Today, I’m talking with Bill Rice of Bill Rice Strategy Group about how he has been using AI to generate leads for his clients. I had so many “AHA!” moments and can’t wait to use Bill’s strategies in my own business. Check out Bill’s free Substack newsletter here.

About Bill Rice:

Bill Rice is the Kaleidico founder, a digital lead generation agency. He also owns Bill Rice Strategy.

He is a lead generation expert and sales process enthusiast.

Transcript:

Becky Beach: Well, hey, welcome to the Becky Beach. I’m Becky Beach, and today’s guest is Bill Rice. He’s the owner and CEO of Bill Rice Strategy. Welcome, bill.

Bill Rice: Hey, it’s great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to your audience.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah. Yes. I’m really excited to talk to you today. Bill Rice is really great at getting leads with AI and a number of other things dealing with strategy and marketing.

Becky Beach: We’re just really excited to have him here today on the show. Bill, could you, um, let, let us know more about you and, and how you got started doing this?

Bill Rice: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, my journey’s, uh, been, I’ve been doing this for about 30 years, uh, so it’s been a, a little bit of a [00:01:00] long and meandering one. I, I started, uh, way back in the day in, in the Air Force, um, in, in intelligence actually.

Bill Rice: Uh, there’s a little bit of a thread there. So I was doing, uh, counterintelligence operations and it was the very earliest, uh, days of the internet and we were taking, um, a lot of what we were doing in traditional intelligence. And we’ve all seen the movies and that sort of thing. I always, so it’s more exciting on the outside than it is the inside.

Bill Rice: It was a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and that sort of thing. But one of the fun things I did was, um, start to transition some of those, uh, tactics and techniques, um, onto the internet. ’cause we, we saw a lot of those activities starting to take place on the internet and. Now, again, depending on how old you are, things like IRC chats and sort of the, the early days, uh, of, of those little, um, places and forums and, and that sort of thing.

Bill Rice: Um, but long story short, um, I kind of made a transition out of there. Uh, started working for, um, some other intel agencies that, that most of us have heard of. Um, and at a [00:02:00] point in time, uh, the sort of. Lure of the commercial market, um, was strong. They were paying a lot more than I was getting paid. Um, and so I had to figure out how to transition myself, um, what I was doing into the commercial marketplace.

Bill Rice: And I started for a brief time, uh, sort of translated myself, uh, on my resume into an internet security guy. ’cause I knew a lot about the, the internet and tracking bad guys and stuff like that. Uh, and got involved with an early startup, one of the first internet only banks. Um, and that was again, sort of my.

Bill Rice: First foray, um, into not only financial services where I’ve stuck for a very long time, um, but also getting into the startup environment, which I loved. Um, and then as I got in there, I realized internet security wasn’t quite as fascinating, uh, as I thought it would be, and I ended up transitioning into marketing.

Bill Rice: Um, and again, the thread that binds the two there. Was, uh, back in the intel days, uh, we were looking at a lot of data, um, signals type stuff, internet type stuff, [00:03:00] internet traffic, and trying to figure things out. And I realized that that’s what the marketing folks were doing in the early days, uh, of the internet.

Bill Rice: And as we were building that internet bank, um, again, ’cause we’re gonna. We’re gonna talk a little bit about I, AI and lead generation. Um, I think it’s fun to talk about the transition that I saw in that moment. And this was in and around the 2000. Um, we had, believe it or not, internet only bank, uh, we’re generating loans on the internet.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. Um, much like more common today. Mm-hmm. And so it was super innovative. Um, but believe it or not, most of our traffic was coming from a company that we engaged with as a partner, um, called Bankrate. Which probably a lot of, you know, Bankrate or have been on their website looking for rates and stuff like that.

Bill Rice: But at that time they weren’t an internet site. Um, they were a marketing partner who actually placed rate tables in newspapers. And so we placed rates, our rates in newspapers, uh, got them to our, our internet site and we were one of the few that that [00:04:00] could lend. Um, and then we started doing this thing with Lending Tree, uh, where they actually started to give us.

Bill Rice: Internet type leads. Um, but amongst all of this, so again, we’re pulling offline traffic, traditional newspaper advertising to the internet. Um, and then one of our developers walked in my office and said, Hey, take a look at this. Uh, and he, he got me to go to this site on my screen. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause we didn’t have laptops at the time.

Bill Rice: Um, and it popped up a big white screen with a box in the middle of it, and he said, you can just like. Put whatever word you want in there and it will build a directory. No, it’s, it sounds funny now, right? Because we were thinking in terms of Yahoo directories, right? Um, but it basically, it was Google. And so at that moment we had to quickly figure out this new black box of like, how do we get our, like Yahoo directory?

