Freedom Blueprint Podcast Hosts: Justin Deese

Guest: Ryan Fenn, Founder & CEO of Chiirp

Episode Summary

Justin Deese sits down with Ryan Fenn, the founder of Chiirp, to break down what actually separates home service companies that convert leads from the ones that burn marketing dollars. Ryan traces his journey from selling windshield repair at gas stations to running a SaaS pushing $1M a month — and explains why the real game has always been the same thing: bridging the gap between a lead and a sale.

Inside the conversation: the 1-minute speed-to-lead rule and the conversion cliff that follows, why "the leads suck" is almost always a follow-up problem, the 12 to 18 touch points it takes to hit max conversion, the texting style that outperforms polished marketing copy, what AI is now revealing after analyzing half a billion messages sent through Chiirp, and why Facebook is about to overtake Google in ad spend — and what that means for contractors.

Why This Episode Matters

If you're spending money on leads — Angi, LSA, Facebook, Google, Thumbtack, anywhere — and your close rate isn't where you want it, the problem usually isn't the lead source. It's the minute after the lead comes in, and the 14 days after that. Ryan lays out, in plain terms, the specific gaps where home service owners leak money and the exact framework Chiirp uses to plug them.

About the Guest

Ryan Fenn is the founder and CEO of Chiirp, a communication and automation platform built specifically for home service businesses. Before Chiirp, Ryan started his entrepreneurial career selling windshield repair door-to-door, then at gas stations, then built a 7-figure online course teaching others to do the same — all driven through SMS follow-up. He launched Chiirp in 2018, narrowed in on home services around 2021, and has since grown it into a platform integrated with ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, i360, FieldPulse and more, used by operators like Tommy Mello.

Key Takeaways

• A lead is a moment in time, not a contact record. When that moment passes, you no longer have a lead — you have a contact. The whole game is reaching them while their brain is still on the problem.
• One minute is the conversion cliff. After 60 seconds, conversion drops by roughly half. By 3–5 minutes, you've lost half again. By 5–30 minutes, you're close to zero.
• Maximum conversion sits at 12–18 touch points. Three calls and a shrug isn't follow-up — it's a head start for your competitor.
• Words matter more than effort. Ryan went from 1-in-10 yeses to 9-in-10 by changing four words at the gas station. The same precision applies to your text scripts.
• Sound like a friend, not an ad. The highest-converting text messages read like you're texting a buddy, not running a promo. Conversational beats clever.
• Eternal drip > giving up. Long-tail follow-up at 3, 6, 9, 12 months turns dead leads into hot leads you didn't have to pay for again.
• AI should make you superhuman, not replace the human. Use it to spark conversations and surface the leads bubbling to the top — then let your sales team close them.
• Facebook is about to surpass Google in total ad dollars. Intent-based search is getting crowded by private equity money. Demand creation on social is the contractor's escape hatch — if you have a bridge that converts.

Episode Timestamps

• (00:01) The question every owner should be able to answer: how fast does your team respond to a new lead?
• (01:07) Ryan's origin story — selling windshield repair door-to-door, then at the gas station
• (02:28) The big idea: bridging the gap between a lead and a sale
• (03:34) The 2014 windshield repair course, $2M in sales — all driven through text messaging
• (05:24) Chiirp's MVP and the three years of struggle before niching down to home services
• (06:50) How home service owners reshaped the product (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber integrations)
• (08:40) $30K/mo to $100K/mo from a bedroom during COVID — and the climb to ~$1M/mo
• (09:30) The customer journey framework: every gap is a place leads die
• (10:11) A lead is a moment in time, not a contact record
• (11:59) The 1-minute rule — the conversion cliff backed by Salesforce data
• (12:50) The DEXA scan story: how one competitor lost a booking by 2 minutes
• (15:42) Justin's take: speed-to-lead in their own contracting business
• (17:05) "They tried Angi and the leads sucked" — why the leads aren't actually the problem
• (18:00) The four-word change at the gas station: 1-in-10 to 9-in-10
• (20:16) Follow-up as a skill: the 12–18 touch point standard
• (21:30) The 7–14 day aggressive cadence and the long-tail eternal drip
• (23:31) Justin's barn story — a year-old lead that closed on a single text
• (24:49) Chiirp as partner, not just software — taking marketing off the contractor's plate
• (25:50) Half a billion text messages + AI: what the data is starting to reveal
• (27:22) The biggest follow-up mistake contractors make on their own
• (29:24) Why texts that sound human outperform texts that sound like marketing
• (31:23) The math on manual follow-up — why it breaks at 10 leads a day
• (33:00) Social media as a lead source: Facebook surpassing Google in ad spend
• (34:30) Intent-based vs. interrupt-based leads, and how to bridge the second kind
• (36:42) Home Service Hoorah event mention — VIP sold out, GA running low
• (37:24) Where to find Ryan and Chiirp

