14: The Power of Profitable Marketing with Ross McDaniel
Behind Their Success: Ep 14
[00:00:00]
Paden Squires: You would rather have really good marketing and a crappy product instead of a really good product and crappy marketing. no matter what line of service you're in, you're a marketing company. [00:01:00]
Paden Squires: Welcome back to Behind Their Success Podcast. I am Paden Squires, the host. And today we have a special guest on for you. His name is Ross McDaniel. He's located in Augusta, Georgia. So all the golf people will probably be excited about that. his business is called Fencepost. This business is about facilitating growth for measurable digital marketing strategy.
Paden Squires: Whether it's segmenting audiences, mapping customer journeys, building awesome paid search and display campaigns, or launching a coffee shop. [00:02:00] Ross has also launched a coffee shop. if it brings value he's in. So the company Fence Post is dedicated to helping home service businesses generate more high quality customers.
Paden Squires: roofers, electricians, lawn care professionals, HVAC specialists, power washing companies. These are all companies that he's passionate about and helps a lot and sees as the backbone of a lot of local communities. So his business is to help them generate more business and get more leads. Some things that he's passionate about.
Paden Squires: He's into authentic relationships. consistent growth over time, digital strategy, and seeing communities grow and families impacted. reading that bio, I think Ross and I have quite a bit in common and I'm excited to have you on the podcast.
Ross McDaniel: Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you.
Paden Squires: how did you begin in your kind of entrepreneurship journey and, where are you at now?
Ross McDaniel: Yeah, it's funny. I actually don't come from a long line of entrepreneurs or business owners or anything like that. I [00:03:00] actually consider myself a business owner.
Ross McDaniel: Pretty risk averse. And I know Faden, you and I were talking a little bit about that beforehand, but I found myself consistently in a small business, either as the principal or founder or partner in some cases, or as one of the early employees, which is part of my origin story. And so just saying all that to say.
Ross McDaniel: still to this day struggles with the identity of a business owner and entrepreneur. we're still figuring that out. But, I've been in the agency world, specifically the digital marketing agency world for the better part of 15 years. I actually went to the local college here.
Ross McDaniel: Augusta State University here in Augusta. Yes. Golf is a big deal. It's actually coming up in a couple of weeks. And as I was getting out, basketball was no longer a thing. The time to grow and mature was nigh. We needed to figure out what was going to happen. And, so I started stumbling around looking for internships, stumbled across this burgeoning agency.
Ross McDaniel: And when I say burgeoning, it had two founders and an employee. And, Started working for [00:04:00] free. This was one of the best things I ever did. The founder there ended up becoming a great mentor and, one of my best friends, is now one of my business partners. and so that really set the course for a couple of things.
Ross McDaniel: One learning the ropes of digital marketing. I cut my teeth on Google ads, got exposed to, I think we had one company pop the fortune 500 mark, one client there. And then a lot of our clients, a ton of our clients were these small, mom and pop shops. The other thing it did for me was really expose me to a number of different areas of entrepreneurship and business ownership.
Ross McDaniel: I had access to the QuickBooks online account from day one, whether or not that's right or wrong, it was there. getting to manage accounts, getting to figure out how to interact with clients and go on business trips and whatever else. so fast forward, selling that agency, getting to. be a part of that and see that and watch that, having a brief stint in house somewhere when I say in house, inside a big, corporate company, and realizing [00:05:00] that,where I was being called to was something a little bit different and, realized that, Hey, this small side hustle that I've been still fostering since day one could actually be something big.
Ross McDaniel: So today what we have really landed on is. Man, all those experiences with Fortune 500, Fortune 1000, big companies, and then on down to the, local community businesses with a local footprint, companies, the ones that felt the most impact from what I was doing in Google ads or SEO or reviews, they were the ones that just wanted to see, a 10, 15, 20 percent bump in their phone calls, right?
