Latest / Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes / How We Use AI to Run 8-Figure Home Service Businesses

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How We Use AI to Run 8-Figure Home Service Businesses · Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes

0:00
Hello, home service business owners.
0:01
Today's a very special episode.
0:02
Typically, Jonathan Patoshnik and I do a podcast every single Wednesday, and we've done it for four or five months now, every single week.
0:11
Today, he's out in Alaska, he's traveling, so we figured we'd do an async podcast where instead of us talking together, we're actually gonna show you something live.
0:20
Now, over the past several months, as we've done the podcast, one of the major themes has been AI.
0:25
And I know for a lot of business owners, AI can seem a little intimidating, or you feel like you're not technical savvy enough to use the tools, or you might have even think that like it's just these big tech companies making a bunch of money, and it's putting the small guy behind.
0:39
And that might be true.
0:40
We're not going to change that as home service business owners, as small business owners.
0:43
We're not going to change that ourselves.
0:45
And so I would like you to be able to use these tools to be able to grow your business and have this be a wave that you ride and you continue to be in the top one to 5% in your market by using these tools.
0:58
And so today we're actually going to show you examples of using AI and we can talk about AI and how cool it is.
1:05
And you've probably heard us talk a lot and you're like, it's cool.
1:07
I just, I want to see it.
1:09
And that's what today's podcast for this today's show is going to be all about is that showing you.
1:14
a screen recording of us just doing AI related tasks that are useful in our business.
1:19
So it's gonna start off with me.
1:20
I'm going to be showing you how to do a CO briefing to be able to get all the inputs you need for your business.
1:26
So as you're scaling a really large company, you don't need to be in the weeds.
1:30
You don't need to be micromanaging anyone inside of your business because you're getting a briefing at the end of the day to know what's going on in marketing, operations, sales, admin,
1:39
and every aspect of the business so you don't get distracted and you don't have to micromanage people or have a whole bunch of meetings that take all your time.
1:46
I'm going to be doing that for about 10 to 15 minutes, showing you how to set that up and how I am using that in the upcoming Texas Challenge to make sure I'm alerted to any problems in the business
1:57
and I can see what's happening in terms of churn, new customers being added, which services are being added at a very high level each every single day, and just send it to me on Slack.
2:07
I'm gonna show you how I set that up using the connection to HomeWorks.
2:11
Then JP is gonna step in, and he's gonna talk about how to use AI to make sure that your copy, your text, is really solid when it comes to writing emails, whether it be a marketing email, whether it be an estimate email,
2:24
It could also be used for things like copy on marketing, like a flyer, a door hanger, your website.
2:29
And so I think these are two really solid use cases.
2:32
And if you enjoy this, please, in the comments, let us know what else you'd like to see, because this is just the tip of the iceberg of what JP and I use AI for.
2:40
So we're going to start with mine.
2:41
I'm going to be talking about that high-level CEO kind of daily briefing so that you can run a large company because inside of Texas, when I go there, I'm not going to spend more than 10 hours per week working on the business.
2:54
And if I'm going to do that, it means I need to have a lot of data in a short amount of time and I can't be sending out meetings and going and talking to a bunch of people.
3:01
I need it consolidated quickly for me and I can use AI to do that.
3:05
And then I'm going to kick it over to JP where he is going to show us how to not make AI slop.
3:10
when it comes to your emails and your marketing message that you're sending to your customers.
3:14
All right, so the very first step we want to do is connect our AI tool to our homework account using MCP.
3:22
So MCP is just a fancy term for connecting your AI agent.
3:28
So that could be ChatWT, that could be...
3:31
Claude, that could be Manus, directly to my Homework account.
3:35
Now, this is the Homework account that I am going to be using in Texas.
3:40
So there is no customer data in there right now.
3:43
But when I'm in Texas, you'll be seeing me talking to my agent a lot.
3:46
And it's going to be all through this platform connected directly into my homeworks account.
3:51
So that way, instead of logging into homeworks to create a customer or to send something or to create an estimate, all of that can now be done just from an agent and more importantly, get a lot of really valuable insights and data.
4:03
So, inside the help articles inside of Manus, it has instructions how to connect to ChatDVT,
4:10
Claude, Manis, it takes like two minutes.
4:12
So instead of even reading it, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to copy the help article.
4:16
I'm going to tell Manis to connect it for me.
4:19
Can you connect to my HomeWorks account?
4:22
Here is the help article with the instruction on how to do that.
4:27
Then I'm just going to drop the link right in here.
4:29
I will use this chat as a way to be able to get insights, set up automations,
4:37
and get reminders for myself on a daily basis, as well as CEO briefs of what's happening inside of my homework account.
4:44
So I just wanna make the connection for now.
4:45
That's literally all you need to do.
4:47
It's going to go ahead and get this running, and I'm gonna log in using my homework's login information.
4:53
It's called OAuth.
4:55
All I have to do is put my login information, which is my username and my password, and it gets all of that connected immediately.
