Explore Joseph Hughes's journey in the Digital Advertising Agencies Industry

I don’t 100% resonate with that. I know there are people who came to this country with nothing and built everything. I certainly built “Contractor Dynamics” from scratch, with no funding so in that aspect, I didn’t have any help. However, I grew up in New Jersey, didn’t experience life-or-death circumstances, I have been very fortunate in that aspect. I had a great normal family and schools. So, I didn’t immediately resonate with that word. I live 2 miles away from where I grew up. My wife lived nearby. We moved around a little bit but came back to our home town so we are very rooted here. However, there are definitely some parts of the journey where I feel rootless and think that we’re always looking to grow roots wherever we are. – Joseph Hughes

We started in July 2012; it’s going to be nine years this year. I grew up in my family’s construction business based in New Jersey and also up in New York. It’s a company that provides marine construction, support and transportation via barges and tugboats, they have a shipyard in Brooklyn New York. The business is 175 years old this year, it started in 1984, I was a sixth-generation family member so it was in my blood. My first job was when I was 14. I would get a ride from one of the guys who runs the shipyard, from Jersey Shore to New York, an hour and a half each day. At that age I was painting tugboats, barges, driving a forklift, all the manual labor you would expect in a shipyard. My friends and I did it together. It was hard work, especially in the winter, in the water, it was brutal. I learned new skills, got to meet new people from all over the world. Throughout college I went to school in Boston and I would work at the shipyard during the summer. After graduation, my cousin Brian and I worked in the main office for 9 years together. So, I got to learn the blue-collar and the hands-on aspects of the business. We were a small business, probably about 30 people. We learned everything from how to propose a bank loan (we were borrowing money to buy heavy equipment to build barges), HR, operation sales, marketing, etc. I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to learn so many different aspects of a business. – Joseph Hughes

It was interesting. My cousin Brian and I were coming into this business that was 100+ years old at the time, conservatively and well run. We would go in and talk to the old guys, my dad and two uncles begging them to try new things. We were fresh energy and I’m sure some ideas were okay but most of them were goofy. They had the wisdom to see down the road. I didn’t just want to step in and do the same thing, be a cog in the system. I wanted to make a difference. That’s exciting, that’s what we’re here for. – Joseph Hughes

Back in 2012, I left the family business on good terms. Not a lot of people leave a family business going very well. However, I just had that entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to create something on my own. I didn’t have a plan; I had a business degree and had a passion for marketing. I read a lot of marketing books. I had a construction background and I thought to combine the two. The construction industry tends to be a few years behind the times when it comes to software, processes, innovations and basic things. I saw the gap there and wanted to attack it. Started a business called “Contractors Dynamics”. I read a training book about training, fitness and had ‘dynamics’ in the title. I like that word, it means a lot of different things, non-static, it’s always moving and that’s where it came from. – Joseph Hughes

The first seven years we were working with the construction industry in general. We’ve focused on roofing in the past three years. We had a construction background and I noticed some companies would do better if they had a nice website, social media accounts, posting once in a while etc. little things can make a lot of difference in construction because you’re talking about $10,000 to $100,000 products. You can make a small tweak and make a big impact. That was really attractive versus marketing for a restaurant. That restaurant has to sell a lot of meals to be able to repeat that marketing investment. I like the impact that we’re able to have with construction companies. I knew I had skills to bring to the table when it came to marketing. Most contractors will have their contractor goggles on and have that myopic vision. I tell them that if they just make some changes, they can double their business, it’s not that difficult. So, I had that confidence just from the background. Speaking their language is key. You can’t go to a construction company and talk in code or geek language. You have to meet them where they’re at, empathize and understand what they’re going through. That connection is important, that gave me confidence starting out. – Joseph Hughes

Google, it’s that easy. I just learned and for the first six months I wasn’t really busy. Had a couple of clients but also time to study and become a real practitioner of this stuff. We took it in your own company. We built up our SEO presence to the point we were getting inquiries from all over the country. That gave me confidence too because we could have conversations with construction owners from different states and our process could find them. Reading books helped. So, I started joining different communities online where people were a bit more advanced and I could learn from them. I am a fan of learning from people and shortening that learning curve. Life is short and we don’t have time to make all the mistakes we need to make in order to become experts. I like leveraging experience from others. Joining those groups was key from a mindset and skill set aspect. – Joseph Hughes

