If You Had $50K to Grow Your Business, Where Would You Spend It?
If someone handed you $50,000 to grow your company today… where would you put it?
Paid ads? SEO? Cold outbound? Sponsorships?
In this episode of Entry & Exit, Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble (Alarm Masters, Texas) break down exactly how they’d deploy a fresh $50K in a security, alarm, fire, or life safety business — and why they don’t fully agree.
They cover:
- When paid ads are the fastest way to make the phone ring
- Why SEO is a long-term asset (not a quick fix)
- How outbound still drives commercial growth
- The importance of attribution, CRM tracking, and real ROI math
- The biggest mistakes owners make when hiring agencies
If you run a security, fire alarm, or home service company and want predictable lead flow without lighting money on fire, this episode gives you a practical framework to test, measure, and scale what works.
Stephen Olmon — https://x.com/stephenolmon
Collin Trimble — https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy
More Entry & Exit — https://www.entryandexit.co/
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If somebody came into your business today. A sugar daddy. You could be a sugar Mommy came in and said, here is 50 K to grow your business. How would you do that? Markets change like what worked in 2024 for some paid ads campaign may absolutely light money on fire in 2026. If you are in a position of I need leads as soon as possible, spending on paid ads.Is probably going to make the phone ring the fastest. It doesn't just stop. When the lead comes in the door and you get them a quote, you need to understand, are you closing that lead? If I can get to a point where I'm $1 in $4 out, that can justify me continuing to spend other dollars outside of my magical 50 K that I was given.Welcome to Entry and Exit. My name is Steven Oman and this is my handsome counterpart. Just trust me if you're listening. He's very handsome. Uh, Colin Trimble, he's my business partner and my co-host. And we also, uh, run Alarm Masters, which is a, uh, security company in Texas. And on this podcast, we try to provide you with practical, tactical advice on how to grow and scale your business.Do you have any comments on my, my hat today? I know that you are really a huge fan of this hat, guys, this flat Bill thing. He's got, he looks like a 16-year-old baseball player in east Texas, which, absolute bumpkin. But yeah, no, super cool. It's super cool. No, it's cool. No, we're killing it. Very cool. Your wife loves it.Yeah, we're killing it. Um, alright, we're jumping in. We have kind of an interesting concept today. We were, we were kind of spitballing on, um. What would be an interesting take on how to talk through growth in your business? And so here's the whole concept. If somebody came into your business today, some benevolent overlord in your words mm-hmm.And said, A sugar daddy could be a sugar mommy, a, a business sugar mommy. Yeah, sure. Um, came in and said, here is 50 K to grow your business. How would you do that? Um, we're gonna talk about our opinions and we actually aren't, um, a hundred percent aligned on what we would do on this. I mean, just on this like theoretical kind of fun like we 50 k to, to burn kind of un more untested type stuff.So we're gonna, we're gonna talk through that. Um, you're gonna hear a lot of Steven's opinions 'cause he's our, our digital marketing guru and he's got a lot of opinions on that. And then there's a couple sales things in there that I got some hot takes on, but, um, I. And we have not like truly prepped before this.So I'm interested to see some of the things that Steven would call out on where he'd place his 50 K. Um, so Steven, where would you to kick it off, where would you take your 50 K and where would you, where would you place those chips to grow the business? My, my first hot take is that I would not place it all on one channel.I think that it's a diversification, uh, yeah. I really believe in testing, in marketing, um, A, B, C, D, you know, all of it. Um, and it's, it's never been easier to be more cost efficient with testing channels than it is today. In my opinion. It's not true of every single industry, every single business, but for, for us, like in the security industry, I think it is, I think there's a lot of things that you could test.With this theoretical gift of $50,000. