The Law of Relevancy with George Swetlitz
Host Bio
Cordes Owen is the founder of Bake More Pies and the host of The Law of Relevancy podcast. For over two decades, he has helped organizations across the medical, retail, sporting, travel, hospitality, construction, manufacturing, and education industries grow by pairing practical web solutions with results-driven online advertising. Before starting Bake More Pies, Owen served in executive roles at two of the largest Tampa-based agencies, leading teams that delivered custom digital and marketing programs for clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies. His work is grounded in the customer’s decision journey—how people discover local and service businesses, what signals they trust, and which experiences create confidence to choose one provider over another. As a host and practitioner, Owen translates marketing strategy into operator-ready guidance, with an emphasis on relevance, reputation, and the day-to-day systems that make customer experience measurable.
Summary
Cordes Owen opens the conversation with a blunt priority call: if a multi-location operator can spend money on only one thing, it should be local SEO and review management—because that’s where real-world decisions get made.
From the start, Owen frames online reviews as a high-leverage, operator-friendly lever compared to heavier SEO projects. “Building a super highpowered website with lots of authority is hard to do,” Cordes Owen said. “Getting someone to leave a great review and then responding to that review is a lot easier and it matters.” In his view, reviews aren’t a side task; they’re a decision surface customers touch every day.
George Swetlitz, co-founder of RightResponse AI, reinforces that lens by zooming out to the reality of location-based competition. “Every business exists in its own little competitive environment,” Swetlitz said, noting that two locations can operate similarly yet perform very differently based on what surrounds them. That’s why he argues operators need a clear read on where each location sits today—and what goals make sense in that local context. When a business is doing a good job, he adds, “one of the easiest things you can do is get people to leave good authentic reviews about your business.”
A recurring theme is that review strategy has changed because customers are saturated. Swetlitz explains that generic outreach blends into the noise. “The days of saying thanks for coming to our business… no one answers those anymore,” he said, adding that conversion rates drop when requests feel mass-produced. The first step in the system they describe is personalization at scale—making the ask feel tied to a real visit and relationship (not a template), even when a brand has many locations.
Owen validates why this matters for visibility. He points to the moment of truth most local customers experience: “When you search for something… the very first thing you see typically is the map,” Cordes Owen said. “Ranking on that map has a lot to do with how engaging you’re being with people reviewing you, you saying thank you.” In other words, review volume and review responses work together as signals—both to prospective customers and, in Owen’s view, to local search rankings.
They don’t treat replies as mere etiquette. Owen likes the idea of using responses to add business-specific context that helps the next reader make a decision—small details that don’t show up in a star rating. He describes adding “little nuggets” such as practical reminders or relevant information tied to the business. That sets up Swetlitz’s broader point: AI can be powerful yet frustrating in long conversations—“the longer you’re in the chat, it seems like the dumber it gets”—but review replies are short enough to reliably assemble the right information and produce a clear paragraph.
Swetlitz offers a concrete mechanism: build a set of location-specific “facts” so the response engine can pull in relevant details when a review mentions something specific. He describes a property manager who created facts for each property; when a review highlights the location, the response can include details like nearby landmarks (“there’s a Starbucks 2 minutes away”) to make the reply feel grounded and useful. The throughline is that relevance—specific detail—makes automation feel more authentic, not less.
Another host-forward takeaway is the link between reputation and paid acquisition efficiency. Swetlitz explains that prospects click an ad and then read reviews; if the reputation isn’t strong (or a competitor looks stronger), buyers “just migrate to them,” effectively turning ad spend into someone else’s customer. Owen mirrors this with a pool-service example where improving reputation was part of making paid search work, including a meaningful drop in cost per click as ratings improved.
The conversation also tackles scale and operational reality. Swetlitz describes what happens as businesses grow: operators pull functions centrally, but lose the “intimate knowledge” of what’s important at each location. That’s part of why review workflows break down in multi-location environments—someone has to respond, and someone has to do it in a way that still feels local.
