More Traffic with local SEO on google maps | Derren Tessitore

Looking to get more traffic from google Maps? Check out our guide on how to do local SEO on Google Maps!

In this video, we'll show you how to optimize your business for google Maps by including key search terms and phrases. By doing local SEO on Google Maps, you'll be able to reach a wider audience and increase traffic to your business!

we're going to show you how to get more traffic from Google using local SEO. By optimizing your locations on Google Maps, you'll be able to rank higher in organic search results and attract more organic traffic to your website.

If you're looking to improve your website's visibility and traffic, then this video is for you! By following these simple steps, you'll be able to take your website to the next level and see a growth in your online traffic!


Darren’s down-to-earth humor compels audiences to laugh while they learn. He engages groups from the moment he steps in front of them and leaves them with empowering tools and focused mindsets that they will use long after the lights have gone out on the event. Darren is passionate about people, leadership and successful businesses. He is especially inspired to help people take their companies to higher levels.

 

 

Darren is the owner and CEO of Thrive Management a technology consulting firm and the creators of Thrive Reviews, reputation management company.  Darren has delivered seminars on hundreds of stages across the US for the past 15 years, personally training over 20,000 business leaders.


https://darrentessitore.com/

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hello hello everybody how you doing my wonderful friends. So some quick housecleaning, if you're watching this on the video, I am probably in the hands around like a madman. But if you're listening to this audio You are Love from the courthouse and also with House Cleaning is I am getting more and more serious with podcasting and YouTube and Tiktok literally Instagram I don't know how I feel about that and have so much success of it. But I asked for you guys it costs doesn't cost a dime, any nothing. Just look up my YouTube Tik Tok with Sam, whatever you prefer is Josh Bolton show. It has Subscribe buttons. If you ever get a chance, put me on mute on unit adblockers off preferably so I can get some data but you have it on more power to you to just like interact comment, I really can emphasize another lights in the comments. Can you also leave reviews on whatever platform you're listening to this to include YouTube, to talk will be tremendous for me is huge. I because I want to get some data so I can also better see who I should invite. And I can also say to more higher profile people, Hey, I've got a consistence 30,000 people, would you be willing to give me an hour of your time and explain everything you know about this topic. So that's where I'm just doubling down on that. Also, if you want to send me a message, if you don't want to be public about it, maybe it's a little it's a critique the fields a little me, I welcome it, there's a tab on my website, that actually you can send me a message and I do get emails on it. And I will actually read it and really good hope personally is knowing that. Otherwise, just know that your information is heard. Other than that. Now let's get right into Darren, Darren was talking about Thrive preview, flower. You are a entrepreneur, small business owner at a coffee shop, restaurant, dog groomer who needed to survive off local traffic, he would definitely get a notepad a piece of paper pen, if you have a roll of digital stuff, type it on your iPhone, whatever you need to do. Darren gets really deep on how to grant without having to use a lot of anything you could actually a lot of what he says you can do on your own without him. Like hey software, though, is that the next caliber really Reiber view helps you get listed. So when you type in my coffee shop near me, your coffee shop will come up. So I don't want to steal the thunder away from Darren. Just a pull funfact me there and get right into it. basic introductions and then we just go right to it with talking about so here we go. Have a good one guys.

intro guy: 3:06

Welcome to the Josh Bolton show. Die interesting and inspiring conversation. And now your host Josh Bolton, you want to delimit it yourself and your background and who you are.

Unknown: 3:21

Sure. Yeah, guys, thanks for having me. My name is Darren desultory. I am the founder of Thrive reviews, we basically help local businesses get found. I started this company about two years ago with the intention of helping the local businesses keep themselves up and can get themselves found amongst all the clutter and distractions on the internet. Basically, businesses have been driving themselves more and more towards the local, or people have been driving themselves more and more to searching for local businesses, and also doing lots of research before they ever get to that business. So I started out in technology consulting, I've been doing that for about 25 years now. I go and I help companies to streamline process and improve productivity. And that resulted in me running into a bunch of clients that needed help getting found. And I realized that there was this need for a service to do this. And that's where we found 35 reviews. So now what we do is we have a whole technology and a team of people that go in and help you to make it so that you can get found and make it super easy and automate as much of it as we can then train you and your staff on how to continue to grow that local presence by getting reviews and getting posts and getting mentions on the internet, social media and things like that. So that's what we do, man it's it's a lot of fun. It definitely helps a lot of businesses and helps people to keep themselves in the the public eye of their local searchers. Yeah,

Josh Bolton: 4:54

I 100% agree like we were chatting about earlier before I turn the mic on. It was the The fact that people are just typing in whatever near me, and it's just it's more vital than ever, because that's like the new phonebook.

Unknown: 5:07

Right? Is it most people don't realize this, but their phones have location settings turned on. So when you search for something like a dentist or a chiropractor, it's automatically going to look for whatever's near you. And then Google's algorithm is going to do its thing to show you what it thinks is more relevant? Well, if you if you know what that algorithm is, and you know what Google's looking for, you can easily tap into that. And then you just have to make it a point for you and your business to keep that in your mind that, look, we need to work on these points on a daily basis so that we stay ahead of the curve, watch percent.

Josh Bolton: 5:41

Yeah, it's, especially with COVID. Everything has shifted. And just like the whole Old workout, your phone, like I said, just type it in. And there's a few times I've looked at restaurants, and they get like great reviews and stuff. And I show up and it says an absolute dumpster fire. And I'm like, Why didn't no one mentioned this in the thing. And then I'm sure you notice on the back end, like you see me go to it, and then leaving it behind me thing. I'm sure that location also talks to Google.

