February’s ServiceM8 Smarter Marketer meeting talked about everything from Referral Voucher Systems to Suicidal thoughts!
One of the topics that has been discussed before is content generation, February’s meeting was recorded using otter.ai – the full transcript of the Zoom meeting is recorded below.. EVERTHING from referral vouchers to suicidal thoughts came up un the hour long conversation (you can see some of the meetings keywords in the Otter screenshot below).. The next meeting will also discuss ‘how to generate over 11,000 words of unique conversational content – in 60 minutes!’.
Back to ‘suicidal thoughts’ I hear you cry.. One of the attendees of the group runs a specialist cleaning business, however, has also written a book The Awakened Parent Challenge he was explaining how he has used Facebook – all with the aim helping teenagers.
Providing wider insights into how Facebook is/was/can work within service focused businesses was fascinating to discuss, and the shared learning was invaluable.
Looking forward to sharing a couple of new ServiceM8 tips at the next meeting, as well exploring how members are getting on with their own Dream 100 growth strategies.. Drop us a line or you can register/get Zoom link from the Facebook Event – 23rd March 2021 14:00-15:00
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Full Transcript of February’s Smarter Marketer Zoom Meeting (over 11k words).
Unknown Speaker 0:00
It’s my turn the moment. To be honest I really like it because it’s simple.
Unknown Speaker 0:06
So we, we migrate swear we haven’t migrated across yet, we, we, we, we got service guru to set us up about six months ago. And I tasked my wife was going through it and see if we can run it in parallel should say she’s now sort of up to a game and and sort of doing some homework on it. So, I haven’t even looked at it, to be honest I have no idea. So, I was waiting to get a report back from my good to go. Okay, when we get when we get to try and run these in parallel there.
Unknown Speaker 0:41
Just is a little issue there’s a little thing there if you have been using it. I’ve got a blog, and it’s around a mini audit that I do for people so some of those people haven’t got an account yet some of them have some of them I like some of them medium users, and some of them are heavy users. And there’s different. I look at different things depending on how they’re using it you know the audit so if you’re ever interested in a mini audit there’s no charge for that. And it gives your people don’t know what they don’t know, and yeah so send your blog what’s involved there. This group.
Unknown Speaker 1:13
You carry on. No, I just wanted to say that helped me a lot. We’ll see. Early wins with taking it on board is a big change it’s such a massive shift to go into something so different. And, you know, small wins for me and as technicians and seeing paperwork and files printing every day for the day to come, what convinced me that drove me nuts, and just having an automated for me that was the easiest first quick way and you know that moment when I could go and take that shelf down when I was holding all the, all the files for the day I could actually go and clear the wall, because everybody had a phone. And that was quite a big change for me and they realised, you know what this is a big step from going from paper versions to now actually, you know, just having it all on the phone. And the other thing that I really love is the fact that you can just take pictures and it’s automatically on the clients job is just really good and now also with the, with the phone system that’s integrated. It’s just you’ve got all the calls just there. Just remind us and tell the other guys as well the size of your business if you don’t mind, so
Unknown Speaker 2:21
bear with me the battery’s running low
Unknown Speaker 2:25
charge difficult.
Unknown Speaker 2:32
So we’ve got myself, my wife
Unknown Speaker 2:36
and my son, work together. So we’re out we’ve only got one van which myself and my
Unknown Speaker 2:44
wife does all the background stuff. So, when we turn it over about 150,000 a year.
Unknown Speaker 2:53
Okay, that’s good done, well done on just one that. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:57
I think we need to go capacity.
Unknown Speaker 3:02
We are going to be working. The late shift.
Unknown Speaker 3:20
Money. We’re gonna try and do it. Really, but we’re just putting
Unknown Speaker 3:24
out some free time as well as is something you guys don’t know about that and he’s actually got a book on Amazon and he’s done super well he’s very much into personal development and stuff and maybe if we get a minute they can share it with
Unknown Speaker 3:37
fantastic Darren if your van has capacity, you could rent it out at night for the night cleaners. Might clean it for you. So we’ve got a common thread going through the group, and it’s a Julian has an interest in a marketing strategy and he’s developed it around dream 100 about getting your next 100 dream clients. So, so we’re trying to just educate people around that and make them aware of it, and I work with, I do work with Julian Julian give us a little update on what we’ve done the last month around that how to, and the technologies used, and then it’s basically it is, it’s a flexible group, but the this week’s topic that was introduced or the this month’s topic was around social media, and if and how that is working for businesses. And also, we all hear about everyone else’s success but we just we try it and we don’t get the same success so just to get some feedback on what people are doing the time they’re spending and if they’re getting returns and if they’ve got felt, if there was any way they could feel confident, trying something else or looking at something else. So yeah, so Julian on the, on the dream 100. Last month, where are we up to
Unknown Speaker 5:07
research, talk to your top 100 ideal for your dream clients, and then really going after those with laser focus. About 20,000 pounds of Facebook ads and bringing all sorts of Facebook ads. Babies all sorts of warm leads to invest.