On tooling, Swetlitz contrasts expensive, per-location reputation contracts with a usage-based approach, arguing it can feel fairer when volume varies widely by location. Owen responds to the fairness logic directly: “I think it’s great… because it feels fair.” Swetlitz also points to AI-driven analysis that goes beyond replying—such as looking across a large set of reviews to identify the biggest problems and where they show up.
A major trust-and-compliance segment centers on review gating. Owen brings up the practice of asking customers if they’re happy before sending them to a public review site. He argues that asking everyone can be better for credibility and learning, because it increases review volume and lets a company show how it solves problems. “If somebody only has five star reviews, it can come across very synthetic,” Cordes Owen said. Swetlitz adds a warning: “Gating… is actually illegal in the US,” he says, and also against Google’s terms. He explains the underlying principle as avoiding “differential access” to the review platform—meaning you can’t put a gate between a customer and the public review publisher. They then discuss a safer pattern: keep the public review path available, while also offering an optional private feedback button for people who want to share concerns without broadcasting them.
Taken together, the episode pushes a simple shift in mindset: reviews are not a box to check. They’re a competitive signal, a conversion moment, and a voice-of-customer dataset—and the difference between “generic” and “relevant” communication is what makes the whole system work.
Q&A
- I run a local service business—what’s the single biggest lever to invest in for growth?
Local SEO paired with review and response management is positioned as one of the highest-leverage investments, because customers often decide from map results and reviews. - How do review responses affect local SEO and Google Maps rankings?
Map ranking is directly linked to engagement with reviewers, including replying and saying thank you. Responses are treated as part of that engagement signal. - Should I respond to every review, or just the bad ones?
Not directly addressed here as a strict rule, but the emphasis is that responding matters—including simple thank-you replies on positive reviews—not just damage control on negatives. - Why are review requests harder to get answered now than a few years ago?
Customers are receiving far more review requests, so generic asks blend in and convert at lower rates than they used to. - What makes a review request feel personalized instead of templated?
Personalization comes from referencing concrete visit details (who helped them, what they came in for, when it happened, and loyalty/tenure), rather than sending the same thank-you message to everyone. - How can RightResponse AI help with review requests and responses?
It’s positioned as an AI-powered approach to personalizing review requests and creating short, relevant review responses by pulling together information that makes the message specific. - I have multiple locations—why can two locations run the same internally but perform very differently?
Each location competes in its own local environment. A location’s performance can swing based on nearby competitors and local dynamics, even if operations are similar. - What’s the practical way to scale review replies when I’m not in every location every day?
As businesses scale, centralization can reduce local context. A workable approach is using short, paragraph-length replies supported by location-specific facts so responses still feel grounded. - I’m skeptical of AI for customer-facing messaging. How do I keep it from sounding fake?
Keep replies short and focused, and include specific, relevant details. Using a set of business/location “facts” helps keep responses concrete rather than generic. - How do little nuggets in a review response help with conversion or trust?
Adding practical, business-specific details can make replies more useful to people reading reviews and can reinforce that the business is real and attentive, not just posting boilerplate. - Do reviews matter if I’m spending money on paid search ads?
Yes—after clicking an ad, people often read reviews. If reviews are weak or a competitor looks stronger, customers can switch, effectively wasting paid spend. - How do I avoid paying for clicks that end up going to my competitor?
Treat reputation and review performance as part of the paid-search funnel: strengthen reviews and responses so that the “review check” after the click reinforces the choice. - What is review gating, and is it allowed?
Review gating is filtering who gets sent to a public review site based on whether they report being happy. It’s framed as against Google’s terms and described as illegal in the U.S. - If I shouldn’t gate reviews, how can I still capture private complaints?
Keep the public review path available, and add a separate optional route for private feedback so customers can share concerns without blocking access to the review publisher. - What does differential access mean in the context of reviews?
It means you shouldn’t insert a step that changes who can reach the public review site. The review platform should be able to receive a fair assessment of what customers think. - What kinds of Voice of Customer insights can I pull from a large pile of reviews?