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 50,000 is a good number because it's, we talk about percentage of, um, marketing spend as a ratio of top line, so like a general rule that you'll see in a lot of sweaty kind of commercial service, home service businesses. We'll say somewhere in the four to 10%.That's a big range. Certain home services especially just inherently require pushing even a little bit further, probably as a ratio. But yeah, uh, just due to competition, you know, roofing can be, you know, very expensive to spend in that sort of thing. Um, so if you think about $50,000, trying to do some quick math, if that was 10%, you're at 500 k, you're, you know, a million bucks.Roughly, maybe 1.25 million. Top line. So this is kind of like almost thinking about a marketing budget for a pretty small business. In this scenario, we're talking about a test, let's say that's just part of the marketing spend for the year. Um, you've got some different options. Okay. So, um, I'm gonna lay out like some of the different.Options, and I'm gonna quickly eliminate a few. So right off the top, uh, I think social media is something that you, you could spend on, and I don't mean paid ads on a social channel like running Yeah. Instagram ads. I don't mean that. I mean like social or organic social. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and I'm really, at this point I'm really thinking about our business security, life safety industry.Yeah. Um. I don't think we're going there. If we were residential, we actually have a friend in the industry that makes really funny videos. Uh, if you, if you want to, you know, reach out, we'll send you a link to it. Um, but he makes these really funny videos, but he's like all in on residential alarm and so.That could be a good use of time and energy and money. He's got a, yeah, like a video production crew, like that's on retainer. I mean, that's like a, I think that's more than 50 K, right? Like if you're doing that, you could, you could probably run that play for 50 k or even a little bit under a year. It just depends how much content you're producing.Yeah. Um, you could get it done. Um, but that to me, for us, especially if you are any meaningful percentage commercial Yeah. Starts to. Um, be less and less appetizing as an option. Mm-hmm. Um, another option, which I already mentioned is paid ads. That's one of the three that I think we should probably dive into more.Yep. Um, another is SEO, uh, SEO is, is changing a lot. Um, obviously with hashtag ai a a big Yeah. Hashtag ai a big, uh, shift. Search, like Google search volume is down double digit percentage, um, quarter over quarter, the last two quarters, I believe, uh, if I'm not mistaken, uh, there's still a huge amount of search volume from just an absolute value perspective.So I don't think you ignore, uh, I think it's just, and on an SEO perspective, right, is um. And, you know, there's a, a local SEO com component we can talk about, um, you know, how to be found on, you know, Chacha, bt, and, you know, other kind of competing LLMs. Um, and then, uh, another option would be like.Sponsorships. So think like local baseball team. Um, bowling league. We know you like that. Bowling league. Big bowler. Big time. Call me the strike. I'm the strike king of the not something awful at bowling. Uh, put me on a ping pong table though. Yeah. It's gonna, uh, I'll do well. Um, so local sponsorships is another one that we, we know a lot of our friends do take advantage of.I think some of that's like a sizing thing. It's, it's hard to get like your bang for your buck. Yeah. If you're only gonna spend a little bit amount of money. Mm-hmm. But then if you're doing two, three, $4 million, should you be sponsoring baseball teams like. It's a bit of a brand awareness, luxury play. So, but that's, that's one of 'em you could consider.Um, that's probably not where I'm gonna go. Um, also, um, cold outbound, I'm, you know, that I'm a huge fan of cold outbound, as are you. Yep. Yep. Um, what does that even mean? Like, uh, you could send. Uh, direct mail technically could be cold. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, been there cold. E Yeah. Been there, done that. Cold email.Um, cold calling. Like everything that is not a current customer or you don't have a touchpoint, there's no inquiry that, you know, they've provided. Like they're truly like a cold contact that you're reaching out to. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, I would say another channel could be like. Trying to, similar on the sponsorship side, but think more like less local sponsorships.Like you could sponsor podcasts and hey, uh, you know. It's relevant here. Uh, newsletters, um, you could sponsor, um, you could, you could even run tv, like that's another channel. Um, again, that's probably like a dollar amount, like 50 K is probably not enough production plus the actual cost to run the app.Yeah. Yeah. So you, you need to be a little bit bigger and have a bigger budget there. Um, but I have some friends that have done very well on tv. Um, so that kind of is a, a nice smattering. Of potential options. Okay? Mm-hmm. So I'll start, we'll go kind of deep on, uh, paid media to Yeah. Uh, on, on my end, because.There's some things I really love and, and what I mean by paid media, paid ads, especially on Google, on YouTube, like on Google, right? So just for the folks that don't know, like paid media would be like, Hey, you go to type in alarm company and Google and those, the sponsored ads at the top, yeah, you can obviously pay, it's like an auction