Robo calls. Always an interruption when you’re in the middle of a dent repair. Every call starts with a lie, too.
“You’re listing is not correct…” or some such nonsense.
But there really is a way for a well meaning person, or worse an evil competitor to alter your listing. If you’re not careful, you may not even know about it for a time.
Also, this year’s at an end so we talk tax planning again.
- If you travel to fix hail, can you make money on lodging?
- How to write off a vehicle all in one year
Finally, the best way to negotiate with an insurance adjuster, and exactly when and where you will need it.
Also see: You as the Expert Insurance Negotiator
Transcript:
Derek: 00:00 On your Google my business, that’s a very important listing and it’s actually in danger.
Derek: 00:12 Hello and welcome to the painless mentor podcast. I’m Derek Olson. We’re going to be talking today about a google my business and some Robo call situations that I’m sure that you are facing to. We face them every day. And so we have some thoughts on that that um, and we’d like to hear your comments about it too because it’s getting out of control. It seems like we have some miscellaneous ramblings on some other stuff too that we’ve been thinking about all week that will be useful for you too.
Tim: 00:43 By way of a teaser on that on your google my business. That’s very important listing and it’s actually in danger. So we’ll talk about that at the end of this podcast.
Derek: 00:53 Yeah. And so now we kind of sound like a robocall, but there is that, there is a legitimate dangerous
Tim: 01:03 I like how they do with accent, right? So they get some voiceover person. Your whole business is in danger, but it really is. It can be. And we’re going to tell you how to watch out for it. But first it’s almost the end of the year is the first of December is indeed indeed. And when that time comes up you started thinking about taxes, you gotta pay to them and hopefully made a lot of money this year and you owe a lot of money in taxes. Everybody hates him. But this is a great indicator of how much you may know
Derek: 01:37 it is a gauge for that. Yeah, absolutely it is.
Tim: 01:40 And even in a bad year you’re like, Hey, I’m probably paying enough. I’m not going to get penalized. So there’s always the penalty or lack of penalty party that you can have such a is the life of a fluctuating business. One of the things that we talked about last year in episode forty eight, which reference that, it’s actually talks quite a bit about taxes and we see the maybe, there’s a change on this and that is the per diem.
Tim: 02:07 So if you travel in fix hail and you go to the city where there’s a little bit of a loophole that we were using, right? What was it? What was it?
Derek: 02:16 The government publishes per diem rates and there are even by locality, there’s a certain amount that you would pay anywhere in the US or be allowed to spend per day for meals and incidental expenses which include tips and all those kinds of things and then in certain areas it would cost more to be there and so they have a higher rate for some of those places and so they, they posted that you can, you can use their website to see that
Tim: 02:47 and so if you’re going to go chase hail in Gotebo, Oklahoma,
Derek: 02:52 it’s going to be the standard (per diem).
Tim: 02:54 Yeah. Which was 93, ninety three bucks or hotel and, and foodstuffs. However, the what’s so last year we were saying we may still be right.
Tim: 03:06 I don’t know, talk to your CPA, but last year we felt like we were OK.
Derek: 03:12 Use those rates even if you didn’t spend that uses the higher because that’s, you know, the government said that’s the right. Seemed to make sense.
Tim: 03:21 If you hang up a hammock between two close together trees, sleep outside and eat McDonald’s every day and spend 12 bucks, you can still get write off the ninety three. So it looked like you were, but it says it’s actually, it’s not actually for self employed persons. So like I say, your mileage may vary, but uh, I’m not sure. I think that’s pretty cool. And because the thing that really stinks what stinks about meal deductions anyways, the IRS
Derek: 03:21 that they’re only half deductible.
Tim: 03:52 Yeah. And I mean if you’re, if you’re eating meals on the road, you are, you know, it’s, it’s should be all deductible anyway, I think, but
Derek: 04:01 Should be, I consider that a business expense because you’re away from home expense that you mean you gotta have it.
Tim: 04:06 But if you put it in the meals category on your tax form, get half of it gets sucked out and you know, that’s on the other hand, like I said, we do some training for a company that some of the auto plants and they, they, they just pay for everything. And since they pay for everything, I kind of highly, highly doubt that this stuff subject to the 50 percent. But, so that’s, that kind of opens up a loophole for you. If I’m not, I’m not sure what the LLC thing, if that would actually apply, you might check on it because if the government views you as an independent, sorry, as a self employed entity that’s different. But for myself, schedule C is what they call a pass-through business. But technically if you weren’t, if you have a corporation you could actually, you could say, well not self employed and working for this corporation.
