Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now.

Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, welcome back to Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield here.

I will put on my podcaster voice for a minute and use that creepy voice.

So sounds like, sounds like some of you that go out and use the creepy salesman voice.

Let's stop doing that everybody.

So awareness moment when you pay attention.

If you find yourself sliding into that creepy salesman voice, just pay attention and stop.

In fact, make fun of it and tell your homeowners like, oh my gosh, that happens sometimes.

Sorry.

Let's just have a normal conversation if you find them being resistant when that happens.

So all of that to say, that's a fun intro into today's episode.

I'm so excited to have this guest on.

He is a total rock star.

I've known him coming up on a year now.

We met at a mastermind that we're both a member of and this gentleman's and with his wife.

Their company is one of the coolest things that I've seen when it comes to reviews and capturing the story from our homeowners, capturing the story from our clients, capturing the story from internally right from our own people within our company.

The message we want to get out.

So I am happy to introduce this is Dan Levens.

He is the founder and CEO of a company called Share One which if you haven't heard of them up till now, you will hear of them because they are quickly becoming a household name in the in the video review market and in the basically there's all of the ways to capitalize and capture your your homeowner story or just any story.

So thank you for joining us on the show today.

Dan and I know probably butchering exactly what Share One does and we'll get some clarity on it here in a second but man, I'm excited you're here and talk to us about the importance what you guys do.

Well, Sam, thank you for having me on the show.

You said drop the voice, right?

Got the creepy podcaster voice.

Hey, Sam, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we're living in such a evolving world when it comes to technology and marketing especially, and nobody really knows, like, what's working and what's not.

You know, one thing that works one day, it doesn't work the next.

And with the economy, with AI, with all these different things, it's like we're all just taking stabs at things and seeing what works.

So it's a fascinating and very fun and volatile world to be in.

But thank you for having me today.

I'm so excited to dive in deeper on this chat with you.

Yeah, man, this is going to be good.

So let's start off with a little bit of, usually the interviews, we start off with just a quick highlight reel of how you got to where you are.

Right.

Give us your story and your wife's story and, you know, introduce us a little bit to who you guys are.

And the big question I always like to ask is, is there a specific life or business philosophy that really drives you guys forward into what you're doing?

And then we could talk, of course, about share one and that kind of thing.

Here in a minute.

Yeah.

So I've always been an entrepreneur at heart.

I started, my mom says I was like nine years old as an entrepreneur.

We used to live in China.

My dad was a diplomat for the Belgian government, and I had the fanciest bike on the block.

And because we're diplomats, we're able to import stuff.

Right.

Back then in China, this is like 1979, everybody had Navy blue and black things and it was all government issued.

I had this purple and red bike.

And my mom tells a story that she looked out the window and she sees this kid, like, riding my bike.

And like two minutes later, she sees another kid riding my bike.

And she finally runs to the back and she sees me with a line of folks, and I was collecting 1 yuan for giving people a ride on my bike.

So I've been an entrepreneur entrepreneur my whole life.

That is a cool story.

Yeah.

And I've never stopped.

I've never stopped.

I founded 12 businesses.

And the way I got into marketing and specifically video is back in the day, I opened one of the first co working facilities in Philadelphia as a means of, like, bringing together people that are trying to create a business, trying to make the world a better place, providing them office space, providing them shared Resources and whatnot.

And just witnessing so many businesses fail.

And it's not because of the idea was bad.

It was really their lack of being able to communicate their value proposition.

So then I was like, whoa, like, this is the problem.

It's marketing, you know, it's the way you communicate.

So then I started getting into marketing.

And this is after running incubators and accelerators and all that.

And shortly into marketing, I'm like, wow.

A super quick timeout for everybody listening.

This is a little different language than we normally hear.

Incubator, business incubators and that kind of thing.

Not baby incubators.

Thank you, Sam.

That's a very good distinction.

Yes.

So got into marketing and really helping people communicate what they do, because a lot of times we're so close to what we do, it's hard to communicate.

And putting ourselves in the shoes of the consumer and all that, and very soon got into the power of video.

And we'll touch on this probably a little bit later, but when you write something down, people may or may not read it.

When you present a video, people immerse themselves in a story.

They get to relive somebody else's experience.

And at the end of the day, we're trying to get people to drop into their hearts.

We're trying to get people to relate to you.

So video became a huge thing for us.

And post pandemic, we had a full film studio, live audience, stage and all that.

And of course, the pandemic hit.

So we were forced to pivot and we pivoted to online interviews and being able to capture video content remotely.

And I'm glad for that change because today we're cranking out hundreds and hundreds of videos a month, if not thousands, virtually super, super affordably.

There's no way we could have ever done that if we're still sending news, not news, but camera crews into people's homes and offices.

Wow.

Wow, that is incredible.

What a cool, cool story.

What a cool transition too, because the.

And geez, the pandemic did that with all of us for various things, right?

Nobody used to go sell heating and air systems virtually.

It had to be done in the home.

And now there's companies all over doing.

You know, there's a buddy of mine over, Aaron over in Kentucky is doing.

He's got a team of like three people doing $4 million a year from the office, never setting foot in, you know, heating in anyone's home, selling air conditioner.

So clearly it can be done virtually.

I love that.

Talk about a way to scale too?

Yeah, definitely.

We are able to.

We've got clients all over the country, some overseas as well, and it broadens the market.

