 We're going to be condensing and bringing you the top five most popular episodes based upon downloads and sharing with you our personal favorites as well. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Popnikalove. Today, we're breaking down for you the top episodes of 2021. If you haven't listened to all of our episodes, which I know most of you have, we're going to be condensing and bringing you the top five most popular episodes based upon downloads and sharing with you our personal favorites as well. These are one of my favorites because we talk to so many cool people over the year. Even as we were preparing for this, we're like, all of this happened in a year. We packed a lot of really good stuff into a year. I think it's good to revisit. Get ready, get set, 2022, coming at ya. Let's take a good review. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm looking at our spreadsheet here, Beth, of all the episodes. I'm like, oh my gosh, we did that this year? It was a lot. Oh my, that's incredible. Yeah. But you also, wait, did you have, you weren't here at the beginning of the year, so I did a couple of these on my own. I was, well, I was moving. You were moving. I got to stop having big life events. 2022, it's the year of average for Beth Popnikolov. The year of, what does that mean? Well, it's just significant because I missed a lot of episodes in 2020 because I had a baby. I missed some episodes at the beginning of 2021 because I moved across the world. And now we're just, now I'm here so I'm just, I'm good, I'm good at coast. 2022, I'm going to coast. Yeah, I doubt that. That doesn't sound right. Yeah. Yeah. So let's count it down, Beth. Let's start with number five. Number five, our fifth most popular episode in 2021 was episode 131. It was three tips for building product manufacturers to increase specifications. Do you remember this act? This was a great conversation. We talked to Eric Zuziak. He's the president of JZMK Partners. Oh yeah, he was great. It was, we went in like a totally different direction on that episode than I anticipated because I was like, okay, he's going to talk to us about high-end custom homes. And he basically was like, here's everything that manufacturers think matters to architects. Here's what doesn't matter. Here's what you need to do. If you want to win an architect, he even talked about what, like samples and stuff like that. Isn't that right? So we're going to play a clip. And I mean, he literally starts his clip with like, I'm going to be brutally honest with you. Because he was just laying it bare for what manufacturers need to know about architects and basically everything that they get wrong. It was awesome. All right. Let's listen to it. I'm going to be, I'm going to be brutally honest with you. Yeah. Again, it's a time thing. We are on deadlines and we've got to perform quickly. We will call the product representative, probably the manufacturer's representative is who we want to talk with. We're not really interested in talking with the sales representative. We're interested in talking with the manufacturers representative about the performance of a product like doors and windows, for example. Those manufacturers, it's really good when we can call them up and say, hey, can you come in and do a lunch and learn for us? You know, bring in a lunch, show us your product and show us what it can do. And also make sure that we can get AIA continuing education credits for your manufacturer's presentation of your product to us. That's going to put them to the front of the line of the other manufacturer's reps who are asking to give presentations. So good. Right? Love it. Man, just nailing it. So county down number four was episode 114. The title of it was three building materials manufacturers whose selling strategies are winning new customers. This is where we had Brett Thorne on the show. He was awesome. Yeah, he's awesome. Lumber dealer who also gave some really good insight from his perspective and selling to contractors and builders and dealers about manufacturers who are doing a really good job at selling to them. Yeah, he had a really great example about Do It Best and their LBM Advantage shows. We're going to play a clip from him. And one of the things that really stands out about Brett is that he's a pro. He has his own podcast. He thinks about these things. Essentially, like a thought leader and influencer, could I call him an influencer? He influenced me. He influenced me. Influenced me. Yeah, I'm a fan. So we're going to play it from the clip from him now. It's really insightful. I think really is shifting the way that they go to market because, you know what? There was so many traditional avenues that have been either temporarily blocked and some may even be permanently closed. You know, I always found the shows, whether it's your international builder shows or your different host seller or your buying group markets like Do It Best Market, LBM Advantage shows, things like that was a great time to go out and talk to the manufacturers, find out what's new, what they're doing, what they've got in the works, where now those guys don't have the ability to do that traditionally like they did. So I think that probably one of their biggest struggles could be is, you know, how do they get that information? How do they take that audience that they, and let's face it, they've got a lot of them have a pretty good collective audience, but