Transcription
Everybody, welcome back to another Upflip Live Masterclass. If you guys were with us last Thursday, we had an amazing episode with Ben Kelly. So, I'm excited to build off of that this week with Andrew Thompson. Uh, I'm your host, uh, Ryan. Today, we're going to be digging in how to grow your service business up to 20K a month. That is real money right there without spending a single dollar on ads. Uh, our guest today is Andrew Thompson, the founder of Jedi Junk and Autopilotapp.io. Fun story here. Andrew used to drop over $300,000 on Google ads to hit $1.1 million in sales, but it wasn't cheap. Now with ads getting crazy expensive, he's showing us how he does it today. Smart, no ads, and focused on getting real leads without wasting cash. He started out with just 5K and a 550 credit score. So, he knows what it's like to hustle with limited resources. Here's what you're going to learn from us today. We're going to talk about how to find leads without breaking the bank. I think that's going to perk all your ears up, as it should. How to get 20K a month without paying for ads and how to start booking clients ASAP to get started on your first business. Every sale begins with a lead. When you get the right ones for free, you grow faster and keep more of your money. Andrew, thank you so, so much for being here. You're our podcast guest late 2024, so I'm excited to reconnect with you. You've got some great stuff. So, thank you so much for joining us today.
Awesome. Thank you. Am I live right now? You are live. We are live. We've got a good audience that I know they're excited for you. So, yeah. Take it away. Excited for today's episode.
All right, guys. Um, how's everybody doing? I know I I got a lot of stuff to go through, so we're just going to dive in. But thank you so much, Ryan, for having me. And yeah, today, guys, we are going to talk about how you can build. Like, I'm going to make a lot of references to junk removal because I was in junk removal, like moving and junk removal, but everything we go through can be applicable to almost every home service business there is. So, just kind of like think about the examples that I make and kind of think about how you can apply this to your guys' your local service business. But anyways, I guarantee you, you guys can hit $20,000 a month topline revenue if you do what I say, okay? Like, you have to actually do what I say because I'm going to tell you everything that I know. So, anyways, without further ado, guys, let's get this party started.
Um, so real quick before we dive in, I'm going to make this really quick just so you guys have a little understanding of who I am. My name is Andrew. Um, I started a junk removal business during the COVID pandemic because software killed uh the COVID pandemic killed my software. I was building a travel app. Couldn't really travel. So, I needed money fast. My second kid was on the way. And one of my friends said, "Yo, if you're willing to put your ego to the side and humility, you can pick up trash and make $1,000 a day." Started Googling the trash business. And there were literally videos that said, "Use a pickup truck and make $1,000 a day." I eventually got into Google Ads on month two or three and spent 250 to 300K every year and pulled in 1.1, 1.2 million in topline revenue. My my margins were 25%. So I did very well. So I am an expert in Google Ads, but I'm also an expert in free marketing stuff, which we're going to cover. Um, I had two locations, literally two separate locations two hours away. Um, I had eight full-time employees and I was running seven days a week because the landfills and dumps were open um on Sundays out here. Uh, after 28 months, I decided to sell the company. Yes, I sold it for only. A lot of people ask, "Why did you sell it for 225?" Because it was a 2-year-old company with not many tax returns. So, you could only sell for 1x EBITDA, which is basically your profit. But, I made 250K that year and then sold it for 225. So, I walked with almost a half a million dollars because I I sold the company at the end of the year and I put that into the software that I'm building for home service business owners, but I lived this for two and a half years. So, I know. And no, I didn't buy a Rolls-Royce. I rented one to uh make a funny video making fun of people who uh promote with Lamborghinis. It was a mocking video. Anyways, that's my story, guys. I did this with literally a [ __ ] credit score, no money in the Okay, $4,500 and I had horrible credit and yeah, I have a 710 credit score now, too. So, woo woo. And that is my story, guys.
So, anyways, let's get into this. What we're going to be talking about is we're going to talk about how to reach 20k a month topline revenue. And depending on what business you're in, your margins can be as high as 70% profit. I don't know like if whether it's landscape, whatever. If you're not spending money on ads, you could have very good margins if you run your business properly. And we're going to do this without. There's going to be some paid techniques in here like good old yard signs, but they're [ __ ] freaking a dollar, $2 a yard sign. So, sorry. And we're going to talk about how to get leads now. So, um, one thing that I came up with, guys, we're going to talk about the marketing quadrant. And like I said, this is applicable to most home service businesses, but it might be a little different. So before we dive in, I want to show you something I came up with that I'm pretty proud of. This is the marketing quadrant. Okay, if and by the way, if you have questions, please prep them for Ryan because I'm going to go fast because there's 70 freaking slides to go through. So please guys, if you have questions, prep them for Ryan.
So this is a quadrant that I came up for because I get asked all the time, Andrew, how would you do how would you do XYZ? How would you market? I have no money. I have zero dollars. I have $500. So, this is a a graph that I a quadrant where you can see if you're doing under 5k topline revenue. Hold on, there's my camera. If you're doing under 5K topline revenue, I want you to focus on the top left quadrant. 5 to 10K, so on and so on. As you can see, fast and cheap, cheap and slow. This is a very common quadrant that people make and they put kind of like whatever variables on each side. If we're just now starting this business, we're going to focus on fast and cheap. So, a lot of the stuff we're going to focus on right now, guys, is going to be the fast and cheap quadrant. And yes, the fast and cheap quadrant is mostly going to be grassroots, not mostly, but a lot of it's going to be grassroots stuff and um a lot of outbound. So, we're going to focus on door knocking, door hangers, outreach. Facebook is broken into five to six different components. And a lot of people are just like social media or Facebook, they but they don't explain Facebook and social media. So this quadrant we're going to really break down. We're going to focus a lot on quadrant one. And you know, I can teach quadrant two, three, four, but maybe in the future, some other time, another thing, another another session. But we're going to really focus here, guys. And if you guys want this quadrant, just I'm sure this will be live after um and you can screenshot it because this is where I want you to focus is quadrant one if you're under 5,000. But if you're under $5,000 topline revenue, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't. If you have an opportunity in quadrant two, like some a networking event or a community involvement, it I'm not saying don't say no. Don't say no. It just means don't focus all of your energy over here if you are not making 5K. So we're going to focus on quadrant one.
