October 22, 2023 • 46 mins
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of making your beauty business thrive in the digital world? With the knowledge shared by our expert guest, Grant Kantios from Go Happy Beauty, you'll learn to navigate through SEO complexities, create an engaging website, manage reviews effectively, and understand the power of a robust Google Business profile.
This episode is a goldmine for beauty professionals, filled with invaluable advice to help your business stand out online. We deep-dive into the world of SEO, with Grant simplifying it into a language we can all understand. We discuss the significance of crafting a website that best represents you and your business, and how to leverage Google's algorithms to enhance your visibility. Dive deeper into the importance of a detailed Google Business profile and learn how periodic updates can lead to immense success.
Ultimately, the key to success in the digital realm is reviews. Learn from Grant why it's essential to read and respond to every review, be it positive or negative. We explore the potential repercussions of neglecting customer feedback and share useful tips on leveraging positive reviews for business growth. Are you wondering about the role of local partnerships in business growth? We got you covered! Learn how partnering with local spray tanners can expand your reach in the beauty industry. This episode is truly packed with insights to help you flourish in the digital world, no matter where you are in your beauty professional journey.
Interested in creating your own website? Start HERE
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If you’ve connected with or been inspired by this episode in any way, leave us a review and let us know your biggest takeaway - I’d love to hear how you embrace Sugaring For All!! And while you've got your phone out, make sure to follow us on Instagram @Love2Sugar.
If you are interested in learning more about Radeq Lab's Premium Prebiotic Sugar Line of products, you can find them at www.radeqlab.us.
If you are interested in our business planner you can find the SugarBoss Planner here --->https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/love2sugar
The link to our Monthly SugarBiz Blueprint: https://www.love2sugar.com/offers/cMhp76LA/checkout
Cheers to your Sweet Success!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to this Sugar Show.
I'm Shannon O'Brien, bodysugaring expert and licensed
esthetician, who's taken my ownskincare business from zero to
multiple six figures and hashelped over 3,000 students learn
how to do the same.
Now let me tell you it wasn'tall that long ago that I lacked
the time, budget and knowledgeneeded to grow my small business
(00:22):
as a body sugaring pro.
If we were to press Rewind,you'd see the many failed
attempts and lessons learnedthat have helped me build the
profitable business that I havetoday, one that runs on its own
and gives me the lifestyle andfreedom that I only used to
dream of.
I created the Sugar Show tohand you my secrets and give you
the simple, step-by-stepstrategies to help you do the
(00:44):
same.
So if you're a cosmetologist oresthetician or wax professional
who's looking to fill yourbooks, make more money in your
business and enjoy greaterbalance between your work and
home life, you are in the rightplace.
Let's dive in.
(01:12):
Ladies and gentlemen, sugar Pros, estes and Cosmos.
It's Shannon from the SugarShow I am.
I always say I'm thrilled tomeet with guests, and I don't
know that I'm as much thrilledas I'm jazzed because I just dig
hanging out with GrantConscious from Go Happy Beauty.
He's one of the most laid-backguys in our industry and
(01:35):
probably one of the most crucial, because he just knows what we
need to do the job and has builtsoftware and programs to help
make that happen.
So I know that you havelistened to him.
In episode 75, I believe it wasabout what he does and really
you'd need to check a look atthe show notes and really spend
(02:01):
time going through what it isthat his company does.
There's so much to talk about,but in this episode we're not
going to talk sales or why youshould use his software.
We're going to talkspecifically about whether or
not in this day and age, youeven need a website, whether you
should just go with a freewebsite and what the benefits
(02:22):
are of that or not.
We're going to talk about SEO,search engine optimization and a
lot of this stuff sounds liketech.
I don't want to listen to thison my walk with my dog.
I don't want to listen to thison the treadmill, but really we
have a great conversation aboutthe reality check on what you
need to do to get your businessseen, especially locally.
(02:46):
The goal is to get bodies on thetable to be doing facials on to
be sugaring on, and if you arenot doing these few things in
this episode, then it is highlylikely that you will not be
standing out like your I hate tocall it competition, like the
other businesses in your areawill say.
Really, the idea is to do thethings that will get you the
(03:09):
most bang for your buck.
As he talks about here, whatwill move the needle?
Because, my friends, this timeof inflation and the recession
whether or not you believe thenthat the gas price is expensive,
the election coming up,everything seems like a reason
(03:30):
for why you're not doing well,but, in all honesty, we're not
marketing well enough.
We're not doing the things thatneed to get your information
pushed into the hands ofpotential clients and current
clients to know what else you do.
So we're going to talk about SEO.
We're going to talk about theadvice that he would give you if
you're like all right, I got tokind of get my stuff together.
(03:52):
We're going to talk aboutreviews how to use the good ones
, how to deal with the bad ones,with how to even get reviews
and what to do with them whenyou get them, because it's not
just like, oh gosh, I got afive-star review, yay me.
You got to do something with itin order to use it for
spreading the word.
So I know that you'll be jazzedafter you listen to this
(04:12):
episode.
In fact, you're definitelygoing to want to go to the show
notes because, especially ifyou're walking on the treadmill
or with your dog or doingsomething else while you're
listening to a podcast which isusually what we do you will
realize that there's a whole lotof wisdom in here, and I even
took notes throughout our chattogether.
So, ladies and gentlemen, Iintroduce you, or reintroduce
you, to Grant from Go HappyBeauty.
(04:34):
Okay, grant, happy Beauty.
Grant, are you ready to dazzlethem with your techie skills?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, I'm ready.
I'm ready, I think so.
Yeah, let's do it Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So I've already introduced you to everyone and I
just I freaking love hangingout with you, but let's talk
tech for beauty people.
Sure, let's talk about, likewhat we actually need, what we
really don't need to worry about, like how to handle stuff with
tech, and I've whipped up somequestions for you that have been
(05:10):
burning in our audience's brain, and so we're just going to
make this super easy so thatpeople that are walking their
dog Life is super easy, life issuper easy.
Listening to our podcast on thetreadmill, you know, at the gym
can like really just take somelike really solid golden nuggets
about SEO and websites andreviews and how the heck to do
(05:30):
all this.
So let's get down to it.
So, as it relates to beautyprofessionals, actually to the
world, what is SEO and how doesit work?
What the heck is this?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
How do we dispel this ?
You know search engineoptimization sounds so technical
.
No, I tell everybody, look,it's basically the process of of
, you know, ranking higher orbeing more visible for the terms
and searches you want to bevisible for, right.
So, depending on what specificmarkets you're in whether you're
sugaring or tanning or waxingor whatever, it is right you
(06:05):
want to come up with, somebodysearches for you in that area,
in your local area, right?
So essentially, you want tofind out how to increase your
visibility and there's obviouslyGoogle's algorithm is famous
for, or infamous, whatever youwant to say, for having over 200
ranking factors and all thesethings to confuse people.
But at the end of the day, youneed to be the best result for
(06:25):
whatever that query is.
You know somebody searching forthe best.
You know sugaring pro near themand they should come up for
that.
They want to come up for it,right.
So what do they need?
They need a website that can befound.
Obviously, you know Googlebusiness profile that can be
found and probably has the mostreviews if you want to be known
as the best, right, quote,unquote best person for that.
(06:45):
So you know there's a lot to it, obviously, behind the scenes
to get those things to come up.
But essentially, you know SEOis being visible for what you
want to be visible for, whateverthose, whether you offer one
service or 10 services.
You want to be visible for allthose different things Depending
on the situation, depending onwhat they're trying to rank for.
You know that'll be a littledifferent, but we want to make
(07:07):
sure that you're visible forthose terms.
You know somebody searching foryou locally.
You want to come up first.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Right, okay, easier said than done.
That sounds all great, but howdoes an esthetician,
cosmetologist, sugar proextraordinaire?
How do you easily get thataccomplished?
How do you easily like?
Where do you put the SEOs?
I know that's not what it is,it's just fun to say.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
No, I know it is.
Yeah, we always get that.
I mean for the, for the websiteitself.
I mean I started the websitebecause it's kind of the
foundational piece, right.
I mean, obviously, as time haschanged, google's algorithm has
adjusted.
I think the Google businessprofile on the website kind of
are neck and neck becausethey're obviously always
favoring their properties andthey obviously own the Google
business page.
So you have to think about that.
But for the website itself,most people you know what we see
(07:56):
is we obviously do websites, sowe optimize it out of the box
for people.
We've done the research, wejust implement that for them.
If you're doing it yourself, youneed to make sure that those
things are visible.
A lot of people are missingcontent on their site.
They're not mentioning anythingabout what they do.
They just say we're the best,we're going to make you feel
beautiful.
Like what does that mean?
What do you do?
What do you offer?
(08:16):
You know, one thing we like tosay is, when somebody comes to a
site, you should be able toanswer three questions what do
you have to offer, How's itgoing to make my life better and
how do I get it Right?
Those three things should beanswered almost instantaneously.
Most people miss out on that.
But aside from the contentitself, you know, if you want to
get more technical, the titleof the page.
You know.
If you're looking at SEO,regardless of your using our
(08:38):
system or Wix or Squarespace,the title of the page has a lot
to do with what that page, howGoogle understands what that
page is about.
So a lot of people miss out onthat.
If I go to sites that peoplehave made, usually when they go
to the homepage it says home andthen their business name.
You know they're missing out onthe opportunity to say sugaring
in whatever that city is, orwaxing in whatever that sugar
you know, and spray tanning inwhatever that city is.
(09:00):
So those are kind of high orI'd say low hanging fruit that a
lot of people are missing outon.
You know if they're building asite they don't have those
things implemented.
We know immediately we couldchange this to make it better.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, really, it's about the back end right and
making sure that you're not soworried about you know, it's
sure it's pretty colors and allthat, but what are you actually
saying?
Yeah, I hear that they thatlike it's just different than it
was before, like now, like the,the algorithms can actually
like understand what videos aresaying, like what words you're
(09:35):
saying in videos and like thewords on your page, like it
scrolls your whole page right ornot, just all like in addition
to the title.
So it's really important whatyou put on the page.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, absolutely yeah , because a lot of people,
obviously being in the beautyindustry, they want big images,
they want less text.
But you know, time after timethey do studies and Google's
constantly ranking the sitesthat have more and better
content on them.
