Using Storytelling To Improve Your Contracting Company’s Marketing

Logan Shinholser
This was me back in 2014, and I used to work for my dad’s pawn company. So talked about it a little bit yesterday on stage for like the three minutes that I had. But I was, my unofficial title at Premier Ponds was rock Bitch. And back when I was under that title, which is not the real HR title, my whole job was just to move rocks from the front yard to the backyard. And I loved it. It was a great time. And, but what was interesting about when I worked at Premier and for those that just sat in on Aaron Harshaw’s talk about Shin Fu, who here has had heard of sinful before? So a small portion of the room. So my last name is Shinholser. My dad was the one that started all of this stuff with Shin Fu.

Logan Shinholser
Shinholser, like that kind of stuff. So I had been hearing, really, since I was born about this whole thing of entrepreneurship, but I, with him specifically, I’ve been hearing about how he is doing all these amazing things in the pond world. Right? We had actually just right after that photo was taken, the first one, we just went to the annual, like, pond conference. And at this conference, he won 2014 pawn contractor of the year. Now, mind you, before going to this event, he would always tell my mom, my three siblings and I, like, yeah, doing all these great things. I’m changing the industry. We’re crushing it as far as pond work goes. Clients are loving us, but we’re not seeing that because I’m just rock bitch at that point.

Logan Shinholser
Then I go here, and he’s on stage for over half of all the talks. And what was interesting about that was the dichotomy of one side, I’m just hearing about this, and we’re like, yeah, dad, we get it. You’re the man. You did a pond at that house and upon at that house. I’m sure all you guys know what that’s like. When you drive around, you show your kids, like, I did the kitchen over there, and I did the deck over on that one. We had that. And then fast forward. And I go to this conference, and he’s on stage half the time. I mean, there’s a whole sales system named after him. And I’m like, man, what is this guy, like, all about?

Logan Shinholser
And what was interesting about all this is he, at the end of this conference, he turned to me and he said, logan, like, I’m working with a marketing company right now. It’s not working out. And we had just actually come off a customer appreciation event where the marketing company said, we’re going to blow it up. We’re going to have all your customers there. It’s going to be amazing. And like four people showed up. Yeah. And then what happened was they said, we’re sorry, we messed that up. We should not have. They put out like an RSS feed. But essentially they blasted out to the Internet instead of, like, reached out to the past customers and said, give us another chance, we’ll try it again. One person showed up. So we go to this conference, he turns to me, it’s not working.

Logan Shinholser
If I’m going to waste money on marketing, I might as well waste it on my own. Son, do you want to try this marketing thing for me? And I was like, I don’t really know anything about marketing, but I have a Facebook page. I just graduated college. Sure, I’ll wing it. I’ll see what I got. And what he said to me was, what I want, Logan, is I just want you to make my phone ring with people that actually know what it looks like to work with us. He said, because right now what is happening is we are like twice the price as everybody else. Because he really taught the whole pond industry about this idea of 50% gross profit margin. If it cost you ten grand to produce, charge 20, because the average rate at that point was a 15% profit margin.

Logan Shinholser
He was like, I’m twice the price as everybody else. But what the clients don’t see online is that when we show up, the whole crew shakes your hand. And when we leave, we saw freak the grass and we pressure wash the driveway and we do all these amazing things. They don’t see that. All they see is when they call me versus somebody else is, you are twice the price. He said, I know that if everybody knew what it looked like to work with us, of all those people that said, you know, I appreciate the Steve, but I can’t justify twice as much money going with you. I’m going to go to the other person. He said, if everybody knew what it looked like to work with us at twice the price, 90% of the people that normally leave would work with us.

Logan Shinholser
Because when you pay the cheapest price, you pay over, you cry over and over again. But when you pay the highest price, you cry one time. So I was like, sure, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I think I’ll figure it out. And what ended up happening was he hired this guy named Tom Reber to coach me one on marketing. And Tom is the guy that is the contractor fight, Aaron Harshaw, is part of the, like, a coach in the group. So this is like old school Tom Reber, where I’m on the phone with him, and he’s like, Logan, this is how you write a blog. This is how you do all this stuff. So he and I kind of working together to figure out this marketing thing, and what we really focused on was three big things.

Logan Shinholser
Blog content, social media, and YouTube videos. And I had taken an imovie class in high school, and I was like, screw it. Like, I’ll try this movie stuff. Like, I kind of like it. It’s fun. It’s a little bit creative. So let me see what I can do here. So what ended up happening was, when it came to these YouTube videos, I just figured, well, if my job is to make sure people know what it looks like to work with him, what better way to do it than video testimonials? So what I started doing, this is the very first one we ever did. I pull out my phone, I hold it up vertically. I mean, there’s no microphone, there’s no anything.