Ross McDaniel: They're the ones that are. coming to my office and saying, Hey, thanks so much for, you know,I had a phone call with somebody that came from a Google app the other day, and that was some real apex of value there. That's a long winded way of saying we found a lot of value in helping the people that we're helping grow our community.
Ross McDaniel: And that has expanded into a more national footprint for us. Uh,really any [00:06:00] business that. It has a local footprint and is where we are focused today. And, my wife and I have actually been able to realize what we call the local growth formula, in our own local footprint business, to be a trellis coffee bar, which we launched last year, with some partners.
Ross McDaniel: So that's the long winded spiel. We're in to help local communities thrive through digital marketing.
Paden Squires: Very cool. When you mentioned there, you mentioned basketball, that's probably something else me and you have in common . I played quite a bit of basketball in my career, in my life too.
Paden Squires: That's, it's a lot of things that me and you have overlapping. When you talk about local marketing and digital marketing like that, personally, that was something that really changed my business or really a way I say a big thing that helped me turn the corner was,I went probably six or seven years before I asked anybody to leave me a Google review. Um,
Paden Squires: Now, how dumb is that? Right.but once I did that, you want to talk about the new leads and the constant new customer reach outs. It was totally game changing.
Ross McDaniel: It's game [00:07:00] changing for so many reasons. for one it's game changing because you now have somebody that's vouched for your business.
Ross McDaniel: That's not your mom or your wife or your best friend. and that's always a big milestone, not only for prospective customers, but also for yourself. That's, it's pretty validating. You get some gumption and encouragement and confidence there. But also the minute you start collecting reviews, Google who doesn't care about your emotions at all, says.
Ross McDaniel: Whoa, we've got something here. There's a live one on the line. Let's put this guy in front of more people. So yes. Yeah. That, that
Paden Squires: social proof, like you say, is very powerful. And even, even for personalities like us, the, some of the affirmation that you get from that, I guess is, you certainly don't want to rely on that as pure motivation, but it certainly is juice to at least make you feel a little better in the moment.
Ross McDaniel: I agree with it. I agree with that. Yeah. And I think other people, from a social proof perspective, like our whole local growth formula is for four key ingredients, visibility, competency, social proof, and referral.
Ross McDaniel: If you've got those four ingredients in any [00:08:00] intentional way integrated into your local business, you're going to see predictable and profitable growth over time. but on the social proof side, I think there's like a little bit of that motivational juice for. the prospective customer that's looking for a service, particularly an emergent service, whether it's crunch time for taxes or holy cow, we just got in the wreck and we need an auto body shop or a personal injury attorney or something like that.
Ross McDaniel: Social proof really gives people the confidence to say, I'll give you a shot.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I'm going through a training program right now. and one of the big pieces in there, the guy talks about a lot is we're all marketing companies.
Paden Squires: no matter what line of service you're in, you're a marketing company. And I've gotten to the point now where I consider my business a marketing company that provides financial guidance, right? And you were to design a business and not that you want to have a crappy product or service, but you would rather have really good marketing and a crappy product instead of a really good product and crappy [00:09:00] marketing.
Paden Squires: that first business with really good marketing is going to certainly outperform the second business.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah, I would agree. And I think we see that almost every time we see, no offense to chain restaurants, right? they've, sometimes you find a good thing you love there, but I think that's a classic example of, you've got good marketing, good messaging, doesn't really matter what's on the back end.
Ross McDaniel: You just get people in. And Values based entrepreneurs and business owners. We do have a responsibility to like to complete that journey, And have incredible marketing because we have an incredible product and we bring it together.
Paden Squires: When you bring those two things together, then they really start to feed on each other.
Paden Squires: And then, you get this flywheel of positive feedback and growth and. when you have great marketing, eventually you're going to have some big holes if the product service isn't actually living up to expectations, right?
Ross McDaniel: think we've actually experienced that in our own business.
Ross McDaniel: One of the big problems I've been trying to wrestle with or not trying to wrestle with actively wrestling with as we're growing is. The fulfillment side,can anybody do [00:10:00] what I'm doing as the business owner, the same way I'm doing it. And so we don't compromise that thing, over there.
