Episode 99 - Why Every Small Business Must Prioritize Google Business Profiles
Episode #99 | Brien Gearin | Why Every Small Business Must Prioritize Google Business Profiles
In this episode of The Curious Builder, host Mark Williams chats with Brien Gearin from Ricochet Digital Marketing about the essentials of modern digital marketing. They dive into critical strategies for optimizing Google Business Profiles, the importance of engaging email newsletters, and how AI can streamline your marketing game. If you're looking to level up your marketing tactics, this episode is packed with actionable insights and a whole lot of fun!
Listen to the full episode:
About Brien Gearin
Ricochet is a Cincinnati area company providing digital marketing services to companies throughout the United States. In addition to delivering results, they pride themselves on offering a level of service that exceeds what is offered by other agencies. They consider themselves to be partners with their clients when it comes to growing their businesses, and their client’s successes are their successes too.
Common complaints about digital advertising agencies are that they are not responsive, that the ads provided are not what the client was looking for, that necessary changes are often delayed (if they are made at all), etc. Ricochet is different in these regards. They are organized, provide what they say they will provide in the promised timeframes, are transparent about the effectiveness of client ad campaigns, and more.
In short, they provide the professional experience that many other agencies fail to offer. They provide online portals where their clients may access all marketing reports at any time, schedule one-on-one meetings, and more. They consider this to be the “Ricochet Difference” and are proud of the level of service that they offer!
Resources:
Find Ricochet Digital Marketing’s Website Here
Follow Ricochet Digital Marketing on Facebook
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Brien Gearin 00:00
You know, in business these days, you have to adapt or die, right? Like you have to, you have to be open to change, and you have to be at least open to understanding what's around you, especially in terms of the digital realm. And it used to be, you could probably get away with that four or five years, I don't know, 234, or five years without really adapting and still have your business and still do all right? But these days, it's like, every three to six months, something is new, something is out there that's going to affect your bottom line in some manner, and if you don't stay up to date on it, or at least pay the people who will keep you up to date on these things and do it for you. And man, the business landscape is going to get very tough for those businesses.
Mark D. Williams 00:42
You today on the podcast, we had Brian gierna out of Cincinnati, and he owns a ricochet digital marketing company, and it was an awesome, really fun episode. I wanted to have it really lively and full of information. So really, right off the bat, we just dive straight into marketing and way beyond 101, I mean, this is basically, if you're whether you're starting a company or you're a veteran, really, what are the 10 things you should be considering in terms of digital marketing? And then really, what are the top five? And we went pretty deep on Google profiles, blogging, email blasts and things like that and so and really, how to leverage AI to help you through all these things. So if you're ready to level up your marketing game, fasten your seat belt. And you're not gonna be able to hit times two on this because we talk fast. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, I'm joined with Brian Gearan, out of Cincinnati, Ohio, with Ricochet digital marketing, marketing. Welcome to the show, Brian. Thank
Brien Gearin 01:38
you, Mark. It's a pleasure to be here, man. I've been looking forward to this. I had you on my podcast a month or two ago, and we had a blast, and we've connected a handful of times in between, so I'm excited. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 01:47
no, it's fun. I interviewed Jerry Bierman from alluring glass, and he and I connected over Ultra running and triathlons and all kinds of other nonsense. And I wasn't it you basically saw I liked or he liked something on LinkedIn, and that's how you found out about me?
Brien Gearin 02:00
Yeah, I think I saw either he posted, or maybe reposted from your LinkedIn feed, a piece of video, a clip from your interview with him on your podcast. And I checked it out, and I was like, Oh, this guy seems pretty cool. I had a, I know Jerry's awesome, but now I gotta, I gotta hook up with one of his friends here. So I reached out to you on LinkedIn and connected with you there, and the rest well,
Mark D. Williams 02:19
man did, man, did you get duped? Turns out, marketing was very effective on you. Don't you always find that marketers like, the the best, the easiest people to sell to, are marketers like, I think I'm probably the easiest person on the planet to sell to. Oh, dude,
Brien Gearin 02:33
you and I, we have a lot in common. And check out our episode on millionaire University podcast if you want to hear that one too, because you and I chopped it up really well. But we have so much in common, and that is yet another thing we have in common. Because I tell my wife that all the time where I'm like, holy crap, honey. Like people could sell me just about anything, and I like to say my older age, I'm getting better at identifying what I really, truly don't need, and what's the difference between an impulse buy and a need buy. But yeah, like, I'm the night if you're selling me something, I'm going to be the nicest son of a gun you're ever going to talk to, even if I turn you down like and there's a great chance I might buy a website. But I think
Mark D. Williams 03:07
we, I think we enjoy the sales process. I mean, it's a little bit it's like storytelling. I mean, really good sales is tells a good story. And I think where you've seen a lot of the marketing go, or at least what I'm interested in, is, I think people that have the best stories, and it's less about selling something and more about crafting this narrative in the story. I feel like that's really attractive and a really appealing I feel like storytelling, maybe it's always been a thing, but it seems like it's very popular to talk about right now. And I know I resonate with, you know, storytelling. And yeah, I feel I feel like, because sales people are so easy to sell to, because we like the process. We like seeing an effect. I remember years ago I was building, maybe four years into building. So this is like mid 2000s like 2000 678, somewhere in there. And do you know what a trial close question is? Yeah, yeah. And so I did my one job in my life, other than being self employed, I worked for a copier company. And so that's the only reason I know what that term is at trial close, for those that don't know it, basically you're asking a question that if they say yes to it, you've already dealt with their objection. So it'd be like me saying, like, Well, I told this guy you walked through my model home, and I said, I forget his name now, but Hey, Tim, if if this house meets into every one of your needs, and if budget is not an issue, is there any reason why we couldn't move ahead and design it and build you a home. And he that was my first time, like practicing a trial closed question in a real life setting, like building a home. And he literally said, that's a trial closed question. And I was like, dear. I was like, oh. And he goes, and I love it. And he was a, he was a used car salesman from Texas, and he was like, my best buddy, but he goes, but I'm not gonna build with you, because I live in Texas. But he goes, I love he goes, I love the trial. Close question, yeah, people love it. I
Brien Gearin 04:45
use that all the time. And before I even knew what that was, a handful of years ago, I was doing it, maybe I learned from someone, or one of my mentors, said it's a great, great way to get more closes. And it's absolutely true, because I'll ask them towards the end. And I, you know, I. Doing this eight years now. I've been selling my own stuff for eight years. I know when somebody is a great fit, and I know when they are going to say yes or no before the call is over. And I always end with a question of, if a Are you ready to sign right now? But be the trial close of, do you see any reason why we wouldn't be able to work together on this project. And the answer is almost always no, and then it's just like, Okay, you said it right there. You know, I've got the invoice ready for you and the documents ready to go. So, yeah, I use that all the time. But into your point about the storytelling and sales, and I always say that my I used to have a massive fear of sales, like, I would be super awkward. I would be worried about asking for the clothes, about just asking for the money, right? Asking for the business. I was terrible at it. But then when I started realizing that sales is nothing more than conversations and hearing what the issues are that the person you're talking to hearing what their problems are, and then, if you have the solution, offer them the solution, and educate them on how your solution works. And it's like, when I made that, it clicked in my head probably four years ago. I'm like, this is all. This is just conversations. It's not sales, but you weave in your store, you weave in your personality. You're making friends, and you happen to be able to do business with these friends, and that that was a huge difference for me. And I, some people, like to call it story selling. I like that too. You know, it's funny,
Mark D. Williams 06:20
even just sharing that story, even though I know it, I it, I haven't actually been practicing that in a while, and I actually makes me want to try it again. I was recently through our curious builder collectives. I was talking to another builder, and we were informing what our next topics were going to be for next year, for discussion. And shout out to Nate Carlson from Highmark. He goes, Well in sales, he goes, I ask for a referral. And I'm like, okay, great. Lots of people ask for referral. He goes, I ask for a referral six times before they're done with the house. And I was like, he was so metric with it. And I'm like, Tell me more. And it was genius. So I'll just for illustration for the builders out there. It was like, I usually do a 15 minute phone call, Discovery phone call. If they call me or email me, I'll do a 15 call first, then we do a one hour meeting in person, and then if they don't sign a design retainer, like we're obviously not a fit So, but anyway, his point to kind of set the stage is like, that would be me in the first 15 minute phone call. You call me and say, Hey, Mark, I'm interested in remodeling my house. At the end of that call, I'd be like, Brian, we had a great conversation, whether we set up a meeting or not. We even if we're not a good fit. He asks for a referral, which I think is genius. He'll say, Brian, I really enjoyed our conversation today. Do Is there anyone else you know that is also considering remodeling or building a new home that you could introduce me to? And so they'll say yes or no. Then they then you that I schedule that meeting with you. You come in for the one hour. Let's say it's a yes. You come in for the one hour. We're having our one hour intro, whether you sign a design routine or not. Number two, Hey, Brian, we had a great conversation. Really looking forward to design with you, or we're not a good fit. But do you know anyone else that is looking to design a home? And he keeps doing that, and I'm like, That is such it's so easy, but I've never thought to do it, and it's so effective. He's, you wouldn't believe at how effective it is. And so I've just, like, can't wait to try it. I'm
Brien Gearin 08:07
gonna have to do that now too. That's genius, because that's just, that's biz dev always. I love that. I haven't heard of that. I
Mark D. Williams 08:15
know I'm enamored with it. I can't stop repeating it. Yeah,
Brien Gearin 08:17
but it makes sense. Like, the best type of lead you can get is a hot one from somebody who, even if they didn't do business with you, but they decided they like you, they're probably going to refer somebody people who like to reciprocate.
