Is Anything Real?

My guest today almost died from a burst appendix.

Two days later, his boss called not to check in,

but to ask when he'd be back at work.

That moment didn't just change his job.

It changed how he understood leadership,

performance, and what actually drives growth.

Welcome back to "Is Anything, Real?",

the show where we take

the stories that sound inspirational

and test whether they actually hold up in real life.

I'm Adam W. Barney,

and I work with founders and leaders in transition,

especially the moment where the old tools stop working,

but the new ones aren't obvious yet.

Today's guest is John de Jong,

founder of AlleyKat Signs and AlleyKat Marketing.

And his story sits right at that intersection of

leadership, visibility, and doing business like a human.

John, welcome to the show.

Hey, my pleasure to be here, Adam.

You got it, John.

Let's start with the moment

that literally changed everything.

You nearly died,

and your boss's reaction

told you something you couldn't unsee.

What clicked for you in that moment,

and I'm not talking about the white light, possibly.

Yeah.

What happened was I lost total respect

for this man who had no respect for me.

I love the company that I worked for.

I was very good at it.

I was, you know, six-figure income,

and I'd won awards with this company.

But,

I was managing directly, 6 salespeople

and indirectly, 24 salespeople.

And when you're in a leadership role like that,

you have to measure things, right?

You can't tell if you're getting better or worse

if you're not measuring.

My own personal performance went down 40%

right after this revelation of where I was.

You know, how big or how small of a cog I was

in this organization.

And it turns out I was a really big cog because

that's why he was on my case to get back.

Right?

But, yeah, 40%.

I went back, I worked for about six months,

and I just knew this was not the right fit for me.

And the crazy thing is, Adam,

I still have the same talents.

I still had the same abilities.

I still treated people the same way,

but I wasn't being treated the same way.

And that wrecked me for a while.

And that's incredible, right, because

if nothing about you changes,

but performance shifts that much,

that teaches a lot about leadership environments

and how to make them work.

How did that experience later reshape

the kind of leader you decided

you never wanted to be?

That's exactly what it was.

We were just talking a minute ago about

we both have kids,

and at that time,

I had one son that was a teenager

and two sons that were below teens.

And the fact that they were almost fatherless

and my wife was almost husbandless

just changed the way that

I was always empathetic as a leader,

but even more so now.

And I really make it a point.

Your parenting never stops, but your, your parenting, go.

You know, I would really work on that.

Like, learn from my mistakes

or learn from other people's mistakes

is really the thing.

And I learned from this guy's mistakes.

Like when I'm dealing with an employee

or when I am actually, I say to them,

tell me how to manage you

because you know what works for you.

Just communicate.

Right?

I think that is so important.

Right, it absolutely is.

And I mean, you know, I have to say

in an environment like that though, also,

culture isn't a perk.

Right?

We don't get to just choose it

or choose when we use it,

it turns into a performance multiplier.

And that culture didn't fit where

you wanted to be

and what you wanted to be in the world.

But then, like, let's fast-forward.

You didn't start with some flashy tech idea.

You bought a sign business.

Why signs?

Well, just think about this for a second.

When business is really, really good,

people still need signs

to compete against other businesses.

When business is bad,

they need signs to be found

to compete against other businesses.

So while there's no such thing

as a recession- proof business,

the sign business is recession-resistant.

And I was never afraid to go out

and talk to people and ask for business.

So when business slows down,

I go out, and I ask for business.

Now I'm pretty blessed in that

we have a very high ranking on Google,

but it wasn't that way.

I actually have a, you know,

a copy of a Yellow Pages book.

And you remember how thick they used to be.

This is the current Yellow Pages book for where I live,

but I literally have never opened it.

Right?

So building a business nowadays

is not about getting found in the Yellow Pages,

it's about getting found where people are searching.

And that's online with our cell phones.

Right?

Or now with "hey, Siri" or whatever.

So that's what I did.

It wasn't flashy.

It was about signage then.

But then COVID came,

and we're a small family business.

We have, you know,

between five and six employees,

and three of us are family.

Myself, my wife, and our oldest son, Chase,

works for us.

