How to get Endless Customers For Your Home Service Business With Marcus Sheridan | Ep. 78

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be discussing how to get endless customers for your home service business with Marcus Sheridan. Thanks much for joining us again, Marcus.

Yeah buddy. I'm happy to be here, Phil, because things are happening and it's a good time to be discussing all these changes, man, because I've never seen change like this in the 25 years I've been in business.

Absolutely. We were just talking before we hit record that SEO. People that rely only on SEO are about to get thumped in the head because it changing in the next three to five years probably, and probably faster than that. So I'm really excited to unpack all that with you. Quick bio. So Marcus is a renowned marketing strategist, bestselling author of they Ask youk Answer, which I have right here, and endless Customers, which I read in preparation for this interview, who revol revolutionized his pool company by becoming the Wikipedia of fiberglass pools during the 2008 recession. After transforming his struggling business into the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world through content marketing. His expertise lies in teaching businesses how to become the most trusted brand in the market by answering customer questions, creating transparent content and aligning with modern buyers journey. So Marcus, with that, can you give us a little bit of synopsis about like who you are, how you got to this point, what you do to help companies?

Yeah, I mean you said it pretty, you said it pretty well there. I started river pools in 2001 pretty much out of college and things were going okay up until 2008. Market collapses, looks like we're going to file bankruptcy, we throw some Hail Marys and I really just leaned into today's digital buyer. That's where they ask you answer came from. And we produced content that nobody had ever produced before in certainly in home services, home improvement and, and we became like you said, the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. And as I was like going on this journey, I said everybody should know about this, man. Like I got to write about this stuff. And so I started writing about it on like a personal blog. And that led to me becoming a full time professional speaker. I mean I speak all over the world. I've been doing it now for almost 15 years and I've got a few different companies today. I've got a sales and leadership communication training company. I have impact as well, which helps organizations do they ask you answer slash enlist customers which essentially is helps them become the most known and trusted brand in their market. That's the, that's the purpose behind Impact. And of course, I've got Price Guide as well, which is the software that allows companies to create quick estimators that generate 3 to 500% more leads for their website.

Yeah, and we're going to talk about all of those things today. The first thing I want to talk about is these four pillars to be a known and trusted company. And I want to talk about them specifically because a lot of people are still relying just on SEO. Google's going to show me and then people are going to come to my website and turn into a lead. But there's so much more that's needed now to be known and trusted. Can you talk a little bit about what those are, what people should be doing?

