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I have been asked who I help many times and for the first time the other day it just rolled off my tongue. Let me tell you the story quick. I was at my daughter's basketball tournament and noticed a familiar face sitting in his lawn chair watching games with his notepad in hand. As I looked closer I recognized him as Grant McGinnis who writes for Prep Girls Hoops. I knew I needed to introduce myself so I did. It was cool to hear someone else break down my daughter's game but that's not what this story is about. Grant and I started talking and he asked, like many people do, what I did for work. I told him I was a Master Health Coach and he asked what types of clients I served. My answer didn't surprise me but it was refreshing how effortlessly and hopefully my response came to me. So, what types of clients do I serve? My typical clients are those people who come to a place in life where they want more. They want to grow healthier so they can get a part of their youth back! Some are totally sick of where they are currently with their health. Some can't stand seeing themselves in the mirror. Some people have difficulty putting their life in order with all the things that seem to be pulling at their time and energy. Some just can't believe how far they've slid since they last took inventory of their health. Some wonder what type of example they are setting for their kids and those around them. Some are experiencing limits in their freedom to move in the world that they've never experienced before. Some just need something to do and figure a small investment in their own health might be a good place to start. It is by the way. Can I help you run a marathon? Yes. Can I help you run 100 miles? Yes. That's not what this is about though. There's a place for that but this is about navigating everyday life. I've got 15 years experience in the fitness industry and have seen lots of fads and gimmicks come and go. There is no substitute for the basics, no substitute for mechanics. They seem easy, and most of them are. Most of the time they aren't that simple though. Why? Most people don't know what to do or they don't know how to do it. They Google something in a fleeting moment of inspiration, find an answer, stick with it for a day or two and go right back to whatever they were doing wishing they could just do it. It's not that simple. Habits don't form themselves and old patterns can be difficult to break. You might be surprised to learn that it doesn't take an all or nothing approach to make sustainable change and real change does take time. Chances are you will have some setbacks. Good! How else are you going to learn what works for you and what doesn't? You're not, which is why our approach is different. We expect setbacks. Do not be unrealistic and set yourself up for failure. Instead, let's learn together with your knowledge of yourself and my knowledge of healthy living how reaching your goals fits into your unique life. Then, we'll piece it together. During my six month Master Health Coach Certification with Precision Nutrition we learned and practiced the skills necessary to help clients change their lives. If you have been considering making a change and growing in health, try coaching with Relentless Courage. Head over to www.relentlesscourage.co to learn more and sign up today!

The Zero Moment of TruthThe Zero Moment of Truth describes a consumer phenomenon that has emerged with the age of hyperconnectivity and the internet. Today's consumer decides whether they will buy a product before they ever walk into a store or go online to make that purchase. They research it on Google. They “Google it.” What they see there on the pages and pages of information, the pictures and the reviews about a product will close or break the deal. As we learn from Caleb Gardner – author of the No Point B, Co-founder of 18 Coffees Innovation and Change Management Consultants, and former Lead Digital Strategist for President Barack Obama's Political Advocacy Group, OFA – the Zero Moment of Truth at its core is Google's attempt to give you a “right” answer when you search for something on their platform. To achieve this, Google gives you the top results that match your search. It all sounds simple enough. But what if the information is wrong? Google can give you SEO and top searches, but it can't give you critical thinking to evaluate the truth of what your top searches reveal. We're getting more information, but not always good information. If you are searching for a sweater and the sizes aren't accurate when it arrives in the mail, it may be irritating, but it isn't determinative. But what happens when the wrong information is about a political leader of the country? Or misinformation about a person in your neighborhood? Or a teacher in your child's school is wrongly accused?Part of the genius of the Obama campaign was its ability to bypass the traditional media and talk directly to the voter. The Obama team created that personal, human connection that politicians don't necessarily get from staged, moderated debates. Caleb and the team rejoiced at this capacity to create new channels of relationship building. It was a heady moment for the winning campaign, and the power of the internet and social media, to enroll millions of people into the army of those yearning for Hope and Change. Until 2016.  We are now left with the moral conundrum of what to do when the communicative tools of power are used to intentionally deceive, defraud, and hurt people. This was highlighted by two events that framed my conversation with a reflective Caleb. 48 hours prior to our conversation, the Department of Justice raided Mar-a-Lago, the residence of former President Trump, to seize back top-secret documents that could place the security of the nation in jeopardy. And Alex Jones was handed a 45-million-dollar judgment against him for claiming that Sandy Hook was “Fake News.” So here we sit. At the intersection of Engagement and Truth. The Number of Eyes versus the Number of Facts. Which way do we go? As Caleb says, “We've given people more information and in certain cases we've given them more knowledge, but we certainly have not provided more wisdom. We certainly have not provided the ability to self-reflect or be self-critical.”Caleb on IGCaleb's WebsitePatrick's WebsitePatrick on FacebookPatrick on IGAt the Podium on IGPatrick on LinkedIn

What you'll learn in this episode: Why all successful business owners use a combination of thought and action The difference between Google Ads, Google My Business, and organic SEO Why all roads lead to Google My Business, and why law firms should be investing in it How SEO has changed over the last decade, and how it will likely change over the next five years Why online reviews are crucial for ranking on Google, and how to get more of them About Ronnie Deaver Ronnie Deaver is the founder of NoBull Marketing, a lead generation firm for lawyers. Specializing in Google Ads and Google My Business, NoBull is know for its “No B.S. Guarantee” and fluff-free services. Before founding NoBull, Ronnie was Director of Operations and Director of Web Development & SEO at SMB Team, a legal marketing and coaching firm.  Additional Resources NoBull Marketing Website Ronnie Deaver LinkedIn No Bull Marketing Facebook Transcript: SEO has changed dramatically over the last five years, but one thing remains the same: keep Google happy, and Google will reward your firm with higher rankings. Ronnie Deaver, CEO of NoBull Marketing, has figured out exactly how to do that for his legal clients. He joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about why Google My Business is so important for law firms; how to get more valuable online reviews; and why your website still matters—but not for the reasons you might think. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today my guest is Ronnie Deaver, who is CEO of NoBull Marketing. NoBull Marketing is a lawyer-exclusive marketing firm. In this session, we're going to be touching on three areas: search engine optimization or SEO, Google My Business and Google Ads. They all play a role in generating leads for your firm. They can also make your head spin, as they have mine, but Ronnie's going to lay it out for us clearly. Ronnie, welcome to the program.   Ronnie: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.   Sharon: So glad to have you. First of all, tell us about your career path, how you got here.   Ronnie: My career path probably started around 10 years ago, and it was a very unexpected way to get into marketing as a whole. I moved to Boston, and for anyone who wonders why, it's a very stereotypical story: I chased a woman. The woman did not work out, but the city did. While I was there, I was very broke. I went on Craigslist—this is one of my favorite stories—and found a guy who was like, “Hey, I need help with my website.” I met with him at a McDonald's, and the first thing he said to me was, “Hey man, I want a website, but what I really want is to show up number one on Google.” In my head, I was like, “I don't know how to make that happen, but if you pay me this much per month, I'll make it happen for you.” So, I got my first recurring client. Fortunately I succeeded, and the rest is history from there.   As it relates to lawyers, I got involved with lawyers three or so years ago. From then on, I've been sold that they're the people I want to work with. As far as I'm concerned, it's almost like a spiritual calling. I have so much respect for lawyers because they literally raise their hands and say, “Yes, I'm willing to get involved with people at the worst times of their lives.” They're crazy. That's insane to be like, “People going through the most emotional problems of their lives, when they're at their worst and their lowest, I'm going to help those people.” I'm like, “Wow! I want to help those people help other people.” I've been working with lawyers ever since.   Sharon: Why are they at the lowest? Because they're lawyers, because they went to law school?   Ronnie: No, they're helping people who are at their lowest.   Sharon: I see. I get it.   Ronnie: If you're getting a divorce, you're pretty emotionally stressed.  If you're going through a criminal case, you're usually not your happiest person at that time. What I respect about lawyers is they put a lot of training and time and willingness into helping people who are not coming to them when they're super chippy and cheery and excited. They're usually unhappy; they're usually trying to solve a big problem; they need help; they can be emotionally touchy. It's not easy to be a lawyer. You're dealing with people at the worst, but these lawyers are volunteering to do that. It's a cool career. While I couldn't be a lawyer—I wasn't destined for that—I want to help those lawyers build better lives and build better businesses for themselves so they can help more people.   Sharon: That must keep you very busy. You answered my question. I was going to ask if you had thought about law school yourself.   Ronnie: I did, but I'm one of those guys that's more of intense action than intense thought. I thought about it, and I was like, “Man, this is not my destination.” I'm a very clearcut, no B.S. guy, and the law is a little—there's a lot of negotiation. There's no clearcut “This is right. This is wrong.” It's not that simple, and I'm a simple guy in that sense. I'm like, “This is how we do it. This is what's going to work. I've tested it and I'll evolve that over time.” I'm not destined for that high level of nuance and thought that lawyers need. I thought about it, but it's not me as a person.   Sharon: That's interesting. I'll have to think about it. I like the idea about intense action. You're a person of intense action and not intense thought, and lawyers are so thoughtful and think everything through. What keeps you attracted, then? Why, after years now, have you continued to work with lawyers?   Ronnie: The biggest thing is because they're so intensely thoughtful, they're also willing to recognize that intense thought doesn't make a business. That's the cool thing about business; it inherently is this weird balance of both. You have to have to incredibly good thinking. You have to think and know what you're doing and why you're doing it, but you can't think your way to success. You also have to take a lot of action, action that you don't know if it's going to be profitable; action you don't know if it's going to work; action even when it's hard; action when you're having a bad day. It's a combination of both.    What I love about lawyers is that oftentimes they're very driven people if they went through law school. They're like, “Hey, I know I have this weakness. I know I can think well, but I don't know what I need to do to act.” They're very willing, if given appropriate guidance and coaching, to take real, major action and have success. When I work with a lawyer, I'm usually quite confident. In almost every circumstance, I can work with that lawyer and they're like, “Yes, I want to make this business work,” and I'm like, “Great. Do this, this and that. This is what we found works. If we follow these steps, we're going to make you money.” They're like, “Great, I will follow the steps,” and they do it and they execute.    