Kyle Bailey on Turning Trade Expertise into an SEO Dominance Strategy

The most successful business owners don't do it all themselves. They delegate. Upwork is where growing businesses find, hire, and pay highly skilled freelance specialists, from software development and AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations. With Upwork, you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. Visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's upwork.com, upwork.com.

Everyone treats summer like it owes you happiness. Long days, pool parties, your best life on a loop. So what does it mean when you feel worse? The summer blues are real. It's why summer is one of the busiest stretches of the year for people starting therapy. Therapy is not only for when you're in crisis. Grow Therapy is for all the moments when you decide you want more. More support, more clarity, more tools. Mental health isn't a destination you reach. It's something you build, and Grow makes that easier. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as 2 days. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. The therapist you want takes your insurance on Grow. Grow accepts over 125 insurance plans. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com/booknow today to get started. That's growtherapy.com/booknow. growtherapy.com/booknow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

And this operates in business owners as well, which is the biggest one, is that we always underestimate What we can do, and we always overestimate or overvalue what other people can do. And we don't understand that we're all doing that. So that's a, it's kind of a two-way street that is operational in every relationship. And so that helped me just to, again, you get back to that empathy idea that it's okay where I'm weak, but now what am I going to do? What, how do I, how do I cope with it? We need to bring it up to par. How are we going to do that? Either I'm going to grow stronger there, or I'm going to offload that or find some coping mechanism to bring it up to par.

Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified. The ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. I am excited because we're going to have a really interesting conversation today about SEO for businesses that a lot of people don't think would necessarily, you know, they don't come up top of mind when you think about SEO, but these businesses, SEO is such a huge component. And particularly as we're moving into this world of generative AI, thinking about what kind of businesses are going to survive, home service businesses are absolutely one of those categories. So I'm really thrilled to welcome Kyle Bailey to the show. You have a book coming out soon.

Yes.

Yes. You're one of the few SEO experts that has built foundations, framed houses, remodeled kitchens before even touching keyword strategy.

That's right.

So let's, before we get into the marketing side, talk about growing up in the trades and what that was like. Was that something you aspired to?

That's a great question. You know, I, I was in it from day one. One of my earliest memories is getting stung by a bee in my dad's kitchen. remodeling shop. And the smell of sawdust and coffee is just baked into me. I don't love— I don't like coffee. I hate it. But I love the smell. It's ironic. But yeah, anytime I smell coffee and sawdust, it just brings back floods of memories. And then by the time I was 10, I was going into houses with my dad and seeing the jobs and even helping out a little bit. And by the time I was 13, I was working full-time. Well, relatively full-time with him. After school, and then in the summers, I would work with him. Then I transitioned to framing houses and doing a lot of landscaping and tree work. In my 20s, worked for 3 years clearing a ranch, doing tree clearing on a ranch that hadn't been maintained in like 40 years. And so, I was 8 hours a day with a chainsaw in my hand and did, you know, did roofing, window replacement. And aspire is an interesting word. I've often said, you know, I spent my 20s doing a lot of stuff that didn't make a nickel. And that's just kind of the way I grew up. You didn't really think like that. And I was, I was in my 30s before I started going, okay, I need to, I need to actually have a career. And so that's what led me. I had some friends that were in the online space. And back then, the funny thing is, I was so unsophisticated. I knew email and that was it. I didn't know anything at all about anything. And so they showed me how— I was actually telling them how they could save a lot of money building a fence for their property.

Wow.

And they said, you know, people would pay a lot of money for that. And I said, well, how— what am I supposed to do, put that on a CD-ROM and go door to door? You know, and that's— he told me how websites work and how you get traffic to websites and people buy the knowledge, the info product we would call it. And that just Blew my mind and I, I was all in from that moment. I, I jumped into some classes and things and started just learning it from the ground up. And then later that year, I had, I had also been in different sales roles all through my 20s and 30s. Any of those companies that I was working for, I was always selling for them. And then I got some, I got ahold of some formal sales training that really, I loved that field of it. And so jumped into, what I learned is that SEO people are not necessarily good at sales. And so I started bolting that on to the SEO framework that I was using and it became really successful because it affects the content and the content flow and the funnel and all that good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, you're in Texas. I did live in Texas for a while, but I am a Kansas girl at heart. I am an academic who now lives in LA, but I also came up in my career in marketing very organically. I was just You know, doing events and learning on the job and then got to, oh, this is actually a career and I can learn more just like you did. So I love hearing these stories because you're not just understanding the marketing, the sales, the keywords that you need to use, but you understand the actual work that goes into these businesses.

