How to use Google My Business & Chat Bot Automations to Drive Leads

Hi and welcome to Broker Tools, where we unpack the tools, systems, and strategies that help brokers optimize the way they work. I'm Katie, your host, and today we are talking about how to drive more leads using Google reviews and AI chat bots. Joining us for this conversation is Jared from Boulder Digital. Um, if you have been keen to maximize your online local presence on Google and streamline the way your clients engage with your business without picking up the phone, then this episode is for you. Jared, welcome to the pod. Thank you. That was such a beautiful intro. I love hearing people's intros. Um, yeah. And and to be fair, like I I I used to um write most of the intros, but I've now got GPT to a really good sweet spot that it now knows how I write and it now knows what I and I kind of feed it some information, but I now don't really have to tweak too much. It's it's a really good place to be. But again, this is, you know, AI modeling at its best. 100%. I um I've got I've got one that I've modeled off the way that I email and and and it just makes me so happy because now it doesn't, you know, have that the semicolons or the m dashes and other random things like that, but also knows that I like to be direct and just try and get to the point and so it does a really good job of that as well. But your intros are on fire. I I I I love jumping on on podcasts because everyone has their own spin on how they see someone and and I like that as well because it's interesting to see how um that the people that you meet and make friends with how they how they like to see you and and the way that they see some of the things that you're doing and um you know each time I jump on one of these it's always really nice to just kind of go ah that's how they think of me. That's really nice. Well, I I I obviously and you and I have known each other probably now a year or two. Um, shout out Victor. Thank you. You're the king of always introducing me to awesome people and I have a great network of people and in go high level and this is particularly why we met because you were working alongside Victor in go high level. Um, and it and we we've already had a conversation with Anthony from Fusemate who also does go high level and just around go high level as a system. But when we were talking to Anthony, there's all these people who do do go high level, but they do it all differently. So how you run your business with go high level is completely different to the way that Anthony does it. And um sure Anthony does also AI chatbots and Google reviews, but he's not like that's not his specialist niche. He actually is really better at that content dissemination process, if that makes sense. And so the way I think about it is I've met all these cool people and I've met them all through different, you know, ways of doing it, but I'm not ever really like locked off to someone just because they are go high level or not go high level. Do you know what I mean? I think it's one of the best things to do because we we do we do builds for agencies all over the place, US, Canada, UK, here in here in Australia. And what is really cool about that is you see how different everyone runs their things. And and I I guess again why I love High Level. I really do. Um and and they sponsor me at the moment. So, I'm not just saying that because they sponsor me, but you know, I genuinely love everything that they're putting together because remember even remember even 5 years ago or 10 years ago to now the amount of different tools that you would ultimately need to try and get to talk to each other or Zap to one another um or Pably or whatever you want to use to try and get things to talk. It's so nice to actually have something now that has most things talking to one another. Um, incredible for coaches. Incredible for coaches because you know th those that wanted a school community or they wanted a membership area or they wanted a few landing pages like it's their oasis. They've got everything at their hands. Um, the the cool part of it is I meet people that have a high level account and they're like, "Oh, you know, I want to do like an NDA. I want to do a non-disclosure agreement because I don't want you jumping in there and and and looking at all of our stuff and coming up with ideas. And I can tell you right now, there is no one where I've gone into their account going, "Oh my gosh, I have to steal this." Because there's a lot of similarities to what everyone's doing. It's just that um the problem that they solve or the industry they serve is different and that's it. Um, so high level you you should be able to talk to a lot of different people because a lot of them are amazing and have different experiences or marketing experience but they lean like you said into certain things that they do really well. I run um with another couple of admins the GoHigh level Aussie mastermind group and every week when we catch up on Wednesdays the information that just pours out of people openly um about topics all of us have our own way of how we see it or do things with it but we're all using the same tool but what what I love is that is we're all using the same tool then you've got uh people like um Vit and Vit's super detailed so he'll do like an 1,800 100page SOP documentation to do something like he goes all in on it and and really breaks it down into to really micro um detail. Then you got someone like me that's like we just need to do the things that it needs to do to get it done. And so I I I document things but not to that level. Um but it's same same but different. Everyone has their own spin. And I think that my annoyance is when people hear about people that say that they do marketing or automation, they put everyone in the same bucket and they really shouldn't because we we all have the things that we do really well. Yeah. Completely. And and this is why, you know, um actually I recently released um Victor's podcast because we were just talking about, you know, how brokers are using podcasting to grow their business. Um but when it came to getting uh other leads, we went with you because you were really great at that whole, you know, Google My Business and even um local mast heads and um other brand awareness at that time. AI chat bots weren't really as awesome as they are now. So we didn't really implement that because no, that's not true. We tried to implement it, but back then when I was working with them, it sucked. bit of a So, it's obviously changed a lot since then. A skateboard with a wonky wheel. Yeah. Like it was there, but still needed a lot more fine tuning. Um, and so we obviously killed that process fast because it just wasn't really like fruitful for us and and it's changed. Um, and and then in in the end, we also used Fusemate as well because you're not the content disseminator. he had the podcast it and that was not your field of service but you did do the that um again Google review part so it was um it I guess at the end of the day why we're having this conversation is because of Google reviews because of also how far AI chatbots have come along and how you know brokers like Victor like anybody else uh are now starting to really use it to optimize. But before we go in and start rabbit hauling, because you and I are notorious, and to be fair to the