Rachel Spaugh (00:01.675)
Hi, this is Rachel with Marketproof Marketing. I'm here for office hours with Kevin. Hey, Kevin.

Kevin (00:10.722)
Hey, Rachel, good to see you after the summit is over. We have met in person as well as 300 and did I see 60 people total attendance? Someone claimed that anyway.

Rachel Spaugh (00:13.545)
Yeah, I've met you in person now.

Rachel Spaugh (00:21.181)
saw that number thrown around somewhere too. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot of people, so much energy in the room. I was just doing my analysis this morning and energetic and connection and like people, those were the top words that people mentioned in their post summit survey. So really exciting, everyone picked up on that.

Kevin (00:43.214)
Yeah, was a great time. did, I was just telling Rachel how I realized that I'm more of an introvert than I realized I was after that. And then I had to go fly straight to go see my daughter at university for homecoming weekend with the rest of my family. So it wasn't until Monday morning when I kind of was able to start recharging my introverted batteries. So we'll see how it goes today. It's just you and I.

Rachel Spaugh (01:06.455)
Yeah, well, I would like

I would like to talk a lot about Summit, so we can just recap that. That should make it easy. It was such a great event and I couldn't help but think if I had still been in my builder seat, still the marketing manager for my builder, just how much I would have gotten out of being in that room. So trying to put myself back in that seat today, I want to just pick your brain as if I had run into your introverted self at the conference and asked you some questions in the hall.

Kevin (01:13.013)
okay.

Kevin (01:36.11)
Alright.

Rachel Spaugh (01:38.826)
and just hear your thoughts. I know a lot of people were really excited about everything you brought to the table surrounding AI. AI was a big topic on the online sales side too. I sat in on some of those sessions and I think people are hungry for more guidance about how to use AI with content. I noticed that theme come up a lot and there's a couple different questions I wanna ask about that today. like first, what are the...

You went over this at Summit, but what are the dangers for those who weren't there of bringing AI into the content process too early?

Kevin (02:14.433)
Well, just remember that every time we ask anyone to view, absorb anything that we're sending out, we're taking something away from them. And as consumers, individually, this should make sense to you that whenever someone says, hey, pay attention to this, this is important, they're taking time away that we can't get back. And I think sometimes what happens in the stress of we need to sell more, we gotta do more, we have to tell more people,

all of the facts, because if they just had the facts, this is a fundamental misunderstanding is that if everyone just had enough information, they would of course choose to buy what we're selling. And in the hurry and stress to do that, we forget that like it has to be relevant to people and it has to be something that they value and want. Otherwise you're just wasting their time. And that concept means that when we can just create more

work slop faster, you slop is the hip new way to refer to everything that AI does. I think that's incorrect. It's funny. It sounds fun to say, but it's not really the right way to think about it. But creating more things faster that are not relevant and not curated and not put through a lens or a frame that's really putting the customer at the center just means that you're gonna make people upset quicker.

Rachel Spaugh (03:19.703)
Yeah.

Kevin (03:44.07)
And what comes to mind, Rachel, is there was a couple individuals who were quoting, this is like five years ago, that text messages were the best and kind of like the first way you should ever communicate with anyone because 100 % essentially of text messages are read. And they're just indexing on this one data point of it's been read instead of considering that there's a whole bunch of other data.

potential data points, one of which I kind of made up just to help people understand this is the piss off factor. You don't know how many of those people got that text message and said, why the heck did I just get this? Why are they invading my personal space just because they know that I wanna keep the badge and the notifications clear on my phone?

Rachel Spaugh (04:18.295)
Yeah.

Kevin (04:36.353)
That's, are you getting some attention? Yes, but are you getting the right outcome from that attention? We're not sure. So that's danger number one is just doing more and more, like more is not always the best answer. One of the things I talked about that really seemed to resonate with most people in the audience is that we don't need more attention. It's not a lack of attention or awareness as to why home builders aren't hitting more of their sales goals.

and we don't just need more content because more is better. So I think using AI tools for research, for better understanding of information that's worthy of being compressed. When I say that, like I've used services like Blinkist and the other names are escaping me, but where you're getting a condensed version of a book. I don't use that.

as a way to think, now I've read the book and I know everything that I need to know from the book. That would be silly. Blinkist and those kind of services provided this service of saying, you could read an unlimited amount of books to choose from. So I would use those services to help me narrow down and I would read 10 or 12 different summaries and go, that one sounds like I wanna read the whole thing. And.

