Dennis Oz: Welcome back to the Remodelers Success Podcast, where we dig into the real systems behind profitable remodeling and custom builds. Today we are in Tallahassee, Florida, where really good design isn’t just decoration, it’s the whole point, and, maybe where being the only licensed remodeler in town with a full service showroom sets the standard.

So this is gonna be a very interesting and very amazing session today. Because my guest today is studied architecture in the University of Florida, and one lesson just really stuck, the design of a space can change how you feel, even how you live. So he spent the last decade, turning that idea into a design build company that simplifies the entire remodeling process from the first discovery call to the final walkthrough.

So, that’s why I’m, I don’t wanna steal his storm, but, he is owning this big operation and also, he knows his designs first. He’s known for his design built approach, and design first, first approach that’s set in this way with a consultation process that respects the client’s time and budget.

I’m gonna ask all these questions to him today and learn more about how he’s running the operations and so on. So, well, again, very excited for this episode, and my guest here, Paul McManus. Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul McManus: Thanks. Very nice to be here.

Dennis Oz: Great. We’re gonna talk about McManus Kitchen and Bath a lot, but let’s start with your background, Paul.

We know that you’re one of, like a design experts in the industry. So, can we know you a bit, little bit better?

Paul McManus: Yeah, sure. I don’t know exactly how far back you wanna go, but, I did, born and raised in Vermont. Moved down to Florida in my mid-teens with my family.

Um, went to the University of Florida where I studied architecture. Um, then I did a bunch of traveling. Uh, so I was in the Peace Corps for a while for four… I spent four years in Africa, but then I traveled. I’ve been to 38, 39 different countries around the world. Uh, so I did that for a long time. In between, you know, I was remodeling, I was a contractor.

Um, I kinda got done with traveling in 2015. Finally got that out of my system, and then started, the remodeling company again, only this time decided I want to do design builds. I want a control over the entire process. So that’s when we opened our showroom, you know, hired a designer, and then started running with this sort of new model.

Dennis Oz: Well, great. Welcome to the show. Let’s talk about your… Let’s dig your background a little bit because we know that you came into remodeling from architecture, and you have a s- very strong architectural, skills that you also, you’re carrying the belief that the, a well-designed space can change how someone feels and how they live, w- like I start… said in the opening. So how has that really design-first thinking shaped the way that you built McManus Design and Build, M- McManus Kitchen and Bath over the past decade?

Paul McManus: Um, yeah, I mean, the, ’cause, you know, we’re very function first, sort of, you know, Louis Sullivan, you know, one of the great American architects sort of coined that phrase.

Um, so we’re very, into layout, storage, function. We spend a lot of time on that. Uh, you know, a common thing that happens with our… What happens with kitchens that’s interesting is, you know, people have a kitchen for 20 years, sometimes 30 years, and their understanding of that kitchen is it’s, it works for them. It’s fine. The, the problem is you don’t know anything diff- Like, you only know that that’s the only kitchen you’ve had for 10 years or 20 years. You don’t know what you don’t know. So our approach is always to meet with the client, talk through how they use the space, and uncover what their frustrations are, and then help them redesign it.

Uh, the… What we love to hear, you know, two months, three months, six months after a kitchen is done and we go visit the client, is how much better, you know, it is than it was before. But often people think, “No, no, it’s fine. I wanna keep everything the same. I just want new cabinets and countertops.” But once we walk through and say, “Well, really, if you just had a little more counter space over here, if we kinda customize the storage over here, you know, if we widen this space a little bit, I think you’re gonna enjoy it more,” and then, you know, hopefully we can convince them to do those things and, you know, we create a better kitchen.

Uh, ultimately our driving force is, you know, our belief is, people only remo- Most people are only gonna remodel a kitchen once in their life. You know what I mean? We’re gonna remodel it, and for the next 20 years, that’s it. That’s your kitchen, unless you move. So we wanna make it, you know, as, uh, you know, the best we can s- so it’s flexible, functions well. You know, we want that long-term approach when we’re designing our spaces.

Dennis Oz: I think, everybody really understand the confidence level when Paul really answers, delivers his answers, and, this is what makes this show special, folks. So that’s why it’s great to have, people like Paul here, and thanks so much, Paul. Because folks, yeah, you know what you’re doing. That’s kitchen remodeling. When you talk about kitchens, it’s 20 years. You won’t e- be able to see that person again. Maybe for their bathrooms maybe, right, Paul? But maybe that’s the, maybe that’s the only thing. But again, like, next 20 years that you have to do your best to just to deliver because another 20 years you don’t have any chance.

