Marcus Sheridan
Appearances
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You have to start thinking like a media company. I do not care how big or small you are. Every single job that you do is a litany of videos that you could be doing. And video is our future for home services, home contracting, etc. It is now a video first industry. And there's a very strong argument that your YouTube channel will be more important than your website in five years.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And so I know that was a lot right there, but this is something I'm thinking about all the time. And I think a lot about it for these blue collar businesses that are wondering, why is it changing? But I don't know exactly what's happening.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You know, my son is 21. He is getting his journeyman's probably within the next 60 days. Has zero debt and is going to be making six figures probably within the next year. I mean, he's on that trend line. Life is great for him. And I was thrilled when he said, I'm going to be an electrician.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Yeah. So you mentioned a few different things there about commoditization of products. I got to say this, another disruptive thing. Let me give you another just example that I think is interesting and that a lot of folks listen to this. I would say, are you brave enough to do what I'm about to tell you to do? All right. Are you brave? Do you have the courage?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So let me tell you about Steve Sheinkopf. I started Endless Customers, the book, with Steve Sheinkopf, his story. Steve is the CEO of Yale Appliance in Boston, Mass. They sell kitchen appliances. So the thing about kitchen appliances is over the years, they haven't been built as well as they used to be built. No, they're not. And they're breaking down a lot.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
The number one question Steve was getting was, was, so of all these appliances you sell, which one do you fix the least? Now, Steve came to me some years ago, and he was saying, I started to read your stuff, Marcus, and I felt like I was kind of doing it, but I'm looking at my traffic, I'm looking at my leads, and I'm just not getting the growth.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And I looked at his stuff, and I said, yeah, Steve, you're not doing the system the way it should be done. You're not obsessed with what your buyers want to know. You're not really listening to them. And so we said, okay, okay, I'm going to listen. And he became one of the greatest students I've ever had. Tell me. What's that?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, you're a TBD. I want that. You're a TBD, Tommy Mello. I got a feeling, though. Okay, so here's what happened with Steve. He kept getting this question about what are the least serviced kitchen appliances. Now, you sell more than one garage door brand, correct? Yeah, manufacturing, yeah. Okay, all right. So he sells a multiplicity. I mean, you know, Bosch, GE, just go down the list, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
His dilemma was this. If I tell the world what I serve as the least and they see all my brands, it means I naturally have to throw some under the bus, right? Yeah. We talked about it. He's like, so I can make my OEMs, my manufacturers happy, or I can make the buyer, the customer happy. Which one's paying my bills?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
See, a lot of people would never do anything to even ruffle the feathers of the OEM or the manufacturer or the supplier or whoever that is. Steve said, no, no, no, no. I'm all in. I'm obsessed with the buyer. So here's what he did.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
He created a series of articles and videos that were, for each year since we came up with this idea, the least serviced, most reliable kitchen appliance brands of that year. Okay? Now, here's where it gets really interesting, Tommy Mello, and let's see if you're going to be the student that you say you're going to be.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
What he did is he took every service call that he ran for the year, which is 34,000 service calls. Okay? 34,000. He analyzed every single one.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And on a chart for the whole world he published, every brand that he sold the previous year, the total units he sold for each brand, the total service calls he ran on each brand, and therefore you saw the least serviced brand that he sold all the way down to the most serviced brand that he sold. And did the OEMs, did these huge brands get upset? Of course. Yes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And what did Steve say? What do you think he said? He said make a better product. That's exactly what he said. Make a better product because that's on you. And so even this year, even this year, he published it again, and he says in the first line, he said, this will be the most debated kitchen appliance article that you will read this year online.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And he does the same thing in video format, right? He's smart about that. Yep. And then he shows all of his numbers. What was the least service brand of 2024 or previous year? It was a company called Gaggenau, which is basically a Samsung product. A lot of people don't know about them, but they're a really great kitchen appliance. One of the worst that he sold this year.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Would you like to know what it is, Tommy? Just say yes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Okay, good job. GE. Now, this is how David wins again. Because... Who do you think has more trust in the marketplace? Steve Shonkoff, Yale Appliance, or GE? Steve is willing to go where no one else is willing to go. And because of that, he's the gatekeeper. He's the trusted leader. He is the trusted advisor. Pick any phrase that you want. But that's audacious. And many people don't roll that way.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And that's why they don't do extraordinary things. That's the way Steve rolls. And that's why he started off with me at $30 million. Today he's doing over $150 million. And this is in a time when everybody's saying kitchen appliances and retail in general is dying because Amazon's taking it over and you can't be successful. And Steve's like, y'all keep saying that and I'm going to keep blowing up.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And he's just crushing because he's doing it differently.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, somebody that's listening has got one in their garage right now. It's still rolling. They've replaced the one in their house like three times.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Well, the problem is, I think, lots of times in home service. You see contractors that do something every day of their life, and they forget what it's like to be an ignorant consumer, an ignorant homeowner, that doesn't understand the nuance of what quality actually looks like. You said something that was really important. You said, we gave it a name, called it the worry-free. Yeah, worry-free.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Right. So a big part of this is you've naturally done it or you've intentionally done it, but you've gotten it done, which is, Oftentimes, we are doing things as contractors that are special, that are unique, that are above and beyond, but we don't name it. Yeah. And it's a big mistake.