Alex Lathery: The branding and the, the website and the logo, they're super important, but you can survive without them, especially at the start. You know, there's people that don't have websites, that still have business, like they still make some money, and so I always push people more to like, do the free forms of marketing, like throw up a very, like, you can, you can throw up a very basic logo. It's not gonna win any awards, but it'll be good enough to get at least that semblance of credibility that you are a legitimate business when you're talking to people.

‍Austin Gray:  Welcome back to the Owner Ops podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray. In this show, we talk all about building and growing local service businesses. We are on a mission to help 10,000 entrepreneurs start and grow service businesses in your own local market by 2030. In this episode, I have Alex Lathery joining us.

Alex is the founder of Blue Collar Builds. It's a website agency specifically designed for local service businesses. He's also the founder of Cincinnati Painting Company. And in this episode we're going to talk about branding, naming, and design principles so that you can go start and name your own business in your own local service market on a budget.

He shares bootstrap principles that you can use right now to go start your business and create your brand today. Check out the full episode. Alex drops a lot of good value from building tons and tons of websites for local service businesses across the us. Can you tell us a little bit about, uh, founding blue collar builds?

‍Austin Gray:  Can you tell us a little bit about, uh, founding blue collar builds? Then how that has led into it's Cincinnati Painting Company, right? Or is it Cincinnati? Painting?

Alex Lathery:  Painting. Cincinnati Paint Co 

Austin Gray:  Company Co. 

‍Alex Lathery:  Yep. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I started Blue collar builds a little over three years ago, and it was kind of in like the summer leading up to my last year of college. Right. So I went to college for mechanical engineering, nothing related to like digital web design. Small business had no, no connection whatsoever. And I got into that field through a series of just wanting to learn a couple of different things. And really what it started out as is like we were kind of locked down on Covid and you know, I had remote classes and I had internships and all these things. And I was like, well, I kind of wanna learn to code because it's a good skill to have. It'll boost my resume as an engineer. It's, it's something that I had personal interest in. It was fun. And so I started to learn a little bit of that when it was in quarantine and just kind of spending some of that extra time digging into it.

And I did that for a couple months and I learned like the very basics I started with like data science and I just couldn't do it. It was so boring, honestly. It was just, you know, writing code for fake data to analyze it. And I was like, I can't do this. Like I just am not gonna do it. So I wanted to continue doing something. So I started doing, you know, what about like web design? Like I could program websites or something like that. So I did that for a couple months, two to three months, learning like the foundations. And I had a kind of like light bulb moment where I sat back and said, you know, this is totally unrelated to what I'm studying in school and it's totally unrelated to anything I'm gonna do professionally.

So I have two choices. I continue learning to code like this, and I could spend five years doing it. And then I'd probably be like a mediocre developer and I would have another job skillset that I could go and like I wanted to be a programmer, I could go be a programmer, but I didn't see any value in that because I had a really good career path lined up with engineering. Mechanical engineering. It was like just kind of going into a totally different direction for no reason. The other option was I had always wanted to start a business and I also got around the same time, kind of uncomfortable with the idea of only ever having one option and only just having a job, especially with the fact that so many people hate their jobs.

Uh, so I kind of had that realization. I'm like, well, you know what? I've always wanted to start a business. Let's take what I've learned, which is web development, and I'm just gonna learn a platform. You know, I started looking at WordPress, I looked at Webflow and I'm gonna become a web designer and sell websites to businesses, build websites for businesses.

So I, I had that shift and I started down that path and I basically spent the next six months or more practicing all of those skills. So, you know, learning webflow, which is what I build in learning how to design. 'cause I was not a designer. I'm a mechanical engineer. That's about as far as you can get from the. This traditional sense of the word design as far as making things look good. Um, I was very functional and technical, right? And so I had no skills in like any of those arenas. I had no skills on like the entrepreneurial front, other than being a little bit smart and being able to solve problems. That was about it.

I had no marketing skills, no sales skills. I had nothing. So I was starting from the ground on pretty much everything. Uh, you know, everything except for like, I had a little bit of a start on actually doing web design, and I spent the six to eight months after that just really just trying to get better across the board of like the projects that I was able to deliver on, but also literally trying to get projects.

You know, I spent probably the first three to four months doing nothing but free projects. And even those were hard to land. Like just finding somebody to even let you do a website for them to get you a testimonial, you know, that you DM people on Instagram. And I, I DM people that were fitness influencers.

I DM people that were like. Info, product coaches, things like that. And you know, Hey, I'll build you a free landing page. Hey, I'll do this. And you know, you get crickets most of the time. So it was a, a bit of a grind, getting even free projects for the first couple of months. Finally started the land sum. I did some full websites for like $250, $500, you know, all in all, in that six to eight month span, I probably made like five or 500 to $750 total revenue.

And with all that I spent on software. So when I bought my Webflow subscription to, you know, have unlimited websites I can build in the account and whatnot, I was basically. Net zero, like I made no money. You know, eight months of work made no money, but I had a lot of skills that I started to develop in that, in that period.

‍Austin Gray: This episode is brought to you by Jobber. Jobber is an all-in-one software management solution for home service and trade businesses. I've been using jobber since day one when I started bearclaw, we use it for things like quoting, scheduling, invoicing, and most recently I've been using it for our snowplowing services.

I love it for snowplowing because we're able to create a job specific to the client's profile. And we're able to track visits each time we go out and plow. This is important because each visit is logged in the system and it's ready to send invoices at the end of the month, so I never have to worry about how many times did we plow a specific customer's account, because Jobber takes care of all of that for us. If you are interested in an all in one solution for managing your home service or trade business, look no further than Jobber. They're offering six months at a 20% discount if you use the link in the description below. 

‍Alex Lathery:  Really, after that point, I started to kind of get some traction. Things really took off, and it wasn't until January of that year that things like really, really took off. They, they basically like five x in terms of like everything, lead volume, revenue projects, and that was January of 2022. Right as I was about to graduate in a couple of months from school. And so that was really when I would say that the business took off and became like a business versus just like a little bit of a hobby.

And I've been doing it since then. So a little over three years since then, my dad works full-time with me. You know, how did I get to where I am today in terms of like, we do this for local businesses, that's also a part of that journey. You know, back when I was trying to find free projects and things to do, the only business savviness that I had was what people were telling me online, which was, you have to, you have to niche down, right? You have to find a niche that works for you. And so as I was doing that, like I said, I reached out to people that were like fitness influencers. I reached out to people that were like info product coaches and all these different. Niches that I thought maybe would be interesting to me, things that I was liking.

But I ended up having a friend that I went to church with who had a landscaping business that he just bought, or was kind of like transitioned to him. He worked in the company, the old owner was retiring. We also go to church with the old owner, and they had no website, had nothing, you know, it was a really old school business.

And so I was like, Hey, I'll do the website for you for free. You know, just want to kind of get some experience. So I did his landscaping website. Then I also had been listening at the time and just throughout the years to the Sweaty Startup podcast, right? So I was also, you know, if I had never started a, a web design business, maybe I would've gone that route.

