Monkey Business Radio

Branding Your New Company

• American Gutter Monkeys, LLC

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Unlock the secrets of strategic branding with us on Monkey Business Radio, where your hosts, Chris Collins and Dennis Siggins, aka Bobby Downspout of Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys, unravel the power of a strong brand. Imagine transforming your small business into a household name just like our friends at Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys. Join us as we explore how aligning your passion with market needs can create an unforgettable company identity that not only stands out but also drives sales and market share.

We start by unpacking the foundational elements of building a brand before launching your business, from choosing the right business aligned with your interests to understanding your target market. Hear about the importance of a memorable company name and how leveraging personal expertise can identify underserved niches. Plus, we highlight Cape Cod Potato Chips as a real-world example of how a clear, simple message can turn a product into a beloved regional staple and show the power of a strong, consistent brand.

Bringing a touch of nostalgia, we reflect on iconic marketing strategies and the timeless value of memorable taglines. Learn how crafting the right message can capture hearts, using examples from Chudder's General Store and classic ad campaigns like Lucky Strike’s "It’s Toasted".

Tune in for an episode packed with insights, inspiration, and a bit of humor, designed to help you master the art of branding and build real wealth through business ownership.

Speaker 1:

Every once in a while someone comes along, shocks the establishment with a new innovation and a tired industry From the movie Moneyball. Here's how Boston Red Sox owner John Henry put it.

Speaker 2:

Really, what it's threatening is their livelihoods, their jobs. It's threatening the way they do things and every time that happens whether it's the government, a way of doing business, or whatever the people who are holding the reins they have their hands on the switch. They go batshit crazy.

Speaker 1:

Hello, I'm Chris Collins, your host. In this podcast. We dive into stories of innovation, resilience and what it takes to shake up an industry. Joining me is my co-host and resident small business expert, dennis Siggins, or, as he's known on the Cape and Islands, bobby Downspout. Dennis, along with his college roommate, andy Brennan, founded the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys and transformed the humble task of gutter cleaning into a thriving, multi-million dollar business that redefined the game. Together, we'll uncover the strategies, lessons and inspirations behind building and growing a successful business. So, whether you're here for business insights, inspiration or just a great story, you're in the right place. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax and welcome to Monkey Business Radio. Welcome to Episode 3, branding your New Company. On today's show, we're diving into branding how it shapes your business, builds trust with your customers and makes you stand out from the competition. As always, dennis Siggins is here with me, or, for those of you on Cape Cod, you may know him as Bobby Downspout of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys. Should I call you Bobby?

Speaker 2:

You can call me Bobby today For this episode.

Speaker 1:

I'd probably call you Bobby.

Speaker 2:

This branding is my favorite topic. It's what we do. It's where I live.

Speaker 1:

And as we talk, about innovation. That's what this show is about taking branding to this level for a gutter company.

Speaker 2:

Well, branding is an oftentimes misused or overused word, especially today. But getting back to the basics, why do you market? Why do you advertise, Chris? I mean, why would you advertise your new company? Oh, got to get some people coming in the door. Sure, you want to increase sales, Right, Increase sales or increase profits, right. If you can only produce 100 widgets a month and you do not have a marketing program, you sell them for $100 a piece. But maybe with a little bit of marketing you could sell them for $120 a piece. So maybe you don't necessarily increase the amount of units you sell or units you produce, but you can produce a higher profit margin. You can also increase market share for future generations of your company. Grow your company, add more jobs. Marketing is a great way to inform your customers of what's going on. There's a lot of reasons why you want to advertise and market your company. But let's face it, there's a million small businesses out there in this country one, two, maybe three-man operations that really don't need to advertise, right, Wouldn't you say?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's quite a few. I mean your mom and pop cupcake shop around the corner. I've never seen them advertised, but the place is packed. Cape Cod Coffee next door no, actually in Worcester where I live, oh gotcha, I've never seen them, but it's packed all the time. So that's sort of a word of mouth. People go by there, drive by there. They have a sign out front.

Speaker 2:

Cod Coffee, right next door to us here in the industrial park. I know the owners. I know a lot of the employees over there. They're doing a stroke of business. I've never heard them with much of a presence out there.

Speaker 1:

I think they're mostly word of smell, because you drive by that place and you can't help but want to go in there and it smells so good.

Speaker 2:

Well, you do. Oftentimes, just in my daily life, I'm at a chamber of commerce meeting or I'm in the supermarket. People bring up the whole marketing process, the whole branding that we do in our companies, and there's a lot of small companies that don't need to advertise the one or two person lawn care company. All they need is their 50, 60, 70 repeat clients and that's basically a relationship-based business. Word of mouth I mean we all have it. Word of mouth is like not advertising at all. It's just organic feedback that spreads through the community.

Speaker 2:

Then you get into seasonal advertising. There are businesses that are seasonal. I mean, let's face it, cape Cod has a lot of restaurants that close in the wintertime. There's an awful lot of seasonality to many different businesses. There's the call to action. I don't know what your thoughts on that are, but the call to action form of marketing is in its most egregious form the auto dealership that says this is the Labor Day weekend special. Come down here and spend your money before this sale is over, because this will never be available ever again. You hear it all the time. Different products and services out there. It's very popular on the web right.

