AI Search and the Death of Old-School Marketing for Home Service Businesses

And there's a really big shift that's happening. So Neil Patel, we mentioned him, he put out this report probably 3 months ago. When they add 6+ words into their actual Google search is 76% of the time gets an AI overview. What does this mean for home service businesses? If people are searching for HVAC repair near me, cool. If they're searching for how much does HVAC repair near me cost, you're getting an AI overview. If they're asking how much does a ductless system cost, they're getting an AI overview and you have to make sure that you're creating content that supports these AI overviews. And this is like the big shift in how people are searching. Take the LLMs out of it as far as like where they go. It's just like the general conversation is changing. The reason is, is because they're shifting to what's called agentic booking and agentic search. And this is like a huge shift that you might have seen the interview that the Google CEO just talks about, where it's like a huge shift that's coming in how the— how Google is interacting with actual websites and businesses in general.

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Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blessett. Josh is not going to make it with us today. I do wish him a happy birthday. It is his birthday. I think he's like 112 this year. So congrats to making it that long in life. And he's not here to defend himself. So he's the old guy in the room that's not here physically. But we're going to talk about AI search today and we're going to talk a little bit about CallRail too. So huge shout out to CallRail for making this episode happen. And, uh, making it so that I could hang out and talk to Phil. And with that being said, Phil, give me a rundown of your business and what makes you an expert and, and here on the show today.

Yeah, for sure. So, uh, Flash Consulting is my company. We do digital marketing consulting for home service business owners between $1 million and $10 million is our bread and butter. I've been blogging literally since 2015 is how I got into blogging. Uh, I started blogging about personal finance, which is how, you know, Mike and, uh, all these guys, like I love personal finance. and I ended up getting featured in Forbes and CNBC and Yahoo Finance and a bunch of cool stuff through blogging. And I got about 30,000, 40,000 readers to my blog every single month. And my whole background is in SEO, basically.

Okay.

Uh, I ended up at a home service business doing $3 million, and I was director of business development and helped them go to $5 million, then sell to private equity.

Okay.

And that was in, uh, 2019. I started my company. Uh, since then, obviously SEO has shifted a lot to AI search. Uh, a lot of the principles are similar, but there are things that specifically in the home service space that we miss a a lot of times, and we're gonna uncover some of those. On top of that, obviously, like, I've done SEO digital marketing for the past 10 years, only, you know, SEO stuff, home service. I had Neil Patel on my podcast, Marcus Sheridan, and I've talked to them about AI search, like, directly from these guys, you know, asked them about AI search and how's it gonna affect these businesses. And that's kind of been how we've built out our system for our clients and what we do as a company.

Very cool, very cool. So AI search is obviously a big deal. Especially in the future coming up. And I was, a friend of mine actually shared this article on Substack about the division of society from in the next 5 years. Like those who are adopting AI, learning AI versus those who are not is going to be like a major like wealth shift, even if it's not like monetarily, like, like, um, knowledge wealth is going to shift drastically. And I know that because of your background, you're probably feeling the same thing as me, as whereas like the more I dive into this, the more it can be overwhelming because there's like every day or every couple days I feel like it's something's changing. As soon as I figure out Claude Code, then all of a sudden Codex comes out with this amazing version. And then the next thing you know, like Cloud Code takes their API and pulls it. So you have to use a key or their CLI and, and makes it so that you have to use an API to get tokens. And then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, so let me figure out Codex. And then as soon as I figure that out, something else changes. And I personally have not even looked into AI search a whole lot other than Marcus shared. And so we had an event last October and Marcus was one of our keynotes there. And he brought up some really good points on AI search. But other than dabbling into it like that, I'm not, I'm not there. Like I, I really depend on Josh for a lot of this stuff. So I'm excited to talk to you today and maybe even implement some of this stuff into my website so I can get up there for AI search.

Yeah, definitely. What I can tell you and the listeners out there right now, there's this shift that Tersh is talking about. BrightLocal, who's like a company, they do, you know, ranking, tracking for local service businesses. They put out a study a couple months ago and basically before, 87% of business people were going to Google to find a local service business. So they start their search on Google. Everyone wanted to be in Google LSA, Google Search Ads, Map Pack, on-site SEO was basically like the game. And the report that they put out was search for local service businesses based off of demographic. And what they found was that boomers are 80% of their searches are happening on Google Search still for local service businesses. But Gen Z is 46% of their searches for local service business are happening on Google, which means less than half of their local searches are happening. Right now it's not that big of a deal, but in the next 3 to 5 years when they actually own homes, They're not gonna magically just go to Google to search for local service businesses. 26% of them are using social media for a local search.

Hmm.

So, so there's this massive shift that's happening in how people are searching. Not only that part of it from a demographic perspective, but just in general, the old strategy was go to Google, type in 4 words, HVAC repair near me, and then see the blue links, read the reviews, and then go to the website and maybe convert, or maybe they don't They don't even go to website. Now it's more conversational. It's not look at the blue links. It's like more of an agentic style interaction, which is like, hey, I'm looking for a company that does this, this, and this that's local, that's not owned by private equity or something, that da da da da, all of that. Um, and we can unpack that way more, but that's basically the shift for business owners of what's actually happening. People have said, Marcus has said this, Neil has said this, I'm saying this as well. There was Yellow Pages to Google and everyone was laughing at the people that were getting on the internet because Yellow Pages was the thing. And then that ran for about 20 years from like 20— 2002 to like 2022. That next big shift is happening now to agentic search and AI search. And a lot of people are laughing at that because they're like, no one's going to do that. No one's searching like that. Yes, they are.

