Mastering Mass Persuasion: Unleashing the Power of Marketing

Chris Kiefer (00:00.986)

Excellent. And just make sure I pronounce the name easy one, Benji Carlson, correct? All right. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer, and today I have Benji Carlson from Breakthrough Academy. He is the content lead, if I'm not mistaken, Benji, that is putting out all the great things you see on Breakthrough's website and their podcast. I'm sure you're doing you're overseeing

Benji (00:06.543)

Nailed it.

Chris Kiefer (00:30.962)

any other website content and stuff that they put out. But yeah, Benji, thank you for coming on today, first of all.

Benji (00:37.785)

Hey, thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Kiefer (00:39.598)

And give me like a, what is Breakthrough Academy? And then give me the more colorful background on how you are fitting in as a puzzle piece there to help them scale and grow their mission.

Benji (00:53.109)

In a sentence at Breakthrough Academy, we systemize contracting businesses for growth. So if you think of your average contractor, home service, business builder out there in the world, they are working incredibly hard to build a company, build a team, build a legacy.

as I think a lot of us, no one can recognize the space itself compared to other sectors of the economy is somewhat fragmented, is somewhat, I feel like saying behind the times is so cliche, but there's a real opportunity if you run a business like this to approach it with systems thinking, build out infrastructure inside your company, create a team of A players that you really want to need.

and scale, the opportunities in this space are massive because it's sort of fragmented and behind the times. And so if you take that philosophy, that methodology to your business growth, there really is no ceiling. And we see that time and time and time again in Breakthrough Academy. So we have an unbelievable team of coaches. You could think of them like system implementers that work with our members. We call our clients members.

and we help them build out financial controls, we help them define their roles, we help them implement hiring systems so that they can fill those roles with the right people. We develop training and onboarding systems so that there's a consistent way, there's a written process for how those new people ought to carry out the work, everything from picking up the phone to finishing the quality control at the end of the project. We optimize their sales and marketing engine so that the owner isn't the only one.

doing all the selling all the time so they can CEO their business properly. And then we help them with their goal setting and execution strategy, big picture, breaking down like a five year BHAG into annual goals, quarterly ROCs, weekly block schedules. And as a result, their businesses grow. I just actually was doing a little bit of review here.

Chris Kiefer (02:59.467)

Mm.

Benji (03:15.369)

this morning on our results. And let me pull them up here so I can quote them properly. It's kind of exciting. We just did our most recent batch of data on growth and what we see is this. The average BTA, this is my shameless plug right at the beginning and then we can get to the good stuff. The average new BTA member, when they start, is doing about 3.1 million in revenue. After 12 months they do 3.9, so that's an increase of

Chris Kiefer (03:33.706)

No, I love this.

Benji (03:44.625)

25%. The average new Breakthrough Academy member is doing about 245,000 in net profit. And after the first 12 months, we grow it to 414,008. So that's an increase of 69%. And we do that while reducing their hours worked. So that is kind of like who we are, what we do in a nutshell. I lead the marketing and the content team with one other woman who's an absolute powerhouse named Erin Schiel.

Chris Kiefer (03:56.596)

Ooh.

Benji (04:13.253)

and we've got some really talented people and are having a ton of fun doing it.

Chris Kiefer (04:17.59)

Well, the thing that I would say first of all is that's the average. How great is that marketing power and that copy of our on average? If you're trying to grow your business, sign up with us because this is the average of what happens. Like, hello, you know, let's do it or don't, you know?

Benji (04:30.309)

Yeah.

Benji (04:35.117)

I just handed off the brief to my graphic designer. I'm really excited to see what she puts together and we can paste that over the website, our PowerPoint decks, our Instagram, and a whole bunch of stuff, so yeah.

Chris Kiefer (04:44.874)

That's fantastic. Um, one of the things that, that makes me think of, you said the, you're reducing the, uh, business owners time just when this coaching group that I'm a part of, which is non industry specific, it's just entrepreneurs, real estate people, investors, whatever it's in locally here in Coeur d'Alene called man on a mission. But we had Dan Martel who is the author of buy back your time. Have you heard of that book?

Benji (05:08.953)

Yeah, he lives down the street from here. I'm interviewing him next month. He lives here in Kelowna. I know the book. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (05:14.258)

That's odd. I should have put that together. So and his wife, Renee, I don't know if you know Renee, Renee Warren, she has a PR company. And so I interviewed Renee recently as well. But buy back your time. Obviously, I don't know if you guys if that's like recommended reading or if you tell people in the business to read that. But that is a transformational book for any entrepreneur. I feel like it's like the traction type.

style of impact if you actually put it into work. But it's like getting yourself out of the busyness and trying to get to a position where you're operating on the business.

