John Wilson sits down with Julie Phan, founder of Big Reputation, to break down how home service companies can use Google Business Profiles to expand into new markets.
They cover how to choose the right location, how many reviews you need before expanding, Google's verification process, and how to build authority on a new GBP without weakening your existing locations.
John also shares how The Wilson Companies has used GBPs through acquisitions and organic expansion, including a $10,000 acquisition that may have generated roughly $1 million in revenue.
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In This Episode
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• When to open another Google Business Profile
• How to choose your next market
• Building reviews and authority
• Google's GBP verification requirements
• Buying existing GBPs through acquisitions
• Google Business Profiles and AI search
• Why more locations don't automatically mean more leads
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Sponsors
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FieldPulse
Ready to ditch the whiteboard and spreadsheets? See how FieldPulse helps home service companies simplify scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, and more.
Book a free demo: https://landing.fieldpulse.com/owned_and_operated
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Connect
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John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Julie Phan/Big Reputation
https://www.bigreputation.ai/
More Ways To Connect with OAO
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
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Just because you launched new GBP, it doesn't mean that you're expanding. You still have to sustain it is going to be the biggest thing.
You should try to buy GBPs for a business that we bought six years ago. Has generated like millions and millions and millions of dollars.
Can your current operations support that new GBP? So again, you don't want to dilute any of the signals because then it kind of hinders your growth rather than supporting it. Do an audit on your current one now and see.
Are you even doing it well?
Correct.
How should we be thinking about like GBPs as a strategy? Um, just welcome back to Owned and Operated, a top 150 U.S. business and entrepreneurship podcast. I'm your host, John Wilson, and on this show we talk home service companies. Talk about my own home service company in the Midwest. And we also talk to my friends about how they're building and buying home services or around the home service industry. Today I'm joined by my good friend Julie Fan. Welcome back to the show. Hi, everyone. You're with big reputation. Yep. Like you founded it, you're running it. I'm uh doing the damn thing. You're doing the damn thing. Uh this has been a lot of fun. Um, so yeah, so today we're to we're talking about a question that you get, I think a lot. Yeah. Uh you want to cue us off with like what we're getting into?
Yeah. So today we're gonna be talking about how how and when to launch a new location. We'll briefly go through the SOP and just basically the back end, what to expect, and just pretty much the setup.
Yeah. This uh so we're at our breaking five uh September 26th, uh, or 26th. And I honestly think that this is one of like the most repeat questions. Yeah. Uh so just like to state it again for the listener this is when should we open a new GBP location? And how and the steps when and how, and yeah, all of that stuff. This comes up so much. Like somebody reads it on Twitter and then they're like, Well, now I need to go launch uh Zillion, which I mean it does, it is good. It is a good thing. We've always just been pretty hesitant to talk about it on the show because I feel like if you do it wrong, then like you're messing with Google's terms of service. And yeah, like I want to make sure we're advising people right.
Yeah, of course. And then like as of when we're kind of talking about this, the di the big disclaimer is Google will change things from time to time. So what may be true today might not be true a year from today, two years. So just so you that your audience knows. Yeah. We're not steering them in the wrong direction.
That makes sense. Uh before we dive in, I want to talk about the whole like new service location thing. Sure. So we um we bought a number of companies over the years, and then we've like organically launched our own GBP locations. So I'm just like giving context to the to the listener. I think we have like 20 or John's golden nuggets. Yeah. Love that, everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that could be a session on the show. It could be good. Um, but what has been really interesting is like the power of these GBP locations is kind of crazy. Yeah. Uh, like we have one for a business that we bought six years ago. And that phone number, which is only on that Google Business profile, has generated like millions and millions and millions of dollars, like, frankly, more than we ever expected to get out of that business. And like we already got that money from the customer list, and like we felt like we made a good investment regardless, because we got the team, we got inventory, we got a customer list, we got all the other stuff that came with it. But the Google business location to me is becoming one of the prime assets that you can buy in an acquisition because the organic power of that thing is crazy. I'll try to find it and then I'll show it later. But Central um is the name of that G VP, and it is, yeah, it's wild. Uh anyway, so we're we're big believers. I think I actually don't know how many we have.
I believe the Wilson specific ones, you guys have four, yeah, and then you have buddies, and then you have other not like Wilson associated, but not directly Wilson.
