Longevity Meets Innovation: The Marketing Strategies Behind a 70-Year-Old Industry Leader

Today, we talk with Jacob Beckstead, the Chief Marketing Officer of Bailey’s Group, one of America’s oldest and most trusted moving and logistics companies. Founded in 1952, Bailey’s has grown from a small family business in Provo, Utah, into a multi-location enterprise across Colorado and Utah while embracing cutting-edge marketing and operational innovations that keep it thriving in the digital age.

Jacob shares how Bailey’s Group is leveraging AI technology, data-driven marketing, and human connection to modernize a 70-year-old industry. From research surveys to crafting detailed, original content that ranks in both Google and AI search results, he reveals how brands can adapt and excel in today’s evolving landscape. You’ll also hear insights on managing small marketing teams, building customer trust, and why taking action beats waiting for perfection.

Whether you run an established brand or are just starting, this episode offers powerful lessons in adaptation, authenticity, and sustainable growth.

In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover the following:

• How AI-driven tools and virtual surveys are improving customer experience and operational efficiency.
• Why helpful and original content is key to being discovered through AI search engines like ChatGPT.
• The role of clear communication and empathy in preventing negative reviews and building long-term trust.
• How collaboration between customer-facing and content teams leads to more effective storytelling.
• The importance of launching quickly, testing, and refining instead of waiting for perfection.

Planning a move or curious about how technology is reshaping the moving industry? Visit www.baileysgroup.com/ to explore Bailey’s Group’s moving resources, guides, and services that make every move smoother.

To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!

Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today!

Transcript

Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the show. Today's guest is the chief marketing officer of one of the largest moving companies in the country, and he shares some incredible insights that every business owner needs to hear. We talk about how to show up in AI searches as Google search traffic continues to decline, how to turn customer feedback into more powerful content strategies, and how to handle or really even to prevent negative reviews before they even happen. If you want to stay ahead of how customers are finding and evaluating your business in 2025, you'll want to stick around for this one. Let's jump in.

Announcer [00:00:36]:
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know. Harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now here's the host of the Harvest Growth podcast, Jon LaClare.

Jon LaClare [00:00:56]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to be speaking with a good friend of mine who also is the chief marketing officer at a big company here in the Denver area. We've known each other for years. But Jake, as we'll get into our conversation, I haven't really dived deep in the past to your background, your experience, all that you've done. So I'm excited to hear a lot more of the nitty gritty of the behind the scenes of what you do with your company as we get through this conversation. But first of all, I just want to welcome you to the show. Thanks for joining today.

Jake Beckstead [00:01:22]:
Thanks, Jon. Appreciate it and love to be here.

Jon LaClare [00:01:25]:
So Jake Beckstead is the chief marketing officer of Bailey's Group. Officially is what I call the Bailey's Moving and Storage is what I've always looked at. I know it's one of your companies that's of course behind you on your graphic as well. But the company itself, the parent company, it's called Bailey's Group, Is that correct?

Jake Beckstead [00:01:41]:
Yeah, Bailey's Group, we're a company that does a couple of different things, but it's all transportation and logistics oriented. So Bailey's Moving is definitely the most well known of the brands that we have serviced. It's been around for quite a long time, but yeah, we do a couple of different things with a couple different companies.

Jon LaClare [00:01:57]:
And I actually don't know. Do you have other locations outside of Colorado? Of course. The headquarters is just a mile away from my office here in Centennial, Colorado. Do you have other locations as well?

Jake Beckstead [00:02:06]:
We do. We have five locations. So we service for the movie and storage especially we service worldwide and domestic moves Wherever you need to be. But we have five office locations, so we have now two in Utah and three in Colorado. That's Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, and then Salt Lake. We did start in Provo, Utah, back in 1952, so that's kind of our original market. There's some awesome pictures on our website of kind of what it looked like when our trucks were from the 50s. But we've grown since there. And Utah, Colorado, are kind of our main hubs of business.

Jon LaClare [00:02:40]:
That's. I didn't realize was that old. That's like almost. You're Almost on your 75th anniversary in a couple of years from now. That's. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I'm sure that world has changed over the years. How long have you been and working at Bailey's?

Jake Beckstead [00:02:52]:
I've been here about 15 years. A little bit. A little bit longer, but 15 probably was the. Is the best number. Yeah. And I feel compared to some of the people that have been here for much longer than that, I still feel pretty young at the company. Like I haven't had all the experience I need yet because there's a lot of people that have been here for a long time, and that's kind of the fun parts of being here. But 15 years for me, yeah, that's a great time.