Bill Rice: You just called Yahoo and you would spend a lot of money and you would get your thing in the directory. But, but Google. Had this, like they wanted you to earn your way in. So we had this black [00:05:00] box we were figuring out. Mm-hmm. And, and I tell that story because, um, now, uh, here some 30 years later, um, we’re in this moment where we kind of knew black box to figure out, uh, and you mentioned before the call that, you know, you had gotten some business, um, from chat GPT or from some of these AI things and mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: And, uh, we’re now trying to figure out like. How do we get in that black box? So, um, so that’s the long journey and intro to kinda who I am and what I do. So.

Becky Beach: Very interesting. Like I also worked for the government myself. I was, uh, I was doing, I was at the BXPX, the exchange Yeah. All the time. And I was doing like, website design, like really, really early in the, in the two thousands.

Becky Beach: And yeah, so I, so they, they didn’t, it was like really hard, hard to, you know, work there ’cause the bureaucracy. So I definitely can relate to that. Yeah. I’m glad that you’ve moved on and now you’re doing something that you really love and, and are excited about. Yep. Yeah. So, um, so again, like what, what you touched on, how I was [00:06:00] able to get the leads from the ai, like I had, I, I recently, you know, got like two clients from the, the AI overview.

Becky Beach: And for a long time I hated AI overview because it took a lot of my blog traffic. I’m a blogger over at Mom Beach and now I’m, my blogging traffic from Google is down like 2000 a month because of the AI overview. And at the one time it was, that was getting like 200,000 searches from ai, not in ai, but Google.

Becky Beach: So now it’s really took away a lot of my traffic. But then, you know, when I was getting those clients, you know, I kind of did a double take. I was saying, yeah, I, I’m really, I kinda like that and I’m getting clients in this and I’m getting recommendations from it. So could you list No. Like how can people, you know, booster their recommendations from the AI overview instead of treating it like an enemy?

Bill Rice: Yeah, exactly. So I, I think there’s two things, uh, you know, that, that are happening right now. So on the Google front. The traditional things that we’ve done to do SEO and and content and, and give the right [00:07:00] signals and indicators to Google as to what’s good content, um, and even pay per click, if you will.

Bill Rice: Um, Google’s kind of messing that up a little bit right now, and I think it’s a bit intentionally. So I say messing it up because messing it up for us. We’re having to figure something else out. But I think they realize that in the short term, they’re probably impacting some of that SEO, some of that PPC, even some of the paid traffic that they’re selling.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. By putting that AI overview at the top. Yeah. Yeah. But they realize they need to catch up. Right. Because if I would venture to guess, if you were to look at your Google Analytics, what you’re starting to see is things like chat, GPT and perplexity show up as as little lines and sources of data.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. Because. Particularly for what you do, you know, website design, um, what we do, generating leads for mortgages and stuff, these more complex topics. Um, and again, it’s the early days, so most of that traffic and those questions are still going to Google for sure. We need to [00:08:00] still be doing the right things there, but more and more the savvy consumer.

Bill Rice: Probably the better. You know, the, the ones that are have a little more budget and are a little more sophisticated in what they’re doing, are starting to go over to chat GPT or starting to go over to perplexity because they can get a lot more information and well organized, right? So

Becky Beach: yeah, definitely you get a.

Bill Rice: Yeah, you get a briefing versus like, uh, for instance, like you might go and say, Hey, who are the best web designers? You go to Google, they give you a whole bunch of choices, and then you gotta do the hard work of like digging through ’em and doing the research. But if you go over to perplexity or chat GT and you say, Hey, who are the best web designers and my local community?

Bill Rice: It’ll gimme a briefing. It’ll say, Hey, here’s the ones that you have to choose from. And it’ll probably give you a chart that tells you like what one is better than the other. So I think a lot of that traffic is gonna start going over to these lar, what we call large language models, um, because I think the user.[00:09:00]

Bill Rice: Really likes to have that sort of done for them briefing, uh, because they don’t understand the reason they’re going there is they don’t understand web design. They don’t know exactly what they need to do. And if you can be in there, um, then that works. And, and kind of to your question right now, again.

Bill Rice: This is why I opened this way. Google was a black box, and we as SEOs have tried a bunch of stuff. We’ve compared notes with other SEOs. Yeah, you kind of know how this black box works. Now, these LMS are another black box, but the one thing that we are finding is we’re starting to test things because it’s the early days.

