WDD LIVE 091: What Makes a Local Service Website Successful on the Modern Web (Examples)

Hey, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is another WDD Live. Good to see you in the house.

Say hi when you get here. Drop a hi in the chat. This is going to be a great episode. I am so

excited for today’s episode. I’m excited for tomorrow’s debate that’s going to be based on

today’s episode. I’ll give you a little bit of context on that. I’ve got some notes, and then

we’re just going to jump right into this. I would say it’s going to be an insight-packed episode.

If you’re an agency, if you’re a freelancer, you are going to want to hear the details of this

discussion. You are probably going to want to hear the details of tomorrow’s debate. I feel very

strongly and passionately about this topic and this realization because, as you’re going to see,

I think there are a lot of agencies and a lot of freelancers that are still living in 2010.

They’re still living in 2015. They have not realized that the landscape has radically changed

and that things are not as they used to be. We’re going to talk about that today. By the way,

if you haven’t realized the landscape has changed and you’re still living in that era,

you are going to be the first one replaced. I’ll save the details for my notes so that we don’t just

jump around here. Let’s say hi to some people. We got Alex in the house. We got Lee. We got Curtis,

Suzanne, Marcus. Good to see you guys. Barbara, Toby,

Mark Zemansky, obviously in the house. A huge episode. Huge episode should be. Yeah. I mean,

by the way, this combines the greatest aspects of WDD Live, of the concept of WDD Live, right? This all

started about how we make websites successful. What makes a website work? And we’ve talked about the copy.

We’ve talked about the marketing strategy behind a website. We’ve talked about the architecture

of a website and SEO and PPC and how advertising plays into it and what businesses can do offline.

And this was the whole concept of WDD of the series to begin with is we need to learn what makes websites

successful so that we can better help our clients. And this just feeds right into that core concept

today. It’s going to be going to be really, really, really powerful. So drop some likes. Okay. Let’s

get the, let’s get the stream going. Let’s feed the algorithm a little bit. We’ve already got a good

amount of people here. We got 160 viewing right now, only 35 likes being reported. We need to get that

likes number up. Okay. Um, man. All right. This is, uh, I’m reading some of the comments. This is good.

This is good. Um, okay. So James is already on board 5,000 base a hundred percent. All right.

Well, I think the, the, yeah, there’s more people joining out. The algorithm is doing its thing. So

what we will do is we will get right into it. I’m going to go over my notes. First, I want to give you

a little bit of background. Okay. Let me shrink my window over here that I’m, that I’m reading my notes

from. We don’t need sound effects either. Okay. Let’s get that panel out of the way. Okay. Uh,

so here’s some background. A couple of weeks ago, I published a video about low budget businesses,

not being able to afford a website. I essentially said like, if you don’t have at least $5,000,

like liquid cash to invest, you, you just simply can’t afford a website in the modern era. And I

went into great detail about why that is. And if you haven’t watched that video, I would highly

recommend going and finding that video on my channel and, and watching it. Okay. And I’ll,

I, we will get into more of the details in, in today’s discussion. I also did a stream or a video.

I can’t remember which one it was where I mentioned that a website is not required to build a successful

startup business in the modern era. I feel like there’s still this idea that a website is required.

And I, I can’t think of a single business example. And, and in order for people to think that a website

is required, they, they have to forget that there’s an entire offline world that actually exists. Okay.

I can’t think of a single business model where, where a website is actually required. Okay. Even I made

the, I made the, my own example of launching a software product where in actuality, you don’t

need a website to even launch a software product. If you don’t need a website to launch a software

product, I don’t know what you would need a website for. What other business would, would it be

required to have one? Um, the, the only, the only concept would be like, if it’s like a membership

website or something like the website is the product. Okay. Um, but again, we’ll get into more

details there. And I think some people can’t comprehend that this is, um, a reality, right?

Uh, and we have to understand that there’s a lot of people in web design, um, in the industry and web

development in the industry and they’re not necessarily marketers and they might not necessarily

be able to put these pieces together. Okay. So you have to understand that, you know, I, I think I’ve

shown that, uh, you know, I’m at least fairly decent at marketing. Okay. And so that’s the lens that I’m

speaking through. And, and if you’re, if you’re not knee deep in marketing, like you have to essentially

like just listen with an open mind. Cause that might blow your mind. When I say you don’t even need a

website to launch a software product that just may not compute in your brain. Okay. But I guarantee you

it is reality. I guarantee you it is reality. So that was another piece of the background. Another

piece of the background is the admin bar annual survey, which just came out. Now, regardless of

what you think of the survey and the accuracy of the survey, it is a reflection of the admin bar

community, which is a community of web designers and freelancers. And the annual survey that they just

released showed that 71% of people in that community are charging less than $5,000 and 60% of that

communities that, that, that filled out the survey is making less than $50,000 annual income.

So you have to decide, is that like, I mean, those, I, those two things go together. If you don’t know,

like 71% of people charging less than $5,000 for a project. And then 60% of them are making less than

those two things go together. Those two things go together. You got to decide, do you want to be in

that group or not? Okay. Uh, my advice, by the way, is for people who are wanting to actively level up.

It’s not for people who are like, Oh, I’m totally fine with what I’m doing. I love my numbers. I love

what I’m doing. I love my scale. I love my scope. I love all of that. Okay, cool. That I’m not, this advice

is not for you. The advice, this is the advice for people who are sick of where they’re at,

who are trying to actively get to higher levels. Okay. And they want advice. So I, I get all the

comments from people like, well, this doesn’t apply to me. Cause like, I’m, I’m totally fine with,

okay, good. Then keep scrolling. Like there’s an entire internet for you to go engage with. Like

you don’t, this post doesn’t apply to you. Um, okay. And then, um, there’s a recent post about,

that I made on social media, which, uh, a lot of, uh, got a lot of engagement, a lot of attention,

a lot of comments. It was about us agencies and freelancers, uh, that they should stop entertaining

projects that are less than $5,000. You just, just, just stop even entertaining it. Stop even for,

for many, many, many reasons, which we’re going to get into. Uh, and then this prompted a, uh, an argument

with a guy named Robert DeVore, uh, which has now turned into an official public debate that’s

happening tomorrow. Uh, Robert is adamant that I am completely and a hundred percent wrong.

And, um, I don’t know, he’s going to, he’s going to school us all tomorrow, uh, apparently. Uh, so

what I wanted to do with this WDD live, because I love, I love examples. I love looking at real world

data. I love, um, asking important questions as we look at real world examples and real world data,

because I think that that kind of helps, uh, everybody understand the actual world that we

happen to be living in. Okay. Um, and you know, it’s just another piece of content that I’ll be able

to point. Hey, if you know, if you want examples, I’ve got some right here. I just, just go watch this

video. You’ll, you’ll see plenty of examples. Okay. So that’s the background. Now let’s get into the

context, which is context is obviously very important to any arguments in any debate. The arguments that I

make, because I, a lot of people do get up in their feelings sometimes, and I think they get up in

their feelings because they don’t understand the context. Okay. So I’m going to give you the context.

This will prevent people from getting up in their feelings unnecessarily. The arguments that I make

are to help and protect two different groups of people, two different groups of people I’m talking

about here. Okay. Number one, you agency owners, freelancers. Okay. I want to see you escape the rat

race of low budget projects. This is a real thing. It is a, uh, you know, so many, such a large percentage

of agency owners and freelancers are trapped in the, in not paycheck to paycheck. That’s like a blue collar.

Like I have a job. I have a career kind of rat race. Your rat race is the project to project rat race,

where your money’s running out at the end of one project. And you got to start another one to keep

the money going. That’s the project to project rat race. I want to see you escape that. I don’t want you

to be trapped in that. If you don’t want to be trapped in it, I don’t want to see you trapped in it.

If you love being trapped in it for whatever reason, I’m fine with where I’m at. Okay, cool.

It’s not for you. But if you don’t like being trapped in that rat race, then that, that’s what I’m trying

to get you out of that. I’m trying to get you out of that. B, I want to help you insulate against AI.

This is a very, like, I, it’s going to be a point that I’m going to try to drive home. If you’re in the

sub 5,000 bracket, you’re good. That, that is AI level work now. Okay. You are the first to be replaced.

The only way to insulate yourself from AI is to get as far away as you can from that 5,000.

bracket. I promise you this. Okay. C, I want to help you stop chasing and taking bad money.

All right. Because there’s this concept that, well, I need the money. Gotta, I gotta have that

project. Kevin, I need the money. You can’t say no. When you have bills to pay, that is never,

never going to get you out of the rat race that you are stuck in. It is never going to, the only way out

is through the word. No, that is the, I I’ve been in it. I’m telling you right now, the only yes,

we’ll only keep you in it. No is the only way out of it. And I, it seems very uncomfortable and it seems

counterintuitive. No is the only way out. Okay. So that’s group one, agency owners, freelancers.

I’m also, my arguments, the same arguments benefit both sides, benefit both groups of people.

They benefit agency owners and freelancers. They also benefit clients. Okay. So one, I want to protect

clients from lighting cash on fire. That’s essentially what they’re doing in so many of these cases. Just

take whatever the number is. It could be 500, 1500, 3500, just fucking light it on fire. Cause that’s

essentially what you’re doing by commissioning a website at that price. Okay. And we’ll talk about

why we’ll talk about why number two, I want to protect clients from sales pitches from desperate

freelancers and agencies. The people we just talked about, the people are stuck in the rat race. Kevin,

I got to have the money. I got bills to pay. I got to have the money. Okay. Those kinds of people

create sales pitches like, Hey, everybody needs a website. I mean, you don’t have a website. You

got to check that box. Everybody needs a website. Right. And then they proceed to build them a dead

end going back to a, which is lighting their money on fire. That’s that this, this is the cycle that

happens constantly. We have an epidemic of this happening. We have an epidemic of this happening

and I want to protect clients. Um, these are low budget and startup clients, right? I want to

help them focus on real ROI activities instead of fairy tales because real ROI activities are actually

going to help them succeed. And so I’m coming at this with a consultant hat on like the, the arguments

that I’m about to make is the advice that if my mom came to me, if, uh, I had a brother or sister or a

brother-in-law or sister-in-law or a best friend, any of these people, if they came to me and said,

Kevin, I, I got this business idea or I’m starting a business, I’m trying to get it off the ground.

What should I do marketing wise, advertising wise, website wise, what, what should I do? And then I

asked them, what is your budget? And if they say, I mean, I can’t afford anything over $5,000, like

it’s got to be under $5,000. Okay. This is the advice that I would give them. This is the arguments

that I would make to help educate them on the situation that they find themselves in. Okay.

So let’s get into the arguments. I’m going to read the chat real quick.

Melanie says, no is a complete sentence.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.

Gavin says, I’m in the project to project rat race. I’m definitely not keen on staying here. Good,

good, good, good. Uh, SK says as, uh, again, as someone who went from charging less than 5,000 to

closing a government project for a hundred K, uh, just last year, my home opinion, it takes some leveling

up, uh, personally and team wise to get there. Okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. You got it. You’re,

you’re going to go through different levels for sure. It’s a process. Okay. All right. This is good.

This is good. I think everybody’s on the same page. I’m just reading. I’m just reading a little bit.

How high level warmup fight. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good warmup. It’s a good warmup.

Okay. Let’s get into the arguments. Okay. I’ve got seven arguments that build the context of this

discussion and then we’re going to go to Google. Okay. I have Google right here. Look,

it’s right. It’s ready to rock and roll. You guys are going to feed you. You get to feed me. Hey,

Kevin, check this industry, check this industry, whatever. We’ll, we’ll talk about it. We’ll go,

we’ll go down the list, but we have to look at everything through the lens of these seven

arguments and the context that I just talked about. Okay. Argument number one. And I already mentioned

this. A website is not required to have a successful business in the modern era.

therefore a website should be evaluated the same as any other marketing asset and passed up on.

If it doesn’t make sense for a business at the given time, we’d no longer live in an era where you just

have to check that box. Everybody needs a website. You just, everybody has to have one that era existed

at one point. That is no longer the era that we live in. Okay. That’s argument. Number one,

argument number two, it’s not 2010 anymore. Okay. What worked then does not work now.