Yes, yes, absolutely. And it's understanding the needs of the customer. That's the most important thing. And I was dealing with a company just yesterday. They don't want to rebrand because the brand represents something the husband and wife love. And I said, that's great, but you're not selling to yourselves. You're selling to your customer. What does your customer want out of your service? That's what your brand needs to be, not something that now you have something else to explain before the customer can even consume your brand. They have one more hurdle they have to jump because they have to understand what that logo means. And it just, the logo makes no sense. It's completely incoherent. And so, yeah, it's understanding what the customer needs, what that understanding how that business owner, I always say home service business owners are babysitters and firefighters. They're babysitting customers, they're babysitting internal struggle. They're, they're kind of therapists because they're walking their guys through, you know, whatever struggles they're going through at the time. And then they're putting out fires all day, every day. And so. Sitting back and thinking through the process of their content relative to how their customer consumes that is just not something they have time or even maybe even awareness to do. So yeah.

Well, speaking about logos and companies, let's talk about the name of your business, right? Front Burner Marketing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was sitting across from a very good friend of mine at a table. I was thinking of what to call it. And we were talking about different tasks and things that I needed to do. And I said, yeah, I really need to put that on the front burner. And then it was so fun. It was like out of a movie. We're both looking down and we both just looked up in each other's eyes and went, front burner marketing, like in unison.

Wow.

Yeah, it was, it was, I wish I could have caught that on film. It was, uh, it was a really good moment. But yeah, that's, that was the name of it. The whole idea is getting the things that should be on the front burner for your marketing onto that front burner.

What was that transition like from moving from building yourself and having that aha moment with your buddies who said, hey, people need this business, need your work, and here's how you can help them discover more of it? So how was that transition moving from the person who actually has the home-based business and is doing the work to, oh, now I'm going to transition to helping other people market their businesses?

Well, there was— so on the personal side, it was a massive shift because, like I said, starting from 13, I've worked with my hands. And so to go into a place where I'm doing everything virtual, that was a big shift. From the standpoint of once I understood the sales piece that was missing, it was kind of all downhill from there because I already knew how to speak their language. And that's a piece of it that I think I bring to the table that few others do is I really care for these people because I've been there. I've been inside that building. I've been in those, you know, meeting rooms. I've been in those houses when something goes wrong, or I've seen the customer when you just change their life. You know, if you're a remodeling company, you literally change the way that customer uses their home. And, you know, the gratitude and the thankfulness. And then also, you know, you break a pipe or something on accident and dealing with that both in handling the customer's disappointment, but then also logistically, you've got this whole other bird's nest of issues now you have to deal with. Or you open up a wall and something somebody did Frankenstein that house together 50 years ago. And like, okay, this is now all changing. So I know what that looks like and feels like. And so transitioning into that, because I was able to speak that, I think it was, it was fairly seamless. That part of it was.

Yeah, nice. So you're able to speak the language. And also show how this would help people's companies expand.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

So, you know, one thing I want to mention here, ADHD. I have it as well.

Okay, all right.

So when you're talking about moving from working with your hands, that's something that keeps your mind busy, right? To moving to virtual, your mind is busy in a different way. Can you talk a little bit about how your late diagnosis Reshape the way that you understood your own path, you know, and your own work?

Sure. Yeah. So all through school, I was labeled as lazy. And I just kind of accepted that. And then throughout my life, different people would say, you're one of the hardest working guys here. And that never made sense to me. I just took it that maybe they didn't understand what they were talking about, because I still accepted that definition. And then I'm 56. I was diagnosed, I think I was 52 or 53, something like that. It's been within the last 5 years for sure. And that also accompanied an empathy journey for me, learning and understanding empathy for other people, but also for myself. And those 2 pieces together, understanding how my mind works, along with the empathy statement of, it's okay, it's okay to not do this as good as other people because there's other things I do better than other people. And now you either offload your weaknesses Or you cope with them one way or the other. And through the years, I'd realized that I built different filters to help me do things. I recognized some time ago that I didn't get the same payoff that other people get from things like checking off a list. I don't get a payoff from that. I'll do it, but it doesn't— I don't have that gear that just sparks that dopamine, right? So, it's different for me. So, I pay it off in different ways. You know, I'm going to do this for an hour, just unbroken. And then I could play my guitar for a little bit, or I can work on a song, or I can do something that operates my brain in a different way. Even writing, you know, writing operates a different muscle than, you know, doing the client work and things. And so the transition, once I understood it, it was a whole lot easier because there was a lot of shame and guilt before. Even after I was an adult, There was, I should be better at this, looking at people who are highly accomplished and always being completely intimidated by them. And that was, that was an eye-opener too, because I met— I didn't meet a guy. I knew him for a while from a distance. We knew each other by first name, knew each other fairly well because we operated in the same spheres. Then we sat down for lunch one day and we're talking about something and I was doing something and he goes, man, I'm just totally intimidated by that, that you can do that. And it was an eye-opener for me because there was several pieces of it. And this operates in business owners as well, which is the biggest one is that we always underestimate what we can do and we always overestimate or overvalue what other people can do. And we don't understand that we're all doing that. So, it's kind of a two-way street that is operational in every relationship. And so, that helped me just to, again, you get back to that empathy idea that it's okay where I'm weak. But now what am I going to do? What, how do I, how do I cope with it? We need to bring it up to par. How are we going to do that? Either I'm going to grow stronger there or I'm going to offload that or find some coping mechanism to bring it up to par. And so those are, and I forget where your original question was, probably because of the ADHD.