Unknown Speaker 5:29
So what we do on social is, we started pushing social advertising you know really taking it to the next level rather than just posting posts on Facebook. We realised we had to get much more more behind it and start spending money on the ads because Facebook is now after making money right. And we started setting up different campaigns and running ads setting up video little video clips with the ad and you know really going all the way with it. And initially the results were really, you know, what we get some inquiries but not many. If you call those people up they’re like super surprised that you would bother calling them because they were like calling me and I only clicked on yet. And so we changed the ad a little bit that we then went to. I worked with another guy, a coach, with the entrepreneur circle and ease people making me do this download. Download the planning download. And I said, Okay, I’ll tell you what, just to shut you up all right the blue stain removal guide I’m going to put it up, then I’ll prove to you that nobody wants to download it. Was I wrong. We probably so far, 150 people download. Wow. And then, with Julian’s help, of course, several months ago set up Infusionsoft, and now the system will email us immediately as soon as one of those leads turn into a customer, and he you know. Initially, I thought what a waste of time because I’ve done all these ads I’m spending about 200 pounds a month just on the adverts and to be honest, that’s not even the law because people say you need spent a minimum of 500. Anyway, we spent the money on that and then suddenly as they’re getting these emails trickling in, or you’ve just done a job for Facebook. So, the thing is just from my experience and hoping to inspire others as well, is to go on Facebook is not something you could go and switch on like you can do pay per click or leaflets For example, when as soon as it hits the map the phone rings. This is a relationship building exercise, especially with Facebook because there are so many people on there and you get different demographics. I don’t think Facebook will ever be the one thing that you go well I do Facebook really well and I’ll get loads of customers. But my, my only learning from that has been that don’t expect everything to come from Facebook but keep being consistent with them, it takes at least I think, to really hold it, and you need to work on it every week.
Unknown Speaker 7:54
Resistance cells is not so much individual clients is more than making geographic areas. Finding your top areas where your ideal customers, live, and then leaving the Facebook avatar, in those areas.
Unknown Speaker 8:22
Currently there are just so sorry guys, what do you do currently emarketing. There’s a thing called the little green book where we live, which is really good. Okay, that gets that gets mailed out one email every year, online as well. It’s, I suppose it’s a precursor to checkatrade really a lot cheaper. That works really well for us. We use checkatrade, and we go into there we go into their directories as well as their postage. We do, we do Google AdWords we’ve got our own Google AdWords campaign set up. We have somebody asked me about an agency fee. We used to pay an agency found that that wasn’t working for us. So, a guy who set that up. That’s good. We just tried we just set the same advertising campaign. Using Bing, even though we know things only about 10% of the searches but I’m thinking it’s our type of client is an older client, you know they they’re just using the software that was downloaded with their actually ideal for us so we’ve got, we’re testing out now. So we’re seeing what results we’re gonna get advertising was probably our main contact our existing customer base just what I wanted to say you probably also very switched on an existing client data Mark Yeah, yeah, I say. I know what I should be doing, whether I was doing it or not, is another matter sort of thing, but I do contact them periodically. But I haven’t got a system in place. But, you know, guys also a little background for many years and we all have been exposed to the next level of marketing through Joe Polish if you’ve heard of the guy, because there was a guy in the UK that really brought that to the UK. You know, we are very familiar with. We are and industry in particular is very familiar with marketing to an existing client database. So you know 100 base clients you know we want to add more clients but sometimes you, you sit on the diamonds you know they like the book, the acres of diamonds. Just nurture those actually, if I can seize another moment there and you’d be you’re aware of the I miss you letter at the beginning of the year. I am. Yeah, I am aware of it. Although what we were doing and we did, we have used it in the past, we’re really focusing on is rug cleaning and stone floor cleaning so we can still do an issue for that as well, we’ve kind of been laser in on those because that’s been, what’s given us the most profit, sort of attention has shifted towards those. So yeah, so I need to find a way of extracting information out of our cleaners. Okay, can be a thing. Sorry, Julian back to your
Unknown Speaker 11:31
customers hijacking the goal. To finish up the last call other than 500 accountants in areas of the mind business, accountants and business to business, became a lot better those top 100. They used to use a tool called out scrape. Don’t be really applied to your computer you guys but he was a smart company that had a Google My Business Page.
Unknown Speaker 12:11
Yes.
Unknown Speaker 12:12
And what else scraped all that you could just search like the search for counters. It looked at, and it was scraped Google my businesses and extract a list of them with all the contact details. First 503.2 cents. They weren’t a couple of dollars to get 500. What was it called scrape, scrape that apply to your business, you’re really
Unknown Speaker 12:45
interesting. There are businesses that refer us really well. For carpet carpet flooring shops in a local area where you can start building a relationship for referral that would be good. Unfortunately we closed the gate on that because we started the flooring business Bertie working with us anymore. Darren is good, you can
Unknown Speaker 13:10
scrape as well you can list them on the, you can rank sort them on Google reviews. Five Star going down so you can see the ones that are more active in Google and getting reviews and those might, those are a little bit more switched on a little bit more advanced
Unknown Speaker 13:31
felt free to trade you know characters and all that sort of thing. So he was doing his work his way through the country was able to pull out a list of guarantees and things that lead to sales people. It may or may not go live so these accountants, still go to each site. Do they research now. Visit the website and.
Unknown Speaker 14:15
Did you see. Did you see my post in the group about the voucher using vouchers, what do you think of that.
Unknown Speaker 14:24
Yes, it’s, it’s an interesting concept. How do you see it deployed Russ,
Unknown Speaker 14:30
so I saw a question on the, on another service mate forum, and I thought about it and there’s some great texts out there to solve this for vouchers and things. It was about two hours later a client I’m working with phoned me up said Russell. I saw 10,000 pounds worth of value Valentine’s Day vouchers, how does serviceman handle. So, so we thought for a moment. And then I wrote the blog afterwards because basically putting that voucher in as a company name as a voucher. And then the person that buys it as a billing as a billing contact and when they give it to somebody, or use it themselves, and they redeem it you put the job contact in. So you’ve got trace it you’ve got that one voucher now, we’ve got full traceability. So, this was somebody in the plumbing trade started the conversation that he wanted when he does the boiler install you won’t be able to give them a 50 pound voucher if it was retained by their friend that they both got 50 quid.
