The Home Service Expert Podcast - Building Your Online Presence The Right Way

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

Jody Underhill is an accomplished social media strategist and the director of Green Elephant Agency, an online marketing agency based in South Carolina. Jody has worked with various marketing experts like Russell Brunson and Frank Kern. He has also helped over 150 businesses in the development of their marketing strategy, ranging from solopreneurs to Fortune 100 companies. In this episode, we talked about marketing, hiring, customer service...

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. Listeners, this is Tommy Mello checking in. I'm really excited about today's interview. It's

going to be with Jody Underhill. Listen, when I met Jody, he was one of the most hilarious, charismatic, best person I saw on stage, just an amazing guy. And he's a master of NLP. He's a master of social media marketing. He's a master of funnel architecture. He's a certified coach and he's got everything it takes to take your business to the next level. And I'm going to tell you, we're going to be putting some really good content in this podcast. You're going to want to make sure that of all the ones we put out, this is the one you're going to want to tune in for. He's worked with guys like Ryan Dice, Frank Kern, Runsel Brunson. He's also worked with Jack Johnson on Funnel Architecture. This is the man, and I'm so excited to be interviewing him today. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hey there, Jody. How are you doing today? Doing well, doing well. Excited to be here. So you work with, I mean, dozens if not hundreds of companies. And, you know, this podcast is all about home service entrepreneurs. And the biggest thing that I found is they really have a tough time scaling, especially when it comes to marketing and sales strategies. And that's really what you've done your whole life is you've been a local marketing strategist in the small business, especially. And what's your number one advice for them when it comes to local marketing and thinking more systematically? Sure. The thing is, is that especially in the home service industry, there's so many people that are technician first and they're good at their job because they are a great technician.

And so they do things hit or miss whenever it comes to marketing their business because, again, with a lot of it just comes word of mouth. So the main thing to be thinking about for local marketing to be more systematic is for you to actually have systems in place that help you do that marketing. And there's a ton of different ways that you can think about doing that, but it's really about having a schedule and really developing what we consider a marketing calendar. And what it seems like it's a lot of work work at first but really if you kind of set up exactly how you're going to position things and what you're going to do with your marketing on a regular basis it makes it a lot easier to keep track of because what i see time and time again especially in the home service industry is people will get started and they'll do one thing for a little while and they'll they'll maybe do some advertising on yelp and then they'll do one thing for a little while and they'll maybe do some advertising on Yelp

and then they'll stop doing that and then they'll maybe post on Facebook a little bit and then they'll stop doing that and then they'll do some PPC advertising. Rather than really having an overall plan in place to do things really all at one time to develop an overwhelming presence so that no matter where people are looking, they see them. Because really not any one thing is going to get you all the business that you need. You're going to have to have a wide angle of approach to doing that. Okay, perfect. You know, a lot of people don't know, but you did write me an excerpt in the book, The Home Service Millionaire, that I'm getting ready to release in a few months. And one of the things that you mentioned in the book

is, you know, there are many steps you have to go through in the home service business to scale. You have to generate the leads, book the calls, sell the services. What can businesses do to ensure that their sales process works flawlessly? Basically, it's identifying every touch point with the customer. You mentioned that I've been doing local marketing all my life. In a previous life, I actually worked for a power company for over two decades. And one of the things that we identified, no matter what business you're in, is there should be no surprises whenever it comes to any type of process in your business

because you can predict what's going to happen based on your expertise in the industry. So if you want to have a flawless sales process, it's really identifying each of the touch points and having those members of your team well rehearsed and well trained in exactly how to handle their touch point. Because sometimes if you're a small guy, you have a small mom and pop shop, and you've only got one or two people, you've got one person answering the phone and one person running the truck, it's kind of easy to keep track of. But when you start to grow and expand and scale, sometimes the touch points you lose track of that. But it's really identifying what you want to have happen at every one of those touch points. So from the time the phone rings, when it rings and someone's calling in,

that person needs to be in a position to know exactly how to get that inquiry turned into a service appointment. And then having that person, having that technician trained on exactly what to say and what to do, how to dress, where to park, the types of things that are going to show that your business has a level of professionalism. And then whenever they do go in and investigate and diagnose the problem, whether it's a garage door or an air conditioner or a plumbing leak, it doesn't matter. They should have a systemized process for how they explain to the homeowner what the problem is and what the possible solutions are. And instead of saying that you're selling them,

you're providing them with recommendations. And using words like that, like solution to the problem or here are our recommendations for what you need to do to solve this issue, goes a lot better than here's what you need to do and here's how much it is. And then even after that, the touch point, I was up in Canada a few weeks ago and I was talking with a painter they do house painting we were talking about reviews and I will probably talk about that a little bit later and they said you know what we have trouble we don't hardly get anybody to leave us reviews like really well when do you ask for reviews and they said well whenever we give them the bill I'm like okay well how much is your typical bill and they said it can be like $3,000 on average

alright well that's not the time to ask them for a review. Whenever you give them a $3,000 bill, and by the way, would you leave us a positive review, wait until after they've paid the bill, give it a few days for them to really enjoy the job that you've done, and let the sting of that $3,000 check that they wrote you go away a little bit, and then ask for the review. But just by looking and thinking about those touch points, it can make it so that every call goes really smoothly, especially because you have a system in place and every person knows their part in the process. So map out the process from the phone ringing to picking up the check to then asking you