Jon LaClare [00:03:16]:
You learn a lot in that period of time, for sure. But it's great. I love that you've got people there that have been not there much longer. You know, much as you can learn in 15 years, it's that legacy of learning that comes from people that have been there decades and kind of hearing, you know, combining the old with the new. And we'll talk about that as we. As we get into marketing conversations a little bit later on, too. But there's, you know, bring the old legacy learnings, Combine them with what, you know, your knowledge. Bring that to the forefront, and you can, as you have work, work wonders with the company. So there's a lot of. I don't know what the right number is. I kind of wrote down on my question. There's thousands of moving companies. I don't know if that's true, but there's hundreds, whatever the number is. Right. There's a lot of moving companies out there, big and small, across the entire country. And of course, what. What makes you stand out? I guess what makes Bailey's different and helps you guys to be so successful in the market?

Jake Beckstead [00:04:02]:
Yeah, Jon, it's a great question because there are kind of two tiers of moving companies that I would. I Would put down there for you. Moving is, is actually fairly old. The country started moving around the turn of the, of the last century between this agrarian society into the more urban society. And that's when you see a lot of moving companies pop up. But because of the history, group number one kind of started back then between 1900 and 1950. So there's a group of moving companies there and then a lot of moving companies today. The second group would be, they're fairly new, most of them within the past 20 years. And there's some regulation reasons because of that. So we put ourselves in kind of that first group. We've been around for a very long time. We're a part of the Allied Van Lines network which has been around for a very long time as well. And that's one of the key differences that you would see is we've got some longevity and experience being part of that group of moving companies that have been doing this since, well, probably moved your grandparents or your great grandparents.

Jon LaClare [00:05:03]:
And I imagine with that comes some trust or credibility. I mean you've been around the block a lot over the years and you know, customers come to you, they know they can trust you because you're not a fly by night operation that's going to be gone. Like I think back to one of the first moves that I paid for. You know, when you're young, you kind of bring friends in and do for free as much as you can, right. And hire your own U haul, et cetera. As you get older, you start to hire people. The first time we ever hired somebody, we were moving from one apartment to another in Boston and I walked around the corner and the guy's dragging our couch across the grass and dirt and actually we're leaving Boston, going to Chicago at the time and, and it ruined it. And it was, it was a nightmare trying to recover again. Small operation, but we learned the kind of the hard way, right. Of, you know, the upstart was cheap, but you kind of get what you pay for in some ways. And you know, are they still around today? Probably not, right? If they're still doing that kind of stuff. And bad things happen in any company, of course. But it's. I imagine that's part of the credibility that comes with being an older company.

Jake Beckstead [00:05:59]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's, it's more than just that. It's this idea that, you know, to kind of take what, what some of those insurance companies do. We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. I mean, I know that's trademark. But that's the idea here. I mean, we have done this for so long that many of the problems that you might experience along the way in a move, we know we have counted for, we've seen them coming so many times. We know how to avoid them. That I think is the biggest thing that customers really like when they buy from us is hey, you can see things that I don't see. You can avoid problems that I don't even know exist before they become things that interfere with my moving timeline.

Jon LaClare [00:06:37]:
Right. And the behind the scenes stuff that we don't see. What's something about the moving business that you think would surprise most people?

Jake Beckstead [00:06:46]:
You know, one of the things I think that's a really, really interesting thing. The thing that I have loved most about this industry is it is very close knit, especially that group that I was talking about. This companies that have been around for a while. Well, we've been around for a while. So we know each other and then we even, you know, we have friends in the industry. I've got friends all over the country that do this in other markets. And we, we talk and we bond over the fact that we have been in this industry and that I think surprises a lot of people. We don't necessarily attract a ton of attention, but there are some people that have been around here so long and some bonds that form. When you talk to somebody that's been in the moving industry and you're in the moving industry, there's like this familial relationship where it's like, oh yeah. And sometimes it's like brothers and you tease each other. We're better than you and we can do it better than you and back and forth and whatnot. But there is a lot of that relationship building. And I know a lot of good people that have been in this industry for years and they're good friends.

Jon LaClare [00:07:53]:
That's good. I think it's a good way to think about, call it our competition.

Jake Beckstead [00:07:56]:
Right.

Jon LaClare [00:07:57]:
Other companies for any business, anyone that's listening, my agency included, any kind of company that's out there, if you look at your competition as a true enemy, then it's hard for both of you to succeed at a high level. But if you look at it in a healthy way where you can really learn from each other, you're going to be different, you're going to be better than your competition in some ways. And sometimes there's things that they may innovate and you can learn from right or things they do right or wrong. So it's learning from your competition and not treating as true enemies. You know, sort of a collaborative approach in some ways. In my experience, it helps your own business to succeed more and really, really rise all tides. Right. It helps all companies succeed better as we're trying to, as opposed to trying to rip each other down, et cetera, but really learning and, and growing from those friendships.

Jake Beckstead [00:08:42]:
That's true. That's very true.

