Zoho Franchise Growth Message

Tom DuFore 0:00

The most successful franchises share one thing in common. They're never satisfied with where the business is today. They're always thinking about the road ahead. That ambition is the fuel that drives growth. And Zoho's business software is the engine that gets you there. With the right technology, your franchise won't just run better, it'll move faster. Candidates will progress through the development pipeline more quickly. New locations will open on schedule. Decisions will get made based on better data and better insights. Zoho gives every size and style of franchise the power to move faster without breaking what works. Whether you're a single location operator building a portfolio, a multi-unit operator scaling across brands, or a regional franchise or growing into a national network, Zoho grows with you every step of the way. Built over 30 years, Zoho's software ecosystem can be configured to match how your franchise system actually works. CRM, operations, marketing, HR, analytics, and more all designed to work together from the start. The more of your business that runs on Zoho, the more connected it gets. Head to zoho.com slash franchise to learn more about what Zoho has to offer. That's zoho.com slash franchise.

Welcome And Why Local Search Matters

Tom DuFore 1:23

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I'm wondering if your business is getting found in local search or is it getting lost? Well, our guest today is Chris Gray, who is a local search expert, and he shares with us how to help local service-based businesses get found and dominate their market in local search. Now, Chris is a seasoned digital marketing entrepreneur and the founder of Red Palm Studios, Earn Core Community, and Bald Buck Seasoning. Based in Keller, Texas, he's built and scaled multiple brands and invests his expertise into helping local businesses dominate online. He also co-hosts the Amazing Marketing Show podcast and regularly teaches live workshops on local search, SEO, and paid media. You're gonna love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Chris Gray 2:26

Name's Chris Gray. I am the co-owner of Red Palm Studios.

Tom DuFore 2:31

Perfect. Well, thanks so much for being here, Chris. And as of this recording, you and I had an opportunity to have an interview on your podcast here just the other day. So it's great to connect with you again and hear more about what you're doing. One of the reasons I'm excited to have you on the show, because this really stood out to me, is you've helped over 70 businesses break through beyond the $1 million marker, many of them being franchisees. And so I'd love for you just to kind of start sharing a little bit about the journey and pathway of

Chris Gray’s Origin In The Trades

Tom DuFore 3:06

going through that process.

Chris Gray 3:08

We specialize in local marketing. So anything near me, you know, chiropractor near me, dentist near me, plumber near me, electrician near me. We really cut our teeth in the trades. And so what happened was we had uh we knew a guy and he had a mom and pop HVAC company. And then he started to he wanted to get into a franchise, right? Uh it was uh one hour air. And so we had to learn a bit there. One, we had to figure out how to rebrand, right? And get them in there and change all that. We did that, but then most important, we had to learn how to get HVAC leads. And we were like, that was new to us. We have doing we were doing some local stuff, but we had to learn how to get HVAC leads. And so I think, Tom, the difference that made the difference that makes a difference with us or with anybody is that we love marketing. I love marketing. It like spaghetti with my life. It's a a part of whatever this I am is, it's a part of that. Marketing is everything, jujitsu is everything. Being a husband and father, it blends into everything. All these principles blend together, and that's how we view marketing. And so we're getting into a different niche, but I just love marketing. I found it interesting. So we started diving, diving in there, figure some things out, boom. He becomes number one one hour air franchise within two years. And we're like, hey, we got something here. Let's keep this double down on this. So the word gets around, and then we start getting other companies, plumbers, electricians, same thing. Boom, boom, boom. It starts blowing up, going from one truck to six, one truck to nine. People are breaking the million-dollar mark. And what the interesting thing, Tom, we got so effective that we we and to this day, we're not we don't run ads. We haven't been running ads. Most of our stuff, our portfolio is about 80 to 85 percent referral. That's it. And so the word gets around, people hear about us, they tell their friends, and then boom. And that's how we started building our our company, specifically in the trades. We've been doing it over 17 years now.

Tom DuFore 5:02

Amazing. Well, I'm not surprised. One thing I know for sure for especially local businesses, service businesses, when someone starts finding success and they start talking with one another, either at networking groups or meetups or however they're connecting, and they're finding success, they always say, Well, how you how are you figuring this out? How are you making that go? One thing I'd love for you to dig into a little bit is how local businesses can use Google and there are various tools and things that they have to really dominate their marketing because that's what you're talking about. You're really helping your clients dominate their marketing. That's one of the reasons I was excited to bring you on to talk about

Google Rewards Brands That Keep Users

Tom DuFore 5:42

this.

