$997 a month. No setup fee for the first 15. · No new ads. No new leads. No new software.
Proof from the field
The Rank engine has receipts.
The Rank system inside Local Hero runs on Merchynt, an AI local-SEO platform used by small businesses across the country. You're not the test case. Here's what owners on the platform say, in their own words.
4.8★★★★★ across 900+ platform reviews, as published on merchynt.com
W
Will Higgins
★★★★★
“The system works! I was on another more expensive system and when I disconnected my rankings plummeted. Two weeks working in the Paige system and now I'm number 2 in my market. I was skeptical but figured it was worth the try, and it works!”
Platform review · merchynt.com
R
Ross Quade
★★★★★
“So far it's really helped automate responses, reviews, using specific keywords I'm looking to optimize and it's kind of one and done... It's been a great service and so far I'm really happy with it!”
Platform review · merchynt.com
S
Sealing
★★★★★
“I definitely saw an increase in my rankings and I definitely recommend it to all... I'm with them for the long haul!”
Platform review · merchynt.com
Reviews shown are for the Merchynt platform that powers the Rank system, as displayed on merchynt.com.
The truth first
78% of customers hire the first contractor who calls back.
Not the best one. Not the cheapest one. The first one. You didn't lose those jobs on price. You lost them the moment the call went to voicemail and the estimate sat with no follow-up. Most contractors don't have a lead problem. They have a system problem, and it leaks in three places:
A homeowner calls at 7pm. Gets voicemail. Hires the next guy.
Estimates go out. No system to close them.
150 old leads sit in a spreadsheet doing nothing.
Booking jobs isn't a skill. It's a system.
Do the math
Three more jobs a year. That's the whole promise.
Say your phone rings 15 times a month. That's 180 homeowners a year asking you for a quote. Add the 150 old estimates sitting in your spreadsheet. That's 330 people who already wanted to hire you.
Every dot is a homeowner who already asked for your number. Right now, most of them never hear back, and somebody else gets the job. We only need the three green ones.
3
more jobs a year, out of the 330 who already called
× $40,000
an average job
= $120,000
more in your business this year. Guaranteed in writing.
You already paid for all 330. We just go get three of them.
Founder, Vera Home
About Matthew Paetz
I grew up in a small rural town in Indiana. My dad drove a truck. My mom worked at the grocery store. Nobody in my house had a marketing budget or a tech consultant. They had their word, and they kept it.
That's where I learned the rules I still run on:
A handshake means something. If you say you'll do it, you do it.
When something goes wrong, you make it right. No excuses, no runaround.
Good work should speak for itself. It just needs to be seen by the right people.
Why I built Vera Home
Vera comes from the Latin word for truth. I built Vera Home because homeowners across Los Angeles County are tired of guessing who to trust, and honest contractors are tired of losing jobs to whoever shouts the loudest online.
What I bring to your business
Before Vera Home, I spent nearly a decade as a behavioral coach, working with more than 700 business owners on one thing: follow-through. I wrote the book on it, literally: Follow Through: The Solopreneur's Guide to Building Real Confidence. I understand how people decide who to trust, and I know technology only helps if it makes your day easier instead of harder.
My promise to you
You'll never fall behind on technology, you'll never be left guessing what's working, and you'll convert more of the jobs you've already earned. I'll handle the tools. You keep doing what you do best.
My word on that.
Matthew PaetzFounder, Vera Home
Rank, visualized
The difference between fighting for shared leads and owning your neighborhood.
Look at this map. Each number shows exactly where a business ranks from 49 different street corners across one LA neighborhood. If you're seeing red, the homeowner on that corner never sees you. Watch what 90 days of Rank does to the map.
“general contractor near me” · Studio City
Day 0Day 30Day 60Day 90
Visibility scan · Day 0
Top-3 spots: 0 / 49
Top 34–910–1516+
Dominance where it matters: Landing in the Top 3 Map Pack triggers a steady stream of homeowners ready to commit.
Zero ad waste: When your phone rings naturally from the neighborhood you live in, you can finally turn off the overpriced Google Ads and lead-broker platforms.
Illustrative animation of a Day‑0 to Day‑90 scan sequence. Your scorecard uses your real searches, your real positions, on the map you actually serve.
Local Hero
The 5R Method.
Five systems that run on the leads you already own. Every one of them does a job nobody in your company actually has time for. None of them ask you to buy traffic.
R1
Rank
Google Business Profile
Your profile rebuilt and worked every week, so homeowners searching your trade in your zip find you in the top three instead of page two.
R2
Reviews
Automated review requests
Every finished job gets a review request, timed so it actually gets answered. Your rating climbs and your map spot follows.
