JOHN CLENDENNING
0:24
Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the AI Marketing Experts podcast. I’ve got our full panel here this week and a special guest we warned you about last week. So, we have got Danny Barrera, the one and only, somebody we’ve known for— all of us have known for years and love to death and have a whole bunch of good questions about him. He runs an amazing agency for contractors. So, he works with small businesses, runs a small business, and everything that we’re all about here. So, welcome, Danny.
DANNY BARRERA
0:56
Hey guys, thank you so much for having me. John, thank you so much. I look at all these beautiful faces. I’m like, That’s a dream team right here. So to all the listeners, this is as good as it gets. So thank you for having me. I appreciate you guys.
JOHN CLENDENNING
1:10
Yeah. And when we first met you, you were Contractor or Concrete Marketing Crew, and now you’re Contractor Click. You’ve kind of expanded to contractors and stuff like that and kind of really doubled down on the needs of the contractor niche. And kind of just to go up one level to get kind of caught up to today, because I know you, you know, I’ve learned a lot of AI stuff from you from presentations and stuff like that. Um, how does AI let you kind of go deeper into that contracting niche and, and helping them out versus sort of a broader generalist agency and going to the next level? Like, you know, where has AI kind of helped you in the last year or so, um, really help your niche out?
DANNY BARRERA
1:54
Yeah, well, last 12 months, um, we ended up spending somewhere around $300,000 on a project that was replaced by new AI improvements, optimization. So it’s moving so quick and so fast that even, you know, the best experts I’ve been able to retain and hire haven’t been able to predict what’s possible with the next iteration of all platforms, all tools. So I can tell you it’s constantly evolved and changed. And my first thinking with AI was, outside of ChatGPT, outside of the chat systems, which are great, amazing, is how do we take every process, every system that we have in our organization and just think about that, think about, just sit with it and think deeply into where are our biggest bottlenecks, where are friction points. And this year, 2026, I said it from stage at the 7 Figure Agency, panel was it’s a transition year of us literally changing our entire business model with AI. And right now we’re on a mission to democratize marketing for contractors. We want to make it accessible. And I first, I want to share so much love and respect for our 7-figure agency community.
DANNY BARRERA
3:20
I would not be here with Josh Nelson, his training and his model And it got me to a point where I had the ability to invest in resources in building the infrastructure of AI that’s now replacing teams entirely. So it’s a scary move. But what’s been happening behind the scenes at ContractorClic, it’s we are literally building the tools that are going to in long term replace us as an agency partner. And the way I’m starting to see ourselves is a, is a good martech company, a marketing technology company infrastructure where, you know, that’s it. We want to make it super easy. We’re working on our latest iteration. It’s, we’ve been able to take website, full website builds with the proper on-page architecture, the URL, you know, strategy, the content strategy, And imagine we took, literally took our best strategist and created roadmaps and let the machines now build out entire websites in a matter of like 70, 72 minutes, 60 minutes, 45 minutes. It’s insane.
DANNY BARRERA
4:34
It’s insane. It’s scary. I talked to one of our clients yesterday because I’m literally having, they’re even like asking like, well, it used to take you 90, days to put together this kind of website. Now it’s like, you’re telling me you could do it this much, you know, in this speed. And they’re wondering what’s the biggest difference. So I think I’m living in a world of possibility and abundance right now more than anything else, because.
DANNY BARRERA
5:06
Can imagine it, you can most likely build it. And that started out, that’s just a small piece of what started out about a year ago in thinking about like, how do we, how do we take our Duda websites and speed up the process? And we accomplished that through a lot of automation. And then I talked to one of my buddies and he literally built out a system because I’m like, let me show you what the structure is, the strategy. He literally built out a system that now is duplicating WordPress websites. And I’m so happy for him. I’m like, dude, you’re crushing it. You know, he’s built the business. But in terms of how it’s impacted, uh, the last year, uh, John, it’s a big question and there’s a lot of ways we can talk about, uh.
JOHN CLENDENNING
5:50
Different— I think I’ll hand it off because I think what you just said there is what I keep telling everybody right now. It is— AI is the big disruptor, but it’s also the big equalizer. So the blue ocean moment that we’ve had, you know, we’ve had friends that we’ve, we’ve seen go into niche and agencies and stuff like that in blue ocean, and all of a sudden they can blow up to millions and millions of dollars pretty quickly. And— but they’ve got got a run rate of the next 5 years. Right now, one-click websites might be a good 3-month blue ocean before it’s everybody again. So then it does come back to being the growth partner, the thought leader, and understanding. So because now if everybody’s the same again, how do I stand out again as, as a contractor? So Chris, you’ve been building out a lot of stuff as well. What— how does— where does that dovetail with you, um, as far as, um, um, Danny?
