Loading summary
Transcript62 lines
- [00:00]
Benji
AI is nothing without the data consumers. When they're doing a search, they want to be confident that they're getting the right answers.
- [00:08]
Tommy Mello
Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learn today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes. But I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O t e s to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevate and win.com podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, check it out. We're my buddy Benji came into town and he is probably one of the smartest data analytics person on the planet. Where did you get into data? How did you learn about data?
- [01:30]
Benji
I don't know if we have enough time for this podcast for me to give you the full story on that, but you know, really, I was so interested, enamored by performance metrics and hitting the right audience and I was mainly interested in marketing in college and so I started going through a sales center, started building out at Ohio University and learned a lot about that and then started my career in data and direct mail and loved it ever since. So it's almost 30 years now.
- [01:55]
Tommy Mello
30 years. And tell us about that. So I met you through Valpak. I got to speak at a couple of their events to the franchises, the little blue mailers that come in the mail. Awesome. Works great for us. Tell me a little bit about what led you to there, what you love about there, what you're working on today.
- [02:13]
Benji
Well, one of my mentors, if not the mentor, Mike Davis, who's now CEO of Neighborly, he recruited, he was CEO of Valpack at the time and, and I met him in New York when I was, I was visiting there with some agencies and he was visiting the local market and asked me to join Valpak. That was eight and a half years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [02:34]
Tommy Mello
And what are you most excited about? Listen, we're living through these days of AI machine learning, data lakes. What is just exciting for you?
- [02:43]
Benji
Well, as a data person that's like the most exciting time, right? So because people are now really paying attention to their data lake, they're putting more investment, the cmo, the CEO is now running point on a lot of AI. Right. They want to know it because it's giving them the answers and giving them the pathway to even more growth and accountability of their overall business. So it can't be a more exciting time for a data nerd data geek like myself. Especially when you can look at that and then tell a business and help a business perform better using the data that they have with our data.
- [03:19]
Tommy Mello
Give me an example, give me an example of how you might use data. I mean we just went through a whole demo of the awesome stuff you're working on, but just for the audience.
- [03:26]
Benji
Yeah, we just launched a new product called My Local Insights in our business and what our job is bring in a customer file. So maybe a one garage, your customer database, which you have name and address, you know the, you know all basic information about them and we can layer and enrich that information, link it, maybe you only have an email and we'll tie that to phone numbers and postal addresses and then help tell the story of who your customers are and how they compare to local population. Because that's really. If I told you your average customer is $100,000 income, that that may not matter because everybody in that community might be $100,000. You want to know what is different and then how you can grow from that.
- [04:12]
Tommy Mello
And when you get really good with the data, what would you expect? I mean if you were very, very good, you had the automations, you had everything firing in all cylinders, you were really a data first company, you morphed into this. What do you think that does for a business?
- [04:31]
Benji
Well, you're not guessing anymore. Yeah, you've got the levers, you've got the information in front of you. So if you said, hey, I want to pour gasoline and in this area, because I know this is performing, I can push that button and grow it even further. So it gives you more confidence because that spray and pray. So years and years ago when I know direct mail and even from a digital, you would do display advertising to hit everybody in the area. You don't have to do that anymore. You can Be more precise and more targeted than ever before.
- [05:02]
Tommy Mello
What do you think converts the best? So you've got this data, you've got moving data, you've got permit data, you've got all this data. You hit them with a text message, a phone call, an email. You hit them with a mailer. Do you hit them with a handwritten mailer? Like are all of it?
- [05:21]
Benji
Well, yes, first of all, yeah, you want to test and control. Right. Each business, each industry, each offer is going to perform differently. So you do proper test controls, you do a lift analysis, you compare the results. Of course, you know, being from with Valpak and Clip. We talk about a lot of direct mail, but a decent portion of our business today is digital. It's all powered by data though. So if you see. Let's talk of new movers as an example, you have a customer base that is always on a move. Roughly in any database, customer database, there's roughly 8 to 12% plus or minus of your customers are in a new mover journey within the past one year. That's an extraordinary amount of churn and change management. Sending out a email notification to them, sending out a push notification, maybe it's a text and then ultimately maybe it's direct mail that all pulls together for the performance analysis.
