Ezra McCarthy
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Lawn Care Success Blueprint. Today I have an author on the pod. I’ve almost finished reading his book, They Ask You Answer, actually referred by listeners of the pod. You probably know Jonathan Patoshnik. I heard about the book from him. And listening to it on Audible, it’s been a very practical and mindset-shifting book for me, and I really enjoyed it. And so today I’ve got a chance to sit down with the author, Marcus Sheridan.
And you may be wondering, listening in, who is Marcus Sheridan? So he sent me a real quick bio and I’ll just tell you a little bit about him. Marcus Sheridan is a globally recognized expert and author and sought-after speaker. He has also an entrepreneurial success story. He grew a small pool company into one of the most trafficked swimming pool websites in the world. And you heard that right—in the world. And then this journey led him to write the book They Ask You Answer, this philosophy.
And I think the listeners will get a lot of value from it. So Marcus, thanks for coming today.
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, Ezra, happy to be here, man. I got a feeling we’re going to have some good takes, some takeaways, stuff that people can immediately apply to grow their business and find that thing that you and I might call financial peace, which is what we’re going after here.
Ezra McCarthy
So good.
Marcus, and you know, listening to your book, it’s easy. The listeners—most people listening in are lawn or landscape business owners—they may be thinking, Ezra, why do you have an author on the podcast to talk to us? But yes, you’ve written a book, but I’d like to take us back to 2008. I was reading through your book, and you correct me if I got the numbers wrong here, but right around that recession time, the craziness going on, you were a partner in a pool business there. And in 24 hours—now your pools, I believe from what you said, the average pool would be $40,000 to $50,000 in value at the time—and you lost up to $250,000. People just called and canceled in 24 hours. And you said that changed everything for you. So can you take us back to that moment in your pool business? And then how did that lead you to come to the philosophy of They Ask, You Answer?
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, man. So we started River Pools in Virginia in 2001. Things were going okay up until the crash of 2008. And to your point, just like right after the crash, man, we had so many people come to us and say, yep, sorry, we just can’t do it. We’re too worried about the economy now. And so yeah, it cost us about a quarter of a million dollars in business in those first couple of days.
Then it just got worse and worse and looked like we were going to have to file bankruptcy. But the beauty of pain and suffering is it forces us outside of our comfort zone, and we have more of a YOLO mindset. And that was when I started to really learn about the internet and study social media, content marketing. And what I heard was, okay Marcus, if you just obsess over your customers’ questions, worries, issues, concerns, and you’re willing to address those online, you just might save your business.
And so I said, well, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to become the best teachers in the world when it comes to—in our case—fiberglass pools. And we created a lot of content, text and video. We put it on our website, put it on YouTube, et cetera. And yeah, we became the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world. But it came from the pain, man. And that’s why pain is oftentimes good, because it drives innovation, because we stop playing safe.
Ezra McCarthy
So this is something that I really wanted to ask you about reading through the book. You’re heavily into content marketing and from what I understand, I believe you also have an agency that helps people with that. So AI—everyone talks about it. With AI now, has your position changed on They Ask, You Answer? And if not, why?
Marcus Sheridan
What’s changed so much is that businesses can’t be completely reliant on Google to carry the day. Because if you think about it, some of your listeners are using ChatGPT and they get this. Some of them unfortunately are not, and they won’t understand what I’m about to say. But right now, for the most part, searching on ChatGPT or AI is a dramatically better user experience than searching on Google. Why? Because there’s no sponsored results. They’re not giving you anything based on whoever can pay the most.
What we’re seeing now is a shift. Basically, for 25 years we’ve been using Google pretty aggressively. We’re seeing a massive shift of people moving from Google to ChatGPT, to AI platforms, so that they can get the thing they want faster, more directly. Google continues to protect its previous business model. It’s making a ton of money on ads. And this is why those that are doing Google Ads are also saying, hey, we’re spending more than we’ve ever spent, and we’re seeing less results than we’ve ever seen.
I’m consistently seeing contractors say this all over the place—folks that are in home services, home improvement. And so we’ve got this mega trend of everyone moving over.
