The Most Important Page on Your Website

Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop.

Logan Shinholser: Hey everyone, welcome back to Remodelers on the Rise. This is Kyle Hunt. I'm wearing my favorite hat of the day. It's my Kyle Hunt hat. ⁓ I've got my headset on. I used to be a trucker, I'm no longer a trucker, and now I'm a podcast guy. So welcome back to the episode. Kyle, how are we doing today?

Kyle Hunt: If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.

Kyle: Well folks, Logan just did a interview, a little intro before ⁓ Kassi gave us the A-OK, we're good to go. Maybe Kassi will toss it in there, maybe not. ⁓ It was pretty creative, had sound effects and everything. Logan, I was thinking of your name when I was about to say, hey, my guest today is Logan Schinholzer, CGN, Contractor Growth Network, ContractorGrowthNetwork.com. And I was thinking about your last name. Do you know anybody outside your family with that last name? Like have you seen it out in the wild? It's a unique one.

Logan Shinholser: Yeah, so it's so it's it's funny. So I ⁓ was in like a a contractor-esque like Facebook group and there was somebody else named Dylan Schinholster that commented on something and I was like, ⁓ my god, like who is like I've never met somebody else with this exact last name. So I immediately commented and was like, Hey, I don't know who you are, but we're somehow in the same circle. And so we immediately connected and then we asked, we like talked ⁓ over like Facebook Messenger within like Two minutes we realized that this was like my dad's second cousin's son. So then I reached out to my dad and said, Do you know who this is? He's like, ⁓ yeah, like that's so and so's kid, probably. You know, so I thought that I found somebody else out in the wild, but it turns out it was just see, I didn't even know I had family outside of my immediate shinholster family. So I thought it was it was wild enough, but it was like a second cousin, I guess now once removed. No, it's interesting. He does ⁓

Kyle Hunt: What if the marketing you're already paying for turned out to be the stuff you could cancel? That's about where Bob McCumsey with McCumsey Builders landed. Since he started working with CGN, his average spot on Google went from buried on page three or four up into the top 10. And here's what he told us: quote, I'm trying to cancel other subscriptions so I can put more money to you guys because I find more value in this. What if the marketing you're already paying for turned out to be the stuff you could cancel? That's about where Bob McCumsey with McCumsey Builders landed. Since he started working with CGN, his average spot on Google went from buried on page three or four up into the top 10. And here's what he told us: quote, I'm trying to cancel other subscriptions so I can put more money to you guys because I find more value in this.

Kyle: Good old so-and-so's. And are you guys best friends and have you guys met up in person yet?

Logan Shinholser: He does events f like large events and he does it a lot for the roofing industry. So there's like certain crossover there. ⁓ we just really chatted that one time. We both went through the whole like, hey, do you have to spell your last name phonetically? And like, do you teach people it's like, hey, it's shin like a shin hole and you hold up that, you know. So we talked through like how you have to like always say that there's no C or no T in the name. But outside of that, ⁓ that was the extent of our friendship.

Kyle: Hmm

Kyle Hunt: When a builder starts pulling money out of everything else just to put more into one thing, that tells you which one's actually working. If you're curious about results like that, want more proof, or just want to hear more stories from remodelers like yourself, head over to contractorgrowth network.com slash results, where CGN is always publishing case studies with real numbers behind them. That's contractorgrowth network dot com slash results. When a builder starts pulling money out of everything else just to put more into one thing, that tells you which one's actually working. If you're curious about results like that, want more proof, or just want to hear more stories from remodelers like yourself, head over to contractorgrowth network.com slash results, where CGN is always publishing case studies with real numbers behind them. That's contractorgrowth network dot com slash results.

Kyle: Hmm Well, there we go. That's the guest last name folks. And you even said like, you know, and he's in the roofing event space. So there's a little crossover there. And while there is a little crossover, you guys have really locked and loaded on design, build remodelers. That is our ideal client. That is who we serve. So probably a little less carry over than maybe years ago.

Kyle Hunt: Go check it out, people. Go check it out, people.

Logan Shinholser: The more that I've gotten into this specific world, the more that I've realized how much I truly believe this is the hardest thing to market for over every other contracting or home service industry, in this sense of it's one of the most expensive things that you're gonna buy. It's very invasive, and it takes longer than you think it's gonna take, and with more decisions that you're gonna have to make than anything else. So even like custom home building, you're not living in it.

Kyle: Then roughing, then a plumbing thing, then a deck. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser: Like you're not in the home where somebody is is doing all this stuff around your family. So, like, even in that sense, like that's to me an easier sell than remodeling, which that means from a marketing standpoint, our job is like not so much like, hey, if somebody is forcing you to spend $200,000 on like a kitchen remodel, you should go with our client from a marketing perspective. We have to convince you basically and show you that. Your $200,000 to make these family memories that you say you want to make is better spent on an invasive, time-intensive, decision-intensive setup, which is remodeling, rather than five killer vacations at Disney World to make family memories as well. So we like we are not selling cars. We are selling, hey, you already have a really nice car that you probably like a lot. Here's a Ferrari that's A lot more money than you think it's gonna be. And it's at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of need. So probably like a lot of the Romanos on this, like I, you know, I think to myself every so often, like, why this industry? Cause like this is a very hard, like there's very few interior design build remodeling focused marketing agencies. And we probably know all of them on one hand. And there's a reason for that, because it's a very hard thing to sell. But at the same time, it's everybody who does this industry, like also probably like I hop on the phone every so often with the prospect and they're like,

Kyle: Mm.

