How a Simple Price Estimator Added 300% In Leads

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How a Simple Price Estimator Added 300% In Leads"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Marketing Trends
• Host: Stephanie Postols
• Guest: Marcus Sheridan
• Episode: How a Simple Price Estimator Added 300% In Leads
• Release Date: May 14, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Marketing Trends, hosted by Stephanie Postols, listeners are immersed in a dynamic discussion with Marcus Sheridan, a renowned marketing strategist known for his influential books "They Ask, You Answer" and "Endless Customers". The conversation delves into transformative marketing strategies, the evolving landscape of search engine optimization (SEO), the pivotal role of video content, and the revolutionary impact of transparent pricing tools on lead generation.

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The Diminishing Role of Google in Modern Marketing

Timestamp [00:00]
As the episode kicks off, Marcus Sheridan poses a provocative question: "Is Google dead?" He asserts that relying solely on Google for building an online presence is akin to "building a house on sand." Sheridan elaborates that although Google continues to grow its user base, achieving a top ranking in search results is increasingly ineffective. He notes, "If you're ranked number one in search results today, it doesn't mean squat. Holy. It means nothing." This decline is attributed to the saturation of search results with AI-generated content, video, and sponsored links, which obscure organic listings and diminish their impact.

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The Dominance of Video Content in Marketing Strategies

Timestamp [00:33]
Sheridan emphasizes the monumental shift towards video content, revealing that at least 82% of all online content consumption is video-based. He criticizes many organizations for "not thinking like a media company," highlighting the necessity of integrating full-time videographers into marketing teams. Addressing the B2B sector, he remarks, "The number of CMOs that are listening to this right now that don't have a full-time videographer on staff that work with them, it's a crime against humanity." Sheridan predicts that within five years, a company’s YouTube channel may surpass the importance of its website in driving brand engagement and lead generation.

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The Power of Transparent Pricing Estimators

Timestamp [00:38]
Delving into lead generation, Sheridan introduces the concept of transparent pricing estimators. He boldly states, "When a company puts a pricing estimator in on their homepage every single time we see a 300% increase in leads." This tool empowers potential customers to obtain instant estimates, fostering trust and reducing friction in the buying process. Rose, the producer, inquires about potential pitfalls, questioning if over-education might render companies vulnerable to competitors or overwhelm consumers.

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Educating the Consumer: Balancing Transparency Without Overloading

Timestamp [41:11]
In response, Sheridan clarifies that while hyper-transparency is crucial, it must be executed thoughtfully. He warns against "poorly educating" consumers, providing an example where a pricing video merely states costs without conveying value propositions. Effective education involves integrating value into transparency, ensuring that customers understand not just the price but also the benefits and differentiators of the product or service.

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The Big Five: What Buyers Want to Know

Timestamp [16:19]
Sheridan outlines the "Big Five" aspects that consumers relentlessly seek during their purchase journey:

1. Cost: Understanding the pricing structure and potential costs.
2. Problems: Identifying possible issues and how to mitigate them.
3. Comparisons: Evaluating different products or services against each other.
4. Reviews: Accessing both positive and negative feedback to gauge reliability.
5. Best Rankings: Seeking information on top-rated options within the category.

He asserts, "Consumers, buyers, they're obsessed with them. Businesses don't want to talk about them." By addressing these five pillars, companies can significantly enhance their credibility and visibility, thereby attracting more qualified leads.

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Case Studies: Effective Transparency in Practice

Timestamp [24:15]
Sheridan shares compelling case studies to illustrate the efficacy of transparent marketing strategies:

1. Sheffield Metals (Timestamp [23:14]):
   By openly discussing the problems with metal roofing and offering solutions, Sheffield Metals garnered over half a million views on their initial video, establishing themselves as trustworthy authorities in their niche despite potential backlash from competitors.

2. Yale Appliance (Timestamp [23:14]):
   Steve Sheinkopf, CEO of Yale Appliance, leveraged honest data about appliance reliability, creating a rating system that highlighted the most and least serviced brands. This transparency not only built immense trust with customers but also elevated Steve to a gatekeeper role in the kitchen appliance industry, scaling his business from $30 million to $150 million annually.

3. Shasta Pools (Timestamp [34:24]):
   Implementing a self-service pricing estimator transformed Shasta Pools' lead generation, increasing leads from 175 to 750 in a single year. This tool allowed customers to interactively build and estimate pool costs, leading to more informed and committed sales appointments.

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The Impact of AI on SEO and Content Marketing

Timestamp [08:07] & [46:43]
Sheridan addresses the evolving dynamics of SEO in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Contrary to the belief that AI will forever tether back to Google, he contends that AI's integration is transient and rapidly evolving. With advancements like Gemini that can interpret video content for search results, traditional text-based SEO is losing its dominance. Sheridan predicts a future where YouTube and other platforms may eclipse Google in importance, urging brands to pivot their content strategies accordingly. He states, "Search engines are increasingly prioritizing direct, relevant answers over traditional listings," emphasizing the pivotal role of educational and video content in maintaining online visibility.

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AI as a Digital Teammate in Marketing

Timestamp [56:46]
Discussing the transformative role of AI, Sheridan rejects the notion of AI as merely a tool. Instead, he describes it as a "digital teammate", integral to modern marketing operations. This perspective aligns with the user’s own characterization, emphasizing the collaborative and augmentative potential of AI in enhancing marketing efficiency and creativity. Sheridan envisions AI as "omnipresent", revolutionizing tasks from content creation to customer interaction, and stresses the importance of embracing AI to stay competitive.

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Disrupting Industries through New Standards and Transparency

Timestamp [66:42] - [76:56]
Sheridan advocates for setting new industry standards to disrupt conventional practices. By identifying and correcting longstanding issues, businesses can position themselves as thought leaders and trusted advisors. For instance, he recounts how he influenced the pool industry to shift from sand to crushed stone foundations, dramatically improving durability and customer satisfaction. Similarly, by establishing leak-proof ratings for plastic containers, companies can differentiate themselves and compel the entire industry to adopt higher standards. Sheridan underscores the necessity of being opinionated and rule-breaking to foster innovation and trust.

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Evaluating Pricing Pages: A Critique of Industry Leaders

Timestamp [80:01]
In a live segment, Sheridan critiques the pricing pages of industry giants like Adobe and Canva. He praises Canva for its clear, action-oriented messaging ("Design anything") that aligns with the principles of effective storytelling, as opposed to Adobe's more generic and less engaging headline—“Plans and pricing for Creative Cloud apps and more.” Sheridan emphasizes the importance of strong, compelling hooks that resonate with the audience and fulfill the promises made, distinguishing between effective hooks and mere clickbait.

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Clickbait vs Educational Marketing Content

Timestamp [83:54]
Addressing the balance between clickbait and educational content, Sheridan maintains that while clickbait remains relevant and effective, its success hinges on fulfilling the promises made. He contends, "What's the difference between clickbait and a great hook? And I would argue, like, a great hook and clickbait, if they're done right, the person's gonna be happy if a promise is fulfilled." This approach ensures that marketing content not only attracts clicks but also builds lasting trust by delivering valuable information.

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Conclusion and Final Insights

Throughout the episode, Marcus Sheridan underscores the necessity for businesses to adapt to the changing digital landscape by embracing transparency, leveraging video content, and integrating AI into their marketing strategies. By focusing on what buyers genuinely seek—clear pricing, addressing problems, facilitating comparisons, showcasing reviews, and highlighting top choices—companies can significantly enhance their lead generation and brand trust. Sheridan's insights advocate for a proactive, educational, and transparent approach to marketing, positioning businesses to thrive amidst evolving technologies and consumer behaviors.

Notable Quotes:

• Marcus Sheridan [00:00]: "Building your house on Google is like building a house on sand."
• Marcus Sheridan [00:38]: "When a company puts a pricing estimator in on their homepage every single time we see a 300% increase in leads."
• Rose [01:54]: "None of them do is just take me back a few steps and say, want to understand better what defines pricing in this industry?"
• Marcus Sheridan [16:19]: "Consumers, buyers, they're obsessed with them. Businesses don't want to talk about them."
• Marcus Sheridan [46:43]: "I think your YouTube channel is going to be more important than your website in the coming years."
• Marcus Sheridan [83:53]: "What's the difference between clickbait and a great hook? And I would argue, like, a great hook and clickbait, if they're done right, the person's gonna be happy if a promise is fulfilled."

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This episode offers a treasure trove of actionable insights for marketers seeking to navigate the complexities of modern digital landscapes. By prioritizing transparency, embracing video content, and innovating with AI-driven tools, businesses can significantly amplify their lead generation efforts and establish themselves as trustworthy leaders in their respective industries.

Transcript

[Stephanie Postols]

Is Google dead?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Building your house on Google is like building a house on sand. And we've known for a solid 2,000 years. You shouldn't build a house on sand. There might be more users than there's ever been, but if you're ranked number one in search results today, it doesn't mean squat. Holy. It means nothing. We know at least 82% of all the content consumed online is video based content. The big mistake that a lot of organizations are making is they're not thinking like a media company. Within the next five years, your YouTube channel is going to be more important than your website. The number of CMOs that are listening to this right now that don't have a full time videographer on staff that work with them, It's a crime against humanity.

[Stephanie Postols]

Look at the space of B2B. They don't know how to make good video content. How do you teach someone to be cool?

