Yigal Adato: 00:04 Hey everyone. My name is Yigal Adato. And this is the Pawn Leaders Podcast, a podcast to help you make more money, stress less, and live an epic life all while working at the pawn shop. Hey Pawn Leaders, welcome back to another episode of the Pawn Leaders Podcast. And with me, I have a great resource for you all that I found after I walked out of my Chiropractor office. And went in for an adjustment in all of a sudden I got a text message on my phone asking to review my chiropractor. And when I clicked through the process, it was such an easy process that it brought me back to my days in the pawnshop wishing, hoping and begging had the clients who would walk out after a pawn or buy or a sale would give us a review on Yelp, Facebook, or Google. So with me, I have Matt Prados who is the founder of review wave and has been working in digital marketing for more than the last 10 years. Having helped hundreds of local businesses achieve success online. He zeroed in on what he feels is the future of online marketing and build the review wave platform to help thousands achieve success in his free time, he enjoys his family, his wife, their two boys and two dogs. And of course being physically active. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Prados: 01:25 Awesome man. Thank you for having me.
Yigal Adato: 01:26 So, you know, I walked out of Matt Hubbard's office, my chiropractor, and get great chiropractor and all of a sudden I get pinged with a text message and you walk me through the steps of, you know, give me a five star review. And so I kind of tested the system. I said, let me click on five, see what happens. And it took me to like a Google or Yelp or Facebook page and I hit back and I said, wait a second. What happens if I hit a one star review? And what happened was incredible. Instead of taking me to the review page, what, what came up was just give us your feedback, how we can change. So before we get into the process of that, tell us how you created review wave, why you create a review wave and what it's done for the clients who are currently using it.

Matt Prados: 02:13 Sure, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, with any company, the story starts long before the company, uh, arrives. And so I would say that the concept spurred because I was leaving corporate America, I made a lot of money in corporate America,but I hated my boss. He was just a pain in my ass to say the least. So, um, I couldn't take anymore. I quit. I walked out. I had,I had no idea what I was going to do. I was going to be an entrepreneur. So I went on, I went on my journey and, uh, you know, probably 18 months into that I'm a, you know, on my knees at night, just praying that there'll be a little bit more room on that Amex because visa is due tomorrow and I need to pay it.Right. And, uh, so anyway, we worked through some tough times as an entrepreneur. And what I realized is there was so many just crappy products out there and just garbage being sold, entrepreneurs about how you can be successful.That I, you know, I wanted to help people be successful and just no fluff, you know, don't give me the perceived value garbage that's promoted out there by so many sales gurus. And so, uh, I found my way into digital marketing and you know, for 10 years we just, we, we figured out SCO, we figured out ad-words, we figured out how to sell online, we figured out website conversions and it's time intensive. So it was great. But, you know, we were limited to helping, uh, you know, hundreds versus thousands. And I really wanted to, you know, it, you know, help thousands and tens of thousands. So I looked at it, I said, what's the one thing that everybody needs online? The one thing, no matter who they are, no matter their brand new practice or we're in business or that, you know, they're a veteran with 40 years, uh, in their pocket. And at the end of the day, it's reviews. It doesn't matter what else you have. You can have no website. But if you have a killer Google local listing with 200 reviews, you can lead from the Internet. You could have a phenomenal website with one Google Review and get no leads from the Internet. So it really, it doesn't matter. Website, no website, etc. If you have reviews, you will be more successful online. And if you do it right, it's money in the bank because they're going to stick, they're going to be there forever. If you do shady things that violate terms of service, et Cetera, obviously you can, you know, have your reviews, filtered, flagged, removed, whatever. And so, uh, you know, we, we set out two years ago to design the smoothest process on how to get people to give you feedback and if they're happy reviews and if they're not happy, why? So you can reach out and help them. I mean, how many times have you left a business, a restaurant, a barbershop, whatever, and been like, man, that's the most fucked up haircut I've ever got. But you didn't tell the barber that because you're not coming to be confrontational. And so maybe it's students for a while, maybe you go and your girlfriends like, wow, that is a really fucked up haircut. Then you'd go to younger, you're like, man, that barber gave me a fucked up haircut because you're pissed because you're a woman just told you you got a jacked up haircut. So, uh, you know, how do we, how we, how would we get win, win? And that was part of the process. You know, I want the patients, the customers, the clients, the users, uh, to have a, to make sure they have a great experience. If they don't be made whole, you know, make it right, have that office make it right. And then when the office is doing a phenomenal job, you don't get that extra, you know, review for it, get that extra little validation that can promote them. And so that was the whole concept. And so, you know, there's, you know, various systems out there that try
to do different things. And I feel like most of them focus on just getting reviews. Uh, you know, maybe they'll even tell you, hey, this is how you create a Google account or do this, this and this. This is garbage because that's going to get you in trouble. So we don't have any of that stuff that we know is going to hurt our clients long term. Because if you have 10 reviews on Google and five of them are from accounts that were made laughter review and then never logged into again, guess what Google knows. You know, they're not any, I mean any software can tell there's a footprint there.

