Blue Collar Business Podcast
Welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast with Sy Kirby. Dive deep into the world of hands-on entrepreneurship and the gritty side of making things happen. Join us for actionable tips on scaling your blue-collar business, managing teams, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving market. We'll also discuss the latest industry trends and innovations that could impact your bottom line. If you're passionate about the blue-collar world and eager to learn from those who've thrived in it, this podcast is a must-listen. Stay tuned for engaging conversations and real-world advice that can take your blue-collar business to new heights.
Blue Collar Business Podcast
Ep. 67 - How A Tradesman Builds A Website That Wins Work
Tired of chasing the wrong leads and wondering why your shiny site doesn’t ring the phone? We sat down with Australian marketer Wes Towers of Uplift 360 to unpack a simpler path: build a clear, fast website that reflects your crew, publish real job stories tied to your service areas, and push that signal across every channel customers actually use—Google, YouTube, TikTok, and even AI tools like ChatGPT.
We start by fixing the foundation. Your website should read like a straight answer on a job site: who you help, what you do, where you work, why you’re different, and how to book you. Service pages beat slideshows, and trust markers—reviews, photos, case studies—do the heavy lifting. From there, we swap “search engine optimization” for “search everywhere optimization,” because customers don’t just Google; they watch, scroll, and ask AI. The win comes from consistent, specific updates: short blogs and case studies that name the suburb, the problem, the fix, and the result.
If writing scares you, talk instead. Wes shares a dead-simple AI workflow: have ChatGPT interview you after a job, answer by voice during your drive, and hand a ready-to-polish draft to your marketer. Repurpose that into Google Business updates, social captions, and short videos. No gloss required—authentic clips from the truck often outperform studio productions, as long as they’re clear and helpful. We also dive into brand basics: a tight logo, colors, and voice applied everywhere, so people recognize you on the road and online.
Expect practical takeaways you can use this week: pick your core services and areas, tighten your site copy, post a case study, and syndicate it with a scheduler that hits Google too. Real beats perfect, and momentum compounds when your message matches the team who shows up on site. Enjoy the conversation, then put it to work—subscribe, share with a fellow contractor, and leave a review telling us which channel you’ll start with first.
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Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue-collar business. I'm your host, Cy Kirby, and I want to help you with what it took me, trial and error, and a whole lot of money to learn. The information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back, guys, to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, brought to you and sponsored by our wonderful friends over at Thumbtack. If you've owned your craft and you care about results and you're spending too much time chasing leads that just don't fit, you need a solution that connects you with customers who appreciate your skills and jobs that fit your team schedule and area. Thumbtack delivers just that without subscription fees or pricing surprises. As your business grows, Thumbtack's tools, automation, keep things running super smooth, ready to grow, visit thumbtack.com slash pro. Book your session with them. Let them know that I sent you from the Blue Collar Business Podcast, wherever you're joining us from today. Thank you guys so much for tuning in for another weekly episode. Today we are going to be heading off down in the marketing lane, guys. So any of you guys that are listening to the show and you're like, man, I don't know how in the world this guy started podcasting. He ain't very good at it, but I listen anyways because he gives me good information. How did this guy start this YouTube channel? How did this guy I am nobody different than you guys? I am flat out telling you, I just started one day, and it's because of people like my guest that have led me along the way and guided me from a perspective of, hey, I don't know what I'm doing here. This is super foreign to me. Help me out. And this gentleman is all the way across uh we well, I guess we say it across the pond, but it's a different pond. It's a much longer pond from Australia. And this gentleman has been working with us as us as blue-collar businesses, uh, trades, skilled trades, or tradees um uh over in Australia. He's built a company with a no-nonsense approach, giving you results and looking and analyzing them with you. Oh, he is the founder of Uplift 360, and they specialize in websites and just specialize in SEO built upon those websites. We're gonna get off into the nitty-gritties of that, and hopefully some of the things that I struggle with, and and uh nobody else better to join us today than um Mr. West Towers. Thank you so much for joining us super early tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, coming coming at you from the future here in Australia. So uh that's fantastic to connect with you. So I've listened to a few of your episodes already, and uh it feels and just to pick up your heart on on, and it feels like we're really aligned in a whole lot of ways, obviously in the in the people that we speak to, but obviously um you pick up when you listen to your heart and uh for the authenticity. So uh that's what I I really am excited about this podcast and and um speaking through some ideas that I might have.
