Paving the Way: From Hardhat to Entrepreneur with Joseph Hughes

Curious about transitioning from a stable job to entrepreneurship? Tune in to our latest episode with Joseph Hughes, founder of Contractor Dynamics. Join us as we explore Joseph's journey from a sixth-generation construction legacy to carving his niche. Discover his unique challenges, including building a house while his wife started a job!

Launching a business is step one, but crafting local connections is a different challenge. In the second part of our series with Joseph, we delve into his strategy for nurturing relationships within a five-mile radius. Coffee chats, community engagement, and earning trust - Joseph's journey exemplifies the impact of 'going local'. If you've questioned offline networking in a digital era, this discussion will reshape your outlook.

Joseph delivers priceless advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, spanning public speaking to content crafting. He doesn't merely discuss authority; he guides you in constructing your platform. His content creation approach and counsel on seeking guidance resonate deeply. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. Tune in and let Joseph's story ignite your entrepreneurial path.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"[It] was really cool growing up in a family business that’s over 100 years old and got to learn a lot of different things about life, about every aspect of small business, and just really fell in love with it." – Joseph
"Business plans are worth nothing until you actually go out there and into the market and test out your ideas." – Joseph
"Public speaking is getting up in front of people and sharing something and usually it’s outside your comfort zone and you’re getting more vulnerable in some cases." – Joseph
"Just transferring a message from yourself to somebody else and communicating essentially to me is public speaking." – Philip
"Don’t try to be a jack-of-all-trades. It’s really hard to differentiate, it’s hard to market, it’s hard to build out good processes." – Joseph
"My goal every day is to wake up and get more people to know about us today than did so yesterday." – Joseph
“If you go in there [meet ups and networking] and always try to give value, it’s going to change things dramatically." – Philip
"Everybody wants that true, authentic relationship, and doing that in-person, you build it up so much quicker." – Philip
"I really love to help people make better decisions around their business, around marketing, whatever that might be." – Joseph
"Build your own stage and you’re just going to establish yourself as an authority right then and there." – Joseph
"The more that you communicate, the better you’re going to get." – Philip
"Take things from wherever and put your own spin on it, your personality, your perspective on it, apply it to your industry, and now it’s something new." – Joseph
"Be consistent. Whatever it is that you want in your life or business is not going to come from just showing up one day. It’s going to come from showing up day after day and putting in the work." – Joseph

RESOURCES
Joseph
Website: https://www.contractordynamics.com/ 
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nailed-it-the-business-of-construction/id1518138271 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyjosephhughes 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephwhughes/  
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heyjosephhughes/ 
Philip
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Philip Sessions: 0:15

What is going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Speaking Sessions podcast. I've got a great guest here, joe Hughes. He is the visionary of Contractor Dynamics, the leading marketing training company for the construction industry. His amazing team at Contractor Dynamics helps roofing and contracting companies create predictable growth by leveraging social and digital marketing. They work with companies of all different sizes throughout North America. After growing up as a sixth generation family member in his family's construction company, he started Contractor Dynamics in 2013 because he saw a need in the market. Joe lives in the Jersey Shore area, where he enjoys running, surfing, traveling and hanging at the beach with his wife, alyssa, and two children. Today, we're going to actually talk about how to become five mile famous and use your knowledge and your story to help you be able to build the business that you should build to help other people. Joe, tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Joseph Hughes: 1:23

Man, that was great. Thank you so much. Awesome to be here. I'm grateful for the opportunity to get to know you as well. That pretty much sums it up.

Joseph Hughes: 1:32

I grew up here at Jersey Shore, moved around a little bit, ended up back down here where our families are kind of from when we started to raise a family. I grew up in my family's construction business, construction and real estate company here in New Jersey and New York City. That was really cool growing up in a family business that's over 100 years old and got to learn a lot of different things about life, about small business, about every aspect of small business, and just really fell in love with it. It came a time when I was about 30 years old and about 10 years ago and I was like all right, well, I can do this for the rest of my life and it's a fantastic opportunity, a very secure company and things like that.

Joseph Hughes: 2:16

But I had that entrepreneurial bone in my body, as I think a lot of people listening can probably resonate with, and we have one life to live. So I said you know what I want to go out there and try something of my own. And you know I had a business plan. But, as we all know, business plans are worth nothing until you actually go out there and into the market and test out your ideas. So, like everyone else, been learning and growing over the past several years and just really enjoying it. It's very challenging, as people can probably relate to, and it's also really rewarding. So that's kind of the elevator pitch, if you will.

