 And the manufacturers feel like, I truly believe, they feel like they're giving you the information and the resources that you need, but they're just giving you a bunch of elements that you have to then put together in a recipe. 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, and we have a great show lined up for you today. We've got Chad Lingavelle, who's the managing partner of LockDoc Security. He's also the host of a great podcast, if you haven't heard of it, called the Coffee Break Podcast, who I've been a guest on, I guess, one or two times, right, Chad? Yeah, two times. Yeah. So welcome to the show. We're excited to have you on. Hey, thanks for having me, Zach. It's not often that I get to be a guest. It's I like to be on the other side of the seat, so this is going to be fun. That's great. So for our listeners, just give us a little bit of your history, how you got in our industry, and then what in the world you do and how does how does a security company have a podcast? Well, the fun thing is that we have a security company that doesn't that has a podcast that has nothing to do with security, which is is really probably the most exciting part about it. So as short summary as I can, I got involved in the business and in the industry back in 2004, I had spent a few years out of high school in the radio industry. And I was I actually enjoyed that a lot. I thought that was going to be my career path. I had kicked around in high school. And as I was kind of moving out of that into getting into web design and graphic design, but I landed into the radio world and I loved it. I'd always loved audio gear and learning that. And so I got involved in automation where we basically brought this radio station from an old school, throwing CDs on or even throwing the big carts into a device to turning the whole thing over to a computer run radio station. And I loved it. But it just kind of hit a dead end with it was kind of a small market radio station. So I started looking at some other options and I'd also felt like I had taken on more than I could handle. And so I was wanting to I was wanting to get a job where I could just check in and check out. I wanted a nine to five and an opportunity came available to get into the locksmith industry. And I said, man, this is going to be awesome. I can just show up, do my job and leave. And a few years later, I discovered that the job was not the problem. I was and that's that's just part of it. I'm I'm going to take on more and get involved. But yeah, so that's that's kind of how I got started. I joined in the security industry in 2004 as a rookie technician and I helped to work and grow a business. And now I moved into ownership a few years ago and just having a blast trying to build and grow something. That's cool. And so I really like your perspective here because you're a fellow marketer and you're also involved in the trade the pro the installer, you know, which is I think a really unique. I want to talk more about what you see that's happening with, you know, different types of trades professionals who are marketing themselves. But, you know, if we take a look at this from a macro standpoint, what I really want to dive into with you today is talking about the trades specifically from the manufacturing standpoint. There's a lot of manufacturers struggle with they struggle with getting people to actually do the work. They struggle with the trade as a whole. There's a decline in the amount of people that are in labor force, if you will, talk to me a little about what you're seeing then as well as, you know, what are some of the things you think the most innovative companies are doing to try to not only win customers, but try to win and build the industry is really what I want to understand. It's it's interesting question. I've been thinking a lot about this over the last, you know, several months, understanding who to partner with. So as a company that's that is a trade company, you know, we're very, I guess, very selective about who we work with. Especially in the security world, because there's a lot of different products. I mean, I get emails all day every day. Hey, would you like to check out this new product? And in the sense, a lot of it is all the same. It's just from a from a different a different brand. So where do we go to choose the type of companies that we want to work with? And those are ones that are constantly pushing the boundaries, constantly trying to find out new ways to do things. That's appealing to us. I feel like a lot of times, you know, maybe it's it's just the way that the business is structured and maybe it's the way that the business grew. But there's kind of gets to a point where you rest on your laurels or you become a little complacent. And so I like to align with people that are constantly, I guess, challenging that complacency, challenging the status quo to continue to grow and be innovative. Can you give me an example of a company or two? If I push on the spot, like, who do you think is being innovative? Of a name of a brand? Yeah, sure. In our industry or just, of course. Oh, I'll take, I mean, if you can give me a big list, that'd be great. But yeah, in your industry. In our industry, Brevo is does a does a fantastic job. There's another company out there called Vercata that is doing some really cool stuff. Also, Abloy does, does some, you know, does some stuff. They've got so many different companies that sometimes it's hard to navigate the whole process, but they've got a lot of innovative things happening in in corners of the business. And, you know, even even inside of the Brevo world, there's a company called Eagle Eye that's really they're still kind of they still kind of operate like a startup in this in the security manufacturing world. And so they're just constantly throwing new kind of data analytics stuff out for for video, which is is really cool. So there's a lot of stuff like that happening. And it's interesting in our industry where somebody will come up with an idea and it'll get out there and then everybody starts to build on it. And so having some industry leaders that are going to constantly re invigorate new ideas into the industry is a is a big benefit for everybody. So when you're saying you want to partner with an innovative company, is it just the product development side of things? Or are you also looking at how they're marketing their brand? Like, what are the different boxes that you're personally checking? You're like, I think that they are