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The Healthy Wealth Experience - Where Financial Success Meets Personal Wellbeing
Host Chris Hall combines 30+ years in finance with wellness expertise to help entrepreneurs and professionals build wealth without sacrificing their health. From investment strategies to money management, we offer advice to make financial success more sustainable.
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Joey Gartin (00:00)
Hope so.
Chris Hall (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Healthy Wealth. I'm your host, Chris Hall. And today I have ⁓ one of my very good friends on the podcast. I'm super excited to talk to him. His name is Joey Garten and he is an expert marketer in digital marketing. He owns a company called Web Driven. so thank you without further ado. Thank you so much for being here, Of course. Of course.
Joey Gartin (00:21)
Thank you for having me, man. It would have awesome if you would have
pronounced my name. I have a very good friend. His name's Joey Gratton. That would have been.
Chris Hall (00:28)
right that would have been good my best friend Jared my name is Joey
Joey Gartin (00:35)
It's okay, Curtis. Let it go.
Chris Hall (00:37)
So
all right. All right. So Joey, tell us a little bit about yourself. I like a little background on you, born and raised, things like that. Tell me a little bit about your backstory on how you got where you're getting right now.
Joey Gartin (00:48)
Well, my backstory is pretty long, brother. You know my backstory. It's a winding road. I don't think I'll go all the way back. But born in Texas, lived in Alaska, moved to Redding when I was 11. Been here pretty much on and off, with the exception of military and college, the rest of my life. Married, four kids, love Redding. It's a great place. A little hot in the summer, but it's a beautiful place with a lot. To me, it's like the perfect size. Maybe borderline too big.
Chris Hall (00:51)
Thank
Joey Gartin (01:16)
So I'm kind of a smaller town guy. I don't yearn to be part of the big city at all. But yeah, in, kind of funny. was in marketing. I took a break from it. I've always walked the line between marketing and technology. I had gotten into kind of, and technology brought me into marketing. I found early in my career, I was always ⁓ dispatched to the marketing teams. know, once you work with one group,
They're like, oh, we like working with that guy. And so any tech questions was like, hey, bring in the Joey guy. so I started, yeah, I guess that's a compliment, right? Like whatever you do, don't send that. But I kind of picked up marketing through osmosis and just working with the teams. But it was always my end of marketing was all the technology. Like, hey, how do you wire these systems together? How can we make sure that these things are done? And so I took a little break.
Chris Hall (01:56)
Yeah?
Joey Gartin (02:13)
Went and worked for the federal government for about 10 years in the tech space, networking, network security. And then just, you know, kind of wasn't really happy with my position. So I started moonlighting a friend of mine. I was looking at different ideas, like the next career path, because I'm kind of a every 10 years, seven years do a new career path kind of guy. And he said, no, take over my marketing. And I was like, no, don't want to take over your marketing. don't know anything about marketing.
not because it had moved past me. Digital marketing, when we talk about digital marketing, we're talking about platforms and how to use them and how the technology works. We're not talking about like the principles of marketing. That's core, right? know, the psychology of marketing. But it's like, dude, how do you do that with Google Ads? How do you do this with Facebook? What should we be doing on TikTok? Should we even be on TikTok? And so I wasn't really interested. I mean, I was kind of, but I thought, no. And so I ended up, you know, giving in and the rest, as they say, is history.
me down this path and started my own agency and been doing this for about seven eight years.
Chris Hall (03:14)
How long?
Joey Gartin (03:15)
about seven or eight years. It's you know, it's funny is ⁓ time is I'll say stuff like I remember the other day my kids are like that that was two and a half years ago. I'm like, well, technically that is another day. That wasn't today. So I'm not wrong. Not accurate. But yeah.
Chris Hall (03:17)
Nice.
Yeah. Yeah. So you specialize ⁓ in
like local marketing as well as ⁓ marketing for realtors specifically. That's a genre that you like. What kind of like moved you towards those types of clients as opposed to anybody else that you know you can work with?
Joey Gartin (03:51)
Well, the local clienting part started because the first client was a local client. And so I mean, had to, so the first riddle to solve was the local solution, right? And so that's what started that. And then he was a big member of BNI. And so I joined, you know, he's like, hey, I joined BNI, I joined BNI. Fantastic organization, learned a tremendous, although I'm not a member anymore because my model shifted.
Chris Hall (03:58)
you
Joey Gartin (04:20)
I still have a lot of things I learned in BNI that I carry forth today. I'm very grateful for it. Especially the specific, being very specific with your message. You know what mean? Like really honing in on a target audience and crafting a message that's very specific for them. That's a big thing that I use all the time with my clients now. And ⁓ the other big thing was ⁓ I had a friend who was a realtor and had retired.
and he decided to come back. And when he did, we met up and he said, hey, look, I want to own my lead generation system. And before I left, I felt like external systems were too dominant and primarily Zillow, but it was Zillow wasn't the only one. They are 800 pound gorilla in the space, but they're not the only ones. And
Chris Hall (05:00)
Thank
Joey Gartin (05:13)
He said I you know, it's not say I won't buy Zillow leads But I don't want them to be so dominant and I want to own basically saying hey, I want to own my lead generation funnel and So he said hey, I really can't pay you to build this out like what you're worth, but I will pay you But if this works if we pull this off the way I'm hoping then in six months I'll introduce you to several friends of mine across the United States that need this exact same thing
And about three months in, he's like, mission accomplished, man. I'm going to introduce you to some people. And so what we did was, there was a lot of learning things. You step in a lot of potholes on this journey, but at the end you go, oh, I just walked this path and you kind of glaze over the potholes you stepped in. We definitely, the way it started and the way it ended or where we are now is a winding road. But I took a lot of account-based marketing ideas.
So account-based marketing is a very specific genre of digital and offline marketing. it incorporates like the marketing and sales are deeply integrated. There are multiple channel. You're measuring everything. You're pre-framing everybody before you talk to them. And these are normally account-based marketing is normally reserved for like very high ticket items, so to speak, big, big stuff. And we took those principles and applied it to real estate and the real estate platforms that we use.
Chris Hall (06:36)
you
Joey Gartin (06:41)
And that's kind of the solution. then, you know, it's the only thing constant in this in space that we're in is change. So it's we're in a constant state of growth and flux.
Chris Hall (06:52)
Yeah, like what do you think the I mean, obviously without getting into the, you know, the proprietary stuff, you know, what do you think that most realtors are probably missing right now when it comes to their marketing, ⁓ you know, their platform, their strategy, etc.
Joey Gartin (07:07)
That's a question. ⁓ It's overwhelmingly ⁓ lead nurturing, overwhelmingly. So most realtors, ⁓ they live at what we call the bottom of the funnel, especially if they're buying leads from lead generation systems. They're getting leads that are supposed to be, okay, these people are ready to buy or sell now. And so they're very used to only having those conversations at the end of the funnel. And that worked. ⁓
10 years ago, 15 and so on, that was definitely the way it was. But with the advent of the digital space, what we have is the real estate sales cycle is very, very long. It's measured in months, if not years. People will start their journey well over a year out. And if you wait until the day they're ready to buy or the month they're ready to buy, the problem is that they've already been nurtured and they're probably already committed to a platform like Zillow or realtor.com or homes.com or whatever, or an agent.