Logan Shinholser
And, I mean, like, it looks like a Guantanamo Bay video where it’s just like, you know, it’s one of those and you can’t hear anything. But that was the start of it all, because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like where you’re like, I’m just trying to figure this video thing out. Clients don’t want to be on video. And as time went on, I learned. So the first one was all about vertical video. Can’t hear anything. And I just said, tell me what it looks like to work with us. And he just went off next. I figured, well, okay, I think it’s supposed to be a little bit more horizontal, because that’s what YouTube wants. Because if you see on this one, you had the black lines, which is not good.

Logan Shinholser
Now, you go horizontal, and we mic’d it up, but in this case, same thing. Just tell me what you’re thinking. And he just goes. And then you start to. As time goes on, the next thing that we learned was, okay, maybe it’s less about the pond and it’s more about the consumer. So let’s get a little bit more of a close up of this guy in DC talking about what it looked like to work with us. And then you keep moving, and now it’s like, well, maybe it’s really not so much about the pond, and really it’s more about the story of the customer. So now we’re talking more and more to the customer. About this stuff. And I remember on this specific interview, this guy, his job, Steve, he is a customer experience officer.

Logan Shinholser
So what he does is he goes into businesses and he looks and sees how are you, like, interacting with clients and, like, what’s working well and things like that. So I was like, this guy is going to be a home run testimonial. And I remember at the end of it was first was very boring because it was super long. But he told me, because I’m, like, walking back and forth behind the camera, because I’m, like, nervous, you know, interviewing this. This Rockstar CXO guy, he was like, yeah, Logan, like, stop moving. He’s like, the whole time, if you go back and watch the film, when I did it, and this is what happened, his eyes are like this the whole time. So that was another learning lesson of, like, okay, when I’m there and I hit go, I’m not moving. I’m not going anywhere.

Logan Shinholser
From there, the next piece is, we start to add in more and more what’s called b roll. But it’s like, as he’s saying, oh, yeah. The crew came out. They snapped together these blocks. We’re actually now showing the crew doing it. And then eventually, we got to the point place where it’s all interactive. It’s the client talking about it. It’s the customer talk, the pond company talking about a pair of ponds. And we have the customer in it. We show the crew building it. So we go over the course of a few years from vertical Guantanamo Bay all the way up to full on stories that have interaction, and it’s showing. Look, we’re not just here to build you a pond and make some money. We’re here to actually interact with you, walk through the space.

Logan Shinholser
Because what we learned was, in the pond world, people get pawns, because typically what happens is they grew up. The parents grew up next to a body of water, and they want their kids to be able to have the same emotion and feeling around fish playing in the water, things like that they got. And because they live in the middle of a city, they can’t do it. So we learned all that, and we realized it’s not so much about the pod. It’s about the feeling that people are getting when they’re working with us to actually get a pawn. And the result from all this was the very first day. My dad would always on this, like, pre job walk through. He would introduce the whole crew. And it used to just be like, all right, you know, crew coming up here.

Logan Shinholser
Here’s the homeowner, Rick. And then everybody shakes Rick’s hand and introduces themselves. And eventually, as we did enough of these videos, we would walk up and he’d be like, all right, Rick, this is Logan. And Rick would go, whoa, I know. That’s Logan and that’s Mike and that’s Nick, and that’s Andrew and that’s TJ. And it was like this revelation of like, wow, these people, they know us. They already know who we are. So by the time that we’re stepping in to their space, they trust us because they’ve seen all of our videos and they know what it looks like to work with us. And when we did this enough, eventually what ended up happening was my dad sold the company in 2020 to his two top guys, Mike andrew. And now he’s off. He lives at the villages in Florida, living it up.

Logan Shinholser
And it was all because we built up this marketing system by just showing what it looked like to work with Premier ponds. So much so that now the crew is, like, the thing. And this company now, I mean, I started their YouTube channel ten years ago, and now they have, like, 165,000, like, YouTube subscribers because, like, I. The current guy came in and just iterated and iterated, and now they’re crushing it. And one of the guys I was talking to, one of the crew members a couple months ago, and the guy was telling me, he was like, yeah, I went to, like, my sister’s, like, high school soccer game. And people in the stands know who I am because they watch the videos as well.

Logan Shinholser
And they have zero attrition in that company because as soon as that guy who gets recognized at his sister’s soccer game leaves the company, he’s no longer able to be that rock star and feel important. So that is where all this video stuff really comes in. Yes, it’s great for customers, but it’s amazing for the team, because when the client is talking about all that stuff, they hear how good of a job that they’re doing. Now, all of this is not random, all right? There’s an actual storytelling formula of how all this stuff works, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. And now the beauty of all this is the story I just told about my dad’s company and me going through all that. It follows this thing to a t. The hero on their problem. This is my dad.

Logan Shinholser
He’s got an amazing pod company. People love him. But the problem is he’s got clients that have no idea what it truly looks like, to work with him. So as a result, they go with the cheaper option. So he says, logan, can you step in the guide and help me out? And I’m like, short. I got this guy, Tom Reber that’s going to help me out. I’ve got a imovie class that I’ve done before. I’m in. I’ll make it happen. The plan was, let’s do the blogs, let’s do YouTube videos. Let’s just show clients what it looks like to work with Premier pawns. So with the journey that is Guantanamo Bay all the way up to beautiful video success is this is how it now looks. We are now showing up and people are saying, I know who the crew is. I’m happy.

