Adapt or Die: AI & Content Marketing for Contractors with Marcus Sheridan

Welcome to The Successful Contractor powered by CertainPath, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. For more information on how CertainPath can put your contracting company on a certain path to success, visit our website, www.mycertainpath.com. I hope you enjoy today's show and take away a nugget or two.

You don't understand human psychology because this, this idea of obsessing over your buyer's questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, and then leaning into those through text, through video, it's so obvious.

Either way, you're getting them into the top of your funnel, which is what the goal is with that estimator.

We need leads.

Yep.

And the number one reason why businesses die is because they don't have enough leads. And everybody I talk to, 2025 says I'm spending more than I've ever spent on Google and seeing less results than I've ever gotten. So this is only gonna continue, especially with what's happening with AI. You know, if you look at only 60% of all searches on Google end in a click at this point, which is crazy, right?

Yep.

I mean, it's massive disruption. It's all the reasons why I wrote Endless Customers and why I'm like continuing this message. One thing I would recommend to everybody that's listening, AI visibility is gonna be massive for you in the future. And if AI is not recommending your business, you could be in trouble.

Marcus, thank you so much for being here. Greatly appreciate it.

Yeah, brother.

For those who have not seen you speak or read your books, kind of share with everyone your name and what you do exactly.

Yeah, Marcus Sheridan. Today I am a speaker, author. That's what I do full-time, but I do own 7 businesses currently. I'm very involved with all things sales, marketing, leadership, and how to become more known and trusted. and where AI is taking us.

Yeah, very good. And you spoke with our crew today at our CertainPath Cabo event. How do you think that went?

Well, you know, it's fun because I told them from the very beginning I was going to be brutally honest and challenge them, 'cause that's why I'm there. 'Cause if they're not getting challenged, it means they're not growing. And I wanted to challenge them to think a lot more like a buyer, like their customer, instead of thinking like the business. And I think we achieved that. I know we had a lot of conversions in the room, let's put it like that.

Yeah, you got a little swarm of people around you afterwards, right?

Yeah, I mean, just, I mean, look, it's people. My goal when I am presenting, and I think anybody that's a leader, salesperson, whatever, doesn't matter, the goal should never be to sound smart. That's not what we're trying to achieve. What we're trying to achieve is communion with the audience and in that moment. Sometimes that's a one-on-one, sometimes that's a one-to-team, sometimes it's a one-to-prospect, sometimes it's a one-to-many, whatever that is.

Yeah.

So I'm not trying to sound smart. What I'm trying to do is, is say things in such a way that anybody can hear it, understand it, and say, well, why couldn't we do that?

Right.

And this is why a lot of times when you hear someone teach something new, speaker, whatever, you almost feel like there's like a delta between where you are and where they are.

Yeah.

I don't want the people to hear me and say, that guy's a genius. What I want them to say is, oh my gosh, that was so obvious, why are we not doing it?

Right. Right, right, for sure. And you have 2 great books. I want to dig into some concepts of those in a minute. But for people that watch this, listen to this, they always know I love learning people's personal journeys. I think a lot can be learned from that. So how about you? How did you originally get into the contracting game? Was that like something right out of high school?

Yeah, it's really interesting. I was— I had a job in the DC area right after college. I graduated from West Virginia University. with a degree in Spanish, of all things.

Really?

Because I was a missionary for my church for 2 years in Chile, and so I speak Spanish really well. And that was a quick way for me to hurry up and get out of college. And, uh, so I was working in DC, and I was already married. I got married young. My wife hated DC. I didn't like it. And so we decided to come back home to what's the area known as the Northern Neck of Virginia. And my 2 buddies had just started a swimming pool company. And they said, hey, we don't have anybody to run the retail store selling hot tubs and like chemical supplies. Would you be willing to run the store while we install pools in the field?

Yeah.

And I said, sure, until I figure out what I'm going to do with my career.

Sure.

And it just so happened that in about, you know, a few months' time, they said, would you become a partner, a third partner?

Yeah.

First I said, nah, I don't think so. And then they came back again, and then we agreed to it, and I became a third partner. And, you know, as they say, the rest is history. But it worked out for them, worked out for me.

Yeah, but it wasn't without some trials and tribulations, right?

Like any business does, but we had a lot. We had a lot.

Right. Yeah. What were some of those?

Well, the biggest I don't talk about very much is like our 2nd or 3rd year in business, we had a massive embezzlement. Oh, embezzlement is one of those things where you don't hear about it until you experience it, and then you mention it and you have a bunch of other small business owners say, hey, that happened to us too. Yeah, super common.

Yes, it is.

Especially with a lot of men business owners that don't understand financing very well.

Right.

