From Lathes to Logos: Why Your Shop's Identity Matters

Brad Herda (: 00:01

Welcome back to the Blue Collar BS podcast. I am your co-host Brad, along with my esteem co-host. There you go. Perfect. The great Gazoo has spoken once again.

Steve Doyle (: 00:11

Wow. Steve. Wow. Wow. I agree. We're going to go with that. All right. All right. That's cool. Somebody's a little. Yeah, I can tell Boomer. It can definitely tell. It's okay. It's going to be okay. It'll be okay. You'll resonate with this topic today, Brad.

Brad Herda (: 00:26

It just can't be right that you can tell how old I am by by knowing all those.

Brad Herda (: 00:33

It's okay.

Brad Herda (: 00:38

Just count the three, right? Let me get my little sand and my little tree that I can go trim and my bonsai tree and my yoga mat.

Steve Doyle (: 00:46

Yeah, yeah, you. OK, do you got, you know, can we make with your hair? Can we make the little trash bags roll on the top to? The little pony, the little pony. You know, yeah, I know.

Brad Herda (: 00:56

What?

What are you talking about?

no, I can't. Obviously I can't do any man bun work. I can't do that. Well, I could. It would just be in. would. It would be in the back and it would look really stupid. I could make that happen. It would drive me. It would drive me crazy having that long over here, right?

Steve Doyle (: 01:15

You know, I think, you know, some people would have a great laugh if they saw that. Just saying. Just pointing that out.

Brad Herda (: 01:22

Maybe I can get some extensions put in there.

Steve Doyle (: 01:25

Just putting that out there. So, so Brad, topic for today. How important do you think branding is in the trades?

Brad Herda (: 01:29

Thanks.

Brad Herda (: 01:47

How do you want me to scale this? What's your scale of importance? Let's put some context around it as to whether it's a revenue piece, whether it's percent of sale. Let's put some context around importance.

Steve Doyle (: 01:49

I just ask you.

Steve Doyle (: 01:55

Cool.

Well...

Steve Doyle (: 02:05

Hmm. Context around importance. Well.

Brad Herda (: 02:11

Because without context, it just becomes arbitrary.

Steve Doyle (: 02:13

Well, that's true. That's true. So I mean, number one, you know, what's the importance of having? Brand a logo and that when you're when you're starting up in a business. Right, so so let's let's talk there. Let's say we're let's say we're, know. We want to be a machine shop, a well known machine shop that's just starting up.

I've got a couple of lays, got a couple of mills, maybe, maybe not have the ability to heat treat. I don't know. Doesn't matter. So I'm doing over a million dollars in business here.

Steve Doyle (: 03:00

What is the significance of having a brand for that business?

Brad Herda (: 03:05

How are you receiving your dollars? How are you getting your orders?

Steve Doyle (: 03:11

you know, I've got a sales guy. He goes out, interacts with people. Salesperson does.

Brad Herda (: 03:16

Okay. So, so somebody's actively knocking on doors, making phone calls, doing things. Okay. so I will say that usually that initial startup person, spend way too much time on logos and all that shit to begin with versus worried about how am going to execute? What am I going to do? And we're not going out, not going out, making the sales calls and doing all the things, right? the name is the name.

Steve Doyle (: 03:35

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 03:42

Right. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 03:46

You can always change the other stuff later after you get going. But as far as a brand, there's two points to a brand. One is to your customers. And one is to your potential employees or future employees. And too often, most blue collar, I'm going to put on my website.

Steve Doyle (: 03:48

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 04:01

Hmm?

Steve Doyle (: 04:07

Yep. Okay.

Brad Herda (: 04:15

I did it. I did it seven years ago and they haven't touched it since. And you know what the worst pick any machine shop fabricator, go down the list. If we had a Thomas registry and just go click on them, tell me how many of them it's online. can, and you can click the links now. So you can go to Thomas Roger, you click the links of just pick the fabricators and tell me the percentage when you go to their website, how many of them show the

Steve Doyle (: 04:20

Right. Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 04:33

I'm this registry. Wow, Boomer, what are you doing?