Unknown Speaker 15:27
So,
Unknown Speaker 15:27
so now, and that if as 12, so basically set it up so you your guys. It’s a great job they get a great review they give the client 50 pounds to give somebody else and they’ll get 10 or 10 pounds for somebody else and they’ll get 10 pounds when it’s redeemed within 12 months, and the guys can can have a book of vouchers nice glossy vouchers, they just put the voucher code in put their name in the job completed now they’ve, they’ve got a stake in it being redeemed as well. Exactly, you give it a six month, you give it a six month life in the queue. So if you’re selling these vouchers after six months it drops out and then you’ve just made money. You’ve made money for no doing nothing.
Unknown Speaker 16:13
years and somebody’s attempts that they did just doesn’t always go as well I think in the way people are very scared to feel they get money for referring a person. Yeah, yeah, I found that I’ve not I’ve not found one that worked I haven’t tried it for a while but we did, we tried and retry I even got loads of little credit cards for plastic not quite as good quality as a credit card but we literally gave one out to every client, with its own unique QR code on it and everything and yeah so we’ve struggled with with referral dynamic, I think this is very interesting what Russell is saying here because if you make it so that your friend gets money and you get money it’s a fair deal that somebody’s referring you thinking, you know they find out I’ll get 50 quid if I refer them. That is difficult but if you get something fair square everybody gets a site that’s a little better, and Ross especially if it’s easier to track in, in service might because before when we did this. It was quite hard to track it in the software we used to use before, but this
Unknown Speaker 17:20
like I say, it’s a unique serial number service mate it’s got a fantastic search from the dispatch board, you put that number in you can find that, but what what the, what so you can find that you can find it very quickly when somebody phones up to redeem the voucher. And then you can just because it’s in the company name as a unique field, but also. You can also the the company was sold, they’re sold about 20,000 pounds worth of vouchers now cash for, for their services. I can tell you what, there’s a blog post about it as well that company, but basically, you can also then put badges on that, so they can see the owner can see how many badges that month have been sold, and you can drill down to jobs revenue at quote stage, because they’re a quote stage when they’re given out when they’re redeemed they’ve come work orders and then they get completed so you can track how much, how much you’ve been redeemed because of work or the stage in January, so you can monitor whether, where the cash is in your business.
Unknown Speaker 18:19
Customer to say if you have a friend that wants the same done there’s about a Yes,
Unknown Speaker 18:24
yes. So this one. He said he this client of this client has got 30 staff, we’ve set him up and he’s got 20 freelancers and 10 staff and the other two locations looking to move into York he does tattooing, and basically he’s got over 5000 active jobs now that he can’t do, because of lockdown. And it’s getting more orders all the time he’s a top end top and doesn’t football isn’t wanting to be footballs and all sorts of people. But basically, he he’s not connecting it to his accounts because it’s a stranger, he puts money into a holding account, and then the tattoo artists pay him for services and he takes a VAT afterwards so so he’s not connected to an accounting package, but then after I talked it through and I did the blog. If you wanted to sell them, you’d sell them as a job. Do the invoicing there’s the invoice to the client, and then you’d set up another job with that code on, because it yes because then use your zero value it afterwards, because you have to complete it and you can’t then sit in the system once the job’s complete. So you set up another one, and it’s based, I think it’s quite tidy, you know,
Unknown Speaker 19:31
we need to get together after the cool sometime in the coming week or two, and just talk that through because it would be a really interesting thing to be able to give. Because what we do is we give clients a little pack with a spotter inside and some overshoes and stuff like that. And if you can have a voucher in there they put it out and they can see there’s value for them and then there’s value for the friend and I think that it can help the street quite a bit.
Unknown Speaker 19:56
If you, if you focus on 100 of your best company customers. And actually this voucher introduces 100 of their friends, you’ve just done a dream 100 strategy for, for, for you, isn’t it to clone to clone the 100 best,
Unknown Speaker 20:10
especially if we have these vouchers. I’m getting something really special. Yes Do customers say that spends more than 500 pounds or something that would really be interesting.
Unknown Speaker 20:35
It’s an experience that isn’t
Unknown Speaker 20:43
working with an optician here in Cheshire. He was the referral programme. A lot of his clients quite elderly neighbours all applies you can use an online referral programme. All you need. So using Acacia soft and has a great programme. Because every quarter. Just to catch up with them to their friends were like I said, they both get reward. Very tough each each quarter, and this is a small video for anyone.
Unknown Speaker 21:34
Because I knew I was thinking about setting up a programme. You know, this month we even while this call to we’re giving away this for referral. How are you getting on with referrals at the moment there and the new module map is there. I’m just thinking you say you using cleaners mate but I thought that stopped. Do they still need support for it. No, they don’t do support for it. So, it’s just a
Unknown Speaker 22:02
sort of basic database back end.
Unknown Speaker 22:06
I did if it failed, when there was an update of Microsoft, about a year ago so I took it to my IT guy, and he was fine he got up and running again he just. And then we switched, we switched from an apple up from a Mac, over to over to the because it doesn’t run very well on Mac, because it needs parallel so so it’s slow as anything so I finally bit the bullet and got another PC. Of course when you check when you change it over it wants to live registration licence. So again I took it to my IT guy, and he said, Well, thankfully, as long as we call your computer or your PC the same name as your Mac. It’s like a backdoor way of doing it because it’s just very simplistic security. So I tried to get hold of the guy who originally sold it, he’s like no interested in it so when he’s like, Listen, if you want to take it over you take it over, you know, free of charge so he gave me the number of the IT guy that design is a stupid system because you’ve got a guy who doesn’t. He owns the rights to it, the guy who solved it doesn’t own the rights to it is madness. So I went and I tried to track down the, the, the designer of the software but he’s not answering his calls or anything so whether he’s whether
Unknown Speaker 23:25
or whether he’s packed up completely so but he’s been an update window soon again. I know. Tell me about it. Yeah, well at least we know there is a way past it.
