Monthly Call Archive
Rebuilt from transcripts 2026-07-27Every Green Grid Goblins mastermind call and public CTR Geeks appearance. The 2024 and 2025 summaries below are compiled directly from the call transcripts. Terms in bold are defined in the Glossary.
The mastermind is still running
Calls run monthly and have not stopped. The next one is 2026-07-29. This page covers everything through 2026-07-08. Anything marked transcript pending is a real call whose recording is being pulled and transcribed right now, so this page grows.
Source status
Not every call has a recording yet
Four 2025 calls exist as video masters with no transcript. Two have notes only. Eleven calls from 2025-08 onward are queued for transcription. All three cases are marked inline below.
| Status | Calls |
|---|---|
| Transcript on file, summarized in depth | Oct 25, Oct 31, Nov 21, Dec 13, Dec 19 2024, Jan 23, Feb 20, Mar 12, Apr 9, Apr Bonus, Jul 23 2025, May 27 2026 |
| Video only, no transcript yet | Feb 2025 Workshop, Apr 24, May 29, Jun 18 2025 |
| Notes only, no recording on disk | Sep 29, Oct 29 2025 |
| Transcript pending, in the transcription queue | Aug 20, Oct 1, Dec 3, Dec 11, Dec 17 2025, Jan 6, Feb 25, Mar 25, May 13, Jul 8 2026 |
Call Schedule
Calls are held monthly, typically on the third or fourth Thursday. Bonus calls and workshops are scheduled as needed.
2024
Oct 25, 2024 - Launch AMA
Free ~2 hour webinar. The founding thesis.
- Mastermind structure announced: $1,000 up front then $200/month, capped enrollment, one guaranteed monthly call.
- The core sequence, restated after three years of teaching it: send branded traffic only, tag it with UTMs, watch impressions climb in GSC, and only then layer CTR on top. CTR is the cherry on top, never the foundation.
- Diagnosed a market-wide drop in call volume even on listings that still rank. Fix: go deep on specific service keywords and every variation, and fight the proximity battle harder.
- The accidental single-variable proof: a Shopify store with no backlinks and no content ranked roughly 12 product pages at #1 purely off Instagram bio-link clicks.
- Introduced Entity Association / Service Association, and walked the full PAA asset chain live on a "sell my house fast Miami" test GMB.
- Explained KP stacking and MREID, plus a claim he said he had never made publicly: a featured snippet functions as a lesser knowledge panel.
- Business layer: PDCA above SOPs, the Kolbe assessment, and the no half cakes framing.
Oct 31, 2024 - First Paid Call
The PAA distribution chain, in full.
- Why calls are down everywhere: demand pulled forward by COVID, a softening economy, an election year, HCU and AI search, and Google shrinking map proximity to push Local Service Ads.
- Revealed he had spent roughly a year deliberately ranking GMBs with no new reviews, and why he avoids bought reviews: the seller now knows your client's business.
- Handed out the PAA workbook: three tabs (GMB post, blog post, press release), one sheet per service per client.
- Content multiplication recipe end to end: blog post, press release, GMB post, Pictory long video, InVideo vertical short, stripped audio to SoundCloud, podcast to Podbean.
- Upgraded the audio step: NotebookLM two-host podcast, or best of all record the actual client answering the PAA list on Zoom.
- Trust signal evolution: citations were the original proof, social now carries more weight, which is why social links sit in the GBP backend and citations do not.
- Live SERP teaching on "metal roofer" versus "metal roofing contractors", including the sponsored-count read.
- Hard member rules: no reselling this as a service, positive sentiment only, know the client's niche before touching anything.
Nov 21, 2024 - Site Structure and Siloing
Where the LLP doctrine got locked down.
- Danny Milea's hyper-local method: search brand plus service question from an IP within six miles, random pins, all lowercase and unpunctuated, brand only with no geo, sprinkled not dumped.
- Simon C's on-page answer format: PAA as H2, answer in the very next line restating subject and verb, then bullets. No paragraphs, no AI drafting. Indexed in eight hours and jumped a full page.
- Justification as a conversion lever: one roofing company credited five million dollars in extra sales to promoting financing on the GMB.
