brandUP Your Business Podcast
Hey, I’m Matt Jackson, and I’ve been through the highs and lows of building brands that make an impact. On the BrandUP Your Business Podcast, I take you along on my journey and sit down with other entrepreneurs to share the secret sauce of branding, marketing, and sales that actually works.
In each episode, you’ll hear real stories, fun conversations, and actionable tips to take your business from zero to hero. If you’re ready to level up your brand and learn from the best, this is the place for you!
Let’s turn your business into something unforgettable. Tune in and join the fun!
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brandUP Your Business Podcast
Season 1: Episode 17: AI, SEO, and Business Evolution
Ever wonder how traditional business education might unlock success in blue-collar industries? In this captivating conversation, Lewis Vandervoort shares his remarkable journey from mechanical engineering to building a thriving marketing agency serving home service businesses.
Lewis pulls back the curtain on his unconventional start in digital marketing, revealing how he first built and ranked websites, generated real leads, and only then approached service providers with proven results rather than empty promises. This proof-of-concept approach stands in stark contrast to the "fake it till you make it" mentality plaguing the SEO industry.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore artificial intelligence's impact on marketing. While many fear AI will replace jobs, Lewis offers a more nuanced perspective: "AI isn't replacing humans—it's replacing humans who aren't using AI." He shares practical examples of using AI as a superpower while maintaining the human touch that makes content valuable. From writing to business strategy, discover how AI can enhance rather than replace your expertise.
Home service business owners will find particular value in our discussion about Google Business Profiles. Lewis reveals how devastating a suspended profile can be (as I discovered firsthand), while providing actionable strategies for optimization: consistent posting, detailed photo captions, and customer reviews that specifically mention services provided.
Perhaps most valuable is Lewis's candid insight on business growth: "It doesn't get easier; you just get better at making hard decisions." This perspective shift helps reframe the entrepreneurial journey, acknowledging that new levels of success bring new challenges rather than eliminating difficulty altogether.
Whether you're in pressure washing, junk removal, or another home service industry, this conversation offers both strategic marketing insights and the mindset shifts needed to thrive in today's competitive landscape. Ready to transform how you approach your digital presence? This episode is your roadmap.
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What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson with Brand Up your Business podcast, and we have an exciting guest today. We're going to bring on Louis.
Speaker 1:He runs a marketing company agency out of Canada, so I followed him for years online and see all the good work that he does and we connected and with my passion and love of branding, I figured it'd be awesome to bring him in, loop him in with everybody here at Brand Up and if you guys ever need services, this guy would be definitely the go-to guy. So, uh, you want to kick this thing off, lewis, and kind of go more into uh like who you are, what you do and maybe why you got started yeah, I really appreciate you having me on matt.
Speaker 2:It's been, uh, I've been following you for a while. Um and uh, love what you're doing with the you know the power washing brand, what you're doing with the power washing brand, what you're doing with BrandUp I mean, just look behind you. Your background is fantastic. So we're all jealous of the background and whatnot, but it shows what you guys are doing and what you have done. But my name is Louis Vandervoort, based in New Brunswick, Canada, so we're just bordering on Maine. For those who don't know, you know what the heck is up in Canada, aside from Canada as the 51st state. But yeah, been doing, been doing SEO and websites for about six years now, since 2019.
Speaker 2:And then before that it was, I guess, going all the way back to the womb. You know, grew up on a farm, did construction all through high school, did construction for four years after high school when he got a degree in mechanical engineering and, did you know, did design work all through the degree. We got married, you know our first kid and I was thinking you know I'm not really a career guy is what I realized pretty quickly. You know, I'm not really a career. Sitting in an office design stuff. I absolutely loved it, loved the hands-on. I had a really cool role designing parts for those who were paralyzed and didn't have the ability to drive a vehicle normally, so we designed like hand controls you could break and accelerate with your hand control and then all the fittings that go with that. So really, really love that.
Speaker 2:But then started the marketing agency in 2019. In 2021, started a local junk removal company. So I got to test a lot of the stuff, not just digitally but in person as well All the networking stuff, all the stuff that you can really use to blow up your business and get things rocking. So just kind of had a wide range of experiences and really enjoyed the process along the way.
Speaker 1:That's exciting and it's kind of cool. You and I both have similar backgrounds. I was college career focused and went to corporate America, did corporate sales, was in that B2B sales role, kind of hunt, grind like white collar vibe. And then I kind of made a jump into more of the blue collar scene and I also have like that passion of marketing and and it's like okay, I I jumped into the scene because I saw that it was an industry there and a market that was untapped. Uh, coming kind of from that like college educated white collar mind where, hey, like we, we know how business is supposed to be run. And then we're going to spaces where, uh, maybe the education of the of people who are running these types of businesses, or more the blue collar, it's like that sweat equity they don't have that same kind of like MBA mindedness or engineering mindedness of how to like create a business, run a business, market push and all that kind of stuff. So I always find it cool when similar minded people have gotten into a space that's almost non-traditional for us and we're able to kind of excel into it because we're able to apply what we know kind of from our traditional education, some corporate experience, and then applying it into like a blue-collar space or a different space and really able to help that space out. So I think it's really cool because we're almost like breaking a mold.
Speaker 1:And I know, growing up a show I liked to watch was called Dirty Jobs with like Mike Rowe, and it was like I was always taught like I went to private schools like hey, get good grades, get a good job, go to college, you'll be taken care of and all that stuff. And then we, our generation is almost like. Our generation is almost like we're realizing now and politically you can see it too with different political parties, where there's a lot of like disgruntledness and people are kind of sour about how the world is and about the economy and the market and jobs. So by escaping that rat race of the corporate America and then getting into spaces like marketing agencies and branding and stuff like that and helping people in like whether it's junk removal or pressure washing, like it's exciting that we can almost like change our path while continuously growing forward. Because I know for me personally, I was looking ahead and saying, okay, I'm in this massive corporation, sure, I can make money, I could be a VP, I could climb my way up in corporate.
