Building a Credibility Funnel for your Small Business

Is credibility incredible or is it credible? Like, when you start your business, do you have any credibility? I don't know. I don't know how it works.

I like that. Incredible credibility. I like that.

That's great, you know, and that's the thing, is even when you like, I have no idea what I'm going to say when we start these intros. Usually sometimes I do, but I just open my mouth and it comes out then. And then suddenly I learn what I didn't realize I knew. And there's a part of that that helps you build your credibility. You know, a ton of stuff. And one of the things that you can do to be credible is to share that knowledge with other people, to teach it, or in whatever variety you might, or whatever manner you might call it. But that's a lot about. What we're talking about in today's episode is how to display and build your credibility with other folks. You're already. You already have your own credibility. And we'll talk about how to make sure you have your own credibility. But that's right, the idea is teach others that you are credible and. Yeah.

You want to use that. Yeah. And we're going to talk about ways to exponentially expand the reach of your credibility. And we're going to introduce a new concept today called the credibility funnel that I'm pretty excited about. And we'll share some details and how it can help you create an exponential system that will really help grow your business. And I'm excited to share today.

Well, there you go. That guy is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 259 of the Small Business Show.

Hey, Dave. You know, one of the things I really like about the Small Business show is I feel like it's helped to really increase my own credibility as a small business owner over the years. Would you agree?

Oh, well, you know, let me put it this way. We have had the opportunity to sell Mac observer before, and I've always made it fail. Now I, you know.

Ah, interesting, right?

I don't. I will take the blame for this. Now, maybe. Maybe the deal wasn't right. You know, like, I, like, think that if I had the right deal in my hand, I would say, yes, but every time what's gone through my head is, okay, well, what, like, that's my. Even if it earned me nothing, and to be fair, it does not. It. I mean, it does not earn me nothing double, Nick. It earns me something.

Yes.

Right? Yeah, it's fine. And it's a. Like, it's profitable. So everybody that works there is good. But it is the thing that I can point to when I'm talking with someone new and say, oh, yeah, no, I, you know, I.

Right.

That's. That's my thing.

It defines you well.

And it, it's part of you people know about. Like, every time I tell somebody I, you know, co founded Mac Observer.com they're like, I think I've seen that website. And my answer is, well, you probably have. We've been around 21 years, right? You know, and. And so, like, that's a. Not only is that sort of a nice thing, you know, it's great when a taxi driver is. Uber driver is like, oh, that's pretty cool. You know, it's like, you know, makes me feel good, but it also gives me huge credibility. Credibility when I'm talking to publishers. Now, I have other things, this show being one of them, you know, other things that I publish. But they all sort of. To take one of our prior terms and reapply it, slash, misapply it. This becomes my credibility. Stack. And so, yes, you know, so, yes, I totally get what you're talking about. This is definitely part of my credibility. Stack.

Yeah. And I would say the same thing, you know, about my previous businesses is that I was. It made me credible because, you know, people saw our building and signs and everything else, and they kind of knew who we were.

Right.

As that business owner. But as for the small business show, as a small business, like a serial business owner, I think this show for me has added a lot of credibility. And I think that credibility and trust are a critical part of your small business success. And that's what I want to talk about today.

I like it. It looks like we're already talking about it, man. It's good.

We are. We are. Yeah. So, you know, your potential customers, partners, suppliers, they need to know that your business is trustworthy, that your employees are working, you know, your customer's best interest. And so I have this concept called a credibility funnel that I want to talk about today. And it's really a path that you can use to build trust with your customers, remove concerns about people doing business with you. And, you know, the credibility funnel ultimately leads to new customers, more sales, more business. And so I want to. I want to go through some ways that you can add credibility to your business, even if you're just getting started. You know, at first I had two lists. I'll do this. If you're just getting started, do this. If you've been around you know, to ongoing business. But there's so much overlap that I'm just going to dive in and we're going to just start talking about them and, you know, you can pick and.

Choose where we'll find where we go. That makes perfect sense.

Yeah, we'll see where it goes. So. Yeah, yeah. So the thing, you know, talking about getting started, one of the ways if you have a relatively new business or, you know, business that you're just really trying to add that credibility to, is lean on your own personal brand. You know, what achievements do you have personally that will give credibility to your business? You know, what have you. We're just talking about it. What have you done before? Oh, I've co founded Mac Observer. Oh, I found a Tech Restore. I did this. So people automatically can associate success and credibility and trust with you, with your brand. And now you can go out and say, oh, now this is my new venture, my new business. And you can bridge that credibility of your personal brand or previous experience into your new company.