DANNY BARRERA
6:38
And yeah, that’s a good question.
CHRIS HUNTER
6:40
I mean, you know, um, I’ve been using Cloud Code quite a bit lately. Uh, recently what came up on the radar for everybody is, is CloudBot. Um, and you know, I haven’t gone that far to actually install that myself personally yet just because of all the security concerns. And I, I was like literally this close. I had a machine sitting right here and I’m like, I got an empty machine, why don’t we install it? You know, and see what could happen. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Well, I don’t want that to happen. So, uh, I pulled way back on that kind of stuff. Um, so let’s talk a little about— a little bit about your infrastructure then.
CHRIS HUNTER
7:19
Um, there, Danny, I mean, are, are you like— you— are your, your programmers now like all full cloud code? What, what— how are they able to build these things and, and how fast are you able to move on Yeah.
DANNY BARRERA
7:33
Well, everyone has their own taste and, you know, we have a couple of engineers that their whole thing is about like engineering solutions and then we have the AI integrator specialists. But in terms of code, look, I think Claude has been the most consistent over time. I’m not a coder. So if you ask me to write a piece of code, I can figure myself out in the process because I’ve been in conversations every night pretty much. For the last 13, 14 months, our team is overseeing. But in terms of like code, you know, what code we use, dude, we have an entire, it’s an entire infrastructure that’s been built and it’s not built on a single tool. You know, we’re thinking about the process and the impact that we’re having to do. And a big thing for us has been like, hey, how do I, as a leader, just focus on leading the company and not focus on the, on the nuances.
DANNY BARRERA
8:34
So I’d be the wrong person to ask about like, what code? I can get that answer for you, but I’ll be 100% here with you. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
8:43
Steve Jobs answer right there.
DANNY BARRERA
8:46
Yeah. Yeah.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
8:48
Well, I’m going to ask because I know we’ve been talking about internal, but if a small business owner, they may be questioning like, okay, but how is it disrupting the actual marketing? So what we’re seeing the local marketing? How would you have that conversation, or what would you make sure that they were aware of?
DANNY BARRERA
9:05
So the external marketing, the local marketing. Yeah, that’s a great question. And it comes back to fundamentals. Like this month, February, we create themes for ContractorClic, and the first month is Conquer the Year. We all mapped out like, hey, what do we want to conquer? What are those things? Going back to foundation elements. I believe AI, it’s like the greatest application of how do we go back to making sure that we are firing in all cylinders in all these different areas. For example, QC, website QC. Is your website built for conversions? You could start there.
DANNY BARRERA
9:50
And you’d be surprised how many agencies still up to this date aren’t leveraging AI to just run some of those redundancies and give it an SOP and a checklist. And for the business owner, you could also do that as well. I mean, it’s scary how like these tools are amazing to do. So I think what is happening right now, there’s just so much noise that a lot of people forget about the foundational stuff. And that is, John, to your point that you brought up about being the guide, you know, for the business owners, the resources. You got to have people that really know marketing and understand how marketing influences and impacts people. And at the end of the day, yeah, sure thing, we see a growth in ChatGPT clicks coming to clients’ websites and all of that, but it’s not to the point where, my gosh, nothing else works except ChatGPT or, you know, all of this AI.. But if you focus on the main core components of like, hey, what, what’s the brand voice? Do we have clarity on how we want to show up consistently? What’s our content strategy? What’s our ad strategy? What’s— how is our landing page, you know, conveying the value that we also preach on the website and in the ads? Is all of that disconnected? So for one place is you can do a lot of that a lot faster and you don’t need a lot of, quote unquote, so many other technical specialists, right, that are just there, you can leverage some of these tools and resources.
DANNY BARRERA
11:26
And then you can use tools like Manus, for example, to help you redefine research, look at your competitors, analyze the top 10 area, and then try to figure out how do I stand out, create better ad strategies, you know, empowering the individuals that are driving the ads, building the content, with all of these tools and facilitating. But in terms of like results, what’s changing? I think rethinking how we work is what’s changing really. How much faster we can do it. You know, it used to take us 6 months to go in discovery of a real landscape. But now if we can deploy in 30 days, 45 days, we could do a lot more than we would be able to do in 6 months to 8 months.
JOHN CLENDENNING
12:11
And maybe that gives the owner of the business a lot more time to make sure that Tommy the technician doesn’t bend over and show butt crack to all the neighbors and actually, so you get hired by the neighbors as well. So, you know, things like, like literally like you, if you can solve these problems easier, you can actually fix the real world, the humanics of it, like the actual be an authentic person, right? And run a better company, not just run a digital, you know, landscaping company that’s so good on digital. When the guys show up, the truck’s rusted, leaks in the driveway and the guys smell funny and, you know, you know, all that kind of stuff.