to be able to get your company name listed up there.So that's what he's referring to by paid media. Google's not the only one, but That's correct. Yeah. So, uh, Google. Facebook, Instagram, um, YouTube, like TikTok, like those are main platforms I'd consider potentially spending money on. Mm-hmm. Um, the nice thing about paid media is it's a quick feedback loop.Yeah. Typically takes a few weeks for a campaign to get warmed up, but then within a month or so you start to get an idea of like. Is, does the dog want the food? Like, are these terms that we're spending money on getting real engagement, we're getting real leads. Like you have an idea within, I would say, 30 to 60 days, um, of how productive that channel might be for you and, and what you're trying to push, like what service or solution you're trying to push through those campaigns and in what geography?Yeah, so. You know, if I'm trying to sell some, like really sophisticated, you know, AI video solution in like super rural western Kentucky, shout out Western Kentucky. Yeah. Um, that may not be as effective as it would be in if I was in San Francisco. Right. You know, you just, uh, so you have to take all that into consideration.But the nice thing is, is I spend money, I can quickly see data and have an idea of maybe where I need to tweak. Um, yeah, but it's, it feels like, oh c control the controllables. Like I can control quite a lot. Well, you just, you just brought up a good point. I want to back up for a second before we get into each of the channels that you kind of are talking about, because one thing that I think is really important to understand is, and I didn't understand this, Steven has a lot more experience in digital marketing and, and really even, um, high volume outbound.Anytime you're gonna allocate marketing budget, Steven, like, and, and you can explain this. There is no magic bullet in marketing, even in a specific industry. And so anybody that's telling you, I can guarantee that if you pay me this 50 grand, here's. From what I understand and what you've done in our business to generate a lot of leads is it's all about test and retest.It's try multiple channels, try d, make, make variations, and it's all about data. So it's like, hey, we're gonna go spend these dollars here. How much are we recapturing in response and in leads and these metrics. And then what you're trying to do, if I understand this correctly, is you're really trying to build a scalable marketing machine.Mm-hmm. So you're saying if I put a dollar in, do I get $4 out here, $3 out here, and $2 out here? So you're trying to say, Hey, for whatever reason, this geo and these services and your ideal client profile may dictate you use X, Y, Z channels and you allocate X number of chips to those channels, right?Mm-hmm. So isn't that, isn't that the way you think about it, right? When you're talking about building out marketing, if we're gonna take 50 K, it's not like jump dump it all in this and it's like, Hey, we're gonna test retest, we're gonna take it slow. You're not gonna burn through 50 K in a month. Am thinking about that, right?We're not at the casino, you know, we're not putting it all in red. Um, and so I, I do think taking a methodical approach is important. Also on the test, retest idea, markets change, like mm-hmm. What worked in 2024? Yeah. For some paid ads campaign may absolutely light money on fire in 2026. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So just because it worked last quarter or last year, you can't take that for granted.So it is kind of an endless test, retest, monitor, measure sort of thing. Um, that's right. And so. The other piece of that is attribution, and I won't get too technical. Good word. I can nerd out on attributing leads from channels, tying that back to, you know, the, uh, kind of cost per lead that, that type of thought process.Um, but ultimately, you know. You want to find ways to be able to attribute the leads you get from the different sources, you're different channels you're spending on. So mm-hmm. You know, coming through a Google campaign, it's very clear what leads are coming from that. Um, if you run TV ads, you could maybe have a, a specific phone number.You know, we, we have a bunch of like custom phone numbers we use for different purposes, so you could set up like a specific number that gets called, and so now you can kind of know maybe where that traffic's flowing from. Same thing from an SEO perspective on your site, you can pull all that through. It comes through a, oh, this came through a form that was on our, you know, commercial fire, you know, page, something like that.You can pull that through and track it. So I do think that wherever you choose to spend money, ideally you have some way to pull through that attribution so that you can make, uh, kind of like informed decisions the next month, the next quarter. Um. Yeah. All, all that's connected. Um, so going back to paid media, um, there's different types.If you are listening and you're more on like a home services, um, type of business, again, some of, some of our friends are heavy or 100% residential alarm. Yeah. Um, I think Google, LSA local service ads. Is a great place to spend. Um, you can't really spend endlessly, like, you can't spend as aggressively as you can on other types of campaigns mm-hmm.Or other types of ads. Um, but Google, LSA is a really nice place. To be spending some money and monitoring, like you will get leads. You have to watch the cost per lead there. 