Clarence Fisher: Hey, what's up? Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I am Clarence Fisher, your host. Oh, no, she di'int! . Yes, she di'int! . Do you ever wonder what people say about you and your business online? Of course you do, and you should. You need to know about people's comments so you can address them promptly, whether it's a positive review on Google or a negative tweet, but with so many platforms out there, how can you keep track of everything? The answer is to create a system for monitoring what people are saying about you and your business online. Doing this allows you to quickly and easily see what people are saying and respond accordingly. How do you create such a system? You're in luck. I'm going to show you how when we return.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses used to dominate their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: Okay, let's get started about this. This system for monitoring what people are saying about you and your business online. It's gonna be easier than you think and harder than you thought. . Wooh. That was smooth, huh? Okay. Number one, claim your business listings. I don't know how many times I have to tell you this. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Shout out to Anj Baker in Florida who made, who left us a comment on a review, I think it was iTunes, and said, Hey, we're listening out in Florida and love your show. Thank you, Thank you, Anj, I love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Everybody be like Anj and leave us a great review. Anyway, how to give you a shoutout salute to you. Back to our scheduled programming. Claim your business listings. Okay. As I was saying before, I don't know how many times they're gonna say this, but the first step is to claim your business listings on major directories and review sites like, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google Business Profile, formally Google My Business, and Angie's List.

Clarence Fisher: This is going to allow you to respond directly to reviews and show up and search results when people are looking for businesses like yours. Number two, this one, it surprises me that more people don't know about this, but it's Google Alerts. Set up a Google alert. You wanna go to alerts.google.com. This is an OG way of, uh, knowing what people are saying about you, because when you set up an alert, you wanna set up alerts for your business name and your name. Any owners in a C level, executives, anybody who of , I don't wanna say any importance because everybody in your business is important, but I mean, anybody who's public facing, I'll put it like that. Anybody who is public facing, you want to create a Google alert for them so that when some, when someone types in anything online and mentions that name, that you will get an alert.

Clarence Fisher: You can say, Hey, send me alerts every day. That's probably a lot you can say every week, or you can say every month. When I very first started, I wanted every day to know about Clarence Fishers, and then I finally, I, uh, realized a lot of Clarence Fishers were dying . So, uh, I was like, you know, this is a little, I don't wanna know that. I don't wanna know about my, be reminded of my mortality every day. So I moved it to every week, and now I just get a digest every month. And it gives me things like when a blog, when one of these podcasts post, when a blog post that I write posts, somebody mentions me and somewhere else it'll, you know, say, Hey, you're being mentioned here. And then every now and then I do get a Clarence Fisher and I try to look and see like how old they were when they passed, and, you know, and I'm trying to beat that number.

Clarence Fisher: All right, Number three is monitor social media. Of course you wanna do this. So in addition of setting to, uh, setting up Google alerts, you wanna monitor social media for mentions of you and your business. You can do this manually by going to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram searches, use your business name, use any relevant keywords, or you can make things a little easier by using tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, which they allow you to set up keyword searches and view all the mentions in one place. So could be, you know, depending on how much action you you take on social media, it could be, could be worth it. Number four, respond quickly and appropriately. You gotta be swift. You have to be swift, Okay? Once you start receiving notifications about what's being said about your business online, don't just don't say, Mm, that's nice.

Clarence Fisher: Ah, you say no, see d and you respond quickly. But don't respond with that attitude though. Here's, you know, you wanna just sit back, relax, take a deep breath and ask yourself, I don't really know what was going on in that person's life at the moment that they decided to write all that nonsense about me. All that untrue nonsense. You don't know what was going on in your life, but don't respond too quickly, I guess is what I'm saying. If it's a negative review and we've got all kind of episodes about how to respond to a bad review, you, you can do a search, how to respond to bad reviews, and we even give you some templates for that. But respond, don't wait until next week, but you don't have to respond absolutely immediately. If it's a positive mention, thank the person for their kind words and invite them to contact you if they have any more questions.

Clarence Fisher: If it's a negative mention, take the conversation offline. If you possibly can get your butt offline, no, take the conversation offline. Just say, you know, Hey man, we're super sorry that you've experienced that, This was your experience. That is not indicative of, you know, how we do business. You know what? Let's put a link in the show notes to the review response templates. Okay? You can click there and we've got probably a hundred over a hundred variations of templates that you can use for both good and bad review responses. So click that and just remember that you're not really responding to the person who's leaving the bad review. You're responding to the people who are reading that, the people who aren't doing business with you yet. Those are the people you're responding to. But either way, by setting up a system for monitoring your businesses online reputation, you can quickly and easily see when people are talking about you, good or bad, this is going to allow you to take appropriate action and maintain a positive reputation for you and your business. Okay? You got it? Did you pick up what I put down? I hope so. That's going to be it for today. If you like this episode, do me a favor, share it on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter #ClarenceFisher, #LocalMarketMonopoly, #owntheblock. Rate us on iTunes and do all that good stuff, Okay? Most of all, put what I shared with you today in use and let us know about it. Till then, until next week, go do what you gotta do in order to own the block. I'll see ya.

Outro: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ClarenceFisher.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I am Clarence Fisher, your host, and dingdong. Just like Mr. Roger's neighborhood. We have returning guest today, Mr. Russ Knight. By the way, Russ has the fifth-highest grossing. So I say highest grossing, the top of the top five podcasts in Local Market Monopoly history, Russ is number five. His very first visit here is how he built a thriving business spreading the, uh, what is it? Spreading goodness actually. Just go to Local Market Monopoly, search for Russ Knight and listen to the first episode that we did together. It is a great one, and today was a great one as well. Russ is so full of knowledge and has a heart to help everyone that he comes in contact with. So we talk about, but don't get it twisted. He's pretty shrewd.. So we're, today we're talking about the shrewdest LinkedIn marketing moves that you can make not only in 2023, but in years to come from someone who actually uses it real world LinkedIn advice.

Clarence Fisher: He's gonna talk about how to appear trustworthy and believable. When I had that bullet point, I thought, Do you wanna appear trustworthy and believable when you're not? No, that's not what we're saying. We're just saying how to make you appear even more trustworthy. And he's gonna show you a trick that if you have kind of a spotty work history because of things that have been going on, you've been unemployed, kind of in between jobs. There's a specific tactic that he teaches that is awesome. I mean, it blew me away. And then the one thing that you need to do, if you're building your brand to be a leader on LinkedIn, this one thing you have to do. And unless you own the company you work for, he's gonna share you something that you must do with your personal LinkedIn profile. It's all coming out. Put to iPhone awaiy. Put it in your pocket and, uh, we'll be right back with Russ Knight.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses used to dominate their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: All right, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. Hey, Russ, are you there, sir?

Russ Knight: I am.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome, awesome. Hey, man, thanks for taking the time out and joining me. Today, as we were talking, I guess it was about, I don't know, a week ago, a couple of weeks ago about LinkedIn and, and you know, how it, how it fits with you. And I thought, Man, it would be so awesome to have on as my guest here, someone who kind of a real life business owner, success around the town who is using LinkedIn and find out kind of how you use it and, and some of the things that you do to make it work for you. So thanks for, thanks for joining me today.

Russ Knight: You bet, Clarence. I'm looking forward to it. This is something that I've yammered about for a long time from, I got on LinkedIn back when the logo was in black and white. Okay. Maybe never really was, but I, that's my joke about being old. And so anyway, Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: I'm like, you can only get on LinkedIn after 10:00 PM Right, .

Russ Knight: Yeah, exactly. I joined, Yeah. And then the planes come on and when they go off the air. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, I got on LinkedIn, like most people, I got on in the midst of a job search and somebody said, Hey, you need to do this. And it is a platform that is useful, but it changes pretty regularly on purpose as they work to modify, make it more relevant and helpful. And so I just thought, man, as we're talking about this, I see some things that have changed recently that might relate to different people depending on how they are approaching LinkedIn.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, yeah. How, how, what, what are you seeing out there?

Russ Knight: So, my thought first is, there are some folks who are gonna be intimidated and say, Oh, I'm not, I'm not really great at this and I don't know where to begin. First thought is, you've gotta kind of come up with a game plan to say, what is your, what are you doing with LinkedIn? What's the point here? Are you just trying to grow connections and to have a higher headcount? Because I'm telling you that that doesn't do much for me, and I'm, I, there's no badge that I get to wear because I have a certain number of connections and it doesn't benefit me. If I'm consistently publishing good content to help my network, that that's helpful to have a wider reach. But my first goal is to keep track of my network, the people I actually know. So when a friend approaches me and says, Hey, do you know someone at Unit Corporation at St. Francis Hospital?

Russ Knight: I can say, Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact, and make a real good connection instead of being, I'm connected to that person, but I don't really know what their deal is. So, you know, we've all had those kinds of conversations and I just, I hate that I would much rather really know somebody. So once I do make a connection, I try to reach out and say, Hey, tell me, what problem do you solve for people? How can we help each other? So I think going to, from the approach, beginning with the point of how can I help people really with very little expectation of them doing something for you? Because if you come at it with, I need you to read all my stuff and subscribe to my newsletter, and by my book and all of that, I think it's smarmy or you, we've all been approached and we all hate the fact that as soon as you connect with somebody, first thing they're doing is knocking on your inbox, on knocking on your door, asking to grab 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever.

Russ Knight: And it's, it may or may not be relevant. And even if it isn't is relevant, that's a weird way to start. So right to begin with a conversation or, Hey man, what are you about? How can I help you? What are you looking for? So some people are looking to broadcast their expertise in hopes that someone might hire them or fund their brilliance. Others are looking to just engage with people who think like they do or think differently. Less and less I'm seeing people that wanna connect with people that think differently, , but, uh, that's our culture. And, uh, some people are looking to connect with folks in a particular industry or in my particular geography or a future geography if they're planning to make a move. So if somebody's planning on moving to another metropolitan area, they might start specifically making contact on LinkedIn with that end in mind.

Russ Knight: So that's kind of the beginning, is to just start with your goal and say, Hey, what am I trying to get out of this? A lot of people are saying, Hey, I'm not looking for a job. This is a waste of time. Well, not really, depending on what you're doing, I think it's always good to connect with people and to, for me, I've built my world network as being a connector. So if somebody is trying to make a connection for a job search, for a lot of reasons. I wanna be able to be that conduit that, that puts people together. Cause I think I can benefit both people when I get to do that. And that gets me excited.

Clarence Fisher: So you're starting,

Russ Knight: That's kinda the first point.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. All right. Great, great. Starting with the end in mind here, like why am I starting, why am I, I really like the fact that you said add value always, but that's kind of, that's kind of your, your. But for sure on LinkedIn, I, I think, you know, adding value is always great, but okay, so we've got that step and then what's next?

Russ Knight: So I would say everybody, you know, everybody's got a different take. Like, Oh, you need to do this and this and update your photo and all these things. First pass, let's take a, let's just view it like a human look at your own profile and say, Would you connect with you? That's how do other people see me? What do you offer that would make someone want to connect with you? Honest truth is most profiles suck. There is so much more that you can do to communicate what you're about. So one of my particular things is coming at this, coming to LinkedIn, primarily thinking about it for job seekers. I've been through more job change than any other three people I know, and it sucks. And I wanna help people who are dealing with that. So one thing that I have done is on my profile, the first job you see on my history is actually my real professional summary.

Russ Knight: It begins from the, the month that I graduated college in June of 93, 1993, to be clear. And so encompasses everything I've done. And the reason that I do that, it looks like it's its own job. The reason I do that is because my work history prior to Christian Brothers has been spotty. It's, I've bounced around, I've had some gaps, I've had some different things. So in order to kind of cover up the fact that I've had stints of two years here, five years here, etcetera. I have one job that says, this is the summary of Russ Knight. And so I think that that helps people understand kind of who I am and what I'm about. And that may be helpful for somebody else. And I got that tip from somebody else who, it was a professional coach for folks that are in job transition. And I just thought it was really good. And it just helps tell your story the way you wanna tell it.

Clarence Fisher: Yes, that's great. That's great.

Russ Knight: Another one is most, I think they say, I don't know, people believe you 64% more when you use a statistic. And so 99% of people don't post content on LinkedIn. I don't know if that number's actually true. I saw it the other day. It's probably about right that because the, the vast majority of people don't post content. And those that do, the majority of them, from my perspective, all they do is post content. They don't interact. And so the important thing about this is, if you're trying to build your brand as a helper, as an expert, as a connector, as an industry leader, you put your good content out there. And then if somebody comments, asks a question, counters your argues with you, you've got to engage. That's the whole point, is to just get involved. And I think one thing that folks miss, if they're intentionally posting content on LinkedIn, the piece that they miss is to go and comment on other people's stuff.

Russ Knight: You see a poll that you like, or that's interesting to you, vote and comment. You see a post from somebody that is a leader of a Fox, somebody that a lot of folks are paying attention to, Daniel Pink or Ariana Huffington comment on their stuff. And you'll be surprised to see the number of views of your profile from other people who say, Hey, that was a thoughtful comment, or interesting. I'd like to, I wonder why they're involved, what their deal is. So I just think most people view it as a broadcast mechanism these days. And it's, I just think that's acting like a sociopath. You wouldn't do that in any other environment. So why do it here? Respond in getting involved. You're putting that content out there to get a response when you get it, engage, follow up, have a conversation with that person.

Russ Knight: So another new thing that I've seen over the past year, 18 months, that's probably been longer, but that's just from my perspective, is the fact that folks are using polls. So a way to say, Hey, what are the biggest drivers for you here in these last four months of your calendar year that are gonna help you move the needle for your business? Is it you need more customers, you need more profitable business? You need whatever the metric is, and give people a few choices and let them vote. And then to begin to engage a conversation with folks about whatever's on your mind. So I'm in the midst of thinking about goal setting and projections for next year. So thinking about a lot of things, I, I'll probably end up with several questions that I want to put out there to just engage people, see what they have to say.

Russ Knight: And again, sometimes you get comments from knuckleheads or people who say, Oh, I totally agree with you, come on, give me something more than that. Please don't comment with nothing. Add some value when you do. So I regularly, so next step, I guess, and I feel like I'm on a monologue here, but so the thing that I see is if I get, if I accepted all the connection requests I get, I would eventually fill up and max out whatever LinkedIn says is the high number that you can have. Cause there is a number, and I don't remember what it is these days, if it's 12,000 or 15,000, but if you took every request from people as an auto repair shop, if I took every request from people from China and Pakistan and everywhere else that are trying to sell the auto parts, my network is full.

Russ Knight: I don't know those people. I'm not gonna do business with them. It doesn't make sense to accept all those connection requests. So for me, I set my own standards, and it's a guideline. It's not a, it's not a contract in blood, but it's just generally a guideline to say first and foremost, can I help this person when I get a request, I get a lot of requests from job seekers since I talk about that a lot. Usually I take that request regardless of where they are. Now, in some cases I get requests from people out of the country that are clearly looking for connections in the US to help them sponsor a visa or something like that. Not interested in that, not a fit. Usually if the person is local to me in salsa, I usually take that connection because we probably have crossed paths or who knows.

Russ Knight: But generally I'll take that connection. Another one that I, I use as a filter is if their profile says they're an independent consultant, to me that means they're usually selling something related to multi-level marketing. And I'm not gonna accept that. I've had people connect with me then approach connections in my network saying they know me and that I referred them. And that's no good. And so I am a little bit more cautious when somebody says independent consultant, and it looks like they're just looking to sell whatever is the latest thing. So unfortunately that bridge has been burned for me. But, and certainly I'm connected to people that do that, but as a rule, as I'm looking at that and filtering, I typically say no, that's my standard. I'm not telling anybody else how to do it. I'm just explaining kind of where my guardrails are and how I approach it.

Russ Knight: Next one is, are they somebody I might hire? Are they associated with my current or former employers or companies in the industry that I'm a part of? I'll probably take that connection. And those are the kinds of people too that I'm looking for to target to say, Hey, I wanna reach out and add them to my network. So to engage conversation. So like I said, that's my particular set of standards. I violate that occasionally just for whatever reason. But I would say set your own standard and decide for yourself what makes sense for you. How do you, it goes back to that first question of what your goal is for LinkedIn and so start there. So I don't know any questions about any of that so far? Did it trigger any thoughts for you, Clarence?

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Are you, how often are you posting content or are you posting content?

Russ Knight: If I was smart and intentional, I would be doing that about weekly. For me, I know some people who post daily and that's their thing. Others might say, Hey, I'm gonna put up post once a month, whether it needs it or not. It really depends on how, again, how you are approaching this and saying, I'm gonna manage this intentionally. And you know, a lot of times what happens is the beginning of the year, just like the gym memberships skyrocket, folks often will say, Hey, I'm gonna get more active on LinkedIn. Well, this is a time, the best time to plant tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today. This is just an investment in your network and people, you know, people you can help. And so it's always worthwhile to say, Okay, I'm gonna be intentional, but I don't post as often as I should. I even have a few videos about automotive repair and maintenance just for the purpose of helping people that I kind of have in my queue that I could post. I just haven't been intentional about that. The shop has been super busy, thank God it has been wonderful. We've got a lot going on. I don't need to do anything to drive and, and draw more vehicles, more cars to the shop. You know, we can always take more, but it's not something that, it's really high on my priority list.

Clarence Fisher: So that things.

Russ Knight: I need to do

Clarence Fisher: So that, that brings up, because I know that a lot of people wanna be in your, in your orbit, so I'm sure you get a ton of requests and you walk us through kind of how you vet those. Are you reaching out to anyone on LinkedIn yourself?

Russ Knight: You bet. Absolutely. I see people that are people from the industry. I occasionally will see somebody who commented on a group post or somebody else's post that I thought was interesting or worthwhile and reasonable to reach out to. So I think that you're just, as you're going through that, occasionally you're gonna run into people that you ought to connect with. And for me, I'm always finding more and more people that are associated with our brand with, you know, we're a franchise brand of Christian Brothers Automotive, and so there's tons of people that are joining shops all over the country oor starting at the home office. And so I connect with those folks there. There's just a myriad of people that I think are, it's helpful to continue to grow and engage. I think I would be smarter. I need to be more intentional about posting regularly with whatever that would be.

Russ Knight: And so another question that some folks struggle with is, what do I post? Man, I would say, what's the big, what's your, the big rock you're trying to, to deal with this week or this month? What are you thinking about? Ask a question, put it out there. Or post a link to an article that you use to help you put something together. Or there's always something going on where you can engage and draw others. You don't have to answer something. You can always, you can ask something to begin a conversation and say, What's a reasonable growth rate based on these factors for me to anticipate going forward? How can we improve our profitability without cutting headcount? This is where we are, this is what we're thinking of, This is what I'm thinking about. So it just depends. There's always, you can always grab articles from sources that you like, things that strike your interest.