Unknown: 6:09

Exactly. It knows the traffic, it knows when it's busy, you've seen a little thing on Google Maps busy at this time. Right? It knows how many people were there, we have our location services turned on or at the location and it knows that we're there, or it knows that we're not and knows how long we stayed there. It has a whole science behind what it's doing, right. And the key is just to be able to kind of tap into the basics and follow some simple rules on a daily basis that any business can do that will literally help rank you, above all your competition.

Josh Bolton: 6:36

So what's some of the ways like you were mentioning to me earlier? What are some of the ways where I'm going to be able to afford a$3,000 a month campaign, but what are the options to you that I could start implementing with thrive?

Unknown: 6:49

That's great. So thrive is not a $3,000 a month solution. We're very affordable to local businesses, our services are anywhere from 100 to $300 a month, depending on what you have us do. So it's super, super affordable. But the first thing that you can do, if you want to do it yourself is go to Google Maps and claim your business, you can go to business.google.com, you can search for your business, you can claim it as your own. And then just take the time and go through the steps of setting up that business so that it's one in the right category, super, super important. And then add any subcategory that has anything to do with your business. Write a really good description with a bunch of keywords in and around your business. You can even use chat GPT to do that. If you want to go check GPT I'm a dentist and I specialize in dental implants. Please write me 750 character article on with keywords on how good we are. Boom, there you go, copy pasted, edit a little bit up, copy, paste it right into into your Google profile. And there's your description, add some nice photos, make sure those photos that you add are properly what's called geo tagged, you can google how to geotag a photo. That means that the photo shows that it was taken at that location. Google really likes that, get a picture of the front of your building your store your entrance, so they know how to find you get some good clean photos of the inside. You know, don't post dirty pictures of the messy background, make it look nice. Get some good pictures of your staff. We all have these iPhones and Androids now that have like these 4 million megapixel cameras that are like super high quality, you can use your camera phone and take a great picture, put some good quality pictures so that it shows who you are and what you look like. Right. And then once you've done all that and you clean up your profile, the next thing you want to do is make sure that you're listed in all the directories. I was just showing us a second ago, our listing our s local SEO tool, take a minute, I'll put it we'll put a link in the bio of this go to our local SEO to do a free audit, figure out where your searching is lacking where I can show you real quick, let me show them, I was gonna say can you give them a demonstration, it definitely can. So this is our local SEO tool. When you come here, you enter in your business contact info and email and then scan your business. When you scan your business, you're going to get a report just like this, you can email or download, it's going to show you your local SEO score. And this is gonna basically be looking at your listings, your local rankings and your reputation. Right. So listings means all of these different directories like City Square, and your town, VIP, local man, Facebook, Yelp, all these other being all these other listings across the internet. These are directories just like Google Maps, Google wants to know that you are legitimate. And the way you show them that you're legitimate is making sure that your name, your address, and your phone number shows exactly the same across the entire net network internet on all of these listing services. This is called a nap score. Right? So what we do our software will automatically push you out to all of these websites and update them every 30 days to make sure that if any changes were done, boom, they're fixed. So this is keeping you up across the internet looking exactly the same, Google is going to love that. So you can go and do this yourself, you don't need us, you can go to Foursquare and enter all of your information, or you can hire us to do it for you. And we'll automate it for you. And then what you want to do is you want to make sure that your local look at your local ranking performance. Now this is based on a couple of key criterias one, so here we see dentist, so this is where he's listing as a dentist, right? He's 12 in his local area, he's two here, three here, three here, and so forth. Right now this is looking at one, does he have the right category on his Google profile as dentist, right. Does he have lots of reviews? Is his listing service well done, as you have lots of photos that have key geotagging in them? Right? And then there's another key thing which people don't realize, is he responding to his reviews and putting keywords in those responses, that's what we actually highly recommend Thrive reviews, we'll respond to all your reviews for you. We have people based in Tampa Bay, Florida, that will physically go in and respond to your reviews, these are humans that are writers, they'll go in, you know, write great reviews and put the keywords is no automation to that we think the human touch is still super important. So this is not robotic, right. So having all that will help you increase your ranking. And then what you want to do, obviously, is you want to get lots of reviews. So you can look at Atlanta Dental Center has 627 reviews based on 104 average in the industry. So they're getting lots of reviews, which is great, they're responding to the reviews, it's probably a couple other things in here, like their geotag ins may be off a couple things that we can do to kind of get this score up, or they may not be trying to rank for dentists, maybe they're trying to rank for dental implant, but you can use our tool here and you can actually smell it. And you can see where they rank for dent where you rank for whatever keyword you want. This tool will go in here and it will search and tell you where you are, which is pretty good. Better. Yeah, he did a little better locally. Right. And he I think he does a little bit of I'm not sure anyway, I'm not gonna guess. But it depends on what kind of business you're in. Right? Like, we just did one for this martial art studio, right. And he's got a really low online score, his directory listings are really off. He and then looking here, but this is under how much our martial arts show arts Yeah, let's search that and see where we come in. Here we go. So he's number six. He's number one in these areas, which is great blacking on the east side, and a little south and north. But he's doing pretty good for martial arts. Right? He's number one here. So now if you look here, his reviews, he's only got 21 has every industry, I just 178. So we need to get more reviews, he needs to fix his listings. And I bet if he just does that, he's gonna start popping up in one and two, and three, and all these other ones as well, right? Anyway, that's our free SEO tool, I highly recommend anyone go and do it, it doesn't cost you anything. It's a free service that we offer. And you can come into this thing right here and you can mess around with the keywords that you want to rank for. And go and do some research, do some research on the keywords that you do want to rank for. And make sure that you have those keywords in your description, you have the right category for the business that you should be in as well. Yeah, so that's, that's pretty much that those are some simple tools that anyone can start using right now and start implementing in your business kind of but the key is just knowing right? You need to know where you're at, you need to know okay, I'm not doing as well as I could be here. My online reputation isn't as well as good