Speaker 1:But that wasn't something that lit me up, that wasn't something that made me excited and I knew that. I mean, like you got to pretty much fit a square in and like a round hole, like a peg, like it's. It wasn't my personality. So like I kind of resonate with what you said on how you're like this just isn't necessarily for me all day long. So it's it's cool to see like you break free from that and then you can really soar and then like hit your potential. So I I always think that's really cool to like resonate with that story as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and uh, dirty jobs, um, micro I didn't grow up watching it, but micros, man, we need more micros in the world. I think that, uh, I was watching diary of a ceo the other day and, uh, you know, with the godfather of ai and he's like you know, some of the things that aren't going to be taken over by ai are the trades you know. Don't be a plumber, you can make really good money. Go be a welder.
Speaker 2:You know some of these things that, uh, you know, people kind of look down on and they're like, oh, you got to go get a college education. It's like, well, yeah, maybe, but maybe not. Maybe it's worth going out and doing what you love, already getting paid really well for it. Welders can make a ton of money, plumbers can make a ton of money Power washers, junk removal there's a lot of money to be made out there in things that AI isn't just going to take over right away, whereas a lot of people that go into college, you know, for knowledge work per se, ai is kind of coming for you. If you're not going to, you know, jump on board and use the tools to your advantage, exactly.
Speaker 1:And I love AI, I play around with it. I have a virtual assistant who helps me out with some of my marketing and I have almost noticed a trend in the space where everybody who was kind of like not branded correctly or didn't know exactly what they wanted to do in like that guru space is now like an AI expert and it seems like AI content is almost like spamming people where, like you're becoming post blind to it now and I'm almost careful with like what kind of AI content I'll post and share because I don't want to be lumped into that. That group of it's like okay, chat, gpd, make me this with like a generic prompt and it does seem like there's a level of intelligence and understanding of ai and like engineering of prompts to like really make it work for you as opposed to just like that generic oh, look at, look how cool this is like copy paste ai blob.
Speaker 2:So I agree. Yeah, um, one of the things I did is I took all my facebook posts for I use as much as I should for uh, posting but I took all my Facebook posts over the last three years and fed it into a project in ChatGPT. And then I use that and be like, hey, this is how I write, so take this concept and help me write it, and then I always edit it after. It's the same for SEO content. We'll get into some of that stuff here. But if you're writing content and just asking AI to spit something out and you're not editing it for your brand, for your voice, for your authority, for your customer reviews and stuff like that, you're missing out on a lot and you're kind of just creating another vomit of recycled content that's out there that Google's not really finding all that valuable. So facebook posts, google and they've never stood in front of a mic and they've never had a conversation. They're just like vomiting information out into the, into the metaverse and it's you can tell and and people want that.
Speaker 2:You know, they want that legit.
Speaker 1:You know real human touch though I think so, and it like like key point there that that human touch. And so it's like the the joke I've heard too it's like oh, ai is going to like replace humans or replace their jobs. It's like AI is going to replace humans that aren't using AI. And if you're using AI and you're putting your spin on it and, like you said, you're using it to like, um, like data scrape all of your Facebook posts, get an idea how you write, like your voice and and kind of that, that brand aspect of it it's. It's a tool to to help you leverage and use going forward.
Speaker 1:But if you don't do that and then you're just general, like generically whitewashing yourself with just whatever randomness is out there in the internet space and on Google and whatever index websites, like it's going to do you no good. So, uh, I mean you're more in the weeds with this than I. Cause cause like this is your business and stuff like that. Are you seeing a lot of like shifting in AI, uh, with utilization, like whether these people are like evolving to use AI? Cause I've seen online, uh, some of these like SEO Reddit groups where people are like, oh, seo is dead and and this and that, and you're the real expert here, so I'm always interested in like your opinion on things and like is.
Speaker 1:AI being used to write blog posting? Or is AI being used to do all SEO? Because I have like these Facebook ads inundate me now of like Atlas AI or Atlas SEO or some of these. They're like. Ai can do everything for you. Is it replacing people or replacing the need for SEO, or is it making SEO even more important than ever now?
Speaker 2:Well, we can key right off of Search Atlas there. So I've actually used Search Atlas. We use Search Atlas for some functions in the agency. Does it replace a person? No, I don't think it does. I think you still need to be an operator. So a car is a lot faster than a horse, which is a lot faster than walking. Walking, you kind of figure it out and you just go where you got to go, or I guess there's some learning curve to to operating a horse. But a car you can go really fast, but you can also hurt yourself pretty badly too, and so if you're not using the tools correctly, like I, can go on and buy a tool that will create me a thousand backlinks in five minutes or a thousand blog posts in five minutes, but that could actually be hurting someone more than it's helping If it's just again regurgitating the content, if it's just spitting out something that's a recycled mishmash of content that's already out there.
Speaker 2:Because ultimately the engines right now ChatGPT, cloud, perplexity they're all pulling information that's already out there and then putting a spin on it, maybe based on your prompt. If you're not feeding it information or editing it after, then you're just again. I'm going to run with the mishmash word that I just used, and it's just recycled gobbledygook. But to your point before, I actually used that in our team meeting this morning AI's not going to replace us. It's not replacing jobs. It's just replacing people that aren't using AI. And if you're not going to take advantage, I think, as business owners, ai is a superpower. Let's step back from SEO and look at okay, cool, how's my business doing? Use it as a business coach. I've paid a lot of money for business coaches over the last six, seven years. I business coach. I've paid a lot of money for business coaches over the last six, seven years. I think that that's a great basis for how I prompt AI now, but you can also prompt it to answer some really interesting questions. We're retooling some of our client experience right now, so I just put in what we're doing now, some frameworks that I like the Never Lose a Customer Again framework by Joey Coleman, some different SEO agency frameworks that I have and what we're doing now, and then say you know, ask me a hundred questions that help you understand what we're actually doing and where, where there's some potential gaps.