You can analyze a large set (e.g., the last thousand reviews) to surface the biggest recurring problems and identify which locations those issues show up in. - I’m comparing reputation tools and per-location fees stack up fast. What alternative model exists?
A usage-based model is positioned as an alternative: pay based on how much you use (like number of reviews handled or specific tools run) instead of a fixed per-location - Should I ask everyone for a review, even if some people might be unhappy?
Asking everyone is positioned as beneficial for volume and learning. It also lets a business demonstrate how it handles problems, and avoids the “synthetic” feel of only five-star feedback.
Transcript
0:00
It’s all about understanding how to motivate other people, understanding their needs. How do you get from here to
0:06
there? When you’re not in control the end of the day, when you’re control, you know, you know, you’re not in control,
0:11
they’re in control. You’re like the breeze. You’re just trying to blow them in different directions.
0:20
[Music] Welcome back to this episode of The Law of Relevancy podcast. I’m Cordes Owen, your
0:27
host. And today we’re joined by George Swetlitz. He is the co-founder of RightResponse
0:32
AI, a reputation management platform powered by AI. George, thank
0:38
you for joining us. Yes, great to be here. I was telling you before the uh the show started
0:44
an hour ago. I was talking to an entrepreneur and I was telling him if
0:51
there’s one thing if you had to only spend your your money on one thing for
0:56
these chiropractic clinics that he’s looking to roll up, you would spend your money on local SEO and review management
1:04
and response management for those local clinics that you’re running. Yeah, 100%
1:09
agree. 100% agree. You know, when when when you’re a when you’re running a
1:16
business, whether it’s one location or 200 locations,
1:21
every business exists in its own little competitive environment. You compete. Every chiropractic clinic
1:29
that that fella is going to own at some point operates in an area where people
1:35
are making a decision. and he might have two chiropractic clinics
1:42
that internally operate just as well the mechanics of
1:47
how they run, but one might do very well and the other one might do poorly just because of the competitive environment
1:54
that they’re in. And so that’s the challenge with location-based businesses is understanding
2:01
where am I? Where do I where do I sit today in that environment and what are
2:07
the right goals and how do I go about achieving them or getting there? And and if you’re doing a good job, one of the
2:13
easiest things you can do is get people to leave good authentic reviews about
2:18
your business. Yeah. No, that that’s that’s right. it. There’s a lot of things that you can do and some of them
2:25
are really hard to do. You know, building a super highpowered website
2:30
with lots of authority is hard to do. Getting someone to leave a great review
2:36
and then responding to that review is is a lot easier and it matters, you know,
2:44
just as much if not more for a localbased business. Yeah. And especially in the business that he was
2:51
he’s in which is chiropractic. I mean you’re giving somebody immediate relief for the with their issue in your
2:58
previous life in the aiology business. You’re doing the same thing. You’re you’re adding quality to their life.
3:05
They’re delighted. Why wouldn’t they leave you a good review? Yeah, it’s it’s it’s
3:11
a great question and and part of it is especially as you get larger, you know,
3:17
when you when you have your own business or you run a group of five or 10
3:22
business, you know, locations, you’re in there every day, you’re involved, and so you can make sure
3:28
things happen. As your business scales, you depend more and more on other
3:34
people. And that was the challenge that we had at Alpaca was
3:42
as you get bigger, you have to pull things in centrally. And as you pull things in centrally, you lose the
3:48
intimate knowledge of what’s actually important in those locations. And so
3:55
that’s the challenge. How do you how do you actually pull that off? And so they’re very different problems, but at
4:01
the end of the day, as you said, somebody comes in to your location, you delight them, and you want them to tell
4:08
the rest of the world. And that’s kind of what we help people do locally
4:15
because the reality is the world is changing, right?
4:21
Three years ago, four years ago, you got review requests, but you didn’t get them
4:27
every day. Now there’s so many review requests that you have to stand out
4:35
you when you’re sending a request. The days of saying thanks for coming to our
4:40
business. Would you leave us a request? They no no one answers those anymore. No
4:46
one leaves not not not no one but the conversion rate of those is much lower.