Mark D. Williams 08:29
And a large portion of our audience are builders and remodelers and Ellie, let's just say, a custom home builder like myself. It's I've never thought about it until recently. It's frustrating to think of how much time and effort it takes for me to acquire a single client, and not that I won't I've been building for 20 years. I've certainly had repeat clients. But it's not like repeat clients, like you would have it in a digital agency, or repeat clients buying hydro flasks or Lacroix or restaurants or any other thing that you buy a lot of on quantity of building a custom home is a luxury product that probably happens once, maybe twice in your lifetime, and so we spend so much time and money to acquire that one. So we have this great client. They had a great experience, but it's hard to it's not like they're I'm not saying that sometimes we don't build for their family and long term, and we do, but what I really need to focus on personally as a builder is harnessing that referral power in a better way, of continually asking them for referrals in a in an organic, nice way, not just like, hey guys, I need some work. What can you drum up for me? But there's got to be something in it for them, whether it's referral program, but they're already your super fans. Like, give them a mouthpiece, give them a way to talk about you. And so we're developing sort of a client experience stepping stone based on the first phone call till 10 years after they've been with us, like, how many touch points? How often are we reaching out to them? And I'm ashamed to say that I didn't think of this earlier in my career. I'm only thinking about it now. Yeah, and so I
Brien Gearin 09:56
love that. I love that reminds me of a story when I was a kid, my dad bought an. Oldsmobile intrigue. This must have been year 2000 maybe 2001 and I would, I always did everything with my dad. I was one boy amongst two sisters. So it's me and my dad. We were hanging out. He would always, he'd take me to all every time he was shopping for this car. We'd go to all the dealerships, and he ended up going back and back to Oldsmobile. And there's this old guy named Bob Carlisle, old, you know, stout little guy, bug eyes, Googly hair, been doing it for 55 years, and he's to this day, still the best salesman that I've encountered, at least one of the best that I've encountered. I must have been 10 years old then, and I remember this guy, because not only was he super polite, he was a very nice guy. He found the right car for my dad. He like spent hours with my dad. My dad is like me. He'll talk forever. So we would spend two hours, three hours in the dealership, and he'd get all the information from my dad to put him in just the right car for him. But the most important thing I realize is that every six months for the next 10 years until, God forbid, the the poor guy probably croaked, but he would call my dad on a six month calendar, and he would say, Hey, Mike, I'm just checking in see how the Oldsmobile is running. We're really glad that we were able to help you out. Is there anything we can do for you? And I'm sure he asked for a referral every time. I just remember that, because I we used to have those old phones with the caller ID on it, and I'd see it says Columbia Oldsmobile, like dad Bob's calling again. And it always sticks with me, because it that's the way that. Like, it's such low hanging fruit, and nobody does it that. And like, thank you notes, right? Just handwritten. Thank you
Mark D. Williams 11:27
notes. It's Oh, funny that you say that. So one of I just spoke about this recently on a podcast. I think one of my Thursday Q and A's some of my goals for moving forward, and one of them is to bring back something I used to do on Thank you Thursdays. I used to do a social media post, and it really started getting in the way of some of our marketing efforts and what we were doing. And anyway, so I used to write two handwritten notes, and I haven't done it now in a few years, and I kind of miss it. And mainly it was spurred because someone wrote me a handwritten note. And in the day and age that we're in it, and obviously you're in digital media, so we'll talk about that at some point. But you know, it's something or, I think it's anytime you do something different than what the rest of the crowd does, that stands out. So whatever's different. And now handwritten notes are not normal, and so now they're very effective, and maybe they're always were, it's hard to say, but, like, I just happened to stop by and talk with an architect, and he spent like, two hours, actually, a hilarious guy, really cool stories too. Shout out to him. But I just, you know, today was Thursday when we're recording this. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna write him. So this year, anyway, every Thursday I have it on my calendar to write two thank you notes. And so I sent him, actually sent him a curious builder podcast shirt he was on, he was on the podcast last year. So I'm like, I better give him some swag too. And but anyway, there's something about that I think that personal touch, I'm really intrigued about hospitality. Like last year, my favorite book was unreasonable hospitality. Have
Brien Gearin 12:45
you read that? I have not. But that sounds very to me, because I'm all I'm telling
Mark D. Williams 12:49
you, put that on your top list. That was my favorite book of the whole year. And, well, everyone on the podcast has heard me talk about 800 times, so I won't do it again, but it's read it. It is, it is one of my recommendations. Well, well, I guess we'll just go right now. Usually I save this for save this for the end. What's been a in 24 Did you have a favorite book or favorite kind of line of thinking or mantra that really sort of seemed to define your 24
Brien Gearin 13:12
Yeah, for me, it was spurred from a book. Ironically, 10x is easier than 2x the Dan Sullivan book. I read a bunch of them last I got back into book reading, which I had been very lax on for many years. And I, my wife had me discover audio books, so I got, I finally got back into it. But yeah, that was a big one for
Mark D. Williams 13:28
me. Do you do that? Well, what were the key takeaways that one? I
Brien Gearin 13:32
mean, that one was, it was even more so just the mindset shift of it, like, you know, a business trying to, everyone wants to 2x right? Like, 2x 2x 2x but for all the the strategies and things that you need to implement, why wouldn't you have 10x on the brain? And it was just, it was fascinating to me, everything that they laid out that actually proved that shooting for 10x is actually easier than 2x I know sounding cliche like that, but it's well, it was crazy to me. I You.