Yeah, this is one of those things where there's so many folks that are sleeping on this. Listen, if you're, if you're using AI at all, it means you're spending more and more time searching on AI, less and less time searching on Google. You should also know by this point that even if you rank number one in Google search results today, the click through rate is incredibly low versus what it used to be. Rank one before would get, you know, 75, 80% of the clicks. Today you could be ranked number one, but because you're so dang buried on page one as rank one, you're getting, you know, 20% or less clarity click through rate, which is extraordinary. That's where we are. If you look at the Google search experience, it's not as good as the AI search experience. It's just not. You don't get the answers the same way. You have to wade through a ton of filtered content. So what this naturally means is there's people going to be shifting over from using Google to using a ChatGPT or perplexity or whatever it is. And over the course of time, that means you're going to start to see a lot less traffic from Google. SEO is not going to on Google alone. It's not going to carry the day. I'm talking to a lot of contractors that are saying, I'm spending more money on Google than I've spent in years. I'm getting less results than I've gotten before. To get the same results in 2024 that you got in 2023, you had to spend 24% more on average. All right? So I mean, that's the world that we're in right now. So what happens if we have a world where Google just essentially continues to slide and everybody shifts over. Well, AI recommendations are going to carry the day. You still got to win the homeowner, they still got to love you, you still got to get referrals. Yes, but instead of paying Google to show you or doing SEO for Google to show you, now you have to earn these AI recommendations. How do you do that? You've got to become a known and trusted brand and you've got to send out trust signals. So there's four fundamental pillars to become this known and trusted brand. And within those you have all these trust signals. So what are the four pillars? Number one, you got to be willing to say online, talk about online, what others in your space aren't willing to say or talk about. And there's a lot to that. But mainly that is the big five. What you read about and they ask, you answer. That's still as true today as it's ever been. Those five subjects that consumers are obsessed with, that they research, that they're constantly going to AI and asking about or Google those five subjects, cost problems, comparisons, reviews and best. So that hasn't changed, that's only increasing, if anything. Phil, second pillar is you gotta be willing to show what others in your space aren't willing to show with video. And you now as a contractor, as someone in home improvement home services, you've got to see yourself as a media company. Even though that might sound weird to you, that's where everything is headed. There's a very strong argument, and this is going to just make some people sick to their stomach, but there's a very strong argument that your YouTube page is going to be more important than your website in five to 10 years. Number three, you've got to be willing to sell in ways others in your space aren't willing to sell. We can certainly talk about that, but that's mainly self service and just completely leaning in to giving the buyers control. And then finally, number four, pillar of trust. You've got to be more human than others are willing to be. You got to have a face, a human face behind the brand. You think about Flash consulting, you think about Phil Richard, because he puts himself out there, he does it through his pod, he does it through his socials. And so those are the big four. Most companies aren't, aren't doing them at a level that's truly unique to their competitors, which means you're not sending out the trust signals, which means that ultimately over the course of time, AI is not going to recommend you. And that's a scary place to be in, in A few years.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people do not realize how much this is going to shift in the next three to five years. And, and they're just saying, okay, well social media is, this is the one. I hear a lot like people are not buying off of social media. And the problem with that thought process is that when you create content, it's training these, these AI platforms that you are the actual. And that's kind of the whole premise is like people are not going to see one video and say, I want to work with. You're building the brand and the brand is what's going to carry you through. And I think a lot of people miss that piece of it. Can you talk about the self service piece? So sell how others won't sell. And you mentioned self service. I want to talk about what that sounds like and looks like in a home service business.

Yeah, Let me give you. I really, you know, I'm really proud of this section of Endless Customers, the book. I think it's one of the most valuable chapters. So there's a stat from GARTNER that says 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. And that number is now closer to 80% at last check. So what does this mean? It doesn't mean we hate salespeople, Phil. It just means that we don't want to talk to salespeople until we're ready, until we're confident, until we're comfortable, until we feel like we're not going to make any mistakes and be taken advantage of. Well, as a business, you can look at this trend and you can complain about it even though you yourself are responsible for it. I mean, we all are. Or you can say, how do I take advantage of the trend? The way you take advantage of the trend is by leaning into self service, giving the buyer more control. What is self service? These are interactive tools that you can find online, mainly on websites that allow someone to either get an answer or take an action that previously they would have had to have done by speaking with a human. But now they can do it through an interactive tool or online. All right, now I, I read a stat just yesterday, Phil, that's so interesting. Today, 60% of all people would prefer to use self checkout. And the number one reason for this is. Do you know why, Phil?

They don't have to talk to anyone.

They don't have to talk to anyone. Which is really freaking sad by the way. But that's, that's reality. 60% of all people Would prefer self checkout because they don't want to have to talk to someone. And what's really interesting is the cashier doesn't try to sell them anything.

Yeah.

And that wild.

Yeah.

