Next-Level Local SEO: Expert Insights from Mandeep Bhalla of Grow Nearby Inc

Video u200aTranscription:

To the listeners, if you are a restoration company or hvac, plumbing, electrical, garage door, And or any, niche it could be outside of home service industry, ud83dudccd but when it comes to local seo, ud83dudccd

u00a0

Hi, and welcome to the 91 Day Success Podcast.

u200aI’m Jonathan, and today

I’m honored to have Mandeep with me. Mandeep is from Grow Nearby in Tampa, Florida, and he is a peer of mine in the marketing industry and I am just so excited because I’ve learned so much from him over the past couple of years and really excited for what he can share today.

Mandeep, for those of you that may not. Or those of us that may not be familiar with you on the podcast here, can you give us kind of a 32nd elevator introduction? Tell us about Mandeep Grow nearby and, a little bit from there. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you Jonathan for inviting me on your show.

I am honored and yes Mandeep Paula. I’m the founder and CEO of Grow Nearby. We are a home service or marketing agency here in Tampa, Florida. We focus on H V A C, plumbing, electrical, garage door, now pest control, pre-service, just complete home service or marketing company. We do websites and when it comes to campaigns, organic campaigns, seo local social media.

So that’s what we do. And we, have a team of. 30 and from six countries from, we have people in the US and, in other countries, five more countries. So we have team from six countries and clients across the country. Yep. That’s absolutely fantastic if you would. Mandeep let’s, walk back to as you got started in the digital marketing area.

I know you’ve had a tremendous amount of experience prior to, founding, grow nearby, but talk to the our, audience a little bit about what caused you to go out on your own and found your own agency and, how did you end up serving home service professionals? Thank you for asking. That’s a great question.

So that goes back to my journey. So I born and raised in India and I was into it for almost a decade. And but, d but in my d n a entrepreneurship is there. Entrepreneurship is my d n a, my dad was into trades. He, was actually door and windows company. He was serving with his like door and windows services in India, back in India.

And I used to go and help him when I was like nine year old, 10, 10 year old, and going and helping him with the projects. That’s how my childhood. Was almost there for years helping him and obviously going to school and college. That was that is something I was part of.

But I joined I did my masters of computer applications and then I joined IT company like several IT companies almost 10 years. But I started one company out there that’s, that was my content writing agency. So we had hundred plus clients across the globe. Not, just India. We, I had I think Australia United States, and a lot of clients from India too.

So we serve almost like a hundred clients in the span of two years and made. Approximately three, I would say 30 million. 30 million inr. I’m not sure. I, can’t like convert that into U S D, but it was like great company and we had Couple of great clients in the US and my wife, she actually got the opportunity to work here in the US in New York, Buffalo, New York.

And one day we decided, okay, this is a great opportunity and we should move to the us And we moved to Buffalo, New York. My wife had a job, but I didn’t have any job there and I, was still like remotely running my content writing agency. But I thought to reach out to our client here in the US and they were.

Serving hvac companies. They were doing marketing for HVAC and some other niche their legacy. And I reached out to them that I want to be part of your company love local local clients, and I want to serve be part of home service industry. And they hired me as a director of seo.

And that’s how the journey got started back in 20. 15. And I served as VP of marketing at, the last company for the five years. But they went in a different direction that I could not see myself falling. I started my company grow nearby. I knew something was happening there. I wanted to serve this home service industry better and started grown nearby in the nighttime.

That’s my side hustle. From 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM. 9:00 PM to 4:00 AM that, was the side hustle and right before Covid one day I’m a big fan of Gary V. You have seen me all over sharing his stuff. And Gary V has inspired me. To pursue my dreams. He always like pushed never, visited and seen him in until the last visit in Indiana Plus.

But everything I got you know, motivated through podcast, like I was consuming his content day and night through his podcast. And that’s how I pulled the trigger. I built this company grow nearby. And I went all in right before Covid. February 29th was the last day where I, when I quit my job and right before Covid, March 1st, 2020.

Can you imagine was the the best time to enter into entrepreneurship? Go all in. So that’s how I went all in and I’m never looking back. What a fabulous story. I really, appreciate that. I didn’t know some of that, even though I know we’ve broke bread together over lunch and, met a couple times.

