The Home Service Expert Podcast - Building Your Digital Reputation In The Home Service Industry

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

Aaron Hockel is the Vice-President of Digital Marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners, a full service agency that works with home service contractors in creating and implementing their marketing plans. Aaron has had over ten years of extensive experience as a marketing consultant for contractors, and is a resource speaker about marketing topics at contracting events. In this episode, we talked about customer service, marketing, CRM...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey guys, Tommy Mello back here with the home service expert. And I got Aaron Hockel on the

line. He lives in Baltimore and he's involved in marketing and creating leads for your business. And he specializes in home service companies. So Aaron, how's your day going? It's going well. Excited to be on the show. How's it going for you today? It's amazing. Just got some bad news about our Google. They filtered 500 reviews out of every city and they left a bunch of bad ones. And the hard part is getting a hold of Google, but we're going to figure it out. Stay optimistic. And it's crazy. Google is a monster. And they can just do whatever they want and screw with people's lives and their business. But I spent a lot of money with them.

So hopefully, they're going to fix this because I've had all real reviews from real customers. And the ones that they left there were obviously crap. So I feel like somebody is being malicious about our company, but other than that, uh, life is good. But, uh, the review thing is something that nobody ever likes to bring up. Like you get an, I get an email from a customer or like, Hey, I got this new review on Google. And I'm like, well, it's not going to be positive. What did you do? Right. So, or what's going on? I, I got this new review on Google. And I'm like, well, it's not going to be positive. What did you do? Right? So what's going on? I feel your pain on the review piece, for sure. I mean, it's crazy. They filter. It's just nuts. But anyways, tell me, you know, you've done a lot of consulting with contractors, obviously. You're working at AltaVista. You're

the partner and vice president of the marketing. Tell me a little bit about the last 10 years. What brought you to do what you do and what's your average customer base look like? Yeah, absolutely. So my last 10 years, so I kind of got out of college about 10 years ago, believe it or not. And I worked for a serve pro for a while doing marketing. I drove around the lime green at Chevy HHR. I met insurance agents. I met property managers. I did trade shows. I did that thing for a while. Then I got into in-home remodeling sales in the middle of 2008, maybe the worst time in

the history of the country to launch an in-home window, door, and siding sales career. That was short-lived. But I do learn a lot, I think, going into someone's home and trying to sell them something, just in terms of how that process all works. I hopped into the corporate world then. Did some stuff at Morgan Stanley. Did some stuff as a recruiter with Emerges Group. But I've been doing this stuff with AltaVista for the last 7 years. It's all marketing-focused, specializing in contractors, people that want to sell roofing, painting, plumbing, all your trade contracting services. And for seven years,

we've kind of grown about 150 customers, 30 states. And this is what we do every day, is just figure out how do we help people that are hopefully listening to this show, drive high quality leads, deal with Google reviews, you know, kind of figure out that piece of the puzzle. So how does it all start? So if I'm a business and I, you know, let's just say a garage door business or shits and giggles when I, uh, what is some of the onboarding process? How do you kind of, do you do like a needs analysis and figure out where we're at today? Yeah, we definitely will start with a needs analysis. But the most important thing for us is kind of understanding your finish line, right?

And making sure we know where you want to be. Because no matter who you are, where you work, you know, you don't maybe necessarily want to do a large rolling overhead door in an apartment building or a distribution center. Maybe you don't want to work in this particular neighborhood. Maybe you don't go here, right? So for us, if we know what customer we want calling our business, figuring that out is the huge first step for us. So once the client can identify who they want on the other end of the phone when it rings, the next step is what are they calling for? Because you might say you do garage doors, but do you repair them? Do you service them? Do you replace them? What do

you want to do with garage doors? Right? Right. You know, maybe you love service calls. Maybe you hate service calls. Maybe when they call you, you want them to be calling to replace their garage doors. So once we figure out like, okay, this is the person who I want to call. This is where I want them calling from. When they call, this is what I want them asking me for. Once we have that figured out, it really just becomes, how do we get that person to call your business when the time is right? So our onboarding process really starts out with figuring out who's the dream customer? What's the service? Where's the margin lie? Understanding that piece of the puzzle,

then we can go back and say, does Facebook make sense? Do online reviews make sense? Do Google AdWords make sense? Do display ads make sense? Does a podcast make sense? Right. You know, what makes the most sense for your business once we know where we want to go? Right. It's like kind of, you know, if you have to get across the Atlantic Ocean, you don't want to choose a car before you know where you have to go, right? That's how we look at it. Our onboarding is really figuring out the end, the finish line, working back to the starting line, choosing the right vehicle, and then, you know, kind of launching it for the client. So tell me, do you notice a big difference between home service versus home improvement? And what I mean by that is if I'm getting new blinds to help improve my home's value and a nicer home versus home service to me is my air conditioning

broke, possibly replacement. But if I'm looking for the Taj Mahal, it's just, I kind of see them as two categories. How do you guys view that? Yeah, I definitely would view it as two categories because I would consider one to be more construction-oriented, trade-oriented. Some of those things being more utility than cosmetic. New blinds is cosmetic. I moved into my brand new house a year ago and took us a while to figure out blinds because shockingly very expensive. But it's cosmetic, right? Whereas if you buy a 30-year-old home with a failing roof, guess what? That's a utility, right? You have to get the roof.

So I would definitely say that I see them as two separate categories. And I would also say that mainly because of the way people are going to look for providers and buy from providers. There's no better example than a surf pro, right? When a pipe explodes and your basement fills with four feet of water, your process for buying that is much different than trying to find a landscaper to plant new trees in your backyard or a blinds company to sell you new treatments for your windows. Right. Or you know what I mean? Like you need someone to come get the water out, make sure there's no mold, rebuild your basement, much different.

So I definitely think that while they're generally still considered, you know, home services, home contractors, home improvement, however you want to like label them out. There's definitely a nuanced difference between what you're calling, I guess the home services, right? Meaning garage doors, roofing, plumbing, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then the home improvement, which might be like redoing a bathroom, redoing your blinds, planting trees, right? Right. I think they're definitely two different things. Yeah. One is like a much stronger,

like our average close time for a door that needs to be replaced versus a custom wood overlay is that people are like, I want, and it's a retrofit. So their garage is working, but they're like, it's three months versus one week and service the same day. So yeah, it's almost a different avatar completely. And it's a different marketing plan. And that's kind of what I wanted the customer or. So yeah, it's almost a different avatar completely. And it's a different marketing plan. And that's what I wanted the customer or the home service experts out there to understand is, depending on your niche, if you got a nice air conditioning unit, you're trying to sell it for

to stop bloody noses, to create better air for your kids, to create cleaner pipes, more efficiency. It's completely different. And same thing, it's just a different mindset and a different marketing is what I think. And that's what I was getting to is... Because I'm on both sides. I'm on the service and doors, and then I'm on the custom doors. But what you mentioned earlier, and it's so funny that you brought this up, is the biggest problem you find with home service companies. Can you kind of talk about the phones and what you've noticed over the