I would've started a service business. So I liked those types of businesses. I also resonated a lot with those types of business owners. Just, you know, guys that work hard, they're, they're really kind of, I'm, I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Cincinnati. So it just kind of fit the vibe of what I grew up around is, was a lot more my style than, you know, the very corporatized startup world where, you know, you're dealing with a board of people and, and you know, they're not the founders.

They're not the owners most of the time. And so I really resonated more so with that local blue collar type of client. And did that project for my friend, started to find other projects, found somebody on Reddit that had a junk removal business that needed a website. I did it for free, found like one or two other people that I, I did either cheap or free websites for in that area.

And I'm like, all right, I think I've got something here. One in the sense that like, it's a niche, I can focus on it. Like, okay, it's blue collar businesses, right? It's home service businesses. It's a, it's defined niche. I think I know it somewhat well. I resonate with those types of business owners, so it fits on that standpoint.

And then the other side of it was, I was looking at everybody else that was out there that was doing web design and that was freelancing and everybody wants to land the big startup projects, you know, 10 K for a landing page, 20 K for a full website, like really high ticket and, and very competitive in all honesty.

And so I kind of sat back and looked at that and of course, would I want to have done that? Sure. You know, I had, I had known people that were landing projects like that, but I was just in no place to land projects like that. I had no portfolio of any websites in that direction. I was not good at design, honestly.

But what I did see was an underserved market in the blue collar space where they had really, really, really bad design. I knew I could be at least a step above that and nobody was doing it for them. Everybody in the blue collar space was like just still spitting out WordPress templates that were just like really ugly, really basic, tons of bugs, super unoptimized.

And so I was like, I am not as good as these guys doing the startups. I'm better than the people that are doing the local blue collar business types. And I like to work with those guys. And so I, I locked it. I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. I came up with the name Blue Collar Builds kind of as like a play on words of like, obviously it's for blue collar type of companies, but then also the websites themselves.

And kind of like my attitude that I wanted to bring to that was that blue collar work ethic. Right. I. Really just Midwest standard blue collar work ethic. And I wanted it to be kind of where I could take like the design quality of the startup world and some of the tech and some of the things that people were starting to get interested in, in the small business side, and could I bring those two together?

And that's really what Blue collar builds was. And that's kind of why I started it. And to this, it's probably the best business move or branding move that I've, that I've done. You know, it resonates instantly. People instantly get what we do and they like it. So it's, it's been three years of, of that and still refining what we do, you know, every single day.

But that's, it's kind of like the journey of how I started it and how I got to this point. 

‍Austin Gary:  That's incredible. I, I love it. And. Kudos on your brand. I love that brand. That was one of the one things that that stuck out to me. 'cause I believe that we, we've been engaging for the last several years and, and, and I specifically remember you like our first conversation because, because I've built him webflow before.

And so it was just like, oh, you know, here's, here's a guy he's optimizing for building sites and webflow. And then I just kind of like watched her transition into really setting your foot down and saying, okay, this is the niche I'm gonna play in. And then whenever you came out with the brand, I was like, oh, that's genius.

Like, like you said, the play on words, it's like blue collar builds, like, that speaks to your customer because like that, like whenever you're dealing with that local business owner, it's like that is what they do. They're blue collar and they build, but then at the same time there's the play on words where it's like, I'm building you a website, right? Yeah. Like, you kind of have that, that, that aspect of it. So beautiful brand. You've, you've mentioned that you're not. You weren't a designer, but for whatever, or however you did it, you, you found it out. Like I've checked out some of the websites. A lot of practice. 

 Alex Lathery:  Yeah, a lot of practice. And some of that comes too from like my, I don't know. You, I guess you could say my ego, right? I like, I, I'm very critical of myself. And when I do, and like when I started, this is the way that it was, I felt like I had good taste. I could sit there and I could say, this is a really good website, but if I sat down with an empty screen, a blank canvas, and you asked me to build or design a really good website, I couldn't do it.

I, it would, I could spend days. Days of practicing and like testing a couple of things, and it would just be okay. Like it would be something that I was okay with, but I knew it wasn't as good as what I was looking at as the example or you know, what I thought that it should be. And so it really was just a lot of different reps and projects of like, what is it about the websites that I do?

Like, why do they look so good? You know, I, I could tell you that they looked good, but I couldn't tell you why I couldn't tell you what it was. And so, you know, I bought courses, I bought like some minor design courses, but a lot of it really was just time and practice. There's really no shortcut to it. And you know, it culminated to where, like the websites that if I really sit down, you know, I, I do kind of consider myself a designer, but also not necessarily like I was not a trained designer.

But you know, when I really sit down and I take dedicated time, I can come up with something that I think is pretty good. But it took a long time to get there and I feel like my. Sort of, you know, my masterpiece of all the three years that I've tried to do this is the painting company website. I spent a ton of time on that website and I've had a lot of good feedback on it.

And, you know, did I spend too much time on it? Maybe I did, but it was something that I wanted to do. You know, I spent three years learning the skill and I had never gone that deep on one where I really combined everything that I've learned over three years and all of the practice that I've put in into one piece.

And I was able to do that because I, I have equity in it. You know, like if I was doing that for a client, like client's not gonna sign up to, to pay me for three months, to, to iterate back and forth and back and forth on a logo, on a website for just like a simple business, you know, it just doesn't really make sense for them all the time from like an ROI perspective, but.

When it's me and you know, at the end of the day, the effort that I'm putting in is gonna pay dividends forever. As long as this business exists, I was able to kind of focus on it a little bit more. 

 Austin Gray:  Yeah, absolutely. So here's where I'd like to go with this episode, Alex. I'd like to dive deep into everything you've learned and let's break down if you're down the Cincinnati Painting company website.

Alex Lathery: Yeah, yeah.

Austin Gray: And I wanna start with branding. Yep. Because this is an area that like, I think you can build a great business without a great brand. Yep. But if you build a great brand first, like you did with Blue Collar Builds, it's like it something that immediately grabs your customer's attention because you're speaking to them in a way that pulls some sort of emotion out of that.

Yep. So how, when you started Cincinnati Painting Company, can you talk us through your thought process behind the branding there? 

Alex Lathery:  Yeah, so, so I own it with part ownership with two other partners, and one of them's a finance guy. One's an operations guy, he's also an engineering background. And then I come with the, you know, the marketing and branding side of things.

And so from a naming standpoint, that one was pretty easy. You know, first thing that comes to mind is like, all right, exact match domains, you know, from an SEO standpoint, Cincinnati Painting company done. It works. And it also, you know, it just is, the reason that I like these exact match business names is because it, it has the benefit from like an SEO standpoint, but also it's super clear.

One of the things that people mess up with their business names is like, they're either too long or they're not memorable, they're not catchy, or they're just like super vague. When you have a business name, you said it about blue collar builds, it's very clear what I do. Blue collar builds, you know, it's, it's kind of the, the play on words, but with the local service business, it's even more direct.

It's like we do painting in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, painting, go. It just fits. It's super memorable. It anybody that's CI Cincinnati, it's gonna resonate with them more so than like, Joe's painting, LLC you know, this is like the type of stuff that you typically compete with, especially in an industry like painting.

