How Home Service Contractors Rank in the Google Map Pack

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone and welcome to the Web Talk Show. My name is Armando Perez-Carreno and with us today is Jonah Bautista from Atlanta Pro Network. How are you Jonah? Hey, I'm doing fantastic Armando. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. I'm always happy to talk about anything that has to do with the trades and I expect because of the name Atlanta Pro Network that we're going to get into that a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started and what got you into this particular space? Yeah. So, we actually have been running a mostly national but also international e-commerce management agency for about six years. Um, did that for for very intensely. You know, helped some of our clients generate seven figures during that time frame. And, you know, it's it's great. It's beautiful. It's powerful, but it's also a pain in the butt. So we were literally uh just rolling with all the punches of you know how all these e-commerce platforms are constantly changing their policies and the growth of AI and shifting economies and the tariffs and all these different landscapes that were were making that industry very volatile right it's very powerful but there's a lot of risk involved and it's more risk than we really wanted to uh to expose our clients to so I was like hey how do I create the biggest impact using the skills and resources that I have that I've built up over the years. And we decided to focus our efforts on the local community, really uh emphasizing the the um the Atlanta network of home service contractors specifically. I've got several friends that are home service contractors. They would ask me for my help every now and then on marketing or website design or SEO or do these different things. And you know, I'm giving them all these free resources. I'm like, you know what? This is really fun. Let's do it. So, we connected with some business directories. We connected with a bunch of other contractors. We really built out an entire uh network around it and now we're able to service people much more efficiently, help them get access to the resources they need to really scale up their companies. Amazing. It is very clear to me that home **[00:02:00]** services is an amazing industry with amazing human beings in it, but unfortunately we see a lot of them not doing as well as they should. You've got your gardener and your electrician and your plumber and your roofer. Well, roofers, many do very well, but it many of them are fantastic at their craft because it's a craft and unfortunately they might not be as good in business or marketing or SEO or advertising, right? utilizing the digital technology, all that sort of stuff. Exactly. So my first question to you here is what do you see being the biggest thing that these people are typically lacking? Where where's their biggest pain point? I mean I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, you know? I mean it's like it's it's not even just necessarily one thing. It's almost a conglomeration of several things, right? They might have some of the basics covered because they're they're absolutely necessary in this day and age. like having Google business profile is 100% necessary and I have met some of the contractors that have been doing this for 5 10 20 years and don't even have that which is wild to me. Um, but yeah, I mean, being able to to be visible anytime somebody types in a couple of keywords into any search engine, whether it be um, you know, Google or Bing or ChatGpt or anything, right? They're essentially trying to find, hey, how am I going to solve this problem? And the people that come up, especially the first three people that come up are the ones that are going to get those jobs the most efficiently. Um, I've met a ton of contractors that literally they have zero online presence. They have no idea how to be able to get visible in chat GBT or any of these other AI softwares and they come to us within 30 days. We're able to to dot dot dot make a few tweaks, adjust their website schema, you know, their metadata, uh make it to where it's like an on andoff switch. You know, they go from being completely **[00:04:00]** invisible to all of a sudden they're ranking much higher in the map pack. They're able to be, you know, found in the Google summaries, you know, for Gemini. Um they're able to be referenced to whenever someone's searching for that specific problem. Wow. But let's unpack a little bit of this. What is a map? Yeah. So the map pack is probably it's all right. So when you get into Google, right, there's three main places that you're going to find a business. You say plumber near me, right? In the very beginning, there's going to be the sponsored posts, the sponsored uh you know, people that are paying Google for Google ads. It's like usually the first three, something like that. Then right after that is the local listings. So the local listings, you'll have a big image of your city, you know, usually with you in the center of it and then several businesses surrounding it and then a list of businesses on the left, right? Those businesses are essentially they're ranking higher in the map pack for a number of reasons. Usually it's because they are active on their Google business profile. They are generating reviews and responding to those reviews regularly. um they are doing good enough work that they're receiving a high enough rating that Google says, "Yes, we'd like to refer these people more than the people that are getting one stars, you know, too often." Um there's literally like 26 different variables that Google's looking at in order to be able to say, "Who am I going to list higher versus some other companies, right?" Those are the most common place that a person is going to choose what company to contact right afterwards. They're they're going to look at those first three and they're going