Owned and Operated #237

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Tal Shub, CEO of Craft, to dive into how AI is transforming sales in the home service industry.Tal shares how Craft built an AI-powered sales engine that listens to customer conversations, provides real-time coaching, and helps service teams recover lost revenue.
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In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Tony Castellucci from Wanamaker to break down how home service companies should think about marketing spend at three different levels: $100K, $500K, and $1M.

Tony and John dig into what works (and what doesn’t) as your budget scales. From avoiding white noise and wasted spend, to maximizing digital safety nets like SEO, PPC, LSAs, and Google My Business, the conversation highlights how to build consistent lead flow and a strong brand presence without diluting your dollars.

They cover why seasonality matters for small budgets, when to shift toward year-round brand building, and how traditional media like TV, streaming, and selective billboards can play a role as you grow. Tony also shares agency-side lessons on attribution, cost per lead, and why marketing dilution is one of the most common pitfalls for home service owners.

If you’re looking to understand how to strategically allocate your marketing dollars — whether you’re running a $5M shop or pushing past $15M — this is a must-listen episode.

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🎙️ Host:
John Wilson

🎙️ Guest:
Tony Castelucci (Wanamaker)

Episode 237 Transcript

John Wilson: [00:00:00] I'll see marketing plans and it'll be like, I've got five grand set aside for like bus stops. I've got 10 grand set aside for radio and I'm like, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That's white noise. That's not strategic. You gotta be strategic. 

Tony Castellucci: I think traditional is probably gonna go through a little bit of a renaissance here.

A hundred percent. It's when I talk traditional, I'm talking scale. When when your LSA isn't working, that. The bottom of the funnel. Yeah. So the best way to combat that is to put a shit ton of people back into the top of the funnel. Yeah, yeah. Filter it down. They're photoing. The basics of marketing. How can I reach the most people for the least amount of money?

Yeah. That's still tv. How'd you spend a million bucks? Uh, what would you do? The biggest thing I will warn you with traditional is

John Wilson: welcome back to owned and operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. I run a $30 million home service company in Ohio. And I also run a podcast teaching other people how to build their home service company and documenting my journey along the way. Today we have Tony from Wanamaker on the show. Again, welcome Tony.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. This'll be fun. [00:01:00] Yeah. No excited. Good topic today. Yeah. Yeah. Today. Today's gonna be good. So today what we're gonna be doing, talking about is we're gonna be breaking down how marketing changes as your marketing budget grows. What does a marketing look like at a hundred thousand a year?

What does marketing look like at half a million a year? And what does marketing look like at a million a year of marketing budget, not revenue. So I don't think we've, uh, I don't think we've ever done this topic before, but it should be pretty interesting. 

Tony Castellucci: Yeah, no, a lot of ways to, uh, to dive into it and kinda.

Getting the nitty gritty. So yeah, it's the coast. 

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John Wilson: You wanna start small or big? Let's start small. Let work our way up. Alright. A hundred thousand dollars a year. Marketing budget. What are we gonna do? What do we, do you want, you want me to lead off here? I'm, I'm curious.

Yeah. I'm curious what you 

Tony Castellucci: think. Again, so we're, we're a full service agency. We really specialize in traditional, but we, we handle, um, you know, a lot of clients with their, with their digital as well, focused on lead gen, primarily with home services. So for a hundred K, uh. A, it depends a little bit on, on the market size so that it's, it's a little variable, but we'll say if you're in a mid small to mid market, 

John Wilson: which population?

Tony Castellucci: Um. You know, population 2 million or less. I'd say like, Cleveland's probably, like you're approaching a larger market. Uh, you're probably two. Yeah. Cleveland's top 

John Wilson: [00:03:00] 50 market. Three and a half million total. Yeah. You're, I wanna 

Tony Castellucci: say like nine d tv, DMA, which is your TV market rank is like 18 or 19, I wanna say.