Now, what does this mean? It means instead of just being recommended by the customer and by Google, you now must be recommended also by AI. And your ability to be recommended by AI is going to have a major, major impact on your life and the growth and success of your business moving forward.
And so what is the answer to this? Of course, in my mind, the answer becomes you must have an incredibly known and trusted brand. And that’s why I wrote the third edition of They Ask, You Answer, which is called Endless Customers. Came out two weeks ago. It’s my newest book and it is the blueprint. It is a system for building a known and trusted brand because platforms are going to come and go, Ezra. And this is what’s going to happen. If I said to you, is Google going to be around in 20 years? There’s a pretty good chance the answer is no. But if I said to you, is trust going to be fundamental to your business in 20 years? You’d say absolutely, right?
That’s why if you can build an extraordinarily known and trusted brand, then you’re going to be built to last regardless of what platforms come and go.
Ezra McCarthy
There’s a really interesting part in your book where you talked about the average person. And you had to correct me on the numbers here, but it was something crazy, like 30-some pages of data in your field.
So the people that are listening are predominantly lawn and landscaping businesses. For someone in that industry, would you still recommend them to be content-focused to build trust? Or what would you tell someone if they were doing $500,000—maybe commercial or residential landscaping? What would your advice to them be?
Marcus Sheridan
yeah, if you’re doing right now $500,000 a year in commercial or residential landscaping and you want to grow, then you have to ask yourself, how much do I want to grow? do I want to build something that I can sell, or do I just want a paycheck for the rest of my life? I can tell you right now that there’s a lot of people that have their name on their business, but they don’t really own a business. they own a job. and the day that everybody starts to work for you and you’re able to run the business and you’re able to eventually sell your business, you have a lot more than a job, right?
so I think that’s the first thing you have to decide. do I want a job that I own, or do I want a business that I can own and sell? now, once you decide that, then you’re like, all right, well, I want to scale. and I want to scale this in such a way that it’s much, much bigger than me and I get momentum on my side. the way you do that is you’ve got to show what others aren’t showing online for the most part.
in Endless Customers, I give four pillars of a known and trusted brand. the first pillar is you’ve got to be willing to say what others aren’t willing to say. the second pillar is you’ve got to show with video what others aren’t willing to show. the third pillar is you’ve got to be willing to sell in a way that others aren’t willing to sell. and the fourth pillar is you’ve got to be more human than others are willing to be.
let me just give you some really rapid-fire examples of each. like if I was a landscaper, let’s say. so one example, let’s start—I’ll work in reverse.
let’s start with the fourth pillar—be more human than others are willing to be. you know what’s crazy? oftentimes when it comes to home improvement, we don’t really know the contractor’s face. we don’t know their voice until they’re walking up our driveway. what a tragedy that is. so instead of that, if you set an appointment with someone, you should absolutely, 100% of the time, you or one of your salespeople, send a video to that person.
by the way, my sales team does this automatically. it’s a one-to-one video. it comes from them to the prospect, to the homeowner, and says, hey, mr. jones, my name’s marcus. I’m going to be the one that’s going to be meeting with you and your family on friday. here’s what our meeting is going to look like. here’s what we’re going to try to accomplish. I’m very much looking forward to seeing you there, right? whatever it is.
so that’s an example of it. now mr. jones is like, I recognize you as soon as you start walking up the driveway, marcus, from your video. that’s what we want. if you’re listening to this, are you doing that? or are you sending out some text-based email that is not going to humanize your brand any further? chances are, it’s probably just some text-based email. that’s not great.
because we’ve been sending text-based email for 25 years. there’s free technology. you can send video-based email. why would you not do that? certainly on some of your email communications.
so let’s look at another one—sell in a way that others aren’t willing to sell. one of the big things that’s taking over landscaping, lawn services, et cetera, is what’s called self-service—what I call self-service. I talk a lot about it in Endless Customers. and basically, this stems from a mega trend that’s happening, ezra, which is this…
75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. and what does this mean? well, it doesn’t mean we hate salespeople. it just means we don’t want to talk to a salesperson until we’re very ready, until we’re comfortable, until we’re confident, until we feel like we’re not going to make a mistake.