Yeah.
So you guys have a few.
Yeah. And then Rapid, I think we have like four or five in Nashville, and then we have three or four or something in Fort Wayne, and now we have two. We just did another deal a couple weeks ago. Okay, anyways, we're big believers of it. It makes a ton of sense. Just do it right. So let's dive in. Where should we open next? Like, as we think about uh maybe talk as as to Wilson, like, hey, we have
let's say 20 G VPs. Yep. Um, or if I only have one, like what do you think someone should be thinking about? One of the hardest transitions for any home service business owner is moving from running jobs to running a business. At some point, the whiteboard or the spreadsheet or that group text that you guys are doing just stops working and things start falling through the cracks. The office is going to lose visibility into the field, and you become the bottleneck for basically everything. That's one of the reasons that I like Field Pulse a lot. Field Pulse gives growing home service companies one place to manage scheduling, dispatching, estimates, invoicing, job tracking, customer communication, and reporting. It has the tools you actually need to run and grow your business without the complexity of a bloated enterprise software that your team's just not going to use. It's powerful enough to scale with your business, but simple enough that your team will actually adopt it. If you've outgrown the whiteboard and you're ready to build some better systems, check out Field Pulse using the link below. For a limited time, they're offering 20% off your base subscription plus 50% off premium support for your first year.
So when you're thinking about launching a new location, the first steps you want to go through is you pick you have to figure out who you're trying to target. So whether a lot of people obviously the easy answer is more affluent neighborhoods. But then it's also are you can your current operations support that new GBP?
So at your geographically.
Correct.
That makes sense. We have a spot. We've wanted to launch one, but it's like it's it's a high like customer density. And we don't do as in like potential customers, like yeah, I think high average income, a lot of homeowners, older homes. Yeah. But it's 45, 50 minutes away from us here. So like not super conveniently located. And it is um yeah, bit basically it's far away. Oh, and we do almost no revenue there. We do like a million dollars in like that area. Um, but like we know we could do more. So yeah, okay, that's top of mind. I'm following you.
Yeah. So population, household growth, housing age, home type, um, home ownership percentage, household income, um, density, obviously. Yeah. And then a good way to even just look to see, just do a quick search as to who your competitors are in that area and what it takes. Like, for example, the top three in the Map Pack, how many reviews do they have? Um, like if it's 50 or 200, that's kind of your breakout number to get to the top. So when you're considering opening a second location, let's say that you're trying to open into a market that where the top three in the map pack average about a hundred reviews. At your current operation, can you manage reviews to to kind of fulfill both locations, both GBPs?
Yeah, that makes sense. I do I do wonder, I'm back on that like one GBP like going nuts for six years. I have always wondered if you could could or should just start outreaching legacy GBPs, like plumbing companies that have 10 reviews or less.
Yeah.
And just like, hey, I'll buy this from you for five grand.
Yeah.
And just see what happens. I don't think people have any concept of like the value of these things.
Legacy profiles definitely hold a little bit more of a weight because just because they've been around longer, so they have more credibility. Now I think your situation is different just because Wilson has grown so vast, and you can go up to anybody and be like, let me buy your business. And they're like, okay, yeah. But other people are. It doesn't look like it like that'd be awesome.
That would be awesome.
But I mean, some people might not be in that you know area or they're trying to grow. Um, but the biggest thing is to make sure you can support your first one first and it's steady before you even think about launching a second one, just because again, you don't want to dilute any of the signals because if you launch too quickly or if you launch too many at once, then it kind of hinders your growth rather than supporting it.
Uh and you think generally when possible, you should be aiming, which I think we've said this a ton on this show, but you should be aiming for like how do you find the areas where you're only competing against people with 100 reviews?
Yeah, so that's going to be more of your rural areas. Um, in different markets, it looks it looks totally different. So you could always use, for example, big rep, we have a map pack tool, and you'll be able to scan different zip codes. It'll give you your top 10 competitor list in that area. And then you can do a competitor analysis on the top three and just to see what your breaking point would be in terms of breaking out into the market in the Map Pack. Yeah. So, like, for example, if you ran a search, I'm just gonna pick somebody where random, like in a rural area, the top competitor might have 500. And then I've seen search results where the next the second and the third will have 50 reviews. So there could be a big jump from the first to the second. So in that type of market, it looks like your breakout in terms of review average should be 50.