It's like Joe's painting or Joe Hernandez painting. Like, it's literally just the guy's name. That's what most of these guys do. And then you have the franchises, right? And, and franchises have kind of have their own connotation. Some people like 'em, some people don't. Uh, but you know them, you know, everybody knows them.

And so this is kind of a hybrid. It's in the middle. You know, we're not Joe's Painting company, but we're not Certa Pro. We're Cincinnati Painting Co. We've got the branding. We look professional. We're a step above what some of, like those one man cruise type of, you know, look and feel. R. We're not like a franchise, like it's clearly local.

We're a Cincinnati painting company. And I think that that's like that sweet spot, you know, that resonates with people. 'cause a lot of people don't want to go with the franchises. You know, they think that it's, they just have a, you know, a typical hunch that they're just gonna be the most expensive option.

And, and that's just kind of is what it is. A lot of people just have that negative connotation. So there was really no debate about what the business was gonna be named. I threw that out there since I painting company. I gave them that explanation like, Hey, it's good. From the other standpoint, I think it really fits from, uh, like a, just obvious what we do and who we do it for, kind of a look and feel.

And I had already pulled together some concepts that I had seen elsewhere. You know, our, our logo has like a, a cursive script type of font. I was like, I just think this would look really cool, you know, Cincinnati and this cursive. And so it really stuck, it, it resonated with those guys. Uh, you know, obviously I was pushing the idea.

So that's what we did and we went for it. And so taking that a step further, you know, turning that into like a logo, into the mascot, into everything. What was I thinking about with that? You know, we had some discussions about, you know, do we want to go like a mascot? And, and we looked at some of the, you know, examples of really solid home service branding.

Obviously pink's, window cleaning is one that everybody knows at least on X, if you've been around X at all. They've got really good branding. And so we kind of looked into some of the different examples and I think that we wanted to go in that direction a little bit, but not totally. A lot of the other stuff that is really popular nowadays is the mascots.

Everybody wants to have the mascot. They want have it. That looks like one of the kick charge creative icons or logos. They do a lot of really good work and the mascots that they do and that you see with most armed services are really caricature. Like they're really cartoony and that resonates, you know, with some people.

But we wanted to go a little bit of a different step, you know, with the painting company. All of us kind of had this, this idea or this vision that it would be really kind of tying back to that vintage old school service type of persona. You know, back in the fifties where it was like that one guy and you know, he is really professionally, he knows everything.

He did it and you got that gold standard of service. And so we wanted to have a mascot, we wanted to play in that space, but we wanted it to be vintage and really throw back to the vintage painter, which, you know, a lot of, especially like, you know, older people will, will definitely know they got the painter's cap and so our mascot has the painter's cap has like the painter's uniform on the white button down shirt with the vest.

And so we started to, to go in that direction. That was always the direction from like a look and feel standpoint that we wanted to go. So we started to go in that direction with some concepts, played around with different fonts, played around with different styles of the mascots. So we even did, you know, explore like one of the mascots that's a little bit more fun and cartoony.

And, and, and I actually tested it. So one of the things that I wanted to do with this one was tested it and I have a, you know, a decent sized audience on X. So I was able to do that. So I started posting, you know, here's all the different concepts that we have, like, vote on 'em every, you know, everybody's voting A, B, C, and I put the cartoony mascot out there.

I put the vintage mascot out there. I put the different logos types out there. And I, I also did this with like, friends of family and like overwhelmingly. People chose the original concepts that we had, which was like this vintage mascot with the paintbrush, with the hat, real simple font, everything. Uh, it, it resonated really well with people.

And so that's what we went with. I wanted it to be a data-driven, you know, data backed decision versus a lot of times I think people that are like designers or web designers, you know, they're really proud of what they have created and, you know, they like this concept and they're offended if that's not the concept that people like, I didn't want to have that attitude.

And, and to be honest, I don't, because I'm not really, I don't consider myself a designer, you know, I'm more of like a, I guess just a, an entrepreneur and maybe you could say I'm marketer. And so I wanted to test it. And overwhelmingly that vintage timeless look that we, that we came up with, with the branding is, is what stuck, and that's what we've used.

Austin Gray:  This episode is brought to you by DialedIn Bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry. If you're looking to keep your books up to date, visit dialedinbookkeeping.com/ownrops. When you use this specific landing page, you'll get your first three months 50% off.

Alex Lathery:  So I've got a couple of things that would, so this is like the, the, the Figma file where I basically threw together everything. So this has all of what we did from a branding standpoint. Like you can see, you know, original voting. So like we actually used AI to create a lot of these initial concepts. So me and my partners were throwing around in chat.

GBTI like to use grok AI for logos. You know, we threw a couple of different logos into AI. Like this one is almost perfectly from AI. You can kind of see, it looks a little bit weird with like this g um, so there's like some hallucinations, but it came out with like a pretty decent concept. And then we pulled a couple of other ones in here.

And ironically, even the painting guy. Almost a hundred percent was AI. Um, you know, the, the actual concept really came from AI and then I took it and we were able to vectorize it into like something that you can actually use, you know, fix some stuff like his neck is, you know, shaved in blue. Um, but did a couple of different concepts.

We voted on those overwhelmingly, at least out of that one. You know, we liked the mascot and then this badge kind of was the one that I think most people liked. We did a bunch of different colors just to see, you know, what would look good, throw 'em on some mockups. Ultimately decided on the kind of navy and red, just felt like it fit Cincinnati, you know, pretty well.

And also it was really bold. One of the things that I wanted from the color standpoint is it had to be bold because it had to be something that was eye catching and I just felt like painting the red and the blue worked really well. So pulled a couple of different versions in here. I wasn't super happy with like some of the badges.

So did a couple of that and then ultimately we started to converge on like the final options, which was this shield version kind of. Icon, the text only. So just Cincinnati painting co with the mascot. And then I also tried a more fun, I don't know, cartoony looking guy and tested that out. And then what came out the end was basically, I.

Voting between these, and we ended up going with this top one that was kind of the overwhelming favorite was Cincinnati painting co with the, with the vintage mascot. And then I modified that badge to be just a little bit of a simpler badge, right? So now if you look at where it's at now, we got a bunch of different versions we can kind of use.

We've got these text versions, some badge versions. We've got the mascot, and then I started to throw, you know, a bunch of those on different uniforms. You know, we're trying to find, you know, what's our guy that's doing the door knocking, that's doing the sales? Who's my operating partner? You know, what's he gonna be wearing from apparel standpoint?

So I kind of designed all that out. And then I also designed out the business cards, the yard signs, the door hangers, which those are in Canva. All of that was basically just one after the other. Very iterative. And it, it probably took about three months of prep work to go from start to finish with all of this.

Then with the website itself, which I started to pull together in Figma as well. This is kind of, this is that final version that I went with. But we ended up with a ton of initial concepts. You know, a bunch of different styles that I was looking at. Pure vintage, modern, kind of a hybrid, and, you know, original concepts.

I didn't even make these, like I had a designer that I work with that that kind of created these, I didn't really like them, to be honest. I wasn't happy with 'em. So I scrapped them all, and I just designed it myself. And that's what all of this crap down here is, is I basically just started, you know, I started throwing some concepts in, I started playing with colors.

