Level Up Your Business with Coaching & Personal Development

Chris Kiefer (00:01.17)

Welcome back to another episode. Wow, right on, did you hear that ding? Muting, one hour, there we go. Welcome back to another episode of the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer and today I am with Austin Hauser, who is the founder of Basecoat Marketing. Austin, thanks so much for coming on today.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (00:21.122)

Chris, thanks for having me, man. It's always a great time to chat with you.

Chris Kiefer (00:23.802)

I wanted to just first start out with you have to be the most professional setup like mic, camera, the back lighting, you got some LEDs, you got a TV. Obviously you come from the marketing and just the content world. So I wanted to say it looks fantastic. What do you use for your setup?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (00:41.774)

Thanks, man. Yeah, so I got a Sony A6000 camera, but honestly, it's the lens on these cameras that really make the difference. I think honestly, you can spend any amount of money on a DSLR camera, but the lens should actually cost more than the camera in some regard, but also the microphone. So I got a mic just out of screenshot here, and I think if you're gonna invest in anything, it should be in the audio, given that not everybody actually watches you. Most of the people...

are gonna be listening to you in the background, even if it's on YouTube or something.

Chris Kiefer (01:14.954)

Totally, no, I couldn't agree more. I had this, I think it was probably five years ago, I saw a video of Casey Neistat talking about how he thinks of production quality versus like effort or time that it takes to achieve that quality. And he says it's like a steep curve. It's like, it applies to many things, but if time and effort is on the bottom,

and you're on your X axis and Y is your quality. There's a very steep climb and then it starts to taper. So he's like, he was like, I always try and find the balance of like the best that you could do, which can take you 10 hours or I could spend five minutes, get 70, 80% of the way there, it looks great. And then, so anyways, I have.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (01:57.452)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (02:06.466)

I have take a lot of, I come from a video production background so I can tell when someone's using a DSLR, but in my current life, I'm just like, Oh, I don't have the time to manage an additional camera and the battery dies or the power cord is unplugged or whatever. So anyways, I, but I, uh, I like what you got going. So good work. Um, well today we are going to be talking about, um,

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (02:22.379)

Yeah.

Thank you.

Chris Kiefer (02:31.75)

I guess I was gonna throw this out there. I don't know, you probably do a lot of content on marketing and lead gen, which we can go deeper into. I also love the conversation around benefits and business coaching. Do you have a, what's hot on your mind right now or what are you thinking about these days?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (02:51.126)

Yeah, so actually, ironically, I was just on a podcast the other day talking about business coaching and just how valuable that is. And I love, I'm very passionate about learning. I consider myself a very curious person. It's why we have one of our core values as be curious. I think it's important to ask questions, right? You never wanna be the smartest guy in the room. In fact, if I, in my opinion, if you are the smartest guy in the room, you might be in the wrong room. I think you should really aim to be the dumbest guy in the room.

any possible scenario, given the fact that you're generally going to learn from those types of people. And I think business coaching is just a great way to accelerate your growth, your mindset, and get you from point A to point B much faster.

Chris Kiefer (03:34.25)

Have you heard of the idea of this is from I'll give the guy credit Stephen Pataski a very successful land and business are like building developer and real estate investor, but he said you should always have a Peer group which is people that are you know going on the same journey as you should have a mentor Which is someone that is this was actually well, I'll come back to his definition of a mentor and then the third one that he says

is a coach and you get three different things from those three people. And then if you break down each of them, I thought it was, I never had like, I've experienced those at different times. And currently I do have, I would say all three of those, but I hadn't ever intentionally sought it out. And what he described is like the peer group is like you, a bunch of, if you're a marketing business, like a digital marketing owner, can you get in a room with a bunch of other digital marketing owners from around the country that are,

talking about their challenges and what's coming and the next thing and all that stuff. And there's value in that. But then there's also mentors, which are, he actually said, it's dangerous to have a mentor that's too far, like say 10 years or 15 years ahead of where you're at, because it's not beneficial for them. They don't enjoy it. They're trying to, they're telling you stuff and you're just caught on first base. You just don't even understand what's going on. But if you can find a mentor that's like,

five to seven years ahead of you, it's much more valuable and enjoyable for both parties. And the mentor is like, you know, you buy him lunch once a quarter or something, could be informal. But then the coach is the other big thing, which is you're paying someone to basically hold you accountable and reflect back how you are showing up compared to what it is that you're stating you want. And so anyways, those are the three things, I don't know if you've ever had it laid out like that or if you have anything to build on top of that.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (05:32.926)

Absolutely. No, I completely agree. And I would go as far to say that at each level, you can have multiple various perspectives as well. So for instance, I'm part of a marketing mastermind group. I'm actually a coach in that group myself. I started out as a student. That's my peer group. I actually have a few different mentors and a few different coaches as well. So just as an example, life coaching, I think running a business is a spiritual game, whether you're religious or not.