Jon LaClare [00:08:44]:
So let's talk about your role as a chief marketing officer. Some of our audience listening, they might be the CEO and marketer and janitor sometimes. Right. So some are like entrepreneur true. Not called. They're all true entrepreneurs. Right. But you know, upstart entrepreneurs, let's call it doing everything, wearing all the hats. And other listeners might be a similar role like yourself, where they're, you know, they're focused on the marketing side of the business in a VP or CMO type role. But can you share a little bit on your business? What does your daily life look like as a cmo?

Jake Beckstead [00:09:13]:
Yeah, you know that that's hard to quantify day by day or week by week. It might be a little bit different most of the time. So you definitely heads down in trying to figure out a path forward through this, this new AI world and this new frontiers is a lot of what my days looked like. Working with my team, helping to, to guide the strategy, write the playbooks, adjust the playbooks as we are, are working through some of these, these new changes and whatnot that's coming into our world. But days are very different one to another depending on if, you know, some days you got to get into a meeting and really attack a problem that we're working on. Or some days it's a lot of heads down and writing or filming or, or talking about some topic that we need to get out to make sure that our customers are informed. I do a lot of that. But on the other hand, I also still like to get out and assist and help anywhere in the operation that I can. So interfacing with with our accounting team or our operations team or management team, that's still very much a part. I mean, we have a big facility here. I've known a lot of these people for a long time, so I'm also one of those that will jump in and help on other things that aren't marketing related to. And I just think that's, that's good business to be able to jump in and help each other and cross lines from time to time just to make whatever needs to happen happen.

Jon LaClare [00:10:38]:
Yeah. And there's more to it than just kindness. You know, you're a kind man and it's part of your nature. Right. But I think it's also important as you're alluding to is, is the better you understand the business, right? The intricacies of the business, the better you can market the business, right? You'll, the better you understand the people that work in your operation. But also you know, what makes it tick, what problems are there, etc, just being at the forefront of every aspect, as much as you can of the business and understand it. That's one of the things I love about marketing is it helps you if you get involved the entire business, right? And in some shape or form you can, you can better market it. You can figure out what stories need to be shared and whatever marketing channels, right? But you get to that high level strategic approach. When you can understand what's well below that high level, it makes you more effective. So I think it's, that's, it's a great strategy for all of our viewers and listeners really to follow. So I want to talk about innovation a little bit because it's, it's interesting to me. You think about the, the moving business. You guys have been around since 1952. It's a long time and in some ways it hasn't really changed, right? It's in some ways, right, so it's a truck and people, right, that move in a storage location, right? In a very simple way, the business hasn't changed a lot. But there is a lot, of course, right, Innovation that, that has and should and will continue. You know what, what has helped you as a company to stand out in the industry? Like what if you think back, whether it's in recent past or, or back a few years, what sort of, sort of innovations have you guys come out with that has helped you either to be more efficient or more effective, but really to grow your company?

Jake Beckstead [00:12:17]:
What? Yeah, so there are a couple of things and it all revolves around, I think technology in particular. Technology has shaped a lot of the way that we do business. There are still some, some vestiges of the earlier times. The, the, the paperwork process sometimes still still exists the way that it does, but especially over the past, I'd say five or 10 years. Yeah, this industry might not always be at the forefront of the technological innovation, but a lot of the things that we're seeing elsewhere in, in, you know, corporate America are coming into the moving industry. It's some AI assistance in, in management and in data technology processes to be able to, to E sign and inventory your belongings in a little bit more streamlined way. One of the ones that is definitely coming through that is pretty exciting is there are AI assists in virtual surveys. So there are a couple of ways now that moving companies that go down this road can invest in technology that if, hey, you know, we still really like to get someone out to your home in order to see what you're moving so that we can get a good scope and an account for problems before they become problems. But if you can't, then a virtual survey tool like, like an AI tool that, you know, there's a, a company that we've worked with for a long time, their name is Yambo. They, they've offered this product. You get out in front the, the camera can see what you're. You walk around with your phone and the AI picks up and starts making a list of what it is that you're moving and can help us kind of cut down on the time that it takes to develop that list. So there's a lot of tools that are coming down that road. But if I were to give you the kind of. The biggest innovation that I personally have worked on is the fact that, you know, our ability to interface with the customers and answer their questions. We just do it differently than we used to. But a lot of the new technology and the digital marketing strategies that would help us get in front of people who are really in that mindset of I'm going to move, but I feel overwhelmed. I don't know what to do and how can I learn how to do some of these things? That's a lot of where kind of my focus has been from innovation is what can we catch in on that that's working out in the market to get our information out in front of customers, Things that a lot of moving companies don't necessarily do. Even still today, you know, video and, and content and articles and, and creating a much larger digital presence. So that's a big answer. The movie industry is changing a lot and it will continue to change, but that's kind of what we're seeing.