'cause it can be, it can kind of get away from you, especially in competitive markets. On competitive industries like roofing in Dallas.LSA is extremely expensive, as an example. Um, so that's the, the point is there's different types of ads, there's different types of. Burden or like obligation depending on the channel. So you also have to know. Hey, do we have talent internally to be able to pull this off as you think about spending money?Yeah. Do you have someone who actually is capable of designing creatives and then putting those campaigns up on Facebook or Instagram and monitoring? Like, or do maybe you need help, like you need an outside agency, um, that has a specific expertise. Like we've worked with agencies as well. Um, so. I think you, that's an element of all of this is these different channels do require some degree of knowledge or experience typically, and you might kinda light money on fire if you're doing something that you have no clue what you're doing or hope this works.Yeah. That's not a good place to be. So be careful to not spend, uh, money, uh, without the necessary expertise in seat. Mm-hmm. Um. And, uh, the, the last thing I'll say on paid media is you have to know your gross margins. So, uh, you have to be really dialed from like a, a full funnel. Like, um, someone clicked, what's the click through rate to a form?You gotta lead, you call them. What do you convert? How many of those do you convert to a meeting, to a proposal, to a one job? What's the gross margin of that job? So you're saying we need a CRM. You need a CRM, you need to be go like the next level or two down on the math. Yeah. So it's like, oh, you know what?We spent $4,000 on ads this month and we got a $10,000 job. Yeah, we won. Well, maybe, yeah, I, I, if you've had a really low kind of GP on that project, you might've, you know, lit a few grand on fire, you know, so there's context to it all in, into how you would grade out the effectiveness of those campaigns over time, wouldn't you say?With paid ads at least. Um. It's a little bit more of a faster reaction time, so you're gonna get faster volume from your investment than probably anything else that we're gonna talk about today. Maybe some outbound stuff, but like don't you think that's probably the fastest? Yeah. If you are in a position of I need leads as soon as possible.Spending on paid ads is probably going to make the phone ring the fastest. And I think that's important for folks to know. Mm-hmm. And because that's just an option. Some people are in that place. Yeah. So it's, it's good to have that on, on deck. Um, okay. So we spent some time on, on paid media. I think there's a lot of pros and cons there.I think if you're in the commercial summary commercial space, um. Tougher home service better. Some industries easier than others in the security alarm world. Residential, very competitive. Commercial, less competitive. Um, geo matters attribution is really important 'cause it's gonna help you define your cost, right?You're basically looking at cost per lead. That's ultimately, I mean, there's a lot of metrics we'll look at, but the big one is what's our cost per lead? And you're really trying to understand the kind of value of that. And then you're also saying, Hey. Um, you need to be thinking about how you're going to track these because you also, it, it doesn't just stop when the lead comes in the door and you get them a quote.You need to understand, are you closing that lead? It's like you could have thousands of leads come in, but if you're only closing one lead that's right. Is that the fault of the. The advertising channel or is that a fault of your own sales process? So there's a little bit of like things that have to be defined there.So paid ads is a place that you would put some chips, but let's just ask anecdotally, how much of our 50 K would you for us? Would you drop into that right now? Assuming we've got the C RM stood up and all that, the other channels that I'll advocate for, we will like pull from the same budget, right? 