Philip Sessions: 2:55

Yeah, that's awesome and it's really cool to see like 100 years that you had this family company that's been around for 100 years and I think, being here in South Carolina now from Texas, both of my parents were transplants. My mom was from South Dakota, my dad was from Alabama and they met in the Houston area and so neither one of their families and really my dad only had a brother there in the Houston area my mom's the oldest of 11. They all moved down her senior year high school from South Dakota, so craziness there, but they only had that family there. There was no other generations. And then, moving here to South Carolina, now my wife, we got some family lands. It was only one or two generations I think it might have been her dad's mom's land technically and so kind of got passed down there and so seeing this generational thing, it's just really interesting and so that that's pretty unique as well.

Philip Sessions: 3:45

And I'd say you being up in the Northeast is maybe a little bit more common, I'm not sure. Then I guess the Southeast as well was kind of all Civil War stuff. Texas started way later, so you don't have as much of that history. So that's just a really cool thing that I like a lot, and so what was that dynamic like? Going from being in this like historical business to just deciding to start your own?

Joseph Hughes: 4:10

Man, there's so much to unpack there, so you know.

Philip Sessions: 4:16

I was just from your perspective, like how did you feel about that? Let's go with that.

Joseph Hughes: 4:21

How did I feel about that? It was exciting. It was definitely, you know, nerve inducing. Right Like went from a very steady, nothing's guaranteed but a very steady job, very steady company, job security, company, car, health benefits, all that stuff and jumped out of the airplane and, you know, proceeded to build my parachute on the way down and that's really what it was, and so that's. You know, that suits my personality. It doesn't suit everyone's personality, but that's something that I knew, that I wanted to do and figure it out, and that's the dynamic there. As far as the timing of it, it was interesting. I would not recommend doing this. So, within a three month period, quit the family biz on good terms. It was a really hard decision, but quit the family biz. We moved, we moved houses and we had our first child and I started my business, all within three months, and that was. That was a little bit too much stress at the time. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So here we are today.

Philip Sessions: 5:30

So, yeah, I mean you can't. You can't talk about any stress at this point, like, ah, that's nothing compared to when we started the company. Yeah, I can imagine the stress load there. Yeah, that would definitely be challenging. The closest we got was my wife. We got married, my wife finished building a house and she had gotten a job about six months prior to that and I got a job the month after we got married. So all within like I guess a month really, of closing on the house that she built, getting married and me getting a job. We had all that and then her job six months prior to that. So it was a lot of stress there as well, just all these dynamics of moving. And then I was trying to sell my house at the same time as I had a house until we moved into our house.

Joseph Hughes: 6:13

Now, okay, Well, first world problems, right, I mean, those are all. Those are all good things.

Philip Sessions: 6:18

Right, exactly, yeah, it's a, I guess, induced stress as well. We decided to go make that stress happen to us.

Joseph Hughes: 6:24

Right, right, exactly.

Philip Sessions: 6:27

Yeah, so first of all, for sure, but before I forget my question. I tend to forget this question because I love the intros and like asking questions from that. But what is your definition of public speaking?

Joseph Hughes: 6:37

My definition of public speaking. I think most people think of it as like being on this big stage and you're you know the bright lights and the cameras and all that sort of thing. I really haven't. I've spoken at lots of events our own events and other events like nothing, nothing too big, really. I just think it's getting up there and sharing something, whether it's a story, whether it's a education, maybe entertaining a group of people and to me public speaking can be people that you know in the audience. It doesn't have to be like going out in the middle of your town square and, like you know, getting on your soapbox or something like that. So just really getting up in front of a group of people and sharing something and usually it's outside your comfort zone and usually you're getting a little bit more, you're just stretching yourself, you're getting more vulnerable in some cases. So yeah, that's not very succinct, but those are things that come to mind.

Philip Sessions: 7:30

Yeah, no, those are all great things that I agree with you. It's not always just about being on that big stage, but it's about just getting in front of people or even just sharing your message. And it doesn't have to be two people. It can be two people, it can be one person, but you just transferring a message from yourself to somebody else and communicating essentially to me as public speaking. And so I want to, I want to grab this picture, so I want to get in what we're going to talk about today and I want to get this picture of, like, where your business is at now.

Philip Sessions: 8:00

So we just kind of talk for a minute about how you were in this very stable 100 year old family company, six generations and you're like, yeah, I'm going to jump out, I'm going to go move all this craziness to being your own person, or I'm assuming it was just you in the business, so you have to correct me if I'm wrong. To where are you at now? Like, how many people work for you? You know how, let's just go with that. Like, how many people are you leading and what does the company look like?