Speaker 2:I did that for our core values. I'd been trying to come up with our core values. I wanted something that was like a really nice acronym but you know, really was like pithy and got everything that I that I had. I said the same thing Ask me 100 questions to try and determine what my core values are, and then we'll refine it from there. I realize I'm really good at answering questions. I think I've kind of trained myself that way through the Facebook groups because I am so active in there, through Slack, because my team's always asking me questions, through customer service, because I'm so used to that. I'm not great I wouldn't say I'm not great at having original thoughts, but to just sit down and like come up with something is harder for me than to answer questions. I can answer questions all day long and so I've trained my chat GPT to ask me questions rather than, you know, give it all the information up front. If it can just ask me questions, then it's there To go one step back.
Speaker 2:I know we're getting off track here a little bit on AI, but my wife got an education in psychology, social work and education and she uses ChatGBT a ton, essentially as a therapist.
Speaker 2:She again knows some of the prompts and knows some of the language to use, so it's not just straight up having straight up having chat, tbt, but you know, every relationship goes through its challenges. Every you know parent goes through their challenges. You know, being there, being present, figuring stuff out and so talking to it has been crazy and very helpful for her. And then, by extension, I started using it and there's just so much power in using it as someone that can, you know, can bounce ideas off of as a second gut check. We pay a lot of coaches a lot of money for for that and sometimes it's really just an accountable, you know, an accountability, and if you can have that and obviously you have to be disciplined in using it, man, there's some power there. I got a little off topic of the and whatnot, but in AI tools, my wife's using it every day almost more than I use it at work. It's crazy, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I've been amazed just how quickly it's evolved, especially looking to the video generation, and I remember I paid some guy to do. I don't even know what the initial video generators were before Gemini and I think ChatGPT was doing a little bit here and there, but there you had to like jumble like 10 different little programs and then create prompts and then do this to make these like two-dimensional videos. Nowadays I can just use Google Gemini and just type in a prompt to use Bigfoot and pressure washer and it looks like it came out of like a cinematic movie.
Speaker 1:So it, so it's fascinating how quickly this stuff is evolving and as a tool as well, it is fascinating, just like, I guess, learned language models, llms that's what you were mentioning too, like you have experience with, I guess that's. Is that mainly like AI stuff or are you incorporating this more into like the backend of your business or helping clients or helping? This is more in the weeds than what I I'm very like high level top, like your mechanical, like engineering mindedness, that's you're probably more like the expert down on like the, the systems and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:So well, if we go to your question. Uh, we didn't quite answer the question of is seo dead? Um, your question from reddit there, yes, and I would say no, it's changing. I would say an unequivocal no it is changing though.
Speaker 2:So five citations or, you know, adding 100 pages to your website or whatever, isn't enough. You've got to follow the rules, and you've always really had to follow the rules. Like everybody's had moments in time where they could game the system or whatever, and then an update comes out and then you know their sites tank right. But at the end of the day, google, bing, perplexity, chatgbt they all want people to stay on their platform. So if they can get the best information to feed someone that answers their question, for them to then continue coming back to use the platform, that's a win for them. And so, in the same way that you've got to have everything dialed in for Google, for Bing, for DuckDuckGo, in the same way it's the same thing for the chatbots, for the AI, llms.
Speaker 2:So they're pulling information from your website, from podcasts like this.
Speaker 2:So if someone's asking about Lewis Vandervoort, you know, in a couple weeks, once this goes out, or whenever it goes live, chatgpt is going to be able to pull from this video that we did and then pull information about me, pull questions.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of research before I get podcast guests on and I just run through some questions. I'll run a few episodes of you and Clay through it before we jump on my podcast, and so it's pulling information from that, from your website, from my website, from the Google business listing, from the reviews that are on the listing. All of that's coming together and so the more information you can have out there on different platforms whether you're doing LinkedIn articles or you're maybe posting on Medium a few times or you've got some Vimeo videos, some YouTube videos the more you can have content out there talking about what you do, where you do it, how you do it, the more informed Google and ChatGPT and all the other language models are going to be when it comes to pulling your stuff. So the basics of SEO are still there Provide information on what you do, where you do it, how you do it.
Speaker 1:Very cool. And then like to your point too, and I've heard that too.
Speaker 1:With Google. It's like SEO, like you don't spam it, because it's the customer experience of Google, is the end user. So like if you're just feeding a junk and gaming the algorithm and then you are forcing yourself to rank high and then somebody's calling you as a service provider, they're gonna have a bad experience with using google. So google's gonna do everything in their power to kind of like sift and sort out all that that crap content and find find the best. So like what I what I do is try to like reframe that and know that in mind. It's like, hey, what's the most value that I can add to the table? That that's kind of like has my unique selling proposition or like my, my brand tied to it. That way I can like differentiate myself from everybody else and the the passion I have with like the branding and the marketing. It's like like you're saying like with so much we're we're talking about this kind of with with chat GPD earlier.
Speaker 1:Like the information, like we, we went to school for information, right. Like hey, back in the day you had to go to a library. You had to copy stuff out of a reference book. That's how you learned. But now everything's on on a phone, on a, on on AI based systems, or you can ask Siri and all the information.
Speaker 1:So like we're in the information age, so like a passion of mine and kind of the purpose of the brand up and and this kind of side project of mine is like understanding like that branding, positioning and and then, like you were saying, with the seo, where you go through and you edit everything out, you maintain that human connection to things and I mean it is. It is like the junk content that people throw out there. That used to work. They're just probably gonna have to refine it now, because I've even noticed on google search, now I've enabled like ai mode so I'll search like who should I hire to pressure wash, like my house in this area, and you can start to see results, start to populate and, uh, what somebody may, may do. Okay, on on like a map path they're not even visible on this like gemini search.