last few years? Yeah, I just think that, you know, we always look at everything in the process, because it's like, anyone can get you clicks on Google. You can buy clicks, you can buy traffic. But we always say like, well, who's answering your phone? What's their process look like? Right? Like, when someone calls a home services business, it's high. Well, it's just an emergency. When do you need service? They should be moving and talking through a different track than someone who is a home improvement company, or a remodeling company, right? Because the needs are different. The urgency is different, right? And so we just simply say that like how you're answering the phone, the consistency is every phone call answered every day, right? We take over a lot

of Google AdWords accounts. And a funny thing we see is people are running ads 24 hours a day, but they only answer their phones from 8am.m. to 5 p.m. Well, guess what? On a mobile phone where half the Google traffic is coming from, people are calling your business at 7 o'clock at night. You know this. A conversion can be... That phone call can cost $20, $40, $60, $100, right? You pay $100 a call and they're all calling at 7 p.m. and it's going to a voicemail that no one leaves a message, just lit money on fire, right? So it's like, how's the phone being answered? The consistency, is it a call service? You know, looking at all the little small things

in the process where like, that's how you make up ground. That's how you get the most out of it, right? You know, look, call answering services can be great. They're not as great as a knowledgeable professional in your office, but the simple fact that someone picks up the phone, hi, how are you? What's, you know what I mean? That goes a long way. So we emphasize that as like one of our weird niche things that, you know, how many marketing companies want to know how you answer your phone, right? You know, that's, that's a good question, but I think that's where you should start. I mean, I worked with a company that he said, your average wait time is three and a half minutes. And this was years ago, but it was crazy because the traffic we got from TV

and our call center wasn't equipped for that. And we're losing a lot of customers. And I want to just explain an IVR is when you say press one or press two or press three for billing, press four. And one of the biggest problems that I find is if I call the cable company or my alarm company or my landscape company, I'll wait. I'll wait because I have to use them or my utility company. But if you're calling a garage door or air conditioning or a roofing company, and you've got 20 choices right in front of you with Google, you're not waiting more than 30 seconds tops. And you're like, obviously they don't want my business.

So wait times is a huge deal. And I think you made a great point on that. Two rings. Two rings is amazing. Pretty fast. But I'm just simply saying is that, you know, if it goes five rings, seven rings, oh, please wait, your call will be answered in 10, three minutes, 30 seconds, right?

Yeah. It's just, you know, it needs to be a human being. The IVR, the menu is a killer, right? Because, you know, you're calling to talk to a professional, right? You want to call it. You have a question. You have a problem. You have a need. You want to learn something.

You want an estimate. You want an appointment, right? You want to call it, you have a question, you have a problem, you have a need, you want to learn something, you want an estimate, you want an appointment, right? If it's press one for estimating, press two, it's just, you know, you're not done. People might press two to get estimating, but the question is how many people aren't pressing two? And you got to have analytics to look at that. And I'll tell you the only reason reason I like an IVR, and it's really circumstantial, is right now we're getting about 1500 robocalls a day, and we're getting blasted. I think we're getting pretty big, and we've got companies coming after us. And that blocks a lot of robocalls and solicitors that have auto dialers. So if it's press one for service, press two for install, and press three for anything else,

and it's quick and easy and simple, I'm not against it if it's for a purpose. But if you have the ability to not have an IVR, all the way. But robocalls are insane. And I'm hoping they're going to pass a law. I mean, people are setting up call centers from the Philippines and Mexico. And they're getting around all the laws too. So I don't know if you've experienced that with any of your clients, but it's getting crazy.

So we do a lot of targeted marketing and local area codes, right? So for us, we operate in the whole country, but we like to, when we're doing our outbound marketing and when we can, I want to include a local number because people like local area codes. They feel more comfortable dialing them a lot of the time well we get all like you know all the contract numbers are generally recycled numbers so if it got picked up in a marriott vacation cruises or a xyz whatever trust me i get them all the time me personally so i know the challenge of what you're talking about a hundred percent so tell me a little bit about

what you guys so I use service Titan I'm a big fan of a good CRM there's dozens of them out there there's service max that just got bought by GE for a billion dollars it's on the force platform there's I don't really like Salesforce for home service because you got to modify it so much. And I'm not going to say... ServiceMax is much better. But there's a lot of platforms out there. I've used about 5 of them. For garage stores, I've used about 20 of them. Everything from... I mean, you name it, I've probably used it. But what is your thought on having a good CRM? It's a must-have, especially for people in a service-oriented business like an HVAC company, right? Okay, let me rephrase it, right?

So a roofing company, if Mr. Smith calls you and says, come replace my roof, you go out, you sell him a roof for $15,000, you put a new 50-year warranty roof on his house, he might be done being a customer. There's still tons of value in marketing to him, especially if you do windows or siding or other things. But the chances of him buying another roof are slim, right? Because it's his house, a 50-year warranty roof. But you still want to have his contact. So a roofer, it's important. for an HVAC company, a service company, someone that has potential for route based opportunity, window cleaning is another one that comes to mind, right? Power washers that comes to mind, something where people might buy from you one, two, three, four, five times a year. It's a must have because it's the only way to stay

in front of these people. There's too much marketing and too much fatigue out there where it's like, oh, I can't remember the name of the guy who washed my windows in the fall and now it's the spring. And I just type into Google, window washing company near me, go. HVAC service company near me, go. So those guys having a CRM to manage all that past customer data, it's absolutely critical to success because you can email blast them, right? And you can automate all of it now too. So boom, email blast, friendly reminder to have your heating checked before the wintertime, vice versa, right? Hey, we haven't seen you for your power washing in six months. Here's 10% off, whatever it might be, right? There's so much power in that for those constantly recurring people

that it's an absolute must-have. I'm not saying that a roofer shouldn't have it. I just say that you have to have it if you're in some of those more constant service-based businesses, especially. Well, I think a CRM, it's Customer Relations Management System, and it's made for that. But it also does dispatching. It also does priority dispatching. It also does text messaging if you get one. It also does things like... One of the things that I like that I was going to

mention is it gives you accountability for your booking rate. Every call is recorded. So I want to see my call booking rate. I want to see what our average ticket looks like, what our conversion rate on sales is. So a CRM is basically now, it does so much more. It tells you so many stats about your business. And to not spend a couple hundred bucks a user per month, which sounds like a lot of money, is so dumb to me. I was just at a conference and these guys are like,

dude, you're crazy. 200 bucks per license. How many guys do you have? I'm like a hundred. They're like, you're spending 20 grand a month. I'm like, yeah. It's probably saving you or making you a million dollars a year. More than that. I mean, literally a good guy in my company will do 40 grand in a month. I'm spending 20 grand on the whole company. Are you kidding me? They have those stats. And you know, one of the guys, I told him I told him what our tickets are. And he goes, well, how do you sleep at night? I go, well, how much do you charge? Because I know your grandpa did it. And I know he passed it on to your dad. Then he passed it on to you. Great guy, by the way. But I go, I actually know

what my costs are. And I know how much I need to make 20% profit. And if you think 20% profit for a home service company is crazy. So I pick my prices built on a profit. And I have a price book. Do you have a price book? And do you have a profit that's built in? Do you pay your employees? Do you give them insurance? Do you pay for their gas? Do you upgrade your trucks? There's so many things that they don't have any clue how they get the prices. 99.9% of a lot of the home service companies are like, I just do the industry prices and sometimes we do good, sometimes we don't make anything.

