AI, Authority & the Future of Home Service Marketing with Casey Eberhart

What happens when AI changes the rules of marketing faster than most contractors can keep up?

In this episode of The Catalyst for the Trades, Jennifer Bagley is joined by longtime friend, strategist, and business consultant Casey Eberhart for a candid conversation about where the industry is headed, and why most contractors are still playing yesterday's game.

Together, they explore why AI isn't just changing marketing tactics. It's changing how homeowners discover businesses, how trust is built, and why your personal brand may soon become one of your company's biggest competitive advantages.

They also dive into the evolution from traditional SEO to AI search, why transparency is becoming a business advantage, and how forward-thinking contractors can position themselves several moves ahead of the competition.

In This Episode

• Why AI is a bigger business shift than the early days of the internet
• The difference between chasing AI tools and building an adaptable AI strategy
• How personal brands influence business visibility and AI search results
• Why your website, social media, podcasts, reviews, and content all work together as one connected digital ecosystem
• The case for transparent pricing—and why hiding prices may be costing you sales
• How customer-first website experiences outperform traditional service-page marketing
• Why every member of your team can strengthen your company's authority online
• Using podcasts, local partnerships, and content collaborations to build market dominance
• How AI helps business owners make better strategic decisions using real market data instead of opinions
• Why contractors who think three to five moves ahead will outperform competitors still focused on today's playbook

Memorable Quotes

"Don't get emotionally attached to any given tool. Get emotionally attached to the process."

"Most of your competitors don't know how to play checkers. This is five-dimensional chess."

"You can be right, or you can be rich. Pick one."

"Your first 50 videos are going to suck. That's okay. Your competitors won't even make it to five."

Resources Mentioned

• Connect with Casey on Facebook
• Jennifer Bagley's book Hands Up
• JenniferBagley.com
• Connect with Jennifer on Facebook
• Hydra OS
• 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 [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to The Catalyst for the Trades. I'm your host, Jennifer Bagley, and I'm very excited. We've been taking a little bit of a hiatus here. I had to get a little down and dirty in some product dev and not sleep for approximately 65 days now. So I am fresh showered and so fresh and so clean, clean, clean, because I got a full weekend of sleep. But Forget about that.

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:28]:
I'm sorry for the disappearing act. Sometimes you just have to focus on the business and get in the grind, get your hands dirty, and that's what I've been doing. But I couldn't choose a better guest to kick off the re-release— I should say, um, the continuance of the Catalyst for the Trades podcast. My dear friend for over 2 decades and colleague and strategist and strategic partner and my thinking partner with ice cream in the bed until the This is going to sound weird.

Casey Eberhart [00:00:56]:
I was just going down. We're already in a different meetup.

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:59]:
We are. I have known Casey so long that yes, in my early days of entrepreneurship, we would be at the house and we would be brainstorming and it just had to continue. And so he would come up, I'd be in my bed and he'd freaking have a new idea and he'd be staying at our house and he would come in with 2 bowls of ice cream and sit at the end of the bed and go, I have an idea. This is how long this friendship has been in play. So Casey, talk to me about what's going on in your world. What are you seeing that has your interest today?

Casey Eberhart [00:01:37]:
Yeah, you know, Jen, so first off, I'm so, so honored and excited to be here. And I always love it. And it's always really interesting because I know when you and I get together, like, we just got to— and finally, for those of you that are just joining us, We've been actually talking for about the last 15 minutes, and finally Jen was like, wait, stop, we have to get started. This is the podcast. So if we, if we sound like we're in mid-conversation, we'll— we will try to loop it back. We don't like leaving— we don't like leaving open loops. So, so first off, um, if this is your first time joining Catalyst with the Trades, you guys are in the right spot at the right time, um, for taking your business to the next iteration, whatever that is and wherever you are, it is time to get on board and get started. And if you're already in the thick of moving everything into kind of the AI model, that's awesome.

Casey Eberhart [00:02:31]:
It's now just time to take it up a step because the thing that you don't have is time.

Jennifer Bagley [00:02:38]:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Eberhart [00:02:38]:
You just don't have time. And for those of you that are older, older, you know, I'm 54. I remember in 1990 when the internet came out, everybody was all freaked out and everybody was Wild Westing it. And I just don't think that that even compares to where we are today. And so, okay, so I think where I would really start in this whole game is to not get emotionally attached to any given tool, but get emotionally attached to the process and get emotionally attached to the fact that things are going to change. Like, I don't know, by the time we're done shooting this. Right. And one of the things I think, Jen, and I know you are on the same board and you have been for a long time, is like, it's one thing for you guys to get your companies out there and get them focused on AI and take the entire sales process and the entire sales cycle all the way through using AI.

Casey Eberhart [00:03:39]:
All of that's awesome.

Jennifer Bagley [00:03:40]:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Eberhart [00:03:42]:
What Jennifer is really good at is like, okay, What's 3 moves out? And one of the things I love about Jennifer and the team and what they're doing at Hydra and what's being built in all of our ecosystems is, um, we don't play the game of checkers, we play the game of chess. And it's actually 3 or 4 or 5-dimensional game of chess. And so what I think we really should start with, Jen, is 3, 4, 5 moves out.

Jennifer Bagley [00:04:09]:
Yeah.

Casey Eberhart [00:04:10]:
And 5 moves out, at least what I see and what I've been thinking about, is really how the personal brand of not only the owner, the founder, the team, the employees, the customer, how does the branding of those people, human interactions, coordinate and fit into the overall marketing of the business?

Jennifer Bagley [00:04:35]:
Yeah, hell yeah. That's a great conversation. Way to tee it up, my man. Kind of like, you know what's going on.

Casey Eberhart [00:04:43]:
Well, I think it's really important. I think a lot of times, you know, I, I've seen a lot in both in my consulting world and my coaching role and speaking and, and all and running businesses. What I find is that sometimes owners get so focused on building the brand of— and I'll probably just use HVAC and plumbing for this. I know we talk about trades in general and it can extend, but Just so I don't have to keep saying 1,000 different times. But, you know, listen, your company has a brand. It has an online presence, online and offline. How you show up at church, how you show up at a chamber event, how you show up at BNI, how you show up on ChatGPT, how you show up everywhere. Your company— so many business owners are really focused on making sure that that is kind of created and architected and has a moat around it and all of that.

Casey Eberhart [00:05:38]:
And then you go off and you post some crazy thing on Instagram or on TikTok in your personal life, and you don't understand how interlocked these are all becoming. And it really needs to be, um, sort of architected out, permeated throughout the entire social ecosystem. What do you think? And Jen, I'll throw this at you as well because I just, I wanna tee this up cuz I think you, you're right on point with all this. And this is, I, I would love your take on this. I believe using data that the era of social—

Jennifer Bagley [00:06:15]:
No.

