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Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
The Franchise Growth Playbook for Service Business Owners to Scale Smart in 2025 with Adam Terranova
00:43:44
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- [00:00]
Adam
Do not forget how to market without Google, without everything else like that. If you forget how to do that, then you just, you know, really fall into spending more and more money on Google LSAs and pay per click. Learn how to develop and don't forget how to develop business. In my experience, some of the best and fastest growing franchisees have a personality. They go out there and talk to it. They do the BNI groups. It's just like they, you know, they get out there and they work and they work it. On the grassroots piece.
- [00:32]
Narrator
Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.
- [01:19]
Tersh Blissett
Mark your calendars right now. October 27th through the 30th Service World.
- [01:24]
Josh Crouch
Expo is back in Vegas for its 10 10th anniversary and we're going big.
- [01:29]
Tersh Blissett
The biggest expo hall in the industry. 2000 contractors. We're talking live podcast recordings all week.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Long with the industry's top contractors.
- [01:39]
Josh Crouch
And when you get to Vegas, come find us at booth 2403.
- [01:42]
Tersh Blissett
We're dropping an AI automation keynote that will change how you run your operations. Save a hundred bucks by using our code SBM100.
- [01:52]
Josh Crouch
You and I are doing a keynote note on AI and automation contractors. Absolutely need to hear this stuff. This isn't just another trade show.
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Tersh Blissett
It's where contracting businesses transform.
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Josh Crouch
We're not just attending, we're taking over the podcast stage. Don't miss the 10th anniversary. We'll see you in Vegas. Today's episode is Powered by Ciro Systems.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Sir is all about removing the clutter and unnecessary touch points to run your home service business profitably.
- [02:23]
Josh Crouch
They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.
- [02:31]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Get a tech upgrade for your business at Get Sarah Tech Service Business Mastery.
- [02:39]
Tersh Blissett
Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching Service Business Mastery podcast and Josh is my co.
- [02:48]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Host and he's not here.
- [02:49]
Tersh Blissett
Not yet anyways. He'll be joining us a little later. I'm Excited to have Adam on the show. And we're going to talk authority brands. And I'm really excited to talk with Adam because I've always had, like, just random questions about authority brands, and I've asked people at, like, trade shows. I don't think it was you, Adam, that I ran into at a trade show, but there was somebody at one of the trade shows. This was like after the booth or being put up and everything. And we just sat there, we chatted for a little while there. I always have, like, just lingering questions on how it works and like the kind of the minutia of like, when you're franchising and do I lose everything? Do I lose rights to stuff? Like, do I have to, like, just tons of questions. So today we're going to pick Adam's brain. We're going to talk about branding and how you can grow and how to grow through a franchising and doing it the right way. With that being said, welcome to the show, Adam.
- [03:53]
Adam
Hi, Josh. Thanks for having me.
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Tersh Blissett
Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Give us a little bit of background on you and what you do with authority brands.
- [04:00]
Adam
Talking all things franchising. You know, how did I get into franchising? Long story short, the show Undercover Boss, which is a very franchise friendly, was filming a brand called Philly Pretzel Factory. And one of the things that the they realized is I need a marketing person. I was the person that was hired as as a result of that for that brand. I was there for probably a good seven years, you know, working and growing that brand. Then I moved on to another family of brands called wow Works, which is restaurant based. It's more of a platform company. And then about 18 months ago, I moved over to Authority Brands. Was it me that I remember talking to, But I talked to a lot of people, but I. There are a lot of nice people that talk and will take any time to talk and teach and learn and just, you know, it's good people surrounded by good people.
- [04:50]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah. I had no idea that Authority Brands had so much under the umbrella. Like when you go to authoritybrands.com and click on our brands, it's like, how many of them are there? There's a ton of them there.
- [05:03]
Adam
There is a ton. There's 15 brands that scape all in the home services field from different things. Right. We have the onus. And the first one is the Cleaning authority, which is where the name started, stemmed from. That was the very first one. Authority Brands started with the cleaning authority and then it's Have a lot of different sectors but everything based around home services. My role here is I am the senior director of marketing for what we call the trades brands, which is one hour heating and air conditioning, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and Mr. Sparky.
- [05:36]
Tersh Blissett
That's really cool. Actually. I seen Junk Loggers is on there. I have a friend of mine who had Junk Loggers franchise here in Savannah. So tell us a little bit about franchising in general. Like if I'm a business owner and I'm thinking about like maybe I need to partner up with someone else to help grow me, is this is franchising a good option to do?