And so you've missed out on that opportunity to communicate with them through the journey. And then what we like to talk about is your unique selling propositions. like, why would, why would I list my house with you? Why would I buy a house with you? It's not like a car lot where we'll like, look, they're the only guy in town that has that car in their lot. This is any realtor can sell any other piece of real estate in the MLS. And so, yeah, so it's like, you have to craft your message and get it to them.
Chris Hall (08:24)
Thank
Joey Gartin (08:30)
And I just think that's grossly, it's overlooked. I think for a lot of the salespeople, it's very tedious. And you really have to have a long view of things. I try to tell them like, what you're trying to do is create an orchard, not a garden. This is not just you're gonna plant some tomatoes and with a few weeks we'll have them. You're planting an orchard. And this is gonna take times. But here's the beauty of if you take care of an orchard, it feeds you for years.
Chris Hall (08:49)
Thank
Right.
Joey Gartin (08:59)
and you do it right, and you build these funnels out right, and you wire these systems together. And you have to have, I mean, you have to provide value. So you have to be a good realtor. You know, you can't get a bunch of one star reviews and be like, my funnel works. Although that is some of the bigger offices ⁓ business model. ⁓ But I think you're really trying to do it right.
Chris Hall (09:11)
Thank
Joey Gartin (09:22)
You're really going to take care of people throughout that funnel and then you know when you look at these marketing funnels There's usually you know the awareness the consideration the conversion, but there's that little piece called loyalty and You know people that buy and sell real estate oftentimes buy and sell real estate again And so taking care of people throughout the process and staying in contact Is very very important, and I think that's grossly overlooked I like to use the analogy with the clients that hey, it's like a four-person relay race
And I'm only the first runner. It doesn't matter how fast I run. If there isn't somebody there for me to hand the baton off or if that person falls or drops a baton or is slow, the race is lost. It doesn't matter how fast the first person is. It's a team effort. And overwhelmingly, the people that I see that don't do well in the space, they just don't have that second runner. It's the idea of nurturing a lead and meeting the people wherever they are. So if somebody says, hey, look,
Our child's going to graduate next year and it's our last kid and we think we need to downsize. We've got a really big house and saying like, call me in a year or I'll call you in 11 months. That's living at the bottom of the funnel. That's not, you need to work with them throughout the year, meet them where they are, communicate with them on a cadence that makes sense. Like you don't call somebody every day that's a year out, but you know, checking in on them, making sure that their plans are still on point. You know, just
Chris Hall (10:31)
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (10:47)
meeting them where they are and helping them through the process. The agents that do that do very, very well. Even in we're right now in a market that's, I think most agents would tell you, you know, real estate is very cyclical and we're in, I don't want to call it a down market, but we're, we've, we're past the peak for this cycle. And the agents understand this are still doing very, very well. In fact, I talked to several of my clients are like, Oh, I just had the best month I've ever had. Even with no interest rates or where they are and whatever it was, we've done the most volume we've ever done.
Chris Hall (11:04)
Yeah.
Joey Gartin (11:17)
They really understand that idea of meeting the client where they are and nurturing them through the process.
Chris Hall (11:22)
Right. Well, and I think that, you know, the there's a huge backlog of people who want to sell their homes and people who want to buy homes because of the low interest rates that we had in 2021, 2022. But even then, again, like, you know, if you listen to the average realtor, they'll tell you that it's not going well, for the most part, but then you see people who are just absolutely crushing it. And I think that you're lending credibility to the idea of the app, they didn't start today.
They started a year ago or two years ago or three years ago. They've developed a process for touching ⁓ clients along the way so that they become loyal, which is again, like real estate is really tough because that's a very disloyal ⁓ customer group.
Joey Gartin (12:06)
All realtors have the horror stories of working with a buyer, you know, for weeks, months, doing everything. And then they go to an open house without them. the listing, they bump into a salesperson and the listing age is like, well, if you want this house, you got to put an offer with me. Like right now, this house isn't gonna last another six minutes, you know, and they say, sorry, he told us, she told us if we didn't put an offer in right then, you know, everybody has a horror story. So buyers don't show a whole lot of brand loyalty because they're,
Chris Hall (12:30)
Alright.
Joey Gartin (12:35)
They're trying to find a home and you don't know the situation and there's a lot of emotion in that. And ⁓ with sellers, you do see a lot more brand loyalty because they're looking for real estate agents, real estate teams that will really take care of them. And oftentimes it's just get them the most money. But lots of times it's a lot more than that. It's to hold their hands in the process, make it easy, keep communication very, very high, be honest with them, tell them when, hey, look,
To sell this house, you're gonna have to do XYZ. It's just, know, disclose everything. ⁓ Beware an agent that says, no, no, no, don't disclose that. It's like you disclose, because when you disclose everything, you've put it on the table. Somebody can't say like, you didn't tell me this. I didn't know that. It's like, well, in the disclosure, we told you. So disclose, disclose, disclose. And then, you know, just be honest. Be honest and transparent. And that's tough, because it's real estate. A big piece of it is sales.
Chris Hall (13:27)
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (13:34)
And salespeople, ⁓ good or bad, usually have that like, they're just so focused on the carrot, which is the payout, that ⁓ oftentimes they bite themselves by burning bridges or something. So good team, don't do that.
Chris Hall (13:49)
Right.
So when it comes to like you kind of have two different kinds of areas that you target and you have the local business and then you have the real estate business, which I mean, technically realtors are local too, but there's a huge differentiation between the two as far as like one is very like SEO ⁓ slash review generated and the other one is more of like, like I said, lead cultivation. So like, what do do for realtors? ⁓ Because they're not I mean, obviously with SEO for the limited knowledge that I have.
not everybody can be in the top three. You know, we get three people and after that it goes dramatically downhill. with this competitive spaces, you're not even really targeting SEO as a factor for the most part, right?
Joey Gartin (14:34)
Yes and no, not the same way. You're not gonna, SEO is dominated by national brands that have no forced registration. So Zillow, Realtor, Homes, the big brand, remax.com, Century 21, the big giant brokerages that are just trying to rank. But you can definitely rank for more local based searches, what they call longer tail keyword searches. So instead of houses for sale, there's very specifics.
Chris Hall (14:57)
Mm-hmm.
Joey Gartin (15:02)
⁓ I also think we're in the midst of a big change in SEO because of the advent of AI. Google has had these tools for years, but ChatGPT forced their hand. So they had Gemini and Gemini-like products in play for years. had AI. I hate the term AI because it's not real, but they had large language models and automations in place for years, but ChatGPT really forced their hand.
and chat GPT is forcing their hand, know, chat GPT is to ⁓ LLM use what Google is to search. And that put a lot of pressure on Google because they were struggling with the idea of, man, we have this behemoth ⁓ revenue stream that is search and paid ads. And how do we morph this with chat? And they've really struggled with that and their, ⁓
Chris Hall (15:32)
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (15:59)
I think they're still sort of, have some solutions in place right now, but I think they're still trying to figure out what's what. I heard them say the term, they didn't want chat to cannibalize ads, but it's going to morph. We're seeing ads in chat GPT responses that they showed up several months ago in the e-commerce sector. And so I met with Google reps a few weeks ago and they just talked about like, we're gonna see emerging of SEO and PPC.