It is a game of your mind, your body and your soul, right? And it's gonna push you and it's gonna challenge you. There's always going to be instances where you wake up, you're like, yeah, you know what? I'd be fine if somebody wants to buy this business today. You know, like it's, you're going to have that as an entrepreneur. And then the, I like to call it the entrepreneur's curse, which is we always have the drive and the motivation to never be content with where we're at today. And that's good because it always makes sure, you know, always make sure that we push ourselves and our team to get.

to want more and to get more. But at the end of the day, you need to have that moment of gratitude and appreciation for where you're at. And I think a lot of guys fall short of that in the business world. And having people to remind you of how far you've come is really important. And then also helping you avoid those roadblocks. And whenever I mentioned that you have different levels or different perspectives, what that looks like for me and our team is my operations director has a coach.

Our CX director has a coach. I have a coach. So you need different types of coaching for different positions. Finance, for instance, is another good one. And I think just anything that you can do to plug somebody into your life who's better at that thing than you are, just saves you so much headache.

Chris Kiefer (07:16.05)

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I actually am curious, tell me more about this coaching for your people. How is it the same coach that is coaching each of them or do they get to pick? This is actually something that I've had conversations I, and cause I have a coach and my wife has a coach and then we're part of a SaaS, like a software mastermind group that also has coaches.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (07:39.502)

Is that by chance Dan Martell? Well, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (07:41.434)

Yeah. SAS Academy. Yeah. Um, it's, it's fantastic. If you have a software company, it is like, it's incredible. Um, and the valid, just like the in-person event was so well run, the coaches that we have coach Tracy, who just is, she's been in multiple software businesses and it's just like invaluable to have somebody that is like giving you the frameworks and the models and the ways to think about like problems that we've been like stuck on for like four years.

It's like 30 minutes where like, oh, that makes perfect sense. This is crazy. It's like, dang it. Why didn't we do this so long ago? You know? Um, but I feel like that happens and yeah, over and over, but as far as the coaching for your team, yeah. How did you guys come up with the way to structure that and make it like, you know, equitable or fair to everybody. The budget to a lot, all that stuff.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (08:12.522)

Yeah.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (08:30.379)

Yeah.

So I actually stumbled across a guy's names, Chris Martinez. He always says I give him too much credit for what he does for me and my team, but I very much disagree with that statement. He has, I was first introduced to him as like an operations coach on the marketing side. He has run a marketing agency himself. He's got a full team and he identified that it would actually provide more value to his clients if he took each member on his team, each director.

and plugged them in with the director on one of his clients. So, you know, we're his student essentially. And what that allows us to do is each department of his marketing company has already walked that path before they understand how it's run. And then they can just plug into each department and basically say, all right, so from operations, you know, media, finance, whatever that is, here's the path, here's the roadblocks you're gonna run into. So for instance, from the client experience side,

they were able to plug away an entire customer journey for us, which is something that could take a year or so to actually really build out. We were able to do that in the course of a couple of sessions. So I don't know that it's there's a right or wrong answer here. But I think if you can find a company, I think it needs to be a company that's well run, that's doing the same thing that you're doing. See if they have other people on their team that you can plug into. And this goes for any industry, right? Painting, whatever.

Chris Kiefer (09:56.755)

Mmm.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (09:57.586)

If you find somebody else who's running their company well, they have leaders on their team and those leaders are going to have the insights that even the owner of the company probably doesn't have.

Chris Kiefer (10:08.154)

And so you just go, you have a relationship with this Chris Martinez, he's the owner and he's coaching you. And then you were like, hey, can your other people just coach my people?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (10:15.523)

Yes.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (10:20.222)

Yeah, so fortunately it was kind of built into his framework that way. So it worked out well, but yes, that's in a sense, that's exactly how I would recommend going about approaching that. Given that again, if the operations director is going to have the nuances of, you know, how the internal communications of a company works. Cause I think internal communications is something a lot of people struggle with. Um, it's just, there's a ton of ways to do it. There isn't a right or wrong way, but finding the most efficient way is difficult.