Mark D. Williams 14:06
This episode is brought to you by Pella Northland. For 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. You know, we use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee. It's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story, you can listen to episode one, Ryan interview Peter and Ed from Pelin Northland about their journey into the pellet ownership. I'm sort of obsessed, just because I think the world's really the word is really cool. Are you familiar with the principle force multiplier? Yeah, yeah. It just sounds really cool. It sounds like, it sounds really bad ass, like you're a Navy SEAL. And like, yeah, exactly. It sounds super cool, but that's ultimately what 10x is, right? 2x is like, double, but 10x Oh, yeah, that's a force multiplier. From a standpoint of marketing, is like, who can you align yourself collaborate with? Who can you partner with? And I feel like, regardless of what your career is, in my case, in the audience is mostly builders. I feel like we're seeing more and more people collaborate in different ways, mainly from a brand deals like today, I was just on the phone talking to a manufacturer, and we're building our first spec home, our model home for sale, and we're designing an entire brand around it. I'm so excited about this, and I'm reaching out to brands to say, and I wouldn't have even known how to do this before I had the podcast, because anyway, learning, trying something new, sort of opens up doors. So in other words, it's a force multiplier for my building company. So I approached this company and said, Would you give me all the product? And the other thing I would say is, don't think you shouldn't ask for the stars. You might get the moon, and if they give you the stars, wow. So I went to this company who I've been using for quite some time, and I said, Could I would this is what I'm doing. I'm trying to get the house to be a net zero house. I'm going to do a ton of marketing around it. I've done this complete brand all about it. And I said, would you provide all the material at no cost? And they said, Yes, we'd be happy to do it. I was just like, it's a big number. We're talking like, I actually even, don't even know yet, 30, 40,000 like, it's a lot. And had I not asked? I didn't even think to ask. And I think the reason I'm bringing it up is, I think for people out there, regardless of your industry, and it has to be genuine, there has to be something in it for them too. And sometimes if you have a bigger profile, or if you're but honestly, even if you don't, so many of these companies are allocating dollars and money in trade because they want their product out there. And if there's a way to get that messaging out there, and you're part of it. It can be a win. Win like this is gonna be a huge win for them. And yes, that's a big dollar amount, so, but it's, it's a big win for both of us. And I love the idea that you can create Win Win scenarios. Oh
Brien Gearin 16:51
yeah, I love that. That's a fantastic example of that as well. Where it's you probably didn't, you certainly didn't expect them to give it to you pro bono. But the, I'm sure they realize the outsized possibility of benefit for them if they provide value up front, and value will come back to you in some sort of fashion, probably in spades, but it's just matter being able to put it
Mark D. Williams 17:11
out there. And I think the disappointing thing is, when people say no, it doesn't have to be anything that big, and that's a pretty big one, but let's say it's something smaller, it's actually frustrating. I found that companies that you've used for decades, and there's a new company that wants to do something with you, and not just because they want to get in with you, got to be a little careful there, that if someone's just going to just try to get in the door, but I'm not saying don't completely ignore it either, because maybe it's you're going to learn something you don't know. But I do it's frustrating. If you get some old heads that are saying, business, it's status quo. We're not changing like you have to stay abreast of what's happening at the times, and trade and CO marketing is really what where we're at and where the future is and history is full of examples of people that don't innovate and change. The ones that come to mind are like palm pilot and Blackberry. And I was never a corporate America, but they like, I think they have a 97% market share, and they went out of business for them three years because they didn't innovate. I don't know enough about their backstory to comment beyond that, but I think for all of us to continue to evolve, continue to train or sorry to to train ourselves to learn new things, I just think, plus, it, frankly, it's just fun. It's exciting, like you didn't get into this business to just clock in and clock out, because you wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you did that exactly. And
Brien Gearin 18:20
it's funny, you mentioned, I just had a conversation with a prospective client, actually, that we're signing them up tomorrow, but we had this discussion on it was her business had gotten a little stale. They had some issues with their website. The calls were down, competition was up, things like that. But part of our conversation revolved around, in business these days, you have to adapt or die, right? Like you have to be open to change, and you have to be at least open to understanding what's around you, especially in terms of the digital realm. And it used to be, you could probably get away with that four or five years, I don't know, 234, or five years without really adapting and still have your business and still do all right? But these days it's every three to six months, something is new, something is out there that's going to affect your bottom line in some manner, and if you don't stay up to date on it, or at least pay the people who will keep you up to date on these things and do it for you, and man, the business landscape is going to get very tough for those businesses, and that's why the boomers are retiring. There's 10,000 new businesses that are going 10,000 businesses that are either going out of business or going unsold, because boomers are retiring. That's one of
Mark D. Williams 19:21
the main things I wanted to talk to you about, was I came on your podcast talk about to the trades, and talk about young kids getting into the trades and the attrition rate, and how do we get more people into the trades? Oddly enough, after this, I'm actually doing a double interview today, after you, after this interview, I've got a young, 16 year old kid coming in who started a sweatshirt company in high school. He had nothing to do with building. But I'm like, I gotta meet this kid. He reached out to me. He was in the Star Tribune, our local in our Minneapolis paper. And I'm like, Okay, you're 16 years old. I'm bringing me on. We got to talk about this. This is amazing, because I don't it's the entrepreneurial spirit and fire, regardless of what you do, that I really want to encourage, and I want to put gasoline on this kid's flames. Yeah, and just and get other people. People excited, and how cool. I think that's what's fun about entrepreneurship, is that we love to see success stories. Like, I don't feel I should only speak for myself, but I don't feel jealous when I see other people do really well. I feel inspired, and I love seeing other there's so much room in the space. Like, it's not to get a little woo, woo. It's like that I have little kids, and they like to say who their best friend is, or who they love the most. And I'm like, Guys, we don't need to do best friends because, or, like, love three kids and amaze my oldest. I'm like, made just because I love you. Does not actually take away from the love that I have for Simon. In fact, if anything, the love that I have for you, it's exponential. It actually increases the more that I love. Of course, I think player, thank you. There we go. I knew we had I'd love to have another host on there. They get it. Look at you a force multiplier of love. That's the ultimate, you know, but that's true of entrepreneurship. When you see more and more businesses succeed, it creates more and more interest, and more and more businesses succeed, because it is really hard, and I don't know the metrics offhand, like I read something the other day, actually, builder trend just had it on. They had their 250th podcast episode. And I think it was like only 2% of all podcasts make it 250 episodes, or whatever it is. I don't know where a million dollar, million millionaire University is at. I think we're at, we're just over 100 maybe 150 Yeah. Mu,
Brien Gearin 21:17
we crossed 200 last year. We're at 223, right now?
Mark D. Williams 21:21
Yeah. So you're already in that. Let's call it top 5% I mean, and granted, it's a fairly new space, too. But anyway, no, I love that. Yeah. What is your thoughts on? So what? We'll dive in a little bit on your specific company. People are probably wondering, like, what are they talking about? Yeah. So from a digital marketing standpoint, we're talking about, we just talked about a lot of old fashioned ways to market, but you're a digital marketing company, and I was just reading off the stuff on your website, and so pretend you're a new entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs out there listening to this are gonna It's like one of those things, like you didn't realize you're doing all these things, or maybe you didn't do any of them. But like, how many of so digital marketing you got? Website, digital marketing, social media, pay per click, Google, Google profile, email content, sorry, email marketing, content marketing, e commerce, marketing, which I don't even know what that is, blogging. And now we got, we definitely got to talk about Google Maps. So that's 11, nine or 10 or 11 things that. And here's the funny thing, most businesses think that they don't need help. They think they can do this all themselves, which is crazy, myself included. We'll talk about myself as a case study at some point. But why don't you tell us a little bit about that's just a lot of things. Yeah, I don't even know where to start with this. It's just a your industry is massive, like, when Fast forward 20 years ago, what was digital how fast has it evolved, and where is it at right now, in terms of what is digital marketing? Because a lot of people, honestly, just, they just assume digital marketing social media, like, it's all, especially the older generation, like, it's all the same thing, but it's so diverse, actually,
Brien Gearin 22:49
yeah. So to answer your one question there, how quickly this has grown? It spreads so fast, if you just look at the advent of AI, so at about this time last year, or maybe it was slightly later or earlier than that, but around this time last year, aI had burst on the scene, and then people, especially in the marketing and business space, were freaking out, right? What was this going to do? Is it's going to take over. We're going to have like killer robots that destroy all our businesses and our jobs, blah, blah, blah, everybody freaked out. And in just a year's time, it's been so fine tuned that now AI is a massive part of my business. It is a big part of my business as it relates to Google business profiles, which we'll get into in a bit. So yes, it has rapidly evolved, and in the last 20 years, 20 years ago, Google Ads was the only thing really like you had websites and you had Google ads, that was your only way to digitally advertise in any meaningful fashion nowadays, you're right there. Our industry is huge. There are so many avenues, different ways for you to market your business in the digital realm, and it is really wildly overwhelming, like if, even as a digital marketing company owner, it can overwhelm me, which is why one of my my go to things in my business is, let's simplify it based on what your business needs. And over eight some years doing this, we've gotten to a point where there's five main areas that the majority of the businesses we serve which are typically in the trades. But we also have businesses that are we have caterers, we have dog trainers, we have boat rental companies. We have just different small I would label them small businesses anywhere from that 1 million to 10 million in revenue range and so many different avenues that you just you have to have a simplified game plan, right? Like Bill Belichick, like their playbook wasn't crazy, it was just simple and it worked. So yes, for business owners, the overwhelm is real. And unfortunately, not unlike many other industries, there's a lot of snake oil salesmen. There's a lot of people who hold themselves out to be marketers and to be, you know, knowledgeable in the space, and they really just aren't. They're just trying to turn a buck and take advantage of somebody. So that is rampant in our industry, just like it is in many others. But yeah, so that it's a lot, and if you look at my website, we. Do offer a lot, but we have a core of what the majority of our clients utilize, and that is the web development, Google business, Profile Management, email newsletter marketing, Google Pay Per Click ads and Facebook ads, and occasionally we have customers that like to delve into direct mail, which we do use software and AI for that as well. Yes, it's there's a lot that goes to it. But that doesn't mean that a single business needs to have all these millions of avenues working for them. If you can knock it out of the park with a simple system, you don't need the other stuff.