Benji (05:54.297)

Totally, yeah, I read it and loved it. It's not prescribed reading, but I know for a fact that a huge chunk of our audience and our actual active members have read it and love it. And I thought he did a really, really nice job with the book and the diagrams and the frameworks. It's very structured, it's very practical. And I can't wait to talk to him.

Chris Kiefer (06:17.522)

Yeah, that's awesome. So you guys are in Canada. How long ago did you guys break across the, I'm obviously, I guess my assumption is that you tackled Canada before you tackled the states, or was it just kind of like from the get-go, the goal was to service North America, or are you guys even seeking Europe or any other places besides Canada and the US?

Benji (06:45.514)

We would have started in Canada, but from a very early stage onwards, we dipped our toe into the US market and have been really successful down there. We're about 70% of our client base is US and 30% is in Canada. I don't think we'll tackle Europe or Australia. A lot of our, like all of our coaching and our advising.

you know, it's software enabled. We've got some tech working for us to help us make the back and forth more efficient. But a lot of it is phone calls, zoom calls, and really proper high touch advising. So just makes the time zones really challenging. And there's plenty of contractors here in this part of the world to work with. I don't think we've got our sights set on going international anytime soon.

Chris Kiefer (07:33.786)

Yeah. The other thing that with that stat you shared at the beginning of the 3.1, is there a minimum size that you require and or recommend for someone to actually get the most value out of Breakthrough Academy? I think you said 3.1 was the average. Yeah.

Benji (07:48.441)

The average, yeah, the sort of like size floor, if you wanna call it that, is probably three quarters of a million dollars a year. If you're doing 750K a year, and you know you're poised to break a million, and your vision is big, and you wanna keep going, that's about the...

size and stage of your business growth where Breakthrough Academy becomes really relevant, and that's for two reasons. One is like the systems and infrastructure that we create are kind of suited for a business of that size and larger. And then the second thing would just be affordability. Like it's, you know, we have, has a price tag, and so a lot of the smaller businesses are just not quite there where budget is concerned. So I'd say $750,000 a year.

Chris Kiefer (08:14.848)

Hmm.

Benji (08:37.493)

And above is sort of our sweet spot and you I shared the average the average number is around three

Chris Kiefer (08:44.798)

Yeah, and so I had heard Breakthrough Academy get mentioned a number of times by several different clients of mine. One of them told me that you guys have a, I don't know if it was a free course or a webinar or like a 30 day challenge or some intro offer that you make available. I don't know if this is like a public thing on your website or how, if it's an ad that you guys are running.

but he was just talking about how fantastic this, again, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I can't remember if he said it was free or nominal price, but he was raving about Breakthrough Academy just after going through that. Does that ring a bell?

Benji (09:25.645)

Cool, yeah, that's awesome. I mean, it rings a lot of bells. We have quite a few, I would say really high quality pieces of free content, whether it's a live web class or round table that I host with some of our entrepreneurs where we're talking about SOPs or financial controls or how to implement project management systems, like that is widely available. And if you're on our email list, you'll be getting notifications about that.

when we're doing them. There's a whole bunch of on-demand stuff on our website under resources you can go to learn. We've got the podcast which releases every Wednesday on every platform, Contract Revolution, like the hat. And then we've got a whole bunch of really cool, we call them contractor quick tools, which are nicely packaged, nicely designed, little bits of infrastructure that you can read, consume, watch the video and kind of.

DIY it. So he probably went through one of those many things. I'm not sure which one, but I'm glad. It's always a good sign when your free stuff is good quality.

Chris Kiefer (10:29.278)

Yeah, totally. And you definitely don't want it to be underwhelming. And they're like, why would I pay? But yeah, the exact opposite is true for sure when it is valuable. So diving into like our primary topic in my opinion would be you are the marketing lead, this content lead at BTA. And the thing that I think is an interesting kind of overlap here with me is that I ran an agency.

Benji (10:32.369)

Right.

Chris Kiefer (10:56.254)

And I was in charge of selling because I was the owner of this small business marketing company and then I went and worked for a residential home service or residential painting company. We had decks, siding, things like that in central Oregon and I was their marketing director there. And I feel like there's something unique that a marketing person with real sales experience brings to the table.

Well, in my case, I was in an actual contractor business, but you're doing the marketing for the consulting company that helps these businesses, but you're still a marketer that comes to the table with a lot of sales experience. Talk to me about that a little bit.

Benji (11:42.577)

I think that having a heavy dose of sales experience, which I do, selling paint jobs, selling a consulting and coaching package, all the way back to when I was a kid, selling brownies door to door, I think that there's like a massive leg up that you have on, if you transition, if the...