Unknown Speaker 23:37
I hope you get going with it now it’s really been very helpful for us and I think it can help you a lot. I guess you all on Apple there as well. You have your iPhones, but we’re trying to move away from a Mac for some reason that we’ve tried to get it all cleaned up and I suppose he’s 10 years old so I need to replace it really, you know, our PC runs like lightning but our Mac runs. Slowly. Okay over courier service making still, you still use because it’s cloud based. You can use it. Yeah, we use PC we use the app is on the on on Apple on Apple via your phone is perfectly fine. So Russell What about your top 100 do you targeting to get more what companies are looking for.
Unknown Speaker 24:26
Interestingly, in the past, I was I was working on the project with Jody around MSP so we were looking at sectors that we could once we get a good client, we can then build out the solution and then look at working with them to replicate that, but it’s a development with with those over the last, last few weeks, I’m taking over as an additional service mates account. And they’re a specialist cleaner and their specialisation is sought chimney sweeping. So, so this gentleman has been his wife is a is a chimney sweep Katie she’s got five people on the road, he set up a business after her to do chimney sweeping more commercial, and he ran. He’s been setting up through the forums and everything he’s he’s now got a turnkey solution for chimney sweeps for service maids and he charges to implement it and once he, and he’s got the he’s got some of the top chimney sweeps in the UK the younger people come along now want better systems and when they get into this tray this game, but he’s got on his books, the oldest chimney sweep in the UK in London. So, so there’s very credible people using that. So I’m looking now at this, I can then just deliver that now there’s credibility is recognised by a couple of guilds. So I’m looking at the, I’m looking at chimney sweep sector, so I’m just I’m not looking to the outer scrape yep I’m just looking at certain sectors around the people around those and engaging with them so Yes,
Unknown Speaker 25:55
very much involved in the country are you talking to these people about
Unknown Speaker 25:59
national no no this York companies in New York. So there’s, there is a, it’s like you’re like any sector there’s a few people. There’s a few technologies. There’s expensive ones and there’s service man there’s really cheap ones. And, but for the people when they get what service may has to offer with the forms of recording and everything. It kind of like is no brainer for the integration with Xero or QuickBooks is a, it’s a no brainer for the, for when people understand what the opportunity is for them to go pay. Go, go paperless basically. So maybe it’s a conversation for outside here here, but I’m setting that I count up as a cert engineering services and specialist cleaning at the moment is dedicated dedicated for chimney sweeps but I’m diluting that a little bit. But, and have a more more complex cleaning requirements as well, so which chimney sweeping is so yeah
Unknown Speaker 27:01
know of, I don’t know him, but I know his daughter. He was the one that set up the Guild of master sweepers.
Unknown Speaker 27:08
That’s the one that’s the guild that this guy’s recognised and I’m sure it’s
Unknown Speaker 27:21
low set right. So I’m just gonna see if I can find Lisa because she is where she is. But that’s another thing we can talk about later and see how I can connect you
Unknown Speaker 27:35
Oh fantastic Yeah, Yeah, but it’s not a hard sell for this, this guy. He is the guy who’s given me, give me the account is. He’s on the, he’s a moderator on these counts and if anyone’s talking about being smarter and be more efficient. He says as this software does this one I do this one, like make your choice. Ask around and see, See what you want so it’s not a hard sell for anyone. And it’s and it’s people that, because it isn’t a hard sell, when it’s right you know it’s right you know i mean if you find the right partner, it kind of gels and you move forward. So, that’s my that’s my top that top one, that my dream 100 at the moment so it’s in line.
Unknown Speaker 28:16
The guy’s not far from us a nice, I’ll see if I can connect you so
Unknown Speaker 28:21
awesome that’s brilliant, brilliant.
Unknown Speaker 28:24
That’s interesting. Okay. So, to talk about my customers you know what we can look to add is, you know, properly, similar to Darren, we focus a lot on existing clients, and I’ve got all these letters that we printed back in December, because once a year, we’d run a free, I miss you letter which means hello, we’ve not heard of you for a while. You we all we want to give you a free clean, come and give us a shout and, you know, we usually give them the normal letter says we give you a small room of garbage cleaning free and then of course you’ve got the opportunity foot in the door to go and do other things. But what we’ve done is we extended it a little bit to also offer a rug clean for free. It’s only a small rug so they’ll pay the extra and otherwise they’ll get one seating place of upholstery clean, free, so that opens the door to have experiences of different services and then you know you can always sell them something extra. And every year we make good money we use this programme as something that keeps January busy January and February. The challenge was just this year, I printed three and a half 1000 stuffing envelopes ready to go in January and guess what they goes borrows and locks us down. So I’ve actually just got 100 sitting on the left on the on the on the desk to date we collected by Royal Mail. I’m sending 100 out to see what happens and how they might convert into jobs. My problem is my deadline my expiry date on it is middle of March and I really need to get them out as soon as possible. But it’s just going back to those customers. You know, we’ve got several 1000 clients in the database and it’s just getting them to come back and use us again, we are getting new businesses that start up but you know they’re keen to find their first 100 customers we’re all of us have been going around the block a few times. My focus very much on getting back to those customers that we’ve had before, just use them again. But then, to come off that and talk about. We are new because I think we always need to look to add new customers back in the in the in the business, again, is my focus now has shifted heavily from leaflets which we’ve done lots of to more digital and I think I’ve said to you, Julian that you know the benefit of having a client come through Facebook. You’ve got their contact details that go into Infusionsoft you can keep sending them messages like for example, Darren Julian set me up Infusionsoft where we’ve got a campaign that nurture, all the customers in a campaign that nurture all their prospects. Back in January, towards the end of January, I think, a Kabila check that email is going out for February, because I don’t think my email sets that nicely you know I always read email again and adjust it and especially with lockdown now you need to adjust the email a bit. And I read the emails and I thought now they don’t seem very nice, I think, let me just stop the campaign. And then I’ll write a new one tomorrow, but what I didn’t realise was I didn’t publish it, which meant that the system just kept running the emails, and these emails went out anyway. And you know what i got emails back from a guy’s going oh thank you so much for your lovely email. I was thinking I should change the email, and at the end of the day is just about getting it out you know it doesn’t necessarily always have to be perfect we sometimes so worried about getting it perfect that we don’t take action and get it done.