they're going to have to market to them a different way. They're going to have to connect with them a different way. I think the manufacturer's problem was how to shift how they get their product to the market or get in front of their customers at a different angle. But the GCs and the professionals are facing, you know, it goes back to that communication thing, and I think specifically with the professionals, they probably need this the most as far as better communication, you know, and we were talking earlier, I said that, you know, communication is so critical right now because of all the supply chain issues and everything that's going on that really stand on top of things being in front of the problems and communicating that. And I think, you know, from the professional side, you know, they're going to have to probably be more informed of what's happening that they need to be a little more proactive and say, okay, you know, I need to maybe plan a little better. I need to be in the know on what the lead times are going to be on special order items, you know, what the lead times are going to be. So I think from them, you know, that line of communication needs to have a lot of bandwidth to it. I mean, it's got to have multiple vehicles to communicate that with your suppliers. Taking advantage of Zoom, FaceTime, all of that, using every resource you can to be proactive in your projects and to stay ahead of the issues that everybody's facing. He's a baller. Yeah, he's a baller. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah, I agree. I mean, he's talking about so many different people on the channel. He specifically calls out GCs and the other pros. He has really phenomenal insight because he's living it, right? All right. So counting down number three, I want to do this one, Beth, because selfishly, I think this is really good. It's episode 111. It's what architects want from manufacturers in 2021. It should be called like what architects want from manufacturers all the time. All the time. Yeah. And that's, that's where we interviewed David Weber, who are huge fans of from Architizer. He's the CEO there. We had him on an event when you held a couple months ago. If you ever get to go to a trade show or you see him, like he's phenomenal. Like he's so, so smart when it comes to what architects want and need. But he breaks down just really plainly because they have to sell the architects too. Like he's not only like he represents that industry, but he also has to sell to them, right? Yeah. We chose this clip specifically because David calls out something here. And if you have conversations with him about architects, you hear him use the word thoughtful about them a lot. And it's such a great way to summarize who they are and how they go about their projects and the products that they specify. And it's a key differentiator in their buyer persona. And David talks about it a bit in this clip. Yeah. You know, I think that architects, they're, they're very thoughtful. They're very creative. And I think they, they have a really important role that they take very seriously as sort of the, the arbiter for sort of healthfulness and, and care for the environment, both in the macro sense and the micro sense of the space. And so they, they have a lot of like weight and responsibility on their shoulders to create a helpful, positive, effective space that meets the needs of those users and the environment surrounding it. So I think that there, there's a lot manufacturers can do to help architects in that mindset and to give them the information they need to, to, to help create a successful space. I think when manufacturers position products, I think they really need to think about their products as part of a story. This is what we always work with any partners with when they're working with us to promote their products within the architecture ecosystem is to really think about the narrative of your products. How can your product help solve some sort of problem? It's definitely a solution, but a solution within a broader context as part of a bigger whole. And I think that context is something that you can never really lose sight of. And the most effective products, I think for architects are products that present themselves within the context of a larger entity within the project. And I think that's part of what is successful about the architecture ecosystem and linking products back to projects is you never lose sight of that context. Isn't he so smart? Yeah. Speaking of fans, I'm a fan of David. Influencer, right? Influencer. I'm influenced. Also, if you're ever having a bad day, architectizer.com has the building designed to pick it right up. It's so good. It's very good. I don't think that's technically part of their value prop, but I really love it. They're going to see like a weird spike. And like, Hey, what's this weird referral traffic source from this like agency, Venvio? And it's like everyone that listens to our podcast, we're going to link to it. Yeah, absolutely. But it's really good. All right. So what's number two? Okay. I'm going to let you do this because speaking of fans, you are a big fan of the uneducated economist. I'm not surprised. So he's our number two most popular episode of 2021, which is absolutely no surprise because he has a killer fan base. And some really incredible insights, but I'm, I'm spoiling it. I'm saying I'm going to let you intro it. And then I