5:02
So it's literally doing this on the background.
5:04
Again, this is the foundational layer for everything else that I'm going to talk about, which is using this, whether it be Chatwt, Claude, Manus, anything with an MCP access to be able to do a lot of really cool stuff inside of your account.
5:18
And what's cool about this is it can have read access, which allows me to be able to see the data inside of my account and get really good data analysis, which, you know, pricing analysis, churn analysis,
5:32
and look inside of my account and see the data.
5:34
It also allows me to do write analysis or writing into my account.
5:38
So creation of an estimate, creation of an invoice.
5:41
And we're adding more and more functionality around like even adding tags.
5:44
So let's see here.
5:45
Recommended for this task.
5:46
So it's already picked up on the fact that there's a Homeworks Remote MCB Server.
5:50
Let's go ahead and apply that.
5:51
So you could literally just go through this and there's like a...
5:54
You could set this up the way you're supposed to and read all of this.
5:58
But again, the whole cool thing about AI is like, I just copied the help article link into the agent and like, hey, set this up for me.
6:06
And it'll ask me what it needs from me.
6:08
And the only part I'm not gonna show here is me logging in and typing in my username and password.
6:13
Okay, and just like that, you can see it says your homework account is connected.
6:16
I enabled the existing homework connector and play a successful read-only verification against its API schema.
6:22
No records were created, changed, no automations or reminders were configured.
6:25
You can now ask for homeworks insights, daily reminders, automations, or SEO brief styles and feature measures.
6:29
Okay, cool.
6:30
So now it's connected to my homeworks account.
6:34
And because I have a general manager, he'll be hiring people.
6:37
I have command center accessing my account and setting up new customers, doing chats, sending estimates, emailing, texting, setting up automations, all of the other stuff.
6:47
I just want a daily brief that is going to tell me what I need to know.
6:51
at a high level what's happening.
6:53
Specifically because this location, I am going to be there for six months, and I wanna know at least what's going on.
6:58
Like, how many new customers do we get?
7:00
Who canceled?
7:01
Why did they cancel, et cetera?
7:02
So I'm going to try to set up a daily CEO briefing, where at the end of each day, it tells me everything that happened.
7:09
So I'm just gonna talk to it.
7:10
I don't have any source script right now.
7:11
I'm just gonna talk to it for a bit.
7:12
All right, so I'm gonna be in Texas for the next six months, and I want to have a end of day briefing,
7:20
I'm thinking at 7 p.m. local time in Dallas, Texas.
7:25
I want to have a briefing that's going to basically recap everything that happened throughout the day.
7:31
So specifically, I want to know the number of leads that were added.
7:34
I want to see how many estimates were sent.
7:38
I want to see how many estimates were accepted.
7:42
I want to see also based upon me also connecting my ads account.
7:48
I want to know what my cost per lead is for that day on Facebook, as well as Google.
7:53
I think.
7:54
It's really important to that I know if customers are leaving.
7:57
So if anyone cancels service, I need to know about it.
8:01
I also want to know what's being accepted.
8:03
So when you look at the estimates that are being accepted, I want to look at the items and services.
8:09
And since I'm offering mowing and I'm offering lawn treatments, I want to know...
8:14
When you give me the briefing, like how many of the customers that are being added have just mowing and how many of them have mowing and treatments and how many of them just have treatments.
8:24
So I want to see that breakdown.
8:25
Yeah.
8:26
it'll be valuable for me to be able to know where to deploy the marketing dollars.
8:29
I also want to be doing an analysis of where people heard about us.
8:33
So that way, even if they're not coming directly from Facebook ads or Google ads, like if they're sitting in our trucks, I don't even know about that.
8:39
So on a daily basis, I would like you to see the referral source that is inside of their HomeWorks account.
8:46
And so where it asks, where did you hear about us?
8:49
I need to know about that in my daily brief and get to know what's happening.
8:52
Now, each day that you send me...
8:55
My brief, I want to know these numbers for that day, but I also want to know it for the last rolling 30 days for all of these numbers, the cost per lead, the if customers are leaving, like the churn rate.
9:07
So I want to be able to know what my churn rate is.
9:09
I want to know if someone left, why they left, and I want that all surfaced inside my briefing.
9:16
And this is so that way I can make sure that quality control is good.
9:20
And if there's any sort of issues out in the field that I'm aware of it, even though I might not be seeing the notes from command center, I also want to kind of in the daily briefing, I want a synopsis of any issues that are happening.
9:31
So customer complaints, calls to command center, any sort of issues with the operations of the business.
9:37
I'm mostly focused on the strategy, the marketing and the advertising, but I do want to keep a pulse on the quality control,
9:45
And any sort of complaints that might be occurring.
9:49
And let's go ahead and start there.
9:50
Go ahead and ask me three questions to make this super powerful of something I might be missing in my daily brief, based upon everything that you can see in the exposed API of homework.
10:00
Okay, so go ahead.
