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Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
The Transparent Pricing Strategy for Service Pros to Drive 500% More Leads with Marcus Sheridan
01:09:15
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- [00:00]
Marcus Sheridan
How much does the fiberglass pool cost? I've tracked the leads and the sales that came from that one single article since the day was written for my company in Virginia, which is to this day still around $35 million in sales that we've made from one single piece of content that took me 45 friggin minutes to write. So if you look at that, that's about $800,000 ROI per minute is what I got for that piece of content.
- [00:33]
Podcast Narrator
Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.
- [01:19]
Tersh Blissett
I want to give a huge shout out to Marcus Storm for sponsoring today's episode.
- [01:22]
Sponsor Announcer
You've heard of Google Ads, Facebook ads and SEO, but did you know that there's an entire ecosystem like 80% of the Internet that ads can be served on that you've barely heard about?
- [01:31]
Tersh Blissett
That's where marketstorm operates.
- [01:32]
Sponsor Announcer
They leverage data, science and AI to build customer profiles for your ideal customers and get your ads in front of prospects before they are ready to hire a pro, planting your brand in their minds early and often.
- [01:44]
Tersh Blissett
To chat with a team about how they can help you grow your business, visit Marketstorm AI if you're a contractor with multiple CSRs, check out this service Business Mastery podcast partner LACE AI. LACE uses cutting edge AI to analyze your phone calls, uncover lost revenue opportunities and empower your CSRs to convert more leads. You can significantly increase revenue without spending extra on marketing or hiring. By using Lace AI to boost your conversion rates for the first time, you can gain deep insights into customer needs at scale with minimal effort. Elevate your call center to achieve industry leading booking rates and revenue. Visit www.lace.AI to book a demo today. Now back to the show. Yo Joshua, really fast. I want to talk about online scheduling for the trades and how they should be affordable, effective and easy to manage. A really quick second here to share a little bit about the latest group of experts that we've teamed up with Autobot AI. Our team of industry experts has develop best in class scheduling of app that seamlessly integrates with Your CRM every book job goes directly into your software and becomes one of our advanced marketing analytics, which is really cool. We can automatically select the marketing campaign of your choice based on how the customer came to your site.
- [03:06]
Josh Crouch
Yeah, Tersh, those industry leading analytics tells you everything that you're going to want to know about your lead. Where they came from, what they did before scheduling and what page they converted on other things. On average about 75% of people who start a booking with our app completed. But we'll give you a more granular reporting that shows conversion rates based on marketing source and medium to help improve your marketing efforts.
- [03:27]
Tersh Blissett
So honestly, with no contracts, affordable monthly rates and you really don't have anything to lose. And so it's, it's a great program to try out and if you use SBM when you go to sign up for it, you'll actually save fifteen hundred dollars on the setup fee. Honestly, give it a shot. Tell us what you think. Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, sitting virtually next to my co host Joshua Crouch. And I am excited to have. We have Marcus Sheridan on the podcast today and I'm super excited to talk with Marcus. Josh and I both have read and listened to his book. It transformed the way that I actually built out my first H Vac company and I really struggled whenever listening to the book. It's called they ask, you answer. They ask, you answer and there you go.
- [04:24]
Josh Crouch
Josh Tersh can't read it anyways because it was dyslexia, but it's called they ask you answer.
- [04:32]
Tersh Blissett
But I, I really did struggle with like pricing, like share pricing. And we've had this conversation before multiple times on the podcast. We have one of our sponsors, upfrog is all about putting prices on your website. And we've had, you know, pushback, we've had, we've had success stories about doing it this way. And so like the OG guy when it comes to sharing the information that your clients really want to know the answer to. And one of the things. So I was listening to Marcus earlier today on the drive around town and one of the things really hit home to me and that was I remember reading this before and listening to it, but then you said it again today and that was like allowed the client to fire themselves. Like what happens if I put my prices on there? And you were using the pool instance and you're like, hey, it's a $50,000 pool. They only have a $30,000. It, like, let them disqualify themselves versus wasting your time. And sometimes I feel like. I feel like there's times where we want to go after more people. And, you know, if you're a customer to everyone, I mean, if everyone's your customer, then no one's your customer. And I understand that concept, but there are times where I'm like, well, what if I win them over in the home? And, like, then I can.
- [06:02]
Josh Crouch
You can sell them, right?
- [06:04]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah. You know what I mean? But anyways, we'll get into that a little bit. But with that being said, welcome to the show, Marcus.
- [06:10]
Josh Crouch
It is such an interesting topic, I would say. About three years ago, I did a Facebook post, unofficial poll. Would you put online or pricing on your website or not? And literally, you could have. You almost should have asked if you're a Democrat or Republican. It was 50.
- [06:23]
Marcus Sheridan
50.
- [06:23]
Josh Crouch
It was, like, split right down the middle. Some people got super angry. Some people were like, yes, you have to do it. So I'm really curious to. You know, obviously, your take was one of the first ones that I ever ran across, especially. And we're talking to, like, service fees and, like, maintenance, like a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars. You were putting stuff online that was.
- [06:42]
Marcus Sheridan
Like, big, huge projects. The issue that you had there, Josh, is you asked the wrong question. Because the right question is, when you're a buyer and you're researching something, do you expect to see pricing information 100% of the time? The answer is yes. The problem is, as contractors, we don't follow the golden rule, even though a lot of us like to say that we do. So let's just look at the. But let's look at the psychology real quick, and then we're going to go take it way beyond just they ask, you answer, which is, if I asked anybody who's listening to this right now, have you researched how much something costs online? Last year, everybody would say, yeah, sure, I've done that. Marcus, if I said to you, when you're on a website and you're looking for cost and price information and you cannot find it, what's the emotion you experience? You. I get super frustrated. I'd say, well, why do you get frustrated? You'd say, well, because I'm the buyer and I'm trying to make a decision. Okay, now, in this moment of frustration, do you, as the buyer, do you as a searcher, do you say to yourself, well, I'm just going to keep on looking at this website until I find it? Nope, you don't do that. If I said to you in that moment of frustration, do you as the buyer, do you say to yourself, well, that's okay, they're not talking about it. They're a value based business. Every job is customized. I'm going to call them on the phone instead? Nope, you don't do that because you as the buyer, you, you as a search or you keep searching, what do you do? You search until you find. And generally speaking, whoever's going to give you what you're looking for, they're going to get your business. If not your business are going to get first contact, first phone call, which every person in this space that's listening to this right now would like to have. Now, if I said to those that are listening though, are you talking aggressively about cost and price online of your services and products right now? Most would say no. Here's the reason why. Three fundamental reasons, boys and girls. Number one reason, they say, well, every job is different. We have a customized solution. It's variable. Marcus. Okay, so if I said to you, if I met with you right now, anyways, listen to this. If I said to you, can you help me understand the factors that would drive the cost of your service product up? You'd say, yes. If I said, can you help me understand the factors that would drive the cost of your service or product down? You'd say, yes. If I came down and said, can you help me understand why there's such a delta in pricing? Because some of you are more expensive, some of you are less expensive. Can you give me a sense why competitors are more and less in this industry? You'd say, yes. If I said, can you give me a general sense for what you all charge your typical customer? You'd say yes. And so this whole idea of it depends is the easiest one to address and the most important because if you don't address that online, well, then what happens is the person is left ignorant. When someone's left ignorant, what do they do? They choose the cheapest thing. That's called commoditization. That's occurred in most industries because oftentimes contractors are very poor educators and teachers. So that's the first reason they don't do it. They say it depends. Second reason why some of your listeners, my friends too, by the way, are saying, we don't talk about cost of price is we say, well, I don't want my competitors to see it. What's silly about that, if I talk.