And because of that, they give too much trust when it comes to the accounting side of the business to another person.

Right.

And so, investment is a huge issue. So we had one, this person really tried to financially burn the company to the ground. I had a lien against my house with the IRS because they filed the IRS taxes, but they didn't pay any of them. And I— she would go to the Every Friday to the bank saying, I'm going to pay our taxes. Yeah, she wasn't. Turns out she was using the money on a gambling addiction that she had.

Oh my.

So it was really tough. And anybody that's been through this knows that the IRS doesn't care if you've been stolen from. They have no mercy on you.

What led us to attend the event today, we've been watching the CertainPath podcast on YouTube for quite some time, and it just had a lot of good content. So we wanted to come and See what that content was live. Coming into this, I had no expectations of what it might be. I've never experienced anything like this before, but it proved to be a truly moving and engaging experience all the way around. My most powerful insight from this is that there are other contractors just like me, just struggling to make it, to figure it out, and it's wonderful to know that there's a network of people that can help support you and have your back. The most exciting thing to take home here, what we're going to implement, is going to be the call-taking and dispatching for profit. I can truly see from the coaches what the value of that is, and for us, that's going to be step one. I would recommend others come and experience so that they can find out what they don't know, to understand that they don't know what they don't know, and to be able to experience a community that's willing to help answer that question.

So that was the years basically 2005 through 2007, 2004 through 2007, in that range. So I'm just recovering from that. 2008 is like, finally we're gonna turn a profit, we're gonna go, it's like, it's all gonna turn around.

Yeah.

And then bam, later on that year, September that year, we see the, you know, The crash of Lehman Brothers, and it's just everything starts to tumble, and I'm like, oh my gosh, how is this happening? And by the beginning of 2009, I was pretty sure that we were probably going to have to file bankruptcy.

Right, right. What pulled you guys out?

Well, sounds terrible, but we didn't have a plan B. I was going to lose my home, my 2 business partners were going to lose their homes, and so what pulled us out really was becoming way more obsessed with the buyer. This was right during the time where content marketing wasn't really a thing yet, but people were mentioning inbound marketing. Like, I found on HubSpot— I'd gone, I'd learned about inbound marketing through HubSpot, and they were a new software company, right? And so I was like, this makes so much sense to me, I could do this. And so that's when I started this process of what we know today as Endless Customers, and now They Ask, You Answer. And I just said, hey, we're going to become the best teachers in the world when it comes to fiberglass pools. That was our main thing, fiberglass pools. And we just started answering questions and addressing subjects that nobody had ever done when it came to in-ground fiberglass pools.

Right. And because of that, you grew that business. And how big is it today now? Because you still have it with you.

It took off. It became a national manufacturer. And we have got dealers all over the country and became the first franchise of fiberglass pools of the US. It was all a crazy thing. I sold the manufacturing franchising side of the business, but I still own the original River Pools of Virginia.

Okay, got it.

Which is still a good little business. It does like $15 million a year.

That's great.

It's a good little business.

Yeah, that's fantastic. So when did you finally decide to put pen to paper and write your first book?

That was 2017, and it came out with the second edition in 2020. Endless Customers came out in 2025. I could have written The Ask and Answer before then, but it was just like, I just wanted to feel like it had baked out enough and I had enough case studies of other industries, 'cause a lot of people kept saying, you know, that, I don't think it's gonna work for my industry. I'm like, you don't understand human psychology, because this idea of obsessing over your buyer's questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, and then leaning into those through text, through video, it's so obvious.

Yeah.

And it works in any industry.

Right.

You just gotta be willing to do it. And, you know, to this day, I've been talking about, and I'm sure we'll get to it, discussing pricing online.

Yep.

For 15 years.

Yeah.

Still less than 10% of businesses do it. Today, on a group of high achievers, high performers, we had about 3% of the room that was doing it.

Yep. No, I believe that. I really do. A big concept in that book is radical transparency pricing. What are some other things people should be radically transparent about in their businesses?

The core of the transparency part is, is the thing that buyers want to know. What they want to know is what we call in the book the Big 5, and the Big 5 are the 5 subjects that buyers, you and I, are obsessed with, that we research before we reach out to a company. And we really have learned this on our own by attending the school of search. And, and it's funny, you ask somebody, what's something that you always search before you reach out to a company, before you buy a product or service? They'll say reviews very quickly. They'll say pricing very quickly. Nobody taught you this. You just learned it over the course of time.

Right.

So the Big 5 are these 5 subjects that buyers want to know about, but businesses tend to not talk about.

Right.