to review every step of the way, and it will help you. Because we all have a process but when you educate the customer you share with them what your process is it makes them say no much less often yeah you know in the book i call those impact areas and what i recommend everybody listen to this podcast take the time to sit down and actually write down all of your impact areas. I pulled up some of mine. I've got vehicles, security, accounting, sales, marketing, CRM, warehouse, dispatch, call center, market management, regional management, training, recruiting. So those impact areas and those key performance indicators really

should dictate everything of how your companies run. And I think that that's exactly what you were just saying there is just really focus on a systematic approach. Now, this is a tougher question, but a lot of us have made a lot of mistakes. Obviously, when you're a business owner and you're thinking about marketing, what would you say? I mean, obviously, you just stated a lot of times people are they don't give it a real chance to succeed. They literally start and they stop, which I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's a huge mistake. What's your number one mistake you see business owners make when it comes to local marketing? Not having a consistent online presence. That is the number one problem that I see.

The consistent online presence has to do with four or five things, actually. You want to have every place that your business is listed, it needs to have what we call the NAP, the name, address, and phone number. It must be exactly correct on every directory that you're out there on. Because a lot of people, oh, I'm on Angie's List, and I'm on Howl's, and I'm on Around Me, and I'm on CitySearch, and I'm on all of these different, I'm on Yelp, and I'm on Bing, I'm on Google+, I'm on all these places. That's great. But what we find whenever we do it, when we run an analysis for most businesses, is that, well, let's say that they

do a really good job and what we consider a good job is having between 30 and 50 directory listings and we'll find people that only have a 10 accuracy because they've got a mistake in their name their address their phone number and when i say a mistake if you to the naked eye when you look at it you don't think of it as a mistake but like for instance if your address is 115 oakland avenue suite 16 that could be written 10 different ways it could be avenue could be spelled out it's wrong in google signs if you have suite 16 on one and ste 16 on another one and pound sign one six on one of them Those are all looked at as being different.

The phone numbers being different or not working. Those are things that go into place. Then the website being listed on each of those review sites. And then finally, the fifth is having consistent reviews. It kills me whenever I see businesses that do a great job. And I know that you've seen this time and time again. You've got somebody that does a really good job, and they've got all five-star reviews, but they haven't gotten a review in a year.

Well, that's kind of like the Janet Jackson song, What Have You Done For Me Lately? If you find a business that even though they've got all five stars, but they haven't had a review in a year, what do most people think? Are they still in business? Is their service still as good as it was? Why hasn't anyone left them a review? So having the directories number one, but then having them correct across the board, that's the biggest mistake I find. And the reason that impacts everything else you do with your online marketing. If you're trying to do SEO for

your website to get it ranked, it's going to impact it if you have those directories incorrect. If you're doing paid advertising, if you're doing pay-per-click with Google AdWords, if you don't have good reviews and you're doing PPC and somebody goes and clicks an ad, they don't usually go from that point. They click back to say, okay, what is someone saying about this business? And if you don't have recent reviews or you don't have excellent reviews and your competition does, you're possibly paying for leads going to your competition. So that's the biggest thing that I see is the inconsistency in those directory listings because that's really where Google is looking at the relevancy is making sure that that very foundational aspect of your business is taken care of online. Yeah, you know, you said it perfectly.

Is it the name, address, and profile? Phone number. Phone number, okay. Because, you know, Jody, I don't know how much you know about this, but we just got bombarded here at A1 Garage Door Service. They rolled out with this new program. They invested over $100 million in the home service industry, and they rolled this out in San Francisco.

They went to Baltimore. They went to Southern California. They just rolled it out in Phoenix Francisco. They went to Baltimore. They went to Southern California. They just rolled it out in Phoenix. It's the first of the nine states we're in, but it's called the Google Guarantee. And what they did is they took the top four spots and they have one little thing in the top corner that says sponsored.

And they actually, they're all local. They're paid, but they mixed all the reviews in. So now the paid ads actually show the stars and it's called the Google Guarantee Program. So all of my technicians got drug tested. They had to verify me. They took my business card. They had me get in a truck. They had me started on Google Hangouts. They had me show them the license plate, show them the outside signage. They had me walk around to the back, show them the license plate, show them the outside signage. They had me walk around to the back, show them the showroom, people answering phones. I'm still not even through the process. It's been two and a half weeks. But the point is, literally, all the reviews now, the Google

locals are still buried now. Now their number, so it goes Google paid, but it looks like a local ad. Google paid, Google paid, Google paid. Then it's a sponsored ad. And then there's the normal three pack. You know, we've been doing this all the way since it used to be a seven pack. But the scary thing is their goal is to take over 90% of all the clicks. So that means in local search for home service industries, this is rolling out. You know, this isn't a joke. If you guys do not have reviews, if you guys aren't watching your public profile, if you guys

aren't really keeping an eye on your reputation, it's going to do damage. Number one. Number two is unfortunately Google's forcing us. They're getting rid of affiliates now. They're verifying your address. They looked at my tax records. They looked at my W-2 forms. It's crazy. So in a way, this is good because we already do drug tests and background checks. We already verify our guys. We work at a real storefront. But as far as affiliate marketing and a lot of the things we've done in the past, it's

coming to an end. And Google's really, you know, I'm hoping that there's some legislation that changes some of the laws because I really feel like they're becoming a monopoly. There was actually a big segment on Fox News. But Jody, the stuff we speak about today, you know, a lot of people that might be listening to this might have not felt the pressure yet, but it's going to happen. I mean, Google was really big three, four years ago, but it's a monster now. And what they're doing is they're trying to take it so you have to pay no matter what. Google owns the large percentage of all the clicks and all the marketing out there.