Logan Shinholser: I want to do this thing and I want to sell it to private equity. I'm like, there's a million industries that you could do that's gonna private equity wants to to buy. It is not custom design builder modeling. Yeah. I'm like, no, no hedge fund manager is gonna step in here and be like, you know what, we should do like herringbone backsplash and stuff like that's not gonna happen. So yeah.

Kyle: Hmm, this complicated design build. That's that makes sense. Interesting that that sets the that sets the groundwork here we are selling a unique product we're selling an emotional service we're selling an expensive service and the way that we market that is important. I also don't want to assume that everybody knows who you are Logan if they're in kind of the remodellers on the rise world they and they've probably kind of seen you pop up over time you're very consistent with the marketing but go ahead and introduce yourself and then we'll get into the kind of focus topic we wanted to dive into.

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ yeah. Sure. ⁓ so I started I don't know marketing agency contractor growth network, but I started this because ⁓ dozen years ago, my dad, he he was in the pond and water feature world, came to me and said, Logan, I got a local marketing agency and they just don't get what we're doing, right? Like we go above and beyond, you know, our we pair crews really well, but ultimately when people reach out to me, they just think that I'm basically twice the price as all the other pond people and they think everybody in the pond world's chucking a truck. I need you to make my phone ring Logan with people that know what it actually looks like to work with us. And I started doing that. And basically what I was doing was just taking all the great stuff they were doing offline, like pressure washing the driver when you leave, or when you build a pond, you're in the grass slot, you're matting down the grass. You got to soft rake that grass to like make it look nice ⁓ when you actually like leave the project. ⁓ so I started documenting all that, did all the marketing for him, and then year after year after year. His ⁓ leads grew. It got to the point where like when we're going out to the job site, like the homeowners already knew who each person on the crew was. So, like from a trust perspective, that kind of got over a lot of hurdles of like who's actually gonna be in my space. ⁓ and that worked so well that his buddies, who were also contractors, reached out and said, Can you do the same thing for me that you did for your dad? Thus I kind of fell into starting a marketing agency because I was just doing sales at the time and doing marketing nights and weekends. ⁓ eight years later, I'm still doing the same thing. And every single way that we try to hack our way to the top or game our way to it, we realize that the only things that really work in this space are really showing people what life will look like if you hire them and all the great things that you're doing offline. But now we want to put it online in a way that people can truly like experience your company before they ever reach out. So

Kyle: Say that again, that first part of what we really found that works is doing what again?

Logan Shinholser: Taking all the basically documenting and taking all the great stuff that you're doing offline and putting it online in a very honest and open and transparent way. Now there's different ways to be a little bit more persuasive and showmanship, which I'm all about. ⁓ but any way that we try to hack our way to the top by doing things cheaper, you know, cut corners like it always backfires. So it's ⁓ Yeah, I mean like there again, like there's there's ways that you can like kind of game it a little bit, but it's like

Kyle: getting creative with keywords or whatnot.

Logan Shinholser: It just doesn't, it never works out in the end. Or like you see a big spike, that person's happy, they go on social media and they go, ⁓ I got my agency that does this for me. It's working really well. And then everybody else jumps on board. And the next thing you know, there's a mass exit six months later because it Google figured out what you were doing. They're pretty smart, turns out. So things like that.

Kyle: Yeah. So, so if you go, when you go to contractgrowthnetwork.com and you look at like your guys' websites that you've created, what people are going to see is there's, there's an element of the website that seems to be very consistent for you. And it's what we're to talk about today of these featured project pages. Why, before we kind of talk about like what it looks like and, and how people can mimic it and create them and how all that works. ⁓ Why?

Logan Shinholser: Correct.

Kyle: Why is that kind of rising to the top of a very focal point of every website that you're building for remodellers?

Logan Shinholser: Kind of give you a personal story.

Kyle: personal stories. Can you make it a little emotional too, like a little little tear jerkery?

Logan Shinholser: I'll make it emotional. Yeah, so my wife and I were about to ⁓ enter our second child, Audrey. Yep, my wife Audrey and I are about to welcome our second child into this world.

Kyle: What's your wife's name? Audrey. My wife Audrey. What do you like? Let me just set the tone a little bit. What's something you love about Audrey?

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ I how I love how Audrey is like I look at her as an individual. I have a lot of respect for her, which I have found that that what that's what makes our relationship work so well is that we respect the individual of each other. So she's very hardworking, she's very determined, she's a great mother to our kids. ⁓ she's kind of the the yang to my yin. I don't know if that's like a real thing, but I think you could piece it together. Yeah, she's like ⁓ she's my build to my design. That ⁓ okay.

Kyle: Ying to the yang, I think. No, you were doing well. Stop.

Logan Shinholser: All right, all right, all right. Yeah. ⁓ we're we're good we're good like tongue and groove if you get what I'm saying. Like we we we piece well together. ⁓ so but yeah, she's she's great but

Kyle: and I was trying to be your wingman there and it was kind of going well. like, ⁓ maybe she'll get to listen to this clip. And then you started getting weird and you know, it was beautiful. So you and your wife were remodeling.