Brad Herda (: 04:45

fucking building in their parking lot.

Steve Doyle (: 04:48

Well, know, 99.99 % of them.

Brad Herda (: 04:51

No one cares about your building and parking lot. I'm just gonna tell you that right now. If somebody's using your website to go find you to see what you do, no one cares about your building and your parking lot.

Steve Doyle (: 05:02

Right.

Brad Herda (: 05:05

No one cares. What they care about is they don't even care what you do. They care about the stories and how you do it. Because anybody can buy the equipment. It's how you and your organization and your culture and how your brand representation is that makes that machine or equipment truly have value to me as your customer.

Steve Doyle (: 05:15

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 05:29

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 05:34

Okay.

Brad Herda (: 05:36

That might be a very different take than many people, but that's kind of my take. Because back in my you know when I was doing all my outsourcing, I could give two shits about the piece of equipment. I didn't care. I cared about the people I cared about. Are we going to do the right things? If my material is late and I told you what was coming on, where you're to work with me to save the time to make sure that we could still get it done and meet a deadline. Are you going to go just chase the next dollar and put me in say too bad so sad?

Steve Doyle (: 05:39

Yep. Okay.

Steve Doyle (: 05:49

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 06:03

Right.

Brad Herda (: 06:05

Your lead times now 73 weeks instead of the 12 that I told you I could get it done in because I just booked all this work or whatever it might be. Shame on me for not getting our material there on time, but that's not how the relationship needed to work, right? So being able to have those stories out there and have your brand recognition out there from a, this company does ABC, whatever that might be. So your branding comes in.

many different ways and facets. I got a couple of home service folks. My pet peeve on home service is the fucking dashboard. Full of garbage, full of paperwork, full of clipboard bullshit, full of McDonald's bags, full of whatever it is. Just put it up there on the dashboard. That looks like shit coming into somebody's house or parking lot or job site or whatever. That is just.

Steve Doyle (: 06:48

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 07:03

that's your brand. is what you are willing to tolerate and accept as the business owner. And that says volumes about how you're going to treat me and my job site or my home. If that's the way you're going to treat your stuff.

Steve Doyle (: 07:14

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 07:21

Yep. Mm hmm. 100 % 100 % What about you know showing up in the you know, a lettered vehicle?

And I don't know, usually, let's call it a drywall company shows up in a lettered vehicle. In your mind, what just popped into your mind?

Steve Doyle (: 07:44

Just curious what popped into your mind.

Brad Herda (: 07:47

Typical what popped in my mind? Well, it used to be a white van. It used to be. Now it's got a lot of FeO2 coloring on. It's got a lot of different blotches and things and it's faded out and maybe there's a maybe the refract is attached to something still a little bit. Might be flopping along as it's holding the ladders and scaffolding pieces. Maybe the doors are closed.

Steve Doyle (: 07:50

Yeah, yeah, I want to know.

Yep. Used to be. Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 08:03

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 08:16

Bumpers are probably rusted out and all dented up. again, the dashboard's probably not in the best condition. You know, tires are probably less than, less than travel safe for winter conditions.

Steve Doyle (: 08:24

Very cluttered. Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 08:32

And again, this is part of someone's brand. Now, is this a brand that you really want to buy from when they show up?

Brad Herda (: 08:38

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 08:44

That's where the problem comes in, because if they're doing many of those situations, they do do great work, right? Because they're spending their time on doing that and not worried about those other things. And it might be that they're not taking their financial aptitude in the right ways. So they just, they could be in a, one pocket, pay the other pocket type scenario because they're not managing.

Steve Doyle (: 08:50

Correct.

Steve Doyle (: 09:06

No.

Steve Doyle (: 09:13

direct.