- [09:29]
Josh Crouch
To anybody, that that's a big one. I've heard a Lot of people say that.
- [09:32]
Marcus Sheridan
Yep. If I talk to anybody that's good at their job and I said, do you have a pretty good sense as to what your competitors charge? They'd say, yeah, of course I do. So here's the big secret. They know what you charge. And this is the big secret. Non secret. Everybody acts like nobody knows what everybody's charging, when in reality everybody's got a pretty decent sense as to what everybody else is charging. Besides that, when was the last time your competitors paid your bills? They have not paid your bills the last time I looked. And you're getting caught up in this idea still that you're giving exact numbers. You're not giving exact numbers. We'll come back to that in a second. Third reason why companies don't talk about cost and price is they say, well, we tend to be the more expensive provider. And if they see we're the more expensive provider, we might scare them away. No sir, the thing that scares us away online isn't when somebody educates us, isn't when somebody teaches us and helps us understand what value looks like in an industry. Rather it's when they say nothing at all. It's the exact same reason that if you were going to go to a new restaurant tonight, you've never been there. You're vetting the restaurant, you're looking at reviews and you went looked at their menu online and they had no pricing next to their menu items. You would say, I'm not going to go. And it's not because you can't afford it, because you can afford it. But the reason why you're not going is because the moment they left it blank, they planted a seed of doubt. When we embraced they Ask youk answer in 2009, first piece of content I put on my website as a pool guy was how much does an in ground pool cost? How much does a fiberglass pool cost? I've tracked the leads and the sales that came from that one single article since the day it was written for my company in Virginia, which is to this day still around $35 million in sales that we've made from one single piece of content that took me 45 frigging minutes to write. So if you look at that, that's about $800,000 ROI per minute is what I got for that piece of content. And because we've got hundreds now of clients that we have embraced the Ask you Answer and now it's called Endless Customers, by the way, because they Ask youk Answer came out third edition like Four weeks ago. And it's called Endless customers now. So I'll say endless customers. We have so much data on this. I have more empirical data than any company in the world on organizations that discuss pricing. And I can tell you that for 80% of the companies that we've ever worked with, a high percentage of which are in home services. Home improvement, the number one traffic lead, and sales generating content has to do with cost and price every single time. Yet there's still people listening to this right now saying, but you don't understand my business, Marcus. We're different.
- [12:00]
Josh Crouch
My market's different. I hear that all the time as a digital marketer. My market different than anyone else in the country. Like, yeah, well, you're right, you're wrong.
- [12:08]
Tersh Blissett
Marcus, let me ask you, do you put an asterisk next to the price?
- [12:11]
Marcus Sheridan
Well, notice I didn't say you had to put the price. This is the misconception that companies have. They'll read the ask, you answer, and they'll still miss the mark. So what I'm espousing is when someone enters the buyer's journey, case in point, you need a new H Vac unit. First question, every single person has. Same question, doesn't matter who it is. First question, y' all know what it is. What is it?
- [12:36]
Tersh Blissett
What's this thing? It won't cost me.
- [12:37]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, what's this thing gonna set me back? First thing they want to know, they'll even say to the contractor. Oftentimes, if you're a contractor, talk to somebody on the phone, they call you and say, yeah, you know, H Vac unit went down, looking to get some price, you know, can you give me a sense for pricing? I'm not going to hold you to it, but could you at least give me a sense? Right, You've heard that not going to hold you to it a million times. Well, you see, that is the. That is the gateway of the buyer's journey. That question, roughly, how much is this going to cost? Unless someone can get a sense of range? Well, then they stop right there. And oftentimes they don't vet further because they're confused and they're fearful. When you have fear, people don't move. And when they don't move, they don't buy. When they don't buy, you go broke as a business, and that's not a very good place to be. Right. And so, you know, the stuff that I was doing early on, like, I. I did, I broke so many rules, and this is just one of them. But I got to talk, can we talk further about this cost pricing? Because this dog will hunt.
- [13:30]
Josh Crouch
Yeah, I actually like to add something to what you're saying because you talk about the gateway, right. Like, so we manage, we have a call tagging team that listens and, and puts out the biggest objections that clients get on the phone. And we're actually developing an AI, AI analysis and automation software to help with this for contracts. So it's like instantaneous results because our team, our human team, the data lags behind five to seven days. It's still good. It's just, it's a lot slower because it's just hard to keep up with calls as they come in. Pricing on the phone is the number one reason. Calls don't get booked because they don't talk about pricing, they don't give any idea what, what the fee is going to cost. A lot of them say, I don't know, I don't have access to the price book.
- [14:12]
Marcus Sheridan
I can't tell you.
- [14:13]
Josh Crouch
They like, it's gatekeeped and people on the phone, you can literally hear them get pissed off.
- [14:19]
Marcus Sheridan
Like you don't even know how much it is to come to my house.
- [14:22]
Josh Crouch
Like you just, you know, or how.
- [14:24]
Marcus Sheridan
Much it is to get my tune up on my air conditioner. 75% of all buyers today say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. I'm going to repeat this just so everybody can hear it. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. What does this mean? What it means is we don't hate salespeople. We just don't want to talk to salespeople until we're good and ready. And that means we want to be confident, we want to be comfortable, we want to be informed and we want to feel like we're not going to get taken advantage of. We're not going to make a mistake. This is every buyer. Okay, and so how do you take advantage of this? Because your choices are as follows. You can complain about and say, oh gee, I wish it was still 1980. Or you can say, you know what, there's a trend, I'm going to take advantage of it. And I always believe in taking advantage of the trends. Well, the future is self service and I talk a ton about this in endless Customers, the book. And everyone, please hear what I'm about to say. When it comes to your website today, if you want to generate leads, self service is going to be the biggest key. No longer are people downloading your freaking buyer's guide okay, you're not getting that first party information anymore like you were before. Give that stuff away, ungate it. Here's what makes conversions happen today. One great example, self pricing tools, also known as calculators, estimators. I have been such a leader in this pricing conversation for 15 years of my life that last year I developed a software that's called PriceGuide AI. And what it does, it allows mainly home contractors, service based businesses to quickly, easily and cost effectively create pricing estimators that they can put on their website. And generally you can have it on your site up and working in less than 30 minutes because of course, AI helps you to build it. Okay, now here's what's great about it. When you put this on your site and you use the call to action, this is very important. It's got to be on your homepage and it's got to say, get instant estimate. That's the money phrase, ladies and gentlemen. Get instant estimate. When you put that on your site, here's what we see almost every single time. 3 to 500% increase in conversions. 3 to 500%. So in other words, if you're getting five leads a week from your website right now, if you get a pricing estimator, you're going to now see 15 to 25 per week. Now why does this happen? Well, the process is beautiful because there's this thing called sunk cost fallacy. And if you're listening to this and you've studied any business books at all, you probably are familiar with it. Which means when somebody is doing an interactive tool, answering questions and then they get an answer, they have now invested in the relationship. And therefore because they've invested further, they're looking for a reason to work with you. And the conversion rates explode. And it addresses this fundamental question that everybody has, roughly how much is it? But it doesn't put you in a corner. You see, there's a huge difference between an estimator and a quote. You're not giving a quote. But what people want is a general estimate. So they know they're in the game. And I've had so many. I had an H Vac company that heard me talk about this man, it's the coolest thing. I saw him in a conference in January. I got a note 30 days later from them on LinkedIn. They said, Marcus, I had a price guide. I am literally shocked. We've already done over $200,000 in additional business, $200,000 from having a pricing estimator on their website. And that's what's crazy about it. Now you're starting to see these pop up. There's like tools like Rufle. You've heard of Rufle for roofers, right? All right, that's an example of this price guide is beautiful because it's $20 a month.