If I work with a restaurant and I work with somebody who's not quite as driven as a lawyer, you can end up with a lot less successful story. The success stories I get with lawyers are incredible. I've got one woman right now, and when I met her, she was basically facing bankruptcy. Now she's growing so fast and hiring because she can barely keep up with the caseload. They're struggling to follow up with their leads. That delta, that change, is so common in the lawyer space because once given direction, they run with it because they're so driven. I love it, and I have so much energy for it.   Sharon: That's great. I'd like to know some of the lawyers you know. Don't you find resistance sometimes? Resistance like, “I know. You don't know. I'm a lawyer. I know how to do that.” Not to knock anybody, but it's like, “I know how to do whatever needs to be done, whether it's marketing or whatever.” Do you find that?   Ronnie: I think that's broadly true for most marketers in working with lawyers. I have a unique experience with lawyers as an individual because of the way I come off and the way I speak to people. The way I think and talk and approach people is very forward. It's no B.S. It's like, “Hey, this is what I think. This is why. This is going to be the outcome if you do this and the outcome if you don't.” I'm very honest and transparent.    Maybe you have seen my guarantee—I won't go into it right now—but if I don't think I can make you money, I'm not going to charge you, basically. If I don't think I can succeed for you, I'm going to tell you I can't, and I won't take you on as a client. I make it very clear to people that I'm not trying to sell you anything. Either you want the thing I do and I can make you money, or you don't want the thing I can do or I can't make you money, and we shouldn't work together. When I come to people with that approach and I'm that transparent, that no-B.S., and I have that wiliness to not take your money, and I'm not trying to scam you or sell to you regardless of your benefit, people will come to trust me a lot quicker. They're going to say, “This guy actually has integrity.”    Character and integrity building is something I care a lot about. Because I approach my business and every person I speak with like that, I usually get very little resistance, because at that point, they're like, “Hey, I actually trust this guy.” That resistance is usually coming from fundamentally they don't trust the person they're talking to. That's not usually an experience I have, because I will willingly stop working with somebody when I'm like, “I think you should focus on a different investment, because I don't think you're getting the ROI from me for whatever circumstances. I think you should go to do this.” I do that even to my own detriment, because my fundamental goal is that I want lawyers to build better businesses. Sometimes that includes me and sometimes that doesn't. I'm willing to say that regardless.   Sharon: I can see how that can engender trust and less resistance. You're in area we've worked in, but not so much as a hands-on area. It's something that really needs to be straightened out. SEO has come a long way since the first websites and I could tell people, “Do it yourself.” That can't be done anymore. What's the difference between SEO, search engine optimization, Google My Business and Google Ads? Can you explain that all?   Ronnie: I find the easiest way to explain it is to envision an actual search. Any lawyer listening, do a search for “divorce lawyer New York City.” I chose New York City because it's going to have tons of searches and a lot of competition. If you do that search, what you'll see immediately at the top is Google Ads. You're going to see the new local service ads. I should say newer; it's been out for years now. That's where you see maybe an image of a lawyer and their reviews. Under that, you'll see text ads. Those are ads that literally just have text on them. Both of these, though, are a form of Google Ads. Google Ads, they're great. A lot of people have had mixed experiences, but the great thing about Google Ads is you can pay to play, and it works if it's done right, if you're doing it with a professional who knows how to fight Google.    Here's the thing: Google Ads is designed to spend your money, not make you money. Think about who's running it. Google wants to make money. They don't really care that much about you. They just want to make money. But when you work with a professional whose goal is to make you money, like me, my goal is to say, “Hey, Google, I don't want you to take my money. I want to make sure we're making money.” Anyway, Google Ads can be really profitable if you spend this much to get that much. So, that's Google Ads, and basically it's pay to play. You pay to advertise. You get clicks. Those clicks turn into calls. Those calls turn into cases. You run the numbers. You try to make it profitable. That's Google Ads you see at the very top.    Interestingly enough, as you mentioned, a lot has changed over the last 10, 15 years in the SEO/Google world. What's right below Google Ads now—and this didn't used to be true—is Google My Business, otherwise known as the Map Pack or the Three Pack. There are a lot of different names for it. That's the next thing, where you see names and reviews and a literal map. Back about 10, 15 years ago, you saw organic results first. You would see ads, of course, but then you would see organic results, your typical text search results, and then you would see a map under that. This was a major shift that happened roughly five years ago, where Google My Business was completely allotted to being above organic results.    Nowadays, what I talk to lawyers most about is that Google My Business shows up above all of your organic results. This is where I think you should put your effort into on the organic side. Google My Business is its own standalone profile. It has a lot of ranking factors that are a little bit different than SEO. It's going to have ranking factors based on reviews, how active you are on the profile. Are you making posts? Are you uploading photos? Have you added your services? Have you added your products? Are you doing Q&As? Are you responding to your reviews? There's a lot of grunt work, which we'll talk about later, that goes into Google My Business as a platform for ranking on there.    Quick caveat there: one of the big differences from traditional SEO—when people say, “I want to be ranked one”—is on Google My Business, you can get to rank one, two or three, but you're never going to own that spot 100% of the time. It doesn't happen. Google My Business is always switching them out. There's no owning rank one 100% of the time in your market, especially in a bigger market. So, the name of the game with Google My Business, because it's so dynamic, is not just to rank one. It's the percentage of time that you own rank one, otherwise known as your market share or your share of local voice, which are just different ways of saying how often you show up in the top three. So, just remember that, people. The big thing that's changed from SEO to focusing on Google My Business is instead of owning that rank one spot and owning it permanently for years, you're talking about a percentage of time, literally, in a given day. If a thousand searches are made in one day, you're trying to have maybe 20% of that, not 100% like you would in the old days, which is traditional SEO.   Beneath is, of course—if you search “divorce lawyer New York City,” we saw the ads; we saw Google My Business. Right beneath that is your traditional SEO. I personally don't promote a lot of traditional SEO anymore. The big reason for that is that nowadays there are all these aggregators: Super Lawyers, Lawyers.com, Justia, FindLaw. These guys are spending millions and millions of dollars a year to own these. I've found that even if you could rank here—and you can with sufficient effort, but the value you get out of it, plus the chances of your ranking are so low that it's not worth the ROI. I did the tracking once. The average website tracker converts 3%. You're going to put all this effort in, and you get 300 extra people on your website. That's like 10 calls. 300 people, that could be a big number for a lot of business owners, especially for the level of SEO they can commit to, but it's only 10 calls. Making that profitable is very hard.   Regardless, that's your three fundamental separations between Google Ads that show up at the top, pay to play. Google My Business, which is where I now recommend people put the majority of effort because it's at the top. More importantly, you're not competing with Findlaw, Super Lawyers, Avvo, any of those guys on Google My Business. You're just competing with the local people in your market. It's a much less competitive market while still having all the volume of everyone in your area searching for it. Below that are organic SEO results. That covers the three.    Sharon: Let's say I'm a family lawyer and I've never done any of this. I come to you and say, “I have money to put behind it. Can you get me to the top or near the top?” Is that possible today? Do I have to redo my website with content?   Ronnie: Yes, it's absolutely possible. Here's the thing. SEO and Google My Business, they still have a relationship together. Do you have to do everything as crazy and intense as you used to have to do with SEO? People used to think with SEO, “We have to redo the website, and we've got to make millions of pages of content. We've got to do that,” and it's this whole giant affair. You don't have to do that anymore. However, your website still does affect your Google My Business because it scans your website and uses that for context of what services you offer. If you say you're an estate planning lawyer, for example, Google wants to see that you have pages for probate, pages for estate planning, pages for wills, pages for trusts, because it's going to scan your website and use that as context.    But here's the thing. This is the big changing in mindset. It's not about those pages' rankings. Those pages are never going to rank. I don't give a crud if anyone ever Googles and finds that page. That's not the goal when you're focusing on Google My Business, at least. The goal is that Google scans them to help it understand what your business does, and then it's more likely to rank your Google My Business profile higher on that Map Pack rather than your actual page.    Here's the other reason I love Google My Business. Google My Business only shows up on the searches where people have literally raised their hands and said, “I need a lawyer right now.” It doesn't show up when they're saying, “Should I get a lawyer?” or “Can I avoid getting a lawyer?” or any of these other research terms. It literally only shows up when people say, “Hey, I want to hire a lawyer right now.” So, the leads you get from it, the people who call you, they're usually very close to making a decision. You're putting effort into showing up in front of people right when they need a lawyer, which is why it can have a high conversion rate and why it can be so profitable.   But yes, you can absolutely start ranking. A lot of my clients rank within as little as 90 days. That's possible. The reason it's possible is because if you put the sufficient grunt work into the profile—grunt work being the posts, photos, Q&As, getting reviews—reviews alone are like 35% of the factor. Put that grunt work in, and even a small boost in your ranking on Google My Business can easily turn into an extra 10, 15, 20 calls a month. 10, 15, 20 calls, maybe that's three, four or five consultations. If you close one of those with an average case value of $3,000 to $5,000, you're already starting to get profitable from what you're spending on somebody like me. The ROI to time factor with Google My Business is so much better and so much faster than whatever SEO that was in the past, where it's 12 months or 24 months to float an expense, and maybe $30, 40 grand a year for years. Google My Business doesn't have that factor. You can go a lot faster.   Sharon: You still have to do a lot of SEO behind the scenes. It shows up in a different way. Tell us more about the grunt work. Do you do the reviews? Are you doing the photography? Are you prodding your clients, saying it's time to write an article or whatever?   Ronnie: Yes, so we do as much of the grunt work as we humanly can. This what I talk about the whole time. We're not selling back magic. We're not selling a magic pill that solves all your problems. What we sell is grunt work. We know if we put this work in, it pays. So, we handle all the on-page SEO. We'll go through and optimize your website fully. For anybody who wants to hear these terms, some of these will be a little technical. We're not going too far into them, but metatitles, metadescriptions, local schema, image alt text, image compression, website speedup stuff. All your basics of having a website that makes sense to Google so they know your name, your address, your phone number, what you do, we'll handle all that.    