I literally, I mean, I Googled something the other day because it was my kids' soccer. So my kids are in the final— my son's in the final four of the state playoffs for Georgia for soccer.

Yeah.

So, uh, no pressure. They actually go to, uh, their game is Friday night, right? And so I was like, what's the statistics? Like I was asking ChatGPT or Gemini. I think it was actually Gemini, uh, because I don't know why, but I feel like I have all of the subscriptions and there's certain ones that the certain LLMs that just, I feel like work better for certain things and I felt like All right, so if I ask Gemini, then it can search the, the up-to-date rankings for all of the other teams. It, it assumed that my kids' school had just lost the game that they played, and then it assumed that the team that they were going to play, if after I told them they won, was the state champions for last year. And I was like, no, I look, that's who they played today and they just beat 'em. And, uh, so it was like, oh, congratulations, they beat the team from last year's playoffs, so they're, they should be going great. And I'm like, stop agreeing with me. Stop being my friend. Like, give me the information. So I literally, I had to go to Google, end up in MaxPreps and, but other than that, like I legit, I go to my LLMs to, to ask questions, uh, and I know a lot of people are transitioning in that direction, and I also want to make sure that I don't assume because like I'm so deep into AI that everyone's acting like me. And I feel like that is the assumption sometimes, especially when I go present on stage and I'll ask the whole audience. I went to a, on stage the other day, uh, I say the other day, a couple weeks back. And, um, there were 2,000 people in the audience and 20% of them had heard of Claude and the rest of the audience didn't know what Claude was. And these were all contractors. And I was like, okay, so that changes my entire presentation because we were going to go a different direction with this. Uh, so would that, yeah, go ahead.

You know, John Torrey from Searchlight?

Yeah. Yeah. I know John very well.

Yeah. So he's a friend as well, probably. So John has this awesome newsletter and he just came out like 5 days ago. With the LLMs, uh, revenue generated.

Yeah.

So since April, so April they was about $216,000 from LLM revenue. And then now, uh, that was in March. Now in April is $416,000 in LLM revenue that's generated. But here's the biggest thing out of the actual like LLM share of who's actually getting leads from certain places out of about 900 total LLM leads that came through to home service businesses, 880 of them were from ChatGPT. And then it was Gemini, like Claude was literally last.

So I could see that. I could see, cause Claude is, is more of my Excel spreadsheet, like fix, fix my stuff, help me write an article, outline an article type thing. And ChatGPT is more of a search one for me. It used to be Perplexity, but not so much.

Yeah. The biggest thing though, for people that are listening is that It's not even about just the platforms that people are searching on, but it's truly like how people are actually searching. It's not as much as like what I was saying about the 4 words. It's more of a conversational type of search. So the, the typical, like average Google search has 4 words. The average AI search has 347 words because people are usually talking to it or they're typing. And there's a really big shift that's happening in this in particular. So Neil Patel, we mentioned him, he put out this report probably 3 months ago. And what they found was that if it's 1 to 3 words, the AI overview section on Google showed up about like 20% of the time. So like HVAC repair near me is never going to get an AI overview. You're still going to get your LSAs, your search ads, whatever. But 4 to 6 keywords gets like 40-some percent of an AI overview. But when they add 6+ words into their actual Google search is 76% of the time gets an AI overview. Wow. So what does this mean for home service businesses? If people are searching for HVAC repair near me, cool. If they're searching for how much does HVAC repair near me cost, you're getting an AI overview. If they're asking how much does a ductless system cost, they're getting an AI overview. And you have to make sure that you're creating content that supports these AI overviews. And this is like the big shift in how people are searching. Take the LLMs out of it as far as like where they go. It's just like the general conversation is changing. And the reason is, is because they're shifting to what's called agentic booking and agentic search. And this is like a huge shift that you might have seen the interview that the Google CEO just talked about where it's like a huge shift that's coming in how the, how Google is interacting with actual websites and businesses in general.

So with that being said, so that for those who are listening, um, do we still focus on SEO or like, I mean, we've seen the arguments on Facebook groups, like is SEO dead. And like they've been saying that for years and years and years. When Amazon came out with, they were going to offer, you know, contractors to link with them, then all of a sudden, you know, everything was dead. But it does feel like whenever I go on there and I do a search on Google, I'm saying, uh, talking about specifically, and then it will give me these, this information, but it doesn't always, like, I'm not saying never, but it doesn't always give me citations for where it got the information. And so then as a contractor, I'm doing all this blood, sweat, and tears writing blog posts. I personally, I know you like blog posts. I despise writing blog posts. Uh, I just, it's not my forte. I'm definitely a math and science guy and not an English, like that's not my forte. So if I put forth all the effort to create like a handful of blog posts and then all of a sudden that information gets scraped by Google and used in the AI search and I don't get citations for it, why keep putting forth the effort on it?