- [05:55]
Adam
A lot of people say it is, right? When you take a step back and get into why do people franchise? There's a franchise psychologist Greg Nathan breaks it down into three things. It's the power of the operations manual, right? Like hey, this is how much this is. They're going to teach me how to do it. The other option is unit level economics. And this is for the financial investor. If I invest this, I'll get this back. And then the last main factor is the power of the brand and the power of the marketing that's out there, seeing the opportunity to grow it within, within their footprint. But it's really a combination of all three is my opinion of the answer. But a lot of times people can identify really strongly with one, two or all three of them.
- [06:38]
Tersh Blissett
So whenever you're doing that, do you have the ability to work with other franchise owners or franchisees or Right at.
- [06:45]
Adam
The current time, right now it's franchise owners. Several years ago it was franchisees. Zor is in Z's like 10 years ago. So it's right now it's franchise operators.
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Tersh Blissett
Got it. So like do you have the ability to bounce ideas off of each other or are you still pretty much your own like operator?
- [07:04]
Adam
Yeah, let's get into that. Right. So there's a couple of different methodologies. The answer is yes and no, unfortunately. So it's not like a clean answer. But when you get into franchise marketing, break it down this way, right? You put a visual in your head. Tier 1 marketing, Tier 2 marketing, Tier 3 marketing. Tier 1 marketing. Best example I can use off the top of my head is built Ford. Tough. You know how many of us have seen those commercials? They're talking all about quality. They're not talking about price, they're not talking about a dealership. It's just selling the quality. That's tier one advertising. And then a lot of brands, the brand emerges and gets to be able to support that feature. And that's what franchisees will pay into a brand fund for, for the operational pieces of that, the website, the support, the local pieces. But then also, you know, as much as possible into built forward. Tough. Yeah. But then with the franchisee where they have a lot of freedom because they're the ones that are going to know the market very, very uniquely and be able to understand it and really get hyper focused and we're here for support guidance along the way is where you'll have much more flexibility. And that's tier three. The way my brain works and has it organized and it's been a prominent thing through franchising. So I get tier 3 marketing or local marketing is where the franchise operator has the most flexibility to be able to do it. They'll get to pick and choose how much they want to spend on LSAs, Google, pay per click, Yelp, Bing, whatever.
- [08:42]
Tersh Blissett
The ability to do that themselves.
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Adam
Yeah, we'll have a good playbook for them. But it's, you know, it's going to be more of their ability then that's where they collaborate. And this is where you get to involve your local passions in between there, whether it be with a cause or some kind of charity that's really close to your heart, that's really localized between there to really partner with that and really get the essence of get your name. Now, I think where you're going with the question is partnering with other franchisees. That's what I would refer to as a tier two partnership. And that's where franchisees that might live in the same designated area. I'll use Philadelphia, for example, eight major counties and it's two or three hours this way. So you can get a lot of franchisees to go together and let's say they want to buy radio or television. It's a very cost effective way to do that. In a way. I've always break that down into like a car dealer mentality. Again, I'm from Philly, so it's easy for me to recite Philly commercials. Hey, come visit your local Philadelphia area Honda dealer association for 1999 oil change. Are they making money on a 1999 oil change? Probably not much, right? If any. But what they're getting is your information. They're getting that first touch. They're getting that experience, you know, to you and from you. And you're able to get in a database and how cheap is it to send an email or a text, just a postcard, because you've already had that experience with them. And that's how they'll do it for. But they'll also get the branding aspects of it as well. The ownership of the contact in today's world is key.
- [10:14]
Tersh Blissett
You bring up a good point there. Like how does it work with multiple franchisees in the same area? Or is there like how does that even work?
- [10:23]
Adam
Like the having that it all depends on what industry it's in in restaurants, the, you know, believe it or not, the closer to better because people aren't going to pass three, four or five restaurants to get to yours. Right. If you're in a casual space. So believe it or not, the closer you are, the better you are services, it's more by zip codes you're servicing and where you'll get to because you're going to the consumer. Great example of that is think how many McDonald's are in every major metropolitan area. Probably not owned by the franchisee, but they're going to, you know, coordinate and run advertising approach for sure.
- [10:58]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, absolutely. Whenever it comes to like growth wise, have you seen a situation to where two franchises were kind of close to each other and, and one or both of them started growing so much that they kind of started getting close to each other's borders becomes like a border battle between franchise owners.
- [11:17]
Adam
Well, I mean there's ways we can control that through the corporate site as well as, you know, through other digital assets. And what I mean by that is just making sure that everybody's staying within, you know, their assigned box because they're buying the territory, you know, from the franchisor, the brand in between there. So if you go to onehour heatingandair.com and enter in a zip code, you'll get one. It'll direct you to one person. And most of the time it's usually just conversations of like, hey, remember you have this to have a little bit of guidance. Isn't too much of a problem with existing franchisees once they get set up.