All right. So, the first thing we're going to talk about, this is a very common method, but a lot of people don't break it down the way that I'm gonna break it down. So, this is called the four corners method. We've all heard of. I I imagine you guys know what yard signs and door hangers are. That's not something exciting to talk about, but when you put this together and I explain it the way that I explain it, you're going to go, "Oh crap, that makes sense." Ghost routes, yard signs, door hangers, EDDM. Okay, so ghost routes is where you have a branded truck. Like I I had a junk removal truck that had a cute Jedi Junk Removal logo with my branded character. I would do ghost routes and I'd lift up the dump truck and I'd go into Whole Foods. I'd go to Home Depot. I'd go to all these grocery stores and I'd do truck parking, right? And then you hit them up and you find the neighborhoods that have like the highest, you know, the highest average income. So you'd start doing a little bit of research. In LA, it's pretty obvious where good income neighborhoods are. Beverly Hills, Santa Monica. You'd pick your pockets and you would drop yard signs outside of all these neighborhoods. You'd hit all. So, you're going to hit them from four different angles. So, I want you really to think about this. If you have yard signs outside of every area of every neighborhood of every intersection and then you go hit up all the neighborhoods and you put a hundred door hangers down and then you also are driving around the city and doing truck parking, you've hit this. You've hit them three different times. If you do EDDM postcards, which we're going to get to later, Every Door Direct Mail postcards, that's the postcards you get in the mailbox. Those do cost money, but this is a technique that's going to be taught in the next class. But you can get in front of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 houses for free. For free. This is the most insane technique that I've ever taught and it is wildly insane. So, if you do one, two, three, and four of these techniques, you're if I do, if I go to Beverly Hills and I put out yard signs, probably the worst place to do yard signs, but um and then I do all the neighborhoods with door hangers, and then I do ghost routes, I drive around, I do some truck parking, and then I do EDDM postcards. You've hit these people four different ways. This is the most standard grassroots boots on the ground technique there is. And this is going to probably be the only grassroots technique that I teach before we get into the really cool digital stuff. But it goes without saying this is the most common sense basic thing I have to teach. But nobody layers it like this where it's 1, 2, 3, and number four, which is EDDM. Nobody teaches this. Um, and it's the most powerful because it brings it all together. So, anyways, that's the four corners method. That's where we all start. And once you nail this down, you're golden. Like you could you could hit 20k revenue a month. I guarantee from just putting yard signs out and doing ghost routes 100%. If you wanted if you literally put out enough yard signs.
So, real quick, we're going to talk about yard signs, guys. In junk removal. Um, and this goes for most companies. I do this yard signs, right? Very simple. Junk removal, free estimates, and phone number. Now, why is my logo not on there? A lot of cities have rules and ordinances that yard signs, you'll get phone calls, right? But it is the most common technique to start your local. You'll see pressure washing. You'll even see "We Buy Houses." I'm sure you've all seen the "We Buy Houses" yard signs. But you want to put out a hundred of these a month. And I do unbranded because you will get cops that call you. And I know that sounds like scary, but it's very obvious when cops call you or if there's rules. Just you got to follow the maybe on this channel. Let me say, be careful. Follow your local ordinances. All your rules because we're on the Upflip channel. So, um, but the point is is you're going to get angry customers once in a while. That's just the reality. So, what I do, this is what I do. I'm not saying you should do this, is I use a tracking number so that people just can't Google your number number and just call you and start yelling at you because you'll get angry customers sometimes, even if you don't put it somewhere that um is not bad, like an intersection. You just got some grumpy neighbors every once in a while. So, I do unbranded signs, but I also do branded signs with my cute logo. And you ask after every customer, "Can I put it in your yard for two weeks if I give you $50 off?" And that is how you stack. Um, you do yard signs, you go put them on everywhere, everywhere they can. But the customers that you do get, you ask to leave in their yard. And you would be astonished the amount of people that say yes because 50 bucks off for them to like represent a company who just like did some amazing service for them. And realize when you're doing home services companies, people are grateful when you help them do something. When you take out the junk out of their garage, it's like a a relief of like so much stress. They are so thankful. The amount of times people are like, "Oh my goodness, you saved my life, Andrew." I'm like, "Whoa." Like literally, it's that dramatic. So, and there's a really cool uh video here, "How to Build a Start Stapler Sign" so you can put them high up on telephone poles so kids just don't yank them down or angry neighbors. They when you're doing nothing wrong, they just don't like you putting it up even though it's not in their neighborhood. Um, and this video's got really great yard sign strategies. Go watch this video, too. He has five like using zip ties and uh all all kinds of really cool techniques. Um, if you use this code, 10% off. Um, I don't get commission purposely so that you guys get 10% off. I promise you that. Um, so this is not a me make money thing. This is literally a code because I'm building software and I'm bringing them customers and I just want to help people. That's all I do. So, use that code 10% off. Um, every other code you find will not give you 10% off. I promise you that. Um, so here's an example of 100 yard signs, 260 bucks. You can see I order them right here because I'm going to do a video on it. Um, and if that's too much money, guys, because we said free marketing techniques, right? If that's too much money, get the bandit signs. They're a little bit smaller and it drops down to $130. They're 12 by 18. Yes, they're a little smaller, but bandit signs work too. These are the They're like I don't know, half the size, you know, just half the size. Um, so yard signs and bandit signs, game changer. Uh, I I'm going to tell you the truth. If you put out 300 of these a month, you can make 20k topline. If you 300 to 500 yard signs a month, that sounds tedious and we don't want to do that. that I don't want you guys to knock on 200 doors a day and put out 300 yard signs because we're trying to find more effective strategies for higher ROI, but you can make 20K a month. If if I had you guys go knock on 200 doors and put out 200 yard signs a week, do you think you can close two jobs? Absolutely. You can make 20K a month topline revenue if you guys did knocked on 100 $200 doors a day and put out 100 yard signs a week. Is that effective? No. But you can. You 100% can. So that's um Okay, that's the four corners method. And is there any questions here? If and if not, guys, we're about to get into the deep deep stuff right after this, like the digital stuff. But any Q&A right now? Any questions right now?
