How Demo Dogs builds trust through personal outreach
Leah Dobyns is the owner of Demo Dogs, a Wichita company specializing in interior demolition for homeowners and contractors. Dobyns explains how personal letters, word of mouth and clear expectations help the business win work and earn trust inside customers’ homes.
Start with the people who already trust you, then build personal relationships with the contractors you want to work with. Consistent, respectful work can turn those early connections into word of mouth and repeat business.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
Demo Dogs was founded on faith by Kevin Dobyns, Austan Kinnaird and Leah Dobyns. They started it to make an honest living for their families and to help the men on the crew grow spiritually. That faith shows up on every job: there’s no cussing on our job sites, we pray together before the work starts, and we treat every home like it belongs to our own family. Homeowners get a respectful, trustworthy crew in their house, along with straight answers and a clean site when we’re done.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
We truly believe you should reach out to your friends and family first. Our very first customer was my husband’s mom. She gave us honest feedback on what we should and shouldn’t do, and needless to say, she became a raving fan. Today most of our jobs still come from word of mouth and from our social media posts. We also want to be a business that’s known for being involved in our community, because that’s where the trust behind word of mouth comes from.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision that changed our direction: We started writing personalized letters to bigger construction companies. For a lot of those guys, personal relationships matter. Most people are chasing Google pay-per-click leads, but we’re reaching for a hand to shake and writing a letter with their name on it. That’s what opened the door to steady contractor work.
The mistake that taught us the most:The biggest mistake was probably hiring the wrong people that didn’t have our faith foundations. They actually only lasted one day on the job. In this case, the contractor just walked off the job, and we never really heard from him again. But making sure you hire people with the same culture, with the same personal beliefs that match your culture, is so important.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
Customers expect a lot more up front now. They want a clear price before anyone shows up, they look you up on Google, Facebook and even ChatGPT before they call, and they want to stay in their home while the work happens. We’ve adapted by giving free flat-rate estimates, sealing off work areas and cleaning up every day, and sharing our real jobs on social media so people can see who we are before they ever meet us.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
`Reach out to your friends and family. Your first jobs and your most honest feedback will come from the people who already trust you. Then go build real relationships with the bigger contractors in your area: write them a personal letter, show up and shake their hand. Do every job like your name is on it, because word of mouth will be your best salesperson.
The pressure to buy Google pay-per-click leads right away. Paid leads can’t replace a handshake, and they won’t build the trust that keeps the phone ringing.
Thank you to Leah Dobyns and the team at Demo Dogs for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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