That’s something I didn’t know. What a great backstory. Talk to me a little bit about how. You as you’ve built your agency, obviously knowing that you’ve, you were from India and now you moved to the us, but talk to me a little bit about staffing. I know a lot of the entrepreneurs that are watching and the business owners that are watching are struggling with finding good staff here in the US and sometimes they’re wondering, what about overseas staff?

How does that work? Can you kinda give us some insights, Mandeep on, tell me a little bit about your staff and where they’re located and why you chose to use some offshore staff. And how that provides better solutions for your customers ab Absolutely. I would love to. So we have we have staff there in the us I’m sitting here in Tampa office, and definitely I prefer having communicators, from the US and when it comes to operations manager, And the sales operations manager communicators, which is like client success managers.

So I highly recommend hiring from, the US and, if you find any other talent, that’s what like I’m not just biased to specific country or state. If I get talent, like I would love to absorb and work with them. But, what I found is there are different, there are so many.

Countries out there where they have amazing talent. In India, we talk about amazing designers, developers like behind all the big products here in the US when we talk about Google Amazon. There are a lot of talent is supporting from India. So I, thought why, should not like I go for India when it comes to designers and developers and building websites for home service industry with the help of designers and developers.

So it’s I had some contact. It’s always tough to get good talent, but you’re gonna have You have to ask questions that can actually are they motivated? Are they is this going to be their dream job? And what, kind of experience they have?

And you can actually always give them tests. Okay, if you’re a designer I would like to give you couple of websites as references. I want work like that. And just, give them, just give them some work as a trial. If you have to pay for it, it’s okay. Otherwise you’re gonna end up hiring a bad hire where you will you will stuck with same hierarchy, fire and hire again.

It’s always good to just give them as a test project and it can apply to actually all, the services that you provide. Jonathan, you you are doing amazing work out there and you, have, thank you have created such a great work culture and going above and beyond for your clients, so you can always.

Give a test project for, the design word to designer, developer, content writer, email marketing specialist, or any funnel specialist. So you can try to give them a test project and see how they do. And we have talent from India, US, Ukraine, London. And we have now, like I think we are hiring from Columbia.

So we have our project manager from Columbia, so six countries. And I always go for obviously skillset, but highly, I always look for the attitude that goes long way. If they don’t have good attitude, they don’t have good mindset, then you’re gonna stuck into that dilemma.

And we have seen a lot and, not fired a lot, but yes, like I, I’m all, I’m always all about giving chances and it’s not about just month or two month. I have given chances to few folks for years, but they didn’t perform. And unfortunately I had to go with a different route.

But that’s what I do. Just asking good questions and give, and just looking for good talent with good mindset. Good, attitude. Yeah. Good. Thank you for sharing that. Again, I know that’s an area that a lot of. A lot of people are looking at but don’t really have a lot of experience with it.

And it’s good to hear from someone that has that experience and has been doing that successfully to know what works and what doesn’t. I know you do that, and I know you’re based in Tampa, Florida, but I, if not mistaken, a week or two weeks ago, I saw you were actually up in Michigan. Not too far from me visiting some of your clients.

Can you talk to me a little bit about in today’s. Age. Why do you still go out on the road and visit those clients even when they’re many, states away? Oh that’s a great question, and thank you for asking. And that’s the voice message that I got when I was in Detroit and I got a voice message from my daughter.

She is six year old, and she recorded from my wife’s phone that, hey, papa, like why, you travel, why you go out and meet your clients? And, this is something I think it’s in my DNA and whatever we are doing, I think no one is doing in the US or not even in the world. We travel, we are all about empathy.

Positivity and relationships, and obviously data back results. These are our core values. We wanna go out and have that, build that relationship with the client. We are gonna go out and see their work culture and build that bond. It’s beyond digital marketing. Anyone can do the website and generate results.

But what we do is we travel across the country on our dime once a month because it’s a lot being, of Dad and running business is hard. So I specifically traveled once a month to visit our client. We just pick, okay, that’s the client that we have not visited.