to say, "Okay, they've got good ratings. They're listed high. They're right next to me. You know, they're practically a neighbor. I'm going to go and call them." They make that call. As long as the business answers and they're able to help them with that problem, then cool. They may not need to call another one. But the problem that a lot of these businesses experience is that they're they're up on a roof somewhere. They're underneath the sink somewhere, right? It's an owner operator system and they're not getting to the phone in time which means that customer is not being answered to which means they're going to continue to the next business to solve their problem. **[00:06:00]** If you're not listed in that map pack and you don't have an automated system set up or at least a front desk receptionist to be able to answer calls when you're busy, you are losing out on thousands and thousands of dollars every single year. And is the map pack something people have to pay for to Google or is it like when you have schema and your website and and you want these providers to be able to understand it? No, it's actually 100% free. Um, and you don't even have to know code. So you don't have to design schema or even have a website technically. Um, granted having a website is going to help you, but no, I mean it's it's 100% free. You just go to business.google.com google.com and you would set up a like you'd register your business with Google. When you register your business, depending on what type of business it is, you know, if you have a brick and mortar, they might make you jump through a few extra hoops, but generally speaking, it's going to be, hey, this is who we are. This is our LLC. This is our business information. This is the type of service that we provide and uh this is the area that we serve, right? Google's going to then verify that information within a couple of days. They're going to provide you with a with either approval or denial, right? Um, at that point you'll have a Google business profile as long as you're approved and then people will be able to start leaving you reviews. They'll start being able to find you in their searches. So, it's 100% free. And I've seen that as a consumer, you look for people and then they have good ratings or bad ratings and you're like, "Well, I'm going to go with the good ones." And then also it's the how fast they're answering because that's I think a lot of people maybe get to this first step of setting up the business because their friend told them you need to do this or you're there but then they maybe don't install the app or or whatever and they don't realize that they have to answer these ratings, these reviews, these questions because it's real people asking them and and if they are on it and you see some business that are on it, even the good reviews they answer, especially the bad ones they answer and you see that move and you're like, "Okay, **[00:08:00]** this company cares." But not only as a consumer, hey, that company cares, Google is also keeping watch and seeing, oh, okay, they care. I might rank them differently. Is that the case? Absolutely, 100%. So, it used to be about 8 years ago, um, Google actually would be do they would rank a company based on tenure, right? So, if they had a company that was 20 years old or 15 years old, they would rank higher versus a company that's only a year old, right? But what they found was that there were so many companies that were out of business and they weren't even active. They weren't even utilizing their um you know the people would contact them. They would visit their website. They would try to get business this service done and that business wasn't even around anymore and Google didn't know that. So they changed their algorithm about 8 years ago. They they found that whichever company was actually most active was the ones that they were actually listing higher amongst a number of other variables. But generally speaking, you're 100% right. You want to respond to reviews within 24 hours, you know, both positive and negative, but especially the negative ones. Um, you want to consistently be getting reviews from your customers. So, having an automated system set up that as soon as you're done with a service, it's going to contact that that customer and say, "Hey, we'd love for you to leave us a review." You are allowed to incentivize that review as well. You say, "Hey, we can give you 10% off on your next visit or we can, you know, provide you with a $5 gift card or, you know, whatever it is." The only thing FTC does not want you to do is to to incentivize a positive review. So, you can't say, "Hey, leave us five stars and we'll give you X, Y, and Z." You're not allowed to do that. Um, but having a system set up to be able to get reviews on a regular basis is how a lot of these companies are able to essentially offset any negative reviews that may come your way. Even a great business is still going to get a 90% approval rating, right? But there's still going to be 10% of people that are a little frustrated with something, right? It's just a fact of life. Um, but if you don't have a functional automated system set up, then you're only getting the people that are that are, you know, pissed off and then want to say, "Hey, you know, this company's, you know, as opposed to the the **[00:10:00]** 90 other people that you served that did love your service and did have a great experience and you just didn't take that time to be able to say, "Hey, can you please write us a quick review?" I I I want us to hold a little bit on that because many of us don't realize that leaving a review adds friction. And if you look at the main camps, there's going to be the people who absolutely insanely loved your service, which are going to be like one or 2%. That go in and give that review because just they they loved it so much they go out of their way, find you online, and leave the review if you're not doing an