The crib that you grow up in is sales, and then when you kinda grow up, you step into marketing in your career. There's a huge advantage. In the sense that you have a deep understanding of how purchasing decisions get made, you have a really nuanced understanding of the objections that you need to handle. You also.

if you're selling the product that you then go to market, you also have a really deep understanding of the lived experience and the pain points and the struggles and the mindset and the environment that your prospect, that your buyer has all the time. And the way that I think about marketing and sales and how those two departments kind of connect up is,

you're extracting all the insight and the wisdom and the sound bites and the copy from the sales world, and you're trying to display it and disseminate it and publish it in the marketing world in a way that's compelling, easy to find, and resonates with the client. So if you're just doing marketing without that sales experience, you have to work really hard on the extraction front because you've got to talk to the salespeople and the salespeople are busy selling and they don't always get back to you.

And it's a much slower, it's a much slower build because it's not just there for you in your brain. Whereas if you come from the sales world, you can, it's a lot easier to just kind of craft the messaging, because you know what that buyer wants to hear. You know what they don't want to hear. You know what's going to make them think twice and maybe clam up. And so.

Chris Kiefer (13:44.478)

in your gut. Yeah.

Benji (13:53.537)

A lot of the things that I try to do or have tried to do with Breakthrough Academy is take all the stuff that worked in the hand-to-hand sales environment. When you're doing meetings, you're doing follow-up calls, use those persuasive angles, use the negotiating skills, use the buzzwords and the sound bites that gets the prospects head nodding. And I just try to do that at a way larger scale with much more eyeballs.

Chris Kiefer (14:19.79)

Hmm. And I think you used the term mass persuasion. There's like a, that's what marketing is, right? At a, or done well. Yeah, if it's good. Tell me about that, because I've never, I feel like there might've been a book on that topic, but I hadn't heard that recently until you brought it up when we chatted last. How is that guiding your...

Benji (14:31.405)

If it's good.

Chris Kiefer (14:46.462)

strategies, the way you think about implementing marketing campaigns, all that stuff.

Benji (14:55.489)

Um, it's a great question. I mean, mass persuasion as a term is maybe a little grandiose. I don't want to just sounds like I'm trying to be a hypnotist. Um, I'm a pretty humble guy, so I, you know, it sounds like, sounds like a lot, but yeah, I mean, I think what you're trying to do is develop a brand, a brand promise and an offer.

and the messaging around that offer that speaks so clearly to the prospect you wanna transact with that they are drawn towards it like a mosquito is to a mosquito light. And if you've ever seen really, really good conversion copy on a landing page, a really beautiful website, a really unbelievable video sales letter, a really great brochure,

Chris Kiefer (15:37.166)

Mm.

Benji (15:50.273)

and you happen to be the type of prospect that marketing organization is trying to attract, you'll notice it's like every word that comes after the last one makes sense and clicks for you. You're just like, how do they, like is this person like inside my brain? Like that's literally what I was like, that's exactly what I'm like really frustrated by and they know like the exact like difficulties that I'm facing in my week to week. Maybe I'll read the next sentence and maybe I'll read the next sentence and maybe I'll click the button and maybe I'll book a call and I just think.

Chris Kiefer (16:00.258)

Hmm. Yep.

Mmm.

Benji (16:20.009)

You know, it's getting a little philosophical here rather than tactical, but writ large, I think that's what marketing teams are tasked with doing, brand building teams are tasked with doing, and they do it with fairly mixed results if we look around the environment, but that's what good looks like to me.

Chris Kiefer (16:38.21)

Hmm. And I would say that one of the things to that, to note about what you just said and tell me if you, if this is not part of your process, please tell me that this isn't necessary. Cause there's a little part of me that wish that hopes this isn't necessary, but also I know the value of it. And that is in order to do mass marketing, mass sales, mass persuasion, whatever you want to call it, you have to get very specific and drill down into who are we targeting? So mass requires

the individual and deep understanding of the individual that you're targeting. And then you just understand that there are many of those individuals in the same position. But I would assume that you are laser focused on this is the person. This is what they're feeling. This is their stress. This is like, and again, I might be exaggerating on how built out you have this, but this is why marketing teams create that avatar of their ideal customer. Right?

Benji (17:37.521)

Correct, yeah. What we try to avoid, and I think that we do a pretty good job of this, is one of the things that I hate are meaningless platitudes that sound good in a sound bite, but deliver absolutely no value and could be repeated by anyone. Our beloved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the absolute epicenter of this kind of languaging, where it's like...

Chris Kiefer (18:00.002)

Just insert the name.

Benji (18:06.989)

Okay, so what are you saying? Right, so that's what bad is to me and we try to avoid that by being incredibly granular about all the stuff I just mentioned, the messaging, the words on the page, the pictures on the page, how the infographic gets designed. And so instead of just speaking sort of theoretically, I'll just tell you like what we do. Like we try to attract contractors.

Chris Kiefer (18:08.246)

What are we doing?