Let’s go to California, Texas, and we travel. And, I prefer to choose weekdays because it’s a lot for, even for my wife. I have to look at, I have to create that balance because my wife if I travel on the weekend, kids are home. It’s a lot going and I prefer going, let’s say today I’m traveling and in the morning I’ll be back by tomorrow night.

It looks like travel a lot on social media. But yes, that’s once a month and plus industry events and why we do that, Jonathan, it’s, again, it’s all about relationships. It’s, very difficult to explain. If I look at my bank balance over the last three years, I would have saved or invested more in other things.

But I have invested all that money into relationships and that goes beyond. Anything. And I think that goes a long way. We, are building memories, we are building relationships. We are creating media that’s gonna be good for two years. People say it’s gonna be good for maybe three, four years, I would say for two years.

We can use real and authentic. Photos, videos, drone footage that we are capturing. And I’m not the only one traveling. I travel with the account manager that is handling our partnership client relationship and my video guy. And it’s all about relationship. Jonathan, it goes long way and hard skills are there in the business, but it’s very difficult to teach soft skills.

Soft skills are missing. If we can apply soft skills like I. Having empathy, understanding your team and clients deploying humility, that goes long way. Oh, absolutely. I think it’s just, I think it’s really amazing that you do that in today’s zoom meeting culture, although we do a lot of those as well.

I love that idea of, you meeting with clients and, making that purposeful as part of what you do. I know you’re, an a master at building relationships and rapport and you’re, again, so approachable and I just, I appreciate that, that abundance mentality that you have of sharing and, putting that out there.

Yeah. As such, You mentioned communications and that and online presence and that, and you I know have an amazing podcast and some of the numbers you’ve been putting up that I see cuz we’re in one of the same coaching groups, are just amazing. Tell us that you would’ve, I know as we work with damage restoration companies and you’re working with home service companies very closely related, a lot of them are always questioning why, a podcast?

Tell me from your perspective, Why are you doing a podcast, and what do you think you’ve done to make that so successful? Thank you. That it’s a great question. Jonathan, I think everyone should have a podcast if it’s if you’re running your, a business like you’re having this podcast, amazing podcast, everyone should have podcasts, especially like individuals, those who want to like grow their brand businesses.

Those are like let’s say serving restoration. Or the home service industry like H V A C plumbing, they should have the, they should have their own podcast. And the mission should be to provide value and you can provide value in many ways. Number one, I would say why we have this like bond for the trades of home service podcast there.

People ask why is that maybe a marketing trick to just attract more clients. I would say if, my podcast can provide some value and if they are looking for some help where they are stuck with any marketing company that has made them hostile and they, cannot get out of it and they don’t have a website or they are struggling with online marketing and I think God is telling me to just help them.

So it’s yes, the purpose is to get like more clients, I would say. To help more clients. Yeah. To more, to help like as much as like I can. And the goal is my co-host shout out to Reya, she works for service mvp America’s number one coach Joe Ra.

She works for him. And we decided to launch our podcast together. Born for the trades. I have that history that my dad was into trades and she had history she comes from trades family. And then we decided that to just launch this podcast, and we have to be different by providing value, by bringing the coaches, industry coaches industry leaders, entrepreneurs, home service entrepreneurs, and by asking them like Emotional questions as well.

It’s not about just showing the fancy story, like okay ABC Plumbing the owner got it into 500 million company not showing the fancy thing, but we want to ask the struggles, the adversity. What exactly happened? What kind of like challenges you, you have faced? Share those like moments, what you have gone through while taking your business from ground to the next level.

People actually came from MUD and they have ta, they have built a hundred million dollar company. Those were there on our podcast and you gotta just ask questions sometimes those are very tough questions to answer and we know. Those questions mostly we ask right there. We do our lot of research and we ask those emotional questions and.

And we get that that juice, like that kind of content that is valuable for the listeners for the home service industry, so that they can get inspired, they can have more impact. And that’s, the goal Jonathan for, this like home service industry podcast, bond for the trades.

Again, kudos on your success there. You, put on an amazing podcast. You do a great job of interviewing people and getting their stories out of them. I know. I love it. And definitely have gotten some inspiration myself. And shift gears a little bit and talk to, as I mentioned, our audience has made up of entrepreneurs and business leaders and business owners.