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Everyone has IP, and you have to look at your intellectual property, the thing that you're doing that most contractors aren't doing, and you have to say, all right, sure, maybe 10%, 20% is doing it, but could we name it? Even if 50%, 75% are doing it, could you name it? Could you talk about it better than the other ones talk about it?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, there's so much going on, man. First of all, it's so nice to be here with you live. This is great. This is very, very fun. I think for, it seems like, you know, I've had river pools since 2001. So I was pretty much right out of college almost. And I can tell you in the last three years, there have been dramatically more changes in those three years than I saw in my first 22 years.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Because if you can do that, then you're going to start to get a lot more attention and people are going to say, I want that. Or they're going to say, I want to absolutely make sure that when we get our thing, it has that and you say the name of the thing. Just like I want to make sure my pool's on gravel and not on sand.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's pretty overwhelming.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Marketing has gotten progressively harder, but it's also gotten much more enjoyable.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Because you can be dramatically more creative today than when we started. Like when I started, it was Yellow Pages. It was all traditional, which was gouging your eyes out. I glorified the day they went out of business, by the way, because they were ripping so many home contractors and whatnot off big time. And then there was radio, which as soon as you stopped it, it stopped working for you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I'm not a very big fan of doing anything that the second you stop spending money on it, it just doesn't work any longer. Now, that doesn't mean I don't agree with doing paid stuff. It just means that I don't want that to be my only means whereby I'm building something. So with Endless Customers, Can I talk about the pillars of a known and trusted? All right, let me talk about something.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Just give people some context here because I want to give you a system that you can follow if you're obsessed with becoming the most known and trusted brand in your market. So that's the payoff of the system, becoming the most known and trusted brand in your market, which is important, Tommy, because if I said to anybody that's listening to this right now, if I said,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Is trust going to be fundamental to your business in five years? Anybody would say yes. If I said 20 years, they'd say yes. But if I said, is Google going to be fundamental to your business in 10 years, in 20 years? They'd be like, I don't know. It's a crapshoot. You see, Google is a platform. Facebook is a platform. All that other stuff is a platform. Platforms come and they go.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
That's always going to be the case. What doesn't come and go are principles. And so you build your models, especially how you market and how you sell and how you build your brand. You build it on principles. And for me, the principle that I'm obsessed with is the principle of trust. Because if they trust you, they just might buy from you. And that's what life is all about.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So how do we engender more trust? So within the analyst customer system, we talk about four pillars of a known and trusted brand. I'll give you each one, and then maybe we could break them down, because I think this is going to be super, like, utilitarian for your listeners, okay? First one is this. They all sound really basic, but then when you get into it, most people aren't doing them.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Number one, you as a brand, you've got to be willing to say online what others in your space are not willing to say. Say what others aren't willing to say online. Now, one thing that was true with They Ask, You Answer, and is very true with now Endless Customers in the sense that I wrote about it, and it's going to continue to be true, is what we call the Big Five.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And the Big Five are the subjects that every buyer wants to know. They research constantly before they reach out to your company. So if somebody is looking for a remodeler, if somebody is looking for lawn care, if somebody is looking for a roofer, they always research five specific things. And by the way, it's not just B2C. I mean, it's B2B. It's how we research stuff. This is a principle.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's extraordinary. The rate of change right now is like nothing we've ever seen. You know, it's interesting too, just from a general marketer's perspective, just to talk about that for a second, for 20 years, roughly, we didn't really change marketing very much. There was Google, there was search, there was paid, and we did it for the most part the same way for 20 years, and that game's changing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's not going away. As buyers and consumers, number one, we want to know all about cost. How much is the dang thing? In fact, that is literally the first question of the buyer's journey. Roughly, how much does it cost? Number one. Number two. As buyer's consumers, we're obsessed with what we call problems or fears or objections. In other words, Tommy, how could this go wrong?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
If I make this buying decision, how could it blow up in my face? Number three. Comparisons. We love to compare stuff online. Product versus product, brand versus brand, method versus method. We're constantly comparing things online. That's number three. Number four, reviews. We're obsessed with reviews, as you well know.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
But the thing about reviews, and my goodness, you guys have crushed getting so many reviews, dog. You've just been nuts on that. Well done. You could write a book on just how to crush on reviews. The thing about reviews, though, is we don't just want good reviews. We want the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