Bill Rice: I think this will probably change, but those large language models are gathering data just like Google is. So a lot of the things that works for Google also gets you into those large language models. Yeah. The only real difference that we see, and we could talk about this in a second, but um, some of those things that you’re doing, and probably the reason you got that AI lead is because as the good things that you did to get Google, [00:10:00] even though that traffic’s declining, you’ll probably start to see some of that AI traffic, um, increase because of the good work that you’ve done.

Bill Rice: Um, for Google. So some of those are analogous. We can talk about some of the more nuances, uh, of what is different. Um, but for now, um, just to kind of open the discussion, uh, a lot of the good work you’ve done on the SEO front, um, will still yield you well, um, on the LLMs.

Becky Beach: It’s very, very true. I recently, I was telling you before the call, well, I had like a, my hot water heater leak, so it, my whole living room, like about half of it was like, flooded.

Becky Beach: So I had to have a home restoration specialist come out and I ended up getting, I, I’m ended up doing a barter ’cause I, I, I’m gonna do his SEO for his website and return for him to fix my living room. He finally fixed it and I, I’m waiting on more information for, to do his SEO. So, uh, so I, I was, I made this post on my mom blog.

Becky Beach: It was a review about his services and that was featured in the AI overview. I have a screenshot of it [00:11:00] and it was fe featured in the AI overview and it recommended his business based on my review. So, it, it can be helpful the businesses if you’re able to get an influencer like myself, you know, to do a review for your business or even have a high ranking site.

Becky Beach: ’cause my blog rank ranks as a, a Dr. 58. So it, it’s pretty high up there. And his own site was a six, so I was thinking like, how can I get his site to rank if that being a six? And I checked his profile and he’s, um, listed on, on a lot of really low sites. Like he has a really poor link profile. So even if you, even if your site has a, a link, a really bad link profile, what, what can you do to be able to get increased in the Google search?

Bill Rice: Yeah, this is where I think, you know, particularly local SEO is gonna change a lot, right? Mm-hmm. Because most of what, unfortunately, local service providers have had to rely on is really a monopoly, right? Google my business, um, because, um, for most of those type of businesses, uh, the consumer, um, is, is searching for, you know, [00:12:00] a.

Bill Rice: Home restoration or an HVAC in my area. And so Google pushes its listings right to the top. Um, and then it’s kind of a little bit of a disadvantage for some, right? If you’re outside of city center, you’re just automatically gonna get pushed down ’cause you’re just not as close to the city that intuitively somebody would search for.

Bill Rice: Um, but then you’re also kind of dependent on them and. And to work on it and to kind of do that kind of SEO, um, because you need the reviews, right? ’cause the reviews kind of help you there. And then to the link profile, what we see with a lot of those, and I don’t do a ton of local, but um, but what we do see when we look at those local providers.

Bill Rice: Is they’ve usually gone down the path of doing a whole bunch of those directories. So they got all these crappy, you know, not Yelp and Google My business, but all those other crappy little like one-off directories and they’ve linked all that into their site and kind of destroyed it to some degree. So.

Bill Rice: To your point in your example, I think what local [00:13:00] SEO is gonna look like in the future, because I think more of this stuff will come through ai or even just talking to your phone and using whatever AI is plugged in there. Um, having a website where you’re sharing specific client stories, um, you’ve got charts.

Bill Rice: You know, and tables, um mm-hmm. This is one thing that we’ve, we’ve found out, uh, large language models, at least right now, loves tables and charts, right? So if you do a chart that compares, like this type of repair versus this type of repair mm-hmm. Or maybe even compares you to competitors, loves charts, loves tables, um, but having like specific.

Bill Rice: Articles or, um, or, or, you know, content related to mm-hmm. Very specific nuanced scenarios like, you know, what to do when your water heater leaks, what to do, or how long will my water heater last? Or, um, [00:14:00] what’s all this white stuff around, um, the, the hose that goes from my air conditioner into my house. You know, those kind of things.

Bill Rice: LLMs just. Gobble that up and can quickly make his, you know, level six, um, website go to a whole different level. Because these LLMs are just, they’re die. Like the other days of Google, they’re dying for content. And so, mm-hmm. The more nuanced you can get, um, the better. And then. Kind of the double down on that is, uh, again, this takes a little bit of work, um, and you’ve gotta figure this out and a little bit of talent.

Bill Rice: But having AI produce that content, uh, for itself is super effective too. ’cause if you, if you. Tell ai, um, Hey, this is my business. Take a look at the website, learn who I am, and then write me something that is likely to show up. In the large language models, what you’re gonna notice is you’re gonna see those charts and tables and you’re also gonna see a much choppier [00:15:00] article.

