Learn. Share. Evolve…

0:00:06 All right, I’ve got a relatively simple recurring revenue side hustle you could start today even.
0:00:11 The idea is to help local businesses gain more visibility in Google so they can make more money.
0:00:16 And the market is huge. Think millions of potential small business customers here.
0:00:22 Today’s guest runs a six-figure digital agency while traveling the world with his family and
0:00:28 says if he was starting over, he’d focus on selling a simple local SEO service. This might
0:00:34 be the last bastion of SEO, local SEO. From ericdingler.com, Eric Dingler, welcome to the
0:00:39 Side Hustle Show. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to unpack this with you for your audience.
0:00:44 You bet. Stick around in this one. I’m excited as well. We’re going to figure out how do we find
0:00:48 customers, how are we going to deliver this service quickly and effectively, and maybe how to remove
0:00:55 yourself from being the hands-on technician in the business. But kick us off with what do you see as
0:01:03 the opportunity here in local SEO? Well, for me, and especially as somebody that every three weeks to
0:01:09 three months, I’m moving into a completely new city with my wife and our four teens, we’re constantly
0:01:15 going to Google Maps or Apple Maps looking for restaurant, barber, you know, grocery store,
0:01:23 dentist, whatever it is we need. And I don’t see people stopping that. People are still looking for that
0:01:30 local service. I don’t see it going away. And everybody in the entire world uses Google Maps,
0:01:37 Google My Business, and Apple Maps. Yeah, where regular SEO, article SEO, website SEO is all being
0:01:44 eroded away by AI and maybe Reddit in the search results. Local SEO is maybe a less competitive game,
0:01:49 and it still works by the old rules, more or less. Whereas like, if I want a restaurant near me,
0:01:54 it’s not being eaten by AI just yet. Yeah. The thing about Google, they have invested
0:02:01 millions and millions upon millions of dollars, mapping every city, every country, every road
0:02:09 in the world, adding all of the businesses that they can find to it, working to ensure that we have access
0:02:16 to a business’s hours, contact information, all these things. Yeah. And they don’t charge for this.
0:02:22 They don’t charge you and me as the end user trying to find a place. And they don’t charge the businesses
0:02:29 to be on it. But even with that, only about, according to Google’s most recent numbers in the USA,
0:02:37 only about 20, 25% of businesses have claimed their Google business profile and have optimized it.
0:02:46 So 75% of the local businesses around you haven’t done this yet. And they all already know about Google.
0:02:53 They already know about SEO. And if you can learn a few key phrases and use those when you’re talking
0:03:00 to businesses, it’s a very easy service to sell. In fact, Nick, today is our oldest son’s 18th
0:03:01 birthday. Oh, okay.
0:03:06 And he is an outdoor kid through and through. Computer’s not his thing. You know, he wants
0:03:11 to be outside all the time. He wants to play soccer and stuff like that. But if he was to come to me today
0:03:18 and say, okay, dad, I want to start my own thing. You know, what, what should I do? And my agency,
0:03:24 we do, we do web design development, app work. We focus a lot on helping businesses meet accessibility
0:03:29 standards. We do paid ads, social media, like we do all those things.
0:03:33 Yes. And this is in transit studios. If anybody wants to go check that out, that’s all right. Go
0:03:37 ahead. Thanks. Yeah. But if my 18 year old came to me today and said, I want to start my own thing,
0:03:43 I would give him a checklist to start a local SEO business. And I would say, this is what you need to
0:03:47 go do. All right. Coach me through this. We’ll worry about like the technical skills. I don’t know.
0:03:49 I don’t know the first thing about local, we’ll worry about that in a second, but like,
0:03:54 okay, let’s say I’m your, I’m your son. You know, like you talk me through this. What do I do first?
0:04:00 Great. The first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to go sell it. I do this a lot. I often sell
0:04:07 services that I don’t know how I’m going to deliver it. In fact, my very first local SEO client,
0:04:17 I sold them local SEO. I collected the money and then I use that money to go pay for somebody to
0:04:24 teach me how to do what I need to do. Because you can tell your customer, this is going to take me
0:04:27 four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. They don’t know.
0:04:30 Yeah. Yeah. You set up expectations. Sure.
0:04:36 Exactly. So you set those expectations. So what I like to do in this case, and this is so kind of
0:04:42 take going step by step, really breaking this down. The first thing I would do is I would write a,
0:04:47 what we call beta test social media post. And later at the end of the episode, Nick,
0:04:53 we can give people a link to, I have this written out in an actual checklist with links and everything
0:04:55 that can, people can follow. Perfect.
0:05:01 But for, for the conversation, the thing I like to do is I like to create a beta social media post.
0:05:08 People that are listening, they probably have friends that are business owners or they use local
0:05:15 businesses. They have a dentist. They probably have a barber or hair salon. They have a favorite
0:05:21 restaurant. That’s not a chain. You have your local mom and pop favorite places, landscape or whatever it
0:05:28 might be. You have friends that have these businesses. So what I like to do is create a social media post
0:05:35 that says, Hey, fellow business owners or Hey, business owners who are friends. I’m testing a new piece
0:05:48 of software or I’m testing a new system that lets me help local businesses be found more often when somebody
0:05:57 searches for them. I’m looking for three businesses that I can use that would be willing to let me use their
0:06:06 business as an experiment. You’ll get an increased visibility on Google and I’ll share all the results
0:06:11 with you in exchange for helping me out. If you’re interested, let me know. So that’s kind of the
0:06:18 gist, something, something like that. You put that out there and then you tell every business owner the
0:06:22 next time you talk to them, you know, if you’ve got a neighbor that has a local business, you go knock on
0:06:26 the door and you’re going to tell them you’re going to do this. And then you can say when they
0:06:32 respond to the Facebook ad or when you go talk to them, you say it’s $500. You know, the first time
0:06:38 I did it, I sold it for $1,300 had never sold it before. Sold it for $1,300. Okay. If you’re as
0:06:44 arrogant as I am, you can do that. But if you’re a little more like, uh, I don’t know, that makes me
0:06:52 nervous. Start lower. That’s okay. Yeah. But there is a guy, Sam Sarston, and he has a, a coaching
0:07:02 program. It’s $49 without the community aspect, $99 if you want into the community and that’s monthly.