[Marcus Sheridan]

You gotta be a rule breaker. Because the rule breakers become the rule makers. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller. Free sales experience call for quote is officially like the middle finger of the Internet. When a company puts a pricing estimator in on their homepage every single time we see a 300% increase in leads.

[Rose]

Have you ever seen a company do this wrong? Lean into this hyper transparency strategy. Is there a world in which you can over educate the consumer?

[Stephanie Postols]

All right, another episode of Marketing Trends. Welcome back. I'm excited you're here. I'm your host Stephanie Postols and today I'm excited because I've got my producer for Rose joining this interview for the first time. Rose, welcome.

[Rose]

Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. That was a fun one.

[Stephanie Postols]

We just got down with Marcus Sheridan. High energy, dude. What'd you think?

[Rose]

I felt like I was in a masterclass. Maybe even 10 different masterclasses at once, all happening at the same time. What I loved in particular was he had so many stories and practical examples. It wasn't just this broad conversation about is Google dead? It wasn't all about AI theory. It was really a lot of practical applications and, and use cases, which is nice.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yeah, it definitely has me thinking a lot about the old ways of marketing. I mean, this dude built up a pool company. It was the most trafficked pool company in all of the world. And it's interesting because he came on the show and was like, what I did to do that will never work again. And if you're building your company on Google, you should be a little worried. And SEO is not what it used to be. And so it was very interesting figuring out, how can I, as a brand show up in these AI search results? How can I make content that actually resonates with the customer? And he dove deep into the world of, you better have transparent pricing. You better be making really good video content. YouTube just might be the future if you're not showing up there. And so, I mean, it definitely has me thinking a lot, even about what we do and how we're showing up and how we're educating the market so that we can be found and found for what they're actually looking for. So it was definitely a masterclass. People probably know him. Had you heard of his book they Ask youk Answer?

[Rose]

I had, actually.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yeah.

[Rose]

I haven't read it myself yet, but I'm definitely going to now.

[Stephanie Postols]

For everyone listening, Marcus wrote an amazing book, they Ask youk Answer. Very well known in the marketing space. Now he's got a new book coming out, Endless Customers. And so we're gonna be diving in, in this interview into all things AI branding, great marketing, how to push the boundaries, how to show up big in the marketplace. So we hope you enjoyed this interview with Marcus Sheridan. Marcus, welcome to the podcast.

[Marcus Sheridan]

It's gonna be a great pod today. Stephanie, I got good vibes about this one.

[Stephanie Postols]

I am a good vibe. That's probably where you're. Where you're getting them from.

[Marcus Sheridan]

That's probably the reason.

[Stephanie Postols]

So, I mean, I really have one big question for you that I've just been waiting to ask, and that is, is Google dead?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Let's come out swinging here. I like this. I would say there is a very strong argument that Google is dying, at least as we know it. And if there's one thing that just cooks my goose is when I hear SEOs these days saying, yeah, I just don't think Google's gonna be that affected by this whole thing. Like, are you being serious? Are you really being serious? I mean, if the writing was ever on the wall. Because I love how, like, the stat that you. That you hear the defenders of Google's future, which, by the way, I have nothing against Google, Right. I've made my life that was built in many ways off of search. Right? But when you see these folks saying that Google is actually growing and that's the stat that you like, well, there's actually more users than there's ever been. Like, okay, so first off, there might be more users than there's ever been, but if you're ranked number one in search results today, it doesn't mean squat. Holy. It means nothing. Because literally you can do, most of the time, if you're ranked number one for some type of search engine result, you have to scroll two to three times on said page just to see the first result. Right? Because what do you got? You got AI answer summary first, and then you've got sponsored searches, because we gotta shove those down your throat and we gotta make them look real. And then you've got related questions and then you've got probably a couple videos and maybe for a local search you've got Google Map and you got all these things and finally you got number one. And you know, do you remember the day, Stephanie, when whoever was ranked number one in Google got 80? I think it was like 82% of all clicks was whoever's ranked number one. And today that number is like single digits almost. It's like, just doesn't mean much. Right? So there's that. And then if we're being very honest, when you look at the user experience of Google today and you say, they're still trying so hard to show me these sponsored searches, and if you went to anybody and said, would you prefer to see sponsored searches or would you prefer just to get the best answer right away without any fluff, most people are going to say, I want the best answer. Which is why as we become more informed, whether it's ChatGPT or some other platform or whether it's Google themselves, we want direct results. That's where it's always headed. Therefore, search. We want the best, most specific, relevant answer to our question as quickly as possible. That's been the name of the game since day one. And those that have understood that, they understood search very well. And now you should be able to see where search is going. But to defend like, hey, hey, I think it's only going to grow. It's like, really? And besides that, I don't know about you, but I have talked to a lot of CMOs and a lot of marketing leaders this year that have said we're spending more on paid than we've ever spent and we're getting less results. And why is that? Because for 20 years we were able to use this incredible tool called Google. And if you were pretty decent with content, you could get a lot of organic traffic and a lot of organic search and you could do pretty well. Like I said, I create, like, I know we'll talk about this, but like, I created the most traffic swimming pool website in the world doing this. I get it. I couldn't build the same business and brand Today doing the same things. Because November of 2022 changed all of it. It changed all of it. And we're just starting to see it. Just starting to see it. So, yeah, I think building your house on Google is like building a house on sand. And we've known for a solid 2000 years at least that you shouldn't build a house on sand. And, and so I definitely don't think you should build your house on Google anymore. It doesn't mean that it's not somewhat relevant today, but I think with every passing day, Google becomes less relevant to your success as a brand moving forward and your ability to become a known and trusted brand increases.

[Stephanie Postols]

Okay, so I've got one other pushback I read about that I want to run by you that I was going through here and just reading about like the future of SEO. And there was one article saying like all these LLMs are built off of Google. So Google still matters because all these answers are coming from Google. Thoughts?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Do we really think that is forever going to be the case? I just think that's ludicrous. And besides that AI has already. So as of this recording, if I'm not mistaken, Gemini can now use the AI to know exactly what's said in a video and show that in search like results and all the other AIs are catching up very, very quickly. So like the argument before, just like people were saying, well, text is going to continue to be strong because of SEO. It's like, well, actually not. You can't look at it. Like AI doesn't look at something and say, oh, that's text or oh, that's a video right there or that's audio. That's not how AI is going to work. It's like that's just information. It's all the same to AI. So I think that's a silly argument because it's very, very temporary.

[Stephanie Postols]

So when thinking about what to bet on, I mean, I know you're big on, you should have good content, especially video content. I think I heard a stat that like 80% or more of the content consumed online is video.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah, we know at least 82% of all the content consumed online is video based content. And then that number's only growing. And so yeah, I do believe that the big mistake that a lot of fol. A lot of organizations are making is they're not thinking like a media company. And you have to think like a media company and you've got to be willing to show. And obviously I talk a lot about this in the New book. But you got to be willing to show what others in your space aren't willing to show. But most folks are not thinking whatsoever like a media company. In fact, like the number of CMOs that are listening to this right now that don't have a full time videographer on staff that work with them is appalling. And it's a crime against humanity. Like, seriously, it's stunning. You know, you see organizations that are huge and they do zero video in house. The future of building an extraordinary brand online is not going to be by outsourcing your ability to produce great content. I am 100% positive of that. In fact, show me one brand that has built something extraordinary by outsourcing all of their content. You don't, you don't see it. The ones that are extraordinary, they move it in house. Especially when it comes to video. I mean, it's, you know, when we see companies like Liquid Death doing amazing things like they've done, it's not an accident, but they got like five people on their creative team. It's not huge, but just like bending rules all the time, breaking rules left and right, being more different than everyone else, showing what others aren't willing to show. That's the future. But you got to think like a media company. And a lot of them just aren't doing it.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yeah, I mean, this makes sense to me for B2C, of course, like Liquid Death All Stephanie, why do you say that?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Why do you say that?

[Stephanie Postols]

Because I look at the space of B2B and I work with a lot of these large enterprises, they don't know how to make good video content. They don't know how to think like a media company. They don't even know what cool is. So, yes, Liquid Death, yes. These companies who are like D2C to start, but when you think about these big enterprise companies or these big B2B ones, and I know you do work with lawyers and other people, like, I know you do have B2B. But it's hard for me to think, how do you teach someone to be cool? Say the things you shouldn't say. Like, there's so many structures in place not to. I'm having a hard time seeing all of a sudden these like older enterprise companies suddenly being cool and having cool video content that people want. Like, help me get there.

[Marcus Sheridan]

You're right. Okay, so the reason why I got fired up is because you just like getting fired up.

