Command the Room & Grow Your Business: Casey Eberhart’s Blueprint for Trade Success

Ready to future-proof your trade business and increase its value? In this high-impact episode of Catalyst for the Trades, Jennifer Bagley sits down with revenue strategist Casey Eberhart—known as The Ideal Networker—for a straight-talk discussion on building lasting, profitable companies in the trades.

Drawing on decades of experience buying, selling, and advising service businesses, Casey shares why owning digital assets matters more than ever, how to leverage content and community to attract customers, and the three must-have assets every HVAC, plumbing, and home service business needs to grow—or get acquired.

You’ll hear how modern marketing, automation, and AI are changing the game for contractors, and why visibility through your website, community, and YouTube channel is key to long-term success.

Packed with real-world examples, proven strategies, and actionable tech insights, this episode is a must-listen for anyone serious about scaling a trade business in 2025 and beyond.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro & Meet Casey Eberhart
 03:09 – Why Commanding Attention Grows Your Bottom Line
 04:44 – Getting Uncomfortable: Why Owners Must Show Up Online
 05:22 – M&A Insights: What Investors Look For
 06:38 – Case Study: Social Content That Actually Works
 09:00 – Outsourcing Smart: Get Your Team Creating Content
 10:06 – Brand Visibility + AI = Next-Level Marketing
 13:28 – Automate Reviews for Social Proof
 14:05 – Compounding Content Assets: The Power of YouTube & Google
 15:22 – Modern Marketing Baseline vs. Fax-Machine Tactics
 20:06 – The Trifecta: Website, Community, YouTube
 25:57 – Content Strategy: Targeted Videos for Any Audience
 28:39 – Hyperlocal Visibility: Interviewing Local Businesses
 34:27 – Building Real Relationships & Permanent Assets
 36:37 – The ROI of Content vs. Buying Leads
 41:26 – Community Resource: Just Start AI
 45:04 – Major in What You Own, Minor in What You Rent
 48:39 – Speed, Focus, and Execution
 52:04 – Closing Thoughts & Where to Connect

Guest Details:
Casey Eberhart
Title: Revenue Strategist

About: Casey Eberhart—also known as The Ideal Networker—is a speaker, business coach, and entrepreneur who helps leaders and sales professionals build profitable connections through strategic networking and follow-up systems. He runs workshops such as Networking Riches and Networking Next Level, and leads the Expand The Network community. With a background spanning industries from amusement parks to film production and real estate, Casey teaches practical methods for identifying the right relationships, creating influence, and turning conversations into business growth

Relevant Links:

• Just Start AI Community
• Catalyst for the Trades Podcast
• CI Web Group

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to "The Catalyst for Trades" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform. Share this episode with aspiring and established leaders, and stay tuned for more insights on driving business success and personal leadership growth.

Transcript

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:01]:
Good afternoon and welcome to Catalyst for the Trades podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Bagley, and today is a special day because I have one of my dearest friends and colleagues and strategic partners, best friends, like the kind you have. Come over to your house, sit on your bed, eat a bowl of ice cream, have strategy session. Casey Eberhart, thank you so much for joining, Jennifer.

Casey Eberhart [00:00:22]:
It's so weird even calling you Jennifer. So I'm gonna from here on out, make a footnote. I'm calling her Jen. I'm super stoked to be here. This is, this is awesome. I know we've been talking about this for a while and I'm super excited that our schedule's lined up for this.

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:37]:
I know I am. So you and I, you decided to randomly, like, sneak away from your whole life and fly out to our Houston house. And we had a three day adventure. I don't think I slept for the next seven days afterwards. So Casey and I decided, you know what, let's get on and have the same kind of conversation that we have poolside, where it creates those enormous ideas in your brain is just chugging and you can't sleep for days on end. And we decided we'd have the same conversation here today.

Casey Eberhart [00:01:13]:
Yeah, I'm stoked. You know, I think when you guys are running your businesses, one of the things that I recommend to people all the time and just for some context on this, I work in the M and A world. I'm a speaker trainer. I've been. The only thing I've done Since I was 20 years old was buy, sell, build, advise, and consult companies. I don't really know anything else. I've not had a W2 job for the past literally like 50 years.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:41]:
So you're also the. My, you're also the person who coached me and made me and my introvert asked, be comfortable speaking on stage and not be just a boring technical engineer, but add some flavor.

Casey Eberhart [00:01:56]:
Yeah, because, because, because early on what I heard was that he or she who has the marker makes the money. And what that means to all of you guys that are watching are whoever's in front of the room, whoever commands the audience, whoever owns the audience, whoever owns the attention, owns the room. And you have a choice. You can either sit in the audience or you can have the audience sit and listen to your message. And that goes whether you're speaking, whether you're doing, doing a small presentation, whether you're in front of a room of two, or you're in front of your sales team, or you're in front of your employees or you're in front of your bank and you're asking for money or investors and you're asking for money or you're, or so it's, I mean, I appreciate that. But at the end of the day, it's at the end of the day really what it is, whether we're using AI, social media, web web search and social. All of that stuff comes down to how do we bring an audience into listening to our message, whatever that is. And you know, you're like, we, you know, Jen and I just are people that I think behind closed doors we're so much more extroverted than we are when we're out in front of a room.

Casey Eberhart [00:03:09]:
And I think people probably don't get a chance to really see who we are authentically very often because it's easier for us to jump in a swimming pool and have a six hour conversation. Right. We just, we've just. I think Jen, one of the things that you and I have sort of both done is been able to recognize and realize and harness the, the power of understanding of a one to many message to message messaging service or messaging blueprint or context or whatever. Right.

Jennifer Bagley [00:03:45]:
I, I love that and I think that's so, that's a really good conversation to have actually, because you and I are both. I think a lot of people would think that either one of you are total extro and that we would be out in center of the party and everything else. And I feel like we would rather hide in the cave than ever have to do that. But it doesn't mean we won't turn it on because we understand strategically it makes sense. So whether if you're a business owner, you run an H vac or a roofing company or plumbing company or something like that, you might be sitting back going, how does this even apply to me? Well, because we're going to be asking you to get out there and get uncomfortable being, you know, comfortable being uncomfortable and start getting your message out there. Like Casey said, if it's video content, social media content, like we're not at a place where you can sit back in a cave and just be invisible anymore and run or grow a business, that day is over. So you might not like it. I don't like holding this thing up in front of my face and recording it a video.