Yigal Adato: 06:24 So let's, let's just go back really quick. And you're saying is that if a pawn broker has the clients open up, um, you know, a gmail account whatever. And then they just leave one review, never log in. Once again, it's done. They'll, they'll flag it, they'll take it off.

Matt Prados: 06:39 I mean, we'll, some people get away with it. There's probably some people that are going to be listening. It's going, ha ha, I've been getting away with that for five years. Well, yeah, that might, that might be working now, but you know what? You might wake up tomorrow and have zero reviews and then what? Because you did it wrong. You know, don't, don't do it wrong. Just do it right. Do it consistent and it's money in the bank and will continue to grow. It's an asset. Treat it like that.Treat it, you know, the way it's supposed to be done. And it will be an asset for years to come. But yeah, absolutely. If you're doing that whole, please create an account and leave me a review stuff. Not only can Google catch you, but I mean, come on, there's no profile picture. If somebody clicks on it and they see that there's only one review, what does that look like? It looks like you're a liar because you're making these reviews up.You can be, you can go by reviews. I mean, I can give you an email. You can go buy 10 reviews for 100 bucks right now. Is it good? No. You know, uh, you know, the guy in India is going to be happy with a 100 bucks, but nobody, nobody's going to believe the reviews or are true because they're going to be from people all over the country. Um, so yeah, you just gotta do it, right? I mean, it's your online reputation that you're looking at. Is it real? Is it authentic? Uh, you know, is it true, you know, these are all questions that people are going to ask when looking at reviews and they're also going to look, is it consistent? If you've got a hundred reviews from three years ago, you know, it's, you know, a hundred reviews is great, but being that they're all three years old and you don't have any sense that it's not that great, you know, it's one of those things you have, it's like brushing your teeth. You know, you stopped doing it for a couple months, you're going to have some pretty ranked breath kiss. Very much

Yigal Adato: 08:11 So. I remember when I was in the shop, um, you know, we would have to beg people to leave reviews and you know, please go on, yelp, please go on Facebook, please go on Google. Do you think, I mean, your software, when we walk through it, it's the customer walks out of the door. Obviously you either connected to the software or the person downloads a file of the transactions of the day. The client gets a text message and you walk in through the process. Right.

Matt Prados: 08:38 Yup!
Yigal Adato: 08:39 Is it important to focus on one social media aspect like Facebook, Google and Yelp or all three? What's the most important thing for the business when it comes to reviews? Matt Prados: 08:49 Sure. I mean, it's really going to depend where you are in the country, on what you target. Because, in San Diego, yeah, everybody's on Yelp. Everybody's on Google. Everybody's on Facebook. In Boise, Idaho, probably not so much on Yelp. Right? So, but everyone's going to be on Google and Facebook. So for sure Google's number one, no doubt. Number two is gonna depend on your area. It's either going to be Facebook or Yelp. And then, you know, the third would be whichever one's left. And then, you know, obviously if there is some, you know, if you're in an area that maybe you know, uses Yahoo for some reason are Bing, I mean it doesn't hurt to spread them around on those kinds of sites as well.