Well, yeah, it was just about the journey, right? And your path under helping you reshape that way that you understood the journey. So I'm hearing a lot of great things. And one of the questions I did have was how did, how has it helped shape the way that you run your business?

Oh man, I think the empathy thing. So there's several I'm very helped by. I think of them like core statements because it helps me come back to and get centered when maybe I'm feeling off-kilter. So one of those in empathy is everybody's doing the best job they know how to do with the toolbox they have. And so that helps me in client situations where maybe a client is getting sideways about something. Or a vendor, if a vendor is getting sideways about something, it helps me get recentered and appeal to them based on that. So I know that you're doing the best thing you know how to do. I think we both see the same vision. We want X out of this. Instead of getting mired down in the you're wrong, no, I'm wrong, no, you're wrong, you know, that doesn't do any good for anybody. Forcing somebody to admit they're wrong doesn't help anything. So calling back to the vision, affirming them that they're doing the best thing that that they can do at the time, and that's what looks correct at the time to them, it's easier to get on common ground and start looking ahead in that way. And I've just found that it helps me all through my life. So statements like that are really helpful to help me stay centered and be empathetic with others.

Yeah. And you've mentioned empathy a few times, which I think is really great. But I'm wondering, thinking about this, the earlier case example that you gave us, because I've had the same thing with clients that are Are this— this is the name they're going to choose and they're not going to change it, or this is the one use case for their product. So, were you able to shift that husband and wife team's minds to a different name or to different keywords, different tagline, something else that would help their business reach the goals that they wanted to reach?

Well, first of all, that's a very common thing. So, it's not just that one client. It's almost universal. Another one is I was dealing with a client who only wanted to have a single page on their website. And they say their, their desire is good. They're like, when somebody comes here, I don't want them to have to hunt through my website. And I get that desire, but they don't understand the function of Google and even LLMs now that are maturing in this field, which is they're going to rank pages. They're looking for pages that describe something. And so when you force all of the information onto a single page, You force them to rank that page based on all those different categories, keywords, subjects, all that stuff. And then you don't get anything. Instead of being everything to everybody, you're now nothing to anybody. And so that's another common one. Another common one, like you mentioned, is keywords. You know, they'll want to, they'll want, it's kind of like very similar to internal branding. So that's what I call it when you brand for internal reasons instead of branding for your customer. And so a customer will come and go, I want to win this keyword. And I'll tell them and I'll show them data that's not going to win you anything. There's zero search traffic for that term. On the other hand, there over here, there's 15 terms that will get you an aggregate of 15,000 clicks a month or 15,000 exposures a month. So your at-bats are going to do better. I'll do whatever you want me to do, but I'm going to tell you straight up that this right here is not going to win you anything. And it's the similar thing with the branding. And no, they haven't changed their mind. And, you know, at that point I can't do anything about it. And I, you know, they also, well, I won't go into that, but basically I'll just say that location's a big deal. And businesses will move locations or choose a location based on, again, internal reasons. Maybe it's cheaper to be 20 miles outside of town, but they don't realize that they lose relevance within the 10-mile diameter that Google gives you.

Yeah.

Around your location. If there's nothing but cows 10 miles around you, those cows aren't going to buy anything from you. And you need to have your location in a place where you can reach your core audience. And so, so those are, you know, those are some of the many internal decisions companies make not understanding the weight of what they're doing. And it's understandable that it makes sense that they don't know, but it still is a factor. And the success of their business.

You're really honing in on some things that are important, really important for local businesses, which is primarily what you focus on versus a national business. Maybe a national business, you know, you can have a digital mailbox in some place, so it shows a location, but it doesn't necessarily have to be where you work from. But when you're a local business, people are going to look in a certain geography. They can choose to look 5 miles, 10 miles, 15, 20, whatever the diameter is. So what are some of the things that you see local businesses— I mean, you've mentioned a couple of them, but what do you— what are some things that you see that they— I don't want to say do wrong, but essentially need to change in order to be competitive in their areas?