Yeah. Yeah. Cleveland. Yeah. It's big. So if you market like 25 or lower a hundred K, you're starting to eclipse that. Uh, threshold where you're able to leverage some sort of scale media in opposed to, I mean, you've probably now outgrown strictly lead eggs. You're probably, um, outgrown some of the more entry level stuff with social and you're probably wanting a little bit more consistent lead flow and, and, and growing the brand.

So at a hundred KI allocate the overall budget roughly the same no matter the the size. Okay. There's a little. Discre, you know, adjusting there. But I'd say, um, and I don't know how granular you want to go, if you wanna talk like grassroots door knocking campaigns and stuff too. Yeah, 

Speaker 5: yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: All of it. I'd say, you know, 10%, just about everybody.

10% is usually on misc now. That's the one that probably changes when you get to a million. You don't spend a hundred [00:04:00] thousand dollars on random t-shirts at softball fields. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Um, but you're probably a hundred K, there's probably 10 grand of just random marketing umbrella things. Yeah. Your local teams, things like that.

Yep. I'd say probably 50 to 60% is your, your digital, and that's all inclusive. That can go up and down depending on the, uh, the market size. So you're probably 50 or 60 k. And at a hundred K. So what's that? Leave us 30. So we've got like 30, 40 to play with. You have a little bit of traditional scale media that I would use with that, but So it's like three grand a month, four grand a month, three grand.

I wouldn't even go a month. I would be, you have at that level, you can do traditional media, particularly, I love broadcast TV, as you know. Yep. You gotta be. On point. So I'm looking at se, I'm, I'm pulling up Google trends. I'm pulling up previous sales. I'm looking at seasonality. Big time. Yeah. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: We're not going to be advertising in a dead month because you're not gonna eat up.

Oh, okay. All the budget. Well, yeah, this, okay, this makes sense. [00:05:00] So instead of you thinking three grand a month, it'd be like 15 grand per, is it 15? Spring, spring, fall? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 15. 15. Okay. I, I think I like that. And you can be even more creative. I mean, again. We talked about it. Video is key. 'cause you can answer why me?

Why now? Yes. Uh, how can I afford you? That's king. But even more important it is at that level is to just reach a shit ton of people. So yeah, even if it's a five second billboard, just. Yeah. Company name tagline. In local newscasts or in prime time or in sports, you can definitely attain that no matter what the market is with, you know, 30 k or so.

Um, and then on the digital side, biggest mistake I see people do on the digital side, don't stretch it too thin. I mean, cover your ass on things that are important. Get your SEO in line. 

John Wilson: I see this all the time. 

Tony Castellucci: Get your SEO in line. Get your PPC in line. Yeah, get your LSA in line. You do not need to be on social and YouTube and OTT and everything right at once.

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Get [00:06:00] P-P-C-S-E-O. Google my Business, LSA. That is your safety net. That's how people are going to even, everything else you're doing is pushing them there. 

Speaker 5: Yep. 

Tony Castellucci: Be prepared to catch 'em. And then with that 30%, 30 grand discretionary, do as creative as you can. Have somebody in your corner that can stretch it as far as it could possibly go.

And try to push as many people to that safety net as you can. Mm-hmm. 

John Wilson: So 

Tony Castellucci: that's my a hundred K take. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Agree, disagree. 

John Wilson: Uh, I, I think that the way you're dividing up the campaigns into seasons that like. I'm moving more towards agreement than I would've been because it, to me at a hundred, uh, I totally agree with how you ended it.

You don't wanna be white noise. Yeah, you do. Yeah. You don't wanna be, don't wanna be white noise. Don't wanna be white noise. And I think the, the game at small budget, the game into any budget, but the game at small budget especially, is you don't really have the money to experiment, like you said, 10% mis, but like, just like that's 10%, you know, that's a lot.

