Sara Fernandez on Why Broken Websites Kill Ad Spend

Sara:0:00
I'm very.

Jordan Lally:0:02
we can edit this out. You're all good. You're all good. Okay. Welcome back to the blooper. See, thank God. Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] podcast, where we talk about marketing, sales, client acquisition, AI, and everything in between. Today, we have a former political operative turned marketing specialist with over a decade of experience in media production, branding.

Sara:0:03
Okay. I was like, stop talking. Okay.

Sara:0:13
Yeah, I like it. Yeah, it takes.

Jordan Lally:0:31
marketing strategy. She's the co-founder of Lead Rush Social, a marketing education and consulting firm that helps founder led businesses own their growth by clarifying their strategy in building AI optimized marketing systems within their business. Everyone please welcome Mrs. Sarah Fernandez.

Sara:0:49
Hey everyone. I'm super excited to talk to you today, Jordan. So looking forward to the discussion.

Jordan Lally:0:54
Perfect. Yeah, we're super happy to have you on. With that being said, let's dive in. So the first question we have for you is, can you tell us a bit more about what Lead Rush does in a very high level overview, exactly how you guys help companies grow?

Sara:1:10
Yeah, so we do a combination of paid marketing strategy. So my husband has a performance marketing background. I have more brand media background, obviously with the political side, you know, it was much more in the media space. And so we've kind of combined forces and mostly what we help people do is really clarify their marketing strategy and then figure out how do they install the systems within their business that will allow them to continue to generate leads and not just be reliant on agencies or consultants or coaches like us.

We really want to set business owners up for success to be able to have those systems in-house, have their team run them. And I think with AI and all the new changes coming with that, we're realizing even marketing professionals, other agencies that maybe are creative agencies or social media agencies, they're realizing, wow, I need to understand the lead side of things because some of my job can be outsourced now.

Jordan Lally:1:59
Great, great point and great insights. I'm really happy that you want to install systems internally into businesses, opposed to giving the keys away to your castle, right? I'm the type of guy where I want to learn how the system is done, how to create the own system, so I'm more in control, opposed to outsourcing it to someone else. So I'm really glad that you're in that space. What made you pivot from kind of what you were doing before to this here?

Sara:2:09
Yeah.

Sara:2:18
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sara:2:27
really, you know, I had a strong brand background, so very creative work, production work, video, podcast producing, things like that. And I love that work. But I think what we just really saw was we have to tie our, our, work to people's bottom line. So if they can see what we can do to get them leads and results, if we can, you know, three X 10 X their business, they'll, they'll trust us so much more than if we can just put out a pretty website podcast. you know, video, whatever that is. And I think that's something that a lot of creative agency owners like me are kind of in the midst of realizing like, gosh, like if you can have an intern with an agent do all this stuff, like a, you know, an AI agent, then what is the value I'm bringing to, you know, these business owners? So I think for us, we just made that pivot probably about a year and a half ago where we were like, we really need to shift things from just doing the creative work. We still do. a fair amount of personal branding, creative work, but it's more really trying to train and educate people, especially marketing. Even we have agency owners that come to us, SEO agency owners that are like, hey, I need to bring paid advertising into my agency. I was doing only SEO. How do I bring this in?

Jordan Lally:3:45
No, great, great talking points there. So I used to play baseball for a long time. And one of the sayings that we had, was, you know, if you can hit, you can play. didn't matter if you sucked at defense, if you had zero, you know, glove skills or couldn't build the baseball, if you can hit, you can play. And I bring this up because it's kind of like in business, if you can find a way to bring in new business, to, to generate new opportunity, you will always be valuable within an organization. And I think you kind of were alluding to that. Perfect.

Sara:3:58
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Sara:4:13
Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Lally:4:16
When you are working with businesses, have you niched down with one specific vertical or one specific industry or do you cover multiple?

Sara:4:25
So me personally, like as a consultant, I did consulting for 10 years up until about like, like I said, two years ago when we made this pivot with our business, but I was mostly knished into leaders. So I was working with political leaders, know, CEOs, startup founders, people like that. That's because of the background that I had, but now we've sort of shifted towards local businesses. You know, a lot of them, it's a very simple problem to solve for us as advertisers is like, hey, You're not even running Google Ads. That's like, let's just start there. So we've really focused on local businesses. mean, that could also be a larger local business. We have law firm clients that are much larger revenue-wise, but still the same problems. Maybe they're running multi-channel marketing, but it's not really optimized to scale. And so I think the thing that we've found is it's an interesting space right now. think we're kind of, to be honest, on the cusp of helping more marketing agency owners and marketers. while also serving local business. The reason we thought let's go towards local businesses, we're like, well, they're less AI disruptible businesses. So for helping a plumber, an HVAC guy or, you know, landscaper, boat rental company, car detailer, they have less disruption coming their way. But it also is something where maybe it's a little bit slower to adopt, you know, a paid strategy or slower to adopt AI. I think a lot of folks are waking up to it, but so many have just relied on industry magazines or word of mouth. you know, doing flyering and mailers in their neighborhoods and in the surrounding areas. And I think local business owners are seeing that they need to get more savvy. They need to show up on AI chat. When you type in plumber near me, find me the best plumber into Gemini or into chat GPT on your phone. You want your business, you want that person to find your business. And so I think that's what we've found is a lot of these local business guys are like, I do need to pay attention to this because people aren't just coming off of Yelp reviews or coming off of Angie's list or You know, people are actually just outsourcing that thinking and that researching to these language learning models.