[Stephanie Postols]

I can tell you just like it.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Because the applicability doesn't change regardless of the business. The business model, the business type, in terms of where buyers are moving, right, Buyers want to see the thing. Video is stronger than it's ever been. It's only going to grow in its importance. In fact, I think there's a strong argument to be made, and this is going to sound sacrilegious to some, that within the next five years your YouTube channel is going to be more important than your website. And so you might say, well, you know, you look at a big enterprise business and how do you create this culture? I will tell you right now, it's not easy at all because there's a reason why we see such rapid turnover of CMOs faster than we've ever seen it before. The number one email that I've gotten over the course of 15 roughly years now of talking about, writing about, speaking about all this stuff doesn't come from business leaders, business owners. That's number two. The number one comes from marketers. And what they're saying is, I believe in this stuff, Marcus, but the problem is I can't get buy in from the top. And I think this is going to be the great challenge for CMOs going forward because what is naturally happening and this is like, this is like the whole, like in many ways this is the whole point of Endless Customers the book, it's like this cry to be willing to be different in the way that you market and the way that you sell and the bigger the company gets, generally there are exceptions. Generally the harder it is to do things that are different and there's more red tape and there's more approvals and therefore as a CMO and as a marketing team, there's generally greater frustration. You feel like a stallion and you just want to run, but you're fenced in and you've got like this 50 foot square area that you have to stay in. And I tell you what, and this might sound like a little bit strong, but I mean it. If a stallion is fenced in, stallion is going to do one of two things. Number one, it's either going to jump the fence or number two, it's going to die. It just, it just can't survive like that. And that's why I think you're going to see a lot of CMOs that feel like they've got their hands behind their back because in order to build a truly known and trusted brand today online, you got to be a rule breaker, become. Because the rule breakers become the rule makers and a lot of these folks will not get the approvals. And it's going to be tough and they're going to have to decide, do I want to go down, you know, do I want to go downstream a little bit and get the flexibility, or do I want to stay upstream for the comfort? But also, I've got this thing eating at my soul every single day that I cannot be the artist that I was meant to be. That is a tough situation. I don't wish it on anybody. Which is why the most important question that any CMO should ask is during the interview process is to the leadership team and it's, what's your risk tolerance? And how willing are you to be different?

[Stephanie Postols]

Yep, Yep.

[Marcus Sheridan]

That is the most important question. And you need to dig into it and you need to give them some ideas on the front end and say, here's some of the, let's say, edgy things that I would want to do as a marketer. Right. And by the way, to me, a lot of this stuff, like when we talk about being different, there's just, there's so many, like, simple ways to do it that to me are obvious to buyers who are like, of course I'd want that. But to someone that is, you know, like, enterprise solution or something like that, like, there's just no way we could do that. There's just no way. Of course there's a. There's a way. I'm not talking about, like, crazy things that are, like, ridiculous. Like, you know, I'm not. I'm not talking about liquid death. I don't know if you've seen that commercial where everybody, you know, licks that fat guy. It's the craziest, funniest commercial in the history of Earth. And I'm not saying that here. Right. What I'm saying here is being willing to do what others are not.

[Stephanie Postols]

So saying the things that your competitors aren't willing to say. I mean, I'm guessing examples might be, I think you've mentioned, like, sharing price or going through maybe like, bad comments or pushback or just being more open about things that are maybe like, oh, we got a bad review, don't talk about it, or like, what else? When it comes to saying things that most wouldn't talk about.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah. So in the book, I've got four pillars of a known and trusted brand. Okay? The first pillar is you gotta be willing to say what others in your space aren't willing to say. And so what can we say that others aren't willing to say? Right. Let me give you some examples. Now, this first group of examples I've been Talking about them for years, because this won't change. And that's. What are the fundamental questions that buyers want to know when they're researching a product or service, a company, before they've reached out to an organization? Like, what do they want to know? There's five fundamental things. We call them the big five. Okay? And again, these won't change. It doesn't matter what happens with AI. What are they? Number one, as buyers, consumers, we want to understand roughly what's going to cost, pricing, budget, et cetera. Number two, we want to understand what could go wrong. In other words, the problems. How could this blow up in my face? Fears, objections, concerns. So we'll just call that problems. So number one is cost. Number two is problems. Number three is comparisons. We're obsessed with comparing stuff we love to compare. Number four, reviews. Except we don't just want the good reviews. We want the good, the bad and the ugly reviews. And number five is best, best, most top, et cetera, right? So we love to like rank things online. So cost problems, comparisons, reviews, best. Those are the big five. Consumers, buyers, they're obsessed with them. Businesses don't want to talk about them. And this is why most people aren't getting traction in terms of becoming that most known and trusted brand, because they're not leaning into what buyers want to know. Okay? And that's what they really want to know. And we say things like, well, we're going to save that for the sales team. That's ridiculous. Because if I talk to any person that's listening to this right now, and I said, when you're on a website looking for cost and price, you cannot find it. What's the emotion you experience? You say, I feel frustrated. Okay, do you keep looking on the website? No, I leave quickly. Do you call the company instead and say, that's all right, they're a value based business? You're like, nope, I don't call them. You keep searching. You search until what happens? Until they give you what you're looking for. Yet most companies will still give three fundamental excuses as to why they don't address cost and price online. All right, three fundamental excuses. Number one, every job is different. It's a customized solution. Which is actually the most important to address, Stephanie, because it's actually very, very easy. Because to address this, well, you should talk about what drives cost up for that product or service in the industry. What drives cost down. Why are some companies so expensive? Why are some companies so cheap? Those are the, like four fundamental things. And finally, number five, roughly where do you fall? Where do you fall in the book? I give. I give. There's a whole chapter on, like, what is the perfect pricing page and everything that it includes. But those five things are the most important, and you should have the perfect pricing page and video about every or for every major product or service you sell. You see, the problem is when people hear we should talk about pricing, they're thinking, I need to get my exact price. No, what you need to do is own the conversation and be a part of the conversation. Teach value in the marketplace. That's what you need to do. And so, you know, this started for me personally with my swimming pool company in 2008. One of the first piece of content I ever produced that nobody had done in the entire pool industry was how much does a fiberglass pool cost? And since the day it was written, that little company, Virginia, has done over 35 million in sales directly from that one piece of content. How much does a fiberglass pool cost? We were the first one to ever talk about it. I tracked it using, in this case, HubSpot. I mean, it's like $35 million in sales. And generally speaking, the number one lead generating traffic that I've experienced with clients over the years of all different sizes. B2B, B2C, service, product, local, national, blah, blah, blah, cost, price, content over and over again. So that's an example of something they don't want to talk about. Let me give you one more, and I think maybe we can actually show this one because you have a visual on it. I've got this roofing manufacturer called Sheffield Metals. Okay. One of the most common questions a metal roofing salesperson or manufacturer or anybody gets is, so what are the problems with the metal roof? Okay, turns out whenever we're serious about buying something, Stephanie, we want to know, how could this go wrong? So, like, this, like, fear thing starts to take over. And so I told this company, I said, I want you to openly talk about the problems with metal roofing materials. Like, tell us what's wrong, and you can also say how to overcome it, but you need to be honest. And they said, man, you sure, Mark? I'm like, yeah, trust me. Trust me. And it blew up. They did a series of articles, videos, guides. Long story short, just the first video they did on this did over half a million views on YouTube. People looking up the problems of the metal roof. There's only two people that look up the problems with the metal roof. First type of person has a problem with a metal roof. Second type of person is thinking about buying a metal roof. See what I'm saying? Let me give you. Let me give you one other example, if I may go for it, of. Of. Of saying what others aren't willing to say. This is the best example. And actually start endless customers to book with this. This story, because I think it's glorious. And if, as you hear it, don't say, but that's B to C, no, it's all the same, folks. It's all the same. Like, stretch yourself to say, no, no, no. It goes beyond that. So there's this fellow named Steve Sheinkopf. He's the CEO of Yale Appliance, which is in Boston, Massachusetts, and they sell kitchen appliances. And Steve came to me, it's like a decade ago now, and he said, you know, Marcus, I've been reading your stuff. I believe that we could become the voice of kitchen appliances. But the problem is we're just not getting much traction. We're not getting a lot of growth, so, like, what could we do? And I looked at all of his content. I said, the problem is you sound like everybody else, and you're, you know, you're saying what you want to talk about, but you're not discussing what buyers really want to know. And I said, you need to become obsessed with what customers really want to know, and that's what you need to lean into. Taught him Big five that we just talked about. And he came to me one day. He said, you know, one of the questions I keep getting is, like, what of these appliances? Like, which one of these brands that you sell do you fix the least? Now, I don't know about you, Stephanie. Like, if you've bought kitchen appliances, the last thing you want is your refrigerator to go down. That sucks, right? And so he thought, what am I fixing the least? Could I talk about that? The problem is, if he mentions who he's fixing the least, it throws everybody else under the bus, doesn't it? And so most people would say, well, I can't really talk about that because I don't want to upset the apple cart. I don't want to hurt my vendor's feelings or OEM or whomever it might be. Steve said, you know what? Who am I here for? I'm here for the customer. The first one he did was circa 2017, 2018. He's done every year since then. He just came out with his 2025 version of this. He came out with a series of articles and videos that discussed the most reliable, least serviced appliance brands of that year. And what he did, he took every single appliance brand from the previous year that he had sold. He created a chart. The chart showed the total units for each brand sold, the total service calls for each brand sold, and therefore the percentage of service calls for each brand that he sold. And therefore, you saw the least serviced brand, and you saw the most serviced brand. And so that's why in 2025, he did it again. A company called Gaggenau was, was the least service kitchen appliance brand, the most service appliance brand, or one of the most. Do you want to know what it was? Ge.

[Stephanie Postols]

So now we know.

[Marcus Sheridan]

There you go. And now did the vendors, the manufacturers, they get upset? Sure, they got upset. But Steve said, yeah, but I'm just sharing the data so your choices get better or not. That's how he became a gatekeeper to that space. You know, it's really, it's really wild. Since we had that conversation. His business went from 30 to $150 million a year. And he really is the gatekeeper of information now within kitchen appliances. He's the most honest, he's the most transparent. He's saying he's showing what nobody else is in that space. And because of that, he's winning the trust. Not just because today you can't just win the trust of just the customer. Right? We've got to win trust of three major entities. The trust of the customer, the trust of the search engine, like Google, for as long as they're relevant, and then the trust of AI, so they recommend us. And AI recommendations are going to be way, way more important than Google recommendations in the future. And so we've got to make sure we nail those. And the only way we nail them is by sending out trust signals to the world. And we can't just do what everybody's doing if we're going to send out the right signals.