Mark D. Williams 25:33
So a lot of places we could go there, I guess. Let's start with two one is, let's talk about the prevalence of Google Maps and why. I've heard a few things as far as rumors, that a lot of business owners, they go and claim their Google profile, which already, if you do that, you're already probably in the hot type percentages, because a lot of people just simply don't, yep. But obviously, Google is a massive search engine. We do a lot of work with Pinterest, with our blogger, and I had no idea behind Google. Pinterest is the second largest search engine optimizer on the web. It's, I'm like, Whoa, it's amazing. And so there's places that you don't think you're gonna get web traffic from, because you just maybe, like, I'm not a big Pinterest user myself, but a lot of our clients are, because that's a lot of the home space. So I imagine the demographics are largely women, would be my guess. Like, I look at Instagram, one of the reasons why I'm on LinkedIn actually, was Brad Levitt, and he had recommended, because I didn't even I thought LinkedIn was for professionals. I guess I'm a professional. I don't consider myself one. It's more professionals like suit and tie corporate America, yeah, yeah. Like, that's where you interview people, and you put your resume out there, and you talk about whatever, and which I guess we talk about on podcast too. But anyways, he gave me a directive. He said, post every day on LinkedIn for two years and let me know. And then just became a habit. I just do it. And I'm amazed at what, uh, what a playground that place is, and it's actually really enjoyable and fun. But where I was going with this is, oh, like Instagram. So like Instagram, if I look at my metrics, being a builder, it's like 70% women, 30% men. But I don't know the statistics on this, but I imagine LinkedIn is probably inverted, and the idea is, like, a lot of our clientele, especially the owners, aren't on Instagram, maybe they're empty nesters. And so it's like, how am I reaching them? And so it's like, different buckets for different people. And I bring that up by saying, like, why are Google Maps so important to your business? And I'll give you the space to expound on that, because I think a lot of people are, like, of all the things you said, that's the last one I would probably consider, like, I really need to spend a lot of time making sure my Google Map and Google profile is like, robust, like, I have a great website, I have a good Instagram. Why do I need to care about my Google profile?
Brien Gearin 27:30
Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny, I actually wrote an email on this to my email list yesterday. But I'll start by saying, when you say Google Maps and Google business profile, one in the same thing just goes by Google business profile. So your Google business profile is a it's essentially what what used to be the Yellow Pages. For those of us who remember the yellow pages, I am fortunately old enough to remember that it is what your new listing is in the digital space and on Google the world's largest search engine, right? So I always say it's God's gift to small businesses and to marketers, because it is free from Google, they do not charge you to have this. They make their money through their PPC in 10 other million ways, right? But your Google business profile is free to you, and it is what when you are on Google Maps. Like I use Google Maps all the time getting around, but especially if we're in a city, or even in my town, I'll forget the restaurants that are nearby. I'll hop on Google Maps, and I'll click the restaurants button and pick the area I want to be in, and I will see all the listings for the different restaurants. It helps me choose which restaurant to go to, and then it helps me get there. I just plug it in and take the directions. But it's the same thing for your for your listing on search. So when you search, use home builders near me, and you're located your IPS in Minneapolis, your Google business profile is now even starting to be weighted heavier than the SEO on your website. So Google business profile is a massive local SEO play. It is not just a free listing where, sure my hours are there, and some people left some reviews, and I don't even care about it. I don't touch it. That's the majority of business owners. I don't care about it. It's just there. I don't have no clue how valuable it is. If you've
Mark D. Williams 29:07
even selected, I bet you've even owned it. I bet there's a huge people that don't even have that's just nothing,
Brien Gearin 29:11
right, correct? Yeah, we have a new client coming aboard who they have not even claimed their profile, like it's rampant, right? There's, I think these days, a lot of people know it and they have it. It's just they claimed it seven years ago when they started their business, and they just haven't touched it since. But it is a massive, massive missed opportunity for essentially free inbound leads. If you're willing to put the work into maintaining your profile correctly, there is a whole lot that goes into it, but the first and foremost, it's weighted to your five star reviews. So when people are always gung ho about getting five star reviews, get them on your Google business profile. It's fine to get them on Angie's or home advisor or Yelp or wherever, but prioritize Google business profile and that the other ones fall in as they may, because when Google exists for people to come to them to search. Search, Google will not make their ad revenue dollars if people come to Google they search something, they get served up a bunch of irrelevant results. That makes me not want to go to Google as my search engine. So Google's algorithms, over the years, have become so sophisticated that they can send me to local businesses with without a shadow of doubt that the businesses they recommend to me are going to solve my problem. So if I'm searching home home builder Minneapolis, Google is going to go to their Rolodex in Minneapolis and say, All right, based on where this search is searching, first thing they're going to check is your profile. Is your profile looking really good? And what do I mean by really good looking profile? So your five star reviews, lots of them, and they're all replied to. Do you have images? Are they added consistently? Do you put alt tags on your images? Do you have posts on your profile? There's a posting section kind of like it looks like a social media post that basically, this is a way for you to signal to Google that you're alive and well, and it reiterates to Google who you are, where you are and what you do. That is what matters the most when the Google crawlers are crawling your profile and crawling your website, if they can conceivably understand exactly what you do really easily, then they are far more likely to send relevant searchers to your profile, same with your website. And the whole point behind a profile being managed to the gills is that you get in what's called the top three of the map pack, the M, A, P, P, A, C, K. So when you search whether it's on mobile or on desktop, if you search Minneapolis home builder, there's if it's a if Google deems it to be a local business search, you're going to get, usually anywhere from one to four paid ad results. And then before the folds are above the fold, before you have to scroll, you're going to see a Google map and then three results, also with a possible sponsored result in there. Those top three results are showing up there because they are the highest ranking profiles, meaning they have the most reviews, most photos they have, they use, they use, have the best utilization of keywords in their posts. And Google is now deeming that out of these three results, we think you'll have a good experience with these people. That's where you want to be, and that is decided mostly by your profile, secondarily your website. So
Mark D. Williams 32:12
a few questions on the post, how often do you have to post for you to be alive and well, is it once a month? Once a week? Like Instagram, it's either weekly or maybe three times for a very active company, website, if it's a blog, you may be updating the blog once a week, or the website might be like a home builder space, so you're updating the website every time you have a new home build, which might not be a lot, the blogs obviously can fill in for that, and yeah, sale page and things like that, yeah, how many? How often is the right amount? I'm sure more is better, but what's a decent you'd be
Brien Gearin 32:42
surprised. So we posted a two times, two times, or two to three times per week clip. So essentially, it boils down to the Google crawlers don't crawl your profile every single day, just like they don't crawl your website every single day. It might be every week. It might be every other week, every two weeks, but it's not every single day. So posting every single day is actually kind of not good to do, because recently, Google removed the ability for all your posts to be kept on the profile. So I think it's either after seven or 14 days your posts fall off so they only keep like your your Oh, wow. Seven to 14 days post. So quicksand,
Mark D. Williams 33:21
what have you done for me lately? Exactly,
Brien Gearin 33:23