- [11:52]
Tersh Blissett
Something that could be like a potential risk for someone who, who's becoming a franchisee. Is there some sort of morality clause inside of whenever you become a franchise owner or whatever where like if you do something wrong and it gives, it gives you a bad name, like potentially they could assume that all 1 hours.
- [12:13]
Adam
Do this the answer. I mean we could talk more about that offline, but let's, you know, I mean, but I'll, I'll answer it this way and I'll use, I guess what was. What is it? Was it in and out burgers? Does anybody remember the name of the franchisee, the incident happened at, you know, with the salmonella, I think is what it was. I'm going from memory, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's. No, but they remember their brand.
- [12:33]
Tersh Blissett
Exactly. And so that you have to like protect the brand. I guess that would be a call. I mean, that would be a concern is that like, you got to make sure that everybody's acting right, you know, and they're following the rules and you don't have one franchise that's damaging all the rest of them out there.
- [12:50]
Adam
Franchising is about the we and the collective we in it together. Right. So it's in a. If it's. You want to be a bunch of individuals, it's not going to be as harmonious as it is when everybody works together. When you get the. There's nothing more powerful than when you get a group of people working together towards the same vision, same goals and things like that. That's what's the most powerful thing in, in business as well as franchising is, is what it's about.
- [13:16]
Tersh Blissett
Now whenever you get into being a franchise owner, do you have to. Can you still be part of best practice groups or how does that even work?
- [13:24]
Adam
Yeah, most franchisees will have some kind of leadership or feedback loop. You know, as far as a council, sometimes it goes from an engagement of the franchise partner, but it's more of like, you know, you want to listen and learn and collaborate together. I would say almost all franchisees will, will welcome that. Some people might be a little bit more geared towards marketing. Some people like, like equipment. Some people might like operations and you know, most franchisees will do. Allow, you know, not allow. Yeah, structured partnership that's out there. Right.
- [13:58]
Tersh Blissett
Like, do you have something built in to authority brands where you kind of like bounce ideas off each other for best practice?
- [14:04]
Adam
Yes, of course. Every brand has, you know, some kind of franchisee group, we'll call it, you know, always called different things. Some are marketing, some are leadership, some are other things. But one of the things about like authority brands in particular versus a platform holding company. A platform holding company will go through and be like. It'll morph everybody down into like one, you know, one piece which is great and efficient. You know what really you do want to try to get that way. But authority brands recognizes, I think, that every single brand has, has unique differences, but still try to collaborate and work it all together for that.
- [14:40]
Tersh Blissett
Now what's the difference in the, like having a parent company and what's the other. The platform.
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Adam
A platform holding company is also a parent company. But the difference is it's just when they acquire a brand or bring a brand on, it's we're going to change everything in that brand. So everybody uses the same systems and elements like that.
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Tersh Blissett
Like how would a parent. How a dealer.
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Adam
A parent company will use a little bit more of a hybrid approach where it's just like, okay, this is working, this one's better. But it's not like, hey, day one, everybody switches over. Is probably biggest example that I've seen.
- [15:16]
Tersh Blissett
In my life is that allowed inside of authority brands to have like the parent company style.
- [15:21]
Adam
You know, we'll operate like I run three different brands. A lot of similarities, but unique differences. Right. So one of them is One Hour Heating and Air Conditional are very seasonal and it's just, you know, so like some of the ebbs and flows are going to be a little bit different. Whereas Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and Mr. Sparky still have some spikes, but it's not as. Okay, okay. You know, it's not like a heartbeat.
- [15:43]
Tersh Blissett
It'S 110 degrees out. So yeah, we're going to be slammed with.
- [15:48]
Adam
Without a doubt. Yeah, without a doubt.
- [15:50]
Tersh Blissett
Does anybody own or is there like any group that owns all three of them?
- [15:57]
Adam
Good number, I don't know the exact number off the top of my head of tri branded franchisee where they might have a location. Just 1, 2, 3 Main street and it could be they'll have a Mr. Sparky franchise, a Benjamin Franklin Plumbing franchise and a One Hour Heating and air conditioning franchise.
- [16:12]
Tersh Blissett
What's the benefit of going franchise versus trying to, I mean, just building your own brand. And, and with that being said, do you, do you ever have someone come under the umbrella who already has, quote unquote, a successful H Vac company and they, they're doing like, they have a good bit of market share and they just still decide to come under like a one hour.
