Marketing Happy Hour - Local Businesses: Enter Your (Online) Reputation Era | Emily Washcovick of Yelp

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

This week, Cassie and Erica chat all things reviews and online reputation management with Emily Washcovick, Yelp's Senior Field Marketing Manager and Small Business Expert. In this episode, we discuss key strategies for businesses to effectively manage their online reputation, craft impactful review responses, and incorporate customer feedback into their broader marketing strategy. Here's a peek at what we cover in this episode: [00:04:30] - Emily walks us through her background working in events and customer service and gives us a peek into her 10 years at Yelp, helping small businesses break down their marketing efforts into manageable steps through mentorship. [00:07:15] - Emily uncovers how you can maximize your digital footprint as a small business and effective ways to build your online reputation. [00:13:35] - Emily provides insight around thoughtfully responding to both positive and negative reviews online, and explains how incorporating your brand's voice into your response strategy is a great way to further connect with your customers and build community. [00:25:25] - Emily reveals the best success tactics she's heard from entrepreneurs on Yelp's Behind the Review podcast. Grab a drink and listen in to this week's Marketing Happy Hour conversation! ____ Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Emily's episode: Local Marketing 101 (+ How to be an Effective Team Member) | Teddy Cheek of The Escape Game Small Business Social Media Advice | Social Media Manager Cameron Norfleet Pivach Small Business Marketing 101 | Karen Danudjaja of Blume ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know which bonus episodes you're excited for - we can't wait to hear from you!  Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our FREE MHH Insiders online community to connect with Millennial and Gen Z marketing professionals around the world!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Emily: ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠LinkedIn Follow along with Yelp: Instagram | Behind the Review Podcast Connect with Co-Host Erica: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Co-Host Cassie: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ New to Marketing Happy Hour (or just want more)? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download our Marketing Happy Hour Starter Kit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This podcast is an MHH Media production. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about MHH Media!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Interested in starting your own podcast? Grab our Podcast Launch Strategy Guide here.⁠

you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. This week, we're chatting all

things reviews and small business with Emily of Yelp. In this episode, Emily shares her passion for supporting local businesses and offers invaluable insights into the importance of online reviews and reputation management. We'll discuss key strategies for businesses to Thank you so much for having me. we'll explore common themes and lessons from Emily's conversations on behind the review and how marketers can apply them to their own strategies. So grab your favorite beverage and listen in to this week's episode. Hi, Emily, how are you today? I'm great. Thank you guys so much for having me. We are so excited that you're here and we're so excited to dive in to all things Yelp. But before we get started, I do have an important question for you that we ask all of our guests and that is what is in your glass this afternoon? I am drinking an iced vanilla latte.

It's decaf because it is the evening, but I needed to feel like I was having a coffee and it's from my favorite local coffee shop, Valentine, here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Oh my goodness. I actually visited Milwaukee about a year ago and I went to a coffee shop there, but I don't know that it was Valentine. I think it was something else, but it was good coffee nonetheless. But over here, I just have right now a Sleepy Girl Mocktail. If you're familiar with the trend that's going around, it's just a little

bit of tart cherry juice and sparkling water. And I left out the magnesium for right now because I feel like that always puts me into sleep. So I don't necessarily want to go to sleep during this conversation, but that's what I'm sipping on. But in terms of something like local that I've been loving lately, there's Willa's in downtown Tampa. They have an incredible non-alcoholic cocktail menu and they actually have a non-alcoholic Negroni, which a Negroni is one of my favorite classic cocktails. So I definitely recommend going there if you are ever in the Tampa area, but Cassie, what do you have? Yeah, I'm on the coffee train as well. Uh, I'm a huge fan. We have a local spot in Lakeland, Florida called born and bread. And I go way too much, but they just expanded their hours during

the week. They were only open two days a week. It was kind of a grab as many baked goods as you can those two days. And then the rest of the week we're closed prepping for those days. We are open. They expanded their hours and they're now open more throughout the week. And so every chance I can get to go over there and grab some coffee, that's, that's where I'm headed. So, or a Kregel, you are the Kregel queen. Yes. Funny story. I've never actually met the owner, but I post so much about this specific item they have and she'll repost it and call me the Kregel queen every single week. So there you go. That is incredible. I love when you're famous to a local spot because you gas them up so much. That's the best. Right. I'm happy to take that honor on.