And then the second part of the question you asked me was the ethics and the why and the underlying philosophy of things.

I love that question because Share One was born with.

During one of my meditations, I had this vision.

I've got a 15 year old and an 18 year old.

So I see them on social media and everybody looking at all this content and what's viral and what's not.

And I had this vision of like, what would it look like if every single person on this planet had the opportunity to share one positive experience that impacted them in a positive way?

If we're to flood all of our channels with these types of positive transformations and it'll create a ripple effect of other people wanting to do the same thing.

Right.

So that's where Share One was born, is really being able to elevate humanity and human experiences through allowing other people to share their stories.

And that's how Share One was born.

Oh, I love that.

That has such a deeper impact too, now that I know the origin story of the company.

So thank you for sharing that.

That's nice.

So we talked about something a minute ago that I think would be a really good segue into, before we get into the other, just what we're going to talk about, about Reviews and what ShareOne is.

But you were talking about how important it is that we understand how the consumer thinks and how important it is to put ourselves in their shoes.

So question I kind of have is while everybody is listening and they're thinking along these lines, what exercise can someone do to put themselves maybe in those consumer shoes?

What can we do to say they're just starting along these lines, I'm a technician that's open to shop or maybe I got a decent sized company and we're starting to get things established.

But there's a lot of companies right now going from the hey, we'll just take whatever business comes in the door to okay, we're recognizing some clients are better than others.

What is that?

What does that look like?

How can they help?

Pinpoint that and move forward there.

One really cool exercise is just kind of hitting the rewind button on your clients.

So if you have existing client bases, pick one, pick two, pick ten and just rewind the entire buying engagement journey all the way down to their AC broke or their AC is not cold enough or what is it and what time of day is it?

Are they sitting in their bedrooms at night, sweating, Are they complaining about something?

And just, just completely rewind to that, to that very initial need and say, okay, if I'm that person, what am I going to do?

I'm going to pick up my phone, right?

What am I going to Google?

What are the words that I'm going to type?

And forget about what you do, forget about all the bells and whistles that you can provide or the price or anything like that.

Just really think about, hey, fix my AC quickly, or did hail damage my roof or whatever those are.

So that's the source of it.

So that's what they're typing into YouTube or they're typing into Google and then keeping that frame, say, okay, so they've got now a list of results.

What's going to inspire them to click?

Are they needing time?

Are they looking for a cool website?

Are they looking for a phone number like whatever that is, and say, okay, so this person now has this pain point and they're looking for this information and they're going to land on my landing page.

Answer those questions, right?

Don't bombard them with anything else.

It's literally like, put your horse blinders on or whatever and just put yourself in the customer's shoes and take it step by step by step by step.

And for us, you know, when it comes to website is like, okay, what did they type in?

They typed in something.

And what's the first feeling?

What's the first emotion?

What's the first word?

What's the first image that person needs to see to be able to say, hey, I'm in the right place, right?

So that's a really cool exercise that we do all the time in terms of being able to put ourselves in the consumer shoes and we're a victim ourselves of being so close to what we do.

But we do all this cool stuff and we can do Instagram reels, We do all these things.

No, at the end of the day, it's like, you know, what are people looking for?

They want more conversions, they want leads to say yes.

They want social proof, whatever that is, right?

So really being able to do that exercise and go through a database of the last 20 clients and say, what were they thinking and what's the emotion that they wanted that they're feeling?

And how do we make that emotion feel better?

How do we make them feel safe?

How do we make them want to take action?

How do we want to make sure they don't bounce from our web, web, web page?

Right?

I love this.

This is so much in alignment with what I normally.

Where most people mess up in the sales process, and this carries over into this conversation, is we get out to people's houses and we think the problem is whatever we find that's broken, right?

The ductwork is disconnected so it leaks air into the attic and doesn't get to this one room or whatever.

The problem is, we think it has to do with that.

But this is so much what I've been saying for a while now.

The problem is what the homeowner experiences in their house.

The problem is my room is too hot in the summer.

It's caused by the physical whatever thing we found.

So it's the exact same thing here.

So if everybody listening.

The reason I bring that up is we already know how to do that in our sales process.

Carry that thought through into this conversation because that's really where Dan is going is what is the problem?

What is the pain point?

And that is the thing that we've got to speak to for when we're, when we're doing this.

So tying that bridge together is a good analogy to help get it a lot clearer, I think.

So once we have that, then Dan, what do we do with it, right?

So we've got that clear picture and then where do we go from there?

So when.

Let me kind of jump into video testimonials.

And I'm a marketer, I've run many different businesses.

And I'm not just like the video guy, right?

Actually, I never really was a big video like videographer or anything like that.

I'm just using video because I find it to be one of the most powerful tools in marketing.

So when, when we help our businesses collect testimonials, we kind of go through a similar exercise.

We say, who's your client?

Right?

And if you, if you are, if your typical client is male and they're between 40 and 45 and you know, whatever ethnicity and they have two and a half kids and they live in whatever.

Well, those are the people that you want to interview.

Again, we're trying to create that.

Hey, I feel at home.

Hey, this video is aimed for me because I can see myself in that person.

So that's, number one, is really kind of picking the people, right?

The last thing you want is a complete opposite.

If you're interviewing an 18 year old just because they have a really good voice, they're not going to relate to that.

They can say whatever they want.

They're not going to relate to it.