And so where, if that's the case with a freaking cashier, where do you think this is going with salespeople? Okay, so there's five types of self service tools, people. And this is going to like rule home services in the future. It's already happening. You have to be very cognizant of this. Going to give you the five. You've got self configuration tools. This is essentially when you allow someone to configure or to build their thing, their plan, whatever that, whatever that thing is. Okay. So you know, it's no different than, you know, if you got somebody that wants to, you know, put a new roof on their house, you allow them to essentially see a visual, you know, build and design version of that. I recently, a couple of years ago, I purchased sight unseen a really big like a metal building, garage building, big four bays. And I designed the whole thing online myself. And I'm not somebody who can do this, but the tool that they had was so easy, Phil. And this was the only company that I shopped. They showed me the price and they showed me the visual build. So it was the ultimate self pricing, self configurated tool. And it looks in my yard exactly as it looked on the screen. And that's really impressive to me. So that is number one self configurator tools. Huge with home services and home improvement. The second, the second one would be self assessment tools. Self assessment is when you give someone a score or a grade if you will, like a health score. Like what's the health score of your roof or you know, whatever it is, how protected is your home? All right, Things like that. And the best tool that I've seen for this out the box is a tool called Score app. And this, you know, it's very inexpensive but you can give somebody these assessments. I've got a really good one on my, my sales and leadership coaching website called question first question first group.com and the what you basically find is it you have this assessment that gives your sales team a score for their current like skill set. So that's an assessment tool once again very interactive and people love the interactivity. They love to feel like they're getting value. But again in the past they would have had to talk to with a salesperson. Third type of tool here would be called self selection. Phil. Self selection is when you help somebody make a choice. So let's say like if you went to my swimming pool website, which is riverpools and spas.com, you have the ability to. There's a tool that helps you understand what is the right type of in ground pool for me, should it be concrete, should it be fiberglass, should it be vinyl liner? And it gives you a recommendation after this interactive questionnaire. And every day we recommend to people that you should buy a different type of pool. It's pretty crazy, but that's how it works because we are the trusted voice and we're sending out trust signals all the time. So those are self selection, I.e. recommendation tools, prolific with home services. Then you've got self scheduling tools. Self scheduling tools is when someone doesn't have to talk to human to schedule time with a salesperson. And if you really want to up the game, this is what's wild, Phil. I've experimented with this. What you do is you allow them to also choose the salesperson they work with. We've done a bunch of these and we see that when someone can choose the salesperson they work with, closing rates generally double. This is wild, right? So imagine like you go if you. Let's say you wanted to sell your home, Phil, that's in Frederick, Maryland right now, right? And you're like, okay, I gotta, I gotta find me a good realtor. And you find a good realtor company and you go to their website and they have seven realtors. You're like, hmm, which one? You know, are they just gonna give me one? But then you see that they allow you to choose. They show you all the realtors. They, you get to see their images, you get to see their bios, you get to watch a videos man, that ux, that's lights out baby. I mean you're like, you're pumped about that, right? And now you're invested in that realtor that you chose because of sunk cost. And the final one and the most important one is the self pricing tools. I like to call them estimators. A lot of people really don't understand the power for home services and estimators. This is the biggest trend line that's coming to this industry. And what we're seeing is estimators when used increase lead flow by 3 to 500%. And essentially you, essentially how it works is you give someone or on your homepage there's an interactive again tool has a cta. The call to action is get instant estimate. That's the best one that we found. And they have to answer a series of questions. And the questions are just like someone. If someone came up to you and they said, how much is pest control for my home? You're going to ask a series of questions, and then you're going to say, based on the answers you gave, here's a rough estimate as to what I would expect your ongoing pest control services to cost. Well, it's the exact same thing with a pricing estimator. And you're starting to see this. You're starting to see this with lawn care. You're starting to see this with roofing companies. And, you know, I, I developed a software for this called Price Guide AI. It's freaking awesome because it's incredibly inexpensive. Less than $20 a month, roughly. And the lead flow, like I said, 3 to 500% when you put it on your homepage and you make it very, very visible. The case studies I'm seeing are extraordinary. And the best application for these are home services and home improvement. And this is, again, I would say, 90% of home services companies are going to have a pricing estimator tool on their website within the next five years. Phil?

Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of times as home service business owners, we just think, okay, well, they came to a website, they were just like, you know, ready to buy, ready to roll. But you have to meet people wherever they're at in.

That's like saying they walked into the bar and sat next to me, and I immediately said, hey, would you like to go home with me? And they're like, no, I don't even know you. That's literally. That's. But people have that mindset. It's, no, you're not Mr. Smooth. Okay? You actually have to earn the business.

That's right.