And a piece of advice, if you're going to do this, a lot of us, it takes it certainly this is true for me. It take. It took a long time and I'm still not fully comfortable with it, but it took a long time for me to be comfortable bragging about the things that I had done, you know, and to be able to talk like, and just say, oh, yeah, you know, I co founder, Bank Observer. Like that. That's an okay thing to say as long as it's in the right scenario. I mean, if I'm, you know, out to dinner with friends and in the middle of dinner, say, I come out of like, that's not, maybe not the right scenario, but there are the right places. And even in those, you may find yourself uncomfortable about them. My advice, sit down and write about yourself in the third person. Swear to yourself that if you need to, that you will never share this with anyone. Right. You can write it on paper and burn it when you're done. But doing that will give you the perspective because a lot of people, when you say, oh, yeah, just, you know, write down all the things that you've done, that's difficult for a lot it is to do. And so to sort of get out of your own head, write it as a story about someone else, you know, and just, just, yeah, and then you'll get comfortable with it and you'll see the things there. You'll be like, oh, well, you know, I could tell somebody I did that. Like, that's pretty cool. And Also, you'll see this list that's way longer than you already think it is and that will help your confidence. Like, oh, I do have like the worst part is thinking that you haven't done enough to have any credibility. And as soon as you said that, my first thought, which may sound strange, was, I don't know what I, how I'm gonna answer this question. I haven't done enough. Like, there's always more I want to do. I failed at all these other things. Like, oh, crap, I'm a nobody. And then it's like, well, okay, but there's the one thing that I can start with and then it flowers out from there and it's a beautiful thing.

It does.

So.

And I have a technique that is actually, that's part of the credibility funnel that I'm going to share with you later in the show.

Okay.

That talks about a very powerful way to get that, that word out about the things you've done without you having to do it. Oh, so this is sure to stick around.

I'm going to stick around. That's good. Okay.

Yeah, that's good. Because we all, we all, most people, I think, because, you know, you want to be, be one of the things we're going to talk about is to be confident. You know, you want to talk, but you don't want to be seen as being cocky.

Right.

You don't want to go over. There's a, there's a fine line there. So I have a couple of tricks for you that I, that I think, you know, will help you still with your personal brand. You know, even if you're just getting started, you just getting out of school or whatever, talk about your education and you know, great, if you went to a great college and got a business degree, awesome. Talk about that. If you went out and got some kind of certification and specialization as a technician, talk about that. You know, recommendations from previous employers. If you're just getting out and starting your own business, talk, share that, put it in your personal blog, what certifications that you may have. And one of the things I love the best because it doesn't cost anything, is content that you've created, articles that you've published. You know, start. If you're thinking of starting a business in, in forever in the next five years, start writing now. A good example. I have a really good friend that is going to be migrating out of the kind of a biotech industry and he wants to go out and do consulting and he's got this five year time horizon and I Said, hey, now is the time to start building your credibility and create content. Write an article a week, an article every two weeks, whatever it is about something in your industry. Publish it to LinkedIn, publish it on your personal blog, medium.com, you know, Facebook, whatever it is, because all that content is going to get pushed out into on the net and over time, you know, an article that you wrote a few years ago, when someone searches it has way more credibility than if you just wrote it a few days ago.

It's true. Even if you're the one. Even if they don't search for it, even if you send them the link to it.

Yeah.

Just the fact that it's like, wow, you wrote this in 2015. It's like, well, yeah, I mean, like, it's no big deal, but yeah, yeah, like, yeah, it really works. And yeah, you're, it's not. I mean, years are better than, years are better than months, but months are way better than days. No, absolutely, yeah. Just do it now. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be great. You can edit.

No. You know, and it doesn't have to be long, it could be short. A good example is, you know, if you go up on LinkedIn and start looking at some of the content, some of the articles that people are publishing, they're very, you know, straightforward to the point, often very brief. But it's, it's, it's okay, you know, that, that works, that works really well. Yeah. And you know, a couple of people that use this concept, I think really well of, you know, growing their company via their personal brand, even though they're both well established person or people and companies. But you know, Brian Burke from sell your Mac.com, you know, he's out there all the time. He wears his bright blue suit and he's at trade shows, he talks about things, he's doing his business. So, you know, he's building, built his own credibility up over a long period of time and he lends that to his tech defenders, you know, Gary Von Meyer, that we've had, you've had both these guys on the show follow these guys on LinkedIn and you know, connect with them and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. They're very credible and they use that credibility to just kind of build this cycle and enrich their own personal credibility funnel as well as it for their business.