AI has this amazing ability for us to say, there's this thing that I don't know much about, kind of like YouTube did, honestly. The other way that we've talked about in the past is, if you watch two hours of YouTube videos on a particular topic, you now know more about that topic than 95 % of the world does. And there's this incredible opportunity for marketers who go, I don't really understand that much about land development and how that fits into the picture.

you still should go to lunch, go to breakfast, like get mentored by somebody in that department, spend some time. But in order to accelerate your learning in that part of the business, you could go use an AI tool to get some of the basics. And so I think that the real win is to use the benefit of what it does really well, which is compressing data to succinct answers or being able to say it in different words that

Kevin (06:57.643)
you connect to and understand better to then go, okay, I have a lot of the data and information, but now I have my own unique lens and my own unique empathy with the consumer that I can then take that understanding and translate it for them using my own brand voice or the company's brand voice or better correlating. Because otherwise you're just creating more noise. like the thing that I saw, Casey Neistat's one of my favorite YouTubers. If you've never watched any of his videos, you should.

really thoughtful guy, very creative guy. And I won't curse, but he is in his last video talking about the new AI tool from OpenAI for video, Sora. He's like, look, we're all super, super F'd, was his answer. Because the amount of content that can be created now is going to be overwhelming for everyone. And that means that the response will be that more and more and more filters and gates are created.

which will prevent all of the slop that you're making from getting to your customer. Maybe not in the next week or two, but over the long term, that will be the next thing to happen is if everyone can make a somewhat compelling, interesting, well-lit enough video in air quotes with a couple lines of text, then the problem will be just too much. And so you're gonna have, it always comes back to trust, Rachel.

in order to have that consumer say, want to spend a significant amount of time with the content that this company is putting out. They have to trust that it has been curated, it has been vetted, it is going to be something that's beneficial for them.

Rachel Spaugh (08:38.654)
Yeah, My mind goes so many places. The most immediate one is I think about email and how that happened. We now have all these different inbox tabs in our email inboxes, right? Because providers figured out people are getting flooded by things they don't want to see. And it's interesting to think about how that might happen on social media or with video platforms. But yeah.

Kevin (08:58.763)
Yeah, and the cat mouse game there continues in email too. So I use a tool, I think I pay 19 bucks, 20 bucks a month for an inbox tool that automatically filters things out and trains based upon where I move stuff over time. It's like, I think this isn't less priority for you. But now in the last version of Gmail that I just went into, there's now a tab that you can just go straight to that says manage subscriptions. And it just shows you

all of the subscriptions that you're on. So what this is like, our consumers are getting frustrated and annoyed that they want to unsubscribe from stuff, but they can only unsubscribe from it after they get an email? Not anymore. Now you can just go into that area and just see all of the email lists that you are on, that it has gotten emails from over a period of time, and one at a time just say, get me out of that one.

Rachel Spaugh (09:37.014)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Spaugh (09:54.411)
Yeah, fascinating. OK, let me think some of the places I want to go from there. So compression was definitely a theme. You had a session, I believe it was day two, Marketing That Kills Momentum, that I thought was something I wish I had heard a year ago when I was in the builder seat about how if you give them all the information, you're just basically telling them your journey ends here, right? And I think about movie previews. I get so annoyed when a movie preview has every dramatic moment of the plot.

in the preview and then I'm like, I'm not going to go see that movie because you just showed me everything I need to know. So thinking about.

how not to do that as a marketer. You talked a lot about creating that intrigue. And I think this was really tricky for me when I was new. I tried all kinds of different things of like, what could I take out that leadership thinks I should put in this email that would then make someone click through the email to go to the website? I'm not sure I did a great job at it. So do you have any pointers for someone who's trying to figure that out? What do you hold back at different stages? We can start with emails since I'm using that as an example. What's something you could keep out of an email message that would make someone go to the website?

state.