Jon LaClare [00:14:52]:
That's great. Let's shift gears a little bit and get into the specifics of marketing. So a lot of our viewers and listeners are really trying to learn how to better market and grow their businesses. And you've done a great job of that at Bailey's. If we think about the current space you're in right now, what marketing channels are the most effective? Like what works best at bringing in new customers?

Jake Beckstead [00:15:14]:
Yeah, this business, like, I think Most service businesses is always going to be built on reputation. So that's not new. That's been that way for maybe thousands of years. I think businesses are built on word of mouth, reputation. But outside of that, a lot of the things that we do is we, you know, we're going to try to work with, with partners. When you indicate that, hey, I'm looking to, to sell my home or buy a new home, you might contact a realtor. We have a lot of contacts there that can help cut their customers get guided to a good moving company. And we'd like to be one of those, you know, there's lots of digital content marketing strategies that we work through to prepare the kind of content that answers, you know, your deep questions that maybe you can't or maybe don't even know to ask sometimes. Because again, it's so overwhelming. And I think one of my ones that we've done for a long time that's pretty popular in the industry though, is we send out some postcards. If you're, if you list your home, then you're probably going to get a postcard from me that says, hey, if you are struggling with moving, if this is overwhelming, I got you, I can help you out. Here's some content that you can read to make it easier or we'll help you.

Jon LaClare [00:16:24]:
That's great. And I was going to ask you what's the normal. I mean, every, every journey is going to be different from a customer perspective, but maybe what's a typical or average journey is from going from realizing they need a mover to hiring and working with Bailey is what happens in between. So is it, does it often start with that postcard? Is that kind of the, the first interaction that's typical?

Jake Beckstead [00:16:46]:
You know that, that definitely was the case in years past. More and more, we're seeing a little bit of a shift. When you initially have that, we termed this the oh, crap, I got to move moment. When you first have that moment, and it's normally it's not always a bad thing, but it is stressful. As soon as it hits you and you begin to kind of get into that mindset, the first thing you're probably going to start doing is trying to jot down a list of things that you need to get done prior to moving. And in there you're going to jot down some things and it's going to open up some questions. And so you're probably going to hit the computer and start doing some research on those things that maybe you don't understand. You Know you have to find a realtor. You know you're going to have to move. You may be not in the moving company mode quite yet, but you will be soon. You got to start figuring how to pack. You got to start figuring out utilities. And so you'll just make this massive list and somewhere in there you will then decide to start looking at a moving company and whether it's a postcard that comes up in the mail or a question that you googled and we got in and get you a good answer to that at some point, it's in that stage when you decide that you need to get a mover, that we typically enter the equation and from there you'll get a few bids typically on moving services and make a decision to move forward on which one you're going to choose. But it's just in that there's a rush and for some customers, I mean, 30, 45 days between when I realize I've got to do this before I'm, I'm signing a contract with the mover, that's pretty typical. But it's also not uncommon to see some customers. I mean, we get phone calls that hey, we're moving a year from now or nine months from now, can you help us get a bid so we can start budgeting how much we're going to need to save? So every customer is a little bit different, but when you have that moment that now you need to move at some point in there, you're going to start thinking of questions about things you need to get done. And that's when we try to be the best coach or assistant that we can be.

Jon LaClare [00:18:49]:
And you talked before about content marketing, shooting videos, doing written content. Where, where's that? How is like, where do people come across that in the best way? Is it, you know, social platforms or your website or you know, how do they first come across that when they start this journey? Journey of thinking about moving?

Jake Beckstead [00:19:04]:
Yeah, most people are searching for questions on Google and we're going to come up with one of the answers. You know, we've got a couple of questions out there that are pretty typical things like, oh, you know, if I have to move and what, what's a binding or non binding estimate? I don't even know what that means. We'll show up that way. But if you're going to take a look at our content, like when, when you're in the mode of learning, we like to point you to our website. That's where the majority of our content is housed. Our are there or Our checklists are there, articles are there, but we do also publish all across social channels. We have a fairly extensive YouTube channel and things that we do on there from our video content. So we try to be in all the places where you might be when you're in that mode of searching for questions. But primarily if there's one spot, head back to our website and that would be where you're at for most of our content.

Jon LaClare [00:20:00]:
And one thing we've seen in our business and a lot of our clients businesses relatively recently is the resurgence or I don't know what the right word is, but really the, the growth of chat GPT in search early on in, in the cycle. Right. So whether they're looking for us for a marketing agency, for example, it may now be the first place they go as opposed to Google. Then getting a more detailed question later. Are you guys a, are you guys seeing that as well where they start to search for help with their moves on chat GPT before doing the search platforms like Google and if so, have you found a strategy that works? So you show up there?