Yeah, God, yeah, you're right. You know, I mean, Brian is a great example, like to, down to his clothing, like, it's awesome. You know, who, you know, who used to be. And not that he isn't still good at it, but he's just, he, he works for Google now, but Jason o' Grady was one of the first people. He published a website called Power Page, which I think is still being published, but he, he's. And I think he still owns it or something along those lines. But, but he works for Google, so he's not, you know, nearly as upfront with that as he used to be. But I'll never forget going to a Macworld Expo and seeing him and, you know, five other people. It was right when we started Mac observer and we were like, oh, we gotta, you know, claw our way into the, into the. Not even, not to the top, but you know, just into being relevant really. And there's Jason and five or six other people with all their orange shirts on going in to cover the show and it's like, oh man, like, we got a long way to go. Now the reality is Jason might have been the only person that ever had written for Power Page before. And he brought five of his friends. I don't know this to be true.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. That's my point is he bought enough shirts to put on enough bodies and walk in and look. He made it seem like he had a presence, which meant he did have a presence. Like it's that, you know, I hate the term fake it till you make it because really once you get there, you realize you just keep faking it. You keep doing the same thing. So I don't like to say faking it, but, but it's, it is that. Or maybe it was that. I don't know.

But. Yeah, exactly.

But Jason really hit me as one of those people that, that, you know, he, he knew how to, he was a, he was expert at self promotion.

So yeah, he was really good. We, we did a lot with him with, with my, with Mac Rescue and with, with Tech Restore. It was good.

Yeah.

So. And you know, another thing that you can do as a, you know, new business or maybe you're going into a new area with your existing business is. It sounds so simple. But licenses and permits, you know, there's all these requirements which I hate. State, city, county, whatever safety you permits and licenses add to your credibility. So you should promote those and you should say, hey, we're licensed, we have permit, we have insurance. Because people compare you to someone else and maybe they didn't think about that if they're. You're doing something on their house or you're selling them a product that needs, you know, long term support. Well, we are the real deal and we've invested the time and money to do things right versus the guy down the street that's selling it for, you know, 100 bucks less or whatever it is. Right, right. Promote that stuff, post it in, you know, in your lobby, put it on your website. Adds to your credibility. Another thing I think that really adds to your credibility is your location and your facility. If you have a physical location. But you can think about this as your website as well. If you just have an online presence.

Whatever your public presence is, be it your location or whatever. Yeah, it matters. Yeah, yeah.

You know, is it clean? I mean, I'm shocked at some places. You know, I was in the repair business for a long time and I'd go visit some of our dealer customers and some of them, I'd walk into them like, oh, this place is unbelievable. You know, it's so, it's, I mean it's like a laboratory, Beautiful, just what you want. The technicians look like doctors. I always went for that. Some of other ones you walk in is like, whoa, man, I don't want to sit, I don't want to touch anything. It's so dirty and not organized. So you know, it should be clean, well lit. It also, if you have a physical location or even online, it should be easy to find, you know, and it should be safe and online. Do you have all your security certificates? So when people go there, they're not going to get a pop up that says this is not secur. You know. And are you also in an area that's surrounded by other businesses? You know, that adds to your credibility as well, you know, Are you in a strip mall that has some great anchor tenants? Well, if they rent to you, that adds you. If you have a nice sign on up on the side of the building, it makes you more credible than the guy that's driving around in the, you know, with a pickup truck.

Yeah, for sure. I will, I will say you, you mentioned having security certificates and all that stuff and I couldn't agree more. Having that little lock in the bar where your website is. To me that tells me that somebody is keeping their website up to date. You know, five years ago it was like, oh look, they're secure. Now it's oh look, they're not secure.

They're not.

Right. And so, you know, there is a push to get HTTPs everywhere. There are two companies I'm going to talk about very briefly or refer you to. One is A company called let's Encrypt. Their mission is to get everyone secure. And they give you free security certificates, 100% free. Now, it's a little bit of a pain in the neck because you have to renew them every three months, but depending on how and where you're hosting your website, that renewal can happen automatically, like I have. In fact, BusinessShow Co is secured with a let's Encrypt security certificate. We don't pay for that. Why should we? Right? I get the same lock. Whether we pay a couple hundred bucks a year or we use let's Encrypt and you, as our, our visitors, get the same security. Whether we pay or use. Let's Encrypt like it's all legit. And so check that out. That's. That's certainly one. If you don't want to use them or you have slightly different needs. There's a company called Cloudflare. You can get a free account there. Depending on how much traffic you have and all of that, you might choose to upgrade to, say, a $20 a month account with Cloudflare. But to be. To be perfectly honest, you don't. You probably don't need that. And they will automatically put the encryption in place in front of your website. Like, you don't have to. You don't even have to get a cert. They will take care of it. And it just magically happens. Their goal at Cloudflare, I mean, certainly is to make money, but they have a freemium model, and their freemium part is a big part of their personal brand or their business brand of truly helping the whole web get secure and fast. So check out Cloudflare too. I'll put that in there.

