 Hi, my name is Tom Stewart. I'm at the Cleaning Business today, and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to speak with Marcus Sheridan this afternoon. Marcus Sheridan is an international keynote speaker on sales marketing leadership. The New York Times calls Marcus a web marketing guru. Marcus's owner and partner at MPAT. It's a firm that helps small and medium-sized businesses with their inbound and digital marketing needs. He's also a partner at River Pools and Spas. River Pools and Spas is really amazing story and I guess it's really where his start in digital marketing began. And really important, he is the author of this really awesome book called AASQ Answer. And I've read it and a lot of my friends have as well. And it's very useful to anybody running a small business. And most importantly, we all have the opportunity to hear Marcus speak this November at the ISS Asia North America. It's going to be November 18th through 21st. Marcus is speaking Monday, November 18th, and he's going to be doing two separate unique sessions for us that day. And, you know, you're going to have an opportunity to hear Marcus explain a little bit more about that. And I promise you, it will be an experience you won't forget. Hi Marcus, how are you doing today? Well, Tom, I'm great. Great to talk with you and your audience. And really excited about the event in November because, you know, we have an opportunity to learn a lot and apply a lot and make a big difference with a lot of companies at one time. A big part of what you speak on and teach other cleaning businesses or just business owners in general about is content marketing. Can you explain to us a little bit what content marketing is? Yeah, whatever, you know, it's funny. Whenever you have a technical phrase like content marketing, it immediately can turn off people because it just even says the word marketing in it, right? And so I like to, I like to simplify it in its most basic terms. And that is this, content marketing is your company's ability to be the best and most helpful teachers in the world at what you do, right? And so a teacher, if you think about it, has a set of students, those students generally have a set of questions. The best teachers are the ones that know how to answer those questions in a way that little Johnny or little Ginny know and therefore understand the answer, right? And so that's what it's really all about. And I think it's interesting, people might say, well, on the cleaning business, what does teaching have to do with me? But if you really look at the process of making a buying decision, there's a lot of, it doesn't matter what you're spending money on, but in this case, we'll just call cleaning. There's a lot of questions, worries, fears even that potential customers, buyers have that have to be overcome if we want to win them over. And that's why we have this thing called content. And that's what content marketing is. It's using information to generate that trust through the power of teaching. Yeah. I mean, certainly in the house cleaning industry, trust is a big deal. I mean, consumers are giving cleaning companies the keys to their home. That's it. Well, that's it. That's exactly right. And, you know, the problem too is lots of times we we tend to dumb industries down when we work within the industry. What I mean by that, Tom, is we say things like, it's just cleaning houses. No, no, it's not. And in fact, there's a whole set of people that have never had somebody clean their house before or clean their, you know, their commercial location before. And there's varying degrees of what good and bad look like within the industry in terms of service delivered as everybody knows it's been in the game. And so because of this, we've got a lot of teaching explaining to do because if you don't do this, here's what happens. When the marketplace isn't educated on what's good, bad and ugly, you end up having a commoditized industry. One that people just base their decisions on price because they think, oh, cleaning, cleaning. And so we're just going to go with the lowest price one. And anybody that's been in this game for any period of time knows that you cannot be the cheapest and sustain a really, you know, customer-centric, long-term business. It's almost impossible to do. That is true. You know, if it becomes a race to the bottom where if you're competing on price, it's not a sustainable model. That's right. That's exactly right. So I've had the opportunity to hear you speak before and it's an engaging, exciting, and enlightening process and anybody who has that opportunity to believe a lot of great takeaways for their business. And you kind of usually start the times I've heard you, basically introducing yourself as a pool guy that you got your start installing swimming pools. Could you tell us a little bit about that experience and how it's shaped your thinking on digital or excuse me, content marketing? Yeah. Well, you know, like everybody's listening to this or watching this, I was a small and still am a small business owner and location-based business dealing with the issues of finding the best help and employees and trying to be profitable and all these things. And started this company with two friends in 2001. We were literally installing swimming pools out of backup pickup truck at the time. We opened up a little retail store and we tried to grow the company. We did, but then all of a sudden in 2008, the market collapsed. And I'm telling you what, thousands of swimming pool companies went out of business during that time when the market collapsed and we were in really, really big trouble time. And I thought we were going to lose the company. I thought we were going to file bankruptcy each one of us and I was going to lose my home, all those difficult things. And that's when I started to really learn about the way today's buyer has changed in today's digital consumer and how the internet was affecting things and what attracted people online during that buying process, that research phase and what really led to trust. And so as I was reading all these fancy phrases like inbound marketing and content marketing, all that stuff, what I heard in my simple pool guy mind was, you know, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customer's questions, you might save your business. And so that's what we did. We really obsessed over our customer's questions. Good, bad, and ugly. We said, we're going to address them on the website through text, through video. We're going to do it better than anybody in