In the past, when you did PPC ads, you usually ran your ads to landing pages that were completely designed to convert. We've all clicked on an ad and there's no navigation, really strong calls to action, no distractions, no site map in the footer. These were the traditional tenants of ads, right? Like the page is like, look, you clicked on an ad, here we go.
versus SEO is you would click on a link in SEO and the page is full of content, images and videos and there's just, there's, and there's links to all different pages in the site to try to keep you on the site and say, hey, what are you looking for? Here's a ton of content. And so these things were kind of like diametrically opposed, right? They're in conflict with each other. And so ⁓ Google has said, we need you to merge the two. We need a page for an ad, part of your ad quality score.
is going to include pages that are rich with content and really answer the question or whatever the person is searching for, it's gonna help them. It's not just there to convert. So you've got to take these two things and blend them together. the only thing, like I said before, constant is change. They even said in the meeting, know, know you guys are getting frustrated because it feels like we're rolling out new things all the time, but it's like that inside Google where we're trying a lot of things and
just expect change, we'll communicate with you and let you know about it. You always have to take, it's like a sales rep, I even though these are techies, they're sales reps, you have to take everything they say and with a little bit of like, okay, because they're a profit driven company and rightfully so. So you have to take agency, no pun intended, or maybe a little bit.
Chris Hall (17:52)
Thank
Joey Gartin (18:15)
But you have to take agency and really take what they tell you and then say, hey, how does this fit for me and my business? So SEO and PPC are merging. We have some strategies for that that we're testing right now. It's a little bit harder to test with the chat model because with Google, you know, they're constantly re-indexing. And with models, they're built on the data set and they're released. And so the data set hasn't changed.
But even that's starting to change now because these chat systems are open to search. And so we're starting to see them change the answers over time. And you have a couple of things going on. One is the chats keep a before they had no memory. There was no memory before, right? You'd start a new chat, had no clue what you spoke about in the previous chat. And then these really small context windows. So like, you you talk for a little bit and it start to get overloaded and hallucinate and do all these things.
they've morphed a lot, they've gotten a lot better. They do have memory between chats. So that just means that they're storing something in a database and they're referencing it. The context windows are huge. So we still have, you know, hallucination. There's some other things have been introduced because of these huge context windows. And you know, you have to be careful with them, but things are changing and we're going to see ads in responses, but they're not going to be like a Google search where it's real obvious. You have this, it says,
big word sponsored above it and it's real obvious it's an ad. It's gonna be a lot more subtle if knowingly out there at all. ⁓ so we're in the midst of change, man. That's why I have a job. It's security for me.
Chris Hall (19:57)
Well, and that's the thing is, like you said, the only constant is change. And this is obviously a huge part of the market right now. The numbers on using AI versus search are just dramatically flip-flopping. And it's getting more chat GPT, more Gemini, more Claude, more Anthropic, all those things just keep going and growing.
And so I think you're going to have to like make sure that your website or your marketing strategy implements them being a big player in the space. So.
Joey Gartin (20:28)
Yeah, I had a talk with
clients and we were trying to go over like, what are the differences? And I said before with search, everything was very internal. Of course, there's backlinks to your site, but it was about how you structure your site, the content you created, how you interlinked. It was very site centric. The only thing external that would be backlinks, right? ⁓ Other websites linking to your website. With chat, it's very external.
So when you ask it something, it might reference your web page, but it'll reference a lot of different things. And but one of things I like about chat is when I asked chat a question, gives me an answer. I can ask the very next question for me as always, how did you come to that conclusion? And it will give you a reason it'll give you its why you you couldn't do that with Google search. But this will tell you this is why I think this is where I found the data. And that gives the client
Chris Hall (21:12)
Please.
Right.
Joey Gartin (21:22)
for us ⁓ a blueprint for where we should be publishing content. And so it's very, very external now. Very like, hey, you need to have files on one these sites. They need to be fully fleshed out and robust and you need to have keywords in them and stuff. it's just changing.
Chris Hall (21:29)
All
Yeah, there's so like, for people who don't know much about marketing, when it comes to local marketing, one of the things you can do is add in some bits of code in the back end of the website that help Google see what you're doing, you know, like, hey, you know, because they can't obviously see visuals and stuff like that, or they're getting really good at all that stuff. But in but in general, that's always been the cases that you would want to put code into like, just be helpful. But now
What I'm reading and maybe you can corroborate this is like now you're it's kind of based on what you're saying is like we're gonna start having to put code in the in the websites and articles and YouTube videos or whatever like content that's gonna be directly Targeted to hey, I want I want chat GPT to pick this up and use it as a result Do you feel like that's kind of where we're headed as well?
Joey Gartin (22:32)
Yeah, you gotta be a little bit careful with that because ⁓ if I think, I think I know you're referencing schema code, which is ⁓ on Google rich snippets. So schema is a project to basically catalog everything. And it's just, it's an idea of giving everything like a structure. So you say, hey, this is local business. We're located, this is the hours, know, or this is a video. This is how long it is, who produced it. This is its topic. ⁓ And so you would embed these little tiny JavaScript
Chris Hall (22:40)
Mm-hmm.
Joey Gartin (23:01)
It's JSON, JavaScript, object notation, little snippets in pages. And then Google has a subset of schema called Google Rich Snippets. And it's open. You can go, can do a source for it they show you, hey, look, these are all the objects that we use to index, you know, like a local business or a web page, an article, a video object, FAQs. There's a bunch of them now, recipes. There's so many of them. don't even know, you know, too many. And they give you the structure. They say, this is the data that we want.
And in the past, when Google would index your site, it would combine looking for this code, this JSON, this object, and then it would combine that with, it would parse the site and say, hey, do these two things, how much alignment are these two separate searches? So one, let's say, we'll just use for lack of a better way to put it, we'll say two bots. One bot reads the schema, one bot reads the page. And they say, let's compare notes. And the closer these notes are together,
the better chance you have a ranking for that. Meaning you put schema in there that says X, but when it reads your website it says Y and it's like, that's a little off. So that's still very, very powerful. LLMs love JSON, but there's also people are starting to put prompts in pages, especially when you have things like these LLM browsers like Comet from Perplexity, or all the various extensions that you can get in your browser.
And you have to be a little bit careful. You know, in my industry, there's three terms. There's white hat, black hat, and gray hat. White hat refers to a digital marketing agency that does everything by the book. You know, this is what Facebook says, this is Google says, this is what Microsoft Bing says. And you play by the rules. Black hat is all the things that hats, you know, hacks. Just all the tricks, keyword stuffing, buying backlinks. And unfortunately, a lot of those efforts still work.
And then gray hat is where you walk that line. You know, where you're like, well, we do mostly white hat, but maybe do a little black hat. Now, web driven is 100 % white hat. The reasoning, and we lose out sometimes to people that do black hat and gray hat in the short term. But in the long run, what I've seen is people, I had so many people reach out to me to take on as a client. And they said, well, dude, I used to be, I used to rank number one for, I hired this company. We rank for all this stuff.
And now I'm like on the ninth page. Like there's not even eight pages worth of competitors, but for some reason, you know, because Google is not going to send you a letter saying, hey, you've been blacklisted. We caught you cheating on the test and we're pulling you to the principal's office. They're just like, here's your F, you know, because that's your grade, right? You're like, how did I get this? Oh, gee, I don't know. I guess you just got an F. So that's always a clear sign to me that somebody hired a black hat. And then there's a bunch of tools we have and that you can go and it's the for me.
Chris Hall (25:30)
to do.
All right.
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (25:57)
for a little tiny marketer and reading to be able to see the fingerprints of Blackhat, a bunch of PhDs from MID and Stanford definitely have figured it out. And so ⁓ I say be real careful with ⁓ some of things people are touting out there right now with AI SEO. It'll work in the short run, but they're not gonna forget. They're not gonna forget what you did. ⁓ There's a whole different business approach,
Chris Hall (26:08)
Right.
