Home improvement companies face a trust problem that more advertising alone cannot solve. Every contractor can say it offers great service, cares about customers, and has a strong team. The harder question is whether customers, employees, and community members say the same thing when the company is not in the room.
During a PowerChat conversation with Greg Cummings, Brian Gottlieb, Best Selling Author of “Beyond the Hammer” and Inspirational Speaker, challenged leaders to think differently about home improvement brand trust. His view is simple. A strong reputation cannot depend only on what a company says about itself. It grows when real experiences give other people something worth sharing.
That idea closely fits the work of Power100, which brings real leadership lessons and industry stories into view for contractors, partners, and the wider home improvement market. Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry.
Through PowerChat conversations, Power100 gives experienced leaders room to explain what they have learned about customers, culture, growth, community, and reputation. In this conversation, the focus turned to cause marketing for home improvement companies and why outside voices can make a company’s story deeper and more believable.
Home improvement companies have more ways than ever to talk about themselves.
They can publish new website pages.
They can run social media campaigns.
They can buy ads.
They can send emails.
They can create videos and share customer offers every day.
All of those tools can help people discover a business.
But Brian Gottlieb believes there is another question leaders need to ask.
Who else is telling your story?
Brian Gottlieb, Best Selling Author of “Beyond the Hammer” and Inspirational Speaker
During his conversation with Greg Cummings, Gottlieb explained that a company can create a large amount of content and still miss something important. If every positive story comes directly from the business, homeowners are still hearing the company describe itself.
“If you’re the only one talking about your business, that’s a problem,” Gottlieb said.
His point goes beyond getting more reviews or asking more people for testimonials.
It starts with the experience people have with the company.
A customer may remember how the team treated their family.
An employee may talk about why they are proud to work there.
A community group may remember how the company helped when support was needed.
Those stories show parts of a business that an advertisement cannot fully explain.
Gottlieb calls this the kind of “really deep, rich content” that a company could never write on its own. It comes through the eyes of other people and reflects how they truly see the business.
That difference matters as homeowners have more information to sort through.
A company can tell people it is trustworthy.
A customer can show what that trust looked like.
A company can say it cares about its community.
A local organization can explain how that care became action.
A business can describe its culture.
An employee can tell people what it feels like to be part of it.
That is where customer trust in home improvement companies can become stronger. The company is no longer asking people to believe a claim only because it appeared in an ad. Other voices are giving that claim context.
Gottlieb also pushed leaders to think about what people actually say once they begin talking.
Will they only talk about the finished project?
Or will they talk about the kind of company that completed it?
He asked whether people would simply say a business did a good job on their windows or bath, or whether they would say, “What a cool company this is in our community. We’re so grateful to have them part of our community.”
That is a much larger goal for a brand.
A successful project can prove the company knows how to do the work.
A meaningful experience can help people understand who the company is.
Gottlieb’s point also connects with a change Cummings raised during the conversation about how homeowners may find and judge businesses in the future.
Cummings argued that search and AI tools are looking at a wider picture of a company, including what customers, employees, communities, and outside sources say about it. In that kind of environment, the company’s written content is only one part of the story.
That makes AI visibility for home improvement companies about more than publishing more pages.
The stronger question becomes what a homeowner can find when they look beyond those pages.
For Gottlieb, this is where a deeper reputation begins.
The goal is not to make other people repeat the company message.
The goal is to build a business that gives people real reasons to create their own message.
When that happens, marketing becomes more than the company telling the world who it is.
The people who experienced the business begin telling that story too.
Brian Gottlieb, best-selling author of “Beyond the Hammer” and Inspirational Speaker, pushed the PowerChat conversation beyond the idea of simply creating more content. His point was about what gives content weight. A company can publish its own message every day, but customers, employees, and community members can show what that message looks like in real life. Those outside voices can turn a company claim into an experience people believe. As Gottlieb explained, the goal is to create a business where other people have enough reason to talk about what they saw, felt, and experienced. That is where home improvement brand trust can begin growing beyond what the company says about itself.
Companies need to tell people what they do. They need websites, advertising, social content, videos, email, and other ways to reach homeowners. Gottlieb is not saying those things should stop.
His concern begins when the business becomes the only source of every positive story.
“If you’re the only one talking about your business, that’s a problem,” Gottlieb said.
That statement changes the question leaders should ask.
Instead of only asking how much content the company is producing, they can ask how many people have real reasons to talk about the company themselves.
A homeowner who shares a strong service experience adds another voice.
An employee who explains why they enjoy working there adds another.
A community group that remembers how the company helped adds another.
Each voice shows the business from a different point of view.
