32. The Four Doors People Walk Through to Meet You | Marketing and Visibility

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and most business owners are making four of them at once without realizing it. Your customers are deciding whether they trust you long before they ever see the quality of your work.

Ginny walks through the four doors people walk through to meet you: you in person, your team and your vehicle, your website, and your social media and Google Business Profile. Every one of them is either building trust or leaking it. She covers what your appearance actually communicates to a client before you say a word, why the stock photo on your website is costing you, what people find when they profile dive your personal Facebook page, and the ninety second Google Business Profile habit almost none of your competitors have used even once.

This one is for the local service business owner nobody ever sat down and explained any of this to. You learned your trade, you got good at it, and nobody mentioned there was a whole second set of expectations running alongside the work. Almost everything in this episode is free. It is about attention to detail, and about the fact that the care you show yourself is the ceiling on the care people believe you will show them.

Grab a notebook, and let's talk about how you are showing up.

Thanks for listening to The Business Mountain Podcast.

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Your outcome isn't a wish. It's a decision.

Transcript

I'm sure you've heard the phrase that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Well, today we're talking all things first impressions. You, your brand, your vehicles, your website, your Google Business Profile, and even your social media. So buckle up, it's a good one today, and I'm gonna pretend like I'm your big sister, giving you sound advice about first impressions.

Welcome to the Business Mountain Podcast. I'm Ginny Seeley, business strategist and longtime process improvement expert. My husband Joe and I own an appliance service business and a coworking space, so I know firsthand what it takes to juggle growth, leadership, family, and faith all at once. Every week we climb together with real-world strategy, smart marketing, and practical tech for service-based business owners. Grab your gear, let's climb.

Welcome back, my friend. Last episode, we talked a lot about the Compound Marketing Machine and how you can show up in AI search. Today I want to talk to you about how you're showing up, period.

And I want to say something right up front, because I've been thinking about how to do this episode for a while. Not everybody listening needs this one. Some of you are already super dialed in. Your truck is lettered, your shirt is pressed, your website has your actual face on it, and you're wondering why I'm spending 30 minutes on this. If that's you, this is the episode you forward to the person that you've been quietly wanting to say something to. You're welcome.

But some of you have never had anybody tell you any of this. Nobody sat you down. You learned your trade. You got really good at it, you hung out your shingle, and nobody ever mentioned that there's a whole second set of expectations running alongside the work itself. That's not a character flaw. It's just a gap in the information that you were handed.

So that's who I'm talking to today. Just pretend I'm your big sister on this one. And a big sister is the person who tells you there's spinach in your teeth, not because she's judging you or your lunch, but because she's the only one in the room who loves you enough to say it before you walk into an important meeting.

Here's the thing that makes this worth 30 minutes of your time. Most of what I'm going to describe today is absolutely free. Almost all of it is free. This is not an episode about spending money to look rich. It's an episode about attention to detail. And attention costs you absolutely nothing except for the decision to pay attention.

So let's start with what most people think branding is. A lot of people hear the word branding and they think of your logo, your colors, your fonts, something like that. Those are all really important things, of course. We talk about those things in the Brand Builder Blueprint, because when you're putting your information about your company out there in a visual way so people can recognize it and see it, you absolutely want to stick with the same colors and fonts everywhere, every single place you show up. That way, people begin to recognize your brand at the instant. They see something and they know it belongs to you.

That is all super important. But what I really want to get into today is the other half. In the branding industry and in the trademark industry, there's a phrase called look and feel. Look is the part you designed. Look is your logo, your colors, your fonts, the things you picked on purpose. Feel is the part people decide. You control your look completely. Your feel is assembled by all the hundreds of little details you may not even realize you're broadcasting.

So when somebody sees your brand, how do they feel? What kinds of feelings does it evoke in them? What kinds of feelings do you want to evoke in them? And here's the one nobody asks. What kind of feelings do you feel about your own business? Because all of those things determine how you're showing up in the world and the type of trust you're generating with the people you want to attract.

Now, how do you actually portray a feeling? That's kind of a weird question, right? A feeling isn't a design file. You can't upload it. But when you're showing up in your community and when you're showing up online, all of those little tiny details about you personally, about your business, your team, and your reputation, all of that has value.

And I mean that literally. It has a dollar value, especially when you go to sell your business. When somebody buys a service business, they're not just buying your telephone list or your email list or your customer list. It's a lot more than that. Because you can have a super long customer list, but if those customers never come back to you and use you a second time because you haven't built the trust that lets them know you're their guy or their gal when it comes to the service that you offer, well, then your list is not worth as much as a list that has recurring value. And people come back over and over and over again to spend money with you only when they trust you, and only when they feel good about recommending you to other people will your audience grow based on those recommendations.