I started playing with, what if I put, you know, a badge here, a badge there? What if I throw the mascot on there? I kind of got to the end of that concept. I was like, okay, this looks cool. What if I do something that's a little bit like this where, you know, it says Painting by Cincinnati's Best, and I start iterating through each of these concepts, you know, throw in different elements in here, maybe changing a font here and there, taking that to, you know, the end concept, which is basically this one. A couple more variations I tested here. 

Austin Gray:  Did you land on that one with, with that badge at the bottom of the hero? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much this one. So this is what it like. Oh man, that's, oh my gosh, that's incredible. So a lot. I'm a sucker. If you're a good design man. Yeah. That's a beautiful site. Thank you.

Yeah. Incredible. I just, I love that hero badge right there. Like, it's, it's so different than a, because like, and I've talked about this a lot on the podcast before, like one of the, oh my gosh, that's, that's awesome. One of the most important things I believe on your. Homepage when somebody lands on it is like, give them social proof. Yeah. Immediately. And you did it in a way that showcases that you've got five star Google reviews, Cincinnati's top choice right there. And then it just, it goes right along with your brand. 

Alex Lathery:  And this is, you know, incredible. It's done all the audits like, you know, especially recently at people's websites and like I always tell them, you should spend like 90% of the time on anything on your website is like right here. And this really captures everything that I try to tell people and try to do for clients in one shot. It's like you said, it's like, okay, instantly if you look at this, it doesn't matter where you look, if you look at the background, it's painters, they're painting. If you look here, it's literally says painting.

It's like super in your face, painting. And then by Cincinnati's best. So within a second of jumping onto this page, you see exactly what we do, which is painting and where we do it slash who we do it for. People that live in Cincinnati, you know, residential, commercial, residential and commercials also down here we do interiors, we do exteriors.

We're licensed to assured they got the mascot. You got again, the social proof like you had said. So within one glance you have pretty much everything that you need. Uh, and it's very simple to follow. That's the other thing that I always tell people is like a lot of times I'll have people that, you know, they have a hero section and it's got a million different things on there and I don't even know what to look at.

And they don't realize that that's what everybody that goes to their website has to deal with and has to think about. And they don't think about how that ties into, you know, how many calls you get, how many clicks you get to certain pages, how long people are on your website. 'cause nobody really tracks that data either.

But if you do take an approach like this, generally it works really well. And it's very clear for people because again, it tells them exactly what they want to know and what they are looking for like very quickly. And as you go down the page, you see that as well. A lot of times the other thing that people do is, 'cause they don't have like web development skills or design skills, is they just throw a bunch of text on there.

Maybe they throw a picture on there, but people don't read that stuff. You know, it doesn't really matter if they don't read it, but you need them to get something out of it. And so I always try to blend the visual side with the information both that you need from an SEO standpoint, but also from like, you know, some people do want that information.

So, okay, you've got residential painting, okay. Interiors, exteriors, commercial. We do offices, retail spaces, industrial stuff. So you can kind of just glance through it and you get a pretty good picture. Here's a, a famous bridge in Cincinnati. There's the mascot. We're constantly throwing the mascot out there.

Easy estimates, license and insured. Timeless reliability, pride in the craftsmanship. Uh, we've got these fun little badges here and there. You know, you can scan through this. Get the story and not have to read a ton of stuff, but it is there if you wanna read it. And I think that that's something that people overlook that I really didn't want to overlook.

I wanted everything to be very visual. I. So that people that visit the website could get what they wanted out of it. But also, again, you have to balance, like if we want this thing to rank really well, you have to have the keywords in there. You have to have enough content in there from an SEO standpoint.

And not a lot of people are able to effectively kind of balance the two of those things. And that's ultimately what I tried to do with, uh, with this one. So it's got all that in there. It's very visual. You know, I try to add in elements here and there that just constantly keep it vintage. You know, you've got these little badges everywhere. Like I said, you've got the mascot. So it really is the culmination of like, everything that I try to tell people or that I try to do for clients all wrapped up into one package, you know, that is this, this business that, that I at least I'm part owner of, so. 

Austin Gray:  This is incredible. Alex, like I, I might go so far as to say this is the, from a design perspective, this is, this is the best local service business design website I've seen.

Alex Lathery:  Yeah, I put that, I put that, put it on my agency website, Caston, right there. 

Austin Gray:  And, and, and purely just from a design perspective and like, and like what I'm, what I'm saying is yeah, like you've put so much time and effort into your craft and anybody who does that, like immediate respect. So hats off to, to what you've done.

And I'm just a sucker for beautifully di designed websites. Yeah. Because I know how much time it takes and like, I, I finally got, so I used to build websites for my, my businesses in the past. Anybody else who's listening to this, who's ever tried to build your own website, like when Alex says this is a three month process right here on what he's put in, it's so true because I realized at a certain point on my websites that I would start going in to make an update. 'cause you have this idea and then all of a sudden you look up and you're five hours in. 

Alex Lathery: Yep

Austin Gray:  And as an operator, I got to the point where I was like, I, I physically, if I want to get good at operating the business, I can't be doing this anymore. So I have to hire the pro and I just have to like delegate this to somebody else. So there was a point in time where it shifted and that was right about the time I started bear cloth. There was, there's one thing that I do want to, and I don't wanna shift the conversation too much to my end because I wanna stay on like you walking us through these principles, but there's something that you said that I wanna bring up here.

You said being really clear with what your, like with what your service does, being crystal clear to your customer about what you do is a really important thing. Yep. And you said some businesses get it wrong because they're unclear. On what service they offer, and the name is just too long. 

Alex Lathery: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  It feels like a mouthful. I will admit that when I started Bearclaw, I didn't know all of these principles, right? Like I've learned consistently by talking with other people like yourself. So one, I think you nailed it on Cincinnati painting company to like with Bear Claw Land Services, it's general, it's long, right? And it's also unclear exactly what service we offer.

Now, my head was going to, like, I, I knew I wanted to, to be able to offer forestry excavation and snow. And so it was like, what? What could. Encompass that because we're a seasonal business, right? Yeah. But then I look at the strategy and I was actually talking to you, you know, Bodie and Andy, right? 

Alex Lathery: Yep, yep.

 Austin Gray: at Stryker. So I went over to, to Breckenridge last week. Bodie was in town snowboarding, and I went over and met him for launch, and we were talking about this concept of like straight line sales, right? And it's like all your marketing efforts, kind of what he was talking about was like, all your marketing efforts should go into selling one service on the front end, and then more services can come in on the back end. So I, I, I wish I would've had that concept of like crafting a brand on the front end 

Alex Lathery: Yeah.

Austin Gray:  to market to your customers, even though you offer multiple services, build your customer list, and then put a plan for an upsell process on the backend. Yep. So I just wanted to share this because I think it's, I think it's applicable here as to your strategy, and then I'm sharing.

That. Hey, I, I, I made a, I made a mistake here. It's not the end of the world. Yeah. But it could have been done better by following that like straight line marketing principle of, I'm gonna sell the customer that we do painting and we're just gonna sell them painting services. Then if you want to sell them other services on the back end, you can do that through your upsell process.

