 Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Tom Stewart here, and we have a bunch of people today. We've got Liz Trotter, Dan Smith, and Gosha Barron. Hey guys, how's everybody doing? Good, good. Happy to be here. Our business moves, it is May 10. We're into double digits in May. Right? What were we doing a year ago? We were like deep into COVID, right? I mean, it was when it was starting to get real, right? We were in COVID last year, yeah. We were wrapped around the word pivot. I think that was the buzzword this time last year, pivot. Right, Dan. Yeah, last year, this time, Dan, I was actually doing your campaign, your disinfectant giveaway at that time. Oh, yes? Yes, literally. I'll put it on my phone and my things to remember. Awesome. Already in May, that seems really fast. May 10th, that seems like it was really fast. I mean, I guess we did it. Who is Facebook user? Robin? They're the group and didn't plug their name in. Robin, Sarah? Those are two that I know do that kind of a lot. Say, hey, I'm gonna, I don't know who that is. Hey, y'all, so today, we have been talking about, so the last few weeks, you guys, we've all been talking about how to get on board with more employees and making a good workforce and, hey, Linda, oh, that's you, Linda. Hi, didn't plug your name in there, huh? That's not like her, so it's odd. So today, we're going to talk about getting Google reviews. I know you guys saw that. But the reason why we're doing that is not because we're not concerned about having a good place to work, but it matters. You gotta have a good place to work. You gotta have good, I don't know what it did differently. I don't know either, Linda, don't worry about it. But you have to be a strong workplace, because if you aren't a strong workplace, then it's gonna be really hard to be a good place to work. So that is what we're gonna be talking about today. But Tom, do we have any news, anything that we need to be looking at today? Anything that happened over the weekend other than Mother's Day? Mother's Day, let's see. Nice. Dogecoin took a dive for those of you who are tinkering in crypto. I hope somebody shorted that. How bad was it? I mean, it's every, you're honoring that everywhere, so it must have been bad, huh? Yeah, it came back some today. I mean, I don't know, this is, I don't own any. I just, I'm a spectator on that one. But nice to have bought so much in the beginning of the year, though, it's like a half a cent, and now it was between 50, it was high 75, I think it's somewhere in the 50 cent coin token. Anywho, today was a landmark day for us here and castlekeepers. Pre-COVID, we had training wages, in some cases, as long as like $8 an hour, and we were able to find qualified people. You grew quickly from there, but today we made an announcement, we pegged our company momentum and wage for starting with a trainee at $15 an hour. So think about it, that's almost a hundred percent. I haven't really done the math, whatever it is, plus enough, a hundred percent to count. And we might not be done. I just think that's where everything's going in terms of wage inflation. And I think that the composition of the workforce post-COVID is different than what it was pre-COVID. And I don't want to be the last company to figure out that our wages need to be higher. So I'll keep you guys posted on how that goes. How did the response go? What response did you get from your people? Oh, it was awesome. It was positive. We taught a lot of things to it. We talked about what it was required in order to maintain full-time status. There's training requirements. You have to complete the PhD course in order to, this is part of your terms of employment moving forward. You have to VPAC sort of highlight. You have to complete the moving course. There's other training, plus there's certain metrics that you have to head in terms of quality, productivity, efficiency, and incentives in order to benefit and to grow. But very positive. And part of it too is we've been raising rates over the last few weeks, both on new quotes as well as incumbent clients getting ready for this. And we explained all the reasons why. And more so than times past, the feedback has been very positive. They appreciate the fact that we're, I mean, we're doing other things too. We have many healthcare benefits at the beginning of the year. We're doing a 401k by the end of second quarter, expanding PTO policy. And we explained all that in the letter as well and the clients think it's great and they're paying more. And at the moment, I guess they can afford it. So it's all good. We'll see how that looks like a year from now. Well, it sounds like a win. I can't wait to see how it all plays out and how it plays out in your hiring, especially. You know, we always talked about being the premier employer in the residential cleaning industry. Well, this is our opportunity to do it. Yeah, looking forward to it. I can't wait. Linda is asking if your state is no longer taking the extra federal money? Oh, that's a good question. In South Carolina, the governor has directed Department of Labor to stop taking it or stop distributing it at the end of June. So they're still gonna be getting the extra federal unemployment benefit for the next month and a half, I guess. Okay. So, yeah, that's six weeks is still a long time. All right, well, you're gonna be on top of it when it ends anyway, because you're gonna be ready by that time. That's the plan. Yeah. I'm just sharing that as food for thought. No guarantees or endorsements on any of this. I don't have a crossbow ball, but at least this is a data point that I'll share with you guys how this journey goes. Yeah. It's great to set precedence for your client base now when you're the only one or the small minority, right? Imagine trying to implement that when every other business locally is doing the same and the homeowner, the client is filling the impact from every different direction. Right now, it's just, oh, a couple more dollars with castle keepers, we can make that happen. Yeah. Especially for this great reason. Unfortunately, I think that clients already see a rate increase in every possible area. You know, so the metal is up, wood is up, everything is, and it's not a little bit, it's 300%. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I mean, it's a big article on the Washington Journal about the cost rising, so. So I think the clients will also understand that our clients also understand that. Yep. It's like, this is the right time. Everything's coming together right now to be able to do this in the best way that it's gonna be the easiest. You know, to your point, Dan, Tom talks about this a lot that you don't wanna be chasing everybody else's thing. You don't look like the winner when you're trying to chase down what everybody else is already doing. So, I'm looking forward. In this thing that I've experienced, I've been on both ends of that before, and it's a lot more fun if you're ahead of it rather than being behind it. I wish I could say I had never been on both sides of that, but I too have been on both sides. Absolutely is more fun when you're on the front end. All right, well. The risk of trying to be on the front end though, every once in a while you guess wrong, and you're in the front end of a trend that doesn't happen. And you're just kind of standing by yourself. It's like, where's everybody else? Nevermind, nevermind. Or you're so in front of the trend that it looks like nobody else is coming on board. And then two days later, I mean, two years later, they start doing it. This has happened to me multiple times where I'm like, yo, what the heck? What took so long? Two terms come to mind. You wanna be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. Right, that's a good one. Yeah, that is a good one, that is a good one. Anything with the pro act, Tom? Anything there? I'm sorry, what? The pro act, the organized labor, anything there? Tell me about that, the organized labor. So talking about, what are they called? When labor like unions, or the pro act is about about organizing all of the labor and sort of unionizing all labor, even our little old places. So that's a new piece of legislation or proposed legislation like probably, that's something that executive branch try and turn it off. Yep, there's a lot of stuff going on about it. I was today, when I was talking with Dan and Gosha earlier today, I was on a, I guess, I don't remember what it was. It was through Cornell University, they were putting on like a Zoom meeting about it and they had people on both sides. And so I was just wondering if we've heard anything about for us in our industry, if anybody's thought about it, how it might impact us, is it something that we just don't even need to worry about yet, or maybe ever, you know? Okay, so this is, I mean, it's actually, a bill that's being proposed, HR 842, protecting the right of organized labor, protecting the right to organize at, no, I'm sorry, I haven't, don't worry about it, it's something else for me to worry about, is that what you're trying to do? Sorry, Tom, sorry. All right, never mind. Well, one problem, she wants to put one other one on, you know. Hey, you already solved that one, let's get to it. Yeah, I know, I'm way ahead of it. Yeah. Just another problem solved. Well, let's talk about something fun, something that we can have some more control over and the ratings, I mean, I feel like this is something that is gonna be a lot of fun for a lot of people because you do have a lot more control over it than we think we do. You know, a lot of times people are like, oh my gosh, I swear, we're just popped into my head and that is just weird for me. What? I know, Google's weird. What was it? The B word. The B word. Oh, is it the one that I used? You know, that one. Did you hear it? So we don't feel that way. We don't have to feel that way because we can be in charge, right? We can be in control. And so that's what you guys are gonna talk about today, yeah? That's right, we will talk about that. And you know, if you ask my husband, I love to be in control. So I'm the one who drives the power everywhere. I do not let him drive because I have to be in control. So it will be nice. So you put in there really well. And you know, so that we can be somewhat in control over that we can be in control and in the LZ space. Yeah. Well, let me introduce myself to all of you that are possibly listening. My name is Gosha Baron. I am with Health Enhance Cleaning Services located in Chicago. And the western suburbs of Chicago and Chicago. And we have another office in Texas. So we have two locations. So what can I tell you? Liz, thank you for inviting me to speak on your show today. Thanks for coming, you were super happy. Yes. And when you invited me, I was like thinking, you know, what to talk about and you said, you know, what gives you, what bring you most success or what helps your business the most? So, you know, I was thinking like, honestly, what gives you drive and experience and what we can brag about is our good reviews and our yelp reviews. Nice. That really helps our business and employees and customers. And that, I thought, you know, could not, I have to bring Dan on this talk show as well, because without Dan, I would never be where I am today. So Dan is the, he is, I'm great to understand all my friends as well as the reviews and the yelp reviews. I should put this to Dan. So I wanted to, I would like to welcome Dan as well. All right, well, you know, I know you guys so it didn't even occur to me that other people might not know who you are. So thank you, Gosha, for bringing that up, right? I know who you are. It doesn't everybody know who you are, but that's it. I know. So Dan, you wanna give us a quick intro about who you are? Yeah. I'm not a company named Homemade Better. Indeed, indeed. I would agree that most people know who Gosha is, but I am, my name is Dan Smith. I'm out of Oklahoma City. I have been in the industry for about five years now. And like many of us just work into navigate through the time and grow the business all in all committed to the long game, right? So