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- [00:05]
A
Here we go.
- [00:21]
B
Welcome back to the episode of the LCR Media podcast where we get to know the pros. I'm your host, LCR Nailer Taliaferro. And on today's episode, we have none other than Marcus Sheridan joining us. For those of you that don't know, just a little bit, and I'll let Marcus dive in where he feels appropriate, but he's a communication expert, acclaimed author and keynote speaker specializing in transformational communication. Some of you might know his book they Ask youk Answer. But he also has over two decades of industry experience, so I wanna dive into that first. But, Marcus, welcome to the podcast. How are you, Taylor?
- [00:58]
A
Happy to be here, brother. It's going to be a good conversation and I promise a lot of takeaways for the listeners there, so stick around.
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B
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So let's, let's start with the. The two decades of industry experience. Like, tell us a little bit about that. Like, let introduce yourself to the audience. For those that don't know.
- [01:15]
A
Yeah, My, my brief background right out of college, I started with Two Buddies, a swimming pool company called River Pools. 2001 was a year and things were going, you know, okay. We were fighting to grow the business right up until about 2008, 2009, and that's when the crash hit and looked like we were in really, really big trouble. And I thought we were going to lose the business. But the cool thing about pain and suffering is it forces us outside of our comfort zone, you know. And so it was during this time that I really started to just lean into things like today you might call content marketing, inbound marketing. But in my mind, as I read about this stuff, learn about this stuff, what I heard was, you know, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customers questions and you're willing to address those online, you might save your business. And so that's exactly what I did. And make a long story short, became the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. And give you context for that. We were getting about a million visitors to the website a month and we just blew up. Became a manufacturer of pools, became a franchise of pools, and I wrote a book about it called they asked, you Answer. And now it takes me all over the world and I've spoken, you know, throughout home improvement, throughout the trades, I mean, you name it, lots of different industries. It's been a joy. It's been a lot of fun.
- [02:37]
B
Nice, nice. Well, thank you for that. What, let me ask from a landscaping contractor. A lot of times pool services can be A complimentary service as well as some landscaping companies do all of that. I know some locally that they'll kind of like dig the hole for the pool and then they'll landscape around the pool. And then there's some other companies that kind of do all of it. So what are for anyone that is looking into maybe adding that service or they're looking for maybe subcontractors, like, what are some ins and outs of that to help some of our listeners?
- [03:17]
A
It's one of those things where I think the two industries are incredibly complementary, because what's happening, especially in the residential space, somebody's looking for landscaping, looking to create a feeling and memories in their backyard. Right front yard, too. But let's talk about backyard for a minute here. And the world is loud. It's busy, it's noisy. There's a lot of distraction. People are disconnected. Nothing brings them together like the backyard. And it's one of the few places where the kids might actually put their phone down. And in the swimming pool, you have to put your phone down. So it's, you know, very, very powerful for that. Over the last 10 years, I've seen a lot of landscaping companies get into pools. Part of the reason is because they get tired of return pool companies and working around pool companies, you know, because a lot of projects, homeowner does two together. One of the things that you have to figure out, though, is, all right, how much involved do I want to be? You know, you can do concrete pools. The beauty of the concrete pool is that you can design any way you want. And, you know, there is like, there's just unlimited possibilities. If you can imagine it, you could use concrete pool. We don't sell concrete pool pools. We sell fiberglass. Drawback to concrete, though, is that it's way more labor intensive. There's a lot more opportunities for errors, and it could really slow down your job. Whereas a fiberglass pool, you're more limited in your shapes and sizes. But if the homeowner sees something they don't like, it's incredibly low maintenance. It's an incredibly fast pool to install. So you can do the excavation, the setting grounds, the backfill, including the plumbing. You can do that the entire backfill in one day. Now it's ready for landscaping. So if you think about that from a cash flow perspective, right? It's just like, you know how it is. You can tell a homeowner project's going to take six weeks and. And, you know, three weeks in, they're like, when's this going to be done. You're like we said, you said exactly about six weeks. They just don't hear this stuff. It's really weird. But that's how humans are, right? And so anything we can do to go faster and to exceed the expectations of the homeowner is a beautiful thing. And they're very complimentary. And fiberglass is great because you can, you know, once you learn how to do it, and it's not that hard, you can really, really cook. It could be very profitable. And it goes great within the suite of landscaping.