Bill Rice: They love list. So again, the thing that large language models prefer that Google doesn’t seem to be as concerned about is structure and order. Um, so. Um, and some people will say, well, that’s not readable. That’s not like a pleasant article. But, you know, in our attention deficit sort of world that we live in, um, humans kind of start to prefer those lists more and more.

Bill Rice: Um, so writing the, uh, great American novel on your blog, um, is probably not helping you as much anymore, um, is just really breaking things down into, um, well organized sets of lists. Tables, charts, things that are really easy to consume and mm-hmm. Sort of see quickly on your phone.

Becky Beach: Well, I have like a, a friend that runs like a WordPress business and she’s been saying that, that she’s using Schemas to get her clients’ websites to show up in the AI overview.

Becky Beach: Like what are your thoughts on that?

Bill Rice: Yeah, she’s right on. She’s right on target. Because again, think about it, these agents that are collecting it and, [00:16:00] and Google’s sort of been begging for this for a long time, but I think the large language models are starting to push people to understand this more.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. Is the more guidance. Um, you give to the computer as to what they’re looking at, like, oh, this is an address. Oh, this is a review. Oh, this is, you know, again, you can use those schema markup to tell it specifically what it is. Mm-hmm. And then it can, because large language model models are a lot less structured, it actually helps it to.

Bill Rice: Um, to, to structure that as it takes it in, and also to understand how to structure it, to give it back, because to some degree mm-hmm. It’s looking at all this disorganized data. So the sites that are gonna win are the ones that are helping it to, to get organized, so to speak.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah, very true. For those that don’t know, a schema is an XML file, so it’s kinda like HTML, but it’s XML and it has like data related to your blog post, like what’s it about?

Becky Beach: Like such as the meta tag, you know, key words, a [00:17:00] brief description of your post, and also like in bullet points. So it’s very easy to digest for an AI overview to read. Yeah.

Bill Rice: Yeah. Well, and we’ve noticed that for a long time. I mean, Google’s been doing this, um, they, they’ve been pulling out lists, like we’ve learned that trick early on.

Bill Rice: If you put a, a list, um, or some sort of summary at the top of your blog post uhhuh, you’re, you’re potentially gonna get one of those snippets ’cause it’s looking for that easy to digest. So, uh, that’s been emerging trend, but, uh, certainly one that’s, that’s working well with the large language models as well.

Becky Beach: I’ve been seeing the featured snippets in so long. Do you think they got rid of that? ’cause all they see is that AI overview dominating the results. You know, people don’t even have to visit your, your website. They can just get all the information from that AI overview and then you’re losing clicks and visits and therefore add income and product income.

Becky Beach: And so it’s really gotten on crazy.

Bill Rice: Well, and I, I think this is where, and it’s a little bit of a subtext in all this, but I think that’s where it’s getting, um, more important to [00:18:00] think about because you are probably going to be cited, um, inside of that overview or inside a chat, GPT or something like that.

Bill Rice: So they’ll say the name of your business. So to think, and again, we don’t, as small businesses, we don’t always have like the biggest budgets, but to think the tiniest bit about branding, like how can you make it. Easy to, to find your business or to talk about your business or what is your name? Um, or does that easily translate into, ’cause they may have to do a second search or they may have to ask for your website.

Bill Rice: So start to think a little bit about branding so that when they see that overview, they don’t just. Walk away that it’s easy for them to, to find you or, or call you and stuff like that. But, um, so branding I think is gonna become more and more significant. ’cause um, again, there’s this zero click sort of, uh, experience that’s gonna happen.

Bill Rice: So, uh, although all of these are getting better at siding where they got the information, ’cause people are nervous, like, is it [00:19:00] real? So I think that’ll get better too. Hyperlinks will come back into the equation. Um, and then hopefully you’ll get some of that click traffic back.

Becky Beach: Like you said before, people are using Perplexity and Chat GPT to do more of their search volume.

Becky Beach: ’cause I saw OpenAI as ranked in the the top 10 websites people visit in the world. Yeah. So I think it’s gonna continue to climb up there and do, do you think someday it might overtake Google search?

Bill Rice: Yeah, I think that’s, I mean, I think that’s what Google’s trying to defend against, like really quickly.

Bill Rice: And, and like I said, I think they’ve impacted and take some, some parti, you know, we do a lot of pay per click and Google ads and that sort of thing. And we’ve seen a, seen a real direct impact ’cause those, even though I think they treat it deconflict, you know. Those sort of paid terms versus more informational terms.