So I just wanted to go into that because I felt like it was right on with what you were talking about is reputation management and what Google is doing now. It's scary in my eyes. But moving forward here, let's say that I was to hire you on board as a consultant, knowing the kind of challenges that most home service businesses face, what would be the key questions you would ask me to develop a strategy? I mean, if we had to pick three, five questions, you know, and what would you do to help formulate that in a way that would shape the program for me? Sure. Well, the first thing I would want to know is what are you currently doing to market your business? Because that's going to help me identify and understand what you already are seeing as being beneficial to your business.

And there's some things that a lot of people are doing that just are not paying the dividends that they used to, depending on what area that they're at, what area they're in. Because sometimes yellow pages in some areas don't work. They still work in areas where there's a lot of retirees. So we kind of look at, first of all, where are you at? Then what type of advertising are you currently doing? Then the next question that comes into play is, where are you at capacity-wise? How much more business can you handle than what you currently doing? Then the next question that comes into play is where are you at capacity wise? How much more business can you handle than what you currently have? Because it's once

everybody wants the phone to ring more, but you don't want the phone to ring so much that you can't get to it. You can't answer it. You wind up making people upset to where they never would come back to you. So we look at what the capacity is. And then from there, we strategize exactly what we need to do in order to get the right kind of customer looking for you. So that's the other thing is, what is your avatar? Some people, it's like, it's anybody that will make calls. Well, that's not necessarily who is going to be the best person for your business, the best prospect for your business. Because right now, it depends on, for instance, Tommy being in the garage door business, do you want to get phone calls from builders having you come out

to install garage doors? Or do you want to get calls from people who need the garage doors repaired? So it has to do with who are you looking to attract? Who is that avatar? And what type of capacity do you have? Now, the next most important thing is do you currently record all of your phone calls that are coming into the business? If you're not recording your phone calls, you're making a mistake because that's a huge opportunity for training. The other area is if you're doing paid advertising, is the person answering the phone alerted to the fact that it is a person calling in from a paid advertisement? That completely changes how they handle the call. Because if you're not doing those things, those few little changes to what you're currently

doing in your business can make a big impact on the conversions you get from the calls that do come in. And then we would look at the foundational aspect of the business. Because some of it is, I'm going to pull a report and look at everything about the business's online presence. I'm going to know how many people like them on Facebook, how many times people share the posts that they do, what kind of information they're posting on Facebook. Is it, hey, use my service, use my service, use my service? Or are you actually posting information that people can find useful

whether they choose to do business with you or not? How many of those directory listings are correct? And how many reviews do you currently you currently have and also where are they at well the other thing is people people they've all got 20 yelp reviews great how many reviews you have on facebook and google because while yelp is really great and it is one of the major four places that people are looking online you need to have a balance between google between facebook between yelp if people are looking on Houzz or on Thumbtack, you want to have a balance of that. So those are the things that we look.

Then the process we walk through is putting a plan in place to identify and put our efforts into the areas that need the most help and are going to get the most impact for the business based on what they're looking to do. Okay, so you really like to jump into marketing first and make sure the processes are set up for training and just making sure that the business can sustain the growth due to the marketing.

Let me ask you this, because you know as well as I do some of the questions we get here at the Home Service Expert and the stuff that comes in, but I don't think these people, they say, I could get the work, Expert and the stuff that comes in. But I don't think these people, they say, I could get the work. I just can't get the help. I don't have the right help. I don't trust these people. They don't do the job like me. Now, I probably hear that nine times out of 10 in comparison to how do I get more business. So how would you go about that? Because I've got a strategy and I want to see what the differences are on really finding good help and building the business.

And I always say this. You've heard me say this hundreds of times, but work on the business instead of in the business. Right. Well, I mean, I kind of have a little bit different approach because a lot of people will go on job boards or, you know, go on Indeed. They'll go to different places, to Monster and different places. But I've actually, in the last six months that I'm working, exposed to and working with a company, that the only thing they do is help find people for the trucking industry to drive trucks. And they get every one of their candidates through Facebook advertising. So while six months ago my F-master would have been different,

but today you can identify and target people with Facebook advertising for your business to be able to bring people in that are looking for another opportunity without having to feel like you're trying to go steal your competition's employees. But just, you know, are you, by the attention of HVAC technicians looking for a new opportunity and then you run it through an advocate to get their information that way. That's one of the things that we see working very well in no matter what industry, and it's one of the things that not many people are doing.