- [06:09]
B
Nice, nice. So what transitioning now into your. All of your speaking, your book, like, what. Where did that transition happen? Like over the decades of you in your pool business, what made you transition into that?
- [06:24]
A
Like, I've always been the type of person that if I was doing something well or if I saw something worked or had a positive impact in my life, I wanted to share with other people. And so in 2009, that's when I started this. They ask, you answer. And our website blew up and it, you know, it saved our business and, you know, everything started taking off by the end of that year. I was like, man, other businesses to know this. So I started writing about it on a separate website and that would become what is it? What is really today, Market Share.com. and from that I was able to start many other companies. You know, I've got today, I've got two software companies, I've got two separate coaching companies, one for sales and leadership, one for marketing. And, you know, so it's like I speak 50, sometimes a year at different events. I try to stay as much as I can in the trades because I love them so much. And these are my people, these are my brethren, my sisters too. And you know, I just, I believe in the blue collar revolution. I believe we're getting ready to go through the golden age of the trades. You know, my son is 23. He is like six months from his master's or electrician license. He's got his journeyman's. He runs my swimming pool company's electrical wing right now. You know, so he's, you know, he's crushing. And I'm more proud of him going to Harvard and become some dopey lawyer, you know what I mean? It's like I love what he does. And the trades is great because it's the most protected by from AI. And so in a place in a world where a lot of these knowledge workers, a lot of these white collar workers, they're going to go through pain in A lot of those industries, because of job displacement, the trades have a much longer Runway of security and of success. And if you can get into trade and you take advantage of technology, you're willing to lean into it, you become unstoppable.
- [08:39]
B
Nice. Love that. Love that. So with that being said, what when let's talk about your book. They ask you answer. For those that don't know what that book is about, if you want to give us like a little, little snapshot of what it is and then kind of again, how that came about.
- [08:58]
A
Yeah, well, they ask you answer was just a result of everything that I had experienced first as a pool guy creating the most traffic website in the world. And then I was able to replicate that framework with other companies in a multiplicity of other industries. And really the core framework is just obsess over what your customers are asking, their questions or worries, their fears, their issues, concerns. Be willing to lean into those. Specifically, there's five subjects that the homeowner wants to know more than any other five. They want to know all their cost questions they want answered. They want to know their fear based questions like problems they want to know comparison based questions. They want to know reviews, review based questions and best based questions like who's the best long company near me. It's of the best, right? We call those the big five. And so really this became they Ask youk Answer became such a beautiful framework of how you could earn more trust traffic, leads and sales online. And the first edition came out in 2017. The second edition came out in 2020, third edition changed the name of it to Endless Customers. And so Endless Customers came out last year in 2025 and they've all done very, very, been very successful, sold well over 100,000 copies. And you know, industries all over the world at this point have used them, but again, they work particularly well in the trades.
- [10:38]
B
Yes, nice, nice, good stuff. Well, so I wanted to dive in a little bit. About when I had first saw you speak in person was at Sync Live in New Orleans back, you know, this not too, not too. A few months ago over the winter. And one of the things that you were speaking on that I was really intrigued about and wanted to share with my audience is about creating content for your business to market your business. One of the challenges, you know, so just for me, I'm a content creator, but I'm also a business owner. I was a business owner first, I guess you could say that, but I was always kind of a. I've had a creative mind like I majored in art classes in high school and actually majored in fine arts in college, which is a little unknown fact about me. So I have a very creative mindset. So. But that kind of went on the back burner for a long time. And then when I, because I was in retail management for, for 15 years, and then when I got into lawn care, started my own business, that's kind of where the creative part of me started to come out. Like, how do I market by my business? How do I, you know, I want everything to look good? And, and then I stumbled upon, this was now 12 years ago I stumbled upon the, the community that we have now online. Like YouTube was starting to become more popular for the trades and just all kinds of industries. It wasn't just, you know, vlogging and fun videos and that kind of stuff. It was like actually a new way to connect and promote your business. And so many platforms have, you know, popped off since then, like TikTok and Snapchat and all those in the last 12 years. So it's become really relevant and prevalent in all of our lives from an entertainment factor, but also from a marketing and a learning factor. So right out the gate 12 years ago, when I discovered that I started creating content too, and I realized, oh, wow, it kind of woke me back up about that part of my brain that I enjoyed creating content. So I've always been an advocate about creating content, but I think there's like a, and, and you know, correct me if I'm, if I'm wrong or if you, or agree, if you, if you see this, but there's like a disconnect with a lot of business owners where they think content creators or influencers or YouTubers, like I don't have time for that or I don't need that. Like, they think of it as like you're just doing it for show or to be popular or to go viral or all these things. They don't actually incorporate that with a need of marketing their business. And there's so many big and small businesses that I have met over the years that don't market their business and they wonder why their leads slow down. They rely on word of mouth. And just, and the really, the key is and has always been to market through social media. I mean, it's not about being a big YouTuber. It's about putting your business, the content out there, your services you provide, the type of people you provide them for and do it well. And I think now more than ever it's, it's really necessary because you were talking about chat GPT and searchability and time on brand. So what do you have to say about any of that? Let's dive in.