0:07:09 And he teaches exactly how to do all this. I don’t have a course, but I know Sam, Sam’s course is great.
0:07:16 Okay. You can go sell this and then go sign up for Sam’s course. And he’ll, he’ll show you exactly
0:07:23 how to do this. And what you’re selling specifically is a one-time SEO boost. So that’s what you’re going
0:07:28 to sell. It’s your, your foot in the door offer. That’s why I’d sell it for 500. One-time SEO boost.
0:07:33 And you tell them, I’m going to improve your position in Google maps and Apple maps within three
0:07:38 months. Okay. Within three months, you’re going to be ranking higher, which means, and here’s that,
0:07:43 one of those key phrases, Nick, I was telling you, I like to use. Yeah. We’re going to increase
0:07:50 your customer activity. I’m not promising more leads because I can’t promise. I can’t deliver on
0:07:55 that. I’m not promising specifically more website visitors or more phone calls. I’m just promising
0:08:02 more customer activity. And every local business owner understands that. And a restaurant is never
0:08:08 going to use the term leads. Restaurants aren’t looking for leads. A barbershop’s not looking for
0:08:15 leads. They’re looking for appointments or walk-ins. A roofer is looking for leads. And so to me,
0:08:18 the most universal phrase that I have found is customer activity.
0:08:22 Okay. And this allows you to not worry, because that was kind of the next thing I was going to ask
0:08:28 about, do you worry about niche? So like, well, I’m only going to target roofers, but then it becomes
0:08:33 maybe a potential conflict of interest if I sign up five roofers in the same town. And now I’m like
0:08:38 competing. Well, who do I, who’s my favorite? Like, how do I figure out who I want to rank the
0:08:42 highest? Yeah. So you’re going to go, you go, you go kind of broad. It sounds like, because this is the
0:08:46 same skill set or the same toolbox can apply across any number of different businesses.
0:08:53 Yeah, absolutely. And the fastest way to a sale is the face-to-face conversation. For a side hustle,
0:09:00 especially to just get started, you’re just talking about finding three or four local businesses that are
0:09:05 going to do this SEO boost, $500, because here’s what happens. You’re going to do the local SEO
0:09:10 boost. And then within that three months, you’re going to get results. And here’s what you’re going
0:09:16 to do. Okay. When they say, yeah, I’ll do this. This sounds great. I’d love to do it. Okay. It’s $500.
0:09:21 So, you know, here’s, you know, set up a Stripe account, take PayPal, take check. You’re starting
0:09:25 out as a side hustle. Like cash is fine. Like however you can get them to pay you.
0:09:28 Yeah. Yeah. Somebody can Venmo you. Sure. Don’t, don’t, don’t let that be the bottleneck.
0:09:34 Exactly. Exactly. Like there’s lots of ways to get people’s money from them. So receive the money
0:09:40 and then say, Hey, listen, I need 24 pictures of your business, people in your business behind the
0:09:48 scenes, the front of the place. I need 24 pictures. And that’s what you need to send to me. And if
0:09:54 they’re like, Oh, I don’t have them. Do you have a 17 year old, an 18 year old, a 25 year old on your
0:09:58 team? Like everybody on your team’s got an iPhone. That’s all I need. I need somebody to take out their
0:10:04 phone and get 24 pictures. Then they’re going to send you those pictures. You’re going to take
0:10:12 those pictures. You’re going to create 12 posts with those pictures about their business. And this
0:10:19 is a great place to leverage AI. AI is really fast, fantastic at this. And then every week you’re going
0:10:23 to go in and you’re just going to post to their Google business profile that so they’re going to,
0:10:28 they’re going to give you access. It’s, it’s super easy to get access to their Google business profile.
0:10:31 You’re going to get access to the Google business profile. You’re going to go in once a week.
0:10:34 You’re going to post a picture for 12 weeks.
0:10:39 And maybe this is for these 75% of businesses that haven’t even claimed theirs. Maybe that’s step one.
0:10:42 Like, Hey, here, here’s an easy quick win for you, Mr. and Mrs. Business owner. Let’s,
0:10:46 let’s do that first. And then we’ll go do this one-time boost.
0:10:49 Right? Well, this is part of the one-time boost. Yeah, this is, this is it. This is part of the one-time
0:10:54 boost. So for the one-time boost, you’re going to use AI to rewrite their description.
0:10:59 You’re going to use AI to help you create those 12 posts. And then you’re going to go in and you’re
0:11:05 going to schedule those. Now down the road, there are tools you can get to automate this. We now,
0:11:12 when we do an SEO boost, we, we create all the content takes us about two hours. We pre-schedule
0:11:15 it for three months and we’re done. We move on to the next one. Yeah.
0:11:19 But you’re going to grow into this as a side hustle. I was, I didn’t start there. And so
0:11:22 to keep it simple, you don’t need a fancy automation tool.
0:11:27 Why does the description need to be rewritten or what are, what are some of like the checkboxes
0:11:29 you want to see in that rewritten description?