- [06:22]
Tommy Mello
Yeah, obviously they're moving in a new home. For my type industry. Look, what we look at is.
- [06:29]
Benji
This.
- [06:29]
Tommy Mello
Is what's interesting to me is H vac hot water heaters, garage doors, they tend to fail at the same time. Like the whole neighborhood. When they were installed, the builder installed them. Within a year they all start going out. So what are your thoughts on using the data to really be able. Because look, one, one neighborhood might be hot for a year and then it moves.
- [06:52]
Benji
Yeah, it's a very personal moment right now for me on that one because last week, you know, I live in Columbus, Ohio, we had frigid temperatures, we had a bunch of snow, my well pump went out and then the next day my water softener stops. And over and over it gets overworked. And then in the middle of the night, my geothermal shut down. So you can't get more cataclysmic than that. And you are spot on. Like, you know, as you get to those certain ages of a home, they need more love, they need more maintenance.
- [07:28]
Tommy Mello
Yep.
- [07:29]
Benji
And absolutely. So if you do a job, and that job is, let's say you do new garage doors and it's $1,000, it's $2,000, you look around, if you're the installer you look around, you're like, these neighbors all look the same to me. Why am I not targeting them? You want that installer to put a sign in the yard. You want them to canvas the neighborhood. And we've been piloting out a program called Neighbors Next that does a lot of that. Sends. That sends that billboard in the mailbox. Closest 25, closest 50, closest hundred to model out that data. So you can't get any more precise than that. And you are 100% right.
- [08:04]
Tommy Mello
Now, what I've been told by people far more advanced than me is you need to send that more than once. You might have to send it seven to 10 times. So you might want to hit them on a monthly just reoccurring to own that, to be. Just be fresh in their minds. What. What is the. Is there like a magic number that you like to do that like a sequence? If you know that neighborhood's hot and you could. Can you go back to the builder? So you want to hit the whole area that. That was the same builder.
- [08:32]
Benji
So let's. Let's talk about, like, neighbors Next. So if you do an install and then you target the closest hundred around that and you get another one, then you target again. You keep fishing where the fish are biting, right? And you keep going. We have reach and frequency calculators that help guide us in that. And you know, the old ad. You remember the old adage years ago with newspaper industry was you got to hit. You've got to hit the audience 10 to 12 times in order for them to actually convert. That's not just a single. That's not just 12 direct mail pieces.
- [09:03]
Tommy Mello
Yeah, you want to retarget them. You do ott. You could do Comcast following you. Yeah, absolutely.
- [09:09]
Benji
They need to hear. They need to feel that you're the brand. You're the dominant provider in that market.
- [09:14]
Tommy Mello
And that's much better than spraying and praying. I mean, that's what realtors talk about. Like, let me own this neighborhood, not let me own this county or this city. I want to be the most knowledgeable person about this area. So if you could own that audience, you're winning.
- [09:28]
Benji
Oh, everybody's competitive, right? You're competitive. I'm competitive. I want to win. You want to win. So I want to own this neighborhood. I want to send direct mail pieces. I want to send messages to this, and I want every single one of those customers, those prospects to be my client, and I want to make sure that they're. That I continue to farm that area and own it.
- [09:47]
Tommy Mello
Hey, Hope you're enjoying the episode. Since you listen to my podcast, you're part of my inner circle and I want to share a personal update with you. I've been building out a house on Lake Penderell with a pool, pizza kitchen, cigar bar, bowling alley, game rooms, basically everything for meaningful memories with family and friends. But here's the thing. This wouldn't have been possible when I was in my 20s. Not because of money, because if I took a day off back then, everything fell apart. Now I can spend days away and my teams of eight players grow the business without me there. So here's my question for you. Is your team giving you more freedom or just more problems to solve? Be honest. If you're still the one holding everything together, you don't have a business, you have a job. And the only way to change that, get around people who've already achieved what you want. That's what freedom 2026 is all about. It's happening at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas 10-26-28. Don't miss your exclusive presale discount. Go to freedom event.com and grab your ticket at the best possible price by February 15. Only a few more days left. Now back to the episode. You know, my favorite, I thought about this quote. It was like 10 years ago, this guy had it up behind his desk and it says, he who could pay more per lead will always win.