- [13:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there, right? Because since the beginning of time, people have bought from those they know like and trust. And we would always prefer to buy from someone that we know like and trust, if we have a choice. Well, what better way of making sure someone knows you, likes you, and trusts you than to allow them to see your face, hear voice, and learn from you? You know, there's the. The issue to your. Your point earlier that. That a lot of these, you know, contractors have. These business owners have, is that you're thinking, you know, I don't want to be an influencer. Okay? So you have to understand there's two types of. Of. Let's just call it influence. And my friend Daniel Priestley talks about this. He was the first one to talk about this. He really crystallized it with this point, which is there are your traditional influencer who says, look at me. Look at what I'm eating. Look at what I'm doing. But then there's a second, and everyone hear me when I say this. This person is a key person of influence. It's a difference. A key person of influence. And a key person of influence says, hey, look at this. Hey, did you know this? Hey, did you know you could do it this way? That's a key person of influence. And everybody appreciates a key person of influence. And in fact, if you talk to most contractors, like, yeah, you know, I love teaching others about this thing that I do, that's one of the reasons why I got it. Okay. Yeah, okay, well, you want to be a key person of influence. Now you might say, well, I didn't get into this to. To be on the YouTube. Well, I beg to differ, because you said when you got into business, you wanted to control your destiny, you got into business. If you're listening to this, because you want to control your destiny, your control freak, good for you. But in the course of doing that, you said, in order to do this, have a business, I'm gonna have to ask people for their money. You see, as a business owner, you take money in exchange for a good or service. That's what you do. So you're telling people, you can trust me enough, in this case with your yard, with your home, but you have to give me your money, and then I'll do this service for you. Well, then at that point, you lose every right not to give them every reason to trust you and the way they can learn to trust you is the same way you learn to trust many others is by seeing them, their face, their people, and hearing them voice their teachings and then saying, I like that guy, I like that guy, I like that person. You know, I'm comfortable enough to call them to, to reach out to them. Also. There's a stat out there, Neil, that's so profound. It says 75 of all buyers today would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. 75 of all buyers would have a seller free sales experience. So what does this mean? It doesn't mean we hate salespeople, just means that we don't want to talk to them until we're ready, until we're confident, until we're comfortable, until we feel like we're not going to make a mistake. So how do you take advantage of this trend instead of complaining about it? Oh gee, I wish it was like it used to be. What you can do as a business owner is you can give them more control, give them more information up front. And that's why you should be producing this content, allow them to learn these things. Let me give you an example of the most powerful way that you can give a buyer control today. And this works in home services, home improvement, dramatically. I've, I've watched it completely revolutionize a different landscaping companies and that's through a pricing estimator on your website. Now this one is one of the biggest no brainers that most contractors, most landscapers, lawn care professionals are not currently doing. And what a crying shame it is. I was the first company in the world to put a pricing estimator on our website. Now pricing estimator is a tool that's interactive. Somebody answers a series of questions about their project and in return to get a general price range. Now the reason why this is so powerful is because this is the number one question someone asks when they build ample problem they need to solve. So if someone says I need a new patio, the first question isn't, well what type of patio is it going to be? It's like so roughly like what's a patio cost? That's like the first question. Now it doesn't. They don't need to know exactly how much it cost, but they need to know roughly how much is it going to cost. And the way that you do that is you have a really robust pricing page on your website that really teaches them all the factors that drive cost up and down and why some tractors are expensive, why some contractors are cheap. By the way, in the course of you doing this, not only does the human love you more, but the AI is much more likely to recommend you as well. Because AI uses when it comes to especially home services, home improvement, it very much uses pricing as what we call a trust signal. And if you have enough trust signals, you get recommended over others. When somebody is searching on a chat GPT for the best contractors near me for example, and so a pricing estimator allows someone to do this. Then they answering those questions, they get that estimate. Now they have more than they started with and they say okay, I'm in the game or I'm not in the game. But at least they know and what we know for a fact. Because, and I can say this because I own a software company. It's called Price Guide. Price Guide allows home improvement contractors, home services to quickly and easily build these pricing estimators. The average price per month, the cost is about $20 a month. This is what it costs the contractor. So you're looking at 250 bucks a year to add one of these estimators to your website. Okay, connect it to your CRM, anything like that. So it's, it's incredible. But here's what, what's wild about it. The typical increase in leads is 3 to 5x Naylor. So organic search 3 to 5x and paid 3 to 5x. So for example, you've got a lot of contractors that are listening to this right now that are doing paid ads, either Facebook or Google or some other means. Every single one of them. You could immediately 3 to 5x the conversion rates of their ads. Simply buy.