Joseph Hughes: 8:27

Yeah, sure, so first it was just me starting out got some, you know, hired out some freelance help to kind of get some of the technical things done, as most of us do Right Now. We are right now 13 people and we're distributed throughout the, throughout the country. We're 100% remote team, which is which is interesting and fun and different dynamics there, and we work with our. Our market is the roofing industry in North America, so we work with roofing companies of all shapes and sizes. We're a marketing training company, so it's a little bit different than your typical marketing company in where we train companies on how to do their own marketing, like we're not doing it for them, we're helping them, like build out their marketing plans and budgets and do all the things and guide them. So that is our model and it's it's fun. We love it. We have awesome team growing every day, building our leadership team leveling up as a team every day. And yeah, that's a little bit of a snapshot.

Philip Sessions: 10:20

OK, and how long has the company been established for?

Joseph Hughes: 10:23

A little over 10 years.

Philip Sessions: 10:25

OK, so over 10 years you got to 13 employees, which I mean commendable for being there at a decade. That's huge, first of all. But I try to paint this picture because you have 10 years to get to 13 employees, all remote and all the stuff. But let's rewind back to the beginning and I think this five mile famous story is where this will pick up. So clearly, you started out as your own. You talked about a little bit about that, but how did you apply this five mile famous to get to where you're at today is clearly and I know this is a big span but I really want to emphasize to the small business owners the power of getting out to your local network rather than trying to be online, because I'm guilty of that where I thought, oh, I'm going to get in these mastermind groups and while they're amazing, it didn't help me move the needle forward directly because I didn't have that local base to start out. So, kind of, walk us through that a little bit.

Joseph Hughes: 11:23

Yeah, so I definitely started very local. Get inside in just a minute. Right now we are a national company and that obviously took some time to do and it's probably hard to start out like that, for sure, unless you're super niche to where you're like solving a very specific problem. I would recommend to anyone who's looking to get traction with their business, go niche in terms of like super local and or like with your, with who you're serving and the problem that you're you're helping people with. If you can do both, as like a local service business, like we work with roofing companies, it's like, hey, focus on like a five mile radius and focus on roofing or painting or whatever it is that you do, I would. My experience anyway is don't try to be a jack of all trades. It's really hard to differentiate, it's hard to market, it's hard to build out good processes, but that's getting more into the business.

Joseph Hughes: 12:16

So we started out yeah, I started out by hosting local coffee meetups for local contractors here at the Jersey Shore and when I started out, I didn't really have anything to sell, didn't have. It wasn't really a business right, it's not a business to really get customers and start selling things. So I would cold call these contractors. I started a local Facebook group, which is still, 10 years later, still a great strategy for any business. Start your own Facebook group. Right, I think you have one, we have a couple, so it's a great strategy. Start a local Facebook group. And I said, hey, every Friday at 7am at the Green Planet Coffee Shop, which is like five minutes from a house, meet up there coffee and, you know, donuts or whatever on me. And we're just going to like network as local contractors. And we did that for a few Fridays in a row, started to build some relationships. You get guys, you know, like the architects that talk to the builder and they form a relationship and things like that. And they started asking me like, hey, like what is it that you do? Like, like how can you help us? And I was still at the stage where I was like I don't know what do you need. And so you know it's like opening up the code, like, hey, you need a website, you need SEO, you need, like some you know whatever. And so that's what it was Just like, literally like figuring out what these guys wanted and and then providing it for them. So that was pretty powerful.

Joseph Hughes: 13:40

One of the guys that was at those meetups. His name is Nick, he is still. He is one of the reasons that we are in business today because that relationship just he introduced me to a lot of people. We've helped each other along our entrepreneurial journeys. He's down in Texas now to Dallas, but yeah, I mean, that was over. That was over 10 years ago and Nick has been responsible for a ton of that business. And in fact, the other one of the other guys that was at those meetups, neil, introduced me to one of our clients that we still have today here in New Jersey, so clients and a pretty good friend as well. So it's so interesting when you know we have this world where right now we're on Zoom, you and I met on Facebook. You know we met online and but the in-person thing is something that I think is so overlooked and it's so valuable just to build that, that connection, and we still host our own events today, 10 years later. It's that important to us.

Joseph Hughes: 14:36

So the concept of Five Mile Famous is your local business. You don't need to market to the entire country. Like you said right, pick out your five miles or if you're in a more like rural area, in the countryside. You know, maybe that's 20 miles or 50 miles or whatever that is, but, like you, have a finite audience and your goal as a, say, local roofing company I just use that because that's what we work with is to just get everyone in that five mile radius to know who you are and what you do and associate with you in a positive way, because you know you're not just marketing to your next customer, you're marketing to be top of mind for anyone in your area, anyone that's in a position to recommend you, refer you, tag you in a local Facebook group, mention you at the gym or the country club, whatever. Ideally you want to be that top of mind guy or girl or company.