In fact, we've all gotten to the point where if a company has no negative reviews, it actually creates mistrust because there's doubt there. And then finally, number five of the big five is best. Best, most, top, etc. Okay? So those are the big five. Cost, problems, comparisons, reviews, and best. This is what buyers are obsessed with, and most companies don't want to talk about it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And that's a tragedy because that's what they want to know. And here's the thing, Tommy, they're going to learn it from somebody. So the question is, are they going to learn it from you, that video, that article, that thing that you posted, or are they just going to say, no, I'm out?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, so let me give you a few things. Let me just say this. Why don't we do this? Let's roll through the pillars real quick, and then I'll show you how to get started. Is that cool with you? Yep. Okay? So that's the first one. Say what others aren't willing to say. Number two, similar to number one, you've got to be willing to show with video what others aren't willing to show.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So I would ask you if you're listening to this right now, what are you showing that the majority of your competitors aren't willing to show with video? Okay? Okay. In conjunction with that, you have to start thinking like a media company. I do not care how big or small you are.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Every single job that you do is... A litany of videos that you could be doing with that dang phone that's in your pocket. Most of us are pushing back still on video, and that's a crying shame. And video is our future. Number three. By the way, for home services, home services, home contracting, etc., it is now a video-first industry.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So I'm thinking about that all the time. I'm constantly in the sandbox right now, which I think everybody should be. It's like your fiduciary, as you know, as a business owner, as a leader, to get in the AI sandbox and to learn a lot about it. I'm obsessed constantly.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And there's a very strong argument, and I know we can't even go down this road fully, but there's a very strong argument that your YouTube channel will be more important than your website in five years. It could absolutely happen. Prepare for it. Number three. You must be willing to sell in ways others aren't willing to sell.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We've got to hit that one hard in a second because that's one of my most favorites, okay? And that's one of the quick starts is to sell in ways others aren't willing to sell. And then finally, number four, you've got to be more human than others are willing to be, okay? What I mean by that, there needs to be a face behind the brand, your face if you're listening to this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
People buy from those they know, like, and trust. We've heard about that since the beginning of time. We don't want a bunch of just, like – you know, standard photos on your dang website that you got online or got AI. It needs to be your face, your team. Obviously, you all do a pretty dang solid job of that. Okay, so let's start with selling for a second.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Now, do you think that number is going down or up, Tommy? Up. It's only going to go up, right? And so what does this mean? Well, it doesn't mean that we hate salespeople.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It just means that we don't want to talk to a salesperson until we are good and ready, until we're confident, until we feel informed, until we feel like we're not going to make a mistake and the salesperson isn't going to take advantage of us, right? This is the mindset of the buyer. So if this is the case... You, as a business, have a choice. You can say, but I like selling the way it used to be.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Or you can say, I'm going to take advantage of the trend. How do we take advantage of the trend? Through what we call self-service. Self-service is the process of offering interactive experiences online that allow the buyer, the customer, to get answers that previously they would have had to have gotten through talking to a human. So there's five self-service tools that are going to change
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
More than I've ever been with today's buyer and how we connect with them how we earn their trust I think about that in weird ways and in ways that people do not I'm also thinking constantly about how we can break rules and industries and disrupt them Yeah, which I think there's plenty of opportunity there and hopefully we'll talk about that today because I could even like we could talk about some just like hacks that anybody could take and
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
entire home services industry i'll mention them very quickly here one a self-assessment a self-assessment is when you give someone a score that could be like what's the health score of your garage door right that's an example of it okay so that's self-assessment number two number two we got to have uh self-selection tools that's when the tool gives a recommendation perfect case in point.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Let's say you sell garage doors, and the person's saying, I'm not sure which type of garage door is the right one for me. Through an interactive experience they take on your website, they get a recommendation at the end. And at the end, they say, oh, that's the garage door I want. Perfect. And then when they meet with the salesperson, they say, I already know which one I want.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I took that little tool on your website. That thing was great. So it's no different on the Riverpool site. I've got one that literally tells people after they answer a series of questions, Tommy, It tells them what type of in-ground pool they should get. We recommend to people every single day that they don't buy a fiberglass pool. And that's all we sell.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We tell them all the time on our own website, through this interactive tool, based on what you just said, you should get a concrete pool. Ballsy? Yes. Trustworthy? Very much so. Okay, so that's the second one. Third one would be a self-configuration tool. Self-configuration tool is when you allow someone to build the thing. So hypothetically, they can build or design their garage door, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
This is going to be a really, really big deal in the future in this industry because it's a very, very visual industry. Okay? All right? Number four. This one is the one I want to talk about for a second because I'm so deeply passionate about it, which is self-pricing. I got a feeling you and I are going to have a long conversation about this one tomorrow.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Okay, so self-pricing is when you allow your visitors to get a general estimate of what they're going to spend before they have to talk to a salesperson. Now, let me break this one down for you, Tommy, then I'm going to get your take. Maybe we'll debate about this for a second. It should be fun. The first and last question of the buyer's journey are almost the exact same question.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Someone has a problem. In other words, they realize, oh gee, I need a new garage door. First question they have is... How much? Roughly, roughly, how much is this going to cost? Literally the first question. Now, what's crazy is oftentimes, if someone cannot get that question addressed, they can't continue in the buyer's journey.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