So that’s, that’s the main thing. And thanks so much for sharing this here. Yeah. So- Paul, we, I would like to focus a little more on the design and build model that you’re working on. And, I… We know that in the Tallahassee area, you’re one of the licensed, remodeler in, in that area.

And, you have a full service showroom, is… I believe that’s a really big powerhouse for you. And, your design and build, model just sits right in the center of how you deliver. So can you talk a little more about we know that you have different, stages in your, McManus Kitchen and Bath journey, but why did you commit to the showroom and design and build approach? And can you talk a little more about how has it really changed the experience for your clients?

Paul McManus: Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, the big push for design build, the reason for it- was just we could have control over the whole process. My, my core frustration was I would work, you know, at the time I was working with separate cabinet people, separate, you know, plumbing showrooms, separate tile showrooms, and we would run into delays, miscommunications, you know, uh, often the com- the one, what, you know, you’d call the tile guy and say, “Hey, when’s our tile gonna be here?” And it would be some story. “Oh, it’s back ordered,” blah, blah, blah. And you know in your heart it wasn’t back ordered, they just forgot to order it, and now they’re ordering it now, and they, you know. And so I just got frustrated with some of these kinds of delays, and then the wrong tile showing up, or maybe it’s two different lots so it’s a slightly different color.

You know, the quality control, I didn’t like not having control of those things. Um, and so that by bringing everything in-house, we’re able to control the process better. Um, and at least I know if there’s a mistake, at least I know the reason, you know what I mean? ’Cause it’s, it’s us, and we can, we can take accountability for that. We can look at our systems and figure out ways to prevent mistakes from repeating, you know, and we can improve the whole business as we go forward because we take care of the whole process.

Dennis Oz: This is amazing because, design and build term is widely used for the professionals in the industry, but do you believe that the homeowners know this term? I don’t think so, right? That’s a little bit-

Paul McManus: We don’t, we don’t use it. You, if you look at our website and our marketing, we don’t use it very much, if, if at all.

Dennis Oz: Yeah. Because the main reason they don’t, it’s not… Yeah, well, I saw that it’s a very, I believe it’s a good analogy to, to have like a kind of a similarity over there, because in the used car industry, people are using, looking for used cars, but sometimes, dealers are putting it in their own pa- like they say, “Certified pre-owned vehicles.”

Paul McManus: Right.

Dennis Oz: It’s a fancy way. Even design and build is not like that be- because we use it a lot. I mean, I am not sure that like a car salesman is using that. Those are certified pre-owned vehicles. I don’t know how often that I use the term, but, in the industry, I believe that design and build term is not widely used, right?

Paul McManus: Yeah, I think it depends on where you are. I think if you’re in the Chicago area, it’s very common. There’s a lot of design build firms out there. I think in the eastern seaboard, probably pretty common. But yeah, in other, in Tallahassee, certainly, uh, the term itself is a little s- self-explanatory, you know, design build, but people don’t really understand what it means. Plus- Like you said, it’s commonly used and it doesn’t always mean the same thing. Like I know contractors here in town, they say they’re design build. What they mean is, “We will send you to a designer, and then we… And then once the designer is done, we will build it for you.” That’s design build for them.

Dennis Oz: Yeah.

Paul McManus: Design… And they don’t have a showroom, and they don’t help with the selections. They’re just sending you somewhere. You know, our process is very different. Like we are the designers, we are the showroom, we are the contractor. It’s truly design build. So yeah, we don’t like using it ’cause it’s a con- it can be a confusing term. Everyone use it, uses it differently. Uh, so we, we try to st- we try to say, “Look, we take care of everything from design to construction in house.” You know what I mean? Or we say, “One team, one contract, one warranty, you know, all under one roof.” We try to use… We try to say things like that that might connect better with, you know, what a client’s looking for.

Dennis Oz: Great. Good to hear that because we know that having those like big, I would say, team, creating one-stop shop experience for everybody or your ideal clients right there comes with some hardships. And, we know that the building the team is, one of those, one of those things that everybody who’s just listening, tuning in today it’s not easy to create your dream team and create your A team in your company. But- I’m sure that you have some golden nuggets for, these people who are just really struggling to create their team. That’s why I would like to talk about team building and people management.

What have you learned about hiring and keeping the right people in the team? Because we know that hiring is one thing, and keeping these people in the team is a, is another thing.

Paul McManus: Mm-hmm.

Dennis Oz: So what’s your thought on this?