Joseph Hughes: 15:27

And every day, like my goal is, even though we're national, my goal every day is to wake up and get more people to know about us today than did so yesterday. So, as a local business, like, wake up tomorrow and say, hey, how can we get more people in our five mile radius to know who we are and what we do? And if you do that every day, that compounds upon itself and you just build this powerful brand that is just provides so much that you can't even imagine. So that's a five mile famous concept that just sounds cool to five mile famous and that's kind of what you know it's. It's just the thing that you picked up on that, because we put out a lot of content, obviously, and you picked up on that, which a lot of people do. So I think, if I write a book, that that should be the title for the first book.

Philip Sessions: 16:11

Yeah, definitely, and it kind of makes me think of Jason Aldean, where he's like so much cooler online, it's like I'm so much cooler in my five mile radius, kind of thing, but yeah, it's such a powerful thing in what's really unique. Is you mentioned how you were just hosting these meetups and yeah, okay, you were buying coffee, buying donuts, so you weren't spending tons of money, but so you were spending a little bit, but it wasn't anything. It's like, oh my gosh, joe is doing so much for us. We need to do something in return. But naturally, because you were doing this, you were being consistent. All sudden, these guys are like, hey, you know, what is it that you do is clearly there's a reason why you're wanting to get together, but that also tells me that you weren't going in there and trying to pitch everybody. You were just trying to have conversations. You were trying to bring people together so they could make those connections, which is such an important thing, and people Don't seem to do that, and I've been doing this in my local market as well. It's starting to get into that traction and I noticed that some people come in. It's like all they want to do is just get something from it and if that's how you come in, you might get something one time, but that's gonna be it. But if you go in there and you're always trying to give value, it's going to change things dramatically.

Philip Sessions: 17:25

We actually there's a guy that I really like and really admire and respect him and he's a great friend now and he came over here from Colorado about a year ago and now everybody knows him.

Philip Sessions: 17:35

He's like a super connector. He's always getting coffee with people, always networking, going and doing events, going to events and just becoming that five mile famous. And because of that now Everybody refers to him and says, like hey, go talk to him and he's a financial advisor. So in the Facebook groups which I'm sure we could go down this, this rabbit hole but in the Facebook groups as well, like, people say, hey, who's a good financial advisor? He'll get tagged by a ton of people. And now there's like people making fake accounts to like bash on him, like everybody just tags him because they all know that he does financial services. And Whenever I first got to know him, I mean we probably had five or six different conversations in person, but like before, like, and he didn't even try and push to sell me and I kind of like pushed him away at first, but we just kept having conversations. He would connect me with people, I'd connect him with people, and then now he's my financial advisor and everything.

Joseph Hughes: 18:32

So it's just like just doing that and building that rapport Locally is such a huge thing that that everybody misses out on yeah, it really is, and it's interesting that you know People tag that guy in the Facebook groups and like people do it to me too, like I'm very grateful for it.

Joseph Hughes: 18:47

People will tag me as like, hey, you know, need help with marketing. You know, talk to Joe and and they might be people that a lot of times are people that we've never worked with right, so they don't actually know Like the tangible results that we could provide or things like that. But it's by being out there and that ties into public speaking as well like putting yourself out there, you become someone that you're just building trust with the community and you know, while people that that tag me or tag your friend, or maybe even people that tag you now Because you're building up a name for yourself, they just know that like, alright, you know Joe's good guy, or Phillips a good guy, he'll take care of you. I don't know exactly what he does or how they provide or what they charge, but I'm confident in just recommending Philip as a person because he's a good guy and I know he'll take care of you, you know so there's, so much to be said for that.

Joseph Hughes: 19:37

Yeah just in this day and age again, with like so much fake news and fakeness on social media, being able to position yourself, is that trustworthy that trusted advisor is is key.

Philip Sessions: 19:46

Yeah, and everybody wants that true, authentic relationship as well, and doing that in person you build it up so much quicker. There's so many people that that I have met online and then, once I meet in person, it solidifies that relationship so much more. But, of course, the people that I've met in person and continue to see in person, we build up an even stronger relationship because you can feel that energy. We're here, we know each other, are good guys and we're smiling like you're having a good time here and everything. But it's hard to fill all the energy just because of that virtual wall between us that Doesn't allow us to fill that energy, and so being around people really helps with that and so what?

Philip Sessions: 20:27

I shift a little bit here. So still kind of this whole local thing. But you mentioned doing a lot of local events and I know you've done some like bigger Local-ish events and maybe some like out-of-state and everything, and you went, spoke on several stages as well. How, how was that progression to like doing your own event where you're speaking from maybe a couple people, and you've built it up over time. What did that look like? And and why did you start with Doing some events like that where you would start speaking and giving information out.