didn't. Well, what's really cool, and I'll just, you know, just some background about this. So this is in the episode 112, this uneducated economist on a housing market lumber prices in the future of construction. This is a guy who has a YouTube channel where he just kind of talks about the economy, talks about what he's seeing. He doesn't exclusively talk about building products, but I think he works for a lumber dealer and has for a while. And so I think it was Mark Mitchell shared his information with me. And so like, I'm hounding this guy like on Twitter, on YouTube, you know what I did to get his attention? He has this thing where he's like, Hey, you want to like, send me a coffee? Like, here's my Venmo. And so I Venmoed him like five bucks. And that's how he responded to me. He's like, thanks for the coffee. Yeah, I'd love to come on your show. You know, that's how I got his attention. Yeah. Isn't it interesting? I did, I did, I actually didn't know that. I knew that you like hounded him on Twitter, but I didn't know we brought him on at the price of a cup of coffee. That's all it took. Now with inflation, that $5 is probably six. Yeah. You basically bought him like a coffee with an extra shot of espresso or something. Probably. Probably. Let's listen to the clip. Honestly, anytime I ever see things get to the extreme, I'm thinking, OK, you just got to wait for the time to turn. Like anytime anything hits a low, you know, lumber hits 250 per thousand, that's a bottom. You know that it's probably not going to go much lower. And when I'm looking at housing and I have a particular area that I would like to buy, not quite there yet, but, you know, I'm building up my down payments and stuff, and I'm keeping my eye on this one particular area. When I first started looking at this particular area, there's like maybe 25 houses for sale right now. I think there's like seven, you know, they're gone. There's no house. The houses that do pop up for sale are like these junky old houses that are extremely close to me. That's an extreme situation. And this is like, you know, when you shake in your head and say, and this is unbelievable to me, then most likely you're probably in some sort of cycle or bubble where things are going to change, right? You know, if it's at a bottom, it's going to go up at the top. It's going to come down. Now, as far as like what the Fed is doing, interest rates going into the future at the Federal Reserve can maintain a low interest rate environment, which they say they're going to attempt to do and is able to maintain that throughout the throughout the next couple of years. And yes, you're going to be able to continue to have this, you know, exorbitant housing market on account that the interest rates are low. The moment that environment changes, the moment that those mortgage backed securities that the Federal Reserve buys, which keeps the interest rates low, once that market changes, then you're going to have a completely new environment and that people are going to have to figure out how it is that they are going to be able to buy a house without being able to acquire the loan at the level that it is. I mean, I feel like I could have talked in for like hours, right? So good. Yeah, I was going to say that it's like the title of the podcast is the uneducated economist on the housing market, subtitle Zach and Simon geek out for 30 minutes while Beth watches. I mean, we talked about the Fed. All right, so what's number one? OK, number one in downloads in our hearts and on the headlines, it was lumber prices. There's no surprises there, right? Is anybody shocked? Number one, will soaring lumber prices be the new normal? So in this episode, we talked to Stinson Dean, who has a very killer Twitter handle all about lumber. What's his Twitter handle? Speaking of Twitter, you have you hounded him on Twitter also, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, him and I can say this. Yeah, so I appreciate him and I connected on Twitter. And what is this? What is his Twitter handle? It is lumber trading. It's like at lumber trading. Yeah. And him and I connected on Twitter. I was like, dude, you should totally come on our podcast. It's fascinating to me the level of insight that he had, as well as just like, we're pretty deep in this industry. But like, there's things that we have no idea that's going on. Yeah. He lives like a whole world that we don't really touch with from a marketing perspective, but is ever present in the minds and backgrounds of the people that we do market to, if that makes sense. It was a fascinating episode. Well, what's cool is like we got a bunch of comments from different people and like you hear from manufacturers about his position and about his perspective, like it was interesting here for lumber dealers about like what they thought he about him. Like that was also pretty interesting, which you'll have to take us out to get a drink to hear all the juicy details. But all right, but let's listen to the clip. From my perspective as a trader, prices used to go from 300 to 600. And like that was those were big moves. Now we're going from 900 to 1300 back to 1100 back to 1200. Like in back to 700. So we have $500 swings. So it makes risk taking much more difficult. So, yes, I think the floor of prices is permanently raised and, you know, we could slow down. Housing could slow down. Interest rates could go up, which to me is the quickest and only