'cause we're just playing off of a $50,000 pool, which is $4,250 a month.Right. Um, big math guy, is that right? Or is it four? 1 6, 6? Whatever brother. It's a little over. I can't do, it's a little over. It's a little over. I'm like, I'm offended that you think I done it. It's a little over 4,000. Okay. Um, sure. So you could have said 6,000. I would've been like, yeah. Totally. I think, um, that you, we'll, we'll get to SEO and, uh, some other like outbound things.Next, I would spend, uh, roughly half of the $50,000 on paid, but I would not think of it like over 12 months. Yeah, I would be spending it, I would be spending that $25,000 probably in a period of three or four months, um, kind of in that, uh, what is that, six to eight KA month? Yeah. To try to figure out if you can get enough momentum and enough jobs to work, because it's not perfect curve.Right. It's kind of parabolic. No, correct. But like if I can get to a point where I'm $1 in, $4 out. Yeah, that can justify me continuing to spend other dollars outside of my magical 50 K that I was given. Yeah. Right. Um, so I would, I would say let's, let's take half of it for, uh, running a really well thought out, well planned, paid test.Yeah, I like that. I think that's important. Uh, I think it's important that you defined how you would spend the, uh, the time windows that you would spend that money. So I think that's great. Um, okay. Next. Where, where else? Like what's bucket number two like? Broadly speaking? Yeah. Bucket number two is the exact opposite.It's, it's literally the inverse of what we just talked about, uh, which is SEO and I. My favorite way to think about SEO is building a long-term asset. So, um, investing dollars in SEO today, tomorrow, next month. Will not likely yield a lead in the next. 60 or 90 days, but the work and the money spent now will produce a lead six months from now that you didn't spend a dollar on technically.Yeah. And so there is kind of a bit of a, a snowball effect if done properly and well executed that SEO can provide that is this kind of evergreen. Asset that you're building now. Mm-hmm. Obviously there's a lot of changes happening in the world with AI and, and search volume going different places, I think for a long time, um, SEO was, um, trying to, like the strategy, the core strategy was not related to answering a question.Um, it was. More so just very information rich, very like, yeah, what are my key words? And I'm gonna just. Hammer 'em do such a high volume of content on my site hitting these keywords that I will seem relevant. Yep. Now new search platforms like that is all about who has the best answer to a question. So what you're trying to do then is develop content on your site that is answering questions that are likely being asked of your prospects and.So give us an example. Give us an example of that. Yeah. So, um, what type of, uh, fire alarm, uh, is needed in a elementary school? Okay. Could be a question that someone's searching, whereas in the past you might have tried to build out content for, uh, K through 12 fire alarm systems, and it was just information about those systems.It wasn't. Answering a question that someone likely is going to type in to try to derive an answer that's contextualized. Yeah, so that may seem nuanced, but it actually radically changes how you build out. Content. Mm-hmm. Um, I, and I think both approaches are, are valuable. It's not one or the other, but the kind of the answer driven strategy is, is a newer type of thought.I think both are needed, um, as you invest in SEO. But the nice thing is, is that because of technology now, I'm not gonna say go use AI to write all your articles or something like that. But you can be so efficient, or even if you work with an outside vendor. The cost of all that has, has commoditized quite a bit, like mm-hmm.I don't think that a $5 million a year security business needs to spend $5,000 a month on SEO. Right? I think you're overspending. So, uh, you know, that is a long-term approach. Build an asset, um, be aware of the, you know, changes happening out in, in the world and, and how people are finding information, finding, um.You know, uh, potential vendors, right? That they want to utilize and partner with. Yeah. Um, and I, I would take $700 a month. Um, for, for that solution. Okay. That you could, you could start to really make an impact. So seven times 12, it's really hard. Eight. That's eight grand. Yeah. So I've got, sounds right. I've got 17 grand left ish.Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, in my budget. But I think that, uh, again, like it's, it's start now. And just never stop. It's like the old adage about the tree. It's like, best time to plant. It was 20 years ago. Second best time is today type of situation. You probably also say, I mean, you've told me this so I'm gonna take this from you.It's like typically the leads that come from SEO are. Better quality leads that are a little bit more, that's right. Um, reputation driven. They want to know that you have a reputation in this space, which by the way, just my only caveat to this whole entire conversation about paid media and SEO o, which I, I con contribute very little, um.I think that reputation is one of the things that really matters and does cross pollinate with SEO in that we spent a lot of time and money last year updating our website, but not just our website. All of our branding across