Casey Eberhart [00:06:15]:
Uh, the era of social media is pretty much over. When we were all on MySpace and Friendster, we were like seeing what our friends were posting. Right. I'm connected to my 8 top friends. I'm seeing what they're posting, yada, yada, yada. We are now in interest media, whereas now if I say, hey, I'm into golf or I'm into fishing or I'm into coin collecting or I'm into crypto or whatever it is, now my feed is filled with not necessarily people I'm friends with, but people that are posting content based on stuff I'm interested in.

Jennifer Bagley [00:06:50]:
Yes, sir.

Casey Eberhart [00:06:52]:
And so it's, it's how somebody can start a TikTok account today or an Instagram account today and have no followers and have tens of thousands of views on a piece of content. And somebody else can be focused on getting 40,000, 50,000 followers and get 12, 12 views on a piece of content.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:11]:
That's 100%. That's 100%. This, this whole game. So Let me see if I can connect the dots and then it'll roll right through there. So let's say, because we have a lot of Hydra clients that, um, are already—

Casey Eberhart [00:07:27]:
Congrats to those of you that are on Hydra, by the way, and congrats to the Hydra team. 38 sites this month out the door from start to finish. I mean, crackalacka.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:36]:
This is—

Casey Eberhart [00:07:37]:
this is—

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:38]:
We had a client sign up last Wednesday. They were not afraid of the onboarding process, which is a little brutal. It requires you to sit down and actually think and contribute. They got it done Wednesday night at 2 in the morning, and we presented their website to them, uh, for review, and they approved it on Friday. 3 days.

Casey Eberhart [00:08:00]:
And that time will just get shorter and shorter the more efficient the agents all work and the more efficient the team works. So whoever the client is Thank you for being out in front playing the game of chess. Yes. Most of your competitors don't know how to play checkers.

Jennifer Bagley [00:08:18]:
Hell yeah.

Casey Eberhart [00:08:18]:
They—

Jennifer Bagley [00:08:19]:
it's funny because I hear people when they're like, well, I kind of want to refer my friend. And they're like, but the onboarding process is kind of brutal. I'm like, what? You have to understand what your business is. You have to be able to identify your unique selling proposition. You actually need to know your prices that you're willing to put online. You need to understand your financing, need to understand your promotions, you need to have a strategy, you need to understand your brand, you need to know how you stand out, you need to know your unique selling proposition. Is that a problem?

Casey Eberhart [00:08:45]:
Well, Jen, I, I mean, it is worth a pause for a second to say, yeah, that is a problem in the same way that in 1988 they were putting ads in Yellow Pages phone books and putting their number— if they weren't even putting numbers on the side of their, of their vans It was a business card and maybe a print brochure. We didn't have email. We didn't have social media. We didn't have texting. I mean, we were all running around with beepers thinking that we had hit the jackpot of technology motherlodes, right? You're just— guys, you're just in that same spot of uncomfortability right now. It's just now the business is yours and not your granddad's.

Jennifer Bagley [00:09:26]:
Yes. The process is going to be different. And unfortunately, most of the marketing agencies haven't evolved at all.

Casey Eberhart [00:09:32]:
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Bagley [00:09:32]:
So they're, they could have just bought a website from somebody 3 to 6 months ago and they still went through this same old process, buy it, fill out this long form, take 5 weeks to get the form in, sit in a pipeline for 6 to 9 months, and then spit out a half-assed website that you have to pay to have optimized for the next however many years because it was shipped unoptimized instead of Rip off the effing Band-Aid, get your shit done early. Excuse my French, but get your, get your onboarding done. Be thorough. Freaking, I believe in applying a high volume of intensity, you know this, in as short a period of time as possible in order to make a mass amount of progress. So that's what it is. High volume of intensity in a very short amount of time. Get it done. Have those difficult conversations, make those difficult decisions, and then ship it faster so we can start getting results faster.

Jennifer Bagley [00:10:32]:
Right, and ship it correctly so we don't have to have the bucket of SEO money for a gazillion years not knowing what's ever actually been done.

Casey Eberhart [00:10:40]:
So, Jen, let's, let's talk about that for a second. I think this is a really important thing. So I know that that's going to scare a lot of folks, right? I know that is— I know that it's scary. So, so I'm sitting here, I own an HVAC company or a garage sale, a garage door repair company or a plumbing company. I have a company, I've got probably, I don't know, 5 to 7, maybe 10, 20 employees. Doing a few million bucks, and I get this onboarding thing and it's just completely overwhelmed, right? Because I have—

Jennifer Bagley [00:11:09]:
Literally one prompt that's about 120 lines. Well, it's gonna produce about 120 pages back to us. When it's one prompt, you sit down with your AI, you paste this single prompt in, and then you have to sit there and have a conversation with your AI until it's done.

Casey Eberhart [00:11:30]:
And so, so, okay, so I'm freaked out. You give me this prompt, or I take the prompt, I put it in my AI, and it comes back and starts asking me questions. You guys, don't make it overly complicated. Tell the dumb thing to ask you one question at a time. And if you need help from your team, I'd probably all sit around a boardroom or on a Zoom meeting and get somebody, whoever can take ownership of that, at least like start to spit it out.

Jennifer Bagley [00:11:54]:
And if you don't know, ask the AI. What should it be to compete and win in my market? And then when it comes back and tells you and you're like, I'm not doing that, well then don't compete and win in your market.

Casey Eberhart [00:12:06]:
This is the thing I think that people get really— this is the thing that I think people get really freaked out about. And one of my best friends is in the consulting space in AI, but on a, on like Fortune 4 companies, right? And he walks around and the thing that he tells every single person is, I've got my best friend with a 180 IQ in my pocket. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, hang on. And he'll take his phone out. Hey, I just told a friend of mine that I've got my best friend with a 180 IQ in my pocket. What should I answer him? And he literally like holds it up and like he and I, like every question I would ask him, he would just like, we were at dinner and he's just like, well, let me just ask. And it's just that level of comfortability having a conversation. And I think it frees freaks people out because they, they've blurred the lines of, is this a human being or just trillions of lines of predictive text?

Jennifer Bagley [00:13:02]:
That's right, that's, that's real.

