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
The Future of Steel Business Marketing
The metal building industry stands at a pivotal crossroads, and those who fail to recognize the shifting landscape may soon find themselves struggling to survive. In this candid, no-holds-barred conversation, we peel back the curtain on what's really happening with marketing in the metal building space.
Facebook Marketplace, once the golden ticket for metal building dealers, is rapidly losing effectiveness. We share our firsthand experience watching costs climb while lead quality plummets – a dangerous combination that's forcing smart businesses to pivot their strategies. "If you're not transitioning toward organic SEO or a fully functioning website, you better have a backup plan," we warn, speaking from years of trial and error.
The transition isn't easy. We discuss the uncomfortable reality of temporarily losing lead volume while building sustainable marketing infrastructure. This digital transformation requires patience – our SEO journey took 18 months before bearing significant fruit – but the rewards are undeniable: qualified leads arriving 24/7 without constant advertising spend.
Beyond marketing channels, we explore how customer expectations are evolving. Manufacturers offering permitting packages (like Carolina Carports) are gaining market share by addressing pain points that traditional dealers often ignore. Quality and reputation matter more than ever in an increasingly sophisticated marketplace where buyers research extensively before making decisions.
We also tackle the thorny subject of marketing companies, sharing our experiences with firms that promised the moon but delivered disappointment. "Their job isn't to score you points or get you sales – their job is to sell you marketing," we explain, while highlighting how industry-specific partners like Shed Geek Marketing understand the unique challenges metal building businesses face.
Whether you're a seasoned dealer or just starting out, this episode provides actionable insights on navigating the changing metal building landscape. The race to the bottom is being challenged, and those who position themselves strategically now will thrive while others struggle to keep pace.
For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.
Would you like to receive our weekly newsletter? Sign up here.
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: J Money LLC
hey, what's?
Jared:going on. Guys, my name is Jared and this is Eric, and we are the Steel Kings. What up? Welcome back to another podcast with us. We are so glad you are with us. We are going to get right into it. Today we are sponsored by the team over at J Money. Thanks to the team over there, joel and his team are doing a great job. If you need financing for your metal buildings, your sheds, your projects, roofing pools, whatever it is, get with the team over at J Money. They will help you out. All right, and we are also going to give a shout out to our friends over at Cold Spring Enterprises, the creators of the VersaBend system. If you are looking for a tube bender, call the team over at VersaBend. They will be happy to help you out. Eric brother, my best friend in the whole world, man, how are you today?
Eric:Man, I'm doing pretty good. I think it's day 10 or 11 for carnivore. I'm feeling healthy. I think it's day like 50 something on no rain. Yeah, dude, it got.
Jared:It got cloudy the other day, but there was no rain we got a couple raindrops at my house, but my grass is in need of some water. I can tell you that for sure it's back to being 80 degrees, like it's supposed to be high of 84 today, which is weird for September. We got this really brief Indian summer, I guess or I don't really know what they call it. It's like when it gets cool in the summertime, but then all of a sudden we've got this fall heat, which is just a super big bummer, because when you're starting to want to get your hoodies out, you're starting to want to go to pumpkin patches and all this crap, you, you end up throwing the shorts back on. Dude, it's hotter than crap outside, man.
Eric:Sure, it sure is bummed out about that.
Jared:But I can tell you, dude, we. So this is a little bit different, right? So just to give you, we try to give peaks behind the curtain. So you're going to hear this episode the week, so the following Monday after Shed Expo. So we're gonna try to give you our best guess as to how much fun we're gonna have at Shed Expo. So hopefully we've seen several of you, hopefully we've said hello and met some friendly faces at the Shed Expo. But we all hung out and we're gonna hang out in Knoxville at the shed expo. So when you guys hear this it'll be the following week, but for us it's coming up next week. So, bro, what are we going to get into? A shed expo? Let's, let's actually do it like this. Let's guess, and then we'll do a follow up episode to see how close we were. How's that?