R3
Reactivate
Database reactivation
Your 150+ old estimates and past customers get a respectful text and email sequence, from your name, with an offer you approved. The ones who are ready raise a hand.
R4
Respond
60-second speed to lead
Every new inquiry gets a reply in under 60 seconds, day or night, by text and voice, and lands on your calendar before the other guy sees his missed call.
R5
Refer
Referral engine
Your best past customers get asked, at the right moment, with a real reason to say yes. Referrals become a system instead of an accident.
Plus the Scorekeeper. One monthly report with the only number that matters: signed revenue the system found you. Not impressions. Not clicks. Dollars, measured against where you started.
How it works on your side
Three steps. Then you go back to building.
Step 1
Apply. Ten minutes. We check the fit against the numbers below, then get on a 20-minute call and pull up your business live.
Step 2
Hand us two things. A login to your Google Business Profile, and an export of your old leads and customers. Any format. The spreadsheet in the truck counts.
Step 3
Take the calls. We build and run everything. You approve every message before it goes out, and you show up to the estimates that get booked.
No new software. No new lingo. No weekly meetings.
The only thing that changes is how many of your estimates turn into contracts.
Do the math like an owner
The most profitable hire you'll ever make isn't a person. It's the Local Hero system.
One full-time minimum-wage hire
~$3,500
per month, direct payroll cost only
$18.42/hr City of LA wage floor, before a single benefit
Plus payroll taxes and workers' comp (already in that number)
Not included: insurance, PTO, tools, truck, training, turnover
Not included: managing a human being every single week
Works 40 hours. Sleeps. Calls in sick. Quits.
Buying the same systems separately
$35,000+
first year, at advertised market rates
Local SEO / GBP retainer: $500 to $1,500/mo
Review management: $200 to $400/mo
AI speed-to-lead and booking: $997/mo, published competitor pricing
Reporting dashboards: $397/mo plus $2,497 per build phase, same competitor
Reactivation campaign: $2,000 to $8,000 each
Five vendors, five invoices, nobody accountable for the whole number
Local Hero
$997
per month. Setup fee waived for the first 15.
Works your Google presence, your old leads, your new inquiries, and your follow-ups
Answers the 7pm call in 60 seconds and chases estimates on Sundays
Never needs training twice. Never has a bad week.
$997 a month, versus roughly $42,000 a year for the hire
One job. Revenue. Measured in a monthly scorecard.
What you're actually getting
Five systems. One team. One number.
Here's what each one costs if you were to pay for it separately:
Rank: Google Business Profile rebuild and weekly management
Full audit and rebuild, ongoing posts, photos and Q&A, review responses, citation cleanup, and Maps rank tracking against your Day-0 baseline.
$500 to $1,500/mo
market-rate retainers
Reviews: automated review collection
Every finished job asked for a review, on a timer that actually gets answered.
$200 to $400/mo
market rate
Reactivate: managed database reactivation
Your list cleaned, an offer you approve, the sequence sent from your name, and every reply routed straight to you.
$2,000 to $8,000
per campaign, market rate
Respond: 60-second AI voice and text speed to lead
Answers every new inquiry day or night and books it onto your calendar before the competitor sees the missed call.
$997/mo
published competitor pricing
Refer: referral engine
Past customers asked at the right moment, with a reason to say yes.
Included
Scorekeeper: monthly revenue report
Signed dollars the system found, every month, against your Day-0 baseline. Competitors sell this as a separate reporting product built in paid phases.
$397/mo + $2,497/phase
published competitor pricing
Vera Home Premium listing + Donna placement
Live on Vera Home, Los Angeles County's ADU resource. Donna, our AI assistant, only ever names Premium businesses when homeowners ask who to call.
$297/yr
Buy it all on your own and you'll spend $35,000 or more in the first year. Get it as one system and you pay $997 a month. One invoice. One team accountable for the whole number.
$35,000+ of value
$997
per month. $2,500 setup waived for the first 15.
For the first 15 only
Come through this page and the $2,500 setup fee is gone.
Local Hero carries a $2,500 one-time setup. That's the profile rebuild, the database cleanup, the speed-to-lead build, and the calendar wiring. Real work, done once. For the first 15 general contractors who apply through this page, we waive it. Not discounted. Waived. You pay $997 a month and nothing else to start.
Why 15? Because every account gets a real buildout and a human watching the revenue number every month. That doesn't stretch across 100 clients. When the 15 are filled, the setup fee comes back and this page will say so.
$2,500 one-time setup
$0
for the first 15 through this page
The rollout
12 months, built in the open.
First 72 hours
The starting line. Your Vera Home Premium listing goes live. Your baseline Maps rank scan lands in your inbox. Rank audit underway, citation cleanup started.