Logan Shinholser: Ha ha. Well, I was just trying I was trying to bring it back to the audience. Cause I I I yeah. So we're we're about to do ⁓ bring a second kid in this world. We're coming back from Job Tread Connect and our our issue is that we only have we have a three-bedroom house and we need to basically get the desk that's in the current nursery that the baby's about to go into out of there because we can't be typing at night while the baby's there. And ⁓ We're like, okay, we need to do an addition on our house to get an actual new office. Who do we go with? And I was like, well, actually, you know, I I've I've talked to this one builder many times at JobTrade Connect, like I've seen his work. Let me just show you his website. So I took her directly to the website. and she was like, Okay, great. Like, let me see like their work. So she went immediately to the website to check out their projects. And she looked through the projects, and then she said, Well, let me see their Instagram. And that's when I was like, Well, why? She's like, Well, these just like aren't really like what why are they photos like that? And like what you know, like I I want to see more of their work. And basically what ended up happening was we went to Instagram. She liked enough of that because the Instagram looked way different than the actual fa ⁓ website. And she was like, Okay, I I will entertain looking at this, you know, like talking to this person. But basically the feature project pages did not do enough to get her buy in to them want to explore more. And that's where I started to realize, like, okay, and then and since then we've done, you know.

Kyle: Mm.

Logan Shinholser: hundreds of feature project pages and we've like morphed them over time and updated them. But basically there's a whole like song and dance to how do you actually get projects to look great, but also then tell the backstory of what was done, why it was done, how it was done, what the thought process behind it was, all of that stuff that really gets somebody bought in. And since we've been building those, those pages now are the number two most traffic pages on the websites that we build after the homepage. So now we make it very easy to Get people from the homepage, which is always the most popular page, to that page, because instead of just trying to make them work for it, the first thing that somebody gets on your website they want to do is go, not like, ⁓ who is this Kyle guy? Or like, hey, how long has he been in business for? They want to know, like, they don't they don't care about those things until they build trust and rapport with your projects. Let's get them right there. And that's where the feature project page comes in. So it started off as like a personal thing that I saw. And then I was like, let's just test this thing out. And then as time has gone on, second most popular page. People spend like two and a half times longer on those pages compared to like a normal ⁓ gallery page because it gives context around it. So ⁓ there's a lot that goes into these things, but they're basically the same way that most remodelers that like would sell and they go, ⁓ Kyle, that sounds like very familiar to a different project. Can I walk you through this project? And a lot of times they have like a PDF that like walks them through it. It's that, but now it's live on a website.

Kyle: Hmm. Yeah, so I've on the website, it's building that no like and trust. It's showing them actual examples of projects that are similar. And instead of going, ⁓ there's seven pretty pictures of it. It's telling the story. It's showing the actual process. So you had sent me, if you're watching kind of the video version of this, ⁓ you'll, you'll kind of see, just clicked to share the screen. If not, we'll, I'll have Kassi put a to the three examples we're looking at in the show notes and you can click along, but just looking at these three.

Logan Shinholser: Yes.

Kyle: three websites, you know, that that top banner featured projects, featured projects, featured projects.

Logan Shinholser: And this one's actually a proposal just seen on this last one. So, like that's some cool stuff that's coming out. But I'll walk you through that one special. Yeah, yeah.

Kyle: Fair. Fit. I see. I see where it is. So if we went to our friends at Home Run Design Build, designer model rather, Jacob and Katie, ⁓ let's click on one of these. Do you have a favorite one? Let's go with the Fairway Oasis. likes to, Jake's had a bum wrist lately. So he hasn't been able to do his full ⁓ golfing season yet, but I think he just got an AOK to start golfing. So the Fairway Oasis.

Logan Shinholser: No, they're all great.

Kyle: So what does a good featured projects page consist of? How do we kind of strategically put it together?

Logan Shinholser: All the number one thing that when comes to these pages that people get wrong is they don't realize that this is an entire performance. At the end of the day, people are clicking on these pages not to learn the backstory, not to learn the pricing, not to learn how it came in. They want to see the final result. With that said, if we give them just photos with no context to anything else of what it started as or any of that stuff, then it's a very quick process. So they just kind of skim through it and they move on the same way that my wife. Did the exact same thing. So I want to kind of set that tone of like, at the end of the day, Logan, you're telling me like you need to have this story, but people don't care about the story. They care about the story as long as we can still provide enough context and and almost like excitement as they scroll down the page. So that is what our overall goal is. So the framework that our ⁓ like when we interview people for these projects are is like if you are like the CG and like project manager or account manager working with the client.

Kyle: Hmm.

Logan Shinholser: Your litmus test of did we get enough information to build one of these pages out is would you be excited to put this project in your home? And if the answer is yes, you've gone deep enough. If the answer is, nah, it's fine, then either one, it's the wrong project, meaning we just interviewed a whole thing about like, I don't know, a very bland hallway bathroom, or B, we just we're not deep enough yet. Go deeper into it. That's the idea. So

Kyle: And we don't need to pick every single one of our projects. I think that's interesting of like pick a few that's got that real solid story and perhaps also more of the project types that you're looking for.