Jake Beckstead [00:20:34]:
You know, we 100% have seen that and I think I'd be lying if I say I knew exactly the strategy to make sure I show up all the time in AI. I don't know that anybody's necessarily figured out the 100% way, but I think a lot of the same kinds of things. Making sure we've got content that is marked up, you know, schema.org markup and very delineated, very detailed answers. The guidance that I give our content team, generally speaking is hey, you know, if Chat GBT could just generate your answer in a, in a quick moment, then you're not being detailed enough. This industry is, is, is detailed enough that there's a lot of answers that even ChatGPT won't be able to give you as deep as we can. That's where we need to live, that's what we need to create. And let's make sure that that gets out there. So far as we've answered particular questions, like very specific questions, that's where we're starting to show up in some of these answers for ChatGPT is, is when it's, it's so specific of a question that our information is kind of the only thing that's out there yet. And so that's when we get pulled into that equation. And, and one of those that was, it's been in most interesting and, and only comes up from time to time are things like how do I move like dangerous items like firearms or ammunition or things like that, which is, you know, if you have those things, that might be something you'd be really concerned about, not something that a lot of people addressed. We addressed it. We get a lot of impact from people asking that question and we have a great answer for that, which is we don't move a lot of those things, but still, we'll explain what you can do.

Jon LaClare [00:22:09]:
Yeah, I love that answer. Like you said, there's no silver bullet. I was hoping you'd have one, but you never. I'm going to keep asking that question. Somebody's going to answer that like this is the exact thing to do. But I think you're exactly right. Where, you know, if a lot of marketers today are using Chat GPT or similar, right, Grok, whatever it might be, if they're, if they're creating their content from AI, then AI is not going to use them as a resource, right? Because they're answering the same way everybody else is answering all your competitors, right? But if you've got a unique piece of content or unique direction, that is important and you're the provider of that, right, you're creating it. So the firearms example, then they are going to use you as a source and we've seen that too. So the more that you can be a leader in terms of not just content, right? Content's easy, right? You can getting something written, even creating an AI video or shooting a video, if with somebody else writing your script for you, content's easy, good. Content is what's getting. Well, it's always been hard, right? And you've got to be unique, you've got to be purposeful in what you do. And when you are, then you'll be found not only on Google, but on Chat GPT as well. So I'm glad you're finding a similar thing. Are there tools that you've found, Found. You know, as you look at all the marketing that you're doing across, you know, tons of channels and different stages of life cycle, etc, are there specific tools that you found to be helpful and whatever that might be, might be a website, a technology, I don't know what it means for you, but is there a tool or a set of tools that's been helpful to determine what's working and what's not?

Jake Beckstead [00:23:40]:
Again, kind of point back to the previous question. I don't think I've got a silver bullet on this one either. I think our marketing tech stack probably would look very similar to most people's. You know, we're strong in our, in our Google Analytics, we keep a strong content management system. We, we use webflow, love webflow for that. We have kind of all the tools that you might think a social poster and, and we have, you know, we check out for Google Search Console and we have SEMrush and we have, I mean we have all of the tools that I think most people would utilize where I think we do things maybe just a touch differently. My background, which was. Has always been fascinating for most people to hear about. I first started my academic career thinking I was going to go into economics and become an economist. And it was through that process that I actually ended up realizing I just have a passion for the data and the numbers and that and pulling that out and being able to create. And we create our own power BI dashboards that can kind of bring together data from different sources. And then I've used a lot of my skill set to kind of create dashboards that help really point us to what is working and what is not working. That has to combine a lot of those sources. That's really been really fun for me to be able to utilize that economics and econometrics background that I kind of had in, in my undergraduate degree that I've loved to carry forward. And it is what got me into marketing is realizing that marketing and economics are more closely related than some people might think. And so that's, that's just kind of a little bit about how I kind of took that. But I, I don't know that we've got a, like a tool out there that, that's really killing it for us. But through a lot of kind of work and bringing that data to live in one spot and, and prioritizing the kind of data predictors that are showing success and creating kind of those prediction models as best as we can. It's not a perfect science. We've been able to, to make some level of good success.