Casey Eberhart [00:13:04]:
It's gotten—

Jennifer Bagley [00:13:05]:
it's— I mean, to me it's freaking brilliant because it used to be that we would have to get on a call with somebody and we would have to have a conversation. We would make recommendations, they would argue why they know better, we would tell them why we know better, and it was this back and forth for forever and no decisions are made. Whereas now, like, you can simply— so it's going to force— what the prompt will do is it will evaluate your entire market. It'll evaluate your top 10 competitors in your entire market. And it's going to put all the questions in context with, while you're offering this cheesy— your brand currently says family-owned and occupied, great customer service, tastes like chicken, tastes like chicken, tastes like chicken, tastes like chicken. And it's going to tell you that, and then it's going to come back and say, your competitors in your market are offering a free air conditioning system with the purchase of a furnace. Your competitors in your, in your market are offering 100% guaranteed satisfaction, or, uh, they'll take it out and replace it. Like, it will come back and tell you what the minimum bar is in your market that you have to compete with.

Jennifer Bagley [00:14:10]:
So I just let them argue with their AI, and we don't have to be part of the conversation. Whatever you wind up deciding, or however far you want to fight it, go for it. But At least you have more data and we don't have to be— it's not us over someone else depending like we—

Casey Eberhart [00:14:23]:
Well, I think this is one of the things that I've always over our 20, 25-year friendship have really been so impressed by you. And ultimately it's how you've built the team and the thought process, which is the willingness. I don't know what that was, but I'm in.

Jennifer Bagley [00:14:48]:
I don't— that— Ding, ding, ding.

Casey Eberhart [00:14:54]:
It was like perfect timing. Um, is the willingness to ask the question that you know you may not want to hear the answer on for whatever reason. Oh, I built that marketing plan because of the past, or oh, I built the— built this and I paid a bunch of money to somebody in the past to give me this stuff. Your willingness and the willingness to accept a different answer than what you want to hear is where the money is made in this game. And then when we extend it to personal brand, this is the thing that I've— I have preached and taught and trained and screamed at and pounded my fist about. What you do outside of the 4 walls of your business is in fact very important to who is and who is not going to give you money Yeah. To your business. I've talked about 5 things to stay away from on social media and everywhere until I am blue in the face.

Casey Eberhart [00:15:47]:
And to this day, I still have people argue with me and I go, awesome. Well, let's go pull up your Instagram account, your Facebook account. Politics, politics, politics, politics, politics. Great. That is incorporated in who is seeing or not seeing your content. So congratulations, you've taken out probably about 40%. Yeah, being generous at 40, but yeah, you're probably close. You're probably actually closer to 50 or 60% because the people that don't want to vote for you are certainly not going to call you.

Jennifer Bagley [00:16:17]:
And then there's a whole nother 10 or 20% don't want any politics at all.

Casey Eberhart [00:16:21]:
Exactly. So, and that stuff is incredibly important. And I would argue based on data that it is becoming more and more relevant to the overall brand of your, of your company.

Jennifer Bagley [00:16:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's, let's make that flip. I wanted to tell you a story, but let's make that switch. So let's pretend like, um, for all of our clients who are already on Hydra and you guys are already, you've went through the process of building an entity.md file instead of a branding guidelines, which is kind of a dummy version of an entity file. Um, You are already focused on AI search, GEO, SEO, AXO, uh, SXO, which is search agent optimization, agent-to-agent optimization, and so forth. So all of these things, and now you're like, well, what's next? So we, um, have done a study on Hydra on our website performance compared to our top-performing, highest-investment most interactive, most engaged clients that are on Hydra as well.

Casey Eberhart [00:17:31]:
The CI Web Groups. CI Web Groups and Hydra. So I want to make sure that everybody understands what she's talking about here. We are kind of each other's secret decoder pins. So if I say something that doesn't make sense, she's going to step in and, and recalculate it. I will do the same. So what she's really talking about is taking all of Hydra's clients, the highest performing client in the Hydra ecosystem, Right, Hydra ecosystem, and comparing that to their own company's brand using the same platform and the same technology. So that's where she's going with this.

Jennifer Bagley [00:18:06]:
Yeah, 100%. So, and we're tracking now that everything is in a centralized brain, there's no one that can argue data with me because I, I, with 2 seconds, I can prompt Hydra and I can ask Show me the highest performing accounts. Show me the difference in strategy in those highest performing accounts. Show me the total number of components, total number of pages. I can do anything. So we did a study that compared like platforms. So Hydra for CI Web Group compared to Hydra for like Eco Services Washington, which they're like $150,000 website. They have the highest volume of components, highest number of pages, most sophisticated architecture that we've built so far.

Jennifer Bagley [00:18:47]:
Outside of some that are in production, so there's only one major difference in between those two, and that is the difference in my environment is the author that is shown on the blog content, on the page content, in the schema, and in the metadata is a human, and in our environment, that human is Jennifer Bagley. And I have some of our team that is also, also an author on the content that is published. And we're building their team profiles compared to with Eco. It's just the owner and the owner. Technically, if you compare my digital presence, my brand, my entity file for myself, my business, my personal file online, and you look at jenniferbagley.com, You look at podcasts, the catalyst for the trades. You look at, uh, I just authored a new book and, um, that just launched. Hands Up is what it's called. You should go check it out.

Jennifer Bagley [00:19:50]:
It's free right now on pre-release. That was my little commercial.

Casey Eberhart [00:19:55]:
There'll be a link below this for sure.

Jennifer Bagley [00:19:56]:
Below this.

Casey Eberhart [00:19:57]:
Okay.

Jennifer Bagley [00:19:58]:
So I'm not selling anything. Just go check it out. Uh, it'll tell you what hell I went through for the last 4 years preparing this thing. Um, so If you look at that, the entity file. So when I publish a page on CI Web Group, I don't, I don't do it, but Hydra does it. And my name is the author and my brand personally carries a lot more weight because everything is interconnected. Think about this big, um, like when you were in school and they had protons and neutrons and all the little synapses and everything was connected, right?

Casey Eberhart [00:20:29]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Bagley [00:20:30]:
So that's effectively what the internet and search engines and social media, They are not separate platforms. They are not silos. They don't sit over here and then sit over here and then sit over here and sit over here. It's this, this knowledge base like Wikipedia. That's a great example of a microscopic kind of knowledge base where you have one article and that article links out to this and links to this and checks the internet and checks social and checks their obituary and all these things, right? So the difference, if you look at Our growth, we moved from WordPress to Webflow to Hydra. Eco moved from WordPress to Hydra, so they had a big difference because the baseline was so low on WordPress, which is great, but not the same, not the same growth rate as CI Web Group. And that is technically the only difference. So if you get on AI, you don't have to trust Casey and I.

