Unlocking Business Growth with Phil Risher: SEO, AI, & The Importance of Authenticity

“If you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse." ~ Phil Risher

In this episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, host David is joined by Phil Risher, an award-winning entrepreneur and digital marketing expert. Phil shares his journey from being debt-free post-college to becoming a successful business owner, emphasizing the importance of SEO, AI, and building authentic content online. He provides valuable insights for home service businesses on how to grow their business, leverage their skills, and optimize their marketing efforts for maximum ROI. David and Phil discuss practical tips on transitioning from hustling to leading, the importance of content creation in today’s digital age, and how to effectively use AI in marketing. The episode also touches on personal growth, relationships, and the impact of living a purpose-driven life. Tune in to learn how to grow your business and achieve a balance between professional success and personal fulfillment.

• 00:00 Welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast
• 00:31 Introducing Phil Risher: Ahead of the Curve
• 05:03 Phil’s Journey to Financial Freedom
• 07:34 The Power of Content Creation and SEO
• 10:56 Building a Business and Overcoming Challenges
• 14:39 Personal Growth and Relationships
• 22:10 Scaling the Business and Future Goals
• 27:37 Understanding the Needs of Home Service Businesses
• 29:06 Key Requirements for Client Partnerships
• 30:39 The Importance of a Centralized Website
• 32:41 Leveraging B2B Partnerships for Growth
• 33:55 Effective Use of Social Media and Ad Spend
• 36:03 Personal Insights and Content Creation
• 47:13 The Role of AI in Modern Marketing
• 50:38 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

SHOW NOTES & LINKS: 

• Website: https://phlashconsulting.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philrisher/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@phlashconsulting

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Transcript

Unlocking Business Growth with Phil Risher: SEO, AI, & The Importance of Authenticity

Hello, friend. Welcome to this week's episode, the Remarkable People Podcast. We are so glad you're here. I'm thankful to God that we have listeners like you in over a hundred countries around the world a week. I'm so thankful that you're sharing this with your family and friends, and I'm so thankful.

That the show's helping you and I get to be part of it. So please, if you need anything, reach out to myself or the guests of any episode, and I wanna do everything I can to help see you succeed. And I mean that. Today we have a very special guest, Phil Risher. Phil is a man who always seems to be ahead of the curve, while he recently just received the Inc magazine top award for entrepreneurship and small business.

When he was younger, he did a rap that became viral back in the early two thousands. He was living debt free without student loans, and he talks about how, he talks about how he was [00:01:00] into tiny homes before tiny homes were a thing. And today. He's a digital marketing expert and he's gonna show you how to grow your business.

You can have even a better life. He talks about things that you can do that are low hanging fruit, you can do it yourself. We also talk about things that you want to outsource. You can focus on the talents God's given you and what you can do for the most, ROI and how you might pay somebody a little bit, but you're gonna get 10 times what you'd get on your own.

So there's so much we cover about. Today's world of SEO and AI and websites and the purpose and social media marketing. And Phil's not only a great human and I consider him a friend, but he's also a subject matter expert, and he's gonna teach you. About how you hear about chat, GPT and Gemini and all this ai, how it's influencing and changing the world we live in, especially professionally, and how if you're a service-based [00:02:00] business, especially between the one in $10 million mark, he may be the perfect solution for you and your needs.

So. Take this episode and like all our episodes, apply what you hear, repeat it each day so you can have a great life in this world, and more importantly, in eternity come. So I'm gonna stop talking and let's get to our episode with Phil Risher.

Welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast: The Remarkable People Podcast, check it out,

the Remarkable People Podcast. Listen, do Repeat for Life, the Remarkable People Podcast.

David Pasqualone: Hey Phil, how are you today? Hey, good man. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk with you, [00:03:00] 

man. I'm excited to have you on the show. I told our listeners a little bit about you, but straight outta your mouth, good, bad, and ugly. We're gonna cover all life and hopefully we're gonna delve into deep things that will help our listeners have an even better life.

But if you promise our listeners one thing they're gonna learn from this episode by the time it's done that they can grow from, what is that? 

Phil Risher: They're gonna learn how to grow their business and leverage their skills to get the most out of their purpose here on this world. 

David Pasqualone: I love it. I love it. And how you said in this world, our slogan, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, is Listen.

Do. Repeat. For Life!. Listen to what Phil's about to tell you. Do it. Repeat it each day. Make it a positive habit so you can have a great life in this world, but more importantly, in eternity to come. So. Our friend Phil, is about to share these truths and so much more right after the short affiliate [00:04:00] commercial.

David Pasqualone: Hello, friend. Welcome to this segment on the MyPillow slides. These are lightweight, comfortable, fashionable, and normally they retail for almost $80, but with promo code. Remarkable. You get them now for $19 and 50 cents, and sometimes they have the white ones, which I also have had. Wear it by the pool.

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[00:05:00] 

David Pasqualone: Alright, Phil, let's talk about it. Everything that's happened to us in life, we don't want to dwell on the bad. We don't want brag about the good, but it all makes us who we are. So where did your life begin? My friend? Where are you from? What was your upbringing like?

Family, location, all the good stuff. 

Phil Risher: Yeah, I'm from Maryland, so right outside of Washington, DC My mom and dad got divorced when I was two, so raised by a single mom and when I went to college, I decided to take out student loans and. I, I had learned about Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University in high school, and I actually overdrafted my checking account in high school and I decided to take out student loans when I went to college.

And I was like, Hey, I gotta pay these student loans off when I get outta school. And when I came outta college, I had a degree in international business and I knew that I was Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University. So in the first 12 months outta school, I paid off these student [00:06:00] loans. And then for the next two years, I saved up and I bought a condo with cash when I was 25.

I was like super, like into this debt free thing. And one of my, my wife is a kindergarten teacher, one of her friends was like, Hey, how did you pay off these student loans? And people started asking me like, what was your budget template that you used? How did you do this? What'd you do? So I created a blog, and this is how I learned how to do digital marketing.