Yeah, great question. So LLMs, large language models, they are trained off of pattern recognition and content. Historically, home service business owners, me included, I was at a home service business. I was like, I'm not posting on social media. It's a waste of time. I'm not, I don't care about likes and shares. I'm not, my client is not on Facebook. They're on Google finding, you know, someone that needs me. That is still true for the most part. However, uh, about a year ago, Google started indexing short-form content in their searches. And not only that, all of the content that you create is getting indexed. So I don't care if it's written word, you know, Marcus would say this, Neil would say this, I don't care if it's written word or it's video content or anything that can be indexed that allows you to stand out as the authority in the subject matter expert. That is really what this is about. You could write blog posts. The, this is my biggest qualm with like agencies is that they start with ChatGPT junk.

Yeah.

For blog content and SEO. Yep. Don't do that. Okay? Do not do that. What you need to do is use a platform like CallRail or somewhere else and have call transcripts.

Yes.

And take those call transcripts and turn them into real content for your business.

Can you give an example of how to do that for those who are listening?

Yeah. I mean, you can take, so this is what we do. Um, we actually have an agent that does this, but I'll give you like the basic practice for someone who's listening. Go to CallRail or wherever you have your call tracking, even if it's in ServiceTitan, whatever. Look at your leads calls that are over like 3 minutes. That usually has some meat and potatoes in there. Take that call transcript, go to ChatGPT, whatever other platform you want, and say, can you take this transcript and turn it into an AEO optimized blog post for me? Basically, then you have your call transcript, which is real customer questions that are happening. Maybe your CSR said something smart. Maybe you want to clean it up a little bit and just talk to it and give it the real information that it should be giving as an answer. Then it takes that, makes it nice, posts it.

Now, is it okay to post it directly versus you writing it? Because I know they've, they've done a ton to making it more humanized. Um, so if you put forth, I know personally, if you put forth a little bit of effort, it's harder to recognize that it's written by AI. Now, if you just. Copy paste, you didn't even format it correctly, then it's blatantly obvious that it was written by AI. Um, but there's, you know, some pattern recognition that humans do as well.

Exactly. So there was like this whole thing where it's like in the age of, of AI search technology search and like every single, you know, blog post started with that or something like, yes. What I would recommend is aside from starting with ChatGPT from your ideas, start with your call transcripts to get the baseline of your real customer questions and what you're actually saying. Then turn on voice mode on one of these platforms and just talk to it like, hey, what's the common question? Like, let me give it an answer and then have it structure it in the way for AEO and SEO. The reason that this is so important is because to your point, like, is anyone going to a website and reading a blog?

Right.

No. No. Who cares? Like, I'm not gonna go read a blog in my free time unless I wanna fall asleep.

Yeah.

So, but with the, this new agentic search and AI search that's happening, the information and how you present it on your website, it needs to be crawlable to be indexed, to be then shown and then educate the LLMs on your business. So the most important piece is two. One, you get real stuff and real information as the authority because now you're actually educating the LLM and not just regurgitating slop. Yes. And then also you're presenting it in a way that's easily indexable and findable and educational. So that way the platform can say, hey, here's the actual information.

So I, I know that— transition a little bit— I know that both of us are, are friends with Marcus Sheridan, and yeah, um, he talks a lot about lists. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, this one comes up a lot because of like listicles and top 10 this and that. I, I think Marcus would echo this exact same thing. Do not go to ChatGPT and just say, come up with a list of 10 and write me a listicle of 10 things, right?

We've seen that before.

Yeah. So like as a business owner, I would know, you know, the top 10 digital marketing companies for home service businesses. So then I would write like, okay, if you want to work with Relentless, right? Here's some of the great things. Josh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would know Josh and I would have a relationship and say like, this is some of the stuff.

Then I would go get it to 112 years old.

Yeah, exactly. There you go. Right. Like I would list them out and I would give real information. That's really real stuff.

Yeah.

What I would say about listicles in general is that for home service businesses, the best type of listicles is local listicles that you can get in.

Okay.

So for example, let's say that you're gonna sponsor a PTA and you get on a list of, you know, sponsors, or you're gonna sponsor a soccer team and you get on a list of sponsors. Don't just sponsor it, get a backlink from the local entity. Because this is one of the big triggers for AI search specifically when it comes to local businesses, that a lot of the listicle type of things, it, skewed a little bit to like affiliate listicle links and like that kind of stuff. You want the local juice out of it, not just to have a listicle on your website or something.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. That makes sense. Now, so you're saying the, the local backlinks are still important?

Yeah. So that same BrightLocal report, they talked about what was the most important pieces to rank in AI search. And for the first time ever in 2026, social media content was up there as one of the things that's important. However, backlinks has slowly been dying. And I would say for home service businesses that are local businesses in general, I'm sure you probably know about domain authority and getting backlinks and da da da, like all that stuff is fine and well, but I don't believe that it matters as much for local service businesses as a local backlink from a local business that's linking to you. But with that being said, I wouldn't, I wouldn't actually like go out of your way to just try to build like 100 backlinks in your local area more organically and naturally. Like if you have a company that you would recommend, then just say like, hey, I should, you know, do a quick blog post about our relationship or just have like a referrals page on my website. Yeah. Back and forth to each other. Like something more organic like that.