But I think this is really important for listeners, and I want to ask you, so this is the brand, let's go next into SEO. You've mentioned exact match domains before. Yeah. Can you talk us through your thought process on. Transitioning from the brand into the domain and why that matters from an SEO perspective.

Alex Lathery:  Yeah, so, you know, it sounds like super basic. Google's got these like really advanced crazy algorithms and you would think that it's beyond the point of you just put, you know, Cincinnati and painting in the name and then boom, it's like magically, you know, you're ranking really well. But generally that literally is what happens both on the organic search results standpoint.

So if you're just searching in Google and you type up Cincinnati painting company, like they'll pull me up and, and it's because we match that. Exactly. You know, and it does make sense, right? If somebody is searching for something and in your name you have that exact phrase, it's like, okay, so if I'm trying to give that person the best result, well why don't I give them what matches exactly what they search for?

That kind of makes sense. And so it does make sense from that standpoint. And so I. That's why it, it works. And that's why our name is Cincinnati Painting Co. And so on top of that, you know, on the Google business profile side as well, when you have your Google Business profile name, which is really tied to your, your LLC name or, or your corporation or whatnot, it does the same thing.

When somebody searches something through Google Maps or they're looking for businesses near me, it does the exact same thing. And so having it gives you that boost both from the website SEO side, but also from your Google Business profile, SEO side. And so typically, you know, there's a lot of like ways that you can spin it.

There's a lot of variations, but it really just boils down to what are people searching and then putting that as your name, but also you don't want to do it so much so that it's like blatantly. You know, just a grab an SEO. That's always my advice to people. So for example, like I don't want, let's say I really was only doing interior painting.

I don't want my business name to be Cincinnati interior painters.com. It's really long, like that's three words, super long. Nobody's gonna remember that domain. And it also doesn't seem like a brand. I always feel like there's a happy medium. You know, even though like Cincinnati painting Co is not the highest search volume painting term, it is something that is searched and it, it is also very brandable.

So it's the balance that you have to strike of like not just stuffing a bunch of keywords into a name, and then you've got this really long URL that nobody cares about, nobody's gonna remember. You're never gonna be able to build a brand around, but how can you get that brand? Also with the SEO benefits and, and doing something as simple as Cincinnati painting co.

We know somebody that, that we're friends with that has Columbus painting co. Uh, it, it works. It's a good formula and there's really nothing that you can overcomplicate if you just go that route. Another really good one that people do is like, I've, like, there's a guy on X that has top choice lawn care.

Yeah, that's a pretty good name. It doesn't have ation in there, but it's very simple. And that kind of gets away from the SEO side. But I think that people really overcomplicate the naming portion of the business. And again, I always tie it back to that very simple formula. It's like, what do you do and who do you do it for? And if you go that route, you're, you're really not gonna go wrong. Um, and it's not like you can't change that stuff ever either so. 

Austin Gray:  Shout out to Nolan with top choice Lawn care. 

Alex Lathery: Exactly.

Austin Gray:  If you're listening. Hello. No, Nolan, I'm actually, uh, going down to, to, I'm gonna see him next week. 

 Alex Lathery: Tom, I got him a shout out.

Austin Gray:  I will. I definitely will. He's such a great guy. Yeah. Have you met him? 

Alex Lathery:  I've never met him, no. I have not been. I've been to Texas once, twice, but it's been years that back in Covid, so basically when my business was not really  that much of a business. 

Austin Gray:  Yeah. He's a he's a great guy. 

Alex Lathery: Yeah. Just really good leader. Also has strong Christian values and Yeah. Has been, been fun to get to know. But yeah, on the, on the topic of exact match domains, I got this email this morning, or it was yesterday or something and it was like best demolition company.com. It's like, hey, this domain is for sale, it's for 500 bucks. And like to your point, like it's not terrible, but it's total keyword stuffing and it's not really a brand, right? And so it's like, I personally think when people are searching for something, like if they were to search Best Demolition Company, Cincinnati in their own market, if your website comes up as Best demolition company.com, I really do think customers are getting smarter. They're coming around to this concept of like there are companies out there who do these rank and ramp websites.

Austin Gray: Yep. And so going the route of actually building the brand. Of Cincinnati Painting Company, which sounds like an actual brand. I agree with you on that in the sense that that's a better strategy than just like best Cincinnati interior painting company to keyword stuff for. 

Alex Lathery:  Yeah, and there's a way 

Austin Gray:  that you can also, like some people 

Alex Lathery:  Always ask like, oh, that, you know, they have a, a situation like yours where it's like, oh, this domain came up. Should I buy it? Should I like start a second website? And that's where I would say like, yeah, like if you want, like if you're doing really well. You've got a website, it ranks really well. You're doing great from a, you know, business standpoint. You have some extra money. You can throw up a second website with a domain of like best stimulation expert Cincinnati or something.

And then, you know, best case scenario is you rank number one for your main business, number two for that. And so all of the leads flow to you in that way. But yeah, I think that like the base plan for everybody should be like, you have to build a brand too. Because, you know, people talk about this a lot more.

So now, you know, two, two years ago, like LSA and, and all these other marketing channels, like you could just basically turn them on and you'd have a business. And it's insane. You know, they were brand new, the lead costs were super low, they were super effective. You know, things have changed. And you know, nowadays you kind of have to have diversity.

Like you have to have ads that you run on meta, you have to have ads that you run on Google. You have to rank with SEO, you have to be doing door knocking and you know, putting door hat flyers up at door hangers. 'cause not all of them work for everybody. And that's something that I think a lot of. Newer business owners struggle with because they do see people online and they're like, oh, I'm good if I just rank.

You know, if I just like focus on SEO, like I'll be totally fine. Or if I just run local service ads, like I'm good. And it's really not the case. So, you know, that maybe gets you so far, but it never really gets you past like the beginner stage. And so a lot of people kind of miss that when they're, when they're starting out, and that's where they start to really struggle too.

Austin Gray: So what recommendations would you have if somebody is starting a local service business? Uh. In their own area on creating the brand and naming their business. 

Alex Lathery: Yeah, and you know, this is typically where people are maybe surprised at, like the advice that I give, depending on what they have as far as resources go to start.

I actually really tend to push people to kind of just bootstrap stuff. Like there are some people where they, they don't want to take the time to like make a website and to make a logo and to do things like really official, but they have the money and they'll just pay someone to do it. And that's great, you know, that works really well for them.

And you can start very quickly with that. But there's other people where it's like, you know, that that money would really set them back either personally, financially, or like that's all of the money that they have to invest in the business. And I actually tend to say to people like the branding and the, the website and the logo, I.

They're super important, but you can survive without them. Especially at the start. You know, there's people that don't have websites that still have business, like they still make some money. And so I always push people more to like do the free forms of marketing. Like throw up a very, like you can, you can throw up a very basic logo.

It's not gonna win any awards, but it'll be good enough to get at least that semblance of credibility that you are a legitimate business when you're talking to people. And so I tend to push people in that direction, you know, get something up, get something up really quick. Do not stress about it. Because the other thing that happens is like people will start to bootstrap it.

