Transcript: The ONE Marketing Tool That Saves Time & Improves Consistency

Lindsay: Do you know that there’s one tool or one resource that every marketing department in the AEC industry should have, but most don’t, and it’s something that they can create. They don’t need any special software, but it will make their department run so much smoother, more efficiently and effectively, and really help onboard new marketers to the department.

Well, that’s the marketing handbook and it’s something that every marketing department should have. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then today’s episode is perfect for you. I have a special guest, Perryn Olson. Perryn is the VP of marketing for REX.one. He’s going to explain what that is. but he’s gonna come on the show today and tell us why he decided to create a marketing handbook. What goes into his marketing handbook, how he physically created it and shares it, and the benefits that he is seeing not only from his marketing department, but other departments. In his company. So, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Perryn.

Lindsay: Well, hey, welcome back to another episode today, we are talking about, one facet of your marketing department that you may have overlooked or may not have thought about how important it is to have a fully collaborative and efficient marketing department. And I have a special guest to share what that is with us. Today I have Perryn Olson, vice president of marketing at REX.one. So hi, welcome to the Perryn.

Perryn: Thank you.

Lindsay: Yes. And so, I kind of left them hanging, but it’s today we’re talking about a marketing department handbook. And Perryn’s going to talk a little bit about how and why and what the benefits are of, of setting this up for his firm. But before we get to that, why don’t you tell our listeners for those of you who may not know you, a little bit about yourself, like how you got into the industry, what you’ve done along the way and what you do today.

Perryn: Yeah. So, like most of us, I didn’t start out being AEC marketer. I actually have a college degree in graphic design and worked at a small studio out in New Orleans and intern there lasted 14 years. Grew, grew up the ranks. As I, as the company grew. I grew, it was a great opportunity because you have to learn a little bit of everything. And early on in my career, we got a referral, from an IT firm. And I’ll get back to that, that’s important note. For a large general contractor, heavy civil contract did highway paving, things like that. And then Katrina hit almost immediately after that introduction. So, there was a lot of cash in New Orleans and there’s also a lot of construction and it was kind of this unity of keeping the out towners out of New Orleans trying to keep the money local. So, a lot of people started investing in construction. We had a lot of generational changes and then my boss at the time went to a conference, which I love the name of Mind Your Own Business. And she came back and was like, we need a niche.

And I thought she was crazy, slept on it the next day. I was like, I totally agree. So, to figure out our niche, we started calling it who we’d not want to work with. So, we started to actually stop working with doctors and lawyers, who do we like working with? And we did construction, so called a few construction clients that we had they thought there’s a great opportunity to go after this kind of niche of construction, brand marketing design website development. and they’re like, you need to change the name. It’s the name of the firm was Design the Planet that like its cool name, it’s too fluffy, literally three out of five constructing the executives their name was fluffy. so that’s where Brand Constructors was born, was out of that kind of brainstorm. I jumped at that opportunity. Most of those clients were mine. I loved working with them. and then in this industry, and just kind of deep dive front for many years after that and grew that firm kind of came the face of that, Brand Constructors and kinda hit my glass ceiling there and then went over to Inge for a little while. And just kind of got tired of the burn. Hinges a very fast-moving train And so I got an opportunity actually from the IT firm that got me into construction, they were growing and good point where they were looking for a marketing director. I was of looking to go internal just to go deeper instead of wider. And I just made the jump from AEC to technology, but had an AEC focus ourselves. And one of the things they wanted me to do there was built out our niche markets for AEC healthcare and auto dealers was actually the other niche.

Lindsay: Oh interesting.

Perryn: So, uh, stay there for a while. I was there about four and a half, five years, but in those five years we had, three CEOs and two owners had changes. So, a lot of crazy pieces were moving and stuff, and it was finally time for me to leave that. and actually, someone I had talked to years ago, the CEO of REX saw on LinkedIn, it was kind of looking around and we started a conversation and it seemed like the right fit. So, REX is actually an interesting model. We are actually a construction company, an engineering firm and a technology startup. So, it’s fitting all my check boxes. And one of the things I really love about it’s, we’re only 10 years old, so we don’t have these sacred cows and a hundred years of history that we have to live by. And I have a CEO that loves doing things that no one else has done. So, it’s, it’s an interesting piece when we talk about things, it’ll say, hey, is anyone else doing this? And I’m like, not that I’m aware of. It’s like, let’s do it, which is totally counter of almost everyone else in AEC. It’s usually, if No one else is doing it, then there’s a reason they’re not doing it.

Lindsay: Right. Yeah. They stay in that safe space of, oh, well, what other firms are doing it? Okay. Then it’s okay to do that.

Perryn: Yeah, and I’ve learned going, you know, IT and, uh, kind of the difference between hinges very much a system and a process learned a lot. but I learned my role as I like to build those systems and processes. And that’s kind of where our topic came from, was coming to REX standardized and institutionalized the marketing.