And what's interesting about the buyer's journey, Phil, the first and last question of the buyer's journey are almost the exact same questions. The first question of the buyer's journey. When somebody knows they have a problem, a need is, okay, I need this thing roughly what's it going to cost? That's literally the first question. And then once they find that out, they proceed forward with research. They choose a few companies to reach out to. They talk to one or two or three or four companies. And then the final question that they have in the sales process is, exactly what's this going to cost me? So it starts with, roughly what's this going to cost me? It fits with, finishes with exactly what's this going to cost me? If you do not address this question, until the very, very end. You are losing a massive percentage of your business. You're losing trust. You're also losing trust signals because. And this is really technical, but in the future, AI agents are going to go out for you. These are your working assistants behind the scenes. And you're going to say, hey, I need you to go find me a company and that can do my lawn care. And I want you to get a general price for my yard. Here's the details on the yard that you need to know. Now please come back with an estimate for me. And that's it. That's the future. And so they're going to come back with an estimate, and hopefully it's going to be from your website. And that's who the homeowner is going to call. I'm telling you, folks, this day is coming sooner than you think. I know you're like, I feel like Neo in the Matrix. Well, you know, I actually kind of do feel like Neo in the Matrix these days. Phil, you remember the beginning of the movie when he was. When he was looking around, he's like, I realize something's wrong. But nobody else seems to realize something is wrong.

Yes.

Like, you see what's happening, Phil? I see what's happening, But I'm like, the world is still living in the Matrix. I'm like, guys, wake up. We gotta get with it. Because it is. We're going through the biggest transformation we've ever seen. Much bigger than the Internet. Bigger than electricity, even.

That's right. So I don't know if you've heard of this, but Google wrote out this thing in their labs called Ask for me feature. And yeah, they literally will call businesses. They rolled out just like car repair. They'll call businesses and ask for pricing on like, an oil change or something, and then call you back and tell you what they told you. The price.

Exactly. And you think that's going to go away, y'. All. That's where it's headed. This is why there's. There's gonna be, like, no such thing as call for quote in the future. Yeah, no, it won't exist.

No, I agree. All right, so we talked about.

You heard it from the pool guy.

There you go. So we talked about, you know, you need to set your business up so that way the. These AI search engines are going to show you by building a known and trusted brand. Then they go to your website and they can go through different lead channels, turn into lead, however they want. Then we talked about them selecting through the process. I want to Talk a little bit about the selling process, because this is going to get changed tremendously. And I think a lot of people miss this where, you know, they're sending out estimates and quotes to everyone and there's no process to manage these. Can you talk. In the book, you talk about assignment selling, and I want to talk about what, how you tie all this together with the content inside of your sales process and everything.

Yeah, yeah. Assignment selling is something I discovered about 10 years ago when I was looking at all my analytics of people that had filled out forms on my site and said, I'm going to get a quote. And I tracked the ones that ended up buying versus the ones that didn't buy Phil. And what I found was the ones that had bought a pool had consumed dramatically more content than the ones that had not. Right. And that goes back to this cost fallacy. The more time someone invests in you and your stuff, your content, the more likely they are to work with you because they're literally trying to figure out a way to work with you because they've invested so much time. And so what we found with River Pools was If somebody read 30 or more pages of the website, they would buy roughly 80% of the time. This is assuming they read it before the first appointment. If they didn't hit that magical number of 30 pages, then the closing rates were around 25%, which is normal for the home improvement space. Right. It's like about 25%. And so we had to say, all right, this, 30 is the number. And when you do that, you're like, all right, now when you're talking to a lead, you get very intentional about, hey, you're getting ready to spend a lot of money. I know you don't want to make any mistakes, so as to make sure you don't make any mistakes. Here's what's going to happen. Before I come out there, I'm going to send you two things. I'm going to send you a video. I'm going to send you a buying guide. Here's what these things are going to cover. Here's why they matter. Here's how they're going to save us time, effort, energy and money and prevent making mistakes. Will you take the time to review these things before appointment on Friday? And now all of a sudden, when you get into the home, the person is dramatically more informed. You know, speaking of assignment selling, one of the biggest surprises that I've experienced with Price Guide is that that pricing estimator tool is I've had a lot of folks tell me, yeah, the lead flow has been great, but my sales team is now using it. When they're, when they're on a call qualifying someone, they say, hey, let's do the pricing estimator now together. Just so you have a sense for what to expect when I come out to your home. Because it increases just the quality of the conversation so much. And I was, I was, like, really surprised about that. I guess I shouldn't have been, but I was like, wow. It's just funny, when you build a tool, the marketplace always ends up showing you what the tool will actually become.