Okay. That makes sense. So here's something that I, I, I came up with a long time ago. And so we, we created a podcast production company because of we were producing so many podcast episodes, it just made sense to kind of help out other contractors and other people in the industry. And one of the things that I came up with was becoming a, like a micro influencer, uh, and having a company have their own podcast and having other businesses as a guest on their podcast. And then you're sharing, like you could create the blog post for the other contractor. And have the links and everything and have it on, like, send it over to them. And then all of a sudden they're backlinking to your website. And then you have like 40 or 50 other contractors or other small businesses in the area that now all of a sudden have a backlink to your website.

Yeah. So good. We have this partner pipeline builder program that we run for clients. And so at my $3 million home service business, about $1.5 million of it was HVAC contractor referrals. So we did duct cleaning.

Oh, nice.

So we had HVAC contractors, probably about 150 of them that referred us business.

Yeah.

And then we did their duct cleaning so that they didn't have to do it. And then we gave them money and it was like a great thing. Now, if I was doing that, I would have a podcast where I would feature local businesses and I would have my referral program as part of that relationship. And I would cut it down into shorts and give them the content and like build out this whole ecosystem of relationship. And I would take it a step further where I would actually have a referral link with their team and everything. And they could send me referrals. To your point though, this is a great way of just like getting that initial interaction. So our partner pipeline builder that we run, we pull a list of complimentary services. So let's say you do roofing, then you pull a list of gutter cleaning companies and then you reach out to them in the first email, you say partnership. And then in the body you say, hey, I came across your website looking for a good roofing contractor or gutter cleaning company to partner with. But in your instance, which I love, would be like, hey, I actually feature local gutter cleaning companies or local businesses. I would love to have you on my show and get to know each other a little bit and see how we might be able to work together. I think that's great.

That's a pretty cool idea. And if you need help with the podcast side, just let me know. But, uh, I, I love the idea of that, but as business owners, a lot of times we are like, oh yeah, another iron in the fire? Like something else for me to do? Great. Yeah. Good job, Tersh. Add some more to my list of things to do. Love the idea also of having a full you know, production company handling all of it. And then you just get in front of the microphone. Uh, in a perfect world, that's exactly what would happen, but that's not how it always works out. And, you know, we know that, but yeah, for sure.

And there's other tools like Clicky or ReferPro that you can like bolt into that, what you're saying, like you could just show up and get on the mic and then you could have a tool like that where you have a referral link, almost like an affiliate link, but basically a referral system that generates leads for your business that you just have to show up, but you have the system in the background. That can generate referrals.

So yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I like some automation.

Yeah, there you go.

Those, those work really good. Yeah. Hello, home service professionals. Do you want to maximize your marketing budget? Then you need to be using call tracking from CallRail. Let's say you've, you noticed a spike in new leads this month. To find out what's driving them, you just log into your CallRail dashboard. Is my new Facebook Is a Facebook ad outperforming my other ads? Or is paid search knocking it out of the park? Or maybe it's time to retire those newspaper ads. Since CallRail assigns a unique phone number to each of my marketing efforts, I know where my best leads come from and which efforts to scrap. CallRail shows you your most cost-effective marketing channels so you can get back to business. Go to callrail.com/sbmpod and try it for free.

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Get a tech upgrade for your business at get.cera.tech/service-business- Mastery. I actually wrote a couple lists here, um, of things in case we just died on the vine. But, uh, I also, there's a couple of them here that I really would like to get to, but you got something. I feel like you got something.

I have like some really important ones. So yeah, a lot of times business owners say, okay, I want to rank in AI search. What the heck should I do? I'll give you like the main, the main things. One, you got to have a pricing page on your website. The reason that pricing page is a pillar, is a pillar page. I mean, Marcus has been saying this for years. But now it's even more important than ever to have specific pricing pages because the, the Google CEO, he just talked about the shift to agent, uh, search. Basically what agent search is for those of you that are out there is instead of people going to Google and typing in something and then getting the links and then going places, now it's just going to be interacting with your Google agent and then your Google agent going out and finding the information and coming back to and presenting it. Right now they have this thing called Agentic Booking in Google Labs where you can actually do this with like OpenTable and Resy to find you restaurants.

I actually use that.

Yeah. Okay. So this is shifting for home service businesses. So we have to shift how we're presenting information online. It's not about our, oh, our competitors are going to see our pricing. It's more so we need to educate these platforms that they know about our business. So pricing page is number one. Marcus wrote all about this and they ask you to answer exactly how to write a good pricing page. Number two is online booking. And a lot of people tell me, oh, my route density. Oh, I can't. If I do online booking, then I got, I'm going to go all over God's green earth to try to do it. No, just set up virtual estimates and that's it. So you do virtual estimates in your online booking and then you don't have to have actual schedules if you don't have a bunch of technicians or routes or like push it out a couple days. But you need to have this because these agents are scraping it already with your Google Business Profile if it's linked up. Like it's very—

With that being said, like our CRM has online booking and for like the websites. Yes. Are those always scrapable? And if, how, how can you tell if it's scrapable or not?