Chris Gray 5:42

Yeah, yeah. That is the name of the game, and that is a strategy. So Google is much like Facebook or YouTube or Instagram, where the goal is to keep people on platform. And you don't think of Google like that because Google is not a social media platform, really. It's uh you know, it's a search and AI and things like that. For Facebook, for example, if we have clients or when we have uh when we're running ads on Facebook, I have two clients. I have the actual client that we're helping, the plumber, HVAC, whatever, chiropractor, whatever it is. My other client is Facebook. Facebook wants me to help them keep people on the platform, and they will reward me by charging me less if my ads are engaging. And so I have to keep that in mind, right? And so I have to meet Facebook's needs while meeting the clients' needs and ensuring that the viewer is actually interested. So Google is like this. Google wants to keep you within the Google ecosystem, right? YouTube, Google, AI search, keep them, Gmail, keep them within the Google ecosystem when we will reward you. So this is how it goes to us dominating the the local like map, the local search. The whole game is to take up digital real estate. So if Tom something goes wrong with Tom's like his house and he needs a plumber or something, he puts plumber near me. My goal is to make sure that whatever plumbing company I'm working for that Tom sees, I want them to show up three to four times in those top seven spots. It's as we as we talk right now, which is gonna change, Google's always changing. But right now, if you put plumber near me, you get about seven, maybe eight spots, right? Typically seven. My goal again is to take up three to four of those seven spots when possible. We do this by showing up using Google's tools. They have something called Google Local Service Ads, we want to show up there. They have pay-per-click, we want to show up there. They have this called the Map Pack. So you have that little map that shows up when you do any kind of near me thing and there's there's companies underneath it. Like there's usually three or four, three or four companies. Sometimes we could take up two of those four spots, right? So what happens is we have LSA we show up for, okay? We have PPC we show up for, and then the Mat pack we can show up twice too, which is a bit of a strategy. So there you go. It's your three to four spots for taking in the top seven. So what this means is if you know Tom's plumbing has four shots on goal and Chris's plumbing has one, and we're doing this over and over again. Who's gonna win? It's gonna be Tom's Plumbing. And especially if you've been on social media and you see Tom's plumbing, you're on your desktop and you see Tom's plumbing on a side ad. You're on YouTube and you see a Tom's plumbing commercial. You've been seeing Tom's plumbing for the last three or four months, and just like, oh, whatever, whatever, whatever. Oh crap, something hit the fan. I need a plumber. You Google it, you see Tom's plumbing three or four times. Who are you gonna call? The person that you've heard of, and they're they're a bunch. That is our strategy.

Tom DuFore 8:41

That is really, really interesting. Well, I don't know if it's a trade secret or not, but as you described when you do that search in that pack where there might be seven or eight listings, and you're talking

Owning Digital Real Estate Across Google

Tom DuFore 8:52

about getting your customers and clients listed in three to four of those seven or eight. So you're talking about essentially half of the options. So my immediate thought is well, how? I mean, that sounds awesome, but how do you do that? And maybe it's giving trade secrets, just curious.

Chris Gray 9:11

Using Google's tools, they have local service ads, we're in there, and we're playing their game and local service ads. Pay per click, we're in there, and we're playing their game and pay-per-click. There's different places they want you to be. And then um, you can call SEO, AEO, GEO. It's all changing for us. It's the same stuff we've been doing. We just make it AI searchable. We play that game for Google, which puts us puts us up in the Map pack. Also, something that people should know if you're a local business owner, this is huge. The more Google business profiles you can get, the better, especially in today's age, day and age. And so, again, the more Google business profiles you can get, the better. We play this game heavy. So, here's an example. I'm in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, okay? I can have a chiropractor office in Dallas. I want to service people from Fort Worth, which is about 45 minutes away or something, and a good marketing company can reach those. We can do it, but it's super hard and takes forever. There's a big Google plays a proxy, they play, they put a lot of weight on proximity, okay? Now, if I'm a chiropractor and I have one in the Dallas area and I'm getting people in Dallas, that's great. Now, say I want to get people in Fort Worth, I need to open up a Fort Worth office and target people around that. Here's here's this gets even deeper. If I'm in Dallas, Dallas is huge. Just Dallas alone is huge. So if I'm in Dallas, I might have an office in North Dallas, then have one in South Dallas, then have one in North Fort Worth, have one in South Fort Worth. So now I'm Dom, I'm playing Google's proximity game. So there's somebody's Google's chiropractor near me, and they're in North Dallas, and I have an office right there, and I've been doing my AEO, SEO, GEO, whatever you want to call it, doing it correctly, I have an opportunity to show up in front of that person. My goal is to be all these different places, as many places as I can, and it's there's ways to get a Google Business profile that is within Google's terms without you having to, there's ways to do it. But my goal is to have as many of these places as possible, make sure that I'm playing Google's game so that Google can find me and AI can find me. That way, when Tom or Chris searches for a chiropractor near me, I'm showing up. That's part of our strategy too, and that's huge.

