Secrets to Google Reviews w/GUEST: Studio 28 Tattoos Owner TJ Cantwell! | Ep. 307

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Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are back for do this, not that, presented by Marigold. And I don't know if I've ever been more excited for a guest. And why am I so excited for this guest? Who do we got? We got TJ Cantwell.

Now, I'm excited because TJ is the owner of something called Studio 28, which is one of the coolest custom tattoo shops. It's in New York. But it's. I hope I get this. All right. It is just cool. Wait, did I get that right? Before I get any further, did I nail that?

Am I right?

It was close. It was close. It's. It's custom tattoos, fine jewelry, body piercing, the whole. The whole shebang and the cool spectrum.

Okay, good. And the reason I asked tj. Come on. You're like, wait a minute, am I listening to this? Right? The marketing podcast. What are we talking about?

Tattoos is because the thing about TJ's business and how he's grown, it's.

And how he's crushing it is because of testimonials, reviews, and really this attention to his customers being so loyal to him and his attention to detail in terms of really leveraging the power of social proof. And we're going to dig into all that. But he's cool.

Like, I don't have any tattoos, so I have to live vicariously through tj because the dude is just cool. So I'm fired up to talk through all of it. TJ officially welcome to the show.

Thank you. That was probably the coolest introduction I've ever had in my entire life. And I will record it, and it'll be my new ringtone for sure.

All right, so before we get into all things reviews, because, listen, you have over a thousand Google reviews, and they're not all. You know, the reason TJ is cool is that they're not all perfect. And he's going to share with us. What do you do? Well, how do you react?

How do you handle reviews in general? We're going to get into all of that. But how did TJ wind up being this guy that you are?

It's a funny road. I actually. I used to be a finance guy. I worked in the mortgage sector and made it through the 06 crash and just everything went to crap.

And I just really didn't want to do it anymore.

I had a bunch of tattoos and I went down and did what we call a pain therapy session, which is literally just go have a session and just let your mind kind of go free. And I ended up in a conversation with my artist. One thing led to another, to a dinner, and then it was about 120 days later, I opened the business.

That was 15 years ago. And, yeah. And just like, took the roller coaster of the ride for it.

That is wild. That really is wild. And so when you, you open up your business, okay, and you're. You're. You're starting to get people to show up and whatever.

At what point were you like, wow, I need to. Reviews are what's going to be the thing that kind of fuels people deciding whether or not they should come to me.

Did you prioritize getting reviews out of the gate for your business or just something that happened and then you jumped into.

Happened a little more organically? So, you know, 15 years ago, you know, Google didn't have a review system. It was basically Yelp or nothing.

So we got the first couple notifications because I had my Yelp page all set up. Yelp was one of the first marketing campaigns that we ever worked with. And we got the notifications about the reviews coming in.

And then all of a sudden it was like, wait a minute. This is, you know, this is something that people are going to be looking at to validate a business before they start coming into it.

So I started jumping onto it pretty early.

I mean, groveling, you know, I mean, literally, like, just begging customers, you know, like, just if they had a good time, I would be emailing them, I would call them and just be like, hey, like, I saw you had a good time. Like, you know, can you please go give us a review? Just trying to.

I figured from the, from the start of it, it was more of a numbers game, you know, it was like, the more you have, the better you're going to look. So let's just try and get as many as we can.

And yeah, but it literally just started from a couple notifications coming in about, oh, people are talking about us.

Okay, so great. Now you start getting reviews. And I love how you prioritize getting reviews. Right? That's kind of like your North Star.

How do you go about doing that now? I mean, is there some sort of automated thing?

Somebody comes in they get a tattoo, they get this email, the cashier says this, like, how do you actually go about being intentional about getting reviews?

There's so much actually we have like a bunch of different avenues for it.

So first we have like in our lounge areas we have like these really cool wooden plaques that we have got someone from Etsy to make that have the QR codes that go right to our Google page. So there's like right there while they're sitting in the lounge. So we're automatically just off the top of their head they're seeing it.

We're not really assuming that they're going to scan those ones because they haven't even gotten serviced yet. But they're already seeing that reviews are important to us. There's another plaque on the way out the door.

We have a fully automated booking system that goes through our website.

And then once you complete your appointment at the end of the day you get a follow up email from the system with the message, you know, hey, hope you had a really great time. Here's a link to Google, you know, please go give us a review, tell us your thoughts.