Okay, two things on this. Right now, I would say that they're not scrapable because I have not been able to emulate it going through like a ServiceTitan booking widget or a Jobber booking widget and being able to find times. What I would say is that the integration with their Google Business Profile is there for those platforms, and you can have the little blue button on your Google Business Profile that says book online. So I believe that this integration is coming just like with OpenTable or Rezi. They have that integration with Google Business Profile that it's like a natural fit. It just hasn't caught up yet. Specifically in the age of Google LSAs, where LSA has that ability with scheduling and they want to make the money off of LSAs. Like it's going to, they're going to figure that part out where there's so much meat on the bone that they haven't unlocked yet with that.

There's so many people though that I talked to that have already cut off their LSA because you can't, you can't, you can't dispute things anymore. And the leads, they're spending $500 to get $20 or whatever.

And Yeah, I believe that this, there's going to be a shift with the agent search and the AI search of like LSAs are going to be shifting away from that. Like LSAs are going to be moved into AI search. I can see that. Yeah, because then it's going to be a pay per lead and then there's, there's teaming up for it and it's like perfect on both ends for everyone.

Yeah, Google's going to get their money one way or the other.

Exactly. And this is a great way to do it because they have like all the stuff and the online booking and it's a pay per lead model and they don't have to do the pay per click, all the stuff like it's. I, this is just, how could they not?

It makes sense. But we also know that the Alphabet company, Alphabet, yeah. Yeah. They don't talk to each other and, or not very well anyways. And so sometimes you and I would, we, we look at things and we're like, this would make sense to, to combine these two together. And the other two, they're two completely different companies inside of Google and they don't even talk to each other. And I'm like, this is a no-brainer. You should be doing this. And they don't ever do it. They just cancel all of them. And so, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I think that the pricing page, online scheduling is like, gotta have that. The other thing that I would say is awards and recognition. A lot of times people just, well, one, they don't really talk about them until their sales process. Yeah. So you wanna make sure that you highlight them on your website. And what most people do is they just put them on their homepage as just like static images.

Uh-huh.

And they don't like, they, they need to talk about them. So like write a blog post or do a video about it or something that's like, hey, we won this award. You know?

It's, well, sometimes it's, you have like imposter syndrome as a contractor and you're like, I don't want to talk about me winning this award. It makes me feel icky, that type of thing. But you're exactly right. Like you, if you want to stand out, you're going to have to talk about it.

Yeah. And most importantly is that you want to educate the large language models about your business. And so it's not about you being, you're going to make a Facebook post and no one's going to see it. Let's just be honest.

Yeah.

It's about, it's about training the large language models on your business. So you need to tell it everything like it's your best friend.

Would you, uh, so if someone was like, I don't really don't want to publicize that I just won this award, um, like the best of award or whatever, um, would you create a blog post and then, uh, not link it to anything or like, yeah, like your homepage or whatever?

Have a page that lives out there that's not linked to anything. Do an unlisted YouTube video. I mean, Yeah, just something that, that is out there in the ecosystem educating those platforms that you—

so it can still search unlisted YouTube videos?

Yeah, it can still search unlisted.

Okay. Just as long as it's not private.

Private. Yeah. Private. You can't see it, but yeah.

Okay. That's good. Well, we've knocked off 4 of the questions that I have on my list. So they're perfectly aligned there.

Yeah. I got another cool one for you. So in about, and I talked to Marcus a lot about this and like we are building this for our clients, which is. Here's another thing. If you still are not bought into content and making this stuff, okay, in about a year or two, there are going to be AI avatars of people.

Like, oh yeah, there already are some.

Yeah, I have one. I have one.

I do.

Okay. So like I use a tool called Delphi, D-E-L-P-H-I.ai, and basically it's a duplicate fill. It's trained on all my content, all the podcasts, all of our SOPs, and my team can ask it any questions that they want.

Oh, I like it.

It's great. Now, when I talk to business owners, they say, I want that because I get asked a million questions. The problem is that they're, they don't have the backlog of content answering questions from their customers. So when this actually comes out and it's live on like websites, imagine there's an AI avatar on websites. Imagine an agent from Google is talking to your agent and your avatar and like asking you questions and going back and forth, right? This is really true. So if you don't have the backend of all of your real content, you're not going to have—

And it's all stored in your brain, your personal brain, and not an external brain.

Exactly. And so you're not going to be set up when, when it shifts over to that. So what I am coaching my clients on right now is you need to be creating real content to, one, train large language models, but two, to have the backlog of content so that you can build an AI avatar for your business. You can have it in your sales process, you can have it on your website, you can have it so that you can link it up. Like even right now, you can link it up with like NotebookLM and other tools that link into Gemini. So this is, it's all in the rumblings, but I believe that that's going to be one of the biggest moats for business owners is having all of that information.