Eric:Okay, I see how close we were. How's that? Okay, I'm going Sunday night, yep, um, with heather, so heather and I are gonna go, and then we're at the uh, the shed cell summit on Monday all day. So I'm going there. I believe I'm gonna have a blast making b-roll film on Monday morning for an hour or two. Um, then we've got, uh, meet and greets. I'm gonna be tail and Shannon, probably, and his wife, um, and peter. Peter is the guy in charge of the shed sale summit. Um, I'm I'm just assuming we're gonna have good times, laughs, etc. Etc. I'm assuming Deanna and he, heather, are gonna like each other and they'll probably go hang out. I'm open man. I know, like doing new things. That's kind of scary, but, man, I'm looking forward to Monday. Monday should be a success. Tuesday is the rent-to-own portion. I believe we're just gonna take like a fuck. We're gonna go do stuff in Knoxville and not do anything shed related and then, uh, I know so, like, what's your, are you coming?
Jared:Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm going to come down Tuesday. So I'm on the park board and city council where I live in Brookville and I have a chamber of commerce meeting Tuesday morning. So I'm going to come up to the? U, where I'm at, and I'm going to work with the team on Tuesday, get them prepped for a few days without me and then I'm going to head to Brookville to jump into chamber stuff, spend some time there before I have to head out and I am going to drive South and pick up our friend Jeff and I will be kind of shooting B roll and getting some time with Jeff. So Jeff obviously is the the owner and founder of shed hub and we love the guys over there. The team at shed hub is great, but I can tell you, man, I'm really looking forward to spending some time with him because he helps us out with our SEO and does a lot of stuff for Dayton Barns, so I'm looking forward to spending time with him. He and I don't get to spend nearly enough time together, so I'll get six hours in the car with the guy and, uh, six hours in the car back. We're going to share an Airbnb not too far from the convention center, so we'll be. Uh, yeah, we'll get to spend some time together, so I'm excited about that.
Jared:I'm excited about the potential of seeing friends that I haven't seen in a while, so I'm excited about that. I'm excited about the potential of seeing friends that I haven't seen in a while. I'm excited for the potential of meeting new friends and people. Hopefully you're hearing this and you're thinking, man. I met the Steel Kings at the Shed Expo and they were awesome. And if they weren't awesome, send us a comment We'll fix it, cause I can tell you, we want to make sure that we're meeting and saying hi to everybody, right?
Eric:I got some people in my mind I want to see and hug and talk to, and put a face with a name and and, more more importantly, I'm excited to spend time with you and Jeff and Shannon. You and jeff specifically, um, would love to do dinner on Tuesday. See what's going on, I think we'll figure something out. But super excited to spend time in the Shed Geek marketing booth and represent the Steel Kings and maybe Dayton Barns incognito. But you know, yeah, we'll fly under the radar.
Jared:We'll fly under the radar I might bring another polo, you never know.
Eric:Yeah, we're always trying to.
Jared:Today I got my five rivers on you know that's good man, we're finally getting around. I think you guys will see us and had seen us so when you hear this, like I said, you would have already seen us at Shed Expo. But hopefully we'll have our Steel Kings podcast merch. I got to pick up Eric's. Mine got delayed so I'm actually dropping that stuff off tomorrow. So you know the days get convoluted when you're listening to a podcast that's pre-recorded, so Eric and I try to keep the content as close as possible to real time With Shannon and his team. They like to edit our footage and make sure that we're good to go. So we usually shoot at least a couple weeks in advance. But with Shed Expo and everything, we have the Shed Expo next week which, again, you're going to get this the week following. We also have the role forming trade show coming up in October, which is exciting because our friends from Shield wall are putting that on.
Jared:We had Gary on a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, had a great conversation with him. He really sees things the way we do. Last week you got to hear from Darren over at Stor-Mor Portable Buildings, first Choice Metals. Those guys are doing some revolutionary things in our industry. And again, if we can all get in one accord and really just agree that the race to the bottom has to be challenged, and the only way that will be challenged is from within. We have to look inside of ourselves to say we sell a premium product, we're going to charge a premium price for it. If everybody races to the bottom, everybody loses, everybody makes less money. So I think that's just something to keep in mind looking back at those previous conversations.
Jared:But, bro, I wanted to talk about the last couple of weeks. We've seen a strong increase on our SEO. We've seen a strong increase on our SEO. We've seen a strong increase on our website. We're starting to see some really fun stuff coming our way and, you know, I think we want to challenge everybody out there a little bit to maybe take a look at what they're doing. Going into the cold months, what are you seeing, bro? I mean, you're on it more than me.
