4 Stories to Add to Your Sales Toolbelt (ft. Mark Dixon)

Aaron Horner
Storytelling is a buzzword that we mention often on this podcast, but today we’re talking to Mark Dixon. He’s a co owner of Odd Fellows Contracting in Williamson, Michigan, with over 40 years of remodeling experience, and he uses storytelling in his sales process to help build trust with his prospects and close more deals. We actually heard him speak at the Rise Conference earlier this year, and as soon as were done with his talk, we knew we wanted to have him on the podcast. Today, he’s walking through the stories that he uses most in his sales process and why he started doing this in the first place. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser, and today I’m joined by Mark Dixon, who is co owner of Odd Fellows Contracting.

Logan Shinholser
Mark, tell us, how did you come up with the name Odd Fellows Contracting? That’s kind of a bit different than what most people name their company.

Mark Dixon
Yeah, it’s a little odd, right?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

Mark Dixon
We’re the second owners of it. The original owner started about 38 years ago, and his name is Brett Alexin. He still works with us, but Brett and Mike Fox worked together. They were just a couple of guys out of high school working together, trying to support their families, and they were trying to figure out what to name this company. And so they tried this and tried that. They ended up coming up with, well, we’re just a couple of guys that are doing odd jobs. Let’s call ourselves Odd Fellows. That’s how it started.

Logan Shinholser
Was there ever a thought of when you bought it, like, hey, we’re a design build, Odd Fellows Contracting. A bit of, like, on the other side of what we’re trying to do.

Mark Dixon
Yeah. So we have kind of talked about this, and now there’s three of us. So we’re an odd group. Right? There’s three. And then secondly, if you look at the definition of those two things, Odd Fellows. Odd means strange, unusual. Different fellows as a group of people working together. So that’s kind of what we are. We’re a group of people who are different and unusual in the remodeling industry. And so we work together to try to make beautiful changes to people’s homes.

Logan Shinholser
Nice.

Mark Dixon
All right.

Logan Shinholser
Well, perfect. Well, the reason that we’re talking today. So were at the Rise conference, and you. I said it on your presentation that talked all about storytelling in sales, and I was expecting it to be storytelling in the sense of, like, oh, let’s talk about other projects that we’ve done. But your stories were more about food, specifically Italian food, if you will.

Mark Dixon
My stories are always about food. Yeah, I get told that all the time. It’s like, if I don’t tell a story about food, I don’t tell a story.

Logan Shinholser
Well, it made it super relatable, regardless of who was in the audience. So can you talk a bit more about, like, I guess, like, let’s just do this. Could you give us an example of a story? Whether it’s the spaghetti one or, like, we have a tomato. Like, there’s. There’s various ones. I think the spaghetti one probably is, like, the easiest one to understand. And I want to kind of take a step back and kind of pick it apart, if you’re good with that.

Mark Dixon
Okay, sure. So this story, I mean, you can use in talking to people about the whole remodeling process. People are mystified by what goes on when you remodel. How do you get from where you’re at today to the final number? A lot of times people want you to just come in and say, well, I want to do this edition. How much is it? Well, you don’t know that. And I just like to illustrate it. So here’s what’s happening. It’s like you and I are going to go shopping for. Or maybe I’m going to go shopping for you. And you say, I want spaghetti. I go, great. I know how to do spaghetti. So as I’m going to the grocery store, I’m pushing the carpet cart.

Mark Dixon
You may beside me, you may not be, but if you are, I’m going to turn to you and ask you different things. First of all, I’m going to go down the aisle and I’m going to say, do you want ragu or prego? Or I can give. Make you a homemade sauce, Spaghetti sauce. And we can do that. Now, you may say, well, I really like homemade sauce. I would rather not have the canned. Good. I’ll say, that’s fine. Just remember that there’s more ingredients, more work that goes into that. It’s kind of like the remodeling project. We can customize it, make it, whatever you want to make it, but there’s more work that goes into that.

Mark Dixon
So just keep in mind that when we get through pushing the cart through the grocery store, we’re going to go up to the checkout and we’re going to check out, and then we’ll know what the price is. But we won’t know that what the price is until we go through this, the whole grocery store. So. So we Just we started off, we want custom sauce. I’m going, great. What do you like in your sauce? Do you like fresh tomatoes? Do you like fresh mushrooms? And then we go down the various aisles to pick those things up. Now, as I’m walking down the aisle, I’m going to ask you questions like, you know what? A lot of people like a salad with their spaghetti. Would you like a salad? Oh, yeah, I’d love a salad. Great. Let’s go down to the produce aisle and let’s.

Mark Dixon
What do you like in your salad? So we’ll gather all the ingredients together. Do you like a salad dressing? Would you like Italian ranch Roquefort? What would you like? Well, I want some Italian. Great. Now in the Italian dressing aisle, you know how many Italian dressings there are? There are a ton of Italian dressings. So we have to pick that. Pick one out. We’ll continue walking through the store and we’ll go past the bakery aisle and go, hey, you know what? A lot of people like a nice, good piece of garlic bread. Let’s get a garlic bread loaf. Now I can go to the freezer and get one that’s pre made, or I can make our own. Let’s continue on. You know, some people like a glass of wine with their spaghetti. So let’s go to the wine aisle.