And one of the things I did was actually centralized it. When I came on board, we had a marketing coordinator for engineering and a marketing manager for construction, and they really didn’t talk, even though they’re in the exact same role, essentially. And then as I got to know them, the marketing manager had more expertise in a thought, which was great. And my marketing coordinator in engineering actually wanted to be a designer. And that was more her passion and her backup. So, we started to centralize the teams in also knowing the technology startup was starting to kick off. Like I can’t have one here and one there, I need a centralized team.

So, we went actually to what I call a hybrid agency model, where we became correct construction, REX engineering became our clients, and we were kind of doing a similar thing with HR and accounting. And that’s where we developed the REX.one brand. And the parent company is. Is the support company for the other REX companies is all of our clients have to be named REX and the name REX.one is actually our universal email address. So, it’s we already had the.one. And so, we started building out this kind of a team attitude of everyone is on the REX.one team.

Lindsay: Okay. Interesting.

Perryn: Yeah,

Lindsay: Yeah, I like that. I’m a big proponent if anybody that you know, has listened to more than one of these episodes of a big proponent of standardization, and, and getting everybody on the same page, and especially marketing departments and, you know, I’ve done very similar things at my previous Firms that I’ve worked at, I’ve been brought in to bring that standardization, bring, you know, build the marketing department. So, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun today talking about one, one area to standardize is, this marketing handbook. So why did you guys decide to create a marketing handbook? What was the tipping point or what was the deciding factor?

Perryn: The very first piece of content I wrote was I came back and then we shared a document, a word and turn on changes. And the two marketers on the team were both, they kept changing all the little nitpick stuff and really wasn’t changing a lot of my verbiage. It was capitalizing. REX is that for us, REX is all caps REX, and the one is all lower case. And so, we just, some of those little things and like design build, I hyphen. Are they hyphenated nice slashed and multifamily. I put two words. They put like, I’m like, this is just different than I’ve done. Like we just need a set of standards. And then as we talk. And as we started standardizing things, we realized we need to hear this.

And it just, so we started kind of keeping lists of the things that we need to start doing. And then we started talking about how do we grow this firm? And one of the things that was happening at REX was we’re only 10 years old. We’re kind of going from a sole proprietor to kind of a company or corporation.

I was one of the. One of five new executive team members, essentially in the last year and a half. Um, so we added four of the four of the five within four months of each other, five months of each other. So, we’re kind of growing and building these processes and building just management. And I just signed us, like, we need to start writing some of this stuff down. It was just,

Lindsay: It sounds so simple when you say it like

Perryn: Yeah. And it’s, it’s that. And then we started turning like, okay, what is our 10-year goal? And they, the goal is to 10 X, the company in 10 years. Okay. If we’re going to scale, that means we’re going to hire. If we’re going to hire, how do we get these people up to speed faster? So, then we start, okay. If we bring on these people, how do we do this? And it’s, it was just some of the simple things of even like, okay, if you onboard a new marketer, what do they need? You know, it’s such some of this is basic stuff of like the capitalization of REX and some of it’s, like one of the things I added just university AEC, acronyms, like is something I know everyone that’s new to the industry. Even if you’ve been in a couple of years, if you haven’t worked exactly in the space, like, like we hired a geo-technical engineering marketer to come in, we were structural and MEP. And this is like, what are these terms? Like it just,

Lindsay: Yeah. Each like market or industry within the AEC has its own jargon.

Perryn: Yes. And we actually, in our engineering, we have a subset of structural engineer called connections engineering, which I never knew as a thing. And that’s one of our specialties. That’s actually our, what we started as was a connection engineering team.

Lindsay: interesting. I’ve never, I’ve worked for structural engineering firms, and I don’t even know what that is. So.

Perryn: we, we do the work they don’t want to do. So, we actually, which is weirdest. We don’t, that team doesn’t work for architects. They work for the steel erectors and literally designed every connection of steel, which it’s like, oh, I knew somebody did that. I didn’t realize that was a specialty though.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So, you talked a little bit about kind of the impetus of like how this started. Like I said, it seems kind of obvious, but I know there are a lot of firms out there right now. And many of you guys that are listening, do you have a marketing handbook? And even if you’re a marketing department of one, you should still start creating one because eventually, hopefully your firm’s going to grow and you’re going to have somebody else, or you’re going to get extra help either freelance, or maybe somebody, you know, from another department. So, let’s talk a little bit about what goes into your marketing handbook.

Perryn: well, I would say it was always my goal with my old firm and I was the marketing department one to do it. And I think the marketing handbook better is just a collection of post-it notes. On my bulletin board. It was sort of like Sherwin-Williams pink colors that match our PMs colors, like that kind of things and hashtags and stuff. But because there’s a little more size, I can’t just share post-it notes on my screen and remember, so, some of it is just so simple. What is their official REX blue, pink colors. It says we’re; we’ve gone through some office standardizations as well. And, with multiple brands, we have multiple social media channels and hashtags. Like, I actually have a shortcut on my desktop of social media hashtags because I usually have someone else do those. But occasionally I see something, I will just go post it or they’re out on vacation, whatever. It’s just a reference for me, even though I’m the one who made the strategy for the hashtags, but it’s especially, cause we’re dealing with so many different brands. We have to operate a little differently. And I know some of you, people are probably like, well, I don’t only have one brand, but you probably have multiple business units, or you have multiple leaders, Studios. Yeah.

