Plumbers, SEO, and $8.5 Million: The Ryan Redding Story

Steve Doyle (: 00:00

Welcome back everyone to this episode of Blue Collar BS'd here with my co-host Brad Herda. How you doing today, Brad?

Brad Herda (: 00:08

Wonderful, Mr. Doyle, and how is the great city of Detroit treating you today?

Steve Doyle (: 00:12

Well, you know, it's not snowing today, which, you know, yesterday was our first day of snow. So that was kind of nice. It was I had a strategy planning session with one of my clients at my house and, you know, everybody was sitting by the fireplace watching it snow. And they're like, this is really distracting. We're in a giant snow globe. So, you know, I'm glad that it all melted. It was great.

Brad Herda (: 00:35

No glove strategy, that could be a marketing plan.

Steve Doyle (: 00:37

It could be. It could be. So, you know, how are things over there in the greater Milwaukee area?

Brad Herda (: 00:44

We had our snow yesterday as well, our three inches, it's gone now and it's winter, right? That's okay, it's what it's supposed to be.

Steve Doyle (: 00:52

That's right. That's right. So Brad, who do we have on the show today?

Brad Herda (: 00:56

Our guest today is Ryan Redding, a digital marketing expert and founder of Levergy, a trusted agency for home service companies nationwide. He's got over a decade of experience, specialized in SEO, web design, pay-per-click, delivering a 17.7 to one return on SEO, which is absolutely freaking amazing because most people don't even know how to calculate that number. So I'm awesome. I can't wait to hear how he goes and creates that return.

Steve Doyle (: 01:18

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 01:24

Known for his relatable strategic approach, understands unique challenges in HVAC and plumbing, turns those local successes into regional growth. He's an international conference speaker, thrives on high level connections, and he finds big events a bit like a marathon. Outside of work, he's a proud dad and a family man living in the Denver, Colorado area. Ryan, thank you for your time today to share your knowledge and expertise with our audience.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 01:52

Yeah, man, it's good to be here. And I think it's awesome you guys are complaining about three inches of snow. I like.

Brad Herda (: 01:57

You got a foot and a half last week. It's OK or two feet.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 02:01

He was like, yeah, I mean, you could take that a couple of different ways. I guess like one is three inches a lot. I can't, can't ask him for a friend. Also. Yeah. We get like,

Yeah, was it two weeks ago? Yeah, we got like 20 something 26 inches. Yeah, like it was nuts. Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 02:10

You

Brad Herda (: 02:15

Yeah, you guys got hammered.

Steve Doyle (: 02:20

Wow. So yeah. Right.

Brad Herda (: 02:22

So yeah, ski season's in full bore for you guys, potentially.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 02:27

yeah, it's mountains are white. It is amazing.

Steve Doyle (: 02:30

That's cool. So Ryan, before I forget, which generation do you fit in with, identify with?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 02:37

Okay, let me ask a maybe clarifying question, because there's a couple different takes. Is this question about like, what year were you born? Like, are you doing the age-related grouping, or is this, are you doing it, hey, you were this old when some sort of trauma happened, that like most people in your age?

Brad Herda (: 02:54

No age. Yes, we're going by birth here. So, but some folks have answered, Hey, I might've been born here, but I am, I am a old soul at heart. So I'm really like a boomer, even though I might be a millennial or I might be a Gen Z, but, that's kind of where we're going is and figure out people's behaviors.

Steve Doyle (: 02:56

H-L-O-H

Ryan @ Levergy (: 03:10

Yeah. Well, so yeah, it's interesting because yeah. Okay. So I would say then by the book, I'm a millennial. I was born in 82, but I probably am more Gen Z. And probably the argument I'd say is like I was, I was in college when nine 11 happened. It's like, that was a formative event for me. And I think a lot of millennials don't really remember like the twin towers, like they weren't quite old enough to actually process that. But yeah. So I'm kind of on that weird gap where I

Steve Doyle (: 03:27

Okay.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 03:40

I'm not a millennial and I don't quite fit fit Jin Z all the time, but I'm some of that weird. I'm sorry. Yeah, X. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. X. Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 03:45

Gen X older or younger because younger. But like like if you're going really young 911 they were like really young at that point in time. You're right, they probably don't remember.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 03:52

alphabet. I got to be honest, Sesame Street was not my jam growing up guys. So the alphabet skills I sometimes those are only three letters. That's only three letters. Yes.