- [16:36]
Adam
Yeah, some do. You know, it'll be like an acquisition where somebody wants to maybe, you know, part of their exit strategy for that, you know, where they can, where they can see it. But the biggest difference thresh is like you're starting off think of it like baseball. We're in baseball season right now, so it's like we're able to, you know, you're able to start off on second or third base down the road. We already had the operational guide. We already have different marketing elements, assets, created, trademarks, all those types of things already in place for use.
- [17:09]
Tersh Blissett
Like because I know of a company in town, I'm in Savannah. I know of a company in town that was a really rather old company comparative and they are now part of a franchise. They're not a one hour, but they're part of a franchise. And I often question like I feel like you had a large customer base, why would you now transition into a franchise? Because I feel like joining a franchise. Part of that is, is because you need help with the marketing, you need help with growing your customer base and.
- [17:43]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
That type of things.
- [17:43]
Tersh Blissett
Is that correct?
- [17:44]
Adam
Or it could be, right? But it's like not really. You got to think back about that individual person, the owner of that company. What's making them do it right? Is it something in their life that wants wants that help? We talked about Greg Nathan earlier. Is it operations manual? Probably not, right? It's probably more buying power that you can get from it as well as other support marketing, things like that. But you know, also to think about it like, is it part of their exit strategy? Was it a sale? In your example that you said, you know, was it like, hey, I'm ready to retire, I just want to sell it. And XYZ franchise companies like we'll buy it.
- [18:23]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [19:11]
Josh Crouch
Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities. Nurture the leads and book them into sold systems before your team arrives to.
- [19:26]
Tersh Blissett
Help you grow your business. Learn more@upfrog.IO.
- [19:29]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
I want to give a huge shout out to Market Storm for sponsoring today's episode.
- [19:32]
Josh Crouch
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- [19:41]
Tersh Blissett
That's where Market Storm operates.
- [19:42]
Josh Crouch
They leverage data science and AI to be build customer profiles for your ideal customers and get your ads in front of prospects before they are ready to hire a pro. Planting your brand in their minds early and often.
- [19:54]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [20:41]
Tersh Blissett
Have anybody who actually joins the franchise in hopes that another franchisee would purchase their territory?
- [20:49]
Adam
Not that I'm aware of. I've seen it happen. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, it's not like, okay, this, that's not my entry strategy.
- [20:56]
Tersh Blissett
Welcome to the show, Josh.
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Josh Crouch
You know, it's interesting you talk about talking about franchises because you know, tertiary and I present a lot and this morning I had an opportunity from someone who used to be a client and actually tertiary and I both know from our CEO Warrior days, he, he's in this local B and I group that was about 45, 50 minutes south of us. And you forget when you learn all these things and you level up as a business owner or you have a franchise or a coaching group or whoever's helping you grow, you forget just how little a lot of business owners actually know about running a business. It was a very good reminder this morning. So that's, that's where I was. I apologize for, for being late. I definitely didn't want to to miss this episode. But I know this is a great topic and I, I've had, I always wondered why like in our area when I started in the trades there was like air serve and I saw them everywhere and I'm like what like some of these other, you know, franchises and stuff, I didn't really know what I was looking at back in 2012, 2013, why would somebody do that? Like they could go because they can grow their business without the fees. But then they also don't get a lot of things they, they start with. You know, Dan Antonelli loves the white, white vans. They don't get a great brand, they don't get the presence that comes with that. I think there's a lot of stuff that's missing when they just. You have to learn all those lessons.
- [22:13]
Tersh Blissett
How do you combat that argument? Or what's your, your rebuttal to someone who's like, no, we're, we're like small and we don't want to pay fees to, you know, grow.
- [22:25]
Adam
Honestly, it's not relevant. Right. Because it's not about us. Acquiring a brand is not going to go out and overly try to acquire other companies. Right. Like, you know, to mold into theirs. Right. They're talking about one hour, for example. They're not gonna like, hey, we'll do it. We're gonna buy out your brand. That would be an individual franchisee would want to look into that. And then that's in between them. Everybody's going to be their own, their own place in the situation. I think, guys, I just want to turn it around is it's more about the individual franchisee wanting to join a brand versus somebody that has a successful business and looking to grow, you know, in, in between or whatever their exit strategy may be.
- [23:08]
Josh Crouch
Authority brands perspective of trying to figure out which markets you guys want to try to get into or try to find someone. What does the process look like for that? Do you guys just map that out and try to go after those areas or is it just kind of fall in your lap when people reach out.