We've got uh one question. And guys, drop your questions down in the chat. We're going to try and get them all answered. Obviously, we have a ton of content here. And Andrew is already crushing it, so I hope you guys are taking notes here. Um, we had a question from Dennis Schultz. um kind of an overarching question. Um, where was it? Um, basically he has a martial arts um brand. What would be the best way to get in front of customers there? I know it's not totally yard signs, but any advice that you can give him?
So without so I mean with what we just discussed the four corners method I think that works for any local service business and I think that's a question that would be better once we go over everything because I don't want to talk about there's so much more to go over but discussing what what I just discussed these these strategies will be effective for your martial arts business 100%. But what do I think is best is going to be further into the content which we haven't gone over yet. So maybe we just wait Dennis when we go through the content because there's a lot there's a lot to go over right now and I probably probably got to fly through this. Any other questions?
None that are coming in through the chat. Dennis, we said that intentionally so you would make sure you stay. I'm just kidding. Make sure you stay Dennis because um right now yeah science four corners method. Pretty basic stuff guys. We're about to go deep now. So how many people do we uh we ready to crank away? I don't see any other questions. Um, yeah, don't you don't need to apologize then. We're you're all good. Um, I don't see any other questions, so let's Yeah, let's keep going. And guys, okay, guys, now that we covered grassroots, we're about to go deep. So, get your paper uh your pen and pad.
All right, guys. Oh, Craigslist. Let's cover Craigslist. We got to cover Craigslist. Um, Craigslist is um kind of a hit or miss. It worked for me in uh Los Angeles. It worked for me in Ventura County, but it goes without saying. It makes it very easy to post. It's $5 a day, $5 a post. You can post in the um uh I post in the labor section. So, I think it's a labor hauling moving section. And there's a whole bunch of sections where you can post your services. This is not going to this is not going to get you 20 jobs a week, but we're talking about techniques to get to 20K a month. And if you stack all of these techniques, guys, you click one button, it reposted every day. I posted my Craigslist ad twice a day in Ventura County because I saw everybody else posting like one to three times a day. So, I spent $2 a day on Craigslist, $10 a day on Craigslist. When I was in LA, I posted four times a day because LA is much bigger and more people posted way more times. So, I posted 9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m. In LA, I posted at 9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 2 p.m., and 4 p.m. I posted four times a day in LA. Now, this will only bring you a few jobs a week, but stack this with everything else. This literally takes two minutes after you make the ad. You can literally just repost Craigslist ads every day, twice a day. If you're in a smaller suburb area or smaller little area, all you need to do is once a day. Craigslist might work for you. It might not work, but put a good photo. You and your family, you and your kids. Show what you do. Craigslist can bring you a few jobs a week. Don't sleep on Craigslist because it's Craigslist. It cost $5 per post. At the minimum, try it once a week and stack this with everything else I'm about to teach. Um, oh, here's an example. So, this is what the section the services section looks like for labor hauling and moving. You'll see, look, I posted twice right here. You'll see this guy, Pro Movers, posted three times. You'll see this one call junk. Is my cursor visible by the way? Your cursor is visible. Cool. Cool. This um, now that I know that, that's okay. This one call junk company. They posted twice. So you guys kind of see how they do it. And people will go search up trash removal, junk removal, painters, electricians, whatever. So, don't sleep on Craigslist. Try it for a month. That's it.
Um, oh, the big one. The big one, man. These are all these are all like I'm actually thinking like, oh my god, if I started over again, I'd kill it. Um, this is a simple concept, guys, and this is the most obvious one that bothers me the most is most people when you start a new local home service business and you start something and you're trying to get business and you're you're frustrated and putting out your whatever you're doing is open up your phone right now if you can go to your contacts list, scroll to the bottom, and I I just I I looked last time I had 500 something contacts. How how many contacts do you guys have? I know some of them are going to be out of state, whatever. But at the end of the day, you guys have a hundred to a thousand contacts. I know some of you guys have thousands because you're psychopaths, right? You're just you're massive awesome networkers, right? Um, there's no reason why you should be ashamed to not just pull out a video. Who cares? Ex-girlfriends included, whatever. Or you can. But you say, "Hey, my name's Andrew. Guys, I know I'm sending you a video because I'm starting a new business and you know, maybe I haven't talked to you in two years or three years. Maybe you're an ex-girlfriend. That's a joke. But, um, I'm starting a junk removal business and I would love if if I could, you know, if there's some trash you needed removed, you know, somebody I'm trying to get my reviews up. You would be astonished at how many people will give you the respect for sending out that message. If you could put your ego to the side and te and I I mean text it to all 500 people in your phone. Record that video. That's going to take you all night. But I promise the amount of responses and the amount of respect that you will get is outstanding. Now, don't send it to your ex-girlfriends. That's a joke. Might not be a good idea. But anyways, don't sleep on just messaging everybody on your phone because I promise you'll get a few jobs from that. Plus, if you don't get a few jobs, they'll they'll ask, "Yo, I'll leave you a review, even though I haven't used you." They'll go to your Google Maps and leave you a review. They'll leave you a review on Yelp. Just trust me on this. This is the most common sense thing that I'm astonished that people don't do. Um, I did this for every one of my businesses. Every single one. I text blasted everybody. "Hey, do you know somebody that needs this or you?" So, don't sleep on that.