Kevin (11:02.669)
Okay, remind me of that, because as you were, this is where both of us in the current scenario might not be helpful for the show's benefit. As you're talking about movies, and the frustration of seeing the trailer with all the answers, here's what came to my mind is...

I'm right there with you. I cannot watch a movie if I feel, if I even feel like I mostly know what the movie is about. My ADD kicks in and I'm like, I can't sit still for that long knowing what I'm about to go through. There's some experiences in life where you're like, I know exactly what it is I'm about to experience and sign me up for that. But movies just are not that for me. And yet I wonder if that goes to one of the other.

topics that I talked about in my opening AI piece around agency. I think there is a whole lot of the population that would be happy to sit through a movie knowing the plot because they're just not sure what else they would do with their time. It's like, well, or they just like going to movies. It must work enough for a large population. And so it was just a good reminder of.

Rachel Spaugh (12:09.013)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (12:12.405)
your taste, my taste, any individual person's taste, you can't over-index and say that must be the rest of the world because enough people are going to movies where they just keep making them and they keep marketing them in that same way. And actually that goes back to what Netflix does where it's like they almost need that certainty of knowing that the movie is good enough to be worth their time, that maybe the average person would rather have...

Rachel Spaugh (12:34.645)
Hmm.

Kevin (12:38.765)
almost complete certainty that their 10 to $12 for the ticket isn't going to be completely wasted. Then to go in not knowing anything. Anyway, that's a whole separate thing. And then like keeping things out with the movie themes. I heard this on another podcast I was listening to where they're talking about Alfred Hitchcock and his understanding of what suspense and and thriller and drama meant. And he was talking about like most people would show you like

the ticking bomb and want the bomb to explode at like an unknown period of time to cause the biggest dramatic impact. But what Hitchcock understood is that the better sense of how to get that emotion to last and have a bigger impact was not the surprise bomb going off, but the suspense of seeing the bomb ticking slowly in a movie theater and no one else knows it's there.

and then realizing that they're, know, a 10 year old child is sitting in the seat on top of the bomb and just letting that tension sit there. And humans don't like, they do not like tension. They just want to pop it or ignore it or get out of there as much as possible. so tension is what sometimes we're trying to put back in because there has to be enough tension or else our brains are like, we just wander off to the next thing.

Rachel Spaugh (13:38.047)
Yeah.

Kevin (14:06.765)
If my brain or myself can convince me that I have all the information I need, well now I'm free to go on and explore something else because I have everything I need. And so in an email, you want to make sure that you tee up and layer in, layering is just like a key theme the more that I hear myself talk. But you're layering in why it's worth clicking.

without giving away all the answers. So if it has to follow through with the subject line, super important, minimal amounts of words, but clearly something that's going to be relevant or important. The preview text, which there's some argument now whether you should even have preview text because that clearly identifies it as not a personal email or coming from marketing, but if you do it, it has to be congruent with the subject line and continue the idea.

Essentially the whole email is a promise. You can think about all the different aspects of the email, but it's a promise and the promise is if you open me up and you read what's inside, there will be something of value for you and you can trust the sender that it's worth your time. And so I don't know why I wanna go back to the end actually and say make sure you fulfill the promise.

Because it's easy to just say there's remember the maybe you won't. There's a book called The Monster at the end of this book with Grover in it. Deep cut here. I had the whole the whole book is like don't turn the next page because there's a monster at the end of this book and Grover is the narrator and each page he's adding more ropes and chains and barriers. He's like do not go to the next page and the whole buildup is that there's this.

Rachel Spaugh (15:48.917)
you

Kevin (16:06.515)
scary monster at the end of the book. And the monster is of course Grover because Grover is a monster and a Muppet. It's easy to use the, there's something incredible. You got to click, similarly understanding that for us it's a longer relationship. And if you use that kind of power with limited payoff early on, knowing that in today's environment people are spent

spending years at times in the builder CRMs because they feel stuck because of pricing or interest rates or whatever. If you over promise and under deliver, they're not going to trust you. Again, we keep coming back to the same things, Rachel. So you gotta keep enough tension. You have to keep building layers of promise of like, I do understand you, I do know what you're concerned about, and I do have something that will help.

and I'm gonna need you to go forward. Now, the other argument with email is, is email now in today's world the best place to always have that approach? Sometimes the best approach is make it easy for them to convey, to understand everything that's most important in the email itself. And it's only if they wanna take a next step or go even deeper. So it's like the promise is there's more, there's even more. Like you got everything and that, what that does,

is it lets you build the trust and layer in that like this is gonna be helpful all at the same time where everything that they expect when they open the email is in the email and then you lean in and you're kind of like, there's even something better if you wanna go here.