Benji (18:34.561)

More specifically, builders, roofers, painters, landscapers, sub-trades, like specialized trades like HVAC, drywall, plumbing, electrical, et cetera, and then home service businesses like junk removal and moving companies and exterior maintenance, stuff like that. So, okay, so that's the person. They are, it's like 70% male, 30% female. They're usually in their...

you know, mid 30s, early 30s, all the way up to their late 50s, some of them in their 60s. We know what kind of cars they drive, we know what kind of brands they like, we know what kind of publications they read, we know what kind of stuff they hate. We even know what, like, where they're at on the political spectrum. We know what kind of, we know what kind of psychographic patterns in society right now are like bothering them.

We know that they get frustrated by their bookkeepers because bookkeepers generally are pretty lousy. Some of them are good, but tons of them suck. We know how they feel about their CRMs that they use and the tech bog down that comes with that. We know how they feel about millennials and trying to hire young people into their business. I mean, this is like the level of stuff that you need to really pay close attention to. Going back to why being coming from sales is relevant, you get all that stuff in sales. You don't really get it on email surveys and answer our question on Instagram. You get it in face-to-face conversations.

Chris Kiefer (19:48.593)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (19:54.251)

Mmm.

Benji (20:00.221)

When you have all that knowledge about who you're trying to persuade, it gives you really good ammo to build stuff around. And I think that, going back to this idea of mass persuasion and doing well at that through a really defined niche, you might think that, North American contractors who work on homes or buildings is like this really narrow little thing. There are,

hundreds of thousands of these men and women all over North America. There's a subset of them who are super intelligent. They know they're smarter than their competition. Who's out there like smoking on the lawn and swearing at the customer. They're looking for business advice and systems thinking and consulting to help them get to the vision that they have. And if you can just kind of put that together in a nice package for them, it's pretty cool. One of the things I...

A mantra I have and I talk about a lot with the team is like never underestimate the power of an underserved market. And we've been very fortunate in the sense that we kind of got to this space very early. We had a five year lead on everyone else that's now trying to do it. And if you want to click around Facebook or Instagram like I do, there's a lot of competition cropping up very quickly. The secret's out, contractors need help with their businesses. So there's a bajillion in one of those people now trying to vie for the eyeballs

We used to have a monopoly on, but I won't get into that. So yeah, anyway, I don't wanna ramble further. Those are just maybe some general thoughts on that topic.

Chris Kiefer (21:38.11)

Yeah, now I think that's fantastic. And the other thing that you had said, I can't remember how you phrased it, but it was like this, not a secret mission, but inside your head, you're trying to guide your marketing team to make, and if you said it slightly different, you can correct me, but the goal is to make, marketing's goal should be to make sales obsolete. Tell me a little bit about that.

Benji (22:05.625)

Yeah, I have some really good friends on our sales team, so I really gotta put a finer point on that. Yeah, don't worry, Dan, I'm not coming for you. Yeah, I mean, what I say is that the goal of a marketing team should be to make salespeople obsolete. Now, you don't actually wanna do that, because your salespeople do the qualifying, do the relationship building, they set up the relationship for the coach or the product or whatever.

Chris Kiefer (22:11.59)

an asterisk.

Benji (22:35.181)

for long-term success, they play an incredibly vital role. But what I don't want them to have to do is go out there and find the leads and build the lists and create the QSOs and do all that stuff. Like our goal, going back to that mosquito analogy, is to make the offer and make the product so appealing that the salesperson's job is to get to know the potential buyer, understand whether they're a fit or not, and if they're not, de-escalate the conversation.

push them towards another program. And if they are, get them really excited to start. But I come from sales and I know what it's like to work with really crappy marketing. It's not very fun and I wouldn't want other salespeople to have to deal with that. So that's kind of like the mission we're on with the marketing here.

Chris Kiefer (23:14.997)

Mm. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (23:22.062)

And like when you said that I was like, to me, if I'm a sales guy, I'm looking for the marketing team that has that goal. That's the place where you want to be because like, you don't like not only I feel like the other thing is, and this has been my belief when I was in it as the marketer was like, when we do our job really well, the salesperson shows up to the house and the person is acting like their best friends.

Benji (23:30.193)

Mm-hmm. Totally.

Chris Kiefer (23:49.678)

It's like, because they feel like they know the brand so well. And you can even potentially, depending upon the sales process, we were sending out like pictures of who's coming to their house, a short little bio. Like they're getting to know the person that's coming into their home to tell them what to do. Very, very well. And they show up and it's like this very warm welcome because they have a couple points of data to connect on.

Benji (24:06.449)

Totally.

Chris Kiefer (24:16.142)

and they also just trust the overall business, the reputation, the reviews, the testimonials from other customers, and that I think is the, that's the secret.

Benji (24:20.044)

Mm-hmm.

Benji (24:27.927)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I 100% agree with that whole notion. I think that, you know, the...