But Emily, we're so excited to chat with you today. Erica and I are both very, very, very familiar with Yelp and how you guys work just from our experience in the past, working with a lot of local businesses, specifically restaurants. But curious first about just kind of how you got into what you're doing and then just tell us if you don't mind about what gets you excited about supporting local brands at Yelp. Yeah, for sure. This is my 10th year at Yelp. So I've been here for quite a long time. In my brief stint post-college before I was at Yelp, I did event coordination at a college university, and then I worked at a Marriott as a front office manager. So really that background in events and customer

service and just those high touch areas where you're dealing with a lot of customers and you're also dealing with a lot of online feedback. So that was my pre-Yelp history. And then at Yelp, I started in sales way back in the day, helping local businesses use our ad product to grow their visibility and get new customers. And then about a year and a half in, I actually switched over to what was then called the business outreach team. And we were solely focused on helping business owners leverage the free tools available to make the most of their Yelp presence. And that is very much in line with what I do today. Pre-pandemic, we used to host a lot of events and educational

efforts in person for business owners. We do a lot of that now digitally and virtually through my podcast and other programming. And really the reason that I love it and keep doing it is there are so many free resources on Yelp that business owners can leverage to get more visibility on the web. But I also love the fact that I can teach them a couple tips as they're completing their Yelp profile that help them just in general with digital visibility. So I can teach them a little about social media or how to manage a review on another site in addition to Yelp. And I just love working with these small businesses who sometimes look at those

parts of their business as these huge problems that they can't really solve. And if we can break it down into manageable steps or help them offload it to someone else, that's like a huge unlocking in their business success. And so I've just really enjoyed helping businesses of all sizes and really sticking with that free stuff and understanding that half the battle is just telling their story and describing who they are so that the right customers can find them. Yeah. So obviously a big piece when we think of Yelp, especially as consumers, we think of reviews, right? It's a place where we go to read reviews on a business before we decide to go visit that business specifically. And so I want to hear kind of in your opinion, what is the importance of online reviews, of requesting those reviews and just reputation management in general for a local business? And then do you mind sharing some strategies

around effectively managing an online reputation for a brand as well? Yeah, absolutely. So I think the biggest thing, point blank, is having your profile claimed and completed on a site like Yelp or Google, or maybe you have like an industry specific platform where you have a profile, it's so important to have those claimed and filled out because those are one of the elements of your digital footprint. So if someone hears the name of your business from a friend or a colleague, or maybe they see an ad of your business somewhere, they're probably going to go and search either Google. Some people will go right to Yelp. But if they know the name of your business already,

Yelp, Google, those are going to be additional things that show up in the visibility of your website. So we want to make sure it's accurate, right? We want to make sure that as a business owner, if there's a free profile that displays us as a business, we want it to be claimed by us, accurate, filled out, right? Now, I think the other step to it is building this reputation like you're talking about. And what I want to kind of hit on first is so many consumers turn to review sites to find businesses, to begin their search, or to validate

or verify information they have about a specific business. And when they go, they are going to look for reviews and they're looking at that information, but that's just one element. They want to see visual elements of your business. They want to read about your offerings or check your hours. And so even if you're in an industry where maybe you don't get as many reviews as a restaurant, let's say, it's still powerful and important to have your page claimed and have the information filled out that you can control while you wait for those reviews to kind of build up over time. Yelp takes a really strong stance against soliciting or asking for reviews because we really think that that should happen naturally. And everyone's probably had that experience before where someone asks for a review or for your feedback, and it almost kind of feels like not as genuine of an experience to you. So we like business owners to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, I call it. Let it happen naturally by letting folks know that you're on Yelp or that you pay attention

to your online reviews. And you could do that by sharing reviews on your social media. You could post reviews on your website. I've seen businesses do really fun things where they highlight reviews in their brick and mortar store. And that's a subtle way to say, hey, we read this stuff. And it lets the user go to the platform that they like. You know, if they're a Yelper, that's a great place for them to write their review. If they're more of a Google person, that's totally fine, too. You want to let that reputation happen naturally.