SPEAKER_00:I'm really excited to have you. Um, you know, there's such a stigma in the trades with marketing in general. Um, I think it comes from a place 100% I'll speak on my place, not for anybody sitting listening today, but it comes from a place of ignorance and maybe a little bit of fear at the same time. And when you mix those two, you're never gonna really per uh walk into any type of limelight in that regard because of the fear. Um, but the marketing perspective, I would love for you to kind of tell us uh a little bit of the background and where you came from, why you started working with us blue-collar guys to begin with, or tradies over there. I I love that term, as you guys will hear me say multiple times today. But um talk about a little bit of the background from why you you jumped, you know, and wanted to start working with us. Uh, and number two, the importance uh coming from that background of some things you've learned along the way to get to the where you're at now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so a lot of people make the assumption that I started in some as a trading, but I I did it. Uh it was just that I started my uh digital agency after working in marketing uh for other other people and and my uh winning clients, and I did anything and everything for everybody initially just because you know you kind of have to. And I was totally naive to business and uh, you know, client, you know, client meetings and talking to people and uh doing proposals and you know, quotes and bookkeeping and all this kind of stuff I didn't really understand. So I came in really naive, but I had a skill set to build websites and to optimize them. But I soon realized that the people I connected best with were tradies, and I think it was because they're really practical, pragmatic, hands, hands-on uh people. Um, they say what they mean, they mean what they say, and I I'm sort of that same way. I don't like to use jargon too much, and I just like to keep it down to worth and practical. And so that's why I kind of naturally connected with these types of people. And so uh that's where I took the business. And it's it's been an exciting ride, a roller coaster ride in some ways, and things are certainly changing fast with AI and and what we're doing online these days. So I've always said it feels like an industry that changes so fast, and if I stopped for one moment to pick it up again, it would be difficult. But man, the last few years been crazy exciting.
SPEAKER_00:So the when did you so you worked for a couple other, I'm assuming, were they blue-collar-based businesses in the marketing perspective back then, or were they just kind of different industries altogether?
SPEAKER_01:Just a hybrid of of uh businesses. My first um employment in in the marketing space, they uh I was a fresh new employee and they never designed a website. So they had one computer connected to a dial up modem, and they uh they won a project to design a website and said they said, You're right, you're the young guy, you better figure out how to build this site. So I found it was the perfect blend of the creative and the technical, and and it worked really well for me. So from there I became their web guy and and eventually started my own business um doing what we do.
SPEAKER_00:So websites are the number one point for you guys to start with. Um, you want to know how these media campaigns take off, you want to know how this marketing perspective, it's all great when you have you're building awareness around something. And um, as you guys know, in a couple of previous episodes, I talk about this marketing cone or this lead cone that is basically this giant top bracket of awareness that travels down to consideration into leads into conversions. But I noticed so many people want to start a campaign, and I was guilty of this. You know, I had zero strategy when I started this. I can admit that. I have not a freaking clue. I'm a dad gum blue-collar pipe guy. Why am I on YouTube? Why am I messing around with this? And I was confused with the results because I didn't even know where to start. I had zero strategy, but I just started doing content. And as you know, Wes, a lot of people, um, that's completely backwards from actually the way to do it. You have a marketing strategy, you go grab content for that marketing strategy and you build upon it. So I entered the game a little backwards. Um, didn't think that my website truly, when I started YouTube or any any of this media sector, uh, I didn't have the recognizable thought that, oh, I need to have somewhere to send these people. I need to be able to tell them who I am, I need to be able to show them what I can do from the business perspective, right? And so when I started this content, I I figured out about four or five minutes in, I'm like, I need to send these guys somewhere. So we had a very basic, basic butter, three-page contact us here. We've got a website, and we can say we've got a website. But was it doing any type of good? Was there was no SEO, there was no word plug, there was no none of that. I had no clue. But talk about the importance of a call to action website and what are these guys, you know, everybody's trying to sell them a website right now. Everybody is, because you know, AI halfway builds them for you. But maybe talk about the importance of a website and what makes a good website for a blue-collar business that you've seen success with.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, if you can be really it's not as uh confusing as it as sometimes people like me might make it sound. It's uh you've got to be really clear and concise and compelling with your messaging. So because no one's reading every word on your website, so they're just picking up a sense of what you do. So I I think it all starts with a vision. So you've got to write the vision down, otherwise, how are you going to forward project into what you want to be? So get getting really clear with um who you are and what uh differentiates you as a business as opposed to the other people within your uh location. Um, those key points of difference are really what you need to make highlighted in your website. So it's all about the message and sharing a message in a clear, concise, compelling way. So people can take action. They can go, right, this is the perfect fit for me, or it's not. There's no there's no problems with people deciding once they've read your material online that that you're not a good fit. That's that's great. They've self-selected. But those that are drawn to you are going to be ideal uh for your target market. So it's not really all that complicated. It starts with writing down exactly who you want to be, who you are now as a business leader, because your business is a reflection of who you are, your personal values, your convictions, what matters to you. It might be quite different to your competitors. So you need to draw upon those ideas and the vision and get really specific in your content so people can make a decision when they come across it.