If your budget is less than 5,000, you either one probably can’t afford a website or two probably

shouldn’t invest money in one. If we look at the top 10 ranking websites for any given local service

business, what you are very, very likely to see is sites that are well beyond the $5,000 price point

occupying those top 10 spots. Okay. And that’s because it requires more than $5,000 budget to move

the needle with a website in the modern era. See in 2010, it was dumb to not have a website because

the opportunity to capture a significant amount of free traffic, even with a cheap website, like that

was significant. That was a significant payoff. Like it was easy to do. It was like, relatively speaking,

it was easy to do. Um, that, that era is gone. That doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like too many and too

many agencies and freelancers are still drinking that Kool-Aid. It expired in 2018. Okay. We got,

you can’t keep drinking that stuff. It’s done deal. You got to throw that stuff in the trash.

Uh, and, and unfortunately they’re feeding that same Kool-Aid to their own clients, right?

They haven’t adapted to this obviously radically different landscape that we find ourselves in.

Okay. Number three, when you create, and so this kind of speaks to number two, a little bit,

kind of takes you down the, uh, the, the timeline here, the trail of what, what, what is actually

going to happen? So argument number three, when you create and publish a website,

what is different in the life of that business the next day, what is different in the life of that

business one week later, one month later, if you don’t do anything else, if you don’t do anything else,

right now you could pour additional resources into marketing and advertising that website,

but those are resources you presumably can’t afford because you didn’t have the budget.

All of the resources that are required to pour into that either don’t require that website to either

exist like resources in terms of time and social media, which I’ll give you an example of in just a

minute, right? Or resources that cost a significant amount of money, competitive SEO, PPC, digital advertising.

These things are not cheap in the modern era. And if you don’t have the money for the website in the

first place, how do you have the money for that stuff? You don’t. So it doesn’t do you any good.

It doesn’t do you any good. The, the website alone will do nothing. It will just sit there.

You have to feed it. Okay. And if feeding it in the modern era requires money or it requires time

and the avenues of time that feed the website don’t actually require the website to exist. Okay.

As I’ll show you in just a second with examples. All right. So number four, um, given that a website

requires thousands and thousands of dollars minimum, a business that purports to not have that kind of

money should protect the capital that they do have and direct their time, money, and attention to higher

ROI activities that have a shorter runway than a website. Okay. There are other alternatives that we can do

besides a website right now at the current time. Remember, this is the advice that I would give

my mom, my cousins, my best friends, my whoever. Okay. I would tell them, don’t burn that $3,500.

I know you found a budget website guy or girl. They’re going to build your, don’t burn that money.

I want you to protect that money. I want you to use it somewhere else because somewhere else is going

to get you a bigger return on that money right now than that website is guaranteed. All right.

That would be the advice that I would give them. All right. You got to think hard about this one.

Okay. You got to, uh, this is, this is, this is requires a little extra intellect. Okay. You need

to really parse this with more, uh, neurons or whatever, whatever’s going on up there. Okay. In the

brain, uh, spending money on a cheap website. So let’s say I do spend the money and then I drive traffic

to it and people convert through that website. That does not, that is not, it may be an indication,

but it is not proof. Okay. That that website was required, nor does it indicate that the website is

even ROI positive. It just means you did it. Okay. It doesn’t mean it needed to happen that way.

So I’m going to give you an example. There’s a landscaping company that I followed

on Tik TOK, found them on Tik TOK. I don’t know. I discovered them on Tik TOK. I don’t

follow like landscaping companies or local service. I’m just scrolling through. Here’s a fucking

landscaping video, but it caught whatever they were doing caught my eye. Okay. And I think at the time

what it was there, they had this like, um, campaign of, they said they’re in these, I guess they would

go to like a low income neighborhood or something. Right. And they would find a yard that is just like

ridiculously overgrown and just obviously not cared for and whatever they would knock on the door.

It’d be some, you know, old senior citizen guy who can barely walk. Dude’s got, you know, can’t afford

to buy a, uh, to hire a landscaping company, uh, obviously isn’t physically capable of pushing a

mower around his own yard. This thing’s out of control. And so what do they do? They say, Hey,

we’re just going to do it for free for you, blah, blah, blah. And then they make this like,

they do everything beautiful, like a landscaping company would do. And it’s, then they go afterwards,

the dudes cry and whatever. It’s good content. Okay. They just do this and they’re just raking in views.

They’re just absolutely murking the algorithm. Okay. With this kind of content. This is a local

landscaping company. Now, if you don’t think you have to understand, okay, that landscaping company

does not need a website in that context that I guarantee you people that want to work with them,

which people are coming out of the woodwork to hire them. Cause they’re like, dude, I just love

this company’s vibes. Oh my God. Look at the stuff they’re doing for, okay. This is, this is what

connects with people, right? If you don’t think in the modern era that they can’t land contracts through

fucking DMS and a phone number and text messages, I don’t know what to tell you. They absolutely 1000%

can do it that way. If they want to do it that way. Not a single one of those people is going to be like,

well, you don’t have a website. So I guess I’m not going to do that contract after all.

They want to work with you. They’re going to work with you. The engine for getting discovered and the

engine for getting those conversions was TikTok was the content. Now, could they do a Wix website for

$1,500 and say, Hey, go here and fill out the form. Sure. Does that need to exist? No, does not need to

exist. They can do it through TikTok. They can do it the way that they were getting the views in the

first place. Right? So you can’t look at that website and be like, well, without that website,

I mean, none of this would ever happen. No, that’s a fallacy. That’s a complete fallacy.

It happened because of the content on TikTok. It happened because of the platform. It happened.

And it could, all those conversions could happen on that platform. And people are used to doing

conversions on these platforms in this day and age. Okay. That was probably unheard of in 2010,

maybe. Oh, you’re going to get business on Facebook DMs. I don’t, yeah. Let me know how that works for

you. Well, we don’t live in that world anymore. People are more than comfortable reaching out in DMs and

texting and doing phone calls and that’s it. And that’s all that company has to do. So that is proof

evidence that you do not need, even though a website could exist and facilitate those conversions.

It’s not necessary. It’s not required. Okay. All of the magic happened well before the website ever,

ever came into the picture. Okay. Now, uh, let’s see. Number six, number six, very important one.

Very important one. If a business still wants a website, even though it may not be a requirement,

or it may not be ROI positive or in cases where there’s a legitimate alternative pathway to traffic

and conversions, usually either offline activities or activities we just talked about, like making it

big on social media, whatever it is in their best interest and your best interest to direct them to

Wix templates or Squarespace or AI or what the fuck ever. Because again, with that landscaping company

example, you, they, they need you, they need you to create a brochure with a form on it for people.

They don’t need you. You don’t need to be involved in that step, in that process. They already did the

hard work. They found all the people. They made a connection with all the people. They don’t need you

to put a landing page together in a form. You don’t need to be involved in that process.

This is exactly what Wix is for. This is exactly what Squarespace is for. This is exactly what AI is for.

And by the way, if you commit to doing that kind of work, you are the first to be replaced. You’re gone.

In an AI era, there is no need for you. There is no need for you. You, you have to distance yourself

as much as possible from that kind of work or you’re done for. Okay. Um, so, and this is,

and by the way, they don’t need to over whatever you’re going to charge them. It’s not hard to slap

that little landing page together to just facilitate all the hard work that they already

did. That, that website is inconsequential to the conversions. Therefore there’s really no

justified spend for it. You, you should spend money on a website where it’s like, you can point to that

thing and go without that, we wouldn’t have had the growth we have. That’s where you invest the money.

Okay. If, if it’s just like, well, I mean, we’ll get the conversions without the website,

but it would just be nice if we had a website. Well, they don’t, they should not spend that much

money in that scenario. Doesn’t make any sense. This is business one-on-one. Okay. Last argument.

There are tons of businesses who claim to have a less than $5,000 budget when in reality,

they have tens of thousands of dollars liquid cash. Okay. They claim to have a low budget because of a

number of factors. One, they don’t know the true cost of a real website. They need to be educated

or two, they’ve seen too many Wix commercials. Oh fuck. Anybody can build a website. It can’t be

expensive because anybody can do it. Anybody can do it in five minutes. It’s a drag and drop. I saw the

Wix commercial. This is what they think they need to be educated or three. They’re just cheapskates.

They don’t, they don’t want to spend money. They’re not, they don’t understand the concept of spending

money to make money. They don’t in any of those three things, you either are educated. You’re going to

educate them or if they can’t be educated because they’re too stubborn, right? Um, you, you can’t,

you just have to move on. Those are not the clients that you want. You do not, you, they are a sinking

ship and you, your name better not be on the passenger manifest. Okay. Because you’re going to

be at the bottom of the ocean with them. They’re not going anywhere. Uh, and they will take you down

with them. So, uh, I’ve, we’ve talked about this before. You’ve got to stay away from these kinds of

clients. So those are my seven arguments to put this in context. Now, what we’re going to do

is we’re going to look at real world examples. Okay. I’m going to, I’m going to pull up Google.

We’re going to search through, I’m going to start because somebody put it on Tik TOK or I’m sorry,

on Twitter X, whatever the fuck platform it is. They were like, well, what about a mechanic?

Right. Oh, okay. So we’re going to start with mechanics. We’re just going to start there.

And then I’ll let you guys also throw out some ideas for, uh, and we’re talking about local

service-based businesses. Okay. Um, all right. Let me, let me, before we do that,

we’re going to get to the chat. All right. Um, let’s see.

Yeah. Mark Peter says these guys make money with their YouTube channel. Yeah. There are a

countless number of huge Tik TOK accounts, huge Instagram accounts, huge YouTube accounts.

They do not, they don’t even have a website URL in their, in their profile. If this isn’t evidence

enough. Okay. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re, you’re, you are living, you’ve drank your own

Kool-Aid that Kool-Aid back in 2000. Everybody needs a website. You got to check the box. Everybody

needs a, that’s you’re drinking your own Kool-Aid. This is not reality. Okay. Um, and, and you’ve got to

get out cause you’re, you’re, you’re essentially lying to your clients. Like we, we shouldn’t be doing

that. You’ve got to acknowledge like you can do this without a website. In fact, you should do it

without a website because all that costs you is the time and effort to make the Tik TOKs or time and

effort to make the YouTubes or whatever. And you take the actual money and you put it into other avenues

that are shorter runway, higher ROI, which we can also talk about by the way. Okay. Uh, let’s see.

Mm-hmm. I’m just reading chat real quick.

Da, da, da, da, da. Mm-hmm. Okay. There’s already some questions coming in. If you have a question,

definitely hashtag Q it so I can find it. We won’t answer questions right now, but we will do Q and A

for sure. Devil’s advocate rebuttals are fine for sure. Throw those out. We’re training. We’re

training for tomorrow, boys and girls. No, I’m just joking. We don’t, we don’t have to train because

we’re right. Okay. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go, we’re going to share our screen.

We’re going to go to Google. All right. I’m going to go, I think I’m, I’m in private browsing,

but I think it still knows where I’m at. Uh, we’re going to go mechanic near me. Okay. Yeah,

sure. Use my precise location. Okay. Okay. Allow. Okay, good. Um, let’s, uh, do I need glasses?

Keep going in and out of focus. I, yeah, I might. It’s auto-focus. It might, especially my hands

waving around and sometimes it, it likes to look at the microphone. I don’t know. Um,

what, what else? There was another part I felt, I feel like we didn’t cover. Um, marketing. Okay.

Uh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What can move the needle? So am I saying that when I say you don’t

need an, a website, am I saying you don’t need an online presence? No, that’s not what I’m saying.

Okay. What can move the needle is simply listing your business on Google or Yelp or other directories

and starting to build a review and reputation profile. That is free. That is low hanging fruit.