So that feeling you thought was fluffy and soft and hard to measure, it shows up on the sale price of your business. It's on the balance sheet. It just takes a few years to get there.

So, how do you build it? One of the things we talk about in Brand Builder Blueprint and in the Compound Marketing Machine is a level of professionalism. And I want to give you a way to organize this, because otherwise it turns into a giant pile of details and you don't know where to start.

There are four doors people walk through to meet you. Four. The first door is you, the person. The second door is your team and your vehicle. The third door is your website. And the fourth door is your social media and your Google Business Profile. Every one of those four doors is either building trust or leaking it. There's no neutral setting.

So let's walk through all four doors.

Door number one, you. One of the things you can do to look professional is to have uniforms and have your truck decked out in your logo and colors and fonts. Now I've said this many times before, and I want to say it again because I don't want anybody clicking off this episode over it. That does not have to be a wrap that you spend a fortune on for your vehicle or the vehicles in your fleet. What it really means is that when somebody sees somebody from your business show up at their front door to work with them, or they show up in your office to do business with you, all of those opportunities are a chance for you to build trust with your level of professionalism.

So I want you to imagine something with me. And I'm absolutely not judging anybody who looks like what I'm about to describe. I'm only saying that people, whether you like it or not, will judge you on your professionalism. Of course, this varies with industry too. What reads as professional on a job site is different from what reads as professional in an office.

But let's pretend you're providing some type of financial service to somebody. Either you're a financial advisor, you're a loan officer, or you're an insurance salesman or saleswoman. You're covering their money, protecting their money, or their assets, or you're trying to make money for them, or you're trying to lend money to them.

And you show up for your appointment and you're wearing sweatpants. You have your hat on backwards, maybe you have some armpit sweat and you don't smell that great. You just came from the gym or you just came from a run and you're kind of disheveled looking, and you show up for your appointment like that.

That person has an expectation of the type of person who's going to show up to work with them in that particular industry. And what they're expecting is not somebody who looks like they just got done working out. If you showed up to do business with somebody and you looked like you just got done biking 10 miles, they will probably think you didn't take the time to prepare yourself for the meeting. You didn't take the time to take a shower, you didn't take the time to change your clothes, and you probably didn't prepare the materials you needed for the actual meeting itself because you were in a hurry.

Here's what actually gets communicated in that moment, and it has nothing to do with fashion. What you convey to them when you walk into that appointment is that they weren't worth the time it takes to prepare yourself properly to meet with them. What you convey is that they weren't important enough for you to take the time to put yourself together. That's the whole thing. It was never about the sweatpants, it's about what the sweatpants said about how much they matter to you.

Now let's pretend you show up in a completely different way. Ladies, you've done your makeup, you've brushed your hair, you've tucked in your shirt, you've got on proper shoes that aren't scuffed, you have neat clothing on, you don't have any heavy smells one way or the other, you smell neutral, you smell clean, but you don't have an overpowering perfume on. Your hair's brushed, you look polished, even your fingernails are manicured. Now I'm not saying you have to spend a fortune to look like this. Clean and pressed costs almost nothing. You take the time to put yourself together before you show up for your appointment.

Gentlemen, your shirt is ironed. You have an undershirt underneath your white shirt if you're wearing one. You don't have any armpit sweat stains, your shirt is tucked in, you've got a belt on, your shoes are polished, your hair is brushed, you're clean shaven, and if you have a beard, it's trimmed. You took the time to put yourself together before you arrived at that appointment.

And that tells the client that you're going to take care of their assets, their project, whatever you're working on for them, with the same level of care you put into taking care of yourself. That's the transfer. People assume the care you show for yourself is the ceiling for the care you show for them.

One of our clients here in our New Bern group program for the Eight Thousander has an amazing lawn care service. And one of the things he says when he's talking about providing lawn care to businesses is that people will judge you based on what your business looks like from the outside. So if you have a business location and your lawn is a mess and you've got weeds growing everywhere, you've got trash on the ground, your parking lot isn't striped nicely, your windows are a mess. If all of those things look haphazard and not put together, people who show up are going to think that you aren't going to take care of them because you're not taking care of the outside of your business. Same transfer, different surface.

So it's about attention to detail. And I hate to say it because it doesn't feel good that people judge you on what you look like.