- [20:12]
B
The LCR Media podcast is brought to you by Toro. And if you've been thinking about upgrading your walk behind, now's the time. The 30 inch turf master with casters, one of the most capable and productive walk behinds in the game is $100 off through May 31st. Don't miss your chance to save on this game changer. Click the link in the episode description or head to your local toiler dealer to get yours today. Hey, just real quick, if you haven't heard, I have a new event coming up this summer right here in Richmond, Virginia on June 26th and 27th. It's called the Profit Accelerator. Live special guests we what you're going to learn there. So you're going to learn how to stop underpricing your jobs, improve your route density, close more bids and fill your schedule with more profitable jobs. So stop sacrificing so much of your time for a little bit of money and join us at the Profit Accelerator Live link is in the episode description.
- [21:06]
A
Every single one of them. You could immediately 3-5x the conversion rates of their ads simply by creating an estimator based ad campaign. So in other words, maybe the campaign is. Somebody goes online and they see an ad, the ad says it's in a Google Ad and it says get instant estimate on your new patio versus like sweet instant estimate. I'll have to like call for quote. Yeah, play that game. Person clicks on it, they land on your estimator, not a landing page on your estimate. And immediately it says, hey, answer these seven questions and we'll give you an instant price range as to what your patio is likely going to cost. Then you ask a series of questions like what type of materials are you thinking about? And things like size or footage amounts, you know, whatever it is. And then by the end it says, okay, based on what you, what you just shared, it looks like your new patio project or whatever it's going to be, going to be whatever that range is, 25 to 50k. Telling you, I've got over a thousand users using price guide right now. And the results have just been astounding because in a time period where people are spending more on ads than they spent in years, seeing less results than they've got in the past, this is what many contractors say. If you're listening to this, you're probably feeling that to a degree you can add something to your website as long as it's very front and center. All right, get instant estimate is the phrase that you want to put in terms of the messaging call to action. You will see 3-5x the second it goes live on your site. And the fact is, Naylor, most companies listening to this right now are not going to do it. And why? Because they still think I want to control the buying process. I don't want to talk about money until I get into the home. And that's actually a huge mistake. AI is going to penalize you for it will clearly recommend you less if you're not willing to talk about this Google legacy, Google is going to penalize you for you're not going to show up. People are searching for anything to do with how much does it cost. The homeowner is going to be pissed off about it because call for quote has become the middle finger of the Internet, right? And this is like, this is where we're going as a society. And again, most won't do it. So you got to be willing to be a rule breaker in your space because the rule breakers eventually become the rule makers and everybody else becomes the rule followers. And I can tell you the whole world is shifting over from legacy Google search to LLM based search, either ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, whatever that thing might be at Gemini. And in the course of doing this, they're going to get their answer. And if you're not in that answer, you're going to be in trouble. And so if you want to be in that answer, you have to start being willing to produce more content that sends a clear message to the chat GPTs to the perplexities. Yet, hey, this is a trustworthy company. This company is an expert. Hey, they've talked about the things that nobody else in their space has talked about, like pricing for example. Oh, they're talking about competitors on their website. See all these things, not in a bad way, by the way. They're just openly talking about who are the best lawn care companies for commercial businesses in Austin, Texas. Right. It's like they're willing to talk about all those things. And because they do, they get rewarded for it. Because they have the interactive pools, they get rewarded for it. And don't even get me started on the future of agentic search when the homeowner is having an agent doing the searching and it's not the homeowner but as an agent. Because then it gets even more precise and you get penalized even further if you're not willing to have those answers.