Uh, structure of the website is number one because they're— I would say the Google Business Profile, but the Google Business Profile is structured in such a way you can't really mess it up. But you can totally tank everything you're doing by having the homepage messed up. So some technical SEO factors, not to nerd out on everybody, but H1 tags, title tags, uh, you need to have one H1 tag for every page. Your title tag needs to have your main keyword in it. Then you need to have subpages that serve. So for instance, in the Dallas area, Dallas is one of those metros. I'm sure LA is very similar that, you know, the metro itself in Dallas, you're looking at probably 8, 9 million people. And it's 100 miles wide. It's about 65 or 70 miles north to south. And so you, you don't say Dallas unless you're in actual proper Dallas, which actually is not that big compared to the entire Metroplex. So you want to locate in the city, the sub-city, or the subdivision that you're in, the suburb. And then within that suburb, you're going to have key subdivisions. So like in my area, Mayfield Ranch is a big subdivision near me. So although it's not its own city, you want to have it maybe even a page if it's big enough, you want to have a page for it. And because there's enough residents in there and they want somebody near their Mayfield Ranch, then you, you really need to have a page that serves that. So if you're a roofing company, roofing company Offering roofing repair and roof replacement near Mayfield Ranch or in Mayfield Ranch. And then you want to have facts about that area. So the very few, if any, business owners ever understand that. They think about ranking for the biggest city because they're thinking, I want to, I want to be in that pool. But what they don't understand is the competition is highest in that pool. So you have the least amount of success with the longest timeline to get to where you're exposed on page 1, and therefore the most money you're going to spend without getting anything back. So you need to go after your fast wins faster and then build up, let all that build up to your larger area.

Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making millions pulling details about you from public records and the internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to 5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24/7 US-based fraud support. Other companies might just sell credit monitoring or just a VPN. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com/hidden. Protect yourself now at aura.com/hidden.

Yeah, I can see that being something people who aren't in this world of marketing and SEO wouldn't really necessarily understand. So do you also see a lot of these businesses that don't have websites, or maybe they have the one-page website that doesn't give a lot of information? Because I know when we were transitioning during the pandemic, right, a lot of smaller businesses in different towns had to say, oh, we need to expand our footprint and we haven't really done so yet. We don't necessarily know how to.

Yeah. So the nice thing about the the business environment today compared to 10 years ago, 15 years ago for sure, is that it's matured enough where every business owner, even if they don't have a website, they know they really should. And so what I would— how I would characterize it is I would say fully half of the business owners out there just have a substandard website. They've got one. There's kind of 2 classes to that. The best case, they went out and used Weebly or Wix or Squarespace. And did a drag-and-drop website to varying degrees of success. Squarespace is the best one of those 3, although I've heard people say Wix has gotten better recently. But it's still— there's just constraints within those builders. You're just not going to get the same thing you're going to get out of a full-functioning WordPress website. And now, of course, AI's come along and that field is maturing. I think that we'll see a lot of that come on board as far as building websites soon, as far as a mature field. But the majority of what I see is just companies with a vastly inferior website. Either it's very old or it looks very old. I had a poor guy that I talked to, he just paid somebody $3,000 for a website and it looks like it was made in 2010. It's just awful. It's just awful. And so that, that kind of stuff happens all the time. And there's companies like— I don't normally call out companies, but I just, I'm tired of seeing it from these guys, so I'm going to start calling them out— Scorpion and Haibu. If you're with them, you need to transition out as quick as you can. They're just not good operators. They follow the old model of they're going to sign you up, they're going to treat you like a queen the first 3 months, and then they transition you to a weaker account manager, and then it all derails. I've got a guy who signed up with me about 6 months ago, and he was with Haibu, and he had been with them for 6 months, paid them $2,500 a month. And his keywords were about 40% weaker. His positioning was 40% weaker than when they started. And when I looked at the website, it was obvious why. I mean, it was just awful. Just the SEO was awful. And the worst part of it is when you go to leave them, unless you've been with them for a certain amount of time, something like 3 years, I think, you have to pay them a bulk amount to get your website to leave.

Wow.

Yeah, after you pay them $2,500 a month, you got to pay them like 4 or 5 grand to own your website. So that's one of the things we never do is any asset we ever build for a client, they fully own it. We'll hand them the keys at any point. We don't do long-term contracts. We do month to month. And if they tell us, hey, we want to cut it in a month, in 30 days, we tie it all up in a bow and hand them the keys. We tell them, you know, from day one, you can lock us out. We don't recommend it, but you can lock us out of anything we're doing. You fully own it. You have the keys. Just like they go out and they build a house for somebody, they don't hold on to a set of keys for that house, you know, or charge the customer 5 years later if they want to fully be done with them. You know, that's just nonsense. Somebody pays you to build something, they should own it. And that's the way we like to do things. So yeah, so, so weak websites, weak strategy. These big companies, you know, they're on a volume model and they, some of them even have shareholders that they have to answer to. So they have to sign up a certain number of people every month. And so that's what they're serving is that signup number. They're not serving your best interest, you know, and that's why the keyword strategy is weak. The overall area strategy is usually weak and the customer ends up paying, unfortunately.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's really unfortunate. I just hearing you say that somebody was paying $2,500 a month and their keywords for 40% weaker. That's jaw-dropping.