Those are great. Two really good resources.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

And, you know, the other part going on this, you know, your location, everything is you need to have friendly people working for you, even if it's just yourself. You really need to make your potential clients comfortable and welcome, whether it's on your website or in your lobby. Those first impressions are really critically important. And, you know, it's, it's very simple. Be friendly. You know, just, just go out of your way to, you know, make sure you, your people have a smile on their face or you do that, you welcome people when they come in, whether they're coming into your website front door or whether they're walking into your lobby. It really adds itself. You don't want to look harried and, you know, rushed and just overworked. You just you want to have a nice, calm, controlled, and, hey, you know, thanks for coming by. How can I. How can I help you?

How can I help? That's it? Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

For sure.

Hey, I want to take. It's a perfect opportunity to talk about our first sponsor, which is Textexpander. At Textexpander.com podcast, we're talking about having your staff be friendly. Well, I would say it's valuable to have your staff not only be friendly, but be helpful. Right. Because that's the thing. I mean, certainly you want to be friendly, but actually helping someone and giving them perhaps what they need or more than they thought they would get from you can really help with that brand. And so textexpander can really help with that, because what textexpander lets you do is sit down and craft all of the customer service responses. Really anything that your staff like, emails out. And it could be simple stuff. I use it. You know, I talk about how I have my email addresses and my phone numbers in there, so when I fill out web forms, I don't need to think and type and make sure I don't have typos. And that's the beauty. Whether you're typing a phone number or an email address or five paragraphs, you don't have to worry about typos because you've already gone through it. Once you've made sure it's good, you put it into textexpander. And then anytime you need that same information to be sent, you pull it out of textexpander. You either use a dropdown menu when you click a button, or you expand text, you type a short snippet, and it expands into a much longer snippet. And what's cool about that is, you know your staff isn't going to have unlimited time. You don't want them to have unlimited time. If they do, you probably aren't giving them enough work to do, but you want them to be able to really give your customers more than your customers expect. And your customers know that your staff has limited time. So if somebody asks a question and you can not only give them, you know, you could give them a brief answer that answers it, or you could say, yeah, here's the brief answer, and here's all this other information that you might find valuable, even if it's not directly pointing back at your business like that part of your brand is huge. To be able to truly offer assistance and information that people might truly find valuable, Textexpander can help you do it. So go to textexpander.com podcast where you'll get 20% off your first year just for being a small business show listener. And you can share those snippets with your team and everything. It's all good. So textexpander.com podcast and our thanks as always to Textexpander for sponsoring the episode.

Nice. Yeah, that, that really adds to your credibility as well when you are sending out the same messaging over and over because you'll find, you know, I'm sure people in customer service can attest to this is often customers will call back and want to try to get a different customer service rep to try to get a different answer.

Right. Yeah.

And, and so it's great, you know, they're trying to come back and get it, but when you can really have a cohesive message for them and it needs to be great, you're not trying to put up roadblocks. You're trying to help people.

No, you're trying to help. But, but, but consistency matters.

Yeah, it's huge. Yeah, it's huge. And you know, along the lines of, of communication, again, the key is to start. If you're starting a new business or, or maybe you just haven't gone out and produced any content that because you didn't think about it or think it's important, I'm here to tell you it is important. People want to know what's going on. If you bought a new truck for your business, post it on Facebook. If you know one of your guys just got his forklift certification, post it on LinkedIn. Start promoting all this content with your company name mentioned, with your staff mentioned. Because down the road, when people are searching for your information about your business, the more information they can bring up where you're controlling the narrative, where they're finding the story that you created. That's powerful and that's the first step in the credibility funnel.

It's true, you know, where most people, even though we're not necessarily good at bragging on demand, as we talked about before, most people are pretty good at, you know, creating their highlight reel, their own personal highlight reel on Facebook. Think about creating your businesses highlight reel. And once you get into the habit of that, you will do it as naturally as you do for your own stuff. Like, I had a great meal. Here's a picture of my food. Like, people love that now why is humans love that is is worthy of a topic on a different podcast, but we do. Right? Just like humans will love seeing. Like you said, I'm business bought a new Truck. Here's a new truck. You know, it's like we've all seen a new truck before. I don't need to see your business's picture, but I want to.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah, that's right.