Bill Rice: I think there’s still some crossover ’cause, ’cause the quality of our, uh, Google ads and pay per click is impacted. So I think Google is taking a very intentional sort of risk position here to say, Hey, we gotta figure this out. [00:20:00] We gotta look more like perplexity.

Becky Beach: Mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: And so I, I think, I think everything’s gonna shift that way.

Bill Rice: I think Google will still hold a strong position. They’ve got some great models and stuff like that, but, um, for us as marketers, the world is, is changing again. So we’ll probably have to figure out more than Google does. Um, but I, I think the consumer prefers, um, chatting and getting a human-like response back.

Bill Rice: Um, and so everybody will move with that.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah, certainly. So what, what would you say to someone out there that has a store and they wanna use AI overview to get more, you know, leads to their store and get more product sales, like, what would you say to that person?

Bill Rice: I, I mean, uh, honestly, I think the, the right first step is to, um, and a lot of these small businesses, again, they get, became over reliant on Google My Business.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. And so they sort of abandoned the website. I think the website’s gonna come back in because that’s what large language models. That’s the only thing they can look at. Like they’ll, [00:21:00] they maybe see, see your Google My Business. But seeing a website that’s well organized has information about your products and services.

Becky Beach: Yeah. Um,

Bill Rice: clearly uses Schema to identify your location and your phone number and your services areas and your services. Mm-hmm. Um, is gonna be really important. So I think we’re gonna, and. Probably sounds strange, but I think we’re gonna see a resurgent of the small business website. And if I was a small business owner, uh, I would make some small investment there, um, to get that information updated back out there, um, and organized in a fashion that the large language models can even look at.

Bill Rice: Because if you look at some of these, you know. Poor small businesses mm-hmm. That, that haven’t invested or haven’t, you know, again, maybe not even have the resources. Um, some of these things look like the 1990s, like your, your restoration folk. You know, if you looked at his website, it probably looks like it’s from the nineties, right.

Bill Rice: And mm-hmm. Um, that’s not gonna serve him well, uh, in this kind of new world.

Becky Beach: Yeah, he told me that he’s paying this [00:22:00] agency that’s like, uh, focusing on restoration companies and he’s paying them 1500 a month, and I looked at his website and his link profile. And he had no key words for even what he’s doing.

Becky Beach: Like it was just very obscure type of key wording. On his, on his, it was like a WordPress blog that had him on, and they made the WordPress blog for him, and he’s paying them 1500 a month to update his pictures and to supposedly do his SEO. And to get a site rank and he’s really upset with the results.

Bill Rice: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think, you know, and it’s interesting you said they were on WordPress. I mean, a lot of these things are, um, they’re just proprietary platforms. They get into one particular niche and they just sort of gobble ’em all up. Um, and again, I think they’ve been able to exist like that because Google, my business has done so much of their work for them.

Bill Rice: Um, but now. You know, just like you said, that that’s just not gonna work anymore. And so I think Google my business, uh, again, it’ll still have a, an important role. Google will figure out how to continue to, to have something like [00:23:00] that. Support small businesses ’cause it’s such a big part of their market. Um, but I think long term, yeah.

Bill Rice: Um. Agencies that just sort of gobble up, put people on templated sites, never update it. And some of that’s on the small business too. You know, the small business should be communicate if they do have a relationship like that or, or with you now. Um, they should be communicating with you to, to give you a clear understanding of the services that they provide, the products that they offer, uh, making sure that they’re giving you, um, the latest and greatest testimonials or there’s some mechanism.

Bill Rice: To get testimonials back on every job. Um, and then of course, pictures. I mean, we’ve got great cameras in our pockets now with phones. Yeah. Um, with small business people. I, I tell ’em like, pictures sell your business so you got happy client. Mm-hmm. You know, a done job, uh, something that, you know, those, those pictures you can take such good.

Bill Rice: Um, quick snapshots on your phone. Get those on your website. And again, um, that’s gonna help you with the large language models. And Google [00:24:00] is having those images. I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot of, yeah. For this kind of business. There’s a lot and, and realtors and stuff like that. There’s a lot of conversions that happen off of image searches, right?

Bill Rice: So don’t forget about that, uh, world as well. And then of course, video, uh, we talked a little bit about video mm-hmm. Um, before the call, but I think video’s an emerging platform that’s, uh, a. For, for people that are not handy, like myself, uh, I spend a lot of time on YouTube trying to figure things out, and the moment it gets too complex, I’m probably gonna call the person who’s showing me how to do it.

