Build Authority by writting the book on your area of expertise 

Hey there guys. It’s Mike Goldstein with the Kitchen Crushing with Kitchen remodeling podcast. And we are so excited today to have with us, one of the foremost experts in all of entrepreneurship as it might be Chris Hunter from roofing sites dot com. And we’re going to talk to Chris, learn all about all of that great stuff of writing a book, how to use it, how to promote it, how to use the promotion to get yourself more leads, more consultations do that just after this. Are you looking for some fresh ideas to jump start your kitchen remodeling business? Welcome to The Crushing It with Kitchen remodeling podcast, your host, Michael Goldstein, founder of kitchen remodeling S E O, the digital marketing agency working exclusively with kitchen remodeling contractors and also the author of the ultimate internet marketing guide for kitchen remodeling contractors. We’ll provide insights on proven tips and strategies from top experts in this space so that you can take advantage of industry best practices. Your host, Michael Goldstein join Mike as he shares his knowledge each week with an insightful interview or educational segment about how to turn your online marketing efforts into more kitchen remodeling leads and sales opportunities than ever before. All right, and we’re back and we’re going to bring in with us right now. Chris Hunter. Hey, Chris, how the heck are you doing? Awesome, man. How are you doing? Well, I’m doing fantastic. So much better now that you’re here, we are so excited. I’ve been waiting for a week to have this conversation and couldn’t wait to do it. But, you know, Chris, you and I, we’ve known each other for a while, right? Um But my listeners may not know actually what, you know, what, what a privilege it is to have you here. So for those of us who haven’t had the opportunity to meet you, who are you and what the heck is it that you do? So, my name is Chris Hunter and I own uh, roofing sites dot com and I’m the chief marketing officer of roofing sites dot com. I’m also the author of the ultimate guide to digital marketing for roofers. Um, and I have been doing this marketing gig for, oh my gosh, I’m gonna really date myself. I think in 1998 is when I built my first website and, and got it ranked on Yahoo. And then when uh uh Google came around, I, I started focusing on Google and then around 2005, we started offering uh S E O services to our clients because they were literally begging us to do that. Um we started focusing on roofing the roofing industry, um, in 2018 and just really haven’t looked back since then. Um, you know, we, we do have a legacy agency called Marketing Heroes, but our primary focus on everything is roofing sites dot com. That’s fantastic. And, and as, as a result, I mean, obviously what you’re looking to do is you want to talk to as many roofing contractors and roofing company owners as possible. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So, you know, I know there’s lots of ways that you probably go about trying to get people to talk to you the same way that, you know, we do here, put your modeling S E O, you know, and this Facebook ads, this S E O, this networking events, this trade shows, there’s all this different stuff out there, right? But one of kind of the, the newer, hotter trendy topics really seems to be becoming an authority in your space, becoming the most well known, whatever it is that you do, you know anything from CPA to, to garbage removal specials, right? I mean, and everything in between. Um, and how do you do that? I think one of one of the best ways is to become the authority is to write the book on it. I mean, how many times have you heard? Yeah, he wrote the book on that, right. So in your case, you actually wrote the book on Roofy marketing, right? Absolutely. So, how did you really get interested? Like, what, what drove you to, to write that book and, you know, like, what was your inspiration to do this? Well, there’s, there’s a little bit of a backstory behind all of that and, and, and a lot of that is that, um, I had a friend in the I T industry that, that, you know, had a book and was getting an amazing amount of, of clients, you know, by simply having that book to have that he wrote the book on I T, you know, and so, uh, he got together actually with several other, um, you know, I T business owners, they manage service providers is what they’re called. And they, they put a book together, each, each of them took it like a, a, you know, a, a chapter and just strictly, just, just went along that and, and, and built this really awesome book. They used it as a calling card, right? Basically for every speaking gig that they did any, any time that they were out and about in their community, they would hand it out, give it away, basically. Right. And it turned into this authority piece for them that made them the, the, the key people in that community. And so I started thinking along those lines and this was probably about 183 years ago that that happened. But I started thinking along those lines. Well, why, why don’t I do that? Right. And so, 56 years ago