June 3, 2025 • 51 mins
Want more leads in the trades? Marcus Sheridan joins host Andrew Brown to talk self-service tools, pricing estimators, and trusted brand building strategies.
Host Andrew Brown sits down with marketing expert, speaker, and former pool contractor Marcus Sheridan to break down what it really takes to build a trusted brand in the skilled trades today.
They cover everything from using AI in the trades industry to designing self-service sales tools that boost conversions. If you’re in carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or any other blue collar business, this episode is a roadmap to standing out—and staying relevant—in a rapidly changing world.
Whether you're a new contractor or a seasoned tradesperson looking to grow your brand, you’ll walk away with clear, tactical advice you can use right now.
IN THIS EPISODE:
● (02:10) – “Just a Pool Guy”: Why the trades get overlooked—and how Marcus flipped the script.
● (11:45) – AI in the Trades: Why blue collar work isn’t going anywhere—and how AI helps, not hurts.
● (23:30) – Pricing Estimator Tools: Why every contractor website needs one (and how it converts).
● (35:55) – The 4 Pillars of Brand Trust: Say, show, sell, and be human.
● (43:40) – Self-Service Sales Tools: How to let customers educate themselves (and love you for it).
● (51:20) – Building a Personal Brand: Why people follow you before they follow your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
● A trusted brand in the trades starts with saying what others won’t—and showing how you do it.
● Self-service sales tools increase lead volume and improve customer experience.
● AI in the trades industry isn’t replacing you—it’s giving you time back.
● A simple pricing estimator for contractors can triple your conversions with the same traffic.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Marcus Sheridan is the author of They Ask, You Answer and The Visual Sale, and a partner at Impact, a marketing and sales consultancy. He’s also the co-founder of River Pools, once a small local pool company that became the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world. A longtime advocate for trusted brand building, Marcus now helps contractors and tradespeople scale their companies using video, content marketing, and disruptive strategies rooted in transparency.
KEYWORDS:
Trusted Brand Building, Self-Service Sales Tools, Pricing Estimator for Contractors, AI in Trades Industry, Blue Collar Business Marketing
Skilled Trades, Trades Industry, Marcus Sheridan, Andrew Brown, Impact, Toolfetch, Carpentry, HVAC, Electricians, Plumbers, Millwrights, Construction, Tradespeople, Craftsmanship, Problem-solving, Creativity, Contractors, Trades Careers, Industry Experts, Skilled Trades Advisory Council, Advocacy
RESOURCES:
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcussheridan/
Website: https://marcussheridan.com/
SUPPORT THE SHOW:
If you’re getting value from these episodes and want to help keep the mics on, consider tipping the show here → https://andrewbrowntrades.kit.com/products/toolbox
Every dollar helps us keep bringing unfiltered insights from the trades, straight to your ears.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When I opened my pool company with my two business partners, I was
right out of college and I was at a family event and
somebody said to me, she said, marcus, I heard you're gonna be a pool guy.
I said, yeah. She said, what a waste.
I was so flabbergasted, I didn't even know what to say.
And of course, there's been a few times over the years where I've had Toby
(00:22):
Keith ringing in my ears. How do you like me now? Because I will
travel around the world and people will come up to me like, yeah, that pool
guy that wrote they Ask youk Answer, right? Yeah, that's me.
Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost Star of the Skilled Trades
Podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on
(00:43):
careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable,
rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the
economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
would cease to exist.
Today we have a special guest, Marcus Sheridan, owner of Impact.
(01:06):
Welcome, Marcus, to the show, Andrew. Great to be
back with you, buddy. It is awesome to have you here, Marcus.
We started our business named tool fetch
in 2001. It's an online tool and supply company
and it was built to support the men and women in the trades. We carry
over 2 million products from 650 different vendors.
(01:30):
Back then, in 2001, we even worked remotely. Like no one
knew what remote meant. Like, you work from home. I'm like, yeah, we work
from home. We built our first website, my brother and I.
I'm dating myself in Dreamweaver. That's good dating right there.
Yeah. Back in the day, like, we like bootstrapped the entire company.
We had a Google search. I remember Google search was a
(01:52):
blue box. It run off this one U server. And when I got this
box, I was like, wow, I'm something from Google. I mean, I'm
predating myself. SEO Search engine optimization was
easier back then. Right. Email was high conversion.
Right. There wasn't a lot of competition. This was even before really
Amazon got into everything. Today the game has
(02:13):
changed, right? The buyer experience has changed. People are
smarter with AI, Social media, this personal brands, they
say Google is for old people. How do you stand
out today? If you're selling a product or service. Online,
you have to be willing to be different
because different is better than better, as my friend Sally
(02:36):
Hogg said, likes to say. I didn't always understand that, but it's
incredibly true. Because these days we're
inundated with so much information. It's the ones that
are going about things a little bit differently, those are the ones that are standing
out, really. My newest book, Endless Customers, is just
this. It's really a call to disruption, a call
(02:59):
to be willing to think differently, to do differently.
And if you're going to be successful today,
tomorrow, five years, ten years from now, what it comes down to is
you can't build your business on platforms. So you can't be Google
Reliant, you can't be YouTube reliant, you can't be TikTok
reliant. And all those things matter, by the way, can't just be AI
(03:21):
Reliant. What you have to have is
a known and trusted brand. Brand is
everything. And that will continue to be the case. And that
brand must be known and trusted. The thing though, Andrew,
that's changed. It's gotta be known by three entities. For about
30 years it was two entities, now it's three entities. So
(03:44):
your brand needs to be known and trusted by customers, buyers.
Pretty obvious. Number two, search engines like Google.
But number three, and this is the one that's the big curveball,
AI. AI needs to know
who you are. And AI, if you want to be successful,
needs to be recommending you. Because if not, you could
(04:07):
be in serious trouble in the future. When AI
ChatGPT came out 2022, most of us were using
it as a creation tool. Andrew, right? It's like, hey, it makes
funny poems, right? It's like, okay, fine, but suddenly
now how are we using it? We've gone beyond
creation. Now we're using it for recommendation.
(04:29):
Now we're going there and we're saying, okay, you know, who are
the best? You know, window door companies in Richmond, Virginia. That's what
we're doing today. And it's giving answers, it's
not giving sponsored searches. You know, it's really, really interesting.
Google made an entire business off of giving
buyers what they wanted and giving it to them quickly. And it was
(04:51):
very, very successful. And the one company
that is now slower to give buyers what they want quickly
is actually Google. Because how has Google
changed? You know, for a long time it was, I want to be ranked number
one in Google. Okay, fine, yeah, it got most of the
visitors, but that's not true today. And the reason for that, of course, is
(05:14):
if you ranked number one in Google, what do you see? First you're going to
see four or five sponsored ads that look like regular
search results, which is pretty tricky and nefarious by Google, by the
way. And then you've got probably some AI summary, that takes up a bunch
of room. And then you've got related questions that takes up a bunch of room.
You might have a few videos and you finally got the first
(05:36):
search result. Being number one is fine.
It oftentimes means nothing. This is why over 50% of all Google searches
don't even end in a click, because they already got what they wanted. So at
the same time, because of this, because of this trend, what's happening is
businesses are saying, I'm hearing this a lot. I'm hearing folks say to me, I
don't get it. My traffic is struggling on my website.
(05:59):
My Google Ads, they're not working like they used to work. What do we
do? Well, you know, we're seeing
definitively that it's getting harder and harder to use Google
Ads. And I just want to tell everybody, you can't build your house on
Google alone. Obviously we've used it prolifically for 20 plus
years, but that's not going to be the case for 20 plus more, not at
(06:20):
least as we know it. And if you have a choice between getting an immediate
answer where you don't have to click on any blue links to get it and
you get exactly what you want by going with directly with AI,
or you can go through a slower process, what are you going to choose? I
don't necessarily go to Google for a lot of the things I want to search
for. I am fully interactive with chat, GPT,
(06:42):
deep research. You know, we're testing out operator
and we are telling it as an AI agent to do data entry
work where somebody right now puts in orders with
vendors. Right? That can be replaced by
operator if you give it a set of instructions. If you want to go out
and tell it to research trips, the
(07:05):
lowest airfare and give me the best place, the hottest
spot to go to, like it can do that type of stuff. It's so in
the beginning stages. But I can see these AI agents
really fully disrupting everything across the
board, but making it easier for the business owner because it's expensive
to obviously you want employees, but it could be replaced, some of
(07:26):
this stuff with technology, whether it's chat online, the game
has changed. Yeah, it really has. And those that are not in the
sandbox, they're going to be in big trouble. Sometimes Andrew, people say to me,
yeah, but what if AI is the Terminator and it just ruins us and kills
us all? I'm like, okay, let's assume that does kill us all. Well,
if that's the case and it's going to kill us all in 25 years. I
(07:47):
want to have a very successful business between now and the time that it kills
us all. I have learned over the course of, you
know, owning my first company in 2001 and, you know, now
and I have got ownership in multiple companies, I keep seeing the same
patterns over and over again. And that is when you fight against the
market, you lose. When you give the market what they want
(08:09):
and you're willing to do that more than any of your competitors, you win.
I'm not talking about, like, they want a better price. I'm talking about if you
match the experience that they would like to have,
then you can do pretty exceptional things. In my new
book, Endless Customers, I talk about the four pillars of a
known and trusted brand. These four pillars are rooted
(08:32):
in giving buyers what they want and being very, very different
than everybody else. So the first pillar of a known and trusted brand
is that you're willing to say online what other companies aren't willing to say.
All right, we'll come back to this, I'm sure. Number two pillar of a known,
entrusted brand is you need to be willing to show with video
what others in your space aren't willing to show.
(08:55):
Number three, you need to be willing to sell in a way that others aren't
willing to sell. Everybody loves to say they've got some unique sales process,
man, when it comes to, like home improvement, home services, the trades, et
cetera, no, most do not have any unique sales
process. And then finally, number four, you got to be more human
than others in your space are willing to be. So those are the four
(09:17):
fundamental pillars of a known and trusted brand. And if I
ask most people, can you honestly say that we're saying
showing, selling and being more human online
than the majority of our competitors? If they're being honest and self aware,
the answer is almost always the same, Andrew. It's no. No, we're not. And
that's not going to carry you long term. And that's not going to build an
(09:40):
extraordinary brand. Do you think this lays like
and going back to even a service company? Do you think
that having a personal brand today, being different
on social media, kind of gets your business to the stratosphere?
If you have your own personal brand, can it lay over onto your company
brand? It really? That's what that fourth pillar, be more human, is all about.