Like you just don't have the money to like. [00:07:00] Find out. So I'm always a big fan of like, how do we get the maximum output now if we're dividing it up by season and it's 15,000 per campaign? Yeah, that feels pretty good. Like I could do 'cause that might be only 60 days. Yeah. You could run it that hard 

Tony Castellucci: if you're in a smaller market.

I always say if, if I had to start a a, a company tomorrow and mm-hmm. You're not shadow luck if you're in a big market, but. Everything in a smaller market costs about the same as a big market, but the entry level, you're not reaching as many people. Yes. So the poll's smaller, but the entry level for everything you're doing marketing wise is significantly, significantly lower.

The other warning shot, I'll say, especially at that level, um, with your traditional types, it's big with radio, it's big with tv now, especially in an odd year where there's no political money, these stations are coming out and they're saying, here's. The deal of all deals. 12 months at 1500 a month, 2000 a month.

That's white noise. That's not strategic. You gotta be strategic. So season alley, like day time, season, don't run seven days a week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, your high call volume days where, yeah, yeah. Angie's List built her [00:08:00] business running weekend morning news to grab leads and sell 'em back to you guys. So.

Sunday morning news, Monday, Tuesday, high call, volume days, retail and everything else. Entertainment will be your back half that no one wants to call a plumber on a Friday night. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Um, so very, very strategic. So instead of 30 grand, over 52 weeks. You know, it's 30 grand over, you know, eight, then you drill it down even further and how many days out of that eight you are even on.

John Wilson: No, that, that makes a ton of sense. Yep. That makes a ton of sense to me. Yeah. I think the game, uh, early on is like, how do we centralize to the least amount of sources so we don't dilute, like, like that makes, uh, it helps attribution. 

Tony Castellucci: Yeah. You wanna know it's working. Yeah. So if I'm only on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, yeah.

Eight weeks a year and I see spikes. Yeah. Hey, I might put a 

John Wilson: little more there at work. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I see, uh, I'll see marketing plans from like. Companies with a, around this budget size, and it'll be like, I've got five grand set aside for like bus stops. I've got 10 grand set aside for radio. I've got, and I'm like, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.[00:09:00] 

Tony Castellucci: Yeah. And you know, I'm an advertising agency, so I, I get put in this whole lot. There's a lot of shady agencies out there that don't wanna be held to attribution and ROI. So what do they do? Spray and pray. 

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. 

Tony Castellucci: Hey, you're everywhere. So everything coming in is my, is my success story. No. Um, you're everything.

If, even if it's working, it could work better if you dial it in with some strategy. A hundred percent. Yep. 

John Wilson: Cool. That was a good one. All right. Half a million. Uh, so that's like a $5 million business probably. Uh, maybe a little bit bigger. Yeah. Because a lot of companies are like six to seven, like six to 10%.

So like 

Tony Castellucci: Yeah. And these are good benchmarks. 'cause this is kind of what I see. So I see the natural home service. Uh, I see plateaus. So you got like your one to two, then they plateau out until they change something. Then you got your three to five that people kind of plateau in. Yep. Then you have your five, then you go off, you go viral and home service growth.

Mm-hmm. Um, but at a half million now you're starting to become a dominant brand, a three to five range. You are starting to stick up a flag in, in really any market [00:10:00] size at this point. Maybe not in New York City and la but everything else you can afford traditional, especially your, your, your news stations.

The allocation, I keep it pretty much the same, 50 to 60% on your digital side. Now you probably have a little bit more there to, uh, eat up more of the LSA share. Mm-hmm. You might be able to branch out and do some creative things on the lead, on the, uh, social side. I'm not a huge social media guy. I think that's.

A very entry level digital tactic. 'cause you can get in at a couple hundred bucks a month, you'll get leads. They're going to be shit. But it's, it gives you something. Once you start to spend significant money on inbound coming leads, you've outgrown that you wanna shift towards quality leads and conversions and, and better KPIs.