Logan Shinholser
I’m good to go. I trust you guys. And it ends up with, he sells the company. So when you storytell and you learn how to really put all the pieces together, the testimonials go from, yeah, hired Jamie. He was great. Loved it. Can’t wait to refer him out to people to, this is what I’m dealing with as a whole. So it truly is a shift in how you present what you do to the market. And the thing here is, I didn’t make this stuff up. Who here has seen Fixer upper? Who here has clients that has seen Fixer upper? Okay, who here hates HGTV? Okay, I just want to get that out of the way. Chip and Joanna Gaines, the way that all their shows work, especially fixer upper, which is one of the top HGTV shows, which is what your clients watch.

Logan Shinholser
They don’t watch it just because they want to see a good before and after they watch it for the story. The way that it works is there’s a couple. The guy just comes back from Iraq, has a leg blown off, and now he’s trying to start a new life with his fiance. And they don’t have the money to do it. But what ends up happening is chip and Joanna Gaines come in and they say, you know what? We’re going to do this. We do this all the time. We’re going to step in, we’re going to help you build the place, we’re going to get everybody together and we’re going to make it look amazing. And then over the course of the actual episode, they’re showing the project being done.

Logan Shinholser
And then when it’s all said and done, what ends up happening here is they show how beautiful the house is, but then the guy just comes back from Iraq, gets down on his knee, or you say, they weren’t fiance at this point. Now they’re engaged, everybody’s happy. And at the end of the story, you’re like, man, I want a house that looks just like that. That’s how this stuff works. 48 minutes of that exact thing. And that script that HGTV has is the exact same script that went through. It is no different. You got property brothers, the Scotts. Guess what? One realtor, one contractor, somebody comes in. I can’t afford a brand new house, so I got to figure out, how am I going to live with my new spouse in a piece of crap home?

Logan Shinholser
The guide comes in to Scott, says, hey, you got a realtor, you got a contractor. We got you covered. Here’s what we’re going to do. The plan is we’re going tour a bunch of different houses and give you options. We’re going to say either this one’s really great, but we need to do a ton of work, or this one’s. You know what? It’s pretty much there. We don’t need much work, but it costs a lot more money. Then they show the actual process of it all happening when it’s all said and done. Couple shows, you the actual house, and they’re super happy. And now they get to make all these family memories, and the kids run into the shot and everybody’s happy to put a bow on it. House hunters. Same thing, right?

Logan Shinholser
Not a fixer upper show, but it’s all about the real estate market of, we want these types of homes. You know, he’s a dentist. I’m out of work. But we got a $3 million budget for a house. We’ll pay in cash. Unrealistic. Which is why we don’t like HGTV. However, this is still one of the top shows out there. Like Chip and Joanna Gates have their own network now on Magnolia because of how good they are at storytelling. The work they do is beautiful. Like, we know that. And at the end of it, people want to buy what they have. But the reality of it is the story component is what keeps people coming back over and over. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about how do we actually make this thing happen.

Logan Shinholser
All right, so this is like workshop style, because at the end of all this, if you can nail your ideal client, it is game on. So here’s what I’d like for us to do is right now, we all have our papers. I want you to think about your favorite client you’ve ever worked with. That if you heard me on stage talk about duplicating your favorite client. I want you to think who they are right now and what most people do when they first hear about this, they go, oh, it’s somebody like this. I don’t want to like this. I want a specific person because you got to know their name. So right now, if we want to talk about the hero and their problem, because at the end of all this, we’re going to put it all together.

Logan Shinholser
We want to know their name because this makes it more personal. We want to know the location. And the reason that we want to talk about the location in this testimonial is it needs to feel more personalized. It needs to feel closer to home. If they’re, you know, if I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and there’s a house fire in Dallas, Texas, I’m not really going to stop and watch the news. But if I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they say there’s a house fire in Charlotte, North Carolina, I’m going to stop and watch because it feels closer to home for me, and that’s what I want to do. So we want to have the client say, this is who I am, and this is where I’m located. So people go, oh, that’s my neighbor right there.

Logan Shinholser
Next piece is the problem they want fixed. Now, this is gonna be what we call the surface level problem. And let’s say we’re just like, right now. And I’m gonna use me as an example because my wife and I are actually currently adding a bathroom to our nursery. We’re about to have our first kid, and we don’t want to walk up and down the stairs, and we also don’t want the baby to eventually have to share a bathroom with mom and dad. So we’re adding a bathroom to the nursery. So we talk about what’s the problem that we want fixed. And the problem is we have to walk up and down the stairs to give this baby a bath as soon as it’s born.