somebody we should consider. Yeah, marketing their brand, the way that their their business interacts with you. So they're the way that they support you, you know, I think it's I think it becomes so commonplace in business where you, you know, hey, I've got this product. You want to buy this product. All right, cool transaction be done. Right. And that is very frustrating and probably a lot of my personality is about developing relationships. So those that are developing relationships well, and that will help to support in the marketing effort, because especially in the trades world, people, trades people are not typically the best at marketing themselves. And so people that can help point you in the right direction to help market or at least give you suggestions or support you in that aspect are also very beneficial. Yeah, one thing we talk a lot about is it's just not selling the product. The product is just like one small part of what you're selling. It's the entire experience from, you know, your digital presence, which is where we play a lot, but like how you, how your customer service, you know, interfaces with people, how is your brand perceived across other channels as well? You know, it's really the entire gamut of what are you providing to that trades person or pro, if you will. So even things like you mentioned, helping somebody in business, like, do you want leads out of curiosity? Like, do you get leads from partners and do you want them? Or do you want to marketing? There's, there's, there's no trades company that's going to say, no, don't send me any leads. If they do, then that is point of my direction. But the leads are great. Okay. I'm trying to say how to figure out how to clarify this because leads are great and everybody wants them. Our relationships are not solely related to leads. And so I think there becomes this situation where there's a vendor or a service company or a trades company that the only reason that they would have a relationship with a manufacturer or another partner would be directly before leads. And so it turns into just a handout situation. Like you come into it with their handout. And if some, if I, if I enter into a conversation with somebody and the first thing out of their mouth is we can get you better pricing and we can hand you leads, then it's probably not going to work because, you know, it's, it's just, that's, it's a, it's a complete transactional situation. Hey, how can we help to grow your business is a completely different conversation because now you've invested in partnership with me. And if we have to spend six months or a year of building a relationship so that we can build the business together, then at the end of the day, they're going to do that. I'll give you a great example. There's one, one manufacturer that we work with developed a business development group for our trade and we became a part of it before we were ever a customer. They, they invited us in and this was years ago, years ago when we were a significantly smaller company and said, we see something in your company and we want to help to, to, to mentor you essentially in growing your business. Zero history with them. We had no purchase history whatsoever. It wasn't like we were this big, big account that they were going after and they invested in us to help to show us how to build a business and that has translated into a lifetime partnership that I, there's zero reason and a high level of loyalty because they didn't come in and fix our business or they didn't come in and change our business, but they helped to, to walk us down a path to get to a point where our business could grow. What kind of time investment was that on their end? Ooh, before they saw what I would say, considerable results, probably two years. So they invested in your business for two years before they really saw return. Time investment. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I'll say this and I, and I'm trying to, I don't want to, to an over promise and under deliver, but our, our business in the last five years, won two significant awards within the organization as hitting record sales numbers for their, for their organization. So we basically, we created two categories of sales, of sales targets based off of the fact that we came in as a zero dollar client and we set two, seven figure records. Okay. So what I really want to know is how did they see your business however many years ago and like what, I don't know if they've shared this with you, but like, what kind of qualifiers did they have to go? You know what? Lockdock is going to be a great partner for us in five, 10 years from now. Like, did they have qualifiers or they just reaching out to everybody and their mom and you all responded? They had qualifiers and the problem is that, let's say if we can march down this path that it can be universal because I think part of this process was very, very unique, right? But I'll give you a couple of elements. Their qualifiers were one that you already had to be an existing dealer, which we were not. So that was number one. And number two was you had to be, you had to, to be, you had to have a storefront. You had to have a business location. And at the time when we started the conversation, we did not. So we got that before we started. So that was, that was one thing that we, that we fixed. So you didn't have either of the things that they wanted and they still reached out to you? But I'll tell you what, what we did have. We met at a trade show originally and the guy that met us saw something different. And I'll tell you why it was a lot to do with appearance. We went to a trade show as a company of five or six, the entire company went, by the way, to the trade show. And at the time we invested in, there was two years that we went back to back. But the first year we invested in, in shirts. We got brand new, nice golf shirts. They were probably the most expensive attire that the company had ever purchased at the time. But we, they were all exactly the same. They were all black shirts and they had, they were like black pinstripe shirts with our logo on it. And we all wore dark slacks. And we showed up to this trade show in a traditional blue collar environment, wherever there was a lot of people that were very, very casual, blue jeans, t-shirts, type stuff. We show up in our nice collar shirts and, and dress slacks and we stood out like a big sore thumb and it wasn't necessarily intentional. It wasn't like, Hey, we're going to show up and stick out. We