And it's nuts to me. But I'm a big fan of CRMs. Let me ask you this. We talked about reviews a little bit. What can you do to make it easier to leave reviews, whether it be on Facebook, Yelp, Kudzu Merchant Circle, Angie's List, BBB, Google? What's an easy way to build a funnel that you don't have to really try in a machine? Yeah. So we love a software and recommend a software called Reputation Stacker.

There's a bunch of these systems and processes out there. The reason we like Reputation Stacker is this. Very easy to use. It populates reviews. Their process, and I'll talk about it more in a second, focuses on getting the review written directly on the platform. It does not syndicate. So it's not asking the person to write the review in Reputation Stacker and then getting it out in the world. It does not syndicate. So it's not asking the person to write the review in Reputation Stacker and then getting it out in the world. It's focused on sending Aaron Hockel to Google as Aaron Hockel, to Facebook, to Yelp, to Merchant Circle, to BBB as me and having me authentically, directly write the review on the platform, which we think is huge. From your IP address.

You know, Google in the local... Yeah we think is huge. From your IP address. You know, Google in the local... Yeah, because it's coming from your IP address. Yeah. Well, I mean, Google is tracking the location of where the reviews are written as a way to impact. Yeah, it's insane. So there's that. And then it also has a really powerful live streaming widget that's super easy to use.

So we're telling our clients who are using it like, hey, we can automate this to an extent. We can ask via email. We can ask via text message. We can choose where we want the reviews being published. They're not syndicated. They're authentic on the platform. And then lastly, I can just embed a live stream of my last 20 reviews from these five sites on a landing page. Here, check out the last 20 reviews from these five sites on a landing page, right? You know, here, check out the last 20 reviews posted about our business online. And they're just live scrolling through. And it's like third party verified by and has a direct link. View this review on Google. So the person can see it. Oh, you don't think it's real? This is not a testimonial

that is from Mr. Smith. This is click it and it's going to go to Facebook and show you Mrs. Jones profile on Facebook. So a lot of power in that process that we think is huge, right? You know, I talk about like ease, right? Like how simple is it, right? How should you do this? How can you keep it simple, right? So reputation stacker works at the simplest level to say, you know, we'll say that, uh, Tommy, you were just a company, just a customer of AltaVista, right? I upload all my customer data into the system via Excel, and you can also sync it with some platforms, but for simplicity's sake, I need first name,

email, mobile phone number. I upload, I hit go. Tommy, you get a text message. Tommy, thanks for being a recent customer of AltaVista. Customer feedback is very important to us. Can you rate your experience from one to five stars? And this is nothing new, but they rate you four or five stars. The next screen prompts them on their mobile phone. Thanks for the feedback. Could you take 60 seconds to write a review for us and then they have links on google on facebook on their mobile phone they click google the chrome app launches and it launches all the way to the point where it's like the next screen that finally comes up is just like

five stars and then start writing cursor blinking right and it's so easy. Email does the same thing and you can auto-program it to send, you know, you push, you know, you program it. So it's going to go out Tuesday at 7 a.m. Anybody who doesn't open or click gets another one on Thursday and then gets a final one on Monday, right?

And so you're just uploading data, hitting go, and it's just running for you. It's really powerful, right? That's the software side of things. I think there are some other sides to the review process that we think are really important. How does a home service contractor go about getting more reviews? An automated tool like that is massively important. Being diligent and using the tool, equally important, right? The third pillar to me is all about our language and prepping the client, right? So if in the initial meeting, before I even do anything, I talk about, you know, and Mrs. Jones, we'd really encourage you

to go check out some of our online reviews when making your decision on somebody to replace your garage door. You've already planted the seed about how good your online reviews are. And sometimes those reviews can sell you against your competitor like that, right? When they sign the paperwork, oh, Mrs. Jones, you know, we're really looking forward to working with you. At the end of this, we're going to ask for a review, just be aware of it. And you tell them two or three times throughout the process. And then at the very end, you know, if you do a property walk, or you have a final customer service phone call, whatever it might be, and Mrs. Jones, Tommy, can you go write a review for me on Google? Right? No? Okay, easy enough. But if I say, Tommy, can you spend 60 seconds to write a two-sentence

review describing your experience working with all the Vista stuff? It would be greatly appreciated. Here's a quick link to Google, to Facebook, to Yelp. All you need to do is click on the one where you already have a profile and then take one minute to jot down two sentences about your experience. It'll really help me grow my business. When you've prepped it as two sentences, 60 seconds, click this and it's going to automatically take you there. It becomes so much easier to the end user in their mind. I don't have to go figure out whose profile it is. I don't have to sign into anything. I don't have to worry about this. I don't need a book. I don't need this. I want 60 seconds. You can do this in one minute, two sentences, click whichever one's easiest for

you. Done. Right. So that's where we see huge power in that third, how you ask the question. Yeah. I find that I got a couple of comments. What you were talking about is a widget. It's an RSS feed, basically, that pulls from that and basically just syndicates on your website, but it's clickable links. Amazing to have that because a lot of people have fake reviews on their website. And by having real reviews, you get the schema data, which actually tells Google that they're real reviews and they actually broadcast that on their organic search level. But what I found with my technicians is they don't want to leave a review for the company. I mean, they will, trust me, people will, but they want that relationship with that technician. And the technician does a great job.

And he says, look, Ms. Jones, my name is John. You met me now a couple of times. I'm back out here to install the door. It really means a lot to me if you take one minute to write a couple of sentences to let me know how I did. And the company really appreciates it. And my boss will love it. They'll go out of their way. They'll go out of their way because they built a relationship with that technician. So it's better than the company asking, is the technician out there actually asking for it then and there. So that's something that I found that works. And I love, I wrote down a lot of notes that I'm going to actually implement with my stuff. That's why I love these things. There's ways to handle negative reviews. And I think you need to really take the time to learn about your company. A lot of them,

a lot of people, especially, you know, the guys that have been doing this while I go, Oh, boo hoo. No one's going to make that customer happy, but they don't understand by taking a minute, giving back some money, listening to their story, trying to get that review satisfied into a happy customer, even though it's a lot of work, their reputation online is worth so much.

