Ryan Littlefield

@NVIDIAGeForce GeForce Day

🟢 GEFORCE DAY IS BACK 🟢 To celebrate, we're giving away TWO GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition GPUs, signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. Want one? Comment "GeForce Day" for a chance to WIN & stay tuned for more!

@GlennDavisSoc @HoustonDynamo @LAGalaxy Should ticket holders come to the stadium or wait it out?

We are in severe weather delay right now @HoustonDynamo @LAGalaxy in Houston !

@STLChrisH @msaskin The one searcher I know who went BK was self-funded with an SBA. I agree this isn’t talked about enough. The other stat in this infographic that hits hard is how long it can take… 2 year search + 5 years of operation = Failed Business That’s a tough 7 years

Would a logical conclusion be that self funded searchers have lower barriers to entry (no screening/qualification reqs), don’t have the collective experience of the fund resources / advisors, and less experience underwriting / sourcing… and therefore would have even higher BK likelihood?

9% bankruptcy on funded searchers. Even greater on self-funded… 1/10 chance you lose your house. This isn’t talked about enough.

@STLChrisH This will likely save someone’s life, but they’ll never know it! Driving is the mostly dangerous part of every industry with hours of drive time per day.

Our vehicle "accident rate" declined from 33% to 14% while our fleet grew from 200 to 300 trucks. How? We installed cameras in every truck. We implemented this change a couple years ago. As you'd expect, our drivers weren't thrilled. We tried to implement the change in a way that respected privacy while adding accountability measures that could reverse a bad trend we were seeing. For trucks assigned to a team member who drives the vehicle to and from work, we installed only road-facing cameras. Our shared trucks have dual-facing cameras that look at both the road and the cab. The cameras have sensors that can: - detect speeding, rapid acceleration, hard braking, rolling through stop signs, and distracted driving. Resistance to having a camera on board your truck is understandable, but I'm happy to say that our drivers have adapted well. And the numbers don't lie—The cameras have worked, leading to fewer accidents, fewer injuries, and less money lost to damages. Have you experienced driving a vehicle with a camera?

@STLChrisH For those that do successfully make this shift, I would bet most of them have a strong relationship with an executive coach/mentor to recognize the need to change and make the substantial effort to do it

The leadership journey from “Founder” to “CEO” of a large company requires the founder to evolve. A start-up founder... Will be wearing many hats. Hiring + Firing, leading team meetings, project planning, making capex decisions, approving payroll. At scale, a CEO... Will have their responsibilities consolidate around 3 primary functions: Capital allocation. Building + recruiting leaders. Culture & strategy. The misunderstanding? Many founders aren't willing to do whatever it takes -- wear the many hats -- required to ensure the company's success. They believe that their role at early stages is that of the CEO leading a scaled business. And that becomes a contributing factor for why they will not achieve their ambitious growth objectives. Is it possible for the same individual to successfully transition from a high-performing start-up founder to a high-performing CEO at the $100 million level?

@STLChrisH A lot of people I’ve spoken with value the membership purely based on the monthly fee charged, but this misses the forest for the trees. Could you share your average revenue per member per year? What % of members get some additional service/install other than their yearly tuneup?

I’ve heard a calling from some to abandoned memberships because they are low margin. My view? Memberships in home services matter. Particularly with seasonal trades. 1. Increases customer loyalty 2. Lowers cost to acquire leads /opportunities 3. Maintenance visits “fill up” the shoulder season

@DavidLewis9523 One other thing to try is to send the Google LSA review link to ALL your customers to boost those reviews up and see if that helps

@RLttlfld We have 2. One is slightly better than the other but not by much. We send the review both through LSA and outside lsa but we get so few leads it doesn't seem to matter.

I've been in LSA (Google Local Services) purgatory for the last few years. Trickles here and there but never consistent and never improving. I've tried a lot of changes that have been unfruitful. What should I try next? LSA was our easiest lead driver when it initially launched. Long story, but we got caught up on the BOT downgrades. Obviously, it is more competitive now. I'm not expecting to get back to our previous performance but zero performance seems unreasonable when my market (Houston) is so large. @Google @GoogleAds

@zwilson I know @WilsonCompanies has had a lot of success with LSA - willing to share a screenshot of what your dashboard looks like?