So when COVID came,

I had to lay off everybody.

And I was thinking,

I was exhausted, like, before it happened.

I was kind of, you know, burning out.

And I thought, oh, this is going to be great.

I'll be able to take some time off,

get some government money,

shut the business down.

No, it didn't work that way at all.

I had to work longer and harder.

What are you laughing for, man?

It was exhausting.

Well, it's just,

there's the unpredictability there that you can walk into.

You know, and even though I'm going to,

I'm going to joke, John, you know,

that you bet your house and your future

on something that was totally practical;

it was not sexy

like the world that we live in

views things these days.

But I'm a deep believer

that boring businesses are the best ones

that are primed to actually survive recessions

and then thrive.

Maybe not in the beginning,

but the middle to the tail end,

and in the future after that recession ends.

Yeah, for sure.

And here's the other thing, is like,

why would you start a business?

A lot of young people don't get this.

So I'm 62 years old.

I've got kids in their 30s now and late 20s.

And so, they would be, you know,

a lot of young people now are finishing university,

they got a ton of debt.

Why would you then pack on to that

trying to start your own business?

Because 75% of businesses fail in the first five years.

90% of businesses fail within the first 10 years.

But, I'm a guy who's built, you know,

a multi-million-dollar business,

lots of secure revenue

coming over and over and over again.

And my kids probably don't want to buy my business,

or don't want to be in my business.

So there's tons of baby boomers,

or tons of boomers.

I'm the last year of the baby boomers out there.

They got fantastic businesses

that are running, and thriving,

and making a profit.

Buy that business.

Right?

Like it's way less risky than starting your own.

Right?

It's got a proven track record,

and guys like me,

we don't need a multi-million-dollar payout.

You know, we want you to buy the business

so you've got some skin in the game.

But then we'll take payments over time,

and banks will lend you money

against a known entity

versus you trying to do a startup.

It's common sense.

But what's the thing about common sense?

It's not common.

People don't think of that, right?

And I mean, I think those of us here in North America

can maybe look, you know,

halfway around the world

to places like Japan

that are a handful of years ahead of us

in that shift where there are a lot of aging business owners

who don't have kids or succession plans in place, and, you know,

there could be value there.

But I want to slide back to the epiphany you had,

a little over 10 years ago.

You got your first Google review in 2015,

and not to point any fun here,

but you didn't even know what it was.

Take us back to that moment.

Yeah, so, it was literally about 10 years ago this month

that we had a client, he's a lawyer,

we had done some frosted window treatments

so that he could have privacy in his interview rooms.

And he said to me, hey John,

let me give you a Google review.

And I said, what's that?

So, I've been smart enough to set up for myself

a Google place because, you know,

we all know that we know we need to be found in Google,

but we don't really know how to do it.

We don't know who to trust,

we don't know, you know, what the next step is.

So I was in that exact same boat.

So he says, oh, come on around back here,

backside my desk.

He leaves me a Google review,

clicks on the star in the far right.

By the way, you need to tell your customers to do that,

otherwise, they're leaving you

a one-star, not a five-star.

The devil's in the details, my friend.

Yeah, it is always in the details. Yes.

Yeah, so he left me a five-star Google review,

and then I didn't even touch it.

I didn't do anything, I didn't read it,

I didn't do anything with it for five years,

or, sorry, two years.

Well, that's a slap.

You know, people don't realize it.

Again, it's common sense. That's a slap in the face.

If you and your wife, Paula,

were out for dinner one night,

and you went to a really nice restaurant

and, you know, for me it would be like Smoking Joe's.

And I'd be licking my fingers at barbecue sauce.

And I go, hey, I'd really like to tell Joe,

what a great dinner I had tonight.

Can you have him come over?

And Joe comes over, and I say,

Joe, that was the best barbecue sauce.

I enjoyed the prime rib so much.

I mean, nothing better than

a glass of beer and some prime rib.

And then Joe turns around and walks away from me.

How insulting is that?

But that's exactly what you're doing

if you're a business owner

and they leave you a five-star Google review

and you don't reply to it.

So I was in a business, doing a consult yesterday,

and I was looking through their Google reviews.