automated thing. And then there's the ones that had a bad experience, which will no doubt leave a bad review just because they're angry at the moment. That's a way for them to vent, unfortunately. So, if you do not remind everyone to leave reviews, then the ones that are going to surface are the bad ones because they're going to be more than even those good ones because everyone in the middle might be very happy with what you did, but they're not going to go out of their way to find the way to review you because they don't know if you use Yelp or Google or your website or Trust Pilot or whatever. So, exactly. I'm I'm glad you touched on this because I have seen as well when we hire someone for for a service that I see they have a,400 reviews right and then their competitor has maybe 300 200 but then you you get you hire them you get the service and at the end of the service right away you get this email that says hey thank you I hope you enjoy it blah blah blah message from the CEO or whatever or whoever your your rep was and then they they ask you for the the review in a very nice way and then that's when you know like that's why they have 1400 reviews just because they're asking people for the review. If you don't ask you're **[00:12:00]** not going to get Exactly. Close mouths don't get fed. Is this automated process something that Google can help you with or do you have to have a third party service to do this? Google does not help you with that as far as I know. Um it's all third party. So it's either a you've got someone on staff, whether it be yourself or your receptionist or someone like that that's actively asking at every single um every single uh completion of service or B that you've got a CRM. You know, we like to use Go High Level. That's our favorite. Um, we help our clients get set up on that to where they have completely automated systems for reactivation and reviews and, you know, and reception and all those sorts of things. But essentially makes it to where as soon as you click invoice, you know, the invoice, send the invoice and the invoice is paid, boop, it's going to send them a review request. You know, say, "Hey, thanks for receiving our service. You know, we'd love to know how what your experience was like. If you could uh mention a couple of key things, this is actually one really important thing for every business owner. Anytime that you're asking for a review, have your customers mention the exact service that they receive from you. And if they can mention you or whoever they receive service from by name, that's super helpful as well. And then even more valuable for SEO is to mention the exact neighborhood or city that they receive the service in. So if you are a plumber in Buckhead, you know, say, "Hey, you know, he fixed my, you know, my sink in, you know, in Buckhead. I've been living here for 20 years and I've never met anybody that I that I love more. I'll contact them back, you know, 100 times over. Right? That's a very powerful review. Those simple keywords help Google's SEO to be able to know, okay, people in Buckhead are getting their sink fixed by this guy and he's doing a great job. That's nice and that's a very good point. I've also seen people do that where they give you the instructions so you don't have to think as much like why do I write in my review? But if they say, "Hey, make sure to mention me." Maybe it's Kyle or Jessica, whoever gave you the service. Hey, make sure you mention **[00:14:00]** uh Jessica helped you and and what you liked about it, whatever. Then it's easier for you to draft something based on your experience and and also okay, it makes a lot of sense that it also helps Google's engine to figure out that that these are legitimate, that these are specific to an area, that a specific person helped them. It brings the human part back into it. So those are those are excellent things to There's another quick thing I do want to mention just because the map pack is so important. It is literally the most important aspect of your uh if you're a home service contractor or any sort of local service business, right? So if you're um if you're a service based contractor, right, you absolutely want to go into your profile. This is something free you can do yourself, but of course, you know, if somebody like us comes and does it for you, we're going to do it 100 times better. No offense, just saying. So, and it's, you know, way faster. But, uh, but essentially what one thing you absolutely want to do is to optimize your profile. So, you're going to actually go through into the category section. Okay? So, the category section, you're going to edit the categories and you want to list every single category that your business could be possibly applicable for. Okay? So, let's just say you are a landscaper, right? As a landscaper, you're going to want to hit landscaping design, landscape lighting, landscape irrigation systems, landscape uh you know, uh what else? Gardening. You know, there's there's all these different categories that can be listed in order to be able to know for Google to know that, hey, if anybody's looking for gardening, this is a company to go to. If you didn't take the time, that 30 seconds to be able to make sure that Google knows that you offer that service or that have that category, then you're not going to come up in the searches, right? Again, you could be missing out on tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a year by not making that simple change. And then second to that is every single one of those categories has about 50 different keywords that can essentially be um connected **[00:16:00]** to it as a service. You could have up to 500 services available on your Google business profile just by going through and optimizing and saying, "Yes, we do that. Yes, we do that. Yes, we do that. Yes, we do that." Most of the companies when they come to us, they probably only have anywhere between five to maybe 20 