(10:03):
People are much more attracted to personal brands than they are to
business brands. You know, because I've been able to build a brand,
I'm able to consistently start companies
and get just Immediate, just traction with these
businesses because people know me and
I've built a brand that is this guy thinks a little bit
(10:25):
differently. He's very, very trustworthy. If he says it, he believes
it. Right. And so, you know, that's essential in being this,
as Daniel Priestley would say, a key person of influence. Right. It's like
that goes a long ways. You've talked to anybody. 99%
of people listening to this right now know who the Kardashians are. But
if I said to those same people, what are the names of their companies? Most
(10:48):
wouldn't be able to say the names of their companies. I don't know the names
of their companies, but I know their names. That's personal brand,
right? Who has more followers? Elon Musk or Tesla? Right. Elon
Musk has way more followers. You could actually go down a list of, you know,
some of these folks that have, you know, a bigger following than the brand
itself. Does people want to interact with brands. Is this actually going to just continue
(11:10):
to grow? The old adage we buy from those we know like and
trust is as true today as it's ever been and I think
will be even more true in the future. Let's just say you sell a
commodity, just a commodity. There's 20 other
companies selling the same thing. Even if you're selling the product in its
map price, meaning we all sell it at the same price. So if
(11:31):
somebody is looking on Google or is doing some sort of
chat GPT search, I know you gave me the four pillars, but like, what
should somebody do starting today to
differentiate themselves if it's you're the same price as
everybody else. Let's use my own business for a quick second tool fetch.
Right? So we carry over 2 million products, but a lot of the products are
(11:53):
commodity based. You can buy it at us, you can buy it maybe at Home
Depot, you can buy it at Amazon. Right? So let's say we're,
let's just say a drill. So everybody knows what a drill is, right? It's a
Milwaukee drill. It has a part number and you have to sell it, let's say
at $100 now you're in line with 15, 20
other companies. How does somebody really
(12:14):
differentiate yourself if they're going down the list? They don't really know most
of the companies. They know Amazon, they, they know Home Depot, but they don't know
this tool fetch company. What would you do in that case? Let's look at a
few different examples. And it's not the same industry, but this is one of
the coolest I've ever seen of a commodity
product that became world renowned.
(12:36):
And that's the folks at Liquid Death. So
Liquid Death, for anybody that's listening to this, you've probably seen them in your
local convenience store. They look like some type
of energy drink or some type of alcoholic beverage. Of
course, what it is, it's water, right? And so the thing
inside is literally no different than that
(12:58):
Dasani. It looks and feels the energy
around it is so different because, A, they put it in a can, B, they
make it look like an energy drink. And so it's like, been disallowed
in certain countries in Europe and certain convenience stores
because people believe, like, oh, that's a alcoholic beverage. It's not an alcoholic
beverage. So their commitment early on with Liquid Death was, we are
(13:21):
not going to build a brand that's anything like we've seen in
the water space, like, in the consumable water space.
And if you look at almost all the waters, they pretty much all look and
feel the same. Like Deer park and Dasani, like, fundamentally, like,
certainly there's people listening this right now saying, oh, I like this or that one.
Yeah. But, like, are they marketed any different? The answer is no. They're in
(13:42):
the same bottle. They've got the same, like, blue labels. And like, for the most
part, they look the same. This is why Sally Hogshead says
different is better than better. It's just like, there's so much to that.
What's really crazy about the folks at Liquid Death is their media
department. Their brand department is five people. And
so they became the second most followed beverage on social
(14:04):
media, bigger than Coca Cola. Why? Because
they're so original of thought. Right. Which is really, really
wild. Now, what could a company that sells,
like, lots of skus, for example, how could they stand
out? Let me give an example. So if I went to this big behemoth
store that was selling lots of products, I would really lean into
(14:26):
self service. And self service stems from the third
pillar. That third pillar is sell in ways that others
aren't willing to sell. And it stems from this fact that buyers
today want to be more informed than they've ever
been, and they want to have more control than they've ever had.
And so 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free
(14:48):
sales experience from Gartner. So what does that mean? Well, it doesn't
mean that we hate salespeople. It just means that we don't want to talk to
them until we're good and ready. And so how you can
take advantage of this trend instead of complaining about it, because that's what a lot
of folks will do is complain, which really, that helps a whole lot, is
you can give more control. And this is through interactive
(15:09):
experiences, let's say, on your website, on your e commerce platform.
Andrew, Whatever. The thing is that allows the person to have
more control and to do things that previously they would have had to have done
with a salesperson by talking to a human, but now they can do it
by just simply interacting with some type of, you know, online
tool, app experience. So for example, on my
(15:29):
swimming pool website, riverpoolsenspas.com I've got a tool
that allows you to compare fiberglass versus concrete versus
vinyl liner and ground pools. Now, I know that when we have a sales
appointment, I want someone to have gotten past the point of trying to
decide what type of pool they want. Because if they're still trying to figure that
out, I'm probably not going to make a sale. So we want to make sure
(15:50):
that our sales team, that we've gotten through that. So we got this
recommendation tool on the site. And this recommendation tool
is so brutally honest that every single day after someone
answers a series of questions based on their needs, it's very unbiased.
It gives them. Based on what you just said, we're going to recommend to you
that you choose a vinyl liner and grapple or that you choose a concrete pool,
(16:12):
not a fiberglass pool. Every day I'm recommending to multiple
people, don't buy our stuff, which is crazy. That's how you become a known
and trusted brand. You do it differently than others. But let's say
someone is trying to debate, like, what's the best type of drill for me? You
know, you might say most people know that, but that's
making false assumptions. And so if you have a tool that
(16:34):
allows someone to just answer a few questions and then
it gives a recommendation of which tool they should
choose, now all of a sudden it's like,
oh, okay, so you're going to recommend the, you know, x, y, z, 1000.
Because I said I need this, that I'm going to be doing this. I'm going
to be focused on this. That's powerful. That's what
(16:55):
sets people apart. And this is not something that you're going to typically see
with a lot of these e comm shops or a lot of these just any
company in general. You know, how many times have you, you
and your business, if you're listening to this how many times have you been asked,
well, if you're me, which would you choose? Oh, I'm trying to decide between,
you know, concrete versus pavers versus stamped versus
(17:16):
stone. Like which one should I choose? Okay, well, how come you don't have a
tool that allows them to decide that? And they feel like at that point it
was their decision because they were the ones that
went on the journey, they answered their questions. So self service is a
mega trend. There's five main types of self service. This is one way
that you could set yourself apart. So an interactive tool, it's
(17:38):
more hands off. So an example would be someone's calling up and is
looking for a radiant heater, right? So a lot of people
sort of know what a radiant tube heater is, but they don't know the size,
the square footage, the btu. Like, do I need propane?
Do I need natural? Like there's questions, right? So if I'm speaking to
somebody, I have to have a 20 minute conversation with the person, right? That's 20
(18:01):
minutes of my time. Wasted time. Yeah, to some degree. Sometimes
it turns into a sale, but sometimes it's just, okay, send me a. Quote or
yeah, it's just inefficient. Fundamentally it's inefficient because they
should ideally have gotten the answer from you already
through an interactive experience. Right. So if they had an
interactive tool of some sort, which basically is, I'm asking the
(18:22):
questions, they got me on the phone, right? So I'm asking those questions. If you
put that into an interactive tool, it separates us a little bit
different than the next company. There's four fundamental tools. My swing
pool website has three are live one's coming out. Each represents a
period of where they are in the buyer's journey. The first one that's not live
right now, but I'm working on it because it's a void in the buyer's journey
(18:44):
stages is, am I even going to use a pool? Like,
is this a good investment for me? So it's essentially an assessment
tool that assesses your lifestyle and then based on you, your
lifestyle, your wants, desires, goals, it gives you an honest
score as to whether or not a swimming pool is right for
you. Very creative. That's a fundamental question that people have
(19:07):
now. Once they've decided on a pool and they've gotten through that, the next
stage is, well, what type of pool do I want? We have that tool on
the site that gives those recommendations. Already explained that one. Once they know they want
a fiberglass pool. Currently we have A tool on their site that asks a
series of questions, and then it gives a recommendation for a particular shape and
size. We all offer no different than if a salesperson was sitting with them in
(19:29):
the home. Homeowner said, I'm not sure what shape I want. What do you think
I should get based on what you see out there in my yard? Salesperson's gonna
ask serious questions, and then they're gonna give a recommendation.
Well, once again, can we replicate that online, giving the buyer more control, giving
the higher sense of satisfaction and more investment in us? Yes, we can. And so
we've got a tool on our site that gives a recommendation for a pool shape
(19:50):
and size. Very powerful. People fill that out all the time. And
then the final is, well, once they know the shape and size, we've
got to build and price your pool tool on our site.
So now they can get an actual estimate. Now, we do this as a
manufacturer of fiberglass pools. Think about that. So we're not actually
installing the pool while we do in Virginia. For my company, our website
(20:12):
is the manufacturer site. And so it doesn't install the pool,
it sells the shell to the dealers like myself all over the country. For those
that don't know, I started the company and eventually sold the manufacturing side.
So what's wild about this is it just gives a range.
But because it gives a range, Andrew, that's more than most companies are willing to
give. No other companies are willing to give that range. It's incredibly,
(20:34):
incredibly powerful. And this is something that I've tested a ton
with trades with home services. And
I started a software company last year, which
is called Price Guide AI. And Price Guide allows
anybody with any type of business, but especially a service business,
trades, home improvement, anything like that, to quickly and
(20:56):
easily create a pricing estimator that they can put on
their website in the second they put it on there and show it
prominently on their homepage. And answer that fundamental question
that buyers have when they know they need something, which is roughly
how much is this going to cost? That's the number one question in the
world that anybody has when they know they have a need, a problem, an issue.
(21:18):
I need new windows and doors. I need a swimming pool. Doesn't matter. It's like,
well, first I want to know, am I in the game or not? Can I
even afford this? Is this even possible? That comes down to that question.
And so when you put this estimator on your site and the AI, by the
way, helps you build it, and you can do this in less than 30 minutes
we see consistently. And I've got data from companies now all over the world because
(21:38):
we have so many customers that we've been able to build up in a short
period of time. Is you see on average a 300% increase
in leads. So 300% increase, all
because exact same amount of traffic that you had before to your site.
But now you're answering the most fundamental question that people
have when they're looking to make a serious acquisition, which is roughly
(21:59):
how much is this going to cost? I had this conversation yesterday with
a guy who owns a roofing company and I said to him, do you
offer pricing like most companies? You have to call,
someone will get back to you. I just want to know the price. So I
completely agree with you. But he didn't do that. Basically it's take the information,
then go down to the customer's home and then take a
(22:21):
look at the roof and then get an estimate. Yeah, he's like everybody
else. If he had any concept of how many
leads he was losing because he's not willing
to address that first conversation of roughly what is this going
to cost? It would make him sick to his stomach. I mean, he would
be sick for weeks if he could count how much
(22:43):
revenue he's lost. Because he's ignoring a fundamental
question that buyers have. If anybody's listening to this right now
and has researched how much something costs online and you can't find
it, immediately, you get pissed. You don't keep looking on that
website. You don't call the company. You keep searching until you find what you're
looking for. That's how you and I shop. All of us listening to this right
(23:06):
now. Your customers are no different. The problem is you've got a lot of companies
like the fellow you're talking to yesterday that wants to control the buyer. And the
last thing buyers want is to be controlled. And so if you can find
a way to make it a win win, what's the win win? You give them
a general estimate, not a quote, and a general estimate with
a pricing tool like price guide, and they get what they wanted,
(23:28):
which is a cents for what it's going to cost. You get what you wanted,
which is a lead in your database. Now everybody wins.
And it's glorious how anybody would not do that today.
I can make a promise to you right now, Andrew, and that is this.
When it comes to home services and home improvement, every home
services contractor in the United States, within
(23:50):
five years, 90% of all these contractors are going to have a
pricing estimator. On their website, 90% in five years.
