Dennis Oz: Welcome back to the Remodeler Success podcast, where we dig into the real systems behind profitable lasting companies, lasting remodeling businesses. So today we are in Massachusetts, and we will be taking you to the South Shore where these legacy firms have to balance their tradition and growth and also rising client expectations.

So today my guest, she is the lead of a third generation remodeling company, serving the region since the 1960s, almost fifty nine if you would like to be precise, and they are recognized among Remodeling Magazine’s Big 50. As the CEO, she oversees operations, finance, and marketing. Those are all our subjects today. We’re going to talk about it and what are the best practices, what are the struggles, what are the roadblocks, and those kinds of things. All these episodes are giving you guidance on these problems, right So this is going to be an amazing episode.

Please welcome to the show, Allison Guido. Allison, welcome to the show.

Allison Guido: Thanks, Dennis. Thank you for having me. This is really exciting.

Dennis Oz: I will be hosting Allison, which was like really kind of a big shaking moment for me, since when I look at your background and resume.

Just would like to have an idea about our listeners. How would you introduce yourself to our listeners

Allison Guido: Oh, to introduce myself. So I act as the general manager of Almar Building Remodeling Company, and I took over my family’s remodeling business from my dad. His father had started it in the fifties, and I had had experience doing vinyl siding installation in college. That was my summer job. So I had field experience. I was getting ready to graduate from college and I was in West Virginia trying to apply for jobs in Massachusetts. My dad said, well, why don’t you come home, work for me for a year, you can find a job, you can find a place to live. I was like, okay, that works out really well. And so I came home, and three years later he kind of turned to me and said, so this is working. What do you want to do And I had come back that first summer and worked in the field and then slowly started taking over operations things. My dad was great at what he did, but my skillset was somewhere completely different.

Dennis Oz: Well, this is an amazing story, but today we’re going to dive into the big moments that you have in your business throughout your whole career. And Allison, you know that running a company like a third generation, you have history, you have the expectations, and pressure to evolve too because decades will bring so many changes, time is going to bring so many changes. And I am sure you made so many important decisions when you are looking at the company’s history. Some moments that you believe are like a checkpoint and you said, oh my God, I am glad that we made that decision. We made this decision. In the past, I would like to talk about those. What have been the most important decisions you have made to keep your company growing

Allison Guido: I think it started back just when my dad decided to bring me on. I have a sister. She’s not part of our business. When you are coming into a family business, the ability to work well together and to not take things personally and to be able to have that separation of where you are going is important. So I think that was a pivotal moment in what was happening for my parents’ journey as well as my own journey. I had been in the business a couple of years and we were trying to decide what we were going to do for laying out my dad’s exit strategy and his retirement plan. And so we were looking at what am I good at, what is he good at, and how do we replace him in that structure. After a lot of thinking about it, we brought in my now husband to kind of long term fill his gaps, and he knew nothing about construction. So we started by throwing him right into the field and we said, okay, you need to learn how to do everything in the business if you want to someday be the salesperson owner alongside me, so that he spent time being the guy cleaning the ground and then doing some carpentry and then doing some project management. So by the time he got into stepping into some of what my dad was doing in his shoes, he had a really good foundation for it. So I think that was another key point. That was a couple of years before we got married. And then we had been operating out of a third key point was we had been operating out of my parents’ property for years prior to me coming into the business. We had had a commercial space and then during the recession we had scaled back and we were back on a dedicated space on their property. So again, as part of that long term retirement planning, we have to get out of my parents’ house. So we moved into a new commercial space. So that was a big separation for them too, of work and home. So that was another key point. And then we moved into this space that we thought was enormous and then quickly outgrew it. We were there for fifteen years before we moved to our current location, which we have now purchased as part of our own long term planning strategy. So I think those are some of those key moments. Another key moment was about a year and a half ago. We went to a conference in Baltimore and we came back and I said, we are going to rip our sales system apart and start over. And so that, we are still working through that key moment, but I think that has really set us up for good long term success.