Brad Herda (: 04:01

And yet, you do SEO for a living.

Steve Doyle (: 04:07

You

Brad Herda (: 04:09

Okay, so the fourth letter is the problem.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 04:11

It's all, yeah, it always is.

Steve Doyle (: 04:12

Wow. Wow, alright. So tell us a little bit about tell our audience a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are today.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 04:29

Probably like most people entirely by accident and unintentionally. I grew up in Oklahoma, pretty rural Oklahoma, dirt poor as a state, but my family was poor. Ended up going to college, like doing that whole thing, moved to St. Louis after school to work at a marketing agency. My first client after being hired was, I don't know if I can actually say their name, they're one of the fortune

100 companies that most people would recognize and really quickly had to

Steve Doyle (: 05:00

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 05:02

If they're in St. Louis, it might have been like Boeing or somebody like that or Anheuser-Busch or who knows?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 05:09

was context clues context clues. But you know like really quickly had to like unlearn everything I learned in school. So you know like it was going to nuts fast forward a few years 2008 happened where the economy kind of went. And I was like you know I'm kind of done with marketing like kind of done for a while like I'm good. So started doing a lot of consulting just like freelance stuff that just

Steve Doyle (: 05:12

Hehehehehe

Steve Doyle (: 05:19

the

Ryan @ Levergy (: 05:37

was good for my mind. So was like different changes in the scenery. I started consulting within academia, which was actually a lot of fun. So I got to work with like main street, small businesses. So think of, I know you guys are kind of, but it's not like Detroit and Milwaukee. So like, think of wherever you go. Like if you went downtown McQuaggenow, right? Like you have bakers and chiropractors and self storage places. And, they're good people. They're self of the earth people who just trying to provide for them family. And they all had really crappy websites.

Steve Doyle (: 05:59

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 06:07

So at the time I was just like helping with HR and here's how to finance a payroll and here's how to do marketing and here's how you like think about risk mitigation. I was in Oklahoma at the time so a lot of it's like disaster contingency planning for tornado season and then it was like you know what else I'll do your website for you do a cheap website on the side hundred bucks a month call it good but just something that doesn't suck and one of the guys who picked up at this time was a plumber. There's nothing special about him. He's one of a dozen industries we picked up.

But his business went from, I think, I think when I first met him, he was maybe 150 K top line to this year. He's closing 8.5 mil, just from like impact of like visibility on Google, you know? And so he was the first person to be like, bro, you gotta stop doing all the other crap you're doing, because you clearly know what you're up to and I'm happy to pay for it. And so he just like true story. He just started paying more money. He was like,

Brad Herda (: 06:48

Nice.

Steve Doyle (: 06:49

Nice.

Steve Doyle (: 07:04

and

Ryan @ Levergy (: 07:07

it was, you know, a hundred bucks a month. It was 300. There was five, then there's a thousand, there's 15, then there's 2,500. You just kept giving more. And I'm like, well, I got to, I got to do something for this now, I guess, you know? So yeah, it was like, I can't just take the money and pocket it. Like that's not, that's weird. Yeah. It's like, look at all the clicky clacks. So that, that became what is now leveraging. So now we do

Steve Doyle (: 07:18

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 07:20

Shit, I got it produced.