- [24:39]
B
Yeah, that's for sure. And something that I thought about a few things, but one of the things, everything you're saying here is we definitely have to move away from like the gatekeeping, the. Let me, let me, you know, let them do this first before I do that. Or you know, and, and afraid to like share too much information or talk about your quote unquote competitor. But I think about honesty, integrity and authenticity. So like the more honest you are, it's refreshing. Right. And you could like I remember you said at Sync Live you showed an example of having on your website having a comparison chart. Right. A quick, easy thing to do. I could create it for you. And you have a comparison chart of, of some of your competitors in your field and like a particular service or services, warranty. Yeah. Pros and cons business. Yep.
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A
There's all types of things that you could put in there.
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B
Right. And then you being honest, like if, okay, one, one of those things you don't check a box for and someone else does, but there's other boxes that you check and they don't like if you're being honest, that shows integrity. And then authenticity. People like, wow, that makes them want to work with you even more. And you're more of a personable company in a day and age where AI is really going to take over some of that authenticity. People need real connection. They need real communication. And the more you do that on your website, before you even get. You might not even get them on the phone. If you don't get past that point. They want to go on the website and then check things out. Because to your point, you know, a lot of people don't want to be sold or sell or be, you know, a part of that. They'd rather kind of surf online, make a mistake. Yeah, yeah.
- [26:28]
A
They. And buyers don't like to be ignorant during the. The buying process. It's not even really a sales process anymore, because if you think you're in control, you're not. The buyer's in control. And the quicker you realize this and the quicker you give them that control, the more successful you're going to be. I can, I can assure you of that. And so in this context, you're like, okay, what are the things that they're going to want? Let me give an example. Configurators are going to be a huge deal in the future for lawn care and landscapers. We want the homeowner to be able to, a perfect world, do some Type of. Of 3D Designer Cat of their own, of their own home. And there's ways to do this. You can use AI tools, but there's different ways. Now you can use AI to help the homeowner do this. They take the photo of the backyard. Now, in the past, when I say, well, I don't want them to do that themselves, I want to get in there and I want to do the drawing and I want to do this and I want to do that. Okay, that's fine, but that's not how you yourself would want to be treated during the buyer's journey. You yourself would, rather than you. More tools. I recently bought a really large metal building, like shop. It was 44 by 70. And I went to different websites, and this one website allowed me to build it with the exact design of, like, where I wanted the windows, how I wanted the color and price. It didn't talk to a single salesperson. Right. The cost was like, I don't know, it's like 80 grand or something. And I did deposit online, and then they showed up from out of state and they built this building. Exactly. And What I see in my yard is like exactly what I built on their website. So configurators. That's amazing. Now a lot of people would say, I mean, the fact that you didn't talk to a salesperson, that's so bothersome. Get over it, dude, get over it. Because in that moment, they were giving me what I wanted. So the key is that you allow people to consume and to buy in form that they want to. Let me give you another example, Naylor. You know, because I'm meeting with so many different contractors, I'm talking about all the different AI tools and I got this one contractor I was talking to the other day. It's got like a fifty million dollar business. I mean, this guy's balling out and, and it's a lot of leads. And when a lead comes in immediately, the lead gets a call from AI that second, right? And then the AI says, hey, I'm here to set your appointment with you that you just requested. We could do it one of two ways. We can set it with me, the AI, or I can have a human set it with you. Which would you prefer? Now this guy's setting hundreds of leads a week. So like there's like a really good litmus test here. What do you think the percentage is? Let's say, hey, I want to set the appointment with AI as neighbor. If you had to make, I guess
- [29:48]
B
I would, I would say it. That's tough. When I was going to lean with, I think there'd probably be a high percentage because people just don't want to be bothered talking, you know, with, with, with someone and, and get tied into and just all the psychological stuff that we're kind of talking about. But I have no idea what percentage, but I think it's probably high. Am I, am I right? A higher percentage?