And that's where we have this like Paradox of wants, you know, this whole ostrich marketing effect. So what do buyers want to know about? Number one, they want to know about cost and pricing. They want to at least get a sense for pricing. They don't have to have exact pricing, right? People misunderstand that all the time, but they need to get a sense for roughly what is this going to cost, because that's the first question, right? Once somebody knows they need to buy something, yeah, literally the first question is roughly what's this going to cost, right?

Right.

If you don't answer that, you're closing the gateway of the buyer's journey. No bueno. So there's that. Second set of questions is fear-based questions, AKA problems.

Right.

Is it true that? Somebody told me that. I'm worried about. These are all the things that— it's like doubts. If somebody's thinking about buying a fiberglass pool, suddenly they ask, are they ugly? Do they pop out of the ground? Do they crack? So again, you can choose, do I answer that? Should I leave it up to somebody else?

Yeah.

Third member of the Big 5 is comparisons. We stinkin' love to compare stuff online. We're constantly comparing things online. Product versus product, brand versus brand, method versus method, option versus option, go down the list. Then we've got reviews. The thing about reviews is people want the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to reviews, not just the positive. And then finally, best. Best, most, top. Think about how many times have you gone online, you research best plus another phrase. Super prolific, right?

Right, right, for sure. So someone as a contractor, especially when you release this and content, you know, I know we'll talk video more later on, but back then, what should a contractor do to get kind of started to start answering those? Just blogs and social media? Yeah.

Well, first thing they want to know is like, okay, you gave me the 5 steps. What do I write about?

Right.

Best way to do that is you go to ChatGPT. And if you're listening to this, listen, guy, girl, whoever is listening to this, for the love of all that is pure and holy, get your ChatGPT account, spend the $20 a month, stop being lazy.

It's so good.

Start moving forward because this is our fiduciaries, business leaders and owners, to do this and to not deny the future as we're passing through it. Accept it for what it is and move on. And we're moving towards a future of incredible AI. And certainly ChatGPT is at the forefront of that in many ways. I built a what's called custom GPT, which is essentially it's a tool within ChatGPT that specializes in a thing. And one of the ones that I built is called Endless Customers Titles by Marcus Sheridan. So if you go to ChatGPT, you click on custom GPTs in the upper left, you go to the search bar and just search Marcus Sheridan. You'll see all the GPTs that I've built for you that a contractor could use right now. And one of them is a title creation tool. It'll create your editorial calendar in seconds as if I was your consultant and guide. Literally, it's using my brain, right? So it's like the titles it does, it's great. So that's your first thing. You get those titles. And then this question of, okay, how do I attack these? And where do I put the content when I've got it? Easiest way to do it for most people is to simply do it cell phone video style. where just you say, okay, for 2 hours on Tuesdays, I'm going to answer these 10 questions.

Yep.

I'm not gonna rush it. I'm just gonna spend the time that it needs, and then I'm gonna upload those or have somebody upload them, edit them and upload them to my socials, Facebook, maybe Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, right? So my website, my newsletter, whatever the thing is that you're putting out there.

Right.

And you just wanna, get so versed, so comfortable with video, and you can stack and be so efficient with video. Like I said, you could address in 2 hours, you could produce 10 videos easy that are going to benefit you and your potential customers for years to come. And with those videos being out there, AI is going to be much more likely to recommend you, and humans are going to be much more likely to love you.

Yeah, yeah. What types of content for a contractor should they be thinking about creating?

Well, I mean, if you look at the big 5, the first one is all the cost content. And when it comes to cost content, there is— you should have a pricing page for each service. And one of those custom GPTs I mentioned just now has how to build a perfect pricing page. It can help you create an outline for that.

Yeah.

I'd suggest you write it, but have it walk you through the outline and then just talk it out. And then you could Essentially create one because you want to talk about what drives cost up, what drives cost down, why some companies are expensive, why some companies are cheap. Really teach people how to buy. You can't expect them to be— it's not obvious to people what it is to, you know, work with a plumber and how much it costs. And this is— they don't necessarily know. People assume that they just know everything. They don't.

They don't.

And so you want to treat them as if this is, you know, this is something they're currently learning with you.

Hey friends, quick interruption while Marcus is talking about price estimators. We brought Marcus to our Cabo Connect event, and I'm interviewing him on our podcast because he's thought-provoking. He's the type of speaker we regularly bring to our CertainPath events. But before you rush to post pricing online, here's something important. Marcus is very clear in Endless Customers. You should never lead with price until you've earned trust. That means your website must answer what he calls the big 5 questions homeowners are already Googling. What does it cost? What are the pros and cons? How does it compare? What are the best options? And what do other people say? If you haven't created pages and videos that answer those clearly and honestly, you're not ready to talk about pricing yet. So start there, build that foundation first. Then when you're ready, we recommend working with Peaxy, a CertainPath vendor partner, to add smart pricing tools the right way. We love bold ideas, but they only work when they're grounded in trust, value, and strategy, just like Marcus says throughout this interview and in his books. You've got this. We've got your back. Back to the show.