A lot of people go on LinkedIn looking for businesses and jobs, but not that many technicians are actually out there on LinkedIn, but they're all on Facebook. And so that's one of the ways to go about doing that. But I know you have a killer strategy that you're going to share, but that's probably a little different than what a lot of people would be thinking about when it comes to finding people, the right type of people. What it does is it gives you the people that are already on Facebook that are trying to understand things. No, you know, Jody, I've been doing that for my business.

You know, Facebook keeps releasing a lot of new things that helps us be able to create what's called a lookalike audience. And if you get enough people that apply, and that's the key, a lot of people don't understand a lookalike audience just means they're your avatar. They're the perfect person to work for your business. And if they apply and you hire them, and let's say you were to hire 20 people, Facebook has an algorithm, and I'm telling this to the audience, but they got an algorithm that'll allow you to find people just like them, the people that you're looking for. And their algorithm is so detailed and granule that it ends up making your cost per form fill or application a lot cheaper. And that's your goal, to get that cost down.

But I really don't care if it costs me $1,000 because by the time I train a guy, I fly him out here to Phoenix. I pay for his hotel. I get him the tools. I pay him on a weekly salary. I got an opportunity cost. It costs me a hell of a lot more than $1,000 if I have to fire him in a month. If I could hire an all-star player and I even had to pay, if I had to pay $2,500, I'd say I'll take 10 of them today because my guy average Lee can do ten thousand dollars in a week so a poor guy does five thousand a great guy does fifteen thousand so that means a guy will do three times more revenue if he's an A player so that'll make me an extra 10 grand in a week. So I really do. I think you're onto something there.

I think Facebook has worked really, really well. And there's another thing that a lot of people haven't heard of. It's called geofencing. And geofencing just means that ads will pop up when you're at a, let's say you wanted a geofence and you own a donut company

and you own a donut company within a mile of Dunkin' Donuts. You could show your donut company popping up at Dunkin Donuts. You could geofence buildings. Now, my idea that we've started to use is not geofencing my competitors, but there are wholesale manufacturers, whether that's Clopay, Amar, Ankmar. There's all these different manufacturers. There's a lot of guys that work by themselves that are thinking, I'm sick of working for myself. I want to go work for a good company. They see the ad pop up, they click on it and they fill out a form. So these are all really newer ways that people really don't think of. And I think you're spot on with Facebook. I mean, the other day I was talking to a guy and he said, Tommy, if you go on to Facebook, you look at your competitors.

And, you know, this might sound a little, you know, not good business practice. But if somebody is not happy at another company and they're getting ready to quit anyway, it's not bad to let them know that you're hiring. And you don't necessarily need to reach out and poach them. But I just watched that movie not that long ago. Have you seen the movie Founders, the McDonald's Ray Kroc movie? I have seen it. I've seen it advertised, but I have not watched it yet. I think you'd really dig that movie.

Ray Kroc says, if your competitors are drowning, stick a hose in their mouth. And I don't go quite to that level. But at the same time, if they can't keep their employees happy, it's survival of the fittest. So I think that that's a great thing. Jody, can you talk to me a little bit? Cause I really, really love this topic on the Facebook. Can you tell me exactly kind of how you guys build those ads and what you found working on Facebook?

This is something that I'd like to learn more about cause we're doing it at A1 and some of my other companies. and I want to learn more about what's been successful at this trucking company. So basically, the ad is very simple, and you have to make it so that the image is something that registers within the little out of the ordinary. So the image basically is a steering wheel, somebody looking over the steering wheel of a truck, and it says, I'm tired of driving the same old routes, the same old way for the same old pay? I know it's kind of hokey, but it's like,

discover a new way to make money on the highway, kind of thing. And so they click on the ad, that's what it says when it gets there, so that you can find out more. You can't put all those words on the top, but when you run it in the news feed, you can put it on the bottom, the new way to make money on the highway.

And they click there, then it goes to a page that has a video on the page explaining to them the benefits of working for this other company. Not the other company, because you're assuming that based on the information in their profile that they already drive a truck. That's the thing, as you said, but as granular as you can get with the detail on what people put in their profile on Facebook, you can put that targeting right in front of them. So, like I said, it's something that they see. It's something that's familiar to them looking over the steering wheel,

looking over the hood of the truck, right? So then taking them to that information and saying, you know, find out today how you can qualify for XYZ signing bonus or whatever, something that gets their attention that they know is better and different than what the typical driver is getting in the industry. So, for instance, in your industry with garage door repair, you probably know what they're up against, and there's the reasons that they should come to work for you.

And those who are putting that best-case scenario in front of them is what's going to get them to at least ask you to check out what the deal is and I do this for one of the things like when I talk to people about hiring salespeople for doing marketing as I always tell them you know where you can find great salespeople it's a go drive an expensive car go test drive a Mercedes go test drive a Cadillac or in my case I just bought a Ford Raptor, so I went and test drove a Raptor and the guys in there, I was like, so you ask them a question, it's like, you know, let me ask you something. So you make pretty good money here?