exactly, yeah, like quicksand, like or like baseball. What have you done for me lately? Right? So it doesn't make sense to take the time or to automate your posts every single day, but if you're at a two to three times per week clip, and you're mixing in a couple offers here and there, that's what Google likes to see to say that, okay, these guys are alive and well. But also, here's a huge missed opportunity for people who who maybe do post on Google on your profile. The biggest missed opportunity is these posts allow up to 1500 characters. Now, when you're searching on Google, and maybe your listeners, if you've done a search on Google, especially on mobile. I mean, like 94% of all searches are done on mobile. You find a profile of a business that that can solve a problem that you have, you might flip through it a little bit half the time, probably more than half the time, people aren't even getting to the posting section. And if they are, they're probably not even reading your posts. That is totally fine, because you know what the posting section is. There is for you to signal to Google who you are, where you are, and what you do on a repeated basis. So these posts, you can load them up with text up to 1500 characters. So we average anywhere from 800 to probably 1100 that's,
Mark D. Williams 34:32
oh, that's how you're leveraging AI you're having AI write a 1500 word post to put, or, sorry, a description, or whatever you're having to do, is that, right? That's
Brien Gearin 34:43
part of it. There's so much that our AI does for our profiles. I can go on that, but yes, that's one of the big things. Because what's the most annoying thing for business owners of the last 1015, years is I gotta post on Facebook, I gotta post on Instagram. I gotta figure out the content. I gotta sit down and write this. Out, right? AI is a big help for this, but it's the one thing that a lot of businesses don't get done, especially if they haven't gotten to the point where they're delegating to a team member or social media content person, anything like that, and it just the ball gets dropped, right? You might post once a month, or you maybe you post for two months and then you fall off for six months, right? This solves that right when you have aI that's helping you do this, but the AI is writing, and it's learning from hundreds of millions of data points from other profiles and from other profiles in your industry, and from the way we train the AI so that it understands the type of keywords that you need to have, and it cross references. Is cross references, it to the the searches that are leading people to your profile, to include those keywords, and include those keyword geographic keywords as well. And it builds out these awesome posts. And some people might think, AI like it's just going to write these crappy posts. It's going to sound like keyword click or stuffing and all this. No, it's not. It is not like it is readable to the human. It is not offensive. If you're an actual possible customer reading these they're actually helpful, but the main point of these posts is signaling to Google, yet again, who you are, where you are, and what you do.
Mark D. Williams 36:09
Are these posts? Can they be video, or should they be video, or they should, but just a photo is fine. They
Brien Gearin 36:14
can be video. Photo is static. Photo is totally fine. If you're if you're a business that's really big into video, that's great, but make sure you have that caption and make sure that you're utilizing a lot of the character space and including your key search terms. And a quick way to do that, if you go into your Google business profile, they have their own little analytics dashboard. It's a small one, but it'll have the top X amount of keyword searches like real world, real world searches that led people to your profile. Incorporate those search terms, the ones that especially fit for your business. Incorporate those into your post, incorporate those into the description, incorporate those into your alt tags on your images, which we haven't even gotten into, but incorporate those into the services you list out in the descriptions that are in there. That's another one people don't even know about. I guarantee you, nine and a half out of 10 business owners have no idea that a, you can put a service on put your services on there, but B, there's at least 10 or 15 different ways you can describe a single service, and Google has it readily available as one of its 1000s of options for services offered. The general public is not going to see this service page. But when you say, we do a bathroom remodeling, we also remodel bathrooms and bathroom fixture upgrades and 10 different ways to describe Bathroom Remodeling now, and you put a description in there that has that's keyword rich now, Google has 10 different ways to perfectly understand that you guys are the place to go for bathroom remodels. And it's just another back end part of the Google business profile that the majority of people have no idea even exists. This
Mark D. Williams 37:42
is just a funny thought. I don't know if this is this. I was thinking, Could you write in like, opposite keywords, like, for instance, let's say you're a luxury provider. Let's say you are. I'm just thinking, let's say you're a Ferrari dealer. And could you put like your keywords could be like, not crappy cards, not Junkers, not you're like, basically, so that Google would be trained like, Hey, I'm not sending you anyone that has their terrible, terrible taste, but I'm only sending people that are like, the creme de la creme. It was just more of like, does inverse logic work? Or is that too weird?
Brien Gearin 38:10
Not. That's a little too deep for Google business profile in terms of the service listings, however, that would be probably more useful for negative keywords in Google ads. I guess that would be more so of we just don't want searchers who search this word or this phrase. We don't
Mark D. Williams 38:24
want to like, for instance, I know lots of home builders that are home builders that don't want remodeling. So you would obviously not have, you would not pick any keywords for, let's say, remodeling, correct. But could you put like, hashtag, not remodeling? No remodels, no bathrooms, no. You know, like, basically, if you didn't want to take any small projects, could you somehow identify wording so that all the leads you did get were all new homes, big homes, you know, if that I don't know whatever your business was.
Brien Gearin 38:50
So that way, here's how that works. There's not a technical way to, like, kind of do like on in Google every filter, it's almost like a filter, right? So in Google ads, you can filter negative keywords, so you don't show for certain if you only want to show for new home build, but not remodeling. You can negative keyword remodeling. However Google business profile, you can't do that technically, but the way to ensure that you are showing for search results for the phrases and terms that you want to show for, that's where you consistently use your the keywords you want to rank for. You use them in your posts, you use them in your description, you use them in your alt tags, you use them in your service descriptions on the back end of your profile. That way Google really understands, like, okay, these guys are all about new home builds, like, there's no mention of remodeling anywhere. Google profile is very unlikely to rank you for relevant keywords that have to do with remodeling. I'm
Mark D. Williams 39:39
just there's the goofy dad side of me is kicking in right now. I'm thinking of like, how far to go with this, because now, with AI, it could populate it so well. But did you ever see the movie? V is for Vendetta? No, I remember the title. There's that anyway. There's one scene where he does a whole five minute speech, and he only uses words that start with V. So the whole thing is V based. Oh, actually, an incredible scene. I'll tell you what. I'll tell. See after. It's worth watching anyway. Where I was going with this is, like, could you find out what your key word is? And, like, have, have AI, like, write a lyric or a poem, or, like, some ridiculous like, because you're nobody's reading this, what's, what's prevent someone from saying for, oh, actually, here's a more practical, not dumb way. Like, let's say, who no new home, Minneapolis or new home Excelsior, where I am at, could I just take new home Excelsior and just repeat it 1500 times, or my max word count? Or is that, yeah, because you're saying that nobody will read these posts, it's only for the crawlers. So couldn't I just take, couldn't I just take 1500 characters of new house Excelsior, new house excellence or new house Excelsior under
Brien Gearin 40:38
nope, nope. Because that that's See, that's what, probably 1010, 1215, years ago, that's what people would do with organic website SEO, is they would, they would go so far as having blocks of text that are on a white background with white font, and it would just be a massive list of repeated keywords. So when the Google crawlers, before they were that smart, they would see this website, and they can't read color, and they can't read images, but they can read text. So it would read keyword, keyword, keyword. But to me, the end user, it's just white text on white background, we would never see it. Google cracked down on that years ago, and now the these algorithms are so smart that there's no there's no way you can get away with keyword stuffing outwardly that would provide a bad user experience without Google catching it. So to answer that question is, no, you can't just, you can't just go on there. And a, for the for the people who do see it, that would look really bad. But B, Google would, they would just knock your way down. I mean, just, yeah, she would get knocked down.