Dennis Oz: This is interesting because especially all these breaking moments happen also with the family related because growing as a family, growing as a business is another. Well, it is success. It is really making, you know, when you think, it is a big happiness moment, but it still comes with struggles too. Yeah, that is what I would like to ask you. Our show is more focusing on the struggles, Allison. So it will be more than happiness. We will be talking about those struggles. Let me ask you this one. I know that because you are working as a couple, it is a unique mix of the strengths and also the challenges too. So how do you divide these responsibilities in the business and, well, working with the significant other always brings some challenges with it. And what have you learned about working as partners at home and at work

Allison Guido: I think that is really what it is. We are partners at home and at work. We were lucky enough that when we first got together in college, we had a working relationship. We worked in theater together, and at one point he was my boss and then at another point I was his boss. So I like that we kind of always had that ying yang going together. But I think that has really served us well long term. So we have been running Almar together for about twenty three years now. I knew I was never going to go back into being a carpenter. I mean, I could have been, but that was not where my strengths lay. So my goal was always to build a sellable business, something that has a structure and a model where eventually, even though when we started, we were wearing a lot of the hats, we could start taking off those hats. And so when he came on, we very early on decided he was going to deal with the sales stuff and I was going to be the operations person. So I deal with, I still deal with the marketing, the systems, and I act as our CFO where we have a bookkeeper who enters things, but I am doing all of the data analysis and he is doing all of the people stuff. He is doing the sales, he is working with our designers. And I think that we work together to make decisions, but the actual day to day stuff, we stay in our own lanes, which is really helpful. People say all the time, how do you work with your husband I do not see him that much. You know, we were on a conference call this morning and the person was like, oh look, I am so glad to bring you two together in Zoom because he does his day, I do my day, and we come back. But we also divide stuff up at home the same way. I do not cook. You do not want me to cook. He deals with cooking. I am a great cleaner, so my high C comes out right through the cleaning. So we kind of have organically done that divide and conquer aspect of things, which I think really is helpful. We make decisions together, but we kind of have identified what are our lanes, staying in them unless we need help. And then again, it is like you have to communicate. I cannot be mad at him for not doing something I did not tell him I needed him to do. So I know communication comes up a lot with the people that you interview, and that is really it. You have to be clear, you cannot hold grudges, and you have to say what you mean and mean what you say.

Dennis Oz: Right. Thanks so much for sharing this. I know among our like follower base, I’m sure that there are like couples trying to work together and, , you just, mentioned that balance, for all those who are just listening, for all our people who’s just tuning in today.

When you just create the balance at home and at work work, that’s bring you the actual success and that integrity. So that’s a very important point. Thanks so much for just, , giving us, the guidance over here, Allison. This is great. Well, I’ll take the conversation to the team management because yes, we are working as just like we have the C level, we have the management there, but then .

We have to build teams and , when we look at Almar,, you have created , a team that really operates like I’m sure that they have clear values, they have the communication between those and you, since under your leadership. So what’s your approach to hiring and also not just hiring, because Allison, when you hire people, we have to keep them on board as well.

Yeah. What is your strategy to keep these people on board after hiring? 

Allison Guido: Um, so about six years ago, we had the realization that we, we, we didn’t have a system, right? I think a lot of this all comes back to having a system and doing the same thing in a better way every time. Right? So, about six or seven years ago when we, when we were hiring and things weren’t working.

We kind of went back to like, what are we doing? What is the process? And we do, we, we’ve been in the Dave Ramsey’s Entree Leadership program for years and kind of a lot of people have come back to it, come back to it and said, you know, the books and the recommendations. And so we read the book that talks about hum, humble, hungry, smart, and.

How to choose people who align with your core values and that are going to be humble, hungry, and smart. And so we kind of started that with as our base, and it’s morphed since then. We’ve elongated the process. It you, it might feel like it takes a long time to get hired, but I’d rather go slow and then have the right person.

And so as. As our team has gotten bigger, we also have included more people. We just made a hire, um, two weeks ago, and it was the first time I wasn’t involved in the reviewing the resumes, so congrats. It was crazy. But we’ve built that team, right? Like everybody knew who has come in. So our system now is, I’ve got a little packet every time we hire somebody, it goes through like, what are we looking for?

What’s important to us? What are questions? Um, and a self-reflection, like where do you fall on the humble, hungry, smart. So, um, you know, we go through the reviewing of the resumes and I’ve templated out every touch with. A potential. Team member is just like an every touch with a potential homeowner. So we read through them, you get the first email that says, thank you so much, here are our core values.