But there are ways to encourage it, you know, and tell customers that you pay attention to that stuff. And responding is a huge thing you can do to kind of get that feedback naturally. If I'm looking for businesses and I come across your page and I see that you're replying to customers who have visited you before, I'm more likely to share my own positive experience. And even if I have maybe not the best experience, I might come directly to you with that feedback because I see that you actually care about what your customers have to say. And so that's why I think having that presence, even if you don't have hundreds of reviews, is so valuable and so important. And you you know, you asked about the

review strategy as well and kind of how that feeds into it. I think a lot of people, when they think of their reviews, they think of it as like, when I get something critical, then I'll deal with it, right? But you're missing such a huge opportunity for all the great content that you have in reviews if you're just waiting for that criticism. And you know, a lot of people say consumers go online to complain. And sometimes that's true. But on Yelp, we have more five-star reviews than one, two, and three-star reviews combined. And so if you're just sitting like waiting for that negative review and we'll fix it when it comes, we're missing out on all these chances to say thanks to someone who already loves you or to share that great feedback from someone who loves you in a way that might

encourage another customer to share their experience. And, you know, the last thing I'll say, because I know I'm rambling a little bit, but the real important thing here is to remember not everyone reviews and it's not your job to turn your customers into reviewers. But what you can do is provide exceptional experiences, go above and beyond with the customer service, really surprise and delight your clients. And that's often what leads to those five-star reviews. For sure. And I love how you mentioned too, the importance of claiming

those profiles out there. I've seen and worked with so many businesses who have quote unquote rogue profiles all over the internet. And so it's really important to control that information. So if you haven't do an audit on your online presence, I know a lot of different profiles outside of Yelp will kind of get created as a result of you forming business. So make sure you're controlling the information on their website, things like that. Cause the last thing you want to do is confusing the consumer and leading them in the wrong direction information wise. So very important. Totally. And I always tell business owners, you know, set up Google alerts for the name of your business and it's, it's free to set it up,

you know, that way maybe a website pops up for your industry or something. And if you get a page for your business created, you'll know about it because you'll get that Google alert that a new page is out there. So definitely important to keep an eye on that stuff. I also love that you touched on community and just how important it is to engage with those positive and negative reviews. Do you have any tips on responding to both of those? You know, what are the best practices when it comes to comms for, you know, for those great reviews? And then also on the flip side for those negative reviews, you know, I've seen a lot of negative reviews out there that people will respond defensively to. And it's always, you know, a controversial thing. And I don't know that that's the best practice, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, for sure. We'll start with the negative because I feel like that's what everyone is so nervous about, right? What do I do when I get that negative one? I think the first step is to remember when you respond to a review, you really want to respond thinking about all potential future customers. We're not necessarily responding just for that consumer or to get into a back and forth dialogue with that consumer. That would certainly be a great outcome, right, if we can find resolution to whatever the problem is. But when I think about review responses, I think of them as a strategic way to reflect your customer service practices. And that's why I encourage business owners to do

that response publicly. Because again, it's great if we can connect with the consumer, find resolution, or get more information from them about what went wrong. But really, we're responding to show, hey, you alerted us to something. We care about this, and we want to make it right. So my advice is keep the response short. Start by thanking them for leaving their feedback, even if you don't feel like saying thank you. I mean, you might be irritated, but by starting with a thank you, we're really, again, showing customer service. We're taking the high road as the business owner or business manager, and we're not getting into a petty argument here.

We're just showing responsiveness. So you want to thank them. Address maybe one of the things that they brought up and how you might be addressing it or maybe how it doesn't align with your typical business practices. Let's say, for example, they mention a long wait time. You could say a general statement like, thank you so much for your feedback. We're really sorry that you had a long wait. We do our best to prioritize, you know, customer service. It's generic to a sense to show that you read this, you heard them, and you're acknowledging it. But then you're going to take it offline. Give them an opportunity to connect with you directly. I see a lot of businesses leave a general email address or even a phone number.