Mark Dixon
And now what kind of wine do you like? So you can see that we’re building this cart, this spaghetti dinner as we go through it. Just telling me that you want a spaghetti dinner to begin with does not allow me to put the numbers together and to say, well, I know exactly what that’s going to cost. Not until we answer all of these questions. And I go through this idea, and sometimes by working together, we come up with ideas that we would never would have come with, come up with apart. So, for example, you may say to me, hey, you know what, Mark? I’m just thinking dessert would sound good with this. I go, great. What kind of dessert do you like? Well, I really love creme brulee. Well, I can’t buy that at the store.

Mark Dixon
I got to make that and I can do it. So we get all of the ingredients, we pull up to the aisle to check out. And as we’re putting ingredients on the aisle, the gals putting it all together and totaling it up. Now when she gets a total, we have a choice to make. We can say, great, that is exactly what I want. I want to do all of that. I want it that way. Or we can say, that’s a little bit too Much money. And I can say, well, what do you want to take out? And you might say, well, you know, I really don’t need the bottle of wine. Okay, great, we can take it out. We’ll still have a spaghetti dinner.

Mark Dixon
So I use that to illustrate to folks that if somebody says that they can come up with a price just by your saying, I want an addition or I want a new kitchen or I want a new bathroom, that’s a little bit shortsighted because they really haven’t gone through a process to discover what you really want in that. You as a homeowner haven’t gone through the process of knowing that? Well, yeah, I can have a whole bunch of different choices, but when I get down to the end, I got to pay for.

Logan Shinholser
And when. When you’re going through that, to me it sounds like that’s more of like, it’s not interactive, but that is your way of explaining your process, or is it actually, like, interactive?

Mark Dixon
Yeah, we’ll be talking about, you know, do you like prego spaghetti? Oh, I can’t stand that stuff. It’s in a glass jar. Do you like Ragworth? No, no, no. I like something homemade. And I may ask them, do you like garlic bread with this? So part of this is an interrogative discussion where I’m asking questions, they’re kind of contributing to it. And then I can, at the end, I can say, that’s the same kind of process that we’re going to go through on this remodeling project. I’m going to ask questions, you’re going to answer them, I’m going to get further information, and then that way we can put together a good design and an estimate for what this project is going to be. Me.

Logan Shinholser
And why. Why use that analogy compared to just giving a real example of a home Edition? Like, hey, you may. You may want this thing to be detached. You may want it to be attached. You may actually then want to do the rest of the floors that connect to this new room. You may not. Like, why do such a. Yeah, like, why go spaghetti related story. Completely, like, not even in the same realm?

Mark Dixon
Because it’s only unrelated in that it doesn’t equate originally in their mind to doing an addition. However, it’s not unrelated to what they have done before. So everybody has gone shopping, right? We all go shopping and we buy stuff. And it could be, you know, I had somebody else after the seminar say, hey, it could be tacos. I said, you’re right, it could be tacos. It could be do you want carnitas? Do you want hamburger? What do you want in it? Do you want a fresh tortilla? So you could use any kind of those illustrations. The thought process is, I want them thinking that, oh yeah, it’s not as simple as just saying I want an addition or I want a kitchen. There’s much more involved.

Mark Dixon
And I want them also understanding that if somebody has talked to them already and not gone through this process, do they really know what you want?

Logan Shinholser
And when you go through this with them, like to me there was like a couple different big things. One of them was obviously going through and the type of spaghetti, then the add ons. And then I thought the coolest part was at the end when we get to the checkout, you may discover like this is a little bit more than I was thinking it was going to be. We don’t want wine. Or actually maybe we get rid of the wine and we double up on the sauce because we’re, you know, sauce people, whatever that is.

Mark Dixon
Yeah. So you can, I mean, you can expand this in a number of different ways. And I think what happens is the client understands the whole remodeling process more because they typically, most clients haven’t gone through a remodeling process. Right. They’ve not gone through this. Or if they’ve had a bad experience, they don’t know why they had the bad experience, but they had the bad experience. If I take them through a shopping experience, and it may be, I mean, it could be any number of things. I like food, so it tends to be food, but it could be car shopping. You know, you can get, how many different kinds of cars can you get? If you said to me, mark, go buy me a car, well, I can do that.

Mark Dixon
But then I got to start thinking to myself, okay, wait a second, what kind of car do they want? What kind of features do they want? What kind of gas mileage is that important to them? Is it important that it has a tow capacity? So you can kind of use that same idea and make it familiar to people that of something that they’ve already done, where they’ve gone through that process. Now I think it helps them to understand what remodeling is like or new construction.

