The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Easily Generate More Business with Amazon Home Services

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

Tammy Duchow is a marketing strategist whose expertise is directly correlated with Amazon Home Services. She is a founding partner of eComProphets.com and the founder of Dukes Digs Pet Products. An author, speaker, and instructor since 2016, she has generated over $50 million in sales on Amazon for several fortune brands, as well as small businesses and her own private label brands. In this episode, we talked about business growth, digital marketing strategies, Amazon Home Services...

it's my belief that nearly any business can grow. I know that any business can grow with the power of Amazon. They bring the consumers. It's like dropping a juicy baited hook into a fishing pond of buyers. And we just have to position our product correctly and wonderfully and tell a great story and provide great service. And that is where the buyers come. I mean, over 80% of households in America are on Amazon. I don't know where else you can do that without running a ton of advertising and building your own huge ecosystem. 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. Today, I have a very special guest. Her name is Tammy Duco. And Tammy and I have got the pleasure of knowing each other over the last year, year and a half. And let me just tell you a little bit about her. She's a marketing strategist. She knows a ton about business growth, and her expertise is directly correlated with Amazon Home Services.

She is a co-founder, founding partner at Ecom Profits, which is EcomProfits.com from 2017 to present. Duke Stig Pet, founder from 2014 to present. The Zahn Factor, she's an author, speaker, and instructor since 2016. Edgewell Personal Care, Johnson & Johnson social media team leader. She generated over $50 million in sales on Amazon for several Fortune brands, as well as small businesses and her own private label brands. She's a digital marketer since 1999, and she led a team of social media care specialists in providing best-in-class consumer service for over 20 well-known brands, the FDA-regulated

GPG Industry Fortune 50 company. I always butcher this, Tammy, when I'm doing the announcements, so don't kill me here, but how's your day going? It's wonderful. So glad to be here. Thank you. Yeah, so basically what you're going to want to listen to is the audience right now is you're going to want to make sure you focus in on all the tips. There's a few big things happening. Obviously Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the monsters and Tammy's worked with all of these companies, but she really has jumped in hardcore to Amazon. And how that relates to us is Amazon Home Services. In my view, I think the trades that are happening right now, the home services are becoming a lot more of a commodity, meaning that Amazon, Facebook, and Google are tracking everything. They want you to take a selfie when you get to the job.

They get all these analytics. They know when you're available. They've got apps installed on your phone to know when you're moving. They know who's closer to a job like Uber. So there's so many things going on. And I think it's really important. This is a very important podcast to listen to because so many changes with technology over the next few years. And it's starting now. It started over in the last several years. And it's starting now. It started over, you know, in the last several years, but it's really starting to make a huge impact on my business. So let's jump into it. You know, Tammy, over the course of your professional career, you've mastered digital marketing and the strategy. Tell me about what you've done to grow

your business as well as what brought you into this whole career. Because I want to hear the whole story of what made you you. That's an awesome question. So, you know, as life would have it, it was, I believe, you know, I was pretty young at the time. I was in New York City. I actually started my career as a professional model out in New York City. I'm from the Midwest. But I did that for about five years and I had the awesome opportunity to work with incredible brands, even though I was in front of the camera that time. But it was just such a

great experience. And the networking that I experienced was bar none, just incredible. And seeing how brands work was something that I just, I could never let go of. To the top that, you know, my father growing up, he was a real estate agent. So I saw as a young child and I would help him in his business. And I became a real estate agent also before I even went to New York. Just the different, the entrepreneur hats you have to wear, right? And the promotions and how excited that he was to, you know, try a different approach to different products or sellers or homes or buyers. And all of that just made me really, really excited at a young age. So I had a great start, okay, to being an entrepreneur. I call myself excited at a young age. So I had a great start to being an entrepreneur.

I call myself sort of a lifetime entrepreneur. And because I was able to establish networks so early in my life, as life would have it, I found myself in the Middle East early on. And I was hired by Starwood Hotels as an e-commerce director back in 1999. I said, you know what? I don't even know what that means. They said, here's your book of SOPs, which is about a foot thick. They said, you'll figure it out. Since then, I was hooked.

It's just like figuring out a puzzle, right? The internet is always ever-changing. And businesses, the growth on the internet is not, it's no longer something you might consider. It's an obvious necessity, right? For all of us to grow our businesses online. And I've really had such a pleasure in being able to work with businesses, large and small, and our own private label brands to, over the last 20 years, to help them excel and grow online. And it's never, ever, you know, it never stops. It's always changing. And I guess that's the thrill of the whole thing.

You know, it's exciting. Yeah, there's so much going on right now. And it's like, if you're not fully involved in it, you get buried quick. And I mean, I'm pretty familiar with most avenues with HomeAdvisor and so many different things. Tell me a little bit about what you're doing with Amazon. Because I think Amazon is the largest company. Jeff Bezos and just everything going on with that. It's just a monster company and so much innovation. Tell me how you kind of hooked on to them and everything you're working on with them.

So over the years, we've delved into every platform out there, all different types of different digital marketing strategies, all the different platforms. And the reason that I just became so gung-ho about Amazon were, there's a few factors. Number one, Amazon at this point in time has about 2.6 billion visitors that it attracts to its platform monthly. Okay. That's amazon.com. That means the US platform. okay? So there's many different, I think there's over 13, at least 13 different amazon.co.uk or amazon. different regions of the world that they have. And amazon.com is so powerful. So let me break that down to you.