Paul McManus: Yeah. It’s probably been one of the biggest struggles of the whole business for 10 years. So I probably, from my opinion, the hardest thing is hiring and, and people management. And, and one of… Definitely one of the most important things. Um, what I’ve learned over the years, a few, a few things- Who you hire really depends on where you’re at in your business, right? I think there’s this advice out there that you only hire the best, you only hire A players. That’s… I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think when you’re small, you don’t need… You, you… One, A players aren’t gonna come work with you, right? A players don’t wanna come work with someone, you know, where they’re doing all of the work. And A players wanna step into an environment where they’re ready to succeed.

So you do A players later. I, I look at it when you’re small, your first hire, second hire, third hire, you just want what I call executors, people who can just get stuff done. You build systems, and processes, and SOPs, they just execute tasks for you.

Dennis Oz: Real doers, right? That’s what you’re-

Paul McManus: They’re just doers, yeah. And they’re g- There’s, there’s no judgment. They’re good people. They, they’re good at getting stuff done, but they’re not necessarily strategic thinkers. They’re not the game changing, uh, hires, but they’re people who help you build the business. Then as you scale, as you grow, and you get to the 2 million a year or 3 million a year, you… now you have a need for managers, right? These are managers who can take ownership of a process. Like, a production manager takes ownership of that whole system. You no longer have to build the processes. He… That person’s in charge. A design manager, showroom manager. So you start hiring these manager levels.

Once you have manager level and your executors in place, now you can look at A players. Now you can look at bringing in people who are more expert than you. Like, hiring an A player to me means I would wanna work for that person. Like, this person knows more about this particular role than I do. They’re gonna take the company up to the next level, but you just can’t do that immediately. You gotta kinda grow into it. So that’s step one for me, is that took me a long time to sort of realize, you know, these sort of levels to hiring and who to look for, for different, different stages and different roles. Uh, the second lesson that took a little while was, uh, you know, it’s not just about hiring.

It’s hiring, how you onboard. That first 90 days, very important. You need to have a real sort of s- set process for how you bring them into the company, get them into the culture, learning all your systems and processes. Um, so you need a great onboarding process, and then you need a good hi- you need a good training process from there. So ongoing training. You have to give people a career path if you want ’em to stick around. You can’t hire someone, “Okay, you’re a designer. You’re gonna be a designer for 20 years. That’s it. You know, so just go to work.” Nobody, you know… Good people don’t want that. Good people wanna grow. Uh, you can grow… You can still be a designer, but you need to be able to grow professionally and personally in that role. Um, you know, whether that means becoming a lead designer, managing people, or becoming a selection specialist or there’s, you know, there’s different ways to utilize people’s talents. They need to be able to feel like they’re growing professionally.

Um, that’s a very big one. And I’ve also sort of learned over time, hire f- you know, hire for culture. I’m not a big woo-woo, wishy-washy, you know? I’m not that. That’s not my personality. So embracing the idea of culture for me took a little while. Um, but now we do try and hire for culture. And what that means for me is, uh, essentially w- I have to like them, and they, I, they have, we have to get along. We have to communicate in the same way. We have to agree on work styles. You know, as a, as an example, you know, we’re a profess- what I would call a professional office. We’re friendly, we’re nice to each other, we like each other, but we’re not a… Some people have a f- like a family environment, right? Where they’re on the weekends they’re, they’re hanging out together, they’re going to movies together.

But that’s not us, right? We talk we have lunches together and we do things together, like for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we’re here to work. That’s our approach. And everyone’s like that. They wanna show up, they say, “Hi, how you doing? That’s great,” and they wanna go to work. They don’t wanna socialize. In fact, it aggravates them when, you know, when I make a mistake and I hire someone who loves to socialize, it creates a problem, it creates friction. Uh, so just learning some of those things about your company and how… And, and it stems from me ’cause we’re a small enough company that the culture is really still driven by me.

Um, and so you just have to hire for that reason as, you know, as well as the skill set, it’s probably one of the most important things.

Dennis Oz: And also what you’re also trying to say is, when you have an A team, I believe A players would like to work with A players, theoretically.

Paul McManus: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s not all A players. You need B players. You can’t have all A players. B players are good too, you know? Some people, someone needs to, you know, be the person who just keeps everything moving on time. They’re never gonna be… They’re never gonna create your game-changing idea, they’re never gonna do… But they’re there every single day doing the work, making sure the, you know, everything runs on time. And they’re happy to do that. They just wanna show up. That’s their goal. Some people wanna excel and be a rock star. Some people just wanna show up for eight hours and do a good job and go home, and not have to worry about the business in between.