And then I also do once a month I send a mailer from myself personally to all clients that came in for the month. You know, again, kind of reiterating like our mission statement.

And you know what we, what the experience we hope that they had and, and leave it like an open line of communication too. So it's, you know, hey, if you had a great time, awesome. Here's the link. Please go give us a review.

If you didn't have the greatest time, which happens, you're not going to make everyone happy.

That open line of communication to be like, hey, you can respond to this email and I, the owner will personally get back to you to hear your concerns and kind of go through where we failed you and what we can do to improve or make it right or you know, correct what, what you think was an injustice, that was just a misunderstanding.

The thing that's really cool about what you're doing is you're a business owner, successful business owner. And it's not like, oh, the reviews, we'll get to them whenever or some random person on the marketing team should look at the reviews or whatever.

You have realized that social proof is the way that whether you're a giant business or a small business, that we all are deciding about who we are going to spend our money and time with. And you're prioritizing, which makes it a priority in your overall organization. And I hope everybody Listening kind of thinks of it that way.

So I, I have a question though. The thing that I think is super cool is how when you get a negative review, right?

Or one that's not like, oh my God, this is the greatest experience ever. What do you do? What are your rules of the road? Like, okay, we are on it this fast. This is what we do. Like, how do you handle the not great review?

The first thing, obviously, we, I, I, I read through it a few times. I want to really try and get a gist of it.

I'm going to go, I'm going to look up the client card in our, our CRM system so that we can, I can see who, who are you, who are you here working with? Go and talk to them about the client.

It's one of those, if, if you're, if you're on top of your business, you will, I, you will know if you're going to get a bad review before it happens. It should not be a surprise. So we'll always go over it with the staff and then kind of, and then we'll reach back.

We'll respond publicly to it, of course, and kind of go over like, hey, you know what? Again, it depends on the circumstances of it where. And no one's perfect. So, like, we could have easily failed you.

We could have had a misunderstanding. We could have put the wrong piece of jewelry in you. You know, God forbid, the worst scenario ever, we could misspell a tattoo, which is horrible.

Which we actually, that's why if you get lettering tattoos, we actually make the clients initial the stencil before we do it. That way we have the proof of like, hey, like, this is the spelling you gave us.

But once, once I kind of get the story from it, we'll then respond publicly on the review. But I think the big thing we'll do is we'll also end it in the review response. We will. We're never going to attack. We're never going to justify.

You know, it's usually just a very, hey, like, we're really sorry that you had that experience. Whether they're wrong or we're wrong, they had a negative experience and that did happen.

So we will always apologize for them having a negative experience. We don't want anyone to have a bad time coming into the shop. And then we'll always extend the offer. You know, hey, like, here is my email.

Please reach out to me and I would love to discuss what happened so we can see what happened along the road and what we can do to make it right for you. That way we can move it out of the review into a private conversation instead of just having, you know, review responses go back and forth.

That's just never conducive for anyone.

I think it's so important that when you get a negative review that you respond to because for me personally, like if I'm looking at like a hotel or whatever and somebody writes something negative on TripAdvisor or whatever and then the hotel management writes back, I'm so sorry, blah blah, blah. To me, the fact that they're on top of it and are applying to it says to me, okay, they have good customer service.

But a negative review that goes left unresponded to is to me indicative of, of an organization that's just doesn't care. So definitely. Right. Yeah.

Well, and it's also an in the, you know, like I, I read like reviews are so important to me.

I don't go to a business without reading their reviews and it's, it, it's always mind blowing to me the amount of people that just don't respond to reviews or only respond to the positive ones. Like responding to a positive review takes 10 seconds, you know. Great. Thanks for coming in. You know, let we hope to see you again.

Thanks for the review. I biggest things for people to take away from it, especially when you're get.

They'll come in and be like, hey, you have so many good reviews. That's so great.

But we have people that come in that actually decided to come and do business with us because of the way that we responded to the negative review. Because it shows that the business cares and that we really do care about all of our clients.

So respond to every review, especially the negative ones. If you're not going to respond to all of them, then at least only do the negative ones because those are the ones people look at.

Totally agree.

And this probably sounds so horrible, but from this podcast here I really try to prioritize getting people to leave reviews, number one, helps the algorithm and all.

But the other thing that I'm sure everybody else already knows this, that if you have a boatload of good reviews that when you get a negative review, there's not enough negative reviews to pull down your ranking that much. I mean, for you to go from 4.8 to 4.4, you probably would need like 200 bad reviews.

