Shed Geek Podcast
The Shed Geek Podcast offers an in depth analysis of the ever growing and robust Shed Industry. Listeners will experience a variety of guests who identify or specialize in particular niche areas of the Shed Industry. You will be engaged as you hear amateur and professional personalities discuss topics such as: Shed hauling, sales, marketing, Rent to Own, shed history, shed faith, and much more. Host Shannon Latham is a self proclaimed "Shed Geek" who attempts to take you through discussions that are as exciting as the industry itself. Listeners of this podcast include those who play a role directly or indirectly with the Shed Industry itself.
Shed Geek Podcast
From Timid Speaker to Confident Host: Embracing Purpose and Faith in Business PART 2
Transform your passion project into a thriving business by tuning in as we share our journey on the Shed Geek Podcast. Learn how early supporters like Jeff Huxman from ShedHub helped shape our advertising platform, turning our dream into reality. Explore the digital landscape of the shed industry with us, as we talk about integrating clickable links into CRM systems and the potential for expansive cross-platform promotion, from Spotify to Apple Podcasts.
Uncover the secrets of financing in the shed industry and see how partnerships with companies like Upgrade are revolutionizing customer options. We dive deep into the importance of financial literacy and SEC compliance, highlighting our strategic partnerships and ethical practices within the Rent-to-Own industry. This episode offers a roadmap to navigating compliance hurdles and exploring innovative marketing strategies that ensure both growth and integrity.
Join us in gratitude as we reflect on the role of faith and community spirit within the shed industry. From aiding those affected by storms to nurturing divine guidance in our professional journeys, we emphasize the importance of faith and gratitude in everything we do. This heartfelt episode is a celebration of the transformative power of passion, community support, and ethical industry practices.
For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.
To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.
To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.
This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber
Solar Blaster
Shed Hub
Shed Suite
Identigrow
CAL
Thank you for listening to part two of a two-part series here at the Shed Geek podcast. If you missed part one, just go back to last week and listen for more engaging conversation here at the Shed Geek Podcast. Call for advertising, innovations, manufacturing. Let's get you on this advertising thing. So, here's how it works. It's really simple.
SHED GEEK:There was a time that I needed to make a living through the podcast. Whenever I first started, I didn't even know advertising would be an option. Jeff Huxman from Shed Hub hit us up and said, hey, can we advertise on here? And I had to build out a platform for advertising. Then, you know, six months later, when I found myself, you know, unemployed and sticking to my guns on owning the podcast, I had to make a living out of it and I did. I started selling advertising. Since then, things have been really cool. Things have been really good. We got Shed Geek Marketing, shed Geek Rentals, shed Geek Finance going, other opportunities happen, speaking, engagements happening.
SHED GEEK:I guess what I would say is like we've been blessed and we've been blessed financially. For that reason, I've been doing this year, something that nobody else. Nobody else can say that they're doing. It's actually contrary to any business person's philosophy. Typically, I have been lowering the price of advertising. I don't need it to make a living now. It's still very relevant. It's still very necessary. It does maintain the show. It allows for me to hire, for instance, my wife, my son, my daughter, so it's sort of a family event. They have a whole production side. Everything goes over to Deanna. She's great man, she's excellent. She gets my son and my daughter in line and she produces all the shows. They upload everything. They are truly the heroes behind what you see here. You just see me out front talking about Sheds. They are doing everything in the background, including making sure that AI is not turning words like shed into things that shouldn't be in the transcript. Yeah, it's been pretty awesome. So how it works now is we have so, like on the Wednesday show, we have 10 advertisers, and you say why 10? Well, I have five one week and then I have a different five the next week. They have a one-minute clip 60 seconds give or take. Some of them go longer, some of them are less, but thereabouts they have a 60-minute commercial. So, for those of you watching it on YouTube, you'll see the commercial jump in maybe now.