Russ Knight: I would encourage you to stay away from politics if that's not your job. If you work for a campaign or work for, in a congressional office or something, that's your business. So I can understand it's okay to post there. However, if I'm posting in support of my candidate or my viewpoint, all I'm gonna do is hack off about half the people who see that. So if your job isn't political, in my opinion, stay away from politics. So I think that the best way to do this, is to just look through LinkedIn, open it up and start making notes about the profiles that you see, that you think are interesting. And then drill into those and say, what is it about these individually that are interesting to me? And then start trying to see if you can see the trends of the 10 or 12 profiles that you chose and say, What is it about these people that made me take note of their profile. And so then emulate those things just so that you're doing the things that would attract your eye. So if you see a lot of people who are publishing good content or just sharing articles from other people, man, and you like that, do that. If you think it's, if you like the folks that send sales messages as soon as they connect and you think that that's a great way to sell, don't do that. Just, just don't.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, I think I need to like LinkedIn. I need to update mine as well. I mean, and use like the services page to, you know, list out some of the services that we do. I've been, I've got test some testimonials up there and stuff like that. But, you know, I think I definitely flesh out that profile. Where I get stuck is accepting connections. I'm a super, super, it's crazy man. I'm, you know, I'm a super private guy.

Russ Knight: Yes.

Clarence Fisher: So the connections things kinda, and I've been burnt, like you, it's like you accept the connection and then like 30 seconds later it's, Hey, quick here to schedule a meeting so that I can, and I'm like, uh, wow. You have no idea how long, how much it took me to click connect on the , you know?

Russ Knight: Right.

Clarence Fisher: So, yeah. Anything else,

Russ Knight: Honestly. Yeah,

Russ Knight: Yeah. Clarence, I would say right at that point, it's okay to take a risk and accept a connection, but it's also okay to go in and break that connection. Oh yeah. I used to try to coach, I, I used to try to say, I'm gonna help people help the world one person at a time and respond to them and say, This is awful. I don't want to talk to you.

Clarence Fisher: Right.

Russ Knight: And the way that you're approaching me is ridiculous. Change your approach. I don't try to coach people on that anymore. If somebody comes at me as soon as we make a connection and they're like, Oh, let's go grab coffee, or let's go without any pretext of reason or mutual connection or anything. And it's immediately they go into sales pitch mode, I'm not gonna respond. I'm just gonna go back in and break the connection.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. I do that too.

Russ Knight: It's easy to do that too. You just go to your connections and remove connection. You can also mute people who you wanna stay connected to that post. Maybe for me, I see people posting too much political stuff, but I, I still wanna stay connected to them. I'll mute them so I don't see their stuff coming up in my profile. So the other thing we talked about when we met is the making sure that your photo is up to date. If you had hair when, when you took that photo, and you don't now man, update it. If it's, if you were, whatever the reason is, it's always worthwhile to go ahead and update your, your profile. It doesn't have to be a professional picture. Next time I don't suit and tie very often, but occasionally when I do, I'll try to snap a picture more appropriate for LinkedIn than the typical golf shirt that I wear.

Russ Knight: But the other one is you can customize your public profile URL. So this is your a link essentially that you can use on a resume, on a business card at the, on your email signature. It's in the contact info section of your profile. So if you go to or search for public profile URL, if your URL there has a bunch of random numbers and letters at the end of it, like after your name, you haven't updated your profile. So mine is linkedin.com/n/KnightRuss, K N I G H T R U S S. And I did that probably as soon as that came out pretty quickly. But Russ Knight was already taken by that time for whatever reason. So you might struggle finding one that matches your name. So if you are somebody who's got your feet cemented to the town that you're in, like if I was, I said I could do Russ.Knight.Tulsa Or something like that, or whatever it is. If you own your own company or you have your kind of own brand, you could use that.

Russ Knight: There's a lot of ways to do that, to make it where it doesn't look like gibberish. And the same is true when you're setting up a Gmail account on a job search. You've used your business email for all things and suddenly you've gotta go set up a Gmail cuz you never got around to it. Don't d four numbers or two. So if you, if you put two numbers in there or four numbers, same is true with your URL with LinkedIn, somebody's gonna assume that's a date of graduation of birth and they might use that to extrapolate your age. Now at a certain point, I'm 51, at a certain point it could become a problem if I was a job seeker that somebody would start to make some judgements about me based on that information. And they didn't ask for it. I volunteered it by putting that number in there. So it's always good if you're gonna use a number in that instance, go with three because they're not gonna, their mind isn't gonna go to that being a date.

Clarence Fisher: Very good.

Russ Knight: That's it.

Clarence Fisher: Hmm.

Russ Knight: A few years ago it was kind of more common for people to publish articles and like have their content posted on LinkedIn. I think they've kind of moved away from that cuz not a lot of folks did it. But I wrote an article one time. We were partnered with the Bama companies here in Tulsa, wonderful employer. And all I did is I wrote an article about what they were doing for their people. And I was bragging on their culture. So I mean, I wrote that five or six years ago. I still think that that idea is relevant. Anytime you can brag on somebody else instead of yourself or shine light on somebody who's doing something amazing, those are the best types of posts. If you're shining a light on yourself, less so, it becomes a little, it is self promotional. People already have a kind of a bad taste in their mouth with LinkedIn about all the self-promotion. So it's something to guard against as you think about what you're gonna post.

Clarence Fisher: So are you finding that LinkedIn is becoming less businessy? Or do you, or you think it's still purely about business?

Russ Knight: No, I think it's complete. I think it is about business and I think that that has, that standard has remained strong. I think it, the more people post memes and the occasional Maya Angelou quote or whatever, it gets a little less so, But what I try to do when I see my friends or coworkers that are posting those kinds of things, I say, Okay, what is it about your work this week that made you think to post this particular quote? Or how do you apply this? How are you applying this thought to what you're doing today? And maybe that's just my personal vent. I really appreciate people being vulnerable saying, Hey, here's where I've failed, here's where I missed. Or saying, here's where I'm trying to apply this really good thought and how it's guiding or helping encourage me towards what I'm doing

Clarence Fisher: Today. That's great. You can always find something to add to something that you share that's kind of, you know, in your words for sure.

Russ Knight: Absolutely. And I just think if all you're doing is just posting, consistently posting other people's stuff, it's harder for folks to try to get a sense of you and what you're really about. So that's why I say make it personal and don't be afraid to make mistakes. I mean, I get that it's the internet and once you post it, it's there forever. But man, you, you can go in and adjust and modify or recognize, gosh, I posted this and this really is not relevant or it's not. I've changed my thinking about this. And I think that's so much better than than saying, I wrote this 10 years ago and, and it's still as double true as it was then. So I like to, I like to show that, hey, I posted this, I was thinking about this, this was relevant at the time and this is how I kind of shifted my thinking.

Clarence Fisher: You know, that's really interesting. I tend to do that. I do that on Facebook as well. Like when you get the, the memories where it's like seven years ago or 10 years ago and I will delete stuff all the time. And it's funny to me the the usually guys who are like, I never delete anything I post because I believe so. And to me. There's nothing wrong with deleting stuff. I mean it's like, that's wisdom , you know, it's like

Russ Knight: Exactly. Yeah. And I post goofy stuff on Facebook. So I kind of back to the original point about starting with your goal for LinkedIn. My goal and intention there is to be professional and helpful, but I'm not gonna post the same kinds of silliness that I post on Facebook. Funny story, I was even, I got slapped down about a year or so after I had gotten involved with Christian Brothers cause I had posted something that really was not brand compliant. And so they, I got a call that they said that post you just made, I know it's on your personal page, but you post a lot of things related to the brand and so it's, you are the brand, maybe this isn't quite appropriate. And so I agreed and took it down. There's a lot of discussions online about who owns your profile and who has the right to tell you to change the tone or what you post about.

Russ Knight: I would say it's your profile and when you put your email address in there so that you can recover your profile, always use a personal email address unless you own the company. Always use a personal email address because you don't know when you're gonna get tapped on the shoulder and suddenly you're locked out of that email locked out of your ability to broadcast your brand and maintain that. So I have both of mine on my profile, but my primary one associated with LinkedIn is my personal Gmail account just for my own protection and based on my history of job change, it's just a good rule of thumb. I've tried to build my profile as an example to show other people what you can do. It's one example. There's plenty of good ones out there, but that's why I say look around, see what you like, look at other profiles and emulate the ones that you like. There's no copyright to have somebody has their profile built.

Clarence Fisher: Man. That's cool. That's another good point. So man, I appreciate you taking the time to come talk to me. Are there any more tips that you like, like if you, what would you say to someone like after they, after they listen to this, you've given the steps that we need to go and kind of make sure that these things are taken care of. But I, you know, I read into so many business owners who are like, you know, I put that picture up there and I started LinkedIn kind of profile because I thought I needed to, but I haven't done anything really, really with it.

Russ Knight: Just got three connections or whatever.

Clarence Fisher: Right, Right.

Clarence Fisher: I would say the first thing to do is put a framework of your profile out there. Tell people who you are, wh

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I'm Clarence Fisher, your host. Today, we're talking about LinkedIn Marketing and how you can take it to the next level. Don't go anywhere. We're gonna cover how to refine your LinkedIn profile and create an effective LinkedIn page. We're going to define your audience and your goals, optimize your page for search and grow your LinkedIn followers. All right here, all next on Local Market Monopoly. We'll be right back.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. Here we are. Do the LinkedIn do the LinkedIn. I don't even know what LinkedIn is. I just made that dance up. Clarence Fisher, your host, and we're talking about LinkedIn. LinkedIn's a powerful tool, powerful, powerful, powerful tool. You can make connections on LinkedIn. We all know that we're all on LinkedIn. You can establish partnerships, generate leads, and boost your brand awareness. There's almost nothing you can't do with LinkedIn.

Clarence Fisher: It's like an air fryer. Oh, it's like almost, but to help you navigate LinkedIn, what we're gonna do today is take a little bit of time. I'm gonna give you six marketing hacks that you can use to find new customers, clients, patients, and partners. And when I say partners, I don't mean partners. Well, I guess you could find a partner on LinkedIn if you wanted to, but ultimately we wanna grow your business. Okay. So number one, , you wanna keep refining your LinkedIn profile. First impressions are so important, and your profile is a great opportunity to impress. So keep your profile up to date. I don't want to irritate any of my realtors in here, but we gotta get beyond 20-year-old realtor picture. Do you know, you know what I'm talking about? Right? It's like the picture from you outta high school, right before you even got your first account.

Clarence Fisher: You know what I'm saying? You don't look like that anymore. Update your profile. I'm starting to get just as bad. I was on a call the other day and, on Zoom, the profile picture popped up before I jumped on, and they're like, well, who's that young guy? I'm like, you know what? I don't think we should do business. No, but I gotta change. I gotta change the image, and update your images. So keep it up to date. It's one of the most impactful ways for you to improve your contact rate. And what you wanna do is aim for close to 100% completeness on your profile. It'll show you how far, how far you've gotten.

Clarence Fisher: And then, once you get it complete, always optimize your profile. Like go back to make a note that every quarter, definitely every six months, absolutely once a year, go back and add new skills, new achievements that you had, you know, examples of your latest work and look at how your voice is coming across. You wanna put some of your personality in there. Authenticity is one of the most important parts of the entire experience. So keep refining your LinkedIn profile. All right. So number two, we wanna create an effective page. This is your organization's profile on LinkedIn. Like we have one for Tulsa Internet Marketing, your page should offer ample opportunities for your prospective customers to learn more about your brand. Okay? So this is an extension of your website. You can have a page for your organization and then also individuals, for you and salespeople and any other person in your organization, then we wanna move to defining your audience and your goals, whether you just want to raise awareness or you're wanting to generate leads, knowing what you're doing.

Clarence Fisher: Why are you here? That is going to be key. And that's going to help you in your targeting. So once you know what you want to accomplish, it's gonna be easier to define the audience. If you sell productivity tools for social media, your goal would be to raise brand awareness among LinkedIn members with job titles, like social media manager or social media lead, whatever the case is for your business. You wanna better define the audience that you want to show up for. And so then we're gonna optimize your page for search. So a company page is different from your individual LinkedIn page for our Tulsa Internet Marketing page. And I get this asked all the time, should I be posting from company or posting from my individual page. We post from Clarence Fisher because I think people purchase from people.

Clarence Fisher: They don't buy really for companies. So the company is there, but Clarence Fisher is posting all of the content, but you still want to have a well optimized company page to help you gain some visibility. Okay. On your company page, you wanna insert keywords in there, incorporate the keywords and the phrases that your customers, clients, your patients might use to search for your product or service. You wanna include them in the about tab or the about, yeah. The about tab overview. You want to clearly represent who you are. You wanna link to your page. Links are essential in boosting search engine ranking. So link to your page from your website, from other social profiles. You want all this stuff to kind of come together and not even kind of, you want it to come together and share relevant content, not just, here, look at my cats unless you're a veterinarian, we're doing a lot of work with vets right now.

Clarence Fisher: So you, that you, that would fly for you, maybe not necessarily for me, but share relevant content and share often. If you look we're sharing at least once a day on pure marketing gold, you should go there. You should go there and you should connect with me, friend me, do not like try to pitch me as soon as I connect with you. That turns me off. And I am the one that will unconnect with you. If you reach out to me that quickly, , I'm sorry. We don't know each other yet. So, but share often the more frequently you share your content and your follower, followers engage with it. It is interesting to me, how many people follow our content? I'm so grateful for it. And people who comment and then we're able to, you know, a lot of times the comments I get are rebuttals.

Clarence Fisher: Like, hey, we don't believe that. And then it's, it's really cool because I am the type of person I'm open minded. I have to be in what I do. Things change so quickly that I can be like, you know what? I didn't even, I didn't think of that. Or I can be like, I don't know, bro. We do this like 10 times a day. This is the truth. I think you should go back and do some research. Either way, we're having a conversation and it's awesome. And it helps you grow follower followers, which is the fifth thing I want to cover today is, your updates appear directly in a follower's LinkedIn feed. So, it helps grow your following when other people LinkedIn kinda works like Facebook in this way when other people comment and like, and applaud your posts, their friends see that.

Clarence Fisher: I don't know if you know that, but one of the guy that started LinkedIn came from Facebook, right? So they all kind of started together and then guy peeled off and started LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is coming as coming into its own. For sure. So use a use the following button. You can put a follow button on your website for them to follow you on LinkedIn. You wanna do that. If all you have is a blog, do that. Invite your profile connections to follow your LinkedIn page. When's the last time you did that?

Clarence Fisher: Instead of reaching out and just saying, Hey, I want to connect with you. And I want this and that and that, and I want this and I want this. Hey, why don't I give you some value, follow my page. I post this and we post this about this. And it's all, it's all for free, right there. Just, just let's let's connect. Okay. Let your employees know your most crucial page posts so that they can share it and boost your reach. Now, this is something that should be done, not only on LinkedIn, but on Facebook, for sure, I guess, yeah. Twitter as well, but have the conversation with your team. There's so many teams that I meet with and the owner is on board, the owner, and we have to do a, we have to do a whole episode on how to get your team on board, but the owner's on board generally I'm brought in, and the team does not believe in the marketing efforts.

Clarence Fisher: So they are not sharing. They don't understand the importance and how much it means and benefits the company for them to share the company's posts. How many of your team members share your post? I would argue very few of ours does. Now. I'm now I'm sitting here thinking about mine. Like I gotta bring this up in the company meeting on Monday. Are we sharing our post? Is, am I the only one? Why aren't you sharing the post? Do you not like working here? Ooh, that could be taken the wrong way. I gotta figure out a better way to say to say that, but let your employees know so that they can, they can post too and promote your company page and your emails, your newsletters, you know, just make sure that people get to it.

Clarence Fisher: And the last thing that I want to cover today is publishing, engaging content on your company page as well, post content that your target audience will want to read and you know, what makes them want to read it? It helps them. It helps them. It helps them like help them by helping them show that you can help them by helping them show that if they pay you to help them, that you can help them because you've already helped them. What phrase do I keep saying help them? And you' following will grow. Cause it could be tempting to try to sell your audience something, sell them the benefits on using your products, sell them, you know, sell them, sell them, sell them. But you notice we don't, we don't do that a lot. Even on this podcast, my goal is to help you.

Clarence Fisher: When I get up every day, my goal is to how many people can I help? I feel like I'm going to make a dollar for every person I help every single month. So whether you purchase from me or not, or it's indirectly, it's going, it's out there. And every person I reach is a dollar to me. So I don't really have to ask you for it. I know it's weird and it gets woo woo but it happens. Just help people and do it on LinkedIn. Do it on Facebook, do it everywhere you are online. I mean, naturally every once in a while, you're gonna run a promotion. That's great. As a matter of fact, I guess right now, I'll tell you to go to localmarketmonopoly.com and sign up for the free newsletter. Mm. But it's still free at some point, I'm gonna sell something to you though.

Clarence Fisher: But most of the time I'm giving you free content. So, I feel like I'm rambling. So I'm gonna just go cut this off right now. LinkedIn make it happen, change your profile pic. Let's do a quick recap. Change the profile, not change it, but update it. Make sure it looks like you, okay? Keep refining your LinkedIn profile, put a reminder every quarter, every six months every year have, or often you want to do it, but go back, look over your LinkedIn profile and go, you know, oh my goodness, we don't even do that anymore. Oh my goodness. We had a big win and we have a case study. Now let me add that. And let me ask, you know, ask this person to endorse me and just make sure that you're going after the same people now, as you want to go after, maybe your audience has changed a little bit, make sure you're speaking to the right people and just kind of look over your page and make sure that it is up to date. Do it, do it now. Schedule time to do it now, at least this week. All right. So hope that helps you. Share this with somebody that you think that it will benefit and also like comment and I said share already, but like, and comment review this episode. And if there's anything that we can help you with, definitely reach out. Until then, go out market, like nobody's business, it's your business and own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Would you like to know more of the tools, tactics, and strategies, the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local market and own the block. Of course you do. Hey, it's Clarence, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly wanted to tell you about a free newsletter, the free newsletter that we put together for you. It's called Local Market Monopoly where we share more of these tips and give you the answers to these important questions and challenges that every local small business is facing. Like, what is hyper-local marketing and why you need to focus on it? How to capitalize on the foremost powerful marketing levers in the world to grow your business, how to monitor and influence what people see and say about you and your company online, and how to systematically reach more and more of your ideal prospects and customers every day.

Clarence Fisher: Making sure more people know about you today than did yesterday and how to get more customers, clients, and patients to buy from you more often. We go into it in this free newsletter and I wanted to make it free because I wanna reach more people, even more people than the podcast. So all you have to do to subscribe is go to localmarketmonopoly.com and we have a big report that we'll give you just for signing up, all free to you. All right. Just go to localmarketmonopoly.com. Now, if you're interested in SEO and how to make your website rank faster, stay tuned, we'll get right to that.

Clarence Fisher: All right. And we're back. Hey, it's Clarence and thank you for standing by with that horrible, horrible intro. that I did before the intro. It's crazy. We created this new newsletter that I'm super excited about, but this is really gonna, mess you up. And I tell you this, I hate selling like this is a free newsletter. And anytime that I, that I offer it or I offer anything, then, uh, I don't know. I just get, uh, like it's crazy. It's crazy. And any, if you're a client then, or customer of ours, you know this right now, right? Like there's no hard sell with me. There's never, ever a hard sell, uh, with me even upselling you into other stuff. And you know this because you know this, so if you're not , if you're not a customer yet, when we get that type of relationship, you will understand that what you hear right now is really what I, how I am.

