From Stalled Leads to Steady Growth at Superior Trucking Payroll Service [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 111]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

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Mike Ritzema
I try to do everything DIY. I read the book and I understood it.

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Mike Ritzema
I thought

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Mike Ritzema
it it just didn't work. I wasn't getting results

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Mike Ritzema
and I was getting annoyed.

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Mike Ritzema
And I see videos from Marcus and they would help a little bit, but

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Mike Ritzema
wasn't there.

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Mike Ritzema
And it finally occurred to me,

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Mike Ritzema
Michael Jordan has a coach.

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Mike Ritzema
I have a business coach for other things.

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Mike Ritzema
Why don't I have a marketing coach?

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Mike Ritzema
I talked to impact, got set up with them,

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Mike Ritzema
and the results started pretty quickly.

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Mike Ritzema
we look back now

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Mike Ritzema
and we're like, it's amazing what the difference is.

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Mike Ritzema
A year later,

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Mike Ritzema
leads almost tripled.

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Mike Ritzema
Our website traffic is way up in a time when everybody else's is down.

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Mike Ritzema
And I think a lot of that is due to the time I spent with the coaches and impact.

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Bob Ruffolo
You're listening to The Endless Customers podcasts brought to you by the team at impact!

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Bob Ruffolo
Ellis customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market.

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Bob Ruffolo
you want to start to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business, pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller. Wherever books are sold.

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Bob Ruffolo
Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impact about how our coaching program can help you implement endless customers to success.

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Bob Ruffolo
And now onto the show. Here's your host Alex

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Alex
Today we're talking to someone who's taken the principles of endless customers and built a real working system around them.

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Alex
Mike Zimmer runs superior trucking, payroll service,

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Alex
and for a long time, he knew the business had more potential.

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Alex
But marketing just wasn't delivering.

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Alex
That's changed in a big way.

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Alex
Now they're generating qualified leads every week.

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Alex
Having steady sales conversations

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Alex
and even hiring a new salesperson to keep up with demand.

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Alex
In this episode,

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Alex
Mike walks us through what shifted,

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Alex
how they're doing it,

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Alex
and what others can learn from the path that he's on.

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Alex
Mike, welcome to the show.

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Mike Ritzema
Hey, thanks for having me.

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Alex
Thanks for taking the time to be on the show and to talk about your journey with endless customers and just share your experiences. I'm really excited to be talking to you today.

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Mike Ritzema
Yeah, this will be fun.

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Alex
Yeah, this will be a lot of fun. So

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Alex
before we get started, I think a good place to just kind of set the stage. Can you tell people a little bit about yourself and then about superior trucking payroll service and what you guys do?

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Mike Ritzema
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's in our name. We are a payroll service for trucking companies,

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Mike Ritzema
and that's all we do. We don't do doctor's offices, we don't do

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Mike Ritzema
mat restaurants and all those other things like

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Mike Ritzema
almost every other payroll service does. And it came out because I was working for a trucking company

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Mike Ritzema
and we were using a national payroll provider, and they were doing something wrong.

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Mike Ritzema
And so I went to the owner and I said, I can I can make you something better.

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Mike Ritzema
And he said, yeah, go do it. And so I did it and it worked great.

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Mike Ritzema
Everything was going great. And so we just kept doing that. And it occurred to me later, talking to other trucking company owners that I had been introduced to,

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Mike Ritzema
that there were some best practices that really smart people just weren't doing.

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Mike Ritzema
And so I thought, well, if these guys, he's really smart guys aren't doing these things, that would save them a lot of money.

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Mike Ritzema
There's got to be a whole lot of people who wouldn't be doing it. And so I laughed and

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Mike Ritzema
2010, went on my own. And 15 years later we've got 12 of us working here and everything's going pretty well.

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Alex
That's an incredible story. I'm. I'm so inspired by that.

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Alex
know, what are some of that old saying? If something if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But if it is broke, you got to do something about it. And you really, you really did

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Alex
you live and breathe that in 15 years in business is an incredible thing.

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Alex
Congratulations.