What's sad is a bunch of the people listening to this right now don't believe
me, and are gonna wait until their competitor in their local market
does it, then they're gonna freak out, and then they're gonna
scramble, and then they're gonna add it. And they lost potentially
(24:13):
hundreds and hundreds of qualified leads simply because
they were living in the Stone Ages. Doesn't make any sense.
And I can back this up, too. I remember sitting. I was at a Grant
Cardone show, like, six years ago, and I
remember I was in the front row watching him. People don't know he's a social
media guy and he's in real estate, but he was making
(24:34):
phone calls to service companies, like roofing companies, you know,
contractors. We were hearing the call live. Like, all he wanted was a
price, and they couldn't quote him a price at all. And literally he's like, this
is what happens every single day. All these leads are coming in, but
they're going nowhere because no one can give you the pricing or give you a
roundabout of price. Someone has to call you back, I need this, I need that.
(24:55):
And this is exactly what happens. Especially, like you said, if 75%
don't want to deal with a salesperson, and I agree with that.
Nobody wants to be bothered. They want to do their own research, and when they're
ready, they're ready. And if you have all that information available for
somebody, videos, you know, when it comes to what you were saying, how to
build those estimators, if you don't have that on your website,
(25:17):
you're going to lose that opportunity. So I completely, a hundred percent agree with you
on that. Again, it's like sitting at the beach. You had your
lounge chair set up during low tide. You see the tide coming in and
you're like, I'm not moving. Like, no, no, you're going to
move. You always move. You do not beat the tide.
The tide does what the tide does, whether or not you or I have
(25:39):
strong opinions about it. And so you can have a strong opinion about what
I'm saying right now. But the truth is, if I said to you,
man to man, woman to woman, would you prefer it if someone
gave you some type of estimate tool or a
recommendation tool or an assessment tool on their website
before you were forced to call them to get the same information, would
(26:02):
you prefer that? Your answer is going to be, well, yes,
don't add a but afterwards. Don't say but my situation. No,
no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Your situation isn't special, isn't
unique. I didn't always understand this as a business owner and it probably cost
me millions, Andrew. The second I realized that my
opinions don't mean squat in the market, that what matters is the
(26:24):
market and where the market's going. And it's my job to meet the market where
the market is. That's what we signed up for as a business owner. You
know, that's why the title of my first book was called they ask, you answer.
Because when they're asking for it, and not just the questions, it's like how they
want to learn, how they want to behave, where they want to do their research.
That's the key. That's what they want. And so, yeah, there's five types
(26:45):
of self assessment tools. I talk a lot about it in Endless Customers.
That section alone of the book could make you millions of dollars if
you follow it. I want to roll back for a quick moment. When you kind
of first started your river pools and spa company
back in the day, you know, every company, and this is really for business
owners too, every company gets to a point where you hit a
(27:07):
ceiling, you can't move forward, you can't grow. And there was is like
an aha moment. You have to get real with things that you keep doing over
and over again. As a business owner, you're getting the same results, right?
When did you have that aha moment? Because you wrote that book, they ask, you
answer. Were you at that point in your business where, you
know, we can't grow or we've hit a ceiling and we need to think
(27:30):
differently, Were you having that aha moment back then? I had a financial
gun to my head in 2009. I thought we were going to lose the business
because of the crash. And up to that point, we had done marketing
like everybody else. Shotgun approach. Back in those days,
there was, you know, devil himself yellow pages
for those that can recall those days. Then you had TV and
(27:52):
radio and print and direct mail and just trying all of
it, losing our tails. And that's when I said,
man, we have got to evolve. And I started to learn about the
changing buyer. And I said, you know, I keep going online for information.
That's where I'm going to learn stuff. Why can't we become the Wikipedia
pools? So, you know, I sat there and brainstormed every question I'd
(28:16):
ever received as a pool guy. And I mean, there was hundreds
of questions. And then one by one, we addressed them on our website, through text,
through video over the next couple years. And that's how we became the most traffic
swimming pool website in the world. By 2012, we were the most traffic swimming pool
website in the world. And we were just rocking by that point.
And that's why, you know, we started manufacturing our own pools because
(28:37):
we had so much trust built in the market. We were getting leads from all
over the country, but yet we were only installing pools in Virginia. And
so I said, let's start manufacturing. And the manufacturing, like
fricking fire took off. Everybody wanted a river pool
because we had the most trust in the marketplace. I mean, that's why it's a
tale as old as time. The difference between today and 2009
(29:00):
is, you know, I really, for the most part, just focus on
producing content on my website and did some
YouTube and that was enough for us to become numero uno
in our industry. I couldn't do that today and get the same results.
I'd have to be better. I'd have to be smarter. Yes, you
still want to produce that content. You still want to address those things
(29:24):
that others in your space aren't talking about on your website. But you got
to use all the platforms, you got to use the social medias.
You got to go on TikTok, even though you're like, I don't like TikTok and
I don't like China. Okay, that's fine. But you still need to be on
TikTok. You ain't got to use it personally, but your business needs to be there
because your buyers are starting to go there. You know, you gotta be on
(29:45):
YouTube. You know, there's an argument to be made that YouTube might be more important
than your website in, you know, six, seven years. I don't know if that's gonna
happen. There's a case for that. And so video
is not going anywhere but up. And so you better, you better.
If you're really serious about growing a brand that's trusted, you better be all in
on video and you better start thinking like a media company, which means you're
(30:07):
finding every opportunity to show everything you do. And what's cool about the
trades is the trades are so visual.
And anybody now that has any type of, you know,
blue collar business in the trades should be
saying, I need to be producing a video every single day
on every single job site of everything we're doing. And I need
(30:30):
to be showing it. I need to be showing it on Facebook. I'll show it
on the gram. I'm gonna show it on the TikTok I'm gonna show it on
YouTube because we're a media company and we're building something special
and I'm not gonna have some just small time shop that as soon as I
get tired I just gotta let the business go because I've not built anything.
You wanna build something, a legacy that's gonna
(30:51):
outlive you, that's a brand that other people are gonna
wanna buy, that's what you want. That's what Tommy Mello did, right?
This is what you want to do, at least most of us. Not
everybody necessarily, you know, wants to have such financial peace and
prosperity. But if that's what you want, you're going to have to do much better
with your marketing. And it starts with ability to build an extraordinary brand. They
(31:13):
do say you're a marketing company first. I remember sitting down and speaking to a
well known plumber. His name is Roger Wakefield. I know Roger.
He actually embraced. They ask, you answer. He heard me speak
something like 10 years ago. He wasn't doing video at the time and he
said this is the way that was his catalyst was seeing
me at Social Media Marketing World all those years ago. And he and I are
(31:35):
still friends. I was on his podcast about a year and a half ago and
I spent time with him and you know, I know his story. He's actually going
to be on my podcast in a handful of weeks as well. But he always
said that I just wanted to make my phone ring, right? He used a
marketing agency, spent all this money, it was a waste of time. And then he
sat in, you know, one of these conferences and Somebody said that
(31:56):
YouTube is the second largest search engine. He's like, wait, what? All right, that
was me. That was the conference he was at. That was me. Oh, that you.
It's a full circle. There you go. Really had a life changing event which
you obviously were the impetus to this. And he went
all in. And it's not like he went half ass. He went all in. And
I was down in his studio. Like he's got a, a nice podcast set up.
(32:17):
I was on his podcast and I was on his live. He took something that
he was obviously in the trades and he had a plumbing company but he took
it and just expanded it, you know, 20x
across the board. So it is possible. I've now built my
TikTok following to about 22,000. I was about 800 about five
months ago. Good engagement, a lot of trades people there
(32:39):
and obviously it was going to be shut down. I was like, shit, I've made
All this strides and momentum and now it's gone. So you're on rented land.
Like it is worrisome that things can be shut down that you have a massive
following on. So you can't put your all your eggs in one basket.
Otherwise overnight you can be shut down. But I think doubling
down and that's what I'm doing is, you know, going back to YouTube and
(33:01):
creating more long format type content like this podcast and
doing more informational type videos about the trades and
stuff related to our own business. But if you're not doing that, you're going to
be passed by. You really are. That's exactly right, buddy.
And we're going to see so much upheaval and
disruption occur because of the amount of change that's
(33:23):
happening with today's buyer. And again, going back to.
That's why I feel like endless customers is important
for today's blue collar worker contractor.
I don't want you to be left behind. My dad was
a builder growing up and he filed bankruptcy. And I remember
as a young man, I was probably 12,
(33:46):
I was out in my backyard and my dad's work
truck was next to the garage and some man
walks into our yard, he gets into the truck
and he drives it away. I said,
what just happened? Why is that man taking your truck? Dad,
(34:06):
See, that's the bank. I said, well,
it really hit me, you know, And I said to myself,
throughout my youth, I was constantly the one that had to answer the
phone because back then we didn't have caller ID
and it could be the credit card companies calling. So these things
left a clear impression on me, Andrew, which was,
(34:30):
I want a life of financial peace. I watched my parents
argue, argue, argue, eventually divorce, primarily
over money. And so if we can
create a life that allows us financial peace,
then I think that's one of the most beautiful things that we can do for
ourselves, for our children, for our families. Right. And our legacy.
(34:52):
To do that, though, you cannot continue to follow the same
rules that you've been given by everyone else in your space and expect
to get extraordinary results. You have to be willing to make your own rules. Because
remember, the rule breakers eventually become the rule makers and
everybody else becomes the rule followers. And that happens in every industry
if you're willing to be the one that speaks up. It's an
(35:14):
amazing story and I'm sure that left, you know, an imprint
on your life and you know, the way you do things and you go back
to a lot of people go back to the. An event of some sort. Or
some sort of tragic event of some sort, and they want to
do better, they change, they grow. So, I mean, thank you for
sharing that story because that's an impactful story. That's. Yeah,
(35:36):
it leaves a huge mark. Leaves a mark, man. Obviously, I'm very
grateful for all of that that I just said, because otherwise, I might
not have learned those things at a young age, and it might not have left
such an impression. Sometimes you have to go through that pain to
be the person you. You are today. You know, for instance, with me and my
backstory about wanting to be an IT technician,
(35:58):
I mean, that's really what I wanted to be. But I was down on 9
11, and I helped tradespeople and first responders find
survivors. You know, it's a tragic event, and that changed
me on my trajectory instead of just going into it is to really support the
men and women in the trades. Like, people have these stories, and you always think
it's like somebody else, but then it happens to you, and you're like, it changes
(36:20):
everything, but you're in a path that you want to be. In
that's very, very powerful. And, you know, it's like, look, you've got a story, I've
got a story. You know, mentioned earlier, be more human than others are willing to
be is one of the core pillars of becoming a known
and trusted brand. Part of that is the willingness to be
honest and transparent about your story. There's always what
(36:43):
everybody sees, and then there's the real story behind that.
And those things genuinely resonate with. With folks.
And it's like when I do business with, let's say, a contractor, I'm
not just doing business with him or her. I'm doing business with
their family that they're feeding. I'm doing business with all
the things that they touch. Their life is enabled by the business that
(37:05):
I'm giving them. All those things make a difference. They actually make a difference. Right.