10:01
I went ahead and just talked to it for a long period of time there.
10:04
It kind of organized.
10:05
It looks like into a bit of a chart of everything I want inside of the document or inside of the automation.
10:10
See what happens.
10:11
So this is going to take a little second.
10:13
It's going to create this automation on a daily basis.
10:16
Okay.
10:17
So it says to make the 7 p.m. day Dallas end of day brief, generally decision useful.
10:22
Please answer these three questions.
10:23
I mean, this is a great question as literally, as I said this, I was like, Oh, I should have told it to put it to my Slack.
10:30
So yeah, for number one, okay, let's just go here.
10:33
Yeah, so for number one, delivering escalation, let's go ahead and put this into my Slack underneath my EA channel.
10:41
So you might not use Slack, but I have what's called an EA or executive assistant where anything that's automated around my summaries that I use from AI go to this specific channel.
10:52
So there's just one place that I always know all of my summaries are at.
10:56
across Notion, Slack, wherever it's pulling from across the different companies.
11:00
So it's useful for me.
11:02
But you could have this send you an email.
11:04
You could have this to have an automation that pops up inside of Manus or whatever platform you're using.
11:09
Obviously there's connectors.
11:10
So see, I can connect all these different apps into Manus.
11:13
So it can see Notion.
11:15
It can see Slack, Stripe, Excel payments.
11:17
I can see all of my email stuff.
11:19
you can see homeworks now there's my homework one let's go it's it's connected to my email so i can have it like put stuff in my calendar i can have it send me emails but i have for me personally i put all all in my slack channels all right let's see the second channel our second question they have here is uh let's see here measurement rules what should count as a lead and a customer leaving in your report okay let's go ahead and move this over here okay so in terms of number two for the measurement rules a lead is just anytime
11:48
Any contact information is added to the account.
11:51
This could be an abandoned cart.
11:52
This could be someone just walking to the crew and giving them their information.
11:58
Basically, any new contact added to the account should be considered a lead.
12:03
I know I want to know where they're coming from.
12:07
what that lead source is.
12:09
And then in terms of customer leaving, if a customer is leaving, we're going to ask them why.
12:16
And so you're going to have to look at the call notes from command center for us to be able to distinguish why they left, since they will call in and those notes will be left in the customer notes or the call notes for that specific customer.
12:32
For churn, it needs to be that they explicitly cancel the recurring service.
12:37
If they just paused for a service or skipped one, that should not count as churn.
12:42
Okay, so again, I'm trying to create this kind of daily summary.
12:46
And what I always like to do before I just tell it what to do is like, hey, what are the few things I might be missing?
12:50
So I'm really happy it specifically called out the fact, like how do you want me to deliver this to you?
12:55
And then also it wants more clarification, like what do you want us to consider as a lead?
12:59
What do you want us to consider as a customer leading?
13:01
So it's useful to be able to define those things.
13:05
Marketing operation context, please connect or identify the specific Facebook or meta ads and Google ads accounts you included and confirm whether at home works.
13:12
Where did you hear about us?
13:13
Fuel is consistently required to intake is a great question.
13:17
Okay.
13:18
Also, which outcomes are very special?
13:20
Okay, this is a great question.
13:21
Okay.
13:22
All right, for number three, I will add the Meta and Facebook Ads account connectors.
13:28
And so you can see all the data that's coming in for that specific, for this specific Augusta Long Care location.
13:34
When it comes to the where did you hear about us field, it is constantly added at Command Center if they call in, because we asked them that question.
13:43
And also, if it comes from Google or Facebook, we are using UTM parameters to populate that field inside HomeWorks.
13:50
So it should be accurate.
13:52
don't see that field filled in, there's some ways that they can sometimes get in.
13:58
And so you can just put unassigned or that's not, it's empty that we're not sure.
14:03
We don't know where it's coming from.
14:06
But I want to get as close to good lead attribution as possible.
14:10
In terms of the cancellations, I do want to really highlight the 90 day turn versus the annual turn.
14:15
So how many people turn in the first 90 days versus the entire year?
14:18
So I can really pinpoint where customers are
14:24
Okay.
14:26
And if you have any sort of notes from command center as to why they left, anything about their refund, I definitely want to see that included next to their name.
14:37
So on this one specifically, I want to know their name.
14:39
If they turn, if they leave, they cancel a recurring service.
14:42
I want to know their name.
14:42
I want to know what service they had.
14:44
I want to know why they canceled specifically.
14:49
Okay, cool.
14:50
So now I have given it everything it needs.
14:53
It's going to be thinking for a second here.
14:55
All right.
14:55
So a few minutes later after the AI has worked, it has quite a bit of information for me.
15:00
So the data model is a good fit for most of the briefing.
15:03
I verified that homeworks can report newly created contacts and their stored source, date, estimate, send actions, accepted estimates, and the line items in recurring service series with a distinct cancellation timestamp.
15:16
Critically, a paused series is distinct from a canceled series, so your churn definition can be applied without treating skips or pauses as churn.