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Mike Ritzema
Thank you. Yeah, it's been a fun ride.

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Alex
Very cool. So can we talk a little bit about how you came

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Alex
to the endless customers ecosystem in the community, like how you found it and how that journey started for you and for your business?

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Mike Ritzema
Yeah, absolutely. So when I started the business,

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Mike Ritzema
I'm not like a salesperson. Salesperson. I'm not. I'm not. They call them hunters and farmers. I'm totally a farmer. I am in no way a hunter. Okay?

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Mike Ritzema
my plan was I'm going to educate my audience, become a thought leader, and then they'll come along with me, because clearly, I've shown them that this is the best way to go.

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Mike Ritzema
And I was trying to do this, and I was doing all the things wrong that you've heard from anybody you've talked to. I wasn't posting consistently enough. I wasn't. They were no call to actions at all.

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Mike Ritzema
there was no big message behind it. I would just think of a topic. I would type out some educational thing, and it was like,

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Mike Ritzema
reading about payroll. Really? I mean, come on, it's not it's not a bestseller. So

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Mike Ritzema
it's just not like I can pretend that it is. And I love it, but

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Mike Ritzema
that's okay.

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Alex
Yeah, but I think that's the coolest part about this. And we have other companies like this too, like we have for some people that are in the insurance industry and they say the same thing, like it's not the sexiest thing to maybe talk about or write about, but that doesn't mean you can't

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Alex
be honest and build trust and position it in a really cool way.

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Alex
That still makes people excited and want to read or

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Alex
engage with video or whatever piece of content you're putting out.

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Mike Ritzema
Absolutely. And then, Larry Kagan from Baron Payroll, who I think you guys know. Yeah. In on Long Island had recommended the book to me,

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Mike Ritzema
and I read it and I was like, this is exactly what I've been trying to do. And as I'm reading the book, I added and failing so miserably at

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Mike Ritzema
but I was that was like, this is exactly where I wanted to go.

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Mike Ritzema
I wanted people to reach out to us. And so then

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Mike Ritzema
20 1718, whenever that was. So we were trying to do this more, but we didn't have a content person.

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Mike Ritzema
you can imagine that that doesn't go well. And you're correct. We would do content when we felt like we could find content and try and write it a little better,

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Mike Ritzema
but nothing was really moving the needle because we still weren't sticking it.

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Mike Ritzema
And then we hired a content person and just kind of told it, read the book and do those things. And again, as predicted,

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Mike Ritzema
it did okay. It did better, but not that much better. We still weren't really getting there.

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Mike Ritzema
We tried a couple other things. We put a couple other people in the role, and then finally I put Melissa, who's doing it now in the role about three years ago.

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Mike Ritzema
And I just said, do it. You're smart. You've worked with me for a long time. You know, about trucking. Just go write articles and read this book and go write articles. And she was doing that. And she was we were doing this three articles a week as recommended, but it still really wasn't landing until I finally had the epiphany.

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Mike Ritzema
And it's it's dumb when I say it, but I'll say it anyway for the benefit of everybody else. That

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Mike Ritzema
everybody needs a coach. Michael Jordan had a coach.

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Alex
Yes.

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Mike Ritzema
Right. You know, every great athlete of every great anything had a coach. And I just took Melissa who didn't, who had a little bit of familiarity with marketing things, but wasn't that wasn't her specialty.

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Mike Ritzema
She's just super empathetic. And I mean, that was that was what she was bringing to it, which is a great thing to bring to it.

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Mike Ritzema
But we had to help it refine the craft. And I was being no help. And so when I had that,

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Mike Ritzema
idea, I went to the first Impact live was in Chicago in 2024.

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Mike Ritzema
We both went, it's three hour drive for us. We went there. I understood the concepts but couldn't explain them, and she got to hear them all firsthand.

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Mike Ritzema
And the drinking from the firehose and all that. And that was when we got involved

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Mike Ritzema
with the coaching, with with impact.

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Alex
so after impact live in Chicago, that's when you get that that moment that was like, okay, we really need a coach.