times are a little challenging right now with employees. We've got some unexpected things in the air, but those that stay at the game keep playing. So that's kind of where we're at right now. When I got the call from Gosha, it was a bit unexpected. She reached out to me and said that she had received an invitation to be on your show and she wanted to know if I would join her. And we kind of talked through what that might look like. And I said, sure, I'd be happy to join. So it's my second time here and I'm happy to be back. Awesome. All right, well Dan, it's kind of a big statement that Gosha said that she owes her success as far as Google and Yelp reviews to you, that she would not be where she was if it wasn't for you. I feel like that's a huge statement. I like even talk space was like, whoa, wow. Let me tell you, let me tell you this story. Yeah, awesome, tell us. I feel like right now, everybody is Googling my company and they're like, okay, let's put your money where your mouth is, Dan. They sure are. So let me tell you the story, how we got together and how all of this has started. So back in November, we, Dan and a bunch of other business owners met. We created our own, what's it called, our own convention. Right, I couldn't think of the word. And we were just sitting casually talking about what helps us in business and what about the reviews and this and that. So we just had a casual conversation. And I, because I love to be in control, as I said that before, I, my, always my first thing is like, my question to all of you is where do you go when you are looking for a new restaurant or when you are in different town, where do you go to look for restaurant or nail place or hair salon, whatever it is. I always go to Google and then I always go to Yelp because I want to make sure that the decision that I'm going to make and the money that I'm going to spend is going to, you know, it's going to be spent well and I want to have that experience. And the reason I am so, such a stickler to checking out Google reviews and Yelp reviews now is because I had a hard lesson. I'll just quickly tell you, we went to Colorado and in the middle of the winter and we rented a car from Fox car rental. It was the cheapest car. And I was like, wow, it's pretty cool. You know, it has, you know, I went for the price, right? Oh my gosh. Nevermind that we had bold tires and we were driving into the mountains and we had no liquid, no washer fluid in the, for the windshield and it was just a nightmare. Nightmare. It was pretty extra for good tires and washer fluid. That's what they said. So then what happened is I go on Yelp and I go on Google and there's one star review and it's like 5,000 reviews, right? And I'm like, holy crap. Okay, from now on I've learned my lesson. Always go to Google or Yelp. I mean, this is what our clients do, right? They research us. So it is so, so, so important for us to have Google reviews and have not just five, 10, 20, but, you know, a lot. And it's been a struggle to get those reviews. We were asking clients and we were telling our people to ask the clients because as everybody says, you know, your people are connected with the clients, the clients listen to the cleaners because they are in their home, but it just wasn't enough. So when I met with, when we were talking with Dan at dinner, I think I had about 140 reviews or something on Google. And I felt, I was so proud. I'm like, hey, I have 140 reviews. It's, you know, it's so cool. And we had like, I don't know, 100 some or 90 some reviews on Yelp. So I was all excited and Dan was like, Dan was like, yeah, we have, I don't know what you were like. You were like, yeah, we have like 300. And I'm like, what, how did you do that? Yes, I remember that vividly. And, you know, I was kind of in that moment where Gosha was so excited. She was so happy with how her process works and how her team is bought in and how the reviews are coming along and she was sharing with the group. And I had that moment like, like I don't want to steal her thunder, but I might have something that could help her even get more reviews or I might, you know, show her what we're doing. And I went out on a limb and I was like, hey, let me, let me very humbly try to tell you what we got going on. And oh boy, she was like, we need to talk. So we had a couple of great conversations. Yeah. I remember that night. Right. So we did talk and rest is history. So today we have on, I have to, I'm sorry, I have my cheat notes because I don't have memory for numbers, but today we have 231 Google reviews. And that's when since, and probably since the beginning of mid-December, I think we got on board mid-December. So we gained about 90 reviews in just a short period of time. In one month, we received 40 reviews. So in just one month. You know, that's about, that's less than five months and you got 90 reviews in a five month period. That's awesome. So you've got, you've got our attention here. What's the secret to us? How does this work? Right. I have a question first. You said it's about 90, 92 reviews or something like that over the course of like four and a half months. Are those all Google or some Google, those are just Google. Those are just Google. And then we have 134 Yelp reviews. I believe we received about 20 of them on Yelp. And then we have 234 not recommended reviews on Yelp. Wow. But you know, it still do matter. People still look at them. Right. But we really focus on Google reviews for the most part. So yeah, so we have, you know, we really, we really are rocking with that. And I'll let Dan talk. I don't want to steal his secret sauce. I'll let him share how it's done. And he can build it. Yeah. You know, it's no secret that in this industry so many people are willing to help one another, right? Gosha is a prime example of that. For those of you that know Gosha, you can pick up the phone anytime you can call her and she's going to, she's gonna carve time out, right? Maybe not in that moment, sometimes maybe so. But she's willing to help and throw it out there. I'm sorry, I