They have hundreds and hundreds of Google reviews,

and they haven't replied to any of them.

I said the very first thing that you need to do

when we even bring on a VA, but you know,

you can get AI to do it, and it's not bad.

We might touch on that a little bit later.

But please reply to your Google reviews because

that helps you not only

build a relationship with your customer,

but other people look at your reviews.

You probably look at reviews,

and you look at how the vendor replied to it.

If you get a bad review,

that is a ticket for you to preach a sermon

and say how good you are,

and how sorry you are,

and be gracious.

And you know, I have some clients that I consult with,

and they're literally calling their customers a Karen

in their reply to the Google reviews

like they're throwing gas on the fire.

Yikes.

It's crazy.

Yikes.

And I love how hot off the press,

811 five-star reviews later,

that proves out what you actually did differently

than everyone else.

How you view it.

And yeah, you know,

putting your skin in the game there.

That leads to the fact

that I truly believe that trust compounds faster

than volume or traffic.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

And just like you said,

the environment is a multiplier.

It's also a divider.

Right?

Like it, you know,

sorry, it'll come to me in a second here.

Well, I'll jump back to that point in a second.

Your reputation is everything, right?

Like it's the foundation that

your business is built on.

If you have a bad reputation,

people know it,

and people stay away from you

ten times more than even if you have a good reputation.

Reputation.

So, let me ask you this.

When's the last time that you

bought something for your wife,

or went out to a restaurant,

or went to a different town,

and didn't look at Google reviews?

Like everybody does it all the time.

I mean, my digital marketing background,

I would say, even back in the days.

Do you remember Foursquare,

the location check-in tool?

Yep.

That's what I would use

back in those days before Google.

I mean, 20 years since I got a smartphone

probably would be as long as it's been.

Yeah.

So nowadays when people do Google, you know,

there's the, you know,

the 10,000 results come up on

the left-hand side in like 1.6 seconds.

Actually, it's like 1.3 million results or whatever.

And then often a Google card comes up,

and that's just a special Google says,

hey, this one business

is probably going to suit your needs exactly.

And that, you know, is so important.

You know, we used to talk about the map pack being

the top three,

and I come in the map pack often.

And I'm not always number one.

Like Google's algorithm is always kind of interesting.

But when they see...

That puts it politely, John.

Well, I mean, they work for me,

but sometimes they actually work against me too.

And that happens with all of us.

Like,

I just lost about 7 Google reviews a couple weeks ago.

But you know what the number one remedy for that is,

besides going through the motions to get them back,

is 10 more Google reviews, right?

Yeah, more reviews.

And it doesn't have to be Google.

You know, it could be Trustpilot

or whatever platform you're using, whatever.

You know, like I'm agnostic.

I'm just, I'm pro-reputation

and pro-getting out there,

what your reputation is.

It doesn't matter where it is.

If you're the only game in town,

then you can just hang a shingle,

and you don't have to be number one.

But if you're, if you're ever planning on selling your business,

think how much more your business will be worth

with 800 Google reviews

compared to my next closest competitor,

who has 200.

Right.

That is crazy.

That is a great way to frame it.

You know, I know, kind of tying back to that,

you know, COVID hit; signs alone weren't enough anymore.

What did you see there

that other businesses missed,

and how you evolved?

Yeah.

So, what everybody needed then was

okay, now I really have to be found

because no one's driving by and seeing businesses.

So then the gig economy really took off.

Right.

Like everybody needs to be found online.

So because I'd already learned

how important it was to get Google reviews,

and I used to just ask people for them,

then I learned to send them a link,

then I learned how to get a Google review card.

Now that's one of the things that we do is

we offer the Google review cards,

and I actually give the first one away to my clients.

And if any of your viewers want one,

just reach out to me at

igetyoufound.com,

and I will gladly send one to you

because this is the number one thing

when you're building your reputation.

You have to make it easy for people.

I love what you do, Adam,

is you asked for the formula for success.

So, I had never calculated it before,

but I figured it out.

You know, AlleyKat's been in business for 40 years,

but we only started getting those Google reviews 10 years ago,

and I really kind of only focused on it

after about five years.