our truck wraps, our sales collateral, our business cards, our email signatures, all of it, to deliver a consistent experience for our customers so that it looked.Um, professional. That's really it. It was just like, Hey, we wanted to establish a little bit of reputation with our customers by no matter what you like, even our, our PowerPoint decks all use the same theme across all of it. And I think that, that, I think that that matters. So, uh, last bucket, I think you said you had three, um, high volume outbound.Yes. Yeah. And different types. I'm, I, I'm gonna just say cold outbound. And I said earlier, this is not to your, this is not your coffee drop targets. No, no, no, no. This is all new, really new logo hunting, new logo. This is not con engaging your current customers. Um, direct mail would fit into this. Technically speaking, unless you are mailing to your customers.Yeah. If you're not inherently mailing to your customers. Um. Within this budget, like I'm not gonna use direct mail. Yeah. If, if I was purely residential, I might think about it more. It might be more consideration would too. I agree. Um, you know, targeted zip codes, that sort of thing. Yep. But for, for this purpose and for this fund, you know, thought experiment, I will exclude direct mail and I'm gonna spin my last.Seven, 16, $17,000 on, um, cold outbound. So, um, that looks like cold email and, or, uh, cold calling of which there are a multitude of vendors. You also could all of that on your own, both of them, right? Mm-hmm. Cold calling is. Uh, maybe the most classic, you know, kind of outbound, you know, motion or motion or strategy that there is.Um, cold email for a long time was scary. You know, like this, just like high volume. I gotta use all these crazy software platforms. It feels really wonky. He feels scammy. It doesn't have to be like that. Um, so within the remaining budget, like you could do it all yourself and definitely fit your costs within the remaining budget of $50,000.If you were going to use someone else, like an outside, like third party to do that, you probably, you probably should. You have to pick one. Yeah. And I, I'll say, um. It depends what you're trying to do. Correct. But within this budget, you probably have to pick one if you're partnering with a, a vendor. So what I would do is I would maybe hire a vendor on the cold email side.Yeah. That's what, and I would run the cold calling internally. Yeah. Um, yeah, I like that. Yeah. So that's, that's what I would do. Uh, but I know you like Cole too. Yeah, I do. I, uh, I have changed my mind around that a little bit. Um, I have always been very. Opinionated about, no. The way that sales cycles are run, and what I've had to realize a little bit is on the new logo side, volume matters a lot and controlling the experience matters less.Than just the volume behind it. So, um, there are companies, we use them that are fantastic at doing really phenomenal outbound email and cold calling campaigns to set leads. And in an original call in five years ago, Colin would've said, I wanna manage all that in-house. I wanna use our tech stack and our people.And I think it's really hard to do that. Uh, I, I would say I could stand it up, gimme the 50 K, and I could figure out how to do it really effectively. But I would need that whole budget and I would need a lot of time to do training and finding the right people. And, and so I think that you're probably, your best investment is somebody that does this with repeatability.And I think that in the modern digital marketing era, person to person communication. That's as personalized as you can possibly get. It is going to result in the best outcomes. Um, I also like layering in mixed media. So like adding in a video, a loom video, doing something like that. Same, I would say that's not super high volume, but, but I like that.I like that play. Um, and I think that it, it, what, what that means is if you, if they're, if, if the vendor's gonna go outbound to, let's just say 10,000 contacts. You are gonna probably define your ideal client profile, and you're gonna have a lot of say around the messaging of what is being said. But you are not gonna really see the lead list.Um, they're gonna, they're gonna vet that. They're gonna, uh, the vendor's gonna make sure that the emails are as accurate as possible. And then you're gonna get served up leads and your job and responsibility is to hand handle those leads. And then from there you manage that experience. And we have found that that is successful.Um, and that is a key part of our strategy. Um, and. And I think that I would, if, if this were me, I would probably spend a, a lot more money on SEO and high volume outbound and less money on paid ads. Steven is way more versed in this, so he, his opinion is ultimately the one we go with. But, but I do think that, um, high volume outbound matters and I think it works, and I think that it.It. I think there's, I think there's a lot of good ways to do it, and