That is kind of required if you’re wanting to get, and you’re going to see it right here. What is the

staple of local searches? The staple of local searches is the map pack. Okay. And the faster

you get listed in this map pack and you start to win in terms of reputation, that’s, that can be all

you need. That can be all you need. And look at this directions. I no website here. Okay. No website

here. They got a phone number. People, people will call and we’re going to go through this in terms of

like, just look at this listing right here and just think of mechanic websites in context. I’m going to

click on some so we can go through them together. But just before we do that, just use your brain

and just think, what are you expecting to see? When you get to the website, are you expecting to see

something, some super creative work, some super creative, unique products? What are you expecting

to see? I’m expecting to see every single website say the exact same shit. That’s what I’m expecting to

see? Because what, what, what, what can you say about changing a fucking tire or, or a transmission

or break, a break job or an oil change that isn’t set on every other mechanics website? What is going to

really influence you? What, what, what, what am I going to run into on this website? That’s going to

convince me that this other, that this company is way better than the other ones that are around me.

Not a damn thing. Not a, the key information that you need is where’s my, where’s my pro mouse.

The key information you need is contained right here. Okay. In the reputation profile,

their copy can say anything and it will say, and we’re the best mechanic you’ve ever seen in your

fucking life. We do the good, we’re certified in 18 different ways. They’re all going to say the same

shit. This is what makes people choose proximity and reputation in this kind of situation that you’re

not going to go to the website. Oh my God. They’ve just totally convinced me. They’ve just totally

convinced me, right? It is reputation and proximity. That is the game that these companies are playing

along with brand like Christian brothers automotive has spent gazillions of dollars building a brand.

That is what wins. That is what wins. Okay. Now you could go to the Christian brothers website,

but well, Kevin, they have a website. Let’s take a look at that. Okay. Let’s, let’s go take a look at it.

Holy shit. That is not a five. That is, if you’re doing this website for less than $5,000,

you are, you should just start a charity. You should be a, that’s what you should do.

Whateveryouare.com, go change that to .org. You’re just doing charity work at this point. This is a,

this is obviously a site way more than five. And you think you’re going to compete with this?

Are you going to get, you’re going to get, you know, Joe budget provider to do a $2,500 website.

That’s going to do what against this? What do what, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

And when, what’s the timeline this is going to happen on? No, that’s, you’re taking $2,500 and you are

lighting it on fire. If you don’t think that if I focus, if I’m the mechanic and I focus on, I want

300 five-star reviews, which puts me in the second spot among these competitors. Okay. And I’m going to,

I’m going to, I’m going to do every other avenue that I can think of to get the business, to get me to those,

that review count. That’s it. That’s the game right there. That’s the, you are never going to put that money

into a website. And then what, what’s going to happen? That’s, we already asked the question.

We make the website, we publish it. What next? What’s going to happen next? And when, when is stuff going to start

happening? Right. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money. Modern era, 2010, you could outcompete them.

Maybe. Okay. That maybe they don’t have their SEO game on point yet. You, you, you, you take advantage

of some things that they’re not doing. Okay. You take advantage of some of the stuff that Google was

allowing in that era. Maybe, maybe. Okay. Not now, not anymore. Now let’s go down to the organic listings

down here where your website would even be found by the way, because this is proximity reputation up here.

Okay. And brand, this is proximity reputation and brand right here down here. Maybe you got more of

the SEO guys. Okay. The SEO guys found a kind of a way in, but here’s the thing that you have to

understand about SEO in the modern era. That shit’s expensive. If you don’t have 5,000, none of these

sites are 5,000 or sub $5,000 websites. You’re not going to find them in the top 10. You’re not going to

find them in the top 10. And most industries, you’re not going to find them in the top 10. Okay. Number one,

you also have to understand that Google now defers to ads and directories and corporations. That’s who

Google defers to now. Number one in every spot is going to be Yelp or SureCritic or one of these like

review directories that make sense for that industry. Right. Um, you could literally,

people will go to the Yelp and you need to be listed on Yelp. You need to be listed here. That’s how

people are going to discover you. And what do you have to focus on? Reputation, reputation, reputation,

reputation, free directories, reputation will get you way further than a $2,500 website will.

Because what’s that $2,500 website going to do? It’s going to sit there and do nothing. It’s going

to sit there and do nothing. And by the way, it ain’t going to convince anybody otherwise. Like they’re

not going, nobody’s going to the website, reading the copy and being like, well, I mean, damn,

I’m just so convinced. I’m just so convinced. You know, I was going to get my oil change at

Christian brothers who has 9,000 reviews, five stars. Uh, but you know, you said the right things

about the oil change. So I think I’m going to go, I’m going to take a risk. I’m going to go with you

instead. That’s not what’s happening. That’s lunacy. It’s absolute lunacy. If you think that’s what’s

happening. Carfax, Carfax, we got, we’re going to beat Carfax. We’re going to outrank Bimmer shops.

There’s another directory. You’re going to outrank them. Okay. All right. Let’s see what,

what this instant car fix. That’s a directory. See, let’s, let’s look what instant car fix is doing.

Mobile mechanics. Okay. So they are, this is Google like, okay, there’s this alternative concept that

we might want to feed people and probably is feeding them because their data says that a lot of people

click on this. But the question is, is this a, is this a sub $5,000 website? Once again,

there’s a lot of pages guys. And then they got more services again. Oh, okay. All right. So again,

you’re going to do this for less than five to change your shit to a.org right now. You are not,

you are in a charity business. Okay. If you’re doing this less than 5,000, you’re in a charity business.

You think this company can’t afford to spend more than $5,000? Okay. I mean, I mean, this is, this is,

this is a, this is what you are going to see because it requires this level of money to play

this particular game. This is what you were going to see over and over and over again. It’s sites

that are playing the game at a high level, which is expensive. Back to my original argument. I don’t

think you can afford to have a website because the people who are in all the spots you want to be in

have a lot more money than you. Right. And they, and they got a huge headstart by the way,

which matters a lot. They’ve already got brand built. They’ve already got a lot going on.

It’s going to be very hard for you to break into that. I would prefer you take the little bit of

money that you do have and go play a game. You can actually win. That’s what I would tell my mom,

my cousin, my brother-in-law or whoever. Right. Okay. Is this, are we understanding now? Are we,

are we connecting the dots? And again, I don’t think, um, one, you, you don’t even want to play.

You don’t want to serve the sub 5,000 market anyway. Okay. They’re the hardest clients to have.

It’s low margins. You’re living project to project. There’s no upside in general. They can’t afford

the retainers that you want to get them on. Like the marketing retainers that you want to get them

on. It’s not a good model. Send these people to Wix, send them to Squarespace, send them to AI.

By the way, AI is just going to steal them all from you anyway, in about 18 months. Okay. You got,

that’s your, just start the clock. Like whether you like it or not, they’re just going to take these

clients from you anyway. Um, this is the, these are the clients you want to go after the clients

that are like, no, no, no, no. We got the money and we want to play. That’s the people you need to,

okay, let’s sign you up my friend. And we’re going to play. Let’s go. Let’s get in the game.

You need people with money. That’s what you need. You don’t need these sub $5,000 projects. And, and

you don’t need to try to convince these sub 5,000 people that they got any chance

of competing against these, these, these sites. No, but what they can do for free is they can start

the Google profile. They can start the Yelp profile. They can go put their money and their time into

other channels and they can start building the reputation and they can start building the brand.

And then they got a little money and they’re going to come back to you and be like, I’m ready to play.

I’m ready to play. You don’t go to Vegas with 50 cents in your pocket. Okay. That’s not that you’re

not going to have any fun. You’re not going to have any, you’re going to be like, what happened?

What happened? Well, I don’t, your trip’s over. That’s what happened. Okay. One, one play,

your trip’s over. You can’t do it. You can’t do it. Okay. We got, we got to stop saying that that can

happen. Um, let’s see. Let’s see. Uh, Kevin Gere, did you assume those service listings were clickable?

Uh, not necessarily. No. Um, they do, they do look clickable though. They are clickable. They have,

uh, they all have links. So, well, it looks like, so some are, are, uh, looks like to do items maybe,

or maybe for the SEO, uh, maybe the SEO, uh, discovery said, you know, not, not a high priority

page. We want to list it, but we probably don’t want to make a page for it, but anything with a link

right here, I mean, look at the underlined ones. These are all, these are all, these are all pages.

Now they’re templated for sure, but it’s unique content. It’s management. It’s site architecture.

You’re not, again, if you’re doing this for less than 5,000, I mean, look, look, they got,

they got faceted search. Okay. By model year, make model. Fuck. I don’t know. I probably charge 5,000

just to build that right there. The little, this little faceted search thing and the architecture

behind it. This is not a sub $5,000 website. Okay. Uh, let’s go back to the, let’s go back to the

Google listings. Um, okay. Your mechanic.com. Was this a directory directory? Okay. Another directory

site. Google loves the directory these days. Half, half of the first page is taken up by directories

that you will never beat. You’ll never beat them. You’ll never beat them. Um, you know why? Cause

Google decided with their algorithm that they want to give, instead of like picking and choosing the

winners, they want to give people lists and say, Hey, here’s the lists of your options. Go make a

decision. And then in these kinds of searches, what are people making the decision on? They’re making the

decision on brand and reputation and proximity, brand reputation, proximity. Okay. Um, all right.

Let’s go, let’s just, let’s switch. Let’s go from mechanic to something else. What do you, what do you

want me to look at? What’s the alternative for people who are below that threshold? Any other

marketing channel in existence that’s relevant for that particular business? Okay. We just have to get

out of the mode of thinking that the website is the only pathway for, for digital. The website’s the

only pathway. That’s clearly not the option. Okay. And then we have to remember that there’s an entire

offline world and that most of these businesses, by the way, are successful because of their offline

world. First, the, what is the, let’s do a pop quiz, pop quiz. We’re talking about local, local

businesses here. Okay. And in, in terms of like a mechanic, in terms of a mechanic, what is the

number one? Here’s your business 101 pop quiz. What is the number one factor in business success

for a local business with a location? What is the number one undisputed factor? Especially if you’re, if

you’re, if you’re, if you’re just getting started, if you’re just starting out, nobody knows about you yet.

What is the number one factor? I’ll wait. I’ll wait. There’s a little bit of delay on the stream.

A little bit of delay. Recommendations. Nope.

Referrals. Nope. Word of mouth. Nope.

Yes. Anja got it. Guys, location, location, location is the number one thing for a business that has a

physical location, location, location, location is the number one thing. Okay. Now, beyond that,

you’re going to get into things like brand. You’re going to get into things like, you know, general

reputation, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Right. And then all the offline activities that these brands do,

you know, they, you know, the flyers they send out, the local events they do the, like, if I was,

if I was a mechanic, okay, like it, it would take me what, 15, maybe 15, let’s say a thousand dollars,

let’s say $1,500 to cater an event for a local car club, for example. Okay. Let’s say I’m a European

car repair shop. Like I, I focus on BMWs and Mercedes and yada, yada, yada. This is the,

this is the kind of clientele that I want. And there’s like a local, uh, either European kind

of car club or a BMW car club or whatever. And I want to, and I want to invite all of them to come

out and I’m going to cater it. We’re just going to have a good time. We’re just going to, we’re just

going to have some fun. I’ll have some entertainment, whatever. I like, imagine doing that a couple of

times a month or even every other month or every quarter or whatever. Like, I just guarantee you’re

going to, the relationships you’re going to build, the referrals that are going to come from that,

the direct work that’s going to come from that, from the people that probably didn’t even know you

existed before you held one of those events. The ROI on that is going to be so much more significant

than a website that just sits there and does nothing that you would then have to pour thousands

of extra dollars into to make it do anything. Cause it’s not going to do anything on its own.

Uh, like there’s so, there’s so many opportunities outside of build them a website, build them a

website. You got to have a website, check the box, check the website, but there’s so many opportunities.

I’m not saying you should never have a website. The whole context of this discussion is you don’t

even have $5,000. A website not going to do you any good. It costs money to play this game.

You can’t afford to play this game yet. Go play a different game. When you have money to play this

game, come back and we’ll play this game. That’s it. Okay. Uh, let’s see.