Do you guys measure like aggregate reviews?
Yes, we do have the your total number of review counts, and then you can split it by location as well.
Okay, I feel like all that makes sense to me. So high population, it's all the stuff that would make sense. Like it's wherever you would want to be. And I think probably the important part here to state is uh you want to be where your customers are. Yeah. So there's a business I actually looked at last night and I we went and visited with the team. And the the Google My Business Profile or Google Business Profile has um it was like a a thousand sum reviews in like an awesome area perfectly surrounded by homes. And I'm like, yeah, this is fucking like that GBP alone is probably worth like half a million dollars. Like yeah, I don't know. Like it's kind of crazy. So I'm pretty pumped up about it. Uh, but all this makes sense. And it's like rural, so they probably win on everything. And if you just like add plumbing, like boom, it's gonna take off.
Well, it's like just even with taking Wilson in general, your Wilson the Wilson GBP is top in a specific area of Akron. Yeah. And then I know that you acquired buddies, which those which buddies is second in that map pack. So between Wilson and Buddies, you guys are taking up the top two spots of the top three in the map pack. So you're getting almost all the calls in that area.
Yeah, there's a lot of areas that we've intentionally left the prior brand so that we can consume more space on the map pack and LSAs. Right. Because we can take um, yeah, if we have like if Northeast Ohio, let's say, has 10 GBPs, um there's often overlap. And sometimes it's like double Wilson. Like at times, uh, when I was like really deep in this a couple years ago, uh on like LSA, LSA used to only provide like two or four search results, and like sometimes Wilson
would be the top two, which was yeah, pretty funny. I thought okay. I think all this makes sense. So as far as like you're saying opening a new location, I think people just to get clear on that, there's opening a new location and there's opening like a GBP. And like which one are you talking about? Because I feel like opening a new location is like, are we launching a business and you know, putting infrastructure in place, or how how are you thinking about that?
So mine is mine is a little bit about both. So when you're opening a new location, obviously you want to do the research and make sure that you know, the way that your business is growing, the way that it's growing, that new market is gonna support your growth. But in terms of your GBP, that's gonna be where the sustainability comes in with with your current operations. Are you able to have enough review volume, enough review consistency and stuff like that? I feel like this is contain the new GBP.
They don't this is the one they miss. They always they'll be like, Yeah, I'm ready for my second GBP. And it's like, dude, you have like a hundred reviews, like right.
Or you average like two a week. That's you should not be opening a second location. Like you should get to a point where your first one can run on its own, can run fairly well, or let's say you redirect some reviews for two to three days out of the week, your first and your first location is strong enough to maintain its its ranking in the Map Pack.
Yeah. So as far as like when you think you're ready, like how many reviews a week or how many reviews on your core GPP.
Again, it depends on your market. Like speaking specifically to Wilson statistics, your Akron location, your Fairlong location, that could survive off of five reviews a week for that GPP in total. Whereas, like, for example, the ones that when you get closer into Cleveland, you need about 10, 20 per week there. Yeah.
So it's to like stay alive on the Map Pack.
Yeah. So in a more in a more population dense city, you're gonna need more reviews to sustain it and even to break out into positions in the Map Pack. But in a more rural city, you'll be able to break out easier.
Yeah, I don't have a good concept. It's sort of like memberships, because we bought all these companies this year, and I don't have like a good concept of how many members we have, which is like one of the most important numbers in our business. Yeah. And like it's somewhere between like 6,000 and 10. And like that's how much I don't know. Uh so who knows? Uh, but like reviews is similar. Like, I couldn't maybe 12,000 or 10,000 all in. Yeah. Um, I mean, maybe it's eight. I I guess I don't know. Cause I think our base one is like five.
Yeah. Um, across your Wilson ones, the last time I checked is I think you guys have eight thousand reviews across all of your Wilson specific G VPs.
So probably taken two thousand on top of that.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, and I think we do like 50 to 100 a week of new ones. That that number I do know. Yes. Okay. Okay, I gotcha. Yeah, I do wonder. Um I was listening to somebody talk a couple years ago and they had 40 GBPs. And the way they were describing it was really interesting because it's it they they're separating uh operational locations from GBPs as their as their business. And so they had 40 GBPs, which at the time I thought was like humongous, but like now I I actually I think we have like 15 to 20. We'll count after after we're done recording because I now I'm really curious. Um how many GBPs? John doesn't know everybody. Like I actually kind of bad. I actually uh don't know. But one of their big growth strategies was like, oh, we're gonna just double the amount of G VPs we have.