Tim: 04:58 And so as long as I’m here, I paid for my meals. It’s like say your mileage may vary and we’re going to book it up, put some links to some articles about that. But uh, I think a lot of guys probably do this. They take the, you know, because some cities are real high, you know, like, I don’t know if Denver is on there, is on that list. OK. Albuquerque, no. El Paso. Now those are on the very bottom, right? But
Derek: 04:58 Boston
Tim: 05:25 Boston you stay in the harbor fixing Hail. You get to. Well, of course you get to pay more to write because
Derek: 05:31 if you pay it, you want to be able to deduct it for sure. Yeah, it’d be nice to be able to inject more if you couldn’t do.
Tim: 05:39 Yeah. And so I don’t know. I guess if cause like what you were trying to do, you were, you were kind of doing that, right? You stay at a lower cost place and try to make a little bit of money on the deduction because it really is making money. If you can write off if you spend seventy and write off ninety, that’s $20 extra day, but if it doesn’t work out for you, I mean, you know that that also might affect your decision of well do I want to stay at this place would I want to stay a little nicer place, you know, could.
Derek: 06:08 Yeah. And still be able to ride off even though it’s higher than the rate. I mean, I don’t see why not.
Tim: 06:13 Yeah. This is the first. Actually I’ve ever noticed that that’s a thing. I don’t know if they changed the law. I’m not sure.
Derek: 06:19 Yeah, I know. I can remember being in upstate New York working and, and you really couldn’t get a place for under a hundred and twenty, which that seems really strange. See being as it wasn’t, there were hotels. It wasn’t like a populated big city, so there wasn’t a lot of demand, but that’s just how it was, you know,
Tim: 06:39 that’s what you paid $120.
Derek: 06:39 Yeah.
Tim: 06:39 Yeah, that’s a lot.
Derek: 06:42 You know, generally it’s more in the, you know, I would say seventy to ninety it’d be a little more common and then sometimes you get a really good weekly, weekly rate, there’ll be 50 bucks or even less a night. That can work out really well. The longer you stay.
Tim: 07:00 So you traveled about twenty hours and then he had to pay $125 a night. So you better make at least a buck 50 that day.
Derek: 07:05 Yeah, that’s right
Tim: 07:06 Or you’re going into the hole.
Derek: 07:08 Yeah, true. That.
Tim: 07:11 So coming in. You know why we bring that up guys? It’s like it’s really stinks to get audited for something stupid. And I’ll give you an example. So I’m actually, Derek and I were talking about this today because we like turbo tax and oddly you’d think turbo tax is not as good as a CPA. I think. I still think if you’re going to get audited you need to hire a CPA, don’t go yourself. That’s the main reason to have a CPA. However, I was spending about 1500 a year to get my taxes done because I have a corporation and you could say, well that’s worth it. But I got audited and I got audited on something that my cpa “ist” should have caught, and actually turbo tax would have caught. And that’s weird to say. But. So it was, it was something as inane as Derek has started working for me.
Tim: 08:01 And so, but he’s also living with me and so he made a metric ton of money that you’re not really. I mean he makes it more now, but he made a good, you know, just get a little check. And so. But I, I claimed him as an independent. Well, it turns out the IRS frowns on that or at least it’s such a red flag that they audited this.
Derek: 08:21 Yeah. To see what else there was.
Tim: 08:26 And so I don’t know. I think we got audited in it. I had to pay again to get represented and then it was uh, you know, in my mind that’s actually the CPA’s fault just because they missed it. They should’ve. It’s like, well, you know, you asked me to do it. Well you are my CPA. I’m asking you to not let me do things. That’s kind of what you think. And maybe that’s an illusion. So if there are any former CPA’s who are now didn’t push pushes please off on this issue or if you’re married to one.
Tim: 09:00 Nope, don’t please don’t cause any marital discord but we wants to know. But yeah, so I mean that’s just an example of why we love, we love quickbooks or not quickbooks, but a turbo tax, which is also an intuit product and that’s Kinda what, you know, the last few years I’ve used it. And so now I guess I’m paying even with corporate, I’m paying like 300 a year buying software. So as far as you know, it asks, it asks a lot of questions about the meals and stuff like that. Usually, I mean it just pretty much take for granted that you’re just going to fifty percent deduction on meals.