What that means is that it's a wild fishing pond of consumers that are ready to buy. We know that well over 80% of searches start online when a consumer is in a buying mode. Amazon.com is over nearly 55% of people now start on amazon.com. Google is huge, but Amazon is the consumer buying starting place. The other reason I'm so gung-ho about Amazon is the consumer experience and the data behind it. So if I'm searching for a thing on Google, for example, or Facebook is more of an impulse buy. I see it, I click on it, I'm like, oh, wow, that looks cool, right? Maybe I wasn't searching. I don't search for it there.

Google is a place that I want to search for everywhere. I want to know Target or Walmart or whoever has it, wherever I can get it. Amazon is becoming the place, the go-to place that people are looking for a thing when they're buying it. Not necessarily researching, but reviews are important in researching. So this is why I'm so hooked on Amazon. We have seen over the last four years, especially how absolutely innovative they have become in delving into different, I would almost say, you know, sort of disrupting the norm of different business industries out there. And this is the holy grail, the Amazon Home Services program. Let's go beyond home services. Now they're calling it professional services. It's my belief that nearly any business can grow. I know that any business can grow with

the power of Amazon. They bring the consumers. It's like dropping a juicy baited hook into a fishing pond of buyers. And we just have to position our product correctly and wonderfully and tell a great story and provide great service. And that is where the buyers come. I mean, over 80% of households in America are on Amazon. I don't know where else you can do that without running a ton of advertising and building your own huge ecosystem. They've done it all for us. That's why I'm so hooked on it.

Yeah, and I feel like right now they're testing the waters because we're going to talk about Amazon Home Services. And before I met you several years ago, I got onto it. And I felt like it was going through a lot of growing pains. And the thing I hear from every contractor is, yeah, Amazon's not going to be able to do anything about home services. We're too skilled and they don't know what it's like to run a business like ours and the mood swings you have with the technicians and the driving and everything else.

And I've heard that from a dozen people on the podcast. And the only thing I can say is they're grabbing statistics. They're grabbing how available we are, what our customer satisfaction rate is, how long we spend at the job. They're sending out so many surveys. And the more people correspond to these questions, the more powerful Amazon gets because they're collecting so much. They're already on our phones. So I want to say it's scary, but it's not as scary if you're a good company. So what Facebook, Google, and Amazon is forcing us to do is become better background checks, do all the stuff that you have to do to make sure you're running a legitimate company. So the home service industry is just exploding right now. I mean, there's so

many buyouts of companies. I see consolidation like crazy. Tell me a little bit about the Amazon Home Services because we've worked together on it. You came along, mutual acquaintances, and now we've become friends. And you've taught me so much about it. And we're going to talk a lot about that later. But tell me, what is Amazon Home Services? And what does it mean to the listeners out there? Here's my deal.

No matter who you are, you need to use this platform. If I haven't made that point before, you need to use this platform, no matter what business you're in or what brand you're selling, you have to be on this platform. You're just missing out, right? So the reason that the home services program is so powerful is because now it allows, I could buy a piano for my daughter and I could also purchase lessons that someone is going to provide to her via Skype through Amazon. You know, this all started, I was buying a shower head. I was buying the spa shower head for my bathroom and, you know, to upgrade our master bath. And it asked me if I wanted to purchase with or without installation. And I said, how is Amazon going to provide the

installation? This makes no sense to me. And I clicked on it just to see what would happen. What happened was they actually found a plumber that they had in my area, in my zip code, that they had already background checked, accredited to make sure he passed all the snuff to make sure that he was a provider that they approved of. So I didn't have to go do any of that research. They actually connected our calendars. I was able to decide the day after the day of expected delivery and the time that I would like him to come and install it. So he came, he installed it. The job was done completely well. Everything was done through an app on the phone and through communication through Amazon. No money was exchanged hands. It was just what I paid Amazon in my initial purchase. And it was, for me,

it was a load off. I mean, I didn't have to go out and look for different service providers. They handled all the money. I knew upfront how much it was going to be. I knew the date, the time. It was beautiful. Was introduced to a wonderful new service provider that I love and I've called since. So it was shocking and amazing to me that Amazon was doing this. This is what these different providers do now, but I wasn't a big practitioner of calling that. I live in a smaller community, so I would just call the guy I knew or someone my friend referred. But this was just shocking to me that I could just do it all on Amazon. So it was pretty interesting to me and made me really delve into it more.

Yeah, super powerful. I mean, even when I order a TV bracket, and believe it or not, I'm working with other companies in the lead gen space. And TV brackets is one of the biggest things people want is their TV installed with a bracket. But when you order anything now, a shower, a shower curtain, it's just crazy the things that they'll have installed for you. And there's someone taking these jobs because they understand that it's a foot in the door. So for me, the reason I make money with Amazon Home Services is it gets me in front of that customer. And half the time, they order a spring or something. They didn't order the right part. And they're just like, you're already here. What do we need? And our job as Amazon Home

Service providers is not to steal the work from Amazon. When I go out to Home Depot, my job isn't to steal the job from the manufacturer who works with Home Depot because we had Home Depot, but we just realized we weren't making money with it because there were so many problems with Home Depot. But Amazon Home Services, we make a ton of money with. It's so convenient for our schedule because we book it when we want to book it, and it allows us to go in there and get more sales and grow those relationships with our customers. So the reason I'm so passionate about it is because when you find something like this, obviously, the hard part is teaching your technicians to adopt it. But I said, guys, if you don't adopt this stuff and you don't understand the Google Guarantee Program, you don't understand why Facebook reviews are important, and you don't understand why this stuff makes sense, then you're not going to have a job pretty soon because we won't have the business because other companies are adopting this, the Home Advisors, the Yelps. And I just think Amazon is a huge force to be reckoned with. So,

you know, I know a lot of people who show resistance towards using tools like this one. They just feel like they don't want to be on the internet. They don't want to worry about SEO and this pay-per-click and all this stuff. They don't understand it really. I think this gives the small guy a chance and the big guys that jump on it and adopt that are going to be unstoppable. But what do you say to the guys that just say, you know, it's like jumping through a rabbit hole every time.