SPEAKER_00:No, I think that's that's a fantastic point. And when you've got to tell who you are, storytelling is everything. That's every that's literally the key to content creation is telling your story. But you know, telling your story on a website nowadays, nobody's hardly reading anything. It's all about videos. You have to have a little bit of video integration because that's how people consume content, whether that's uh about us video, what whatever it may be. But with these websites, I have on my early years, you know, during that time, four or five months into this marketing campaign. I'm like, man, I've really gotta, I've really gotta up my website game. And so I went to, you know, a gentleman like yourself, Wes. I've been through three marketing guys to to land where I'm at right now. And I went to the first guy, and I'm like, hey man, I've really got to do something. I know you do websites, make me a nicer website. I need it flashy, I need it, I need all the things, you know. I need, I need to be catching every eye. And what I didn't understand, Wes, and I hope you can talk a little bit more on, is that I know this by experience that there's two types of marketing. There is the results-driven guy, the analytics guy, the guy that cares about what's the message actually doing. And then there's the creative type that can build these flashy websites, maybe the best-looking thing once you find it, but you you may be a fisherman dropping a line straight down in a bucket of ocean and have the prettiest lure, but you no fish are around to see the lure. You got to put your boat on some fish. And so um that's where that you know creative mindset to the results-driven mindset is. Talk a little bit about the difference of maybe working with Uplift 360 about the results-driven mindset compared to that just flashy creative. Need a little bit of that, but it's not the full concentration.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so oftentimes less is more, really, with the creative. So the message is what needs to sing and needs to be presented in a professional manner, so it's easy to consume on multiple devices. Obviously, everyone on their mobile or their cell phone and uh and PCs as well, and everywhere in between. Um, so the the design should be there to support the message, but getting found is the key thing. So you've got to get found firstly, so that you've got eyeballs on the website. So uh you've got to lure them in in all different ways. So we call it search everywhere optimization, not search engine optimization. It's not just Google anymore. People are researching with their preferred large language models, so their AI, I use ChatGPT to do a whole bunch of research for a whole bunch of things. I mean, it's like my personal psychologist, some of the time. It's uh I run everything through it and conversations through it. So that's what people are doing, and they're searching for whole context, you know, sentences. So it's a language, it's a language-based model, so it understands the nuance of what you're saying. Back in the day, we used to optimize for say plumber Melbourne or HVAC Melbourne or electrician, um, wherever you are, New York. And uh, so the it should it's far more sophisticated than that. All the tools are trying to do the same thing, and this is a key um thing to understand. They're all trying to surface the very best and type a specific message for when someone's looking for a bit um particular need. Um, so you've got to publish that information in a way that all the platforms understand it and can surface it at when the time's right. And they're getting more and more sophisticated with that. So, whilst I said the website should be clear, concise, compelling, that's your main sales pages, if you like, your main core service pages. But then behind the scenes, you would have somewhere where you can publish frequently and more substantial content. And typically it might be blog or news or case studies where you can really flesh out detailed specifics of what you do. For example, I mean, there was a few weeks ago I had a leaking toilet. It was a real drama, as as these things can be when they're emergency. So I just jumped on chat GPT, I was having a discussion, how do I fix this thing myself? And a few different um solutions came up, and I looked at them, I couldn't figure it out. I ended up um hiring the person who gave the attempted solutions uh who was local to me. So that's how it is. So people still need the service, they might research it uh before making a buying decision, but you need to be the one where your brand shows up for the at the right um at the right time. And for uh tradies, usually they're geographically bound, they can only service the location that that they they're in. So that's good because it means you're not competing against the whole world, you're just competing against those that are in your in your town or your city.