[Stephanie Postols]

So what's interesting about that last example is that he had his own custom data. Like it was his. He owned it. It was from what they were doing. And it. So another guest that we've had on too was like, look at the areas that you have data that no one else has and everyone has it in some kind of way. And like, those are the things that you should be sharing to create content like this that people can't copy.

[Marcus Sheridan]

That's exactly right. Yeah, it's content that people can't copy. This is your ip, right? It's like, like information. It started with you. You're the original source. I think that's a big deal going forward. And a lot of times, and I talk about this in the book, like, just disruption in general, how everybody's. And they don't really understand that and they don't know to look for it. But then once you know what to look for, you're like, wow, we've actually got a lot. And then you can do some really special things to just stand out and separate yourself from the crowd.

[Stephanie Postols]

Love it. Yeah. I was thinking about the pricing, like, being transparent with pricing. Because my first thought when you were sharing that everyone should have that is probably encounters you've had where people are like, well, you know, if I put it out there and people don't know what I do, really, like, I was thinking about my company and, well, we can walk through it. Of Mission is a media company. We have a network of podcasts and we get sponsors, but our sponsors are very different. It's not just an ad. But then I was like, well, actually wait, we could then show, here's what CPM sponsorships look like, which we don't do. Here's this thing, here's ours. And like showing all of it, like you said, is like educating the market on, here's why we don't do CPMs, because that's dumb. Here's what we do instead, and here's what other people do. And like, just visualizing that.

[Marcus Sheridan]

So good, right? So what you just described, you really nailed it. Because what we're, what we're trying. What I'm trying to help people understand is you have to teach people how to buy. You have to teach them how to shop, how to research, what to look for. You see what I mean? It's like if I'm looking for a CRM, I've never bought a CRM before. Maybe I have, maybe I haven't, whatever. Like, for a company to say, listen, you're gonna. As you research CRMs, you're gonna find there's roughly three different types or tiers in the market. And then you explain each tier, you describe the tiers, what generally you can do with them, what type of brands fall under those tiers. That's incredibly helpful. That's the type of stuff you should be producing. Even if you're one of those brands, it's the type of stuff you should be producing. Most companies won't think like that. And you know, when it comes to pricing too, there's one more I talk a lot about in the book. Because the third pillar of an owner trusted brand. So first was say what others aren't willing to say. Second is show what others aren't willing to show with video. Third is sell in a way others aren't willing to sell. And there's this incredible stat that every CMO CMO should be obsessed with, which is 75% of all buyers. This came from Gartner this year. They sent to me directly. So I don't know if they published it yet, but she said I could share it. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. Okay, so what does this mean? Well, I don't think it means we hate salespeople. We just don't want to talk to salespeople until we are good and ready, until we're confident, until we're comfortable, until we feel like we're not going to make a mistake. Right. And so if that is the case, how do we take advantage of this trend, which clearly is only going to grow? Well, the way we take advantage of the trend is we lean into it. Because there's a lot of people that say, I just wish selling was the way it used to be. It's like not gonna happen. Or we can say, all right, we've got this mega trend. More and more buyers want control. How do I give it to them? Well, it's through self service. So in the book we talk about five different types of self service tools that are essentially, and I know every CMO knows this, but essentially interactive tools that you can use online, on your website, et cetera, that give people answers that previously they would have had to have gotten by working with a human or working with a salesperson or working with a designer or working with an engineer, whatever that thing is. Let me just give you a, let me just give you a couple of, a couple of examples of these. All right? One of them is a self scheduling tool. Now here's what's wild. And you know, as I mentioned, these people are gonna be like, I already do that. No, no, stay with me. So a self scheduling tool where the person, the prospect can choose time to meet with salesperson. Now again, the person listening to this saying already do that. Marcus or I already know about that. No, no, no. Again, stay with me. Here's what we found. When you allow someone to schedule their own time instead of having to force them to talk to a human first to schedule a time to talk to a rep and you allow them, when they schedule that time to choose which.

[Stephanie Postols]

Person they work with by face, by name, by what?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Ah, yes. So imagine this. Stephanie, let's Just use like a super basic example anybody would understand. Let's say you're looking to sell your home and you see this big real estate firm nearby and you've heard good things about them. You go to their website and on that firm, and this could be commercial, residential, doesn't matter. Of course on that firm you see a list of their realtors and there's eight realtors on a page that you could work with. You're like, okay. And you see an image of each one, you see a bio of each one and there's essentially an intro video that each one of the people created. And then based on that, you're able to choose who you work with. Here's what we've seen and we've run these tests like we have a bunch of clients. I have a company called Impact. We help companies. Do they ask, you answer? Now endless customers, this whole system. And what we have seen time and time again is when you allow them to choose their salesperson. Closing rates double every time, every single. It's crazy. It's no different than our friend Steve and from Yale Appliance, when you schedule a showroom visit on their website, you pick what salesperson you want to work with.

[Stephanie Postols]

That's cool. That makes sense. I mean, if he had a certain style and you're like, oh, of course I can tell that you have the style I like versus this one doesn't like. So yeah, that's cool.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah. And people might say, well, I don't want them to do it. What consumer doesn't want that? What buyer doesn't want that? We would like to vet. We like vetting. This is why we like Uber a heck of a lot more than taxis. Yeah, right. So it's the same principle, the all of it is involved with this, the phenomenon of sunk cost. Sunk cost fallacy, which is the more time somebody spends interacting with you or your staff, the more likely they are to feel committed to buy from you. So if somebody chose their own salesperson by vetting, they're going to try to make it work. Now let me give you another example of self service, which is the most important one for service based businesses, which is a self pricing tool. And this is the one that gets people all ruffled up like, I could never do that. Yeah, yeah, you can. So when it comes to self pricing tools, we know the first question someone has when they enter the buyer's journey. Okay. As soon as they like, let's say they're not like outside the traditional funnel or they're like, they Just started the journey. They know they have a problem, they know they have a need and therefore they know they need to buy something and they product, service doesn't matter, they know they need to buy something. The first question, Stephanie, every human for the most part has, do you know what it is?

[Stephanie Postols]

The price?

[Marcus Sheridan]

What's the price? Just. And here's how they ask roughly like what's this going to cost? That's how they ask. They don't say what's the exact price. They say roughly what's this going to cost? That is the initial phase one of the buyer's journey. Once they know they have the problem, of course, okay, now then once they get that address they're able to say, okay, that's like viable. Now I'm going to do my legwork. They start to research companies, compare stuff and eventually they convert into a lead and then they meet with a salesperson and then the last question generally they ask the salesperson is okay, now exactly how much is this? So the first and the last question of the buyer's journey are essentially the same. Most brands, most marketers completely whiff on the first one and it's wild. Now I've got a lot of data on this for two reasons. So I've got two different companies impact. My impact builds customers estimators for organizations. So we've done a lot of testing of that. And last year I started a software company called Price Guide. And Price Guide allows people to immediately build their own estimator.

[Stephanie Postols]

Can you pull this one up? I think this one would be a good one.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah, yeah. Using, using AI, right? Super easy, super easy to do. You can just go to Price Guide AI and here's an example of it. So what does Price Guide do? It allows you to, to create a working estimator that goes on your website and literally I've seen people do it in 30 minutes or less. Different types of companies. You can do it for any service, you can use it for any service and the AI allows you, it helps you to build it for in the end for any industry. Now I'm not. If somebody is a multi, multi million dollar company, you might not want to use a Price Guide. But I can tell you what, and I'm sure about Price Guide because of the data that I have on it. What we've seen is when a company puts a pricing estimator on their homepage and they use the phrase, and here's the key phrase, get instant estimate. That's the key phrase, get instant estimate, which sounds pretty appealing, right? Stephanie. Okay, so what happens is you like every single time we see a 300% increase in leads. So if you're averaging 50 leads a week from your website, you're gonna start to get 150. We see it over and over again. And what's wild to me is most companies, they don't do it and they won't do it, but they will do it eventually because they're going to be forced to do it. Because I would submit that within the next five years, 90% of service based businesses are going to do this. Furthermore, I think call for quote will die a terrible deserved death because especially in SaaS. Because who on God's green earth wants at this point to call for quote? Call for quote is officially like the middle finger of the Internet. No one wants to call for quote. What we want is a general sense for here's what it's going to run me and then we'll play, then we'll engage. And so we've done this over and over again. Let me tell you about this one. It's actually a swimming pool company called Shasta Pools. Shasta Pools. And you can even bring them up. There's Shasta Pools.

[Stephanie Postols]

So this is your estimator on their website here.

[Marcus Sheridan]

We built this. My company Impact, built this one, right? And so what's wild about Shasta is that the year before they had an estimator on their price, right? You got the pool pricing tool here. You click on it, you get an instant quote. And so they're like, wow, nobody's ever done this. No concrete pool builder had ever done this in the United States of America before. Shasta Pools did it here. And so you go in, you select your pool style, right? And you're just like so excited because you're like, you mean I'm going to get an estimate real time? Like you're going to get an estimate in real time. And so it's like we're literally walking you through it. And then it tells you, okay, here's the different phases of construction, here's what you need to know. And so just like what a salesperson would tell you in that moment, then they, and they continue to walk you through this. And then you get to select certain options, you can watch certain videos, right? So make a long story short about this tool. And this company is so special. They're amazing, special group of people. My company Impact built this estimator. It probably costs, I don't know, in the neighborhood of 20 some thousand bucks, right? This is a customized one. It's different than price guide. All right, super great tool here. All right, the year before they did this, okay, in 2023, in May of 2023, which is a very important month for pool builders, they got roughly 175 leads that month. Okay. The year after May, which was a down year that May, they got roughly 750 leads. The majority coming off of this estimator.