Benji (24:38.186)

Here's a really cool thing that I learned from this guy, Marcus Sheridan, who wrote a really good book, you know, They Ask You Answer, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (24:44.378)

Oh yeah, that was my, I had everybody at the company read that at my web foot.

Benji (24:48.693)

Yeah. So he was on a podcast the other day and I read the book and I interviewed, it was a great, great episode. But one of the things that he talks about is sort of the age of the unsavvy buyer being very, very over, very behind us. If you look at the proliferation of the internet content, search engines more recently, large language models, like if you

are under the delusion that your prospect, your potential lead is not learning a hell of a lot about you before they meet your salesperson, you're on glue, like you're absolutely asleep at the wheel. And so his whole message is why don't you try to sculpt that narrative? Why don't you make it really, really easy for that prospect to get to know you and answer the questions that they're gonna ask the salesperson, answer those questions on the website in the sales collateral.

in the pre-estimate email, in the FAQ section, in the automated text that goes out before the tech arrives, blah, so that really that salesperson is there to build a relationship, understand the scope, shake hands, do a deal, and get him in the schedule. And I just think you really, this is not a profound statement, this isn't exactly cutting edge wisdom, but it's relevant to what we're talking about. Just don't bury your head in the sand,

and try to pretend that your buyers aren't unbelievably up to speed on your company, its reviews, its values, its brand, all of that stuff. They're going to figure it out one way or another. Why don't you make it easy for them?

Chris Kiefer (26:28.114)

Mmm, love that. What would you say is the, how long have you been in your current role at BTA?

Benji (26:37.841)

I've been at BTA for six years and I've been doing, I've been in this role for two.

Chris Kiefer (26:43.242)

and you were doing sales for BTA before this. Yeah. So I'm curious in this content role, first of all, was the, they ask you, you just mentioned they ask you answer, was that something that you guys were knowingly applying? Sounds like maybe inadvertently, but had you read that book prior to two years ago, and were you actively putting that strategy or that lens on the content that you were creating?

Benji (27:11.309)

It's a good question. I picked up they ask you answer more recently the big sort of marketing Bible that we read to launch our content strategy because if we could wind back the clock three years ago We had nothing we had no podcast. We had no blog posts. We had a Very very lousy pathetic webinar campaign. It was not good so we

Chris Kiefer (27:27.008)

Hmm.

Benji (27:38.285)

The book we read was Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi, which is a really, really great kind of get started, learn the basics, learn the frameworks, learn about listening mechanisms, learn about content formats, learn about a production schedule versus a publication schedule. That was a big kind of watershed moment for us, and I think we've done a decent job. I think we've done a decent job implementing a lot of the stuff that book taught us. But no, They Ask You Answers, a more recent thing.

Um, I literally was, I was.

Chris Kiefer (28:08.93)

but probably a lot of similarities between those two.

Benji (28:12.029)

Yeah, he's a little bit more, he's a little bit more, a lot of Marcus's stuff, and he's of course expanded on it, but a lot of the stuff that he writes about is really sort of webs, like how to develop a really strong website, and then there's a little bit on sort of content, but a lot of it is about SEO and blog writing and how to write the right blogs, because the customers are asking those, and that's how you build trust, and that's how you get clicks and traffic, and all that stuff, so yeah. That was a more recent development, but a really good read for anyone.

Chris Kiefer (28:26.431)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (28:37.238)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (28:41.502)

And so you were about to say something else, I think, about the Epic content marketing.

Benji (28:48.145)

Just that it's a great read if anyone is feeling like they need content and they want to know how it all interconnects. And every time they open up their Instagram grid to post something, every time they sit down to write something, every time you think they're going to start a podcast and then do two episodes and bail on it. It's a good primer to just really...

wet your whistle and get your head around the whole, the whole strategy, the whole concept. It's very practical too. There's a lot of like, it's quite implementable. It's not sort of high level, hairy, fairy stuff. It's like, do this, get this result. So I'm just sort of endorsing the book if anyone wants to go deeper on it.

Chris Kiefer (29:28.437)

Mmm. I love that.

I'm definitely gonna go deeper on that. So now two years in this role, six years at BTA, what would you say is like, because what's the total, or I don't know if this is public information, or if you, I don't know why you wouldn't be able to share this, how many members do you guys have in the ballpark?

Benji (29:48.577)

We have north of 500. The last time I checked which was a few days ago was 543. It fluctuates month to month depending on adds and drops but we're around the 550 mark right now.

Chris Kiefer (30:01.726)

And then you have the coaches are those members that then decide I'm assuming or not at all.

Benji (30:07.653)

Full-time Breakthrough Academy coaches, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (30:09.626)

Okay, and some of them, some are, some not from running businesses or are they just like running contractor businesses, I mean? Is that like a normal path? It seems like it would be, but maybe not.