Jordan Lally:6:27
Give me one second. My dog's need... Okay. Come on dog.

Sara:6:28
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:6:36
We can blow up the matter there, but you gave a great answer.

Sara:6:39
Okay. Am I looking in a weird spot? Like, should I look up at my camera or more down at you? That's what I'm like.

Jordan Lally:6:45
Look at me, because I look at you, but I know my camera's up here and it might look off, but look at me, it looks perfect. Yeah.

Sara:6:47
Okay, I'll look at you. Okay. Thank you.

Jordan Lally:6:55
Do you help local service businesses or even other agencies on the consulting side install AISCO? Like, do you know how to do that for other companies?

Sara:7:06
Yeah, so we're starting to dip our toe into that. The answer is yes. It's not as simple as one would hope. Last year we were like, oh great, can just run, like paid advertising does help you rank better on the language, on the models. But the other thing is you really have to be, it's actually PR. You really have to be in those super lawyers.com. You have to be in those ranking publications for local businesses. Also, if you have some local press, like you've been,

Jordan Lally:7:12
Right.

Sara:7:34
awarded something, things like that. That's where these models are really drawing their credibility from there, like saying, OK, we're going to rank these higher than someone who's running really aggressive ads. for us, we encourage people like your Google reviews really matter now, especially locally, because AI does use the reviewers and what they're saying about you to verify against the other factors that it's reviewing. So paid paid ads and paid advertising can be a good strategy right now.

This could shift in six months. I'm not sure exactly where we're headed here with how models are working, but I do think one of the biggest things people are missing is the awareness that you have to start showing up on these models. If you don't show up on these models, your ad strategy, your organic strategy, your flyering, all of that's going to be trumped by somebody who's in their bathroom with water flowing out of their sink, typing in, hey, chat, who do I call for? you know, a plumber in my area, please. And then, you know, with agents, please call them, please get the bids. Like if you are totally out of that process, how are people going to find you?

Jordan Lally:8:42
Man, you gave some great insights right there. It's not a... It's all perspective. I don't want to say it's a scary world because I have so many AI agents in my business and thank God they exist. Holy smoke. But on the flip side, if you're not utilizing these AI agents, if you're against AI and against AI SEO, I feel kind of bad.

Sara:8:55
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:9:06
You know, because that's the way that the world is adopting. That's the way that the world's going. And I don't want to sound harsh, but business is harsh. Adopt or die. know, so.

Sara:9:15
But yeah, it really is that.

Jordan Lally:9:17
For sure. So in regards to, I think when you started Lead Rush, you wanted to focus on local service businesses. makes no sense. I think you mentioned pivoting and kind of helping other consultants and other agencies. It's like acquire more skills, download. They would download what you know into their organization kind of.

Sara:9:37
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the things we're finding is, you know, business owners certainly need these tools, but the people that serve business owners also need these tools. You know, there's many agency owners that they're really great at what they do with social media or with SEO or with even with paid advertising. But like when they think about trying to optimize even their own business with AI tools or passing that along to their clients and For us, as an example, we run paid advertising where we want to know how things are from the whole chain. So when somebody clicks from a meta ad, goes to your website, and then signs up or bails out, we track all of that. A typical digital agency doesn't care about heat mapping your website. That's not their job. That's not what they do. They do the paid ad placement. a bunch of your ads or a bunch of your traffic's going off a cliff. They can address that with you and say, hey, we think your team needs to fix your website or your landing page or whatever. But if you don't have those in-house resources to do that, or if your agency is not advising that, then you have a problem where nothing's talking to each other. And I like to think of it as like a bridge. Any point, any crack in a bridge, if you have a car driving over it, it's going in that dip. So we're trying to fix the whole bridge from buyer sees you to buyer converts and all those divots in between agencies can even not be shoring up those those divots. So I think even smart agency owners are like, I really need to keep track of all this stuff for my clients. I can't just be telling them, yeah, you got this many impressions or whatever. If they if the conversion side of it is not clear, that's a problem.

Jordan Lally:11:22
Right. I don't care if I get a billion impressions, if I earn zero dollars from those billion impressions, what the hell is the point? You know? I think attribution is so underutilized and not spoken about enough in the marketing world. And you are, what you're describing is performance marketing to a T, right? Cooling to get impressions. It's cool to drive traffic, but where is the lead following off? And if they are coming from Meta and we're also running Google, did they ever click on a Google ad?

Sara:11:26
Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Jordan Lally:11:51
Right? You need to track the customer journey. What softwares do you use to...

Sara:11:51
Right.