And that's why I was so mad that they took out 500 good reviews and left a bunch of crappy ones. But we're going to take the time and actually go back to these customers. We've already reached out to them, but I'm going to reach out again. But I think a lot of them are fake. They're from competitors. There's nothing you can do about that. And that's why Google kind of, you know, whatever. But Yelp is better at that about filtering fake reviews. Google's getting better with their new Google Guarantee Program. But, well, how do you combat negative reviews? What's your thoughts on that? Yeah. So we kind of follow the rule of thumb that, you know, any negative review, regardless, deserves a public

facing response. Sure. Right. So that the people, other people, I'm going to take it one step back. 97% of home service consumers will use reviews during some point in the purchase process. That's a stat from Comscore. I can get you the literature on it, right? But so it basically says that whether it's before they call, after they call, before they decide, people are reading reviews about your company. It's unavoidable, guaranteed to happen regardless of what you're selling, where you are, who you are. People are reading online reviews about you. So that needs to be the first digested thing. And as a result of that fact, once that's accepted, if someone does put a

negative review up about you, it is not necessarily the end of the world. It is, however, extremely important that you put out a quality public-facing response on it because it shows all the future people that are potentially going to use your business, that you acknowledge these things, that you care, that you're these things, that you care, that you're willing to look at this thing and evaluate your own business and be engaged should something not go right, right? Everybody in the world has had a bad experience and been at fault or whatever it might be, right? So people get that. I think the other stat from that research is like 90% of people will use a business with an aggregate star rating of

four out of five or higher. So if you make four the benchmark, 90% of people will use you. So when it comes to it, you get dinged, right? The first thing is don't write anything down or call that person. We say for depending on the review, usually take some time to simmer. When it hits your email, don't just instantly call Mrs. Jones. Don't go right to the review and start typing your response online. That will get you in trouble because most people aren't rational right in that first immediate minute. Take some time, digest it. If it was about a particular technician or salesperson, call that person. Talk to that person about it, right? Find out what the root of the problem is. I've seen people get blasted for the owner wouldn't come out and give me a quote, even though he was

directly referred, we were directly referred to him because it's a, it's a policy of his that both homeowners be home, right? Regardless of whether or not you agree with both homeowners being home. In his case, it was probably for a $70,000 project where I don't think one party's making it on their own, you know, $500 garage door repair. Yeah, I get it. Right. $70,000 major waterproofing and reconstruction project. No matter what anybody says, both husband and wife,

both partners are going to be involved, need to be involved in that process. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. One star review. This company came highly recommended to me. However, I can't believe they would not come out and give me and so i'm talking to this client and i'm like well you know this woman's reviewed a lot of starbucks so we'll just leave that as you know what it is but uh

you know how do we deal with that right so we had to come up with a public facing response to this because this person never even bought. She's never even experienced the quality of their work. So once we digest it, talk to people, get the facts behind it, right, you know, we always try to say, like, we should apologize, right? Mrs. Jones, we're sorry you had a negative experience working with us, right? And this is provided we can't call them and rectify the situation with a rebate, with a service call, with an upgrade, right?

If we can rectify the situation and fix it and they can take it down, that's obviously goal number one. I'm going down the path of we can't call Mrs. Jones and get the review changed. We apologize, Mrs. Jones. We're really sorry you had a bad experience working with us, right? You know, we acknowledge that we dropped the ball in the process, right? We look and say, if you acknowledge your mistake, that's important too, right? You know, we acknowledge that we dropped the ball in the process, right? We look and say, if you acknowledge your mistake, that's important too, right? We then talk about like, address how we're changing, right? And then we apologize again, right? So we apologize, because we want to apologize, we want to own it. We want to let people who are reading this down

the line know that we're listening to the customer. Here's some ways we're potentially going to change it. And then we just say, we're sorry again, right? Sometimes you got to eat a little crow, unfortunately, in this world. But at the end of the day, if you approach it right, it's going to, it will be okay. If you go on there and get in a hostile public argument on an internet forum, that is never going to turn out well. Because then that person, instead of writing a bad review on Google, they're going to go out well. Because then that person, instead of writing a bad review on Google, they're going to go find your Yelp. Then they're going to go find your Facebook. Then they're going to go find your... They usually, depending on how teed off the

customer is, they'll go try to ruin your world. It's crazy how a negative, unhappy customer will go so much more out of their way than a very excited customer. An excited customer will go, what can I do for you? And they'll go, I'm going to go on Facebook or go on Google or go on Yelp. A negative customer will hit the BBB, the trade commission, the freaking, the contractor's licensing. They'll hit the Yelp, the Facebook. I mean, they go down the line.

And that's when it's better. This day and age, you need to create a wow experience. You need to create raving fans and you need to have checks and balances. So our CRM actually asks the customer how we do right after. So if it's negative, we get on that right away. We know before they get a chance to demolish this online. And another thing is most people, they don't look at the good reviews because they don't trust them. They go right to the bad ones and they see what the company did. So even though our Yelp review, it's a 4.5 with 465 reviews. People I know, they go straight to the negative ones and then they read them and then they go, this customer is crazy. Or they say that's pretty

valid. But now I see where the company, what I do is all of our calls are recorded. So I put a link in the response to the phone call because they say they never set a service call. And I look at it and I go, we didn't say it. And I don't want to charge it. Sometimes I get money back. But I'm like, listen to the phone call. We clearly stated that. And typically, I'll try to get it off. But if the customer is like, no, no, no, this was my experience. You guys are crazy. I'm leaving it up. Then I just put a link and I say But if the customer is like, no, no, no, this was my experience. You guys are crazy. I'm leaving it up. Then I just put a link and I say,

I'm sorry, sir. Obviously, if anybody out there doesn't trust our service, they can listen to the phone call. But I was more than happy to return the money. But this customer obviously feels like we were up to blame. But never turn it at them.

Just like you don't want to bring competitors into your responses. Like, oh, that company is shady. That's not the right way to handle. But yeah, I 100% agree. I 100% agree. It's all about just, you know, you said delivering a wow experience, right? Which people are like, well, how do you deliver a wow experience putting a roof on a house? Right? And it's, I can tell you because I've seen the good reviews and the bad reviews. Communicate, do what you say you're going to do, show up when you say you're going to show up. Most roofers out there know how to put a roof on a house, right? They know how to get up there,

tear it off, replace it, you know, clean up after yourself. It's delivering that experience. And then I also liked what you really said there too, about we up ASAP boom we're right on it when you do that I mean to some extent you can almost not trick the person but that upset customer that dissatisfied customer if you're right on it they can think oh I wrote my review I blasted them you know beat their chest and they don't think then, oh, I also should go write this on Google, right? Because they've already gotten it out in the follow-up, right, to you. One of the most amazing ones I've seen in this whole thing was a plumbing company based in the DC area by us. When all their techs do everything iPad, tablet-based, app-based, right? Custom built

for them. So this is not probably the most repeatable thing, but an awesome concept. When the tech is done in the app, he hits a button, the app sends a push notification to the call center, and the person's phone is ringing within 15 minutes. And it serves two major things. One, it serves the angry customer, the review, how was it, what did we do? But in an area like D.C. where the traffic is so immense, it doesn't let the technician go so far away. If Mrs. Jones says, oh, he forgot a wrench. Oh, he didn't pick this up. Oh, he didn't do that. Oh, we want it. Right. They're also keep the tech close to the property where even going 10 miles in DC can be an hour

drive. Right. So I don't, I don't get it. So the technician, it's a button on the CRM and then who calls him? The dispatch team is calling a call center, a customer service.

