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Episode 006.
What type of business are you really in? The Product business? The Service business? Both?
Are you in the sales and marketing business? Are you sure?
Dave Zook is the CEO of Horizon Structures, knows what business he’s in. He doesn’t let himself get distracted with details that don’t add up to more structures being sold.
Whether it be dog kennels, horse barns, chicken coops or even log cabins, Dave has become a master in the sales and marketing of modular buildings. Using all his resources online and offline, he’s putting together an empire that knows no boundary.
There are a lot of great lessons here for ANY self reliance-based business operator. Listen to this!
To find out more about Horizon Structure’s fine products:
https://www.horizonstructures.com
Find out how you can transform your successful company into your Dream Business:
http://brianjpombo.com/dreambiz/
Full Transcript
Brian: What type of business are you really in?
Are you in the product business?
Are you in the service business?
Are you in both?
Are you actually in sales and marketing, and you don’t know it?
Today’s talk is with Dave Zook of Horizon Structures. And I think you’re going to find this one really interesting because a lot of the points he brings up can be applied to just about any business.
Listen to this.
Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.
If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.
You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.
We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.
From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure life off the grid.
Brian: Dave Zook is the CEO of Horizon Structures, building custom modular barns, sheds, garages, kennels and coops for nearly any scenario.
Founded in 2010, Dave went from being a one man owner operator to a team of seven sales people delivering products to all 48 states and even internationally with multiple manufacturing facilities across the US.
Horizon Structures now has global reach. Dave, his wife and four children live happily and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Dave, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about what you do.
Dave: Hey, thanks for having me on your show, Brian.
You know, I got a few things going on. Like you said, I grew up in a very entrepreneurial business friendly family and my very first venture into the business world I was preteen.
My dad had a business where we were manufacturing modular building.
So I kind of grew up in that world, and I got to the point where I was in my late teens, early 20s, the internet was still very young at that point and some of our dealers for our modular buildings, were starting to get on the internet as back in the days when you could, if you had a modular building business, you could put your thing up on the internet.
And you were on the first page of Google. I mean, it was so young and I remember going to my dad and saying, Hey, what do you think about advertising on the internet and really getting our presence up there?
He looked at me like, I was crazy. And it’s like, how busy Do you want to be?
I mean, you know, we were just slammed.
I remember like 10, 12 weeks on behind getting buildings out the door.
And so I ventured off and started my own business started Horizons Structures for two reasons. One was because I saw an opportunity to was because I didn’t want to grow up in the business world, not knowing if I could go out and do something on my own and be successful. I mean, I see this happen quite often where the second and third generation kids come along, grew up in the business and you got to wonder, and I’m sure they wonder sometimes, like, if I would have ventured out on my own, I wonder if I could have ever made some waves?
Started a successful business and saw that through. So I was kind of more trying to prove myself to myself.
And then the other thing was I saw the opportunity in the internet space and kind of went out and in that realm and and that’s really what we are at horizon structures.
We’re a sales and marketing company, we sell quite a few different products, mostly in the modular building space with all modular horse barns and modular garages and you know, modular dog kennels, and we saw all that stuff but we’re a marketing company and we’ve got different manufacturing facilities setup now in several different parts of the country where we can, you know, act as that sales and marketing arm and have other people build for us.
We’ve grown a lot over the last, you know, 15, 20 years but it’s it’s been a lot of fun and challenges along the way, of course, but we’ve grown a lot and had a lot of fun.
Brian: That’s so cool coming from that background. How long was it before you started seeing success on your own apart from the original family business?
Dave: That happened pretty fast. I mean, I know the probably the first five to seven years we were in business, we grew by 100%. year over at least 100%. It was quite a few years where it was, you know, a couple hundred percent but we grew by triple digits every year, for the first five to seven years now it becomes harder and harder as your sales go into the millions of dollars.
But those first couple years that first five, probably five, six years, you know, triple digit growth year over year not very long at all.
I mean, I started with just me myself, selling and of course, I had a trucking company as well, where we delivered our own products are and modular building.
So I had a trucking company and then I had this young company Horizon Structures that was just starting out.
I was like, doing the sales going down the road in my truck and this was before cell phones were even mainstream. That first year or two, I had a home phone where somebody would call in in regards to an ad that had plays or something on a modular building, and they would call into my home and when I get home from delivering modular buildings at night.