Benji (30:19.597)

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. Our coaches are, it's kind of a few different archetypal roles or profiles that end up being really strong Breakthrough Academy coaches. Certainly a lot of them were entrepreneurs themselves and they built a really strong construction company, a really strong plumbing company or home service company. They have...

exited it successfully and cashed out, or they've put in place a management team and now have a whole bunch of time on their hands, and this is something they wanna do as a result of just a lifestyle change and something different, and wanting to pay it forward to some degree. There's another group that are like, I would, what I would describe them as is very high level leadership roles. So they're not entrepreneurs, they didn't grow a construction company.

One of our most senior coaches, a really good friend of mine, was a super high level leader in, from like the oil and gas sector. Another one is a project engineer for Shell and worked on international projects. So they come from sort of director level, C-suite level positions in large organizations where there's a whole bunch of people that need to be well organized to carry out a task. So not, they don't have the entrepreneurial journey, but they understand operational systems.

Chris Kiefer (31:36.926)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (31:41.046)

systems, yeah.

Benji (31:41.773)

just like dialed in. They understand how to lead leaders, how to build teams, how to solve problems, how to move projects along. And so that's kind of the other profile.

Chris Kiefer (31:55.234)

So what I was gonna say is that, so six years at BTA, two years in the current role, you got 550 members. What's the, when you took over this role two years ago, what is the nugget of information or the one or two things like, man, if we would have done this, or maybe it was maybe if you were to switch from sales to this role a year earlier, two years earlier, whatever it is, what's the thing that you wish you would have known or you would have implemented?

back then to get you to this mark that you're at right now.

Benji (32:29.969)

That's a great question.

Benji (32:36.265)

Um, things that could have gotten us along further had we known them faster. And I'll think of a couple of things. Um, one would be understanding paid media at a deep level, understanding paid ads, different platforms, sort of funnel building, ad plus copy.

Chris Kiefer (32:57.602)

Hmm.

Benji (33:00.341)

leads to landing page, leads to conversion from landing page and registrant or direct to call or whatever. Just like understanding how that stuff works at a deep level, because now that we have it going, it's just absolutely pumping for us. I mean, I wouldn't consider us sort of world class. There's brands and marketers who are way better than us, but for our standards, we're really proud of how far we've come on the paid media front. If you're nervous about it.

read some books, talk to some people. Paying for advertising, paying for eyeballs is not an evil thing. It's actually an extremely effective way to reach your customers. So that'll be one thing. The other thing that I really wish that we did sooner, and we're literally right in the thick of it right now on a pretty massive project I'm leading, is understanding your unique offer. And if you go to our website right now, you will not see a unique offer. If you go to our website and...

six months, you will see a really beautiful, high gloss, highly visual, highly interactive offer. And by offer, I mean, what is it that you uniquely do that no one else has that your prospect wants? Because guess what? Saying we have content and we have great coaches and we have systems in it, everyone else is saying that too. So you need something that is uniquely yours, it's trademarkable.

Chris Kiefer (34:10.446)

Hmm.

Benji (34:23.777)

It's highly descriptive, it's highly visual, it incorporates graphic design elements, it incorporates really great copy if you wanted to do like the expanded version, it would incorporate some video. The reason that the book, the reason that Traction is a book and EOS WorldWise has been so successful is because they have EOS TM. Like that is a trademarked, that is a trademarked thing that they have and people gobble it up. And I have a ton of respect for them.

Chris Kiefer (34:45.782)

entrepreneurial operating system, yeah.

Benji (34:53.917)

and we admire what they've done on the brand front. I think that what we do specifically for contractors and home service businesses is like at a whole other level because it's so much more niche and specific and we're constantly having to battle against prospects or saying, I'm looking at EOS, I'm like, dude, do this. This is so much more for you. This is so much more specialized but we've had such a hard time communicating that on mass because we haven't had that standardized.

Chris Kiefer (35:10.818)

So much specialized, yeah.

Benji (35:20.905)

unique offer. So I'm really excited for the first part of next year when some of this stuff will see the light of day and that people are going to visit our website and like, instead of going, okay, this I kind of get it. But so is it for me? They visit the website and they'll go, holy crap, why I wish I found this two years ago. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (35:32.022)

Yeah, is it for me? What am I gonna get out of it?

I've been looking for this, yeah, love that. It sounds like Storybrand, is that?

