Episodes

In the episode Neel sits down with Daniel Thompson of Salt Water Digital . Daniel has been in SEO for many years and took some time to share some insights into SEO for local services businesses, like: - Why Google My Business is harder to get verified now, and why some legitimate reviews are getting flagged and hidden. - The proof of work your agency should be showing you. - Whether local service businesses should be using Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram ads. Enjoy the episode!

When you pay for someone else's experiences you can move farther and faster than you would have on your own, allowing you to leapfrog the competition. In this episode, Neel shares a few of the key practices he's gotten through business coaching (see more here ), including: - The need to delegate, automate, and systematize (he sets aside time every day to do all three) - Why proactive planning helps you start working on your 10 year goals now - How its often the small effort on key levers in your...

During a break from the Conquer Summit Neel took a few moments to share some tactics he plans to implement to push his sales up at the MaidThis location in California this year. One of the pain points driving this change is an increased cost of labor, which Neel had not kept a close eye on. In the episode he discusses: - The difference between recurring customers and re-occurring customers (and why he'll be chasing more of the latter this year) - The ideal ceiling for labor costs in a home servi...

In this episode Neel and Johnny talk about the different hires you need to make as you grow your remote local business. They discuss: - the first hire you make and what areas they need to help with - how roles have to change as you move past $100k to $500k in annual revenue: people need to be more specialized - why the biz owner should be a marketing strategist, not a marketing executor You'll also hear them discuss margins and how many team members you'll need to hit $1M in annual revenue Enjoy...

On this episode, Neel sits down with Weh'yee Barkon of Internally , a firm that helps connect organizations with talented people in Africa. Neel and Weh'yee discuss: - the lack of opportunities available to well-educated, multi-lingual workers in Africa - the consumer education necessary to overcome the bad "brand image" of the continent - the absolute bargains to be had for workers (a full-time 40-hour/week worker can cost $500-$1000 USD a month!) Even though he was born and raised in the US, W...

In this episode Neel and Johnny share three books that they enjoyed reading in 2022. — They both show love for Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers, which they've mentioned multiple times on the pod this year. — Johnny mentions his tendency to reread books, one of which is Scaling Up. — Neel mentioned Prisoners of Geography, a book that's helped him see the world a bit differently on his travels. You'll also hear both Neel and Johnny reflect on Russell Brunson's Trilogy of books and the funnel-hacking th...

Neel recently moved a lot of stuff into Notion. One of those things was an ongoing list he keeps of business ideas. In this episode he shares a few of them and why he thinks they might be good bets, including: — Drone window cleaning — Full service mancave setup — Snowbird homewatch services — Hoarder/crime scene/meth house cleanup (seriously!) Believe it or not, there's even a real estate play in those hoarder/meth home examples.

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss in detail what it's been like for Johnny to scale Home Services Academy. They chat about: — The importance of marketing and sales being in sync, particularly in the early days of the business. — How appointment setters can help drive a greater show rate for prospecting calls (Johnny also shares his pay rate). — How Johnny and his team learned by doing when it came to qualifying leads. Johnny also shares how his dramatic growth over peers who have been in t...

Some years ago Neel met Itamar Marani , a former Israeli Special Forces soldier, who in the course of conversations shared risk analysis and mitigation tactics he had been taught. This includes looking at the magnitude, immediacy, and probability of an event happening, as well as mitigating tactics that can be used to deal with that event, like: — distance — barriers — deterrence — countermeasures Neel walks through these using a hypothetical "man has a knife and wants to hurt you" scenario and ...

It's a bit of a switch up this week, as I get interviewed by Chase Warrington of the About Abroad pod. For those who get my newsletter or listen to the pod regularly, this episode will be a great summary of the last few months and what I do at MaidThis Franchise, but also serves as a great conversation between Chase and me, covering: — Some of the most important lessons travel can give you. — Sustainable remote work and creating community (something Chase works on every day). — When the "nomadic...

In this episode Neel shares his experience of hiring and working with dozens of remote team members since 2013. He shares: — Which platforms you can use to find remote talent (Upwork, Dynamite Jobs, We Work Remotely) — What countries he's had great experiences with (South Africa, Honduras) — Which countries have talent "on sale" because of inflation (Venezuela, Argentina) — Why all great hires start with solid job descriptions (learn more here ) Enjoy the episode!

In this episode Neel and Johnny answer the question: "Should everyone go into entrepreneurship?" (Short answer: No.) Entrepreneurship has been so glamorized lately that it's made to seem that everyone can and should be an entrepreneur. Neel and Johnny offer some thoughts on why that's a bad idea: People with low risk tolerance won't do well — every day involves some kind of risk in entrepreneurship. People who have a 9-5 for a very long time (though a franchise might be a good fit in that case) ...

