Is “weird” marketing actually working in home services… or are contractors missing massive opportunities?
In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson is joined by Sam Preston (CEO of Service Scalers) to break down unconventional marketing channels that are quietly driving real revenue for home service businesses.
From advertising above 100+ stadium toilets to generating leads through church bulletins and local newspapers, this episode explores the overlooked strategies that most contractors ignore—and why they work.
They also dig into why crowded channels like Google and Facebook aren’t the only path to growth, and how thinking differently about marketing can unlock cheaper leads and stronger brand recognition.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why “weird” local marketing channels still drive real results
- Real-world examples: stadium ads, newspapers, church bulletins, pizza boxes, and more
- How overlooked channels can outperform traditional digital ads
- The power of brand familiarity and low cost per impression
If you’re looking to grow your home service business, reduce customer acquisition costs, or find an edge your competitors aren’t using—this episode will change how you think about marketing.
Host: John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Guest: Sam Preston
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-preston-a682103b6
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More Ways To Connect with O&O
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
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Weird local marketing channels. That's still work. If it's not weird, we don't want it. And I am very literally above 116 toilets. I want the sign to say, when you pee, think of me and just like my face. Can you give us a ballpark on like how much that that costs? Probably 20 grand. You're gonna get such a low cost per view, even lower than something I'm.Facebook ads, we'll drive somewhere between half a million and a million total from home shows. Like that's real money. And the cool thing is, is like 95% of people are not thinking this way. I think my big message with all of this iswelcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson during the day, I'm the CEO of Wilson Plumbing, heating, cooling and Electric in Ohio and Indiana. For fun. I run a podcast where I talk to people about growing a business inside the home service industry. Today I'm rejoined by my good friend Sam Preston, the CEO of service Scalers.And a fun aside, uh, is that this is episode number 300. It's crazy to believe that I've been podcasting for five years now and sharing my journey from 3 million of revenue. To today, 40 million. Uh, and basically bullshitting on the internet somewhat professionally. Uh, but I'm thankful for the tens of thousands of contractors that listen to this every month and read our newsletters, and this is a lot of fun.So, episode 300, I, I couldn't think of a better person to share it with them. A good friend, Sam. 300. That's insane, bro. 300. I know. I. It. That is crazy. Okay. And how, how, how long has the podcast been on? Like, that's a hundred episodes a year, so 2021. Okay. So no, no, 2021. So episodes a year, so like one a week effectively?Yeah, we took a small break. Um, we took a small break in 2022 because I was busy integrating, like, so I started the podcast when I was hunting for deals in 2021, and I talked about, hey, the acquisition process, and it was a very like acquisition focused show. And then in 2022. We were in, we were deep in integration and we had some challenges going on, which I've talked about a lot on the, on the show.And, um, so like we had to take, we had to take like a, a pause, we like slowed down and uh, but we picked it back up again. Pretty hot and heavy in 2022. Or early 2023. And then, yeah, I mean, we've been a two, two times a week show for probably two years now. We are, uh, yeah. It, I mean it's, it has honestly, it has been crazy.It's like, uh, it's changed my life and I think all the right ways. Um, yeah, episode 300 is kind of a fun milestone. 'cause I keep, I keep wondering like, when is 300? 'cause I know it's coming up. I see 2 70, 2 82 90, but 300 episodes out there in the world. I'm honored to be a part of your 300. That, that's amazing.Oh, yeah, dude, that's amazing. It takes like so much consistency. You know? How many times have I started some kind of social, uh, campaign where I'm gonna write on LinkedIn again? Um, and just like, well just, you, you get busy as an owner and you, you fall off trying to solve the problems Yeah. And trying to grow and stuff like that.So like the, the, the fact that you've spent this much time doing one thing consistently is insane. Yeah. Well, I, I think comically, um. I think of it as a short period of time, because 2016 is also the year I've been running Wilson for 10 years. Mm-hmm. And like I get the same comment of like, dude, you've been doing the same.And I'm like, kind of. Yeah. Oh dude, that's incredible. We're we're, uh, we're corn fed, man. We're Midwesterners working, you know, we're workhorses. We're here to get it done. Let's go. That's go. That's amazing. Proud of you, dude. Today. Uh, today we're continuing our click to Call series. This one should be really funny.I have some funny examples of, uh, of like these channels, uh, but it is weird local marketing channels that still work. If it's not weird, we don't want it. If it's not weird, we don't even wanna talk about it. Like, get that shit outta here. Uh, this is, I'm talking funk stuff like. How many urinals are you advertising above?Like that's what, that's that's what I wanna know. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, so, so Sam was in town, what, what was that? Two weeks ago? And, uh, and we passed by this, uh, like baseball stadium. And he is like, do you advertise in there? And I am very literally above 116 toilets in that building with like my face and like our logo.And I'm like, absolutely. I, that's amazing. Okay. I found like I was doing research on this and I actually saw, I, I am the, I am the bathroom sponsor. That's amazing. Uh, that's the package. Alright. What's research? What's research? Research? I saw that bathroom stalls recall is like 92%, which I have no idea how they found that stat.So I, I like, I'm skeptical that that's real, but there is a moment where like you're peeing and you see that, you're like, why? Like, yeah, I, I think, I think that's a good advertising if you're running a home service company with a fleet. Here's a question for you. Do you actually know what's happening at the pump?Not what you hope is happening, but what's actually happening? I'm talking shared pins, manual odometer entries, cards that still work even when the truck isn't there. That stuff adds up fast, and that's why a lot of operators that I know are switching to Coast Coast is a smart fuel card built for the trades.It uses GPS and vehicle data to verify transactions in real time. So if the vehicle isn't present, then the card declines. If the fuel volume looks off, it flags it and it's backed by a $25,000 fuel fraud guarantee. Some terms apply. It's also a Visa card, so your text can fuel wherever. Makes sense. No detours, no weird network limitations, and you can control exactly what each card is allowed to buy.One company, milestone Home Services. Saved over 130,000 a year after switching. Plus, cut down fraud and admin time. If you've got trucks on the road and fuel is a meaningful line item, this is worth five minutes. Go to coast pay.com/owned and operated, or click the link below. And get a custom savings estimate and see where your leaks are coming from.Yeah, I mean my, you know, the sentence I used directly with the baseball team when we were signing this deal was, uh, I want the sign to say. When you pee, think of me and just like my face, you know, RP signs, thumbs up. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's probably really good if the plumbing is working because they're like, oh wow, clearly this is well done.And it's really good if it's not working. 'cause they're like, I need to call somebody to come fix this. Yeah. On, on a, on a normal day potentially, uh, potentially less. Now, the one challenge with that is I couldn't get the back of the female stalls. Which I was very put out by because a hospital system already had them.And I was like, come on. Like, come on then, bro. That's hilarious. Okay. Like can you give us a ballpark on like how much that that costs? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, probably 20 grand and it was a three year contract, so probably, you know, 20 grand a year. And then what else did we get? We got, um, I think we got like strikeout sponsor.Um, which is kind of funny. And then we got something else. Uh, but the bath, I mean, the bathrooms was just hilarious. That's so good. We, we talked to, uh, we talked to the Cleveland Browns, we talked to Oh yeah. Um. The Guardians, I think is their name now, or whoever the baseball team is. I, I, I remember it as the Indians.But, um, and then what's the other one? Calves. So we talked to all of them, um, and bathroom sponsorships. It was kind of funny, like we would pitch the idea like, Hey, Cleveland Browns like, can we buy your bathrooms? And uh, everyone was pretty open to it. That's amazing. So like, uh, we, we were gonna do. Um, we were gonna do the, whatever the baseball team is, we were gonna do their bathrooms and they have like 80 games a year at this freaking stadium.Um, versus like, football apparently only has seven or eight or whatever. And it was only a hundred grand, which like, it's not bad. I mean, that's PR hundreds. I mean, I don't remember how many, uh, people, it was a week, but it was hundreds of thousands. I thought millions over the course of the season. Like it was a, it was kind of an outrageous exposure.Now does that, that that cost include like material or is that just like the right to advertise it? It depends on the, it depends on the sponsor. The one for 20 grand included the material. The one for a hundred, I think it was like we get material credit or something like that. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. And I think you're gonna want to go with something like baseball that has just significantly more, or basketball, you're gonna have significantly more events than football, which is, you know, taps out at 17.Yeah. But there we go. There's my weird bathrooms urinals. Um, I mean, I, I think that there is a. I think, you know, my dad, my dad was doing, uh, well, I guess we'll define, define some of these. So one would be like sports advertising. I, I would say like big sports advertising. Um, you know, another example of this, if you search Roto-Rooter captains, I wanna say on Google, um, Roto-Rooter sponsored a minor league team here in.Northeast Ohio and they replaced seats inside the stadium, right behind home base. They replaced like 50 seats and they put toilets. It's hilarious. It is. It is so funny. That's so good. Do people actually pay for those? It's so good. And like toilet? It's like toilet. Oh hell yeah. It's like toilets with arm shares.Like, they're not like real, like, you know. Yeah. Don't shit in it. But like, you know, I, it's, uh, yeah, it, it's, it's really funny. That's so good. Um, it's, yeah, so you can do, uh, sponsorships. You could do, um, you know, back of the baseball stadium. Um. A lot of colleges, you know, sports marketing is like its own thing.Yeah. Uh, churches is another one that I think fits into this category. I would even put local newspapers as like, weird in, in 2026. Like I would, I think that's a little bit odd. Um, youth sports, like t-shirts, uh, honestly like school programs, like, um, we just started ad we advertised in my, my Son's Schools program.Um, and I think, again, weird on one hand it's sort of like, how do you quantify it and, um. I don't know any other restaurant menus, pizza boxes, anything else you can think of? Bus, uh, benches, um, dry cleaner hangers. Mm-hmm. Movie theaters. Oh yeah. Place mats, gas pumps, grocery carts, church bulletins, uh, coffee bulletins.Lots of those different types. Pizza boxes. Um. I'm sure there's some weird ones out there that we haven't heard of yet, and so if anybody has a good one, please comment below. What's the weirdest thing you do? Comment? Yeah, regardless if it worked or not, I wanna know. Oh yeah, yeah. No, we just, we just need to know.Mine's urinals. I spent 20 grand to like sponsor tour. Did you, did you see uptick in organic traffic or anything? Or is that just like purely a brand play? I don't, I don't think we've quantified it and I'm almost not sure that I want to, this, this is just a joke. We don't care if we make money here. Like I just like this.Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is funny, like, it's a funny story, to be honest with you. I have spent more for less, so I'm like, let's give it a shot. Yes. You know, my, my dad, my dad did, uh. So church bulletins and like local newspapers, you know, print I think is kind of this little category that's, that's pretty interesting.My dad did a, uh, he, he opened up, it's called the West Side Leader, and it's inside northeast Ohio. Um, it, it's not even northeast Ohio. It's like, uh, the west side of Akron, like where I live. And Akron has, uh, you know, 200 to 300,000 people in the county. And, um. The West side leader goes to the west side.There's east side leader. Uh, but there was no HVAC advertisers at all in the west side leader. Okay. Like not a single one. And, uh, or like the classifieds or whatever, I don't even know. So he put an ad there. 'cause my dad's like a very, he loves, uh, wet heat like hydronics, boilers. Steam boilers, water boilers, whatever.So he put in this ad just to like see what would happen. He, he did this like a few weeks ago. He told me about it at breakfast and he's like, yeah, I put this ad in the west side leader. It was like a hundred bucks. I just wanted to see what happened. He got eight leads in the first week. I mean, and on, on one hand I was, I was sitting there and I was like, wow, that's.That's crazy. Like I did not, I honestly did not expect that. Um, and on the other, it's like, okay, well, I, I mean people are looking, you know, and if you are the only HVAC company sponsoring that little thing, then it makes sense that you get calls. Right. We had the same one for a church bulletin. We bought a business in January and they were advertising in a church across the street.We did not continue it. Maybe we should have. Um, but they, they were driving leads and it was like five to 10 leads a month. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I feel like the, the church bulletin, tell me if I'm wrong, like, is it just about placement or, I feel like it's way more effective if you're like a part of that community.So you're putting it there and you're like, oh yeah, I, I know John, he goes to church with me. Yeah. Or I see this guy at the coffee shop all the time. So it makes sense that it's there. I would imagine so. Yeah. Um, and similar to like, so you know, we're, we're Catholic and our kids go to a Catholic school, so like the church and the school are like the same community.Um. But I would imagine so, like Jack, you know, my son Jack went to school, uh, the other day and like my wife sends me a video, she's rolling up to the school and there's like a sign. 