Now there's strategic ways youcan add the text to the pages to
make sure it still looks good,but it still needs to understand
(10:07):
what it's about.
And I was having a conversationwith somebody the other day and
they have, you know, fullservice spots.
They said what we did?
You know we wanted to be at thetop for this first service,
right, so they wrote a pageabout that.
And then you know a litany ofblogs on that one specific
service.
Google's going to associatethem with that service and
they're going to be come upfirst in their area because
Google's like they're a subject,basically a subject matter
(10:29):
expert for that thing.
And then you kind of move downthe you know, go through the
services, add more pages, morecontent, but at the end of the
day, google wants to find thatinformation somewhere.
So if you have it on your site,you're going to benefit from it
.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So okay, so let's talk about that for a minute.
That's probably fascinating,because if you think about an
esthetician that sugars andthey're trying to set themselves
apart in their area, say theydo facials and they do sugaring,
if you think about it,everyone's talking about facials
, right?
So, you can put facials on yourwebsite.
Obviously you wanna let peopleknow what you're doing, but
(11:02):
wouldn't it benefit you to beefup your sugaring?
Because when people are lookingfor that, right, you would be
the one that comes up.
You're probably the only one inyour area that does it anyway
right now.
But like you really wanna beefup, like write blogs about
sugaring.
You know, like, for those ofyou that are listening, I talk
about sugaring all day long.
Listen to what I say and turnit into a blog.
(11:23):
You know, like, take that topicand turn it into a blog, right
and so, and nowadays, thosewebsites they like come with,
like, the ability to blog,usually in the software, right.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Is that what you?
do yeah, absolutely.
We build that.
You know and you can do it.
You can use whatever you needto generate those blogs.
A lot of people are overwhelmedbut if you wanna be the go-to
person, like, sugaring is kindof very similar to where we we
kind of made our roots and spraytanning, right, it was like not
as much competition.
So people we've been workingwith for years have been at the
top and they're still reapingthose benefits now.
(11:56):
Now there's more competition.
So if you're starting fresh,obviously there's more
challenges.
But if you dedicate yourself,if you're the go-to person,
google's gonna associate thatwith you, right?
So, thinking on you know thetopic of sugaring, you could
create the service page and thenthink about people don't know
what to blog about, right?
Think about the top questionsyou get from potential clients,
and each one of those is a blogin and of itself in addition to
(12:19):
adding them to the FAQs on yoursugaring page, you can elaborate
on them in blogs.
If you're not a great writer, gohire it out at Fiverr, speak it
into a mic, go to these, youknow, I think-.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
ChatGPT.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, chatgpt Revcom will take it and translate,
transcribe I think it's a dollarper minute into actual texts
and they'll make sure it's goodgrammar and everything for like
a dollar per minute.
It's like there's really noexcuse not to do it anymore.
So you know, and I've done thatbefore you don't have time to
write it Literally, you speak itinto audio, send it in and it
translates it.
There's probably free serviceson it, honestly, for that now.
(12:52):
But if you wanna be the expert,the go-to person, you need to
make sure that you are.
They're good, like you mightknow in your head that you're
the go-to person, but doesGoogle know?
If not, then you need to makesure you are.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Okay, some of our students and audience are like,
oh shoot, do I have to have aGoogle business profile?
I think I heard about that backin the day, but how do we even
do that, like without divinginto super Google?
But like, where do you someonego to make sure like to start to
have a Google business profile,cause we'll talk about websites
(13:26):
next.
But like, where do you startwith, like, the Google business
profile?
Cause that's super important.
People are Googling.
You have to have a Googleprofile.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Go to Google, type in Google mybusiness is.
You know the Google businessprofile.
Now go there, type it in, it'llcome up.
You hit start now.
It's a pretty quick process ofsetting it up.
I'm assuming most people areworking at a physical location.
If, for some reason, you're gota home studio, you don't want
to display that address, ormaybe you're mobile.
We have mobile tanners.
Make sure you say that youservice your clients at their
(13:56):
location, then it'll actuallyhide your address.
So a lot of people hesitate, atleast in the tanning world,
because they're mobile and theydon't want to put out their
actual address.
You just say I service them attheir location, then you're a
mobile business.
But you set it up.
They send a postcard typically.
Sometimes it'll automaticallyverify, but most times it sends
a postcard to the address youput in that code, your profile
(14:16):
is set up.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Gotcha okay and then so it's really important to have
a website.
I see a lot of people who justget the free website template.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
You know, like let's talk about the free website Like
where would you go to get yourwebsite done?
Well, I mean, that's what weexpect, and free websites even
work like it's easy to fill inthe blanks.
But does that even work?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well, it depends.
We obviously specialize in that.
You know what was happy tans?
I'll go happy beauty for sure.
But with the free websites,let's say you go to something
like a Wix, they're not gonnagive you.
If you're doing the free levelat my last time I checked, at
least you're gonna get.
You're not gonna get your owndomain, so you're gonna have
something somethingsomethingwixsitecom, right.
(15:08):
So first, that's notprofessional.
Second, it's not gonna rank onGoogle very it'll be very
challenging to rank, just theway that it works without
getting too technical.
So, free website people aretypically taking a template.
They're changing out images,changing out text and then they
roll with it.
I think there's limitationsthere because there's so much
(15:28):
that goes on behind the scenes,as we talked about the title and
all this stuff, right, that'sone of the beauties of what we
do is we actually do all thatfor you.
So I'll have to say, secondguess it or think about it.
But you know you're going inthere using the free template.
You're probably changing outpictures and words where you can
, because it's set up as atemplate.
You don't know how to movethings around and then you're
pushing it out as it is andagain, it's not gonna be
(15:49):
optimized unless you've done theresearch and implemented it and
you're gonna have somelimitations there, because that
template was probably not set upfor sugaring in this case.
Right, it's set up for someother random beauty service.
So you know, if nothing else,at least do the free site.
But that would be the bareminimum.
I would say it's better than nosite at all, but not much
better.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Right, right.
So nowadays there's a lot ofespecially younger estheticians.
I say that because I'm aseasoned, older gal.
There's a lot of younger galsthat are like I don't wanna
bother with website, I'm justgonna make like a link.
I'm big into Instagram, I'mgonna use Linktree or linkinbio
and just send people to you know, to book with me.
(16:29):
Why is that not smart to justrely on a social media platform,
even if it's Facebook, with abook now button, and not have an
actual website?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
You know there's a lot of things to be said.
Obviously, there's been timeswhere those systems have gone
down and you're offline.
Right, it's out of your control.
That's one thing I mean.
The biggest thing is you don'town that content they do.
So you have to consider that.
The website is a you know, wetell everybody this.
It's the hub for everything youdo, whether it's online or
offline marketing.
(17:01):
Your website address is thereand people are gonna just be
like I'm here and people aregonna see that and it's visible.
It's a lot easier to put youknow happytanscom than it is to
put linktree you know forward,slash back, slash all this and
people can find that.
And then on the website, youcan control the narrative.
You can set it up how you want.
They can navigate how they wantand you set yourself apart.
(17:24):
You're more credible.
You look different.
You're not the same aseverybody's Instagram profile.
Whether it's more aestheticallypleasing, it still looks the
same.
It's still this grid of images.
And then you know you mentioned, like a link tree, the thing
where you put the bios in there.
I tell everybody you should justbuild that, you know, into your
site.
It's easy to do.
You should have that at yourdriving traffic than, rather
than to a link tree address.
(17:45):
You're driving it to youractual website, which helps, and
then you obviously have them onyour website and at that point
you can do what you wish.
You can have a popup come up.
They get some on your emaillist.
You can have all the relevantlinks you want.
You can send them to anotherpage after they click something.
Whatever you wanna do, right,it's kind of open to you.
But at that point again, you'recontrolling what happens,
(18:05):
versus using these third partyservices, where there's some
limitations there.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, oh, there's so much to know and so much to do.
I know, I mean really, at theend of the day, it's.
It's that website is your houseand no matter what the latest
thing is to drive them to yourhouse TikTok, instagram,
whatever the next thing is likethe house is what you have to
(18:34):
have, tight, right, and so youhave to have all the keywords
that you want people to find youfor.
You know your pictures not likeyou know pictures of you and
your cat.
Like you know, like pictures ofyou doing what you do and being
the master.
You know, it's never been easierto do a blog post with search
(18:56):
engine optimized keywords thatwill you got to gain, play the
game here, right, like it's notjust oh, I'm not a good writer,
it's hey, use a tool that willsay sugaring, hair removal, body
sugaring, brazilians like,we'll use these keywords.
So explain really quick this isprobably like the craziest
(19:19):
question you've probably heard.
Well, maybe not crazy, butexplain in basic form what an
algorithm actually is.
Sure, because I'm sure a lot ofbeauty people are like aha, the
algorithm, and it's just thislike nebulous thing.
Like what is an algorithm as itrelates to all of this data?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, I mean it's a way for, for instance, in
Google's case, to make sense ofwhatever people, whatever that
query is right.
So they're using all thesethings in the background to
check what somebody types in andto return the best solution you
know for that query.
So it's their way to take, youknow, an ungodly amount of data
and process it very quickly andthen return that to you.
(20:00):
So I think you know a lot ofpeople get caught in that,
whether it's an Instagramalgorithm, a TikTok algorithm, a
Google algorithm.
But you just really have toknow what works.
You know and dispel all theother things and we tell people
this.
When I do presentations on SEO,it's like we're focused on that.
You know the Pareto's principle.
What's the 20% that's going tomove the needle?
80% of the way, we're notworried about all these other
(20:20):
little things that couldpossibly help, but they're not
really going to move the needle.
We just want to set people upfor success and focus on those
few things that make the biggestdifference in their business,
because we know time is limited,so we want to make sure we can
leverage that and utilize it asbest we can.
Sure, sure.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
What are you seeing right now as of this recording
is like really the socialplatform that's really working
for local marketing?
Because I really think thatsometimes estheticians feel like
they got to be on all theplatforms and sometimes what
that does is it doesn't hit yourlocal audience.
It's just like, oh, dancing onTikTok, showing sugar, you know
(20:58):
talking about, you know like lipsyncing to whatever that kind
of goes to this nationalaudience.
And if we're going to be smartwith our time, how do we really
hone in on the local audiencewithout spending all this time
dancing to the latest socialmedia?