Logan Shinholser
And with this, like, are you doing this simply? If they say, I just want to get a ballpark price for what this is, or you then, you know, even if they don’t give you that quote unquote, like objection or ask, you’re still saying, can I explain to you how our process works, and then you still go through spaghetti.

Mark Dixon
I try to. I kind of. You know, I. I talked in the seminar a lot about having kind of a remodeling sales toolbox. And so this is just one of the things that you could pull out of the toolbox. And it depends on the client and what they’re thinking, you know, Depends on my relationship with the client. I like to use something like this. And sometimes I’ll explain it this way. We’re going to go through this whole process, and you’re going to make one of four decisions. Okay, Decision number one, you’re going to do the whole spaghetti dinner, everything. And you’re going to say, you know what? That wasn’t my budget to begin with, but you’ve made it sound so good. That’s what I want. Or you may go, listen, I can’t afford the whole thing, and I can have the creme brulee later.

Mark Dixon
So let’s just do the spaghetti dinner. Let’s cut out the wine, and I can have a bottle of wine later. So we split the project up. That’s a possibility. Number three, you may go, you know what? I don’t need the wine at all. I won’t ever need it. I won’t ever need the creme brulee. I don’t want the French bread. I just want the spaghetti. So we can cut the project back. Or three, you can go hungry. You don’t have to do the remodeling project. Okay, well, you know what people will say they’ll never choose number four. They just never choose it. They go, okay, yeah, I can do one of those three.

Logan Shinholser
I like that because it adds, like, a consequence. Because I thought you were just going to go, or you just realized at the end of it you didn’t really want spaghetti and you actually wanted something cheaper. But, like, I like the fact that you’re like. Or it’s like. Or you could live in this piece of crap kitchen for the rest of, you know, time. So that’s. I like that. How you’re, like, tying it into, like, there’s a negative to number four, if you will.

Mark Dixon
Yeah, I mean, that is a decision, right? I mean, you could make that decision. Evidently, you’ve made that decision up to this point, so you can continue to make it. Just you live with the consequences of it.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, but I. I think it’s. It’s weightier than that because it adds, like, a true, like, going hungry. I don’t think. Just back to your green thing. I think everybody would Agree. Going hungry in life is not the option. So it’s like they agree with that. So it’s. And in. In your case, most of these things are not like, they’re either going to do this thing or, like, it’s not like a big catalyst of like, your roof blew open. Now you got to do it. It’s more of just like every single day, they’re kind of like living with this apathy of what the space is. So you’re.

Mark Dixon
Now remember, every time you walk back in here, you’re going to see that door falling off that kitchen.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Mark Dixon
And. And that’s okay. You’ve lived with it thus far. But you’re gonna think. Think about that, and you’re going to think about, I could have had the whole bowl of spaghetti.

Logan Shinholser
Do you ever have people that, like, just say, like, they. They just. They don’t like the spaghetti analogy or it just seems too weird or odd, if you will. Like, do you ever get pushback on it?

Mark Dixon
I. I don’t. Because I. Well, I. I don’t think I have.

Logan Shinholser
I. I don’t just blow right past it. Yeah.

Mark Dixon
Well, I don’t use it every single time. If I have a good relationship with the client before I tell the story, I don’t. I may tell. We may talk about other stories in life. In other words, I might say to them something like, hey, I just got back from vacation last week. I’m getting back to it. And, you know, they go, where’d you go? Well, I went up to Tahquamen Falls. We love that area. And you guys ever been up there before? If I have a camaraderie with the client, I try to develop that. You know, all things being equal people do business with people they trust. All things being unequal, people still do business with people they trust. And so I’m trying to garnish some trust to begin with as I go and talk to folks.

Mark Dixon
And I think if I feel like I’ve got a little bit of trust and I feel like I can tell a story, if these folks are, you know, just right straight to business, you know, I got to tell them, listen, part of what we do is develop relationships. And, you know, I’m not the kind of person that will just come in and come in here and doesn’t care about what I do. I care about the people. And when I care about people, I want to know about them so that I can make good suggestions. I want to know how they live and what kinds of things are important to them. I think that’s the only way to make really good suggestions and to work out what’s the. You know, what the best is for them.

Logan Shinholser
And with this, the whole storytelling approach, because I want to go into a couple other stories that you may have just to give, like, other examples so people are not trying to, like, do a spaghetti story for every scenario. Did you, like. Was this something that was, like, learned, or you just, like, even before you bought the company, you were just a storyteller or you were in sales and you always had, like, analogies for stuff? Like, I guess. How did this come to be?

Mark Dixon
Well, so I have been in remodeling for over 40 years and started off working in the field. And, you know, it just. I like to tell stories. My kids tell me. I tell way too many dad jokes, but, hey, my grandkids love them now, so what can you say? Right?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Mark Dixon
So I would say that I’ve had a tendency to tell stories throughout my life. I enjoy telling stories. I think that it’s a way for people to relate. I enjoy listening to other people’s stories. I want them to tell me about, you know, an experience they had. Tell me about their vacation. What did you like about it? What didn’t you like? Would you go there again? You know, all of those things are. I think I’m naturally inquisitive about people, and I think that allows you to develop relationships when, you know, the background with people. And I like people.