We just closed out 2018 and we blew out some sales records and had our best year ever.
Then I take the call and call the people back and turns on the building and the company grew from just me and then of course. I had a full time employee, you know, and that first year you know, after about six months, and then it grew and now we’re up to seven or eight employees and the office full time till people and of course, we got a manufacturing team and all that but no, a lot of growth in those first few years and we’re still continuing to grow.
Brian: Oh, fabulous, really cool. Right now, what would you say is your top selling product?
Dave: Our core business has been in the Horse Barn space from the time that we started now we’ve got quite a few other products that we branched into and there are some of those products that are really gaining traction.
One of those has been the dog kennels.
When you think about people who have horses, just throw a number out there I might be what 5% of the people in United States 10% of people, whatever.
Well, how many people have dogs?
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: I mean, you’re talking probably 90% of the people have dogs. So the market is so much bigger.
We have a couple GSA Schedules where you can sell directly to the government and we’re selling to swat teams and police forces. Forces in Oregon, you know, I mean, so we’re taking we’re taking modular building modular dog kennels.
In fact, if you go on YouTube and put in Horizon Structures dog kennels, you’ll kind of get the whole picture of how the whole delivery process goes.
Whether it’s a dog kennel horse barn, you know, big garage or any of that.
And we delivered one we had delivered a big dog kennel to a police force down in Greer, South Carolina, you’ll see the video.
But just that kind of thing and venturing out into that space. You know, that’s a space that we kind of ventured into.
We were tinkering around with it, but really weren’t real serious about it and about probably five years ago, and that’s just has really taken off of it.
There is so much opportunity in that space. I would say right now, our core is still in the horse barn space module response base, but it’s definitely dog kennels are certainly getting some traction.
Brian: Right on, that’s cool. Who would you say is your ideal customer?
Dave: Ideal customer, and that various some but I just go back to the horse barn space ideal customer and horse barn space is someone middle age probably in their 40s.
They have three to five acres. They’ve been bought in a horse somewhere down the road, five miles, 10 miles, whatever.
And they’re just ready to bring them home. We can come in there with a modular horse barn, they can put up a fence, they can bring their horse home and join right there at home.
I would say a female 35 to 50 years old, I don’t know maybe it’s midlife crisis and they want to either get into horses or they’ve been in horses for a long time but they’ve disabled them somewhere else.
And then when you’re talking dog kennels, there’s kind of two different kinds of buyers, three different kinds of buyers, the one scores residential not so much then the next step up is breeders, trainers, groomers, dog sitters, that kind of thing.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: And then more the commercial buyer would be SWAT teams and military and police forces and we’re really getting a lot of traction there.
Brian: That’s it’s really cool. I mean, talking about a real varied marketplace. That’s really awesome.
If you were talking to any of those people, what would you say that makes you different out of any of the other modular options out there?
Dave: We don’t really have too much competition in the dog kennel world.
That’s really why, you know, we’re able to deliver these things out to California, Oregon, out to the west coast. I mean, you know, how you kind of have your thoughts in your own head about what you think it real.
And I remember having this conversation because I thought we were kind of tinkering around with the dog panel space. I remember we built some that were, you know, 10, 15, $20,000 and I thought the space capped out at 20,000, who in the world would spend more than $20,000 on a dog kennel.
I remember we built three dog kennels for some rescue shelter out in California and the shipping to get a 14 by 14 building you’re talking you know, super wide.
Hi permitted flag cars a whole bit to take it all away California talking about like $20,000 just in shipping. You’re talking 15, 20,000 and shipping and I remember the their buildings came in at like 60 grand apiece.
And I’m thinking, oh my goodness, this is probably a one and done deal.
I mean, this is crazy.
You know, I never heard of somebody spending $60,000 on Dog kennel.
Then I did a follow up call after the buildings were delivered. After everything was in place. I was talking to the owner and I was asking how things were going? And they like it and all that.
He said, I just can’t believe the value for what we paid for. I mean, you’re talking $60,000 big dog kennel, this is like….nothing, I’m like thinking to myself. I was just, I wasn’t even thinking straight.
I mean, like, I would have never thought. Since then, I mean, we really put some some effort and some marketing into this and realize the potential is out there.
And since then we sold a whole bunch of six figure dog kennels.
I mean, you’re talking dog kennels in the 100, 150, $200,000 range, but when you look at what their options are a $200,000 dog kennel, $150,000 dog kennel from us.