Derek: 09:39 It does do that in the software.
Tim: 09:42 If you put it in that bucket or as they say in the UK, the Bukit he put in that bucket, it’s going to cost you or you’re only going to get right off portion of it. I guess. Same thing with travel 50 subject to fifty percent or is it just the meals? I can’t remember.
Derek: 09:42 Just meals.
Tim: 09:59 OK, that’s good.
Derek: 10:00 Hotel is written off completely and that’s nice. Yeah.
Tim: 10:03 So another good reason. I mean if it’s going to be why stay in a rat hole, if you’re not in to profit from it, you get little tiny towels from motel six, right? So they give you a hand towel and they’re like this, your bath towel. And then they got that sandpaper John Wayne Toilet paper. But anyway, so, so that’s travel and I mean that’s one of the things we talked about with, with tax play with. Yeah, go up, go back and listen to episode forty eight because it has some good information and then when you listen to that kind of disregard or at least check into what we said about this per deum thing because we’re just not sure.
Derek: 10:38 Look into it and it and let us know what you’re doing. Um, I’m really curious about this and I’m not trying to, not trying to go against the law. I’ll pay whatever I’m required to pay, but you know, if there’s something else I can do.
Tim: 10:51 Do you want to go on record right now, Derek, and say that you are going to steal from the government
Derek: 10:58 if there’s a legal loophole. Yeah. Why wouldn’t you use it? I was going to bring up the auto expenses too. There’s a number of ways you can do it, but that’s why you can just do the standard mileage rate and that’s what I do because it’s easy and you could get into doing a leased vehicle or writing off payments, stuff like that. But that’s gonna that’s not something I know about, but you can’t do stuff like that, but that’s why I, I kinda wanted the, the lodging and the meals to be something easy like that because the mileage is easy. I just track it in my phone. Um, you know, my start mileage end mileage, so I, so I do have a record of that in case they ever asked. Um, but then you just multiply it times. It’s 53 and a half cents per mile this year actually went down.
Tim: 10:58 That’s weird.
Derek: 11:48 Yeah, it was like 50 six or fifty five and a half before that. Most people watching the price of. Yeah.
Tim: 11:55 That is good. Yeah. Because I doubt in fact I almost know you’re not going to be able to beat that.
Derek: 12:02 No.I have run the math and I never can. I mean even if you, if you account for wear and tear on the vehicle and service maintenance and gas, it’s still is way more than I would actually spend.
Tim: 12:14 And the Nice thing too, you can also sort of double dip. I guess you can write that car off as a depreciation. So it’s like, that’s either either consult your tax advisor or turbotax. A interesting thing. Last year we were thinking about getting a car and it’s like, what about leasing, you know, so, uh, can, can a corporation lease a car and then give it to the employee. And so like I, the corporation pays for it and so it’s a hundred percent deductible and then I also get to do something with it.
Tim: 12:51 It doesn’t actually work that way. So there’s, I thought that that would be the case, but it’s not. They’ve got that kind of worked out where they see people doing that and uh, it’s based on, cause it is, it’s based on how much of his personal use and all that. So, and when you get into leasing a car and writing it off, it’s real critical of how much you actually, even if you have an employee, how much you let them drive it, how much they’re allowed to drive. What’s in the uh, so that’s a sticky issue to um, I guess the section 179 thing though is pretty cool. Somebody was talking about that the other day,
Derek: 13:25 Yeah, and I don’t remember if we mentioned that in episode forty eight, but we’ll mention it here again, if either way, that’s where you can write all, write it all off in one year, which is really cool.
Derek: 13:34 If you have a great year and you’re going to buy a vehicle anyways, that’s perfect time. That would really take off from your tax bill. Um, they did change it because they call it a Humvee, um, loophole people were buying Hummer’s at the time and just writing them off. And then clearly it was really more of a personal expense. I mean, it’s, it’s hard to say that a hummer is a business expense. I mean, you can, I do know guys that had hummers back then and they were actually using it for business, but um, for SUVs, you can still get to Tahoe and write it off, but only up to twenty five thousand of it is able to be section one seventy nine,
Tim: 14:15 but all in one year, that’s pretty nice
Derek: 14:17 But all in one year. So that’s still that could still be really beneficial for you if that’s what you wanted to get, but you can get, um, I think it has to have a six thousand and six thousand pound gross vehicle weight rating.