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SHED GEEK:Of you who are listening, you just hear the commercial through our different audio outlets, such as if you're a call-in landline Amish listener and you call in on the podcast to listen, which has been excellent, by the way, we see about 400 call-ins per week from the Amish and that's exciting. So, for those of you who stand out in the phone shanty and go back and save your place and listen, we appreciate you. We don't say that enough, but I promise I do. But how it works is we have five advertisers. So, if you figure 45, 50 minutes of content, that's five one-minute commercials. I don't want to inundate you guys constantly with commercials. I don't like it when I'm on different social media platforms. However, we do want to get word out about different advertisers. We want to give them their money's worth, but we have significantly slashed the price of advertising, because it is not a primary means of income now and where most people would say no, just keep taking, keep taking, raise the prices. Any of that.
SHED GEEK:I feel a different level of conviction. I feel like we are making a good living. I can give back if that's the one way that I can give back. I don't believe in giving it away for free. I believe that if you give it away for free, it's worth what you paid for and we have helped, you know. I can think of at least one or two companies that we've helped make well over six figures. I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars. I would make the argument that we've helped generate millions of dollars of business out of the podcast and we haven't always captured that, but I do believe in the Zig Ziglar quote. Any of you who've talked to me in private or do you'll get the consistent answer from me, and that is to help others get what they want so that you can get what you want. So that's kind of part of one of my keynote speeches.
SHED GEEK:That's coming up is the idea of being a giver versus a taker and how givers succeed, even surprisingly, in the spirit of giving versus just constantly taking and this is a prime example of being a giver we can give back advertising at a discounted cost. So, for that reason we want to grow our advertising network, but we can only grow it to 10 people on my Wednesday show. We'll talk with Steel Kings on theirs and we'll work out an advertising budget for them. We'll talk with Sam on his work out an advertising budget. For the Wednesday show, It's really simple. We have 10 spots, five one week, five the next, and then they rotate throughout the year, so they have a one-minute commercial going out there. Those come at a different cost, but anyone can get on the newsletter and for those of you who don't know what the newsletter looks like, let's just do this. For those of you who are able to see, this would be an example. So, what you see here is the newsletter. This is our studio sponsor. It has been for three years. That'll end in May. Union Grove Lumber will then have a new sponsor we actually have.
SHED GEEK:All these are clickable links. So, if you wanted to go to their website, it's really simple. You would just click on this and, as you can see, it's loading slow today, but you know, boom, you're at their website. All the rest of these go. You can click on any of these links to find out about any of our services and fill out these lead forms and it automatically runs into a funnel in our CRM and we'll get back with you.
SHED GEEK:We have the episode number where you can listen or you can watch, depending on if you prefer to listen on Spotify or any of the other outlets like Google Podcast, apple Podcast, stitcher, bullhorn I mean, there's a whole bunch of them and then, of course, youtube for video, which dominates the video market, even episode registry if you need to go back and listen Again. All these are clickable links. Today's Adventure or Today's Advertisers it is always an adventure. You can click on these and in some cases it'll go to their website. In some cases, we'll have lead forms If you want to find out more information.
SHED GEEK:This usually is a clickable link that goes to some type of website, tells you who today's show is, gives you a little bio, and then these are all our Shed Geek supporters and these are what we refer to as digital ads. This is kind of like what you'd put in a magazine, if you will. It's a 400 by 800 pixel advertisement and you can click on each one of these, and in many cases, you're going to see that there's a lead form where we partner with this company and here's some information on them, and if you want to find out more, go look at their videos or fill out this lead form. You know, so, depending on how well they have their website set up, if it's digitally tracking, they're able to kind of find out. If you want more information I can't see specifically that it's you, but well, in some cases they can, so I'll leave that alone. But basically, I guess what I'm saying is if you're an advertiser, if you're someone who sells a service or a product in the shed industry and maybe this will work for the Steel Kings as well, it works for Sam's podcast as well, too If you want to reach the industry, this is a hundred bucks a month.
SHED GEEK:It's a hundred bucks a month to stay in front of people. They can click on these links and as time works on, we can build these links out farther. You know to where there's automation funnels and things like that. So, it's what we plan on doing. We want to grow this. We want to see this grow tremendously, and one thing that is super exciting that we'd really like to start doing in here is to grow this newsletter in general.