Joseph Hughes: 20:56

I just I'm not a salesperson. I love people. I'm a relationship person. I'm an educator. I don't know it's because my mom was a teacher and my sister was a teacher. It's just kind of in our family. Just I really love to help people make make better decisions around their business, around marketing, whatever that might be. So I'm of the school of thought where you know, if you educate enough people, then the people that want some help are gonna raise their hand and say, hey, can you help me further with this? And then the ones that don't, that's fine too. Hopefully I can take what you you're putting down and they can go implement it and see some value in that. But yeah, the in-person thing for sure, building that, that relationship.

Joseph Hughes: 21:35

Back in the day, ten years ago and this year we well, the past few years I was in the. I was in the position where we've got some traction with our business. I got some traction with my personal brand and started getting invited to speak at events, I would say over the past three or four years. And I was in the, just the mindset of the yes man, like I'm just going to say yes to everything because it's new and it's exciting, and sometimes you're getting paid Sometimes you're not, sometimes just covering travel either way. That's cool, but you know, at the end of the day, like they trust you enough to put you on stage, like very honored, and just saying yes and just trying to figure out, like okay, what events are worth it, which aren't, because you know we talked about this before they record. It might be, it might not cost me any money, but if you're flying to you know, arizona or somewhere you're at, that's time away from your business, it's time away from your family, it takes time to recover from flying across country and things like that. So you really got to be like cognizant of that time commitment, the opportunity cost to that, and so, yeah, a lot of success speaking on stages and things like that.

Joseph Hughes: 22:43

And this year we started to focus on our time, our money, our energy into our own events, because a lot of these events there's so many events these days in any industry really and what we found is that not a lot of organizations know how to throw like a good event, and some of them were good, you know, some of them are just like kind of a, you know, like snoozy, kind of put you to sleep sort of thing and I'm not saying I'm the best speaker, like those were amazing opportunities for me to practice and provide value. But, like you know, every time you get a little bit better critique yourself and things like that. But yeah, this year we started putting our energy into our own events. So we're doing, we're doing four, we're doing a quarterly event, our own workshop. So we've done two so far this year here in New Jersey, we did one in Columbus, ohio, and then we have Denver and Orlando coming up later this year and those have been a lot of fun because it's it's it's just us at Contractor Dynamics speaking and educating. It's not like there's no sponsors, there's no one that's getting paid to speak, nothing like that, it's all of us and we're just educating and building relationships.

Joseph Hughes: 23:51

And that's been, that's been awesome, man, it's been so much fun on so many levels. Number one we are a remote team, so it gives us an opportunity to meet up in person as a team. Number two, it gives us an opportunity to get some of our clients there, people that we've been working with for eight months online. Now we meet in person and just kind of take that relationship to the next level and then it gives us, you know, exposure to new audiences of people in those different areas throughout the country. So that's been a lot of fun. And every time we do an event, we have an after action meeting and the next morning and we just kind of critiqued like, okay, what went well, what can we improve for next time? So we were continually learning, improving, which is one of our core values. So, yeah, we're going to continue that this year and beyond and continue to build those events.

Philip Sessions: 24:37

Nice, that's awesome, and so when's the next event going to be?

Joseph Hughes: 24:41

October 19th in Denver and November 8th in Orlando. So we're doing kind of back to back events, which is it's going to be a little bit of work, a little bit of work, but we've got a pretty good SOP and blueprint for them, so I think we'll be good.

Philip Sessions: 24:55

Nice. So that's exciting. So make sure you go check that out, guys. I'm sure we'll cover that for the show notes later when we talk about where to reach out and everything. But I'm curious because I know you've been to several events. Obviously you're starting to host your own. You've spoken at several. Do you like more like the big events or the smaller events, like what's kind of like that perfect size event for you, and why?

Joseph Hughes: 25:18

Well, our own events. So we had 72 people at our Columbus Ohio event last month and we decided that, like anywhere between that and 100 is good for what we want right now in our business. That enables us to keep it kind of like an intimate feel. We can have some breakout sessions, we can talk to, you know, hopefully all the attendees throughout the day and it's not so big where people feel like they're lost and we call it their workshops. So we call them workshops. We want people to actually do work and get their questions answered. So in terms of our business right now, that's kind of a sweet spot for us. Like 70 to 100. And I don't know, I mean, maybe that grows as we evolve. I just want, I don't know, we'd have to figure out a way to keep that personal vibe to it. So, yeah, and I know people do it. So we just got to you know, learn, learn how that works too. So we're kind of getting comfortable at this level and then maybe we'll seek another level, maybe not, I don't know.

Philip Sessions: 26:22

Yeah, and really just depends on what you want to do. I think workshops what I've experienced and seen in the industry it seems like less than 100 tends to work really well, unless if you have like a massive team, that you're doing it all the time and you can get a ton of speakers in and have a bunch of break breakout rooms. So you really got to be like at a hotel, a really special venue where you can have tons of different areas for people to go into those breakout sessions, especially with working with contractors and small business owners. I could see it being better at that level and really, if, like, once he gets over 100, too much over 100 people in attendance, it really does kind of take away from that intimacy.