services listed, depending on how much time they've actually invested into optimizing their profile or if they've hired a company to do it for them as well. On average, we're usually connecting a home service contract with somewhere between 1 to 300 So that way they're found way more frequently anytime somebody's searching for those types of keywords. Makes sense. Now, is there you have to caveat this with like yes, there's probably 300 services because if you're a plumber, there's a million things you could do that you can't possibly think of, but they're listed so you can just grab them and you don't do it all the time, but you do them sometimes, right? Like they're specific things. Um, so you want to be specific, but then you also maybe I'm going to ask you this question. Let's say you do landscaping and you but you don't do tree pruning. It's like a big thing with like insurance and all that. So, you don't want to choose those where you don't do it because it might hurt your your ranking as well. Is that is that a thing or not? Well, more so is that you don't want to have it selected just because if somebody does go searching for that specific um service and then they contact you for it, then they're you're not going to be able to service that. You know, they say, "Hey, I'm really looking for true printing." It's like, "Well, we don't actually do that." Oh, it said online that you do. That's weird. You know, you want for it to be accurate. You don't want to just have a bajillion different services listed if you're not servicing a bajillion different things. You want to focus on and the reason that I say um okay 300 sounds really overwhelming for most people, right? It's like oh there's no way I could perform 300 services. You would truly be surprised. These are a lot of these are things that you do all the time, you know, every single week and you don't even really think about it because there's specific keywords that people are using in **[00:18:00]** order to be able to find those those uh those specific services. What we do is we essentially have a giant list. You know, it says, "Okay, these are the 50 things that would be uh the different 50 services that would be listed underneath that category. We're going to check all, select yes, and then we're going to go through down that list and you just tell me the ones you don't do." And you'd be surprised out of that 50, most of the time these contractors are doing at least 40 of those 50. Well, yeah, it makes sense. Like, how many times do they change the whole panel, right? like maybe maybe not as often they change the breakers, maybe they but there's specific services they can do that they do sometimes but maybe it's not the bulk of it and so they just it's not on the top of their head. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. By making those couple of changes, it makes it to where instead of you just being found in a onem radius around your facility or around your your home base, now you're able to be found in many more locations for many more services. So that way you have people from five miles away that when they're searching for specific categories or specific services that you're able to be found. Now another very good good point that you mentioned at the beginning is okay you get your reviews you start to rank you're going to get some calls because people need these services for you are actively in the middle of the restroom with the plunger or something like trying to get something done and you get a call, you're not going to answer the phone and so that person might go to your competitor. So what do people need to do to be able to stay on track with all these calls that they might be getting and actually get those jobs? Yeah. So there's a couple different strategies. You can either a hire a real person, right? you know, you have a front desk receptionist that that's their only job is just answering answering calls. But that really only makes sense if you have a high enough volume, right? Or if that person is also handling other admin aspects for you, where they're, you **[00:20:00]** know, doing paperwork, they're doing bookkeeping, they're, you know, they're contacting uh partners and leads and whatever, you know, they they they need to be doing more than just picking up the phone. Otherwise, they're basically you're just paying them to scroll, right? Uh the alternative if you want a human doing it is there's also like so one of the strategies that we use for our clients is we have like a um a white label um you know digital reception you know where essentially there's like a it's like a call center that they'll do for 75 cents a call. They'll essentially be able to handle any calls coming in and be able to to act as one of your representatives. They they have a database of questions and answers and they know, you know, what to be able to say when XY andZ happens with their only goal being, hey, let me make sure that you have the information that you need and be able to book you for an appointment or get you to come in to the facility if there's a facility. Right? It's one of those two. Uh the third option is to automate it. Right now, if you're automating it, you're either going to have a voice AI, right? That's essentially answering those calls and being able to act as a human. Personally, I don't love voice AI, at least not yet. It it still definitely feels like a robot, you know, and with home service contractors specifically, especially local businesses, people are looking for that personal human touch, right? They want a real human being. They want someone they can trust that's going to come into their own that they know, okay, that's Jerry. That's my neighbor. That's a guy that's been here for 20 years. He's going to be here for 20 years, right? He's a great guy. I've known him. I've used him number a number of times, etc. versus you call someone at some company and you get, you know, on the phone with a