I got to do all these things. And then it's lucky to get, you know, five jobs a day. You know, the naysayers, what do you say to them? That's such a great topic to cover because it is, those are the people I'm really passionate about helping as well, because we all are resistant to change, right? And we've all seen that if we don't grow online, we might be left behind at this point, right? We've seen it over and over, over the last 20 years. And the big businesses that are shutting down left and right now, because they haven't adapted quickly enough, right? So we know that we have to be online. This is where people are. This is where 90% of searches start online before they buy.

You know, 55% of those are going to Amazon, you know, for buying a thing. So we need to embrace this. All right. The reason it needs to be Amazon, that needs to be part of your equation is because in my opinion, it's the easiest place to start. If you don't even have a, you know, you have a semblance of a website, maybe you just have a URL and it's not really an active thing. Maybe you just have your local listings, you have a few review sites going on, that's great. But, you know, running it in a whole, I mean, Tommy, you know, you've built incredible ecosystems with your websites and booking things online. And it takes a team to do that.

And with these small guys, let's say some small service providers are one or two or five or 10-man shops. Sometimes they just don't have the expertise in-house. They don't know who to trust. They don't have the time to wear the hat to figure out the marketing part of it and believe me it changes so fast how would you right so as entrepreneurs it's really hard for us to figure that out amazon has that figured out it's sort of a plug and play that without getting too techie once you're on the platform have you ever gone on the platform and then found that you were searching for, I don't know, sunglasses and suddenly those sunglasses followed you all over the internet? You know, that's called retargeting and remarketing. Amazon has this whole thing built into their ecosystem, right? We don't have to worry about all these techno lingo that all these different providers

that are trying to help us build our own little ecosystem around our business would talk to us about. And we don't have to navigate through all the techno lingo because Amazon has done it for us. So I hope I'm saying that in a way that's understandable. But to me, it's sort of a plug and play where we can ride the coattails of a giant. They've got it dialed in. It's amazing. They are the biggest advertiser on Google. So if you're on the Amazon platform, you're going to end up on Google anyway. In another way, right?

It's easy to advertise and do add-ons through once you're listed on the site so to me it's one of the easiest barriers to entry to really getting your business to grow online we saw as they evolved how things became more streamlined sometimes you know with a new program on amazon sometimes there's there's some growing pains and sometimes even support doesn't know how to answer your question. Yeah, we'll figure that out. And we just get through it. But really getting down to it, brass tacks. It's not hard to get started, guys.

You just have to have the mindset that you're going to be, you're an entrepreneur as you are, right? That's why you started a business, right? And so we know that there are going to be some little hurdles, but at this point, it's pretty smooth flowing at this point. And it's really easy for people to get started. And the best way for anyone to get started with doing any kind of business on Amazon or selling anything on Amazon is just going to amazon.com just as a consumer, as you would to go buy a thing

and scroll all the way down to the bottom and you'll see a black footer down there, a black area at the bottom of the page. And it will say, make money with Amazon. And in that little paragraph of links, you will see sell your services on Amazon. And you click that link, it takes you to the services page, and you say apply. And you fill out application process was, geez, you know, two minutes. It's, you know, what's your business? What's your name?

What do you do? What are your services? And put your URL in here, put your review site in here. So they do take a filtered look at, you know, are you a business that can be trusted? Are you someone that has provided services that someone has given good feedback about. So they do have a filtering process. So if you don't have that piece ready, that would be the number one thing I would do. I would build a bit of a presence online, meaning get some review sites out there if you're on Yelp or claim your Google listing and get some reviews. Tommy, I remember you saying as part of the course, you were talking about, you know, a great way to do that if you're just getting started is give away your services for free to friends and family and have them really review you and your service. Yeah, I think that that's super important.

One of my tips that I always tell people is you got to use your friends and family network. And, you know, I don't just don't call your friends and have them leave you at five star, just literally like go practice on their stuff, get the rulers, get whatever you got to do if you're in the garage or niche. But so many people have such a huge network. The people that I see successful at any of these things that like network marketing or like you know your level under me so multi marketing type stuff is they use the friends and family first like literally to not take advantage of that in the home service space and say look i can't tell you i can go on and on about the

because my friends and family has turned into a network where a friend of a friend of a friend people call me every day technicians they go hey do you know this person? I'm like, I have no idea. They said they're recommended by this person. I'm like, I have no idea. But they say, I know Tommy. And everybody knows the owner. What they're looking for is that third-party validation. I mean, that's really what it's all about, Tammy, is... And you know that. They're looking to say, well, wait a minute, you're a two-star on Yelp. You're a one-star Google, you're a two and a half star on Facebook. We don't even know if we should let you through our enrollment. That's like saying, you failed my drug test,

you failed my background check, then I want you to come work for my company. No, it doesn't work like that. So that's the first part of it. Let's keep going through the process. So, you know, if you don't have that five-star yet, get it, put it into practice with your warm network and practice on people until you do get, it doesn't have to be five-star, but at least, you know, I don't know, three and a half, four would be great. Four would be great before you apply. Just know how you look online, figure out, Google yourself. So many businesses don't even Google themselves.