Speaker 1:

Web is all about call to action All the time. You're getting pop-ups and things like that buy now on sale, sure, sure. Before you think better of the idea, right click away, and that's the whole thing. There's a whole thing actually in website marketing is getting that person to click within 30 seconds of actually seeing your ad. That's the whole game.

Speaker 2:

Branding. Branding, in my opinion, is the highest form of marketing. There's no call to action. There's no sense of marketing. There's no call to action, there's no sense of urgency. Branding, to me, is building a culture in the mind and the heart and the soul of your potential target market, so that you're already living in their brain rent-free. And then something happens. Their car breaks down and they say, oh my gosh, I got to call so-and-so. Or mom and pop are sitting around wondering what are they going to do tonight? We're going to go out to dinner. They're going to go to your restaurant because you're already living in their head rent-free. That's branding. Have you ever picked up the phone and called McDonald's?

Speaker 1:

Nope, never called McDonald's. You've probably been there once or twice, right?

Speaker 2:

No, yeah, I mean I don't go much anymore, but no, mcdonald's is so well-branded in our American culture I don't know if that was better back in our younger days or if it's better today, but we all know who McDonald's is, we know where they are, we know how to find them. We don't call them on the phone, just go there. There's no word of mouth of these, right? Yeah, branding is the highest form of marketing. That's, that's where it's at. I want to. I want to talk about cape cod potato chips. Cape cod potato chips has just transcended our culture. They sell great on cape cod. They sell great over the bridge throughout all of New England and other parts of the country. What is up with Cape Cod potato chips?

Speaker 2:

When I was in college, high school and college, my dad was a salesman his whole life and he met Steve Bernard out on the golf course out at Dennis Pines or Dennis Highlands one or the other. He met Steve Bernard, who was a young man who had just come up with an idea for a potato chip company. And he met Steve Bernard, who was a young man who had just come up with an idea for a potato chip company, and my dad was in the packaging business. So he and Steve became fast friends and this little three-person operation called Cape Cod Potato Chips was just starting to gain momentum. Over the years, cape Cod Potato Chips would become my dad's largest account and Steve Bernard was just legendary in my household. As a college student I watched this guy take an idea and take it to such a high level that it was about 1984, anheuser-busch bought the company Do you remember any ads for Cape Cod?

Speaker 1:

I don't ever remember any ads for cape cod. No chips. I always knew they. Just those were the chips to grab. Now the packaging was pretty recently.

Speaker 2:

There is an ad on tv that I see oh really, but let's, let's just take rico flashback and take a drive back to 1984.

Speaker 2:

Cape cod potato chips wasn't advertised. They didn't need it because what was occurring there was angelo's Supermarkets. Back then there was 11 of them, I think, on Cape Cod. There was no Stop and Shop, no Shaw's, none of that. There was Angelo's Supermarket and Ring Brothers. Steve Bernard had contacts here on Cape Cod, where he grew up, that Angelo's Supermarkets carried his potato chips. I remember the original logo. It wasn't all that attractive and when Steve and my dad met my dad brought their ideas back to the art department for the company that he represented and they came up with that beautiful lighthouse logo that you see today and then the folks at Angelo's were putting it out on the shelves.

Speaker 2:

People come to Cape Cod from all over the country to go on vacation and I remember Cape Cod potato chips. Before they were in the industrial park where they are now. They were still a growing company but they weren't quite there yet. But Steve Bernard used to tell us how he's getting calls from different parts of the Northeast and other parts of the country because business executives had come to Cape Cod. And what's the first thing you do when you go on vacation? You go shopping to buy some snacks and foods, because you're going to the beach and these Cape Cod potato chips were flying off the shelves and they are better than any other potato chip. It's the only kind that we eat. Come over to my house and open the cabinet. That's all we have. We don't have any other potato chip. And business executives were going home with the memory of Cape Cod potato chips and they were sending back orders to Cape Cod potato chips. I am so-and-so. I was vacationing on Cape Cod and they were requesting a few dozen cases for their store. It was self-marketing.

Speaker 2:

The company was bought by Anheuser-Busch back in about 1984. I have an idea as to what the dollar amount is, but I'm not going to say because I don't know for 100%. Sure, at the time my dad had Cape Cod potato chips as a customer. He now got the whole line of Eagle snacks which was owned by Anheuser-Busch. The experiment failed. Anheuser-busch was not able to brand the snack line the way they wanted and Steve Bernard bought the company back for pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 2:

But the reason I bring that up Cape Cod Potato Chips is one of those rare, rare companies that was able to cut a big slice out of the snack food pie without spending a significant amount of money on marketing and branding dollars. By the way, if you're a business owner, that's not going to happen to you, it's not going to happen to me. That was just amazing. An amazing product, an amazing process that Steve Bernard created. The guy's a genius. He was a genius.

Speaker 2:

Tragically, he passed away. I believe it was about 09 of. I believe it was pancreatic cancer. It was very, very sad. My parents were really devastated when it happened. But, steve, your spirit lives on buddy. I had a few mentors long before we used the term mentors. Steve Bernard never knew it, boy. I studied him, I followed everything he did. I made notes back then.

Speaker 2:

But let's get back to branding.