Uh, somebody put out what we were supposed to put out some other industries. Let me look and see if,

if somebody did. Okay. Attorneys.

Attorney near me. What comes up first? What do you like? I mean, if you’ve spent any time in SEO,

you know what you’re going to see right off the bat every single time, right?

Say review, reputation, proximity game. This one doesn’t have a website or doesn’t list it.

Um, let’s go, let’s go click on this one. 10 plus years in business. Okay. Now here’s,

here is a sub $5,000 website. Attorney Chuck. Let’s go to attorney. Let’s go back here. I want to look

here. Okay.

Who do we not see? Attorney Chuck. Nowhere to be found. Here. No visibility. No listing here. Okay.

Who do we see? Gary Martin Hayes. You guys, if you live in Atlanta, you, you hear this guy on the

fucking radio 18 times a day. He’s on the rate. Gary Martin Hayes and associates. They spend gazillions

of dollars on radio ads. Fact. Okay. I’m telling you, you can’t afford to play this game in 2025,

unless you got money. Now we’re going to go up here. The reason I found this guy. Okay. Probably

proximity. The number one factor of the Google map pack is proximity. Now the question is,

is this website, what is, first of all, I would argue this website is, is convincing me not to work

with this guy. I don’t know. This is a, this is like a classic, just super template, low effort,

no effort, just obvious. Like, I don’t know, dude. I’m, I’m, I’m not, this is not, it’s not selling me.

Okay. He does have a lot of other pages, which aren’t even listed up. Oh, they are. You can’t even

tell. There’s no indication that that’s going to be a dropdown. Okay. But even with these amount of

pages, I mean, you could tell no design work went into this. No, nothing went into this.

This would be my example of dude, just, this is AI is going to take care of this in a jiffy.

If this is what you’re trying to land as, as work, you’re done. You’re, you already don’t even realize

you’re out of business. You’re just out, you’re out of business. AI can whip this up in a heartbeat

for, for, for nothing, for pennies, for pennies. Okay. This is not. And, and I would again say,

I, I’m, I’m, I almost think he’s better off without it. Like go, go focus on turning these 11

reviews. Oh, it’s 115. That’s okay. That’s why good reputation. Full five stars. Guarantee you

people are going to go to that website. Not really. Oh, okay. What? Let’s go back and read reviews.

That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to, I want to see what people are saying about this guy.

And then when I read the reviews, I guarantee you, it’s the review profile that is going to convince

you to do work with him or not do work with him. That website is inconsequential.

And even if it’s barely consequential, it doesn’t even, it’s, it could be done with AI. It’s not,

this is not your game. This is not the kind of work you want to be involved in. This is a perfect

example of Wix template. Bing, bang, done. Bing, bang, done. Wix template. Okay. Websites not required

to do this, to do what he’s doing. And I guarantee you, he’s got gazillions of offline things going on,

relationships and everything else driving the vast majority of his business. What I said before

was we have to be able to point to the website and go without that, we wouldn’t have had the

significant growth. Okay. What’s doing the work. This is doing the work. This is doing the work.

Okay. Not the thing that we click on and go there and go, Oh, look at this shitty template.

Nothing going on here. Doesn’t even have any copy. And look, he’s, this is what people care about.

Like the only thing relevant on the site that you’re going to find are the things you found back

on Google, which are the, the review and reputation profile. Okay. What was this convincing you?

What is this? This convincing you? Oh yeah, for sure. I love the icons. I’m going to go with this guy.

Cause I love the clip art. It’s, it’s what you would literally AI just would write.

What are we doing? What are we doing here? Okay. You, we, we can’t, if anybody points to this website

and goes, man, I mean, without this, this guy would be nothing. Nobody, nobody would know about this guy

without this going on. Nobody, nobody would hire this guy without this going on. You, you, this is a,

you’re, this is an absolute fairy tale. It’s an absolute fairy tale. Okay. Let’s see.

Um, okay. Let’s, let’s go down. Let’s go down the list. Justia. Look at this. What did I say?

What does Google love? Lists. You can be in these directories for free. What’s the next thing?

Lists directory. What’s the next thing? The same fucking site. Another directory. What’s the next

thing? Ah, ah, here we go. Here we go. Okay. We got it. We got another website here. We’ve got a,

a three person firm. What do you think they have? What do you think they have? Right?

You think these guys don’t have any money driving up in there and in there, in their BMW SUVs and

their Porsches and everything else. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of pages, a lot of pages,

a lot of pages, a lot of paid, a lot of content, a lot of pages, not a five, that is not a sub $5,000

website. It’s simple. It’s templated, right? But it, the SEO, I guarantee you they’re paying for SEO.

And I guarantee you the amount of that SEO, uh, greatly exceeds $5,000. I guarantee you they’re

doing a lot of stuff offline. They got four offices. The, or you think these people are going to be the

people who are like, Oh, we don’t have $5,000 to spend. No, these are the people who come and they say,

we have money and we want to play the game. Okay. What else are we going to find? What else are we

going to find? All right. Come down here. There’s Gary Martin Hayes. I already told you they spend a

gazillion dollars on radio ads. Here’s Justia again. Didn’t we see Justia earlier? It was number one.

And it’s also like number seven. They’re hogging the, all the top spots are ads and directories.

And then the people spending crap loads of money to, to barely squeak into this list.

Two people managed to squeak into this list. That’s not a directory. And you’re going to tell

your client, Oh yeah, that’s $2,500. We could totally, we could totally get you right here.

Yeah. We could totally get you there. No, no, that’s a, that’s a lie. That’s a fairy tale.

You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid. It’s not happening. All right. Let’s see.

Says it was designed by Justia. Which one? Um, Conan Yeager. Was it this one you’re talking about?

Oh, you’re right. There it is. Uh, yeah. So the directories, it looks like has a, yeah.

Yeah. That’s, that’s hilarious. That’s hilarious. Okay.

So this is being dominated by Justia right here, which clearly, um, you know, this is going to be a,

uh, money, money, money, money organization. Okay.

Uh, so a $5,000 site is pointless and come back with a real budget. Okay. Show us a local services

site built with a real budget. How is it different? I just showed you go to, well, here’s the other

thing that I’ve been saying for so long. I’m going to click on Gary Martin Hayes. Okay. Um,

look at this, dude, they are SEOing the shit out of this. Okay. Like all of this, you think these

exist just because they wanted to give people, uh, uh, information on all these things. These pages

exist because they hired an SEO firm that charged them tens of thousands of dollars and said, if you

want to play this game, these pages have to exist and we need unique content for them and yada, yada,

yada, yada, yada. This is, this is what the actual website, if you’re going to say, I want to play the

game, this is the game you have to play on top of the tens of thousands of dollars they spend in radio

ads and everything else. This is the argument that I have continued to make since the beginning of time

that businesses require money. Okay. Businesses require money and we’re all stuck. Everybody that,

I can only find clients that have $3,500 to spend on a website. No, you can’t. You are being lied to

by half of the clients that come to you. They want a deal. They want the cheapest thing they can possibly

get. They don’t understand how to really make it work and what really needs to happen. They need the

education. Okay. Because these same people have a location that they signed a $5,000 a month lease on.

They have a BMW that they have a lease on or a loan. They have a house. It’s too big. They got a lot of

money for a lot of people not named you. And for some reason you think, Oh, well, that’s all they

have. No, it’s not. It’s not all they have. I guarantee it. It’s not all they have. Now, if it’s

a very like true startup, Oh man, I’m broke. I got a dream. I got no money in my bank account.

Okay. Yeah. Those, those people exist too. Guess what? They can’t afford to play this game yet.

There’s a lot of other games they can play and a lot of other games they can win. This is not one of

them. So we need to direct them to the games that they can actually afford to play in and the games

that they can actually win right now. And then once they’ve won a bit, they can come back and we can

take them to the next level doing the thing that actually requires money. Right? So you have to

understand, like, again, um, when, when I did, uh, you know, roof claims project guys, they,

they were spending, if you have to wrap your mind around this, like the idea that you were going to

come in and like beat roof claims somehow, which they lost, you know, they changed marketing team.

They lost their mind. Uh, but they were spending a hundred thousand dollars a month on Google ads.

That was their Google ads account. Okay. You, you like the, it’s just, it’s ridiculous.

Like the scope of, of claiming like, oh yeah, $2,500 website will definitely move the needle for this

person. That’s the kind of people you’re up against. There’s 10 spots. Eight of them are directories.

There’s two other spots left. And you think the $2,500 budget website is going to sneak in

with no reputation profile on Google. Like what, what, this is craziness. This is not like,

I don’t even know why we’re entertaining this idea. Okay. We just have to accept reality.

Like if you’re sub 5,000, that’s what Wix is for. That’s what Squarespace is for. That’s what AI is

going to just take over in 18 months. Okay. And again, if you are, I’m trying to give good advice

to clients, but I’m also trying to give good advice to you. You got to get as far away from

the sub 5,000 market as you can possibly get yourself. Okay. And that might mean you’ve got

to up your skills in other areas. Your sales skills are going to have to get better. Your SEO skills are

going to have to get better. I wouldn’t even play the SEO game. Honestly, in this day and age,

I would go play the PPC game still there. I would go play the digital advertising game in other areas.

I would play the general consultancy game of helping clients understand. There’s a point I’ve made many,

many, many times. Are radio ads SEO? Are radio ads SEO? If you didn’t immediately answer yes,

you don’t know SEO. You don’t understand SEO. That money being put into radio ads directly goes to Gary,

Martin Hayes, Google searches. And that informs Google that this is a company that people desperately

want to find. And when that’s not happening for the other competitors in their local area,

Google, that is how Google puts them. They, yes, they’ve got all the pages that they’re supposed

to have on the site, but Google looks for brand interest indications and things that you do offline

directly impact your listings online. Because any brand search tells Google, this is a brand that

needs to be found. This is a brand people are wanting to find and they will pump them right up.

Okay. So anybody that doesn’t understand that radio ads offline is actually SEO,

they’re going to lose. You’re not playing the game, right? You’re not playing the game, right? You

don’t understand the full game. You don’t understand all the rules. Okay. And you’re going to get taken

advantage of. So I’m, I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to help you guys see a picture. We don’t live

in fucking 2010 anymore. Like in 2010, there was enough SEO play. The top 10 results was wide open.

Go for it. Go, we can, we can do, we can do a lot of SEO and we can do it fairly low cost. And we can

do yada. Okay. We could play that game. We don’t need gazillions of dollars to play that game. That is

not the era we live in anymore. That is gone. Ship has sailed best accept it and pivot and adjust,

or you are going to be deleted. You’re going to be deleted. Okay. Let’s see. Let’s see. Let’s see.

I don’t name another one. What, what, what else do we want to look at? What else do we want to look at?

Chiropractors.

Okay. Chiropractor near me. What do we see right off the bat? You’re always going to see it. Any

local search, you’re going to see the map pack right off the bat. First of all, the first damn above the

fold, the entire above the fold area is ads. So what did I say before?

If you don’t have the money to funnel people to the website that you created via this, this,

this, what is it going to do for you? See, these are people right here who are smart enough to recognize

I can’t win this game. So I’m going to play this game, but this game costs money. This game is free.

Okay. So, but, but what do you have to do? What do you have to do? Look at this.

And if you don’t think the joint, the joint is one of the largest, uh, I think franchises, it’s like a

chiropractor franchise in this area. Gazillions of dollars. Okay. Hamilton mill chiropractic center,

Hamilton mill family, complete care. These are proximity and reputation wins right here. They are

right down the street from me. So this is a proximity game and they’re showing me the highest

reputation options in my proximity. That’s how the map pack works. Okay. Now we’re going to go down

there. Who’s winning, who’s winning the local franchise with 18 gazillion locations and a

gazillion dollars in their bank account. That’s who’s winning. Number one, you’re going to beat them

a hundred percent chiropractic, another franchise. Okay. Georgia spine sports. We’re going to go,

we’re going to go here, see what they’re doing. Okay. Let’s click on that. Yelp directory. This is

actually a, there’s less directory stuff going on than you would normally see, which might tell you,

Hey, we have a little bit more opportunity here. Okay. Um, let’s go to Georgetown clinics. Um,

Colin chiropractic. Okay. These are car accident spine pros. Okay. Let’s take a look at some of these.