Derek: 14:30 So that’s going to put you into a three quarter ton truck and above. Um,
Tim: 14:34 that guy mentioned a certain length of bed
Derek: 14:36 and a certain length of bed. It’s gotta be over six foot, um, which some of your half tons are actually under that
Tim: 14:42 five and a half, but the extended cab. So yeah, you get to watch that too. Um,
Derek: 14:49 but I mean that might mean you’re getting a big truck so
Tim: 14:54 you’re not just compensating. So those are some things that we know and we don’t know a lot about it, but I mean there’s some things that we’ve been told and is on the Internet so it must be reliable about taxes. So. So that’s Kinda fun. Um, so I think we pretty well talked to. We’ll put some links in the show notes as always for some articles that we found. And again, you know, we are not tax consultants that we play one on this podcast.
Derek: 14:54 That’s right.
Derek: 15:22 Now here’s a weird one, Derek. So there’s an awesome article which we will post again, it’s a talking about saying no to low paint and material profits and this the shop in Florida, it’s a five hundred. Well if there’s two shops really, so 500 cars a month and they were just taking it on the Chin on paint and they knew they were because now there’s tracking systems, right? So if you as a painter go over to the mixing machine and you’re going to mix some paint. You need to have an ro and an employee number and so they can tell who mixed that paint and who, what car it went to and so they can track these expenses. So this shops that looked at it and said, you know what we’ll no longer accept paint caps. So pink caps were like, I don’t know, I’m just gonna.
Derek: 16:09 Throw a number out there. It’s so let’s just say it’s 50 bucks an hour flat rate and then you’ve got a paint labor hour which the book figures out the manufacturer says what’s two point 5 hours to paint this fender well? So it’s $50 an hour plus materials, so materials is based on an hourly rate to usually, so it’s two point five times, let’s say 26 or 30 dollars an hour. So, so anything that you paint is actually roughly 80 bucks an hour. Fifty is labor thirty is materials, but then the insurance companies are like, no, let’s just cap every job because you guys, you know, some of these jobs have a lot of hours on them. So $350 is the maximum amount of. And so if you’re a DRP, that’s kind of one of the pills you’ve got to swallow with the shops said no no more. And so they just started charging and they lost some DRP’s (direct repair provider’s) because of it.
Tim: 17:02 But they stopped losing money on cars. But where he gets interesting in his comments is he mentioned that there’s been some actual labor hour drops on paint times and like, so like the insurance companies are just kind of doing shady stuff with. I don’t know. And I’m going to give you example of how it’s happening at PDR. Just a second. So hang on, but. So here’s, here’s what his answer was to them, when they would throw a figure out like that, he would say, show me how you came up with that number. So Dent Devils, I can’t remember his name. He posted a really good video that other day of a kind of a discussion that was having with an adjuster and it wasn’t really going well. I’m sure that he would say the same thing, that I think that that’s a, this is a better way to negotiate. And so here’s where it comes up with PDR guys. So, so you guys did, what was that?
Tim: 17:59 Nissan Murano. Nissan Murano. And you drop the headliner
Derek: 18:02 Yeah a late model Murano, had to drop the headline or just to get to some dents at the very front in front of a double sunroof. And uh, we did go ahead and drop it all the way because with a double sunroof there’s not much material for the headliner. And you know, sometimes you can do a partial drop. I’m sure we’ve all done that just to taking a visor down and, you know, pushed a little dent out at the front or at the back. Um, but we did go ahead and take it out because we knew if we just did the visors and stuff, we’d bend that headliner because it doesn’t, you know, there’s not much, not much material that
Tim: 18:35 you’d put the kinks in it right there at the,
Derek: 18:37 Yeah you really would, it’d be bad. And uh, you know, it’s not that much effort to just go ahead and just do it all. And uh, the interesting part about this is that, um, so we got paid for it. We got paid for the dent removal and the full cost of R & I the headliner just like you’d expect, but then on the insurance, what the original had a was only one and a half hours to do, I don’t know if it’s a partial drop or what it said on the estimate and I wonder, um, so the body shop owner is going to go back and get that full amount.