Logan Shinholser: That's the big one right there is that if you go, all right, I'm you know, you're in let's just say Ann Arbor, and you're not actually in Ann Arbor, but let's say you want to do more whole homer models in Ann Arbor. Let's you're Jeff Ford, all right, you want to do more whole home models in Ann Arbor. The best thing that you can do is capture projects of whole homer models in Ann Arbor. Because now what you're doing is one, you're proving to people I have done this thing before. Two, if you have enough of those, you're able to show variety. So you're able to show, like, hey, you want mid-century modern? Great. Here's a project around that. Versus like if you like more of a transitional style, same idea. And then so you kind of show a little bit of variety there. And then finally, three, Google loves this stuff. Like, you know, in this world of AI, like we all use AI at this point, but like it's hard to fake a real project. So if you can show Google you actually have experience doing this very specific real thing, it's way more impactful that Google wants to now trust you. And we're even seeing it, we're like, on Google's like Google Business Profile, like they on their own will link to these pages directly from the Google business profile. So it's like I look at these as like the gift that keeps on giving.

Kyle: Hmm. Yeah, so we ⁓ got a name for the project. We've got the city and state. We've got to get started right there. The rest of the project portfolio from unused deck to year round entertainment oasis. Some nice writing here. Timeline, location, investment.

Logan Shinholser: Yes. Top pricing. Yep. Just to quickly get them through. And again, if we just lead off with all the nerdy stuff like the backstory or just all like there's a level of like there's design that has to come into it. So like think of the difference of if I'm presenting an actual like rendering from chief architect to Kyle, and I say, here's a piece of paper. I have eight designs that I have screenshots of that I put on one sheet of paper. Each thing is gonna get crowded and it's too small.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: Versus if we said, great, let me put each of these individual renderings on its own, you know, 11 by 17 paper and I'm gonna present it in a beautiful way, you're way more likely to buy that thing because of just the medium of how it's presented. It's the same thing here. We're trying to build this into a story, but you have to have enough like design and like visual hierarchy associated with it to keep people going down the page.

Kyle: A beautiful deck that sat empty most of the year. Now we're hearing a little bit of the story. again, if I am an ideal client and I have a similar project, the amount of trust that is being built through this is amazing. We are selling in an environment here in 2026 and I'm hearing it from a lot of our our peer group clients or one on one clients. It is harder this year to sell and close remodeling projects than it was last year. That's becoming quite apparent a bit across the board. It doesn't mean the market is horrible, but it's getting harder for people to sign the dotted line. We need to build more know, like, and trust. We need to put our best foot forward. And if I go to your website and you've got a couple of pictures of before and after, a couple of pictures of a pretty finish that has no storytelling, that talks not at all about the pain points, that ⁓ just is basic, that is not... going to assist us in separating and differentiating us ⁓ from the others. So this one's highlighting some of the pain points. ⁓ And then what do we move into on the old project page?

Logan Shinholser: Then we want to go into design. So if we have 3D rendering. So on some projects they had 3D rendering, some projects they just had mood boards. But basically, we want to then show the process in which we got there. And then at the end of this, I can show you like the cool way, Kyle, that we're doing it now, that we're taking it a step further. But I digress. Cause we want to basically, if we're having issues where people go, well, why do I need to spend eight grand on a design fee? Like kit isn't that just the cost of doing business. Like we want to make sure that design

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: Or at least pre-construction is part of all this because it's like, look, we don't get to the end result, which is what you really want, unless we go through design first. But design should be sexy in itself. People, we don't want to look at it as a means to an end. And a lot of homeowners look at it that way. We want to sell the idea of like, you need design, otherwise, you're gonna be in trouble. The best way to do that is to consistently show on these future project pages that this person had to go through design. So it normalizes it, but it also then bridges.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: From the before to the after.

Kyle: Gotcha, complete entertainment set up under cover. Outdoor kitchen with durable countertops, seamless indoor outdoor flow with the Nano wall.

Logan Shinholser: Lo let me highlight what you're what he's reading right now. These are gonna be ⁓ like featured elements of the project. So the way that I I I pose it is I'm like, Kyle, you just did this project. If you could show Kassi, who's listening to this right now, you built this whole setup. If you walked in and you could only pick four things to highlight and either show or educate her around on this project, what would those four things be?

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: And the reason for that is there's typically around those four things, it's things that are important to the homeowner and things that you did that were unique that sometimes we may need to do a little bit of education explaining of what was done. And what ends up happening here is we want to give basically like things that stand out its own section on the site. Because otherwise if all you do on this page is just show a full gallery, we don't know if if like if something is important, make it look important. So that's what we're trying to do here is we want to show like, hey, we had this indoor outdoor flow with the nanowall. Like that was a big deal to this homeowner. Like those things are not cheap. You could have just put in ⁓ French doors, but they didn't. Why do they do that? Because they want it to feel indoor outdoor at the same time. Let's go ahead and show its own section or with a own little mini vignette for that exact thing.

Kyle: Yeah. The other thing I love about these pages is one for all the reasons you just mentioned of it's the gift that keeps giving in a world of AI, this type of content is, getting grabbed, is getting shown. ⁓ you mentioned the Google side of things, even shown in the business listings. The other thing I love about taking the time to do these properly beyond the rankings and that side of things is the work that goes into this. There's 15 social media posts just on this page alone. You can repurpose it that way. You go out and have an initial conversation or initial meeting with a, with a prospective client and you send them an email directly to a page that's very relevant and highlights a halfway down. You're going to see the following that again enhances your ability to differentiate you from the other. So it's nice to be able to use this in many different ways. ⁓ Do you want me to pause here and go over to one of the newer ones? You seemed a little. like you wanted to go over to maybe one of these other examples.

