The Google Business Profile course for local business owners.
A free, small-cohort academy for local business owners who want to understand how Google local search really works, and then run it, taught by a Level 7 Google Local Guide who has spent six years inside Google Business Profile.
Free. No card. Admission by application. The next cohort is forming now.
There's a version of "academy" that's really a sales pen with a welcome mat. This isn't that. The Academy exists because the fastest way to fix local search is to teach the people who own the businesses, in a room small enough that the work gets done on your profile, not on slides about someone else's.
What the Academy teaches
The Local Guide Method has two halves: the profile work (reviews, photos, engagement, the engine) and the GBP Growth Stack that brings people to it (YouTube, Shorts and TikTok, and a CRM). It's a system where your own customers do your SEO for you, and it's taught in the open, in four parts:
- Reviews that teach Google what you do. Not "great service," but the words a customer would actually search, coming from actual customers. Start with getting reviews that help you rank and replying to every review.
- Photos that prove the claim. Real photos from real jobs, posted on a cadence instead of whenever you remember. See the photos that matter.
- Engagement that keeps the profile alive. Replies, posts, and answers to the questions customers ask, so the business reads as open and busy. See writing posts with AI and answering customer questions for Ask Maps.
- The engine. The automation that asks for the review, schedules the photo, and drafts the reply, so the first three keep happening after you stop thinking about them. It's the same engine behind the Local Guide System.
Also inside
- Live sessions with Greg Tresler ("Google Greg"). Bring your profile, your question, or your confusing Google notification, and get it handled live, not "book a call to find out."
- The weekly webinar, and the replays. Webinar Wednesdays runs live this Wednesday, and Academy members get first access to everything that comes out of it.
- Owners like you. All working the same map pack problem from inside their own categories.
Taught by Greg Tresler, "Google Greg."
I'm a Level 7 Google Local Guide with six years inside Google Business Profile, and I run the live sessions myself. No assistant reading slides, no "book a call to find out."
Who it's for, and how you get in.
Who it's for: local business owners. You don't need any technical background. If you can post on Facebook, you can learn this.
How you get in: you apply. It's free. You apply because seats in a cohort are limited, not because there's a sale on the other side. Greg reads every application himself and builds each cohort from the owners who are ready to do the work. Some of you will learn the system and run it yourselves, and that serves the mission. Some of you will decide your time is better spent on your business and ask to have it run for you. The Academy is where you get enough understanding to make that call wisely, either way.
Get on the waitlistNot ready to apply? Join Webinar Wednesdays free.
The Academy, common questions
- Do I need technical skills?
- No. If you can post on Facebook, you can learn this.
- What does it cost?
- Nothing. The Academy is free; admission is by application.
- What if I'd rather have it done for me?
- That's the Local Guide System, at four levels. See the four levels.
- Is it for marketers or agencies?
- No. Cohorts are for local business owners.