You probably have more multitude than you realize. And so, you start standardizing stuff. And one of the other things we were starting to see. when business developers like why’s multifamily, hyphenated, and like, cause I’ve never seen it that way. I’m like, that’s the standard we put in place like that. Just there’s new nuances that new people bring to the table, that we can say, well, this is the REX way. And like it’s whether it’s right or wrong, this is how we’re doing

Lindsay: it.

Yeah, we’re just going to all be consistent. This way.

Perryn: Correct. Let’s be consistent with that. Cause I think we’ve all seen documents. I think multi-family that easy one that kind of pinpoint you’re like, well, why. is it hyphenated in the title and not in the body?

And it’s

Lindsay: right.

Perryn: just that little kind of things and spell checks. Not going to catch that. Like

Lindsay: No, right. Yeah. Same with like healthcare. I think you also mentioned like design build a big one. I worked in transportation firms, stormwater, one word, two words,

Perryn: Or even how do you how do you make the acronym for those? Like I’ve even seen companies have selling different acronyms for things. And some of the other things, since we have multiple offices, even a little thing, like we have a whole page on headshot standards that we then literally copy and paste and send to the photographer that we’re using.

And it was great. We actually had a photographer in your neck of the woods recently for our Orlando office that followed them. It’s like they came back, we had like a little bit of touch up to do. Tweak colors and soften the macro, but we did one in Chicago and the photographer did it for one of the eight photos. He followed the standards.

Lindsay: Oh, my goodness. Oh, that’s frustrating.

Perryn: so, do we go make, and everyone reshoot, or we just have a couple hours of Photoshop on everyone. So, I’m sure some of you probably like one of the marketing team of one, or I don’t have time to stand it in. We’ve kind of been doing this in the background of collecting stuff, but it’s the thing that I’m trying to get stuff out of email. Like we’ve done a few different office brandings recently, and we’ve got the pink colors in there. Just even we’d do like one vinyl wrap. Like we wrap an entire wall with our mantra. Well, we’ve learned the hard way is we need to do a certain level of sanding on it. So, we know it’s, this is a level five sanding. Well, if it’s not documented somewhere, where is that? It stuck in my email. So, if I’m not around anymore, if I’m even on vacation, you’ve got to have these kinds of standards. Cause we put that in there. what else did we put in that? Oh, even we’ve had a trade show recently that we came up with some blue signature drinks. So, we put the recipes in there.

Lindsay: I love it.

Perryn: and I’m sharing this with the other team, because that was one team of my six business units. We did this for a trade show there’s so if the other people weren’t at the show, which they weren’t, how would they even know we had a blue signature Let alone how to make it. and then even adds a link so you could get some how to make one drink or how to make a jug.

Lindsay: Well, even for yourself, like next year, when that trade show comes along, are you going to remember the recipe for that blue drink?

Perryn: or where we found it and what tricks we made it to make it bluer.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. So let alone other people, but for yourself, like you don’t want to dig back through your own email find that.

Perryn: That’s one of the things I’ve started telling the team. If you ever have to go to email to reference something that needs to be in the book, like that’s just kind of becoming the new mantra of, and it’s, we’re not done. Like I was making updates to it today. And so, it’s this idea that we’re going to constantly make updates to it. And as things change. you do need to go back and revisit it as well. And the one thing that our team marketing con comes to Guinea pigs, and I would, if this happens for other people, but this is kind of working at we’re packaging this up and they say, Sharon, so you guys need to document your processes. You need to document your frequently asked questions and things like that.

Lindsay: So, we talked a little bit about different ideas that goes into it, your editorial guidelines. I heard that your brand colors, if you have all your social media channels and certain hashtags that you use your headshot standards, I’m sure you could probably also add like project photography standards. If you know, there are certain things like that, all the way to like your frequently asked questions or trade show drinks. And I would imagine too, any type of, brand language, like your mission statement, your vision statement, you know, any, and you know, how you about REX.one, is there, so this a lot of information. So how physically are you creating this and sharing this and updating this

Perryn: So, since we’re marketers, we know InDesign, so we created an InDesign book.

Lindsay: um,

Perryn: And way a book works, and most people don’t use the book feature and I’ve only used it once in my career before this it’s essentially, the book is like the spine of a book. And you add in all these individual InDesign templates. So, there’s an individual template for every single or InDesign file for every one of these. So, there’s one on our history. There’s one on AEC, acronyms and jargon. There’s one on logo, colors, and social media. So, our book right now has about 22 individual InDesign files within the book, and then you can drag and drop the order and things like that. And actually, they can page number them. but what’s cool is about that is you can then share one page. So, if we’re sending something to our printer, we can send our logo guide but also the next step for us is we’re going to go build a business development handbook because one of the things we’ve also seen is when they business developers come on board, it’s not teaching them how to do business development.