Yes, for sure. I think if you say, hey, we have this tool that we built as a company that took all these different things into, into consideration. Let's just put your numbers in and figure it out. There's no selling part to it. It's just like, this is what it is.

Yeah. And it, what, what happens is instead of some crescendo, climactic close. Right. It becomes, huh. Okay, that's roughly what we thought it was going to be. When do we get started?

Yeah, exactly. Very simple.

Who doesn't want that?

Exactly. So with these 30 content pieces, how should businesses go about layering these content pieces into their sales process?

Yeah. Well, you want it to align, you know, with the buyer's journey and how it fits. There's different ways that you can do it. With home services, it's usually a bit. Depending on the urgency, it can be a bit faster.

Yeah.

Whereas let's say with a swimming pool, it might take. It might happen over the course of six months if there's like a particular service they know they need.

Yeah.

This might happen over the course of six days, but the principles remain true. Which is what you're trying to do is you're trying to make sure that all doubt, fear, worry, concern are eliminated before you sit down with them. And the way that you do that is you just get intentional about it. So if someone fills out a form on your site, you might have some automated message that goes out to them that says, hey, you just filled out a form. Did you know that there's seven major mistakes people oftentimes make when choosing their, you know, tree removal company? Right. And then they're like, huh, I hadn't thought about that. And so that's where it starts. And then you talk to the person on the phone and they're like, hey, can you come out and, you know, give a quote or whatever? And you're like, sure, let me send you something that's going to address some of those major questions that you have, I've got a video for you as well that. Because I want you to see how this process is going to look like. In fact, I want you to see the difference between stump removal and stump grinding. Because there's a big difference. And sometimes people don't understand the difference between the two. Like stuff like that you shouldn't be answering when you get to the home.

That's right.

They should already flipping know it. And if you're answering the exact same stuff every time you get to the home, it's because you are a crappy educator and you're not doing a very good job with your marketing. And so this is why you need to, you know, read a book like Endless Customers, because it's going to help you to understand exactly how to win that trust earlier in the process.

Yeah. And I think that the biggest part for most people is it's going to help you one on the front end of getting people that say, yeah, this is the company I want to reach out to. Then also help you close more deals. Going to help you get more leads and close more sales just by educating the customer through the process.

Really great point. This is a double whammy in a good way. Because dramatic improvements with your marketing and your lead flow and your lead gen. Dramatic improvements with your sales side. That final 20% of the buyer's journey, right. Where you're meeting with them, if you're talking with them, you're going to just see that the conversations flow better. Generally, closing rates go up and sales cycles go down almost every single time when you do this. Right. Just because they were already so much further along, it doesn't take them nearly as long to make a decision. I mean, it's like literally is. I mean, is this so obvious to me? Because I've seen it over and over again. And the number one industry that I speak in is home improvement and home services. Like, because these are my people, these are my kindred spirits. I'm able to watch and see the case studies every day, man. I had a. I had a company come up to me the other day. It was. This was pest control. And they said to me, marcus, it was a husband and wife. And I was at some conference. They said, we've been waiting to see you for four years. You made us millionaires. I'm like, oh, that's wonderful, man. That's so great. And he, and he stopped me, like, put his, like, hands on my shoulders. He said, no, Marcus, I don't think Like, I want, you know, you made us millionaires.

Wow.