And they're going to understand what that process looks like way better than the business owner does. So like to your point, having a mentor, that's 10 years in front of you, they're going to be looking at you as to why do you care about these small problems when you should be focusing on the bigger picture, which I think is helpful. But in, in the moment, you really need answers to some of those small problems that even get to that next level. And I think that's where having the dedicated coaches for each department really helps, you know, elevate you to that point much faster.

Chris Kiefer (11:17.118)

What about a life coaching or the other, like so in just my assumption is the arrangement that you have, it's fantastic tactical advice. It's like, hey, here's the customer journey, got it? Yep, okay, let me know if you have questions. But what about the other stuff, which I know you invest in personally, what about like just realizing that you've got limiting beliefs and childhood trauma that's stopping you from doing?

being the best version of yourself. Do you do that stuff with your team as well?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (11:46.626)

Yeah.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (11:51.138)

So yeah, I do it myself personally. And the way that I impart that on my team is I actually coach them. I train them, I impart some of my wisdom on them. And so just kind of to paint the picture there, my journey on the life coaching side, which just to back up even a moment further, I would really go as far to say that in the world of business, 90% of your success comes from your mindset. Believing that you can. You mentioned

limiting beliefs. That is something that I think a lot of people struggle with, having that imposter syndrome, right? If you can

Chris Kiefer (12:26.906)

or subconscious beliefs that they don't even know they have. Yeah.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (12:29.542)

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think 90% of your success comes from your mindset. The other 10% is skill. You can learn skill pretty quick. That's what coaches are for. But believing you can and overcoming the fears of failure, right? Everybody fears failing, which in my, I've been there before. I get what that feels like. But now looking back on that as somebody who's failed a bunch, it's like, all right, well, how else are you going to learn? Right.

I like to use the analogy of a video game. You don't go into a video game and expect to get to level 10 the first try. You're gonna die a hundred times along the way, right? It's the only way you can do it. So I actually invest in Tony Robbins. Everybody's probably heard the name before, but he has a great program and it has nothing to do with motivation. It is all to do with identifying what your limiting beliefs are and just demolishing those. He has some very intense in-person programs, which I highly recommend anybody,

Chris Kiefer (13:00.394)

Without dying. Yeah, exactly.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (13:25.034)

where you are in life, go attend one of his events. He's got a, it's called Unleash the Power Within event. It's once a year. It's usually held in like somewhere on the East coast. Here in the States, I think he also has them overseas throughout the year as well. It's like a four day event and you walk on fire, right? Like you literally walk on fire, it's wild. The crazier event though is what's called Date with Destiny. They actually made a Netflix documentary about this. And yes, correct.

Chris Kiefer (13:52.43)

I'm not your guru? Yes, I've seen that one.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (13:55.498)

So I attended that event back in December and it is like going to sniper school where UPW is like bootcamp. You get very little sleep. You're in a room that's full of like 15,000 people and it's freezing cold. You know, it's like they purposely starve you of food. You don't get a ton of sleep. So like they're breaking you down. Date with destiny is like you were there from 8 a.m. until 3 a.m. And then you go back to the hotel, you sleep for a couple hours, you come back.

You do the same thing the next day, you're jumping around, you're burning calories. It is intense and you barely eat while you're there. You don't know what time it is and it's a very intense event. But when you're talking about breaking down your limiting beliefs in childhood, memories of being bullied or whatever that looks like, those types of events are really what does it for you because it solidifies what those challenges are and just how much they are, the story you're telling yourself in your own mind.

I think a lot of us have this perspective that everybody is thinking about you when that is just the most selfish belief you could possibly imagine. Everybody's thinking about themselves. They don't care about you, right? So once you overcome that, the rest of life becomes so much easier.

Chris Kiefer (15:06.346)

Mm, I love that. So how many Tony Robbins events have you been to?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (15:11.074)

So I'm what's called a platinum partner. And just basically what that means is I can attend all of the events throughout the year. I've attended several virtual, several in person. I was just in Whistler at a finance event where we were talking to the best of the best of the world and in the finance space. So he has different types of events for different reasons. But in my opinion, if you are ever interested in Tony Robbins, he's got an app called Breakthrough.