I created a WordPress website. I learned how to do SEO, get back links, do social media content, do email marketing. This was back in 2015, so 10 years ago. And I got featured in Forbes and CNBC and Yahoo Finance. Always cool things. And at the time, I didn't like the job I was working at and I ended up leaving my job.

I bought a tiny school bus. And I made a little tiny home and I traveled around the country with my dog and I made content and I would do news interviews, podcast interviews, all this cool stuff. And when I came back from that trip, one of my clients from Enterprise was a $3 million home service business.

And he needed help [00:07:00] growing his business. So he asked me to be his director of business development and I started working there. And in the first year he went from 3 million to 4 million in revenue. And then my business was created flash consulting, all from this trajectory. And at the top I said, you never know how your skillsets and what you do is gonna lead into your purpose and how you can impact the world.

And for me, it was a winding road, right? I lived in a school bus. I was hiking around. And I paid off some loans and I made this, this blog, but then it all kind of came to a head when I started working at this company and it all made sense with why I was doing what I was doing and the skills that I had.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no, a lot of people they hear to this day, they hear the term blog and SEO and they hear about you know, well, I grew this business online with digital marketing. But they really don't know what it means. It's like podcasting. Yeah. For years I heard about podcasts. I don't really know what they were, and then I just started doing it.

Right. Which is ironic how God led me. Yeah. But talk about what [00:08:00] is in today's world. 'cause you know it's changed, it's evolved. Yeah. It's changing. Talk about what is blogging today. 

Phil Risher: Okay, well, blogging today is about creating content online, and I wouldn't just stop at a blog. I would just talk about holistically creating content online.

When we think about SEO search engine optimization, it's shifting right now from search engine optimization to search everywhere optimization, specifically in the age of AI search and AI searches. When someone goes to Chachi, BT Perplexity, grok Google AI mode, and they ask it a question. You wanna be shown traditionally when you used to write blog content or SEO on your website, Google the search engine results page would then show you and hopefully you'd have good rankings and be shown, and then that would help get more traffic to your website and then grow your business now.

It's not just about writing good content, it's about being the subject matter expert that these large language models, LLMs, which AI search is built off of. You need to create content that stands out as a subject [00:09:00] matter expert so that they show you in AI results. So to answer your question about like, what does blogging have to do with today, I wouldn't stop just at blogging.

I would create content that's gonna help people, that helps you stand out as a subject matter expert, which these AI platforms are gonna recognize you and then show you in their results. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and what I want people to understand is most of our audience knows what it is and they're pretty savvy, but some people are embarrassed to say, what is that?

When you have a blog, you can write, you can make videos, you can even do all sorts of other images and media types. So it's just like Phil saying, sharing content. And you were traveling, doing it. So you started building an audience in a community. 

Phil Risher: Correct. That's right. Yeah. So when I started blogging, I had no idea what I was doing.

And one thing for listeners that I figured out was these things called backlinks, which backlinks is basically authority. And authority is very important right now because these large language models, they recognize authority and that's how they build [00:10:00] trust on these platforms. So basically what happens is.

Is when you create authoritative content and get back links from platforms, they're gonna show you more. So what I did was I had a cool story. I paid off my student loans. I bought a condo with cash. Then I went to writers. So I went to like Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNBC, and I found articles of similar stories and I tweeted at the writers of these articles and I said, Hey.

Saw your recent article about this, this, and this. I actually have a cool story. If you're ever looking for an evergreen content piece that you wanna share, here's a great story. That's how I was able to get back links and get authority into these spaces. This is very similar, David, to podcasting. Like you mentioned, a lot of times with podcasting, it's hard to get on cool shows or hard to get cool guests, and it's all about working and, and leveling up to the next level and taking what you've done and then flip it to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing.

David Pasqualone: So how do you recommend someone get started? [00:11:00] Becoming a content expert these days. 

Phil Risher: Okay, so this is great. If you have a business or if you're a person that wants to create content, the number one thing that you can do is create content based off of questions or comments that people are asking. So let's just take it if you're a business.

If you're a business, there's a really good book. It's exactly behind me called They Ask You Answer. And it's about the questions that your customers are asking. You want to answer those questions. So here's how you can do this in a streamlined fashion. 'cause this is what we do. So if you do Zoom calls, you can use a platform like Fathom or Otter and it will record your Zoom calls.

You can take the transcript from those calls. If they're prospecting calls or client calls, take the transcripts, plug them into chat, CBT, and ask it to give you 10 or 20 different hooks or content ideas based off of the actual calls that you're having. This is a really great way then to take the questions that your customers are asking and turn it into social media or con authority.

Created content options. Now, my company, we work with home service businesses like plumbing, plumbers, electricians, [00:12:00] remodeling companies. So what we do. We actually have call tracking numbers that we record their calls for. Like running ads or in general, just to track the different channels. So what we do is we take the transcripts from their calls, then we plug them in chat, bt, and we get the hooks out of it to create content.

So your question was how does someone get started? It's, take the questions that your customers are asking, or even if you're just a general person, take the comments that you see or the questions that people are asking, and create content on whatever you're passionate about or your subject matter expert in, and start doing that over and over and over again.

David Pasqualone: So somebody has a HVAC company and they're always asked the same five questions and they're just getting frustrated. They don't see the gold in that yet, right? They, you're telling them to go to Gemini Chat, GPT, whatever. What's your preference? Is there one you see 

Phil Risher: that works better? I would say just stick with at GBT, it's the easiest one for people to use.

But Gemini's fine too. 'cause it's with Google. And for like for HVAC for example, we work with a bunch of HVAC [00:13:00] contractors. What we do is we set up a content calendar. So David, you'll know like in January, people are not talking about. Ac, they're talking about heat, and then in February they're talking about something else, and then they're talking about allergies and indoor air quality.