Sara:11:58
Yeah. Yeah. So we use, you know, Microsoft clarity we use to install heat mapping, but we also use AI to now analyze all those, you know, recordings. If you like, even a year ago, we were like having to watch them ourselves and try to figure out, okay, where's the button failing or whatever. Now we just give it to Claude and we're like, diagnose the problem here. but you know, there's a lot of like, softwares that I think what we feel is there's a problem where you're duct taping all these software's together a little bit, where you're like, you have Google analytics, have, you know, Meta's analytics. You also can integrate some of these dashboards. There's lots of tools, obviously call rail, SEMrush. There's all these different tools. But I think for us, it's like, we are still very much in the mix of like having to interpret like, okay, do we have the right information from Google? Maybe, maybe not, you know, or.

Let's look at our landing page tracking and see what's happened there and make sure we know exactly how many customers came through the checkout page. Let's compare that to what's happening with Microsoft Clarity and really interpreting all of that for the business or the client. think what we are hoping to do in the next probably 18 months is develop something that will make all of that talk together. Cause it's a headache for everybody to try to. you know, whether you're doing it yourself or you're in-house doing it or you're an agency doing it for clients, you're like, I hope that I'm getting the right information from all these dashboards. So, yeah, so that's kind of where we're at right now.

Jordan Lally:13:30
You're right.

Jordan Lally:13:33
For sure, and I've used Meta's dashboard, Google's dashboard. I don't know what the hell is wrong with these damn near trillion dollar companies, but they can't track shit, dude. Like they've been this almost everything. I'm like, how are you this large of a tech company and you're actually featured as dog? You know, it is horrible.

Sara:13:41
Yeah. No, yeah.

Yeah.

I know. Yeah, it's horrible. Yeah. And I think that's the thing that it's like, okay, well, even, you know, with chat GPT rolling out advertising, we're like, what is that going to like, what is that dashboard? Like, what's that going to look like? You know, how accurate is it going to be? And since we're in, you know, like a conversion business more than the lead business, we have to defend like, If we're saying we're going to help you create a system inside your company, we have to actually do that. We can't say we got you this many impressions or what have you. Like we have to say you paid us this amount and now you're making this amount based on facts that we can show you. And I think that's where performance marketing agencies, know, whether they build some internal dashboard or they, basically, everyone's in the same problem of trying to figure out what's actually true.

Jordan Lally:14:45
Right, right. When you are installing these systems, you maybe shed some light on like maybe like the nurturing process that you would install into a company from like they clicked on a Google ad, they became a lead. Do you install any nurturing, pre-email, pre-text, selfie videos, anything at all to kind of nurture that lead before the consultation or I could quick 15 minute call that they might have depending on the business, you know.

Sara:15:09
Yeah, I think email marketing is one of those tools of like, you know, really trying to help stay in front of them, you know, stay in communication, especially if they haven't booked, you know, a coaching call or what have you. Also, you know, it's interesting. I think what we found, like I had a big like one of my clients I worked for had, large email lists and that was largely how they sold. Email still converts really well from a product sales standpoint. but it's amazing how now just people filling out forms, like they just want the information, like they don't want to hear from us as much. They just want to know, like, where do I find out about the detailing prices? You know, they don't necessarily like need to have be chased and chased and chased. At least what we're finding is if we do a good enough job with the ad to form, they just will convert. They don't need to be chased down. I think that ongoing nurturing of those repeat customers and all of that. That's where email marketing is really strategic to increase the lifetime value of those paid acquisitions. So we'd certainly want to see that, you know, whether it's a CRM system, that's really good, or email marketing campaign, that's really good, text campaign, definitely want to add those layers on. Just depends on the size of the business, right? Like we have a client in Florida, they're about rental and detailing company. they don't do a lot of email marketing because the frequency that people are renting those boats, like they rent it, they come on vacation, they go home, maybe they don't come back on vacation to that area. You know, next year they're going to Miami, this year they went to Cape Coral. So it's just, it's not as lucrative as like whereas detailing, right? Like that's super, people need those boats detailed consistently. So that's a different kind of game for them.

Jordan Lally:16:56
100%. When it comes to your own client acquisition, what type of system or strategies do you guys have to incorporate?

Sara:17:04
Well, we obviously use paid advertising because we're a paid company. We also have a good referral network. we like a lot of times we get people in on coaching, but then we upsell them to a higher ticket thing, whether that's a website redo or because we find all the problems and we're like, okay, we've coached you. You now know your website's the problem. We know your website's the problem. You can either go fix that and carry on your merry way, or you can have us do it.

We do upsell that way. upsell sometimes brand stuff, you know, so we'll upsell like, hey, you don't have any of this. You don't have a logo. Like you don't have a brand. You don't have a website. Like you were literally working off of a Google My Business account. Like that's all you have, you know? So it kind of just depends. And then I would say like something that we're expanding into is like free content and education. You know, we have like a $27 course that teaches you how to do. a Google ads campaign in a weekend if you want to do it on your own. And so we're trying to expand into like, what sort of low ticket or free content can we help reach more people and expand into that more education space, which is always a growing space. I mean, we've been aware of it since 2018, but it's so hard to do when you have clients and you're managing your own, like even you doing this podcast, you're giving up time to be with me. that you could be doing sales or whatever else for your business. But it is an investment that we see as a long-term value, especially I think as AI gets more competitive and people are gonna look for people they know like in trust. It's like if you're a known quantity, you're a known face, your public presence, that's where they're gonna look for their resources. So that's kind of where we're moving.