Speaker 1:So I guess there's there's different things that google's pulling, that it's not just like oh well, this guy lives right next to you and he has a bunch of spam listings and fake reviews. So I'm sure, like you said, the language models where they're like combing the internet, are finding a lot more complexity and depth to things than than like the traditional gamification of SEO could have been. I mean.
Speaker 2:I believe that's true, based on what I've read and what we've tested as well. It's very much. How can you be? You know there's some gamification you can do of the elements you know right now, but they'll get smarter and they'll get more in touch with what's actually out there. Just a tactical tip for people I mentioned Google reviews there briefly.
Speaker 2:If you can get your clients to mention what you did for them in the review even down to the point of maybe you take a picture for them and maybe you actually write up like a template review for them. Like, hey, matt came out power wash my house. It was incredible. You know we had algae growing on. You know the vinyl siding and you know he came in, you know, cleaned everything up and then put something on it so that it won't grow back that sort of review for them to put on. You've done all the work for them. They put it up there and now it's like a super detailed bit about exactly what you did. It's not just hey, matt was awesome. Now it's like a review there that Google and the LLMs can pull from when it comes to you know what? What the heck does Matt do anyway? What does Matt the driveway do and you know how can it help me.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, I've, I've heard that too, because, uh, like, if you're not putting the descriptors in there, it doesn't know what it, what it means. Um, you could have a thousand reviews. But if you have a thousand reviews, that's a great job, as much as if it's detailed and there's like keyword targeting and I guess locations or something like that.
Speaker 1:Also, I've heard with like Google my Business profile say you can upload like keeping that active and updated with like pictures and maybe like file names, I guess Is that as relevant with geotagging or did they kind of scrape that?
Speaker 2:I would say geotagging is happening mainly in the back end of the phone when you're taking the picture now. But uploading, you know, if you can do a picture from every job, then you're, you know, kind of the highest level of opportunity there. But if you can do at least a picture a day, that's kind of the next level. Like, just upload a picture from one of your jobs every day and in the caption talk about what you did and where you did it, and then, if you can't do it daily, do it like two or three times a week, but be consistent with it. Show you're alive, show you're well. Don't just do a photo dump of 30 photos every month. Um, there's, there's a much more power in doing it consistently, because Google sees you're alive, google sees you're active, google sees that you know you're paying attention to this stuff and when someone calls, it's more likely that you'll actually answer.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Yeah, that's one thing I ran into last year and I may have seen a post where you do this, helping people where they had like a deactivated or disabled, suspended Google account Like.
Speaker 1:I just last year I had my Google account completely suspended. I got these spam attacks and if you guys are in like the pressure washing space or junk removal, it seems like there are these attacks coming from other countries where they try to ransom you into like preventing more negative reviews. And I messed up because I had a service-based business and I guess Google terms and conditions. If you don't have a physical office location, they can like ping it enough and then it says sorry, your account is like disabled and deactivated because it like didn't hit the like terms and conditions, because I had my house pulled and and I guess that was a loophole they did. So I had to go through that whole process of reinstating my Google account and it's back, but like I had to switch from having a primary residence, so like having like a targeted address, to now a service area and it being gone. It must've wiped like a lot of my map pack, rankings and ratings and stuff like that. So I'm still, like a year later, trying to get back to where I was previously.
Speaker 2:so did you lose reviews in that process too?
Speaker 1:I didn't lose a lot of reviews.
Speaker 1:I have a couple fake reviews still left um, but I don't know what my reviews like like I look at, like I use house call pro as a CRM, so that would show like a Google review of this much, and then sometimes they never tie up completely, like local service has a different number than sometimes my review has a different number, so I don't know what to believe. But overall I maintain like majority of my reviews and I couldn't get rid of some of these fake reviews that are like glaringly fake, it's like in a different language and like talks about like driveway resurfacing, but it is what it is. It's collateral damage of business. I'm like, hey, as long as I'm back online, because when I didn't have a listing for like a month, that was brutal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a, it's a lifeblood. I mean, a lot of people talk about just focusing on the website with SEO. But talk about just focusing on the website with SEO, but your Google business profile is the first. It's the first thing that people are going to see. You know, right under the ads it's the map pack. You got to be there and if it's down like that's a, that's a kick to the nuts man.
Speaker 1:Like that's so stressful it was.
Speaker 1:It was terrible Cause like I ranked decent on SEO and I have good Facebook marketing and I have I have all these other channels that are like doing pretty well and and then it was just like a rug got pulled out from under me.
Speaker 1:Uh, I'd say like end of june last year till august, and so like the mid mid summer till the fall was just like a huge drop in business because, like you said, like your, the, the map packs, the google, like that's that's huge. So like that's something that should be optimized and somebody like me who's five years in a business established we're doing like half a million dollars a year in revenue, like that that tank does a good chunk. So, like, whether you're a small business or a medium-sized business, like you, you need to make sure all this stuff's optimized and if you have any issues, like reach out to somebody like lewis who can help you out and sort that out, because you can't just be like, oh, I'm gonna rely on word of mouth, like no, I, I thought I could, and then that tanked me like 10, 15 just not having that listing.