Logan Shinholser
With. With a lot of, like, the. The clients that we work with. Like, the. I think the. One of the biggest strengths that, like, I personally have is I have now done two remodels at my house. So I. I’ve. I’ve gone through it as a homeowner. I tell. I. I think at this point, on every single call, I bring up positives, I bring up negatives. I bring up, this is how my wife felt.

Mark Dixon
Hey.

Logan Shinholser
I bring up, like, I’ve got two little kids. This is what I wish would have happened, or this is what happened, and we didn’t know it until we experienced it. So I bring up my own personal side a ton, which helps because I’ve actually purchased the exact thing. So I’m kind of like. And I go to these conferences, and I hang out with, like, other remodelers so I can talk about life and business and all that kind of stuff. Are you like, this is something my dad was really into. Was like, when he got into, like. So he had a company, pawn company, and he. He could afford his own product. And he. He was basically his own customer. Where it wasn’t like, I remodel kitchens, but I would never spend that kind of money on something which kind of creates a disconnect.

Logan Shinholser
So with you, are you, like, hanging out with your clientele a lot to understand more about their world and, like, what’s important to them, like, or is it strictly just in a business setting that is how you are learning more about who your clients are?

Mark Dixon
I would. I would say I don’t know that I hang out with my clients. It’s not like I’m. I’m in, you know, the same church or the same golf club or something.

Logan Shinholser
Like that or, like, demographics wise, demographically,.

Mark Dixon
I would say I live in a lot of the same situations as several of my clients, you know, and I’ve raised a family. My wife and I have been married for 47 years. You know, so we have some experience in life. You know, we have three kids. We have five grandkids. So, you know, there’s a lot of those things that I think relate to people, and I think just listening to people and asking them what. I’ll give you an example. Years ago, I did a kitchen project for Gloria Ramirez in Arizona. I lived in Arizona for 20 years. And I was talking to Gloria after this, and I said, gloria, how was the experience? She says, I’ll tell you what, Mark. Here’s what it was like. It was like giving birth to a baby. I said, what do you mean?

Mark Dixon
She says, well, you know, she says, you get pregnant, you’re looking forward to the birth of the baby. You’re. You’re putting things together. You’re getting the nursery ready. You know, you’re. You’re thinking about baby names, and then when you go into labor, you want to kill anybody that got you into this situation. You just absolutely say, this is the worst thing possible. She says, and then you get done, and you’re holding the baby in your arms, and you’re looking at this baby, and she says, and then you start thinking about having another. She says, that’s what remodeling is like. And so, you know, I think just. I like to relate to clients. I like them to tell me stories like that, because I can use that story to talk to somebody else. What is remodeling like?

Mark Dixon
I’ll tell you what one of my clients told me. It’s like giving birth to a baby.

Logan Shinholser
And, like, the birth is like, that’s like your punchless phase of like, yeah, nobody’s happy.

Mark Dixon
Yeah, we’re in. We’re in the drywall phase. Right, Rusty? Through the whole house. And my goodness, I didn’t realize it was going to take this long. And the inspector took longer than. He didn’t show up on time. And the plumber did this and backed into this and tracked over that. Those are the kinds of things that happen. That’s like giving birth. You know, you. You picture the labor of this. I’m going to be in labor for six or eight hours. One of my daughters was in labor for 34 hours. Okay. She didn’t expect that. But after it happened, they have a baby boy and. And, you know, they’re tickled pink and.

Logan Shinholser
Because then it’s like you hold the baby and all of that’s forgotten and it’s now, and you realize it was worth it the whole time.

Mark Dixon
Worth it. I didn’t think it was when I was going through it, but, man, now it’s worth it. You know, I’ve had several clients. I just. We just recently finished a project for the Enriquez, and it was a perfect, pretty big remodel project on a home that we talked to them about the amount of money that they were spending. It didn’t make sense from a dollar and cents perspective. They were never going to get their money back out of the house. But they said, listen, We’ve lived here 30 years. We have four lots on this city, in this city area. Our lots go through from street to street. We got all the way through. There’s just a big lot. We raised our boys here. We have been very frugal. We just want to do this. So we finished the project up.

Mark Dixon
She was in here a couple weeks ago, and she said, I just want to tell you how much we love this project. It has changed the way that we live. We didn’t realize that were missing out on some of the things that we love to do now that we have this kitchen and the whole house remodeled. So they hugged, and she was just about crying. But a remodel project can change people’s lives. A meal, it can be a greatest meal you ever had, but it doesn’t change your life, right? But when you go through a remodel project, that can sometimes change your life. And you get a chance to do things and act ways. And, you know, I had another client said, my husband and I now cook everything together.