Jennifer Bagley [00:04:44]:
And I still am not doing that, which I am thinking about doing it. I'll do this.

Casey Eberhart [00:04:51]:
She's getting ready to get ready. I get it. She would rather take a video of me in a massage chair than her in a massage chair. I. I get it. But, Jen, you bring up a really good point. And this is something for all CEOs and owners to understand. Your ability to profit and exit your business is directly tied to your ability to get in rapport with somebody on the other end of the blank and communicate a message.

Casey Eberhart [00:05:22]:
Right. I work with a lot of investors that are right now acquiring trades, trade businesses, H vac, plumbing, pool service, landscape, the home, the entire home service market. And if you do not figure out how to get your company's brand and message in front of an audience that can buy from you, you're toast. Like, I don't know what else.

Jennifer Bagley [00:05:47]:
Like, like worth pennies. Yeah, I actually, I just got off a call with a client of ours and everything is up. Looking at their reports. They're on page one of Google. They're in the AI overviews, they're on the AI search engines. They're showing up. We just launched our brand visibility, which you're gonna freak out. We now have the ability to track the queries that are the conversations that are being had on Chat, GPT, Cloud, and Gemini and see who shows up.

Jennifer Bagley [00:06:18]:
So we can now say what the queries are, what the conversations are, where our clients are mentioned and where their competitors are mentioned that they aren't mentioned. Right. Which was freaking crazy. But they're starting to show up in all these things. They followed the blueprint and they're like, well, we need more calls. So I was like, all right, well, let's go look. Because visibility is not an issue. You're.

Jennifer Bagley [00:06:38]:
You're outranking everyone in your entire market for Thousands. It was 6.6.9000 keywords across about 40 miles circular of. Of distance. And so I went in and I was like, well, let me go look at your social media first. As soon as I opened up social media, it was like their logo. These are the posts. It was their logo. Their logo.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:01]:
A. You can tell an eye sock image of some dirty air conditioner and then their logo and then another picture of a guy in a hard hat and then their logo.

Casey Eberhart [00:07:14]:
And.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:15]:
And I was like, okay, so let's start going through here. How many. Let's go look at your competitor. And I went to your competitor site and I pulled theirs up, which they were two positions below them. And I went to glance at their social media, and it was one of their technicians. Then they were cleaning their trucks. Then it was a technician interviewing a homeowner that had just put in a new system. And then it was a review and everything else like you can't hide from this.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:42]:
You can't outsource some of all of this. You got to be real.

Casey Eberhart [00:07:47]:
And even if you're going to, even if you and, and Jen, you bring up a really, really good point because I think when sometimes people will hear us say they're like, well, I'm not a public speaker. I don't want to get up on stage. I'm not Jennifer Bagley. I'm not Casey Eberhart. Got it? Then position your company as the speaker in front of X amount of people. And if your H Vac business has an audience of two and your competitors HVAC business has an audience of 45, 000, guess what? You're going to be gobbled up on pennies on the dollar. Like, like to me, like here, like let's, let's break this down. The Google Knowledge panel, like should be.

Casey Eberhart [00:08:26]:
Everybody should have that complete right? Number, number, number two. You got to show up where people are actually searching. Where are they searching? Web search, pure and simple, right? That's why you work with someone like CI Web Group, frankly. Because you, you and I can't do this stuff, right? We need smart people to do it for us. So if we're going to outsource it, then let's outsource it. Smart, right? Like it. Like, like okay, so I work with a, an automotive company, right. A fix it shop, right.

Casey Eberhart [00:09:00]:
The owners want nothing. They are the most introverted people on the planet, right? So what did we do? We now pay the mechanics a dollar for every post they make. So I don't care. I don't care if they post a picture of an oil change. One of them got really cute and put on an outfit of their logo and went out and stood out in the middle of the street trying to flag in traffic. We made a whole video out of that, like a dollar. So, so what, you pay $10 a day, $20 a day to have your technicians and your people that are out in the field create content for you. Like if we're going to outsource this, like let's be smart about it.

Casey Eberhart [00:09:38]:
And you know, here's. I was thinking about this Jen, before we started, like we should all be on chat. Gemini Perplexity. All these looking and seeing who shows up for when we're searching for our own stuff and who can we partner with.

Jennifer Bagley [00:09:55]:
Like now we have a platform that actually tracks it for our clients. It rolled out yesterday.

Casey Eberhart [00:10:01]:
That is sexy. Af. I've been told to not swear so sexy. Af.

Jennifer Bagley [00:10:06]:
This is my podcast. Everything goes okay.

Casey Eberhart [00:10:09]:
Awesome. So, I mean, here's, here's the thing. One of the things that I watched Jennifer talk about years ago, and she probably still does this as some of her presentations. Have you seen her speak? She may, she may have done this in front of you, but she says, listen, you've got to find the 15 years of the 15 year olds of the world and recognize it. In three years, they run the world. Right now, her son Terrell, like, when we started this thing was like a kid. And now he's an adult. And you know what? Guess what? He's running the world.

Casey Eberhart [00:10:37]:
Yeah. Just about to have a grandchild. His grandchild is based on AI.

Jennifer Bagley [00:10:42]:
Yes. Terrell now is running the content department, which is producing a million blog posts a day. That's crazy. That's the same kid you already know, right?

Casey Eberhart [00:11:03]:
You said that. I, I still want a Christmas gift from him. But Jen, you bring up a really good point. Like, guys, think about this. So everything Jen and I talk about really comes down to helping you guys do one of two things. Save time or make more money. That's it. It's very simple.