0:11:34 Yeah. Well, they probably haven’t done it if, especially if they’ve never claimed their Google
0:11:40 business profile, or if the business owner wrote a, wrote it, the business owner talks about
0:11:48 how they’ve been in business since 1985 and grandpa gave it to dad and dad gave it to me. And we’ve
0:11:54 got six employees and we’re so proud of our community and we love serving dah, dah, dah. And nobody
0:12:01 cares. They want to know, are you the place for them? You know, if you’re a barbershop, you want to,
0:12:07 you want to answer what we call their pre-qualifying questions. You can walk in, you can pay with cash,
0:12:15 credit card. You can book an appointment. We do kids, we do fade ins, we do beards. Like
0:12:21 what are the common questions people ask you about your business? And that’s what has to go in the
0:12:25 description. And so most business owners talk about themselves and not their customer and their
0:12:31 customers needs. So real easy fix. Plus you want to make sure that you mentioned, you know,
0:12:39 the business type you are, you know, AJ’s barber, proudly serving Columbus, Ohio, men, kids,
0:12:44 short hair, you know, then you, then you list the things, walk-ins, welcome, all that kind of stuff.
0:12:50 So that’s in the description. I got it. Got it. Okay. Then, and this is in that, the checklist I have
0:12:55 a lot of businesses, local businesses, they go to set up their Google business profile, Nick, and they’re
0:13:00 like, I want to serve everybody. So they put their service areas, the United States of America.
0:13:10 Okay. Huge mistake. Huge mistake. Because when Google decides who to show to somebody in Google
0:13:16 maps, and when Apple decides in Apple maps, the first thing they’d look at is the geographic location of
0:13:22 that phone. So I’m in Budapest, Hungary right now. If I get my phone and I search
0:13:29 barber near me, it’s going to show me a couple of the closest barbers right here to me in Budapest.
0:13:38 But if I turn my VPN on, and I say I’m in Miami, and then I open Google maps, and I ask for a barber,
0:13:45 it’s going to start showing me barbers in Miami. If you say you’re in the United States, that puts your
0:13:50 business geographic location out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, because it goes clear up past
0:13:55 Alaska down around Hawaii. And the only people that’s going to see your pizza shop barbershop
0:14:01 mechanic is somebody trolling for fish out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, not what you’re going
0:14:07 for. More with Eric in just a moment, including the exact type of posts you should be creating for
0:14:12 local businesses. Plus, how to scale this thing into a six figure recurring revenue business with a remote
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0:16:41 All right. So another quick win. Sounds like, okay, narrow down that service area location. And you
0:16:47 kind of draw a perimeter and, okay. The service area. Yeah. All kinds of ways to do that. You know,
0:16:54 just the city or a couple of towns. But I just start with that one central space. And so you do that.
0:17:02 That’s optimizing. Optimizing the description. Optimizing the service location. You get those
0:17:07 things optimized. And a lot of people, they haven’t, business owners, they haven’t bothered filling in
0:17:14 all the little boxes about parking, accessibility. Is it, you know, veteran owned, woman owned,
0:17:20 you know, something like, there’s all these things. And it’s because Google keeps adding these questions
0:17:26 and information every few months, they add a new one. And most businesses aren’t updating that.
0:17:30 So you’re just going to go through the Google business profile. And, and here’s the thing,
0:17:37 if you’re like, Oh, I don’t know the answer, make a list and send an email to the, say, Hey,
0:17:40 just wanted to follow up with a couple more questions. Do you do this, this, and this, and
0:17:45 this? They’re going to answer it. You’re going to put it on their Google business profile. Super
0:17:49 simple. Yeah. So that’s optimizing. You’re just going to do it one time. Then you’re going to create
0:17:55 the 12 pieces of content and you’re going to go in once a week and add those. So one day added on
0:18:00 Monday, one day added on Tuesday, you want it to seem kind of natural. And then once, once a week,
0:18:05 you’re going to add a picture, those things right there, you’re going to start to see their rankings
0:18:11 improve. You’re going to see increased customer activity. We like to use a tool called local
0:18:18 Falcon. I think I pay around $29 a month for local Falcon. It’s a super inexpensive tool.
0:18:25 You go into local Falcon, you go to reports and you, you, you find the business. If they’ve got a
0:18:32 Google business profile, local Falcon is going to find them. And then you, you said a geographic region.
0:18:37 We normally start with like two miles and then you put in a search term or a couple of search terms,
0:18:44 barber, men’s haircut, pizza, pizza, delivery, pizza pickup, depending on the business.
0:18:54 Okay. And what local Falcon does is it goes and it scans the entire area because I can be a quarter mile
0:19:03 to the East of a business and it’s in 20th place on Google. I can go a quarter mile to the right or to,
0:19:10 to the West. And it’s going to be in first place. Your position on Google changes street by street.
0:19:16 Yeah. What this does is it creates a heat map and it shows you all of these dots and it puts the right
0:19:21 position of where you are. So you’re going to have some areas that are green, some areas that are red,
0:19:28 some that are in between in the yellow and orange. Now some businesses may be all green. This whole
0:19:34 lit expand out, look for a different search term, expand the radius. Okay. Some businesses it’s all red
0:19:39 except for right where their business is. It’s green. And those are the business owners that go,
0:19:44 well, we thought we were in first place on Google. Yeah. You are. If you’re searching from your front
0:19:50 door. Yeah. Yeah. In your business, but you can either get in a car and drive around town and refresh
0:20:00 your search every street, or we just create this geo grid for you. Now down the road, you can offer this
0:20:06 geo grid as a freebie. This is a good way. Once you start getting some clients, as you’re getting
0:20:11 established and you start to promote some things, this is a great lead magnet because a lot of business
0:20:16 owners see this map and they’re like, Oh, I want, I want to see that for my business. You don’t need
0:20:22 to do that starting out. That’s kind of a 2.0 kind of strategy. Okay. Right now you’re going to just talk
0:20:26 to a couple of businesses, get a couple of people to hire you. You’re going to go in and do these things.
0:20:30 You’re going to create one of those maps every month. You’re going to run the scan. Again,
0:20:36 a local Falcon has this whole list of suggestions after it runs the report, AI generated suggestions
0:20:40 that’ll tell you a wealth of information of things to do to improve your rank.