You know, the quicker you can make personal connections with those that
you're potentially doing business with, the better off you're gonna be. This, again
is an argument as to why video is such a big deal. So why podcasting
is so great, Andrew. I mean, obviously, you're building a great brand for your
organization and making connections that you never would have made otherwise.
(37:28):
A lot of work. It's a lot of work, but you're doing the work and
it's paying off. I look at you on LinkedIn, I'm like, you know, that guy
does really, really well on LinkedIn. You're active there. You got a big following,
got a lot of engagement. You know, you're putting in the time, and it's really
impressive to see. You know, the other part of this is that what people don't
see is the, you know, it's not instant gratification, it's delayed gratification.
(37:49):
A lot of people don't want to put the time and energy. Look, it's a
lot of work, what you do and you speak across the country. It's a lot
of work, but you love it. But sometimes you don't get that
instant gratification. When you. When you and I had spoken prior, you had mentioned about
it took time for you to get speaking gigs. Right. You had to start
somewhere, and a lot of people give up at that point. But you didn't give
(38:10):
up. Right. A couple years in, maybe you got your first break
and then you got traction. People give up before they really take
off. Yeah, I mean, it's that classic, like, overnight success story that took 20
years. That's generally how it is. I, for my first
14, 15 years of owning my pool company, I never made more than a hundred
thousand dollars in a year. There's this phrase that you've
(38:32):
probably heard before. It's like, we often overestimate what we can do in a year,
underestimate what we can do in 10. Right. So in
2009, I'm like, looking at bankruptcy. I've never
made six figures in my life. By 2020, I was a
multimillionaire. That's how life can work, if
you work it. Obviously, I don't say that in any
(38:54):
form to say, look at what I've done
as like, you know, I'm awesome. It's just
that compounding effect of building a brand, of doing
the little things that can create this momentum
in your life. And it's beautiful. And, you know, if you believe
in, you know, compound interest, you ought to see the power of compound information.
(39:17):
It works the same way, and it's just as powerful in terms of your personal
brand and how your brand becomes worth something. Every time Andrew does a
podcast episode and does a LinkedIn post and does his
TikTok, it's like that is an investment he's making,
and that's compounding information into this, you
know, account called his brand. Now it's growing and growing and growing
(39:39):
to eventually, you know, you become
like they say at that point, you've built something really extraordinary. I
would just challenge everyone to think like that and to make sure, though,
that you're Getting over your own feelings, because that's where it gets dangerous. Well, I
don't like video, so I'm not going to do video. Doesn't matter. What does a
buyer want? No buyer's ever gone to your website and said, gee, I'd love to
(40:01):
see a video right now, but I'm sure they don't like video, so I'm going
to give them a pass. Right? That's not how it works.
And so we meet the buyer where they are. You know, we got to be
willing to say what others aren't willing to say. You need to be willing to
talk about things like pricing. You need to be talking about competitors. Not in a
bad way, just openly, in a good way, because that's what people are
asking. You need to be willing to compare stuff because that's what people are
(40:24):
asking. You need to be willing to do self service because that's what people are
asking. You need to be willing to call it what it is, call a spade
a spade, and be honest. Become known as that thought leader in
your space when other people are not. These are the types of things that you
can do. Let me give an example of this. We started doing pools
in 2001. The way a fiberglass pool was built, Andrew, was you
(40:46):
dug a hole, you put a sand base at the bottom, you put that pool
shell on that sand base, you backfilled around it with sand, filled it with water,
poured your concrete patio around it, and that is a pool installation.
And we said, this is dumb because sand
has problems. Sand settles, sand washes. Two
thousand years ago, the Bible said, don't build your house on sand. And yet we're
(41:07):
building pools on sand. Doesn't make any sense. And so we really talked about
it. We said, the industry's wrong. You should be building your pools on
crushed stone. And here's the reasons why it goes down compacted. You know,
it's much better backfill, much better base, yada, yada. Well,
when we started this process in 2001, about 80% of the fiberglass pools that
went in were done with sand. Today, about 80% of the fiberglass pools
(41:29):
that go in are done with crushed stone. That's what I mean when I
say, just don't sit back. You gotta be willing to stake your claim and
create your own ip. The competitors might say bad things, but
the world will respond because again, the rule breakers become the rule makers.
I feel like sometimes you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable,
right? So me putting out videos and content that I did, I always Had a
(41:52):
speech impediment when I was a kid. Like, I was always like conscious of all
that, you know, and turning the camera on. I was scared shitless.
And look, I get flamed online and people say this and people say that.
And some people give up because they don't want to hear from, you know, the
naysayers or the haters. And it's just what it is. As you rise
in fame and people get to know you, it's just they come out of the
(42:14):
woodworks. But for me, I'm doing it for a greater cause and, you know,
building a brand, just like you built your brand, but you have to be willing
to put the time and energy into it. It's not something that could be built
six months a year. This is like years, three years,
five years, even 10 years down the road to build something. Like you said about
your brand, if you can start a company and people know you, they trust
(42:36):
you. It's really, it's trust. Right at that point,
you built a trusted brand. They know you that whatever you're going to put your
name on, people are going to buy from you because they trust you. And the
need for that's never going away. Andrew, that's why you have to understand evergreen
principles if you're going to build something that scales over time. You know,
I've had a pool company for 25 years that's not as old as some
(42:58):
people's organizations, but that's a lot longer than a lot of pool companies make it.
Trust me. And I suspect we're going to have it a lot longer because
we're going to continue to lean on that because we know trust is that one
thing that regardless of what happens with AI, regardless of what happens
with the economy, with technology, that it's going to be pivotal
to our success as we move forward. I just want to quickly pivot over
(43:20):
which it's interesting you shared that your father was a builder. You
know, I was trying to understand sort of your connection to the blue collar world,
which I didn't realize that your son is an electrician. And I saw you did
a post and you said that at 12 he had his own workshop. At 14,
he was working part time. 17, he had a full time gig and now he
runs his own truck at 21. That's freaking awesome. Yeah, it's amazing.
(43:42):
And here's what's wild. When he was 17,
I said, My son's working full time as an
electrician. And I said this on Twitter and I said,
he will be making six figures probably by the time
he's 21, 22, 23 years old, and he's
gonna have no college debt and he's gonna have an extraordinary life and he's
(44:03):
never gonna look for work. And somebody on Twitter said, and
I'll never ever forget this. Yeah, but he'll still just be
an electrician. And I thought, oh, you little
sob. It goes back to when I
opened my pool company with my two business partners. I was right out
of college and I was at a family event and somebody said
(44:26):
to me, she said, marcus, I heard you're gonna be a pool guy. I said,
yeah. She said, what a waste. I was
so flabbergasted, I didn't even know what to say.
And of course, there's been a few times over the years where I've had Toby
Keith ringing my ears. How do you like me now? Because I will
travel around the world and people will come up to me like, yeah, that pool
(44:46):
guy that wrote they Ask youk Answer, right? Yeah, that's me.
So do I have an affinity towards the trades? You better believe it. I think
they're the backbone of the economy. And I also think
what's really wild now is that we thought AI
was going to hurt blue collar. No, no, no, no. AI
is hurting white collar. Blue collar is going to have a much longer
(45:09):
road in terms of like a Runway before AI.
You know, I don't think you're going to see a lot of, you know, optimus
robots in your crawl space anytime soon. I don't
anticipate that anytime soon. Could it happen in a hundred years? Yes,
but I don't expect it happening in the next 20 years. I think a lot
of your white collar friends are going to be looking at you like, man,
(45:30):
you are right. I'm sitting here levied with debt from college
and I can't find a job, you know, within my white collar space.
And you're just sitting there, you know, running this incredible plumbing business
or whatever business, and you're happier too. It's
also interesting to me, Andrew. I own a, like an agency
coaching company with 45 employees. And I got a pool company.
(45:53):
I had like 45 employees during COVID too. So I had these two companies during
COVID One all like blue collar non college
graduates. The other one, white collar, all college graduates.
Guess which one had all the like, mental health problems during COVID And guess
which one was like, had the happiest employees and just didn't really
skip a beat during COVID There's something magical
(46:15):
about the Trades in that regard. I'm sick and tired of people
giving it a bad rap. I'm not micro, but I want to do
my part in the conversation and I'm going to continue to
be a part of it for as long as I possibly can. Yeah, that's great
to see that your son is pursuing something. Obviously, you know, he's good
with his hands and you know, he's in a unique opportunity to do
(46:38):
extremely, extremely well, as you even stated. And you know, the amount of
different trades that we need, whether it's electricians and welders and carpenters.
I'm not going to spew the statistics with you, but good place. There is a
heavy disruption across the board when it comes to white collar jobs and AI. And
I see it across the board. I mean, I'm having discussions with
AI, even like financial stuff where I'm loading in
(47:00):
my financials, I call my accountant. I can just, you know, AI can
just give me all that information and you compound that by a
lawyer or other, you know, types of people
you would go to. Typically AI is going to completely
disrupt that across the board. And I think blue collar in the next
handful of years. And you could already see it with Gen Z
(47:22):
that the Wall Street Journal said that they're becoming the tool belt generation. It
really is that they are really looking at college versus a trades
path and some of them are choosing the trades. I go down to a
show called Skills USA in Atlanta and
there's 6,500 kids who compete against each other in welding and
carpentry. I mean that's like the future generation of like
(47:44):
tradespeople and it's thriving and there's
advocation there, advocating for the trades. It's super exciting
where the trades are going. The old adages are still there, but it's changing
through social media and it's an exciting time and I think your son is in
a great position. Every kid's gotta make that decision if you wanna sign
on that dotted line and, and take that huge loan. But it's really, you
(48:06):
know, you've gotta decide if it's right for you. But the trades is an option
and you can make good money and you don't have to go into debt.
Now the tools of the trade. I could
literally ask you questions for the next hour, but obviously this podcast is
only about 45 minutes. This was an amazing conversation,
(48:28):
Marcus, but in every episode we always ask our guests a
tools of the trade. If someone is just
starting their business today online, we touched upon this. What are
the crucial steps they should take to
build their brand. So if I'm starting now, tomorrow,
I'm. Going to be real quick about this. I'd start doing videos immediately.
(48:50):
Everything you do, every job site you walk on, I would just start doing videos
of it. That's number one. Number two, I'd have a pricing estimator on your
website that's gonna get you whatever people do come to your site,
they're probably gonna convert and so get that PriceGuide AI
number three. One of the most important things that you can do, we follow
this rule newly something that we've evolved with my swimming pool company
(49:12):
and I'm now teaching it to a lot of other businesses is the five minute
rule when it comes to all leads. Speed to lead is everything in the future.
And if you will call your leads within five minutes
of them reaching out to you, there is a 900% greater
chance that you will have a conversation with them than if you wait
30 minutes or later. So be
(49:36):
obsessed about when you get a lead, call the
lead that second and it'll make a huge difference for you.
That is great advice. Videos is that's today people
want to see you. You have to put yourself out there. You have
to kind of get over the fact of being on video. A lot of people
don't want to do that. But being on video, taking video of the job site
(49:58):
a day in the life of what you're actually doing, I do see a lot
of people who are actually live streaming their job.