Then on the setup side of Google My Business, there's actually quite a lot. One of the things people don't realize is that five or eight years ago, Google My Business was a set-and-forget thing. You put your name, your info, your category and never thought about it again. Maybe you get a review every now and then. Nowadays, they've turned it into a quasi-social platform. I want to be clear here: it's a terrible social platform. Never think of it as a social platform. But even if you're not going to get views or likes or whatever on it, doing that activity still makes Google happy, which means you're more likely to rank higher. It's about making Google happy, not about getting profile views or image likes. In terms of setup, you can put all that basic information in: your name, address, phone number, description.   Nowadays, they've recently—and I say recently as in the last couple of years—they've added functionality where you can add literally every service you offer. Let me give you an example. When I work with a criminal lawyer, they're not just a criminal lawyer. They do drug crimes; they do manslaughter; they do criminal deportation. They do all these different subcategories. Even below that, a drug crime lawyer is not just a drug crime lawyer. It's also Xanax crime, meth crime, marijuana crime. You can break this down. For our average client, we're adding 50 to 100 individual services, breaking down literally every single thing they do. We're adding 100 words of extra context into the back of the profile, putting every single thing they do. Again, that gives Google more context of who you are and what you do, and it makes it easier for you to rank. The cool thing is when you do rank, if somebody did want a marijuana crime lawyer near me, Google literally would say, “Provides service: marijuana crime lawyer.” You're more likely to get the call because not only did you rank higher, but you showed that you're a specialist in that industry.    You can also do products. Products are basically a visual version of that. You get to do the same thing, but you put photos and you can link to a certain page on the website. It has a little more of a visual component to it, but again, it's another way of telling Google who you are and what you do. We do all of that on the setup side.   Then you have the ongoing side. On the ongoing side, again, we do all this grunt work. We write a blog post every single month. Lesson learned; I now only work with J.D. holders to write blog posts for lawyers. I will never have somebody who has not gone to law school write a post for a lawyer. No lawyer likes that. I've never had a problem with a lawyer now that I only have people who went to law school writing it. I had lots of issues before, but we've done that for years now, no problems. So, we have an actual law student, somebody who went to law school, got their J.D., write the blog posts so the lawyer doesn't have to.    Then we go further than that. We have posts on Google My Business. We'll upload photos. If we have to, we have stock photos; even stock photos are better than no photos. We do send a little automated text asking lawyers, “Hey, send me a photo if you have it. If you have a real one, I'll take it.” I make it as easy as if you just respond to a text, I'll handle uploading the photo. So, we ask for those photos or we post our own.    We're going to be uploading our own questions and answers. People don't realize this, but you can actually ask yourself a question on Google My Business and answer it. You don't have to wait for somebody to ask you a question. That's a whole new functionality. A couple of years ago, Q&As didn't even exist. Now Q&As will do this. Say I have a family lawyer. I'll say, “Hey, what's the process of divorce?” and I'll ask myself that question. Then, J.D. holders will write a 300-word response and post that there. We're adding 10 of those a month; we're adding 3,000+ characters of words to the profile proving to Google that we're an expert and know what we're doing. Again, more and more grunt work, everything you can do.    Finally, on the review side, I can't do it for you fully. People have tried completely outsourcing but your conversion rate will be terrible. If I do it for you completely, I'll get one out of every 10 people to leave a review for you, which is a waste. What I have done—and I've gotten this up to a 40% conversion rate, so four out of 10 will leave of review of you. I set up a very simple flat automation for our clients, where all they have to do is give me a name, a phone number and an email, and we'll automatically send three to six follow-ups by SMS asking them to leave a review. It'll follow up over 10 days. It's that follow-up that makes a big difference, because the first time you ask, they're never going to leave a review. You've got to ask at least two or three more times, and they'll do it on the follow-up. That gets about a 40% conversion rate. Most of our clients are getting two to five, sometimes 10 new reviews a month.   When you combine all that together, what we end up seeing is often between 20% and 30% lift month over month. By lift, I mean an increase. If they're getting 30 calls now, next month I'd see maybe 40 calls. The next month I'd like to see 50, 60 calls. The next month I'd like to see 60, 70 calls, so that at the end of it, I have a lot of clients. Within six months, they've doubled their call volume. When you're doubling your call volume, that pretty easily turns into quite a bit more revenue.   Sharon: Wow! But you're saying, though, you still have to do all the stuff we used to do. It's the stuff we're talking about, just on your website. You'd come in and say, “Let me change the tags. Let me change this.” You still have to do that, even though people aren't coming to the website directly; they're coming to the ads or Google My Business. When you add, let's say, 15 more services, is that behind the scenes? Like if they search “criminal lawyer in New York City” and then they click on that and see, “Oh, this guy does all this criminal stuff,” is it behind the scenes?   Ronnie: It's completely behind the scenes. The customer will almost never see it unless it showed up on a very specific search. Here's the thing: it's in the profile of Google My Business itself. It's not a thing anybody can click through to. It's not a thing somebody can explore or open up. Products are a little different. Products you can click through and explore, but services are explicitly a backend thing, so Google My Business knows exactly what your services are. They sometimes use it where the customer can see it says “provides” and whatever the service is. That will sometimes show up, but you can't control it. It'll sometimes show up on the search, but there's no clicking through and seeing all those services. So, mostly we do it for Google's sake.   I love that you mentioned all that old SEO stuff as still being present. The way I think about it, Google My Business was built on the foundation of SEO. It's not that they're completely disconnected, but nowadays, SEO is a supporting tool to Google My Business. I don't usually recommend SEO as a standalone campaign anymore just because of the numbers and profit. I tracked 200 campaigns and here's what I found. I tracked every call, every form fill, every everything. I found that 60% to 80% of all calls a lawyer got over 200 campaigns could be directly attributed to Google My Business. They called straight from Google My Business. They didn't go to the website at all. They just called from Google My Business without ever going to the website.   Sharon: Does Google My Business give you a separate phone number if you're paying Google for ads? Do they give you a separate phone number to track this?   Ronnie: They do have some call tracking functionality. It's not a separate number. What they do is behind the scenes. They have what is called call history in Google My Business. I don't usually recommend it, and the reason I don't recommend doing that is because, first of all, it's bad data. It'll lead you to believe you're getting worse data than you are because it can only track the people who click it to call. It can't track the people who type it in manually. Google My Business is still going to show your actual number, but when you click it, they run it through a different phone number on the back end. So, it's only tracking 60% to 70% of your calls. It's not tracking the many, many people who Google on their desktop and then call from their phone, for example.    What I do instead is set up call tracking, where we replace your office number or we import your office number and turn it into a tracked line, depending on if you have a vanity number or really old number you love. Either way, we either completely replace your office number with a new tracked line, or we'll import your current one and make it into a tracked line, and then we put that on Google My Business. Then we have perfect data because it doesn't matter how you placed the call. Whether it's clicked on or manually called, I have that data. I know how that person called and I know where they came from.    Sharon: Is everything you're describing the same on the phone, desktop, mobile device?   Ronnie: It's all the same. They would see one phone number all the way through. It doesn't matter where they come from.    Sharon: What happens if you have a vanity number? Let's say I'm a client and I say, “Oh, I have to call John. I know his number is 1-800-LAWYER.” How do you separate those?   Ronnie: Yes, if you really care about running a vanity number, I understand. Like I said, we have the option to import that. We can import that number and turn it into a call tracking, which I think is best practice regardless. If you're going to have a fancy number, at least know how many people are calling you. I think that's the useful thing to do. So, we import that number and turn that into a call track number. Then that number stays the same. Nothing changes. It's the same number. When you switch from T-Mobile to Verizon, you get to keep your number. It's the same thing. We get to keep that number; we just turned it into a tracked one. It's the same number, but you get all the benefits and now you can track all your calls.    Sharon: When you're working lawyers, what are the top three mistakes you see, or the top three tips you have? What would you say?   Ronnie: I think as it relates to broad marketing, the biggest thing is not realizing what personally works for you as an individual. What I mean by that is the biggest thing I see lawyers do as a mistake—this is all business owners—is that it's so tempting to follow the advice of everyone else who says, “This is the best way to succeed,” and they'll do it regardless of whether or not it's good for them as an individual. I'll give you an example of somebody it's not good for. Say you've got a very shy person, a very shy lawyer who doesn't enjoy meeting in person. It makes them very nervous. It makes them very sickly and unhealthy and anxious. They're having a bad day. Every time they go to a networking event, they're miserable. But every lawyer they've ever met has told them the only way they're going to succeed is if they get good at networking, so they grind their way through and force themselves to go to all these networking events. The reason I think that's a terrible idea is because business is marathon; it's not a sprint. This is general business advice separate from marketing. Business is a marathon, not a sprint. If you go do things that make you miserable all the way through, you're not going to be able to sustain. You're going to want to quit. You're going to want to give up. You're going to burn out. You're going to shut down. You're going to give up. It doesn't work. So, the biggest mistake I see lawyers make is trying to do things the way everyone else tells them to, regardless of how it feels to them.    Networking for me is super easy. I'm very outgoing, very loud. I speak. I can own a room very easily. Great. What didn't work for me was trying to force myself to run a lot of Facebook ads. I'm a very direct marketing guy. Cold email is how I do things. Meeting people in person is how I do things. Podcasting and talking, that's how I do things. But everyone I met was telling me, “Do Facebook ads. Do Facebook ads.” That just freaked me out. If I spent $3,000 in Facebook ads, I was terrified all month, like, “Oh my god, I'm wasting money.” Then I'd be miserable the whole day, all day, every day. I never would have gotten this far if I kept doing what everyone else told me to do.    The same thing is true for most lawyers. Find the marketing path. Find the way to run your business that works for you as an individual, even if everyone else tells you it's not the best way. Again, success is going to come from surviving over the long run, over the marathon, so you can find what works and find the thing that keeps building up rather than the short-term thing everyone says should work. That's the biggest mistake with lawyers. Just find the path that works for you. If you don't like making content, you don't want to be on TikTok, you don't want to network, you don't want to whatever, that's fine. There's a way to do it; I promise. You've just got to find the way that works for you. That's my number one tip there.   