Logan Shinholser
And the frustration here and why it’s a problem, which is in the final piece of the here on their problem is, what is the downside here? It’s potentially dangerous. It’s exhausting. We’re going to have to do this all the time. So essentially what you’ve just done is we have who the client is, where they’re located, what is the problem they’re currently dealing with? And that could be as simple as their kitchen’s outdated, their bathroom leaks, their deck has so many splinters on it that it’s dangerous, but you want to identify the problem. The wrong way to do it is they wanted a bathroom. That’s a positive, which is fine, but we want the negative here. What is wrong right now? Because nobody wakes up and drops $150,000 on a kitchen because they just wanted a new kitchen.

Logan Shinholser
They do it because there’s an issue as a whole. And then we want to talk about why it’s a problem. So in my case, if you have the Shinholser family located in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we have a new baby coming in, and we have a nursery that doesn’t actually have a bathtub upstairs, and my wife and I, we don’t want to walk up and down the stairs all the time to give this kid a bath because it’s potentially dangerous. And at the same time, eventually, we don’t want to have to share a bathroom upstairs because we only have one other bathroom upstairs with our kid. We want our own private time. That is where you start, and that is where every single HGTV show starts as well. The next piece is. Let’s enter the guide.

Logan Shinholser
So now, with that same client that you had in your mind, this is where you come in. All right, we all want to be the hero, the savior of the day, things like that. But in reality, this is more of their story, not yours. So the first thing we want to do is, how do they find you? So think right now, how did that person find you and write that down? And the reason that how do they find you is important, is by telling people, this is how were found. They are more likely to follow in those same footsteps. So, for example, if it’s they found me on Google, then the client’s like, oh, they’ve done my homework for me. I don’t need to go on Google. They’ve already got me covered. I’m good.

Logan Shinholser
Or they found us through a referral, which is great, because then it shows that you do good enough work that people are referring you out. Or maybe it’s a past customer. That’s even better. Yeah, we did a bathroom for them, and now we’re coming back to the kitchen. So, essentially, we’re trying to replicate and show this is how they came in, because, again, it’s the journey of it all. And then why they trusted you. What did they like about you? Because just because they found you doesn’t actually mean that they want to hire you. But there’s got to be some reason that they trusted you. And that could be. Yeah, we had great reviews and they absolutely love those. Or we did this thing called a design process that was awesome.

Logan Shinholser
And we trusted, you know, they trusted us so much during it because we’re really interactive that they wanted to move forward with the project with us. So that is how we want this next step to go where it’s how did they find you and why do they trust you at HGTV? That’s a pretty easy one. They found you online and they trust you because you’re chipping. Join the games. Who wouldn’t? You have an entire network named after you. All right, in my case, how do we fund Google? We went on Google, look at a bunch of different remodeling companies around the area, and we end up trusting them because we actually had a prior relationship with the company. So I just said, screw it. There’s nothing else out there that’s better than this.

Logan Shinholser
I’m going to go right back to them, but I’m still going to bring all that up because this is still part of the journey. Third step is a simple one. The plan, the solution to their problem. Now, this part right here is the tricky part between this, the plan, and the journey, which comes in right afterwards. The plan here is a very simple one sentence, if you will, statement of how did you solve their problem? In my case, we didn’t want to walk up and down the stairs to give a baby a bath. So the plan was we are going to add a bathroom to the nursery. It is that easy. So it’s easy for people to understand what you’re actually talking about here. So it’s like, oh, problem, don’t want to walk them down the stairs. Solution, we add a bathroom.

Logan Shinholser
So right now, think about your favorite client. Write that down in every single HGTV show. It’s going to be something along the lines of, we’re going to remodel this house so they get to live in it. It’s super simple, but it’s just like, you know very easily what’s going to happen next. And don’t worry, we’re going to put all this together next. The journey. This is the fun part that you guys all love. This is when every contractor is like, I’m doing video. Like, what do you do for video? They’re like 3 hours of drone footage. Like, it’s a kitchen. How you doing that? The journey is there simply to show transparency. It’s not to show off the foundation and all these things that the contracting world loves. Think about in HGTV. The transformation is all the fun stuff.

Logan Shinholser
It’s actually showing, putting up the crown molding and actually doing some of the demo and swinging the hammer and all the fun stuff that. It’s almost as if you need to appeal to a three year old boy. You got the big machinery, you got the solar system, like the things that little kids love. That’s what you kind of want to show on the journey piece of it, right? Appeal to that child because they like that stuff. Your clients like that stuff. Cause that’s the fun parts. So now with the journey, the process of implementation. My rule of thumb here, four steps, max. That’s it. So in my case, it’s going to be step one, to add this bathroom. It’s a design. Step two, demo. Step three, add in all the fixtures. Step four, finish it out. It’s super easy.

Logan Shinholser
Now, if you want to extend how long the video is, you can extend this part. And the reason I say for is because as I’ve done this for years and years, the beginning part of who’s the hero? You know, who’s the client in the problem. It’s always like, yeah, shouldn’t host our family. Charlotte. Yeah, I didn’t have a bathroom. And then once we get to this part, it’s like, oh, I got a whole dossier of the entire thing. And it’s like, we don’t want a scope of work. We just want the basic, Max, four steps of what do we do? Just enough for people to see that, like, you didn’t wing it and you know what you’re doing. And there’s like an actual process here. So now that we have the basic journey laid out, four steps, Mac.