Rachel Spaugh (17:46.323)
Yeah.

So to ground that in a specific example, I'm thinking about this one inventory home that I was trying to sell one time and we just couldn't figure it out. We really struggled. We felt like it was a great house, super cute, popular layout, really popular community and it just sat and sat and sat. So we were trying to figure out a new angle to present it to the public and me and my new found marketer, know, clumsy like a dog with big paws skittering through the house. I was like, well, let's go with this

energy efficiency thing because this home is smaller and you're going to not have to use very much energy. And we had like hers ratings. And so I did all the calculation going back to Beth's like data and storytelling to try to tell the story of how much a customer would save by buying this home just on their energy bills. So we used a really strong subject line of, you know, turn whatever the down payment for the house was into $97,000 in savings.

pretty strong hook, but then tried to do all the math, like in the email. And I felt like it flopped. It was so hard for me to try to figure out how do I show people how I got here and did all this math and looking back, maybe I could have put it on a blog post, but help me do an autopsy on that email. What do you think worked there and what didn't and why?

Kevin (18:57.003)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (19:05.953)
Yeah, what would have, so do you have to do all the work and the calculation on your end to come up with what the claim is that was in the email? And I think the clearest thing would have been to say the tension was made with such a strong claim in the subject line. You didn't need to add more tension right away. It doesn't feel like so the tension needs to be released.

It needs to say, here's what you can do with that money, and here's how you get it, here's how you save on it generally. So release the tension, and then focus on what's in it for them, like what, again, what do do with that money? But then the next step would be, if you wanna see the actual calculation, like then go click here, or click here to.

see the beautiful pictures. it's the additional layers that I'm not addressing in the email that if I successfully addressed something that's of interest to you, well, what's the next thing that consumer needs to do? If they've never seen that pictures of the house before, then they need to go see that it's not just energy efficient, it's beautiful too, and in a great community. And so let the rest of that story be told off email. But I think that's, you can have too much tension where the customer is just like,

This is stressful and I don't like it and I'm out. And so you're constantly trying to say, like, I saw someone speak at PCBC a couple of years ago and she was like a professional speaker. And she said the best speakers, and I should follow this advice more myself, constantly say, here's the problem, here's the solution.

Like here's the current reality of where we are and why things are bad and could be better. then here's the thing, it's not a narrative arc that you would typically think of where it's just, starts bad and it gets better, better, better, better, better, better. And then there's a payoff at the end at the climax of the story. She's like, no, you want to constantly go back and forth from here's your pain, here's the future, back to the pain, back to the future. And it's that tension of going back and forth that makes people

Rachel Spaugh (20:59.561)
Yeah.

Kevin (21:17.257)
in giving a speech, like really lean in and feel like, okay, but where is this gonna end up and stay in the bad place? Are we gonna keep going to the good place? Where are we gonna go? And I think sometimes marketers just wanna throw it all, either release all the tension or add all the tension. And you gotta keep feeling that middle road all the way through.

Rachel Spaugh (21:37.608)
Yeah.

Rachel Spaugh (21:41.269)
That is a really great insight and that makes total sense to me in retrospect. Like good start and then just did too much and didn't really that soon enough to go back to movies again. The way that I decompressed after Summit is I watched 1917. Super very relaxing thing to do. But what you just reminded me so much of like the first two minutes of that movie, they do that. You've got the general and he's like, hey, here's what's going to go wrong if you don't fix this. Here's where I need you to

Kevin (21:58.669)
Yeah, right.