Here’s what we’re looking for in this position. Um, then if they move on to the next stage and we do a five to 10 minute call and you know, that’s just to like, Hey, let’s talk to you on the phone. Answer some initial questions because we can cut 50% of people out, just by the way, we don’t like what they’re saying on the phone.

So after that, then they, if they move on past that, then they either get a Thanks, we’re not gonna work out, or, Hey, we’d like to zoom with you. So then we do a 30 minute zoom, that’s usually two of us. Um, and they, and that’s where we’re bouncing off those questions, those culture questions, and, um. Technical questions.

And again, we can cut people down about half after that. And then we bring it down to like our top one to three people who we think, okay, let’s spend an hour with this PE person in the office. Again, you get another layer more detail about who we are, what we’re looking for, and when they come into the office, we do, um.

Two sets of interviews, so you meet with two different people twice. You get a tour of the office, so you get introduced to everybody. We do the disc personality profile in between the two interviews. So that gives the, those first two people a chance to come and say, Hey, this is what I like, this is what I didn’t like.

This is what you should ask more about. So, well, the pers the in the candidate is filling out their per profile. We’re having a chance to talk about them. Um, and then usually that last two people is me and Craig, or me and the other person. And the first one is. A technical person and a culture person, so everybody got, gets a chance to meet them, to see what they have to say, to see what they seem like.

Um, and then we never offer anybody anything at the table. We then come together as a group and we talk about what did we think? Um, if it’s a man not, we always ask the women, would you be willing to be alone in the office with this person? Did you get any weird vibes? ’cause if. The women in my office can’t be with them.

I can’t send ’em to a homeowner’s house. 

Dennis Oz: Right. Thanks so much for sharing this. I know among our follower base, I am sure that there are couples trying to work together, and you just mentioned that balance. For all those who are just listening, for all our people who are just tuning in today.

When you just create the balance at home and at work, that brings you the actual success and that integrity. So that is a very important point. Thanks so much for giving us the guidance over here, Allison. This is great. Well, I will take the conversation to the team management because yes, we are working as just like we have the C level, we have the management there, but then

we have to build teams and when we look at Almar, you have created a team that really operates, I am sure that they have clear values, they have the communication between those and you, since under your leadership. So what is your approach to hiring and also not just hiring, because Allison, when you hire people, we have to keep them on board as well.

Yeah. What is your strategy to keep these people on board after hiring

Allison Guido: So about six years ago, we had the realization that we did not have a system, right I think a lot of this all comes back to having a system and doing the same thing in a better way every time. Right So about six or seven years ago, when we were hiring and things were not working,

we kind of went back to like, what are we doing What is the process And we have been in the Dave Ramsey Entree Leadership program for years and a lot of people have come back to it and said, you know, the books and the recommendations. And so we read the book that talks about humble, hungry, smart and

how to choose people who align with your core values and that are going to be humble, hungry, and smart. And so we kind of started that as our base, and it has morphed since then. We have elongated the process. It might feel like it takes a long time to get hired, but I would rather go slow and then have the right person.

And so as our team has gotten bigger, we also have included more people. We just made a hire two weeks ago, and it was the first time I was not involved in reviewing the resumes, so congrats. It was crazy. But we have built that team, right Like everybody knew who has come in. So our system now is, I have a little packet every time we hire somebody. It goes through like, what are we looking for

what is important to us What are questions And a self reflection, like where do you fall on the humble, hungry, smart. So we go through the reviewing of the resumes and I have templated out every touch with a potential team member is just like every touch with a potential homeowner. So we read through them, you get the first email that says, thank you so much, here are our core values,

here is what we are looking for in this position. Then if they move on to the next stage, we do a five to ten minute call and that is just to like, hey, let us talk to you on the phone, answer some initial questions, because we can cut fifty percent of people out just by the way we do not like what they are saying on the phone.

So after that, if they move on past that, then they either get a thanks, we are not going to work out, or hey, we would like to Zoom with you. So then we do a thirty minute Zoom, that is usually two of us, and that is where we are bouncing off those questions, those culture questions, and technical questions.