They're just literally just on TikTok, just live streaming, which is great. The
pricing estimator. And that's where it's going today. No one wants to wait for a
price. I mean if you're going to wait for a price, someone's going to the
next company. And also the five minute leads, we do that as well. Like
(50:18):
immediately a quote comes in, boom, within five minutes. I'm calling the
potential lead at that point and sometimes it converts right
then and there. So I think speed is everything. So where do people find
you on social media website if they want to go down that rabbit hole to
find out more about Marcus? Yeah, biggest recommendation I'd have. If you've
enjoyed anything I've said today is go to endless customers.com
(50:40):
and get the book. And the book will have if you follow it. I mean
it's a system that will have an extraordinary impact on your brand and on
your company. That's number one. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Connect with
me on LinkedIn. I'm very good on LinkedIn, Andrew, you know is too.
So if you're not connected with both of us, you should be. I'd say those
are the two things. But make sure you go to endlesscustomers.com yeah, definitely.
(51:01):
Check it out. Check out Marcus's new book that's coming out. Marcus, thank you
so much for being on the show today. My pleasure and thank you to our
listeners. If you want more valuable insights and trades related information, head
over to andrewbrown.net and join our Trades Movement newsletter
where we advocate for the trades, we share inspirational stories. Like
Marcus, we provide resources and you join a passionate
(51:24):
trades community. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss
another episode. We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the Lost Art of the Skilled Trades. Visit
us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips.
Join us next time for real stories. And meaningful initiatives
(51:44):
as we celebrate our men and women in the skilled trades and shape
the future together.
When I opened my pool company with my two business partners, I was
right out of college and I was at a family event and
somebody said to me, she said, marcus, I heard you're gonna be a pool guy.
I said, yeah. She said, what a waste.
I was so flabbergasted, I didn't even know what to say.
And of course, there's been a few times over the years where I've had Toby
(00:22):
Keith ringing in my ears. How do you like me now? Because I will
travel around the world and people will come up to me like, yeah, that pool
guy that wrote they Ask youk Answer, right? Yeah, that's me.
Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost Star of the Skilled Trades
Podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on
(00:43):
careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable,
rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the
economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
would cease to exist.
Today we have a special guest, Marcus Sheridan, owner of Impact.
(01:06):
Welcome, Marcus, to the show, Andrew. Great to be
back with you, buddy. It is awesome to have you here, Marcus.
We started our business named tool fetch
in 2001. It's an online tool and supply company
and it was built to support the men and women in the trades. We carry
over 2 million products from 650 different vendors.
(01:30):
Back then, in 2001, we even worked remotely. Like no one
knew what remote meant. Like, you work from home. I'm like, yeah, we work
from home. We built our first website, my brother and I.
I'm dating myself in Dreamweaver. That's good dating right there.
Yeah. Back in the day, like, we like bootstrapped the entire company.
We had a Google search. I remember Google search was a
(01:52):
blue box. It run off this one U server. And when I got this
box, I was like, wow, I'm something from Google. I mean, I'm
predating myself. SEO Search engine optimization was
easier back then. Right. Email was high conversion.
Right. There wasn't a lot of competition. This was even before really
Amazon got into everything. Today the game has
(02:13):
changed, right? The buyer experience has changed. People are
smarter with AI, Social media, this personal brands, they
say Google is for old people. How do you stand
out today? If you're selling a product or service. Online,
you have to be willing to be different
because different is better than better, as my friend Sally
(02:36):
Hogg said, likes to say. I didn't always understand that, but it's
incredibly true. Because these days we're
inundated with so much information. It's the ones that
are going about things a little bit differently, those are the ones that are standing
out, really. My newest book, Endless Customers, is just
this. It's really a call to disruption, a call
(02:59):
to be willing to think differently, to do differently.
And if you're going to be successful today,
tomorrow, five years, ten years from now, what it comes down to is
you can't build your business on platforms. So you can't be Google
Reliant, you can't be YouTube reliant, you can't be TikTok
reliant. And all those things matter, by the way, can't just be AI
(03:21):
Reliant. What you have to have is
a known and trusted brand. Brand is
everything. And that will continue to be the case. And that
brand must be known and trusted. The thing though, Andrew,
that's changed. It's gotta be known by three entities. For about
30 years it was two entities, now it's three entities. So
(03:44):
your brand needs to be known and trusted by customers, buyers.
Pretty obvious. Number two, search engines like Google.
But number three, and this is the one that's the big curveball,
AI. AI needs to know
who you are. And AI, if you want to be successful,
needs to be recommending you. Because if not, you could
(04:07):
be in serious trouble in the future. When AI
ChatGPT came out 2022, most of us were using
it as a creation tool. Andrew, right? It's like, hey, it makes
funny poems, right? It's like, okay, fine, but suddenly
now how are we using it? We've gone beyond
creation. Now we're using it for recommendation.
(04:29):
Now we're going there and we're saying, okay, you know, who are
the best? You know, window door companies in Richmond, Virginia. That's what
we're doing today. And it's giving answers, it's
not giving sponsored searches. You know, it's really, really interesting.
Google made an entire business off of giving
buyers what they wanted and giving it to them quickly. And it was
(04:51):
very, very successful. And the one company
that is now slower to give buyers what they want quickly
is actually Google. Because how has Google
changed? You know, for a long time it was, I want to be ranked number
one in Google. Okay, fine, yeah, it got most of the
visitors, but that's not true today. And the reason for that, of course, is
(05:14):
if you ranked number one in Google, what do you see? First you're going to
see four or five sponsored ads that look like regular
search results, which is pretty tricky and nefarious by Google, by the
way. And then you've got probably some AI summary, that takes up a bunch
of room. And then you've got related questions that takes up a bunch of room.
You might have a few videos and you finally got the first
(05:36):
search result. Being number one is fine.
It oftentimes means nothing. This is why over 50% of all Google searches
don't even end in a click, because they already got what they wanted. So at
the same time, because of this, because of this trend, what's happening is
businesses are saying, I'm hearing this a lot. I'm hearing folks say to me, I
don't get it. My traffic is struggling on my website.
(05:59):
My Google Ads, they're not working like they used to work. What do we
do? Well, you know, we're seeing
definitively that it's getting harder and harder to use Google
Ads. And I just want to tell everybody, you can't build your house on
Google alone. Obviously we've used it prolifically for 20 plus
years, but that's not going to be the case for 20 plus more, not at
(06:20):
least as we know it. And if you have a choice between getting an immediate
answer where you don't have to click on any blue links to get it and
you get exactly what you want by going with directly with AI,
or you can go through a slower process, what are you going to choose? I
don't necessarily go to Google for a lot of the things I want to search
for. I am fully interactive with chat, GPT,
(06:42):
deep research. You know, we're testing out operator
and we are telling it as an AI agent to do data entry
work where somebody right now puts in orders with
vendors. Right? That can be replaced by
operator if you give it a set of instructions. If you want to go out
and tell it to research trips, the
(07:05):
lowest airfare and give me the best place, the hottest
spot to go to, like it can do that type of stuff. It's so in
the beginning stages. But I can see these AI agents
really fully disrupting everything across the
board, but making it easier for the business owner because it's expensive
to obviously you want employees, but it could be replaced, some of
(07:26):
this stuff with technology, whether it's chat online, the game
has changed. Yeah, it really has. And those that are not in the
sandbox, they're going to be in big trouble. Sometimes Andrew, people say to me,
yeah, but what if AI is the Terminator and it just ruins us and kills
us all? I'm like, okay, let's assume that does kill us all. Well,
if that's the case and it's going to kill us all in 25 years. I
(07:47):
want to have a very successful business between now and the time that it kills
us all. I have learned over the course of, you
know, owning my first company in 2001 and, you know, now
and I have got ownership in multiple companies, I keep seeing the same
patterns over and over again. And that is when you fight against the
market, you lose. When you give the market what they want
(08:09):
and you're willing to do that more than any of your competitors, you win.
I'm not talking about, like, they want a better price. I'm talking about if you
match the experience that they would like to have,
then you can do pretty exceptional things. In my new
book, Endless Customers, I talk about the four pillars of a
known and trusted brand. These four pillars are rooted
(08:32):
in giving buyers what they want and being very, very different
than everybody else. So the first pillar of a known and trusted brand
is that you're willing to say online what other companies aren't willing to say.
All right, we'll come back to this, I'm sure. Number two pillar of a known,
entrusted brand is you need to be willing to show with video
what others in your space aren't willing to show.
(08:55):
Number three, you need to be willing to sell in a way that others aren't
willing to sell. Everybody loves to say they've got some unique sales process,
man, when it comes to, like home improvement, home services, the trades, et
cetera, no, most do not have any unique sales
process. And then finally, number four, you got to be more human
than others in your space are willing to be. So those are the four
(09:17):
fundamental pillars of a known and trusted brand. And if I
ask most people, can you honestly say that we're saying
showing, selling and being more human online
than the majority of our competitors? If they're being honest and self aware,
the answer is almost always the same, Andrew. It's no. No, we're not. And
that's not going to carry you long term. And that's not going to build an
(09:40):
extraordinary brand. Do you think this lays like
and going back to even a service company? Do you think
that having a personal brand today, being different
on social media, kind of gets your business to the stratosphere?
If you have your own personal brand, can it lay over onto your company
brand? It really? That's what that fourth pillar, be more human, is all about.
(10:03):
People are much more attracted to personal brands than they are to
business brands. You know, because I've been able to build a brand,
I'm able to consistently start companies
and get just Immediate, just traction with these
businesses because people know me and
I've built a brand that is this guy thinks a little bit
(10:25):
differently. He's very, very trustworthy. If he says it, he believes
it. Right. And so, you know, that's essential in being this,
as Daniel Priestley would say, a key person of influence. Right. It's like
that goes a long ways. You've talked to anybody. 99%
of people listening to this right now know who the Kardashians are. But
if I said to those same people, what are the names of their companies? Most
(10:48):
wouldn't be able to say the names of their companies. I don't know the names
of their companies, but I know their names. That's personal brand,
right? Who has more followers? Elon Musk or Tesla? Right. Elon
Musk has way more followers. You could actually go down a list of, you know,
some of these folks that have, you know, a bigger following than the brand
itself. Does people want to interact with brands. Is this actually going to just continue
(11:10):
to grow? The old adage we buy from those we know like and
trust is as true today as it's ever been and I think
will be even more true in the future. Let's just say you sell a
commodity, just a commodity. There's 20 other
companies selling the same thing. Even if you're selling the product in its
map price, meaning we all sell it at the same price. So if
(11:31):
somebody is looking on Google or is doing some sort of
chat GPT search, I know you gave me the four pillars, but like, what
should somebody do starting today to
differentiate themselves if it's you're the same price as
everybody else. Let's use my own business for a quick second tool fetch.
Right? So we carry over 2 million products, but a lot of the products are
(11:53):
commodity based. You can buy it at us, you can buy it maybe at Home
Depot, you can buy it at Amazon. Right? So let's say we're,
let's just say a drill. So everybody knows what a drill is, right? It's a
Milwaukee drill. It has a part number and you have to sell it, let's say
at $100 now you're in line with 15, 20
other companies. How does somebody really
(12:14):
differentiate yourself if they're going down the list? They don't really know most
of the companies. They know Amazon, they, they know Home Depot, but they don't know
this tool fetch company. What would you do in that case? Let's look at a
few different examples. And it's not the same industry, but this is one of
the coolest I've ever seen of a commodity
product that became world renowned.