The second one, as it relates to Google My Business specifically, is that it's not a set-and-forget profile. I'm going to say it again. It is not a set-and-forget profile. Five years ago, you were right; it kind of was. You would set it. It wasn't even the thing that showed up first. It was secondary. Now, it's the thing that shows up first. I've tracked 200 campaigns. The majority of your leads comes from Google My Business. Think about this: all roads lead to Google My Business. Here's why. You run that billboard campaign. They'll remember your billboard. They might remember your name, and what do they do? They Google your name. What's the first thing that shows up? If you do a Google search for the business and you have a Google My Business listing, the first thing they see on the entire right side of the screen is a massive thing with everything about you, your reviews, you information. That is Google My Business. It's literally massive. It takes up the entire right side of a Google search. It's huge.    So, if you run that billboard campaign, you run that Facebook ad, you do that radio campaign, even if you get a referral, the first thing people do nowadays is they Google you and read your reviews and look at your profile. I've seen lawyers lose referral leads because they were Googling them, and they were like, “Hey, you've only got one review. I don't trust you. Your Google My Business profile looks terrible.” All roads lead to Google My Business, so what I tell people is don't set it and forget it. Put more effort into it than anybody else, whether you pay somebody or do it yourself. This is not stuff you can't do yourself; it's just a lot of grunt work. Get in there. Make the posts, add the photos, get reviews. Do the work. All roads lead to Google My Business. Don't set and forget it. Make use of it. Find everything you can do. You'll get paid for it in the end. It's grunt work that pays. That's what I tell people: it's grunt work that pays.   Which brings me to my next thing, which is that when it comes to reviews, there's a big myth. I get so many complaints about reviews. “I can't get reviews. I'm a criminal lawyer. Somebody who just had a child sex case doesn't want to leave a review. Somebody who just went through a divorce doesn't want to talk about the divorce.” First of all, you don't actually know that. There are a lot of assumptions. I know if you were going through a divorce, you wouldn't want to leave a review, but you don't know that about other people. I have met a lot of criminals who are pretty thrilled to brag about the fact that they were a criminal who got off the hook. They're very thrilled to leave that review. They're proud of it. You've got no idea what people are willing to do. Don't assume you do. More important, the reality is that reviews are so profitable. Even the referral person is going to look at your reviews. So, you've got to get those reviews, and the number myth I see is that most lawyers think they can only get reviews from paying clients, people who have succeeded and paid you. That is not true. The only requirement for a review is that you gave somebody legitimate legal value.    Let's think about that. What does that mean? I'll give you an example that blows it out of the water every time. Estate planning lawyers, every quarter they're going to host a local seminar at the nursing home, for example, and 60 people are there. Maybe they get three, four, five clients out of that session. They're thrilled. They've just made so much money. However, here's what they do next. After that seminar—they've just spent two hours with these people—the ask all 60 attendees to leave a review right then and there. They get 15 to 20 extra reviews in one day for a seminar they were already going to do and they already got five clients out of. At free consultations, you just spent 30 minutes giving legitimate legal value to somebody, even if they don't become a client. I've got clients right now who get three, four, five reviews a month just from people they did a free consultation with. They didn't even become clients, but at least they got a review out of it for that free consultation. So, there are lots of creative ways that you can get reviews. You've just got to think, “Did I provide legal value of some sort?” Friends and family count here. If you gave legitimate legal value, if somebody asked for advice or a thought or suggestion or direction and you gave legal value of some form, that's cool; ask for that review. You're safe to do it. It's worth the payout.   My final thought for people, and I'll close off here, is that I know you've probably had a bad experience with Google ads when you tried running them yourself. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. There are a lot of lawyers who are like, “I'll never do Google ads. It's never profitable. I tried it once and I lost a lot of money,” especially after Google launched Google Express Ads. I don't know if you remember those, but Google tried it for a while. Basically, Google wants to get rid of us agencies because we are really good at not getting people to spend as much money. We're really good at getting our clients to reduce the budget with Google ads. Google wants a direct path to the client where they can work with the lawyer and the lawyer pays Google. They don't want a middleman. However, the benefit of the middleman is that when you work with an appropriate middleman, you can get it to where we're constantly telling Google, “I don't want to pay for this. I don't want to pay for that. I don't want to pay for this.” What we're doing every day and every week is finding out what's worth paying for and what actually turns into money.    I'll give you an example. If I work with a criminal lawyer, what I've found out—and we've helped clients make more money this way—is that if we just pay for DUI searches, we'll get some cases that way, but a lot of people who are in a DUI, some of them don't have the money or they aren't very socially responsible people. They're not likely to have the money or to pay out. What I found was if we go after nursing DUI or contractor DUI, suddenly the game changed. Now we were going after people who lose the entire livelihoods and licenses. A nurse loses her license for a DUI. Suddenly, those people have more money because they're nurses, and they're way more incentivized to make it work because they don't want to lose their license. I have that context where I can pay money on Google Ads to find the leads that are most likely to make you money and actually convert. When you work with a professional on Google Ads, you can make your campaign a lot more profitable than anything you've ever done on your own. So, don't throw out Google Ads. You're literally getting to pay to put yourself in front of people who say, “I need a lawyer right now.” If you work with a professional, you can make a lot of money with it. Don't throw it out. Consider it.   Sharon: You work with Google a lot. It sounds like Google would love to go to a lawyer and say, “Just buy my ads.” It doesn't matter whether it's a nurse. This is just off the cuff. What's next for Google and you? Do you feel changes coming? It seems like every time one learns what's going on, it's changed. What do you feel is changing or coming?   Ronnie: Yes, one thing I love about Google is that while it seems like it's changing a lot—which it is. It's changed more in the last five years than it's changed in the last 15. At the same time, it's kind of the index fund of marketing. What I mean by that is if you think of it as a broad hull and you don't get distracted by Google itself in terms of user behavior, it's the most ingrained thing now. It's a social/cultural thing. When you don't know something, what do you do? You Google it. You look for it. You make a search for it. It's the most basic thing. We haven't quite gotten to that with social media like Facebook. You're not so ingrained with the idea of Facebook that you go on Facebook to look for an ad to find an answer to your problem. It's not the same; it's completely different. Google has the benefit of being this culturally ingrained thing. Even though its platform is changing a lot from a user behavior standpoint, nothing's really changing, unlike Facebook where a single iOS update completely shattered Facebook ads, and now you suddenly can't make money on it. That's wild. That's very unlikely to happen on Google because it's so ingrained in culture and how people work. It has the benefit of being high intent. People only go there when they intend to find an answer or when they intend to hire somebody, unlike Facebook. They don't intend to find an ad on Facebook; they just happen to.    I bring that up because when it comes to Google and why I love it and expound on it so much, it's the index fund of marketing. It's hyper-ingrained in culture. It's not going to change very much at all in terms of the cultural side. It might evolve, but it's going to be Google. It's going to be the idea of searching for a solution. That may evolve in its format. It might be like a VR headset, where an ad shows while you're searching for something on a VR headset. But fundamentally people are going to search for answers, and you can pay or put grunt effort in to show up in front of people when they search for the answer, whatever format they take. So, in some ways it's changing; in a lot of ways it's almost not at all. For me, I'll probably be on the Google search world, because why would I not put all my effort into putting myself in front of people when they're already looking for me? That's where I want to be. It's easier that way. Fundamentally that's not changing.    Now, when it comes to actual platforms—which, to me, are on a micro scale compared to the macro we just talked about—there is some micro-stuff changing. The thing that's going to keep changing is Google's going to keep trying to find ways to get rid of agencies. I'm going to have to keep fighting. We're going to fight that as long as we can. There's going to come a day where eventually Google succeeds with that, but the agencies will probably still have a role because business owners have better things to do than manage their budgets or campaigns. There may be a human component forever, but there will probably be a point where Google succeeds enough where their ads actually perform at reaching their goals for the client. That is probably still many, many years off, because right now the reason Google Ads can't do that is because they don't know your business.    For example, right now with local service ads, which is probably the most they've ever succeeded at making it where they can go directly to the lawyer, they will run a campaign for an immigration lawyer, but they don't know that business. So, if that immigration lawyer says, “Hey, I don't do deportations and I don't do asylums,” Google has no filtering for that. You can't turn that off, so you get all immigration leads. Right now at least, there's no customization to that individual business. That's the kind of filtering I can do as the human saying, “Hey, I only want these types of cases. I don't want any of these cases.” I can put that kind of thinking into it. Google may one day fix it up, but they haven't done it yet.   What they're trying now is an improved version of all this called Performance Max. It recently came out. Basically, it's the same idea as Google Express Ads, but with the lessons from local service ads. It's like version 3, but now it goes on all of their Ads platforms. They're trying merge into one giant ad platform where you pay one budget to advertise on Google ads, display ads, YouTube ads, Gmail ads, on all their platforms all at once. Of course, in theory that sounds great, but if you just give it to the bots, it's going to spend money. It has no context of who you want to target, what types of cases turn into money. Performance Max might have a role to play. I don't expect it's going to take over the agency role anytime soon. I probably need to keep fighting them for a long time to make sure we're only spending money when it makes money. But what we're going to keep is a trend where Google tries to find some new way where we don't need an agency. They're going to underestimate and still not understand what the individual business actually needs, so we're going to keep going back and forth until one day they figure it out. I don't know how long that's going to be, but it's probably at least five, 10 years.    Sharon: You've given us a lot to think about. It's not your father's Google, I should say.   Ronnie: Yeah, it's changed a lot.   Sharon: I want to thank you so much. It's been very, very interesting. We greatly appreciate you being here.   Ronnie: Absolutely. I had a great time. Thanks for having me.  