Jennifer Bagley [00:21:28]:
Like, get on AI and start asking about how does your personal brand and your team's personal brand and influence on the internet impact your business performance. And so you'll see a lot of marketing agencies spend a lot of time on their own personal brand, their name, right? And there's, it's not just because they're marketers. It's because they know that if, if the machine sees that the owner behind the business that's publishing the content that's submitting has a high authority, then automatically that authority passes to the business. And so I think that like now it's not just enough to, like you said, you said it perfect. It's not just enough to have your pretty pictures and your mascot and your pretty colors and your pretty van paint and whatever, and then move to Hydra. And now you have like this entity file and all of this additional knowledge base and central intelligence system and this data. But now we need to level it up, ratchet up one more notch and say, One, what is the strategy for you as a business owner starting to gain authority in your industry, in your space? 2, what is the strategy for, um, getting your team to participate in business growth regardless of what level? I don't care if they take the trash out or clean the shop or the ones washing the van. Are they taking video? Are they adding content? Are they publishing? Are they participating in reviews? Are they sharing reviews? Are they contributing? Right? And then start to get a process for structurally improving the authority rate of yourself and everyone, whether it's building your own website, writing your own book, publishing your own leadership content, and then building the team pages out of those people on your team.

Jennifer Bagley [00:23:11]:
And this is where this is kind of going to be like your 1980s, '90s argument. You're going to have some people are like, well, I don't want to put my team on the page because then people will recruit them. Well, don't you think if you help improve the authority and the knowledge and the power of your team that they might just want to stay? Like if you empower them. So there's that point of, do I want to put pricing online? No, because then I think people will underbid me. Do I want to put my entire team on there and help them build their authority? No, because they might recruit them. What if the gains are significantly bigger than that by doing exactly that? I have my entire team. on the website. I have my entire team now hosting podcasts, doing interviews, publishing content, participating in social, and they're building their own authority and their own brand.

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:01]:
Does that mean I'm putting them in a position where they could technically be more recruitable? Abso-freaking-lutely. Absolutely. But do I want to win more? Yes.

Casey Eberhart [00:24:14]:
Well, can I, can I tap into this? Because I think this is— I, I think you're right on point, but I'm gonna offer The complete flip side. So as consultant, as consultant brain on, one of the roles I put myself in is my job fiduciarily is to take a scenario and look at it from every potential angle possible and feed back to the client. Here are the possible outcomes. Now we can pick which one you want to go with and then work backwards to to deploy.

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:46]:
Yeah.

Casey Eberhart [00:24:47]:
So yes, do you make your team recruitable?

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:51]:
Yeah.

Casey Eberhart [00:24:52]:
You also put a moat around them. So if they do leave, you're still going to have what they've already produced for you. That's number one. Number 2, if I'm playing chess in this new game, there are really kind of 2 different scenarios that are going to happen. You're either going to start acquiring competitors Or you're going to get acquired. And the ones that have a deeper base will be acquired for more money. That's just like it. And I— this is— we don't go too deep into this, but I work in the M&A space and have for the last several years.

Casey Eberhart [00:25:29]:
And the first thing that we look at when I've got a client that's looking to acquire businesses is where is the other team's hole? Where, where have they not done a good job? And can we acquire that? Or if they have it better than us, then I want to acquire it for that, for that. So yes, putting pricing on, is there a risk? Yeah. And you know what? I know there are a lot of people, both like Jennifer and myself, who if we don't see pricing—

Jennifer Bagley [00:25:57]:
I'm out.

Casey Eberhart [00:25:58]:
We're like, I'm out before, like, I'm out before we've ever began. So I would probably overpaid for stuff because I'm just told what the pricing is. I don't want a bunch of fees. I don't want to be told that it's only available on a Wednesday between 1:00 AM and 1:13 AM if I'm like, you know, in, you know, wearing green underwear and drinking a margarita. Like, just— You guys, in the world of business, I think one of the things, Jennifer, that a lot of people miss is that they're building all this stuff and they're losing how they are as a customer in other businesses. Like, I have a, I have a, a phrase I use with a lot of people. It's— here it is. It's really actually simple.

Casey Eberhart [00:26:43]:
Don't be a weirdo. Like, if you want pricing—

Jennifer Bagley [00:26:48]:
This is what they'll say. They'll say the way you build pricing is through value at the kitchen table. No, you're breathing on my counter. You're touching my stuff.

Casey Eberhart [00:26:57]:
Well, you're implying that you're at the kitchen counter.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:00]:
You didn't get me to the kitchen counter.

Casey Eberhart [00:27:02]:
Yeah, you didn't get me out of the Sizzler having a meet and greet over lunch.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:08]:
Right.

Casey Eberhart [00:27:08]:
This is, this is the part that, this is the part that I think sometimes we as business owners forget that our customers, we are customers of other businesses. And I think if we literally like Took as an exercise. And when you have a great customer experience or when you have a bad one, put it into your AI thing and say, hey, this is what really sucked about this experience when I went and got piano lessons or I went into Mexican or whatever. Reframe this to help me not have somebody feel that about the current way we're doing this and now incorporate it in my personal brand.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:46]:
I love that.

Casey Eberhart [00:27:47]:
You will have a whole— I mean, this is literally like we talked about this before we started to hit the record button. Like, gang, Oprah, she's just built a publishing company. There's all these different arms. Oprah is still a person. Something may come and something may go, but you kind of know who Oprah is, what she believes in, what she doesn't agree with, what she does agree with. And as she's got more and more influence, she's kind of put more and more rails on what is said about her and what's her private life. So can Oprah have a private life? and still be Oprah Winfrey? Of course. So can you in your hometown.

Jennifer Bagley [00:28:24]:
Yes, absolutely. Uh, let me— I'm gonna tell you that story. So, um, the water heater company— and if you haven't watched the podcast, he just did a podcast with Jasmine. So Jasmine is now my co-host, and she's doing her own podcast inside of our network. I don't have to show up for all of them. Amen, Jasmine! I'm about to get the rest of the team to start doing them too so that I can figure out, like, who are our podcasters. Which again, does it make them more recruitable? Potentially.

Casey Eberhart [00:28:51]:
Well, let me— can I, can I throw this one more way at you, Jen? Then I want to hear yours. I, I want to hear your story. But I— you guys, I want you just to take a second and hear what Jen is really talking about. It really comes down to leverage, right? So if you've got a, um, I'm gonna interview every business owner in Puyallup, Washington, and you've got a podcast, and then you have What if you opened up your YouTube channel and your podcast channel and said, hey, any business owner in Puyallup, if you want to come and do a podcast, we'll put it on our, on our network. Or hey team, who here wants to get squirrely with a podcast or wants to do written word? And you create this publishing entity local and you allow these local, other local business owners and other interviews and other content and your local newspaper and all this stuff to put put into this machine, the net-net result is not everybody needs a water heater every minute of the day, but they're gonna need stuff other than that.