robot. Some people might get turned off by that. Not everybody, but some people. The alternative is being able to use a conversational AI, which is a textbased thing. Um, that is way less uh less friction, you know, where someone they they shoot a text message to a company and they say, "Hey, I'm looking to get this service done." Okay, cool. What's you know, what's the uh the job looking like? Do you have any photographs? Where are you located? Um, you know, what's your budget for this job? **[00:22:00]** how quickly you need it done. It can ask any number of different questions and it's able to kind of interface in the same way the human would with again the ultimate goal being book you on the calendar or come on in, you know, depending on what your Yes, that makes perfect sense. And it's a tiered thing, right? It'll depend on the volume or if if you can afford having someone there makes sense, business sense or not like you just said. And then the voice AI it's getting better, but you still need to do it implement it in a way where where it actually does a good job and it doesn't turn people off like you said and there's there's also reasons that people just don't want to interact with them, right? Like you don't because it's still new, right? Right. And then the chatbot aspect of conversational AI with text is something that has been around longer and so people are still a little bit more used to especially when they do it properly. So I think everyone this is the reason it happens for for the voice AI but it happened with chatbots before and it happens with the IVRs that when you call the phone system and it was sort of smart but it wasn't like there are now and it never understood what you were saying. So people get turned up. Oh my god, those are so frustrating. They're so frustrating. I don't know why they exist. like they should just switch to the new ones and at least you like they're dynamic, right? But anyway, Yeah. And they've gotten a lot better in the past 6 months, you know, and of course in 6 months from now it's going to be way better again. I mean, so it's the technology is always improving, you know. I don't want to knock it too much. We've just had too many too many rough situations where we're like, "Oh, this is the future. It's going to be amazing." And I'm like, "Oh, not yet." Yes. Yes. Yeah. There's some very good implementations, but for example, there's there's a company that that I can mention that that does the chatbot interface very well, AAA. So, if you ever had to like replace your battery or whatever, their new system, you used to have to call and they're very nice and all that, but in the the new you go on the website and there's this little chat thing. And I was skeptical at first, but I've used it a couple of times and and it's amazing. You you tell it and immediately it's like, "Oh, yes, this account based on the number, whatever." And then the location, it grabs a location and **[00:24:00]** what do you need? Okay. And then okay, it has been booked and the whatever is going your way and and it's really fast, really efficient and then they still call you. A person calls you and validates everything which is very good and they'll tell you that they're on their way or whatever. But now for them service. Yeah, it's great service and it's and it's much more manageable because it's outbound, right? You did everything in the text but then they can call you whenever they're free. So they don't have to have a 100 operators receiving calls. They just have those outbound calls which are easier to handle and people just had the interaction anyway. So I think that's a great way to do it. Sort of like a hybrid thing but but it gets the job done. So that's that's really cool and I I I think people should definitely use one of the ones that you mentioned especially in the trades because they're typically busy. A lot of them are owner operated and uh and and people like generally I know some electricians that are amazing and they should be in the top of the world, right? But but they aren't because they are doing the work because they're good at the work and they want to finish the work. They want to interrupt the work and so they're not getting more work as they could. So, so a lot of it could be balanced out very nicely if they check some of these boxes that you're talking Well, see, that's one of the things that we really assist our clients with is essentially thinking long term, right? There's so many owner operators that they've been going dayto-day for the past 5, 10, whatever years where they they might have an employee or two, but they're essentially they're relying on word of mouth. They're, you know, they they have this a simple website, maybe, you know, they're getting enough business to where they're making money. think, you know, some are ranging anywhere from 500k a year to 3 million a year and doing fair work. You know, they're doing a great job, but they are locked into their business. They are stuck in a position to where they're essentially they're the one to go to for all **[00:26:00]** the answers, for handling everything, for all the paperwork, for all the, you know, the ad everything is reliant upon them. If they ever wanted to retire or they ever wanted to sell their business, they can't. They're stuck. You know, you can't sell a business that is completely reliant upon the business owner. It is the job of the business owner to figure out how to get out of your own way because you will always be the big biggest bottleneck. You're always the expert. You know everything. You're so good at everything, but until you're able to delegate those tasks and be able to to remove the responsibilities that you have into your team, the team that you trust and a team that can do a great job, and then you're essentially watching for quality control, building those relationships with, you know, with people, essentially helping to grow the business itself, then