So that's, number one is really being Able to pick the right people for your interviews.

And second, during the onboarding process when we're really trying to figure out, hey, what are the perfect sound bites for you?

The question is, what are your objections?

What are your main objections?

You know, what are people thinking when they're debating whether to hire you?

And so if we know what the objection is, if we know the objection is there's a lot of competition and I'm going after price, then the first thing that we want to capture during a video testimonial is, hey, at first I thought that getting a new roof was all about competition and price, but little did I know when I went with them, I got xyz.

Right?

So we take those objections and we convert them into a statement that the, that your clients are actually declare on your website.

So before your prospects even think about it, objections are already taken care of.

Love it.

Right?

Yeah.

That's so cool.

Because it, I mean every bit of this, it, it fits the flow of truly how?

I mean, coming from a sales perspective, it fits the flow of how, you know, we should design our sales flow anyway, which is handle the objections before they come up.

So we're just, it's not new information, we're just reminding them and they're like, oh yeah, you said that.

And so this is like starting even a step further ahead of that before you even show up.

And the coolest thing, what I love about this too is I've been a fan of video for a long time, sending video follow ups and video communication and even on the way video to introduce this before we even arrive.

But what this does, it, it adds so many touches ahead of time.

Because thinking like a marketer, I mean, how many touches does it take before a buying decision happens?

Right?

27 or something?

Yeah, something ridiculous.

So this huge number.

And so with the more touches we can add before we ever show up, we're chopping away at those.

So let's talk about the power of video because from my limited knowledge, you obviously know a lot more about it than I do.

But you know, I function from the living room effect type of philosophy.

But let's expand on that a little bit.

Tell me some stats.

What's the importance of why video?

Right.

So we touched on it a little bit earlier.

Well, first of all, let's talk about reviews in general.

Yeah, for sure.

Everybody uses Google and Yelp and Better Business Bureau and all that.

There's a piece of research by Bright Local and they did a survey on how suspicious are you of fake reviews when reading these sites.

And on average, 82% of consumers have some level of suspicion when it comes to written reviews, even on platforms like Google and Yelp.

So right off the bat, people are already like, well, I'm not sure if I believe this.

And then the other thing too is if you have a website with a thousand written testimonials, people aren't going to read it.

They're going to look at it and say, okay, cool, check this person has reviews.

And they move on to the buying process.

If there's a video and they watch the video, they get immersed into a story.

And most of us, if I were to ask you to think about one piece of advertising that you remember, I guarantee you it's going to be a video or an image.

It's not going to be some words.

So there's power in a human mind to be able to, to relate to and remember images and video.

So, so it's more memorable and also being able to take somebody through a hero's journey, which is typically our story.

Formula for video testimonials is, hey, where was I when I was in pain?

What happened?

How did I feel?

Then I met this person, the solution got solved and now I live a happy life, right?

So this whole little valley kind of a thing and being able to take somebody through that with your brand and your past clients builds immediate, immediate trust.

So it's super powerful.

And then if you want to talk about why 82% of population are skeptical, and I think a lot of people are sure they're maybe buying reviews and whatnot.

But then there's also AI.

Anybody can go into AI today and say, hey, write me a review or do this and do that.

So information is getting so diluted and it's hard for people to trust it anymore and they get just overwhelmed.

So with ShareOne, we guarantee that every single Share One video is a representation of a true transformation by a human being.

So we trademark by humans for humans.

And it gives people that sense of safety and also connect connectivity to another human being.

I love it.

I love it.

So for those reasons, I think video are, are absolutely king.

Well, well, talk us through then what ShareOne does and, and how it, why it's so effective in gathering the, the testimonies that it, that it, it is able to get together.

That's a good question, Sam.

There are a lot of platforms out there that automate the process of collecting testimonials, including video testimonials.

Let me give you one example.

We had a client, they sent out a list to 2,000 of their, of their clients asking for a video review.

I'm not going to name the platform that they use, but there are a few out there.

After three or four emails, they received two videos back out of 2,000 requests.

One of them was unusable because the person was rambling on and the camera was kind of pointing up their nose and they couldn't even use it.

So one out of 2,000.

With share one, we take special care in first identifying who we want to interview, how they're feeling, how do we honor them, and how do we make them feel like you're so special.

It's like me saying, sam, I'm going to send a news crew to your house tomorrow for you to share your story.

Are you going to say no?

No, you're going to be honored.

Right.

So that's a similar approach that we take during an invitation process.

So to date, we have a 47% conversion rate from the time that you identify a client that you want to record a testimonial from to the time that we actually do the recording.

And that's our white glove invitation process at the end of the day, similar to what, you know, you, you teach, I'm sure, is treat them like human beings, right?

So, so the invitation process is, is, is critical and especially when they show up, like everybody that does an interview with one of our interview directors, they, they, they feel like, oh my God, this is great.

This is fun.

This is so easy because we, we help them out.

We help, we tell them what to say.

We tell them like, finish this sentence, say this, say that, how'd you feel about this?

But I think I might have jumped a gun there.

So share One, we help.

Good.

So, yeah, take us through the, walk us through the nuts and bolts now.

So when a client comes to us, we go through the onboarding process where we look at the pain points, the objections, the avatars, all those things we had just discussed, and we reverse engineer the whole process.

So what are the perfect sound bites?

What's a perfect video testimonial that you want to collect?