Logan Shinholser
And if you guys do design, build, who here is design build? Step one is always design. The reason you always want to have design in there is it now reinforces the idea of design. So now they know this is part of the process every single time. How many times have you all seen the chip and Joanna Gaines show and they didn’t start off with a design? Never. So now if you’re watching Chip and Joe and the Gaines and you’re thinking, I want to go hire them to do my kitchen, are you thinking there’s even a world that you’re not going to get a design? No way. That’s what we wanted. We went to reinforce how all this stuff works, how your solution fixes the problem. Now, this is the surface level solution.

Logan Shinholser
And when I say surface level, this is like, when you think back to the motive that Aaron Harshaw was talking about, Clyde calls you up, hey, I want to get my kitchen remodeled. What’s going on? Yeah, kind of dated, and we just don’t love it. That’s your surface level problem. That’s. They want to remodel the kitchen because it’s dated. So that’s all we want to focus on here, which is just, in my case, how the solution fixes the problem. They now have a bathroom and don’t have to walk up and down the stairs every time they want to give the kid a bath. So in your case, think about that with your favorite client. If you did a kitchen, did you bring it up to 2024? And now it’s functionally sound. If you did, you know, remodel their deck.

Logan Shinholser
Did they now have a deck that doesn’t have splinters all over the place? If it’s a bathroom, hey, we now have a bathroom that doesn’t have grandma’s pink tile from the seventies and doesn’t leak anymore. Essentially, you’re just trying to put a nice little bow on the actual project that you did. Again, we’re slowly closing the loop. We’re starting off surface level on the problem, going deep on the problem, and now it’s almost like a u, where now we’re going. I’m sorry. It’s like a z, where now we’re coming back up to surface level of the solution. Right before we go to the deeper level solution, which is the transformation, how did the solution that we did fix the why behind their problem, and this is the most important piece of it all. Most people skip this part.

Logan Shinholser
They go, we did the Shinholser house, did the bathrobe. They don’t have to walk them down the stairs. They’re good. But in reality, in my case, the why behind this is now my wife and I. It’s a little bit easier to have our first kid, right? We don’t have to worry about going up and down the stairs. We don’t have to worry about are we going to slip with a kid in our hands? We don’t have to worry about in the future, are we going to have to share a bathroom with our kids? That sounds like a pain in the butt. So we want to show how good life is right now because of the solution. So in the kitchens example, most people will get kitchens redone. Again, they don’t just love kitchens, which is why they’re dropping all this money.

Logan Shinholser
They want a space for their kids to be able to do homework together, or they want to now finally entertain for Thanksgiving. But because they’ve always had a segmented kitchen and dining room, they were unable to do that. So now that it’s open concept, they get to invite everybody over to their new house with their new kitchen to entertain. And that is where Chip and Joanna Gaines crush it. Because at the end of the episode, it’s not just like great house. On to the next one. It’s like the guy drops to his knee and proposes because now they have their dream home for the next 30 years. So the whole story here is really about the consumer and it just masked as a renovation project. Does that make sense to everybody?

Logan Shinholser
So we now finalize it on the transformation and when we want to bring it all together, this is how it would sell. You would go, we’re here. And, you know, let’s just say I’m doing the testimonial right now. I’ve done it so many times, so hopefully it goes well. Hey, we’re the Schittenholser family and we’re here in Charlotte, North Carolina. My wife and I are actually about to have our first kid. So we’re super excited to have the kid. But upstairs in the nursery, there’s no bathroom and we have to walk up and down the stairs to give this kid a bath. And honestly, we don’t want to do that. Plus, in the future, we don’t want to have to share the only bathroom upstairs with our kid. So we ended up going online.

Logan Shinholser
We had to find a remodeling company that we wanted to work with. And we settled on Portico. We liked them because we actually had a priority relationship with them. And on top of that, like, they talked all about, like, how their process was very solid and they walked through everything transparently. We just felt like they were the company for us. So what we did was we started off with a design as a whole, and then we moved right from design. They then came in, they demoed it. It took them a couple of days, it seems like, to do that. And then next thing you know, they went through some rough and plumbing, they added the final fixtures, painted the whole thing, and now the whole place looks awesome.

Logan Shinholser
And now my wife and I, we don’t have to deal with, you know, walking up and down the stairs anymore. We don’t have to worry about what the future is going to look like. And now we actually get a home that we’re proud of to have this baby come in. So when friends and family come over to see this kid, like, everything is situated right there in this nice new nursery. And now we’re really starting phase two of our lives. Compare that to a normal testimonial. Yeah, we hired portico. They came in, they did a bathroom for us. It was awesome. I would recommend them to anybody. It’s great. Yes, sir. So are you coaching the client prior to the video to go through all. I mean, you can do it very naturally. Yes.