just said, Hey, if we're going to go to this show and we're going to be there, then we're going to look like we, like we're supposed to. And so they drew a lot of attention and, and they saw that and they said, hold on a second, these guys aren't normal. You know, this isn't, isn't the norm. The second year that we showed up, we did it. We were very similar, but, you know, all dressed alike in, in, in company attire, not, not uniform, but not a uniform, but in uniform clothes. And we drew a lot of attention and people said, Hey, what, why are you doing this different? Why do you look different? And we said, Well, we were, we want to be professionals. We don't want to be just tradesmen. We want to be professionals. And so if we're going to be professionals, we're going to, we're going to dress the part. And because of that, it spurred several conversations and some sit downs. And they said, Hey, we think that you guys have something. We're not quite sure what it is, but we're willing to take a chance on you. So the, the first step was though, presenting ourselves to be where we wanted to go before we were actually there. I like that. It's just for the job you want, not the job you have was the idea, right? That's the idea. So let's talk a little bit more about the trade, the pro installer. What is the biggest challenge that they're dealing with today that most manufacturers aren't even aware of? You know, everybody says training. Like if you were to ask 100 folks, that's what they would say is training. We're different in that aspect because we handle training in, in house. I think a lot of people, especially from a marketing side of things, a lot of trades folks are, are looking for a, a, a easy switch to flip on. And, and what I mean when I say that is a lot of times manufacturers say, Hey, here are the elements that you need to promote and, Hey, we're going to give you collateral. And, you know, Hey, here's this PDF that you can put your logo on and, and all these things. And for somebody, especially in a business is growing, when you don't have an established marketing department and you're, you're really, you know, a lot of times the owner is heavily involved in the sales and marketing side until they build that up. It's, it's complicated. And, and the manufacturers feel like, I truly believe they feel like they're giving you the information and the resources that you need, but they're just giving you a bunch of elements that you have to then put together in a recipe. So they're not giving you a cake. They're giving you the flour and the sugar and the, and the eggs to make it. You still have to make the cake. Oh yeah, we've got a couple manufacturers we work with who they'll go to their trades, tradesmen, trades people, their partners, and they'll say, Hey, we're going to handle everything for you. We're going to handle your website, your advertising, your positioning on Google. I don't know, not many people manage their social, but they'll go in and say, Hey, we'll do this. All we're asking for is either X, X amount of spend, you know, in terms of how much you buy from us, or you're going to put in dollar for dollar from an ad standpoint. But Dave, it's completely turnkey. And like, can you imagine as a business, if like you're trying to get off the ground, like what kind of value add that is like, you will never leave that manufacturer. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's what you just described as exactly what I'm saying is, you know, if you give me the cake and just say, Here's the cake, but here's the price for the cake, then that makes sense to me. If I back myself up seven, eight years, nine years ago, as we were trying to figure out how to market our business, it was like, there's a thousand PDFs and a thousand pieces of content. Okay, what am I supposed to do with it all? How do I do Google ads? How do I do it? It was too much work. And so even now fast forwarding, I'm talking with business owners across the country all the time. And they're all like, Yes, we want to do all this stuff. Can you do it for us? Because I don't have the capacity to put it all together right now. I'm trying to actually run a business, hire people do all this stuff. I can't run a marketing strategy. You can't throw another thing on their plate. Yeah. Yeah. What about marketing from the manufacturing standpoint? Like you do marketing all the time. Like that's all you do, Chad, like you're marketing your podcast, you're marketing your business, you're helping other companies market themselves. What marketing tactics and strategies should manufacturers be thinking about that maybe isn't on their radar? Or what do you see as working really well today that, you know, people may not be aware of? Have you heard me talk to people before Zach? Never. My biggest pet peeve from a manufacturing standpoint is that manufacturers are marketing to installers. They're not marketing to the end user most of the time. So I try not to speak in definitive. So there's there's pitching their product to me as a as a as a trades person to this is this is the facts and the features and all this stuff. And that's great. And they spend lots of money marketing that product to us. But it doesn't actually get to the end user. So the end user needs to know what I believe is the problem that the product solves, not the features and functions of the product. The installers need to know the features and functions and how it works and how to install it and all that stuff, because that's what they're doing. The end user, what drives demand for that particular solution needs to know the problem that it solves. So I'm trying to think of a good example, because I know that's just, you know, that's just terminology. But for us in our industry, a door closer. And this because this is the one that I use all the time, the door closer, which for a lot of people, they don't even know what it is or where it is. But it's this big metal chunk that hangs at the top of the door that you never even look at. And the only reason that you know it exists is if it's not working correctly and it's lambs or or the door stays open, right? But for our industry, manufacturers take wonderful product shots of this hunk of metal. And they post it out and like, you need to have this. And the for the average person has no idea what it is, it's just a big chunk of metal. Well, the problem that that thing solves is, have you ever gotten smacked in the back of the the heel of your your foot, because a door slammed