Certainly not all in the home services trade, but I know you’ve got a lot of experience in local s e o. And even your company named Grow Nearby, you’re helping customers with that. A lot of people come to me and say Jonathan, this National seo, I don’t need to worry about. I serve clients within an hour of my office and I’d really love to work there.

What tips or advice can you give to a, business person that’s out there, regardless of their industry of things that maybe they should be looking at? When it comes to ranking well locally so that their customers find them when they’re looking for the services that they offer. Any advice you can give to our audience there, Mandeep?

Yeah, absolutely, Jonathan. Love that question. And that’s, something I’m very, passionate about and, regardless of industry, if it’s if to,

u00a0

u200ato the listeners, if you are a restoration company or hvac, plumbing, electrical, garage door, And or any, niche it could be outside of home service industry, but when it comes to local seo, u200ayou gotta have two things dialed in.

What is your service and what is your location? These two combinations make the local seo. So let’s say, if we talk about Jonathan, I wanna ask you what’s, the one service in the restoration that is like pretty frequent people search for? I would probably say water damage restoration.

Water damage restoration. The, first thing is you gotta have a decent WordPress website. It has to be, it has to be a WordPress website. There are other platforms out there. But I highly recommend having a WordPress site, nice web, nice website where you have all the pages for the services, water damage and other, services that, that, you know, maybe they, they have it like maybe for HVAC plumbing, but let’s keep it restoration.

All the pages should be there. There should be content written for the services, for the restoration services and making sure that you have 500 words. 2000 words content out there. Look at the competition. If somebody is ranking higher on, page one, by the way, there is no page one now.

Right now there’s no page two, no page three. It’s all 10 positions, and then you scroll, right Jonathan? Absolutely. So, if somebody’s ranking higher, you gotta look at the competition who is ranking higher and check out their meta title, meta description, metadata content, what and how many backlinks they have.

And come up with your competitive analysis and competitive strategy that how you’re gonna dominate them. And now, the game. Plan should be having a WordPress, right? Write all the pages for your services and write all the pages for the locations, people call it service area, cities, neighborhood, write all those like city Pages, service area pages on your site, and making sure that you.

You include all the best keywords, maybe for restoration. There are like keywords, you can Google it or just reach out to experts in the industry like Jonathan and ask what are the best keywords that we, can Jonathan can rank and Jonathan would love to share those keywords that those are pretty much like people’s search and you should be incorporating in your copywriting.

It has to be a combination of water damage restoration, Tampa, Florida. You should have 500 words minimum content for, your service and same for the other locations. So I’m giving example, I’m in Tampa, so there are surrounding areas. Brandon Lutes, I’ll be writing like page for.

A water damage restoration company in Lutes, in Brandon. So, that you are an option on Google. If you don’t have content for your services and location, you are not an option. How will you rank higher on Google? And nobody’s going to l look for you. Nobody’s, nobody can find you.

That’s the first thing. And second is, Like local citations there are like citations Yahoo Bank, super pages, yellow pages, apple maps, bing maps. You gotta have dialed in because Google loves like consistency, nap, consistency, right? Jonathan Nap, we talk about nap, right? Absolutely.

Name, address, and phone number. Name, address, and phone number. It gotta be consistent we run the reports and you must be running the reports of Jonathan and you must be looking at this restoration company. They got 60 errors and what they what, errors looks like is they have got phone, inconsistent phone numbers, addresses.

They, might have used their house address and now they got a shop. But inconsistency there, and Google looks at everything. You gotta have your nap dialed in, name, address, and phone number across the major platforms. And that’s the foundation. And obviously, Google my business. Google is God.

You’ve gotta have your goo Google reviews, as many as on your Google profile. And making sure that you respond to the reviews, add photos, and there is a like option if you can like the reviews, that’s gonna help too. And there are some signals that goes there is more science behind it, how you can rank in the local pack and Jonathan, I’m sure that you, are helping it and that, but yeah, that’s pretty much the foundation.

Not to make it complicated, but have a nice website making sure your nap is accurate and you have service pages and C pages dialed in. That’s the first thing that I would highly recommend setting up. No, and I, totally agree with you and I’ll admit that was a bit of a setup question because people hear me talking about that as well.