- The LLP, not the homepage, is the money page. The homepage is "the business card."
- Multi menu system and the Dallas container concept for multi-location clients.
- LowFruits walkthrough: weak spots, all in title, exact-match counts, featured snippet ownership.
- Patent-grounded theory: semantic triples, OQ and Q manipulation, and the argument that broad keywords now outrank keyword-plus-geo in difficulty.
- LoopNet play for sourcing legitimate GMB addresses, and checking your wall before committing.
Dec 13, 2024 - Friday the 13th GMB Brand Live Audits
Live audits, Vision API, and the hiring block.
- Live GMB audit of a New Orleans roofing listing: no keyword in the name, stale posting, image missing logo and NAP, reviews only pulling from Facebook, closing at 6pm.
- UTM tags declared non-optional, which triggered a blunt exchange with Shaun Mitchell about GSC versus GMB Insights.
- Every image run through the Google Vision demo. Wrong labels or objects means the image gets sent back and remade. Faces should read joy.
- Review text run through Google NLP for sentiment. Same rule for NotebookLM audio: cut anything negative before publishing.
- Image distribution as a silo: GMB internal upload, external GMB URL, public Drive folder, LH3/LH5/LH6 links, and an Amazon bucket foldered by service.
- Hiring and operations: pay per task, interview five to ten at once, the hidden instruction in the job post to filter template repliers, DISC or Kolbe for role placement.
- Possum filter and blacklisted GMB discussion with Allen Levings: broken with brand, authority, trust, and prominence, not keywords.
Dec 19, 2024 - The UTM Masterclass
The single most practical call in the archive.
- Gold stars framing: rich snippets, non-branded knowledge panels, and generative answers are each Google awarding a star.
- Answer-first snippet rule: never repeat the question in the first sentence. Live-audited metal roofing, concrete driveway, hail damage, plastic surgery, and dental PAAs to prove the pattern.
- The bulk of the call: a Miro mind map showing a separate UTM tag per traffic entry point, organic, maps, knowledge panel, LSA, plus one per social profile and audio property.
- UTM recon on competitors in Charleston, Boston, and Miami. Most had no tag at all, which he reads as a beatable listing.
- Link architecture locked: every social to the GMB post, GMB post to the blog post via Learn More, blog post to the service page. No cross-linking between socials.
- Reviews are not required to rank. Order is keyword in the GMB name, then reviews, then engagement. Reviews are a subset of engagement, so enough engagement substitutes entirely.
- Google Vision image work live on Spencer's insulation client, including one level up when Vision will not return the exact service.
- Closers: check indexation first on any new client and push through Omega Indexer, and the word cloud image trick.
2025
Jan 23, 2025 - SEO Neo Deep Dive
The organization discipline that makes Neo work.
- Corrected the circulated flow chart: socials point to the GMB post, not the blog post.
- One 1,000-word PAA article becomes months of short content via Opus Clips, CapCut Pro, or Pictory.
- Bulk Gmail creation: the dot trick, keeping the SEO Neo Gmail separate from the client social Gmail, and mobile-created Gmails being more trusted than desktop-created ones.
- Jarret moved a fence staining contractor grid average from 16 to 12 in one week using only a YouTube video, a GBP post, and a blog post. Free tiers only, no SEO Neo.
- NotebookLM footprint warning: every generated podcast uses the same two voices, detectable across an entire niche.
- Event posts as a durable brand signal. Years later an Eventbrite entry was the only thing still surfacing in the knowledge graph for one test brand.
- The PAA qualification sheet: knowledge panel, snippet, generative answer, and where the map pack sits. Map pack at the top signals higher commercial intent.
- SEO Neo second half: content buckets segmented by client, service, and geo. Mike runs 250 to 350 buckets on his main account.
- Case studies: a Denver plumber keyword from 10 to 74 percent, another from 72 to 88 percent, a test real estate site from 12 to 69 percent.
- Reporting policy: several members send no reports at all, only geogrid links and CallRail notifications.
Feb 20, 2025 - Mike's Own Tools
The call where he demoed software he built himself.