Casey Eberhart [00:11:22]:
Your customers, by the way, are looking to do two things. Save time and. Or make more money. Right? Like, I have worked with H vac owners where they say, well, we have a conversion problem, right? And I, like, I said this to Jen, I was in her pool and I said this like, I don't get it, because that's a grudge purchase, right? That's like a mechanic shop. Like, how do you have a flat tire, drive your car into a mechanic shop that fixes flat tires and then not be able to convert you into a paying customer, like, you're pissed off your tires flat.

Jennifer Bagley [00:11:54]:
Right? Right.

Casey Eberhart [00:11:55]:
So if you have not done enough front end work to where somebody finds you and calls you and says, holy crap, I'm in Palm Springs, it's 120 degrees outside and my air conditioner is down. And you get somebody in a van at that person's house and if they cannot figure out how to sell that person an air conditioner problem, bigger problem, big problem. Right? And so we have to. And part of that sales process I truly believe in my core is having your current customers that are happy and love you give testimonials. By the way, you don't have to do the video on that. You're letting your customers do the videos on that. You're letting your customers write reviews. You're asking your customers to leave, to leave a Google Review that.

Casey Eberhart [00:12:41]:
Like, you know, one of the ways I saw this happen, I saw this in real quick.

Jennifer Bagley [00:12:46]:
Hold that. We just launched, I saw it this morning for the first time. Our, our Cortex local platform now has the ability when you send the link out to your client, it will automatically write the review for your customer to just click paste so they don't even have to type with their thumbs and put all the stuff in there like, because like you said, they want to save time. You want more reviews, make it convenient, make it easy, save them time, give it simple. So now, as soon as they click Happy face, I love everything, it will write the review and all they have to do is say they want to publish it. They can edit it if they want, but little things like that, little things, that's a automation at its best. Make it easy. Okay, go back.

Casey Eberhart [00:13:28]:
It's the little things. It's where synergistically those little things add up. So Synergy is where 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 11, 1 plus 1 equals 17. And we're getting further and further where 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 11 or 17. We're getting to a point where with things like Cortex and with CI Web Group and understanding the difference between Wix, WordPress and Webflow, you're understanding that one plus one is now equal 39. One plus one equals 42. One plus one equals, you know, 99. Right.

Casey Eberhart [00:14:05]:
If you guys can get 70 out of a hundred of your customers to leave you a Google review and then that content gets pushed out, I mean, if it were up to me and I could wave a magic wand, I would get it up on your YouTube account as well. Because YouTube is indexed by Google and Gemini and YouTube, you can monetize your channel and use that as an asset to pull revenue off of, to reinforce this entire project. And when your customers, now you can send your customers to your YouTube channel and say, hey, don't take our word for it. Before we come and arrive at your house, take a look at our YouTube reviews and you've got pages of 3, 400 reviews. People are going to gravitate to the people that look like them, look like they have the same type of house as them in the same type of city. So now we can go watch. Oh, I, I, I am, I'm from Mexico and there's a review in Spanish. I may want to watch that review.

Casey Eberhart [00:15:01]:
Oh, there's a dude that has weird spiky half gray hair and wears a shirt that's too tight. Like I'm in, right?

Jennifer Bagley [00:15:08]:
Yep. So, okay. So now we're saying let's level it up, right? The basics now are, the basics now are just getting a review on your Google business or your social media sites. So the level up.

Casey Eberhart [00:15:22]:
I would say this, let's, let's, before you say level up, let's establish where the baseline is. This to me where we are right now, you guys is very simple. There are a lot and I'm looking at it. Let me, let me. When in doubt, zoom out a second. I'm looking at this from an M and A activity. What are investors looking to acquire? They're not looking to acquire businesses that are run on pencils and fax machines. And a lot of businesses are still run on pencils and fax machines.

Casey Eberhart [00:15:50]:
And what we're doing is we're talking about taking it from, not from a fax machine to aol, we're talking about taking it from a fax machine to lightning fast automation. So Jen, when you say level up now, now from that perspective, if you guys are running your business and I say fax machine, I'm saying that in.

Jennifer Bagley [00:16:10]:
Air quotes, which could mean a WordPress website, one blog post a month, you're 25 pages of content. You get reviews on Google, you might post some canva graphics on social media. That's fax machine today 100%.

Casey Eberhart [00:16:25]:
And that level of fax machine is, is, is, is raising the bar. The tide is already raising. The reason why Cortex is so powerful or you guys cranking out a million blog posts a day is you. The clients that we have in like just start and the clients that we have that are coming on board with, with CI and any of, in any of the products. And I don't, I am. And just for the record guys, like I can sit here and scream and yell about CI. For the record, I'm not a, I'm not a paid spokesperson for this thing. What is being done for the clients that are, are part of this.

Casey Eberhart [00:17:03]:
And it's, it's like you have to do something because the reality is most of you, most of us can't produce what the algorithms are requiring to be fed in a one on one environment. We have to have help, right? We have to have machines being able to do that.

Jennifer Bagley [00:17:28]:
Yeah. 100 Optimus Bot comes out, I'm buying two because I don't want to have to do the house or the laundry. It's gonna do it for me. And if I can send it to go do my speaking events, I'll send it out and go do that. You don't have to work so hard anymore. Like you can produce. What Casey is saying is you can produce at a thousand to one the rate with, left with, with less money and less effort and get better results. Which is an oxymoron if you don't do it.

Jennifer Bagley [00:17:59]:
Absolutely silly. Okay, you and I got into this really big conversation. The three legged chair, this triangle, then three part piece. So, so let's break down, let's break down your coaching with me because I, I sat down and, and you went over which I love the fact when you have people. Casey and I always talk about the fact that we love sitting down with each other because neither of us are sucker fishes. When we sit down, I get fed and I learn from Casey. He's going to be in my ass about the things that I'm not doing or that I could be doing better, or that I'm not maximizing, optimizing or leveraging and so forth and vice versa. And it's just really nice having a friend that can sit down and, and you can, you can level each other up, you can feed each other versus.

Casey Eberhart [00:18:47]:
Exactly. But we are not, we are not the, the friendship cart of the world. So, so let's talk about this. So Jen calls it a three legged chair. I, I, I just refer to it as a trifecta. Okay? So essentially you guys, this is nothing more than a machine. And it's only kind of like the basic context of a machine. So if you can wrap your head around sort of what I'm about to say in terms of the three components and how they all work together, then everything else is just bolted on to one of these three components.