Jordan Lally:18:47
And you hit on the precise reason as to why I of started the podcast, right? Content is king. If someone were to watch a full 60 minute podcast, the probability of them knowing you like, and you would trust in you is like, it shoots to the roof. And now, not when you ever asked for a high ticket, you know, purchase, or you asked for a high ticket sale, it's probably going to convert at a much higher rate. It is a long-term game. Content is definitely not an overnight thing unless you, you know, put money behind

Sara:19:02
Totally.

Jordan Lally:19:17
Content but as a whole different strategy. I do want to shed some light or at least give my insights on the low ticket to high ticket funnel You a great idea by the way do not do free because I think the person The the the differences between someone who comes to the funnel for a free lead magnet a $27 lead magnet is literally night and day. Like I know it's only $27, but the person who paid 27 bucks for this awesome, like low ticket thing, probability of them converting to a high ticket or even a medium, medium ticket sale is substantial compared to I got this free thing from lead rush and that's it. You know, just like the mindset, the call, all that fun stuff.

Sara:20:00
Totally. I agree with you completely. And honestly, that's what we learned. We threw out some free things and it's much better to build a self-liquidating offer where you have some sort of, you're being paid basically to build a buyer list. So then you deploy back to the buyer list a higher level offer. We've seen this with even other folks that we've advised who've now run with it with their own offers and the scaling from

Jordan Lally:20:14
Yes.

Sara:20:29
a $27 or $67 purchase to now a $2,500 certification or whatever is so much easier than you would think it would be. We were talking about how one of our leads came through, you know, many of these leads that come through, but like they're the easiest sales will ever make, you know, like they did a $27 course and we sell them a $4,500 coaching package. They are like, great, done. I'm in, you know, and we're like, that was so easy. Like, you know, whereas when we're doing referral marketing, it's just, you've got to create more trust and it takes more time. And so I think that's why we've been like, to your point, you know, we have had a keen eye on content for years. I mean, I literally, that's what I did for others is create their content, their LinkedIn posts, their podcasts, their, you know, social media posts, but it's always hard to do for you do for others, and you don't do it for yourself. And I think that's, that's the game that we have got to get out of as, you know, as owners. is if you know, whether you're an agency owner, consultant, coach, whatever is you have to start doing the stuff for yourself. It is a long term investment. It can feel expensive with your time, but I think it is where where we ought to go.

Jordan Lally:21:37
Well, it's also you have to look at what is the highest leverage activity that can be doing in my business. And for some podcasts might not be the answer or make it a 10 minute YouTube video might not be the answer. It's outreach, it's emailing, it's DMs, it's trying to generate sales and business for the company. So it kind of does depend on where you are.

Sara:21:47
Right.

Sara:21:59
Holy.

Jordan Lally:22:01
In regards to the low ticket, high ticket funnel, it sounds like you're utilizing Facebook and Instagram ads for this, or are you actually using Google?

Sara:22:07
No, mostly a meta is what we for just for the funnel. It's meta. Google doesn't really make sense for what we're saying. Yeah.

Jordan Lally:22:17
Sure, for sure. Okay. So can you take me to that journey? Just out of curiosity. So I see a meta ad, I click on it, 27 bucks. What exactly are they getting?

Sara:22:26
So they're getting how to build a whole Google campaign from, don't have a Google ads manager account set up to I've launched my first ad. What they also get in that, if there's like a little order bump where they can buy a tool that allows an AI tool that basically allows them to, does it for them. So does the, writes the ad copy for them, make sure, and we use this tool for ourselves. Like we've deployed this tool with our clients and the AI ad creative convert, like we can see it does better than our ad creative sometimes. So we're like, all right, let's use their, this ad creative. And so, it just really teaches you from, don't know anything about Google ads at all. And I'm a local business owner to I want to run Google ads. have now feel confident to launch something. The truth is, is like, it's not easy to do it yourself when you're just trying to follow a YouTube video or whatever, cause you're like, okay, I got stuck.

So we do have some ancillary like support tools like to as part of the package that help you diagnose what's going on.

Jordan Lally:23:33
Even at 27 bucks, that's really good on you guys.

Sara:23:36
Yeah. So we're just trying to get people to try it out. You know, just see if Google ads might work for you. See if you could maybe, because there's a high intimidation factor about setting up your own advertising and spending money online that you're like, I hope this is going to convert because I'm dropping $10 a day, you know, or whatever it is.

Jordan Lally:23:46
Absolutely.

Jordan Lally:23:54
That part, it's like damn, I'm gonna spend money on this. hope it freaking works. Okay, cool. So I just purchased a $27 DIY build my own Google campaign. How do you convert that low ticket buyer into an actual high ticket coaching student? What is that essential pathway?

