205 A Guide to Google Reviews for Accounting Firms 🫠

Nothing is more triggering than a stupid negative Google review blotting your firm's identity online. But really, what relevance do they have to like professional services? You want to leave me a bad review because I didn't want to work with you? You don't like me, bub. The feelings mutual. So today we're going to talk about does it even matter what types of firms do Google reviews still matter for? We're talking about the rules with asking for reviews.

Some gotchas there.

Talk about how to ask for reviews and how to respond to reviews with.

A few g just blood boiling examples.

But don't worry, we're going to pull in Leonard the legacy accountant to give.

Us some ideas for how to respond to these idiotic negative reviews.

So come on down, get yourself a piping hot serving of Jason Daly. First and most importantly, do they even matter? We got a lot of ground to.

Cover so I'm going to rapid fire through this.

Worth being aware Google reviews can actually.

Impact your SEO ranking. So generally positively reviewed businesses will display higher in SEO results than lower ranked businesses.

If you rely quite a bit on local business, this matters more as well because when people Google search for stuff it will show local results first.

A really valuable part of those search results is the like location specific like on the map results it will give you on a Google search.

And I mean it's perfectly like legitimate.

To run a accounting firm around local business, particularly if you do tax.

The argument is getting harder for accounting firms to just work with local people.

But tax firms where salt is a major issue, particularly if you're in a complex state or even even smaller jurisdiction than a state.

You can build a killer business around.

Just being really good for a slightly more general type of person within a region like like region specific tax expertise that is a type of specialization for firms like that. I would argue Google reviews are a bigger deal because proximity for searchers does impact results and then absent other forms of differentiation, people will make buying decisions based on Google reviews.

So it's one of those things where people will make a decision on it, but if they have made a decision on it, you've probably already lost the larger battle of trying to be unique.

And one of one and giving them ways to build a relationship with you.

Before coming to you. If they're window shopping me versus the guy across the street or even the guy across the country, I've already lost an opportunity to be unique and ultimately as long as we are not unique.

We are going to be price takers, not price setters. When you're not unique, they don't know what differentiates you from any other firm. They're not gonna have as much respect for your expertise because they don't see you as like, the expert for them. So not everybody starts there.

Like, when you're starting out, people are.

Not looking at you as the queen bee, as it were.

That's the thing that takes time to build. So if you're still in a spot where reality is you're being benchmarked against.

Other firms, Google reviews, they're gonna matter.

There's also just a. Like, in the process of being selective and weeding people out and not being a great fit for everybody, there's almost this minimum level of bad reviews that you're almost guaranteed. Now, it's not to say that you shouldn't do everything that you can to avoid this stuff. And oftentimes that comes from ending client.

Relationships the right way, like doing the right thing, like making it a phone.

Call, not breaking up over text, trying to be intentional in how you communicate. It's not a personal thing. It's a business alignment thing. A lot of folks and bad reviews.

That I see for people who are leaving firms, oftentimes they feel personally jaded or slighted and that they weren't taken care of. And nobody likes feeling like they weren't.

Important enough or something like that, right? Like, nobody likes feeling like the little fish. So it's not to say that there.

There isn't value in communicating that stuff the right way and leaving people in.

A good spot and even connecting them with a new professional who's better, a.

Better fit for them.

But it's the kind of thing where misunderstandings happen. And the fact that you're probably bound to get a few negative reviews for me is maybe the greatest motivator to.

Still try to get positive reviews. Because if you're never asking for positive reviews, the only thing that's ever going to be there is negative reviews.

And that would just bother me. Maybe it's an OCD thing.

Maybe it ultimately doesn't matter.

If somebody's been following you on social media, listening to their podcast, all those.

Things people are never going to see. Your Google reviews really doesn't matter. Really funny example of this, actually, where.

Google reviews kind of don't always make a ton of sense. Now the headquarters for Lego is in Denmark and I was curious, I wonder if they do any, like, tours. And I didn't even know what the headquarters were.