Bill Rice: So I think, um, that’s another opportunity for, for small business, uh, service type industries is, you know, show what you do, um, show mm-hmm. The quality of your work, how to get things done, show people simple things. And then I think for the, the more complex things or the moment they get in trouble, uh, trying to do it themselves, um, that’s an opportunity for you to get a lead.

Becky Beach: Oh, yeah, certainly. Yeah. I once had a plumber come over and I was like mentioning how he could get his site rank because I was hoping to get his business. And then he told me that, uh, that [00:25:00] he’s a, he doesn’t want to share how he does like plumbing work on YouTube, for instance, because he’s afraid that people will just, you know, see how to do it and they won’t even bother at calling.

Becky Beach: Like, what would you say to those people?

Bill Rice: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a, a bit of a misplaced fear, uh, honestly. ’cause again, um, you know, most of, he’s not, this is my opinion, of course, um mm-hmm. But he’s not getting business from people that. Like that he’s, you know, hiding from, right. I mean mm-hmm. Most of the people that call him either don’t know how to do it, um, which is probably a big category, um, are, are in a, like a, a moment of panic, right?

Bill Rice: Because something’s going wrong. They don’t even have time to figure it out, right? Because they, they’ve got, um, a, a case like that. Um, or it’s just a convenience. Like, I don’t wanna, like personally. Like an hour of me figuring out lead generation is a lot more valuable than me figuring out how to, uh, swap out my toilet.

Bill Rice: Right. So, um, so I think, [00:26:00] you know, convenience is a factor. Um, but the moment that he tries to keep this a secret mm-hmm. Um, one, there’s already 10 other plumbers that have shown everybody anything that he could show ’em.

Becky Beach: Right.

Bill Rice: He just gave all the business to those other 10 plumbers. Yeah. Um, so I, I think that’s, that’s always.

Bill Rice: Hiding. Even my lead generation, you know, I do a lot of videos that show lead generation. I go on the podcasts and talk about it all the time. Mm-hmm. It’s like mm-hmm. If you’re so inclined, uh, to do it yourself and you can be effective, great. Then I’ve, you know, made a, a loyal fan, um, but most of you can’t and won’t.

Bill Rice: And so that’s an opportunity for me. And if, if I didn’t do that, um, I’m, I’m seeding all that opportunity to some competitor who’s willing to get out there and, uh, and show a little of the secret.

Becky Beach: Well, what would you say? Is there someone out there that’s thinking, well, that, that’s really neat, but I don’t really have the time to make a whole YouTube video.

Becky Beach: Could I just, you know, do a small video on TikTok? Is that gonna help me with my leads? Like what do you think of that?

Bill Rice: Yeah, I mean, those, those [00:27:00] short, even on YouTube, I mean the, the short form video

Becky Beach: mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: It is probably, uh, I mean, there’s a longer nuanced discussion about like short versus long and stuff like that.

Bill Rice: Um, but if you’re so inclined to take your phone and do a short form video. Um, I think you’re gonna have just as much success with that. Um, you know, most of the time anymore, I’m not sure about the conversion rate, but the time, if you just look around, look at my kids, look at my wife, look at my friends, like they’re all scrolling short form video, right?

Bill Rice: And so, um, it, it would be silly to, to not think that that would yield, um, just as good a results as a long form. So it’s really whatever you have the time, um, and kind of what feels. Right. Um, but short form, yes, absolutely an opportunity. ’cause again, people don’t have a lot of attention anymore. Um, and if you can show ’em how to Yes.

Bill Rice: You know, um, find out how to, uh, you know, find your ring in the sink, um, in that little catch at the bottom. [00:28:00] Uh, and, and. You know, 10 seconds or less, and, um, and save that wedding ring, then, you know, that’s, that’s probably gonna be a value add. And they’re gonna put you in their little contact database for when they need a plumber.

Becky Beach: What kind of challenges do you see with, with people that are, that are wanting Legion? Like what kind of challenges do you see them facing?

Bill Rice: Yeah, I mean, I think in general, like Legion, uh, is. Like, for instance, for us, we focus on financial service and we do a lot around mortgages and, and FinTech and those sorts of things, so, mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: Um, Legion in that context, um, has a lot of specific nuance to it. There’s a lot of compliance, there’s a lot of regulatory stuff in there. Um, there’s a lot that you need to know about the products and those sorts of things. So, um, so when you’re looking for Legion or you’re trying to figure out Legion, um, one, if you’re doing it yourself.