Mm-hmm. So, um, I'd heavy up all of the things we talked about. P-P-C-S-E-O-G-M-B-L-S-A. Um, maybe start looking a little bit more at lead quality. So maybe I have a little digital budget that I can carve out for streaming video [00:11:00] and zip codes that I wanna start targeting. You can yeah, start adding in a little bit of more sophisticated approach to be pickier with your leads.

And then on the traditional side, um, same 30% ish, so I'm not a math major, but you're getting up, you know, what's that? A little over, a little over a hundred thousand, somewhere in that range. Yeah. You're starting to be more of a 52 week brand. Depending on the market size. Again, if you're in a top 10 market, you might still have to do a seasonality type of approach, play with, uh, spot lengths, things of that nature.

Yeah. But most markets you could be that 52, again, 1% of the market's in the market at any time. So the faster you can get to that consistent. Um, presence. That's where you can really start to build that, that cred, um, brand credibility. And you'll see rev referrals come up. You're seeing your branded searches start to spike.

Mm-hmm. So it starts to snowball at that point. So, um, not a whole lot I'd say, just so you can add a little bit more sophisticated approach, some more high level [00:12:00] tactics on the digital side and more of a consistent 52 week feel on the, uh, on the TV side. 

John Wilson: Yeah, I think all that makes sense. I think, um. It's sort of the same thing, just don't dilute, which I think people naturally tend to do.

Like the bigger the budget, the more they're like, well, I think I should be more places. But half a million dollars is still, uh, like you can dilute too much. I, we, I saw a p and l, like a, it was a business. We were thinking about buying. This was like two years ago. And they were spending, it was $5 million business spending full 10%, so 500,000, which that alone is already kind of uncommon.

Like not many people actually spend 10%. We see six to eight is usually the range. We kind of see a hundred percent, like most people are six to eight. That was already like a little bit of a red flag. I was like, oh, 10%. That's, that's odd. Get after it. Uh, I just don't see that very much. Yeah. So, so we, we dig into it and, um.

I bring up the story a lot, but like 150 of it was billboards. Are you still running your referral program with spreadsheets and Venmo? Well, VUCA is gonna bring your referrals into [00:13:00] the 21st century. It's a referral program on steroids. It's fully automated with ServiceTitan integration, SMS functionality, and built-in tracking and payments.

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Tony Castellucci: this.

John Wilson: Oh yeah. I was like, oh, it shit, Tony's gonna be pissed. But yeah, that was crazy. And then, uh, you know, some, some was, uh, a little bit of tv. It was like they sort of did, they sort of did everything. And I, I still think at um. 500,000 is 40 grand a month. Yeah. You know, so we're talking about money, but we're not talking about like, that's still not that far to go.

Like if you've got eight, eight to 10 on, uh, conventional, [00:14:00] you have $30,000 to do leads and like Google will take a hundred grand to market. So you still have. You, you're like barely scratching the surface on what Google can give you. Still. And there are nuances, 

Tony Castellucci: especially and by market, by company. Yeah.

So at 500 grand now you're enough Places where I've set, you know, kind of a benchmark allocation. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: But now you're starting to get KPIs. So now, hey, maybe you know. In my market, I'm super strong with TV and TV's driving it. So maybe I'm not spending as much on PPC as maybe my benchmark. Yeah. Would, would tell me to.

So you're starting to get a little sophisticated there again with, um, so you have in this scenario, you know, eight to 12, depending on how you structure it, with that 30% a month on the traditional side. Big proponent of broadcast tv. Stay away from cable radio. I'd only do it if I'm pushing recruitment billboards.

I'm only buying select high traffic billboards in zip codes in geo areas that I really wanna target. I'm not doing a mass [00:15:00] billboard campaign, so to your point, don't dilute it. Especially with tactics that aren't gonna move the needle nearly as much as as others. So, yeah, own tv, build that brand strategically.