And then from there we identify the people, we figure out what questions we're going to ask, and we train all of our interview directors on the specifics of that outcome.

So the invitation goes out to your client and we follow up with the client until they book.

They do a virtual interview with one of our producers, our live human being producers, and then that's a 20 to 30 minute interview.

During that interview, our interview directors know exactly what they're doing, they're asking the right questions.

And once the interview director feels like we have all the sound bites, we need to give you that perfect testimonial.

We hang up the phone and we take that 30 minute video footage and we edit it down to two or three minutes.

We add captions, we add music, and we deliver that back to you.

Once you like what you see, you can keep it as it is, you can do whatever you want with it.

We can also give you Facebook ads out of it, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, whatever footage or social media needs you have, have.

And we have tons of ideas on how to use video testimonials to increase your conversions.

So that in a nutshell is is our business.

Love it, I love it.

So this is so everybody listen.

I mean as we know this testimonies are everything in, especially in home, any kind of home service, right?

I mean testimonies are incredible in everything.

In fact, yesterday, heck, I was driving to get my daughter from school and I was driving by a just the one off emergency rooms that they have.

And right on the front of the marquee, it's got the flashing LED sign and it's got the temperature and it's got some announcement that they had.

And then the very next thing was Google reviews and it had the number and it had the star rating right there.

It was like 1407.

This is crazy because I remember yesterday it was from Yesterday, it was 1417, 4.9 star average rated Google reviews for this place.

And I was like, that's brilliant.

Why don't we put that on our signs, right?

Just as everyone's like, let's put your sign on the front, why not, right?

Just tell people what we do.

But the video, man, the video testimony is so powerful just because of the story that it tells.

And I love that.

So how can we use some of these video testimonials, right?

I mean, so one of the things that this podcast is known for is every episode we give, you know, give some sort of actionable item that people can implement right away.

So say they use, you know, just grab some video testimonials or say they, you know, get ahold of you and they, they start doing some share one testimonies.

How do they use them?

What moving forward, once you have those, what is, what are some best practices there?

I'll share with you a few case studies that our clients have had a lot of success with, especially in the last few months.

They take our video testimonials because we move like the Hottest, the juiciest part up front.

So the first eight, nine seconds is something really, really powerful and hot.

And they'll use our testimonials and run them as Facebook ads strictly.

And they have tens and thousands of conversions just by running testimonials on Facebook.

So that's one super powerful thing to do.

You can add it to your mix of social media content.

So your content calendar, instead of just talking about technologies or roofing techniques or whatever that is, occasionally one out of four, one out of five, throw in a video testimony of somebody talking about your services.

But we had a, A, a business, and their sales process was you hop on a call, they discuss, you know, the, the, the, the service, and they follow up with a proposal.

And they would sit there and wait until the person signs a proposal.

So they've been doing that for years.

And then they started using our video testimonials.

And with the proposal, they said, sounds.

Like you need to connect with me to him.

No.

And for this, for this particular company, we helped them create a handful of different testimonials.

So depending on who they're talking to, they were able to pick the closest avatar to the person they're talking to.

And along with the proposal, they would say, hey, take a look at this video.

Their conversion rates went up 40%.

Holy.

Just by changing, just by adding that one video during their sales process.

I'm not suggesting that's going to happen to everybody, but for this particular case, that's what that consumer needed to touch on.

The power of testimonial and the sign with the Google reviews.

I love quoting Dr. Robert Cialdini.

So I've got his book in front of me here.

Influence.

That's a good book.

So quick, Influence is going to be in the book club soon here in the next few months.

I've got it on the list for everybody listening.

So make sure to join the Close it now book club.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Over 5 million copies sold.

This guy is, bar none, the psychology of influence.

And anybody who sells anything needs to read this book for sure.

Join a book club.

So what he says in there is the 95.5rule.

And basically what it means is only 5% of the population are instigators.

95% of the population are imitators now.

Imitators.

There's nothing wrong with being an imitator, right?

Most of us are.

I am too.

So an imitator is a person that looks and see what other people are doing.

So if somebody has an iPhone or somebody has a new speaker or Somebody has a new roof and they follow.

95% of the population bases their decision on imitating somebody else's behavior.

Only 5% of the population are actually the initiators.

They're the ones are going to go out and buy the latest iPad or latest whatever, and they're willing to take the risk on something new.

Sure.

So when you're selling something and you're selling on benefits and you're selling on all the things that you do, then you're only addressing, really 5% of the population.

The other 95 is waiting to see what their neighbors do and who their neighbors are using.

Right.

That's the power of influence, and that's the power of referrals.

That's the power of testimonials and reviews.

Right.

That's why that matters so much.

And even on us, when you go on Amazon and you go shopping, what's the first thing that you do?

How many stars?

Of course, is it four and a half?

Right.

Or is it four and three quarters?

Let's not, let's not get anything under 4.8 stars.

That's all I'm looking at.

Right.

So that's, that's, that's human influence.

And, and, and then I've been a victim of that, too, is like, hey, we can do this, we can do that, we can do this.

And it's all new stuff.

But little did I like, finally realized, like, wow, they don't want to hear that.

They want to hear somebody else's story.

Right.

And that's probably why the majority of new businesses and your industry is word of mouth and referrals as neighbors.

Oh, so much, so much.

And that's why even the language that, you know, that I trained to use in the house is.