In this episode Neel sits down with Jon Matzner to talk about his journey to small business ownership and eventually a type of franchising Jon calls "affiliating." Jon bought a garage upgrade business and grew it really quickly but when he looked at the franchising landscape he didn't like what he saw and didn't want to create a scenario where franchisees had to come to him with "may I" requests all the time. So, instead he created lots of resources and allowed others to leverage his knowledge t...

In the experimental episode (literally recorded on the road), Neil discusses the differences between being a business builder and a business investor. Neel has long tried to do both, but has recently realized that means he's only doing half as well in each field. He thinks it makes more sense for him to pick one and make the other more passive. Since it's rare to find someone who can excel in both building and investing, it makes more sense for people to pick, and either is good, but it probably...

In this episode, Neel gives reviews of software he has used to run his remote local businesses in a more automated fashion. Neel starts by breaking down software into core vs. spoke. Core software includes companies like Launch27, BookingKoala, ZenMaid, Jobber, and Housecall Pro. Neel shares what he likes and doesn't like about them and also reminds listeners to consider whether they want a more industry-specific or industry-agnostic platform. Neel also discusses Slack, Zapier, G-Suite, Active C...

In this episode Neel and Johnny tackle the question of how entrepreneurs feel about what their business does. While Johnny delves into the idea of what your goals/endgame are and how that can create different answers at different times in your entrepreneurial journey, Neel unapologetically says that you do not have to like what your business does, as long as you don't hate it (people who don't like donuts shouldn't open a donut shop). They also discuss: how sometimes working in your business ins...

In this episode Neel and Johnny welcome Sergio Silesky and Chris Munn to discuss different ways to deploy cash. Sergio is a business partner of Johnny and is in "cash stack" mode so all the income they are earning is getting reinvested into the business. Chris has often used his active income to invest in more passive businesses like real estate or already-running businesses doing between $1-5M in EBITDA. They also discuss: Why buying and renting out a single family home is a terrible idea (Chri...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss the business of gurus and how they've both changed their attitude on them over time. Johnny was formerly a hater until he himself became a "guru" by sharing information in free and paid form. As for Neel, he used to be anti-guru too, until he learned to simply "respect the funnel" and see that these guys did work really hard, even if their style wasn't for everyone. They also discuss: Some of their favorite gurus — both Neel and Johnny are Alex Hormozi guy...

In this episode Neel and Johnny give four proven tactics that they have used to drive hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales for their respective cleaning businesses. Those tactics are: Local Facebook Groups (Johnny explains his method of guerrilla marketing in these groups) Cold Email (Neel highlights the template for this underrated way to get new clients) Giveaways (Johnny harnesses the social power of Instagram to get a huge list of new leads) Postcards (Neel shares a brand that allows sp...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss the benefits of a $50,000+ mastermind that Johnny and his business partner joined. Originally Johnny had hired this company to help with sales and in classic "value ladder" style the company overdelivered on the entry-level product so that Johnny was primed to hear an upsell. Things had gone so well with the original sales help they asked for that it was a no-brainer to join the mastermind (even though they had to split up the payments). Johnny's loved all...

In this episode Johnny catches up with Neel about his recent visit with the Hazda tribe in Tanzania. Neel got the special government permission necessary to go out there and learned a lot. Neel's day started with joining some of the members of the tribe hunting for food. He was blown away at how fast the tribal members moved through the bush and how accurate they were with the bow and arrow. Neel and Johnny also discuss: what an average day is like for the Hazda why the Hazda reject newer techno...

In this episode Neel and Johnny revisit the old quote about the five closest people to you and talk about proactively upgrading those people. They discuss: the power of groups like EO, EOA, and the Dynamite Circle why it's worth paying to join some groups (Johnny paid $50,000+ to join one particular group focused on e-learning businesses) the power of meeting people in Facebook groups and on Twitter. Neel and Johnny also talk about how easy it is to reach out to people on Twitter but how few peo...

In this episode, Neil gives listeners a step-by-step guide to starting their own vacation rental biz. He starts by highlighting the opportunity: people prefer vacation rentals to hotels now, and there is a huge demand for hotel-level cleaning services and a massive lack of companies to fulfill that need. Steps which Neel outlines include: Your website: it doesn't need to be perfect...it just needs to get up ASAP Your booking system: will be different for residential cleaning and vacation rental ...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss opportunity vehicles: what you are doing in your career, and how is it helping you achieve your life goals? Things they consider include: different "levels" of opportunity how those levels can be completely different for people with different skill sets and personalities the undesirability of low margin businesses with lots of moving parts Enjoy the episode!