Josh Bolton: 13:13

right? Now, this was really like when we you showed me this earlier, I was like, wow, that I didn't even think about all the E 182 directories. To list yourself on here. We

Unknown: 13:24

have I mean, we do 100 And there's more. But we do the top 100 directories and we'll list you on all of those. That's kind of what we found to be super important like Facebook, and obviously Google and Foursquare and some of the Bing and some of the bigger bigger ones. But the ones you know, but there's a lot of little ones out there that you know, they're legitimate directories. Now another thing too is we've all heard of this term backlinks, right backlinks are web links that point to your website. This is 100 backlinks. Right out of the gate. Well, we just got 100 directory sites that are legitimate websites that are now pointing all URL to your web page. Right. So you know, you're gonna help your local SEO, you're gonna help your online presence as well. If you're, you know, trying to reach out of area traffic, you may have a product or service that you sell online as well, that just getting yourself in those directories will get you those instant backlinks right away.

Josh Bolton: 14:14

That's really good. So you touched on something earlier that I want to, I know, thrive can work on but I want to hear it from you is a local martial arts place were talking about earlier. He's very busy, he barely has time to wipe his own ass as he's running from one room to the other. How does he respond to messages when he's that busy?

Unknown: 14:30

So we will respond to the reviews for you, right? We have real people that will do that that will help you. If you don't have the ability to answer the messages, then don't turn on the messages in your Google Chat. Does that make a difference? Still in the raking Do you think it definitely does. Google wants to see you using more and more of their services. They want to see a good q&a section in your Google profile. They love to see the messages turned on. So I recommend find someone in your organization one of your Kids, anybody you can think of that can help you get them involved and get them to answer those messages for you, or put the map app, the Google map app on your phone and just turn on notifications. And when you have five minutes, go over and look at the notifications and answer all those messages. One other cool thing that we do, which I'll show you is we have a, a, a unified inbox, we call it basically what that means is we can create a shoe this, we can create one place in our software, where anyone can communicate with you from all the different platforms that you're connected to. So this inbox is your Google profile, it is your, your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and basically what it does, it allows people to, and also text, we can put a text number on your Google profile, so people can physically SMS text you in here, right. And then what we do, which is also super important is we have this little chat feature that we can put on your website. And what it's very cool, it allows someone to chat with you directly. Now, if you have multiple locations, or you have like, this is great for like lawyers, car dealers, we've been seeing a lot of car dealers start to use this feature. And one of the main reasons they like it is because the receptionist can monitor it, and the receptionist will just have this open with sound on. So every time someone sends a message, they can go, Okay, I'm going to assign this over to Josh or Darren, and send it over to a sales rep. And then the sales rep can use our app on their phone, iPhone or Android and literally start chatting with that person about the car or product that they're interested in. Right? Remember, the world of shopping has completely changed. People want to know as much as they can possibly know before they walk into that business. They don't want to waste their time driving down there and asking questions, and then not having it be what they want. Hey, what are your hours? Do you have room for a class nights and weekends? What is your cost for that class? I have three kids. They're 815 and 20? Can they all go to the same class? What hours? Do they have to go to that class? Here you have this brand new Escalade, it's a 2021 Escalade with you know, 80,000 miles on it. Is there anything else wrong with it? Does it have newer tires? Is there any wear and tear that's noticeable? I'm going to ask these questions. What's the final sale price? After taxes and surcharges? You have listed? 23,000? Is it going to be 34,000? When I walk out the door, right? I bought a car from my wife during the pandemic and we she was looking for a car and we kept finding these prices, oh, it's 35,000 35,000 35,000 bucks out the door was 42,000. That's $6,000 increase, right? And I'm like, wait a second, that's a big deal. So I finally found someone to like, it's 34,000. And that's what the out of the door prices, you just have to pay that sales tax. So it's 36. Five, you're like, oh, wow, this is literally like$4,000 cheaper than everybody else, right? Because they're not adding new surcharges. And I was doing that by calling and going to their websites and asking them via chat or sending them an email. If they had chat, it was so much easier, because I can just send them a message. And that's really what people like to do now. So putting this little chat feature, and also adding the fact that you can now send text messages. Because if you go to like your, if you go into a business, let's let's go somewhere other than the Starbucks, let's go to like this guy right here. Okay, so here's a wine store, right? You can't message him from here. But if there's a phone number, I can send them a text message? And are they going to answer me if I send them a text message? So if I come and text them, will they answer me a lot of these companies don't have SMS capabilities right here on their on their Google map app, we give you an SMS number in here. So they can call that number and it will directly ring to your office, or they can text that number and it will land right here in the inbox. That's cool. Which is super, super important. Anyway, just another really cool feature that we have that allows you to have this one unified place. And also you can have 1000 locations and have it all come back to one, one inbox and have one manager managing all of that communication from across all of your locations, which is amazing. Yeah, very important. Anyway, that's so good. You