Rachel Spaugh (22:11.252)
go and all the tension is really built in in that first two minutes and then the whole rest of the movie as you said is just watching the guy go about his mission and wondering the whole time going back to the ticking time bomb is he gonna make it on time is he gonna get there is he gonna do it is he gonna save all the people so that's our yeah

Kevin (22:26.209)
Yeah. And those are my favorite movies too. Because they any movie that says in the first five minutes, hey, you either need to pay attention for this whole thing or just get out. Those are the movies that speak to me. And that's probably just just my brain. But like Baz Ullman movies, I remember when I saw Mulan Rusher the first time I was a kid in college and that's not my kind of movie. But they were just

is like Gilmore Girls speak fast and singing and dancing, all this different stuff. And I was just like, what is that? And then I saw an interview with him where he's like, that's my approach is you're about to strap into my ride and we're going right now. Whereas the movie that's like, we're gonna slowly build and character develop for 30 minutes. Again, it doesn't feel like someone's valuing my time in the same way.

Rachel Spaugh (23:10.292)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Spaugh (23:19.484)
Yeah, I think so much media has gone that way that consumers probably have been trained more so to expect that now, for better or worse, right? We want to know what's in it for us right up front, and then you can take your time and be leisurely. OK, thinking through that and extending it a little past marketing now, I think one thing that was really hard for me was threading that needle as a new marketer between what is my role and my job to say versus when does it go over to online sales and sales. And sometimes I would come up with marketing

ideas and then as I got deeper into them realized this actually needs to be a conversation and I can't have that conversation as the marketer, but I love this idea. I don't just want to give it up. I don't just want to toss it over to online sales or sales. How do you, how do you take an idea you come up with as a marketer and hand it off in a way that is actually helpful to your sales team and to your customer?

Kevin (24:11.469)
Oh, lots and lots of planning, practice, rehearsal, preparation. It's kind of like putting on the summit. You have to first make sure that what you are handing off is something they want to pick up. That, think, in and of itself could be something that people need to really stop and consider. A lot of times the conversations aren't had, and this goes, I think we talked about this on an episode previously, like what objection are you willing to take?

And sometimes these great ideas that marketing comes up with are creating objections that we haven't considered would even happen. So that's just unintended crossfire damage there of we think one thing's gonna happen, we're overly simplistic about what might happen, and we just assume everyone out in the world's gonna behave and respond the same way. And then online sales or sales comes in and is like, what the heck are you doing? Like all these people are coming with this.

other idea about what you just said and we didn't even know it was going out and now we don't know what to say and now we look stupid. By the way, if you want to kill your relationship with sales teams of any kind, do anything that makes them feel or look stupid and you will, you're instantly in a hole that you may or may not recover from. So you wanna have conversations with them of here's what I'm thinking because.

Rachel Spaugh (25:21.383)
Yeah.

Kevin (25:32.31)
This is the idea of dialogue again, two oppositional forces coming up with the best idea. Here's what I'm thinking about sending out, here's where I'm coming from, what do you think? And online sales, who has these hundreds and hundreds of interactions with consumers every month goes, I mean, what about this? What about that? Because we can't get far enough on just our own perspective. And then.

Through that dialogue, I can think of examples where people would say, well, what about this? Like, I wish more people asked me, like, this is a strong differentiator of who we are or what we offer in these communities. People don't seem to ask me about that stuff. Okay, well then, can't have, it shouldn't be us having the full conversation, giving all the information. But finding ways to tee up.

or peak the interest around those ideas that those questions do get asked. It's kind of like lobbing up a softball to the online sales team or to the sales team. So when I work for a custom builder, didn't... Custom has this tension of you can do almost anything and also almost anything is paralyzing to a large number of consumers. So it was all about...

Rachel Spaugh (26:47.891)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (26:51.349)
combining the idea of we can do anything, but we have experts. And then when online sales would get those emails and those conversations and people would kind of tiptoe into it, like, what do you think about this? It wasn't, do you offer this? Like a consumer calling and saying, can I get this option in my house? Do you guys do this? Is very different than them saying, hey, what do you think about this? Because it wasn't just that these are people who are gonna...

like give you facts. But these are people who have helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people through the process of building a custom home over the years. And there is much of the value proposition as anything else. So I think you're right that the marketers tend to want control and too much control leads to rebellion. I'm not just talking political or anything. It's like,

Rachel Spaugh (27:34.887)
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin (27:51.478)
As a parent, you can try to control your kids. That's why we use the analogy of the horse and the rider a lot of that thoroughbred and the jockey. If the horse feels the jockey too much, it's gonna throw the jockey off. It's like, I will accept enough guidance, but too much control? No, thank you. So it's really understanding where the handoff is. I mean, think how good.

