CASE STUDY 03 / THE LAB
I test everything on my own money first.
I Hang Flat Screens. Colorado Springs and Denver, founded 2019, still running. I own this one, and nothing gets sold to a client until it works here.
Disclosure: I own this business. It is my testing lab, not a client. Everything below is stated with that in mind.
BEFORE
A business, not a demo.
I started I Hang Flat Screens in 2019 after Orlando. TV mounting, in-wall cable concealment, above-fireplace installs, outdoor televisions, soundbars. 27 named service areas across Colorado Springs and Denver metro.
It is a real business with real customers who get annoyed at real mistakes. That is exactly why it is useful. Anybody can build a demo that looks good in a slide deck. Running the tactic on a business where a bad month is your own bad month is a completely different standard.
When I started marketing it seriously, it had five Google reviews and it depended on Thumbtack, which is a shared lead marketplace. Every lead I paid for was sold to competitors at the same time, and I competed on price for work I was better at than the people I was bidding against.
WHAT I BUILT
Everything I sell, running on me first.
01
The full search stack
Website, Google Business Profile, and local SEO across 27 named service areas in two metros. Everything on the SPOT side of the system is running here, and it is where I learned what actually moves a service area business versus what just looks like work.
02
Review generation at volume
Systematic review requests on every completed job, at the moment the customer is standing there looking at a perfectly level television. This is where the review playbook I sell was built.
03
Getting off shared leads
The deliberate project of replacing purchased marketplace leads with owned demand. Thumbtack is gone. Organic and profile traffic carry the business now, with one controlled paid channel on top.
04
One paid channel, run on purpose
Google Local Services Ads at $500 to $1,000 a month, deliberately, as one channel sitting on assets I already own. Not as the whole business. I talk about this openly because pretending I run zero paid traffic would be a lie.
SERVICES RUNNING
RESULTS
Real numbers, publicly checkable.
-
5 → 144
Google reviews
At a 5.0 rating. Started with five. You can count them yourself right now.
-
400+
Thumbtack reviews
Up from roughly 200, at 4.9 with Platinum Pro status.
-
70%
Lead to booked job
Seven out of ten leads become booked work.
-
$312
Average ticket
Which is the whole reason this business is the lab and not the client profile.
-
2x
Organic traffic
Roughly doubled. Organic is about a quarter of total traffic.
-
$0
Spent on Thumbtack
Off shared lead marketplaces completely.
Straight with you: I am not publishing revenue for this one. It is a solo operation at a $312 average ticket, which means it would fail my own qualification test if it walked in as a client. That is the honest read, and it is why this page says testing lab and not success story.
THE POINT
What this proves, and what it doesn't.
What it proves: the search work, the profile work, and the review system produce results on a real business with real money at stake, in a market I compete in every week.
What it does not prove: that I can scale your operation. This is one person with a van and a level. It is not a six-truck operation and I am not going to dress it up as one.
It also does not demonstrate missed call text-back, because I answer every call myself. When I am too busy to answer, that is my signal to expand. That piece of the system is proven at Rob the Hair Viking instead, and I would rather point you at his page than pretend mine covers it.
READY TO TALK?
WANT ONE OF THESE?
30 minutes. We'll figure out where your business is leaking and whether I'm the right person to fix it.
Or call 720-902-9409