Oh, it's actually ringing the call center and saying, Hey, we just want to check up to make sure Mark did a good job or what? Yeah. In the CRM, you know how you can like assign tasks to people. It's basically automated so that when the tech in the process, the tech says job 101 completed, when that button gets hit, it sends a push notification to the call center and the call center gets an

immediate alert to pick up the phone and call job one, the main point of contact at job 101. Okay. I got you. So basically, so we do a text message. We're in that transition between text messaging and phone calls. And actually, one of my goals in the next week is to ask customers how they'd like to be communicated with text messaging, phone calls, or possibly email. Hopefully not fax machine or pager. But one of the things that I've actually been going through, and I'm a big marketer, I love marketing, it's my passion. There's so many ways to make money marketing.

And I think it's kind of daunting to a lot of home service companies. Google is a must, Facebook, iffy, depending on your industry. There's Nextdoor. There's Yelp. There's also doing events. There's also TV, radio, billboard, which is more branding. There's also... I write handwritten letters now to my customers. There's also word of mouth. There's HOAs. There's going after them in LinkedIn if you're B2B. I mean, the list goes on and on.

I mean, I've got a list of a million initiatives. There's door-to-door knocking, which could be very successful for a lot of businesses, especially like bug, you know, exterminators. But with all these things out there, what's low-hanging fruit, do you think, to most home services that maybe they're not thinking about? Yeah, great question. I noticed you didn't say the phone book in there, which is a good thing to not look, right? I didn't hear yellow pages. So I guess that one's officially off the list.

I guess you're down to, you know, a million minus one. Right. So if we're looking at home services, right, and we're talking that reactive purchase, right? My garage door is broken. My roof is leaking. My AC stopped. My pipe burst, right? If we're looking in that home services, that reactive purchase, right? It's not low hanging fruit, but I simply say that a warm phone call to your business of, hi, Tommy, I found you guys online. I'm having a problem with my garage door. Can I set up an appointment to have someone come look at it? That's the absolute

best phone call, right? That's what all of our marketing, all of our work is around. And so to me, people talk organic SEO. I say it takes a long time. People say Facebook ads. I say, well, it's hit or miss, right? Because people on Facebook are passively looking, they're not proactively looking. So to me, we're advocates of, I just started my roofing business, I need leads, right? We're Google AdWords, we're pay-per-click believers in that regard, because it's so quantifiable. It can be tracked, it can be recorded, everything can be understood. We know our math on it. We know we paid X for a phone call. We got X appointments. Everything is really math-based at that point in time. And so to me, it's not necessarily the lowest hanging fruit or the cheapest hanging fruit,

the cheapest hanging fruit. But to me, it's like a person who has a roof leak, who opens their phone, pulls up Google and hits call, right? That to me is the immediate warm sales opportunity in your pipeline, right? And it's reactive, right? That to me is the low-hanging fruit. So to us, I would say search is the first one, right? I just can't put SEO as the low-hanging fruit because it can take months, years, et cetera, to fight your way up and to get into all that sort of stuff. So I can't necessarily say it's an immediate strategy, but as a broad thing, search to us is the initial way. It's how people look. It's like the phone book is the search engine, right?

So 30 years ago, I know people who were saying, oh, the full page, first page ad in the roofing section. The double truck. That's what they used to call it. I made one garage door, so I fell first in the phone book. People did AAA, ABC. I was going to... Yeah. But I mean, you hear about these guys who were spending $100,000 a year on a Yellow Pages ad. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, they were spending... $200,000, $300,000000 quarter million. Yeah. And it works. It works now, but they work, but they don't want to spend any money on Google. You know, if you were the double truck, you own that market. It was like, no one could buy it from you. You were, you were this monster that you go, dude, I don't even care if we answer our phone. We got more than enough calls. We're the monster. We're the big player. And I will say this.

I've been doing a lot of branding on top of Google. And it's good to... They're not going to always think of my company, even though everybody thinks, oh, yeah, I think I meet people all the time. They're like, I think I use you guys. Trust me. Their subconscious has hurt us enough to where they're going. If they see us on the top of the ads, the click-through rate goes through the roof.

And I'm talking from a 5% to 10% click-through rate all the way up to 60% if you're doing well at branding. And I think a lot of people go, yeah, I just do Google. And I'm like, what's your click-through rate? What's your average time on page? Do you have a chat box on there? How often are people engaging on the on-page site? And they don't look anything at the titles. They don't A-B test. They don't try different things. They don't build separate landing pages. They don't localize the stuff. They do the whole state. And I think that's a killer. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So I mean, I know as a, so we're a certified Google partner and I want to say the research we have hover something in like when a person sees the same company's ad on Google three or more times, click through rates are like five X, right?

So if your budget's not enough to show your ad, if you can't draw a lot of impressions on your ad, you're already at a disadvantage. But if the person's looking for garage doors, looking for garage doors, and it's boom, boom, boom, there's our brand, there's our brand, there's our brand, you exponentially increase basically your odds of getting the click. So that's a huge factor, right? Yes, the more visibility you get, slam dunk. You kind of tied up and brought landing pages there as a thing, right?

And so looking at all the stats is important. To us and everything that we're seeing is that, you know, and it's funny you brought it up because we just did an exercise of like, you know, internally, what are the 10 most important things on the landing page? So it's a really hard way. I think you got to have a very, very... Let me take a stab at a few.

Go. Okay. So number one, I would say it needs to be a very, very clear call to action. Do you want a phone call? Do you want a forum fill? Which is the biggest one you want? Number two is it's got to have a very fast loading. It's got to load very, very, very quick because loading times are affecting Google

search big time. Number three, landing page needs to have testimonials and just a few of them. And you want to have video because video is the top thing. People will play a video most of the time and it's engaging and it's more time on page and improves your quality score. And the next thing is you want to have the most important things at the top, but you want to have a really good site map because people need to be able to get around your site easily. And I talk about user interface all the time because I think user interface is probably the most important thing in anything, whether it's software on your website. And then I do like to say, if you're not built in WordPress, you should think about rebuilding your site. But a lot of times people don't put keywords there

like free or same day service or no obligation. There's certain keywords that really go a long way. Money back guarantee goes a long way. Anything you can put to legitimize yourself, ROC number, which is a contractor number, warranties. Okay, I took a stab at it. Let's go through it. All right. So I don't have it open in front of me. I should have opened it while you were going through all that. So you had CTA, right? You had big call to action.