SHED GEEK:I'd start like I'm going to start putting some blogs in here, but for those of you who offer products and services that you want to reach the industry a little bit further, this is not a pay to play. You do not have to be an advertiser if you want to be a blogger. So if you want to get in here and write some information that talks about your product maybe it's making sales simple, you know, maybe they want to talk about the sales process and put together a small blog and we can link that so that you can go and read that, and that's, I don't know, it's kind of like a digital magazine to some extent. I guess you could say Again, we're not wanting to be in a competing space. We don't want to. We write in the magazines. We love those guys. We encourage you guys to advertise with them. We encourage you guys to read those. But this is a platform to do a similar thing digitally, and so we want you know, maybe you're a digital shed builder and you want to talk about the benefits of 3D configuration Write a blog, give it to the industry. We want you to do that. Uh, but if, if you're advertising, it's really really simple. Um, that's what advertising looks like on the podcast. Um, I think that's everything. Yeah, we want to get. Want to get that newsletter up and going a little bit.
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SHED GEEK:Okay, where do we go from here? Want to grow the newsletter Bloggers just talked about that. That's our hope, that's our plan. We'll see if it happens. I can tell you that it's a lot. If you're going to be dedicated to writing something, whether it's 500 words, 500 words, a thousand words, 1500 words nice little blog goes back to your website. Create some backlinks, all that good stuff. I just need a dedication. If you're going to write something once a month, you know it's. It's arguably a little easier for the magazines. They put out six publications a year. So, if you're writing here, we put out something three times a week. So if you're wanting to be a blogger, I highly, highly encourage you to dedicate yourself, to ask yourself can I sit down and write 500 or a thousand words or 1500 words per month?
SHED GEEK:Because we want an array of different people and different services, different business minds, that sort of, are willing to share just some thoughts. They used to have some blogs on the NBSRA website. Man, I used to read those, loved them. I thought those ideas that were on there were really, really great. They didn't, unfortunately, stick with it. It seemed like they'd done it for a year or two, don't know what happened, not part of it, just saying it was awesome. I loved it. I loved reading their thoughts. So, we want to try to put together some of that same dynamic content Long-term for the podcast.
SHED GEEK:Oh, long-term for the podcast. You know, I don't suspect anybody thinks that they're going to get in and make a living on a podcast and especially do it for four years in and make a living on a podcast and especially do it for four years, let alone hopefully for 10. I think that's where I'm at right now. You know. I think that we've got several more years of content that we can continue to create. Is it sustainable to do a podcast for 10 or 15 or 20 years? I don't know. I don't think that far ahead. I should probably, but I don't. Years, I don't know. I don't think that far ahead. I should probably, but I don't. I feel pretty secure for the next several years. We will begin to lean on some of our other business adventures a little bit more, but who knows, I don't know, maybe I can find a replacement at some point or maybe we can continue to do what we've been doing, which is finding other personalities in the shed industry to sort of step up and discuss things. I'm always welcome, open to a conversation if it's something that you guys want to do.
SHED GEEK:I have been more, more than overwhelmingly pleased and surprised at some of the positive feedback we've gotten. I've had people tell me everything from you know you have the voice for it, the personality for it. You know I love the uniqueness I have a. There's a CEO of a very large company that you guys would know Tell me. You know you walk a really good line, you walk a really good tightrope on the podcast to not upset anybody, and that meant the world to me. You know same guy sent me a book uh, appreciate the heck out of it a leadership book. You know that meant a lot because, um, you can, you can doubt yourself a lot, uh, as you're being vulnerable and doing this and putting out content and information, uh, people might not like you. Not everybody does like me. I get it. I don't know what I've done to them, but you're just not going to get everyone to like you and I try to and that can be very difficult. So, you know it's hard to be vulnerable and put yourself out there and just yeah, so long-term, we want to create connectivity. Long-term, we want to create connectivity. Long-term we want to create value.