I started writing my book and, and I tell you what it is so hard, it’s so stinking, hard to write a book and especially about something that is a complete moving target. I mean, mark the marketing industry changes an awful lot, you know. And so it’s, it’s really, really hard to write a book on marketing because by the time that you actually publish that book, let’s say that you wrote a chapter on Facebook. Well, guess what Facebook changes every single week. So it’s, it’s really hard to, to actually, you know, get that published in a timely manner. And that’s what I was facing is that as a business owner, you wear a lot of hats, right? And you get pulled in so many different directions. And so I would, I would write a little bit and then it would sit there and then I’d go back to it a month or two later and like, oh, man, I gotta to rewrite that whole thing. Facebook has changed or Google has changed or, you know, all of these different, uh, mediums have changed, you know, so I kept having to go back to that time and time again. And, um, and really, it came down to about a year ago, uh, that I finally just buckled down and I’m like, ok, I’m gonna get this done. This is my rock for my quarter, right? This is my one thing I’m gonna accomplish this. Do I do I sense an E Os trend coming in here. Oh, yeah, we’re, I’m a big E Os geek, man. Uh, you know, but, you know, so I, I, that was my rock for, for quarter one of, of 2022 was to finish the darn book. Right. So, I, I, I sat there and I, I blocked out time every single day to write for an hour, every single day and that’s all I did and made sure that I, I, I got it done now, I probably in retrospect, wrote way too much. Right. It ended up being 336 pages. Um, but I should have probably pulled that back to about 210 and 23 but there’s a lot of stuff in my brain, I guess that I had to get out, you know, and, uh, but, but for sure it’s, it’s, it’s hard to write a book. It’s really hard to write a book, you know. You know, the interesting thing is when you, when you wrote it and I, and I’ve written one too. And so I, I feel the, the pain, I know the struggle there. Um, there, there was this little piece of software that didn’t actually exist back then. Uh, this little, this thing everyone’s heard of called Chat GP T. Um, and I think that might be able to provide a little bit of assistance nowadays. Um, I know, you know, we’ve got a lot of, a lot of A I tools out there. We’ve got Jarvis or whatever the heck it’s called. Now, I know we have on page I O and all of this, all these different things. Um, but I, and I, I want, you know, if you use the tools to help you organize, I think it’s a lot easier. The, the other thing that, that I found when I was writing was sitting there and actually writing is really hard talking about what you want to write is really easy. And what I ended up doing was I actually just recorded myself talking for 210 hours, you know, and transcribed it and it was my book, you know, then obviously, you know, you had to, You have to get, you pay an editor to, to get all um like this, you know, that kind of right. But I mean, there are so many ways you can go about doing it, don’t I, I, I guess what I’m trying to say is like I, if people listen to this and then they think, Oh my God, 210 pages, I gotta write. There’s a lot of ways to write a book. It’s not just sitting in front of a word and hammering it up. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if, if I was gonna do it over again and I probably will because I’m, I’m thinking about writing a book on search engine optimization, you know. So if I do that. I’m gonna do exactly what you said because, you know, I think it was one of our, our mentors that, that told us that little hack there, right? Is, is that, you know, just, just speak into the camera and let someone else edit that, right? And, and put it into a book format, right? Yeah. So let me ask you this, what are some of the key insights of the strategies that you share in your book? Um And really how can, how can somebody in the home services space use those to, to help generate authority when they write their book? Well, um so what I talk about in my book is on my, my marketing system that we’ve used for pretty close to 23 years, right? And we call it the four hour marketing system, right? And, and in that system, you’ve got reputation as one of the pillars, reach as another pillar, resell as another pillar and, and, and referral. So, um how can you use that? That’s a great question. I don’t know if you can use that, you know, for writing a book, but uh if any authority you can. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I, I think that if you’re gonna write a book about something, right? Write it about your system. I think about how you do things, you know, and, and name it something and keep it uh pretty easy to remember, right? Uh Not just for you, but, but for the people reading it and that they would, that way they can, they can take something away from it. I think, you know, from your book, you know, one of the other things I like about books, you can call me a child if you want, but I like pictures, right. I like, I like to see illustration and things that kind of break it up a little bit. Um, and, you know, and nowadays, you know, with, again, going back to all the A I tools out there, you know, with mid journey, especially with and all this stuff, you know, it’s easy to kind of get some real, get really creative with kind of how you illustrate your, your ideas too so that, that can help you stand out a little bit. Um But it is, is there anything that you could think of, you know, that somebody in the home services, whether it’s in room, whether it’s in kitchen remodeling or, or anything in between, how they can use, how they can use a book that they write to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Absolutely. So I was thinking about this uh this morning, right? In kind of preparation for this. And I think that if I were a Homer Modeler, OK, the book that I would write would literally be a coffee table book, right? And you, you just simply take the pictures of your past projects and put it into, you know, the ultimate remodeling or, or, or the dream home, uh, whatever that you want to name it, but have it to where someone is proud and happy to put that on their coffee table, you know, and I, I think that would really differentiate you, uh, pretty much from any other contractor in your entire area, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Or even better here. Let’s take, take a page out of the Seinfeld world here. If you’re gonna write a coffee table book, let’s make into a coffee table pop up with little different parts of your, your 218d modeling, you know. Yeah, exactly. Get myself every time I get a coffee table. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um So once you’ve got the book and, and, you know, you have something, you have a tool now to help you gain authority, you got to get people to actually know that it’s out there. So I know that, you know, you’ve used your book obviously to generate a lot of interest in yourself. What platforms have you found most helpful to, to have people find the book outside of just putting it on Amazon, you know, going on a wish and a prayer that people are gonna search for it. Well, yeah. And what’s interesting is, is that I get a few sales through Amazon, but the vast majority of the sales come through Facebook ads, right? So I, I run a Facebook ad that’s targeted towards roofing, uh, company owners, right? That says, hey, come and come and get my book and, and it takes them to a funnel page that then they can, they can actually sign up to get that book. Ok. Um, But I think that is one of the most effective ways and it, it’s really not too expensive. I think we’re paying $1003 a day, you know, to, uh, run those ads and I know that I get in between five and 2100 signups every single day. Right. Um, since we’ve been running those ads on roofing company owners. Now, the cool part about that for me is that, that actually puts them into my funnel and puts them into my email database, right? And if you don’t have a database, I would highly recommend that, that you start building that database. Now, you know, if you’re listening to this, you’re listening to Mike’s uh podcast here. You know, I, I think that you really should be putting that forefront and I think that the, the punctuation mark on that was uh the COVID lockdown, right? Most businesses that in, in an all industries, all industries wide that didn’t have a database really super got hit during that time period, you know, so um be doing any anything and everything that you can to build your database of, of people that would need your services, right? And want your services and I, I would even take it a step further than that is build the database, but, you know, set up some sort of a long term nurture sequence so that we’re leveraging that database. And, you know, and it’s interesting because I’m thinking that I’m thinking about Chris, your email um and your email signature and I know on it you got right at the very end P S, check out our, check out the book, you know, I mean, you, you don’t miss a beat every chance there is to promote it, to promote you as the authority as the guy. If you were in the roofing industry, you gotta talk to Chris. There’s no, if there’s no buts about there is nobody bigger, there’s nobody better and you let them know that in the, you know, you know, in every channel that you have. So that’s another thing that, you know, have you found that, you know, just by using your database and, and leveraging those emails like that people get more interested and then do they find, you know, is it that they find the book and you’re more uh more authoritative because of that or is it that they talk to you and you have a book? I’ve used it both ways, right? I’ve used it with um people that I’m meeting with, I’m like, have you read my book? They’re like, what book, you know? And I’m like, oh, you mean this book right here? The ultimate guide to digital marketing for, have, have you read the 290. Have you gotten that yet? They’re like, no. Can I get that? I’m like, absolutely. I’ll even autograph it and send it to you, you know. So, um, I absolutely, I think, I think it’s just the al, almost one of the ultimate leverage pieces, right that you can use in your business and, and honestly, since I published it, I only published it in June of last year. So we’re not even a year into this being published. And, you know, it has garnered me Lots of interest. I have used it as a calling card uh with my dream 2100 list. Um and I think that that any, any kitchen remodeler that that is listening to this, you could do the same thing, right? Use write the book, build the book, whatever that, that you want to do with that and then send it out to your dream 100 list, right? So what’s your dream? 