Mark D. Williams 41:37
I'm 10 years my idea is 10 years old. I like this. Well, that's okay. I only read it at 12 year old level, so it's perfect. This episode is brought to you by adaptive. For over two years now, I've been using adaptive. It's an incredible game changer. It's AI technology based. It helps you with Bill Pay and as a builder, there's very few things that anger our subs more than not being paid on time. Well, those days are gone. Not only do you know exactly where you are, but you can pay people through your ACH channels, making draws extremely quick with one click of a button, which used to take hours, my office staff is now able to generate a draw to the bank or to the client in literally seconds. The thing that I appreciate the most about adaptive is their ability to keep changing. We've given them three or four feedbacks on things that we need as builders, and within just a few months those they're rolling those things out. This is saving us hours per week and days per month in terms of our efficiency. If you're looking to upgrade your business, I'd highly recommend adaptive. You can reach out to them@adaptive.com or listen to the curious builder podcast episode 15 or episode 80, where we dive into their origin story. Lake society magazine is Minneapolis premier target market boutique lifestyle and design publication. It embodies the unique lifestyles and design of the Minneapolis city lakes neighborhoods from Lake of the isles to Lake Harriet. It showcases the best in local design projects by both premier builders, architects and interior designers in this area. Lake society magazine has the look and feel of a national publication, with glossy covers, high end finishes. It's mailed directly to upper brackets, single family homeowners in the city lakes area, and it's the perfect local coffee table top publication. Subscriptions can also be available through the website, lakesociety magazine.com additionally, publisher and founder, Karen Steckel has over 27 years in a local magazine publishing industry, and has a passion for high end photography and quality graphics. Her commitment to quality visual simplicity and beauty are strongly reflected in her beautiful lake society magazine. Well, let's shift a little bit into I mean, that was really helpful. I think it's really interesting. I made two notes here to go and double check I remember doing a little bit last quarter. And anyway, I have to go back and see I haven't done it probably since. So I'll have to add it to my never ending to do list. Let's talk a little bit about, there's so many things to talk about, I guess. If a you mentioned your key tenants, and we're gonna run out of time before we run out of yeah, we've only got 18 minutes left. My goodness, that went fast. We haven't even talked about your business, which is really what I want to talk about. But this is really just the market, so there's a lot more to go here, just really quick, if you were to, if you were to prioritize the four or five things that people should do, and we won't dive into each one. The five were, what did you say? And maybe the order, chronological order of what you think is important?
Brien Gearin 44:26
Yes. So it can be different for every business, because every business might be in a different financial stage, budgetary industry, geographic area, it can vary, but typically across the board, the order of operations for us is web development. So you have to have a great website, whether it's a starter, one page website that has all the SEO juice that you need, or a full build out where that mainly the biggest difference is the size and the amount of pages that are indexable by Google, as well as back end client portals, things like that. But if your website is your digital. Foundation. If it is a hunk of junk and it's not doing any sort of lead gen for you, you have a problem, because you're probably also not very discoverable on Google. And Google's also where you have a crappy website, I'm not sending my traffic there. So that's number one. Is that foundational website? Number two is the Google business profile. So those are the top two where, if you have a great website. It's functioning well. Google likes it. It's got a great UI. People like it. Now Google's going to send more people there, and then, if you pair that with a great Google business profile that's highly managed, you're getting one five star review a week. You're updating, you're putting those posts on there. Now your chances of being found organically online skyrocket, like you might depending on your business. You might not even have to invest in paid advertising. Because your two basic foundational things are doing so well. So rather than building on a foundation of sand with no profile and a crappy website, build a nice, solid, big old slab of digital foundation and start with those two things. After that, the very first thing we move into is, if it's again, this is where you kind of depends on budget. A lot of clients. Those two first things are a good place to start, and then they grow into Pay Per Click ads or Google ads. But for others, or for most of them, the ones who don't go into the lead gen right away, not most of them, just however, where they are, where they're at in their business. The next most important thing is your retention marketing, and that comes with email newsletters. So this is one of the most overlooked, in my opinion, one of the most overlooked aspects of a marketing, marketing flywheel for a small brick and mortar service based business is the fact that they make no effort, or very little effort, little consistent effort, to stay in contact with the people who already know, like and trust them and or their prospects. The easiest way to stay in contact with these people is either a weekly, bi weekly or a monthly, at a minimum, monthly email newsletter. And it can be easily built out a template you can have start with a message, have a what's new in the business, or recent projects we finished, followed by update from the owner, or whatever you want to populate. There's things we're doing in the community, and then, especially for service providers like such as yourself, having a reminder of your referral program at the bottom or somewhere in your email, featuring it in that newsletter. It just always consistently reminds people that, hey, I use these guys. They were a lot. They were awesome. And, oh, by the way, they'll cut me $100 check for every referral I send them. I'm definitely telling my buddies to go use this lawn care company or this roofer or whatever. And then with email, we also do sequence building. So a lot of times when you get prospects in, whether it's through your website or through paid ads or whatever direction, they need to be greeted in some fashion. And the best way to do that is with email. So the minute somebody drops into your CRM and they're automatically added to your list, they get a anywhere from one to four email sequence over at one to five days or so, and it introduces a company. It thanks them for their inquiry, whatever printed information you need to get across. And then it starts building the know, like and trust through storytelling and emails where it's Mark D Williams custom homes we were founded in 20 years ago. This is what we do. This is what we're about. And use that over a couple emails, and it warms people up to you, right? Guarantee you that'll instantly set you apart from so much of your competition, because very few people care to do it, very few businesses care to do that. So that's the next one in order. And then from there, it's your your paid advertising. So your Google ads, I'm speaking more specifically in the trades areas and home service businesses. But the Google ads, like, if you got to have budget for that, and if you really want to boost your inbound calls and your inbound leads, that's a great, great way to put fuel on the fire. And then after that, still in the realm of paid ads, is Facebook advertising. So Facebook ads are very industry dependent and gold dependent. Not the best place for I shouldn't say it's not the best place for Legion. It's a different place for lead gen, but also it's a great place for brand building. Now, lots of different people and marketers business owners have different opinions on brand building. But if you don't want to spend a lot of money to get your projects, your message, your things, out in front of a lot of people in your area, Facebook ads is a great way to do that. You can also do paid lead gen on there. It's just a someone who's responding to a Facebook ad. They're the tippy tippy tippy top of the funnel. They require a ton of nurturing and quick contact to get them down to where they might become a paying customer, as opposed to Google, I'm problem aware. When I'm searching new home builder, Minneapolis, there's a great chance I'm trying to talk to a home builder about building my house, whereas on Facebook, I might be sitting on my couch, I might be in the market, or I want to consider it, but I'm at so far at the top of the funnel, compared to a Google search, or that's the big difference between the Facebook and Google. So little bonus tip there. But those, that's the playbook that we give to 99% of our customers, our clients, because it's it's the most basic things that a business could need. And some of them need all of it. Some of them want half of it. Some of them want the top part of it. It's whatever. So, so
Mark D. Williams 49:59
let's. Talk about. I mean, obviously, if you're not doing anything, you just heard the top five things to do. So start doing them. I'll use myself as a case study. I'm doing almost all of these things, and I have a couple people that help me, but not why, and I would only because I can speak from first person in this is the reason I'm bringing it up, why it's overwhelming. It's a lot. I mean, I have two people. I have one that I have a person that all they do is write blogs for me and post it we I the blogging and newsletter has delivered the amount of not only content we generate, not only through the curious build, but from Mark Williams Custom Homes is robust. It's not without expense. I'm spending probably 24 to 30,000 a year to have this done. It's really high quality. It speaks it's on brand, and it's commitment in marketing. I guess my question in that is, it took me a long time to believe that, and then, like, when you're in this realm, you're like, Okay, I'd have to do it. Then you start seeing how it's effective, and you're like, Okay, wow, I wait. I can't believe it took me this long to get into it. I guess my question is, I'm doing all of this sort of juggling, and it's a lot like, recently, two people on my team are informing that, that I'm gonna have to find maybe a different spot to do this. You and I are gonna chat after this, actually. But then the second, second question is, what? Let's say? Step one, if you're not doing it, start doing it. Two, let's say you are doing it, but you think you can do it all yourself. And I fall into that quasi category. I'm not personally doing it myself, like I'm handling some of the social media, some of not, I've handled the website, but some of it not. I mean, I imagine I fall in like a lot of builders that are somewhat dangerous in marketing and love it, but they do a lot of it themselves. Why? You know, it's crazy as a home builder for someone to think they can go build a home to the same level that I can build their home. That's why I have a job. Why do so many business owners who are good at their business? You're a good plumber, you're a good plumber, you're a good electrician, you're a good builder, you're a good architect, you're a good designer. Why do they also feel like they have to be a good marketer? Why do they also feel like they have to run it all? And we'll get into like, why you have a job? We probably talked about digital marketing at all, but I assume I'm not alone in saying that. Why is the small entrepreneur so resistant to hiring somebody like you it would make their life so much easier? Is their elevator pitch? Wow, am I wrong? Is it just me? Or this is a very common occurrence where people think they should do it all themselves.