Brad Herda (: 09:14

that correctly to put themselves in that situation as we've talked before about, you know, was it costly to get up? What all those things and you know, those trucks over time have to be replaced. And if you're not capturing that and putting some of that aside, it's, it's hard to recover from those things. It's hard to recover when I've got that 1993 Chevy van and all of a sudden it finally dies. And now all of a sudden, Holy shit, I got to have.

Steve Doyle (: 09:28

Yeah, exactly.

Steve Doyle (: 09:38

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 09:43

75 grand to go get a new one outfitted if I'm lucky. And you've never planned for it and you've never thought about it and you've never considered it.

Steve Doyle (: 09:46

Exactly.

Steve Doyle (: 09:52

Mm-hmm. Right. But that's again, the question that I well, I won't say again, question I want people to think about when we talk about branding is it's also part of your first impressions when you're rolling up to people. And yeah, you might have, you know, an outdated website with website reviews, Google reviews, things like that.

Brad Herda (: 10:09

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 10:21

all these perceptions that people have can have a positive and or negative impact on your business.

Brad Herda (: 10:29

Right. There's a, so one of my clients I've been doing work with off and on, they are in the appliance repair world and all of their trucks are there. They're wrapped. They're gorgeous. They've been, they've pretty much been updated. The new fleet's been recycled out over the last four years. but they've kept them clean and go forward. There's another, there's a,

Steve Doyle (: 10:51

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 10:57

Eagle disposal here in Wisconsin. They write computer with waste management. That guy has decided that he's all he does is new truck leases. That's it. Right. It's like a two year lease on his, these, on these trucks because they just get beat up and done whatever. And then he's not going to spend the time. I'm just going to get the lease and go forward. Every one of his trucks are clean and sparkly. He does garbage dumpster removal stuff.

Steve Doyle (: 11:02

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 11:21

Hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 11:27

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 11:28

but his trucks are immaculate.

Steve Doyle (: 11:30

And what does that brand say to a consumer? What does that say?

Brad Herda (: 11:36

Right. It says, well, could say I'm paying too much. It could, but it's going to most likely say, hey, I'm going to take care of you. I take care of my stuff. So therefore I'm going to take care of you. So if your fence for your dumpsters are all jacked up, I'm going to let you know about it. I'm going to take care of the things that are there. I'm going to put your dumpster back. I'm not just going to drop it somewhere and hope that the gates close and

Steve Doyle (: 11:43

could.

Steve Doyle (: 11:49

Exactly.

Steve Doyle (: 11:58

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 12:05

ruin your gates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Steve Doyle (: 12:08

Right. Exactly. So at what point? Actually, I'm going to ask this question. Yes, the grace. At what? At what point do you step back and you go, what is the value of this brand?

Brad Herda (: 12:18

please do. The great gazoo is on fire.

Brad Herda (: 12:38

So that is always the hard one to talk about. I'm going to go. So the last two dragline projects that I did, we were shipping to India and these crates and boxes and everything we were doing, they're going to go from facility one onto a truck to another. Right. And all the docs, all the things they're going to get handled over and over and over again.

Steve Doyle (: 12:43

Why?

Steve Doyle (: 12:50

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 13:05

Yep. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 13:08

So we're going down highly, these expensive machine components, fabrications, assemblies, et cetera, are gonna travel halfway around the world. And if we use our standard packaging.

Steve Doyle (: 13:20

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 13:22

highly probable that some of the stuff's not going to make it there, going to be damaged, lost, et cetera.

Steve Doyle (: 13:26

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 13:29

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 13:31

So we decided to beef that up to be, hey, and it was expensive. It cost like a million and a half dollars to do it. One of the questions I got asked was, well, how much did we save?