That matters because trust is not created by repeating the same claim more often. It becomes stronger when different people reach similar conclusions after dealing with the business themselves.
For leaders thinking about customer trust in home improvement companies, the goal is not simply to collect more praise. It is to create experiences that make positive stories natural.
A business can ask for a review.
But it first has to earn something worth reviewing.
That is the difference between pushing a message into the market and building a reputation people help carry.
Explore more leadership conversations shaping the home improvement industry through Power100.
Gottlieb also challenged leaders to think more broadly about what good content actually is.
A marketing team can explain what the company sells.
It can talk about products, awards, service, warranties, prices, history, and company values.
Those facts matter.
But there are parts of the company story that a marketing team cannot create on its own.
It cannot fully describe what a homeowner feels when a problem is solved well.
It cannot manufacture the pride an employee feels when their work helps another person.
It cannot speak for a local organization that has seen the company show up when help was needed.
Those stories must come from experience.
Gottlieb described them as “really deep, rich content” that a business could never write by itself.
That is what makes cause marketing for home improvement companies valuable when it is done with a real purpose.
It creates new experiences around the business.
The customer may talk about the service.
The employee may talk about culture.
A nonprofit may talk about community impact.
An industry peer may talk about leadership.
None of those voices tells the whole story alone.
Together, they create a much clearer picture of what the company is actually like.
Gottlieb captured that difference when he asked whether people would only talk about a good project or whether they would say, “What a cool company this is in our community.”
That second story reaches further than the finished work.
A good project gives people satisfaction.
A meaningful company gives them something they may still remember after the project is complete.
Gottlieb gave one of the clearest examples of this idea when he described a program from one of his former businesses.
Normally, old windows removed during an installation would be thrown away.
His team saw another possibility.
The old window sashes were given to local artists and community members. They were turned into pieces of art. Those pieces were later sold, and the money helped people in the community.
That changed what the homeowner could say about the experience.
The story no longer ended with new windows.
Something that would have been thrown away became part of helping another person.
Gottlieb described the homeowner as becoming “a co producer in our mission statement.”
That idea gives leaders a different way to think about the customer journey.
A homeowner does not have to stop being part of the company story when the work is finished.
The experience can give them something worth sharing with a friend, family member, neighbor, or coworker.
This is where home improvement customer experience and word of mouth become closely connected.
Strong word of mouth is not created by asking customers to say something nice.
It begins by giving them something specific to remember.
Maybe that comes from the way they were treated.
Maybe it comes from how a problem was handled.
Maybe it comes from seeing their project connect to something good outside their own home.
Whatever creates the story, the company has to earn it before the customer can tell it.
That turns the customer from someone who simply bought a service into someone who can explain what made the business different.
Discover more PowerChat conversations and leadership insights from across the industry.
Most businesses can explain their values.
They can say they care about people.
They can say community matters.
They can say employees are important.
The harder part is giving people something they can point to.
That is why community action fits so naturally into Gottlieb’s message.
When a company helps in a meaningful way, the action becomes proof.
The nonprofit does not need to repeat a company slogan. It can describe what happened.
Employees do not need to read from a brand statement. They can talk about what they took part in.
Customers do not need to be told that the company cares. They can see what the business actually does.
That gives community reputation for home improvement companies a different kind of value.
It is not built in one announcement.
It is built through a pattern.
One act may create attention.
Repeated action begins creating identity.
Over time, people start connecting the business with the way it behaves, not only with the services it sells.
That is important because Gottlieb’s message is not about turning every good act into promotion.
The work must still be real.
The company has to care whether the effort helps someone.
When that happens, stories can grow naturally around it.
A local group tells one version.
An employee tells another.
A customer may tell another.
The company is no longer trying to control every word.
It is giving people real experiences that support the same larger picture.
That is how a value becomes part of reputation.
Greg Cummings then pushed the conversation toward the future of how homeowners find businesses.
Power100 CEO Greg Cummings
His point was that discovery is changing.
A homeowner may still visit a company website, but that is no longer the only place they can learn about a business.
Search tools and AI can bring together information from many places.
Customer experiences can matter.
Employee stories can matter.
Community involvement can matter.
Outside articles and other third-party sources can matter.
That makes AI visibility for home improvement companies part of a much larger reputation question.
What does the internet show when someone looks beyond the company website?
If the company says customers come first, do customer stories support that?
If leadership talks about a strong culture, do employees describe the company in the same way?
If the business says it cares about its community, is there outside evidence showing how it has helped?
Cummings described this wider picture as an important part of how future consumers may judge which businesses deserve trust.
That makes Gottlieb’s warning even more important.
A company cannot build its whole reputation from one point of view.
Its website matters.