And Mandeep and I did not collaborate on this. We both are in the industry and we both really believe in, each other and what we do for our clients. But I want to show you that again, local SEO is possible. It’s not always easy, but it’s very possible. Yeah. And it’s definitely a process that you can follow.

So regardless of the business that you’re in, regardless of your industry or niche as, Mande said, if you follow those basics, you’re going to do well. And if, you don’t want to, or you’ve got better things to do, then hire an agency. Hire somebody like Mandeep, hire somebody like me that can help you in that process.

There’s a number of great agencies around. And again, they can help you do that and grow successfully. And that’s so important nowadays with the business. And as, as Mandy mentioned Google continues to make changes. They just, as he mentioned, there is no more pages now. It’s an infinite scroll of exactly by 10 slots at a piece.

Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not here to talk about, but it, as a business owner, you owe it to your customers and your team to make sure that you’re staying up on things like this so that you can continue to grow. And expand. So Mandeep, thank you. I think that was great and I appreciate it.

And we’re we’re absolutely in sync on, on the ways to do that, so thank you for sharing that. Yep, you’re welcome. Talk to me a little bit about the future as, we take a look at what the future holds. I know there’s everybody around that some people think that the economy’s gonna go in tank.

Some people think that I talked to a, actually a prospect yesterday. Get this, he wants to buy marketing services, but he thinks that the world’s coming to an end, literally in about a week and a half. And I asked him on the call, if you think the world’s coming to end, why do you wanna buy marketing?

And he goes I could be wrong. So we’ve got obviously lots of different perspectives. Talk to me about your perspective, Mandeep, as an entrepreneur and a business owner. What do you see the future looking and how do you think as business owners we can take advantage of some of those opportunities to better serve our clients, to provide better services, and at the same point in time, to support our teams and our families.

That, that’s a wonderful question, Jonathan. So for me I’m, always like optimistic and obviously positive. The thing is that you gotta look at the economy. You gotta look at the numbers and everything. I run my podcast and a lot of Industry players were there on my podcast Tommy Mellow Ken Goodridge.

So you gotta be prepared. Whatever is gonna happen that’s gonna happen. You can’t control the interest. Interest rates might go up people might be struggling in, q3, q4. Things will happen, but never, ever stop marketing. I think that’s the first, I think biggest mistakes as, a business owner, I.

Like it, it could be restoration or H V A C home service industry. Never ever stop the marketing. Double down on marketing and I think that’s the best time to actually grow in the market. And those who have done that we have those numbers with us. Those companies, those who have doubled down during this hard time, they have actually grown exponentially and they have taken their company to the next level.

And people they talk about like maybe reducing it if they’re spending. Five person, let’s reduce to two person, three person minimum. You should be as a business owner, home service, or any business owner, you should be spending 10 to 12 person in into marketing. And I would say the future looks like those who doubled down on the marketing.

And they, are going to win. And now the future, when we talk about ai, like AI is going to take the jobs. No, AI not AI is not going to take the jobs like you as, like trades. As trades people. You are going to install, you’re going to do the restoration work, you’re going to do the H V C installation.

Robots cannot come and install H V C installation. We are far, if that’s gonna happen, that, that might happen. But I think we are far, maybe we are talking about. 30, 30 years or 40 years we still have, everything what we have been doing. Maybe there are some tools that can write content.

Those tools are out there. Maybe they can produce videos and photos and content, but no one can replace. The emotional intelligence that, the connection that you have with human beings, right? No one can remove that piece, like emotional intelligence piece. No one can replace trades people, those who are going out and doing the work.

The, first, I would say the future looks like those who are real authentic, putting out content, and people think like that doing the restoration work. And, putting out like photos and video is not like fancy or sexy, I would say. That’s your bread and butter. You gotta be going out and putting out content. Take out your phone and shoot a video that you’re doing water damage restoration out there. Like with, if you want approval, you can take the approval from the homeowner. And and not just that job photos and videos, you can actually take out that video like do, a selfie video with the owner.