Steve Doyle (: 13:41

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 13:48

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 13:49

I'm like, well, I don't know because something didn't happen. So to your point of what's what does that branding bring you? The fact that I didn't show up in a rusted out Chevy van that used to be white and smoking all over the place and leaking oil on everybody's driveway. Did I get the job because I didn't have that van or did I get the job because of some other reason? Hard to say.

Steve Doyle (: 13:58

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 14:06

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 14:16

Mmm.

Right?

Brad Herda (: 14:20

But you could use a perception to say the perception would be if you show up and it's all good and it's there and you're putting on the booties and doing other things, but you're going to have a greater value or opportunity to win that job. If things show up and they're in order and they're clean and they're neat and there's a process, then if you didn't, which is also part of your brand, if they show up with a, here's their branded shirt or their name tag or whatever it is, you have a greater chance to at least gain the credibility to start versus probably not.

Steve Doyle (: 14:33

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 14:51

Right. OK. All right.

Brad Herda (: 14:54

So I think that's a that is a difficult question. It's a very difficult question for most tradesmen to answer because there's usually so fixated on the fucking cash of what's happening right now than what the whole thing looks like because of work because we're continuing moving money from one pocket to the other and never getting ahead.

Steve Doyle (: 15:05

All right.

Steve Doyle (: 15:10

Right. Well, isn't that part of the whole customer experience? Your brand is part of that whole customer experience. So you may or may not have that cash to move from pocket A to pocket B if you're not living up to your brand standards.

And while we haven't explicitly come right out and said it, I'm going to say right now, your brand extends far beyond your logo in your name.

Brad Herda (: 15:40

hundred percent. Right. Do you answer the phone? Do you return calls? Right. Most people aren't going to answer the phone if they don't know, if they don't know the name of the person that shows up on it's going to go to voicemail. Is your voicemail empty? So people, new customer or somebody can leave you a voicemail and say, Hey, I need to know X, Y, and Z. And are you going to return the call in a reasonable amount of time? Reasonable is not.

Steve Doyle (: 15:47

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 15:51

Great. Yep. Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 16:02

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 16:08

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 16:09

seven days later.

Steve Doyle (: 16:11

Right.

Brad Herda (: 16:14

Reasonable might be three hours next morning, depending on the time of whatever it showed up, but there should be a reasonable expectation. Are you going to reasonably respond to an email? Are you going to reasonably respond to a text message along the way that's not just a thumbs up?

Steve Doyle (: 16:14

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 16:24

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 16:34

All of it matters. And how you respond matters to your customers more than

Steve Doyle (: 16:49

maybe some other choices that you're making.

Brad Herda (: 16:51

So this same, this same, I shouldn't say the same. was talking with somebody the other day and, we were talking about communication and being good humans and different things. they got a very rude text message from one of their customers, project project manager, just being a, just trying to throw their weight around.

Steve Doyle (: 17:02

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 17:07

Mm-hmm. Yup.

Steve Doyle (: 17:16

do whatever. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 17:18

and it happened to be a male project manager female that's receiving the Kudos to her. She called them back up and said, Hey, I'd like you to read this text again and tell me if what would you think about this if it was your wife or daughter who received this message?

Steve Doyle (: 17:22

Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 17:40

Right.

Hmm.

Brad Herda (: 17:44

I'm like, good for you for doing that and showing that you're not willing to be treated that way.

Steve Doyle (: 17:47

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 17:51

Yeah, exactly.

Brad Herda (: 17:53

And that you expect to have you expect respect because we're trying to mutually solve a situation for each other. Right. I'm going to supply you a product, go do my installation, do whatever it is. And you're trying to satisfy your customer that you can't satisfy without my product along the way. So we're mutually beneficial for us both to behave as good humans than to bitch and complain at one another.

Steve Doyle (: 17:57

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 18:19

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 18:24

And that's one of the things that when I was, again, I built my purchasing team, you know, for we got late to the party for a large equipment in our area here. there's only so many eight inch bars around that makes sense to move product to, we built our team to be the organization that our suppliers wanted to work with. Part of our brand was.

hey, they're going to have a conversation with us, they're going to share information with us, they're going to not have us quote a nickel and dime and do whatever, they're going to make it easy for us to work with them, so therefore, we will give them more time than not.