Eric:You, you're on you know I I had redone, like sales wise. I redid my marketplace and, um, they changed their policy on renewing and delete relist. Just heads up if you guys are doing that, make sure you stay up to date. A good place to follow that is the Facebook meta Facebook page. Uh, with updates. They have a specific page for updates, so I went ahead and redid it. They are now renewing on a different. It is weekly, but the delete and relist ends at some point, so you've got to have some ready to go. I'm getting messages left and right. The economy seems. You know we've got a rate cut tomorrow. I mean, we didn't even talk about that in the pre. I believe we're losing at least a quarter or a half a percent tomorrow, which should create optimism. Honestly, tomorrow, September the 17th, Tomorrow.
Eric:September the 17th. We'll probably confirm that on our next episode, but I feel good we're getting. You guys know what I've been up to, if you've been listening to every episode. I'm conquesting our website and I am super pleased with what's happening. People are going back to Google. They're going back to well, they're not going back to. They're utilizing AI, grok and ChatGPT to find businesses to buy stuff from, rather than Facebook advertising, and so I'm not saying it's a thing of the past, but um, I think I I think it's time.
Jared:I think it's time to maybe throw that out there. Yeah, so, if you are, if you are strictly selling your metal buildings or pole barns or shelves, if you're strictly selling in Meta's platform for free through Facebook Marketplace, you really strongly need to consider what you're doing. If you really want to take the next step or continue to advance your platform or your presence, you really need to start to pivot. I can't stress that enough. And again, we're giving you the tips that other people aren't super comfortable giving you Because, again, if you compete in the space that I'm in, that makes us competitors. But I would argue that if you're in the same space as me and we're doing a like job that all, all rising tides raises all boats, I really, I really feel that way. I think that right now, specifically in the steel industry, we're seeing a transitional moment.
Advertisement:Today we have something truly groundbreaking to discuss the Zula from Mobeno Solar Solutions. This incredible shed ventilation system is set to redefine how we approach air circulation and energy efficiency. A shed ventilation marvel With three robust fans generating 630 CFM. Two fans usher in a breath of fresh air, while one strategically expels staleness. What's groundbreaking, it's solar-powered, harnessing the sun's energy. The Zula is a sustainable dream, eliminating electricity costs. Sleek, powerful and eco-friendly, this system is a game changer for those seeking efficient air circulation without compromising on green values on green values. Visit Mobeno's site for more of this innovative solar shed ventilation solution.
Jared:I talked to, I mean several different manufacturing owners, several different high-level individuals in that field probably monthly, I'd say at this point were worried about steel tariffs. Earlier in the year we were starting to worry a little bit about, you know, zoning and permitting and blueprints. I think that stuff going into 2026 is going to become uber important. So working with the right manufacturers, those companies out there that are doing it the right way Darren we talked to Darren last week and you guys heard him. He is a going headfirst into the metal building space and he said, point blank why would we not be offering a permitting package? Hey, for 500 bucks we'll take care of the permit for you. If you're a dealer, does that not sound like awesome to you? And there are manufacturers out there, one of which I want to give a shout out to is Carolina Carports. We do a fair amount of business with Carolina Carports. The team over there is just remarkably well put together. We work with Tim and some of the guys there in the sales team Seasoned Seasoned team.
Jared:I mean when you've been around for 25 years you're an OG.
Jared:When you're an OG metal building and carport company like Carolina, you can really name your price. They had been running a discount for a long time and they took that discount away when the tariffs started to become pressing and I'd imagine going into 26,. They'll probably bring that discount back or some form of a discount. But I can tell you they offer permitting packages specifically in Florida and I can tell you they've gotten almost all of our business in Florida because of it, because they help us. They're right there. They want to help you close buildings and I can tell you from our perspective it took us a while to get in there.
Jared:They don't just take dealers either. You can't just sign up to sell for Carolina Carports. You got to know it and I like that. I like that validation process. I like that manufacturers are getting picky and not that. If you're an individual and you're selling metal buildings again, I wish you all the best. I hope you're doing well, but be doing it the right way, man, I cannot stress it enough. It doesn't take but one or two customers that can just ruin your trajectory.
Eric:The guy that I was talking to this morning, from Missouri, is getting a 30 by 40 by 12. And he's I had to overcome I live in Ohio. That was easy to combat since Better Business Bureau and my and my Facebook profile ratings. He said the other company was local. I said I got a quote from him two weeks ago. I tried to call him yesterday, Monday, and their phone was disconnected. He got the heebie-jeebies so he's like yeesh and so I. You know he didn't take his money, but I'm assuming you know I kind of told him the warning of it's not and you know we said this, dude, we said this earlier this year.