I think it, you know, it's highly vendor dependent, so I would say if you need help with that, give us a, give us a shout. Yeah. We can kind of point you in some right directions. Nothing's guaranteed by the way. Your market may not respond.The lead list for your ideal client profile may be tough. You know, you may be, you may be going after small businesses and they're like, no, or you may really want enterprise, and they just don't respond well. So it's just like you have to kind of get a little flexible on targets. Right. Yeah, that's, that's a really good point that, um.Some of these channels are better for certain types of, uh, targets. Yeah. And so I I, I won't go into too much granularity, but you can imagine that, um, having some really specific content for a very specific need for an enterprise client where they read a case study and watch a video on your site. Might pull through an enterprise client better than randomly cold calling someone in a 5,000 person org.That's a, that's a great, that's a great segue. So I think we've kind of defined where we put the chips and where we put the categories. And I think ultimately the takeaway for me is, hey, if you're gonna do this, you gotta do it in chunks. And it's not perfectly linear. You're not just gonna spend 700 bucks a month on paid ads.You may spend, especially, you know, I would say paid ads and, and email. High volume email or high volume outbound, you probably, those are, you're gonna layer a lot more of, uh, dollars in early. Yeah. And upfront over a 2, 3, 4 month period. And then on your, and, and that's really in a way to kind of ma like volume matters.There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. But also it's gonna help you determine, hey, is this working for us? Is this something we wanna keep reinvesting in? And then SEO is sort of like that drip on the faucet. You're gonna kind of commit to it and you're gonna commit to it forever. And we see a lot, the, the biggest mistake you can do is turn it off after seven months because you just lift, you lit your money on fire.Yeah. And you are, you are guaranteed to not like, so get ready, commit. I would even think, can I just prepay this vendor for the SEO and get it discount and, and get it outta my mind and just owe that I've invested in this particular thing. So, um. So, yeah, Steven, leave us with some closing thoughts or homework or anything because I, I think that this is a, a concept we get asked about a lot and it's, a lot of folks are like, Hey, we're new in additional marketing.Like, where are you seeing your best returns? And so the answer is it depends on your business, which stinks. But anybody that doesn't say it depends is telling you it's probably selling you snake oil. Um, and so I think that you know who you are matters in terms of your business go to market. Yeah. Um, my last thoughts are don't spend money.That you don't know how to manage from a, from an expertise perspective on certain channels. Yeah. So if you know you don't know, and you know that no one on your team knows how to do this, like, I encourage you to get an external, you know, partner in the mix. And then as a follow-up to that, if you work with agencies or vendors.You have to hold them accountable. Yeah. 'cause no one's perfect. You know, you can't just expect that they are going to be 100.0% Amazing. Yeah. So you have to hold your vendors accountable, just like any other vendor, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and then. Don't, don't overspend too fast. Yeah. You know, if you decide, hey, we're gonna run this budget, like, be methodical, be purposeful, ask other, you know, operators, reach out to us.Like, um, just confirm that you know what you're doing. Kinda get some advice from others before you go spend a significant amount of money and regret it. Because I have seen so many people light. Tens of thousands, hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars on fire after some strategy that, like a buddy on a golf trip told them mm-hmm.Is amazing. Yeah. And they didn't, they didn't really take the time to ensure that it was gonna go well. Yeah, yeah. No doubt. Yeah, I think that's great. Um, if anybody has any questions or they want to get connected, um, hit us up on info@entryandexit.co and just say, yo Steven. That's all you really need to say.Yeah. Or you can leave it in the comments. So we check all the comments. Um, if you put it in the comments, we will reach out and respond to that. We really appreciate that. Which reminds me if you wouldn't mind. Engaging with our content, liking and subscribing and doing all the things that every podcast host ever asks you to do.'cause it actually really matters and means a lot to us. And also we really like it when people email us and tell us what things they want to hear about. 'cause we're always trying to think about what's good, engaging content. So, uh, yeah, let us know. Thanks for listening. We hope you have a fantastic week.Thanks.
