The Ride Along took the stage at Inspection Fuel in New Orleans for Episode 62, where Brad Lowery and Matt Brading sat down with Saiya Patel and Lindsay Freeman of Social Saiya – a father-daughter-built marketing agency that started in a college dorm room and now manages 26 clients across the country.
The duo shared how they scaled their business organically, built strong client relationships, and proved that consistency and communication drive growth. From analytics and review management to creative strategy, Social Saiya’s approach mirrors what inspection businesses know best: success comes from showing up and delivering every single time.
Watch The Ride Along Episode 62, filmed live at Inspection Fuel, and be sure to subscribe to The Ride Along newsletter for insights on running – and growing – a smarter inspection business.
Transcript
Brad Lowery
My gosh, guys, more amazing stuff here at Inspection Fuel. This is obviously The Ride Along. And if you haven’t subscribed to the show, be sure that you go ahead and do that. And if you haven’t checked out Social Saiya, if you’ve been to the conference but you didn’t stop by their booth, well, you totally missed out. But thankfully, we got them on the show here, so now you have to watch. But first of all, guys, thank you so much for being here. I’m looking forward to talking to you guys and hearing what you guys. What you guys do because I mean, obviously I’ve heard this, we’ve talked at the booth, but I want all the listeners to kind of know about y’all and what you guys are looking to do with your business here. Saiya, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Saiya Patel
Hi, my name is Saiya I am a senior at Ohio State currently, and I started Social Saiya with my dad around five years ago. Go Bucs, by the way. Sorry.
Brad Lowery
Go Gators, by the way. Sorry. Hey, I’m Florida boy, okay? Hey, keep going, keep going.
Saiya Patel
And yeah, so I’ve been doing this ever since. Social Saiya is a digital marketing company. We do everything from social media postings to review management and listings management and website design.
Brad Lowery
Very cool. And we’ve also got.
Lindsay Freeman
Hi, I’m Lindsay Freeman. I’m the VP of Marketing at Social Saiya.
Brad Lowery
Very cool. So I thank you guys seriously for being here. mean, we, Matt, obviously you might know a little bit about marketing. In fact, you got very subtly, low key aggressive about how much you know about social media marketing.
Matt Brading
I wouldn’t say that at all. As a matter of fact, no, I just thought that maybe that we could do some things for each other, right? Like I think that I could just help get what you do out there a little bit more. And I think that it’s a good idea. And I think that people need to hear it. That’s what aggressive. I don’t know about that. And also, I don’t really know if I know anything about social media. I might have just gotten lucky. I’ve come to terms with that. That’s fine. But I, the one thing I do know is that I am consistent with it and I have been lucky enough to develop, you know, a large platform to be able to showcase stuff like this. And I think especially when we were talking yesterday, I was kind of excited about the idea of your I mean, obviously you’re an inspection conference, right? But that doesn’t is you’re not limited to home inspectors. That’s not necessarily your target client, right? I mean, it could be. You could you probably have some. know you have some as we talked about that yesterday. I also think I see this very useful for real estate agents too, because I’ve even done some speaking at some real estate gatherings that people were trying to learn how to up their social media game. And that’s what you do, right? That is essentially in a nutshell what it is that you’re doing. So I think it’s really cool and I definitely think there’s a lot of people within the inspection community. Because this is how social media is how people are getting their information that is where they’re going to find things to find people to find companies to find products and So if you’re not on social media Then you’re missing that right and so but there’s a lot of people that don’t know how to make content but in your case, I don’t want you to kind of describe what you do a little bit better, but People can send you raw content and then you can edit it and put it together in a way that maybe would be a little bit more attractive and takes a little, because people are intimidated, especially with the editing process. If you can get past the looking at the camera and saying something or even not looking at the camera and saying something, I mean, they can send pictures, they can send video, they can look at the camera, they can not look at the camera and then you work your magic, correct?
Saiya Patel
Correct, yeah, so. We honestly work with clients however it fits them. So if it’s a client who doesn’t want to be on the camera, then we’ll figure it out to a way that they can send us a voice memo and we can make a cool graphic video and put that as a voiceover, right? And then the most ideal situation of course is having clients send in actual videos of themselves talking. And in that case, we’ll just edit those, cut those, add captions and work our magic that way.