We've talked about it with our team members. We have a dress code policy for this reason. Not because we want to judge our people or make them feel bad about how they look. It's because we want to instill the same confidence I was just describing in every single client we serve. At the coworking center, we want it to be nice and neat and clean and warm and welcoming. We want things to be stocked. We want the restrooms to be clean. And I'm not saying that we're always perfect because we all get busy. But we do our best.

And I'll be honest with you about why this matters to me personally. I believe the way we do our work says something about how we see the people we serve. Taking five extra minutes to put yourself together before you walk into somebody's home or office, well, it's a small, quiet way of saying, hey, you matter to me, and there's real joy in getting to work that way. Treating an ordinary Tuesday appointment like the people on the other side of them are worth the effort, because they are.

Now, here's where this connects to your marketing. When you're showing up the way we tell you to show up in Compound Marketing Machine, one of the things we talk about is human connection. A lot of the Compound Marketing Machine is about content marketing, creating a blog post and pushing it out to all the other avenues. But one of the things we talk about in there is showing up in person.

We want you to get out in your community and make yourself known. Show up to the chamber grand opening events for all the different businesses in your town. Most of the time, you don't even have to pay to be a chamber member to attend those because the businesses want you to. They want people to come to their open houses because it's a great way to network with other people in their community and bring business to them. You can also show up to a local BNI group as a visitor twice every six months.

Show up neat and clean, tuck in your shirt, look professional, have your business cards ready, because you're trying to make your best first impression anytime you meet someone new. When it comes to your personal appearance and your personal brand, a lot of times and in a lot of ways, they're one and the same.

Okay, your business first impression online is a completely different topic, and that's the second half of today. Your business appearance online has a lot to do with your social media, your Google Business Profile, and your website.

Your website is super important. First of all, you must have one. A lot of people ask, why do I need to have a website? It's not necessary. I have a Facebook page. Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't own your Facebook page, and you don't own your Google Business Profile either. At any time, either of those places online, even Nextdoor, well, they can shut you down whenever they want. They can decide to shut down their whole entire business, and they can change their algorithm. Any of those opportunities that they take can have a major impact on your business. So if you count on them being the sole source of where your business is, well, you're putting yourself at risk because you're at the mercy of their whims.

That's the reason your website matters. Here's the other one. People feel like a business is legitimate if it has a website. You could make the argument that nobody cares about that anymore because of social media, but they do. They want to be able to go to your website, find out who you are, what you do, who you serve, where your service is located, and what services you provide in what locations. They also want to know how much it costs. We talked about that in the last episode, and that's one of the really important questions you should be answering for your people. They want to know also how to get in touch with you. And most importantly, they want to know who they're working with.

So they don't want to just see a stock image of Blue Overalls guy. I've talked about Blue Overalls guy before. He's not my favorite guy. Most of the time, he's doing something stupid, like holding a screwdriver and inserting it in a place that a screwdriver doesn't belong. You know your profession best. You know exactly what I mean.

When people choose to do business with service-based businesses, they want to see who they're going to be working with. If you have a team of technicians who are going to show up at somebody's house, you need to have pictures of the people who are showing up at somebody's house. Think about who's on the other side of that door. Oftentimes, there's going to be a retired person at home who might feel vulnerable there. It might be a stay-at-home mom with young children who might feel vulnerable. And honestly, even if it's a guy answering the door alone to a stranger, it can be intimidating to a lot of people. So you want to make sure that that person on the other side of the door, when they open it, they feel really confident, that they know who they're opening the door for.

And this is where everything we talked about in the first half comes right back around. Your vehicle pulling into their driveway has your logo, your lettering, some type of way to identify your business. So that way they feel confident that that person belongs in their driveway. We don't want a creepy white van showing up. You want to be in uniform. You want your van to look nice and neat when it pulls up, or your vehicle to look nice and neat. You don't want a bunch of stuff shoved inside your window so it looks like you're a slob or a hoarder. You wear a uniform so they can identify who you are and what company you're from. And you want a smile on your face and you want to look neat and organized, just like we talked about earlier.

We want that neat, organized smiling face front and center on your website too. And that way people can make that connection that they're opening the door for the right person. They also want to build that know, like, and trust with you. If you have various people on your team and you feel comfortable showing your whole team, that's great. If you're a solo operator like a financial advisor, a bookkeeper, a realtor, an insurance broker, anybody like that, well, let them see who they're doing business with.