We're developing a service offer for a brand of chocolate that's been in business for many years, with a traditional sales network that's still its mainstay to this day. However, for the past several months, even a few years now, the company has been losing market share. They know they need more consumers to get to know them, now, or buyers will start to choose a brand that's better known for their chocolates come Easter, Christmas, and Mother's Day. Today it's rare to have any monopoly over a market without raising your brand awareness to attract consumers. Are you one of those entrepreneurs who invests the bulk of their resources in sales and very little in marketing? I'm sorry to tell you that this extremely risky marketing cycle has been very harmful during the pandemic because your customers are spending more time at their computers. What's the very first thing they do when they're looking for a product? They GOOGLE it. Your competitor, whose name is mentioned by influencers/media and featured in their own online advertising strategy, will be at the top of the list. This is all the more tragic for a brand whose products, which are high-quality and have sold exceptionally well for it, are now sitting on the shelves because consumers haven't heard of them. Don't wait until you're in that situation. Make your products quickly available on your website or a transactional site, and get people talking about you. - Send your products to a highly targeted list of influencers and media. - Focus on a platform like podcasting, which is a very powerful online tool that's still being overlooked. Buyers will be even more interested in you, and they'll take the risk of adding you to their shelves. But if your products don't sell once they're in their store, you can be sure that that second or third order will be very hard to get. Yes, you have to invest in your sales, and that investment involves a budget as well as resources allocated to the company's promotion, PR, and social media. To start making yourself known, nothing beats combining PR with social media. In our 20 years of coaching brands and services in getting out there, raising their profiles, and reaching their clients, we've managed to crack the codes. And now we're ready to share our pro tips with you in this podcast and our free webinars. In addition, our paid training sessions, led by a seasoned professional, will add to your success. Take the leap! Sign up for our lists: FREE NATA PR MODEL

When you’re in a dark hole, it can feel like there is a loss of hope, but you can dig yourself out with some wisdom and encouragement. It was a hole that I had fallen into. I was in a deep dark hole where the sun didn’t seem to reach. That is what a mental illness can be like—All-consuming, overwhelming, and a  ‘blocking out’ of the reality of anything possibly being different. The fog bank is all-consuming. I was in a hole, but I was not alone. Alongside though were bible characters who had also been in a similar place. Elijah, Moses, David, Jonah, Jeremiah, Job, Naomi, Paul, Peter, Judas, to name the ones that we know of that had emotional struggles. Even Jesus struggled with his dark night of anguish and a time when the sun refused to shine. God handed me a spade and encouraged me to start digging. The Anonymous Hole Dweller One of the interesting observations I have made from blogging for many years now is that there are many people that I would call ‘Anonymous Hole Dwellers’. They know they are struggling; they want help but don’t want others to know about it. It’s a privacy thing. I’ll solve this on my own, D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself), and there is a fear of what others will think and how they will react. So they reach out to find help on the internet. They Google search their pain-filled questions, see a page or two here on Turning the Page, spend some reading, and then they are gone. They remain anonymous – unknown. I want to give them a spade and encourage them to dig. Perhaps Turning the Page can offer a couple of footholds for their journey up and out. The spade To me, a spade represents hard manual labor. I’ve used a spade many times. In fact, I own about six of them. Each of them slightly different and suited for various tasks. I have dug so many holes and drains that I know the feel of a good spade. It’s dirty work: sweat, mud, and tired muscles. You cut the turf, push the steel into the soil and wedge the dirt out. Then you do it again and again. Over time you make progress. You gain a sense of satisfaction at the progress made. It’s tangible and real. But I don’t know of anybody that gets excited about digging. It’s much like what this quote says about opportunity. The reason most people do not recognize an opportunity when they meet it is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like Hard Work. Thomas Edison? Most people I have found don’t want to wear overalls and pick up the spade and do the work. Some people have become so used to their hole that they have made it their home. Decorating the walls with internalized victim stories, they live in an echo chamber of past events. Critical voices keep them from looking up. When God hands you a spade Let’s go back to that dark hole. You are at the base of a deep dark hole, and the only way out is up. So a spade is in your hand. You grasp that spade, and you start to chip and dig away at the walls of the hole. After a little while, you have dug out a small hole big enough to put your foot in. Then you dig another hole in the wall for your hand to grasp on to. You do this over and over again until you have dug a ladder, as such, out of the hole. You climb a little, and you dig a little. Dirt is filling in the hole under you. You are sensing the light above filling your senses. Hope is beginning to rise in you. You dig a millimeter more. You slip now and then, but because it’s your hole and it’s you that is doing the digging, you progress on. With every successful notch made and elevation gained, something is changing in your brain. The electrical pathways are becoming more positive. The way you used to think becomes a distant memory. There is a new you that is emerging. Stronger, deeper, and more centered. There is a resilience to your nature so that when the winds and storms of life blow, you don’t buckle. You bend and move with the flow. It’s a millimeter foothold. I like to think of recovery as millimeter ministry. It’s small enough to make it feasible and highly achievable. What are some millimeters? reading your thinking compass every day taking medication (if prescribed) every day doing something nice for you every day going to bed at a regular time every day meditating on some Bible verses every day getting pragmatic about some of the pressures bearing down on you everyday problem-solving rather than problem dwelling everyday exercising a little every day nurturing the beautiful and meaningful in you every day It’s an ‘every day’ rhythm of digging a little bit each day. Habits, patterns, and practices changing your life. I will cheer on your digging I’m not going to rescue you from your hole, but I want to cheer on the progress and offer suggestions. I have noticed that rescuers and quick-fix merchants often have a need in themselves that they want to fulfill. Instead, I will encourage the millimeter that turns into a centimeter. I have a hole of my own, which is my responsibility. You can cheer me on and fuel my heart with whispers of courage. Let’s dig together In my book ‘Broken to built,’ I reflect on how Jerusalem’s wall was rebuilt after devastating destruction with an ‘And next to them’ attitude. It’s an awareness of others next to us in our rebuilding and digging. It’s hard, dirty, and often thankless work. But there is a beauty and wonder at the progress made when the dig is focused and alive. When you’re in a dark hole, it can feel like there is a loss of hope, but you can dig yourself out with some wisdom and encouragement. Quotes to consider Only a secure person can empower others. Those who have to remain in control can never let go long enough to allow others to make mistakes and learn from them. David Riddell Nothing digs ditches like shovel fulls of dirt.  Rick Hanson Metanoeite, or change of consciousness, can only come with time. Patience is the very shape of love. Without it, religion is merely about enforcing laws and requirements. Richard Rohr Every ‘rescuer’ needs to know that sometimes people will need to feel worse before they can feel better. D. Riddell   Questions to answer What does your hole look like? What is a millimeter foothold that you can dig today? Why do some people like to decorate their holes and make them their homes? Further reading Barry Pearman Photo by Mari Potter on Unsplash     Get a weekly email full of help for your Mental Health and Spiritual formation * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name *      

When you’re in a dark hole, it can feel like there is a loss of hope, but you can dig yourself out with some wisdom and encouragement. It was a hole that I had fallen into. I was in a deep dark hole where the sun didn’t seem to reach. That is what a mental illness can be like—All-consuming, overwhelming, and a  ‘blocking out’ of the reality of anything possibly being different. The fog bank is all-consuming. I was in a hole, but I was not alone. Alongside though were bible characters who had also been in a similar place. Elijah, Moses, David, Jonah, Jeremiah, Job, Naomi, Paul, Peter, Judas, to name the ones that we know of that had emotional struggles. Even Jesus struggled with his dark night of anguish and a time when the sun refused to shine. God handed me a spade and encouraged me to start digging. The Anonymous Hole Dweller One of the interesting observations I have made from blogging for many years now is that there are many people that I would call ‘Anonymous Hole Dwellers’. They know they are struggling; they want help but don’t want others to know about it. It’s a privacy thing. I’ll solve this on my own, D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself), and there is a fear of what others will think and how they will react. So they reach out to find help on the internet. They Google search their pain-filled questions, see a page or two here on Turning the Page, spend some reading, and then they are gone. They remain anonymous – unknown. I want to give them a spade and encourage them to dig. Perhaps Turning the Page can offer a couple of footholds for their journey up and out. The spade To me, a spade represents hard manual labor. I’ve used a spade many times. In fact, I own about six of them. Each of them slightly different and suited for various tasks. I have dug so many holes and drains that I know the feel of a good spade. It’s dirty work: sweat, mud, and tired muscles. You cut the turf, push the steel into the soil and wedge the dirt out. Then you do it again and again. Over time you make progress. You gain a sense of satisfaction at the progress made. It’s tangible and real. But I don’t know of anybody that gets excited about digging. It’s much like what this quote says about opportunity. The reason most people do not recognize an opportunity when they meet it is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like Hard Work. Thomas Edison? Most people I have found don’t want to wear overalls and pick up the spade and do the work. Some people have become so used to their hole that they have made it their home. Decorating the walls with internalized victim stories, they live in an echo chamber of past events. Critical voices keep them from looking up. When God hands you a spade Let’s go back to that dark hole. You are at the base of a deep dark hole, and the only way out is up. So a spade is in your hand. You grasp that spade, and you start to chip and dig away at the walls of the hole. After a little while, you have dug out a small hole big enough to put your foot in. Then you dig another hole in the wall for your hand to grasp on to. You do this over and over again until you have dug a ladder, as such, out of the hole. You climb a little, and you dig a little. Dirt is filling in the hole under you. You are sensing the light above filling your senses. Hope is beginning to rise in you. You dig a millimeter more. You slip now and then, but because it’s your hole and it’s you that is doing the digging, you progress on. With every successful notch made and elevation gained, something is changing in your brain. The electrical pathways are becoming more positive. The way you used to think becomes a distant memory. There is a new you that is