Logan Shinholser
But for a client to go through these six or seven steps, it’s hard. Right. To super challenging. And I used to try to do that where I’m like, hey, could you say something like this? And I would riff for like five minutes. And they’re like, I can nail the name part. So what we now do is it’s all Q and a. You go step by step. Now we’re going to go through how to do a testimonial here, but knowing this story is super important, so you’re able to recite it. What Aaron Harshaw talked about was, yeah, can I go third party and say, can I. Can I tell you about another customer of ours that dealt with the same thing? If you’re able to recite this thing, then people are like, okay, cool, got it.

Logan Shinholser
So when you do the video, actual testimonial itself, it’s all open. Q and a. Hey, do me a favor. Could you start off with your name and we’re located. Yeah, Logan, you know where the Shinholser family were located? Here in Charlotte, North Carolina. Perfect. What was the problem you were dealing with upstairs? Well, this. So that’s how it’s all done. Cause you’re right, it is a pain to do all this stuff. Yes. What’s your biggest way to overcome the natural objection that people have to be in front of the camera? Like, you obviously don’t mind being in front of the camera. I’m comfortable with it. Most homeowners probably don’t. Or a lot of my customers will be like, oh, you want to put me in front of the camera? First big thing is one, you set it up front.

Logan Shinholser
Hey, at the end of this project, if we crush this thing, would you be willing to do a video testimonial with us? And if they say yes, great. If they say no, that’s okay. You don’t need every single customer to do this. But if you do it up front now, what’ll happen is they’re getting prepped, they’re watching what’s happening, they’re a little bit more attentive, and they know they got to be on camera afterwards. So they’re usually a little bit nicer during the process as well. So the other side of it is with us, like we actually fly all over the country to do these things because it is hard. The biggest issue that I see when people try to do it on their own and they can do it is how comfortable they naturally in camera themselves.

Logan Shinholser
Because if you are uncomfortable on camera, that’s okay. Everybody is when they first start. But if you’re uncomfortable and you’re behind the camera, they’re going to be uncomfortable in front of the camera as well. So half our job is to make the clients feel at ease. So if I go out there, I’m like sitting back and like a lazy boy, just like directing.

Logan Shinholser
What kind of equipment do you recommend for audio?

Logan Shinholser
If you come back to our booth afterwards, I can walk you through the whole equipment list. Is that cool? Yes.

Logan Shinholser
How long would you say or recommend a video?

Logan Shinholser
Should be three to four minutes. We’re not doing a 48 minutes.

Logan Shinholser
You wouldn’t say to do any under like minute 1 minute videos. You think it should be longer?

Logan Shinholser
I would go a little bit, like for these, there’s different usage of videos. So you could take exactly what I just talked about and make a whole 48 minutes. HGTV, you could do it in 60 seconds. It all depends on the, like for the length is if you’re going to show it to a consumer, where are they in the journey? If they have no goal of like, ever doing a remodel project with you to say, here’s a five minute video, it could be really entertaining. They probably won’t watch it, but if it’s like a TikTok where it’s like 60 seconds more likely.

Logan Shinholser
But you said two to four minutes.

Logan Shinholser
I do, yeah, three to five, something like that.

Logan Shinholser
How long do you think you just talked for?

Logan Shinholser
34 minutes. What do you mean? Like during that testimonial? Yeah. Oh, 90 seconds. You were super.

Logan Shinholser
But you’re confident in moving quick and then there was no b roll.

Logan Shinholser
There’s. Yeah, so, and what I’ll do at the end of all this, if you all want to, like, I can show you examples, but I’m just riffing quickly to go, let me show you, like, the points. But then what would happen is like you go, hey, we’re the Shinholser family and we’re in Charlotte. Stop. Charlotte skyline. Yeah. So it’s like, it’s all about cadence and tonality and stuff like that. So we build custom homes.

Logan Shinholser
So I thought I just started doing social media, but going like every day as much as you can for especially implementation, because that’s what’s really interesting to people. Like seeing the people working on the framing, seeing people work, you know, up in the rafters, in the corners of their house. So just going every day and taking lives, like, taking footage, even if you don’t have time to go ten minutes through and take those videos, because when you’re like, oh, I need content, bam, make a voiceover.

Logan Shinholser
So with. So she just brought. Wait, what’s your name? Sorry, I’m saying Chris. All right, Logan. Nice to meet you. So what she brought up was, I go there to the job site. I take photos and videos of the crew doing things that is fantastic for social. These longer videos, they’re not going to do as well on social media because they’re four to five minutes. And most people, when you go on social media, you’re there to be entertained. You want to have some fun, you want to giggle up some memes. You want to see a 62nd video, and that’s about it, and then move on with your day. These are really good for conversion in the natural style, which is horizontal. It is three to five minutes.