Unknown Speaker 31:52
It’s an interesting one, that. So, Pierre is more advanced with his marketing but service mate Darren does have integrations or do you use MailChimp at all.
Unknown Speaker 32:07
So, so MailChimp is a free integration with ServiceNow whereby you can you can segment on your, you can segment, the data on your, so you can do targeted targeted campaigns based it through because it knows that service mate geo locates and knows where your customers are so you can you can do quite focused free emailing if you like if it’s low volume so yeah just straight out the box.
Unknown Speaker 32:31
I’ve just recently signed up to a lifetime membership monthly amounts to. Click Funnels the other one that’s just great funnels. And the reason I got that was because we were doing some work to do with my book. So, we were getting customers in through Facebook to check to take a challenge to do what to do with the book. But the problem is, we’ve got a cost that relates around that and that causes an in person course so we stopped, we stopped running it when everything shut down. So, yeah so but I paid for this group photos thing which seems to have a lot of functionality in it but I don’t know what it links into or not, right now that’s interesting, because you actually have multiple business.
Unknown Speaker 33:23
What is your book, Don what’s your book.
Unknown Speaker 33:37
Challenge. How to strengthen the connection with your teenager in seven days.
Unknown Speaker 33:47
Is it based on the chimp paradox at all And the thing is,
Unknown Speaker 33:53
the monkey brain there but yeah the main crux of it is is that you you don’t you don’t own that monkey brain, whereas a lot of a lot of things sort of talk about your internal dialogue or. or. Basically, it belongs to you, whereas what we’ve done, we’ve tried to separate from that negative voice. So, so that’s been the difference in what I sort of share, rather than teach share. So, yeah, it’s just something that really my wife when she was suffering from depression, anxiety, he just happened to be that I do a lot of work with teenagers So I sort of drilled down into the niche of working with parents of teenagers but equally, it helps. Anybody who sees any sort of negativity, which we’ve all got a negative voice inside our heads from time to time, some people it just runs a bit of saying so that that was it. That’s where it came from, but it was it was it was originally written 12 years ago so it was originally over there again. Before I killed my team, which was a bit more in your face but yeah so we did a rewrite last year in lockdown. And that was the time that we came up with. Yeah, I got a lady to help me, so it’s all on Kindle edition now as well. And it’s on all the all the Amazon platforms as well. Now it’s not audible we haven’t done an audible recording yet able to purchase cost to do, I don’t know, I don’t know I haven’t looked into that yet. I love audible so I do I love audible I. We’re always listening to something in the van and again.
Unknown Speaker 35:38
If we go back to Facebook, sorry Julia
Unknown Speaker 35:43
funnels myself. It looks like it does everything. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 35:52
I was just fed up. I signed up to Click Funnels to do the project I was doing. Yeah, and I just got I’m doing my typical sort of throwing 80 pounds a month, down the drain. Only down drains you’re not using it properly. So yeah and then one of the people on the, on our mastermind call said, Oh, I use through funnels and you can just do a lifetime. I think at the time it was about $1,000. So, I just, I just get a lifetime access and I know I’m going to use it for other stuff as we go sort of thing so
Unknown Speaker 36:24
replaces WordPress. And like follows the jarvey webinarjam
Unknown Speaker 36:32
service may.
Unknown Speaker 36:50
Something like this that goes wow that would actually work really well.
Unknown Speaker 36:55
I I avoid those regarding regarding social I’ve been I avoided Facebook for years, and I had everyone’s got an account but I didn’t do anything with it but once. Last year, maybe it was locked out, but the groups within Facebook have that so powerful, the communities that are building up and do you have, do you have a Facebook group for your own for your own book and your core so your to your
Unknown Speaker 37:30
Facebook group. So you get a interaction, and obviously as soon as you’ve got a Facebook group of people who are in it. They also because it’s a free challenge. I got them to do is answer three questions before they get so that was kind of like payment concern. So to get in the group so I really understood a little bit of their, their, their pain points, so you can structure. You know, you could stare the chat the whole week challenge towards helping them get rid of those pain points. So, yeah, I mean, physical challenge in that group so far, but it gave me seven hours of content which is pretty good. I’ve now just got picked my way through those videos and see if we can get content out of it.
Unknown Speaker 38:12
Yeah, it wasn’t. He wasn’t early days but he was looking to take the zoom call and live, live stream on Facebook as well.
Unknown Speaker 38:21
So,
Unknown Speaker 38:22
so you could have a you could have a close group of people, and then you’re going out to the world and you’re attracting people as Facebook is still pushing out live streaming on their channel because it brings people in doesn’t it.
Unknown Speaker 38:43
Something was definitely a mess between because we had, we had about 45, people sign up to it. As in, but then but then we only ended up with about nine people in the Facebook group. So somewhere along the line we lost sort of 3030 in the group Caldera. So the group is the awaken parent challenge in Facebook.