[Stephanie Postols]

Tool here where they, I want to ask and thinking about more leads, were they still quality? Like did they have the like similar conversions where it's like they got more and people converted.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Right. So with this you will generally see you'll get the best and the worst of both worlds. So you're going to get a lot more leads, a lot more qualified leads and a lot more not so good leads. Which is why there's things that you can do with an estimator. You can, you can put in filters. So for example, you could put in what is your time frame. Time frame is one of the easiest filters. Okay. You can put in another filter which is. Would you like to get, would you like to have an actual conversation? Another great filter, worst case scenario is what it does. It builds up your marketing database an incredible way that you can remarket to and you're building a ton of trust. But what we see over and over again is a ton of these people now end up converting. Alright, so that's the power of estimators. And what's really, really sad is most companies just aren't thinking like that. And especially if you're a service based business, you should be thinking like that because that's the fundamental question that every buyer has. And like I said, you take a company like Shasta, the cost was 20 ish thousand for a simple interactive, you know, experience on their website. The return is already in well into the millions, like well into the millions of leads that came from the estimator that convert it into that like actually convert into a sales appointment and bought into the millions. And they've had many people that have come in and said I'm buying from you because you were the only one that helped me get a better sense for pricing. Isn't that crazy?

[Stephanie Postols]

Yeah.

[Marcus Sheridan]

So that's how it works. And that's an example of showing what others aren't showing, selling what others aren't selling. Like that's the whole gamut right there. That's the whole gamut right there.

[Stephanie Postols]

I love it. Well Rose, since you're here, you've been listening in. Is there anything that you want to ask Marcus Anything that we've been missing here. I'm about to go into disruption with him. But before I moved on.

[Rose]

Yeah, I have a. And I'm coming, Marcus. I mean, I'm coming from kind of almost a consumer mindset. Like, I mean, this is all very new to me, by the way, but.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Let me just say this really quick.

[Stephanie Postols]

Wonderful.

[Marcus Sheridan]

The reason why so many leaders struggle with great marketing is because they've stopped thinking like their buyer. And there's too much thinking like the business. The ones that lose that edge about them, they struggle to do extraordinary marketing. But the ones that always think like the consumer think like the buyer. They are the ones that do some of the most extraordinary things with their marketing. Sorry to interrupt, but I just thought that was very, like. It's very important.

[Stephanie Postols]

It's a good clip.

[Rose]

Yeah, I was going to say that's a great clip. Have you ever seen a company do this wrong? Like, lean into this hyper transparency strategy mindset and just do it wrong? End up making themselves more vulnerable to their competition? Or is there a world in which you can over educate the consumer?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Well, I think it's a great question. Could you over educate? I think you could poorly educate. Let me give you an example of that. Okay, let's say that you. You said, okay, all right, Marcus, I'm going to create a video about how much this stuff costs, whatever it is that you sell. And the video was just like, all right, so you want to know how much it costs. This is how much it costs. And that's it. That's actually ineffective because what you didn't do there is. You didn't help them understand value, value prop. Anything like that. So this is why when you do that video, when you do that article, when you create that experience, the whole idea is that you're teaching the value the whole time, you know, because I get people coming to me all the time and like, you know, it's so frustrating. Like, manufacturers especially are the worst of this. Like, you know, I'm losing. We're losing lots of deals, you know, overseas. Okay, well, is the quality the same? Well, no, you know, and I'm like, yeah, but have you talked about the fact that the quality is not the same? Have you taught the market that the varying degrees of quality when it comes to the manufacturing of your product or your service, whatever it is? Have you taught the market that? Have you explicitly explained it really, really well with the pricing video as a manufacturer? Or are you just hoping your sales team covers that gap they're not showing? And so because of that, the market's poorly educated. The problem is when the market doesn't understand value, they end up choosing the lowest denominator. In other words, a lack of education is what commoditizes something. And so as a business, it's your job to decommoditize the thing that you sell. The way you decommoditize is through extraordinary education. The way you can extraordinarily educate is by talking about and showing things online that nobody else does in a way that the buyer wants to hear it. But yes, to your point, if you don't lay foundations, things like value, and you just say, here's the price, this is why. You know what drives me crazy? SaaS companies drive me crazy. And I can say this as a SaaS provider, and here's what drives me crazy. They have their pricing page, they've got their good, better, best. Y' all seen it before, you know what I'm saying? They got good, better, best, and each one has more features. But what they don't teach you is the rest of the industry. They don't teach you anything. Like here's for example, if I was a company like Salesforce or HubSpot or any of these behemoths, I would have a self service tool on my site that allows me to answer a series of questions. And based on the series of questions, it gave me a recommendation for the right level of, let's call it HubSpot. For me, that's a great UX, that's a great, like, experience. It's interactive, I'm into it, I'm in control. It doesn't feel like there's any pressure. But what do these SaaS companies do? Good, better, best. And then I got to figure it out. Like, how am I supposed to know these things? I don't know these things. But if you walk me through it and ask me some thoughtful questions and I say, well, I do need that, and here's why. No, I don't need that. Right? See now that is powerful. They don't do it. I don't understand it. You see what I'm saying? So again, I think that whole model, the whole world of SaaS is pretty much broken. The idea of you can't get anything unless you schedule time with the engineer, with the demo person, like, who wants that? 20, 25, what the heck.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yep, I agree. One thing that was coming up for me with Rose's question and with how you just answered that too is like, is there a world where you start, let's just Say you start putting out all these transparent pricing and everyone's doing it and then next thing you know, all the LLMs are just rolling it all up and they're like, the average price of a pool is 10 to $150,000. Okay, you want it with this. It's like they just start averaging everything and pulling in the best answers because they have all the transparent information. And in doing that, I'm like, seems like there's still a need for a company to figure out how to stand out above just the consolidation of information, which is where the world's headed right now.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah, well, if. Let's look at it first of all, first off, if the AI, which is a recommendation tool. Right. Recommendation engine now, if the AI is drawing its answers when it comes to pricing from you because you're the most complete, there's a decent chance it might source you. Right. Like it currently does. And it makes it a much likelier chance that it recommends you. Which by the way, the companies that, because we have the data on this, the companies that have been doing what I'm talking about, which is they ask, you answer. Because we have so many. They ask, you answer. Case studies for folks that have been doing it over the years and for those that are not aware. I'm originally known for the book they Ask youk Answer. It's had two editions. The third edition is Endless Customers. And so there's a lot of data that goes into, like when I'm saying something, it's like we've got a ton of companies that have gone through this journey. We see it, we know the companies that get recommended the most by AI right now are the ones that have been doing the ask you answer. In other words, the ones that have been prolific teachers online that have been addressing the things that buyers want to know. I think that will only continue. I think that's going to be important. But let's say hypothetically that AI gives you a general range. Well, you're still going to prefer if you go to somebody's website and I still believe websites are going to matter.

[Stephanie Postols]

I was actually going to ask. I was seeing a lot of content around, like websites are dying. It's one click everything now. Like, yeah, I think.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Or zero clicks.

[Stephanie Postols]

Sorry.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yes, I think that there, I think websites are going to matter a lot still for at least five years. But there is a chance that they will diminish to a degree. Yes, no question. Which is why I've already said, like, I think your YouTube channel could matter more than your website. I still think companies are going to find a way to vet you. Excuse me, Individuals or companies are going to find a way to vet you before they buy from you. And so they're going to still would like to go to some type of hub of yours. So they might end up going to your YouTube, they might end up going to one of your socials, they might end up going to your website. But when they go there, what is the experience and are they going to be fed? Which is why having those interactive tools like I just discussed, like the self scheduler for a salesperson, the, you know, estimator tool, these are things that really, absolutely do set you apart. But, you know, at the same time, I think this is why, you know, I'm saying you gotta lean into the whole media side of this because you can, at least for probably. It's hard to make predictions. It was really hard writing AI, like, including AI stuff in the book, Stephanie, because I was like constantly saying, how outdated is this going to be in a year? How outdated is this going to be? So I couldn't, like, I literally couldn't put prompts in the book. There's a companion guide that is digital because I couldn't do it right. Everything is too fast. I was just talking to somebody the other day and sorry if I get on a tangent here, like a sidetrack, but it's like it was a group of us marketers at a, at a. An event. We're just talking, like, for about 20 years, we didn't really change very much. Like, for the most part we did. We. We're doing it the same way for about 20 years. I know there was like, new platforms and stuff, and TikTok came in 2017, whatever. I know. But for the most part, it was about the same. And then, like, over the last two years, you can't keep up with any of this stuff. I spend more time today trying to learn about AI and keeping up with everything that's happening with technology, as a marketer, as a business owner than I ever have in my life. It's crazy.

[Stephanie Postols]

So, Marcus, I've been following you on LinkedIn. I've seen some hot, controversial takes when it comes to AI, and so I want to hear from you, like, what are some of the ones that are getting you in hot water right now? What are things that you believe that others do not agree with you on?