What do you have done? Get the video testimonial from the homeowner. Maybe out of 10, 1 1, 1 homeowner might say yes, which is okay because not all gonna be comfortable on camera, but it’s all worth the shot. But imagine if you have that piece of content, that video. With short, with your customer, you put out on all micro video, social media platforms.

You can post it, you can run ad, you can be the queen and king of your town and you can attract a lot of business. So that’s just one piece of thing that you can do. But the future looks like whoever is close to the customer is going to win. And that’s emotional intelligence relationship empathy.

That is not going anywhere. Robots and AI cannot have empathy. That is something for sure. Oh, I love that. I love whoever’s closest to the customer is gonna win, because I think you’re absolutely right, and I think that really validates the importance of what you were talking about. When it comes to content marketing and especially video marketing.

We’re in a really amazing time of life when you think that virtually every one of us has a professional camera in their pocket. On their mobile phone. Yeah. And that, camera is capable of doing things that just five years ago we couldn’t necessarily even do with cameras. It cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The, technology advancements there are amazing and absolutely agree. I love that whoever’s closest to the customer wins and one of the best ways. In my mind, I’d welcome your thoughts, Mandeep, but to get close to that customer is to do video. Grab that your camera, do a selfie video. Talk to them, answer their questions.

Even. A mutual friend of ours, Matt Plat, out of Kentucky, he says talk about what’s happening in your vicinity if you’re a local business. Not everything’s about you promoting your business. Talk about the high school football team. Talk about the bizarre that’s going on downtown. All kinds of things like that to demonstrate that you’re a pro, not only in what you do, but in your community and that you’re involved in your community.

And guess what, when people in your community that you want to serve are ready for what you have, you are the person they’re gonna think of. No, absolutely. I think that’s, a hundred percent. And on top of that, I would say look at you, Jonathan. Like even if, let’s say, if you are not.

Not with your customer, not interacting with someone, that’s totally fine. But if you are, if you think that you are confident as, a business owner, restoration owner, or any ho any trades company owner that you feel like that you can provide lot of value. Just like there are three mediums, like three mode of communication written which is like text.

Graphic like pictures or videos, like three formats. If you are comfortable in writing 500 words blog and that you think that you can provide value, just put a blog on your website or blog anywhere. Just share it with, your audience. If you think that you can take picture and you can elaborate like you know what’s happening.

That’s the content that you can provide value. If you think that video, it’s like people say, right picture is worth a thousand words. I say video is worth million words. It’s, worth million words and, absolutely that do you agree with that? Oh one 110%. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. No you’re, absolutely correct.

And. I just, I love to hear somebody else validating that I, you, I know you do a lot of video, I do a lot of video. We can both speak to the, value that brings, not only to our expertise, but to the customers that reach out to us, because maybe they’ve been watching videos for a year before they contacted us or has happened to me the other day.

I got a, call from somebody that had watched a podcast I did months ago. Yeah, but they just watched it. And so to them it was brand new. They had questions and that, that video continues to work for you as a business on an evergreen basis. It’s there, it’s available. People do Google searches, and guess what?

YouTube results come up. So I think it’s a fantastic advice. Thank you for that. Yeah, you’re welcome. And, YouTube is is the second search engine in the world. And right now, Just under price attention is Facebook reels. I just posted today on Facebook that, okay, if you have missed a boat like TikTok boat or Instagram reels board, you have Facebook reels like PR under price attention, and I’m, and I love what you do, Jonathan, you’re putting out.

I see you like popping on my feed every morning, every like day you are in you, don’t shy from camera. You, if you are in, your car, you are just producing content and you are providing value so that people can learn about online marketing or general trips, very good content that you’re putting out.

Keep doing the great work. That’s what exactly I think everyone should be doing it if they get comfortable. So I always say Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Oh, that’s a great advice. It’s great advice. One thing I’d love your opinion on Mandeep, and I know there’s the, best way to do something and then there’s the acceptable way to do something.

One of the things about video that I hear all the time from people is I do it, but I don’t have a studio or I, don’t know where to sit or whatever. And you’ve seen mine, you just mentioned, I do a ton of my videos. Literally while sitting in my truck. Part of it’s because I work with damaged restoration contractors who spend a lot of time driving around looking at different jobs.