So we set up a content calendar January, February, March, April, may, June, July. And then we have themes that we're talking about every single month that correlates with what people are gonna be actually searching for, are talking about. Then what we do is we take the hooks and we create hooks off of those themes.

So a lot of times people get scared like, well, what do I talk about? I could talk about anything. I could talk about the five questions, which is great. But when you have a theme like indoor air quality, then you can get very specific on what are the top five questions with indoor air quality. Another thing is this versus that content works very good.

So you might do Pepsi versus Coke, burger King versus McDonald's, and you share this verse, that content. It's not just the questions that people ask, but this verse that. Also pricing guides. So, hey, you're in the market for a new ductless AC system. [00:14:00] Here's what you need to know about pricing guides. And it allows you to create content based off of those things, not just getting stuck in.

Here are the three questions that you should be asking for HVAC and I'll give you one other quick tip on this. The hooks, the first five seconds, everyone is creating content. Like, here's three reasons that you should get a new HVAC system this summer. What you wanna do is say something like. Here's the number one reason in South Florida, why HVAC units go out and how you're gonna solve that for your home.

Something that pulls them in with a local geographical target that's a lot more punchier that's gonna help them stick around to watch it than just get coached on three things that maybe doesn't make sense to them. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and we kinda jumped into the business side, right? Yeah. Swoop through your life.

Alright, so let's do this. Let's kind of go back. You grow up. You're a mom's single mom. Yeah. You get into high school and then after high school, where does your life go from there? I miss it. Did you go to college or did you just start [00:15:00] working right outta the ch 

Phil Risher: Yeah, well, well, in high school I was working at Ruby Tuesdays.

I was a waiter and I went to college. I did go, I went all through. Oh, that's right. You said international business. That's right. I apologize. Yeah. International business. I, I interned at Enterprise Renta car. I interned at Merrill Lynch and then I also did like flag football coaching, so I was pretty much grinding it out in in college.

And then when I came out, my parents were divorced, as I mentioned, so my mom actually got married when I was in college and she moved away and I never lived with my dad before, but I called him and was like, Hey, I'm on a goal to pay off my student loans. In 12 months and I'm looking for a place to live.

Could I sleep on in your basement? I'll take care of your young kids and be an on-call babysitter. I'll cut the grass, I'll do the dishes. I just can't pay rent for the first year. He was like, yep, sounds good. And that was my transition out of college into paying off these student loans and getting after it.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And I want people to understand that because people are like, well, yeah, you paid off your debt 'cause you made th $3.8 million in a year. No, [00:16:00] Phil. Phil, did you make $3.8 million your first year? N 

Phil Risher: no. No, when I came out, I was working at Enterprise, so I making, I was making $48,000 a year and living, you know, off rice and beans basically.

And the thing is, like people, one, one pushback that people say is like, oh, well of course you could do that. You didn't pay any rent or you lived in your dad's basement, whatever. I don't have someone do that. Like that was one option. I could have lived on someone's couch or rented a room for $500 or something like that.

But I think the biggest thing is, this is a really good quote that I always say to myself is, if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse. And for me, it's like if I want it, I'm gonna figure it out. If not, I'm gonna find an excuse on why I can't do it. And when I find myself making excuses, I then think to myself, well, I must not want this bad enough that I keep making excuses that I don't figure it out.

And that's kind of been a theme throughout my entire life of like, I'll figure it out or it's not gonna work. 

David Pasqualone: And that's just it, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody is faced with [00:17:00] choices and sacrifice. And Phil had short-term loss for long-term gain, that financial freedom. And like you said, you could have got a room for 500 bucks a month.

Phil Risher: Yeah. 

David Pasqualone: But to you, that six grand a year was more important to pay, pay off debt than it was to be comfortable and Exactly. It was you, you didn't have a wife at that time or kids. No. So yeah, man, it's beautiful. Yeah, same thing with cars and I, I, it breaks my heart. Breaks my heart when people go out and they're child or teenager.

Buys like a $50,000 car goes in debt and the parents support it. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I'm just like, that's slavery. It's like you're literally buying a car to make a payment. Your insurance is through the roof and you're gonna be working and pulled out of church on Sunday. You're taking time away from family.

And you're gonna be working to pay for a car you probably don't need, in most cases, 

Phil Risher: you [00:18:00] know? That's right. I I, I always tell people this when they ask me about building a business or taking risks. For me personally, the number one secret weapon that I have is being debt free, and one B is having a supportive spouse that is ride or die with me.

The reason that, number one is being debt free is because. I feel like I can take as many risks as I want, but I'm not gonna lose my house or lose my family or whatever, and I can, I can live so that way I'm not taking advantage of people or doing things that's outside. I'm, I'm actively just like trying to solve people problem and help people.

If it makes sense to work together, great. If not, hopefully I just add value to their life and I come from a place of abundance for that. And for me, that's one of the biggest things. But second also is obviously when you, when you buy a school bus and make a tiny home and travel around the country. I was dating my wife at the time for a while and you know, you have to have someone who's like down for it.

And I also started my business over our honeymoon, right? So it's like I had a job honeymoon, now I'm self-employed doing my own thing. [00:19:00] So you kinda have to have those two pieces for me that's been really instrumental in helping me grow my business. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And it is, to be equally IED and move in the same direction is crucial.

And that's a biblical concept. 

Phil Risher: That's right. 

David Pasqualone: So let's do this. You're in the hustle. You're in the middle of it. And you meet a great woman who's supportive. Yeah. Well she, we met in high school actually, so Oh, okay. So she knew. Yeah, she, from the beginning almost. Yeah. 

Phil Risher: We, we dated in college all the way through.

Like, she saw me, you know, living on rice and beans, paying off my debt, you know, living in the trap house that I, that I bought, that I bought with cash and just like all the stuff, like she saw everything. So it's really cool 'cause she's seen the progression and sees me now and it's the same person, you know, it's cool.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. That is fantastic. Yeah. And when you are working through these phases of your life and having somebody by your side that's supportive, that's huge. 'cause it takes all that energy from distracted over here to just staying [00:20:00] focused on the goal. Exactly. What do you think though, most people, we have learned some things we generically God put in our code.