Yes.

To pay a marketing company $30,000 a year is— you should be getting a lot out of that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you mentioned websites. So talk about the expansion of your business. What service did you start with? How have you expanded? And then of course, adding team members in this kind of work versus working with your hands in construction is also a different beast.

Yeah, so I actually started my business in 2010. And what I actually started doing was Facebook, because that was right when Facebook rolled out their business pages. And if you remember this, then you remember that the— all the scuttlebutt is that it was going to replace Google, we weren't going to need websites anymore, because those business pages were so good. And it was true at first. And so the way I started my business is Facebook had no gates on organic exposure. So I had the max of connections. I had 5,000 connections. And like clockwork, if I put out the invite, I would get a 10% conversion in my first pass. So I could come to you and say, hey, for $500, I'll get you 500 likes immediately. And then, you know, we'll get a second pass and we'll get you even more. And they're all local. They're all, you know, so it was a really good model. And then I think I sold one and Facebook changed the rules. They changed The way they offer exposure. And I was already doing sales in SEO for a guy that, a friend of mine that I knew, and he was kind of changing things in his business and he wasn't going to stay in that place. So I just started up my own SEO piece for myself. And so that's when I transitioned into doing SEO, started offering websites a few years later. And my big learning curve was letting people be who they are. How I would start is I would hire somebody and then see where they were weak, you know, things were showing up, and then just work really hard to get them to be better in those areas. And what I finally realized is everybody's at where they're at, and if you give them an opportunity to improve and they don't, you really should let them be who they are. Now, if you can work with where they're strong, like maybe they're great at spreadsheets, great, you're going to be my spreadsheet guy. Find somebody else for the WordPress entry piece. And then, okay, you're my WordPress entry girl, you're going to do this. And then find somebody, find what they're strong at. And then I think I would— I connect really well with people, so I get to know them and their families and everything. And then from that moment on, I'm feeling like I'm letting them down if I don't keep trying with them. And not understanding that there's a business function and there's the person. Those are 2 different things. And you can be fine friends with the person. I'm friends with people that I had to, you know, kind of cut ties with still because I just told them, look, I really like you, but you know, this isn't working. This is not meeting the standard. We both agree on that? Yes. So that was a big learning curve. And I've— my success really took off once I adapted that new model. So that's what I would say. And just understanding systems, I still am not the best in the world at that. Separating systems and people, like you're doing this and don't cross that over. We only do this and tell me when you're maxed out, because that's when I need to add somebody else. Because I use almost exclusively overseas folks because I tried to use stateside people. And the thing is, in my field is once anybody's any good at this, they're going to go start their own thing or they think they can. And, but in any case, they're going to leave. So I would train people out, train people out, train people out. And what I found is overseas people, they understand the value. And it's— I can pay them higher than their average and still do fine. And it's helping them. They're getting a steady paycheck, which is very unusual for them. They usually are doing contract work. But I've had guys that have been with me 7 years, 6 years, And 4 years. So we have long relationships. I know their family members' names, you know. So yeah, so, so I think it's learning whatever the balance is for you. Some people are stronger in bringing the hammer down. I'm not that good at that. And then other people are really good at the connection and empathy piece, and that's where I'm stronger. So I have to learn to draw lines that stay in place. You know, I'm— I can be bad about saying, we can't do this anymore, then it happens again. And then I just don't do anything about it. So you have to find a way to motivate the team, and you really want to find people who are motivated by doing a good job. And when you find that person, give them a pay raise immediately so they're, they're not going to go anywhere. Tell them what you expect of them and let them exceed that, and then keep bonusing them for that, because those are the kind of people— not only are they going to be doing a great job, they're great for team morale. So when everybody's in the meeting and we're all talking about what we did that week, that person that's shining, everybody else is like, oh, I need to raise my game. And sometimes even for me, you know, they're saying what they did for the weekend. I'm like, oh, I got to raise my game. And so that's what you want. You don't want a thing where you're berating everybody because nobody's doing what they're supposed to do. So those are some of the big lessons for me.

Yeah, I think those are important lessons because I've done both as well. I've had US team members and I've had overseas team members. team members. And my overseas team members have been with me for 4 years, you know, specifically focused on parts of my podcast, and have been amazing and fantastic and are not going to leave, right, and go find something else. And like you, you get to know their families and you feel like you are a family. And so you all want each other to win and you all have the same goals.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So talk a little bit about your book because when we were originally going to talk a few months ago and you're like, my book is about to come out. And before we jumped on, I said, is your book out so we can talk about it? And you said, not quite.

Yep.

And this is, I mean, this is something that I think everybody who's writing a book goes through is, oh wait, I need to switch these sections, or, ooh, maybe the timing's not right, or whatever the case may be. So can you talk a little bit? Tell us about what— You know, the title, who the book is for, and why you felt like this was the time to write a book.