They don't feel comfortable because everything else is almost irrelevant until I know, am I in the game or not? How many times over the course of years, for anybody who's listening to this right now, has someone said to you, I'm not going to hold you to it, but just give me a feel. What are we looking at here? I mean, we're talking anybody that's been in the game hundreds and hundreds of times.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So that's the first question. Then they start their research. They start researching companies. They reach out to companies. They start to fill out forms or make phone calls. And then they meet with salespeople. And the last question of the buyer's journey, it's extraordinary. It's almost the same. And now it's exactly how much is this going to cost?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We start and we stop the buyer's journey with the same question, essentially. Now, what does a pricing estimator do? So I've got a company that started called priceguide.ai. And I said, this is a mega trend. And I want, I know where this is all headed. And I want contractors to have the ability to add a pricing estimator to their website.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So the data I'm about to give you is based on now hundreds of current users for this software that I started last year. And the thing is like catching on like wildfire. Here's how it works. It uses AI, of course, and any contractor can go to priceguy.ai and they can say, here's my business. I'm a landscaper, I'm a roofer, I'm a remodeler, whatever it is.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
if we're allowed to use that word, if you want to disrupt your industry and just really get known very, very quickly, I've got some ways for you today that are going to work every single time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And then the AI will say, okay, so if that's your business, here's some of the different services that you could offer. Which services do you want to offer? And then it selects the services and then the AI pulls up a bunch of questions that you would likely want to ask customers.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
the homeowner, so as to be able to give them a general price, like what's the square footage, what's this, you know, typical questions that you would ask someone to give them a range, and then you modify it yourself, and you put in some number variables, in other words, how that would impact the price based on their answer, and make a long story short, it gives you a snippet of code in less than 30 minutes, and less than $200 a year, you can have a working pricing estimator that you put on your website.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Now, here's the catch. Here's what's so extraordinary about it, Tommy. I've seen this over and over again in home services. If somebody puts this on their website, you will immediately see a three to 500% lift in conversions the day you do it. Three to 500% off of your existing traffic. Now, you're not spending almost any money here.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Can you imagine if you get five leads a week, let's say, to your website right now, and suddenly that five goes to 15? What type of financial impact is that on your business? And we're talking about $200 a year. Now, there might be some pushback coming here, so I'm preparing for it. But let me just say, you know a lot about software.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
The average SaaS product, software as a service, has a churn rate of 3% to 5% per month. That's normal. I've had this maybe out now for just under a year, and our churn rate is under 0.6%. And there's a reason for this. As soon as somebody puts this on their website, they start generating a crap ton of leads that they wouldn't have generated before.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
But one other catch to this, you have to show it clearly on your homepage that And you need to have a strong call to action that says something like, get instant estimate. Get instant estimate. So now, you see what happens is most home contractors will literally on their homepage have like,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It could absolutely happen. Prepare for it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Five CTAs that are the same freaking thing, and it says call for quote, call for quote, get your quote, get your quote, get your quote, which is almost like at this point the middle finger of the internet. This drives people crazy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And so instead of just saying, hey, call for quote, call for quote, call for quote, fill this form out for quote, et cetera, et cetera, now you're literally addressing that first fundamental question that they have, They're able to say, okay, I feel like I have a sense. And you can make it as rangy as you want. You see, you don't have to be specific. But you do have to give a range.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Okay, we'll go there first because there's just some fun things. Can I give my quick background just so people understand where this comes from? So I started River Pools with a couple buddies in 2001. Things were going okay for us. We were focused on mainly fiberglass swimming pools. Then we had the crash of 2008, 2009. look like we're going to lose the business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Because if you give a range, now you get the conversion. Now you've got the email that you can re-market, you can nurture. And now you're cooking with gas, whereas before you didn't have nothing. If most people realize just how many people they lose from their website, that they could have gotten a lead from simply because the only thing they had on there was call for quote.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
They would vomit in their mouth. It's that strong because they don't realize this, but yet it's been done the same way for so long. This is the norm in the industry. And one last prediction, then I want to hear your thoughts. And sorry for the rant. No, no, good. And that is this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Actually, I'm not sorry because I believe in this and I think it's extraordinary the impact that it can make on people's lives. Because I've looked over that cliff of bankruptcy and it's not fun. And I want to help people find that financial peace. And this is that serious to me. We've had so many companies do this now. And what's wild, let me give you one example.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I had a shed manufacturer in Scotland. that had been doing the Ask-You-Answer. They had pricing articles. They had pricing videos. They had a price list on their website, Tommy, a price list of their different models. And so they said, Marcus, I think I want to put price guide on there. I want to put that estimator tool on there.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I'm like, I don't know if it's going to really work because you have price lists, but okay, fine. Suddenly they have five extra leads from that day and it's never slowed down. In their first six months, they did over a million dollars in revenue from it. And here's what we realized.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Anytime someone does an interactive tool on your site, that's the key phrase, interactive, there's this thing called sunk cost fallacy. You're very aware of it. The more time they spend working with you... the more they're invested in you and the more they desire to find a way to work with you. That's the power of estimators. And man, they're changing the game. Final point. My prediction is this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
90% of all home services... are going to have an estimator tool on their website within the next five years. Mark my words. The question is, are you going to wait until everybody does it and then follow the lead because it becomes the norm in the industry? Because it's already happened in roofing. You're already starting to see it with some grass-cutting businesses. So you're starting to see it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's going to happen. It's going to be standard. Don't wait. Lead this conversation and don't be led by your competitors.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