And he's got a lot of the general frameworks of these events on that app. But the two events each year, if you guys can go online, look them up, UPW, Unleash the Power Within and Date with Destiny. Those two events, anybody can benefit from them. I highly recommend.

Chris Kiefer (15:53.574)

Interesting. I was going to say, I had a, another coach say one time that the content in any coaching or any event like that, like if you were to read the transcript of a Tony Robbins event, um, you'd be like, into like there's nothing groundbreaking there. And that's the point when people are like, Oh, I'll just watch the video or I'll just read the, read the book or whatever. The difference between, um, what this coach would say is it's,

Yes, it's the like the physical presence of the person. But what is even more powerful is that you carved time out of your own life. You like physically moved or journeyed to a different location and you are like cutting out noise and distraction and the everyday routine of your regular life. And that itself is creating a container for, you know,

transformational stuff to happen because of that. Like that's the prerequisite of going to an event is that all happens just by default. And then you layer on the other stuff in the event. And again, the knowledge is not, is probably stuff that you've heard. I mean, you could tell me, no, there was some new stuff I hadn't heard of before, but 98% of the stuff that is explained, you're like, oh yeah, I've heard someone say that to me, but for some reason it didn't stick. And this guy would say it's because you never like.

put yourself in a place to actually be able to receive that information or have your body process or do something with it? Do you agree with that or how would you, having actually done several of these events?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (17:28.586)

Yeah, I really think, I mean, if you just look at how much time you invest into an event like that, it's in the course of six days, you are investing about 90 to 100 hours of your time into one thing. And that is rewiring your subconscious. That's literally what you're doing. And if you think that you can rewire your subconscious in the course of a week, any other way, unless you fully immerse yourself in that program, it's not going to happen. Right. So I really think it's about just breaking your body down your mind down.

Chris Kiefer (17:50.183)

Full immersion, yeah.

Hmm.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (17:57.59)

looking at actually like where you're at, there was a lot of meditation involved and a lot of just deep thought. And the crazy part is you'll be in that room for 20 hours and it feels like five, just the time flies so fast. But regardless of what you're doing in life, I think if you focus on you yourself, that is the best thing you can possibly invest your money into. And you notice I say investment, because coaching is a cost, but in my mind, it's just an investment. There's nothing better you can possibly invest your time and money into than yourself.

Chris Kiefer (18:27.57)

So as far as like encouraging your people, one of this is a conversation that I've had around this with employees of ours is I have always, well I'd say it was probably four years ago, was the first time that I invested in a coach outside of like a sport coach that was coaching me in a team that I was on, right? First time that I had done it was four years ago.

I guess that's not true. I had like, I hired like a sales consultant, like eight years ago, but it was very tactical. Um, and then I'd been in like some business groups, but just literally paying for someone that I would say is more of a life coach. That was the first time I had done that was four years ago. And I had to, um, interestingly, my former employer paid for part of that investment because it was, um, I don't remember what the amount was, but they said, we'll pay half of it for the six months.

like commitment that they were asking for. And they invested like my business, my company that I was an employee of, invested in me to do this. And then after the six months, the owners were like, okay, we can't keep doing this. So if you wanna continue, you're on your own. And I did continue. And I would say looking back through this coaching group, these coaching groups that I was a part of and meeting other people, it was that encouraged or.

gave me the confidence through other people just reflecting back with no attachment to what I'm doing to have the courage to be like, you know what, I'm gonna go back out because I was an entrepreneur, then I was an employee and then I jumped back in the entrepreneurial world two years ago. But the reason I'm bringing this up is I've had the conversation of like, I want to invest in people in my business in their own coaching and life coaching and just figuring out what their purpose is.

even at the risk of it being the beginning of the end of our working relationship, if that makes sense. Because it's like, yes, there's a fear of like, oh no, what if this rock star leaves our team and does something else? But it's like kind of silly for me when you break it down. It's like, so what are you saying, Chris? You want to like, hold on to people that are meant for something else? You know, like.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (20:24.974)

Totally.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (20:43.586)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (20:43.686)

And then also not believe or trust that someone else is going to come and fill that role. That might be a better fit or whatever. But I feel like a lot of people, a lot of business owners I think are fearful. It's a classic, like what if I invest in them and they leave? And it's like, what if you don't invest in them and they stay? Then what? You know? Yeah.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (21:04.846)