Logan Shinholser
It’s really more of somebody if they’re, like, starting to, like, you know, get into your process and into your world, these do really well. Now with this whole idea of storytelling, this truly, like, you guys are here to learn about video testimonials. Truthfully, like we. It’s like the chocolate cover carrot. You want the chocolate, but the carrots. The thing that you actually need, the storytelling component is everything. Every single person at my company goes through storytelling training because you got to know how to do it. When you nail this stuff down, everything then becomes a story.

Logan Shinholser
So when it comes to social media, let’s say social media captions and ads, most people, when they put up a before and after photo of, let’s say, a new kitchen, they then say, I just did this kitchen in Katy, Texas, if you want one, here’s my phone number. Call me. And what you’re doing is you’re just saying, look, I’m here to sell you some stuff people wanna buy, but they don’t wanna get sold to. So instead you go, hey, there was this Smith family and KDTex. Their kitchen was super outdated. And then now you’re going through the whole script all over again. And when we do testing of a and b, testing to see what works, what doesn’t work.

Logan Shinholser
When you do the story, more engagement, more views on the actual post because of the engagement, you actually get a lot more people to stop and read it and go through it compared to simply just got it. I can buy some stuff from them if I want it also now tells the whole story here, because in one case, and it’s like the pond world’s super big on this, where it’s like, just built this pod. Call me if you want one. Versus like, here’s why the family did it. They wanted to spend time on their patio with their young kids next to something that’s not just a patch of grass. And it goes from here’s upon buy it to here’s the whole backstory. Now, you realize in that photo, there’s actually an entire family behind the scenes doing all this stuff.

Logan Shinholser
So social media, you want to infuse this into it. Website copy project walkthroughs, essentially on. Yes.

Logan Shinholser
And they’re like, oh, that’s just like my house.

Logan Shinholser
Yes, yes. So essentially what she just said was, it allows them to connect. The people reading it put themselves in the shoes of your consumer. And they go, well, I got a young family. That’s me. They went to Google. They looked around. I don’t need to google. I’m just going to hire them because they did the hard work for me. So it’s the ability to put themselves in the shoes of your favorite customer you’ve already had on the website. It’s the same thing and everything we’re talking about here. When Aaron went through the motive, I’m glad they actually put me after him because this goes really well. The motive is not about, yeah, I can do your kitchen. Got it. Done. It’s like, why? What do you want? Like, let’s just talk functionally for a second.

Logan Shinholser
You walk in your kitchen, what do you really want this thing to feel like? Got it. Okay, so as you’re saying that, do you envision, like, your kids doing homework there? Okay, cool. Have you thought about, like, a breakfast bar? Got it. So the whole time you’re just trying to figure out how people want to live in their space. It’s the same thing here. So when you’re on the website, you want to talk about those things. I’m like, we’re not here just to build you a deck. We’re here to give you a space to entertain for 4 July that you finally want, or an extension of your home if you want to have outdoor dinner time together. This is how you do it with a deck. So you go from the deck builder, which is a commodity, more so into.

Logan Shinholser
We’re here to transform the dynamic of your family. And the last thing, sales calls, same thing. It’s what Aaron talked about, which is all the third party stuff. Client calls up portico and says, yeah, I want to add a bathroom to the nursery. Oh, 130 grand. That’s a lot of money. Hey, it is a lot of money. Can I share with you a quick story of another client that actually was in, like, a very similar position? Great. The Shinholser family over in, like, Dilworth. Do you know the Shinholsers by way? No. Okay, that’s cool. Over in Dilworth, they dealt with the same thing. It was actually their first kid, and they were saying they didn’t want to walk up and down the stairs. And essentially, what is happening here is, by you storytelling on somebody else.

Logan Shinholser
You’re calling out all the things that they’re currently thinking of, and they’re like, yep, I don’t want to walk up and down the stairs. Yep, that could be dangerous. Yep. But essentially, what you’re doing is instead of you feeling like you’re cornering them and being like, whoa, what are you gonna do if you slip on the stairs with your baby? Like, holy shit. Like, back off, man. Like, I’m just trying to get the bathroom here. But by going third party, it’s a little bit different. Yes. Can you explain third party examples? Sales calls? So that’s what this is. So if somebody hits you with an objection, you get to say, can I give you a story or an example of somebody else that was in a similar situation as you, and then you go through the whole story.

Logan Shinholser
So, feel.

Logan Shinholser
Felt.

Logan Shinholser
Found.

Logan Shinholser
Say it again. Feel. Felt.

Logan Shinholser
Found.

Logan Shinholser
Yes. Feel. Felt. Found. I understand how you feel. I felt this way before.

Logan Shinholser
What I found is that same concept.

Logan Shinholser
Same concept, but now it’s somebody else, and it adds, like, street cred to the whole thing. Yeah. The shinholser’s over in Dilworth. They went through the same struggle, and this is how it all turned out. And now they have a beautiful kid, and they don’t have to walk up and down the stairs, and they love it. And the person either goes, that’s me, all right, I’m in. Or they go, you know, I appreciate it, but, like, I’m good. I’ll get the exercise. And it’s up to them, and that’s totally cool. But if you can nail this storytelling stuff across the board, that is really when all this gets fun.