Paden Squires: It's kind of interesting. getting to know a little bit about your business and where you're at and where I'm at. I'm in a similar situation, I've built my business the last decade or so, and it's basically just revolved around me. My name was on the door.
Paden Squires: Every client that came through that door was expecting to talk to me. And, the transition out of that and the ability to let go of some of those pieces that you need to let go of, so you can actually scale and build a business instead of just, you know,so much of my business, I felt like the last decade, it's just like me owning my job.
Paden Squires: And not actually having built a business, right? Like I just worked for myself. it's not that I built some kind of business that can operate at all without me. and that's part of that is, small minded thinking or insecurities. And the other part of that is knowing my profile and my personality that I have a hard time [00:11:00] getting rid of things or delegating things, unless I think you're as good as me at it.
Paden Squires: Yeah.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah. So I'm new to the whole culture index deal, but knowing some of what you've been willing to share just in our commonalities, the thing that I have found most difficult is reconciling the fact that mindset actually has played a significant role in the performance of the day to day.
Ross McDaniel: And what I feel like I'm a pragmatic individual, that's actually counter to that pragmatism. and I realized that, at the end of the day, we're going to have to let go of some of those things. And there's actually a lot of pride. Roped into that, and insecurity roped into that.
Ross McDaniel: And, I think somebody in our world mentioned the other day, 70 percent is okay. And if we can replicate ourselves to 70%, we're going to see some massive gains there. yeah, I am aligned with you
Paden Squires: 100%. So Ross,a question I'd like to ask everybody on here is what would you consider your best skill?
Paden Squires: Like what makes you successful at what you [00:12:00] do? What's your superpower? That's a good question.
Ross McDaniel: I think my number one skill is the ability to connect with people authentically, don't care for inauthentic relationships. but I also recognize that you can't have deep, meaningful relationships with everyone.
Ross McDaniel: So what's the balance of, having intentional care for someone else's world,within your capacity. And I feel like I've done a decent job of that. And I think within our business, that is a vehicle for us, which is seeing communities grow and human flourishing in those communities, through what we're doing.
Ross McDaniel: I want each of my people to also be able to build authentic relationships with our clients. There's so much snake oil out here in the digital marketing world, specifically a lot of gurus. We want people to feel confident, not only in, in the results they're getting, but also the. The way those results are being interpreted.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah,
Paden Squires: and that's um, a skill that I feel like I've developed quite a bit over the years and just working with, literally thousands of entrepreneurs, that ability to connect [00:13:00] and connect quickly and connect deeply. there's times during tax season, we're recording us in the middle of tax season right now.
Paden Squires: And later today I have, Like 20 appointments on the calendar. And with each one of those, each one of those clients, I'm with them for 20 to 30 minutes and the ability to meet someone new, sit down with them, build rapport and 20 to 30 minutes and make them feel good about, okay, yes, he's competent.
Paden Squires: He's a nice guy. He's going to take care of me and do that all quickly. I didn't understand at the time as I was going through this the last 10 years, but doing that over and over and over, it's a skill you develop.
Paden Squires: And, you don't realize how valuable that skill is until maybe you take some time to step back and look at it.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah. I think that's one of the tricky aspects of trying, like how do you replicate
Paden Squires: that?
Ross McDaniel: It's purely a cultural thing in your staff. And it's Oh, I say it's purely cultural because there's the values alignment, but then there's also the skill alignment. [00:14:00] And I don't think I'm particularly, probably smack dab in the middle, slightly above, in the world of like competency, generally speaking.
Ross McDaniel: So you don't want to speak about yourself highly, but like, how do you. Through the years of experience and three years of mindset and whatever else, like how do you replicate that? I think that's the one that I'm trying to figure out as well. Yeah.
Paden Squires: And you know, I always get into digging into culture index profiles and whatever.