Yeah, I was actually on a podcast and we were talking about, um, the home service business owner's story and how much difficulty they have telling that and also seeing the value of it.

Interesting.

And I'm explaining this and I'm going point by point and in my head I'm like, this is a book, I need to write this. And so that's where the genesis of the idea came from. And so, yeah, I started it in November and I had probably 70,000 words inside of a week because I was writing every day, just pounding it out. And I'm like, this is going to be awesome. I'll have this thing out by January. And then one of the sections, I just started having trouble figuring out how to transition some of the areas. And then life stuff, you know, stuff comes up and You get, you know, just delays it. And then had a— I don't really get writer's block, but I do get something like wrap it up block. There's something like that for me. It's like, I just don't know how to end this chapter. I don't know how to transition from here to here. And so, yeah, so I had a major breakthrough about 3 weeks ago on a couple of major things that were keeping me tangled up. So yeah, title of the book is What's Your Story? It's the connection between the story of the home service business owner and the homeowner so that they can have a better connection. And so it walks through kind of the esoteric side of it, but then also the very granular tactical SEO markup side of it as well, because all of that plays together. And that's the mistake a lot of people make. I've seen beautiful websites that have horrible SEO and it's wasted. Then I've seen like really mundane looking websites that have really good SEO and convert better than the good looking website, even though a refresh would do them better. They're still converting because the customer understands you can solve my problem. And so all of it matters. And I go through the review process I've got. That's another thing that I had to go through the entire book on. The AI landscape has changed so much. Just since November. I mean, Google has rolled out 3 updates in the last 30 days, where most of the time we get 3 major updates a year. We've had 3 in the last 30 days. So all throughout the book, there's these update sections and it says, as of today, this is now happening. And I put in there repeatedly, you need to check what's going on today because I can't update this book every week, you know, of course. So yeah, that's it. And I'm— About 90% through the final draft. So it really should be out very soon.

Fantastic. And that is such a good point. And I was going to ask about AI as part of this conversation as well, because, you know, I have noticed now if I'm Googling something, it'll ask me a series of follow-up questions. Do you want to know more information about this or this? So it's not just AI overviews, but this whole other section. that I might have done research on my own previously, or I might have gone to an LLM. So I'd love for you to talk about generative AI when it comes to Google, but also when it comes to searchability on language models.

Sure. So the history of it is really fascinating. I know the book will be written someday. Maybe I'll write one. But when we first started, it was mind-blowing and horrifying all at the same time, because I had one— in one particular example, I had a customer. We were number one across probably 200 keywords in the North Dallas area in remodeling. And so, you know, I bring up AI, I'm expecting to see at least some exposure. We were nowhere to be found. And so, yeah, and it was on Perplexity in particular. And so we started going through that whole process of like, what is, what do they want? Why are we not getting returned and all that fun stuff? Well, this is before Gemini came out. Google did their first AI launch, which was a disaster. A good, a great book sometime would be all the disasters that Google has launched because they have so much money. They could just launch whole million-dollar projects, multimillion-dollar projects, and it burned down and they go, oh well, we'll move to the next one. But they finally got Gemini to where it's, it's a viable product. And now they've baked AI into everything. And that's good and bad. The bad side of it is that you have no choice anymore. With Google, you cannot not have AI kind of peeking into everything you do. And the bad news about that is they're aggregating all that, and we'll see, you know, we'll see what the long-term payoff of that is. But then, of course, Claude and ChatGPT are the other 2 big players out there. But then you have Perplexity, you have DeepSeek, you have all these other players that are out there. So particular to the search field for the home service business owner, I'll limit it to that. There are probably 15 key data points that are— I wouldn't say they're departures from the way that Google did it, but I would say the emphasis on these different pieces are different. And so service area pages are mad— they're even bigger than they used to be. And so if you say that you do roofing but you don't have any cities listed You're in big trouble. You're in big— you're not going to get returned. Your About Us page being a separated, dedicated page with very specific information on it, it's more important than it's ever been. Proof of expertise on the homepage, high on the homepage, very critical. Where it used to be Google would deduce that from your different pages, now AI looks for it on the homepage. You have to have it on the homepage. We've seen visibility, AI visibility tests increase 30, 40% just by putting 2 sentences in on the homepage.

Oh.

Yeah. Just saying we've done 1,000 roofs in the Dallas area in the last 20 years. Just a sentence like that will massively change your AI visibility. The citation list is different. It's, I would say 75% of it is just like normal, but things like reviews on Angie's List and I think, you remember Foursquare?

Yes.