Yigal Adato: 09:33 Yeah, I understood. So walk us through the process really quick, I get the text message and what does Review Wave do? Matt Prados: 09:40 Absolutely. So we send out the text, uh, basically, you know, we, we merge in the client's name and you know, say, you know, we hope you had a great experience. Would you mind leaving feedback? And we give them a link. They click on the link, they go to a page, and this is all customizable. But basically I'll say something to the effect of overall, how was your experience? You can have a one to five star theme. You can have a, you know, a yes, no question. You can have a happy face, sad face, so you can customize it to the personality of your, Your Business, your pawn shop in this case. Uh, but let's say it's one to five stars. So if they click four or five stars by default, we consider that positive and then we send it to the next page which says, hey, we're so excited you had a great experience. Would you mind sharing that with others and getting links to, you know, Google, Facebook, Yelp, whatever it may be. If they didn't have a great experience, one to three stars, they get into a different page. It says, Hey, we're so sorry you did not have incredible experience. What could we have done to make your experience five star? They get to type in their answer. There's no dropdown, no radio box. It's literally exactly what they're upset about. And the reason for this, you want them to vent. You want them to tell you exactly what it is. You don't want to have some generic, you know, your receptionist is me in or you know, your sales rep is pushy or you know, whatever. You want to have an exact verbage. They hit submit. We thank them for their feedback, they're done. Then we don't do it and they don't. We don't ask for anything else. And they feel like they were able to express themselves. So they've given you their negative review. So hopefully they won't go to Google, Yelp, or Facebook and leave a negative review.And hopefully you'll be proactive enough to reach out and say,hey, we're really sorry you had a bad experience. You know,here's a coupon for 10% off your next purchase. You know,
whatever. Make it right.

Yigal Adato: 11:21 Gotcha.
Matt Prados: 11:21 So that's the, that's the concept there.
Yigal Adato: 11:25 What's the percentage of people who respond to the text messages?

Matt Prados: 11:29 Sure. So on average for every hundred feedback requests that are sent, you're going to get about a 25% response rate to an initial feedback. And then from that you're going to get, you know, five or six actual reviews. So depending on how many unique people you're doing deals with each week, and then you multiply those statistics out, you're going to have an overall kind of feeling for, you know, what kind of feedback and what kind of reviews that you could get.

Yigal Adato: 11:58 And I think that's a great percentage because thinking back, if you're doing, you know, 50 transactions a day in a pawn shop, let's say, and 25% of those click open and you get, you know, two reviews a day, I'd say 30, 60 reviews a month. That' soutstanding.
 

Matt Prados: 12:15 Yeah.

Yigal Adato: 12:16 At the end of the year
Matt Prados: 12:18 700 plus a year.
Yigal Adato: 12:18 What?
Matt Prados: 12:18 That would be 700 plus a year.
Yigal Adato: 12:18 Yeah. I mean, can you imagine having 700 plus reviews and the next pawn broker over has 13.

Matt Prados: 12:28 Right.
Yigal Adato: 12:29 So there's, there's something that always comes to mind when I talk about reviews is like Phil's BBQ down here in San Diego.

Matt Prados: 12:35 Ok!
Yigal Adato: 12:35 Phil's Barbecue has thousands and thousands of reviews. I mean, there insane.

Matt Prados: 12:39 Yeah!
Yigal Adato: 12:39 Most reviewed business on Yelp, I think.
Matt Prados: 12:42 Uhum.
Yigal Adato: 12:42 Studied them and they have a huge sign that says, uh, if you need help or let us know if you need help before you Yelp.
Right. Constantly proactive about reviews. It's their core business.

Matt Prados: 13:00 Yeah. And they've got a line outside their door and around the corner when you want to go there at any major mealtime. Yigal Adato: 13:06 Yeah. Because when somebody looks you up, when somebody says, hey, restaurant, Google, Facebook or Yelp, they're number one because they've got thousands of reviews.

Matt Prados: 13:16 Right?
Yigal Adato: 13:16 And that's the goal with review wave. Correct?
Matt Prados: 13:20 Absolutely! That is the goal to empower any business to level the playing field, get those reviews, you know, get on top. Whether they're brand new and they've been around forever. Reviews is the thing that, you know, the one thing that any business could focus on and improve their business.
Yigal Adato: 13:35 Now obviously I met you about six weeks ago and we're trying to implement review wave into the pawn industry. So my question is going to be more, I know that you're in the chiropractic industry, the dentist industry. What other industries are you in?

Matt Prados: 13:48 Uh, we're, I mean, we're literally in everything from, you know,medical, you know, dental, chiropractic, audiology, all the way to the funeral home business and insurance agents. So pretty much anything and everything in between.

Yigal Adato: 14:03 Wait, sorry. I just want to make sure that pawn brokers aren't saying, well, this doesn't fit what we do because you had everything that's out there.

Matt Prados: 14:10 Yeah,
Yigal Adato: 14:11 Great.
Matt Prados: 14:12 I mean, let's get serious. If a funeral home could ask for feedback, [Incomprehensible]

Yigal Adato: 14:19 It's got to be some great service. Right. So my other question is what is, what have you seen in the businesses that we, that use review wave, uh, in, in increasing business? Like what's happening? Like Matt, Hubbard's business let's say, and I'm sure he doesn't care that I spoke about it, but yeah, because he said
reviews, what's going on?