I mean, it's a scarcity mindset is what that is. And, you know, I think as entrepreneurs, we all need to recognize the fact that we are resourceful. And so like, there's a few different human needs as we all kind of follow the same path, right? And one of those that I think most of us are most attracted to is the fear of uncertainty. Some people like being uncertain. They love living the life full of excitement, like what's around the next corner, right? Like those are like the adrenaline junkie kind of people, which I think you could say that I'm

part of, but uncertainty is things like your rock start on your team leaves. Now what, you know, like, am I going to be able to find somebody? Is everything going to come collapsing down? Like you start telling yourself the story that in reality, everything's going to be fine because you will find a way. And I think you just need to be confident enough in what you're doing to recognize that and be able to keep pushing forward because that's all business is, is it's identifying the half-life of a problem and making it as short as possible. So that way you can just find that solution.

I think a lot of us dwell on fear and problems that aren't actually problems. Another perspective of this is, standing here today, if you ask yourself, what are your problems in life? We can probably come up with a bunch of shit, right? A mortgage debt, whatever it looks like for you. But in reality, you don't have any problems today. You are alive, you are standing above the ground, the sun is shining outside, whatever that looks like, your problems aren't that big.

And I think a lot of people over, they put the problems too big in their mind, where I think if you make them smaller, the solutions become a lot easier to find.

Chris Kiefer (22:41.642)

Hmm. You heard the favorite or like a great one that I always think about in these contexts is a healthy man has many wishes, but unhealthy man has only one to be healthy again. Um, but yeah, I think that's like, yeah, it's like you're alive. It doesn't matter. You could be losing every, all of your material possessions, you know, go to jail, I don't know, whatever the stuff is like, okay, like now, now what, you know,

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (22:51.822)

one that's right

Chris Kiefer (23:11.134)

So you can still move me, but what's the next decision that is in front of you to make?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (23:16.078)

That's right. There's always something next. And I think being able to identify that is crucial for success, right?

Chris Kiefer (23:22.086)

So this is the part of investing employees. I know I want to do that, but here's the thing. I know that I, the first coaching group that was like, first of all, the business did not fully pay for it. I had to pay for some, so that was helpful. But the next session, when I put in 100% of the money, it was different than when it was getting paid for, or I'd been in groups that were free.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (23:49.827)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (23:50.346)

or someone else is like, hey, I want you to come to this thing. I have a free ticket. It's totally different than when it's like your money's on the line and you are like, I need to get a return on this. Like I'm showing up. I'm going to be, I'm going to do my homework, all that stuff. So how, because obviously you investing in Tony Robbins, you have a personal like monetary commitment to this thing.

And if you just paid for that for a team member of yours, I believe, and I'm curious if you would agree, that there's no way that they're going to get the same transformation because it wasn't, I don't know, like that matters. I don't know how else to describe it. So I guess, what's your solution to encourage and assist and invest in people? But also it's like the coaching of like, I'm gonna do this much and I have.

hope and pray that you see the value and you take your own resources and dump it into it for yourself as well. But there's like, I feel like there's a balance of like, you can't just expect like if you if your people on your team only have the mindset of, I like coaching and I will do coaching as long as it's provided and it's valuable. That's a different perspective than someone that is like

I value coaching so much, I'm willing to take money from other places of my life and invest it into that.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (25:18.974)

Yeah, no, that's a great distinction. And I'll first just mention the fact that I probably spend close to a six figure salary on coaching, right? And it's again, because I remember the first time I made an investment into coaching, it's like $1,200 a month, right? And I remember I clicked pay and just, I started sweating. I'm like, is this the right investment? Like, am I gonna see a return on this? And literally probably 110 X return I've seen from that one investment. So,

Coaching the investment side of that is just a no brainer. In my opinion, if you're willing to put in the work, the coaching program, you're either gonna outgrow it real fast or it's gonna help you succeed for the future. I mean, it's one of those two, but the chances of you not getting anything out of a coaching program, I think is very unlikely. Now with that said, in terms of your team though, so we have 29 people at Basecoat Marketing, diverse set of disc profiles, we use Colby as well.

they all have different perspectives and different motivations in life. And we ask them whenever they join, what's your why? Like, why are you here? Why did you decide to join Basecoat Marketing? Because we want to know what motivates them. Like what gets them out of bed each day? Some people like to travel. Some people want to just do more surfing in their free time. Like whatever that looks like to each person on our team. But the bottom line is everybody on your team, it's going to be very few people on your team actually, are going to be as motivated as you are as the entrepreneur, right? You have all the risk on the line.