Yeah.
Which is kind of a lot of work. I mean, that's crazy. You have to hunt down locations and leases and like activate the GBPs. And I mean, there's a lot going on there.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to double, like, even if we were to double Wilson, it would take a whole nother team to do what you guys are doing. Because yeah, same then with opening up new GBPs and the verification process that keeps changing even on a month-to-month basis, that it's just so difficult to launch new locations now. So you need a a team monitoring that all the time.
I think I'm I think I'm kind of into this, uh, to be honest though. Now I'm like, so at the time we thought about doing exactly that because we had the same thought. It's like, okay, in order to go from 40 to 80, like you have to have a team.
Yeah.
But like we could do that now. That'd be sick.
They are cracking down on satellite locations, which I know you could have a lot of.
Yeah, to talk talk to me about this.
Okay. So throughout the verification process, a lot of people have cracked the code over the last few years, like we're just gonna launch more G VPs, which was what we were just talking about. But Google will start suspending locations now if they don't think that it's operating. So for example, a lot of people in the industry um will have to go through a V re-verification process. So you need to make sure you have a whole walkthrough video, you need signage, you need to show a van that's actually stocked with equipment. Um, you need to sh I I they kind of go back and forth with whether people are working in the office or not working in the office, but at you need to have desks and staging material in there so it looks like you are operating out of that office versus just having a location.
Yeah, yeah. Which I think that makes sense. Yeah. Like I think that makes sense. I I know um I don't think this is the case anymore, but it it like five years ago, it used to have uh Amazon would uh like basically send out a text to anyone that would um got really struggl struggling over my words here. They would send out a text if you wanted to deliver a package. So like the drivers were just like 1099, sort of like Uber or uh Lyft or whatever, where they would be on an app or they'd get a text and they'd sign up and they would go do it. So what they would do is like you would drive by an Amazon location, and on all the trees next to the location, people hung phones because it was all geo-tracked, like it's the closest thing, and that's the same thing with GBPs, like the thing that we've talked about the workshop forever is wherever you set up a location, like physical office or GBP or whatever, like you want to be where your customers are. Like that's why we're physically here. Like, this is the wealthiest section of our county, and it's like not close at all. Like we're here for a reason. And the year we moved here, we grew 50%. Um, so to me that makes that makes sense that like there would be some limits because I can see how it can be I I can see how it can be abused. Yeah, like I'm talking about abusing it. Like, how do we double? That'd be sick. Are are do you think that um I'm sure this will come up at some point, but like just to like cut through it, as you as people think about like new locations as a strategy, yeah. Two or three years ago, Google was the driver of basically all leads and mainly how people searched. Now with like much more AI search, yeah. Um how are you how are we thinking because I'm sure Google still gets referred by chat or Claude or whatever. Yeah. Um but so does Yelp and so does Angie's and all these other review aggregation platforms. So like how how how should we be thinking about like GBPs as a strategy?
Um just to clarify, so your question is just more or less when to launch, or what do you mean?
Is this like is the strategy still as effective as it was three years ago? That's basically the question. Um Because people would use GBPs as their growth strategy three years ago, and it doesn't
I don't know if that still works the same way or doesn't. Like uh I don't know.
Yeah, I mean it still does. Like I'm sure you guys I you probably don't know because it doesn't seem like you're tracking some of your numbers. But um like I'm sure your marketing team knows has these numbers ready on you know, to track each how many calls you're getting from each of your G VPs.
Yeah, we have that.
Um so that like for example, your Wilson won't your STO office, so your headquarters probably gets a lot of calls because it's your strongest location. Now some of your other hundreds a week.
Like we have our smallest ones get like 10 a week.
Yeah. Um, even if you're getting, let's say, 10 reviews, right? You're still getting or 10 calls, right? You're still that's still organic leads that you don't have to pay for via PPC or LSA, stuff like that. So it is still a good growth strategy and it's just capturing more leads. But of course, you want to be strategic. Like you just don't want to launch them anywhere and everywhere. Like you want to target an audience that you can serve. So for going back to your question from a while ago, you have a market that's very far from here that you're trying to service.