our space to make a long story short. It became the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. And it just really exploded the business. And of course, you know, since that time, I still have the company, but I've opened up sales and marketing company as well, because so many people have said to me, hey, Marcus, can you show us how to do that thing? Like you said, the book they asked you answer came out. It's really turned into a movement, which is cool, Tom, because now it's not just a pool company. There's thousands of companies, local, national, big, small, mom, pops, brands, you know, across the board that have embraced this philosophy, this framework, and it's working for them. Because here's the beauty of it. It all comes down to trust. And how can you become the most trusted voice in your space? That's really what this is about. And if I, if I came to anybody and I said, is trust going to be fundamental to your business in 20, 30 years, they'd say yes. If I said something like, well, is Facebook going to be fundamental to your business in 20 years? They're like, I don't know about that. I doubt it. That's exactly right. Because Facebook is a platform, whereas trust is a principle. It has no beginning, has no end, just is and always will be, especially for businesses. And that's the battle we're in. Every single one of us, regardless of what we sell, how we sell it, we're in a battle for trust. And that's what I'll help people do, especially what I help people do. And when you come to the session, both sessions, that's what we're really going to be driving in there. If you, if you are obsessed like me with becoming that voice of trust, and ultimately therefore getting more traffic lead sales, this is, this is what you want to attend. The, I guess, title of your presentation at the ISSA show North America is the digital consumer and how residential cleaners can reach them. How would you define the digital consumer? Well, if the digital consumer for each one of us is found when we look in the mirror, and we recognize how we really evolved as buyers over the last 20 years, and we're prolific because we love to search online. We love to ask questions. We ask hard questions online. We want to feel like we have a great sense for things before we talk to a sales person. We want to feel like we have led the sales experience, not the other way around. We want to feel like, in many cases, we know more about the business, about the product, about the service, and the business themselves do before we make that leap of faith and give that company our money. Ultimately, we hate surprises. We want to feel informed and we are willing to do the research so as to make sure that we're informed. We have no surprises and we don't make mistakes. We do that digitally. And that's why today on average, 70% of the buying decision is made before someone talks to a company, talks to a salesperson. You know, 20 plus years ago, Tom, that number is probably around 20, 30%. So today we're at 70% with this digital consumer, and the number is only growing. And it's going to continue to grow. And so how do we win that relationship on the front end before the handshake? This is something we've all got to address because no matter what happens, it's the rising tide. It's going to come up whether we move our lounge chairs or not. So we need to do something about it. And that's really what this digital consumer is. A lot of our association members in just cleaning businesses in general are relatively small. The people who run them own them often are wearing many different hats, spread thin, not a lot of time to dedicate to marketing or any single discipline for that matter, have limited budgets, limited resources. Is it possible for businesses like that to reach the digital consumer? Well, it certainly is. And it's one of those things where what we're going to talk about is stuff that's really focused on what is attainable for anybody? Is it necessarily going to happen with the snap of a finger? No. But for example, there's essential information that should be on every website if you want to win their trust, essential information. And the majority of companies, if you broke this down, let's say there's 10 major pieces of information that every website should have if you want to win their trust over. Not just show that you're a great company, but if you want to win their trust, 80 to 90% of those, let's say, 10 things most companies don't have. And so this is a problem. It needs to be fixed. And so we are going to talk about things, actions that companies can take, whether they're a one person shop or they have 10 employees or 100 employees, these are going to be principles that they can apply. Some are going to be able to do it at a greater scale than others. Yes, because they have more resources, they have more time. And others are going to make the time to do it better than others simply because this is life that we've chosen as business owners is we're going to control our destinies. And if you want to control your destiny, and that's why you got into business, let's be honest, well, then you're going to have to embrace digital in some way, shape or form. And we can't do it like everybody else. We can't say it and explain it. The thing that we do, the thing that we sell like everybody else. We really got to see ourselves as teachers of the marketplace. And so we're going to give them the guidelines and the principles to do that within a budget, certainly something that's scalable. And that's why I'm glad you asked that question, Tom, because it's going to be tailored to them. Yeah, I think that's really great. I mean, when I read your book, one of the things that struck me was, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. And I remember back in the day that it was, you know, you could just run a really big yellow page ad and set back and take orders. And what's happening, you know, in digital marketing and how you explain your book is it's kind of leveled the playing field. It's democratized what's happening, anybody who wants to jump in and try to reach the consumer by building trust as an opportunity to compete. Well, this is such a beautiful time because I see so often digital David's slaying Goliath within their industries, because they can be quicker, they can be more nimble, they can play by their own set of rules for which they can make. And this is why you see companies that are small, just absolutely pummeling the some of the big boys and girls at the top of the industries, because they were