4:53
And so when we talk about what we do at RightResponse AI and what makes us different kind of in this review
4:59
ecosystem is using AI to personalize.
5:05
So rather than saying you know thanks for coming to our chiropractice office would you leave us
5:11
a review it says Dr. Jones was really happy that you came in for an adjustment
5:19
on Thursday. Thank you for 6 months of loyalty. It would really help us to get
5:25
the word out if you left us a review. If you’d click here, you know, we’d
5:31
appreciate it. And you can personalize those requests at scale
5:38
and increase the likelihood that those review requests are going to convert
5:43
into reviews. And that’s the first step in that journey and that flywheel of
5:48
building your your uh your place in the rankings. Yeah, that’s essential for a local based business, whether you’re a
5:55
restaurant or a chiropractic center or a medical clinic. It’s it’s essential. Um
6:01
you know, and the metrics are I mean, we are using the internet the vast majority
6:06
of the time on these devices. And when you search for something and you scroll
6:12
down, the very first thing you see typically is the map and ranking on that map has a lot to do
6:20
with how engaging you’re being with people reviewing you, you saying thank
6:26
you. And one of the things I really liked about learning about RightResponse AI was that it’s uh you know, it
6:33
seems like you can also add little nuggets like thanks for coming in. We know we hope that you no just reminder
6:40
like happy hour is every day from 4 to 7 you know. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No.
6:47
So that’s the thing when you think about when you think about AI
6:53
and people struggle with this all the time. AI is so powerful yet when you try to do
7:00
something people will often get frustrated. Yeah. you know, and if you’re if you’re
7:05
dealing with a chat, the longer you’re in the chat, it seems like the dumber it gets, right? You
7:12
know, the long and so the nice thing about review requests or review responses that they’re very short. Yeah,
7:19
it’s a paragraph. And so it’s relatively easy
7:24
to kind of you to use an agentic approach to
7:29
put relevant information together to generate a nice response.
7:38
So, for example, um we have a property manager that
7:47
has built a series of facts about their locations. So, if somebody said, “Oh, I
7:52
love the location at this particular property.” The response sees, “Oh, it’s a it’s a mention of
8:00
the location’s great. So let’s put into the response. Yeah,
8:05
there’s a Starbucks 2 minutes away and you know it to make it real for people.
8:12
Obviously I mean this is something you’re passionate about. You know in your your previous life you had uh in
8:19
your career you were associated with Alpaca Aiology and you were a big part of growing that organization to over 200
8:26
locations. What inspired you to now become your an entrepreneur
8:32
in a tech space like this? Yeah. So that’s it’s a great great question. So
8:38
we struggled with these issues with these exact issues at Alpac. We wanted
8:43
to grow organically a lot of money on pay-per-click social you know um social ads things
8:51
like that. But the gold the gold standard is how much are you growing
8:56
just organically through SEO and that was a real challenge for all
9:02
the reasons that you know you you you know people understand who who are running these location based businesses.
9:10
And one of the things that we noticed was that
9:16
the the businesses that we had that were that that ranked higher also had better performance with paper click.
9:24
And that’s because when people you attract people through an ad and then they actually go
9:32
read the reviews. And if your reviews aren’t great or if there’s somebody else that’s higher in the rankings, someone
9:38
just migrates to them. And so essentially you’re just spending your money giving them a another customer.
9:44
Well, I mean that’s a very important point. I I remember uh we worked with a pool service a few years ago. We helped
9:51
them grow to the largest pool service in the whole country. And when they came to us, their average ranking was like a
9:57
2.9. And we knew that our strategy had to get to a uh a paid search. made sense for
10:05
them to have a component that was very paid search because when people have an issue right now, paid search works
10:11
great, right? Um, when people are researching a purchase they’re going to do in the future, SEO is very powerful.