They'll do it themselves, but they'll spend like hours on the website, on Wix or something, or Squarespace where it's like a really easy do it yourself editor. And they hate it. You know, they're like, this is so bad and I, I don't think I can launch with this. And there's a lot of like indecisiveness and so I, I always tell them, you know, just throw something out there. It's super basic.

It's not gonna be great, but you just can be okay with that. You know, you have to know that at start, and you can use the time and the money to get customers and to get some revenue. Because to give an example of a cleaning business, if worked with a lot of cleaning businesses, you know, if you spend like $2,000 over the first couple of months on ads, let's say you're running Yelp ads, or you run local service ads and you use that budget to get ads, you may end up with a thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue or $2,000 a month in recurring revenue, maybe more.

So now you have a bit of a launchpad and you can reinvest that revenue into other things that will continue to compound website logo, dial in the branding, maybe expand into a different ad platform, maybe do something on like the physical standpoint. You're printing out flyers, but like it's really about how can you get those first couple of jobs for.

The cheapest really is what it comes down to. And how can you start to stack some of that momentum, which is where you start to spend money, right? And I always push people to just do the three forms of marketing to get those first couple of jobs. And so that's like doing Facebook posts, that's talking to people that, you know, that's reaching out.

If you're in a business where you can do like semi-commercial deals, like let's say you're, you're doing cleaning and you want to get with real estate agents and you wanna do all of their turnover cleans or their, their listing cleans, you know, there's ways to get jobs like that where you don't have to spend any money, you just have to spend your time.

And, and I always push people to start there and just take those baby steps and, you know, invest in some of those marketing channels as you go versus doing what I do, which is I start from scratch with everything and I've built everything to the peak of what I could make it from day one. But that's because that's a skillset that I have and that's the skillset that most of the.

Blue collar local service business owners will not have and and they should just be okay with that and start where they have 

Austin Gray: Agreed. I, I could not agree with you more. I, I'm wearing one of our old hats here. This is, this is literally just a, that, that was like a pre-programmed template in, in Canva that I just put our words in and like the logo was the logo.

And I'm with you like, the most important thing is to go generate revenue. After the revenue and, and the profit is generated then, then it's something you can start looking into and I appreciate you. I I really do. I appreciate you sharing that for the listeners because this is why you, you guys know Alex is a good guy cause he is not, he's not just trying to sell you a website right out the gate. 

 Alex Lathery: But I like, I do this on calls. Like if somebody gets on a call with me and I can tell that like this is an extreme financial commitment for them. I'm like, dude, do not buy this. Like, you're not at that point, like, come back in two months.

Like I will give you resources, I will give you advice. Like whatever you need, just start this thing. Because the other thing that I see happen a lot is there are a lot of people that they get sold on the dream, you know? Mm-hmm. They're gonna make 20 KA month and they're gonna have a fully passive remote business 'cause they see some people talk about it and they start it. They spend a lot of money because people online also tell you to spend a lot of money to start things. And you know, then they end up negative, right? They end up six months later, they spent all their money, they don't have a business and they're really burnt out.

And, you know, it was just a bad decision. And so I, I try to turn people away from doing that, especially when you can tell that that's where they're at, that, you know, they don't have the money or they don't have the experience and it's a big risk for them. And I think that this, you know, like a sign of any like good marketer or marketing agency is like, are you willing to push people for a sale or are you like just a normal, genuine dude where you're like, if I was that guy, I'd be really upset if, if they made me spend like all this money and then it just fail.

You know? And I think that a lot of people, they. Tend to not think that way. They tend to think like, you know, it's not my fault if somebody doesn't succeed, like you can't force somebody to succeed. But I do think there's like a level of responsibility that you have when you, you have a skillset and you're like selling somebody something.

Like, I, I don't ever want to sell somebody something that doesn't generate a return that is a lot higher than what I would pay, you know, have them pay me for, I just would feel wrong doing that. And, you know, that's not always the case, especially in the marketing agency world. 

Austin Gray: Well, in your website and SEO strategy ranking online, it's a long-term strategy.

Yeah. It's not the first thing you do and, and you're just, it's, and most often times, like, it's gonna take a long time to see really good results for, for a lot of people, unless you just hit like a really specific pain point in an underserved market. Um, what resources would you point people to to bootstrap those things like names, brands, logos.

Alex Lathery: Honestly, you can do a lot with like Canva, the Free Canvas subscription. You know, I, I've done logos on the Free Canvas subscription before. There's also a lot of free, like you said with the Bear Call logo, you know, you just throw up these AI generated like logo templates, so a lot of 'em, you know, you could pay like 10, 15 bucks and this decent and you can, you can survive out of that.

So those types of resources are really solid. Anything AI is gonna help you, like if you're trying to come up with a business name, go into chat. GBT, throw in the criteria. Hey, I want this to be like very clear what we do, who we do it for. I want it to include the location name, Cincinnati. I want it to talk about painting 'cause we do painting.

Generate 50 different business names that I could use for my business and, and then generate the URL, you know, what domain should I go and buy. That's the stuff that you can, within a couple hours sit down. You can have the business concept, you can have the name, you can have the logo, you can have everything except for the website done.

And then for the website, you know, you go to Squarespace, you go to Wix, depending on the CRM that you're using, some of 'em have like a template built in website that you can rely on at the beginning. And I tend to advise people to use those like to the fullest extent. Again, they're not gonna be perfect, but like, you don't need perfect when you're starting out, you need revenue.

And then once you get to be a little bit more official when you're down the road, then you can start to go and like, let's do this the right way and, and kind of invest in it. So the best resources really nowadays, which we didn't have back when, like we were starting our businesses like years ago, is, you know, AI honestly, um, you pretty much have like a free consultant that'll get you, you know, 80% of the way there versus if you paid somebody to tell you what to do and they'll be able to get you, you know, infinite ideas.

Austin Gray: It is pretty incredible what AI is doing right now. I like we, when I started the snow shovelers business, like we just literally used an AI logo and did like a couple versions of it. My question for you specifically though, if, if listeners go and use an AI logo generator, how can they. Turn that because like, remind me of what, what format AI sends it to you in. Just like a picture, right? A p and g or a jpeg. 

‍Alex Lathery: So yeah, it's not like the vector, you know, like super official scalable type of file that you would get if you worked with like a logo designer. 

Austin Gray: What's a quick way that listeners could take a, take an AI generated logo in p and g format and transfer that into a vector?

Alex Lathery: So like any, even if you just search up p and g to SVG converter, P and g to jpeg, converter background remover, those, they're free tools for literally everything. You just have to search 'em. So like to give an example, if you get an AI logo, it'll probably come as a p and g. It'll have a background color, most likely like white or you know, black.

And the first thing you can do is you can, you look up AI background remover. This one that I use is called Remove.bg. Remove background. And you can upload it there. It'll remove the background. You can redownload it. Now, it has no background. You can throw that into Canva. On the free version, you can crop it up a little bit so it doesn't have all this white space.