SPEAKER_00:It's crazy to think about it regionally just like that. But I just got to give a shout out to our boys over at Thumbtack. You could, I don't know for a fact if Thumbtack's in Australia, but if you're here in the United States or Canada and you've got a leaky toilet, you can always reach out to ThumbTaq, and there's a local pro willing to give you a shoot you a price. Four or five pros are going to give you a price real quick and run out there and get your leaky toilet fixed. But no, you're exactly right. And you're talking about, you know, things that most of the audience doesn't even understand, like the blog posts. Uh, I had no idea. I thought a blogger was somebody that wrote about food. Like I didn't have a clue what this meant until I have been almost three years into this, learning by experience, and we screwed up. And you and and and I wanna I want to shed some light on this because through our own website campaign, we do these blogs that update the information for the bots to go find. And at the same time, we once you it can be completely relatable content, but if there's a term that um uh how do I do this without losing you guys? But if there's a term within that blog that the bots go and find and really want, they can hone in on that and take your website a different direction that you don't even know is happening in real time. And but that blog and always updating real-time information. What are you doing? What happened in these three months? It's so important to not just number one, have an effective website that's clean to consume to your eyeball on mobile, PC, wherever it may be. But at the same time, now that we've got you know that clean and consumed information, we at the same time want to be effective with that information back out into the marketplace, or nobody's gonna find you. You got to put that boat on some fish. And so talk a little bit about you know the blog process. What are these guys sitting there if they were to sign up with some marketing company and they got um their website through, but now they're asked they're being asked for information about what happened in the workplace this month. And and you guys that are sitting in the blue-collar space in the trade space, it's not, well, I fixed the Nudgum water heater or I went over. No, I worked on this project that actually has great public ties that also works for the blog that is also getting posted about. You worked on that project that's so talked about in public right now. That's great for your website. It's things like that. But talk about a little bit of the mistakes that you see in trying to get content out of guys.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so that can be really challenging because a lot of our clients they're they're still on the tools. Some of the the slightly bigger ones will will be less on the tools and have more availability to help us with some of the ideas for the content. But it's um, as you say, sometimes blog can be scary and overwhelming, and what do we publish and and all that kind of stuff? It's about setting up a a little sequence of events that is simple for you. So we've got clients who would just send their job sheets in, they'll just say photograph, you know, they've crudely written notes of projects they're working on. And from that, it's enough information for us to understand what it was, the location, which is great to talk about the location because it's good to show up in Google and and the like. Um, but we can take that and make a case study or a story or example out of it. So it all of a sudden we're understanding exactly what they do from a day-to-day basis. Now, some people might say that's pretty boring information. Well, it might be for most people, but it's not if you have a specific need. And the tools, Google will surface the very um precise and best information to the right people at the right time. They're only reading the information that's relevant to them. So Google and the other tools love fresh, unique content added regularly to your website because it's just a signal to them to suggest you're still in business, you're still trading, you're still relevant. So it's a clue to them that you're you're uh vibrant and happening business. So that's how yeah, that's one of the ways we do it. Some Another client he videos projects as he's working on them. So he'll in his truck, he shouldn't probably be doing this. I don't know, I won't say who it is, but he'll be videoing what he's doing and explaining why he's doing it and the benefits and what the client's trying to achieve and the location he's he's serving and all that kind of stuff. He's a pretty rough and uh rugged kind of individual. He's he's got swearing and all sorts in these videos. He publishes them on YouTube. It's fine for his target market uh for what he does. But um, from those, the transcripts, we can rework them using AI, of course, to write them into um blog posts and content for his website. And he's doing phenomenally well just by slightly adjusting his processes and and capturing some of that stuff so we can make the most of the opportunities.
SPEAKER_00:We need more people like him and like myself that are willing to stick a camera out there on our job sites. Um, and the benefits he's probably seeing from that is the same benefits that I walked into. Um, that I was like, man, this is nuts. Why why isn't everybody doing this? And it's it's probably funny for you, Wes. You you literally hand them the key, 95% of the key. All they have to do is stick it in the lock and do some work, and they'd have a full-blown marketing program. But a lot of them, it's that fear that I was talking about. But you hit on something um that I want to bring up, and I think it was search everywhere optimization or everyone?