Jennifer Bagley [00:29:51]:
Bring in the painter, bring in the pool guy, bring in the freaking roofers. Yes.

Casey Eberhart [00:29:56]:
Sorry, I, I jumped in on your story, Jen.

Jennifer Bagley [00:29:58]:
Sorry. Let's start publishing content. Start publishing content. So there's no one who's outside of this game. Just because you own a roofing company doesn't mean you shouldn't start being a content publisher. It's literally how we're getting you more leads, so why not play a part in it? Why not participate? Okay, pricing. Water Heater Company, so it's on our YouTube channel, um, and I'm sure Krista can find the link. Jasmine and the Water Heater Company just did this podcast, and it's very good.

Jennifer Bagley [00:30:24]:
It's an honest account of why they chose us, working with us, what it felt like to go through onboarding, and the results after 30 days of being live. One of his stories, so he and I had some pretty— he'll talk to you— like 6 hours of deep, deep this is like 11:00 PM till 1:00 in the morning. I'm going to have a coming-to-Jesus meeting with you to talk through this. So Anthony was amazing. And he was telling me about basically their business model. Their conversions are going down. Like before they were working with us, they're still quoting the same amount of jobs. Conversions are going down.

Jennifer Bagley [00:31:00]:
They're losing more and more business. Their closing ratios aren't the same. And then I was like, well, stop the madness. You guys are driving out to every one of these single opportunities. and you're pitching them at the kitchen table. I was like, put the price, stick to a price. I don't care what you put it at. Put it at whatever you want.

Jennifer Bagley [00:31:16]:
Put it on the high side, put it on the website and let it self-adjust or let it self, what do you call it? When somebody can say whether they want to do it or not, self-weed out, I guess.

Casey Eberhart [00:31:32]:
Self-select.

Jennifer Bagley [00:31:33]:
Yeah. Let it self-select. Let the consumer self-select if they want to continue the process. And I was like, the worst-case scenario is that your lead volume decreases, but those who are interested buy, and you didn't have to drive out to the property. You didn't have to lose the bid, but they actually purchased. So he sent me a text message yesterday and he said, first person went to the website, chose the water heater they want, bought it. Online, checked out. We never had a conversation with them.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:04]:
We went in and installed the water heater, and he sent me a picture of the Yelp review they got 5 minutes after they left. Fully automated beginning to end.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:12]:
And you and I are that buyer.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:14]:
Yes.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:15]:
I don't care about—

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:16]:
I don't care how much it costs either.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:18]:
I don't want somebody to come to my house. This is the— I don't want to go down a whole nother rabbit hole, but I got to tell you People like me. This idea that there is somebody in Palm Springs or somewhere where it's hot as Hades that gets a call to go sell them an air conditioner because the air conditioner is on the fritz or the hot water tank's on the fritz, and they get to the kitchen table and cannot start installing in the next 20 minutes— like, my brain does not comprehend that. If my air conditioner is broken, we are grudge buys. Like, we are pissed.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:54]:
Convenience.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:56]:
Convenience. Jennifer does not have time to get 3 bids of 3 different people. She got a newborn grandkid in the house. She's got a team working. There is a time element and there is— OK, there is a premium, maybe, maybe not for being able to do that. But customers don't want to be hoodwinked. They don't want to get there and feel bait and switched. They don't want to feel any of that.

Casey Eberhart [00:33:20]:
You guys, if you put yourself in your customers' position and ask yourself, what would I realistically want or not want somebody to do in order to come fix the pipe under my sink or get a hot water tank or fix the garage door that's busted? And now I've got kids that are, you know, tagging stuff and stealing bikes. I'm like, put yourself in that role and say, like, how would I want to be sold? And I think if people said, how do I want to be sold and why do I buy and how do I buy? and you sell to yourself, be your best customer, and then that permeates through your entire brand and ecosystem of who your personal brand is, you guys will crush. I mean, it'll be amazing.

Jennifer Bagley [00:34:03]:
Yeah, I, I freaking agree. And if you're like, no, I want someone to sit in my home and I want to blink and I want to kissy kissy, shake hands, get a hug and all of that. And I mean that with the best. Create the path for that too.

Casey Eberhart [00:34:15]:
I was just going to say, you can do that.

Jennifer Bagley [00:34:17]:
You can do both.

Casey Eberhart [00:34:17]:
What you better have is you better have the right gal or the right woman who has that same temperament out at the front, out at the kitchen, right? Like, this is the thing, Jen, I think where you are, where Hydra and the team is great about, like, getting people to the door. It's up to you guys, it's up to all of us to figure out, like, how does that person want to be sold? How do they want to buy the solution? If you have somebody that is touchy-feely, needs to be nurtured and wants to be loved and told how amazing their house is, Then you better send somebody out to that person's house that's going to comment on their artwork, take their shoes off and put on foodie footies, walk in and walk in with a little charcuterie plate of $5. Like, like, the person has to play the part because somebody comes in and does that to my house. Like, I've got a lot of really cool artwork. Like, I'm proud of, of the stuff I've got on the wall. Someone comes to my house and tells me that they love Jonathan Adler pottery, um, and shag artwork on the walls. Like, they have my business. I'm like, okay, take it.

Casey Eberhart [00:35:23]:
Right, exactly. So gang, what Jennifer can do is she can get you to the kitchen table, but you're gonna have to have the right person. And that's where having your team and having that team brand ecosystem is so vitally important. This is why I'm a huge— now I don't want to venture too Off topic here because I could go down a whole nother world with this. I live in Los Angeles. We are a very diverse crowd here in LA, right? Here's the thing. If your customer base is diverse culturally, socioeconomically, or whatever, and you have only one type of person with only one voice, you are going to lose to the competitor that has a YouTube channel with 40 different testimonials on it from people of different shapes, different sizes, different colors, different viewpoints. Because when I go to a referral page and I'm looking down, the person I'm going to click on to hear their— what they say about you is the one that looks closest to me.

Casey Eberhart [00:36:30]:
Now we can dress it up.

Jennifer Bagley [00:36:32]:
It's a whole big thing.

Casey Eberhart [00:36:33]:
It's a whole big thing. But this is where, like, I work with a motorsports company, right, in North Carolina. And when I looked across their entire ecosystem, it was all one voice. And then when we started doing research on who the customers were, turns out the customer was very, very much like them. And the people we were losing to didn't look and sound like us. So But our client, our on-the-floor staff was very diverse. So we started having them do content, them be part of the equation and them play in the game. And our conversions went through the roof because I just think people felt like, oh, this company is talking to me.

Jennifer Bagley [00:37:19]:
Oh, I love that. I'm gonna throw myself under the bus right now. This is really good.