Memorable Quotes

"A lead is a moment in time. Once that moment passes, you don't have a lead anymore, you just have a contact."

— Ryan Fenn

"They go, 'I tried Angi, those leads suck.' Well, actually, you suck. People are successful with them for a reason."

— Ryan Fenn

"Text messaging lets you put your arm around the guy, pull him out of the room, shut the door on the thousand other people yelling at him, and have his attention for a few seconds. Don't waste that on an ad."

— Ryan Fenn (paraphrased)

"Use AI to turn you into a superhuman, not to eliminate you from the process."

— Ryan Fenn

Resources & Links

• Chiirp (book a demo): chiirp.com (note the two i's — C-H-I-I-R-P)
• Ryan's Skool community on Facebook ads for home services: skool.com/RyanFenn
• Connect with Ryan: Add him as a friend on Facebook
• Home Service Hoorah event: Tickets at the Freedom Up Blueprint site (VIP sold out at recording)

Action Items for the Listener

1. Time how long it actually takes your team to respond to a new lead — today, not in theory. If it's over a minute, that's where to start.
2. Audit your follow-up cadence. Count the touch points. If it's under 12, you're leaving money on the table.
3. Read your last 10 outbound texts to leads. If they sound like an ad, rewrite one to sound like you're texting a friend, and A/B it.
4. Build (or turn on) a long-tail drip — 3, 6, 9, 12 months. Year-old leads close. They just need a reason to remember you.
5. Pick one source where you've blamed the lead quality. Now look at your conversion process for that source instead.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Homeservicehoorah.com

Welcome back to the Freedom Up Blueprint podcast, the show built for home service owners who are done playing small ball. So I got a quick question for everyone listening before we dive into today's conversation. When is the last time you actually timed how long it took your team to respond to a new lead? If you don't know the answer, you're going to want to hear this conversation today. Trust me. Today, I've got Ryan Finn in the hot seat.

Ryan is the founder of Chirp and Chirp is honestly one of the most talked about communication and automation platforms in the home service space right now. If you've ever lost a lead because nobody followed up fast enough or watched a customer ghost you after the estimate, then this is the conversation you need to hear. So Ryan, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks Justin, happy to be here.

Ryan, before we jump in and go deep on Chirp and all the cool stuff you guys are building, take me back a little bit to what you were doing before Chirp even existed. Like, I don't know, what were you doing on a random Tuesday?

Well, when I was eight on Tuesdays, would know. On a random Tuesday before Chirp, was selling windshield repair in a gas station. That's what I would have been doing. Yeah, yeah. I started my first business. This was 2026, so this would have been 2010. I should say my first...

Okay, that's some hardcore sales.

successful business. Started lots of little things. I've always loved entrepreneurship, but that was my first successful business. Started windshield repair, going door to door, and then I saw a girl doing it at a gas station. I was like, man, she's smarter than me. And she was letting the cars come to her while I was out going and finding the cars, you know?

And she figured out something that really stuck with me and has stuck with me and actually has become the biggest part of my business, which is bridging the gap between lead and sale, like opportunity, know, person and deal, right? And you know, because we can all get traffic. We can get traffic on Facebook, we can get traffic on Google.

Yeah.

we can get traffic at the gas station, right? But they're not there for, they're not necessarily there for that thing, right? They're not there, they're there to get gas. How do you bridge them to your product or service? How do you bridge somebody from Facebook to buy your product or service, know? So she did the windshield, she washed windshields.

and that little act of service gave her the opportunity to look at the windshield, look to see if there was a crack in the windshield, and then start a conversation. It was that little tiny thing that made all the difference and it opened up a huge world to me. I started that first business, did really well with it. And then...