Jon LaClare [00:25:37]:
I think it's a great answer actually because I think there are a ton of tools out there, many of which are free or certainly inexpensive and they're available to any business owner and many of them have them at their fingertips. The attention I think is what's often missing. You know, it's, you go in there, you don't really know what the numbers mean, etc. I think I love how you describe it as creating a dashboard or you know, every business is going to. Your, your dashboard is going to look very different from ours. Right? But it's finding that set of numbers that are meaningful to your business and being able to track those over time and whatever tool that is. It's, it's about making sure you actually pay attention to the data and that you look at it in the right way and find out what that right way means for any particular business. So that's a, that's a very helpful answer. It's funny you mentioned economics. I, I can't remember if we've talked about this in the past, but I had a sort of similar career path right where I started in accounting. Same thing. I've always liked numbers and I remember going to my first marketing class. You know, you do that as part of your accounting degree and, and it just seemed foo fooy like marketing 101. I'm like that's, I would never do that. Right. It's only later on as you get, you know, past 101, you realize it's, it's such a quantitative field but a fun way. Right. Like economics, accounting are great. But I love how you can now use the numbers in marketing. Right. So it's not just analysis, at least in the accounting side, that's really what that is. But in marketing now I can. As long as you can understand the numbers, make them tell the story. You know, you're going to look at them differently than you do in accounting, for example. But looking at the numbers, finding a way, if it's a dashboard or whatever the approach might be for each company, make sure you understand that story. On growing your business through learning by what's working, what's not working, as simple as that to explain. Obviously it's more complex to put into, into practice. Well, if, if, let's talk about your team a little bit. So what's been your approach and what does your team look like right now in terms of there's obviously you as the chief marketing officer, but what, what departments or, or groups or you know, how do you, how do you structure your marketing organization for success?

Jake Beckstead [00:27:40]:
Yeah. So on my team or relatively small team still, we've got six individuals on the team in total, including me. And the way that we kind of work it is we've got two kind of major divisions, one of, of, of the, of the team to two members of our team focus on talking to our customers. And a lot of people put that in a sales organization. But I believe that having those people that are answering those phone calls that are talking to the people who are looking for moving services on step one, I believe that's vital to have in the marketing department because that's Crazy awesome insight that you can, can get from those conversations. And so they're on our team. And then the other side is we have a variety of people that are predominantly and focused on developing content, whether that's video content, social media content, written content. So that's kind of how our team breaks down the customer side and the content side. And we work together on a regular basis to bring those things together at least once a week, talk about kind of what we're seeing, what the customers are saying on the phone. It also gives us an avenue if we want to. If we're thinking about a piece of content or a strategy that we want to go down, we can get out to the customer team and say, just kind of preview this a little bit, talk to these customers about this concept, tell us if it's landing, tell us if that matters to them. And so we kind of use that as a great way to get some insight to what's going on in the mindset of that person who is now finally said, yep, I'm going to contact a moving company and what's on their mind right now. So that's how we break down. And we've grown just a kind of a little bit at a time. I mean, it was several years ago that I was the marketing team of one. And as we were developing, I think this is a pretty common story for a lot of people. But as we were developing our capability and it just got beyond what I could do and we were bringing on some success, I brought on the next person, and that next person kind of helped us get to the next level. And then we isolated someone who was doing customer work but doing another job as well. And we grew that into its own role. And so just organically over the years, we have grown from me doing pretty much almost everything to now our team of six that handles it top to bottom.

Jon LaClare [00:29:56]:
I love how you described the customer side and the content side and the interaction between the two. And I think that's missing in a lot of businesses. And sometimes it's the same person. Right. If it's an entrepreneur like yourself in the early days. Right. Whether it's one person or a team of a hundred, communication or connection between the two. So if it's one person, it's just making sure your learnings are going into your content. Right. And having that, that communication going back and forth again, whether it's, you know, internally or whether it's across the team. So often if we focus just on content without realizing what's working, what's not or what problems are out there that we need to address. We'll have beautiful content, but it won't mean anything. Right. To get to results, you've got to have that interplay between the two. You know, in your case departments in a solopreneur environment or a single marketer environment, it might just be the realization, right. And taking the time to test and learn what's working, what's not in content, but also what's learning in interactions with customers. The closer you can get to those interactions. Talking to people on occasion, which is not common in the digital world. I love so many, like I want to do everything with the arm's length transaction, but if you can have that, that interpersonal reaction, not just over email, but occasional phone calls or if it's at a trade show in person or whatever it might be. But hearing directly from customers, potential customers, happy and sad, is only going to make your content, and therefore your, your marketing that much more effective. I want to talk about negativity a little bit because I imagine I, I know you guys have solid reviews, but, but in any moving company there's going to be hopefully just, you know, one story like I had. Right. Things happen in any business. So you're, you're bound to get negative reviews occasionally. So luckily for you guys, it's a very small percentage. But do you have a strategy like, how do you overcome that? Because if you're, if you don't treat it correctly like that can scale up and be a real problem for the business in any business. Right. If people just read the negative reviews or negative reactions. So how do you, how do you react to that or what do you do when negativity comes into the business like that?