Matt Prados: 14:39 Yeah, absolutely. So I, I mean honestly, Matt is probably one of the best chiropractors that I've ever met. Uh, I actually come from large and the chiropractors in the world over 80 chiropractors, my family, I've been adjusted by probably you know 500 different chiropractors cause I've worked in that industry, I've consulted for that industry, you know, etc. And he just phenomenal chiropractor, top, top 1% of every chiropractor ever met for sure. But you know, 10 years into the business, he had 24 reviews on Google, which is pathetic. 24 reviews, right?That's like what no, nobody has. And so within, let's see, nine months, he's got over a hundred reviews, obviously not as high volume as a pawn broker, but, that's pushed him into the top three in Google for chiropractor San Diego, that has, you know,taken his, new patients from the Internet from, you know, four or five a month to four or five a week. You know, I mean, there's just a tremendous difference. I mean, the difference between four or five new patients in 20 new patients in a chiropractic office is, is significant.
Yigal Adato: 15:44 Or in any business.
Matt Prados: 15:45 I mean, you know, 15 new deals a month, you know, is obviously a significant amount of revenue. But at the end of the day, it not only validates him for all his hard work, you know, as an entrepreneur we put in more hours than anybody, you know,there's no 40 hour work week. You know, it validates the staff.Their names get mentioned. I mean, that feels good. That's a bonus for them. And even though I said he's in the top 1%, he's had multiple patients over the last nine months. That left gave him a one to three star review. They were able to reach out to handle the upset patients. Now, not only still a patient, but one of their most raving advocates because they showed, they cared, they reached out, they handled the issue, they owned up to what they did wrong and made it right. And so, you know, the, the repercussions and the, the good things that happen to guys that really might review wave and use it consistently, you know, aren't even, it's even too early to tell. And it's a, it's almost hard to measure because I truly believe that it's changed the entire path of some businesses because if you're a struggling chiropractor and he's not struggling, but if you're struggling and you're seeing five new patients a month, then all of a sudden we're at 20. You've gone from, you know, a personal income of like $100,000 a year to a personal income of like $400,000 a year. I mean there's a, it's a drastic change and then you know, you get more referrals because you know, you've got more patients coming in. So it's a snowball effect. You know, I mean if you can imagine, you know, in the pawn industry for example, so you were in the business for 16 years.If you can imagine that during that 16 years, every single person that left upset told you why. Yigal Adato: 17:28 That'd be amazing.
Matt Prados: 17:29 That feedback. Well, I mean that, the value of that feedback alone because yeah, everybody likes a win, but you don't learn anything from winning. You learn from your losses, right? So if you knew every time you lost, why you lost and you know,maybe there's something you would change or maybe that guy was just crazy cause you will get some crazies obviously, but you atleast get to have closure, like, okay, so that guy was not happy because he didn't like the fact that I had brown hair. Well, I'm not dying my hair so enough with him, but this lady wasn't happy because you know what we nickeled and dimed or you know, was that extra dollar, you know, we wouldn't come down really worth it or you know, whatever in the long term scheme of things because we're never going to do another deal with her, you know. So it's just that I think is such a significant, value that, that people overlook.

Yigal Adato: 18:20 So it's not just about reviews, it's customer service. And I think in the retail environment, like the pawn shops, the one who has the better customer service wins.

Matt Prados: 18:30 Absolutely.
Yigal Adato: 18:31 If you're getting those reviews, the negative feedbacks and they're not hitting Google, you know what things you need to change in the pawn industry. You know, what, what employees aren't doing as good. You know, what products need to come in.You know, what process isn't working out. And that to me is gold.

Matt Prados: 18:46 Absolutely. Actually one, one point further on the employee point, you can actually say which employee did this deal? And we will track the feedback based on the employee. So in your dashboard and review wave you can see all your different employees and you can see all of the deal, you know, number of requests set for them and what their feedback is. And so each individual employee will have a feedback number and then you'll have a whole number as well.