You know, so I, first off, I want to get your recommendations on how to make this happen, but I'll tell you how I've done it. And for those who are listening, if you're not a nerd like I am, like, don't, don't dive in this rabbit hole because it is a rabbit hole, but I built an Open Call server that is completely separate from everything else. I got 144 terabyte external NAS hard drive system, multiple hard drives, and every conversation that I have automatically loads from my Plaud device, my little voice recorder, a note taker. It automatically goes into Slack and it goes into a specific Slack channel that I communicate with Carl. He's my external brain. He's my open call server. Nice. And, uh, he automatically transcribes, or it's already transcribed, but he, he sorts it out and then banks it wherever it needs to go. He determines which company I was talking about, or if it was personal information, so to build my personal brand, and then sorts it out and, and puts it in the file folder that it belongs in. And so then he can scrape that data later on and including building apps. So he, there's an app building agent inside of My open call.

So good. I wanna hit this though, cuz home service business owners that are listening, imagine you go and work with another marketing company, a CFO, fractional CFO or something else, and you have that like database about your business that then you can say, here you go, now you can access every single thing about my business and not have to ask me a million questions and take 6 months to learn about my business. That is what we're talking about here. What we are built is, so with CallRail or any other tool, you have the call transcripts. You can take those call transcripts and drop them into a Google Sheet or something else, and you have a Google Sheet with all of your real customer questions. Questions and real information that's happening. You can plug that into a NotebookLM. So now you have a searchable database with real questions that you can go back and forth on. You can also record your calls using Rilla or something else. There's other tools out there that then you can get that transcribed and dropped into a Google Doc or a Google Sheet. Plug that into your NotebookLM. These are all free tools, by the way, that I'm telling everyone. Now you have a NotebookLM database where you have a new hire come on board, have them go in there and ask you questions, anything that comes up. On top of that, as business owners, if you creating content or SOPs, you can plug those into your NotebookLM as well. There's obviously ways to do this, like what you're saying.

Well, I think that NotebookLM is one of the most slept on, uh, programs out there because it's so simple. It's so, it's overwhelmingly simple. Like the very first time I, I used it, I was like, I don't understand this. Like there's, there's very little, like back when I first started using it, there was very little guidance. It didn't even have the infographics at that time. Uh, and I remember Like even the podcast version of it, it was like, what do I do? Like there's no instructions. I just hit the button and then it does it and I, I can't change anything and all this stuff. Like they've made advances, but I feel like it was another of the Alphabet companies that somebody was like, hey, we have everything, let's just build this out and then not use it. And then all of a sudden somebody found it and they're like, hey, this is supposed to be for schools, but. This is gonna be perfect for an external brain.

Oh, absolutely.

And all of a sudden it gets all this publicity and some traction, and now they're putting some more effort behind it. But for those who are listening, you should take your website, just your homepage URL, and put it into your Notebook LLM account. Notebook LM, tell it to create a podcast and you can have a conversational podcast. Now you have different ways you can set it up. I like to set it up as just a conversational. And it will blow you away with just that one URL, the information that it will create. And it's accurate too. Like if you find something that's not accurate, you can fix it. But for the most part, it's, it's really accurate. And if you have like a lot of old blog posts, like if you're 10, 15 years old and you have blog posts from back then, you'll, it'll scrape some of those. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, I forgot that we used to do that all the time. And we don't do that anymore. And like, it'll, it's, it's really cool.

The setup that I mentioned to you, like every single one of our clients, we build them a NotebookLM and then we funnel the calls and everything into a NotebookLM. Because if we're making like email newsletters or content or promos, like our team can go and reference their brain that we're like building over time. And obviously we give them access to it because we want them to use it to train their people. But it's like, we're trying to, it helps us do our job better, but then it also is great for them.

Now, do you have a way to automatically funnel calls from like a CallRail? Like, can, is there like a Zapier integration or do they have a?

Yeah, they have API integration.

Oh, okay.

Sweet.

I didn't even know that. So you literally could funnel every single one of your calls straight into NotebookLM. And then, so there's no manual having to figure out, you know, now I have somebody in the office copying and pasting transcripts.

There's a lot more to it, but yeah, I mean, not, not like to do it, like someone could do it right now. I'm saying like you could build so much more stuff that like, that's why I mentioned like we have agents and all this stuff, like doing a lot of cool stuff.

Cool. Um, there is, okay, so I have one question that I want to ask and we can go as long or as short as we want to on this. If a contractor days and they want to set up, set this up to improve their AI presence, what would you have them fix first?

Yeah, so we actually have an AI checklist, readiness checklist that we built out. So like I could probably give that to you or put it somewhere.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

But basically it goes through all the stuff to do. The first thing is pricing page, online scheduling, make sure your awards are up there, make sure you have all your services built out on your website for the services that you offer.

Do they need to be on different pages or the same page or?

Yeah, different pages.

Different page. Okay.

Like HVAC, you know, you do HVAC repair, installs, ductless, whatever. Like have them all listed out. This is like technical SEO stuff, right? The, the old school SEO stuff. But the reason is, is because you need all of that information to be indexed on these platforms and you need to like set it up right initially. So that's the first part is like go through and like, this is why like if Josh was here, he'd be like, yeah, you still gotta do the SEO stuff. Like it's not, it's It's not going away, it's just, it's just packaged a different way now. You still have to educate a different platform. It's not algorithm, it's a language model. Once you kind of get that part in place, the, the other part would be you need to start funneling real content in. If you're working with an agency that's just using AI slop, or you're just starting with ChatGPT AI slop, that is not helping your business. It could probably be hurting your business because it doesn't trust you because it's not real stuff and it's. You're just taking things and giving it back to it and it's like, I already know this, like, leave me alone.