lever at this point is interest rates going up, colliding with higher home prices at the same time. It'll cool the market off, which I think we all need. I don't think there's any chance of a crash or a bubble in housing. We're so grossly underbuilt. But to me, the big shift is going to be how the industry manages risk. I mean, he had a wild ride this year, you know, I we need to recap, maybe we bring him back on. Do you think you could you could tweet at him enough to get him back on? Like, tell us how the year rounded out for you or like, what do you see in 2022? We need a part two. We do need a part two. So, Beth, what that rounds out the year in terms of our top five. What is your honorable mention? Which one did you enjoy? So one of my absolute favorites was we talked with Katie Schilling. She worked with Cameron Ashley and was integral in helping Cameron Ashley, a huge nationwide distributor, stand up their Ecom platform. And Ecom is ever present in our lives. Like, it's it's inescapable. You have an opinion on it. If you're listening right now, either you are like, yes, we need to do that. No, we can't do that, or I wish we could do that, but we can't. And here's why or somewhere in there. And listening to it from her perspective was absolutely fascinating. We're going to play the clip, but let me just spoil it for you. Her insight and her company's insight into this is an addition to our revenue stream. This is not taking from anybody, but this is simply growing our ability to grow revenue and our ability to bring revenue in versus funneling it from other channels is so key. And I can't tell you the amount of times that I have repeated that throughout the year, because I think that's just incredible perspective on the need. And basically the business case for Ecom in the building materials industry. I would say don't do it if you think it's going to save you money. Our CEO has always said that. And very clearly, it is an investment. This is not something that, you know, you just throw some money towards and you walk away from, I mean, it is a true investment. So do it because you care about your customer. You want them to have a better experience. You want them to buy the products from you whenever, wherever. But don't do it because, you know, you want to save warm bodies in a room with, you know, salespeople. The website for us is an option. It is not a requirement for our customers. You don't want to use the website. Call facts, do do what you normally do. But this is for just the future of Cameron Ashley, but it was in no way a strategy to just save us a bunch of money in the long run. It was really purely designed for the customer experience. So I would say if you want to make that investment and your customer, then absolutely go for it because it's been the best thing that we've done in a long time and it's been revolutionary for us and unexpected. So I mean, I think that I would definitely say this is not a money saver, but it's it's it changes the game and it changes the way your customers think about you. So good. I mean, the other thing I really liked about her, her episode about this, she was pretty transparent. Yeah, the fact that like this is how we got a million dollars in a day. Yes, this is how we did it. That is compelling. I know, right? Yeah. Very cool. So what about you? What's your honor roll mention? I actually have two. I got two honor mentions. OK, so here's it. So I was looking at the list here over the year and there's two episodes. I think that should be actually one episode. So your episode with Ashley Stevenson, Social Media ROI is like in the top 10. But if I take that one along with the recent one you did on TikTok with her, it's like top three. So your episode with her on TikTok and social media, we got a ton of people. I mean, I was like, OK, this would be a cool episode. Like this is something we should talk about, let people are kind of asking about, but the amount of people that responded about those episodes like off the charts, very cool. Yeah. So for me, I'm like, OK, like that's that's pretty because number one, I like seeing our team win and I like like when we discover those episodes that like, OK, like this will be interesting. Like we've done those. We're like, oh, this will be interesting. Like years ago, we did the one where Home Depot were like, OK, maybe we'll release this one, most popular episode for the year. Yeah. So for me, like that was really cool. We also need to see just Ashley is incredibly smart, you know, and sure. She makes us look really good. Let's listen to a clip from the TikTok episode. So I love the idea anytime an account has a very specific niche that they try to either attract or associate it to something happening from a social perspective. So for example, the Met Gala, something very popular. It's covered on TV, on social media. Everybody watches it. Everyone wants to look at the outfits. There was a faucet and fixtures company that is based in California and they literally just have faucets and plumbing fixtures and they created an entire TikTok video comparing the faucets and fixtures to Met Gala outfits. So I mean, it's very unique. I know, right? Like this is the Kim Kardashian full black faucet, basically in comparison. If we're going to have something that looks really glamorous and then there's a comparison of that one next to that. So they made something that people were paying attention to that