SHED GEEK:It's always been education through entertainment. You know, obviously whenever I lost Kyle, we lost some of our entertainment value. You know, it was a lot of fun to have him on the show and we haven't really just sort of like replaced that, that entertainment value. I'm a little bit more of a deep thinker, you know, and try to laugh, try to have fun. Dylan's really great. He's, you know, he's the best I can think of as far in terms of replacement from entertainment. The guy's absolute blast to be around. But really the whole team I mean, as you guys get to know, cord and Wyatt and David and Nick and Josh and Justin and yeah, it's so many more, there's so many great personalities. I feel like we can just get on here and sort of discuss things in the industry and if you feel like we're worth listening to, we thank you for it. It means a lot to us. I wrote that on here.
SHED GEEK:Ministry, you know, prison ministry and drug rehab ministry, you guys know, has always been a part of who I am. Hebrews 13, 3 says be with those in prison, as though you're in prison yourself. Two-thirds of the New Testament Bible is written in a prison, you know. So, I really have a heart for those guys and you know my job has taken priority, where I've been able to focus on those things quite like I wanted to. So, I am looking for a passion project that goes beyond just making a living. So be in prayer for me on those things. I'm really trying to weigh out those things and what's best and how to accomplish them.
SHED GEEK:So, services we offer and this is going to be the wrap up of today's podcast and it'll be long enough if you've already listened. So this long. So, um, you know I'll start with financing, obviously. You guys know we created Should Geek Financing, which is powered by Jay Money, joe Oney and his group, and what they've done is really awesome.
SHED GEEK:You know financing in the sense of partnering with Upgrade, and you know there's just so many thoughts that I've got on it. And there's just so many thoughts that I've got on it, I guess, first and foremost is I believe that financing is the natural rhythm that we will find ourself in in terms of being able to offer some type of services, payment services for customers who want to purchase products, both steel products and shed or other ancillary products. You know financing because you know it's already established. It's understood by most. I'm not saying that we don't need a big push in our education system about understanding financing in the school system, but on a personal level, you can teach your family best practices and I encourage you to do so because there's just a there's an ignorance to the way that, the way that money works, and I was a victim, victims, not the right word.
SHED GEEK:I was never a victim. I was exposed to that
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SHED GEEK:My parents were both poor growing up. My dad was one of 16. My mom was one of nine. Neither parent graduated high school, let alone college, came from a broken marriage. I think I've told you guys that you know my dad's married five times. I was the sixth child of his third marriage, second child of my mom's second marriage. My mom is great. Just let me be clear and say that she is excellent. Me and my dad have bumped heads more than once, but we're finally at a place where we have our best relationship we've ever had in our life.
SHED GEEK:What does all this have to do with financing, Shannon? You know I would make the argument. Neither one of my parents made more than $10 an hour their whole life. I've often said I think I've probably made more money than both my parents combined in their lifetime at the age of 44. With that being said, you know they didn't understand money growing up. No one taught them. They just didn't understand how it worked, and I think a lot of people don't understand money growing up. No one taught them. They just didn't understand how it worked, and I think a lot of people don't understand how money works.
SHED GEEK:But financing, to me, is the natural course of the direction the shed industry is going to go. I'm not saying that Renton is going away by any means. I'm just saying I feel like in many ways, it's had its heyday, right Like, financing is a federally regulated credit sale, but it's common to the way that most people do business. However, as we continue to see stressed and strained credit and bad credit making decisions, I wonder sometimes about what those FICO scores look like and you know, what kind of rates will you be able to get at 500 FICO or something along those lines. Is it much different than rent to own, and what type of regulations will sort of stranglehold that? And that's something we're always trying to educate ourselves on. Joel does a tremendous job and I'm super thankful for all of you guys who have signed up through Shed Geek Financing via J Money using the upgrade program. I believe that they have the best program in the industry and, with that being said, do I think others are good and there will be others come to the table? Yes, and do we need that? Yes, I actually think it's going to take competition.
SHED GEEK:In order to get us to be able to start offering decent rates at those 500 credit scores, we require, you know, a significant amount of underwriting and background check and different things, because if we're sending the vendor, you know a check, you know we want to make sure that they're on par and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. For those who are like, no, I don't want to go through all that, the other companies didn't make me go through all that Probably not our customer right. Like, we want to be a little bit more. What's the word I'm looking for? Want to be a little more organized, and we can always loosen up a little bit, but it's hard to reinstate anything that you haven't already started with, so we'd rather do that. You know we're usually finding guys around. You know 680 credit score and up, but you know $100,000, go up to $100,000.
SHED GEEK:We could at one point say that we were financing tiny homes. Can't say that now because there are some legalities and things that you can get yourself into trouble with there if you're financing homes, because you have to disclose a certain amount of things and there's regulations around that sort of stuff. If you want to venture out and do all those things on your own, there's plenty of people out there who will go through the process. But we feel like we have a pretty, a pretty good product with a lot of different turns. So, I'm super excited about financing. I really like the idea of more people entering the space.
SHED GEEK:I know if you're a rent-to-own company you don't like to hear that. You might even be saying but Shannon, you have a rent-owned company, why would you want to say that? Look, I think that cash is king and I think that financing would be your next best option. Obviously, if you can get a $5,000 shed on a you know, a decent interest rate and you're only paying X amount of fees you know, maybe, maybe it's $1,000 in interest over however many years that's obviously a better way to purchase. That's at least a cheaper way to purchase if you're going to end up renting to own a shed to completion. Again, in rent-to-own you don't purchase anything, you just rent something. But it stands the sniff test, if you will, that it's going to cost you less through a lower interest rate through traditional finance than it will if you make all of the rental payments and receive the building at no cost. That's just my dedication to wanting to see people make good financial decisions, because they're likely in most cases. Renting likely Not always, but likely because they've got stressed or strained credit. Renting likely not always, but likely because they've got stressed or strained credit.
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SHED GEEK:So, moving on, I'm a big fan of finance, what it's doing. I'd love for there to be more competition in that space. Rto, gosh, I could just go on and on and on about RTO Software, RTO Pro, RTO smart, things like that. I'm really watching some of that and seeing is someone else going to come to the table on that and being able to figure out how we manage contracts, I mean. So, the software side of things is really interesting, unless you go internally and you can maintain your vertical integration like some of the big companies and create their own software. But it's really interesting.
SHED GEEK:One thing I want to talk about on it and we're going to do a podcast coming up with Josh and Justin. Many of you guys have already talked to them. You know they're excellent people. They're awesome, but you know collecting money and investment. You know public solicitation they're awesome, but you know collecting money and investment. You know public solicitation. I want to be careful because we want to maintain compliance through the podcast and, trust me, if I don't maintain compliance, there's someone out there who will seek the opportunity to reach out to the SEC and see that we are not doing it. So, there's a reason why we don't call for investment opportunities. Two reasons, mainly on the podcast. One, it's illegal, so we don't do it. Two, it's kind of hard to continue to all of us eat from the same plate, if you will, in other words, those of you who have investors. They're already probably supporting your business, so they don't want to support ours. So, it's kind of hard to go to you guys to get it.
SHED GEEK:You got to find outside investors through relationships and I can even cite to you. You know, the SEC public solicitation rules. Regulation D-506, you know, does not allow general solicitation or advertising to the public. You can only approach potential investors with whom you have a pre-existing relationship. Allows general solicitation on 506C public announcement but all investors need to be verified and accredited. Accredited investors include individuals exceeding a net worth of a million dollars, excluding primary residency, or with an annual income of over $200,000, $300,000 with a spouse. You can publicly announce investment opportunities but only if you conduct fundraising through the SEC registered funding portal or dealer, broker, broker, broker, dealer. There's limits that you can do. You know key considerations. Announcing your investment opportunity publicly could violate securities if done improperly. You must verify all investors, meet accredited investor criteria and obviously consult with a securities attorney, and you guys know we have several of those, or a couple of those in the shed industry that's been doing this for a long time. They offer probably some great advice.