That's back in the day. Foursquare, man, we thought Foursquare was gonna unseat Google, but I mean, uh, Facebook. But then Facebook incorporated check-ins and it killed them. But they're still out there, and we've actually seen reviews on Foursquare show up as proof of viability for a company. So reviews on Angie's List— every home service business out there hates Angie's List, but I always tell my customers, just use it long enough to get 5 or 6 reviews because those reviews show up. LLMs value those very highly. Chambers of Commerce is more important than ever. They've always been good, but now they're, they're massive. LLMs always check Chambers of Commerce. And so those are some of the specific things that LLMs treat a little bit differently. But people think there's a, there's a big myth out there that LLMs are going to kill Google. And there's a guy out there named David Quaid. He talks about this at length, that that'll never happen because they can't afford to rebuild Google's index. Google's index is their secret superpower, you know? And so when LLMs surface data, they're about 75 or 80% of the time they're going to Google to surface it.

Wow.

Yeah. And so you've got to make sure that all your old bases were covered, but now you've got some more work to do. Everything you did for Google back in the day still needs to be done, but you've got some other work you need to do also.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's— so is it making a lot more work for you, for your clients, or is it just slightly different work?

Yeah, the work needs to be done. I think it's an overwhelming thing for the home service business owner. So a lot of times it's just analysis paralysis, you've heard it called. I don't really like that cliché, but that's what it is. Because it's like, am I using ChatGPT? Am I using Claude? Am I using DeepSeek? Am I using Gemini? Which thing do I do? I have to rebuild my website. Do I— what social, you know? And it's overwhelming. And so, and then everybody and their dog is out there claiming one thing or another. About AI. So when you go to tell them something is true, they're like, yeah, but I've heard this is also true too. And I've also heard this is true. And I've also heard this is true. And so for them, I feel for them because they're in the position of having to pick in the dark because it's an overload of information. Everybody claiming something else is true. Everybody claiming expertise, you know. So it's a rough thing. The work is there. Yes. And it has to be done. Yes. My main message to home service business owners is that If you have not already started, you're way behind. 6 months ago, I was saying you're behind, but now you're way behind. Your competition that's on page 1 of AI visibility is way ahead of you right now, and you've got to jump on. You got to rev it to the max.

Yeah.

And you did use a very specific example of just adding 1 or 2 sentences on a homepage about the proof of your expertise can be a big game changer.

Assuming all the other basics are there.

Yeah.

That was a case where every other SEO best practice was being followed, but it had lower AI visibility because of these things that were missing. And we put that in and it jumped. So I'm not saying that you can have a horrible website, go change 2 sentences, everything gets better. It probably will get better, but I don't know if better will be enough to get you on page 1. But yeah, yeah.

And are these some of the examples that you share, the case studies of different clients you've worked with or different things you've seen in industry in your book?

No, somewhat. There are some cases like that. I think I do mention the remodeling example because that was a big, that was a massive shockwave. The book is more, so I start off by talking about your core values and the 2 mistakes everybody makes with core values is they think they know what they are and they never know what all of them are. And I teach them how to go through an audit, self-audit first. Then an employee audit, then a customer audit, and do it in such a way that they will be honest with you and tell you the good and the bad. You know, customers may love you, but they love you in spite of the fact that maybe you're late every time, but you do such a good job they'll overcome that.

Yeah.

And you don't realize how big of a deal it is. So I note in there, you need to list all your core values that are positives, but also keep track of the negatives because you need to fix those. That's free money. I use the metaphor of burning buckets of $100 bills throughout the book. You don't want to be stacking them and not burning them. And so things like not taking selfies at a subdivision sign, that's— it literally takes seconds out of your day. And, but nobody, I mean, when I say nobody does it, nobody does it. It's so rare to see anybody do that, but it's gold. Because it's your face. You should have a logoed hat. It'd be really great if you had a wrapped vehicle. And then over the shoulder is the subdivision sign. That tells the entire story that we serve you in your neighborhood all in one snapshot. And Google— another big change also I didn't talk about yet, but Google, it used to be that images were holes in the code that Google had to interpret, but now AI recognizes what an image is. And so they're gonna see that, they're gonna link it all up. And just by that one image, the AI is gonna say, you serve people in that neighborhood. So yeah, I go through the core values and then I go through, I think it's the 11 E's. So it's like empower and embody, different E words like that. And how basically the idea is to have an easy acronym to be able to keep these ideas consistent in your culture. Because what I've seen a lot of companies do is they'll pay to have a consultant come in, they'll go through all this effort, but then they won't pursue it and execute it afterward, you know, to keep those things in front. And then everybody just goes back to doing things the way they did them. But if they'll put these pieces in place, then they will have a system that what you eventually want, it's a lot like O2 sat. Do you know what O2 saturation is?

No.