One of the most powerful pieces of content you can produce is a tool. And not to necessarily jump ahead, but it's a self-service tool. And self-service comes from the stat that 80% of buyers today say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience.

Right.

So what that means is we don't want to work with salespeople until we're very ready, until we're confident, comfortable, informed, and we're not going to make a mistake. The way to do that is to offer self-service tools on your website. Self-service tools are some of the most powerful conversion assets you can, you can build. It's an interactive tool that allows someone to get an answer or take an action without talking to a human first.

Right.

So in the case of a self-pricing tool, That allows you to essentially— there's this tool on the site that somebody answers a series of questions like you would if they came up to you right now and said, hey, roughly how much is this project going to cost me? As the contractor, you'd say, okay, let me ask you these questions first. And then you'd say, based on what you just said, here's a range of what I would expect you to spend.

Right.

An estimator does the exact same thing. It's not a quote tool. It's an estimation range tool. And in the process As a result of doing that, you get leads. In fact, generally 300% more leads than you normally get. Another one is I would start, just for the video side, start sending one-to-one videos to your customers and interactions.

Okay.

For example, if you have a sales appointment, when you're walking up the driveway, if that person hasn't already seen your face and heard your voice, you failed them. You failed them. So send a video beforehand instead of an email. Send a video beforehand. Say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, just want to let you know this is what I look like so you can recognize me when I'm walking up your driveway. Also want to remind you, here's the things that we're going to cover tonight. Here's what the process is going to look like, and here's what we're going to cover. Here's the goal of our meeting together. Just by doing that, you make such an impression with the person.

Yeah.

They're not like you're You're bypassing some of those barriers to trust. I don't understand, like I asked the group today, and these are high performers, how many of you have a salesperson that is sending out one-to-one videos before or after appointments? Nobody said yes.

I was going to say, I don't hear it.

Nobody in the room. This is the easiest way you can separate yourself. The problem with so many contractors is they have this mindset of I need to save everything for the in-home visit. That is a very flawed mistake. It's certainly not following the golden rule, because that's not what we want as consumers, as researchers, and it's not aligning with the data that we have. It doesn't match the data. The data says if you want to get a mountain of leads, you give more on the front end so that they'll trust you more, so that they say, I want to engage you and I want to talk to you. It's really, really simple.

Yeah, it makes sense because we're hearing more and more, more bid shoppers, more bid shoppers, right? So what an easy way to differentiate yourself just with that little video, right? And anybody can do that.

Yeah, and it's like the problem with the bid shopper is they— the worry is like that, well, they get a bid and that doesn't set the standard of like what value is. If you build an estimator, yeah, this— the questions you're asking are as if you're in the home and you're saying, like, if I was a pool guy, okay, let's start with size. What size pool do you think you're going to want. Okay, and let's talk about options. What type of patio do you think you're going to want? Oh, you want to know more about concrete? You want to know more about pavers? Okay, I'll explain that to you. Whereas with the tool, it says click here for more information on pavers, click here for more information on cobblestone, or whatever that thing is. Like, it'll do that for you.

Correct.

So a great estimator is a great educator as well, and it increases the trust that moves them through that funnel so they realize, okay, it costs more, but I would want these options. The other guy didn't include this. This makes so much more sense.

Yeah. How critical is it for that project then to fall within that range?

Not.

Okay. It's actually not critical, right? Because, you know, people, as everybody knows in home improvement, budgets get blown every single day.

Yeah.

What matters, what's critical, is that you address their initial question. Roughly, what's this going to cost?

Right.

There's the roughly what's this going to cost, and then, oh, here's what it is now that you've said everything that you want.

Right.

They're not necessarily the same thing.

Yeah.

Now, is it, is it ideal that it's somewhat close?

Yeah.

Well, yeah, but you do it in a big range. Like the one I showed the audience today, it— the range that we gave them based on what they had said in the estimator was $110,000 to $160,000.

Yeah.

Now that's a big $50,000 range. But guess what? That is more than they're gonna get from 99% of the competition, right? For which they're grateful, right?

So either way, you're getting them in the top of your funnel, which is what the goal is with that estimator.

We need leads. Yeah. And the number one reason why businesses die, yeah, it's because they don't have enough leads.

Right, right. What's your thoughts on— it's, it's a, it's an upfront, right? It's not a finance price, because a lot of times we talk financing so much these days. The estimator is not ever in a finance price, it's the total project price?