'cause we sponsored some event that's coming up and Jack's like, Hey, that's our company. He is seven years old. He's like, Hey, that's dad's company.And um, so I, I do think there's, like, there you get greater value by being in the community, like the church across the street. Probably makes a lot of sense and we probably should have, you know, re re-upped it because it, like, they're gonna see the ad in the bulletin, then they're gonna literally pull out of the church.Right. And see the frigging business right there. Yeah. I think what I struggle with, uh, I, which I think I'm, I'm sure this is the reason that like no one else is advertising HVAC inside West Side leader is it's, it's sort of like not obvious if there's going to be a return. Like at all. It feels like this could either, like I sponsored that event and I'm like, it was $2,000.And in my mind, I, and I even had our controller coded this way. This is charity. Yeah. Like this is, yeah. I was like, I expect absolutely nothing to come from this. But I don't know, like I, I mean obviously I, I'm saying that while also giving two examples in my life that people are driving leads successfully.But for some reason I still have struggle like. Getting it to click in my head that it would work. Yeah, I mean, I think I would approach this in two different ways. Uh, one obviously, like if it's not driving you more revenue, it's probably a bad marketing play. Um, but I, I would play this brand number one, right?So we want just our brand to be out there more often. Specifically if you start to get. Bigger, uh, and you want to be just seen more often. Uh, people want to like your brain. Once you've recognized a brand, it processes that information easier. Uh, and so if it's seen your company over and over and over again, the moment their, their toilet breaks and they go search on Google, they recognize your brand.Like, oh, yeah, yeah, I, I know Wilson. Here we go. Um, so I play it that way. But the other one is cost per view. Uh, right. Like that. You're gonna get such a low cost per view, something that you even lower than something on Facebook ads, or we were talking about this the other day, um, you know, advertising on, uh, the Super Bowl.It's a million dollar placement. Everyone's like, oh wow, it's a million dollars. There's no way I'd ever place it. I, I would even do that. But that cost per view is so much lower than you would ever get on Facebook ads. Like, that's easy for those brands to spend. A couple million dollars on that. And so, not saying you should do that, uh, but saying like, you know, when I was looking up like what does it cost to to get on pizza boxes, it was like $350 for 10,000 flyers.Like you can't beat that price for just to get in front of 10,000 people. So, um, you know, I would, I would play around with it. Um, a couple others that I've seen or heard of is like, or I've personally run like Craigslist ads for some home service businesses. Um. I don't offer that as a service anymore because it was really hard to scale.Um, but we saw good returns on those and it was, you know, very manual work. Um, and I don't know if it still is. Um, but then the other one would be like Reddit, like that's another one where I'd play around with that because it would be really interesting to run ads there and see if that would help you with backlinks or, uh, getting people like noticing you.So, I mean, there's a lot of other ways that you can go about this, but I would play it as a brand. We wanna get our name and our logo out there, so if people are familiar with it and how can I get as many views as possible, uh, as cheap as possible. Have you ever bought enterprise level software and realized that managing it really just became a full-time job?Well, that's pretty much exactly why my restoration business, which over to Field Pulse, we were tired of software that promised efficiency, but came with endless training sessions, onboarding and frustrated techs, and using it began to feel like it was a job all on its own. Field Pulse was built for owner operators who don't want more dashboards.They need scheduling, invoicing, and job tracking, and they need it all to live in one place without the chaos or the learning curve. Field pulse is simple to roll out. It's easy for your team to actually use, and it was 75% cheaper. Then the other titans of software we were using right now, if you book a demo with Field Pulse, you'll get an exclusive partner offer.It's 20% off an eligible annual subscription and 50% off premium support for your first year. If your software upgrade has turned into a time suck, it might be time to make the move, book a demo with Field Pulse and see if it's a better fit. I wonder, um, I'm, I'm back on the classified section, so my. What I think was so interesting about that, that experiment in general.One, it was a classified, it wasn't even an ad, it was like HVAC contractor will replace a boiler and it was really focused on the boiler. 'cause that's what he feels like doing. So very niche market like boiler owners are only like 10% or less at homes. Yeah. So very niche in the classified, not the ads in a.Small town newspaper, eight leads. So when I think of like, what would a plumber do, which is less niche than boiler, I, I'm ki I'm kind of interested. So I, I'm almost going the opposite way where like potentially brand, but the two examples I can think of were very lead driven and I would almost do like a 50 bucks off if you cut out this bulletin or cut out this whatever, like make it a small coupon.'cause it. I mean, those two examples are like very clearly L lead generative. Yeah. If you can quantify it like a, you know, a QR code on a pizza box and stuff like that, like, that's when you can figure out whether that actually made you money. And the cool thing is, is like 95% of people are not thinking this