First 30 days
Reactivate and Respond go live. Your old leads get worked with a sequence you approve line by line. Every new inquiry gets answered in 60 seconds and booked. Your 30-day money-back window runs the whole time.
Month 2
Reviews and Refer switch on. Finished jobs get review requests, past customers get asked for referrals on schedule, and your first Scorekeeper report shows signed dollars against Day 0.
Month 3
The full system is compounding: rank moving on the map, reviews stacking, reactivated leads booking, new inquiries answered before the other guy wakes up.
Month 12
$120,000 or more in new revenue, or we keep working for free. Not a story about activity. Signed contracts, tracked in your CRM, against the leads the system touched.
Where it lives
Built on Los Angeles County's ADU resource.
This isn't a marketing agency bolted onto your business from three time zones away. It runs on verahome.pro, the directory homeowners use when they start planning an ADU, and every claim on this page is measured there.
17,000+
Valley ADU permits tracked through LA's public permit data
1,956+
live contractor listings across the ADU supply chain
1,048
licenses verified against the State of California, check date shown
21
trades organized by build stage: Plan, Build, Systems, Finish, Site
Three ways you can't lose
We put the risk on our side of the table.
Day 0 · Setup fee waived
The $2,500 buildout is on us for the first 15 contractors through this page. You start at $997 a month, nothing more.
Days 1 to 30 · Full money back
If at any point in the first 30 days you decide this isn't for you, say so and we refund every dollar you've paid. You keep the rebuilt profile and the cleaned list.
Month 12 · The $120,000 guarantee
If Local Hero hasn't added $120,000 or more in new revenue to your business in 12 months, every fee stops and we keep working for free until it has.
You'll never have to wonder if it's working. You'll have the number.
Revenue is counted from signed contracts tracked in your CRM against the leads the system touched. We agree on exactly how it's counted before you sign anything, in writing, so there is never an argument about the number. The setup-fee waiver applies to the first 15 accepted applications submitted through this page.
The fit
Built for a specific kind of contractor.
The guarantee works because the math works. The math only works if these are true:
Licensed general contractor in Los Angeles County.
15 or more inbound leads a month already.
Average project of $40,000 or more.
150 or more past leads or customers from the last 12 months.
$1.2 million or more a year in revenue.
If that's you, apply. If you're not there yet, claim your free listing on verahome.pro and we'll talk when you are.
Straight answers
What owners actually ask.
Is this a marketing agency?+
No. We don't sell you ads, and we don't sell you leads. Local Hero takes the inquiries you already get and the customers you already earned, and closes more of them. If you're running ads today, keep running them. You'll just close more of what they bring.
Why do I have to apply?+
Because we take 15 businesses, and that's a real ceiling, not a countdown timer. Every account gets the full buildout and a human watching the revenue number every month. That doesn't stretch across 100 clients, and we'd rather cap it than water it down. The application is how we make sure the 15 are businesses the guarantee will actually work for.
What do you need from me?+
Two things, once: access to your Google Business Profile, and a customer and lead export from whatever you run today (Jobber, Housecall Pro, Buildertrend, ServiceTitan, QuickBooks, or a spreadsheet). You approve every offer and every message before anything sends, and you take the calls and estimates that come in. What you don't do is manage anything week to week. That's the point.
Does this work with my CRM?+
Yes. The system works from an export, so it doesn't matter what you run. No rip-and-replace, no new software for your office to learn, nothing about your day-to-day changes.
What counts toward the $120,000?+
Signed contracts, tracked in your CRM, on leads the system touched: an old lead we reactivated, a new inquiry we answered and booked, a referral that came through the referral system. We write the counting rules into the agreement before you sign, so both of us are looking at the same number all year.
What happens after the 15 spots are gone?+
The $2,500 setup fee comes back and this page will say so. The monthly price and the guarantees stay the same.
I already pay someone for SEO. Does this replace them?+
Rank is one of five systems, and it's the only one that overlaps with a typical SEO retainer. Most owners fold that spend into Local Hero because the other four systems are where the signed revenue comes from. If you'd rather keep your SEO vendor, we'll talk about it on the call.
When do I see something real?+
72 hours. Your Vera Home Premium listing goes live and your baseline Maps scan lands in your inbox. Inside 30 days your reactivation sequence has gone out and your speed to lead is answering the phone. Your first Scorekeeper report arrives at the end of month one.
15 spots. Application only.
You built the business. You earned the reputation. Now own the leads.
Provide. Protect. Be present. That was the whole point of going out on your own. Local Hero exists so the follow-through runs without you, the calls get answered, and the jobs you already earned actually sign. Apply, and if it's a fit we'll pull up your business live and show you exactly where the money is leaking.