Thank you. I'm like, bro, yeah, thank you, man, for doing the work. Because less than 3% of the people listening to this right now are going to take action anyway. All right. Otherwise they're just making themselves feel good with this mental stimulation. But yeah, but what is the magic? That's when you take action.

Yeah. And it kind of goes right into the next question that I have for you was you talk about building these revenue teams in your business and taking this action because, you know, business owner, they're listening to it, they're like, yeah, we should be doing this. But like, who's going to do this? In my business, I'm running around doing all this stuff, like, how do I do this? There's one part to this which is like, you need to be a media company and like really focus on this. But you talk about these revenue teams and building this out. Can you talk through what that looks like?

Yeah, a couple things going on. This is intimidating for a lot of folks, but one person could do more. Like the work of three to five people five years ago because of AI. And if you brought in one marketing person to create content, text and video based content for you, the amount of work they can do, especially with home services, because everything's so visual, I would do, and everything's a story in and of itself. It's extraordinary what they can do. And then you start thinking like a media company. A media company says every single thing we do. We could show that's how a media company thinks and that's how you need to think if you're listening to this right now. And then when it comes to the revenue teams, too often sales and marketing are very siloed. They're not on the same page. You know, marketing produces a piece of content and sales, like, I don't know, what's the purpose of that? Like, I don't even need that. Like, nobody's ever asked me that. That should never happen. So if, if you're on the same page, if you're meeting weekly, somebody from sales, somebody from marketing, and you're talking about what's the content that needs to be produced, what's working, what isn't working, what are some new doubts that you're hearing or some fears or some questions or objections, you know, how can, who's the best subject matter experts on the sales team to meet with marketing to cover some of these subjects. That's like, these are the types of things you should be doing. We talk about Revenue teams and endless customers. Thank you for mentioning that, Phil. That's an important component of like a really like high achieving sales and marketing organization.

Yeah. So if as we do marketing for companies and we say, hey, we should be working with your sales team because they are the front lines, we need to be in alignment with this stuff.

That's right. And when they don't avail the sales teams to you like they should, you can't deliver the same quality of work. And I know that's for you been a choking point because you know, unfortunately that's what clients do. Sometimes they don't clear the obstacles and take those necessary steps to get the greatest results. You know, too often they come to an agency, a consulting company, whatever, like yours, and they're, they think they're getting a babysitter. And what they're, what they're signing up for is a partnership.

Yeah.

And they need to do their, their, you know, their side of the partnership, of the agreements to a street. And that's, that's very worthy of mentioning here.

Yeah. I also want to talk about AI. You brought it up for people that don't know you can build GPTs or my GPTs that are trained on you, that can, that you can write just like you, similar things that can get you part of the way there. Can you talk about the GPT or whatever you want to call it, side of things. But then also this AI avatar type of thing for content that's coming down the pike.

Yeah. Well, already with my swimming pool company, when somebody calls us, they, excuse me, when somebody fills out a form on the site, they get an immediate call that is from an AI assistant. And so it basically sounds something like. And we do this in off hours, Phil. And so it's an AI assistant. So in other words, if you, if you fill out a form at 8 o' clock on a Sunday night, you're immediately going to get a call. It's going to sound like this. Hello, this is Marcus. I'm an AI assistant with river pools. And you just filled out a form asking to meet with one of our salespeople. And I'm just calling to set up a time whereby you all can meet and have that conversation. Right. So it's boom, it's so fast. Because speed to lead is such a big, you know, part of our success in home services. And so having AI to be able to make phone calls for you, especially during off hours, for that speed to lead incredibly important in home services. The first company has a conversation with the prospect like a Full conversation with the prospect wins the business more than 7 out of 10 times. So that's a huge number. And that's why you want to be first every single time. It's just a really, really big deal. And then you've got what. What are digital avatars and digital avatars. I write about this in the book, and it's hard for a lot of people to fathom, but it's coming. I want you to imagine that you went to the River Pools website and you were greeted by someone on video in the corner. And they can, like, you can pop. They. You can pop it up and maximize it. And they. You can talk to them directly like you're on a zoom call. Like, you and I are discussing this right now. Like, it's almost like it's a zoom fill, right? We're discussing it right now. And this person once again says to you, hey, I am Avatar Marcus. I'm not the real Marcus Sheridan, but I'm his avatar, and I'm using all the content he's ever produced to answer your questions. And you can ask me any question right now. Either type it in or say it out loud, and I'll answer that question for you. And, oh, by the way, if you would like to get a general estimate as well, I could do that for you right now. Now, that's coming, people, and you're going to see that in 2025. In 2025, as in this year. And a lot of people are like, no way. Now, what's really funny to me, Phil, is people will say, yeah, my customer doesn't want to talk to AI. They want to talk to a human. Let me clarify to you right now the truth of the matter. People don't care who. Who they're talking to as long as their need or problem is met.