just have to speak to that really, really quickly. Yeah, Gosha came onto our MMA group and she spent an hour doing a presentation to our group on how to make more money for no benefit to her. And it was huge. Like all of the big secrets that you think nobody's ever going to tell you, she told us all of them. All of them. So yeah, once to people that are, go ahead, Tom. As far as you know, all of them, she might have, she told, it's possible. Why do we invent a wheel when the wheel is already invented? Come on. Yeah. It's like, there's enough homes to clean for everybody. So. Okay, but people say that all the time, but I just want to go to what Dan said. Put your money where your mouth is. You actually invested your time, energy, effort into us and you poured it into us and you did not want anything from us at all, ever. And here you are again today. So I just really want to say yes. All right, so Dan, what's the big toss? Hey, you know, as everyone knows, this is not a scripted event, right? So. Oh, I know that for sure. Pretty obvious, right? I didn't know Liz was going to bring up that example, but briefly, I was in that audience, right? I was in the audience with the MMA group in listening to Gosha come in and share and was able to take practical information and apply it and had a few other questions and reached out to her and put some things into practice. And if I can plug unsolicited here, Liz, the value of MMA, that's just one example. That's one example of my participation in that group and leveraging kind of just the helping of one another. So hopefully this topic today is helpful to other people out there. When we talk about magic secret sauce, I don't know that I have the answer. I know that the industry is very, very kind in whole, in aggregate with sharing with one another, right? We're not in direct competition in most cases. So we're going to talk a little bit about reputation management. And I'm not here to sell, I'm not here to promote. My goal is to provide a little bit of guidance and help because so many people have poured and invested their help in me. When you think about reputation management, many people are willing to spend great amounts of money on different services, different products, right? The two that comes to mind that are pretty hot right now, BirdEye is one reputation management company. If you've never heard it before, you can Google BirdEye. Another that's really hot right now is Go Tell Us. I really wanna start out by saying I have not used either one of those services, but I know that there are plenty of people that do who will testify that those are great, great services and they do a lot of things aside from just helping build legitimate reviews for your business, right? You wanna do so with integrity and according to Google's ecosystem, you don't wanna get in trouble. So if that's your jam, that's great. There's great products and they do 20 other things. What I discovered kind of stumbled on across is the human element of asking for a review and it really was born out of my personal experience that led to frustration. So I'll share with you, this literally was born in my wanting to increase our Google reviews for our small business, kind of being new to the landscape, right? I said we're about five years old and I would ask people for reviews endlessly, right? Every opportunity I could and for those of you who have been down this road before, maybe you've had a similar experience, everyone says yes, everybody says yes, they're going to leave a review, but nobody does and I'm determined that that's the case because people in most cases want to avoid conflict, right? Society as a whole, we rather most normal people rather just kind of avoid conflict. So it becomes so much easier for them to say, oh yeah, sure, I'll do that when they absolutely have no intentions on doing it. I didn't figure that out until much later. What came first was discouragement. I'm like frustrated, I'm like, but she told me she was going to leave a review and she was so happy, like she couldn't have lied to me, right? Maybe she just forgot. And then- Our staff also says the same thing. Oh, but they promise. Totally true. You know, and I don't know what else to do. And then they give up too. So, yeah. Hey, TJ's got some solid advice there, solid advice. Hey, just try one review, that's a bad pathway, I'm sure. So that really kind of is the beginning of my story and I started to figure out what could I do to ask for a review, but also follow up. So in the early days, it was me trying to follow up a second time, trying to follow up a third time, not wanting to overstep my bounds and upset anybody or become too obnoxious. And it just went on for so long that we had grown to 78 Google reviews and we had been, you know, three years in business. I don't know. And like we were at 78 and that was, I thought we were doing great, but in comparison to the local market, but I just couldn't understand why it was such a low return rate. So I started looking at the different services out there. I saw the cost and we were not in a position to kind of invest in terms of spending money for reputation management software. And I thought, how could I come up with a solution that kind of puts in place the ask once, ask again, ask again, and how can I do that in a way that doesn't offend people or annoy them, right? That was the key. So I kind of came up with a script and idea and approach and methodology. And I was so concerned that I was going to upset people that I was on the fence. So my wife and I, it was one late one evening and I was reading to her some of the things that I put together and she said, what do you have to lose? And I was center focused on what if this is a bad idea? Like, what if I ask you for a review and you tell me yes, and then I try to hold you accountable for it? Like, where's that going to get me, right? That's, I don't know where that was going to land me. You could get a bad review or the other is they're annoyed and they find another cleaning service. Yeah, I had that on the back of my mind, right? My wife, a little more free spirited. She kind of put things in reality. She said, hey, try it and you could always stop. And I thought, okay, that's brilliant, right? I hadn't thought about that part. So here's my take, right? I don't have a magic answer for you, but here's what I've discovered and what I shared with Gosha. And as you heard her testify has really made a big difference. This is purely my philosophy and my opinion. I don't have any data that the bigger companies have. You, you know, in this day and age, I'm sure they have metrics galore, but from a little shop perspective. We get Gosha's data. I mean. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. From my perspective, I thought, you know, if we're asking for these reviews from a human level, and if you're waiting for the shoe to drop, like this is it, from someone in your office asking for that review, and then that person following up, maybe twice, maybe three times, right? Every company's gonna be different. In the process, maybe the owner having a little bit of investment in the process, right? So now the customer has agreed to a review and they get a message referencing their agreeing to leave you a review, and you can go about it any number of ways, right? So here's one example, and I talked about it with Gosha, and she said, I don't have time for that. The person who asked for the review follows up and checks in, hey, I just wanted to see if you've had an opportunity to leave us a review, give you a friendly reminder. And then at a later time, kind of the Gosha goes in there and says, hey, Susie Q told me that you were gonna leave us a review, I'm super excited, I can't wait to read what you're gonna put on the edge of my seat. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of commitment, but what we discovered, what I discovered is the follow through, the doing it every single time made a big difference. So when I was talking with Gosha, she said to me, Dan, I've got a lot of things going on, I'm probably not gonna have time to follow up with every review request. So we kind of strategized and I showed her some of the things that I was doing, and we created a system, it's what it boils down to. It's a system that helps make this process more efficient. The takeaway however is this, in my humble opinion, your client is not getting an email from a company they've never heard of. They're not getting an email from a name brand that they don't know. They're not getting bombarded by a different survey or outside communication channel. They're getting an email or a text message or a phone call from the very organization that they have a relationship with, right? They value you, so you're showing equal value and investing time to send that message directly from within your office. And for our business and obviously for Gosha's experience, it's been a game changer. It's been a game changer. So I'll recap and I'll pause. When I would ask somebody for a review, they would say yes, and rarely would they do it. And as much as I would try to remember to follow up, it kind of just never happened, right? There's other calls that come in and it just kind of gets out of control and try to remember who to follow up with. So we created a system and the system worked. And what I noticed in a year's time, we jumped from 78 reviews to over 200 reviews in a year. And I attribute that everything to the personalization of our message, the personalization of it coming from the office. And some of you out there might have received 500 reviews from BirdEye. And that's great. Maybe I should look more into that, but I've been really pleased with the process that we have. And when Gosha called me and she's like, Dan, she would text me. Gosha, if you remember, she would text me and she'd say, we got three reviews today. And then 20 minutes later, she would text me again, I just got another review. And she was so excited that, you know, that just got me charged up. And I was pretty happy to see her experience the same encounter. Right on the board and buzz. And here's another review. Here's another review. I'm like, oh my God, this is so cool. You know, it really works. So I feel like you're like stringing us along and now you're going to tell us like, what is it, how, how do I do it? What do you mean you got a system? I don't understand. I need, I need to, how can I do it? How can you do it? Okay. All right. Well, today we're at 248 reviews, 248 reviews. And I actually share that number, not from any boastful platform. I share that number to prove a point. And I'm like, what is it? How do I do it? What do you mean you got a system? I don't understand. I need, I need to, I share that number to prove a point. We had arrived at 200 and something of reviews and we had some change up in the office here. And the person that had been relentless on asking for reviews was no longer on team. She was no longer in the office. And all of a sudden we saw a taper effect. We were not getting the reviews coming in. And I discovered and eventually, you know, told Golshia, it is a, oh gosh, I don't remember how I phrased it, but it works if you work it. I mean, plain and simple, it works if you work it. So, you know, there's a little manual element to it. How long does the manual process take, Golshia? What would you say? 30 seconds? Yeah. At least 30 seconds. Yeah. For sure. If that, right? I don't do it, but my team does it. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's super quick. Yeah. And, and you never have to worry about it again. So Liz, let me, let me kind of put a little more meat on the table because the teasers are getting, they're getting to you. I can, I can feel it. This is like an infomercial. Yeah. I feel like you're going to sell me a condo here. Hey, free shipping and handling. I can tell you that right from the start. No. So we created an automation. I created an automation that really put in place. The human message. So it's, it's messaging that comes from our office. Every company is going to be different. I don't know your, you know, your business. I don't know how you communicate with your office. But we've set things up in a way where when you want to ask somebody for a review, we have a process for that. We have a system. You go in and you execute the system. It takes about 30 seconds. And, and that's it. That's the end. There's, there's nothing else to do. We're still doing it. We're still doing it. Wait, there's more. So we've all heard of automations, right? We've all heard of automations that help us be more efficient in the office, get more things done with less time. And this really does fall under that category. I set up an automation. I set one up for, for Gosha. That, that puts in play a defined process and the process is, Hey, you told me that you were going to give me a review. You agreed to giving us a review. So we're following up on that in a, in a, Susan, that's a great question. I have nothing to sell. I have nothing to sell, but I'm always willing to take a US cash. I just put that out there. I have nothing to sell. I have nothing to sell, but I love, I love free money. The process is asking somebody for a review, but referencing the fact that they told you they were going to do it. And from a psychological standpoint, there's power in that. There's accountability in that. And then allowing enough time to go by for that review to come in and reminding them, Hey, you told me that you were going to leave a review. And we haven't seen that just yet. We got to break it down because I'm going crazy here. Okay. Let's start at the beginning. So you clean somebody's house. Yeah. All right. And so the system is just an automation that's going to do these things. Here we go. Guys, here's the meat. The first thing is when does the first, is it an email, a text? What is it? What goes out? Oh gosh. I'm not trying to be vague. It's whatever you want it to be. It's whatever you have set up. Yeah. Whatever you have set up for your business. We do it. And it works pretty well. Yeah. So after the cleaning, we call the client. My team calls the client. I was cleaning. And they said, Oh, how would you rate the cleaning? And they said, Oh, absolutely. It's five. It's amazing. And then my team will say, thank you so much. I'm so happy to hear you were very satisfied with the team. We'll definitely pass this along to them as well. Would you mind leaving them a review on Google? Or would you mind leaving them a review? Would you mind sharing your experience with the public? And then they're like, Oh, absolutely. And then my team will say, wonderful. Great. I will send you a link to your text message. Is that okay that I can, that I send you a link with it to your text message. And the client says, absolutely done. So, thank you for articulating that for me. Very well. Thank you so much. I'm digging into the automation and everyone's like, okay, how do we do step one? The psychological hook is asking for their permission. Right. We're asking, can, will you leave us a review? And when they say yes, we're asking them, can we send you a message? So now we're getting their permission. All right. Instead of you guys that are listening. So instead of saying, okay, great. Thank you. I'll send you a link. No. Instead of saying that you have to say, can I send you a link? And clients like people like to be in control. Yeah. Just like earlier. Right. Yeah. I send you a link when they say yes. Now they have bought it. Right. Okay. Now I really, Now I have to do my part now and they feel more connected to, they have to, are they going to? No, they're still not going to. So we're going to go back to like the next step. So that first wait a minute. Kosha, that call was the day after the cleaning. Is that right? We always do it the next day. Yeah. Morning. Yep. Next day. Okay. So then we give us timeframes to Dan. All right. So that can I send you a link? And I can send you a link right to their phone. And whoever it is doing the follow up calls. Correct. Is it always the same person, Kosha? We have it the same person. Yep. In person. But if in your company it's a different person. Y'all just, I think that's going to matter somewhere down the line here. So whoever it is doing it. All right. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah. So the important piece as mentioned was getting your buy in, but it goes back to the path of lease resistance. They're always going to say yes. So we're looking for the buy in, but we know that 98% of the people are going to say yes. So then you begin the automation. You plug in what little information again, it takes about 30 seconds to send them a request. And it reminds them essentially. Yes, ma'am. Wait, what request? The request to leave a review that you had already seek to approval for. The one that has the link. Correct. So the link that we asked to send, now we sent another request saying, what does it say? Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to speak with you today. Here's the link as promised, right? You're referencing the fact that they gave approval and you're following up on what it is you said you were going to do. All right. The link is the link to Google or Yelp or whatever that they click on in their review. Yeah, your source. All right. And it's directly there. It's a quick link. Yeah. Directly makes it easy for them, right? So then we're going to pause and we're going to wait time. We're going to allow them time to leave that review. And if the review doesn't come in, we're going to send them a... Every company is different. It can be two days. It can be three days, right? We want to do what Gosha does. We know that works. We do have two days. Two days. Well, that's not very long. I mean, I feel like two days. Two days. And then I can leave. So then they don't do it, right? Then they get the other time. Yay! And then they're all automated. The initial text that you're sending, is that all through an automation where you just basically click a button and the automations. Yes. Yeah. So I'm going to talk about the automation because that's where all the work is. But I care about