You know that? Claim your Google listing. Find out what's going on out there and then rectify what you can before you fill out that application. And don't do it blindly. They're going to ask you for a URL, meaning a website. If you don't have one, throw one up. It's not that hard.

There's a lot of WYSIWYG editors out there like Wix or gosh, you could do it in an hour if you need some kind of presence, right? Just get that. Do a Facebook page, right? A Facebook page doesn't take a long time. Just get it up there and make sure you look good. And that's the way to start. And once you start, those are the things they ask you in their application. You'll pass the muster, right? And the next thing they'll ask you for liability insurance, if you have small business liability insurance. And again, that's another thing that is an easy thing to do, but pretty necessary in

most all small businesses, whether it's products or services, call your local agent if he doesn't know how to do it. Small business liability insurance. I mean, it's a few hundred bucks, maybe five, six hundred bucks a year for small businesses, depending on what you do. And it just covers you. So they ask the question, do you or do you not have it? And if you definitely are going into people's homes for

your service, then they're going to require that up to a million dollar policy, but it's not hard to get. And Tommy, I think you're a little bit more versed in that arena too, for as much as you had to deal with. Yeah. I really try. One of the biggest mistakes I see, Tammy, is number one, they throw you in the wrong category. They threw me in electronics for the first three years. And because I plug in and open it with low voltage, but the fact is I'm never two rings above on the ladder. We don't work on a ton of commercial. And first of all, this is a whole lesson in itself is get classified in the right things. I've had a workman's comp auditor come in and save us $50,000 this year because he said, they're assuming that

most of your staff is in the field. Well, we've got a huge business now. We're a growing company. So we really were able to save a fortune when you start analyzing. And one thing I'd always recommend is always, always, always shop your insurance every year. Your vehicle insurance, your theft insurance, your personal insurance, whatever it might be, get it all checked up. But yeah, there are times where I had a landscaping company and it was so cheap to get this stuff, but it's so important.

It just protects you. Liability insurance protects you. Well, I'll tell you what happened once is I was cutting a bush. And of course, I accidentally cut through this air conditioning tube that released all of the Freon. But it was covered. It wasn't that expensive. I

think I might have just paid a guy to come fill it up. But I've seen guys cut through beams. I've seen really bad things happen. And liability assurance is such a must. But basically, Amazon is going to make you cross your T's and dot your I's like anything does, like the Better Business Bureau does, like any sensible company that's going to have you work on their job site if they're a construction company, they're going to make sure this stuff's done. So most likely, the people listening to the podcast, hopefully, unless you're thinking about going into business, you have this stuff. You're bonded, you're insured. If there's any type of licensing you might need over and above,

I should say, you've got the licensing already figured out. So I've needed a business license and I needed some specialty license. So now I've got the register of contractors, but I didn't need it in every state because certain states don't require it. So you can literally call and figure out what you need. I mean, this stuff is not rocket size, but it is important. And a home advisor requires this stuff. A lot of companies are going to start requiring it. So if you don't have it now, you should get it. So once we get through licensing, I think the next thing, Tammy, is probably through the background of the owner and the workers. Is that right?

Yes. So that little form that we just filled out, that was called the application, right? We landed on that landing page. We answered a few questions and that was the application. So now they're going to go off Amazon and go take a look at how you look online. How are people rating you? Is this someone that we want to promote and represent and refer to our trusted consumers. And if they say yes, your application is approved email within, it varies, but I would say two to three weeks has been the norm recently. And they'll say, okay, now you can start to register. So the next piece is we go through this registration process where we set up our account and it's in a seller

central dashboard, which is confusing to people who sell products because that's the same name, but it looks differently than when you sell a product on Amazon. If you're selling your services on Amazon, you have different tabs at the top, like your jobs, when they book you, the referrals, all these different tabs that are wonderful. What you need to do is you need to set up your technicians, the people that are going to be performing the jobs. They're going to do background checks on each of those people. And I know, Tommy, you had such a great tip when we were talking about other businesses to do their own background check first. That was like a big thing that was a huge takeaway in working with you. I think that's such a big

takeaway that people should do for their small businesses before you allow Amazon to do that. Right? Yeah, no, that's huge. You don't want to get caught from the Google Guarantee Program. You don't want to get caught from the Amazon Program and any other programs that are going to require you to do a background check. Make sure that you do a vigorous background check on your employees beforehand before you run them through. If you haven't, do it beforehand, because once you get that, it's not impossible, but it's not easy to get that turned around. Right. So they're going to do a background check during this. So they're going to ask for their name, an ID, a selfie. Okay. And there's social security, I believe. And they verify those things through a background check. And that's the next step. And you're going to be able to choose your service location.

