Why Transparency Wins In Today’s Market: Talk Of The Trades Ep 010

Dennis Ayotte 0:03
Perfect. Yeah, Gerald, you're, I think our 10th guess is, I think so episode 10, or we're on Episode 10. I think maybe you're like our sixth guest. But we're still figuring some things out. But we get better every day. Man, so sorry. Alrighty. Hello everybody. Welcome to Talk of the trades, where we talk to experts, friends and family in the home services industry, to just help spread some knowledge of all the best minds in the business. Today, we have Jerold Hall with us. He is the VP of sales and dealer Development at amcoat Industrial. He spent 17 years at Landrum. HR, more importantly, though, he's an author and the founder of egg fest, and we'll talk about that a little bit more, Gerald as well. So thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate you being here. You've been such an amazing advocate and champion for us. And you know, it's really allowed us to, you know, not only grow our company, but our team. And so we really appreciate you, and you always kind of being there for us, man, I appreciate

Jerold Hall 1:12
it, man. And listen, you guys, you guys do good work or things like that don't happen, right? So appreciate you having me on the show. I'm looking forward to chopping it up to you guys, awesome.

Dennis Ayotte 1:21
So most importantly, you know, we'll talk about Rhino Shield, because we want to talk about that and some of the other brands within your company. But more importantly, as you can tell, I'm a fan of food, right? And fishing, I know you're a big fisherman, and so, you know, we wanted to start off with a real important question on, where is the best barbecue, right? And there is a right answer, Gerald, I'm just letting you know, is it Texas? Is it Memphis? Is it the Carolinas? Where is it in

Jerold Hall 1:55
my backyard? Is it? Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 1:58
that could also be it so well, Barbecue, Where does your heart tend to lie? I

Jerold Hall 2:05
tell you, yeah, my heart is as I am a Texas barbecue guy. I like the Texas style. I love a good Carolina style pulled pork, too. So it really is. It's regional. You know, as far as you want to get into the barbecue argument, I'm not getting into it. I'll tell you my into it. I'll tell you my preferences personally. And we'll be at Memphis In May, at the World barbecue championships next week, and we'll be cooking some Texas style barbecue on with briskets and shoulders, and we'll be cooking little Iowa pork, so with a big bouquet on it. So okay,

Dennis Ayotte 2:39
what's Iowa pork? I don't, I don't think I've ever heard of Iowa pork. Iowa's

Jerold Hall 2:43
really, really known, known for being a pork producing state. It really is. And so we'll have some compart Duroc shoulders from from the great state of Iowa coming down. Wow,

Dennis Ayotte 2:54
man, my mouth is watering, and I just ate lunch. So, okay, so what about barbecue sauce, or no barbecue sauce? When is it appropriate?

Jerold Hall 3:07
If you do it right, you really don't need barbecue sauce, right? I think it's appropriate, particularly on a sandwich. You know, when you've got when you've got bread to deal with, it's certainly appropriate. But if you're just eating straight barbecue man, sauce optional, for sure.

Dennis Ayotte 3:20
Okay, love it. Love it. Okay, we're going to run through through some of the meats to see where they kind of rank on your scale. So Turkey versus chicken, turkey, okay, Turkey versus sausage.

Jerold Hall 3:38
Probably go sausage. Yeah. Okay,

Dennis Ayotte 3:40
okay, sausage, sausage versus beef rib,

Jerold Hall 3:44
beef rib that's not even close, okay, beef rib,

Dennis Ayotte 3:48
beef rib versus pork rib,

Jerold Hall 3:53
beef rib, again, not even close. And I love a good pork rib, yeah, okay, beef

Dennis Ayotte 3:57
rib versus a pork butt.

Jerold Hall 4:01
Beef ribs going to win? Yeah, all right. Final one,

Dennis Ayotte 4:04
here's the championship beef red or Texas style brisket. Oh,

Jerold Hall 4:11
definitely be Texas style brisket, because, you know, they're not too god awful dissimilar, right? But, but I'm going to either eat a beef rib or I'm going to eat a whole brisket. So, you know, it's the quantity is going to take it over the top there.

Dennis Ayotte 4:23
Heck yeah, man. Well, I can't wait till you come back and visit and hang out so we can do our little barbecue tour, because the list has been growing, man, since you've been here, I've just been keeping a catalog of stuff so we can go check it all out.

Jerold Hall 4:36
Very nice. I'll put it on the calendar. My friend. Awesome,

Dennis Ayotte 4:40
awesome. Well, thanks for answering all those questions, man. So now let's chat a little bit more about kind of overall just am code, if you want to kind of give the quick elevator speech, and how does the Rhino Shield brand kind of relate to it?

Jerold Hall 4:55
Yeah. So amco's been around for almost 30 years now, and. We manufacture High Performance Coatings, right? So Rhino Shield is a ceramic coating for the exterior of your home or business, and we It comes with a 25 year guarantee, which is unlike anything in the paint industry. You know, paints mostly water, right? And it evaporates and and dries up, and you're left with some chalk and things like that. So Rhino Shield is a nano technology in the coating. It really is a unique product in the marketplace, same with our floor shield product, which is 100% polyester concrete floor coatings. So we manufacture high tech coatings, roof coatings, like super shield, and we take them to market through independent dealerships. So Anthony, for example, there in San Antonio has been with us. Gosh, she's been around pushing 20 years, I think, between Dallas and San Antonio. And, you know, we've been taking ceramic coatings to the market for over two decades, and it's been a it's been a fun ride. It really has. That's awesome,

Dennis Ayotte 5:59
man. Love to hear it. Yeah?

