Green Flags in a Local Business: 1. Answers the phone like a human 2. Shows up roughly when they said they would 3. Has real photos instead of stock people 4. Google reviews from real customers, not just their mother 5. Website loads faster than 14 seconds 6. Not afraid to say

This year my wife and I are doing something different for Christmas. We’re building our own hardwood dining table. Started today by testing stains and laying out the dimensions. There’s a unique joy in making something by hand that you’ll use every day

Working on a local project and I’m pumped about it. Logo → website → wrap design. The full package.

My partner closed on a $9,300 interior paint job today Not a bad way to head into Thanksgiving Keeping the winter dreams alive 🙏

🚨 BLACK FRIDAY – 5 Spots Only (Closes When Full) Most service business owners are stuck with one of these three nightmares: - No real website at all (just a Facebook page and prayers) - A cheap template site that looks like every other contractor in town - A DIY disaster

And because of this if you have a website that is NOT optimized you are bleeding leads

Challenge Accepted 🤝

Even with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday in the mix, we pulled in 11 leads this past week. All interior painting or pre-booking estimates for next year projects. This is from our new winter ad campaign. The biggest lesson so far: your ad + your offer absolutely

The Only 4 Page Types Every Local Business Needs Most local business sites fail because they only focus on “SEO pages” or only focus on “design.” A real, high-performing site needs all four of these working together: 1. Landing Pages Your homepage + any ad-specific landing

If you want to work with local businesses, you have to get comfortable with phone calls and texting. No Google Meets. No Teams calls. No Slack channels. After a few years, you develop a sixth sense for which leads will never join a Google Meets invite and it is a lot larger

I run a web design agency that’s built hundreds of sites for local businesses. I use AI every single day for ideas, outlines, content, custom code, debugging, speed. I love it. If I’m not at the point where I'm vibe-coding entire client websites from scratch with AI… why would

I've vibe coded two apps that we've deployed internally. Both were disasters. It's cool, and maybe it'll get way better in the coming years, but right now the time spent isn't worth the money saved. Should be focused more on growing and retaining revenue.

Table Update: We ordered our table legs and picked a stain. We decided to order pre-made legs because I don't have a router or lathe to make anything fancy. We ordered the wood from a local mill, all hickory. Next step is designing the frame because I want the legs to be

One incorrect setting on your Google Business Profile can cut your rankings in half. Just got off a call with a fencing business owner about a new website. He had no idea his Google Business Profile was set to “serves all of North America.” Fixing that takes two minutes… and

A lot of people don’t realize this, but there is a hidden fee on every $500 Fiverr website. It’s called the Template Tax. You save money upfront and then pay for it later in: - lost time - lost leads - bug fixes - rebuilds - SEO that never works By the time you scrap it and

Alex Lathery Had a coaching client that was doing this. We changed his profile to be location-based and his impressions 13x'ed in two months. His calls went from 1 in both July & Aug to 122 in October. 🤯

Blue Collar Builds - 2025 Wrapped Websites Launched: 102 across dozens of industries. Some of my favorites: - Custom tiny homes - Commercial sign manufacturer - Racecar development & repair shop Biggest New Chapter: Launched our first in-house local service company.

Same prompt. Same structure. Four variant pages. And the AI slowly wandered off task. This is why you can’t just one-shot mega prompt to generate copy and ship it without review.

Every Google Core Update exposes the same mistake (and local businesses keep repeating it) Google released its December 2025 Core Update which will rollout for ~3 weeks. It shows sites with scaled, low-quality content (particularly those with lots of templated pages, duplicated