Now, all right, guys. It is time to dive into the digital stuff, right? Because this is where the possibilities are endless. We're going to talk about Facebook. We're going to deep dive into how to use Facebook without running Facebook ads. So, Facebook, I like to break down into two components, okay? You have groups and you have your profile. When I say profile, I'm talking about your personal profile and your business page. We're going to talk about both, but I'm really going to focus on the personal profile because the personal profile is where I got all of my work when I was on Facebook. All right, groups are going to be Facebook groups and um this is a group that I ran, but we're going to be talking more about Facebook groups that are um uh like realtor groups and local local community groups. Okay.
So, um, the first things first is Facebook is your personal. Facebook should become your brand. All right, guys. A lot of you might not see it this way because it's just you're you're Tommy on Facebook and you don't want to update your cover image to be you standing on top of a dump truck. I was pretty ashamed and I hate to say this, I was coming from the background that I had picking up trash. I was kind of embarrassed about it and that's the God's honest truth. But once I I I took it in and I said, "Yo, I I run Jedi Junk Removal. I am a trash company." I changed my cover image and I put a profile image. I put my my my intro here saying I'm the owner of Jedi Junk Removal. And I started posting personal stuff, me making coffee, me with my kids, and then every once in a while I post about my junk removal company. Um, get your profile verified, too, so you get the blue check mark. Uh, it's 15 bucks a month. It just makes it you look legit. So, become your brand. And you'll see why as we go through these slides, but you really want to transform your P. If you want to make your company a $20,000 a month revenue company, you need Andrew Thompson is Jedi Junk Removal. Okay? They need to see that you are the human behind the local business. You drink coffee, you fish, but you also take out trash. Okay, because Facebook is so freaking powerful, it's going to blow your minds. So, here is my old one. I didn't have my Jedi Junk Removal one, but this is my old profile. These 1,700 friends, I started with 200, my high school friends, but then I started adding realtors and and this was a a photo of me originally. It was me um picking up trash, my Jedi Junk Removal truck with me and my kids. is a really cool photo and I started growing my Facebook page which we're going to talk about but you need to become your brand. Um, here's a great example of a good buddy of mine who's crushing it. I think he's got a lot more friends than this now. This is a while ago but Carson is Junk Guys. This is his personal page. Okay. And he posts about I I like to make the coffee example because I like coffee. But you get it. You you post real things. You show that you're human. But you also say, "Hey, I do trash." Now, the reason why your business uh your personal page is so important on Facebook is because of what we're about to talk about right now.
So, Facebook outreach, where Facebook outreach starts is this Facebook groups. You're going to go to Facebook and you're going to search up every community Facebook group in your area. And it's pretty simple. You just go to Facebook groups and you start browsing. Or if you know what group you want to get into for junk removal, it's pretty obvious. We want realtors. So, I start with the realtors Facebook groups, um, buy sell groups, yard sale groups, um, and sometimes your cities will just have like massive amounts of community groups, right? Just you're a part of the Ply Vista community group. So, you just start stacking up these groups and you join every group. Okay? Now, you're going to join, try to join a hundred. Like, literally just hit join a just join every group you can in your area. Okay? We're talking about free marketing techniques to not spend money on ads. So, there's going to be a little work here. But if you aren't making $20,000 a month, this is what you need to do. So, the first step that most people think you should do is spam Facebook groups. That's a technique. It works. We're going to do that. We're going to get to that. We're going to do it creatively. But the power of Facebook groups, is you figure out what your target audience is, mine is realtors, because realtors sell houses and house owners want to get rid of junk and they ask the realtors to help them. So, I went to real estate groups and I added every realtor that I could. So, 1,300 of my friends are real estate agents. I got countless jobs from realtors. And yes, 50% of the people when you add them, you're going to get an error message from Facebook that says you can't do this. You don't know them. And then you just keep going through it. I had a VA add all of them. I pay a VA from ver a virtual assistant from the Philippines. I pay her full-time $650 a month and she just works for me eight hours a day. So, I used VAs, but in the beginning, dude, it takes three minutes to go and hit add ad add. Like, you can add a 100 people a day and grow your friends list. Um, once you start doing that, you can then start outreaching. Okay? And there's I'm going to show you some really cool techniques in a in a few slides, but here's an example. I actually asked to buy this group. I was going to buy this Facebook group. Okay? What better way for me to like buy a Facebook group and like change the cover image and be the leading junk removal guy. I was going to put like make it a real estate Los Angeles and he wanted a little bit too much money for it. It didn't make sense for me at the time, but he ended up using me. I said, "Yo, sell me your group." He's like, "Possibly. Do you do junk removal?" Yeah, I do junk removal. So, he ended up using me like 10 times. He was the admin owner of a real estate group. Now, you can go down the rabbit hole as far as you can think with this. Like, buy Facebook groups and own them and re rebrand them as yours. Just so you guys know, Facebook groups, 25 cents a member is the going rate. 10 to 25 cents. So, if you find a Facebook group with 5,000 members, that's another technique. We're not covering buying Facebook groups, but just this goes very deep, Facebook. So, just think about all the possibilities of adding friends and growing your friends list. And then you start boosting posts, your posts to people that's in your community. You have a you now have 5,000 friends of people in your community. The power of that is insane because you're going to be doing stories, you're going to be doing posts, you're going to be doing Reels, and they're all people in your local community. And then when you boost it, Facebook's algorithm algorithm will boost it to your community plus people in their community. So Facebook gets it just stacks and compounds.