Clarence Fisher: I am a super soft sale. It is a wonder that I am not starving and my kids have not starved. Uh, but we do. We, I mean, we do pretty good. And I think it's because we lead with value. I think everybody will tell you that lead with value, and hey, if you want us to do some for you, we'll do it. But anyway, thanks for weathering through that. You're gonna be hearing about the new email newsletter. It's absolutely free. You can,, you can go and join that. I think at some point we are going to offer, maybe a one-time upsell type of offer for you to get onto the, super cheap, paid newsletter, but there's always gonna be that free one. Okay. So just go to localmarketmonopoly.com and you can, you can join there.

Clarence Fisher: All right. So today we're talking about SEO, which is not new to you, you know, about SEO, 81% of customers, clients, or patients use the internet to research their purchase before they click or call. And SEO is a big deal. Uh, but SEO takes time. And again, if you've called me and we've talked about SEO and you've called specifically for SEO, I am probably going to sell you, try to talk you out of it. And the reason being, I know I'm not an SEO hater and I don't hate kittens. The reason being is SEO takes time. And a lot of the times rarely do I get a call that is so strategic that a business is saying, you know what? It's okay if it takes nine months to work. Uh it's okay. We've set aside that, that doesn't happen very often.

Clarence Fisher: So when you call me for SEO, and it's usually because you have in your mind that you want to your website to rank higher, and you know that it's going to take SEO. That part you do know, and deep down, like way back in the back of your head, you know, it's going to take time, but, and you may tell me this. I mean, I've been doing this for over 10 years, probably, we're going on 12 or 13 years, I've been doing this a long time. And so you're going to allow yourself to tell me that you understand this, and then we start an SEO campaign. And then in month two, I'll give it month three. You'll call me and say, Hey, Clarence, when are we gonna see something, uh, happened? Uh, you know, what's going on. And I'm gonna say, Hey, do you remember when I told you it would be, six months, maybe nine months, man, six is fast nine months before we saw traction here. Do you remember that? And he'll go, no, I don't or you may say, yeah, but you know we need to be making something happen either way.

Clarence Fisher: This is why I try to talk people out of SEO and they call me and say, Hey, Clarence, can you do our SEO for us? Um, we're gonna have a conversation. And with it, if you really are stuck on doing SEO, you're going to have to add a paid campaign with that. You're gonna have to add AdWords to that for us to do it because yes, you need SEO. And I want you to have SEO, but we also know you need the phone to ring right now, especially so you can keep paying for us to do SEO. So we're gonna do paid ads as well with the SEO now to get that out of the way. And I think you should do that no matter who you go with, you need to do that is run paid ads with SEO, do not hold the SEO bucket over your marketing.

Speaker 2: Person's head and say, Hey, you're fired if we can't get this ranked in 30 days, I'm gonna tell you if they're getting you. If they're getting you extreme results in 30 days, you're gonna pay for it most likely in about six more months or a year, as soon as an algorithm switch happens. But all that said, now let's get into some stuff to do. If you're gonna do SEO, which you should be doing SEO, the first thing is target relevant, primary and secondary keywords. We all know that each pay Google ranks pages, not necessarily websites. So you wanna have a page. Every single page needs to have its own primary keyword that you're trying to rank for. And it also needs to have secondary keywords. We're not gonna get into LSI today, latent, semantic, indexing, that's kind of an advanced thing, but it's basically where Google says, Hey, anybody who is talking about this one specific keyword, if you're talking about chiropractic, there are other words that people use that are chiropractor related, but not necessarily all out saying chiropractor. Google's not stupid anymore. Google's super smart. So you wanna use these other keywords and not just have your city chiropractor, chiropractor, your city chiropractor in your city, in your city chiropractor. You don't. I mean, that can be your primary keyword was we gotta have some secondary keywords. And then we have to have other kind of content in there that is alluding to, but not all out saying. And speaking of content, number two here is have original content. I really think the duplicate content penalty

Clarence Fisher: Is all in your head, but at the same time, original content is going to work is going to rank better. You wanna have at least 51% unique. So if you're going to get one of the services where they're giving you replicated content, we'll stick, we'll stick with the chiropractor, thing for a moment they're giving, they're selling that you pay 50 bucks a month, right? Well, you know, that the exact same content is going to all 300 clients that they, that customers that they have, right. Well, you wanna kind of Finese. That a bit so that you have at least 51% content. I am not going to tell you that just having the straight up duplicate content is going to kill you but it's definitely gonna be beneficial to tweak that a little bit so that it becomes evergreen and it becomes you, number three is you wanna optimize your title and meta descriptions.

Clarence Fisher: And when I say meta descriptions, the description is what shows up. I mean, you've seen it when you could do a Google search, you have the title, all of those listings are a title. And then right up under that as a little paragraph that talks about whatever that page is about. Those need to be unique on every single page of your website reminds me if you want us to do an audit for your website, and I'm gonna, you know what team I'm gonna throw this out there for? Or they're like, don't do that. Don't you do that because of inflation. I'm gonna say, ask for the $500 audit, ask for the $500 audit I'm gonna do that. I gotta put a limit on it though. I gotta put a time limit on it because of inflation. That's gonna be good until, um, 2023 my team is like, what are you doing?

Clarence Fisher: 2023. So if you're listening to this after 2023, it may be $5 and 25, $500 and 25 cents. I don't know. But anyway,, let me go back to the content. Typically, I don't put, I just told you I don't do sales, right? Typically I don't do that, but we've been doing a lot of these audits here lately, and they've been super beneficial because when we got down to title and meta description, where the audit spits out is the title and meta description on every single one of your pages on your site and shows you exactly which pages are missing title and meta descriptions, and which one needs to change. All right. So you can do this yourself, open your website, go to each page and look at the title, make sure there's a title. Make sure that title is not the same as any other page on your site. It has to be unique and then make sure the page as a description and makes sure it's unique on each page.

Clarence Fisher: An easy way to do this is to download. It's a free plugin. It's called Yoast, Y O A S T plugin. You can do this with all in one SEO plugin, either one of those will work great. We use Yoast a lot. Matter of fact, we use Yoast now for almost everything. So, but you can download it for free. There is a paid version, but the free version does great. So, uh, it will definitely allow you to change your titles and meta tags on every single page. If you have a WordPress website, which you should really have a WordPress website right now. So when you're in there and you are changing these titles, keep your page title to 30 to 60 characters and keep your meta description under 160 characters who wanna make sure that they don't clip off and include the target keyword.

Clarence Fisher: I would say in the title, include the keyword somewhere in the middle to the beginning. And then in the description include the keyword at the beginning. If you can, we don't wanna stuff. We want things to sound and read to a human that's. Another thing is we can do these things for Google, but you really, you want them to be readable and enjoyable for a human being communicate what your page is about and what makes it unique and make sure that the title and meta description, as I said, is unique on every page. Number four, we wanna use short descriptive URLs. If you, if your website, especially your blog is putting the date in there. Qe typically change those, t's called the permalinks, and you can do that on the left hand side.

Clarence Fisher: When you log into the back of your WordPress website, look on the left, go down to settings. I believe it is. And permalinks and change the URL is it's appearance, isn't it? Yeah. It's appearance, change the URL structure so that it is the page name. And in that way you have the keywords in the page title, and you also have it in the URL and it's gonna be great. All right. , it's gonna be great. It's gonna be fabulous. So, uh, use the keywords, try to include your primary keyword in that URL. We wanna make sure they're readable and make sure it's concise. You, you know, around 60 characters, you don't want this really long web web address. Okay. Those are, uh, really, I think the biggest, biggest things that you have to look out for in SEO is target have a primary keyword for every page.

Clarence Fisher: You can have secondary keywords for the page. Each page need to be tightly optimized around a specific keyword. Okay. Don't try to stuff everything into one page. One page is about that one thing which is what makes blogs so awesome, because you can take a list of keywords and write a blog around every single one of those keywords, like one keyword per blog, and you can go on for decades, right? Make sure you're writing quality, original content. If possible. I know the service providers that only serve vets that only serve chiropractors that only serve dermatologists, make it so enticing for you to pay $100, $97 and get one blog a week or two blog. And it's the same thing for everybody else who signs up for it. I'm again, I'm not telling you you're going to hell cuz you're using those. What I'm saying is, if you can tweak it a little bit, have someone tweak it. If it's front desk, if it's your marketing person, your part-time marketing person. I can't imagine that you're doing this on the weekends, but if you are it's you, but try to tweak it at least a little bit. Okay. But if you can't do that, definitely use the duplicate content either way, you gotta have unique page titles and meta descriptions and make sure that,your URLs are short.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. So there you have it, using SEO and getting the best out of SEO again, I recommend that it's gonna be with a paid, that you got something paid going on unless you just have the budget set aside in order to work on SEO for the next nine months without a major, major return. And again, like I said earlier go in and sign up for the free Local Market Monopoly newsletter. We've got a really meaty report that we give you to help you optimize the four proven marketing systems that are I can't say guaranteed to make your business grow by 25%. I can't say that. But what I can say is that you will Def you will. I can't say definitely. Can I, dad, come it go and download the report, put it in the use and you will see improvement. Okay. localmarketmonopoly.com that's it for me this week. I'll see you next week. Go own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher : Hey, it's Clarence Fisher. Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. You know what we cover here, the tools, tactics, and strategies that the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local markets and own the block. I wanna tell you about something before we get started, though, we created a free weekly newsletter, man, is this meaty, uh, to give you the answers to the most important marketing questions and challenges, every local, small business faces. Questions like what is hyper-local marketing and why you need to be focused on it, how to capitalize on the four most powerful marketing leverage in the world to grow your local business, how to monitor and influence what people see and say about you and your company online and how to systematically reach more and more of your ideal prospects and customers every day. Meaning more people know about you today than did yesterday. I forgot how to get more customers, clients, and patients to buy more from you more often, we're covering this and more in a free weekly email newsletter. All you have to do to sign up is go to localmarketmonopoly.com. We've got a big free report for you just for signing up. But the main thing is, you're gonna be on that every single week in addition to this podcast. So stay tuned and we'll be right back.

Clarence Fisher : Okay. So this week we're gonna be talking about, let's talk about your, your contact us, thank you page, or it could be any thank you page on your website, but typically most of us have the 'Thank You'. After someone fills in the 'Contact Us' page. Did you know that that is one of the most important pages on your website? Some of us who do, who sell products online, not only, not just for our brick and mortar business, but those of us who sell products understand the power of the thank you page. But what I'm seeing is that more and more local, small businesses, brick and mortars, don't understand the power of the thank you page. So I wanted to cover that today, if you are not using, if all you are saying when someone completes a form on your website is 'Thank you. We'll get back with you.' Then you're leaving money on the table.

Clarence Fisher: You could do things like just, you know, ask for a survey, even if you wanted to a quick survey, it's inexpensive to get the feedback. And all you have to do is come up with a few questions, paste the link, even after they submit a link could come up, you know, please help us be better, do better, give you more by taking this survey. That could be your 'Thank you.' If you choose to do that, then ask, keep it short five to 10 questions that and people will, more participants will take advantage of that. If you just keep it short, keep the survey brief, tell them how long it's going to take. Hey, this is only gonna take three minutes. It's only gonna take five minutes, I would say three minutes.

Clarence Fisher: And that's going to increase your chances of people taking the survey. Please take this 45-second survey. Please take this two-minute survey. You notice we keep getting shorter. Please take this ten-second survey. I wouldn't go 10 seconds. Everybody knows that it's not 10 seconds unless it's only one or two quick questions, but you could do that. You could use Google forms in order to do this. We use Google forms a lot because it will auto-populate the answers in a spreadsheet that we can go and look for the most common answers. And that way, you know, just kind of stands out. This is what's really on people's minds. It only takes a few minutes to create those. Uh, you can check out Google forms and let's talk about what to ask if you're gonna do this survey thing. You can, uh ask readers to tell you more about themselves as individual customers, clients, or patients.

Clarence Fisher: Just ask 'em say all this, what's a good question that I'll give you one great question that has worked for us is what is the single biggest challenge you face when it comes to underlying? When it comes to your, the problem that you solve? Like what, like, for me, I'll give you an example. What is the single biggest problem you face marketing your business? What is the single business problem you face keeping your car maintained? What is the single biggest problem you face in looking young, or what is the single biggest problem you face getting a job? Whatever, you know, that just, what is the single biggest problem you face? And pretty soon you're gonna have tons of juicy data. You're gonna see the, you're gonna see the same problems pop up and up, and you can actually create a lot of your content around those problems, but even more so than that, when you or your team are, are talking to prospects, you know the problems you need to be talking to right off the bat, you know, because you, you have those, you know, exactly what the problems are.

Clarence Fisher: You can ask them, um, you know, what are their goals for the year, or what are their goals for contacting you? What's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to whatever this area of expertise is. I know that we've got that queued out to go into our Facebook and LinkedIn audiences. What is the biggest pet peeve you have when it comes to digital marketing agencies? And I am so looking forward to seeing those answers. Ask for feedback, you can ask for feedback on the thank you page for, you know, let's move beyond that. Let's move, uh, away from that survey. Let's say, you're asking for feedback on your product or service, or you're asking for feedback, even on the content that you're putting out there. If you're picking up what I'm putting down right now, you're getting that the Thank You page, instead of being an empty space, you can use it for something, use it for survey, or you can use it to get feedback for spotting problems.

Clarence Fisher : You can use it to get reviews if you want that. Some of the questions that you can ask is, "what made you decide to contact us?" "If you could change anything about our product or our service, what would it be?" "How did you like our products or service?" This is all in the thank you page and use it to, what we use it a lot to, to do is increase sales. So as soon as someone enters their information, you know, they have a problem that they want solved if they're on your website. So why not right then, ask for the next step. A lot of time, when you download a free report from us, you will get the opportunity to schedule a call, or you will get the opportunity to upgrade to something else that will make that faster.

Clarence Fisher: You've already taken the step. And, um, you know, when you, when you logged on, you wanted more information. So at that point, what's the best time to offer you something to speed that along. If you want to take it, you don't have to, but you could. And that is a good use of the 'Thank You' page. Let's say you don't want to do that. Let's say you don't want to do a survey. You don't want to ask for feedback or reviews. You don't wanna try to sell anything or upsell anything. One thing you could do is just add a link to your best content. Maybe they fill out the form. And then the thank you is, Hey, you might enjoy these or most people who have reached out to us enjoy these. Hey, this is some of the best, our top 10 or our top three articles that answer these questions.

Clarence Fisher: We love 'em everybody else loves. I'm sure you'll love 'em too. So give them that as a bonus. Another thing you could do, I know I'm ripping right now, right? So another thing you could do is give testimonials, I think this is awesome. This is awesome. So what better time to say, Hey, other people have been impressed with what we do, uh, look at these testimonials. Yep. This is what you got coming right now. So display testimonials on your, on your, thank you. Let's see, what else could we do here besides the testimonials, man, that's gonna build some brand awareness for you is give you one more here, ask them to follow you on social media. That's, that's super simple. And you say, Hey, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, connect with us on LinkedIn.

Clarence Fisher : Look at our YouTube. And as a matter of fact, let's go a bit further, whatever community you have going on, maybe they can join a Facebook group. Maybe they can join your LinkedIn group, anything. They've already on your email list. So that doesn't, that doesn't really do much, but you get what I'm saying. Use the thank you page. Like right now, what I want you to do is call whoever handles your website and say, 'what do we have on our thank you page?' What do people see after they submit 'contact us'? Please, please send them somewhere. Just a page that has one of these suggestions on here and guarantee. I mean, it's like free money, just sitting there a guarantee you will see some growth.

Clarence Fisher : So just by adding some of these simple, simple elements, hope this helps you. As we said before, Hey, we've got a free newsletter for you now at localmarketmonopoly.com. Just go, get a big report. Uh, that'll help you, uh, grow your business. We see, we used to say guaranteed to grow your business 25% or more but we're having to step away from that guaranteed, just because I don't like lawyers. Uh, no, I like lawyers. Like my look, my law friends are like, or did you really say that? I like lawyers. I don't like the litigiousness of today's society. So, uh, but if you use the four levers that we share with you right there, I I'm about to say, I promise, man, you're going to have some benefit. I gotta, can you, can we get with the law department and just see what I can say now? Just what can I say, uh, take this, use it, share it, comment and like it, and, uh, we'll see you next week until then go own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher : Hey, it's Clarence Fisher. Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. You know what we cover here, the tools, tactic strategies that the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local markets and own the block. I wanna tell you about something before we get started, though, we created a free weekly newsletter, man, is this meaty, uh, to give you the answers to the most important marketing questions and challenges, every local, small business faces. Questions like what is hyper local marketing and why you need to be focused on it, how to capitalize on the four most powerful marketing leverage in the world to grow your local business, how to monitor and influence what people see and say about you and your company online and how to systematically reach more and more of your ideal prospects and customers every day. Meaning more people know about you today than did yesterday. I forgot how to get more customers, clients, and patients to buy more from you more often, we're covering this and more in a free weekly email newsletter. All you have to do to sign up is go to localmarketmonopoly.com. We've got a big free report for you just for signing up. But the main thing is, you're gonna be on that every single week in addition to this podcast. So stay tuned and we'll be right back.

Clarence Fisher : Okay. So this week we're gonna be talking about, let's talk about your, your contact us, thank you page, or it could be any thank you page on your website, but typically most of us have the 'Thank You'. After someone fills in the 'Contact Us' page. Did you know that that is one of the most important pages on your website? Some of us who do, who sell products online, not only, not just for our brick and mortar business, but those of us who sell products understand the power of the thank you page. But what I'm seeing is that more and more local, small businesses, brick and mortars, don't understand the power of the thank you page. So I wanted to cover that today, if you are not using, if all you are saying when someone completes a form on your website is.

Clarence Fisher: 'Thank you. We'll get back with you.' Then you're leaving money on the table. You could do things like just, you know, ask for a survey, even if you wanted to a quick survey, it's inexpensive to get the feedback. And all you have to do is come up with a few questions, paste the link, even after they submit a link could come up, you know, please help us be better, do better, give you more by taking this survey. That could be your 'Thank you.' If you choose to do that, then ask, keep it short five to 10 questions that and people will, more participants will take advantage of that. If you just keep it short, keep the survey brief, tell them how long it's going to take. Hey, this is only gonna take three minutes. It's only gonna take five minutes, I would say three minutes.

Clarence Fisher: And that's going to increase your chances of people taking the survey. Please take this 45 second survey. Please take this two minute survey. You notice we keep getting shorter. Please take this ten second survey. I wouldn't go 10 seconds. Everybody knows that it's not 10 seconds, unless it's only one or two quick questions, but you could do that. You could use Google forms in order to do this. We use Google forms a lot because it will auto-populate the answers in a spreadsheet that we can go and look for the most common answers. And that way, you know, just kind of stands out. This is what's really on people's minds. It only takes a few minutes to create those. Uh, you can check out Google forms and let's talk about what to ask if you're gonna do this survey thing. You can, uh ask readers to tell them more about tell you more about themselves as individual customers, clients, or patients.