- [18:19]
Josh Crouch
So in other words, one sale, one lead is worth it.
- [18:23]
Marcus Sheridan
It's crazy. It's crazy. And you can, you can crush off of it. You get one lead, you know, because your average lead that you're probably paying for in PPC right now is probably somewhere between 75 to $100 for a lot of you that are listening to this. And so now all of a sudden, you know, for two of those, you can get three to five x leads. It doesn't make sense. Listen, within five years, mark my words, if you're listening to this right now, 90% of all service based businesses within home improvement are going to have a pricing estimator on their website. I will guarantee you that. I will bet my four children, my grandson and my granddaughter that's on the way that that is going to happen. And the question for you is, are you going to be the one that's reactive to everyone saying, yeah, we should probably do that? I mean, you all remember the days when contractors are saying, yeah, I don't think I need a website. How'd that work out for you? You know what I'm saying? It's just like I don't need email. Yeah, yeah. Electronic mail. This is the big change that we are seeing. Let me give you another one really quickly with, with self service that I've seen. I'll just be fast about this one. We have, we've created tools for people that, let's say you have an organization with multiple salespeople, all right, which, you know, I mean, that's not, you know, that, that, that certainly happens. So Tersh, let's say one of your company sets a bunch of salespeople. How many does it have?
- [19:44]
Tersh Blissett
Three.
- [19:44]
Marcus Sheridan
Three. Okay. You can create a page on your website and on that page you have the three salespeople. All right, so let's say you have a call to action that says schedule your site visit with one of our, with one of our sales reps or whatever you call that person. Okay, One of our diagnostic reps or whatever you want to say and our consultation specialist. So you have the three there, you have an image of the person, you have a video of the person explaining just about themselves. You have their bio there. And then you allow the prospect to choose the salesperson and to sync up with their calendar and choose the time that they meet with them. Now, here's what we found. Every time We've done this. 50% increase in closing rates for those that. That choose a salesperson versus those that do not choose the salesperson. 50%. And again, why is this? Because of sunk costs. You see, because they went through a process of selecting who they wanted to work with on your team. Now they're trying to find a way to prove to themselves that they made the right decision. It's really fascinating, the psychology of this. And now all of a sudden, you see a dramatic increase in closing rates. We've done this with a bunch of companies now. It's crazy how it works. Isn't that wild? I bet you've never seen anybody do that before, have you?
- [20:57]
Josh Crouch
I got a question for you, Marcus. And because we're talking about, you know, getting people to, you know, getting traffic to the website to be able to get this instant estimate, AI search is exploding. Google has come out, literally with AI overviews, and now they have an AI mode which is, like, experimental, but will, from the sounds of it, will eventually be like the thing on Google Search. Like, you won't have your normal Google search with the 10 blue links and all the other stuff on there. It's going to be AI mode all the time. And then, of course, ChatGPT is. We all know it's growing exponentially. How does what you teach factor into this? Because I. I told you before we jumped on, I had a Facebook group post that. And I engage tertiaries. I engage in a lot of Facebook group posts. He hates engaging on Facebook. But somebody was saying because they did a search for, like, how much does a plumber cost? And I had a customer send them the screenshot of what it should cost. Of course, the information came from Yelp, HomeAdvisor, Angie Thumbtack, all the sources that could care less about your business.
- [21:56]
Marcus Sheridan
All the plumbers that are pissed about the low number, they can blame themselves because they haven't had honest conversations about it online. And you see, this is by online, are you.
- [22:06]
Tersh Blissett
Do you mean on, like a blog post on their website?
- [22:08]
Marcus Sheridan
A blog post on your website? There's. There's essentially, I teach, there's five levels of pricing online. Okay. Level zero is when you have a pricing tab on your website, and they click on the tab and they see.
- [22:23]
Tersh Blissett
Call for quote, contact us.
- [22:25]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah. Which is, by the way, the middle finger of the Internet. So that's level zero. It doesn't even get credit for level for any levels. Level 0. Level 1 is when you have a pricing page on your site and you, you talk around pricing, but you don't ever give any numbers at all. So you still, you're misleading and that pisses people off. Level two is when you have a pricing page like I teach about in Endless Customers. They ask, you answer, where you explain what drives cost up, what drives cost down. Why are some companies expensive? Why are some companies cheap? Right? Just help someone understand all the value components. And now they're like, okay, I understand why somebody would spend 20% more because they get this, this and this. And I wouldn't live without that. Level three is when you have a pricing video, right, that's Also on your YouTube page, that's also on your socials that you post. The pricing video once again explains those big five things, which drives cost up, which is cost down. Why are some companies expensive? Why are some companies cheap? And roughly where do you fall? Right? So that's level three. Level four, now you're starting to cook with gas. Is a pricing estimator. This is when people just love you to the end of time. And then level five is when you have an exact quote tool. Now, I'm not a fan of an exact quote tool most of the time because that does mess you up for variables. And so some companies can do that, but many companies can't give an exact quote, but you can give an estimate. And so those are the five different levels. Now here's what's going to happen in the future, and here's what's wild in the future. Somebody's going to have their H Vac break. They're going to talk to their. And by the way, I know I'm preaching to the choir with you guys, you know this, but I'm just for our listeners because I want them to see the future state. All right, so what's going to happen in the future is you're going to have your little AI agent. And this is that AI assistant that does anything and everything for you. Your H Vac is going to break. You're going to go to your AI assistant, all right, Your agent, and you're going to say, listen, I need you to find, I want you to go research the top 20 local H VAC contractors here in Richmond, Virginia, where you live, wherever that is. I want you to research reviews, I want you to research pricing, I want you to give me your top three recommendations based on your research. Your agent's going to go out, it's going to do all the Research, it's going to come back, it's going to give you a report, and here's how the report is going to sound. It's going to say something to you like, hey, Josh, I did the research. I found 20 companies locally. I vetted them all. I chose the top three based on a variety of factors, mainly reviews, but also the ones that had pricing estimators on their website. I found that five of them had estimators on their website, but of those five, three of them had the best reviews. Here are the three companies I'm recommending. Here are their estimates that they have given me. Which would you like to call next? That's the future.
- [25:05]
Josh Crouch
It sounds like you've done that a few times because literally, like ChatGPT, when you put that stuff in, it literally goes like, it gives you like the, the basis of how they did their research. It sounds like you literally have done this like a bunch of times to get that information.
- [25:17]
Marcus Sheridan
This is our future, everyone. I mean, listen, I not saying I'm excited about it or I love it. I've learned not to complain about where the world's headed.
- [25:26]
Tersh Blissett
We can't control it.
- [25:27]
Marcus Sheridan
It doesn't help me to complain about it. What helps me is to say, how can I live in the solution right now? Now there's no question that you should not, you should not build your house on Google alone anymore. I could do that with river pools. In 2009, I had the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. We dominated, we took over the industry. I couldn't do the same thing today. I've got to be on more platforms today. And I can't just expect Google search alone because the companies that have been rooted in a ton of SEO and a ton of content in the past, specifically towards Google search, their traffic is going down. And also Google Ads, if anybody's listening, don't necessarily have a really strong future either. Not like they do today. If you talk to most contractors today and you say, how's your Google Ads been going? Most are going to tell you, I'm spending more this year than I've spent in a long time and I'm getting less results than I've gotten a long time. This is what everybody's saying. There's a reason for this, because as soon as SEO is going down and people are getting less organic traffic to their site, what that means is they have to start spending more on paid. And so now you're starting to see more people on paid, but yet less people are, are using Google and As less people use Google, if you've built your house on that, suddenly you're saying, son of a gun, I could be in big trouble here.