Aaron Watters 6:01
So as you guys look for dealers, you know, Dennis and I, we're all involved here at Leadhub, but we're really, really passionate about starting a Rhino Shield dealership in Shawnee, Oklahoma, so walk us through that five minute conversation to find out if we're the right fit for you. What? Yeah, and first

Jerold Hall 6:20
and foremost, that's an that's an open territory. Open territory, yeah. So, so our Rhino Shield dealer, we've got a proven business model, right? So you need a few things to be successful as a Rhino Shield dealer. What you don't need to be as a painter. Our successful Rhino Shield and floor shield dealers are marketers and sales people. You know, Rhino shield guys typically work with with crews that are painters. You know, a marketing person and a painter are very rarely the same thing. So Rhino shield guys are savvy business men and women that know how to market and sell, and we, you know, you guys know, we provide them with a lot of those assets and brand guidelines and things of that nature. But at their core, you have to be able to market, generate leads and sell the product. The installation is super critical and important. But the single most important thing to any home improvement business, single most important asset, is leads, absent that it doesn't matter how good my product is or how good your installation is, if we don't have leads, we don't have a business. So we need more marketers. You need some cash. You need a little bit of money to get going, 75 to $100,000 it's not a franchise. So there's no startup, there's no franchise fee, there's no ongoing fees, but, but you need some money to market the product and and so it's a pretty straightforward program to become a dealer, but you need to be able to have some have some cash, be able to market and sell and follow the system. Our successful Rhino Shield and floor shield dealers follow the proven methodology. It works. I promise you, it does. We've been doing it for more than two decades, and we've got over 80 dealerships across the country, and we aggregate best practices. So those are kind of the core components of of a successful Rhino Shield, particularly in Shawnee, Oklahoma, yeah. Well, well,

Dennis Ayotte 8:11
Aaron, looks like we're moving to Shawnee. Yeah, yeah. I

Aaron Watters 8:13
was just going to say I hate marketing, though, so I don't want to do marketing. So I mean, do you run into dealers that don't want to do the marketing and, and how does that conversation work? Do we immediately get de queued from your pipeline? Yeah,

Jerold Hall 8:27
absolutely. I mean, it really is that that critical? We, if you, if you, if you can't find a good marketing partner, or don't have one in house, you know, we have a mixture. And, you know, we have some rider shield dealers that are 20 plus years old. They've, they've, they've got in house marketing folks. They also still outsource some of it. You can be successful with both, but you really, it doesn't matter if it's in house or outsourced. Marketing has to be you have to be obsessed with marketing, and then you have to have people that can close sales in the home. And selling in the home is a little bit different. You know, I've worked for Fortune 500 companies. I've worked for small and medium businesses, and I've worked door to door and selling in the home. And it is a unique animal, and we can teach you how to do it, but it is unique. So it's, you know, it's a lot of fun and and our guys have been, except been doing this for little over 25 years.

Dennis Ayotte 9:26
Nice, Gerald, you mentioned kind of that, that proven process that you guys have kind of mapped out. Can you give us a little insight into that secret sauce, or that secret barbecue sauce that you guys cook up over there to kind of help your dealers?

Jerold Hall 9:41
Yeah, the cool thing about I've been in sales since I was 14 years old, and that's 40 years ago Monday. But the cool thing about Rhino Shield and floor shield is there's there are substitutes, meaning there's paint, there's high build paint, there's other elastomerics, but there truly isn't anything like Rhino Shield and. Marketplace. And we know this because we test our competitors products, right? We do this on both sides, independent, third party tests. The big secret sauce for us is that we have the testing data that proves what we say. You know, Home Improvement, as you guys have heard me say, does not have the best reputation for honesty and transparency, right? Everybody, everybody's has a home improvement nightmare my first house in 1997 I still remember the fence project, right? And so we try and be as transparent as possible. So when a Rhino Shield dealer can say, Listen, don't take my word for it, you can listen to the the BASF lab test, or, you know, MicroSTAR lab tests that prove our product puts a 6.8 9r value equivalent on the outside of your home. It's not be telling you that. And you can look at the 3m microspheres and see that the solar reflectivity rating right is 106 versus 100 for bright, bright white paint. And that means that you know you're going to have significant energy savings in particularly a Southwest Texas home in the summer, when the outside of your walls are 10 or 20 degrees cooler, and so there's less heat transferring inside, so your air conditioner doesn't have to work. So secret sauce is is superior product with the testing to back it up. Secret Sauce is that we have protected territories. We only distribute our products through our certified, authorized dealerships, so we control the quality of the product and the quality of the person bringing that product to your home. And so it's, it's not, it's not an anybody can get in the club kind of moment. You know, we vet our guys pretty thoroughly, and we hold them to very high standards, as you should, because it's a premium product. You pay a little more for it initially, but again, it'll save you 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s, over time with by breaking that painting cycle and constantly painting your house or repairing your stucco and things of that nature. And then finally, you know, it's the ability to stand behind the product. It's, we didn't start last week. You know, we've got video and testimonials of 20 year old installations, and they still look great. And actually shooting some more in Chicago in two weeks. And it's, it's, it's, really is a unique product that you can take to market. And as a salesperson and a business person, that's a that's, that's not common, to be able to go to market with something that's truly different than anything else on the market. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 12:15
one of the my favorite quotes that I heard of you when I was like doing my research, Gerald was you said data removes the emotion from the conversation, right? And so, and I love the fact that you guys have data, you know, around the brand and like the product, but also you know how you, you know, challenge your marketing partners and make sure they have the data that matters for your dealers, right in terms of lead count and other specific metrics like CPA and and things like that. So I think, you know, that's one thing we really just value about you overall as a partner. But I really loved, you know, when you when you said that, where did that kind of like come from, that specific quote?

Jerold Hall 13:00
Yeah, you know, I don't know. I think that's a James crane quote. And I'll have to send him a copy of this. So my, my chief revenue officer, when I was at IMS, we, we, we've found expert witnesses and trial consultants for the 400 largest law firms in the world. And it was true, truly a data driven machine. That is, that is, you know, business development guys making 67 calls a day. Client managers work at heat map. It was data, data driven, and it just doesn't lie. You know, you can measure your, excuse me, you can move the things that you measure. So if my close rate is 28% I want to get it to 29 and 30 and 40. And if my return on ad spend got the dealers right now struggling with three to 5x return on ad spend, that's not going to cut it in this in this day and age, right? You know, we look for eight as a floor a return on ads, especially in the digital side of things. You know, traditional advertising still in there, but we work with our dealers and hold them accountable, right, for what they do with the leads when you guys create them. And we hold our with our marketing partners, accountable for creating those leads and creating quality leads. And we work together to get that return on ad spend up. And we have some dealers that are, you know, operating in the 30 and 40x return on ad spend with their digital spend and so, and that's, that's fantastic. There is no, there is no cap to that, in my opinion, you know, but we try, and we try and use data to manage relationships, and we have good relationships with it, with a lot of our partners, but at the end of the day, it's about performance. And that's, that's the sales guy in me. We are, we are always held to performance standards. And it's, it should be no different for every position in the cycle of of a business.