Eric:I believe that that these, these quick startup ones, they're not. They're not going to happen that much anymore. It's going to go right. There's going to be a flip this wintertime. There's people that worked for us last year that was banging buildings out. They're not selling buildings this year. They're just not. I know they're not. I know that what happened? There's a great scattering that's taken place. Everybody's scattering that's taking place. Everybody's going back to websites. Everyone's going back to leads on a website. In my personal opinion, that's the direction we're going, um and so if you're not buttoned up and doing it right, people will not buy from you. It is now year seven of selling six selling buildings. People now know the game, the customers are now knowing the game.
Jared:We can't continue to go down a rabbit hole and not see results, and I think that companies like Meta are getting wise to people actually trying to run full scale retail businesses through marketplace. That's not what it's designed to be and I mean I hate to say this to you, but if you're repping your business through Facebook marketplace, you're in violation of their policy. You know, when you list a building, it has to be listed from your personal account, listed in a way that has no references to your personal business. We've had reps. I mean, I'm gonna tell you, we've had reps in this shop get restricted on Facebook Marketplace and on Facebook completely because they broke policies.
Jared:And if you're struggling through Meta right now, meta is not a retail space, it's not a retail environment. It's not meant to be set up that way. Now, if you're gonna list a handful of buildings in your neighborhoods or across the country, if you're doing it the right way, great. If you're selling buildings, even better. But I can tell you, if you're not transitioning in a way that is leading towards organic SEO or just a fully functioning website I mean you can get a website put together in an afternoon if you have the patience for it and I think that for somebody like me who has watched, we went from a very basic WordPress website years ago. Then we upgraded to a different WordPress. I mean, we've gone through three or four different iterations of the website. I can tell you, if you hit it and you hit it right, it will produce for you. That's what we're seeing right now, and it took a long time for us to really come to that realization.
Jared:Running targeted marketing campaigns through meta this is different. So you have marketplace, which is meant to be a personal storefront, and you have met a business platform or met a business suite where you can advertise your business. That's where you're spending money, and what Eric and I figured out over time and it didn't really take long is that the price just kept going up and the result count just kept coming down. And then what? Over time? What happened is we'd spend more money, we'd make less money and the quality of the lead started to go down. That's when things really started to get bothersome. I mean, you can probably touch on it better than me, eric. You've been doing this longer than me.
Eric:The amount of people who you might be Okay. So there's multi reason on that type of deal, on that type of deal. So I think it's probably best to explain if a per, if a person Googles something, they are actually wanting the thing. Yep, like, if you're Googling it and and then they click on you, they're going to your website on purpose. So, so 100% of the time people on your website are on your website on purpose, sorting through maybe a design or maybe price. Do they finance what's their coverage area? Where they're they're questing something metal building related when you're paying, when, when 20 companies are fighting for the same face time as a person who, who basically liked the post you know, maybe they weren't even really necessarily wanting to buy metal building you know you're getting these um messages pop up on your phone. It's like, hey, you know, a lot of times people have Facebook settings where if they're on your Facebook page for a minute, a message will pop up. Yeah, not, that's not a lead, that's just me. Someone was looking.
Eric:So I believe, when 20 companies are fighting for the same Three dollar or ten dollar and at this point probably 10 to 15 dollar message and you get 30 of those, I mean, are you really going to risk spending five hundred dollars to get 30 messages where you might only quote 20 of them and five of them are even talking back with you, and then you might sell one and you do that for a whole week. That's $2,500. If you don't sell one building in that week, you've lost your money. And so I believe when we started we were one of the few and it was easier because the people weren't exhausted from seeing metal building message campaigns. Now they're. Now they're exhausted.
Jared:Yeah, well, you got to think about. You got to think about the way the trajectory of everything works, right. So you know, word of mouth, trading post you know this is 100 years ago, right? Word of mouth trading post, you know, general store gives way to the influx of radio. Advertising becomes part of what you hear on the radio. Radio gives way to television. Television eventually gives way to the internet, gives way to the internet and all along the way you have things like broadcast radio and television, and advertising became a fixated part of our culture. So now, with internet, you have to figure it's going to go in waves.