- [26:51]
Tersh Blissett
Okay, so one year, I know you spent a large amount of money, but a lot of it was on pay per click. But then your organic took off and you didn't have to spend hardly anything on organic. I mean pay per click compared to.
- [27:04]
Marcus Sheridan
Your send out trust signals to the world. Trust signals is every piece of content that you produce or people produce about you. If you want to be recommended by AI for 20 years, we had to make sure we were recommended by homeowners and recommended by Google for 20 years. Now the second one is starting to fall off and the third one that is going to become the cog in your business for a long, long time is whether or not AI will recommend your business. In order for AI to recommend your business though, you can't do it like everybody else is doing it. This is why having a pricing estimator, this is again another example, having pricing content is going to be table stakes. But let's look at something that I taught about and they ask you answer. And still works very, very well today for AI recommendations that anybody that's listening to this should try. Most won't try because you're going to lack courage and which is really, really sad. But a couple of you will have the courage to do what I'm about to tell you, which is this. I remember in 2012 I was still selling pools, this is my last year selling pools. And I was sitting with a couple of homeowners in Richmond, Virginia, sat with them for like two hours, gave them a quote and they said, marcus, we like you, we think we'd like to do business with you. But if we don't do business with you, is there anybody else you'd like, you might recommend? And I thought, I hate this freaking question. And I didn't sell the pool that night. They were, you know, still, you know, set on looking around. So I was driving home and I had like a two hour drive like always. And I was pissed. And I was thinking to myself, well, they asked the question, so guess what, I'm gonna go answer it on my website. And I created an article, who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia? Review slash ratings. So that was the title of it. Who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia? Review slash ratings. And I listed five of the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia. And I, and I, and I took the five that I had lost the most deals to over the course of the previous 10 years. That's who I chose. Okay. And I described each one of the companies based on their own information on their own website. Well, what happened as a result of this? Now I started ranking for all my competitors when people were searching reviews competitor name Richmond, Virginia. I was ranking for my competitors after I had produced a best of article which is by the way and you know this Josh, you're in it every single day. I mean obviously terse you know it too. It's like one of the most common searches we deal with is you know, best pool builders, best H vac companies, such and such in name of the town, city, state, whatever it is. And so this is prolific and we I produce this list. So I was the first person in home improvement that openly, openly talked about competitors and started ranking for all my competitors keyword phrases. And I've done this with a lot of industries now and these best stuff continue to work. But here's what's wild. Two things have changed now when you have those best of lists, this is what AI uses. They pick up these lists and then they source those lists. And that's when someone does a best of search today on AI. All these clients that I have that have produced these best of clients, they're the ones getting sourced, they're the ones getting mentioned the content that they have.
- [30:02]
Tersh Blissett
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Tersh Blissett
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- [32:10]
Tersh Blissett
Help you grow your business. Learn more@upfrog IO are they pulling the list itself? And so they're recommending everybody that you put on the list or are they?
- [32:19]
Josh Crouch
We've seen this like we church and I have done this for like best H Vac podcasts and stuff and then we we look at the source list. We're on like service titans BL House couple run like really big national blogs. And I've seen the same thing in, in a bunch of different ways.
- [32:32]
Marcus Sheridan
The difference today when I wrote they ask you answer came out 2017 second edition 2020 and then endless customers third edition came out this year. Endless Customers changed that teaching to say before we said don't put yourself on the list because it sounds self serving, you're going to get the benefits of the traffic, you're going to get the gains. And I mean I made millions off of these best of lists on a personal level. But now I say put yourself on the list. But here's how you had to do it. You have to say if you're a homeowner looking for the best H Vac companies in Richmond, Virginia, we have created a list here based on 10 factors that demonstrate the highest standards when it comes to H Vac companies in central Virginia. We're basing it on number of Google reviews, how long they've been in business, et cetera, et cetera. So in other words, you want to create a criteria for how you're defining best. At that point you can put yourself on the list because it doesn't sound as self serving. And you can also because, because otherwise if you put yourself, if you create a list, you don't show your criteria, how you made the list and then you throw yourself on said List. You don't.
- [33:41]
Josh Crouch
Software companies do this crap all the time.
- [33:43]
Marcus Sheridan
That's right, all the time.
- [33:45]
Josh Crouch
Always on the list.
- [33:47]
Marcus Sheridan
You can do. You can do that. And so we've got a ton of companies that are doing really, really well with AI recommendations, Best of searches, because they have done this over the years and it continues to work. I had one do it last month and immediately AI recommendations picked it up and they're already seeing benefits from it. Here's the thing. You still want to produce content like we've talked about, rooted in the big five, which are those five fundamental subjects. Everybody searches, cost problems, comparisons, reviews, and best. Those are the big five. They run home improvement. I talk a ton about them in endless customers. You still want that content on your website, but you really, really need to be aggressive with this on a video perspective. And you need to be really, really pushing the YouTube envelope like you've never pushed it before. There's a very strong argument that you could make that within the next five years, your YouTube page is going to be more important to your brand than your website. And that's hard for a lot of people to understand, but there is a clear, clear trend line. That's where a lot of folks are going. So different than my most podcasters are now going towards like, you know, YouTube because it's making. Because the number one podcasting channel in the world is YouTube. As everybody that was getting a ton of website traffic before from Google SEO is seeing a decline. Those that have been using YouTube are not seeing any decline or any dip from AI. They're only improving right now. That trend line's not going to stop. Right. So AI is not hurting AI recommendations are not hurting YouTube usage at all. In fact, the one blue ocean, to a degree of search still remains with YouTube, much more so than you find with just regular traditional search. You can be ranked number one in Google search results a day. And Whereas, you know, five years ago you're getting 80% of the clicks, today you're getting less than 20% of the clicks because they got got to go through a freaking swath of AI summaries and then they've got to have related questions and then they see all the sponsored searches and then they might see a map too. And like, you're ranked number one, but you're like, I'm not getting the visitors. I get it, man.
- [35:54]
Tersh Blissett
I'm ranked number one, but I'm on page two.
- [35:57]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly.
- [35:59]
Josh Crouch
That's what it feels like today.
- [36:01]
Marcus Sheridan
That's what it Feels like today it's almost like ranking number one doesn't mean squad anymore in Google for a lot of these companies, especially location based businesses like H Vac, home contractor, etc. Because of the, the fact that they're showing all these things, even freaking, even ChatGPT now is starting to show the map, right? And it's like it's getting very, very interesting. It goes back though to you got to become a known and trusted brand. And if you're going to be a known and trusted brand, there's four pillars I talk about in endless customers. You got to say what others aren't willing to say. Online, you got to show, with video, others aren't willing to show. You got to sell in a way that others aren't willing to sell. And you got to be more human than others are willing to be. Those are the four.
- [36:43]
Tersh Blissett
What do you say to the, to the, the business owner or you know, whoever that is, really good at fixing air conditioning, but they're just really not interested in being on video like that. Like it's, it's, it's almost like a, like stage fright.