Aaron Watters 14:50
Yeah, you mentioned, you know, how you guys work with your dealers and in those metrics, and a lot of people talk about, you know, the carrot or the stick. And, yeah. There any kind of dealer awards that you guys do, or any kind of ceremonies, things like that annually to try to help them with the carrot, because we know where the stick can come from. But what's the carrot? What do you guys do from from a culture standpoint?

Jerold Hall 15:12
Yeah, well, ultimately, the ultimate carrot is that they make more money, right? And they're building, they're building a business that you know is a saleable asset, right? We've had several transactions in our Rhino Shield world, as dealers have chosen to exit and and cash in on all the hard work they've put in. So I've never been an operator that liked the stick methodology much that usually the data usually takes care of that and takes care of itself. But yeah, we, we have dealership performance awards. We have quality awards and and we, you have a dealer trip every year that we, we take our top performing dealers, I think last year was in Saint Martin, and for that, it was Barbados and Saint Lucia before that. And so we're working on up Alabama for coming up for 25 so, you know, the I got the rattlesnake rodeo there, and I know Aaron, you're a big fan of snakes.

Aaron Watters 16:12
Yeah, well, Jerold,

Dennis Ayotte 16:13
just, just, so, you know, I do have a valid passport, and you have to, if you ever need something, tag along. And, you know, give any sort of presentation, we're here for you too. So

Jerold Hall 16:24
I'll let you explain to my wife, Becky, how you're going to be my plus one. Yes.

Dennis Ayotte 16:29
Alright, alright. So, Gerald, the other thing, it's interesting talk to us about, like the dealer model versus the franchise model. And you know, your your overall thoughts there.

Jerold Hall 16:41
It's funny. Actually shot a vertical short on this this morning. You know, franchises are a very proven methodology, and there's nothing wrong with franchises. They've been around forever and in just about every vertical. The big difference is, you know, you're gonna you're gonna have a franchise fee that we've seen range from 25,000 to 150,000 depending on which model you get into from different painting companies. I think Cerda pro says you need about 248 liquid last time I looked to get going. So that's a big investment, but it also comes into turnkey product. Man, it really is, and then they're going to get you for three to upwards of 12% we've seen in the marketplace for ongoing franchise feeds. So 3% of your revenues to 12% of your revenues based on the types of service, three to six is the most common range. But if you subscribe to software and you use their call center and use their lead gen, you know they can get pricey, and if they perform then that's a cost to doing business right, that you have to have to come to come to terms with with our dealership model. You know, very transparent. You guys notice, we make our money on our product. We make a fair margin on our product, and our dealers have, you know, minimum purchase requirements based on their geography and their tenure with us, right? And so it's a pretty stable, recurring model for us. There's no franchise fee, there's no, really no upfront cost. Your deposit goes towards product credit, right? So you're pre purchasing, you know, 75% of your deposit goes to product credit that you already have, and the rest goes to cover, you know, it's a $20,000 deposit, right, by the way. So it's not a, it's not a big number at all, and 15 of that is product credit for your business. The real, the real expense in getting this going is the marketing. So once we have a new dealer, we just brought on Jeff up in the Bay Area. You know, you come to training here in in Pensacola and destin and not too shabby, places to visit for for training. And then we go through the program, the the advertisements, the brand guidelines, the, you know, the soup to nuts, on how to sell it, how to install it, and then, then we, then we go to work together. So versus the franchise model, which, you know, very similar, we're as close to a franchise as we as we can get from a support standpoint. And you can ask our dealers about that. Many of them also have other franchises, and I'll stand our sales and marketing and Installation Support up against anybody in the country. But we make our money on product, and if we do it right, we all make good money, and we have for little over 25 years. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 19:16
I know Gerald when you first kind of or one of your biggest projects, you know, for Rhino Shield was, you know, making sure that you guys had a brand story and had assets for dealers and all that. And so walk us, like, through that process and kind of, you know, what was your like, Aha moment to say, hey, like, we really need to be able to support in these areas so our dealers can be successful. Yeah,

Jerold Hall 19:40
so you know, our group purchased AMCO in 2021 from the original owner, gutting Steve Dominic, who built a very good, very profitable company, or we wouldn't have purchased it. But what we noticed and what we heard, we listened to our dealers, we had focus groups with our dealers, and said, What? What can we do? We didn't. Buy this business to keep it the same size, right? We bought it to grow and expand it, and we want to do the strength of our businesses, our dealership network. What can we do? First and foremost, they're like, give us some marketing support. You know, our guys are good marketers, but at the end of the day, they're, they're small business, independent small businesses, you know, we're a, we're a veteran owned company. We manufacture our products in the US, and we take it to market with local small business owners, and it's a really cool, gratifying business model that we have. So what they said is, we need marketing support. And so we worked with my good friend Veronique and destin over here in Pensacola group called hatch mark studio, and we said, first, do no harm, right? The rhino brand and the rhino logo and the rhino market strong, and it's got 25 years worth of that, and anything we do to change that, that has a downstream impacts to, you know, 40 plus dealers. So what we what we found through focus groups, and we worked with Doug at red iron design and several other folks collaborated on this. We said we don't need to trade change the logo. The logo is strong. The brand is strong. We just didn't have enough assets behind that logo, so we created an entire library of video assets and print driven assets and social media assets, so that when you come on as a New Dealer, there's an entire library. And we just shot eight more today of long form, video, short form video, long form, written content, advertisements, so Home Show, magazine templates, social media, ad templates, copy for those we have, you know, AdWords for when you when you go to market. These are the these are the words that search words and for PPC campaigns that work and for different substrates. And so it really is when I say it's as close to a franchise as you can get, we're pretty proud of it.

Aaron Watters 21:53
Awesome, yeah. But I hear a lot with the franchise model. We've got some franchises we love, that we work with, that we think are doing it right? There's some others that we typically hear things where they are typically talking to their franchisees, and once they ink the deal, here's all the stuff you can't do. It seems like mindset shift is completely flipped with you guys of really trying to energize the local dealer and giving them as much as you can to be successful.