Yeah.
I wouldn't I you could launch a new GBP there, but I would start building locations along the way until you expand to that area versus just like here's one an hour away, and then here's a pocket of four or five different Wils Wilson ones from a different area. So that way, because you already have brand awareness, so that branded search will just kind of grow as you continue to launch more locations. But I would do it, you know, in a in a growing radius versus like here anywhere, like not like a throw a dart at a map kind of thing. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, that makes sense. All right. So like let's walk through the SOP for launching a new location.
What do we have to do?
Okay. So when you're launching a new location, um, you want to pick the market, obviously, choose the location and address, depending on whether you want a service area based or a storefront location. That's if you have a storefront location, you're gonna pick the you're gonna sign a lease because you're gonna need some of the details of the lease for the verification. If you do a service area-based GVP, you still will need an address. However, that will be hidden from the public.
Okay.
Um setting up and verifying the Google business profile, building out the website and location page, setting up phone numbers and tracking, and building out directories and citations.
What does that one mean? Just like yellow pages and hey, we exist, we're here.
Yes, correct. Um you're gonna start generating reviews, you're adding photos and posts and ongoing activity. So you want to make sure that that profile is always active with new content.
Um you want to like hook it up to Service Titan, you want to like, yeah, drive photos, drive like, hey, we were here's a lot of things.
Right. Yep. Photos, um, your updates, any type of problem. Products, stuff like that, adding your socials. And then that's when you layer in the LSA and then paid. So for example, to dive more into the SOP portion, you want you want to set it up from a clean email. You're going to have a new email with a new phone number. Don't use the same emails or phone numbers that the main business uses.
Yeah.
Just because the risk with that, if you have all of your GBPs under one email, then let's say one account gets suspended. They all get suspended. So it's good if you have them separated. Setting up the page as normal, name, location, hours, and pictures, and then getting verified. So that's where a lot of people run into issues with getting verified, and Google again is cracking down. So this will require a video of the address and the surrounding businesses, the video of you having the keys to the building and opening the door, a permanent signage on the door, mailing address. It can be it could be a sign, like it doesn't yeah. So signage to the building, suite number or letter, um, moderate staging. So making sure you have a desk, phone, so it looks like people are operating out of there. Google will ask you to send a verification video. Um so just make sure you have all of those clear pictures. I think from what I've been hearing in the industry is that it's no longer being automated reviewed. So it's it's actually going through somebody to physically reviewing in the footage that you're sending. So footage of the walkthrough of the office. Yeah.
They don't even tell you the reason. Right. Which is kind of annoying.
Yeah. And then and then another thing that I've been hearing is that you have to show a truck in front of that building.
Yeah.
You have to open the truck and I know that you're you have to show you have the keys to the truck, yeah. Yeah, tools, like, and I know that you guys use packouts, but if you have a truck stock, like having that truck stock, so it might be good just to have like one that's presentable anytime you go launch a new location with the wrap and stuff on it.
Yeah. So that makes sense. When um I think a lot of people have questions around like, okay, I did the location, what do I do now?
Um, which what we've done, which I think is what you're saying here, is like you funnel the reviews from one or all of your other locations. You either like shut down the review requests or like I guess I don't know. I'm sure there's other ways to do it, but like you shut it down and like point it all to one.
Yeah, correct. So you'll be able to build the authority of that profile fairly quickly. Um that's something that we offer. So for example, you can route your reviews.
Yeah.
So right now, I believe Wilson has them all checked. So whenever a job gets completed, the review just goes to the closest zip code or something. Right. The closest GBP of where the job was performed. Now let's say you are launching a new location, you shut off all the other ones, and then in our review request link, we redirect that review to your newest GBP. So again, you can build up the authority of that profile fairly quickly.
Yeah, that is nice. That is nice. How aggressively should people like push reviews? I guess like is there I always felt like a hundred was a good number of reviews to like have on a satellite GBP.
So again, it just it depends on the location. It a lot of this is dependent on your market. So I was talking to a prospective client the other day, and we he was talking about launching a second location. His first one does pretty well. I mean, it's in a rural area, has 50 reviews ranked top in his map pack. Um, he's thinking about opening a second location about 40 minut 45 minutes driving distance away. And we did an analysis on that market in his initial call, and the top three in that map pack didn't have anything higher than 50 reviews. So again, it's it's different for that area. So he could probably break out with 2030. But in a market that's very competitive, like let's say Dallas Fort Worth, you're probably gonna want to, you're gonna be in the several hundreds before you start to break out. And as specifically in the DFW area, having more locations is gonna work out in your favor just because it's so populated.