Sara:24:11
Right now, so there is a offer page that comes up after you. So you can, you you get offered the $27 course, the order bump, and then it can, you can sign up for, our coaching kind of application. And so that's how we, you know, people sign up there, they meet with us and then we decide if they, you know, are a good fit because some, not all local businesses are, should run on Google ads. That's just the truth. Some industries are very expensive. Like for example, if you're a security company, You're fighting ADP, you're fighting Ring Doorbell, you're fighting all the big boys in that pond. If you're a personal injury attorney, you have to have a large budget to play on Google ads. So some of our intake is just figuring out like, what kind of business are you? What kind of ad budget do you realistically have to play with? Because we can't coach you if those two things don't check out. And then from there, it's kind of, you know, we, again, we upsell a website. Sometimes we upsell a higher ticket.

Jordan Lally:25:01
Absolutely.

Sara:25:09
Like let's say it's a personal injury attorney, have multi-channel marketing, they're running billboards, they're streaming, they're running all these different campaigns. And there are some traditional, some digital, that's a more involved thing. We can't coach you for 4,500 bucks for that because we only do that for a single channel.

Jordan Lally:25:30
No, for sure. I'm asking these questions because you're obviously a little bit more advanced than I would say most of the people who I have on the show. And I really learned to dive in and pick your brain because I know all this stuff, but most people don't, you know, I'm like, man, and it's people don't know what they don't know. At one point in time, I didn't know how the low ticket to high ticket process, you know, worked, you know, and once you know, and it's like, dude, this is, this is, this is like changing the game right here. Why did I not do this sooner? But again, you don't know what you don't

Sara:25:44
Yeah.

Sara:25:53
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:26:00
Okay, cool. So there's an upsell opportunity and then possibly book the coaching call. Do you have any outbound sales staff, like a setter to call the people who did purchase the $27 low ticket thing to try to get them on a coaching call or like an implementation call?

Sara:26:00
Exactly.

Sara:26:15
Yeah, we don't right now. It's something that's on our, you know, horizon that would we would implement. I think we're still refining our product. You know, there's other products that were like, hey, maybe we should spin this up, you know, rather than this course. So it's like, I think we're still trying to figure out before we really invest in that, like what's the right product. But yeah, I definitely see so much value in that. And the second we had a winning, like a product that we feel like this is crushing, like we would definitely. have a setter in that position because I think there's so much value in not doing that work yourself.

Jordan Lally:26:50
No, absolutely. What would be the price difference between, um, I come in at $27. Cool. There's an option for a $4,500 coaching program. What's the difference between that coaching program and like the done for you version of that.

Sara:27:06
that's more custom priced. So it depends on the size of business and size of ad budget. You know, that could be 13 K a month to 20 K a month depends on how complex we're, we're talking of multi-channel marketing. I think it also depends on how many AI tools we're going to build for like that team to have in house. Like, so if you have a one person marketing, let's say you, a of these, a lot of these local businesses, We'll either have no marketing person or sales. They'll have a sales team. They'll have operations, but they won't have a marketing person. They might have an agency or contractor that they give that to, or they have somebody who's sort of been tapped for marketing, like, isn't, they're like, I'm not really a marketing person. I'm sales slash marketing. So it depends on how robust a team is. If they have a team of three marketing people, that's a different game for us to say, okay, you don't need as much automation. But if they're a one-man band who's

Jordan Lally:27:52
Right.

Sara:28:05
not as experienced in marketing, especially on the paid side, we're going to bring in more automated tools to help them manage stuff than we would maybe bring for a more robust team.

Jordan Lally:28:18
Gotcha. OK, so thanks for the insights. I want to dive into the power of AI agents. So I have a client. He's in the e-comm space. He owns an agency in the e-comm space. He does Google PPC. We deployed an AI agent to where, so we do cold email for him. When he receives a positive reply, From that reply, it creates a Google PPC campaign automatically, literally within seconds based on like the Apollo data, his website, competitors, et puts this in a nice, super sexy document and then sends that off to the lead in like under 60 seconds from that. Yes.

We essentially tell them that you have two options. You can either build this campaign out yourself, or you can schedule a 15 minute call and we'll do this for you. And that's kind of like our process. And that right there, what you're describing, the $27 ticket and this free lead magnet that we're giving away for this e-comm guy, kind of similar, right? Kind of the same. And I bring this up because you're talking about deploying AI tools and AI agents and how many do we have to install, all this fun stuff.

For everyone listening out there, can almost do anything, almost anything with AI agents and AI tools. Like a process that is repeated and manual can be done by an AI agent and probably a lot better than you can do it. like look at that seriously. It will change your business. I promise you. In regards to that though, AI agents that you use internally, can you shed some light on those?

Sara:29:39
there.

Sara:29:50
Yeah, I mean, I think we are maybe just dipping our toe more into it. I think with Claude, that's opened up a whole new game. Like we've built our own software. You can call it vibe coding, you know, but we've built our own software, like I said, to, or beta testing this on our clients of like, that, I told you, duct taping together, Clarity and Google Analytics, all this. So that's something we've deployed. You know, we have... even just simple little agent like my husband has an agent that goes through his whole, all his emails and gives him an executive report, right? Like today, here's what you need to miss. You need to not miss these things in your email. You need to email this person back. So some of the work that a VA would do, we are outsourcing to an agent because we could use the VA for higher value, human high touch things that we need. Our operations manager, uses AI within

Jordan Lally:30:25
I'm saying.