And you do need a mix of, of people.

Dennis Oz: This, that’s amazing to learn because, folks, that’s, that’s another thing that you always think about because once, just like Paul said, if you’re just starting, maybe you don’t need the A-team on right off the bat. But, after, generating good revenue, let’s say if you just also know how to reinvest in your business, you need better talent, and I’m sure that the p- the things that Paul shared is just going to, give you a little bit of knowledge and the big experience coming from- a big sp- big pioneer in the industry. So this is, this-

Paul McManus: I, I’ll tell you, um- I’ll tell you something, one more thing on hiring that took me a little while to learn. Um, your first hires, a lot of people, their first hire, they want it to be an admin person, someone to help with all the little things. I wouldn’t do… I think that’s a mistake. Your first hires should be people that either increase production or increase sales, right? Hire people that grow the business. You can do the admin stuff. You might not like it, but you can do it. Admin takes a lot of supervision. Like, you hire an admin person, you just hired someone, now your new job is teaching that person, and your- but your business isn’t growing.

You’re not making any more money. Hire people that help you make more money first, and that’s usually production and sales. So whichever one, you know, you’re… Whichever one you’re constrained. It’s businesses are only constrained really by two things. You don’t have enough leads, so you don’t have enough sales, or you don’t have the capacity to produce the leads you have to, you know, to serve the people that the leads are generating. Whichever one’s your constraint, hire for that first, and then the admin is your third hire, fourth hire. ’Cause then revenue has grown. Those people can take stuff off your plate. You’re no longer selling. You’re no longer producing. Now you have the time to work on that.

Dennis Oz: Because it will give you more time to work on the tasks that you would like to work on, right? That’s the main thing right there.

Paul McManus: Yeah, and it grows your… Grow the business, grow revenue first, and then… And admin doesn’t generate revenue. They’re very important roles, but they don’t generate revenue. Hire for generating revenue first, I would say.

Dennis Oz: I think, you know, that could be the one of the highlights. Admin work doesn’t generate revenue, folk. Just put that somewhere. You can write it on your mirror every day, we would like to focus on revenue generated activities in the company. Admin is not just one of them, just like Paul underlined. So thanks so much for this.

Let’s talk about sales a little bit. I was looking at your website and how you know, market the business. I know that you have a good, better, best budget, but there’s a… I’m sure that you already built a clear path for the prospective clients, right? You have a discovery call, and then you do, a consultation, and you do the budgeting.

How did you develop this process? When we go a little, just a little bit deeper, what other business owners can learn from that process?

Paul McManus: Uh, yeah. So our pro- yeah, we have a multi-step process. We’re a little unique in that we charge our initial… We charge a fee for our initial consult, not just the design process. But I’m not gonna give you an estimate without paying a small fee. That’s one of our sort of qualifiers. Um, that was sort of in response, initially, when I was, you know, working solo, just a way of qualifying people, not wasting my time going on sales calls that were never gonna turn into anything.

Dennis Oz: So, you can’t say yes to everybody, that’s what you are saying, right?

Paul McManus: You just can’t. You can’t. And you can… I find it difficult to qualify someone absolutely on the phone. The fee to me is the ultimate qualifier. One- If someone will pay that fee, in my mind, they value professional services, right? They understand the estimates of professional service, they’re willing to pay for it. Um, and so that makes me think, good, then design’s also a professional service and you w- would be willing to pay for that as well. And it’s the, also acts as the very first sale, so it’s a trust builder with the client. So small sale, and the design process is a little bit bigger sale, and the whole build process is a even bigger sale.

So it’s sort of you’re stepping and you’re building trust as you go. So I like that for multiple reasons. It also does allow you to discount. So for example, referrals. If a existing client refers us to someone, we will do that estimate for free as a gift to the person who referred and the, you know, this person. So you can… And people like that. You know, that’s a way of just rewarding a client for referring you without giving them some gift, silly gift that they don’t want. Uh, over the years, we have gotten better at qualifying on the phone. We’ve developed processes to do that. I’ve loved using, recently loved using AI. It’s been a huge help. So we just created a skill in Claude where we can take a, the, the initial phone transcript and toss it in there and it, it’ll generate some questions and some ways for us to qualify that client.

Dennis Oz: Well, I’m gonna ask the AI in the next question also, but I’d love to hear a little more about the process. We can talk about that.