Speaker 2:

It's a common word today, this branding.

Speaker 2:

A lot of clients of ours and a lot of young businessmen and businesswomen and startups often will talk to me about their brand and they really haven't launched the company yet. I explain to them you don't have a brand yet. Until you hit X or some fraction of X, you really don't have a brand. You might have a product, you might have a service, you might have an idea, but branding is when you establish your brand, your company name, your image and you market that brand in your location. In your region, the old cowboys used to take a branding iron and they used to brand their cattle, so it was embedded in the hip of the cow or the bull. That this is my brand is on this cow and this belongs to me. That's branding. You want your brand, you want your company name to be branded on their brain as though you implanted it there. You want to be living rent-free in the minds of your target market 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that when they need your product, they call you.

Speaker 1:

On top of that, yeah, things work better with your brand as well. Then the word of mouth, the seasonal ads, the call to actions all have much more power. Having some sort of personal connection enhances your ad. So people just don't throw them out right away because they see that it's an advertisement. They see that it's your brand. So people just don't throw them out right away because they see that it's an advertisement. They see that it's your brand. They trust your brand. I'm going to listen to that. You have seven seconds, I think. When people hear an ad, I think there is seven seconds to evaluate your brand. So you only have seven seconds in their mind. So if it's embedded in your brain, if it's burned in your brain, you're much more likely to associate you know, have a positive outcome from that experience than otherwise.

Speaker 2:

Well, one of the things I've always subscribed to is the more times you touch your customer or potential customer, the better the chance you have of them becoming a customer. As you know, we rely heavily on radio advertising for the Cape Cod gutter monkeys, but we also, I think we put 15 or 16 trucks a day out on the road. On any given day in our region, in its relationship to the city of boston, a well-logoed truck could garner between a thousand and five thousand views. Yeah, so those are great numbers. If the first time somebody hears of my companies on the radio, the second time might be when they see the truck drive by. The third time could be they're passing one of our job sites and they might see a lawn sign. Or maybe their neighbor might say, hey, I just used the Cape Cod gutter monkeys to install my new gutters.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that's three or four times now that you've touched that customer and as that continues to grow out there, that's what causes growth and that's why we want to spend our marketing dollars wisely. We want to use our marketing to create a brand, plain and simple. So, chris, you're a young future business owner. How do we choose? Our product, our service, our company, our widget. What are we looking for? You haven't put any money into it, you haven't spent any advertising. Where do we go? Where?

Speaker 1:

do we go? So, typically, I'd start with something that interests me. I'd want to get in a business that I have some passion for, some sort of you know, yeah, me. I'd want to get in a business that I have some passion for some sort of you know, yeah, yeah. So that's probably where I'd start also interest me? What are my skills?

Speaker 2:

yes, you've got to have an area of your expertise, exactly exactly. You got to look at the need for the product, right, you know is it, is it necessary, is it already out there, or is it something that you got to create a whole new image because it doesn't exist? And then course, how big is the need for it? What's the potential size of this product or service or widget that you're going to create? And then we get to the marketing, identifying your target market, the age, the income level, regional locations, the sex. Does your target market live in the suburbs? Are they in the city? Are they out in the rural areas, or do you not even have to consider that? Is it something that you're going to sell virtually? Are you going to sell it online? Is it available through your website?

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of considerations and as you're thinking about these, you've got to consider your target market, who's going to buy your product or service, and there's a difference between who uses your service and who purchases your service. I know one time I had a small business on the side cleaning carpet and upholstery and cleaning offices, and one of the things that was very obvious is that the office manager determined what services were used for that office, not the president of the company, not the owner of the company, but the office manager, and back in the 1980s that was usually a woman in her 30s. So I should be branding to the woman in her 30s, not the business executive in his 50s, because he doesn't make those decisions. So knowing who your target market is is one thing, but knowing who is the purchaser versus the end user, that's another thing. I mean shaving cream back in the 1960s. I can't remember the company, but it came to the industry, came to be known in the industry that men don't do the shopping and there were a lot of marketing programs for shaving cream and shaving razors and needs like that, that the TV commercials were geared towards men. And then one of the shaving cream companies stumbled upon this genius of an idea that women do almost all the shopping and it they proved to be accurate. It changed the way the industry marketed back then.

Speaker 2:

Um, parents buy for their kids. Yeah right, do you market the skateboard to a risk-taking 10 or 12 year old? His parents aren't going to buy that, you know. You market it. This is the safest skateboard on the market because you know your kid's going to get a skateboard one way or the other, you want to buy him the safest one. So you know, where do you market that, that skateboard?

Speaker 1:

So let's talk a little bit about Cape Cod gutter monkeys in respect to some of these things. Obviously, you probably weren't born a gutter monkey. We talked about this a little bit before in the previous podcast. But how did you determine that that was what it was going to be? That's what you're going to throw your passion behind.

Speaker 2:

You know I've always been in the trades, in particular the roofing trades. I was about 50 when my wife and I sold the company. We moved to Cape Cod. I was a little too young to retire. I just started doing odd jobs on the side. I didn't want to build a company again. I didn't want to build a brand all over again. I'd done that a couple of times it was.