If somebody was to build that, from scratch start to finish in California, New York, Connecticut, wherever that is you probably talking 345 hundred thousand dollars in costs.
That video that you can watch a YouTube video that I met you here the police officer say that they were looking at different options.
The costs were just crazy.
Then they found us and they’re coming in $100,000 under budget. And so when you look at what we’re competing with somebody building from scratch, a local contractor, and then us coming in with an already built modular building. There’s really not that much competition in that space.
Brian: Wow, talk about being in the right place at the right time.
And what’s amazing to me is that as the people putting this together, is there a huge difference between horse barn and a dog kennel besides the size, I mean, obviously you got fencing that the specifics, but in terms of how much work comes from your end it takes about the same right?
Dave: Yeah, really what you start with is a box. So you start with a footprint, you know, so I mean you’re starting with whatever 12 by 40 building, and then how you outfit that box whether, you know, I mean, obviously the big difference dog kennel you don’t need the kickboard for like you’re doing a horse barn.
And really, the difference then just goes on the inside of the building, like how they laid out how it gets outfitted.
Obviously, there’s a lot of things you got to do for inside of a dog kennel that you wouldn’t have in a horse barn and vice versa.
But no, I mean, it really just starts with with a shell frame course that’s where the cost comes into. Because when you’re even just like building a house, you start with your square footage, and then you start outfitting the inside.
I mean, you can really well you can make or break your budget on the inside of the house, your framing and your shell is basically pretty universal.
I mean, you know, there’s certain square footage cost but when you start putting inside of it together and you talking you know granite countertops versus regular countertops, are you talking in a dog kennel you’d be talking like poly or flooring where you know that standard in our buildings, now where, it’s a waterproof flooring.
You can get in there with a power washer and you can watch it right down into the drain, you’ve got an old slide wall where it’s all waterproof.
There’s all kinds of stuff on the inside that you can do that gives you a bunch of different options. But that’s really the difference between a horse barn or a dog kennel is just how you outfit the end of the box.
Brian: That’s awesome. That’s really cool.
What do you like best about your business in your industry?
Dave: I like just business in general. I love it.
I can’t imagine ever working a W-2 job.
I haven’t done that since I was in my teens and I just liked the one customer relationships.
I like sales and marketing. I just like me when that sale happens and when you can deliver a product that meets or exceeds a customer’s needs.
I got guys in the shop, you know, it’s easy for those guys to just think well that’s their job and they’re just showing up and cranking out buildings and working as hard as they can.
But I’m telling them, I gotta remind them like this is somebody’s dream, like you’re building somebody’s dream.
Somebody might have saved up for the last five or 10 years or half their lifetime to be able to afford this building that you’re building for them. So when you’re able to deliver that, I love that stuff. And then to be able to have relationships with vendors and suppliers and builders and the whole thing I can’t imagine being not being a part of that world.
Brian: So what would you say are your biggest gripes regarding your business and industry?
Dave: There’s always challenges. A lot of our challenges are weather related.
I know this year has been a challenge for us here in the northeast and Pennsylvania. We’ve been getting a ton of rain. It makes it hard because a lot of our bigger garages and some of our horse barns you know, they take site work and concrete, concrete footings and I kind of stuff and it’s been a mess this year.
I just heard somebody say this morning that we got seven inches of rain and in Pennsylvania 2018.
It’s crazy. Having to deliver modular buildings into people’s backyards with that kind of scenario.
I mean, it’s been a challenge this year. And of course, earlier in 2018, we had a tremendous lumber spike.
You know, there was tariffs going on. We buy a lot of lumber from Canada.
And so we’re used to paying 6, or $7 a sheet for and that stuff spiked to like $17 a sheet and now your triple for a product that you use truckloads of them on a weekly basis.
Those kind of things, yeah, there’s always something you know. But if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
Brian: Wow! So have you found that that’s leveled off now?
Dave: Yeah, that’s come back and stabilized and leveled off some more. Yes.
Brian: Oh, that’s good.
Where do you find your new customers at?
Dave: As I told you before, we’re building marketing company.
That’s where our real strengths are.
So I mean, we do some shows. we advertisse in the papers somewhat.
But we’re strong, we got a strong internet presence, in fact, would be interested to know if you know when you do a search.
In fact, when we’re done here, I’ll give you a couple keywords, you can type them into your computer and see what kind of results we get.