- [37:01]
Marcus Sheridan
So how many times I would say to that person, how many times has somebody come to your website, wanted to see a video so they could understand the thing, couldn't find the video and said that's okay, they don't have a video, the owner gets nervous on camera, I'm going to give them a pass. Never happened in the history of the world. Nobody gives a rip about how comfortable you are on camera. They only care. Like Toby the Great Keith said, I want to talk about me, number one, right? So when someone's coming to your site, here's what's wild. People will tell me, yeah, I don't have a Facebook camera. Interesting. So do you ever meet any of your customers face to face? You expect them to look at you, then you ask them for their money. Then you see when you ask people for their money and that's what happens when you become an entrepreneur. You ask people for their money in exchange for a good or service, you lose the right to say, I'm not going to give you every reason to trust me. Now video is where we are all headed. And all you have to do is pay attention to the teenagers because it doesn't matter the fact that you still might use Google or every one of the teenagers I know today have moved over to ChatGPT. All of them. And they are all on YouTube. And to them, that's their TV. That's their Saturday morning TV. Right. And so the whole world has changed, and we can't continue to say, I'm going to allow my personal opinions to screw up smart business decisions.
- [38:39]
Tersh Blissett
What do you tell a business owner who maybe has imposter syndrome? Because that. I know that that's a fear. Like, hey, I'm going to say something that someone else doesn't agree with, and then we get into an online debate, and then I don't want to. Like, I want to avoid the conflict. Does that make sense?
- [39:00]
Marcus Sheridan
You will. When you become a thought leader and you build a brand, you will be attacked.
- [39:07]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [39:08]
Marcus Sheridan
And that's when you have to say, because, listen, you guys get attacked.
- [39:12]
Tersh Blissett
Sure.
- [39:12]
Marcus Sheridan
You've got a podcast and people find reason to say negatives about you all. And now that you've gone big, I.
- [39:19]
Tersh Blissett
See this comment all the time. It's like, does it. Does that guy have any emotion in his voice, like, talking about me? Because I. I'm. I tend to be very monotone, and I'm like, all right, I'll take. I'll take that.
- [39:32]
Josh Crouch
Tersh is definitely the calmer one. I'm the fiery getting an argument, blow Facebook up 1.
- [39:41]
Tersh Blissett
I took that personal the first couple of times I've seen it. But then now it's like, okay, now it's something to make myself better. And we're not perfect. And if we think that we are, then, like, that just feeds into an ego.
- [39:55]
Marcus Sheridan
When people tell me they're not good on camera, I say, but are you good with people? And they say, yes. Every time they say yes. And I say, well, see, that's the problem right there. You are seeing the camera as a camera. I see the camera as a person. You notice, like, even though I'm talking to you two guys, you know, Tersh and Josh, I'm actually talking to your audience pretty much, like, a hundred. Like, I'm always directing myself to your audience. And that's because that's who I'm obsessed with. I am literally obsessed with my audience in any place that I go, can I make a connection with them?
- [40:30]
Tersh Blissett
How did you get to that point, though, to where you become obsessed with the audience versus. Because I like thinking back to, like, an e Myth. And you're thinking, like, all right, I'm the mechanic, and I need to become obsessed with the audience, the person, versus fixing the item, the air conditioning unit. Like, that's a. It's a mindset shift. I know that you've mentioned before, like, people asking you to come out on site and observe the installation of the pool. And you're like, I don't, I don't, I don't work on pools. And when you said that, I immediately thought of Josh because Josh is, he's very knowledgeable in that area. But he doesn't own wrenches like he does, he doesn't work on, he doesn't turn wrenches, knobs or anything.
- [41:15]
Josh Crouch
I turn them the wrong way.
- [41:17]
Tersh Blissett
How does someone who is very technical, mindset, engineering mindset, move their mentally over to like now? I need to become obsessed with educating the client.
- [41:29]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah. I'm not saying any of this is easy, but I would say there's, there's a couple of things going on here. Number one is what you can do to make your life easier is you can have someone interview you on camera. That acts as the audience they are in their stead. And because of that, you know, if, if you, if you have a, you know, a lot of, sadly a lot of home improvement companies don't have a marketing department at all. And I think you really need one. I think you should bring in someone that has journalist like skills. By the way, you could hire a recent journalist graduate to work for your company. You can get them for a very, very competitive number because they can't get a job in journalism right now. But they've got media experience, they've got interviewing experience, they know how to think like the reader, the viewer, etc. And so it's their job to ask you the questions and to get you to further explain things. Because oftentimes to your point, you might suffer from the curse of knowledge, which is thinking the world understands everything you understand when they don't fully understand what you're saying. The other side to this is, and this is really important, if you're listening to this, the goal is to never sound smart. Like, I'm not trying to sound smart when I talk to you all today, I am seeking communion, understanding with your audience. I'm not going to use technical phrases. I'm going to speak in such a way that it's immediately understood. But I'm not trying to sound smart. Somebody once told me something that really changed my life. And at first I didn't fully get it, but then it made so much sense. They said simple terms, it's dumb not to dumb it down, dumb not to dumb it down. But then I really, really got it because the goal is that light bulb comes on, it's aha. And so even though I write stuff about sales and marketing and digital, rarely does anybody say, oh, I don't Know what that means? What do you mean by that? Because rarely do I. Even though we might have said SEO today, I'll usually say getting found online. You know what I'm saying? It's like, this is. Like, this is the language so that you can be understood. Now I will. I just got to say one more thing about video. If I talk to anybody that's listening to this and I said to them, have you ever sat with a homeowner, screwed up your words, and said to the homeowner, I just totally screwed that up. Can we just start the whole conversation over again?
- [43:53]
Tersh Blissett
You're so much more organic.
- [43:54]
Marcus Sheridan
It's like, I've never done that. Yeah, you've never ever done that. What do you do with the homeowner? You keep going. Why?
- [44:01]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, you just winged it.
- [44:03]
Marcus Sheridan
So when you see the camera as a homeowner, you stop stopping. You stop second takes. I do so many videos, I don't really ever do second takes. I mean, it's very rare for me to do a second take because I just don't care about the fact that I screwed up. Just like with us right now, we're all having to do this as we have this conversation. If we fumble over a word, it doesn't matter. We don't have time and we don't have the ability to stop. We're alive, we're recording. You know, we're not going to hit edit later. We're going to keep going forward in our conversation. So we do this in the sales world. You need to learn to do that when you're discussing things on camera. And once you get to that point, you're like, wow, I'm not. I've had people go, literally in 45 minutes working with them, go from I suck on camera to oh, my gosh, I think I might be a natural. I'm not kidding.
- [44:49]
Tersh Blissett
I have light bulbs going off. That makes so much sense as to why, like, Josh has engagement with his videos because he's really not that smart, so he doesn't ever have to worry about sounding smart.
- [44:59]
Marcus Sheridan
You know, this is why we tell ChatGPT to write on a fifth grade level. It's the same reason.
- [45:04]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've done that for the forever. Like, I have a custom GPT written out for technicians, invoice summaries. One of the instructions says, read, make sure that it's at 8th grade reading comprehension level and remove all industry jargon. And like, that's the. The main focus of that, that job summary GPT. And so, yeah, no I, I understand and I get it. Wholeheartedly agree with what you got. What you said there. Josh, what were you going to add earlier?
