From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
Coach or Guru? Navigating the Noise in the Trades
Growth stalls when we expect marketing to fix what’s really an operational problem. We dig into the honest math of margins, staffing, and process with Joe O’Grady of Team SPG, and we map out how to turn ad spend into predictable revenue without lighting profits on fire. From budget benchmarks to tracking discipline, the takeaway is simple: more dollars won’t help if your systems can’t catch them.
We start by setting realistic budget ranges based on goals: 8–10% of net to stay steady, roughly 14% to grow, and up to 20% when you’re preparing for a sale and need to showcase demand. Then we get practical about readiness. Can your CSRs answer and book the calls? Are your techs converting at healthy rates with consistent average tickets? If those fundamentals wobble, your marketing will only expose the cracks. Joe shares why accountability beats hype and how candid coaching helps owners fix processes before they press the gas.
We walk through closed-loop tracking so every lead tells a story, from first touch to final invoice. That means unique numbers for paid tactics, tagging in the CRM, and measuring answered calls, booked jobs, conversion rates, and revenue. We tackle the love-hate with referrals—powerful yet fragile—and explain why a balanced mix matters: SEO for intent, Local Service Ads for speed, direct mail for targeted reach, brand for long-term trust, and maintenance plans for recurring revenue. Small improvements compound: a modest boost in CSR booking and tech close rate often outperforms a large budget hike.
If you’re ready to replace gut feel with data, align spend to capacity, and make every campaign accountable to outcomes, this conversation will give you a clear playbook. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a nudge toward tracking, and leave a quick review to tell us where your biggest bottleneck is right now.
If you enjoyed this chat From the Yellow Chair, consider joining our newsletter, "Let's Sip Some Lemonade," where you can receive exclusive interviews, our bank of helpful downloadables, and updates on upcoming content.
Please consider following and drop a review below if you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to check out our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.
From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
Interested in being a guest on our show? Fill out this form!
We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
What's up, Lemon Heads? Welcome to a whole nother episode of From the Yellow Chair. I am Crystal, the co-founder of Lemon Seed Marketing. And today, y'all, I love a good operational kick in the booty about how I need to be paying attention to more than just marketing and looking at my margins and what is like where am I bleeding? Where am I hemorrhaging? But where am I doing good? But I want to look at the whole picture a lot better. So you're gonna want to buckle up and uh listen up today. So grab some lemonade. Let's talk it out. All right. Well, Joe, welcome to the party.
SPEAKER_00:Hey. Hey, hey, hey.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, hey, hey, hey. So Joe O'Grady is here with us from Team SVG. And listen, I had the best interaction with you at Service World. Um, we just kind of met on this on the floor. There wasn't a lot else going on. So we met up on the floor and kind of laughed and joked for a little bit. And we decided, like, why have we not had more conversations together? So tell everybody why they should care what you have to say today.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, the truth is there are many people out there that do what we do, just like there are many people out there that do what you do.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Um, why they should care is because I care.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, love it.
SPEAKER_00:So, quick background. I used to be in a very different industry. I actually used to own ballroom and Latin dance studios up north.
unknown:Oh.
SPEAKER_00:And I moved my I moved my whole family, I sold my studios, and I moved my whole family to Florida to manage someone else's studio. I just didn't want the bills in the overhead, right? I always tell people if I knew then what I know now, I'd have a chain of dance studios, I'd still be dancing. Um, but I moved my whole family to Florida, and that that, you know, that that poor guy got embezzled from his ex-wife, and we ended up homeless. Me and my wife, and uh at that time we had two kids living with us and two dogs. Um, and and quite truthfully, we were living in bad circumstances in a crack and whore motel down here in Osprey, Florida. And I was I was playing poker every day to make$160 to be able to feed and house my family.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00:So my wife put my resume online, monster.com. That's how long.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, back in the day, back in the day.