Logan Shinholser: I can do whatever you want. This is a great, I mean, like you get the the the beauty here is like the is the versatility. So you mentioned like, hey, you can send them an email. You can also live, like the way that we you and I are talking right now, like on an introduction call, somebody goes, Hey, hey, Logan, I just like I want to get like a new outdoor living space. I looked on your website. looks like you guys do that. I'd like to schedule an estimate. And I'm like, Kyle, that sounds great. Before I do that, can I kind of walk you through our process? I want to make sure that I can even do something that you're looking for. And you're gonna go, that sounds great.

Kyle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: Then I'm going to go, great. Are you in front of a computer by chance? Can I get you to pull up this specific project? And what I can then do is I can walk you through that project page and actually have an open discussion around, hey, look, like let's go through some of the before, let's go some through some of the afters, the use cases. And now what I'm effectively doing is I'm using the information that's on this page to get you to open up about your own project. So I'm now like in that last case with ⁓ you know, home run, it talked about they have a deck. And what they really wanted was a place to spend more time. So actually, let's cover this thing up. I can go, okay, great. Talk to me about your project. In this specific example, they just had a deck. Are you working with a deck right now? Or like talk to me about what your current scenario is. And then the perk is the person is going to be able to open up about all that stuff and go, You're right. I actually do have a deck. I don't use much of it right now. I'm like, well, how come? Like, well, you know how it is in up here in Seattle. Like it's always raining. And I'm like, okay, well, what have you just so basically instead of you trying to like figure out How do I have a great sales conversation? Like I I saw Paul McManus posted like a really good like in in the the Facebook group. Like, this is my initial call. Like to me, what I then want to do is take that and add visuals. Because if I'm like, yeah, deck like that, like what you're talking about, that's like $350,000 to the normal person. They're like, wow, like nobody ever goes, ⁓ that's way less than I thought. It's always way more. So what I want to do is I want to then show you the visuals of what 350 gets you. Because if it's good photos and it's good storytelling, it then's gonna make you go from like,

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: Wow, three fifty, no way. It's like okay, three fifty, like I okay, looking at this

Kyle: It sense. The second story, the climate control. ⁓ man, that would be so awesome to watch the game.

Logan Shinholser: All that. Yeah. You're you're selling a visual thing and you're trying to do it verbally over the phone, just show them the visual thing. It's like why I used to work at indeed.com selling. We had a slide deck for a reason because like I don't want to just run through everything verbally. I want to show you.

Kyle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm. So when you think of a remodel, a design, build or modeling website, the feature projects, is that by far your favorite section for all the reasons? it?

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. I mean, like it is like to the point where like I tell people first off, like, look, I'm a marketing guy, but if you come to me and you don't have good photos, we either need to one, go get photos or two, be willing to get photos. So a lot of like what we talk through is like your photography. And we do a lot of guidance on good photos versus bad photos, it architectural photos versus interior design versus real estate photos, because all three of those very different things and they also sell very different companies. Do we want to have close up of the craftsmanship if we're more of a builder? Or do we want to show more of the design elements? Because we are design build. So like for each individual company, just the photos itself. I I mean we our next YouTube video is going to be like a very comprehensive one all about like how do you actually guide your photographer? First off, how do you find the right one? And second, how do you guide them in the right way to get the right photos? And then how do we tell the stories around them? But like those feature project pages, like my whole talk at the conference, ⁓ your conference, the Rise conference is all about like, great, let's assume you have these feature project pages. These are all the ways you can then market them. So we're gonna go through like social media, both paid and organic, how you can add these two SEO and write blogs around them, direct mail, email. Basically it's like your foundation is Like what you brought up on your own of like, hey, you could do it through an email, you could do it through social media. Like it's now, once you have that documented, you have photos, you have a review from the client, you the whole story, the possibilities are endless. And again, if you're if your clients are anything like Audrey, they don't care about the business. They don't care about the core values of the the owner until they care about, wow, that's a great project. I could see that in my home or something like that in my home. Then they care about everything else a little bit more.

Kyle: Mm-hmm. Got it. He's talking about the rise conference folks, August 11th and 12th. I just pulled up the website to confirm because I couldn't remember if it was the 12th or 13th, 11th 12th in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Logan will be there. Yours truly will be there. According to my screen right here, it says 53 days from around 19 hours, 52 minutes. We'll be kicking it off. So do come to that. And then you also mentioned Remodeler's Community. If you go to remodelerscommunity.com, that's the Facebook group. We're not done yet, but how did they find you again, Contractor what?

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ contractor growth network dot com.

Kyle: Check it out, people, check it out. Yeah, so photos, photos you're talking are huge. We know it, we have to, I'm starting to think here, I was gonna say, the hypothesis. No, I'll say, I'll confirm it. It's always, it's always as a business owner, it's always been important that you put your marketing hat on more regularly, that you put your storytelling hat on more regularly. But doggone it, I'll just say it, in 2026 and in 2028 and in 2030 and going forward, it's going to be more important. It's going to be harder to cut through the clutter and putting out generic kind of okay, oh, and that's pretty, but stuff that doesn't tell any story, stuff that doesn't attract the ideal client and frankly repel the non-ideal client. The content that doesn't tug on some of the pain points and some of the solutions, it's going to work less and less if you're lazy with that. One thing is maybe you need to invest and have pros like Logan and his team create it for you. Secondly, you also just need to be more of a, more of a storyteller, facts tell, story sell. Start looking at your projects, start paying closer attention as you're talking to prospects, those pain points, start talking about what was the actual result? ⁓ let's, let's kind of get onto the emotional side of this remodel, not the sticks and bricks. Continue to lean into that. It's going to be an important skill that, that all of us develop as business owners. You agree with that hypothesis?