Jerold Hall 22:18
Yeah, I think, you know, it's important. It's a, you know, a district distributed model is challenging, right? Our livelihood is dependent on the success and prosperity of folks that don't work for us. So, I mean, that's a unique model I've worked in. I've worked in it with Southern Company and Motorola, and I've worked with it here. But if you, if you've nerd, if you care about the relationships, right? And you care about Anthony in San Antonio, and you put boots on the ground, and you go and you work with them, and you roll your sleeves up with your dealers. It's a lot of fun, man. My CEO still thinks I'm crazy, because I like to work home shows with my dealers. I'll go work a Saturday, right? It was just up at Rochester in March. But, you know, I can talk to 400 500 homeowners in a day, and I can test out phrasing, and I can, you know, the psychology of words is really important when you're selling and it's really important when you're telling stories, and that's what you guys do. It's what we do. And being able to test out phrases and test out, you know, pitches, and then model that behavior. You know, my Rochester dealer was just at the end of year one of being a floor guy, and never done a Home Show. So we rolled up to Rochester in March. It was awesome. It was gold but, but we had a great time, and we had great success at the show. And so you get to model the behavior for a new dealer or newer dealer, and also get to talk to the customers and get feedback on is what is, is what we're saying, still resonating with them. And we learn from homeowners when we do that, right of, oh, you know what? It's really not about painting stucco. It's really not about it's about protecting it. They, you know, everybody that came here, so they were looking for something to protect their stucco. So let's make sure we message that so it's, it serves both sides. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 24:04
yeah. What's cool about that is kind of the segues into kind of the next topic we want to, you know, chat with you about. It's the kind of they ask you answer mentality, right? And we've seen this work so well for brands like Rhino Shield, because, you know, Rhino shield is not the price leader in the market, right? We have a premium product that's going to last you. It's not paint, right? Yeah. And so right off the bat, there's that potential hurdle from price, because we know it's always on, on somebody's mind. And I love with the they ask you answer model is we're upfront about that, right? We tell you right out the gate. And I think some of our other clients or brands are afraid to do that. But what I've heard, and you probably know better than me on this Gerald, is that, you know, a lot of times your sales team loves that, because they know when they're going into a home. Lot of these times, these people are prequel. Qualified already, and they would have disqualified themselves after understanding what it was per square foot versus somebody else. So I guess two fold from a sales perspective, you know, how does this model help your sales guys? And then part two of the question, holistically, from a marketing perspective, how do you think it impacts the dealer? Yeah,

Jerold Hall 25:22
our dealers were terrified, quite honestly, that we were going to start talking about it. And you know when, when Marcus came down to our Marcus Sheridan, who wrote the book, I've worked with Marcus and read his book almost nine years ago when so I met it, he came to a Vistage meeting in 2016 I think, and we implemented this at my at Landrum HR as well. And so it really is. It's It's such common sense at the end of the day when you're done with the journey, but when you're starting the journey, to be completely transparent about price, it's scary, until you realize that the information is already there, and the customers can find it. So the question is, do you want to be the one in control of that narrative? And giving a thorough, well thought out, we don't just say, hey, Rhino shield is going to be six to nine bucks a square foot. It's you got to go into the reasons that it might be six and the reasons that it might be nine, right? And at the end of the day, you know, homeowners have five questions that they every every homeowner has five questions as how much does stuff cost? Does this stuff really work? Can I get it any color? Tell me about the installation process. And then finally, the warranty, right? If you get them to that fifth place, you're in a pretty good place. They've got a lot of information. You know, we see customers take six, 812, 18 months of a journey on our website. Before they say, I want to quote, it's an education process. So we start that conversation by putting a buyer's guide right on our front page or our website. Yeah, that answers those five questions in detail, and you can read it, or you can watch it in long form, video, video, seven minutes that that that article or in video combination, 71 times a day. Consumers read it for almost five minutes, average time on page. Yeah. People tell me, I'm crazy. People tell me I'm crazy for doing long form video. But if the consumer is interested, they will watch it as long as it takes to get the message across. So so from a from a standpoint of, you know, our dealers were nervous about it. But what they saw was, yeah, we saw a little bit of a drop in leads, but we saw a dramatic increase in close rates. So from the sales guys standpoint, I walked into a home in North Florida with the dealership, and the guy comes, he jogged. He was a runner, so he naturally, but he jogged out of his house. He had the buyer's guide printed out. His wife wasn't there, so a one legged Home Improvement nobody likes right? He wrote us a check that day. He'd already had three colors put on the side of his house, and he had notes all over that buyer's guy that he printed out that were questions from his wife. So if you're afraid to answer the questions in print or in video, why would you be afraid to answer those questions when you answer them one on one with a customer, right? You answer the question, because if you don't answer the question, they don't move on. If you don't answer the cost question, that's the first thing to ask you in the home show booth, or how much it costs. I want to know how much it costs, you have to answer the question to be able to continue the conversation. So initially, our guys were terrified, quite honestly, and we were a little uncertain ourselves. How would the customers respond? But when we came to the agreement as a ownership group and a management team that this is what we're doing, man, this is like a big relief. And so we've seen, I mean, you know, a dramatic increase in organic leads versus paid leads, right? Because consumers are searching for problems like, what is the best exterior coding for stucco? By the way, if you ask at the chat GPT, I got it and I got it for brick and I got it so, so that content, we got a we got a guy sold a job in Birmingham the other day. They said, Hey, chat, what's the best concrete floor coat? And chat said, by far, floor shield. So, you know, I mean, we're treating that content piece too, for our dealers. But if you don't answer the questions, you know, I looked up a restaurant getting tires, getting tire quotes. And my friends up the road, I won't mention their names, when always tires. But you know, when I punch in, I go through the trouble of punching in 265, 6020 right for my tire size, and I want to see 70,000 mile rated tires and up, and then it says, Call for price. Yeah. Man, I just went on Tire Rack, and I just went on so and, I mean, there's 1000 places that will answer these questions, and if you're not one of them, man, I they're friends, but I didn't get a quote from, I mean, that's, that's the reality of it is if you don't answer the most commonly asked questions, and then you go into things like, what affects it? Well, the size of your house affects price, the complexity of your house, the type of siding can can impact it. How many stories is it, you know, so there's all these things. Is there damage to the siding? Is there a lot of repairs? How many colors are you going to get? Is there 1000 things that. Impact the variability of of getting your house coated with with Rhino Shield. But at the end of the day, we know 99% of our going to fit in that range of that six to nine. And nine means you're probably getting some repair work and some other things, you know. And six means you got a pretty straightforward house. Doesn't need a lot of stuff. So at the end of the day, it's been, it's been a wonderful journey for us, and we continue to do it, and we continue to create content. We continue to answer customers questions, because new ones come up, right? We're answering questions now about tariffs, right? Big paint companies are dealing with any lot of imported coatings and imported products for coatings, rider, shields, made right here in the US, we are not raising prices this year, and we see, in fact, our many of our dealers, are getting a little more creative with with their pricing, because everything's getting more expensive, right? So homeowners having to make a decision, and we don't want you to delay protecting your house because of the economic uncertainty. So they all offer financing, and same as cash and all those things. So we've seen an increase in in financing jobs, for sure.