DANNY BARRERA
12:44
So yeah, that’s what matters at the end of the day. A lot of people confuse like a marketing agency doesn’t solve the business problems. It will only amplify what you have going on. So you have great customer service, great appointment setting, great sales process. Amazing. You’re ready to make money. Look, I’ve dealt with over 600 small business owners at this point in time. I can tell you we are here to show them the ropes so they’re learning in the process.
DANNY BARRERA
13:10
But right now, an example is We are teaching our clients how to leverage simple tools like Gemini, how to build their own applications that they can use, share with the team in a very simplified fashion. And that’s something that we are empowering our clients to do through internal training, because I believe the hardworking business owner out there, they’re still doing a lot. And, you know, it’s wide open, like there’s no, specific book on how to do it right, you know.
BRAD KILGORE
13:43
I think you hit on an important factor, Danny, too. You mentioned brand. What we’re seeing, what we’ve talked about on our show before, is, you know, building your brand correctly now and using the AI tools to do so is going to make so much of a difference where, you know, if you’re— it’s changed. You’re not— your customers aren’t just searching anymore. They’re asking, you know, and if you’re building your brand and you’re answering the questions on the website, the FAQs and all these different things, and you can do that pretty quickly now with AI tools, it’s a game changer. And so it just goes back to what you just said, building a brand correctly online, then having the systems in place, you know, for your, for your scheduling, for your follow-up, for all these other things. And it’s not like we never did those things before, but now it’s something that could be automated, it could be streamlined, and it could be easy for the business owner to use. I think that’s super important, and I’m glad you brought that up.
JEN CREGO
14:45
You mentioned using Gemini, empowering your clients to use Gemini to create applications there. I’m curious if you can talk more about the applications that they are building or the uses that are really helping.
JEN CREGO
15:01
That those small businesses save time, save.
DANNY BARRERA
15:05
Money, make money, things like that. Yeah, I’ve become— so I’m going to go and answer the question here, but just as a funny sidetrack, we developed this product that we spent a little bit over $90K developing this analyzer that was supposed to go into like all of our entire Google ecosystem and take all of our ad accounts, all of our data. And give us recommendations. Our team could chat with it. And then Google launches Vortex last year and in a deeper way, deeper integration with all of their native tools. And we’re like, holy shit, like this literally, that was, let’s scratch that. Let’s build it. Like it was like, it’s insane.
DANNY BARRERA
15:47
But anyways, fast forward, like there’s a Google AI Studio, which if you have a Workspace account and the Gemini pro in the business, you know, that’s what we’re pointing clients to use. And we are having the conversation of like, what are those recurring things that you have to constantly solve for the team, quantify specific product. We have one client that’s looking at their inventory, they have developed their own application with a simple form. We have another client that they’re like, hey, I’m developing my leadership team. And we’re like, okay, what are you using? There’s 90.io, like, you know, those EOS platforms that they like to use. Well, I don’t want to pay for this. And then we’re like, hey, you could also use ClickUp. And for that conversation was like, what if we just create a simple dashboard that you can track things and like you can create a few users and if you spend 2 hours, you can create your own software that’s internal to everyone in the organization..
DANNY BARRERA
16:49
And if you really want to carry that to the next level, then you hire a developer to take it to that finish line because you’re not like Chris, you know, I’m not a coder. I don’t expect them to have it done. But that’s an example of one. And the KPIs, inventory, dashboards. And I encourage any agency owner as well to do it for themselves. It’s like, what are those things that, you know, it’s taking people a lot of time. You don’t have visibility as a CEO, as a business owner. That you want to simplify that data, that you could figure out, okay, what can I create? And look, yeah, you could use other applications, but Google is a very simple tool and it’s got everything in there.
DANNY BARRERA
17:30
For one of our clients, they wanted to create their own social media plan. We literally helped them create their social media with their brand voice, with their like the planner, the 12-month planner with sequences, and it leverages Gemini to spit all of that out. And it’s insane what you could do. I mean, we used to get paid to do that kind of stuff, right? So we’re literally showing the business owners and not all of them get it. Like we have probably 40, 45% of our client base. They’re not going to touch AI. Like they’re just not there. They’re past that time.
DANNY BARRERA
18:09
But they’re open to hearing how to have someone internally leverage some of these tools. So Jennifer, those are some of the examples there. Really, there’s no limits. The imagination is the only limitation.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
18:23
That’s exactly right. Well, our listeners and viewers, I hope they really— I feel that you’ve motivated them and given them that incentive to start again playing, really taking some of these ideas or what their daily frustrations may be with that internal communications or whatever that might be and seeing what solutions they can come up with. And I like, again, it empowers them, it gets them excited, it helps them. They can get the feedback from their team members or small business owners. But to your point, then a developer could take it to the end to finalize it. But you get there so much faster these days than once it was before a meeting to have a meeting to get all this information where they can really get a good start to it.