Mark Dixon
We didn’t realize we couldn’t do that in the old kitchen, but now we can. And so we love working together in the kitchen. It’s made us closer. So I can just tell Folks, we can improve your marriage, too. When.

Logan Shinholser
When we are going through this, like, are you also, like, back to that, like, labor story? Because I think it’s such, like a. That’s such a good one with this. Because as somebody who’s now gone through it twice, we had one that was a super long labor, and we had one that was, like, just. Labor was a bit annoying at the end because the, you know, like, a couple things popped up, but, like, the doctors handled it the whole time. It was just. And maybe they’re scrambling behind the scenes, but we don’t see any of that. You know, we’re good. Are you then going to your clients, like, hey, we’re about to enter drywall, which is. In other words, we’re about to start labor. So up until this point, we’ve been sitting there in the room hanging out, water broke. But we’re just.

Logan Shinholser
I mean, we’ve had two C sections, so I can’t really attest to, like, what it’s, like, normally three. Okay. Yeah, so we had. Ours were, like, scheduled. We’re, like, watching, like, TV marathons, just, like, hanging out, you know, so we’re a little bit different. But, like, are you saying, hey, we’re about to enter, like, the labor phase? Just. Yeah.

Mark Dixon
I mean, if I have opportunity to do that. Yeah. I think that’s one of the other things that I can. I can tell them how bad it’s going to be without telling them how bad it’s going to be.

Logan Shinholser
Right? Yeah.

Mark Dixon
So you just. You just. I don’t know if you realize this, Logan, you just bought in to how giving birth is like, remodeling. Right?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. I’m going to use it on my calls. Yeah.

Mark Dixon
Yeah. Right. So telling a story has people buy into it now they can start to relate to. Oh, I get it. You know, before you start talking about the drywall phase, they go, yeah, okay, it’s drywall. What’s the big deal? But if you talk about it as being the labor portion, they’re going to go, oh, I see. Yeah, I didn’t. We didn’t like going through that part of it. I said, well, that’s kind of what’s happened. But you got to keep the end in sight. Remember what it’s going to be like when you get to the end.

Logan Shinholser
So you’ve got your spaghetti story that explains the. Basically, like, the design process. You’ve got your labor story that talks through, I guess, like, the pains of. Or the ups and downs of it all of, like. I mean, hell, even in Our scenario, like when my wife has like the designs for our nursery in her hand, like everybody who comes in, she’s happy. It’s the same thing. If you get your ultrasound photos and you’re showing everybody and you’re not even thinking about the labor at that.

Mark Dixon
Point, you’re just pumped about going through labor, right? Yeah. And then wait till your kids hit the teenage years. You’re going to go, oh my gosh, what did I do?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So you have those two. Do you have any other, like, staple stories that you’re like, hey, we, you know, for this type of scenario or this thing, I like to tell this story. Because you also do like, it sounds like you go third party, which is like, hey, can I tell you about a different client and what they said or how they didn’t realize they could now cook together and before, they just didn’t, you know, they didn’t know that they could. Yeah.

Mark Dixon
Know what? They didn’t know. So, you know, so I mean, another story I tell, sometimes clients will think that remodeling, remodelers are a commodity, Right. It’s like going into the store and buying, you know, I can go into the store and I can buy tomatoes and I go, you know, I say, well, you can, right? That is absolutely true. You can go buy tomatoes. But let’s talk about tomatoes. Okay. What do you get in a grocery store? What kind of tomatoes do you get? Well, you can buy a Roma tomato, right? They come in the big bulk basket and they just, you just pull them out of there. Are they the best tasting? Probably not. Well, what’s the best tasting that you can get at the grocery store? Well, it depends on your taste, right. So you can buy.

Mark Dixon
Oh, they make the comparelli tomatoes that are kind of an Italian tomato. They’re smaller, but they’re kind of tasty. You can get the small cherry tomatoes, the sweet angel tomatoes. You know, you can get a vine ripened tomato. But you know what? The best tomato that you can get is not at the grocery store, it’s at the farm market or it’s. You grow it yourself. Those are the best tasting. Now, maybe you don’t care, but there is a price difference between every one of those tomatoes, Right. The Roma tomatoes you might be able to get for 59, 89 cents a pound. But as you go, like the vine ripened tomatoes, those are typically some of the most expensive because they’re the hardest to come by. It takes more time and effort to get them to the store unbruised.

Mark Dixon
The one that you grow yourself takes the longest and the most energy. So, yes, you can. You know, you can look at remodelers as being tomatoes, but not all tomatoes are created equal. What kind of tomato do you like? What kind of a remometer do you like? Do you want somebody that is, you’re just another job and they just can’t wait to get this done? They just turn them over? Or do you want somebody that really cares and is concerned about the story that you’re going to tell when you get done? Because every remodeling project has a story. It can be a great story. It can be a terrible story.

Logan Shinholser
Do you find that this, like, especially in this scenario, because you’re talking about, like, comparing bids and stuff like that. Do you find that this, like, drops people’s, like, defense systems to a certain extent? Because, you know, in this phase, you.