15:25
The daily brief will report the following for today and the prior 30 completed days.
15:31
New context and attribution source, including unassigned,
15:35
Estimate sent and accepted, accepted service mix, platform spend and cost per lead, explicit recurring service cancellations, 90 day churn, annual churn, and a quality control synopsis.
15:47
Every cancellation will include the customer's name, canceled recurring services, cancellation date, reason for the available command center record, and any refund mentioned.
15:55
The current day's advertising operational figures will be clearly marked preliminary at 7 p.m. before late data can still arrive.
16:03
For service mix, I'll classify each accepted estimate as mowing only, treatments only, or mowing and treatments from its accepted line items.
16:12
I checked the current item catalog and found mowing and initial mow, but no clearly named treatment plan.
16:17
This is great.
16:17
So the HomeWorks account is brand new, and I haven't put my treatment packages in there yet.
16:24
So it's only seeing mowing and initial mow as items and services right now.
16:28
Please provide the exact item names that should count as treatments or confirm them that I should use a treatment keyword rule and flag unmatched.
16:38
This is great.
16:38
So it's trying to figure out exactly, hey, there's missing treatment stuff here.
16:42
So.
16:43
I will still need to connect Meta Ads and Google Ads, since I have not connected those here.
16:48
But let's go ahead and see what an example of this might look like.
16:50
Okay, this is excellent.
16:51
I still need to add my treatments packages and items and services to my Homework account, since this is a brand new location.
16:58
So I will do that soon.
16:59
I will also connect my Meta Ads and Google Ads accounts shortly.
17:03
But could you go ahead and send to my Slack channel an example of what this might look like and just pre-populate it with
17:11
data for the business, assuming that I'm spending about $500 per day on ads, and that I'm getting about five to 15 new customers per day.
17:22
And I have about four to five technicians out in the field.
17:25
And just give me an idea of what this could look like fully filled out in operations while I'm in Texas.
17:32
And just
17:33
Don't use data from homeworks, just pre-populate it with stuff inside of my Slack channel.
17:39
So I can see what this briefing is going to look like in terms of formatting.
17:42
So this will be interesting to see what actually comes up with formatting, because I haven't given it a format.
17:46
I haven't told it, okay, I want it to look like this just to spare you the extra time of that.
17:49
But let's go ahead and see what it looks like and what, once it creates its daily executive report inside of Slack, how it looks.
17:57
So we're back in Slack and it has posted to my EA channel.
18:01
And this again, just as fictional data, but this is what you're, I'm gonna be getting every single day when I'm in Texas.
18:07
And the reason for this is because if I'm not in operations, I still need a pulse on it.
18:11
And if I'm not actually running the ad myself, since Augusta leads is doing that, I need to have a pulse on it because I'm not answering the phone because commands are doing it, I need a pulse on it.
18:18
And so the whole objective
18:21
of using AI in this case is that I don't have to be in the weeds and spending time looking over people's shoulder or micromanaging them, but rather I can just get a snapshot of what's happening, but be able to get the information I need to be able to take action in business or see where there's problems.
18:36
So this is the example.
18:37
I've got a snapshot, 7 p.m.,
18:40
11 new contacts were added today 294 in the rolling 30.
18:45
Oh, I see it did here.
18:45
So it is like my daily estimates sent estimates accepted, et cetera.
18:50
And then it does for what is in the last 30 days.
18:53
That's great.
18:53
Last rolling 30.
18:56
Okay.
18:56
So marketing has them that I'm spending on a spout on Facebook and meta or Instagram, Google ads, shows me what my cost per lead is.
19:05
Awesome.
19:07
It's very easy to connect your Facebook ads account and your Google ads account to be able to bring this data across.
19:13
So that'll be easy.
19:15
And then the lead attribution part of what's coming in from the homeworks dropdown of when homeworks is answering the phone.
19:23
We also, we make sure that we use UTM parameters to bring across this automatically if an, a form is filled out from Facebook or Google.
19:30
So it makes it more accurate.
19:32
Okay.
19:32
Then we got estimates accepted.
19:34
How many were sent?
19:35
How many are accepted?
19:36
Accepted estimate conversion.
19:38
So this was like my 40%, 42% close rate.
19:41
One was mowing only, two was mowing and treatments, and then none of them were treatments only for this specific day.
19:47
And then here's churn.
19:48
Okay, this is great.
19:49
So it shows the customer's name, what our 90 day churn is, and then our annual churn.
19:54
Very good.
19:55
And this is great.
19:56
So it'll be pulling this from command center in terms of that.
19:59
It'll be able to see all the call notes that are being added inside of homeworks and just give me a quick snapshot like what's happening in terms of bad stuff.
20:06
So like this is a complaint.
20:08
She reported clippings left near the side gate.
20:10
The command center schedule the crew follow up and request a completion photo.
20:14
Awesome.
20:14
Another one is from Morgan question a mowing cadence change.