The good thing about pain and suffering is it forces us to get outside of our comfort zone and say, let's just send it. That's when I really started to obsess about the buyer, about the internet. Make a long story short, we ended up doing a bunch of things that were creative online that were innovative and very, very disruptive. We became the most traffic-swing pool website in the world.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You see, but it's not about price. You just heard that and you took, it's about price. It's not about price. What it's about, it's about the person having a sense for roughly what's this going to cost me. There's a psychological need. We've got the data on it, Tommy. The second somebody puts this on their site, let's just play you're the homeowner for a second, okay?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We agree, by the way, that when it's a low research, high speed purchase, then estimators aren't very useful. We agree on that, so there's no use for that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
But when it's a new purchase, and I'm talking about for almost literally anything that's home improvement, because by the way, we are really funny about our homes, and the price of the thing is not so much the dictator as to whether or not someone will do the research, nor is it the major dictator as to whether or not they'll use an estimator.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
The major component that dictates how much research somebody will do and whether or not they appreciate something like an estimator or any self-service tool is their fear of making the wrong decision. That is the number one factor that dictates how much research anybody will do for anything. And so, with this being said,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We found, for example, with my pool company, that if somebody read 30 or more pages of our website before we did the initial sales deployment, they would buy 80% of the time, which is pretty extraordinary, right? If they didn't hit that number, closing rates were about 25%, which was industry average. Now, for a long time, people would say to me, yeah, but that's pools. No, it's not pools.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
In fact, somebody's listening to this right now, and they're debating between Samsung and iPhone, and they might have done like 100 pages online of research comparing the two because they're like, I really value my phone. And so we have to be very, very careful about what we say isn't necessarily valuable, but if it's going on somebody's home, it's very valuable.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Now, with that being said, let's say that you want a new garage, Tommy. You're not in the industry, a new garage door, excuse me. You're not in the industry, all right, and you have to get a new garage door. You know, it's broken, and you know you just want to get a new one. You don't want to get a repair.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Would you, if you were going to someone's website, appreciate it if they allowed you to get at least a sense for pricing as the buyer? So this is golden rule number one. What's funny about marketing is a lot of people don't believe in following the golden rule. But if I ask them, do you believe in the golden rule? They're like, totally.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And then we became the fastest growing fiberglass pool company in the U.S. We became the fastest growing manufacturer of fiberglass pools in the U.S. We became the first franchise of fiberglass pools in the U.S. And it's been an extraordinary ride.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
But then as soon as you say, all right, so let's look at this. And they're like, yeah, but... And usually the reason is we're afraid... that it's going to hurt our sales process because we've got such a special sales process that we're thinking That might hinder exactly how I do it in the home.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And what we see happens every time is I've got a lot of contractors now that use price guide as a standard before the salesperson comes. They're like, have you done a price guide yet? And the person's like, well, no, I haven't. We want you to do the price. They're literally, they want them, which I didn't realize it was going to be used that way, which is crazy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Which makes you dang good. And you're one of the, man, I wish we had time to really go into sales training because I'm so deeply passionate about it. I just got to say one thing. Can I say one thing about sales training? Yeah. Just as a side note. I meet with sales teams all over the world.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
All I have to do is ask one single question to find out immediately what their sales culture is, like you know within one question. And the simple question is this, how often do you do real role play training as a sales team? That is the only question that matters. And I can tell you this, less than 5% of the home improvement industry does role plays once a week.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Less than 5%, which is a total tragedy. What does this mean? It means we're practicing sales on our customers and not on ourselves, which I think is a crime.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And throughout this time period, of course, I've started all these other careers, one of which is speaking full time to businesses, just like the people that are listening to this right now. The number one industry that I speak to is home services. That's why I'm so pumped about this, being on this pod with you, because these are my people, dog. That's right. Right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I think outside of the training side of it, the idea that you would walk up someone's driveway and they wouldn't recognize your face to me is a crime. Before you get to the home, if they haven't seen your face and heard your voice, you have failed them as a contractor. And you have put yourself in the same class as everyone else that walked up their driveway.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I can recall a time when, see, for years, I would knock on the door when I was a pool guy. And I would hear a kid in the background say, Mom, Dad, pool guy's here. For years, you know, kids were excited. Pool guy's coming. It's like Santa Claus, right? And then I started doing video very aggressively. And something crazy happened. This is a true story.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
One time after I started doing video, I knocked at the door and I heard a kid say in the house, mom, dad, the guy on the video's here. So that's what I was, the guy on the video. So I was like, oh, okay.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So let's talk about just some quick ways that you can disrupt. And I'm just going to take it back. I'm going to go way back in time for a second on this, because I think this whole conversation will probably have to do with a little bit of disruption.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And then right before the end, before I was, you know, like moved on from being the sales guy at River Pools and started doing all this other stuff, I heard a kid say, I kid you not, mom, dad, Marcus from the video is here. Yeah. that for a second. They knew my face. They knew my voice. They knew my name. That's a slam dunk. And that's the way it should be.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