They always say the same thing. Well, yeah, but I could, I'm always open to new opportunities or new ideas, or I could always use more. And that's the kind of thing, are you happy with your current driving job? Want to make more money? Everyone everyone's currently they'll never say they don't make enough but they're always open to more and that's kind of the same positioning that you'll have to do with those ads to get them to intrigue them because the best person to hire is not a person looking for a job it's somebody who already has a job that's doing a great job absolutely it's the people you know when the market when everybody lost their job during, you know, I know there was a lot of people during the Obama administration that were out of work,

and it was bad that I was getting more applicants than ever, but I really felt like it was kind of the litter, you know. It was just, it wasn't good at applicants. And the best people, if you were to downsize during an economic downturn, you're going to keep all your A players, then you're going to keep your B players, and you're going to let your C players and your D players go. And those are the people that are applying. And not to say, though, there's a lot of business owners that I found, too, that just don't know how to manage effectively. And not to say, they might have been a D player for one company,

but once they got the right management and got the right incentives, they could be A players. So that's not to say that it didn't have anything to do with management, because that's not fair to a lot of people out there. But, you know, everything that we're talking about, and I want to dig into quite a few more questions here, because I love this stuff. And I love talking to you because you've taught so many people how to be successful. You know, you helped me a lot in the book process and the home service profit formula and designing a lot of this stuff. And I had an idea kind of dawn on me over the last couple months. And we talked, you just said record phone calls. So I actually called the owner of CallCap, who's the best company in the business, and worked out a special deal for the listeners if they want to use CallCap.

I also called Power Selling Pros. I dealt with Bring Em Over There. He teaches CSRs how to book more phone calls. I'm also working on what you were talking about was actually, and you know this, Jody, it's a squeeze page. It's basically a one-pager. They click on it on Facebook. They hit this page.

But here's what most people in the audience might not know. We can pixel that page so that every single time that somebody goes on Facebook or they go on YouTube or they go on Pinterest or they go on Instagram, our ads pop up. It's like these people are following me. It's destiny that I work for them. So there's so many cool things. It's also called Google retargeting that we could do. And also, if they fill out that list, you send them to, there's a lot of different things. Some people use lead pages and they've got their own thing called drip. Some people use MailChimp. Some people use constant contact. But the point is you get them in a funnel. And now that they're in there, they're always receiving email from you unless they opt out. And one of the cool new projects we're working on for our listeners is an opportunity to do voicemail drops and text message blasts. And it's all on a calendar. So whether they've

got a stationary line or a cell phone, it bypasses right to the voicemail and says, hey, Jody, it's Tom Mello here. I know that you applied for the job, but I really wanted to see if you take a minute and come in and talk to us, because some of the things we're rolling out here and whatever we're going to do to differentiate ourselves, basically. But the point is, all these tools, you know, the one thing that I found, Jody, is a lot of guys, you could tell them and information's free. And that's going to lead me to the next segment. But you could tell them how to do it, but they've never done it before. Some of the times they just need help to get the ball rolling. A lot of these people in the home service industry, they've done the old school and they did really well at it. And a lot of the younger guys are getting good at it and gals, but some of them just need it done for them. And it's not tough.

I've onboarded 100 people on the call cap. I've worked with Brigham on so many different companies to teach CSRs how to book 85% of their calls. But that's just some of the stuff. I basically find something I really like and say, well, you do something special for our listeners. And I've partnered up with them on a lot of different avenues. I mean, even forming an LLC, I could get done for a couple hundred bucks versus 500. You're going to pay any attorney. So anyways, you know, when it comes to online marketing, you're a huge advocate for giving stuff away for free.

You're providing tons of value up front. And I think that you're a big fan of the 10 FAQs. Get in front of a camera and answer them. You know, tell me a little bit about how you would go about doing that. I mean, I text you, but I've got a camera here. I've got a special microphone. I'm running a program I've never used before. I think I'm a pretty advanced user, but I still had to call for support.

So how do you get a normal guy that's really looking to start that type of marketing involved and going? Sure. And it's super simple. And when I do a presentation, I say, what if we could get your message positioned in front of hundreds of people that are specifically looking for your product or service and then position you as the expert so that you become the go-to person for that product or service.

And I could show you how to do it as simple as a push of a button. Do you think that that's something that would something that most of the people that are listening to this podcast would say, okay, smart guy, yeah, sure, show me how to do it. Show me. I'm sure that they would. Show me. So it's very simple. And the thing is that five or six years ago or even seven years ago when I got started with this back in 2009,

it was hard. It was hard to do what I'm going to talk about. But when it comes to giving away content, it's as easy as pulling the device in your pocket out it's called a cell phone it has a camera on it and you flip it around you a lot of times a lot of them have selfie mode and you just answer questions that people frequently ask you it doesn't matter if you do garage door repair HDAC plumbing if you're a roofer it doesn't matter if you do garage door repair, HDAC, plumbing, if you're a roofer. It doesn't matter if you do landscaping. People still have the same questions over and over and over again. You don't need fancy equipment.

You take your phone out. Hey, this is Jody Underhill with X5D Landscaping. One of the questions I get asked all the time is, what kind of grass can I put underneath my oak trees so that the grass will actually grow? Well, that's a very good question because depending on where you're at, in Florida you use Bitter Blue, and up in here where I'm at in South Carolina, and you go into the type of grass that you're – it's a very simple question. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

And it's not – you shouldn't stumble and it's not hard because you know the answer to the question. And you just do about 10 of those. You create a YouTube channel, which is super simple these days because most everybody has a Gmail account. When you create a Gmail account, it automatically, you can push a button to create a YouTube account. You just put them on there. Now, the other thing that you do is you use that content everywhere.