[Marcus Sheridan]

Golly dang, Stephanie, I tell you, AI is becoming, like, worse than politics. I've got a general rule that I don't like to talk about politics online, because just for the most part, you're not going to change people's minds. And I want to love you, and I want you to love me for how, like, my pure brain thinks, not, like, jaded by our, like, political lenses and stuff, right? And so it's interesting to me when I wrote recently about the four stages of AI resistance, right? And I'm starting to see them so prominently right now. So you've probably heard it before this, how this works, but generally, whenever you have innovation in technology and adoption of new technology, here's what we see. Stage one, they ignore you. Stage two, they laugh at you. Stage three, they fight you. Stage four, you win. So if you look at, like, let's say, the history of Uber, this is exactly what happened within. Like, they were constantly being sued after they were ignored and after they were laughed at, right? But eventually they won. If you look at Airbnb, they exact same thing happened. And eventually, like, the business model wins because usually what happens is the market wins. Like, the people. People drive that market, right? And so it's really, really wild. I'm starting to see for the first time, stage three is really prominent, especially online. You're seeing more and more people become divided into AI is good. AI is bad. If you're using AI, you're good. If you're using AI, you're bad. I recently wrote a post on this that I just didn't think should be that controversial. I probably should have known better, but I said, you know, I keep seeing professionals that are purists when it comes to the way they do what they do. And they say, if you are using AI to do this thing that we do, right? As a content creator, as an animator, as a writer or whatever, the thing is, you are like, as a videographer, it's like somehow you're less than. What the heck is wrong with you? If you look at what a videographer is using today versus what they were using 10 years ago, there's a lot of shortcuts in there. I mean, a whole bunch. Are they not purists? And then if you look at everything we're able to do in terms of just content creation in general today versus what it took before, all of this is like, we've got ways to make life easier now. This doesn't excuse the people that use AI in a nefarious way or in a way that truly is just like automated LinkedIn comments that, you know is AI, and that's lame, but I don't care about those people. What I care about is the fact that AI makes me feel superhuman if I'm using it the right way and if I'm experimenting with it just like it does for you. And the fact that we're judging people now all of a sudden is like so cool to judge people. Like, oh, judges person, everybody jump in. Let's all judge them together. And it's like, okay, the same people that are judging them right now are going to eat their words in the future and they're going to be using these tools just like we saw so many times in the history of Earth. Those that were complaining about the people. Forget how much debate we had about electricity at the beginning. I mean, let me tell you, it was like crazy, the debate we had about electricity at the beginning. It was like the devil incarnate was electricity. And now, of course, we're talking about now listen, I know it feels a little bit different because the, the, the swath of impact is greater when I say the swath of impact. When cars came around, all of a sudden it's like, okay, the people and the horses and all those that were connected to the horse economy, they got replaced. But it didn't have this massive swath of impact from a jobs perspective. In fact, it made probably more jobs because now all of a sudden we needed these things called hotels, right? Because people could travel. And it's like, it was really amazing its impact on the world. So I get the fact that AI is affecting more industries at the same time, but the denialism that is occurring out there, and I'm not one of those use AI or you're going to die types, I don't even like saying that. But I know that if you're not using AI, what's naturally going to happen is those in your industry are going to become more efficient and more effective at their jobs to the point where it's going to be difficult for you potentially to keep up with them. And you're going to be left wondering, how do they charge that or how do they do that or how can they do that with that few people? Now, again, I'm not celebrating it, but it is what it is. And so I don't think it's a very good idea to suddenly get in this place of AI is evil, and anybody that uses it in my space is beneath me. I think that's really, really dangerous. I think as a business owner, it's your fiduciary to meet the market where the market is. I've always learned that. And I can't. I've always said, Marcus, don't allow your personal opinions to screw up smart business decisions. So, in other words, could I believe that the AI could be the end of the world in 30 years and the Terminator is coming? Well, I guess it could, but between now and then, I want my company to be really successful. There's certain beliefs. This has been really fun because it's all happened fast and I'm consistently, like, feeling like something is somewhat true. And then I realized, oh, that's not true at all. And the first famous quote in the AI space was, AI won't replace you. Someone using AI will.

[Stephanie Postols]

It's still going on, by the way. I hear it a lot.

[Marcus Sheridan]

It's still being used.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yes.

[Marcus Sheridan]

I'm telling you what you talk about a quote that is definitively not accurate. And I've seen it attributed to different people, by the way. And I think it was said in the right context at the beginning. I don't think it was said in a misleading way. Those that I think I said it, you know, 18 months ago. But guess what? AI will take your job, and someone that's using it will also take your job, potentially.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yeah. Yes.

[Marcus Sheridan]

So it's not very accurate. Another one that I need to write about still that I haven't fully baked out, Stephanie, is AI is just a tool. I don't think it's a tool at all. I mean, maybe when we started in November 2022, right. Maybe that was. Maybe we could have called it a tool, but it's so much more than a tool. I promise you we will in 10 years. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh at the idea that AI is a tool in the business world. It's going to be like oxygen, it's going to be like water, it's going to be like electricity, it's going to be like nuclear energy. Like, these are the things like. And oh, by the way, all those things I just mentioned can be used for good and bad. Right? But it is so much more than a tool. So the idea that AI is a tool. No, I don't think that is accurate anymore at all.

[Stephanie Postols]

I agree. So what would you call it then, if it's not a tool?

[Marcus Sheridan]

I need to really think this one over because it's all encompassing and it's tangible, it's intangible, it's many, many things. Right. It's omnipresent in many ways.

[Stephanie Postols]

I mean, I feel like it's like a digital teammate, like a digital employee. That's kind of how I've been using it as of now. Like Think of it like that. Train it like that. Don't get mad when it messes up because you haven't trained it well enough. That's where I'm at now with it.

[Marcus Sheridan]

So I think that's a really accurate place. Like it, you know, it is a digital teammate, and it can be whatever type of digital teammate I want it to be. But I even think that Stephanie is going to feel antiquated probably in time. Do you know what I'm saying? I think in time we're going to say even that wasn't fitting for its total impact on us and on the world. The other thing about this is, like, listen, I understand the frustration towards it. I get it. Because a lot of people, there's like this very primal fear of I'm going to lose my security, my job. So it's very, very primal. And I empathize with that very much. At the same time, if somebody said right now, you can lose your career, but we can find the cure for cancer, we can, would you say, I'll take it? I would take it in a heartbeat. Like, right now, I would take it in a heartbeat. And I think it, like, it is so blatantly clear that AI is going to be the one that gives us the answer and the solution for cancer and for all these other diseases and for all these other health problems that we have. And that alone is beautiful. AI is going to be the answer to healthcare and expensive healthcare, the number one reason for bankruptcy in the United States. Healthcare. AI is gonna really be the thing that fixes that. Right? So we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater here, Right? It's like you. And you can't be super selective. Well, I really want it to cure cancer, but I don't want it to impact my career and my job. I'm sorry, but that's. That. It doesn't work that way. I wish it did. Listen, it's affecting me too. People are like, well, you know, if it was affected you, it's gonna affect me. It's gonna affect all of us. But I think at the end of it affecting all of us, I do think there's abundance and I do think there's like this. The impact on the world is going to be extraordinary. And the impact on education. Don't even get me started on that. Right? It's going to completely reinvent the education model. They're already doing tests where schools are using AI as personal assistance, and they're way outperforming students that are not using the personal AI assistant. So I think it's a time that we should be cautiously, very optimistic. There's nothing wrong with that. And what. But what's the alternative? Just live in fear all the time and just, you know, try to hold on to water in your hands, knowing that it's going to slip through? Because we evolve as humans. And for anyone to say that it's. It is my right to have my job the way that it is forever and never change and never be challenged by technology, I just don't think. I don't think that's fair. Now, if somebody wants to complain about the way AI has been trained, I understand that to a degree and how they did take many people's writings. But listen, there's a big fuss recently about how Meta stole all this like content from sending 5,000 books to train their AI. My name was mentioned in that, like three different books of mine were, were in that 75,000. Okay, so I've got friends that are authors that are really, really frustrated about this. I feel for them. I don't share the opinion. Maybe I'll change. But I for. Since I wrote they ask, you answer now, endless customers. I've had no exaggeration, Stephanie. Hundreds of agencies and like just regular businesses. But hundreds of agencies have told me, yeah, we use your stuff all the time with clients. I think I didn't make any money off that. Unless you count the 25 cents I got for the book they might have bought, you know, whatever I was like. But I don't sit there and think I have. I have been treated unfairly because they're using my IP as a strategy and I'm not benefiting from that because I wrote the book to give my what life has taught me to share that with the world in the hopes that people would apply it. So suddenly we can apply things at a very mass scale and we get extremely upset about it. Now again, I don't fault someone for getting annoyed by this. It does not hurt my feelings though, that I've been scraped and that my content was used to train an AI tool.

[Stephanie Postols]

And hopefully, I mean, at least we talked about this. The scarcity versus abundant mindset. Like, hopefully it just brings more awareness to you anyways and your work. I always think that when things become open source, things are getting scraped. Your name is probably going to get out there even more and who knows what the it come from that.