the other side for the people that are not Dan and can't create the automation. Like, how can you at least manually get started and then create that automation? Yeah. Okay. So let me make sure I'm talking in that in that respect. So you're asking for permission. You're sending the first request. And you do so instantly, right? You're waiting 48 hours. And if they don't leave a review, then you're prompting them with a reminder. And for some companies that might be a message coming from the business owner, in Ghosh's case, it's a message coming from the person that asked to begin with. And I don't want to get too philosophical or to dig too far into the psychology side. But when the person that you promised to leave a review, they've asked you once and you didn't do it yet. They ask you a second time, you know, for some of us there's an element of, ooh, gosh, wow. Yeah, I told her I would do this and I haven't done it yet. And for some people, that is a prompt to actually go out and do it. And when that message goes out, it has a link again. It's just a coincidental, you know, hey, we're going to slide the link in there. And it's written in a way, the script can be anything, but it's written in a way that says, hey, just want to check in. Thank you so much for agreeing to leave us a review. It's just kind of a real light reminder. It's just a light reminder. Is somebody having to kick these off or are there reminders being created in the office for people to do this or is all of this just completely running by itself? It's running by itself. The entire, this is the beauty, the entire process invested, Tom, per client, per request, sub 30 seconds. And then you don't worry about it again. Okay. Once we get the review, does somebody have to go in and turn it off? When the review comes in, you log the review as review received and it shuts the automation. If not, they're going to keep getting reminders to... Yes, that is true on a technical front. I would say from a excitement front, as Gosha can attest to when they're coming in, you're fired up, right? You get it, you go in, and you plug in their contact information. They're going to do that because they're celebrating. Yeah, and they're going to see the review come in. In Gosha's office, for example, we built it to share a celebratory message inside her communication channel. It kind of sparks some internal office competition and excitement, if you will. Okay, so that's another piece that I want you guys to really hear that gets left out a lot. So, when you have Soteles or you have Verdi, when the review comes in, that's it, we're done. But in this automation that you need to create for yourself, when the review comes in, it needs to send out a celebratory message to everybody in the office saying, hey, y'all, congratulations. We got a review on Google or on Yelp, or hey, you guys, Michelle got a review on blah, blah, blah, on Yelp or whatever, so that there's a celebratory note in there as well. Yeah, and that really just kind of like... Because I get those. So my phone was going up with these, and my team was so excited. They had these champagne, whatever. You ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Think for a moment. The business is out there, and your watchers, how many people have said to your team, if you get us a review, I'll give you $5 a review. I'll give you $10 a review. And the companies that are successful in that, they might be spending $100, $150, $200 a month in reviews. If they're lucky, that's great to get to spend that money. On the other hand, there are companies that you're asking their team, and they don't really have the buy-in, right? They may not be vested in working in that category, right? They got a hard job as it is. We had a comment that mentioned review shaming, and I really want to take a moment to address that. We live in a busy world. I mean, we live in a world of intentionality, right? I meant to send you that email, Liz, and I entirely forgot, genuinely forgot to do that, right? I told you that I was going to leave you a review because I really am a satisfied customer. But I had to make dinner for the kids, and the next day I got called out of town, and I just completely forgot. There is a third component, the last and final component. And that message, again, is custom to however your business works. And it's really thanking the customer for doing business with you. It is not shaming them in this respect. It's not a negative. It's a, hey, we value you so much. Thank you for using our company. If we can serve you again in the future, let us know. And no surprise, there's a convenient link in there should they choose to leave us a review. Now, I can tell you that we see the highest number of reviews on that third message. We see more on, we see less, it's in order, right? The first message, not a lot of reviews. The second message, a few reviews. By the time the third message comes out and they're set 48 hours apart, all of a sudden it's like, wow, the reviews come in. So we've got, you know, about seven more minutes, I guess, before we get to the top of the hour. Dan, when you set this up, what is the frequency between the first, second, and third message? I know that you said there's a lot of different things we can do, but two days between? Two days. First to second, two more days between second and third. Yeah, it's 48 hours specifically, right? Because we want to message them during business hours and during a time that they did business with us. But it is set to two days in between. And it's proven to be great. And really it's just another touch point with your client because they may never have intended to do business with you. Do you include weekends? I mean, seven days a week, it really doesn't matter if it's a weekend. It doesn't matter, yeah. Okay. It doesn't matter. Of course, if someone on the technical front wanted to set it up so they were not bothered on the weekend, that could be done. I feel like there's value in capitalizing on the 48-hour segments because we want to be, you know, top of mind