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:08
But I think even dumbing it down to the basic level, again, on this show, we hear from our audience. We’ve got people that are like at the tail end of what Danny said. Yeah, I want to make an app so that when my technicians get back to the shop, they take a picture, they talk into the phone, and it just submits it. And I know they got back to the shop and there’s a timestamp, right? And you don’t need to buy something anymore. You could build that right now. And other guys have just— I just glazed over their eyes, right? But on a basic level, are you talking to ChatGPT or your AI friend of choice, ’cause your customers are, are you talking to it every single day with a little bit of context? Does it know your company story? And did you just have a difficult phone call with a client and you drop that in and go, how could I have done that better? Like just on a simple level, that might sound complex to some people, but you could figure out how to do that. I show my team all day long. No, no, no, no.
BRAD KILGORE
19:58
That 5 minutes and you’re done. Like here, let’s just do it together right now. And then all of a sudden you see the light bulbs go off and they go, Oh, and then next thing they show you is like, wow, that beats what I do. But they just run with it. So you’re teaching your clients the AI education. How do you— because you’ve got those different layers of clients too and contractors. How are you finding they’re taking that training and education?
DANNY BARRERA
20:20
Well, that’s part of our evolution at ContractorClick. We want to help our clients go into their bigger and better future. And I think in 2 to 3 years, marketing is probably going to be 15%, 16%. Our digital marketing services are no longer going to be what is our main driver of revenue right now. You know, that’s just the reality. We’re kind of like in this marathon, but it’s a fast-paced marathon because some months it feels like we’re not moving forward. And then I, you know, my wife always, she’s the one that gives me like a reality check and she’s like, hey, you realize you’re doing something that’s never been done before. Like people are not doing this.
DANNY BARRERA
21:03
You know, with like at this level. And I’m like, but you don’t understand, I feel like everything’s just moving so quick, so much quicker. So one of those things is empowering the contractor to have those conversations and saying, how are you leveraging AI? So last year I created a series called Thinking with AI. And that started out those conversations because you really have to rethink work with AI. And what would be different? What would be possible? What are, again, going back to the same things, what problems are you looking to solve? One of our clients, he went back and we had a marketing in-person event and I showed them, hey, let’s go ahead and start building one thing. And then he was like, okay, well, I want to do a visualizer. And anyways, he called me for Christmas and he’s like, let me show you something. I want you to jump on the Zoom call.
DANNY BARRERA
21:57
It’s like I’ve been developing this visualizer and I’m rolling it out on the website thanks to you. I just facilitated the conversation of how do you go back and start leveraging these systems here for your own clarity and rethinking what else could I possibly do, you know, inside of my organization. Now, the biggest challenge I tell you is you have the leaders. If the leaders don’t get it, you might have someone else underneath them that might be really sharp, tech savvy.. But if you don’t build that congruency in the organization and you’re not leading that conversation, it’s a complete mess. And I’m seeing a lot of people take advantage of that opportunity. It’s wide open, by the way. If you’re an agency owner, you want to empower your clients, you want to audit them, their business and how they can apply.
DANNY BARRERA
22:44
It’s a wide open field right now. So we’re kind of doing that there. We’re not charging them extra. Managed client service, you know, a retainer. It’s part of the program is what we do. But in a monthly conversation, we’re bringing that up. How are you thinking with AI? And that’s what we’ve been carrying internally with our team is the same thing. It’s what are you doing different? What have you learned this week? What’s different? What’s new? What’s changed? What have you broken? And I stay out of the shiny object, guys, because I have a lot of other things that I’m working on.
DANNY BARRERA
23:18
But I do hear from them, hey, I tested this tool. And then if they keep bringing it up, I’m like, great, let’s go ahead and— should we show the clients? Should we share what’s going on? But yeah, I mean, some of our clients have brought in their own social media in-house because they’re like, you know, I can create my own thing. I’m like, great, amazing. We didn’t make much money on those services, you know. So it is, it is an interesting conversation, John, because in some, in some ways, if an agency is not preparing and upgrading their own selves, and I’m glad you guys put together this group, there’s an incredible amount of agencies out there that they’re not thinking ahead, man. And they’re, the clients could do what they’re doing for the clients and they’re no longer needed. That’s just a reality. So just leading the conversation.
DANNY BARRERA
24:12
Every client wants to know about AI these days, even if they’re old. Invite their people that are tech savvy in the conversation and then figure out how to roll that out. So for us, that’s what’s work is having those conversations. And then we partner up clients that are more on the advanced side so that they have their own groups that they can chat with. And one last thing here is we’ve This year we moved into the Circle community because we were having a hard time with engagement and then grouping people. And we had to create different, you know, training centers and portals. And we’re like, man, I just want one place that I can log in and then roll out all of my training and have segments of people, all of them consume at their own pace. So that’s in an effort to double down on that, John.