- [45:35]
Josh Crouch
I don't remember now, but I do have a question because we talked about like a couple of the, the blog posts and stuff on your website that have gotten a lot of great traction. So somebody's listening to this and they, they, they're like light bulbs are going off their, in their head. Just like Ter said, he had some light bulbs going off and I think his light bulb was making fun of me. But either way, for content ideas, where, where should they draw inspiration if they don't have a, you know, if they can't hire a journalist to like do the research or someone to do the research and they're, they're small and they, they really want to start implementing this early in their business or maybe when they're, they don't have as many team members and stuff, where should they go for ideas? Where should they find them? I mean, I obviously chat is an easy answer, but is there, is there other place like, so they know that there are like, what are other people asking? Like you said you were literally in a sales call and they asked the question, so you went back and wrote a blog post about it. Where should they draw inspiration from? What, what kind of ideas or word?
- [46:27]
Marcus Sheridan
The homeowner is the greatest keyword tool in the world, I think, always will be. If you're. Listen, I used to sit down with the homeowner and I'd get a question and before I even answer the question, I thought how I address this on my website. Have I created a video about this? Because there's a reason why they're asking because they didn't get the answer, otherwise they would know the answer. So it's my, my fiduciary to make sure they know these things. So like I was obsessed about that. It's still into this day. I'm like, look, why is this person asking this question? They should know this already. It's my job to make sure they know this. I think that's going to continue to be the key for I, I don't think people should look at AI and just stop producing content. I think we need to lean in harder. I think we need to tell better stories. I think we need to show better stories. Like I, even though you might not get any traffic from Google search in five years, I don't think you should stop with this idea of addressing your, your customers questions and you should go, I've got prompts in the book about this, but it's like all you got to do is say, hey, listen, this is my industry. I want you to use Marcus Sheridan's They Ask youk Answer methodology and his big five Cost Problems comparisons reviews. And I want you to come up with 15 of each of the big five for my industry that people are asking and searching online with a strong hook and a strong affinity towards SEO titles. And you're going to get like 75 glorious titles, slash searches, slash videos and articles that you should produce really quick.
- [48:00]
Tersh Blissett
Just, just a 30 second. What first thing that comes to mind here, AI written articles.
- [48:07]
Marcus Sheridan
Bad.
- [48:08]
Tersh Blissett
Good. Ugly thoughts.
- [48:10]
Marcus Sheridan
Well, the way most people are producing them with AI is bad. Right? And the thing is, I think I'm a huge fan of AI. I'm a huge fan of AI assistance and getting help with AI. But if every single one of your pieces of content doesn't have a personal story, a story from your company, if it's not written in first person or first company, you know, one of the. It's like I can tell if something's been written by AI Lack soul. I can tell oftentimes if it's been written by a person. Example of, you know, a person is, is if you say, you know, we were talking to a homeowner the other day and they were like, be honest. How long is my H Vac unit really going to last? Now this is such a great question. We hear it all the time here at Tertia's H Vac. And so we decided to produce this video today to answer that very question. We're going to give you the honest, frank truth on really, how long is that H Vac unit going to last? Now, everything I just said, that could have been written, that could have been video. Doesn't matter. That was human and it should sound. That was first Company. Here's what someone asked us. Here's the conversation we had. So that was a story plus that first person conversation. Very informal and so there should be cues that you're sending out. But if, if you could take your article and it could go on any other competitor's website, you have failed and you're probably going to get penalized for that.
- [49:38]
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Tersh Blissett
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- [49:58]
Josh Crouch
About search, we talk a lot about search traffic today, right? But even if, let's say, like you said, maybe, maybe you get no search traffic from anything on Google just because the, the world dies or the Internet dies or the way we know it. But what. And we tell a lot of contractors this. And something I wanted to add to what you said is during the sales process, the pre estimate, pre selling before you go out and actually give the estimate, the post when they're still making a decision, all of these content pieces that you are putting together through this, this philosophy become sales pieces for you to use about the top competitors, the reviews of the people that you've worked with, how much things should cost, why it should cost that way, what are the factors? Like these are all really great topics that you can also put into your pitch, pitch while you're in home. And you can also point to the fact that you have pricing on your website. And other people, you just create a little doubt, right? You have it on your website and they're going to say, well, I've searched other competitors and they don't have on their website.
- [50:58]
Marcus Sheridan
Well, why do you think that is?
- [51:00]
Josh Crouch
And now you created a seat of doubt. There's a lot of ways to use this content, to repurpose it in a way that's really meaningful to you. And then your people on the phone, when they're answering the phone, they can also share links, share videos to the person.
- [51:11]
Marcus Sheridan
Is it time for me to share a story about that? Because I can go over here. Absolutely. Do we have time for a story about that? So one of the things I discovered some years ago, I really leaned into content and they asked you answer was I was looking at two groups of people on my company's website. Both had filled out a form and said, I want to get a quote. And I was comparing the ones that bought versus the ones that did not buy. And what I found was the ones that had bought. I kept seeing a number which was if they had read 30 or more pages of the website, the closing rate was 80%. If they didn't hit that magic number 30 in terms of 30 pieces of content consumed that we had created, the closing rates were 25%, which was essentially industry average. So it's like a hockey stick growth in closing rates if they consumed enough of our content.
- [52:01]
Tersh Blissett
30 pieces of content's a lot though, isn't it?
- [52:03]
Josh Crouch
Are you talking about just website content? Are you starting talking about like videos and multiple.
- [52:08]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, I'm talking about. But it was on Our website. This is what I could see from our analytics. So I was like, oh, my gosh, got to get somebody to DO is read 30 pages, essentially, of our content, and they'll buy from us. 80% of the time, it's on like Donkey Kong. And so here's what happened. We implemented assignment selling, and this is how assignment selling works. That's the name I came up with. And like I said, we do a ton. A ton of sales training. I've got a sales training company. And the way assignment selling works is, let's say, tersh, you were the homeowner, right? So I would say to you. And let's say that you, you know, called me up and said, hey, Marcus, could you come out to my house and give me a quote for a pool this Friday? I would say to you, tersh, I'd love to come out to your house this Friday, but you're getting ready to spend a lot of money, and I know you don't want to make any mistakes. And so as to make sure you don't make any mistakes, here's what we're gonna do. Having a conversation on the phone right now, I'm gonna send you two things, Tersh, that you're gonna love. The first thing I'm gonna send you is a video that shows you the entire install process. This way, you. You're going to see exactly what it looks like in Friday. When I come out, you're not going to say, marcus, what does this process look like? You're already going to know. Now, real quick, that just saved me 30 minutes in the sales presentation. Now, the second thing I'm going to send you, Turish, is this buyer's guide. This buyer's guide is great because it's going to answer a lot of the questions that you have about pools that nobody's bothered to answer yet. Like, should I get a heater with my pool? What's the best type of heater? Should it be electric? Should it be gas? Should it be solar? Should I get salt? Or should I get chlorine? What's the best type of COVID Should it be mesh? Should it be. Should it be solid? Should it be automatic? These are things that you should know, and you should know that before I come out. So they're in this guide. Now, this guide's a little bit long. It's about 30 pages, wink, wink, wink. But I promise you, it'll be well worth your time. Tersh, will you take the time to review these things before our appointment on Friday? And so now, Tersh, says yeah, sure, no problem. And a lot of people will do that homework because that's why it's called assignment selling. Because they're getting ready to write a big check and they don't want to make a mistake in their backyard. And so doing that it exploded our closing rates. And that's available to any contractor today. And I've had many companies do that. I've had H Vac companies do that really, really successfully.
- [54:09]
Tersh Blissett
That's a good point. Now the FAQs that you put in there, I'm sure they're this pretty similar FAQs as what you would normally have on your website.