when the home is still clean, not two weeks later after it's a little rough around the edges. So the manual process of this basically is the upfront call of the day after to find a way to ask permission. So let me touch on that. I know we're short on time, but this probably is the most valuable piece that I can leave in the context of everything I've shared today. And that is we ask for everything when anytime something positive is said. So most commonly, people will ask after checking in when a customer's had a first-time clean. We all do that, right? That's common. That's pretty expected. The part that I like to preach to Gosha and office staff here is we ask, anytime we know somebody is happy. If someone has called in to say, I need to reschedule till next Thursday, hey, while I have you on the phone, I want you to know Natasha is amazing. We love her. She does so much for our company. Oh, by the way, if I were to send you a message, would you be willing to leave us a review online? The person only called to reschedule their service. I'm calling to update my credit card. You guys are the best. I just referred my friend to you. You're coming to clean my mom's house next week. Thank you so much. Well, good. I'm glad you enjoy our service. Before I let you go, would you be willing to leave us a review? Anytime we know someone is pleased with our service, why would we not ask them to leave a review? And that has been instrumental versus asking after one-time claims. What's your favorite medium? I guess we heard that Gosha likes text over E. E-mail. Do you find text to be more effective as well, Dan? In my personal setup, I have a combination of both, Tom. I got text and E-mail. Does one work better than the other, or are they both within the same campaign? Well, they're in the same campaign, and here's my philosophy. You have a segment of the population that's going to react well and respond instantly or near instantly to text messages. Equally, you have a segment of the population that will see the text. They will intend to do it. They're going to get to it later, and they completely forget, and then they discover a message in their e-mail. So, that e-mail hits them at another time. They're less busy. I've got a multitude of messages going out that, again, I want to tell you, when you're hearing this for the first time, the same feeling I had was, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's way too much. I have never had one person from 78 reviews to 248 say, take me off your list, never send me a message again. It just doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Happy clients. They are happy there. I want to really hit on this point hard for all of you that are right now thinking, you've got the, yeah, but, yeah, but, my clients won't like it. They have already told me they don't like reviews. All of the, yeah, but, you have going on in your head right now. I want to remind you of what Gosha just said. They want to give you a review because they are happy. So, they want to. So, when you are giving them the prompt, it's a reminder about what they wanted to do, not what you need. And then another thing, if you don't ask, it's not going to happen. So, then, before you have to ask, and I'll tell you, we have now received many reviews lately because we are still busy trying to hire people. Everybody on my team is doing Indeed and Zip Recruiter, everything else. We are not talking about Google reviews. So, or, yeah, you've got to be careful because you've got to ask. Yeah, yeah. Because it was a finish. It works. It works if you work it. We had, that's the point I tried to make earlier. We pulled off the pedal because we had some office changes and our review count has slowed down a little bit. So, you have to put the work in, but it's worth it. And when you come out on top as the highest reviewed company in your area, trust me, it makes a huge difference. And when every other caller says, you had the, how did you hear about us? You had the most Google reviews. We hear that all the time. Gosha has told me, she now gets that all the time. And also, we brag to our new employees. We tell them, please go to our Google so you can see how good we are and how our clients love us and our employees love our teams. And it makes them feel good that they are working for a company. Yeah, I love that you can say we have the most Google reviews. Go check us out. And you're asking all of the people that are happy so that Google reviews are good, y'all. So, we have one question here before we have to head out of here, Dan. Robin wants to know if you use reviews to bonus your staff at all. No, I don't. Many cleaning companies do. And your mileage may vary. You may have a team that's happy to solicit reviews and get that $5 or $10 or $20, whatever you pay them. You have companies who attempt to do that and they just don't have a lot of participation with their team. With the process that I'm sharing with the community today, it takes the employees out of that element. They have a lot going on. They're building relationships. They have hard work. They're not dealing with that process. And when you make it very simplified for your in-office staff or just yourself as the owner, it's a time saver that's going to produce many more reviews than just asking for your staff. And Gosha, she comes from the environment of previously engaging her staff to seek reviews. We used to reward our nurse $50 for each five-star review. We would get a lot. We would spend in one month over $800 on reviews. It doesn't really sound like you got that much in comparison to what you're getting. It's a game changer. I'm telling you it's a game changer. Thank you. Yeah, thank you both. This was good info. So we are at the top of the hour. Gosha, Dan, thank you both. This was really good information. We're going to be back Wednesday. We're going to be picking up on the theme of technology to grow our business. And it's going to be awesome. Cool. Thanks guys for having us. Thank you very much. See you on the Power Clock user. Bye-bye. Bye, guys.