Right.
Well, so I think that like with most people, you know, they want the results, they don't know how to get them. So they're trusting that their marketer is, you know, doing the right things for them and not doing black hat. I mean, how how does a person kind of like, oh, hey, this person's not black hat. mean, like for you, you've been in the business for several years now. So you have, I mean, like you said, seven years. So you have clients that are that
Joey Gartin (26:31)
you
Chris Hall (26:50)
Been that long with you right that to me is a resounding like hey listen This is why I work with this person But like the average consumer the the lady who owns the floor shop in town How does she know she's hiring somebody who's black hat versus white hat?
Joey Gartin (27:06)
Man, that's a great question and sad to say it's hard to distinguish if not impossible, nigh impossible. I think, you know, one of the ways is how you find the company, where they're based. ⁓ But you know, everything I say right now that is like a mechanism to figure it out, the Black Hat people find ways around that. There's, you know, in this little town of Reading, there's a couple of
digital marketing agencies that use black hat tactics. ⁓ And they've been around and they have good reviews. And ⁓ it's just it's hard. Like for our business model, dual brag session here. We do no marketing for ourselves. Every one of our clients has been referred by another client. And we actually turn down more clients than we take on. When it's not how it started, man, when I first started, it was it was take on every job. Because, you know,
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, do you need a home loan? But I found, know, hey, let's vet the clients, let's find somebody who really wants this. And the vast majority of people I meet, they want immediate results, you know, they want the best of the best. And they've got, you know, they want a Ferrari and they've got a Hyundai budget.
Chris Hall (28:05)
You're hired.
Right, ⁓
Thank
Joey Gartin (28:32)
And we're not at the top of the price range, not even close, but I'm just a big believer in transparency and communication. so setting those, ⁓ those goals right when we meet them, say, Hey, where are you now? Where do you want to be? And just being honest with them. That's why we don't have fixed pricing. We don't have, we don't have a canned solution. I mean, we have a set of best practices and tools we use, but no two clients are exactly the same, not even in same, you know, I have
I work with a few roofers and market to market is completely different. So the solution is 70, 80, 90 % the same, but there has to be something that's for your market, how big you are, a roofer that says, look, we're doing five roofs a month and we wanna go to 10. The strategy for that person is dramatically different than somebody says, hey, look, we're doing about 40 roofs a month and we wanna get to 80. That's a completely different strategy.
Chris Hall (29:06)
Right.
I hate that.
Joey Gartin (29:31)
⁓ And so that's the same
Chris Hall (29:31)
Right.
Joey Gartin (29:32)
with realtors. have clients that have my biggest client has 260 sales agents in six offices across six states. And my smallest is him and his wife. And so our solution ⁓ is pretty different for those two groups. There's a lot of the same mechanisms and tools, but our approach, our budget, certainly our budget, right, ⁓ is dramatically different.
Chris Hall (29:40)
Yeah.
Right.
What I want to highlight in that is that you get access to you as a husband and wife real estate team the same way that a company with 260 employees gets access to you. Your solution is it may be ramped up or ramped down. There may be more ad costs, less ad costs. But someone who's just a husband and wife gets access to someone who really is doing a great job for somebody with 260 employees. think that's pretty cool because I think that most marketers are going to
choose one path or the other, right? They're going to have the mom and pop and that's all they're looking for, or they're going to have like enterprise level people and that's all they're looking for. I think it's cool that you have a wide array and again, I know you had said that, you you turn down more clients than you take on, but I think it's still cool within that realm of you turn down more clients you take on that you still would take on a husband and wife client instead of, you know, someone who might have 20 employees.
Joey Gartin (30:58)
Yeah, well, we're very focused on customer retention versus customer acquisition. So, I mean, honestly, the vast majority of clients we take on, we operate in the red for several months. We invest a tremendous amount of resources into them to get them really fully going. So we don't break even for several months. So our model is, ⁓ you know, we want you to be around for a long time. We want you to be in business a long time.
So that's part of the vetting process is when I meet people who are, I don't know, they're not thinking the long term, then we're not going to be a good fit. You know, if they want to get like, look, especially in real estate, again, remember back to how we started this, we talked about how most realtors live at the bottom of the funnel. I don't mean that in any disrespectful way that an idea for a lead, if you say the word lead, they're like somebody that comes in and they're ready to buy and sell right now. And that worked in 2010 and prior. Absolutely. That was real estate. Very rare. You you, you
Chris Hall (31:36)
Right.
.
Joey Gartin (31:57)
nurtured your network, but you wouldn't consider somebody a lead unless they walked in or called you or something that said, look, we're looking to buy or sell like pretty soon. ⁓ But now that's gone. And so when someone's lets me know through the vetting process, just I usually meet with them ⁓ that, hey, look, I'm looking for immediate and short term results, then we don't take them on as clients.
Chris Hall (32:22)
Yeah.
Right.
Joey Gartin (32:26)
And I never
say it like that. I always say like, hey, right now we're probably not a great fit or we're a little too busy right now. I try to be nice and kind, right? ⁓ And I refer out. There's a lot of ⁓ marketing companies that I think do a good job. I don't think they're as good as us. If I thought they were better than us, then I would be ⁓ trying to figure out what they're doing. But I know several marketing companies I think are very, very good. And their model is a lot more customer acquisition. So they'll have higher fees upfront.
Chris Hall (32:31)
Yeah.
Okay.
Right.
Joey Gartin (32:56)
and lower monthly fees and they're, you it's just a different model. And you know what mean? So it's, we're not a one size fits all by any means, but we have great customer retention and I'm proud of that. And I'm proud that all of our marketing is just word of mouth referral.
Chris Hall (33:01)
Right.
Well, I
think again, like, you know, when I look at marketing, a lot of people, they have a platform, they want you to sell you this for $69 a month or that for $120 a month. And they're not really like looking at the overall holistic view of a company. Like I feel like the marketing like most marketing tools, in my opinion, are like, hey, I only work on elbows, you know what I mean? Like I only work on elbows. And then I well, that's cool, because I only work on
Skin tags or you know, whatever like they're all very like almost special super specialized and I think that you know, one of the things I think it's cool about what you do is it's very holistic It's very like I take care of the whole body like we're gonna look at like what you're eating We're gonna look at like what you're drinking. We're gonna look how much sleep you're getting like you're giving a perspective on a client of the entire process not just like one thing so
In a little that I know about marketing, you one of the things I saw was, I don't think it's, you'll give me a better word for this, but it's basically they have a graph. Google has a graph of like, they plot all the things that are going on with your business onto a graph. And the more that you fill that out, the more likely you are to show up in results. And so I have always like, you know, when I'm talking to people marketing, I tell them like, you need to go get someone who's going to take care of the whole graph.
Joey Gartin (34:27)
huh.
Chris Hall (34:40)
And yeah, because oh, yeah, you can buy little tools here and little tools here and little tools there for $39.99 a month. But like, those are only going to help you with the finger. They're only going to help you with, you know, a mole. They're only going to help you with the little things where you need someone, in my opinion, who is going to try to fill out that whole graph for you. And that's one the things I think is really cool about what you do is it's very, it's not just 30,000 foot, but it's 30,000 foot with all the tools that you need to get them where to the overall filled out graph.