And I think that's great. I mean, it shows publicly you're not running from this, right? You do want to talk to them if they want to talk. But ultimately, that's not the goal. Like, it's great if the person updates their review or removes it. But you are doing your due diligence simply by responding. And I wanted to mention something you said, Erica. You said sometimes people respond and they're really defensive. That is so important to remember not to do because I think a lot of times that validates

sometimes what these negative reviews might be saying. Whereas a lot of times a negative consumer, they kind of out themselves in many ways of maybe an expectation that wasn't normal that other customers might not have. And so by you being professional and really taking the high road, you're always going to appear better to those future consumers. And we're all human. I mean, we know that humans run businesses, so mistakes are bound to happen. It's much better to just be the human and acknowledge the mistake than to try to play it off like you're an ungrateful customer. I mean, let the other consumers make those assumptions on their own. I don't think you need to call that out to a

consumer. And you're certainly not looking friendly and approachable by being argumentative to a negative review. Now, I will say with a positive review, that's the more fun one, right? Like this is someone who already spent time because they want to shout your business from the rooftops. So definitely respond to those. It doesn't have to be super lengthy. I think sometimes people get in their heads like, what do I say? I think it's nice if you invite them back or maybe mention something that you have that they didn't try. I've seen people before write reviews about dinner and then the response mentions come back for brunch. So those are all great ways to keep it short, but engage them and have it be a little

personal. The other thing I'd say is remember that keywords and phrases in reviews, but also in review responses help you appear in search results. So that's something to be mindful of too. If they mentioned your happy hour or a certain dish that is really famous or popular, re-mention that in your response. It's a great way to kind of get that little keyword check for yourself in the back of your mind. And it customizes that two or three sentence response that you're writing. Last thing I'll say about review responses in general, I think it's really valuable to reply within about 24 hours. Sometimes that's not always possible, right?

Like maybe 72 hours is more realistic. But don't do it in the heat of the moment just to get it done, especially if you're upset. It would be much better to delay it a day or whatever than to send it. I help people craft responses all the time. I honestly don't mind giving my email if you guys want to put it in the show notes or whatever. It's emilyrw at yelp.com. Super happy to help craft responses. But I also just say, you know, run it through ChatGBT.

Ask a friend, ask your partner to just read it if you're unsure. But at the end of the day, keep it high level, keep it very thoughtful and reflective of who you are as a customer service provider, and don't get into the weeds or the minutia, especially on a negative review. Oh, such good advice. And I loved the mention about keywords as well. I personally did not know that with reviews. You mostly think of the content on your page or the content on your website, et cetera. But that's a great reminder as well. So thank you for that. I want to ask too, a lot of people listening are representing brands. They don't necessarily own the brands, but they're in charge of managing that online reputation.

One of those tasks being managing reviews, responding, et cetera. So I'm curious what advice you have for marketers who are managing the marketing efforts of a business they don't personally own and how can they effectively advocate for that business and drive marketing success and kind of buy into the vision of the brand just overall? I love this question. When I saw that we wanted to dig into this, I got really excited because I honestly think there's a huge advantage here

when you're in that position. The emotional element is somewhat removed, right? You can be a little bit more robotic about how you want to approach it and how you can create a strategy. Whereas a business owner, especially in the beginning, it's very, very personal and sometimes like debilitating how much they care about a review that comes in. And so I think it's an added benefit to be someone managing a brand, but it also carries a lot of weight, right? And I think that's the most important part of doing that role is you need to understand the vibe and the vision of the brand. And you need to understand the voice in which they want to show up online, right?

I think there's the very standard, like, let's be polite. Let's be direct. Like, those are things that can go for anyone across the board. The three of us could put together a response strategy with some templates that are very generic in that way. But is this brand funny? Do they want to be, you know, approachable? Do they want to maybe do a little education in their response, depending on what their

business is? And so to get to understand that or make sure you're on the same page as the brand, I think as the marketer or the one managing it, you want to come up with some suggested templates and then let the brand give you a reaction to that. Have the owner or whoever you're kind of collaborating with read some of them and tell you like, oh, maybe I would like tweak that or say that differently. But you want to have essentially a baseline of this is pretty much how I respond to the happies. And this is pretty much how I respond to the frustrations. But then from there, it really is like you need to understand this business to understand how deep are we going on some of these reviews. And I'll give you an