Jake Beckstead [00:31:59]:
Yeah, you know, Jon, this is a, this is a people business. Service is inherently very personal. And, and so, yeah, anytime you've got that situation, you know, people are fallible. People have their bad days, their good days. And so, yeah, so maybe there's a situation that happens or maybe, you know, the logistics of the, of the move just, you know, there's, there's something that happens, a storm or a truck breaks down or something of that nature that just kind of throws off a timeline. They happen. The, the first approach that we take is mitigate the amount of times that it can happen. So kind of, kind of prevention, and that's one of the things that good moving companies, but good service companies generally I think would do is try to structure your world so that you can prevent as many as possible. Then when they do come, I think it really just comes down to personal attention. And this is just maybe a little bit about me. Sometimes I feel like I'm a little bit out of place in the digital world. I really strongly believe in a people environment, communication and personal one on one. We have a team here, our moving coordinators. When you get a move with Bailey's, and this is not unique to us, there's many moving companies that do this, but not all will have someone assigned to watch over your move. And their job is to kind of make sure that things are going right so that if something comes up along the way, we can have the conversation at that time rather than the whole move completing. And then how did it go? No, we're talking at several steps along the way. When things go wrong, it's a matter of explaining before the movie begins. If it goes wrong, this is how we're going to handle it. This is what a delay claim would look like. This is what a property damage claim or a belongings damage claim would look like. This is how we're going to go through that process if it comes down to it, and this is how we're going to prepare for it. So I think when we get to that point, if we get those negative experiences, it's just being able to react to the customer as best as we can and say, we know this is a incredibly stressful situation because you are moving and that just heightens everybody's emotion. But let's work through it one step at a time. We'll do the best we can. And sometimes that lands really well, and sometimes it doesn't. We're not perfect at what we do, but for the most part, most customers have been pretty understanding of. Yep, you told me about this in the beginning. I get it. I don't like it. But we'll get through it and we'll come out the other end better.

Jon LaClare [00:34:37]:
And I found too, with communication, you can overcome a lot of issues. Right. It's. I talk about, you know, our business. We've launched hundreds, hundreds of products over the years. And launching new products is risky. You know, there's a lot of failure. It doesn't. No matter how good the product is, how. How good the process is, things happen. They're out of your control. And what I've been amazed at, knock on wood, luckily, is we've had a very solid relationship with our clients, even when there's a failed campaign. Right. Even when it doesn't proceed as quickly or as profitably as we'd hope. And, you know, we pride ourselves on having A very low rate of that. Right. But they happen and is if you can communicate, it keeps everybody happy. Right. Because everybody understands that you're doing your best. And, and what you explained I think is so important. Get ahead of it. Right. Explain the process so they know if the communication is there upfront. And this applies to everybody's business that might be listening. When you communicate up front, before the purchase, before the transaction and afterwards. Right. Getting that connection when the sale is done or your case, the move is done, the relationship isn't over because things could happen. You might open up something a month later and it's broken. Right. And, and not realize that. And it may not be your fault, but they may blame you. But if you've been communicating with them, then they know who to reach out to. It becomes a more positive relationship. Relationship. And I, you know, you mentioned how you're, you like relationships, not just communicating over the digital world. I think it's important in every business, even those that are, that seem fully digital, you can be so arm, arms length if you're shipping a product from a third party warehouse to a consumer in a different state, you don't touch anything, you don't see them, you don't talk to them. But if you can connect with them or communicate with them in some way or another, automated emails at a minimum, right before and after the process, again, talking on different scales in your case, you know, getting that personal interaction of course is so important. So I love how you describe that and I think it's really applicable to any type of business. My last question I have for you is, is there any advice, Jake, that you'd give to other entrepreneurs thinking in any field or marketing leaders that are trying to scale their business as you've done? So I love your story that you came in. The business has been around for a long time, but you've been instrumental in a lot of growth since then. You know, your own department growing, but your, your revenue is growing as well. So any advice from the learnings as you look back on these 15 years that you think might be applicable to, you know, any generalization or any general category of businesses?

Jake Beckstead [00:37:03]:
Yeah, I, I think so. I mean I think early in, in my career definitely made my share of mistakes like we all do, we're learning. As I look back on some of those things, some of the learnings that I've taken away is maybe first and foremost it takes good people in order to make good business. So the team around you, and even if it's a marketing team of one Marketing is just one part of an organization and there will be other people with you at some point. You need to make sure that you've got some good support from them and that you support them as well. When that works, it helps make everything a little bit easier. That's what made marketing successful, is my ability to kind of go in and talk to some of these different departments and get their feedback on what's happening so I could make adjustments in my side. So that communication, that talking, those relationships, I think are important. And the other thing I've learned over the years is, especially in the very beginning, I always was wondering on whether or not what I was about to put out was perfect. Is it the perfect video? Has it been edited perfectly or. Or back then it was a. We were doing, you know, a lot of display ads or some of those kinds of things. Is it. Is it the perfect message? And one of the things that I've learned is perfect isn't necessarily as good as getting it out and getting it tested and then iterating it. I think a lot of what I have has made us successful here is getting something out, getting our best effort out as quickly as we reasonably can. It's got to look good and it's got to function, but getting it out. And if it doesn't land, we'll iterate through that. If the ad isn't perfect, we'll iterate through that. If the article isn't perfect, we'll iterate through that and we'll figure it out because we're not scared anymore of necessarily making a catastrophic mistake. We know what we're doing. We know how to speak to the customer well enough that if we can get it out the door, we can iterate it to become better.