So it's really mathematically like impossible.

Yeah, right, right. I mean, is that like, you know, that's when I plan it.

100% is because like when we were getting started and we didn't have as many, you know, like we got a bad review. It was, it was freak out mode, you know, like, oh my God, like my. I'm going to lose my business.

No one's going to want to come in because, you know, Karen came in and said that she hates us. Like, and then. So, yeah, it's like the more you get. It's a math game.

It gets, you know, just math is statistically hard to change that review, the, the rating on it. So. Yeah. And plus it's, you know, the more you have it. Also it takes the edge off a lot. Like, that's one thing I will say. Like, it.

I don't even get stressed at bad reviews anymore. And I used to get freaked out about it. Like, like genuinely freaked.

Like I had to leave work and like, you know, go, like, go do a shot real quick or you know, like walk around the block. Like just something to like calm down. And now it's like, hey, like, okay, that happened. It's okay. Like, how are we going to respond to it?

What can we learn from it? When can we grow? You know, we talked before, you know, the whole. My, my whole concept of there's no such thing as a bad review.

So like, it's, it's nice to be. Once you get those, those numbers built behind it, it makes it a lot easier to deal with it.

And then you actually become way more effective in the way that you deal with it. It.

Yeah, I totally agree. So let me ask you this. Is there any way, let's say somebody, a competitor or whatever goes on and purposely writes a nasty review?

You know, it's not real. It's complete fake. It's total garbage. Can you actually get a review removed?

Oh, so here's the first major misconception. There's no way. Especially you hear all the time with Yelp. There is no amount of money that I can pay to Yelp to have them remove negative reviews.

They have their algorithm and it's the most hardcore algorithm with Phil filtering of reviews. And Google's the same way they filter reviews. There's. You can never pay to have them removed. All you can do is report them.

And then it depends on how Google Yelp, TripAdvisor, whoever it is, how they're going to view the review and what your circumstances of reporting it are if it violates their guidelines. I have had plenty of reviews removed, but because they violated the guidelines. So I guess the. The number one thing to do is know.

Know the companies that you're getting your reviews on, know what their guidelines are, know what customers are allowed to do and not do, and then you can use that. You know, like, if you get a really bad. You know, we had.

It was probably like eight or nine years ago, we had someone that went on and left a scathingly bad review. And they were.

And in the end, like, once we looked it up and figured it out, it was a mom that was mad at us that we wouldn't tattoo her underage daughter because they were from a state that allow for underage tattooing, but New York does not. And she's like, well, she has a bunch of tattoos. And we're like, you know, super cool like that. It's illegal in this state. Like, we can't do it.

She went and left the review that we were using dirty needles. She called the health department on us like, it was crazy. So, like, that was something I was able to have removed. And.

But it wasn't because it was a false review. We were actually able to have it removed because she cursed in the review.

Oh, wow.

And we knew the guidelines that you can't use language like that. So. Yeah, but it's actually, like, really.

It's really hard to get rid of a review, even if it's a competitor that's leaving a negative review against you to hurt the business. Like, they would have to be dumb enough to use their actual name like that.

You can be like, hey, look, this is John Henry that is listed as the owner of this tattoo studio that is a major competitor of ours. So it's actually. It's pretty hard to get reviews removed.

I think the easiest thing to do is just make sure you're always doing the best by your clients and giving them the service that you would expect to get any business you go to. And then you'll just. You'll get the reviews and then you don't have to worry about the bad ones that come in. You can use them to your advantage.

So let me ask you something. I may go to Google review jail for this, but this is my take. So for one of my clients, my marketing agency, they spend forever.

They spend a ton of money building out this app, this shopping app, whatever, and they go and they pushed it live and they. Their competitor, I guess, had like a boatload of their friends go and leave horrible reviews on this app right out of the gate the day it launched.

And the app never recovered from it because the reviews were terrible. Nobody downloaded. They went out of business. Right.

And so I'm a fan, which is probably bad, that when you're going to be launched something, you know, whether it's your book on Amazon or it's your little store or whatever, that you have a group of friendlies that, when you are launching, are going to go in there, buy the thing, do the thing, whatever, and then leave you a good solid review and not game the system, but kind of like, get it out of the gate in the right way. Is that terrible? Am I a horrible human being?