DANNY BARRERA
25:05
And then we have professionals that come in and talk to our clients too. So it’s all the way is not just on me.
BRAD KILGORE
25:11
And that makes sense. Like you’re just transitioning from the doer of service, the vendor, where you always gave massive amounts of advice. I’ve known you for years, Danny, and you guys helped your clients with the thinking and you’re the marketer of your services. Let me help you think better on that. And that part is just expanding because of AI while the services, you know, might be getting easier and faster and they could take some in-house, sure. But that thinking and utilization actually just is growing to fill the void anyways and it needs to. So the communities, the circle, all of that, that’s brilliant.
CHRIS HUNTER
25:45
So let me ask real quick, I wanna interject here is what I’m hearing you say is that, you know, the future, you’re saying that 15% of what you’re doing now or was doing last year for your clients is what you’re going to be doing in the future. What’s, what’s the other 85%? It almost sounds like software and training to me.
DANNY BARRERA
26:08
Software and training. Software training. I have a couple of other things I’m not going to talk about here in the group. Just stay tuned. We appreciate each and every one of you for following the journey. But, you know, it’s big dreams, big plans. Hey, we want to impact the lives of 100,000 blue-collar, hardworking business owners. And, you know, for as much as I would love to, you know, dream about that being on the agency environment in the old school way, and I mean that very respectfully because that’s what’s got me here, it’s you need the management, you need an account manager, you need, you know, an entire team.
DANNY BARRERA
26:47
I want to make it so much easier for people to find success because I think about my father and I think about growing up like, man, we had to move from before he was a preacher, he became a preacher and he sold his businesses. We were literally moving from house to house in El Salvador because sometimes he couldn’t make it work. I think about that guy. I’m like, how could I help him with— he couldn’t afford a full-stack agency, you know, a $5,000, $6,000 monthly retainer. So for me, I’ve looked at and I meditated, prayed on this, and I’m seeing the gap just getting so much bigger. And it’s an agency, you’re going to either make the jump to be up here charge high retainers, or you’re going to look at this and say, I’m going to be moving here into this lower ticket arena, which is what we’re moving slowly into, make it more accessible. The amount of support needed here from a human resource is a different level of support. If I want to go and hire a Google Ads strategist with a lot of experience in the roofing industry, water damage, that guy at the minimum, like someone really good at what they do, it’s $120,000 a year salary, right? It’s a reality.
DANNY BARRERA
28:04
So I got to go premium. If I’m not going premium, my economics at scale, they’re not going to work. They’re not. So I’ve found that to be a frustrating internal conversation. And I love to help people out, guys. Like that’s what it is. So I think about those numbers, Chris,. And I’m like, what can we build that’s going to replace, you know, what we do in managed service? What can we facilitate? Media buying, you know, the website building is a big thing, making it more accessible because websites, everyone needs a website nowadays.
DANNY BARRERA
28:35
Like, it’s even more important to have a website. How can we make it even better? You know, so that’s, that’s the roadmap, Chris. The main things, yeah, education, training, is a big one. Technology is what I’m 10x-ing down on because it’s a different level of scale. And I’m learning. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a lot of different pains, but.
BRAD KILGORE
29:02
I’m here having fun with it. And like your dad, some people don’t want to own— like, I mean, I always talk about it. Like, I just did my part 2 webinar yesterday on How to Survive the Next 24 Months in the Home Cleaning Services, Carpet Cleaning. And I kind of laid out that harsh truth that it’s our internal conversations, but I just said you’ve got to understand your lane. You’re either a carpet cleaner that just happens to own a business, or you’re a business owner that just happens to be in the carpet cleaning world. And that’s in anything. You’re just, you know, like any contractor. There’s guys, like guys and gals out there that just want to go out and do the work.
BRAD KILGORE
29:40
They love get— like, they just, they have their name on the side of the truck and they’re gonna be them and their brother-in-law and their cousin and the, the neighbor down the street. And that will be their business. And they need us as much and they need that help as much as the guy that says, you know what, I never wanna be in the truck. I wanna hire people, but I want 20 trucks and I wanna buy out the— I want to own— and they’re both are legitimate, very legitimate businesses.
JOHN CLENDENNING
30:02
Yes.
BRAD KILGORE
30:03
And both of them need that help.