Yigal Adato: 19:11 Wow.
Matt Prados: 19:11 You can absolutely manage your staff based on feedback.
Yigal Adato: 19:16 That's incredible because that puts, a better mindset into the employee saying every transaction I'm doing can essentially I'm being, I'm being graded so I have to be the best that I can be. Because if not, I'm going to get a one star review and it's, I'll be on a chart or I won't get my bonus or whatever you want to do. Matt Prados: 19:39 Totally. And, and brand point. Yeah. I got a buddy, he's actually from San Diego. He posted on Facebook a a rant, if you will, about a print shop. So he went into the print shop and they did just a terrible job on his print job and the employer didn't really care then play. It was like whatever. And you know, he says to the employee says, look, you might not care that I'm going to leave and go put a negative review on Yelp but enough negative reviews and you're, the business is going to go down and you're actually going to get fired because the business owner can no longer afford to keep you on. And most, you know, most employees, won't think that long term. They won't think about each deal being that important, but you put a system like review wave on them and where they're literally going to be graded each and every single time. It definitely changes the mindset and allows you to train them so they can be better employees, they can serve themselves, their customers better and they can have a better life because they're now doing better themselves.

Yigal Adato: 20:30 That's amazing man. So obviously it's a, it's a win win. I love the software. I hope that people listening will go to review wave.com and we're going to have a special offer for them when they put in the word Pawn PAWN. And I want to ask you a question. As an entrepreneur, what's been the hardest thing in building this business?

Matt Prados: 20:49 You know, I think the hardest things came before this business, honestly. Because you know, the hardest thing is, is when it all comes crashing down. Because when you start out as an entrepreneur, you're like, oh, I can beat the world, you know, I'm invincible. And then, you know, your first loss, you know, that smack in the face and you know, what not. So it was the businesses prior to this business, this business has been a very smooth, you know, I've worked with incredible people, uh, you know, gotten advice from, you know, just some of the most brilliant minds on the planet. And, you know, so this, this particular business has been very smooth rolling. But as an entrepreneur, you know, I've, I've put in the time I've been in the trenches, I've had all of the losses, so I get it. You know, there, there is definitely times in businesses where that's going to happen, but, you know, the biggest lesson on that is focus on that one thing that can change your business today. Because as an entrepreneur, you're going to get hit with like thousands of different opportunities to invest, you know, questions about this different everything just, it's going to be all over the place. But if you leave aside all the things that aren't that important and you focus on, you know, that one thing, that's what makes all the difference.

Yigal Adato: 22:04 Great man. Thanks for sharing that. And that obviously you were doing this on video and people can't see it. I know the bracelet that you're wearing. I know what that means. So I want to ask you, how important has coaching been, in your journey as an entrepreneur?

Matt Prados: 22:19 Coaching is, is absolutely. You can't, you can't succeed at the top levels without coaching. At the end of the day, you know, it's probably cliche to a lot of entrepreneurs, but you know, look at every single professional athlete. They have a coach, they had a coach every step of the way. As an entrepreneur, there's definitely people that have come into my life at the right time for coaching. You know, at the beginning of this business, you know, I met a gentleman who had literally just sold his software company for $50 million and you know, he believed in me and he actually invested in our company and has become an incredible friend and you know, with, you know, coaching from him with, you know, coaching from, you know, just other incredible people who've done there and been there and done that. You know, people that have walked the walk. You know,this idea of, you know, learning to be a life coach and these guys go train to be a life coach. Like thank you. To stay away from them, find people that have actually done it and those are the people that are going to help you achieve what you want to achieve.

Yigal Adato: 23:23 Awesome. Matt, thank you so much for me on the show. A pawn family. Go to review wave.com and enter the Code PAWN to get a special offer that Matt and I worked out for you guys.Matt, it's been an honor having you on brother. I appreciate what you're doing for the retail community because obviously it's hard in this day and age when everything's online, you're out there helping the, you know, the, the service provider, the pawnbroker, that chiropractor to build their business. So thank you for that.

Matt Prados: 23:53 Absolutely. Thank you for having me it was great.
Yigal Adato: 23:55 Awesome guys. Check out, reviewwave.com and my goal is connecting, connecting Matt to the software providers out there so that this happens automatically and is an easier,smoother process for the pawn brokers. Also, don't forget to check out the podcast community Pawn Leaders Podcast community on Facebook and I'm giving away a 30 minute free strategy session. Go to pawnleaders.com and let's chat. Let's have some fun. Thanks everybody for listening and stay tuned for the next episode on pawnleaderspodcast.

Highlights

Matt Prados built the Review Wave platform to assist hundreds of local businesses to achieve online success. He has been working in digital marketing for the last 10 years and enjoys spending time with his family and being physically active. Matt zeroes in on what he feels is the future of online marketing in this episode of Pawn Leaders.

[23:26] Visit the Review Wave website (reviewwave.com) and enter the code PAWN to get a special offer