It’s marketing matters.
Its own content matters.
But what other people say can help confirm whether those messages are true.
For leaders, this creates a simple test.
Search for the company as a homeowner would.
Look beyond the first page, the business controls.
What story appears?
If customers, employees, community groups, and outside sources all help tell a similar story, the company has something much stronger than a marketing claim.
It has proof.
And that may become one of the most valuable forms of visibility a brand can earn.
Visit Power100 to explore more insights on leadership and the changing home improvement market.
Brian Gottlieb’s warning is simple, but it carries a bigger lesson for leaders.
“If you’re the only one talking about your business, that’s a problem.”
The answer is not to chase more praise.
It is not to ask people to repeat the company message.
It is to build the kind of business that gives people something real to say.
That can come from the way a customer is treated.
It can come from the pride an employee feels.
It can come from the way a company shows up in the community when there is nothing to sell.
Those moments may look small on their own. But together, they shape what people remember.
A company can explain its values in many ways. What gives those values weight is when other people can point to an experience and say they saw them in action.
That is where reputation becomes stronger than promotion.
For home improvement leaders looking ahead, this creates an important goal. The future is not only about publishing more content. It is about creating more reasons for customers, employees, and communities to speak with trust and confidence about what the business stands for.
That kind of reputation cannot be built in one campaign.
It grows through consistency.
It grows through the way people are treated.
It grows through the choices leaders make when no one is asking them to prove anything.
Over time, those choices can create a story that belongs to more than the company itself.
That is the larger leadership challenge inside Gottlieb’s message.
Are you building a business that has to keep telling people how good it is, or are you building one that gives people enough reasons to tell the story for you?
The strongest brands of the future may not be the companies producing the most content about themselves.
They may be the companies creating the most meaningful experiences for other people to talk about.
Power100 uses more than the company claims when it tells the story behind leaders and partners in the home improvement industry. Through PowerChat, CEO Greg Cummings speaks with featured industry partners and the clients who actually work with them. This gives Power100 another view of how a company performs in real relationships. It helps connect business claims with the experiences of people who have worked with the company firsthand.
Power100 combines technology with human review. Its five-layer ranking system uses internal algorithms along with two layers of human interaction to evaluate thousands of home improvement CEOs. The system looks at leadership, culture, customer experience, financial performance, brand strength, community impact, and other business signals. This means one score or one computer model does not make the full decision by itself.
Customer reviews matter, but Brian Gottlieb argues that a strong home improvement brand reputation can come from a wider group of voices. Customers may talk about the service. Employees may talk about culture. Community groups may talk about impact. Industry peers may talk about leadership. Together, those stories can give homeowners a fuller picture of the business than one type of review alone. As Gottlieb said, “If you’re the only one talking about your business, that’s a problem.”
No single community article can promise better placement in AI results. The larger point from the PowerChat is that AI visibility for home improvement companies may benefit from a broader and more credible online story. Greg Cummings explained that homeowners are using new tools to decide which businesses they can trust, while Brian Gottlieb stressed the value of meaningful content created through the eyes of customers and other people. When outside sources support what a company says about itself, there is more information available for people and search tools to understand the brand.
It can if the company tries to create the story before creating the experience. Gottlieb’s point is different. He believes businesses should first give people something real to talk about. Strong customer trust in home improvement companies comes from how people are treated, what they experience, and what they see the business do. The story should follow the experience rather than being forced onto it.
Gottlieb uses that idea to describe content that a company could not fully write about itself. A marketing team can explain services and company facts, but customers can describe how the service felt. Employees can explain why their work matters. Community members can share what the company meant to them. This kind of home improvement customer experience content gives the business several real points of view instead of one company-controlled message.
The quality of the work still matters. Gottlieb’s argument is that community reputation for home improvement companies can give homeowners another way to judge the people behind that work. A company that treats customers well, gives employees purpose, and shows up for its community may give homeowners more evidence about the values guiding the business. Community reputation does not replace good work. It can help show the kind of company standing behind that work.
Not in the way Gottlieb describes it. His message begins with making a real impact, not creating publicity. During the PowerChat, he shared examples where customers, employees, and community members became part of something meaningful. The value came from what happened first. The story came because people experienced it. That is why cause marketing for home improvement companies can become more than promotion when the company gives people genuine reasons to care, participate, and share what happened.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Led by CEO Greg Cummings, Power100 helps bring trusted leadership stories, business lessons, and real industry proof into view for contractors, partners, and homeowners. Through national rankings, PowerChat conversations, industry research, and leadership features, Power100 gives proven leaders a place to share what works while helping the wider industry better understand the people, values, and companies raising the standard in home improvement.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