SHED GEEK:We will not use the podcast for that, but we have used our personal relationships as an example. I've learned so much about Rent to own. A lot of people say, oh, you shouldn't be in Rent to own. Why shouldn't I be in Rent to own? Because you're publicly or doing the podcast or whatever. I had one guy tell me uh, I see, I see you in a different space now, in a different light now, because I see more of his competitor, which is odd, because that company actually, um, managed contracts. I would have thought they would have seen me as a potential client rather than a competitor. Yeah, yeah, well, we've. We've grown. We've been able to use the, the pod, the podcast and the platform to be able to grow and reach people and tell them what we're doing in uh Shed Geek Rentals.
SHED GEEK:You know, um, we, we like to think that we've had a trusted brand and that people want to work with someone that they trust. That doesn't mean they're going to run to us. It doesn't mean that we're going to be their first option. We like to try to be if they ever switch. But we want to do things honestly and we want to grow the right way.
SHED GEEK:We've had a lot of luck this year. We've had a lot of success this past year. You know we partnered with Stay-at-Home Storage. We rebranded Shed Geek Rentals. They've been in business for 13 years, so they already know what they're doing. You know we've had either our best year or on our way to our best year now since the partnership. So, thank you all of those of you that would sign up.
SHED GEEK:Are we perfect? No, do we always get it right? No, have we had to learn a lot along the way? Yes, there's still a long way to go, but I really feel super confident in who I'm working with and what we're doing. And you know what we're happy for the success of others too. I mean, you know we've had others have so much success that they reach out to us to try to sell their portfolios because they're trying to free up to get more money. We understand, you know rent-own is. You know, maybe we'll have to do that at some point because we just tap out.
SHED GEEK:Rent-own is one of those funny things where you know it is a money game. You have to have, you know, a tremendous amount of money to fund contracts, to cash flow, and it's been fun to learn. It's also very frustrating. It's also highly competitive, to the point to where, you know, I almost worry sometimes about, you know, savvy business people who manipulate the situation. You know I pray that I never, never become that, you know it's. It can become very, very difficult and very territorial and very, very protective, and I appreciate good competition.
SHED GEEK:We don't win them all. We lose some, you know. We know we're not going to win them all. We, we do have a good retention rate. I'm super excited about that and you know we've had to ask for some very large numbers and we have used for the SEC's sake, we actually have used our personal relationships to gain on asking this year and we've been asking for big money. We may not be one of the big guys by any means, but you know we had to ask for about $8 million recently and I think that'll show you. That's after asking for $5 million just four or five months previously. So, we are seeing growth.
SHED GEEK:So, if there's other RTO companies that aren't seeing growth, we'd love to talk to you if we can take on some partnerships or contracts. We're not necessarily super excited about buying out portfolios but we like the business that goes along with it and, hey, we're happy to work with you. But if you have someone that you're working with already, that's great. In the marketing world, we actually work with a lot of manufacturers that don't use us for rent-to-owns, so we're actually making other rent-to-own companies money because we're providing good success in the marketing world to increase people's sales. So, we work friendly with other people. We won't ever ask for investment publicly.
SHED GEEK:I did make the mistake one time before of a solicitation no trouble, no one said anything. I just wanted to clear it up and make sure that we are in compliance. We always, always, always want to be in compliance. We have no desire to get anybody's attention. So, working with stay-at-home best year yet You're in good hands with those guys. I think I mentioned that we do have a unique value proposition. You guys have heard that before.
SHED GEEK:One of the things that I find interesting is For sheds specifically. You know we offer a premium. You know we offer a premium kickback, if you will, for writing contracts with us. That's a common thing among the industry. What we've tried to do is what seems like a race to the bottom on these dealer premiums is we've actually tried to do something different. We've tried to invest in your marketing budget in lieu of a dealer premium. And the reason I say that is this you know, in any business in America, you should be applying at least 4% of your total revenue towards your marketing. You're all in marketing budget. Those who are aggressive are doing 8%, 9%, but 4%, 5%, that's pretty standard. You know, if you're John Deere, coca-cola or Bubba's Shedlot, you know you should be applying about four percent towards your total marketing budget, whether that's website, seo, brochures, whatever. Well, that's about what you see the common dealer premium for.