Yeah.

So, so you need to get real stuff in there. So whatever inputs that you want to do for real stuff, like what we do is like we take their call transcripts, we turn that into content, we take their call transcripts and turn into video hooks. Then we get on a call with our videographer, we make real content, we post the content because it's so important to be training these, these models on your business.

Yeah.

The other thing I would say is to, is to start thinking about How would, if we switch to this agentic booking and agentic search, is everything on my website that I would want to tell an agent? If an agent was out there looking for an HVAC contractor or whatever service, it, do I have everything on my website that I would want to tell this thing about my business? Like, I've been in business since this, I've been in that. Like, if you think about it that way, it's different.

So, okay. So in that realm. Cause I've, I've had people come up to me and say, um, what about intellectual property? And I would say personally, if it's like super secretive, I wouldn't put it on my website anyways. We're all parts of best practice groups. Like we're, we all know what the next thing is that we're all doing. Um, it's just who's implementing it, implementing it and who's not. Exactly. Um, with that being said, there's very few things that are new under the sun. So I wouldn't really be that concerned about it. Like, obviously you want to put your P&Ls on your website, but as far as that goes, what would you say?

This is how I, how I used to talk about Google. This is how I talk about LLMs. Google's the number one referral partner in the entire world. If Google trusts you and they like you, they're going to refer you on their Google search engine results page. The LLMs is the exact same thing. So imagine you have this free tool that's out there and all you have to do is build a relationship with it and get it to trust you and give it real stuff to learn more about you. That's exactly how we think about it. So you need to be the person that's educating these platforms. Yeah. As much as you can, whatever you feel comfortable sharing, share.

Okay, cool. That's good. That's good. That's, I feel confident in that. I agree with that. This last question I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna read it verbatim because when I wrote it out, I was writing as I was talking, like the way I would talk. So sometimes I don't write the best. Uh, how should business owners measure AI search visibility? When they are not getting the same click data they used to get from Google rankings?

Yeah, great question. So if you're working with a marketing company and they're not talking about this yet, these are the things that you should be listening for or looking for. So these tools are new, right? Like Marcus has a tool with AI Signals. Neil Patel has a tool that just came out with like, you know, visibility. BrightLocal has a tool in Labs that we use to see visibility. Essentially, there are two main things. Um, one is prompts. So the prompts that are happening are the starting point of like what people are actually searching and then what they're seeing.

Can we get those prompts? Like, can we access them?

Yeah, so I'll talk you through how we do it.

Okay. All right.

The shift from keywords to conversations is kind of all the way tying it back from the beginning. Before it was keywords and you would put together a list of keywords and then you would see where you would rank over time. And it was easy to say, oh, your rankings are going up, your rankings are going down. You know, that was like good SEO. Now when you talk about conversations, it shifts. So to answer your question, there's a couple ways. One is Google Search Console. You can actually look at any searches that happen on Google Search Console that were over 6 keywords. And usually those are more in-depth type of conversational prompts that people would be asking.

You used to like look We, what are they called? Long, long tail keywords. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's one way. The second way, and this is the easiest way, and it goes back to the call transcripts, is that the call transcripts, the people are asking the questions on the phone. And what we try to tell the CSRs to do is to ask this question. Someone calls in and says, hey, I need emergency repair to come out with my HVAC unit. Instead of just saying, we charge dispatch fee, da da da, ask them, well, what's exactly is going on? And then it's like that exact thing, that dream outcome or that exact situation is the content that you want to prompt for and you want to create for.

Mm.

Right? So you need to pull that out. Hey, I want you to come. I need somebody to clean my gutters. Why are you calling us now? What's going on? Exactly what, uh, Brigham talks about with Power Selling Pros. Like, pull that out so you can get that dream outcome, and then that's gonna be that, that, that big thing. So that's what you want. Then you start with the prompts. So that would be the best. Those two ways.

Yeah.

Then there's two parts to it. There's share of voice and mention rate. So share of voice is the amount of times that you are— show up. So basically if there's 100 times, then your share of the voice, let's say you show up 50 times. So your share of voice would be 50 times on that prompt. And then the mention rate is, um, if you're mentioned or not and how many times you're mentioned. So basically—

where can we get that? Is that inside Google? Um, Yes.

So these platforms that I was mentioning, like AI Signals, Neil Patel, uh, BrightLocal, that's exactly how they're measuring AI visibility. They're starting with prompts and then they're running those prompts and they're, they're taking it and looking at share of voice and mention rate, and then they're giving you an aggregate score for you and your competitors. And so like one of the things that we're doing is measuring, okay, that call to content system that I mentioned to you before is how is that Building more visibility from an AI search perspective based off of the prompts and then share of voice and mention rate. What I will say is that for most businesses, they have no idea about any of these things. And for most agencies, it's still like figuring it out.

Yeah.