- Opened with the Joy Hawkins finding that Google will not show the same URL in both the map pack and organic. Clint Butler's fix, endorsed by Mike: leave the GMB on the homepage and rank separate city pages organically, so you hold two spots instead of one.
- Shaun Mitchell's win with zero CTR: a stuck multi-location garage door GMB came unstuck in about two and a half weeks purely from the PAA plus social distribution method.
- Velocity guidance: one to three GMB posts a day is safe. Never 20 to 50 in a day, never post on a Monday.
- Rich snippet management: if you win one, immediately send engagement, links, a press release, or a Neo campaign at it, because Google is testing you and will pull it.
- Demoed a suite of self-built tools: KGMID lookup, bulk Vision image analyzer, bulk NLP content checker, Places lookup, GMB link grabber, autocomplete spy, trust flow puller, and a PAA rewriter.
- Centerpiece: the Brand SERP Report Card, scraping pages one through three and auto-categorizing every result by asset type and control level.
- PAA depth discipline: only work the top four PAAs under the parent topic. Going four levels deep changes the intent.
- Never let AI write pricing into home service content. The garage door pricing and safety failures were the example.
Feb 2025 - Workshop
No transcript
Video master exists at _Mastermind-Calls/2025-02_Workshop/Feb-Workshop.mp4 plus 26 supporting images. Not yet transcribed.
Mar 12, 2025 - Content Buckets
Opened as a tribute to James Slattery, who had just passed.
- Members shared how James pushed them toward SEO Neo and toward Mike's material. Mike floated starting a scholarship in his name.
- Corrected PAA selection: do not start with broad head terms. Start at the SERVICE level, take the top four PAAs per service, spread volume across services. Brian Kato added the 5 pillars rotation.
- Hashtags: at least three per post (service, brand, geo variant). Demonstrated live that adding a hashtag changes the whole SERP.
- Hard rule on AI: never use AI for R and D. Research manually in the SERPs and maps first, then send the same task to multiple AI tools and compare.
- The content bucket teaching Mike called the nugget James refused to give away: one bucket per client PER SERVICE, never one broad brand bucket.
- Live case study on the deliberately off-topic "sell my house fast Miami" test site: from all red twenties on Dec 17 to breaking through by Feb 25, running Neo alone. No backlinks, no citations, no CTR, no site updates. Run lazily with the default prompt specifically to prove the floor.
- The RD 100 ratio theory debate. Clint Butler pushed back hard: RD 100 is not to rank, it is to stay indexed.
- Geo at the end of the PAA is what pulls MAP rankings. Without it you are chasing organic only.
Apr 9, 2025 - Suspension Defense
The most operationally dense call.
- Moved to Yext for listing lock-in because Google was reverting NAP edits. Agency-direct pricing beat SEMrush and GoHighLevel resale.
- Call tracking numbers flagged as a suspension trigger. Landline primary, tracking number secondary.
- Reinstatement tactics: reply to the original appeal email string to reopen the same case, register a real LLC and supply a government-hosted lookup URL, and the business card method during video verification.
- Broad versus geo PAA and cannibalization: national PAAs link to the locations hub page, geo PAAs get no-indexed or canonicaled. Clint Butler's counter-play used link echo as the safety net.
- Proximity shrinking measured across seven major and three small geos in three niches. Broad grids collapse to a few blocks, keyword plus geo still holds the full square.
- Live audit walkthrough in Local Brand Manager: category comparison, review velocity at 180/90/30, post counts, Q and A, services, attributes, Core Web Vitals, schema scrape.
- SEO Neo sequencing: GMB Blast first, let it sit a week. Chris Castile's realization: one DAS campaign already contains four, so people running four separate DAS campaigns were running 4x what was intended.
- RD 100 clarified: every URL you paste spawns its own campaign. Run it at tier ones, never straight at the money site, so you keep a deletable pillow.
- CTR warning: incomplete ATB campaigns create pogo sticking, which Mike calls punching yourself in the face.
Apr 24, 2025 - Bonus Call
No transcript
Video master exists at _Mastermind-Calls/2025-04-24_Call/. Not yet transcribed.