Logan Shinholser: I do. And can I give you an example around that? So ⁓ a Ramaj on the Rise client just signed on with CGM that I met a couple of years ago. And they are they're not straight up design build. They do in-house drafting, but they get a lot of work from architects, designers, things like that. So they're really more focused on the building side, which if that's the case, that I we talked a lot through the decisions that are made on the project, right? It's the

Kyle: Please.

Logan Shinholser: Higher level like mill work that has to be done. But like they had gave a very unsexy, but a very great example of something they did that I'm like, we need to photograph that. And what it was was an appliance garage. An appliance garage is typically not like this, like, ⁓ we I cannot wait to market this thing. But this appliance garage, you open up the cabinets and it has a electrical strip that has like eight outlets on it. And I gave this example of in my kitchen in my house, the the previous ⁓ owners remodeled it. I know exactly which outlets I can plug two appliances into at the same time without it tripping. And it's only one, there's only one scenario. The rest of it is I can only have one appliance plugged in at any given time. So I asked them, I said, okay, on this strip, is it like you could plug like eight hairdryers into it and you're good? And they're like, yeah, we had to do this, this, and this. I'm like, okay, that is typically not going to make the cover of a magazine. But if you capture that photo as one of those four features and then do that little vignette under it that talks about they wanted an appliance garage. And we made sure that you could plug eight Instapots into this thing without tripping the breaker. So you're not walking downstairs every five minutes. That then shows the level of care and thoughtfulness that you're going to put into their project with just a very specific example because people don't know when you say, ⁓ I'm going to try really hard in your project and I'm going to care a lot. Everybody says that.

Kyle: Anyway.

Logan Shinholser: But if we give specific examples of that exact thing, that is where we're gonna come in and go, This is what we like, this is how we approach this stuff. So that's kind of the idea.

Kyle: That's a good thought process. One thing related to that, we bought an Instapod a couple years ago. I think we used it twice and have never used it since. Do you have one?

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ really? I I used it every single day for three years and then I used it so much that I got sick of it. And now now I use it once a year.

Kyle: Interesting. Now, I will also say as a public service announcement, the rice cooker, which I kind of scoffed at when my wife brought it home, is amazing. Love the rice cooker.

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ yeah, yeah. So I've heard so I've I've I'm a big sushi guy and like when I've made sushi rice in my Instapot, it's great. But I've then heard, hey, go get like an actual like rice, ⁓ like a good rice cooker. It's it's the best.

Kyle: Few things for you guys listening, Rice Cooker, do that. More storytelling, absolutely. If you're compelled and you go, you know what, I've got to step up my stinking website and my marketing and my feature projects, go to ContractorGrowthTheNetwork.com and reach out to Logan. ⁓ The other thing I clicked on, this is more of a proposal you said for Austin and Callie at MSC. There's a couple of things I liked on this one of, you had this little thing that says what drives the range. And it says timeline and square footage are illustrative, pending final project figures. but what drives the range? Yeah, but that's kind of interesting of kind of the three biggest drivers. Again, educating folks on the process. I like that.

Logan Shinholser: That was just me making something up for it. But yeah. Yeah, because basically it's like we don't want them to look at this thing and go, ⁓ wow, a hundred and sixty thousand dollars for a bathroom, that must be what their bathrooms cost. When in reality, that's because this person went with like in this project a high-end Zaliege tile. That's a pain in the butt. And I'll show you a better version of this, what just going through right here. ⁓ it's in I just put it in the chat. So if you click on that, this is my favorite thing that I'm now pushing everybody to. And this is comes from Brian over at Build It Right, who also comes from Romals on the Rise. So thank you, Kyle. But let me let me walk you through this story.

Kyle: sunrise. Yeah, you bet.

Logan Shinholser: And this is a such a good one. He went off and did this on his own. And I'm now like, this is the gold standard. So scroll down a little bit. Keep going. Keep going. Don't worry about this stuff's boring. Keep keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. This part right here. All right. Stop. All right. So here we go. We want to show you. Let me walk you through story of this. So in his space, this is Brian. Brian's up in Oconomawalk, Wisconsin. ⁓

Kyle: Don't undermine all of this. For-

Logan Shinholser: All of his houses are like lake home houses. It's all older houses that look exactly like what you're looking at in this photo. It's small, it's cramped. It looks like it was built in like 1993. And basically, what he does in all these homes is he goes in there at this very expensive lake, blows out the walls, opens it up. So it starts with we have this cramped kitchen, it's got a peninsula island, it's not very good. Scroll down. Then we go into initial as-built floor plan. And what we did on this one, and I got this idea from Jeff Ford, because he does a great job of this thing. We have floor plans that are not the typical, like, let's show all the mechanicals, all the lines, let's let's give you every single dimension. We don't care about that. We just want to see what the before looked like and we want to color code it so you can see what was actually done. So right here we see the before floor plan. Scroll down, guess what we see after that? The after floor plan. So now what we can do is we can compare and contrast.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: The two different ones. So as Brian is explaining this story to somebody over the phone and go, Does your kitchen look like this? Okay, that makes sense. Let's go to this floor plan. Like I don't have your floor plans in front of me because I've never been to your house. But like, how does this one align with yours? That's so similar. Like, I also all that stuff. And he goes, Okay, great. On this specific project, let me now you see this floor plan. Can you see the difference? This is what we did. They really wanted to open the space up. We did this, we did this, we did this. You see on the left side, that's now like a dining room. So basically, you're making it easy.