Casey Eberhart [00:37:26]:
Go, Jen.

Jennifer Bagley [00:37:27]:
This is a really good lesson for me. I have been known to be somewhat of an asshole. And at least that's what comes back to me. I'm not an asshole. I might be very direct and I might challenge you to think outside of the box and I might be very pointed in my conversation, but direct doesn't equal asshole. It just means direct. However, however, my entire team is definitely not the same. Camille, That woman is— she is a data guru.

Jennifer Bagley [00:38:00]:
She's never gonna lie. She's gonna tell you exactly like it is. She might be considered a little rough around the edges because whatever the truth is, it's the only thing you get, period. And it has zero perception or ill will or anything. It's just freaking data. Jasmine is a mom of many kids, and she gonna smack that thing right into submission. Like, she's gonna be— She might not bring all the data, but she's seen it enough that she's not gonna bore you with numbers. She's just gonna tell you to get your stuff together.

Jennifer Bagley [00:38:29]:
Bee, on the other hand, is probably the sweetest person on the planet. She's not highly technical. She's not a developer, but she's very, very good calming people's nerves. She's very, very good if you're not comfortable with the technology and you don't feel confident about it, saying, I know, I'm here, I'm with you, I've been there, I, I've gotten through this, we can do this together. Like, I could go through our entire list. Uh, Danny, I could go through every single one of them.

Casey Eberhart [00:38:57]:
I just look at— I look at one-hand Terrell. Think of one-hand Terrell and one-hand Kathy, one-hand Mike right now. These are all— if you guys don't know who these players are, we do. Here's the reality. All 3 of them, very different, very different people. What makes them tick? If Jennifer said, hey, Casey, I need you to answer these 3 or 4 questions, And it will tell me who to best put you with so that you get the right type of service. Some people are going to be like, oh my gosh, I need Kathy. Some people are going to need— I need Jennifer.

Casey Eberhart [00:39:31]:
Some people are going to be like, I need, you know, I want to work late at night. I don't, I don't have time during the day. Give me 4 o'clock in the morning. Oh, then I've got the person. We are not doing the best job as company owners of asking our customers.

Jennifer Bagley [00:39:46]:
That's fair.

Casey Eberhart [00:39:46]:
Hey, how do you want to be sold?

Jennifer Bagley [00:39:48]:
Yeah.

Casey Eberhart [00:39:49]:
Do you need it cheap? Do you need it fast? Do you need quality? Do you want us to tell you how pretty you are? Do you want us to just tell you what you need? What's your skill level? I had a phone call with a coaching company, I think. So I have several coaches just in my own ecosystem, and they never asked me. They were trying to sell me a product that I was overqualified to buy. And they started talking to me like I was 3 years old. They never asked me what my experience was with the product, and it was pretty technical. I mean, it was like crypto trading and decentralized ecosystem. Like, it was, it was crazy. And I just sat there at the end, and he was like, well, what do you think? I'm like, well, I think you just talked to me like I was a kindergartner, and I am a master's degree compared to what you are.

Casey Eberhart [00:40:35]:
So can you talk to me on a master's degree level? And then he was able to, and I was like You just waste— I said, I'm just telling you this from a consultant. You wasted 2 hours of trying to sell me as a kindergarten because you never asked me what my skill level was or where I was in the process. One time I told a guy, I'm like, we got on a call. I said, listen, here's the deal. I'm closed. This is your call to lose my business.

Jennifer Bagley [00:41:01]:
I do this all the time. I feel sorry for salespeople.

Casey Eberhart [00:41:04]:
It is to shut up. Start asking me about why I have a Crock-Pot on my shelf or why there's a picture of Charlie Sheen there or why I've got Disney Mickey Mouse ears. That's when you start to build the rapport. But I think one of the things, Jennifer, is— I'm just going to plug you, Jennifer. One of the things, Jen, is when we start to build that personal brand, we'll let that personal brand fill in some of those gaps about what you're like. If you were around me for any length of time on social media, you know I love Disneyland. You know I love the ocean. You know I have— I came from the Pacific Northwest.

Casey Eberhart [00:41:36]:
You know I live in Los Angeles. You know I used to produce movies. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff.

Jennifer Bagley [00:41:40]:
Yeah.

Casey Eberhart [00:41:41]:
I know Jennifer just had a grandchild, right? I'm, I'm so excited every time I see a picture of little Dallas running around, right? I know that her mom runs Special Agent Realty. I know that she travels between Houston and Seattle. I could probably tell you where she is at any given time because I'm locked into her personal brand. We don't have to talk on the phone every 5 minutes. For us to know what each other is up to.

Jennifer Bagley [00:42:09]:
By the way, your walking is really good. You're walking.

Casey Eberhart [00:42:13]:
I thank you. I have committed to doing 10,000 steps a day and I have not missed a day in almost a month.

Jennifer Bagley [00:42:19]:
I need to pick that up.

Casey Eberhart [00:42:21]:
Um, but I say that, I say that, Jen, just in the sense that as business owners, you guys, what you're doing on social media, what blog posts you're writing, what content you're creating, how you're interacting with your Google reviews, how you're interacting with that is going to tell the story and fill in a lot of these gaps. So you just need to be mindful about what it is and who it is that you are being when no one else is looking, because that's when they're looking. 100%.

Jennifer Bagley [00:42:49]:
So let me tie, let me tie all this together. So, because you said a lot of really good stuff and it ties right in. If you look at any of our hydro websites, the majority of them where the client decided not to argue with us about how we should go about it. Which is the majority. We have amazing clients. Um, if you look, what you're going to see that's different— go pull up 20 roofing companies, 20 door companies, 20 HVAC, plumbing, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is. Go pull up a ton of them that are non-hydro, and what you're going to notice is they all have the same playbook. So the playbook sounds like this: hi, welcome to my company.

Jennifer Bagley [00:43:25]:
These are my services. These are my reviews. This is my team. This is my dog. These are my promotions. This is my phone number. And this my online booking. Imagine walking into somebody's home and standing up there in your brand and going, this is my logo.

Jennifer Bagley [00:43:43]:
And this is my clipboard with all my services. And these are all my reviews. And these are all my blank. And these are all my blank. Imagine that in a house. And this was the kind of biggest aha moment where we had more freedom with Hydra. If you go look at the Hydra sites, what you're going to see is when, soon as you get there, you're going to see where it says, What's going on with your home? How can I help you? And there's a house and there's little buttons you can click on throughout the entire house. And you can say, well, I came here because my air conditioning is broke, but I also want an electrical unit outside because my husband wants to install a TV.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:16]:
And I also want to put an EV charger in because my wife just got a Tesla or whatever. And you can go start picking all the things that are available for your house. Then it says something like, We know you're in Washington State and we know you're facing the fact that energy prices are increasing by over 30% over the next year and will potentially double the year after that. Are you interested in figuring out how to reduce your energy bills? Here's a list of solutions, not services, that can help you accomplish that goal. Not that you can buy today for this amount.