Yeah. Yeah, sprawling.
Yeah.
Yeah. Did you know this is just like a fun aside? Uh, but like city city populations are I think are just really interesting. Dallas and Fort Worth separately are both in the top ten most populated cities in the U.S. Like as individual, not even DFW combined, but them individually are both top 10.
Yeah. I mean, I'm crazy. Yeah, there's a lot of people there.
That's fucking nuts. That's fucking nuts. How many people like on big rep have sort of like launched this new location?
Um, we'll talk about it during the initial call. And then usually what I'll do is because people seem to have a lot of interest.
It's it's one of the most asked about things every time somebody comes to the breakfast workshop. They're like, how do we add more GBPs?
I I mean I tell people to lean on me as a resource. It's not a forte. Like I've before big rep, obviously I've worked in an office, so I kind of know some of the back end. I tell people to lean on me as a resource, but typically that's a strategy that you should be talking to your marketing agencies with. We're just a tool aside from your agency, but your agency will give you the best advice. And of course, be can be quick, people can always reach out to me.
Okay. All right, cool. What how quickly do you think new locations start working?
I would say again, this is dependent on the market, how quickly you can build the authority of that profile and how consistent it is. So you definitely don't want 20 reviews one week and then zero the next. I mean that sends up red flags to Google. So you want to make sure that you can be consistent. But I've seen GBPs be successful, like you're talking about when they're successful or just how quickly from when you sign a lease to when you can't.
Like how quickly from like, hey, we we're live, we got our first review. When do you think you start seeing traction?
Yeah, so again, that's gonna be dependent on the market. Um I would say within the first 90 days, there's a potential if you're in a rural area, you can break out. Yeah. But in again, I just like to use DFW because it's heavily populated. There's a lot of competition there. That's probably gonna take a while to build. So you have when you're accounting for that, you want to make sure you have enough time and resources to dedicate to you know, your GBP.
Yeah.
Because it is gonna take a while in that type of market. It could be months, it could be, you know, two to three quarters before you start seeing break it makes it breakout.
When when we were getting um when we were getting more concerned, honestly, this is bringing up like a lot of like uh triggering memories. No, like honestly, good memories, because I feel like we went down a lot of this and then we just got heavy into MA.
Yeah.
Like I just didn't get very far on some of it.
Yeah.
Um, but when we were doing this, what we were thinking about was like that one specific location. It's 45 minutes away. It's like it's an obvious area. So the way we were thinking about this was we pull up our map of like where do we do work and like what's on the fringe of our service area, and you overlay that with average income and age of home, boom, you've got a good spot for a GBP or an or an acquisition, like either one. Yeah. Uh but to me, an acquisition, like one of the big assets you get is the GBP. Yeah. Uh so it's kind of the same problem. What we were thinking about doing was hey, we're gonna launch a location an hour away. And we were gonna do like the hour away strategy. Obviously, we ended up doing something totally different.
Yeah.
Um and what we were gonna do was three to six months before placing a tech there, we were going to open up a GBP and start like funneling reviews. Yeah. And then by the time we actually needed it, it would be functional and live. Uh we didn't end up doing it, but um, I think Rich did it, and I think it worked. I think in Maine or something.
Yeah, he has a few main offices. I believe Rich, correct me if I'm wrong, you have two.
I don't know. But I think that's what he did, is I think he opened it months ahead of time and then started feeding it.
Yeah, yeah. Rich is um Rich Well, we we don't, we shouldn't, yeah.
I don't know. Okay, that's somebody else's stuff. All right, so if you're what happens if like you're three, six months in and you're not ranking, like what do you do? How do you fix it?
