Thaddeus Tondu is the CEO and Co-founder of On Purpose Media, a digital marketing agency specializing in services like web design, social media management, branding, and pay-per-click advertising to help businesses achieve real results. On Purpose Media is known for effectively assisting home service contractors dominate their markets — particularly HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. Thaddeus is a digital marketing expert with a track record of building a seven-figure business from the ground up. He is known for his candid approach and commitment to transparency, which has transformed the digital marketing landscape for home service industries across North America.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [03:23] Thaddeus Tondu talks about On Purpose Media and what it does
- [05:11] The importance of cold calling and building rapport in growing a client base
- [08:49] How On Purpose Media prices its services
- [11:43] On Purpose Media’s strategic decision to niche down to focus specifically on HVAC, plumbing, and electrical
- [14:24] Thaddeus discusses On Purpose Media’s redesign and branding
- [19:44] Valuable business advice from coaches and mentors
- [23:18] Innovative software for team communication and culture-building
- [31:00] How to effectively manage tough business conversations
- [42:09] Handling mistakes with clients through honesty and accountability
- [44:53] The adoption and impact of EOS and KPIs within On Purpose Media for business growth
In this episode…
Navigating the shift from traditional media to a dynamic digital powerhouse poses significant challenges for entrepreneurs. Adaptability and strategic foresight are essential as market landscapes evolve rapidly. Embracing innovation and rethinking business models, how can leaders successfully chart a course toward sustained growth and relevance in the digital age?
Thaddeus Tondu, a digital marketing expert, delves into how his agency was conceived and rose to success during the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic. He shares strategies for acquiring those first crucial clients, building rapport, and the significant choice to specialize in certain industries to drive value. Thaddeus also explores the lessons learned from high-profile mentors, tells us why culture is the bedrock of his agency, and gives insights into the power of authentic branding.
In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Thaddeus Tondu, CEO and Co-founder of On Purpose Media, about building and scaling a niche digital marketing agency. Thaddeus discusses On Purpose Media and what it does, effectively managing tough conversations with employees and clients, and its strategic decision to niche down to focus specifically on HVAC, plumbing, and electrical.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
- Kumospace
- Karen Hite
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
- Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
- Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
- Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
- Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz
- The Real-Life MBA: Your No-BS Guide to Winning the Game, Building a Team, and Growing Your Career by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch
- Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell
Related episode(s):
- “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
- “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
- “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
- “Leading with Passion with Gino Wickman Founder of EOS Worldwide” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
- “The Two Leadership Traits To Explode Your Business With Mark C. Winters Author and Founder of RocketFuelNow.com” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
- “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
Quotable Moments:
- “Building a business based on honesty and transparency came from the challenges I saw in the industry.”
- “In a remote world, culture is paramount, and tools like Kumospace help bridge the gap.”
- “Getting pricing right means understanding both your costs and the value you’re providing.”
- “Your core values should be interwoven into every facet of your business, from hiring to daily operations.”
- “Being direct but kind is the key to navigating tough conversations.”
Action Steps:
- Niche down and specialize: Focusing on specific industries can greatly enhance your ability to deliver targeted results.
- Build rapport through cold calling: Direct communication methods remain effective for connecting with new clients and eliciting genuine feedback about their needs.
- Create authentic branding and imaging: Replacing stock photos with real images in marketing materials immediately boosts trustworthiness and conversion rates.
- Implement core values in hiring and operations: Integrating your core values into every aspect of your organization, from the hiring process to employee evaluations, helps maintain a strong company culture.
- Use innovative tools for remote team culture: Embracing forward-thinking software helps in facilitating communication, collaboration, and camaraderie among remote team members.
Sponsor for this episode
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Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:01
You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.
Jeremy Weisz 0:22
Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Thaddeus Tondu of On Purpose Media. Thaddeus is before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the top agency series, there’s a few favorites. I had Jason Swenk on. Jason Swenk built his agency up to eight figures and sold it, and then he started purchasing agencies, and now he runs a group, kind of, I guess you call it that. He’s a mastermind of agency owners to help each other grow, because it’s the group he wanted when he had an agency. Check that episode out. It’s really interesting about the agency space, valuation space. Also, I had Todd Taskey on. Todd Taskey helps pair agencies with private equity. So he helps sell agencies.
He is a Second Bite Podcast. It was another interesting episode where we talked about valuation agencies called the second bite, because sometimes when the agencies sell in the private equity world, and then private equity sells again, sometimes those founders make more on the second bite than they do on the first. So it’s interesting to hear that model of selling it’s not retiring on a beach, it’s actually just keep working in your business and growing it and rolling equity into the next entity. So check out those and more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. So we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution.
So Thaddeus we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host, so they can create amazing relationships, create amazing content, but most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected], I have a lot of free episodes on Inspired Insider about podcasting, so you could check those out as well.