Sara:30:46
ClickUp, I don't know if you're familiar with that task management system, but it's like Asana or any of these. And they've rolled out AI within ClickUp. And so we have a recap email writing agent that writes the recaps for a coaching session or a client call or anything like that. So I'm having my operations person spend a lot less time doing menial tasks that she's more valuable than that.

That's where we were really looking for anywhere where we're like, I want to give this to an assistant. I want to pay someone $20 an hour to do that. Like whatever that task is, that's what, and then also more complicated tasks. Like I need all of this stuff to talk to each other and it's not talking. Can you fix it? You know, like for example, with clarity, like having an agent that goes through and analyzes all the people's clarity. and then gives us a report that we can simply give to the client and say, again, we're not fighting because websites tend to be sacred cows for people. it's like, we're not fighting you on your website based on our opinion of your website. Like literally your users are doing these things and they're mostly on mobile. So you're obsessed with your desktop version of your website, but your mobile version is actually where it's all jacked up. And that's what this feedback is telling us. Do it with it what you want. But that's what the facts are.

I think that's some, but there's so many, to your point, there's so many ways that businesses can use agents and we're even like feeling behind. like, oh my gosh, we need an agent for that. need an agent for that. Like it's, think everybody, you know, it like.

Jordan Lally:32:17
I feel behind too, but like we're not, trust me, we're way ahead of the freaking spectrum on most of this continuous stuff.

Sara:32:21
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's kind of to answer your question. think the, know, I was just talking to my husband today. Like I feel like for marketers in general, people are going to look to you and they're going to say, what is your tech stack? Like, what is, how do you, like how, what do you use to manage your world? Prove to me that you're using AI because I know marketing has a lot of like, you know, you can outsource copywriting, can outsource ad design development. Like

Jordan Lally:32:37
Yeah.

Sara:32:50
Basically anything that we used to do, proposal writing. Like we have everything outsourced to AI at this point.

Jordan Lally:32:59
It's literally insane. And as long as the tool, the software that you're using has an API key, you can essentially connect those two together. And the best part is you don't need to know how to code. You just say, hey, Claude, I want this done. Make it happen. It's like, OK. And then you come back an hour later, and it's done. It's f-ing crazy.

Sara:33:07
Exactly.

Sara:33:17
Yeah, even with Claude code, you're like, make this. And then you're like, I'm stuck. What do I do now? And it's like, you need to set up a database. I don't know how to do that. Okay. To set it up for me, you know, it's just amazing. These tools is like magic for sure.

Jordan Lally:33:32
Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's see. I know one other tool that we like to use internally is essentially client reporting. So we use instantly for our software to send out cold emails, right?

Whenever, like every week, it gathers the data, so how many emails were sent out, how many were open, positive replies, opportunities, all that fun stuff. It takes all that data per client and then sends that into like a nice sexy little spreadsheet. And that's essentially a task that a client success manager would have done, and now all that's automated. So we can focus on keeping our clients happy in other ways. You know what I mean? So, yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, let me see. I have more questions for you. Give me a second here.

Sara:34:07
love that.

Sara:34:13
I think that's a really great idea. hadn't thought about doing that with instantly, but I think that's definitely a hack. reporting is such a huge aspect of marketing and it's tedious.

Jordan Lally:34:23
Absolutely. I'm not sure if you guys utilize cold email at all, but instantly is my favorite email software. You brought up something about, give me a second, the data. F your feelings. What does the data say? Right? Like the business owners that you're talking to. I want my desktop website looking sexy, but nobody's on a desktop looking at your website, bro. Everybody's on mobile. All right. Optimizer for mobile, dude.

Sara:34:36
Yeah. Yeah.

Sara:34:41
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that's the most frustrating as a brand person. I have both of those people in my brain, right? The brand person like, but this looks pretty and I want it to like, but it's like, these videos are dragging the page speed and like, you know, this is if this is supposed to be more than a business card website. And I think this is where people need to understand. Are you using your website as a business card to like attract opportunities to, you know, if you're a startup founder, you want investors to look at a pretty website. You don't need it to convert. But if you are a business that needs your website to make sales, you can obsess about keeping your video that's like dragging the page speed down because again, that bridge is breaking there, you know? So I think that that's where you really have to understand like what are you doing? Like what are you doing with your website? What's the goals? You know, if you're What type of business are you? What do need your website and your sales pages to do? And then you do have to listen to the data. And it's hard.

Jordan Lally:35:49
Absolutely.

From a Google PPC perspective, or just a Google ad perspective, I come from a meta background. You'll lose me in two seconds inside Google, but I know meta like the back of my hand. I know on the meta side, you want to utilize a funnel, like not a website, but a funnel. With local service businesses, let's say you're helping out dentists or a lawyer, would you say a funnel is a better approach for that? Or maybe like a full blown, full scale website with more information?