Joey Gartin (35:06)
That's what we try to do. But no, you're right, the graph, that's exactly the word. They have a graph, and they're measuring everything and how everything is interconnected. so, especially when we talked about the advent of chat, that graph is even more important than it was before, right? What are all the things that, where can we find you in all the places? If you only show up in one place, that's kind of a signaling, huh, well, I just started a business, okay, we've got to get you in all these various places.
Chris Hall (35:11)
Okay.
Right.
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (35:34)
You've got to be in a bunch of directories. We've got to get reviews. We've got to get some backlinks. They need to be legitimate backlinks. We need to produce content. ⁓ That's one of the big things I think ⁓ has helped us is getting our clients to be very proactive with us. So I don't like to produce a lot of generic content. I know there's some fantastic tools out there, NanoBanana, Sora, Veo, and they have their place.
But I feel like the best ones are when the clients produce content for us. Now we edit it and we clean it up and we, you know, massage it to the right. Like this is what you do for Facebook reels. This what you do for YouTube shorts. This is what you do for TikToks. This is what you do for static ads, know, images that don't really move, things like that. There's definitely specifications. But when you start with real content, like for example, we picked up a painter and
I said, hey, look, take your iPhone, go through some of your projects. after projects, I said, no, the whole process. People love watching these do it yourself home shows. So show the kitchen before you started, show the ugly kitchen when they've tore it apart, ⁓ show the beautiful kitchen at the end and tell a story.
Chris Hall (36:44)
Mm-hmm.
Joey Gartin (36:54)
and get us those assets. then, you know, obviously we do some mild editing, we add some logos, some various things, clean it up, maybe put some smooth jazz behind it, that kind of thing, whatever. It does very, very well. You know, when you publish it out, say, does this ugly kitchen remind you of anything? Look at this beautiful kitchen, I like this. you know, he's like, wow. The other big thing that my clients usually tell me is, ⁓ for lack of a way to put it, we like to make celebrities out of our clients.
Chris Hall (37:06)
in.
Thank ⁓
Thank ⁓
Joey Gartin (37:23)
And I don't mean,
you know, Johnny Depp celebrity, but people will say like, hey, you're that painter. And I saw you guys painted that house. Like they get stopped at Costco and he's like, yeah, I am. Hey, we're thinking, do you have a card on you? ⁓ And they're like, wow, that really works. To me, that's that goes back to us talking about real estate and nurturing as we do that heavy with our realtors. Heavy. We're like, you need to be producing a market update. You know, a video where you just talk about the market. You need to produce
Chris Hall (37:27)
Thank you.
Right.
Okay.
Thank
So.
Joey Gartin (37:53)
videos where you're handling FAQs. It can't just be on your website. And then when someone's in the funnel, when we've worked with the tools and that we can start going down that technical realm. But when we say, hey, look, this person's most likely in the real estate funnel, even if they haven't given us their contact information, they're doing all these things that make Google and Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. Say, yeah, I think this person's thinking about buying or selling a house. Then that's when we put these assets in front of them. And so now they start to see the face.
They go, oh, you're John Smith Realtor. And yeah, I saw this video where you were talking about you thought interest rates might come down after the next quarter, but you didn't think they would come down substantially. It just starts that conversation. It builds celebrity and not celebrity like red carpet, but just they know them now. And that's the big.
Chris Hall (38:40)
Yeah. Locally
famous, recognizable. And then of course it lends credibility to expert, right? This guy must be an expert. He's always talking about this product, this topic, this service. So I definitely feel like that. Is that hard, I mean, to get like the average person to like make videos? Like, is it pretty like one of the most challenging things I would think you'd have?
Joey Gartin (39:03)
It's it's it's one of the most challenging but you know, it's funny is it's like tattoos if you I don't have any tattoos But my friends do and once they get the first tattoo, it's like it's like, you know, like a second and a fourth so getting that first video is tough, but Getting through the rhythm getting helping them set up a system and saying hey look, let's get a cadence here You know, like one of my most successful Realtors he films everything one hour a month
Chris Hall (39:12)
Right.
Joey Gartin (39:33)
And he produces a lot of content in that one hour. He gives us a lot of content. And one hour a month, that's it. That's all he commits to. And he, does a great job. And we're able to create a lot of different assets from that. You know, all different sizes, all different links. And then the other thing is we're not just blasting everybody with that. We're measuring and saying, look, here, here's the group of people that the platforms and us, and there's a lot of moving parts in there.
This is somebody that we think is in the real estate funnel. Whether they're 17 months out or they're actively looking today, they're in the funnel. And so they were able to put those assets in front of them. when the big light bulb takes off is when I get some anecdotal call where the client goes, I just got a listing. This lady called me and said, hey, I was listening to that video. And they quote the video.
or something the person said, and I really like that, would you come look at my home? And I have a, here's a anecdote. I some clients out in Florida, and they're big clients. And I was for years trying to get them to do a market update and a podcast. And they were, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. So they did the market update and they saw a really good response from that. And then I said, hey, why don't you guys do a podcast?
And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, it's a father son team. And I'm like, just talk about a real estate market. Just chat for 20, 30 minutes. And because from it, we'll get a bunch of little snippets. We'll get a bunch of little like sound bites where, you know, the dad says something and the son goes, well, really, you know, this last month we saw. And they're like, that's not interesting. I'm like, it's not interesting to anybody who's not inside the funnel because real estate is transactional. It's like insurance. When do you care about it? When you're shopping for insurance, that's when you care about it. Think about it on a day. Huh, my insurance.
Chris Hall (41:01)
Thank
Right, right.
Joey Gartin (41:28)
So it's transactional. they finally, after two plus years, they did a podcast and it was not great. I'm not going to lie. And they said, what do you think? said, nailed it. Beautiful. Ernest, Ernest Hemingway told us the first draft of anything is, know, ⁓ yeah, this is a family podcast. So I'm not going to curse, but he was thinking. And so they did the second one and then
Chris Hall (41:36)
Thank
Nailed it.
Right.
Yeah right.
Joey Gartin (41:58)
So they'd only done two, we're about six weeks in because we're four weeks apart. And we get on a big group call and they said, I just took two $900,000 listings from people that were not in our database. And they both quoted and said, well, I watched your podcast and you said blah, blah, blah, two. And he's like, this stuff actually works. Well, now, now their podcast is polished. There's they've got, you know, microphones, lights. Yeah. I mean, it's like high quality stuff.
Chris Hall (42:03)
Yeah.
Joey Gartin (42:28)
But they just had to get that like, whoa, that aha moment, like this really works. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, it does. Because you're just getting your message in front of people, the right message at the right time. There's a lot of people pitching this kind of stuff, but they're pitching entertainment. They're pitching a model of being an influencer or getting thousands of followers. My clients don't get tens of thousands of followers. They get tens of thousands of views.
Chris Hall (42:39)
Right. I love that story.
Joey Gartin (42:55)
Right? There's a difference. But they're trying to build that kind of audience. What they're trying to do is get their message across to people that are in the market. That's, there's a key difference there. And so I'm like, I don't need you to do the floss dance. We're not doing TikToks. We're not trying to go viral. You're not, if you're not careful, you guys are going to try to basically become a Saturday Night Live skit writing troop. That's not what we're going for. We're going for your name, your face, real estate professional.
Chris Hall (43:05)
Yeah.