Paden Squires: And it, my listeners hear me talk about all the time and listeners, you should look into culture index a little bit. It's a really cool tool. but knowing your profile is the exact same profile as mine,Yeah, you have a hard time promoting yourself, don't you?
Paden Squires: It's tough for us to be able to really self promote or even talk about some of our accomplishments because, we get that, we hit that accomplishment, we cross it off the list and we're like, that was no big deal.
Paden Squires: Let's move on. Because you don't take the time to actually celebrate anything you've done. And you've just moved on and I'm not speaking for you, but maybe for me, it's I don't know if I'm motivated to just am I [00:15:00] just constantly trying to prove myself and prove myself to whom,is some of the deep questions, I think about from time to time.
Ross McDaniel: I certainly think about those as well. yeah, trying to discern, are you actually, looking to achieve this for anybody outside of yourself, when it really comes to terms with it, is this a Bain pursuit of success or is this a purposeful outcomes oriented? I've got a family with three small kids and a wife and another business in the community I'm trying to foster, or super involved in our local church.
Ross McDaniel: Am I doing this for the why behind all of those? Or is this actually just an expression of my own selfish vain pursuits? It's in my entrepreneurial journey that I've had to straddle and battle to not grow up. Yeah.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. a lot of the same feelings for sure. you've been in entrepreneurship for some time period.
Paden Squires: Looking back on all that, what would you say is the best decision you've ever made?
Ross McDaniel: Great question. The best decision I ever made recently was hiring an executive assistant. truly at the [00:16:00] beginning of the year I did and it changed my life. That's more of a tactical, fantastic decision.
Ross McDaniel: Highly recommended, at a macro level, I think the best decision I ever made was actually just taking the leap and doing it. there's never a good time. You never have enough money. The goalpost moves. you just need to jump. And when I did, it was awesome. And I have to get my head above the cloud sometimes and realize Oh, you did.
Ross McDaniel: And, we're in good shape.
Paden Squires: same thing. I have the same type of answer of the best decision ever made. It was that at least in that one moment, I was brave enough to step out and, and do my own thing. Being able to do that is certainly not an easy decision.
Paden Squires: And then also like you were talking about, as you've gone down the road, being able to step back and look and see, wow, I have come a long way. It's important to constantly remind yourself of that, as we're always forward looking, fighting through the, whatever battles we're dealing with on a day to day basis, or the problem that's set in front of us right now, that we can't figure out how to solve.
Paden Squires: Thank you. That may make us feel [00:17:00] like we're not good or not capable, but it's important to always remind yourself, man, I've come a long way.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah. And mapping the journey from where we were to where we are now, there's some goodness and some Providence in that, and just some I don't know, grace and And like you said, I think our profile is probably struggling with self promotion to look at that honestly, as an accomplishment. And be honest with ourselves and say, Hey, this is big. This is good. and not discount it for happenstance or coincidence or whatever else.
Paden Squires: So on the flip side of that, what's one of the biggest mistakes you've made on your journey?
Ross McDaniel: Never made one.
Paden Squires: Perfect.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good question. I think this is a perhaps cheesy answer, but like not doing it sooner is one, I think that. That's one. I also think that it's a mistake that I make, daily, tying your identity to when one or lost client is a constant battle.
Ross McDaniel: the [00:18:00] work we do at Fencepost, the coffee we sell at Trellis, the friends we make in our neighborhood, those are not our identity, that metric of success and one win or fail, that's not who we are. we are separate from that. And apart from that, those are just expressions of our identity.
Ross McDaniel: And, I think for me, that's a mistake that is a recurring theme in my world. my beautiful wife, we're actually celebrating 10 years of marriage today. It's our 10th anniversary. Thank you. It's awesome. but she is just super faithful and helps me. Call those out and recognize that. but yeah, man, it's, that's a big one.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah.
Paden Squires: The whole identity thing,wrapping your identity up in, some level of success or anything externally,is, it's going to be a fragile identity. Because at any point, any of those things can be taken away from you. And if that is taken away from you, you get into this identity crisis of who I am and what I am.