Like, what platform are youfinding is really like moving
(21:18):
the needle best for localesthetician?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
marketing Like Google business, for sure.
Google, my business, 100%.
I mean most people don't thinkof it.
As you know, it's not probablymentioned the same breath as a
social media profile like anInstagram, facebook or TikTok.
But for local business, forpeople actually seeking out the
service, you want to be foundright and people are investing
all this energy on an Instagram,a TikTok in the hope that
somebody that's searching for asugaring pro in their area is
(21:46):
going to look for them.
Wow, the people that areactually seeking the service are
on Google searching it out, andyou're not there, so you know.
And on Google business, you canupdate photos, post updates,
all these things.
People aren't doing that andthey help with relevancy and all
that kind of stuff that Googleis looking for and people aren't
spending the time there.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Okay the audience.
Stop for a minute on thattreadmill.
If you can write it down or putit in your notes, I want you to
really really hear this have awebsite that makes sense.
Spend the time You're going tospend thousands and thousands
and thousands and thousands ofdollars on a designer.
Have a website that makes sense, meaning it has all the right
(22:29):
words, all the right meat thatyou want people to know about
you.
Let it sell you.
Don't kill yourself to be doingall the different.
You know social media pieces.
Start with a solid, rock starGoogle business profile.
(22:49):
Fill it with really goodpictures, really good reviews
we're talking about reviews in aminute, but really good, like
make sure that you're asking forreviews.
Fill that up, because whenpeople are Googling, guess
what's going to pull up in thealgorithm?
The Google business information, right.
Like that's the first place youwant.
(23:10):
If you're not a social mediaperson and you just really don't
love it.
Start with those two things.
Dial those things in and makesure they're right.
Then you can go next toInstagram, probably for our
world.
Make sure your Instagram istight.
We'll do another podcast onthat.
Make sure your Instagram istight.
But your website, your Googlebusiness profile and your emails
(23:34):
, and we're going to talk aboutthat in another podcast because
there's so much to talk about,but those are so, so important.
So let's go back to reviews,because I know that there's a
lot of people that if you golook up your Google business
review or your Google businessprofile, you might not have any
reviews because you haven'tasked for them.
You need to get more reviews.
(23:55):
Your head is spinning becauseyou're like great, now I got to
do this.
Like why?
So?
Do reviews actually help yourlocal business?
What your reputation with yourfriends and family that live
elsewhere because you dance sogreat and lip sync so well?
It's talking about gettingbutts on the table.
(24:15):
I want to sugar butts.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And who has and brows and all the things.
No-transcript.
Do reviews actually help that?
Because back in the day it waslike, oh, Yelp, oh, who cares
about Yelp?
I know let's talk about reviewsand what actually helps.
Put booties on the table.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, If you look at the studies they have outside of
, the number one search factoras far as Google Business goes
would be proximity.
So the proximity to that person, your business is to that
person when they're searching.
That is one of those things.
That's while it's in yourcontrol.
It's not.
You're probably signed to somethree-year lease or whatever it
is.
So that is what it is.
(24:56):
Outside of that, the reviewsand, more importantly, the
consistency of those reviews isvery, very important, and that's
where a lot of people miss outis consistently asking for them.
Maybe you do an email blastonce a month and ask for them,
or once a quarter, maybe once ayear, who knows you might get a
handful, once and never.
Once and never.
Yeah, and you might get ahandful of reviews at that time,
(25:17):
but it's not consistent.
So we see the people that aretaking action.
They've built it into theirworkflow, whether they're
actually manually sending a textto their new clients at the end
of every day, at the beginningof every day, whatever that
looks like, or emailing andrequesting it, but just simply
making the ask on a consistentbasis.
And people are not going to doit all the time.
We know that time is of theessence and people don't want to
(25:41):
spend their time, but there'scertain ways you can ask for it
Let people know in your text orwhatever.
Hey, this takes about 20 or 30seconds.
Just leave us honest feedbackand things like that.
We sent out an email about thisand we had some people get like
10 reviews in one day, justsimply copy and pasting what we
put in there.
But it's like keep it simplebut make the ask.
Most people are not doing thatand the reviews are huge.
(26:03):
You can read a bunch of studies, but about somewhere around 80%
to 85% of people choose a localbusiness based solely on their
reviews.
So it's one of those at the endof the day, if nothing else, if
they find you on Instagram orfind your website.
It's kind of a fact check howgood are these people?
They have 100 something reviews.
Obviously, that's pretty good,so that's a good way to kind of
(26:27):
cross verify that for them.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, you really got to make sure you stand out and
there's going to be more andmore people that sugar because
we're training all of them.
And they're going to be comingto your town and we want to make
sure, and if they're moving toa new town, they're going to
want to see do these people evenhave reviews?
They're dropping their clothesfor you, whether they're spray
(26:49):
tanning with your audience, orthey're getting sugared or even
getting facials.
They're dropping their clothesfor you.
They want to hear some reviewson whether or not you're any
good, exactly so.
Ok, so what you're saying, thenis so those of you that have a
Google Business profile, youdouble checked?
Oh yeah, I should probablyupdate my photos, because those
are from five years ago.
(27:09):
Right, like that's my oldfurniture or my old setup or my
old colors or whatever?
Update your stuff.
But I would venture to guess, ifwe're real, a lot of people got
all excited about GoogleBusiness Profile.
They asked all their friends tosend a review, and then you
forgot about it, and that wasfour years ago, five years ago,
(27:31):
and so now you have five starreviews, but they were from a
really long time ago.
You're saying those kind of dieon the vine.
They need to be fresh all thetime.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, yeah, if you're looking for relevancy, google
uses all these factors to buildthat algorithm, but that's one
of them is how consistent areyou with getting those reviews?
If you, I'd rather get one aweek for the whole year than get
50 in one day.
It's going to pay much moredividends long term for you, ok
so Google likes that better.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Obviously we want lots ofamazing reviews, but Google
actually there's a method behindthe madness, right?
This isn't touting.
Oh, look at me how wonderful Iam to get five stars.
This is we need consistentpeople coming in and saying we
love her, we love them, we loveit, we love sugar, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Ok, yeah so if you build that into your workflow,
it's important.
And to think of it from maybeit was about a year ago.
About this time last year, Ifeel like it was like, hey,
google's hiding all thesereviews, what's going on?
But it's Google's way to fightit.
I've been on the other side ofthat, where we're getting one
star reviews from Donald Duckand it's obvious that they're
fake, but it's not againstGoogle's terms of service.
They can't remove it, whateverthat looks like.
(28:37):
So Google's kind of built thisin to try to figure out how do
we do this and hide the onesthat we're not sure about.
But if they're getting 50 newreviews in one day, it's like a
red flag.
Like, hey, something's notright and Google has a lot more
understanding than we know of.
Like this is a certain type ofbusiness.
They could probably serve anumber of clients in a day.
(28:57):
It's not unusual to get tworeviews in one day, because they
understand that you're a beautybusiness and people come
through the door.
They understand the differencebetween that and a contractor.
They're not going to build fivehouses in a day.
So it's like they have a verydeep, rude understanding.
Like has this person, thisGmail account, ever left a
review before?
How long ago was it?
Are they friends with thisperson?
They know all that stuff andit's pretty crazy to think about
(29:20):
, but the consistent ask is themost important thing there.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, yeah.
Ok, so we see our reviews upthere.
Like you said, some are fake,some are your friends.
Google understands if they'reyour friends.
How I'm gonna start with anegative.
How do we handle a negativereview Cause?
those are really hard to read.
(29:44):
Now let me tell you, sugar Pros, I have two thoughts on the
negative review.
Before you answer this, grant,the first thing is really look
at that negative review and askyourself are they probably right
?
Did you show up late and yourroom was a mess and you talked
about yourself the whole time?
If the review is probably right, it's probably time to, like,
(30:08):
take a little stock in whatyou're doing and use it as a
positive fuel for you.
So there's that, right.
So I think that sometimes weneed to hear a little negative
criticism to understand, like, Ican't just slack in my business
.
So there's that.
But then there's also thenegative review, where you know
you're providing an amazingservice, you know that you're
(30:30):
doing the best that you can, andthere's always gonna be that
negative Nelly, that you didn'tdo it, just perfect.
The tea you handed her was alittle too hot when she sat in
your quiet area and now she'sgiving you a two star review
because she didn't likechamomile tea, she wanted green
tea or whatever.
Like there's those people,right?
(30:50):
So should we be no contact, notresponding Like we never saw it
or heard it?
Like, oh, I got a negativereview.
What do you mean Like I don'tpay attention to those, or
should we actually be responding?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I'll preface this by saying youshould read and respond to
every single review, negative orpositive.
That's a huge thing.
Google wants to see that aswell.
But for those negative reviews,I personally have read a lot
and I've seen some people whereit's almost like they take it
personally and they're fightingback in the reviews and that
looks even worse than notreplying at all.
(31:27):
So make sure you don't do that.
Take it for what it's worth,Whether it's a legit, like you
said.
The first case it's alegitimate piece of feedback,
right, we actually got afive-storey review for our
website build over the other day, but they also gave some
feedback of like, hey, it wouldbe nice to improve this process,
and I was like, funny, you saythat we're literally banging our
head against the wall trying tofigure that out.
So if somebody gives you alegitimate feedback, take it for
(31:48):
what it's worth.
It may be that person, like yousaid in scenario two, where
it's like they're gonna complainabout everything.
Offer them a solution.
Thank you so much for yourfeedback.
We appreciate you taking time.
We'd love to offer yousomething or we'll reach out to
you, whatever that looks like.
But do make sure you replythere and if it's something that
you know, it's that scenariotwo, where you're fired up and
(32:09):
you're like this isn't true.
Sit on it for 24 hours beforeyou reply and you'll often
rethink how you're gonna replyin that knee-jerk reaction to
where you're gonna be frustratedand reply that way.
So but do reply and make sureit's in a positive light,
because it's gonna show more onyou than that person that's in
the video On your character.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Sure, absolutely, and try offline to maybe make it
right.
Like there might be somethingyou absolutely didn't do great,
like reach out to that person,not through the review response,
but reach out to that personand say, hey, I saw your Google
review.
Maybe one of your staff membersreally didn't do a great job.
I'd love to improve that foryou.
(32:48):
How can I have you back andmake that better and make sure I
have green tea in my pocket andnot all chamomile, or whatever.