I’m excited to introduce Thaddeus Tondu. He’s a digital marketing agency owner who built a seven-figure business helping home service contractors get more leads and business and dominate their markets. And he helps HVAC companies, plumbing companies, electrical companies. And we’ll get into why those niches in particular. And you can find them at onpurposemedia.ca for more information. And Thaddeus thanks for joining me.
Thaddeus Tondu 3:16
No worries. Thank you for having me on.
Jeremy Weisz 3:18
So just start us off and tell people a little bit about On Purpose Media and what you do.
Thaddeus Tondu 3:23
Yeah, great. So we’re a five-year-old agency. November 2019 is when we came up with the idea of, hey, let’s go into starting our agency. February 2020, went live with it. I quit my job within my first full time, my first full perfect timing, right? Great timing. And, well, we didn’t know that it was happening, right? I mean, hindsight’s always 20-20, and so I quit my job in February 2020, like, right at the very beginning, within the first week when I landed five clients. Four weeks later, COVID hit, and we lost four of our five clients. Like it was wild. Like it is probably not the best time to start a business. But one of the reasons why we did and why we wanted to go into digital marketing space, it came from five years of print media and print advertising and magazines sitting down with a lot of small businesses and medium-sized businesses, and our rapport-building technique was, hey, I took a look at your website. Is there anything that’s not on your website that you want me to know about your business? That was it.
That was the only rapport question that we ever asked. Because if they wanted to build rapport, they would tell you all about it. If they didn’t want to build rapport, they wouldn’t tell you all about it. Lot of times, though, people, well, what do you think of it? And then always were the ones that was tough, where you had to tell them that, hey, your website sucked, right? But a lot of times it just opened up a conversation to say, man, I don’t really know about my digital agency. I don’t really know what they do, I’m really frustrated. Or they paid somebody money and they left, they didn’t get the product, or they did this, but now they can’t get in touch with people. Now, there’s also great stories out there. Like, yeah, I love my agency.
They’re absolutely amazing for me. It’s like, okay, by and large, the majority are one of those first two camps. And so we’re like, let’s build our business based off of honesty and transparency. Now see where we are now.
Jeremy Weisz 5:01
So how did you get those clients? Most people you know, right off the bat, wouldn’t go, boom, I got five clients.
Thaddeus Tondu 5:11
I picked up the phone and called literally. I just cold-called any business. It didn’t matter, like local businesses. And so the thing with being in business for the last five years, or in print advertising for the last five years, is I had a big database of businesses that I could call upon, some current clients, some that I know, that told me while my digital this digital that first. And so I’m like, you know what I’m going to call all those low-hanging fruit of people that I already know, that I already have built a connection with and offered that to them. So it was a little bit easier for me because I had the database, but it was across the board. It didn’t really matter what industry.
I mean, we had a pet store, a dog daycare, an HVAC company, and I’m trying to remember, a roofing company. And there’s one other one that was in there, oh, and a float spot. That’s what it was. Those were the five. And so, like, when you look at those, you’re like, all right, I think those were the five. By the way, I’m going on memory here, so don’t, don’t hold me to that. If that is, I don’t think I could check you on that one anyway right now, it’d be me fact-checking myself. I probably will after this, but it was all people that I knew, and I just called and I had a conversation, and we landed now. We were also pennies on the dollar, because we told him that we were new and we wanted to learn some of the things. So like, we’re going to charge you low amounts. And they’re like, let’s go.
Jeremy Weisz 6:25
I want to hear because I know that you have training going back even to Cutco sales. So all the people I know went through Cutco are masters, okay? And so I know there’s more than meets. I just called them. What were you saying when you were on the phone with them, like you said, you had some risk reversal with listen, we’re new. What were some of the things and how did you it sounds like maybe you knew some of these people, maybe not. But what were you saying on the phone with them?
Thaddeus Tondu 6:54
Yeah, I’d have to really die. I know. After the first five I switched to a second opinion audit, and so I would call people randomly didn’t have a relationship, and just offer a second opinion look, and go through their digital marketing and give you actionable tips on how to be able to get better. And I created a whole script for it too, and told them that was no obligation. It was free. Created a power like a PDF. Everything was online, so it was easy for me to do. And then I’d send them the PDF after manually, by the way, doing the PDF not with like technology now. They both give them the value the first few it was, it was kind of the same things like, Hey, I’d love to come in and sit down and do kind of a second opinion audit, by the way, renew, and maybe I can point you in the right direction of being able to help us learn some things and help you, at the same time, get some marketing out, and it’s kind of a win-win.
And they’re like, oh, you can do marketing for cheap, and you’re going to learn in like, okay. And like, I remember the one client, he said, hey guys. Like, he’s like, that, I have no issues with you being you. In fact, I applaud you for taking the step. Because, I mean, they’re business owners, they get it. There’s a risk somewhere. And so he’s like, you just have to promise you one thing. I’m like, What’s that? It’s like, well, when you mess up, you just have to promise me that you’re going to fail forward, that you’re going to learn from the mistake, and you’re not going to make that same mistake again, because you are going to mess up on my campaign, and that’s okay, just learn from I’m like, done, sold. I can do that for you.