Casey Eberhart [00:19:20]:
So number one, we gotta have a website, slash blog. Okay, now I say website. I don't even know if I would call it a website anymore. A blog that's continuously becoming relevant. Okay? We gotta feed the algorithms what they want. We gotta feed the, the algorithms the yummy, yummy food to make them want to show your content to people. Right?

Jennifer Bagley [00:19:42]:
I call it training data. It's training. When we're training our AI agents, we're training through content and logic and rules and guidelines and so forth. We're giving it all of the information it needs to be successful. Your website is the training data for the LLMs and the search engines to get in front of your customers for the queries that they ask. Same thing, just content, content, content, content.

Casey Eberhart [00:20:06]:
And if you're not familiar with LLMs, it's basically just AI. Let's just call it ChatGPT, right? Or whatever. Right. And Queries just mean searches. So I'm in Palm Springs. I'm like, my pool just broke down. My pool is freezing. My jacuzzi is not hot.

Casey Eberhart [00:20:21]:
My air conditioner isn't working, so on and so forth, right? How do you show up? So you have your data training as one component. The second component is I'm gonna. I'm gonna amend this a little bit and call it your newsletter, Slash and. Or community. Okay? And when I say community, I mean something that you control, and you are in control of the email addresses that are coming in there. Okay? So, like, I teach people how to acquire Facebook groups. So I think everybody that's in the. In the trades or home services should own a bunch of Facebook groups for their local town, right? The buy and sell group in North Hollywood, the, you know, North Hollywood business thing.

Casey Eberhart [00:21:03]:
I have a triplex down in Freeport, Texas. I'm in the middle of a major construction project right now. Every single person I've hired came out of a Freeport Talk, a Freeport, Texas, Facebook group. Own that, because you can generate leads out of there very easily. Okay? But you might have a circle community. You might have a school community. You might have. Or your database, which is stuff that you own, right? Because it's an insurance policy.

Casey Eberhart [00:21:28]:
If social media goes down and you get ri. And you don't have access to the email addresses of your clients, your customers, and your prospects, you're toast. Okay? So you got your training portal, your database, and slash newsletter. And then over here, we have a YouTube channel. And the reason that YouTube is so vitally important to this equation is because when you produce content for YouTube, it all works interchangeably. So this podcast we're doing right now is being done as a podcast. So that's kind of a centerpiece that podcast or this podcast will be pushed out on YouTube. Who likes YouTube? Google.

Casey Eberhart [00:22:04]:
They only own the number one website in the world, followed by number two, which is YouTube. So we're gonna push this on YouTube. Then we're gonna take this podcast and we're gonna put it on our training portal. Okay? So now we can send an email to our entire database that says, hey, everybody, come check out the video that Jennifer and I just did where we talk about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we're pushing people back to our YouTube channel to consume more of our content. Or we're pushing them up to our training portal, and now we're interacting with them. So all three of these things are working together. The reason why. And I have people argue with me every Single day about whether YouTube is the right place to store your video.

Casey Eberhart [00:22:45]:
Right. Here's the thing. Number one, the YouTube channels are monetized, meaning when you have a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of rolling watch time, all those annoying ads that are playing in front of you, you're actually going to get paid on. Number two, you can put clickable links in there. So you're going to put a link to your site or to your freebie or your download or your free quote or whatever in the first three lines of your description so you don't have to click see more. All I'm doing is watching how you guys are watching YouTube videos. And we're just playing into that algorithm, right? We're making sure that your name is there, your company name is there, so that Google knows that you're relevant, YouTube knows that you're relevant. Now that you have all three of those, Jen, now it's like going, okay, where are our customers hanging out and what can we do to get those folks inside of our triangle where we can't lose them? It's a spider web.

Casey Eberhart [00:23:35]:
If they, if they are on our.

Jennifer Bagley [00:23:37]:
Email list and they helping the performance of other things, you're Max, you're leveraging YouTube inside the description. You're adding a link that's a backlink to a blog article that has all the text about that particular topic. So now you're building backlinks from one of the highest, most credible platforms there is. Everything is connected or not. There's a difference in performance.

Casey Eberhart [00:24:04]:
Yeah. And I think all we're saying is, like, listen, if you understand the foundation of those three, then what does Facebook do or what does TikTok do, or what does LinkedIn do? Again, you got to go where your customers are, right? To me, it seems like a lot of folks that are homeowners are hanging out on Facebook still. Is it going to be that way five years from now? Maybe not. I mean, we were talking about vine and Telegram and all these other places over the, over the years and MySpace.

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:34]:
That was fun.

Casey Eberhart [00:24:35]:
I like the direction of Periscope and Clubhouse and all these things that come and go, but those three components are never going to change. The things that feed them are always going to change. And I think, Jen, one of the things that I so respect about you, and I've actually learned this from you, is to not let grass grow under your feet. In terms of what you're talking about, what we were talking about five years ago, seven years ago, 10 years ago, or two months ago could be dramatically different and what we're going to talk about in two months from now. But those three components probably not going to change. You own an email address. YouTube Pretty much ain't going anywhere. Make it split from Google and your web domain and your stuff.

Casey Eberhart [00:25:17]:
You own it.

Jennifer Bagley [00:25:18]:
100. So let, so let's break this down and let's make, let's get really, really granular with this. So there are a lot of homeowners, guys and gals who are DIYers. They want to fix it, they want to figure it out, tinkle, tinker with things and try and figure it out themselves. So if you're targeting solely the fix it yourself group. I had a client, I told him to build a bunch of DIY videos on how to install a ductless air conditioning system. And he was like, why? No one would ever do that. And I was like, that's the whole point.

Jennifer Bagley [00:25:57]:
What if they try and they can't figure it out, but they've been watching your YouTube videos and then they call you because you're the ones that was explaining how to install it, Right? So long form video, the, the more narrow the focus and the more valuable the content. Right? You just don't, don't want to throw up a video. That long form video of your trucks rolling in and out, that's like on fast forward. Unless you got some. Never mind. Just probably not the best idea. But if you did target an audience. So I'm going to focus strictly on DIY or I'm going to focus on how to hire heating and air conditioning or a plumbing company or a home service company.