was trending and they made it fit for their business and their brand. They didn't say this is the Kim Kardashian faucet. They just said, hey, these are inspired by paint companies do a really great job with that as well. Anytime you can create an inspirational opportunity that and use images that everyone is seeing and consuming at that point and allow them to associate you to it in a positive way is 100 percent checking the box of what you should do. There's other examples of doing before and after transformations. A lot of times when we're in this big to be space or we're doing building projects and we're talking about products, the average person and end user doesn't know how they all work together. They see them as individual components and pieces and they become overwhelmed. So showing them the example of this is where we started and then this is where we're ending and we we placed all of these together in this beautiful way. It's just taking your cell phone and walking through a door of a project that you did or taking your phone and recording the assembly line in the manufacturing facility. It's it's not something where you need an entire production company to come in and spend two, three days recording and shooting footage. You don't need very, very doable. So, Beth, I want to get your perspective on this. How much bigger is TikTok going to be for building product manufacturers a year to two years from now? Is it going to be bigger? Is it going to matter? Or is it going to be like, oh my gosh, we should do Snapchat for building products and we actually don't need to do it. Yeah, so the world of social media platforms, this is this is a wild gamble. I mean, I'm just being totally transparent. I think to say that I know what's going to come next in the world and the universe of social media is I mean, that's just saying a lot. I think there's only potential. All I see is potential. I also see demand. I don't know what you think, Zach. I view it this way, like where people are spending time. So, like, if you look at different demographics, different audiences, younger generation is spending more time on TikTok. And as they come into workforce, is that going to change? People do spend time differently on social media. There might be different social media channels, but I do think there's opportunity there. Like, I don't think it's going to be the only place, but I do think that there is, like I said, there's potential, there's opportunity. And there's ways, especially to, you know, if you're trying to target a younger audience, whether that's getting them into the trade or getting even potentially new recruits or employees, like, there's different ways to leverage those channels. So I'm like, why not try, you know? So that rounds out our top five and our honorable mentions. I will say, you know, this has been an incredible year, you know, for the podcast and for our viewers, I'll ask you as our viewers, two things real quickly in parting to round out the year in 2021. Number one, we're always looking for ideas for content. If there's something you want us to cover, there's something you want us to talk about, drop us a note podcast at venue.com. Sometimes we get great ideas from people who are reaching out. They're saying, hey, I really want to talk about this. I'd love to hear you all bring this person on or share about this topic. Some of our best ideas and best episodes are from our audience. So please bring us those ideas. Number two, one way you can get back to us, which we don't really ask for anything on the show is go to the podcast store. We would love five star reviews. There's one star on the Christmas tree. We want five stars on our podcast. So please, we would love those reviews. Anything you can do would be great. It'd be a huge, huge thank you from Beth and I. But Beth, I will say, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year to you. Yeah, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy New Year. What are you doing? What are you doing? You and your family? So I have big plans to do a Harry Potter movie marathon with my husband. Oh, you're a big Harry Potter fan. I'm not a big Harry Potter fan. I'm a medium. I think I could be a bigger Harry Potter fan. Never watched all of them. So we're going to watch. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I've watched a handful randomly. So we're going to watch them all in sequence. This is like the one time of year you need to get cable then because ABC Family just basically puts those. Is that what's happening? Like really just put them on repeat. It's like that and Home Alone and like Christmas story, like those three things. What else do you need? I mean, I'm set. I'm set. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? What are you doing? Whatever my wife tells me to do. As always. You know, I'm just kidding. So I'm actually serious now. I'll do whatever she tells me to do. So what am I doing this Christmas? I mean, hopefully nothing. Just I mean, we've got a lot of family. So like we'll visit my wife's family. We'll see my family and I will survive the gauntlet of like sweets and food. The holiday parties. Yeah, be good. Yeah, be good. But listeners, thank you so much again for this year. It's been awesome. And if you want to subscribe and get more content like this, go to VenbyO.com slash podcast. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth Popney Glove. Thanks, everybody.