how do you take advantage of this trend? well, you have to give buyers more control. and the way you give them more control, kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure book back in the day, is through self-service.
there’s different types of self-service tools that you can have on your website. but essentially, they’re interactive tools that allow someone to take an action or to get an answer that previously they would have had to have gotten by talking with a human directly.
one of the ones that’s really blowing up for lawn services is estimator devices. something that may be hooked up to google earth, and it measures the square footage of your lawn. and then, boom, you’re able to give an estimate.
actually, which is very powerful because the leads are very high. I started a company last year called price guide. what price guide does is it allows home services, home contractor companies to quickly, easily, and cost-effectively build pricing estimators for their website, with generally the result being a 300 to 500% increase in leads.
so let’s say you’re a landscaper, all right ezra? and you’re trying to be different than everybody else. you’re trying to sell differently. you want to show and talk about what others aren’t showing and talking about. so let’s say…
with a tool like price guide, you could within the next 30 minutes have a working pricing estimator for your landscaping services. and so the way it works is it uses ai to help you build out this estimator, and it helps show you the potential questions that you would want to ask. and then you input the different numbers or variables. so with each answer they give, might say, let’s say it’s landscaping. first question might be, are you looking to do backyard?
backyard, front yard, or backyard, front yard, side yards. that might be your first question. second question might be, what is the total square footage of your backyard? third question might be, are you looking to do hardscapes? are you looking to do landscaping, looking to do plantings? what specifically are you looking for?
so each one of these are questions that I would ask you if we were meeting in person, and then I could give you an actual estimate. and so now, though, what’s happening is the person is essentially interacting with you, even though you’re not having a conversation. and then at the end, they get an estimate.
so price guide allows you to build this in 30 minutes or less. it costs less than $200 a year, which is crazy. and generally speaking, people see, like I said, a 3 to 5x return. so let’s say you get three leads a week from your website. if you add an estimator to your homepage and that’s your primary call to action—your estimator—you’re going to get somewhere around 10 to 15 leads per week now.
that’s a wild difference. and suddenly you’re just getting way more leads. you’re having way more conversations than you were having before. the first question everybody has when they get on the buyer’s journey—first question is roughly, how much is it going to cost?
most companies don’t want to talk about this until they meet in person. but yet you, as a buyer, you don’t like that. and so why would you put your prospect through it if the goal here is to become the most known and trusted voice?
so this is going to be table stakes for landscapers, table stakes for lawn services. everybody in our industry is going to have a pricing estimator within the next five years, ezra. mark my words. it’s going to happen.
Ezra McCarthy
and this is something that I’m actually curious about because I know that’s one thing, at least in they ask you answer, you talk a lot about getting the pricing on the website. now, one thing that I’m a huge proponent of is reducing friction in every single place you can. and so what have you seen?
obviously you’re a big proponent of putting the pricing on the website, but have you seen that adding the pricing on the website and the auto quotes—because I’ve seen some even in our industry, but they’re done so poorly that it adds so much friction. in my opinion, they’ve already been on five other landscapers’ websites and no one’s got back with them.
so what would you say to someone who said, hey, this is adding friction. should I do it or not?
Marcus Sheridan
actually, yeah. so what it does—the biggest friction point at the beginning of the buyer’s journey is, am I in the game or not? could I afford this or not? that’s what they want to know.
so the three ways that you can innovate most online is that a) you can remove friction, b) you can remove fear, and c) you can make it faster. they’re the three f’s of innovation online—remove friction, remove fear, make it faster.
Ezra McCarthy
writing that down. you said…
Marcus Sheridan
so if you think about a pricing estimator, which one of the three? it actually does all three of those. it helps immediately remove the fear of, can I afford this or not? it removes the friction of trying to find out roughly what is this going to cost me. it’s much faster now because they’ve gone from point a to point b. so that is a huge component to this.
now, of course, the other side is you want to have a great follow-up program. you want to have speed to lead. speed to lead is essential. it’s a really, really big deal. and that’s one of the most powerful things that you can do as a business—be the first company that they talk to.
so we know that when it comes to home services, the buyer will go with the first company they have a conversation with 78% of the time. 78% of the time. being first is the name of the game.