Apr 2025 - Bonus Call: LLM Reverse Engineering
The most forward-looking call in the archive.
- GMB posts vanished from US and UK SERPs. The team spreadsheeted visibility by country. Directive: do not stop posting, push image and video to the GBP back end and link social to the blog post instead.
- The water rising in the building rant: a Brooklyn grid that flipped from one pin to full coverage in a week, backed by ten months of prior scans. Screenshots without the timeline are marketing.
- Built Matt Diggity's content auditor GPT live: custom GPT, paste the prompt, upload the helpful content guidelines and the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, tick all four tool checkboxes.
- Scaling it: one custom GPT per client, per niche, per service. Claude Styles to train voice from a writing sample. Claude Projects with 20 uploaded articles to write in a named author's voice.
- The core new material, the LLM reverse engineering workflow: query "best
<service><geo>", read the Places and Sources tabs, prompt for all source URLs one per line, spreadsheet and dedupe across every service and geo, sort into competitor / linkable / listable, get the client onto those sources, then re-run and watch the answer sway. Demoed live on a Salem Oregon law firm and an Elmhurst Illinois bounce house company. - Green hat philosophy stated: there is no black hat or white hat, only ethical versus unethical.
- Service-keyword doctrine hammered: build tier ones per service, then RD 100 those. Critical detail: a cloud site's homepage is a brand tier link, so publish a service-specific post and use THAT URL as the tier one.
- Referral traffic proof deck: Nike 16.9M visits from organic social in six months, Shein 23.5M organic social against 40M paid social.
May 29, 2025 - Monthly Call
No transcript
Video master exists at _Mastermind-Calls/2025-05-29_Call/. Not yet transcribed.
Jun 18, 2025 - Monthly Call
No transcript
Video master exists at _Mastermind-Calls/2025-06-18_Call/. Not yet transcribed.
Jul 23, 2025 - AI Stack and Press Releases
The last call with a transcript on file.
- Infrastructure warm-up with Shaun Mitchell: network cards capping gigabit regardless of ISP plan, wired Ethernet, UPS battery backups (not surge protectors) on the router and any home server running proxies.
- Claude as the data visualization layer. Mike's number one non-coding use: "make me a gamified interactive dashboard with this data." Applied to SOPs, MCP setup notes, bookmark triage (the 4 R's), GSC client reports, and meeting transcripts.
- NotebookLM as the client brain: feed sources, generate the study guide, convert notes back into sources so the brain compounds, generate the mind map and the podcast. One podcast per PAA, then a master podcast covering all PAAs for the service.
- Podcast syndication as brand building: showed a brand whose GMB had been taken down but which still holds a knowledge panel plus iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Player FM, SoundCloud, Patch, and Crunchbase listings purely off podcast syndication.
- PAA to video pipeline with Pictory, with a hard warning: a human must proof the output. Pictory once tried to instruct viewers on repairing a garage door spring, which can kill someone.
- Reddit Answers demoed live as a referral traffic source that bypasses Google entirely.
- Press releases covered in depth for the first time: roughly $48 per release, picked up by Benzinga and AP News. Three outbound links, with the exact service keyword pointing at the View Larger Map URL.
- CallRail custom tags as the reporting weapon that earns equity stakes and vendor list placements.
- Live EMD audit across Denver, San Antonio, Boston, Dallas, and LA. Two of three map pack winners on EMDs regardless of review count.
- Agency staffing: roughly one fulfillment worker per ten clients. Hire workers, not just project managers.
- Merchant Center nugget: get local clients' products listed as real products, because the algorithm is starting to reference that data even for local.
Aug 20, 2025 - Monthly Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue. Summary lands here when it clears.
Sep 29, 2025 - GEO and NEO Wiki Wizard
Notes only
No recording or transcript on disk. The following was captured in notes at the time.
- GEO and AI Overview strategy update.
- NEO Wiki Wizard deep dive: embedding YouTube RSS feeds into wiki pages for automated video syndication.
- Press release importance for LLM citations and referring domains.
- Patch.com added to the syndication stack.
- "Best keyword plus geo" framing for AI Overview targeting.
- UTM tags for LLM traffic attribution, and Ahrefs limitations for local SEO.