you're going to be stuck, right? No investor can take on a company that is where the business owner is essentially the crux of everything. you know, they want something that's turnkey that they can go into, flip a switch, and be like, "Okay, cool. I'm making the same amount of money, or I make these couple little tweaks, and I'm making much more." Yes. And we've had a few episodes talking with experts at exits and investments in companies. And human risk is is is a true thing. But also, maybe you're doing so well that they do want to acquire you. you lose your leverage because now they have something to hold over you that can put you in a an improper position. So you might still get acquired, but we hear so much experiences from people who did an exit and they had a services business, but then they they they leave the exit with a very sour taste of mouth. They're like gh. It's like like they still got a lot of money, but they're like uh cuz they either they come in, they roll it up, and they like change it completely. So the whole the whole company culture goes away or they had to stay on for whatever restrictions that don't make sense for them. Like and that's not nice. Like you should be **[00:28:00]** able to have your company continue the way you built it because it's a it's hard to build a business from scratch. Oh yeah, absolutely. which is literally the reason that these these investors and and bigger companies, they'll pay seven figures, eight figures, you know, to to acquire a well functioning company, you know, but if it's not well functioning, then who really wants to buy it? Is it valuable? They're basically just buying your client list at that point. Yeah, that's a good point. And there's some some interesting data coming out from McKenzie and others where they're talking about all these companies from boomers that are sort of getting to a point where they want to stop working or they want to retire or they want to sell them or whatever. They don't know what to do. The family might not want to run them, etc. And this becomes sort of prime real estate for investors to come in and and buy them. But by you preparing yourself and not being the key operator of the business and having all these automations and and having everything in line, you can better position yourself if you are in that place where you want one of these companies to come in and acquire the company. Yeah, you can retire or really I mean another aspect too, I've got a I've got one guy, he's a pressure washer, right? Great guy. He's been doing this for eight years, something like that. incredible service, but he's a purely owner operator. And I'm like, I talked to him. He's like, he's like, "Yeah, I think I'm just going to take this week off, you know, I'm feeling tired, you know, X, Y, and Z." And I'm like, "I get it. I totally get it." You know, I mean, and you have that right as a business owner to be able to do that. But if you don't have a functional system in place, all your money just stops. You have no new income coming in if you're if you're the only one doing it, right? If you have a functional system, then, hey, yeah, take that week off. You still made a few grand. you know, you're able to to kick back, relax for laps on the beach or, you know, chill at the house or whatever and your team is doing a good job for you. You know, you have people that you trust **[00:30:00]** in place so that way you have you still have a cash flowing Yeah. Yeah. It's uh sometimes we don't think about it as entrepreneurs. You're like, "Oo, I can take this week off." Yes, you can. But unless you pre- booked like the upcoming ones or or set up some service packages that you're getting recurring income from or something like that, like you said, just if you stop, then the money stop flowing and then that's that's going to be a dip that you might not feel now, but you might feel it in a couple of months depending on the season. So, yeah, absolutely. That's a good point. Now there's some softwares that I've seen mentioned around right in the industry like house call pro and jobber and that sort of thing. So how are those u for for people? Do people like them? Do they enjoy them? Do they create friction? Is it like something too big for a company that's too small? H how what has been your experience listening to these owners and um seeing how they use them or whether they like them or not etc. like not specifically those, but all the tools that are specific for for home Right. Right. And I'm going to be 100% honest with you. I personally haven't had as much experience with those. You know, I know they're very popular in the industry and people do use them. Most of the the um business owners that I talked to, they don't have any CRM in place. They don't have a single CRM that they're operating with. And so that's one of the main things that we help set them up with is like, okay, you need a functional automated system. Something that's going to be able to help you with invoicing, with, you know, with uh your sales process, with keeping contact with your with your clients over the next, you know, 3 months, 6 months, year, whatever it is. Nothing that's spammy, but just something that keeps you in top of mind, says, "Hey, you know, we're still here. We still care about you. We're still happy to serve you." Um, we traditionally use go high level. You know, Gohigh Level has definitely been our bread and butter. It's more effective, you know, for us when it comes to building out those automations and building out all the systems. It has like a bajillion different softwares kind of like **[00:32:00]** integrated into one. So, if some company is a little bit more technologically advanced and they have been using some other softwares, they can usually cancel some of those other subscriptions and just kind of consolidate it into one, which is nice. But the vast majority of people that we talk to, they don't have any CRM. They don't have