Speaker 2:

One thing I found out was that gutter cleaning on Cape Cod is an incredibly underserved market. My college roommate, andy, and I decided to go into business together. We determined that we wanted to go big. We didn't want to just be a couple of guys cleaning gutters, that we wanted to build a real good company. And that's what we did.

Speaker 2:

I mean when you're creating a name. I think it's the most important step in that process. So you know the name has to suit the product. It has to satisfy your target market. A good brandable name should also, or could also, serve your region. So if you look at a name like Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys, it tells you a couple of things. Where we are, it's Cape Cod. What we do gutters Capecodguttermonkeyscom is our website. So there's a lot of stuff built into that name and, believe me, it took us a little time to choose that name. We had a lot of other names we were looking at, but this one, I think it filled the bill. What were some of the ones you tossed out out? Gutter guys, gutter buddies, uh, stuff like that. You know two guys cleaning gutters? Uh, we came up with a lot of gutter monkeys just rings. It's first of all, it's alliterative. Uh, cape cod is alliterative and gutter monkeys is alliterative I mean it just works yeah, off the tongue.

Speaker 2:

Monkeys are cute. The general, the general public has a cute image of monkeys um.

Speaker 1:

Imagine them hanging off your gutters swinging, swinging hand over hand just take the name great name, 1-800-gut-junk.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, tells you what they do junk, right. Their phone number is their company name, right, and I'm sure it's probably 1-800-GUT-JUNKcom. I mean, there's so much built into 1-800-GUT-JUNK, you know, webuyuglyhousescom Great name. Tells you everything you need to know. So, yeah, that's basically what we did. You know, I've studied other business models, as I mentioned earlier. Yeah, I watched closely the development and the growth of Cape Cod potato chips and I've been taking notes on that my whole adult life. The duck boats up in Boston my brother-in-law used to drive for them Great company, really cool. I crawled in behind the scenes up there and I devoured their website. I looked at their culture and their model. They're doing great things up there. And then our friends Elliot and Barry from Jordan's Furniture.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Remember, we grew up with those guys.

Speaker 2:

What a great, great gimmick, if you will Right, they took furniture and bedding to the level it is today. And then everyone else followed. Yeah, they were the leaders, yeah, so yeah, that basically was the foundation of the Goddard Monkeys. I mean, look, I was 54 when we started the Goddard Monkeys. I had a full lifetime of roofing experience. I had a full lifetime in the trades. I had 30 years of self of well, more than that, 35 years of self-employment and marketing. So I had a big advantage starting out anyway. And plus, my kids were grown. Yeah, I didn't have, I didn't have to go to little league games, right, I didn't have to go to high school track meets and wrestling matches, so I could really focus on the company. And you know, getting back to your question, the company name, that's how it came out.

Speaker 1:

And then you also do other things. So your demographics here, understanding your demographics, understanding your market. Cape Cod's kind of an unusual place, right Very unique.

Speaker 1:

With the demographics are probably 55 and older being a higher percentage in general. Sure, some are owning homes, some owning second homes, especially homes you don't want to take care of, you're not going to be around, you need someone to take care of it. There you go, and, of course, there is a lot of wealth on the Cape. So you've got a lot of good. You know demographics working in your favor, absolutely Did you take that into consideration. You must have considered that, or must have been Ever since I was a kid.

Speaker 2:

My parents bought their or built their first Cape house when I was a kid and I had a lawn cutting business and a pretty serious lawn cutting business in my teen years and we'd come down to the Cape because my parents were always flipping houses and buying houses and so we were always down here on the weekends working on stuff and I remember looking around thinking this is very different from Framingham where I grew up. There's an older population who has a lot of disposable income. There's a whole lot of second homes, vacation homes, investment properties and, yeah, investment property owners have money and they need to maintain their property. They understand that. They just don't have the time to do it.

Speaker 1:

Cape Cod is a natural hotbed for home services, plain and simple yeah, only 80% of houses are occupied on the Cape full-time, year-round. Yeah, so 20%, that doesn't sound like a big number. That's a big number compared to other areas, and your median age is 55. So you've got 55-year-olds. Shouldn't be up on gutters in the first place, up on ladders in the first place. You know they've got a second home or they've got, you know.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, we didn't get lucky and you know land on Cape Cod. We had moved to Cape Cod and when it came time to start a business, we kind of designed a business around the culture of Cape Cod. And that's the way you want to do it. If you grew up in Ashland, massachusetts, or Albany, new York, wherever you grew up or wherever you're living and you're going to operate your business, yeah, you got to design the name, the brand, the logo. You got to design it all for your local culture. That's going to give you a big advantage over your competitors. And the name I mean, let's face it, I think the name is one of the most important parts of branding. It's easy to brand a brandable name.

Speaker 2:

One of my companies was called On Time Construction back in New Hampshire. You know what Customers used to challenge me on that. We were primarily a roofing company and they would call me up and I'd show up on time and they would laugh and say, my gosh, you actually did Like. You're the only contractor I ever knew that actually showed up on time. And the whole thing with that is, I always wanted to respect my customer. So I never lied to them. I never said I'm going to be here on Tuesday and then not show up, I would say I can't get there next Tuesday. I can put you down for two weeks from now and I'll call you on Sunday and I'll give you the day we're going to start your job. Just be honest with your customer. Other really good names webuyuglyhousescom and 1-800-GOT-JUNK are two of my favorites.