And. And. And, you know, maybe you're picking out trucks. Hey, what do you guys think? You know, this kind of thing, you know, it's better to have 50 posts on Facebook, 50 posts on LinkedIn, you know, then. Then have none when people start searching for you. And you can do. You know, we've talked about this before. There's. There's software that'll help you push that content across all these different platforms. You don't have to go one after another because it can seem kind of daunting, you know, but you can use. You know, one product is hootsuite, which is just an unbelievable product that'll push your social media posts across all these different platforms at different times. You can set up a lot of stuff. I love it. They have a freemium version as well as a paid.

You know, to the point of. Of getting a new truck for your business. Ask people what truck they would buy. Like, describe your business needs. Engage. It's totally fine. You know, I do another podcast, the Gig Gab, for musicians, and people come to us for advice on lots of things, including gear. Well, I'm looking for. You know, I have a need in the studio here, and certainly I could pretend I'm Dave the expert that knows everything, which is untrue. I don't. Couldn't possibly know everything, but I could and do my own research, you know, in a bubble, decide what kind of mixer I'm gonna get or would get if money were no object, you know, whatever, and then talk about it on the show and that people. That people would find that valuable. But this morning I just posted and I said, here's what I'm looking for. What would you folks do? Now? I've got tons of responses from these people, and our Facebook group isn't that big. It's only a few hundred people, but tons of responses. Now I know A, what I should talk about. Then there's several things I never would have stumbled on. B, I know this is a topic that's of interest to our audience because they've responded to it. And C, I now have content for the show that other people wrote for me. Like, this is great. So, yeah, that's terrific. Yeah. Engage and engage. Not to be the expert, you know.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Be the curator. Yeah.

Because I always. My Whole life I've always worried about sounding like I, you know, oh, I don't really know, so how can I make this statement? But that concept of asking questions is, you know, and we do it here all the time. Hey, what works for you? You know, send us a message of feedback at Business Show Co. Tell us what we got wrong. I mean, put yourself out there and ask, you know, for that, for that. Feedback is great.

Yeah. The other thing, it's that confidence that we talked about before, too. Same. It's all part of the same deal. Yep.

Yeah. And. And when you're thinking social and all this stuff, you know, we're going to start talking. We're going to talk about reviews and stuff in a few minutes. But go set up a page for your business on Yelp, if you haven't already. If someone hasn't already done it for you, you need to own it, you need to claim it, because you want, again, want to control the narrative. You want to tell the story your way. You want to post photos your way. So when people are searching for reviews and they find you up there, they, you know, you want to have some input on what they see as well as a Google business. Google my business page. You need to set that up because again, you get to do it or someone El will set it up for you. And it, it's. It can be tough to make changes to that sometimes. So you want to set those things up, you know, as soon as you can. So another thing that you can do, especially if you're just getting started, get involved with the community, you know, and help. It'll help give you credibility. Join a chamber of commerce. What local business group? There's a Young Entrepreneurs Council, the Rotary, you know, and then promote your membership and involvement because you'll have other people like, oh, this guy helps with the Rotary. This, you know, I'm a Rotary member. You. You'll find you'll be referring business back and forth. Get yourself involved. It'll help you tremendously.

Huh? That's a really good idea, you know. Yeah. As someone who doesn't really. I mean, at this point in my career, I don't have any local businesses. All of my businesses are online. But I think there's probably still huge value in joining those groups. I've never thought to, but that's a really, really good advice. Yeah.

Well, especially if you're a solo entrepreneur and you're getting started. They also just give you the, that daily feedback loop. If you get a chance to go to some of these meetings or you want to learn to speak better. Public speaking. You know, if you join Toastmasters and you go to their meetings or you do whatever, it's really helpful for you as a growing business owner. Another thing I really like that I've seen more and more is to add a social aspect to your business. And, and you know, we've all seen the, like Tom's shoes. I think it is you, you buy a pair and we donate a pair. You know, you could do that. You could donate a percentage of your profits. Offer free or discounted services to specific groups like the military, students. I just found out we have a ski resort not far from us, Bear Valley, I guess it is. And every Sunday, if you're in the military or you're a veteran. A veteran skiing is free.

Huh?

That's, it's awesome. You know, it's like, that's totally cool. And you know, we used to offer free services. We were in the tech business. We did e waste drop off so you could, you know, drop your stuff off and we had a, you know, company come pick it up. Just think about the services that you could offer people for free or at a discount. And again, it adds to your credibility. Promote it, create some posters, put it up in your lobby, put it up on your website. And it just helps you rise above the people that are not doing that. That.

Right.