And again, we can cut people down about half after that. And then we bring it down to our top one to three people who we think, okay, let us spend an hour with this person in the office. Again, you get another layer, more detail about who we are, what we are looking for, and when they come into the office, we do

two sets of interviews, so you meet with two different people twice. You get a tour of the office, so you get introduced to everybody. We do the DISC personality profile in between the two interviews. So that gives those first two people a chance to come and say, hey, this is what I like, this is what I did not like,

this is what you should ask more about. So while the candidate is filling out their profile, we are having a chance to talk about them. And then usually that last two people is me and Craig, or me and the other person. And the first one is a technical person and a culture person, so everybody gets a chance to meet them, to see what they have to say, to see what they seem like.

And then we never offer anybody anything at the table. We then come together as a group and we talk about what did we think. If it is a man, we always ask the women, would you be willing to be alone in the office with this person Did you get any weird vibes Because if

the women in my office cannot be with them, I cannot send them to a homeowner house.

Dennis Oz: Right

Allison Guido: Right. We work in a business where we are in people lives. We are in their home, in their safe space. I mean, I say it about the women too, but you see it seems to be more of a concern sometimes with men, right If I am sending a carpenter or a project manager to a house with a twenty year old woman and a baby,

I have to know that that person feels safe. So everybody gets a chance to feed into that conversation about whether they would be a good fit, whether we would feel comfortable being with them. So I think that has made a huge impact in the quality of our team members, their ability to contribute, and their turnover.

Our director of production has been with us thirty five years since I was nine, well before me, but we have several team members who have been with us nine, ten years. So even before this system, we were doing some things right. My office manager says she has a no asshole policy. So we literally say to her, what do you think

Do they pass

Dennis Oz: It is amazing. I mean, this is pretty much like your own background check. This is a very powerful way of doing it. And we

Allison Guido: Also do that. We also run a background check.

Dennis Oz: Yeah, of course. Definitely. There is no question. But you are doing that in really

detail level because this is how you really care about the culture of your company. Folks, we are talking about the culture here. Really realize Allison is talking about the culture of the company. Some people can really deliver exceptional jobs, but if they are not really good at

adjusting themselves or just they are not really good with your company culture, this relationship is not going to work in the long run. And just like Allison said also, if you are bringing team members and since you have an A team, they also would like to work with A players, you definitely need to ask your own team members about what they think.

And this is what we also learn in Allison response that is very important to us, not to just by yourself, but also ask it to your own coworkers, not the employees, your coworkers, because you are just a part of a team. And thanks so much, Allison. It has been rarely discussed in this show and you just really kind of freely poked that really rare moment in our show, saying that hiring does not only come from the managers, it is also a company wise decision.

And thank you so much for pointing out that.

Yeah. That is

amazing. Well, let us talk about a little bit of sales. I would like to ask you the sales process. We know that the main struggle here, the main problem here, many of the companies in our industry, they hit a ceiling when they are trying to convert leads into contracts because

it is just like art of selling there. You know, you may get some leads from your website, which we will talk about marketing soon, but you may get some leads from there and you may have some people asking, maybe word of mouth, people coming to you, but converting these people from the leads to the sales is especially a little bit harder in high ticket jobs.

Yeah.

So how does your process really look like from the first inquiry to signed contract And what helped you to improve this close rate

Allison Guido: So what we do is somebody calls or fills out the form on the website and they get an immediate auto email that says, thank you so much, here is some basic information and this is what is going to happen next.

We are always trying to set that what is going to happen next with them, whether it is verbally or through our system. So then they hear back from a project manager, project developer, a salesperson, and they set up the appointment. They go out and they do that initial fact finding mission. Like what do you, what are you looking for What does your space look like What is your budget All that kind of basic, we call it initial estimate meeting, kind of fact gathering.

And what we do now is because we do a lot of design build stuff now. So what we do now is those people come back to the office and they put together what we call a project narrative, and that is kind of a summary. This is what I think I heard you say you wanted and this is the budget range, without knowing a lot about what is happening, where we think we will be. And that was the change we made about a year and a half ago. We used to do that initial meeting, then come back to you with a seventeen page detailed estimate with a price, and it was so overwhelming for people, or it was too detailed that our conversion rates were not great and the team was spending a ton of time on it.