I like to show both, actually. Yeah, yeah. In fact, if you do my pool website, you'll see that there's an estimated initial price and then there's your estimated initial monthly expenditure or payment.

Okay.

Because some people are focused on that, some people are focused on the initial price, you know, whatever it is. And that way you hit them both where they are.

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you then pivoted and wrote Endless Customers, came out earlier this year, right?

Right? Yeah, earlier this year. It was a USA Today bestseller. I wrote it because everybody was asking me when ChatGPT came out, what's this mean for They Ask, You Answer? What's this mean for websites? What's this mean for content in general? And what's one thing that's interesting about this is despite the fact that we have all the AI in the world that can quickly and easily produce all this content now, yep, you saw it today, who had Content about pricing on their website. Right. Any one of those people could have gone to ChatGPT and said, "Hey, here's my situation. I want to you know I want your help producing a pricing article," and they could have produced a pricing article in 15 minutes with AI, and it would have been good. It could have been still very very human, and but they hadn't done it. Why? Because the content that's most valuable generally takes the most courage to produce.

Right.

Because it puts you in a in a in a road that is less traveled. And you're thinking, well, nobody's ever done this before in my industry, or very few have done this, or geez, I want to save everything until I get into the home, which again, I just cannot be more explicit about this. That sales model of I'm gonna save everything for the home, that is going to die.

Yeah.

People are more annoyed by that by the day, and the reason why you know that is because you are annoyed. When people say— it's no different than if you see a car on a car lot and you say, roughly how much is it? And they say, come on into the store and we'll talk about it. You're like, oh, heck no, I'm not coming into the store to talk about it. Just give me a sense and then I'll say, okay, then I can come in and we can have the rest of the conversation.

Yeah, for sure. A lot of this is just trust. That's all these things. It's all of it. trust. So, and how has this evolved with consumers? I mean, just between the 2 books, I mean, do you feel like consumers have changed even more?

Consumers are even more impatient. The trust deficit has gotten greater. We don't know who to trust today. I mean, like, top to bottom, there's a huge general divide in the country about who to trust about anything. We don't know if we can trust brands. We don't know if you We can trust leaders. We don't know. And so when somebody says something that's outrageously transparent, it's like, wow, that caught my attention. I feel like I can trust that person.

Right.

Right? So there's such a need for this, a need to lean into it. The opportunity's there. People want to buy from those they know, like, and trust. That's never going to change, ever going to change. I think too what's sad is a lot of people think if I'm using technology, I'm using AI, it's actually going to decrease the human element of the sales process. And my argument is that if you're using it the right way, it will increase it. You know, I mean, people all the time say to me, man, I feel like I already know you, right? Because they've consumed so much of my stuff, right? Watch me in the videos, they've heard me on the pods, they've you know, read my stuff. I mean, that's, that's like, that's the essence of being human, but I'm leaning into AI as hard as I can.

Sure, sure. You talk about the 4 pillars of trusted brand to follow up on this. Would you mind sharing that with everyone?

Yeah, the 4 pillars that you read about in Endless Customers, the 4 pillars of a known and trusted brand are number 1, say online what others aren't willing to say. That's really the big 5, okay? Number 2, show with video what others aren't willing to show. That's also mainly big 5, plus there's other things out there, which by the way, I've got a custom GPT that helps you create video ideas of things that no one's ever shown in your industry before. Yeah, that would just like send huge shockwaves through your industry. And it's an awesome GPT. It's one of my favorites. It's lesser known, but it's freaking awesome. Yeah. The 3rd pillar of a known and trusted brand is sell in a way others aren't willing to sell. And the core to that really is doing the things like we've talked about, using the one-to-one video and the sales process. Doing the self-service tools, like I mentioned, like a pricing estimator, which is so powerful, and nobody seems to want to do them, but that's part of the sales process, right?

Yeah.

And it really creates that trust component for the person. So that's the third pillar. The fourth pillar is be more human than others are willing to be. And what's interesting, Bob, is when you do the first 3, You end up doing the fourth one because if you're doing the one-to-one video, if you're doing more video in general, if you're talking about others aren't willing to talk about, showing what others want to show, that's a very human thing. If you're more transparent, more open, honest, right, you're following the golden rule better than others are willing to follow in your space. Yeah, yeah, man, that's, that's very human.

And it's not, you know, when you talk about video, you don't want just the owners doing it, you want the whole team ideally, right? And then isn't that something you constantly call alignment day? Is that when you Is that kind of when you talk?

Yeah, we talk about that in the book. Listen, the biggest reason why— one of the number one emails I get is from marketers that say, I believe the stuff that you teach, Marcus, but my leadership team does not allow me to do this stuff. Alignment and buy-in are just huge. I tell marketers all the time, you live and die about like on your ability to get buy-in for that thing you want to do. Otherwise, you're not a very good marketer. It'd be like, be like an artist that when they, they paint, they can only use a few colors within the palette. So that's not, that's not really ideal. So yeah, you want to get everybody on the same page and address the issues, the what, the why, the when, the where, the how, the who.