- [23:18]
Adam
To you guys and that's a different world. I work more in the consumer marketing side. I feel like the conversation went down heavily into development. Development, marketing, development. Piece of it. But though we have a whole department called the franchise development, they'll do some research beforehand, figure out how many, you know, households are in a certain area that somebody's looking at. And then also too, as we're Thresh and I were talking about earlier about working together within an individual DMA and it could be, hey, we have a spot, one extra spot in xy, you know, northeast XYZ territory. What's. Who do we know out there? Would anybody be interested to open up and start a franchise?
- [23:59]
Josh Crouch
Pivoting because the consumer marketing. So you mentioned consumer marketing and Tertia and I talk a lot about AI and automation. He may have shared that before or not. But as far as, especially from where you sit when you have all these brands, all these markets, all these things going on as far as from a top level down, like what. What kind of things are you guys focused on as we move forward la Last half of 2025 GPT 5 from chat GPT is supposed to be out in a month. There's a whole lot of stuff going on, a lot of technology tools, all that kind of stuff. Like what are you guys looking at that maybe our listeners can like try to get some guidance on? Like what should they be paying attention to when it comes to all this technology? All this stuff that's like it's a ton of noise. What, what kind of things should they focus on? What kind of things are you guys focused on?
- [24:47]
Adam
I'll start with this and I, I'll, I give this advice to everybody. Do not forget how to market without Google, without everything else like that. If you forget how to do that then you just, you know really fall into oh I can spending more and more money on Google LSAs and pay per click. Learn how to develop and don't forget how to develop business. In my experience some of the best and fastest growing franchisees have a personality. They go out there and talk to it. They do the BNI groups. Right. It's just like they, you know, they get out there and they work and they work it on the grassroots people piece. They do a lot of good stuff. Now that said, let's get into the nitty gritty as far as what's coming. My fear is, I mean there's a lot of information, hey, what's Chat GPT pulling from it? How's it going to do it where my brain is, I'm thinking one step further. It's what's going to. It's not about how can the business use this AI which is a lot of different ways. I'm sure it's probably been beat up on, on your show a lot of different ways too.
- [25:47]
Tersh Blissett
Sure.
- [25:47]
Adam
How is the consumer going to use it? What happens when a consumer starts to go through and be like, you know, hey Gemini, book me a air conditioning service please. Okay, tomorrow, two o'. Clock. How are they picking that? Right?
- [26:01]
Josh Crouch
Yeah. You don't even have a consumer to business connection. It's just a personal assistant there. I've actually shared this this morning. I haven't seen it in the trades yet but Google business profile literally just had that like beta release for you can. I don't know exactly how it works because I haven't seen it in, in the wild yet. But like you can have their, their AI call a business to ask about pricing, availability, schedule, menu and then that will cons, I'm assuming consolidate the information and give you an email or something of what happened and like you can so you can do this and get pricing information from as many people as you want, which is scary because there's still a very big wall up in this, in the home services space about putting pricing out. There is a very. You might as well ask if someone's a Democrat or Republican at this point because it's like 50, 50 and people are very set in what they think or what they know. And it causes a lot of. A lot of colorful discussion.
- [27:07]
Adam
I don't even know where to start on that one. There's so many different ways to like break that down. Right. Like it's.
- [27:12]
Tersh Blissett
What's your thoughts on online pricing?
- [27:14]
Adam
It's hard because you think about like an air conditioning unit or a plumber. You know, you don't know where the week's coming from. You don't know until I get there. And a range could be that it can be this big. So it's really tough in home services. You're not buying, you know, or, you know, the price, it's fixed cost of.
- [27:33]
Tersh Blissett
Goods, all the variables involved in it.
- [27:35]
Adam
Yeah, the hard part. And until we can like really identify that piece, you're not going to be able to get pricing on the phone. But for my. My world, emergency services are the bigger ones. Right. Your water's not working. How many, how many people are you going to call and check? Right.
- [27:52]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, right.
- [27:53]
Adam
It's. The conversation has to turn around a little bit in my part of the home services world because it's more of like a, you know, who can be there first.
- [28:02]
Tersh Blissett
Do you find that you can build some brand loyalty where people are willing to. To wait a little bit if you are busy?
- [28:13]
Adam
Absolutely. I think some of the brand loyalists will. To get in between there. Right. Because they know they have an experience, they have that personal connection. They have trust in the brand. They will wait a day or a little bit if. I mean, listen, plumbing's going all over the place and it's like, you know, pushing out. That's a different.
- [28:33]
Tersh Blissett
It's coming up. Inside the bathroom.
- [28:38]
Adam
There will be.