any automations. They don't have anything in place in order to be able to track all that stuff. At most, they use QuickBooks, you know, for for their bookkeeping. Uh, which is great. I love QuickBooks, you know, don't get me wrong. Um, but yeah, you know, it's I have had I've spoken to a couple people that have used Jobber or House Call Pro and they sound like they're relatively easy to use. I just wouldn't be able to give you a direct analysis as to how they compare to uh to GoH High Level, which we have so much more experience Yeah. Well, the the great thing about gohead level or any tool that that a company or agency has experience with is that you know it by heart and so you know what you can do, what are the limits, what um what works better versus other things. And that puts you in a great position because people come to you for counsel, right? For for advice, how do I do this? And a lot of times these other packaged services, while they're good, they they end up being very bloated. They might have too many things that you don't use. They get expensive. For some operators, it's just too expensive for licensing. And then also, they they don't necessarily fit what they want. And sometimes they're thinking of a specific flow because they saw it online, it makes sense and that funnel or whatever, and they just can't do it because the system locks you into a specific way of doing things. So, I think even even more nowadays, having tooling that that aligns to you is very valuable. Especially with AI, you can build things, etc. But also with high level and other tools that are sort of builder tools, right? They're they're they're not strict. You can use them to connect things together and create automations. And that's really what a most business owners need is a steady way to **[00:34:00]** receive the leads, process them, follow up on them, onboard them, and whatever whatever other automated processes they need. more than many of the other things that some of these tools might give you. You actually just reminded me of a of a recent project. I mean, we're still we're still very closely aligned with this client and still building and growing and and shifting and whatnot. Uh but we've been working with a directory, a business directory in the Atlanta area. They're strictly local, right? They only work with businesses that work within Atlanta proper. You can still be metro and as long as you come into the city, you can be part of the directory. Um it's called the Southern Schmoo, right? It's an awesome organization if you guys want to check it out. But they essentially will allow for um they have this concierge system like almost like an NG alternative, right? And we we built this thing from the ground up, you know, using Claude and and a couple other developers, you know, we essentially helped to to create this this very complex, very efficient automated system that acts as a lead genen system for for anybody that is looking for a home service contractor in the Atlanta area. They would just punch in a couple keywords, you know, their zip code. It might ask some questions about how fast they wanted it or budget or yada yada. And then the automated system will then use an algorithm to to track and locate, say, okay, you know, they they mention they're looking for a plumber, right? We've got this group of plumbers that we can source from that have been certified by the group. And then based on their keywords that they mentioned in their description, say uh leaky faucet, you know, or something like that, right? You know, this plumber specifically specializes in leaky faucets or they're the closest one to them. So, we're going to direct it to them. We send a lead over, the the plumber receives it, they're able to then see, okay, yes, you know, this is a job that I want to take. They'll select it, you know, go and make contact with that client usually within about 15 minutes. Um, the whole process is seamless, right? We've gone through literally dozens of iterations, you know, to make it as good as it is now. But yeah, I mean, it's a whole system that just streamlines that for everybody, you know. So it was it was a kind of cool way for us to essentially help one organization to **[00:36:00]** help hundreds of organizations, you know, with with a matter of uh within a couple of months, you know, to streamline that whole I like that because it's it's yes, Angie exists, but it's huge and so it's huge and it's expensive. It's expensive. It's huge and it's it's generic. It's like it's for everyone. So anyone can just sign up and then you can pay a little more to be noticed and like it's this whole thing. But the fact that this one is local and that it's people that I presume are vetted in some way. It gives it a much higher appeal in my opinion because you know the industry, you know the issues that happen. You might know the people like it's it's not that just anyone can go in and and con someone into a job, right? So that's that's really neat. I like when things go hyperpersonalized to a sector or to a locality because we we as humans want that that sort of connection. Mhm. Yeah. Especially with this with this industry. That's actually one of the things that really drew me to it, you know, cuz like AI is super powerful. Obviously, we're all using it in some capacity, some more than others. You know, we use it a lot, you know, within uh within the Atlanta Pro network in just in coding and and uh you know, development, design, that sort of stuff. But there's a big fear of AI taking everybody's jobs, right? It's it's like, okay, what industry is least likely to to be dominated by AI within a short period of time, right? within the next 5, 10, 15 years is probably going to be the hope service contract industry. Um, it's a little less likely that you're going to have robots coming, you know, building your roof, you know, something like that. It's probably going to happen at some point. It's probably