But and say I hear you, I hearyou and I would make this right.
You know like I love that.
But how can we use thosepositive reviews without saying,
(33:09):
oh my gosh girl, thank you somuch for the five stars, I love
you too.
It's amazing.
Yes, we should respond.
But how can we use thosestrategically to our benefit?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
You can.
I mean, there's a number ofways you could share those out
on social media.
Obviously, it's a great way toshare the feedback in that, and
then also, obviously, embeddingthem on your website to showcase
the testimonials.
And, you know, put the livefeed from Google on there so
people not, you know, notwritten text where you could
copy and paste whatever you want, but it's important to do that.
You know, our new review toolthat we have, sinisto, allows
(33:42):
the embedding and the socialsharing directly from within the
tool.
We could talk more about thatlater, but it's important to
make sure that you're utilizingthose and leveraging them for
whatever it is and it's.
You know you can have ascreenshot of a bunch of the
reviews and just post them onsocial.
You can do it from within atool like Sinisto, or you can
simply you know, at least makesure you're putting them on your
website so that people can seethose live feed.
(34:04):
It's a way to give that socialproof that people are looking
for without having to leave yourwebsite.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, yeah.
So you just mentioned Sinistoand this is a plug for that,
because I'm a busy, busy woman.
Yeah, I have five kids, I havea brick and mortar store, I have
love to sugar, I have a podcast.
We're doing all the things Ihave to have a social life.
I like there's only 24 hours aday, I don't want to burn myself
(34:32):
out.
Like seriously, when it came totech, I was like great, you got
to help me.
Man, when I met you, we werejust talking about, you know,
socials and just websites ingeneral, and then you came out
with a Sinisto thing and I'mlike dude, you're magical.
Please help us to understandthat there really are tools out
(34:56):
there that you know.
When you say, like embeddingyour review, you know people go,
like I said they're walking onthe trail, I'm going, oh, great,
let me just embed my reviewreal quick.
Like you know, let me put it onmy to-do list.
You know, like what have youseen that is and why you created
these tools in our industry,like most, like it's not that
(35:22):
we're not smart, it's not thatwe don't want to do this, it's
really that there's just so muchto know and you kind of take
that off the plate.
So address that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, I mean, it comes back to time.
Even with a website service,where we started.
It's like you can go, you know,create your own website
elsewhere.
You can take the time to createthe content that we'll need.
You can go create the website,figure out the website builder,
figure out the SEO and all thatright, it's going to take you a
minimum of 20 hours I wouldguess probably more than that
(35:55):
and how many weeks?
Glasses of wines, headaches, etcetera, you know.
So we want to save the peopletime and set them up for success
.
So if we can do that in astrategic, you know, more
systematized way for you, wewant to help with that.
And then on the review side, youknow, it was like we saw that
people are spending so much timeand resources on all these
other social platforms right butthey're not spending it on the
(36:17):
ones that really move the needle.
You know, if you listen to ourpodcast, we had over 130 guests
and I look at all these people'sbusinesses.
They are ranking at the top fortheir website as well as their
reviews.
We're fortunate enough to dowork with a lot of them, but
others, you know, don't.
But we want to make sure thatwe set them up for success.
So with reviews, we knew likeit's hard to make the ask.
(36:38):
So you know, with Sinistro, forinstance, you can go get the
reviews from within the tool.
It'll send out either SMS oremail.
You can send it out directly.
You can do one client at a time.
You can upload a CSV of athousand clients at a time and
it'll do it for you.
To take that a step further,because people's time is so
limited, it's hard to rememberhey, I sent out this review but
(36:59):
nobody answered.
Right, we have automatedreminders at three and seven
days to where, if somebodydoesn't click that link, it'll
send them a reminder and you cancustomize what that reminder
says.
So it's not the same messageover and over again and some
people don't want to be buggedpeople.
But at the end of the day youtypically have to ask more than
once to get a review, unlessit's a good friend where you can
literally sit beside them andwatch them do it.
(37:19):
But you know, systematizing thatand adding it to it.
You know we want to build outsome more things, but at least
having that and having a place.
You know it creates a reviewlink, it creates a QR code.
You can do all that from withinit.
You can look at the analyticsand see how well it's doing.
And even recently we added athing to because it's so
important to reply to all yourreviews.
You can go in and hit reply.
If you don't want to type yourown thing, just click AI reply
(37:42):
and it will send like a threeparagraph, a nicely written
thing.
It actually interprets thereview and then reads through
and puts out a legitimateresponse.
Yeah, and that's good, becauseyou're not going to Google and
seeing every single reply is thesame and Google sees that too
Like thank you so much, grant.
Thank you so much, carly.
Thank you so much, sarah.
It's like legitimately, likewe're glad you had a great
experience, you mentioned this,this and that, like it actually
(38:04):
reads through and gives you alegitimate reply within that.
So all these things can be done.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
I'm so grateful for you.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
So you can go in and look at the reviews, you can
filter and see.
You know, you can pull in.
Once you connect your profile,for instance, it'll show you all
the reviews and you can say hey, show me all the unanswered
reviews.
Even if they're from five yearsago, we still want to reply to
all those.
And you can go through andknock those out.
You know, one at a time.
You can use the AI reply or youcan actually reply yourself,
but there's just so manybenefits to doing that and
(38:31):
having a system whereeverything's controlled within
that.
And again, as far as theembedding goes, I know it's
confusing, but you know, ifyou're using a website builder
like ours, it's just a simplething where we would actually do
it for you.
We just need that code and clipit in there.
But we try to make all thatstuff as easy as possible
because we know how challengingit can be and how overwhelming
it is as a small business owner.
And really time is, you know,the most important thing.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Oh man, you're preaching to the choir.
So I have literally taken avery sporadic approach to my
social media as it relates to mybrick and mortar.
It's kind of like all over theplace.
When I had a minute when I wasthinking about it.
If I happen to be watchingsomething like, oh shoot, I
(39:16):
should probably look at myreviews.
I don't have time for that.
You took literally all of thisrandom all over the place time
and just made one spot for me togo.
I schedule into my day, into mymarketing piece.
I go in, I check everything, Ido what I need to do, check on
to the next thing.
Those are the things, like yousaid, that move the needle.
(39:41):
On that note, if you had, what'syour biggest advice?
If somebody was like gosh, I'mdoing lots of things, grant, I'm
doing dancing with my sugarball, on TikTok with the lip
syncing.
I asked for reviews a few yearsago.
I haven't looked at my websiteforever.
(40:02):
If I was really going to sitdown as of today, because it's
going to change this time nextyear and we're going to update
this, I think once a year weshould do this.
What's the biggest advice thatyou can give?
Beauty student, esthetician,cosmetologist, whatever beauty
pro, what's the biggest advicethat you could give us if we
(40:23):
want to really make thingsdifferent for next year?
How can we start now?
What can we do to really movethat needle?
That would be just like, maybeeven three things that would be
just so strong for our audienceFor sure.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I'd start with a Google Business profile, simply
because it's free and everybodycan utilize it.
If you don't have one, go setit up.
There's plenty of videos how todo it.
It'll walk you through theprocess.
Make sure that profile isfilled out to 100%.
Google actually tell you 80%,whatever that looks like.
Make sure you put thecategories, the description, a
unique description.
If you can put as many words inthere, fill it out.
Whatever the max words is, fillit out.
(40:59):
They want that.
Put pictures, put services, putpricing.
Fill it out 100%.
Make sure you do that.
If you're new, if you're a newprofile or not, go through.
If you don't want to use aservice like Sonisa, that's fine
.
If you have an email as ascheduling system, look at your
workflow and say how can I addthis review request in here?
(41:19):
If you're using any schedulingsoftware, you can certainly
probably set it up to say, 24hours after the appointment,
send this out.
Or I was interviewing somebodya couple days ago and she has
three locations now they havealmost 700 reviews collectively.
She's like I personally, as theowner, literally text the new
clients every day, the next dayand ask for that review.
(41:41):
Say, hey, I'm the owner.
I'd love your feedback and it'swork for her, so she could
utilize the tool, like Sonisa,and build that in if she wanted,
or she can manually do it, itdoesn't matter to us as long as
it's getting done, but that'sgoing to help boost you,
obviously.
So that's like a couple ofthings.
And then going back to thewebsite if you don't have a
website, get one.
Make sure you have that becauseat the end of the day, not only
from an SEO and visibilitystandpoint, but from a
(42:03):
credibility standpoint, it goesa long way in showing that
you're a legitimate business.
We subconsciously kind ofbasically gauge a business based
on all these factors, whetherit's social media or website,
and say they have a good website.
I could see them being theirluxury versus this website that
was thrown together 20 years agoand you're like, yeah, they're
(42:27):
probably not worth that ticketprice item.
So that credibility factorshuge.
So if you spend some time,improve your website, find a
service that can provide it foryou, whatever that looks like,
but make sure you have that andthat it's up to par for what you
need.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
I love it.
I love it, Grant.
I think we could legit.
I think we talked about threedifferent web podcasts that we
can do I think legit we couldmake this a monthly thing when
we just might do that.
Thank you so much for all you doand thank you for making my job
a whole lot easier, becausethere's just not enough hours in
the day for this sugar boss tomake all the things happen, and
(43:05):
you really just make it easier,because this is not our talent.
Our talent is in the treatmentroom, and if you can make our
jobs easier, then you're our newbest friend.
So I'm really really glad thatKelly Callahan from the play the
spray tour and all thedifferent spray tanning things
that she does, introduced us allthat time ago.
(43:26):
And for those of you that arenot marketing yourselves and
partnering with a spray tanner,oh, that's a whole another
podcast that I'm fixing to doright now, because we all have
the same audience and we can bereferring people back and forth.
So check the reviews and theGoogle business profiles of some
(43:47):
spray tanners in your area andsee if you can find someone to
partner with.
That's a whole another.
Like I said, there's a fourthpodcast.
Yeah, there you go, so thankyou so much for your time.
We are, as always, grateful tohave you in our toolbox and I
look forward to chatting withyou soon.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Thanks, shannon, take care.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
See, I told you so.
Grant is one of the coolestguys in our industry.
He is, as you heard, just calm,cool and collected, but he gets
a job done and he's reallyhelped me, as I said, in my
business, to just work smarter,not harder.
So I hope you enjoyed thisepisode.