audience, we've already chatted for half an hour before we even started the podcast because we're just that hardcore of a nerd. Um, but let's kind of go back in time to early day Jared. Where did he start? What was his kind of career before getting into this? Blazing. I think that would be like a great starting point. Well, I I think that the thing that one one of the nice things that I take as a compliment from people is they go, "You're not afraid to try something new." And I see this in my daughter as well. Hence why there's a guitar behind me because she's taken it upon herself that now she wants to learn guitar. Uh a few years ago, she wanted to be able to sing. She's wanted to try dancing. She does basketball. And and I really admire that about her because she's trying different things to see what what she likes and what what really revs the engine. And I've been very similar over the years where I did glazing coming out of school. I really didn't enjoy it. But you know, it was kind of like when you're young and naive and people are good communicators, you find that you follow the suggestions or the uh the accolades that they feed you of what you're doing. I I got asked to go out there with one other guy named Jai. We went um we we had a two-eek trial or a oneweek trial uh to go out and just check it out. Even though we didn't want to do it, both said we wanted to be builders. And it's interesting at the end of each day we'd catch up and be like, "Oh, what do you think?" "Oh, I don't know. What do you think?" "Oh, yeah. I guess it's all right." And then that was the whole thing every day. And there was no excitement. There was no wow. And then come the the the Friday, they're like, "You guys are fantastic. We'd love to have you as apprentices, you know, give you give you um uh what is it? Security with the job for the next four years, blah blah blah blah blah." And they're kind of like, "Okay." And then you sign the paperwork and then you're in. Um you know, it didn't really give it much thought. And I was like that for a few years going through it. And then there was one stage where I where I just become really good at that time of the thing that they had me doing. Um and so I was just really good at that. Then I found that when I was really good at it, I really enjoyed it. Um I really enjoyed it. It gave me a lot of passion. But then the the thing that stopped the passion was it had a roof on how much I could earn and that that was nothing to do with where I was working. Awesome people to work for, wasn't that? It's just you can't keep making your way up that chain. Eventually there's there's a limit where they go this is as much as we pay. Even even if we love what you're doing, this is the limit. And I just wasn't satisfied with that. And so I started finding other ways to make that work. Uh we then um I I I'd put on a heap of size going to the gym. So then I went I'll just do topless butlering. Um so then we we opened up a business doing topless butlering. that then grew to six guys and one girl covering um Tazzy. Um we ran that and you know that that's kind of the journey that that um got me into business and then looking at that opportunity of what what could I be doing that makes impact and and and is bold in what I'm doing. I had a background with my granddad for many many years. So my my mother unfortunately has got u mental health conditions and things like that going on. So from 7 to 14 I lived with my grandparents full-time purely because she just didn't want me in the house. Um to put it bluntly, but that was just the way it was played out. Um but it gave me incredible life skills by being with my grandparents because they came over from Cyprus and also from England and had nothing when they came over here. and they created a life by having um takeaway stores, apartments, antique shops, um all kinds of stuff. And when I was with them, it was non-negotiable. Every Saturday you were working. I got paid five bucks. I got to go to a roller skating ring that my granddad would pay for. That was like my break in the middle of the day. But it was his work ethics that I absolutely know gave me that drive to have the same work ethics. So I can start early in the morning and I can finish early in the morning again. It because I I just get so passionate and driven now by the things that light me up. Um especially in the marketing space. I I genuinely love helping people and I I I went to go down the the life coaching space because I felt like that was a deeper connection. Then I went into sales training because I felt like that needed to be a deeper connection. And then a couple of years back um Johan uh reached out to me, called me out of the blue. He's someone that that is um a partner and then also a referral partner. And he's like, "Yo." I'm like, "Hey." He's like, "What are you up to?" I'm like, "Well, getting ready for Christmas." He's like, "Dude, you do that sales coaching, right?" I'm like, "Yep." He's like, "But your background's marketing, right?" I'm like, "Yep." He goes, "So why the aren't you doing that?" And he jumped off the phone. He's like, "Ste." And then that thought sat with me for weeks over that Christmas period. And I was like, "Why am I not doing that? Why am I not doing that? Why am I not doing that?" And I I now know it was because I felt that I was getting a deeper connection and outcome for people by working with them with the sales coaching, but didn't realize that when people are trying to run a business and they feel confused or they feel overwhelmed with tech or don't understand the the the intric intricacies of marketing. That's what you're helping with. and and that has a a big play when three months later they actually go, you know what, I just wanted to say I'm so grateful that we were able to connect and you've helped me so much and thank you for for this or this or this. That that's that piece that gives me fulfillment. Um breaking when when you're a glazier and people are have a broken window, they're not excited to see you at all. Um, in fact, they they're more annoyed that you're there because you're fixing something that has been most cases broken by accident and now they're having to fork out money to fix it. So, they're not happy to see you, you know, doesn't really feel whereas the marketing definitely lights me up. Ah, and I guess it's it, you know, I think when it comes to marketing, some people don't even know that that's their skill like as in what is marketing like what people go, oh, I need marketing and then they might need sales. But they really go hand in hand. They are two separate jobs, but they are like as in if you don't do one well, the other suffers either way. And and the big thing is that um everyone needs to remember that you can perfect things and have all these things running really awesome um as far as foundations for your business, but without the sales the business fails and and and that is just a a genuine outcome. So the the key for me, the key thing to always be focusing on is what's the thing that's producing sales? Is it me? Is it the team? um is it are we running um anything effectively that's at least helping us to have a conversation with someone to see if we can help them to then turn it into a sale. Um but you you need to start with that. It's scrappy especially for startups. It's scrappy because you you you you're