Clarence Fisher: Just ask 'em say all this, what's a good question that I'll give you one great question that has worked for us is what is the single biggest challenge you face when it comes to underlying? When it comes to your, the problem that you solve? Like what, like, for me, I'll give you an example. What is the single biggest problem you face marketing your business? What is the single business problem you face keeping your car maintained? What is the single biggest problem you face in looking young or what is the single biggest problem you face getting a job? Whatever, you know, that just, what is the single biggest problem you face? And pretty soon, you're gonna have tons of juicy data. You're gonna see the, you're gonna see the same problems pop up and up, and you can actually create a lot of your content around those problems, but even more so than that, when you or your team are, are talking to prospects, you know the problems you need to be talking to right off the bat, you know, because you, you have those, you know, exactly what the problems are.

Clarence Fisher: You can ask them, um, you know, what are their goals for the year, or what are their goals for contacting you? What's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to whatever this area of expertise is. I know that we've got that queued out to go into our Facebook and LinkedIn audiences. What is the biggest pet pet peeve you have when it comes to digital marketing agencies? And I am so looking forward to seeing those answers. Ask for feedback, you can ask for feedback on the thank you page for, you know, let's move beyond that. Let's move, uh, away from that survey. Let's say, you're asking for feedback on your product or service, or you're asking for feedback, even on the content that you're putting out there. If you're picking up what I'm putting down right now, you're getting that the Thank You page, instead of being an empty space, you can use it for something, use it for survey, or you can use it to get feedback for spotting problems.

Clarence Fisher : You can use it to get reviews if you want that. Some of the questions that you can ask is, "what made you decide to contact us?" "If you could change anything about our product or our service, what would it be?" "How did you like our products or service?" This is all in the thank you page and use it to, what we use it a lot to, to do is increase sales. So as soon as someone enters their information, you know, they have a problem that they want solved if they're on your website. So why not right then, ask for the next step. A lot of the times when you download a free report from us, you will get the opportunity to schedule a call, or you will get the opportunity to upgrade to something else that will make that faster.

Clarence Fisher: You've already taken the step. And, um, you know, when you, when you logged on, you wanted more information. So at that point, what's the best time to offer you something to speed that along. If you want to take it, you don't have to, but you could. And that is a good use of the 'Thank You' page. Let's say you don't want to do that. Let's say you don't want to do a survey. You don't want to ask for feedback or reviews. You don't wanna try to sell anything or upsell anything. One thing you could do is just add a link to your best contents. Maybe they fill out the form. And then the thank you is, Hey, you might enjoy these or most people who have reached out to us enjoy these. Hey, this is some of the best, our top 10 or our top three articles that answer these questions.

Clarence Fisher: We love 'em everybody else loves. I'm sure you'll love 'em too. So give them that as a bonus. Another thing you could do, I know I'm ripping right now, right? So another thing you could do is give testimonials, I think this is awesome. This is awesome. So what better time to say, Hey, other people have been impressed with what we do, uh, look at these testimonials. Yep. This is what you got coming right now. So display testimonials on your, on your, thank you. Let's see, what else could we do here besides the testimonials, man, that's gonna build some brand awareness for you is give you one more here, ask them to follow you on social media. That's, that's super simple. And you say, Hey, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, connect with us on LinkedIn.

Clarence Fisher : Look at our YouTube. And as a matter of fact, matter of fact, let's go a bit further, whatever community you have going on, maybe they can join a Facebook group. Maybe they can join your LinkedIn group, anything. They've already on your email list. So that doesn't, that doesn't really do much, but you get what I'm saying. Use the thank you page. Like right now, what I want you to do is call whoever handles your website and say, 'what do we have on our thank you page?' What do people see after they submit contact us? Please, please send them somewhere. Just a page that has one of these suggestions on here and guarantee. I mean, it's like free money, just sitting there a guarantee you will see some growth.

Clarence Fisher : So just by adding some of these simple, simple elements, hope this helps you. As we said before, Hey, we've got a free newsletter for you now at localmarketmonopoly.com. Just go, got a big report. Uh, that'll help you, uh, grow your business. We see, we used to say guaranteed to grow your business 25% or more but we're having to step away from that guaranteed, just because I don't like lawyers. Uh, no, I like lawyers. Like my look, my law friends are like, or did you really say that? I like lawyers. I don't like litigiousness of today's society. So, uh, but if you use the four levers that we share with you right there, I I'm about to say, I promise, man, you're going to have some benefit. I gotta, can you, can we get with the law department and just see what I can say now? Just what can I say, uh, take this, use it, share it, comment and like it, and, uh, we'll see you next week until then go own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: All right. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

Adi Klevit: Thank you for having me here.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. I am excited about it as always happens. We get into this, conversation, animated conversation behind the scenes before I hit record , and so it's like, Hey, hit record, hit record, getting ready for this podcast episode, I went outside of our process and I was like, Hey, I'll get that. Kristine. Doesn't have to get that right now. This is, I really wanna dig into this. And before you know, it, like three days went by four days, went by five days, went by, I didn't send off the questions. So I'm like, oh my goodness, it's coming up. I gotta get the questions out. So I CC'd Kristine who was probably laughing and is saying, yeah, yeah, you tried to, you tried to do it yourself again. So I'm excited to have you here. One of the things that jumped out at me was that you specialize in putting order into the chaos of an expanding organization.

Adi Klevit: Exactly right.

Clarence Fisher: Tell us about that.

Speaker 2: right. So what I love to do is bring order into confusion into chaos, into a disorganized situation. So, but I'm not an organizer. I'm not like, don't get me into your house. I mean, I am personally for my own house. Right. I have my labeler and I like to organize things, but I'm not an organizer. What I am is basically I create, I mean, me, myself and my team, we create documents and implement processes and procedures for businesses so they can grow and scale. So that's how we bring order. We do that. And we also create management systems so they can be replicated. So they're consistent so they can be used over and over.

Clarence Fisher: Yes. So what does that look like for a business?

Adi Klevit: So what it looks like the end product is basically a document. All the processes in the business, outlined, mapped, documented, and then making sure that all the employees, the teams, the staff they know about it. So they're actually being followed by all. So making sure that they're actually being implemented and followed on a day to day basis. So that's what it looks like in terms of the final result.

Clarence Fisher: Oh my goodness. So, okay. Let's, let's bring it back because, uh, my listeners out there, I know as business owners, we're saying, I mean, everyone's chomping at the bit right now, but let's for someone who doesn't understand why not having this is a problem. Let's, let's talk about that. So what, why, where, where where's the problem,

Adi Klevit: Right. So if a business does not see that as a problem, they're probably not in the right stage to start documenting because they probably need to market. They need to get new clients or new patients or new customers, whatever they, whomever they service or work with or sell more products because they don't feel the pain. And I'm not saying you have to feel the pain in order to start doing it, but you have to be aware of it that it's coming or that it's a little bit uncomfortable, right? I mean, if you are right now, sitting there and you go, well, I don't have any problems. You know, you need to probably sell more or get service, more people. So then you start feeling a little bit of uncomfortable. And at that point, you look at it and you go, okay, do I want to grow?

Adi Klevit: Do I want to expand? Do I wanna get to the next level? And if the answer is yes, and then you ask yourself, well, what's the problem. And then the answer that you get is there's only one me. I can't really duplicate myself. I'm wearing too many hats. I'm working too many hours. I don't see my family. I don't have a life anymore. I'm kind of working in my business. I'm a very expensive employee of my business. Even if I hire, how am I ever going to train somebody? You know, it's all in my head, there are no systems. You know, all of those are triggers to know that you actually have to have well documented processes and procedures in your business.

Clarence Fisher: That is amazing. You really know your client because as you're, as you're saying this, I'm thinking those are the exact questions that the exact process that I went through. Uh, and the number one que the first question you said was, do I want to grow?

Adi Klevit: Mm-hmm .

Clarence Fisher: And before I ran into that question. I remember sitting one weekend and I'm telling my wife, I'm like, you know, I am really stressed out, like, like how, what you were saying. It's like, my I'm staying up late. I'm working late. I'm I'm working weekends. I'm, it's just like, and it's still not enough. Do I want to go to the next level? Like, that is a, a serious question, because I think like at one point I really had to decide, do I want to just back go backwards and be a little more comfortable or am I going to, you know, suck it up and really get in here and push to the next level. And that's a serious question.

Adi Klevit: It really is. And when people ask me, who is my ideal client, I can give you, okay. You know, I work with businesses between this and this revenue and this number of employees. But then I stop doing that because really my ideal client is an entrepreneur that is growth oriented that has a purpose. They obviously want to help others. They want to, they have some kind of a service or product that will help. Um, but, but they're motivated because they want to grow their business. Right. And why do you wanna grow the business? I mean, I know you are very big on why I saw your questions that you sent me. I'm very big on why the first thing is to really find a why. Like, why do you wanna grow? What motivates you? And it can be a great game that you wanna play because you're competitive and you want to have a big business or not even big, big, but like at least a business that is growing, you feel responsibility for your staff to provide that, um, playing field for them, or being able to provide for them to provide for their families.

Adi Klevit: You really believe in what you do and you want to grow. You're just an entrepreneur that wanna have several businesses that are very successful, whatever your, why is you have to, that business owner has to have that growth oriented mindset.

Clarence Fisher: I love it. I love it. And as you're, as you're talking, I'm thinking about our buddy , uh, that referred you to me and I'm like that you're right. You're right. So he wants to grow like that and growth oriented. Yeah.

Adi Klevit: We can give, we can give him a shoutout it's Davis Family Arbor and they are, they do an amazing work. And Brad definitely has that mentality of growing and the way that he services his clients, it's from the heart, he really cares about them. And he knew that in order for him to continue to service his clientele, the way that he wants and really create, really help them, he needs systems and automation in place in order for him to actually be able to bring on the right employees, train them correctly. So the quality of service doesn't go away. So that's a great example.

Clarence Fisher: Great, great example. And yes, big shout out to Brad. Yeah. So when you say growth minded, I know it was a while of being in business before I realized that that's, who I wanted to service was growth minded businesses, just probably because I'm competitive myself. And, um, you mentioned, maybe being competitive and I'm, you do better with people who are like at least who are like you. So when we get together and I'm like, Hey, let's dominate the market, you know? And, and then there's kind of this pullback of, I think we're good. Can we, can we kinda shut this lead flow off, like what?

Adi Klevit: I know, I know I'm so totally understand where you are coming from because people, that's why, marketing companies and like processing companies, or business consulting or systematizing work really well together because I see it as a circle, or it's basically like a triangle. So you have, you have the demand, you create the demand and that's what you do, right? I mean, you do the ad words, you do the, um, you know, the referrals, you know, you, you basically get them help with the marketing, right? So you have that. So that creates a demand. Once there is demand, you are basically shoving in people, the customers, the patients, the clients into the company. So now people can have two choices, you know? Well, I mean more than two, because one of them is you have enough capacity and you can service them and things are going well.

Adi Klevit: Okay. So that means you have systems in place. Number two is it becomes a chaos and you can service them. And at that point you have two choices. Either you are going to basically block your leads and say, okay, don't turn it off. Or you go, okay, how am I going to systematize in order for me to service all the inflow that I just got. And then when you have systems, you, all of a sudden will see that you need more demand, and then it's going back to marketing. So then we, well, you are not we, but together as a team, right? So like advising the client, you as the marketing advisor will now create the more demand. So we have more people coming in more organization, and then it just goes around like that. And that is really the cycle that the business should go through.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. And which is why I was excited to even have this conversation because that is the next step. And if I want to grow, I need to help facilitate and find a way for them to be comfortable to do just as you said and say, Hey, no, we don't, the machine's going, we don't need to stop it. Let's just, but then we have to have that, that honest question of, do you again, do you want to go to the next level?

Adi Klevit: Right. But if you don't, then don't even start a marketing campaign. You know, there is no point because, I mean, I guess you have the, now I'm supposed to have more clients or more patients because, and Clarence you can, you have more data because you are a marketing expert, but when you shut down those leads coming in, it's not easy to turn it back on. Right. And create, because it takes so much to get there. So it's not like all of a sudden, and that's also I say, like, it just tells about you, you did a fantastic job. You know, there is this flat of leads coming in, and now if I'm gonna shut it down, it's not like next month I can open it back up and it's gonna be this. It's not on demand. People are just waiting there. Right.

Clarence Fisher: This is so true. And we had a campaign, I guess, a month ago that we did that. And it was never revived. I mean, we couldn't revive it because the algorithm shut down and said, Hey, you know, this must not be what we think it is. And it is just a whole thing. So, yeah. Right.

Adi Klevit: So the solution is really to organize. So once you promote, then you need to go into an organization and systematization, but at the same time, don't stop your marketing because when you organize and systematize, the whole idea is that you become more efficient and can service more. So now you need more of the marketing push to actually be able to support that. Right. Because a lot of people ask, okay, well I'm on the verge of having to hire, but I don't have enough income to hire, right? Because let's say for instance, I'm a construction business and you open, you are my marketing agency, you do a fantastic job. And we got all these leads coming in. Well, I didn't hire the estimator yet. So now I cannot service. But it's like, a lot of people feel like it's a catch 22 because you know, if I'm hiring, but I don't have the leads, what should I do?

Adi Klevit: So what comes first? And the answer is always, it depends. It depends where you are at. We need to look at your finances. We need to look at the future. We need to look at where you wanna go and how to structure, maybe the compensation for the estimators. So it ties into the profitabilities. So you make sure that enough leads are coming in. You have the systems, you have the people, and then you go, so it's really, it's the profitability, but it's the people and the processes that comes into play here.

Clarence Fisher: That's really good. I run into a lot of business owners who are, maybe they have one truck or two trucks, and a lot more who have one truck and they're out there, they're making enough, they're making a good amount of money, but if they pull, oh I've got one for you. Okay. I got one for you. I just filled it this call earlier this week. Okay. Five trucks. Okay. They brought on a couple of more people, a couple of more engineers and payroll went up. Okay. So payroll went up then the owner panics a little bit and let those two people go and he jumps back in a truck. Now sales has suffered because we found out he did half of the selling. So now he's in a truck and he can't sell, but we can't bring back the other two or we think we can't because they're not talking to you until after we get off of this call. Uh, but it's this catch 22 of now, we have to get him back out of a truck. So how does that happen? Like how do we get him back out of the truck?

Speaker 2: Well, the way to get him out of the truck is first of all, having a little bit of a mindset conversation, right. To understand that are you a business owner or are you an expensive employee of your business? Right?

Clarence Fisher: Mm-hmm mm-hmm .

Adi Klevit: So he goes, okay. Yeah, I do wanna get out of the truck. I can see that he doesn't work. So the way that you do that is documenting basically the knowledge transfer and documenting everything that he does that is successful when he is in the track. And then once that is documented, you hire the right people by using a correct hiring process, and then you train them, but you have the basically we create a manual, we create a textbook and we create also a way of training. So you train them and now they're trained and they can get into track instead of the owner.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. And so that's the same process, and I'm sorry, I'm just throwing these at you. Yeah. Because this was not scripted at all.

Adi Klevit: no, it's great.

Clarence Fisher: And I'm thinking, cuz I have another guy who he is the only guy in the, he has one truck or he has two, one is sideline he's for the person that he wants to hire. Uh, but he can't bring himself to make that leap. So he is in the truck. He makes very good money, but there, I there's that mindset, I think there's that mindset, but then there's also the, I don't want to take the couple of hours a day to create these processes but that's what you do. That's, that's what you come in to do for them. Right?

Adi Klevit: Right. But that's an interesting question. Let's take that question. I don't wanna take a few hours in my day to create those processes and you're right. I do that for them. It's kind of like saying, I don't wanna do my bookkeeping, but you have to see hire a bookkeeper.

Clarence Fisher: Right, right, right.

Adi Klevit: But the question is, can you afford not writing those processes? What is the other alternative? Because if you can afford it, it's not the right time for you to do it. I mean, that's another question that you should ask yourself as a business owner. But if you go, I cannot afford not having processes and procedures because that means that I am going to continue working 60 hours a day, or 80 90. And people probably hear us and say 60, that's like a vacation. Okay. Right. So 90 hours a week, 80 hours a week now I don't see my family.

Adi Klevit: I can take a vacation. What will happen if I even dream about taking a two week vacation, and not working, no, I'm not talking about vacation where you actually on glue to the phone and the computer and your family's like, come on, go away with us and you go, no, I can't because I'm gonna lose my business. Right. So don't kid yourself that you are in Hawaii, but you are working 12 hours a day or even six hours a day when you actually should be vacationing. All those things you should ask yourself, can I afford not to have it? So yeah, maybe you can't afford a time, but look at it from the other way. It's like, can you really not afford a time? You know, because even if you work with me, you can, you still have to put a time in. You have to put a time. What we do is we make it very concise and very, to the point. So, you know, you don't have to think about where to start. You don't have to think about how to document. We just, all you need is show up for an interview. We interview you and we extract the knowledge and not just you as the business owner, also talking to the other employees. But anyway, that is an answer to the question.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. This is so awesome. As you're talking, I'm thinking about the one we went to Disney world. This was, I don't know, five years ago, five, six years ago. And um, finally got to the point where I was able to take everybody to Disney world. It's one of those things and kind of the, everybody was happy to go, grandkids, happy to go. But the single silent tier for me was when we got through the gate and just to see everyone run. Right. So it's kinda like this, oh my goodness. We did it. Right. But I was on the phone on Slack between every ride, as we're standing, waiting for the ride and they're like, pop you're, you're ruin it. You're ruin. You're ruin it. You know? And like, well, I gotta get this call and I gotta get this and I gotta get, and I knew it, like, I, I felt horrible, but I had to, and there were, I felt like I had to. Right. And so things had to change when we got back. But what you're speaking to is so real.

Adi Klevit: Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is why I I'm doing what I'm doing. Like, you know, my background, I'm an industrial engineer and that's how I got started my career over 25 years ago. So I'm always, always did process and process improvement. And I used to work in the semi conducting industry. And then I worked, I had two business of my own. I managed a big company. I worked for an international consulting company. So it's different things that I've done throughout my career. And then in 2011, I decided to start my own company and I was doing general business consulting, cuz I'm really good at it. You know, I definitely love implementing business systems and coaching and partnering with my clients, not as a business partner, but you know, partnering on the journey to make sure that they're doing well.

Adi Klevit: And then what I realized is that I can be there and I can give advice, very valuable advice that I know will work, but then it doesn't get implemented. And that's what got me. I said, they're paying me money and I'm giving them advice and strategy and I know it will work, but it just doesn't get implemented because they just don't have the time and they are wearing too many hats. So then I go, okay, there is a huge need to actually create business playbooks and create, implement, create document and implement processes and procedures. So you know that within three months you're gonna have that particular sales department fully documented or the HR department fully documented, or how you do customer service or how you handle customers fully documented without you having to spend time, figure out how to write, how to figure it out.