That doesn't mean we're bound to something, but like God, listen things in us and we have natural gifts and abilities. Some are hereditary. But most are learned whether it's through observation or through intention. So being coming from a broken home. Sometimes people struggle with relationships and knowing how to communicate.

How did that affect you going into the relationship with your wife? 

Phil Risher: Yeah, I would say it, it can affect people. I was very fortunate that my parents did a couple things right. Going into a broken home situation first, they did a great job of not painting the other person as a villain. So my dad did never spoke bad about my mom.

My mom never spoke bad about my dad for the most part. They were pretty cordial and and lifted each other up. My dad was also very involved in my life. He helped coach my baseball team. All those kinds of things. And, [00:21:00] and he was, he was involved and I gotta see him frequently and stuff. So I would say from a broken home, quote unquote perspective, that was the first thing that I still saw.

People that were adults, that treated each other with respect, that both I know, loved me. The other thing was that my dad got remarried when I was young, probably five years old, and I saw their relationship. And how they interacted, and it was very positive. They're still married to this day, and I, and I consider her, you know, almost like a second mom.

So it's like I saw a lot of good things. Another thing was being raised in the church from a standpoint of when I was 10 years old, I started going to a, a good quality church. I saw a lot of good relationships around me that helped me see, okay, this is what an actual productive relationship looks like.

Also my wife and I, we, we just like get along so great. Almost like, you know, really great friends. And then building into that, you know, even further it's just like very natural for us. We just get along. We, I mean, we've known each other now. I'm 35. We met when I was 16, so it's like we just known each other for a long time and, and we just get along.

[00:22:00] Great. 

David Pasqualone: That's fantastic. So today, where are you at today before I go into deeper, specific questions? And where are you heading next, Phil? For business or life or just in general? Life and business, where are you at? 

Phil Risher: Yeah, I would 

David Pasqualone: say, because I know last time we talked you had 

Phil Risher: some exciting 

David Pasqualone: news, right? 

Phil Risher: Yeah.

I hired a salesperson for my company. No, 

David Pasqualone: what? The awards. Oh, oh, last time we talked? Yeah. 

Phil Risher: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We we did WIN Inc. 5,000 best workplaces at the company, which is very exciting. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. They picked like 594 businesses and we were one of them. We have a team of 14 people.

I would say from a business perspective. You know, we're scaling. We, I just told you we hire a salesperson. You started this week o offline, and it's like we're scaling the business. We're growing. I'm right at the, I've been in business now six years. I'm right at the precipice of like, taking off to the next level.

Like, I can really see how this is gonna work. I've, I've effectively bought back my time, [00:23:00] got the pieces in place, and now we can kind of scale from a personal perspective. I'm, I'm kind of at this weird place where it's like, I ha I also feel this. I'm never, I'm content but not complacent. And I can kind of sometimes feel myself getting a little complacent with things.

And I came to this crossroads, this was probably three or four years ago, but it was, it was the parable of the talents, which is like, I'm 35. I, I was saying like, I could sit here, you know, and do this, and just like kind of s. Keep my talents over here under a rock or like behind this bush, kind of keep 'em going.

Or I could really like go out and really live this out of what this looks like for, from what my perspective is, which is making a big impact. And I feel like I'm called to do that and I don't wanna get stuck in this complacency phase, but it's like. In business. Every time I get to a comfort level, it's like I could sit back for a month or two, but then I'm like, okay, no, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing.

I need to get outta my comfort zone. Kind of a long way to say like, that's kind of what's going on in my life and world, I would say. 

David Pasqualone: Beautiful. Yeah, no, [00:24:00] and that is true because if someone's not familiar with the parable of the talents basically there was a ruler and he gave his employees. A talent one went out and made five.

And a talent. A talent. I hear different numbers. Yeah, but it's basically, let's say a hundred thousand dollars. So you say, go invest this. Make money. So one guy takes it, makes 500,000, the other guy takes it, makes 200,000. The third guy takes it and buries it and buries it. Yeah. Then when the ruler comes, he goes to the, the second guy.

He is like, oh, you did great. You're faithful. Good job. Good job. And then the second guy comes, he's like, wow, you did great. You were faithful. Great job. Never really mentioned the amount. Just you were faithful. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes back to the first guy and says, Hey, why didn't you do what I told you to do?

I gave you talent. Talent. [00:25:00] Why didn't you use 'em? That's right. And he's like, oh, you know, and then you can interpret this, read the Bible. Yeah. Context before and after. Yeah. 'cause my interpretation may be different, but basically he makes excuses, like Phil was talking about earlier, and he is like, well, I know they're, you're a hard man and I didn't want to disappoint you, so I figured not losing money is better than losing it.

That's right. And no, it wasn't. So the ruler punish says, you know, get outta here. You're, you're. You're, you're no good to me right now. That's right. And he takes the talent, gives us to the one who made five. Yeah. So that's what you're talking about. That's what Phil's talking about, where he's saying that God's given me talents and abilities and I want to be the servant that makes the five.

I wanna make the servant make 10 or a hundred. Right? That's right. But, but you want to be that servant who reinvests. So what did your. What was the, I mean, obviously the Holy Spirit, but what areas of your life was he pointing out to say, Phil, keep going buddy. Keep going. Yeah, for sure. Don't get still, don't get still.

Phil Risher: Yeah, for sure. Specifically when it comes to [00:26:00] like a business perspective, I had, you know, we were doing like maybe three or $400,000 and I was at the point where it's like, you know, making good money, making an impact on people's lives, but it's like. Could I do this for the next 30 years and just kind of like be here, you know, like this doesn't make sense when I have all this great stuff that we're doing.