You could sprinkle in some billboards, but um, and maybe some print in there as well. Some, some localized print. Um. Not a newspaper fan, but you know, I have clients that rave about those little, you know, the home mags? The clippers, yeah. Yeah. Old ladies, you know, hold 'em up. Yeah. You know, so, 

John Wilson: um, they're not, we've done okay with it.

Uh, like ROI was like a two times. Yeah. But I also think messaging wasn't right. So like, could it have been a four times could have been fucked. Print is, messaging 

Tony Castellucci: is just so important. Print is tough. I mean, a lot of people, you gotta have your. That's where it even ties back to, to the brand credibility.

People kind of gotta know you, they're not going to see you. Yeah. And then Google you off a print 

Speaker 5: ad 

Tony Castellucci: for the most part. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Um, but will it hang around especially for, you know, HVAC and plumbing? Could it be on a calendar for months? Yeah. And now my pipe broke. Yeah. So there's some, some positives to it.

John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I, I read an article, [00:16:00] uh, last week about, you know, as the more challenging leads get in 2025, the more people are looking for like. Alternatives. Like how, how else do we drive leads if LSA doesn't work or if it doesn't work as much as I need it to, like, what else are my options? So, uh, this one guy, uh, he's, he like reverted his spend from like a 70 30, like digital traditional to.

70, traditional, 30 digital. I've seen it. And, uh, most of traditional went to direct mail and supposedly it worked. Like according to this article, I, in my mind, I'm like, I wanna see the mail, but direct mail, it was really interesting. It can work. 

Tony Castellucci: I, from a traditional focus, I have a hard time paying. 40, 50 cents per person.

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: That's an insane amount of money. And you break that down. Well, you can cost per thousand. You can, you can pay 

John Wilson: less. But it's like inside these bulk, 

Tony Castellucci: the val packs, I mean, I throw those right in the trash. Um, yeah. So that's when I talk traditional, I'm talking scale. When when your LSA isn't working, that's the bottom of the funnel.

Yeah. So the best way to [00:17:00] combat that is to put a shit ton of people back in the top of the funnel. Yeah, yeah. And filter it down. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: So that's probably what he's doing. Just wrong tactic to it. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Um, but I don't hate the, hate the thought. 

John Wilson: Yeah. No, I, I think, uh. I think traditional is probably gonna go through a little bit of a renaissance here.

Tony Castellucci: hundred percent. It is. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing people are coming to us, raising their hands, you know, in these buckets. This 500 K bucket. I was doing this five years ago, it's not working as good. Yeah. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: And they're the basics of marketing. How can I reach the most people for the least amount of money?

Yeah. At the end of the day, yeah. That's still TV and a couple other strategic traditional pieces. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Um, but yeah. Cool. Let's do the 

John Wilson: fun one. Let's do the big one. Million dollars. Just throw it in the, how'd you spend a million bucks? Um, what would you do? A million bucks, Lambos. And that's it. So 

Tony Castellucci: I'm wrapping Lambos and just driving 'em around.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Uh, a million bucks. Actually, this might be though. I know, I was gonna say pretty much the same allocation. If I was going to change my allocation totality. So a now I'm cranking down that 10% on the random shit. I'm taking that down. Yes. I'm not spending a hundred grand on little league softball teams.[00:18:00] 

Um, but I would think about possibly up in, um, the traditional side. 'cause at, at, uh, a million dollars you are a brand. So now you're not competing with Chuck and a truck. You're competing with regionals. Yeah. You're competing with the Angie herself. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: So at that point. It's about brand, it's about being branded, branded search.

So, and, and you probably are coming close to maxing out LSA and some of the, you can't probably even add 

John Wilson: much. You're pretty, yeah, you're pretty close. Like, uh, it depends on the market, but like, LSA, uh, will max at like 50 to a hundred a month. Mm-hmm. Like if you're a small market, much less. Yep. Yep. Uh, even PPC Maxes.

Yep. Like PPC, it's the first 80% of searches are affordable. The last 20. Are not affordable at all. So if you're in front of the first 80, like you're good. 