So your business, your place of business is in a particular zip code. And they will say, okay, are you willing to go 20 miles in a 20 mile radius in a 50 mile radius? Do you have other places, you know, other service location areas? In your case, Tommy, you serve several states and several different areas. So it was quite a process for your team to get through this. But your team is amazing. And they did it with all these technicians over time. Having on hand a great updated picture that would match something that would be like a selfie when the guy's on the job and he would take a selfie. So make it look similar. All right. That is one of the ways that Amazon actually approves the fact that you were actually there, you performed the

job and it was actually you, it was a specific technician, and then they will approve the job for payment. Okay. Have that in their information, your provider area. And that's pretty much part of the registration process. Then they're going to go off again and do their little background check and come back. And then you're going to be ready to go after that's done. So I want to get talking about the mistakes that I made because just to collect from Amazon was a learning experience. Once it's done, it's done. And I, what I mean by that is when I first started on this program, we had 30 outstanding bills and then we had to get consent from the owner and this and that, cause we didn't do it right. And now we haven't had one issue with that. There was a little bit

of training behind it, but it's not rocket science. It's just when you never did it, you never did it. So I want to get talking a little bit because we did put together this stuff. And when I say we, I mean, you basically came in, you knew all the right things to do. And then we worked through some issues together of a big business in 12 states might have. And we documented it all and you put it all together in a real cool way to take it on. I don't know. What do you call it? The home service, Amazon home service program? Well, we call it get booked.

We just want to show people how to get booked on Amazon, get referred and booked by Amazon. So we call it Get Booked, but it's really about how any business or service can get referred, listed, and booked and paid by Amazon. It's pretty incredible. so there's a ton of stuff in this you interviewed every issue that i experienced i've got a couple buddies you helped get on to go through the you know make sure it's not just one size fits all just garage door companies we made sure that when you went through you had my buddy you've had several friends go through it but i remember uh you had Sean go through it and I remember he called me he's like I got through the program and he's making money he's happy what can you tell me some of the details that you put into the course because why would I get this if I just if it seems easy to me in some regards like home advisor was easy I mean some of the trials that we went through were a pain in the butt. And I don't know if I can go back and just have it all done for me and just get it done. I'd say

for me, I would. But with your help behind me, even it was like still there were so many things that they change. And as they change, it's nice to me when you know people that you do there, they can actually get answers. Yes. And you is the thing about Amazon. So we also work with brands and people who sell products on Amazon as well. And one of the factors with Amazon, Amazon is Amazon. They're going to change every day. It's not that difficult. Here's how I look at it. Here's the way that I love to look at this. I love the fact that there might be one or two more hurdles that we have to jump through because number one, they're the most trusted. They were named the most trusted brand in America just months ago. I forgot who put that out, but big

publication, a huge market research firm, most trusted brand. Okay. People have their credit cards on file. Hundreds of millions of people have their credit cards on file at this place. Okay. At Amazon. So by getting your business on there, they're, they're pretty, you know, particular about the products and the services that they allow on this platform. And they get a little more so finicky. I can buy a thing on eBay and I'm not quite sure where that came from. Amazon, you know that there were probably 10 more filters that that product had to go through to get to me because they look at where it was manufactured. Was it in a particular type of facility? These different things. So we should take comfort in the fact that when we buy a thing on Amazon,

we can be pretty clear, pretty sure from the reviews and the filtering process and the fact that they've come so far and done so many things for brands and grown so many brands and done things to really filter out different sellers and brands that are not up to snuff, that you know what? We're getting kind of the best of the best that we can get with their incredible delivery and distribution system and all of that that they have built. So in my book, this is how I always look at it. Oh, you added this little step in here. Okay. You know what? That's fine. I'm glad to oblige because you know what? I'm happy that I don't have to build an ecosystem like an Amazon.

I'm happy to just dip into your 2.6 billion visitors every month and get new referrals and new clients. I'll go through that hoop. I'll call my insurance agency and get some liability insurance, whatever it is. So I know it's a pain and it's a struggle sometimes. I do deal with some of those people that say, what? There's like six steps. Oh my gosh, that seems like too much. Well, take a step a day, take a step a week, whatever you need to do, just get on it and harness the power of this giant, because I'm telling you, it will change your business. And it's incredible. And when I see Tommy, you know, when we say it changes every day, I mean, for fun, it's like a hobby of mine. I go over to Amazon and I look at the categories

every day. I don't know if you shop like this, but if you go to amazon.com and you shop in the search bar, you could type for a thing just like we do on Google, like a keyword, like if I want to buy a dog toy, right? Or I could use on the left-hand side, there are these categories. And guess what one of those categories are? It's Amazon Home Services. Amazon is called Home and Business Services. And when I click on that, I can directly book someone to come and clean my house, mow my lawn. Wedding planning. There's crazy photography. I mean, bartenders, real estate. It's crazy. Think about this. You know, I used to post a thousand ads a day on Craigslist. I mean, I took advantage of their system. And what started happening with Craigslist is I couldn't trust the people I'd hire.

It was like, because you could game the system and it was just, they were cheap, but they were garbage. Well, I think one of the coolest things about Amazon is they do a good job of vetting and they won't leave you on their stuff if they get enough complaints. So, you know, if you're not a good company, you probably aren't listening to the podcast anyway. But if you're a good company, you do the right thing. You back up your work. So here's something kind of cool to understand. With Google, Google has their Google Guarantee Program. Well, with the Google Guarantee Program, they don't give back a lot of money because Google says you got to first take it up and have proof that you've sent and try to work it out with the company. So actually, one third of all Google guarantees actually go through of the issues that when somebody tries to file to get their money back. So Google does not want to give money back and neither does Amazon, but they want to have a good service done.

So they verify when you're there, they do simple little things. And I'll tell you this, what's kind of funny about this whole thing is all my home warranty companies are starting to make us do jumps through a few hoops, like check in and this, take a picture of this, verify this. So this is not something that's just Amazon or Google or anything. This is something that if you want to, you're going to see the sharpest decline you've ever seen. It's going to be like falling off a cliff in the next two years if you don't adopt these programs. And I'll tell you, I use things like Hootsuite for social media posting.