Like I feel like I need to go out and build something that's bigger that impacts more people and not just like sit back and like, oh, this is great. So that's the first thing. Right now it's, to me, it's more about the impact that I'm making from a content perspective kind of ties all, all this back together that like if I truly believe that what I do helps people.

Like, which I truly, in my bones, I know that it helps people. 'cause we have clients that are doubling their revenue year over year, tripling their revenue, selling to private equity for millions and millions of dollars. Like I know what we do helps people. I have to have a conviction to go out and help as many people as possible through my talents that I've built, and take that and go to the next level.

And I feel like sometimes you know, might be nervous, oh, am I gonna stumble about about this? Are people gonna resonate with [00:27:00] this or that, or this? But it's not about me, right? It's about using my talents to help impact and get a greater reach. So that's something that I've really been trying to focus on.

And then the other piece of this is buying back my time so that I'm using my talents and not getting bogged down on things that are not my talents, just because it's easier to do it or less expensive to do it, but really trying to focus on what's my unique ability? What's my talents? Go out and do it.

David Pasqualone: Yes. When you're working with clients, like some people may be listening like, okay, I don't know. I want to grow my business. I want to increase my talents. But Phil, what do you do again? And, and how can it help my business grow? What, what do I have to do? So if someone is out there listening to you and they own a plumbing business and h and that company, if they own a roofing company, 'cause you said you focus on service-based industry, correct.

Phil Risher: Yep. So home service business, one to 10 million in revenue is our bread and butter. The reason is when I worked at a $3 million home service business, we took 'em to 4 [00:28:00] million in the first year. And the way we did that was I figured out a lot of problems and I solved them for this business. And the biggest problem is this home service businesses have a CRM.

That they barely use or they use, but they don't have the data out of it to actually roll into marketing. The marketing that they're doing is just cookie cutter marketing. So what happens is you have marketing that's just doing their thing out here. Then you have home service businesses that are doing their thing over here, but nothing is talking to them.

So you might be running ads on Google, but you don't know, is this actually making me money or not? What's my return on ad spend? You might be doing marketing, but you don't know if it's actually helping you increase your rankings if you're getting more leads or less leads than last year. If you're getting more estimates this year than last year.

What my company does is we tie all this together. And then we figure out what we need to fix. Is it a lead problem? Is it a sales problem? It is a retargeting email marketing, text marketing problem. Is it a lead channel problem? And we are almost like a fractional CMO for home service businesses that can't hire a full-time [00:29:00] person, that need a consultant to come into their business and build out all these systems.

David Pasqualone: Beautiful. And then when you are working with the client. Are you requiring? Okay, you gotta write me content, you gotta produce videos. What are you asking Of the clients you work with? 

Phil Risher: Yeah, that was your question and I didn't answer it, so my bad. So what do we require from these people is one partnership.

So, you know, we gotta meet on a monthly basis. We gotta review your numbers. Two, you have to have a CRM in place, jobber house call Pro ServiceTitan because the CRM is where all the numbers are gonna be that we can access and you can access, and you can all work on this to help you grow. The third one is, it's really good if you have a CSR customer service representative who's gonna answer the phones and work your leads.

Because a lot of times it's not a lead problem, it's a lead management problem, and the business owner is running around doing a million different things that if we get them more leads, it's not gonna necessarily grow their business. We had an electrician out in San Diego and he was in, he was exactly what I just explained last year.

So we got a bunch of leads for him this year, but [00:30:00] last year he did 70 estimates in one month. This. This year he did 120 estimates based off of the lead flow that we helped him increase. But he still only closed 30 of them because he doesn't have a lead problem. He has a sales problem. Yeah, he is the number one sales guy.

He is A CSR. So what do we need from them is like a commitment to actually grow, buy back your time, build out the infrastructure. 'cause you can't get the outcome if you don't have the infrastructure as far as like creating content and all that stuff. That's what our team is for. We're there to learn about your business, help you create the content.

And video. We can get on video calls and help coach you through video content, but for the most part, it's just like we need someone that's a growth-minded business owner, not just a running around technician mindset. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And how do you explain for ladies and gentlemen who are looking to grow your business.

Building a website to me, I believe is the central hub. Yeah. I I really believe the website should be the central hub. All your social media feeds to the website and then that's your sales funnel. Do you agree with that, Phil? Yeah, because if I'm wrong, tell me, I mean, what are your thoughts on that? 

Phil Risher: Yeah.

No, there's a stat on this that 87% of people do [00:31:00] their research offline. They go to Google, read reviews, they go to Yelp, they go to Facebook, they go to Instagram, they go to Better Business Bureau, whatever. They ask Facebook groups, they're doing their research offline or or off your website. Then they go to your website and they're looking for a couple things.

One, they're looking for professional logo pictures. Not stock photos. Stock photos is saving you time, but it's also costing you trust. So you need to have not stock photos on your website. Second, you need to make it easy to turn into a customer. If you can't turn into a customer in 10 seconds on your website, then it's broken.

You're gonna miss out on all your leads. And the third thing is, is on mobile in particular, you gotta have sticky headers at the top. Call now, get estimate buttons because 50% of people are using mobile, not just desktop. So. The premise is you need to set yourself up off your website so that way you show up and you look like a credible company and you have enough reviews and you have good content that people find you, but your website has to be that hub, like you're saying, hub and spoke model.

Everything drives to it, and it's like, yep, this is the company that I thought they [00:32:00] were, they're professional, and it's easy to reach out to them. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and that's, that's sometimes I don't express myself, but I, it's like the web, the world, it's like a giant net and it pulls it all in. Yeah, and then that's the whoof, the funnel, like the water slide into the pool of fun.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, so that's why I think it's so important. And another thing is people expect to just, you know, in the old days, let's say 1950s, I'm gonna start a business and I'm gonna hang my slate and I'm gonna drive business that didn't work with a physical business in our society in 2025, it's, I'm gonna launch a website.