Jennifer Bagley [00:26:36]:
For golf course communities, what's important. Security is important, keyless entry is important, efficiency is important. Maintenance we're going to call you, right? If you had this entire batch of content that was speaking specifically to estate gated communities, golf course communities, DIYers, whatever it is, you have to pick this really good niche of humans and understand what's important to them, not what's important to you, what's important to them. Then how hard is it to get training video? And I would say if you need help like figuring out those niches, get on Madness and ask for a market analysis by median income and have it create a buyer Persona and an avatar and it's going to tell you everyone that owns homes that's between this range and this range, this is what's important to them. This is what they're looking for. This is the concerns that they have. Like it'll break down everything that you need and you could technically go Right in after that and say, now create video scripts that specifically target people that have homes in golf course communities. Write all the scripts.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:39]:
So now all you need is a cell phone, some good lighting, brush your hair, brush teeth, make sure you wash clothes, whatever. Don't wear your sweatsuit after mom and me party night.

Casey Eberhart [00:27:54]:
Yes. And you guys, don't let Jen scare you in what she's asking you to do. You can go to chat GPT right now and say, Hey, I own an H vac business in North Hollywood, California. Can you please pull up 20 questions that I should be answering in 45 second videos and give me the 45 second script and please put it in table form and hit go. And a minute later, it's going to give you 50 different video ideas, hand those to your texts and even say, I'm sending my texts out with their cell phones to create these. That's one way to do it. But Jen, let's take it even easier for a second. Like I was thinking about you wanted to get granular, so I get all engineering on you.

Casey Eberhart [00:28:39]:
So let's say I'm. And I use North Hollywood guys because I live in North Hollywood, California. So I live in North Hollywood. If I owned an air conditioner, an H vac business here in North Hollywood. What I'm really trying to do is get. Any time there's a conversation around North Hollywood, I want me to show up. And if I could, this came from. I used to speak at events all the time and I would always ask people, who's the most powerful woman in the world? And it doesn't matter if I was in front of 20,000 people or a group of 10.

Casey Eberhart [00:29:09]:
I got the same answer everywhere I went, which was Oprah Winfrey, right? You were probably thinking that. So I broke down her deal. I'm like, she hasn't been on the air in 20 years. Like, how are you guys still saying this 20 years later? Well, the reality, the reality is she just followed a formula. Other people's content plus their reach, that's it. Equals more contacts for her. Think about it. She had Tom Cruise.

Casey Eberhart [00:29:32]:
Tom Cruise would come out, they would talk for a few minutes. He would be promoting a show, he would bring his audience, he would leave 22 minutes in. Then he would. She would bring out a second celebrity. Then she would bring out a lifestyle person and promote a book, right? Like it was so formulaic. So if we take that and we look at, at something like YouTube or a quick podcast where you're creating something like this. You guys, here's how you could do this. Check this out.

Casey Eberhart [00:29:54]:
Let's. Let's use North Hollywood as an example.

Jennifer Bagley [00:29:57]:
Okay?

Casey Eberhart [00:29:57]:
I'm a diy. I'm an H VAC guy, and I want to sell H vac units to people in North Hollywood. Okay? So here's how I would do it. I would say, okay, I'm gonna send my text out and every time they do something simple, I'm gonna have them explain what tools they're using, where I can sell an affiliate link and I can sell the tool in my YouTube video. I'm going to have them explain what it is they're doing. I'm going to show them exactly how to do it in real time. Take your phone out, stick it on a tripod. It's a 25 minute video.

Casey Eberhart [00:30:24]:
Call it a day. But how do I get eyeballs from people that are in North Hollywood looking at my YouTube channel or looking at my blog? Here's how I would do it right now. First off, I would go to ChatGPT and Madison perplexity and all these, and I would say, hey, who are the top businesses that are showing up in LLMs right now? Because I want to use AI I'd get a list of those businesses, whether it's your veterinarian, your landscaper, junk removal, acupuncturist, nail salon, restaurant, bowling alley, party clown, all of them. And I would call them up on the phone and I would say, hey, I'm a guy in North Hollywood that runs a business just like you. I'd love to get you on an interview about your business for five or 10 minutes on my YouTube channel just so we can get some play around North Hollywood. Now why is that important? So I interview Sally Sue. You know Sally sue the nail salon. Hey, guys, this is Casey from North Hollywood H vac.

Casey Eberhart [00:31:17]:
And today I've got Sally Sue. She runs a nail salon at Vineland and Ventura. If you guys haven't checked her out, you absolutely should. Boom. I let her talk in yammer round. How'd you get started? Great. What's your thing? What do you love about North Hollywood? How do you see the community? Blah, blah, blah. Tell me a little bit about nails.

Casey Eberhart [00:31:31]:
She's telling people about nails or whatever. And then I now optimize that video. I'm like, Sally sue from North Hollywood Nail Salon, interviewed by Casey Eberhart from Casey Eberhart's HVAC business. And now what's happening? Hey, watch. Two business owners have a sweet conversation about what's going on in the concept in the context of North Hollywood. Now, what happens is, let's say you have a hundred of those videos over the course of a year. Anytime you guys, somebody types North Hollywood, thinking of moving to North Hollywood air conditioner, North Hollywood, you have that opportunity to show up. Now, some of you are going to go, well, yeah, but I don't want to set up a zoom and a streamyard and do all this stuff.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:11]:
Great. You're all going to networking events like BNI and Chambers and all that. Take your phone out. Hey, Jen, tell me a little bit about your nail salon. Hey, tell me about this. Record it right on your phone and set up.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:21]:
This ain't rocket science.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:24]:
Yeah, carpet and paint, brain surgery, it ain't.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:31]:
What it is is activity. Action breeds action.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:36]:
And so you see just on a granular level for. Because a lot of, I think our, our folks are in a small geographic location. And maybe you start with the people that have the same customer as you, but you don't compete with. Yeah, pool service, junkyard, landscaping, window repair, window tinting, gutter repair, leaf blower repair shops, fireplace repair shops, window washing, and interview all those folks. Now, when somebody's searching for my fireplace is broken in North Hollywood or my pool is broken in North Hollywood, I want them to see you on your channel. You interview the. Make that other person look like a rock star to their customers, which means they're going to share out the content. They're going to put it in front of other people.