It’s what resources does REX already have for you like, I had a new business, all bred started a couple months ago and she’s like, I need banners. I need this. I need flyers. I’m like, we have all that. So, like, why didn’t know? Like it just so it’s, she’s totally right. We need all that and we already have it. So, it’s just, here’s what you already have. I was talking to one the other day and I’m like, here, let me, he’s trying to, like, I don’t know how to find this information. Use this tool. It’s like what tool I’m like. Okay. So, we haven’t trained our people, what tools we have. So, I’m not maximizing that return on investment. So, we built the book. One is making it easy for us to keep up to date. And then if you’ve ever worked on an InDesign book over there a hundred pages. It gets unruly sometimes, especially there’s a lot of photos and things like that. So, these are all separately, individually, and I think the largest document and there’s only seven pages.

Lindsay: That’s nice.

Perryn: so, you can go update that one page. The other thing is InDesign, you can’t share. So, I can have one person working on one chapter, essentially, one person working on another, and then the book will then essentially sort them out.

Lindsay: Right, right. Yeah. Each chapter is like a separate file. Yeah.

Perryn: And then we can interchange them. So actually, we’re looking at re redoing our statement of qualifications for our engineering team, because sometimes we have just structural go or sometimes it’s structural Nmap sometimes it’s all three. Like we can interchange a little differently by working off these multiple books. And so, kind of keeping our normal source files

Lindsay: Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, you have one InDesign book and for those of you that are listening, that doesn’t know what we’re talking about. If you’re familiar with InDesign files, you can, take a bunch of files and add them to a book and it kind of makes them cohesive, but you can still edit each file and maintain each file separately.

And it just updates into the book. it’s been a while since I’ve done that, but I used to do that for some pretty large, Design build MP3 pursuits that we used to work on that where we have four or five marketers working on the same pursuit, same proposal. And so, we would do it that way so we could, you know, so-and-sos assigned to resumes so-and-so is assigned, you know, the project approach and graphics and stuff, so different people could be working on it. And the nice thing about the InDesign books is you can create your table of contents. And then when they’re all in the book, you can, then all the page numbering is sequential throughout all the files at even as you add and subtract pages and stuff.

So,

Perryn: it makes that way easier. Um, so yeah. it was on that we had not done before and we’d even gone to kind of a master page for somewhere like statement qualifications and those pages. And we have these crazy, like cheat sheets on how to export them with the different sections and like, I’m working with my designer I’m like this would be so much simpler in a book. I

Lindsay: yeah, yeah.

Perryn: make three different books for the three different variations. because if you think about like one person’s resume is probably in 20 or 30 different files between and proposals and stuff like that, the way the books would were essentially make a book for each one of those pieces, and then you’d feed off the same resume.

Lindsay: Okay. Gotcha. So also, in this marketing handbook is like, kind of like your firm qualifications and you’re like master resumes or are those separate?

Perryn: We keep those separate? we’ve listed like kind of where they’re at and in like the business development, here’s your marketing tools or you market materials. Like we list, you have a statement of qualifications. Here’s the different variations. we’re trying not to go too far in the weeds, and it is this kind of balance act how far do we go? And one of the things we’re going to, if it’s something that you have to go look up, put it in there, like that’s like the hashtags, like we post social media every day almost, or every week. But it’s very easy to kind of forget certain hashtags or, uh, just trying to keep our consistency. And sometimes we’ve also had some hashtags we’ve got feeds other places we wanna make sure we get them right.

Lindsay: Right. right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. okay. So that’s a little bit about how you’re creating it. How are you sharing it? Because not everybody I’m sure is opening the InDesign files.

Perryn: Correct. So, we have this PDF export of it. So, like I have one of, one of the pages just pinned on my desktop. it’s in our, we all work off of teams, so we have that. And then as we’re building out other pieces, we’re sharing that with other teams and their team channels. So, it’s, we kind of have a, a spot for our business development team is like, here’s all the final marketing files for you guys like the final flyer. So, we don’t give them the InDesign and all the JPEGs and like all that. Here’s your final PDF and it’s date stamp. So, they already kind of trained to know that’s the central place for everything. So, we’re doing the same thing with a marketing handbook. It’s like, here’s the final file.

Lindsay: Okay. And then when you guys make updates, you just go and update that file

Perryn: And then we just change the date, change the date stamps. So, we know it’s, it’s the most recent,

Lindsay: Okay.

Perryn: yeah. I’ve, I’ve, gotten rid of the samples one to two final finals,

Lindsay: yeah.

Perryn: years ago. I learned why when we hit final, final, final, final, final. I was like, we didn’t start date stamping

Lindsay: I will. I wanna like have in the file name. No, this is really the final.

Perryn: Yeah.

Lindsay: So, I started doing this like submitted, like that’s for proposals specifically, like that’s the submitted file.

Perryn: Yep. That’s perfect.

