You don't need to be an influencer.
You need to be easy to find.

You already have a real job. This page is not asking you to add a second one — the one where you post daily, chase whatever's trending, and build a following.

Five short chapters live under this manual. Every one is about being easy to find and easy to trust online, in whatever time you have. Most of what works here costs nothing but a few minutes.

Not a content job

A lot of the advice aimed at small business owners is written for people who like being watched. It's a full-time job on its own, and it isn't the one you have.

Somewhere out there, an account with a ring light is telling owners like you to film yourself talking to a camera between calls. That works fine if talking to a camera is the job.

It isn't yours. Yours is up to its elbows in somebody's water heater, and it pays better.

None of the five chapters here ask you to perform. They ask you to be findable, to be straight about who you are, and to get back to the truck.

What it costs

Nearly everything in these five chapters is free to set up — a page, a profile, a claimed listing. What it costs is your time, and only your time.

That's still a real cost. The hours are the price, and no statement ever arrives for them — which is exactly why they're easy to spend without noticing.

A chapter in the Lead Machines manual runs the math on whether those hours pay you back. This page won't repeat it. Go there when you're ready to run your own numbers.

In 2022, the Census Bureau counted 29.8 million businesses with no paid employees at all, against 8.3 million that carry a payroll. In construction alone, just under 2.9 million businesses reported zero paid employees, and still pulled in $238 billion in work between them.

The five chapters

Read the one line and go to the one that matches your question.

• Which platforms matter for your trade Who's actually there, sorted by age instead of hype, and what nobody can honestly tell you yet.
• The Facebook page, and who can actually run it Page versus profile, who on your crew can post as the business, and the scheduling shortcut that quietly stopped working.
• Nextdoor: the page you may already have Claiming a page a neighbor may have started for you, and what a Fave really is.
• Instagram for the visual trades Worth it if your finished work photographs well, skippable if it doesn't.
• The truck, the signs, and the words that do nothing Why matching your name across the truck, the sign, and your listings beats the words you paint on the door.

If you already know which one you're wondering about, start there. If you don't, start with which platforms matter — it's built to answer that first.