Paul McManus: The discovery call is critical. So we used… Discovery call for us used to be pretty quick. What do you wanna do? Okay, this is how we work. Pay the fee, we do the call, we do the visit. That part’s okay. Now we spend a lot more time p- not asking questions about what they want to do, but asking questions about why they want to do it. Um, so we, we ask questions. Like, one of the… A great question that we’ve recently started asking is, uh, you know, I ask the client, “Tell me, when you first bought this home however many years ago, why did- why this home? Why did you pick this house over all the other houses available? Why this house?” And what that uncovers has been very interesting.

And people will say, “Well, you know, the day we moved in, we knew we were gonna remodel the kitchen, and we’ve been planning.” They will just start telling you things that you want to know without you having to ask, you know, because they’re telling their story. And so we always want to try and ask questions that allows the client to tell us their story, and that informs… Again, our, our approach is to, to redesign the kitchen so it works best for them. And so we need some of this personal information to be able to do that. But that also helps qualify. Clients who think about this stuff, clients who aren’t a good fit for us won’t wanna answer that question. They’ll say, “Well, you know, I just like… We just needed a house, so I bought the house.” You know, because they don’t care about that stuff, they just care about price. You know, that’s an indicator that they only care about price. They just want someone to do it quick and cheap or whatever, and that’s an initial signal that they’re not a good fit for us.

But if they’re willing to talk about their goals and what frustrates them and how they wanna fix it, you know, it leads us down the road of like, okay, you want to invest in your home, that makes you a much better fit for us. Uh, and so those kinds of discovery call questions, uh, have been a real… They, they do a lot of heavy lifting for us.

Uh, then we do a home visit. We scan the home with a 3D tool, um, uh, to capture our as-builts. That visit’s pretty short. We just talk to the client briefly, do the scan, and we’re out of there. I don’t wanna bother people much, so the idea is like, “Look, we’ll be quick in and out. We know you’re busy.”

Then we bring them into the showroom. Um, I use that initial scan to create a concept drawing, 3D concept, and we create what we call a good, better, best budget. And then they come into the showroom. I think a critical step is to always present in person w- when it comes to these higher ticket, you know, remodels.

Um, and we sit in the showroom. We’ll be in, in the showroom for an hour and a half to two hours talking about design ideas, going over the budget, adjusting it, talking more about, you know, the problems they’re trying to solve. And the goal really is to customize the budget and the design, uh, specifically to their needs. So when they leave, they don’t just have an estimate that someone emailed them. You know, they have a total remodeling plan that’s well thought out and gives them confidence that they can move forward, you know, with the project.

Dennis Oz: This is so amazing. And also you just, talk about some of the AI tools. I’m so excited to talk about this one because right now, Paul, we got- we are getting a lot of questions from our podcast listeners or, I would say from our own clients too. Like, and you never know where the, real struggle is. That’s why this is where our purpose here is to bring people like you to just to give, quality information back to the community. That’s why I would like to ask you this, question. This is one of the most frequently asked questions to us. Let’s talk about AI.

You already mentioned, like you’re transcribing some, of your phones, but I would like to ask you, your whole process. Where do you believe that AI started to make a difference in what department and how do you utilize AI?

Paul McManus: Yeah, so I mean, we’ve been messing around with AI for maybe a year now.

Um, the easiest impact is on your, probably on your marketing, on your cop- on your copywriting, uh, on, uh, some of your image, in tweaking images, image generation. It’s probably easiest use case is let it help you with your marketing. You know, we… If you have something you wanna put on your website, you write it, you just put it in whatever AI you want. You say, “Hey, I wanna put this on my website. Help me make it better.” And it will, you know… Then it’s a, it’s, it’s important to understand it’s a conversation, not a one and done. So then it says, “Oh, try this.” Then you can say, “Well, I don’t really like that, but I, how about this?” It’s, it’s really a conversation.

That’s easy peasy. And what I would say to anyone intimidated by AI is it’s not hard to use. It’s hard to be good at it. It’s not hard to use, so just start using it. It doesn’t really matter, you’ll get better at it as you go. But what you’ll learn… So in- initially just start using it, then what you’ll learn is the AI only knows what you tell it, right?

So if you want it to be better, you have to tell it more about you. And so if you have, like, we have a brand guide, you can upload your brand guide, now it knows your brand. You can feed it your website, it can learn about you. You can t- you can literally ask it. You can say, “Hey, will you ask me questions so you can know me better?”

