I wanted to capture some key points about our company story / Hook Agency’s history while it’s still kind of fresh, and hope to continue to add to this post in new era’s of the company.
For the purposes of this content – we broke it down into 5 key areas:
- Tim B Design beginning’s, Bea Joining, and name changed to Hook Agency
- First Couple Employees, Culture Prioritized, Mission and Core Values
- Why did Hook Agency Niche into Roofing, HVAC, and Plumbing?
- Pushing harder into roofing and our own marketing experiments
- Hook Agency enters HVAC heavily, events and the future
Tim B Design beginning’s, Bea Joining, and name changed to Hook Agency
In 2017 I had been out on my own for 6 months, and business was starting to ramp up.
I had more work than I felt I could manage on my own.
My new wife Bea Bonte wasn’t loving her job I said, ‘why not do this together?’
It sounded crazy – but wildly, right after she resigned at her corporate job, her whole department was laid off.
It felt like it locked in the idea “that what may appear to be risky, is less risky than staying the same, or not moving forward.”
Bea wasn’t that good when she started, but she was a lot more organized than I was – and she started to take over the work behind the scenes, and make sure things got done on time.
Nights up til 2am inputting content in websites, and long days juggling too many clients for 2 people, led to our first couple hires under the new name ‘Hook Agency’ in 2017-2018.
We were young and dumb – and thought we could start a totally new enterprise from scratch.
First Couple Employees, Culture Prioritized, Mission and Core Values
That first employee besides Bea…
They left one year after spending every extra ounce of energy I had training them day-in and day-out.
It’s enough to drive a man to get resentful – the only problem?
Resentments don’t fix anything, in-fact, mentors urged me to go the exact opposite direction.
Create a culture that people actually love coming to work. I tried in fits and spurts to find ways to make it happen. Many failed and it was hard AF.
🎥 We created our own Office knockoff called The Agency
👊 We made shirts of our culture motto ‘Champion The Underdog’
🙏 We tried to make a culture of encouraging each other, and started to get a little more selective with clients.
And then – in January 2020 we stepped out on a massive limb to take a 3 year lease on a space twice our current size…. 👀
Why did Hook Agency Niche into Roofing, HVAC, and Plumbing?
Why did you decide on home services?
Is probably the #1 question besides ‘how did you choose your name’ people ask me.
3 of our first 5 clients were home services, a business coach pushed me to niche, we dragged our feet for 4 years, and then after half of our clients were roofing and home services Bea Bonte said in early 2021…
“We have to choose a day that we’ll no longer take other clients. We’re not doing our best work there.”
We knew we had higher R.O.I., and better customer satisfaction in the niche where our team wasn’t constantly relearning people’s business.
We did a big celebration (pictured) for Niching Day, we started saying no, we re-launched our website, and sales and marketing for ourselves as well became a whole lot clearer.
“Go to where they are, get their attention, be useful to them.”
Our whole team too, started to feel the benefits of having a much tighter demographic, and our processes started to benefit rapidly. Word spread amongst existing customers and a BOOM of contractors came in as customers the following year.
We were now fully involved with the contractor world, and in 2022 we accidentally stumbled into being the main planners, promoters and executors of a 10-event series around the country, right as my wife became pregnant with our first baby girl, June.
Pushing harder into roofing and our own crazy marketing experiments
At a certain point I realized people don’t think of themselves as ‘Contractors,’ and everything we did that was MORE SPECIFIC cut through noise way more.
Thus in late 2021 we pushed hard into ROOFERS and started to hit 30-40 roofing companies in 2022.
What happens then?
Word of mouth spreads way more easily.
We kept doubling down. Events for roofing, roofing memes, roofing podcasts, roofing videos, everything.
We’ve had HVAC, Plumbing and other home service clients this whole time, but we got these huge chunks of roofing clients because of our concentrated roofing sales + marketing efforts.
During this time we tried crazy stuff, flamethrower commercials, our own cologne called ‘Smells Like More Leads,’ bright Hook-branded roofing underlayment, and 8 people in the company tatted the Hook on them.
I shared that on Linkedin, and people HATED IT.
So much visibility because people were angry and called us a cult.
So I decided to double down… should we bring a tattoo artist to a trade show and give away free tattoos?
The anxiety was overwhelming, it might be illegal… and will anyone even get one? We were about to find out.
Hook Agency enters HVAC heavily, events and the future
What does the future of Hook Agency look like?
Well in the last 8 years, we’ve done a ton of experimentation, and feel like we’ve learned some things.
We plan to utilize all of those things in this next era.
We’ve learned a ton on doing events, and then making our own events, that hopefully we take into owning our own building this year, and utilize that space in new ways.
We’ve learned a ton from partnering with influencers and coaches, and from our iconic experiments (like 38 tattoos at a tradeshow) that I hope to expand and leverage as we launch my 4th book this year.
And as we’ve expanded our tight roofing niche, to go after HVAC – perhaps we’ll reach a fever pitch in that industry, if we do our job right, and word of mouth will spread from our great work, and our reputation for excellent customer service.
Allowing us to push even more into plumbing in a few years…
Whatever it is…
Wherever we are, we know people will be at the center of it. The community that we get to be part of, and hopefully enhance, and our 33-person team which keeps growing, and each of our people as individuals that keep growing in their expertise and their careers.
And remember – as we try crazy shit, as we have fun, make money, and stay as useful as we possibly can…
We’re out here doing it for you. The home service business owners and service professionals that help homeowners everyday, and make our communities a better place.
You inspire us, and make this all worthwhile.
And to all those people telling us to aim a little lower, to keep the noise to a dull roar, or to dim our light, remember…
“People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it.” Bernard Shaw
The first 10 years is the hardest, right?