Benji (35:41.881)

Dude, I've already given away two of my three books. You told me to have two of my, two of my three favorite books are gone. Yeah, yeah, it's StoryBrand, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (35:46.118)

Oh yeah. But is that what you're doing? No, I mean that's even better because we've just given the context. So two of three, we're on our way. So I just got to figure out what the third one is in the next 10 minutes. So but no, I was going to say Storybrand, when I was at Webfoot, we went through that very aggressively, just out of curiosity, because I tried to do it with just our marketing team and then we finally hired a Storybrand quote.

coach, you know, or like someone that they recommended. I would highly recommend it. I don't know how early you guys are, but it's just like, it's, I mean, it goes back to another book that I'm a huge fan of is the Who Not How. I'm sure you've read that, Dan Sullivan. It's just like, we were, I mean, we thought of ourselves well. And the other thing that I think was a stumbling block for me was that Dan, or I'm facing on the guy's name, story brand, Donald Miller.

Benji (36:15.845)

Were they good?

Interesting.

Benji (36:42.583)

His name is Donald Miller.

Chris Kiefer (36:43.966)

Yeah, Donald Miller does such a great job of making this like step by step playbook in the book that you read. And then there's all the maps and everything. And I think because I was the marketing director that made the decision to not hire somebody. And then we got into it and we're having these discussions and kind of like, what does this mean? What about that? And then we then went back and hired someone. And it was just like the nuance of going through the motions and the repetitions 25, 30, 50 times.

there were things that we were debating for days and they were like, have you thought about this? And we're like, duh.

Benji (37:21.925)

Dude, that guy is a content genius. Donald Miller deserves an award. In this modern thought-sphere, there's all these quote unquote gurus who all have books and they all speak on stages and everyone's smarter than the last and blah, blah. I think a lot of it's bullshit. But of all the people in the modern thought-sphere, Donald Miller is one guy that I would, if I saw him in an airport, I would walk up to him.

and I would just shake his hand and probably hug him. He is so brilliant, that book is so good. And you just like, if you're a marketing or sales or kind of operate in the persuasion realm, you'll just absorb it like you're drinking water. It's just so intuitive. It's really, really a stroke of genius what he did with that book and then everything he's built since.

Chris Kiefer (38:12.21)

And I love the, what's it called? The grunt test. I think that's, isn't that his coin term? Like if a caveman looked at your marketing, could they go, huh? And understand like, oh, I know what they do. You know, like food, hungry, go. Like that's the test for any marketing campaign. Cause like you said earlier, you have this fluffy buzz wordy thing and people are like, ooh, that's good. And it's like, you show it to 10 people and they're like, so what is it?

Benji (38:27.626)

Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally.

Benji (38:36.718)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (38:41.534)

Like, what am I getting? Yeah. Awesome, so I love those nuggets of what you wish you would have done differently. Anything else on the community building aspect? Because I would say my view of a group like yours, is like BTA, is you're only as strong as the community is, basically.

Benji (38:41.549)

Right. Totally. Yeah.

Benji (39:09.175)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (39:11.262)

I don't know if this is true or not, but being in the mastermind, in my experience, whatever mastermind that is, is generally 10 times more valuable than the knowledge you get from the coach or whatever. Not that the knowledge of the coach isn't essential or important, but it's the tribe of people that are executing in unison a given thing, and there's that, you know, conversations that are passed back and forth and things like that.

Do you agree with that first of all? And how have you guys, if it is the case, how have you guys focused on building this really strong community of people that are like the BTA tribe or whatever you guys call that?

Benji (39:52.285)

Mm-hmm. That's such a good question. So yeah, I do believe in that very, very strongly. So that's the first part of your question. I mean, the value of community cannot be overstated. Again, this is one of those buzzwords, so I'm gonna try to cut through it here and give some actual concrete thought. There is cathartic, meaning like healing value. There is...

intellectual value, there is emotional value and communal social value that comes from surrounding yourself with people who are fighting the same fight, who are on the same journey that you are. You cannot believe how lonely many of the painting contractors and plumbing contractors and whatever

out there are on some level. It's not to say like they're sort of like, they have no friends and they're sort of like these lost souls in society, not at all, but they're lonely on sort of, they're not feeling met or understood by their friends from high school, the people they go to church with, probably in many ways their wife or husband or partner, they're dealing with problems that are so esoteric and down the rabbit hole of their business that they have nowhere to go with them. So they're like,

Chris Kiefer (40:55.352)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (41:18.094)

Mm.

Benji (41:19.205)

They're sitting there thinking about some super complex, super random issue about the production process at this little point of their business and they want answers for it and they wish they could talk to someone who's figured it out. So if you can serve that up to those people and say we've got people just like you, we have people are rung below on the ladder and rungs ahead on the ladder.

and you can talk to all of them as much as you want. In fact, we're gonna like cultivate that through our group meetings, we're gonna cultivate that through our in-person events and you're invited. The vibes at these, we call it, the big one we do is the Winter Summit, we do a summer retreat, like the vibes at these events are so intense, the conversations stretch into three, four in the morning, and it's not because people are partying, they're literally just like on the edge of their seat talking to whoever. So I think, I think,

That's why it's so important. The second part of your question is how do you do that? You do that by being really strict about who you let in the program. And sorry, there's a lot of people we don't let in the program. Culture fit, values alignment. Do we have a similar mission? Are you just a straight up dick?