I will tell you that we havesome powerhouse episodes coming
(44:26):
up that will change the way yousee sugar, to be honest.
You're going to be learningabout ingredients.
You're going to be learningabout the health of the skin,
nourishing the skin.
In the coming weeks and months,you're going to be learning more
about business, and there's somany ways that you can help your
business to grow.
Make sure there's bodies on thetable enjoying your sugar
(44:47):
services, your aestheticservices.
Even in the slower months, likeJanuary or March, you know it's
really about how you marketyourself, because if your
business is slow, it's becauseyou're not letting enough people
know about it.
So I hope you learned a lot andthat you're going to use these
tidbits in your business, and Ireally hope that you spend some
(45:09):
time on you and your clientsspecifically.
So have a fabulously sweet weekand I look forward to seeing
you in the next few weeks andmonths, and it's all about the
journey together, my friends.
So take care and stay sweet.
Welcome to this Sugar Show.
I'm Shannon O'Brien, bodysugaring expert and licensed
esthetician, who's taken my ownskincare business from zero to
multiple six figures and hashelped over 3,000 students learn
how to do the same.
Now let me tell you it wasn'tall that long ago that I lacked
the time, budget and knowledgeneeded to grow my small business
(00:22):
as a body sugaring pro.
If we were to press Rewind,you'd see the many failed
attempts and lessons learnedthat have helped me build the
profitable business that I havetoday, one that runs on its own
and gives me the lifestyle andfreedom that I only used to
dream of.
I created the Sugar Show tohand you my secrets and give you
the simple, step-by-stepstrategies to help you do the
(00:44):
same.
So if you're a cosmetologist oresthetician or wax professional
who's looking to fill yourbooks, make more money in your
business and enjoy greaterbalance between your work and
home life, you are in the rightplace.
Let's dive in.
(01:12):
Ladies and gentlemen, sugar Pros, estes and Cosmos.
It's Shannon from the SugarShow I am.
I always say I'm thrilled tomeet with guests, and I don't
know that I'm as much thrilledas I'm jazzed because I just dig
hanging out with GrantConscious from Go Happy Beauty.
He's one of the most laid-backguys in our industry and
(01:35):
probably one of the most crucial, because he just knows what we
need to do the job and has builtsoftware and programs to help
make that happen.
So I know that you havelistened to him.
In episode 75, I believe it wasabout what he does and really
you'd need to check a look atthe show notes and really spend
(02:01):
time going through what it isthat his company does.
There's so much to talk about,but in this episode we're not
going to talk sales or why youshould use his software.
We're going to talkspecifically about whether or
not in this day and age, youeven need a website, whether you
should just go with a freewebsite and what the benefits
(02:22):
are of that or not.
We're going to talk about SEO,search engine optimization and a
lot of this stuff sounds liketech.
I don't want to listen to thison my walk with my dog.
I don't want to listen to thison the treadmill, but really we
have a great conversation aboutthe reality check on what you
need to do to get your businessseen, especially locally.
(02:46):
The goal is to get bodies on thetable to be doing facials on to
be sugaring on, and if you arenot doing these few things in
this episode, then it is highlylikely that you will not be
standing out like your I hate tocall it competition, like the
other businesses in your areawill say.
Really, the idea is to do thethings that will get you the
(03:09):
most bang for your buck.
As he talks about here, whatwill move the needle?
Because, my friends, this timeof inflation and the recession
whether or not you believe thenthat the gas price is expensive,
the election coming up,everything seems like a reason
(03:30):
for why you're not doing well,but, in all honesty, we're not
marketing well enough.
We're not doing the things thatneed to get your information
pushed into the hands ofpotential clients and current
clients to know what else you do.
So we're going to talk about SEO.
We're going to talk about theadvice that he would give you if
you're like all right, I got tokind of get my stuff together.
(03:52):
We're going to talk aboutreviews how to use the good ones
, how to deal with the bad ones,with how to even get reviews
and what to do with them whenyou get them, because it's not
just like, oh gosh, I got afive-star review, yay me.
You got to do something with itin order to use it for
spreading the word.
So I know that you'll be jazzedafter you listen to this
(04:12):
episode.
In fact, you're definitelygoing to want to go to the show
notes because, especially ifyou're walking on the treadmill
or with your dog or doingsomething else while you're
listening to a podcast which isusually what we do you will
realize that there's a whole lotof wisdom in here, and I even
took notes throughout our chattogether.
So, ladies and gentlemen, Iintroduce you, or reintroduce
you, to Grant from Go HappyBeauty.
(04:34):
Okay, grant, happy Beauty.
Grant, are you ready to dazzlethem with your techie skills?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, I'm ready.
I'm ready, I think so.
Yeah, let's do it Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So I've already introduced you to everyone and I
just I freaking love hangingout with you, but let's talk
tech for beauty people.
Sure, let's talk about, likewhat we actually need, what we
really don't need to worry about, like how to handle stuff with
tech, and I've whipped up somequestions for you that have been
(05:10):
burning in our audience's brain, and so we're just going to
make this super easy so thatpeople that are walking their
dog Life is super easy, life issuper easy.
Listening to our podcast on thetreadmill, you know, at the gym
can like really just take somelike really solid golden nuggets
about SEO and websites andreviews and how the heck to do
(05:30):
all this.
So let's get down to it.
So, as it relates to beautyprofessionals, actually to the
world, what is SEO and how doesit work?
What the heck is this?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
How do we dispel this ?
You know search engineoptimization sounds so technical
.
No, I tell everybody, look,it's basically the process of of
, you know, ranking higher orbeing more visible for the terms
and searches you want to bevisible for, right.
So, depending on what specificmarkets you're in whether you're
sugaring or tanning or waxingor whatever, it is right you
(06:05):
want to come up with, somebodysearches for you in that area,
in your local area, right?
So essentially, you want tofind out how to increase your
visibility and there's obviouslyGoogle's algorithm is famous
for, or infamous, whatever youwant to say, for having over 200
ranking factors and all thesethings to confuse people.
But at the end of the day, youneed to be the best result for
(06:25):
whatever that query is.
You know somebody searching forthe best.
You know sugaring pro near themand they should come up for
that.
They want to come up for it,right.
So what do they need?
They need a website that can befound.
Obviously, you know Googlebusiness profile that can be
found and probably has the mostreviews if you want to be known
as the best, right, quote,unquote best person for that.
(06:45):
So you know there's a lot to it, obviously, behind the scenes
to get those things to come up.
But essentially, you know SEOis being visible for what you
want to be visible for, whateverthose, whether you offer one
service or 10 services.
You want to be visible for allthose different things Depending
on the situation, depending onwhat they're trying to rank for.
You know that'll be a littledifferent, but we want to make
(07:07):
sure that you're visible forthose terms.
You know somebody searching foryou locally.
You want to come up first.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Right, okay, easier said than done.
That sounds all great, but howdoes an esthetician,
cosmetologist, sugar proextraordinaire?
How do you easily get thataccomplished?
How do you easily like?
Where do you put the SEOs?
I know that's not what it is,it's just fun to say.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
No, I know it is.
Yeah, we always get that.
I mean for the, for the websiteitself.
I mean I started the websitebecause it's kind of the
foundational piece, right.
I mean, obviously, as time haschanged, google's algorithm has
adjusted.
I think the Google businessprofile on the website kind of
are neck and neck becausethey're obviously always
favoring their properties andthey obviously own the Google
business page.
So you have to think about that.
But for the website itself,most people you know what we see
(07:56):
is we obviously do websites, sowe optimize it out of the box
for people.
We've done the research, wejust implement that for them.
If you're doing it yourself, youneed to make sure that those
things are visible.
A lot of people are missingcontent on their site.
They're not mentioning anythingabout what they do.
They just say we're the best,we're going to make you feel
beautiful.
Like what does that mean?
What do you do?
What do you offer?
(08:16):
You know, one thing we like tosay is, when somebody comes to a
site, you should be able toanswer three questions what do
you have to offer, How's itgoing to make my life better and
how do I get it Right?
Those three things should beanswered almost instantaneously.
Most people miss out on that.
But aside from the contentitself, you know, if you want to
get more technical, the titleof the page.
You know.
If you're looking at SEO,regardless of your using our
(08:38):
system or Wix or Squarespace,the title of the page has a lot
to do with what that page, howGoogle understands what that
page is about.
So a lot of people miss out onthat.
If I go to sites that peoplehave made, usually when they go
to the homepage it says home andthen their business name.
You know they're missing out onthe opportunity to say sugaring
in whatever that city is, orwaxing in whatever that sugar
you know, and spray tanning inwhatever that city is.
(09:00):
So those are kind of high orI'd say low hanging fruit that a
lot of people are missing outon.
You know if they're building asite they don't have those
things implemented.
We know immediately we couldchange this to make it better.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, really, it's about the back end right and
making sure that you're not soworried about you know, it's
sure it's pretty colors and allthat, but what are you actually
saying?
Yeah, I hear that they thatlike it's just different than it
was before, like now, like the,the algorithms can actually
like understand what videos aresaying, like what words you're
(09:35):
saying in videos and like thewords on your page, like it
scrolls your whole page right ornot, just all like in addition
to the title.
So it's really important whatyou put on the page.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, absolutely yeah , because a lot of people,
obviously being in the beautyindustry, they want big images,
they want less text.
But you know, time after timethey do studies and Google's
constantly ranking the sitesthat have more and better
content on them.
Now there's strategic ways youcan add the text to the pages to
make sure it still looks good,but it still needs to understand
(10:07):
what it's about.
And I was having a conversationwith somebody the other day and
they have, you know, fullservice spots.
They said what we did?
You know we wanted to be at thetop for this first service,
right, so they wrote a pageabout that.
And then you know a litany ofblogs on that one specific
service.
Google's going to associatethem with that service and
they're going to be come upfirst in their area because
Google's like they're a subject,basically a subject matter
(10:29):
expert for that thing.
And then you kind of move downthe you know, go through the
services, add more pages, morecontent, but at the end of the
day, google wants to find thatinformation somewhere.
So if you have it on your site,you're going to benefit from it
.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So okay, so let's talk about that for a minute.
That's probably fascinating,because if you think about an
esthetician that sugars andthey're trying to set themselves
apart in their area, say theydo facials and they do sugaring,
if you think about it,everyone's talking about facials
, right?