more or less trying to survive at that point you know and and we've all been in that position unless you're fortunate and you've come from some funding and things like that. In most cases, um, a lot of people have to start really scrappy and and do what they can and overcommit to stuff because they're like, I at this point, Katie, I just need you. Like, I need you to pay me money. So, yes, I'm going to take your money and I'm going to give you that thing and I'm also going to give you this, this, and this because I need you right now, you know? Yeah. We've all had that project that you're like, I got scraps for it and I not overd delivered, but you like over overd delivered. Um to the point of what I love well somebody calls it scope creeping. Um we call it absolutely is creepy creepy and don't even appreciate that when you go above and beyond. Yeah, I've hit a nerve on you. I know. I'm like I can go down rabbit holes and but I guess the difference between you and I is that we're in the consulting business. So, you sell um sales and marketing services and I sell CRM design and system automations, those types of things. And so, they don't necessarily have a set product. You have to design and make an offer that someone will want to buy. But the gift of being a broker is that you've already got readymade products, ready made to buy um opportunities, but finding the right leads to come through is its own game. And finding the right niche who would want to because you've got your product, you've got your service, you've got the basics of everything that you need to do at a normal broker level. I'm just calling it just brokering because we're going to exclude the entrepreneurial brokers who who need to design a new course or offer a side business. We're just talking about brokering because it just creates too many rabbit holes. But from a you know, you already have your product, you already have your service, it's now trying to get it into the hands of somebody who wants it. Hm. Um, what would you do like as an I know that Google Ads is probably your I mean not Google Ads, Google Reviews is your one of your favorite places to start. Well, the the reason why I think it's a great place to start is because you're always in challenge of the big banks. Always. And little known fact, they've got a lot more money than what you do. And so they always have the the marketing budget to to push out other people when they want to. And that's so different to big box retailers being able to do that to the smaller guys. They just have the bigger budgets to be able to push it out. So then what you need to do is go, right, well, what are some ways that we could effectively advertise in our local market where we can actually get some runs on the board and get some visibility. And I've worked with a lot of brokers and I I'm sure that if you're listening to this, you're going to go, "Well, I can do more than the local market and I can do all over Australia." And you absolutely can and so can every other broker. The thing is that you want to bring it back to focus because I can tell you right now being in ROS like BDM rolls where they're like you can sell everywhere in the country as opposed to hey here's a little suburb we just want you to focus on where the focus goes the energy flows and so if you've got too big a focus it's very hard to get um repetition or get runs on the board and get things happening. So you're better off to dial it down. So you dial it down and then you start looking at then your offering. And then a lot of brokers have a lot of different offerings. They have a lot of options with banks, but then they also have a lot of um options with what they can do as far as personal loans, car loans, home loans. They can really open that up as well. So, the best thing you could do and and it's not removing all of your services because we offer a lot of other things outside of our main service that we share with people. The main thing is focusing on the one thing and really getting a good hyperfocus on streamlining that to try and get it as good as you can. And then when you've got that running well and you've got money coming in and you've got everything um set up with standard operating procedures so that it runs well time and time again, day in and day out, you've just got a really nice system of how that comes together. Then explore those other services. So then explore um breaking out from the home loan market into personal loans next or car loans next, but focus on one first. And so ways that you can do that first of all is referrals, right? Referrals are massive. We've got a mortgage broker that's on the central coast in New South Wales. They came to us uh wanting more more leads, more conversations. I said, "There's people that are literally talking to your clients every day that you could potentially form a partnership with." So, what we do did is we set her up with our AI leads tool. We set up five emails over 10 days to then communicate a special offer to those people and a request to to become a joint venture together, become a partner. And I still remember when she got her first one, she was so excited because all she had to do was find relevant people that were talking to clients uh that her potential clients and then it was just autopilot. But a lot of people don't realize that things like this exist. And again, it's because a marketer will sell the that they do well because they focus on one thing primarily like what I'm sharing here. But ultimately the the other side of this is you you need to have an open mind to then look at other things because the first objection I get when when I mention this Kate is I don't want to be a spammer and I don't want to send out emails to people. It feels icky and it absolutely can be the ickiest thing on the planet. It really can be gross if you do it like that. When you're coming from a genuine connection, it's completely different. We're reaching out to skipping businesses right now in Victoria and our angle is showing them why they would want to talk to us because we're getting such good results with a couple of skipping businesses already. We just rep We're just showing them how we want to replicate that. It's like, hey, here's two markets where we're doing this really well. This is what we're doing. If you're interested, I've just recorded a quick Loom video. Let me know if that's something you're interested in. We'll also wave the setup fee purely because we've come to you direct and we're not running ads to find you. If that's interesting, let me know. Right? And then we've got people that are coming back to us. We then have people that are coming back to us with interest. We have people coming back to us and they're saying we're already doing something like this. There is no one doing what we're doing right now in the GP space um that that I know of. And when you then tell me you've got someone internally doing it, I I know I can call it out, but there's a way to do that. So naturally then all I did there was run an audit where we could show visibly how they were showing up in the market and they had already watched all the videos that we shared with um the the breakdown on how the service works. So now they've gone from where they thought they were doing well to then the reality check of oh maybe things could be a bit better. No different to a