Post that video on Facebook. You post it everywhere that you can. Put it on your website. That's one of the easiest ways to give content away for free because people go online looking for answers to questions. And if you're the person that's answering the question, that's giving them the information, are they going to go try to find someone else who hasn't answered their question?

Or are they going to feel like they've built that know, like, and trust you factor with you because you answered the question that they were looking for? It's really no harder than that. And those are the questions that people are frequently asking. Then there's also the questions they should be asking. Rather than asking, what kind of grass should you plant under your oak tree, what you really should be looking at is, is that oak tree in the right place? Whatever the question is, something of that nature. I went that way to kind of go a different but what is the thing

that they should be looking at and it's really that simple you know it's not you don't have to give away your services you don't have to give something away that it's a monetary value but by sharing that information giving them those answers because here's the thing you might even give them like Francis Tommy I know for instance you did videos for how to replace the rollers and the springs on a garage door, right? Yes, sir. You do that because you want people to see it

because one of the things is when they see how hard it is, they're going to call you to come do it anyway, right? Because even when you show somebody exactly how to do something, it doesn't mean that they're not going to take that and not give you business. A lot of times they're going to go, wow, I see that this guy really knows what he's talking about. You know what?

Screw it. I'm not going to do this myself. I'm calling him. That's how you give the content away. It's very simple, very easy. And it's not about, you might put a free report together if you want to, but really, it's about sharing the information of answering the questions on how they can solve the problem. Yeah, it's really interesting because most people, and I used to tell this to you, Jody,

and you hit the nail on the head, is if I give this stuff away, you know, then what do they need me for? But the point is, I was talking to a lawyer the other day. I'm going to Houston. You know, we just got done with the flood out there, and there's a lot of business opportunities. I'm meeting with a bunch of insurance adjusters.

I'm also meeting with a bunch of home service experts that they basically are the contractors. They're the main subcontractor. They sub it all out and they take this contract. It's a contingency contract. So I'm going to one of the lawyers out there on the phone, and he said, you know, less than 30 percent of the people are insured with flood damage insurance. But the fact is they don't understand that they're also insured under their homeowner's insurance policy. Not every one of them, but because of the wind and the different effects is they could actually, lawyers can push this stuff through. Now, of course, the home warranty company or the insurance company is going to say,

no, no, we're not going to cover you. But when the insurance lawyers become involved, it changes everything. So as a lawyer, he needs to put this content out there. Listen, call us up and here's, and he could teach you all about it. But the fact is you're going to learn that he's better or she's

better and more equipped to handle those type of companies because that's what they do all day. Just like, you know, two things came out of my spring videos. You're right. I got a lot of business. People said, I'm not going to mess with it. But they also said, where can I order them from? Can I order them from you? And that was the birth of another business. So I think we have 1.5 million views on that video. And it was nothing special either. If you watch it, it's not like you'd be dazzled by it. But, you know. I have a video that I put out in 2010 called Social Media Marketing in Three Minutes.

Because my business partner at the time and I got tired of going and doing talks to individual businesses that really are just wanting us to come in and tell their employees what to do so we put the video together and this is back in 2010 whenever having a hundred thousand views on the video was considered viral and within a year we probably did over half a million dollars of business from people who saw the video of this telling them exactly what they should do by then going to our website and picking up the phone and calling us, asking us if we could help them with their marketing. So the more you show people what to do and how to do it, the more they see you as being the expert

and the more that they will then pick up the phone and call you versus the 20 other people that are in your city that do exactly the same thing that you do that aren't telling them how to fix it. You're absolutely right. I mean, I do it myself, Jody. If I find somebody, I talked to a guy earlier, I talked to him at 730 this morning. The guy does tools for real estate agents and I'm involved in some lead gen stuff for investors. And, you know, we had a great conversation and I said, man, the reason I called you is I looked online and you seem like you're the best. You're the top dog at this stuff. And it's just instant credibility.

It's instant rapport. And it's amazing that people are leaving this. If you've got a cell phone, you can make these videos. You could post them on YouTube. You could post them on Facebook. You could post them everywhere. And then you just have your friends go on there and say, do me a favor, leave a comment. You email all your customer lists, which if you don't know how to do that, we could help you on the Home Service Expert. I mean,

go to thehomeserviceexpert.com. We'll show you exactly. I'm building right now a ton of free tutorials on maximizing your email list, especially to send them to YouTube pages. You know, Jody, we just installed at my cousin's house in Michigan. He runs my Michigan market. It was a screen door that opens and closes on your garage. It's affordable. It closes on the rails and you can walk through it. And if you'd spend any time in your garage, it's the perfect screen.

So I'm making a fantastic video of how to install it, although it's complicated to install. But we're going to kind of fast forward through that. We're going to make a two and a half minute teaser. And my goal is to pick up a ton of sales through that. I'm showing him how to do it. I'm showing him in the garage having a beer afterwards. And it's these simple things. I'm just going to email it to my list.