Chris Kiefer (42:24.45)

Mmm.

Benji (42:40.249)

Like are you really arrogant and you think that you're the next Elon Musk when you run a million dollar painting company or a million dollar roofing company? Not to knock on roofers but they're some of the worst culprits. So there's a very strict assessment process that we go through. This is why our salespeople are so important to figure out hey is this person going to mesh with the culture that we've built here the community that we've built here. Because if they're not.

That's all good. We'll find someone else who is and there's other coaching programs for them. And I think that we've been, one of the things that we can really hang our hat on and we get complimented on this by our membership all the time, is to go, I have never been to a sort of blue collar business event with this many smart people. This is so cool. Like finally, these are like my, these are like my, this is my tribe. Yeah, so.

Chris Kiefer (43:27.97)

my tribe.

Benji (43:31.565)

Yeah, I mean, those are my thoughts on why it's important and maybe a few thoughts on how it's important. I don't think we have time, but there's a whole process around getting, what questions you ask and what you're listening for in the answer and all that stuff to kind of do that systematically. But yeah, we're very strict about the culture that we've built and who we add to it.

Chris Kiefer (43:51.822)

That's fantastic. Well, I'm keeping an eye on the time here. I appreciate everything that you've shared so far. Last couple questions, it sounds like one of them is gonna be quick, because we already covered two of the three. Are you dead? Okay, three book recommendations.

Benji (44:02.197)

I thought of a couple new ones. Yeah.

Benji (44:08.045)

All right, book number one is by these guys, Chip and Dan Heath. This one's actually just by Dan Heath. They wrote a really good book called Made to Stick, which is good for marketers. A lot of marketers have read it. They wrote one more recently called Upstream, the quest to solve problems before they happen, and it's about upstream thinking instead of downstream thinking. Deal with root issues, stop dealing with symptoms.

really great read, very quick, very well researched. The second book, not a marketing book, it's called The Power of No by James and Lydia Altucher. It's kind of a play on the power of now, but it's the power of no and it's teaching people why the word no is one of the most powerful words in the English language, how to use it more often. Very, very quick read and really was huge for me.

The third one, let's just do a non-business book. Ishmael by Dan Quinn. Great book.

Chris Kiefer (45:11.854)

Dan Quinn, what's that? Or I don't even know if I've heard Dan Quinn before. Give me like the 60 second or 30 second on that.

Benji (45:19.817)

Ishmael at the surface is about a talking gorilla that a man finds But really what it is it's like a spiritual journey and an exploration of mankind and our entire species meaning on earth and it gives a really hopeful and optimistic and Prescriptive view of the future which I think in today's society would a lot of people would find very refreshing It's a great it's great to audiobook too. It's very well narrated

Chris Kiefer (45:40.963)

Be helped.

Chris Kiefer (45:45.614)

That's awesome. And then last question, favorite movie.

Benji (45:51.705)

Apocalypse Now.

1979, absolute classic.

Chris Kiefer (45:54.714)

I feel like the, is there newer versions of it? You're talking about the apocalypse now in 1979? I have not, I've definitely, I was gonna say if it was a more recent one, I might've seen it, but I have not seen the 1979 one.

Benji (46:11.281)

The, it's a play on a very famous book called The Heart of Darkness, but it's sort of an adaptation, a modern day adaptation based in the Vietnam War on that book by, I think his name is James Conrad or something, Conrad. Anyway, Apocalypse Now is an absolute, probably the most epic movie of all time, very iconic. There's some unbelievable scenes at the end. It's just a very beautiful film.

Chris Kiefer (46:37.09)

That's awesome. I added it to the watch list. I love, see this is why I ask for recommendations because I don't have a lot of time to watch movies. So when I do watch a movie, I'm not going to Netflix to see what's trending and some crap, like I want the classics. So it's great nugget. Add it to the watch list. All right, well Benji, if someone wants to get in touch, what is your recommended way that they do that?

Benji (46:52.433)

Totally.

Benji (47:03.653)

B like Benji, T like Thomas, academy.com, BTacademy.com. There is a big orange button on the top right that says get started, or you can book a call with us. There is a blog, there's videos. At Breakthrough Academy on YouTube, you can see a lot of our video content. And then Contractor Evolution is the podcast. Spotify, Apple, Google Podcast, all those other weird podcast platforms that no one.

uses but I'm supposed to mention. Every platform every Wednesday were pretty easy to find.

Chris Kiefer (47:32.359)

uses.

Chris Kiefer (47:38.358)

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Benji. This was fantastic. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge and giving back.

Benji (47:44.569)

Thanks for having me, man. It was fun.