Josh Bolton: 18:55

know, I was just gonna ask on the whole SMS, is there a separate tab to say, hey, this one's for texting

Unknown: 19:00

course they do is we give you a number that will ring at your main number for that location or and make it so you can receive Texas, right? So we're basically replacing that number and giving you that text number. You can have multiple phone numbers on your listing if you want, like you can have two or three numbers on here. It's not really worth it. Because first of all, think about it. We're just gonna click the top one. Yeah, we're not remembering phone numbers anymore. We're clicking on dialing them, but we're clicking on them in texting, right. And there's also another feature that I have actually have a screenshot that I just took. Let me just show you the screenshot real quick. Your Business state. Here it is right here. So this is the mobile version of the Google app. You'll notice this chat feature right here. Right, that allows them to chat you and if you have the mobile app on your phone with notifications on you'll get notified when someone sends you a message or you can have the chat feature, go right into our unified inbox right here and have it come in here. And that way you can communicate with them that way. But when you go to Google Maps, let me To show you your profile sugars, how to turn this on real quick, when you go into one of your locations, this is the business manager for your location. This is a plus Driving Academy school it is in Grand Prairie, Texas. And if you look right here, you'll see this, this is we edit your profile, this is where you click on here and you can turn on your messages, she has her messages off, if they hit this on button, boom, it turns on, and you can start getting messages right into your Google Maps app or into our software. But I highly recommend you turn this on, download the Google map app, turn on your notifications and start getting people to text you right away. Okay, cool, there's a lot, you can do an insert a q&a, super important to have a good q&a in here. Anyway, there's a lot, you can also do updates, you can do posts, so you can come in here and literally write a post, and then add an image and then make it so that is like, you know, a call now button. And then you can even set it up. So the expires, we can do. Actually that's done here on the offers, you can do an offer the start and end date. Super cool, right?

Josh Bolton: 20:59

So like if they go to your Google profile, and if they actually did everything they could get like the 65% off instead of 40. In person kind of thing.

Unknown: 21:07

Exactly. So you can add these little updates that show up as posts, see these posts right here. This is an update that she did on June 24. She said last call, don't miss your last answer on ArcSight in the class, and this is literally an update that she's posted. These are updates. Now she's not using it as much as she should This is June 4, I recommend posting something on here at least once a week, if you can do more than once a week do it. You can schedule it through our software to post in here as well. So you can go in with our software and build out a bunch of posts and just schedule them. But I recommend you put these posts up here as much as you can, you will make Google happy. And you will get rank higher by doing this. Anyway, something that I

Josh Bolton: 21:46

realize is using like a YouTube video in the post also help with the ranking because it's a Google hooking back to Google,

Unknown: 21:53

you can do that. You know, I

Josh Bolton: 21:55

think I think that's just talking about the December 14 one.

Unknown: 21:58

Yeah, let's see here. This one, I was one up. But I mean, we're still here. This is a video this was a video. I don't know if she uploaded this or not? Or if it's a YouTube video, I'm not 100% Sure, it might be an upload. Yeah, exactly. Either way, I definitely recommend you guys use the update feature. It's right here. When you go into your business profile, you'll see this little add update button. You can also look at a booking calendar so that if you have like a calendar app, like a Calendly, or something like that, you can do that you can edit your services, you can edit your products, you can literally have products for sale, and then you can have your your stats and advertising. That's right all that's right in here. And if you want to add a manager, you click on these three dots business slots will ask me how to add managers hit his manager, and then hit add. And then there's your manager, you can add a new manager, I can't do it because I don't own the business. But what I'm one of the managers here, so the owners can do that. And if you have multiple listings for the same location, I just had a client today I was onboarding who has to Google Map listings to the exact same location, but they're totally different. And he didn't read them, someone else did. So we went and claimed ownership of both of them. And then I our team goes in and tells Google to merge them and put the reviews on one. So they you basically take one and make it the primary and then the other one goes into it, and then all the reviews will stay with it. It takes about three or four days for Google to do that. Sometimes they're faster. But we have a whole process because we're fully integrated with Google. And we have, you know, we actually have contacts in Google. So we just send it up to our channel and boom, they'll merge them for you within a couple of days. And then you'll see that go away. Very helpful. If your listings are kind of messed up. I had another guy that had three listings in the same town, and they're at different addresses, but they're all him. Right? So he had to go, we had to claim them all, you had to make one main listing and then merge the other three and another two into it, and then have that one, listen to that location. It happens, you know, Google makes mistakes. And people can create Google listings, like I can go to Google Maps, and I can create my own listing. If I go to maps.google.com, I can come in here and say, Okay, I'm gonna build a listing right here. You know, there's a way of doing that. And I can just create a new business and put it here and it may not even be a business. Right? So it happens, like I said, this is where my dentist is, and then Google doesn't necessarily know where they may not verify it. Anyway, so it's, it's kind of important to know that too. And to just check and see where your listings are, and are they there, and you can do that easily by coming to Google Maps and just searching for your business. You know, and, and seeing okay, what's, where's my location? And then come in here and Oh, good. This shows I have two chick flakes here. We only have one. Let me let me get these ID numbers and then have them merged. That's what we do. We'll merge them for you.

Josh Bolton: 24:53

Anyway, awesome. Yeah, I would say this is really cool. I mean, I don't have any businesses listed, but it's definitely One of those when I do, I've given you a call and be like, just just set it up for me.