Speaker 1:

You've got a couple others. Nike is a great one. I always loved Nike. I mean, we were all runners in high school so we all were wearing nike stuff. Sure? I remember even back then. Uh, what a great name. Tesla is another one I love. I don't. It's an amazing company. Yeah, it is. And picking that name is so interesting because I don't know if you know anything about tesla I do, but he's the father of ac, you know alternating current, and tesla is a battery company which is dc, but they still pick them. It still still resonates. It's a great name. Even if you don't know who Tesla is, it's a great name. Yeah, it's really kind of an interesting name. And Pepsi Pepsi is another one. Pepsi is a really interesting one, originally called Brad's Drink. The guy who started it was Kaleeb Bradham, I think was his name.

Speaker 2:

The name of Pepsi.

Speaker 1:

It was called Brad's Drink? Yeah, because Bradham was the last name. He was a pharmacist. He took cola and pepsin, which was a digestive aid, and mixed them together and came up with a soda. A lot of colas back then in those days was looked at as a digestive aid. That's how they were sold, but yeah, so originally. Can you imagine what would be left of Brad's Drink today after Coca-Cola came on the scene?

Speaker 1:

There wouldn't have been anything left of him, so it was a good idea to change it to Pepsi-Cola, which is what he ended up with On a smaller local level.

Speaker 2:

You know good names the Fishbowl, tropical Fish it's real easy to brand that. I saw on Shark Tank the other night. Y'all Sweet Tea, oh, wow, and they're doing real well with it. Yeah, y'all Sweet Tea. Some friends of mine down here, customers and I'm a good customer of theirs too is Seafood Sam's. Yeah, they own four or five restaurants all called Seafood Sam's right here in Sandwich, sagamore and Falmouth. People come to the Cape and they want to go out to dinner. They're looking for seafood and those guys have knocked it out of the park.

Speaker 2:

I have a client down in Virginia and they run a business called Top Dog Auto Detailing and they've kind of become the top dog in their area. It's a real interesting story. But it's not how they started out. They had to work hard to get there. But those are easy to brand. If you're branding a business and you name it the fishbowl, it's easy to brand. We know what you do. You sell goldfish, you sell mollies, you're selling tropical fish there. A couple of names that are not easy to brand. I'm going to throw some out to you. Chris Pete's Lawn Care yeah, john's Plumbing and Heating. Dave and Donna's Restaurant Are you listening? Yeah, I want you to keep listening. Paul's Carpet Care, wally's Dog Walking, anthony's Pool Services these are tough to brand because there's nothing real memorable about that. It would be if my name was Chris and I was in the gutter services business. Chris's gutter service. It's a lot harder to brand than Cape Cod gutter monkeys.

Speaker 1:

Yeah really the only thing about. When the industrial revolution came along, they started branding products only to make them recognizable from each other, but not as a marketing technique.

Speaker 2:

That's how branding came along.

Speaker 1:

And that's kind of what you're doing when you put your name on it, like Pete or Dave or something like that.

Speaker 2:

Let me ask you something while you're sitting there. Tell me what Mike does. I just gave you a bunch of names and businesses. What does?

Speaker 1:

Mike, do I have to look at my notes? You don't know. No, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, what's the name of the tropical fish place? Fish Bowl. There you go. Yeah, that's my point.

Speaker 2:

That's my point, right? Brad's drink? Yeah, brad's drink. How about the alphabet soup? Remember back in the day when the yellow pages were the way to go 70s and 80s, everybody used the yellow pages to find information, like today we have the Internet. Well, in the yellow pages you were listed in alphabetical order. So you have, like Acme painting, so someone would come in ahead of you and go double A painting. So now they come ahead of you alphabetically and it really got kind of silly because the next guy came along and put triple A painting and pretty soon you got four or five different painting companies with a handful of A's in front of them, just fighting for the top spot in the yellow pages, which we've now looking back. I mean, I used to be in the yellow pages with some of my different companies and it doesn't work that well it doesn't work that well.

Speaker 1:

It was pretty much the way it was. Remember. I always remember this piece, the Roadrunner. Remember all the packages and stuff Acme, it was always Acme. I never realized why that was, I just figured it was something about the Roadrunner in particular. But no, that's actually because that was typical back then. Acme was very popular.

Speaker 2:

AAA carpentry? How about this one? Mms Pro Auto Detailing? How about XYZ Roofing? It doesn't tell you much about the product and maybe it doesn't have to, but I want to tell you a story.

Speaker 2:

Some friends of mine down in Virginia. They started an auto detailing company and it was called MMS Pro Auto Detailing and they were struggling, they weren't getting off the ground. Anthony and Valerie nice young couple and they became a client of my son who owns a marketing and promotional company down in Virginia. Now I've met with the owners, the couple that owns Top Dog Auto Detailing and at one point I had recommended they change their name to something more memorable than MMS Pro Auto Detailing because it was just kind of getting mixed up with all the rest of them. And they did, and they continue to tell me that everything they do is just so dynamic because they have a great name. Yeah, now they also have a really beautifully logoed and lettered van and I just talked to Valerie earlier today.