Brad Herda (: 07:27

I I gotta click a couple keys on that keyboard somewhere.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 07:37

full service digital for primarily trades plumbing HVAC electrical garage door roofing Speak at a lot of shows written a book have a podcast my own So it's been kind of a journey that never in a bajillion years never would you have said that I would be here now But have loved every minute of it

Brad Herda (: 07:59

spectacular. So so the way you got into the Blue Cow World Trade Space Home Services was pretty accidental essentially based on how I hear the story.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 08:09

100%. My dad was in pest control. so I like growing up, I remember the grind it had on him. But besides that, what I remember was like those dudes work hard. And I remember thinking like, I don't want to I don't want to work with my body. I want to work with my mind, you know, like, because of how hard it was just on his body. And so yeah, I mean, I've got tons of respect for guys who can turn a wrench. I suck at being handy.

Steve Doyle (: 08:39

Right. So what trends have you been seeing in the digital marketing space for the trades?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 08:39

So I try to bring a different skill to the table when I can.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 08:52

AI is kind of the big thing right now. Yeah, so AI is disrupting a lot of things in the trade. So what a lot of people, if they're not deeply entrenched in the trades, I think they're surprised to realize how tech savvy it's become in the past seven or eight years. In part, that's because of like the prominence, like big FSM platforms, like Service Titan comes to mind, which has given more data and more visibility into internal ops for blue collar businesses than has ever happened before. And that's true for

Steve Doyle (: 08:54

yeah, yep.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 09:21

plumbing is true for roofing, that's true for pest control. it's, it's really crazy. But because of that, now you have this people who are inclined to leverage tech when it's cutting edge, even if they're reckless with it. So AI has been coming into like internal ops, right? So we have CSRs answering phones with AI. We have people dispatching route efficiency optimization with AI. We have people forecasting trends with marketing with AI, even like CSRs like.

Steve Doyle (: 09:36

Yep.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 09:48

writing emails, blog posts, we have AI generating text messages to remarket, rehash campaigns of customers and databases. You have that like for ops, but then from a marketing standpoint, now it's a whole other ball of wax. You have Google starting to implement AI to Google search and to Google AdWords. So like they are trying to figure out how to deploy AI to their end user. And most people don't have the digital literacy to determine what's AI, what's not, what's human, what's fake. We saw a lot of that in this most previous election cycle.

Steve Doyle (: 10:09

Yeah.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 10:18

But there's just a lot of this influence of coming from this emerging technology that most people don't understand. We do not have the ability to regulate and is progressing far more than anybody has ever seen in history.

Brad Herda (: 10:31

Nope, we don't.

Steve Doyle (: 10:36

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Brad Herda (: 10:38

the unintended consequences are going to be are unknown and unrealized at this

Ryan @ Levergy (: 10:45

Yep. will, yeah, that's one of the scary things. Like, it is impossible to know what AI is capable of doing until after it's doing it. So that creates really weird questions that have to be answered at some point.

Brad Herda (: 11:02

So as you have, as you got into the trade space and the home services world.

Steve Doyle (: 11:02

Yep.

Brad Herda (: 11:11

Are you work right there? There's a lot of guys that have been around forever and a day there. There's a family there, the local business. They're the one there. The number one name recognition in their area. How have those older owners accepted you and your services into their world to to adapt and change to the millennial buying habits and or Gen Z buying habits of it's not just pick up the phone, look at a truck or whatever. How have you been able to support them in making their digital transformation?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 11:42

That's an interesting question.

Steve Doyle (: 11:44

Hmm. That's what we do here.

Brad Herda (: 11:45

It's what we do here. It's like 60 minutes, Ryan.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 11:48

Well, let's not pat ourselves on the back too strong there, guys.

Steve Doyle (: 11:50

Ryan @ Levergy (11:56.802)

So like, think about it. Cause like my, I hope my dad doesn't listen to the podcast. He, he's probably like the classic guy, like old school business model, like back in the day where you just kind of did what you always did. You get, you get the biggest ad in the phone book with the biggest number and the biggest whatever. Right. And that's just how you got your phone in ring. When AOL came out, when they started sending everyone, I just free DVDs in the mail, he struggled to pivot.