So now that's basic Facebook outreach. Now, we're going to talk about marketplace outreach, which is a little more this is something that is it works and I have to cover it because it is a free technique, but it's also a little more difficult of outreach. So, in junk removal, um, people list stuff for free. Not all of it sells. So, what did I do? I messaged them, yo, um, in a nice respectful way. If it doesn't sell, I'd love to help you get rid of it. This is a great way to get business, but yes, it's one of those things like it's almost like putting out yard signs. You got to go do a lot of them and but we're talking about free techniques to survive until you can get out of quadrant one and break your way into quadrant two to quadrant three. Okay? So, if you look at the quadrants, we're going under 5K techniques and we're going to go to the $10,000 techniques and eventually once you get to $20,000 a month, you can look at ads, paid ads. But these are all the techniques you use from quadrant one to get to quadrant two. All right? So, this is Facebook Marketplace outreach. Much different than adding friends and doing standard Facebook outreach through groups. It works. It's less effective and it's more annoying, but it is a technique. If you're sitting doing nothing and you're making no money and you want to grow your local service business, how hard is it for me to click on these 5, 10, 15 people and copy and paste a message? It would take two minutes. Two minutes. Okay, fine. Maybe five for you, but it would take me two because I'm a computer wizard. I'm just kidding.
Now, marketplace posting. This is another less effective Facebook technique, but I have to go over all the Facebook techniques because there is so many. This is the um the for sale section. So, a lot of people will go post their services in the for sale section. So, you'll see painters and plumbers and electricians and junk removal companies and moving companies finding a place in the marketplace to make a listing saying junk removal, painting, plumbing, and it works. But Facebook really doesn't want you advertising your services in the for sale section. So, they'll regularly get deleted every week, but people do this every week for a year. And it's effective. It works. It's just Facebook will eventually delete it and you'll have to repost it and it gets annoying and I did this for a while and lots of people do. You're not going to get in trouble. Facebook will just delete it and um their Autobots will delete it. Optimus Prime goes through and no but uh anyway so that's Facebook um that is the Facebook um marketplace posting um technique.
So um now let's get to the group posting. I have a really insane technique here. This is a game changer for everybody. This was something I debated on not sharing in this class. I was going to save this for and maybe I will save this for the academy. No, I'm just kidding. Um, no, but this is a this is a really cool technique, guys. And this this will be a game changer. So, group posting is a very known thing. All right, we all know about group posting. And if you don't, um, it's joining all the local community groups and, um, posting your services. But as most people know, if you go spam all these like real estate groups and and you just make a post about your junk removal company, people are going to be like, "Oh, who's this annoying dude who just keeps advertising his company?" So, my first rule of thumb with Facebook group posting and also Nextdoor posting because it's kind of similar is give value first, ask questions, and comment. But a lot of people don't do that. And this technique can work just spamming Facebook groups with your offer. It can work and it does work. But there's a way to take this another another you can really really really make this powerful. So you'll see here's an example of a guy who posted his stuff in the Marina del Rey community which is uh 4,500 members and he got comments and people are asking how much. But to take this a step further, guys, it takes time to post into 100 groups. You're going to post in all 100 Facebook groups. You're going to eventually learn that 80% of them are going to decline you. 20% of them will let the post go through and then you'll end up out of a 100 groups, 20 yeah, 20 posts will stick, right? That is the strategy with Facebook groups is you constantly advertise your business in these Facebook groups but what if what if we can make this more powerful and more automated. Now I want you to think about how you can apply this to your business because I I can't break this down too much because we'll be here forever, right? So there's a tool called groupposting.com. I discovered this tool maybe a year, two years ago, right? Three, a while ago. And it's an extension. It costs money. It's not expensive. It's cheap. But imagine there was a tool that you can schedule group posting to 100 Facebook groups every day at a certain time, every week, whatever, on autopilot. So, can you theoretically just have it post to all 100 groups every week with your um your offer? Absolutely. Take it a step further. What if you had it post every day and you asked questions in all the groups and it just every day it's just posting questions, right? So people think you're just like a human asking questions. Then once a week it did an offer. So get creative with this because you can schedule posts because you don't want to be the guy that just comes into a group and says, "Hey everybody, look at me. Buy my stuff." Get creative with asking questions and giving value in these groups because you can automate it for automate every day at 8 a.m. 7 a.m. and it just posts questions in these groups. So people are like, "Oh, Andrew Thompson, he's asking questions. He's he's a real person." Oh, and then once a week he says, "Hey, by the way guys, you know, this last week I asked all these weird questions. Uh, but I did want to mention that, you know, I take out trash block." So get creative with this group hosting. This is the most powerful tool that you can use for free marketing. Now, yes, I know it's [ __ ] sorry, freaking $10 a month. I know it's 10, 20 bucks a month, but this will be the most powerful tool in your tool belt, okay? 100%. If you want to maximize Facebook, if you follow all the Facebook steps prior to this, brand yourself, make a Facebook Oh, you do need to make a Facebook business page. Sorry, I skipped that slide, but you want to also have a Facebook business page. But I would argue your personal page is more powerful than your business page in the beginning. In the beginning because more people are going to be talking to you through your personal page. You don't want to message realtors through Jedi Junk Removal. Message the realtors through Andrew Thompson. I'm Andrew. They want to work with a human. The reason why people work with local businesses is to avoid the corporate to avoid the the the the AI phone service that you know you don't want to pick up anymore. So, um, your personal profile on Facebook, guys, so much money you're leaving on the table with if with you're not growing your Facebook profile page. We haven't even talked about social media yet. This is social media, but when I say social media, I mean TikToks and no, not TikToks, but Reels and videos and content and posts. Like, we haven't even dived dove into social media. So, that is Facebook group posting. So, there's a lot to take in there. I had to go through that fast.