Proximity And Multiple Business Profiles

Tom DuFore 11:13

It's one thing to get someone to click on an ad or click on something to find it. But the harder part is for them to act on it, to submit a contact form, call in to book an appointment or schedule or something like that. So how are you helping your clients navigate that process?

Chris Gray 11:33

The within the trades, let's say, let's talk about the trades, right? Because it's gonna depend on it, depends on niche to niche, right? But for the trades, when somebody has a it's usually like an emergency moment, like, oh my God, something broke, but I need something. There's some things that people think through when they make trades calls, but a lot of it's emergency stuff, and there's a conversation happening in their head. So whether it's for trades or whether it's another business, your client, your customer has a conversation happening in their head. The goal is for that copy to enter that conversation already happening in their head, or already answer those questions that the person doesn't know they already have. So let's go back for the trades. If it's somebody, you know, Googling a plumber near me, they want to know is this company local? Are they trustworthy? And the low are you local, reliable, and affordable? Local, trustworthy, and affordable. That's what's happening in their head before they even know it. They the affordability part they're probably aware of, but the local part, the trustworthy part, they're not even thinking about it. So going back to this, what happens is they let's say the customer puts plumber near me and it comes up. They see your company. One, they need to they need to have seen your company before. They haven't seen it before, they don't know who you are. You got an uphill battle. So it's much easier if they already have heard of you in some form or fashion. They're already heard of you, okay? They're heard of you. Then they're gonna look at the stars. When we all do this, they're gonna look at the stars. Is it five? Okay, how many do you have? Five reviews? Do you have five thousand? Oh, five stars or four and a half and five thousand. Okay, this person must know what they're talking about. Let me click on it real quick. When they click on it, what do they see? Oh, I want to see a real person, not some stock photography or something. A real person. Ideally, I'm in Keller, Texas. If I had a plumbing company, I would be on the front of my website with the killer water tower behind me. Oh, this is a real person in my city. Oh, and then also they're giving me some kind of discount, coupons, $59 off, free service call. Right then and there, we've answered so many questions and we haven't said much. We just have reviews, we have a name you've heard of, we're in a city that you know about, images that you're familiar with. We have real people, and we have coupons that answers some of your affordability questions, just like that. That's how you would do it, maybe in the trades. I've done this in different businesses, but if the key is knowing what the customer wants and entering that conversation in their head, ideally answering those questions before they ask it.

Tom DuFore 13:55

It's kind of going backwards now, but you said showing up beforehand is the ideal place to be so that you have already some awareness maybe with this potential budding customer at this point. So, how are you helping your customers, or how do you advise folks? You know, I'm thinking for the owner that's tuning in and saying, Oh, well, I've got franchisees that might need this, or for my own business, I need to do this. So, how are you getting in front of them ahead of time?

Chris Gray 14:22

If you're a big business, you got a big franchise, you can do billboards, you can be, you can do radio. That's that is viable in some markets. In some cities, you should have billboards and you should have radio, but that's a little more expensive. Let's talk about

Turning Clicks Into Calls And Bookings

Chris Gray 14:33

the the everyday person, probably doesn't have a massive branding budget. What we would do in that case is that there's ways, there's AI we can use to give somebody a OTT-worthy commercial. OTT is these commercials you see on streaming platforms like YouTube, TV, Prime, Hulu, the streaming platforms, local commercials, those are OTT. We like to get there. We have ways to do OTT commercials to have Tom in it without me needing to have Tom, right? We can make that, no problem. Those commercials usually $15,000. We can do it for less than three with AI and technology, and people would know that wouldn't know the difference. Let's say somebody couldn't do that, and they're like, you know what, Chris, only got like a thousand bucks, man. What am I gonna do? Okay, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna go crazy on Facebook and Instagram. If that's where your demographic is, which is most demographics, especially if they're older. That's where your demographic is. If they're younger, we're gonna go to TikTok. Even TikTok is for the older demographics, it's for all demographics right now. My whole point is we're gonna find where your demographic is, if it's in the trades or on Instagram and Facebook, primarily Facebook, and we're going to pepper them with good branding, good ads, things that make them stop and see your name, and not just Chris in front of a truck and hey, Chris is plumbing, $59 off, call today. No, we want to give them to laugh, give them to remember some funny memes, just have some kind of personality with the brand. We're doing that, and we're doing that well in advance. So now, three, six, nine months from now, when they need your service, they've heard of you, they call you, you make them a member of your your your membership club, you take them off the market. This is the game, this is the strategy.