Are they like a corporate office?

Do they do manufacturing there? And so I was poking around on Google Maps one day and the Lego headquarters has 307 Google reviews with an average rating of 3.5. And let me read you just a few of these reviews. Here's a one star. Two months ago Lego has the worst Internet shop I experienced in a while now. The experience was horrible and misleading on many levels. The parcel was sent to the wrong location and I was left to solve this with the shipping company. Another one star from Justin Erickson three months ago waited to get on the website just for the website to not be working and wanted me to wait again. No way. Should not have bought and ruined Bricklink. Everything is garbage. These are reviews on the headquarters for Lego in Denmark. I was in New York and had a meeting with gusto and was on.

Google Maps and they've had a. They've had a bunch of offices in New York so finding the right one was a pain.

And this like physical office location for Gusto and there's a whole bunch of.

Of they have physical offices all over the place.

Was like fully review bombed from people annoyed that they're getting payroll notices in the mail. So unlike a macro level, I do think for many types of businesses Google reviews are not what they once were. When we were doing business with people at chamber meetings and it was all local and all that, it mattered a lot more than it does now. But I would still have a hard.

Time turning my brain off to it completely.

So when does it not matter? When your client base is.

Is everywhere. It's less of a big deal when you're differentiated. The goal is get people to me.

With already having built trust in me.

As an expert so they already know me when we first meet. They're not just like window shopping people's websites. I think if they've seen my Google reviews, I've lost the bigger battle and the bigger opportunity to be unique and establish myself as an expert before we start working together.

Now, lots of businesses they're still relevant for.

Like if, if you're a restaurant and there's three other restaurants on that block.

Sure those Google reviews are super, super useful and, and that sort of thing.

It matters. Like if there are three dental clinics in town, you better believe Google reviews matter.

But when you're a professional services firm who by definition is exclusive and not.

Trying to please everyone, it's a little more messy now.

I'm still going to ask for Google reviews because I worry if I don't.

All I collect is, you know, once a year I get a stinker or two.

So Some thoughts on how to most tactfully do that. But first, Google's rules around actually what.

You'Re allowed to ask for, not ask for.

It is perfectly okay to ask for reviews.

And this is. We're specifically talking about Google's review rules. Yelp's other services are going to be different. This is for Google.

It's perfectly okay to ask for reviews, but you're actually not allowed to selectively ask for reviews. This is called review gating and something.

They specifically call out to say that you can't do.

And where we probably see that the most is, is if you say install.

An app on your phone and they're like, how are you liking the app?

And if you say it sucks, they're.

Like, oh, give me your feedback.

And if you say it's great, they're like, sweet, hit this button and go leave a review that you're not actually allowed to do.

For the Google reviews we're talking about, the GM is a gmb.

Google my business, you can't do that. Which I didn't actually realize because historically I was like, okay, at the end of a project, ask for their feedback.

If they love it, then hand them off to review, to review. Actually not allowed to do that.

You're also not allowed to offer an incentive.

So this is like give them money or give them discounts or something like that.

While their rules don't specifically mention giving them things like non monetary things, they.

Have taken action against companies who've done this last.

You actually can't ask employees, friends or.

Family members to leave reviews. They say it's a conflict of interest.

So if mom's a client, can't get a review from mom or friends. Guess you can't be friends with your clients now. Equally important, how do I get that stupid review removed? And maybe it's just like totally false. We had some reviews that were like for businesses that were completely unrelated to ours.

Like there was another company with a similar name that operated on the other side of the country and somehow these knuckleheads came to leave the review for us.

Gang. This episode is sponsored in part by Accruer. Have you seen this one yet? We did a demo day on the main channel for it a couple few months back. So Accruer, all it does is it connects to your QuickBooks online files and whenever it sees like in an expense.

Or an invoice or anything like that.

In the description, I think the phrasing is for period, like date to date, it will automatically post journal entries to accrue that revenue, that expense, that payroll journal entry, even to accrue that across periods, it will prorate it by like.