Lindsay: yeah. and then delete all the rest of the PDFs, you know, that were like version three, version seven,

Perryn: I know I’ll go make a separate folder for him. Like one of the things that did it, what does that Brand Constructors? We actually have a file called final folder called final. And then we had all of the samples and stuff like that. We get really good about our file structure. And, but even the final, sometimes you had multiple versions. You’re like, oh, what’s going on?

But it’s and its stuff. And you come back three or four years later and find that stuff. And that was, and the other things, one of the things on the market handbooks. Our name standards. How do we abbreviate, like our own file structure? It was one of things. So, it isn’t just things that we had to do, but some of the stuff we had to make decisions on, because remember I had a construction market or in an engineering market and I was coming in new. So, all three of us were doing things differently. And I remember years ago when I was at the Brand Constructors is like trying to find an old file for business cards. And some people called the BC, some called the bus card, B cards, some called dizcard it’s like.

Yeah. It’s like what one of them had some wasn’t going to be anything or like cards. And I’m like, is that a new card? Is that a like, so it was like just standardizing our own terminology for file structure, and then trying to even build out a folder structure that. Kind of organizing all this because you know, I was coming one person, put everything on one server and one put everything on another and then we kind of jammed them together. And so, it’s, and That’s kinda the way we’ve grown also through acquisitions, we had separate servers for everything, and we’re still somewhat standardizing that. So, some of this was forcing us to make these decisions and then share them. So, we’re still got to go clean up and that we’ve made these decisions. We’ve got to go back and clean up the server. but that. those are some of them, it wasn’t just documenting. Some of it was actually making the decisions of doing this.

Lindsay: Right. And that’s really important to get your, a file name, your folder, name structure, kind of determined and making it like. Painfully obvious and as logical as, as possible. you know, I’ve had to do a little bit of cleanup, in our, we have it like a SharePoint marketing drive. Cause I was like, well, where are all the blog posts? And they’re like, oh, well they’re in HubSpot. Cause we use HubSpot to, and I’m like, well, where are the. The word documents, like where are people? Right. Oh, they’re like, oh, they’re in somebody’s email. And I’m like, and there like multiple drafts going around and I’m like, okay, we are going to put one file in a blog folder called 20, 22 blog articles.

And you know, you name it this way. And then we’re going to just share that link. It’s everybody that needs to edit it. So, they’re editing all in the same document and it was just like, oh, my gosh, why aren’t, why are we doing this? We’re just creating so much more work when we don’t approach things that way.

Perryn: And in, because I have a CEO, that’s an engineer and very big on process improvement. So, one of the things that he’s kind of also trying to push out is not just constantly think of processes for this, get it right the first time. So, it doesn’t take you like that. It wasn’t the business card. I mean, it should take me two minutes to make an update to somebody who’s business cards sent out to print. If it takes me an hour to find the file. Cause they can’t find the file, then it’s kind of, those kinds of things are just not having to go back and edit files again because you use multifamily instead of hyphenating, like just getting it Right, the first time saves so many issues and it’s amazing. Like I think we’ve all worked at a company or what’s a team. They get it wrong early, and then they’re constantly paying for those mistakes’ months or years

Lindsay: Right. They don’t want to take the few minutes to just set it up right from the get-go. So, yeah. And if anybody. I put together a resource because I’m so passionate about file naming and structure. I have my end your file. Frustration, starter pack. So, I’ll put the I’ll link that up in the show notes. It’s an e-book and a template and just some guidance on how to specifically structure your marketing, drive. It’s really geared towards marketing. So just shameless plug there since we’re talking about file structure.

Perryn: perfectly relevant to,

Lindsay: Okay. So, getting back to the marketing handbook, so you’ve created it, you’re updating it continually. I love your kind of your slogan of, if you have to look it up, if you have to look up something, put it in the marketing handbook, and you’re sharing it. So, you’ve implemented it and you’ve been using it. What are some of the benefits you’ve seen since deploying.

Perryn: I don’t have to look stuff up this much. It’s I I’ve seen, like we hired a new marketer, marketing coordinator in November. And there are certain things that it took her a little while to get up, to speed you know, she came from a geo-technical engineer. She knew the industry to an extent, but it was still very different than what we do. And it was kind of a detriment of my designer. And I almost think of like, in some regards, like if we both put in, like when we’re doing our file structures and our naming conventions, and they were probably 90% the same. It was kind of eerie actually. So, her and I could actually work very well together and kind of figure each other’s mindset. That doesn’t mean the next person will, and that we want diversity on the team. I want people to think different. I hate yes men. And so, we have to be able to pass on, be able to communicate the institutional knowledge, is one of the big things is just get people up and running faster. It’s about getting that stuff right the first time. and then kind of the first step of process improvement is document the process. And I was amazed when I, when I started REX, when the things I did was to learn, to make a flow chart of like, here’s how its proposal goes from start to finish.