Casey Eberhart [00:44:49]:
What would—

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:49]:
what do you want to do? Do you want to put in a high-efficiency heat pump? Do you want to put in an EV charger? Do you want to put in tankless water heater? And you can start going through and selecting all those things to help you what accomplished the goal of reducing your energy bills. So that logic is referred to as a client-first approach.

Casey Eberhart [00:45:08]:
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:08]:
And that means that the— you understand, which that's what Haider does, you understand what's going on in that market, you understand what you're competing against, you understand what you need to do in order to connect with the consumer. That conversation also sounds like the one you should have when you walk into their home. So tell me what's going on with your house. What do you guys got going on? Do you guys have any other projects in the house? I know I'm here for the AC or whatever, but when was the last time— did— have you guys ever had your dryer vent cleaned or whatever? Did you know that thing catches fire? So we—

Casey Eberhart [00:45:40]:
so I refer to that as owning the customer, or in this case, owning the house. Whoever becomes the trusted house manager is going to be the one that is called for referrals for a jacuzzi repair, a landscaper, uh, which is why, like, I know we don't have time to go into that, but building that network of trusted, vetted other services that you guys are all networked with, that you can, at, at, with a, you know, hand to book swear that they're going to be the best or one of the best for that person, it's huge. I will, I will say this, Jen, at the end of the day, owners, you've got an option here. You can be right or you can be rich. Pick one. And that's really what Jen and the Hydra team is doing, is they're just providing you a pathway to being rich. And I don't mean just rich in terms of more leads and all that. I mean rich in like life and fulfillment and, and helping your crew.

Casey Eberhart [00:46:40]:
And families of their crews. And, and working with the people that you want to.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:45]:
Making more money, bigger margins.

Casey Eberhart [00:46:47]:
Hire the people that are right and then listen to them.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:51]:
Yes, your, your vendor network. So we have a client, um, in Poulsbo, um, right off of Bremerton, right? Is that an island or not an island?

Casey Eberhart [00:47:02]:
No, Poulsbo is not an island. I just remember because Poulsbo RV, we used to do a bunch of stuff with them back at, uh, at a park I used to run. So yeah.

Jennifer Bagley [00:47:10]:
She's, uh, so this is Eagle Pipe Mechanical. A lot of people know her, Lori Terschel. Um, and we did this on her. So she had us build a custom component that what it did is it asked, what do you have going on in your house? And it had all her services, but then it also included the roof, the garage door, and everything else. And we built her another custom module, which is a vendor directory. And she's starting. And so it was really interesting when I was talking to her, she was like, I actually can turn this into a little business. I think I could sell these services and subcontract work to a lot of these guys that don't have really strong businesses in the market.

Jennifer Bagley [00:47:48]:
She's going all ham on this. And now she's like, well, I was doing HVAC and plumbing, but now I technically can sell anything.

Casey Eberhart [00:47:55]:
So what if she— it's so funny because our producer is like pinging us like crazy. And then she's like, oh God, they're on. They're just not getting off this thing. We're getting red scrolls and all this kind of stuff. But here's, here's the thing, Jen. What if she took all of those people in her vendor network, interviewed them about their business, and put it on her YouTube channel with a referral link on the YouTube video that then she got paid for? Now it's just one-off. She got paid for referrals. Now the YouTube algorithm is helping her, and she's got a place to pour all of them.

Casey Eberhart [00:48:25]:
It's on her page.

Jennifer Bagley [00:48:27]:
We can add all those videos to Hydra. That can become part of the data source. So Part of this is tailgate marketing, right? If let's say there's a pool company in your area and let's say you interview them and I have all this podcast data and I can throw that video on your website and Hydra's central intelligence engine can, can crawl the transcript, understand everything about that pool company. And then when somebody's searching for the pool company and let's say the pool company has a shitty old WordPress site, but somebody's searching for them, guess who's going to come up? Eagle Pipe Mechanical is going to be the one that shows up in the AI search engines because you have the podcast, you have the transcript, you have the content inside of there. They're looking for a pool company, but you're getting brand mentions and they land on your site because you have a better engine instead of the pool company and they convert through you and you have an opportunity to what? Like introduce other services. Yes, absolutely. Thousands of people.

Casey Eberhart [00:49:23]:
At the end of the day, we'll sort of wrap this up where we started. Most of your competitors, guys and gals, do not know how to play checkers. This is 5-dimensional chess.

Jennifer Bagley [00:49:35]:
They don't know how to play chess.

Casey Eberhart [00:49:36]:
Yes, they don't even know where the game— they're, they're still playing, you know, I don't know, Catan or whatever, right?

Jennifer Bagley [00:49:43]:
Go Fish.

Casey Eberhart [00:49:44]:
Here's the thing.

Jennifer Bagley [00:49:46]:
Go Fish, actually, it is.

Casey Eberhart [00:49:47]:
Yeah, I mean, here's, here's where this really comes down to. At the end of the day, you're gonna have a lot of business owners that say, eff it, leave it to the next guy, right? They're my age, 50, 55. They're getting ready to retire. They don't want to put the time and energy and effort into this. It just means they're either going to be going out of business or they're going to be for sale. So if we think about this strategically, build this now and acquire those folks that are going to come out and just be like, eff this, leave it to the next guy. Let me be the next guy. Now, when you sell, you're selling when you're ready to retire and you're ready to call it a day.

Casey Eberhart [00:50:24]:
Why? you're relying on a full-blown asset that becomes way more valuable the more stuff that's in that asset. So, Jen, I just want to just give a huge shout out to you and the entire CI team. It is so— I'm so proud. I feel like this proud younger brother or older cousin or combination of both. I'm so, so very proud of Your own customer-first approach and your own team's willingness to take everything in and go, okay, how do we best serve the customer? How do we best serve the client? And I've watched you guys from day one. I remember when you and I were doing stuff together 25 years ago and we were just cracking up that we were so ahead of our game. And I still think that you and your team are ahead of the game right now, just in seeing what's out there. And so I'm just, I'm incredibly incredibly proud.

Casey Eberhart [00:51:19]:
I'm super honored to be on the show, and it's just awesome.