No different than a lot of people have an attrition problem with appointments set. They lose appointments. So they set the appointment and then before the person can get out there, they back out.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
The easiest way to eliminate that attrition is by sending a personalized video from the salesperson. And the reason is because before that, the person is canceling on a company that they don't know and a person that has no story. But if you set the appointment, and this is what my sales team does, appointment is set, boom,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And immediately, they send out a video, that's a text, to the homeowner, introducing themselves, saying, my name is Marcus. You know, here's my quick story. I live in the northern neck of Virginia. I have four children. I am so excited to come visit you and talk to you about pools next Thursday at 1 o'clock. Now that person, when they cancel, they're not just canceling on a company.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
They're canceling on a father of four children. And it's different. And you'll see if you do that, you'll see that your attrition will improve dramatically.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
When we started installing fiberglass pools... Now, by the way, when I give an example today, for you as the audience, it is your job to hear the principle of what I'm saying and then apply that to your business, regardless of what we're talking about, because it's very easy for anybody to listen to this and say, but that might have worked for him as a pool guy, but that won't work for me, which, by the way, is the death of creativity and innovation in business.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Yeah. I want to talk with the guy on the camera. That's exactly right. To your point, though, we can't just throw our team on camera and suddenly expect them to be great. A little bit of training can go a long way, and it's just really, really simple things.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
One of the things that my company, Impact, does is we train organizations how to be world-class with their digital sales and marketing in-house. And we help them apply this endless customer system that we're talking about, which was they ask, you answer. And one of the things that we do within all this context is we train teams how to be better on video. Most teams are not trained.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Simple, simple little things can go a long way. For example, we have what we teach always is the no stop rule. And the no-stop rule is something that you and I are following right now, which is we know right now, well, we could stop, but we're not going to stop. We're going to move forward. When you're selling in the home, you don't stop. You mess up all the time in the home, but you don't stop.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Don't be that guy or that gal, please, for the love of all that's pure and holy, right? So... When we started with fiberglass pools, here's how fiberglass pools were built.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You're following the no-stop rule. And so if you ask a salesperson, Do you ever stop with the homeowner when you're doing your pitch? Like, well, no, I can't do that. I got to keep going. You stop with the camera. You go, oh, let's redo that. That's right. So what do you do when you're in the home? Well, I just move forward no matter what. Could you do that if we're on camera?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And they're suddenly like, oh. So you have to, when you're looking at the camera, it's literally like I'm sitting with the homeowner right now. We're following the no-stop rule. Another really, really simple rule that we teach with video is the three-second smile.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And I was watching you teach your team about the power of the smile in your training earlier, but the three-second smile is very, very simple, which is before you start a video, you start smiling for three seconds. You should be coming off of your smile and not going into your smile when you hit the record button. And so it changes your body too.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's much harder for you to struggle when you're smiling. It's just something powerful about it. So come off of your smile, three second smile. We have this big joke, right before we hit record, we're always saying, we're smiling, we're smiling. Like we always do that in studio because we're trying to create that right energy. Sounds silly, but that's how it works.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And the last thing I'll say about that, quickest way that you can start a culture of video with your entire team is you have them do one-to-one video with their own clients. That is how, because now it's not going to the world. They're sending it out to the team. It starts with the leader communicating with his or her team through one-to-one video. They see that you're doing it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You dug a hole, you put a base of sand at the bottom of that hole, you set a fiberglass pool shell on top of that sand, you backfilled all the way around that pool with sand and filled it with water, and then you poured a concrete patio around it, and you called that a fiberglass swimming pool. Now, any doofus knows there's one fundamental structural flaw with what I just described.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You're setting the conditions, the tone, the standard, if you will. Now the team starts to do it. You train them how to do it, of course. And there's so many tools out there and it costs almost nothing to send one-to-one video. You know, I've had email now for 25 years, and most people are still sending out text-based emails. It's freaking crazy, dude. It doesn't make any sense.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I mean, sometimes, yeah, text is fine. But lots of times, to your point, before you go on the appointment, for example, that should be a video. That should be a video. And if you're not sending that as a video, shame on you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
That's why they don't leave for another dollar an hour. That's the stuff right there. That's the stuff that galvanizes, man. That's awesome. And I love how you build systems around that, like the little things.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I saw about systems today.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I kept seeing it. I'm like, this is so good. This is so good. You could tell you're so system-driven. I love the vibe that I felt walking around your building today. It made me want to be a better person. And any time you walk into a building and you've got this shrine to Dale Carnegie, as soon as you walk in, I'm like, that was the book that changed my life. Obviously, it had a big effect on you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I found it for 75 cents at a garage sale, How to Win Friends and Influence People, when I was in college. That was the moment I fell in love with personal development. It just changed my life forever. And I've always thought, you've got to read How to Win Friends and Influence People once a year. Just need to do it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's amazing how timeless those principles are. If you haven't read it, if you're listening to this, please do yourself a favor and listen to it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Don't teach it to lie. Google was the first one to really screw that one up. Oh, yeah, like when you asked about what was the first one? Like the founders. Don't teach AI to lie. Here's a couple things about AI. There's still a lot of your listeners that haven't really gotten the sandbox yet. Not at all. Which is really scary.