Alright, DE fam. Grab your coffee. This one's long because I want you to run it today on a real business, not nod along and forget it by Wednesday. There's a one-page template at the end. Steal it. Today's tactic: a 25-minute audit of any local business's Google Business Profile using nothing but public data, that ends in a one-page gap list you can send cold. Most of you are still opening conversations with "I'd love to chat about your marketing sometime." That's not an offer. That's a request for a favor from a stranger. Let's fix that. 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁, 𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗮 𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 The assumption is that you need access before you can say anything useful. You don't. Here's the thing. Every single input that decides whether a plumber shows up in the map pack is public. The business name. The primary category. The hours. The photos. The review count, the review dates, the responses. The posts. The Q&A. The website it points to. All of it is sitting there right now, visible from your kitchen table, because it's visible to his customers. That is the entire purpose of the profile. You're not hacking anything. You're standing on the sidewalk looking at the storefront. Now the other bad version of this, and this one's more common in our world. Most "free audits" are an automated PDF with a score out of 100 and a red bar chart. Subject line: "Your business is invisible online!" The owner opens it, sees a 43, and feels insulted by a robot he's never met. That's not an audit. It's a form letter with his name merged into it, and he can smell it in four seconds. A gap list is a different animal. Five things, in his language, with what each one is costing him. One page. No score. No logo on every corner. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 Run your own numbers on this one. Say it takes you 25 minutes per business once you've got the rhythm. Twelve gap lists is five hours of your week. If three of those twelve take the call, and one of the three buys a $500 profile optimization, that five hours paid you about $100 an hour.

Every week somebody posts a version of this in an agency group: "My niche is too saturated. There are already 30 agencies doing this in my city." It's not. Or at least, that's not why you're losing. When agency owners hit this wall, they do one of three things. They switch niches. They drop their price. Or they pile more services onto the menu so they look bigger. All three solve the wrong problem, because all three carry the same vague offer somewhere new. New niche, same sentence. Lower price, same sentence. Bigger menu, same sentence. The competition isn't what needs to change. The sentence is. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 "𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗺𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻" 𝘂𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 Go look at your homepage. If any of these are on it, you found the problem. "𝗪𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲." Every agency in your city could put that on their site tomorrow. Some already have. When a prospect can't tell five agencies apart, they pick the cheapest one. Can you blame them? "𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹-𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴." That's a menu, not an offer. You just handed a business owner a list and asked him to diagnose himself. He didn't call you so he could do your job. "𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻." Which results? By when? Measured how? A word every agency uses tells the buyer nothing. "𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲." When nothing else about you is different, cheap is the only difference left. And somebody is always willing to be cheaper than you. "𝗪𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀." A roofer doesn't want the agency that works with everybody. He wants the one that already knows why his phone goes quiet in January. Here's the thing: You're not competing with 30 agencies. You're competing with the fact that you sound exactly like all 30 of them. Your market isn't crowded. Your message is. 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝘂𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 It shows up in one question: "So what makes you different?" If your answer is "we really care about our clients" or "we're great at communication," the call is over. You just don't know it yet. Every agency they talked to this month said the same thing.

I'm not sure how long ago it was but one of the 8 tips in a post of @Dorn Just Dorn was to turn off open email tracking on cold emails to reach more people. I did it recently. As I'm looking at an email workflow now I see the wait step, with email opening being the trigger to to continue the campaign or if they don't open after 2 days resend with a different subject line. With opened tracking turned off, won't this nulify the strategy? Chatgpt says it will but thought I'd ask here to. So...

Monday. Let's go. You know the post. A calendar color-coded like stained glass. Every hour blocked. Deep work, batch admin, content sprint, inbox zero by 4:30. Caption about protecting your energy. Count the blocks. Now count the ones where he talks to somebody who could pay him. 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐏𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫. You can run a full calendar and an empty business. Most weeks that's exactly what happens. You rebuilt the onboarding doc. You redid the service page. You spent two hours testing a new AI tool. Friday came, you were wiped out, and you couldn't name one person who moved closer to signing. That's motion. Motion feels like progress because it costs the same energy. And some of it is real work. Somebody has to build the systems, and if you're four months in doing all of it yourself at night after the day job, the admin isn't optional. That's the price of the build. But here's the part that's going to sting. Motion is the most comfortable hiding place in this business, because it's the only kind that comes with a to-do list. Nobody feels guilty rebuilding a proposal template. It's work. It's just not the work that pays. Price it out. Last week, hours on things a client could see and pay for, against hours on things only you will ever look at. Put your target hourly next to the second number. That's the invoice your calendar sent you. 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤. 𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫. Conversations started. Not tasks closed, not hours logged. One input you control, counted daily, written where you have to see it. 𝐏𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫. Outreach or follow-up before email, before the dashboard, before the tool. The work only you see gets the leftovers. 𝐏𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭. Next to every task today, write who pays for it and when. No answer, it moves to Friday or it dies. 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐩 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐨𝐧. The proposal sitting at 90%. The follow-up from three weeks ago. Send it. A busy week and a profitable week look identical from the inside. Only one of them shows up in the bank.

Post your 3 weekly goals in the smart format… These should your 3 high priority tasks... Don’t forget to report on last week's goal results… If you didn’t meet your goals, reflect a bit about why you missed the mark. Share your reflection if you’d like to do so. People who post to this weekly pinned thread 3 times get access to the accountability bonusesSeptember 14th Accountability Check In