how do you become first? well, you find ways to put yourself in front of the customer sooner and convert them faster through a tool like price guide. and now all of a sudden, you’re having way more conversations. you’re first oftentimes.
so yeah, it is a big deal. but yeah, you also see some folks that have clunky quote tools that don’t help at all—they just hurt. also, keep in mind, a lot of times people think I’m saying give the price. I’m not saying that you should give a specific quote. I’m saying, at a minimum, you should be giving an estimate.
and if you give an estimate, that will help someone say, okay. and you can say, now we’ll confirm this price that I’ve given you—this estimate—we’ll confirm the exact price when I come to your home. but at least now you’ve got a working general feel for what is this really going to cost me?
people appreciate that. they love it. they’re way more likely to invite you to their home. and now you will see that your sales conversations are much further along when you get there. so your closing rate actually goes way up. that is so good.
Ezra McCarthy
good. reducing the fear, friction, and speed. so in the pool business, as you started putting guidelines on the website, as you started building a brand, did you find that lead-to-speed—even with those large purchases? because some people are selling $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, I’ve even heard of up to $100,000 landscaping jobs. does speed to lead still come into play there? or did they trust you so much?
Marcus Sheridan
because it doesn’t matter the product or the service. 78% on average will go with the first company they talk to. so it should be an obsession.
for example, one of the things I’m doing with river pools this year is, when I don’t have somebody working in the office on the phones, I still want to be able to call the lead back immediately if they fill out a form on our website.
so we’ve got now AI-based phone calls that we’re doing. somebody fills out a form on a sunday night at 8 o’clock, immediately they get a phone call from AI. and the AI sounds real as it gets, but it literally just says, hey, this is marcus. I’m an AI assistant at river pools. you just filled out a form on our site. I would love to schedule a time with you right now and one of our salespeople. would that be okay with you?
boom. what’s… this is the thing. it’s like, I’m seeing—and this is happening now. it’s starting to happen all over the place. because people at first are like, whoa. and they’re like…
Ezra McCarthy
what’s the response to that?
Marcus Sheridan
okay, they quickly get it. it’s amazing how quickly we adapt to technology as humans. and AI voice technology has gotten so good so fast because what was holding it back… see, a lot of people are thinking like automated voice messages and that sounds cheesy. what AI does—it sounds real.
and what makes it sound real, ezra, will surprise you—it’s the way that it uses breath. that’s what makes something sound real. so for example, notice how I said, “so for example,” I just breathed before I spoke. what the AI has now done—it adds breath into when you’re speaking. and so because of that, along with the fact that it has all this nuance to human voice, now it’s really dead on the money. and so it’s getting better and better and better. it’s incredibly powerful.
the thing that I know about that is we’re getting to the point where we won’t care if it’s AI. we’re only going to care, am I getting the answer to my need or problem quickly? we just don’t. a lot of people think, they’ll say, well, as humans we want to talk to humans. it’s utterly false. it’s not true whatsoever.
because if I said to someone, would you like to talk to a rude human that’s frustrated and impatient, or would you like to talk to an AI whose only goal is to help you out and won’t get frustrated at all? so we’re heading this direction now.
if you can have both, of course, that’s wonderful. that’s great. but generally, you can’t scale human interaction all hours of the day unless you have a call center. so this is where we’re headed.
I would just say that the thing about the lawn care and landscaping industries—they’re the most visual industries in the world. I know this as a pool guy, because we’re like first cousins. we do a ton of both. I mean, we do a ton of landscaping. we do our patios and we do retaining walls and we do all these things.
we’re an incredibly visual industry. every single job is a story that you can and you should show. if you’re not doing before and afters on all your jobs, you’re failing yourself, you’re failing your family, you’re failing your future. it’s just not okay. and you should be doing that.
you should be creating short-form videos with your phone and posting that on facebook, posting it on instagram. you have to see yourself as a media company and you yourself are a brand.
and if I’m a CEO and I’ve got, let’s say, a bunch of workers and we’re doing half a million a year, I’m now saying, okay, I’m the head of marketing. I’m gonna travel around. when I’m not giving quotes, I’m gonna be creating video with the services that my team are doing in the field—doing the before and afters, doing the images, doing the videos, uploading those. that’s your most important job.
if you want to hyper-grow your company, and then you bring on that social media manager that’s acting as a videographer, acting as a content person—that’s your first big hire once you’ve really started to build some momentum. and now you’re going to be above a million dollars really quickly if you can scale and bring in the right people.