- Member wins: four clients with PAA, SoundCloud, and Podbean deployed, AI Overview placements confirmed.
- GeoBooster and Local Viking for job-site posting.
Oct 1, 2025 - Monthly Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
Oct 29, 2025 - Google Stacks and RSS
Notes only
No recording or transcript on disk. The following was captured in notes at the time.
- Google Stacks explained and compared to NEO's modern workflow.
- rss.app for converting YouTube channels and playlists into RSS feeds for Neo wiki embeds.
- Content bucket strategy at scale: 100 articles per service, one bucket per service.
- NAP Blurb with Spintax for URL variation in wiki campaigns.
- Google's 2-year Gmail inactivity policy and its impact on legacy Google Stacks.
- Short videos versus standard videos in SERP order for service keywords.
Dec 3, 2025 - Monthly Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
Dec 11, 2025 - Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
Dec 17, 2025 - Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
2026
The mastermind is running continuously. Ten of the twelve 2025-08 to 2026-07 recordings are still being pulled from Drive and transcribed, so most entries below are placeholders that will fill in. The 2026-05-27 call has a full transcript on file and is summarized in depth.
Jan 6, 2026 - Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
Feb 25, 2026 - Monthly Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
Mar 25, 2026 - Monthly Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
May 13, 2026 - Call
Fragment only
A 46-second Fireflies capture exists at _ingest/fireflies/calls/2026-05-13_zoom-ggg-call.md, covering Zoom registration link setup and nothing else. The actual call recording is in the transcription queue.
May 27, 2026 - Neighborhood Targeting and the Profit-Share Pivot
A four-hour call. Full transcript on file, roughly 35,000 words.
- Geo targeting tightened from city to NEIGHBORHOOD. Broad city terms are no longer the target. Know the proximity radius and the GPS centroid for the metro before you promise a client a ranking. Chicago, Miami, Denver and Dallas were the worked examples. See Geo-Targeted PAA.
- The 100 GMBs answer, restated. One GMB getting 100 calls loses to 100 GMBs getting one call each. For competitive metros the standing recommendation is now multi-GMB or physical office expansion, backed by real leases and local partnerships. See the Playbook FAQ.
- Profit share became the dominant business topic. Ideal client profile stated on this call: companies doing $1M to $5M a year. Analyze the existing book, identify profit-share and equity candidates, fire the unprofitable clients. See The Profit-Share Model.
- Pricing follows proof. Sell on ROI and case studies, not on deliverable lists. This is where Call Tracking and ROI Reporting turns into the pricing argument.
- Agency-side automation: Stream Deck pushed hard alongside the Claude extension for operator tasks. See the Tool Stack.
Source: `_ingest/fireflies/calls/2026-05-28_zoom-2026-05-27-1852-green-grid-goblins-mastermind-monthly-call-cdcd50.md` (Fireflies upload date 2026-05-28, call date 2026-05-27).
Jul 8, 2026 - Monthly Call
Transcript pending
Recording is in the transcription queue.
Jul 29, 2026 - Next Call
Upcoming
Scheduled. Not yet held.
Public appearances
Podcast and guest sessions, not member calls. Same methodology, general audience.
| Episode | What it covers |
|---|---|
| CTR Geeks with William Jones and Chris Palmer (~1h55m) | Bot tool shootout, fingerprint and device hygiene, click farm buildout, the Micro Workers live walkthrough, the testing window, and the LA chiropractor case study (22 to 11 on micro workers, 11 to 4 on real devices) |
| CTR Geeks with Chris Palmer and William Jones | The 20,000-link CID blast test, result completely neutral. CTR throttling policy, exact match GBP title blocking knowledge panels, and the foundation checklist before CTR |
| CTR Geeks (third episode) | Asset type breakdown, why phones beat bots, the branded ladder, tool-free CTR via push notifications and email, replicating full user intent, and the indexing crisis |
| Live on The SEO Vault, Episode 152 | Mike's correction to how most people run CTR: stop force-feeding the money keyword, find impressions with no clicks instead. Brand first to 30 to 50 percent share |
| Michael Merlino: CTR Manipulation for Local SEO | The most tool-transparent session. His full CTR stack named, fake user journeys, manipulated URLs, QR code CTR, and the 15 review sandbox |
| How To Rank Faster in 2025, Pt 2 | The free workshop. NavBoost as vindication, the master file document for LLMs, the Perplexity sources workflow, and the full stack agency argument |
| Brent Bowser and Mike Merlino: Google My Business | Tumblr blog networks, CID versus ShareLink, the underused free GMB website, G stacks and IFTTT rings, and competitor recon with GMB Crush and PLEPER |
Topics by Category
Which call covered what.