0:20:46 Do you have an example or two of, of, of like the type of post that you’re posting on behalf of these
0:20:50 different businesses to their Google profile? Sure. Give me an industry. It’s just any industry
0:20:56 you want. We can go with the barbershop example again. Barbershop. Great. So they give you a picture
0:21:00 of a kid getting a haircut. You’re just going to, you know, take that and you’re going to say,
0:21:06 depending on the type of year, maybe it’s another one of our, you know, customers in getting ready
0:21:12 for the summer, getting a haircut before vacation, back to school seasons coming up, getting ready to
0:21:19 head back to school here in Pittsburgh. Talk about, you know, vacation coming up, just whatever you can,
0:21:24 or maybe it’s the barber that’s cutting their hair. Maybe they’ve been there five years, you know,
0:21:29 Hey, here’s Tony been with us for five years, cutting one of our favorite little customers hair again,
0:21:34 helping them get ready for vacation. Okay. But you don’t know, you don’t always have that insight.
0:21:38 So you got to like kind of probe the business owner for what’s, what’s the occasion. You don’t want to
0:21:43 just make stuff up. Oh, Tony’s Tony’s Tony really just started last month. That’s always a little
0:21:48 weird. I wouldn’t make up anything like that. I wouldn’t make anything like that. But, but here’s
0:21:53 the thing that can be a little annoying with this. Very few people read these. That’s what’s annoying.
0:21:59 Sure. No, I get it. It’s like you need to feed the machine, even though nobody’s realistically
0:22:02 reading. It’s like, but you got to give it some data. You got to give it some stuff to chew on.
0:22:10 Yes. People read reviews and people look at the pictures, but very few people read the post,
0:22:17 but Google does. And Google wants to make sure that if it’s going to recommend you,
0:22:20 somebody’s there turning the lights on. Yeah.
0:22:26 Because if Google sends somebody to a closed business, they’re going to lose their trust
0:22:32 in Google. They may start, they may switch to another tool. If Google starts losing eyeballs,
0:22:40 Google starts losing advertising. Google will not lose advertising. I mean, that’s, that’s how
0:22:42 they make their money is advertising. Yeah.
0:22:48 So they want to keep the eyeballs. They want to make sure that they’re giving you and me when we
0:22:56 look for a business, a business that’s open, a business that other people use, a business that
0:23:03 keeps their hours up to date. Google will reward you by what these, these are called signals.
0:23:07 Yeah. Yeah. Giving positive signals, make it look active, right? It’s active and engaged. They’re,
0:23:10 they’re using our tools and helping people in that way.
0:23:14 Yes. And right now, again, for those that are listening, they’re just trying to get started.
0:23:22 You’re just doing a one-time local SEO boost. So you’re doing a minimal viable product here
0:23:27 to get results. You’re, when you run that first local Falcon scan, you’re going to take a screenshot.
0:23:31 Each time you run it, you’re going to take another screenshot and suddenly you’re going to get before
0:23:37 and afters, you know, had very little green, two months later, all of this green, they’re showing up
0:23:43 all over the top of Google. Okay. Because then what you can do, you’ve got these first few
0:23:50 seed clients. They’ve given you the money that’s given you the money to invest in higher, you know,
0:23:56 into a training and the getting some tools, but now you can go back to them and say, here’s the
0:24:02 results we got. This is great. Here’s what it’s going to take to keep you at the top of this.
0:24:07 You’re going to need to keep posting once a week and you can do this. And we got to get into
0:24:12 eventually what there’s these things called directories. There’s some great tools that help
0:24:19 with this mods local is one. Yext is another. These are tools. A business owner can go and pay
0:24:27 for themselves to do it. And the business starts getting added to directories. Directories are
0:24:34 websites that link to businesses. So this is how you get those backlinks. They’re still gold,
0:24:40 even in local SEO. This is still a big thing. This was NAP listing, name, address, phone number
0:24:44 listings, like all across the internet, all pointing back to your, your home base, your website.
0:24:51 Exactly. And some of these directories now power voice search. So it’s important to have these
0:24:58 directories up to date because Google looks for consistency of NAP, name, address, phone number.
0:25:05 If you’re listed on 20 websites, but sometimes the name is spelled out one thing. Sometimes it’s this,
0:25:09 sometimes that the address is a little bit, sometimes the phone number is different because
0:25:13 you had it, you got a new phone number. So that that’s a signal to Google. Like, um, do they have
0:25:18 their act together? Can they really be trusted? But this is an advanced and this isn’t, we don’t,
0:25:25 we don’t touch directories for a local SEO boost. I don’t have to. Okay. But for our monthly recurring,
0:25:31 where we go and we say, Hey, listen, we can manage this for you and we can write content.
0:25:38 We need to have a strategy session once a quarter where I come in and I interview you about your
0:25:42 bar. How long have they been here? How long have they been like, this is where you get into the
0:25:47 nitty gritty and we do a quarterly strategy session. And we have, you got any specials coming up next
0:25:52 three months, anything you want to put, like you have a seasonality to your business in the next three
0:25:56 months. This is where somebody like, Oh, back to school is big for us. Valentine’s day is big.
0:26:02 Okay, great. So then you create that content calendar. And at this point you’ll get a tool
0:26:06 where like, now you’re going to create the content and post it. So it’s automated and done for three
0:26:14 months and things like that. Or better yet, how I do it is I now have a team that does this. I’ve got
0:26:21 an amazing person on my team from El Salvador. She’s a rock star and this is all she does for us.