I use things like BurnEye for Google posting, for getting reviews, reputation management. It's just these tools that we have. And I'll tell you, Tammy, the tool that you provide is how to get through this Amazon thing. Make sure you collect the money and it shows you how to build a presence there and you get more and more jobs. And I think, you know, how important is a five-star review?

It's pretty key. As a consumer on Amazon, I'm sure most of us are. Most of us know that we really trust other people's opinions and they are fierce about filtering those things. I know we hear sometimes that they're not all legit, but I really do think over the last couple of years, they've really done some huge filtering. I know from being a product provider on the platform that a lot of our reviews, even legit, like all our legit reviews

even went away. And so they're a huge filtering process. So I'm telling you what, you have to provide a wonderful, amazing over the top experience. That is what Amazon consumers have come to expect. That is the consumer you are serving. They can make or break your business. And I would do everything in my power. I've even called consumers. I've given things away free. I've done whatever I could do. And believe me, I've built lifetime customers, loyal, loyal customers. And this is a platform that you could really excel with that. And it goes a long way because everyone else sees it. So it can really grow your business in a hurry.

It's not hard to build. You know, we deliver amazing experience, but I'll tell you what Amazon people get used to is they get used to that timeliness. People go on Amazon because more than anything, I think people have made a paradigm shift to go more towards not so much money as much as their time is important. So we get used to, I mean, by the time I can get up right now and go to Walmart,

it's like I can get it here tomorrow and I don't really need the toilet. I order toilet paper, cleaning supplies, Windex, I mean, squeegees. I'm ordering protein shakes for the refrigerator, like random stuff now because it gets here the next day. They got more fulfillment houses than anywhere. And if they've done this with products, the deny that they can do this with service would just be erroneous and a mistake because you're telling me I need rollers, okay? Or you're telling me I need a new filter for my pool. You're telling me I need a new drain for whatever. I'm seeing it here on Amazon. Now, the one thing that I think is a good thing is you could go on

Amazon. You could see what they're charging customers to install it. So I use this as a tool. Look, yeah, you can buy it for $20, but Amazon charges $120 to install them. Because people go, well, it's only $20 on Amazon. So now if you get to learn Amazon and go through this process, I use it as a, yeah, do you know how dangerous it is to change out a garage door cable? Yeah, they're only $5 or $10. But go ahead and find out what happens if you don't have the right tools and know how to change those, what will happen to you? You'll lose your life. And Amazon's not going to give that away for 20 bucks because Amazon started to realize, and I'll tell you the first mistake they didn't know is you got to price it to what people are going to charge. And you got to price it into a way that Uber where everybody

makes money because those Uber drivers that are out there, trust me, without enough of them, you don't get picked up fast. And without paying them right, they won't go to the job to pick you up. So you got to be at a price that makes sense. So it's a pretty cool thing. It tells you where the equilibrium is. But Amazon, look, Amazon is a Chinese product still. It's not like giving you a warranty, a killer warranty on the product. Who do you send it back to?

I've never sent a product unless it was completely wrong back to Amazon. I hate that. I'd rather go... If I'm going to go for certain things, I don't go to Amazon. I plan on taking something back. It's just a pain in the butt to try to ship it back. So I think that there's a lot here with this thing. But more importantly, it was so nice. I'll tell you one of the things that we have learned through this program is how long did it take all my technicians to respond? That took forever to get on the platform. One of the things you talk about in your courses, which I've worked on with you, but I'm in it. But it was really, you came to me and you said, can you help me put this together in a way that I can get this out there to help small businesses?

And I said, sure, you help me get on Amazon Home Services. Well, one of the problems we had was none of the technicians were getting back to the email. So some of them were getting filtered to their spam. So we learned to just make emails internally for these people, for your staff, and get it all done. I mean, when you go through you of how many times you've done it, we saw the challenges. It just gets done faster. You collect the money right the first time. I just can't tell you, like a done-for-you service for me,

it's just so much makes more sense. Like I could have moved my server and all my computers over. I had a company who were in a new building move everything over, make sure it all worked properly, upgrade the memory, make sure every mouse worked. They did a status update. They updated all the software on it. They made sure that it had the spyware or whatever.

So I could have probably done that if I wanted to sit down, but that's not my specialty. So tell me a little bit more about the program because I feel like if you want to take the time and do it yourself, or you build your own website, you do all your own marketing, you do your own pay-per-click, you can get through this platform fairly easy, especially if you're a tiny company. But if you're like me, hindsight is 20-20, but I don't like to take time. It's not worth it to me. Yeah, I think we have learned so much. And again, thank you and your team, who's been incredible.

When you look at the course that we actually came out with and built, it has several different modules from why you need to be on, you know, different statistics. I can be, maybe I'm a two-man shop and I'm out at a job. I don't have a full-time VA working for me or an assistant, and I'm taking calls on the job. Now you can have someone book these calls for you, right? So it goes from that level through, because of you and your amazing team, we cover if you're a multi-state serving service like you are and how your team handles that aspect in several different service areas. So we've had your head of customer service. She was incredible. And we do detailed interviews. We do screenshots. We go through the dashboards. We talk about the different things that you want

to take along or the different ways you want to train your technicians, sort of the emails that you gave them to make sure that they were claiming the jobs on time, taking a manual form in case they didn't have Wi-Fi ready for them, making sure that it was a best practice to check in as soon as they drove up to the job because sometimes they get in the middle of the job and then kind of forget. So there was so much that we learned through this process and we go through all of that. And then we have a whole section on Tommy's tips. I mean, your tips that you've given are incredible. Some of the things that you've crafted over time with your team, like this incredible five-star review and getting more review trick tip.