 And then you can export it as whatever you want. That's the GPG at jpeg. You can put it on a Facebook banner, you can put it on a, uh, you know, an Instagram post. There's a lot that you can do with Canva is really my, my recommended and like favorite. Free ish design tool and then all of those online, you know, I just need to do one thing, like remove a background to search up AI background remover or if your, your logo's blurry or you have a picture that you wanna use for marketing, but it's blurry.

There's AI image upscales, I use AI image upscales all the time. You search up AI image upscale, you throw an image in and tell it to make it higher resolution by 200 or 400%. People just don't know that You can literally search for just about any tool and AI or some kind of, you know, internet code will do it for you and most of 'em are free, which is the crazy part.

Austin Gray: So that gets to your logo. Any sort of prompts for telling chat GPT? What kind of logo you make? 

Alex Lathery: Yeah, so I would say it kind of depends, you know, all of the AI platforms, they've changed a lot. Like there was a time where I was getting really, really good logos from X'S ai, so. Like I would put in the most basic prompt, you know, generate me a modern startup logo for a financial company called Grays Financial.

It spits out this beautiful like nearly perfect logo, text and all. But then there's other times like if I go on right now and I said the exact same prompt, it'll just come out with garbage, you know? And so they're always changing. There's really no good way to go about it. You can go really deep into like researching like prompts and stuff, but I tend to start really basic, like.

Hey, I want a simple vector logo, modern logo for a landscaping business. You know, and then put the name, 'cause they're pretty good at handling text nowadays. And you start there, it'll generate, you know, one to four concepts and you can say, all right, this looks pretty good, but I don't like that the colors are too dull.

Can you make it more vibrant? And you just start chatting with it and it'll, it'll be iterative. You have to do a lot to get it really to where you want, but a couple of iterations and you'll be 80% of the way there. And, and that's kind of where, you know, even when I do logos for clients nowadays, most of the time that first concept, I will throw something together with AI and just spitball it to them.

Just to kind of get their initial take before I go and spend a ton of effort to like actually design out the logo. And so you'll get 80% of the way there and then usually, you know, down the line or whenever you decide to redo it, you can work with somebody that has like illustrator skills or like graphic design skills and they can like fix, you know, some of the issues with the logo, like I showed you on Cincinnati painting code one, like the initial text, it kind of looked a little bit weird, you know, I deleted that little line and, and used that exact content or that exact font in the end.

But that's the stuff that an illustrator, like a graphic designer can help you with down the road. How about domains? I buy all my domains on name cheap.com and I'm not sponsored, but domains are really basic, right? You know, buy the, buy the exact match domain. If it, if it fits for you to say painting co.

Is what we did. Buy the, the one that is just your business name, bear call, you know, land services.com. Like. People overcomplicate them. Sometimes people also buy like dozens of domains, you know, and it's like, Hey, just buy the one that you're gonna launch with. Buy it on name cheap, buy it on GoDaddy. It really doesn't matter what platform you buy it on.

I just like name cheap because it's cheap and because honestly, there's really no special gimmicks for a local service business domain. You just buy it and then you just use it. It's really nothing special to it. 

Austin Gray: Agreed. Yeah. And, and we've, I, I hope listeners, if you're listening to this, like you're, you're learning from the lesson that I learned with Bear Call Land Services.

Is that a make it or break thing? No, like. We're ranking in our local area for like, we're, we're ranking on Google with a long domain, bear Claw land services.com. We, we, we rank for things like tree service, excavation, things like that. So my point with the is like, it's not a make or break thing, but I shared that story earlier because I believe listeners, if you're listening and you haven't started a business yet, it's worth listening to Alex's advice.

Like he's in it every single day. He's building websites for people and he is helping people name and come up with a, a brand that resonates with, with local communities. And so, like he's drinking his own Kool-Aid at this point. Like he started Cincinnati painting Co. And he has equity in it. And his responsibility was marketing and branding.

And he put his whole effort and energy into it. And this is ultimately what he landed on. And so my hope is that by sharing a bit about a. My story and how I could have made it better from the beginning and having Alex share exactly what he did, that you guys can just jumpstart straight to what works.

Right. So it's like if you're starting a, I don't know, let's use what, what's an example? 

Alex Lathery: Landscaping business. Landscaping. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: If you're starting landscaping in, throw out a city, let's call it Houston. Houston. Houston Landscaping. Um, I guarantee there's already a Houston Landscaping room. There is, 

Alex Lathery: Yeah. Probably there's one in like every, people like me have ruined that, that market. You know, you have to, even with us, we don't have the.com. Somebody bought the.com but there, they didn't have a website for it, so we just threw up on the.co tried to buy the.com from them, uh, TBD on, if that happens, but we got the head 

Austin Gray: Oh, so bummer that you didn't get that one.

Alex Lathery: Yeah, but even that, it doesn't really matter, you know, as long as like, as long as they don't have the website up. You're the first one to stick a claim in that area. Yours just says.co instead of.com. Uh, so that, that domain becomes a lot less valuable to anybody else because you've already launched so.

Austin Gray: So purely from an SEO value though, or Google's algorithm?

Alex Lathery: Yeah, it's the same. It works. I think some people maybe think that dot coms are a little bit better, but I have never really seen it matter to me like really my, all my dot cos rank super well and I have noticed no difference. And so, you know, like for us, I think they wanted like $1,500 for the.com and we paid four for the.co.

And we rank, you know, even as early as it is, we rank pretty dang well for a competitive area. And yeah, so now that now we're the only ones that launched with Cincinnati painting Co CM and so. For them to try to launch a website if they wanted to on the.com. They're like very far behind us. Google already associates that name with us, so we have the upper hand and, and this is kind of what I told my partners as well, 'cause they were gonna pay the $1,500.

It's like I don't really see the value in it because if we launch right now, we start ranking. Like we've basically captured that, that term, that is our term now. And so now that.com that they wanted to get $1,500 for, it's like, well, you know, it's not gonna be of use to them. They're not gonna really be able to launch a website on it and out compete us unless they wanted to spend a ton of money.

And so, you know, we've offered them a couple hundred bucks for it. It's been rejected in the past, but I think that time comes around, they'll come around and, and we'll get that domain for a lot less than $1,500 because now it's not worth anything to. 

Austin Gray: I follow your strategy there to like outrank them first. Yeah. And then get it for cheaper. I have heard, like personally, like everyone I've talked to, and this could just be, you know, a marketing thing, but I have heard dot com's are more valuable at Google's Nice. Yeah. than.co. 

Alex Lathery: Yeah. And I think it's because people, you know, if you think about like a customer's perspective, I think people are used to the.com.

Sometimes people just like it maybe a little bit more, but from a technical ranking perspective, there's a little bit of an advantage. But it's really, you know, we're, we're, we're kind of down in the local space, right? Where it doesn't really matter, you know, not competing with hundreds of really, really sharp a plus businesses.

Like they just, there's not a lot of competition in the local space. And so, you know, kind of, again, is it a make or break? No, not really. And, and will we get the.com domain in the end or could we get it today? If we wanted to pay that price, we could. And so that's, that's kind of the nuance to that strategy, right.