No, I think everyone should do that. I did that. That's where you get. That's where you know, if you're not. If you're not leaning on, you know, the people that you know and your friends.

You know what. What I don't agree with is having people leave reviews that don't. Don't have anything to do with it. Like, I have a friend that owns a.

A product company that they were on Shark Tank and, like, they got a deal and everything. It was super co. Like, after that, like, they hit all of us up.

We're all in the same fraternity, and they were like, hey, like, I want to send you the product, you know, and then just, you know, no, it was, go on Amazon, buy the product, I'll reimburse you for the cost of it, and then use it, and then go give us an honest review about it.

That's cool.

Which is totally fine to do because we're still an actual user of the product. It's just. You're leaning on your friends and family to be a part of it.

If you're just telling your friend, you know, if you're just putting up a Facebook post, you know, be like, hey, like, here's my new company. Go leave it a review. If you. You haven't done anything with the company, that. That's. That's low.

Yeah, I think that's crap. I agree. I'm glad you kind of, like, pointed out that version of it, because I agree with exactly what you said.

All right, before we wrap up here, I want to ask you, like, since I've never gotten a tattoo, okay, where is, like, where on my body is the starter tattoo? Like, the most common starter tattoo spot? Is it, like, my wrist? Is it my arm? Like, if I'M coming into your shop. Like, Jay, listen, you're a nerd.

You have no tattoo. You should start with, like, a circle on your toe, which is definitely, like, your upper shoulder. Okay?

It's. It's an E. It's a really. It's one of the least painful places to get one. It is easy for you to see it. It's easy to show people it.

It's also very easy to hide it. Most clothing is going to cover it up. So, yeah, I tell everyone, let's get it on your shoulder, because you don't want to.

You know, you have people that get it on their back for their first one, and then you see them, like, in the mirror, like, you know, trying to, like, look at it and stuff, like, get it somewhere that you could see it. That's for sure.

All right, wait, I got another question for you. So, like, you're at the shop or whatever, and people are coming in, and you have, like, rules, okay.

We, you know, in terms of what type of tattoos people would do, and then somebody has to come over to you get. Are you okay if we tattoo this? Because it's super weird, right? Like, like, what is something that you have to, like, make the judgment call on that?

Yeah. All right, we'll do it. Even though it's. I don't mean something like, like, offensive or.

Or mean or whatever, but, like, if somebody wants a picture of, like, a. Like, a donkey, like, like, flying in the air, does that have to come to you for approval or something?

No way. Those are the most fun ones. Absolutely not. We're there. We have our things that we will not do. We don't do any, like, gang tattoos.

We won't do anything that's anything that would be considered offensive to any, you know, group of people or any, you know, anything racist. Anything like that. Other than that. Like, no, like, honestly, like, it with tattoos, the weirder the better. Like, when you come in.

Like, when you come in with, like, a crazy, weird idea, like, those are, like, those are just the super fun ones because those are also the clients that are going to come in if you want to get something really weird. Generally speaking, you're also the most open to artistic interpretation. So you are going to let the artist just have the most fun.

And that is how you're going to get the coolest tattoo, is you let the artist just do their thing, give them a concept, and just let them rock out on the design, and that's how you're going to get, like, the really cool stuff. So, yeah, the Weird ideas, bring them all day. Studio 28, New York City. All your weird tattoos, bring them in.

I'm coming, I'm coming. I'm going to get the Mike Tyson face tattoo. It's happening. All right, everybody, tell everybody where to follow you. We wear your stores.

Everything they got to follow, they got. We're gonna put in the show notes, but tell everybody everything.

Yeah, so it's Studio 28, fine jewelry, body piercings and tattoos. We're at 108 West 28th street in Manhattan, New York. You can follow us. All of our social media is Studio 28, NYC.

My personal Instagram is TJ Cantwell. Feel free. You can follow me, you can reach out, ask me questions. I never mind it at all. And yeah, come in and see us.

I love it, I love it. And we're just all in the show notes. I'm telling you, if anybody's getting that tattoo, you go in there, you say you heard TJ on this podcast.

You can get a. You can get the logo of the podcast on your arm. Yes, that would be.

I will put. If someone, if someone comes in and gets the logo of the podcast, I'll pay for it.

I'll. I'll pay for it. And then I'll block that person for the rest of their lives because I'll be scared of them. Oh, amazing, man. Thanks for being here.

Appreciate you.

Absolutely.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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