emerging. Stronger, deeper, and more centered. There is a resilience to your nature so that when the winds and storms of life blow, you don’t buckle. You bend and move with the flow. It’s a millimeter foothold. I like to think of recovery as millimeter ministry. It’s small enough to make it feasible and highly achievable. What are some millimeters? reading your thinking compass every day taking medication (if prescribed) every day doing something nice for you every day going to bed at a regular time every day meditating on some Bible verses every day getting pragmatic about some of the pressures bearing down on you everyday problem-solving rather than problem dwelling everyday exercising a little every day nurturing the beautiful and meaningful in you every day It’s an ‘every day’ rhythm of digging a little bit each day. Habits, patterns, and practices changing your life. I will cheer on your digging I’m not going to rescue you from your hole, but I want to cheer on the progress and offer suggestions. I have noticed that rescuers and quick-fix merchants often have a need in themselves that they want to fulfill. Instead, I will encourage the millimeter that turns into a centimeter. I have a hole of my own, which is my responsibility. You can cheer me on and fuel my heart with whispers of courage. Let’s dig together In my book ‘Broken to built,’ I reflect on how Jerusalem’s wall was rebuilt after devastating destruction with an ‘And next to them’ attitude. It’s an awareness of others next to us in our rebuilding and digging. It’s hard, dirty, and often thankless work. But there is a beauty and wonder at the progress made when the dig is focused and alive. When you’re in a dark hole, it can feel like there is a loss of hope, but you can dig yourself out with some wisdom and encouragement. Quotes to consider Only a secure person can empower others. Those who have to remain in control can never let go long enough to allow others to make mistakes and learn from them. David Riddell Nothing digs ditches like shovel fulls of dirt.  Rick Hanson Metanoeite, or change of consciousness, can only come with time. Patience is the very shape of love. Without it, religion is merely about enforcing laws and requirements. Richard Rohr Every ‘rescuer’ needs to know that sometimes people will need to feel worse before they can feel better. D. Riddell   Questions to answer What does your hole look like? What is a millimeter foothold that you can dig today? Why do some people like to decorate their holes and make them their homes? Further reading Barry Pearman Photo by Mari Potter on Unsplash     Get a weekly email full of help for your Mental Health and Spiritual formation * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name *      

These days, the “customer journey” invariably takes people online. They Google their questions, they ask their Facebook friends for recommendations, they spend hours in their email inbox. How can your business position itself to meet your ideal custom

In this episode, Francis and Alana the "Improving Alana's Life Day-by-Day" series. They Google search life lessons that Alana's mom has told her throughout her life to figure out if they're real or not.

In an emergency, where do customers find a plumber? They Google "Plumbers near me!" and they call whoever shows up first or whoever has the best reviews on Google. Do you fall into one of those categories? If not, you're letting your competition steal your business. Showing up on page one of Google is more important than ever. A digital marketing agency can help you optimize your website and show up for keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Hear how digital marketing can transform your business and bring in ready to buy customers!

  There is nothing like an internal whistleblower report about a FCPA violation, the finding of such an issue or (even worse) a subpoena from the DOJ to trigger the Board of Directors and senior management attention to the compliance function and the company’s compliance program. Such an event can trigger much gnashing of teeth and expressions of outrage followed immediately by proclamations “We are an ethical company.” However it may well be the time for a very serious reality check.  The DOJ Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs focuses this question in Prong 7 with the following: Response to Investigations –What has been the process for responding to investigative findings? You may find yourself in the position that you will have to have some very frank discussions about what to expect in terms of costs and time outlays. While much of these discussions will focus on the investigative process and those costs, these discussions will allow you to begin to talk about remediation going forward and begin to explain why money must be budgeted for the remediation process.  One of the things rarely considered is how the investigation triggers the remediation process and what the relationship is between the two. When issues arise warranting an investigation that would rise to the Board of Directors level and potentially require disclosure to the government, there is usually a flurry of attention and activity. Everyone wants to know what is going on. Russ Berland, the Chief Compliance Officer at Dematic Inc. has noted, “for that short moment in time, you have everyone’s full attention.” Yet it can still be “a tricky place, because you get your fifteen minutes to really get everyone’s full attention, and then from then on, you’re fighting with everybody else for their attention, just like the normal things in business life. It’s, they’re coming in and saying, “Okay, here’s the situation as we know it now, there is an investigation path, and corresponding to that, here’s what we think is the remediation path and some outlines of what it’s going to take,” often with some dollar signs attached to it.”  You need to explain the costs to the Board and senior management. As Berland said, you need to be upfront and candid in firmly stating, “For us to get to this place, this is what it’s going to cost.” Moreover, you need to be able to show how some companies paid very large amounts, not just in the eventual fine and penalty but also in other costs. Berland went on to say, “We want to show you how people have lost money by having to write big checks, because they didn’t take this seriously, and saved money, because they didn’t have to write as big a check, because they took this very seriously, and your return on investment here is going to be very high if you do this well.” This is easier with the information that was provided in the 2016 DOJ Pilot Program around FCPA enforcement as it demonstrated how much discount a company can receive below the minimum range of the Sentencing Guidelines for remediation.   One of the most difficult parts is that the investigation is often done in a way in which the investigators want to maintain as tight a control over the information and privilege as they possibly can. The remediation really requires output from the investigation to understand where the risk points are and where the gaps are, both in the compliance program and the internal controls. There’s a tension there, and it needs to be structured in a way that information can be shared with those who are designing the remediation without fear of compromising the investigation.  Dan Chapman, CCO at Vimpelcom and formerly CCO at Parker Drilling,  also believes that costs must be adequately discussed to set proper expectations. These include both direct costs and, even more importantly, a discussion of indirect costs to the company. He noted that “the biggest cost to a company during an investigation is the diversion of management resources” and, as he further explained, “kind of everything stops to focus on the investigation.” This indirect cost comes through largely the time commitment of senior management. He further explained, “if senior management has to commit 20% of their time, that’s 20% that’s not going towards revenue generating, shareholder value protecting activities.”  Yet, how can you communicate that to somebody who has not gone through a full blown internal investigation then coupled with a federal investigation with the DOJ and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) involved? Understanding that the all-encompassing nature of such an event is difficult to articulate, Chapman goes through some of his past experiences as touch points. He said, “I talk about past experiences. One example would be at a past company, my first week on the job, they had a worldwide conference for all the senior managers from around the world. At that meeting, I asked all the senior executives, you know, C-level executives. I said, “Over the last few years, have you spent 5% of your time on the matter? They’d raise their hands. Then I kept escalating it: 10%, 15%. Hands didn’t go down until about 20%. Then I explained to them, to the audience, I said, “So if you got 5%, 10%, 15% more than your senior management, where would this company be?” I think that’s helpful, but there’s not great way to quantify it. It’s kind of like quantifying compliance generally. How do you quantify the absence of non-compliance? How do you quantify what could have been? How do you quantify the opportunity costs of managements time?”  You can explain the upside of compliance and do that in a manner that juxtaposes the cost. Chapman said you could mention things such as, “If you have clear policies and people know what to do, think how much easier your life would be. Instead of having to make calls and figure it out on your own every single time, you had clear policy.” The same types of arguments come into play in areas generally considered the purview of HR, i.e. recruiting and retention.  About recruiting Chapman posed the following for consideration, “Think about recruiting. Where do your new hires out of college come from? Where do they get their information about your company? If they Google your company, what’s one of the first things they see if you’ve been in trouble? They Google it, and they’ll get a penalty, or they’ll get some news article about the wrongdoings.” He also points out retention of current employees by asking, “How you would feel if everybody at this company felt good about working here, and no one felt embarrassed by what happened. Would that help retention?”  Yet even more than these types of points about employees in the organization, Chapman believes it is important to make it personal to the highest level of the organization and try to make it as real and personal to your audience as possible. He says he asks the Board and senior management “What about you? How do you feel about being involved in it? Rather than being something that’s out there, the company, what about you? How do you feel about being here?”  Obviously, the investigation will be critical for you to help understand what remediation your compliance program will need going forward. As Berland said, “Somebody found a way to get around your system. Maybe they colluded to overcome the internal controls. Maybe there was a group that simply wasn’t well trained, didn’t understand, or there was a group that was extremely well trained, and decided to do it anyway. But somehow, there are issues in your system, and by system, the overall system of the executive tone, the governance, the compliance program, the internal controls, all at a meta level.”            It is axiomatic that you cannot finds gaps in your compliance system until you stress test it. Viewed in this light, your compliance failures can be viewed as such a stress test. Berland said, “Well, guess what, you just got handed a stress test, and this is where the system broke down. Now you know there’s a gap. Well, absent the investigation, as painful and difficult as that is, that gap would have just been sitting there.” The investigation will raise information to you about the failures of your compliance program that you may not have known existed previously.  While there will be a desire by some folks to not give out any information about the investigation until it is completed and there is a final report, you must resist this at all costs. If the results of the investigation are not made available to you as the CCO or the compliance professional charged with remediating the compliance program, any such remediation will be extremely difficult, because, as Berland noted, “you’re just going off suppositions and guesses.”  