Unknown: 25:04

Yeah, and we do that, too, we get a lot of that where people are like, Hey, I have a business that I don't have it listed, and I need help. And we'll just go and we'll just do it for you and get it set up. And we typically don't charge anything for that, like today, that consultation I do with that guy. My I was on with him for 45 minutes. And it was, you know, it was a referrals. One of my really good friends referred him. So I jumped on and did it. But the biggest problem was, he had two listings, and he didn't know how to get into them. He's like, I don't even know how to get into these, like, how do I edit them. So we found a way we got them, we claimed them, we validated them, or what they call verified them so that you prove to Google that you own them. Once it was verified, then we had editing capabilities. And we went in, we cleaned up one of them. And then we told Google to merge the other two, and He's off and running. It's great.

Josh Bolton: 25:53

That's awesome. But yeah, like I liked the automation part. And I'm assuming, could you say that anywhere from 100 to 300 a month. 300 a month is the half the one late like Lady or team of authors, writers in Florida who reply

Unknown: 26:07

199 a month and will reply to your reviews for you, your reviews. And we'll set up your listing will clean up your profile. That's one nine and a month. And then it's an additional $100 a month for the listing service. That's where we go and we physically get you listed in all of those 100 directories. And then we update it every single month for you. Yeah, and then we have, that also includes the web chat feature. So you get the listing and web chat. And you can put that code right into your website, we give you a little code, send it to your web developer, and they'll just put it on the back end of your site and boom, you now have web chat. And that's pretty cool. And then you can get our app and download the app in the App Store. And you can even answer the web chat right from your phone. So if someone sends you a message, boom, you get a notification on your phone, and you can answer it.

Josh Bolton: 26:56

Ya know, and one thing I'm gonna tie in earlier, we were mentioning car places using that chat feature more. I bought my Toyota Tacoma earlier this year. And literally, I was in Texas getting trained for a job. And I'm chatting with this guy in California going like, Hey, I saw this listing, do you still have it? And he's like, Yeah, I'm like, is there a way that you can't sell it? I don't have money right now that put like a deposit. And that kind of thing. Yeah, can't get he's like, can't guarantee that. But he's like, if it's here, I'll have it for you. So then we did this seems like he said, like, Okay, is it good? Is there any repairs? is there's this? And then he answered everything. Eventually, he's like this board, can you just can I get your number and said, so we can call?

Unknown: 27:36

Exactly right. And it's, you know, most people will do that. Like, we're also used to texting. Think about it. How many people do you text before you call? You know, you most, if not all now. That's right, it used to all be on the phone, and we'd call everybody and talk on the phone. Now, it's all done through texting? Well, that's all the chatting is it's just texting in a different app. Right? You know, so now that people want to, they want to be informed, they want to know, like, when are you open? I don't see it here if you're open on weekends, or do you take MasterCard? Do you take you know, are you able to do a trade in? What kind of price do you think you can give me for my trade? And this is my car, you know, things that you want to know, before you get there, right? Because, you know, it's we want to know, I don't want to get in my car and drive somewhere and find out that they don't have it. I'd rather go on Instacart and order my, my shopping and have my food delivered to me. Right? It's 20 bucks for it. That's right. It's like, is it worth 20? bucks? Yeah. What's a two hour cycle? Do the supermarket? Like, is that is my time worth more than$10 an hour? Oh, yes, it is. So I'll pay the $20. You know, it's worth it to me. You know, it's anyway, that's kind of the way that I look at it. And we're all becoming more and more informed consumers that want to spend more and more time doing the things we want to do. And finding out what we want to find out before we have to go and do something that is going to take more work. Right? Like, I want to know exactly what I'm getting before I go there. Like I just bought a suitcase. And I love Briggs and Riley, I will love them forever. They're just a great brand. There's a lifetime warranty. I've had, you know, a suitcase with a handle fell off. I gave it to them and they fixed the handle right away. didn't cost me anything. This is great, right? So I I found a luggage store. I then they had a chat feature. I said, Hey, do you have this model? In stock? This is what I want. I did all the research is the one I wanted. And I was like, do you have this one in stock? And do you have this one in stock? I want to come and compare them. And they're like, We haven't both? I just went there and looked at them. So instead of driving to the mall, getting out of my car, walking to the store, looking at this thing, right and then getting there and going, you don't have it. Right now I knew I was walking to that mall with a purpose. I went right to the store looked at the to compare themselves. This is the one I want. And I walked out and that was it. You know I didn't spend an extra hour of my life or two hours of my life to find out that they didn't even have it. Write. Anyway, that's the beauty of the internet and the beauty of chatting. And that's why I recommend you have that feature turned on. And also have your main number be a texting number. You know, even if it's Voice over IP these days, you can add texting to it. Like our phone system is all Voice over IP, but we have chatting and texting on our voice over IP lands. So when someone texts me, it goes right to the app on my phone, and my eight by eight app pops up and says you got a text and I gonna answer it. Right. So it's, it's, it can be done. And if you don't, we can give it to you, we can give you that as a free service, or free feature add on to our software, or the the texting part, the texting, yeah, we give you a free number. And we add that number to your Google profile. And then people can literally click on that number and text it. And it will go right into your your Thrive reviews app. And then what it will also do is it will pop up in the inbox. And if they call it it'll route right to your main number, whatever the main number is.

Josh Bolton: 31:00

That's cool. Now that's really valuable anymore. Like a lot of Voiceover The what I've seen Voice over IP, they charge an arm and a leg for everything.