Yep. We go a little step further. We say call to action above the fold on mobile and desktop so that it's immediately clear when the page loads. So above the fold on mobile and desktop so that it's immediately clear when the page loads. So above the fold, so the location of the CTA. We said, we then go multiple CTAs on the page so that as somebody's moving through, as they move through the content on the page, you know, they move down, they watch our video. Underneath our video, it should say, get a free quote now right multiple calls to action throughout the page always telling them how to convert testimonials absolutely we agree we are WordPress fans as well you went a little more

content route so some of ours is more design oriented and function oriented so we said making sure all of our phone numbers are hyperlinked so that on a mobile phone if I click a phone number, it launches the little click to call thing. This is a big one people forget to do. Every landing page, every phone number on your whole website, everywhere should be set up like that for mobile phone. All of our calls to action, if it's like get a free quote now, it's like a button, right? If they click that button, we say it should automatically redirect to a contact form on the same page. So you have no page load latency. So they click get a quote. It takes, and you mentioned the fast load times, that's on our list. But if they click get a free quote, it's not taking them to a new quote page,

it's taking them to a contact form to request the quote on the same page. The page jumps up and down. You know what I'm talking about? It, it just scrolls down right to it. Yeah. Yep. We say that. And so this is another one. You talked about like A, B, testing, all that stuff. The research basically says that the more information the user has to fill in, the more likely they are to get form fatigue. So our contact forms, we ideally have four fields, a maximum of six. So it's not first name, last name, street address, city, state, zip code. How did you find us? What do you need? Why are you? It is name, email, phone, message. Yep. Right. Four fields makes it very easy for the person to fill

out. We require all of them, all required. So we get all the information that was one of ours i'm just trying to see oh images that relate to our service so if you're talking about uh you do garage doors right so if it's a garage door repair it should be a broken garage door than a fixed garage door but if it's a you know you mentioned like wood panel overlays or some decorative garage doors, it should be about, you know what I mean? It should all tie in. They should know exactly. You're searching for a shingle roof. Yeah, they should know exactly. If I'm a caveman, here's a good concept for the listeners.

If I'm a caveman and I pop up on your website and I don't know English or Latin or anything, I should just know exactly what the hell you do on the image. Like, oh, it's a garage door guy. Obviously, a lot of times you land on a page. You're like, what the hell do these people? I look at billboards and I'm like, I'm driving 70 miles an hour. I don't know what the hell that is or what the hell you do. There's nothing.

It doesn't, most company names don't even have what they do in it. And I don't want to go into example, but 80% of the businesses are like, what you're not Google. You're not changing the game or Yelp. You're a small business or like, you know, I don't, I don't want to say anybody's name, but I can think of a dozen names locally here that I'm like, what the hell are they thinking? But that's funny. One thing Groupon refills Groupon went down to

two fields. You know what Groupon ended up doing? One field, your email, that's it. And they found the conversion rate of adoption went through the roof. And I would, I would just, I would say to any home service companies out there is get the key information only. You want their first name. You don't need their first name, get their email address and why they calling and their phone number. You're absolutely right. The less fields. And here's what's super cool is the auto feel is changing the game.

And actually there's companies out there that could guarantee the auto fill. So somebody might hit something like if I hit T on a form and then I decide I don't want to do it, boom, they grab the data. There's companies that'll grab that autofill data because it actually did it, but I didn't click on it. And then you could grab that data and say, you know, I think you might have filled out a form. No, I actually decided I didn't want to do it at this time.

Okay, well, look, let me tell you a little bit about our service. Trust me. I like that. It works. I like that. It works. I like that. So I have two other ones that we had on our list. Use bullets, check marks, or visual cues to highlight your most important information.

Right? So you mentioned like my ROC number, money back guarantee, you know, some of those keywords, right? Well, bullet those out. People are naturally and organically, their eyes jump to that stuff. Right. Um, and then use, use bigger fonts everywhere. Bigger is easier to read. You got, you know, how, what's the average age of a homeowner in your market, right? If it's, you have old people around you, guess what? Reading glasses. They're not looking at 12 point times new Roman. That doesn't, that's not easy for them to read, right? How many people have that mega zoom on their iPhone messages,

right? Just think about that. So like big easy to read fonts. And then we say that there should never be like more than there should, you should really minimize two consecutive sentences of font. So it should never just be blocks of type. Everything should be bullets. Everything should be shoutouts when we're communicating our most important information. So you can have an about section and you can have solid chunks of copy on there for keywords and for SEO and for all that sort of stuff. But your most important information should be, why do people call us to replace our roof? Boom, licensed, bonded, insured. Boom. 4.8 out of 5 star rating based on 199 online reviews. Boom, boom, boom, right? 50-year warranty on every job. Boom. Owens Corning Platinum Certified Roof. You know what I mean? Don't write out,

we are Owens Corning certified you know so we're really big on bullets right that's a great point is the audience should listen to one thing i was in utah yesterday at a company that does manufacturing and i met with their marketing team good buddy of mine owns it they've got you know 70 people and uh their their marketing team's eight and i said how you guys get in traffic and he goes, Tommy, I went there two and a half years ago. I talked to these guys about it. They go, we went from 3,000 a month to 70,000 visits a month by our blog.

And they use infographics. They use really, really good stuff about the company. And for garage doors, you might want to do spring cleanup, things you need to know about your house. One of them is maybe replace your bottom rubber because of keeping all the bugs out. And so you can talk about your product indirectly. Spring cleanup. Make sure to clean the coils on your air conditioner, right?

You can blog about a million things because people search this stuff. And then you can have an article on Facebook and actually get it out there and syndicate it everywhere you want. So I'd say if you want to put a lot of type, do it on your blog, put a video on it and put some screenshots. Just kind of like an infographic of things because some people are visual. They love pictures. Some people like to read. Some people want to watch a video. So a blog should combine all three of those, I think. And Google loves the Google scrapes words. You know, Google doesn't scrape videos unless you transpose it,

which you're doing good if you're able to do that. And Google doesn't really do anything for pictures unless you geotag them and put descriptions on them, which is great to do too. But I'm confusing the crap out of people, but these are all great things. You're not confusing me, but maybe, uh, maybe certain, uh, yeah. It's important to remember that the end of the day, Google's a machine and they read text as it is literally. Right. And they make sure it's you.

What is that? Um, it's been a while, but what is that thing you run stuff through to make sure it's authentic content? Copyscape. Copyscape. Copyscape. Yeah. So we've always run everything because there's so look at, I guess no matter what,

there's a lot of unique content out there and we've used spinners in the past and you know, all that stuff, but you know, it's really now it's about quality and it's actually about like, how often is this getting shared? What's the social proof? Social proof is a big thing.