Casey Eberhart [00:33:24]:
And now you get all the suggested videos from North Hollywood and it starts to become a machine where 1 plus 1 equals 200.

Jennifer Bagley [00:33:33]:
Yes, these are permanent assets with compounding interest impacts on results. So you're. On the contrary, you could go buy a lead on Angie, share it with five other companies and compete on price, and then you're still the same company you were. Or you could take 10 minutes and start creating a permanent asset that lives forever, gets stronger over time and produces compounding and compounding results and helps you with everything else you're doing. Because the more that people see you, if I go look up a company and all I see is Canva graphics and istock images. I can't fall in love with Canva like the hard hat guy. We know that's fake. Everybody uses it.

Jennifer Bagley [00:34:19]:
So. But what I can do is start falling in love with the people behind a business and feel more comfortable about talking to them.

Casey Eberhart [00:34:27]:
You said something that I really want to make sure everybody hears that you're producing an asset that produces a return, which is an ROI or ROE return on Your energy. And if you do it right, it becomes compounding over time. So this is, this is what I see happen a lot. Oh, I'm gonna go do Instagram reels and Instagram stories and Facebook stories and TikTok like awesome. Except the problem is that we're just doom scrolling and those videos have a half life of about two days, meaning after about a week they're useless. Whereas on YouTube they become more valuable over time as Google picks them up as, as, as blogs pick them up, as Google pushes it more out. So I started going to this gym, right? New gym owner had this whole conversation. He puts a video out on Instagram, it gets 300 views like in 24 hours.

Casey Eberhart [00:35:25]:
He's stoked. He puts that same video on, on YouTube. Just have this conversation this morning. In 24 hours it got 42 views. And he's irritated. And I'm like, let's think about this now.

Jennifer Bagley [00:35:39]:
That one lives forever.

Casey Eberhart [00:35:40]:
Exactly. That sits and lasts forever. And once I started to explain, like, think of each video as a dividend paying stock.

Jennifer Bagley [00:35:49]:
Yep.

Casey Eberhart [00:35:49]:
Right. Think of this as two different ways. As a video paying stock that pays a dividend while you're sleeping day in and day out, day in and day out, day in and day out. The other way, if you're in real estate, think of your YouTube channel like an apartment building, right? Are you, are you the good news about a YouTube channel versus an apartment building. And I'm converting apartment building investors into buying YouTube channels because of this exact theory. On a, on an apartment building, you have to have a for rent sign, the apartment has to be ready, you've got to have curb appeal, you got to rent it. And then you sit there and you wait and then that person can move out and it stops producing revenue. The good news about a YouTube channel is you can go into a video that you've already put up there, re optimize it, make it better and more appealing for the algorithm, it starts producing revenue.

Casey Eberhart [00:36:37]:
In this case maybe views or clicks to your website or impressions or Google Juice or LLM Juice, right? But here's the sexy part. You can keep adding doors, adding videos to this. And where this really becomes ultra sexy is in the M A world. So when I'm working with investors right now and we're looking at say a pool service company to buy, if they don't have a YouTube channel, it's not worth as much if they don't have a database that they're sending out weekly newsletters to, worth less money if they.

Jennifer Bagley [00:37:12]:
Don'T Have a blog, website, content they.

Casey Eberhart [00:37:16]:
Don'T have, they're running it on a fax machine. So. So our guys are buying these businesses at pennies on the dollar. So if I were just a betting man, I'm like, listen, I want to retire out in three years or five years or seven years. Everything I'm doing today, what am I building for an investor to come in and go, oh my gosh, he's got this YouTube channel that's throwing off 25, 50, 100 people into the database every week. That database is being communicated with. That database is feeding into a website and we got this machine going.

Jennifer Bagley [00:37:48]:
It's vers. Yeah. So 100,000%. So when I look at companies budgets, I look at marketing budgets all the time. And what I look at is 1% of gross revenue or less is being allocated to anything that's a permanent asset that they own. The rest is being burned on ads that's gone. So we're basically, as a business owner, I consider myself an investor in my business in more than one way. So as an investor, I want to make sure that what I'm doing is I'm investing in things that are permanent.

Jennifer Bagley [00:38:24]:
I own it. It has compounding interest the effort that I put in. Today is worth more. Tomorrow is worth more. The next day is worth more the next day. So when you look at your marketing and advertising budget, if the majority of your marketing and advertising budget is being thrown at the blackjack table on things you don't own, you can't take with you have no permanent value. That list is long. So let's go through that list real quick.

Jennifer Bagley [00:38:48]:
Billboard. Is it permanent or, or compounding owned asset? What is it? Same thing. I just, I messed that up. Is it owned asset that's permanent or are you renting it? You're renting it.

Casey Eberhart [00:39:04]:
Flyers, business cards, any type, any type of, any type of. Jen. This, this is where I get really like my brain starts to fry because I don't, my brain doesn't work this way. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just kind of share kind of my thought on this, right? So my best friend is a real estate, a real estate agent slash broker up in Washington state. And he helps people acquire multi family unit projects. Okay. So he spends a hundred and fifty dollars for somebody to fill out a form on bigger pockets that says I might be interested in talking to somebody perhaps, maybe so someday I might think about perhaps might consider buying an apartment building somewhere in Washington. They send him that lead and he pays $150 for it.

Casey Eberhart [00:40:00]:
Do. Do I think that for $150 he's the sole person that gets that lead? No. So, so now I go, okay, so that means 20 of those a month is 3,000 bucks. But. But he has a hard time understanding why 600 bucks a month for five months on blog content is more valuable, because in his head he sees, yeah, but I'm not getting 20 leads right now. And I think for business owners, when you, when we all make this flip to understand that this is a game of chess playing kind of against people that don't know how to play checkers.