Bill Rice: There’s only really a few channels, right, that you can, that you can use, uh, on your own. You can do, like you did, [00:29:00] you did a blog, um, and you did some SEO and you published some articles, and that’s a great way, uh, again, depending on how much competition there is, um, that can get you into position really well.

Bill Rice: It works. Great for local, it works great if you’re in a niche, those sorts of things. Um, if you’re a little bit broader and more competitive, you might have to go into the paid. Um, so Google ads, Facebook ads. The moment you go there, now you’re getting more technical. That’s where you’re probably gonna want to get, um, somebody, whether it’s a, a freelancer or an agency, somebody that has some specialty there.

Bill Rice: Um, email. Is great. You know, as you’re, um, putting together clients or you’re encountering like the, the plumber that you talked about or the restoration. Hopefully he has a database and he’s sending emails out to you occasionally. Uh, ’cause, just ’cause you did restoration with him.

Becky Beach: Mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: Um, he probably does some other things or you can refer him.

Bill Rice: So emails a, a great strategy. Um, still probably one of the. Best and the [00:30:00] cheapest ways to generate leads. Um, so your database, um, is everything. You know, even you as a web designer, you’ve got a lot of past clients and people that you’ve worked with. Um, I, I know in, in the worst of my cycles as a, as an entrepreneur, um, I always tell this story, uh, in those dips, and I don’t know why the numbers 12, but, uh, there were kind of two times that this really happened.

Bill Rice: Uh, I just went to my. Past clients and people that I knew my contact, I pulled out 12 of them and I emailed all 12 of them and I said, Hey, this is what I’m doing. Uh, this is what I’m working on. Um, one, I was surprised how many people replied back to me. I was like, oh, I didn’t know that’s what you did, or I didn’t know what you, that you’re kind of doing something different or whatever.

Bill Rice: Um, and then in each of those cases, I got two to three clients. So it’s kind of the quickest, fastest way. Um, so, you know, any small business or any business, um, that’s been doing anything, you know, probably has, you know, 20, 30, 50, a hundred people sitting around that [00:31:00] they haven’t communicated with in the last three to six months.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. Just reminding them what you do and that you would love to have a referral, or if they have a need, you’d love to service them. That’s an automatic couple of clients right there.

Becky Beach: Oh yeah. I think that all them should get CRMs and I, I like to use Monday for mine and just keep track of like VIP clients and I’ll usually give them a discount.

Becky Beach: Like recently, like I’m almost a course creator and I created like, like a course that I’m usually, I’m selling right now and I had a student reach out. Wanting a discount because, you know, ’cause she’s like on a budget and so I gave her the discount. ’cause I see in, in my CRM that she has bought over $2,000 worth of stuff from me before.

Bill Rice: Nice.

Becky Beach: So because of the CRM. So you can keep track of like VIP clients and I really recommend those people. If, if someone’s out there as a service provider. Like, you should also keep track of your, um, VIP clients too with like a CRM such as Monday. That’s the one I like to use. And there’s also, um, I Right recently got into using high level.

Becky Beach: You heard of that?

Bill Rice: Yeah, high level is a, is a hot one [00:32:00] within our agencies. We’re, we’re white labeling some of those solutions specifically, which is nice because, uh, I like high level, especially if you’re, if you’re serving lead generation clients or you want to get in the CRM business, because once you kind of dial it in, you can literally make a copy of it.

Bill Rice: Um, and then, you know, optimize that for another client. But, uh, if you are in a niche, uh, high level’s great for that, uh, I would suggest that’s a, that’s a really kind of easy business to start. CRMs are, are so, so valuable in that way. Um, and then the other thing that’s neat about them is, you know, they’ve got all the platforms.

Bill Rice: You can do landing pages with them. You can do text messaging, you can do mm-hmm. You know, obviously phone calls and a lot of automation, which is, at least in our business when we’re doing high volume lead generation automation becomes really important, really quick.

Becky Beach: Yeah. That’s actually the business that, that the home restoration guy’s using, like they’re built on high level.

Becky Beach: ’cause I, I looked at the, there’s a site called Built [00:33:00] with.com. You could see what a site’s built with, and I, I saw a high level on there. So that agency that he’s working with. Are using high level and they’re charging him like 1500 a month and, and they’re only having to pay like 500 a month for an agency and who knows how many clients they have.

Becky Beach: So it’s a great way to make money and to start your own agency. Is that what, what you use for your agency?

Bill Rice: Um, so we focus a lot on the front end of the lead generation, Uhhuh, but what we found is there are a lot of clients that we were just emailing them leads and they weren’t doing a very good job because they didn’t have a CRM system.