Speaker 2:

They're're buying another one. It hasn't even been a year yet and they're buying their second van. So they're going through the growing pains. And she talked to me about hiring and trying to grow the company. And you need the other van. You need a little more marketing, you need a couple of more employees. So they're going through those growing processes but they're doing well. They just had a record month in September. They've branched out a little bit but they are in the mobile auto detailing business. I didn't even know that existed. But they go on location to your home or your place of business and they do the auto detailing, so you don't have to get in your car and drive it to their location. That was all new to me. Yeah, and I understand that's a significant business. Now, as opposed to the old fashion, you bring your car down to the auto detailing place and then pick it up at the end of the day. Yeah, so they've got a good thing going. They got a great name top dog auto detailing. Very, very memorable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it goes back to making you know the good brand makes all the other marketing you do much easier so you know, branding wise mistakes that you might want to avoid.

Speaker 2:

You know, don't choose your name based upon its position in the alphabetical order. You know, because it'll appear'll appear where it will appear in the yellow pages, on signs. The Chamber of Commerce listings that type of thing. That's not a good reason for choosing that name. I also often recommend that a new upstart business owner might want to not use his or her own name, first name or last name, unless it's really brandable, unless it's significant. Gosh, don't ever drive a blank white van.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you see this man yeah, if you've got a beautiful truck or a beautiful van man, put your name, put your phone number out there, put your logo on that. That is free advertising yeah, I drive down.

Speaker 1:

I've come down quite a ways down here on Little Cape to join up with you guys on certain days and I'm always watching the trucks go by for competition. They've got a ladder on top. I wonder if they've got it. Sometimes I was veering into their lane to get close enough to read the little sort of magnetic things got stuck on the side and it's typically you know Bob's carpentry or you know joe's roofing and he's driving a box truck with 20 ladders on. Oh wow.

Speaker 1:

And yeah I've got to get. I've got to get two inches away from his side door to actually see what the sign is on the side. So, yeah, that's a good example. I gotta tell you and say that's crazy.

Speaker 2:

That box truck is a moving billboard. Yeah, if you logo that box truck, I mean you got three sides, you got left, right and you got back. It is a potential moving billboard and I've often. We have a digital marketer that works for my son's company and I know what digital marketing is all about. I've talked to these people. They charge anywhere from $5 to $20 per imprint for a pop-up and this is a really well strategically located pop-up. But sometimes it might be the utility company that wants you to advertise with them on their website and they're going to charge by the pop-up ad. If you're just looking conservatively at a thousand imprints a day driving a box truck down the road, I mean at $5 per imprint not only is that worth somewhere, has a value somewhere in the $5,000 range, but it's right in the neighborhoods that you work in. When your service truck is in a neighborhood and you're performing your burner service or your lawn cutting service or your roofing services, you are right in the neighborhood where your customers live. You want to logo?

Speaker 1:

that truck. Yeah, I'm driving down the Cape. I'm sitting in Cape traffic behind a box truck and there's no logo on it. Imagine I'm sitting there, a captured audience, don't feel away from me. And yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Also, don't misalign your name, phone number, website, domain name. Make them all the same. Every once in a while I'll have a client that has a good business and he wants to grow that business and he might come to me and we'll sit down and we review what's going on and I've had a couple of them. Where they're, you know, the company name isn't the domain name, so it's uh, you know, dave's lawn services and the website is beautiful lawnscom. Yeah, don't do that. It's confusion there. Call your company Beautiful Lawns and go with BeautifulLawnscom. Make sure they're aligned because that will allow for a much better platform to brand as we move down the road. Early on, you can maybe get away with it, but make that brandable. Make sure that you're aligned on almost every level. Yeah, slogans, tag lines so many great ones. Oh, there's so many good ones.

Speaker 1:

Longest running. One is uh from the beers diamond is forever. Yeah, it's one of the longest, that's a good one wrong longest current running ones. Yeah, 1947, I think that was no kidding, nike, just do it yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2:

That's a real. Just do it right. I forgot about's a real. Just do it Right.

Speaker 1:

I forgot about that Actually it's final words of Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977, believe it or not, they actually changed it. I forget what it was. It was close to just do it, and when Gary Gilmore uttered those words, they picked it up and then they ran with it.

Speaker 2:

So, Chris, you have a house back in the White Mountains of New Hampshire this is where my wife and I lived most of our adult life and in the beautiful little town of Littleton, New Hampshire, there's a store called Chudder's General Store. Not that memorable of a name, doesn't really jump off the page, but Carol and Mike, the founders, were friends of ours 30 years ago and what they did was they built a general store with the world's longest candy counter. Just Google it. Pretty soon it became aware that they had applied for, and were trying to receive, the certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's longest candy counter, and eventually Guinness had to come out and they certified that indeed this is the world's longest candy counter. Wow.

Speaker 1:

I always just thought that was just a tagline they used. But no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:

I mean there's a big banner out front and I mean it was big stuff. Yeah, when Guinness came out to measure the whole town was they blocked off the main street. I mean it was, it was big time. It was big time Cause this is a small rural community in the white mountains. Uh, they make the best, uh, the best fudge fudge.