So much of it is introducing so many things.

If you were to sit with me for an hour and a half in an appointment, you probably could count a dozen times.

I'll say.

So what most people do and what everybody in this neighborhood loves to do and what all of your neighbors love to do, those kind of expressions just become natural language because it's the herd mentality, that social proof.

Right?

Absolutely.

What every other businesses like to do is collect video testimonials.

Yeah.

But that's the thing is they don't.

And that's why it's such a unique value proposition right now.

Right.

It's like nobody's hardly collecting video testimonies.

So when we do, we become the big standout, which is cool.

So what are some other ways that we can use that we can use social media testimonies for and just putting the stories out for people for engagement on social media.

I'm sure these can live on like websites and things like that as well.

Absolutely.

So websites, landing pages.

If you do any presentations that have some kind of screen involved, by all means do some super cuts of testimonials in there.

If you guys send out regular emails, newsletters to your existing client base, don't undermine that.

Again, it's the 95, right.

So even if they have a new AC unit being top of mind for the next dinner party, when somebody says, hey, my AC is crapping out or something, you're top of mind.

So being able to send these stories and people want to see it, there's almost a sense of vulnerability of like, oh, I want to peek into their lives.

Right.

See what they're doing.

Right.

So that's super, super powerful.

And we have recently launched a, a widget.

So everybody's probably familiar with the chatbot widget, the bottom of the website.

So we now have a video testimonial widget that can sit on any corner of your website and when they click on it, basically your video testimonials just automatically start playing.

So that's a super, super easy way of making sure that video testimonials are front and centered in any website, site or sales pages out there.

Man, I love that too.

This is total tech talk real quick.

But I love that it's a widget that you have to click to open it so it doesn't bog down the website either until it's opened and then we watch it.

So great.

And a lot of people get annoyed at going to a website and the video automatically starts playing.

It's like, no, I don't want to listen to it.

How do I mute it?

Or like disturbing my.

Something you might want to watch.

But because it auto starts and forces you into it, it turns you off immediately.

So, yeah.

And of course, having subtitles and everything is critical.

I don't remember what the stats are this day and age in terms of what percentage of people watching videos aren't even listening to the audio, they're just reading subtitles.

Sure.

I feel like it's a pretty big number though.

Yeah, it's pretty big.

It's pretty big.

So make sure any video that you throw out there, add captions to it, and then you're ADA compliant as well.

So don't forget about that.

Love this.

So there's all kind of ways.

So something else.

I was thinking everybody, how you can use your video testimony.

So is one outbounding.

Right.

Those should be in your company newsletters, in every messaging out that you send individual reps. Having a collection of a handful, just like Dan was saying, having a collection of a handful of different stories, different types of people that you can attach along with for example, quotes for ones that don't sell in the house to follow up to close it like Dan was talking about.

Or when we do make the sell in the house, when you do close a deal, sending one of those as again with a similar, you know, similar demographic because it helps lock the deal in.

It helps become very much instead of somebody having buyer's remorse, it helps to encourage them that they made the right decision.

So it can also be used on the backside for that kind of reinforcement as well.

So just brainstorming out loud all these.

Different things here you mentioned those three guys sitting in office and never leaving it and closing millions of sales.

Another cool strategy potentially is the first outreach is say hey, I've got a video from your neighbor that you need to watch as a cold outbound.

Right.

Email.

It's like, okay, I'm going to watch that.

Yeah, no, this is actually your neighbor.

Yeah, it is.

Right, right.

So you can use like one video testimonial hit a whole blanket of communities or whatnot.

That could be super powerful.

I'd love to see the open race on that.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, I will.

I'll R and D it for you.

Something else that's going on.

Everybody is you're going to be seeing a lot more of video testimony coming up here pretty quick.

I'm actually getting some video testimonies for close it now as well.

So you will, for everybody in the community you'll get to see firsthand what ShareOne is able to do because I want you to for everybody.

Listen, I don't bring companies like this to the community If I don't 100% believe in them.

There's been a few across the last four or five years that have come and gone not because I didn't believe in them, just because for other various reasons.

There's been a couple.

But everyone who is on the list right now as our recommended providers are incredible.

They are the top of the top of the industry in what they do.

And the Share one is no, no, no doubt the same.

So that's why I'm, I'm excited to introduce them to the closing now community because it's a huge missing piece in what we do, especially in the market.

The last couple Years, especially this year with sales being down so much, we have to differentiate.

And more importantly, I love this so much because it stays in total alignment with the Close it now mission and ideology and methodology of I'm using big words everybody.

It stays consistent with the close it now message of a heart piece connection.

We, we've got to connect at the heart level and have emotional connections with our homeowners and truly care at the highest level.

And this helps to show how we care because people will forget what we say to them, but they'll never forget how we make them feel.

And stories sell, facts tell, stories sell.

So quick little this is my soapbox because I'm so passionate about this man.

It's one of those things that when you, when you know the power of something and when you see so many people just completely underutilizing it, you get really passionate about helping more people.

I know through communication with you, Dan, that you're very much the same.

It's like you see all of this and it's like, how do we reach more people faster because it's such a great tool, right?

Absolutely.

And at the end of the day, what we're doing is if somebody has a good experience and their life is probably positively impacted, why shouldn't they share?

Why shouldn't other people have access to that?

So going back to the uses when you're talking, it just dawned on me that we have, there's creative ways of doing this, right?