Sara:36:21
both, both can be done, but well, think that funnels, you know, are very ad friendly because they're set up with that funnel psychology. so if, especially if you're running an offer based funnel, right? If you're like, Hey, we are just promoting, car wraps and we have a really great deal for car wraps. And, know, we want to drive our Google ad traffic to this car wrap promo deal that we're trying to do. Right. That's, that's a great way to use a funnel. But if you're like, again, like going back to the boat. detailing company, the size of the boat matters, the amount of like, like types of like servicing on that boat, people might want more of a buffet of options. So in that way, we were driving traffic straight to the whole homepage, but right on the homepage, shows you here's the services, here's the size of boats we can do. Cause that's also a limiting factor. Like if you have a huge yacht, you know, and this boat rental company only has three employees, they can't service that size of yacht. You know, they, that's just too, they don't have enough people.

So I think that it depends on, know, a lot of it's about calls. And so if you're a business that really needs the phone to ring, just having it go to like a lead form, you know, where they're getting that phone call right away, you're responding within five minutes via text, even after hours. This is where another AI thing, you know, AI receptionist, like if you can set up an AI receptionist that after hours immediately hits somebody back and says, hey, I'm, you know, Sarah from blah, blah, blah, law firm. You've missed us. you know, you're after hours. I know you just got a car accident, but like, you know, we will call you tomorrow or the next business day. Please leave us a message with all of your information so we can have a member of our team call you back. Like that speed to lead is so like, especially with local, like you, if you can respond within like for personal injury, if you can respond within five minutes, you're 78 % more likely to convert a lead. So a lot of these businesses speed to reaction is where it's at, you know, for for Google especially, like, because if you're paying for that lead, you got to fall through on giving them that phone call or reaching out to them.

Jordan Lally:38:25
Absolutely. Do you know who Alex Hermos is?

Sara:38:28
yeah, for sure.

Jordan Lally:38:29
So I love this video that he made back when he had Jim launch before he sold it. There was one client in particular that was like 4X and everybody else in the program. And Alex is like, dude, like, what are you doing differently? Like you're in the same ads for you as everybody else. Like yet you're in the same program. How are you 4X better results? He's like, I hired one person. Her only job is to call the lead as soon as they come in. That's all she does. She doesn't do anything else, but just call the lead as soon as they come in. And because of that, I 4X the company.

Sara:38:53
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jordan Lally:38:59
this one thing it's so crazy so spiritually it matters

Sara:39:02
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've seen that like with this like boat rental. just go back to them because they're an easy example. But I mean, they 3X their business within like seven months just running ads, following through. They hired two more employees this year. They're going to triple their business. Like it's just it's amazing what it can do for a local business to just, you know, do some paid advertising, have a really good closing system and just seal up that bridge. You know, that's really That's really what makes Google sing is if you can do that.

Jordan Lally:39:32
Absolutely. Two or three more questions for you. Looking back, when you first pivoted into the consulting, Dunfue agency side, what are some things that you wish you knew before you got into the industry?

Sara:39:35
Yeah.

Sara:39:47
that's a good question.

I think I wish I knew like how much websites were going to be a factor, to be honest. That's been something that to me has been like, gosh, we have to do another website, you know? And it's like, I think there's so many people are so proud of their website that's even five or 10 years old. And it's like, I don't know how to tell you this, but your website sucks, you know? And again, it's not my opinion, but Google thinks it sucks.

Jordan Lally:40:04
I appreciate it.

Sara:40:22
All of our heat maps are telling you it's the clarity is telling you it sucks. So I think what we found getting into that is we didn't realize we were going to have to be so much in the website redoing business. Thankfully, we have a background in that. We have the team, we have the contractors to do that work. But I think I really was very idealistic in thinking like, oh, we can just come in and get these paid systems going and make sure that they have the sales team doing the right things.

But almost every single time we have to deal with the website. And so that's something that I wish I had known of like, okay, if you're going to really fix these things for people most of the time, 90 % of the time, the website is the problem. If people are running ads and not seeing those returns, it's almost always the website. And I mean, we have had clients running, you know, six figures and ad spend a year on a broken website, having no idea that the website is actually

Jordan Lally:41:15
you

Sara:41:19
the problem. And so they think, I'm getting, I'm getting leads. I'm still getting certain amount of stuff per month, but actually that's all coming from their referral and their salespeople. Their advertising is doing nothing. And then we come in and we say, Hey, we're looking at your advertising. We're looking at your website. We're seeing this broken bridge. You had no idea. You just dropped six figures in ad spend last year into the toilet. And so it's like, that's something that I wish I knew we are going to have to address people's websites so much because It has been an interesting thing for us of trying to get away from, you know, doing people's creative work. We're still, we got to address the website most of the time.

Jordan Lally:41:58
No, for sure. Especially with PPC. And I think we have felt victim or became a victim of the propaganda from GoDaddy and Squarespace. But it's like, I get a website. All you need is a website. And not your website sucks, dude. Get it back to your point. It's so funny. And I guess on our side, thank God.

Sara:42:10
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jordan Lally:42:21
vibe coding, you know, we can just use clod or Gemini, you know, whip that shit up in like two seconds. It looks hella nice anyways, you know?

Sara:42:26
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a lot of ways. I mean, it's amazing that you can build like a landing page in seconds, you know, but I think that the thing that we're trying to like figure out is like, how do we get out of the website business a little bit? know, that's not really what we want to be doing for folks. And I'm wondering if as people are becoming more aware, they're going to start having their teams or their contractors fix their websites.