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Because we learned in some book 2,000 years ago that you don't build houses on sand, and you certainly shouldn't build pools on sand. But yet they're building pools on sand. And so what happens as a byproduct of that, right? So sand settles and sand washes. So fiberglass pools were moving and they were shifting. Nobody was doing anything about it. So we said, this is dumb. What is going on?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Everybody says, where do I start? Can I just answer that real quick? There's different answers to this, but here's what you want to do. Go to ChatGPT. And by the way, just do the $20 a month version. Yep. And just do it because it's worth it to you. Go to ChatGPT and say, hi, this is my name. I'm talking to chat right now.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So my name is Marcus Sheridan, and here's my business, and I want you to describe your business. And then say to chat, I don't know how to use you. What do you need to know to help me, and what questions do you need to ask? And then all of a sudden, it'll just go, and you go back and forth with it. Allow it to help you understand. to go through this process where it learns about you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And then you can say, so based on these things, how can you help me in my business? And now it'll just go. It is not, no matter what anybody tells you, it is not a tool. It is not something This idea of – here's the thing. I wouldn't say that – I was using my friend Tommy the other day, and he helped me to write a particular article because he's so good with copywriting.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I would say I was working with Tommy the other day, and he helped me produce an article that was much better because he's great at copywriting. So it's the same thing with AI. Stop seeing it as a tool. Start seeing it as a teammate. So if you had a new employee and you didn't know what that employee could do for you or how it could help you, what would you do?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You'd sit down with the employee and say, hey, can we have a conversation, please? Yeah, sure. your team member, and then you'd say, okay, so this is my needs. Could you help with that? What else could you do for me? Start seeing it as a teammate. Stop thinking it's a tool. It is not that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Well, I would say make sure you get the book, EndlessCustomers.com, or you can find it on Amazon. And if you get it, please leave a review. That means the world to me. I think you're going to love the book. It is a system that you can follow to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm a dang good follow on LinkedIn. I'm a baller over there.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And so look me up and connect with me. Message me. I will personally answer you if you message me on LinkedIn. And I'll give out an email here. Marcus at Marcus Sheridan dot com is my email address. Marcus at Marcus Sheridan dot com. I've got my email in my book as well. And I put it out there just because I tried to scale the unscalable, just like you do every single day, man.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And I started creating videos and articles that essentially said, there is a major problem with the way fiberglass pools are installed. And we put our stake in the ground. We said, this is wrong and it shouldn't be this way. We're the first company in the world to talk about this. At the time, over 80% of all fiberglass pools were installed on sand. Now,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So, Tommy, this was great. And what you've done is extraordinary. I'm very, very inspired by not just your story, by you and just like watching your team. I'm like, man, man, man, man, you... To your point, you execute. You take action. And that's the great difference is you're a doer of deeds, not just a sayer. And that makes all the difference, man. So thank you for this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We did this and suddenly I started getting calls, Tommy, from like pool contractors around the country. And they're saying to me, Marcus, you're killing me here because I got this homeowner that once they're pooled, installed on gravel, but it's going to cost me a thousand more bucks to get gravel instead of sand. And so like, what's going on here?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And I said, what's going on is the fact that you're settling on an inferior methodology to do your stuff and you shouldn't be. Make a long story short, the whole industry changed. because we spoke up. Today, it's a complete reverse of when we started. Roughly 80% of all pools, fiberglass pools, are built on gravel, some type of crushed stone.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So, one of the easiest ways that you can disrupt your industry, and this happens in almost every industry, and I'm sure this is happening in garage doors. There's something about the way a lot of people do garage doors, let's just use you as an example, that annoys the crap out of you. That you're saying to yourself, it shouldn't be done that way. Like, why is that allowed?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
There's standards that everyone who is worth their salt drives them crazy throughout home services. So, for example, and let's just see if you can come up with one now. What is something that happens all the time within the garage door space that drives you crazy? Maybe not every contractor does it, but a whole bunch of them do it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So that's the type of subject right there that you can just own it. You have to give it a name. You have to brand it. And there's a process here. But you can go after that. And then everybody is saying, so I'm going to get that strut thing, right? Like that strut thing. Strut technology that I was learning from you, that I was watching that one video, you're like, we're getting that right here.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And you're like, yes, yes, it's standard. But now the whole industry has to start to shift because you raised all boats. That's what the great ones do. And a lot of folks aren't thinking like that. But yet they sit there and they watch things all the time and they get frustrated with it. We, instead of just watching it, we did something about it. Can I give you another one?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Okay, so here's another one that we did. This is it, by the way. Some of these actually give us disruption prompts in Endless Customers, the new book. One day, Tommy, I was sitting there, and this was circa like 2011, 2012. I was in a grocery store, right? And I was looking at the magazines on the magazine aisle, and I saw that, you know that magazine Motor Train Car of the Year? Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