0:26:27 She only does local SEO content. She creates it, but she meets with the clients once a quarter,
0:26:36 does a strategy session, maps out their content. She can do two of these a day. And we typically charge
0:26:44 around $750 a month for the ongoing monthly recurring revenue. Wow. But again, I grew into
0:26:50 that. So this is local SEO. It’s not going away. But that’s no, that’s like really, really cool to
0:26:57 see what is potentially possible down the road with a trained up team member who is taking half a day
0:27:04 to service this customer that you’re charging $750 a month for. You imagine the margins on that are quite
0:27:09 healthy. Yes. Even if you hired somebody in the States, I have one person on my team in the States,
0:27:14 but the rest of my team are remote. We’re an entire remote. I’m remote. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:27:19 You know, so my team is remote. Yeah. And, and we just, that’s how we, we operate because we are able
0:27:24 to keep them very high margins. We’re able to keep our costs very competitive that way. And it’s fun to be
0:27:31 able to travel around the world and meet your staff. Do you worry, you know, this is the Bezos line of,
0:27:35 you know, your margin is my opportunity. Do you see clients getting poached from under you
0:27:42 from other competing services? It was just like the number of small businesses is so vast,
0:27:46 so massive. That’s like, well, even if we lose a client, it’s fine. We’ll go find somebody else.
0:27:52 Like it’s, we try to play this game of churn versus retention and margins versus like, well,
0:27:55 wait a minute. How much does this really cost them to fulfill?
0:28:02 Yeah. If you show up every month with a report that’s showing results, Hey, we got you these
0:28:08 results. That’s you. Most business owners, that’s the number one complaint I get when we get a new
0:28:13 customer, we were spending all this money. I never knew if it was working. Got it. You know, I didn’t
0:28:20 know where the results were because in the agency world, we’re known for just sending a report,
0:28:26 expecting our clients to read it. They don’t have time for that. We show up proactively. Hey,
0:28:30 we just looked, you’re at it. And we just tell people we’ll, we might call a client and say, Hey,
0:28:36 we just ran your report. And you know, on average, we’ve dropped three positions and we use that. We
0:28:42 We use we, not you, not, you know, it’s, it’s, we’re in this together. Hey, we dropped three points.
0:28:47 And so we looked and here’s what we’d like to do. We’d like to do this and this and this over the next
0:28:53 six weeks. And they’re just like, Hey man, you’ve got our back, whatever you need to do. Like, cause it
0:29:00 just, you build trust, you build trust. And for us then, how this led to then the, I had no intentions
0:29:07 to own an agency. I was pastoring a church and my wife and I decided to adopt a sibling group from
0:29:12 Bulgaria. We had two biological children and we just felt like the next thing we were being called
0:29:18 to do was adopt. And I had to come up with an extra $50,000 because we wanted to adopt debt free.
0:29:18 Okay.
0:29:24 I didn’t know how I was going to come up with $50,000. So I had to come up with a side hustle
0:29:32 and I knew how to build websites. And so I started building websites and that kind of got a little
0:29:40 bit of traction and I got a couple dozen clients. And then I learned about this local SEO and I just
0:29:46 went back and I upsold my very first client to do it. I was like, Hey, I’m testing this thing and you
0:29:51 know, and they’re like, yeah, okay, sure. And I was like, it’s $1,300. And they’re like, yeah,
0:29:54 sure. Let’s do it. I’m like, great. And then I went to some businesses I didn’t even know. I did
0:30:01 the same thing and I did that. And then I started, then I worked through my network, my local business
0:30:07 network, onboarded all the low hanging fruit. And then we started to learn how to do another service.
0:30:12 And so I just went back through and I said, Hey, we’re now doing reviews as a server. We can help you
0:30:16 get more five-star reviews from your satisfied customers. Oh yeah, Eric, let’s do that.
0:30:21 Yeah. I was going to, I was going to ask if the reviews were a part of this like ongoing monthly
0:30:26 package review, uh, uh, reputation management, collecting reviews, reputation management. Yes,
0:30:32 it is now. It is now. Absolutely. But it is really its own separate kind of monster,
0:30:38 if you will. And that’s okay. So we packages it as a separate service because I can either sell
0:30:43 somebody reputation management or I can sell them a local SEO boost. We always start with the boost
0:30:48 and then I can come back and say, Hey, we can add this. We’re constantly trying to figure out how can
0:30:55 we increase wallet share? You know, how do I increase that monthly recurring revenue per customer? When I
0:31:02 first started out, my average monthly recurring revenue per customer was $49 a month. Okay. Yeah. You come
0:31:09 a long ways. Yes. We’re now more like $490 average per customer per month with a whole lot more
0:31:17 customers. Now, some of our customers are $2,000 a month. Some of our customers are still $99 a month,
0:31:22 but you know, it averages out across the board about $495 a month. More with Eric in just a moment,
0:31:29 including why accessibility compliance could be the next big service opportunity. Plus his fastest path
0:31:36 to $25,000 a month in recurring revenue coming up right after this. Let me know if this sounds familiar.
0:31:41 You’ve got more ideas than you’ve got hours in the day. And that to-do list is never quite done.
0:31:46 That’s why finding the right tool to stay on top of everything and simplify things is such a game changer.
0:31:52 For millions of businesses, including dozens of side hustle show guests, that tool is Shopify.
0:31:57 One thing I love about our partner Shopify is you don’t have to start from scratch.
0:32:01 They’ve got hundreds of ready to use templates that help you build a beautiful online store to match
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0:32:12 customers wherever they’re scrolling or strolling. And they’re not sleeping on AI either. I’m talking
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0:32:27 with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com
0:32:35 slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:32:41 For such an important channel like phone, the software powering this important channel was
0:32:47 super outdated and clunky. We wanted to make it delightful and make it very easy for businesses
0:32:53 to connect with their customers through voice and text. That’s Darina Kulia, co-founder of our sponsor
0:32:58 OpenPhone. Trusted by more than 60,000 customers, this is the number one business phone system that
0:33:04 streamlines and scales your customer communications. I like to think of it like a centralized hub to receive
0:33:10 and respond to calls and texts in your business. And I asked Darina about who’s typically signing up
0:33:17 for this kind of service. We definitely have a lot of folks who come to us and their personal cell phone
0:33:22 has become their company phone number and they’ve hired a team or they’re starting to scale their
0:33:28 business and they just find themselves as a business owner, as a founder being the bottleneck. So we see
0:33:35 that all the time. And then we also see folks much further along where they’re using some legacy
0:33:40 complicated tools that are just not really made for how communication happens these days.