Jared:And I think we had this moment in time where everybody and their brother was on Facebook. Facebook was you. Facebook was the king of social media. Not that it's not now. I mean, everybody has Facebook. It seems Meta and Facebook are super popular. But what I can tell you from an Overlook perspective, someone who is not social media I am not on social media, I mean, I only have social media because of the business what I can tell you is that x and tick, tock, x, is it all of these new? So, and chat gpt is a social media platform, whether you think it is or not. Chat gpt is a social media impacting device that I have, the likes of which we've never seen in this country. You know, I think that there are so many tools out there now to where used to be. You could run an ad on Facebook. Let's say it's 2020, pre COVID 2020. And you're on Facebook.
Jared:Man Eric's right. I mean, eric was one of the kind of a pioneer I would say I mean, certainly from a dealer perspective, doing things with idea room, doing things with a configured website. Eric's told me a bunch of times if Eric would have had the bandwidth in 2020, we'd be the biggest metal building dealer in the United States. But we didn't. We were, we were a team. We were, you know, a makeshift team put together in one shed lot in Huber Heights service. And you know, $10 million in metal building sales I mean that's a crazy number.
Jared:Now you know we have a fully fledging business that does $10 million a year. But it's clean and it's neat, it's organized, it's put together, it can have relationships, it builds things. You know that's the reason five rivers exist. You guys have watched us through the process. This year We've created this business selling pole barns and boy, what a, what a testament to Eric's hard work and discipline. That's been Because Five Rivers is now putting buildings up. Not only are we selling the process, but we're in charge of putting them up and we've seen our projects come to life and I can tell you those projects have so much more art than they ever could have. They have our whole soul. I like them yeah.
Jared:I mean it's it's awesome because we own the whole process. So now we're responsible from start to finish on projects. We don't have to ask anybody's permission. If we want to take a discount, if we want to charge a little bit more, depending on what the situation is, we make that decision. We make that judgment call and I can tell you that has come from laser focus and discipline of growing the business the right way. We would never have been able to do that if we weren't focused, and that's what the call to action today probably is around the SEO value, getting yourself out there and branding yourself.
Jared:We've talked about all this stuff before, but I can tell you, man, the days of selling, selling on Facebook marketplace if that's all you're doing, you better, you better have a backup plan. We do, we did, we're still implementing the backup plan. Um, we're going to use Facebook marketplace, don't get us wrong but it becomes just one, one pillar of the business philosophy. If it's meta, if it's google, if it's organic seo, whatever it is, you need to have pillars of your business that you focus on and that you budget for. Because Eric hit the nail on the head, if you run a $500 message campaign for five days in a row and don't sell a building. You are not loving your life at that point. And we've been there, trust me 100%.
Jared:I remember this one time, eric. I remember this one time I had just started taking over the ad set JW, who's been on this podcast before JW, was running things and I was stepping in there, eric had just given me the reins on a couple of things and I was still super early. I don't take days off, mind you. I take zero days off. I took a day off and I think I maybe I went to King's Island or something with the kids and I said, hey, I'm going to be unavailable for like four or five hours. I have a couple issues I'm going to take care of when I get there, but I'm going to be unavailable for four or five hours. When you get in the swimming pool, I'm going to get in the lazy river and just float for a while and, like dude, our ads, jw, for whatever reason, didn't turn them off. Do you remember that? Dude you were? I mean, eric was red like red dude, eric was hot because, dude, I dude, I mean. That's the kind of stuff like you can say.
Eric:It's too. It's a mature. A mature. It's like um, it's an instant um satisfaction. You know that I can spend a hundred bucks and I'll get someone. It keeps you so short-minded, though, because there's no sustainability, because if you don't turn it on, you don't get leads, If you don't spend money. We are at the point where we have a humming website. I would put it in the top 10 websites. We're not going to share our secret sauce, but we probably have probably the strongest SEO in metal buildings pretty close, probably top five, I would say. At this moment, I've got a, I've got a vision that is in my mind to get us into the top couple, meaning top search results and um, and.
Eric:And those produce leads at 2 am when you're sleeping, and you don't have to buy them, they just show up, they show up, they show up, um. It's almost like you have a store that in the. As you're walking down the magnificent mile Michigan avenue in Chicago and you walk past the store in the glass, you look through the glass that back in the day, when you couldn't look on websites and stuff, you just saw a store. You had to base your decision on whether you wanted to go in or not by what they displayed. You know, some companies would put like a Ferrari in the glass. You know, like try to lure them in because they know when, if they can get them inside the thing they can get them inside now.