- [54:17]
Marcus Sheridan
That's why I'm hoping your listeners at a minimum in terms of taking action, get endless customers. It's on audio. You're going to get so many stinking ideas of things that you should be doing. That's like number one. Number two, if you're not getting price guide or a tool like it and putting an estimator on your homepage with that phrase get instant estimate, you're literally saying I do not want 3 to 500% more leads. Which to me blows my friggin mind. But there's people that will say there's no way I could do that. I just don't understand. And so those are two steps that anybody should and could take today.
- [54:52]
Tersh Blissett
Do you recommend putting the price got above the fold or is it above the fold?
- [54:57]
Marcus Sheridan
Okay, but it's just another, it's just a CTA that says get instant estimate. And so the problem is what almost everybody has is get pre quote which just annoys the crap and nobody wants. It's like the person walks into the bar, they sit next to you and you take that as a cue of hey, would you like to go home with me? You haven't said anything to them yet. So instead of that and literally when somebody comes to your site and you're like get quote, get quote, asking them to go home with you too soon. Now that's they're going to eventually be ready for that. But there's got to be something in between. Now remember the first question they had roughly what's this going to cost? So now you've got that, then you got another recommendation tool, an interactive tool. What's the best thing for my situation? Is it a, what's it called? A split unit? I forget what it's called.
- [55:48]
Tersh Blissett
Oh yeah, packaging.
- [55:50]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, it's like, like there, there might be like different like so recommendation tools are super powerful. That is another example of, of, of what you should have on your site. You know, it's going to get to the point where your. Your site, the biggest. Your website, the most important component is going to be that you got the conversion. There's going to be a lot less education that's happening on your site. And so now you got to say, I got to do the conversions. Well, they get the buyer's guide, you can have it on your site. But the buyer's guide, they can get a lot of that from ChatGPT right now. What are they not going to get from ChatGPT right now? An honest estimate. What are they not going to get necessarily, is a recommendation based on a bunch of parameters that you've created that helps them out and is specifically made for your product or service. Right. So these are things that you could be doing a scheduling tool, like I mentioned earlier, right? These are. This is powerful, man. And these crush conversions, baby. And that's what everybody's saying is, I got a lead problem this year. All right, let's fix it.
- [56:47]
Josh Crouch
So we talked a lot about what content to put on your site. So I have. I have a question on the flip side of this. Have you ever run into anything or do you. Anything that you would not put on your site? Like any sort of content areas that you wouldn't go into?
- [57:01]
Marcus Sheridan
You just give a price. Let's say you just put a price list. No education. That's a mistake. That's what you don't want to do. What you do is you teach it really, really well. Through that article, that's 1500 words discussing all the factors through that video, that's 10 minutes that's showing and explaining how, you know, cost and pricing works with H vac or remodeling or whatever it is. Then with the estimator, I get this. That really, really helps someone. So that's. That's something I occasionally will see somebody do, trying to think of another one, and I can't. Like, it doesn't. It's not coming to me right now, Josh.
- [57:39]
Josh Crouch
That's why I figured out, just to see if there's anything that was like, man, I've seen this happen, and you should definitely not do this.
- [57:45]
Marcus Sheridan
Well, you shouldn't take a dump on your competitors and say bad things and get sued. Right? So if you're going to talk about your competitors, I would suggest that you just use words from their own site. Right? Just don't say anything negative about them. I mean, I've talked a lot about competitors and, you know, I mean, I've had My threats, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to go way into it, but I would just, you know, I think you have to comfortably talk about them but don't take a dump on them.
- [58:12]
Josh Crouch
I talk a lot about this with community referrals. Meaning like if I'm an H VAC contractor, I team up with an electrician, a plumber, a roofer or a solar company. And so we all like refer business to each other. Like create your own BNI group essentially.
- [58:23]
Marcus Sheridan
Right.
- [58:24]
Josh Crouch
Without maybe some of the rules and just, just we all refer business and then get links to each other's sites and all that kind of stuff. Some sort of strategy around the same thing. But creating a best of article like or top five electricians in the city, top five roofers and have that type of.
- [58:40]
Marcus Sheridan
Okay, yes, yeah. So like to go one step and then you do it for like sister and then cousin related industries as well. Absolutely. I'm an H VAC company. To your point, I'm going to do best, you know, home remodelers in my town as well. I'm going to create an article, I'll probably create a video about them. I'm going to go so far as to like highlight their work and show images because listen, man, I want them referring me and I want them to say, golly day. I've never had a company like create a whole article about why they are impressed with us. I'm totally going to be recommending them to my customers.
- [59:17]
Josh Crouch
Imagine breaking the ice with an article you wrote about because you can go look at Google, you can see the reputation on Facebook groups and stuff. You can kind of see what people are saying. Imagine sending that to them as like the icebreaker to start a relationship. Be like, hey, I just, just want to let you know I included you in my article about the five best electricians in my market. I've seen the work you guys are doing. You guys are doing great. Just here's the article in case you want to reference it and just like creating that relationship with people in your market that you don't know or maybe you just haven't been introduced to.
- [59:44]
Marcus Sheridan
Listen guys, before we dump out here, I do want to say one thing and there's a chapter on disruption in the book. Just want to just. I can't stress how important it is to break the rules today. Let me give you an example of what I did back in the day and how change your trajectory as a business. When I got into fiberglass pools, what we were taught was you dug a hole in the Ground. You put a base of sand down. You put the pool shell on top of that base of sand. You backfilled around it with sand, and then you filled it with water. You poured a concrete patio and called that a pool. Everybody knows that you don't build a house on sand. Why are you building a pool on sand? Two thousand years ago, we learned you don't build your house on sand. So we saw that, and we're like, this is dumb. Pools were shifting. Sand settles. There's, like, lots of problems that come from that. So we produced a series of articles and videos that talked about the flaws with installing fiberglass pools on sand and backfilling with sand. At the time, 80% of all fiberglass pools were installed with sand. Today, 80% of fiberglass pools are built with crushed stone. Because that's what we taught. We changed the entire industry. And so that's disruption 101. And I would challenge you for listening to this to say, what are the things that you see in the industry that you're like, I don't like this. It shouldn't be this way. Could you talk about them? Could you preach about them, teach about them and say it's not right? Yes, you could do this. I was talking with Tommy Mello about this the other day. I said, what pisses you off about the industry, Tommy? He's like, what makes me crazy is when you go into these big subdivisions and they're trying to save money on the garage doors, and they don't include this, this, and that, and they have a crappy product. You know, it's like lipstick on a.
- [61:33]
Tersh Blissett
Pig, and it looks terrible. And it's like, yes, we're gonna lean into that.
- [61:39]
Marcus Sheridan
Let's talk about that, and let's change and let's create a standard in the industry. I said, does it. Is there a standard for these types of additional components? Are there, like, levels or standards of garage doors that everybody's agreeing to? He said, no, there doesn't exist. I said, well, guess what? There will be, because we're going to make it here with a one. That's what's possible for anybody that's listening to.
- [61:58]
Tersh Blissett
Okay, so question I have. Let's say I want to get a pool installed, and I'm dead set that I don't want it to be fiberglass. I want it to be poured in or whatever. What's it called? Whenever it's not fiberglass, concrete or vinyl, it's going to have a slide and, like, just. It's going to have all the all of the kits and caboodles. What's.
- [62:19]
Marcus Sheridan
What.
- [62:19]
Tersh Blissett
What's that going to cost me? On average right now in the U.S.
- [62:23]
Marcus Sheridan
On average, right now in the U.S. you're probably going to spend somewhere between 80 to $150,000.