0:33:48 We also just recently launched Sona, which is our voice AI agent that can handle any missed calls.
0:33:54 If you have clients calling outside of business hours, instead of them going to voicemail, it can go
0:34:01 into Sona, which is capable to handle any replies and can also take a message. So you are capturing that
0:34:06 lead information. And it’s like, and it’s a robot, like it responds like on the fly with some
0:34:12 pre-programmed responses. It does such a great job. This way they can handle questions 24 seven.
0:34:18 Now here’s, here’s a scenario for you. So let’s say I’ve committed to a certain business phone number
0:34:24 and I’ve distributed flyers. It’s printed on my business cards. It is on my local business listings,
0:34:30 on directories throughout the internet. Like what’s the process to now have that ring open phone system
0:34:35 versus the current system? Totally. So we see this all the time. This process is called
0:34:41 phone number porting. We port numbers from all kinds of carriers. So basically no matter what
0:34:47 provider you’re using, we can take that number and move it over to open phone. It is free. We handle
0:34:51 the whole thing. And if you want to try out open phone, we have a free trial. You can try it out,
0:34:57 see how you like it. And if you like it, you can then decide to port your existing number over and
0:35:02 handle the whole process. Now open phone has automatic AI call summaries. So you don’t have
0:35:06 to worry about taking notes while you’re on the call. But another cool feature is what Darina called
0:35:13 AI call tagging, basically allowing you to quickly filter for the calls that were sales objections or
0:35:19 customer complaints or requests for a discount. So you can review those and see what worked, what didn’t
0:35:25 and train team members on the most effective tactics and language in those cases. And it’s all in the name of
0:35:30 building a better, faster and friendlier customer experience. I want all open phone customers to
0:35:36 five stars only. Right now open phone is offering side hustle show listeners 20% off your first six
0:35:45 months at open phone.com slash side hustle. That’s O P E N P H O N E.com slash side hustle. And like we
0:35:49 talked about, if you’ve got an existing phone number with another service, open phone will port it over
0:35:57 at no extra charge, open phone, no missed calls, no missed customers. What’s your take on this? I’ve
0:36:03 seen some people advocating this as a potential foot in the door strategy. And it’s to say, thanks to
0:36:09 these AI website building tools, you know, type in a quick little prompt, you know, spins up this really
0:36:15 nice looking website for local business XYZ. You could send that straight to the, Hey, look, I noticed
0:36:19 your website was maybe looking a little dusty, a little outdated. I made you this new one. You could
0:36:25 have it for 200 bucks. It took you all of three minutes to create with AI. Like, and people using
0:36:29 that as a potential foot in the door one for, okay, I could sell that website as a quick little revenue
0:36:34 hit, but maybe this guy clearly knows what he’s doing on the tech side. Maybe I can hire him for this
0:36:38 local SEO and potentially this recurring revenue. Holy grail down the road.
0:36:43 I think that’s totally doable. You can do that first. There’s a whole lot more people doing that.
0:36:49 And you’re running up against ads for Wix and Squarespace that run during the Superbowl. That’s
0:36:56 what you’re competing against. And so I have found it’s become a little bit harder to sell websites
0:37:03 because there’s a lot more, well, I think I can just do this tomorrow. You know, business owners move
0:37:10 towards the squeaky wheel. They’re always going to want more customers and they all use Google.
0:37:15 A lot of times I’ve even had some clients start to tell me like, oh, I can’t Eric. I can’t remember
0:37:20 the last time I looked at a website if I’m not doing research. And so I’m not saying websites aren’t
0:37:25 going to always be important, but for a local bit, like when’s the last time you went and looked at
0:37:28 the barbershop? I’m kind of bald. I don’t look at a lot of barbershop.
0:37:32 That’s a funny example for two bald guys to be using here.
0:37:38 Maybe barbershop’s not the right one, but you know, for a barbershop, even a landscape or something
0:37:45 like that, like I’m not going to go look. I might go look at a dentist website, but I don’t know.
0:37:54 Sure. Absolutely. I would rather help somebody because it’s hard to qualify the win of a website.
0:37:58 Like, hey, I got your new website up. Now, if they’re vain, they’re going to, oh, look at me.
0:38:02 I got my nice new website. They’re going to like that. But if you can show up and say,
0:38:08 this is why I like reputation management is actually another foot in the door offer because I can show
0:38:15 up four weeks after we launch and I can read you three five-star reviews. Hey, Nick, let me show you
0:38:20 what this customer said about you. They said, you’re the best and you’re great. You know, and then this
0:38:27 customer said this and you’re able to give them that feedback. Then you can say, now I was looking
0:38:31 at your website. Now that we’re getting more reviews, your website needs a little bit of work.
0:38:39 They’re going to trust you and say, oh yeah, let’s redo it. It’s easier in my opinion to go that way
0:38:42 than to start with the website. And that’s been my experience.
0:38:46 Right. That’s fair. No, I was just curious to get your take on that as somebody who’s in the space.
0:38:50 All right. What else do we need to know? So we’ve kind of covered, we’re going to start with this
0:38:56 local SEO boost. We can hopefully transition into an ongoing monthly maintenance package. We could
0:39:01 layer on reputation management, collecting reviews, and there’s software tools to help you do really
0:39:06 all of this stuff and hopefully make it a little more automated and potentially sell websites down the
0:39:10 road. Like, you know, getting your foot in the door and hopefully, you know, business owners,
0:39:14 no other business owners, right? So the word of mouth starts to spread. Do you want anything else
0:39:18 proactive on the marketing side to try and build up that client base?
0:39:27 Yes. Accessibility. Accessibility is both a social justice issue as well as a good for business.
0:39:37 In every business, unless it is a religious organization or a private club, every business has to legally
0:39:45 meet the standards and requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And just this last week,
0:39:52 the European Union’s new accessibility laws rolled out. So this is becoming very, very universal.