Lindsay: my gosh. Yeah. I love

Perryn: it was, it was funny cause they were like, why are we going through this Perryn? We’ve all been doing this for years. Just humor me. And so, I had like a five-step process by the end of it, it was 12 step process. Like it was just, it just jogged by the different hands and what, who needs to do what? And because it made us kind of sit down OK, marketing’s in charge of this business. I’m in charge of this. Accounting is in charge of like who’s in charge of stuff. Cause we had, we had one proposal when I first started, we missed the deadline because we’re all waiting on someone else to provide information and basically it was this giant circle. And it was kinda like why was marketing supposed to do that? And accounting comes like, why was I supposed to, like, we had to really sit down who owns this ownership or who owns this content. And that was a big piece. So just figuring out your processes is one thing, but then you got to document them for the next person. And, you know, it’s, you still got to think of that proverbial hit by the bus. You know, it’s, I’ve unfortunately, when I was at a company for 14 years, there’s a lot of turnovers in 14 years. So, it’s your constant kind of going behind somebody and trying to figure out, okay, how is this person thinking to save this file? Where would they save?? Like the knowing? So, I used to totally forget the fact that I’m thinking, okay, when you’re gone, I’m going to have to figure this out. It’s like, if you wouldn’t be on a vacation and not have me call it.

Lindsay: Right.

Perryn: Then do you need to do this the right way the first time.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah.

Perryn: Cause I don’t, I don’t like calling people on vacation, so I try to change that mentality of just it’s not when you’re fired or quit or whenever it’s, or deaths, patient, like let’s just do something simple and fun when you’re at Disney world do you want me to call, you?

Lindsay: Because you can’t find a file.

Perryn: I can’t find a file. Yeah. So, I would try to do that kind of stuff. Like just, if you’re one of these people that can’t go on a cruise, cause you can’t disconnect. Cause your phone has to call you, then you didn’t document anything.

Lindsay: Right. Right. it can seem overwhelming at first. Cause I, I get this a lot, you know, especially when I was a CRM consultant, I’m like, Let’s talk about the process let’s document, let’s put together some training materials and they’re like, oh, we don’t want to, you know, they don’t want to take the time to do that. And I’m like, but what happens when you have a new PM that starts, and you, and you want them to enter data into the database, like now you have to spend your time showing them how to do that. When you could have just made a little cheat sheet graphic or a video or something.

Perryn: Lindsey, you love our CRM has all of our business units on it, all six of them, and there it’s getting a little unruly.

Lindsay: Yeah, I bet that could be a whole other podcast.

Perryn: I’d love to have a month just to sort that thing out.

Lindsay: So, but anyways, so you have the marketing handbook you’ve been implementing it. you talked a little bit about this earlier, but what other areas are you focusing on next, as you’re setting up the marketing?

Perryn: Yeah. So, one the working books never done. So, it’s like, just get that out of your head. Like it’s when we started, I think we had a list of five, then you’re 12 and 20, like essentially. Okay. Here’s what we’re going to have done in phase one. And then we’ll get done some more. Like, it just, it’s a never-ending story. which is a good thing. Like even there’s some things I wrote a few months. Yeah. Often onboarding, offboarding, you know, a marketer was a process I put together it’s already changed in the last six months. Like, just because we’ve had different tools or things change. So, it’s just one of those things I do, but really the next big step is we’re building into a business development manual, and there’s kind of two sides that we have some full-time business developers, and it’s more of just here’s the marketing materials we already have. There’s already chapters in the marketing handbooks that’s essentially done. but then also have some engineers that are kind of moving into the doer seller or seller-doer role. That don’t know how to sell. Like it’s just they’re friendly people. They know how to make phone calls and have lunches. And that’s about as hard as it goes. They don’t know kind of the training behind it. So, we’re kind of also building a training manual that will be a companion for the BD manual. That’s more just their tools. So that’s kind of the next piece is really focusing on business development and its interesting guy, cause I’m sure somebody who’s thinking, like, why did you focus on marketing first? One is I can control it and I knew it

Lindsay: Yeah.

Perryn: versus business. I’m going to have to get other people involved. And it was just some of the letting other things play out in the company. Just other we’re developing that seller-doer culture in particular in the Los Angeles office. So, we’re getting some of the right people in the Right seats. So, it didn’t make sense to write a manual before they were there. And now that yeah.

Lindsay: are you going to involve them in the writing of the manual?

Perryn: Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s, uh, right now we’re, I’m just wrapping up the marketing handbook, uh, kind of getting the first phase done and then we’re starting work on the table of contents, essentially for the BD manual? And then just this week, we’re finally kind of got some buy-in on. Okay. Let’s build out some training for these guys and now we’re going to figure out. Did we go hire a consultant? Do we do it in house? Do we have one of our full-time business developers become more of a sale? Like we’re trying to kind of figure out that next step. but we, we do agree that we do need this institutional knowledge documented in figure, like figured out document it. And it’s not just marketing. It’s not like we’ve really revamped IT recently and they’re going to all this and those huge documentation of, you know, things like that. And, uh, so that’s, it’s just the maturity of the company. Going from that sole proprietor, that kind of everything was in his head to this bigger company.