going to happen. Well, the roof the roof maybe because they're outside. It's very easy in terms of like if you put you you nail, right? But not easy. Just don't get me wrong, but it's like it's up there. Wow. Imagine, compare that to like trying to get behind a toilet and like fixing a **[00:38:00]** thing where you have to like barely put your hand in there with like how how are they going it's not coming anytime soon. They're going to figure it out, but it's going to be a while. So, and there's going to be a big barrier of people trusting that sort of experience, you know, of trusting having some machine, you know, come into their house and, you know, that has uh, you know, a fake automated personality and and this and that, whatever. Some people are going to be fascinated by it, you know, almost like Whimos. Uh, but, you know, there's definitely a big portion of people that could be like, I don't know about all that. You know, I want Jerry, who again has been in my neighborhood for 20 years and I've known him for, you know, for most of my life or something like that. Um, or I want the those real handshakes, you know, those real relationships. So, yeah, I agree. That's that's very important, too. If people want to learn more about this, let's say someone is uh she's in the home services, they're listening to the podcast, they're they're driving the truck, they're like, "Hey, this sounds great. I want to start doing this sort of thing." What would be your recommendation to start getting into this and and where can they learn more as well? When you say getting into this, are you referring to helping to scale their business up or getting into like setting up their map pack or getting noticed? Maybe they don't have a website. Like do they focus on their website? Do they focus on the map type first? Like what is what would be like the first step for someone who who's listening and feels that they might be invisible to like the new age of people finding people for a job. Yeah. Yeah. So, we actually because we come across so many business owners that have they've been doing this for a while and they just they have some stuff set up but it's not really set up appropriately. One thing that we usually recommend is we say, "Hey, let's do an audit first. Let's figure out what exactly is going on with your business and then from there we can give the best recommendation as to how to be able to resolve it." Um, it has been a little bit of a consistent pattern where we find that there's a lot of business owners **[00:40:00]** that they just need they just need a revamp. It's a new website that's SEO optimized, that's AI visible, you know, that has all these things in place so that it's super easy for for AI to be able to recommend them. Um, my wife actually I set up her, you know, her website with everything and she's literally number one on Google right now for her industry and it's like we just set it up what 3 weeks ago, something like that. So, it doesn't it's not that hard. You just have to have the right stuff in place, right? And um yeah, the Google business profile, AI visibility, all those sorts of things, if you need logo design, etc., that all comes included with our starter pack, right? The starter pack essentially gets everybody from from day one to where they need to be. And it's not until we at least complete the starter pack that they would be able to move in towards the the advertising programs and the things to help them scale up from there. But it gets them set up with a CRM, gets them set up with the, you know, with a SEO optimized website, with a Google business profile optimization, all those things. so they can be visible online and it's set at a price point that's super affordable that most anybody in a home service contract industry would be able to make that back in one or two jobs. Hey, that's excellent. And is this only specific to Atlanta? Do you only service the Atlanta region? We don't only service Atlanta. No, we just picked up another client in San Diego yesterday. Um, you know, I mean, we service nationally as well. We just like to focus our efforts in Atlanta. you know, again, because those real personal relationships be in that tight-knit community, you know, actually shaking those hands, etc. Um, but I'm used to running national and international businesses. I mean, we have plenty of meetings like this where we'll connect over Zoom or connect anywhere else. We just, this can be done anywhere and everywhere, you know, but it's like a Yeah, it's one of those things where we have been focusing our efforts in those specific niches and in that specific location. But yeah, I mean, if you're in need of help, we're always welcome to answer questions. You know, we provide a consultation. Consultations are free. You're always welcome to uh to, you know, connect to our website and have a an audit done and you'll be able to see exactly what's going on with your business. You don't even have to do a consultation. Um, and that's atlantapretwork.com. **[00:42:00]** Excellent. atlantapretwork.com. I'll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you, Jonah, for coming on the show. This has been very enlightening. I think people that are in the industry or adjacent industries will take a lot from it and maybe get their stuff in order to start appearing in the search results and taking some of those jobs uh as well from their competitors. Yeah, literally there's people searching all the time. Just in Atlanta alone, we've got about 2 million people that are searching and yeah, as long as somebody's getting those jobs, might as well be you. Amazing. If you haven't liked and subscribed to the show, please do so because that way you'll figure out whenever we re release new episodes like this amazing one with Jonah. And again, Jonah, thank you so much for coming on the show. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Mono. Thanks everyone and we'll see you in the next one.