Unknown: 31:10

Yeah, it's like 25 bucks align.

Josh Bolton: 31:14

And then you have your limited minutes and how many texts you can send to.

Unknown: 31:17

Some of them are you got to look around, I like eight by eight, it's unlimited, I think we paid $24 A line. And we think we have like 15 or 20 lines right now, maybe 20 lines. So you know, we're obviously it's a little bit of money, but we have a bunch of phones, and we have a bunch of people with extensions. You know, we need it in neural taxable, so our guys can all chat. And we also have an app that we can put on our phones and talk to each other and send files. And anyway, it's kind of a, I like it for our needs. But you don't need to get that elaborate. You know, there's other things out there that that aren't that expensive. So I would just say do your research if you need it. But if you don't, and you don't have it, we can give you that we can give you an SMS number for your main line.

Josh Bolton: 31:59

Okay, that would balance it, that would be a definitely good sell for others. Like I was saying, it's like, do I have to add in or 50 bucks a month just for it? Nothing?

Unknown: 32:09

You don't know you really don't. And also our web chat, like most web chats are 100 bucks a month. Right? Yeah. So we give you the web chat and the listing service for that to the listing, you go get listing services for about $100 a month. So now you're saving money there. We're trying to keep this as affordable as possible. We know that the small businesses don't have a ton of money, right? But you have to look at it. What is it worth to you to get one more customer walking in your business? Right? What kind of value does that have to you? And then they go, Okay, now if I can get, you know, two or three or four or five? What does that worth to me? You know, and that's when I started looking at it. And there's over a billion people a day searching Google Maps. That's a lot. That's a lot of people on Google Maps people. Right? It's a lot. So you have to think with that, like, Am I missing out? Am I not getting that traffic that I should because I'm showing up as the 20th position. Right. So it's worth putting your attention on your Google profile. It is a major part of the slope of the local business economy right now. And if you're not paying attention to it, you're going to miss customers.

Josh Bolton: 33:16

I am just curious, because I just converted to an iPhone. Does this driver work with Apple Maps?

Unknown: 33:24

Yes, we do. So we can request reviews to your Apple Maps. And also just so you know, Apple does have their own new map system. They do. They do. It's brand new, it just came out not that long ago. So what they used to do here, let me just show you real quick. They used to have their map feature. They had the map, but all the business listings were coming from Yelp. Earlier this year, what they did was they created their own business profiles. So now if you go to apple.com forward slash business forward slash Connect, you can go in here and you can basically just click this Get Started button and create your your apple profile on the Apple map. Now, they do allow people to read leave reviews, but it's a thumb up and the thumb down. It's not as elaborate as the as a Google Map. I joined the ventures

Josh Bolton: 34:17

Okay, obviously I'm sure they'll eventually and great the other one. Yeah,

Unknown: 34:21

exactly. So it's it's getting there. It's in its formative stages. But you can see some insights you can put some photos you can showcase some items. Any anyway, it's it's it's there. And people that use Apple Maps use it. Apple Maps is nowhere near as popular as Google Maps. Even though people are using iPhones. I use iPhone. I never use Apple Maps. One of the main reasons that I personally don't use Apple Maps because most of the time it's sending me to the wrong location. I know that I can count in the last five times I've used Apple Maps. I've been sent to the wrong location for more times, and I'm like, Okay, I give up. I'm going back to Google. I tried you apple. I try.

Josh Bolton: 35:07

I use Waze. Personally, I like Waze that says, so Google now to

Unknown: 35:11

upgrade. So Google bought Waze, right? And it's, you know, I like Waze as well. I like the police feature. I like the traffic notifications. I like gamifying the map, because that's what they did. They made the map a game like, oh, there's a cop. I'm gonna mark this cop. Oh, there's traffic. I'm gonna mark I'm in traffic, oh, there's a shovel in the road. I'm gonna mark objects in the road. You know? It's just it makes it fun, right? Anyway. So I love that I love Waze as well, but, but I'm looking for businesses. I'm going, I'm going to Google Maps. I'm looking at restaurants, I'm going to Google Maps I'm looking for, you know, hotels, I'm looking for, you know,

Josh Bolton: 35:47

usually I wouldn't using Waze a lot lately, to find stuff. Like when I'm out in the field working, I just type their food near me, tap.

Unknown: 35:54

Oh, that's cool. So they've probably fully integrated with the Google Map. Business features now as well, I'm guessing, because they've been migrating and adding more and more of that into their platform. Because they're the same now. Right? And you can even advertise on there. So it's kind of cool, actually. So yeah, I get it. I get it. Makes total sense.

Josh Bolton: 36:15

Right? Yeah. Well, now, like I was saying, when I was in Texas training for a job, I had no clue where it was. So I literally was like, okay, one of the tabs in there was like hotel near me. Chapter and that's where I found the Best Western. And I was like, All right, I'll pay the whatever. leastways will get me there.

Unknown: 36:30

That's great. That's great. Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's, um, there's a lot, there's a lot on there. And I I'm guessing that they're adding more and more businesses, to everything. Yeah. Yeah, just so you can see it. And so you can use it right?

Josh Bolton: 36:49

Um, Darren, is there anything specifically that I might have missed that you want to talk about?