Steve Doyle (: 12:04

You

Ryan @ Levergy (: 12:26

there's a lot of people that trades who are still like my dad, right? It's like, nope, that's the way we did it. That's way we go either from how you price yourselves or how you hire HR compliance, pick a thing. I think those people will always exist until they die and either die as a human, which God forbid is not anytime soon or die as in the industry, like they get ran over. Most interestingly is there's been at least in the space I'm in, the plumbing, each rack of electrical space, there's been a.

Brad Herda (: 12:29

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 12:31

Yes.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 12:53

big influx in the past four or five years of big PE firms, very young, very savvy, very sophisticated, and they will come in and they will drive your business to the ground in a heartbeat. So a lot of these guys are kind of watching from the sidelines and they're seeing the inability for them to pivot fast enough. And the bad part about capitalism is for everyone who wins, there's also someone who loses. So cool. Some of those people might not ever adapt and that's okay.

Brad Herda (: 12:57

Correct.

Steve Doyle (: 12:58

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 13:06

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 13:18

Correct.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 13:23

Some people reluctantly do so, like we'd call these like laggards, like they don't go only because they don't have the option to say, they don't have the option to stay. So those people reluctantly come along, but don't ask them to put an app on their cell phone. Like that's pushing it too far. Asking them to send an invoice to a customer digitally is like, bro, what?

Steve Doyle (: 13:38

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 13:47

No, no, I have to review it. have to put my pen and paper to it. have to, and I gotta get my eraser out.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 13:50

Yeah, how am I going to clean up the ketchup off the car seat from my computer screen? It's just like this weird, this weird thing. But I think, I think honestly, most people at this point have turned to people for good or for bad that are in their twenties and their thirties who don't know any different, who are crushing it and disrupting customer expectations.

Steve Doyle (: 14:09

Right.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 14:15

And so people are left to the choice of, they want to get left in the dust or they want to try to learn what these other guys are doing? So you're going to have the mix. think, I think 60 % of the people are going to pivot around and either adapt to what's happening. They might not fully adapt to me, have the energy and the drive and the grit a 27 year old does, nor should they write those a 27 year old can make so many mistakes and recover. When you're in your fifties, you don't have many mistakes left.

Steve Doyle (: 14:21

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 14:45

But there is probably 30 % who will just kind of pretend like the world's not changing. Things are still like it was back in the Reagan years and just keep plugging along. And I wish those guys a ton of happiness and I hope they're able to kind of build their end of business life that they want. But they're gonna get ran over in the marketplace.

Steve Doyle (: 15:04

Mm-hmm.

Yep. When you talk about disruption, would you mind talking to specifically in the trades from a digital marketing perspective? What are you seeing is as outside of AI? What are you seeing that people are doing that are like, yeah, this shit's working. This is what people really need to be thinking.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 15:28

Yeah. So I would, this sounds, this sounds crazy. I would say basic business practices. So I say that to go and I'm referencing my dad again, which sorry, dad, you know, there's a point in time where time and materials was the way to price yourself. And it's like, I've got an hour in this job and I get 50 bucks of materials. So, Hey, my price is this cool.

Steve Doyle (: 15:42

you

Ryan @ Levergy (: 15:55

There's been a sophistication development the trades of people understanding though, like the time value money. Hey, there's an efficiency capacity. You're not actually paying for your time on the job. You're actually paying for the time that you turn the key, drive off the lot, like have to get maintenance done, get your tires rotated, like do the work, set money aside for vacay. So there's a sophistication that's happening in their costing and pricing models. That has been awesome. So that helps them build like more sustainable businesses that aren't quite feast or famine.

Steve Doyle (: 16:10

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 16:24

that aren't quite on the verge of going out of business if they get one, too few calls in a given month. If they decide to go on vacation with their family, God forbid they take time off. They don't go broke in the process. Like those things have been really crazy to see. The other thing that's been really cool to see as far as disruption goes is customer expectations. And I think this started changing a lot pretty dramatically during COVID. COVID was.