Notice there are going to be some ad options down, uh, below as well. Okay. Let’s go. Let’s go take

a look, see. All right. So we’re going to come in, uh, welcome to Georgia spine and sports rehab. Now

what you’re trying to tell me is, okay, here’s the thing. Sub 5,000 website. Yes or no. Okay. And then

does this website look at, look at, okay. And how many WDD lives do we have to talk about that? Do we

really think, I mean, honestly, be honest with me. Do you really think that this shitty copy,

this obvious template and these fake people, these are stock photos, stock photos, um, are, are really

like people just, they look at some like, Oh my God, she looks so happy. Oh, look how fit she is. Oh,

clearly, clearly there’s athletes. I identify with athletes. I think I’m going to go to this

chiropractor right here. See, I would argue that this money right here was just essentially it’s,

it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s lit on fire. It’s like the, you have to go to a reputation. None of this is going

to convince anybody to go. So what are they going to go? They’re going to go to reputation. And I, I’m

actually not even saying, okay, they have a testimonials page. Okay. But here’s the thing. Okay.

That’s a very, I mean, they have enough, they haven’t, well, I don’t know that they have any

review. Do they have any real reviews? So this is the other part of the website, uh, that everybody

is onto now they’re onto the fact that there’s a lot of fake reviews out there. They want to see video

reviews. Cause then they can judge if they’re fake or real. There’s a little bit more judgment there.

Uh, but like these right here, they don’t necessarily trust them anymore. Like it used to be good,

but they don’t necessarily trust them anymore. And so I’ll tell you what happens. I’ll tell you

what happens with sites like this. They don’t know if they can trust it. There’s nothing convincing

them to actually buy. Cause it’s all shitty copy and stock photos. And one real photo of the interior

of the location. That’s a corner with two things in it. I don’t, is this what you’re seeing this and

you’re like, Oh, I got to go there. I got that’s, that’s mine right there. What this site does is it

bounces back and then they go up and they try to find the company somewhere. Why didn’t it go

backwards? Website’s broken. Okay. Uh, all right, let’s go back to Google. They bounce back to Google

and they’re like, can I find that company here? If there was anything about them that they actually

liked. Okay. Because people are in a mode of comparison. They’re like, all right, here’s my

options. Which one am I going to go with? Well, they saw potentially fake reviews on that website.

Um, and no, no real copy, no real, like, it’s just all that could be AI generated for sure. Easily,

easily. Um, and so they bounce back and they start looking here and this is what I do. I think anybody

that’s honest with themselves, nobody that’s honest with themselves is going to be like, well,

let’s click on that one again. I don’t even remember which one it was. Colin. I don’t even know.

No, it wasn’t Colin. Uh, no, George. I don’t even know. I don’t even know. But the idea that

they’re going to click on that, look at stock photos and shitty copy and go, I’m in,

I’m in with no other due diligence for a, for a chiropractor, no other due diligence. That’s,

that’s craziness. If we look at the actual behavior of human beings, they go back here and they’re

like, what is the general public saying about this place? And they go start reading reviews. And then

the minute they do that, and I would love the analytics on these places. I would love the analytics on,

on some of these websites, right? The minute they do this, they’re right back into the hands

of the brands with reputation and the brands that actually have a brand, like real brands,

real brands. Okay. Um, let’s go to the joints website real quick. Okay. As an, as an example,

let’s go back to, let’s go to their homepage. That took me to their location page. Okay.

Obviously more professional, obviously more well done. Uh, we’re not going to spend time on reading

the copy. Look at all the pages, look at the guides. They’ve got plans and pricing. They have

a different model. This is their, this is their like special offer kind of model that they use to

hook everybody in. Okay. Let’s go to, there’s your franchising opportunity right here. Um, let’s go

down and see if they have, okay. Here’s their location directory. You, this is a sub $5,000 website.

Nope. Except it doesn’t even work on on GPS. Look, Oh, it’s cause I’m in a private browser.

Okay. We let’s, we got to allow it. Let’s go allow. Okay. What? Okay. Yeah. It’s, it’s failing,

I guess. Nope. Now it’s working. Okay. Good. I just wanted to show you, I just wanted to show you,

this is just proximity to me. This is how many locations they look at. I mean, look at this.

Okay. You’re not going to win. You’re not going to win this game. All right. Um, give me another

one. Give me another here. Actually let’s do Colin, Colin chiropractic. All right.

Are you building this website? I don’t know. I don’t know. Uh, it’s got a lot of pages. It’s a very

shitty template. It’s a very old website, which tells me what is the number one rule of like,

if you’re going to find websites that, um, you want to pitch to like, Hey, I think we can really

take your site to the next level. Okay. You don’t find websites that are obviously five years out of

date, 10 years out of date that, I mean this thing, how, what era do you think this was built in?

The fact that it’s so old lets you know, they’re not concerned with putting money into their website

all that much. If they were, they’d be actively working on it. They’d be, it would be far more

modern than it currently is. They’ve just let it exist there. They probably have lots of funnels

bringing in traffic, lots of referrals and reviews because by the way, con chiropractors is a reputation

game. So many people go, Hey, I need a chiropractor. Like, is there one you use? Is there one I can

trust that isn’t going to break my back and shit and like make my, make my, make me worse? Like

there people do due diligence and they care most about reputation and reviews and referrals. Okay.

Same with mechanics. Like, yay. Do you know a mechanic? Cause I’m, I don’t want to go get ripped off.

I don’t ever know if they’re telling me the right things. I don’t know if I can trust them. I don’t,

they’re talking to friends. They’re talking to relatives. They’re talking to people.

They’re not reading copy on a website going, well, I mean, sounds good. Oh, look at that. Look at that

stock photo. Clearly they’re good at this, right? That’s not contributing to the buying decision

simply because it exists. It doesn’t help. It’s not doing anything relevant. Okay.

All right. Let’s go to, is there one more? Maybe we’re going to look at one more.

Oh, somebody brought up a bakery, bakery, bakeries near me, bakeries near me. Okay.

What? This is bimbo. Come on. Can we, yeah. What kind of brand is this? What kind of brand is this?

Okay. Let’s keep going down. Damn. I mean, oh, I’m in brave now. Hold on. We don’t want to be in

brave. You don’t want to be in brave. Brave search is awful. Absolutely awful. Okay. Bakeries,

bakeries near me. All right. Baking grounds. Here’s your map pack. Okay. I mean, a thousand,

one 49, four 94. Okay. Yelp. Oh, there’s Yelp taking the top two spots. I’m interested in what the

baking grounds is doing. They’re up here. They’re here. I’m interested in what they’re doing. Paris

baguette. This is a very commercialized, uh, lots of money, lots of money, uh, multi chain location

thing near me. I believe the baking grounds is also, but I, I haven’t heard of that quite as much.

Uh, we’ll take a look at what Barrett’s baked goods is doing. Sweet hut bakery and cafe. But again,

we also have to put ourselves in the shoes of somebody like looking for a bakery. First thing

is kind of like, I, yeah, I might go to Google and go bakeries near me. And I’m going to spend honestly

me. I’m going to spend most, like, it goes back to the question. What are you expecting to see

when you go to the website? What is going to be on the website that Google doesn’t already tell you?

Google’s already telling me, well, a lot of people like this one, a lot of people like this one.

It’s telling me the address, telling me when it closes, telling me the phone number. Um,

often the menu is right there. Often photos are right. But here’s the thing. Like what is going

to be on the website? Like, what am I expecting to see? Pastry. I mean, I’m baked goods, but I mean,

is it going to be some like, Oh my God, I’ve never seen a cupcake like that. I’ve got to go there.

Is that, is that going to happen? Is there going to be some revelation on the website that I don’t

already know? I only care about the reputation and the roof. Does it taste good, right? Is it a good

bakery? Do other people recommend it? Is it close to me? Can I get there before it closes? These are

the things that matter to people when it is the context of a bakery. I don’t know what people expect

to see, but let’s go, let’s go to the baking grounds. Okay. All right. Uh, and I’m, I’m curious to

look for, for one or two specific things, but let’s keep going down. This could be a nice little

WordPress website, right? Nice little WordPress website. There’s a nice menu. Okay. Um, I, no,

no, uh, I mean like, okay, I don’t, I’m not, you’re not even seeing any photos, right? I’m just seeing

it’s a menu. It’s a menu. Could have got that menu on Google, by the way. Uh, let’s keep going

down. Got our history. Okay. Uh, home of I do cake is a real old fashioned specialty cake boutique,

which has been creating cakes for all occasions for over 50 years and family tradition since 1958.

We want to be your first choice for all things bakery with over 80 years and combined experience.

We, by the way, that is such a ridiculous, this combined experience stat that everybody,

that’s another rant probably for another day. Um, okay. We provide specialty 3d cakes,

wedding and groom case. We table some more, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s reviews.

Could have got those on Google too. Could have got all this on Google. Could have got all this on

Google. Okay. I’m going to go to about us. All right. We got a little bit more history that seems

like it’s every other about page that I’ve ever seen in my life. We got our testimonials page.

All that was found on Google. We’ve got our cakes. Oh, look at this. Oh, we’re into SEO. Oh my God.

Okay. Hold on. Hold on. I’m suddenly feeling like we’re not in the sub 5,000 range anymore.

We’ve got a lot of data. We got a lot of lists. We got a lot of stuff going on in these templates.

We got a lot of stuff to manage. We got extra pages. Let’s go to our pastries. Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Okay. Galleries. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Yeah. You could probably, you could whip it up with some

templates and some cheap shit and all this other shit. But again, I would argue very successful bakery.

They want all this detail. If you’re doing this sub 5,000, I feel like you’re a charity. I feel like

you’re doing charity work. Okay. Uh, okay. You got catering services, more galleries here.

All right. All right. And then a contact page. I just don’t feel like this is a sub $5,000 site.

Feel like these people should be paying more than $5,000 for this. Especially if we’re going to show up on

the first page of Google. Especially if we got all this. I mean, that contributed significantly to

their, to their revenue. And I bet you they’re making gobs of money. Okay. So the idea that this

should be a $3,500 project, bing, bang, done. No, no, no, no. It’s not. It’s not. Okay.

Rant now, please. I love the rants. Can’t read the menu on Yelp or Google. They’re usually low res

picks or PDFs. Uh, and that’s fine. That’s fine. So we went to the website. We wanted to see,

I mean, the thing is, is like, let’s, let’s, uh, you can’t expand any of these anyway. Are these

really better than Google? I mean, I’m trying to click on them. I can go to the full gallery,

I guess. It’s not, I wouldn’t say it’s the best website ever. I wouldn’t say the photographer.

I mean, I think that’s just low res in general. Um, I would actually tell them to put some extra

money into photography. Um, but you know what, this gets, does it get the job done? Whatever.

It probably gets the job done, but this is not a sub $5,000 website. I mean, they got so much stuff

going on, so much stuff going on. This is not a sub $5,000 website. And this is arguably a site that

they’re, they would have a, probably a very difficult time. First of all, you’ve got good branding,

like this logo. They paid money for this right here. Probably, um,

like what number would you put on this logo? Let’s just do a pop quiz. What number

would you put on that logo right there?

Just as an example, just as an example,

like how much money just on the thing before the website was even built, just this thing right here,

how much money did they put into that logo right there?

Even if you used a logo, what’s one of those logo creation services? 99 designs.

And you go to, uh, where’s the, where’s their pricing? Man, they changed a lot since the last time I was here.

Do they have their pricing anymore? Packages? What are, what are we?

We’re a logo design right here. Let’s look. Okay. Uh, I want to get started. I know they have more packages than this.

Okay. You don’t want the 299. You get, you get jack shit for 299. Okay. So let’s say they go gold.

So not they’re in 900. If they, if they use a service like this, they’re $900 in just on the logo. Okay.

Um, and they’re going to, we’re going to jump to that full, like that whole website. We’re going to jump to what?