Um, you should start looking at your website. So when you're talking oh, I know we're talking specifically about GBPs, but this ties into when a customer is searching for you, whether that's just through like, you know, uh as more people move over into AI, like what's the best plumber near me? That kind of goes, that ties not only your GBP, but your website, your citations. There's a plethora of things, which we'll talk about in another episode in more in detail. But um there's a lot of things that go into search that AI takes into account. So for example, if somebody were looking for best plumber in Akron, Ohio, the AI is going to get more, it won't just suggest best plumbers based off of who has the most reviews and rankings, although that is a portion of the formula. AI is going to ask clarifying questions like, what type of work do you need? Um, whether that's is that a repipe or a water heater? Different contractors are known for different things. Um how soon do you need it? So it's gonna be a lot of those things tie into your GBP because, for example, when the AI asks clarifying questions like, is this for when you ask for best plumber, right? Is it gonna be for an active leak? Is it for a water heater? Is it for a faucet? They'll read through your GBP, all of your reviews and see if your customers are mentioning that in their service, which is why we we encourage customers to leave what type of service they get in their in their review. And then also in terms of your responsiveness, um, how often customers are searching for you. So all of these, all of these small signals that are on your GBP also tie into your website and then can affect how you're showing up in search, not in overall in AI and just regular search as well.
Okay. All right, that makes sense. We've sort of like talked through it a little bit, but how does Big Rep fit into all of this? And maybe like we I we honestly probably should have said this at the beginning of the show, but like what does Big Reputation do?
So Big Reputation, we are an AI-based platform. We use the tools and work that your technicians, such as photos, job details, we're using all of that data that you're already collecting on site that your technicians are collecting. And then we kind of automate a lot of the postings, content, review responses, and stuff on your GBP. So we typically focus on the SEO for your Map pack.
Got it. Okay. Makes sense. All right. So the way you guys would help would you be help funnel reviews, you'd help uh someone would go launch the GBP and then like activate you to like connect to their CRM and funnel reviews to it, funnel photos, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, or like let's say a company you just don't have the time to dedicate to answer every review that's coming in or you know, it's lacking, then that's where we come in. We automate the responses, we give the extra context, we post photos on your behalf, photos that are not being AI generated, but that your technicians are already taking on site for proof of work and for yeah, for Google.
Yeah. Okay, cool. Makes sense. Any closing thoughts from you on opening up your next location?
Yes, a few things. So one mistake that operators should avoid, you definitely don't want to confuse with adding a map pin into breaking out into into with entering a market. So a location becomes valuable when it has the enough resources to support it. So that means sustaining your review count, um keeping profile activity, customer activity, stuff like that relevance uh and a repeatable process.
Yeah.
Now, what should an operator do before thinking about launching a second location? This seems basic, but do an audit on your current one now and see.
Are you even doing it well?
Correct. Yep.
No, I feel like that's not even that basic at all. I feel like most people don't do it well. Um and you guys have that like health check thing. I think people should just run their GBP through there.
Yeah.
There was uh it was it was illuminating that there's like hundreds of things that make your GBP work.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
It's basically like the new version of your website.
Yes. Yep. And then the biggest thing that I want, I guess the biggest takeaway from this episode would be that your expansion does not create authority. If you do expand, then that's just another piece of the puzzle that that you will need to have authority on. So it's just because you launch a new GBP, it doesn't mean that you're expanding or that you have more authority in the market. You have you still have to sustain it is gonna be the biggest thing.
That makes sense. I think my uh you called it a gold nugget. My gold nugget here. John, it's golden nugget. Yeah, thank you. Is you should buy you should try to buy GBPs. Like, and I think it's a valuable part of an acquisition, but I even think like go down market. Like we bought businesses, the one of our GBPs came from a business, and we bought that business for ten thousand dollars. Yeah, because it was just like the phone number and the GBP, and I I don't, there was something else in there, maybe the website, I don't even know. We should look at how much money that GBP has generated purely organically. I'm gonna do that after that. I have to do some homework on both of these because like that ten thousand dollars that I spent in 2022 is probably like a million dollars of revenue over the course of that five years. Like it's just gonna be ridiculous. It's our it's the Fairlong GBP.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one does really well.
Yeah. That one does really well. $10,000 to buy that GBP. So like that's my gold nugget here, is just like just buy them. Yeah, I think it already had like 50 reviews when we bought it. Uh, but now I'm like, God, how do we do a lot more than that? That'd be sick.
You show a little ankle. Is that what you do?
Yeah, yeah. You show a little ankle and you wink a few times. Um, awesome. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Make sure you uh toss us a like, sub, check out Catalyst on the owner operation.
Find John's ankles online. Find John's John John's ankles online.
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