SHED GEEK:So what we decided to do was ask if you know, hey, we would just invest in your marketing budget if you're using us on rent to own, and the reason for that is we may increase your sales. Maybe you're a $3 million a year company and with good marketing practices, we can increase your sales to $4 million. With good marketing practices, we can increase your sales to $4 million. The benefits of that far outweigh the check that you're going to get from a premium, and if anybody wants to compete with that now, it's on a much more fair level. Instead of somebody coming in with a big purse, a big chunk of money, they're going to have to out-serve you. They're going to have to out-serve us in this case and they're going to have to understand marketing enough to benefit you that way. So, we've had private talks with many RTO people in this. They said, hey, that's a great idea. We've seen a couple of them sort of put the hint out that they're starting to offer some of those services. So, we're excited. We know that First Movers Advantage is going to go away, but we're super, super excited to be able to offer that.
SHED GEEK:If you have more questions about it, you can always ask myself Josh, Justin, Dylan, anybody.
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SHED GEEK:Marketing. I'm going to do this because I got a very important client call in about 15 minutes. Shed Geek Marketing. Probably the most exciting thing for me in 2025 is Cord Cook coming on as the develop manager for Shed Geek Marketing. You're probably familiar with Wyatt, who's a CRM specialist, David, who's a website specialist, Nick, who is a video specialist, and Dylan, who I like to call just the Willie Mays of everything. He's got talent in many different directions, so super excited to have those guys involved.
SHED GEEK:You know, November was our best month ever only just barely beat October, which was our best month ever. Only just barely beat October, which was our best month ever. We're excited really about marketing and where it's going in 2025. You know we're nearing 50 clients in the shed space now. We believe that we still have a long way to go. We'd love to talk with your company about marketing. We have a 100% retention rate at this point, so we're excited about you. Know people who are working with us are about marketing. We have a 100% retention rate at this point, so we're excited about you. Know, people who are working with us are staying on. Our close rate is continuing to go down because we're getting more inquiries, but we're still closing at a good rate.
SHED GEEK:Early on, it was awesome. And listen, we are educators. So, if you call and you say I don't understand marketing, I just want to understand it, we'll just have an hour conversation with you about it and we can kind of understand and consult you in the right way. We might not be the right fit, especially if you're a dealer. It's really hard to work with dealers unless you're really doing a lot of volume, because there's just a certain amount of costs that you need to be able to prepare yourself for if you want to do marketing the right way. You know starting out with. You know building your branding guidelines, moving into your website. You know creating, installing all of your tags so that we can track the success of campaigns, and then moving into things like campaigns, google ads and Facebook ads, Instagram. You know there's other areas where people are starting to. You know do ads. I mean we stream in different other areas like Hulu and stuff like that, so we can reach a lot of markets.
SHED GEEK:The cool thing about us this is what I like is you know we had a pretty large company come on as a client and they had a marketing person there, the marketing person had a good opportunity to go work for somewhere else, and probably what I'm most excited about is he suggested on the way out they should hire us as an agency, and I can't say thank you enough to him for that because we didn't see that coming and I can't say thank you enough to him for that because we didn't see that coming. Basically, what we're trying to say is you can hire one person, but it's going to be hard to have one person to be good at everything. On the flip side of that is, when you hire an agency, you have multiple people good at one thing. You know David's, really you know he's built so many websites right, like he just knows his way around. He's built so many shed websites, to be specific.