SPEAKER_00:And uh I got interviewed and hired by a company called Clockwork Home Services. They own Mr. Sparky Electric, yeah. Um, one hour heating and air, and Ben Franklin Plumbing. I I didn't know anything about the contracting space, but you know, I quickly learned I met some phenomenal people, and this industry itself changed my life, changed the trajectory of my life, gave me my dignity back, and my why became like my why is always my family, but my why became paying back to this industry and the owners and the people who work in it. So that's what so I wake up every day and I think, how can I help someone? And look, my knowledge is is similar to to most people out there. Uh, the difference is I care. I I truly want the people we work with to succeed because they deserve it, they're good, honest people. Yes, so so that's why they should listen to me. I mean, listen, I've I don't think I say anything too different than anybody else. I curse a little. I have New York Tourette's, I'll try and keep it down on this meeting. Um, and I'm not a rah-rah guy, I'm not the guy who's gonna blow smoke up your ass and tell you what you want to hear, um, unless you deserve it, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So if you know, people come to us because they want the truth, they want the path, and they want somebody to hold them accountable. That's what was missing and is missing in a lot of these groups. I hear so I just saw yesterday someone talk, uh, someone in the industry coaching on on a public forum said, you know, people these these owners can't afford not to do coaching. Yeah, they can actually not afford it. There, there is a time in their life where you might have to say, and I've had to say it over the years, okay, you weren't properly funded, you didn't go about it the wrong way, your marriage failed, you're now an alcoholic. Let's get your life together and go to work for someone else, because that's just the hard truth.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the things I've really noticed lately is there's so much, um, so much of that going on where, like, listen, you just were not set up. You need to take about 10 steps back. And like, you know, we we romanticize clawing your way out, right? Oh, you clawed your way out from the bottom. Yeah, like and and probably lost a lot along the way. When sometimes, you know, pride comes before the fall. Sometimes you could just say, you know what, let me go buckle back down over here and come out even stronger. Um, but we we romanticize the hustle, which again, I'm a I I understand it. And for a lot of people, just a little grit gets them there. It gets them over that hump. But for some people, like you're just not ready to be where you need to be. You're not financially ready, you're not mentally ready, you're not, you know, emotionally ready. Your family life is a mess, your personal life, you know, like the alcoholic or drugs or whatever's going on. Man, I'm telling you, I see it every day. I mean, I look contractors in the face every day that don't need to be running companies, right?
SPEAKER_00:And and you know what? So I opened my own dance studios because I believed I was the best technician, right? And I failed miserably in the sense that I made a lot of money, but I didn't have a pot to piss in.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I marketing, so we're gonna talk marketing. Like I spent money on marketing without tracking it.
SPEAKER_01:Oh no, that's the sin.
SPEAKER_00:Right? That's the sin. Gut feeling, gut feeling. Yes, yes. You know, there were two there were two local uh sales reps for local newspapers that loved me. Because they would come in my office and flatter me and give me treats, and I would drop tons of money. Come to find out later in life that none of those ads paid off.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because you know you're stuck.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I wasn't tracking it, I didn't know how to adjust my gross margin. I didn't know, I didn't know in that field what the proper percentage would be. Right? Yeah, so now that I know and I'm helping contractors, right? I know I can look a contractor in the eye and actually say, if you've been in business 10 years or more and you're looking to keep steady and keep your guys busy, you should be spending eight to 10 percent of your net on marketing. If you want to grow, you've got to bump that to 14. And they don't they flip out when they hear if they're gonna sell their business, shoot, they got to go to 20 a year prior to selling to getting it ready to sell, because that makes it more attractive for the owners to see to for the future owners to see them. So, and and but they don't know how to adjust their pricing to handle it, they don't know how to prepare their techs to handle the volume, they don't know how to prepare their CSRs to handle it, and that's a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you know, marketing is not a band-aid for bad operations, nor but what it is, is it will exacerbate anything that that is that's got a little hole in it. Okay, so if you really go to 20% marketing, like I tell everybody, you know, listen, I'm here for the party. You hear me? Like I am ready when you have a good, healthy, I'm gonna use the word robust budget ready for marketing, you're ready to hit the gas. It is more important that your operations be ready for that marketing spend than where we're actually gonna spend it. I'm just gonna tell you.