Unknown Speaker 39:09
Have you dabbled at all in the LinkedIn world for lead generation,
Unknown Speaker 39:19
my LinkedIn. Because I do, we do do mental health awareness training myself and my wife and I, so we was we’re all set up for that on LinkedIn rather than trying to, you know, rather than confuse issue I just thought LinkedIn, would be better for me maybe I’m wrong but rather than set myself up as a specialist rug cleaner or stone floor cleaner on there. I just always done it as my training. So, which which did work well you know we’ve really, we have some really good clients you know we do, we were doing a lot of work for unite the union which is one of the biggest trade unions in the country, which is phenomenal. Just we were just about to do some work with their British Airways cabin crew. Again around the negative voice inside your head and all that, and how their clients when their clients are kicking off or panic get on a plane that order is is the negative.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Should we not person Yes, we are all we are trying to do is quiet in that little negative voice you’re just trying to get it to reassure it’s just like it’s a child, even if somebody’s getting angry is that negative voice inside their head. So if you can quiet, like like the chimp paradox, you, you can’t really negotiate with the chimp because by the time the chip kicks off your internal vision sort of thing. So, but what we’re saying is if you can just, if you can just give the person, what they need, which which there are structures that, then you can quiet and that that that internal voice down, and then all of a sudden all the lights come back on. And then, and then you’re okay, while they’re in that fight or flight thing, which, which will have been kicked off by the negative voice in your head that week on the screen. Then, then you know all bets are off at that point he’s like talking to a drunk person. Again, so yeah we were just about to do the training with the way the cabin crew but then this COVID stuff. So we have to put it on the back.
Unknown Speaker 1:02
But the, the nice you have with the awaken parent challenge. That’s a, that’s a niche within a niche isn’t it and that’s why I that everyone is aware of the mental the mental health issues going forward COVID and people work through people’s situations but but the the the parenting element, it will either resonate or it won’t everyone read the mental health will resonate with everyone it’s awareness, but that one will will put a deeper, a deeper interest quickly for conversion it’s a brilliant niche. And that’s why
Unknown Speaker 1:33
we named it that because we were very conscious of who we wanted to work for so we knew we were gonna, we were gonna nullify quite a few people but those were the ones we didn’t want to work with. We didn’t want to have to sell the concept. You know, that, that, that, just the word resonate even though that resonates with me, you know, rather than, that sounds like that oh crap. We’re not there to sell it to parents because even though they might have the biggest problems with their children because they, you know, they might be very structured and have a lot of rules in their life, which some kids are going to actually kick against but plus I’m more interested in helping kids or parents of kids who are suffering some sort of, you know, mental illness challenge whether that just be panic attacks or anxiety or depression or even as bad as suicidal thoughts, you know it’s it’s just nice to be able to talk honestly to them and get them involved and make them understand that actually, it’s not that bad. You know what they’re feeling is quite normal. And that’s the half of it really is just normalising things. And it really helps because my wife’s been through it all, and come out the other end. People really listened to her, you know it’s not like a doctor. Yes, they might have qualifications, but if you ask them, have you ever suffered from suicidal thoughts. Most of the mitigating, and even even ones that have we’ve had doctors on our courses, they say, I can’t tell my clients that suicidal thoughts, because, because that is their voice inside their head is saying this is you know this is going beyond my remit, you know I’m not supposed to share that with my clients, so they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place to even if they want to help, they can’t tell them their own story, which is terrible, because really the person just on the other, the patient just needs to know that, actually it’s not that bad. And there is a way out. It’s interesting.
Unknown Speaker 3:32
Fascinating social channels for that and reaching people is a classic channel, isn’t it, because, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:55
Found like the awakening. The Awakened parent challenge book. So that’s your fan page facebook group but there is a there is, there is a Facebook group as well, called the same thing. So, so you need to answer some questions to be accepted into it. Okay, that’s where I’m sort of heading so how many people have you got in that group. So we’ve only got the first time we ran it like I said we actually got 45, people who registered into the Gruffalo email campaign. But then only nine of those ended up into the actual group. So while I was running the seven to seven people, or nine people. Well that doesn’t matter you need to start somewhere and that’s still divided by one person to be able to hear exactly the reason I ask is because I’ve been exploring the idea of the Facebook group and the Facebook page, right, so we’ve been doing a lot on the Facebook page, as I said earlier, we run the ads we all do these things. But then, recently I’ve set up myself with video stuff and like Russell said I’m trying to get face with three via Facebook and all. So, my aim is to build more value to people, especially at this moment you know what I can’t go out there and say hey buy my carpet cleaning because grandma is not going to have me in the house because she’s scared and, you know the kids are having the school after school the kids at home and all that. So it’s all about adding value at the moment so I thought to myself, you know, Facebook page couldn’t well by the community on a Facebook group with each other, giving advice. But then I found, there’s a lot of work going into managing that Facebook group, there is. So I just wanted to pick your brain How long have you been doing it and how much it started it started looking into this last year, because of course what we have more time. Yeah. So, so I just, yeah I just set up the group was specifically to read the pages of the book the chapters of the book, we created as a seven day challenge. It was. It was to help people rather than buy a book and just read a chapter and put it on the shelf. It was to say right you you obviously in some form of pain. When you go, less. Let’s run with it. And let’s, let’s just, if you can get if you can commit to reading two chapters a day. Then we’ll take we’ll walk you through those chapters each day as well. We’ll give you my take on why I would write those chapters and what the benefits are, and what some of the stories around the chapters are so, so yeah it was just that was the that was what we were trying to do, but it was very much, just, you know, let’s see if it works. I went to the group. I’m doing it with, you know, some of them are bad some, some really good successes. But again, a lot of them are doing things whereby you know it’s selling on Amazon or something like that some people have gone the other way and of like, Oh, I’m going to make some money, which is obviously a big call for a lot of people. So, so they’re really engaged in a group. So, you know, they’ve got hundreds of people, and then they’re just walking them through right okay. And again, the point of the group being for them is well I’m going to sell you. I’ve told you I’ve kind of told you what you need to do. And now, if you want to go further. through and how to do that step by step, you know, you’re gonna pay me $1,000 1000 pounds. So, you know, there was a means to an end for most of them, how it could work from a carpet cleaning point of view, you could potentially if you ran an ad, an ad campaign in Facebook, just talking about like stains and spots and stains, you know, how do you get rid of you know, because you can’t let you know because I can’t see them or if you’re saying, I’m really aware that some people, you know, womb a very cautious and losing their home. So I just thought I’d set up something that shows you what you could use in your cupboard, you know, hopefully, you know, either eliminate or at least reduce some of the things that you might start, you know, you might be the new Mrs. Mrs.