Paden Squires: it'll humble the heck out of you real quick. you lose a client and you wonder what happened there, was it me or whatever. [00:19:00] And then, It's just important to really tie your identity to the process, to the work itself, not necessarily the outcome, but like your intentions in the work itself.
Paden Squires: It's, you know,my intentions are good. I do the work and whatever happens, I tie my identity to, or try to, I'm far from perfect at it.but tie my identity to just doing the work. and I'm that guy that I do the stuff and hopefully good things happen.
Ross McDaniel: Well, our clients want the results, but at the same time we should be evaluating the process and done excellently, just do the best you can.
Ross McDaniel: That is trite, but at the same time, like there's great honor in pursuing the process and like expressing the why behind what you're doing through your process, regardless of outcome, because that's honoring to who your identity is. yeah.
Paden Squires: you hear a real Hunter.
Paden Squires: Doesn't love the prize, right? sure. Yeah. They want to hunt and get the [00:20:00] deer or whatever, honey, but a real hunter loves to hunt, right? They love the process. And that is, that's so key. That's so key in everything because, if you're just constantly chasing the prize, there's two problems there.
Paden Squires: One, you may never get there. Yes, I personally believe you've got a lot of control of getting to where you want to be, but there's things you may just never get to. so tying your identity to actually getting that prize is a serious problem.
Ross McDaniel: It's a serious problem. You're setting yourself up for failure.
Paden Squires: Yeah, definitely. So looking back, Ross, looking back in your career, going back to where you said, Hey, you know what? I'm going to start, I'm going to start my own thing. I'm finally brave enough. I got enough courage to do it. If you could go back right now and give that guy one piece of advice, what would it be?
Ross McDaniel: Developed systems early. I think that's the biggest thing. I really only started developing systems a couple of years ago. And had I done that sooner? where would we be now? And maybe in the same spot, probably in the same spot [00:21:00] or better with less headache. and I think that was a game changer for me.
Ross McDaniel: this year onboarding an executive assistant was an expression of that onboarding, a client account manager was an expression of that. but you truly can't grow or scale unless you've got some systems.
Paden Squires: And yeah, I'm the same way, man. I've,it's really, I would say only the last 15 months or so where I've really even started building out systems, which is amazing and I, I've always had everything on my plate and was everything to everybody.
Paden Squires: And you realize one that can't scale to, and you're going to get burned out doing all these kinds of things that aren't maybe even in your skillset. They don't give you energy. So being able to build those processes, that's a journey I'm on to, I love, especially when you get offline and talk more about how that executive assistant thing worked out for you.
Paden Squires: Now you design that, because gosh, I need one.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah, got a great resource. Would love to connect you and anybody else. I stand by them. That's the fourth ingredient of the local growth formulas referral. Man, I'm a [00:22:00] big fan of it. They've been life changing for me, the executive assistant crew that I use.
Ross McDaniel: But
Paden Squires: once again, I have to be willing to let go, right? I gotta be willing to, let go of my calendar, let go of my email, or all those different things. And I think, what's scary for me, and I'm in the middle of it right now, I've built a team and we're going through our first tax season at this moment.
Paden Squires: And it scares me every day. I'm like, what are our holes in our process? What's not getting done? What is falling through the cracks? And I'm really aware of making sure I want everybody to have a good experience. Now there's going to be things that are going to happen. but it's always my concern.
Paden Squires: I want to limit that as much as possible because.like I said, people want to know that we're competent. We can do our jobs, but at the same time, they're just looking for a good experience.
Ross McDaniel: Amen. Amen.
Ross McDaniel: I think we're in this age of knowledge based business, for the last, 10 or 15 years in perpetuity from now on, who knows?
Ross McDaniel: But city systems and processes pay homage back to the [00:23:00] industrial revolution and in some of the early auto manufacturers and the assembly line. And what did they do? They designed the system. Then they put it out and then they withdrew the system to do quality assurance, and then put another iteration out.