They didn't know they needed it. Yeah.

you know, Facebook traffic or social media traffic.

introduce them to an idea and then bridge the gap and close them on buying my thing. We were able to do like two million dollars in that course and I did it all through text messaging. The way that I bridged that gap is I would put an ad up and then once somebody expressed information I would begin communicating them through text message. I would send videos and testimonials and different things to you know and that is how I bridged that gap and made a bunch of money there.

It's been the same process again, finding out how do I then find people, you know, and we've discovered, you know, all these different ways that it is very useful in home services. How do we, you know, plug all the gaps, all the holes along the customer journey? And we've grown, we've done really well. We're pushing about a million dollars a month now, ⁓ you know, in the last three years. And so it's become a...

a really powerful tool for home service companies to convert more leads. So here we are now today. Gas stations to hear.

Yeah. Well, that's it. That's quite a journey. So did when you

started out by building chirp, did that happen through a conversation with a contractor? When you started chirp, it even like, was the focus on contractors yet, or was it just more of a broad and you've eventually tapered down?

No, so it was probably 10 % of what it is today, the idea. the idea was Facebook leads, instant text message, and then follow up. That was the, we'll call it the MVP, the minimum viable product. And when I built it, I had no intention of just going after home services. It was just anybody that would buy this thing. was, you know, and then.

I miss the entrepreneur

journey, right? You're like anybody who will give me money.

Yeah, I was selling it to real estate agents. A food truck bought it. E-commerce guys were buying all these different things. ⁓ again, the bridge was, you know, how do I convert people into buying this thing? And part of that process was discovering the message. And then if everybody's heard, know, the riches are in the niches.

Mm-hmm, yep.

Or

I think it depends on where you're from.

Oh, this is really cool, but what if it integrated with Service Titan, Housecall Pro and this? And I said, well, what do you mean? Explain to me that, well, we have, you when an estimate goes out, what if we could follow up here? And what if when a lead comes in from Angie or from Thumbtack or from here, and we started to build all these integrations? And pretty soon,

It was far more than just, hey, let's convert Facebook leads into jobs. was, let's convert any lead from any source. Let's make sure that all of our estimates are being heavily handled at the right, perfectly laser targeted follow up. Let's make sure that we have multi-channel follow up. Let's make sure that we have, ⁓ you know, wherever they could drop off when somebody books a job or, you know, what do we want to say when somebody, when somebody, you know, cancels a job? All these different ways.

missed calls, abandoned calls, that stuff. And so we started going from that 10%, which was Facebook leads, to all these holes in the customer journey. And that's really where we discovered that the home services was who could benefit the most from us. And so we doubled down and said, okay, let's tighten up these integrations so we have the deepest integrations into like ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, i360, FieldPulse.

a bunch of different things. And then ⁓ our messaging is solely around home service, how to convert more home service jobs. Our campaign ⁓ builder and all the things and all of our templates are all around home service. Our coaches are all trained around home service. So it took a good three or four years to discover that part of this process. And then once we did, I was struggling in that 20, $30,000 a month range.

Mm-hmm.

And then I was able to, during COVID, when I kind of discovered this, I took us from that to about $100,000 a month from my bedroom, just like selling it to home service guys from my bedroom. And then we started to really get momentum, you know, and Tommy Mello got on board and...

all these influencers started to get on board and, ⁓ you know, because they were using it in their own businesses and we just started to scale from there. Now, like I said, we're pushing that million dollar a month mark. Hopefully, hopefully the next month or two, we'd have our first seven figure month. So it'd be sweet. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Nice. So let's,

let's back up just to here. know you gave us a little bit of a glimpse into what Chirp does, but for anybody listening who doesn't know, give us like the full rundown on how does Chirp help business owners make more money.

So we look at your customer journey, right, from the beginning to the end, and everybody wants to tighten up their processes, they want to get things dialed.