It's not just strictly, oh, you know, I had this problem and now it's fixed.

So Compass Real Estate, they're a client of ours, their SC division, their sports and entertainment edition.

So what we do there is we came up with this creative strategy of instead of saying, oh, you know, buying a house was easy and you know, da, da, da.

We are interviewing all their celebrities and sports folks that have used Compass to like discreetly buy, buy and sell homes and whatnot.

And the idea that we came up with was, hey, instead of just talking about the transaction, let's talk about like, what does it mean to, what does a home mean to you?

Especially once you reach that status, you may feel like, wow, you know, I've got a seven million dollar home and but I used, you know, I grew up in the, in the, you know, back, the back streets of Philadelphia or whatever.

They may have some guilt around it, but it's like, hey, share with us like what, what does it mean to have a home?

And like some of these answers are like, I just want a big enough living room to where my entire family can sit on the couch and watch football together.

Because that's the heartbeat of my family or something like that, right?

So they take this content of our interviews and they slice it up and they throw it all over social media and it's just getting, it's getting really, really good, good reviews.

It's getting a lot of views.

So there's different creative ways of, you know, using this video content.

At the end of the day, what ShareOne does is we have a real, very smart human being who's conducting an interview and we can share, shape and form that interview into whatever it is that whatever creative campaign that we're looking for.

Cool.

So here's a question.

Once somebody, I don't know how well this can be done, but say you do a 35 minute interview with me for the purpose of a review, say for share one for your company and then six weeks later you're wanting to change the campaign to a different message.

Can you, is there enough content in that original recording to just repurpose it or is that something that has to be rerecorded?

So I'm asking for partially for the sake of the listener base because how do we redo get into the different campaigns and things?

Do we have to rerecord every time?

Walk us through what that kind of looks like.

The one thing that we make sure that we do is, and I know like I shouldn't do it because we'll get more business if we, if we didn't.

But I want to make sure this video is going to live with you guys and you guys can use this video for a long time.

So we never, we try not to mention dates, we try not to mention seasons, we try not to mention specials, we try not to mention prices.

So really about capturing the, capturing your story, even when it comes to names, if you're running a specific campaign or some kind of a spot special, we're trying to refer back to the parent company.

Something that's going to stick, stick around for a while.

Then you get the flexibility of creating the ads or creating the copy or doing intro slides or closing slides or call different call to actions.

But keeping that, that's that video story as a heartfelt share is something that we strive for so that people don't need to come back to us every few weeks.

Hey, we changed our, our, you know, neighborhood or whatever.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

We try and keep it evergreen.

Oh, that's, that's beautiful.

I'm, I'm Glad that is the answer.

Because that.

That'll really, I think, help a lot of people listening that are thinking right now of possibly how they could, you know, how they could use this or any.

Or how to use any video testimonies into their, you know, fit it into their budget or their.

Their campaigns.

So.

So in that same vein, though, something else that you want to keep in mind.

I'll share an example.

So if I'm in a market for a black T shirt with red buttons, right?

And I go on a website and there's a review about their clothes, I'll be, oh, okay, cool, Right.

If there is a video testimonial on a person that looks like me that's wearing a black shirt with red buttons, I am sold.

I'm not looking anywhere else, right?

So being able to be.

To be specific about the product or service that you guys are providing is also very, very powerful.

So when I say evergreen, I really mean, like, the minor things, right?

The pricing and whatever.

But if you're really going after a specific type of roof, like, have people mention that, because if I'm in a market for that specific type of roof and I hear somebody have a good experience with that product with you, then I'm halfway there.

There.

I'm sold.

I love this.

This is powerful in the conversation.

So I'm taking all of this.

And it's incredible how much this applies to so many different categories as well.

It's like the more that.

It's like the classic.

When you first go to, like a networking group, like a BNI or something, and they train us how to give our elevator pitch.

So quick side coaching for everybody listening.

Go to a networking group, they're going to ask you to talk about your company and what you do for 30 to 45 seconds, maybe a minute.

That minute is.

Or 30 seconds is the shortest amount of time you'll ever experience.

But what they told us was, of course, if you say you do something for everyone, everyone else hears that as you do this service or product for no one, we've got to be specific in the ask.

So they would, you know, would just be so specific in.

And the lesson here is, when we're doing this, the more specific we get.

It's not that the person that we're talking to thinks that we're looking for that specific person, but what it does do, it opens up their mind into saying, well, I'm not exactly that, but I'm close.

Or this is not the referral that they're asking for, but I know Somebody that's close to that.

So it gets the brain working and unlocks the cobwebs and opens it up.

So when we're doing these exercises, everybody, it's really important that don't stay general.

We've got to be specific in what we're looking for.

We have to be specific in our demographic, in the avatar, in the message, right?

And one thing at a time.

Don't flood it with a thousand different things.

It's one thing at a time so people can pay attention to the one thing, and then the next video is the next thing, and then the next video is the next thing.

You're not going to do five different topics in one video.

So just quick little side notes for everybody.

That's super important and powerful here.

That's a really good but very hard lesson.

Like, even for me, I talked to my mentors in business and they're like, dan, you got a niche down, man.

You're doing testimonials for everybody, right?

And it's like if I came on the show and said, hey, I do video testimonials for roofing companies only, it'd be a different conversation.