That's right.

Let's say you are trying to resolve an issue with an airline. Would you rather talk to a human that is arguably very impatient, maybe hard to understand, going to put you on hold to get the answers, or would you rather talk to an AI that you know is an AI but is extremely kind, very impatient, never gets upset, pretty much has answers immediately because they have access to immediate data. Which one would you rather work with?

Yep, that's right.

My daughter, who's 25, came to me the other day. He says, dad, I'm serious. And she says this to me. I posted about this on LinkedIn. It went viral, and a bunch of people said, yeah, that didn't happen. I'm like, what a bunch of yeah. Anyway, she came to me recently. She said, dad, I've decided that I would rather, for customer service, I'd rather talk to AI than a human. And she said, the biggest reason is I am not afraid to ask any question because I know the response will be positive. Now, for those people that have only had. You see a lot of people, like, I've never talked. Had a good conversation with AI. No, that's because you're talking to some stupid voice automation software that sucks.

Exactly.

And it feels like it's prehistoric by this point. You talk to an LLM voice AI. I mean, you can't even imagine how. How good it is.

So do you have any. So LLM voice? Like, how do you build us on ChatGPT or. I'm sure there's companies or companies.

Tons of, you know. Yeah, there's tons of companies that are coming out now to do voice AI and to do your digital avatars.

Okay. I had Neil Patel on the show. We talked about this one called hey Jen.

Hey, Jen. Is the number one for digital avatars. Synth.

Synthesia.

Yeah. Yeah. I always mispronounce. I hate it when someone comes up with a startup name that you can't pronounce very easily. Come on, guys. Yeah, right. Hey, Jin. I remember Synthesia or whatever the heck their name is. I forget. They're both like neck and neck.

Yeah. So those are the two big ones. Something that we've been playing around. I think it's hard because it's like, it's not quite there yet. Every single time. Like, it's not quite there yet from what I feel like. But it's getting there.

That's why it's really. By the end of 2025, I would say it'll be there. The mouth doesn't perfectly always match in. The hand gestures don't perfectly match. Especially for someone like me, who is very animated with. When I speak, like with my arms and hands. And it doesn't quite do that very well yet. Problem is, people will look at it, Phil, and they're like, that looks. I can see that's not real. It's like, dude, pull your head out of the sand and recognize that this is as bad as it's ever going to be again. And in three months, then it's going to be perfect. And you're still probably going to complain, but yet somebody's going to be running circles around you with their sales and marketing because they're thinking about this very differently than you are. They're not looking for the 1% of imperfection they're looking for. What's the 99% that it could do for me?

Yeah, exactly. I want to round this out with kind of taking it a step back, which is you have these seven cues of human content because you can go down the other side, which is what you're kind of talking about, which is like, everything's AI and this is just not good. And people are like, this is junk. How do you go to the other side and make sure that this all makes sense and is good?