SPEAKER_01:Everywhere, yeah. Scary, isn't it? Everywhere is a lot, a lot of places.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you're you're right, it is. But what a lot of our audience, my audience sitting out here right now, is probably thinking, well, you know, I use Google, I use Chat GPT, but you guys that are sitting there listening, how often do you go to YouTube? How often do you go to TikTok and go, how to, I'm telling you, I do it all the time. How to do this, how to do that. I'm going to YouTube before I'm going to Google, although uh, you know, YouTube boasts back into Google, but there's other places that we're we're now developing um past Google, and Google was our one-stop shop. But you're right, we've got all these AI resources. But before we get into the AI conversation, speaking about search everywhere optimization, because what I need to explain to you guys from our terms is that we've got a website. Well, that's cool, but we need to spider web it. It's a huge web for you to link up on Google. And correct me if I'm wrong here, Wes, but essentially Google and everything and everywhere will go through and crawl your website, or they'll go crawl your TikTok, and they'll see a little bit over here on LinkedIn. And then, oh, here's a Facebook and Instagram meta post. And oh man, they're all talking about pipeline. Okay, this might be a pipeline guy. And we've got to get past those bots in order to even get ourselves in front of a natural naked human eye to be able to consume our information. And you have to consistently, consistently post, but not just on your website. While you're gathering that information for your website, guys, post it other places, revitalize that content. Because literally, as Wes would probably agree here, getting guys like myself to provide consistent, measurable content is probably one of the biggest struggles you have as a marketing guy because we don't we think we don't have time to be doing that. Well, I've got this, I've got that, I've got this. And I know you've probably broken some molds, but now you get, you know, that guy that comes in and we're working on the website. How do you start explaining past what I just did in a very brief uh Neanderthal way of search everywhere optimization? How do they start? You know, if they wanted to start posting on TikTok or YouTube, how are they being effective with their website as well?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So everywhere, as I said, it's a lot of places and that and that's the perfect, the ideal. But sometimes done is better than perfect. So it's a matter of choosing some action steps that you can actually apply and you've got the time to do. The video piece is often difficult just because people are reluctant to be behind cameras and and so on and and that kind of stuff. As I said before, that guy who swears through his videos, they're they're rough videos, they don't have to be as polished as what some people might think they need to be. They just need to show authentically what what you do and what you're about. And it's that so you start people can start to understand who you are. And um, some people might like you, some people might not, and that's perfectly fine. That's just the nature of things. But those that are brave enough to really take that step to take video, that's awesome. If you're not, what we're often doing is we'll write for the blog based on some form of information, job sheets, whatever it is that they provide, write some content, and then what can happen is that can easily be repurposed and syndicated through social media. There's tools that will allow you to do the one, you know, post it once, but it'll uh go to all your platforms. So um Publer is the one we often use, uh, which is really great. And the reason we like Publar is because it will publish to your Google profile as well. A lot of these tools that uh syndicate out the social media, they don't often use they they don't often integrate with Google, or at least to my knowledge, they don't. They didn't when we we made the selection. So um it's really great. Google Love anything that's Google, and still Google is the biggest um source of traffic to websites typically. So publishing on Google's own platform is really helpful. And and because you set all your accounts up in that one place, you just set it up, you just publish it once and it goes everywhere. It's super simple. Um, it is time. Some of our clients have like a marketing manager and or uh at least someone looking after that, so they can take care of that themselves. Others might rely upon us. It's a matter of us fitting in with how they work and what capabilities they have in-house. I think as founder-led businesses, the the thing is to remember you don't need to do everything yourself. You can rely on experts, but you do need to have a basic understanding so you can select the appropriate people for the appropriate tasks. Otherwise, you might be led down the garden path. Unfortunately, every industry has some rogues, and marketing is certainly one of those industries where there's rogues and you could be um spending a whole lot of money for little results. So uh just get an understanding of the basics so you can make a good selection.