So to tell you that it's like, this is the silver bullet is like, I would say most people don't have that. What we have is like AI signals or different things that we know, but Also, it was like this big Reddit boom, like everyone needs to post on Reddit. And then it was like, no, Reddit sucks. It's not that anymore. And so it's like, is it gone or is it, is it still here? For home service businesses, who knows? I mean, there's like up and down. There's tools that you can actually see every single day, like which platforms it's pulling from. Like, okay, today it's like Reddit's 10% and then Reddit's still 50%.

So, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually built a program that searches, uh, AI, uh, it uses AI to do keyword searches across Facebook groups and Reddit posts and for keywords. And so like it, because of that exact thing, like, hey, you're not only searching for, you know, HVAC contractor in Charlotte, North Carolina, but also like brand reputation too, because we had like Most contractors, I say most contractors, a lot of contractors I talk to don't have any clue about Reddit. And they could be getting roasted on Reddit in these subreddits and have no clue at all. And so I was like, you should use this tool to just make sure your brand's not getting roasted on the internet.

And so I think it's good. And the crazy thing is like this, what I'm talking about, there's not really like a platform or a real answer. It's like Tersh making this cool thing that's in like pulling these things and then like me making this thing over here and then pulling this agent. It's like the Wild West of figuring this out and like, this is what you're saying, like everyone can have ideas and it's like, who's gonna figure this out and what's gonna actually happen? And we're in that space, which is why this is the biggest shift from Yellow Pages to Google, because it was just like that with the Google Wild West. And then it's Google to AI search and the companies that are like on the forefront of it, they're gonna get it. The people that are like running the old playbooks, they're gonna get toast.

Yeah. Okay. Very, very last question. I promise. Uh, AI building websites, good or bad?

I think parts of websites is good. I think a full AI build of a website, I haven't seen it to the point where it's good enough yet, but there could be good inputs. For example, if you're super niche, like if you just do HVAC websites and it's like, here's our normal service area pages, here's our normal service pages. And it's like plug and play.

It's got references to good stuff.

Exactly. Like for my company, we work with home service businesses, gutter cleaning, electrical, custom closets, right? Like it doesn't really make sense for us. We might have parts of it and pillars that we can use, but it's not as like cut and dry. That's not to say that it's bad if you do it the other way. It just depends on who you're working with. What I would hesitate is I'm not going to hire someone to do it professionally. I'm going to go to Claude because Claude can replace my whole marketing team. It's not there yet, guys.

I was wondering where you're gonna go with that.

Like, yeah, you see all the posts and everything and, um, like, shoot, I, I have 23 team members. Of course I would want Claude to replace my 23 team members if it could, right? I love you guys, but like, come on.

It's— yeah, no, it's— I, I'm with you there. And not only that, it can be— we know this by firsthand experience. It can be working amazingly for 2 months and then all of a sudden some random update and all of a sudden it just get crap results. Exactly. And then you have to refigure out how to do the prompts a different way or fix your memory or something goofy's going. Like I, I had one once, like last week or week before last where it started pulling in data from a year ago and I was like, where's my memory? Let me find, and it would literally saved two things from a year ago where I asked it to help me write an invoice out. And I was like, why are you bringing up that person's name all of a sudden? And so, yeah, like that's, and we've also seen websites 100% built by AI and just have some AI slop out there. And of course that's just going to hurt you in the, in the long run. Like vibe coding, like I love vibe coding. There's no, they, unless you know what you're doing, you're not, there's no SEO value because it's not even written in the same code. So, or language. So, um, yeah, be careful with that too.

But yeah, everyone wants to vibe code, but the problem is like, you can vibe code like a cool calculator or tool, like go for it. But maybe like an estimate software or something for your business that's unique, but like to do a website, especially with the whole agent thing is like, yeah, I don't know.

You can hang it up. It's like, unless you have a lot of time to spend on it, um, you're Yeah. It's cool.

But I will say this, you see this on LinkedIn and a lot of times it's because like it's an e-commerce website and they're slapping on a landing page and it's like, AI built my landing page. It's like, cool. This is different for home service business. This is not an e-commerce landing page or something like that. Exactly. Or SaaS landing page or something.

So Phil, if people wanna get in touch with you, learn more, um, where's your podcast and then where can they follow you?

Yeah, so Flash Consulting, P-H-L-A-S-H Consulting. Consulting.com. We work with $1 million to $10 million home service businesses. So you can go there, discuss your business. If you want that AI readiness checklist of, you know, go on LinkedIn, you can connect with me, ask me for it, whatever. YouTube is the best place. We have a, we have a great YouTube channel, Flash Consulting, P-H-L-A-S-H Consulting. You can get our podcast, you get all of our video content, educational stuff. That's the best place.

Cool, man. Phil, I appreciate you hanging out with me.

Yeah, brother. Good to connect.

Absolutely. If anybody has any questions at all, don't hesitate to reach out to Phil. If you have any questions for me, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'm happy to help. I will tell you, if you send me a Facebook message though, I probably won't check it. Just being honest with you because I do not like Meta. So there's that. I do have a lot of friends on Facebook, but, uh, it's the bane of my existence. But with that being said, I hope you'll have a wonderful and safe week until we talk again next time. And oh, by the way, happy, happy 112th birthday, Phil Risher. Happy birthday to Josh today. So I'll see you later, old man.

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