Tom DuFore 16:08

I love what you've been sharing here and talking through. And you know, one of the things you'd mentioned is finding success with franchisees. I'd just like to talk about how you work with franchisees versus independence, and maybe it's one and the same, it doesn't really matter, but it makes me think a large part of our audience and people who tune in are either franchisors or business leaders that are thinking about franchising their business. And now you have to say, how do I help my franchisees get local business and grow their business locally? For example, if you're based in Dallas area, well, you might be doing that for your current business. But if a franchise buys in Orlando, Florida, or Phoenix, Arizona, how do you help them out to new market for most of these folks? So I'd love

Pre Awareness With OTT And Social Ads

Tom DuFore 16:54

for you to talk a little bit how you work in those areas.

Chris Gray 16:56

Oh man, it's great. We've cut our teeth mainly with franchisees. That's we we work with eight, that's most of our portfolio. And what we see there, you know, this stuff is like you know, I'm in Texas, eat a lot of Mexican food, and you can have all these different dishes, these different Mexican dishes, but they all have like the same ingredients for the most part, like the same base ingredients. That's with our strategy. We it mixes and matches, it looks different, but it's the same base ingredients. But when it comes to franchisees, there's ways that what we've seen is a lot of it depends on the franchise or and so there's some franchise ours are like, hey, go make money as long as you don't do these one or two things that that violate our brand thing, go make money. And so we go do that, and then you have franchise ours who need to protect the way the brand looks, which makes sense, right? You want consistency amongst your franchisees. We get it. So we get with the franchise or other franchisee who knows the franchise or's rules and make sure that we understand the way that franchise or wants to look. We work with them heavy. Hey, we're putting out this, we're putting out that. At the very beginning, we're working heavy to make sure that we are making sure that that franchise or the franchisee is consistent with what the franchise or wants. Once we have that, then it's just boom, boom, boom, boom. So again, there's two ways we do it. Some franchisees have a bunch of room and they just they don't care, go make money, we go do that. Some franchisees have franchise ours who have you know strict rules. We make sure we know that we're in compliance with it, and then we go from there.

Tom DuFore 18:18

Perfect. Well, Chris, this is a great time in the show for us to uh let folks know how they can get in touch with you. So, how can someone find out? They say, Wow, this is awesome info. I'd love to talk with Chris a little bit, see how he works with companies and helps them out. How can they get in touch?

Chris Gray 18:35

I am at yo Chris Gray almost everywhere. So at yo like y-o in Spanish, that means I. So yo Chris Gray everywhere. I'm bigger on Instagram, which I'm rarely on, but I'm bigger there. But if you actually want to talk to me, you can go to Facebook, find yo Chris Gray, and and we can have a conversation. You'll actually talk to me if you hit me up on Instagram or TikTok, that's somebody else acting as me. You can contact me on Facebook or you can go to red palm r-ed-p-a-l-m.us, fill out some information about your company, and if we're a good fit, we'll reach out to you and and help you as best we can.

Tom DuFore 19:10

Perfect. Well, this is a great time in the show. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Chris Gray 19:20

Oh gosh, tons. That question is so great. I have had tons of misses. The thing that comes to mind, because you talk about

Franchisee Marketing With Brand Guardrails

Chris Gray 19:28

failure, there is so many. There is so many. So I can't give you one specific. But what the thing that I've learned from the multitude of misses that I had is to just show up the next day. Just show up. And that is it. It's just that simple. Just show up. Same thing with jujitsu or being a husband or a father. Plenty of times I poop the bed. Let me learn from this and just show up the next day better.

Tom DuFore 19:55

Man, that is so succinct and spot on. I appreciate that. Uh, it's a great reminder for me right now. I needed to hear that today. Well, let's talk about a make or a highlight, a win or two.