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's that's such a good piece of advice. Yeah, educate yourself. Um, don't wait, would be the biggest thing for me. Um, I waited too long, and you guys are probably sitting there going, like, what do you mean, Cy? You're you're kind of ahead of the curve. You got this podcast, you got the YouTube channel for the construction. You you you're you're all over. No, I'm telling you, if I knew what I knew now, three years into this, I would have started year two. I would have probably started six months into this. I just had a guy um shout out to Cole Morse. He was on here three weeks ago, and he started a YouTube channel up. He was his daddy owns a HVAC company, has for 25 years, was destined to take it over, was a master HVAC tech, and he decided, no, I'm done with this. I'm just gonna go buy some equipment and start up an excavation company. And he documented every process and step along the way and was very transparent. But there's not everybody out there in the world as open and transparent as, say, Cole is, but telling your story is such a huge piece, is where I'm going with this, guys, is that it's really not that hard in the raw, organic, authentic, non-produced content. We're all for in the last 10 years, it's just so crazy. And you, Wes, you can probably mention on this more than I can, but the transition of what consuming of the content has been, we all wanted this produced content. We wanted to see this flashy. And and don't get me wrong, we still have our channels that we we like that overproduce content with, but it's very particular. Now, you'll probably not even notice. But if you were to pull up your social media right now, three out of the five or ten people that you follow are raw and organic people that are just telling their story through life. Do the same. You and and and yes, there needs to be some type of professionalism to it if you're gonna put your company a part of it. But you get if it's your company, you get to have that measurable line of where you can't cross over and where you can. But number one thing is just freaking start telling your story and find somebody like Wes or Ike or anybody that has been on the show here that can help you navigate through this process because you need strategy, you need a plan. And before you can get to the results of SEO and all the things that we're talking about, but there is tools, there is tools out there like ChatGPT, like Grok, that can literally go, you can type in there, guys. I'm telling you, you can do it right now as you're listening to me. Give me a crash course 101 on marketing and website building and read that information. Then go to Google, then go to YouTube, then go just educate yourself. Now I get it. All of that information isn't just 100% verified information, but you can at least start to walk yourself through a navigable path that you can have an educated discussion with Wes about the plan and strategy of your content moving forward. But number one spot is that website. And circling back to that, Wes, is that AI, man, I I want I want to hear your opinion. You've been in this 20 years, you've been in it since a dial-up connection. And there's some some of uh the audience members that don't even know what that is. I'll never forget that tone the rest of my life. But there's a lot of people that don't understand how quickly this is all changing. It's and and just in the last two decades up to this point. But now with AI, the things that you can do, you know, Publer, I think you mentioned, you know, that's there's all forms of it. Post one place, go to eight places, whatever it may be. But talk a little bit about the AI and optimizing in the processes that you're doing for these guys in the tradies and the skilled trade space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, it with any new tech, it can feel a little bit overwhelming, and that's for everybody. And so um, what I would say if you know what if people haven't started at all in AI, I would say just get ChatGPT, pay the$20 or whatever it is uh to get the better version and just start using it, and you'll soon realize what the potential capabilities are for your business. I mean, I've got clients who have helped um use Chat GPT whilst they're between jobs, so they'll be in a car driving to the next job. We just help them with some uh discussion points that they can have with ChatGPT to write a blog post. So we'll we'll say we'll give them some guidance and so what all you do, and it's super simple, say because you can s you can talk to ChatGPT, the the voice one, and you say, Hey, hey Chat GPT, help me write a blog post about the project I've just done. Ask me question by question uh so you've got enough to write a great blog post. And and it'll say, Yeah, it'll say something like, Okay, tell me about the project, and you'll say, I was just on this uh plumbing project, and I we needed to find the the cracked pipe and blah blah blah. And it was in uh Belmont Geelong and blah blah blah. And it'll ask, AN, okay, and what was the outcome and what caused the problem? And it'll ask a few questions to flesh out a fully fledged blog post. So by the time you get to wherever you're going, there's a fully written blog post. And the beauty of that is it's all your information. So some people do it the other way around. They'll just go to a tool like ChatGebray and say, hey, write me an article because I need content, write me an article about plumbing. And it's generic and bland, and it's not anything new because all it's doing is pulling in information from everywhere and collating it in it into a perceived new piece, but it's not really new, it's just a collation of other people's ideas. But if you go the opposite way and you're feeding it the ideas about the project you've just done, you'll have a blog post written before you get to even your next job site. And you can just flick that to your marketer to get it published into your website. From that, it can be repurposed into uh social media posts and it can be syndicated out. It's not as difficult as what people might think. Once you start to use some of these AI tools, it's pretty exciting. And as you touched on before, real beat's perfect. So just get the stuff produced and happening. You want the your message to be an exact match of who your team are when they show up. If it's super polished and you know, professional and clean and elegant and all that kind of stuff and uses big words, and then your guys show up on site to do the project, there's a mismatch, or you know, they're gonna think something's not quite right with this fit. It's not genuine, it's not authentic, it's not real, it's not raw like these guys are. We we trust the guys that have shown up on site, but it doesn't feel like who we were intending on hiring. So getting past all those fears of not being as polished as we need to be, you've got to break break those um mindsets and and move forward and and use AI in the most simple way, just like I described. It's super simple.
SPEAKER_00:No, I um I can't tell you how many times I've preached it to my team this year, um, especially my marketing, my marketing content creator guy. ChatGPT every single day makes some type of prompt in ChatGPT. I don't care what it is, ask it a question, tell me some information. And here's a here's another way to use ChatGPT. Just before I do these podcasts, I want a background. And if I literally, I'll do it for you guys that are watching right now. I've got it pulled up and I asked, hey, Chat GPT, verify the information about Mr. West Towers across the world and make sure I under have a good understanding of Uplift 360. And it gave me every bullet point, everything he's been focused on in the last 20 years, and gave me a description. So if you're going into a meeting, okay, I know we're getting a little off here of marketing, but if you're going up to a meeting and you know this gentleman or uh this lady happens to be somebody big in the marketplace, has a lot of money, whatever the case may be, and you're a little bit nervous about interacting with them, ask Chat GPT about them. Give me a quick intro about these people and how they relate to my business. And you mentioned earlier, I know this is going a little off here in the weeds, guys, but if you do pay that$20 or whatever it is, uh subscription fee, it's a language learning model. So it's always learning. As you're using this tool, it's learning. So that next blog post that you answered all the questions, there may be one step that it may use your business name. And you're like, well, how's it already know my business name? Well, you put it in there the last time. And and it'll start picking up on generalities and averages and start asking you different questions because it's already learned that knowledge and already has that knowledge. So you're always um, I would suggest if you're going to start using some type of AI, build an account and it will start learning. I can't tell you how many times that I've gone up to a meeting, use Chat GPT. Hey, give me a brief description of who they are, their background, and it will sit there and spit out without me asking how SciCon could be beneficial with this partner or client or customer or whatever it may be, how this may be beneficial, or it may be completely opposite ends of the spectrum. But ChatGPT from the marketing standpoint, oh my gosh, the amount of things that it can be used for. From, you know, a lot of this marketing journalism thing, pardon me, was research. And you've got to go find all of this information. Now I can literally ask it into my phone, it's gonna bring me 10 times that information, 100 times that information within seconds back to my phone that I can turn around, reuse, repurpose, or align with what I was going to say and make myself sound completely different or professional. And that's the other thing with ChatGPT. You can literally tell it the emotions you want it to have. Hey, I want to respond to I've typed emails, copy and pasted emails. I want to respond to this in more of a passive-aggressive tone. I want to be more aggressive, I want to say this kindly. How do I backhandedly say this? Hey, you should have done this and this wouldn't have happened. And it will professionally write, like if you struggle writing emails, it will respond to every damn email for you guys. Like the administration potential that Chat GPT and all these AIs have excels. You guys, if you're like me, who can't put an Excel spreadsheet together to save your life, you can put the information and data and say, hey, put this in an Excel spreadsheet that I can share with my team with these formulas. It will do it all. But from the marketing perspective, gathering information, gathering the blog post, gathering, you're you're exactly right, Wes. You can sit there and go, hey, question for question. And I and I love that that you said that because a lot of these guys are just completely intimidated by, oh, I don't even know where to start. But literally ask me question for question. And if you can answer your question, you can write a blog post.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you touch on something really interesting too. There's there's nowhere to hide anymore. So you've really got to look after your brand and your your reputation. So just like you did for me. I mean, if I had a criminal record or did something dodgy in my past, it'd probably show up, wouldn't it? So you've got to really look after the clients you're serving because these days, and so that's great. I mean, people listening to podcasts like this, they're gonna be quality people because they're always looking to improve and enhance what they're doing. But every industry has rogues, we we know that. So they're doing dodgy things. The good news is they're going to be discovered, they're gonna be exposed by AI um these days. So making sure you deliver a quality outcome and and uh and uh making sure your brand is in in solid uh uh uh position all the time, it'll it'll uh serve you really well.
SPEAKER_00:I think you also touched on something in the marketing space that a lot of people skip over is the brand itself. Like, is it presentable? Does it have purpose? What is the meaning? What is the color palette? Does it match your t-shirts? Does it match your trucks? Is it a different color? Like all of those things, when you're trying to bring awareness to a brand, it has to be the same on every touch point that they see, whether it be a social media post, whether it be your website, whether it be your guy is standing in line at the gas station, or it be one of your pickups or machines or whatever it may be running down the road, it all has to. Be connotative to the eye to be able to consume and go, Oh, I know those pipe guys or dirt guys. There was this one company I've seen a couple of times. Yeah, let's call them. And that's what happens. But like my marketing technique brings me this brand guide. And I'm like, what in the hell is that? And he's like, Listen, if you're gonna post anything, this is the specific two or three logos that you're gonna use. And here's the files and here's why. And he laid it out in a brand guide. And I am literally gonna go through a rant rebranding. We're in our 10th year of business. We started in 2016. August of 26 will be our full 10 years of business, long, grueling mistakes filled and success filled at the same point. But we're gonna go through a little bit of rebranding. And I just want you guys to know back to a testament, and I hope you can touch on this too, Wes, is that when you get started, yes, it is important. The brand is huge, but my brand at SciCon has three iterations around the original brand. It can be worked, it can be shaved, it can be reworked, it can be rebranded, it can be so don't get caught up. In my opinion, Wes, you may be completely different. But for me, guys, the brand from the get-go doesn't have to be this crazy redone thing. Reach out. I mean, ChatGPT can almost build you a logo nowadays. I'm not gonna go there. I know that's probably blasphemy to you, Wes, but at the same time, um use it as a resource. Don't get so caught up that it's gotta be super perfect. You gotta actually start running some revenue, that brand awareness as you start on this marketing campaign. Get with somebody like Wes that has the experience and go, hey man, you've got a really good start. Let me start shaving and honing and actually really channeling this in and let an expert do it rather than you, so you can go out there and lay that pipe, run that wire, run that concrete, whatever it may be, and make an extra dollar while somebody else is actually putting their brain power to it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's it. And so something like a visual brand, so that your logo is one of the key pillars for that. You really do want to get that right because it's ex it can be expensive to change it in the future because you know, if you're printing it on your uniforms and your vehicles and your signs and uh everywhere else that you put it, you know, it also takes time to change it on all your social media and and everything. So it's it's ideal not to cheap out on that. The the good thing with AI for so branding is the visual aspect, but also the way in which it communicates. And so over the years, the bigger brands would have like a style guide for their writing, so everything's precisely written in a certain style all the time. Copywriters really had a challenge with that. Some of these documents were quite lengthy, so they would read it, understand it, and it was so detailed that they would start writing and soon forget what the style guide said. But with Chat GPT and other uh tools, you can just use the style guide as a prompt to say, hey, tidy this up to make sure it's on the style guide and on brand. So getting those foundations in place that you can just reuse um with AI, it's it's it's magic these days.