Logan Shinholser
Because then it takes you from this transactional contracting company of, hey, you give us money, we give you a new kitchen, to transformational, which is all about, hey, when you come to us, we really want to make your space feel like your space. We want to give you that kitchen that you’re proud of, and it shows off all the hard work that you’ve done over your careers because you can afford something like this and your kids are there, and just, like, you’re essentially building up this space for these memories for everybody. That is the goal here with storytelling.

Logan Shinholser
So same thing. If you’re doing shorts on, like, TikTok or whatever, and you’re just shooting short videos and you’re on the job site, you should be talking about the family. You should be talking about their process.

Logan Shinholser
Yes.

Logan Shinholser
Stuff’s happening behind you.

Logan Shinholser
Yes. That’s. It’s all narrative. It’s all narrative.

Logan Shinholser
Not just, hey, we’re here putting in this kitchen.

Logan Shinholser
Whatever. Yeah. You want to walk through it. Yes.

Logan Shinholser
Do you have, like, any legal documents.

Logan Shinholser
That you get clients to sign off on?

Logan Shinholser
Or is it, okay, we do. I know some people build that into their contracts as well, of like, hey, when we come out there and do this, like, we’re like, we’re gonna take photos. I have heard some people that are like. Like, well, they legally have to let me take photos. And then at that point, it’s like, yeah, but if the client’s pissed off, like, they’re probably not gonna refer you. Yeah. So just, like, be mindful of that. But when we go out and we do testimonials, we just have them sign a quick waiver that just says, like, hey, in case you were wondering, we’re gonna put you on camera.

Logan Shinholser
So you mentioned when you did this for premiere pools, a premier pause. They did it on YouTube. Where do you suggest, like, do you still suggest putting testimonials on YouTube? Do you suggest embedding on your website? What’s the.

Logan Shinholser
Because the thing here. And the question was, where do you then put it? How do you leverage it? Well, the reality is you want it everywhere. Because if they’re just testimonials. Yes, it’s a testimonial. It’s really a story, because as you’re walking through it now, it’s something that’s, like, almost like a mini four minute episode of this project. And when done correctly, it’s now, like a show that people want to tune into. So it’s great on YouTube if you wouldn’t want to. And that’s what we do, is we chop it up and put it into a 62nd version for social. You put on social website. So, like, we have, like, every client that we build a website and do video for, we will infuse them together. 82% of Internet traffic last year was video consumption.

Logan Shinholser
So people are getting used to it more and more. So we want to show this is how we’re different as a company. So when you come into the website, it’s got video as the background that’s showing beautiful homes with them, working with a client, things like that. So it’s all the storytelling components of it. What do you mean by that?

Logan Shinholser
So let’s say somebody goes and does the five star review, and they’ve also done your testimonial. Right now you can just add their pictures, but you can’t add video.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Rumblings that Google is looking at doing where they’ll allow.

Logan Shinholser
So you can add video now to your Google Business profile. You were able to do before to a certain extent, but now I don’t know if clients can do it in their testimonials, but I would be shocked if in the next year that’s not changed to allowing it, because that would.

Logan Shinholser
Be good if they’ve got it where you can have them go do that and tag that video.

Logan Shinholser
Yes. Again, all this stuff, like, when you’re going through it, start off a little bit smaller. This is hard. Like, my journey of doing this went from like that to like, now we have a whole video team that does it. But the first piece here is nailing your ideal client. And on top of all this whole presentation. Follow that exact formula. If you get this thing down, it makes it much easier to really just follow a flow the same way that, you know, you go in, you do the design, you do the demo, you know, then you got it all out, then you go boom, boom. And when you’re all said and done, redoing a kitchen is pretty much 80% the same every single time, different features. You’re knocking down a wall. You’re not knocking down a wall, but it becomes very formulaic.

Logan Shinholser
And when you get it dialed into this point, it’s super easy, once you get there, to actually be able to pull this thing through. So here’s my ass. I want to hear what y’all are about. Like, we have a sick event coming up next week. We have a guy named Chris Voss that’s coming and speaking. It’s all virtual event. On the back of your piece of paper, you got a QR code. It’s a dollar. Usually dollar 125 is a dollar. It. We have a bunch of speakers coming in that’ll be really good. But the whole thing is, you all have a story. You have something very cool. And I know in entrepreneurship, because I’m one as well, half of why you started was freedom. And the other half, now that you get into it, is you almost want acceptance.

Logan Shinholser
You want to tell your story, and you want people to be like, damn, that’s really good. That’s who I want to work with because of all the things they’re doing. And kind of, like, circling back to my dad’s thing, like, the biggest frustration was, we’re doing all this extra stuff. We’re shaking the hands of the homeowners. We’re soft raking the grass. We’re doing all these things. I want to get credit for that, because if we’re going above and beyond and we’re not getting credit for it, that’s like communism. Everybody’s the same, and that’s not what we want. So if you want to fight communism, come back to the booth. Thank you, guys.