The number of days in a month.

Even if you go in and you change that down the road, you change that description to a different date, it will update all those accrual journal entries. So if you've got clients doing contracts.

Where that revenue gets recognized over, you know, a year or two, a number.

Of months, and you got a whole bunch of those going on at the.

Same time, makes that super simple.

If you got clients doing prepaid expenses and you actually track them, makes that super simple as well. The payroll journal thing was actually really.

Cool to me because it will then like figure it out based on the number of days in either period.

It's all super smart by a company called Finoptimal. They're building like a whole bunch of.

These little kind of tools for public accountant folks like us.

To check this one out, head over to accruer.com or check out the link.

In the show notes.

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Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team up, here are the reasons you can get a review removed. So for any review that they leave.

If you're logged into the Google my business account that's associated with the business.

You can flag reviews for Google to.

Come take a look at if it doesn't meet their criteria.

So reasons why reviews can be removed Spam or fake content reviews must be.

Authentic and reflect a reviewer's actual experience.

They can't manipulate ratings or misrepresent facts.

Most of the time we're going to contest a review, it's going to fall into this bucket. Off topic content. So unrelated restricted content. This is around stuff like alcohol and gambling. I guess there's some restrictions here.

Illegal stuff, terrorist content, anything explicit, anything offensive, anything dangerous or derogatory, anything that could be perceived as impersonation and then.

Conflict of interest like we talked about, friends and family or employees.

So for me, most of the things I'm going to get taken down have.

To fall into this first bucket. Spam and fake content reviews must be authentic and reflect the reviewer's genuine experience.

They should not manipulate ratings or misrepresent facts. Bingo. Oh, I've seen a lot of stinky reviews in my days that misrepresented facts. Not always because they were bad people.

Or trying to lie or something, oftentimes.

Because they just didn't understand.

That's actually one of the examples we're going to go through at the end here.

Now if you flag that review and.

They don't remove it, there's actually a second. You can basically appeal it by getting in touch with Google.

Small business support.

There's a little form where you can.

Reach out to support and people have.

Actually had luck like getting that appealed, providing more, you know, proof or something like that where the initial flag failed.

If it's egregious, it's worth doing. I don't, I don't get the impression.

That they're going to be super inclined to take the side of the business because it's supposed to be like from the other perspective. And obviously if any business could just come in and get bad review reviews removed, it would just totally defeat the purpose. Right.

So how do we ask for reviews in a way that isn't going to feel slimy? People have all sorts of ways that they try to like 200 IQ. Oh, this isn't against the rules when you're like that.

Sure seems like it's against the rules.

A few examples to say we're going to donate X dollars to a charity.

For every five star review we get.

Maybe you've got a charity you like and that's just something you put in your email signature or in the office.

If people come in the office a.

Lot, is that against the rules? I don't know. Are you incentivizing the person leaving the review by saying we're going to donate $20 to X Charity for every 5 star review?

I don't know.

It does feel like it's incentivizing a.

Review, but like the incentives aren't going directly to them.

Some folks will do stuff with like internal staff competitions. So like every month whoever has the.

Most reviews that mention them gets some sort of bonus or something. And so your staff or your clients.

Are actually like being incentivized to win.

Something for their favorite person at your firm or something like that.

I don't know if this is against the rules or not. It's kind of one of those things where it's like, is the boogeyman really going to come get me if I do this?

But then as soon as I say that, people will leave comments about boogeyman coming in and actually getting you.

I don't, I honestly don't know if.

That'S against the rules or not. I saw another example of, of someone that had a sign out that said please leave an honest review. So they weren't, they weren't review gating.

The sign said please leave an honest review and take a gift card. And they had like a stack of.

Gift cards there for their honest review.

I don't know that I would push.

The envelope so much.

Maybe if I were in a business.

Where my Google reviews were massively important, I'd get more aggressive.

I don't know that the juice is.

Going to be worth the squeeze here because at the end of the day.

It'S not a huge thing for our type of business.