Like 1500, 25. What are we going to be at?

Keep in mind that like the sites we were doing one page, that’s, that’s the 5,000 minimum.

That’s the first page. And that’s copy. That’s discovery.

That’s all the stuff that actually has to go into a project like this.

a hundred to $200. I, this logo is not. Okay. So D1 Teresa, that logo is bad. That is not a,

that is a, okay. How about all of the females in the audience? What would you describe this logo as?

Do we really think that’s a bad logo for a local business? I mean, I got to show you some bad logos,

my friend. I got, I got a slew of bad logos. I can show you. I wouldn’t say that’s a bad logo.

It’s not the best logo, but it’s what it was better than I would expect for a local business,

like relative to other local businesses. Yeah. There we go. I exactly. I knew that was exactly going to be

what the answer was. When I asked the question, that was the exact word that was in my mind.

Um, yeah, it’s cute. It’s cute. That’s what they’re obviously going for. It’s cute. And that’s

what their whole website, their, their whole website gives the vibe of, yeah, it’s cute. It’s cute. We

got cute colors. We got cute little hearts. We got cute, cute, cute. We’re cute. We got a cute little

font. We’re cute. That’s what they, there’s a vibe they’re trying to give off. Um, yeah, the logo is

mid, not bad. It’s mid. Yeah. But I mean, guys, you’ve seen way worse, right? You’ve seen way and

you would probably, I would say, expect way worse from a small local bakery shop. Come on. I would

expect way worse. I would expect way worse. Um, okay. Oh, let’s do Q and A. Let’s do Q and A.

Cause we, we have, uh, the questions can be about any of this. It can be about any aspect

of marketing, uh, website creation, budget scopes, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Um, and the reality

too, like, I really hope you’re not doing these kinds of websites sub 5,000 with all these galleries,

with all this stuff going on with all these different locations. I mean, you’re, you’re

probably into CPTs and custom fields and templates and loops and logic and yada, yada, yada. Like,

I just feel like you’re giving, you’re giving the farm away and the amount of money they’re going to

make from this. Also, again, when you get into, um, you know, you can obviously have value-based

pricing has to come in to some degree in these projects. It can’t just be like, well, well, I tend,

I just have a perfect template for them and I’m just going to fill it out. I can do it for super cheap.

Like, yeah. And you’re gone. Like you’re gone in 18 months. You’re, you’re done. You’re done. So

in 18 months. Okay. Let me go, let me go search hashtag Q. Hashtag Q. Okay, good. Can you use an

example for this session? A crawl space mold mitigation company in middle Tennessee fighting

against big companies with lots of marketing dollars? Yes. Cause I will tell you right off

the bat, this mold mitigation space is crawling with SEO agencies, crawling with SEO agencies. They

are pouring money into this mold mitigation, uh, near me. Okay. Oh God, I’m back on brave. Brave is

useless. Let’s go to Google again. Okay. All right. Um, sponsored, sponsored, sponsored, sponsored,

sponsor. Map pack. Okay. We come down Angie’s list. Number one, you got to get listed in Angie’s list.

Okay. Got to get listed in Yelp. Got to get listed right here. Got to start building the review profile,

the rating profile, and then you need to play another game. Serve pro gazillion dollar company

mold be gone. Uh, reliable restoration. Let’s click on them. I haven’t heard of them before.

Let’s click on them and see what they’re up to. Um, Angie’s list again, thumbtack home advisor says

directory, directory, directory, directory, directory, directory. That’s half the top 10 is directories.

Uh, let’s go here. Uh, let’s go here. Reliable restoration. Okay. Look at all this. Look at all

these pages. How many service areas pages do they have? Are these pages? Yep. Yep. This is a 50 page

plus website right off the bat. Not, it’s not a good website. It’s not like, it’s not, nobody’s like,

man, that design’s amazing. That this is amazing. No, it’s, it’s a content play. It’s an SEO play.

That’s where the money went. The money didn’t go into the design. This is a templated bullshit website.

All the money went into SEO. So this is a greater than five, easily greater than $5,000 website,

but you can’t look at it from the perspective. Well, that did the design doesn’t look $5,000.

The design, that’s not what they put the money into. They put the money into the sheer number of pages

pages and the SEO behind them and the content in those pages. That’s where the money went.

And you can’t do that with a sub $5,000 budget. This is not happening. Okay. Now let’s go back.

Like that’s the, that’s the other thing you have to make sure you understand. You’re not looking for

websites that win design awards because design awards don’t are, they don’t equal ROI for businesses.

What we said forever. The most important things on a website is what the website says.

And that could be sales copy or in this case, because sales copy does not matter all that much

for these kinds of websites. This is a play of get our name in people’s mouths and eardrums and eyeballs.

And that is SEO is shit out of it. Come up in the listings. And then when you actually do the service,

do it. And I guarantee you, they, they come to these people’s houses, they do the service and they give

them some sort of treat for a, by the way, leave us a Google review and we’ll give you 10% off or get,

leave us a Google review. We’ll send you this nice gift card kind of bullshit. They do this all the

time because they pump up those review profiles. They are playing the game. Okay. And you know,

Google’s made the game be played this way through decisions that they’ve made on, on their own. I,

I don’t necessarily agree with half the decisions they’ve made. I think it sucks. Uh, but this is

the game that these companies are playing and they have lots of money to play the game with. And so,

yeah, if you are, if you’re an up and coming mold remediation company and you are my brother-in-law,

I’d be like, dude, do not even attempt to play this game. Yes. Go make your directory listing here.

Go make your Angie’s list director, uh, directory listing, go make your Yelp listing, make all that

stuff, make all that stuff. Okay. And then we’re going to go play other games. And that might be a

social media game. That might be another offline activities game. That might, there’s a lot of

different games we can choose to play. This is a losing game. And even if you win, what is the timeline

of winning? When are, when is it? You probably going to be out of business before you ever take

hold here. If you don’t do other stuff. Okay. So you just can’t afford to play this game right now.

It’s just not a thing. All right, let’s go to the next question.

How does distancing oneself from sub $5,000 websites help a person stay relevant in a world of AI?

Doesn’t the fact that AI can facilitate things, even make lowering prices possible? We don’t need

a crystal, like we don’t have to pretend to have a crystal ball and know every single detail of what’s

going to happen with AI. What we do know is that if your agency or your freelance business does AI

quality work for AI targeted projects, there’s no, there’s just no need for you. It doesn’t,

I don’t see a pathway where people are going to be like, well, I could have ate it for free or

super duper cheap. You know, the, whatever Wix is going to give people 20 bucks a month.

Wix AI is it for me. I got what I needed. Bing, bang, boom. I’m on the web. Okay. Um, I don’t know

why they would choose you. I don’t know why they would spend $1,500 or $2,500 with you because you

can’t say that you’re going to do anything. You’re not going to ship anything that AI wasn’t already

capable of shipping. You’re not going to say, well, we can do all those SEO pages for you because the

thing is you can’t do those with a, with AI because Google’s going to filter those out. Google,

Google knows what was AI to death. Okay. Um, and by the way, that game is likely going to change too.

I think that game is a dying game in itself that let’s do a page for every variation of every little

service we have. And let’s put mostly bullshit copy on there. I think that is a dying game in itself.

And so there’s going to be a point in the very near future where people have to pivot away from

even doing that. Okay. Um, ultimately it’s, it comes down to what I’ve said over and over and over

again. This applies to SEO. This applies to just business in general. We have reached an advanced

stage of the internet where you literally need to focus on building the best business you can possibly

build. It’s like, we’re back in the old days now where it’s like, you can’t play games anymore.

You’ve got to legitimately have a business and build a brand and you have to build reputation

and you have to build awareness in all these different areas in a lot of ways offline. Okay.

Um, and even agencies, even freelancers, when they asked me, how do I get leads? I say,

get out from behind the keyboard, go out into the real world. You’re going to find way more

opportunities out in the real world than you are typing on that keyboard. Okay. You cannot discount

the impact of the real world. I know we, we all want digital to just be the final answer.

The only answer. It’s just not reality. It’s just not reality. Let me go back. I don’t think

we need to screen share much anymore. Let me go back to questions. Uh, what about the 80% of people

that use Google to find a local business? You lose out on a large amount of clients and only cater to

clients that are active on social media. Um, no, because you, if you, um, this is free right here.

This is the first thing everybody sees in a local search. You play the reputation game. Um, and,

and you play the other aspects of it, right? So you play the offline games, you play the social media

games, you play games. You can actually still win in this day and age, that landscaping company that

went to Tik TOK guarantee you, they have a Google listing guaranteed. They have a Google listing,

right? Um, and the business that they’re driving from Tik TOK is driving the Google reviews profile

and the reputation rating. That’s going to help them elevate in the map pack and stand out in the map

pack with the number of the sheer number of reviews and what the reviews actually say, right? Um,

they’re playing a reputation game. They’re playing a discovery game. It’s all about discovery. The

question is, am I more likely to get discovered using Tik TOK’s algorithm and creative content,

or am I more likely to get discovered trying to play in this game right here against companies that have

way more money than I do. They’ve been here way longer than I have. They have way bigger websites

than I can currently afford to create. You just have to look at that and be like, that’s not a game I

can win. So I’ve got to go play a different game. I’m not going to, I’m not going to play a game.

Like every card is stacked against me in this game right here. Unless I have a lot of money.

If I have a lot of money, I can go right. Look, let me, let me refresh this mold mitigation near me.

I got money. I got money. I’m right here. Where am I drawing? I’m right here tomorrow.

That’s why I said, when you build a website, you wake up the next day. What’s different? Nothing.

Nothing is different. You wake up the next week. What’s different? Nothing. Still sitting there.

Still has no traffic. You wake up a month later. What’s that? Nothing. Nothing’s still happening.

But with PPC, I get a little money together. PPC, I’m here tomorrow. I’m here tomorrow getting leads.

Right? Okay. Money though. That doesn’t work for the people who are like, oh, I don’t have any money.

I’m sorry. I don’t have a budget for that. That requires money to play that game.

And the people that have that money, guess what? They can afford a $5,000 website. They have the money.

It’s a money game. That’s all the context is. It’s a money game.

Okay. Google call ads are being phased out in 2025 and transitioning to RSA responsive search ad that final URL.

Is this a question though, Jeremy? I don’t see a question in here.

Okay. Let’s go to, uh, does a local coach in growth phase need a WordPress solution over something like landing pages on kit?

If so, can you explain how to best describe the advantage?

A local coach, like, I don’t, what kind of coach are you exactly?

Um, so I’ll give you an example. I, you know, uh, I coach softball, right?

And so my algorithm, my TikTok algorithm is very heavy with softball content. Right.

And I go and I see the same hitting coaches, for example, because obviously there’s a lot of details and intricacies in hitting.

Okay. And there’s a lot of hitting coaches.

And which ones am I going to find? Like I can go type in like hitting coach near me.

These are these hitting coaches. Like, are they even, uh, let’s do softball hitting coach near me.

And I’ll tell you how I looked for hitting coaches. Okay.

There’s two ways I found hitting coaches.

One of them, uh, was scrolling on TikTok and I, and I come, you come across hitting coaches and you watch them.

This is not something you can do necessarily on their website. Um, you watch them over and over and over again,

because you’re going to see multiple videos from them before you actually become interested.

It’s like the same person has to show up. This is a general marketing rule.

Like people got to see things five, six, seven times. And they’re like, Oh, I’m interested in this thing.

Oh, I know this person. Like I’m, I want to watch their videos. Right.

That takes repetition and the algorithm helps with that. Right.

There’s no website algorithm. That’s going to show your website seven times to the same person over the course of a week.

Right. TikTok will do that though. Instagram will do that though. Right.

These social media platforms will do that. And that’s the perfect kind of content to be creating.

If you want people to know, Hey, Hey, look, I’m good at what I’m doing. Like watch me.

I’m watch me work with these hitters. Okay. And so I’m seeing these over and over and over again.

That’s one way. And if I liked the hitting coach and they were in my area, I’d be like, dude, I will reach out.