Speaker 2:It's, uh, it's a real thing. Yeah, we can certainly help out. Um, we've got a couple connections that, uh, you know, are directly working in google. Um, and, uh, it's a big deal because, uh, you definitely don't want to just scrap it and start again, because if you just just do that with the same info, like, let's say, your business listing goes down. I see a lot of people being like, well, I'm just going to delete it and start again. You know I'll lose the reviews, that's going to suck, but I just got to get it back up. Well, google's going to see that same info again and it's really going one, get someone like us to help out. And, uh, you know, we can get it back. And nine times out of ten, as long as you've got documentation and it's a real location, even if it's your home location and you just show service area as opposed to showing the address, um, typically you can get them back, but nine times out of ten yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was not fun. So I mean and and it's so competitive in the pressure washing space I know I speak of pressure washing. That's just kind of my main business right here. So, like I see, like I just see in our market, in and and you like stresses the importance of getting ahead, of getting ahead of like seo and like figuring out, like like what you're doing now is going to help you out years down the road, and I I had an seo guy help me. I'd say 2022 ish, 2023, ish, and I'm really starting to see a lot of work now just in in rankings and stuff like that. So it's, it's it's not like an immediate thing, but it's definitely like a investment into, like the future of your brand and your company. And that that to me, was like the best investment. If people ask cause, I see online people are like, oh, seo, that's like that's just you're paying somebody and like it's a waste of money, but like that, that to me was like the best investment I made in my business.
Speaker 2:I agree. Um, you know, having started the junk removal company in 21, uh, we went out of the gate hard with SEO so it would catch up as quick as possible. And then it was all the networking stuff. We did some giveaways, I did referrals for video testimonials, we did some free jobs right off the bat for a guy who did a bunch of videos for us. We just went ham. But SEO is what. We haven't touched it for three years. It's still bringing in a ton of leads, so it's very valuable.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Tell me a little bit about I know we talked a little bit before the call but how you started getting into like building websites and pretty much you're not just talking about SEO and selling a service SEO Like you went in proof of concept from the start like added value, and then you were able to like build these websites and and then like essentially get leads and then like what? Uh, like sell leads and you're not just like selling a promise here. Like you're able to like, hey, we started, we, we got proof of concept, we had like great tangible results and then we started like building out sites and then, and that kind of evolves into what you did now. So kind of break break down, like when we were talking about how you first started this and like to me that's that's really cool, that's kind of like a unique approach. Uh, that I've heard, because I usually hear people like oh, you build a business and then you sell seo and then you do this. So like you kind of took a unique approach to everything.
Speaker 2:So what, uh? The way I got started in se SEO was I would do? I basically build my own website. So let's say what's your town?
Speaker 1:We're in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I would do Greenville power washing, I'll do a website you know around that and then I would build the website up, I would rank it, I would get calls coming in and I would forward those calls to you and then you would pay me some monthly fee to receive those calls and to receive those leads. And the pitch being you know, hey, we're not like HomeAdvisor and we sell it to a bunch of people. You know it's a, you know this leads coming through for you and you only. So I, through that process, mechanics aside of you know how people got the leads. I would be building a website, ranking it and getting those leads, and so I tested that At one point I had over 100 sites and, you know, got to test out a lot of things for SEO on my own stuff Spend, I said to you before the call, you know, waste my own money and not my clients money and learn what worked and what didn't.
Speaker 2:And and then we moved into helping people directly with their brands and working on their websites. But we got to, you know, cut our teeth and lose our own money for, you know, for a few years before that, Right, I think that's.
Speaker 1:That's kind of how I did my pressure washing business. I didn't jump into this selling the world. I started doing basic stuff and kind of like bootstrap my way into it. So I mean, I think that's, if you guys are in a space and you're trying to like be more salesy as opposed to like this is the tangible product we have.
Speaker 1:Because I know a few people my dad has a business and like he's gone through the ringer a few times with like SEO companies and he's just like he's a doctor, so he doesn't necessarily know the technical. You just hire somebody, you trust them and you think, hey, they know what they're doing, they have a pretty website, like they seem to be like creative types and then and then years down the road, they my dad connected with a guy who's a real seo guy. He gave him an seo audit and he's like you got no seo man like you're. You're almost fed a lot and I feel like in in this space that's common and like like there's way more to seo and and this than just like the pretty websites. Because I feel like you can I've been playing around on like WordPress and Eliminator or whatever and then you can have, like AI, make a pretty website for you, but is that going to rank? Is that going to drive real results to you? Is that going to help your client or help you as a business owner? That's what's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again it goes back to the tools. I'm glad you brought up the uh ai tools. So, um, if you haven't yet, you should check out lovabledev. Um, super fun, you can basically uh, my workflow is typically I'll tell chat dbt what I want to build. Again, I come from the design and building of websites, so I'm probably telling it things that you know maybe a layman wouldn't use. But still, you could get chat dbt to ask you questions and then create a prompt and then I'll put that in lovable and then it just builds a website off the prompt, and it's pretty insane. You can have a full website built out in like five minutes.
Speaker 2:So of course, there's some stuff you have to go in. It's built in HTML, though, so you can go in and you can put in schema code, you can do all the SEO stuff. So lovable is really fun. And then another one is 10 web. So you mentioned Elementor in WordPress. 10 web will actually do that same sort of thing, but build it in Elementor blocks so you can go in and edit it after and it can follow kind of the same hierarchy that you're used to with with Elementor when you're building. So it's, there's some cool tools out there, man.
Speaker 1:It's going to be fun. It seems like it, because I know I'm kind of one of those guys who like, yeah, I like the branding and marketing, but when it came to my business I'm like, okay, find somebody that's proof of concept in a space. I got my website through a guy named Ryan with 180 sites and he does a lot of pressure washing sites.
Speaker 2:Great guy, great site and everything like that.
Speaker 1:I didn't know anything about brush washing or I didn't know anything about website building, like I had an interest. But I'm like, hey, it's important to invest in somebody who is not just providing you a pretty website with a form, but somebody who's able to deliver. And I mean, with all these AI tools, it almost seems like it's really important to find somebody who can deliver. Because, like hey, if I can ask ChatGP, gpt a couple questions and then use 10 web or lovable or one of these kind of ai generation things, you could, you could almost fake your way into building an agency.