20:17
The command center confirmed the weather driven route adjustment and set an expectation for the next visit.
20:22
Excellent.
20:23
Great.
20:23
And then it says CEO focus for tomorrow.
20:26
Review the two service quality follow-ups before route launch and ensure both have an owner and completion confirmation.
20:31
Number two, keep a close eye on bundled service conversion.
20:35
Fictional treatment attachment is strongest in accepted estimates while treatment's only volume is limited.
20:41
Number three, tighten lead source capture on the 12 rolling 30 unassigned contacts before real came by.
20:48
Great.
20:48
So, again, this is just for illustration purposes.
20:50
I have not connected my Facebook ads.
20:52
I have not connected my Google account.
20:53
But once I do that and I'm in Texas for the challenge, it's going to be popular with real actual data.
21:00
But this is all in an effort to be able to delegate parts of the business to...
21:05
and preserve my time so I can focus on strategy, focus on where the business should be going, and not have to spend more than 10 hours a week.
21:13
I'm going to show you how I write messages.
21:17
In this example, how I write an email marketing campaign to a client.
21:22
This is such a common use case for AI, and that's why I've chosen it.
21:26
But I will tell you, most people feel that other than building a website, doing a little data analysis, writing, that's about all you can do with AI.
21:38
And that is entirely wrong.
21:40
But I've chosen to go ahead and use this example because it's the most common way that most people use AI.
21:46
And so I'm gonna show you how I do it.
21:49
And I'm gonna keep it very brief, so I'm leaving out a ton of stuff.
21:53
If we had a video camera rolling over my shoulder for two hours, you'd see so much more.
21:58
Now, what I'll tell you is, I recently put a video on Five for 50, and I don't know what the headline's gonna be because they change, but it's something about AI,
22:09
And the gist of the video is one question to ask yourself to find all the ways you can use AI inside your business because there are so many ways to use it other than just writing and other than just building websites and other than just writing software code.
22:24
So many ways.
22:25
So I encourage you to watch that video because it also gives examples of how you think about where you plug AI into your business.
22:32
And I'm guessing you haven't heard these examples.
22:35
It's a different way to think about AI.
22:38
All right, I'm starting in Gemini.
22:40
I don't use Gemini, I don't like Gemini, I don't like Grok, and I don't like Meta's AI models.
22:47
I like Claude and I like ChatGPT.
22:50
I'm sure all of that will change soon, and at some point, Gemini might be the best.
22:54
Maybe Grok will be the best, I don't know.
22:56
But at this moment in time, I think Claude and ChatGPT are the best based on all my use.
23:02
I pay for all the models, and I think it's imperative that you do.
23:07
Because Claude and Chachiputine know way too much about me, I'm writing an example email in Gemini just to get us started.
23:16
So again, so many ways you can use AI, but I picked the one that so many of us probably predominantly use AI for just to show you a few different ways to think about it.
23:29
So how do most people use AI to write?
23:32
Starting in
23:34
Gemini, I just as a quick example, I wrote, write me an email to my clients upselling mulch installation.
23:42
Remember, I serve DFW.
23:44
What information do you need to know to write this email?
23:47
Ask me questions one at a time.
23:50
Okay, this is the first problem.
23:52
This is where most people start.
23:54
They write, they type, and they don't know what to say.
23:58
And as a result, they hardly tell the model anything.
24:03
And as a result, they get an email like this, and it sucks.
24:07
There's no other way to say it.
24:10
So one thing I did that maybe many people don't do is I at least asked it to ask me questions one at a time.
24:17
I gave it quick answers.
24:18
Again, it wrote me an email.
24:20
But first and foremost, the top level thing you have to do, in my opinion, is talk to it.
24:27
And so I prefer to, you can use, of course, any of these tools to talk to it.
24:32
I personally use a product called Whisperflow.
24:34
I just hit a hot key on my keyboard and I just start talking and it records everything I'm saying and I just do a brain dump.
24:42
So as an example, if I wanna write an email
24:46
I just start talking.
24:48
And if I don't know what to talk about, then I'll have it ask me questions.
24:52
I'll have it prompt me.
24:53
And then I'll just record audio because if I have to type, I'll type 30 words.
24:58
If I talk, I'll give it 300.
25:00
And that is the key.
25:02
And if you're somebody who doesn't like to talk and you'd rather type, it's going to take you way longer.
25:08
I'd encourage you to still consider typing.
25:10
Nobody's listening.
25:11
Nobody.
25:13
it's just a machine, AI is just math, it's not actually intelligent, don't be embarrassed.
25:19
Just do a brain dump and who cares what you say, it'll figure it all out.
25:24
It doesn't need to be clean, it doesn't need to be fancy, it doesn't need to be well organized.
25:29
You just need to get all the thoughts out of your brain because that context is the context it will use to help you write.
25:38
So as an example, I was recording that as I was talking, and normally I would just hit the button, obviously, and then it would do its thing.
25:48
All right, so let me get rid of that.