broker reaching out to a referral partner because some of these people already have referral partnerships. they have referral partnerships that they kind of just do because they're there, but then they're they're a little bit old and tired and they're not actually feeling like they're mutually beneficial anymore, but they're just kind of like, well, you know, it's just easy to give these people to Tom, like here's another one for Tom. Whereas, if you can prove that you actually have a genuine interest to become a friend and partner with these people, very different. So that one way alone can actually help you to connect with people that doesn't have ongoing cost to it apart from maybe where you might be doing a referral fee. But most people should be happy to pay a referral fee for a lead coming in and turning into business because you're only paying for it if it turns into business. M you're ultimately being given a warm lead that you haven't had to run ads for, that you haven't had to go out of your way to warm up that's coming to you and then has a third party referral which then builds credibility in that. Right? Because that person has said, "Hey, I trust Katie here to take care of you. I'm going to connect you guys up together." That's got to be worth something. And so really, most people do between 10 to 20% in a referral. If someone gets paid to refer people, I promise you, it is so much different the way that they work to find business for you as opposed to when you're just doing it out of the good of your heart. And I have no issue with paying people referrals. I' I've got one guy that refers six figures worth of work to us a year, right? And and he wants nothing for it because he just knows that we do a good job. And and I'm not trying to incentivize them, but I am because I I always tell them, you're saving me advertising dollars by connecting me with these people. So, I'm more than happy to pay for it. Yeah. And and I mean, not to keep at the end of the day, Goh High Level has a great um affiliate marketing part that makes it easier. So, if someone came through a link, that would be great. Um and so you can do like a genuine um other form of referral marketing. However, I think with referral marketing often what I found is that people will um also check you out online themselves. So, they will go, "Oh, okay. You've referred me this person." Then I'm going to go online and confirm you are whoever you say you are. And then they might look at your website. But as you and I have really I guess noticed that Google My Business is also becoming one of those big key parts of that process. PE people read reviews because they ultimately want to know again third party data what people really think of that business, right? Because it's it's one it's another thing that's less controlled by business. It's controlled by the people that are going out of their way to jump on there and leave leave a review. And that that plays a large part in building credibility, but it also right now plays a large part in visibility. So, as an example to that, we're in Melbourne. I went to the used um which is what that cool drum head is in the background. And I was sick as a dog um last year when when we went up there. I got really sick and I just wanted to literally enjoy a pali. But to start off with, I looked up pubs near me and I got a range of pubs, but they they weren't really near me. And I thought, "Oh man, this is going to be a hike or or an Uber to get round to these." But then what I did is I knew I wanted the Palmy, right? So I I went um Palmy near me. What it did is it didn't pull up the pub. Then it pulled up the pub because of people's reviews where they mentioned how good the Palmy was. So notice the keyword in that review also plays a significant part, not just the reviews. So since June last year, we've got a data scientist that jumps in and checks out everything online and then works out what's important to Google with the Google maps. And right now the order is Google reviews, right? The keywords in those reviews, the frequency of how often you get those reviews, how often do you post, and then how often you're actually uploading a new image to your GPP. That's the order of how it works. Most people have got reviews, they've got 100, 200 and they stop because back in the old days that was how you you could do it. I'll build my credibility. I'll get a few hundred reviews. Now I don't have to focus on it because I've completed I've completed that marketing thing that I had to do for my business. But then they no longer put the effort into their Google reviews and then that's where they start to drop. So sometimes you don't actually have to have more reviews than everyone else. Originally, people thought that, but if you've got regular reviews coming in, that outweighs not just the amount of reviews that you got from 10 years ago and never put in your efforts ever again. So, you want to try and get reviews from people, but then you want to try and get keywords in there. So, personal loan, home loan, car loan, refinance, uh mortgage broker, um all all of those keywords that are relevant and and some will be more relevant than others. some some of these brokers that are listening to this won't have some of these services, but focusing on your service keywords because ultimately that's where you want the visibility. Then they write their review, have those keywords in it. So just like then when old mate sick and trying to find a palmy, it's not just the business showing up, it's a business showing up from the reviews that are actually feeding that information into it as well. Okay. The other thing then is now AEO's come out, answer engine optimization. So you've got Google AI and Plexity and things like that, chat GPT. When you're looking at information, it needs to get it from somewhere. Originally, at one point, they were pulling information from the questions and answers tab inside the Google business profile. Now, you still have one, but it's not visible anymore. So, what we did is we created a widget so that we can actually put questions and answers directly onto the business's website because we know that the AI is still pulling that, right? We've got an appliance repair business um that's based up on the mainland and they literally told me that they had someone search for them on GPT and that's how they found them by asking a question that was relevant to the Q&A section on their website and then they ended up buying a white good from them. Oh, right. So that just shows you how feeding that information works. But if we didn't pivot to suit the new model of them removing the Q&A then and and not putting that there, that wouldn't have created the the the process for the algorithm or or the the search engines to pick that up to actually then provide it back to people. So there's a lot of this at the moment, even Google at the moment, if if you look at Google results and I look at Google results, there's reports this week that people are saying it looks different for some to to others. And again, this is because Google is now making a shift in what it's trying to experiment with AB testing. It's marketing. So it's now trying to work out what it thinks it should be doing, where it should be pulling the information from. But one of the core things that's still pulling information from is your