Aaron Watters 31:08
And I think with the way that AI cert, you know, has really grown in the way that it's handling these questions, the geo location and the proximity of the searcher is less relevant than it was, you know, six months ago, and so we're not answering those questions somebody else is, and most of the AI search bots are not paying attention to Geo location as much as they used to. So I love that philosophy there. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 31:33
the other thing I was going to ask you Gerald, and so, you know, I think the answer is certainly important, but the other part of it is the why and how you answer, right? Because, if you just tell Sure, the Oh, our product is three times more expensive than paint, you know, but then, like, you got to take that next step and answer, you know, the why, and that's your brand, is you have all that data and information. So it goes back to that you can really kind of explain, but you see, where have you seen the most success in explaining that why and making sure that you're nuanced and how you explain the answer? Yeah. Man,

Jerold Hall 32:09
so to me, I mean, it took me almost three years to put Rhino shield in my house because it's a it's a project. Man, painting your house is not easy. It's and even if you're not the one doing it. I actually applied my own because I wanted to learn. I wanted to be able to do that. But it's, it's a pain. You gotta cut bushes back. You gotta take windows. You gotta trench around the house. It's inconvenient, right? You know, my wife is does not like the the blinds down in the house. She likes a nice, bright house. And you gotta tape up those windows and do everything. And you I'm cutting bushes back that, and it's just, it's an inconvenient process, so part of that why is do it once and be done with it. Not only is it going to save you time and money, it's going to be it's a big investment. It's protecting what is likely your largest investment, your home. That's, you know, art and Maria said in our brand video, they said your home's your biggest investment. Why wouldn't you want to protect it? Right? Want to protect it? Right? But then at the end, the selfish part of it is I don't have to go to that project three or four times in that same tough cycle, man. And if you think that labor or materials are going to get less expensive in the future, I challenge you on that one a little bit.

Dennis Ayotte 33:20
Yeah. Awesome. The other thing you mentioned is the Rhino shield is made in America, and I think that's something that is overlooked in any products you know, these days. So I just wanted to highlight that. I think that's very cool. And, you know, talk about a major benefit when we're in this time of kind of some uncertainty with tariffs and things like that. You guys leaned into that messaging a little bit more or 100%

Jerold Hall 33:45
we actually shot videos this morning for both product lines that talk about that. You know, it's it's important. It's important. I'm proud that we manufacture in the USA. I'm proud that we are veteran owned, as we're a service disabled veteran owned small business designation. So those are those two things I'm just personally proud of. But you know, the beauty of part of our business model is that, you know, even things like during COVID, right, Sherwin Williams couldn't get 43% of their SKUs on the shelf. Our Rhino Shield dealers did not go without product. We only distribute it through our dealership network, and we control our supply chain by and large. Now, did we have to go buy $100,000 worth of X raw material and get into the inventory, you know, start a three PL company to get into shipping? Yep, we did, but we made we made sure we did, and we learned a lot from it, and and our guys and girls didn't go without product, and that was a huge thing during COVID Right, to be able to distribute our product that way. And there's just a pride factor of doing it, manufacturing things here in the US, we could, we could offshore and save some money, but it's not worth the hassle, and it's not worth the uncertainty, and certainly not. Worth diluting our message, right? Yeah,

Aaron Watters 35:03
so we so we can do a Made in America campaign over the next 60 days. And the highlight is July 4, yeah? And you're going to have a barbecue and a fishing competition and a beer Olympics, all celebrating America. Heck, yeah. Hey, that's

Jerold Hall 35:17
the same weekend as a Pensacola big game Bill fish tournament. So, yeah, we can make that happen. You guys come down. We'll have a firework show right here, right outside the office, and and and some barbecue and cold beer. I would have no problem with that.

Dennis Ayotte 35:29
Awesome. That'd be a ton of fun, man. Yeah, Gerald, you're going to have to send us those videos. And you spoke about that buyer's guide earlier, and we launched a whole campaign for Anthony around that. And we're starting to see a slow, steady, you know, folks, you know, and but the the other beautiful thing about it is, you talked about that buyer cycle before. Sometimes it's 12 to 16 months before somebody actually does action, right. And so one of the things where we pivoted a little bit while, yeah, we're still focusing on lead gen, we needed to also try to build some folks into our funnels so we can remarket them and help them through that education process. And so you guys create incredible content. I love the corporate side. You have so much information and knowledge on there, and it just makes our lives easier. So appreciate that. But yeah, you're going to have to send us your new videos, because we've been wearing out the ones with Anthony and you, and some of the ones with you solo, and so it's been working effectively for us. And so, yeah, the other thing I wanted to talk about a little bit more is, like, you know, the how do you, you know? So for other contractors out there, and specifically, like, you know, Rhino Shield dealers, you know, you understand the value of marketing and branding and, you know, but even more so for a product like this, because, you know, we work in multiple areas of the trade. So if you're you know, for an HVAC company, they it's more like demand service a lot of times, right? It's right. See one out it's 100 degrees. I need you today, plumber. My toilets backed up. I need you today, when we work with like water filtration companies and Exterior Home Remodeling companies, you know, we find that sometimes it's a little bit harder to let our clients know, like, Hey, we gotta be in it for the long haul, to invest in the marketing long term. And, you know, measure what we can from a brand awareness standpoint, whether it's direct traffic or increase in, you know, search and your branded keywords. So what do you What's your philosophy on that overall? And like, when you're talking to your, you know, dealer partners, what are some of the things you're letting them know to to help prep them for, like, the journey that they're going to be going on, yeah,