Hugely important. You’re going to have different processes for different points of your business. As you’re staring out, there’s no process. A lot of people get hung up on thinking you need to have a process but you don’t have enough project, work or clients at that point. In the beginning I would work on someone’s website, another client’s SEOs, someone else’s blog posts and it was all over the place. There’s no way you can develop a process based on that. I’m a big fan of SOP right now. As soon as you get into a rhythm where you know what you’re doing, what your services are, you’re dramatically going to level up your efficiency and also up level your deliverables. You got clients on checklists, putting out a consistent product. That’s key. If you want to work on your business constantly and wear 16 hats, multitask and everything, don’t worry about the processes. If you want to grow beyond your own hustle and grind, don’t want to survive on Red Bulls and coffees, you need to have processes, it’s going to make everything better. – Joseph Hughes

You try to project this perfectly polished thing to the world; you bring someone in and they may think it is a mess. Especially in the beginning, you have to understand it’s startup culture, you just have to get in there and do work. I didn’t have a management background; I hadn’t ever led a ton of people. That was a skillset I hadn’t developed and is a skill I’m still working on. I tend to hire for those soft skilled people that have energy, have pride in the work, have integrity, are open to being coached and learning. I found out that in marketing things move so fast, you’re not going to hire someone that knows it all. If you do, they are going to be expensive or have their own company already. Find people with soft skills and you can train them on those hard skills. Leadership from day one is so important and is something I still work on. – Joseph Hughes

It’s rough. I set these lofty goals, thinking I could make one million dollars the first year. You just don’t know until you go to the market. You can have the business best plan in the world and work on it, which I did but you go to market and get your teeth kicked in. You get noes, people who don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’ve got to have that big “why”, it’s got to be important to you. I’ve had friends who started businesses and gave up after a while. Their “why”, their reason isn’t big enough, they don’t want it bad enough and go back to their corporate jobs. That’s fine, I’m not judgmental. However, I had a different mentality. Maybe pride had something to do with it. When I left the family business, it was made clear to me that if things didn’t work out, I could come back to it. I’m grateful for that but that was also my driving force. I wanted to make it work on my own, and didn’t want to go back with the tail between my legs saying I didn’t make it. It was tough. I knocked on doors, called local construction companies and that’s not my personality. I know people in this industry enjoy that but to me it’s scary. I read this quote a while ago: “You can either fight and try to get a seat at the table or you can make your own table and invite people to that table”. I took that advice and I started from scratch. I had a construction industry background in the marine construction world which involves heavy equipment, up and down the East Coast, we were not  a local-type company. No one around here knew me, at least not locally. So, I started my own community in my own directory, basically a local contact directory at the Jersey Shore. I had a Facebook Group, a directory website we built. I tried to charge 97$ a month and only two people paid for it and others didn’t know what they would pay for. I went back to the free model but would have these Friday coffee meet ups. I would show up every Friday at 7am at a coffee shop, offer coffee and bagels to me, meet and talk shop. I didn’t have anything to sell anyone, didn’t know what I was doing but became someone worth knowing because I would facilitate these meetups. I was bringing people together, the design build guy talking to the architect, the builder talking to the roofer. They were forming these relationships. They asked how I could help them and I answered that I could help them with whatever they needed. I made my own platform, wrote emails, called people about what was going on with their business, what they were struggling with and asking how I could help. – Joseph Hughes

It’s definitely a matter of time. It wasn’t immediate. Out of that initial group of clients in 2012, we’ve got only one, Nick who’s still a good friend and client. We had two initial clients and we worked well with them on their local SEOs, marketing their websites, etc. They were both nice enough to provide video testimonials of their experience working with us. I was able to leverage those video testimonials, got some more, build some case studies out of those two and it kind of spiraled from there. I know what I charged and it was not a lot, it was embarrassingly low, I lost money. However, do that work for free, get that case study and that’s the asset you can show to potential clients. Instead of talking about yourself you can show them a video testimonial and it carries so much weight. That’s a great way to gain credibility. Do good work, get the case study and build from there. All you need is one case study. – Joseph Hughes