Google business profile, right? So you need to make sure that it's relevant, that the hours are up to date, that you're posting regularly, that you have uh special offers on there, that you've actually got all your services highlighted. People in like two or three services on their GP, and it can take way more than that. It can take way more. So actually filling out each of those individual areas will help you to actually get all of that reach and increase your visibility. So that that way you don't need to be standing in your business to be found on Google. You should be able to be within 2 hours of traveling around your location and then being fully visible for keywords with your Google business profile. Yes. And as you were going through this, it made me really realize that Google, while it's a finical place to be, um, it is sometimes your best referral partner massively. And, and as long you've given your referral partner enough information, aka the question and answers, good reviews, they're going to continually refer you clients. Correct. It's the same as posting on your Google business profile. Who does that? Most people don't. They some some people don't even know that that's an option on their Google business profile. And this is why Katie, we get some crazy ass results for people because we enter their market and no one gives a about their Google business profile. We add our tech into it and it just lights up, right? And and I mean lights up. We had a transport business right in the CBD of um of Sydney, like right at the harbor there. In the first month, they've gone from 20 plus position, so anywhere beyond 20 to then being in spot one, two, and three, right? We then had a skip bin business that had no website, a Facebook page, didn't even have a Google business profile. We helped them set that up. We put the tech on and within the first 14 days, they ranked for eight out of 10 of their keywords in spot one, two, or three. That person then had someone order a skip bin. They then ordered five more skip bins. Pretty much covered what he was paying us to use it for the entire year. Yeah. And I guess this is where that whole CRO or conversion rate optimization um really matters in the process because um a lot of people think oh this is time consuming and this is so much work and and then like if you're trying to do it as yourself as a broker cuz some of like you know cost of investment is is a big hurdle especially in the world of AI and marketing. managing just your profile by yourself can have phenomenal amounts of results without overinvesting. That I think is what you're really saying. Yeah. And the other part with with doing your content like social media content and things like that, we have some we've had times where our clients are like, "Oh, it it feels like it's just got a lot of keywords in it." It's like, well, keep in mind we're trying to do two things here when we're creating content. We're creating content for people to visibly see. We're also creating content for machines because it's machine learning as well, right? So, it's not just Google AI that we're doing the machine learning for. If we're posting it on Facebook, well, guess what? There's Metal Lama on there that will then pull that that information when it's trying to look online in that local search. So, we're trying to train all of those AO engines that ultimately are not part of Google, but can be affected with Google. That's how we find that we do this. And you can do all of this stuff yourself. You absolutely can do all this yourself, but you've got to be prepared to post multiple times throughout the week to be able to do your questions and answers, to be able to convince someone to write reviews with keywords in it, to then reply with keywords in it, to then be able to upload images, but before you upload the images, put the keywords into the old image of the tags in the back of the image before it's uploaded. That takes a lot of time to try and get all that right. or you work with someone at a fraction of that price and then you can actually have that all done for you and the only thing that you need to do then is provide images and ask people for reviews but then you've got a system that can handle all of that for you because anything that we try to do with people and you're you're very much the same right when we're talking about CR CRM and automation it's not to add more to their plate it's to actually things off their plate and and that's what we're what ultimately we're selling we're we're selling time and money is what we're ultimately selling. There's freedom as well. They're typically the three levers, but it's normally saving them time and money. So, they're saving time by not having to do it themselves, but then they're making money because they're getting the visibility from from being seen online, right? And then for them, they go, "Okay, I can warrant the investment for this because I'm getting it back." That being said, we have hospital businesses that that ask to work with us and sometimes I knock them back and and it's nothing other than the ROI because I don't want to set people up to do that when they're selling coffee and making like a dollar $2 off a cup of coffee. That's a lot of coffee you've got to sell to to use some of these solutions, right? Whereas email marketing could be very good for them because they could reach out to like start being a bit more corporate and reach out to businesses around them. Whereas when you're talking about brokering, there's better margins. So that means that they they aren't like h I I'm like I I need at least nine jobs to cover this investment. It's way less, right? Because sometimes it might even just be one job that's going to cover that. Which then means you're talking about trying to help them find one job every 30 days, which is not a big ask, right? to have the ROI there. So, that's what we look at as well is just making sure that it makes sense, which is why we tend to work with people that are more service-based um rather than people that that are selling, you know, lowpriced items. Yes. Um I was going to go down the rabbit hole of the American um visiting the Brooklyn um coffee. Anyway, let's not go down that rabbit hole. Um because they created a whole miniseries. Anyway, we are not here to turn this into a little uh TV show. Um, coming back to um what I I actually realizing is I guess there is a tiny gap in and around getting Google reviews. Um I actually did a podcast with the guys from CADM and they have a side business called Testimonial Donuts. So that actually helps solve that collection of test testimonial part for you. Um and so this is where systems and processes really really really actually shine because marketing is at the end of the day a whole funnel of actions working towards systemizing streamlining and so that you can do this on a re rinse and repeat. So, sure, you've gone out and got a referral partner. They've spoken to you or you're someone in your lead circle or key interest group, have done a Google search and have found your Google business or Google My Business profile, which has hopefully got all these great reviews in it. You've done enough information content supply that they're like, "Oh, I understand. I know who you are as a business. I know what you do. um I'm now interested in contacting you. Where would you take