Adi Klevit: How can it be shared with everyone that is being taken away from you. You know, it's kind of like doing, can you imagine doing your own taxes? No. mm-hmm but you know what, if you don't give the information to the CPA, he would not be able to do the taxes. You know, right now we are, I'm sure this can be an evergreen process. And there is always some kind of a tax season. So that you need to submit the documents to your CPA. You have to find the time to do that. But the truth is is that if you're organized, if you have a process, it shouldn't take that long. It's not fun, but it shouldn't take that long. And then it's up to them to the CPA to process your taxes, same thing here, you have to commit to a time and then it gets done.

Clarence Fisher: I'm curious. Have you been able to create that documentation in one vertical and just offer that, like say you work with a plumber and create a set of processes, and then now you have a set of processes for plumbers.

Adi Klevit: You know, it's a good question. We work with many industries in similar industries. What we gain is the knowledge and the experience of how businesses work well, but we definitely tailor made it to our customers, to our clients because it's not one size fit all. I mean, I can take one planning company and tell 'em, okay, now you use it for your planning company because they have the own way of doing it. And it's very important to me that when we document something for our clients, we take into consideration, what's important for them. What's their, why what's their culture? You know, like let's say we work with many, um, creative agencies, marketing agencies, but you know, what's important for you is not what important for the other person and what you take pride of and your secret sauce. Cause that's what we are good at is extracting that secret sauce.

Clarence Fisher: Mm-hmm .

Adi Klevit: who you are, your why, how do you do things, the language that you like, things written, and another example, we work with many property management companies as an example. So yes, you know, there is like the basic process of like, you need to onboard owners, you need to onboard tenants, you need to do the lease agreement. You need to manage the tenants, you have the move in the move out. I mean, you have the maintenance, so I know what the key processes are, but then I will go, how do you do it? Right? How do you market to your owners? How do you treat your owners? You know, it's like, whatever it is, it's different maybe the way you do inspection. I mean, I know that there should be an inspection done. So I will ask you how do you do inspections, but it's, it's really tailor made to the individual.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. Very cool. So what, what are some of the biggest myths out there when it comes to systematizing a business?

Adi Klevit: That it's hard to do that it's impossible to do, which I don't think so. I mean, you just need to, don't know how to do it. That the other myth is like business owner thinking I'm the only one who can do it, which is no, because it's not true because if that's the case, it's gonna be take a long time to do.

Clarence Fisher: mm-hmm .

Adi Klevit: So if you have a team, I mean, if you are the only one in the business, you are the only one in the business, but then again, that's not the time to document, cause you need to start hiring, you need to start getting more like expand. But it's, you can always use an employee that you wanna clone and interview them or get them to do it. In terms of like, I'm the only one who can do it or it takes, or it's impossible.

Adi Klevit: It takes time, it does take time, but it doesn't have to be impossible. There are many ways of doing it. Like we can record a video, like for an example, I just work with the CPA that just before tax season, right. He decided that he wants to document these processes and procedures because he's expanding and growing. Said okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna create infrastructure. Meaning we are gonna identify your core processes in the business. We're gonna figure out the step by step procedures of what you do. But the how and the actual details, what you're gonna do is you are doing it during doing taxes. You're gonna record a video and you're gonna put the video under each step. And then when taxes is done, then we can take it and we can take those videos and translate it into a step by step procedures. But that was a great way to do it. And we got it all done before he became really busy for taxes.

Clarence Fisher: That is a, a killer, uh, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Adi Klevit: No, no, go ahead.

Clarence Fisher: I was saying that's a, a, a killer tip, right there is to record that video as you're doing it and you don't have to break as much to create the steps. Yeah,

Adi Klevit: Yeah, for sure. And then what we like to do is we actually take the videos and we translate it into step by step. Because if you're teaching somebody that don't always wanna watch, like a five, six minute video, even 30 minutes video, however, it takes long, it takes you to do it, right. Cause then you are, Hmm. I don't know this screen, not that screen. So, but we, we can work with it. You know, you, you give us the video, we create the procedure and then maybe we'll have you rerecord it from beginning to end without any mistakes. Right. You know, and other myth is like, my staff is not gonna like processes or I'm creative. So I don't need processes, processes are going to block my creativity. And that's a myth because I think processes are actually going to increase the creativity because it will take the actions that actually has to be, have to be repeated and will save you time.

Adi Klevit: I mean, Clarence, let's take an example of what happened today. Like in terms of you sending that interview questions was last minute, right. Which is fine. And it didn't bother me, but you said, you said it. So that's why I'm taking that example. So you know, you are creative, but let's say you have the process of interviewing and you send the questions ahead of time. So it's always, okay. I send the questions, like, let's say three days ahead of time, I guess have time to prepare. I get it back. My assistant processes it. She tells me what's important. I'm already smooth. Okay. You don't follow the process. You send it last minute. Now you go, okay. I don't know, is it you gonna be mad at me or not? I mean, is she gonna have the answers? Maybe she doesn't know how to speak.

Adi Klevit: And she had to like rehearse in front of the mirror for two hours and I didn't give her enough time. And now all this time is being wasted on thinking about it. But then also let's say you get a guest that cannot be spontaneously, just speaking. Then you are wasting your time, their time. And the interview is not as good. And the listeners don't like it, et cetera. You see, you have those things that interfere. And honestly, it's also like being creative in a creative agency. You know, you need data from your clients, right? I mean when you are going to do AdWords or you are gonna set up a referral program, you're gonna figure out their website, optimize it, whatever it is, you need to know, you need to have data from them, cuz otherwise it's not gonna work. Mm-hmm if you don't have a system on how to actually gather that data, you are going to basically waste a lot of time. And instead of being able to service several clients at the time, you're gonna be able to service one and chasing them. So there is no creativity in that, but let's take it on the other hand, if you actually had a system, very, very, a system that is very good and being followed, then you can have five clients at the same time, but you can also spend your time being creative as opposed to creating your processes every single time.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, and I am so thankful that you are such a professional and know what you're doing because, because everything that you said that could have gone wrong could have gone wrong, because, and especially for creatives, it's when we say, like I said, Hey, I'm super interested in this interview. I want to dig deeper and get creative in this and that. And step outside of the process that, that allows us to, like you said, keep things rolling because over the past 12 years that we've been in business in order to stay in business, I've had a lot of heartache and going through exactly what you're saying, collecting information. So we had processes and autoresponders and all that stuff that does that collection, but it was so hard earned. I mean, it was, it was almost going out of business earned you know? Yeah,

Adi Klevit: For sure. For sure. I mean, it is, it is a really hard one knowledge, hard work to get that knowledge. And that is a key component of a business is having that technology. And honestly, one of the, you know, there is a lot of things that, to be said about time management and blocking time on your calendar and that system or that system or that system, but having the right technology of how to do something will save you a lot of time. You know, just like what I said if you have the, the procedure on how to get data from the clients and it works every single time or how to onboard a client, then that the client is being onboarded correctly that they have a great experience, you know, you want them from the start because they go, wow, this is an agency that is gonna take care of me.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. I'm I'm so glad that we've met now. What about cost? How, I mean, is it because I know, I thought that I would lose not only time, but lose money by doing this

Adi Klevit: Lose money. You mean like internally in the business?

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Because I'm because the time that I'm taking to do this, I'm not doing something else.

Adi Klevit: Of course. So that's where you have to do, look at it as an investment, it's not cheap, but it's an investment, you know, we are basically like the time that you do that. I mean, it's like any outer service, like, you know, again, the CPA, I mean the CPA is kind of like a given because I don't know who is gonna sit down and do their taxes. It'll take you like, I mean, I, I don't know if anybody can even duplicate anymore how to do taxes by themselves. Right. I remember the first, like back in college, when you can do the 10 40 easy, but then it becomes definitely not easy. You can't figure it out. So that's maybe a bad example. Like if you need a lawyer, you're not gonna go and do it yourself.

Adi Klevit: Right. But some people like, let's say they have, like, I know how to do bookkeeping, but would I do my own bookkeeping? No, because it takes time. It's not worth my time. I can get a professional to do that. Right.

Clarence Fisher: H-hmm,

Adi Klevit: It's the same thing with, any like,ow, okay. So I can go and learn marketing, but I'm not going to do that. You know, I'm gonna hire you. So it's kind of like, it's a, it's the same concept of, and even simple things like at your home, I mean, are you going to clean it yourself? Are you gonna hire a house cleaner? You know, mean, that's the first thing. One of the things that I off boarded off my plate was hire a house cleaner because the three and I love cleaning. It's not a problem. Right. But I don't wanna do it that often because the three hours that I can clean my house, I can actually use it in order to spend quality time with my family, work on something that is worthwhile, you know, so you really need to figure out like, what's, your time is worth. And where is your genius zone? If your genius zone is the right processes and procedures, go ahead and do that. If it is not, then don't do it.

Clarence Fisher: Very cool. I like that. What do you think are some of the pitfalls and mistakes that people make when they are creating the processes themselves?

Adi Klevit: So what I hear most, cause I ask that question, like I ask my clients or business owners, what do you think? And they say, well, you know, it's the, not enough or too much. So some of them go into like details. They can write like 200 page on one step of the process and then go nowhere. And others are like, not enough, just like the right award or two or sentence. And then people cannot really understand or do anything with it. That's a pitfall, a pitfall. Another pitfall is putting it in different folders or different places and it's not organized. So definitely having one centralized place and using a process documentation software is extremely important. So that is one another pitfall. And, and the main one, I really think it's, making sure that it's being implemented, cuz you can write the most beautiful processes and procedures, but if it's not followed by the team, if it's not accepted, if it is, um, forgotten or nobody uses it, no reason to actually write processes and procedures.

Clarence Fisher: That is so awesome. We have a recurring task once a week that uh, something has to be done by the process. Like just pick a process. I don't care what it is, but we have to go by the process. And I can't tell you, well, you know, this, how many times something is either out of date or they've most often discovered a better way to do it. Yeah and then update it. Yeah. That's, that's great. That's great.

Adi Klevit: I mean the same thing with my processes in my company, I apply that, you know, I, I do a review and, and every time we discover something new, then one of my staff goes and updates it. But it has to be, you have to be all the time. And even then when I do the review, I like, oh yeah, this is, that step is a little bit out, you know, outdated because now we do it differently or we have a different software, et cetera. So it's definitely the periodical review is extremely important

Clarence Fisher: For someone like me. It seems so boring though, to ,

Adi Klevit: But you know what, that's why we have the way I look at it. You know, it's like that famous diagram, you have the business owner in the middle as a circle and then you have like those lollipops, right? You have like that line with another circle and a line with another circle and you have all the trusted advisors that you need to have in order to make it holistic and make it as a whole. Because if we were all into processes, nobody will produce and nobody will market and we'll just go and write and organize. So that's why the right synergy is taking somebody who can push the production. Somebody that behind organizing somebody that is pushing the demand, creating the demand and pushing the people in, in terms of marketing, somebody handle the finances, somebody handling the IT. Like I know I would not be even be able to conceive, fixing the IT or creating IT systems, but there are people that's their passion. And I, I so admire it because we work well together, but I need that complement, the skill.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. So can you gimme an example of how you've helped someone go from help one of your clients overcome these obstacles that we've been talking about?

Adi Klevit: Sure. So one of my clients, you know, he's a contractor and when I started working with him, he was basically wearing so many hats. He was, it, he had staffed, he had a pretty successful company, but he was just overworked. The same example you gave with the vacation, not able to take a vacation or kidding himself that they can have a vacation, but it's not really family complaining about it. You know, the quality of life, you know, there was no ending view because he was making money, but there was no quality of life. And when is that gonna end? You know, so he's in his forties. I mean, is that gonna end when he's retiring, but how is that gonna end? You know, when is retiring gonna happen and how can you even sell the business when it's so dependent on the owner, right?

Adi Klevit: I mean, that's also a great consideration on make your business. If the business is a turnkey operation and operates without you, it's much easier to sell. So that's another one. So we start working together, we start documenting, you know, I had my weekly meetings with him. I interviewed him, I interviewed his staff. We start writing those procedures. And as we were doing it, you can see that he saw, oh yeah, this one now can be totally delegated to that person. Or that procedure can be done by this person. Or this procedure is actually not necessary. We can have a subcontractor, we can communicate what needs to be done, but it doesn't have to be done internally. So we basically document, we started with operations and then we documented sales and then we documented HR and then we documented how they're actually running the company in terms of meetings and the meeting cadence and all of that.

Adi Klevit: And we did all of that. And then it was able to see like how to actually shift this business model to something that is more profitable and did fantastic and actually hiring a great marketing company. And then they created more demands. So the business extended even more and at the process of doing that, he was able to actually open another two businesses while maintaining that amazing lifestyle of not, I mean, I saw his time blocking. I mean, it's amazing. It's like he's working certain hours during the week and that's it. And that is a success, you know, because now he's able to take a vacation without working. I know cuz I spoke to his wife and I know that that's happening.

Clarence Fisher: that is awesome. And then thanks., you already, uh, shared with us how, you know, how you were inspired to do this and thanks for sharing that, um, you were successful before you started your business. Um, is there a lesson that you learned early on that still kind of resonates in effects the way you do business now?

Adi Klevit: You know, I think the lesson is that I can't do it all. You know, I cannot do it myself and the business cannot rely on me. You know, it's like one thing that I learned in, even before starting my business as an employee, when I was working for a cons in a consulting company and even, even when I was running a business and had my own two, it's always empower the people that you're surrounded by, because that is the only way that your clients or your contacts will trust them. So I either as an employer, like when I was working even as an employee myself, but I still had direct reports, I would hire them. So I would hire people that I can trust that I can actually have them service our clients. And when I would pass a client to one of the consultants that were working for me, I would always make sure to explain why I chose that consultant.

Adi Klevit: It's honest, you know, you can't lie on that, but really choose the right personality, the right person, you know that they're gonna take really good care of them and really empower that person to do that. So don't pass it on to one of your direct reports or your employees or your staff, and then try to micromanage and see what if they're doing. Okay. You know, trust the people, train them, trust them and let them go with it. You know, that, that is something that I learned and that is very valuable because that is the way you are actually gonna grow the business. You can't micromanage or be suspicious or not trust your people.

Clarence Fisher: Very cool. Thank you so much for your time. And closing two questions here for you. One is what is the most important question that we may have already answered this, but what's the most important question that a business owner needs to ask themselves as they consider systematizing their business in a way I, I guess we, we talk about that as do I want to grow. Yeah.

Adi Klevit: But I think in closing it's the question is like, can I afford not to and do I, do I wanna grow? You know, it's gonna do I wanna grow. Okay, good. Can I afford not having systems? If the answer is now I cannot afford it. Like not, not afford paying for getting the systems done. What I'm saying is afford not having the systems in the business, then do something about it.

Clarence Fisher: And then what do they need to consider when they're thinking of, when they're talking with consultants like you, like what's the biggest thing to look for?

Adi Klevit: I think it's like the rapport, like really getting along with that person, seeing that, that person can understand, uh, business processes and they can actually extract the data. Seeing examples of work, looking at the website, looking at testimonials, you know, we have several, we have testimonials like with names of actual clients. And I tell my prospective clients, you can talk to any of them and talk to them. It's just a matter of like really looking at, okay, what is the final product? And do I want that final product and how is it gonna get achieved?

Clarence Fisher: Okay, cool. I'm on your side, you are very transparent with everything there. So that's, that's great to see.

Adi Klevit: Yeah. We have to have like a partnership with our clients, you know, it's it's, we are there for their success. You know, we want to be successful. So, you know, our success is the success of our clients. You know, if our clients are not happy, then we are not doing what we need to do. You know, it's not like I can sell them something and then disappear. It's no, it's like, I am there to do the job. So if it's not getting done, we are not successful. And you know, so yeah.

Clarence Fisher: So where does the energy come from? Have you always had this, this energy or is it like, I don't know, you're vegan or something or like what,

Adi Klevit: No, I'm not vegan. I do the keto diet, but I don't think that's, but that's, that's just a side. Um, you know, it's me.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. So that's awesome. It's contagious. It's contagious. Thank you. I'm gonna be on my next call. Like, yeah. Alrighty. So how can we find out about you in the business success consulting group, where do you want to send us?

Adi Klevit: So go to bizsuccesscg.com. So that's bizsuccesscg.com. You can call us at (503) 662-2911. And LinkedIn Adie Klevit. I think there is only one Adie Klevit. So it's Adie K L E V I T. Many ways to reaches.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Thank you.

Adi Klevit: Call Clarence. And he will connect us.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, for sure. and I will put the link in the show notes and thanks so much for tuning in until next week. Go do what you need to do in order to own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Eric Knam: When you look at coaching, a lot of people think that it's for the weak and the wounded business, but if you go and you talk to Tom Brady or a Michael Jordan or Michael Phelps Tiger Woods, anybody who is the peak of their game, they see that coaches played a huge role in their success. So while we certainly can help businesses that are struggling really, where we get a lot of opportunity to make some significant impact is in the businesses that have kind of hit a plateau, right? They've flattened out. They know that they can get to another level, but they're just not quite sure how to get there.

Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I am your host Clarence Fisher. And today we talk with certified business coach, Eric Knam about providing business, help advice, coaching and mentoring services to small and medium sized businesses like yours and mine. We'll uncover the six steps to building a profitable enterprise that works without you. Key phrase "without you." Also the three elements you must have in check in order to increase sales conversions and create a consistent stream of income, how to put systems in place so that you can finally take time off and much, much more. Eric has a passion for helping businesses like ours grow and become profitable so that we, the business owner can enjoy the lifestyle we deserve. As a business coach and as an advisor, he helps you deliver the results that you desire using proven tools, methodologies, and systems tested and perfected over tens of thousands of businesses worldwide in over more than two decades of experience. Hold on, we will be right back with Eric Knam.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses used to their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: All right, Eric Knam, how are you, Sir?

Eric Knam: I am doing well, Clarence, how are you, sir?

Clarence Fisher: Man... I'm doing well. I've been looking forward to this since we met and so glad that you made it. Thank you for taking the time.

Eric Knam: Well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I've been on pins and needles all day looking forward to this, so it's finally time.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Eric Knam: Yeah, tahat's kind of a loaded question honestly, but I think the, the easiest way to, to kind of set it up is, you know, when you, when you think about people who start their own business, really, there's one thing that they should have in mind when they do that. And that's to build a business that they can sell someday. And I talked to a number of business brokers and it's absolutely shocking how many people go to the business broker trying to sell their business when they're ready to retire and find out that it's really not worth anything. So what we do is we work with business owners to help them build our definition of a successful business is a commercial profitable enterprise that can work without you. So if you think about it, when it's time to sell that business, if you have to work in the business all day, day in, day out, if, if the business revolves around you, then you've really created a job for yourself and an investor isn't looking to come in and buy a job for themselves. They're coming in to look for something that's gonna be able to make them more money with them, not having to do a whole lot of work. So that's in a nutshell what we do.

Clarence Fisher: That's great. Yeah. A lot of us find, do find ourselves, with a job it's like, you start the business to leave the job that you hate and that sob you work for, whatever. Right. And then you find out, well, dad gum, I'm working holidays, I'm workings weekends

Eric Knam: And the guy I'm working for is a bigger sob than the one. I, my first MLS job

Clarence Fisher: Exactly. Outta the pot. Right. It's fire. So, how did you get started helping businesses the way that you do?