But I feel like a lot of times ⁓ contractors, don't put enough weight onto things that seem trivial, but are actually very important. They seem trivial, are actually the thing, right? They're actually super important. One of them being speed to leads. We talk about at the beginning of the journey, if we look at it like a plant in the ground, or a tree, let's say we're growing a tree, the most delicate part of that journey for the tree is that

Mm.

moment that it sprouts out of the ground right ⁓ it can easily be smashed and destroyed

Same with a lead. We have a minute. A lead is not, a lot of contractors look at a lead as a contact information, a name, a phone number, maybe like a certain request, like I need an HVAC inspection or whatever it is. That's how the lead is represented to us, but a lead is actually a moment in time. So if we have a timeline, a human brain is moving through a thousand different three,

things throughout the day and there's a moment in time where their brain becomes a lead for us because all the things line up they need the service or they need they're they're interested in the service and they offer us their information and request information now

Their brain is on that thing for that moment and then that thing then that time passes and their brain moves on to other things or they resolve it in some other way and now you just have a contact you don't have a lead the lead passed the moment in time passed you have their contact information, but it's no longer a lead. It's just a contact and

people will go, well these leads suck, and you go, well they're not even leads because you missed that opportunity. And so you missed the moment in time. so when we talk about speed to lead, ⁓ we find, and this has been clearly true across the board with us, it was proven with ⁓ case studies done by Salesforce and all these big internet guys, ⁓ a minute is the timeframe that we have to get the best conversion rate with our leads. So if somebody's on,

⁓ okay.

If somebody's on your website, if somebody is on Google LSA, if somebody is filling out a Facebook lead form, ⁓ they call and you miss the call, any of these opportunities, you have a minute to contact before that timeline moves. And what happens is we see a stiff drop off right at that one minute mark to where.

now that lead has become much less likely to convert by about half, so you're losing about half your opportunity. And then by minute three to five, we're missing another half again. And then by five to 30, your chances of converting drop like almost to nothing. And so I'll give you an example. I had to get a DEXA scan, so.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

That's where you go, for the listeners, a DEXA scan, you go into the doctor's office, it's a big, like ⁓ one of those, looks like a big scanner, goes over your body, and then it tells you that you're fat. That's what a DEXA scan is. At least for so far. Yeah, you're like, these things aren't very accurate, I'm sure. ⁓

You're like, what percentage? That can't be right.

And then you tell your trainer and he goes, no, they're pretty accurate, dude. Like, dang it. So I needed to get this done. And so I looked them up on Google, right? And it said, yeah, I looked up Dexascan and they pop up, right? And there's the five star review. There's two on top.

They both have five star views. They both look the exact same. So I call the first guy. He doesn't answer and he goes to voicemail. So I hang up and I call the next guy on the list.

They answer, they get my name and phone number, they get my time, and they book me for that afternoon, and then I hang up the phone. Once I hung up the phone, I get a text message from the other guy. Hey, did you wanna book your Dexascan? Sorry, I missed your call. Did you wanna book your Dexascan? It was too late, and literally, I looked at the timing on it, and it was two minutes from the time that I had called him to the time that I finished booking with the other one, and I get the text message.

And it was like, you missed, in that one minute, you missed the opportunity. I would have booked them. If he would have texted me 100%, I wasn't shopping. was like, whoever answers, I'm going. And so that one minute cost him the job. He handed that job to a competitor. And had he texted me within one minute, before I had the opportunity to actually get to the call and actually book,

He had a much better chance of catching me. So, or if you'd answer the let's be clear, answering the phone is the best option. We're talking about in the times where you can't answer the phone or whatever it is. ⁓ And that's one of many different ways that this makes sense, but that's the point, is that minute is very, very, very crucial. And a lot of contractors kind of look at that and just see it as not a big deal.

or answered the phone. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm looking at it as going, is it. This is like, this is everything. If you are spending money on marketing and you are not contacting your leads quickly, you're leaving money on the table. And then of course, we go into beyond that, after the speed to lead. Once we solve for that, it's like, okay, what's next in the journey? Follow up, we've all heard follow up.

So

before we go to follow up, I'm gonna make this point. I wanna make sure everybody listening, all the listeners caught what you said, which is one minute. And I think for anybody who caught that, their chest like tightened up a little bit because they thought, well, there's no way to follow up in a minute, which there is a way to do it. And I can tell you when we first started, which we don't own the business anymore, we sold it. When we first started it,

Mm-hmm.