10:17
It’s very good. But when people have a need right now, like a green pool that
10:22
just turned green over the weekend, we knew that they were going to want to uh use paid search. The challenge is is
10:28
that when you have a very low reputation, you’re paying two and three times the
10:33
amount that somebody else with some great reviews. And so it was a big part
10:40
of our paid search strategy to work on their local strategy and their reputation management strategy because
10:45
as we worked on that and got them up to three and a half and closer to four, we were able to see paid search uh the cost
10:53
per click go from, you know, $13 a click down to $7 a click. Right. Right.
10:59
Exactly. And so the the problem that we had the the further compounding problem
11:05
we had alaka was that we had 200 clinics. And so when you’re trying to execute at 200 locations you need so we
11:13
go out we try to find tools and the tools and and these are the same tools that exist today out in the marketplace.
11:20
They want an annual contract and they’re very expensive on a per location basis.
11:25
All of these things and then you you see a feature that you really need. Well, that’s in the other package that you have to buy. And when when someone’s
11:32
asking you to spend, you know, $200 a month on a location or $100 a month, you have 200, that’s $20,000 a month. And
11:40
you you just can’t afford to do it. So, fast forward, we sold we sold Alpaca and
11:49
Chat GPT is announced in 2022, end of 2022, we roll into 2023. And I I had
11:57
been I I started this development team maybe 10 years ago and I got the team
12:03
together and I said you know I think we could solve the problem that we had like we could build this we could build an
12:09
application from the ground up using AI to solve this problem. And so we spent
12:15
about a year and a half building the platform and we launched in you know midway through 2024.
12:23
And so that was that was like that’s the origin story of of RightResponse AI. And
12:29
how’s it going? It’s it’s going great. It It’s going great because there’s a real
12:38
when when people understand that they’re able to personalize response,
12:47
personalize requests, understand what’s happening better in a way that’s kind of
12:52
affordable. They It’s It’s It’s exciting and it’s interesting to watch what people do. We have a ferry company in
13:00
Greece that’s one of our customers and they must have 30 facts they have built
13:06
around all elements you know because people just ask a million questions and so rather than try to answer those
13:12
questions one by one they’ve just built the AI to answer those questions in a
13:18
very kind of methodical way and it just makes it makes their lives so much
13:23
easier and and and that’s what that’s what this is you know all out. Yeah. One
13:29
thing I really appreciate about this conversation and talking to you is you seem to have a really uh strong grasp of
13:36
like the very meta level, the very high level of like where things are moving
13:41
and and how it’s impactful and it seems like that translates down into very tangible and tactical tools.
13:47
How has your education, you know, getting your MBA at Harvard like where
13:52
did you pick that up? Is that is that more of the uh the college of doing this in life or is it a big part of the
13:59
education that you you’ve garnered along the way? Well, I think the the you know the
14:05
education gives you certain tools and skill sets but you know my my kind of
14:12
career has progressed. I originally started in operations and manufacturing
14:17
running factories. So a real appreciation for you know the steps that
14:23
are required to actually put out good product quality product and then I moved
14:30
into consulting and it’s all about you know understanding how to motivate
14:36
other people right understanding their needs and how do you get from here to
14:42
there when you’re not in control the end of the day when you’re consulting you know you know you’re not in control
14:47
they’re in You’re like the breeze. You’re just trying to blow them in different directions. That’s right. And so, you
14:53
know, you have to manage that. And then at Alpaca, I went back to operating,
15:01
but where I was, you know, in charge. And then you find out, you know, when you’re CEO, it’s still not about you.
15:07
It’s still about enabling all of the people in your organization to achieve
15:13
something. And so over the years I’ve I’ve just operated
15:19
at all different levels. And so that’s what I love about I mean I love software
15:26
just because it’s so scalable. But what I really love is helping enable
15:33
people to grow their businesses. And sometimes, you know,
15:40
sometimes I’ll say things in meetings that, you know, they I’m, you know, I’m not the
15:47
CEO, right? I’m just a vendor. So, you know, I have to always keep that in mind that, you know, it’s their business to
15:52
run and I’m just enabling them to do that better. Well, I I think a big part
15:58
of of being a part of a startup and creating a tool like what you guys have created is figuring out how you’re going
16:04
to market. And it looks like a big part of the way that you’ve decided to go to market is to be very affordable and also
16:10
to work with agencies.