Eric Knam: You know, it's really kind of been an interesting journey. I've spent over 20 years in corporate. America was with a fortune 100 company, ran a multimillion dollar business unit for them. And when I left there, I spent most of my time in sales and marketing and leadership really predominantly. And when I left there, I thought, you know, what are the things that I loved about what I did that I could carry over into something that, where I would have a little bit more control over, over my own life. Right. I wanted to get away from, from the corporate grind, so to speak. And

Clarence Fisher: You're not gonna say sob, right, you're gonna be

Eric Knam: . I mean, no, no. uh, so, you know, getting away from the corporate grind, it's like, well, what are the things that I enjoy doing? And it was, it was coaching, it was mentoring, it was leading, it was helping people, you know, set goals and cast the vision, and then put a plan in place and help them move toward that, and then celebrating the steps and celebrating the successes along the way. Because so often I think what happens is, you know, we set these goals and then we just, it seems like we're never gonna attain them and it's kinda like trying to, trying to get to the horizon, right? If your goal is to get to the horizon, you're never gonna get there and you can get really dejected, but if you stop and turn around and look at where you started and look at where you are, then that's something to celebrate, right?

Eric Knam: So we wanna measure, we wanna measure the gain, not the gap. So that was kind of the surface reason for it was just, I really love working with people and helping them achieve their goals and celebrating with them. But, you know, when you peel the onion back, I think the real emotional thing that ties me into to what I do is that my Dad was in the air force. He was a career air force man, retired after 23 years, I think it was and decided to take his pension and buy a business, buy a small business. And unfortunately the business didn't survive. So he and mom had to go back to work. So here they are spending their, you know, their, their golden years, both having to work. And then unexpectedly at the age of 56 which I guess probably isn't quite the golden years yet.

Eric Knam: Right. But at the age of 56, Dad passed away from heart attack and that left mom with the debt of a failed business, you know, and no husband, obviously as well. So it really put a real strain on her. And I think about that, and I think, what would their, what would their last years together have been like if they had had a successful business and then what would her years have been like upon his passing? How much easier would it have been for her if she didn't have to assume all of that debt and all of the challenges that went along with that failed business?

Clarence Fisher: Well, so, wow. So of course, in a situation like that, you would want someone to coach you kind of help you get things together with most of our listeners, how would they gauge whether coaching would be right for them?

Eric Knam: Okay. That, and that's a great question because I think when you look at coaching, a lot of people think that it's for the weak and the wounded business, but if you go and you talk to Tom Brady or a Michael Jordan or Michael Phelps Tiger Woods, anybody who is the peak of their game, they see that coaches played a huge role in their success. So while we certainly can help businesses that are struggling really, where we get a lot of opportunity to make some significant impact is in the businesses that have kind of hit a plateau, right? They've flattened out. They know that they can get to another level, but they're just not quite sure how to get there. So I like to say that the business owners we work with, they need to be open-minded and they want to grow their business, and they want to grow themselves personally as well. So if they fall into those categories, then they'd be a great candidate for coaching. Cause let's face it. There are people out there who they know everything their way is the only way. And they're not willing to try any new things. And honestly, if that's the case, then probably not gonna be that successful if we work together.

Clarence Fisher: yeah, yeah. That's that's Hey, that's great and that's wisdom, and there are quite a few people that are already tired, already frustrated in their business. And I'm sure some of the things that we'll cover today, but definitely hopping over and working with a coach like yourself can help them get things together to where, you know, it really is a dream to be able to go out of town for a week and not have to worry about what's going on back home at the office, you know?

Eric Knam: Yep. That's Absolutely.

Clarence Fisher: That's the dream. So how do you go about creating that? When we talk about a commercial, a commercial profitable enterprise that works without them, what are the steps to do that?

Eric Knam: So we actually have what we call it, our six steps. If you think about building a house, right, you gotta have a good foundation. And then you build on top of that. So I always equate it to, um, a recipe for baking a cake or cupcakes or cookies or something like that. Your business has got all of the ingredients, but you gotta put 'em together in the right order, because if you don't, if you take the cake mix and you throw the frosting in there, and then you throw that in the oven, cook it for however long you cook a cake, you know, at 350 degrees, take it out. And then you add the, the eggs and the, the oil and the water, stir it up, put some candles on it and give it to your spouse. They're probably not gonna be pretty happy with, with what you gave them, but if you do it in the right order, you end it with something that people appreciate and enjoy, and it can be the same with the business.

Eric Knam: So the first step where we start is really what we call mastery. And there are four key components to that. So we've got time mastery, we've got money mastery, we've got delivery mastery and we've got destination mastery. So time mastery is really all about making sure that the business owner is using their time wisely. Are they, do they find themselves doing the $12 an hour jobs that somebody else should be doing, or are they working on the business and doing the, you know, the $500 an hour business owner tasks that they should be focusing on, right. Growing the business, working on it. If they're in the trades, are they getting their invoices out on time, things along those lines, which leads me then to money mastery. So how tight control do they have over their finances?

Eric Knam: And I'm, I'm constantly amazed at how many business owners find out if they made money at the end of the year when their accountant sends them their taxes. And it's really kind of scary. So I will talk to some business owners who say, oh yeah, I get a profit and law statement. And I look at that once a month. Okay. Well, that's great. Well, do you take that and do you compare it back to previous months? So you can kind of get an idea for what trends are. And that's one of the things that we like to do is say, okay, we had some really interesting blips here. We went way up in this month, on this particular expense, what happened there? Very often, the, the response back is, Hmm. I don't know. Okay, well, let's go do some digging and see if we can find out what happened.

Eric Knam: So the business owners who do tend to actually pay attention to their finances, a lot of times are just using the reports. So that's, that's looking in the past. So it's kinda like driving your car, just looking in the rear view mirror the whole time. So we also want to think about forecasting, right? We wanna budget. So looking at your numbers from your P and L is gonna give you an idea of, you know, that that's kind your, your measurement, are we on track? And then your budget is really for profit, right? This is, this is how much we intend to make. This is how much we think we'll make. We've got our certain KPIs to help drive the drive, the revenue, you know, so we got a much better understanding of what our financial situation looks like, so we can make better decisions.

Eric Knam: So in addition to money mastery, then we move on to delivery mastery. Delivery mastery is really all about a consistent product. So consistent product or service that is delivered on time, on budget and at a profit. Uh, we wanna make sure we're getting feedback from people, right? Finding out how'd you find out about us? What did you think we want the bad feedback so that we can tweak our delivery and make sure that it's that much better. The next time somebody comes in, because when you've got customers who love what you do, love your service, love your product. They'll keep coming back. And then the fourth component, there is destination mastery, and that's really all about what's the, where do you want to take the business? You know, what's the vision, what's the mission? What are the values that you ascribe or that you subscribe, I guess I should say to your business.

Eric Knam: And it's really important to know where you want to go. Cause otherwise you're just kind of out there flopping in the breeze. It's like getting in a, getting in a boat and setting out to sea, and maybe you end up on an island and maybe it's a, a really nice island, or maybe it's a desert island, or maybe you end up floating around in the middle of the ocean for a couple of years and you end up at the bottom of the sea, right? So if you don't have a destination, it's really hard to get where you're going. And even if, uh, you know, you're gonna get blown off course sometimes. Uh, but it, when you know what your destination is, then you can kind of adjust your sales, you know, change the rudder and make sure that you're getting back on course to get to where you wanna be.

Eric Knam: So that's kind of that, that first step is making sure that we've got that foundation of mastery in place after that, then we move up to niche. So this is kind of the, the marketing component. And this is really all about being that profitable enterprise that we talked about, right. Making, making some money, having some consistent cash flow. And here we wanna, we wanna get to a point where we're not competing on price. Uh, and so many people when I ask 'em, you know, Hey, do you think people buy because of value or they buy because of cost. A lot of people think it's cost, but it really isn't. You I'm sure you probably have a car, right. Mm-hmm okay. Is it, uh, is it 20 years old held together with duct tape? No radio, the windows are still

Clarence Fisher: Made. I got one like that, just because I live, debt free. So there is one like that. It's an old truck, uh, that, you know, I think we got from her mom and it's just like four speed. And I promise anytime I roll up somewhere, the, the kids at the drive there're like, is he really rolling that window down?

Eric Knam: That's awesome.

Clarence Fisher: How so, so I am the abnormal. Yes, I have one, but you know, we've got the, we've got the reliable and that you're

Eric Knam: Right. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe a better analogy would be, you know, every time you take the family out to eat, do you take 'em to McDonald's and, go to the, you know, the, the dollar value menu. And that's the only thing that you can order off of, you know, when you go out for your anniversary, do you go, Hey, all right, honey, we're going, we're going for the dollar value menu tonight to celebrate high on the hog. Right.

Clarence Fisher: I'm not bad too yeah.

Eric Knam: Yeah. so there's value in that. Right. Right. And we see value in having a, a nice car with a working air conditioner and windows that roll up and a radio that works. Right. Right. So that's why, that's why they can't keep cars on the lot right now. Right. Cuz people want, want the new cars and they can't get 'em. So, so it's really all about selling on value and, and a couple of ways to do that are number one is figure out what is your unique selling proposition? What makes you different than anybody else out there? And, and a great example I like to use on this is, um, Uber and Lyft are, are fantastic example of totally taking an industry and turning it on its ear because we had the taxi industry for so long. And you called you waited when the guy got there, you hope that he wasn't, you know, a smoker, you hope that the, the seats weren't held together with duct tape.

Eric Knam: I mean, I think we've all been in some of those taxi cabs where it was like, I hope that this thing gets me where I'm supposed to go. Right. You know, and now you can pull out your phone and order a car that's there in two or three minutes, you got a picture of the person driving it, you know, their license plate. They've got ratings from other people who've ridden with them before and oh yeah. They get to rate you too. So that's a great example of us P really defining themselves and changing the game. The other thing that I like to, to see happen is for business owners to have a guarantee because guarantees really helping that conversion process when you've got somebody on the fence as to whether or not they want to go from, you know, from not being a customer, to being a customer, a guarantee can help.

Eric Knam: You know, we offer, uh, for our coaching clients, we offer a guarantee of within 17 weeks. If we haven't found our fee, then we'll coach you for free until we do. Right. That's how confident we are in the, uh, you know, in the results that our clients are gonna get. And we even, we even set a goal of saying, okay, okay, so I'm paying for myself. That's great, but what's in it for you. So our goal really is to go three times the return on investment of the coaching investment within the first year, 10 times return on the coaching investment within the second year and globally, we average seven. So you can see how something like that really gets somebody's attention and says, oh yes. Wow. I can go ahead now and, and move forward with this with less concern or less worry. So niche is really all about marketing.

Eric Knam: We know 80% of marketing doesn't work. So we wanna make sure that we're testing and measuring, uh, figuring out what are the things that we're spending money on that, uh, that are really making a difference for the business. Because if you gave me a thousand dollars and I gave you $1,500 back, every time you did, how often would you gimme a thousand dollars? Mm-hmm right. And that's really what marketing should be too, right? It's an investment, not an expense. So once we get the, the, the consistent cash flow going, then we start to look at, at leverage as the next level. And that's really all about systems and systems stand for, save yourself, time, energy, and money. Okay. It's all about making sure that all those little tasks that are repetitive can, can be covered and we have a good way to do it.

Eric Knam: And I think, uh, the great example of leverage here is, uh, we say leverages, do the work once get paid forever. And one of my favorite examples of this is, uh, back in Silicon Valley in the early days you had Microsoft and you had, um, you had Apple. Microsoft created this software that they were able to just sell over and over and over again, they tweak it, they sell it, they tweak it, they sell it, they tweak it, they sell it, uh, Apple on the other, on the other hand, uh, made a computer, sold a computer, made a computer, sold a computer, made a computer, sold a computer, which was great until everybody had a computer. And then what happened? Steve jobs got fired. Do you remember where he went? Mm-hmm he went to Pixar. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's really where he learned about leverage.

Eric Knam: And you think about, uh, you think about Monsters, Inc.or Toy Story or any of those movies. They made those once, but they sold the lunch boxes. They sold the, you know, they sold the stuffed animals. They sold the little Woody, pulled the string in his back. There's a snake in my boot. Right. They were able to sell over and over and over again. They're getting still getting money off of every time it's run on television and royalties, right. So he leaves Pixar and he goes back to, to Apple. And I think this is where it is really, really brilliant is he figures out a way to do the work, never and get paid forever. Because if you think about it, how many songs has Apple written, right. How many apps have they created? They're just taking a cut off of it as it's coming through.

Eric Knam: So that's a great example to leverage as far as putting systems in place and then doing the work one time and getting paid on it forever. Uh, so once we got good systems in place, we can work on expanding our team to run the systems and systems really should run a business. And anytime there's a challenge, you know, we really wanna look first at, is it a system issue or is it a personnel issue? If it's a personnel issue, then we think, okay, is it a competence issue? Do they need more training or is it a commitment issue? And if it's a commitment issue, then obviously we have to address that a little bit differently, but really the team is there to support the customers, right? Given the absolute best experience possible. Uh, we wanna put, uh, have good, uh, job descriptions in place. We wanna have good key performance indicators in place.

Eric Knam: We need to make sure that everybody understands exactly what it is that they're supposed to be doing so that they can get out there and do it. Once we got a good team in place, everything's coming along there. Then we put a general manager in place and we move into synergy, which is, uh, really where you can now duplicate the business over and over again. So you think about a, uh, you know, McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or something like that. They've got that set up so well that they can just go in and drop one on a, on a, you know, a street corner, anywhere in the US, if they were anywhere in the world in a lot of cases, right? So now you got somebody else kind of managing the day to day on it. You can be as involved as you want to, as the business continues to grow, then we hit results, which is that final step. Uh, and that I like to call that the mailbox money step. So that's when the business owners getting passive income, uh, you know, they can, they can reinvest it. They can start buying property, they can sell the business, you know, whatever it is, but they've got that freedom. They've got that financial independence to be able to do whatever they wanna do. So that's a really long answer to your question of what steps do we take to get people to a point where they have a commercial profitable enterprise that works without them.

Clarence Fisher: No, I be, no, that's great. That is great. And that, and that's one of the things that I don't know, I found so fascinating when I came to hear you, uh, speak was just how formulaic it was and, and, and laid out. And I, I thought I, I'm looking around, I'm thinking, okay, I've been in business for 10 years. And I'm wondering if the people around me are really picking up what you are laying down. If you know what I'm saying? Like, like I'm in the back. And I wanna take my handkerchief off, like, like old school church and just, yeah. , you know, So like how long, so how long does it I'm gonna ask, how long does it take when someone engages, engages you to, to walk those steps?

Eric Knam: Hmm. And that's a great question. Quite honestly, it's gonna depend on the business, right? So some businesses can be ready in a year. Some businesses can be ready in five years. It, it just really kind of depends on where the business is now and how big, how big we need to grow it. Right? So I've, I coach businesses that are, you know, low six figures, all the way up to multi, multiple million dollar businesses. And the interesting thing is every time I sit down and get, and start a new engagement with one, they all have a lot of the same problems, you know, you would think, okay, here's a, here's a $10 million business that's been around for, you know, 15 years. Surely they've got the mastery component under control. They don't, they don't, they just have the challenges on a bigger scale.

Clarence Fisher: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's, it's it. It's, it's amazing. It's, it's trying to find payroll run around last minute. You know, if the people on the lines is AB AB like new, how close , you know, things come.

Eric Knam: Yeah. Uh, I heard a quote from, from our founder, Brad sugars. He said, if you've never struggled to make pay, if you've never worried about how you're gonna make payroll, then you've never really owned a business.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and there's then there's times when you have those, those discussions, and I'm sure your, your parents had them. I I've had them with my wife where there are serious. I'm about to pull my hair out, trying to figure out how to not let these people down. Mm-hmm on the client side and my team side, it's all about to crumble. Why did I, how can I, you know?

Eric Knam: Yep, absolutely. Yeah. I hear that every day.

Clarence Fisher: And my poor wife is, I was like, well, babe, I supported you. I supported you. ,

Eric Knam: You know? Yeah. so I think that's such an important thing too, is to have somebody in your life who does support you. Right. But at the same time, you know, I think I'm thinking back to a, a client owns a, a large accounting firm and we were talking and the comment was made about their spouse. And it's like, well, you know, that person's not really a lot of help when it comes to, to business advice. And then we were talking about their friends and they said, well, you know, normally I I'm the most successful of my friends in business. So normally I'm the one giving them the advice. So it's like, I need somebody to, to sit down and talk with and bounce these things off of. And, you know, I, I went through the, the six steps and it's a really important part of what we do, but I don't want it to come across like this as a check the box type of thing.

Eric Knam: Cause we are very much about coaching business owners to achieve their goals. Right. It doesn't matter what I want for you. It matters what you want for you. So one of the first things we do when we, when we enroll a client, when we engage with them is we do what we call an alignment. And it kind of goes back to that, uh, uh, destination mastery that we just talked about in that first step. And it's all about getting really clear on where do you want to be in 10 years? Where do you want, where do we need to be in five years to get you to the 10 years? Okay. So now where do we need to be in one year to get you to the five year to get you to the 10 year? All right. So what are the steps we have to take over the next 13 weeks?

Eric Knam: And we actually sit down and put that first 13 week plan together, again, based off of the things that they want to accomplish. Now, there will be some things that I will definitely interject on and say, okay, I think that your time management or self management could really use some help. So here's some tools that we're gonna implement. Here's some things that we're gonna do to help you get that under control, because when we do that, then you can be more productive. But by and large, what we do is really focused on getting them to build the business that they dreamed of, you know, when they, when they started things

Clarence Fisher: That is so great. And it's great to have the option. I, I think I I've heard that, that we all should be building to at least have the option to whether sale or, or keep someone in charge and get that mailbox money

Eric Knam: As you're right, as you're talk well, you know, and, and it's funny too, to talk to, to business owners who say, well, you know, my kids are gonna take it over. You don't know that, you know, my dad thought I was gonna go into the air force. I went into the army, you know, , there's no guarantees there that just cuz it's attractive to you doesn't mean it's gonna be attractive to the kiddos.

Clarence Fisher: I have to ask, how was that taken

Eric Knam: He actually commissioned me. So it was, it was pretty cool. It was a neat thing. But yeah, he, uh, it's funny. I saw when I was deployed, I saw, uh, a cartoon in, uh, one of the over in the, we were the air force. Uh, and, and there was a cartoon that was posted up in one of the orderly rooms and it was the four different services and it was the, the Marines, you know, laying there in the mud and all this. And the guy's like, I love how much this sucks. And then next to it was the army guy also laying in the, you know, laying in the, uh, in the mud. And he's like, man, this sucks. And it was the Navy guy and he's sitting on a boat and he is, I can't believe I'm gonna be at sea for three months. This sucks. And then it shows the air force guy sitting there with the remote control in his hand saying what no cable TV, this sucks. so, uh, he definitely got over me on that as far as, uh, me picking a place where I got to go sleep in the mud while he got to go sleep in, uh, you know, really really nice barracks.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, the, um, a couple of things that stood out to me, there's so much, I'm going to have to rewind at, you know, this myself and, and just hit it on slowmo and make sure that I have bases covered, you know, it, it was right before I came to see you. Uh, my wife and I had went to on a trip to, uh, San Diego, um, never been to San Diego, did the zoo and all of that stuff, uh, did, uh, midway, uh, got to tour the midway battleship, which was mm-hmm , which was really great. And you know, they have these guys with the, they call 'em them yellow hats. And these are guys who had actually served on that ship. Oh, wow. That you they're, you know, they're older and you can, uh, you know, talk with them. Uh, so that was great.