Speaker 2:But again, like I, even before the tools, you could fake your way into building an agency, so it's even easier now.
Speaker 1:I guess I gotta thank ty lopez for that um yeah but it's crazy. But but like, I've seen you build up your groups on Facebook and that's kind of how I saw you. And then I have a friend, um Thomas Pottinger is his name, he's out of like Pennsylvania and he he he recommended you back in the day, like years ago.
Speaker 2:um, as like a good resource for things, thomas I think he's up there with, uh, someone who's bought the most websites from us. I think we've built like three websites for him. Thomas is yeah, thomas is super solid he's super solid guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's, he. He's all into the farming scene too. So I don't know if you guys resonate, uh, with that kind of stuff. So yeah, I'm always mouthwatering, as he's, you know, cooking his own bread and he's got his own chickens and uh, yeah, he's just having a blast there it is funny, my, my wife's, kind of what we call down here like crunchy, where she's into the whole like uh, uh, like organic stuff and and like we had we had our son in a bathtub like natural birth, home birth, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:So that's incredible man it is kind of cool to, because he's like, hey, got the hardcore business. And then a lot of these guys like we're we have interest, is like, hey, we're like we could live off grid if we want to minus our video calling across the the country, pretty much across multiple countries, with this. But it's like, yeah, once I hang up here we're going, I'm going to get like my uh, like h3o water and like like ground myself in the grass.
Speaker 2:So I love it. I love it. Yeah, we use the term crunchy as well. Uh, my wife turned me on to a channel. Um, it's a husband and wife, I think. Their channel is called really very crunchy. Or she wrote a book called really very crunchy and it's just hilarious because they make fun of people who are crunchy, but they're also crunchy. Um, it's great stuff.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's like hey, we can make fun, cause it's we're making fun of ourself. Yeah, yeah, my, yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife was like the homeschool person who, like this was like normal before it became cool and now it's cool. So they're like I was the weird homeschool kid that like didn't eat red dye 40 in my my chips. Like in in the us like there's just junk everywhere in food. So like every time I go to europe or I've never gone to canada, I don't know if they're like you have better regulation with food, but like it's.
Speaker 1:It's certainly not europe up here, yeah like I did a trip in northern europe and I could literally eat everything and be completely fine. Here you're like hit and miss just because it's just loaded up with all the nasties and the chemicals. Uh, but that was my sidetrack, sorry about that. I just talked about I was thinking about thomas and goats and like like bottle feeding goats in his backyard and buying websites for me. So it was just kind of funny yeah it was a fun sidetrack I enjoyed it got me sidetracked there, uh.
Speaker 1:But I think too, like building a community is really important too, because, like with facebook uh, you mentioned you do like a lot of offline marketing, but do you do a lot of stuff like with, like facebook groups, is that it's still is that still, a viable source of kind of building a community? And and because I've seen like almost mixed things people like running more of their personal facebook pages now versus like groups, but, like I still see active groups like you have a really healthy group where, like I get a lot of value out of that. So, like is, are the the like the winds shifting at all, or is it just mainly like, hey, keep doing what you're doing, if you're doing it right?
Speaker 2:I think people are always going to want community in some space. Whether it's going to be facebook in five, ten years, I don't know, um, but facebook has been really good to us. I would say 90 of our business has come from facebook over the last six, seven years, um, and that's not just for the agency, that's also for junk removal. So, um, I was pretty involved in the junk removal. So I'm not in the junk removal company that I started now because I've got four kids and an agency. I have to kind of keep my focuses prioritized here.
Speaker 2:But when I was doing all the marketing for Integrity Junk Removal, I was really active in the community groups here locally. So I'd be posting two or three to five times a week on the business page, the Facebook business page, and then I would share those posts into the groups. I would take the best performing post from the week and share that out into the groups, and I wasn't just sharing like, hey, we do junk removal. It would be like videos, time-lapse videos, pictures of the team, you know, pictures with customers, some giveaways, stuff like that, and it was great for us. So we started to be known really quickly and then I would do giveaways as well.
Speaker 2:So I'd go get gift cards from local restaurants, so basically get them to give me gift cards and then I would give them away on the page and then basically it would be a comment for a draw and then I would share those into the groups. So not only it would be a comment for for a draw, um, and then I would share those into the groups, so not only in junk removal, but then you know, in our agency, 90% of our businesses come from the Facebook groups, whether it's the ones I own and control, or just commenting and communicating with people in other groups that are active and, you know, in the niches that we service. So still very, very much a going concern for us at this point. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I still very, very much a going concern for us at this point. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean I'm just I that's that's kind of how I stumble upon you and then some word of mouth, so like that's the great organic reach to get in front of people. And it's like hey, you got people who are using other service providers and then they start to follow you and they say, hey, that guy's good, just because, like hey, I have my stuff bill doesn't mean I can't refer you to people that are in need of that service and that's almost the value that I've seen too.
Speaker 1:And in like the local groups with pressure washing it's like hey, that may not fit my wheelhouse, but this is another guy who's great, and I made my connection with clay I made in a pressure washing or in a local Facebook group, so it is kind of cool, you start adding value and sharing with people and and it almost like compound effects, which is really cool.
Speaker 1:I guess I got a question too. You had all those websites, uh, where you were like kind of building these SEO targeted websites. Do you still have them, are they still active, or, um, did you kind of pivot that into something else?
Speaker 2:So I definitely still have some of them. Um, I definitely don't have all a hundred. I think I'm down to around between 5 or 10. Now. Basically I was building them out and testing them. So not everyone that I built landed right. Not all of them brought in the leads I would think that they were going to bring in. I'd study a market, look for low-hanging fruit as far as rankability and then what I thought would be a good search volume. So not all of them hit, so some of them I just took down because they didn't really land or I couldn't find a good client.