So to think that putting somebody from your team into a coaching program is gonna get them the same kind of benefit as it's gonna get to you, I think is very unlikely. That is why it's under my opinion that you as the leader should be leading them on using the shoulders of others. So whatever you learn at a coaching program, you should internalize it. And the best way to do that is to teach other people. And I think that's why, you know, on our weekly, we do weekly team huddles. We just had one this morning. It's every Friday morning.

and we just get everybody on the huddle. And I'll talk about some boring topic that some people may enjoy, some people won't. We talked about burnout this morning and how just that looks so different for other people. And it's hard to recognize it when you're in it and just tools and tactics that you can implement in your life to get out of that. But that's something I learned from somebody else. Like there's no unique thoughts these days. I think we all just kind of learn something from somebody else and then twist it into our own perspective.

Chris Kiefer (27:42.154)

Hmm. And so what are you saying that you just accept? Or you are agreeing if you don't make the own your own personal investment You will have a different or a less or it's obviously maybe not even say less or more There is a difference in personally investing in coaching and not I'm saying or would you agree with that?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (28:01.602)

Um, let me, let me rephrase. Yeah. So I think from a life coaching standpoint, it's, it needs to be very individual and it needs to be the person investing in that. I think some people could benefit from it, but it's a different mindset on the life coaching side, given that there was so much motivation involved there that falls outside of a job description, right? Um, on the tactical side, so skills that other 10%, a hundred percent, you can invest in coaching.

your department leads, whatever, whoever's a leader on your team should find a lot of value in that. But it's mainly, that's just because it falls in their job description.

Chris Kiefer (28:35.978)

Right, right, okay. Yeah, that's awesome. I would say, what else is, what's the future for Austin look like? Next three, three to five years.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (28:47.17)

So yeah, Baseco marketing is an ever evolving and we started out as a lead gen company, right? And just delivering results for clients. We got our start back in around 2008, working with some of the big franchises nationally under a previous agency of mine. And we'd since pulled that team over into base coat marketing and really doubled down in this industry. Well, over the years as COVID happened and

life got real easy for us. And then it's kind of back to pre COVID numbers where it's getting a little more competitive. Um, and the fact that we continue working with business owners, one of my, I think one of my biggest failures as an entrepreneur is presuming the success in other entrepreneurs, right? So what I mean by that is, uh, assuming that other people who are running a successful company are a successful business owner. And, uh, just as an example,

let's say that you have a $2 million painting company, us bringing them on as a client, I would presume that they know how to sell and that they're pretty good at operations, right? Is that you get to multiple seven figures, you got to be doing something right. That presumption is wrong. There's a lot of guys who run a lot of businesses that on the surface seem pretty successful. And then when you get into the nitty gritty of it, they don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to run a business and some of them are not very coachable, right? So that was a big,

eye-opening, awakening experience for me. So something that we're doing to assist with that is providing resources across the board for all of our clients, coaching. And if, look, again, it goes back to the thought of, if you are coachable and you're motivated as an entrepreneur, there's nothing you can't do in life as long as you are willing to take the advice of others. If you think you are the smartest guy in the room, have fun hitting those potholes, because they're gonna hurt.

Chris Kiefer (30:36.15)

Hmm. So you are, uh, do you do more like aggressive is the wrong term weeding out of like, how do you vet clients before? Cause this is something that is very, very relevant to us. When we're doing automation packages, like obviously we have a reputation management and review software. It's like, use it. Anyone that's applicable to anybody. It's a software, plug it in. It works. But from the consulting and automation side, it's like we're

basically getting married. Like it's a pretty, it's very like intimate in the like the access level that we need to like QuickBooks and accounting and all your numbers, like everything, because all of it can be automated. And so we've had some situations where, and luckily it's all been before we've ever like agreed to work with people, but in the discovery calls, we're kind of like, did he just say that? Like that's kind of a red flag.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (31:31.999)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (31:32.286)

You know, anyways, I'm curious if you have any structured way of qualifying or even just like putting out values or, you know, stating things to help them, uh, discern out themselves. So they're, they don't want to work with you guys. You know what I mean?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (31:47.85)

Yeah, there's, we have hard KPIs and soft KPIs around that. So our sales process early on, it's like, hey, do you want, you got money and do you want to work with us? Great, here's a form, go, let's get going, right? Now it is very different than that. We turn away, and I literally say this on the sales call, we turn away about two thirds of bit business. So if they make it far enough on the call where they're still talking to me and I'm like, all right, let's talk about pricing, they've, they're definitely the minority of people that we would ever talk to.