Tony Castellucci: Yeah. So I'm focused on essentially making sure I'm good on the, on the, the back framework, the biggest thing. 'cause when people get here, they keep the allocation about the same and they start dishing it out everywhere.

Especially on the digital side. Yeah. I, again, not a big fan of, of social, not a big [00:19:00] fan of display advertising. Even retargeting for the 

Speaker 5: most 

Tony Castellucci: part. Yeah. I don't like retargeting, especially with services. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. I 

Tony Castellucci: mean, who's wants ads? 'cause my pipe broke three months ago. I still wanna see your ad. Yeah. Yeah.

So I am focused on that scale. Maybe I start sprinkling in a couple more billboards I am cranked up on, on tv. Yeah. I am doing a lot of streaming tv, especially quality streaming tv that's going quality programming. We call it FEP, full episodes. Mm-hmm. Full episode program. So, uh, that's, you know, programming 22 minutes or longer.

Um, because you want that engagement, you want your name to be. That's the goal. And then the cost per lead and ROI and, and ROAS all follows after that. Um, now the biggest thing I will warn you, um, with traditional is I guess it's kind of a little bit off topic, but people wanna hold the cost per lead to a digital cost per lead.

It's a different Yeah, totally. Methodology. Try to look at that halo effect and how it trickles down. So if you're rolling your eyes mm-hmm. A million dollars I'm gonna spend. You know what? 300,000 [00:20:00] on traditional. You're crazy. Yeah. I'm telling you. Don't follow it through. Go deeper. 'cause it will change the game.

John Wilson: Yeah. Well, I, I think, uh, to summarize that this is CAC to LTV, which is seemingly not a calculation that home service like walks through a lot, but CAC is customer acquisition costs. Mm-hmm. Versus lifetime value of that customer. Mm-hmm. Like it's the guiding metric for. Any advertising is like, how much did it cost me?

Yeah. And how much over the lifetime of that customer will I receive in revenue? So Lifetime could be three years, could be five years. It's not just the first appointment we spend. 

Tony Castellucci: A amazing amount of time trying to correlate everything traditional to ROI. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: But it doesn't matter how good you are, you are never gonna be able to fully capture everything it's doing.

Yeah. So that's the biggest thing. And then the, the other part of that is I'm seeing, um, the conversion rate. [00:21:00] Anything that I can tie back to tv. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: Or traditional. 

Speaker 5: Yep. 

Tony Castellucci: If you follow it through all the way to the sale. Lead to sale should be over 40%. I mean, I'm seeing like 43% on average. That makes sense.

I mean, they sought 

John Wilson: you out specifically. 

Tony Castellucci: Yeah, they sought specifically. They want specifically, I mean, a lot of companies that work that are coming, well, you 

John Wilson: solved the 

Tony Castellucci: why me, why now? Can I afford you? A lot of companies that are coming to us are saying, I can't. I'm converting, you know, lead to sit at 40%, not lead to sale.

So I mean, that's a game changer when you start to think of it. Yeah. Yeah. A quality lead. So, yeah. Um, that's the other part of it, but, but yeah. Hope that's helpful. So yeah, that's how I struck. Yeah, I think, I 

John Wilson: think, uh, I 

Tony Castellucci: agree with you. I thought we were gonna 

John Wilson: fight a little more. Are we gonna fight more on this?

We can, but, uh, no, I think, I think, uh, yeah, a million bucks. Um, definitely you're more of a brand, traditional should be a bigger thing. I think the only like caveat that I would add, uh, and I'm gonna say this with caution. At a million dollars, someone internally should be accountable for that budget. So there is an inside hire that comes in at a [00:22:00] million dollars.

Like A CMO? No, like a marketing manager, marketing coordinator. Now. My, my caveat is like, what I am not saying is in-house your marketing. Like I know companies with um, $5 million budgets that have a marketing manager and a coordinator, and they manage agencies like we have agencies. Mm-hmm. Uh, and a big mistake that I see is like really early on, someone's like, oh man, I don't wanna pay a, uh, an agency to do this thing.