- [62:31]
Tersh Blissett
What if it was double that much?
- [62:33]
Marcus Sheridan
Sure. It can be triple that much if you want enough stuff. Why do you ask?
- [62:37]
Tersh Blissett
Oh, I was just curious. I mean, I might know somebody who's getting a pool done.
- [62:40]
Marcus Sheridan
Are you going to spend $300,000 on a concrete pool where I live? What is your weirdness?
- [62:46]
Josh Crouch
Exactly what he's doing.
- [62:49]
Tersh Blissett
What I'm talking about.
- [62:51]
Josh Crouch
We're getting a pool built. But what tersh is not sharing is, like, in Arizona, like, pools can be like play pools, or they can be.
- [63:00]
Marcus Sheridan
They could be resorts. You chose the resort and you went with concrete because that's what everybody in Arizona gets.
- [63:06]
Tersh Blissett
What's the reason for that?
- [63:07]
Marcus Sheridan
You have a labor base that is extremely skilled with concrete, works really, really well. So you can get a concrete pool for. For much less than you could a fiberglass pool out there.
- [63:17]
Tersh Blissett
Really?
- [63:17]
Marcus Sheridan
Because fiberglass is more material based in the cost, whereas a concrete pool is more labor based in the cost. Okay. Right. And so because you have so much of this, like, blue collar labor that exists in Arizona, you can get. The pricing for concrete pools in Arizona are the lowest anywhere in the United States of America. So the fact that homeboy Josh is spending 300,000, he probably spends 600,000 if he was in, like, New York or something like that. I don't think this fellow. Good, y'.
- [63:49]
Josh Crouch
All.
- [63:49]
Marcus Sheridan
Let's go. Let's go. Sponsors.
- [63:52]
Tersh Blissett
I don't think it's quite 300, 000.
- [63:54]
Josh Crouch
It's not quite that much, but it is resort 275.
- [63:58]
Marcus Sheridan
We all get it. It's.
- [63:59]
Josh Crouch
It's Arizona. And honestly, if we're home and we're not traveling, I want to. I want to enjoy it.
- [64:04]
Marcus Sheridan
You don't have to excuse yourself. You've. You've worked for this big dog. All right, y', all.
- [64:08]
Josh Crouch
I knew exactly. You know, it's funny.
- [64:09]
Marcus Sheridan
As soon as turf before anybody listened to you, man, you deserve this, man. 150 clients.
- [64:16]
Josh Crouch
Yeah, Marcus, as soon as Ter started asking the question, I'm like, I know exactly where he's going with this because I shared information with him like, three weeks ago.
- [64:25]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah. Can't even help himself. Oh, he's like a kid. A fat kid in a candy shop. He's got to go. Crap.
- [64:32]
Tersh Blissett
I am literally the fat kid in the Candy shop. Like, Josh and I go to candy shops. And Josh, like, they have dark chocolate. And I'm like, I don't care. Let's get it all.
- [64:41]
Marcus Sheridan
Hey, I got to ask you all, you got this event coming up. When is your live event? Marcus?
- [64:46]
Josh Crouch
This is a hilarious story. I pet Slack up. And Carol, Carol commented from LinkedIn, she's our podcast manager. She literally was blowing us up in Slack during this episode to ask you that very question. I said, carol, I'm not gonna ask him live. I will ask him after.
- [65:00]
Marcus Sheridan
Well, I wanted to put you on the spot live, because you are putting.
- [65:04]
Josh Crouch
Us on the spot live.
- [65:05]
Marcus Sheridan
Pull a turch on on you all. Anyway, I don't want to bore your listeners to death. We can discuss it. No, absolutely. Hopefully I'll see them in October.
- [65:12]
Tersh Blissett
Another thing that's really cool is the event is going to be at the Savannah Bananas as well. So Jesse Cole and Jesse gonna be.
- [65:22]
Marcus Sheridan
There because he's a friend of mine.
- [65:24]
Tersh Blissett
Jesse is a friend of mine as well. I don't. I haven't confirmed that he'll actually be there.
- [65:28]
Josh Crouch
If he's not, I think Jared's gonna be right.
- [65:30]
Tersh Blissett
Jared will definitely be there. Yeah.
- [65:32]
Marcus Sheridan
That's awesome. That's very exciting.
- [65:34]
Josh Crouch
We'll chat about that.
- [65:35]
Tersh Blissett
Marcus, we appreciate you hanging out with us.
- [65:37]
Josh Crouch
Yeah, this is great.
- [65:38]
Marcus Sheridan
And that was fun, guys. You're building something special here. And I love.
- [65:41]
Josh Crouch
Real quick, do you want to put the name of the book again just so just in case people missed and didn't realize it was a book you're talking about?
- [65:47]
Marcus Sheridan
Yes. It's Endless Customers and you can find it on Amazon. Can I finish with a story? Can we close with a proper story?
- [65:53]
Tersh Blissett
100%.
- [65:54]
Josh Crouch
When.
- [65:54]
Marcus Sheridan
And this is for all the listeners. And you just listen to us for an hour, five minutes. That makes you special. And I'm serious when I say this. When I got into the pool industry, I'd been in the game for about 10 years, and the industry was doing really well. Maybe like five years. Excuse me. And the industry was doing well. It's probably circa 2005, 2006, this before the first crash. And I went to the owner of the manufacturer that we were selling at the time, and I said, you know what? Instead of going on a cruise this year, instead of, like, you know, everybody going and getting drunk and stuff like that, why don't we have, like, an educational event or conference where everybody gets better and they improve their companies? And he says to me, marcus, don't. You know, pool guys don't Care about education. I thought, what are you talking about, man? There is a movement that's happening within the trades that's really, really special. This podcast is a microchasm of this macro movement, which is we're having so many people enter the trades now because they say, you know what, there's actually security there.
- [67:04]
Tersh Blissett
It's recession proof.
- [67:05]
Marcus Sheridan
They're not going to take my job. AI is not going to take my job there in the trades. And they see that people in the trades are oftentimes very happy. And now there's all these educational support groups, masterminds, and I'm, you know, I've been on a lot of them. There's something special happening. My son is 21 years old. Just the other day, he's a full time electrician. The other day he says to me, dad, I've got a hundred thousand dollars in the bank. He's 21, he has his own crew, 100,000 in the bank.
- [67:37]
Tersh Blissett
That's what I'm talking about.
- [67:38]
Marcus Sheridan
Look at that. He started at 16.
- [67:41]
Josh Crouch
I'm gonna send this, this little clip to our kid.
- [67:43]
Marcus Sheridan
Our.
- [67:43]
Josh Crouch
We both have teenage boys and they both are thinking about the trades. I'm like, here you go. Now you know what you need to do.
- [67:48]
Marcus Sheridan
Proud to be in the trades. You know, final thing I'm going to say. When I got into river pools, I went to a family event and this lady family member comes up to me and says, marcus, I hear you're going to be a pool guy. And I said, yeah. She said, what a waste. And then I thought to myself, wow. Oh, you did not. And I have had people all over the world come up to me that I don't know. They say you're the pool guy because they've read the story. Yes. So be proud of the fact that you're in the trades. If you're listening to this, I mean, put your chest freaking high and own it, because it's a glorious time to be in this game.
- [68:28]
Josh Crouch
That's a great way to end, Marcus. We really appreciate, man, this was, this was a really fun conversation.
- [68:34]
Tersh Blissett
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [68:35]
Marcus Sheridan
Thank you, guys.
- [68:35]
Tersh Blissett
We'll see you, buddy.
- [68:47]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.