So, you can put facials on yourwebsite.
Obviously you wanna let peopleknow what you're doing, but
(11:02):
wouldn't it benefit you to beefup your sugaring?
Because when people are lookingfor that, right, you would be
the one that comes up.
You're probably the only one inyour area that does it anyway
right now.
But like you really wanna beefup, like write blogs about
sugaring.
You know, like, for those ofyou that are listening, I talk
about sugaring all day long.
Listen to what I say and turnit into a blog.
(11:23):
You know, like, take that topicand turn it into a blog, right
and so, and nowadays, thosewebsites they like come with,
like, the ability to blog,usually in the software, right.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Is that what you?
do yeah, absolutely.
We build that.
You know and you can do it.
You can use whatever you needto generate those blogs.
A lot of people are overwhelmedbut if you wanna be the go-to
person, like, sugaring is kindof very similar to where we we
kind of made our roots and spraytanning, right, it was like not
as much competition.
So people we've been workingwith for years have been at the
top and they're still reapingthose benefits now.
(11:56):
Now there's more competition.
So if you're starting fresh,obviously there's more
challenges.
But if you dedicate yourself,if you're the go-to person,
google's gonna associate thatwith you, right?
So, thinking on you know thetopic of sugaring, you could
create the service page and thenthink about people don't know
what to blog about, right?
Think about the top questionsyou get from potential clients,
and each one of those is a blogin and of itself in addition to
(12:19):
adding them to the FAQs on yoursugaring page, you can elaborate
on them in blogs.
If you're not a great writer, gohire it out at Fiverr, speak it
into a mic, go to these, youknow, I think-.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
ChatGPT.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, chatgpt Revcom will take it and translate,
transcribe I think it's a dollarper minute into actual texts
and they'll make sure it's goodgrammar and everything for like
a dollar per minute.
It's like there's really noexcuse not to do it anymore.
So you know, and I've done thatbefore you don't have time to
write it Literally, you speak itinto audio, send it in and it
translates it.
There's probably free serviceson it, honestly, for that now.
(12:52):
But if you wanna be the expert,the go-to person, you need to
make sure that you are.
They're good, like you mightknow in your head that you're
the go-to person, but doesGoogle know?
If not, then you need to makesure you are.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Okay, some of our students and audience are like,
oh shoot, do I have to have aGoogle business profile?
I think I heard about that backin the day, but how do we even
do that, like without divinginto super Google?
But like, where do you someonego to make sure like to start to
have a Google business profile,cause we'll talk about websites
(13:26):
next.
But like, where do you startwith, like, the Google business
profile?
Cause that's super important.
People are Googling.
You have to have a Googleprofile.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Go to Google, type in Google mybusiness is.
You know the Google businessprofile.
Now go there, type it in, it'llcome up.
You hit start now.
It's a pretty quick process ofsetting it up.
I'm assuming most people areworking at a physical location.
If, for some reason, you're gota home studio, you don't want
to display that address, ormaybe you're mobile.
We have mobile tanners.
Make sure you say that youservice your clients at their
(13:56):
location, then it'll actuallyhide your address.
So a lot of people hesitate, atleast in the tanning world,
because they're mobile and theydon't want to put out their
actual address.
You just say I service them attheir location, then you're a
mobile business.
But you set it up.
They send a postcard typically.
Sometimes it'll automaticallyverify, but most times it sends
a postcard to the address youput in that code, your profile
(14:16):
is set up.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Gotcha okay and then so it's really important to have
a website.
I see a lot of people who justget the free website template.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
You know, like let's talk about the free website Like
where would you go to get yourwebsite done?
Well, I mean, that's what weexpect, and free websites even
work like it's easy to fill inthe blanks.
But does that even work?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well, it depends.
We obviously specialize in that.
You know what was happy tans?
I'll go happy beauty for sure.
But with the free websites,let's say you go to something
like a Wix, they're not gonnagive you.
If you're doing the free levelat my last time I checked, at
least you're gonna get.
You're not gonna get your owndomain, so you're gonna have
something somethingsomethingwixsitecom, right.
(15:08):
So first, that's notprofessional.
Second, it's not gonna rank onGoogle very it'll be very
challenging to rank, just theway that it works without
getting too technical.
So, free website people aretypically taking a template.
They're changing out images,changing out text and then they
roll with it.
I think there's limitationsthere because there's so much
(15:28):
that goes on behind the scenes,as we talked about the title and
all this stuff, right, that'sone of the beauties of what we
do is we actually do all thatfor you.
So I'll have to say, secondguess it or think about it.
But you know you're going inthere using the free template.
You're probably changing outpictures and words where you can
, because it's set up as atemplate.
You don't know how to movethings around and then you're
pushing it out as it is andagain, it's not gonna be
(15:49):
optimized unless you've done theresearch and implemented it and
you're gonna have somelimitations there, because that
template was probably not set upfor sugaring in this case.
Right, it's set up for someother random beauty service.
So you know, if nothing else,at least do the free site.
But that would be the bareminimum.
I would say it's better than nosite at all, but not much
better.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Right, right.
So nowadays there's a lot ofespecially younger estheticians.
I say that because I'm aseasoned, older gal.
There's a lot of younger galsthat are like I don't wanna
bother with website, I'm justgonna make like a link.
I'm big into Instagram, I'mgonna use Linktree or linkinbio
and just send people to you know, to book with me.
(16:29):
Why is that not smart to justrely on a social media platform,
even if it's Facebook, with abook now button, and not have an
actual website?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
You know there's a lot of things to be said.
Obviously, there's been timeswhere those systems have gone
down and you're offline.
Right, it's out of your control.
That's one thing I mean.
The biggest thing is you don'town that content they do.
So you have to consider that.
The website is a you know, wetell everybody this.
It's the hub for everything youdo, whether it's online or
offline marketing.
(17:01):
Your website address is thereand people are gonna just be
like I'm here and people aregonna see that and it's visible.
It's a lot easier to put youknow happytanscom than it is to
put linktree you know forward,slash back, slash all this and
people can find that.
And then on the website, youcan control the narrative.
You can set it up how you want.
They can navigate how they wantand you set yourself apart.
(17:24):
You're more credible.
You look different.
You're not the same aseverybody's Instagram profile.
Whether it's more aestheticallypleasing, it still looks the
same.
It's still this grid of images.
And then you know you mentioned, like a link tree, the thing
where you put the bios in there.
I tell everybody you should justbuild that, you know, into your
site.
It's easy to do.
You should have that at yourdriving traffic than, rather
than to a link tree address.
(17:45):
You're driving it to youractual website, which helps, and
then you obviously have them onyour website and at that point
you can do what you wish.
You can have a popup come up.
They get some on your emaillist.
You can have all the relevantlinks you want.
You can send them to anotherpage after they click something.
Whatever you wanna do, right,it's kind of open to you.
But at that point again, you'recontrolling what happens,
(18:05):
versus using these third partyservices, where there's some
limitations there.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, oh, there's so much to know and so much to do.
I know, I mean really, at theend of the day, it's.
It's that website is your houseand no matter what the latest
thing is to drive them to yourhouse TikTok, instagram,
whatever the next thing is likethe house is what you have to
(18:34):
have, tight, right, and so youhave to have all the keywords
that you want people to find youfor.
You know your pictures not likeyou know pictures of you and
your cat.
Like you know, like pictures ofyou doing what you do and being
the master.
You know, it's never been easierto do a blog post with search
(18:56):
engine optimized keywords thatwill you got to gain, play the
game here, right, like it's notjust oh, I'm not a good writer,
it's hey, use a tool that willsay sugaring, hair removal, body
sugaring, brazilians like,we'll use these keywords.
So explain really quick this isprobably like the craziest
(19:19):
question you've probably heard.
Well, maybe not crazy, butexplain in basic form what an
algorithm actually is.
Sure, because I'm sure a lot ofbeauty people are like aha, the
algorithm, and it's just thislike nebulous thing.
Like what is an algorithm as itrelates to all of this data?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, I mean it's a way for, for instance, in
Google's case, to make sense ofwhatever people, whatever that
query is right.
So they're using all thesethings in the background to
check what somebody types in andto return the best solution you
know for that query.
So it's their way to take, youknow, an ungodly amount of data
and process it very quickly andthen return that to you.
(20:00):
So I think you know a lot ofpeople get caught in that,
whether it's an Instagramalgorithm, a TikTok algorithm, a
Google algorithm.
But you just really have toknow what works.
You know and dispel all theother things and we tell people
this.
When I do presentations on SEO,it's like we're focused on that.
You know the Pareto's principle.
What's the 20% that's going tomove the needle?
80% of the way, we're notworried about all these other
(20:20):
little things that couldpossibly help, but they're not
really going to move the needle.
We just want to set people upfor success and focus on those
few things that make the biggestdifference in their business,
because we know time is limited,so we want to make sure we can
leverage that and utilize it asbest we can.
Sure, sure.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
What are you seeing right now as of this recording
is like really the socialplatform that's really working
for local marketing?
Because I really think thatsometimes estheticians feel like
they got to be on all theplatforms and sometimes what
that does is it doesn't hit yourlocal audience.
It's just like, oh, dancing onTikTok, showing sugar, you know
(20:58):
talking about, you know like lipsyncing to whatever that kind
of goes to this nationalaudience.
And if we're going to be smartwith our time, how do we really
hone in on the local audiencewithout spending all this time
dancing to the latest socialmedia?
Like, what platform are youfinding is really like moving
(21:18):
the needle best for localesthetician?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
marketing Like Google business, for sure.
Google, my business, 100%.
I mean most people don't thinkof it.
As you know, it's not probablymentioned the same breath as a
social media profile like anInstagram, facebook or TikTok.
But for local business, forpeople actually seeking out the
service, you want to be foundright and people are investing
all this energy on an Instagram,a TikTok in the hope that
somebody that's searching for asugaring pro in their area is
(21:46):
going to look for them.
Wow, the people that areactually seeking the service are
on Google searching it out, andyou're not there, so you know.
And on Google business, you canupdate photos, post updates,
all these things.
People aren't doing that andthey help with relevancy and all
that kind of stuff that Googleis looking for and people aren't
spending the time there.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Okay the audience.
Stop for a minute on thattreadmill.
If you can write it down or putit in your notes, I want you to
really really hear this have awebsite that makes sense.