[Marcus Sheridan]

So, you know, I've been working with Haejin on, on my digital avatar and you know, this is one of those subjects I actually Talk about it in the endless customers. Digital avatars. My goal right now is that you come to my swimming pool website by the end of this year and that you're. You're greeted by either myself or another one of my team members. Digital avatars. And essentially it says to you, hey, welcome to River Pools. I'm Digital Marcus. I'm not the real Marcus, but I am here to answer any of your questions or if you don't have questions, if you want, I could even give you an estimate for your swimming pool right now. And you're looking and talking to that person exactly as you and I are talking right now. Stephanie. The technology is there right now for that. I mean, it is there from. I mean, there's just a. There's. I would say the digital avatars are like 97% there, roughly. I mean, there's still moments of glitches where it looks like a cheap martial arts movie or something like that. That. But like, it's, for the most part, it's. It's there. Some people might say, well, that's not very human. Would you rather someone have a conversation with your digital avatar? The thing that is using your content, your brain, it looks like you, it sounds just like you, or would you rather them just read words that you created on a webpage? I want them having full conversations with me, and then when they meet me, they say, I feel like I know you because, like, I was talking to your avatar. And like, that's just one example. Stephanie. We're going to do that with Riverpools. I'm going to do that on a personal brand level this year. I'm going to put out my Marcus Sheridan digital avatar to the world for anybody to get consulting from anytime at no cost. Talk to me whenever you want. I've got literally millions of words online that I have produced, and I want to help you at scale. And golly gee, I can't answer all the dang messages I'm getting as it is. And so I'm really thrilled for the opportunity to give my IP through the form of a digital avatar to the world. And to your point, because I come from this very abundant mindset, I think, what does that mean for me? It means more connections, more impact on the world, more speaking opportunities, more audience, more community, more of all the things, simply because I'm just giving it away. Whereas a lot of people would say, that's nuts, that's crazy.

[Stephanie Postols]

So this is a good segue into reeling it back into this marketing world. And I really want to think about in the weeds, like things that these, like me as a marketer building my company. What can I do with AI right now to be disruptive, to show up big online, to disrupt these, all the AI models and Google and everything. Like, how can I show up in a different way? How would you recommend your clients? Yeah, just showing up bigger and different.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Let's talk about that. I'm going to give you some examples. So one of the things that a lot of companies, I've done this activity with different companies and it's really, really powerful. Okay. A lot of companies have processes in place that is essentially like ip, but they don't call it ip, they don't name it, and then they don't leverage it or use it in the market. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about here, Stephanie. I was recently with a bathroom remodeling company that does about $200 million a year. And it's a pretty big business. And what they do is they essentially take out your old bathtub and they put in stand up showers and they do it all over the country. Right. 200 million is a lot. And so I said, what's special about your methodology? They said, well, you know, there's this marks, there's this, we use acrylic. I said, what's great about acrylic? They said, well, it's impermeable. In other words, water can't get through it. I said, okay, so is that a problem with showers and stuff? They said, oh, it's a major problem. This is one of the reasons why you get subsurface rot, this is the reason why you get mold, is because there's lots of things like let's say an old tile shower which has grout and stuff. Water gets through that, moisture gets through that and it causes a lot of problems in a home. I said, I had no idea. I said, is there a rating system for that in the industry in terms of the surface of your standup shower and how impenetrable it is when it comes to moisture? They said, no rating system like that exists. I said, could it exist? They said, absolutely. I said, that's going to be our thing. We're going to create it. We're going to go after this aggressively in the world. That's an example of ip. Okay.

[Stephanie Postols]

So that's like find a problem that someone uniquely knows. No one's really talking about it. And then I'm going to become the rating system that everyone's looking to or the reviewer or the like the Platform that kind of shows something that everyone.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Should know about 100%. Same example, I was with a manufacturer of plastic deli containers, a very large one in the United States. And so if you go to, like, your local, let's say publix, and you get a salad at the salad bar, you put it in some type of plastic container. Okay. And that's maybe your lunch, right? And I was asking, I said, well, what makes your plastic containers so great? Are they the same as everybody's? Like, no. One thing that makes it great is the fact that you literally can't, like, unless you rip the strip, you can't take it off. And it's pretty much moisture tight. Like, it's moisture tight. You could put all this all addressing, you wanted in there, shake it up, shake it around, throw it upside down the back seat of your car, and it's not going to leak. I said, oh, that's so fascinating. Is there a rating system in the plastic container industry for, again, convenience stores that tell someone how leak proof the container is? They said, nope, it doesn't exist. But if you think about it, it should exist, Stephanie, because if you put, let's say, cookies in a plastic container, it doesn't need to be leak proof. If you put a salad with salad dressing in there, it does. And so I said, could we create the rating system for all of our products and then start teaching that to the market? And they said, yes, we could, Marcus. I said, perfect, we're going to do that. And what's going to happen is because we set the rating system, everyone else is going to have to follow suit in the industry. And now the ones that we sell to, let's say, the publics of the world, they're going to ask their other vendors, what's the rating, the waterproof rating on this container, because that will affect what they order for the different products they put into it. When you make a rule for an industry, you become the ultimate, like, trusted advisor. When I got into the swing pool industry, another. Another thing that you can do as a company is you can say, what is it about your industry that just, you know, is clearly wrong or pisses you off? Okay, these are like really, really just great prompts as a team to discuss. Because if you've been in, like, I know if I came to you, Stephanie, I said, what drives you crazy about your space? The stuff that you see, Just like it shouldn't be, but it is. You'd have a list for me because you've been in the game. So anybody's been in the game in any industry can look around and say, this is wrong. Why is it like this? When. When I got into pools, we were selling fiberglass pools. And the way that they built a fiberglass pool in the US Was that you dug a hole in the ground, you put a base of sand at the bottom of that hole, you put the pool shell on top of that, and then you filled the pool up with water and you back to backfilled around that pool with sand, you poured your concrete patio and you were done with the pool. But. But immediately we're like, wait a second here. We've known for like more than 2,000 years that you don't build your house on sand, and yet we're putting pools on sand. And what were the problems that were being created from this? You saw pools that were settling from the sand that was moving. It was washing. And so we had this huge series of articles and videos where we openly said, you should not be building your fiberglass pool on sand. Here's the reason why. Suddenly I had pool builders from around the country that were calling me just another regular pool builder in Virginia at the time. And they were saying, marcus, you're killing me here. Because I had a homeowner that now wants me to put gravel or crushed stone as the base and backfill instead of sand, but that's going to cost me about $1,000 more. And I said, that's not my problem, bro, because you are settling on an inferior product. So maybe you should raise your prices and do it the way it's supposed to be done or should be done, instead of just accepting it as it is. So at the time, 20 years ago, 80% of all pools were built on sand. Today, 80% of all polls are built on crushed stone because we made a fuss out of it. And so one of the best things that you can do in your industry is say, what are some of the standards that are wrong about this industry? Some of the best practices, quote, I put that in, quote, that shouldn't be considered best practices. How can we go after them aggressively? And that is a way to stand out big time in today's market. You with me so far?

[Stephanie Postols]

Yes, but I've got two questions now. One, I want to hear a software example, because I'm thinking about all these software companies right now who are like, they're coming in with what they believe should be best practices. Let's think CRM or things to do, like ways to do marketing or whatever. It might be software. I'd love to hear an example around like that. And then the second one is, how do you even get people to find your video? Like for product stuff? It kind of makes sense of like you're doing it this way, all these people are buying pools and like the homeowners are involved. And that one makes a little more sense. But I'm thinking like, if you're coming in with a software product and you're like, you upload leads this way, my way is better. It feels like a harder space in my mind. So I'd love to hear both of those, like getting customers or getting people to even look at your videos and doing it for software.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah. Let me start with the second question first because I think it's really relevant as we see the pendulum swinging and people are using, let's say search engines like Google Las Vegas and they're using AI and their zero click and all this stuff. What it means is there's going to be an actual increase in the usage of YouTube and social media for people to learn about products, services, et cetera. YouTube being one of the biggest beneficiaries of this to this day. You can do extremely well in the YouTube algorithm and you can do extremely well in YouTube search because it hasn't been affected by AI. And I'm not sure when it will be affected by AI, at least like the business model that was Google in the way that it has looked roughly for 25 years, that that is going to be massively disrupted. But it wouldn't surprise me if you went to YouTube in a few years and it looked pretty similar to what it does today. And so you, as a business, you have this opportunity to do well with YouTube when you go to YouTube. And by the way, I believe, and I think I mentioned this, I think there's a very strong argument that your YouTube channel is going to be more important than your website in the coming years. And what that means is you need to understand just generally how the algorithm works. And what works with the algorithm is essentially when you are really driving, here's what's wrong and don't fall for this, right? It's almost like you're creating this fear of missing out, like FOMO with something, right? And so when you are heavily opinionated or strongly opinionated on YouTube about what is wrong with an industry or why something is incorrect that drives eyeballs is very, very strong. And so one of the quickest ways that you can stand out, let's say that you are a software company and let's say that you are trying to compete against the salesforces or hubspots of the world, right? So I might come out with something that basically says these are, these are legacy softwares. And because they're legacy, they've got this massive moat that is called your customer data. And because of that, you're afraid to lose them. But here's why this is so dangerous. And oh, by the way, I'm not smart enough to know why it's all dangerous, right? But I need to create a common enemy, something that is opposed to what I believe is the correct way of, let's say the future of, you know, software or some like, marketing automation software or something like that. Like, like this is something another. Another example of potentially something that is wrong is if you said one. One of the things that we see in the world today is everybody wants to be this all in one tool. But the problem with all in one tools is they're not actually great at one specific thing most of the time. And so the all in one model is dying. And the reason why it's dying is of X, Y and Z, which by the way, I don't know if that's necessarily the case, but I'm just being like hypothetical right now. And that's what you would like, want to drive your stake in the ground and say all in one softwares for marketers is a problem and your whole model goes around. That impact started as a traditional agency and then we made the traditional agency the enemy of our messaging. Because we said a traditional agency oftentimes creates this perpetual need, need to use them. And they're not trying to teach or train you, they just want you to pay them the rest of your life as a business. And so we said we're a coaching company that's going to teach you how to become a media company. In this way. You won't have that perpetual ongoing, like, you know, hamster wheel vibe with your agency and wondering, gee, are we any better than when we started so that you got to have enemies in business when it comes to your messaging. And I'm not saying like lie about it, but I'm saying position your message that way and you need to be willing to do that. You need to be willing to take a stand more today and in the future than you've ever been. Because lukewarm is probably not going to get you found and it's not going to get you noticed. And the algorithms don't really appreciate lukewarm.