willing to focus more on what does the buyer really want, and do it without all the red tape, they made it easier, they made it more friction-free. And they're changing the game in their space, right? And I always like to say that, you know, every industry has leaders and generally speaking, those leaders are the ones that set the rules. And everybody else is a rule follower. But on occasion, you'll have somebody that's a rule follower and they'll say, you know what, we're going to do this thing differently. And then they become a rule breaker, right? They break the rule. And the rule breaker, eventually though, becomes the rule maker. Because if you're willing to break the rules of an industry, do it differently than the way it's always been done, let's say. Now, all of a sudden, we're just going to say, wow, buyers are going to be like, this is exactly what I wanted. Business are going to say, wait, you can't do that. But eventually, they have to fall in line because the marketplace demands it. And so, they were breakers, they become the rule makers, and everybody else that was the leaders, now they become the followers. That's the circle of life and business. And it's spinning faster than it ever has, which is why it is a time for great opportunity. You don't, to your point, have to have the budget for that full page ad, for that crazy TV commercial campaign anymore. And that's a great time to live in, and we have that opportunity. Marcus, I've heard you say that we are all media organizations, whether we like it or not. What do you mean by that? It's a good one, Tom, because at this point, for buyers, our mindset as buyers is unless we see it, it really doesn't exist. So, what I mean by that is, I don't just want you to say, well, it's our people that make us special. Well, I mean, everybody says that, especially in the cleaning space. It's like, it's our people that set us apart. Well, if everybody's saying it, what does it mean to the marketplace? Well, it doesn't really mean anything. So, if I come to your site, if I'm looking at your digital properties, let's say, can I see your people? Can I meet them? Can I get a sense for them? Do I know the story behind them? Because then, seeing is, at that point, believing. You say you do extra detail in your processes when you service a house or whatever it is. Well, do you show that? Do you show what that process looks like? Why it's different? Why it's more detailed? Why it's worth the additional 20% that you're charging? Whatever that thing is, these are the types of things that we should be talking about and showing, but we can't just be saying it alone, because otherwise, that's not going to carry enough weight. So, you're going to be speaking at the ISSA Show North America November, the show's November 18 through 21. You're going to be speaking Monday the 18th. Starting a party right, Tom. Yeah, absolutely. Lead off with the best. Could you explain what the big takeaways would be for anybody running a cleaning business would get from your presentation at the ISSA Show? Yeah. They're going to get a tremendous sense, first and foremost, as you mentioned. A few of these you've mentioned, but how the buyer has changed. Therefore, what we must do is businesses to adjust. We're going to talk about how we can become the most trusted voice in our space, how you can immediately stand out from your competitors, how you can make those buyers look at you, tilt their head and say, huh, they're not like everybody else. I feel different about this company, how you can get more qualified leads, how you can get more leads, how you can shorten those sales cycles in the process. We're going to talk about how to use video as well in the sales and marketing and customer experience process, how you can do it simply, without a big budget whatsoever, without being a Hollywood actor, but yet still take advantage of it and become very, very proficient with it, without being a techie and watch how it affects your business. And of course, your bottom line. And so there's going to be lots of takeaways. And that's my promise that if anybody comes to these sessions, you're going to have a whole lot of takeaways. It's not going to be a bunch of theory. I'm not into that. That's not my jam. My jam is how much applicable information, techniques, tips, tricks, can I give my audience so that they can immediately take it back and say, yes, this is working for me and my organization. That's my commitment. Well, that's awesome. I mean, I can say I've been a member of ISSA RxC for a long, long time. I was one of the people that started RxC and I've seen a number of speakers. And you're looking for a couple of things. You're looking for meaningful content, useful information you can take back and use to make your business better. But you're also looking for dynamic speakers who can be entertaining and make it interesting. And Marcus, I mean, you rock on both counts. And I just want everybody to know that, that if, you know, at all possible, they have the opportunity to come out to Vegas and see you. I guarantee you it's going to be one of the most exciting and memorable experiences you've ever had in an ISSA show. Again, those dates are November 18 through 21. Marcus will be speaking Monday, November 18. If you want to know more about the show, you can go to issa.com. They actually have a page show.issa.com that will take you right there that, you know, you can register, get your hotel rooms and the whole thing. It's really easy. Marcus, is there any last word you'd like to share? You know, I think maybe just the last thing I'll say is it's not often as businesses where we get to work on the business instead of just being engaged in the business and the day to day. And that's why we come to these events. And it's one of the best parts about my job as somebody now that gets to travel, speak to these companies is you watch literally how one talk from this event, because in the right frame of mind, like I said, they're working on their business in that particular moment, can change their life, right? And there are going to be people that attend ISSA this year that apply some of the things that they felt prompted to apply, and it will literally change their life in the life of their employees, their families. That's what it's all about. And that's why I'm excited to be a part of the event. Well, thank you, Marcus. We look forward to seeing you. And again, go to issa.com. It's really easy to sign up. And we really hope to see you in Vegas in a few weeks. Thank you, Marcus. My pleasure.