So what we are doing now is with that summary with a budget range, that is letting people know, does this even work for you In between those things, they were getting emails and touchpoints about us, about the type of project. So they would get an email that says, you know, guidance for planning a bathroom,

all of that kind of stuff to help build the know, like, and trust, even before somebody got there. So the budget range is one of two things. Now you have the budget range. It either works for you and you like us, or you are sticker shocked and you go away for a little while. If it works for you, we do what we call a development agreement, and that is a

small fee. It gives you time to work with the designer or the architect depending on the level of project. And that is where we really spend our time now, digging into making layouts, looking at selections, having the trade partners come in and give us real pricing. And again, I know some of the people you have interviewed in the past have done the same thing. We are spending way more time getting ready for the contract

as opposed to jumping into the contract, so that everybody is on board. The homeowners are on board, our trade partners are on board, our production team is on board, and we are working out all of those fine details before we get to the contract as opposed to just racing and getting the contract and then not being prepared.

So that has made a huge impact. The thing that I am struggling with, because it is so new, is I have twenty two years worth of sales data. It has kind of gotten thrown out the door with how many, how many people do I need to talk to to do this, how many leads. It is all in flux now because I am selling, we are selling more jobs at higher dollar volumes, but

I need fewer people because we are spending quality time with people. It is not quantity, it is quality. And that is freaking me out because I am used to, I like the data. I am like, I needed three hundred leads before to sell this much and now I need half of that. But I think it is doing our team a lot of good because we are not throwing as much spaghetti against the wall all the time,

and we are building much stronger relationships with people before we are asking them to sign a contract for three, four thousand dollars, a million dollars.

Dennis Oz: Wow. Well, this is a great example of how little things change, big impacts. So those little things create like really big impact there. And I am glad that you also have this vision and folks, you see this show is all about talking about these aha moments and I am glad that you already just witness another one here. So this is great. Thanks so much for sharing this one. And of course these moments are what making this show great. And that was one of them. Well, let us talk about AI Allison.

Allison Guido: Okay.

Dennis Oz: There are a lot of buzz, like people are doing that, like writing emails and different things. I even see people going in the houses and then recording the conversation, creating the quotes based on AI, based on what the customer says, and there are different approaches to this AI world. How do you integrate AI to your business And what is your, I would say, expectations from AI

When you look at future, if AI does this, that will be great type of ideas. How do you use it now and how would you like to use it in the future

Allison Guido: Yeah, so we use it now. It is terrifying and amazing at the same time. Right So we have, I started using it by going back. We have like three hundred blogs on our website, and when we converted to our new website, they did not all convert over well, so I started with it by trying to throw the blog into the website, have it clean it up, make it into the new format for me, which is really helpful. So that is, and I, like everybody else, I am using it for, this is what I want to say, can you make this sound nice so that people do not hate me kind of stuff. But we have also started converting into things like those project narratives I talked about, it is helping us put together those, this is what we heard the homeowner say we wanted, like what needs to be included in this summary. We also are utilizing the AI apps. We have an app that records our homeowner meetings and our production meetings and spits back out that summary.

Dennis Oz: You can mention name. Is that Vila What

Allison Guido: We are using Otter.

Dennis Oz: Oh, okay. Otter.

Allison Guido: Yeah. So that has worked out really well for us. We have tried a couple of different ones, but Otter has worked out really well. And what we have just kind of tested and realized with Otter, and I am sure other ones do it too, is we can, within its own AI, ask it to review all of the client appointments and give us a summary of how we are doing or how we should approach things. Here we go. So in terms of the sales team, we can go back through all of their recorded sales calls and say where are they strong and where could they improve. And we started it with my husband Craig and the things it kicked back out were the things I have always said. You are not great at setting next steps. You would do better to, based on their recordings, you would do better. And it is almost like having that mentor with you, especially in instances where you are not going to have a second person. When he first started, I would go on sales calls with him and I would do that. I would be like, hey, so next time, maybe if you did this. It is kind of like the Apple Watch. I got him the Apple Watch so that instead of me saying, hey, do you want to go for a walk, the watch is telling him he has to do it.