Eric:Now you got all this and so we're creating that environment where, when people walk past, they want to know because of all the places we are, all the things that we offer, all it's we're making ourselves. With Facebook. It's like the lights are off, the door says don't come in, there's no advertisements. When you don't have the ads on, it's very you might as well board that freaking store up there's.
Jared:There's a couple things if you're working with a marketing team, if you're working with a meta marketing pro, if you're talking to them on the phone. So now you've graduated from. You've graduated from marketplace. Let's say you're in meta business suite. You've got a business, you're starting it. Whether you're selling sheds, metal sheds, metal building, you can be anything, you can be selling anything. You're on meta business suite. The second you talk to them, they're going to tell you you have to leave your ads on all the time to produce. That's great.
Advertisement:Oh no. Sam, what's going on? Are you okay? Yes, I'm fine, Lisa. I was just trying to get a screwdriver and all this other stuff fell down. I'm ready to go buy a shed so we can have some space in this garage again.
Advertisement:I agree, I keep looking at the shed Mr Jenkins bought. Let's ask him where I got his.
Advertisement:Howdy neighbor, we're wondering how do you like your shed?
Advertisement:I love it. It's exactly what I needed, and I couldn't have asked for a better service. And where did you get it? Hmm, I can't remember, but let me check Something. This nice will probably have the builder's name on it somewhere. Hmm, no, I'm sorry, I can't find a name anywhere. Well, we finally got a shed.
Advertisement:Yes, I just hope we're happy. The thing is a lot more shoddy than I expected, and I'm sure I told them I wanted a window, but they didn't have it in the paperwork so I couldn't argue. Boy, is this a lousy shed.
Advertisement:We haven't even had it two years, have we Barely? It was just a bad deal all the way around. Mr Jenkins told me the other day that he likes his shed so much he wants to get a second one, but he still can't remember where he got it.
Advertisement:Your product is your best advertising. At IdentiGrow, we provide nameplates that ensure your quality products are never forgotten. Identify your products, grow your business. For more information, visit identigrow. com.
Jared:We like message campaigns. Our business has been built around a message campaign. The problem with running message campaigns 24-7, 365 is you'll get messages at 11 o'clock Nobody's set, yeah, nobody's working. Is you'll get messages at 11 o'clock? Nobody's set, yeah, nobody's working. And unless you've got somebody who never sleeps which we're lucky enough to have somebody who is on it but not on it like that, not on it 24-7. I mean me and Eric at times have been up at 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night, servicing leads personally, personally, and the days of those are done. We don't want to do that. We have to sleep. We have to sleep to be productive. The next day the business is closed. With SEO, it takes it takes a plan, it takes an investment and it takes time. It's like planting a garden. You don't plant seeds in the next day. Have your, have your harvest.
Eric:Oh, I like that analogy.
Jared:We've got a way to season. You know you have to plant that seed, you have to water it, you have to give it some sunlight, you have to keep the predators away, you have to keep the enemy from approaching you, you have to keep it safe. You put up a fence, you do all the things that you do to make it successful and at the end of the season, your yield is your harvest, and I would say that's been for us. It's taken us about 18 months. I mean to give you kind of a peek behind the curtain, if you will. We have invested heavily in our online SEO presence over the last 18 months and now, in September of 25, we're really starting to see the harvest of our hard work.
Jared:It's taken time to get there. It's taken time because what you have to do if you're like us and you're running a small business that has a fixed operations budget, you have to lower one half to bring up another. So if we were running a specific amount on meta and all of a sudden we're not and we're bringing that down, if you're at let's just use a random number $5,000, you're spending $5,000 a month on meta and you're spending zero on SEO and you're expecting a certain number of leads. As you lower that meta down to three, down to two, down to one, you're raising up your SEO investment by the same two, three, five, whatever it is. You're going to lose leads in that leeway. You're going to have a period of time where it's very uncomfortable and we've experienced that.