Ross McDaniel: I think we can still do that in a knowledge based economy. We can still get out there and do that in our businesses. I certainly have.
Paden Squires: Yeah. And it, yeah, it's just that it's that. Continuous improvement. It's a continued improvement in your business process. It's the continuous improvement in yourself, especially in this knowledge based economy, right?
Paden Squires: Like the type of work you do, the type of work I do. The thing is, how often does digital marketing change? How often does Google change their algorithm and what have you, that you constantly have to be on top of, to make sure your customers get what they want.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah, we did last week. We had an algorithm update from Google. This one was good for my client. It's so funny in November, everybody gets crushed. it was the local business killer. but here in March, man, we [00:24:00] couldn't agree.
Paden Squires: Good for you, man.
Ross McDaniel: ride the wave.
Paden Squires: what's your ideal customer or who do you best serve? in case any of the listeners are interested in you.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah, thank you for asking. So at the end of the day, we're all about seeing communities thrive. We believe that the backbones of those communities are the small businesses that serve them.
Ross McDaniel: That's typically a health, health metric of a mid cap, 250K to a million person population is like, what are their small businesses? Like how successful are they? And so we exist to serve those. if you have a local footprint of customer base, that's what we want to get in and, And execute our local growth formula for you.
Ross McDaniel: A lot of times that looks like roofers, plumbers, HVAC companies, working with a chain of six accounting firms right now. and then another, 10 medical practices, all one umbrella. So there's a little bit of. Branch out there. But if you have a local footprint, we want to help you.
Paden Squires: So what's the best way people can connect with you?
Ross McDaniel: Yeah. Head on over to our website at fence [00:25:00] post. co again, that's fence and a post, dot C O and, ask for a free assessment myself or one of our guys will jump in and take a look at your entire online ecosystem, your website, your Google business profile, how you're showing up in search rankings.
Ross McDaniel: And we'll just give you an honest assessment of where we think some low hanging fruit is.
Paden Squires: Yeah, that's awesome. It's interesting. I should have brought this up earlier, being from Augusta, you know, there's a tax loophole named after your town.
Ross McDaniel: I heard that, but I had always, it wasn't until recently that I realized that was not just for us.
Ross McDaniel: I thought it was just, no,
Paden Squires: it's just named after you guys. So just to give the listeners a little background, there's this thing called the Augusta tax loophole. You'll see it called the Augusta loophole. and I guess it came from the locals there. So basically the loophole is you can rent out your personal residence up to 14 days a year and you never have to pay income taxes on it.
Paden Squires: So why is it named after Augusta? They have a little golf tournament there called the masters. And I guess the people [00:26:00] there,went to their congressman to try and get this loophole.
Ross McDaniel: It must have been, I just thought it was like a state or local ordinance. Yeah, no, you and several others have been like, no, this is a federal deal.
Paden Squires: Yeah. So everybody in Augusta leaves, rents their house out for big money for the golf tournament.
Ross McDaniel: You'll see entire families living with other entire families for the week because it just makes that much sense. And you don't have to pay
Paden Squires: income taxes on any of it.
Ross McDaniel: Yeah. It's money week for Augusta for sure. Very cool.
Paden Squires: Very
Ross McDaniel: cool.
Paden Squires: Ross, anything else you got for the listeners or want to put out there?
Ross McDaniel: I'm thankful for the time. This is, it's always good to get on like minded podcast hosts podcasts, and yeah, at the end of the day, we just want to serve others excellently and authentically.
Ross McDaniel: So thank you. Absolutely.
Paden Squires: guys, thank you for listening to the show. Check out Ross McDaniel, the company's fence post, fencepost. co, right? so give him a check out. He's your marketing guru, especially if you got a small business in the community, and looking really to get your phone to ring, right?
Paden Squires: So thank you guys for listening. Ross, thank you for coming on, man. And, everybody [00:27:00] have a good day.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people, as we're trying to accomplish our goal of helping create more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, @paydensquires, or going to www.paydensquires.
com. On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