Brad Lowery
Now that’s super cool and obviously I mean you guys have caught on just from listening this far You guys are a social media management company and had inspection for one thing that we’ve really tried to do is kind of Get away from the same vendors that you see at every single conference and we’ve really kind of tried to expand in thinking about what inspectors might need and bringing in some new vendors. Now, I mean, you guys are obviously, your family’s no stranger to Porch and Inspection Fuel. I mean, your dad, Cal, is a friend of the show, good friend of mine as well, and one of my favorite people to drink with at a conference. anyway, but seriously, so I mean, if you know First Inspect, then you know Cal. tell us a little bit of the backstory about how you and your dad developed this business.
Saiya Patel
Yeah, so honestly, going back five years ago during COVID, I was a sophomore in high school and I was working for one of his hotels. And during that time, I noticed that he had social media postings go up and it was a hotel in the middle of Ohio and there was palm trees being posted about this property saying, come stay with us, right? And I was like, this is, I was like, dad, come on.
Matt Brading
A bit of a misrepresentation maybe.
Saiya Patel
Dad, even you know more about social, a little bit more about social media to know that this is just not.
Brad Lowery
You looked at my followers on my personal page and you’re like, what? Just leaving now.
Saiya Patel
And so I was. And so we saw that and I was like, dad, I could do so much better. So I started kind of picking up those hotels at first. And then he was like, hey, Sai, my other businesses need this. So we started with the inspection company, brought Lindsay on, a couple other outside companies started reaching out just via that and saying, hey, I like what you’re doing on social media. Can you do this for my company? So then we kind of started social SIA from there. So yeah, that’s kind of how we began.
Brad Lowery
And I mean, what did you just find, Lindsay, off the street? have you guys known each other? Like, how did you get into this?
Lindsay Freeman
Yes, so it goes back. actually taught Saiya and her older sister at a jump rope class. And so if you know anything about Cal, a little bit more secret, he was a jump rope coach and.
Brad Lowery
Wait, what? my God. No, it’s now out there, Cal. It’s out there. I’m gonna call you Skip from now on, okay?
Lindsay Freeman
there.
Matt Brading
Cut from classes.
Lindsay Freeman
Saiya and I were competitive jump ropers in Cincinnati, Ohio. so I taught her, a few years older, and I taught her in a jump rope class after school, brought her on.
Brad Lowery
We’re double Dutch it later. Let’s go.
Matt Brading
Have a jump rope. Does anybody in here have a jump
Brad Lowery
No, but I got a fifty foot extension cord. Yeah. Double Dutch it up. Let’s go.
Saiya Patel
But.
Lindsay Freeman
It goes back so we actually grew up together and I grew up with their family and they’ve helped us so much in the jump rope world we grew up together and then they started this social media marketing company and that’s what I was going to school for so they reached out when there was two companies and now we’re up to twenty six and so we’ve it’s amazing brought me along for the ride.
Brad Lowery
Cool and what’s been kind of the secret to scaling for you guys? I mean like how have you guys recruited these businesses or reached out to them and what does it look like? What do the operations look like as well?
Saiya Patel
Yeah, so honestly, scaling, we’ve done it pretty much all organically. Yeah, so pretty much like through just connections, networking, yeah, conferences mostly. I pick up a lot of clients just like talking to them and they usually need social media marketing. It’s just such a hard thing to do whenever you’re running your own business, right?
Matt Brading
it seemed like to me. And you’ve been able to learn how to scale kind of slowly by doing it that way. Learn how to better serve everybody because it’s not moving too fast.
Saiya Patel
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the fact that like we’re both, she just graduated college. I’m still in college.
Brad Lowery
Welcome to Debt Repayment. I mean, who knows, maybe. Let’s just assume that you had the free ride.
Saiya Patel
Yeah. So yeah, it’s been like a good amount of growth to where we can sustain it while being students as well. So now that we’re now that Lindsey’s graduated, she’s on full time. And so it’s a lot easier to scale. And now we’re super excited because now we’re like, we can now reach out to businesses and ask, are you looking for this?