people along this journey? Because this I think is the fun part with AI chatbots. Well, I think that that the the interesting part of this is it goes back to what we were saying about when you're advertising what happens after the ads, right? The Google business profile is almost like the running ad. Like the ad worked, they read the reviews. They like what they're about. They're now going to the next step, which is clicking the button to if they click to call, great. you've got someone that's potentially a lead, but if they've clicked to go to the website, we still don't have details yet. Like we we're we're we're getting them closer, but we haven't got it yet there yet. So, some ways of doing this is then lead magnets. I I did a video on this um to upload to YouTube because again, I've automated a process through high level where people can DM a text message uh sorry, send a keyword to a text message or they can DM it through Facebook or Instagram. Mhm. goes through an automated process, collects a name, collects an email address, and then it sends out the the lead magnet, and the lead magnet's more or less a checklist for for AI and automation, right? A broker business could do the exact same things. Um, we've done this with with a broker before where we made a lead magnet, which was um the seven mistakes when refinancing a home as an example. You can then go on GPT or an AI tool and get it to make a cool 3D mock of the cover. you can then um you can then uh go into Canva and make the document, you know, like there's there's templates that sort of do what what you'll need it to do. We've got we've got templates that we give away to people so that they can literally go through and just make one within a few minutes, especially with GPT because you can get the words in there and then reword it to be your own. But then you've got a document that then lives and breathes through your social media channels, but also on your website, which is another additional marketing touch point like you were suggesting a few minutes ago, where you can actually warm those people up and build trust in you, the company, and the product by them downloading it. In the end of the lead magnet, you might have the next call to action, which might be to check out the YouTube channel where we're breaking down these things. or it might be, hey, um, book in this time slot to get this free loan report. Whatever the case may be, right? You can choose a call to action, but ultimately what you're doing is you're trying to get them to absorb time with you in market so that when they're ready to take the next step that they're then moving forward. Um, real estate agents, not many do this, but real estate agents and mortgage brokers could literally open up a membership area and actually make mini programs on how to do this stuff. like little clips like 30 some could be as small as 30 seconds to three minutes long. It's like in this one I'm going to show you how you can um look at saving money for for your home deposit. And it might be right. First thing we're going to do is we're going to download all of our statements and then we're going to look for the common things that are reoccurring uh things that are coming out of the bank yada yada yada. What we see here are these. Now what we're going to do is go back to them, ask to speak to their manager, see if we can get a better price. I literally did this years ago. Someone was showing me to do this going through a wealth program and it's amazing. I I I even did it I even did a deal with Audible. I you not I did a deal with Audible and I said you had me on N bucks or whatever it was and now it's on 16. I would like to remain on the price that I'm on. And they're like we're sorry we can't do that. I'm like I thought you might say that. I'd like to talk to your manager please. And then they put me through to the manager. I spoke to them and what they were doing, they were manually going in each month and changing the price down for me. Now, that's audible, Katie. What? You just made me remember this just because we're talking about money and finance, but that that was the coolest ever. I should make a video on this, but nothing like negotiating. But that was that's the power of this, right? is is even that's a video that hash every broker is now going to make a video and steal this from me after they listen to your podcast like right here's something that I've tried don't think this is a live experiment like and you should do some basic testing like we talked about other little testing things that we were before we even started the pod but you have to start with something small you have to start with something educational that helps people because there's just too much gaps in the understanding of what it is you do. So, you need to break that barrier down to make it easier for people to go, "Yep, I'm the right person to help be of service to you." Correct. And and with that lead magnet, right, you can then break that into a chatbot to take over that conversation. Once you've once you've gone through and you've got their details, you can then break it into a chatbot to then stay in contact with them. the the benefit of a chatbot and and we do voice and chat. My preference wouldn't have been chat years ago because it was rubbish. Whereas now, I think that it's where it needs to be to the point where when you're running ads or running any anything that starts a conversation with someone, and this is great for brokers to know, we have people that will pick up the phone and call a lead within 3 minutes of them putting in their details. Why? Because most of them will still be doing this on their phone at that stage, right? Because they've just been on on the form and filled it out. What we found was people still weren't answering the phone even though you were quick to try and give them a call, right? If you leave it too long, it pretty much is impossible. Whereas, when we had the chatbot reach out to them and go, "Hey, are you looking for more information or are you ready to book a call?" It didn't matter which option they chose. We just wanted them to actually respond to us so that it could then go into its process of qualifying that person and booking in a call to the point where 80% of our calls that are booked now are purely done by the chat agent. Nice. The reason why that's powerful or I believe it's powerful is because a voice AI still doesn't feel personable, right? You don't feel like you're connecting like you and I are talking now. Message absolutely still feels personable because the way that it replies is still very humanike and so it does feel very real. I know that even when I've been on sales calls for our business and they're like, "Oh yeah, I don't think that that stuff works." And then I can pull open the tab for their contact and go, "This conversation that you had," they're like, "Yeah, I'm that was completely done with the chat agent." And they're just like, you know, like, "Oh." So that's why I think chat bots work extremely well. The other part is by having a chat agent on your website. Sometimes your website, your website's your brochure. It's meant to sell who you are and what you do really well and your contact details. Sometimes it doesn't always hit the mark for people when they're looking for specifics. Whereas when you've got an AI agent, it gets better