Get a really nice picture of yourself. It doesn't have to be something you spend a lot of money on, but look sharp. Make yourself look professional, neat, and pulled together, and have somebody take a great picture of you with a natural background in portrait mode with any modern cell phone. You can fix that up and make it look really decent. This should not be a picture where you're a little sliver of a cropped-out person from a giant group photo of a family on a beach or something. It should not be a picture of you with your dog. Even worse, it should not be a picture of just your dog.

One of the people from BNI who visits our chapter often really gets on people in our chapter about having a professional picture of themselves on the BNI app. Same exact principle. You want a professional picture of yourself online representing your business on your website.

All right, door number four, social media and Google Business Profile. When it comes to social media, I've had people push back and tell me that their personal social media presence, like their personal Facebook page, is just that. It's personal. Well, big sister here again, telling you that when people learn about your company, the first thing they do is click on your name and profile dive in your personal social media page. You might not like it, but it doesn't matter whether you like it. People are investigators. They want to know who they're doing business with. And they have every right to look at public information about who they're doing business with.

So when you're putting information about yourself on your personal social media page, I want you to keep in mind that anything public can be seen by any of your potential clients. If it's not something you'd want to advertise to your client, it really shouldn't be public on your social media. And I'd argue that it really shouldn't be on there at all.

We have literally had tenants and applicants to our business post pictures of themselves in bathroom selfies. We've had them post pictures of themselves doing illegal drugs. I don't know why they think that's a great idea. Perhaps nobody ever told them. They didn't have a big sister. So I'm telling you right now, as your business strategist, that's not cool. Nobody wants to see your bathroom selfie, and nobody wants to see you doing illegal things.

And really, I say the same about political things. We're in a very divided time right now politically, and it's just not a good idea. It's never going to benefit you to post all of your divisive political views online on your Facebook page, especially publicly. Anything you post online is easily tied to your business, and it has the potential to hurt your business, which, I might remind you, has the potential to hurt your team members. That amazing team that you've built, even if it's one or two people, they're counting on your business too. So don't let them down. Don't make bad choices online with what you're sharing.

Finally, your Google Business Profile. This is a really great place to shine professionally. On your Google Business Profile, go ahead and put your most professional pictures of you and your team. Put pictures of the areas you service and the types of things you service. And here's a fun one. Geolocation is a really awesome thing, because when you take a picture with your phone, it can capture the location where you are. So if you can take a picture of something like the entrance to a neighborhood that you service, and then make a post that says you are super excited to service a Sub-Zero refrigerator in a certain upscale community, that is a really great way to put information on your Google Business Profile that will attract exactly the clients you're looking to attract. Free. It takes about 90 seconds. Most of your competitors have never done it even once.

So I hope this episode was helpful for you. I didn't mean it as a way to make you feel bad or feel criticized. I'm just getting real with you. When you put yourself out there publicly as a business owner, people are going to form impressions of you. They're going to make a decision about whether they want to do business with you or not. So you want to be putting your most professional image out there. Take the time to put yourself together and knock their socks off with your online image, and make everything really cohesive for your brand.

But here's what I really want you to take with you. You, as the business owner, are the number one asset for your brand right now as you're building your business. Not your logo, not your website, you. That changes as you climb. Later, as you approach Camp 3 and Camp 4, you start to back away from being the face of your business so it can be more sellable, and that's fine. That's the goal. But at that point, you've established your brand and your team is who's showing up front and center on all of your branding. So just think about whoever it is representing your business right now, whether that's you or your technician or your front office, you want them to be polished. Facebook, website, Google Business Profile, and everywhere you show up in person. All four doors.

If you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I hear you, but I don't know how to pull all of this together into something that actually runs on its own, that's exactly what the Compound Marketing Machine group experience is built for. It's the whole system, showing up in person and showing up online, one piece of content working across every place your customers are looking for you. The group experience kicks off on August 4th. If you've been circling this one, now's the window. Head on over to outcomeacademy.com/compound and take a look.

Here's to showing up as your best self all the time. I wish you the best, and I thank you so much for being here on the Business Mountain Podcast.

Before you go, here's your next step. Take the free Find Your Camp quiz at outcomeacademy.com/findmycamp. In about two minutes, it shows you exactly where you are on the mountain and which path fits you best, whether that's the Eight Thousander Expedition, the Compound Marketing Machine, or one of our other resources. And if this show is helping you, follow it wherever you listen. Subscribe on YouTube and share it with a business owner who needs it. Thanks for spending this time with me. I'm super grateful for you, and I'll see you in the next episode.