Brad Lowery
Yeah, now what is some of those packages look like for businesses?
Saiya Patel
Yeah, so we kind of do social media postings, review management and listings management, and those are, those pretty much are a package deal. And those… It’s basically you’re getting two to three posts a week and then reviews you’re getting all your reviews replied to within twenty four hours. And then listings is you’re listing your property across or your company across two hundred different platforms including Bing, Yelp, Google, all of those. Just so web crawlers will go in there and they’ll rank your website higher seeing that you’re more consistent and just prominent.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, that’s huge. stuff. you guys, it sounds like you definitely pay attention to analytics then as far as how you guys are running things. What are some of the key stats that you guys are looking at?
Saiya Patel
Yeah, so we like to look at impressions, reach, engagement. So actually, Lindsay, I’ll you talk about this. Marketing.
Brad Lowery
Go VP, come on.
Lindsay Freeman
I would say our largest thing is we have such a variety of different type of markets and so depending on what their goals are is what those analytics – is that we’re going to be looking at? If someone’s trying to gain brand awareness, then we’re going to be looking at stats that is going to help make sure that we are getting their brand out there. And then maybe it is, hey, we’re trying to get people to book with us. We want to book an appointment. So we’re going to be looking at stats such as click-through rates. And if people are heading to their website, things like that. So we have a wide variety. The platform we use, we can pull stats, whatever we want to help. And then what we do is every single month with our clients, we’re a small business, we’re in constant communication, probably every day with our clients and we meet with them every month, bi-weekly, whatever works for their schedule and we show them, hey, this is what we’re doing, this is what’s working and if it’s not, we’re able to work with them, reroute and see what’s going to be working that next month. And so very hands-on and making sure that we’re fulfilling their goals and giving value to them.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, and I love that this is stuff that you guys have been doing working through college. I mean, just credit where credit’s due here. That’s the initiative, the work ethic that that takes, that’s massive. I mean, I worked through college too, but it was not this creative. I painted houses. Okay, like just, I’ve looked. It was easy up until, you inhale too many paint fumes, and I think there’s still been some residual damage.
Lindsay Freeman
Yeah.
Matt Brading
I knew something was up.
Brad Lowery
Let me tell you, mean, it’s, it’s yeah, lasting effect. Don’t breathe in carcinogens people. Yeah, it’s like, look, you can either start a business or huff paint and I chose apparently the latter. Yeah. So, good on you guys for being entrepreneurial. I tried and failed. Hey, you know, sometimes it works out. Okay. But, no, this is super cool. Now, pricing wise, we haven’t really talked about that.
Lindsay Freeman
College jobs. Look at you now.
Brad Lowery
But let’s do a little plug here. Where can they follow you guys, first of all? And learn more about this.
Lindsay Freeman
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all just at Socia Saiya. So we have it right here. The spelling is unique and so that’s what we are. No one else took that tag so that was kind of lucky for us. And then we also have a website socialsciah.com
Brad Lowery
Very cool. And pricing wise for your clients, what does that typically run on average?
Saiya Patel
Yeah, so typically it’s like fifteen hundred for the whole package, including like website design and creation. And then also if you already have a website, we’d edit that for you and transfer over the domain to us. So then we’ll just update it monthly or however much we need to do that. And then it starts at fifteen hundred usually, but for this show, we’ll do a discount if you’re listening in. It’ll be twelve hundred for you.
Brad Lowery
Now is this going to be like if we put a coupon code this is going to live on obviously podcast platforms YouTube Will you guys still honor that if they said if they were like hey I watched that episode or listen to that episode is that we guys still honor that discount That’s cool. Okay, so guys you need to go follow them check them out because again we understand this is a this is important I mean, obviously, you know Matt’s super consistent. That’s how you’ve built your following but it’s not for everybody.
Saiya Patel
Yeah, definitely.
Matt Brading
I mean it is it’s a lot of work and lot of effort.