Well, it's all about just training your AI at the same time editing everything. If you're going to use it to produce written content that it's fundamentally, it's got to be your voice. One of the easiest ways to ensure this is to write in a first person style. Always. You know, like here at river pools, one of the questions we get all the time. So that's it. Like, you want to have that first person, first company style of writing. You also want to make sure that you're including some type of company or customer experience or story in everything you write. Now don't just answer the question, how much does an in ground swimming pool cost? And sound like some boring freaking college professor. Instead, say, you know, one of the questions we get here all the time at river pools is, okay, Marcus, be honest, how much is this pool really going to cost me? And that's a great question. It's one that you deserve an answer to. And in today's article or in today's video, what we're going to do is we're going to really try to give you a deep dive on everything to do with how much does a fiberglass swimming pool cost. We're going to explain the factors that drive it up. We're going to explain the factors that drive it down. We're going to talk about roughly what it is in Virginia versus the rest of the world. And by the end of this, you're going to have a great sense as to what a fiberglass pool cost you. Now that what I just said, that's the type of intro that I teach companies to do because it sounds really human. There's all these like little cues in there that makes them feel like, okay, it's a real business. Like, they're writing it for me. They get me, they understand my pain. There's empathy, you know, there's first person style, they're referencing the location. All those are cues, signals that, hey, this is not just AI, this is a human behind this. And I think that is very important. But I'm. I'd be lying. I'd be lying if I said AI is gonna, on its own sound incredibly, incredibly human with time.

Yeah. I think the more that you can. One definitely talking, like here at River Pools, I think that that's so important. A lot of times you just rely on ChatGPT to write something for you, and it really doesn't sound like, yeah.

It'S like, yeah, if you could copy and paste that article and it could go on any website in the world, you have just wet the bed.

Yeah, exactly. And I think this kind of brings it full circle, which is that when you create content, video content that you can turn into blog content, based off how you say things and what you say, you're training these LLMs on your stuff and you're coaching them, and you create this flywheel of content that's educated on your business with the backing of AI to then speak as if it's you with the coaching of this AI. That's the flywheel that people really need to get to.

This is a really important point, Phil. People will start to say, well, if they're going to get all their answers from AI and not from my website in seven years, let's say, which could happen to a degree, why would I even produce any content? One of the biggest reasons is because, number one, you got to produce those trust signals. But number two, you need to train your own AI to represent your voice, your unique style, so that when somebody does reach out, that it. That it has a soul that truly represents you. My digital avatar is going to be all, marcus, baby. It ain't going to be some crap that came from someone else or a million other people online. It's going to be true to me, and so it needs to be true to your brand. There's a lot of other arguments as well as to why I think people are going to continue to produce content. And it's going to be important for a long period of time. But, you know, I'm. I think it's great, Phil, that you're talking about these things for home service providers, because Most, well over 95% still head in the sand when it comes to this conversation. You're thinking about it at a very high level in your space, which is why people should be listening to your podcast, period. And I'm not saying that to stroke anybody's ego. I'm saying it because it's true and you're doing a great service.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. And it's going to get more and more and the more that people can create content and really dive into what Marcus and I talked about, it's like this is the future and the companies that don't do it, the going to get left behind. The companies that do it are going to be the next brands that people know about. And a big shaker on this is like the old big competitors in your space. They're going to get dusted by the new guys that are doing these things.

Yeah, you better run circles around, around. And this is why the digital Davids always slay the Goliaths.

Yep, yep. And people miss this every single time. So Marcus, where should people go to to get to learn about you? Obviously you should get the book Endless Customers.

Endless Customers you can get on Amazon if you get it. I would be so honored and appreciative if you could leave a review because it makes a big difference. Just like you need to be asking your customers for reviews too, folks. Right. And so I'm going to ask you for, for one, you can also go to endless customers.com so Amazon and endless customers.com connect with me on LinkedIn if you're listening to this. If you use LinkedIn, Phil is a great follow on LinkedIn too. Everybody should know that I really like his content a lot. You can also email me marcus, marcus sheridan.com and if you need a great speaker for your next event, I'll bring the fire, the brimstone and people will take action.

Yeah, thanks Marcus. Really appreciate you coming back on again and look forward to continue the relationship.

Yeah, my pleasure.