DANNY BARRERA
30:05
That hand up, right? So, you made such a good point and that’s the exact same thought process because we’re like, hey, Maddie, she’s the co-owner of the agency. She’s got, I would say she’s got more say and pull and influence into what we’re doing decisions than I do at this point. And one of the things is like, let’s think forward a little bit. Where do we see ourselves? What are the risks we’re willing to take to evolve? And that was one of those conversations is like, okay, if we’re gonna scale people and we’re not like, yeah, can we be high ticket, really high ticket? Because this is a great pocket. You’re good at what you do and you go ultra high ticket, meaning above $5,000, $6,000, $8,000 a month retainer. Minimum, a managed retainer a month. The expectation here is much different than the one down here. It’s much different.
DANNY BARRERA
31:06
Now, if you try to bring this level of expertise down here, which we’ve tried, it doesn’t work. It’s too, it’s an overwhelming amount. And it doesn’t make the guys that are under half a million dollars wrong for not aspiring for more. Because I had a conversation with this guy and his name is Chase. Shout out, Chase. And he’s like, you know, because of you guys, I’m able to see my kids go and play their sports, take my daughter to swimming lessons. I have a business that’s profitable. He doesn’t aspire to be— he’s like, I make more money than the guy at $2.5 million a year.
DANNY BARRERA
31:44
And this guy, because I’m like, Chase, we gotta, we gotta, like, we’re doing really good for you. I want to— I want you to make more money. He’s like, no, you You’ve done good. So I’m like, I would love to serve more Chases. And there’s such a big amount of underserved contractors out there, which is part of the vision here.
BRAD KILGORE
32:04
You know, that was a great point. And word of mouth has turned into AI. So like, I mean, that’s the other scary moment for those guys we’re talking about because they go, I used to get all my work from word of mouth. And it’s like, okay, well, that’s now this because whether you’ve got a bunion on your toe or you want to figure out if a I have a new lamp in the living room. Not saying that I just bought new lamps for my living room, but I just bought new lamps for my living room. Take a picture with ChatGPT and go, what would look here? And boom, you get 5 different choices. Well, that means when I go to ask for a carpet cleaner or a contractor, I’m not asking my neighbor and my best friend anymore. Who, what’s the mechanic, Brad, that I’m gonna take my car to? I, I now need to, I ask my AI friend, and that was 1% of search this time last year.
BRAD KILGORE
32:44
It’s arguably higher, but they say it’s 1%. 30% of search now and will be 80% of search by this time next year. And there goes all the word of mouth businesses that you and I just talked about. There goes all of those chases and all like, what are you gonna do now, buddy? Because like the word of mouth is they’re talking to their AI friend. If you don’t have that infrastructure and that content going up and those happy customer stories and all that kind of stuff, and back out in the real world again, that the real world exists again, that 40-year window of cheap money and all this kind of stuff is gone. You have to go back and see what they did like 40 years ago where people knew other people and went and interacted and all of that. Like everybody had to run a business as well. So your brand is great online and your brand is well known offline as well.
BRAD KILGORE
33:33
So they both have to work together in the same playground again. And that’s new as well. So the.
JOHN CLENDENNING
33:42
Risks are huge opportunities. I think the other part that Danny touched on too was some of his clients, they are, for lack of a better word, they’re afraid of AI or they don’t know what to do with it yet, right? And the 6 of us have been in not only the marketing industry for many, many years, but we’ve also been on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the AI world for, at this point, 2+ years. And so I remember Just this week I had a longtime associate, a business owner come to me and says, you know what, we don’t even know what ChatGPT or Gemini do. Can you show us? Because they know they need to, they know that the boat is going fast now, they better jump on. Whereas a year ago, like, yeah, whatever. Now they know, they know they have to get real with it. And then when you show them, you know, to use a phrase from Danny, they’re just like, holy shit, man, I can’t believe what this does. You know, I’m like, guys, I’m showing you the basics.
JOHN CLENDENNING
34:43
I’m showing you the very basics of what’s happening with AI and marketing and what it can do in your life and everything else. And they just are like, oh my God, I need more. You know, how do I learn more? So, you know, how do you, how do you see that, Danny, with your large list of clients, of the ones that are just now looking at maybe I need to embrace this, I’m missing the boat.
DANNY BARRERA
35:07
Exactly. You got to meet them where they’re at because I’ve made the mistake being too high level and then I’m like, fuck, I— excuse me, I just literally lost 90% of the room, 100% of the room, you know, because I get excited.
BRAD KILGORE
35:22
You haven’t heard me on this podcast then, Danny.
DANNY BARRERA
35:25
Come on, listen. The first one is the— I, I bless, I baptize the podcast here. Sorry about that. Uh, but I do talk to myself that way and I’m like, man, did I, did I make that point across? And, and I’ve had a lot of these conversations where, uh, this year, you know, I took what worked, what didn’t work. And one of them was like trying to put everyone in the same room. So you gotta understand where they’re at, um, and, and figure out are they really entry level? And if they’re entry level, number one, I don’t need to teach that. I don’t need to be involved. Like, hey, our team is totally competent and capable.