(12:36):
And that's the folks at Liquid Death. So
Liquid Death, for anybody that's listening to this, you've probably seen them in your
local convenience store. They look like some type
of energy drink or some type of alcoholic beverage. Of
course, what it is, it's water, right? And so the thing
inside is literally no different than that
(12:58):
Dasani. It looks and feels the energy
around it is so different because, A, they put it in a can, B, they
make it look like an energy drink. And so it's like, been disallowed
in certain countries in Europe and certain convenience stores
because people believe, like, oh, that's a alcoholic beverage. It's not an alcoholic
beverage. So their commitment early on with Liquid Death was, we are
(13:21):
not going to build a brand that's anything like we've seen in
the water space, like, in the consumable water space.
And if you look at almost all the waters, they pretty much all look and
feel the same. Like Deer park and Dasani, like, fundamentally, like,
certainly there's people listening this right now saying, oh, I like this or that one.
Yeah. But, like, are they marketed any different? The answer is no. They're in
(13:42):
the same bottle. They've got the same, like, blue labels. And like, for the most
part, they look the same. This is why Sally Hogshead says
different is better than better. It's just like, there's so much to that.
What's really crazy about the folks at Liquid Death is their media
department. Their brand department is five people. And
so they became the second most followed beverage on social
(14:04):
media, bigger than Coca Cola. Why? Because
they're so original of thought. Right. Which is really, really
wild. Now, what could a company that sells,
like, lots of skus, for example, how could they stand
out? Let me give an example. So if I went to this big behemoth
store that was selling lots of products, I would really lean into
(14:26):
self service. And self service stems from the third
pillar. That third pillar is sell in ways that others
aren't willing to sell. And it stems from this fact that buyers
today want to be more informed than they've ever
been, and they want to have more control than they've ever had.
And so 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free
(14:48):
sales experience from Gartner. So what does that mean? Well, it doesn't
mean that we hate salespeople. It just means that we don't want to talk to
them until we're good and ready. And so how you can
take advantage of this trend instead of complaining about it, because that's what a lot
of folks will do is complain, which really, that helps a whole lot, is
you can give more control. And this is through interactive
(15:09):
experiences, let's say, on your website, on your e commerce platform.
Andrew, Whatever. The thing is that allows the person to have
more control and to do things that previously they would have had to have done
with a salesperson by talking to a human, but now they can do it
by just simply interacting with some type of, you know, online
tool, app experience. So for example, on my
(15:29):
swimming pool website, riverpoolsenspas.com I've got a tool
that allows you to compare fiberglass versus concrete versus
vinyl liner and ground pools. Now, I know that when we have a sales
appointment, I want someone to have gotten past the point of trying to
decide what type of pool they want. Because if they're still trying to figure that
out, I'm probably not going to make a sale. So we want to make sure
(15:50):
that our sales team, that we've gotten through that. So we got this
recommendation tool on the site. And this recommendation tool
is so brutally honest that every single day after someone
answers a series of questions based on their needs, it's very unbiased.
It gives them. Based on what you just said, we're going to recommend to you
that you choose a vinyl liner and grapple or that you choose a concrete pool,
(16:12):
not a fiberglass pool. Every day I'm recommending to multiple
people, don't buy our stuff, which is crazy. That's how you become a known
and trusted brand. You do it differently than others. But let's say
someone is trying to debate, like, what's the best type of drill for me? You
know, you might say most people know that, but that's
making false assumptions. And so if you have a tool that
(16:34):
allows someone to just answer a few questions and then
it gives a recommendation of which tool they should
choose, now all of a sudden it's like,
oh, okay, so you're going to recommend the, you know, x, y, z, 1000.
Because I said I need this, that I'm going to be doing this. I'm going
to be focused on this. That's powerful. That's what
(16:55):
sets people apart. And this is not something that you're going to typically see
with a lot of these e comm shops or a lot of these just any
company in general. You know, how many times have you, you
and your business, if you're listening to this how many times have you been asked,
well, if you're me, which would you choose? Oh, I'm trying to decide between,
you know, concrete versus pavers versus stamped versus
(17:16):
stone. Like which one should I choose? Okay, well, how come you don't have a
tool that allows them to decide that? And they feel like at that point it
was their decision because they were the ones that
went on the journey, they answered their questions. So self service is a
mega trend. There's five main types of self service. This is one way
that you could set yourself apart. So an interactive tool, it's
(17:38):
more hands off. So an example would be someone's calling up and is
looking for a radiant heater, right? So a lot of people
sort of know what a radiant tube heater is, but they don't know the size,
the square footage, the btu. Like, do I need propane?
Do I need natural? Like there's questions, right? So if I'm speaking to
somebody, I have to have a 20 minute conversation with the person, right? That's 20
(18:01):
minutes of my time. Wasted time. Yeah, to some degree. Sometimes
it turns into a sale, but sometimes it's just, okay, send me a. Quote or
yeah, it's just inefficient. Fundamentally it's inefficient because they
should ideally have gotten the answer from you already
through an interactive experience. Right. So if they had an
interactive tool of some sort, which basically is, I'm asking the
(18:22):
questions, they got me on the phone, right? So I'm asking those questions. If you
put that into an interactive tool, it separates us a little bit
different than the next company. There's four fundamental tools. My swing
pool website has three are live one's coming out. Each represents a
period of where they are in the buyer's journey. The first one that's not live
right now, but I'm working on it because it's a void in the buyer's journey
(18:44):
stages is, am I even going to use a pool? Like,
is this a good investment for me? So it's essentially an assessment
tool that assesses your lifestyle and then based on you, your
lifestyle, your wants, desires, goals, it gives you an honest
score as to whether or not a swimming pool is right for
you. Very creative. That's a fundamental question that people have
(19:07):
now. Once they've decided on a pool and they've gotten through that, the next
stage is, well, what type of pool do I want? We have that tool on
the site that gives those recommendations. Already explained that one. Once they know they want
a fiberglass pool. Currently we have A tool on their site that asks a
series of questions, and then it gives a recommendation for a particular shape and
size. We all offer no different than if a salesperson was sitting with them in
(19:29):
the home. Homeowner said, I'm not sure what shape I want. What do you think
I should get based on what you see out there in my yard? Salesperson's gonna
ask serious questions, and then they're gonna give a recommendation.
Well, once again, can we replicate that online, giving the buyer more control, giving
the higher sense of satisfaction and more investment in us? Yes, we can. And so
we've got a tool on our site that gives a recommendation for a pool shape
(19:50):
and size. Very powerful. People fill that out all the time. And
then the final is, well, once they know the shape and size, we've
got to build and price your pool tool on our site.
So now they can get an actual estimate. Now, we do this as a
manufacturer of fiberglass pools. Think about that. So we're not actually
installing the pool while we do in Virginia. For my company, our website
(20:12):
is the manufacturer site. And so it doesn't install the pool,
it sells the shell to the dealers like myself all over the country. For those
that don't know, I started the company and eventually sold the manufacturing side.
So what's wild about this is it just gives a range.
But because it gives a range, Andrew, that's more than most companies are willing to
give. No other companies are willing to give that range. It's incredibly,
(20:34):
incredibly powerful. And this is something that I've tested a ton
with trades with home services. And
I started a software company last year, which
is called Price Guide AI. And Price Guide allows
anybody with any type of business, but especially a service business,
trades, home improvement, anything like that, to quickly and
(20:56):
easily create a pricing estimator that they can put on
their website in the second they put it on there and show it
prominently on their homepage. And answer that fundamental question
that buyers have when they know they need something, which is roughly
how much is this going to cost? That's the number one question in the
world that anybody has when they know they have a need, a problem, an issue.
(21:18):
I need new windows and doors. I need a swimming pool. Doesn't matter. It's like,
well, first I want to know, am I in the game or not? Can I
even afford this? Is this even possible? That comes down to that question.
And so when you put this estimator on your site and the AI, by the
way, helps you build it, and you can do this in less than 30 minutes
we see consistently. And I've got data from companies now all over the world because
(21:38):
we have so many customers that we've been able to build up in a short
period of time. Is you see on average a 300% increase
in leads. So 300% increase, all
because exact same amount of traffic that you had before to your site.
But now you're answering the most fundamental question that people
have when they're looking to make a serious acquisition, which is roughly
(21:59):
how much is this going to cost? I had this conversation yesterday with
a guy who owns a roofing company and I said to him, do you
offer pricing like most companies? You have to call,
someone will get back to you. I just want to know the price. So I
completely agree with you. But he didn't do that. Basically it's take the information,
then go down to the customer's home and then take a
(22:21):
look at the roof and then get an estimate. Yeah, he's like everybody
else. If he had any concept of how many
leads he was losing because he's not willing
to address that first conversation of roughly what is this going
to cost? It would make him sick to his stomach. I mean, he would
be sick for weeks if he could count how much
(22:43):
revenue he's lost. Because he's ignoring a fundamental
question that buyers have. If anybody's listening to this right now
and has researched how much something costs online and you can't find
it, immediately, you get pissed. You don't keep looking on that
website. You don't call the company. You keep searching until you find what you're
looking for. That's how you and I shop. All of us listening to this right
(23:06):
now. Your customers are no different. The problem is you've got a lot of companies
like the fellow you're talking to yesterday that wants to control the buyer. And the
last thing buyers want is to be controlled. And so if you can find
a way to make it a win win, what's the win win? You give them
a general estimate, not a quote, and a general estimate with
a pricing tool like price guide, and they get what they wanted,
(23:28):
which is a cents for what it's going to cost. You get what you wanted,
which is a lead in your database. Now everybody wins.
And it's glorious how anybody would not do that today.
I can make a promise to you right now, Andrew, and that is this.
When it comes to home services and home improvement, every home
services contractor in the United States, within
(23:50):
five years, 90% of all these contractors are going to have a
pricing estimator. On their website, 90% in five years.
What's sad is a bunch of the people listening to this right now don't believe
me, and are gonna wait until their competitor in their local market
does it, then they're gonna freak out, and then they're gonna
scramble, and then they're gonna add it. And they lost potentially
(24:13):
hundreds and hundreds of qualified leads simply because
they were living in the Stone Ages. Doesn't make any sense.
And I can back this up, too. I remember sitting. I was at a Grant
Cardone show, like, six years ago, and I
remember I was in the front row watching him. People don't know he's a social
media guy and he's in real estate, but he was making
(24:34):
phone calls to service companies, like roofing companies, you know,
contractors. We were hearing the call live. Like, all he wanted was a
price, and they couldn't quote him a price at all. And literally he's like, this
is what happens every single day. All these leads are coming in, but
they're going nowhere because no one can give you the pricing or give you a
roundabout of price. Someone has to call you back, I need this, I need that.
(24:55):
And this is exactly what happens. Especially, like you said, if 75%
don't want to deal with a salesperson, and I agree with that.
Nobody wants to be bothered. They want to do their own research, and when they're
ready, they're ready. And if you have all that information available for
somebody, videos, you know, when it comes to what you were saying, how to
build those estimators, if you don't have that on your website,
(25:17):
you're going to lose that opportunity. So I completely, a hundred percent agree with you
on that. Again, it's like sitting at the beach. You had your
lounge chair set up during low tide. You see the tide coming in and
you're like, I'm not moving. Like, no, no, you're going to
move. You always move. You do not beat the tide.