Speaker 2:So, like masonry was a niche that I was in, I could rank those, you know, with my eyes closed, but then finding a provider was really hard. There was two cases where, on two separate occasions, I had the police involved because I was sending leads to a guy who was actually just taking people's money and then running, and so the police had found on the site. Basically it pointed back to us in the terms and conditions, waiving responsibility for it, but they were just curious what I knew about it. I was like, oh man, this sucks. So I took that one down because I didn't want to be involved in that mess. But yeah, it just came down to some of them didn't rank the way they were, or some of them, you know, as my focus went to working directly with clients, I wasn't active in finding a client to land for that, so just parked some of them. I think it'll be something we bring back here. It's something I'm starting to look at again in earnest, building up that side again. That's very cool.
Speaker 1:Do you think I guess you're in the scene of like are you mainly focusing on like kind of a trade, type of client? Or do you go into other verticals and vectors of like, hey, we do SEO for this and this and this? Or do you mainly try to say, hey, we're like, really, we understand these industries, we go after these industries? Or like, what's your model when it comes to how you set everything up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so home service is kind of the blanket niche that we're in. Um, I grew up in construction so I, under you know it can can grasp the concept pretty quickly if I don't understand it directly through experience. Um, but yeah, aside from that, like we're not doing e-commerce, um, we-commerce, we're not doing lawyers and doctors and stuff, so home service, anything that touches the house we can probably serve you or refer you to someone.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Are you seeing certain industries start to take off? I know, because if you've got junk removal or if you've got pressure washing or, I guess, masonry, you're probably trying to steer away from that. If you're running into issues, I take some good masonry you're probably trying to steer away from that if you're running into issues.
Speaker 2:I take some good masonry clients, but I think junk removal is still very young. I think power washing is still very young. I think they're both very young industries. If you look at roofing, plumbing, hvac, those are industries that, like, we complain to be competitive in these industries, but if you look at some of those, like they are, that's competitive, you know. If you look at roofing in Miami, you know it's gonna be tough to rank there, you're gonna have to get creative, whereas power washing, you know, know, yeah, it might be tough, it's certainly a lot lower uh ticket too. So that makes you know, brings its own challenges. But, um, power washing, junk removal, still very young. I mean, uh, I would say probably 10 to 15 years behind, like the roofing industry, when it comes to just the uh maturity of the industry. When it comes to looking at the business owners as well as you, as the awareness of homeowners, like power washing, not every homeowner knows that that's an option or junk removal it's still, there's still fairly new industries, very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of stumbled into pressure washing and it was just kind of like a side hustle thing I did when I was a college kid so I had no idea it would blow up to what it has blown up to. So it's very cool. I viewed it kind of like how people probably traditionally view it. You're like, yeah, just go clean a driveway with a wand all day long and make 300 bucks. So it's crazy how the industry is like really sparking and evolving and I guess we can thank social media for that and like TikTok and all that kind of stuff. I guess, as far as like, what with what you know now, what would you have told yourself when you first started your business? I know this is one of those kind of cliche moments Like what are some things that you wish you knew, say, in 2019, when you were like really kicking this thing off than you do now?
Speaker 2:I thought when I got to a certain revenue level, everything would just become easy. You know, everyone shoots for that million dollar mark or that half a million dollar mark or $5 million mark, right? So I thought when, like, a certain revenue level was achieved or the team was to a certain point, everything would just be easy and I could just float along on a cloud of bliss. And it turned out that wasn't the case. And it doesn't get easier, you just get better at making really hard decisions. And that was something that a mentor said to me that flipped a switch and just made everything easier, because I wasn't struggling anymore wondering why I was such a bad business owner and things weren't easy yet. So I've got a long ways to go, but if easy yet. So you know, I've got a long ways to go, but if I could go back, it would be like, hey, it's going to be a grind, that's what you signed up for. You're just going to get better at handling the chaos. You know, a $40,000 tax bill in the first year would have crushed me. And now it's like, okay, all right, yep, you know, and you just carry on and you figure it out and uh, yeah, I think that's probably the biggest one.
Speaker 2:It used to be like when I started. It was like imperfect action beats perfect in action. You know, every day, all day, and now it's like all right, let's keep going, let's let's acknowledge that it's going to be tough and let's figure out how to empower the team. That's kind of the phase I'm at now is, you know, we're scaling to where I'm not touching everything and so if my team is not up to speed, then everything's going to suffer. But on the flip side, if I can get these awesome people and train them, anything is possible. We can make some magic that's very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of was the same and I feel like dude in the beginning. It's like the hustler is there, right? The hustler is that spark that gets us going. And then a quote I like to use is like in order for the CEO to appear, the hustler must die.
Speaker 2:And I've kind of refined yeah, it's tough, it's a tough death.
Speaker 1:It is tough because it feels like failing when success in the beginning is the grinder and the hustler. And then it's like, oh man, I work sun up to sundown, I'm touching everything. Like you're just saying like, hey, my team has to be up to speed because I'm no longer like on everything and that's that's like huge in my space. Like, yeah, I can train a guy, have him go out and pressure wash, pretty simple. But then, like you get callbacks, you get like, oh, you missed a spot or like I would have, I would have spent a little bit more time here and there. And then it's like allowing yourself to be OK with I need 110, which was like that hustler mind mind I had in the past, but that's not feasible anymore. When I have multiple trucks on the road, I'm doing stuff like brand up and, like you said, you're trying to scale and I kind of have a learning. I'd say last year came to me crazy because I ended up having like west nile virus. Uh, I got bit by mosquito with west nile virus and I got encephalitis and so I was Mr Bad pressure washer man out there, like working sunup to sundown and doing stuff. My like, still being on the truck ended up having a seizure. Being sick Encephalitis is like swelling, so like I literally woke up in a hospital with no memory and then I got discharged from the hospital in like two weeks after being in the hospital and, uh, they tell in South Carolina, if you have a seizure, you can't drive for six months. So that was kind of my like eye opening. Like you're like, okay, I'm a human being, like I'm a human, I can't be like super, super hustler man. Like I'm just going to grind up and hustle up and I've shifted that kind kind of, as you were saying too, with yours.