I mainly just don't want somebody to come and see 5 reviews and all of them are negative.

So how do like practically solicit this stuff?

We get spooked about like asking things of our clients, gang. We can ask things of our clients we got to get more comfortable about, like asking for referrals.

I found, I think one of the blockers here is we don't always treat.

The people that we work with like fellow business owners, fellow entrepreneurs. We treat the relationship a little more like as a transaction. And I find that people are, as fellow business owners are pretty reasonable when like you explain the circumstances and help them to understand why them doing something is going to be valuable. For you because they have many of the same problems and folks generally aren't going to be bent out of shape about that.

We did a whole episode a long.

Time ago about how to ask for referrals. Because if you don't, you get like referrals from the entire client base.

I actually think by default referrals skew a little more towards the bottom of the client base. Cause they're like, you give one person a deal and they're like, hey, I'm.

Getting a good deal here, let me bring all my friends to you. And you're like, thanks. When what I actually want is just to ask like my tippy top best favorite clients for referrals. But if you don't proactively ask for referrals, I think it actually on a whole pulls your client base down a little bit. Just my experience.

But asking for reviews, you won't do.

It until it's built into a process.

It's one of those things where everybody.

Can be like, oh yeah, we really do need to ask for that stuff more. But you never will until it is a non negotiable, like part of a process, like a status, something that has to be done every single time.

Now there is software for this stuff.

For managing reviews, but it's really made for high volume review businesses like restaurants where you can see all your reviews from all the different platforms, Facebook, Yelp, everything all in one place and gives you a way to manage it and like templatize your responses and that sort of thing.

But if you're getting 30 reviews or.

Less a year, like I don't see that software really being necessary.

With Google you can create a link.

To link directly to the page to leave a review for you. You can create a link and a QR code like this is all part of the Google my business stuff. And you should do that like you do want to remove all the friction possible for somebody to leave a review for you. Print out the QR code. If you have folks in office and.

You'Ve got a waiting room, give them something to do. Have a little cookie plate, some sort of cookie vessel with an image of the QR code says please scan this and take a cookie and they don't even know what it is at that point. They scan it, they take the cookie, the cookie's delicious. All they got to do now is hit that five star. Is that allowed?

I don't know.

Maybe you don't even, maybe you don't even say what the QR code is. That's the mystery, they just have to.

Somehow get past the QR code to.

Get to the cookie, if that's me.

And I know during COVID there was.

All these like, don't, don't unknowingly scan QR codes. You're gonna, you're gonna get a computer virus.

But these are like, you know, QR codes you find in dark alleys in the bathroom of a nightclub.

We're talking about the waiting room of.

A professional office where people are going to be a little more open to scanning QR codes.

When it comes to making the ask, timing is everything.

So think about the entire customer journey. When are they most tickled?

When are they most dazzled?

That's when you want to get them. Maybe that's on delivery.

Maybe you do a razzle dazzle, like video on delivery or a cool report.

Or something like that. That's where you want to make the request, is when they are at their.

Happiest, not when you're trying to get.

Them to gather documents or something like that.

So, for example, for a tax firm, this is the sort of thing where.

You know, after you collect the 8879 and you send them a confirmation, or maybe when you first send the return.

To them to review and you include.

A video at that, or something like that, if there's a point in that.

Journey where they're going to be dazzled.

That'S probably the best time to ask.

You're going to get a shockingly low percentage of people who will do it because we're all kind of.

We get asked to do this so many times a day now, we're almost kind of blinded to it, I think.

But unfortunately for most firms, it will.

Just be part of playing the game. And business owners generally understand that.

I do hope over time it becomes.

Less of a thing. Like, I would rather not fuss with it. What a pain.

How to use those reviews. Once you have them, though, testimonials on.

Your site are great.

Especially, especially, especially if you are targeting.

A very specific niche type of person, very specific profile. If you have, like, thought leaders within that space and you can put a testimonial from them on, on your landing page, man, that goes. That goes so far.

So we talk about all the different.