Tim: 19:10 Yeah but he wanted to ask. So that’s what’s interesting about it. And so like he wanted to ask, did you guys actually drop the headliner because he’s one of those guys that doesn’t want to, he just wants to only charge for what he actually does. Hats off to him for that. That’s good. However, he also has, because we’ve had this discussion, he’s looked at cars where they did that where they, they, they, they low houred us on the headliner and he’s gone back and looked at the procedure pages for it and it actually says that an included operations to drop the glass and actually take the headliner out of the car and that’s where this is going to become an issue I think possibly. So when you asked that question to the insurance adjuster, which is by the way a power question, “show me how you came up with that figure”, or “show me how you came up with that amount or show me how you came up with those hours.” So remember that phrase because it’s very powerful, but it could well be that, you know, they, they whip out the procedure pages on that deal and they said, look, this is for, you know, four point five on this luxury headliner is to actually take it out of the car. Did you take it out of the car and maybe we might have to start doing that. I don’t know, but it really seems to me to be a technicality.
Derek: 20:23 Yeah, it is technicality. It’s uh, that’s what’s frustrating is like why are we fighting over small things over here?
Tim: 20:23 Yeah.
Derek: 20:31 It shouldn’t be an argument.
Tim: 20:32 It’s such a tiny percentage of the whole job.
Derek: 20:35 But then, if they’re calling it an hour and a half, you, I mean, you’re losing th’sat significant. I mean you’re talking about a three hour difference maybe or more if you start talking about including the sunroof. So there’s 150 or more.
Tim: 20:48 Yeah. So, so it is something that comes up, but I think if you guys, it’s worth reading this article. I think because of the way the, just the, the position the guy takes is quite interesting.
Derek: 21:01 It sounds like he had a little bit of a shift. Like he was engaging in arguing, trying to lay his thinking out in a logical way, but that wasn’t working
Tim: 21:12 and it’s like so many things, you know, it comes down to one decision, “I’m just not going to do it”.
Derek: 21:22 Yeah, and then suddenly , all the is in his hands really because it’s, there’s nothing else after that.
Tim: 21:30 This is maybe kind of his philosophical question, but so here he is. He actually works for a company he’s not the owner of the company he’s a manager of those two body shops. You think it’s easier for him? It’s harder for him to, to actually make that decision to say let’s draw the line in the sand and
Derek: 21:46 I mean if they make a company policy, if it, if it’s isn’t at the top level than I guess it would be for him. He doesn’t even have to think about it. It can just be company policy.
Tim: 21:55 I guess. Arguably you could say it’s just as risky for him, you know, because it is. You are going to lose DRP’s, you’re probably going to lose, you know, that level of referral. Yeah. And you’ll have to answer to somebody for.
Derek: 22:07 Yeah, and I mean if, well, in the DRP situation you may just have to continue to play the game and make it up somewhere else, which we know they do that.
Tim: 22:15 And then really, I mean, who can argue with it because he keeps track of everything. It’s just like, you know, here’s what we were making on cars before, here’s what we’re making on them now. Which would you rather do you know, we’re going to make it up in volume. No.
Derek: 22:33 Can test that theory out real quick.
Tim: 22:37 Right? Yep. That’s a lie. Good. So, um, that’s interesting to me. Um, so this last week we promised you. And guys, thank you for waiting for that little teaser. So here’s something weird.
Tim: 22:50 Google my business is what it’s called today. It used to be called, man it’s been a lot. Can you remember some of the names, Google places, whatever. That’s yesterday. They get to change it however they want to because they are Alphabet. Um, but anyway, so google my business, very important lead source for everybody. And it’s something you should pay close, close attention to, even closer to now today, because as it turns out, Derek, it is much like wikipedia
Derek: 22:50 in what way?
Tim: 23:19 Well, so wikipedia is a super reliable source of information, isn’t it? I mean you can trust it with your life.
Derek: 23:26 Maybe not that far.
Tim: 23:28 Maybe get some good tattoo recipes off there. I don’t know. Well you can’t because as you guys all know, wikipedia is editable and it’s, it’s pretty well closely watched by volunteers, but it’s also editable. And so anything that can be edited is can be subject to falsifications
Derek: 23:54 That’s right and it might only be for a little bit a day or, or less. That might be the day that you’re looking at it.