The businesses that are not taking the, you know, adding that social aspect. I think it's powerful and it's, it's a, it's, you know, it's a great cause. I got a few more. We're going to run long today, I think, because some of this stuff is so important. Another one I really like is, is get involved and sponsor and help, you know, local charities, groups, you know, buy a banner on the high school fence, the football team. You know, you may not get any business from it, but people see your name out there.

That's good branding. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's. Yep. It's good. I mean, it falls into the. Yeah, it falls into the last one of, you know, I, I sort of categorize all of this as do good, you know.

Yeah, do good. I like that. Yeah, that's really good. And if you don't have cash, because I've often found myself like, wow, you know, we're just, I'm kind of tight. I can't buy that thing. Donate your time, donate your manpowers. Like, hey, I can help organize that event with you. Or I know how to do this. I know how to, you know, sell tickets. I can do whatever, and then promote your involvement. Take a picture with a group of people that you've been involved in and post it in your lobby. Put it on your website. Had a great time this weekend with Habitat for Humanity or with whatever, you know, whatever conservation or group that you like that adds instant credibility. Post it to Facebook. Put it on your LinkedIn page for your personal brand, your name, as well as your company LinkedIn page. Spread it across and spread it wide.

You're right. I've run into people both in their personal lives, which is slightly more understandable, and in their business lives, which I. I disagree with that. Say, no, I do this just because I want to do good. I. I don't want to. If I promote it, that taints the. The good that I did.

Sure.

Well, I disagree with that. I. The good that you did is the good that you did, and that exists. I mean, as long as you did something good, you helped out organizing a thing, whatever your thing was, that's fine. Then you can talk about that in your business, you know, and. And certainly you want to find an appropriate way to talk about it. So it doesn't seem like the only reason you did it was correct. But the two can ex. Can coexist. You can do something good, and then you can talk about it. And maybe what you do is instead of just saying, hey, look how great we were. We did a thing over there, you come out and say, hey, you know, we did this thing over there, and we learned a lesson that was really important to us and share that lesson. And now it's sort of. You're. You're referencing this awesome thing that you did by also sharing, you know, a good part of it. Right. And it still gets the message out, though, that you did a good thing. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, no. Just because it helps you doesn't mitigate the fact that you helped others.

That's it.

It.

Exactly. Right, Exactly.

And, yeah, and you can also promote other people to come help. Hey, we had a great time at Habitat for Humanity. They're doing another event next weekend. Please, you know, sign up and help or make a donation. So, you know, you're. You're continuing this. This great relationship with the. Whatever groups you, you know, want to align yourself with. And. And you're helping everybody. And it. It really. It. It. It's powerful. Yeah, it's powerful.

Oh, it's huge.

Another. Yeah, another thing I really like, and we talked about this last week a bit when we were discussing trade shows, is, you know, Teach, share your knowledge. You're an expert at something, I guarantee it. Maybe it's not even related to your business that you're growing, but you know, stuff, right? Speak at events, write articles for publications, write an editorial for your newspaper or a local website. And again, you're just pushing out this, your, your, your personal brand or your business, and you're just getting it out there. And it could be really brief. I know. Dave, you recently spoke at Google and it was like six minutes or something, right?

Right. It was less than that. It was three and a half minutes. Yep. Yeah, I got so much out. I personally got a lot out of that and I got so many, like referrals and interest in all of those things.

Yeah, you got it. And I do the same thing. I speak at ebay. You know, I get involved with all this kind of stuff. I love it, you know, and even though they're brief and little things, you always meet one person that has a dramatic impact on your business or your personal life. Always.

We just hired an SEO consultant. She works full time for ESPN doing, or abc really doing all of their SEO across all their properties, but she's able to do consulting on her side and on the side. And, and the only way that I met her was through that Google conference. And I, I mean, I, I can't say whether or not it's going to make a huge difference for us because we just hired her and she just started doing this stuff for us, but I can't imagine it won't. And I think it might be one of, if not the best decision we will have made for the business this year. You know, I like to think I feel that way about every decision we make, because otherwise, why not, why make it? You know, but, but I feel like the opportunity would not have even been on the table if I didn't do three and a half minutes at Google talking like a maniac about goals. I know.

Yeah, that's, that's awesome. And I got, I got a few more quick ones. And then we're going to jump into real quick about this concept of the credibility funnel training. Get you and your staff trained, you know, at Tech Restore, even though we were an independent repair facility and we really promoted that for a number of reasons. All of our technicians became Apple certified and that helped us a lot. You know, we posted their certifications online and in our building and, you know, we talked it up all the time. And it's a, it's a great thing to promote whatever related certifications you can get in Your industry or licenses for your people do it. Not only does it add to your credibility, but it also creates a path, a career path within your organization. Even if you only have a few people. It's like, hey, the next step is to get this certification, and then you do this and you do that. So I really like the, you know, the training concept. It works really well.

Yeah.

And then we're talking about reviews. You know, once you get going, ask for people, ask for endorsements, you know, ask for testimonials and the other thing, like you were saying, Dave, ask for help. Ask for constructive criticism. What do you like about this? Do you like this sign? Do you like this one better? Do you like this truck? You know, all that kind of stuff. And maybe you offer an incentive for some of those reviews. You know, one of the things we did at Tech Restore is we offered to double a customer's warranty if they left us a review on one of the review websites because we knew how important that was. And even if they didn't give us the best review, we still it. And it was a great incentive. So maybe some way you can offer them something, you know, now or in the future that that helps helps them get up there and leave a review.

That's what a great idea that is. That costs you nothing. Yeah, I mean, you know what I scheme of things. It costs you nothing because you would.

I was.

You would have warranted that past the. Anyway, anyway. Yep.

Yes, that's right. I used to tell my people my, you know, customer service reps that were awesome, but they always. They're fighting for the company, right? They think they're doing that. Well, no, I go, you know, what if they call us and it's a month or two out of warranty, we' going to fix it anyway. So now let's turn it into a, you know, a promotion. And, you know, we. We talked it up everywhere and it worked out really well.

So smart. I like it.

Y Y And like you said earlier, be confident, not cocky, but, you know, know your own and your business, business's value and let people know how you can help them. You know, don't use words like maybe, should, might, or, you know, other vague terms. Stick with yes or no. And, you know, it's okay to say no if you can't help that customer. Use precise wording in your marketing. You know, when you put out your marketing material, when you write those articles and when you talk to people, especially verbal, people are drawn to confidence.

Right.

We talked about inspiration in the show last Week, same kind of thing. People love it when you're confident. Again, it's a fine line. You can't be cocky like, we're the best at everything, but you can say, oh, no, this is what we do, and it's awesome. And we change people's lives. And I used to, you know, know we, we had it up in our building. You know, we're changing the world one repair at a time, because we were. And you would get letters from people that talked about how you saved money. I couldn't afford to do this, that. And it, it really works well. So be confident in, in your own ability and in your business ability.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so how does this all relate to this credibility funnel topic? And here's where I'm going to tell you how to spin it to make it exponentially more powerful than if you go out and tell everybody all this.

We're waiting.

Yes, the most powerful method for gaining instant credibility is for someone else to talk about it, not you.

Absolutely right.

You know, you, your mo, your marketing, your promotion, those are all essential. But when a previous customer or someone you know, or someone that's worked with you or your business in the past, when they talk about your, your achievements, your service and your talents, it's far, far more powerful. So you want to get the information that they need to make these recommendations out into the universe as soon as you can.

Right.

This stuff has to be easily accessible. And the way you start and envision this funnel, the top of the funnel is created by pushing out all this credible information, everything we've just been talking about, you get it out there, there online, print, verbal, email, the more information you spread out, the larger the top of the funnel is going to be and the more people you're going to bring in. To go back to what we said, if you just wrote an article a week ago and versus if you've written one every week, and this could be a 500, this could be 200 words, 300 words. When somebody goes and searches and gets five pages of Google results versus one page or versus a bunch of other content that's not related to your business, you've widened that funnel out dramatically. And people tend to slip in like, oh, wow, man, these guys have been publishing articles about pool sweeps. And, you know, if you're in the pool business and chemicals and all this kind of stuff or referencing articles somebody else wrote, you don't even have to write it. I mean, you can promote all that kind of stuff. You want that funnel head to be as wide as possible. So once it's you've built it, you need to make it easy for them to use that information themselves or to refer someone to you. So you got to have easy to remember information. Like an alpha phone number, right? Like 1-800-we-fix Max. That's brilliant. 1-800-radiator or whatever. You know, come up with a number if you're in. If your business is primarily via phone, you got to come up with something that's easy for people to remember to refer people to or or to use it themselves. If online is the way to go, you've got to come up with a web address even if it's not your main web address. Maybe you've got multiple sites that are all feeding via this funnel into your main website. You've got to come up with something that's easy to Remember. We use BusinessShow Co because it is what we do. And I love the way the rhythm flows off and that you go so. So make sure you've got an easy way for people to find you once they find all this credible information at the top of your funnel.