I'm gonna be successful. It was just, yeah. What do you think about that? 

Phil Risher: Yeah, so if someone is just starting out, the number one way that you can grow your business is through B2B partnerships. And I was just out in Las Vegas on jobbers podcast, masters of Home Service, and I did an episode on this whole game plan.

But basically, if I was gonna start a business today, I would build it off of B2B partnerships. And what that looks like is you find complimentary [00:33:00] services and you have them refer you business that comes in the door. So let's say you're a roofing company. You find all the gutter cleaning companies in your town and you say, Hey, you don't do roofing, but you're on people's roofs and you're doing gutter cleanings.

If you send us a lead, we'll give you a hundred dollars. If you send us a customer, we'll give you $500 and. The whole premise is that you have now salespeople all out in the field that are selling for you, that are sending you leads. And the beauty of this is that you're not spending money on Google ads, you're only getting money.

You're only getting lead. You're only paying when you get leads or customers that come in the door. And two, they're warm leads. They're people that are referring you to come in that already know, like can trust other company and they're referring you in. It's not like a cold lead from ads. A lot of people just say, oh, slap up a website, run some ads, get some leads, come in and grow my business.

The best way to do it is to get B2B partnerships. Build out that relationship, and then you have sales funnels coming from all over the place with leads. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And then talk about also it breaks my heart to see people are pouring money into [00:34:00] Facebook ads and it just seems that there's very little return in most people's Facebook advertising and all of 'em.

I mean, you got LinkedIn and then boosting posts and Yeah. And spreading it. What are your thoughts on most social media platforms and where are you actually seeing return? 

Phil Risher: Yeah, there's two parts to this. The first thing is when you think about the buyer's journey. Where are people at in their buyer's journey when you're on these platforms?

So for example, when we think about Facebook, Facebook is very top of the funnel. They're scrolling through their Facebook, they see an ad. They say, oh, I wonder how much this costs. Let me go see what this is. Specifically when we talk about home services, it's like, oh, I should get my gutters cleaned, or I should get an HVAC tuneup.

Let me go see what the price is for this and click on this. It's very top of the funnel. It's not like the people that I told you before that are in the market that are doing the research, that are then finding the company and saying, Hey, I'm ready to roll. You're the company I wanna work with. So the reason Facebook ads don't work a lot of times specifically for service businesses or home service businesses, is that there are a lot of price shoppers and tire kickers because they're not at the need point.

They're not [00:35:00] searching for the need that they have on Google. They're just scrolling through Facebook and they see something that's pretty and shiny. So that's the first thing is thinking about. Where, what, what mindset is your avatar in when they're on that platform? So like for us, we recommend optimizing for Google first because Google is high intent searches.

People are going there looking for an HVAC contractor to Google specifically, 'cause they need an HVAC contractor. So if you're not maxed out on that platform, which is bottom of the funnel, people, high intent searches, why move up the funnel to more people that are top of the funnel that are gonna be tire kickers that you need a better sales process for when you could just work on the bottom ones.

The second piece of this is return on ad spend reporting, which most people just throw money at the Facebook Gods, at the Google gods, and pray that they get leads, and that it actually helps 'em grow, and then they have a gut feeling that it's all working. Yeah, right. You don't run your business off gut feelings.

You have to have your return on ad spend dialed in. You'd have to know, I spent $2,000, I got 10 leads and I made $20,000. That's a win every single month. Most companies don't have that. [00:36:00] 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no. Not even close. Not even close. Alright, Phil, so we started off the episode, we talked about growing your business.

I think we brought people a lot of good content in that area, and we talked about your journey and your life and kind of where you're at, but I feel like there's a whole bunch of whole, so let's just isolate first in your personal life, from your birth to today. Is there anything significant that we didn't talk about that you want to discuss that'll inspire or motivate people?

Phil Risher: I used to be a rapper, so yeah. Nice. There you go. That's a cool one. So in high school, i, I was in, I was in marching band, created con created videos and stuff and music. I learned how to use fruity loops and make beats and stuff. And then my friends, we'd rap on them. And that really kind of got me outta my shell of creating content and doing fun things.

So in high school, one of my raps went viral. And so I would say that was kind of the starting point of making fun things and doing content and creating [00:37:00] cool things. This was back in like 2008, 2007, something like that. So. I, I guess the, the, the theme around that is that like knowing who I am and being confident that like, I'm just gonna do this and if they, if people don't like me, it is what it is.

But most of the times what I found was like, by being unique or being different, it just like draw, it drew so many more people to me. And so that was a really big one for me. 'cause when people hear that, they're like, oh wow. Yeah, I was actually making real content and doing stuff. So yeah, that was something that's unique that probably people didn't know.

David Pasqualone: And that's inspiring to be who you are and don't be anybody else. Exactly. Exactly. I always used to think once I got saved when I was 15 and God changed my life, I was like. I never was big into lying 'cause I was surrounded by liars. So I hate lying. And I think that's the trait most associated with Satan.

Phil Risher: Yeah. 

David Pasqualone: But when my life changed and I really understood who God was, I was like or understood more ever as a man, be able to fully understand God. But I was like, why bother lying? Yeah. God knows the truth and he's the only opinion that [00:38:00] matters. I don't respect myself when I lie, so I might as well tell the truth and take a beating if I need to because it's better than lying.

Exactly. So it's, that's good advice. Just be yourself, be who God made you to be. Exactly. All right. What about 

Phil Risher: your, oh, go ahead. I was gonna say one other piece of that is like a lot of people, if they don't create content, they get very self-conscious about like, do I say this right? Do I, do I fumble over these words?

Do I look okay? Do I have this, do I, do I have the right light and do I have this? For me, it's like that calling about the talents, that has to be stronger for me to be able to say like, okay, I need to get out here and do this. And like, those are things that are gonna, those excuses that you mentioned about the guy that buried his talents, those are the exact excuses that people fall into.