Niching down is a fast track to success, to getting traction. It’s not for everyone. I’ve made a lot of business mistakes and I continue to. However, niching down, focusing is something I’m very happy that I’ve done. Even at first “Contractor dynamics” was a marketing agency for contractors, that kind of focused on itself, we weren’t a generalist marketing agency. I thought that for us to be able to provide value for our clients we would need to know the construction industry, obviously. Our initial client Nick introduced me to several friends who were roofing company owners and it kind of blossomed from there. The lineage from Nick to all the clients and introductions he’s made has been millions of dollars. I’m very grateful for that. In 2019, we decided to focus on roofing specially because it’s a gigantic market, we’re not even scratching the surface of that. The process for marketing is simpler and we can provide more value for our clients. Let’s say for example we are offering marketing services to a roofing company in Florida, we can try the same for a company in a different state but tweak it because it is in a different area. Plug and play. As far as attracting clients, they want to work with use because we focus. All of our clients have had experiences with generalist marketing companies who don’t understand them and appreciate that we do so. I highly recommend it as a quick way to gain traction. We’ll eventually go back to construction but right now we are roofing-focused. – Joseph Hughes

As far as marketing, with any business, you have to be intentional with the brand you’re putting out. You want to craft that brand because how you position in your market is everything, how people view you, what they think of you. Be intentional about what that brand is in social media, you need to be careful about what you’re putting out there. You want to be authentic but also cognizant that people are looking at different things, parts of your brand and drawing conclusions about that. Branding is everything from your logo to your truck wrap, website, the way you write emails or answer your phone. All those different touch points are part of your brand. You want to create that consistent brand experience with every touch point.  For any company, that’s key, that’s necessary. As far as what your brand stands for, I think for a while, our brand stood for the guys who’re going to work hard, are nice, understand your business, get results. As you grow, beyond just the owner, you need to make sure that the quality is there. You need to ensure that you’re getting those clients results and either way you track how many of them are getting results, what type of results they’re getting, whatever that is for your particular business. As you grow your brand, that quality needs to stay high because that’s what you have. If that quality dips, people start talking and you’re in trouble. – Joseph Hughes

I’m the kind of person that likes to be liked. I don’t know if that’s ego or it’s just my personality, I get upset if someone is mad at me. I’m not looking to pick fights, I’m not confrontational. Maybe there are people out there that I annoy or loathe my content. One of my good friends says:” What other people think about me, is none of my business”. There are a few people in this world whose opinion I truly care about. Our brand is our brand, I want people to think positively of it but for any person that may have a negative comment on a Facebook post, you have to ignore it. It comes back to what’s your vision, your vision’s got to be bigger than one knucklehead who’s going to make a comment. Also, think about just providing value. As long as you’re doing that, then that’s awesome. – Joseph Hughes

The rollercoaster can be rough. There are days you wake up and you just don’t want to get out of the bed. The positive self-talk, having the long-term picture in mind helps even though it might be a rough or slow week with sales or something like that. Last week we had a record week in sales in our entire 8 years history and this week is slow. That’s fine. We used it as a time to work on our processes and work with our clients. You have to keep that long term vision in mind. I’m not the smartest guy out there but I’ll show up everyday and put the work in. I’m going to be consistent. I’m not going to be competing with anyone besides myself but I know that most people are going to give up when they don’t see results and I’m not. I’m going to do the work and do whatever it takes. I think that’s related to my blue-collar upbringing, going out there and doing the work. That’s my mindset, it has its drawbacks but that’s the key for sure. – Joseph Hughes

I can think of two process things. Number one is not charging enough, not knowing your numbers as far as revenue and profit. Definitely guilty of it, just going out there, charging $1000. If it’s going to cost you $500, you may think you earned $500 but you have overhead, cost of business development, taxes, other expenses that go into that. So, that was a big thing I didn’t realize at least a year into business. I looked at my tax returns and it didn’t make any sense. Charge enough. Have the confidence to provide value and charge enough so that you can actually do a great job. A lot of people don’t charge enough and they always can only provide an average service or product. Do the opposite and you can provide amazing service or product, know your numbers, profit. Number two was trying to figure out everything on my own. There are people out there that have been there and done that, maybe not your exact business model if you have a unique business. Leverage that experience because it’s painful to make all those mistakes on your own. As a solo entrepreneur starting out you get in your head, feel like a failure. Get in around people who are levels ahead from where you are and learn from them. That’s priceless. – Joseph Hughes