Ezra McCarthy
marcus, I know your time is constrained here in a couple minutes. you gotta go. can you tell us about this new book that you just released two weeks ago you mentioned?
Marcus Sheridan
yeah, it’s Endless Customers. you can get it at endlesscustomers.com. ultimately, if you’re saying, I want to be the most known and trusted brand in my market—wherever your market is—there’s a system in Endless Customers that’s written out that you can follow. it was written for you.
now, if you’re saying, yeah, I just don’t think I’m ever going to, I’m just so small right now, what can I do? little things. you can do little things. just starting one-to-one video—simple thing. seeing yourself as the head of video for your company—simple thing. doing a pricing estimator online—simple thing. using a tool like priceguide AI that doesn’t cost you almost any money at all. it really is a no-brainer.
the days of just having plastered all over your website “call for quote” or “call for pricing” or “get a quote”—they’re just dying, ezra, because people are annoyed with that. they need something in the middle. they need more.
and it’s not just some buyer’s guide that you’re going to put on your site that you expect people to download at this point. they’re not giving you their email for a buyer’s guide anymore. move past that. give them something they really want and appreciate. and these interactive tools—that is the way to go.
in the future, you’re going to have people using configurators that are AI-based. they’re going to allow them to do all of their landscaping design before they talk to you as the contractor. and then they’re just going to give you the plans. literally, they’re going to give you the plans and they’re going to say, can you quote these plans?
I’m not saying that’s a good or bad future, but that’s where we’re headed, guys. we might as well get in the sandbox. you can’t ignore it. it’s not going to help you. it’s your fiduciary duty to meet the buyer where the buyer is.
where the buyer is going is what we’ve talked about in this call. the buyer is going toward AI, faster answers, remove the fear, remove the friction. just doing that is going to put you in a class by yourself. and call people back quickly.
Ezra McCarthy
so important. and that’s one thing I learned back before I was using the lead services. and I wouldn’t recommend them to my enemy, but they’d send you those leads and five other people and you have to get back. and I learned literally—minutes, minutes was too long—seconds.
so I’d get a text and whatever I was doing, I’d drop it and call them. and I found it really would make a difference. and it still does. I don’t use those services anymore. they’re terrible.
Marcus Sheridan
sure does. yeah, because every year you use one of those services, you take a year off of your own life. basically, it’s how it works.
Ezra McCarthy
yeah, and you’re paying them to be your competition online. yeah, and bump you down in the rankings. yeah, terrible plan.
Marcus Sheridan
not ideal. that’s again, though, why you need a known and trusted brand.
Ezra McCarthy
yeah, that’s so good. well, marcus, this has been great. I know your time is valuable. any closing thoughts for someone listening and looking to grow their business this year?
Marcus Sheridan
let me just say this really quick. we often overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in ten years. I didn’t make that quote up, but I’ve lived that and I’ve seen it myself.
my first ten years in business, I didn’t make over six figures in a year. and then my second ten years in business, I became a multimillionaire. this is what’s possible for all of us.
one other thing I want to say to you—and it’s the wisdom of the great jim rohn, one of my greatest mentors. and jim always would say, you have to learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.
a lot of people listening to this, ezra, probably working pretty hard on their job. the question is, are they working hard on themselves?
you work hard on yourself, all the other stuff starts to take care of itself. and then you become an extraordinary leader and an extraordinary manager of people, an extraordinary salesperson, an extraordinary marketer, and you’re off to the races.
Ezra McCarthy
well, that episode was packed. thanks so much, marcus, for showing up. if this has been helpful for you, I’d recommend you go over and check out his book, they ask you answer, or his newest book, endless customers.
and if you got value from today’s episode, be sure to share it with another lawn or landscaper. be sure to hit that subscribe button. and until the next one, keep up the hard work.