You know, we were waiting on things to ramp up. So we were using some of these lead aggregators that, you know, most people talk bad about. ⁓ we did very, very good with them, but we'd stayed locked in and focused and called them. Like we were a minute was our number. we didn't have any definition if that was the right number or not. It was just like, we were like a minute because we knew after that five other people would call them. And we did so well with those aggregates because of that. But then when we started to grow.

Mm-hmm.

that became the focus shifted to where that wasn't the attention because at that time we didn't have technology to be able to do this in a form, know, chirp wasn't there. So ⁓ I just wanted to make that point of speed to lead by definition, really, you just gave it a timeline. Like you gave it a definitive number of one minute. And for anybody that got nervous, don't get nervous. Don't get nervous.

Yeah,

and think about it like this, right? We hear it a lot. go, they go, I tried Angie. Those leads suck. We go, well, actually you suck. And, and I don't want to, I don't want to paint them as this perfect thing,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you call them three days later and they're like, no, my stuff's taken care of.

people are successful with them for a reason and they exist for a reason. It's not like they're just, you know, and I get it. It's a hard game to play, but I could have made that same excuse at the gas station, right? Angie's going, hey, look, I'm providing the cars coming in. It's up to you to close the deal, to make it happen. The best I can do is get the cars to come into the gas station, right? That's the best we can do on our end.

And so it's always, for me the answer is always, let's look at your lead conversion process. Because if you have a system in place that is duplicatable, it's repeatable, and you can actually look at data and say, okay, why is our close rate X? And.

and can we improve that? Where could we improve it? I'll give you an example on this again. At the gas stations, and this is a lesson I learned early on, when I would walk up to the windshields when I first started to wash the windshields of these people coming into the gas station, I would say, welcome to Mike Chevron, can I wash your windshield for you? And they would say no. About one in 10 would say yes, just because people, seemed generally they didn't want to be bothered, right? They're just, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks.

It wasn't until I changed just four words in my approach.

that I started to be successful. I would walk up and I would say, hi, welcome to Mike Chevron. As a courtesy today, we're washing everybody's windshields. So I went from can I wash your windshield to as a courtesy today, we're washing everybody's windshields. And there's lessons in the words and all that, but the point is not so much in the words themselves, but in the slight change, because the slight change took me from one in 10 saying yes to nine in 10 saying yes. So if I saw 100 cars in a

Mm-hmm.

90 would allow me to wash their windshield or 10 which one's better right and so When people if people aren't looking at their process and going okay, how can we tweak these things?

And this comes from just keeping bad data. If you're trying something different every single time or you're saying something different every single time on the phone, you're not able to track this. And so you have to be very deliberate in what you're saying, your cadence, how you're saying it, what are you saying in your text messages when they go out, and are those words giving you a one in 10 opportunity or a nine in 10 opportunity? And once you find that unlock,

Right.

Pretty soon you go, holy crap, Angie sends good leads. And you go, no, they're the same leads. You just found your bridge, right? You found that bridge and now you can actually convert.

That's pretty good. That's good gold. So you were starting to talk about follow-up was kind of the next step of the process is so we've got speed to lead, which is anything, which is less than a minute, less than a minute. You got to be on it. And next we've got our follow-up.

Yeah.

Yeah, so follow up, obviously we've heard it a hundred million times, fortune's in the follow up, right? But it again becomes cliche, it becomes like, yeah, I do follow up on leads, I call them, I'll call them a couple of times. it's like, follow up is actually a skill that should be mastered. It's not just a something that you just go, yeah, we follow up. It's like, no, there are steps and cadences and different things. And.