Right. ⁓
Joey Gartin (43:24)
Same thing with the painter. don't, it's not men. I don't want him dancing or sliding down a banister with jokes. That's not at all. Like we're trying to show the quality of what you provide and put it in front of people that are like, man, I would like to update my house. It needs something. It needs a facelift, you know? And it works, overwhelmingly works.
Chris Hall (43:43)
Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, like,
I mean, here I am doing my podcast, ⁓ which is, know, originally, this is something that you and I had talked about, it was part of the strategy when I left the bigger company that I was with to go out and be independent. This is part of the strategy that I have. And it, you know, I haven't yet had the $900,000 listing because I don't sell real estate. But I mean, I can definitely tell you that people have talked to me and said, Hey, I saw your podcast. Hey, I saw that clip you man, you're always on my Facebook page. Now, you know, like those kinds of things matter.
⁓ And again, like I've taken really, you know, to heart, you know, the advice you gave, which is like not to be entertainment, not to be campy. ⁓ I do actually know people here in town that are doing the podcast stuff or they're doing the short reels and stuff like that. And it's very, you know, like, hey guys, ha ha ha, you know, and it's just like that to me, I don't feel like that has staying power. I don't feel like that, you know, like with that.
Joey Gartin (44:38)
I think it sells low end,
I think it sells tchotchkes and low end products. But when choosing a financial planner, or real estate or anything of like higher value ⁓ that anybody can sell, I think that's You know, versus like, if you were like, hey, I'm the only person in town that's got Air Jordan 4s. So you know, whether I'm campy or not, you're gonna
Chris Hall (44:43)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (45:04)
When you talk about, you want a professional, you want somebody of quality, you want somebody that you're like, I think this person can provide what they're saying. I just don't, entertainment to me is not, it's not part of our model. There is an absolute place for it, man. ⁓ Absolutely. But that's not the client book that we work with. So it's not part of our mix at all.
Chris Hall (45:10)
Yeah. ⁓
Good Good night.
Right. No, I think it's really important to differentiate in the beginning what you want to look like in the end. You know, like, how do you want to design this? Like for me, you know, my podcast, the design behind it is that I want to interview people that I like, that I like to listen to that like to hear about, you know, like I want to I want to I'm a very interested person anyway. So when I find something interesting, I'm like, Hey, can we get them on the show?
Joey Gartin (45:52)
Thank
Chris Hall (45:55)
You know you and I have talked about marketing for years now and I know like, you know a lot of what you do behind the scenes But what I know more than anything is like I'm always interested to know what you're working on because I know that you ⁓ As opposed to other marketers in town that I know like are always trying to find the new thing Like I always know that you're right now. I can without even talking about I can tell like you're already on the cutting edge of AI so ⁓
So like, you're going to be on the cutting edge of the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I think a lot of marketers, ⁓ you know, they find a one trick pony and they're going to just ride that thing till it dies. And, and I feel like that's a, that's a model that exists, especially in marketing, but it also exists in what I do, you know, ⁓ you know, I'm also into customer retention more than a customer acquisition. I really only want to pick up 10 clients per year, which is
really, I mean, you think about how many people are investors, that's not that many people. again, like I'm a lot like you, like I want to when they interview me, what they mostly don't understand is I'm also interviewing them. ⁓ You know, the two rules that I have when it comes to, you know, working with me is number one is I don't want to be the only one who cares about your retirement. So like if I call somebody and they don't call me back, like they don't care about the retirement there. ⁓ It's not that big a deal. And I don't want to be the only one who does care. And the second one is I don't want to be the captain of a sinking ship.
So in other words, if they come to me and they said, listen, we've made all these terrible decisions. Can you help us? And it's like, well, the, you know, the cows out of the barn, you know, I don't know that's the right way to say that or not. But you know, there are horses out of the barn, you know, like you can't really help you at this point. And so I know that, you know, it's just going to build frustration over time when they do finally get caught up in the choices that they made.
You know, like, just like for basic examples, like if someone's like, Hey, I'm putting away 50 bucks a month, but I want to live on $9,000 a month when I retire. It's like, okay, well, I don't know if you have a calculator handy, but those numbers are not going to work. So I think it's important to know what you want to, what you want your practice to look like. It's important for people to know what they want their content to look like. ⁓ So speaking of which, you know, we're, in the version of AI. had mentioned VO. I know there's several things now where people can just like kind of pop open.
Joey Gartin (47:50)
you
Thank
Chris Hall (48:13)
a tab and say, make me a 30 second video that says this, this and this. And I know like for certain ones, I don't, I don't know if anybody can do a 30 second video time, but I know like video does like eight seconds at a time. So people are going to be what's that?
Joey Gartin (48:27)
You'd stitch them together.
Chris Hall (48:29)
Yeah, and then you stitch them together, exactly. But I know that we're heading into an era where people can produce pretty high quality video. ⁓ You know, like better than, I mean, because the lighting's perfect, the actors are perfect, the makeup is perfect, you know what mean? Like they look however you want them to look. ⁓ I could tell. No, that's great. But I mean, like, so we're definitely, what's that?
Joey Gartin (48:36)
Absolutely
Right now this is a I clone talking to you
Is
it the facial expressions right?
Chris Hall (48:58)
Yeah, exactly.
Nailing it, right? Nailing it. So you're doing a great job. So for those of who can't see, he looks like just like the Joey that I know. anyway, with going with the content, what's that? Right, They did that. You look like you've lost weight. So nailed it. What are some things like AI wise or?
Joey Gartin (49:00)
Perfect. Thank you.
Little thinner. I told chat, me a little thinner.
Chris Hall (49:24)
Like just like maybe like one or two like things that all small business owners who do business off of the internet, right? In other words, like they need their listing to show up. They need their website to show up. Like what are like one or two things that every business owner could do to create like a little bit of movement where they maybe don't have any.
Joey Gartin (49:45)
Well, wow, it's a great question. And there is no one single magic bullet. But one thing that comes to mind is ⁓ having ⁓ LLMs help you with communication. Hey, man, I'm really busy. My emails box is full. I got to get back to people like you said, hey, the person doesn't get back to me. The tools around helping you clean up your email inbox and maybe helping you craft messages, even the one that's plugged into it. Like I've been using Grammarly for a couple of years.
Grammar is not my expertise. ⁓ I Worst grades in school were always around English and grammar. I'm just getting putting that out there But grammarly I'll write something out and it's like, you know a bunch of red and blue lines just are flashing I'm like, please So I think just that and there's some great tools out there around managing your inbox and just making sure that you communicate some great tools the CRMs where you say look, let me let me plug everything into the central tool and there's a
Chris Hall (50:30)
Thank you.
Joey Gartin (50:45)
fine line, can just do this all honestly in some of the tools, the inboxes, right? That just help you stay on top of stuff, prioritize communication. Hey, this person needs, I need to respond to this person now, today. You know, versus like, oh, you open your inbox and there's like 85 new emails and you're like, so I think that's one of the easiest fruit on the ground, so to speak. Easy, just pick up the fruit on the ground is something that helps you say, look, here's the priority list.
These are who you need to communicate with like now. And then the second thing would be just helping craft your message, you know, just saying, I'm not, ⁓ you know me, I'm a very sarcastic person working on it. God's working in me. ⁓ So I will write emails that I'm like, man, even I know that does not read well. Like I know that there's, I also work with machines all the time, so there's no emotion, right? So I'll all the time write an email.