Speaker 2:

I mean everything up there, but but home of the world's longest candy counter, what a great tagline yeah, mike and carol ended up selling the store many years later and, um, that store has remained a destination, hasn't it? Yeah?

Speaker 1:

sure, our kids, our kids went there. Every time we went up in new hampshire they had to go to there. Now I tell you, they're all in their 30s and 40s and when they go up with their friends they go up to the house up there. They take their friends there. Yeah, they'll go up and actually they'll come up to the house after they're all gone and there'll be these bags of candy. These kids are like 40-year-old people.

Speaker 2:

They're all going up there, but they all do it still. You feel like a kid again.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, yeah, chudders general store, home of the world's longest candy counter. Actually, they have a. They actually have a store at the top of, uh, breton woods. Yeah, they do area. Yeah, get off the lift and there they are.

Speaker 2:

in fact I was. I was doing some work for a customer down here in hyannis on the cape and, uh, the building next door is a little candy shop and he asked me to come over and he wanted to have some work done gutters on the building and I measured up and I was putting a proposal together for him. And I asked him and I mentioned Chudder's General Store and he said oh yeah, I know those guys. Well, here you are, four hours away. And he said look, everyone in the country who's in the candy store business knows Chudder's General Store. And that was just a random guy that I met down here on the Cape. Yeah, chudder's General Store is almost the gold standard in the candy business. Wow, and let's face it, you know as well as I do. They sell sweatshirts, they sell hats, it's memorabilia, it's fudge. I mean, they sell everything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but it's the candy that brings them in the candy that brings them in. Yeah, you go up there and you find little candies that we had when we were kids that you can't find anymore. Oh yeah, Little wax Coke bottles Remember oh, I love the Wax teeth. You can find stuff that just you know takes your breath Pixie sticks.

Speaker 2:

Remember those gross things? Oh my gosh, I mean just all this old stuff.

Speaker 2:

It's a trip discussion about it. There was a real battle going on back in 19-teens for the cigarette market and Lucky Strike, the company. They brought in an outsider. They brought in a marketing guy and he went through the whole process. He was in the plant, he was watching things being done and he said what's going on?

Speaker 2:

When the tobacco on the assembly line comes down and it goes through this process and I guess somebody said well, that's where the tobacco gets toasted, we toast our tobacco. And the outsider, the marketing guy, said that's it, that's it. And the tobacco people said no, no, no, no, no. Everybody toasts their tobacco. You either do it in the sun or you do it in an oven, but everyone toasts their tobacco. That's not important. But the truth of the matter is the general public didn't know that.

Speaker 2:

So Lucky Strike launched a campaign that was based around the fact that their tobacco is better because they toast their tobacco. Now the rest of the cigarette world said, yeah, we all toast our tobacco. That's no big deal, we're not even going to worry about that. But the truth is the average American cigarette smoker, including both my grandfathers, they didn't know that. They said, oh, these guys are toasting their tobacco, we're going to buy that cigarette. And then, when other companies started throwing it out there, the belief was oh, these other companies are just copying them, they were the original. We toast our tobacco Great tagline. Never underestimate the value of a good tagline.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately, the cigarette companies were one of the best at doing that. They were so good that they ended up getting banned from TV and advertising and sporting events.

Speaker 2:

Here's something I don't want you to ever do. Don't make the mistake of choosing a bad tagline. Here's one that we often see that just it gives me no information at all. Fully insured, free estimates. Yeah Right, you're a painting contractor and you're you know, pete's painting contractor. Fully insured, free estimates. I don't think that adds to your brand. I think every reputable company is fully insured, right, and every reputable contractor is going to give free estimates. So I would recommend that you don't take up. Don't take up room on the side of your van with that. Get yourself a better logo, yourself a better slogan. Gosh, don't ever go with cheapest prices in town Lowest prices highest quality.

Speaker 2:

You're just fishing in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Speaker 1:

right there, people turn you off instantly. It's back to that seven-second rule. You only got seven seconds rule. You toss it out there and that's it's gone right, right, yeah, choose a good slogan.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, it's okay to have um one or two good taglines, but keep those out there kind of understand what you're going after.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what's what? What is the purpose of this tagline? I was one looking at some of these uh different taglines and one of them I found really interesting was volkswagen. Back in 1959, when the car industry was going huge, they were building cars as absolutely as big as they could possibly build them. And when Volkswagen came out, actually what they ended up? Coming down to use reverse psychology. They actually came up and said think small. That was their tagline and it was hugely success. It launched, you know, the bug and all those other things hugely, hugely success by using this sort of reverse psychology saying, okay, everyone's going this way, everyone's going big, big, big. We're going to go small, think small. And it was in the united states. Surprisingly, in the united states it was, uh, hugely successful you know, and my, my parents are great parents.