Ways you can market to develop a niche, particularly in new media. If you're doing stuff for influencers, for podcast hosts, for folks that work, for associations that these people might be a part of, that's killer social proof.

For somebody to come to a website.

And see a name of somebody they know they're going to be like, oh man, this is, this is the place for me.

So those reviews can be really useful.

Sidebar.

You can ask for those testimonials independent.

Of reviews and those are actually much more impactful than just some random person leaving a Google review. So don't be afraid to just like entirely separate from Google reviews. Ask an influential person for a testimonial that they could put on their landing page. Generally they're going to be happy to do it and as long as you're going after a specific type of person, that's really valuable. If you're serving a very general client base, they're not going to know who John Smith is.

But if you're working with beekeepers, they're going to be like, that's John Smith from Talking Bees with John Smith. One other thought is engaging people who are not necessarily clients to leave reviews. And as far as I can tell, there actually aren't any reviews against this.

You got to steer clear of like related parties like friends and and family members and that sort of thing.

But vendors that you work with, partners that you work with, Is there a.

Legal firm that you exchange a lot of work with? Financial advisors?

I wasn't able to find anything that said it wasn't perfectly okay for those.

People to leave reviews doubly.

So if those people are clients as.

Well, like that's an ask that they ought to be able to follow through on. Better yet, leave them a great review and then say, hey, could you leave me a review?

The old Google review. Quid pro quo. Okay, let's get mad. I'm going to run through three stupid Google reviews. Leonard, you ready to go? We've got Leonard the legacy accountant who's going to propose his own response to each of these. And then we'll think through what is.

A tactful way that we could respond.

Without being an a hole, being dismissive.

And like looking bad in the replies to the reviews.

Cause I don't want to sink to their level. This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at ShareFile ShareFile. It is a secure, easy to use collaboration and workflow solution made to meet the needs of your accounting firm and their clients. The ShareFile fair accounting solution helps enhance client onboarding process processes, organize document collection and orchestrate secure document exchange. With document status visibility, automated emails and e signature capabilities, ShareFile makes for a more modern client experience because that stanky old client experience they have right now, it's not good enough. Stop emailing files back and forth. You're better than that. To learn more about how the ShareFile for Accounting solution can help increase your.

Firm'S workflow, efficiency, security and collaboration, go.

To sharefile.com or click the link in the Show Notes to learn more. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. You may have seen a recent Main Channel video or my newsletter where we showed how to build an AI chat assistant on top of a set of financial statements so that when you deliver them to a client, the client can like chat with the financials. It's actually really interesting, like really good.

At like answering dumb basic questions.

What happened to my office expense this month? You know those questions. And actually a really compelling way of building cool AI stuff right now is using Live Flow to sync data from QuickBooks to your Google Sheets. Because Google Sheets has an entire ecosystem of stuff built around it already. All sorts of other tools you can plug into Google Sheets and when those tools can then see all of your accounting file stuff.

I mean lifeload lets you push like.

All of the a whole bunch of the reports from QuickBooks, balance sheets P and L, but also general ledgers. All of the detail you could possibly need. If you are looking for a really.

Interesting way to like make your firm.

Stand out, particularly if your clients are.

The type of folks who are into AI right now, it's a really cool way to do it. Use Live Flow to bridge that data.

To the spreadsheet and then AI tooling.

To take it from there.

And then use that spreadsheet either by.

Uploading it to an AI tool or via integration letting people then like interact with that accounting information.

Pretty cool. And if you're working with big clients like company groups, like I was doing.

Before I got out of firm running.

Live Flow consolidation can actually roll up.

A whole bunch of those files and give you that reporting too. Imagine being able to chat with like Consolidated Reporting. That's pretty darn cool. You want to learn more about that one?

Check out the link to Live Flow.

In the Show Notes.