So anyways, that was so good, Andrew. That was incredible. So I hope everyone that's watching this is taking notes. Andrew, you have given us some great actual advice. We do have a few questions for you. Um, I absolutely love this question. So this comes from GH21033. Um, Andrew, I love your sense of humor. That's not the question. I make similar jokes. Question, please. You started your business with $5,000. What did you buy with that?
So, the $5,000 was a deposit on um the truck that I rented for 400 bucks a month, which was only the the two months. So, one month and then the second month, you know, because that's what he wanted. So, and then after that, I did experiment with Thumbtack ads, which is very dangerous. I don't recommend that. But it was honestly just the equipment, the sawzall. Um, yeah, it was honestly just equipment and the rental of the truck. So for junk removal, we needed like a dolly and saw and I got into Thumbtack ads. Craigslist posting. I did Craigslist posting twice a day. That that was the only expenses at the beginning was the equipment and oh yard signs. I did do yard signs in the very beginning. And then the rest of the money eventually went into like paid ads, but that's a dangerous game to play. We don't want to do paid ads if you guys aren't digital marketers. Um, that's why we're going over the free techniques. And yeah, so I hope that answers your questions, my man. It was mainly just equipment. Equipment.
Cool. I love it. Um, this one comes from Christopher. Christopher, I know you asked two questions. That first one got answered about the post, so I'm going to skip that one. Hope you understand, but I do like your next question. My question, should you leave the groups that do block your posts?
Oh, so if they block your posts. Yeah. Yes. Because unless you do it the way I described where you start asking questions. So, if you start by asking questions, then you're not going to get blocked. And maybe they do block promos. Like if they block your promo every time, then yeah, the if they block if you can actually get all of your questions, let's say you put the group posting on autopilot and it posts questions every day. And I actually when I say every day, I truly mean every day because more exposure in those groups is better. Like Facebook recognizes exposure and consistency. So, and if not every day, at least a couple times a week. If your questions are going through six days a week, but on the seventh post of your promo, the the moderator or admin declines that post, absolutely stay in the group because you're going to get normal people like you're like, "Oh, I want to see what Andrew Thompson's." And he'll click your profile and he'll eventually find you. So, that's the whole technique of group hosting. And I'm using this technique now in in my software. And it's it's astonishing. I ask questions like, "What do you guys want in software? What?" and I'm just posting these questions and then it's so no the answer is don't leave the groups if you do it the right way. If you just spam groups you're then yeah you're you get no benefit.
I like it. Um, awesome tools. So this question uh I know we're uh you know we have a lot of slides to cover here so I'll try and get to a few more here. Um, let me do this question from Zaniah I believe it's pronounced. I apologize if I'm not pronouncing that right. Um, would grassroots with a mix of paid ads marketing work well with reaching out to college students for a business idea? Should you center your marketing to trends in Gen Z slang or be direct?
Oh, wait. Okay, hold on. Re Okay. Grass with paid grassroot to answer your question. Grassroots with paid marketing always. Absolutely. But what was the the the second part of that question? Would it work well with reaching out to college students for a business idea? reach out to I don't know if I Okay, so you want to know if you can reach out to college students for one of your business ideas. Is that what she or he's asking? I believe so. Or like should you center your market should marketing obviously depending on your target audience. Who should your marketing language be catered to? Let's stick with junk removal. Should it be catered to that 50-year-old that has the money to do this? Who should your how how should your message be catered? Yeah. So um in my mar so if I understand your uh question correctly um in my industry it's anybody we try to target 35 and up. So colleges would probably be not a good market for me right to to advertise to. So, if I'm understanding your uh your question correctly is definitely make sure your marketing that you're catering to is definitely the right target audience because on Facebook when I actually did eventually run paid ads, which paid ads are great on Facebook if you do them correctly or any paid ads have to be done correctly, is I would target only 35 and up. Most people under the age of 35 are willing to do junk themselves, right? But I hope I guess I'm not understanding completely the message the question, but I hope that helps. Um, so if not, just ask the question again and maybe we'll get to it after this next round.
Cool. Let's ask two more questions. We're going to do a fan blitz question. If you guys watch the YouTube videos, listen to the podcast, you're familiar with this. So two fire blitz, give me a five-second answer here. Um, is this the best way to gain leads for construction businesses?
Facebook. Uh, if we're talking about Facebook, I would I'd say yes, 100%. Okay, cool.
Um, and then this can't be real TV. Um, going back to yard signs, um, what about gas station poster boards? Are those like effective? I'm assuming putting them in gas stations there. So, I would just say the answer is put them anywhere you can where they'll stick for at least a couple days. Like if there's driveby traffic and and you can get it in a gas station, whatever a gas station poster board is. Um, yes, 100%.