Jennifer Bagley [00:40:38]:
Yeah, it's more like jacks.

Casey Eberhart [00:40:41]:
Yeah. And that's why. That's why, like when you and I were talking and I saw what, what you guys were doing with Cortex and what we were doing, what we're doing with just start AI and. And guys like, let me just plug. Just start AI for a second here. It's a community of people just like you and I that are all learning AI And Jen and her team and me and my team and several other folks like Karen Glasser is in there and Stephanie is in there and Lisa's in there and Krista's in there. Like, it is a community being built for us by us taking people along this journey of AI. So if you don't even know how to spell AI, then you should come play with us over at Just Right.

Casey Eberhart [00:41:26]:
If all of this freaks you out and you're super scared, then it's, it's, it's. I mean, for right now, it's free to be a part of it. There's a ton of content in there. We do it in bite size, easy, easy to understand components. But you guys like Jen and I, when we talk behind closed doors and in a swimming pool or sitting on a bed, having a Sunday, an ice cream sundae, or on the phone on the fly and in text messages. Everything that we're doing is figuring out how to help businesses save time and make more money. And what really. I just know this from talking so much and knowing Jen for 20 years.

Casey Eberhart [00:42:05]:
What hurts her at her core and her team's core is when they see a business that has so much potential, but we can't get the business owner to understand and take a teeny, tiny leap of faith. Not even a leap of faith. A leaf, A leap of a few dollars and, and do it alongside what you're already doing. If what you're doing is already working. And you're going to Angie and you're going to Buy leads from other places. Like, keep doing it. But please, for the love of all that's holy, when you go out and you're saying they're trying to sell an air conditioner, you. You're trying to sell an air conditioner to a homeowner, telling them how much money they're going to save, how much better they're going to feel, how much better their life is going to be, and then you're putting them on a maintenance plan so you can come out and continue to make them comfortable.

Casey Eberhart [00:42:55]:
That's all technology is doing for you guys. Yeah. Your pool warm. It's keeping your pool clean. It's keeping your yard mowed. It's keeping your rotted fence from looking like crap. It's keeping your flowers growing. It's fertilizing your garden.

Casey Eberhart [00:43:10]:
It's cleaning up the dog shit in your backyard. Like, that's all technology is doing. You can keep paying a silly kid to do it, but pretty soon, Optimus prime is going to come out and do it for you.

Jennifer Bagley [00:43:20]:
Yes. Oh, I. I got one of those little mowers. It's a little robot, and it mows the whole lawn. You don't even have to. I mean, now it does the house, but. Okay. Yeah, I'm be.

Jennifer Bagley [00:43:31]:
It's. Casey is 100% right, you guys. This is. There's got to be a significant amount of effort and attention that is given to things that are permanent. And those three things Casey mentioned are the simplest things you can do massive amounts of content on a website that is designed to perform that you own, not rent. Do not go spend a bunch of marketing money on a website you're renting and you don't own. Tell them. Give them the bird.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:03]:
Walk away. Rebuild it. Build something you own. No one's going to go remodel an apartment you're renting. Stop doing that. I say every damn day. I'm like, oh, yeah, we can get started right now. And they're like, well, but I don't own this website.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:15]:
You're spending $5,000 a month with some company on a website you're borrowing, and you are going to leave and start over. Stop it. Stop doing that.

Casey Eberhart [00:44:24]:
And by the way, when you leave, by the way, when you leave, they have already built the Google Juice on that, and they're going to continue to profit from that website.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:33]:
Yeah, that's crazy. No renting. So second is, people want to do business with people they know like, and trust. There's no AI replacement. Well, there is, but there's no AI replacement here.

Casey Eberhart [00:44:47]:
I hate to interrupt you. Let me add one thing here. Snow like and trust. Those are three huge components, but we have to add a fourth and that is remember, they have to know you, they like you, they have to trust you. They can do all of those things, but if they don't know who you are and they can't remember you at the time that they need X, you're in trouble. You're gonna lose.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:04]:
Yeah, they're just gonna go to Google. That's your brand, right? So content like this has to be important. Long form video content on YouTube is the only true permanent social media asset.

Casey Eberhart [00:45:19]:
Okay.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:20]:
The rest is, is gravy, Right? It's the sprinkles on the cake, right? Yes. Do reels. Yes. Post, regular post on Ticky Talk and Facebook and Snappy Chat and all that stuff. Yes. All that's great. But that's not a long term permanent asset that lives forever. Your website, your blog content, your pages, your YouTube channel and your database, those are your most important assets.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:43]:
They need to matter a lot more than 1% of 1% of a budget. And the rest, you're going to take the gambling table and drop it on, on Red 6 and hope you walk away with more than you spent. Like we need to readjust our priorities. Especially considering that right now there are no ads on AI search and the average consumer with a brain, a brain, I'm sorry, but doesn't click on ads. Like think about it, when's the last time you clicked the paid ads link Case?

Casey Eberhart [00:46:17]:
I don't, because I don't have them put in front of me anymore.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:21]:
So right, this is the average. Ask your family, ask your freaking, go to a family reunion. Ask the table, ask your friends. When you go to look for something first ask them, are you now going, still going to Google or are you going to chat GBT or some other AI search and start doing that analysis? You don't need me to tell you or Google to tell you that it's losing market share out the wazoo.

Casey Eberhart [00:46:44]:
But I did it this morning, literally guys, this morning, like I had blood work done and I had a, I got my blood test back today, right? And I go through there and there was one thing that was red. It was, I don't know, some four letter acronym. I don't even know. It was DL. I don't even remember what it was. Right. A year ago I would have gone to Google and I would have went, what is dppl? Whatever it was, I don't do that because now I don't trust what's coming up. I don't know who I can verify.

Casey Eberhart [00:47:13]:
There are going to be a bunch of paid ads for stuff I don't want to. So I went to ChatGPT and I said, hey, what is this? I'm a 53 year old dude. Should I be concerned? Yes, you have a doctor said exactly what it is. And I was like, no, don't be concerned. I'm like, okay, thank you. Please, Jen, what you're saying can be summarized, I think, for a lot of people in from a mindset perspective. You guys, here's the deal. In college, you have a major and a minority and Jen always talks about this.