Philip Sessions: 27:01

And I would say my experience when I went to Apex I think it was 2021, mdm 2021, that there was probably like two or 300 or maybe and it seemed very intimate. And then the next year they had like I can't remember it was a couple thousand I believe, and they just lost the intimacy. Of course, the venue kind of changed and stuff as well kind of went more to an arena style instead of being in a conference room kind of thing. So there's definitely those different dynamics to help or hinder some of that intimacy and everything. So I personally like the smaller ones myself, so that's really cool.

Joseph Hughes: 27:36

Yeah, I think the lesson there for anyone listening is like just figure out what you want. Don't figure is not always better. It's more a matter of what fits your why and your business and your personality and things like that. So just get clear on that. Don't try to chase bigger just because everyone else is doing it, you know, agreed, agreed.

Philip Sessions: 27:55

And so one more question around speaking that, I'm going to probably selfishly get in a little to the marketing side of things, but how has public speaking helped you personally as well as with your business?

Joseph Hughes: 28:07

Well, I would say, personally, we've both been able to I know people throw around the word impact a lot, but with both personal brand and the business, we've been able to impact a lot of people that you know clients, of course, that pay us to work with us, but then, just, you know other people that are in our circles, online, offline. What have you? For me, personally, it has definitely helped me to articulate what I think I know, or what I know. So it's like you know, they say you don't truly understand something unless you're able to teach it, and I really agree with that, because the, you know, the most difficult part of our job is a servant and education company is taking like this big topic of marketing that is not a native language for roofing company owners and distilling it into like what, here's what you need to know, here's all the fluff. We're going to get rid of that, but here's a step by step progression, and so it's an. It's an ongoing it's not battle or challenge, just an ongoing refinement of like how can we get this message across more clearly? And public speaking is has definitely helped that you ought to be succinct. You can't give people too much. You got to give them, like you know, a couple of golden nugget takeaways, keep them, get them to feel something, maybe entertain them, which I'm not really that great at. So, yeah, that's been a fun journey for me, because it's never easy, it's always hard, I'm always preparing the night before. So, yeah, that's how it's been a benefit to me.

Joseph Hughes: 29:40

And then the business. Yeah, I mean, just when people are starting out, you want to get a seat at this table, right, like you want to join that group or join Apex or whatever. But I would encourage people to just kind of break that paradigm and you can start your own stage, right, that's me at the coffee shop 10 years ago and I had no idea what I was doing. Or start your local Facebook group or start a local meetup or whatever it might be. Build your own stage and you just instantly just create, as long as you know what you're talking about and you're a good person and your values are there and your ethics and everything like that and your intention is pure, you're just going to establish yourself as an authority. Right then, and there, right, so it's huge, it's a huge authority builder.

Philip Sessions: 30:24

I love it and I completely agree the more and better you can get at communicating, and the more that you communicate, the better you're going to get. But you can translate those ideas and transfer them really to other people as well and help them learn, especially if you're in that service More. I guess coaching space is very beneficial, but even if you're in a service-based or product-based industry, learning how to communicate and speak helps you be able to sell better as well. So there's a lot of dynamics that public speaking can certainly help you with, both personally and professionally. So I want to ask you a marketing question. You mentioned something in the bio and so I'm just going to kind of read it here A process for consistently creating valuable content.

Philip Sessions: 31:09

I'm curious what does that process look like? Because I'm always looking to create more valuable content, as is everybody else, and I see your content. It's really good, it's always got some value, and you go about it different ways, so it's never just one specific way. So I like how you go about it, so it's always something kind of fresh. It's never exactly the same thing. So how do you go about that process?

Joseph Hughes: 31:34

Man, it's like anything else. It's an ongoing refinement of just a lot of studying of what others are doing, and you don't have to look at any gurus or anything like that. But it's like, hey, what do you like consuming? What type of content makes you really think? What type of content challenges some of your assumptions or shifts your mindset or gets you excited or just really resonates with you? And just like, look at what those people are doing. And so that's something I do a lot of as I study. And then I'll sit on things.