Clarence Fisher: But one of the things that stood out to me is we had started, or I had started, I say, I, no, it was definitely we, me and my team two months prior to allow, to just make sure that I could take that, that week mm-hmm . And one of the things in consulting with, you know, my peers is that I, I took, I didn't even think about was, was getting them mentally prepared and understanding that I believed in them enough to what that they could, that they could do it mm-hmm because I, I I'd never taken a, a, any time off, but it was, Hey, I promised my wife, I'm not touching anything for a week. Right. And so I'm, I'm passing this on to them look Brandy. I told, I told them, they know my wife, you know, it's like I told her, I'm not touching anything. And they're, they're mainly, they're mainly females. They're like, yeah, go her, you know, , I'm like, well, but you know what that means, right? Like I'm not going to be here for you to ask me anything mm-hmm and then it's set in for all of us, like, do we have the systems in place? And you know, I found myself, Eric probably day three on vacation where I just didn't care. like, I was

Clarence Fisher: Like, Whether I come back to anything, I don't really care right now, you know? And I didn't care until the last leg of the flight coming home. Mm-hmm then it started kind of like, oh, Crap. That real. Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: Say, to say again, when I sat in front of you, all of this was so timely, it was on my mind. And that's why I was so excited. And so hyped to be able to speak with you and get this out to my audience, because I mean, we all need this mm-hmm and very rarely do we say, Hey, the solution is outside or, or outside of me, kinda like what you said with the athletes and the, and the coaching for whatever reason, we just don't do it.

Eric Knam: Yeah. And I think as business owner, it's interesting you say that, cuz I think, and I find myself doing this too, right. As, as the business coach, I have to have all the answers and I have to be the strong one and you know, I'm human too. And I make mistakes and I, but I think sometimes we get to a point where it's like, okay, I own my own business. I've I've made my bed. I've gotta lie in it. And I, and I, I can't ask anyone for any help. And you know, if you, if you look at, if you look at humanity, I mean, we're meant to, to exist together. We're meant to, to serve each other. We're meant to help each other. We're meant to bless each other. And you know, that's really what I love to do. That's the best part of, of this.

Eric Knam: You were talking about putting the systems in place and taking time off. And it made me think of clients. I brought onboard a little less than a year ago and their whole thing was, you know, we're making plenty of money. We have no time. We are working 24 7 all year. And it was funny cuz during one of the, one of the initial coaching sessions, uh, it's a husband and wife team. Uh, one of 'em said, we don't have time for this. We can't do this, this just, this isn't working, uh, trust the process. And by the end of our session, we had figured out something to help free up their time. They just took a five day vacation. They're not working weekends anymore. And it would, it just, it, because we put systems in place, we put the right people in place. So we've taken offloaded.

Eric Knam: Some of those $12 an hour jobs that they were doing to other people who can handle it, handle it more efficiently, uh, more effectively freeing up their time to work on the business. And now not only do they have time off, but the business is growing exponentially as well, as far as the, the revenues and the profit. So it's really, and we were, we were on the call not too long ago and to come up with me and you really did pay for yourself and, and that's the kind of stuff that makes me do what I do. You know, what everything else is great. But being able to know that it made a difference in somebody's life and that they're able to now actually go enjoy a weekend, you know, away with, with their spouse, just that you can't put a price on that.

Clarence Fisher: Not at all, not at all. There were, there were a few things that jumped out at me when I saw you in person. And one of those, if you can speak on was the point of power.

Eric Knam: Yes. The point of power. So, uh, maybe some of the folks in your, in your audience have, uh, have read the book called The Oz Principle. It kind of hits very similarly to that. And it's really all about, we call it the point of power or the, the point of decision. And it's all about how you handle a situation that, uh, that you're in. And if you, if you imagine this, this red dot caught of floating in the, in the middle of a piece of paper and then below it is the word bed B E D and the B stands for blame. The E stands for excuses and the D stands for denial. Okay. So when we're below the point, we're powerless. So when we're in a situation, we can see denial is a, is a great example. Uh, you know, with the business owner who has continued to do the same thing over and over again, the money is not coming in.

Eric Knam: They're about to run outta money, but they're not doing anything about it. They're just in denial, that things are, are gonna get really bad really quick, right? So then you move up to excuses. So excuses are all about, it's not my fault. And we see this all the time. My wife was trying to sell something on Facebook marketplace the other day she had had it sold person said, I will come and pick it up. At this time, she was supposed to come on Sunday afternoon. We blocked off like an hour and a half of our day on Sunday afternoon for this person to come, never showed up. My wife messages her back. And it's only when she says I was under the, uh, I'm guessing you don't want this anymore. That she responds back. Well, we had to leave. So she wasn't able to come.

Eric Knam: We just finally ended up selling it to somebody else. Cuz there were 60 people in line for this thing. And the response came back. Well, it's not fair. It's not fair. I, I got hung up shopping. I was busy all these excuses as to why they couldn't keep their commitment. Right. So perfect example of somebody making excuses and then there's blame, right? So it's somebody else's fault. And when we get stuck down underneath the point of power, we really are powerless because we're not taking control of things. You know, we're letting, we're letting the, the winds kind of dictate where we take the ship so to speak. So when you go above the point of power, that takes us to where we are powerful. And if you think of, think of the word or like you used to paddle a boat, uh, and you've got ownership, accountability, and responsibility, and those are really the things that make us powerful.

Eric Knam: Those are the things that really help us change our destiny. And a lot of people look at the word accountable and responsible and they use 'em interchangeably and, and they're really not the same thing. And, and really the perspective here is responsible is forward looking. So I am responsible for doing something accountable is rearward looking. I was accountable for having met that result. And then ownership is really own your ship, right? It is the buck stops here type of mentality. And when a business owner can address a challenge like that and lean into it and actually own it, then it makes a huge difference because it changes kind of that, that mindset of theirs and it, it permeates throughout the organization. And that's so, so that's really one of the cool things about the point of power is that you can use it personally, but then you can think about your business as well.

Eric Knam: So if you've got a culture that is regularly below the point of power, you've got people blaming one, another making excuses in denial about what's going on. Then that's really an opportunity for more management systems for putting clear job descriptions in places for KPIs, for testing and measuring, for holding people accountable for, for sitting down with them and, and making sure that you're managing their performance, doing those performance reviews, having the work in progress meetings, you know, whatever it is, that's gonna help them understand what they're supposed to do and manage them out of those behaviors. Now, if you've got a group that is on top of it, they they're accountable. They're responsible. They own the, they own their job. They own the business. Then that's where you can really focus on leadership. It's kind of the whole, here's the vision, follow me. Let's go get this thing. So the point of power just is, is so amazing and, and, and works on so many different levels and in so many different situations,

Clarence Fisher: How is this related or passed on to a person's team? Not just, not just them as they're working with you, how do, how do we get this to our team?

Eric Knam: Yeah. Well, so that's a great question because it goes back, I think to the, the mission, vision and values, because if you've got a clear set of values, then you can use that as part of your hiring process. Right? I can ask you what are, what are the things you value? I can tell you, these are the things that we value at this organization. I can have you sit down with other people who work at the organization and they can say, Clarence, this is what it's like to work here. Right? So they get a really clear idea. And when you start bringing people in who have those same values, the rest of it kind of takes care of itself. Right. But, uh, again, I think it goes back to what are you dealing with? Do we need to put more management things in place or do we just really need to get the troops fired up? Right? Do we need to reconnect and reengage? Cause sometimes you got the wrong people on the team. You got the, you know, sometimes you got the, the wrong people on the bus. Sometimes you have the right people on the bus, but they're in the wrong seat. And then sometimes you have the right people on the bus, in the right seat. And that's ultimately what we want.

Clarence Fisher: So do you sometimes run into it where we have to say, Hey, I'm going to blame it on our new coach that I need to either move you or remove you. Does that does does that happen? Or, or, or what?

Eric Knam: I've got? I've got no problem being the bad guy, but you know, it's kind of funny cuz I've had several instances where uh, probably in the first or second coaching session, I've realized that somebody needed to go just from the stories. But as, as a coach, I don't tell you, you need to fire somebody, right? That's not my place. It's, it's your business. As a coach, it's my job to help guide you to see. And I ask, I got several clients who could call and talk to and say, what's the question asks you about your personnel and it's is your organization better off with this person or without this person? And then listening to the response, it's like, okay, do you realize how many excuses you just made for that person and helping them get to that point? But I got no problem being a heavy, as long as they don't give him my name and, and home address,

Clarence Fisher: He lives here.

Clarence Fisher: That's right. Yeah. Here's his office. As soon as you asked her that question, I went, I went through, well, if I have to, if I have to think too hard about it, then that's an issue as well. Isn't it?

Eric Knam: Yeah. I was actually working with clients yesterday. They're looking to bring in somebody else on and they wanted my opinion and it's really kind of funny because I just kept asking him questions. And one of the final questions was it's yes or no. Is your organization going to be better with this person on your team? And they both said yes. And then at the end of it, like, we really appreciate your feedback and insight. And like, it was all your feedback and insight. I just helped you get there. Cause you knew the answer all along. You just had some mental block to keep you from getting it.

Clarence Fisher: Isn't that interesting that uh, we do need people to pull it, pull it out of us. Mm-hmm so I, I know, you know, me and I can wake up in the morning and, and I'm shooting ideas with my wife and she's in the shower and I'm, I'm like shooting ideas. Like what do you think about, what do you think about? And she's like, babe, I don't, I don't know. like,

Clarence Fisher: , it's like you wanna say So, but it's, it's great to have somebody to bounce off. Okay.

Eric Knam: Well that's exactly why I have a coach, right? Yeah. Cause I believe you gotta eat your own cooking. Cause I can't grow myself and grow my business if, if I don't have somebody to bounce things off of as well. And yeah, my, my wife's happy to talk to me too, you know, but I get the same thing when she's in the shower. Yeah. I don't know. go talk to your coach.

Clarence Fisher: Exactly, exactly. So, uh, man, I I'm gonna be respectful of your time. There's got, there's so much that you covered. I mean, we talked about no price competition and when you went over testing and measurement, that was huge in, in closing today though, let's hit the, because when you went over the unique selling proposition mm-hmm and you went over the guarantees, we have a, we have a, a client in common who he came and he was telling me about these guarantees that he wanted to do. You know, we were having our QBR, our quarterly business review

Clarence Fisher: And, and we're eating, going back and forth. And, and then he is like, Hey, I'm gonna create these guarantees. Uh, we got a guarantee for this niche and we're gonna create this guaranteed this niche. And I'm like, who are you like, like, huh? I mean, that's great. But, but where did this come from? You know? And then, well, it's, it's, it's my coach. It's it's it's Eric mm-hmm okay, great. And so yeah, when I got there and then I heard you speak on it, I leaned over to him like, this is what you were talking about. Right? He's like, yes, this is what I was talking about. And then I heard your guarantee, which is phenomenal, even, you know, and you covered it a little bit earlier. How do you, how do you get people to come up with that? And we'll close with this and, and let everybody know where they can get more information from you, but okay. You know, how, how are they coming up with that?

Eric Knam: So, and that's a great question because a lot of times when, when I say the word guarantee, people immediately think that I'm saying, you know, if you're not happy, then you get your money back. And that, that doesn't have to be the guarantee. Then they automatically start to try to come up with the guarantee themselves. And it's like, okay, slow down. You're not the decision maker here. So what we wanna do is we want to go to the customer and ask them what are some frustrations you have with my industry? So a great example that, that I, I use in that workshop that you attended is, you know, if I own a plumbing company, what are things that people don't like about plumbers? Well, they never show up on time and they leave a huge mess wherever they were. Right. So I could come up with a three point guarantee that says, we guarantee that we will arrive within 30 minutes of our scheduled appointment. If we don't, then your first 30 minutes is free guarantee. Point number two, we will leave the area where we work as clean or cleaner than it was when we got there. And then just for fun, you can throw in a third guarantee that says, we guarantee that every one of our plumbers will wear a belt.

Clarence Fisher: Love it. love it.

Eric Knam: Yeah. So it's really all about who's the, who's the perspective customer and what's frustrating to them. If you're a doctor, right. We all hate sitting in the waiting room or we all hate being, you know, we get it through the waiting room and they leave us in a, in an exam room for an hour. So if you're a doctor, can you figure out a way to put systems in place? So you can guarantee your patients that they'll be seen within 15 minutes of their appointment time. Right? How many people are gonna go to that doctor? Just cuz they can get in and out now the ones who wanna miss work. Right. They'll be staying at the other place, but I got stuff to do.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. Okay. That's great. So could you one more time your guarantee for you?

Eric Knam: Yeah. So my guarantee is if I don't find my fee within the first 17 weeks, then I'll coach for free until I do. So. And that can be any number of ways. Right. So we could be the, the financial component of it. Like I told you about the folks who they wanted their time. Right. So that was worth way more than any, any coaching investment they'd ever made. So it can be a little bit subjective, but yeah, I will coach for free if I don't find my fee within 17 weeks now the business owner has to do the work. Right. I get that's like the gym saying, all right, we guarantee that you're gonna lose 20 pounds and look buff for the, for the beach this summer. Well you gotta show up in order to do that. Right. Right. Right. and then our goal is, uh, and I don't know that I did a great job of explaining this earlier is, you know, for, for every thousand dollars that somebody were to invest in coaching, our goal is to get them a $3,000 return in profit. By the end of the first year, on the end of that second year, we're looking to get 'em a 10 times return. So for every thousand dollars they would invest, they'd get $10,000 back in profit. And globally, we average seven. We are global company been around for 27 years, 82 countries over a thousand coaching offices. So we're not a, we're not a fly by night organization.

Clarence Fisher: That is so great. And one of the things that you said that really hit that, I don't think a lot of people think of is if, if you get stumped on an issue, you have that many other coaches to tap into.

Eric Knam: Which is that's a great, great community. Yeah. That's one of the reasons that I, I went with action coach was because of the community, you know, you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. We all do that in our, in our industries. If I get stumped on a, on a digital marketing question, I'm, I've got my masterminds and all that stuff that I'm, I'm a part of too. That is excellent. So Eric, how do, how do we find out about how do we get in touch with you? How do, how do my listeners get in touch with you? Find out more?

Eric Knam: Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, well I think the easiest thing honestly, would just be to go to the website, actioncoachtulsa.com, or they can just Google action coach Tulsa. And if they Google action, coach Tulsa, uh, phone number is there or they can just reach out 9 1 8 2 2 3 3 4 4 2. We can set up some time to grab a cup of coffee, do a quick 30 minute zoom. We'd love to hear about them, their business, their goals for the business, what they're hoping to accomplish and see if there's a way that maybe, maybe I might be able to help 'em out.

Clarence Fisher: And what do you, oh, I gotta, I, I have to, this is a new thing that I've done. I've done. I've got the interview deck here. Oh nice. And so the last question, okay. You are going to be the determiner of your fate here. Okay. Okay. I'm going to pull, uh, for those listening, this is brand new. We've got the interview deck and it's a deck of cards, uh, full of questions. And I'm going to ask Eric, how many cards should I pull off the top? And, and, uh, which, which number he wants to answer.

Eric Knam: It's got a skull and crossbones on the front of it. It looks like poison sign, like, uh, nuclear waste. Uh, so let's go. Let's go simple. Let's go four.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. So the, the last question one. Oh, you have to see it. One that I'm, I'm cheating.

Eric Knam: That's please keep your hands above the table. Two

Clarence Fisher: three and four is if you were going on a road trip, what are the three must have you could not leave without?

Eric Knam: Oh wow. I'd have to take my wife. uh, I can leave the kids. That's OK. But I'm definitely gonna take my wife. All right. Going to take my iPad cuz I love or my phone. Uh, not because I wanna be able to be contacted, but because of all the music that I have on it, cause I love listening to music. Uh, and then I'm thinking probably some sunblock cuz we're headed someplace tropical.

Clarence Fisher: All right. Wife, phone, music and sunblock. All right. So thanks Eric. You've been wonderful. Uh, I really love the, uh, interview. Thank you for stopping by.

Eric Knam: Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Outro: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit Clarence fisher.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Hey, what's up. It's Clarence Fisher, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly, and I am absolutely positively sure that you have an annual planning process of your own. If you're a successful business, I am absolutely sure you do it somehow. If not just pulling out a napkin and writing down what you want, to watch you want to have at the end of the year. What I'm going to do today is walk you through the annual process that we do, and then show you a couple of things that we're adding to hopefully even boost our results further. So, number one, I'll give you the process that we use. Number two, uh, tell you the tweaks that we're making that are going to keep us even more motivated to hit our targets. And hopefully you can find some gyms that will help you and your team as well. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. I almost said, Hey, let's pay some bills and we'll be right back. That's kind of like TV or something. But like I said before, you've probably already have a planning process about this time of year. We all look to say, you know, take a look back and say, what did we do? And where do we want to go? It's an important thing to do. And if you're anything like me, your planning process has always been annually. And what we're going to try this year is we're going to try to, first, let me walk you through. We will start with a three to five year kind of goal. And typically it's me, selfishly. I will sit back and say, Hey, where do I want to be in five years? What does five years look like? And then I'll just write it down.

Clarence Fisher: Now we know tons of stuff can change and will change between now and five years, but overall what I want to have and be and become doesn't change too much, not at this stage in the game. And then I'll walk that back to three years. What does, what does three years look like and I'll write that down. What does it look like in family? Faith, fun, finances, fitness, fitness is always last. What is it look like? And then I'm going to break those down into what we would normally call our annual goals. Now I have this for personal and then business, of course, the personal is what am I going to do with my salary and what am I going to do with my family? Okay. So once I get all that down and you'll see that we kind of break these, I'm going to break these down in personal and business.

Clarence Fisher: But I've got my goals on the personal side, we'll get with my wife and say, Hey, this is what it's funny how are things go? I'm the planner for sure. I've got things planned for generations. And I'll say, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. What are you thinking? And we kinda just, she was like, okay. Yeah, I'm down with that. So let's go get it. So super easy around here. But on the business side, I'm looking at the year, of course, five year, three year, I'm looking at the year, like, where do we want to be? And a lot of times with me, it's revenue, where do we want the, how much growth do we want? How many new customers is that going to take? What products are we going to launch. And then, I mean we get to that later in the planning, but I will typically start with a revenue goal. And then I will say, Hey, we have these holidays. We'll put a promotional calendar together. But I think what we're going to start doing this year is something that I read about from a site called Scalable. And they've started to not do annual planning at all.