Steve Doyle (: 16:25

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 16:35

Mm-hmm. Right.

Brad Herda (: 16:49

Yes.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 16:53

an interesting time for a lot of reasons. I'm going to take all the political aspects of it, put it on the sidelines. What it did for customers was it forced them to interact with companies in a very different way. A lot of customers didn't want to pick up the phone. They didn't want to just walk across street. Some of them didn't want to text. So it changed what they expected when they interacted with you. They still wanted the same service. They still wanted the same benefit. They still wanted the same thing, but they didn't want to do the same steps they did previously to get it.

Steve Doyle (: 17:03

Yes.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 17:23

Amazon learned this pretty quick. Like, you get this certain garage door opener will actually put the package in your garage for you. Right. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to be to say your door. I think it'll mailbox will just bring it to your garage. Some companies are like, no, I'm not putting booties on in the house. Like bro, customers have changed. so I think, I think you have like business acumen disruption of just people coming in with best practices groups, teaching people how

Steve Doyle (: 17:42

Yep.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 17:53

business models work and how cash flows and how to plan, how to build teams where people don't just have jobs, that they have careers like this. Like you don't just don't just have this business that I could go out of business any day, but like, you have a growing successful, sustainable business. This is fantastic. Which for decades in the trades, was it very common? You have customer expectations changing largely as a result of COVID and big tech companies kind of figuring this out first and everyone else having to kind of catch up on those memos.

Steve Doyle (: 17:55

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 18:23

And then you have like tech advances, like the deployment of things like service site and AI. We have a very different industry now than we did a decade ago. It's kind of where it comes down to.

Brad Herda (: 18:33

Absolutely. And not only do we have a different industry, we have a different market right now, right? So COVID helped those home services organizations go and boom, then interest rates exploded. And I don't know what it's like in your market, but here are the houses aren't trading. There's not enough trading of houses going on to create a sustainable life for many of those home service organizations because they did all the stuff that they needed to do over the last four years. How are

Ryan @ Levergy (: 18:39

100%.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 19:01

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 19:02

How are you supporting your clients in that, to avoid that race to the bottom, so to speak, right? You talked about the P firms coming in, creating that vertical integration and being able to drive, maybe drive price versus value to, eliminate competition. How are you helping your, your clients and others avoid that race to the bottom to be that preferred opportunity for their clients when there's less opportunities today.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 19:30

Yeah, actually I love that question and I love that dynamic and let me first start by the end Never race to the bottom like that is the fastest way to die and bleed out. So let's just kind of get there I'm gonna climb my way to the top every flippin time. Okay. Wait, can we can we cuss do we bleep out things or should I just should I keep this PG? All right, cool All right, cool. I just want to make sure before I just start running lip When so let's

Steve Doyle (: 19:41

Yep. Yes.

Brad Herda (: 19:50

No, no, we are a explicit show. Go for it.

Steve Doyle (: 19:50

no, you can fucking swear.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 20:00

Let's look at the dynamics, right? Throughout history, and you can talk about capitalism however you want, if it's good or bad, you like it, it doesn't matter. People want to buy brands that make them feel a certain way. People don't make logic-based decisions, they make emotional-based decisions, and then we try to validate it with logic. If you ask someone to buy an iPhone, the iPhone almost every time appeals to emotion, to ego, to status. If you ask someone why they get an Android,

Android almost every time position itself on price or value. Buy one, get one, get this deal bundled in with your agreement. But people feel like they're better because like, but I can customize everything. Look, I can, I could launch this certain bootloader on the sideload. Ram, Ram thing. It's very nerdy. and if you are an it with an Android, I will make fun of you forever. but the reality is, is like, that's how people make decisions. It's emotion, right? It is not logic.