Rachel Spaugh (27:52.497)
Every parent knows, I was just thinking.

Kevin (28:19.885)
a salesperson feels saying, hey, the consumer data shows this needs to be addressed. Here's what we could potentially do with marketing. What do you think? And I really need you all to be the best at this conversation because, so yeah, all those things together. That's all.

Rachel Spaugh (28:39.197)
Yeah.

That's all. Our work here is done. It makes me think of this social media post I saw a few weeks ago that has stayed with me because it stuck out so much. don't remember which builder it was from. I wish I could. But know a lot of people were asking at Summit on how do you keep your social media fresh? How do you keep your emails fresh? And I think about everything you just said. And I love the idea of we'll take the conversations that people are having further into the funnel and

them up a little bit and give that visibility and this builder did it really well. The whole video was framed as like someone in the field or someone in sales calling one of the people in construction or in land development, I don't know what department, and asking, hey these guys want to know can they put these specific trees on their lot? Can we do that for them during build?

And then the whole real is just the guy explaining all the different regulations and zoning codes and how, we as the builder can't do that. But once you move in, the thing they're asking for, they absolutely can have. Yes, they just have to do it themselves. And I could imagine being a marketer sitting inside a builder that when people hear that for the first time, like deep into the process, they're probably really upset. And it sounds like you're just trying to say, no, you do that. We don't want to deal with it. So I thought that was a brilliant way to just bring that question and that objection or that disappointment further up the funnel.

Kevin (30:01.037)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Spaugh (30:05.781)
and show some visibility into that. Can you think of any examples like that over the years that you've seen of someone doing something with content that's maybe unexpected but is very tied to that customer journey?

Kevin (30:18.367)
Yeah, although we're gonna go deep in the rabbit hole because, well, first, the idea of bringing things up that are gonna happen later on is not just good from, like, this is something new or different from a content perspective. It's things that consumers aren't gonna find as answers in the FAQ section. There are still...

Rachel Spaugh (30:41.905)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (30:44.447)
a whole bunch of things that no AI tool is going to pick up because it has to be addressed enough times for the data to even through that period of compression show up in an answer. So unless every builder or hundreds of builders or at least dozens of builders are talking about this publicly on their websites, there's not gonna be enough.

Rachel Spaugh (30:55.888)
Yeah.

Kevin (31:06.271)
information. That's why until very, very recently, by the way, silly example, if you asked any AI visualization tool to show you to make an image of a glass of wine that is filled to the brim of the cup, it couldn't do it. Because wine, almost every image of wine is a glass of wine that is about halfway or a third full, so you can switch it around. And so it was like they asked for wine. That means this image filled to the brim.

Essentially, it was saying would equal not wine. And so it would say, yes, here's your image as you've requested filled to the brim and it would show a thing of wine half full. So there's this data problem. so talking about things that other people aren't talking about and don't have answers to is showing this expertise, which is also really important and showing the value of why you have that conversation. For us, again, even as a custom builder, was...

there's things that we can't do well. So it was lighting fixtures. We had hundreds of different lighting fixtures that you could choose from, but we did not allow people to just say, found this one random light fixture from Pakistan that I'd like to import for $3,000 and then have your electricians hang. The reason was a very practical one, that if we wait for 60 days for this light fixture to show up, one that delays

timing of everything. Two, they often show up with missing pieces and parts and then what do we do? Three, there was an instance one time where a electrician who was being paid, I mean, let's just make a round number, 50, 60 bucks an hour, is hanging a crystal chandelier that someone selected. The chandelier itself was like $2,000.

But the amount of time that it took for an electrician to hang individual crystals by the thousands properly meant that the labor going into that light fixture was like three times the amount of the light fixture itself by the time they were done. So it just didn't make sense to be like, yes, we will do anything and everything you want to. There still had to be some limits. And customers who are hearing that you're the number one custom builder in the market are like, hey,

Kevin (33:29.547)
This is your promise, what the heck? So we created what we called a design selection and we made our own interior designers for our own models. If they wanted to use any light fixture, which they always did because they're models and it's their canvas and they wanna do something fun and different, we'd say, great, if you wanna use that lighting fixture, then here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna follow the same rules as our homeowners and you're gonna get

It capped off when the home is done, turned over to you to do the design, and you and your team are going to find whatever other light fixtures you want. We limited them to, I believe, two or three per house maximum. And then we would identify those in the model, sales teams knew.