But from your perspective, talk to me about the excuse that, and you probably hear it as well, about well, I would, if how, do you recommend that business owner that’s watching right now says, Jonathan Mandeep, you guys are fine, but, and I do video if. How do we get them to get past that point?

What do, what would you, what advice would you give that business owner? I. That’s a fantastic question and I think people judge themselves a lot and, they think that what others gonna think and they think what? You know what, if people gonna judge them, it’s okay. They know that’s, their thing to.

Think and judge, that’s not your job, right? Your job is to produce content. When I was like, I was totally uncomfortable getting on camera and that’s my video. The first video was back in 20 21, 20 21 in New York City in a hotel. Like it was not fancy. And I started from there and I started one, one, video, two, three.

I never practiced two. Like I straight shot. On selfie camera and just post it. that’s how I got comfortable on camera. But I think we are judging ourself a lot. How am I looking on camera? How people gonna represent think about you.

The thing is that this is the one of, one of the best tools in the world right now. In your pocket. Take out your phone and look at us. I am not in my home studio. Where? Where? Podcast studio. That, where I supposed to be. And and look at you, you are traveling. Where are you right now? Alabama. Yep. Yeah. I’m, traveling, opening up a new office and I’m sitting here in a very echo open room. But if I should take a picture I’ve, got my laptop sitting on, a counter and I’ve got a box underneath a tripod, which is holding my mobile phone, which is what I’m recording this with right now.

And a mic attached to it. And is it perfect? No, absolutely not. We did some sound checks since we were getting started, and it’s not perfect, but we’re creating content today and that’s important because if our story is good and our message is good, people will watch it even if we don’t have the perfect video.

Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s all about raw, and just like authentic content and, you have to just think about that only and it gets more attention that people look at you. That you are like very being yourself, you are raw and you don’t think about you, you don’t overthink about the studio and everything.

You don’t need any fancy cameras. You don’t need anything to get started. I think start with your phone and stop overthinking. That’s what I like. The first advice I would give is okay, if you want to get comfortable, maybe just create five, six videos with yourself. Don’t post anywhere.

And just watch them like just record one. Yeah, 2, 3, 4, 5. And just watch them and see where you can improve. But I think I never watch my videos back. Mostly just like I just posted whatever I posted. I don’t know, like I hate to see my content back, but I posted, sorry bud.

No, and I give you T tons of credit for that. Again, I think overall great advice and if you’re watching this podcast, maybe this is that one moment you needed to hear, to say, okay, I’m gonna pick up my mobile phone. I’m gonna answer a question for a customer. I’m gonna post it up on YouTube and I’m not gonna take it down.

I think that would be great. Yeah I think that’s the way to do it and keep doing what you’re doing. That’s fantastic. Providing value. And I think the world will look amazing. If, we I think I was listening to Gary V’s podcast last night. World actually runs on communication.

Yeah. And if we can do better communication Yeah. We, yeah, we all gonna win. Absolutely. Absolutely. We could use Gary V as an example of he will shoot almost anywhere. And if you’ve watched him, he doesn’t script anything. It’s all off the cuff, but yet he’s amassed millions and millions of followers by motivating people and giving them great advice on how they can build their businesses, how they can live better lives.

And again, I think he’s just proof of the fact that There are better people speaking. There are more attractive people. There are people with better equipment, but they’re not getting the message out and he is because he just presses record. I think that’s so incredibly important. Yeah, that’s what I did, and I think I’m the example right here that I, listened to his content, consumed his con, consumed his content.

And here you go. Producing content and just yeah, going all in. Absolutely. Mandeep, as the name of our podcast is the 91 Day Success Podcast and part of the raid, and we came up with that, is I’m a huge fan of Russell Brunson, the owner of ClickFunnels, and he has a book out called 30 Days, and he literally went back through and asked, I think a hundred of.

The most successful clients that he’s had, what they would do if they had to literally start over from scratch in the first 30 days. And I thought that’s, good, but it’s not really realistic because most of us have other things that are gonna require some time. We need probably a little more than 30 days and three months just happens to be 91 days.