0:39:59 20 to 25% of people that use the internet have some type of barrier. Could be a disability,
0:40:07 could be slow internet. It could be they use a SIM card with limited data. So they have images turned
0:40:14 off. If you can design a website or social media content that is super easy to read, or you make
0:40:22 sure you use what’s called the alt text, you’re opening up a business to about 20 to 25% more customers.
0:40:29 So accessibility is huge. It’s never going to go away. And that’s the other problem with all of these
0:40:34 places that are spinning up webs. None of them yet are spinning up websites that meet accessibility.
0:40:41 So you can spin up a website for a foot in the door offer, but you’ve just put a legal target on them.
0:40:47 And not only that, you’re not being a good neighbor to people with disabilities. So that’s how we talk about
0:40:52 it with our agency. Like, we want to help you be a good neighbor. Accessibility is a whole nother new
0:40:56 fascinating world. But I don’t think I would try to get into it as a side hustle.
0:41:03 Okay, so this is another add on service. Like, hey, by the way, did you know a websites? You know, I think
0:41:09 it’s all businesses over a certain size, something like their website has to be ADA compliant, according to the
0:41:14 like, yours is not, but we can help get it there. And, and here’s what it’s going to take.
0:41:23 Yeah. So the confusion that comes in on the size of business is there are a couple different articles
0:41:28 of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the part of the article that deals with the physical
0:41:35 and employment accessibility, making accommodations for that, but specifically to the physical property
0:41:43 depends upon the size of your business. There are zero exceptions for your web content. Your way it
0:41:50 does not matter how many employees, it doesn’t matter your revenue. If you’re selling $3,000 a
0:41:56 month, and you’re a business, your web content technically has to be accessible. Now, there’s no
0:42:03 enforcement, unless somebody chooses to bring a lawsuit. But last year, this changed, the Department
0:42:09 of Justice came out with some new regulations last April, that said if you receive any money from the
0:42:16 government through a grant, through a grant, maybe you’re a doctor’s office and you accept Medicaid or
0:42:25 Medicare, maybe you’re the local garbage company, and you have a contract with the state to, or I’m sorry,
0:42:35 the city to provide garbage pickup within the city. If you get any federal or state money, or local money,
0:42:41 in exchange, you’re providing a service to continue to be eligible after April next year,
0:42:46 you must have your website compliant. And we’re starting to get clients that are coming to us
0:42:52 saying, Eric, we’re filling out our application for our state funding for next year, and they’re asking
0:42:59 for a website compliance certificate. So that is happening in a very specific industry. So that’s a little
0:43:04 bit different. But here’s the beautiful thing about it. I tell people this all the time. Real estate agents
0:43:10 don’t build the houses they sell. Nick, I have no clue how to go in and set up what’s called ARIA
0:43:15 tags on a website. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know what that is. Yeah. But my developers
0:43:23 do, and they do it every day, you know. And so I’ve never ran a Google ad. I’ve never logged into the
0:43:28 Google business platform area, whatever, I forget it. I mean, it’s struggling, but you can think of what
0:43:32 it’s called right now. But the Google ads platform, I’ve never, I’ve never done it. I don’t have no
0:43:41 idea. But we run Google ads every day for, for customer. Eventually, from a side hustle, team
0:43:47 building becomes key to it. And again, if my son was wanting to start a business, this would be
0:43:52 something I would try to get him to do from the, from the very beginning is to find somebody that can
0:43:57 do fulfillment and then go out and sell it and then pay that person to do the fulfillment.
0:44:03 Got it. Is there a sweet spot in terms of metro area size or is there markets that are just like,
0:44:08 this is too competitive? I wouldn’t trust myself to sell a one-time SEO boost because I don’t think
0:44:13 we can move the needle here. No, because even in a very competitive market, there are plenty of
0:44:18 businesses that those other brands are not even going to give the time of day to. They’re going to
0:44:23 judge them based upon their location or the condition of the business or something like
0:44:29 that. And they’re looking for mass. They’re marketing broad strokes, running ads, you know,
0:44:35 cold calling, cold, I can’t stand cold calling, cold emailing. So they’re getting bombarded with cold
0:44:40 emails, cold calls. In my experience, Nick, and I don’t know what your thoughts are on this or what
0:44:50 you’ve seen. In my experience, the fastest way to $25,000 a month in recurring revenue is local
0:44:55 networking. And sometimes we go into new markets and by geographic markets. I just recently hired
0:45:02 somebody in Kent, Ohio, and we’re following our process in Kent. It’s a US-based employee. We needed
0:45:07 a new person. The last person was leaving. I found somebody in Kent. It’s always good for me to have
0:45:12 somebody in the US. And we just started the same thing. Signed up. This person started going to all
0:45:18 the local networking events. We found a local business association and went to them and said,
0:45:23 hey, we’d like to host a podcast for you. You’re the producer of it. It’s under your branding.
0:45:31 We’ll interview your members and it becomes a member benefit for you to give to your members for free and
0:45:36 help you recruit more members. This is the fourth or fifth local area business podcast we’ve done.
0:45:42 And they’re like, they love it. And so we just, Katie started going around and interviewing all
0:45:47 of Main Street Kent. That’s the business, that’s the business association. She just started interviewing
0:45:52 all of their businesses. And at the end of it, she’s just like, she’s built a relationship. And she says,
0:45:58 hey, can I add you? I actually am with In Transit Studios. Can I add you to our weekly email newsletter?