I’m a DM. Do they need a website for anything? Like the next step for the next step to happen.

I want to hire you. Well, you have to go to my website. First of all, no, I’m going to DM them.

And I’m going to go, Hey, I want to do some, I want my daughter to do some hitting lessons with you.

What are the rates? Blah, blah, blah. We’re going to have a conversation like human beings are.

And then we’re going to come up with times and then we’re going to go to a location where they do their work.

Okay. And done deal. They don’t need a website. They don’t need a website. The entire transaction happened.

Website lists. Imagine that. Okay. I would call up a place like this. Okay. Which is a batting cages facility

and a training cages facility. This is what I actually did do. Call them up. And cause I needed a pitching

coach, not a hitting coach. I need a pitching coach for my daughter. I don’t know how to teach softball

pitching. I play baseball. I know how to throw a ball. I don’t know how to softball a ball. Okay.

Uh, the, the, you know, the whole, the whole, the whole deal that they do. Right. So I was like, I need, I need to

get her a pitching coach. So I was like, where do pitching coaches tend to hang out? I didn’t even go to Google.

I was like, I need to find a facility because they always have connections to pitching coaches. Right. And I can ask

them questions about the pitching coaches. They’re going to be like, well, we got three of them and I’ll be like, okay,

which one would be good for this level? Right. And now we’re having a conversation. This is details that I can’t,

it’s very difficult to either find these or deduce these by browsing websites. I don’t even think like

what softball hitting coach, this is a, what is this? This is a, uh, softball tutors, a directory.

Okay. Again, directory. What is this? A training facility. What is this? A training facility. What

like, these are facilities. You call the facility and you’re like, Hey, I need a coach. Right. So

this is how it works. And so if I wanted to be, first of all, if I wanted to be a, a pitching coach

or a hitting coach or whatever, one is you would go connect with a facility. That’s not like the idea

that I was like, well, you know what I really need. I need, I need a website that displays my, all of my,

uh, my pitching coaching accolades. And, um, and then what I’m going to do is I’m going to try to earn a

spot in the top 10, right? No. Why are you doing all that? Go get a connection with these facilities

and, and go start making content and go start building a brand and a following a community.

And yeah, like that’s going to pay off way sooner than like a, a, a, a $1,500 whipped up WordPress

website. Like just playing the wrong games. It’s not, this is not 2009. This is, this is not what we

should be doing. Uh, let’s see. Um, how can you approve a company’s? Oh, okay. This is actually

a good one right here. And before you take on a client. So the question is how can you improve a

company’s bad reputation or reviews? I, it’s not a game I want to play. It’s really not like if,

if someone’s coming to hire me and they’re like, we, we got the money. We want to do SEO. We want

to do PPC. We want to, we want to improve our rankings. We got the money we want to play. And I

Google them and they have a three-star average review and they got a lot of ones and a lot of twos

and a lot of, there’s a lot of problems. I just, I, it’s not a good fit. I, I move on.

Like that’s a, it’s a losing game. It’s a, it’s also like, it’s problems you can’t even fix. I can’t

fix that stuff typing on a keyboard. The only thing you could do is, is lie about it, which I’m not in

the business of doing. Okay. In order to fix that, you have to go into their operations and that’s not

what they’re hiring you for. Like you have to have an honest conversation and be like, look, we can’t,

we’re not going to make this work with that kind of review profile. Okay. And do I want to be in the

game of review? Uh, you know, uh, whatever they use that word for, for like fixing, fixing their

profile, fixing the, no, I’m, that’s not the game I want to play, dude. I want to find really good

businesses are doing really cool things. And, um, they just, and like the, the perfect kind of business

is not the super well-established blah, blah, blah business. It’s the business that did all the right

things to get to the point that they’re currently at and they have money. And they’re like, we haven’t

been able to play the SEO game, uh, up until this point. Right. Um, because we couldn’t afford it or

whatever, but now we can, or we haven’t really been able to play the PPC game the way we should be

playing it, but now we want to, and we have the money. Those are the kinds of, they recognize the

value. They have the money. They’re ready to go. Those are the, those are like, that’s like a perfect

kind of client. Right. Uh, and they, and they’re doing their actual business work to a high quality.

So they have the reputation to back it up. Um, this is, that’s the kind of a perfect client.

Okay. So there’s no point in having a central booking point for clients and a website. We have

found that the modern generation prefer not to ring and would prefer to make a booking online.

So again, it depends on the context of the situation. Like I said, if you’re getting all

this traffic and visibility and discovery from all these other channels and the website just is a means

to like, okay, it’s more convenient. Like we established this because it’s convenient for people

to fill out the form and contact us this way. They don’t need you for that. That’s the thing is like,

they’ve done all the hard work. They’ve already done all the discussion, like all the people have

discovered them and want to work with them. They’re just adding this little convenience thing.

That’s exactly what AI is going to, is going to step in and do for them. And so you could play that game.

I’m just telling you, I don’t think that game is going to survive another 18 months because you’re,

you, your job as an agency that wants to scale and survive and, and actually start finding projects

that are 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, whatever, or that people have the money to sign marketing retainers for

say, Hey, we’re going to do a, an $8,500 website or a $10,000 website. And that’s, you know,

pretty modest. But what we are going to do is we’re going to sign that PPC retainer and we’re going to

pay you thousands of dollars a month to manage our PPC campaigns that we’re willing to put tens of

thousands of dollars into potentially. Um, that’s, that’s, that would be another good, right? That’s

people you’re looking for where the website is of consequence. Like it is, you can look at the website

and go without that, we wouldn’t have had this growth that year. That’s what you’re looking to

build. Not, you’re not looking to build well, because the website exists. It’s a little bit

more convenient for people to contact us. That’s not the kinds of projects you’re looking for. Um,

you’re looking for the ones that require your expertise and your experience and technical skills

to pull off and make it work because not everybody can build PPC landing pages that have the right

layout and say the right things. And they target the right keywords in the right way with the right

budgets. And yet that’s skill. That’s skill. AI can’t do that yet. Okay. That’s skill.

You survive. If it’s just, well, I mean, I just need a, I just want to make it easier on people to

contact us. We just need a little landing page with a contact form. Okay. Like AI can whip that out.

You don’t want to be in that game. That’s not the business you want to play.

Okay. Uh, okay. But having a website, even just a one page website helps you rank in the map pack.

I can guarantee you can rank in the map pack without a one page AI spun up website. Even if it did help,

AI can do it. It’s again, it’s the, it’s not the kinds of projects you want to be involved in.

It is low level. It is, Hey, Wix can take care of that. Squarespace can take care. It’s not you. It’s,

it’s, it would be like, um, I got a scrape on my knee. Let me go find a brain surgeon or an ER doc

specialist. I don’t need them for this. I got band-aids in the cabinet. Like this is that’s,

and that’s the thing is like any, who can put on a band-aid, anybody find anybody with a pulse.

So they can come put the band. So that’s not the game you want to play. That’s a commodity game.

That’s not a, we’re going to build an agency around this and, and have a bright future game.

That’s what we have to recognize. That’s little band-aids just because it’s within our wheelhouse.

If it’s a little band-aid, you don’t want to be involved in it. It doesn’t require you.

And you’re not going to be able to build an agency around that that has any longevity.

Uh, let’s see. Do Google ads win? I have found that even though the ads win on the page fold,

if the website is poor, people move on down the page and find a site with good content.

Yes. Um, yeah. So if you want to play that game, let’s go talk about what, what makes that game work.

Uh, so here’s, here’s a sponsored restoration, local free mold removal estimate. So if I wanted

mold removal, here’s their little offer that they’re putting in front of us. Okay. Lots of people will

click on this. Lots of people. And immediately you see they are playing the game the right way.

So immediately we can tell if, if the ad sends the person to the homepage, they have no idea what

they’re doing. They have no idea what they’re doing. If they send it to a landing page that speaks to the

exact keyword that was searched for, has a direct offer, has a direct pathway to, Hey, like a call us,

call us now. Look at this call now, call now. Okay. Um, they’re talking about insurance companies.

They accept, look at this call, call, look at all these calls to action, right?

Mold, mold, mold, blah, blah, blah. Now I would say this is not fantastic. This is not like it’s,

and obviously you can’t really speak to this unless you see analytics. Now analytics could easily back

you up where it’s like, let me, Oh, Oh yeah. Sorry. Screen share. Okay. Sorry. Yeah.

This helps. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the pings.

You could hear the pings. My team’s always got my back. That’s why it’s so dangerous to stop sharing

and then have to reshare. So here’s restoration local. This is what we were looking at, right?

Not, not much money put into the actual design. Okay. It’s the money went into, and this is classic

where you’ll see this. It’s almost like they hired a PPC company to build the site or an SEO company to

build the site. So what you’re not going to see is beauty. You’re not going to see like an artist was

not involved in this. Okay. Like a designer was not really involved in this. This is technicians

in a specialty field, like PPC or SEO actually building the site. Okay. Um, so what you’re going

to see is the general strategy, but I would say like one, if I was like looking at improving this,

I would go reputation immediately when you, when you arrive. So right under this hero,

I’d go reputation or you could argue insurance and then reputation. I think insurance is very,

very important in this little, uh, offer kind of situation that they’re putting on here.

Um, because maybe not all these companies actually work with these insurance companies for you,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s kind of like roofing. Um, you, you want, you want companies

that have the teams available to talk to all these insurance companies, uh, and actually work the

deals for you. Um, so I, but I would move the reputation way higher. Um, and then I, I just,

you know, I always feel like these kinds of like, I mean, just it’s, I know a lot of people don’t care

about this kind of stuff, but I just, I, I think we could do a way better job of converting. If we

just had a little bit better layout, better copy, like this is just kind of feels to me. And I guess

cause I’m in the industry. So like, I may be no better than a rando off the street, but like,

this is just so lazy to me. It’s just absolute poor. It’s dripping with laziness. It was, they check

the boxes that they were supposed to check and they’re running the ads to it. And if it works,

it works and they might make some small adjustments here and there. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s landing

page game all day long, which means by the way, let’s be very clear on this behind the scenes here.

What’s going on in the PPC account. There’s probably a dozen or more campaigns running.

They’re targeting specific areas. They’re targeting specific keywords. Every landing page needs to,

you need like per keyword. Okay. So if you have like mold removal and then you’re doing a mold

mitigation or, or a, that’s probably a little too close together, but there’s probably, well,

like look up here. Okay. So let’s say they’re doing a PPC campaign for water damage. Uh, let’s say

they’re doing one for fire damage. Let’s say they’re doing mold removal, biohazard cleanup. These are all

campaigns, PPC. They’re all separate campaigns targeting separate keywords. They all need their own

landing pages. And then they could even be broken down by service area, which needs to reference the

service area in the landing page. And now we’re getting into potential logic inside of the template.

And that’s going to start building out more costs. And this is not like, there is tens of thousands

of dollars being put into this effort. This is nowhere near a sub $5,000 budget effort. Okay. It’s just not

possible in any way, shape or form. Uh, so it’s just, you can’t, if you don’t have the money, you can’t play

this game period. End of story. Come back later. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I’m giving you the

honest truth. So you can go put the money into something that will actually work for you. Um,

let’s see. Is it a good idea to look for businesses near me that have lots of reviews, but don’t have a

website or a good website and then pitch them my services? It depends on what your, so what I’ve said

agencies need to do is they need to sell web design and web development plus some sort of accelerant.

What is an accelerant? Some sort of expertise in marketing, whether it be PPC, SEO, something

involving social media, um, any number of other digital PR. Okay. Uh, consultancy around what the

business needs to do on these various channels that can, you could just be a consultant in these areas.