So AI is great for some kind of that backup, especially when you are a husband and wife team. I am not the one nagging, the app is the one that told you that.

Dennis Oz: I think you created that. Yeah. I think you created another board member with AI in your company. Can we say that

Allison Guido: Yeah. It is really interesting, especially how you use it. So I was at a conference at the Women in Residential Construction Conference a couple of weeks ago, and there was a whole panel on it, and one of the women was talking about how they create a file in their AI for their clients, and they dump all of the information into emails, estimates, and then ask it questions, especially if change orders are coming up based on what is in here. How would the homeowner respond or how should I approach it I tried it where we took all of our trade partner estimates for one of our projects and our internal estimate and scope of work and put it all in and said, is there anywhere where I have something in the scope of work that is not addressed in the budget Or do you see any, and it missed. It missed things. It is still learning, but it was really interesting for the things that it did pull out. It is for me to just compare and contrast, just using it as another tool to make us better. Some people think it is going to replace people. In some instances it will, but it is also making our systems better. And there are things that I inherently know that it is not going to know. So there are just, there is a lot of scary and amazing applications to it.

Dennis Oz: Great. This is amazing. I was going to ask the next question about marketing since it will be a great follow up, but I have another question.

Allison Guido: Sure.

Dennis Oz: Well, you are mentioning all these conferences. Allison, this is great. You are investing your time, you are booking that plane ticket, going there, spending time with peers. I am sure that you find it helpful because you share a big time on these. You are going to Baltimore from Massachusetts, you are going to the conference for women, just like you mentioned. How does it change your business Let me ask you in this way, do you go there, you learn and you come back and you believe that is like a big change Because I would like to also encourage our listeners to go there as well.

Yeah. And I just would like to learn your real benefits from these conferences here.

Allison Guido: I think that we as business owners and especially remodelers sometimes get so busy being busy, we cannot get out of our own way. I think that if we want to grow and learn and build professional companies, continuing education is super important. That was the first thing my dad taught me. I would come home from college and go to the Journal of Light Construction, the JLC Live conference with him, I think three years in a row. And in some ways I felt like I got so much more practical knowledge out of that day and a half with them than I did in college. There were so many other good things, but like, and I think that is probably where he started to realize, oh, maybe Allison is going to come into the business because I would be like, oh, we could do this, oh, we could do that. I would be back in West Virginia in my dorm and be sending him ideas of things that we could be doing.

I think that, yeah, I think that it is so valuable. If you get one good actionable idea out of anything you do, it is worth your time. Right So we went to the Pinnacle Experience in Baltimore, and honestly I had never heard of it. The conference reached out to me and asked if I would come and facilitate, and they were like, we will cover your ticket, come, and I was like, okay, why not You know, you have to take advantage of the opportunities that are given to you, right So we got to participate in the whole conference and for years I knew we needed to do something with our sales system, but I did not know what or how to get started. And we are sitting in one of the round table groups and one of the guys is presenting and I said, that is it, that is how we get started. And we went up and we talked to him afterwards and he was like, yeah, I will walk you through exactly how to do it. And when you are in these conferences, you are not, the local associations are great, but you are meeting with people who are competitors.

Dennis Oz: Right.

Allison Guido: They do not want to tell you their secret sauce.

Dennis Oz: Yeah. But then you just, you have a moment that they started to share. Right Yeah. So you are at this

Allison Guido: Conference in Baltimore and this guy from Virginia does not care what I am doing in Boston. So he is like, I am happy to tell you. And one of the big things we talked about at the conference in Austin for the Women in Residential Construction was less than ten percent of the industry is women. So you walk into that room and everybody wants to help you. Everybody wants you to succeed. There is just this energy in there that you do not get other places. And one of the things, one of the panels was talking about this time, because they were all women who had been through natural disasters, the Hawaii fires, Katrina, the California fires, and they were talking about being able to build a resource network outside of your area before there is an emergency. One of the, so they were talking about how because they had resources outside of their natural disaster area, they were able to pull off of them. And I thought to myself, oh my God, that is an amazing idea. We can learn from each other, but God forbid we have something where we need each other too, we have already built these connections because we have taken two or three days to get out of our business to work on our business.