Bill Rice: So we’ve started using and offering high level as a kind of an affordable solution, um, to get them doing the right thing once we hand ’em the leads. Um, and of course. If they have a higher conversion rate, um, then because they’re using a CRM, then they’re can continue, um, getting services from us for, for lead generation.

Bill Rice: Because that, that’s usually, that, that’s the second component of lead generation. If you’re failing with lead generation, if you’re actually able to produce them but you’re not closing the deals, it’s probably ’cause you don’t have a CRM [00:34:00] and you’re not doing good follow up because again, consumers and, and people on the internet are not terribly patient.

Bill Rice: So if you don’t follow up with them quickly

Becky Beach: mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: And, and frequently. They’ll forget about you and go somewhere else.

Becky Beach: Yeah, definitely. You can use like chat GPT to write follow up email sequences. That’s what I do to make, I make like maybe 500 a day, you know, just from my follow up email sequences, selling my courses.

Becky Beach: Yeah, so those are really simple to do. You can just use chat GPT to make like those follow up sequences. You can just send it to the person, you know, in, in the hopes that they’ll get your, through your services again.

Bill Rice: Yep. Oh yeah, for sure. That, that follow up lead nurturing is what we call it. Mm-hmm. Um, super important.

Bill Rice: Yeah. Just staying in front of the customer. ’cause like I said with the example of the, you know, hey, I was in having a hard time and, and didn’t have a lot of clients and leads coming in, mailed those 12, well, what did I do? I. I just reminded them of what I did because, you know, we’re all, you know, for good or bad, we’re all sort of self-interested and self-focused and, you know, we forget even what our best [00:35:00] friends do for a living half the time.

Bill Rice: So, um, if I, if I asked you to, you know, list out 20 of your best friends and then next to ’em, put what they did for a living

Becky Beach: mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: You’d probably get stuck on a few of them. Right. Right. Because it’s just, just not what you think about. So those emails and just reminding people what you do, um, you know. It helps on a couple fronts.

Bill Rice: One, one, it’s usually motivating, right? ’cause they’re, they, they want to cheer you on. They’re your friends. Um, but then they, they probably give you a couple referrals too.

Becky Beach: Yeah, definitely. So let let us know more about your business, how, how people could find you to work with you.

Bill Rice: Yeah, so, um, I focus a lot, uh, these days on strategy and so bill rice strategy.com mm-hmm.

Bill Rice: Uh, is my primary focus there. Uh, on there you can get more information about playbooks and that sort of thing if you’re kind of in the, the industries that I serve. Um, and then probably the most valuable thing that I do, um, is, uh, a newsletter that’s called My Executive brief.com that you can sign up for.

Bill Rice: It’s on Substack. Um, and I, I actually kind of built that outta my own need. Um, as, as you may have heard in my voice or hopefully. [00:36:00] Uh, I’m super curious. I like to be on the front end and the edge of sort of emerging things. Yeah. And kind of know how these things are. Um, and so I started building this, um, this executive brief to be kinda like a chief of staff for me to help me sort of categorize and, and talk about the things that I’m seeing and where I think, um, things are headed.

Bill Rice: Um, and it’s just always been that curiosity. And so now you can get, um, what used to be a copy for me. Uh, you can get a copy for yourself, uh, by signing up for that newsletter, my executive brief.com.

Becky Beach: Oh, great. Yeah, we’ll have all of Bill’s links in the show notes over@beckybeatshow.com. And didn’t you say you also, you also had like a, like a freebie to give as well, or is that the newsletter?

Bill Rice: Yeah, the newsletter is probably the, the best way to do that. Every now and then, uh, I will give away playbooks or, you know, I have some mm-hmm. Um, different, uh, checklists and stuff like that, uh, on gum road. But all those links are usually in the newsletter and I’ll, I’ll push those out as I release those.

Bill Rice: But I, I do release quite a bit of free, um, I like the [00:37:00] playbook style. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that’s, you know, kind of an interesting way to break something down into really actionable next steps.

Becky Beach: Sure. Well, bill, do you have any last words for our listeners today?

Bill Rice: No, I mean, I, the most, uh, kind of important thing to me over the last, you know, 20 or 30 years of my career is just always be curious, trying things tinkering around.

Bill Rice: Mm-hmm. And I’ve always had the best success, uh, with doing that. So stay curious.

Becky Beach: Well, thanks much for being here today, bill. You can check out Bill’s links again in the show notes at BeckyBeachShow.com Well, thanks so much for being here. Have a great day. Goodbye.

Bill Rice: Thank you.