And keep my advice on that is keep an eye out for new top level domains that come to life because there are new ones every year. And one of the bands I play in is a band called Fling. Okay, when we decided to get online, the best we could get was flingrocks.com. so okay, great, we got that. Now it's fun because when we say it live, I can always say that's a website address, not a request, you know, so people aren't actually flinging rocks at us, you know, I mean there's like fun, you can have fun with it. But when the dot band domains came out, I went and grabbed Fling Band. Now I haven't changed our website, it's still flingrocks.com but if you go to Fling Band it redirects to flingrocks.com and it's a way easier thing to say to people is go to Fling Band. They'll remember. Band. Oh, I saw a band. What was their name? Fling. Perfect, good to go. But that wasn't even an option on the first day. So think just stay on top of this stuff. Because even if you don't get the domain you want on the first day, get something good enough and then keep after it it throughout your business's life, you may find that there's better things that you can do just if only to serve this purpose. The easy to remember information. You don't have to change anything. Else just redirect and point. That's it.

I like it. Yeah, that's good. And I think one of the mistakes people make once they have a customer in this credibility funnel too is they, they often loop them back out to the, to the top by promoting. You know, once you've got them in and you, maybe you've got this mini site, you know, that that's kind of selling a certain product or service that you're promoting and the customer's there, you don't want to loop them back out with things like, oh, read our reviews or this kind of thing. You got to come up with a way or if you can to track them in. Okay, they've read the reviews, they're here, they're at this point, they're ready to buy. You don't want to oversell it, you don't want to push it. Again, keep the focus on at that point, you know, converting them to customers. Now's the time to focus on the product or service. Once you've got them in this, this funnel. Yeah, and, and then add value, you know, keep promoting the value of your product service as they get deeper in, you know, talk share promotions, talk about benefits. Because if they're, if you're finding in your analytics, you're looking at your software, hey, people are abandoning their carts here or they're not doing this. Maybe you need to have some kind of promotion. You know, hey, if you buy now, you're gonna get something or a discount or schedule the service. And we'll give you this sign up right now for this newsletter. And get this, you know, you see it all the time when you go to all these websites. That's what they're doing. It's like, well, we've got you here. We spent all this time and money, you know, building this credibility funnel. We've got you here, we don't want you to leave. And even, you know, you see those pop ups when you go to click the browser tab close and they go, wait, you know, you may need that, you know, and then you're not done. Because once you've made the sale, then you need to then start over, leverage that relationship to increase the size of that credibility funnel, funnel again, you're creating a system to build your credibility over time, measure your results, adjust as needed and then just repeat over and over and over. And all those people that you're providing awesome service to are just going to help you build this robust and very wide mouth credibility funnel. That at the bottom is where the money's Going to come out.

That's it.

So I like this.

I would say if you don't like the term leverage the relationship, I would say level up the relationship.

Level up, yeah. That's great.

With your customers, right, because you've got them to a certain point now you can level up. And then after they've bought from you between zero and one times that they bought from you, there's a huge level up. Between one and 10 times, there's another huge thing. So keep that in mind. Track that and engage those people at different levels there.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, how many customers that are buying your product or service are then coming and following, you know, and, and you on Facebook or how many people can you get on LinkedIn to convert, you know, track. Track that and then maybe ask those people. So why did you come do this? Oh, well, there was a promotion. If I joined the, you know, if I liked your page, I got an extra. Whatever. Okay, that worked. Let's do that more. Or ask people. Why didn't you, you know, reach out? Keep, keep trying to build that credibility over time. I would love to hear ways that you've increased your small business credibility. It's really an interesting topic for me now. The markets are crowded and there's so many businesses out there. Adding that credibility to your company can really make you stand out. So share with us via email@feedbacksinessshow.co or visit the small business support group at businessshow co. Facebook. Come share your story. And you know, we'd love to share your story here. Maybe we can send some business your way and help you with your credibility funnel.

That's right. Get on this show, then we'll talk about you. And now that we're part of that funnel. Absolutely. Yeah.

Put it on your website, post it to LinkedIn, you know, get some additional credibility out of it. We'll be glad to help you. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

All right, man. Well, I think that's the end of this one. One, right? Have we. Are we any more credible now? I mean, we've. We did well, we did a lot of these things. We, we taught for sure. We asked for help. So that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. All right.

So we, yeah, it's good. I mean, I think every show we do, it add star credibility and we're, you know, 259 episodes in, so I think we're on the right track.

Yeah, no, and that's what it is. Just keep doing it. Like, don't stop. Once you, once you start this stuff. Don't stop. And, you know, you'll find your path. Just. Just go ahead and do it. Yeah, it's good. All right, folks, well, thank you for listening. As always, send us your thoughts at feedbackusiness show co. As always, visit us on Facebook @businessshow co Facebook. And keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.