We are small, just scratching the surface even though we’ve been in business for eight or nine years. We are growing, trying to balance marketing and sales, bringing out new clients. Our fulfillment process as an internal team is being able to serve those clients at increasingly higher levels. We’ve hired consultants recently to help fill out those processes, it’s a lot of work. It’s exciting work. That means we’ll have leverage and provide more value to our market. For the rest of 2021, we’ll be focused on roofing. The 2022 plan is to branch back out into construction. We want to be the marketing training company for the construction industry and that’s our long-term vision. – Joseph Hughes

Your time commitment is a matter of how fast you want to go. If you’re going to work sixteen hours a day then you’re going to make those mistakes more quickly and figure things out more quickly than if you worked 8 hours a day. It also depends on your life situation. If you’re single and only have a dog to take care of, you have more time on your hands. It’s different if you have a family. Right now, our kids are eight and six and that’s my number one priority: family. We can definitely grow more quickly if I worked 80- or 100-hour weeks but that’s not me. I’ll keep it short but my daily schedule is: 5:30 am to 7 am is a 90-minute focus block of work every week day. It’s about things that are important but not urgent, big projects I’m getting no interruption. I get my coffee, do my workout, have family breakfast, get the kids to school. From 9am to 6pm I go to work and then I wind down and spend family time. I spend 50 work hours a week on average and that’s kind of my sweet spot. I’m more interested in putting more quality time on those hours than putting more hours in the day because it’s a diminishing return for me. Some people can work 14 hours a day and be fine, I can’t. I’d rather have focused time than more time. – Joseph Hughes

My family is my greatest achievement. I have two healthy kids; a beautiful wife and we have a great family unit. I’m grateful for that. Business wise, it really is the brand. I am so proud of not myself but the brand that we have in our industry. It’s an asset, it’s like equity in your house. You’ve got conversations like this that happen because of your brand, collaborations with people, getting invited to speak at events. These are like mini “I’ve made it” moments, we know we’re not going to go out of business tomorrow. When you’re staring out, that’s a real fear, it keeps you up at night. When you get to that brand status, it’s a great feeling to have a higher-level of certainty that you’re going to be able to continue this dream. I’m proud of that and super protective of that brand as far as we want to make sure we’re servicing our clients, are not growing too quickly because that brand is invaluable for sure. – Joseph Hughes

One of the things I don’t agree that I’ve mentioned before is that I don’t think it’s necessary to work 16 hours a day. I disagree that you’ve got to sacrifice everything, your health, family and go all in. Certainly, there are days you need to do that. I’ll wake up at 4 am and go to work if I know I have a big day. There are days and weeks you have to go in and push a little harder but don’t sacrifice health or family because we need to have our health of course and a lot of times we build our business for ourselves and our families. Don’t go all in and forget everything else. I think that’s something people might think they have to do and why they don’t make the leap. Again, by following people and aligning with people that are a couple of levels beyond where you are so you can learn from them, you can get traction without having to work crazy hours. – Joseph Hughes

Make sure you’re working with a clientele and niche or industry you really enjoy. That’s crucial. I see a lot of young marketers go through a training program and want to target roofers because roofers make money and can pay them a lot of money, or dentists, etc. There’s going to be blood sweat and tears. You’re going to be in trenches with your clients. If you want to grow, you have to go to events and speak, be at conferences. So, you better like the industry that you’re working with, you need to have that or else you’re going to burn out quickly if you’re going after the dollars. I love our industry, a lot of my clients around my age are building families, businesses, and are very entrepreneurial. I like that fellowship of men and women who are kind of on a similar journey and that gives me the fuel to continue to try to do great things. Make sure you’re passionate about what you choose. – Joseph Hughes