Mark Dixon
Would imagine we’re not talking about the cost of remodeling. I’m not talking about. Right, right. I’m talking about what something else costs. I. I think it does help to drop the defenses a little bit in that, you know, they can look at that and they can go, oh, I see there’s a difference. They all are red. They all, you know, have a tomato taste to them. But there are certainly. I’m a. I love tomatoes and sweet corn for. For dinner in the summers. Okay. But I have particular taste in what the tomatoes are and what the sweet corn is. I could just go out in the field and pull a piece of corn off of field corn, but that would not take its corn. But what’s that going to taste like? Right? And the same goes with tomatoes.

Mark Dixon
But I think that telling stories gets people involved. They’ve done some studies on it that telling a story changes the way the person thinks about things because then they start relating and they start buying in. I’ve even read that when people get involved in a story, it increases their dopamine levels that they become more suggestible. They end up being able to agree better. So there’s, you know, I don’t understand all the science behind it, but.

Logan Shinholser
Well, I don’t. I know it helps, like, memory, because they have, like, I was watching, they had on Netflix, like, a mini docu series that explained various things. And one of them was on memory. And they. And they talked about people that have to memorize a bunch of numbers or letters or characters will then assign. Like, the letter A is a goblin, the number one is a fence. So if it goes like, okay, here’s Your slew of characters, A1, 7, B4. Like, they’re like, okay, a goblin jumps over the fence. And, you know, so they’re like, starting to assign the story component to the actual individual things and allows them to, like, you know, remember it more.

Logan Shinholser
So I would imagine you’re then being, you know, in the household, like my wife, and I would refer to you as not Mark, but like, the tomato guy or something along those lines. But either way, it’s not like, which one was Mark again. It would be like, oh, it’s not like, oh, the tomato guy. Like, we had three of them who talked. Like, we would know exactly who was the tomato guy.

Mark Dixon
Differentiates you. It’s just like the labor story, right? Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Mark Dixon
Now that you’ve heard it. Now, you have talked about labor before. You’ve taught you. You and your wife have talked about, you know, the kids going into labor, but you never equated that to remodeling until today.

Logan Shinholser
And I think it’s such a perfect analogy because of, like. Because it’s funny, because as soon as you said it, and maybe I’m just biased because I’ve been through it. I work in this industry, so I know the. The ebbs and the flows and how it all works. Excuse me, all that kind of stuff. But as soon as you said it’s like, labor, I was like, oh, I wonder if he’s going to talk about that.

Mark Dixon
What?

Logan Shinholser
Once you’re holding that baby, you forget it all. And, you know, so I’m, like, starting to, like, put my own spin on it where it feels as if I’m, like, finishing your sentences where you don’t even have to explain the whole thing. I’m just tying it all together of like, okay, it’s going to be worth it. It’s going to be a pain in the butt at certain points. Other points is going to be great. At certain points, people are going to throw us a shower or they’re going to want to come over and check out this new space, stuff like that. So it allows me to, like, put myself in the shoes and start to make the connections way faster once. Because I already know what the labor process is.

Logan Shinholser
I don’t really know what the remodeling process is, quote, unquote, if I’m a homeowner. But it ties it all together very quickly for me, which is helpful.

Mark Dixon
Well, and I think, too, if you can, you know, I want the clients to be able to tell their story about different things. I want them to remember this with some amount of Fondness. They’re not going to remember every part of it with fondness because they’re going to go back and go. The time went through the drywall, that was like labor, and that was painful. But, you know, when they get done, they’re going to look at it, go, man, this was a. This was a great experience. I realized we had to go through some pain. But the experience. The story that I’m going to tell now is one of, you know what? I would do it again. I would have another kid. I would go through this remodel project again because of what came out of it, what happened as a result of it.

Mark Dixon
We had. Years ago, I had a project that just. The client, her name was Ricky Rollinger. And Ricky was just as were getting the design ready, were doing a kitchen and an addition on the house and some other things. She just was so excited. She says, you know, she says, the day that dumpster shows up, when we start this project, it’s going to be like Christmas to me. It’s going to be like a gift. And so they had kids, and so we did some special things. We wanted it to be memorable to them. So the day the dumpster was delivered, I went down and I bought a red bow about 3 foot in diameter, and I stuck it on the dumpster. So when she got home from work that day, she had the gift of a dumpster in her driveway.

Mark Dixon
And then we had the kids because were doing major remodeling. I told the kids, I got them some paint, and I said, I want you guys. I drew a little square on the wall. I says, I want you guys to do. Paint something on the wall that you want mom and dad to remember. And so they did some painting. Well, we cut that piece of drywall out, we framed them, and we gave it to them as a piece of art at the end of the project. That would be something that they remembered from that point on. So if you can think of things where people will tell stories about you, I think that helps, too.