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A
The numbers. 80%.
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B
80%.
- [30:10]
A
80% of people choose to set the appointment with the AI. And yet you'll have some business owners that say, I don't want to talk to AI and my customers don't want to talk to an AI. No, that's actually not true. How it works is you want to choose the fastest route to solve the problem. You have full stop. That's how it works. And so if there's a route that's faster, but that means you have to talk with the AI, then that's the one that you're going to take almost every single time. If it removes friction, that's the route you're going to take. If it removes fear, that's the route you're going to take, you know, my. I was talking to my daughter recently. She's 25, 26. And she said, dad, I've decided that I have a choice. I only want to talk to AI when it comes to customer service stuff. I'm like, really? Tell me about that. Now she knows this is my world. I'm always talking, teaching about this stuff. So my kids come to me and tell me their behaviors with technology and AI all the time. And I said, why is that? And this is the light bulb here. She said, because I'm never afraid to. That my question is going to be embarrassing when I'm talking to AI. So what happens is humans will talk to a customer service person or a salesperson, and they're embarrassed to ask certain questions because they feel like they'll be judged. Whereas she says, AI is not going to judge me for asking anything. And that's, to a degree, that's an indictment on a lot of salespeople out there. Right? Because people learn that through experience. And that's also a challenge that you have to rise up to. I mean, I think the future is one where the buyer is going to want to consume and learn on their terms. So some people are going to want to do AI, some people are going to want to do humans, some people going to watch. Watch a video. Some people don't want to read. Some people want to listen. Right? Your job is to make sure that you produce an experience that allows them to do the thing in the way they would prefer to do the thing. Not about you, not about your opinions. I learned a long time ago in business, my opinion doesn't pay the bills at all. In fact, I'm not careful. My opinion can ruin the business. What I need to pay attention to is the marketplace. The marketplace is what matters to me. And the marketplace is speaking every day. And if you're willing to pay attention, just like you know, I can tell you right now, legacy Google's gonna die. It's just gonna die. Anybody with half of a brain knows that the future is not you going online, doing a search in a little box and 20 blue links on the screen, and you get to choose which blue link you want to click on. You don't know which one has the answer, but you're just hoping for the best, which, by the way, you've been doing that for the last 20 years. Okay, you're crazy if you think that's the future. The future is one where you get an immediate answer. Not only do you get an immediate answer, you get a justification of the answer you just got, which, by the way, you've never gotten in 20 years from Google. Not only do you get a justification, but you get to take an action. And that action is whatever you want. You want the AI to help you set the appointment. Boom. It helps you set the appointment. You want the AI to make the purchase. Boom. AI makes the purchase. And it's going to be that easy. It's going to be that simple. Everybody says, I don't think so, I don't think they'll give the control. As soon as it's faster, as soon as it removes the friction, as soon as it removes the fear, guess what? Everybody is in. Everybody starts to do it. That's how Critical Mass works, right? And it will come as no surprise because it should be obvious if you're just looking at it from a first principles perspective and from a common sense perspective, it's as clear as day where we're headed, folks.
- [34:15]
B
Wow, that's great stuff, Marcus. That's great. And I'm hoping that those of you listening and, or watching now or in the future, you're really understanding and processing. Sometimes you got to listen to things a couple times to really let it sit in. Because we have to break down some of our false beliefs, right, so that we can understand what's actually going on. Because I was conflicted with the percentage answer, because I was thinking, I really don't like talking to AI either. But I had to think about my. From my customer's perspective. And that's what if we, if we lead with the customers first and what they want, then we'll be better off for it versus what we want. So I know that can be tricky for folks for, you know, in different scenarios.
