My meme about a broken AC unit went viral and got me 3 new service contracts in Phoenix

I snapped a picture of a rat nest inside a condenser coil last summer, posted it as a joke caption, and within a week a homeowner called me to fix his unit, then his neighbor hired me too because he saw the same post shared on a local Facebook group.

3 comments

3 Comments

blairtaylor14d ago

Wait, did the homeowner actually mention seeing your meme when they called you, or did you piece that together after they hired you?

charles_kelly4314d ago

Actually @blairtaylor, I didn't piece it together at all. The homeowner straight up told me when he called that he'd seen my "water heater or caulk" meme on Nextdoor and figured I'd be the guy to call. He even quoted part of it back to me on the phone. I'd guess maybe 1 in 5 calls I get now start with someone referencing one of my posts or memes. It's kind of wild how much that stuff spreads around in local Facebook groups and Nextdoor.

sam_murphy3914d ago

Hang on, I'm going to push back on this a little. I get that it feels good to have people call you because of a funny post, but I wonder if you're accidentally building a reputation as the "joke plumber" instead of the serious, reliable one. I've seen this happen with a contractor friend of mine who leaned hard into being the funny guy on social media, and people started hiring him more for the personality than the actual work, which led to some weird expectations and even a few complaints when the humor didn't match the job. There's also the risk that the meme gets shared out of context and someone call you thinking you're a handyman for all kinds of stuff you don't even do. I'm not saying don't have fun with it, but I'd be careful about how much your business depends on being a local internet character rather than a straight-up tradesman.