Brien Gearin 52:08
Everybody thinks that way, and I there's a there's many different reasons. One of the biggest ones, and I've had this trouble as an entrepreneur myself, is delegation, right? This is my business. This is my baby. Even if you're a partner, it's a partnership business, it's still that fact of nobody can do this the way I can do it. And the thing is, when it comes to your business, typically, as the business owner, you're right. Nobody can do what you do as good as you can. But in business, and especially nowadays, there are so many moving different moving parts that contribute to your ability to do what you do really well, but also be profitable and make money doing it. And there are two totally different things besides that, trust is a massive one too, right? Like, marketing is not inexpensive. It is expensive to especially if you're doing paid advertising. If you're paying for blogging, you're paying for web maintenance or web build. You're paying for management of your profiles. You're paying for your content. It is very expensive. And as typically a small business, even a $5 million business, everybody has different margins in different industries, and manage their money in different ways. And when you're cutting a check for 1500 2000 3000 4000 5000 $5,000 a month before even ad spend. That can be really scary, unless you're, if, especially if you're maybe you're a $1 million business, or you're 2 million but your margins are pretty thin, or your expenses are really high. It's really understandable when a business owner says, Man, I need to do this. But dang it, like I don't know if I can take that $2,500 hit, plus another 1500 in ad spend. So it totally depends on where the business is, but I think that's probably the number one reason, is the fear of the investment. And it's I always tell prospects. It's not unlike regular monetary investing. You're going to put money in, and the goal is to put $1 in and see how many of his friends come back after your efforts. Right? Hopefully it's 510, 1520, plus. But there's no guarantee of that. And there's no guarantee of it happening quickly right. Now, the big thing about building trust and marketing is a, having a track record, but B, having the trust in that person that them, they and their team have the expertise on hand to handle and troubleshoot what happens in your business. And to be honest with you, that's the other I mean, that's severely lacking, especially in my industry, is just honesty like it's happened to us before. We had, we had a plumbing client a couple months ago, and he came on. He didn't want to do our our system. He just wanted to see if we could tackle Facebook ads. And we launched right before the holiday, or, you know, the months leading into the holidays. And I'll be honest with it did not work out. We did not get the results that we thought we could and that we've gotten in the past. There's a multitude of column reasons that. I don't like to call them excuses, but we launched at a bad time. They didn't want to do Google. They only wanted Facebook. And with the we were selling a high ticket item. It was like $7,000 item, and I kept them abreast of it the entire way and say, hey, look, bud, you know, right after the holidays said we're not going to spend your money anymore, because this isn't working. I do not feel that what we are serving here in the budget that you elected and the that the the market is not in the mood for this. Could it have been our copywriting Sure. Could it have been an offer that the the market didn't like? Could have been because it's a holidays, sure, we don't know 100% but it didn't work. And I had no problem going to him and being like, Hey, boss, this ain't working. I'm not going to burn your money like, I'm not going to sit here and say, let's try this. Let's try this, just to get another months out of you. Absolutely not like, Facebook was not the platform for him, and it's, I think that's, this is a very long winded way of answering your question of you have to have somebody you trust, and you have to be able to take the leap and take that risk and invest the dollars in this. But also, don't be afraid if things aren't going well and you don't feel like it's right for you to be able to pull the plug. So hopefully, hopefully that that answers the question a little bit, but it is we encounter that every, every single day we're talking to a prospective client. One
Mark D. Williams 56:20
of the things that you didn't mention social media. So let's talk specifically. Let's call Instagram or Tiktok, or those platforms that was not in your top five at all, and yet, though that and not that stuff can't be repurposed for the other things that we just talked about. But where do you see? Where do you see that in terms of effectiveness? I feel like I'll let you answer the question, so
Brien Gearin 56:41
are you speaking specifically towards the organic side of social media? Yes. Okay, so the organic side of social media, we will, we avoid. We deal on the paid side. The organic side of social media is another industry all to itself that takes a different mindset. It's a creative mindset that I don't personally have, and it's not one that I'm willing to bring on a teammate to deal with, because we help our clients grow through the system we have, and the Pay Per Click talent, the paid added talent that we have. But that doesn't mean that it's not wildly important for a lot of businesses, you know. And my question is, for businesses that rely heavily on the organic you know, some industries lend itself to more success better than others. But my question is always, what type of ROI Do you glean from your organic efforts? Like, can you prove that X amount of sales came from people who either engaged with you or found you on organic social media?
Mark D. Williams 57:38
And I think I think a big part of it too is like, for instance, good friend of mine, Katie Cath, with Jay cast. She's remodeled her here, and she's got a great social presence. She'd kill her blog. In fact, I model my blog after her, because hers is so good. And she had said that. I mean, like 95% of all of her clients come through social media, which is shocking, because I get, like very few, considering how much effort and resources I put into it, and I asked her now she has a cabinet shop, and she does so she's got a bigger range of offerings than I do, and she can sell to B to B, where I'm everything is B to C for the building company and and where she can be a little bit of both. But one of her comments was, is that when people come through that way, they already know who she is. They're very high. Her closer rate is like through the roof because they've been following her. They know her story that. And so I would say this, that when we do get a client, they I feel like, you know, you have to have some presence of social media, yeah, I'm not saying to not have one. No, right? I understand. I got your services. If I was to do a medicine analogy, your Western medicine, like surgery and data, and then there's the Eastern medicine of Yeah, little more, the jungle healer, yeah, which both work, yeah. My wife to go that point. My wife was a physician, but I definitely see a chiropractor, believe in massage, and do other things at the other day. You're trying to get your head right, or your body, and there's a number of ways to get there. And I think a business is a well rounded, let's call it the health of the business. And there are multiple ways to stay healthy, and some I think you have to know your business. And I didn't give you a ton of time, but this was so interesting that we really just went guns blazing on all things marketing, which I think this episode hopefully, is really helpful. I found it really interesting. Yeah, one of the things I wanted to give you a little space for is you said you'd mentioned, was it eight or 10 years you're not 12 years old. So you didn't just start this. Like, where did you come from? Like, why start a marketing company? Like, what was like, why did you start ricochet?
Brien Gearin 59:24
Yeah, so this is Ricochet. We're in about our eighth year here, and it's a long story, but I'll make it palatable and short here. So I grew up, you know, typical Midwestern kid went to high school, played sports. Sports was my major, right? Like, that was my thing. I was a baseball player and a golfer, and I grew up with the you got to go to college. That's just what happens in my family. You go to college. And I was like, Okay, I'm going to college. Went to college. I had no clue what I wanted to do. You know, I messed around the first year, almost got kicked out, and, you know, didn't pick a major until halfway through sophomore year, when they're like, you have to have a major. You can go home. And I was like, crap. So I was like, well. What am I bad at? Okay, science and math. Let's avoid that. What can I do? Read and Write. Okay, looks like I'm gonna be an English major. So that's how I got through college. Ironically, I did better in college than I did in high school, but I graduated. And again, it was right back at that moment where I'm like, Oh, crap. What do I do? Like, I'm just this dude floating in this in space right now. So my dad's like, go get into sales. I took a job in Cleveland, phone call sales. It was awful. Lasted six months, showed myself the door when they pulled this exhausted I see the door. Telecom expense management, yeah. So I was setting meetings for outside reps in the state of Wisconsin. And it was funny, because probably of all the states I could call Wisconsin was one of the nicest. Probably Minnesota is the same way, you know, the Upper Midwest just niceties, and there's so many just nice little ladies we call and I'd be like, Oh, hey. You know, it looks like your ad spend, your spend is a little bit too low for us. We were there. Our team was like, auditors. I was setting these meetings for these auditors, and I just, I made one sale. My $50 commission got revoked two months later, when they know showed the meeting. So that's how good I was in sales.