Talk to me a little bit about that, about social proof, about actually getting it shared on social media, getting the plus ones on Google plus really Google's looking a lot more for quality over, uh, they used to go after, um, basically it's quality over quantity. Yeah. So talk a little bit about quality over quantity. Yeah. So talk a little bit about quality over quantity. Yeah. So, I mean, it depends on what we're talking, right. But in terms of like website content, SEO, Google, all that stuff, the huge thing they're looking for now are, you know, it used to be, Oh, write 300 to 400 word blogs and do this and do that. Right. Google's now really looking for like well-structured, longer form articles that talk on an expertise level.

Right. So, you know, unfortunately, as awful as this is, they're now talking like, let's say you really want to do something about like you want to rank for replacing garage door springs. Right. We want to rank for replacing garage door springs. You know, the way Google is looking at it now, and what the SEO industry is really pointing to is saying, well, you need to come up with a 1200 to 1500 word, basically, essay on replacing garage door springs, which I'm not going to write that one for you. But I might know someone who could. I'm not getting I'm not going down this one. And it needs to be structured appropriately. It needs to have certain headers. It needs to have schema data, as you mentioned, images, all these different things built throughout it. And so then the idea of how Google is looking at things is they're looking

for that really long form, really authoritative information. And then they want to see other things all, you know, and this is the back linking stuff, you know, as 101, all pointing up to it, but that's even on your own site, right? So it could then be that, you know, you wrote your 1500 word manifesto on replacing garage door springs, then it needs to be, when do you replace your garage door springs? You write that article, 500, 600 words, link that, point that up to the top one. Then common signs, you need to replace your garage door springs, point it up, point that up to the top one then common signs you need to replace your garage door springs point it up point it up point it up point it up you know content clusters is another way people

are talking about it cornerstone content is another way people are talking about but essentially you're just trying to point all of even your own sites links and traffic all up to that root massive piece of information so yeah the quantity of backlinks still matters and the quantity of what you're putting out there matters, but it has to be high quality. It has to be authoritative. It has to have like a structured purpose in how it's all being built.

So just writing a 500 word piece every day about all kinds of different stuff and having no like focused intent behind how it all builds together it can get you some traction but it's not going to really take you where you want it to go right and then the other side of the coin too is you mentioned like social proof social sharing all that kind of stuff what we say about that is that content needs to be written in a way that people care about it. Right. One of our most successful pieces of content we've ever created was, uh, for a commercial elevator

service company. And it was seven oldest working elevators in America. I love that because people, right. People love stuff like that. No one cares about, you know, renovating, you know, elevator cabs or three signs your elevator motor could be failing, right? It's important and you need to have that valuable content on your site. But when you're talking about social engagements and getting shares and getting plus ones and getting people to like and comment and do all that kind of stuff, right? It needs to be something that's kind of, I don't want to say corny is not the word I'm looking for, but like, I can't come up with the word, right. Maybe you can help me out. And you know, like, uh, something that's engaging, something that's thought provoking, something that's like, Oh, that's interesting. Like,

yeah, I always say like, I think about all the dumb stuff I click on online, right. Cause we all click on dumb stuff, whether we want to admit it or not, you know, 20 childhood stars, where are they now? right? And like, it's just saved by the bell, where are they now, right? You see that kind of stuff and you're like, oh, I wonder where they are now. Like, let me click on that, right? And so, it's like, that's not really gonna, you know, that's what you need to come up with, right? Is that kind of stuff, if you really want to get that engagement, that push behind it, right? Let me tell you this. One of my partners built a pretty sophisticated

garage door website and he built this blog and it went nuts and it jumped from number four. His website for this keyword, garage door repair Phoenix, jumped from number 14 to number two. And it was all about man caves and it had pictures and he went around and found all these amazing pictures, but he still put the links. It's not like he stole that stuff. He put the links to where the original was,

but he put it all in one thing. And I mean, this thing got shares, likes hits all over the place. It rained so quick because Google said this is important i think he did a press release on google about it and bam that thing went nuts and all of a sudden the site started to just climb overnight and you know it's kind of cool you gave me a good idea like celebrity garage doors what's in them right like just what's parked under their man caves or any of that stuff it's like that's home run, right? Yeah. Hey, good stuff, man. The world's biggest garage

doors. Oh, yeah. What's his name? The Saturday Night Jay Leno, man. He's probably got one of the bigger ones. Oh, yeah. So, let me ask you this. You know, we talked about a lot of stuff, a lot of marketing. What do you think is something

maybe we left out that you'd like to share with the readers? I'm going to give you a chance to give them all your contact information and all that stuff. But what do you think is something like a big takeaway today that home service experts out there could listen to and actually say, that's a gold nugget. We talked about a lot and I really appreciate you coming on. But is there anything maybe you think we might have left out or something you wanted to share with the listeners? Yeah. And there's one interesting thing that I would point out that really doesn't touch on anything we've talked about, right? But you know, I still talk to so many people and I talk to tons of contractors all the time who are so all, what's your best way to get leads? Word of mouth, word of mouth. And look, a warm word of mouth referral is hands down the

best opportunity there is because there's instant social proof, there's trust, there's all those different things built into it, right? But so our big takeaway is how, you know, millennials, younger people, and even older people to this extent are really leveraging right now. One thing we're seeing are Facebook groups and then the micro sites like Nextdoor, where the idea of a word of mouth referral is rather than going to the end of the driveway when you see Bob, your neighbor, out getting his newspaper and asking him, hey, Bob, you know a painter, right? I'm going to go into XYZ neighborhood group on Facebook that has 1,100 members or ABC community forum that has 3,000 members and say, hi, I'm looking, my garage doors need to be replaced. Can anybody recommend me a company? They're going to go on to next door and say, hey, does anyone know someone around here who can replace my roof? I did a good job for them, right? So word of mouth is still pervasive. It still exists. The method for which in the way

people ask is changing. And you know, Facebook's been in the news lately getting a lot of negative publicity and all those other kinds of things, right? But we're seeing every single day in these groups, just nonstop people asking. And so making sure you have a good Facebook page, it's active, it has fresh content, making sure you're getting, if you can, your customers to follow you, getting reviews on you can, you know, your customers to follow you, getting reviews on there. Because if someone recommends your business on there, right, it tags your Facebook page in an auto link straight to it. Right? So the idea that people are still asking for word of mouth, it's just taking a more social media oriented approach

and making sure your ducks are lined up for that is a huge thing that, you know, we're emphasizing to more people. It's been happening for a little while now, but I still think the pervasiveness of it is kind of continuing to grow. And why ask one neighbor when I can ask a hundred, right? Instantly. And then guess what? In 10 minutes, I get seven replies from people who live in my neighborhood. And every reply tells me exactly who the company is and includes their Facebook review star rating. Right. Why am I going to send seven text messages? You know what I'm saying? It's so much easier. It is. And it's a younger demographic doing it. It's not your 50, 60 year old. It's the 30, 40.