on you? Or have you ever opened the door and it swung all the way open because the wind caught it? That's the problem of this hunk of metal fixes that problem. But at the end of the day, the end user, the person that's actually using that particular door on a day to day basis doesn't care what the metal looks like, they just need to know, can you solve the fact that my door slams or that my door won't open all the way? And so that's that's what I'm looking for from a manufacturer. If they're helping to market something and historically for us, all of the marketing money that they've spent to market that money, that product to us, it essentially falls dead at that point, because I now have to change the entire narrative and almost scrap everything that they've provided, just to actually point to the problem that it solves. So can I play devil's advocate with you on that? Please. Okay, so we help manufacturers with the very thing you're talking about. We've definitely seen a shift of more B to C, or adding B to C and to B to B, you know. But for a lot of manufacturers, they think, hey, if I get the tradesperson to like my product, they like it, they install it and we could take roofers or siding installers or plumbers, whatever. The average homeowner doesn't know any. I mean, I mean, I'm a homeowner. I don't know that much. Like if I go and let's say I go and I build a deck, okay? I go get some contractor who builds decks day and night, common quoted. I say, Hey, I really want you to use treks. And he goes, you shouldn't use treks. Treks is garbage. You should use Azek. Yeah, I'm gonna go. Great. I'm not going to argue with him. Yeah, sounds great. Because let's say Azek did a better job at marketing to that tradesperson. Sure. So that would be for a lot of manufacturers, the argument as to why they prioritize that tradesperson that installer. But what you're saying is, yes, I'm still important, me being them, you know, you the installer, but the homeowner, the end user, whoever is actually purchasing it is important because they have to understand the problem it's solving. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, because so in that exact and I like your scenario here because I have no idea anything about anything that you just said other than a deck. Okay. So all the other brands are Greek to me. So in that sense, if I'm searching for or I'm looking for a deck, I'm not going to be searching for either one of the products that you just said because they don't mean anything to me. What I'm searching for is how do I get a nice? How do I enjoy my deck? How do I have a maintenance free deck? Like I don't want to have to stain it and paint it or whatever that you would have to do to keep up with the deck. So that's what as a consumer in that situation, I would be looking for how to get a, you know, a very reliable deck with, you know, that I don't have to maintain or something like that. Yeah, some like that. Okay. So in that sense, now if the manufacturer is creating content that's going to drive me to that and then attach me to a dealer or somebody that's going to solve that problem, then I'm gold because now I'm coming to the dealer and saying I want, you know, I want this deck because I don't have to maintain it. You're more educated. Yeah. And the thing is now, you know, I have had this conversation with a lot of people will an educated consumers not necessarily what we're looking for. Well, you cannot look for that all you want to, but that's just the nature of the beast now. Have you seen this? You know, that's what everybody does. And if you want to know something, what do you do? You Google it. And what does Google give you a YouTube page? You know, that's that's what's happening is that users, end users, consumers are becoming more and more educated, more and more aware, and they know what they're looking for. And they're going to find somebody to help them get it. If you compare your customers today to let's say 15 years ago, 2004, you said you got started. Yeah, a little over 15. How much more educated are they? Oh, everybody is, you know, especially in some of the more advanced electronic products that we offer on the security side. I mean, do we have people contacting us and saying we want you to use this exact type of hinge or this exact type of door closer? Unless they're a facility manager and they're very, you know, very much adamant about it. But there are people that will come and say, Hey, I've done the research and I want to use this because of a BNC. Do you ever talk out of it? We explain our perspectives on the on the type of products that we use, because we we use a lot of experiential data. You know, we've been utilizing this type of product and we've used this and here's here's the pros and cons of both. This is why we recommend this. That's great. Chad, this has been fascinating. Man, thank you so much for coming on the show. For our listeners, if they want to get in touch with you or contact you, what's the best way for them to do that? The from the from a business standpoint, if you go to locdoc.net, you're gonna, you're gonna find me. If you Google my name, there's probably gonna be a bunch of pictures of me and videos on YouTube that you can watch. And it'll all point back to the same place. If our marketing is working correctly, it'll, it'll bring you to the website and you can connect with me there. But I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, all that stuff. Just my first name and last name. Pretty easy to find. If you can spell Lingafilt. That's great. We'll make sure we link to that in the show notes too. So for listeners, you can check out our site for that. But I mean, I know a lot of people are listening to this, but Chad, you have the probably the single best backdrop and studio setup of anybody we've interviewed. I mean, like you're put, frankly, you're putting me to shame right now. It looks like if you, if you just saw a picture of this, like it would look like you're interviewing me, not the other way around. I appreciate it, Zach. It is, it's been a, it's been a long process. We started out with, with a couple of simple microphones and a GoPro sitting, sitting on a stand to, to a really incredible studio that we're blessed to have. So I appreciate you, appreciate you acknowledging that. That's cool. And for our listeners, if you like this content, make sure you go to Venvio.com slash podcast to get more of it. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams. Talk to you soon.