You know, I think I'm up to between 70 and 90,000. I haven't looked recently because it's building every day, but we're really killing it on our email list. And I know every time I put something out there, it grows. Can you talk to me a little bit? Because I can't think of a better person right now in the world to talk to about email lists and how important they are to growing your business. I mean, you're an internet marketer 100% now. You've worked with the biggest people in the industry and you are one of the biggest. Explain to me how important and how to build that email list and why it's important. Sure.

It can really become the lifeblood of your business. Whether it's email, it's all about building your list no matter what business you're in. Because what we have found is people want to receive information from businesses that they do business with and that they know, like and trust. And the other thing is, is it allows you to stay top of mind without being a nuisance. Because I know I talk to a lot of people, especially in the home service industry, they're like, well, nobody wants to be bothered. They don't want to give me their email because they won't want me spamming them. Well, if they're saying that, it's probably because of something that may have already

happened. But basically, it's like, you know what? We would never do that. We're only going to send information that you would find useful and that also would be able to save you money in the long run on things that you're doing. Like for instance, if you're in an HVAC contract, you're sending a reminder out every month on when it's time to replace your air, making sure that you replace your air filters. If you're in the, no matter what it is, you can send, or if it's like right now, we're going from, I'm in South Carolina, we're going from summer into fall because the leaves

are already starting to get a little tinge of red on. And so in a couple weeks, it's going to be time to make sure that your systems are checked out, make sure that your furnace is ready to go for the winter that's coming. Being able to stay top of mind is advertising that you don't have to pay for. If you capture their email, if you put them into a list, then you're able to send information to them, and you can also use it to level out the values in your workload. So, for instance, if you'll say you're looking out to the forecast, it's like, you know what, Tuesday, man, we're just absolutely dead. Guess what?

Friday afternoon, Saturday, you send an email that says that you have a special running for something that's like 25% to 50% off and fill in the valleys of your workload. I see it all the time. For instance, I'm signed up for an email list. I like giving examples of people that I don't do marketing for. So there's this company called MG Grand Day Spa. About once or twice a year, I buy my wife a full day spa treatment, too. I got an email from them yesterday saying, tomorrow only, get a $300 spa treatment for $89. Why do you think they sent that email out?

It's because they have a lot of openings on their books tomorrow. So every time they send that email out, people fill it up. They didn't have to run an ad on the radio. They didn't have to run an ad on the radio. They didn't have to run an ad on Facebook. They were just simply able to push a button and send an email and get more business in the door. And it's the same way. That email list becomes your marketing list that doesn't cost you anything to market to. Absolutely.

I mean, you know, in the garage door industry, it's tough because you don't have people coming in. You can't revisit them as much as you might be able to do in air conditioning and some plumbing because, you know, we always have a leaky faucet or something to fix on the plumbing or the AC unit needs a lot of maintenance. But there's a lot of businesses. I just as a business owner, I met with the biggest home service company in the world. Okay. It's direct energy. And we're doing some of marketing for them now. And I said, what's some of the stuff that really differentiates you? He goes, Tommy, what makes us worth so much money? And the reason we're the biggest is because if we go into there for air conditioning, we're selling a home warranty plan. We're telling them we could install all their fans,

handle all their electricity, their lights in the front and backyard. We're telling them we could handle all their plumbing needs. They own plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and a home warranty company. So they walk into one customer and they could sell them the slew of different opportunities. So I just think, when I think about garage doors, So they walk into one customer and they could sell them the slew of different opportunities.

So I just think when I think about garage doors, I say, OK, there's a garage door screen. There's the garage door armor. There's epoxy flooring. There's garage door storage solutions. There's parking assists. So, you know, this is going to get old to the listeners. But I say there's three ways to make money. You get more customers. You keep the customers coming back more often. You charge the current ones more money. And the way you charge the current ones more money is not by ripping them off. It's finding other things you could sell them. And I love the approach of just what Jody's talking about, you know, email marketing, I don't want to keep you too long. We're already going over, but I want to talk a little bit more, kind of close it down and talk about text marketing, which is SMS marketing. What's good? What's bad? What works? What doesn't?

The thing with text marketing, the same thing with email marketing is you can't do it too often or people start to get marketing message blindness. So one of the things I see is, oh, I can, every time I push the button, I get a dollar per subscriber. Well, if you do it too often, that starts to, it's the law of diminishing returns. The thing that works with email marketing, the same thing works with text message marketing, is sending out the specials, sending out, the same cool thing with text message marketing is you can actually send a coupon to them. I actually prefer text marketing versus email because it has such a higher open rate. For a while, I was the president of Digital Market, one of the largest digital marketing companies in the world.