And a quick story. One of the things we didn’t think I needed document that we had to, as we were sending business cards off for the new technology team and the CEO was like, let me just see what you want, please. Oh, you’re using the wrong phone number. I am.

Lindsay: Oh, no.

Perryn: So, I mean, it would have been like a $50 mistake essentially print those business cards, but it’s still gotten it done right the first time no one ever had the conversation of what are the official phone numbers for the technology team.

Lindsay: Oh goodness,

Perryn: And it was just it’s in the CEO’s head. And I know if I would ask them a year ago, he would have told me, but I never thought to ask them because I didn’t know it was an issue like it just, so it just, those kinds of things, I didn’t know, they had more than one phone number, like in. It’s just, so now we have a nice Excel sheet that then it gets brought in, InDesign for the marketing handbook of here’s the official addresses. And because we have multiple companies, I have some offices that are both engineering construction, but not vice versa. Like Los Angeles is just engineering. We don’t have a construction license in Los Angeles. Yet

Lindsay: Right. So, you have like that extra yeah. Of. Company is at what address? And who’s licensed in what office? Yeah.

Perryn: And I’m in none of them, I’m a hundred percent remote, so that makes it more fun too.

Lindsay: Yeah. That is fun. I was wondering, so you guys don’t have a New Orleans

Perryn: there’s two of us in New Orleans. I recruited the technology president, who was my old boss at the IT firm the founder of the IT firm I worked at.

Lindsay: Okay.

Perryn: uh, so when we were trying to start that up, I was like, Dave would be perfect for this. So, there’s two of us. We do occasionally get together for lunch.

Lindsay: I was going to say, or happy hour, you have your own little office happy hour.

Perryn: We occasionally got together for lunch before he worked at REX. That was just cause I’ve known him for 20 years. He recruited me to the IT firm, and I now recruited him to REX. So, it’s, been fun working with them and actually it’s been cool trying to help him develop and really launch that company. So,

Lindsay: Nice, nice. I love it. I love it. How we in this industry particularly. Like we meet people and then we reconnect and then we’ve worked with them again. I just love how like, interconnected.

Perryn: Well, and he’s the one who referred me to the first construction company.

Lindsay: oh, Nice.

Perryn: So actually, the first two. So, which is, it was weird when I went from AEC marketing to IT marketing. And two of my biggest clients were my marketing clients in the past. So, I walk in they’re like, what are you doing here? And I was like, are you here to meet the business? Like, no, I’m here to at the CFO. And why? Because I worked at the IT firm now. Oh, that’s weird.

So, it was just, it’s a fun, full circle on that one. And the fact that I could then pull him, to REX was,

Lindsay: yeah, that’s neat. That’s neat. Okay. So, let’s start wrapping up for today. This has been really great. I think. The marketing handbook or some kind of marketing resource guide or whatever you want to call it. It seems so fundamental, but I guarantee you so many firms don’t have this. And I think it really will help even that marketing department of one really just be more efficient and more effective.

Save a lot of time when it matters most like when you’re on that crunch, you know, you need that social media posts out, or you need to finish that proposal and you want to verify the office address that it’s coming from,

Perryn: I will say one of the benefits too. There’s always this issue with marketers’ kind of giving the credit they deserve. When you show this marketing handbook to your C-suite, they’re going to like, oh, there is more to marketing than posting on social media. There is more like there’s more science to it. There are also just more foundations of what needs to happen and more standards. Like just, I found it definitely elevated like the aura of marketing when I started even just developing the table of content. So, like you got to track all that stuff. Somebody does like it just so I, if you are, the market might even be more important if you’re a department of one, one of that, you’re thinking more of a process and then just everything in your head. Um, but it’s just to show this to your C-suite. Like, here’s all the stuff I got to deal with.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Before I let you go today, I have three more questions. My rapid fire questions. Are you ready for them? Okay. So, question number one. What is your number one piece of advice for marketers who are new to the AEC industry?

Perryn: it’s simple. Get your boots dirty, get out to the job site, whether your architect, material, construction, get out on a job site. See what you build, see what you do. See the people out there, especially in the construction. They need to see you. They need to understand your real, otherwise just huge disconnect between corporate office and the job site.

The other thing is your kind of gets the real company. Like when I severed on consulting, I always want to go see a job site and they always assume I want to go see like how they market a job site. No, I want to go see the project manager and actually understand what’s really going on and you get the right project manager or superintendent. So, if you get a superintendent that’s been with the company for decades, they knew more about the company than the CEO does.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah,

Perryn: So, it’s a, it’s a good way also just to build credibility with them, but it’s, you really get to understand more about the company when you get out there. So, a lot of people don’t understand really what they do until they get out to the job

Lindsay: Yeah. So, it’d be two pieces of advice. Buy a pair of steel-toe boots. Cause they won’t let you on the job site without them and then go out to the job site. Okay. rapid fire question number two. What has been your favorite or most memorable win?