Chris Kiefer (32:01.107)

Right.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (32:17.61)

So what that looks like for us is we have a discovery call and we have some hard KPIs. They're just hard numbers that we know if your company is of this size, you're gonna be stretching to afford our services and we never want that. There should be a comfortable relationship where you jump in, we're one component of your marketing strategy. Once all those hard KPIs are defined, that's when we start talking about soft KPIs and that's gonna be, do we want to work with this person? Yes, they can afford us, their company's right, it's structured right, their growth goals are right.

but is this person, do they have the personality of a team member that we'd wanna bring on? Because we literally treat our clients as a team member or as a partner of ours. And to your point, it's like getting married. And that's how we evaluate all of these relationships. And yes, it's difficult to do over a phone call or two. We do our best job. There's always going to be a certain percentage that slips through, but every time that happens, we just learn from that, right? It's a failure.

that we consider an opportunity to learn. That's all a failure. Failing is just a new challenge or a new opportunity.

Chris Kiefer (33:22.162)

Right. Love it. Um, and you don't, do you have like a specific, they don't, their clients are not taking a test or something or filling out a survey or things like that.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (33:33.494)

You know, I've considered giving...

Chris Kiefer (33:35.498)

Cause these are all things that have been discussed on our end. And I'm like, I'm not, I mean, I'm not opposed to it, but I also am wondering like, yeah, how much work do you make it for someone? Yeah. I mean, I, it's, I guess it's the higher, the higher the demand is for the service, the more hoops you can make people jump through. But, um,

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (33:38.582)

Yeah.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (33:53.61)

Absolutely. I mean, we're generally booked out around this time of the year, about 30 days. So it is not, we're not hurting for business in that regard. And I would rather bring on somebody that we know is going to be a good fit for us than bring on somebody that's going to be a challenge for everybody. Cause it's going to be painful for them too. But you know, it's, I was, it's funny. I was having actually a conversation with one of my coaches the other day.

Like, wouldn't it be great if everybody just wore their disc assessment on their forehead? Like it would make life so much easier to be able to have conversations and talk to people, especially once you get to know how the disc profile and like the Colby assessment, how all of those actually, you know, turn out in real life. Um, but no, I've actually considered giving our prospects a disc assessment just to understand how they tick. Cause I think that would really, you know, if you start to develop a profile around that I'm a big numbers, a data guy. And.

Chris Kiefer (34:39.315)

Yeah.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (34:44.662)

If you can identify like, hey, this is the profile that we fit best with, then those are the kind of people that you want. I don't know, that's.

Chris Kiefer (34:50.578)

I mean, I completely agree. We've had our discovery process for automation is like, it's very in depth. It takes usually two meetings at least that are an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes a third one to just like make sure that we know what we're getting into and make sure that it's very clear what problems we're gonna solve and what we aren't gonna solve and then communicate that effectively. And there have been two instances on discovery calls where people are just like.

And this is two out of say 50 discovery calls in the last two years where people are like, okay, can we just cut to the chase? Like, what are you guys, what's up with all these questions? And to me, I'm like, all right, like this is the urgency that they have to like quickly solve the problem is a red flag that's like, oh, okay, you just kind of revealed some colors there of like, I don't know if this is gonna work because

we have a process and we're very methodical. And if you want to deviate, you're welcome to pick a company that like moves faster. And you know, so like luckily, I don't know that's kind of an interesting like the discovery process because it's a longer period, kind of has the ability to get in our case, I'm not saying it's relevant for any type of business, but the work that we're doing is like literally touching everything. So we've had that

work to our benefit a few times.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (36:19.246)

I mean, I think the pre-qualification in any business is going to be critical, right? It's something that, let's say you just break it down to like a painting company, there's gonna be clients that you do not wanna work with or you shouldn't work with might be a better way to say that. We had one of our clients say that their ideal client is somebody with a good sense of humor. And I loved that description. Cause I think if you have a good sense of humor, it just makes life light, right? And it's not so serious in business. I think a lot of people take it way too seriously.

Chris Kiefer (36:44.215)

Yeah.