- [28:38]
Josh Crouch
I feel like plumbing people will not wait for plumber.
- [28:41]
Adam
I think I'll have more piece of it. But guys, don't forget emergency services. Speed to lead.
- [28:47]
Josh Crouch
I shared that as well this morning because I've seen some studies where like 78% of homeowners will pert. Will do business with the first company that responds to them. Which is sad that we even have to like have studies based on that and have to share that because a lot of companies don't. They miss a Lot of calls, a lot of form submissions, leads come in and they just go into like this black hole that exists. And because we're so busy putting out fires and dealing with employees and hiring new people and training people and all this kind of stuff, you, you forget, like the, the core thing that's going to get you anywhere are those people inquiring about your business and fixing those leaks in that bucket, if you will.
- [29:25]
Adam
I mean, it comes down to, you know, I use the term last mile of marketing. First mile of operations is that call center booking that lead, getting somebody to answer the call, making it happen and get all, getting it all the way through. Last mile of marketing. First mile of operations.
- [29:41]
Josh Crouch
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Josh Crouch
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Tersh Blissett
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- [29:54]
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- [30:01]
Josh Crouch
It's business in general.
- [30:02]
Adam
Right.
- [30:02]
Josh Crouch
And I was reminded of that, the BNI thing this morning. But so many businesses, they, some people are really good at marketing, some are good at sales, some are good at doing the thing, whatever the service or product is. But operating a business because it requires so many different things to connect in a central place and to make sure it all works. And then you kind of recycle and repeat when you have good service, get a review, promote that review, get new customer and do the same thing over and over again. There's so many pieces to that. It's a really hard space and it, like we have these conversations a lot because with digital marketing, because we track all that stuff and we have to. Because we want to get more like we want their. Spend their money to go forward further.
- [30:46]
Adam
Yeah.
- [30:47]
Josh Crouch
Like I think a lot of people think markets. Oh just, they just tell me to spend more. It's. Well, it's because we have to. Because you need more leads. Because we're not closing the ones or selling the ones or booking the ones that are in your database now.
- [30:57]
Adam
Yeah.
- [30:58]
Josh Crouch
So you need more. And it's just, it's, it's a, it's a vicious cycle and it just, it gets more and more expensive every year. Local service ads since it started to now is four, five, six times as expensive as it was until 17, 18, 19.
- [31:13]
Adam
Oh, no doubt.
- [31:14]
Josh Crouch
You know, and everything else gone too. And it's just, it's harder and harder.
- [31:17]
Tersh Blissett
To do and, and you're doing brand Searches too.
- [31:19]
Josh Crouch
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:21]
Tersh Blissett
On lsa, you're competing against yourself.
- [31:23]
Josh Crouch
I'm assuming you guys get a lot of, especially with like Ben Franklin, those different brand, like you get a lot of brand searches. Like people actually specifically look for you versus look for the competition. And of course you guys got to pay because now you got to protect your brand name because other people are probably bidding on your brand name.
- [31:37]
Adam
It's always a market by market piece, right? Like you got to just watch and see, you know, watch, watch inside Google search console, see if somebody's outbidding you. I wouldn't just come in and start buying your name, especially a unique name like that. I would just be like, hey, you have to start watching it because am I going to spend money to block somebody else or am I going to try to develop it on my own? And those are questions that, you know, we can help franchisees work through and look at each one individually of how that goes. So it's always a case by case basis. But in general, I would say I try. It's always a debate, do you buy your brand name or do you not buy your brand name? I think sometimes even Benjamin Franklin, you know, just use that. How many, how many of those searches bounce so fast? Because it's a kid doing a term paper on Benjamin Franklin, right?
- [32:27]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, that's a good point too.
- [32:28]
Adam
Yeah. You know, you gotta just think everything through and then. So but if nobody's. So that, that might stop somebody from like looking at individual buying brand names outside of it. But pay per click and LSAs are two totally different things. LSAs are, are great for the emergency, the emergency sector as we go through there. And then, you know, pay per click, you can really target in on what people are looking for and what their intent is.
- [32:55]
Josh Crouch
You mentioned on the, on the AI side that with like the cons, how consumers are behaving with that. Are you guys noticing anything? You know, because I, I know like, especially with AI search, it's starting to become more of a, a thing, more of a topic, more of a. Everyone wants to know how to rank on that, just like they wanted to rank on Google. And what are you guys seeing as far as the consumer side and how they're interacting or how that's affecting any of your locations?