Tim: 24:01 Yeah. Which is sad for you because you got a lead based Tattoo. You’re not so bright anymore, but. No. So here’s what’s, here’s what’s happening. We’ll post a link to an article about this. This was shocking to me. Your Google. My business listing is like wikipedia now because someone can suggest an edit including a competitor and the egregious thing about it, and hopefully they’ll change this soon. But there doesn’t seem to be, there’s two things about it, at one you might not get notified that there’s been a change to your business listing and two it, some of the edits actually happen on the fly, so it’s like they happen and then they check up on it and the way they check up on it is even if you don’t know, you’ll, maybe you’ll go to the listing or…
Derek: 24:56 So actually I think you really the best way, so we’re going to give you a solution right now is actually check the listing on your phone often why on the phone?
Derek: 25:07 Sometimes it’s different on there because it knows the location that it’s taking that into account to you.
Tim: 25:11 Yeah. And the phone is, I mean it’s going to be the million dollar deal, right? So yeah, the phone is real important. But also on the phone, if somebody has edited a part of it, it will show a different color. It’ll actually show. You can see Kinda. Yeah. So maybe that’s the best way. But here’s, here’s what’s bad about it is that you might not know how to change it. So when you log into your google my business listing, it says this listing, this section has been edited to prove there is no disapprove. No, there was no like or unlike button.
Derek: 25:45 It’s really weird. I logged in and saw that and I was like, this is really annoying. It doesn’t make sense
Tim: 25:52 because maybe, I don’t know. You thought that there might be an edit on ours,
Derek: 25:58 which was because of the geographical location that it was showing
Tim: 26:04 and maybe I mean I just can’t find now. So we used to actually enter in the cities that we, that we worked on when it was google places, but now I think they just go off geographical area. So I don’t know if that’s editable or not. It doesn’t look like it is you guys correct me. But the way that you actually have to correct it is you actually have to go back in and edit your business. So yeah, you definitely don’t want to accept that. You want to go in and edit it. And I mean like do a hard edit on it, which is going to be subject to them, approving it with human eyes and all that.
Tim: 26:34 But I mean this is particularly frustrating, isn’t it? Because now you got to watch it. I mean there’s actually been. And if you do get, if it does happen to you, definitely go on there. Google as a forum that you can go in and report that stuff and go and report it in this in the right spot and you’ll try to gather as much information as you can, screenshots, whatever. But that doesn’t look like in, in, in the future. And this is particularly interesting to people that like let’s say that you are running, I mean if you’re, if you’re an agency and super frustrating because you’re not going to get notified, the owner will, but the agency won’t. So if you’re running anybody’s Google my business listing for them particularly you want to watch out for and let them know that things could change without. But it’s very frustrating
Derek: 27:21 Yeah you hate to get fired over that when, if you’re the agency.
Tim: 27:23 Oh my gosh. Yeah. Because if you, if they change the url or the address or the phone number or something ridiculous like that
Derek: 27:33 wondering while your business dried up.
Tim: 27:35 Yeah. Cause there aren’t. There actually are. And It’s hard to get kicked off Google. It’s not impossible. But a couple of things that they don’t like is if you’re actually just a mobile business and you try to put like a ups box or something in there that’s not, they don’t, they don’t like that, don’t do that. And the other thing is another thing that will get you kicked off there is um, having your so like I have, we have um, they thedentterminator.com we had our main one is Tulsahailrepair.som right. But we’ve talked about this a lot, so we have all these vanity names but they all redirect to Tulsahailrepair.com because that’s our main site.
Tim: 28:10 But we have Tulsa Dent, we have Tulsa hail all those dot com’s. So if I was to go into my google listing and say Tulsa Dent Dot com, but then redirect that using a 301 redirect to the tulsahailrepair.com, they’ll get you kicked off quick, so don’t do that. So if you actually have whatever your real url is it so when you want to use don’t do that. But on the other hand, you know, thinking about somebody’s editing that and that stupid edit. If you don’t pay attention to get you kicked off. So this is a really frustrating thing. That is not just as things saying sky’s falling, It’s a super important to check it. I think. I don’t know, Derek, what’s a good way to do that? I think
Derek: 28:54 try and check it every week. At a set time or set a set a reminder I think. Yeah, we’d be on it.