Chris Hall (51:30)
Thank
Joey Gartin (51:42)
and then give it to chat and say, look, I need you to clean this up. This needs to sound more professional, a little bit more friendly. I feel like, and I talk to the LLMs as if they were friends of mine. I talk about like, hey, I'm upset about this. I'm worried about this ⁓ simply because it helps them with their context of what they're going to produce for you. And I end almost every prompt with, please ask any clarifying questions.
because the whole idea is that you're trying to give it the ultimate context. And it'll rewrite the email and I'm like, oh, perfect. Or I copy and then I know that sentence I'm gonna take out, that's a little too formal or just flat out say, hey, this is really good, but it feels too formal. Can you make it a little less formal? And it always answers the same, sure. And then, know, it gives me the less formal version. And so I think those are just, that's the easy fruit on the ground. When we start talking about marketing,
the tools it can get out of, it can spiral out of control really fast. And at some point, you know, are you still going to be a painter, a chiropractor, a realtor, a dentist, a roofing contractor, or are you now a digital marketer because you're in the tools all day. So I would say sticking to that, helping you with communication and prioritizing who you should communicate with.
Chris Hall (52:55)
I
Okay, I like that a lot. using the tools when you say LLM, that's like a chat GPT. It's an AI version. Sometimes there's specific robots, if you will, that specifically go into your emails and check things and write replies and say, you want to send this? So just making sure that people know what LLM means in the context we're talking about it.
Joey Gartin (53:21)
⁓ It
just, we use AI and I know I'm a nerd. You know that at heart, I'm a nerd. And so I have always struggled with it's artificial intelligence. It's like.
Chris Hall (53:29)
Mm-hmm.
I don't really.
Joey Gartin (53:36)
Not really, man. It's a large language model. It's fantastic. It's brilliant. I love it. I treat the LLMs as if I have four, I guess five friends and they're all geniuses and they all have access to insane libraries. And then ⁓ I talk to them that way, but they're fallible. They hallucinate. They make mistakes. They're not just set it and forget it. I mean, I've seen some models that do that. And of course they always have the horror stories, but know, humans are like that.
Another great tool that I think is awesome is I use Notebook LM a lot. This is Gemini. This is a Google tool free and it's just Gemini but with a slightly different interface where you can add documents to it. And then when you ask it questions, it will stay, it will reference just those documents. So it's been trained, it understands English. So like for example, I was working on a big software project and ⁓ it's a language that I'm fairly good with but it was a new ⁓
library in the language that I was like, So I went and found a bunch of documents on it and I uploaded it to Notebook LM and then when I would get stuck, I would say, hey, this is where I'm at, I'm stuck and it would only answer from those documents I gave it. And then it would say, hey, on page three, paragraph six, it gives you links right into the documents so you can double check its work. ⁓ That's an insanely powerful tool. ⁓
you know, when you have a lot of PDFs or something and you're like, I gotta, I do it all the time. I use it all the time, every, yeah.
Chris Hall (55:10)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm starting to the point where I pretty much use it in one shape, way, or form every day as well. It kind of goes along with the idea of like, I think that like with AI, and what's happening with the world, I think the most important part is to automate the tasks that you do daily, that you don't need to be they don't need to be done by you. Right. So there's two ways to solve that. Like, so someone emails the office
⁓ My entire team is gonna get a copy of the email and the first person to see it's gonna gonna respond to it, right? So so why that's a switch such a small automation But the automation is that it goes in here and then immediately gets distributed to everybody And again that that makes me and my team better and more responsive to mark to our clients and prospects So so I think that's a good good point is like where can you find? like small tweaks to your overall day-to-day
that takes and gives you like, again, like, if you if you get back like five minutes a day from not having to check your email because your bot already did it for you and told you what you really need to know, like five minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but five minutes times, you know, couple hundred days a year, like you've gotten several hours back. And those are hours that you could spend prospecting. Those are I also think that, you know, one of the things you had mentioned was this lead cultivation. And I feel like that's another thing that business owners I think could really, really take advantage of is is
being proactive, delivering massive value to the clients that they have, which will, in turn, my opinion, get lots of referrals. So what can clients do to automate those touch base points, hey, we want to deliver value to you after the sale? What are some ideas that you have for just anybody that's sitting there? How do I make sure that?
You know, the person who did it, I mean, obviously you have transactional business, right? That's just going to be like, I a can of corn. You're not going to probably market to them. if someone is using you for bookkeeping, you've got the sale, but you want to keep the sale, but you also want to make sure that they refer you to your friends, which I think you have to go above and beyond to get referrals from your friends. That's my two cents on that. So like, how can people automate those kinds of things as well?
Joey Gartin (57:27)
Well, that would probably go back to the CRM, you know, customer relationship management, which is just, it's just a glorified database with like features. That's what we're talking about. I mean, you could technically do all of this with a Google sheet. It depends on how big you are and how intricate the services you offer. If you offer one service, it's a lot easier, but if you offer 25 services, it starts to get, you you, you want to try to find people in that database where you say, Hey, look, this person purchased service A, B and C. They probably really liked D.
Chris Hall (57:33)
Okay.
Joey Gartin (57:57)
versus person purchased ABCD. why would I commit, they're already buying D. Why would I even communicate them with D? I need to talk about E. I think we see this like in e-commerce a lot. ⁓ And we've stolen a lot of our ideas that we implement from e-commerce. Account-based marketing and e-commerce are probably the two forefronts that I steal the most ideas from. ⁓ In my line of business, R and D means rip off and duplicate, right? So.
Chris Hall (57:58)
Mmm.
Thank you. ⁓
Joey Gartin (58:26)
You know, it's they've already invented the wheel. Like, no, I need a better wheel. You mean bigger, smaller? Like what's better? Better materials. But so e-commerce is really good about that. I mean, Amazon, the king of like, hey, you purchased a can of corn. Did you need a can of green beans to go with that? Or do you need a pot to cook that corn? You know, sometimes pot handles get hot. Would you like an oven mitt? I mean, they're they've got it dialed in. So each service is a little different.
Chris Hall (58:29)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joey Gartin (58:56)
So I think that would be one vein. Another thing would just staying in contact. You know, I mean, a really good database. If I was a bookkeeper, obviously I'm going to do your books, but I'm probably, you know, I want to send out a happy anniversary card or I want to send a happy birthday card or any life's moments. Or, you know, if you are offering a new service, know, bookkeeping is a tough one. That's a tough like to wrap your mind around.
Chris Hall (59:24)
Sorry.
⁓
Joey Gartin (59:24)
No worries,
no worries. I like the challenge. But with a lot of these services, you know, you can say like, well, you had service A and you know, obviously, this is built on this is predicated on you offering good service A. Hey, you hate it. You know, it's a family truckster. You hate it now wait till you drive it. No, that's not the mentality. We did A for you. And you know, you gave us five star review or you know, whatever. Anybody you know that might want service A?
Chris Hall (59:44)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
APNIC.
Joey Gartin (59:54)
you know, asking for the sale. Like, yeah, B &I taught us that, taught us that, you know. If you know anybody anywhere that needs anything, like, no, that's the wrong message, you know, be very specific. Hey, you know, we, house painter, we painted your kitchen. ⁓ You know, you said you loved it. Is, you know, do you have any friends or family? You know, anybody in your life that has maybe they've been talking about how they loved your kitchen or they're not happy with theirs.