They would go, I just love that light. What is that? I'm like, well, that is a designer option. Designer option, what does that mean? It means that you can add all the things necessary for that light to be there, but when you move in, there's just gonna be a cap on it and it's up to you, the homeowner, to install it. Well, that's dumb. I don't want it that way. I understand it is inconvenient. Here's the reasons why, and by the way, we made our own designers do the same thing. So.

telling that in a fun, interesting, compelling way is not for everyone. Like that's not something that you would put on your main feeds. But it is this idea of either helping to overcome an objection, make people understand something that they don't initially understand that I think is a good example of what you're talking about.

Rachel Spaugh (35:02.034)
Yeah. Any other just lingering thoughts for you from the summit that you would like to share in this forum today?

Kevin (35:10.413)
Well, the thing that I got asked the most to talk more about was something that Casey from MI referenced. it was hit on lots of different places, but his specific quote, which I sadly don't have in front of me, so I will probably not do it right, is that incentives are closing tools, not primary marketing messaging. And I think I had five or six people text me over the next 30 minutes,

Rachel Spaugh (35:30.482)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (35:40.098)
different versions of can you send that out in a mass mail so my boss can see it back home to can you please walk over to the room next door where all the salespeople are and tell them the same thing. That one definitely hit it. And I think the other thing for me is just this idea of limiting factors where as marketers, the reason we get curious about all parts of the business

Rachel Spaugh (35:46.458)
Yes.

Kevin (36:07.533)
should not be because we wanna control all parts of the business. But it's understanding that the limiting factors have to be addressed. That's what the market proof algorithm is about, is what is the limiting factor that's preventing the results we wanna have happen. And the limiting factors as perceived by the rest of the company is always, we just need more leads. We just need more traffic. We just need that one person who's gonna buy.

And there is nothing in any of the data for most home builders that says that you need more attention. And so I think systems, CRM systems, processes, whole entire departments, it is possible that one of the reasons, I just had to call someone yesterday, essentially that another department in their company was ruining the customer experience from beginning to end, like almost intentionally, like they were sadistic.

that has to be addressed or it doesn't matter how many more people you shout to and try to convince and get them to trust you because you're just ultimately going to create more unhappy customers. So I think that was a big one for me too is like just accepting what everyone else is saying is limiting factor. That's why we need the data to tell the compelling story is and not to tell them you're wrong to give them an opportunity to change their minds.

So I think, and the last one, Rhonda kicked off at the beginning by saying, do something different. And I just kind of added on the, do something different with a purpose. Either do something different to address the limiting factor or to go deeper, like triple down on what makes your builder different or unique in the marketplace. Different for different sake is, that's the definition of chaos. Like let's just do something different. Why? Just because you got to keep doing stuff different.

Rachel Spaugh (38:00.764)
Yeah.

Kevin (38:03.393)
That's just chaos. Different with intention to either fix limiting factor or go deeper on the brand is always worth doing.

Rachel Spaugh (38:10.866)
Yeah, if you're new, especially, you don't want to get the reputation of being the person who comes in and changes things up just for the sake of changing things up. Like, it's so ego-driven, and that's a hard reputation to overcome later.

Kevin (38:18.945)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (38:22.647)
That's one of the biggest sources of frustration between my wife and I, right? It's like, where's the toaster? It's been here for the last six years. I don't know, I just, I wanted to move it. Okay, well, I mean, why? Like was, it just felt like it needed to be different. Okay, and so I just have to relent and be like, her do it, but change for no reason is gonna be frustrating to people around you. Like they need to understand what the purpose is.

Rachel Spaugh (38:50.234)
Yeah, don't make your marketing the toaster. That's the sound bite from this episode. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. This is awesome. I'll see you again next month.

Kevin (38:55.149)
There you go.

Kevin (39:00.205)
All right, thanks, Rachel.