Okay, first review. Here it is. Quote Avoid at all costs. They will charge you hundreds of dollars for asking questions without telling you and then overcharge you. A basic itemized personal tax return with a couple business questions charged me $700 plus dollars when they quoted me $130 an hour for one to two hours. Unbelievable. Also by the time they sent me the bill, they even added interest to it. This after the fact. I called them myself asking about when to expect the bill.

They told me not to Worry about it and then charged interest.

Tale as old as time. Misunderstanding on how much a thing's going to cost. Hard not to get mad at that sort of thing. But also you got to consider is.

Like, is there a seed of of.

Good information in there takeaway there for me, man. Upfront pricing, especially on the itty bitty projects. It's kind of what makes itty bitty.

Projects suck is one thing goes slightly sideways and you're way over budget. But this is one of the beauties of upfront pricing. You eliminate the risk of misunderstandings on this stuff.

Okay, Leonard, take a stab at a reply here.

We appreciate your feedback and understand the tax season can be as confusing as a chameleon in a bag of Skittles.

Wow.

Remember, we charge by the hour because we use that time to summon the ancient accounting spirits to guide your returns.

Okay.

The added interest is just a way of keeping the spirits motivated. They're quite old fashioned and prefer their dues on time. If you're feeling overcharged, think of it as an investment in your financial enlightenment. Next time, feel free to ask about our new service, Telepathic Tax Consultation. It's cheaper, but you have to really concentrate.

Oh, that's a groan. Telepathic Tax Consultation.

Honestly, I can hear the snark there, Leonard. There is a degree of truth to that.

Well, if I could have read your mind and actually understood what you had.

Maybe I would have quoted you correctly up front.

Okay, what's a tactful way to respond to this one? They're mad about, like, pricing not coming.

In as expected, but they're also not saying big numbers. Like if you've this. Like if you've worked with a tax firm, the prices they're quoting are very cheap prices. In fact, at one point they said $130 an hour, which is shockingly cheap for TaxPro.

I'm going to try to make them feel heard without telling them they're right. So I can say something like, hi, Steve, thanks for taking the time to.

Give us this feedback and we're sorry you had a negative experience. And I will usually give an acknowledgement to like, we're going to do the best we can moving forward to communicate pricing expectations as clearly as possible. So I am not saying I want them back.

I'm not even saying they're right. But I am saying I hear you and we'll do our best.

Like I can. I can have just a nibble of humble pie on that. Even if I don't agree, I don't think it makes me look bad to say, like, got it. There's. There's some useful feedback in here.

Okay, review number two. Disaster. I turned in my tax documents two weeks early. Apparently that isn't early enough.

Don't I know what that means? I don't know if that's two weeks before deadline.

They called me the Friday before the deadline. Come on, come on, come in. On the 18th, the deadline to sign your return. So I did. Then they lost my return and filed an extension, then forgot about my return. Then when I raised a red flag like, hey, why haven't I received my refund? They go looking for it. Oops, found it. So we actually says, sawi, we'll go.

Ahead and file that now. You suck at customer service.

Actually know the backstory on this one.

The person never returned assigned 8879. They had to get their spouse to sign it, and they never returned it. And so the return didn't go out until they got the 8879 and they forgot. And so they called and they said, well, you never gave us 8879 file return. And they got mad and they left.

So is it their fault for not returning the form so that you can file tax return? Yes, it is. Is there a seed of, like, feedback to take from there? Maybe we need, like, an automated way to follow up with people on signing that form, you know, so that is just as clear as possible that we.

Need this back and we can't file your return until we get it back. So, like, there is actionable feedback there. I wish it wouldn't have resulted in a one star review.

And could I flag this one and maybe get it removed from Google?

I'd probably give it a try. I don't know that Google would actually go for it to remove it, but I'd probably give it a try.

Leonard, what's your take?

Sorry to hear about your experience. It's clear you're just too advanced for traditional tax filing. Most clients aren't ready till the last minute. But you're out here setting records. We usually play hide and seek with the documents to enhance security. Thanks for the feedback. We'll keep losing stuff in your honor.

Keep losing stuff in your honor. Probably not the move. Leonard, I don't know if we want.