16:16
Yeah. So we we try to
16:22
we we try to be available for everyone, right? So we have very large clients
16:30
with hundreds of locations and we built the platform to accommodate brands and
16:35
regions and you know different kinds of you know user levels and things like
16:41
that. But we also built it to work for you
16:47
know from a cost perspective with someone who has a small business that can’t afford much. you know things are
16:53
especially in today’s economy I mean it’s scary in in some businesses right now and so people are very
17:01
cautious about spending money and I think the our usagebased model
17:07
and we can talk about that but that’s kind of a whole different
17:12
thing that we did uh you know most software as a service
17:20
especially in reputation management you know, is a set fixed fee and it
17:26
really survives on kind of this breakage concept, right? So, right, you’re you know, you you can do up to a 100red
17:33
reviews a month, but you know, the average person does 10. Yeah. And so, the average person is subsidizing the
17:39
people that do 300, right? And that’s that’s kind of the typical model. Well, AI comes along
17:46
and you can do really interesting things, but you can’t do them for free,
17:52
right? And so, you have to you you have to you have to be able to charge people for
17:59
using more sophisticated functions. That’s the whole nature of AI. So, we we we re we rebuilt
18:09
the entire underlying structure to be usage based. So, if you have 10 reviews
18:15
a month, you pay for 10 reviews a month. You have 100, you pay for 100. If you want to use our map rank tracker, every
18:20
time you click, you pay 50 cents or whatever it is. You don’t have to buy 50. Everyone wants $50 a month. Every
18:28
every SAS Yeah. software company wants $50 a month. So, you go, you want to buy a map brain tracker tool, they want $50
18:34
a month. You want they everyone wants $50 a month. Well, you can’t afford that. So, we just broke that model and
18:43
when you join RightResponse AI, you have access to the entire platform and you just use what you want to use and that’s
18:50
kind of the beauty of it. I think it’s great. I think I think ultimately you end up with clients that stay longer
18:57
because it feels fair. If you’re not using it, you’re not getting charged. If you are using it, you’re fairly getting
19:03
charged. Who can argue with that? I agree 100%. And as we develop more
19:09
sophisticated things like compare, you know, go look at our last
19:17
thousand reviews and tell us our biggest problem or tell us the locations and which those are things that
19:25
that we can build with AI, but that might cost you couple bucks. And if
19:32
that’s important to you this month because you have a problem, go run the report and next month when you solved
19:38
your problem, don’t run it. Don’t pay for it. You know, it’s it’s very much that kind of model. That’s what it’s
19:44
kind of a democratizing thing. It’s thing that I wish that I would have had when I was CEO. You know, if I would
19:51
have been able to buy this model for my 200 locations, I absolutely would
19:57
have bought it. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. U I remember when I first started seeing this heavily used, there was a uh
20:04
a company called Podium and they’re still around and they ended up branching
20:10
off into some point of sale via text message and some text messaging platforms. But they’re where they grew
20:16
really quickly and were one of the biggest in getting reviews was that they were very quick about asking people
20:23
reviews after they received the service and or during the process of them receiving the service. They were very
20:29
quick with it and they also have a sequence of things in case they didn’t get a review, they would do it. And and one of the um
20:36
one of the discussions I had with them years ago was this idea of gating
20:42
feedback where you get feedback, but you try to ask them first in case you find
20:47
out they’re not happy with you. And then only you only ask them to leave a review
20:53
on Google or wherever or Yelp or whatever wherever that you want them to leave a review. you, but you only ask
20:58
them if they would have given you five stars. And they weren’t using that approach when I was having this
21:05
discussion with them. And they said that their research showed that actually if you ask everyone, it works out a lot
21:12
better because you end up getting a lot more reviews. You learn about problems.