The tide does what the tide does, whether or not you or I have
(25:39):
strong opinions about it. And so you can have a strong opinion about what
I'm saying right now. But the truth is, if I said to you,
man to man, woman to woman, would you prefer it if someone
gave you some type of estimate tool or a
recommendation tool or an assessment tool on their website
before you were forced to call them to get the same information, would
(26:02):
you prefer that? Your answer is going to be, well, yes,
don't add a but afterwards. Don't say but my situation. No,
no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Your situation isn't special, isn't
unique. I didn't always understand this as a business owner and it probably cost
me millions, Andrew. The second I realized that my
opinions don't mean squat in the market, that what matters is the
(26:24):
market and where the market's going. And it's my job to meet the market where
the market is. That's what we signed up for as a business owner. You
know, that's why the title of my first book was called they ask, you answer.
Because when they're asking for it, and not just the questions, it's like how they
want to learn, how they want to behave, where they want to do their research.
That's the key. That's what they want. And so, yeah, there's five types
(26:45):
of self assessment tools. I talk a lot about it in Endless Customers.
That section alone of the book could make you millions of dollars if
you follow it. I want to roll back for a quick moment. When you kind
of first started your river pools and spa company
back in the day, you know, every company, and this is really for business
owners too, every company gets to a point where you hit a
(27:07):
ceiling, you can't move forward, you can't grow. And there was is like
an aha moment. You have to get real with things that you keep doing over
and over again. As a business owner, you're getting the same results, right?
When did you have that aha moment? Because you wrote that book, they ask, you
answer. Were you at that point in your business where, you
know, we can't grow or we've hit a ceiling and we need to think
(27:30):
differently, Were you having that aha moment back then? I had a financial
gun to my head in 2009. I thought we were going to lose the business
because of the crash. And up to that point, we had done marketing
like everybody else. Shotgun approach. Back in those days,
there was, you know, devil himself yellow pages
for those that can recall those days. Then you had TV and
(27:52):
radio and print and direct mail and just trying all of
it, losing our tails. And that's when I said,
man, we have got to evolve. And I started to learn about the
changing buyer. And I said, you know, I keep going online for information.
That's where I'm going to learn stuff. Why can't we become the Wikipedia
pools? So, you know, I sat there and brainstormed every question I'd
(28:16):
ever received as a pool guy. And I mean, there was hundreds
of questions. And then one by one, we addressed them on our website, through text,
through video over the next couple years. And that's how we became the most traffic
swimming pool website in the world. By 2012, we were the most traffic swimming pool
website in the world. And we were just rocking by that point.
And that's why, you know, we started manufacturing our own pools because
(28:37):
we had so much trust built in the market. We were getting leads from all
over the country, but yet we were only installing pools in Virginia. And
so I said, let's start manufacturing. And the manufacturing, like
fricking fire took off. Everybody wanted a river pool
because we had the most trust in the marketplace. I mean, that's why it's a
tale as old as time. The difference between today and 2009
(29:00):
is, you know, I really, for the most part, just focus on
producing content on my website and did some
YouTube and that was enough for us to become numero uno
in our industry. I couldn't do that today and get the same results.
I'd have to be better. I'd have to be smarter. Yes, you
still want to produce that content. You still want to address those things
(29:24):
that others in your space aren't talking about on your website. But you got
to use all the platforms, you got to use the social medias.
You got to go on TikTok, even though you're like, I don't like TikTok and
I don't like China. Okay, that's fine. But you still need to be on
TikTok. You ain't got to use it personally, but your business needs to be there
because your buyers are starting to go there. You know, you gotta be on
(29:45):
YouTube. You know, there's an argument to be made that YouTube might be more important
than your website in, you know, six, seven years. I don't know if that's gonna
happen. There's a case for that. And so video
is not going anywhere but up. And so you better, you better.
If you're really serious about growing a brand that's trusted, you better be all in
on video and you better start thinking like a media company, which means you're
(30:07):
finding every opportunity to show everything you do. And what's cool about the
trades is the trades are so visual.
And anybody now that has any type of, you know,
blue collar business in the trades should be
saying, I need to be producing a video every single day
on every single job site of everything we're doing. And I need
(30:30):
to be showing it. I need to be showing it on Facebook. I'll show it
on the gram. I'm gonna show it on the TikTok I'm gonna show it on
YouTube because we're a media company and we're building something special
and I'm not gonna have some just small time shop that as soon as I
get tired I just gotta let the business go because I've not built anything.
You wanna build something, a legacy that's gonna
(30:51):
outlive you, that's a brand that other people are gonna
wanna buy, that's what you want. That's what Tommy Mello did, right?
This is what you want to do, at least most of us. Not
everybody necessarily, you know, wants to have such financial peace and
prosperity. But if that's what you want, you're going to have to do much better
with your marketing. And it starts with ability to build an extraordinary brand. They
(31:13):
do say you're a marketing company first. I remember sitting down and speaking to a
well known plumber. His name is Roger Wakefield. I know Roger.
He actually embraced. They ask, you answer. He heard me speak
something like 10 years ago. He wasn't doing video at the time and he
said this is the way that was his catalyst was seeing
me at Social Media Marketing World all those years ago. And he and I are
(31:35):
still friends. I was on his podcast about a year and a half ago and
I spent time with him and you know, I know his story. He's actually going
to be on my podcast in a handful of weeks as well. But he always
said that I just wanted to make my phone ring, right? He used a
marketing agency, spent all this money, it was a waste of time. And then he
sat in, you know, one of these conferences and Somebody said that
(31:56):
YouTube is the second largest search engine. He's like, wait, what? All right, that
was me. That was the conference he was at. That was me. Oh, that you.
It's a full circle. There you go. Really had a life changing event which
you obviously were the impetus to this. And he went
all in. And it's not like he went half ass. He went all in. And
I was down in his studio. Like he's got a, a nice podcast set up.
(32:17):
I was on his podcast and I was on his live. He took something that
he was obviously in the trades and he had a plumbing company but he took
it and just expanded it, you know, 20x
across the board. So it is possible. I've now built my
TikTok following to about 22,000. I was about 800 about five
months ago. Good engagement, a lot of trades people there
(32:39):
and obviously it was going to be shut down. I was like, shit, I've made
All this strides and momentum and now it's gone. So you're on rented land.
Like it is worrisome that things can be shut down that you have a massive
following on. So you can't put your all your eggs in one basket.
Otherwise overnight you can be shut down. But I think doubling
down and that's what I'm doing is, you know, going back to YouTube and
(33:01):
creating more long format type content like this podcast and
doing more informational type videos about the trades and
stuff related to our own business. But if you're not doing that, you're going to
be passed by. You really are. That's exactly right, buddy.
And we're going to see so much upheaval and
disruption occur because of the amount of change that's
(33:23):
happening with today's buyer. And again, going back to.
That's why I feel like endless customers is important
for today's blue collar worker contractor.
I don't want you to be left behind. My dad was
a builder growing up and he filed bankruptcy. And I remember
as a young man, I was probably 12,
(33:46):
I was out in my backyard and my dad's work
truck was next to the garage and some man
walks into our yard, he gets into the truck
and he drives it away. I said,
what just happened? Why is that man taking your truck? Dad,
(34:06):
See, that's the bank. I said, well,
it really hit me, you know, And I said to myself,
throughout my youth, I was constantly the one that had to answer the
phone because back then we didn't have caller ID
and it could be the credit card companies calling. So these things
left a clear impression on me, Andrew, which was,
(34:30):
I want a life of financial peace. I watched my parents
argue, argue, argue, eventually divorce, primarily
over money. And so if we can
create a life that allows us financial peace,
then I think that's one of the most beautiful things that we can do for
ourselves, for our children, for our families. Right. And our legacy.
(34:52):
To do that, though, you cannot continue to follow the same
rules that you've been given by everyone else in your space and expect
to get extraordinary results. You have to be willing to make your own rules. Because
remember, the rule breakers eventually become the rule makers and
everybody else becomes the rule followers. And that happens in every industry
if you're willing to be the one that speaks up. It's an
(35:14):
amazing story and I'm sure that left, you know, an imprint
on your life and you know, the way you do things and you go back
to a lot of people go back to the. An event of some sort. Or
some sort of tragic event of some sort, and they want to
do better, they change, they grow. So, I mean, thank you for
sharing that story because that's an impactful story. That's. Yeah,
(35:36):
it leaves a huge mark. Leaves a mark, man. Obviously, I'm very
grateful for all of that that I just said, because otherwise, I might
not have learned those things at a young age, and it might not have left
such an impression. Sometimes you have to go through that pain to
be the person you. You are today. You know, for instance, with me and my
backstory about wanting to be an IT technician,
(35:58):
I mean, that's really what I wanted to be. But I was down on 9
11, and I helped tradespeople and first responders find
survivors. You know, it's a tragic event, and that changed
me on my trajectory instead of just going into it is to really support the
men and women in the trades. Like, people have these stories, and you always think
it's like somebody else, but then it happens to you, and you're like, it changes
(36:20):
everything, but you're in a path that you want to be. In
that's very, very powerful. And, you know, it's like, look, you've got a story, I've
got a story. You know, mentioned earlier, be more human than others are willing to
be is one of the core pillars of becoming a known
and trusted brand. Part of that is the willingness to be
honest and transparent about your story. There's always what
(36:43):
everybody sees, and then there's the real story behind that.
And those things genuinely resonate with. With folks.
And it's like when I do business with, let's say, a contractor, I'm
not just doing business with him or her. I'm doing business with
their family that they're feeding. I'm doing business with all
the things that they touch. Their life is enabled by the business that
(37:05):
I'm giving them. All those things make a difference. They actually make a difference. Right.
You know, the quicker you can make personal connections with those that
you're potentially doing business with, the better off you're gonna be. This, again
is an argument as to why video is such a big deal. So why podcasting
is so great, Andrew. I mean, obviously, you're building a great brand for your
organization and making connections that you never would have made otherwise.
(37:28):
A lot of work. It's a lot of work, but you're doing the work and
it's paying off. I look at you on LinkedIn, I'm like, you know, that guy
does really, really well on LinkedIn. You're active there. You got a big following,
got a lot of engagement. You know, you're putting in the time, and it's really
impressive to see. You know, the other part of this is that what people don't
see is the, you know, it's not instant gratification, it's delayed gratification.
(37:49):
A lot of people don't want to put the time and energy. Look, it's a
lot of work, what you do and you speak across the country. It's a lot
of work, but you love it. But sometimes you don't get that
instant gratification. When you. When you and I had spoken prior, you had mentioned about
it took time for you to get speaking gigs. Right. You had to start
somewhere, and a lot of people give up at that point. But you didn't give
(38:10):
up. Right. A couple years in, maybe you got your first break
and then you got traction. People give up before they really take
off. Yeah, I mean, it's that classic, like, overnight success story that took 20
years. That's generally how it is. I, for my first
14, 15 years of owning my pool company, I never made more than a hundred
thousand dollars in a year. There's this phrase that you've
(38:32):
probably heard before. It's like, we often overestimate what we can do in a year,
underestimate what we can do in 10. Right. So in
2009, I'm like, looking at bankruptcy. I've never
made six figures in my life. By 2020, I was a
multimillionaire. That's how life can work, if
you work it. Obviously, I don't say that in any
(38:54):
form to say, look at what I've done
as like, you know, I'm awesome. It's just
that compounding effect of building a brand, of doing
the little things that can create this momentum
in your life. And it's beautiful. And, you know, if you believe
in, you know, compound interest, you ought to see the power of compound information.