Could you give them our contact information? So asking for the sale and then upselling like, you know, somebody you do their kitchen, following up with them a few months later and saying, Hey, look, we've got some slow time. We're going to do some interior painting. Winter's coming is do you have any bedrooms or would you like the living room repainted? You know, would you like the mantle redone ⁓ or Hey, it's spring. The rain stopped. Now we can get to exterior painting. I don't know if you'd like your, you know, your home painted, maybe just the gutters, something like that.
And that starts with having a database so that you can look, you can go to your database, a good CRM tool lets you do stuff like that. Like say, hey, show me all the people who purchased A, B and C. Why? Because, and but did not purchase D, filter out the people that purchased D and says, well, these 13 people. Well, there you go. There's 13 people that you can sell D to, right? That's the whole idea. And so having a good customer database, I think is really good. And when I say that,
Chris Hall (1:01:04)
Right.
All right.
Joey Gartin (1:01:24)
There's a, people always ask me, what's the best CRM? The one you'll use. They're all 90 % the exact same feature. But this one has a special button. Okay, well, will you use the special button? Will you press it? You know?
Chris Hall (1:01:28)
Yeah, right.
For those
of you watching, a yellow pad is not a CRM. I know a lot of people like roofers that love to work their entire business off of yellow legal pad. that is not, I mean, that may be good, but that is not a CRM. You are not going to go back in there and find out who you did business with in February that also might want some gutters.
Joey Gartin (1:01:44)
But.
And if yeah, and so, but that would be the second big spot that I would say, just taking all the work you did, because if you've been in this business for any amount of time, you have, hopefully, you have a army of people who are advocates for your service, who said they, and he did a great job. I love my kitchen. like empower your army, works for you. know, like, no, new, new.
Chris Hall (1:02:18)
You must be.
Yeah, that's
You had mentioned reviews. I know for a long time that was like a really big deal. you had to get reviews, had to kind of have more than your competition and stuff like that. Do you still feel that's the same way now? Do feel like reviews are as important as they used to be?
Joey Gartin (1:02:31)
Right.
⁓ I think Google reviews are still ⁓ insanely valuable. And when somebody says how many is enough, if I told you that I was handing out gold bars, how many would be enough? An unlimited supply of gold bars, how many do you want? And then at what point do you want to stop collecting them? You just all, you know, ⁓ more. ⁓ But filling out the Google business profile fully is just, it's
Chris Hall (1:02:45)
Anyway.
All right.
Joey Gartin (1:03:09)
It's a must. So that means it, you Google needs to know everything about you. They need to know the areas you service and the areas you do not service. They need to know the services you offer and the services you do not offer. They need to know about you. If you want to show up in that graph, you've got to give it content. We do auto hosting for our clients and their Google business. It's a big piece of our larger automation system. Our clients, Google business, if you go there, it's robust. It's
Chris Hall (1:03:27)
So.
Thanks.
Joey Gartin (1:03:39)
Fully filled
out and we are in a constant state of publishing information to it. Now it's not like it's not the classic social media. This is not the same stuff as we do a lot of posting for our clients on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, things like that. YouTube big. ⁓ That's more. It's two different animals because with Google business, you're really feeding the bots. You're feeding the bots that they that you show up when you do Facebook or Instagram. You're feeding the humans. You're.
creating content that you're directly talking to the human. So it's a little bit different. There's a lot of similarities overlap. If it was a Venn diagram, there's quite a bit of overlap, but it is different. And so the easy fruit on the ground, when we get a new client, we go through an entire audit process, but the easy fruit on the ground and Google business is one of the first things, if not the first thing, whether you're realtor or not, any business, any local business, it's one of the first. And then it trickles down. There's other,
places, you need, like you said, you brought up the graph. You need to show up. The graph is a bunch of different nodes, right? That's the term they'd use, right? Google business is a node. Your website would be a node. Your Facebook page would be a node. And then obviously some nodes are worth a lot more than others. Google business is at the very top of that list.
Chris Hall (1:04:57)
I feel like you always ⁓ explain to me as Take it a quiz and some of the quiz questions are ten points Some are five some are three and so like your first thing you want to do is go in and get all the Ten point questions that you know, right and then then go to look at the fives and then look at the threes and then go back and try to see if you can solve the other ones as well, so ⁓ I still sounds like Google reviews is still probably a ten point question that we that we should be trying to get right Okay good
Joey Gartin (1:05:23)
Absolutely.
Chris Hall (1:05:26)
Well, I can talk to you for hours because I don't really do. Is there anything else that you want to talk about before we end the show?
Joey Gartin (1:05:35)
They would cover a lot, man. I mean, like you said, this is a, these are deep. I mean, if you're into it, it's deep. We can talk for hours and hours and still have hours and hours left to talk. So probably, probably got to pull the plug at some point and leave it for part two, right? People clamoring after they see this for more, right? So we'll, well, know,
Chris Hall (1:05:42)
Thank
Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
That's right. Put in the comments if you want to see us again do this. We can do this again, but we need you to comment
on it Yeah, so speaking of which ⁓ Just want to say if you guys are enjoying the show I know that we've had like 350,000 views on our materials in the last 90 days So we're having really good success in that respect. We really do appreciate you guys. Please subscribe If you want to see more of this content, please like please comment do all those things
Because once again, going back to what we're talking about, that tells Google, YouTube, Spotify, hey, these guys are valuable. People enjoy this stuff. And then they'll show it to more people, which is great ⁓ for us as well. ⁓ Joey, if people want to get ahold you, what's the best way for them to do so?
Joey Gartin (1:06:43)
My website WebDriven spelled a little wonky W-E-B-D-R-V-N dot com so we got rid of the last two vowels I wanted to buy the full ⁓ domain you know after I built it up and I think the guy wanted like five grand for it I was like what? Last two vowels so WebDriven dot com yeah that's the way to hold
Chris Hall (1:07:00)
Okay,
and I'll make sure to put that anywhere there's show notes or descriptions We'll make sure we link to that as well And if you Joey's phone number, that's gonna cost you you're gonna have to you know Pay this guy to get that phone number. So I'm just kidding. I won't give out his phone number So right now you're targeting still very very much looking at realtors and you're looking for
Joey Gartin (1:07:11)
Thank you.
Thank you.
Chris Hall (1:07:29)
⁓ Just like local local businesses and that that doesn't really have a like there's no specific Local business you're looking for it's more of like again You're gonna you're gonna see if you're a good fit for them. Is that right?
Joey Gartin (1:07:39)
Yeah, it's case by case basis. We can help anybody. We can help anybody. I know that's a bad B &I thing. we have, if you looked at our portfolio, there are some odd businesses that I never would have targeted, but they were a friend of somebody who was a client. you know, like, well, yeah, of course we can get your phone to ring. We can get your inbox to blow up. Yeah, hopefully.
Chris Hall (1:07:41)
Okay, so I can tell you what's that?
Yeah.
Well, and that is one of the things if you know Joey like I know him is that he loves a challenge. He loves a challenge. So if he's never done it before, you have a really good chance of getting his attention. But I would say without a shadow of a doubt, I have no problem absolutely recommending WebDriven and Joey Garden. I feel like he is usually light years ahead of your local marketer.
Joey Gartin (1:08:16)
Screw it.
Chris Hall (1:08:28)
And truly, I tell him this all the time, that he doesn't charge enough. So take advantage of him while you can.
Joey thank you so much for being on the show. really appreciate you man. Thanks to everyone who's listening. Have a great week
Joey Gartin (1:08:39)
How's
Chris Hall (1:08:40)
Great.