Kyle: Like, ⁓ that's so similar. Exactly. We want to open that wall up.

Logan Shinholser: In a way that you're telling the nerdy stuff. Like every every builder, every remodeler wants to talk through the process and here's and like the strategy they approach, but they put like a huge block of text. It doesn't like nobody wants to read that. They want to see the visuals. So then keep going. So we showed the afterfloor plan. And then guess what we showed? A hyper-realistic rendering from Chief. Right. And then if you scroll, look at that angle right there. Now look at that angle.

Kyle: Same thing, there's the design, there's the after.

Logan Shinholser: Yes. So what we did, and and that's the actual after photo that aligns with the before photo at the very top. So you basically went from before photo of this boring 95 kitchen, as built floor plan, after floor plan, ⁓ after rendering, and then after photo, and then if you scroll down a tiny bit more, you'll see a beautiful before and after of the same angle from the other angle to really show the difference between the two. You see that story?

Kyle: Yeah. I, and if I'm Brian and I really like how you're saying, man, use this in your sales process of that, of just like, if I'm sitting there with Brian and Brian's, Brian's a good sales person. He's easy to get along with and all of that. He also pronounced his tough city name quite well. But if we just, if we just went through that and he goes, ⁓ we have a project very similar to that. And he walked my wife and I through this.

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ it's so helpful. I've had a lot of practice and a lot of YouTube.

Kyle: The amount of confidence I have in him, even if I just was Googling, I found him through there, I reached out to him, the amount of confidence I have in him and his company and my understanding of how the design process is important and why it matters and how it works, he, in these photos and step-by-step, just built a tremendous level of know, like, and trust with me. Without this, it's blabber mouthing. Well, we can do this. And here's how the design build process works. And let me show you all of this deeply detailed typed out step-by-step text that I'm kind of sort of remembering. I remember all of this very, very clearly. Even I agree with you. It's brilliant to highlight. Number one, just strip down the design. So it's just, it doesn't distract me hardly at all. You highlight that and then you show the after even as somebody who doesn't know how to read plans very well or somebody who's never seen plans before they will immediately get it. let alone to show the design process. Wow, we can actually see it.

Logan Shinholser: It is it is so easy and and this is like just other fluffs you like but it's just like that main section I wanted to show you. But the beauty here is that story that I just told you, right now, the only person in the company that can really tell those stories are those that have been super involved because it's hard. So if you hire a salesperson and they come in and they try to sell this work, a lot of what us owners do that sells really well is you just tell the stories of other people and other projects very similar to theirs. But unless you then, as the owner,

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: sit there and and educate about all these other projects, these project pages then make it so much easier for the salesperson to basically just be able to like go through this exact thing with the prospect over the phone. So they don't have to then learn 10 years of project history. You're able to just look at the feature project pages, say, ⁓ like, you know, yes, you have to study those. If you have a dozen of those, they have to know the dozen of them. But if it's like you want to open up a kitchen in Okanomawalk, perfect. I have one that looks just like it. Let me walk you through it.

Kyle: There it is.

Logan Shinholser: And then each of those things is it's just it's jump off points for the conversation. Hey, is yours like that size? Like maybe I'm way out. Maybe yours is super expansive and I'm wrong. Like, and and you go through the whole song and dance, like, hey, before I get out there, like, can I just show you some of our work? Because like ultimately, what we do, you may think it's super ugly, and this is a super fast conversation. And just like Kyle Smirk, they always they they laugh, you laugh. I do the same thing with my websites. ⁓ you knew I was going? ⁓ I thought you knew I was going with that one.

Kyle: Well part of the reason I was smirking is because when we can't, I, huh? No, I smirked primarily because we came off of the screen share and I looked at myself and thought, well, it's a handsome guy. And then after that, I thought, man, you just look kind of frustrated and angry there. Being a host of a podcast, people don't even know what we have to deal with, Logan. There is so much, the lighting, the makeup, the whole thing. And I'm like, Kyle, smirk and smile a little bit. You look so gruff and angry there. It's exhausting. It's exhausting to. Yeah. Everybody's like, ⁓ it's so hard to be a remodeler. You know, we're juggling this and did it. ⁓ please. try to be a podcast host.

Logan Shinholser: Did you did you know if you ⁓ if you bite the insides of your cheeks you look skinnier?

Kyle: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I've been doing 43 pushups a day because I'm 43 and I'm a hundred six. I don't want to talk about myself. I'm like 160 days straight. And I came out of the bathroom the other day and my wife was in, in there and I said, honey, I've been doing pushups out of my shoulders. Look thinking like they look better than they were. And she goes, about this muscle? And she pointed to my biceps. I've never had good biceps. She's like, why don't you start like doing some curls?

Logan Shinholser: Isn't that pretty ⁓ nice.