way.Everyone's like Google ads, Facebook ads, you know, uh, LSA, but like, no one's like, well total, I mean, there, there wasn't a single HVAC contractor in that newspaper. And that newspaper goes to. The wealthiest section of this city. And it's like, that's, that was also kind of wild. You know, what we didn't talk about, which is kind of like weird local marketing, um, but home shows.Mm-hmm. So home shows, we started doing home shows about two years ago with our canvassing and events team. Yeah. The, I mean, they, they, uh, it is a very significant source of revenue for us. We, we had one show so far this year that did, I think it broke 200,000. Uh, or it was, it was close. Uh, and that was one show out of like the 10 that we've done year to date.So kind of crazy. And, um, but they can drive real value. And what I think is really funny is like it ebbs and flows with popularity. So this year, last year, this one, it's called the Great Big Home and Garden Show. Um, I don't know if, I don't know how many HVAC contractors there were, but there was north of 15.Just like spitballing this year. There was one and it was us and I, I, I don't know what happened. I don't like, 'cause most of 'em last year were like PE backed, so maybe they cut their like explorative marketing spend. I don't, I really don't know why it went like from 15 to one. Um, but like that works. And I, I remember.I remember like, uh, we were buying companies and every company we bought had like these signs and I'm like, what the hell are these for? They're like, yeah, we used to do home shows and then we just stopped. And, and, and I think that that is a weird local marketing thing that people don't think works anymore.But it really does. It really does work. I mean, all this whole year in total, we'll drive somewhere between half a million and a million total from home shows. That's real money. And if we were a $2 million contractor, we'd grow by 50% just doing home shows. I wonder if you could also play that with like, um, and I wanna know if you've done this, like local newsletters, uh, advertisings, um, or like find mm-hmm.We, we have done it. We have struggled to get traction. Okay. What kind of newsletters are you thinking? Like, actual news? Or has it been like, so it's more like community focused. Mm-hmm. Um. Maybe, maybe it'd be different if it was actual news, but this one's like a commu like blog event. Like, Hey, here's these, here's the stuff to do this weekend.Um, maybe news would be different. I don't know. 'cause I, I think you're right. Like the thing about them is they can be so big. Yeah. Like the one that we're, that we're sponsoring has like 40,000 some readers. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy. Like that's a lot of freaking readers. But we don't get much, we haven't gotten a lot from it.Is it, uh, still relatively cheap? Or is it expensive? Okay. That's cheap. Yeah, I mean, like, try to get on that. Yeah. I, I, I think the issue is like, do we, uh, it's sort of targeting like are they renters? Do they own a home or, you know, and, and I don't know how much that matters, but like that information doesn't matter at all for a home and garden show 'cause everyone owns a home or like a church bulletin.Um, I guess at least in my church, like most people are gonna be homeowners. Um. Obviously, maybe that's church dependent. Uh, but yeah, with, I, I think the part of the thing with the newsletter is like, who are they targeting and trying to nail that down. But I, I do think that is a good example of a. That's a good one.The other thing I would be interested in, literally have nothing to back this up except for I wonder if this works, is, you know, e e-commerce com companies have went really heavy on micro influencers. Um, so like finding people in your community. Foodies, you know, parts. Yeah. Anything that you can find where you could maybe sponsor, uh, a, you know, a, a restaurant visit or you know, a meetup.Yep. I think this does two things. One, micro influencers. You could probably find a bunch of people that have like a small following that would love. Uh, uh, just a little bit of cash to sponsor you. Yeah. And then second, it creates a backlink back to your website, which is, you know, yeah. Kind of expensive when you're going for like specific super local niche.So you'd be like two birds, one stone. Yeah. If you have, if you're already in the media, social, uh, content game for your local area, that might be another play where you could, again, drive traffic cheap eyeballs, um, and backlinks. That's a good idea. I know I've talked to, well, Chris Hoffman was doing some local influencer work.I don't know how much it actually did for him. Um, but I, I do think that could, I do think that could work. Um, I liked the idea of local meetups, but like specific to something. So something that we've, we have not, we have not like executed on this perfectly, but I think like. A wine night for realtors.Mm-hmm. And just like literally collecting people and just talking to 'em would freaking kill. I think so much of it is like, who's in the room? Um, but even like dinners, like somebody pitched me the other day on like, uh, like, Hey, just go to this dinner. And I was like, all right, fuck. Yeah. Like, I'll, I'll eat, I eat.And um, yeah, no, totally. And, and after I got