And the creating content piece, a lot of people fall into this, that they have to have it all perfect and it's like it's, it doesn't, you have a unique story. You have a unique way of saying it. You have a unique perspective that then you can go out and share with the world and you should feel that way and you should feel confident that it's okay to to be you.[00:39:00] 

David Pasqualone: And most pieces aren't gonna go viral. And I mean, I think 90% of the pieces that do go viral, it's corrupt anyways. It's like famous people paying off other famous people and it's behind the scenes. They control the algorithm. You know, if if somebody who owns Facebook wanted to promote one of his girlfriends, boom, she's famous.

Right. 

Phil Risher: Exactly. The thing with the viral thing is, so I, I create YouTube content and I usually get about like a couple hundred views per video. That's as if every single week I went in and spoke to 300 people at a conference lecture hall for 12 to 15 to 20 minutes every single week. Like imagine the difference of thinking about it that way.

David Pasqualone: No, I agree. I heard someone say that a couple years ago about podcasting. Yeah, exactly. They were, they were like, if you have a hundred people a week listening to your podcast, why are you discouraged? Yeah. He's like, if I asked you, Hey, will you come every Monday at seven o'clock and speak to a group and there's be a hundred people there every week.

Exactly. You'd show up every week. [00:40:00] So why are you discouraged 

Phil Risher: about your podcast? Exactly. We started counting impressions or views. I don't care much about views or impressions from a lead gen perspective, but just in general, like how much impact are we making and how many views are we getting? And last month I think we got like 80 or 90,000 views across all of our platforms.

I'm like, imagine me like I'm able to, you know, 90,000 people are gonna see all the stuff that we're doing. Like obviously I wanna get more than that, but that's just like pretty amazing when you think about it, like what you're saying. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, it compounds just like interest on investing. Exactly. 

Phil Risher: Exactly. 

David Pasqualone: So, awesome, Phil.

Well, it's so professional. If you, do you have anything else you wanna talk about? Like, Dave, this is like a huge mistake I see people make and it's so easy to fix. 

Phil Risher: The biggest thing is if you're spending money on ads. Most people are running around with the gut feeling thing. You gotta have a process dialed in for your return on ad spend every single month.

Whether that's Google, Facebook, Yelp, meta, LinkedIn, [00:41:00] whatever, YouTube, if you're run, if you're spending money on ads, you have to know your return on ad spend, and you have to make sure your marketing company is going to provide that for you. Not just leads, not just conversions, but actual revenue. I spent 2000, I got 10 leads, I made 20,000.

That's the number one thing. If you fix that, it's literally just lever levers. Just like, okay, this one's working. Let's do more of this. This one's not working. Let's do more of this. Most people don't do that, and that's the problem. That's why they can't grow. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and on the reverse for the, there's marketing companies watch.

I have a marketing and sales consulting company. Yeah, but like you, you mentioned earlier you have the gentleman that you drove a ton of business to, but he can't close it or he is not closing. He can close it, but he wants to work in a sales. Exactly. Or he needs to hire someone who can sell. Exactly. For the people who are like, you know, there's a lot of business owners are great at what they do and like just do your job to their people.

Yeah. But they don't know how to teach 'em. Right? Mm-hmm. To those business owners, do [00:42:00] you help with the sales coaching or do you strictly focus on driving sales? 

Phil Risher: We do not do the sales coaching because it, as you know, it's a whole nother beast of getting in there. That's why when you were on my show, I was asking you a lot about that.

'cause that's like, so there's this book called Buyback Your Time, and by Dan Martel. He has this replacement ladder and the, the five rungs are admin, hiring, customer service representative. Second is delivery, get more technicians to do your work. Third is marketing. Hire a company like ours to do your marketing professionally or someone else.

Fourth is sales. Most people get pigeonholed in sales and the one to 3 million revenue mark, they all get stuck in the sales seat and they, the sales seat means I go out on the warm leads that I want to work, but they never work. All the other leads follow up with the estimates, any of that stuff, and it's always broken.

But no, we don't do that. But we always see that's a pain point from one to 3 million to help them go to the next level. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And then forgive me, I am not fully here in the sense of I'm a little tired. Did you say the fifth one after [00:43:00] sales? The 

Phil Risher: fifth one is management. 

David Pasqualone: Okay. I'm like, I thought, I thought you said four.

I was wrong. Yeah, I stopped 

Phil Risher: at four because usually if you get those first four seats. An admin person, delivery, marketing, and sales, you have a business, then you can manage it. And that's from the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. Great book. And I highly recommend it to anyone out there who feels like they're just spinning their tires, you gotta start buying back your time.

And a lot of times you're stuck doing $10 tasks when you should be focused on a hundred dollars tasks. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And ladies and gentlemen, a lot of us have a high moral compass, and that is good, but what's the phrase. Perfection is the enemy of progress. You're not sinning by not doing your like a hundred percent killing yourself every time.

Because if you do a hundred percent killing yourself every time you're dragging through most of the week, and with what Phil and I are talking about, you always want to do your best. You always want to give it. Your best, but it's at that [00:44:00] time, and you don't want to feel that psychological guilt or shame or be dragging and emotionally down because everything does tie together.

So if your sales is dragging you down, then your production or your management, everything's gonna work together. It's like your body. If your body's super healthy, but you get a problem with your kidney, everything goes down. Right. That's right. But man, I had a point to make about this. That I see all the time in businesses, and I lost it, and I apologize to you as my audience and Phil, but keep, oh, damnit, what were you saying?

There was something that I see all the time in people. 

Phil Risher: I guess they're the number one sales person in the business. They're the hustler. The hustler has to die. The leader has to be born. All those things, to me is what I see a lot of. They're hustling, running around, burning themselves out. That gets you to a million to go from one to 10 million.

You gotta be a leader, the hustler has to die. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no, all that's true. I just, there's something I was [00:45:00] gonna say that's like, it's so obvious, but nobody sees it or very few people see it. And I, 

Phil Risher: there's a, there's a balance between things. It's all good. 