I mean, that's worth thousands of dollars alone for any small business. There's just things that you laid out that were invaluable to any small business owner through this whole process. So it was just really wonderful. And we did have time to explore a little bit more about Amazon as well, which was also kind of fun. Well, that's what's cool is you put some other stuff in this course. We talk about the affiliate program or associate program, and then the Alexa voice enabled program, which people don't understand this, but I talk to my phone. I ask for every service.

And there's going to be a certain time when you trust Google, Amazon, and Facebook so much, we're going to start talking and then more. That's going to happen a lot more. Tell me a little bit about some of the stuff that you've put in here for this program you came up with as a bonus. Yeah. So there's two bonuses. One is called Amazon Associates Program. It's called Affiliate Program. So, you know, we as humans love, love to just tell everybody how much we love a product. If we love a product, we found something that just has worked for us in whatever way it's supposed to work. A new supplement, a new whatever it is. We talk about it. We go on Facebook and just talk about it. You know, it'd be really great if Zuck would pay us some money for the

referral, right? But he doesn't, but Amazon does. So if you go on social media and set a special link that actually refers people to buy it on Amazon, they not only pay you a percentage of the retail value of that product, but anything else that consumer buys on Amazon for the next 24 hours. So this is something that we teach small business owners to implement in their email signatures, in their proposals. I mean, we have landscapers that go out there and do a proposal or a sort of a lookbook on ideas. And they say, you know, these are the type of lights we can do in your backyard and are on this pergola or blah, blah, blah. And these are the things that you don't have to just be a blind referral to Amazon to give you where it's readily available in the most trusted

buying purchase platform in the world. You could make a little extra money from it. And businesses do, they make lots of money from it. So that's one part of what we teach. And the other part is the voice enabled. I mean, we've all heard of Alexa. If you have an iPhone, you talk to Siri. If you have an Android phone, you say, hey, Google, right? These voice enabled things are, it's incredible how quickly this is being adopted. In fact, we did a, we did a, for one of our private brands, we just did a sort of an infomercial, like an old school on TV infomercial. What we found out was people were listening to that infomercial, sitting in their living rooms and then talking to their phones instead of typing the website into their computer. So they were talking to their phones

and because they were talking to their phones, you have to position things in a different way. There are over 34 million Alexa enabled devices that were sold this last year. And it's going to go faster and faster and faster. And we teach people, businesses, how to be ready. Search terms are a little bit differently. When I say a thing, it's different than the words that I might, how I might type a thing, right? That's a big deal. Just by being on certain platforms like your Google, certain Google-enabled platforms or having your business readily available and across many different platforms in voice search, whether it's Siri or Google or Alexa is really important. Right now I can order anything with my voice and it automatically happens in a minute through Alexa. I can do the same thing with

services. So it's hugely important. It's a tidal wave happening. So I just want to make people aware of it, help businesses start thinking about it, get ready. There's some simple ways that you can be prepared and, you know, check a couple boxes just like you do with our Amazon Home Services program and get referred, get ready for the consumer rush. You know, that's going to happen. They're just going to buy in a new way. That's what's happening. So there's all this stuff you talked about. And I mean, it's all around Amazon.

We talk, I spend so much time talking about Google and talking about, you know, there's so many ways I make money that I don't have to pay anything. Look, I'm still doing deal-a-day sites. I do Groupon, I do Living Social because I don't lose any pay anything. Look, I'm still doing deal-a-day sites. I do Groupon. I do Living Social. Because I don't lose any money by being on these platforms unless somebody purchases from me.

So it's the ultimate equalizer to get your advertising costs down. So to get this course that you put together, and I helped on. Okay, we put a website. Homeserviceexpert.com forward slash Amazon, right? Yes. Yep. Homeserviceexpert.com forward slash Amazon. And then tell me a little bit about if somebody wants to get ahold of you, Tammy, they just want more of you. They want to learn more about what you offer. What's the best way to do that? I'm all over social media. So my last name is Duco, D-U-C-H-O-W, Tammy, Tammy Duco. So you can find me everywhere. Otherwise, the Zahn Factor is really where we discuss these things. This is the passionate, it's a Facebook page. It's just a page anyone can join or like or follow. And we talk about

these things every day. Every day something's happening. I mean, today, you know, India, Amazon India adopted, you can book your air travel on Amazon now, right? And it's going to follow suit. There's just every single day there's something happening. We're also talking to you about different ways to control your Alexa. You know, that's another thing. When I talk about Alexa, people say, oh, I feel like I'm being invaded. They're invading my privacy. Alexa listens to everything. Well, you know what? Education is power. Just you can figure out how to control it and turn that stuff off. So, you know, we talk about things consumer-oriented, business-oriented, but like I tell everybody, give me any business,

I'll tell you 10 ways to grow out with Amazon. This platform has bells and whistles to help you grow, excel, scale, and be visible to the world online. If you're not online, you know, if you're not growing online right now, you're going to get left behind. That is the bottom line. This is the easiest way to get started. I just get so much value in helping businesses

and seeing them scale almost automatically after our little painful setup that we go through. Maybe painful setup. It's getting easier and easier. But, you know, that's it. Just follow us at The Zon Factor. The Z-O-N Factor. Find us on Facebook and follow us there.