So to your point, it's a very, very hard thing to do, especially if you're more generalized and you are an amazing H vac person.

You're also an amazing pool person.

You're also an amazing roof person.

But if you approach the market like that, you're less.

Like, you're going to make less money at the end of the day.

And that's so, so hard to do because immediately as a business owner, I'm like, well, I'm leaving money on the table.

People should value me for this and that too, right?

But there's a certain number I think if you reach, like, what is it like after 5 million of top line or 10 million top lane, then you can start to diversify.

There's a.

There's a business rule somewhere, but if you're south of that, it's like just.

Just niche down and specialize.

Focus on what you're good at, right?

Focus on what you're good at.

So I tell my mentors, you know what?

I don't do any.

I don't do.

I don't do video, any kind of video.

I only do video testimonials.

So that's my niche.

Love it.

This is so cool.

So total brainstorm here as well.

This is the last brainstorming.

Then we'll start to land this plane a little bit.

But I'm also thinking of for everybody in the field that if you're a specially comfort advisor or a project manager, but this could be for technician, whoever else as well.

Now business owner, if you're owner of the company, close your ears for a second.

You may or may not like this.

I think it's used properly, it's extremely powerful.

But I feel like every representative you should be out there, you should create your own personal web page, website, your own personal website for you.

And what you do that's not connected to the company that you're at, maybe have that in your write up.

But because we know our industry and things happen, you are creating your own resume.

So the more testimonies that you get and it doesn't matter in this video testimonies and pay for it yourself, collect video testimonies, doesn't matter if they say the name of the company in there because across time, you know, say you move companies, who cares?

You're gonna have other companies or whatever other testimonies, but they're mentioning you, talking about you, how well you took care of them.

It's your resume.

And this thing builds out over time.

When you build the muscle of success in sales, you can literally throw a dart and pick where you want to move and have a job before you ever get there.

So this becomes your resume.

So when you're looking for a new position, you just send the link to your website to the hiring manager and say, here's a good head start before our interview.

Tell me how your interview goes out if you start doing this.

So that's my quick little message for a side note of another way that we can use these testimonies because they're so multipurpose, right?

So let me piggyback on that.

And business owners, you can start listening again.

So if you go to our website, our about us page.

So it's www.share.one share one share dot one.

There's no dot com or anything.

And then you go to the about us page.

Every single staff member is a video.

So it's a video testimony, right?

So we have a lot of clients that have like therapists or consultants or whatever.

And instead of collecting video testimonies from their clients, we're basically interviewing every employee on there.

And what that does, we'll ask creative questions like why did you get started in this field?

What keeps you passionate when you're not working?

Things like that.

So when you go to a website, especially a very transactional type of business and being able to see, oh my God, like these are the live human beings that I'm going to be interacting with.

This is the project manager, this is the foreman, this is the salesperson, and there's a cute little video of them talking about that they're real human beings and they care, and this is their hobbies.

That's super, super powerful and extremely huge differentiator when it comes to a very competitive landscape like this.

So being able to leverage our interview directors instead of doing testimonials just to do some cool, fun interviews with your staff and your employees.

Love it.

Yeah.

I mean, talk about a way to really bolster up the About Us section.

That tab on the website that most people barely have one or two pictures or a picture of a pizza or something.

Instead, this is the way to really build that part Our worst, like a.

Like a purchased image or a Getty image or something.

Oh, geez.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There was a clip art with like a flame and a, you know, flaming an ice cube.

Oh, my gosh.

But yeah, so.

And that.

And then again, that is a really killer way to this.

We're just brainstorming all kind of things.

So one of the big concerns, it always has been and always will be because first of all, people don't necessarily understand the proper way to recruit.

They think just posting a classified ad is enough for hiring.

But testimonies from your employees about what it's like to work there, man, that would completely turn around somebody's ability to recruit.

That's huge.

That's absolutely huge.

And then let's not forget that there's a reason why YouTube belongs to Google now and anybody with video content on their website relevant to your business.

We're all playing the SEO game.

It does tremendous efforts and huge ROI for SEO purposes if you start having videos because guess what?

Your competitors aren't.

Right?

Absolutely.

And then, gosh, yeah.

The cool thing, what I love about YouTube, and this is just a quick little tech talk, but for everybody listening, this is an important piece of information to remember and understand.

Social media platforms, YouTube.

Not YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, you know, TikTok, all of those.

That's just social media.

It goes into a feed and then it gets pushed down and down and down and down.

YouTube is a search engine.

There's a big difference there because it doesn't matter how long ago you post that video up on YouTube, if you tag it right, it's a search engine and will come up right away.

I personally know a guy that he was making videos 12, 14, 12 to 14 years ago for his company that he was doing at the time.

And still to this day has people reach out to say I want to join your business.

I watched your videos from that was his network marketing company 14 years ago and they still are ready to join and he hasn't done it in over a decade.

But the videos still live there and that's just an example of how powerful when we get stuff on YouTube is.

So for everybody listening, get your stuff on YouTube.

I'm speaking to myself as well because that's my next step also.

That's why I know so much about it right now.

Oh, good stuff, man.

Yeah.

Let's land this plane, brother.

I think it's, we're, we're getting close.

That's some good info.

The power of testimonies.

It's everything right?

So where, so you mentioned it again.

Tell, tell everybody again where to go to contact you, how to, how to learn more about ShareOne and give us a quick rundown of what, what it looks like when you know when somebody wants to, wants to work with you.