Joseph Hughes: 32:11

So I use Evernote and it's on my computer and my phone, ipad, the whole thing, and I'll just like, if I hear something when I'm running on a podcast or I'm reading something on social media or a book, I'll just jot down that idea in Evernote like word for word, as is, and I'll just think about it. I'll come back to it. I have a couple. I have a couple blocks every week of two hour, blocks every week in my calendar recurring calendar events, my Google calendar that are called prolific content creation. I want them to be prolific. I don't know if they always are, but that's when I'll like, I'll go into Evernote and I'll look at the ideas that I've written down or typed out over the past week or so and I'll just kind of start thinking about those. Okay, how can I take that idea? You know this guy is a fitness podcast I was listening to and he said this thing or how about this morning? Actually, this morning I did a workout in a park locally that my buddy, my brother-in-law, runs, and I was like thinking about, like you know, when you're in business, like everything, you can apply everything to business, right? So we're going through this workout. I'm like there's a lesson here. I came home I actually did not put it in Evernote, I just shot a video, I put it up on my social media stories and so, like there's just all these things that you like.

Joseph Hughes: 33:29

I think one of the most valuable things you could do is, you know, take things, take things from wherever, bring them into your own little lab. You know, to put your spin on them. Not just like change your word, but like put your spin on it, your personality, your perspective on it, apply it to your industry. And now it's something new. So that's kind of the philosophy behind like where my ideas come from, and then a lot of it as far as like the actual content is geared toward educating people on how to make smart decisions and just kind of like shifting people's mindset away from, like some assumptions they may have had into like hey, here's a new way of thinking about this thing that might be beneficial to you. So I focus on those two things like paradigm shifts and education, and then just the and then just a variety of formats. I can dig into that as much as you want, if you want.

Philip Sessions: 34:24

Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of rabbit holes. I do want to ask a different question. There's some great stuff right there and definitely helpful. I've heard of Evernote for sure, using something like that to write things down. I feel like the best time I think of content is while I'm driving, and so that tends to not be a great time. I am bad about it. Sometimes I try and put a note and I go back and read it later. I'm like what in the world did I say there? Because it's like terrible text. I didn't get it right. Because I'm going somewhere.

Philip Sessions: 34:51

Yeah, I should do the voice note, yeah. So yeah, I should do that for sure. Sometimes I'll like screen record the podcast If it's something I'm listening on, a podcast, so I can go back and watch or listen to that later and take notes later. So I've done that as well, but it just depends on the situation I'm in.

Joseph Hughes: 35:11

Absolutely. Yeah, if I'm running sometimes I'll just take a screenshot of where I am in the podcast episode, like hey, I'm at 13 minutes and 37 seconds. Screenshot that, and then I'll go back and listen to that part.

Philip Sessions: 35:23

Yeah, yeah, for sure, that's a good way as well. I want to ask one other question what do you do to repurpose content? I know I've had a lot of content and I feel like I need to do something to go back and repurpose that in some way. So what are some good tactics to go about repurposing old content that has done well?

Joseph Hughes: 35:43

So just literally copying it, pasting it. So sometimes that, as long as it's yours, I think people have this misunderstanding that like, oh, I already posted something in three months ago. If I posted again, philip might remember that it's a repost. Well, number one, philip's not going to remember because there are so much noise in our world today and like, if you remember, then you might be a creep right. And number two, it's my content. I can share it however I want. So actually, the Facebook post that's going to go on my Facebook after this recording, like probably 8.30 tonight, is something that I posted in December. That did pretty well, and so I literally it's already ready to go on my browser. I grabbed it from Facebook and I'm going to probably change a couple words here and there, because we're always like evolving a little bit, but I'm using the same exact pictures and I posted tonight. It might do well, it might not, who knows, we'll see.

Joseph Hughes: 36:51

Other than that, I have Evernote and I also have a Google Drive folder. I probably have a total of 500 or 600 pages of Google Docs just content, and I'll do a search. If I want to talk about something like daily habits, I'll just go in that drive and search for daily habits, I'll see a bunch of posts pop up. I'll see something that's like yeah, I could talk about that, or maybe add a little tweak to it, maybe add a new image to it or something like that. Or take that and just shoot a video about that. Because, realistically, I'm pretty focused on my business and my personal life. My range is not super big. I'm talking about the same stuff all the time anyway. There's only so many ways you can say it. So I do repurpose a lot. I still write new stuff every week and record new videos every week. A lot of the daily social media stuff is repurposed, for sure.

Philip Sessions: 37:49

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and it's funny because I had some people be like oh man, I like the post you had yesterday or today or whatever. I'm like. What post? What are you talking about? Like, I've already forgotten what I posted. I'm just in this habit of continually posting. You got to be more specific. Yeah, exactly.

Joseph Hughes: 38:07

All those are people that might post once a month, and it's a big deal to them.

Philip Sessions: 38:11

I get that for sure.

Joseph Hughes: 38:12

Yeah, exactly, so I need to keep that in mind.