100? Well, those are your dream 100 clients that you wanna work with. So, so target a neighborhood, right? Target the the neighborhood that you want to work in and send your book out to them as a calling card. Literally, it costs $5 off of uh Amazon Kindle uh publishing uh I think $6 in change, you know, for mine to get it shipped to me. Uh Grand total and using Amazon or sorry uh the postal service uh mail. Uh What is it? Called. No, I should know, I should know this off the top of my head. I, I look at it all the time anyways, they, they have a, um, uh, an, an author mail basically that you can ship a book out for, for a lot cheaper. Right. So I use ship station in order to do that. And I shipped it out to all 100 of my dream 903 list. And then I’ve got my, my folks calling that dream 100 list, right? As a follow up, hey, did you get the book? So that’s led to a lot of uh conversations and really, that’s what you’re looking for, you know, is to get the conversations going and to be the authority in, in your, in your community. Right? Yeah, for sure. You know, and not only that, I imagine, you know, you’re going to the roofing trade show and you go, you’re going to all of these different and how great is it you have to take, hey, by the way, I wrote the book here on kitchen modelling S E O. If you want to know how to leverage your Google ads, this is what you gotta do. You just, all you gotta do is kind of go through and I hand that out at trade shows and people call them who wrote this really and like the astonishment in people’s eyes, like you actually took the time to write that you must really know what you’re talking about. That’s, that’s the thing like, and honestly, that’s what I’m saying, even if you have to use, even if you have to use bar. Is that what calling bar? I think Bard with ad barred, not barred. Even if you have to use one of those, it gives you that instant credibility and, and that, that, that’s a sense of astonishment of, oh my God, you actually did this. You took the time. I’ve gotta read it and I, I’ll tell you I was out at the, um, the, the, uh, kitchen and bath trade show in Vegas about a month or so ago and I gave away a couple 100 of these books at the trade show and I go at no less than a dozen people emailed me basically, you know, saying, hey, was on the plane, read your book on the way back and they asked me a question with something in it. Um, and that it, it, such a forget about the fact that, yeah, it’s a great way to generate business. It’s such a great feeling to know that people actually listening to what you say or what you wrote and they, they want to have a conversation and that, that’s the whole idea. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. And, and it’s, it, it’s literally making you stand apart from everybody else. That’s really what it’s all about. Right. You know, I mean, that, that’s the thing is like, if you’re in the home services. You’re like, how do you take that book to build relationships to, you know, and those relationships are gonna become potential clients, they can help you establish credibility. I mean, these are some of the, the keys that you can use as sports. It’s not just a, it’s not just a vanity item, right? It’s not a license plate, it’s, you know, it’s not a billboard. This is actually something you’re adding value to people’s lives with it too, for sure. Absolutely. So, let me ask you knowing that you’ve gone through this whole process, what advice would you give someone who’s considering writing a book about their industry? Like, how do they get started? Well, just, well, one decide to do it. I think that, that making the, the decision to actually do it is the biggest part of it, right? And getting the mindset that I’m going to do this, right. And instead of putting it off second, block it out, block it out on your calendar, right. Put it into your calendar that I’m gonna write two pages a day, right? Whatever that it is, whatever that you decide on there and then to start, I would build your outline of the book. Ok. Um, I mean, just everything that we were taught in English class, you know, in fifth grade is build the outline and then write in, in inside of that outline. Ok. And I don’t know if they teach that to kids in, in school these days, I don’t, I don’t know, but I know what I was taught and that’s how I was taught to write a paper. So it’s, it’s the same thing, outline, it, write it. Well, that’s funny because, you know, how many times do we sit