So in my contact database,

here's the actual breakdown formulas.

I have 6,700 contacts.

I ask everyone

when they're in person with me,

are you happy?

You know, and would you leave us a Google review?

But back then I didn't have the cards

or anything like that.

Then I used to send them one email.

Well, now here's my formula is

I send them a text message saying

could you leave us a Google review?

Then I send a follow-up email the same day.

Would you mind?

Because, you know, send us an email.

Because text messages are open 90%,

emails are opened, you know, 40% the first day,

maybe, you know,

and it goes down after that.

And then you send them another text message,

and another email,

and another text message.

I actually had one guy say to me one time,

John, I'm leaving you a Google review

just because you were so persistent.

Right?

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

That is one of those,

probably a lot of small business owners

consistently overcomplicate

because they don't think that consistency is important.

I would even share, John, you know,

I've done it myself, and in building my coaching practice,

consistency is a hard thing to maintain

in terms of human nature.

Yeah.

So you need to build a system

or develop a system.

And systems are available nowadays.

You know, HubSpot, GoHighLevel,

or, you know, I got some that I white-label,

I have my own system that, you know,

I've taken their foundations and customized it

so it's even better because I know what works.

But you know, people,

you gotta let the scales drop from their eyes.

Like you can,

you can lead a horse to water,

but you can't make him drink.

I'm in a sign shop, you know,

buying group all across Canada.

I've taught all this stuff.

I've been a speaker

on national forums for the sign business.

And you know how many sign shop customers I have?

2.

Like, people, it's a numbers game

because people don't listen.

I'm telling you,

I am the number one ranked sign and marketing company

in the entire country of Canada.

Now, granted,

we're only 10% of the size of the United States,

but I'm actually one of the

highest-ranked in all of North America

because I do it.

Not because I'm better.

I'm not good.

I'm not better.

There's lots of great sign shops out there.

There's lots of great marketing companies out there.

But I'm not afraid to ask.

You know, my wife Barbara and I

will be married 40 years in about two months.

She could not stand me when she first met me.

First impressions are so important,

but usually or often they're wrong.

Okay, I'm actually not a bad guy.

But you think the first time I asked her out,

do you think she said yes?

She said no.

She goes, you're in that fancy,

you're in that fancy German sports car.

It's a Volkswagen Scirocco, a Volkswagen Rabbit,

with a fancy body on it.

She said no, but I didn't stop.

So I guess that's the secret to success in business nowadays.

Don't stop.

Right?

I asked her a couple more times,

and she went with me.

And now here we are 40 years later.

Three kids, three and a half grandkids.

Yep, yep.

Three and a half.

Well, I mean, equating that back down, though, John,

you know what, what would you say is

one thing any local business owner who's listening today

could do, maybe not this week,

but this month,

to get found more easily,

whether it's online or offline.

Okay, well, first of all,

if you have Google reviews,

start replying to them,

and if you don't have Google reviews,

start asking for them.

That is the number one thing

that you can do immediately.

But that might take time.

And if you don't have customers,

obviously that's going to take some time.

But you can go back,

and you can ask all of your past customers

and do it.

I would start by doing it by phone and say,

hey, it's John from AlleyKat Signs and Marketing.

We did the sign for you a while back.

Are you still happy with it?

Is it working for you?

And if there's not, now you've opened a communication

and they will tell you that there's a problem

or there's an opportunity,

which is great.

And if they are, you say,

hey, would you mind helping me out?

We're trying to get to our first 20 Google reviews,

and would you help us?

And the next thing I would do is

optimize your Google Business Profile.

If you want to get found on Google

or if you want to get found online.

So this affects ChatGPT,

this affects Gemini,

this affects Grok,

this affects Perplexity.

All of the AIs are scanning Google,

and your Google Business profile

is the most important information.

So you can put up to 300 characters

to describe a service that you provide.

You can put up to a thousand characters

to describe a product.

So, let's say, you know, my, the Google review card

or whatever, or an A-frame or something like that.