Yeah.

Just like today, everybody came in that room saying, I can't talk about cost and price in my website. The majority of the people left saying, oh, absolutely we could, now I know how. But in order to do that, that segment takes me about 20 minutes. I know because I've done it hundreds of times. And I've tried to shorten it and it doesn't work. You have to walk someone through a journey of psychology and self-reflection until they realize, oh, son of a gun. So he's not saying I got to put exact prices, but he's saying I got to educate people to understand value because if I don't, somebody else will.

Duh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You also had this concept that I liked in the book about surfacing intellectual property. Do you mind kind of talking about that, sharing that?

Yeah, yeah. That means you got to the end of the book. Good job for that. Every company has IP, intellectual property. Oftentimes they don't realize it. Let me give you an example of this. When we were When we were starting to install fiberglass pools, we were taught to install them on sand. So what happens is you dig a hole and you put a base of sand.

Yeah.

And you set a pool on top of that and then you backfill around it with sand and fill it with water and you pour your concrete around that. Well, any dummy will tell you that you shouldn't build a house on sand.

Right.

Right? Can you imagine? We've heard that for over 2,000 years. Don't build a house on sand. sand. Well, pools were built on sand. We were like, this is problematic, and we started seeing problems. We would see settling issues sometimes, just like all types of issues. So we said gravel is the way.

Yeah.

Now at the time, roughly like 90% of all fiberglass pools were built on sand. This was 2001. So we started educating the world about the problems with sand and how you should use crushed stone.

Yeah.

And we just said, this is obvious, here's the engineering behind it. You should base it with stone, you should backfill it with stone.

Yeah.

And this way it won't settle, it goes down compacted out the gate. Well, I started getting calls from pool builders around the country saying like, Marcus, you're killing me here because this homeowner wants me to do crushed stone, but that's going to cost me $1,000 more in materials. I'm like, I'm not killing you. What's killing you is your low standard.

Right.

So you can do it right and do what's right for the homeowner, or you can do it wrong. Today, roughly 80, 90% of all fiberglass pools that go in are built on stone.

Right.

So we changed a whole industry. So that was our IP that we drove a stake in the ground to and said, this is what we do. And whenever I meet with a company, I say, what's something that you do that you might not even realize is important, but is A differentiator to you and everyone else in your space.

Right.

Right? So for example, once again with pools, here's a plumbing example. One of the mistakes with hydraulics of filter systems with pools is people in the past would use inch and a half plumbing.

Yeah.

Well, that hurts your hydraulics. You should always use at least 2-inch plumbing with an in-ground pool.

Yeah.

Nobody talks about that. We really talked about that and why. Lots of people use flex hose. The problem with flex hose instead of Schedule 40 PVC, flex hose actually has problems with termites in areas where there's termites. Believe it or not, termites eat through flex hose and eventually flex hose can cave with too much weight. And so Schedule 40 doesn't do that. It doesn't have that problem. Termites can't eat it.

Yeah.

So it's again, like it became our standard. And that became an industry standard, but that started as our IP.

Right, right. And it's by recording videos and showing people that. Very simple.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is also what allows you to charge so much more than everybody else because we are clearly the most expensive fiberglass pool provider.

Right. And it increases trust, right? They know, like, look at how—

It comes to the same thing.

Exactly, exactly. Video doesn't have to be hard. I think a lot of people get— I'm sure that you face this, see this all the time.

Very much overcomplicated.

Yeah. So it's just as simple as just using an iPhone, right? And just go ahead and just shoot some video and get it out there. Hey, let's be honest. If you're listening or watching to The Successful Contractor, you're looking how to get better, more revenue, more profit, more time, a happier team. You're a self-starter, an avid learner, all great things, but you can only learn so much from a podcast. That's why you need a coach, a system, some accountability, a network of 1,200 contractors. industry-leading training, all that and more, you need CertainPath. At CertainPath, we offer a free discovery call with a CertainPath coach. It's real one-on-one conversations with someone who can help you, help you get clarity, get focused, and start making real progress. At CertainPath, since 1998, we've helped thousands of service business owners in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing build companies that run on systems, not stress. Businesses that grow fast, and profitably, but also protect their time, their team, and their values. If you're working long hours, carrying all the pressure, or stuck at a ceiling, this call is for you. Our coaches have helped contractors go from $500,000 to $5 million, from $5 million to $20 million, and from $20 million to $100 million plus. Whatever your goal, CertainPath can direct you along a path to achieve it. So if you're ready for a real conversation with CertainPath, About your business, your goals, what's actually in your future. Go to the episode description and click on that link that says book your free discovery call. You don't have to figure it out all alone. You just need a proven path and someone who's walked it before. That's CertainPath. Book a discovery call now.