Brand and Entity
| Topic | Call |
|---|---|
| Entity buckets | Oct 31 2024, Apr Bonus 2025 |
| KP stacking and MREID | Oct 25, Oct 31 2024 |
| Brand identity framework | Oct 25, Dec 13 2024 |
| GMB brand audits, live | Dec 13 2024 |
| Brand SERP Report Card | Feb 20 2025 |
| Entity stacking and cloud sites | Jan 23 2025 |
| Popping a knowledge panel | CTR Geeks, Chris Palmer episode |
Content and PAA
| Topic | Call |
|---|---|
| The full PAA distribution chain | Oct 31 2024 |
| Answer-first snippet rule | Dec 19 2024, Nov 21 2024 |
| PAA depth discipline, top four only | Feb 20 2025 |
| PAA qualification sheet | Jan 23 2025 |
| Broad versus geo PAA, cannibalization | Apr 9 2025, Mar 12 2025 |
| Image optimization and Google Vision | Oct 31, Dec 13, Dec 19 2024 |
| Service page and LLP structure | Nov 21 2024 |
| 5 pillars rotation | Mar 12 2025 |
Tools and Technical
| Topic | Call |
|---|---|
| SEO Neo deep dive | Jan 23 2025, Nov 21 2024 |
| Content buckets, one per service | Mar 12 2025, Apr 9 2025 |
| RD 100 mechanics and the ratio debate | Mar 12 2025, Apr 9 2025 |
| GMB Blast cadence and risk | Jan 23 2025, Apr 9 2025 |
| LowFruits, SEO Minion, Detailed SEO | Nov 21 2024, Feb 20 2025 |
| UTM tagging architecture | Dec 19, Dec 13 2024 |
| NEO Wiki Wizard, YouTube RSS embeds | Sep 29, Oct 29 2025 |
| rss.app | Oct 29 2025 |
| Mike's self-built tool suite | Feb 20 2025 |
| Micro Workers CTR campaign build | CTR Geeks, long episode |
Strategy and Policy
| Topic | Call |
|---|---|
| Proximity shrink and LSA pressure | Oct 25 2024, Apr 9 2025 |
| Same-URL map pack versus organic | Feb 20 2025 |
| Suspension defense and reinstatement | Apr 9 2025 |
| LLM reverse engineering workflow | Apr Bonus 2025 |
| AI Overview and LLM citation strategy | Sep 29 2025, Apr Bonus 2025 |
| Press releases in depth | Jul 23 2025 |
| Google Stacks, legacy versus NEO | Oct 29 2025 |
| Green hat philosophy | Apr Bonus 2025 |
| Agency staffing and rev share | Oct 25 2024, Jul 23 2025 |
Where the source files live
main/master-folder/
_Mastermind-Calls/ 15 dated folders, YYYY-MM-DD_Label
_Transcripts/ 52 files, flat, the raw dump_Mastermind-Calls/ is the sorted view and _Transcripts/ is the raw dump. The two mirror each other for every overlapping call.
Call Format
What to Expect
Each monthly call typically runs 60 to 90 minutes and follows this structure:
- Updates - new Google changes, tool updates, industry news
- Training - deep dive into a specific topic or technique
- Hot Seats - members submit sites or GMBs for live review
- Q and A - open questions from the group
See Also
- Glossary - every term used on these calls
- SOPs Overview - structured procedures derived from call training
- Workflows Overview - multi-step processes built from call strategies
- Quick Reference - fast-lookup tables compiled from call content
- Algorithm Updates 2025 - policy changes discussed in the Feb 2025 call