- [35:00]
A
So.
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B
But you spelled it out very clearly. So thank you for that. Where, so what's. What's next for you, Marcus? What's going on in 2026? What can we talk about or promote
- [35:12]
A
for you think that you should be thinking about right now? If your business, and we've alluded to it here, is agents and the future of agentic search. And this is not something that you should sleep on, folks. Because what's going to happen is you need to understand that building a website for agents is going to be not the same as building it for a human. You might say, I'm confused. Look at it like this. You go to a website as a human, certain things like the messaging is a big deal to you. Are they using story brand, for example, with the messaging and is it Is it really tapping into your senses? Are you looking at images that really touch you in your heart as a, as a parent or as a homeowner or whatever that thing is? There's a lot of emotional components to it. Whereas when an AI agent comes to your website, guess what? They don't care about the color of the call to action button. They don't care about that hero image. They don't care about the perfect headline. All they care about is, can I get the answer I'm looking for right this second? And I mean this millisecond, because they're looking at the entire site in seconds, parsing it very quickly, saying, can I find what I want? So what's that mean? That means you've got to have a site that's built for agents. This is hard for people to understand. So, like, that's not really happening that much. I mean, within about 18 months you're going to start to see that for a lot of people, a lot of websites, you're going to get more non human visitors than human visitors to your website. And I'm not talking about bots, I'm talking about an agent that is representing its human owner, if you will. Right. So what's going to happen is somebody needs new patio. I tell their agent, go out and vet all the local landscaping companies. I want you to come back to me and I want you to tell me your top two choices with your recommendation agent. Does all the research not only invest the 45 local companies because the homeowner would have only vetted six, but this AI 45, not only did they at 45, they read every review of all 45 online and they read every page of their website. Now they know all their pros and all their cons. They know their true expertise. They've also found them listed on other sites. And so because of this, they come back to the homeowner and they say, okay, I've researched 45 companies. I came up with the top based on reviews and based on their expertise and experience and the warranties and the things that I was able to learn about. Now, of those websites, only four of them had estimators that I could actually give you an estimate for. So I quickly was able to dwindle that list down at the top to the ones that were the top with estimators. And from those, I have been able to ascertain these four estimates here. Now I'm going to recommend these two companies based on everything that I have done from a research perspective. What would you like me to do next. If you like, I can go ahead and set the appointment, make the call now. And a homeowner says, move ahead, green light. Yeah, full send, whatever they say. All right? And now all of a sudden, the agent sets the appointment. And oftentimes what's happening now, what will be happening is by the time the homeowner is speaking to the contractor, the homeowner hadn't even set foot on the website. That's going to be so weird, dude. Now, this is also where it gets challenging, though. It gets challenging because your website has got to speak the language of the agent. Like we said, some examples of this technical things like schema. Schema is a phrase that nobody knew of a year and a half ago. Now it's becoming a phrase that everybody needs to know. Schema is essentially a labeling system whereby an AI understand very quickly what something is. So if you have an FAQ section of your website, it's got FAQ schema. A review section is review schema. If you are using a pricing estimator, like price guide, the tool I was telling you about earlier, Price guide, the code that it's built with, and you put it on your site comes with schema. So this way the AI knows what it is. Now a lot of people might say, I don't know if this is really going to happen. Go online right now, I've been roofer near me. Type in landscaper near me. Guess what you see upper left, this little box that says online estimate Google out of this last like 60, 90 days. And so now they're funneling people into the companies that have estimators. And I knew this coming, saw it as clear as day, like, duh, of course they're going to do that. What's Google always done? Google has always been obsessed with. I'm going to give the, the. The best, most specific, relevant answer as quickly as possible to my customer, to the searcher. Well, in the case of landscaping, it knows, like one of the foremost questions is roughly how much is this landscaping project going to cost? So now that's why you see this online estimate feature when people are doing near me searches for contractors. You're also seeing Google is experimenting with this, essentially this thing called have AI check price. So homeowner does search, then a button pops up on the screen within, like the other businesses that says, hey, have AI check prices. I've actually done this experience with Google before. And so it asks you a series. Once you click on the button, it asks you some questions about the project that you want. And then it's AI. Google's AI reaches out to the contractors and then gets back to the homeowner and gives the homeowner a report of what it found. Pretty wild. Now you think that's just like happenstance. This is all a preview of the future, everyone. This is the world that you're going to be living in. So what that means is you've got to prepare your site from a structural perspective to be able to communicate and interact with agents. It also means that any tools that you have, the configurators, the S, the agent needs to be able to use those things. So if the agent can't use that configurator tool, well, then that's not a good thing. The agent can't use the estimator. Not a good thing. Just because a human can use it doesn't mean an agent can use it. So you're going to have to learn about these things. And if your web company, your website builder, your agency, whomever is not talking about these things with you, well, then shame on them. And I would take that as an indictment on the work that they're doing for you because they should be talking about this with you right now and preparing you for this, because that's what it's all about.