over time because you'll see it someone ask a question and it'll be like uh um it didn't answer that very well. but then you'll provide it that answer and then next time when it gets asked that question, it then knows how to respond to it. So over time, you're actually leveling up your chat agent to be more qualified at handling inquiries or questions that are coming through. But by doing so, then that agent can help that conversation, qualify them, and potentially book them in as well, which I guess is like this whole world of optimization. like you're trying to reduce the friction of a one getting a lead, two, you need to give enough information so that they actually know that you're the right person to do the job. Especially in the world of brokering, like trust is paramount. Yeah. And you're not going to get trust just by having a really blank space of we do brokering. Um we've had a lot of conversations along the different pods saying you have to pick a niche. Like it's at the end of the day people need to talk to people and they need to feel the humanness behind it cuz if you can't feel the humanness then things kind of you know go wayside and it's becoming more and more important and it's becoming more and more relevant in the world of AI and um by you know what we were saying earlier with having um referral partners and having your landing page or even just your Google business all up to date with the right amount of information so that that person can say, "Yeah, I'm actually going to invest my time and energy to go to their website. I'm going to invest my time and energy to chat with their chatbot." Um, it makes so much more difference because it is all an investment. Correct. And it's an investment of their time as well. So, you you need to be providing enough value where they actually want to give up their time. And time is one of the easiest things to get people to give up, but they still don't want to give it up freely. No. You know, even as a broker, you know, yourself, you don't have time for half the stuff and and so if you're super busy, just imagine your clients. That's right. Their minds are too. That's right. And and the reality of this as well is most people that are dealing with this industry, if they're looking at home loans and things like that, they're genuine gen generally available outside of ours, which is when you're not or you shouldn't be is the reality. you have the family lifestyle or a personal lifestyle that allows you to take that time off and correct and this is where the AI chatbot if you don't yet have the time can actually helps like supplement so they can give you time. It it is absolutely that I remember um last year we're running the chat agent and we watched a bloke have a conversation with our chat agent and book in a call while we're watching a Jack Jumper basketball game in the lounge room. Right. And and that is so good. Like that is such a good feeling knowing that you can comfortably leave an AI chat agent to actually have that conversation and then know that it's going to be able to handle it and book in a call or handle objections while you're still living your life and being able to enjoy things like watching the basketball and things like that, you know, because you don't want to be doing that at night. I I know I used to before AI where I'd then all of a sudden be there on autopilot talking to people. I don't want to do that. No. Yeah. Sorry. I was having flashbacks to my day as a social media communications manager. Um like when a post comes up and a comment comes back and anyway um it it having AI chatbot obviously really helps bring you that peace of mind that obviously what the world is really high intense. You have to be on it. You have to be communicating. And what AI is actually affording people is this break where you've actually trained it to do some empathy things. Um I know that sometimes AI is even better at empathy than humans because it'll notice it a little bit better. Uh sometimes sometimes I agree with depends depends on the person because some people have a personality of a brick and um you know when when someone like that's in business it's very difficult to try and share any um empathy towards someone whereas an agent can pick up on that relatively pretty pretty good. They can also pick up when people are pissed off and know when to shut up um which is another important thing as well because it still comes with challenges where people don't want to talk to a chat agent. You know what I mean? They they still want to be able to talk to a person. And the key thing there is it's it's helping you and your clients to help provide them with a service in times where you're not available. Mhm. Right. Because you're not always available. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. You could be a roofer stuck on a roof um and and you're dropping down a piece of roofing iron. You're not going to be available for for people while that's happening. And it's no different to a broker than being in in a meeting with a client. You're not readily available to respond while you're in there. So, it's it's not there as a replacement. It's there as an aid. And then the aid kicks in where it needs to. And then the human takes over from there. Yes. And I think it if it doesn't really matter if you're actually onboarding a human staff member versus an AI agent staff member. They they're both actual staff members for you. And sometimes either staff member may not be able to handle the inquiry to the fullest and it needs to come back to you. But by having the buffer there, by having that system and process in there for you, it really does give you the space to actually build out your business so that it can grow in the way that you need to because as a human, you only have so much time and energy in the world to do all of these things. Plus, so lead generation obviously is one of your key pillars, but then servicing the client and making sure those uh settlements occur, that's the larger part of your business. And it's better that you focus on that area than the upfront stuff. Yeah. Well, once you've got those things in play and you've got good good repetition in your lead sources and things coming through, then then it's where you get to do what you do best, you know, as opposed to then freaking out trying to scramble to try and find new business each month. It's trying to it's them being able to handle what it is that you do really well. Yeah. And a lead genen person or a marketer, you you you came into that role to be able to help people with financing. Yes. And and I was telling Jared this before the pod. I am always amazed by the value of what you as a broker do with lender policy. Like the if this then that finding that right lender that whole mechanism of finding the right opportunity, it's a big job. Um and I do not have time to to map it in my own head. And so hiring you to map that for me as a a client who might want a loan. Um that's the peace of mind that you give people. I think that there there's there's so many ways that it can be stripped apart. It's just working on the things that move the needle. And you don't have to do things perfectly. A lot of people get caught in that and that's why they don't move forward. It's being able to go right now, if I just did this thing, it would make a big enough impact in in what