DANNY BARRERA
36:01
And you’d be surprised. You put one of your rockstar account managers there to go and teach them. We have someone called Melissa. She’s incredible. She loves to present, put her on a Zoom call, you know, and like she takes care of the conversation, the clients, gives different examples, and you become more of a facilitator. And give guidelines and prompts, et cetera. So one thing we’ve done is like Manus is great at doing deep research we found, you know, and perplexing and all of that. So like Manus is a great tool.
DANNY BARRERA
36:32
And if we know there’s going to be, so right now we’re, the majority of our business is home improvement. The majority of our clients, they’re home improvement. We create a 12-month plan on based on these industries. How should we teach our clients if we want to teach them the basics, fundamentals of AI, ChatGPT, etc.? Just let managers go and do the research for you. Like, it’s as simple as that and keep it that simple. Now, for the more advanced stuff, it’s like every quarter, it’s what’s working now. And I did a summit 2 years ago, not last year, because last year was a development year for me. This year is— I’m bringing that summit back again.
DANNY BARRERA
37:15
It’s a Contractor AI Summit we have in place to do a big, some much bigger than we’ve done. And the goal there is to just get the mass population to come in. And we want to hear, we want to pay attention based on surveys. So we do surveys at the end of the month for clients. What are you looking to learn? You know, what are your needs right now? And based on that, Laura, that’s our content plan for the year. And then that’s where the circle comes in. The circle training comes in. And we used to have a system much like the 7 Figure Agency platform, which is nice.
DANNY BARRERA
37:50
But it just, the engagement was not there. People couldn’t find stuff. Like it was hard for us to manage 3 different communities. And I just wanted to simplify. So we’re going to Circle now. And that is so that we can structure the entire roadmap for advanced, intermediate, and entry level. Uh, we’re calling them different names, but that’s just in the summary and then just building the training there. And we’re not just doing AI, we’re doing marketing, marketing with AI, how to do it yourself.
DANNY BARRERA
38:18
Like, how to bring your assistant, your spouse to go and learn how to do this. Like, we’re literally teaching clients how to do it. But just having those conversations has improved retention with some of our struggling clients too. You know, that’s just what it is. So marketing performance wasn’t there. And we had a client that in November said, hey, I’ve only stuck around because I really love your guys’ training. Now, like, man, that’s sad to hear, man. You know, what else can we do? And he’s like, well, I don’t want to spend more money.
DANNY BARRERA
38:47
So We’ll just keep it there. So, it’s like, okay, well, but it’s interesting. You know, that’s another piece of feedback. But that’s how we tap into different levels, Laura. Because, yeah, what I found is.
BRAD KILGORE
39:01
People can get frustrated if they’re— Yeah. And there’s so much information there to advance. That’s the downside is there’s so much information online that you can go down rabbit holes. Like, you can get overwhelmed. And having that hub, however that is, anybody in the audience listening, having having that sort of somebody curate, vet it, confirm it, have a larger audience of similar people like you that say, are you using, oh no, you’re using Claude, you’re doing this, you’ve created this thing. And then all of a sudden it kind of take a deep breath and go, okay, so I don’t have to know if Claude bot is worth installing on my home computer and having it give out all my financial information to somebody in China tomorrow. Kind of idea because the community is like, like there’s a leader and a community that you’ve built around that. And I love that idea.
BRAD KILGORE
39:51
Any famous last question from the group for Danny before we wrap it up? I think we’ve covered a lot and given a lot of people a lot of thought here, which is what.
DANNY BARRERA
40:01
We love to do. Danny, you mentioned home improvement, knowing that you had come from that, the concrete contractors and everything. Are you finding that the AI that those businesses need, like, like, has the niche disappeared with AI or is it evolving?
JEN CREGO
40:25
Like, do those businesses need something different.
DANNY BARRERA
40:27
Or is it the same? That’s, I love that question. From an IP perspective, like, people could hold IP and say, only I know the niche. Now it’s that you can go and do market research and be very well. When I went into concrete and I took it seriously, it took me some time. And then I shared some of, some of the planning strategies in the 7 Figure Agency community. It’s like, how do you research the niche? How do you go about it? You could do that and then learn the language and learn like the buyer cycle, the sales cycle, the language and all of that. So from entry point, it’s definitely gotten easier. But from the implementation point, performance, there is so much more value to be niched down.
DANNY BARRERA
41:17
If you’re a performance, you’re niched out so much more. I love the concrete industry, like I really do. It just hits home for me. I feel home there. But I can tell you that with almost like looking at the future ahead. If I would have stayed just in this one pocket, I would not be able to have the reach that we, the runway that we now have with ContractorClic. And that was a hard decision. But if I was in roofing, I would stay in roofing.