Speaker 2:

They I couldn't have had a better set of parents, especially being sort of entrepreneurial in my roots. My parents were, were not, and when I was a kid, my brothers and I we made a ton of money cutting lawns, and that's a really great story for another time. But as I became a young adult and started my first couple of real serious companies, you know, I'm now, you know, 22 years old and I'm really getting serious about it. And my dad used to say this a lot hey, if that was such a good idea, I'm really getting serious about it. And my dad used to say this a lot hey, if that was such a good idea, someone else would have thought of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Okay, again, that's my dad trying to protect me from the world out there. But the truth of the matter is there's one common thing about all brilliant ideas is that no one else is doing it. Now, still, nine out of 10 of them are going to miss their mark, right? Not every idea that no one else is doing is a good idea, but every idea that hasn't been thought of yet has the potential. So you know, that's something to consider. Just because no one else is doing it does not necessarily mean it's a bad idea. If that was such a good idea, someone else would have thought of it. It's not enough for me, but hearing it made me think.

Speaker 2:

It's like, okay, I've got to step back and give that some extra consideration. Let's talk about the territory. You've now come up with a company name. You've got a skill set. You're building a business. You're making widgets. What is your territory? Are you a product? Are you a service? Are you a combination of the two?

Speaker 2:

If you're in the restaurant business, how far are people willing to drive to sample your food? Because if it's 12 miles, you should be doing the bulk of your marketing and branding efforts in that 12 mile radius. Maybe it's 20 miles, I don't know. Everybody's different. In the city it's probably different from the rural communities. In the home services company, they don't come to me, I go to them right. In my restaurant business, my clientele travels to my place of location. In the home services business, I travel to your location. So in the home services business, the question is how far are we willing to travel? So that might be you cover your town, or you might cover your county, or maybe you cover a 12 or 15 town area. It's all different. It's based upon you and what you're willing to do. Hair care, personal care, massage therapy how far are people willing to travel for your services? And I don't know, I don't know, but is it 20 minutes, is it an hour? We don't know, but you do Right.

Speaker 1:

If that's your business business, you should know that it kind of depends on what you're selling. You're selling goldfish, you're selling, you know, potato chips or whatever well, getting back to um top dog auto detailing.

Speaker 2:

When they first contacted me, or when I, I think I first met them, I was doing a seminar down there and Valerie was at that seminar and I did not realize that auto detailing had a significant piece of the market that was mobile. I was thinking old school, that the customer drives to their location, to their shop. So the old method as a auto detailer you probably had. You know, maybe a-mile radius that people would be willing to travel for your services. But, anthony and Valerie, they can choose their distance. They can travel 30 miles and there's a situation where the changing times and the changing technology allows them to redefine their target market and the area that they service. So those are some considerations as well. Then, of course, is virtual territory. That's a whole different.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we could do a whole show on that. Yeah, we could do a whole show on that one. But, yep, yep, it's really kind of changed the game. In terms of small shops, we've got all these new advertising platforms, nextdoor in particular. Nextdoor are very good for a small area for your mom and pop, your donut shop or something like that. Not a great option for someone like a Cape Cod Cutter Monkeys, because you've got so many options, so many areas that you cover. Nextdoor doesn't allow that in that sort of platform. There's so many new ways of advertising online. We do numerous shows on just that alone.

Speaker 2:

Just look at Facebook itself, though, how much it's changed.

Speaker 1:

When it first came out, facebook was a young kid's tool, facebook's old school now it is in terms of the posting and stuff like that, but the marketplace has really taken off. I don't know if you're familiar with the Facebook marketplace A little, but not a lot. My kids use that. They furnish their homes with it. It's amazing. Oh, yeah, yeah, and I'm actually starting to use it myself. You can find some really great stuff on it, just for a plug for marketplace. But yeah, yeah, so there's certain aspects of it that's changing. It's becoming one of the most popular parts of actually Facebook. Now. It's actually their marketplace.

Speaker 2:

Hmm, yeah, I wanted to just sort of throw one final consideration out. There is oftentimes, when choosing a name, you might choose a name that is specifically geared towards where you live, and in my case, this is Cape Cod, and, yeah, we're the Cape Cod gutter monkeys. This is Cape Cod potato chips. Cape Cod beer oh, cape Cod beer. I mean, there's so many Cape Cod out there. You know, we see it all the time. Cape Cod plumbing and heating. South Shore plumbing and heating. You know, you see the vans and the trucks out there on the road. South Shore plumbing and heating.

Speaker 1:

You see the vans and the trucks out there on the road. Now go back to yellow pages. The C section would probably be about 90% of the yellow pages.

Speaker 2:

A lot of our customers are Cape Cod. Fill in the blank. We do service work for them. I know because I handle the accounts receivables and the C section is huge. It's because of where we live. So it's also wise to consider the physical location of your business and, if it's applicable, consider that in naming your company. Again, the message today is it's easier to market a brandable name.

Speaker 1:

There you have it. Yep, sounds good. Okay, we'll go out on that Right. There you have it. Yep Sounds good. Okay, we'll go out on that note. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2:

No, monkeys were harmed in the making of this podcast. That's right.

Speaker 1:

See you next time. Bye, Thank you for tuning in to Monkey Business Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to subscribe, like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs like you, and if you've got a question or topic you'd like us to cover, leave a comment or reach out to us on social media. We'd love to hear your thoughts and keep the conversation going. Don't forget to leave us a five-star review if you found the episode valuable, and make sure to share it with anyone who might benefit from our tips and stories. We'll see you next time. This podcast is produced by American Gutter Monkeys LLC. Build real wealth through business ownership. For details, visit us at AmericanGutterMonkeyscom.