Clarence Fisher: Well, I'm not scrapping annual planning. I do see the benefit of breaking it down into quarters. In fact, years ago, I read a book called the 12 week year. If you haven't read it, I actually bought the course as well because the book was so good "The 12 week year'. And the premise of it is that instead of work, what is it called time? Athletes do it. It's time, something training, not time-restricted or something, but it's basically, instead of saying, Hey, I have 12 months. Imagine if you only had 12 weeks and in the 12 week year, they don't say it's a quarter. They say, no, your year is 12 weeks. Don't think four quarters, think 12 weeks, that's it. So whatever you would get done in a year, typically, how do you get it done in 12 weeks? Meaning you're getting a month's worth of traction in one week.

Clarence Fisher: I mean, it's incredible. So like, let's say if you want it to lose, if most people lose, say 20, say you got 20 pounds to lose instead of taking a year, what will it take to lose that 20 pounds in the next 12 weeks? And so I've been running, I've been doing this experiment for quite a while, and I've missed quite a few of my 12 weeks at the end of the 12 weeks. You take a week off and you kind of shake it out. You know, if it's diet, you kind of eat whatever you want, be sure not to gain back everything that you lost in those four weeks. And then you set another 12-week goal during that week and then you get back on it. You pick the one to three habits or one to three metrics that you will measure to make sure that you are going to hit your target.

Clarence Fisher: For instance, if you're losing weight, you say, Hey, what are the three metrics I need to measure? Maybe it's worked out three times a week, maybe yet, intermittent fasting, 16, 18 hours a day, and maybe it's no carbs or 20 grams of carbs a day. And so you track those metrics. And as long as you're 80% effective on track on that, then you typically hit your goals. So that's kind of a quick overview of the 12 week year. Totally recommend getting that book. If you have not had it now back to the annual plan that we, I picked up at scalable, and it's, they're calling it quarterly, but since I've already done the 12 week year, and I'm familiar with that, I think it fits quite nicely. And so they have a two-part, phase one is the planning and the w and then part two is review and approval.

Clarence Fisher: But if you have a team after you've planned everything with your leadership team, or with yourself, you want to take it and get buy-in from your team. So here are the steps here every quarter. Now, first, go ahead and do your five-year, three year, and your one year, just like you would normally do, but instead of getting, spending a bunch of time on that one year, just write down the outcome that you would really like, okay, what would you rather do have become in that year? And now we're gonna, we're, we're gonna switch to quarterly. And the first thing we want to do is clarify the time period. When does it start? When does it end? So I know mine usually ends around the 21st. So I'll be it's January 1st through March, say 21st. Cause I'm going to a week, that last week of the quarter, you can use that last week of the quarter.

Clarence Fisher: You know, you can go January, February, and March and just hardcore, and then take that first week of the next quarter to do your planning for the next quarter. I like to take the last week of the quarter to plan, celebrate and plan the next quarter, the following quarter, excuse me. So whatever it is, fill that out. And if you've got different companies, you're going to have a sheet for each company, a piece of paper for each company that you're going to do these planning on, but for the sake of this podcast, right now, we're going to this episode right now, we're going to do one company and then choose a theme for this year. Now, this is nothing new to them or, or us we've always chosen a theme. It was asking my buddy Mike Cooch, that put me up on that years and years ago, to choose a theme.

Clarence Fisher: What's the theme of this quarter? Okay. Are you launching something new? Are you systematizing everything? You're scaling everything. Is this the quarter you're going to finally get profitable? The quarter is the pandemic and you think it's going to only take three months to get back and you just need to survive. What's the theme of this quarter. And the theme is what you're all going to rally around to push you to hit your targets. Okay. And speaking of targets, I love the way Mike did it with his team. And he's like, whatever the theme was, they posted stuff all around the office. Like if it was Vegas, they had roulette machines. And they had all this stuff around the office to remind them of their theme because if they hit their target, they're going to Vegas, but whatever your theme is, I mean, that's kind of on the reward, but whatever your theme is, that's your rally cry for this quarter.

Clarence Fisher: Now, speaking of your targets, we got to select our north star metric. What is that metric? That if we hit it, it's going to pretty much guarantee we get the result we want. Now. I like what they talk about as far as, Hey, you know, it's hard to just narrow it down to one metric. So let's go with, uh, number one, pick your north star metric. What is number one? Is it new conversations? Is it new leads? What's the number one metric that you're going north star metric that you are going to measure? Well, then also don't feel shy about adding two to three more metrics. No more than that. No more than say four or five metrics that you are measuring. There's the number one, then got these sub metrics that you can measure. And these are going to be the things that you've got on your scorecard that you're going over with your team every day. You know, what's the scorecard look like for those metrics.

Clarence Fisher: And within that, we want to start now figuring out what are the key initiatives. They say, let's talk about strategic pillars. Like within your theme, there are three or so pillars that, or sub-themes that work within the major theme that you need to get done that people need to buy into. You know, for example, one of the examples that they gave is, if your theme is scale up, one of your sub-themes could be, grow the team. So you need to grow the team in order to scale up. Okay. So take your theme. And then what are the three, four things that you need to do, kind of sub-themes of your theme, and those become your key initiatives. Okay. So in that case, or to scale up, you got to grow the team. All right. So what, what do we need to do? That's one of your key initiatives. If it's a revenue goal, then you need to create another product or scale one of your other products. Then what initiatives do we need to do in order to hit that?

Clarence Fisher: So, once you have those initiatives, you have the metrics that you need to keep an eye on in order to hit those initiatives, look at last year and see where you are as far as those metrics go, how many appointments did you get? How many sales did you get? How many new leads did you get, whatever your metric is, what did it look like last year? Okay. What do you think it needs to be at the end of this quarter? I said last year, but let's break it down in the last quarter. What does it need to be at this quarter in order for you to realize your goal? Well, of course, you know, the difference between what you had and where you need to be, or where you are right now and where you need to be is the gap. And so now you're going to go to work to fill in that gap.

Clarence Fisher: So to clarify it, you have the time period clarified, you have chosen a theme for this quarter, you've decided on your north star metric. What's the number one metric that we're going to measure for sure that if we hit that we're going to hit our goal, then you can choose up to one to three more metrics. Okay. Uh, decide what your key initiatives are going to be your three to four key initiatives that are your sub-themes or sub pillars. I'm just going to say, these are your projects that you are wanting to get done. And now that you have it, let's go review it with your team and get it approved. And the reason we want to review with your team, like, I don't have different levels of leadership in my business.

Clarence Fisher: So I personally take it to my team and let's gather around and say and this is if I've done it myself, okay. I'm like, all right, this is what I feel like we need to do. Can you, how do you feel about this? And, you know, Florence may be like, Hey, you're forgetting that we have this. And I'm like, oh yeah, I did forget about that. I didn't, I forgot we had that. We're not done with that yet. But, yeah, I did. I did forget about that. Maybe Christine will jump in and say, Hey, as a matter of fact, this is also, I mean, this right here. I mean, I'm not saying that we can't do it, but, and so we have that feedback because they're the ones on the frontline, frontline, right?

Clarence Fisher: So I do this, I do a lot of consulting. I'm doing strategy and any more, I started a company and I was doing all the hands-on, hands on, hands on. But you know, as far as creating ads and stuff like that, I don't really, I don't do that anymore. I'm more on the strategy, the copy, and all that stuff. So I guess what I'm saying is they can have a better idea of the flow, the project flow that's coming in. And I need to take all of that into consideration. Now, of course, if you have a leadership team and your leadership team takes it to the boots on the ground, and then they feedback to your leadership team, and then you have one more meeting with your leadership team, you could do it that way. If you have a smaller team, kind of like I do, then it's me getting the feedback from them on what I feel like we can do.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. And then I edit it, bring it back. Hey, what do we think about this? Okay. And finally, we get something that we can all buy into. And at this point, I'm going to bring up something that is going to happen. If we hit these goals, you know, at the end of this 12 weeks, the end of this quarter, that's not something that they had brought up. But this is where I'm like, Hey, the bonus is looking like this, or it's going to be a weekend at a resort for everybody. If we can, if we can hit this goal, this is after we get the buy in. After I, after I yeah, we can do that. Now let's get excited about it. Okay. So what we're changing this year is that we're breaking it down to quarterly or what I want to call the 12 week year implementing that 12 week year. And this, I mean, this integrates very tightly with the 12 week year is periodic training. It's, that's what it's called and athletes do it and it's these 12 weeks let's go with that instead of the annual planning, because what happens, what happens every year is you think you have enough time to hit your goals. If you're, if you're behind in Q1, you're like, Hey, I got three more quarters. Right.

Clarence Fisher: And then, but you never catch up. Or if you do, hats off to you, but it's hard to catch up, it's hard to stay motivated. So this really, really helps. And I like to know, you know, what you do for your planning. If you have something different, if you like this, let me know. All right. So hopefully it helps. And hopefully, you can hit your goals this year. Cause I mean, I'm setting some pretty cause we have to make up, make up for the whole COVID business. So I was setting some pretty aggressive goals for 22 and I think we're going to hit them. So if this helped you, be sure to comment and subscribe, if you have not leave us a rating on iTunes or wherever you listen to it, and this is what, this is what, I'm gonna see you next week. Um, but this is what I want you to do. I want you to take what you learn, go out market the market, and own the block.

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly, Clarence Fisher, your host. And today we're going to talk about website security, keeping your marketing safe, keeping your website safe. It is getting, I tell you what out of a control. We not only host a number of websites. We take care of quite a few websites and we are busy if our customers do what goes on behind the scenes we're like running and throwing fits and chairs, and giving ultimatums, it's crazy. It's like a battle. But then on the outside, it's kinda like the duck, the feet are moving. And then on the outside, they're just gliding and nobody knows, and the websites stay up and it's so beautiful. But then you get behind the scenes and it's ugly. And that's what I'm going to share with you today is how you can protect your website.

Clarence Fisher: I'm telling you, I'm going to give you all of the ninja stuff. Not all of it, because it will be here all day, but I'm going to give you the biggest benefit, the things that are going to give you the biggest benefit in keeping your website safe and avoiding hackers, as soon as we get back,

Clarence Fisher: All right, we're back. And we're talking website security. And what I'm going to do is give you some simple steps, uh, to monitor your site and keep your site safe. I'm telling you, it has been so crazy here lately that you know, we used to update plugins. I'll I will give you a quick win right now. If you have a WordPress website, and one of the things that we run into quite often is once you have a website developed, many businesses, don't ever log into that website. They will say, you know, Hey, we don't need an ongoing website care package because that's going to cost every month, right?

Clarence Fisher: You've built our website. You've spent thousands of dollars on this website and it's like, Hey, we're done. We're done doing business. Well, Hey, that's great. You want to save that money, but I'm telling you, if you have a WordPress website, for sure, you have to log in to that website and you have to update the plugins. You have to update the core WordPress CMS, the database, it has to be updated and you can do it. You can log in and click the button and choose all the plugins. Some plugins can auto-update, if you have that capability, but not all of them, but you definitely need to log in, see what plugins need to be updated, and click update so that they update. Otherwise, they leave a back door open for malware and hackers to get into your website.

Clarence Fisher: And if you can tell right now, I'm super passionate about it because we've been fighting for the last 90 days. Just a malware, the likes that I've never seen in 12 years in business, it is just super crazy. So if you have a WordPress website, if you're updating it yourself, then you probably know this, and you're probably fighting it. We used to run updates once a month, and then we had to do them twice a month. Now we're having to get into our customer's websites every single week, updating and cleaning and making sure that malware is not in there. So what I'm going to tell you to do right now is, well, that's the quick win. If you haven't been into your website and you don't have an ongoing website care package with your web developer, you need to get in right now and make sure that all of your plugins and the core website or the core WordPress installation is updated.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. And then I'm going to tell you that you need to contact your web developer and get on some type of plan, because I promise you when it goes down, when it hits the fan, you will not be ready for it. And you will not want to take all of the time out of your schedule to try to be, actually, you're not, you're going to tell someone else on your staff or on your team to handle it. And then they're going to have to pull away from what they are doing. And it is going to be a headache when you can just pay a hundred $150 or whatever they charge them off to monitor and your stuff. I'm super adamant about this right now, if you don't have a web person or you don't, sometimes you don't trust the web person, that digital website, and you just wanted to get away, give us a call.

Clarence Fisher: You go to a localmarketmonopolycall.com and you can get a 15-minute call and we'll take care of you, but you have to be taken care of. I'm going to walk through some steps right now that you can do, or you can hand them off to your web person. Again, I'm telling you to hand this off to your web person, and, and they're gonna, you know, again, like I always say on here, they're going to thank you. They're like, Hey, you know what? I don't know who you're listening to, but I love him because he keeps sending you to me with this information. So here we go. You want to ensure that your website is secure. Okay. It's essential to keep hackers in thieves out of it. So I'm just going to give you five really quick ones that you can do if you have, uh, access to your website or to a developer, then you can knock these out.

Clarence Fisher: I think there's, there's probably even more than five in my notes here, but first, first off you want, you need to make sure that you are notified if your site goes down. And so, there are all kinds of different notifications that you can use software that you can use. One of them is called Pingdom that you can install. It's one of the best uptime, uh, monitoring platforms out there. You can use what all else is there, backup. I would just go ahead and look up Pingdom and then use that. There's an option to monitor your site from even different parts of the world. If you need to, then that's a good one. You just want to make sure. And there are several plugins. You just want to make sure that you are notified when your website goes down. And then typically you will also be notified when your website is back up.

Clarence Fisher: Now, this is, if you are monitoring it yourself, I promise you, if you have some type of package with a web person, they have this, okay. They are being notified when sites go down and I will tell you, if you are monitoring this yourself, don't be alarmed when you get a notification that your site went down because you know, sites go down more often than you think, but they're not down a very long. Where do you want to get alarmed is if you don't get that email saying that the site is up within about five minutes, 10 minutes, if it's been 10 minutes and you don't have, the, your site is up email, okay, now, ears are perked. What what's, what's going on? So if you're monitoring yourself, just don't be alarmed when you get, if you get that, when you get that, I'm going to say email, you just want to pay attention.

Clarence Fisher: If there is a long space between, that and the site coming back up. So go check out Pingdom. You want to make sure that you are notified. And then also you want to have some type of security subscription either. You're going to get it with your web developer, or you're going to get it directly with someplace like security. You can do a security scanner count check of your website. You can go to the SUCURI site check and that's SUCURI will put the link in the show notes. There's VirusTotal, WP scans, WordPress security scan. We'll put links to the east, uh, Norden safe web, there are all of these different security scanners that you can use in case your site is hacked. And you know, if you want to see if your site's blacklisted, which is probably not, but if it gets hacked, you want to definitely go to someplace like SUCURI site check, put your URL in there, hit the button.

Clarence Fisher: And and they should be able to report back whether you have malware on your website and then you have the option to have them clean it up. And I'll tell you, it's not cheap to have your website cleaned, which is again, why this entire episode. I am sorry, but I usually don't push you towards a managed solution, but for this I am, I'm just saying, find a web person and get on a website care plan. Otherwise, Hey, I'll just pay when I get hacked. It's just not the thing to do. Okay. Monitor your links. What links are being sent to your, your website now, you know, that you hired some SEO people in the past, possibly because they told you for $300, they could get you to page one. And in your report, you're like you got 5 million backlinks from different countries and all kinds of different sites.

Clarence Fisher: I'm telling you, it's a bad thing. So make sure that you monitor your backlinks. You could be losing authority from that as well. You can go to link checker pro, that's a good tool that you can put your, your, what I'm saying, your URL in and check your links. You know, a lot of times in the comments, people are linking out spam comments on your website. If you, if you're trying to avoid that, there's a software called Akismet AKISMET. Let's put the links to this, so all of these in there so that they can have access to this and the Akismet, I think it's $10 a site. Now, it used to be $5 a website that they would block or help block spam comments. And they worked pretty well. The spam comments from showing up on your blog posts, because what they, what these bots do is they'll put a comment on the blog post, and then, you know, put a link. And the comments always like, Hey, didn't know what was going to do till saw your post and then linked to a Russian website.

Clarence Fisher: And there's like comment after comment after comment. So the keys map helps you block that. And then also on your contact forms on your website, make sure to have Captcha on. And if you, captcha can be, when they submit their information, it pops up and tells you to choose all stoplights or choose all bridges or choose all puppy dogs. Or it can be the, what's two plus whatever number or whatever, but just make sure you have captcha turned on because there is bot there is such thing as bot traffic, and it can be malicious once it gets out of hand. If you want to check and see if your website is being targeted by bot traffic, there's a Finteza that you can use to see if you're being affected. And again, we're going to put the link in there, but you want to monitor also your brand name to see if you've been hacked, you know, the Dark web, it was funny.

Clarence Fisher: We were doing some work for an IT an MSP company. And I didn't know anything really about the Dark web at that time, but the Dark web is like totally on my radar right now, because you can have your emails out there on this dark web. And you can, I mean, it's gust ridiculous how much information is out there, but you want to keep a pulse on your brand name. I would go to Agorapulse and that's going to be something you can use to monitor your social, your name and social media and everywhere online. These are some of the things that you could do, but I'm going to tell you the biggest bang for the buck that you're going to get right now is make sure that you have, if you're doing blog posting, get Akismet and we'll have the link on there, make sure you have Captcha on and make sure that either you have a, you have some type of monitoring service, the security does one I'll check and see whatever else you can use, but have some type of malware protection going on on your website, especially if you have a WordPress website.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. So I guess I could have just said that, you know, keep your, keep your website safe. Have these three things, have your Captcha on, have Akismetmet to do your comments. Also, you want to make sure that, I mean, you have to have an SSL certificate at this point at the very, otherwise Google is saying that your site is just not safe. It's telling visitors that your site isn't safe. So if you don't have an SSL certificate, definitely call your web person. And I mean, I'm sure you do, because if you did not, you would have been told by now that when someone goes to look at your website, Google is saying, this site is not safe. They started doing that about a year or so ago. Now everybody has an SSL certificate. And really, if you're on a GoDaddy, I just hate to GoDaddy, I think still charges in order to leg for their SSL certificate, which is just like crazy.

Clarence Fisher: But anybody else, you can probably just get it added for free. I would think at this point, so if you have any questions, definitely, like I said, you can reach out to us at localmarketmonopolyhelp or localmarketmonopolycall.com. If you want to grab a quick call and, and chat about any of this, we'll put all of these links. I know I've kind of been scattered a little bit, and I started off all fiery because this is the thing right now, it is security. You know, it's security on. I know it, companies have to be making a killing right now, MSPs because it is so rampant right now, just that the hacking that's going on, and it's not just the big companies. It's the local, it's the local mom and pops just the local, small business, the local business owner, the main street business that we're having to fight these really sophisticated malware programs. And again, I'm probably excited because I'm, I'm the one fighting it. I, you were one of our customers and you're like, I don't even know what he's talking about. That's what I'm talking about because we are, we are gang banging in the background for you I do on your behalf. Anyway, go protect your site, listen, go out market your market, do whatever you need to do to own the block.