SPEAKER_00:And they have to be, they have to have a system to track it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Um, if if you don't track it and keep your your marketing in check and understand, you know, we all have gut feelings. I had a gut feeling when I ran a$14 million unit. Multi, it was a multi-franchise unit, and one of my units, um, all my texts kept telling me that this one area sucked and they hated going there. But when I looked at my marketing and I looked at my revenue, it produced the most revenue and was the best bang for the buck. I'm like, but they didn't like it because it was 40 minutes from the shop, yeah, and houses needed a lot of work and they were getting lazy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. You know, they again try that. This is like the biggest issue that I see with contractors when they want to talk to Lemon Seed, is like, well, I'll say, so tell me, what do you think is really driving the majority of your leads? So they're gonna give me a mixture of things, but one time or a lot of times they might say, Well, I've just been, you know, word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth. So, like, let me tell you something that is very true. Let me give you some acknowledgement. That is true. You have probably built a decent business off of word of mouth, but I say this so I'm blue in the face. What got you here will not get you there.
SPEAKER_00:Can I tell you a funny story? Yeah, so there's, and this is kind of a country story, not that I'm saying it because whatever, but okay, yeah, I get it. So there's a turkey on a farm, and he's looking up in this tree, and he wants to get to some of the bigger, higher acorns up in the tree, and he jumps and jumps, and he can't get up there. So this bull comes over, and the bull says, I'll help you out, buddy. And the bull takes a big plop and he says, Eat some of that. So the turkey eats some of it and he jumps and he gets halfway up in the tree. He jumps back down. He says, That's incredible. And he eats the whole pile and he jumps, and he gets to the very top of the tree, and he's eating all these acorns. And the farmer looks up and says, There's a bird up in that tree, gets out his rifle and shoots him dead. What's the moral of the story? Bullshit that got you to the top ain't gonna keep you there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00:But it was so here's the deal referrals are dangerous, they are probably the strongest lead any company can get, you and I included, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, correct.
SPEAKER_00:Referrals are great, yes, but a referral is only as good as the amount of clients you currently serve. You have 10 clients, you can look at three referrals each, and you can do the math, and then that spreads out. That's awesome. That is awesome. But now what happens if you mess up one time? Because here's the the truth no one remembers when you do something right, but no one forgets when you do something wrong, and your entire referral chain can break down from one bad review that's not the same for new clients coming in, and you always need those fresh clients. It's like cash flow, it's like cash flow, it you just got to keep it going. Client cash flow. Oh, I just made up a term, client cash flow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, but you're exactly right, and you know, listen, we all love the little hit of a good referral, but it's it takes a combination, it takes a holistic marketing approach. And so, you know, I think a lot of our contractors like, how do I pay for good marketing without wrecking my margins? And I think it's really I think it's about having a good balance of you know how how hard you go with your marketing dollars is how hard you need to go operationally.
SPEAKER_00:Well, again, if you're tracking it, you can see is SEO paying off this month or this quarter, or is LSA really pulling it through? And now you have AEO, right? Right. So you have to track all that, and then you look at your referrals. And if you're not doing maintenance plans, shame on you. But these are all the things that you geofence with as long as you track it. And and again, here's the thing I hear a lot. My marketing company sucks, Joe. Do you know anybody? Well, wait, let's take a look at what's going on. And I'll find CSR conversions under 50 50, I'll find technician conversions under 50 with average tickets of$500. And you said it earlier. Fix your operation first. Don't blame marketing on poor operational efficiency. And if you're not tracking it, why are you telling me they suck if you can't show me the numbers? How much are you paying per lead? How many leads are you getting a month? What are you doing with those leads? How are you turning them over? So, as far as budgeting goes, again, you can adjust your budget depending on what the data shows you. If you have no data, you're going by gut feel, or somebody saying, You should do this, it worked for me. Well, great. Can you show me how it worked for you and the numbers? If they don't have the numbers, it's just a gut feeling. And listen, I'm a lot bigger than I used to be, and I damn sure don't trust my gut now.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and listen, honestly, this is not a um, this is not rocket science. Like that I don't want contractors to make this overly complicated, right? This is literally deploying something in your company that allows you visibility for cloak, I call it closed loop marketing, right? So I want to know from the point of acquisition. So when did I get the the clients a full attention, potential clients, and then how did they book with me? And then what did they do once they booked, right? Closed loop, meaning from point of acquisition through me, my company leaving the home. What did that entire relationship look like? And so there is a lot, especially those of you that are on like a service tighten or things like that, there is a complete lineage that you can follow of okay, this client came from Google Local Service Ads. We had never done service for them. We went out and did a$99 tune-up. The technician flipped it over, they joined our maintenance club, and we actually were able to quote a new system. The client bought a new system, and here we are again. So now you can say, Man, that GLSA lead that cost me$120, but I I sold an$18,000 system and they joined my maintenance club. That's what we want to be able to see because that level of data gives us that level of data making decision ability.