Logan Shinholser
One of the things that you’ve done throughout this conversation is you have. If you’re giving a specific client example, you have named their first name and last name. Do you. Are you doing that just on the podcast, or do you also do this when you’re in somebody’s home saying, you know what? I had a different client. His name was Ricky Romero. Like, do you do that as well there?

Mark Dixon
I. I tried to. I wanted them to, you know, because there are some salespeople that. That make things up. I don’t make things up. Fortunately, I’ve lived long enough that I don’t have to.

Logan Shinholser
Right.

Mark Dixon
But, you know, I want them to think of these people as real people because they were real people and they’re fond in my memory. You know, some of them I worked with for years. Over the years, you know, I did. I did a project one time for. He was this former CFO of Honeywell and oh, I. We had done three or four projects with him. And he joked with me. His name was. It was Dick. Everybody called him Richard or Dick. Anyway, so Richard was telling me, he says, you know, Mark, the next project we do, I want to see you actually work. So I want you to write in the contract that you’re going to come and do some demo. So I did, you know, and now he can tell a story.

Mark Dixon
Hey, this guy that sold me this project and designed it came over and did some demo and he got grubby. Well, it’s a story now that he can, you know, talk about and that he can relate to others. And I have found that, you know, if you can. If you can create something memorable for people, that then it. Then I guess the story lives on after I have left that project.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, it. Because like we. I mean, we do that in our house of like, we talk about certain scenarios that happened during the project and we kind of like laugh and joke about it, but it kind of brings us back into like that specific moment. I do want to wrap like one more of these stories that it’s like the. The going backwards before you go forwards story. So the one where it’s talking about like, you know, some people want to save stuff during demo. Hey, we’re about to redo the kitchen. We want to salvage all this stuff. Can you talk a bit more about that one?

Mark Dixon
If I can remember it, I will. So. So, you know, sometimes as people are considering a project, they’re thinking about all the stuff in the past. They want to maybe reuse things, you know, in remodeling project. When we start a remodeling project, we don’t start making progress. We start tearing it apart. Right, right. So we actually go backwards before we ever go forward. And as a client, you sometimes do the same thing. You have to go backwards before you ever go forward. So, you know, we’re going to talk about different things that you have and you maybe you want to reuse on the project. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn’t. I have. So I use. Sometimes I’m going to take a side Point.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Mark Dixon
So sometimes I’ll use feel, felt, found. I think I talked about that. So I understand how you feel. You know, I sometimes feel that same way. I had a client that felt that same way. Here’s what they found, is that they started to think that they wanted everything. But then as we started to look at can we really incorporate this? We came up with ideas together that we never would have come up with a part that did not include what you thought you wanted to keep. And so, you know, it was necessary for us to kind of go backwards to discover that before we ever went forward and say, well, that’s not important. It’s like. It’s like discovering, do I really want French bread with my spaghetti? You know, is it really worth that?

Mark Dixon
And by the way, I had this old loaf of bread I want to reuse in the house. Well, okay, we can reuse it, but it’s not fresh. And, you know, we’re going to have to doctor it up so that we can reuse it. And we may get to the end and you may take a bite of it and go, oh, man, that’s stale.

Logan Shinholser
I feel like that’s like you’re about to redo the kitchen. And the floors in the kitchen are going to look great, but the floors in the rest of that first floor are not going to look great. And now you’re stuck with stale bread, with this to die for, homemade spaghetti.

Mark Dixon
Yeah, well, and think of. I mean, you think about, you know, and maybe you’re doing that because adjacent floors are the same flooring. Well, okay. How many times are you going to do this in your life? How many times? You know, years ago, I was in the market for a new car, and I walked into a Chrysler dealer, and I thought I wanted to buy. It was a Dodge dealer. I thought I wanted. Was Dodge. Chrysler. Anyway, I thought I wanted to get a Charger. Okay, So I looked at the chargers, but on the floor was a Chrysler 300 SRT8. And that was in 2006, maybe something like that there around that on that time period. Anyway, that car was the most expensive car that I had ever bought. I bought the showroom model off the floor because it was gorgeous.

Mark Dixon
But I didn’t even know that I liked that car till I went into the dealers that I talked to them about. So the same kind of thing, you know, when you talk about doing a remodeling project, sometimes, you know, you may want to say, hey, we want to keep the floor in the kitchen, because we spent good money on that. That’s fine. And you know what? You don’t have to do the floor right now. The floor is one of those things that if we get the kitchen all done in two years from now, you say you want to do a floor, you can do that. You’re going to spend more money, and it’s going to take longer to do the floor then than it would have been to do it now.

Mark Dixon
And right now, you’re going through construction, you’re going to go through it one time, you have to go through it a second time if you do it in the future. So, yeah, I think there’s a whole bunch of things you can talk to people about, telling stories on, I will.