So what would you say? You know, that's a great piece of advice. I'm the big fan of what do I got to do to get started? Step one, step two, step three, like listeners out there are going, okay, cool. Now what? That's just more shit I got to deal with. How do I get started? Well, I would say you can call me, but I'll save that for down the road a little bit. No, make sure you have a good Facebook page. Make sure it's got pictures. Make sure it has pictures. Make sure it has pictures. Make sure it has pictures. Make sure it has reviews because your star rating will pop up right there, right? Make sure you have the Facebook chat installed on your phone and have notifications enabled because a lot of more of that 30,

40-year-old homeowner crowd, they'll chat a Facebook page, right? Making sure you have all installed on your phone and have notifications enabled because a lot more of that 30, 40-year-old homeowner crowd, they'll chat a Facebook page, right? Making sure you have all that stuff set up. Then, you know, home improvement contractors can also backdoor this a little bit because guess what? I can go join XYZ community group. I can go join ABC neighborhood group on Facebook. And then as I'm scrolling, posts in those groups will appear in my newsfeed. So if you just take a minute to scroll through, you might see a post in there. Can anyone recommend a garage door company? Can anyone recommend a roofer? Right? Well, guess what? PM me. You can recommend your own business. So you can even, I don't want to say troll, but mine for leads that way on your own. Same, you know, next door is a little harder because it's so micro-targeted.

But Facebook, you know, you can join a community forum. You know, by us, there's a neighborhood that has about 3,000 houses in it. It has a 400-kid elementary school for just the neighborhood. And they're all 3,000-square-foot single-family homes, right? People in there are asking every day for stuff. So you join that one. If you just keep an eye on it, you're going to be able to hit some low hanging stuff. And that's a hundred percent free. I love it. That's the kind of stuff I love on this podcast is to share that kind of stuff. And I love taking notes and putting all this stuff down.

And it's like, where does this fit into the equation? Where's my time best spent? But I also like to ask, as we're getting off here, I'm going to grab your phone a second, but is there a book or two that you think that really stuck out to you that maybe some of these people, and I don't care if it's about life, about spirituality or about home service, is there something that really you'd recommend that really changed your life or really maybe some of the home service experts out there can get a lot out of? Yeah. So I'll recommend two autobiographies. The first is Phil Knight's Shoe Dog. It's a pretty fascinating story. It goes from the day I think he graduates with his MBA to the day Nike goes

public. So it's a pretty fascinating story before Jordan, before the swoosh, before the everything, right? And it's a fascinating look at how businesses grow and scale and all that sort of stuff. And then I think, you know, Walter Isaacson, who's done the autobiographies of Steve Jobs, or not the autobiography, the biography of Steve Jobs, he just did DaVinci. I think the one on Jobs is a fascinating read. Just most people don't know that a lot of the things he did he was told couldn't be done like oh no electronics manufacturer should have a retail store because microsoft or dell was doing it at the same time and failing miserably and it's like you know the way he did it and the

way he thought about it apple's the most you know profitable by square foot retail store in the world right you know what i mean like insane things like all the other people are failing miserably at this. Don't do it. And I'm the most profitable on the planet. So those two, and then, uh, on a marketing side, there's a book called, uh, they ask you answer. It's all about like digital marketing, online marketing. Right. And so it's the idea of your customers are asking things, be the answer. And how that, if that's, you know, a fundamental backbone of your online,

your marketing strategy, you'll be super successful, right? So they ask, you answer. Okay, I'm going to get it. I'm an audible dude. So I'll knock out like sometimes two, three books a day because I listen to it pretty fast. But that's amazing.

So let me ask you this, Aaron. What do they do to get a hold of you? Tell me every which way. Tell me your website. Tell me your LinkedIn. Tell me your... Let's go through this. Absolutely.

So you can just put us into Google, Alta Vista Strategic Partners. We have decent reviews. I always make that joke right there, right? Alta Vista Strategic Partners right into Google. That'll pull us up every which way. Our website's altavistasp.com. So you can come there and check us out. You know, my phone number is going to be just my direct desk is 443-960-4004. Call me. I'm down, right? I try to answer the phone every time it rings and do a good job saying hello politely and you know, all those different sorts of things. And then my email is just Aaron, A-A-R-O-N at AltaVistaSP.com.

Shoot me an email. Love to talk with anybody about things we talked about on here today. Things that we didn't talk about, any marketing questions, any marketing issues. Right. But, uh, you know, that's how you get ahold of me. Yeah. Just so the audience knows, uh, Aaron does a lot of B2B stuff, a lot of LinkedIn. Obviously we only had an hour. We went over that, but, uh, there's a lot of other things that they do that we didn't talk about. And it never hurts to get another opinion. Even if you are working with somebody, I'm sure their expertise is very wide. And I've had other marketers on here and I like to get a good...

I mean, I never got a lot of the advice I got today. So Aaron, I thought that was amazing. And there's so many cool things to take out of this. So hopefully all the listeners enjoy themselves. And we definitely want to get you back on here. I always tell people as times change and we're in this world of change right now, is to get the latest guys that are continuously to be in the trends,

the Google partners, the guys that are thinking about Nextdoor and Facebook groups and those things outside of the box. It's good to have them on every six months because things change. I mean, Facebook's just, they just announced a couple days ago they're getting into the home service business. I just got this new ad. They said, Facebook goes into this. So it's keeping up with all this stuff. It's not easy, but it's the people that are changing every day and keeping up and build a culture of change. And that's what I'm trying to build here at my office is a culture that's just a hundred percent. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but we're going to give it our best shot and creating that ultimate experience

of our customers. If we can create that and it's above anything else, they'll be happy to do whatever we want to help our company. So Aaron, is there any final thoughts before you jump off here? My, I harp on reviews all the time to everybody I talk to. So if you have great reviews, if people can only read mostly positive things about your business online, they will call you.

It will help you close more deals. Right? And people read them every day. So I just simply say, like, there's one thing you can do. If people only read great things about you online, they will call you, you will close more deals. That's my final kind of like thing that I harp about all the time. Great stuff, Aaron.

Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on and tune in next time to The Home Service Expert. And I hope everybody's having a great day. We'll talk soon. Hey guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I wanted to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com.

Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the book. I poured two years of knowledge into this book and I had 12 contributors. Everybody from the COO at HomeAdvisor to the CEO of Valpak and of course, Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan. It tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire. It goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation. Have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you want to be calling where you can make money and get great reviews. It also goes

into simple things like how to attract A players. Listen, if you want a great apple pie, you need to buy good apples and you need to know where to buy those apples. And it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score. You should have your financial check every week. You should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope you pick up the book, and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day.

Tune in next week. Thank you.