We got over 5,000 industry specific keywords.
Now the first page of Google, you know, it’s taken a lot of work.
But you know, we got a good team around us that takes care of that kind of stuff. And we’re heavy on the internet, and then just having the I mean, there’s one thing to drive traffic to your website, but then having the reviews to go along with it.
You asked about challenges.
I remember there was a customer who this was this happened two or three years ago, but there was a customer who put a rush order in on a horse barn and we took her deposit and we built her the horse barn and it wasn’t just a stock order.
It was a customer ordered horse barn.
She then went out to her own contractor and got pricing for her site work that she needed to get done and it ended up with the way she got permitted and all that the site work was going to cost her a lot more than she had figured on spending. So she cancelled her order.
And so we sent her deposit back minus 25% because of our policy, and it’s clearly spelled out on our contract. You know, if you order the building, and you know, you cancel the order after it was built, obviously, we got to find another buyer for it.
And it was not pretty product well, mysteriously, like two days later, there was like 200, 1 star reviews came through and landed on our Facebook page!
And they were all from like Mexico.
So when you went on our Google reviews or our reviews and you you know, you start checking it out. We went from like a 4.8 or 4.9 star to like a two star company.
Commercial Break: All right, we’re going to stop the conversation with Dave right there.
If you are an owner or executive of self reliance based company and you’re interested in Taking your business from where it’s at to really being ideal to be in a dream business. I know you’ve probably had a really successful business up until now.
But what would it take to really make it ideal for you?
What would it take to where you’re putting in the perfect amount of time and doing the things you absolutely love and business?
If you apply for a chat with me, we will talk about how to achieve that dream business scenario. You heard Dave talking here about the situations you really can’t do anything about the weather, the government, crazy customer sending a bunch of horrible reviews for you onto Facebook, which we really don’t have any control over.
Do you have enough confidence in your current situation that you believe you can overcome those storms hitting all at once?
If not, we need to talk go to BrianJPombo.com/DreamBiz and fill out the application.
Now there’s no guarantee that I’m actually going to be the one that ends up talking with you and there’s no guarantee that you qualify.
But if you do, it’ll take 45 to 60 minutes, we’re going to go through where you’re at to where you want to be and I will help you outline a plan on getting there.
I want you to be able to walk away with a plan of actually achieving your dream business go to BrianJPombo.com/DreamBiz. And now back to the talk with Dave.
Dave: And so of course we’re back and forth with Facebook trying to get this logged in they were acting like they couldn’t do anything for us.
Finally, one of our customers had, I don’t know if it was an exact from Facebook, but it’s directly related to Facebook looked into this for us and disappeared but they were up there for a year.
So those kind of challenges but just having a really good marketing presence and then also having really good reviews.
That’s the number two buying decision that customers are making today is number one referrals.
Number two positive reviews because as we found out that not a whole lot you can do to control, if you get a bad reviews up, or you can’t just go up and delete them.
They stay with you just having a positive reviews and then just having a marketing machine that can direct people to our website.
Brian: Absolutely. You mentioned search engine optimization within there.
And like you said, You’ve been in that game since early on, you started noticing the power of that, because you’re showing up for the right terms. You’ve got your social media, and I love your guys’s Facebook posts and YouTube videos, social media on its own.
How much has that benefited your business?
Have you been able to see that directly?
Or is that more of just something you feel like you need to do?
Dave: I look at marketing as a spoke on the wheel, everything that you do help feed.
The other thing that you do, there’s not one thing that you can point to and say, well, that’s the thing that’s made us successful.
I talked about SEO, you know, we’ve got PPC, we’ve got obviously the reviews, we write blog articles and then there’s a number of things like that all kind of feed off each other and if you can kind of basically successful and the whole wheel, you know, where you got spokes in the wheel, you got eight different things that you’re working on.
They’re all kind of feeding each other.
That’s where it’s at. You can’t just point at one thing and think, well, that’s the reason for our success.
So that’s kind of how I see Facebook.
Here’s what I really like about the social media platforms, we’ve done things where we’ve reached out to a customer it heard delivery of they are new horse barn, and when the trucks loaded up at our place, we take a picture, tag the customer, and then it’s fun to see all the chatter from our friends.
And you know, they’re all chat to each other and comment and then on her side, when the building gets up to her place, and then she takes a picture of her coming to the driveway and being loaded, poach them and then you get this whole pig chatter going on.