SPEAKER_00:It really is, man. It's uh it's incredible the compounding measures that AI has just eliminated touch points to from you know a customer like myself to you using somebody like this. And there's such a stigma around marketing that we've got to break because sales is really easy when you market. And most of these guys that come to you, uh, timing is probably one of the largest pieces of the puzzle for you. Because yeah, you're right, it could be re-expensive if you do go with a cheaper logo and then you've got to rebrand. And yeah, no, absolutely there's cost to that. I ask everybody on the show, Mr. West, um, number one, where can we go and find you?
SPEAKER_01:Uh Uplift360.com, I would assume.com.au being an Aussie website, uplift360.com.au. And from there, all the social media you'll find on the on the website. And even if people are curious, they can book a book a meeting with me, a strategy call. So happy, happy to chat with anyone. Being a digital online business, I can uh serve anyone around the globe.
SPEAKER_00:Blue collar performance marketing's passion is to bring attention to the honest work done in blue-collar industries through effective results-driven marketing tactics. They specialize in comprehensive digital marketing services from paid advertising on Google and Facebook to website development and content strategy. I started working with Ike and the team earlier this year, and they've had a huge impact on our specific marketing campaign and trajectory of our overall company. Their expertise in digital ad management, website development, social media, and overall marketing strategy has been an absolute game changer for our sales and marketing at SciCon. If you're looking to work with a marketing team who does what they say, does it well, and is always looking for ways to help your company grow, book a discovery call with Ike by going to bcperformance marketing.com backslash BCB podcast, or click the link in the show notes slash description below. Thanks, guys. Sitting here in Arkansas, speaking a day behind where they are in Australia. It's just crazy. Um, but I do ask one last question here, no matter what part of the uh world of the industry that you are in, but what's the key takeaway for these guys? The blue-collar worker, that trade, that skilled trades guy who's just sick and tired of being stuck in the mud mentally, physically, emotionally, ready to find the next step.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I would say just take some time to reflect on the vision of your business and to write write that vision down so you can run with it into the new year and have team members support you in that. Because once things are clearer, marketing becomes easy, your message becomes easier. And to remember that real beats perfect, just to get your message out there. No one needs a super polished version of you, they just need you the authentic you and to know that you're gonna deliver on what they need. So it's as simple as that, really.
SPEAKER_00:No, that's perfectly said, man. It's absolutely perfectly said. Well, I really appreciate you joining us today for a different type of marketing conversation, a challenging one at that. And to give these guys a realistic lens as to what they may be facing, you're right. It isn't as complicated as it's made to be. And uh with experience as as you have, um it can be shown through very easily and get this process done. Now, there is some work that you got to do, just like in anything else, guys. So don't think you can just magically spruce it up. There's questions, there's time spent to get this up and running. But once you get it up and running, it gets a lot easier. I will tell you that. Get it started, get it implemented, and then from there, things can uh the blog post, don't let any of that scare you. That's a little on down the tracks, but it's all coming down the pipe for you guys. But number one, get started. Reach out to somebody. If not, reach over to Wes at Uplift360.com.au and get you a free strategy session call, get you at least talking with Mr. Wes and maybe pointing you in the right direction. Um, Mr. Wes, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you coming on and joining uh the audience and and and sharing your personal insights and and your professional background to get where you're at, because it's super important that these guys understand that there's people out there willing to sit there, ready to take their questions and their answers, and um appreciate everything you do.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, uh, it's been a real pleasure being on the show and looking forward to staying connected on the socials.
SPEAKER_00:For sure, my guy. Until next time, guys, you be safe out there. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellas, check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.