Steve Doyle (: 19:04

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 19:17

Right? So, so being able to put ourselves in position where our brand as a group was, yeah, we want to work with you folks because you are doing it different.

Steve Doyle (: 19:28

So for our listeners here that are kind of starting to question some things, at what point do you suggest to businesses that it's time to rebrand?

Brad Herda (: 19:42

Ooh.

That's a tough one, because I just did mine. I just did my rebrand, right? Which isn't quite up here yet. I still have to get the new sign for behind there,

Steve Doyle (: 19:47

Yeah, you did. You did.

Brad Herda (: 19:58

And it doesn't have to be super, super major, right? It can be just minor and it can just be little tweaks here and there. But with it comes a little bit of energy. With it comes a little bit of unstailness. You you look at how many, how often does Pepsi change their logo? But if you go back through the history of Pepsi logos, they change, but they didn't change dramatically. still the redden. Circle.

Steve Doyle (: 20:05

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 20:12

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 20:27

white and Yep.

Brad Herda (: 20:28

red, white and blue circle, right. And it's just a little bit different. Each time it's not like it's major or, you know, Budweiser, we just change a little bit of this or different. So

I know, I would say maybe every eight to 10 years it's something to think about, but that doesn't mean you update your website that infrequently. You should be working on your website on regular basis.

Steve Doyle (: 20:51

I updated it. It's a static. It's a static asset and I'm done. I've only I did it. I done it moved on

Brad Herda (: 21:01

Right. Yeah. That doesn't mean you don't post blogs or do something or share stories or put testimonials out there or things like that or new equipment or just different industry things. It doesn't mean don't update your site.

Steve Doyle (: 21:07

Right.

Brad Herda (: 21:16

What are your thoughts on that?

Steve Doyle (: 21:19

Steve Doyle (21:23.594)

I like it when it's when it matters, like when it means something like I'm like if I'm rebranding, there's a reason for rebranding. Not just just to not do it just to, you know, refresh and re update and change every swap things in swap things out. Like I'm not I'm not a person that does stuff like that. But it's when there's there's Hey, I truly want to make

a difference and I'm committed to making a difference as a business owner, then you know what? If you're going to grow your business, you're gonna make a significant trajectory change, then let's put, like you mentioned, Brad, let's put some energy behind it with a fresh new look. Nothing beats going and getting a new suit and putting that on and strutting your shit down whatever.

Sidewalk you're walking down, whatever room you're walking into, when you have new clothes on, you just carry yourself differently.

Brad Herda (: 22:28

You know, when I look at family businesses, when you go through that transition of generation, that's a good time to rethink, relook at core values, relook at your mission vision statements, look at those things that can be very important. You know, unlike Denton Racing and Ricky Bobby and right now that's not my dad's company anymore, right?

Steve Doyle (: 22:32

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 22:39

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 22:45

yes.

Brad Herda (: 22:58

I mean, took it down the wrong approach potentially, but he did what he did to go and have his business be what it was, right, wrong or indifferent.

Steve Doyle (: 23:01

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 23:07

Hmm?

Brad Herda (: 23:10

that's usually a good time to help facilitate and whether you're trying to keep a legacy or reenter the door with the same name, but a different approach or whatever that might look like. that's a good time as well. I think from a family business perspective.

Steve Doyle (: 23:20

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 23:29

Well, Brad, thank you for indulging me on this conversation today.

Brad Herda (: 23:34

Hey, not a problem, sir. It's one of the topics we have not discussed yet. you are the great gazoo.

Steve Doyle (: 23:38

Right.

Well, with that, thank you, sir. Yeah, you too.

Brad Herda (: 23:44

All right, have a great weekend