SHED GEEK:So not even just marketing, but marketing in the shed space. Specifically, you know Nick, with video and I think video is highly, highly underutilized continually in the shed space, like you could put out good video content constantly and it's almost like your customer knows you whenever they show up and if you do it well, there's a cost to it. There's a no, let me rephrase that there's an investment to it. The same as if you're a hauler and you have to buy a semi and a shed mover and a trailer. You know, if you're a shed builder, you've got to buy some metal and you got to buy some boards and some hardware. You know, if you're investing in the marketing, it's supposed to be making you more money than it's costing you and that's what our promise is to you. If we're working with you, we do not like the idea of just costing you money and being a line item budget. If we're costing you money, then we need to part ways and we'll part ways sooner than later. You know, at some point you gotta be, you gotta be making money on, on what we're doing, what we're offering for you. So, there's that Excited about having court on. You guys are going to love him.
SHED GEEK:His podcast is coming out this Wednesday. You'll know him from HHO. We did a podcast with him previously Years ago. A couple years ago. He was a franchise expert in what he was doing. We were lucky enough to pick him up to come over and join the Shed Geek team. Super excited what he was doing, uh, he was. Uh, we were lucky enough to pick you pick him up to come over and join the Shed Geek team. So super excited to have him on. Um, you'll still continue to see from, uh, all the rest of us. As, as far as, like Dylan or Wyatt or um, any of those guys yeah, I'm rambling at this point Um, and it sounds like they're testing out the tornado sirens. So, if you're hearing that in the back, my apologies.
SHED GEEK:Guys, I don't really know where to go from here. Love to talk with you. Love that you guys continue to listen. Hope that we continue to put out content that you guys would enjoy. You're always, always, always welcome to reach out to me. I don't mind anytime ever you guys reaching out. I always try to get back to you within the same day, or at least within the same week minimum. You know 15 emails while I was on this, doing this podcast. So, you know it's going to be busy, busy, busy. That's just the way life is. I prefer it that way. Keep your pipeline full If you're in sales. That's the key to success. That's my little opinion for the day. Uh, not everybody's going to close at once, but you will eventually have people close. Um, yeah, I really don't know where else to go, other than maybe we'll do some more of these if this turns out crash and burn and you guys don't like it. Maybe we won't do any more of them, but, uh, appreciate you guys listening to me set and ramble kind of talk about the state of the industry, the state of the podcast, where we are, who we are, what we're doing, where we're going. I always enjoy sitting down with you guys. I encourage you guys to reach out. I'd love to create some dynamic podcast episodes this year, in 2025, and that's about it.
SHED GEEK:I haven't prayed in a while. I haven't got a chance to. We're going to go ahead and pray us out of here today so that I can hop on this other phone call soon. Lord, thank you for today, Thank you for this new year. New year meaning new opportunities. It means you've kept us here for some reason, some purpose, which we're supposed to be obedient to and listen to and be sensitive to as you give us direction.
SHED GEEK:I'd ask that you'd continue to speak into your people through this industry that has embraced faith in so many ways, and we're so appreciative for that, knowing that we could be and have been in so many industries that do not seek your will, seek your guidance, seek your word. We're thankful for you. We're thankful for your son, we are thankful that you would give us any opportunity that we have. We know that nothing comes except for through the Father. We know that you are blessing us to stand up and walk each day, to breathe each breath, and we don't want to take those things for granted, even in our sinful nature. We ask that you'd forgive us in areas that we failed you and failed each other.
SHED GEEK:Ask that you would continue to just sort of bless this industry as it's been a beacon, considering the giving heart and charitable heart of those to give of their time, their products, their money a way to, as an example, the folks suffering through the storm damage out in North Carolina, east Tennessee.
SHED GEEK:I ask that you would just watch over us and help us to hold our tongue, be wiser, be better listeners and have sort of a spirit that puts you first, as each potential customer we meet through shed hauling or through being a shed dealer who comes in to purchase today or manufacture or a new hire for our companies. Just ask that you would just continue to be a blessing to us, and we thank you for your obedience. Just ask that you would just continue to be a blessing to us and we thank you for your obedience. We know that you are always, always, always on time, and we know that you are always for us and you have a plan for us to succeed. We thank you, God. We give you our best today in Jesus name' name, amen. Thank you, guys. Certainly appreciate you listening and I sure hope you got something good out of this today. I know I did Talk to you soon.