We would send over a million emails a month. But if we got a 20% open rate, we were popping the corks on the champagne bottles because that was a winning subject line. As a matter of fact, that company has a publication called 212 Winning Email Subject Lines, and every one of those were emails that got over a 20% open rate. With text marketing, it has a 98% received rate and looked at because you have to see it. If you get a text message right now, if it shows up on the front of your phone, you have to look at it. So it's much more effective because more people see it. The thing is, though, you

can't abuse it. When do you send a text message? When do you send an email? You want to send it on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday around 10 a.m. What do you want to send? Something that they will find of value. But with text marketing, you really, in the home service industry, you don't want to do it more than two to three times a month because if you do it'll start to it'll start to get overwhelming get a little old and people will basically text stop and stop receiving the text messages because the thing is that it is more effective than email marketing but i suggest that you do both because people that don't some people will sign up for email that won't do text and vice versa well jody real quick i was just going to tell and i want to hear what your thoughts are

on this but the important thing about text messaging is that it's super relevant or they're going to hit stop and you're not going to get anybody so that mass text message for the home service industry what i would recommend is make sure you have what's called segmented databases, which means that on an anniversary date or a quarterly basis, you hit them up and you say, this is what needs to be done. And here's a special. If you're not a motive shop, you say every two months you hit them with an oil special. Every four months you hit them with a tire rotation. Every six months you hit them with a general come in for a tune-up. But, you know, restaurants are different and a lot of businesses are different than home service. But if you could

segment the database built off of anniversary dates and things that might mean more to them. So if they've got a wood overlay door, put them in another segment, like I said, segmented databases so that you could hit them with more relative data to their circumstances. So on a wood overlay door, we tell them every more relative data to their circumstances. So on a wood overlay door, we tell them every year you need to get a clear coat. And different air conditioning units require a different type of maintenance. There's pools that have salt water versus chlorine water. You want to build separate campaigns for them. So what is your advice on that, and do you recommend doing that,

or would you say that that's overkill? I mean, to your average guy doing 100 customers a month total, I think that's overkill. But to a larger company that's really hitting a lot, what do you think about that? If you have something that you can use to differentiate, like, for instance, if I live in a tiny house, right, so I don't have a regular central air conditioning system, I have the mini splits. I have three mini splits. They have a different type of maintenance, different type of work that has to be done on them versus a regular central air conditioning system. So if you have something in a central AC, it's different than like where you're at.

You have soap pumps for air conditioning, right, instead of heat pumps. So if you have a way of differentiating it by that type, yes. For the smaller one, I would say at a minimum, what you would want to do is come up with a reason to send one out at least once a month, because you can come up with a reason every month for sending something out. January is Happy New Year. February is Valentine's Day. March, April, you have Easter, you have spring, you get Memorial Day, you have Father's Day, Mother's Day, you've got Fourth of July, you've got Labor Day, you've got the beginning of fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. You always have a thing. You have back to school, you have the end of school. Tie it to something that gets your attention based on what

type of event that's happening at the time of the year. If you don't have a way to differentiate between what it is that you do or what type of equipment the customer has, make it so that you're sending something out that's timely based on what's happening in the area. So that would be my suggestion there. Yeah, and, you know, whenever I talk to Jody, he reminds me of 20 things. So I know I keep talking here, but what we did for monsoon season is we text message all of our A1 customers, prior customers in Maricopa County. And we said, monsoon season is here.

Last year, we had to replace over 600 openers due to power failure because of monsoon season. Call us up to get your free one today with a tune-up. And it was short, sweet, to the point. It provided a reason for them to call, and it was built on an event. And that's exactly what you need to think about when doing text message and email blasts is make it relevant, keep them top of mind, and educate them. And throw out some of that goodwill that Jody was talking about earlier, the top 10 FAQs, questions about your business. But Jody, I've already run overboard. I know you're a busy man. I love talking with you.

I still want to talk to you about coming and visiting. You let me know if we could do it here the next man. I love talking with you. I still want to talk to you about coming and visiting. You let me know. If we could do it here the next month, I'm totally up for it. And I really, really, really appreciate every time I get to spend any time with you and Vanessa. So I appreciate you jumping on. This is Jody Underhill. Did you want to add anything here that the listeners might be interested in hearing? The main thing is don't let it overwhelm you.

It's basically you take it, put it together as a systematic approach i know everyone's very busy they're doing everything for them go visit the home service expert.com look at that your tommy has an excellent program with home service profit farmers all types of way to get help with doing these things the last thing you want to do is be the technician in every aspect of your business. There's no shame in looking and asking for help. And there's lots of different solutions out there that can help you streamline things

so that you can focus on your business and let someone else take care of the technical stuff that you want to do. But if you're just your one man operation, you have two or three people, do the small things. You shoot the videos,

do the things, just take action. Don't listen to this and say, oh, those those all sound good and then go get on the truck and go to the next service call and not take action on some of these things that you've heard if you just do two or three of them it's going to make a huge difference in your business and that's what we want to see we want to see everyone making an impact in their business and becoming successful absolutely listen this is the home service expert i'm tommy me. This is Jody Underhill. Really appreciate you guys listening in and we'll see you on the next episode. Tune in for next week. Thanks, Jody. You're welcome. Take care,

everybody. All right. Bye-bye. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Now listen up. Do you want to dominate your market triple the profit you make without working those long 12 hour days seven days a week if the answer is yes my team and i are opening up some new time slots to help you solve your biggest business challenge just go to home service expert.com forward slash discovery and book a free 30-minute call with our team today i will repeat that home serviceomeserviceexpert.com or slash discovery and book your free call today.