Hey, for your business, I’m going to put together a YouTube strategy for you. And I’m going to tell

you exactly how to, how to execute on it. But again, let’s use some social media. Let’s say,

let’s say we’re going to use YouTube as an example. There’s two routes that a company can go

for the most part with something like YouTube or even TikTok, put TikTok in that category,

help put Instagram in that category. They’re either going to do it themselves in which you have to get

a busy business owner to sign up for, yeah, I’ll do TikTok every day. Or like, do you got a fucking

niece, a nephew, somebody that could do like, we’re going to have to find somebody to put in that effort

because if they were going to hire you, like just what does it take to hire a social, a brand,

like an agency to run a social media account the right way? It is so insanely expensive to do it the

right way because what connects with people do the, do the bullshit. Oh, we’re going to post on your

Facebook page three times a week. That’s more money. You’re just lighting on fire. You’re just lighting

that money up. That does nothing. That does absolutely nothing. What connects with people? I told you what

connects when I’m scrolling TikTok and I see knock, knock, knock. Hey, we’re a local landscaping company.

I noticed your yard is just completely overgrown. You got a damn forest going on over. The Amazon is in

your front yard. Uh, and, and is it cause you can’t afford it? Is you can’t what, which, and, and, and the

guy who opens the door is 99 years old, right? Probably is like, he just got out of a coffin.

He’s like fitting himself for it. And yeah, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. My yard’s out of control. Oh,

we’re going to do it for you. Don’t worry, sir. We’re going to, we’re going to take care of it for

you. They get it all together. We are watching. And like, now the guy’s crying. Nobody’s ever done

this nice thing for, Oh my God. You’re going to hire, who’s going to create that content other than that

guy running that company. Who’s going to create that content. Now that kind of content does get

created for brands. You know who it gets created for Nike, Adidas, all the millions of dollars that

they go, Hey, we, we need a campaign. We need a, we need a concept. We, okay. We can execute on this

for, they’re going to hire actors. They’re going to hire, it is going to be a whole production.

That’s the only other way you can do that. You either find somebody that has the time and talent

or you have a gazillion dollars. There’s really not much in between. Okay. Otherwise your,

your content is going to fall flat. It’s going to, it’s not going to connect with people. It’s

obviously not going to be authentic. It’s not, it’s just not going to work. It’s not how social media

works. It’s not what people are looking for on social media. Right? So what you can do is you can

be the advisor who comes in and knows, Hey, here’s, here’s the campaign that I would go with. Now you’re

going to have to execute it yourself. Okay. Uh, because there’s nobody around to execute it for you.

And you don’t have gazillions of dollars. So, but what I will do is I will tell you

how to connect with your local audience on these platforms. I will tell you exactly what to do.

And then it’s up to you to execute the plan. And by the way, the only time you would even

agree to be the consultant in that capacity, I would do some tests. I was like, Hey, I want you to get

out your phone. You don’t need any equipment for this. I want you to whip out your phone. I want you to

record some videos and I want you to send them to me. And I’m going to coach you on this a little bit.

We’re going to say this, this would be like the phase one. Like, is it even possible for you,

John Bob, the business owner to do this on social media? I’m going to, I’m going to charge you

$1,500. You’re going to send me three videos. I’m going to coach you on how to improve these videos.

And I’m going to also come up with a concept that you can execute on in the videos that you’re going

to create. But first I need to know, what do you even look like on camera? What do you, what,

like, can you connect at all? Okay. And so we’re going to, he’s going to pay. This is going to be

the intro to the consultancy. And then he’s going to send me the three videos and I’m immediately

going to go, all right, this guy’s got promise. Like we can work with this guy. Or I’m like,

I don’t see Jim Bob ever being able to do this. So I’m just going to go back and tell him, I’m going to,

Hey, I don’t think it’s going to work with you necessarily. Do you have a nephew? Do you have a

cousin? Do you have a long lost brother? You have somebody that can step in and do this for your

company who you would maybe put on salary or something like that. And now we have to have a

discussion. Is that even a possibility? Is it because you can’t fake it and you can’t manufacture

it out of thin air. It’s just, they’re either, they can either do it or they can’t do it. Okay. And we,

if they can’t do it, we got to look at a different Avenue, right? It’s not a game we can win.

Got to go play a different game. All right. So like all of these avenues, do you know how many

agencies tell clients day in and day out, we’ll run your social media, just pay $3,500 a month.

We’ll, we’ll run your social media accounts. And they just, every single month, you might as well

take that $3,500 every single month. Give me that stack of cash and I will just light it on fire for

you. And we can all just watch it burn together. And that will be way more entertaining than pretending

that this bullshit we’re doing on your social media accounts every single month is moving

any sort of needle. It ain’t, it ain’t moving any needle. Nobody paying attention to any of that

content. And you can go to their pages and profiles. Oh, congratulations. You’re up to, you’re up to 375

followers and you got 14 likes and seven of them are prawn bots, but you know, it, it is what it is.

We’re making progress. I’m not putting money in that game. I’m not putting money in that game at all.

Okay. Uh, let’s see, see, see, see, see. So PPC is the answer to the sub 5,000 site needing results.

It’s not because you, you have to have way more than that to run PPC campaigns. So, um, yeah, you,

you still have to have that. That’s a money game. You have to have the money to play that game.

Okay. You started with the problem of how do you help clients who have a sub $5,000 website budget

right now? What is the service offer for that? The whole context of the argument is the way you help

them is you tell them the truth that you cannot afford a website right now. You can’t afford the

game that you think you want to play. You could have played that game in 2010. It’s not 2010 though.

It’s 2025 and that ship has sailed and you can’t afford to play that game. So what I’m going to

advise you to do is I’m going to advise you to ignore everybody who tells you that you can play

this game for $3,500 or $2,500 or $1,500. I’m going to tell you to ignore them. I’m going to tell you to

protect that cash. I’m going to tell you to go do X, Y, and Z activity. And these could be offline

activities. They can, it’s going to depend on the business. Every, every niche, every industry,

they’ve got channels that we know work and channels that don’t work so well and what the budgets are

to play with those channels and yada, yada, yada. But I’m immediately going to go from salesman

to consultant, just like if it was my mother, my mother, my brother-in-law, my best friend.

And I’m going to say, do not burn your money on that right now. Absolutely go make a free Yelp

listing. Absolutely go make a free Google listing. Absolutely go make a free sure critic risk listing

or whatever, whatever directories are in your industry. Okay. For sure. Go make those. Okay.

But then I want you to turn your time and attention to these other avenues that we can actually win at.

And you’re going to use these revenue, these avenues to build your reputation.

And that reputation is going to feed right back into those directories that we just created. Okay.

Like I’m talking about, if we’re starting from scratch, if we’re starting from scratch,

this is the game that we’re going to advise them to play. Not burn $3,500 on a website that is

absolutely just going to sit there and do nothing and isn’t going to get you any closer to any,

you’re going to be on page 576 until you magically find some money to do PPC.

Like even SEO, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. You got it. Like the first thing I told every

SEO client is don’t expect anything for six months. Like at least that, like you go, there’s a runway.

It’s like a Boeing 747 can’t take off in 10 feet. It’s just, it’s not physically possible.

Everybody has to acknowledge that a Boeing 747 requires a specific length runway in order to get

into the air and there’s no cheating it and there’s no way around it. There’s just accepting reality.

Okay. Um, and so, yeah, this is, you have to help them with other avenues. And by the way,

you might not have to do anything with those avenues. It is literally like, I can’t help you right now

with the work that I do. I would advise you to go do these things. And then when those start to work

and take hold, please come back to me and we’ll talk about the next steps. I’m not, you can’t be like,

well, we got to sell them something, Kevin. No, we don’t. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not

what we’re in the business of doing. We’re in the business of selling things to the right people.

We’re not in the business of selling anything to anyone. That’s, you have to get out of that mode.

I want to watch those people walk away. Thank, and they’re going to thank, thank you for not selling

me something I clearly did not need and could not use at the time. That is the feeling that they are

going to get. That’s the feeling we want them to have because that’s the truth.

Plain and simple. And the thing is, is there’s a lot of agencies who are, oh, Kevin, I need that

money. I need that money. Okay. Do you need it bad enough to lie to them? Do you need it bad enough

to tell them a fairy tale about what’s going to happen with this website that they’re going to spend

$3,500 on and they don’t have any other money to put into it? How bad do you need it? And by the way,

you only need it, need it, need it. Cause you’ve been playing in the sub 5,000 market for far too

long. You’re living project to project. We got to get you out of that. What is the way out of that?

The word no is the way out of that. No, you’re not a good fit. No, you’re not a good fit. Oh,

you have money and you were ready to play the game. Yes. I’m saying yes to you. And immediately I’m not

project to project anymore. I got a client has actual money. And you know what? I couldn’t get that

client. If I said yes, yes to the first two that I should have said no to this client comes along,

they’re ready to go. Here’s what happens. It’s either like, ah, I’m overloaded. Like I, I don’t

know how I’m going to take that on work. Like, let me, let me finish up these projects and then,

and then I’ll be able to take, no, they’re gone. That’s opportunities gone. Or you go, yeah, yeah,

we could take you now. You lied to them. Yeah, yeah, we could take you now. And then, so you,

you get the first check cashed in and then what do you do? You fail to deliver. You fail to hit the

timelines because you’re overloaded. You’re maxed out because you got these other projects, these,

these, these, uh, sub 5,000 projects. Okay. Or another route that I’ve seen time and time again,

you take on the money client and you, you fuck over the two sub $5,000 clients. You’re like, I mean,

I got bills to pay. I gotta, I gotta focus on this money client right here. And then now they’re without a

provider and now their deadlines are not, their promises are not getting delivered on because you

can’t escape economics. This is basic economics. This is the, like, do we see that there’s an epidemic

of this in the project, the project, this is why I’ve always said, by the way, that it is better for

clients to spend more money. It is in their best interest to pay you $10,000 instead of $5,000.

Why? Because of risk, because of runway. If they pay you $5,000 and you run out of money and now

you’re hunting down other clients and you’re forgetting about them, that doesn’t do them any

damn good. They’re better off paying you 10 and you’re still here because you didn’t run out of

money yet. That is a better outcome for them. They are better off spending 10,000 versus five.

You can’t, you can’t escape economics. If the amount of work is more than the $5,000,

your runway is going to run out and your Boeing 747 is going to nosedive into the ground and you’re

going to kill everybody on board. Quit doing that. Okay. All right. I think we get, we get the point.

We should get the point by now. Let’s go ahead and put this one in the books. We’ll do last,

last little chat review here. It’s been two hours. I went over time once again. Okay. Let’s see.

A lot of questions still coming in. I like, I like how Americans pronounce Adidas compared to

Germans. Uh, is it, uh, Adidas? What, what is the, what is the, uh, someone type the pronunciation.

Repairs put Q. Okay. So

Some of the chat is funny. I always know when it’s ding, ding, ding, ding, like the, the, the,

the notifications are just going wild. I know something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.

All right. Here’s what I’m going to do because, um, if you’re still here, which there’s like 250

now. Okay. It’s dropping now. Obviously we’re, we’re wrapping up. Okay. But if you’re still here,

because I can’t read the chat after the fact it’s, and it’s so hard to keep up with it. Um,

Kevin streams have a self-regulating thermostat set to two hours. Yeah. Uh, that’s when I,

that’s when I started like, okay, I can’t drive the point home. The, the horse is as dead as it’s going to

get. Um, I’ll give it a few extra wax, but it’s, it’s, it’s as dead as it’s going to get. Uh,

go to the comments area, not the chat, go to the comments area and just give me your final thoughts

on the, on the, uh, the general premise, the, the, the, the arguments. Okay. What, what side of the

fence are you on? Are you in general agreement, general disagreement, total agreement, total

disagreement? Like, where are you? I can’t read them in the chat. It’s just going to get lost.

Just go to the comments section and leave it as a comment on the video. Cause I would like to know

where everybody stands on this stuff. You can also go to my Facebook post about this and drop the

comments there. You can go to my X post about this and drop the comments there. There’s going to be a

whole debate tomorrow, WP town hall, where we’ll get into this with a live, another live human being

that claims to have the finest rebuttals in the land. Okay. We’ll see if they’re up to the task.

Uh, but that’s it. Love you guys. Hopefully you got, you know, some sort of insight and value out of

this. I’ll be back very soon. Peace.

Thanks.

Thank you.