There's definitely a risk and like, should you get the.com if you can? Absolutely. But also, you know, some of the dot coms that people will try to get, they'll be a thousand, $2,000, $3,000. And back to that bootstrap mentality, don't spend $1,500 on a domain to get started. You know, start the business.

Austin Gray: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bodie and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bearclaw land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you wanna learn more, visit stryker digital.com. That's S-T-R-Y-K-E-R digital.com. 

Austin Gray: Well, I do agree with you that operating and getting, getting going is more important because you can beat them to number one on the search results because if you're operating, you're, you have the ability to go get five star reviews, right? 

Alex Lathery: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And you've got time.

Google takes time as a factor as well. Like if they spend two years understanding that Cincinnati painting Co is us, our website, it's gonna be really hard for someone to come in with the dot COM and convince Google that actually it's not them, it's us. 'cause that's the, that is the way that they look at it so, 

Austin Gray: Cool. Well, yeah, one, hopefully, hopefully you have some negotiation power at that point. Yeah. Whenever you're, whenever you're outranking 'em. But it's 1500 bucks. Like this is a long term business. I, I'm, I'm buying that domain all day at 1500 bucks. Uh, that's my opinion. 

Alex Lathery: We might soon, but they don't, we, the, the thing is that we know the guys that have it, so it's not like, just so real.

We know the guys that have it, and they don't have an interest in operating in Cincinnati. They have a painting elsewhere and they we're gonna do something in Cincinnati. They, they're like, ah, I don't know if we're gonna do it anymore. You know, we'll sell you the domain for 1500. And I was like, guys like.

I, we'll give you, I think we offered them like a thousand, right? A thousand. And they're like, no, we're gonna hold onto it. And I think it's just because the owner just doesn't want to get rid of the domain. I don't know why, but you know, it was a little bit of negotiation, some back and forth, but they have no interest in operating in this area anymore.

They were gonna, they were going to originally sort of do like a coaching thing with my partners before I was involved. And then they kind of stepped back because they were actually gonna do something else in their business. So they have the domain, they're just sitting on it. It's not doing anything, but yeah, they just wanna sit on it, I guess so. 

Austin Gray: Well listeners, uh, take your, take your own opinion here from this on.com and.co. I agree with Alex in the sense that operate like getting going and operating is the most important thing because. And we haven't even jumped into five star reviews yet in relation to SEO, but moving fast, operating, we're in agreement there.

And just get to number one on Google as fast as you can. So my question for you is, what is your strategy from here on out to get ranked to number one on Google? 

Alex Lathery: Yeah, so I mean, it's really just the basics, right? We're, we're trying to get reviews, uh, we're trying to get, you know, painting is a little bit of a seasonal business and so like we're just getting into that season where things ramp up.

We've got a lot of estimates that are on the books and we're trying to close those first couple of sales. And as we do that, obviously pushing reviews is a really big one, but. Outside of that, you know, it's really kind of just the, the basics. Like we have a good website up, we've got the pages up, I've done the keyword research about what people are searching for, and that's a little bit more advanced.

Like, not everybody's gonna be able to do that, but you can kind of just, you know, even if you just look at your competitors and that's like the only form of research, like what, what pages do my competitors have? Like, I should have a page for that. Uh, as long as you actually do that service. But that's, that's pretty much what we did.

We launched a really good website. We have the pages in place for the places that we service and the services that we offer. And now I'm just monitoring those, right? I'm building a little bit of backlinks, so that's also a little bit more advanced and technical for, for some folks. But like other websites linking back to our website, you know, building those citations, making sure that we have like a Google business profile, a Yelp account, X account, an Instagram account, a Facebook account, you know, all these directories and social media profiles.

We've got 'em making sure that all that stuff styled in. Then outside of that, for us, the SEO is, again, it's like that you said it's a longer term one, we're just taken as slow. We did the exact match domain, so we're already in a pretty good spot. We are getting some traffic organically from that. But outside of that, like we're really diversifying and that's kind of what I said earlier, like we're trying to make sure that, you know, we're not just sitting here waiting for the leads to pour in through SEO.

So we're doing door knocking, you know, we've doing, we're doing um, yard signs, we've got door hangers, we've got flyers, we're doing meta ads that just launched this last week. I'm in the process of getting Google set up and launching Google local service ads. So, you know, we have a bit more of a budget than somebody that is like just starting, just 'cause we've got three partners.

But that's really what we're doing is we're trying to diversify, you know, how the little bit of like the physical offline marketing have the organic SEO social media marketing in place and then have the ads in place. So we kind of have that trifecta and then on a couple different platforms, like I said, split between Google, split between Facebook.

That's really what we're doing and, and we're just trying to get those estimates in place. One so that our operating partner. None of us are painters in the sense that, you know, we run a painting business, but making sure that he gets, that, those reps in, you know, for the estimating for the sales process, like all that stuff's gotta get dialed in and you really need the reps to get that dialed in.

And so that's what we're focused on. Especially, you know, April, march, um, may like really heading into summer. We're trying to get as many estimates and then hopefully as many jobs as we can this summer to, to really spur the business forward. 

Austin Gray: Awesome. Well, let's cut it here and let's do a part two if you're down on more of the, the complete marketing strategy, because you said something there that I feel like is really important to dive into and I think it's gonna launch us into another hour long conversation.

Yep. But it's on the topic of you mentioned, Hey, we're, we're. We have SEO in mind right now, but we know that it takes a long time. So we have to go craft our marketing plan to go get, get the leads right now. And this is where I see a lot of people who have reached out about the online marketing plan in general, just make a mistake.

It's like they think if they invest in SEO right out the gate, that that's just gonna bring up a funnel of leads. So I'm gonna stop it there because I have a lot of thoughts and I know that you're gonna have a lot of thoughts on this as well, and. Let's do it round two. Let's do it, man. Well, Alex, it's incredible to meet you.

Where can people find your website agency and Cincinnati painting online? 

Alex Lathery: So my website, bluecollarbuilds.tech. I did not get the.com for that one. That was just not even available. Couldn't buy it. So Blue Collar Build Tech, and then I am pretty active on X, Alex Lathery, 

Austin Gray: A-L-E-X-L-A-T-H-E-R-Y. Fantastic. Well, thanks again for being on and sharing your journey about how to design and name local service brands. 

Alex Latheny: Absolutely, man. It was a pleasure. 

Austin Gray: Well, listeners, I hope you've received some value out of this If you have very similar to building a local service business podcast. It works the same way. So five star reviews are very important, and if you're getting value outta these episodes, would you mind to take 30 seconds and just leave us a quick five star review on Apple and Spotify, and then if you're listening on YouTube, we'd sure appreciate a like and subscribe to the channel.

You'll get notified whenever we drop our weekly episodes. Our schedule is every Friday we drop a weekly episode about building and growing local service business. We are on a mission to help 10,000 entrepreneurs build and grow seven figure local service businesses by 2030. Another way to stay involved if you haven't already, is to get the episode summaries and the high level bullet points sent to you via email on Saturdays.

You can sign up for that newsletter at ownrops.com slash newsletter. That's ownrops.com/newsletter. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you guys in the next week. Don't forget, work hard, do your best. Never settle for less.

‍

‍