Talk to me as an entrepreneur and someone who obviously has just in the not too distant past, started your own business, grown it to be wildly successful over the short time you’ve been in business. Talk to me about what would you do if, you chose to start over, you didn’t have to worry about food or clothing or any of that, but you had a thousand dollars in your pocket and you had 91 days to build a business that was gonna generate 10 grand a month or more.

What would you do in those first 91 days? Mandeep? Yeah, absolutely. Is it is it going to be like are you asking for digital business or any, anything you want, you could choose to do anything you desired. It can be exactly what you’re doing now, starting over could be maybe your dream would be to say, Hey, I’m a nut for AI and I want to get back into the content business and, use AI content.

Anything you could dream of that you say, this would, be what I would do if I was gonna start over from scratch. Oh that’s that’s, again wonderful question. So I would love to, let’s say if I’m starting from scratch I’ll go back you know what I did. And still hustling and grinding.

From day one. I’m gonna, whatever the niche is, if I’m starting my business, I’m gonna dive into, I’m gonna go all in with my content strategy, put out as much content I can. And on top of that, what I would do, I will DM. I will reach out to all the companies, like it could be b2b, b2c. I’ll be reaching out to each and every one that who I am and what I’m offering.

And I would love to do it for free. I would love to do it for free for some time. I just want to provide value. And obviously at one point you’re gonna end up like receiving a lot of business and you are just like one piece of content away. From landing your dream client and keep, I’ll keep hustling and going all in with my content and keep knocking every door like 50 doors or a hundred doors every single day.

And that’s how I’m gonna go there. Get there. Great advice. Great advice, and I think practical for everyone, whether they’re starting over or just looking to expand their business. That’s great advice. So let me tell you if, you are in the H V A C business or some of the other niches that, that Mandy mentioned and you wanna reach out to ’em, we’re gonna put all of his contact information right here on the screen.

We’d encourage you, Mandeep’s a, trusted friend and someone that I know you can rely on if you’ve got questions. Mandeep beyond that, if somebody’s driving in their car right now and they go, man, That just really resonated with me, what you said, and they wanna reach out, but they’re not in a spot to, to pop on the web.

What’s the best way for that business owner who’s driving down the road that wants to reach out to you? What’s the best way for them to, connect with you, Mandeep? Oh yeah. Thank, absolutely. Thank you. And the best way to just reach out to grow nearby.com, G R O W N E A R b y.com. Grow nearby.com/schedule.

And, everything is out there. If you’re looking for the content the, work that we have done, and you can schedule time with me we will spend 1, 2, 2 hours to create your digital marketing roadmap there. And that’s the best way to reach. And my cell number is 7 1 6 2 9 2 5 4 8 7.

I’m available 365 24 7 as an entrepreneur. There you have it folks. No better way than an easy website link and a cell phone number that I can confirm is actually mandeep’s cell phone. So that’s way cool. Yeah. And we want to thank you, Mandeep. I so appreciate your time. I know you’ve got a gazillion things going on, and as you’re growing this agency that’s literally growing by leaps and bounds, want to thank you for your time today.

It’s really been appreciative. And on a side note are, you headed to Miami, by the way, next month or no? Yes. Yes. I’ll be in Miami and different location. What a great group of marketers and this group is led by Josh Nelson. I’m, excited to be there next month.

Are you gonna be there? I’ll be there. In fact Mike, who’s our producer in the background here, he’ll be there. We’re bringing a bunch of our team members along and yeah, so looking forward to it. As you mentioned, I think the Josh’s seven figure agency is without a doubt, the best. Agency owners in the world.

And I’m always amazed at their abundance mentality. We can take people that are in identical groups or identical niches and they’ll still bend over backwards to help you be successful because they believe in that abundance mentality. It’s just absolutely amazing. Abs Absolutely. I, agree with that. And thank you for inviting me on your podcast. I just loved it and I wish you all the best and success, Jonathan, keep doing what you’re doing and yeah, that’s the way to do it. The same to you, Mandeep. And if you have stuck with us through the end, we wanna say thank you for hanging on through the rest of the podcast.

We wanna wish you the best and we want to thank you again for your time. Make it a great day and we’ll see ud83dudccd you on the other side.

u00a0