He advocates there be a solid line of communication between the people who are doing the investigation and the people who are leading the remediation. Otherwise, you can only begin your remediation in the most general terms and you will not be able to deal with specific gaps in your compliance program or risks that need to be managed.  Such an approach can also be a recipe for disaster. First, and foremost, the DOJ will not give you credit and you may lose the types of benefits articulated in the FCPA Pilot Program. Moreover, the executive attention will have dissipated, or, as Berland said, “When you’ve got the energy, use it.”  What about the always-dreaded ‘Where Else’ question in any FCPA investigation? Berland believes the key is “anticipating the question is going to come up, and having an answer ready, which is, “We are going to do a comprehensive risk assessment of the remainder of the company. We are not going to go out and look under every leaf and every, you know, check every tree, but we are going to do a very extensive risk assessment, and we’ll be able to come back and tell you that we don’t think there is a likelihood of other issues in other places.””            However, the answer could be equally something along the lines that ““we have found a high likelihood and we’re going to continue to take deeper and deeper considers that section until we know if something happened or not.” That was an acceptable answer. It was, you know, “here's the slice of the pie where we know something is happening, and here’s the process to look at the rest, given it really is kind of a risk assessment plus going forward.””  Three Key Takeaways A serious FCPA allegation gets the attention of the Board and senior management. Use this time to move the compliance program forward. Be aware of how your investigation can impact and even inform your remediation efforts. How do you deal with the dreaded ‘where else’ question?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elise talks about the importance of a website for any business, but especially for the massage therapist who has a mobile or brick-and-mortar business.  As people no longer use yellow pages, a business without web presence is missing out on one of the most powerful marketing tools available in this technological age. People search online, via Google, to find anything they need. They research products, companies and providers before they make a purchase. Elise tells the story of how many websites she made before she finally settled on a domain name registrar and hosting company for her current website. Listen to the details she provides on the following: How the internet has improved her business Her very first website was Yahoo How she used Wix website to set up her own website in a couple of hours How her website captures her target audience How to help your clients find you through your website People use Google to search for the most convenient method of purchase They Google to find out the closest store, the best price, and the easiest people to deal with Websites help build your reputation as a massage therapist Websites help build your credibility People learn about your business through your website You can choose to have online booking through your website Your hosting company can host multiple websites or businesses Your website will include all the information you want your audience to know about your company. All the pages that you should have on your website Your website will help convert leads to sales Elise says you can have your own website for a very affordable fee You can even start with a $100 only Check out her website for the rest of the valuable resources and tips:   Game Change Your Biz

The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, December 10, 2014, from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT). Last week we talked about the future of the employee-employer relationship, and this week we’re going to talk about how to legally leverage social media in the recruitment process and more.  Where’s the first place most recruiters go today when screening a candidate? They Google them and more, right? They search for them via social media to see what’s up in the virtual world — even if they don’t admit it (or admit they based hiring decisions on what they find). The fact is, employers can easily find professional or personal information on a job candidate with just a few clicks. However, alongside that ease come real and rising legal risks that employers must be aware of when researching candidates on a social network or through a search engine. Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-founders and co-hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as we learn about how to legally leverage social media in the recruitment process with this week’s guests: Jason Morris, Co-Founder, COO and President of EmployeeScreenIQ; and Nick Fishman, Co-Founder, EVP and CMO of EmployeeScreenIQ. Thank you to our sponsors and partners: Dice, Hootsuite, SAP/SuccessFactors, GreatRated! of Great Place to Work, IBM Smarter Workforce, CareerBuilder, PeopleFluent, Fisher Vista and HRmarketer Insight.

In this episode we'll discuss the incredible power of telling people your weaknesses, also known as a damaging admission. It's counter-intuitive but works like a charm. These days consumers are looking for someone to trust. This strategy allows you to be that trustworthy advocate for them while increasing your positioning, conversions and revenue. Transcript: Hey, this is Jeremy Reeves and I want to welcome you back to another episode of the Sales Funnel Mastery Podcast. In this episode, we’re going to talk about ‘Damaging Admissions’. If you don’t know what Damaging Admissions are, that’s a marketing and copyrighting technique that’s essentially where you actually purposely show weaknesses in your product or service. And you do that for a couple of specific reasons. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. It’s actually a really powerful technique. I know if you’ve never heard of it before, it might sound a little bit strange. And if you have heard about it, I think it’s a good reflection back on what you should be doing. A lot of times, no matter how advanced you are, it’s good to come back to the basics. This is actually one that I really don’t see many people doing. And it’s a big mistake because it really can add a lot of power into your selling persuasion and your overall marketing. Before I get into that, I just want to throw it out there - I am in the process of trying to find one or two websites to buy, to add to my portfolio. So if you have any websites that maybe you don’t really have the time for, let me know. I’m in the process of looking around, trying to find somebody that I can trust to buy a website from. What I do, as you know is take businesses, and take them from point A to point B. I do that sometimes with websites, where I buy them and then fix them up and either keep them for the cash flow or re-sell them at a higher price. So if you have any websites that you have and you’re looking to unload them – you need a little influx of cash – let me know. The email is jeremy@jeremyreeves.com. Just give me the overview of the business. You don’t have to give me anything really specific. Just give me like the URL, what it’s about, how it works, how much time you put into it on a weekly or monthly basis, a general range of how much money it’s making (that kind of thing), if you want to throw a price out there, anything you’d look to get for it. It’s just so I kind of have some background info on it. And then if I’d like to pursue it, if it sounds like something that might be interesting, then I’ll write you back. And then we can go and look and get specific financials and all that kind of stuff. So, with that said, let’s talk about Damaging Admissions. Like I said, Damaging Admissions are basically something that you do in your copy. It could be email copy. It could be on your website - ‘About Us’ pages are a good place to put stuff like this. It could be within a sales letter – that’s also a good place to put it. So, basically anywhere that you are trying to make a sale or anywhere you’re doing any kind of marketing. It could even be in your ads, if you’re running magazine ads or something like that. What you do is, you essentially tell something about yourself, about your product that at first glance appears to be a negative. It appears to be a bad thing. And I’m going to give you a couple of examples of this, just to get your juices flowing. So, at first glance it appears to be something that’s actually a negative. And people are like, ‘Wow! Why would they say this about themselves? They’re actually showing me that they’re not perfect.’ (That’s actually something else we’re going to talk about.) And then you come back and say, “However, that’s actually a good thing because… blah, blah, blah.’ And again, I’m going to give a couple of examples of this at the end. The reason you want to do this, number one, it increases your trust and your authenticity. It shows that you’re integrity-driven. Somebody who isn’t trustworthy, somebody who doesn’t have integrity, isn’t going to give you the truth. And people see this as, ‘Okay so he’s telling me the truth about A, which in turn means that he must be trustworthy. He must have authenticity. He must be genuine and authentic.’ So it increases all of those factors. I’m working with one of the top fitness experts in the world right now. I just finished their copy for them so it’s going into design mode now. And that should be live in probably six to eight weeks, something like that, because the design takes a while. We went back and forth for a couple weeks actually just hammering down, getting every single tiny little sentence and phrase and word in his sales page, so that there was absolutely zero hint of ‘disingenuous’. (I don’t really know if I said that right. It’s morning now so forgive me.) --Absolutely no hint of him being inauthentic and non-trustworthy. So every single tiny little piece of copy in there was showing him to be authentic and trustworthy. That’s the position they’re going after there. The whole theme of the copy was wrapped around them finally being that voice that you can trust, and that’s going to take care of you, and isn’t going to throw you around the ringer like all the other weight-loss programs have. This person instead is that one person that’s really going to be helpful and genuine and honest with you. So we had to make sure that in the copy there was absolutely no hint whatsoever of him being inauthentic or anything like that. That’s why I’m thinking about Damaging Admissions because we put some of them in the copy. So number one, it increases your trust and authenticity. Another thing is it actually shows who your offer is not for. And I’m going to show you some examples of that. I have five examples for you. Okay, so you can use this to show who your offer is not for. So if you have an offer, if you have a product or service, then what you should be telling your audience who it is for and who it is not for. When you do that you attract the people that it’s for and you actually push away who it’s not for. The more you push people away – the people that it’s not for, not your target audience – the more you’re going to attract those that it is for. It’s kind of like magnet. The farther you repel it, there’s one side you repel and the other side you switch around, and it clashes together. It sucks you in. And that’s kind of how you can think of this. Okay so it also shows who your offer is not for, and by doing that you attract those who it is for. Another thing is that it shows your weaknesses on purpose. With the Internet, with forums, with people talking, with social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest), all these different things, everybody knows your weaknesses anyway. There’s no weakness that you can have in your business that people will not find out about. It’s impossible because people will do research now. They go on Amazon. They go on their Facebook account and ask about your business. They go on Twitter and they search different trends on your business - They Google fifteen different things to find out. People are essentially trying to make sure that you’re not going to rip them off. They want to make sure that if they do business with you, it’s going to be worth it, it’s going to be a positive experience for them. So, everybody knows your weaknesses anyway, so there’s really no point in holding them back anymore. And when you do this strategy of Damaging Admissions, when you follow it and you put it in your copy, and you show your weaknesses, not perfect, people trust you more. Because, nobody thinks you’re perfect anyway. Everybody knows that means there’s no perfect solution. As much as I would like to make my service a perfect solution, in reality it’s not. It’s impossible for any one person or one company to be perfect for anybody. There are always going to be weaknesses, even if they’re small. Maybe you have the smallest weaknesses of your competitors, but everybody has weaknesses. Everybody has points that aren’t perfect. And nobody thinks that you’re perfect. Nobody thinks that, except maybe in niches like the Internet marketing where they think the Guru is perfect. In reality, nobody thinks you’re perfect anyway so there’s no reason not to do this. Let me give you a couple different examples of this. Number one is the Ninja Blender. I bought a blender, and you may have heard of the Ninja Blender. I think it’s on the infomercials. I heard from a couple different friends- I was saying that my old blender was crapping out on me, and I wanted to do smoothies and that kind of things. So I started talking to friends to see what blender was good. I found out from a couple different friends that the Ninja Blender was really good. So I got that. The first time I used it, I sliced my finger a little bit because the blades on it were so sharp. I didn’t realize it, and I grabbed it. There’s a little compartment in the middle of it that actually spins the blades that chop everything up. I grabbed them – not hard at all. I barely even grazed them. I didn’t slide my finger. All I did was come, if you can imagine holding a knife and just touching it with the inside of your finger. You’re not slicing it, just kind of poking it almost. That actually sliced my finger open when I did that. So I was thinking, ‘Oh my God! These blades are so sharp that it sliced my finger.’ And you can actually use that. You can spin that as a selling point. You can do some kind of copy saying, ‘You have to be careful’, Be careful, the blades are so sharp, it should be handled with care so you don’t cut yourself’. That’s a way of turning a bad thing into a selling point. The second thing is being too busy. So if you communicate that you’re in demand, it’s attractive to people. It’s kind of the forbidden-fruit type of mentality. I can tell you for example - I think it was the last podcast or the one before that - when I said that I was too busy and I could not take out anymore work. I got inundated with people that wanted to do business with me. I developed like a waiting list. I didn’t say that to get more business. I really was and still am really, really busy. But, especially if you’re in the service industry, people want to know that you’re busy because it means that you’re in demand. It means that other people are trusting you, and that that person should trust you too. If you’re in the service business, you can talk about the times that you’re really, really busy. Or, you could put up a waiting list or something like that. And that communicates that, ‘Yea it’s a bad thing that you’re too busy, but it’s a good thing because there’s a reason that you’re too busy.’ The third one is being too expensive. There are a lot of people - Think of like a Rolls Royce. They can do a lot of Damaging Admissions regarding pricing… or Ferrari, or Bentley or any of the really high-end cars. It doesn’t have to be a car, obviously. But no matter what you are, whether you’re a consultant or you sell or you’re a website designer - whatever it is that you do or you sell. Maybe you sell weight-loss equipment that’s really expensive. That is going to be a bad point to some people. But it’s going to be a really big selling point to other people that want to go out and spend a lot of money. They feel that the more money they spend, it makes them feel better knowing they bought the top-of-the-line thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the ads for, I think it’s called the ROM. There’s a piece of weight loss equipment that is $15,000 for one machine. And even with treadmills, you can go out and you can spend $800 on a treadmill, or you can spend $6,000 on a treadmill, depending on how fancy it is. For me, I think it’s kind of worthless spending a lot of money on a treadmill because you step on it and run. I mean, it’s a conveyor belt. You could probably make your own for a hundred bucks or something like that. But, a lot of people like all that fancy stuff. They like to look at the GPS on it. And they have little screens on there, and they have little TVs built in. There are all kinds of fancy gadgets for treadmills so that’s just one thing. You can actually write your copy in a way that if you’re too expensive, that’s actually a good thing. It helps you attract. Again, it comes back to the attracting and repelling. If you’re selling a service that’s really expensive, and you talk about the fact that you don’t want the cheap thing because cheap doesn’t work, and you have to put enough money to make things work, and that kind of thing - you’re going to repel anybody that wants to go cheap. And you’re going to attract people that want to spend more money. And the reason for that is because people that want to do business with you, people that want to spend that want to spend that money, are going to agree with you. They’re going to resonate with you and they’re going to be bobbing their head up and down as you’re saying that, because they agree with you and that attracts them to you. Number four is having damaged products. A lot of offline businesses can do things like – and this doesn’t actually have to be offline, you can do it online too. So for example, here I have two examples in this. One is a fire sale. So you’ll see a lot of times, places like furniture stores will do fire sales, or rain-sales or hailstorm-sales. What happens is, let’s just say they get flooded. There is a half-inch of water on the floor and it got the very bottom of the furniture wet. So they can’t sell that at full price because technically it’s damaged. Even though maybe it’s not really damaged, you wouldn’t be able to tell, or it didn’t hurt the integrity of the structure of the actual furniture. It’s not going to break. It doesn’t change the look or anything like that. They still can’t technically sell it for full price because it got water on it. So they can have a flood sale or something like that. It’s the same thing with fire. Maybe the flames never even touched the furniture but the smoke got in it. So maybe it’s going to smell like smoke for a couple weeks, and they can have a big sale – a fire sale. Another thing is if you sell any type of physical product like, let’s just say, an information product that’s in its physical form. I have one client that sells a beauty product. It’s like a beauty organizer. So if people return those to him, he can resell those at a lower price point, of, say 30% off, and say these are used. There might be tiny little scratches on them but we’ve polished them up. They look fine but technically they were used before so we don’t feel right selling them at full price. You can have all these kinds of sales based on these damaging admissions, okay. And the fifth one is – if you remember the car rental company AVIS – their big thing was, we’re number two so we try harder. So that was their damaging admission. And it helped them go from, I think it was like number ten or something like that, to number two in a short time. (And don’t quote me on the number 10. I forgot what it is off the top of my head.) But they ended up at number 2. And I know they essentially went from the bottom of the pile to number 2 at the top because of that. So they’ve really gained a lot of market share because of that slogan that they came out with. ‘We’re number two so we try harder.’ It really got them a lot of business. I actually heard that they had that for 50 years and they just finally dropped it. So maybe it was wearing out, maybe people didn’t care anymore. But for the time that they did use it, it really helped propel them to the top of the market. They said, hey you know, they are number two. It was essentially communicating the fact that number one gets lazy. So, yea, we’re number two but since we’re number two, we have to compete more. We have to try harder, we have to fight like a tiger to make it work and to really keep our positioning. Those are a couple examples of damaging admissions. I hope this helps. I hope it helped you figure out a few different ways to plug it in your copy again. You can put this in your emails. You can put it in your videos. If you do podcasts, you can talk about it in your podcast. You can put it in your sales copy. Basically any point that you’re trying to make a sale. And it could be even like a pre-sell in your actual marketing, and not your selling. So, you can put it in your ads. You can put it, you know, when you’re talking to people on the phone. If you focus a lot on SEO and doing stuff like guest blogging, or writing articles, writing blog posts, press releases, offline like in magazine columns, anything like that - you can put these damaging admissions and kind of slip them in there. It’s a really subtle way of selling to people, especially if you know your target market and you know what they’re going to respond to. It’s a really subtle way of doing this and increasing your positioning, which helps you increase your prices, it helps you increase your conversions, all that kind of good stuff. So, I hope this helps. I hope this really added a lot of value to your day. And I will talk to you soon.

Chinese restaurants around the world are gearing up for Lunar New Year's celebrations on January 31st. In the US, more and more high-end options are emerging for those looking for a more lavish meal to ring in the Year of the Horse. CRI's Alexander Aucott has more. Going for a Chinese meal has a whole new meaning. No longer is it a cheap takeaway or a quick bite in a Chinatown cafe. The latest trend is for Chinese haute cuisine and it's being served in high end restaurants across the USA from Los Angeles to New York to San Francisco and Miami. Chinese haute cuisine is changing the perception of Chinese food by fusing modern, healthy dishes like this kale and pomegranate salad with traditional dishes like dim sum. And in addition to the food, diners experience something they don't usually get in Chinatown - luxurious settings and cool vibes. Clarissa Wei, food writer for the LA Times, says one of the reasons this trend is growing so "Children of Chinese immigrants are coming of age and they are kind of getting sucked into this whole food culture, so because of that Chinese food is really becoming popularised. Not just Chinese food, but Asian food in general. So that's just been kind of a trend that's opening up. For example Los Angeles' San Gabriel valley has long been a hot spot for authentic Chinese eats, but because you know a lot of us are now the second generation, people grew up in America, we want the quality, the atmosphere and something more accessible than cheap Chinese food." Albert Charbonneau, general manager of Hakkasan, a successful modern Cantonese restaurant chain, says the Chinese haute cuisine trend in Hollywood is all about healthy, delicious food. "This trend is coming from a misconception of thr Chinese perception of dining that it's low cost, more unhealthy, but now since the haute Chinese cuisine came to the market everybody just came into a different direction being more healthy and health conscious, choosing more refined dishes and that's how the haute Chinese cuisine came about. It's all about service, fine ingredients and serving it at the table and enjoying it." The chefs are gearing up for Chinese New Year on January 31st which is traditionally celebrated with a huge feast. Situated on the famed Sunset Strip, restaurant Chi Lin has a menu of regional Chinese specialties, ranging from traditional noodle dishes with a modern twist to healthy salads. To mark the start of the Year of the Horse, executive chef Tyson Wong will be preparing whole fish, noodles with truffles and green beans, and traditional Peking duck. "People are travelling all over the world now. They Google. They Yahoo. They You Tube. People know more about education, the food, the idea, the concept, variety, so people are trying to explore a lot of different things." Also, this New Year coincides with the 40th anniversary of restaurant Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. This was the first upscale Chinese restaurant chain founded by Michael Chow, son of Peking Opera Grand Master Zhou Xinfang. Famed for its fresh noodle making, Mr. Chow remains the grandfather of Chinese haute cuisine.