Casey Eberhart [00:47:42]:
I learned this from Jen 20 years ago and I still use it today. It's about doing the right things in the right order. And at the end of the day, we have a lot of people that are majoring in shit they don't own and minoring in stuff they do own. And all we're asking you guys to do is switch your major. Switch your major to things that you do own and minor in shit you don't and you'll be farther along than many, many, many, many, many of your competitors.

Jennifer Bagley [00:48:07]:
Hell yeah. Supposed to be a lever. Turn it on, turn it off, turn it up, turn it down. Supposed to. You're not supposed to live on it.

Casey Eberhart [00:48:19]:
Doesn't want to live on it, by the way. But wait till she has a grandbaby and all of a sudden we're going to start seeing a whole lot more. Just watch.

Jennifer Bagley [00:48:27]:
Oh my gosh. Okay. I know we're running out of time. Casey, I love being able to visit with you. I am so, so thankful you took time. I know your travel schedule is crazy. Your schedule is crazy. So thank you for spending this hour with, with us today.

Jennifer Bagley [00:48:39]:
I appreciate you.

Casey Eberhart [00:48:41]:
Well, Jen, thank you for doing what you're doing and bringing this all and being such an advocate for business owners and founders and contractors to really help them grow their business. And I don't just mean that tritely like, oh, she's here to help you grow your business like it is. Every fiber that's in your body and every cell and every person that works in and around you and your organization, from Kathy Marshall to Mike to everybody else that is in this entire organization. And I cannot express my gratitude for you and Stephanie creating Just Start AI and allowing me to come be a part of it and allowing our community to grow inside of there. So you guys, this is just my pitch. Other than just being very grateful for Jennifer and the entire team is come hang out with us in. Just start AI. You can ask questions, we'll review stuff, we'll help you.

Casey Eberhart [00:49:33]:
Like our whole gig over there is to help you guys. I know this is going to shock you. Just start using AI.

Jennifer Bagley [00:49:43]:
This was a really. This took a long time to figure out the brand on this baby.

Casey Eberhart [00:49:48]:
Very difficult. We came up with all kinds of domain names, days.

Jennifer Bagley [00:49:55]:
Oh my gosh, I will, I will all in on this. When Casey sits down in my pool and tells me that I have nine opportunities for things that I'm not currently doing or could be doing better. Casey, how long did it take me to execute on all of the nine deliverables that you told me to do with my team?

Casey Eberhart [00:50:19]:
Well, I don't, I don't really know because I got up the next morning at like 4:00 clock in the morning and was having a cup of coffee and I texted Jen. I was like, I'm still, like, I'm still buzzing from last night. And she's like, text me back from her bedroom. I've been up the whole night and I have 13 different playbooks and I've got 165 paid strategy already. I'm just like. And I literally. The text message was, well, then get out here and let's chat about it. Jen was so great.

Casey Eberhart [00:50:47]:
About you is, is your speed in which you are able to take in information, have the team take it in, create a playbook, create a strategy and willing to go out and try to break it. And that's why. And that's why the folks that are in the ecosystem are doing better than the folks that aren't.

Jennifer Bagley [00:51:07]:
I agree with that. This is speed, baby. This is why we work well together. Because we don't just talk, we talk. We, we create a plan, we contact our teams, we execute the next day. We're saying, all right, it's in. What's next? What do we do next? Like, you got to truncate that time. Execute fast.

Jennifer Bagley [00:51:25]:
Without clarity, you cannot focus. Without focus, you cannot execute. If you do not execute, you will not win. I hope this session has helped at least create a lot of clarity, has given you an opportunity. Casey said it best to change your focus. Minor major switch, that stuff he was talking about to flip out. Your energy is deployed so that you can execute on things that are going to be going to give you the greatest results in your business. I love you, Casey.

Casey Eberhart [00:51:54]:
I love you too, Jen.

Jennifer Bagley [00:51:55]:
Thank you, you guys. For those of you I don't know, Casey, close out the Podcast, you do this, do the close.

Casey Eberhart [00:52:04]:
Here's the thing, you guys, at the end of the day, business owners, we are being assaulted from everything around us all the time, right from phones to billboards. The noise is really loud and it ain't gonna quiet down. And so what we really wanna be able to do is bring folks that are ready and are willing to be along for the ride to turn up the volume and the voice of your brand and your business in getting in front of your customers at the time time they need you and turning down the volume on the noise from everything else around you to allow you the clarity and the focus to build the brand and build the business and serve the customers so that you can go to the beach, you can go to the mountains, you can play with your grandkids, you can leave a legacy, you can create intergenerational wealth. And you are not going to be able to do that using the tools and the playbook that we had in 1972. It's just really that simple. And you can fight and say, get off my lawn and then some robot's gonna come mow the damn lawn. Right? That's just the reality. So, you guys, here's the deal.

Casey Eberhart [00:53:15]:
Jen, thank you for being a, a, an amazing advocate for business owners in growing and always being the one that's willing to take the, to fall on the knife, be willing to be the outlier, be willing to be made fun of, be willing to get some pushback from team, community, customers, friends, family, to be able to, to be able to continue the, the, the journey and allowing other people to be on that ride. And for any of you that have been in a room where Jennifer has been or somebody on the team has been and understand that our goal here is really to help you create the catalyst from business to exit. And growing an exit is really based on you building your business and building your brand in a way that's super smart, super easy. And whether you're leaving that business to a kid or whether you're planning to sell it or whatever that is, let us help you grow this thing, get to that point. So, Jen, I will see you at. Just start. AI. You're freaking amazing.

Casey Eberhart [00:54:26]:
And I can't wait to come up to Seattle and get to hang out again.

Jennifer Bagley [00:54:29]:
I love you. Let's freaking go with that. More time, money and freedom. That's what we're all looking for. Takes a little bit of energy, a lot of coaching and some really good friends to help you along the way, but that. Thank you, guys.

Casey Eberhart [00:54:42]:
Deuces thanks, guys.