I'm just gonna go do it. And. It's like your budget's like $200,000. Like what are you talking about? Yeah. Like literally, what are you talking about? And like we have agencies. Yeah. So I, I think just you don't pay 

Tony Castellucci: and a lot of times you don't pay them. Like for traditional media, we're on points. There's no out cost out of you buy it or I buy it.

It's the same cost to you. Yeah. We're getting a discount. So digital's a little different 'cause you have management fees. Yeah. Service around. But on the traditional side. Yeah. Cost to you. So to your point, yes. But. When you're spending that kind of money and you're using agencies, you almost think a babysitter, to your point, you need somebody you need keeping [00:23:00] false on it.

You gotta keep the 

John Wilson: agencies accountable. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I'm giving that big caveat because I, I think people get, like really worked up about in housing their marketing and which I don't think happens until like millions of dollars of spend. 

Jack Carr: Probably one of the most important decisions you can make in your ETA journey is which SBA lender.

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Tony Castellucci: The only people that I've [00:24:00] seen s successfully in-house their marketing fully.

Um. Were huge. They poached. Yeah. You know, people like me from other age, like they poached people in the business and brought them in. They didn't train up sales. 

John Wilson: Well, there's, there's 

Tony Castellucci: no 

John Wilson: way to, you know, there's, because the thing people don't like, I, and I I'm saying this specifically at a million, is like every single discipline of marketing is a specialty.

Tony Castellucci: Yep. 

John Wilson: Like media's a specialty. PPC is a specialty. Yep. Paid social is a specialty and like they're a generalist to do that, would do a horrible job. I mean, that's why we niches and that's why 

Tony Castellucci: we lead with We're traditional. Yeah. Specifically tv. Yeah. Listen, well, we do digital. We do a lot of digital too, but we know that sometimes.

Yeah. If you're happy with your digital guy, yeah. He's probably not versed to do tv. Yeah. And I'm probably not as good if he's, you know, if you're happy or maybe I am, but you know, why, why chance it, um, and go that route. So, um. Yeah. I mean, vet it to your [00:25:00] point. And, and then the other part of the, of, of bringing it in-house is, I mean, just from running a business, there's cost to that.

You know, you got health insurance, you got benefits, things like that. So is it worth taking on a team of, you know, 20, 30 people to execute? Yeah. Everything. Um, but yeah, so Awesome. We didn't fight that much. 

John Wilson: No, we didn't. No. Uh, and I think those are good benchmarks. 'cause a million dollars of spend, I mean, that could be like a $15 million business.

Yeah. Uh, a million dollars is a lot of money. Yeah. I 

Tony Castellucci: mean, when you're that big, um, best way to think of it too is you got the biggest bullseye on your back in your market probably. Yeah. So when you are going a little bit more brand traditional centric Yeah. That's your best defense. Yeah. You know, don't let them poach your clients by, you know, upping.

Um, you know, Angie spends Angie and HomeAdvisor, I think combined for like four or $5 million a month just in PPC. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Tony Castellucci: So you're competing with them. You don't want a search that's coming to you to be siphoned off at the bottom of the funnel. Yeah. Um, 'cause it's not branded enough so. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Makes total sense.

Yep. Awesome. Awesome man. Cool. Appreciate back. Uh, people wanna get ahold of [00:26:00] you. How can they find you 

Tony Castellucci: want more? Dash leads.com is our website. Um, fill out a form, fill our numbers on there. I'm Tony, uh, we're a smaller shop, so if you, if you do it, I'll see it directly. Awesome. And, um, happy to have a conversation, see where it goes.

Cool. Appreciate the riff. Awesome. 

John Wilson: Thanks man. If you like what you heard, make sure you check out owned and operated.com and make sure you like and sub.

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