But when a client leaves you a Google review,

and here's the, here's the kicker:

Google gives you 4,000 characters to reply to that.

So you can tell a story.

You can say, thank the client by name,

you reply and discuss the product that they bought.

Because if they don't put that in the Google review,

hey, thank you so much

for getting that A-frame or the vehicle wrap for me.

And so now you're putting

keywords back into your reply, right?

So those are now searchable.

And then,

you become an authority to the AIs as well, right?

So you become an authority to your clients.

You show the nature of your character,

the way you write the reviews.

And by the way, there's tools for this tool.

I have an AI tool

that will automatically write your review for you.

And it does, it gives the clients prompts,

but it will also reply to the Google review.

Now, there's a caveat here.

AI, in my opinion, stands for actual idiot.

Okay?

You have to train it first.

Boom.

Okay, so I do what I...

I mean, my view is aligned there, John.

AI is not about creation; it's about iteration.

Exactly.

How to start,

and then you have to put a lot into it

to make it not slop or make it not garbage.

And that's what I call AI Squared Adam.

So AI is my actual intelligence.

This gray hair that I have here, I earned it.

Right?

And then I'm going to

partner with the artificial intelligence

to do the job for me.

So I have to train it to be as smart as I am,

and is intuitive,

and to use words and grammar

and attitudes that I have.

But it's still just a thing.

It's a tool. But please use it.

Well, and I think that this all moves in that way, John.

of, you know,

at any point for any business owner,

being findable beats being clever.

Especially when you're thinking

you're being unique with using AI.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, relationship always beats tools and automation.

Always.

Relationships take time to build, too. right?

Yeah.

But John, you know,

after leadership failures,

near-death clarity,

and building two businesses, the human way,

is anything real?

Yeah.

So, what is real?

My value statement is valuable people.

People are real.

That's the foundation for your business.

Valuable relationships.

Who am I having relationships with?

Relationships with your staff are more important, actually,

than relationships with your clients.

I can get new clients

just by putting an ad on Google

or people finding me.

But relationships with your staff are actually key

because they represent you.

And, so if you do a good job with them,

so the formula is:

valuable people,

valuable relationships,

creating valuable results.

So, you have to start with the people,

then you work through the relationship,

and then you get results.

Oh, that's magnificent.

That is a magnificent one.

John, this is such a grounded story,

You know,

weaving in leadership,

growth, family,

and doing things the right way.

Where can people find you and AlleyKat,

and reach out to connect?

Yeah, I think up on the screen,

it might show up there.

We're in a half screen.

You can reach me at

igetyoufound.com

And so, all you have to do

is put in your email address there

and then we will send you out our book

which is

the playbook for how to get found on Google.

And that's no charge.

And then if you want,

I will also send you,

if you send me your address,

I'll send you one of these Google review cards

and I will program it exactly to your Google business profile.

You know, this is, it's a loss leader.

They don't cost me a whole lot of money.

But literally, you know,

it allows me to be a benefit to you.

And everything that we talked about here today,

I have in that I get you found playbook.

Beautiful.

And you can do it yourself,

or you can use my AI tool for $140/month Canadian,

which is only $100 American,

or you can hire me to help you get found

and do it all for you for $500/month.

And by the way,

if you're spending money on Google Ads right now,

I'll just end with this.

If you're spending money on Google Ads right now

and you do not have

your Google Business Profile optimized,

stop it.

Stop spending money on your Google Ads

until you have your Google Business Profile optimized.

You're just wasting money.

And then after that...

You're throwing money out the window, basically, John.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you were my kid,

that's what I would tell you to do right now.

Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome.

John, this was a huge pleasure.

I think the lesson today, you know,

leadership needs to show up when things go wrong.

You know, growth follows trust, not tricks.

And the simplest systems often win the longest.

So, you know, if our listeners here today

are building something

and want to do it without burning people

or burning themselves, you know,

my clarity call is also down in the notes,

but we'll link to everything

you mentioned a minute ago

in the show notes below.

John, it was a huge pleasure.

Listeners, until next time,

stay human,

stay visible,

and keep asking what's real.

Thank you, John.

Thanks, Adam. Have a great day.