Chris Gray 20:07

We can talk business all day. The biggest win I've had here recently, though, just going beyond, you know, we're talking business and stuff, things are great with the company. The biggest win is that my wife and I have been married. Oh gosh, we're going on 12 for 13 years now, together for 17. And some of the principles I've learned through business and jujitsu and and just in life in general, my the biggest win I've had just recently is my wife and I are the most in love we've ever been. We're shooting this around the time of Valentine's, and it has not been the easiest thing. Everybody knows how marriage is, right? It's not it, it is work, work, and we are the most in love we've ever been, like little kids, like high school, you know. Let me get next to you and stuff. And that sounds all sweet. It didn't start like that. Like I said, we're 12 or 13 years in. I've never been a cuddly person. 12 or 13 years in, I'm a more cuddly person. That's because I dealt with crap is going on inside. That's been the biggest win. Let me deal with me so I can show up better as a father and husband.

Tom DuFore 21:05

Wonderful. Well, the name of the show is multiply your success. And so we ask if you use the multiplier to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you've run. Oh, absolutely, man.

Chris Gray 21:18

Everybody's talking about AI. It is powerful. And I I think I I'm in the circle, I'm in a circle of other people who are power users or the thing. So I forget what's happening in the and outside of the circle. I talked to other, I talk, I was talking to my sister, and she's, you know, use it for emails or ask questions the same way you would use Google. No, there is so much that can be done with this. And I'll leave it, I'll leave it at this. There's different, and I'm not, I'm not talking about just GPT, Claude, or Gemini's the world's big. No code, vibe coding. There's so much going on out there, and this is this is uh

Misses Wins AI And Defining Success

Chris Gray 21:50

we're on the precipice of something big, but I'll say this to make it simple AI, if if you know Tom knows everything there is to know about franchising. Right. So if Tom has an AI agent or AI system that helps him with franchising, Tom can play checkers or not checkers, he could play chess and it will magnify Tom's efficacy by 1,000%. Now let's say Tom, I would assume that you're not a good plumber. You probably don't do plumbing, right? That's correct. I I am not. So if Tom went to AI and tried to use that to help him with plumbing, it's going to magnify his incompetence substantially. And so this is the thing with AI. If you were good at something and you have a skill set, it can take you to the next level. Quantum, quantum leap. But if you don't know what you're doing and you're kind of messing around and you're trying to like do something big, then it's like giving a tank to a novice or something. It just there's so much that can be done there. And to answer your question, AI has helped tremendously. And I'm not just talking about Chat GPT.

Tom DuFore 22:50

Fantastic. Well, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?

Chris Gray 22:56

The men that I have surrounded myself lately are men who are successful husbands, fathers, or businessmen. They're not always successful husbands. Plenty of them are divorced. That's how life happens. But they have a, there's this, there is this desire to be the best in every area of my life at that moment. If they're a father and a businessman, great. If they're a husband, father, and a businessman, great. Whatever it is, whatever roles they play, they strive for success and in all of those roles, not just business. And that's been that's success for me.

Tom DuFore 23:30

Very, very well said. Well, Chris, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you are hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Chris Gray 23:37

I'm grateful for this space and this time. And if nothing else, like I don't care if you don't reach out to me, if you reach out to me or not or whatever it is, local marketing and marketing in general is changing. And we just talked about AI. And if you're just kind of sitting back and twiddling your thumbs, you will get dusted. This thing is moving at an exponential speed.

Key Takeaways And How To Connect

Tom DuFore 24:10

So takeaway number one is how he helps companies and how to get found locally, but not just have your business found, but dominate your market. And he said, remember, Google's goal is to keep people on their platform. And so he helps his clients show up in the top three or four of the top seven spots that become available. Takeaway number two is that customers want to know if your company is local, trustworthy, and affordable. So I thought that was a great nugget. Is your company local, trustworthy, and affordable? And is your business profile communicating that? Takeaway number three is optimizing your Google Business Profile, where he says, Do you have enough reviews? Are they real people? Do you offer coupons? And is there a way to book an appointment directly with you there? Thought those were three phenomenal takeaways. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win came when he talked about his multiplier, which is AI. And I thought that it was a profound statement that he said. And AI will amplify, and I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially he said AI will amplify your competence or your incompetence. And I thought that was a really, really great segment. So he's a marketing expert. Well, AI is going to help him amplify that expertise. Versus if you're trying to figure this out on your own, yeah, it might help you a little bit, but it probably more so amplifies your incompetence. I thought that was a great perspective and really just a cautionary approach for how we use AI and incorporate it into our day-to-day use. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com to schedule your free no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week!