DANNY BARRERA
41:48
No need to go anywhere else. Plenty. If I was in landscaping, I would stay there. And that’s it. That’s been my observation just on me. Yeah, the niche, I said the execution is what’s becoming the most critical part right now. It’s in the ability and the confidence of the team to deliver results for the niches because the challenge for us has been as we scaled multiple niches, we literally have to go out and hire people that have worked for agencies in those niches and then, you know, kind of recreate the entire infrastructure for delivery. So it’s, we multiply our our chaos.
DANNY BARRERA
42:28
And yeah, I don’t, yeah, I don’t think niche agencies will disappear. It will only get better. You’ll get better and stronger as you go deeper. Yeah. So follow my footsteps unless you.
BRAD KILGORE
42:45
Love pain and suffering.
DANNY BARRERA
42:46
We heard it the last, the last summit about it.
JEN CREGO
42:49
I truly tell you guys. Yeah. I’ll ask a question that I, I want to ask. What question do you wish we would have asked you today? Because you’re bringing such value, you’ve gone deep on so many things. There’s a lot of nuggets here that I know that our listeners and viewers are going to run with. But what’s the one question you really.
DANNY BARRERA
43:08
Wish we would have asked? It’s a great question. I mean, how are you preparing yourself and your team for the future? Like, that’s— we’ve doubled down on our people. And I said this from stage, this year for us, it’s a top grading year for all of our talent. And I can’t save people. I literally started out the conversation this year with like, hey, I’m going to give you so much opportunity, the best that I can, but I can’t carry— if you’re not moving fast enough with us, I can’t keep you around. The biggest challenge is like we’ve had amazing performers from an execution perspective that just have not embraced AI. And unfortunately, I’m sorry, we’ve had to make the decision of having to cut some people off that were incredible humans, hardworking individuals. So I’ve been working a lot on the mindset piece and getting them to level up their mindset, learn that change is amazing, speed is operate, remove that resistance of technology of like, my job is in care and, you know, it’s going to be removed.
DANNY BARRERA
44:20
No. Like I showed our web team, we have a great CRO implementation specialist, web designers, web project manager, and we’re like, that’s one of the departments that’s literally we’re replacing with AI and technology. I’m like, guys, I want, I need you to get really good at what you do, like the best at what you do. So I think that’s a conversation I don’t hear a lot from agency owners. They want to level themselves up, but if you want to grow and scale, it’s all about the team and how are you carrying that forward. And I don’t think there’s enough people that really understand what’s happening. So you kind of have to build it as you go. And, you know, so as you level up, you level them up and then you challenge it, create the environment so that they grow.
DANNY BARRERA
45:07
And that’s a big one. That’s, that’s really what we’re working on.
JOHN CLENDENNING
45:10
What I’m working on. No, that’s a brilliant, that’s a good, good pin to put in the end of this because we’re small business owners as we started this whole thing with. So it’s not just the agency, it’s like anybody listening to this, as Danny said earlier, it’s the top down. You can’t, you know, take Janice at 3 levels deep to be the one that sort of is the driver of this whole thing. We know it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s gonna crap the bed. You’ve gotta be as the owner of the business leaning in, joining these groups, doing all that kind of stuff, and, and being the, the maven and, um, the North Star for the team. So that’s where I’m heading, that, and pulling them along, giving them a hand up, because some people won’t come along for the ride. And this ride is not a 5-year, 10-year, maybe, maybe we can nurse that to retirement, you know, gal in the back corner, unfortunately anymore.
BRAD KILGORE
45:57
Maybe, maybe it is time that, you know, those kinds of things those harder decisions have to be made, but as the owner level, be in charge of those. So, um, no, I think that’s a great way to— great way to end it. And I really appreciate you coming on the call. I think you’ve given a massive amount of value to our audience. And again, where if anybody needs to reach out to you, we got contact@contractorclick.com. Anywhere else that they can find you.
DANNY BARRERA
46:21
On socials or whatever? So it’s contractor.click. Um, I’m looking forward to growing, uh, my socials this year. If you can find me at Instagram, that would be amazing, at It’s Danny Barrera, and on Facebook. I would love to connect with all of you and thank you so much for having me.
BRAD KILGORE
46:39
And keep an eye out for that AI summit that he’s got running. If you’re in the contractor niche, get your tickets, join the audience, be part of that. And yeah, with that, everybody who watches, give us the comments, what you thought of this episode, any questions you have for Danny, we’ll pass them along as well. And as Brad always says, like, follow, subscribe, share it with your friends, your family, and your granny. And, uh, we will see you next time.
JEN CREGO
47:02
Take care.