25:50
So first and foremost, I can't recommend enough that if you don't talk,
25:56
Change that behavior.
25:57
That alone will make a big difference.
26:00
Now, because the model doesn't know a ton about me, I get back this boring email with the terrible headline, refresh your flowerbeds professional mulch installation.
26:09
Who cares?
26:09
Nobody cares.
26:10
They're getting 90 emails.
26:12
It's not exciting.
26:13
It doesn't create curiosity.
26:14
It doesn't create concern.
26:16
It doesn't open a loop that you need answered.
26:18
It doesn't do anything.
26:19
It's a terrible subject line.
26:21
It's boring.
26:22
And then even looking at this email, it's like, I just don't even want to read it.
26:26
Like it's I'll just put it that way.
26:28
There's nothing about it that's interesting or exciting.
26:31
There's nothing about it that's city turf.
26:33
There's nothing about it that's my voice.
26:34
There's nothing about it that uses the common language we use as a company.
26:39
Okay.
26:40
So this is what most people get back and it's not going to get you anywhere.
26:45
It's not good.
26:46
So one of the first things I highly recommend you create inside your business is if you're going to use AI to help you do any design work, I'd recommend you create what's called a style guide.
26:56
Okay.
26:58
And a style guide is basically just the look and feel.
27:01
It's the rules.
27:02
It's how the logo is used.
27:04
It's the colors that are allowed to be used.
27:06
It's the fonts.
27:08
It's the color codes.
27:09
It's the printing codes.
27:10
It's all of that stuff.
27:13
And this is important for a whole ton of reasons, but for one, when you're designing, you can just upload it to AI and it will give it the rules.
27:23
Well, the same is true of your communications.
27:26
So I have a playbook that we have created.
27:29
It's probably 11 pages and it's exactly how we communicate with the clients, how we say things.
27:34
It's what we say.
27:35
It's what we don't say.
27:36
It's all the rules of communication.
27:39
It teaches AI exactly how we communicate and it has exact examples.
27:44
The brand messaging guide is our USPs, phrases we use, big concepts we push.
27:52
It's everything around brand communication that we want to be very consistent on in the marketing across direct mail, across email marketing, across our website, et cetera.
28:03
And I'm not gonna open these because I don't wanna show off all this stuff, but I highly recommend you make these.
28:09
And it makes all of your writing better immediately.
28:12
Here's the other problem.
28:14
If you're doing the writing, eventually your models will,
28:18
will learn, like mine learns about me.
28:21
The problem is as soon as you want your team to do some writing, all this, everything that is coming out the way you want it in your model will not work when they start trying to write
28:34
for the company or on behalf of the company because it doesn't know all the stuff you've taught it over a month or years.
28:40
And that's where these guides and additional guides to this become really important.
28:45
If I am having someone respond to reviews, then I have a review communication playbook.
28:52
It's incredibly important.
28:55
So your experience might be, well, I've been using this for a while and it's getting pretty good.
28:58
Yeah, because you've iterated and it's learned.
29:01
But if you go to a fresh instance on someone else's computer and you're asking them to now respond in the voice of the company, it doesn't know any of this stuff.
29:11
So it has to have these documents.
29:12
You can use AI to help you create these documents.
29:16
But I will tell you,
29:18
It's very rare I take what AI gets me.
29:21
I fight it constantly.
29:24
All right, so let's jump into writing an email.
29:27
So the problem with having to do this on the spot is I'm sure I won't do as good of a job as I normally do, but I'm just going to go for it.
29:33
All right.
29:34
Writing an email to my CityTurf clients.
29:37
We are upselling mulch and we...
29:42
are talking about both the aesthetics, how it will make them look and feel after the mulch is installed.
29:48
We are talking about, we're in the middle of summer heat right now, so we're talking about the benefits of laying down mulch to protect a, create a moisture barrier.
29:58
Let me figure out three more things to talk about or three other considerations, prompt me one at a time.
30:03
I need to figure out a CTA on this, and I want to make the response super simple, something like just reply.
30:12
Or we could give them a link.
30:13
Let's brainstorm that.
30:15
So that was a pretty mediocre audio on my part.
30:18
But now I'm on the spot recording this video.
30:20
So I'm just going with it.
30:21
But first, I just need to get some thoughts down.
30:24
If I had thought through this example more before I started here, I might have had a lot more I could have said.
30:29
Let's see what it comes back with.
30:31
You can pause your screen and read all this if you want to, but basically it gave me back four or five things.
30:36
It's asking if I really want to do all five benefits.
30:38
Of course, I don't.
30:39
I just wanted to get some ideas from it.
30:43
So in this case, I would say, no, I only want to focus on everything related to the heat.
30:51
and protecting the property.
30:52
And the side benefit is the outcome of how your property makes you feel and how it looks, especially if you're entertaining over the summer.
31:01
Again, maybe way too much information for the email, but that's the gist of it.