Unknown: 36:56

Um, you know, I'm, I'm gonna say this, make sure you respond to your all your Google reviews, super, super important. A lot of people are not giving that. Take the second and give that guy or girl, the courtesy of letting them know you heard them. They went out of their way to leave you a review. Give them a minute, and let them know you heard them. It's really important. And guys, it's really easy. And another key thing, put some key words in those responses. Right? Don't sound corny. But if you're you know, let's say a chiropractor. Thank you so much for your great review of our chiropractic office in Clearwater, Florida. We really strive to help people have straighter backs. Oh, you just added four keywords. Right? You know, so it's okay to sound a little corny and add that in there. It really is. It's gonna help your Google rankings.

Josh Bolton: 37:44

Also, it's one of those few times I have to read reviews. And I was like, oh, okay, he is there. Because he like he said it in his

Unknown: 37:52

his comment. That's right, exactly. And another thing you can do is you can turn those one star reviews into five star responses by giving a really good crafted response. And I'll tell you something, own the one star reviews, guys. Don't ignore them. They're not going to go away. Yes, you can try to get rid of them. And yes, we can fight to get rid of them as well. However, if it's a legitimate one star review, because you suck, it's going to stay there. Right? So you need to own it. What the heck did you do wrong? To get this person to leave you a one star review, take responsibility for it and write a really well crafted response? Or you can hire Thrive reviewers to do it for you. Right, just hire thrive? It's easier. Yeah, it's much easier. Well, it will answer if it's a one star review, we will consult you to get the best response. We're not just going to blindly respond to that one star review. Because we don't know what happened. We're going to want to know what happened. We're going to want more data from you. We're going to send the response, we're going to send an email to you and say, Hey, you got this one star review, tell us what happened. You're going to say this is what happened. And then we're going to say great, we're going to craft a response, send it to you for approval, and then we'll post it. You may go back and forth three or four times on our response compared to what you want to say. But trust me, don't just shoot from the hip on your one star responses. Take a second sit back, cool down, get your head in the right space and then respond. I know it sucks. I know it's upsetting. I know what pisses you off that someone would say that about your blood, sweat and tears. But you need to take a minute, you can't just go and start yelling right back at them. Trust me. I've seen it. I had a dentist that was doing this. He was relying on star reviews. I remember you you were a jerk and your implant was a pain in the ass and blah blah. I'm like, Dude, you can't do that. You know, for one you just violated HIPAA. Right? You can't just out the person is being a patient. Right? That's against the law. You know, so you gotta be careful with those responses. Get your head on man get cool. I mean, yes, you can edit your response. But once it's out there, people are reading it. They're gonna go this guy's a jerk. I'm not gonna go to that. Is this right? Or they're gonna go, oh, wow, they're real people, they make mistakes and they own up to their mistakes. Okay, I'm gonna go check them out. And you'd be surprised. I know, I know I do when I go and I look at a restaurant, restaurant or anywhere I'm gonna look at a review. I click Sort by one star, and I read the one stars first. And then I look to see, well, what did they say in those ones? Their responses? Right? How did they handle it? Are they jerks about it? But did they actually take responsibility and say something to handle the problem?

Josh Bolton: 40:29

Anyway, yeah, you know, 100% that I've done that too, like, for? For even just product reviews on Amazon, I just sort by one start and just be like, Okay, what is everyone saying?

Unknown: 40:40

That's right. I think I was looking at a wallet the other day so it's great ad for a wall mouse while it looks really cool. And I went and I looked at I'm reading the reviews, like clicked by one star. And there's like, the theory of one star reviews saying only holds three credit cards only holds three credit cards only hold three Korean like, Well, no, look at my wallet. Okay, I got like seven or eight credit cards, put the license. Now this isn't gonna work. Right? It but had I not done that I was almost gonna buy it. And if I didn't have those reviews to read, I would have wasted 20 bucks, or whatever. It was 30 bucks and got a wall on here. And but like, I don't want it. You can or you can have it? That's right. Exactly. Give it to somebody as a Christmas gift. Perfect. Because why elfin cash like, where did she lose out of this? i Oh. I don't know. Yeah. How many gifts have I given over the years we shifted, I bought that I didn't want.

Josh Bolton: 41:35

I think that's what white elephant was for. It's like, here, you just take something I don't want anymore.

Unknown: 41:40

That's right, and someone else might like it. So great. So great.

Josh Bolton: 41:47

Well, thank you so much for coming on. I don't want to take up too much of your time, an absolute honor and a pleasure. I'm going to win it. Like I said, When I finally get going in like listing I'm calling you up.

Unknown: 42:00

So thank you. Welcome. You know, I'll give you one more thing, just so you guys know, I'm a volunteer for a nonprofit called foundation for a drug free world. I travel around the country and I've been training teachers on a free drug education program on how they can educate kids. Every year, I reached anywhere from three to 4 million kids around the US with real drug education. And it's all volunteer work, I pay for all my own trips. And it's all funded by Thrive reviews. So Thrive reviews, all the money, the profits, that we make a really good percentage those profits go right into my nonprofit so that we can do more of this nonprofit work. So not only are you helping your business, you're helping educate kids on drugs as well.

Josh Bolton: 42:41

As beautiful. It's an especially nowadays, like here in California, you pretty much walk down the street and get some pot and smoke in most if not all don't even card you anymore.