This becomes a very difficult process without automation. You're not gonna follow up with 100 % of your leads 15 times, which is like a number that is really important, right? Somewhere between 12 and 18 times that we follow up with leads to reach maximum conversion. Not everybody is going to convert on that first minute, obviously. We don't wanna then take those leads and go, we paid money for that lead. And so it's like,

I'm gonna do whatever I can to get money from that lead. That doesn't cost me more than what it costs to, know, than I would get from the job, but I gotta make sure that I'm maximizing. So I'm gonna follow up consistently with those leads. We typically will follow up fairly aggressively for seven to 14 days using various touch points. We use text messages being the best way to follow up with a lead. Email.

ringless voicemail, then we, ⁓ obviously now this year and everything is a lot of AI involved as well, ⁓ but we are following up consistently with these leads automatically. So, and the great part about this is sales guys don't care, sales guys don't care if the lead is brand new, they care if it's hot. And so like, if a text message goes out seven days later,

and the person responds, yeah, no, no, no, I do need to get that done, yes. That's a new hot lead. That's the same as the day one lead, right? And so if we remove that boring, monotonous part of follow-up from the sales guy's plate and just let them focus on the leads that are bubbling up to the top from the automation, they're much happier.

The owner's happier because he's closing the leads that he's investing money in and this whole kind of system is working in harmony. And ⁓ we'll continue that follow up indefinitely. So what I mean by that is if they do not respond, we're gonna put them into a slow drip that's going to three months, six months, eight months, 12 months. people will get a lead pop up six months later. It'll be like, hey, you reached out about a project six

I wanted to see if that's something you still wanted to explore. And it's not gonna happen every time, but every now and then you get one that goes, yeah, you know what, did that, yeah, I wanna do that. And guess what, that's like a brand new hot lead that you didn't have to pay 200 bucks for, whatever you're paying for your marketing.

So, so I want to, I want to tell a story to submit the exact example you got, cause this just happened to me yesterday. We have a barn and it's a prefab barn and we had a company come out and put it in and it was great. And then a little bit later, about a year ago,

We went back up there again because I wanted one a little bigger. Cause now that I'd had this in, there were some tweaks. It was like, Oh, I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have done that. And so my wife and I started talking about getting another one built. We've gone through a couple of different, you know, contractors and a couple other companies, but I don't remember who I talked to a year ago when we originally talked about this, doing this thing, the guy randomly two days ago sends me a text and says, Hey man, we were talking about a year ago.

about you doing this barn project. just, you know, don't want to bug you, but just wanted to see if this is something you wanted to, to dive into. My wife went, my wife and I went yesterday and signed a contract to get this barn bill. And honestly, had he never, I didn't remember the guy. I mean, once I met him, I was like, Oh yeah, I remember he was a nice guy and whatever. But from a freaking text message that the guy just sent from a year ago,

Perfect.

Now all of a sudden he's got a whole big project that he's doing for us. So, uh, man, it works.

Perfect.

Perfect example. And we see it just like time and time and time again. And what we like to do, like we've morphed into kind of this like, we have really awesome software. We've built this really great tool, it works really well, but we've become more of a like, almost like a partnership or coaching.

company where we say, look, we need really good plumbers, we need really good HVAC guys, we need really good, we need you to be really good at that. We don't need you to be good at Facebook, or we don't need you be good at TikTok, we don't need you be good at software.

And so we like to take that off the plate of the contractors. Hey, we're gonna build all your sequences, we're gonna build all your stuff, we're gonna work with you and help you through this process so that you can be a good HVAC guy and not think about am I following up enough with my leads, am I doing enough here and am I doing enough there? And that's what we've really morphed into is this kind of like partnership where we say hey, and what we've done is we, I,

This was kind of a cool thing we discovered in the last six months. But over the last seven or eight years, I've sent to half a billion text messages through Chirp, through the system. ⁓ All these different contractors, you know. ⁓ Almost caught up to my daughter's texting, ⁓ how much she And I didn't really know how I was gonna use that data until AI came along.

And now I have AI reading through the half a billion text messages and coming back with insight. And it's coming back with all this really incredible insight. Like when is the best time to send messages? What's the best wording to say? What are the best things? And we're training AI to be able to build your campaigns. So you know when I talk about what words you should use, it's finding those things and helping you craft these campaigns that are gonna be higher converting than if you

and much faster testing and that kind of stuff. So it's been really cool to see what it's coming back with. This is like little insights. It's like, Monday morning is actually a really good time to send an estimate follow-up text message. I didn't know that. Don't use certain words as like certain things and certain words and different things and combinations of words. And it's helping people move faster through figuring out their bridge.

So when contractors are doing this on their own, what do you think is one of the biggest mistakes that they make? Let's say from the follow-up side.