- [11:10]
Benji
I saw that in a signature. I saw that in a signature this week from another advertiser.
- [11:14]
Tommy Mello
And it's that means you got your booking rate or your contact centers dialed. That means your conversion rate face to face when you knock on the door is dialed. That means that you're offering everything to the client and you're letting them choose. They might say, oh, well, I want that. That as well. I might as well. And so if your conversion cycle's right, you could pay more. And I, I know there's a lot of people listening right now that are like, oh, great, something else to buy. I can't even afford to advertise as it is. What do you tell somebody that's kind of lost in their marketing world?
- [11:44]
Benji
Well, short of having that Henry Ford quote, you know, the person that stops advertising stops time or whatever, however that quote goes. You know, we just completed our 2026 small business study, and small business owners stated that they will normally advertise when their business is good. What does that mean? When their business is not good? They're going to continue to go through a spiral.
- [12:08]
Tommy Mello
The death spiral is what it's called 100% you stop marketing. I just talked to a guy that said, listen, he was sitting in this seat yesterday, a massive water filtration company. He goes, 2008, 9 and 10, we poured money into market when nobody else was. We took market share, didn't make a lot of money. Those three years came out and just murdered. It is when you're not making money, why is it the first thing people cut is marketing versus all the people that are performing?
- [12:36]
Benji
Because those marketers or those C level individuals are not looking at the data. They look at marketing as a cost versus marketing as an investment. Yes.
- [12:48]
Tommy Mello
Well, give us a few more words of wisdom here. What else are you excited about in the next few years? I know that Elon just did a deal, a private deal with his companies. I don't know if you saw that today.
- [12:56]
Benji
I did. I think people are afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of some of the future things that could be possible. Look at what AI has done to our industry and what AI will do to even more industries over the next couple of years. So yeah, I think people are just simply afraid of the future.
- [13:13]
Tommy Mello
Well, where does, well let's, let's take a deep dive here. We went through the industrial revolution, you know, it took care of like 20 farmers. One machine could handle 20 farmers. Well, the farmers just had to learn new stuff. It was easy. You know, when the girls had to put in for the phone calls, they learned how to do something else. When we, there's nowhere else to turn, it takes over. I mean we're probably going to be on universal income where, where some people are more optimistic, they say, well, you don't understand. Humans adapt. Adapt to what? It's a better surgeon, it's a better driver, it's a better at building houses, it's better at filming, it's better at fixing garage doors potentially. Once the AI is in the, the humanoid, like where do, where, where does it go? And by the way, Tesla believes that there will be 10x more humanoids than humans here within the next 10 years.
- [14:08]
Benji
I think that might be very accurate. Yeah, I have, I have a several hundred foot driveway and when we first built the house, I did not have snowplow or anything like that, did it? Manual. That was backbreaking work, right? Think of the cotton gin, all that stuff back breaking work, you know. Then I got a, you know, snowplow. Yep, still a lot of work. You got to maneuver that thing. Two years ago I bought a side by side with snowplow on it super quick. I'M evolving, right? So the next phase, I've got to get some humanoid bots, apparently, to plow my driveway for me, and I have to worry about it. But as I think about the future and as I think about data continuing to infuse it, because AI is nothing without the data, and we have to make sure that, number one data is accurate, it's normalized, and we can count on it. Consumers, when they're doing a search, when they're looking at Copilot, when they're looking at ChatGPT or whatever the AI environment is, they want to be confident that they're getting the right answers.
- [15:14]
Tommy Mello
Right. I do think we're going into a utopia within the next five years, when SGI and all these things come out, they will come out. It's a matter of time. It will be good. But where do you find your meaning? I mean, I like to golf, I like to do water sports and have fun, but, you know, when the machine could go faster, it takes me. It takes a kid 12, 12 grades to learn school before you even specialize, it goes to college. It's a matter of a blink of an eye for a machine to learn all that stuff.