All of this stuff doesn’t hurt.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: Anything like that you can do to create a positive vibe. That’s all part of our strategy.
Brian: Absolutely.
Dave: And then of course, when the customers happy and they talk about it and tell their friends, a lot of our business referral business.
Brian: Yeah. And that leads me to my next question.
Obviously, a lot of that takes you beyond just everything that you guys do online.
So referrals, that doesn’t necessarily have to be considered an online thing that could be a one on one thing, because I imagine if you have somebody referring you in the same area, you may end up with extra people that saw their neighbors, and then they’ll be ordering a horse barn from you?
Dave: Yeah. And you know, there’s things that I’ve done for people who I know have been influencers, whether that’s a horse train, or whether it’s somebody who I’m aware of that has a big network has a big kind of presence.
There’s things that I’ve done for those people who get that sale where you never know, is this going to be the sale, you know, a one time transaction?
Or is this going to lead to the guy’s neighbor and his friend and his daughter that could turn into 10 sales.
So you never know, for sure who that person is.
Some of those people who you know, have a following or have a presence in that specific market. You know, there’s the I’ve done to make sure I get that kind of sale.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: And I would, you know, going back to the marketing to the SEO thing, I would bet if you were to take, you know, wherever you are in the country, if you were to search in Google for horse barn, either plural or singular that would show up in the first page of Google.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: Whether it’s horse barn, modular barn, prefabricated horse barn, any of those things, we’re gonna most likely show up on the first page of Google.
Brian: That’s great.
Dave: And you’re talking, you know, you’re talking these are very highly competitive keywords.
Brian: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Do you do any sort of outreach or marketing, offline trade shows speeches, any type of traditional advertising?
Dave: We do, we have a couple shows we kind of narrowed our strategy. There was a time when we were doing 15 shows and we were in 25 different paper magazines.
And now today, we’re down to two or three shows and probably maybe two magazines and the rest of our attention goes more towards digital.
We kind of try to hit the shows that have been the monsters and have been kind of the you know the biggest shows in the area and have tried to hit those hard instead of scattering our presence over a bunch of smaller more more local shows.
We saw a big shift around 2008 people are much more comfortable buying stuff on the internet than you used to be.
You know, you think about spending 50 to $200,000 in a modular horse barn on the internet sight unseen.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: I mean we got some of that stuff happening and it’s not unusual for that kind of a customer to come out to our sales lot and you know, look around and look at our product and all that but it’s not unusual for guys to spend that kind of money 1500 thousand dollars i don’t see you have never even seen you face to face.
Brian: And they they just literally pop it over in the cart and put their credit card in.
Dave: No, you’re having multiple conversations on the phone,
Brian: I would figure, and I just want to make that clear to everyone at home.
Dave: Right, no that’s typical ecommerce purchase, if you’re selling a 150,000 dollar horse barn, it’s not an ecommerce, right?
You’re having a few conversations.
But it’s surprising to me that people don’t want to come down and talk to you face to face and see the product and walk through some of your stuff.
And I think that kind of goes along with a lot of our customers and referrals.
A lot of our customers read our reviews, and other peoples.
We’ve also done something that is unique to our industry, and it’s on our website, you’ll be able to see a map. And on the map, there’s a bunch of different customers who we’ve reached out to specifically and said would you be interested in being a referral source?
And what happens is, let’s say I live in Massachusetts, I got a customer over here that’s got a horse barn similar to the one they want. And now she can click on it now customers email pops out of customers a picture of a barn kind of the town that she that we don’t give up too much of that information right up front, but the town where they’re at, and then an email address.
So that customer can then email the customer who bought something from us in the past and set up a time go over and look at our horse barn.
And then of course, if that transaction happens, then the customer who was the referral gets a little gift, we have a referral bonus that we send out to that customer.
Brian: Wow.
Dave: Things like that, that we’ve done that kind of tries to help that referral thing and make it so that the person from Boston, Massachusetts don’t have to drive seven hours get down to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and see our product.
Brian: Fabulous. If we had you back on the show, like let’s say a year later, what would have have had to happen over the last 12 months for you to have felt happy with the progress concerning your business?
Dave: Anytime you’re in any kind of business, you don’t want to take a step backward course our sales goals are low.
You know, there’s that for 2019.