invited, uh, I was like, Hey, that actually makes kinda like a lot of sense because the other people in the room. Um, at this fucking dinner. Like one guy owns a insurance company and one guy, you know, so it's, it's like, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Um, I not maybe, obviously mine are like very people focused.Why did newspapers do? Yeah. Okay. I'm like, all right. Am I all just too one sided? I, I don't know how, I don't know how I feel about like, sports, like, like little league sports teams like name on the back of the shirt. I mean, I like it in the sense that like, there's that. Association, uh, because obviously the people are like, oh, my kids, and, you know, John Wilson's plumbing company, right?Like, I feel like there's that like already Yeah. Built in, uh, you know, love of that. But then like, again, like how much is that actually gonna pull back for you? I have no idea what's, what's, what's another, what, what else do we have for weird ones? Restaurant menus. Mm-hmm. Um, I always do wonder, like I'll go to like a cafe.Like a diary type of cafe, and I'll walk in and it'll be like the entire table is sponsored by somebody. And first off, I just think that's like hilarious, uh, to me. Like what happens if someone stops? Like some of these are like printed on there and I'm like, dude, what happens if they stop paying? Like, do you have to redo the tables every time?Yeah. Um, but uh, yeah, I mean menus or like that type of paraphernalia, uh, I think I'm a fan. Yeah. Um, I, I think my big message with all of this is, and you sort of said this earlier with the local newsletter thing, well, how much are you paying? Yeah. Like, how much are we talking about here? And like, if a church bulletin is a thousand dollars a year, and that's 52 placements.So what is that? 20 placements? Yeah, that's, or $20 a placement. It's like 20 bucks. So like. You know, you can probably drive $20 of value a week out of it. And it's also like not hard to ROII, I also think I have, like, we have wasted money on some of these local things, so, uh, maybe it's like, how much is it?And like, just continue to test. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing I would wanna play around with is trying to figure out how you can be. With the realtors and obviously the idea of showing up to like one of those meetups, I forget what they're called, where like everyone sits around and just passes around business cards.Um, I, oh yeah, we didn't even talk about that, but like, uh, um, like a business networking group. Um, oh, there's a few names I we're in like four of 'em. Um, and those are, those are real, like they, they drive real value. And it is kind of funny because, you know, a lot of the people that listen to the show are probably millennials and, um.For the most part, there are no millennials in that room, which I just think is interesting because they, they do have real business that occurs inside those rooms. Like there's millions of dollars of referrals and everyone's like, Hey, word of mouth marketing's the best marketing one. That's literally word of mouth marketing professionalized, like that's what that is.Yeah. I mean, most, most people reach out to their realtor. To find contractors, right? Like every, you know, like, Hey, do you know anybody? I mean, we, we still reach out to our ours every once in a while. It's like, hey, like what is, uh, do you have somebody that will fix this? Um, and so like, being that person, like, I don't know how you get in because they, the, uh, realtors, uh, really are closed down about like you giving them some kind of spiff.Um, but getting in with those, maybe sponsoring like a realtor event, uh, like a lunch and learn or something, that would be really interesting. No, I, I agree. We, we've tried to do, uh, we did home inspector events. Mm-hmm. Um, like trainings because home inspection, uh, like it, it, they're sort of technical, sort of generalists, but they need, like, the more training they have, they're very grateful for it.So we've done home inspector trainings, we've done realtor trainings. Um, we have, we've never gotten out into like the networking thing, but I, I think that so much of. I think there's like a B2B relational aspect and it would be nice if like a, maybe this is like me pitching myself, but like I think you almost need like a community manager that like goes and drives this community and, um.Like they're running the trainings, they're like meeting realtors. They're like helping to establish B2B relationships, uh, that just turn into more and more referrals. I like it. I like the things that are just a little bit off the beaten path, um, that nobody else is thinking of. Um, now I think they just work it.It's also a great place to waste money. You also might just find that one little thing that nobody else has done in your area and it just works. I talked to a lot of home service business owners, and if you are anything like the many shops that I know, you're getting flooded with AI pitches right now.Most of 'em sound great, but then they fall apart. The second they hit the real world. The one that I've kept coming back to is Avoca. What impressed me is they actually get how contracting businesses run, and it's not just some AI answering service. Avoca is going to handle inbound calls, outbound