31:05
We're first pushing on the benefits of mulch due to the heat that everybody's experiencing right now, so they'll understand it.
31:13
And then we're subtly mentioning the look of the property, especially for those that are entertaining.
31:21
And then here it's pushing back on something about using the just reply.
31:26
I want to use just reply for now because it's the simplest, least friction way for the client to respond.
31:31
And we have technology that will handle the inbound messages.
31:35
So I'm not concerned about it.
31:39
So something else I often do is I tend to write a lot of this out myself.
31:44
So I'll just do a brain dump and I'll just write a concept.
31:49
And I think that's really important as well.
31:50
There's lots of ways to do this.
31:52
That's not the one I'm demoing, but it's very common for me to write it out.
31:56
That way I get my thoughts down and I'm not being completely influenced by the model.
32:02
And that's something else to consider.
32:05
I'm going to pause, read this, and I'll be back.
32:08
You can read this if you want, but I'm going to just go quick here.
32:12
We can do one and two.
32:12
I don't want to do number three.
32:15
We can do one and two.
32:16
I don't want to do number three because we do not want people to cut back their irrigation system.
32:21
Do not use number four.
32:22
It takes the email in a different direction.
32:24
All right, so the point of this is not to actually write a good email.
32:30
That will take too long here.
32:31
So let me just run you now through, once you've got something, some different ways to think about this.
32:37
So...
32:38
First, I'm going to have it channel somebody else.
32:43
Rewrite this email the way Alex Hormozzi would write it and make sure that he knows who my avatar is and he's using my avatar.
32:51
So I'll just tell you right now,
32:53
I'll do this just to show you a couple.
32:55
The problem with using someone like Alex Mosey is, even though I can tell the system to use my avatar and it knows who my avatar is, the problem with using somebody like Alex is, the way he writes and the way he talks, he talks very much to a male audience and he talks to a business audience
33:11
owner.
33:12
He also knows who his buyer is.
33:15
And his buyer is probably someone who already has and who he's talking to is probably someone who already has a fairly successful business that can afford to write a $5,000 check to enter the lowest tier of his world.
33:26
And I know he is selling a book, but so everything about the way he writes and talks is specific to that kind of, he has a very style.
33:35
Now, the one thing I do like about Alex and why I did use him here is I don't use
33:42
examples from him much, but he is excellent at writing very brief.
33:47
We take something complex and shrink it into a few words, okay?
33:51
And so it'll simplify the messaging significantly.
33:55
All right, so that's point number one.
33:57
So what you might want to do is find a number of people who are really good copywriters, okay?
34:05
And you figure out what it is that they're really good at.
34:09
I like Alex just to help me take nine words and make them five.
34:15
You might use somebody else.
34:17
It's like I could say...
34:19
Now rewrite this letter in Gary Halbert's voice, but channel the Bourne letters, not his normal writing.
34:29
So the reason I did the Bourne letters from Gary Halbert is because he brings you into his writing in a totally different way than Alex or many other people.
34:42
Okay, so now why would I do this?
34:44
I would do this not because I'm gonna take their writing and use it, I would do this because I'm just looking for ideas.
34:50
I'm looking for an angle.
34:54
So he starts with, I stepped outside this morning and it was already brutal.
35:00
You know the kind of heat I mean, the kind where you're sweating before you reach the mailbox.
35:05
Like he brings you into the story, he's a storyteller.
35:08
So you could use,
35:11
anybody that's a good writer and you can swipe pieces of their copy, it's not that you'll use the exact paragraph, it'll give you an angle.
35:21
And then you take all that and you go back and you write your own thing.
35:25
Or you grab this and you grab, it's like, hey, I want to focus on this angle right here.
35:32
and help me rewrite it in my voice, in the CityTurf voice.
35:36
At the end of the day, I'm still writing the email, but I'm trying to find all the best examples.
35:42
So I might say, hey, channel, give me 10 subject lines from Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, Alex Hormozzi.
35:53
I can keep going.
35:55
And I'm gonna just look through them and see if I find one that grabs me.
35:58
And then that's gonna be maybe an angle that I take.
36:01
Now let's just say I find something that I like, okay?
36:07
And again, this is, I'm going very quick.
36:09
I'm going to take this over to, say, ChatGPT.
36:12
I'm going to record a prompt.
36:15
Hey, I'm writing an email for CityTurf using my normal avatar.
36:19
You reference all my guides.
36:21
And again, we're upselling mulch to our clients.
36:26
Okay, so...
36:28
That's pretty lousy.
36:29
I would not actually record a prompt like that.
36:32
But, and then I would, oh, one more thing.
36:36
Here's what I've got so far.
36:37
I want you to tear it apart.
36:40
And then I'd go, and then I'd give it a better prompt than that as well, but I'd tell it what I wanted to do.
36:44
I wanted to, I wanted to challenge me.
36:47
I wanted to surface new ideas.
36:49
I wanted to think about what Miss Smith, who's 42 with two kids at home living in this city,
36:56
She's a stay-at-home mom.