Obviously, there’s a little higher and they were in 2018. And it’s not all just about numbers. I feel like we’ve made some steps in the right direction, whether that was bolstering our team getting stronger in a certain area getting ourselves positioned correctly for the next two, three years.
You know, I’m willing to take a step backward time to find things that step backward is going to equate and two or three steps forward. And the longer term I like thinking longer term.
Brian: Yeah.
Dave: But no, I mean, those kind of things, vendor relationships, there’s things we do inside our company this year that we’re excited about. And one of those was setting up a new builder in Kentucky, you know, that was kind of a kind of an area down there that we didn’t have covered that was in another business that we’ve got cabins as well.
That was in that space and now that gives us access to cover a lot of Tennessee and there’s some, I don’t know how much you know about Tennessee, but that’s one of the dates projected to have some of the strongest growth in the country over the next decade.
So that to me is exciting, those kind of things.
So if I got to take a step backwards, in order to take two or three step forward in the next two, three to five years. I’m willing to do that. But now you don’t always want to be moving forward.
Brian: Yeah, it’s fabulous.
What advice would you have to other business owners that are in similar markets?
Dave: Build a great product, because that’s where it starts.
I mean, you can have great marketing and you can have great sales teams, but you got to be able to back it up. If you’re looking long term. You got to be able to back it up.
And the only way to get the great reviews again, that’s the second highest buying decision maker for customers is Google reviews, how do you get Google reviews, we build a great product and give people a good experience.
So just build a great product and then figure out how to get that out to the world.
Brian: Awesome. Awesome.
What could a listener do may be interested in finding out more about your products and services? Where should they go?
Dave: We’ve got a great website, HorizonStructures.com go on there and look at our different products. Check out our reviews online and then also check out some of the keywords that I gave you to see if our marketing’s working right.
Brian: Hey, thanks so much for being with us, Dave.
Dave from HorizonStructures.com. Thanks a lot.
Dave: Hey, thanks for having me on your show.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: That was an awesome talk with Dave Zook. He really knows his stuff.
There’s so much that he went over there. But I want to point out a few things that he mentioned, I thought was interesting how he mentioned growing up in a family business and feeling the need to prove yourself.
I think you can see a little bit of that coming through with the talk with Ann Malloy in the last episode, episode number four.
It seems to be a common theme with people that grow up in the family business.
I found it really interesting how he refers to himself as a sales and marketing company.
Yes, they are known for producing these great modular structures, but that’s not his main focus. They’re at the point now where they can actually have other people producing the structures and his focus is on the sales and marketing end of it.
Finding the right buyers for the end product and connecting those two together.
That’s a very different way of looking at business. And I don’t think most business owners look at it that way straight off the bat. But I think you should ask yourself whether there’s a possibility for you to have that into your business. I like the flexibility of his business in general, that one idea of having a modular building, basically a box, you’ve got a box now what can we put inside the box?
Okay, we could put horses inside the box.
We could put dogs inside the box.
He didn’t mention it here, but I know they have chicken coops small boxes for chickens, what animals?
What situations would people need a box for?
And all they do is they retrofit the box to fit your situation.
All of a sudden, you have a new marketplace. You have a different type of person looking for something. It’s such a unique way of looking at business.
What do you produce in your business that could be switched just a little bit to create a whole new market. Place to hit an entirely different customer. And then he talked about that multi spoked wheel of success.
He said, it’s not just one thing that makes the difference for their success. It’s all these different things. It’s their marketing, their SEO, their social media, all the different pieces or spoke on the wheel alone, they don’t hold it all together.
Together, they make the entire wheel and they make the whole thing possible.
It’s a very holistic way of looking at the entire business. And I think that’s very healthy. It’s something we can all learn from. And finally, he mentioned that automatic testimonial system where they’re taking testimonies from people that have used their product and then asking them if they would open themselves up to talk to other people interested in getting the same thing.
That’s a gutsy move, and the fact that he’s able to achieve it, and then actually work it into the website to where you can get an email address of somebody that has bought the same thing that you’re looking at.
So that they can talk to that person. That’s an incredible thing.
And it’s what they’re referring to now is social proof. Just the fact that you have that there will make a person more confident about you and your product or service.
It’s something to keep in mind. How could you build something similar into what you’re doing into what you’re offering online and off?
Overall, awesome conversation. I can’t wait to see what Dave Zook and Horizon Structures are doing in the future.
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