When emotion comes in, there's only a few primary things that drive them, right? It's like, want to feel loved, valued. I want to safe. I want to take care of what's mine. I want to like provide for my future and like invest, make money, lose money. Those sort of things are now the drivers. So we know this about humans. We know that humans do this. Apple knows this. Mercedes knows this. Everybody knows this. So stop trying to flip and be McDonald's. Try to be a Ruth's Chris.

Steve Doyle (: 21:16

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 21:25

Ruth's Chris has no problem attracting people to have a $300 steak at their restaurant. None. And guess what? I don't know this to be true. My money would be, it's pretty damn accurate that what Ruth's Chris does in a month selling $300 stakes, McDonald's does in a month of selling a bajillion hamburgers. So it's like, you can run yourself busy, crazy ragged, spending out tens of thousands of really cheap burgers that are shit. Sorry, McDonald's people.

Steve Doyle (: 21:31

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 21:50

You're a bitch.

Steve Doyle (: 21:56

yeah.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 21:56

In reality, you could also focus a really hell of a lot on the experience and the quality of what you're providing for your customers and people will pay it. The numbers at the bottom of your P &L will still balance out. You'll still make the same amount of profit. Like the top one the same, the bottom line might be a little bit better, but you won't be crazy in the process. And so I think for those people, it really is just helping them realize like stop competing on price.

compete on experience, be a premium brand, means you have to be a brand that positions itself as premium. If you have shitty vans, shitty uniforms, if it looks like kids are abducted and what you drive up in.

Brad Herda (: 22:31

You mean the white vans that are no longer white?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 22:35

Yeah, those. I mean, you you will only ask and justify a premium product when you provide a premium experience. So that's how your website looks, how you answer the phone, how you drive up, how your text smells like when the look, feel, smell the interaction people have is going to justify like, yes, these guys are worth it or not. And if anyone disagrees with that, go to a luxury car dealership and order a custom car and see how they treat you.

and then go to a Hyundai dealership and see how they treat you. They are very different experiences. I'm not saying one's better than the other. That is the standard. You cannot sell a Hyundai for a luxury car price. That's when you're gonna get the backlash, but you can totally sell an Aston Martin for a premium experience. Absolutely. Does that even answer the question? Is that in the ballpark?

Steve Doyle (: 23:08

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 23:22

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 23:30

Yes, yes, it does. It does because you're talking about making sure that you create the experience, the brand and the emotion to go with it versus competing on price. It's that value prop, right? And the my fear is and that's why it's a great guy. I think it's a great conversation is that the guys that maybe were working for the large organizations during COVID and said, why am I doing this? When I can do this for myself and all they had to do is show up to get the job over the last two years.

Steve Doyle (: 23:31

Did it.

Brad Herda (: 23:59

because nobody else wanted to show up every day or make the phone call or do the follow up. That's not the way it's going to be probably for the next maybe year, year and a half or so. And then they got to survive that window before the housing market maybe turns and changes and creates more opportunity for people as we exchange homes. So home services can go, yeah, I need to do this and keep that whole cycle moving forward.

Steve Doyle (: 24:09

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 24:09

yeah.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 24:22

Well, and I think I'll take that a baby step further too. I think what COVID also did was it made people who are really shitty business people look really successful because of the customer situation, right? The customers were kind of forced in the spot that hasn't happened in a hundred years in the United States. And so people are moving, people are upgrading, people are getting stuck at home being like, I don't like how warm my house is in the summer. Like they were never normally home.

Steve Doyle (: 24:36

Yep.

Brad Herda (: 24:36

Correct.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 24:52

And all of sudden they're making these big investments in whatever they were in, right? In their houses and what they were driving. And it made people look better than they were like businesses coming in to sell things. Like it made them look like better salesmen, better closers, better, whatever. Now that we're not exactly in that environment anymore, it's harder for people who thought they were rock stars four or five years ago. Now they're like, shit, they got to figure out actually how to do the thing. Like

Steve Doyle (: 25:00

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 25:16

and

Steve Doyle (: 25:20

Right?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 25:22

It turns out when the tide goes up, everyone goes up, not just like a few people. Like, this is really the time where the people are really, really exceptional at what they do. They focus on leadership. They focus on developing the craft that focus on improving their own core skills. Those people are continuing to grow. They have not slowed down with any sort of economic uncertainty or political uncertainty. They've, they've been full steam ahead. The only people have struggled now are the ones who like got comfortable back in the day and thought they were the shit.