SPEAKER_00:But you just said it, that level of data. Without the data, data, you can't you can make a logical decision, right?
SPEAKER_01:And your your gut will deceive you. Um, honestly, you don't like how your gut deceives you two ways, I think. The biggest way is you can't help but naturally assume that people like what you like, and that people do what you do. So, for instance, contractors will tell me all the time, direct mail does not work. And I'm like, I will show you how direct mail works. Give me two seconds. I have five clients I can show you right now where they are kicking butt 30 times ROAS on direct mail. It's because you don't read direct mail that you assume no one else reads direct mail, you don't go to Google to look for oh child, you know, this is not a great example.
SPEAKER_00:You know, that's that's like you know, they have to learn the difference between marketing, advertising, and branding. Oh right, and there you know as well as I do, they're three different things, yes, right? And usually marketing and and sales fight, um, but but they don't understand that, and it they need people to teach them, and that's why I implore all marketing companies, please educate your clients and your potential clients, educate them and let them know here's what it is, here's what it's intended to do, and here's a tracking mechanism you can use.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm telling you. So, you know, uh, my sister and I started a pest control company with my brother, and so like right now, pest control is not nearly as robust as the HVAC and plumbing industry. So we're having to piecemeal a few things. We know what the end product is that we want, but right now we're having to piece it together. But at the end of the day, we're piecing together something that will give us data, data to make the right decisions. So I just tell you here the the easiest thing to do, one thing that you could go do today is look at every piece of marketing that you of advertising that you have deployed that makes up your marketing plan. Right? So your marketing plan should include all of your paid tactics, all of your community tactics. It should include any branding. Um, Limited C calls our package the branding accelerator, anything that's building those things, right? So, you know, your marketing is your comprehensive strategy of both paid and you know referrals and things like that. So, you know, you should be able to go through every paid advertising tactic and make sure it has a trackable way for you to see at the bare minimum, at least who called that number. At the bare minimum, who called that number or who did who interacted with that number? But second level is I would love to see conversion rates, like how much of it was answered, how much was it was actually booked, and then what did your team do with it once it was booked? Because let me tell you, from a marketing person that has to defend all these vendors all the time, odds are, odds are, I'm gonna show you that we actually we, your vendors, because Limit Seed is a basically like we are a uh we're the conductor of your orchestra. So we we have all of your vendors in place and we're helping you monitor those, right? So your your odds are your digital vendor generated enough leads you couldn't book enough or close enough to hit your goals. So that's not a vendor problem, that's an operational problem. Again, I'm not here to blame you, but I'm here to show you now. Go tweak this little thing and boom, your conversion rate gets higher. It's a work in progress all the time. You're in a construction zone every day.
SPEAKER_00:I do an entire one-day fast track event where I explain how moving the needle just takes little bitty twerks, right? Tweaks, twerks.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, twerk it up, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:I twerk it. Um, and it's funny, people don't realize if you improve your CSR conversion rate, okay, whatever percent, that's X amount more calls, even if your text only close the same amount and at the same ticket. Now you get your text. Converting at a higher rate, but you still let the same ticket. You can literally, and then you teach them how to increase ticket averages. Those little tweaks absolutely, fundamentally change the entire way a business runs and deals with their marketing company and their budget.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:We do we do a one-day uh event. Our next one is April 9th in Las Vegas.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, and it's all about this.