Unknown Speaker 8:26
Mrs mob. This is.
Unknown Speaker 8:34
So, you can start doing things with white vinegar and stuff like that.
Unknown Speaker 8:43
You know, saying to people right okay you’re gonna have your, your white cloth your white. Terry towel and a dab dab dab. That’s the mistake most people make. Yeah, you could potentially but again you’ve got your right is going to be tight. So what I’ve done so far is, you know, typical questions come in, somebody would send you a question saying I’ve got this workflow Can you send it. And then what I would do is build a video around that so what I found, before was I signed up to something called go video it’s something similar to euro I think you’ve signed up. That’s a brilliant that’s a brilliant marketing technique for them because, because people searching for COVID might end up finding co video. So what this does is it’s a bit like YouTube that I can easily recall the videos those videos I could send the text with my video so people would contact us and say, I’ve got this issue. So, nickel and the office our office manager, she’ll come to me and say oh we got this video this this email in there something just get you just look at it, tell me what we can clean this, you know, inevitably sometimes these things happen in the cloud don’t know at all. So, I would sit down I’ll tell it what to write and then eventually I thought, you know what, I’m just gonna make a video and send it to this person. And then from there, the idea came, you know what, if this person is somebody else’s question. And then if I have the content. The next time you click through the content. So that came from that and then from there I thought, you know what maybe I should, but I’m not sure if the time I’m going to put in, if somebody’s really going to want to watch. So I was thinking of going slightly wider and talking about all things around the home so you know the garden the driveway the roof the electricity. And what I was thinking I was involving other trades as well, to say, you know, electrician and trusted electrician local to me that I know does a good job and he can comment on all the electrical issues and the plumber can talk about them. But guys, the only thing, the only thing there is more niche down you are more interested people are going to have, whereas if you lose it. The group can be very wide but he might lose interest I think
Unknown Speaker 11:01
Judy had an interest your when you set up your group you had an interesting sort of Revelation, it was potential new clients, Julian as well. Wasn’t it, our clients coming back, and buying your services from us.
Unknown Speaker 11:26
Today, we got a serviceman as well, with a commercial cleaning company Yes,
Unknown Speaker 11:33
they do. Pest Control cleaning but that is a 5050 staff in in London. He’s having trouble with the software and scheduling. So service May I know we’ve got got a discovery call next Monday, service may as it stands would not suit him if it a few years ago is too is too big. Now he reckons he’s doing 4000 jobs a month you know I mean, so, so, but what there is, I love creative thinking around how to use technology and keeping inside the box because, potentially, he splits his business into four divisions connected them we wink for reporting. He could have four divisions competing against each other now. So you’ve got for first time fixes for quote win rates for reviews, and you actually the business is more manageable because you’ve got 14 leaders, and he now is his eighth climbing up the business whereby he’s running 14 litres not and so it’d be interesting interesting call because for service mates can run that but one service mate with 5000 jobs a month and 50 staff is on its limit straightaway.
Unknown Speaker 12:37
Businesses really interesting.
Unknown Speaker 12:39
winc reports which integrates with with service mate, there is a charge where it’s a very very advanced reporting tool. And basically, people are now using that running 20 service mates and actually managing a franchise through winc reports, it basically you can compare x, x, external databases with service made all it’s all open access all areas within the service may, and you can bring all that together using pivot tables no code and automations to actually to make sense of the business and have a dashboard, and have all your KPIs in one space and that’s reporting from multiple channels once it’s set up so, so, so that type of company, but be interesting to know he’s got a problem with scheduling at the moment so service make nails that it’s whether he’s open to a different kind of fix but if he came up if he chose that, over, over maybe Salesforce, it’d be one 10th of the cost. If not one 20th you know what you’re wrong.
Unknown Speaker 13:40
And I’m so glad I didn’t go down that road I’ve heard of companies that nearly went bust Yeah. Pit if you’re not careful,
Unknown Speaker 13:51
we got to, we got the client through that and it was from a Salesforce consultant. He looked after the parent company did football pictures no 3g pictures for football clubs and places, and there was a service team of 10 guys, and they were looking to set it up in Salesforce the Salesforce guys that listen Oh, look at service may is too much, it’s like it’s too much work for the and in one week we got them set up and they’re just flying with it doesn’t integrate with Saturday so it’s a manual transition to their accounts in Salesforce, but it just the reporting and everything they can analyse football pictures and the reports or have a picture of a football pitch of where the issues are and everything, and it just kind of, they just love it because they’re not technical people. If they’ve gone for Salesforce, it would just ground the business down you know I mean, the Agile maintenance division.