Spend the time You're going tospend thousands and thousands
and thousands and thousands ofdollars on a designer.
Have a website that makes sense, meaning it has all the right
(22:29):
words, all the right meat thatyou want people to know about
you.
Let it sell you.
Don't kill yourself to be doingall the different.
You know social media pieces.
Start with a solid, rock starGoogle business profile.
(22:49):
Fill it with really goodpictures, really good reviews
we're talking about reviews in aminute, but really good, like
make sure that you're asking forreviews.
Fill that up, because whenpeople are Googling, guess
what's going to pull up in thealgorithm?
The Google business information, right.
Like that's the first place youwant.
(23:10):
If you're not a social mediaperson and you just really don't
love it.
Start with those two things.
Dial those things in and makesure they're right.
Then you can go next toInstagram, probably for our
world.
Make sure your Instagram istight.
We'll do another podcast onthat.
Make sure your Instagram istight.
But your website, your Googlebusiness profile and your emails
(23:34):
, and we're going to talk aboutthat in another podcast because
there's so much to talk about,but those are so, so important.
So let's go back to reviews,because I know that there's a
lot of people that if you golook up your Google business
review or your Google businessprofile, you might not have any
reviews because you haven'tasked for them.
You need to get more reviews.
(23:55):
Your head is spinning becauseyou're like great, now I got to
do this.
Like why?
So?
Do reviews actually help yourlocal business?
What your reputation with yourfriends and family that live
elsewhere because you dance sogreat and lip sync so well?
It's talking about gettingbutts on the table.
(24:15):
I want to sugar butts.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And who has and brows and all the things.
No-transcript.
Do reviews actually help that?
Because back in the day it waslike, oh, Yelp, oh, who cares
about Yelp?
I know let's talk about reviewsand what actually helps.
Put booties on the table.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, If you look at the studies they have outside of
, the number one search factoras far as Google Business goes
would be proximity.
So the proximity to that person, your business is to that
person when they're searching.
That is one of those things.
That's while it's in yourcontrol.
It's not.
You're probably signed to somethree-year lease or whatever it
is.
So that is what it is.
(24:56):
Outside of that, the reviewsand, more importantly, the
consistency of those reviews isvery, very important, and that's
where a lot of people miss outis consistently asking for them.
Maybe you do an email blastonce a month and ask for them,
or once a quarter, maybe once ayear, who knows you might get a
handful, once and never.
Once and never.
Yeah, and you might get ahandful of reviews at that time,
(25:17):
but it's not consistent.
So we see the people that aretaking action.
They've built it into theirworkflow, whether they're
actually manually sending a textto their new clients at the end
of every day, at the beginningof every day, whatever that
looks like, or emailing andrequesting it, but just simply
making the ask on a consistentbasis.
And people are not going to doit all the time.
We know that time is of theessence and people don't want to
(25:41):
spend their time, but there'scertain ways you can ask for it
Let people know in your text orwhatever.
Hey, this takes about 20 or 30seconds.
Just leave us honest feedbackand things like that.
We sent out an email about thisand we had some people get like
10 reviews in one day, justsimply copy and pasting what we
put in there.
But it's like keep it simplebut make the ask.
Most people are not doing thatand the reviews are huge.
(26:03):
You can read a bunch of studies, but about somewhere around 80%
to 85% of people choose a localbusiness based solely on their
reviews.
So it's one of those at the endof the day, if nothing else, if
they find you on Instagram orfind your website.
It's kind of a fact check howgood are these people?
They have 100 something reviews.
Obviously, that's pretty good,so that's a good way to kind of
(26:27):
cross verify that for them.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, you really got to make sure you stand out and
there's going to be more andmore people that sugar because
we're training all of them.
And they're going to be comingto your town and we want to make
sure, and if they're moving toa new town, they're going to
want to see do these people evenhave reviews?
They're dropping their clothesfor you, whether they're spray
(26:49):
tanning with your audience, orthey're getting sugared or even
getting facials.
They're dropping their clothesfor you.
They want to hear some reviewson whether or not you're any
good, exactly so.
Ok, so what you're saying, thenis so those of you that have a
Google Business profile, youdouble checked?
Oh yeah, I should probablyupdate my photos, because those
are from five years ago.
(27:09):
Right, like that's my oldfurniture or my old setup or my
old colors or whatever?
Update your stuff.
But I would venture to guess, ifwe're real, a lot of people got
all excited about GoogleBusiness Profile.
They asked all their friends tosend a review, and then you
forgot about it, and that wasfour years ago, five years ago,
(27:31):
and so now you have five starreviews, but they were from a
really long time ago.
You're saying those kind of dieon the vine.
They need to be fresh all thetime.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, yeah, if you're looking for relevancy, google
uses all these factors to buildthat algorithm, but that's one
of them is how consistent areyou with getting those reviews?
If you, I'd rather get one aweek for the whole year than get
50 in one day.
It's going to pay much moredividends long term for you, ok
so Google likes that better.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Obviously we want lots ofamazing reviews, but Google
actually there's a method behindthe madness, right?
This isn't touting.
Oh, look at me how wonderful Iam to get five stars.
This is we need consistentpeople coming in and saying we
love her, we love them, we loveit, we love sugar, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Ok, yeah so if you build that into your workflow,
it's important.
And to think of it from maybeit was about a year ago.
About this time last year, Ifeel like it was like, hey,
google's hiding all thesereviews, what's going on?
But it's Google's way to fightit.
I've been on the other side ofthat, where we're getting one
star reviews from Donald Duckand it's obvious that they're
fake, but it's not againstGoogle's terms of service.
They can't remove it, whateverthat looks like.
(28:37):
So Google's kind of built thisin to try to figure out how do
we do this and hide the onesthat we're not sure about.
But if they're getting 50 newreviews in one day, it's like a
red flag.
Like, hey, something's notright and Google has a lot more
understanding than we know of.
Like this is a certain type ofbusiness.
They could probably serve anumber of clients in a day.
(28:57):
It's not unusual to get tworeviews in one day, because they
understand that you're a beautybusiness and people come
through the door.
They understand the differencebetween that and a contractor.
They're not going to build fivehouses in a day.
So it's like they have a verydeep, rude understanding.
Like has this person, thisGmail account, ever left a
review before?
How long ago was it?
Are they friends with thisperson?
They know all that stuff andit's pretty crazy to think about
(29:20):
, but the consistent ask is themost important thing there.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, yeah.
Ok, so we see our reviews upthere.
Like you said, some are fake,some are your friends.
Google understands if they'reyour friends.
How I'm gonna start with anegative.
How do we handle a negativereview Cause?
those are really hard to read.
(29:44):
Now let me tell you, sugar Pros, I have two thoughts on the
negative review.
Before you answer this, grant,the first thing is really look
at that negative review and askyourself are they probably right
?
Did you show up late and yourroom was a mess and you talked
about yourself the whole time?
If the review is probably right, it's probably time to, like,
(30:08):
take a little stock in whatyou're doing and use it as a
positive fuel for you.
So there's that, right.
So I think that sometimes weneed to hear a little negative
criticism to understand, like, Ican't just slack in my business
.
So there's that.
But then there's also thenegative review, where you know
you're providing an amazingservice, you know that you're
(30:30):
doing the best that you can, andthere's always gonna be that
negative Nelly, that you didn'tdo it, just perfect.
The tea you handed her was alittle too hot when she sat in
your quiet area and now she'sgiving you a two star review
because she didn't likechamomile tea, she wanted green
tea or whatever.
Like there's those people,right?
(30:50):
So should we be no contact, notresponding Like we never saw it
or heard it?
Like, oh, I got a negativereview.
What do you mean Like I don'tpay attention to those, or
should we actually be responding?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I'll preface this by saying youshould read and respond to
every single review, negative orpositive.
That's a huge thing.
Google wants to see that aswell.
But for those negative reviews,I personally have read a lot
and I've seen some people whereit's almost like they take it
personally and they're fightingback in the reviews and that
looks even worse than notreplying at all.
(31:27):
So make sure you don't do that.
Take it for what it's worth,Whether it's a legit, like you
said.
The first case it's alegitimate piece of feedback,
right, we actually got afive-storey review for our
website build over the other day, but they also gave some
feedback of like, hey, it wouldbe nice to improve this process,
and I was like, funny, you saythat we're literally banging our
head against the wall trying tofigure that out.
So if somebody gives you alegitimate feedback, take it for
(31:48):
what it's worth.
It may be that person, like yousaid in scenario two, where
it's like they're gonna complainabout everything.
Offer them a solution.
Thank you so much for yourfeedback.
We appreciate you taking time.
We'd love to offer yousomething or we'll reach out to
you, whatever that looks like.
But do make sure you replythere and if it's something that
you know, it's that scenariotwo, where you're fired up and
(32:09):
you're like this isn't true.
Sit on it for 24 hours beforeyou reply and you'll often
rethink how you're gonna replyin that knee-jerk reaction to
where you're gonna be frustratedand reply that way.
So but do reply and make sureit's in a positive light,
because it's gonna show more onyou than that person that's in
the video On your character.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Sure, absolutely, and try offline to maybe make it
right.
Like there might be somethingyou absolutely didn't do great,
like reach out to that person,not through the review response,
but reach out to that personand say, hey, I saw your Google
review.
Maybe one of your staff membersreally didn't do a great job.
I'd love to improve that foryou.
(32:48):
How can I have you back andmake that better and make sure I
have green tea in my pocket andnot all chamomile, or whatever.
But and say I hear you, I hearyou and I would make this right.
You know like I love that.
But how can we use thosepositive reviews without saying,
(33:09):
oh my gosh girl, thank you somuch for the five stars, I love
you too.
It's amazing.
Yes, we should respond.
But how can we use thosestrategically to our benefit?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
You can.
I mean, there's a number ofways you could share those out
on social media.
Obviously, it's a great way toshare the feedback in that, and
then also, obviously, embeddingthem on your website to showcase
the testimonials.
And, you know, put the livefeed from Google on there so
people not, you know, notwritten text where you could
copy and paste whatever you want, but it's important to do that.
You know, our new review toolthat we have, sinisto, allows
(33:42):
the embedding and the socialsharing directly from within the
tool.
We could talk more about thatlater, but it's important to
make sure that you're utilizingthose and leveraging them for
whatever it is and it's.