Dennis Oz: That is amazing. So for all our listeners who are just maybe watching, just know, just understand how important that is to be surrounded with people that also make the mistakes that you will make. They already walk the walk, folks. They already made all these mistakes, all the scars in their faces and all the gray hairs. I always use that analogy.

Allison Guido: Yeah. So, yeah. There is no reason for us to reinvent the wheel. Right Somebody has already made the mistake if we can learn from it. We are going to make plenty of our own, but if we can learn from somebody else or share what we have done, let us make it a little bit easier for everybody.

Dennis Oz: That is right. Amazing share. Thanks so much for this one. And let me bring the conversation to the marketing talk. Well, I am not going to let Allison go, folks. I am holding her here as much as I can. Right This is an amazing conversation. I am sure you are enjoying the conversation as much as I do here, and this is great. This is a great session. Well, let us talk about a little bit of marketing. We know that when you have the platforms and at the same time, sometimes clients behaviors are also changing and it is bringing us challenges to the marketing, the things that we have. We are doing in the past may not work today and the things that we are doing today may not work in the future, and marketing is always changing. How do you keep up the business with these kinds of changes and how do you play the marketing game

Allison Guido: Oh, it is hard, right Because even when, because it is not that they lie, it is that they do not even know when someone calls. We always ask, that is the best way to gauge what is working, what is not, but they will say, oh, I do not know, a referral or this or that, and then I look back through my CM and I am like, well, you found me on the internet, but you have been getting mailers from me for ten years. So you have to do a little bit of everything. And so early on, I said we have to do a little bit of everything. And so when I make our marketing plan, I have things broken up by month and I have categories. I have the social media category, the internet category, the direct mail category. So we try to hit something every month in every category, whether that is the videos online or the social media. I do not do cold postcards. I do like somehow we have connected or touched or I have been in your neighborhood. One thing that works really well for us is we do what we call move over letters because in the seventies that is what it was called in the system my dad bought, because we wanted to move from this house over to your house. So we still call them move over letters, but literally it is just a letter that goes to all of the houses on the street that we are working on that says, hi, we are going to be working on your street, you are going to see trucks you do not know, you are going to see people you do not know. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. Ninety percent of the time people love that. Every now and then we get a call from somebody, do not park on my lawn. But I feel like that gives the neighborhood a sense of comfort. And also people will call us and say, because they will be watching us. And it adds to that level of know, like, and trust because we reached out, we told you what we were going to do, we told you we were going to be there.

So yeah, we do a little bit of everything. We do a lot of networking. Ninety percent of our work comes from referrals and networking.

Dennis Oz: Amazing. Wow.

Allison Guido: Yeah.

Dennis Oz: That is perfect. Well, we know the power of referrals.

Allison Guido: There is no silver bullet and that is the problem. We all want to just be like, I am going to throw a 10,000 dollars over here and that is going to work.

And just after 20 years, it just does not.

Dennis Oz: Yeah. Well this is always the biggest struggle since I am in the marketing game for many many years and I have been also exposed to that question a lot, what is working today

Mm hmm. Giving

that answer that time does not really make any much of a sense.

It is just working today. But the thing that we do just like an agency last year is pretty much different when we look at what we do today, because game is changing, because clients are changing. Folks, you are here, you are listening, the generations are changing. Right now, millennials will start asking for sometimes remodeling projects and coming to you, right

When we look at our ideal buyer avatar They are, yes, they are kind of more than like middle age. You do not target young 25 year old young professionals or those, there will always be opportunities over there. I do not say there is nothing there, but the most of the opportunities, just like you think about your last 10 sales, I am sure they are,

like it will give you an age group. So now different age group, just different generation is just getting to that age group. I am just like a millennial and right now I am just thinking about, you know, renovations right now. So this is, this is how it works and just like Allison said, the things that have been working like three decades ago, the generation looking for something, the name, even the marketing material just really reacts to that,

to that avatar. So this is how we play this game. And Allison, this is great to share. It is a great share. Thanks so much. Yeah. And yeah, for just like you said, referrals are your fuel for your business folks. Yes, your referrals are your fuel, they are your rating. You have to, you

Allison Guido: Better work them.