36:57
How would she feel about it?
36:58
I'd go into that whole thing, and then I'd have Chachi PT challenge it, okay?
37:03
So now, and I don't always do all of this, but it points out several ways you could use it.
37:08
So it's gonna bring back something.
37:10
So when it brings it back,
37:12
I oftentimes might just, I'm not even going to read all this because I'm already 17 minutes in here, but when it brings it all back, I might just copy all of this and then I'll go paste it into Claude and I'll say, hey, this is what Chachi Petit said.
37:25
And then I'll grab from Claude whatever it says and I'll have the two go back and forth.
37:41
And so basically I'll give them both, I'll just have them go back and forth.
37:46
So when it gives me an answer here, I'm gonna take it, I'm gonna go back to chat GPT.
37:50
I'm gonna have them kind of fight it out.
37:51
Now I interject in the middle to kind of direct them and tell, but I'm trying to surface, I'm trying to get them to fight it out to surface the best ideas.
38:00
Doesn't mean I'll use it, but I do find it really helps narrow the thinking and it helps me move in the right direction.
38:08
All right, so again, it's going to come back with something.
38:11
I'd grab its response, and then I'd paste in ChatGPT, and I'll just make them fight.
38:15
Okay, so let's move on to just a couple other ideas.
38:18
So let's say I read the email, and I...
38:21
We do not want to do any discounting.
38:23
We need to create a reason why.
38:27
So help me write this concept.
38:30
We bought two semis of mulch.
38:32
We saved 20% by prepaying for the mulch and buying it all at one time.
38:36
We're passing all of that savings onto our clients.
38:40
We can do 74 mulch jobs before we run, we're guessing before we run out.
38:48
Help me write up that angle as a reason why.
38:51
So again, I'm not going to bother showing you the output.
38:55
The point here is that this is an example of where you now want to challenge it.
39:01
Another way you might use it is right now it's writing in our voice.
39:05
I might tell it, I want you to change the sound and I want you to write in the voice of Sarah in our office.
39:11
I want to make it sound like it's a female writing to a female.
39:15
You run through all these scenarios and then what you do is you read them and you find the best...
39:22
or you merge together a bunch of these ideas and you find the best approach.
39:26
And then when you kind of get that general structure built, then you have it rewrite it in your voice.
39:33
That's the gist of the idea.
39:35
So the takeaway here is,
39:38
For this to be smart, to get good output, it's not just, hey, give me this thing and then you take it and you mail it.
39:44
It's just, the copywriting is not good enough.
39:47
It doesn't convert.
39:48
It's not your voice.
39:50
It doesn't sound like you.
39:51
It's not on brand.
39:53
It doesn't know your avatar.
39:55
That's why you need the guides.
39:56
That's why it needs to learn over time.
39:58
But the general process is,
40:01
You might start by just doing a brain dump, getting it down on paper or talking to your AI model, just a complete brain dump of every idea you have.
40:10
Do you have any previous writing, anything around this topic that you've ever created before?
40:15
Paste it in, screenshots, uploads, files, doesn't matter.
40:20
And then you get started and you just run through this process like I ran through.
40:24
And just try all kinds of different angles until you find what grabs you.
40:28
And then you start to zero in and then you start to go down that road.
40:32
And then you challenge aspects of it.
40:35
You challenge the subject lines.
40:37
You have it give you lots of examples.
40:38
You challenge the offer.
40:39
You challenge the response mechanism.
40:41
Like you break it down into pieces and you say, give me three alternative ideas to this.
40:47
What would create the least friction possible to get the response?
40:53
What would be the dream come outcome for my client?
40:56
Like you just go through all those and you ask questions.
40:59
So this is a bit of work.
41:00
It's not easy.
41:02
But the general idea is you've got to give it tons of context, tons of examples, iterate, iterate, iterate, have a couple of models fight,
41:12
with each other, and then what will surface is something that you feel really good about.
41:18
Have it simplify the language.
41:20
Write it at an eighth grade level.
41:21
Write it at a fifth grade level.
41:23
Any word that does not sound like you and does not sound like your company, do not take it.
41:27
Change it.
41:29
Make it yours.
41:30
And just the idea that we give a very small prompt, we take whatever it gives us, and we just send it, that does not work.
41:38
It does not convert very well.
41:40
Yeah, you can knock it out quickly, but to create something...
41:44
using AI doesn't actually, in my opinion, take less time than if you had done it the old school way and done it yourself.
41:52
Rather, it takes the same amount of time and sometimes more, but it probably surfaces a better work product.
42:00
It surfaces better output that might have a better chance of converting.
42:04
That is more likely to be on brand.
42:06
It's more likely to use the statements and the phrases and the USP and the thinking of the company.
42:13
And that's why you use AI.
42:15
It's not to speed it up.
42:16
It's to make it better.
42:18
Context, examples, iterate, fight, challenge, and then refine.
42:25
That's the model I use.
42:27
I hope that helps.