Jennifer Bagley [00:51:24]:
I love you, Case. And for— I love you. And I've— every major business decision, I've always called and said, can we have some ice cream? I have an idea. This is— if you guys want to understand what a personal brand is like, go look at jenniferbagley.com. Go look at Case. Case, put your website up, or Uh, I'm—

Casey Eberhart [00:51:46]:
we're in the— we're, we're, we're gonna chat because we're in the rebuild section.

Jennifer Bagley [00:51:50]:
I know somebody who can do that.

Casey Eberhart [00:51:52]:
I know, that's why you're gonna get called.

Jennifer Bagley [00:51:54]:
So, um, go check him out on social media though, because Casey is— he's been known for a gazillion years as the ideal networker. This man knows how to build strategic relationships, strategic partnerships, um, and leverage those— that network and those relationships more than anyone else. I've learned a tremendous amount from you. I continue to when I fall into my cave and I start coding for too and I go, shit, I haven't even been online. Let me pop up. And then there's Casey. I'm like, okay, you have to prioritize this, Jen. It matters.

Jennifer Bagley [00:52:24]:
I am not a big social media person. I do it because I— it's my responsibility as a business owner. Um, but go check his out. This is— don't overthink it. Like, what Casey and I are producing is not overproduced. We didn't have to have a media crew come in.

Casey Eberhart [00:52:42]:
Could—

Jennifer Bagley [00:52:43]:
can you do that?

Casey Eberhart [00:52:44]:
Sure.

Jennifer Bagley [00:52:44]:
Is it like great to have a bunch of content? But yes, this is really simple. Like build your personal brand, build a website that's surrounding your personal brand. Um, Casey and I have both versions. We have those versions where people have been writing short stories and blog posts for forever that get flipped into a book. Or for me, I wrote the book over the last 4 years and then now I'm flipping it into short stories. Either way, it's content. And they both contribute with each other. Figure out how to get on podcasts like this one, or when my team reaches out to invite you to get on a podcast, or don't wait to get on the list.

Jennifer Bagley [00:53:20]:
Reach out to our team and ask to join the podcast to talk about your Hydra Launch, because that's brand mentions. That's an authority site that's going to give content and we're paying for it, right? When you get on somebody else's content, you're getting free marketing. It's their budget. It's their team, their resources. You're getting content. Then publish that content on your social media. So you're starting to feed the synapses and the ecosystem. Right? Then document it on your website as this is press or media.

Jennifer Bagley [00:53:47]:
So you'll need a press or media area where every time you're at a speaking event or every time you get on a podcast or every time there's a write-up or you win an award, you're starting to build that library of your press and media. Use press releases and then like have a voice. You have things every single day that make you Talk to the top of your freaking visor in your car, the things that piss you off or make you proud or whatever that is. I mean, I hate, I despise pulling this phone out and talking to a screen. I hate it. I hate it so much. I don't like it at all. You are a master at it.

Jennifer Bagley [00:54:27]:
The first time I ever did that was this year. Normally for the last 20 years, all I've done is post video with pictures and music. And finally I got the courage to pull this stupid thing out and figure out now I probably need to be nicer because now I'm only talking to it when I'm pissed about something. But message to share, but like watch what we're doing online. And I'm seeing a lot more contractors do this. So this isn't like no one is doing this. There are some major heavy-hitting contractors that are publishing amazing content. It's fun.

Jennifer Bagley [00:55:03]:
It's quirky. It's informational. It's educational. There does need to be a little bit more tactics on how to connect all the synapses to your entity file, your website, your blog, and everything. I'm seeing it a little haphazard right now, which is good. Activity is activity and it breeds activity. But if it was a little bit more strategic and you were building content clusters and topical authority surrounding permanent assets that are on your website, and then you're adding content that supports that. and it's connected, you would actually 10x or 100x the value that you're getting if it wasn't so haphazard.

Casey Eberhart [00:55:42]:
Um, but, but your first 50, your first 50 videos are gonna suck, ladies and gentlemen. They're just gonna suck. So go be haphazard and get your first 50 out of the way. The good news is your competitors won't make it to 5. So I think what Jennifer is saying is just start, because if you get to Jennifer and you're 50 videos in 51 and beyond are going to be way more powerful than if we have to do the first 50 that are going to suck. So that's, that's my, that's my, my helpful hint from HelloWee sitting here in LA.

Jennifer Bagley [00:56:14]:
I love that. I'm leaving one last thing. If you read my book, there is a chapter in the book where I explicitly explain that starting my, um, business, when I sat down with my father and I told him I was going to start my own business, he said the exact same thing. He said, you know, Jen, It's gonna suck. Suck it with a smile.

Casey Eberhart [00:56:39]:
So I don't get rendered speechless very often, and I'm gonna let that be the, um— I just, you know what, I'm having such a— I'm just— here's the thing why Jen is laughing at my response to this. Kevin was an amazing, amazing, amazing guy. And the one thing, for being as a techno nerd as he was, that he always did was be able to blend the super, super technology-focused brain to the real world. And so that comment, really, as funny as it is, just kind of on the surface it's funny, the real— the reality is what he was really being able to do was transcend a techno manual and talk to, talk to real people. And I think for you guys that are running businesses, that's what we need. We don't care how an air conditioning unit works. I don't care about the motor that runs my garage door opener. I don't want to know how a pool filter works.

Casey Eberhart [00:57:46]:
You know what I want to know how to do? Will the dumb thing heat up when I hit the button? Like, I have an air conditioner that I can't get to right to do the right temperature. I don't need to know how it works. Just tell me how to solve the problem. And I think one of the things that Kev did was—

Jennifer Bagley [00:58:03]:
Keep it real.

Casey Eberhart [00:58:04]:
He kept it real. And I just— I know I'm going to make you cry with this, but he really created a legacy and a through line in what he started all the way, all the way through to that grandbaby that I can hear running around in the background. Right. So anyways, I'm incredibly, um, proud and to— of everything that you guys are doing, Jen. And I'm just— I'm super honored to be your friend, and I love what you guys are doing.

Jennifer Bagley [00:58:32]:
I need your story for the book. I'm saying it publicly while it's recorded. When can you have it to me?

Casey Eberhart [00:58:37]:
We'll talk about what you want, and I will give it to you.

Jennifer Bagley [00:58:40]:
Okay?

Casey Eberhart [00:58:41]:
With a smile.

Jennifer Bagley [00:58:43]:
With a smile. All right, you guys, thank you so much for joining again. I'm— again, I'm sorry for the hiatus and disappearing for a little while. We had a lot of work to do, but we're Casey, I love you very much. Krista, love you. Thank you for attempting to keep us on time. I know that also sucks. With a smile.

Jennifer Bagley [00:59:03]:
All right, we're out of here.

Casey Eberhart [00:59:04]:
Awesome, everybody. Ciao.