21:18
You get to show people how you actually deal with problems as an organization and solve, you know, customer service
21:24
things. So it it looks like you’re a real company and that you really care about people a lot more. And it also
21:32
doesn’t look fake. If somebody only has five star reviews, it can come across
21:37
very synthetic. Yeah, it it’s a complicated problem
21:44
because, you know, it’s one of these things, the race to the bottom, right? And so, um, you know, gating you talked
21:51
about is actually illegal in the US. Well, I mean, it’s it’s against Google’s
21:58
terms of service. Yeah. And it’s actually illegal, right? Right. So, you
22:05
know, everyone takes some risk when they do that and the big platforms won’t,
22:11
but smaller platforms still do. I run across it all the time when I’m doing competitive analysis. uh you know we’ll
22:17
ask we send out a text are you happy? Yes. And they ask for the review if you’re happy
22:24
legal. So um
22:29
for clarification, what does that law say? Like so if we’re looking it up, what is uh what does the law actually
22:36
tell you that we’re supposed to do and what you’re not supposed to do? you’re you’re not supposed to provide
22:42
differential access to the review
22:47
to the review platform, right? So, you’re not supposed to have a step that gate, right? That’s
22:55
between you between that customer and the Google review. Google or any review
23:03
site, any review publisher is supposed to
23:08
be able to have a fair assessment of
23:13
what customers think. And that was kind of a a rule that was promulgated by the
23:19
FTC last year. Now whether this administration cares who’s left in the
23:24
FTC, I don’t know. But but at that time it was something that they were taking
23:30
very seriously. Well, I think it’s something as consumers that we we would want we would
23:37
want that rule to be in place because we want to know if people are not having great experiences and we want to know if
23:42
they are having great experiences. It helps inform us all and we all if you have a business you should be striving to deliver a quality service or product.
23:50
No, absolutely. And you know there are things that you can do you know because the the counterargument
23:59
is someone might be willing to give you negative information if they didn’t feel
24:06
like it was going to be broadcast over the internet. Right? Some people don’t want to just broadcast but they want to
24:11
tell you. So you can you can
24:17
create your screen. It’s kind of this is what we’re doing where they can leave the review on whatever source they’ve
24:23
decided to leave the review on or at the bottom it says if there’s something you’d like to tell us privately click
24:29
this button. So it’s not gating because
24:35
the person can still click and go to the review publisher. But if they want to le say something
24:42
privately and you’re kind of suggesting that there’s another route to telling us privately,
24:48
then they have that option and that’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with with doing it. Yeah. And and a lot
24:56
of times that can happen because uh you know maybe uh you don’t like
25:02
making a scene, you don’t want to leave negative feedback. In my case, my uh Google username is my first name, last
25:08
name, you know, and so like I’m not Bulldogs 1981, you know, it’s it’s uh
25:15
first name, last name. So if somebody’s actually researching me, I don’t want them to see that I had a bad massage at
25:22
uh you know, Massage Envy or something like that. So uh you know, too much
25:28
pressure, shave your arms. I I don’t know. uh like so I I do like that
25:35
private option and it’s really important to have that right yeah agree and I and
25:40
and as long as you do it in a way that’s transparent and fair it doesn’t violate anything and probably gets the same you
25:47
know gets to the same end you know end point anyway very good let’s go back to uh yourself I
25:56
I love to hear entrepreneurial journeys tell me how you climb the ladder at
26:02
Alpaca. So, so you’re working there. You helped grow multiple locations. What are
26:08
the things that you’re doing or that you’re seeing as operating within an environment like that that helped you
26:14
grow within the environment and helped it it succeed and stand out to where you could eventually be running the
26:20
organization? Yeah. So, it’s a the story is a little different. I mean I I was a consultant for years and the consulting
26:27
that I did was really around driving performance improvement and we would
26:33
work with mostly with large very large companies. Um and the idea was really
26:41
that that the the the source of knowledge is within the company. Right? That was the
26:47
idea behind our consulting practice that if you the problem is not that people in
26:52
the organization don’t know what to do. The problem is that it’s very it’s very difficult to get things done big
26:59
companies. And so the role that we played was
27:05
gathering up these good ideas and then helping them fight the good fight to get
27:11
those ideas implemented. That was the idea. And then I also started doing that with
27:16
private equity firms with their portfolio companies. And so I ended up
27:22
kind of working with a particular private equity firm and they were doing this consolidation in the aiology space.