(39:17):
It works the same way, and it's just as powerful in terms of your personal
brand and how your brand becomes worth something. Every time Andrew does a
podcast episode and does a LinkedIn post and does his
TikTok, it's like that is an investment he's making,
and that's compounding information into this, you
know, account called his brand. Now it's growing and growing and growing
(39:39):
to eventually, you know, you become
like they say at that point, you've built something really extraordinary. I
would just challenge everyone to think like that and to make sure, though,
that you're Getting over your own feelings, because that's where it gets dangerous. Well, I
don't like video, so I'm not going to do video. Doesn't matter. What does a
buyer want? No buyer's ever gone to your website and said, gee, I'd love to
(40:01):
see a video right now, but I'm sure they don't like video, so I'm going
to give them a pass. Right? That's not how it works.
And so we meet the buyer where they are. You know, we got to be
willing to say what others aren't willing to say. You need to be willing to
talk about things like pricing. You need to be talking about competitors. Not in a
bad way, just openly, in a good way, because that's what people are
asking. You need to be willing to compare stuff because that's what people are
(40:24):
asking. You need to be willing to do self service because that's what people are
asking. You need to be willing to call it what it is, call a spade
a spade, and be honest. Become known as that thought leader in
your space when other people are not. These are the types of things that you
can do. Let me give an example of this. We started doing pools
in 2001. The way a fiberglass pool was built, Andrew, was you
(40:46):
dug a hole, you put a sand base at the bottom, you put that pool
shell on that sand base, you backfilled around it with sand, filled it with water,
poured your concrete patio around it, and that is a pool installation.
And we said, this is dumb because sand
has problems. Sand settles, sand washes. Two
thousand years ago, the Bible said, don't build your house on sand. And yet we're
(41:07):
building pools on sand. Doesn't make any sense. And so we really talked about
it. We said, the industry's wrong. You should be building your pools on
crushed stone. And here's the reasons why it goes down compacted. You know,
it's much better backfill, much better base, yada, yada. Well,
when we started this process in 2001, about 80% of the fiberglass pools that
went in were done with sand. Today, about 80% of the fiberglass pools
(41:29):
that go in are done with crushed stone. That's what I mean when I
say, just don't sit back. You gotta be willing to stake your claim and
create your own ip. The competitors might say bad things, but
the world will respond because again, the rule breakers become the rule makers.
I feel like sometimes you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable,
right? So me putting out videos and content that I did, I always Had a
(41:52):
speech impediment when I was a kid. Like, I was always like conscious of all
that, you know, and turning the camera on. I was scared shitless.
And look, I get flamed online and people say this and people say that.
And some people give up because they don't want to hear from, you know, the
naysayers or the haters. And it's just what it is. As you rise
in fame and people get to know you, it's just they come out of the
(42:14):
woodworks. But for me, I'm doing it for a greater cause and, you know,
building a brand, just like you built your brand, but you have to be willing
to put the time and energy into it. It's not something that could be built
six months a year. This is like years, three years,
five years, even 10 years down the road to build something. Like you said about
your brand, if you can start a company and people know you, they trust
(42:36):
you. It's really, it's trust. Right at that point,
you built a trusted brand. They know you that whatever you're going to put your
name on, people are going to buy from you because they trust you. And the
need for that's never going away. Andrew, that's why you have to understand evergreen
principles if you're going to build something that scales over time. You know,
I've had a pool company for 25 years that's not as old as some
(42:58):
people's organizations, but that's a lot longer than a lot of pool companies make it.
Trust me. And I suspect we're going to have it a lot longer because
we're going to continue to lean on that because we know trust is that one
thing that regardless of what happens with AI, regardless of what happens
with the economy, with technology, that it's going to be pivotal
to our success as we move forward. I just want to quickly pivot over
(43:20):
which it's interesting you shared that your father was a builder. You
know, I was trying to understand sort of your connection to the blue collar world,
which I didn't realize that your son is an electrician. And I saw you did
a post and you said that at 12 he had his own workshop. At 14,
he was working part time. 17, he had a full time gig and now he
runs his own truck at 21. That's freaking awesome. Yeah, it's amazing.
(43:42):
And here's what's wild. When he was 17,
I said, My son's working full time as an
electrician. And I said this on Twitter and I said,
he will be making six figures probably by the time
he's 21, 22, 23 years old, and he's
gonna have no college debt and he's gonna have an extraordinary life and he's
(44:03):
never gonna look for work. And somebody on Twitter said, and
I'll never ever forget this. Yeah, but he'll still just be
an electrician. And I thought, oh, you little
sob. It goes back to when I
opened my pool company with my two business partners. I was right out
of college and I was at a family event and somebody said
(44:26):
to me, she said, marcus, I heard you're gonna be a pool guy. I said,
yeah. She said, what a waste. I was
so flabbergasted, I didn't even know what to say.
And of course, there's been a few times over the years where I've had Toby
Keith ringing my ears. How do you like me now? Because I will
travel around the world and people will come up to me like, yeah, that pool
(44:46):
guy that wrote they Ask youk Answer, right? Yeah, that's me.
So do I have an affinity towards the trades? You better believe it. I think
they're the backbone of the economy. And I also think
what's really wild now is that we thought AI
was going to hurt blue collar. No, no, no, no. AI
is hurting white collar. Blue collar is going to have a much longer
(45:09):
road in terms of like a Runway before AI.
You know, I don't think you're going to see a lot of, you know, optimus
robots in your crawl space anytime soon. I don't
anticipate that anytime soon. Could it happen in a hundred years? Yes,
but I don't expect it happening in the next 20 years. I think a lot
of your white collar friends are going to be looking at you like, man,
(45:30):
you are right. I'm sitting here levied with debt from college
and I can't find a job, you know, within my white collar space.
And you're just sitting there, you know, running this incredible plumbing business
or whatever business, and you're happier too. It's
also interesting to me, Andrew. I own a, like an agency
coaching company with 45 employees. And I got a pool company.
(45:53):
I had like 45 employees during COVID too. So I had these two companies during
COVID One all like blue collar non college
graduates. The other one, white collar, all college graduates.
Guess which one had all the like, mental health problems during COVID And guess
which one was like, had the happiest employees and just didn't really
skip a beat during COVID There's something magical
(46:15):
about the Trades in that regard. I'm sick and tired of people
giving it a bad rap. I'm not micro, but I want to do
my part in the conversation and I'm going to continue to
be a part of it for as long as I possibly can. Yeah, that's great
to see that your son is pursuing something. Obviously, you know, he's good
with his hands and you know, he's in a unique opportunity to do
(46:38):
extremely, extremely well, as you even stated. And you know, the amount of
different trades that we need, whether it's electricians and welders and carpenters.
I'm not going to spew the statistics with you, but good place. There is a
heavy disruption across the board when it comes to white collar jobs and AI. And
I see it across the board. I mean, I'm having discussions with
AI, even like financial stuff where I'm loading in
(47:00):
my financials, I call my accountant. I can just, you know, AI can
just give me all that information and you compound that by a
lawyer or other, you know, types of people
you would go to. Typically AI is going to completely
disrupt that across the board. And I think blue collar in the next
handful of years. And you could already see it with Gen Z
(47:22):
that the Wall Street Journal said that they're becoming the tool belt generation. It
really is that they are really looking at college versus a trades
path and some of them are choosing the trades. I go down to a
show called Skills USA in Atlanta and
there's 6,500 kids who compete against each other in welding and
carpentry. I mean that's like the future generation of like
(47:44):
tradespeople and it's thriving and there's
advocation there, advocating for the trades. It's super exciting
where the trades are going. The old adages are still there, but it's changing
through social media and it's an exciting time and I think your son is in
a great position. Every kid's gotta make that decision if you wanna sign
on that dotted line and, and take that huge loan. But it's really, you
(48:06):
know, you've gotta decide if it's right for you. But the trades is an option
and you can make good money and you don't have to go into debt.
Now the tools of the trade. I could
literally ask you questions for the next hour, but obviously this podcast is
only about 45 minutes. This was an amazing conversation,
(48:28):
Marcus, but in every episode we always ask our guests a
tools of the trade. If someone is just
starting their business today online, we touched upon this. What are
the crucial steps they should take to
build their brand. So if I'm starting now, tomorrow,
I'm. Going to be real quick about this. I'd start doing videos immediately.
(48:50):
Everything you do, every job site you walk on, I would just start doing videos
of it. That's number one. Number two, I'd have a pricing estimator on your
website that's gonna get you whatever people do come to your site,
they're probably gonna convert and so get that PriceGuide AI
number three. One of the most important things that you can do, we follow
this rule newly something that we've evolved with my swimming pool company
(49:12):
and I'm now teaching it to a lot of other businesses is the five minute
rule when it comes to all leads. Speed to lead is everything in the future.
And if you will call your leads within five minutes
of them reaching out to you, there is a 900% greater
chance that you will have a conversation with them than if you wait
30 minutes or later. So be
(49:36):
obsessed about when you get a lead, call the
lead that second and it'll make a huge difference for you.
That is great advice. Videos is that's today people
want to see you. You have to put yourself out there. You have
to kind of get over the fact of being on video. A lot of people
don't want to do that. But being on video, taking video of the job site
(49:58):
a day in the life of what you're actually doing, I do see a lot
of people who are actually live streaming their job.
They're just literally just on TikTok, just live streaming, which is great. The
pricing estimator. And that's where it's going today. No one wants to wait for a
price. I mean if you're going to wait for a price, someone's going to the
next company. And also the five minute leads, we do that as well. Like
(50:18):
immediately a quote comes in, boom, within five minutes. I'm calling the
potential lead at that point and sometimes it converts right
then and there. So I think speed is everything. So where do people find
you on social media website if they want to go down that rabbit hole to
find out more about Marcus? Yeah, biggest recommendation I'd have. If you've
enjoyed anything I've said today is go to endless customers.com
(50:40):
and get the book. And the book will have if you follow it. I mean
it's a system that will have an extraordinary impact on your brand and on
your company. That's number one. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Connect with
me on LinkedIn. I'm very good on LinkedIn, Andrew, you know is too.
So if you're not connected with both of us, you should be. I'd say those
are the two things. But make sure you go to endlesscustomers.com yeah, definitely.
(51:01):
Check it out. Check out Marcus's new book that's coming out. Marcus, thank you
so much for being on the show today. My pleasure and thank you to our
listeners. If you want more valuable insights and trades related information, head
over to andrewbrown.net and join our Trades Movement newsletter
where we advocate for the trades, we share inspirational stories. Like
Marcus, we provide resources and you join a passionate
(51:24):
trades community. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss
another episode. We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the Lost Art of the Skilled Trades. Visit
us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips.
Join us next time for real stories. And meaningful initiatives
(51:44):
as we celebrate our men and women in the skilled trades and shape
the future together.
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