And, and it’ll just, it will just start asking you questions. It’ll save all that stuff in its memory. So that’s kind of what I would call tier two of using AI. Step one is just use it. Who cares? Just start playing around. Step two-

Dennis Oz: Just like typing the same thing to Google, right?

Paul McManus: Yeah. Then step two is start teaching it about you. Step three then is you can build skills and projects. These are like little mini tools you can build in the AI to do very specific things. You know, we have one for hiring. So I drop in a resume, it creates interview questions, it creates tracking process. It does… I just drop in the resume, it does everything else ’cause it has a skill, it has a set of instructions, so it knows what to do when I drop in the resume.

We do the same thing for new onboarding new clients. I drop in a transcript, it knows the six or seven things it has to do next ’cause I’ve built that skill. That’s kind of level three. And then you can go more and more and more from there, you know what I mean? There’s all, you know, you can get deep and deep and deep, but I would say those for 90% of people, those are probably the core things. And you can go from level one to level three in, you know, a month or two if you put in the effort. It’s not, it’s not that challenging.

Dennis Oz: Yeah. What do you think about those? Right now I see some of these, you know, like receptionists, AI receptionists, and, um-

Paul McManus: Mm-hmm.

Dennis Oz: Yeah, well, it could be really good for appointment settings, but just would like to learn your thoughts do you think they are helpful for like an industry, like a super detailed industry in design build or do you think would you rather getting that voicemail instead of just sending those people even the off office hours that you would like to send these people to voicemail. Is that okay for you? Like, you only try to put that on an AI receptionist. What do you think about those, those robots right now?

Paul McManus: Uh, so we don’t use them. I- when you call us, I want a real person to answer the phone, period. Now, if you call us after hou- we don’t currently use one for after hours, but we are experimenting for after hours calls.

You get the AI receptionist that says, “What do you need? Okay.” And they can book an appointment for you. Or typically our first approach is schedule a phone call, so they would just be able to schedule a time for me or someone else to call. Um, we’re g- we’re definitely gonna implement that. I think that’s a good use case.

But for a- it depends on the business. For h- for sort of what we do, high ticket design builds, you need to talk to people. ’Cause I don’t think there’s, there’s no way around that.

Dennis Oz: This is what I was asking, yes.

Paul McManus: Yeah. If I was a window and door installer, if I was a, you know, service plumber, You know, I get- 15, 20 calls a week. It’s not a lot of calls, right? We only need to do… We do 25 to 30 projects a year. They’re just really big projects. Uh-

Dennis Oz: Because of our high-ticket projects, folks. This is it. I know most of the business are, our trades, but we just would like to underline this. We are not talking about like an, like a quick emergency home service here. We are talking about high-ticket- service here.

Paul McManus: If you’re, if you’re a plumber or electrician or a window installer or gutters or landscaping, you might be getting 150 calls a week or a d- a day. You know what I mean? So the AI receptionist can be a big help. You know, I think so you gotta think it through for your own business. I’ve experimented with a lot of them. Here’s what I would say. The goal always is to reduce the friction between the client wanting to hire you and the client being able to hire you.

So if the receptionist can facilitate that, then that’s a win, right? You just, it needs to be, you need to make it as easy as possible. You know, for high ticket, I don’t think it makes it easy because it can’t answer the questions and ask questions the way we currently can. But if a client’s goal when they call you is, “I just need to book,” then, or, “I just need a quick question,” I think it can be helpful.

I also think, you know, AI aside, put a s- w- like, we have a link on our website, schedule a call. We want every client to schedule a call. I’d much rather you schedule than call me cold, because who knows what I’m in the middle of doing or who knows what my, my assistant is doing when you call. But if you schedule the call, I can be prepared for that call.

So just put a link on your website that says schedule a call. And most… I mean, I have two things on my website. I have schedule a call. I have three. I have schedule a call, calls directly, and I have a form you can fill out. Almost everyone schedules a call. Your clients also want to schedule a call, right? ’Cause they would prefer to know when they’re gonna chat as well. So that’s, even without AI, that’s a very simple thing.

Dennis Oz: Great. Well, thanks so much and this is, I believe this is one of the, again, just to underline, this is one of the most frequently asked questions and thank you so much for, giving your golden nuggets about this and, this is perfect.

Well, just would like to bring that conversation to marketing right now because I know AI is also being used in marketing, but I would like to ask you a little more like a big picture question, not just with AI. How would you generate those leads, that qualified leads? I know that you have a qualifying process right after this one, but being, putting your brand in front of the people in correct times to correct people, showing that brand and, schedule a call, like getting a click on that button we need to advertise our business or we, we have to make our business visible, let’s put it in this way. So, what are the also, talking about these marketing, what are the best things that you believe that is working for you? And also I would like to enter the secondary part of the question, what will be the, what would be the, like the best, I would say, hardest moving target for marketing?