David Pasqualone: No, you're hitting it. I'm just, it's like I'll go back and watch it and be like, dang it.

That's what I should have said. Yeah. All right, man. Well, it's been great talking to you again all the time. Have fun. Enjoy the conversation and learn and grow. But yeah, sales coaching. You need someone, ladies and gentlemen, to not just train your people, but you need accountability. You need to reinforce it.

You need to stay on top of it. You need to make it fun. And if somebody doesn't have that personality, that doesn't mean they're a bad person. It just means they're not the right sales person. That's right. So you need to find that person for it. So let phil drive you the leads, get a company that does great sales coach and shows results to show you how to harness him and then make sure your manager's good on embezzling money.

Yeah. So that sounds like a great business to me. Yeah. Right. So anything else, any final thoughts, Phil, 

Phil Risher: before we wrap this [00:46:00] episode of the podcast up? I would say if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse if you know Google ads are not working for you. 'cause they don't work for you, they work, you just don't know how to do them.

If SEO doesn't work for you, it works. You just dunno how to do it. If EMA market doesn't work for you, it works. You just dunno how to do it. So instead of just making excuses, it doesn't work for us. Try to find a company that can help you do these things and find a solution. Don't just write it off. And this is woe is me kind of thing.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to reach you? 

Phil Risher: Flash consulting.com. P-H-L-A-S-H consulting.com. We do these free marketing audits. If you're one to 10 million home service business, we can hop on a call, walk you through exact roadmap to help you grow your business.

We give it to you. We, we give the recipe, sell the cooking. So we're open book that's the best way. If you just, Hey, Phil, you send like a cool dude. I usually hang out on LinkedIn or Instagram. It's just my name, Phil Risher. All right. And I wanna talk about one more thing. 

David Pasqualone: People who are saying, you know, email marketing doesn't work well.

It's like anything else. There's [00:47:00] so many pieces of it and it does work. And you know what else works? Direct mail works. Yeah. You know, I know that because Google sends direct mail to my door. Yeah. And Google's the one that is saying, I know to only go digital. Right. So everything works in the right context.

Right. That's right. But I do wanna talk about ai. I mean, it's. The elephant in the room. Yeah. 'cause people are becoming lazy. They're not thinking. I feel like you ever see the movie Wally? Everybody's sitting there slurping on their shakes, getting fat, just watching tv. Yeah. And AI do all their work, right?

Yes. There is a better way. And obviously you and I know that and that's how we make our livelihood. But when it comes to people listening to this show. Some of what we marketing agencies do for a living is being phased out, but the SEO is still crucial. So where do you think the balance is right now between AI and SEO?

Phil Risher: Well, I, there's [00:48:00] kind of two parts to it. The first one is AI search. Which is people not going to Google, going to chat j BT or Perplexity or these other platforms and doing search on there. So how do you show up in those platforms? Here's a very simple way to find that out for your business. Go to chat j bt or whatever platform that you like, search for HVAC service in whatever your city is.

See what it gives you the results as. Then ask it. How did you come up with these results? It's gonna give you the guidelines that it came up with. Then if you're not there, say, what do I need to do to position this company to be there? It's gonna tell you what to do. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I had Neil Patel, who's like the SEO OG on my podcast and Marcus Sheridan who wrote, they asked you Answer.

And I asked him a lot of these same questions. And what they said was, the traditional SEO stuff is still very important. 'cause a lot of these platforms, when you ask them, how did you come up with these results? They're gonna say, I went to Google and did a search, and this is some of the results that I got.

So they're still using the typical SEO strategies. And it's still relevant to AI search, but the one big caveat to [00:49:00] this is content creation. Before companies would look at creating content for social media as just like another thing that they had to do for branding that wasn't necessarily lead gen that was gonna lead to leads.

Now it's not because those content pieces are getting transcribed and put into these large language models and they're coaching the AI platforms on your business. That's the only way that they learn is based off content that's produced. So if you create content that's educating people that's unique, that helps you stand out as a subject matter expert, it's going to help you in AI search in the long run, define and be shown exactly what you do.

So that's the first part of it is AI search. The second part to it is like AI and automation from a marketing perspective, and there's a million ways that you could do this with these AI agents. Streamlining your processes over here, transcribing stuff. And this, this in particular is moving so fast that it's like what you do this month is gonna be outdated by next month.

Some of the things that we're doing, we have, [00:50:00] like my GPTs, where our clients, we train these GPTs on our clients, so that way we can ask it questions or use it to create content based off of the things that we know about this company. We use those content calendars that I mentioned before, that we can go in and through AI and then educate ourselves on the top producing content pieces from these content calendars.

So then we have an idea. There's a million ways, but those are the two different sides of it. AI search and AI automation. 

David Pasqualone: Beautiful, beautiful. And ladies and gentlemen, you want to do what God's called you to do. You want to do what you're the expert at and what you're gifted at. But if you need help with the marketing.

Give Phil a call. He said, like a one to $10 million services based business. He'll give you a free quote and he will let you know this is what you need to do. It's an evaluation of your site and your marketing and what you're doing, and you're gonna win just from that free consult. Right, Phil? 

Phil Risher: Yeah. Oh yeah.

I mean, we have like probably 65 star Google reviews just from that, just from those those audits. So it's like, [00:51:00] it's like so much value. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. Yeah, act. Absolutely. So Phil, it's been a true honor to have you on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, like Phil started off, like our slogan says, don't just listen to this great content, but do the good.

You need to repeat it each day. So you have a great life in this world, but most importantly, in eternity to come. So Phil, thank you again for being here, brother.

Phil Risher: Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate the conversation.

David Pasqualone: Oh, always. And ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you in the next episode. Ciao.

Thanks for Watching the Remarkable People Podcast!: The Remarkable People Podcast, check it out,

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