27:30
And so I joined on I joined the board and uh
27:36
and was kind of doing the kind of thing that I did kind of at the board level. And
27:42
then the company made a big acquisition. It was kind of a acquisition where we more
27:48
than doubled in size. And then COVID came. So it was like this double whammy,
27:54
right? You know, this big acquisition followed by CO and it was just a very complex
28:01
difficult environment. As you can imagine in aiology clinics, you’re dealing with people who, you know,
28:07
average age is 70. you know, you got to have a lot of patience even doing that because they can’t hear you half the
28:14
time when they’re not using the product. So, it’s frustrating when people you have to repeat yourself. Yeah. So, it’s
28:21
very very complicated environ. Then co comes and obviously disproportionate impact on our people and you know we’re
28:28
staying at home and lots of issues. So they asked me if I would step in as CEO and to help
28:37
usher the company through this very trying. But what are you doing? Like obviously uh you know you seem like very
28:44
intelligent. You’ve got this very laid-back style. What do you think was the key to your success in being even
28:51
asked to do that or to be in that role? I I think it goes back to what I learned
28:58
as a consultant, which is it’s not about me. It’s about assembling
29:05
a great team and helping that team break the barriers
29:12
to getting things done. Yeah. Right. And
29:18
you know it’s very difficult for many CEOs but the key is really you know I
29:25
would say you I would say to to someone who worked for me they would want to do something and I might not think that was
29:33
the right idea. I might think that there’s a better answer, but the problem is is the minute I say do what I want
29:41
now the monkeyy’s off their back, right? Because right, it’s your it’s your responsible for I made the decision. So
29:48
unless I thought it was make or break, like unless I thought
29:54
that the risk of a an outcome was really big, I would and and this is
30:02
something that I would do that other like I I would engage in lots of conversation with them. I would help
30:08
them understand like we would go through data. We would really explore it and I would say this is what I would do based
30:15
on this data. But that doesn’t matter. What do you want to do? How do you read the day? And they would they would say
30:21
and unless it was a make or break kind of thing, I would say, “Okay, well, we’re going to do what you want to do.”
30:27
That’s right. And and they would do it and and sometimes it would go their way
30:32
and sometimes it wouldn’t, but they were accountable because it was their decision. Yeah. That’s a very that’s a
30:37
very uh astute leadership skill you have there. And I uh I believe in that a lot.
30:43
Uh I’ve I’ve worked a lot on leadership personally myself over the years. I mean read books uh gone to classes really
30:51
tried to trust you know go back to like this the core what is this uh what are
30:58
responses what are online reviews all about and it’s about building trust and and it’s throughout all your
31:04
interactions especially when you’re leading an organization trust is so important and so I I love the saying
31:10
that the organization will move at the level of trust within the organization
31:16
between the people who are here and it sounds like you know all about
31:22
that. Yeah. Well, I mean that was, you know, especially trying to get
31:28
through a period like co I mean you you
31:34
if you thought you knew everything, you you know you know you you were you were
31:40
bound to fail. Yeah. Well, George, it’s been great having you on the show today and learning about y’all’s approach to
31:47
how to do local listings, how to respond, reputation management, monitoring, and how you’ve decided to go
31:53
to market. Where can we follow you and and learn more about your thought leadership and what you guys are up to?
32:00
Yeah. Well, the best place is really uh our our website, rightrespondsai.com.
32:06
We have a a blog section and we put our best thinking there.
32:13
That’s great. Well, we’ll follow you there. We’ll check it out and I encourage everyone who’s listening to this to look at it. It’s a it’s a great
32:19
looking website. It looks super easy to use the tool. Um it’s been fun learning about it. And you can follow us anywhere
32:26
where podcasts are found across all of the social media feeds for The Law of Relevancy and bake more pies. George,
32:33
thanks for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. All right, we’ll see everybody the next time.