Unknown: 42:53

It's It's really bad. And you know, it's was doing these kids is really what's scary. Look, if you're 20 years old, and you want to get high in your house, go right ahead. I'm who am I to judge you for that. But if you're a 16 year old kid, and you're gonna go get higher than get in a car and drive around and kill me or kill yourself, I don't think that's cool, right? And what the long term effects are on these adolescents have been found that it literally makes you your IQ go down and it doesn't come back up. Right. So it's, you know, it's it's having long term effects on our culture, you know, and also it is actually getting these kids to think that it's okay at a young age to get high. And, you know, they're dropping out of school younger they're getting in more crime. It's just it's just a bad scene long term for our planet.

Josh Bolton: 43:42

As it is and it's a shame that society believes Oh, it's normal it weed makes people calm. I had I had a very bad experience one sort of edible. I accidentally essentially took a gram of THC. I was chatting with Jesus, but yeah, I was not called with it. I was freaking out.

Unknown: 44:05

Yeah, you were you really were in you know, you're lucky. You're okay. And didn't you know, that's a good thing.

Josh Bolton: 44:13

Yeah, that was a big one. I realized I'm like, the how much I took, I could have popped my heart from live stress. I could have done this. I could have blown up my liver or kidneys, whatever. Now I'm just like, that's where I just sit there and I'm like, I'm done. After that one I'm like my intention it no more.

Unknown: 44:29

If you meant well done. Look, man it dude, you got to do I get it. You know, it's is a free country and you have the right to do the things you want to do, especially if they're illegal. Just don't put other people in harm's way because of it. You know, let's look out for the kids. You know, what are these kids going to do? Where are they going to grow up? And are they going to have brain damage by the time they're 20 years old? No, I had seven friends of mine died before I was 16 years old. Two of them were Yeah. All from drugs. Two of them were high driving a motorcycle crashed into a tree. Right? So yeah, okay, maybe the pot won't kill you directly, but it can cause you to do stupid stuff and get yourself into quite a bad position that you don't want to be in 100%

Josh Bolton: 45:16

the amount of like when I was in high school, the amount of pot acts like crashes I heard about it was like, it was will when I was in high school ecstasy was on the rise. So weed and ecstasy, the amount of like deaths not even just crashes was almost averaging like

Unknown: 45:35

two a week. Wow. Crazy man. It really is. And now we have to watch off the fentanyl. Yeah, in the fake pills is fake pills, fake Adderall figs annex fix oxy that have been a list in them. The DEA has been confiscating them. And they say that four in 10 of them have lethal dosages of pot, I'm sorry, a fentanyl in them. Also the vaping a lot of people think that vaping is safe and effective, and it's not going to hurt you. The biggest thing with the vape is the metal coils, those metal coils are made in China, and they have lead and arsenic content and other heavy deadly metals in them. And when you push the vapor across a 400 degree piece of metal, it picks up pieces of that metal pushes the metal into your lungs and causes your lungs to stop working forever, literally shuts off parts of your lungs. And that's why you have these kids that are 1718 years old having lung failure. Right? And that's from vaping you know, and it's it's not worth it. And in addition to that, you can go and get a vape someone could hand you one of their vapes and you don't know what's in it. Could be PCP could be heroin. Could be pot. Could be just bubblegum. Who knows? Right? You don't know if you didn't put it in there. You don't know if you didn't. If that doctor didn't give you that pill at the pharmacy, you don't know what it is. If someone hands you a joint you don't know what's in that joint. Right? I remember one time someone handed me a joint it had had cocaine in it. And I thought I was gonna die. I literally just like you with that with that. gram of THC. That's right. I was freaking out thinking my life was over. I'm like, That's it. I'm gonna die. It's over. I'm dead. And I'm freaking out.

Josh Bolton: 47:19

No matter how much didn't matter how calming music you're listening to, like trying to vote ground yourself. You're so far gone. You're like what's going on?

Unknown: 47:27

Not matter, man. I was scared out of my mind. I thought I was gonna die. I'm like, oh, no, this is it. It's the end of the day. It's happening. The holy doors are opening. I'm done. That's right. Exactly. But I made it I lived and yes, I smoked weed again. Right. Yeah,

Josh Bolton: 47:52

the drug thing. It's crazy. Like the Portland situation right now.

Unknown: 47:58

Have you heard about that? Know what happened?

Josh Bolton: 48:02

Within the last six months completely decriminalize drugs.

Unknown: 48:06

Oh, that's right. It's the City of Portland. Right? Not the host right? Yeah, just city of Portland. So all drugs that became criminalized, though.

Josh Bolton: 48:14

That's not a felony either. Like if you look it up on YouTube, like poor even Tik Tok is where I saw it. Like, all these just addicts are going everywhere. And they're stealing and robbing and raping in the streets.

Unknown: 48:30

was crazy to think if you start looking at the crime rate in Portland, and you're probably going to be shocked at what you find. That would be my guess. Yeah.

Josh Bolton: 48:44

Well, Seattle is an r1, where they pretty much just defunded all the police. I think there's like two officers. And that's it for all the Seattle

Unknown: 48:54

right now. Pretty much. Wow, man. This is scary. It is. This is scary. Well, we got some work to do, man. We did. It all starts with educating the kids on what the drugs are. So they don't want to do them in the first place. That's proper education. So that's the nonprofit volunteer for drug free world.org. And check it out, guys. Absolutely.

Josh Bolton: 49:20

Thank you again, for everything. This is just like I say I'm gonna say it again. It truly has been an honor and a pleasure to chat with you.

Unknown: 49:27

Thanks, Josh. Appreciate that. I'm glad we got to meet you too. Thanks so much. xmm in the LA area, and we look Yep, we'll have lunch. All right. Sounds good to me. All right, buddy. Thank you. Welcome.