Jerold Hall 37:41
it's about a well rounded marketing campaign, right? There are, there are industries like in the floor side, you can get away with just doing meta ads on in the concrete floor coatings business, it's got a limit on what you're going to get from but you can, you can build a good business just doing meta. You really should be doing meta and Google, right? And you really should also be doing home shows. You probably want to be doing some radius mailers around your jobs and things like that. But a well rounded message, you know, is nothing new. That has been, you know, it's been an interesting journey, and you have to share this with you guys. You know for years, rider, shield, guys and girls, radio, TV, print, home magazine, and we're good to go. And that is just not the case. We've had markets Boston, for example, Cincinnati, where just overnight, the radio and TV stopped working. And if you didn't have a good foundation into the digital world of Google and meta, it's it's, it's been a really hard pivot for a lot of a lot of folks, which is one of the reasons we're creating this content, so that we can try and make it easier on them. But finding mining, finding marketing partners that understand that, yes, I'm, I'm, I think clicks and impressions are, are important when you can correlate them to how many leads did it generate, right? Because, because, at the end of the day, it's about lead generation and all of that works together. Anthony's still doing some radio and some TV. It's working okay for him. He's if he's long as you're getting a good return on ads. But those things feed each other, where dealers have a good, well rounded marketing campaign. Guess what? Their digital has done really well right out of the gate, because they're here. So there's, there's different audiences, right? Broadcast, TV, radio, you're just, everybody's hearing that, right? And it's kind of like a display ad on on Google or meta, right? But, but lead ads are very different. Google's an intent based search. People are looking at it. And so is chat eight, chat and and the second largest search engine, that's not a search engine in YouTube, you know, people are and now Tiktok, you know, is picking up on that. So you got to have the content there, and you got to have a well rounded messaging, but it's a different lead. You know, when we see meta leads, for example, they're much higher in the funnel. They're still in the awareness and interest part of that sales funnel. Google guys are down in the middle to the bottom because they got a problem. There's. Trying to solve, right? And so that's setting expectations on the types of leads and the efficacy of those leads, like, what percentage of meta leads are actually going to talk to you? Right? That's a training moment for folks who are used to talking to eight out of 10 because they called my office or they filled out a form on my website. So it's been, it's been a journey, but it's about a good, well rounded campaign, and it's about watching the metrics you can't look at this once A month. Hey guys,

Aaron Watters 40:56
oh, okay, can you hear us now? Hey, Gerald, sorry I got you. We're still recording. Yeah, so good, yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 41:42
that'll be a nice edit. We lost our feet on this side. Sorry about that. Okay,

Jerold Hall 41:46
I was sitting there looking at me. I was like, I guess

Dennis Ayotte 41:50
it's on there. Sorry about that. I don't

Aaron Watters 41:53
know if I can swap this back, but let's see. That's fine. All right, we'll keep going.

Dennis Ayotte 42:00
Yeah, cool,

Jerold Hall 42:02
yeah. I think, I think where we dropped off was, you know, you can't watch, you can't watch your marketing campaigns on a monthly basis anymore. You just can't. You got to look at them daily. I mean, look at, I legitimately look at dashboards daily with my guys. So, yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 42:18
yeah. Well, we try to explain it is like, you know, there's an awareness component, right? First, we gotta let everybody know we exist, and you know what we do, right? And then from there, it's like, okay, how do we generate some consideration, right? So we move them down a little bit more. We get them to the site, get them to download a buyer's guide. And then eventually, how do we convert them, once they finally decided to reach out to us, you know. And so that's where we have to rely on our, you know, clients. And you know, the thing that we love about, you know, Anthony in particular, and and you too, is how much you guys understand the importance of close rates, and you know, things like that as well, because our job is to get your phone to ring and those forms to come in. But you guys know, like, your call call sales representatives need to book those calls, and then eventually your Salesmen need to close those deals. And so how do you look at that journey overall? And how do you help, like, educate your dealers? Because one of the big things is, you know, we talk about marrying marketing and operations, and we were born in the trades, and so, you know, we understand how important it is to answer calls and book them and close those sales. You know, do you often go down that path with your dealers?

Jerold Hall 43:36
Yeah, man, we it's, we've had several dealers entering into the digital marketing world for the first time. All right, having success. You know, Dallas, for example, in March and April, over 200 leads from the digital world, right? That's just very low sit rates, right? So this the lead setters in that tradition that are used to traditional they're not making you have to treat leads that come in from a digital creation like Google and meta. They're different leads, you know. So you have to set different expectations, right? You know, if you can get 30% of meta leads to talk, to talk with you and have an appointment, it's pretty good. Yeah, we've got some. We've got a leader in the clubhouse force right now is at 32 and he's really good at what he does, and so you've got to set some expectations that these leads are going to convert differently. Now the long game will be how many of those 70% that didn't respond initially actually come back through retargeting over time, right? But there's 30% that'll they'll turn up month one. If you've got a brand like Rhino Shield, or brand like floor shield, we see right out of the gate, we see success with digital campaigns that are well done, well crafted and and monitored. But it's going to be interesting to see that long game. And again, with Google. You know, if you can get 40 to 50% of Google leads to talk. With you. Man, that's, that's we've seen. We've seen high 40s and 50s in our marketplace. And then when you if somebody calls your office, man, or fills out a form on your website or mine, you know, we had a dealer eight leads that came through for one of our dealers in the Northeast, and all eight of them sold. They came through our website. I wish it was 100% like that, but that just happened to be a good batch. But they came to our website, and we go back and track them, and they've consumed six or eight pieces of long form content. And they they talk about, you know, the shortcomings. They read the articles like, you know, the the limitations of stucco as an exterior finish. And they read the article about the 98 mile an hour wind driven rain test. And they watch the comprehensive guide, and they look at customer testimonials, and then they, they go through this journey, and man, when they, when they, they come to our website and fill out a form, it's, it's those are those. They're happy to get those leads, right? They're very happy to get those leads. So, so

Dennis Ayotte 45:55
I got an interesting question for you, Gerald, so after they've gone through the journey, and they reach out to you. Have you, what's the weirdest kind of or most unexpected use case that somebody has asked you for, for Rhino show, like, have you ever had a guy reach out? I'm like, Yeah, I want to paint my car in Rhino Shield. You know? Yeah, we

Jerold Hall 46:13
probably have. I haven't had a car guy, house boats. House boat, yeah, can we put this on a house boat of mine? Huh? I don't know that I'm going to warranty a house boat, but you can paint whatever you want with it. Man, you coat whatever you want with it. But yeah, we get some, you know, we get some, some unique things, like fences and things like that. And we've got a, we've got a stain product that that we make for for decks that would work on that. But, yeah, most of them are pretty, pretty vanilla by comparison. But we have had, we've painted some pretty cool projects, like we put Rhino shield on the NASCAR wind tunnel because nothing else would stay on it. Yeah, we the Los Angeles motor speedway. We've done some Simon mall projects, and the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, a Veterans Center in St Louis. So it's we've done some really cool projects over the years. Nice.