One more question, then we're going to move on. I apologize. cuz I can't get to all these questions, but Buzz Gaming, what would you do if a business is super slow, even when you use this free strategy, you're explaining consistency, just keep going, try something new. So, yeah, to not sound too uh to to make this quick and not sound too boring, is if yard signs and door hangers and the four corners method isn't working for you, you need to double down on all the digital techniques we're about to go through, including social media stuff we're about to go through. So, be most if yard signs ain't working for you, you need to do all the digital stuff because the digital stuff will work. I love it. Super good.
Let's keep moving forward. Everyone, I just want to plug this. Uh, Andrew is going to be doing another 30 minutes at the top of this hour in the EPIB Academy. So, get signed up with the EP Academy. We have a whole another 30 minutes where we'll get all your questions answered. So, Andrew, let's dive into social media. People love digital techniques. Let's do it. Let's get this done.
So, guys, step one, four corners method. You got to be branded for the four corners method to work. Step two, the art of Facebook inc um brand yourself. Get all that working, right? I would argue don't touch social media unless you have your branding in place. It's it's not a hard rule, but you know, have a good logo, have a good presence, look good on camera. Um, have your Facebook profile, all that stuff pimped out because this is where social media now you're stacking everything.
So, social media, let's talk about social media, even though Facebook is social media, but what I'm talking about is like videos. So, set up all the platforms. You want to be visible on every platform. Have Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook personal, Facebook business, Next Door, LinkedIn. Have a Google business profile. Have a Yelp listing. Yelp is important because don't pay for Yelp ads, but Apple Maps when people search on Apple, they're pulling from Yelp and Bing pulls from Yelp. So, set up all your platforms. Okay, that's number one. Be visible on all get like a couple videos on each one. Have a logo, right? But we're not going to focus on Tik Tok or whatever. Um, Tik Tok's great, but really most of our customers are on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. So, we're going to focus on the business page, the personal page, Facebook, uh, which means Facebook reels, which are vertical videos, Facebook ads. We're not going to talk about these, but they're very Maybe I'll do another master class someday with Upflip Academy teaching Facebook ads and Facebook groups and outreach. Very powerful. We are going to touch on YouTube just a little bit because it's so freaking powerful.
Okay, so my first tip is get Rayban metas when you can afford it. They're expensive. They're 300. But there is nothing more satisfying than point of view content watching people clean houses and oddly satisfying content that we watch on Tik Tok and Instagram from that POV perspective. It's interesting and it makes it so easy to record you painting, cleaning, and you could do social media. And this is because most people forget to pull out their phones and record. All right, this is so this is just a tip, not a must. If you're good at pulling out your phone and recording and you don't forget, then you don't need these, but eventually get them.
So, I'm going to go over a couple comp a couple Instagram people who are killing it um to show you the possibilities of reeling in customers of social media content. You know, good old Tik Toks and Instagram reels and Facebook reels. So, this is one guy, Junk Rescue, who he does very professional branded content, okay? He if you go look at his profile, you'll see that he keeps it very related to what he does for his business and it works and it's probably more to his target audience because people are like, "Oh, he rents out dumpsters and there are these really cool videos. Oh, he does junk removal and takes out people's trash." However, um you're not going to go viral for something like that. Now, virality is not always equal to or it just isn't equal to the amount of customers, but it does get you exposure on a different level that opens other opportunities.
So, I'm going to show you some people that do creative things with their junk removal company, and I want you guys to look at this and just kind of think, what can I do? Um, in my home service businesses, Junk Teens is a great example of killing it with social media. They run a junk removal company and they were teenagers in high school and they just do wild freaking videos of them making money building a business and just random like they filled up their dump truck with water and swam in the back of the dump truck. Now, is that their target audience getting them more customers? No. Are some of them going to come get are some of them going to see this and want to hire them because they're like teenagers having fun? Yeah, absolutely. They're building a brand. So, and their content's wild. And um here's there was another one on here that I wanted to show that I forgot to put in here. So, I'm just going to talk about it real quick. We've all seen I imagine the oddly satisfying content, also known as like ASMR on Tik Tok or Instagram, the landscaping guy who goes and landscapes an entire yard for free and shows it like time lapse really fast. Those are getting millions of views. Those videos are getting millions of views because you see the lawn, the crazy backyard and like uh grass and trees or it just like slowly vanishes and looks beautiful. So oddly satisfying content. So think about junk removal hoarder houses. You can literally just set a a camera up and then it starts disappearing the the junk and it like starts to look from like disgusting to clean. So those that kind of content goes viral. this guy does more. This is targeted towards the wrong people, but they're going viral and they tell me I talk to these people and they say they're getting customers from this. I don't understand it because I'm not Gen Z, but it works, right? I do different type of content, but I got to show all forms of what people are doing. They show you like how much money they're making in junk removal, which is targeted towards people who want to start a junk removal company, but they claim that it's getting local presence in their local community and people are hiring them even though they're talking about how their business works and how much money they're making in junk removal. So, there's just that's like four different um people creators that I showed you promoting their business and growing on social media. So, don't sleep on social media, guys.
But, this is a whole different world of making content. So, I could talk about making content forever. I'm not going to do that because that'll be a whole another class in itself, but content content content with social media will grow your business.