in geometry class and, and say, what the hell am I ever gonna use this? And I definitely remember saying that in English class in fifth grade and you, that’s exactly what I learned on an outline. And it’s funny because everything in life I do now everything in business starts with an outline. Um So yeah, like pay attention to what you learned in elementary school so easily. Right. Right. For sure. Oh, but that’s, that’s really funny. You said like that. Um So what, what is, but what do you think are some of the biggest benefits though? So you’re gonna go ahead and write, well, what is the benefit that you, that you have seen from writing the book? Um outside of just obviously that, you know, you, you’re saying you’re getting 9, 10 appointments a week or, or whatnot outside of, of that. What else are you seeing? I think it’s just getting more attention and it’s really hard in this day and age to get attention and to keep that attention. Um You know, I mean, there’s, there’s tiktok, there’s, there’s Instagram reels, there’s, there’s Facebook reels, there’s youtube shorts. I mean, all of these are, are just bombarding us, right? So how do we as business owners then then grab, grab and garner attention from our audience? Well, this is just one of the pieces I think I, you know, other pieces that you probably talk about are are doing videos, short form videos, doing a podcast like this, build a community around your company and and around your actual community, you know, be the authoritative figure there. Yeah. No, for sure. And I know you bring up some really interesting with the, with video shorts and the tiktok especially um as long as we’re still about to use it, uh We don’t like to get into politics too much here. But you know, if there is no, there is nothing wrong, you know, picking up your book going to, you know, chapter or whatever and you know, you just look at summarize it, you know, and then go on to tiktok and talk about that. I mean, one of the, there, there is a phenomenal marketer that many of you have heard of. His name is Dennis. You And Dennis, you came up with this content factory idea and it’s all about repurposing your content. So if you write a book, now you have a blog article, if you have a blog article, now, I can rewrite that as a press release. If you’re gonna have a press release, now you can talk about it and let’s go and go on YouTube and make a video. Oh, and now we can download that MP3 from the video and we have a pocket. So the book, you know, even, even though it does take a while and there is a lot involved in it. Um I think that you can really leverage it. Um And I’m sure you, I’m sure you’ve done that yourself. Absolutely. Leverage the dickens out of it, man. You know, like you said, put it in your email signature, put it on your website, put it, you know, pin it up to the top of, of, of your Facebook page. Um I mean, there’s just a million different things that you can do regarding your book and, and how to use it and, and leverage that. Um I mean, every single video that I do, I literally say, hey, this is Chris with, you know, chief Marketing Officer of roofing sites dot com. I’m also the author of the ultimate guide to digital Marketing for Roofers and then I show it to them because, you know, people having a physical copy of a book is way different than this day and age than having an ebook, right? Ebooks were big 10 years ago, but now you really need that physical book. Well, take it a step further is how many people have done and I forgot what the name of the program is, but download the unlimited Kindle or whatever it is. But yeah, I, I can download everything I want for free. I just pay my 10 bucks a month And I think that there is something when, when there’s a value you have to pay $3, for a physical product. It, it just, it holds more value than me. And I downloaded this in 18 other books last week and I might read one of them. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah, I can’t tell you how many I have on my phone that I said that about. But maybe someday I’m gonna take a trip to Australia just so I can sit on a plane for 18 hours. I have a reason to actually read one of them. Yeah. And I’m the same way with audible books, you know. I’ll, I’ll be like, oh, I need to listen to that one. I need to listen to that one and they just pile up and pile up because you get those two credits every, every single month, you know. And so I, I use those things quite a bit but I do listen to a lot of books. You just don’t have enough time to listen to all those books, you know? But at least when you’re listening you can do that in your car. You can do that. I can’t, I can’t be working and then, and reading at the same time. So when you have that, when you’ve actually written the book, it is just, it, it’s that added authority. It’s a, this is something that you need to set aside time for and of course you got to compel people to actually then go ahead and set aside the time. Yeah. But these, I, I think that, you know, being able to, to leverage your book, you’re able to generate interest, you will become the authority in your space the most well known, whatever the heck it is that you are. Um, you know, and you know what, I’ve made a few bucks on my book on Amazon, people have bought it. I find it hard to believe, to be honest. Um, but, uh, I, you know, I’ve even thought about running ads on Amazon. I haven’t done that yet. I don’t know if you have, I have not done that yet. You know, we do run now we do run Amazon ads for clients who, you know, they’re in the cabinet space, they want to sell the cabinet. So, you know, if you can, if you can do it for, I, I saw the door knobs on the Amazon, you think you can sell your own book on it? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, and, and I, I don’t really know anything about Amazon ads personally, you know, and which is why I’ve stayed away from them. Facebook ads right now are working. Yeah, I think Facebook ads are working really, really well, you know. Um, I think that the next step for us is, is really to leverage the book inside of maybe some linkedin outreach for us personally. Um, and to see if people, you know, would want that book, you know, and just simply having someone reach out, uh, to, you know, offer that. And it’s, it’s really for us as marketers. It, it’s, there’s so many people in our industry nowadays and, and, um, it’s possible it’s the same, you know, in kitchen remodeling. But I, I think that having that piece, I, and I know I keep saying this but having it to set you aside is huge. It is a huge thing and it’s been huge for us. I mean, just even in the past year. So that’s, that’s fantastic. Well, Chris, this has just been unbelievable. I mean, I’m learning so much as talking to you today. I mean, even though I’ve actually written my book, you’re, you’re bringing up things that I didn’t even think of which I love. But any time I can learn anything new and I know that our audience loves it. I mean, in fact, you have dropped some real knowledge bonds on us today. Um, I’m sure that, you know, my audience would make more, get a little bit more information on this from you. So if someone wants to get a hold of you and they want to talk to you, how would they do that? Sure. Just go to roofing sites dot com. Uh, and, or you can just email me at, uh, Chris dot Hunter C hr I S dot H UN T er, at roofing sites dot com or you can go find us on all the socials, you know, Facebook, Instagram, linkedin, all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, just look up roofing sites dot com or roofing sites and we’re not real good on, on making sure that it’s, it’s all the same and if they want to hear you talk, you know, because you, you have so much things to say you got a podcast too. You know, I do, I’ve, I’ve actually got two podcasts. Um The first podcast is something that I’ve been doing for the past couple of years where I interview successful Aggie entrepreneurs. I’m an Aggie uh from Texas A and M University. Whoop. And uh you know, so I’ve, I’ve interviewed over 100 really, really successful aggie entrepreneurs. Um And, and, and little tidbit there is that I surveyed all of them and about 90% of them on E Os, right? Entrepreneurs operating system. So, um my, my next podcast not to interrupt you, but guys in about two weeks, we have the expert on E Os Lyn asking, coming on the podcast. So you gotta check that out. Cool. Yeah, I had to do that. 100% Lynn knows his stuff, you know, and he’s got a really interesting story. Um He was, he came on my podcast a few weeks ago. It’s good and that podcast is gonna drop here probably in the next, uh, week or two. I’ve got to get it over to my podcast editor for that. Um, I didn’t mean to spoil anything. No. No, it’s cool. Well, he’s, he’s, he’s a, he’s got a really cool story. So, um, definitely tune in whenever you hear it here on. Um, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it tears me up every time. Yeah. Yeah. Um, my other podcast, I’m literally just in the starting stages with that called Roofer Growth. A because I’m so really good with names of the podcast. So I went with Aggie Growth and then Roof for Growth. So, uh the idea there, yeah, the idea is about the same. We’re gonna interview successful roofing company owners, figure out what makes them tick and get their growth a and share them out with everyone. Uh but also meeting with industry uh experts as well. So Lynn is one of my first industry experts that has come on the podcast. So that’s cool. That’s fantastic. Well, Chris, I said, I wanna thank you for everything that you shared with us. This was so great. I’m sure that, that my listeners really appreciate it. I know that our value on it today. Uh Hopefully we can have you come back sometime and, you know, talk about some other marketing ideas because, you know, we’re both in the industry and it’s always, it’s always great to, to kind of share and see what’s working in one industry and how you can leverage it in another, uh, for everybody else. You know, I want to thank you for tuning in for, for listening to The Crush of K remodeling podcast. Um, it was Chris Hunter. It’s Mike Goldstein. Thanks so much and we’ll see you next time.

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