Jordan Lally:42:35
It looks like

Jordan Lally:42:44
Okay.

Sara:42:56
naturally because they're like, I just didn't know this was the problem. I think that's what bugs me is so many times agency owners and business owners have no idea like what's happening with their stuff. And so we've even told agency owners like, why do you not have clarity on every single one of your clients? Like, because when something breaks and they call you about they're pissed about their ads, you need to know where the problem is. And so many agency owners don't even track this stuff.

Jordan Lally:43:24
Yeah, even to take it one step further, the client should never call you saying, I'm pissed. I mean, you want to have a proactive leadership position like, hey, you're at your sucking right now, but we're on it. mean, is everyday, getting back to what you said about websites, is it good LTV though? Like, is it a good up so even though you don't want to do it? Yeah.

Sara:43:33
Yeah, exactly.

Sara:43:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. The perceived value of a website is very high. And the cost of doing it is decreasing because we can use all these tools, you know? So it's not like I have to have like someone do the copy and someone do the design and somebody do, you know, I still have people that do those things, but it is getting more more competitive to be able to do websites pretty quick.

Jordan Lally:43:48
Mmm.

Jordan Lally:43:55
for sure.

Jordan Lally:44:08
For sure. Agreed, agreed. And then last question for you. What is, what are you, the husband, the team, the leader, rush, the family? What are you guys looking forward to the most in the next 12, 20 part months? Any big plans?

Sara:44:20
Yeah, I think for us, we're really looking forward to expanding into the education side of this and the certification side of this. think, you know, I read today with Anthropic, like 65 % of the tasks that are performed by marketing professionals are going to be replaced by AI. And like that's a huge threat to marketing people everywhere, whether you're in-house, whether you're an agency owner, whether you're, you know, a contractor, consultant, whatever.

And so I think for us really helping, you know, I think you and I are, there's a group growing group that's more like in the 0 % to one 0.1 % of people tracking AI stuff. But as we can kind of throw more knowledge over our shoulder, as we're tracking ahead and kind of keep tossing more information behind us and people are picking it up and they're internalizing it, we can actually get people more trained. For me, the saddest thing is to think about people being left behind. So thinking about whether you're a marketer.

And you now just don't have the tools to do your job or you're a local business guy who didn't pay attention. And then now you're, you know, you're not even anywhere on an AI world. Or you're a consultant that just fell behind on knowledge and keeping your, your, your skills sharp. I think that's what we're excited to keep rolling out resources and tools. Like if we can get the software built in launch that helps agencies connect all the dots and just, Hey, the AI will tell you where the problem is in your client account. if we can help a business owner just learn a little bit, like how to build some AI tool for their business. Like just one step, you know? And I think just helping people baby step towards the future. Cause I think that what we're really seeing with AI is a coming storm. And I think it can also be an opportunity. And so I think for us, we're excited cause I feel like we're at the front end of spearheading that opportunity and hopefully taking people along for the ride with us.

Jordan Lally:46:15
Oh my gosh, yes, I think AI, wave will create more millionaires than any other wave in history ever. Like, it is fantastic. And like you said, you and I are definitely out of the curve. And if you can keep passing the knowledge behind you, I, maybe I'm selfish, I'm not doing that, but we need people like you, Sarah. We definitely need people like you to pass the knowledge.

Sara:46:24
Agreed. Yeah.

Sara:46:38
I think it's like, you know, rising tide lifts all boats, right? The more competitive that every business gets and that more people that understand these tools, the more we can actually produce and do great things for the world. I do think entrepreneurs and business owners can change the world. They can help solve so many huge problems. I also think, you know, well-funded families and communities like when you're a business owner and you don't have leads, your whole system is choked. You know, you're your team is, you're stressed about payroll, you're stressed about, you know, every aspect of your business. And when you were getting to six figure months and all of a sudden your whole thing is changing, that is freedom for that person, for their individual team and family, but also for their community. They're giving more to charity, they're helping more in, you know, whether that's volunteering or whatever. So I really believe like lead generation AI adoption, these things are... have some philanthropic or positive social change attached to them. If people can just get out of their own way and say like, okay, I'm just going to suck it up and realize I got to learn a new thing. And as an elder millennial, like I'm resistant to every new social media that comes out. like, hell no, I'm not learning Snapchat or whatever. TikTok, like I'm done with these things. Like, but I've had to like get over that and be like, well, I've sort of figured out chat GPT. Now I got to like learn Claude, like You know, like I probably got to look at Gemini. So I think it's just, you have to just sort of get over your own resistance to change. And that's where the magic happens.

Jordan Lally:48:10
I love your mindset and because you possess that mindset, that's exactly why you are in the position that you are. You shouldn't be successful. So good job, Sarah. Of course, where can they find you? Last thing, where can they find you?

Sara:48:18
Thanks Jordan.

Sara:48:22
You can find me on LinkedIn. Sarah Fernandez is the easiest place to find me. And then our website is Lerushsocial.com.

Jordan Lally:48:32
Again, Sarah, it was a pleasure having you on. It was a great conversation. Audience, we'll talk to y'all soon.

Sara:48:38
Thanks, Rodan.