example. There's a lot of business models where a centralized marketer is managing the profile for all these different locations and they're responding to reviews, but they're never in the brick and mortar. And I think that can work to an extent. There's certain things you can respond to where you don't have to know what's happening within the walls of the business. But I do think there are some reviews, particularly critical reviews, where it is worthwhile to talk to someone on site before you make that response. And even if you're not putting all of these details, this shift manager said, whatever,

it's still helpful context so that when you are crafting the response, it isn't disconnected. I'm sitting in a cubicle and I've never been in this business. I don't understand that the exit door is over here and the entrance is over here, right? There has to be an element of I first know from a templated high-level approach, here's how we want to sound. We're on the same page. Then on the secondary level, I know who am I going to go to when a specific problem comes up so that I can make sure I'm responding with knowledge of what's happening on site. part is you have to really guide the business to understand what they see as something that's important if they want to add it is really something that's lost if they don't do it. And let me break down what I mean. I think a lot of business owners think,

yeah, if I had time, I could engage with my online reviews, but otherwise like they're just there, you know, I'm doing my thing. If they wanted to talk to me, they could just like come to me and that's it. Like, I'm just not going to engage. And I think as a marketer, someone who's helping a business understand online reputation management, et cetera, you need to get them to understand that every review that's put out online is the same opportunity as when a customer tells you that in person, positive or negative, and it gives you a chance to leverage that. And by ignoring it, it is a lost opportunity. And by managing it, it's going to take a little bit of time in the beginning, but it's going to pay these huge dividends in the long run by having passive funnels of referrals come to your business because of these different listings that you have templated responses, you have FAQs, you have everything

that you need in order to do the job on the behalf of the brand. And you can actually apply that to beyond just the online reviews. You can do that in response to social media. You can do that in response to direct communication. Maybe people are emailing you and that's kind of what you reference. And there's a lot of different touch points there that you can apply the same tactics to. So I'm glad that you touched on that. I want to shift gears just a little bit to talk about your podcast Behind the Review, where you've had some conversations with both business owners and reviewers. So what are some of the common themes or lessons that have emerged from those discussions? And how can marketers apply those to their own strategies?

Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest themes or lessons or success tactics that I've seen business owners take on, especially since the pandemic, is getting better at telling their story and having that be such a part of the marketing, right? And have that be such a part of how consumers share the business online. And, you know, I think what that comes down to is getting over the fear of talking about yourself, which I think like it's so wild that entrepreneurs can all sort of relate to that. Like they make a good or

a service or a product because they know there's a need for it. Right. But then they sometimes have the hardest time talking about themselves and like why their product or service is so great and why they got started. And by doing that, by being skilled in sharing your story and the story of your business and putting the people at the front of your business, I think you see a lot more of that consumer engagement. That's where you get those customers that are not only writing you a Yelp review but telling everyone they know about you because they are connected to what made you you you, you know, and what drives you and what excites you. And oftentimes the customers that you're building, they're a part of that community. They can relate to your business in some way. And so the more human that you can be about your business and your brand, I think the

more relatable it is and the more likely people share your story. And that also extends, like you said, to social and to all these other platforms. And so I think that's been like a winning theme is the people who do that and get comfortable showing the behind the scenes, telling more about who they are. They see those customers telling that same story. I mean, literally like writing the background of a business in an Instagram post that they create or when they write their review. And so I think that's just a great overall change that more businesses have been doing is being themselves, being human. I think when it comes to the big themes for reviews and just being successful with your online reputation, it's about thinking of it

as a task. I mean, all of the best business owners who respond the quickest, who have the best reputations, you know, they have the business owners app, they have the notifications turned on. And it's not just for Yelp, it's for all of their platforms, right? If they're getting a message from any platform, they're having an alert system that comes in so that they can be responsive. And I think that's such an important element of business ownership today because people can get in touch with you in so many different ways. And whether you're responsive really determines if they choose to work with you or if they've just moved on to the next potential at that point. So I think that's a huge one. And, you know,

