Contractor Spotlight
Featuring Joe Everest with Ozark Fence from Springfield, Missouri
Do you ever feel like your fencing business gets lost in the shuffle?
How can you and your brand stand out in today’s digital world?
We interviewed YouTube celebrity, Joe Everest, to learn a little about him, how his online presence got started, and what he recommends so YOU can stand out too!
MH: Hey Joe! Thank you so much for taking the time to have a quick call and answer a few questions. Let’s start with how long you’ve been in the fencing industry and where you got started.
Joe: Sure, so that answer is kind of a moving target, right? I think I’ve been in the business for about 20 years. I only say that because I was in middle school when my dad owned the company at that point. Y’know, it was summertime, so the first day of summer came, and he woke me up and said “Guess what? You’re coming to build some fence with me!” And I said “No I’m not! I got plans with my buddies!” We were ridin’ our bikes up to the gas station or something. And he said, “Nope! They’ll be here when you get back. Time to go!”
MH: Every kid’s dream, huh?
Joe: Yep, that was how we got started. Just picking up the lot, taking out the trash, cleaning the bathrooms, that sort of stuff. Then I took an interest in gate fabrication, so the fabricators showed me how that worked. That was back before we had a welder, so we were cutting pipe and using gate corners. It’s one of those things, when you hear guy’s fence stories, it’s kind of the one you typically hear. Like Tony Thornton, the Executive Director of the AFA, he’s got a story that’s pretty similar to mine. When he was a kid, he got picked up and they said, “Let’s go! We’re going to work!”
MH: How long did you have your business before you started getting into YouTube?
Joe: I bought the business from my dad on January 1st, 2016. I believe we started the YouTube channel maybe a year and a half or 2 years ago. So, I had the business for a few years before I started my Joe Everest YouTube channel. I also have a YouTube channel for Ozark Fence but it admittedly is not as active at the moment. But I had started that as a marketing channel roughly around the time when I bought the business.
MH: You said that you only started your YouTube channel 1 to 2 years ago, but it has grown like wildfire. You’ve got amazing content and very high production quality. Do you think that has helped grow your business? What kind of relationship is there between the YouTube channel and your company?
Joe: It has! And you know, we actually don’t go out of our way to tell people what business I own. I keep the channel separate from my business for the most part. But we’ll get tons of calls and emails saying, “Hey where do I get this thing that you talked about in your videos?!”, whether it’s a PostMaster video (which is still performing very well, by the way), the post hole foam, or whatever it is we’re talking about. People want to know where they can buy it. Even though all my videos have a link in the description showing where to go buy it or who sells it – we still get all sorts of questions of where to go buy things. So it’s had a tremendous impact.
MH: Many fencing contractors may feel like they don’t have the personality, talent, and especially resources that you do to create and maintain such a successful YouTube channel. But what advice could you offer to other fencing contractors who, maybe don’t want a YouTube channel specifically, but just ways to stand out and set their business apart? Whether that’s with their Facebook page, Instagram, etc.
Joe: They need to be their own brand ambassador. That’s my biggest piece of advice. I also do public speaking at different places like schools, etc. So that’s usually my key takeaway with whatever I’m talking about – that you need to be your own brand ambassador.
MH: What do you mean by that?
Joe: You need to be the face of your company. The example I like to use is, in the 80s, Nike had a real problem. They were losing market share to their competitors like Rebook and Adidas. To resolve that, they went and hired a brand ambassador (now it would be called an influencer). It was Michael Jordan. Forbes put out an article in May of this year that said, to date, that Nike had paid over 2 billion dollars to Michael Jordan to be their brand ambassador. Now let that sink in. That’s billion with a B!
#1) That’s a pretty nice payday for Michael Jordan. But #2) My point is, there wasn’t anyone named “John Nike” who was making his own content, right? So they had to go and pay through the nose to get Michael Jordan. Basically, the whole talking point is, people form relationships with people much more easily and readily than they do with brands. People didn’t buy Nike tennis shoes because they were comfortable. They bought them because they were Air Jordan sneakers associated with Michael Jordan. Same thing applies to you and your business.
What’s funny is, that’s a problem we’re going through right now at Ozark Fence. My sister, Sarah, runs our residential division. I haven’t run that division for a year and a half or so, but when she goes and knocks on people’s doors, they still say, “Where’s Joe? I thought Joe was coming out?” Because they have probably been seeing all the videos we still run from when I was doing the marketing. This kind of illustrates the problem a lot of business guys have. Sarah, my sister, doesn’t like being on camera so she doesn’t want to do videos. But those videos are so impactful, we still run the old ones that feature me, and we still get people asking why I’m not there. So we’re working with her on being more comfortable in front of the camera.
One part of that question I also want to address is – we started with a very basic camera. It wasn’t fancy at all. We shot in my living room, I had a backdrop that I just hung up, and my wife had to take the kids to the playground so it could be quiet enough to shoot the videos. We didn’t start in this studio with the gear I’ve got today. What I tell fence guys now is, listen, each of you has technology in your pocket that creates 4k video files. I mean these phones can take crisp, nice videos. On that note, there’s another YouTube channel run by some guys in the UK called D&J Projects. These guys have a tremendous following. Their channel is growing even faster than mine is and they shoot all their content on their iPhones! So it can be done. And it can be done relatively easily. All you need is an iPhone and a tripod. A lot of guys get wrapped up in that – that they can’t afford a $4,000 camera or $1,000 lights. Now those do improve the quality of the video, don’t get me wrong. But most importantly, bottom line – just start making videos. If you keep giving yourself excuses, you’ll never get started.