Jared:I mean, I'm not, I am here to tell you. I am here to help you and give you one or two people. So me and Eric are just two people. This is just our opinions, but I can tell you from our experience there have been thin days, thin days where we have spent money and not made money, and that's what we don't want anymore. We want days where things are good, where we spend zero and make good money, and that's what SEO will help you do if you build it the right way. And I get the pushback a lot, eric, and I want you to jump in here because you've been pushed more than me on this, because I hate them and I can say that with a passion. I hate them. Marketing companies, marketing companies will bleed you dry, they will chew you up and spit you out and they will sell you on all of these fancy things and at the end of the day, they don't accomplish much Unless they're the right ones.
Eric:There are ones out there that care about you, but they're very few and far between, if you have a plumbing issue in your house, you will call a plumber mainly because maybe it's complicated and you don't actually have the time to learn it. You know for a one-off thing, so it's like a one-off thing. So you, you, you use a service for it. Um, same with grass cutting you can cut your own grass, but maybe you'll you, you don't have the hour and a half hour or whatever it takes. On marketing, it's different because, in my personal opinion, you might as well learn how to do it. I mean, it's something you're going to take with you all the time, so it's not like it makes sense to pay somebody to do something for you if it's going to produce fruit.
Eric:Um, but oftentimes we've we, we, we almost went with a couple different marketing companies and, bro, I felt like I was talking to they was talking to me like I was an idiot and I'm like I know probably as much as you. I'm trying to get you to free my time up, but really you're trying to take advantage of me not knowing much and I'm not a good client for you because I'm gonna ask a million questions and and so I fear and I hope this doesn't rub somebody the wrong way, but like in the shed industry, where people aren't like are the traditional handshake and this. Then you know uh, newsflash like if you don't use computers, like yeah, you'll have to have a marketing company. So I'm not bashing you for that decision, but if you're somewhat savvy with technology, it doesn't take much to learn how to. I mean everything's AI.
Eric:You can go on literally ChadGVG and say make me an advertisement with this building.
Jared:Let me say this about marketing companies. Okay, we're making it sound bad. There are good marketing companies out there, which you have to find is one that suits your need. Number one real solutions real solutions.
Eric:Like shed geek has real solutions. There's real solutions attached to it.
Jared:We're not. You know, we're not going to get on some platform here and hot and hypeed Geek Marketing. We're going to tell you that they do a good job. We struggled with a couple. Let me tell you this, the way that I look at it. Once I understood this and I'm going to say meta, I'm going to say Google, I'm going to say Yelp, I'm going to say anything where there's a marketing professional.
Jared:You probably want to steer clear of that, and the reason I say that is because you can find the information that they want to give you on Reddit, on X, on tutorials. There's a million things you can search. But what I will tell you is their job as marketing professionals. The sales that they get are to you. When they sell you marketing, they've won, okay. Their job is not to score you points. Their job is not to get you sales. Their job is to market for you to sell, okay. So, like your job is to close, shed steel buildings, whatever, it's their job to close marketing.
Jared:I like marketing companies that work with alongside of you that say, hey, we're not going to take a dollar unless you see an increase of X. We want to know what your last three months were. We want to see your P&L. We'll take a loss on our end if we can't perform for you, and each individual task carries weight. So, hey, we'll put together a website for you a couple thousand bucks and we'll get that going.
Jared:You to me, every project needs to have an innate value, both financially and benefit to you as a business owner or operator or whatever you're doing. So if somebody comes to you and says, hey, I got a marketing thing, I want to run by you, make sure you're getting something. Number one and it shouldn't just be hey, I'm going to post for you on Facebook because you can do that yourself. You can do that for free. You know you need somebody who's going to go in and get your Google ads set up, going to get your Google products set up, going to get a? You know, going to get a dedicated, a dedicated meta ad campaign. You need somebody who's going to perform tasks. And we went down that rabbit hole, just like Eric said, exactly for that reason to free up our own time. Down that rabbit hole, just like eric said, exactly for that reason to free up our own time. And what we realized is that our time, being valuable like it is, is more valuable honed in that space.
Eric:It's expensive, man, it's expensive it's, it's, it's expensive and you you've got to have, you've got to know people so like, why shed geek marketing rocks? Is because most people can talk to each other about how their their time was, and I that's.
Eric:I mean they do a good job there because they know the industry.
Eric:What like companies? That say, people that don't know the industry that's you guys steer clear of.
Jared:So like if somebody's been helping you. Yeah, I agree. The people, the people that market for big fortune 500 companies, those are not the companies that you need to be working with marketing your sheds. That's just my opinion. Work with companies that know the product. Shed geek marketing just happens to be one of them. There are several out there.