- [33:23]
Adam
AI search results in and keywords that trigger AI search results are going through the roof. You know, for us we'll get into too much, too many specifics, but they're going really, you know, that's what's generating that and how that comes through My advice to everybody is look at the serp, you know, and see how it's going to do and break down each, each section of it and then each section that Google has it listed as is a unique strategy that you have to, that you have to look through. And that would be like some general marketing advice and you know, topics and conversations to go through.
- [33:55]
Tersh Blissett
Do you feel like local pages make a difference there?
- [33:59]
Adam
Yes. Like little micro sites of like, you know, brand.com location. Absolutely. Really doing well. Other geo pages doing really do really well. What I don't think does well is on a brand, you know, that comes through that the local service pages on a website on Google business profile, I think they're great as you go through that.
- [34:22]
Josh Crouch
Actually it's a lot more difficult now. But what the thing I like is if we do research for a client in a market, we can find the sources of the information that are being fed and why, you know, try to try to reverse engineer. Like Google has been a black hole since its inception. Like everyone's like, oh, this is what's working. No, this is what's working. And it was just this constant like tug of war of like, you should do this now, you gotta try this hack and this thing because nobody really knew. And with at least with AI and some of the stuff that being sourced, these websites being sourced, you can at least start to like, try to understand of like, okay, they're pulling from here, let me look at these sites and start like trying to reverse engineer what they're doing. Obviously this takes time, but there are things yourself, any business owner listening to this, or manager or marketing manager Adam said when he says, look at the server, that's a search engine result page. Just type something in a search that you think someone might search in your area. Just start paying attention to the different sources and the links. And like I've even. It's crazy because I know a lot of the industries, home service industry does not like the BBB and because, you know, a lot of the markets change and stuff. I've seen multiple times when I do research and market that the reason they chose the top two or three people on chat GBT was because they were BBB accredited and that's starting to show up. Reddit is starting to become a much more popular thing with, I mean it's been popular on Google for a little while now, but people with people's comments of your brand in Reddit are becoming a much more important piece. That stuff's actually getting pulled in and be like, oh, I Picked them because so and so said they did great job or whatever and they pulled like the thread.
- [36:00]
Tersh Blissett
So you're saying that they need to be active on Reddit?
- [36:02]
Josh Crouch
I feel like we need to be active everywhere.
- [36:04]
Adam
That's the hard part.
- [36:05]
Josh Crouch
It doesn't like the days of just Google and Adam stopped me if, like, you, I mean, I think you were really aligned with this when you mentioned building your brand and, you know, market awareness and stuff. But the days of I just got to get my Google stuff right, I'm gonna blow up and I'll be great are over. That's my opinion. I mean, it's a part of the mix, it's an important part, but it is not.
- [36:28]
Tersh Blissett
You almost have to hire a CMO just to handle all of this stuff.
- [36:34]
Adam
Trash, as you said. Like, that's the, you know, reason you join a brand, right? You know, power the brand power to marketing, you know, for stuff like that, that you can have people, like, really go deep into it and really deep into it, you know, for it. I mean, Josh, I got a thing for you. Just as a casual conversation, what is your definition of Google's mission statement?
- [36:54]
Josh Crouch
I think they're trying to help with getting like, the best results in front of somebody because if they get the best results and they stay on the top of the game, they can serve more ads.
- [37:01]
Adam
That's my interpretation of it, right? This top level, Google is trying to organize the Internet when you think about it, right? And they use terms like degradated signals. So you start getting clean signals that come. That come through it. They, you know, it's just like you start getting degraded or not clear signals. They start, they start to trust you less. You get nice clean signals on a lot of different things. They trust you more. You know, that really come through it. So I think those are some of the ways, at least the way my brain works is like, okay, when I and everybody I talk to and we talk about this constantly, try to organize the Internet, we make more money by serving ads. Now here's, here's something else that I would always say that everybody across the industry, when you're Googling something, whose customer are you? What does Google want? Is the same thing any business owner wants, right? Google wants to give that person Googling, you know, have the most confidence that what they're Googling you're the right result for that. You're going to be the best plumber, the best electrician, the best H Vac person that's out there. Best widget, anybody that's out there Right. So they want to make sure that it's a good match and it comes down to how well are you organized across the Internet. Right. Everybody talks about nap name, address, phone. There's a lot more than that that you can put into it inside your Google business profile. But reviews and review velocity, stuff we read about and talk about every day, that's what in my opinion, what gives Google comfort and trust that hey, I'm going to put this guy first, that they're going to get a five star review. I always look at it and try to think about it and get people to really start thinking about it.