Logan Shinholser
Say just kind of like. Like, looking at it really seems like if you have one. Like, the example I will give for this is in high school, wait, for the sat, they added in, like, when I was going through it, the writing section, which they’ve now disbanded. But at the time, basically what they taught you in SAT prep was you need to have enough information about one specific person that when you do the essay, you can basically contextualize it to that person. And it’s funny because for me, I had Martin Luther King and I had Abraham Lincoln, where I knew enough about both of their lives, what they did, that kind of stuff. So anything that they threw at us, they were like, you can basically write about these two people, and you’re good. And funny enough, I remember.

Logan Shinholser
I still remember it, the prompt was, does fame bring happiness? And those two people I couldn’t equate to. So I ended up having to write all about Britney Spears because it was the time that she was crashing out. But I bring that up because it like your spaghetti story, because you’ve brought that up again, you know, afterwards and talked about the stale bread. It really sounds like if you have your core story, like, for me, like, when I talk about this stuff, I always refer back to my specific remodel at my house. What went well, all that kind of stuff. And I obviously know it so well that you could basically throw anything at me.

Logan Shinholser
And I’m like, yeah, that was kind of like this one time that this happened and we had a big snowstorm and things got delayed, like, so it all comes back to it. So almost sounds like having, like, your core story that is so adaptable that you bring it back. I mean, that’s what you’ve done a couple times with the spaghetti thing. Is that where you’d suggest people kind of like, start is just have that, like, hey, pick one core thing that’s adaptable or, like, well.

Mark Dixon
And I think if you use it, then you refer back to it, right? Because now it means something. And now you can reuse it again and again. It illustrates the same point. I don’t care what the story is. It could be, you know, since I like food, that is, it’s a natural for me. But if I really liked cars, I could tell you all the stuff. And I. And that one car was my favorite car of all time, but I could tell you all the stuff that car had in it that I didn’t even know to begin with, that car was available with that. You know, it had a V8 engine that was a Hemi, but it was a souped up Hemi, and it had over 600 horsepower. And it was, you know, it had the low inflate tires.

Mark Dixon
And after about six months or eight months, my brakes were going bad. And I go, I took it back to the dealer. I go, well, why are the brakes going bad? And he says, well, Mr. Dixon, this car has this feature where if you accelerate hard so that the tires don’t spin out, it applies the brake on the rear tires. That’s why your brakes are wearing out. Well, okay, so you can relate, you know, you. I. I think if you tell a story and you. Once you have an acceptance of it, you can refer back to it. That makes sense.

Logan Shinholser
100. So just pick something that you’re. It sounds like you’re passionate about and like you’ve lived it, rather than just like, well, I don’t really like Italian food, but I’m gonna tell Mark’s spaghetti story. But, yeah, do you want big spaghetti or little spaghetti versus, like, actually going through the different types of, you know, what noodle do you want, if you will?

Mark Dixon
Well, and, you know, as time goes on, you can add more. You know what? We can even go to SpaghettiOs. I can get you SpaghettiOs if you want. SpaghettiOs.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, that’s fun. Because then. Because that goes back to your. Or you can just go hungry and starve. You know, the SpaghettiOs, nobody’s like, you know, I could be your Chef Boyardee if you want. I can do that. But you’re, you know, only your kids are going to be happy. Nobody else is. So cool. I love it. All right, well, Mark, hey, I appreciate this. This has been fun. I would say of just like being able to relate to a lot of this stuff. So if there’s, I don’t know, one place for people to start, and they’re trying to get more comfortable, because I really feel like that’s really what this is. Getting comfortable, talking about some harder things with prospects and with clients. Where would you suggest that they start?

Mark Dixon
So, I mean, there’s a number of different things you can do, but I think practice telling stories to your family. You know, I think everybody has historical lessons that you have learned in life that you can retell through stories. Right? And I think if you do that, I’ll give you an example. When I was about 12, 11 years old, I saw in the back of a comic book, this fishing kit, and I just. I fell in love with it. I bugged my dad until he just went ahead and bought it. It was like, 15 bucks. Okay. Well, when I got it, you know, what it was worth is nothing. But that taught me a lesson. Right? Not everything that you see that’s advertised, that sounds like a good deal is really a good deal. You got to think about it.

Mark Dixon
But I think if you can tell stories to your family, that’s kind of where it starts. Tell stories to your workmates. I think if you can start getting comfortable doing that, then the next step is that it becomes natural to tell stories to your clients.

Logan Shinholser
Cool. I love it. I’ll. I’ll tell my wife that. Because she says, when we do bedtime stories with my sons, I tell the stupidest ones. But there’s always a great lesson at the end.

Mark Dixon
There’s a moral to it.

Logan Shinholser
There’s always a moral. I just. Sometimes I take a very roundabout way of getting there.

Mark Dixon
That’s called a bunny trail.

Logan Shinholser
Oh, yeah. Okay. I’ll talk like, hey, look, Audrey, like, Mark Dixon would love this one. He gets it. So it might be a you thing. So we’ll see. But, Mark, I appreciate. I appreciate this. This is awesome. Cool story sell, man. This is good. Thank you.

Mark Dixon
You’re welcome.