I think the other big thing when it comes to, you know, marketing a business or telling the story, you're going to have to be repetitive. That's for all of us, right? When you're marketing yourself or your brand, to you, it feels like you're saying the same thing over and over and over, but you have to repeat your core message to hit your consumers at the various times that they might be ready to spend money with your business. And so getting comfortable saying your message over, getting comfortable posting, responding, engaging, and not overthinking if it's perfect, because that is what prevents a lot of business owners from doing it. I don't have

time. I don't know what to say. And so we need to almost treat it more like the human things we do when we respond to a text message or something like that. Again, you don't want to be flippant with this stuff, but you want to do it effectively in a timely manner and then move on because we can't waste our time and energy really. Well, and I think having some of those frameworks in place that you talked about earlier is probably going to help with some of that efficiency. So if you have those templated responses, for example, that you can jump off of and tailor, that's probably going to help make that process a lot easier, make it less overwhelming. So yes, great advice, Emily. And this whole episode has been full of great advice. So thank you so much. But we want to ask you one of our favorite questions as we close out here. And that is,

what do you know now that you wish you knew earlier on in your career? I think the biggest thing I've learned is nothing I work on is more important than me and my health. And I truly think that that helps you do a better job. I'll give you just a quick little side story. About five years into my journey at Yelp, I went on unexpected medical leave. I had a mental health emergency and I was out for three months. So at work on a Tuesday, thought I would be there on Wednesday, was not there on Wednesday and was not there for three months. And situations like that make you realize, one, how replaceable you are to an effect to everyone who isn't like, you know, your family or things of that nature. But also, two, you're better when you do prioritize yourself.

And so, you know, sometimes I look at a calendar day coming up on the week and I'm just like, that's not good for my health. Like I'm looking at that day and I already know that's not it for me. And I have to cancel or move stuff or rearrange. And I think five years ago, 10 years ago, especially, I never would have done that. I would have thought, you know, everyone who thinks they need to meet with me today needs to meet with me today. Everything I think I need to get done today needs to get done today. And once you start to prioritize yourself because you realize you perform better when you prioritize yourself, I think it really allows you to take that time you need. But when you're stuck in that rat race of, I don't even have an hour to

step away because I have so much to do. Like, no, that is not true for anyone because you're just putting yourself into a negative deficit when you do that. So think of that. Are there things that you can ever like put off or reschedule or adjust? And sometimes it's one 30 minute meeting and that changes the whole dynamic of the day. And sometimes you have to cancel your whole day. And, you know, those are the moments when you remind yourself, I'm choosing to do this today. I'm being a responsible colleague, friend, whatever, by giving people a heads up, but something could happen to me unexpectedly and this whole day could get canceled. So if I need to do that to be the best version of myself, that's okay. You don't have to like get hit by a car to get the whole day off.

You know, sometimes you just decide you need a whole day off. So I think that's important. Yeah, it's definitely important. And I think we hear that a lot too. And people are a lot more understanding than you think they're going to be in your head. You know, everybody has been there and everyone has needed that time away or just to, to cancel a meeting. It's, it's not the end of the world. And so we always say, prioritize yourself, prioritize rest, you know, exactly kind of what you said. But we would love to know where we can

find you, follow along with you and see what you and the team at Yelp are up to online. Yes, so definitely follow Yelp for Business on Instagram. We post a ton of great stuff there. You'll also see the podcast highlighted there. Definitely check out Behind the Review on any podcast platform, wherever you listen to Marketing Happy Hour. We'd love to have you listen to our show.

And then my last name is my Instagram handle. So if you want to follow me there, I do fun Yelp stuff sometimes. You'll see stuff with my dogs. So always open to new followers there and love to see what different small businesses are doing. Also, if any of your listeners want to apply to be on the podcast, they can just send me a note with a link to their Yelp page and we'll get them vetted for the show. We would love to have any new businesses that want to be spotlit. Incredible. What a great opportunity. And we'll link out everything in the show notes so everyone knows where to go to find you. But thank you so much again for joining us. This has

been a very valuable conversation. I think people get a lot out of it. So thanks so much for having me. It was really fun chatting. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour, but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free Marketing Happy Hour Starter Kit at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash starter dash kit.

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