Aaron Watters 47:02
Let's do some golf balls before the masters. And just say it'll take your golf ball, your drive will go 600 yards and see who buys it,

Jerold Hall 47:09
yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not a bad idea. Or we can just go to the Masters, you know? Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 47:15
that'd be fun. Yeah, gotta sign up for that lottery. So Gerald tell us about some of the other brands and products. So we know about Rhino Shield. You mentioned, like, you know, we've been talking about the roof product you guys have, and the flooring. Tell us a little bit more about those. Yeah,

Jerold Hall 47:31
so super shield is a, is a our roof product. It's, it's, it's very, very similar to our DFC, which is our, our exterior wall product, but particularly in the desert, Southwest. Man, you know, you got a lot of tile roofs out there. And those roof, those tile roofs, fade, and they soak up heat, if you think of, you know, like even, you know, cement board and and stucco and that terracotta tile. And they just soak up heat, and that heat, you know, you can measure the outside of a wall, and that's, that's one measure of it, but you measure the inside, what, how much heat transfers from there, right? So, when you can put a almost a 7r value equivalent, on your walls and on your roof, right, not only is it going to last for 15 years on your roof, 25 years on your walls, but it's going to insulate it and protect it. And you guys don't have knock wood, you don't have hurricanes out there, but you get some pretty gnarly storms in the summertime. And, you know, we get again, this product stands up to the 98 mile an hour wind driven rain test is a pretty cool and they take our product, they put it on a cement block, they put it in a chamber, and they shoot a jet of water at it, 98 mile an hour, jet of water for 24 hours. Wow. And if it gets past the product, it's pass, fail. Test, right? Gets past it, it's out well, Rhino Shield, not only did it pass the wind driven ring, 98 mile an hour part, but they also test it for absorption, because if it doesn't get past it, but it soaks up all, you know, all the water. That's not great either. And we had point four, we want less than one half of 1% absorption rate after 24 hours of 98 mile an hour wind driven rain. It's a good product, I promise you. And it when you and so we got the roof product. We've got to protect that product. That's a coding for decks. And then we make a floor shield, which is our other primary brand, which is a high solids, 100% polyester garage floor coating, and we take that to market same way with dealerships across the US. See me for open territories, but yeah, it's cool, man. We manufacture premium codings, because I can't compete with the big guys, right? They've got a great business model, planned obsolescence. You're buying my product every five seven years. Awesome. You're putting epoxy down every two to three years. Awesome. That's great for them. It's not great for the environment. It's not great for the homeowner. It's not great for I've painted my house seven or eight times in 30 years before I found Rhino Shield. You know, it seems like every, every two or three years, I was redoing the trim at least, but it's, but it's, you know. So we've created a disruptive product for both markets, right? And we take it to market with with data that, you know, ask a homeowner in Rochester said, well, Apollo's concrete has been around for 30 years. Said, and they are very good people. They've got a great reputation. They don't have this product, I said, but get a quote from and then ask them these three things. Ask them what their adhesion is, and don't take their word for it, because Home Improvement doesn't have the best reputation, right? Ask them for the testing data, and I said they won't have it, and she's, how do you know? I said, because I've tested their product and I beat them, and I wouldn't show you the test results if I didn't win, right? So you know, asking for the testing results, runner, shield, floor, shield, super shield, ask your ask your painter for for the test results, and you'll win every time.

Dennis Ayotte 50:58
Very cool. Love it that you guys have all that data. So awesome, drilled. So getting close to wrapping up here, let's talk about some fishing. So Aaron wanted to know, have you ever bow fished?

Jerold Hall 51:12
I have I bow fished when I was a teenager, we used to have off of Pensacola Bay, scamby Bay. We would have this little inlet where we would get, you guys probably don't eat mullet in Texas, but we eat them here, and they're delicious. But we would get, like, you know, big, I mean, big mullet, and we would go down with a bow and arrow, and we'd shoot those mullet. Yeah, we, I did a little bit of bow fishing, but not much.

Dennis Ayotte 51:35
Okay, is bow fishing like gigging, or

Aaron Watters 51:37
it's where you bow and arrow on the water, and you use the bow and

Jerold Hall 51:43
arrow. I have get, I have gig flounder as well. We've get, we've done some gigging, really. What that was called

Dennis Ayotte 51:47
gigging, gigging is more where you just have, like, a rod and just stab, yeah,

Jerold Hall 51:52
you gotta you got a three point spear, and you're standing on the bow of a flat boat at night with lamps, and the flounder, when they run out in the fall and winter. It's, it's kind of adrenaline rush, you know, just different way of catching them. Yeah. What

Dennis Ayotte 52:07
kind of fishing are you doing these days, Gerald, I know you're a deep sea guy, and, you know, you just, you know, sometimes, I don't know, go out in your backyard and just cast the line from mine or,

Jerold Hall 52:17
yeah, you know, most of my fishing these days is, is, you know, usually bottom fishing, snapper fish and things like that. We did a competitive offshore fishing for over 20 years, and it's a young man's game. We still, we still go offshore and troll a bit tuna fish and things like that. But most of my fishing is going to be within 20 miles these days. So yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 52:38
and how'd you get the nickname buck? Was that a fishing thing or just, man,

Jerold Hall 52:43
I wish I could tell you, but I asked my mom, and many, many times she goes, I don't remember. We just, we just started calling you Bucha. So I really wish I had a cool story, and I probably ought to come up with

Aaron Watters 52:56
one. Okay, cool, can we buck? Absolutely, absolutely,

I've got, I've got one more that's really important and near and dear to my heart. That is a mustard based potato salad.

Jerold Hall 53:10
Oh, it's, it's mayo. It's a baked potato style potato salad all day. Man.