All right, so we're gonna move to the wrap up questions. What are three book recommendations you have for us?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (36:52.662)

Yeah, so I'm actually, I just finished reading a book the other day called the Chimp Paradox. If you haven't read it, it's talking about mindset. It is a great book about mindset. And it just breaks down the concept of having a chimp inside of your mind. That is like our basic evolutionary mind, like the fight or flight kind of mind. And it is 10 times stronger than your human mind, right? Like you're never gonna be able to wrestle that chimp. So your chimp is typically gonna win in these stressful situations, but your human mind's the analytical thinker, right?

So that whole book, Breaking Down, Challenges, Problems, how you can go about solving them without your chimp getting in the way, but knowing that you can't tame your chimp, it's just cause constant battle in your mind. That book really resonated. It's called The Chimp Paradox. And there's a book, and this is something that any business owner should read. It's called They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.

Chris Kiefer (37:35.108)

And what's the title again?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (37:48.806)

It's our entire content strategy. So if you want to go steal our SEO strategy, our content strategy, go read that book. Uh, it is fantastic. It is something that it identifies. Yeah, it's brilliant book. Um, and then finally, uh, building a story brand by Donald Miller, uh, story brand is how we write all of our content. So marketing is 90, 99% content. I would say it's actually, it's probably 90% expectation setting, 10% content, but

Chris Kiefer (37:58.514)

I forgot that we've talked about this before. I'm a huge fan of it.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (38:18.602)

out of the actual implementation, it's 99% content, right? And having the ability to write a story about your brand versus trying to sell your brand is a very different concept. So those are my top three book recommendations for any business owner.

Chris Kiefer (38:33.138)

Love it. And what is your movie recommendation?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (38:36.99)

Yeah, so look, whenever I watch movies, it's going to be some nerdy sci-fi movie that I can just shut my brain off for. I've always really enjoyed the movie Interstellar, and I think it's in part because it has Matthew McConaughey in it. And, you know, it's I'm just a space nerd in that regard. So I've always really enjoyed that.

Chris Kiefer (38:56.734)

Love it. That is a, I feel like I had a science teacher tell me that Interstellar is like the most physics or physically, but like physics correct movie.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (39:08.534)

Yeah, they had they had physics or they had physicists actually analyzing the film on like the black hole part to like to make new discoveries like the way that they built that algorithm to make the special effects is just incredible. So I can talk about that for an hour.

Chris Kiefer (39:22.938)

Yeah. I think it's the, it's, it really made when you start getting into that it's like, Oh my gosh, that's, yeah, it is, it is crazy. The universe and just existence is, uh, intelligently designed. I'll say that. Um, yes. My wife hates talking about space. Interestingly enough, she, she is, uh, we're both Christian. And so she like, it's, I don't know what it is. Like, I don't, like God created this, like,

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (39:38.727)

On the next podcast, let's talk about space, Chris. I think that's a great topic.

Chris Kiefer (39:53.138)

you know, um, but she's just like, it like makes her uncomfortable. And I'm like, I think it's, it's like, if you ever, you probably have the number of stars, like, have you looked at this or study this? It's like in, I remember in college, like you have, you look at like a little chunk, like hold a quarter up and like the stars that are within like that quarter or something is billions. And then it's like,

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (40:03.443)

Mind the leaf. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (40:19.566)

Yeah, it's just, it's absolutely mind boggling how many stars there are. And then to think that each one of those stars is a sun, small percentage of those have planets orbiting them and you know, it's, it's crazy.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (40:31.362)

Habitable life has got to be out there. It's just interesting that we haven't discovered it yet, but yeah, it's fascinating stuff.

Chris Kiefer (40:34.99)

Exactly, yeah. So what is your preferred method of contact for people to reach out to you?

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (40:41.462)

Yeah, so very simple. Base forward slash call. Just forward slash call. If you guys wanna get on a call with our team, we'd be happy to run through some of those pre-qualification questions to see if you might be a good fit for us and our programs.

Chris Kiefer (40:54.662)

Yeah. And Austin, I can tell you, cause we have a shared clients, um, for those, for painting companies in particular. And if you're one of our clients, um, base coat does a great job. We have several, I think we have three clients that I'm aware of that are work with us for the automation and work with base coat for marketing. So they have been very pleased with the results of base coats delivered so far. So appreciate your time, Austin. And it's been great working with you side by side and we'll, we'll be seeing you around.

Austin Houser - Base Coat Marketing (41:22.638)

Thanks again, Chris. Talk to you, brother.