⁓ When they're doing it on their own, a lot of times they overthink the messaging and they kind of put their marketing hats on and go, okay, they'll send messages that sound very marketing, like, ⁓

For the next 10 people that respond, you get $49 tune up or whatever. It gives it kind of this like, it's like an ad. It's like they're sending an ad. The best, the highest converting text messages are the ones that sound very conversational as if you're texting your friend. The purpose of text messaging is that it has a personal.

vibration to it, right? And I don't mean the vibration on your phone, but the actual feeling you get when you get a text message.

Think of it like this, if you're in a room with a thousand people pointing at you, that's like our day, right? Every day we see ads all day long. Ads, ads, ads, ads, ads. A thousand people are yelling at us all day long. Look at my stuff, look at my stuff, look at my stuff, look at my stuff. Text messaging allows us to put our arm around the guy, pull him out of the room and close the door with all those thousand people and shut the door and shut it off for a second and have his attention clearly for a few seconds.

If you have that guy's attention for a few seconds, do you wanna then go, for the next 25 guys, you know? It's like, no, you wanna just say, hey Justin, ⁓ hey it's Ryan, ⁓ I'm gonna be in your area tomorrow, do you wanna get a tune up on your AC? Like just a real basic, like just a friendly, like thing. And it's like, yeah, it's like refreshing to be like, it's a human being. And so your messaging should just be.

Mm-hmm.

And people go well, then that's inauthentic. We go no, we're just trying to start conversations. We're not trying to fake anybody out, but we're trying to start a conversation. And once he responds, we're going have a human takeover. We can't have AI now take over. ⁓ I'm like the anti-AI ⁓ guy. I sell AI, but I have a great area with AI right now, and I kind of tell people.

Well, there's still the human

connection. And I think that's one thing that people miss when it comes to AI is people still want human-human connection. I don't think that's ever going to change.

Yeah, 100%. I

say, use it to spark conversations, use it to turn you into a superhuman, not to eliminate you from the process.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, okay. So on the lead, so just to follow up what you said too, ⁓ I think probably consistency is another problem that most contractors have when they do this themselves. you know, cause again, like the example I gave is I got busy, you know,

Well yeah, that goes back to, yeah, and

that goes back to ⁓ when you're following, especially if you're following up manually or anything like that, the process, you're unable to determine what's working and what's not. Because if you can't tell me your exact process,

you can't then go, where is there, let's look at the day two text, is that one doing well? The day five text, is that one doing well? Whatever, right? If you're just following up a bunch of different ways, you can't say, let's fix the words because the words are different every time. And so you have to be consistent, extremely consistent, and then you have to actually track what's going on and then test against different things. You have to have the patience to test against. And that's where we have A-B testing and that kind of

Mm-hmm.

and that allows you to do those things like at the gas station. Had I not been paying attention to the words that I was saying, I wouldn't have been able to fix and make that flip.

Well, and I bet most contractors too don't follow up enough. know, I know most companies I talk to, go, what's your follow up process? like, well, we call them three times. If they don't answer, we don't call them back anymore. I said, well, it's not always important now. Again, go back to the barn story. It wasn't important a year ago. We were kind of in the kick in the tire phase. Now we're ready to go. And now they followed up. So I'm guessing probably most contractors that they try to manually do this in house probably don't follow up enough.

Well, nobody's gone yet.

The numbers are clear that the 12 to 18 touch points is where you're gonna reach maximum conversion and nobody's doing 12 to 18 touch points, no way. And then, you know, manually, if you get 20, even if you got 10 leads a day, by day 10 you've got 100 leads now that you've got a call, you know, and it's like, no way, you know? And so that's not gonna happen. And so yeah, three calls, it's great, it's great start, but.

Mm-hmm. Right.

You

12 to 18 touch points through and calls are cool but what if the guy is one of your leads that just is never going to answer the phone? You're never going to get that guy. Yeah, that's me. I'm never going answer the I answer it.

And that's me. I'm not answering the phone. If you're not saved in my phone, I'm not answering it. But

again, the dude text me.

Okay, cool. So you need to follow up in different ways, because there are some guys that won't respond to text messages, and you get them a voicemail, or you get them an email. ⁓ And so you have to hit them with all these different directions. then again, you go into the eternal drip that is unless they opt out, I'm going to keep following up. And you're going to get those year long leads to pop back up.