The hard part for a lot of people is the editing and uploading.

Right.

And so here's what I do as an example of one of my videographers. I can shoot whatever I want with an iPhone. easily, or I get somebody to shoot me with it. And I would recommend that you have a lav, a mic that is not just your standard one on your iPhone, although you can do it if you're close up. But I would, I would actually get a nice mic that adapts into your iPhone. But you can get a video editor full-time in the Philippines for $1,500 a month.

Yeah.

It's working 40 hours a week, right? That edits all your videos, uploads all your videos to social, And handles all that stuff that you're like, I don't have time to do the post, right? I don't have time to make the edit. Okay, get somebody. $1,500 a month, right? Tell me you don't have that. I think you do. I have a Philippines video editor. He's living like a king in the Philippines. He's loving it. I'm loving it. We're both happy. It's a worldwide economy at this point. Yeah, so why would you not do that, right? It's a good, good way to do it.

Are there any other common adoption, you know, mistakes? Yes, or people that just— I don't want to do it because this reason, and you know.

Well, a lot of people say I'm just not good on camera. I call total BS on that because if I said to any of those same folks, would you say you're good when you get in front of the customer? Yeah, everyone would say, yeah, I'm really good with the customer. Yeah, well, that's what the camera is. The problem is you're seeing it as a camera, not as a customer. Stop seeing it as a camera.

That's good.

Start seeing it as a customer. When I see the camera, just like right now, it's like I'm thinking about the person on the other side. I'm talking to— sure, I'm talking to you, Bob. I'm talking to the contractor. That's who I see in this conversation. And so I know how to make my flow in that direction. So that's a very important part of it. I think another mistake people make is they try to sound smart. I said that earlier.

Right.

Don't try to sound smart. The moment you try to sound smart, you start to look dumb. Dumb it down. I mean, really, don't look to look and sound intelligent. Look to be understood.

Sure.

That should be the goal. Another one is what we call the no-stop rule.

Okay.

It's basically this. If I said to anybody that's listening to this, have you ever been in a home selling your service and said, oops, I messed that up, let's start the whole thing over again?

Yeah.

Like, you've never done that before.

Right.

Well, then why do you do that on camera?

Right.

So when you're in the home, you follow the no-stop rule. If you mess up a word, you keep going. If you jack up a sentence, you'll fix it in the moment, restate it maybe, and then you'll keep going. If you say a question wrong, you'll rephrase it.

Yeah.

So you're following the no-stop rule.

Yes.

And you have to do the same thing when it comes to video. So we just tell people, like, when you start the video, no matter what, your mindset is, I'm not gonna stop here. Like, no matter what, I'm gonna finish this.

Right. How do you get— and I kind of brought it up earlier, but I wanted to circle back— to get the buy-in from the team, like technicians or call center, like to get them to start producing content, right? That's a problem. It is, right?

That is a problem. Generally, that goes back to the alignment day, which is you want to— what works the best, and this bothers people sometimes, but it's true. There's an old phrase that goes like this: you can be a prophet to the world, but nobody will listen to you in your hometown.

Yeah.

So if you're head of marketing, or if you as the leader say, hey, here's the vision, here's what I want to do, I want everybody to start answering questions, and we're going to talk about pricing and da da da da, people are going to give you that Right. Because you're not world-class at influencing people on how to shift their perspective on this.

Right.

So you bring somebody in that does it. Like, I do that. I have a team that does that. And again, sounds self-serving. It's not. It's just like, because if I go— if my kids say, Dad, what do you think about this? I'll give them an answer like, I don't know about that.

For sure.

Like, people pay me money. No, doesn't care. You're my dad and I'm familiar with you.

Yeah.

See what I'm saying?

For sure.

It's— we're all like that.

Yes.

Right? So it's that law of familiarity that hurts us in those situations. If you want to get buy-in, you either need to bring your team to an event like we had here.

Yep.

Okay, or you need to bring someone to you.

Right, I like it. Any fun signature stories of people you know, companies you know that have implemented implemented this and where they've grown because of it?

Man, I got, I mean, literally, I got loads of stories. I wish I had never charged for consulting and said, I'm only going to charge you for how much more revenue, you know, like literally performance-based, because I would own like all of, you know, Cabo at this point with the We did some math on this. It's over $1 billion in impact that They Ask, You Answer has had with companies, way over $1 billion. One of the stories I shared today was from the great Steve Sheinkopf at Yale Appliance. The gutsiest thing he did, he created— he kept getting the question, what appliance brand do you fix the least?