Paul McManus: Oh, that’s a good question. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a hard one. Yeah. Um, so we’re always been big on what’s called content marketing. So we write about a blog post a week, post it to the website. We do a pretty detailed project case study for every project. Um, that case study, by the way, it’s very detailed, but includes pricing, timeline, challenges, problems, solutions. Like it’s a real sort of description of the project. Clients really love that. It really helps them. It builds trust. Um, not- besides just seeing pretty pictures they can read and say, “Oh, okay. Oh, and there was a problem, and this is how they fixed it.” Like, it helps them really understand us and how we work.

Um, the blog posts are great. Um, they’re informational. Um, we… What we’ll do is write a project case study or a blog post, publish it to the website, and then post it to social media, and then promote it. Then we pay to promote it so it reaches more people. That then drives traffic back to the website where they can learn more about us.

Um, and then we have tools on the website, like a pricing calculator or, you know, free things they can download. So we can capture emails, that goes in our newsletter. Then we send a newsletter once, once every two months for us. Um, so that, like you said, we’re able to stay top of mind in that way. Uh, so you just need a, you need a, a bit of a suite of tools that support each other.

Um, we like social media, but paid, you could do paid ads, pay per click obviously works too. It doesn’t work… We haven’t found great success with paid ads. We’ve had a lot more success with organic social and paid social. Uh, the… An un- overlooked one, uh, is, uh, you know, put s- signs on the trucks, signs on the trailers- signs in the lawn. To date, that is still the best, uh, advertising and it’s, you know, relatively inexpensive. Very clear, clean, not a… Don’t write 100 things on your truck sign. It should just name what I do, and I should be able to read it from across the parking lot. You know, it should be big and super simple.

I have, you know, a second, I’m driving in traffic, you’re driving by, I have that much time to go- “Oh, kitchen and bathroom modeling, McManus, cool.” And I can remember that for later. You know? I don’t need-

Dennis Oz: Good advertising right there.

Paul McManus: Yeah. I, but I, what people make the mistake of is writing 17 things they do, and the website, and the phone number, and a QR code. It’s too messy, you know what I mean? It’s not a billboard or s- a poster, it’s a moving thing, right? So just big, easy to recognize. Um, that’s, you know, it’s phenomenal brand building and, and marketing. People call us and say they think we’re so much bigger than we really are. We’re not a huge company.

Because I have, I have four trucks or five trucks maybe, and I have six or seven trailers all with my name on them, and they’re all being driven around town. You know? And so it just makes us look huge even though, you know, we’re not that huge. So that’s, that kind of stuff. Don’t overlook that even though all this other stuff is out there, is what I would say.

As far as challenges go, and shifting- marketing. So we’ve always been really p- good at content marketing. What that really does is it makes you rank really well when someone Google searches you. Uh, that is now changing, right? Because if you’ve done a Google search lately, you’ll notice the results that are, the organic results are way further down the page, and you’ve got the AI overviews, and the sponsored stuff, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff up here, and then your result is way down here.

So that’s changing, and that’s, I don’t know the solution. I don’t think anyone really knows the solution there yet. I think everyone’s figuring it out, how to get, how to show up in AI overviews. I think it’s still about content marketing. I think it’s still about, you know, you wanna answer the questions people are asking in a, in a, in a way that’s unique to you so they understand your l- level of expertise and, you know, wanna reach out to you.

So I think the, I think ultimately it’s still the same, content is the way to go. Um, but that’s definitely shifting. Our organic search results are down. Um, but our, you know, our web traffic is climbing, and so there’s, you know, it’s good and bad I think-

Dennis Oz: Yeah. This is great because, people might be wondering what questions that I ask. And Paul, you know what questions that you’re being asked for all the time. Yes, you do. I bet you…

Paul McManus: Yeah, you, you definitely know.

Dennis Oz: Of course, yeah. Yeah. Even, Paul, you’re giving consent and you’re transcribing all the calls. Yeah. Maybe these people then also transcribe their phones and, listening to all these phones and transcribing it for a month will give them, questions and content maybe. Yeah. Do you- Do you think it’s a good, it’s a good idea to, like, maybe, uh-

Paul McManus: Yeah, I’ll tell you- yeah. That’s a great idea. In fact, not just for a month. Every call, just take the transcript, put it in AI and say, “Hey, I want… Create some Facebook posts or some blog posts from this transcript,” and it will take all of the questions the client asked in that transcript and create content for you.

And they’re re- they’re really good questions, ’cause they’re questions that clients actually asked you, right? And that’s all you gotta do. It’s just you’re answering the questions that your clients are asking. So yeah, 100%, use those transcripts. Create that content.

Dennis Oz: Great. Folks, that was an amazing, session with Paul today. We’re gonna wrap up, but, I think we talk a lot about sales and creating our team and even the AI and marketing. So, I hope you guys are enjoying this episode as much as I do because people like Paul here, just like these pioneer people here to just, share because these world-class people share what they know, and because we know that sharing is caring here.

So thank you so much, Paul, one more time. We’d like to wrap up the conversation of the day. Just would like to ask I would say one piece of advice that you would give a remodeler who wants to build a remodeling business that lasts from the early stage and to the later stages. Not just stay busy, job to job, but something creating sustainable. What would be your piece of advice here?

Paul McManus: Boy, that’s a loaded question. There’s a lot, there’s a lot to unpack there. So would probably say, um, you gotta build… You wanna build your systems. Systems and processes is the answer. You need really good systems and processes. The order you build those in matters. So always, always, always start with lead generation. No leads, no business. So you need a lead generation system or process that consistently delivers you the number of leads you need to meet your target revenue, whether that’s five leads a month or 10 leads a month, or 20 or…

It’s just gonna, as you grow, it will grow. But, so you’ve gotta build that system first before you… Like a sales process is important, but if you don’t have leads, who needs a sales process? Build the lead system first. S- The second most important thing to me, sales process is important, but it’s pricing, how you price, and how you raise prices, right?

So understand the numbers in your business and your gross margins and your costs and all that. Figure out your net profit you need, you want to earn. Charge appropriately. Stick to your guns. Don’t discount. But also develop a strategy for raising your prices over time or you’re gonna get stuck, right? I like to say, you know, money solves a lot of problems.

You can make a lot of mistakes if you’ve got money in the bank. So you’ve gotta focus on getting money in the bank, and then don’t spend that money. You know, earn a nice living, but then save as much of that money as you can, um, ’cause that’s the money you’re gonna need to get through bad times, cover mistakes, ’cause you will make mistakes, you know, and in reinvesting and growing your business.

Uh, so those are probably the two core or maybe th- um, maybe that was three core things. A good lead generation process, price appropriately, and then have a system in place to raise prices over time that’s consistent with your demand. You know, our general rule, if we’re sold for six months, we’re booked out for six months, and lead flow is good-

Dennis Oz: Raise prices, right?

Paul McManus: If we’re not booked out for six months or, or lead flow is slow, we’re gonna lower those prices back down. Not so low that we’re not profitable, but you know, that’s our flow. And so for a number of years we kept raising prices and things just kept getting better and better. We just kept raising prices and things got better and better.

We were able to save a lot of money. Now things have slowed down for us, but so, but one, we’re able to lower prices and still stay profitable, and two, we have money saved so that we can increase investment in marketing if we want to, or we can increase, you know, we can cover gaps if there are slow periods where we’re not generating enough revenue. That’s how you create a sustainable business.

Dennis Oz: Wow. This is amazing because you talk about a dynamic approach to the, pricing management endeavors. You cannot learn this from, like, the Ivy League universities, folks. That’s the real deal here, and thank you so much, Paul. Today’s episode was, starting from your story and ending with all your, like, expertise.

I believe that you gave us a big information, like really usable information for our listeners. And Paul, I just would like to thank you one more time for, uh- showing up here and sharing all these golden nuggets. Thank you so much. Maybe one last question. Most of the times that we are, we have the business owners, listening this broadcast.

And, our websites are designed for usually prospect of homeowners, that’s for sure. But if they have, like, a follow-up question or something like that, what would be the best way for these business owners to just, to reach out? Is that your email? Just to let you know, don’t share your personal phone because it’s gonna be distributed to 15,000 people. Just to like give you a heads up. But what do you think that would be the best way to contact you?

Paul McManus: If they wanna reach out, the easiest way is probably just my business email, which is my name, Paul, @mcmanuskb.com.

Dennis Oz: This is great. Paul, let’s wrap up, and thank you so much one more time for being here.

Folks, that was another episode, another great episode of Remodelers Success Podcast. We’re gonna see you next time. Goodbye.

Paul McManus: Thanks, Tas.

Dennis Oz: Bye.