Join the conversation. And let's go grow your business. So a couple other things and we'll end it here. But if I always ask everybody on the podcast, if you had to pick three books that were really influential what would those three books be so i would say three books okay there's three things i think are so important as an entrepreneur to understand um which i think about all the time and number one is the way we think about all the time. And number one is the way we think about building and growing wealth and financial literacy really in general. I don't think we understand that enough as we grow

in this country to this day. But so a friend of mine, his name is Alex Becker, and he wrote a book called 10 Pillars of Wealth. And it really helps you to understand a different way to think about what being an entrepreneur is. And most of us who've grown up in a particular area in this country think that our parents go to work for 40, 50 years and they retire and then they live off their retirement. And that's the way to wealth. That's the true thing. And to this day, my mom still tells me, when am I going to get a new job? People do not understand entrepreneurship. So that's a great book. Number two, I would say The Consumer Journey is so important. And there's a book written by Zappos people called Delivering Happiness. And it talks about the incredible

lengths that they go to, to make sure that that consumer is so happy and how turning around what might have been a bad review could be your most loyal customer in the world. And I just love those opportunities. I think that's really important as a business owner. And number three, honestly, Tommy, I think your book is very, very important. And it's not a joke. I really do love Home Service Millionaire. It is incredibly valuable to people

that are in our industry in entrepreneurship. And I think it cuts a lot of corners for people. So if you haven't read it yet, there's valuable information in there that I think can shave off years of trial and error if you really apply these things. Well, that's great. So we know how to get ahold of you. We got some great books. And I'd like to leave you with a final thought. You've already left one, but I kind of have, I didn't tell you the way we kind of structured as we get the, how to get a hold of you got to say that I love a podcast that actually delivers. A lot of times it's more, hey, listen, here's some food for thought. Here's this, here's that.

This is like, this is the wave of the future. So you're doing some cool things. You're up on it. You're making a lot of businesses a ton of money. I appreciate you coming on today. And I think that the audience is going to get a ton of value. And with that, I'll leave it up to you. Thanks for allowing me to be here and talking to your audience.

And this is really my favorite audience. I've worked with lots of different brands. We have our own brands. But it's really the small business owner that I, the entrepreneur that I, my heart is with you. It is tough. It is tough. And don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to be a digital frontiersman. You know, it's like when we, when we traveled to the great wild west way back in the day, can you imagine? We didn't know it was lying ahead. And we don't know that either on the internet.

We don't, right? Maybe we've been scammed or spent too much money, didn't know what the heck we were paying for all the tech talk or whatever it is. You know what? Figure it out. Get it done. We have laid out something really, really special and amazing and simple for you to understand or someone close to you to understand or in your business to understand

that can literally change the way you do business or grow your business I can't stress enough how important Tommy I think it was it was funny in one of the interviews you did, you were saying, it's like being around when the phone book was just introduced or being around when mobile phones just came out. Getting your business on this powerful platform is, I can't stress enough how important it will be for you as a small business owner, small business. When we say small business, that encompasses a lot of businesses, doesn't it? Well, it's anybody under 25 million is considered a small business. Which is, yeah, a huge population. And I'm going to leave you with a story because

I want you all to think innovatively, think outside of the box, how we can use this platform every day. New ways, new opportunities are being made available to us to just hop on the wings of this giant beast, you know, and have our businesses soar. And one of those ways recently was, you know, video. Video is the other thing. I can't stress enough. Oh my gosh. Don't be afraid to get out and do video. Tommy, you're so good at this. Adopt video. Get on this platform. You're not going to break stuff. Just get on the internet. Just grow your business. I was at a business as a small store, small retail store. And it was a, almost like a door, like a Hamptons kind of area, right? Where it's seasonal, where people come for

the summer and then the store closes up all winter and the owner has to make their living, you know, live off what they've made in those short five months of the season all year, because they're just doing traditional business in that local area. And we visited the small, beautiful, eclectic toy store, my daughter and I, and I saw her crying at the counter, the owner. And I approached her and I said, is there something I can help you with? Are you okay? And she said, that darn Amazon, she said. And I said, oh, what's the matter? And she said, well, I see these people coming in here and they're tourists. And I've taken so much time and effort to create the most eclectic toy collection that is so special to me. And I've done all this work,

but they come in, they look, scan it on their phones. They look it up on Amazon and they just order it from Amazon because they don't want to pack it in their suitcase and take it home. So I really lose out on all the hard work I did. And I said, wow, maybe there's a way that we can help. So what we did was we helped her get an Amazon Associates code. We helped her build it into what's called a QR code. So now we encourage consumers when they come in to scan that code, not only when they do buy, if they do buy that product on Amazon, does she get a percentage of the retail value of that? But anything else they buy on Amazon in the 24 hour period, she also gets a piece of that as well. And not only that, but now she's also, she's also listing her products on Amazon as well. So, you know, we just have to think outside of the box. And that's what I want

to leave you with is don't be afraid to innovate. Don't be afraid to take that step forward. Continue to pursue new avenues because it is the future. And that's what's going to grow your business and make a difference between if you're here in five years from now or not. Right. So let's embrace it. I agree, Tammy. It's going to be huge. And this is one of the monster companies that we talk about and to not embrace it would be a shame. So appreciate you coming on today and look forward to talking with you soon here. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Have a good day. You too. 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 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