SPEAKER_00:It's all about this. It's it's it's a phenomenal event. You can check it out on Facebook or LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's a good segue. So I love this little quick chat that we had today. Um, I know we could probably book a whole nother episode and talk about a whole nother topic. So you're gonna be on my list to get back in the studio. But tell people, Joe, if they were like, okay, I like Joe's style, I like what he's talking about. Tell them how they can get in contact with you about Team SPG, kind of what services you offer, and and uh how you can help their business.
SPEAKER_00:So we offer coaching, consulting, and training um from in every aspect of the business. And for those who know EOS, we have taken EOS and kind of made it more service uh company friendly, and we call it SOS. So we work with leadership operations, CSRs, technicians, service managers. We and we're more, and just let me be clear. Um, we're not therapists, so we're not the ones who say to you when you say, Hey, I'm thinking about doing X, Y, and Z. We're not the one to say, Well, which do you think you should do? We're gonna explore them with you and hold your hand and walk through it. Once we find the right path, we're also gonna help you create it and hold you accountable to get it done.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, that accountability word again. Yeah, I love this. I love this. So if you are like me, and I just feel like my business, it's every little piece feels maybe I need more control, I need more structure, I need more guidance. I think team SPG would be a great place for you to at least interview and see if they're a right fit for you. And so in your show notes, you'll have it. Go ahead, Joe.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's the other thing. Um, we're we do kind of interview each other, we don't just sign people up. We have a one-month vetting process where we work together with owners because we're not silver bullet, we don't want people who think we are. So we're gonna work together for a month to find out if you think we're screwballs or if we know what we're talking about and you're comfortable and you're ready to move forward. Or we find out you're looking for the silver bullet and you want somebody to do everything for you. We ain't it. Sorry, fella.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, this is like we don't force anyone to make decisions on the spot like that. We'd like to work with you for a month, get to know you, get to know your business, and see if we're really a good fit. That's why we are a smaller agency. We're not big like Nextar. We probably never will because of the way we operate.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I um I definitely think that most people need to step back and at least start interviewing coaching companies. One of the best things of business advice I ever got was you should always have a coach, whether it's a coach on your is it leadership, is it sales, is it conversions, is it culture? What is your so I even if it's not like these big long-term, but you know, jumping in with people and the people that aren't just yes people either holding you accountable, thinking you out, pushing you outside the box.
SPEAKER_00:And if anyone tells you you can't afford not to do this, buyer beware, red flag.
SPEAKER_01:You do not like that sales approach.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's not even a sales approach, it's bullshit because these people work hard for their money. And the truth is, I have seen some PLs that really can't afford it. Okay, and we we actually have a free program for people who can't afford it.
SPEAKER_01:I do the same thing with lemon seed. Like I will tell people outright, you do not need to be spending lemon seed, it is kind of a luxury, um, and you may not be ready for that yet. You may be six months from it, a year from it, but right now you just need to buckle down, and I'll give you free advice so that you're ready to come back to me.
SPEAKER_00:That's what we do. We have a free academy that runs owners, technicians, CSRs, and that is for people. And and the funny thing is, six months, seven months into the program, all of a sudden you're making more money, and you go, Oh, shoot, this does work. Now we'll have another discussion because now you're actually at the cash flow and the capital to do it. Yeah, and I'm not, I am absolutely, we will never sign someone up who cannot afford it.
SPEAKER_01:No, and yeah, no, us either. We try not to, you know, if you tell us the truth, we try to come up.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, unfortunately, sometimes I have to do that, but I really appreciate you having me on. Yeah, and I'd love to come back and uh next time we see each other, let's have a coffee.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, let's do it. Well, listen, thank you guys so much for listening to another episode. I am Crystal, and I'm the co-founder and lead strategist here at Lemon Seed Marketing, where we help contractors really identify a structure for their marketing. We have our three-bucket framework for structuring your marketing strategy. We have our brand accelerator program that helps you build a brand. And then more than anything, Lemon Seed saves you time, money, and builds momentum. So we would love to talk to you about how we can help you get your marketing on track. In the meantime, if you've loved what you heard, share this episode, leave us a comment, leave us a Google review. Um, make sure you tell Joe how great he did today. But, guys, thanks for sipping lemonade from us. Have a great rest of your week.