Kyle: So I went and found some five pound curls. brought them to my office. I've been cranking those five pounders out, Logan.

Logan Shinholser: You should try bar class. You want to be humbled. That's that's your way. You think that the six dials in your remodeling business can be tough at times. Go try bar class. That thing is really tough.

Kyle: Okay. Stay focused because Logan has a hard deadline because he's got an interview coming up here shortly. Logan, the goal of our podcast, you pointed at me.

Logan Shinholser: I said you're spot on.

Kyle: Yes, the goal of our podcast today was I wanted to talk about, know, let you tell your story a little bit. She let you show off the expertise a little bit, but also why are these feature projects pages important? How do they fit into your overall marketing efforts and kind of like what do they consist of? Mission accomplished on all of that. So that's all rock solid. Wouldn't mind you finishing things off with a, Hey, if you didn't hear anything else, if I were, know, if I really, I really want to emphasize the following for our listeners and then again tell them what to do if they want to hear a little bit more about Iyoka.

Logan Shinholser: So if you got nothing from this but this right here, it is one, when you are done with a project, get great photography of that project. Not iPhones, not my 17-year-old is into photography. Get an actual like great photography that highlights what you do and honestly makes the project look better than what it actually is. Kind of like a resume. Like if you're a seven out of 10 person, the resume should make you an eight and a half. Not a not a 10 where you're lying, but an eight and a half.

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

Logan Shinholser: That's what the photos should do. And the second thing is make sure that you get a review from that individual client. Like to your Google page, like your your ⁓ Google business profile. Like those two things, like that's we tell people like if you have projects and photos that you either have or are willing to get, and you have reviews, we could basically do whatever we want from a marketing standpoint for you. But if you do not have those things, it becomes very tough. Yeah, you it's very hard. It's like the person that's like, I want to do custom homes. I'm like, what kind of projects are you doing now? And they're like, a lot of bathrooms. I'm like,

Kyle: harder to tell the story.

Logan Shinholser: That's gonna be a big jump for somebody to go, hey, like, you know, it like, yeah, like that's such a big deal. So you wanna show off that you can do this stuff and it needs to be done in a very like sexy way. And I would say the photos are the best way to do it. Video's great. Everybody wants to go into video and they get the drones and they get the, you know, like the time-lapse, ⁓ you know, GoPros, but like ultimately, like photos still are the thing.

Kyle: We'll trust you with this.

Logan Shinholser: Like you're closer to like the fashion world, I would say. So photos are still a big thing there. So allow people to experience your projects through your future project pages. Because unless you have like a model home that you can walk people through, the next best way to do that is through media. So photos, reviews, that's gonna be your jam.

Kyle: Hmm. Good. So everybody listening to this, think of one of your projects. One of your projects could be even two years ago, could be last year. And ⁓ you didn't really take advantage of excellent, wonderful photos of it. You haven't really told that story. Maybe you haven't gotten that Google review and just pick that one and say, all right, in the month, this month, let's lock in, let's get the photos. Let's get the Google review. Let's start telling the story and focus on just one a month. All of sudden you do that. You know, it's reasonable. You can sneak that in. You can make time for that. Think of that project and take some action on it. And Logan, if they reach out to you, what happens?

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ you'll talk to me. You can talk to me. I'm gonna I'm gonna talk all about your project. So come in ready to talk about your favorite. It's fun, like it's good. Like I get like I talk to people, I get to talk about like their favorite thing, which is like the projects that they like poured their heart and soul into that they go home and they tell their spouse, and their spouse's like, that's fine. I will nerd out over this with you. Why that tile? Wow, how'd you actually do this thing? What made you really think about like if you walk through the pantry, then you get to the outdoor living space, like all that sort of stuff. So it's like people get to like get excited.

Kyle: Ooh, wow.

Logan Shinholser: ⁓ because I get excited by this stuff, as you can tell by my tonality. ⁓ but yeah, we'll ⁓ we'll chat, we'll go through all this stuff. It will be a lot. I mean, every single person that has moved forward this quarter, it has been we have spent no less than 30 minutes talking about their photos, how to get better photography furs in the area, how to then guide them, all that stuff. So we will talk we will nerd out over photos, but those are the biggest things that will sell you more projects.

Kyle: Yes. and you're about to interview a potential employee that's going to join the CGN team. ⁓ What's one of your favorite interview questions? What's one of the interview questions you're going to ask today?

Logan Shinholser: one of our core values is be your best you. So I ask, Hey, this is a leadership position. What was the last book on leadership you read?

Kyle: they get stuck on that. That's gonna be a rough one.

Logan Shinholser: They they usually get stuck on that. Yeah. Like if they're if they can answer it, they're good. But like usually it's like, ⁓ well, I I haven't I haven't read one recently. I'm like, that's all right. Pick one ever. And you can probably guess where that goes. So that's probably that's a good one. I also got I saw I stumped study the other day of like, are you a better leader or a better manager? And ⁓ it was it wasn't a great answer.

Kyle: Yes, either a good way or a bad way. Cool. Say a prayer, folks, for the guy he's about to interview because that interviewer is, he's going get the good stuff. All right. Thank you, Logan. Have a good interview. Thank you for sharing this. Reach out to ContractToGrowthNetwork.com, peeps. Thank you so much.

Logan Shinholser: Yeah. Or Yeah. Cool. Thank you. See you guys.