Tim: 29:03 Whatever browser you like to use on your computer. I think you probably ought to set several pages up to check them and just make sure they’re running on a daily basis. So, you know, get, go into the settings on your browser and figure out how to get those three pages open up and just open them every time you open up and then you can check it on a daily basis and make sure that it’s copacetic. That’s probably the best way to do it. Um, but it’s frustrating. So the other thing, I mean, this guy, Derek watched, I think you guys watch me going. So I kinda went… a little crazy on a guy yesterday and it’s really not his fault. I mean it’s just this job, but it’s another, it’s a, it’s like everybody calls. Right? And we were joking earlier in the call about your whole business is not subject to being kicked off Google or there has been changes, you know, they, they try to soften it.
Tim: 30:01 So a guy called yesterday from Biz Iq. Well they’re, you know, quote unquote legit business, right? Because they, I’m sure they’re an agency and they do stuff for people and if you use them, you know, and you love him, this is probably going to offend you. But I don’t love them because I don’t, I don’t think that anybody should start any, any kind of a business relation on a lie. And so I let him go through it and he’s like, he’s like, hey man, you’re, there’s some discrepancies in your deal. And Google sent us a list saying that, that uh, there’s discrepancies on your listing. I was like, really? You know, and just super nice to him and let him run through his deal. And so he’s like, OK, so your business is at such and such. OK. And, and you do auto dent repair.
Derek: 30:45 That’s right. Yeah. And you don’t do any kind of other thing. Yeah. I don’t know what. “Well, maybe it’s possible that this was a, there were some discrepancies and now they’re, they’re cleared now, so that’s good.” And I was like, hey, tell, tell me about this list that Google sends you. Cause there is no list. Right. So it’s just like, you know, so where did you get the list? You know, how about you send me a shot? He said, are you going to send you a screenshot of your google? No, I don’t want you to send me a list. I always send me a screenshot of that listing page, you know, so I was being a jerk. Yeah. And it’s his job and it’s not, you know, it’s not his fault, but I said, where did you get the list? I got it from my manager.
Derek: 31:25 I said, where do you think he got the list? He got it from Google. I said, what tells you that? Because we’re a google certified partner. Well that’s complete nonsense because the Google certified partner, you know what the requirements are that you spend 10 grand over over ninety days in Adwords that makes you a google certified partner. And so all it means is that you run adwords and the rip people off by running terrible Adwords. In other words, not paying attention to all the stuff you’re supposed to pay attention to an Adwords to make the click rates go down. So. Well we’re, you know, we’re a google certified, you can check it on our website. Well that’s just nonsense, you know. So I mean guys, you know, it’s just me. This is me ranting, right? So no one lives a rant but except the guy ranting, but the thing is the, you know, when they call you and they’d say there’s discrepancies on it, we all have that.
Derek: 32:18 It’s like, well I don’t want to get kicked off google, you know, I mean it happens to me and I feel like I’m pretty savvy maybe. But you know, there is no list. Google doesn’t publish a list of the discrepancies, you know, it’s just foolish. So anyway, that’s my two cents on that. But definitely keep an eye on your, on your google my business page because it is subject to edit and if you guys are evil, don’t do that to my listing because I’m watching. But you definitely, you definitely got to watch that. Actually here’s, here’s a little kicker for you. They just added the ability to post on that dude and I think it’s probably not a bad idea to make some posts
Derek: 32:18 like pictures, just text?
Tim: 33:06 Yeah. Talk about what you’re doing, what you had for lunch that day. No, probably gotta be relevant, I guess,
Derek: 33:11 Yeah, to the business,
Tim: 33:12 to the auto world relative to you or your business, but I mean, you know, if you’ve got some kind of a little tip that you might post about auto repair or something, you know, you can post that on there or if there’s somebody that you love, I’m going to give some love and why not give a shout out to somebody that you do business with a vendor or something. I think that’s pretty cool, but by making those posts, I think you probably gonna help yourself because it’ll force you to log in. So keep an eye on that. So your Google, my business just became like wikipedia, but not in a good way. And guys, we thank you for listening. It’s been a pleasure to be with you and fun and we hope that you will post your questions and other idiosyncrasies on our website or on our facebook page and we will see you on the next episode
Derek: 33:12 see you next time.
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