You know you can have ascreenshot of a bunch of the
reviews and just post them onsocial.
You can do it from within atool like Sinisto, or you can
simply you know, at least makesure you're putting them on your
website so that people can seethose live feed.
(34:04):
It's a way to give that socialproof that people are looking
for without having to leave yourwebsite.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, yeah.
So you just mentioned Sinistoand this is a plug for that,
because I'm a busy, busy woman.
Yeah, I have five kids, I havea brick and mortar store, I have
love to sugar, I have a podcast.
We're doing all the things Ihave to have a social life.
I like there's only 24 hours aday, I don't want to burn myself
(34:32):
out.
Like seriously, when it came totech, I was like great, you got
to help me.
Man, when I met you, we werejust talking about, you know,
socials and just websites ingeneral, and then you came out
with a Sinisto thing and I'mlike dude, you're magical.
Please help us to understandthat there really are tools out
(34:56):
there that you know.
When you say, like embeddingyour review, you know people go,
like I said they're walking onthe trail, I'm going, oh, great,
let me just embed my reviewreal quick.
Like you know, let me put it onmy to-do list.
You know, like what have youseen that is and why you created
these tools in our industry,like most, like it's not that
(35:22):
we're not smart, it's not thatwe don't want to do this, it's
really that there's just so muchto know and you kind of take
that off the plate.
So address that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, I mean, it comes back to time.
Even with a website service,where we started.
It's like you can go, you know,create your own website
elsewhere.
You can take the time to createthe content that we'll need.
You can go create the website,figure out the website builder,
figure out the SEO and all thatright, it's going to take you a
minimum of 20 hours I wouldguess probably more than that
(35:55):
and how many weeks?
Glasses of wines, headaches, etcetera, you know.
So we want to save the peopletime and set them up for success
.
So if we can do that in astrategic, you know, more
systematized way for you, wewant to help with that.
And then on the review side, youknow, it was like we saw that
people are spending so much timeand resources on all these
other social platforms right butthey're not spending it on the
(36:17):
ones that really move the needle.
You know, if you listen to ourpodcast, we had over 130 guests
and I look at all these people'sbusinesses.
They are ranking at the top fortheir website as well as their
reviews.
We're fortunate enough to dowork with a lot of them, but
others, you know, don't.
But we want to make sure thatwe set them up for success.
So with reviews, we knew likeit's hard to make the ask.
(36:38):
So you know, with Sinistro, forinstance, you can go get the
reviews from within the tool.
It'll send out either SMS oremail.
You can send it out directly.
You can do one client at a time.
You can upload a CSV of athousand clients at a time and
it'll do it for you.
To take that a step further,because people's time is so
limited, it's hard to rememberhey, I sent out this review but
(36:59):
nobody answered.
Right, we have automatedreminders at three and seven
days to where, if somebodydoesn't click that link, it'll
send them a reminder and you cancustomize what that reminder
says.
So it's not the same messageover and over again and some
people don't want to be buggedpeople.
But at the end of the day youtypically have to ask more than
once to get a review, unlessit's a good friend where you can
literally sit beside them andwatch them do it.
(37:19):
But you know, systematizing thatand adding it to it.
You know we want to build outsome more things, but at least
having that and having a place.
You know it creates a reviewlink, it creates a QR code.
You can do all that from withinit.
You can look at the analyticsand see how well it's doing.
And even recently we added athing to because it's so
important to reply to all yourreviews.
You can go in and hit reply.
If you don't want to type yourown thing, just click AI reply
(37:42):
and it will send like a threeparagraph, a nicely written
thing.
It actually interprets thereview and then reads through
and puts out a legitimateresponse.
Yeah, and that's good, becauseyou're not going to Google and
seeing every single reply is thesame and Google sees that too
Like thank you so much, grant.
Thank you so much, carly.
Thank you so much, sarah.
It's like legitimately, likewe're glad you had a great
experience, you mentioned this,this and that, like it actually
(38:04):
reads through and gives you alegitimate reply within that.
So all these things can be done.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
I'm so grateful for you.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
So you can go in and look at the reviews, you can
filter and see.
You know, you can pull in.
Once you connect your profile,for instance, it'll show you all
the reviews and you can say hey, show me all the unanswered
reviews.
Even if they're from five yearsago, we still want to reply to
all those.
And you can go through andknock those out.
You know, one at a time.
You can use the AI reply or youcan actually reply yourself,
but there's just so manybenefits to doing that and
(38:31):
having a system whereeverything's controlled within
that.
And again, as far as theembedding goes, I know it's
confusing, but you know, ifyou're using a website builder
like ours, it's just a simplething where we would actually do
it for you.
We just need that code and clipit in there.
But we try to make all thatstuff as easy as possible
because we know how challengingit can be and how overwhelming
it is as a small business owner.
And really time is, you know,the most important thing.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Oh man, you're preaching to the choir.
So I have literally taken avery sporadic approach to my
social media as it relates to mybrick and mortar.
It's kind of like all over theplace.
When I had a minute when I wasthinking about it.
If I happen to be watchingsomething like, oh shoot, I
(39:16):
should probably look at myreviews.
I don't have time for that.
You took literally all of thisrandom all over the place time
and just made one spot for me togo.
I schedule into my day, into mymarketing piece.
I go in, I check everything, Ido what I need to do, check on
to the next thing.
Those are the things, like yousaid, that move the needle.
(39:41):
On that note, if you had, what'syour biggest advice?
If somebody was like gosh, I'mdoing lots of things, grant, I'm
doing dancing with my sugarball, on TikTok with the lip
syncing.
I asked for reviews a few yearsago.
I haven't looked at my websiteforever.
(40:02):
If I was really going to sitdown as of today, because it's
going to change this time nextyear and we're going to update
this, I think once a year weshould do this.
What's the biggest advice thatyou can give?
Beauty student, esthetician,cosmetologist, whatever beauty
pro, what's the biggest advicethat you could give us if we
(40:23):
want to really make thingsdifferent for next year?
How can we start now?
What can we do to really movethat needle?
That would be just like, maybeeven three things that would be
just so strong for our audienceFor sure.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I'd start with a Google Business profile, simply
because it's free and everybodycan utilize it.
If you don't have one, go setit up.
There's plenty of videos how todo it.
It'll walk you through theprocess.
Make sure that profile isfilled out to 100%.
Google actually tell you 80%,whatever that looks like.
Make sure you put thecategories, the description, a
unique description.
If you can put as many words inthere, fill it out.
Whatever the max words is, fillit out.
(40:59):
They want that.
Put pictures, put services, putpricing.
Fill it out 100%.
Make sure you do that.
If you're new, if you're a newprofile or not, go through.
If you don't want to use aservice like Sonisa, that's fine
.
If you have an email as ascheduling system, look at your
workflow and say how can I addthis review request in here?
(41:19):
If you're using any schedulingsoftware, you can certainly
probably set it up to say, 24hours after the appointment,
send this out.
Or I was interviewing somebodya couple days ago and she has
three locations now they havealmost 700 reviews collectively.
She's like I personally, as theowner, literally text the new
clients every day, the next dayand ask for that review.
(41:41):
Say, hey, I'm the owner.
I'd love your feedback and it'swork for her, so she could
utilize the tool, like Sonisa,and build that in if she wanted,
or she can manually do it, itdoesn't matter to us as long as
it's getting done, but that'sgoing to help boost you,
obviously.
So that's like a couple ofthings.
And then going back to thewebsite if you don't have a
website, get one.
Make sure you have that becauseat the end of the day, not only
from an SEO and visibilitystandpoint, but from a
(42:03):
credibility standpoint, it goesa long way in showing that
you're a legitimate business.
We subconsciously kind ofbasically gauge a business based
on all these factors, whetherit's social media or website,
and say they have a good website.
I could see them being theirluxury versus this website that
was thrown together 20 years agoand you're like, yeah, they're
(42:27):
probably not worth that ticketprice item.
So that credibility factorshuge.
So if you spend some time,improve your website, find a
service that can provide it foryou, whatever that looks like,
but make sure you have that andthat it's up to par for what you
need.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
I love it.
I love it, Grant.
I think we could legit.
I think we talked about threedifferent web podcasts that we
can do I think legit we couldmake this a monthly thing when
we just might do that.
Thank you so much for all you doand thank you for making my job
a whole lot easier, becausethere's just not enough hours in
the day for this sugar boss tomake all the things happen, and
(43:05):
you really just make it easier,because this is not our talent.
Our talent is in the treatmentroom, and if you can make our
jobs easier, then you're our newbest friend.
So I'm really really glad thatKelly Callahan from the play the
spray tour and all thedifferent spray tanning things
that she does, introduced us allthat time ago.
(43:26):
And for those of you that arenot marketing yourselves and
partnering with a spray tanner,oh, that's a whole another
podcast that I'm fixing to doright now, because we all have
the same audience and we can bereferring people back and forth.
So check the reviews and theGoogle business profiles of some
(43:47):
spray tanners in your area andsee if you can find someone to
partner with.
That's a whole another.
Like I said, there's a fourthpodcast.
Yeah, there you go, so thankyou so much for your time.
We are, as always, grateful tohave you in our toolbox and I
look forward to chatting withyou soon.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Thanks, shannon, take care.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
See, I told you so.
Grant is one of the coolestguys in our industry.
He is, as you heard, just calm,cool and collected, but he gets
a job done and he's reallyhelped me, as I said, in my
business, to just work smarter,not harder.
So I hope you enjoyed thisepisode.
I will tell you that we havesome powerhouse episodes coming
(44:26):
up that will change the way yousee sugar, to be honest.
You're going to be learningabout ingredients.
You're going to be learningabout the health of the skin,
nourishing the skin.
In the coming weeks and months,you're going to be learning more
about business, and there's somany ways that you can help your
business to grow.
Make sure there's bodies on thetable enjoying your sugar
(44:47):
services, your aestheticservices.
Even in the slower months, likeJanuary or March, you know it's
really about how you marketyourself, because if your
business is slow, it's becauseyou're not letting enough people
know about it.
So I hope you learned a lot andthat you're going to use these
tidbits in your business, and Ireally hope that you spend some
(45:09):
time on you and your clientsspecifically.
So have a fabulously sweet weekand I look forward to seeing
you in the next few weeks andmonths, and it's all about the
journey together, my friends.
So take care and stay sweet.
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