Um, let's talk about YouTube. So, this is uh somebody that uh runs a junk removal business and he's got he's got 6,000 videos now, by the way, guys. He's now at 28,000 subscribers. And here's what he does. Here's my YouTube channel. I had a branded YouTube channel, Jedi Junk Removal. That's me, my wife, and my kid. And you'll see that I have apartment cleanout, blah blah blah, hoarder house, dirt junk removal job. Um, now what I'm trying to bring a point to is when you upload these videos to YouTube, not shorts, not vertical videos, but the long form videos, whether they're 30 seconds or five minutes, look what happens when you start searching up how to cut out a hot tub in Texas, how to remove a basketball goal, um, how to remove a satellite dish, how to remove a trampoline, how to remove a fridge door. This guy has videos that get embedded into the Google search results. So, we're not they're not even clicking the videos tab in Google. Google automatically embeds YouTube videos into search results. So, if you think about this in the long-term scenario, if you take all the social media content you're doing and also just upload it to YouTube and put a title, you'll start getting natural organic SEO growth through videos embedded into YouTube search results. So, very powerful. This guy kills it and he does nothing but videos on YouTube. So, I just wanted to bring that to um your guys's attention. If you're doing social media content, upload them to YouTube and you'll see, dude, 18 second video, 1 minute, 20, these are garbage videos. No offense, my friend Ricardo, if you're watching this, but you know, these are garbage videos. But the thing is is he made thousands of them over the last 18 years in business. And he now his whole business runs off YouTube. He is a millionaire from just having YouTube videos because of the natural SEO component. Now, I can't talk about SEO. That's a whole another video in itself, but very powerful stuff, uploading videos to YouTube. So, that's YouTube. Make tons of videos with titles that people would search because Google will embed those videos. So, if you're a painter, there's no reason you shouldn't show here's how you paint a wall. I don't know anything about painting, but it could be 30 seconds and you just here's me painting in Austin, Texas. Here's how you do commercial painting in blah blah blah. And brand your YouTube channel to your business and be consistent. Post videos as often as you can. That's YouTube Q&A.
By the way, guys, I'm speed running this now because I know we've only got a few minutes left. We only got about 10 minutes left. Um, so we're gonna uh I'm we're not really going to answer questions here. I apologize. If you guys have questions again, you can sign up for the Apple Academy and we're going to have a full another 30 minutes after there. Um, the only thing I will note here is we got a really funny comment that I love. It's from Akos. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Um, so the it's just a comment. Uh, so we're making YouTube tutorials great again. So, um, kudos to you so far, Andrew. I think people are loving it. Everyone's engaged. So, kudos to the audience for being engaged. Uh, but Andrew, you have a lot of great takeaways. So, let's keep going. I know we've got some more slides left and, um, want to leave room for any more questions. So, answer ask questions if you have them below, but Andrew, keep, uh, keep.
Yeah, I think, um, guys, I hope you guys enjoyed that. I think, okay, the rest is kind of what we're just going to go over in the academy. So, uh, the next class in a few minutes, but anyways, if you guys want to find me on YouTube, it's Andrewjedi. Uh my Instagram's android period orautopilot. And of course um if you guys run a local home service company, please try my software autopilotapp.io. Um that's all I'm going to plug about it because I'm not going to sell myself uh sell myself. This is just you guys check it out if you want to check it out. So that's where to find me.
And so in the academy, we're going to cover two incredible topics and why these are the most powerful topics. Uh well, it's all powerful stuff is EDM, every door direct mail. We're going to talk about and I kid you not, how to every door direct mail is the United States Postal Office, Postal Service, those postcards that they put in people's mailboxes. Yes, most people when they check the mail, they throw all the junk away. A handful that don't. So this is very powerful. This direct mail is still a very powerful technique. But the problem is sending out a postcard after postcard fees and USPS fees is a dollar a postcard. Maybe 50 cents to a dollar. So getting in front of 10,000 houses is potentially it depends. $3,000 to 10,000. It's expensive, right? I'm going to teach you how to do it for free with a little bit of work. And this is not this is not a joke. If you're willing to just follow what I teach, you can have a postcard and you can make money from it, but also your business is on the postcard. This is a wild technique and of course we're going to talk about what it says right here, cold emailing and scraping. This is a more complicated topic. I'm going to show the software that I use. We're going to I did a breakdown. I downloaded everything that I'm going to how I do it. I'm going to show you guys the potential of cold emailing, but we're going to expand on cold emailing with you'll see in the class. There's a there's a lot to it. Um, so EDM Oh, how I forgot these slides. How to send 5 to 10K direct mail postcards to people's homes for free or make money. This is every direct mail. You get to choose the postal route. So, you can choose the neighborhoods. Like, you can choose the highest income neighborhoods and send to them only. It is imp. You can literally send a 100,000 direct mail postcards over the course of 5 10 months if you do these techniques. And I promise you, if you're just a good person, this is if you're a good person and you are friendly, this is doable. The second part that we're going to be covering in the the next section, scraping mass. Yeah. Yeah. So, let's hold off for that in the live stream. So, just don't let's just not go to those slides. Yeah. Yeah. because we're going to cover that in the live storm. Correct. Uh and the EDDDM we're going to cover. Perfect.
So everyone join the Uplip Academy right now and then this webinar is going to start here in about 8 five minutes at the top of the hour here. So Andrew uh just gave you a little bit of a snippet of uh what's to come. So a lot of really good stuff there. Then we're going to have get all your answers qu all your questions answered. Should stop sharing for now. Stop sharing. You're all good to stop sharing again. Join us in the uploop academy. But Andrew, so far this has been amazing. So, I'm excited to learn more about EDM and then some cold emailing tips. So, everyone, we'll see you in eight minutes, seven minutes now at the Up Academy. Um, and we will talk with all of you all soon. Awesome. Thank you guys. I hope you guys enjoyed the content. I really try to give some u valuable info. So, I hope you guys liked it. Um, should should I just hang up here? We're good. You're all good. Everyone, thank you so much for joining today. We'll see you in the academy here in a few minutes. Cool. Bye.