O2 saturation, like when you're in the hospital, they, they, they'll prick your finger and they can tell how much oxygen is in your blood at the periphery. And one of the ways they can tell that you're ill is you don't have enough out there. And so it's kind of the same way. You— what you want is every tech, every sales rep going out and touching a home, you want them speaking the language of your core values. Every time one of your office people picks up the phone, You want your core values to be reflected in that call, both in function, like we always treat customers right. You want that function to be there, but you want the words to be there too. And so a simple thing like, before I get off this call, you know, one of the things we're really serious about is treating our customers like family. Is there anything that's happened in the— in your working with us that hasn't met that? Please let us know because we'd like to help you out. You can— here's an email. There's a page on our website. Make it easy for the customer. And just speaking that, even if you know the customer's had a great experience, you both reinforce that they had a great experience. And you also give voice just in case there's something there you didn't know. Because that's where the, you know, the 1-star review will come out of left field on you. You know, they didn't feel comfortable telling you in person, but after everything's over and they don't have to see you anymore, now they're going to tell the truth on your Google profile. And so baking those into your processes kind of— inculcates is the right word. I don't like to use big words to make myself feel good, but it's like baked in so that every morsel has that piece in there. It's kind of like Goodfellas when he says there's not enough blueberries in this muffin. You know, you got to put 13 blueberries in every single muffin. It's kind of the same way, you know. And so go through that and then go— I go through the reviews. Review processes and how important they are, how to build them into your team so that it's just it's a part of your breathing. You know, the first call that goes out should mention reviews. Hey, Mrs. Smith, we're going to come out. We're real serious about doing five-star service. If anything doesn't meet that, please let us know. You can always call me. Here's the owner's number. You can always have access to let us know if there's anything not meeting that. Tech goes out there the first time to do the repair. Hey, Mrs. Smith, good to see you today. Here's what we're going to do today. Like they already told you, we're very serious about 5-star service. Let me know if there's anything I'm doing that doesn't meet that. Your follow-up call when the job is done. Hey, Ms. Smith, how did it go? Did we meet your expectations for 5-star service? And so this idea is present there throughout the entire process. And so it increases the probability that they are going to leave you a review. So things like that. And then there's, there's more, but yeah, you'll have to read it. Yeah.

Exactly. And, you know, for those listening who might not have a home service business, everything you just said applies in different ways. You might not have somebody going into a home from your— but you might have people coming into your store. You should still treat them the same way, right?

Yeah.

You still need to think about your values and make sure that your values are present and very visible and that everybody understands what they are and that you're also surrounded by people who share the same values. I think not enough people do that. I've had a lot of conversations around that because it can be difficult. You might think you have some of the same values, but they might not be the right ones, or you might not understand the values.

And another really important thing is you can't demand values from your employees that you don't exemplify. So if you demand that your employees always treat customers well, but you chew your employees out, or you have favorites that you treat better than others, Or you have family members that you've hired that you treat differently to a different standard. You can't expect that, that they're going to hold good values in front of your customer base. That's just not practical. So you have to be willing to throw yourself under the bus, hold yourself accountable. The best thing a business owner can do is hold themselves accountable to a value or a boundary that they violated. Like if your boundary is that we never speed, Here I am getting caught speeding, you know, and I'm going to fine myself. I'm going to do myself the $10 fine and I'm the owner, so I'm going to triple it. You know, something like that where you hold yourself in public to something that you didn't hold to. So now when you go and speak to those employees, you have grounds to do that, you know?

Yeah, 100%. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I have so many other questions I could ask you just on a personal and professional level. But I think you've done a really great job of sharing your story, but also some of the things we do need to think about no matter what business you have in terms of discoverability, making sure you're showing up, remembering that what somebody said about you 5, 10 years ago could very well pop up right today. And that could be what they make their decision on. So Kyle, I'm excited to share, you know, your website, frontburnermarketing.net, where I'm I'm assuming we'll also be able to find your book when it comes out, as well as some of the free tips and other things that you offer.

Yes, yes, we have lots of free tools that we've built there. There's a book recommendation list, there's a glossary of terms if you want to learn about SEO. It's exhaustive, so it might be a little bit overwhelming, but you can find— you can look up any term there and learn about SEO for yourself. I've got a free rank checker on the homepage. You can go in there and check every day. a single keyword for your business. It's totally free. They don't have to sign up by email or anything. So yeah, I really identify with the men and women who own these home service businesses because I grew up in it. I just love the field. I love serving, serving them. So got a lot of free stuff on there for them.

Fantastic. And do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto?

For this, I'm a Christian. I read and study the Bible a lot. But for business, my favorite thing is a quote by Alex Hormozi. The work works on you more than you work on the work. If you let it, you got to be honest with yourself. And that's scary sometimes.

Yeah, 100%. Well, thank you so much, Kyle. Again, you've left us a lot to think about in terms of values, in terms of business structure, in terms of making sure that we're putting out into the world, into our clients, what we want back so that we can continue the work that we do. Thank you to everybody who is listening to this episode or watching it. I'll be back again with another amazing guest to share their story, their journey very Until then, think about that. Think about the impact that you want to leave on the world, but also how you can make the words and the reviews and things work in your favor for your business from others. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, Check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.