0:46:02 And they’re always like, oh yeah, that would be great. We’d love to get that. And we’ve signed on
0:46:07 all kinds of clients that way. So over and over and over again, it’s hard to beat. I’m not saying
0:46:13 the Chamber of Commerce or BNI. Those are great and they have their places. But I’m talking about
0:46:19 going to the local community business association and getting in there and then finding some of the
0:46:25 strategic partnerships. When I was in Oceanview, Virginia, one of my best strategic partnerships was
0:46:33 a commercial real estate agent because Duncan knew every single time a new business was coming in to
0:46:40 town. And he was able to make referrals for me over and over and over again for, you know, hey, so-and-so
0:46:45 starting this business. Hey, did you hear so-and-so is going to try to open up an ice cream shop? Oh, no,
0:46:49 I hadn’t heard that. You know, I’d reach out and build. Hey, I heard you’re going to start an ice cream
0:46:56 shop. You know, how can I help? And stuff like that. So it’s hard to beat that there’s no money
0:47:02 hiding behind your computer, especially starting out in a side hustle with a local business. It’s just
0:47:08 hard to be getting out there, hitting the pavement and meeting people, having a face-to-face conversation
0:47:14 and getting those first few clients in. Like you said, they start talking to others. You get a couple
0:47:19 case studies. Now you can start to branch out. Now you can start to grow. And it’s just,
0:47:25 to me, the fastest way to $25,000 a month in recurring revenue is local networking.
0:47:30 All right. That’s fantastic. You heard it here first. The digital nomad life comes second.
0:47:35 What comes first is this? Boots on the ground, local effort. There’s no money hiding behind your
0:47:40 computer. I love that line. Eric, you’ve got the agency. What’s next for you? You got the family,
0:47:45 you got the travels. What’s got you excited these days? We are trying to figure out where in the world
0:47:50 we’re going to live. We need to settle down as our children are turning 18. We have another one
0:47:57 will be 18 next year. It’s time for them to start transitioning to young adult life. And literally,
0:48:04 the world is open. In three and a half years, we’ve lived in over 20 countries. And we’ve just learned
0:48:09 that we love all the places. And so what’s exciting for us is trying to figure out that.
0:48:11 Give me like your top three. Like where are your favorite spots?
0:48:19 Oh my goodness. Our favorite spot. So London would be a great to live in. We really love Buenos Aires,
0:48:26 Argentina. Argentina’s fantastic. We really like that. And let’s see a third one. Istanbul,
0:48:30 Turkey. We wouldn’t settle there. But if you’re looking for someplace to visit,
0:48:35 check out Istanbul, Turkey. It’s a great city. Very good. I’ve been fortunate enough to have
0:48:40 visited all three of those. So I will all vouch for those all very cool places. So okay, there you go.
0:48:45 This has been awesome. I’ve got a ton of notes. I know people will hopefully take a lot of action
0:48:50 based on this episode and go sell some of this service on their own. If you would like to grab
0:48:56 Eric’s local SEO side hustle checklist, I would encourage you to do that. It’s at ericdingler.com
0:49:02 slash side hustle with all the details that we talked about in this episode. That’s Eric with a
0:49:09 C, ericdingler.com slash side hustle for that local SEO side hustle checklist. Let’s wrap this up with
0:49:14 your number one tip for side hustle nation. Real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell.
0:49:20 So don’t fall into the trap that you have to be the one doing it. There are some side hustles where it
0:49:26 makes sense and things like that. But if your long-term kind of desire is to start a side hustle
0:49:33 to escape the nine to five with it, then figure out how to be a leader. If I was starting over,
0:49:39 the two things I would study starting over, and I’m talking like I’m 50. If I was going back to my 20s,
0:49:44 the two things I would study to start over is leadership and list building.
0:49:47 Okay. Well, you heard it here first. Leadership and list building.
0:49:52 Real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell. My interpretation is don’t find yourself
0:49:56 getting stuck in fulfillment. You don’t want to be the technician doing the work all day,
0:50:00 every day. You want to be building client relationships. You want to be leading the team
0:50:06 rather than getting stuck in the freelancer’s trap of selling your skills. You don’t even need to know
0:50:10 necessarily how to do this. You just need to be able to play matchmaker with the people who need
0:50:15 the service and the people who know how to get it done. That’s absolutely right. I have a 90-day
0:50:19 accelerator. I do every quarter where I take a group of people through the process of
0:50:26 gearing up to hire, onboard, and lead a remote team. If that’s something somebody would be interested in,
0:50:31 go ericdingler.com forward slash side hustle. They’ll download that. They’ll be able to reach
0:50:37 me from there and be more than happy to help somebody navigate hiring a remote team.
0:50:44 Very cool. Go check it out, ericdingler.com slash side hustle. My other note that I have here is,
0:50:48 you know, you want recurring revenue. You got to solve a recurring problem. Businesses needing to
0:50:53 increase their customer activity, like Eric said, hey, that’s a recurring problem. It’s never going
0:50:57 to go away, right? So sell that result. And if you want recurring revenue, you got to keep selling it.
0:51:00 Give those follow-up reports. Hey, before and after, here’s what we did. Here’s what we’re able to get
0:51:05 done. Here’s where we want to go next. So really cool stuff. Again, ericdingler.com.
0:51:10 The Side Hustle Show, as you may or may not know, just had its 12th birthday. And whether it’s your
0:51:14 first time listening or you’ve been here since the beginning, I appreciate you spending some time
0:51:19 with us in your earbuds today. If you’re newer to the show and you want to go a little bit deeper,
0:51:22 hey, what else you got here? It’s been around for this long. You can actually get a personalized
0:51:28 playlist at hustle.show. All you have to do is answer a few short, multiple choice questions,
0:51:32 and it’s going to recommend eight to 10 of our greatest hits to start with based on your answers.
0:51:38 Totally free. Hustle.show for that personalized playlist. Big thanks to Eric for sharing his
0:51:41 insight. And can I shout out our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone?
0:51:46 Sidehustlenation.com slash deals is where to go for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:51:51 Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That’s it for me. Thank you so much for
0:51:56 tuning in. If you’re finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:52:01 Fire off that text message. I know you got at least one friend who can take Eric’s model and run with it.
0:52:04 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen. And I’ll catch you in the
0:52:07 next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.