we're doing right now. And and then just start with that. You know, it's it's better to start than not start at all. Um, you know, I've seen people that um have these incredible ideas and then they just don't push the go and then it's too late by the time they go to do it. um or or new things become available where they go this would make this thing better and so they continue to sit there trying to make it perfect a lot of the time untested and they don't even know if people want it and then they put it out in market put all of that time all of that money sacrifice to get there to then find out it's a flop I I just don't don't want to do that with myself or anyone that we're working with. Yeah. if you were to suggest I guess a starting place around you know Google reviews or Google my business rather and AI chat bots even if it's just three simple actions what would you suggest? So, the the first one that I'd suggest is asking for reviews because a lot of people say that they ask for reviews. They don't really ask for reviews. Um, as an example, um, get yourself um an NFC card. If you see people, you know, in in real life, get an NFC card and then that way when you're asking for the review and they're all pumped up and they're all excited about the finance that you've got them, it's very easy for them to then leave a review because they're still feeling that emotional charge of how you've helped them. Whereas what you'll find and and every one of you would have experienced this, someone goes, "Yeah, yeah, I'll leave a review." And then a few days pass and you reach out, you reach out, you reach out, you feel like a broken record and you never get the review. So, it's trying to make it very easy for people to leave reviews. So, the review cards work really well. The other thing that you then want to do is um make sure that you're emailing the review link to people as well. So, you know, have it so that you're in front of them and you're asking in your email so that you're trying to get it. Don't don't make your review process part of another process. I see a lot of people do this where they go, I I've got it in my invoice at the bottom. That's not telling them to do it. That's just going if you feel kind enough, it's there. Whereas when your communication is directly asking for the Google review, it's very different. The other part of that is ultimately if you're in front of those people, you can ask them to leave keywords within those reviews, you know, the ones that you're working on. Um it's not always the case. So, you know, if you need to find someone to help you with that, use a partner that does use that kind of technology to um to help you utilize AI and also utilize writing testimony uh reviews that that are similar to it. And then you've got one of the biggest shifts there. The next thing you can do is you can watch a YouTube video and go, how do I optimize my Google business profile? And sit in there and try and do all that yourself, just knowing that you've done the core part of optimizing it. There's then the care that comes after it. But those two things would be enough for you to start to see some improvements. When it comes to the chat agent, don't don't go with something cheap. Don't go with a $15 option that you might be seeing um getting around online. We've had plenty of people come to us and change over to our service because they realize that those things don't work. So, find someone that that sees what you're trying to do, but don't try and overd deliver on it. Don't try and make the chat agent perfect. It's there to be be used as an additional tool to build credibility to build trust and then to ultimately get that person feeling comfortable to do the next thing. And ultimately that's picking up the phone or that's filling out a contact form. Simple things. Simple things. And and when it comes to I guess the chat agent you if you happen to have go high level or um others I'm thinking HubSpot even has it too. They've got already got it inbuilt so you don't need to. So just obviously know what kind of software you already have because some of it already comes in built. If not um you know Jared, this is where you really come in and uh probably can guide people if they wanted to reach out to you. Where do they go? What do they do? Yeah. Well, I think that that there's doing it yourself, but you know, you can give me a pair of scissors. It doesn't make me a barber. And I I certainly don't try and do my own loans or anything like that. I I go to someone that that I've used uh that I met through I believe through a referral. Um and and then I still use them to this day. Um so I think that that the key thing there is you can do the Google business profile stuff and get some of that off the ground relatively easy. A chat agent does require someone to be there or someone with a team that can keep an eye on it and stop it from going a little bit awall because ours still occasionally goes awall. Um, and we're pretty sophisticated with how we've built that one out, but it still has its moments. Um, where, you know, it might repeat a reply and then they go, "Yes, proceed." And then it'll say the same thing again over and over and over. You know, we don't want the chat a Yeah. Like AI is just not perfect yet. You know, it has moment still has hiccups. There might be down uh maintenance being done with GPT. You've got to switch it to another provider. All these other things. Um, but if people wanted to reach out to us, it's Boulder Digital Ber. uh not with a you um as as people might often think, but you can absolutely go there. We've also got all of our social channels. We're pumping stuff out on those. We've also got Google reviews, so you can check out some of them yourself. Um but ultimately, that that will uh be where we would love to have a conversation with you if you are genuinely looking for a partner that that wants to to really try and help where they can. We don't promise like massive outcomes. We don't sell hope marketing. We we look at doing logical things that provide logical results, you know, because there's too many people selling hope marketing to make you feel good and then six months later your bank account's empty and you're upset with the person you're working with. We're not like that. And so, if you're someone that wants that help, we would love to have that conversation with you. I would love to have that conversation with you. But I um I think that you are doing a great job and you're doing the best that you can and there's a lot of free resources. Don't get caught up in them. Just focus on a couple of things that can move the needle. And if you would love to have a conversation with me like I would you, I'd be more than happy to. Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me on the pod, Jared. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Having the conversation. You're welcome. Um, so if you want us to have another conversation um about anything that we've already tal talked about, please feel free to have your comments below. Um, I will also have the details to Jared in the link down in the comments section below. Not the comment section, the description section. You know what I mean? Yeah, do the things, you know. Um, and we will come back to you. Thank you again, Jared. I really appreciate you. Likewise. I appreciate you. See you guys. Bye.