It's a total farce. I'd LOVE to see the people's data and dashboards that claim they are getting hundreds of leads a month from LSA. I call BS. We have some really big, good clients, with extraordinary reputations and large review counts and it barely produces anything. I wish they would just reengineer the entire system because it's garbage as is.

LSA continues to be comical to me... Estimated outcome: 80k spend per week and estimated to get 1300-3000 leads per week. Actual outcome: <1k spend per week and getting ~4-6 leads per week. How is it possible that Google engineers are this bad with an algorithm to estimate real world outcomes in LSA based on vertical, market, reviews, and other variables?

@WilsonCompanies I’m in!

Just started a new, private space for owners in the electrical, HVAC, and plumbing worlds to come together, compare notes, and engage with me directly. Reply to or tweet this and I'll DM you the deets. 👊

@zwilson Is this all discovered through trial and error/experimentation?

In local SEO, if you're not paying attention to the nuance of search terms in your region, you're missing out. This is the difference between Charlotte, Houston and Miami. People in Charlotte heavily favor "ac install" and "hvac installation" to "ac installation" while not showing much liking to "air conditioning installation" or "air conditioner installation". Where people in Houston, have almost even distribution of "ac install", "ac installation", and "hvac installation". Furthermore, Houston shows very little volume for "air conditioning installation" or "air conditioner installation". And further south in Miami, searches heavily favor "ac installation" and "air conditioning installation" to anything else. To the extent the others have zero search volume. Localizing your service area pages and your service pages to use the most common phrases within your region will have a marketable impact on conversions and CTR.

@DavidLewis9523 @TheMissionAC What a big milestone! Congratulations. As far as celebrating goes, you can’t beat catering from El Tiempo

Quick brag on our team @TheMissionAC . There are tons of companies with way more than us but we hit a milestone today by cracking 2,000 Google reviews. We enacted some new processes that helped our team execute and get us there. Boom! I promised the team we would have a party when we get there. Any suggestions?

@zwilson @WilsonCompanies @thehvacjack Thank you! Still not sure what it takes to get illegitimate reviews removed, but I certainly appreciate you flagging it. Of course, the best way to counteract it is to get more 5 star reviews! You should be able to see this review if you find our Google LSA profile

@RLttlfld @WilsonCompanies @thehvacjack Weird. I can’t see that publicly. FWIW I just marked one of your bad reviews as spam because the reviewer wasn’t a customer. I’m sure it was a competitor or some hack SEO.

Shoutout to @WilsonCompanies and @thehvacjack for unveiling the mysteries of Google LSA to me and other OwnedAndOperated conference attendees last week. Following their guidance, we now have our first "Google verified job" review

@shalomnissim11 @WilsonCompanies @thehvacjack It’s hard to prove directly, but these reviews can boost your ranking for Google LSA substantially more than regular GMB reviews

@RLttlfld @WilsonCompanies @thehvacjack Are these reviews better?

@WilsonCompanies These really stand out - first thing I noticed when I walked through your office

@DavidLewis9523 I feel for the sellers in this case… they might have no idea they have an interested buyer being blocked by their inept broker

So far, I’m not impressed with small business brokers. Am I alone? Here was my most recent interaction on a Plumbing business for sale. Me: “To start, I’d like 3 years of financials on the business” Broker: “before I give the financials the owner wants to meet first” Me: “great - let’s do it. I’m impressed they want to build a relationship first” Broker: “before the meeting though I want to let you know we got another Bid. It’s $9mm. We need to know if you’re willing to offer more.” Me: “OK, What would you like me to base my valuation on?” Broker: “the financials” Me: “you told me I couldn’t have them till after the meeting” Broker: “oh, did I? Let me see if I can get that to you. We don’t want to setup the meeting unless you can go higher.”

@STLChrisH We need to lean into this more for our membership’s pitch. How did you determine that this is the main driver for 10% of your members?

Customers will pay us over $1,000,000 in 2024 for services they choose not to use. Why? 10% of our membership program subscribers pay us monthly for only one thing... Priority Service. Peace of mind knowing they go to the "front of the line" when they need us.

@thehvacjack @WilsonCompanies @OwnedOperatedco Appreciate you sharing so much! Already got our second Google LSA page submitted!

Just want to shout out to all the people I met at the Breaking 5m workshop @WilsonCompanies hosted last week for @OwnedOperatedco . Met amazing business owners on such exciting paths. I got back home with almost no voice from talking so much shop. Great time.