Steve Doyle (: 25:34

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 25:50

Yep. Yep.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 25:51

And here we are now being like, but people aren't doing what they used to do. Yeah. No shit, dude.

Steve Doyle (: 25:57

Exactly. shit.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 26:00

Sorry, I'm a sympathetic guy. You can tell I like, I have a big soft spot for people who are idiots. I'm sorry, who, I say that, look, guys work hard. Like I'm all joking aside, like guys work hard, but sometimes they forget that their business only exists to solve customer pain points, which means when their customer pain changes or gets bigger or gets smaller, their business has to adapt to. So we just, we all forget that lesson sometimes.

Steve Doyle (: 26:06

You

Steve Doyle (: 26:19

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 26:26

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 26:30

Absolutely.

Brad Herda (: 26:35

Go ahead Mr. Doyle. is where Carrie will put this out. This long pause, she'll take that long pause out. This is where you participate, Doyle.

Steve Doyle (: 26:38

It's long pause. Good. OK, I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. The one question that I have, Ryan, honestly, is more on the marketing side. So if we look at the plumber, the electrician, HVAC guy, what are some things that they need to be doing that they're currently not doing?

Kind of on that same vein, like, hey, in the last four years, know, COVID's kind of helped make us lazy. are some things that those specific trades can be doing from a marketing perspective that they haven't done before?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 27:25

I say this, so this is actually a marketing answer, but it's not gonna sound like a marketing answer. I think a couple things is one, invest in your personal and your team's leadership capabilities. The reason this is such a big friggin' is that you will always be the bottleneck every time.

So you will never attract people better than you, smarter than you, more capable than you. If your vision isn't big enough to attract people where they can see themselves in it, you're gonna be stuck in your little tiny little baby vision. Invest in yourself, invest in your team, because that makes everything else easier to do, everything else. Once that's done, obsess, obsess over the customer experience.

It is true for a lot of the blue collar trades that to a certain degree, there's a commoditization element that's a play. For most people, they don't think about a plumber till like they step in the shower and it's cold, right? Or they walk downstairs to the basement, it's full water. Nobody's sitting around on a Friday being like, I wonder who the plumbers are in my area just for funsies. Nobody does.

Steve Doyle (: 28:23

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 28:36

I'm

Ryan @ Levergy (: 28:39

So like there's a spot of focus on what the customer feels and experiences and goes through and what's important to them. And don't really focus on like differentiating yourself from competition. Differentiate the customers you want. Like that is probably the single biggest hack that people forget is like, don't worry about the PE. Don't don't don't don't care. Focus on the customers you want cater service that they really, really enjoy working with.

Steve Doyle (: 28:54

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Brad Herda (: 28:56

that.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 29:08

Once you start doing that, all the other stuff is, is, gets really, really easy, really quickly. Right? So sure. Use data to make marketing decisions instead of, instead of like emotion. Don't follow the hype train just because you went to some conference and someone said a microphone and said, Hey, I could do next your business. you do this, don't, don't just jump and drink all the Kool-Aid like be of sober mind. But I think really

If people take the time to invest in themselves, which is not sexy, it's not fun, it doesn't give you the dopamine hit. And if you're really obsessed on the customer that your business is orienting around, I think it kind of simplifies a lot of things downstream really quickly, to be honest.

Steve Doyle (: 29:51

Yeah, absolutely.

Brad Herda (: 29:52

I think we're in alignment on that very much so. Cause you're not going to attract talent when you need to hire if you don't know what the fuck's going on.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 30:00

Yep. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 30:03

Just that simple.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 30:05

Yep.