To admit to losing stuff.

This is a tricky one because you don't want to start a fist fight.

And say, it's your fault, dummy, for not getting us the form that we need.

But I also am a. Am a prideful man and don't want to admit fault. I'm probably just going to keep it really vague here. I'm going to say, hey, Tina, thank you for taking the time to share.

Your feedback and we're sorry you had a negative experience. I'm perfectly happy saying we're sorry you had a negative experience on, like, all bad reviews. That's not accepting the blame, in my opinion.

I'm good with something. Like, it's clear we had a breakdown in communication here.

I don't even know that I want to say that we're going to like, change our systems as a result or something.

I may just keep it short and sweet. Thank you for, for taking the time.

To share your feedback. It's clear there was a, there was a breakdown of communication here and we're sorry you had a negative experience. I may just. Because what else are you going to say? Like, you're not going to get into specifics. I'm not interested in doing a back and forth. That's probably the best that you can do. And even if that, you're just completely wrong. I honestly, I don't know that it ever makes sense to then, like, start a fist fight in the replies. Like, I'm just probably not going to take that battle.

Our review number three, last one here, was not informed up front that this.

Company charges hundreds of dollars for asking tax questions in a get. In addition to getting taxes done.

Of course you charge. Answers to questions are considered consulting fees. Be aware, I will take my future tax business elsewhere. Leonard, let her rip.

Remember, every question is a step towards enlightenment, and enlightenment isn't free.

That's a good point.

If it's any consolation, we also charge ourselves when we ask questions internally. So it's a universal experience. Look forward to not answering your questions in the future.

Oh, sick burn. Leonard. Susan, sorry to hear you had a negative experience. And we obviously didn't get on the.

Same page about our pricing policies. We'll do our best to communicate this better in the future. Something like that. Like, even, even that where it sounds like, oh, maybe we didn't communicate good enough. Like, I'm fine with that.

I, I'm going to try to think.

About it from the perspective of somebody hopping in and seeing those reviews.

And what I wouldn't be impressed by.

If I'm reading it is like, somebody getting super petty in the replies or like splitting hairs or like any sort of back and forth. Like, I just, I wouldn't be impressed by that if I was going through and looking at somebody else's reviews. So there is an element of getting over, like, trying to. Trying so hard to be right that you end up looking like a knucklehead in the comments. Right? So don't fight that fight. But the worst thing you can do probably is not respond at all. Like, you do need to respond. Look like you are on top of every one of those reviews, the absentee one. Like, that's worst of all to me, I think.

You know what would be fun is.

Just like going through a whole bunch of stupid reviews.

Do you have any dumb reviews that you've gotten that could be a fun.

Thing to go through and like, figure.

Out is there like a seed of.

Something constructive here that we could take from it? And then how would you respond in as tactful a way as possible or.

Even how do I get this removed?

Like, what's a concise way to communicate to Google that this is like, completely false? If you had any really stupid reviews, man, drop them in the comments.

Seeing other people's Google reviews has always.

Been like, good sport for me because I know just how infuriating it is to be on the other side of it. I don't feel as bad when I see other people having to go through that, like, at arm's length. It is pretty funny because it's just such a dumb. Like, it's one of those things where.

Like, if you had to explain it.

To an alien that came to our.

Planet, it's just such a dumb game.

Oh yeah. People can go to this website and say how bad I am and then other people will see it and then I have to like, argue with them.

Even though I don't even want to work with them to begin with because.

I'm afraid of how my business will look if somebody browses to it from Google. Oh, but that's what makes it so exhausting too, right? Like, that whole exercise just feels so pointless.

Anything we missed here? Any rules? Gotchas. Would love to see them in the comments.

It's kind of an unfortunate aspect of. Of running a business like this that you have to worry about it.

And then if you got any stinker reviews, would love to have a giggle over those in the comments.

And I'll pin the very worst one. How's that?

Thanks for coming and hanging today. We'll see you in the next one.