Philip Sessions: 38:14

Sometimes I'm like, oh man, I don't want to do the same thing. But yeah, I'm going to start doing that, go back to some of the stuff that's really done well and then repurposing that, Maybe change it a little bit Different picture graphics or something like that. Or, if it's a video, maybe retake it, something like that for sure, because that's definitely a huge thing which really goes into that. You have that one core message If you're continually trying to create something over and over and over again, eventually you went from I was talking about roofing to now maybe you're expanding to solar or gutters I don't know something else, because you have nothing else to talk about with roofing which doesn't help your business in that case, absolutely.

Joseph Hughes: 38:54

Yeah, and the core message is so key because, like I think, so many business owners think they're annoying their audience with their market, with their content. But seriously, if I put out 10 pieces of content, you and I are connected. On Facebook, for example, you might only see two of them. You might remember one of them, I don't know, but it's like you think you're overwhelming people or annoying people or whatever, but you're not, because people aren't seeing all your stuff. They're not remembering it. There's a lot of noise in our world. We're hit with thousands of market messages every single day, so we've got to cut through that noise. And yeah, I mean people need to hear something, you know what, eight to 15 times before they take action on it. So be consistent with your message for sure. Man, such great points.

Philip Sessions: 39:40

Well, joe, I appreciate you sharing some of that marketing stuff and, of course, all the rest of the knowledge that you share today, and so I want to get into our last question. I'd like to ask every guest, and that is, if you only had one message to share for the rest of your life, what would that message be?

Joseph Hughes: 39:57

Be consistent, because whatever it is that you want in your life, your business is not going to come from just showing up one day. It's going to come from showing up day after day after day and putting in the work and not seeing the results of that work right away, but trusting that the compound effect is going to take over and you're going to see the outcome, the result, the transformation that you want. So be consistent. And most people are not, which is why most people don't, you know, get to be doing, have what they want.

Philip Sessions: 40:26

So that would be my message and I want to ask this question real quick because I totally agree with that and and I don't want to put any words in your mouth here but obviously you were very consistent. You did those weekly. You know, every Friday morning you would have coffee and donuts and everything, and then over time then it was compounding and you've been in business for 10 years now. Where do you feel like that, that first maybe major break? I know there's kind of steps along the journey of owning a business and building a business, but where do you feel like that first break was time wise, where it's like, okay, now things are starting to happen for me in your business?

Joseph Hughes: 41:06

Well, it was three years in. For the first few years of my business, I thought for some reason that my business was unique and I had to like figure out everything on my own. So that was like part mindset and part like just my growing up in construction, like my blue collar, like purets and work ethic, like just put my head down and do it. Not that I thought I was the smartest, but I just like, I just always like excelled, you know, whether it's sports or school or whatever, but I just put my head down and working hard. And so I did that in my business for the first few years and I unnecessarily struggled and didn't really get a lot of traction.

Joseph Hughes: 41:46

And in 2015, my third year business, third or fourth year in business I joined a small coaching group and got a business coach. His name is Tim and was in that, so Tim's 10 years older than me. He had, you know, he had a marketing agency. He had sold it, he'd been there and done that.

Joseph Hughes: 42:06

So I was like whoa, like all the problems and like questions I have are not unique, like you've already been through these things, and he's like, yeah, and so that was just like like mind blowing to me, and so that was eight years ago and to this day, I still have business coach because and I always will because like life's too short to try to figure out everything on your own. So you know whether it's a business coach or whether it's simply listening to a podcast or getting a book, or like a free course online, whatever it is man like unless you're Elon Musk and you're trying to colonize Mars, like what you want to do someone else has already done it. So you know, figure that out, put your twist on it, get in touch with that person, learn from them, whatever it is, but don't try to figure it out on your own, because there's no need to.

Philip Sessions: 42:54

Yeah, man, such a good point, and I was just curious to figure out where that number was. I keep hearing like the third year. The third year seems to be like this magical year, for whatever reason, that things just click for people. It seems like that very first break and everything. So for those of you that are in those first couple of years, keep at it. You're going to get there. But go get that help and listen to podcasts Like that my podcast, if you're listening right now, obviously go listen to Joe's as well, which is it's what is the name of the podcast real quick, and then also tell us where people can reach out to you.

Joseph Hughes: 43:26

Yeah, sure, our podcast is pretty niche, so it might not be for everyone, but it's called nailed it the business of construction, and yeah, we've got like 160 something episodes, again being consistent. So, yeah, good stuff on there, good reviews and whatnot. And then if you want to learn any more about what we do, it's contractor dynamicscom, or, catch me on the social media is Joseph Hughes and putting out content every day. So that's where we are.

Philip Sessions: 43:55

Awesome. Well, joe, keep being consistent, I know you will. I appreciate you. Come on the show and share all this valuable information and get into pick your brain a little bit about marketing and building that five mile famous approach that you started to build your business to where it's at today. So stick with the five miles and go out there and share your message, because it matters, guys.