Brad Herda (: 30:06

So, so Ryan, how do people find you get ahold of you get more of this expert sympathy, knowledge, empathy that has been oozing out of this show today so far and to not to. That's not the you're not the first one to say that. But so but no, how right. The word you used was climb to the top. How do people get ahold of you to continue that that climb to the top instead of the race to the bottom?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 30:18

You are such an asshole.

Steve Doyle (: 30:19

Yes! Yes!

Ryan @ Levergy (: 30:35

Yeah, so probably the way most people find this is by hitting us up on our podcast. It's blue collar dot CEO. Not the takeaway you guys are doing. You guys have a really great program and do really great work. But on our show we try to get like a lot of really thoughtful, smart people who are really pushing some things and not just talk about what they did. But trying to learn like how they think, because like when you start really understanding how people think at that level, that's really where a lot of the magic comes from.

Brad Herda (: 30:43

It's all good, man.

Steve Doyle (: 30:56

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 31:01

If they start hearing the conversations, we have a YouTube channel, we have a TikTok feed that's really popular. And if you start feeling like, hey, I think this might be worth reaching out to, they can hit us up at leveragee.io. All of our socials are leveragee.io somewhere. So the Tiki Talks and the YouTubes and whatevers. But yeah, I'd say we produce a lot of stuff just for free for people to consume, to make themselves smarter, to make their businesses better.

Steve Doyle (: 31:26

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 31:26

And if at some point you think, hey, this is worth the conversation, leveragee.io, there's a giant green button that says schedule call, just click it and we will be there.

Brad Herda (: 31:34

Alright, so asshole's gonna pop up again here. What is the coffee order? Because all of their LinkedIn, there's coffee everywhere. It looks like you're a coffee fiend. So what is the coffee order?

Ryan @ Levergy (: 31:45

there there is no coffee order so I am a I'm very much a coffee nerd I'm very much a coffee nerd so I'm gonna sound like a pretentious asshole again so

Steve Doyle (: 31:54

A lot of assholes on this show today.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 31:57

There's only three. There's only three, dude. So I learned a long time ago that I don't like coffee until someone gave me good coffee and I went, I like good coffee. And so it started this whole thing about like how it's farmed, how it's dried, how it's roasted, how it's brewed. So like over time, I'm all in. I've kind of learned like good coffee is more like tea than it is like Starbucks.

Steve Doyle (: 32:01

Okay.

Steve Doyle (: 32:11

Yes.

Brad Herda (: 32:19

So you are all in.

Steve Doyle (: 32:19

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 32:24

Yes. Yep.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 32:27

It's like I will never touch a Starbucks. I can't go to a gas station. I can't I just can't. But good coffee like so my favorite right now. Well right now it's winter in Denver so it's like Sumatra coffees are my favorite. There's like a little bit peppery a little bit spice and I pour over in a V60 and I love it. But during the summer like Ethiopians more my jam. It's a little bit more berry a little bit more fruit. It's still kind of like the lighter tea side. Those to me I love but yeah those.

Steve Doyle (: 32:39

Mm-hmm.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 32:56

So yeah, I have my coffee shipped in. do the whole, I'm very, very nerdy with the coffee thing at this point.

Brad Herda (: 33:01

I was just curious because I see her when I was looking through pre pre show my okay There's coffee cups everywhere and like alright, there's something something to it

Ryan @ Levergy (: 33:08

Yeah. Coffee and bourbon are like the two, my two jams at this point, like good coffee, good bourbon. I will not, I will not come down off those mountains.

Steve Doyle (: 33:11

Mmmmm.

Brad Herda (: 33:18

Nothing wrong with that. Ryan, thank you so much for giving us your time today, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with our audience. We greatly appreciate you,

Steve Doyle (: 33:19

Nothing at all.

Ryan @ Levergy (: 33:27

Sirs, this is Blastix. We're gonna be right.

Steve Doyle (: 33:27

Yeah, thank you. Yeah.