- [15:46]
Benji
Right. That's why you're always going to need home service. You're always going to need home improvement.
- [15:50]
Tommy Mello
For now, yeah. That's why.
- [15:52]
Benji
That's why the trades are pretty protected. You need electrician, you need a plumber.
- [15:55]
Tommy Mello
Trades are protected. That's why. What's his name, the CEO of Nvidia. Yeah, he was talking about the plumbers, the safest. That's why everyone's getting into it. But how many plumbers can you have and for how long before the. The eyes and the robot?
- [16:08]
Benji
Well, as long as there's a toilet, there's going to be a plumber.
- [16:11]
Tommy Mello
But not every single person could become a. Yeah, right.
- [16:14]
Benji
Until the humanoids become plumbers themselves.
- [16:16]
Tommy Mello
Yeah. No, it's pretty easy. Load it all in. It sounds simple to me. It does sound simple, because if they could wash the laundry, it's like. But that's a trick. All I would do is wear a suit for a month and I do all the work and that just loads. The AI system just slows into the. The robot.
- [16:37]
Benji
Yeah. It's going to learn from that. Yeah.
- [16:39]
Tommy Mello
I mean, it's not. It's not complicated to me. So what happens, though? Are you optimistic? Do you feel good? Are you worried? Are you cautiously optimistic? What do you think?
- [16:49]
Benji
I wouldn't be human if I wasn't worried. Right. So am I Optimistic. I'm very optimistic about the future because hopefully that gives more people opportunity for leisure, for recreation, to do things that are more valuable to them as a person. More family time. Right. Work, life, balance, maybe that's a little bit better. So that's where I'm optimistic. It's going to give us more time. Time is something that we can't get more of.
- [17:15]
Tommy Mello
Well, with AI understanding the genotype and the geno code, I think we might be able to get an extra a hundred years out of us.
- [17:24]
Benji
That's right.
- [17:25]
Tommy Mello
They say if you can make it 10 more, you're probably going to live an extra 100.
- [17:28]
Benji
Yeah.
- [17:29]
Tommy Mello
But yeah, I'm a little worried just because I think most people, they get a lot of satisfactions through accomplishment, through, like doing good work. And I feel like that's an important piece in humanity. And we've always had that. Like, you'd have to go hunters and gatherers. Right? And now it's just going to be like, hey, you want a house? This thing builds the outside of the house. This little robot goes around and like builds, and it's a better house than we build today. It's just interesting. But I'm obsessed with data. I'm nowhere near at your level. If someone is just lost and they just don't even know what we're talking about, it's just over their head. They don't understand their ideal client. They don't understand what their avatar looks like. Is there a book they could read or something that just give them basic fundamentals besides yours?
- [18:16]
Benji
Yeah. I mean, you've got a great podcast. You highlight a lot of this stuff because as a business, you need to understand who your customers are. Those basic avatars, those Personas, can they read? There's plenty of books out there that they can read about it, but I prefer to kind of get my hands dirty.
- [18:31]
Tommy Mello
Yeah.
- [18:32]
Benji
And, you know, I go ahead and I engage with a business that you feel comfortable and confident with that can help you. They create an introductory model for you. You test that out and then you go from there.
- [18:43]
Tommy Mello
And if somebody wants to reach out, learn more about what you do, how do they do that?
- [18:46]
Benji
You go to valpak.com, there's bleed gen 4 lead gen forms there. You can put in my name and request me. I can, I'm happy to jump on a call and talk with it.
- [18:55]
Tommy Mello
You might get in trouble here.
- [18:56]
Benji
I love it. I welcome that.
- [18:59]
Tommy Mello
Benji is. I'm telling you guys, this guy's a fricking genius. I mean, there's no other data scientist out there that builds teams. What I like about somebody that really knows what they're doing, they know how to do the work, but they know how to build a team and get the result quickly. And the stuff that you just showed me, it's frickin nuts. So I'm excited. Thank you for coming in today.
- [19:17]
Benji
Thank you. I appreciate it Tommy. Take care.
- [19:19]
Tommy Mello
Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 garage door service. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com for podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.