You know that, right? So I looked at that, and I said, you know what doesn't exist? Motor Train Pool of the Year. What if we created an award system for swimming pools? So this story is tripping, okay? Check it out. So what I did, and this was before our whole site went big, but this was part of the process of us just blowing up and becoming the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So I said, what if I... To make it clear to everybody, we were a simple pool builder, a dealer for a fiberglass pool company. We weren't a manufacturer at the time. So essentially, we were like a Chevrolet dealer, right? And there's... Just like there's about, you know, seven, eight major auto manufacturers, there's about seven, eight major fiberglass pool manufacturers.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So we were really, really small fish in this pond with these Goliaths. So I said... Why don't we create an award system where I give out awards to all the manufacturers, including the ones I'm selling against, for best fiberglass pool shapes of the year.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And so, for example, I did a whole bunch of research on all the different manufacturers, and I said, okay, just like you might have sports car of the year, I said, we're going to have freeform fiberglass pool of the year. We're going to have rectangle fiberglass pool of the year. We're going to have diving fiberglass pool of the year. And I gave out all of these awards, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
published them online, made a big fuss about it. Suddenly, okay, suddenly here's what happened. I was getting calls from manufacturers and they were literally saying to me, first off, they were saying, who is this guy giving out these awards? But they noticed the article started getting a ton of traction. Like the content was getting a ton of traction.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So like, okay, it's getting a lot of traction. People are getting noticed. They were getting calls about these different shapes that I had mentioned. And so now they started to reach out to me and they said, they said, Marcus, we think we have some shapes here that would go well in your awards next year. Would you come out to the factory and view these different models that we have?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So suddenly I was getting invites out to these places and I was just some 30 some year old little kid in their mind, but suddenly like I was having this influence. Then I was seeing, and this is the funniest part, major competitors on their homepage were, were telling the world that they had won an award for best fiberglass pool in class. Linking back, of course, to my website.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So before I know it, I'm just like getting all this traffic from these major manufacturers. And this is a classic example.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Oh, yes. And this is another way that River Pools just blew up. So this is a classic case of how does... The digital David slay Goliath so easily because you don't have a board where you have to sit there and get approvals for everything. You don't have a bunch of red tape. You can be fast. You can be nimble. You can be quick. I mean, it is when someone tells me, I don't know, I'm just so small.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Like, I just can't. I don't have this big board. I don't have eight people on my marketing team and I don't have this and I don't have that. I'm like, well then count your lucky stars because that means you have no limitations and you can just do stuff all day long and everybody's like, I can't believe you did that. And then that's how you make waves in an industry.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
We're in a time period where you've got to create what I call trust signals. And we can obviously get into this, but trust signals, because for 20 years, 20 years, like I said, we had to really make two groups very happy with us and recommend us. First off, the homeowner had to recommend us, right? That's been true. in the last decades and it's always going to be true.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
But then, 20ish years ago, for the first time, Search engines had to recommend us. Google had to recommend us. And we've been fighting that battle for more than two decades now. But suddenly AI comes out in November, 2022, and now there's a third party that has to recommend us, which is AI.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And the thing that everybody's sleeping on, Tommy, and the thing that worries me to death about all these home services companies that I'm meeting with all the time and are saying to me, yo, Marcus, I'm doing paid, but it's just not working. Like I'm spending more on paid right now than I've ever spent. I'm getting less results than I've ever gotten.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
I am working with an SEO agency, but I don't understand. I'm not getting the traction that I was getting before. Or my rankings are still decent, but I'm seeing less traffic as a whole. It's like, yeah, that's because everything is going towards you and I are going to be using either ChatGPT or some AI as our fundamental search engine that we search with in the future.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
And it's different when it comes to AI because the future of all these home services companies is going to be contingent on whether or not AI is recommending them, which a lot of folks don't understand right now because you're not going to be able to throw money at the thing and say, all right, I'll just spend more on Google Ads.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
Because what happens if we have a world where Google Ads don't actually work very well?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
What happens when you might rank in search, but it doesn't matter because, A, a lot less people are using Google search, and, B, even if you're ranked number one, you're so far down because they've got an AI summary that they have to see, and then they've got all these sponsors that they have to see, sponsored results, and then they've got related questions that they have to see, and then you maybe have a map that they have to see, and you've got all these things.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It used to be six, seven years ago, whoever ranked number one in Google search results is getting about 80% of the clicks. Today, that is not true because on many of these, you are buried down. And what this means, Tommy, is we got to do whatever it takes to create signals. We have to create signals and the world has to create signals about us, period.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
So when you have major manufacturers, for example, linking to you from their website and saying, hey, look, we won an award for best in class. That's very disruptive, but it's also a major trust signal. And that's going to be the future for a lot of folks. And that's why I'm glad we're having this conversation. That's also why I said I need to write Endless Customers because they ask, you answer.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan
It's extraordinary in a lot of ways. I mean, really, it's probably the best SEO strategy ever. ever like put down on paper for anyone that can, like anybody can understand it as an SEO strategy. It's like, oh my goodness, even though I don't use the phrase SEO in the book, it was extraordinary for that. But it didn't talk about AI. It didn't talk about where we're headed.