Perryn: So since you do content, I think you’ll love this one, uh, years ago when I was kind of transitioning between company that was doing some consulting the business developer got me in the market, got me in and I’m sitting across from the CEO and he finally he’s like, why should I hire you? And I spot something behind his back. He had a bookshelf behind his back, and I said, can you pull out that book with the orange spine? And he’s like, why I’m like, just humor me and he pulled it out. Like I wrote that book. He’s like, and it’s the book I wrote years before was construction executives guide the very marketing, he’s like, all right. And he literally signed the contract. Right then we’re done. So, it was like, when you wrote the book on something, it does help,

Lindsay: Yeah. You really flexed. I think that’s what the kids say. You really flexed.

Perryn: Yeah, it was just cool because it was a few years later, four years later after I wrote the book, and I was at a different firm at the time. So, I was actually representing myself, but I was the one who wrote the book, and I knew he was on the list that we mailed it to. So, it

Lindsay: Yeah. So, you knew he would have it, and that was great that he had it

Perryn: yeah. And he actually, I could tell you actually read it, actually, you could, you know, books look new or not like he had actually looked at part of it.

Lindsay: Wow. That’s even great. Well, that is, that is pretty dang awesome.

Perryn: That was a cool win.

Lindsay: Yeah. okay. Last question for today. What are you excited about?

Perryn: I really started digging into account-based marketing is some, I think it’s not a term we hear much in AEC. Uh, but it’s, I think it fits it’s very much about one is kind of doing a go-no-go earlier, not wait on the proposal, but more is, do we pursue this client, which in ABM terms is called ideal client profile, but it’s really a go, no, go on do we even pick up the phone and call this person to you and pursue them, but it’s then how do we do more of a personalized approach and make it more client friendly? We’ve seen this shift in technology and a lot of other marketing sectors make it more customer or client focused. Yeah, we still have too many people in AEC that are all about the firm.

So, this is kind of a hyper-personalized approach to business development. It really pairs marketing business realm together. It brings in content and things like that. So that’s something we’re building out right now, on our team and trying to build out their standards and also kind of giving us some standardization across business development, focused on that. But it’s focused on the client. Okay, why would we pursue them? Where are they a good fit, but why would they care? Is the really the most important question?

Lindsay: Yeah, I think that that is very exciting. I’ve been hearing, I read and in listen to a lot of things outside the AEC industry. And so that’s really big and other B2B sales, especially like high ticket, you know, procurements kind of like what we sell.

Perryn: What’s more high ticket than a building.

Lindsay: I know. I know. and so, it’s really vague and I haven’t really grasped it yet, like fully studied it, but I would be very interested to see how that, how that goes for you and what you do with that, because I know you’ll have much success with that.

Perryn: Yeah, and this is the blessing of having a CEO that loves the fact that no one else is really doing it. Like it’s when I first started, he’s like, what’s this whole account-based marketing thing. I’m like, I have an idea, but let’s really research it. And then just as I kind of dug in, I kept checking them. I’m like, this makes sense. And we just like these fits, and it also fits REX. It was one of the best things like this is what we want to be doing.

Lindsay: well, and I can imagine with your different companies, you know, engineering, construction, and technology, you can serve more of a complete client. You know, you can serve the client in complete,

Perryn: Yeah, it is, uh, it is a differentiator for us, but we also be careful is because some of our best clients on engineering side are other contractors, like, so in invite. So, it’s, we are separate companies, which is great because now I have an engineer leading an engineering firm and a contractor leading construction, but not, you know, I think we’ve all seen like an architect of running an engineering firm. It’s a different discipline. Um, I’ve seen it even on backend web developers trying to do front end websites. You see it in all kinds of facets. So, it fits us well that if it’s our business, that we can be somewhat interchangeable, and it’s really still focused on what’s best for the client. Do we go design build on this because that’s what the client needs, or do we hire a different engineer, or do we hire a different contractor? And most business developers have been in this industry for a while naturally do this. They naturally very relationship focused. They’re naturally trying to personalize their message. The difference now is kind of how we really get content to the business developers is

Lindsay: Right, right. And personalized con it’s really the marketing piece of it. Of the account-based marketing. Yeah.

Perryn: Yeah.

Good.

Lindsay: All right. Well, thank you for being on the show today and for sharing all what you’re doing at REX.one, with all of our listeners.

Perryn: Yeah, I appreciate you having me loved the conversation.

Lindsay: Okay, well, thanks again, to, Perryn for coming on the show. I hope he gave you some ideas of how to get started developing your marketing handbook if you don’t have one. And if you do have one, maybe some ideas of other things to include in it or how to package it up. And how to share it if you’re not sharing it with those outside the marketing department and also shameless plug, I referenced my end, your file, frustration forever starter kit. and so, I’ll link that up in the show notes. So that’ll help you at least start organizing your files better. Okay. So. That’s it for today’s episode, I’ll be back next week. Same time, same place with more marketing, and AEC proposal goodness. Until next time. Bye for now.