Speaker 1:Like you go, I'm seeking more like refinement in my business this year. And it's like, okay, I'm not just seeking, how can I keep blasting my revenue targets out? Because I mean, we're kind of in a tougher environment economically. There's so much competition, like there's, you know, the us economy. Every day is up and down. So it's like like hey, we're, we're, we're economy is based upon like what tweet, what's the tweet of the day? Or like what's the missile of the day. So it's, it's silly, but like it's kind of you can't have that. Like all burn the ships, grind like, go forward, blast off, like. Like like you just got to bake in margin and that's kind of where I'm at now. So like I I resonate with what you said there because I'm like man, if I had that same, like that first year attitude of like, like you said, if you have like a forty thousand dollar tax bill and like you're, you're so like reinvest, reinvest, skinny, that would like break you and I've kind of had to make that same transition myself.
Speaker 2:Um but crazy, crazy times and crazy worlds but it is, we just keep going, we control what we can and we keep pushing forward yep and and again.
Speaker 1:That's like the muscle you have to grow. Um, it's like the ceo mind is a different mind than the, the mind that got you there, and like the mind of delegation and and just being okay with like it seems like every day there's some some level of failure at every little tentacle in my business, but it's the ball still moving. Every day there's some some level of failure at every little tentacle in my business, but it's the ball still moving forward and there's not any huge fires. It's like don't let those failures turn into big fires. That's kind of like my mindset of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's never. It's never as good or as bad as it seems, right? I like that where you said there's always some tentacle of the business that, uh, that is on fire and you just got to make sure it doesn't spread to the body and, you know, put it out as it goes down the arm and and figure it out, right yep, yep, yeah, because, like our egos make everything seem like every, all eyes are on us and in reality it's like nobody knows, nobody cares, it's like just don't let it get too big, where where it becomes a problem, uh, but I'd say we got, I'm at like, so you got five minutes left.
Speaker 1:Is there any closing statements, or is there anything that you want to share with the audience that we haven't touched on yet?
Speaker 2:I would say don't be afraid of AI. We talked about AI a fair bit. Don't be afraid of AI. Remember that your customers want answers and there's a great book I don't know, I just moved offices so I don't remember where it is right now but it's called they Ask you Answer by Marcus Sheridan, and keep that in mind when you're doing anything on your website, on your video content, on your social media. The concept of the book for those that don't know is basically Marcus Sheridan, the author, had a pool company and in 2008, in the crash, basically, they lost all their contracts for that summer.
Speaker 2:People just called him and be like no, we're canceling it, and the business almost went under and he got a bit desperate and turned to writing a blog every night answering the questions that he was getting on sales calls. He just became super transparent what's the pricing? Is Fibrillizer, concrete pool better? All these questions he was answering anyway but hadn't put out there publicly and they went on to have the most trafficked pool website company on the internet in the world getting orders from Australia because people were reading their website and just insane stuff. So he's built a book around that. If they're asking, if your customers are asking these questions, answer those questions in a form that they can find it and then, by extension, google and the LLMs can find it, and you'll put yourself in really good stead going forward for SEO, because essentially all the search engines care about is are you answering the questions that people have, and then they'll match you up with those people and magic happens and then they'll match you up with those people and magic happens.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, that's, I'm gonna have to check that book out. I like reading. My wife and I both have tons of books. I have this bookshelf upstairs with like 3 000 books, so I, I go. I go between like I.
Speaker 1:I just moved offices so I had to tone it down a little bit, but I had a lot of books on there for sure I go between, like I'm kind of in a mode now of like I'm trying to be like into, like the production, because it's like you're either in consumption mode or like production mode and I've been playing around like with, like with ai.
Speaker 1:You can like literally write books, and then I wrote this like traditionally, uh, and I like with the personal branding side of things. It's you can write a book and put it up on kdp like really easily, have somebody on Fiverr or whatever website, or, if you want to do it yourself, design a cover, shoot it off and then you got a book of life. And I view that as like a cool personal branding thing and almost like you're adding value, like like what you're saying about that book, where the guys just ask answering questions's, you're, you're solving the needs of a customer. You're not trying to sell to customers things and it's like, hey, by putting all that value out there, like by being on podcasts, like you're on my podcast, like whether it's people, llms, or like Google, like it's all like oh, this is, this guy is a lot. That seems like that's the name of the game and you're just amplifying it with technology.
Speaker 2:That we have today.
Speaker 1:It's fun we're at the hour mark. I don't want to take you away from all your busy stuff with your team, but I really appreciate the podcast. I think it was an awesome podcast.
Speaker 2:Definitely got a lot of good clips and content in it. Thanks for having me on, man. It's been cool you mentioned at the beginning, but we've known each other for a long time through social media. First time chatting here today and it was as good as I thought it would be, because I've seen all your awesome content out there already, seen what you've done, kind of seen your story. It speaks to the power of social media, but just appreciate you having me on and being an awesome host.
Speaker 1:Yeah and yeah, I'll definitely uh post all your information. If people want to connect with you and learn more about your services, I mean like, hey, if I, if I'm, if I'm in need of seo and quality marketing guy, you're definitely the go-to. So I'll drop all your information, appreciate it, man? Yeah, no problem, I'll drop the outro here and then, uh, if you want to drop off, that's cool, I'll just end the recording, appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Lewis, appreciate it. Man, talk soon. All right, see you.