Jeremy Weisz 8:18
Like, just don’t spend all my money on right? So you say, I mean, most people, how to say most people, but I know I’ve heard people who I had one of the co-founders of Wistia on the podcast a while ago, and they said they made themselves look and feel like a big company, even though they were new. So it’s an interesting, you know, approach, obviously, just to be straight up, hey, we’re new here. How did you decide to charge at that point?
Thaddeus Tondu 8:49
Throwing darts at a dart board really. Like, we didn’t have a clue. We didn’t have a clue. We bought, well, I know that one of the courses that I bought was Ty Lopez’s Social Media Marketing Agency 2.0 and, like, I think he’s on, like, 5.0 now. And I always kind of make fun of the course, but like, there really wasn’t a lot of substance, and there was enough to be able to, like, okay, you have to kind of understand some of the things. Then you just have to kind of go from there. We shot in the dark. We’re like, Sure, this price sounds good. What’s our, what’s our cost of our software, and then maybe, let’s add some margin on top of it. And had no clue, and I don’t think we made money for the first few months, because that was on purpose, right? We wanted to make sure that we had some case studies and some data to be able to support that we can do it digitally.
Because that’s the other part too, is, I mean, what’s your barrier to entry to being a marketing agency? Laptop and internet connection. Cool Digital Marketer, right? There’s no certification. There’s no core I mean, you can take university course from a professor who doesn’t even know how to turn on his laptop, and he’s going to tell you about digital marketing right now, I’m being a little tongue in cheek here, but the idea is there and so, okay, well, how do you learn digital marketing, real-world applications, in my opinion, that’s how you learn a lot of it, and that’s why we were upfront with it. Now we pivoted from that we would. We stopped telling people that we were brand new, and we just told them, yeah, we’ve got six years of marketing experience. We didn’t tell them that five of them were in print.
Jeremy Weisz 10:13
What do you remember one of the first clients, what you end up charging? You probably win set now.
Thaddeus Tondu 10:19
I believe it was $197 a month for Google ads, plus their ad spend. And then we had another one that was, like, $250 or something like that to manage their social media. And it was a pet grooming and a pet store. And like, I remember going and like, like, yeah, let’s just do it. So I took my phone and a tripod, and I literally went down there, and I spent probably two hours just having, like, filming them, doing dog grooming and, like, hyper, lacking the video but I mean, like, we were, like, probably below minimum wage at this point, from what we were charging. It was wild.
Jeremy Weisz 10:55
How did you decide on the services that you offered? Because at the time, you went from selling print media and now you have an agency. So what were the services you offered?
Thaddeus Tondu 11:06
Everything. It was anything. Digital, social media marketing, social media management, Facebook ads, Google ads, website building, SEO. We did it all like let’s just go for it and figure out which ones we like and which ones we’re good at.
Jeremy Weisz 11:21
And then, at what point did you obviously, now, I’m gonna share your site here for a second, and right now you obviously focus on specific industries. And I mentioned plumbing, HVAC, electrical. What point did you decide we’re gonna niche down.
Thaddeus Tondu 11:43
September 2020. We hired a coach inside of our agency, and I had that site. So that’s the old site. We’re actually in the process of redoing the site right now, and we can talk a little bit later about that, what, what it looks like, and kind of the why behind it. Hopefully this week, if not next, we’ll have that up and live and running. But in September 2020, we had a coach in our business, and he’s like, you guys, you got to niche down like you’re doing five or six or seven different trades. Do you guys want to be a generalist agency, or do you want to be an agency that’s niche down and take clients from all over North America? And as a Canadian company earning money in USD was actually very attractive to us, especially right now. It’s one US dollars, $1.39 in Canadian dollars, right?
Like, it’s crazy. And so we looked at all of our past clients and said, okay, which ones resonated the most with us? Well, as the blue collars, it was a roofer, and there’s an HVAC client, and we’re like, okay, well, which one out of the roofing in HVAC makes the most sense. Like, well, we kind of like HVAC. And my business partner at the time was a comfort advisor, sold HVAC, and so it just made sense to naturally go that way. The other part of why we moved away from the dog store, the dog grooming model, and into HVAC, or Home Services, debating between roofing and HVAC was the ticket size, right? When you look at being able to recoup marketing costs, well, if you have a dog groomer charging $100 a dog groom, I don’t know if even that accurate, $50 a dog groom, we have a black lab. We don’t need to get our groomed.
But if it’s a $50 or $100 and it’s recurring, sure, well you have to bring in a lot of dog groomings In order to be able to justify a high ticket, high margin marketing cost. HVAC, well, if you’ve got an average install of $10,000 to replace a system of $15,000… Don’t remind your money back. Yeah, don’t remind you, right? And so you have an opportunity to show a return on ad spend and an ROI and return on investment easier with a higher ticket number than you do with the lower ticket number. Not to say there’s anything wrong with companies that want big volume, low ticket completely fine. I know a lot of successful agencies that do that just wasn’t for us.
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