follow-ups, texts, web leads, dispatching, and even coaching your CSRs.Inside of one system that's built for growing home service companies. And if you're on ServiceTitan, this matters. Your integrations go deep so you're not duct taping five tools together and hoping nothing breaks during your busy season. I also like that they're honest about what AI should and shouldn't do when a call needs a human, they have a 24 7 live transfer built in, no drop balls, no awkward customer experience owners using Avoca are seeing hold times, basically disappear and booking rates jump.Sometimes by more than 30%. And that is real revenue, not just a vanity metric. If you're looking for the one AI partner that actually helps you book more jobs without creating more chaos, this is worth taking a look. Book a demo at the link below. I, I think what I, where I struggle with a lot of this stuff because I, I was thinking about this, uh, yesterday.I was thinking about this a couple days ago, honestly, before I even knew we were gonna talk about this, because I was thinking about the newspaper thing. Yeah. And the church bulletin. And what I struggle with is like, I know that, I know that he got leads from the local newspaper. He probably got eight leads, and on one hand it's like, okay, like, hey, that's leads.Um, but on the other, and maybe I'm just being dumb and someone can like, just point out to me like, Hey, you're overthinking this, which maybe I am, but in my mind we need so many leads. Like I need like 250 leads a day. It's sort of like a, that effort doesn't scale that I think I get stuck in and so does probably everybody else is, oh, I can't scale that.And it's like, obviously you can't scale church bulletins like no shit. But like it's, it still does something towards it. Um, but I think that's where I always get a little bit lost in the sauce is like, how many hours am I gonna spend doing this? And like, will there be return? Whereas like, I know, I know there will be return.SA, uh, and I, I think that's like my, my big challenge on these local things is they all take a lift. Like home shows take a lift and the realtor thing takes a lift and sponsoring my school's thing takes a lift. And, um, it's just not as easy as like turning on meta ads, but. It's good for your community and it gets you out there and it's cheap, right?Like I was looking at church bulletins and it's cheap as hell. I was looking at church bulletins and they're, they're like on average like 42, 40 $2 a month cost. So like, well that's not a lot. 10 bucks a week, what's the worst? You turn it off after three months going, Hey, that didn't work. Or you leave it on for a year because you've forgotten that you've, you've added a subscription.Um, like I think, I think it's worth trying some of these smaller ones and just seeing how does it affect anything? And maybe the answer's nothing. But, um, I mean, I've been part of those, so many of these conversations where like, I don't think it's doing anything. So you turn off that campaign. Yeah. And then suddenly you see a dip and you're like, whoa, what happened?Like, oh, I just turned this off. Yeah. You know, three weeks ago. Well, maybe it was that you turned it back on. Okay. Now I'm starting to see something come through. So, um, I think it's worth, yeah, worth trying, uh, and trying to be unique and trying to find ways that people aren't thinking, thinking outside the box.Yeah. Um, being places that nobody else is gonna be, um, and seeing what you drive. Yeah. Well, I, I think that's the exciting part of all of it is no one else is there. No one else is inside that newspaper. No one else is in the church bulletin. Like it is a very, whereas like everyone's on Google. No one else was in the home show and we did almost $200,000, right?Like there's a, just because other people aren't doing it, doesn't mean that they're right. It just means that they're not doing it. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing that I, I love that because like SEO Google Ads, there's already competition in the market. So if you're starting brand new, yeah, part of that learning phase is just like trying to squeeze in to create some space for you against your competition.Yeah. No one else is on that church bullet. So like you're there, you're already number one now. You just gotta figure out, will that actually drive leads? This was a good roundup of weird marketing tactics that. Still work. Maybe we should do, like whoever has the, the, whoever has the weirdest thing that they've done will mention them in the next podcast.And so. You, they should just come on the podcast and tell us about it. Like, I still want to have the guy on that did all the signs up in Michigan, like, I think that'd be so fun. They went from like zero to 6 million in revenue in three years in doing like only yard signs. Like that was their, and I'm like, that's fucking awesome.I love that. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Let's do that. The, the person that comments the weirdest thing that they've done, the the weirdest one. You're coming on the show, you telling us about it. I love it. I can't wait to meet you. Yeah, I can't either. That'll be a ton of fun. All right. If you like what you heard, make sure you like, comment the weirdest thing you're doing and sub to the channel pace.