Yeah.

Because people hate it when their appliances break, especially your refrigerator freezer. And so he creates a list, an annual list now every year, that shows all the brands he sold from the previous year, the total units he sold for each brand, and the total number of service calls he ran for each brand. So therefore you learn the least and the most serviced brand that he sells.

Right.

Which is wild, right? Annoyed the crap out of his vendors.

Yeah.

Because they're like, oh, I can't believe you threw us under the bus. Like, it's the data. Do better.

Right.

That's what he said. But that article and video series, which he now does every year, gets millions of views.

Yeah.

And he is, you know, he went from $30 to $150 million in revenue.

Yeah.

He's just incredible. And I just have seen so many that are like this. I mean, not an event goes by now where somebody will come up to me like, hey, I started doing this 3, 4 years ago, completely changed my life. You know, I have, you know, a life of financial peace now.

Yeah, I love it. I'm just thinking it probably drives lead costs down too by doing a lot of this. It's just stuff, yeah, you're paying for someone in the Philippines or some editor, but with how expensive Google is now, I mean, my goodness.

That's the thing. Everybody I talk to, 2025 says I'm spending more than I've ever spent on Google and seeing less results than I've ever gotten.

Yes.

So this is only going to continue, especially with what's happening with AI. You know, if you look at only 60% of all searches on Google end in a click. click at this point, which is crazy, right? I mean, it's massive disruption. All the reasons why I wrote Endless Customers and why I'm like continuing this message. One thing I would recommend to everybody that's listening, AI visibility is going to be massive for you in the future. And if AI is not recommending your business, you could be in trouble. I created a piece of software which is the most powerful and the most cost-effective AI visibility tool on the market today, bar none.

Yeah.

There's nothing close to it. It's called aitrustsignals.com, and it allows you to get a free score as to what your AI Trust Signal score is based on 19 signals that AI uses to recommend your business.

Interesting.

And there's a free and a pro version. The pro version basically gives you an in-depth analysis of the action items to take for each one of those signals, and then you receive an update each month and tells you how you're trending, up, down. and the new signals that are coming out, because new signals are coming out all the time with AI. As AI evolves, the tool evolves with it. So it's $10 a month, but it's a game changer. AITrustSignals.com is the name of it. If you use it, you'll see very quickly, oh, I got a problem. A lot of people in the room today scored like a 50, 60 range, which is not good because that means as more and more people are shifting over to ChatGPT and AI, less and less using Google.

Yeah.

I mean, if AI is not recommending you, because it's not like there's going to be 10 blue links for them to choose from. Yeah, it's just going to be like 2 or 3 answers.

Yeah.

Hey, I recommend these companies and there's only 2 or 3 of them. Right. You know what I'm saying?

For sure.

That's going to be— it's going to cost a lot of money to some of these companies because they're going to be sleeping on AI visibility.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to using that tool myself.

Yes, that tool is awesome. Yeah, it's, you know, it's in V1 right now. It's only going to get better. But I've already had like major companies approach me like, this tool is amazing. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it. Uh, you spoke today, but we're gonna have you come back in the spring in Mohegan Sun, Connecticut. Uh, what kind of topics do you think you'll be covering there?

I'm sure I'll be talking about AI. Hopefully I'll be talking about transformative communication, which is one of my most favorite topics that I didn't get to really address today.

Yeah, because we'll have a lot more sales— we'll have salespeople and technicians will be It'll be really fun.

Yeah.

Uh, how, how valuable is it being like in organizations like this for contractors? CertainPath, you know, the community. If you're not on your—

Bob, don't get me started. Yeah. Everybody needs an accountability partner or partners. Everybody needs a coach, period, full stop. Yep. My millionaire and billionaire friends all seem to have coaches for some reason, right? It's not an accident. Yeah. Everybody needs to tell you When you're screwing up, everybody needs to hit you with two by four truth. And so many businesses are just reinventing the wheel over and over again. That's why there's power in community. And when you step away from the business and you're not in it, you can work on it.

Yep.

You must if you're listening to this. If you're not involved in some type of community or mastermind, you will never reach your potential. It's called the Law of the Lid. John Maxwell wrote about this. I'm sure you're familiar with that, right? But you will only rise to the sum of your 5 best friends or your 5 best, in this case, business acquaintances or partners or members that are, you know, with you in these, you know, these groups. So what CertainPath is doing is really special. And, you know, today was my first I love it.

I love it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for your time. I know it's been a hectic 24 hours for you, so, but I really appreciate it.

Yeah, that's why God put me on this earth, so I'm happy to do it.

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