MH: Plus, considering the type of industry that we’re in, people may appreciate a more down-to-earth feel, anyway.
Joe: That’s a fair point – it really is. When I see really polished content with a really polished speaker, I automatically get the impression that this is an advertisement and that is a paid actor. I really think that the more realistic the footage is, the better. I tell guys, don’t edit your content too much. Leave the “um”s and the “ah”s in there. If you misspeak a word, leave that in there. Because people can relate to that so much better. If it’s super polished and everything’s perfect, it’s going to come off as a sales pitch. There’s something to say about using a phone and not having perfect audio or perfect lighting – because it’s going to look real. People will see that this is someone out on a job site rather than a polished actor in a studio trying to sell a fence.
MH: Awesome – that’s great advice! You are the face of your brand, especially in the fencing industry. So get out there and create those relationships! And if you’ve got a smartphone, then you’ve got a great place to start.
Joe: Yes, exactly, if you’ve got a smartphone, then you’ve got better technology than I had when I first started!
MH: I bet! Now let’s talk about some of the products and topics that you cover in your videos. Do you have any favorite products – *wink wink* PostMaster – that you like to talk about?
Joe: Ha! Yeah, so that’s funny because, I meant to look this up before you called, but I wanted to see what our highest performing videos are. Usually the PostMaster video is at the top, or toward the top. Let me see where it is today… We use trackable links in all the videos so I can see how many people click and all that. Last week we sent 130 people over to your PostMaster website. And that’s the only place where that link exists, is in that video.
MH: Appreciate that!
Joe: Oh yeah, PostMaster is a product we love to use, so might as well show it to people. It’s one of the top 10 videos, “Why your next fence NEEDS to be built with STEEL FENCE POSTS,” which is the PostMaster video. When you look at the top 10 videos, they’re pretty much all product reviews. So, post foam is in 
there, video reaction ones are in there, fence stain is a big one, post setting techniques… But the ones I really enjoy doing, and the ones that people really enjoy watching, are my “Does this thing work?” videos. The company who sells it tells you it works. So, I try it, see if it works, and I’ll tell you from a professional standpoint if it’s really legit or not. Like that post foam – it does not work for anything! But the seller will tell you it works. It may work in very controlled environments, but not in the real world.
MH: We do see a lot from homeowners asking questions about PostMaster, how to set the posts, and whether using post hole foam is a good option or not.
Joe: Yeah, they market it for steel posts, but it just doesn’t adhere. It just doesn’t stick. And after that first video I put out – the seller of the foam sent us a cease-and-desist letter on it because they didn’t like how it portrayed them. But it was an honest review. We sent them all the footage unedited because they thought that we edited it to make it look like their product failed but, no, it legitimately failed. And that’s what people are wanting to know – can it be done easier but still be effective. You don’t want to 
lug 80lb bags of concrete all around the backyard if you don’t have to, so these 2lb bags of foam seem like a good idea if it works – unfortunately, it doesn’t work. From my perspective as a business owner, I want to make sure our business is as efficient as possible. Efficiency is everything. So I’m reviewing products that I want to use or I already use in my business. We ask the question – does this work well and make my business better? Then while we’re at it, we film it to show other people what the process looks like. Fence guys do this stuff all the time. They’ll go set posts in their own backyard to see what method works best, what product works best, and they’ll implement that in their business. I just happened to film it. Well, I don’t do it in my backyard anymore, my wife got pretty tired of that, so now we do it in our fence yard.
MH: So what I’m hearing is – it’s pretty good to have educated contractors and educated homeowners.
Joe: It absolutely is. And that’s the mission. If we want to talk about the mission of the YouTube channel, it’s to elevate the industry through education. Both from a consumer standpoint and educating new guys or gals starting out in the fencing industry. This is nothing new, but we’re going through a time right now where we’ve got employees leaving and starting their own businesses. Because they’ve done the work and they know all they need to know about it. But then they get into it, and they realize they don’t really know the business side. So that’s the mission – to make the industry better through education.
MH: That brings me to my last question… What is your long-term vision for your YouTube channel?
Joe: Just keep creating educational content. That’s really it. Whether we’re talking about educating business owners about business topics – which is my favorite, that’s what I like. I love running the business/operations side of Ozark Fence. I mean I can go out and build a fence, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t enjoy it. I do enjoy making my business better. That’s really the end goal we’ve got in mind – to keep raising education.
MH: And keeping up with current events, especially now with the current climate of the industry. I watched some of your live stream with the AFA director, Tony Thornton, where you both went through several questions that people were asking – that was really interesting.
Joe: I love doing those. I do live Q&As every Saturday morning. Because people will tell you what they want to know. My thought is – if one person has that question, there’s probably a few other people who have that question, too. So by doing live Q&As you’re actually answering questions in bulk. When Tony reached out and said, “Hey! I’ve got a State of the Industry report. Do you want to go Live and talk about it?” I was like, “Yes I do!” Because that has been the #1 question in my YouTube comments, my email inbox, everywhere. Everyone wants to know what’s going on and when it will get better.
MH: Yes, exactly. Well, you keep on keepin’ on! Keep educating our consumers, our industry, and keeping up with current events. I look forward to seeing what else you, your YouTube channel, and your business will come up with in the future. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Joe: You bet!
Interested in finding out more? Below are links to Joe's YouTube channel and our PostMaster website.