Unknown Speaker 14:40
Message yesterday saying thank you for joining us today on the call. Should was what’s the one thing we can add value to you for and I don’t think I’ve seen a reply and you didn’t get a reply because I couldn’t think of anything. So, I suppose, I suppose I mean, I got service maybe I haven’t invested any time. And I spoke to my wife briefly but she, we were, we were we set aside some time yesterday to go through it but she almost got scammed on the on the on the phone and food for like one of these broad phishing links really really really close to get scammed so but luckily it didn’t happen so. So that kind of shook her up so she ended up giving herself enough, I see. We didn’t get around to discuss. Maybe you can connect to with Russell and Russell can talk. Yeah, it would be interested yeah so I would like to, because at some stage I do need you to sit down and it might be the time to go Okay, sit down with Russell, and just just go through to go through what I mean because presumably it’s got I know this might be a really tough question but is it got a reasonable reporting out the other end. So, so that you can see, like, you know, from a from a for all jobs you’ve done as you know what jobs you’ve done but like the value of jobs you’ve done in a given period, and the types of jobs, but also the where the jobs have come from. So we can start seeing how much we’re spending on a certain stream, advertising, we’ve set up, custom fields, and there’s a small fee for doing that I don’t know Russell can talk more about that but our custom fields have got a way in which we track when people hear about us and you know whether they get a number from today similar way in which we used to track them years ago and get booked up, which is, of course, for the sake of Russell Julian the different software we used to use before. So, that is how we do it there, I would say that it’s not, it’s not absolutely amazing out of the box. We are working to make it even better but there’s quite impressive. Reporting available in there. And of course like Russell said earlier with wind reports which is a little add on, you can get actually very insightful information out of it.
Unknown Speaker 17:03
With a mini audit, you can job categories job status, down to individual down to people in your business but also there’s badges, with it before you need to go to the custom fields you can apply badges for Facebook, Google, for when when you set up the job and you can report you can drill down and save custom reports and their strategic reports, like you say, how many this last month or last quarter, how many people are caught how much revenue Have we got from all the ones from the little green book, you can easily do that and it’s strategic and you can save those searchers, and then you can you can get metrics and you can go back for the last year and things So, but, but Pierre is more advanced and maybe he expects more out of the system but because you’re not using it. Yeah, I think he was actually quite impressed Yeah, to begin with and then then you could go the journey.
Unknown Speaker 17:51
I’ve just found that for me was the real big picture of the whole thing and then somehow it got to me i thought you know what let’s just take it one step at a time I’m just gonna start doing this and then I’m gonna start doing that and the one thing that worked for me was I went to the office one day and said Philip because I dragged the project down and on and on. And I just said to Nicola listen Nicola. This is now your baby I don’t want to know about to use it the bloody thing up, you work with. At the time we worked a little bit with David but then some of that goodness I found Russell along the way. And she was working with Russell and you know what she just started running with it and then a brick road my first technician in Detroit, get your first instal the software, you know, we’re gonna run it side by side, and you know what before New and everybody’s wanting it is just, you know, take it one step at a time and you know it was also for me but I really wanted to do that, you know, they should focus on really implementing it. So you’re totally Yes, will you use now completely yeah absolutely nothing. So for the last three years now. Rarely. Right. It’s actually been a little bit longer because we started using it for our flooring business because I was looking for a solution and then the guy I work with a guy that does a bit of it forces and stuff and I called him and I said this and I got fed up with get booked up. And I paid him money to find me the top 10 options and he found several others and also service made them at the time, David, who you work with service guru was in Cambridge and of course being South African I thought okay let me go with David. He helped us he helped us you know he helped the set up but you know unfortunately the road wasn’t for us to work together wasn’t that long. And for a while I was sort of bit frustrated a bit annoyed and then I found Russell and Julian and you know what from the, I started working with them more. So at the end of the day is just about, you know, taking that jump and go you know what if Windows update and it’s all gone. It’s all gone. Oh, wait a minute, I better do something now because otherwise you know what you’re going to end up losing all your customers, they’re not going to even know who they are. Thanks for that.
Unknown Speaker 20:08
On that cheery note.
Unknown Speaker 20:15
You’re, you’re you’re in the group now, aren’t you so either, message me or ping me a message or, or Russell at m cog UK but with less touch base I’d love to do a mini or I love to see how people using the system it challenges me and I think it’s like, I’ll send you a ping you across a blog if I’ve got whatever email address, and you can see what the mini audit involves and then take on a journey but ultimately, I say to anyone. There’s lots of systems out there. It’s the partner you choose makes a difference, because the getting the right partner that is on your wavelength and there’s other partners, but it’s a case of, it really when it sings it sings doesn’t it you know I mean, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 21:01
Any advice any guidance any questions about service banking or water each other more than happy to help you. Brother. Thank you. Appreciate that. Any time I was terrified by the group. The Gruffalo involved. Yes, webinar, gentlemen. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s good. So yeah, you never know Julian if you go favour that and I think I might use you on the other project.
Unknown Speaker 21:37
Just making sure that it does whatever they say. Instead of trying to get, because what we did was with David, they built us via add ons and this costing us quite a bit of money. And then I just got so fed up with the add ons and then it didn’t work and then it didn’t connect and then this was update, and then I went to Russell and soon realised you know there’s people that either want to build the add ons and charge you lots of money for an all let’s see a way in which we can bolt something on that we don’t need to develop but it works. And that’s what I like with Julian and Russell rather than to go and reinvent the wheel and start something from scratch and totally dependent on that company, no matter how bad they are, which is, you know, for me has been much better since we’ve shifted. So, anytime if you need any advice any guidance any help, you know what to show. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 22:37
Great to meet you. Great to meet everyone and we do run it once a month so people drop in and drop out so we just we just growing this group but if you do choose to nudge service met along then it’s a great environment for meeting different people and asking how people are doing it and I was a heating engineering company yesterday as COVID safe and all that, and I just, they’re putting notes on the wall of printing out things and the administrator has a big book of all these things I said, Have you heard of tasks. He said yes and said, Well, Not really. When I took when I showed them, she was writing all these tasks down in a book, when they could have been against the job and she could have been pinging them to the owners and everyone in the business to actually make it digital and live, and people don’t ask me because they just don’t think there’s a solution and they don’t think they’re just too busy and it’s silly until you actually see somebody the way the working that we actually come up with the solution does a lot of the systems do a lot of things it’s how you can make people’s lives easier using technology if you can, and that’s a it’s revolutionary when it when it works great, great to meet everyone. And you guys find out now.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai