I think you should buy tons of articles on the internet that talk about the value of freshening up or good signage on conversion to insert traffic. Like literally I would type in, better signage, and then green screen. Hey, have you had the same sign? Have you had the same window signs?
Have you had the same buy two, get two free? Banner on your pole for nine years? Like this article says, if you change your core offering on your main outdoor advertising every quarter, your business goes up 31%. I'm along that side guy.
That can crush. Attention is the number one asset. Oh thanks. Good.
We were downstairs at the desk when you walk by. Oh yeah. That's fine. Good.
Very good. Long week by time. I guess the Friday's. I'm excited about it.
Very excited. Yeah, me too. I can't wait. I'm excited about this as well.
I'm really excited to focus and listen and try to find out as much value as possible. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Why don't I do some listening?
Okay. I'm sure you gave some thought to what you wanted to discuss or get out of this. Yeah, definitely. We'd love to zero in on that one of it.
Well, you know, I'm going to start really just recent. So I've been doing social media, a lot of posting. You do paid advertising. I've got a guy who doesn't like paid advertising.
And totally or externally. How much do you spend a month? We spend a month. Respect.
So it does really well. All of our business growth is from it. But what I see more than anything, and we do a decent amount of posting, not a lot. On the organic side.
On the organic side. Decent amount. Educating on that number. What platform is how many?
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, not as much. And just started, since you've been pushing LinkedIn, just started doing some posting like that. And read your two shorts. You two shorts, really started getting into two shorts.
How do you do that? The only thing I like YouTube shorts is that if you title them, like, lead aside for my story, whatever we're getting to the details, YouTube shorts, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. So like, you know, where a lot of this stuff is kind of like running a commercial, like if people happen to see it, YouTube lasts longer. So I think about it.
So you get both. But keep going. Well, so a lot of what I've been doing when I started was literally standing in front of buildings that we were doing. Hey, we just put up the sign.
Yeah, I was doing a lot. And getting. What's the um, what's the. At Long Island sign guy.
TikTok and Instagram are probably the most active of the two. Makes sense. Go ahead. So a lot of it is that.
And I started to add the, start to add the educational business, local business marketing, local business, things that are going on that I see. What I've really seen is I walk into a client now. Someone tracks me down on Instagram, whether they do a lead through paid or just my organic. I walk in and it's like the deal's done.
Of course. You've already built brains. It's, I mean, I've never. You're not in sales anymore.
When you do this. It's why you buy a Ralph Lauren or a polo. It's already done. It's not correct.
I think the thing right away that I'm excited about. I asked the team. We just got it. I'm going to give you one of the first copies.
Thank you. I'm excited for you to read it. What I'm excited about with you leaving here is getting great at it. Let's say we're talking about health and wellness right now in that business.
You're just like, you know what? I started eating a little bit better and going to the gym. I'm like, that's good. You're like, I want bigger muscles.
I'm like, okay. Well, I've come through to learn in the last 10 years. There's a proper way to do hammer curls. And then there's a way now occasionally when I'm traveling with Mike, we have to go to Equinox or something.
And I see all these characters doing work out. I'm like, wow, they don't do it right. They don't do it right. That's what it is.
That's what I see here. I'm like, you're last 12 posts in a row on Instagram. All of them, not best practices. First second of the video.
So for example, this one, which I like actually, I think this could be a very good format for you. I like to keep your eyes on a little bit of this. We're in traffic. I'm not going anywhere.
I don't know what the behind the scenes use are, but reach. But eight likes, two comments, a couple of tweaks. And just like to use those because I can see them. Let's say I've got a thousand reach.
You'll pull it up. It's going to be really cool. That's going to be something we're going to focus on. And honestly, I'm incredibly obsessed for us to, I'm incredibly obsessed with everything that's taken on.
Yeah, and it's going to be right next to if you close it. But that's all, they're all repetitive. That's a big part of what I'm excited about. He's not afraid to be on camera.
Clearly, he's got it. He's got it. He's got it. He's got it.
He's got it. He's got it. There's a couple of different things I'm thinking about. A lot of different things.
So one, it's important to me, given how gracious you've been to my dad, that this isn't the only value we bring. So one of the reasons I wanted to send Carly to be here is I want to focus on as much as I can give me. Maybe not uniquely, maybe because they know me so well. But I'm going to give you what I got.
And then we're going to do some follow up with you as well so that we can really refine down the best practices. I want to talk about it. Beautiful. And then depending on how much you accomplish, amazing.
You know this. I'm very hot on the local mayor thing. People always talk about it not working. I get a lot of that feedback.
But then I get the occasional feedback where it really works and it just becomes a game of the same thing. Are you good at it? So one of the things that I think about when you're the long island sign guy is business development with other businesses that don't need your sign. So let me explain.
What's the most famous deli in the town that you live in or closes town or pizza shop or restaurant or something or an ice cream shop or something? Give me anything. In the town we live in? Rockies.
Rockies is a big restaurant on the island. Right. I'd like you to do content with the owner of Rockies outside of Rockies where it's a very visual where people know it's like, you know, one of the things, if you look at the ads Brandon's doing for my life right now, that first thing, yeah, that first second is everything. Yeah.
You can imagine if you're going through the stream, if you can see the big Rocky sign, if you guys are standing outside, you're just going to get a lot more awareness. Go ahead. Well, so before I got into the sign business, right before I decided I'm going to try to do this and I started something called Meat Long Island and the idea was just I was going to do business people. Nothing else.
Yeah. And then the form became long and I sort of dropped it, but now my day is spent, literally I go in and talk to you about your sign for five minutes and then it's 20 minutes I'm growing on your business. I love talking about the businesses. So I talk to business owners all day long.
You're filming that? No. Good. That's what we're going to do.
That's what I'm trying to figure out a way. It's also going to set up your post this career. If you do this well, you'll do consulting when you guys move wherever you want to move after this. If you do this well, it will significantly grow your business.
But be known as, you know, as a business consultant, it's kind of a pleasure decorating. I did it for wine, but obviously being a business strategist, like leads to, I mean, like, you know, obviously ramen, I could like hang it up and just go to Florida and like be on a Zoom a couple hours a day and live a very, very nice life. I think, I think that's great. If you're actually doing that, then we need to go hang on that.
That's my, that is my day all day. I think we need to get a kid to film you from Long Island. I think we need to get you into much better practices and then I think we need to spend the rest of the time with me on is macro strategies of things that are sustainable that can get you content. Um, um, science, so obviously you get a building sign, obviously we're that any, all signs are just big buildings.
Anything, anything from. Go to the lowest. Banners, yard signs. Someone walks in, they want yard signs for their power washing business.
We'll make them 50 yard signs. Got it. They just stick in people's yards. So we do banners for schools for anybody.
We'll wrap the inside of a building walls, all your wall vinyl, we'll do all that. What about the outside stuff? It's like sticky. Oh, guys.
All the vehicle, all the graphics on buildings. Um, yeah, it's, it's all vinyl, it's all the same sort of vehicle wraps. We had a, we had a customer of mine calls up and we've gone and put some vehicle graphics on his truck and goes, I just got a new cement mixer. I'm like, I'll come by.
He's like, I'll bring it to you. So the cement mixer on the side, my guys are wrapping it. They go all excited to play with the cement mixer, what did I think? What's a, from the business model standpoint, what is the best things to sell?
The bigger the project, the more, the more vinyl, great vinyl is the highest margin. So vinyl is, um, so you don't have any, but the door graphics, your dots on your door, someone put those dots there and those little dots and sometimes where there's, you know, you're making a lot of content around vinyl? Um, no. And as much as we should.
Yep. So in the shop we'll fabricate, we'll print all that, we'll cut it, we'll land it, we'll get it ready for the installers to go in. So let the shop. Okay.
So are you aware of what's going on with live streaming where people are just streaming the mundane? Mm hmm. Is there an opportunity, I know it won't be you. It might be people.
It'll be me sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. We're back in the.
Is that an opportunity? Yeah. We set up the GoPro at the end of the table and it's like, I'm fast forward. He's put videos together of doing all the shops.
There's nothing that happens that you're concerned about or anything. Like you'll be able to live screen it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. No, there's no. Okay. You make notes.
It's kind of a. There's just kind of like this. What I would call professional ASMR porn that people just like. They're just like watching voyeurysm.
Like people just like background noise. Like it's wild. Yeah. You'd be stuck.
Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You've got to talk to.
Yeah. How long does this take to do for one client? That's right. You're doing it first.
Like you're not constantly looking. Like I'm going to answer in 15 minutes. It's coming back in 15 minutes. We don't have to go live 24 seven.
We don't have to go live the whole day. But what happens in our showers is we've got guys in an hour old day. We've got the shop going to be open and nobody in it for four hours. And then all of a sudden for three hours.
Of course. Plus. All over the place. So there's nothing going on there that's.
No. No. What else? I've got other ideas but I just want to make sure I don't.
I've looked at it because everything I've focused on is Long Island. Everything I've focused on is Long Island. So I see a lot of the local. Would you rebrand the tri-state?
We could. There's issues working in the city outside licensing permits. I can do anything inside to go outside. So we've avoided Queen Brooklyn for now.
Makes sense. So it's just a pain. It's a pain in the neck. And then you've got...
Long Island. I mean it's big. We've got 3.7 million people I think. So it's a ton of business.
It could be busy for a while. It could be busy for a while. Yeah. What's the competitive landscape look like?
A few big players and a ton of different names. Big Apple printing. They're all... Marcus's universal.
They're all... But the big guys are five and ten million. There's a big sign around. That's probably a ten million dollar company.
But the real landscape is the million of million guys that have worked out of the truck, worked out of the garage, or have $300,000 shops. That's the big landscape. That's the big one because they don't have overhead. They don't have insurance.
They go out and they just... I'll do that for half a price. And that's the big landscape. And it's not just...
There's one guy running around doing that. There's everybody. Everybody that works for me used to own a sign company. They all used to own sign companies.
That's the landscape. Interesting. That's exactly what it is. But none of them...
This guy, the guy that said about the concrete truck, he's a customer. We took care of him. And he literally said, I got on your truck and pulled his cement truck. So I need it wrapped because I can't take it out on the road.
And it's probably a $100,000 truck. And he said, I need it wrapped now. I need the graphics. I need my deal team numbers on it.
He just pulled it up and said, get this done. So we build the customer relationships. Small guys don't have that. The little guys that are working on their trucks are working on the garage just don't have that opportunity.
But the only other thing I'll say is I got into this a year and a half ago. And I had been in internet marketing for 20 years. Mostly I had a security software company, email marketing, just that type that I was done. Search.
Affiliate. Yeah. I had a big email marketing. I used to own a security software company.
So like mail? No, no direct mail. And I just played around with some social media, but not a lot of fun going around with security software. It's not allowed to do it.
And you know this, like social is hard. Like it's actually hard. That's why it's so lucrative. It has all the attention.
You know, back to your bunch of guys running around with 300K. You're competing with the whole world. Literally actually. Actually.
And the book I just wrote is like a textbook. Like I was bored reading it in my boot. I'm like, because it's just, it's hard. But it's so lucrative when it's right.
You know what? The fact that you wake up every morning at one post can drive your business in perpetuity. That's ridiculous. It's like there's everything like it.
It is. Yeah. That's why I like a little bit of local stuff. Like to me, I'm trying to think of like what could hit the psyche of all of Long Island.
And I think it's Long Island institutions. Or I don't like politics, but like I assume those politicians have put the lawn signs on. They have to make signs. Yeah.
You know, mine went there. Then I'm just trying to think about like where and what and how. A buddy of mine owns a guy used to work with who owns LA in a minute. Which is I don't know if you've seen it.
It's a TikTok channel. All LA. Yeah. And he does.
Now he's gotten to the point where he's left his job. He does interviews. Big people now. Yeah.
And that's what he does. And I just, you know, you always talk about doing something you're passionate about. I don't know if I like talking to business people about business. Yeah.
I think you have a whole lot. I think yours is exactly what you said. Like if you're going to be there for 25 minutes. Get content out of it.
And once you understand, if you're, again, back to that, that was a restaurant, right? If you do that at like the counter. And if you in the first second of like the, um, the image, if it's, you know, like when you look at something like that, it's, you know, like you're dead already. The people are gone.
I thought that was cool. By the way, I think it's cool too. Sid will tell me he's been here with me the whole run. Many of my favorite moves don't work anymore.
Or it never worked. Yeah. This is why I'm excited. But anyway, back to the, the restaurant.
I need, I need like the two of the wine library, right? Like that was, that's great. Because I saw him. Obviously I'm the wine library.
But you know, I, I think that you and that owner, this one again is also hitting it. That, basically that for the right 25 institutions. That being a thumbnail in the first second and maybe the quick inside joke, you go right into it. Like the hedgehog, right?
Everyone like, you know, this long island lore, right? Like that's it. Because then you, then you could start creating mass awareness, right? And so they're just like, I'm just thinking about and you could do this and that and one quote from an interaction, 25 minutes.
You could be thought about putting a root beer fountain in. That's your business. You're like, I just think it's a volume game. Yeah.
And best practice quality and quantity ratio is how I talk about it now. Obviously if you post four times a day and they're all bad, then they're all bad. Yeah. But if you post four times a day and you understand core principles and you have a couple go-to moves and you've created a system that creates content, then I got something.
Yeah, those, I, the people that I talk to that see my videos are a lot of the same people over and over again. And I realize that. Well, I think, because I'm not, I think there's a couple things that let's go ahead. Well, I'm not getting the dish, I get it.
I'm not getting the dish. And what I think is probably happening is your paid media buyers probably going to reach the frequency in a short area. He's just focusing on that stuff. That's all right.
That's all I want. That's all I want everything that stuff again. Do you have any idea how he's doing his media or you kind of like letting him do his thing? Oh, what do you mean, how he's doing it?
Is he targeting Hispanics? No, there's, no. It's Suffolk County and your first piece of content starts with, you know, Spanish translation. Zip code, zip code over, and I don't remember the age, but I think we started at 35 or 30.
Just because my preference is, my preference is B to B. I'm not really, I don't want the, the PTA mom. PTA mom's a headache. Of course.
So, um, so I don't really want that what I'm looking for is the, is the, um. So is the only target male? No. But he's business.
But he's taught. No, we don't, there's no targeting beyond age and zip code. You have, I'd love for us to look at his media account. My intuition is that there's a lot there.
Mm-hmm. That, you know, f***ing bucks a month in a small area. You could do damage. We do.
You know, I don't know what, um. Correct. Exactly what's happened. It comes in first too.
And you're feeling good. Not enough. But you don't know. I used to think Burger King was good enough.
No. Until I had like a real stake. Yeah. Yeah.
And I used to run the Google ads to my security software company and we spent a lot. Really? Yeah. That was intent marketing, not branding.
Exactly. Sales. You know what I noticed a lot of also is, I can't convince you to buy a sign. No.
Like I may go get involved. Yeah. That's right. Go to find in your face all the time.
You convinced me to consider a sign that I didn't know I even needed it if you talked broad enough about all the things you got going on. That I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
That I would say is, you know, I got one for you. Please take a note of this mentally or team. I've got a really good look for you. This has a lot to do with why we're getting the new sign.
Like, you know, we're, we have figured out local advertising with my library. Mm-hmm. Exactly what I'm going to do for you. I'm like really figure it out.
Like, there's a text from Brandon from five Saturdays ago at nine to one a.m. That says, I haven't seen literally quote, this is the craziest thing I've seen in 25 years. There's a hundred customers in the store. Nine a.m.
That's four. That's four. Yeah. Yeah.
So, uh, we're going to go, oh, so now that we've figured out because it's a 75% internet company. Mm-hmm. But now that we've figured that out, I'm like, all right, we've got to fucking care about the store again. Like we really, it's really, really weirdly secondary.
It's been like a warehouse infrastructure more than like a store even more beautiful stores. Yeah. So now I'm focusing on everything. Like, landscaping, signage, everything.
It looks like we're going to have business with all that signage. I'm excited. I'm very happy for my dad. But where I was going with that is one of the reasons I'm doing that is through the years of having meetings with Walmart or Best Buy or GameStop.
Like, this can make sense to everyone. But like, it really fucking matters the outside aesthetic of your store. It's like, it's like fashion. So I think you should find a ton.
This is a fun one. I think you should find tons of articles on the internet that talk about the value of freshening up or good signage on conversion to in-store traffic. Like literally I would type in better signage and then green screen. Hey, have you had the same sign?
Have you had the same window signs? Have you had the same buy-to-get-to-free banner on your pole for nine years? Everybody's driving by the fucking... What's the...
LA... I'm trying to think of the signators. Sure, go. They've seen the same sign.
They've tuned it out. You got to refresh it. Like this article says, if you change your core offering on your main outdoor advertising, every quarter your business goes up 31%. I'm a long outside guy.
That can crush. That's convincing. That's why Brandon and Jeff are texting me probably right now because not only that, but when I came over the signs they have in the windows, they're signs from our distributors just because they wanted to put them on. It's bad for us.
They're wines and liquor. We need no money on. Yeah. And so let's make our own signs.
And those signs are not expensive. Yeah. Absolutely. So that is...
I think you should do a lot of that. Outside aesthetic conversion, there's unlimited articles and blog posts that have been written in the last 20 years that are on the internet. You have to get very good at search. You probably want to use AI a little bit.
Yeah. But like those green screens? Like that pitch I just made, that's how you convince someone who's like, wait a minute. We have had the same fucking banner, like lobster this Friday night on sale for less than six years and it's got stains all over it.
It's a piece of shit. Yeah. It's a crazy lobster. The exact same thing.
It's a lobster. I think, you know, or did you know that if you hang a banner under your core sign on your business and obviously town... I get it. You don't worry about that.
That, you know, I think if you start talking about, and by the way, you want to talk about poking on a zip, every local business is getting annihilated on in-store traffic. Every restaurant, every store. It's all Postmates and Uber Eats and dot com. Yeah.
There's not a fucking person that'll just store it right now of any kind that is interesting. The customer count is down. It'll be every four and every four and every four and every four and every four. Yeah.
And so if you're a fucking male salon and you see that and you're sitting on your fucking desk and people come in and you look at your window and you're like, I've had that same fucking sign of a girl with some nails on it being like, open now for a fucking nine years. I would pound that. You could also talk about like, hey, that's a long time ago, a big thing that you guys don't know is I was in a marketing for 20 years. So now you're talking a little bit about your marketing.
Now you're hitting back with like, look at what happens if you do that. I think you could crush that. That's a whole genre. Like what this is, what we're doing right now is strategy.
Yeah. And like that one strategy, like actually spending 30 minutes, because in the beginning you'll find a bunch of articles and then it's going to have to go deeper and deeper and deeper. Now I would do that all day. All day.
All day. I'm going to go down those two. Yeah. Like it's real business.
You're really talking right to the business owners. I'm not even going for awareness. I'm going for like the fucking guy who knows the gal that knows like she's down 100 customers a month from last year. And she knows why.
Because even though she's in a good strip mall, people are ordering fucking delivery. The guys that are super online, the guys that are making it now are the ones that are, they're building their businesses around the new norm. So in other words, they're not like restaurants are not opening up and building out a restaurant that's huge. They're building, they're taking old restaurants that are smaller and redoing them and using a different, like roast goes and they keep looking for old locations and they've got this really small.
So they take a lot of inbound. They don't pay for a lot of seating and they've got this back and they've got their back for their food. And they're used to a lot of people coming in and out. And those are the guys that really seem to be adding more and more.
It's all ghost kitchens. Yeah. Everyone's like, it's the middle's gone. Yes.
It's delivery and super premium. Yeah. Yeah. You got to get me out of my fucking house.
Well, like people think people are lonely now. What do you mean fucking pods? It'd be our and never move. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I think you can really attack that. Nice.
Yeah. That's not a sign that actually has $8,000 value for them that year. Yeah. Okay.
We put up the, we put up the, we started using AI for design work. Nice. And so we'll, I need a barbershop and I have a design and we'll, and we put up an AI picture for, an AI picture for Barbara. It's an amazing looking picture.
Really clean crisp on the side of the building. And literally the guy, two days later was like people are sitting at the light and walking in and commenting on those pictures. Of course. You know, like this is ridiculous.
The, the sign that we're going to put on the millboardam, you sign? Not the main. The fucking wallboards. It's crazy.
It's busy all the time. There's a blank building right now. I assume that everybody knows this because we've been there for 20 years. It's not a human to work.
No. There's a question. By the way, the amount of people that are about to come into that store, one of the biggest mistakes I made in my career in that store was not put the underlining level of beer food. Like, you know, people that walk in the wine are like, oh, you're a beer?
Yeah. Yeah. You know, so like. Watch that.
Watch that. I got this. All right. What do you think about the thing that you said about, you want to work with brands, make a free app for them?
Like, what do you think about reviewing signs for local businesses that you want to work with? There's one thing. I'm really grateful that you guys should jam on that. And I enjoyed this so much and I'm so grateful actually that we'll allocate even more time with me.
We'll do this again. I'll find out a little more time soon. Perfect. This is too fun for me.
Thank you. And I'm really, really grateful. It means a lot to me for what you're doing for my dad. It means a lot.
And I know this is high value in return and I know we're doing it. I was in the back in the shop and Jesse yells back and goes, Carrie V needed to sign. You think I was confused? I think I was confused.
I'm afraid of the owners of these toys. You guys will have a good meeting. Thank you. We'll get more time.
We'll get more time. Such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.