- [38:38]
Josh Crouch
I mean, think about it. Like a lot of times people go to search to Google, they won't necessarily put in the word best. Like we don't. We would talk that way in a conversation. Like, hey Adam, you know what's the best restaurant you've been to? Right? Because we talk like in a conversation. But now as we start getting used to having conversations with an AI chatbot, the longer like it, optimizing for a very specific keyword is a lot more difficult because now we have conversations, not just keywords. And so optimizing for those are going to be a whole different ball of wax moving forward. I've seen some stuff, of course it's all theory, but actually some of it's come from people asking chat GBT specifically like what percentage weight do you give for all of these different things? And of course I don't, you know, who knows if it's actually the real information. It's probably not. But reputation has become and brand mentions and things about building a brand like you've talked about where you're building something that instead of going and being Google's customer, they go and they are Ben Franklin's customer or Mr. Sparky's customer instead. And there's so many things we can do to impact that without having to pay for a lot.
- [39:44]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, the guerrilla marketing, make sure that.
- [39:47]
Josh Crouch
Customer knows you are the person to call back next time. So they don't go to Google, they just go, hey, oh now there's a phone number, let's call them. Or they have a QR code to go to the website and chat with you or whatever.
- [39:58]
Adam
Guerrilla marketing, local marketing is a lost art. And I mean that outside of Google. Right. And getting outside of that because Google.
- [40:05]
Josh Crouch
Was an easy button for a lot of people. Like, oh, if I'm working on Google, I don't have to do any work, it's just an easy button.
- [40:10]
Adam
But also I put that on Covid too. Right. Since we're just kind of chatting. Covid kept everybody in. Like not doing it didn't teach that new generation. I don't know if you guys probably remember people like oh, nightclub, hey, go here, go there, go, you know, and passing out flyers and oh yeah, has that personality anymore to be able to do that. And then some of it is phone related. Let's you know, call that one honest. But people forgot how to self promote. What I mean by that is like a business. I'm not talking like being an influencer on TikTok. I'm talking about like handing out flyers, door hangers, basic things like that. That just a lost art.
- [40:47]
Josh Crouch
I used to be in B and I know Tersh has been a president of his BNI chapter and Savannah and stuff. So like you kind of forget that stuff. But you have that conversation a lot. Like even if you're not in the BNI and you're a plumber, go find a roofer, a landscaper, an H Vac company, electrician, go find like they all have the same referral partnership. Yeah, you can make your own referral network if you will. I mean BNI is much more organized and you can learn a lot more through there. But you don't necessarily like, let's say you can't get into a chapter that you want to get into because some places you can't create your own. There's other people that want referrals. You all want the same business. The same customers that hire a landscaper are probably going to hire an H Vac company to come out. Take it into your own hands. That would be my advice. I mean it's, I mean obviously it's against like we get paid to help people rank on Google. We do the same thing tertiary and I put out treasure trove of content. So that way people, when they open their phone they, they think of service business mastery, they think of trade automation pros. And it's by design like we do that on purpose not to bug you, but to give you as much value and free education and information and have, you know, great guests like yourself on here so we can all spread the word. And that way people, they think of us, they think all these guys have really helped me and they didn't ask for anything in return. That builds our brand and people start talking about it. And you can do the same thing locally. You don't have to be a podcast or a networking. You can do all of this locally too and give away free value and education. Just put it out there. It will definitely help you.
- [42:09]
Adam
Thank you guys for having me on. It's been nice to, like, just give back. I know Thresh got really deep in franchising curiosity early on in this call.
- [42:17]
Tersh Blissett
But had anybody to sit here and I didn't have a bike cornered.
- [42:20]
Josh Crouch
You can thank your buddy Rick Brown for cornering you because he's. He's the one that pushed to get you on here. And I'm glad we did. I'm sorry I was late. I still think we had, I mean, conversation obviously probably bounced a little bit, but it was.
- [42:31]
Adam
There's a lot of good stuff here, you know, conversation. We went all the way around, but I'd have it no other way. And hopefully people got value from it. And, you know, thanks, guys for having me on as our.
- [42:41]
Josh Crouch
I'm just glad we made it all the way around. We get stuck.
- [42:46]
Adam
I don't think with this group we'd be. We'd be stuck much. Right. I think we'll find things to talk about and, you know, keep going and keep going and keep going. For sure.
- [42:54]
Tersh Blissett
Absolutely. Adam, it's a pleasure chatting with you. If anybody has any questions, authoritybrands.com There's a ton of information there. Until we talk again next time, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week. Thank you again, Adam.
- [43:04]
Adam
You're welcome. Thanks, guys.
- [43:05]
Josh Crouch
Thank you.
- [43:16]
Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.