Jared:Shannon doesn't care when we say that this is not the Steel Kings podcast, brought to you by only Shed Geek. We love the guys who are Shed Geek marketing to this got an email from Shannon about Shed Geek Marketing. What I will say from the Steel Kings perspective is we're going to be heavily involved with things that are going on in the industry. We're going to keep our hands, our eyes, our ears. We're going to make sure that we give you the straight truth. I can tell you I have never gotten anything but the truth from Shannon, period. I feel like that guy has stood up and he has been a loud voice in a silent room more times than I can count. He's given us this platform and I can tell you give him a call, give his team a call. He's happy to connect you. If he can't take care of it, he'll find somebody who can. The Steel Kings are going to ride hard on our podcast and ride hard for the people that listen to us and give us the time so I can tell you, contact the team at shed geek marketing if you're in the need for something. Even if it's just a consultation, they're happy to talk to you.
Jared:Um, because we've spent, you know, the last 10 minutes or so bad mouth and marketing companies, and there are a lot out there. You know there are a lot of people out there in this industry who have good intentions. You know shed pro idea room, a lot of these companies that have 3d configurators, crms check them out. Okay, I mean, give them the time because they might be able to take your business to another level. And I think that that we're looking at this moment right now in this industry sheds, metal buildings, portable buildings, whatever. This is a penultimate kind of moment. Things are changing. I can feel it and eric and I have our finger on the pulse. More often than not anymore I mean, knock on wood, we've not been, we've not missed the boat too many times. Knock on wood, we've not missed the boat too many times. We can feel it. I feel the shift.
Eric:Oh yeah, oh yeah and I would not call us webmasters by any means but if you're interested in what we're up to and you want to rap on the phone, I'm more than willing to consult and chat with and take a look at what's under your hood.
Jared:We are an open book and I'm hoping, as we come back from Shed Expo, so this episode again is going to be the week following Shed Expo. I hope that we've met many of you at good times, met new friends, saw old friends and we're going out of it with a complete focus on the rest of this year in 2026. So I think I'm going to put a pin in it, man. This has been a good one, bro. We need to have more discussions like this that are blunt and frank and we need to be upfront, because that's what we want to be. We expect people to be like that with us. Bro, you got anything on the way out, man.
Eric:I will be at it's after, but I'm looking forward to recapping with people who came to the Shed Sales Summit. I will be one of the panelists on the platform, so I'm looking forward to discussing the do's and don'ts in marketing what works, what doesn't work, what used to work, what's going to work, et cetera. And so if you're listening and you saw me, I'm appreciative that. You saw uh came. They drop us a line. Um, our emails are below our tags there.
Jared:Eric at steel kings. com, if you want to get together yep, I will leave you guys with this, as I always do get out in your communities and do something. Um, please, we lost. We lost a big voice this past week with Charlie kirk the assassination of Charlie kirk. I just want to say I am a I'm at a loss for words. Now. It's hard for me to even say or talk about it, because it always is terrible when someone gets killed. But when someone has a voice, like Charlie did, um, whether you agree or disagree with the guy, no one deserves to be killed. No one deserves to be hurt. Violence is something that should never happen Again. Agree or disagree doesn't much matter to me, from the Steel Kings out to everybody.
Jared:If you felt that, we felt that we were on the call together when we heard about it and Eric and I were shook, so I can tell you, get out in your communities. If you really were a big fan of Charlie kirks, that's what he'd want you to do. He'd want you to pick it up and move. Get involved in your church, get involved in your community. Do something special for somebody else. It'll make you feel good, I promise you. I promise you it won't make you feel worse when you do something for somebody else, you will feel better for doing it. Okay, I'm telling you, there's nothing better than making somebody else feel good. I'm Jared, he's Eric. We are the Steel Team. Check us out next week on another episode. Check out our friends at Cold Spring Enterprise for the first event.
Eric:Let's go.
Jared:Check out Joel and his soon at J Money for all your financing needs. Shannon's on Monday. Oh, we're on Monday, Shannon's on Wednesday, and we will be back at you with another episode of the Steel Team Podcast.
Eric:We need some rain. We need some Elijah prayers for rain. We need rain.
Jared:Yep Later on, guys, peace out.