Brad Lowery
No, truly. And so if this is something that you guys need help with, admit that you need help. OK, that’s fine. It’s the first step of solving the problem. Anyway, yeah, truly, mean, you guys can do it, provide a big lift for people here where they don’t have the time or maybe even the creative capacity to be doing this, because it’s still essential. Now, anyway, what’s y’all’s plan as far as where are you looking to take this in the next like five years?
Saiya Patel
Honestly, we just want to grow. We’re looking to grow however much we can. Honestly, five years from now, hopefully we have around like fifty clients. That would be great. A small team working with us. Yeah, mean, honestly, I can’t make a realistic goal because I feel like we’ve been growing faster than I’ve thought.
Matt Brading
You need to shoot for the star.
Saiya Patel
Realistically, I don’t know what realistic means.
Matt Brading
I like I say, shoot, I think the answer is all of them. mean, you know, get them all.
Brad Lowery
That’s your baseline. You’ve found your baseline. All in the first few. Honestly, it’s as simple as going like, hey, in the first I’m not telling you how to run your business. That’s not it because you are doing great. We already established, OK, we’ve already established y’all had the initiative to start this, which was better than I did when I was also. Yeah, better than most. So look, it’s as simple as like, hey, in your first few years that you’ve seen here, we’ve gotten to this point over the last one to two years. We’ve scaled by this much. That’s now your baseline. And you’re like, hey, let’s beat that. Like, you know what saying? If we were able to accomplish this in this timeframe, that means if we want to push the bar just a little bit higher, then we should be able to hit this within this timeframe, right? So, yeah, aim for the stars, like you were saying, seriously.
Matt Brading
I mean, I think it’s Grant Cardone that says like, you know, go big, right? Because if you set your goal to be, yeah, yeah, the ten x thing. If you set your goal to be just massive and you don’t achieve it, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t achieve anything. Like, so I set my goal to be a thousand, I got five hundred. That’s half. That doesn’t sound good, but like, that’s way more than you, you know? Yeah, that’s still really big. And so something to really be proud of. yeah, think shoot the stars. Get them all.
Saiya Patel
Yeah.
Lindsay Freeman
Yeah, and think we’re just we’re learning so much right now and we have been growing so much, especially since I graduated. We’ve been able to have me on full time. And I think with that, it’s just going to continue to get better. Once she graduates, we’ll be able to continue to grow. But what we’re learning right now is making sure that we deliver on every promise that we give every single client. And even though we’re continuing to grow, we’re spacing it out to make sure that every single client is happy with our work and that we exceed expectations. And so making sure that we set goals and as we’re growing larger and larger that every single client is going to be treated like our first. We have all of this knowledge now from you know almost thirty clients in but we want that connection with them to make sure that they know that we’re there for them and we’re their biggest supporter and every single one of us and all of our family members go and follow those pages. We act like a small business and we want to continue to keep that heart and soul with us even as we grow.
Matt Brading
I can respect that. I mean, I like the fact that everything is just kind of a personal experience with each one of your clients. I mean, think that’s really cool.
Brad Lowery
Now it definitely is. I mean you guys have so much ambition. Way to articulate how you want to treat your customers by the way. That was awesome. You sound like a VP. my gosh. Yeah, right? Yeah, that was some serious boss lady energy here. Dang. No, awesome. You guys are to go so far. Keep it up. It’s been great having you on the show. And I’m excited to follow y’all’s trajectory here with growing the business.
Lindsay Freeman
Thank you so much.
Saiya Patel
Thank you so much.
Brad Lowery
I recommend you all start a podcast. You guys have great voices for podcasts. There you go, you should do it.
Saiya Patel
Hey, maybe we will. We can talk all…
Matt Brading
It’s chairs and you can.
Saiya Patel
You next.
Brad Lowery
Let’s go for it. you go. Let’s do it. Yeah, love it. Love it. Well, thank you guys so much, truly, for being here. Saiya, Lindsay, this has been great. And thank you guys so much for watching. Be sure to go give them a follow. So much more coming from Inspection Fuel right here on The Ride Along. And by the way, Cal, you were supposed to drop some bourbon off on this table by now and you didn’t, man. I got to find you. Skip. We’re calling you Skip now because of the jump rope. That’s it. I love it. We’ll see you next time.