You have got like, in terms of marketing, we still go back and touch our past clients, we have to remind them that we are here, that we are here to serve them. So you still have to market to them because that is how you, out of sight, out of mind, right

Dennis Oz: Right. Well, thanks so much for this great share. Wow.

Let us wrap up. I do not want you to go, Allison, but yeah. This is an amazing conversation, so

Allison Guido: I could talk forever.

Dennis Oz: Yeah. Well, this is perfect. This is one of the amazing sessions that we are having. Well, I just have a last question, like the most important thing when you believe that someone

who is in this for maybe like years and they could not really find success, they are struggling in different places. What is the one piece of advice you will give to a remodeler or a company, construction company who wants the business that lasts and succeeds

Allison Guido: I think that is challenging because a lot of people get into remodeling because they are really good carpenters.

You know, the turnover rate in remodeling is not because people are not good at what they do, it is because they are not good at business, and they are not good at creating systems. And I think that is what is a little bit different about us because you do not want Craig and me necessarily going out and hanging your door, but we understand people and we understand the numbers and I think that

even if it is not something you are doing, finding the right person to help you with the numbers, help you understand your numbers, and understand how to price and how to manage your money. If it is not something you can do, that person has to be able to explain it to you in a way that you can understand.

You know, I think we talked about this on, you have talked about this on other episodes where, you know, they get that deposit and they think they have got all this money, so they go out and buy a brand new truck, but then you still have to produce the job. You still have to pay your overhead. And so it is a matter of

contractors going out of business, not because they are not good contractors. I mean some of them are not. But because they do not understand the business aspect of it. And at the end of the day, we are all doing this because we want to make more money and take more time off and

the companies that are professional are considered professional because they are running it like a business and not like a hobby.

And so I think that is the hard thing for a lot of people who decide that they can get into business because they are looking at their, they might even be with a professional company and said, well, I can do that, I am doing all the work. But they do not see all the things that go into it to actually run a business.

So understanding or getting someone to partner with you who can help you understand the numbers

and what your true costs are so that you can make a profit is really important.

Dennis Oz: Thank you so much for dropping this knowledge and all your golden nuggets today. That was a great session, Allison. I have one last question because this is a question not

from the, like, you know, most of our listeners are business owners, but sometimes some homeowners are tuning in. You know, even someone who just really would like to work with you, they would like to learn more about you. Because remember folks, these people will spend thousands of dollars with you.

They would like to understand you just like a business owner because they are buying a service from you more than product, right

Yeah. Let us say if they come to you, if someone like a prospect comes to you and would like to get information from you, this is your moment to pitch your business in the show.

What makes Almar great So just let us talk about it.

Allison Guido: I think what makes Almar great is that we really are focused on communication and being honest. You know, we talk a lot with our team about giving good information, whether it is to those in leadership, whether it is to those within or without our team.

I am not going to be the right fit for everybody. That is okay. But I want people to make safe decisions, hire reputable people. Our website has 300 blog articles on it about questions to ask, how to plan, things to look out for, and that is more so that people can make safe choices. We get a lot of people who come to us the second time, you know, we are either too expensive or do not fit their needs the first time around,

and then they realize, oh, we really probably were a better choice, which is a great honor, but also I feel horrible that they had to go through that experience to learn it. So I think we really try to communicate. I think that is both our strength and our weakness because you can always get better and give people good information and good advice.

Dennis Oz: That was a session that really talks to everyone. Thanks so much, Allison. If someone has maybe a follow up question, you know, let us not share a personal number. This is going to be distributed to thousands of people, but whether the website is the best way to go, even the homeowner or a business owner.

Allison Guido: Yeah, you can reach us through almarbuilding.com, that is our website, or email at almar@almarbuilding.com. Those are probably the two easiest ways to reach us, but we are everywhere. We are on all the social medias. The website, yeah, somebody is always checking the email.

Dennis Oz: That was such a great session, Allison. Thank you so much.

Allison Guido: Thank you.

Dennis Oz: And let us wrap up. I believe, folks, you enjoyed this session. We talked about marketing, hiring, operations, sales. This is what you need, and when you listen to the session, try to understand the one actionable item, just like Allison said today, one actionable item because you are one actionable item away from success.