Mark D. Williams 1:01:02
That's a that's a brutal what would be to a follow through, man, it's a brutal
Brien Gearin 1:01:05
It was awful. It was awful. So I found my way out of that. I had two weeks before I ran out of money. Would have had to move back home. I was living in Cleveland at the time, and I got I made a list of what am I good at, and what do I like doing? And Lawn Care popped in there when I was growing up. I didn't know I was an entrepreneur already. I bought my neighbors, John Deere, and I mowed lawns from fifth grade through high school, and a little bit during the summer in college. And I said, there's gotta be something in lawn care. I took a $9 an hour job spreading fertilizer as a lawn care technician, but the owner of this company was an entrepreneur, and he said, he said, you're 23 huh? I said, Yeah. He says, you're pretty young. Do you have any interest in entrepreneurship? And I was like, Yeah, I've always, I always have. I've just never thought I was allowed to do it right. Like, who did I need permission from? But I never knew I had it. And he said, I'm always looking for people to come into this job, learn it from the ground up, and possibly be a branch owner in a different city. You're from Cincinnati, right? Yeah. Do you want to live there? And I was like, Yeah, I probably do. And he says, Once you and your wife have kids, you're going to want to live back home. So this might be for you. So for two years, I learned from this guy and his branch manager in Columbus. When we moved the second year for my wife's job and I was going to open a branch of this company, I was going to be an entrepreneur. I was going to be a part owner, it fell through. We were doing organic lawn care. Doesn't work. Didn't like it. I did a ton of studying with the some of the guys at Ohio State turf school about how when you do the right stuff, the synthetics correctly, it's okay. It's not environmentally like, horrible anyway. So from there I was again, back at square one, no job. We we moved to Indianapolis with my wife's job. She got kind of back into the VA system. She's a dietitian at the VA hospital, and wanted to get back there. That's where she did her residency. And I was like, Okay, what do I do now? I know I want to be an entrepreneur. Maybe now's the time, but we had like, $2,000 to our name, right? Like, just broke as a joke, and at the time, my father in law needed help with his small business. He's like, I need someone to build me a catalog. You're a millennial, you do computers, right? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, you know Adobe? And I'm like, Yeah, sure. So I taught myself Adobe InDesign, and I built him a catalog, and then he said, I kind of need help with sales too. Do you want to do trade shows with me? I was like, Sure. So for three years I worked for my father in law, and all the while, I'm like, Okay, this is not my career. I'm not gonna, I love my father in law. I'm not gonna work for him forever. I have to figure something else out, this marketing thing. There's something here. I didn't major in I have no knowledge about it. Maybe there's something so I just became a bookworm and a Google worm. I went down the rabbit hole of just teaching myself as much as I could and trying to find mentors in courses where I could learn how to do something and gain a technical skill. And that's when I found my my first mentor. He had a short, a little course on how to run Facebook ads as a side hustle for small businesses to help them generate leads. So I joined this course. It was like $300 and it had a coaching community aspect to it. And in this community, he said that, you know, I told him, I said, I'm joining this because there's no plan B. I'm going to burn the bridges after this. There's got to be a way for me to be an entrepreneur this. With this, he's like, yeah, there absolutely is. I'm doing like 30k a month in exactly what we're teaching you. And I'm like, Alright, I'm in, like, give me everything. So I learned from these guys for it took me 11 months to get my first client. I started this on the side while working for my father in law, and I started getting real world proof that I could do this. I started generating leads for real people. And man, from there, it's just been a waterfall of I got really good at Facebook ads. I learned how to sell it. And then I said, Man, you know, it'd be really nice. I have people ask me about Google ads. I don't, I didn't know how to run Google ads. And even to this day, I'm I can be dangerous with them. But you know what? I hired my first teammate back in 2021 we've been working together ever since, and he's an incredible Google Ad specialist. He's been doing it since Google Ads became a thing, and then we started crushing it with Google ads. And I'm like, man, what else? There's something else. And people keep asking me about, oh, this thing called the at the time, was Google My Business. And I was like, I'm gonna go teach myself that. So I taught myself everything i. Possibly could about Google My Business. And then I started managing my own for my business. And then I asked a few of my current clients, hey, I noticed your Google business profile isn't in use. Do you want to try something with me and see if we can generate more leads from it? You know, only cost you a couple shekels. And they're like, yeah. So I started getting real world proof that I didn't
Mark D. Williams 1:05:16
realize that. I didn't realize that you were taking shekels, because I got plenty of shekels.
Brien Gearin 1:05:21
There you go. Hey, if it's green, it spends, if it's shekels, whatever you have, we'll take it the new frontier. But yeah, so that's and then from there, we added web development. We added that last year, brought on my teammate, who's an incredible not just a web designer. He is a web developer, meaning he's a full stack engineer. This guy makes the most incredible websites, and he's a part of my team. So it really became me building out a team of people that can do things that I could do, not web design I can't build a website, but things that I could be dangerous in, or have the knowledge to converse about, but would never go personally sell without somebody who's an expert in that seat. So we slowly added those services, and we added the email newsletters. My email copywriters are amazing, and they do a great job getting the information from our client and putting into a template and getting it out there, adding a little spice to it, and taking care of that. So yeah, so that's kind of how this business started and grew out. It grew from a side hustle into a real thing, into me burning the bridges. When I told my father in law, thanks, but I'm out, he was like, Are you sure? Can I, like, give you some more money, just so I know my daughter's going to be okay, but, and that was at COVID. So, like, it was, like, three weeks later, COVID happened, and I was like, might have screwed up, but let's find out. Mess around, find out. And yeah, here we are, eight years later, and it's, I mean, it's awesome, and I feel like I'm still just getting started, like we're really booming, and the partnerships I've developed through this business are incredible. And I biggest thing is I just love helping the small businesses actually grow, because if they're not growing, I'm not growing, and then everybody's unhappy. So it's like, there's one option, and that's growth. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 1:06:59
no, that's great. You're right. I forgot when you said about the similarities, almost identical. I went to school for communication because I didn't know what else I was going to do. And then I had a lawn mowing business in high school and in college. And then I sold copiers, selling doing 100 cold calls. I forgot that. Yeah, that's other than I didn't play baseball, pretty much everything else. I just need a backwards hat like you and our little Nordic faces would be about the interchangeable. That's right,
Brien Gearin 1:07:21
that's right. Yeah, we even look something
Mark D. Williams 1:07:25
so Well, I appreciate your time, and we'll have everything in the show notes, your links and everything like that. And you're gonna have to stay on after, because now we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to use me as a case study on what I can do. So yeah, thanks again for, thanks for going to come, for coming on. And I assume the best place for each for you is just your website.
Brien Gearin 1:07:39
Yeah, yeah. Check us out. Ricochet, D, M, R, I, C, O, C, H, E, t, d, as in digital, Amazon, marketing.com, hit me up on the website. The best place to reach me, personally is either through LinkedIn or through my email. And it's just Brian, b r, i e n, it's an Irish thing at ricochet dm.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn, b r, i e N, G, E, A, R, I N, and I'm always open to meet new people, connect with new people, begin new relationships. And if any of your listeners out there want to hit me up, I am.
Mark D. Williams 1:08:07
I'm an open book. Sounds good. Thanks again for coming on. Thank
Brien Gearin 1:08:11
you so much. Mark. This is great.
Mark D. Williams 1:08:14
We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is it lives between what the contractor coalition is and a builder 20 group. What we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes, you get up, you mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there. You'll be out in under three hours. We're going to be going to Phoenix, Arizona. Brad Levitt is going to be leading a curious collective in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading a collective, as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well for our second annual collective. So you're interested in collaborating with other builders. If you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship, ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective. Check out the Events page at the cures builder podcast.com thanks for tuning in to curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business, please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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