[Stephanie Postols]

Yep, I love that. That's really good. I could see a framework of being like, like, who's your villain? What do you stand for? Like, just walking. Because I think that, at least for me, I've had, like, this idea of, like, oh, you don't want to be too big, or if you say something that's kind of wrong. Like, and actually over this weekend, I was with my chief of staff and we were like, why are we not showing up bigger? Why aren't we actually, like, saying the reason that we're here? And like, even if 1% of what we say is inaccurate, but it came from good intentions and we actually believed it. Like, like, who cares? We need to show up brighter. We need to come up with, like, stronger opinions of, like, this is why we're here, because we know it. We just haven't been loud enough. And so I think that's a good, like, push for every company is like, are you being loud enough, girl?

[Marcus Sheridan]

You're saying it because let me tell you, the happiest day in the life of business isn't. Isn't when they know who they are. It's when they know who they're not. Because when you know you're not, you're able to call out very, very clear, clearly what you're not, who you're not a good fit. Fit for and where you stand. Now, the issue is a lot of leaders are scared to ruffle feathers, and I'm telling you, that is the great divide going forward. There's going to be a lot of leaders that are not going to make headway with their marketing, with their brand, and it's going to be because they were just so timid and didn't want to annoy one person. If you don't want negative comments in 2025 and beyond, you're not going to build a known brand. I'm telling you, you've got find me one person or one company that has a strong brand that doesn't have naysayers and people poo pooing whatever the brand is about. I will post something that is like, the sky is blue on LinkedIn. And people like, well, actually, Marcus, that is a dangerous thing to say. And I'm like, what the h. Come on, are you. But that's where that's where we are. I have to be willing to play that if I want to gain the trust of the largest amount of people possible. I have to be willing also, therefore, to let people go. No different than my speaking style. Stephanie. I'm one of the very few speakers you'll ever see that I go into the audience and I Am like a different. I am just. It's a different experience. And 1 to 2% of the. Of the survey results when I speak are going to be like, he yelled at me. He invaded my space. Like, he was kind of intimidating. And the other 98% was like, man, I never looked at my phone one time. That was some of the most. Like, this is the best speaker I've ever seen. It's like, okay, so who am I going to focus on? The 98 or the 2%? I let the 2% go. I already know I'm not everybody's cup of tea. Just, like, listening to this right now. I'm talking with a lot of passion. There's a certain percentage of people that have turned this podcast off because this dude talks fast. He's a little bit annoying. I mean, he's a pool guy. What am I going to learn from a pool guy? Like, And I am so at peace with that because there's another group of people. Like, I mean, I am so picking up what this dude is putting down. Who is he? I've never heard of him before. Oh, I'm gonna go check out his LinkedIn. I'm gonna connect with him. I heard him on Seth Pie. He's like, pretty dope. Like, that's the circle of life. I'm here for it.

[Stephanie Postols]

I am, too. I like it. So we're shifting now because I want to try something brand new on Marcus. For the first time ever on marketing trends, we're gonna be doing reaction videos. We're going to pull something up and actually, Rose, I'm going to let you just do what you want with it. Pull it up. I don't know if we're supposed to give context. No context. Just let him react. Whatever you want to do, Rose, take it away.

[Rose]

Okay, so we are looking at a few different pricing pages. So we've got Adobe, we have Canva, and we have Motion array, which is like video version for Canva templated assets. So we wanted to get your raw reaction to the layout of these pricing pages, how transparent they are and what they could do better.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Yeah. So when I look at. When I look at any of these pricing pages, the one thing that none of them do is just take me back a few steps and say, want to understand better what defines pricing in this industry? Click this. So it's like, it's only for the person that's so far down the buyer's journey that they are just ready to get the exact price in this case, for some SaaS, whereas I think they missed the massive, like, opportunity earlier. And it can be on this page as well, which is essentially teaching them what defines value in an industry. And typically in every industry, especially software, there's three tiers of software types. And if you can explain those three tiers and then say, and so those are the three tiers. And here at Motion Array, we fall within that mid tier based on what we just described or we fall in that upper tier. Now the person's like, okay, I've got context. The problem is on these pages there's not necessarily a lot of context. What's interesting too is the one in the middle. What was that? What was that? Canva. Yes, naturally. It actually, like, visually is much cleaner than the Adobe. I find the Adobe one lacks quite a bit of soul. I don't think anybody's reading that top headline on the Adobe just because of the way that it's done. Whereas if you look at the top headline on Canva, like, boom, Design anything. Which by the way, is super story brand. All right, look, it's like this is very action oriented design anything with the right plan. So that's a verb. Design anything. It's a payoff for me. With the right plan. I'm like, okay, I'm interested. Whereas Adobe says plans and pricing for creative cloud apps and more. Right? So they have clearly not read story brand. They need a little bit Donald Miller love right now and they need some, some better, you know, messaging in general. We go to Motion Array. Select the right plan for your creative needs. Once again, that is like the most basic headline for what would be in this case a pricing page. Canva. You win.

[Stephanie Postols]

Get it? Canva. Yeah. All right, what's up next, Rose?

[Rose]

All right, it's going to give it away what it is, but I just, I would love your reaction to it.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Wow. Okay, first off, I can barely read in terms of just like this. To me, a classic example of someone that tried to get fancy with their color scheme. Have you ever clicked your mouse right here and then it says you will? I just don't totally understand this. I'm sure this was a nice idea. This has fallen on deaf ears here. I don't know what it's about. Maybe it's about what was it that Apple ad or something like that?

[Stephanie Postols]

Yeah. So this ad, well, first of all, I think it got like 40% conversions, which is insane thinking about the history of ads. This was the first ad ever. I think it was by at&t. First banner ad.

[Rose]

It was.

[Stephanie Postols]

And like 40 plus percent conversions, which is so fun thinking about the history of, like, how we started and people being like, ooh, I'm going to click, click, click. Like, I'm just going to click right through to now. Like, in this world of fighting for attention and trying to figure out how to convert people.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Now I understand. So this was the first online banner. Okay, that is wild. You know, and we look at it and this shows us how far we've come and how developed our filters are today. Because this would never work today because you can barely even see the text very clearly because it's got this rainbow thing going on with it. Right. Today it'd be, like, strong red with a big swooping red arrow or something like that. The U will would actually look like it was legible. Right, right. But. But, you know, that's just. That's the circle of life. That's kind of cool history right there. We've advanced a little bit.

[Stephanie Postols]

We have, we have.

[Rose]

Yeah. I have a question about that, actually. So is clickbait copy dead now that we need to actually be educating our audience? And there's. It's so oversaturated with everybody going, look at me, look at me. I want attention. Click here, click here. Do we need to get right to the point?

[Marcus Sheridan]

No, I don't think it's dead by any stretch. Now, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily good, Rose, but I definitely don't think it's dead. And I think, sadly, you know, there's a lot of time I tell everyone, listen, I want you to be clickbaity, but I want you to fulfill your promise with the bait. And the problem is a lot of folks don't fulfill the promise. And so if you fulfill the promise, I want you to click bait the living crap out of that thing. Right, that. Because, you know, because really, what's the difference between clickbait and a great hook? And I would argue, like, a great hook and clickbait, if they're done right, the person's gonna be happy if a promise is fulfilled. And I think that's the thing that we always have to remember as marketers. Otherwise, yeah, we could get the click, but then we just piss people off. But I don't think it's dead by any stretch.

[Rose]

So would you say this is a great hook or it's clickbait?

[Marcus Sheridan]

To me, this is definitely would be considered clickbait. Yes. Yes, this is definitely clickbait. This is not a very strong hook. No.

[Stephanie Postols]

Unless you're back in 1994. Then everyone's like, unless you're in 94.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Like this Internet thing is bang got me.

[Stephanie Postols]

All right, Marcus, you're amazing. Where can people learn more about your book that's coming out?

[Marcus Sheridan]

And you, yeah, Stephanie, you've been so fun. You've got such great vibes. So I'm really, really happy I was here. I think your energy is contagious and that's a beautiful quality. If you're listening to this and you stayed this long, make sure you go to endlesscustomers.com that is where the best place to get the book is. Endlesscustomers.com and I'd love for you to go there and to connect with me on LinkedIn too because I'm awesome on LinkedIn and I'm going to give you some good stuff to think about most days of the week.

[Stephanie Postols]

Amazing. Thanks so much. And we'll have to bring you back for a round two in the future and hear how the book launch went and all that.

[Marcus Sheridan]

Let's do it.