- [42:44]
B
Yeah. And one of my takeaways from that is you need to learn so that you can grow with it. Right. The change is coming. So there's always change. We evolve as a civilization, technology, business, all of that. So we can either learn and grow with it, or we can fall behind to it and just be left in the dust. And there's so many companies and so many people. You know, they've lost relationships, they've lost connection in their community, they've lost their business or just haven't really grown where they, where they could make more impact, not only for themselves, but for their community, for their customers. Because you're just like, oh, this is too hard, or I don't know if this is necessary. I don't. I'll believe it when I see it. But then it's too late, you know, So I think ultimately we, we need to wrap our heads around, yeah, change is hard, but it's. It's for the better. You know, it. Growth is not. You have to put in the work for growth. You go to the gym, yeah, you work out, you break yourself down. You might be sore the next day, but you grow bigger and stronger. Like, that's the whole game. You do that with your mind, you do that with your heart. You do that with your body. Right. So let's, let's, let's dig into that. We're business owners for a reason. So. And it's not for everyone but if it's for you and you want to stay committed, then you need to focus on what changes are coming and listen to what Marcus was saying and some of the stuff that I've say over time and what will be continue to be said in the future so that you don't get left behind. So.
- [44:10]
A
Yeah, well said, Naylor. Very well said.
- [44:12]
B
Thank, thank you, Marcus. So before we wrap up, where can anyone find out more about you and what you have going on?
- [44:20]
A
Well, you can, you can. My main website is marcus sheridan.com obviously if you're listening to this I, I do, you know, in house workshops for companies, brands. I speak at a lot of big events stuff too. You can Find me on LinkedIn is where I put my best content. I'm not really a Facebook guy or a Instagram guy in terms of my own brand. But if you're trying to follow my messed up just like I post my best stuff right there on LinkedIn pretty much every morning. I give you my best thoughts and you can also reach out to me directly. Marcus. Marcus sheridan.com with any questions. Price guide. You can find a little price guide AI. I highly recommend you have that and there's a free book on there that you would really appreciate. It's called, it's a great little book called Call for quote is Dead is the name of the book and it's free. You can just download it right now on there at Price guide AI but it's the contractor's guide to winning with online transparency in an AI first world. And so I want everyone to be prepared for what's going to come. I make some really bold predictions. Pretty much 90 plus percent of the predictions I've made in the last 10 years, they keep coming true. So I wouldn't call myself a futurist. I'm in here. I'm a here and now is and I'm pretty good at telling you what's going to happen within this here and now window of the next few years. And that book is going to help you a lot with it. So make sure you get that book. It's free. It's taking no time to read. Call for quote is dead. Check it out.
- [46:00]
B
Thank you. Thank you for that, Marcus. And of course for those of you that are listening to this episode episode on the podcast, look in the episode description. We'll have all the all the links to everything there. So you can quickly click on that and go there and and explore to your heart's content. But LinkedIn is definitely the way to go as well. So check that out and check out Marcus. Thank you, Marcus, for being on on the the podcast today and sharing so many gold nuggets and investing your time in in the community. So I appreciate that. And thank you to eToro Company for sponsoring the LCR Media podcast. And until next episode, this is Naylor, Talia Farrow and Marcus Sheridan signing off. This has been an lcr media and Mr. Producer production.