Aaron Watters 53:13
Oh yeah. Great media. Bucha, yeah,

Jerold Hall 53:17
yeah. Now I've had some very good mustard mustard potato salad. But if I had to pick my preferences, very little mayo, little sour cream, yeah, maybe some discriminate.

Dennis Ayotte 53:29
I don't discriminate on any sort of carb. So as

Jerold Hall 53:33
long as it's good, man, that's what it that's what matters. You can, you know, you can we, you know, we cook on big green eggs, but you can make good barbecue on anything if you if you know what you're doing, and then you can make good potato salad if you know what you're doing with mustard or with mayo. But one thing I will not vacillate on, and I will not waver on, is that ketchup does not deserve to be on a hot dog or a hamburger. It's a vile condiment. It's only meant for potatoes that are fried, and if you put ketchup on a hot dog, you you'll anger me.

Dennis Ayotte 54:03
We gotta remember that one

Jerold Hall 54:06
relish for me. Yeah, my wife's favorite thing on a hot dog, by the way, is ketchup. We can peacefully coexist, but I just, I can't take it. It's wrong. When

Dennis Ayotte 54:15
is egg Fest this year? Gerald, yeah,

Jerold Hall 54:18
so egg fest is this year's it's the weekend after the Blue Angels homecoming show. It's November 14 to the 16th, so we're excited, man, it's, it's, this is 23 Yes, it's year 13 for us. And so it's going to be our biggest year yet. Last year was our biggest year ever. Every year we've kind of grown it with different teams. You guys should come over from Texas, man, to be a be a nice road trip. Put you in. We might even let you. We might even let you, let you judge, if you want. You could disable everything, right?

Dennis Ayotte 54:45
Hey, hey, if you, if I can be a judge, I will be there. Gerald

Jerold Hall 54:52
bet Dennis its own. Alright, cool.

Dennis Ayotte 54:54
We'll need to make a donation this year, because I know last year you guys raised 131 And from our earlier conversation, you guys are approaching the million dollar mark. That's massive. So tell us a little bit about just the charitable efforts there, and kind of what y'all been able to do over the years.

Jerold Hall 55:11
Yeah, man, we are, we are so fortunate. My buddy Doug and and Lisa and I started this, but we've got a we do about 20 charity events a year now. So it's not just the weekend, right? We're, we just cooked it. We just cooked at the Children's Hospital. And one of the things, you know, we're, we're funding a facility dog for the the Children's Cancer Center. So we get to take something we're a bunch of knuckleheads man that like to barbecue and drink beer and bourbon, things like that, and we get to take a hobby that we love to do anyway and turn it into something we can use to raise money for charities and impact folks. We've, we've been very fortunate this community is, is what makes it happen. I mean, we have people come from all over the country to the event. Michael comes in from New Zealand. He's going to be our guest pitmaster again this year. He's coming back from New Zealand. He's a he's got three barbecue restaurants over in New Zealand, and he flies over, we buy his ticket, right? But he flies over for a week, and he busts his tail and cooks for 600 people at our VIP event, right? And mo comes down from Iowa, and Slade comes in from Arkansas. And people come, you know, the barbecue family man, they come down and they do it, because they know that that what we're doing makes a difference in the community, and it's been a lot of fun, and we're very fortunate to to get to do it. Shoot, man,

Dennis Ayotte 56:29
we're about to move to new office. So Aaron, what's the chances we can get at Green Egg? Because we can start practicing now, get it together before November. Instead of judging, let's compete. It's high. Yeah,

Jerold Hall 56:41
the challenge has been thrown down, and I accept you. I would love to have you guys we have so we have a group from the burn shop up in Wichita Falls that come down. They've been down five or six times. They create really cool fire pits and things like that. It's a metal shop, metal fab shop. But those guys, COVID. They, they came down with their Berea tacos one year, man. And it was, they were straight fire. So, so it brings, bring some San Antonio to Pensacola. We'd love to have it. We'll, we'll get you, we'll get you a hotel on the beach. We've got some awesome hotel partners that work with us. And we, we will have a good time and eat lots and lots

Dennis Ayotte 57:18
of food. Well, Gerald, thanks so much, man. We, we really appreciate you just, you know, joining us, being on the show. If anybody's interested in, you know, becoming, you know, a rhino shield. You know, partner dealer. What's the best way for them to kind of reach out to you? Yeah,

Jerold Hall 57:34
so you can go to rhinoshield.com and there's a become a dealer page, uh, that hopefully we've answered all of your questions up there. You can download the presentation to see what it looks like my information is there. You can reach out to me directly. Same with floor shield. If concrete coatings is your jam and you don't want to get into paint floor shield.com. Again, everything right there. We've got lots of content for you to consume to see if it's a good fit for you. Because, you know, not, not everybody is cut out to be their own boss. I mean, I went into business for myself, and in a couple of years, learned that, man, I really, I really don't like this solo practitioner style, right? It just, it's a different animal. So we try, and we try and be as upfront and transparent as we can about who's a good fit and who's not, because, at the end of the day, if we're 12 months into this, and you haven't made any money, and I haven't sold any product, that's a worst case scenario for both of us. So we want to bring people in with with wide open eyes to the opportunity and and we have, we have lots of good success stories, and, I mean, we have some that didn't turn out so well, right? That's the nature of starting a business. It's a risk. But we've got such a, such a track record of it. We have way more wins than than losses in it. And so just go rider shield com or floor shield com and give me a call.

Dennis Ayotte 58:49
Very cool. Well, Aaron and I got dibs on Shawnee. So,

Jerold Hall 58:56
yeah, I've got, I've got Tulsa taken care of, but Shawnee is open, man. Shawnee is open. So, well,

Dennis Ayotte 59:00
hey, thanks again for you know, also just being such a great partner to us and having trust in us and believing in us, we really appreciate it, and can't wait to see you when you come down to San Antonio. We'll make our little tour to barbecue, maybe even hit, you know, some place where we can go drink some bourbon, Rebecca Creek's out here and a couple other spots. So we'll make it a full field trip day, man, I

Jerold Hall 59:22
will not oppose be opposed to that, my friend. We'll see you guys soon, and thanks for having me. Awesome. Take care.

Dennis Ayotte 59:30
You'll just hang back a couple minutes. Gerald, we're going to let the episode upload and be good. Sure.