Absolutely.

So our.

Thank you, Sam.

Our website is again www.share.1 so share 1.1.

It's not.com or anything.

I'll make sure these are in the episode notes too everybody.

So don't crash your car trying to take notes.

While you're at Drive Time University here.

Would you like to share one from our website?

You'll see a bunch of examples, case studies on how other people have used our services.

There's a cool little eight minute video that goes into how we work.

There's a pricing page that breaks down how extremely affordable we are.

Everything's done virtually.

Yes, we use live human beings for everything.

But my goal in life right now is really to be able to shift the trajectory of the content that our kids and our next generation get to watch.

So if we can flood all of our channels with some positivity and some cool life transforming stories, then that's my goal.

So the pricing is super, super affordable.

So share that one.

And then also we're gonna, Sam and I are gonna put together some, some specials for your audience.

So pay attention to share one CloseItNow.

And we'll make sure we get everybody some cool perks and benefits.

Sweet.

I love that.

That is for everybody.

Listen, that's actually news to me.

So thank you Dan.

I appreciate that very much.

And for all of you guys, when I'm working with a company like this to bring them into the community, all my focus is not like how much can I make on the back end.

My focus is helping everyone to really fill a hole that I see in our industry.

And it's very much.

That's why, I mean, five and a half years later, there's not a single sponsor on this podcast.

And honestly, I don't perceive really ever having the need for that.

I think it's silly.

A lot of times there's room for it, but for everybody, listen, I don't want you to be bombarded with just buy my stuff all the time.

That's why very seldom do we have that.

And this is not that.

What, what I'm bringing to y' all is one of the best tools that I've seen for differentiation in our, in our industry in probably a decade.

And this is I 100% am, will am and will be using it for close it now.

And if you work with us within our on our company level coaching packages, our on site trainings, this is something we're going to be including as part of that package.

Because I believe in it so much.

It's basically becoming a big portion of everything we do.

And so if you're not making videos, guys, go out, make videos, throw in your phone.

Literally, there's nothing easier and more powerful than a video follow up, throw in your video on your phone, talk to that homeowner like the real person, say, hey, Dan, I wanted to answer your question directly because it's important and I didn't want to, wanted to make sure you understood what I'm saying.

Tell, answer their question, send them that video, and it will blow you away at what your response rate goes to.

Right?

It's, it's powerful.

Hey, Sam, can I share something with your audience?

Absolutely.

All right, guys, so I've known Sam for about a year now.

We're in this pretty powerful mastermind together where a bunch of business owners get together and, and we pour our hearts out in terms of sharing ideas and whatnot.

And can I just tell everybody, on this show, Sam genuinely is constantly looking and just pouring his heart out and pouring so much energy into finding solutions and being that leader in his industry.

And he genuinely soaks everything up and is looking under every single pillow and nook and cranny looking for the best solutions for you guys.

So whether you work with me or not, it doesn't matter.

But I want you to know that you are in extremely, extremely good hands with Sam here because he does spend so many, so many hours and waking days trying to make you guys more successful.

So, Sam, thank you for everything that you do and thank you for having me on this podcast, man.

Yeah, I Appreciate it, man.

Thank you for those words.

And it's very true.

I that's exactly.

There's so many things that, you know when you're in an industry that moves so slow and stays behind technology, it takes being very intentional to go outside of that silo to find things that that work.

And thanks for saying that because it definitely is a there's a good chunk of my week that goes into that every week that people don't see.

It's that behind the scenes stuff that's like I'll spend an entire day sometimes tracking down these rabbit trails for stuff because I heard a rumor from somebody who heard a rumor that somebody had a really cool product that might help us.

But thanks for that, man, and thanks for being on the show for everybody.

Yeah, Share One's awesome.

You're going to love it.

Share one S H A R E O N E closeit now and you can read more about what it is and what it does.

There will be a link on my website as well and we'll have the widget as soon as it is developed so you can read some Close it now video testimonies on the CloseItNow.net website.

Go to Close ItNow.net to learn more about the coaching programs.

Last Quick announcement.

We are taking applications right now for the fall of 2024, in the spring of 2025 if you would like us out to do on site training for your organization.

The testimony I read earlier on a podcast I just recorded, Johnny Guerrero is pretty cool and is on a Google review.

We'll have to get him into a video.

But what he said was he's coached with me.

Actually he's coached with me a little over a year.

He earned more this last quarter than he did the entire last year as a selling technician out in the field.

So if that's the kind of results that you want for your organization, go to CloseItNow.net, fill out the form on there or you can email me directly, Sam Closeitnow.net and we can have a conversation of what it would look like to come do on site training for your location.

But there are limited spots and they're filling up pretty quick.

So I want to make sure that you get your inquiry in soon so we can have a good conversation before the spots are gone and we have to look at later on next year.

So that is the last of the announcements for today.

Thank you for listening everybody.

I appreciate it.

Thanks Dan for being on.

Thanks for having me, Sam.

This is great.

Thank you.

Absolutely man.

Until next time, everybody go be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

Our passion is to dive head first into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement, and at the same time, covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

We hope you've enjoyed the show.

If you did, make sure to like, rate and review.

We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find the website@closeitnow.net find us on Instagram, Instagram at the real Close it now and on Facebook at Close It Now.

See you next time.