Jake Beckstead [00:39:02]:
And that I think it used to fret a lot in the earlier days about whether or not. Whether or not that message was exactly the right way to say it. And hopefully never. Nobody ever goes and pulls up some of my old display ads and things. Oh, you know, they weren't as awesome as maybe I've learned over the years, but even then they worked even though they weren't perfect because they were there. And I think there's a lot of some people that I have met in my career that have missed out on some opportunities because they were afraid to put something out that wasn't perfect. So I don't know. I think those are just a couple of things that I have thought about.

Jon LaClare [00:39:43]:
I love it. And I wrote the book the Perfect Launch System, and I'm A big believer in. You get to perfection through iteration. Right. There's. There is no initial. No matter how many times you've been doing, even after 15 years, right. Your video, your content, your display, whatever you're working on, it's not going to be perfect right out the gates because it needs to learn through you test something new. Unless you've done it 100 times before. Right. The final iteration can be close to perfect. Right. But. But it's, it's when you're trying something new. The process is what perfects the ultimate campaign. The content, whatever it might be. And so many entrepreneurs especially, get stuck waiting until they figure it out, right. And they feel like it's perfect. But you're not going to get there without. Without some communication, without some interaction from an audience. Right. Getting out in front of traffic that's going to see, are they clicking on it? Are they not? Is it leading to conversions? Is it not? And. And what's driving that success? And then gradually get to perfection. That's a great way to say that. Well, Jake, this has been a lot of fun. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would be helpful for our audience?

Jake Beckstead [00:40:46]:
You know, as. I don't think we've covered real. I think I've covered really most of everything. I would just, you know, when you're looking for a mover, I would just say, hey, we can help you.

Jon LaClare [00:40:58]:
And how do they get in contact with you?

Jake Beckstead [00:41:01]:
Yeah, I mean, you can find us online. Baileysallied.com we got our phone number right there. If you want to talk to a real person, you call. We'll talk to you. If you want to interact with us online, you know, there's some budget tools to help you understand kind of what a moving budget might look like, and some tools to get in contact with us there digitally as well, if that's something that is more interesting. But my larger. We got a lot of resources on our site, whether you want to hire us for moving or not. Take a look at those resources. Get educated on how to make the best move possible, because that's what makes a good move. Being educated on the process and avoiding some of those standard pitfalls that people can make is the key to having the best move ever.

Jon LaClare [00:41:39]:
And I've got a second. You know, part of what makes any company successful or really helpful, whatever field it might be in, is the people behind it. And Jake, you and I have known each other, I think, for 15 years, probably since you first started, was when you first moved to Castle Rock. I think, you know, roughly around that time. We've known each other for a very long time and you know, for our audience that might be considering a move or maybe have friends or family that are, you know, I can't speak more highly than I do about Jake and the organization behind him as well. So I do encourage you to check them out, check out their website and even if you're not looking to move right now, take a look at what he's done from a marketing perspective. Check out their content and you know, you know it'll help finish the story. You've listened this far in our interview today. It'll help finish that story of what he means by good content. Right. You'll see some at different levels. Right. Some brand new and some have been perfected along the way. And BaileysAllied.com is the best website to go to. We'll put that into the show notes as well. So if you're driving and listening to this as an audio podcast, as always, go check it out on your favorite podcast platform on our website, harvest growth.com or on YouTube. All those places will have the the way to get a hold of of Bailey's and and learn more. But Jake, thank you so much for your time today. It was really fun to reconnect with you.

Jake Beckstead [00:42:58]:
Absolutely. Always love talking to you.

Jon LaClare [00:42:59]:
Jon, thanks for tuning in to today's episode where we uncover the stories and strategies behind some of the most successful marketers out there. If you're looking to take your business to the next level, be sure to visit perfect launch.com you can grab a free copy of my book, the Perfect Launch System. It's packed with the proven principles we've developed over the past 20 years of helping hundreds of businesses launch and grow successfully. Plus you'll also get exclusive one page summaries of some of our most popular podcast interviews, real world insights you can apply right away. Head to perfectlaunch.com and start building your perfect launch today. Until next time, keep learning, keep launching and keep growing.