Yeah.

So let me ask you this, obviously there's a lot of different places to get leads. The lead cost to acquire a customer is not going down. It's not ever gonna go down. But obviously social media is becoming a huge part of where people are going to buy. Maybe not going to buy intentionally, but they're going to make buying decisions. Are you guys helping contractors in that space capitalize on any of the social media leads that might come in?

Yeah.

Yeah, so this goes back to what I talked about with like Angie leads, Where you go, ⁓ they can provide the traffic.

Can we then convert that into a lead? That's the question. So Facebook, this year actually, will surpass Google for the first time in dollars spent on ads. 400 and something billion dollars will go to Facebook and 400 and something less billion dollars will go to Google. And so people are seeing this shift because Google is, and especially in home services, is being

dominated by people who can spend a lot more to get a job, private equity, these groups come in and go, I'm willing to lose money for a long time before I'll make money, and that's their model, and they're kind of predatory in that way. And so people have to learn to go, okay, where can I get more...

more opportunity and the problem is is search, that's one type of lead, that's an intent based lead. That's somebody that is, they're looking for your product or service. On Facebook there's a billion people but they're not looking for your product or service right now. This is the same as if we send somebody out door to door.

Right? If you go door to door, those people aren't looking, but guess what? Door to door guys can crush it. They can make a lot of money because they interrupt somebody's day and create demand. And if you can create demand, are, you can print your own check, right? It's like, this is it, right? And so, what you have to do is you learn, okay, if there's a billion people over here pulling into the gas station, how do I bridge the gap?

And you create a great ad that says, just like let's use HVAC as an example, right? There's great ads like $49 tune up or some people are just going straight for the kill and say, is your HVAC not working? Like let's talk. And then you have like garage door guys, oh get a tune up for $29. All these different hooks, right? call them hooks to get their attention. And then now we put them on this conversion bridge that then takes them from I don't know who you are to shut up and take my money.

Mm-hmm.

process, right? And once you've nailed that, you have an unlimited amount of leads. You can go to Facebook and say, on traffic, send it to my funnel, send it to my bridge, and I'll get deals. And so what we do, I don't run ads. I've been running ads on Facebook personally for years. I've generated probably 250,000 leads on Facebook forms.

I actually, because I have Chirp, the software, that's my main business. But we want people to take advantage of Facebook ads because it's kind of the way to get out from the tyranny of Google. And so we have a school, if you know it's school, S-K-O-O-L. ⁓

It's a place where guys like me go and teach stuff. We have a school where we teach Facebook ads, how to build this bridge, how to build the whole process. We do teach that process on how to get leads from Facebook that way.

Very cool. So listen, as we wrap up here, I want to say this. Ryan is going to be one of the sponsors at our home service Hoorah that is coming up this year. So make sure you get your tickets. I just got a text message this morning that our VIP tickets are sold out. So only general admission is left and they're going to, we said this at beginning and they're going to sell out fast and there's not very many left and we're still several months ⁓ out.

Get on it.

Come hang out with me and Ryan and Jared and my wife Kristen and all of our and all of our friends and learn some more about business but ⁓ Ryan what is the best way for somebody to get in touch and find out a little bit more about chirp or do a demo?

So go to chirp.com to get a demo, C-H-I-I-R-P dot com. There's two I's, so chirp.com.

Get a demo of Chirp if you're in need of the lead conversion process, if you want help with that in that area. We wanna show you where there's leaks in your business. can help you implement these things. If you're in a space where you need more leads for your business, you wanna learn how to do Facebook ads the way that we do them, you can go to my school, skool.com slash Ryan Fenn. So either of those two will get in touch with me. And be sure to add me as a friend on Facebook. post a lot of really, ⁓ hopefully,

really great stuff there. ⁓ I try to be very open about how we do things and help people ⁓ both on the lead generation side and the lead conversion side.

Well, Ryan, we appreciate you coming and hanging out and spending some time with us and letting us learn a little bit more about Chirp. And my man, we will see you very soon.

Very soon. Heck yeah, thanks Justin. Thanks everybody.