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Mike Ritzema
had known it for a few months before. Connor had been talking to me about it, and I knew I felt like that was where I knew I had to end up. But then when I finally got there and got to meet some of the people

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Mike Ritzema
like, yeah, we got to do this, I'm like, I have done Melissa dirty on this.

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Mike Ritzema
This is just not okay. What I've done to her.

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Alex
it's tough to because, you know, Melissa sounds like she's she's really great and is probably a great writer. And the empathy piece is huge because when you want to build trust with people, you need to have that,

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Alex
empathy piece. It's just so important. But it's one of those things where I read the book, too, and I was like, oh, this is simple.

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Alex
This makes total sense. I can I can go do this. Let me just

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Alex
roll my sleeves up and make it happen. And

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Alex
it's easier said than done. It really is. And and that's where, you know, the events and coaching and training really comes into play. And we've seen it happen time and time again. So it's cool.

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Alex
Cool to hear you say that.

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Mike Ritzema
You know, and even like I remember from that,

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Mike Ritzema
event that Mandy had gone up and showed us the GPT that she has, and that just blew me away. Like, I knew I knew about ChatGPT. And, I mean, it was a fun toy

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Mike Ritzema
and I would use it for things. I still use it for things. But then when I that introduced me to custom GPT

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Mike Ritzema
and then I'm like, okay, now I see, like beginning with one of my

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Mike Ritzema
not great articles that I wrote or something and turning running it through Mandy's thing

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Mike Ritzema
and then having it come out with an article that looks a ten times better, right?

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Mike Ritzema
And stick sticks the landing and does all these things, you know, that was that was much better. And so that was that was I saw the light

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Mike Ritzema
then we did coaching shortly after that.

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Alex
That's really cool. I, I think too, it's important to note that

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Alex
you really were born into it.

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Alex
we see this happen a lot that

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Alex
the result of like it working versus it not working really comes down to a person like yourself. It's the CEO or the CMO or somebody that's in a leadership role,

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Alex
and it has to start from the top down.

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Alex
That buy in is so important. And

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Alex
do you feel like you were really driving this for for your team as you as you started to, like, get into the coaching program and you started to really work the system more and more.

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Mike Ritzema
Well, I felt like I was driving it before the coaching program. Okay. Like especially like I'm like, we're going into this thing.

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Mike Ritzema
I think she had already talked to Connor. She might have talked to. She might have been in one of your one of your meet up things with Christy Frey.

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Alex
Nice.

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Mike Ritzema
He looked at our website and it made his head hurt, if I remember that. Right.

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Alex
That's all.

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Mike Ritzema
Right. By the way.

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Alex
That sounds on brand. Yeah.

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Mike Ritzema
That's right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was he was it was fair.

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Mike Ritzema
And I appreciated that. And so I think she was mostly on board. But then after going to meet everybody and then and then doing like the first one on ones, we were in Allie's group. So Allie and Mandy, who we spend the most time with,

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Mike Ritzema
as soon as she did the first one of those, she was and she was like, all right.

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Mike Ritzema
but I had asked her because I, she wouldn't necessarily want to disagree with me. She wants to go with the flow. That's a

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Mike Ritzema
West Michigan thing up here. We don't argue about things. And so I'm like, do you want this? Like I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to fund this. Is this something that you want and we'll think beneficial.

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Mike Ritzema
And she's like, yes, all right. We're doing it.

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Alex
Very cool. And the rest is history. So

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Alex
let's talk let's talk about that. So we established the journey like how it started.

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Alex
Once you started using these custom gtis, you and you had gone to the event, you started working with a coach and a trainer. How did that shift your content? Like how did it make it land?

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Alex
You said you stuck the landing. I thought that was that stood out to me.

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Alex
What do you mean by that? Like how did it shift the content and the result of your content

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Alex
sticking?

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Mike Ritzema
Landing is a good CTA.

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Mike Ritzema
Yeah, it's a good call to action like that is sticking the landing. You wrote this great article, fantastically wonderful content, the super informational and beneficial to everybody. And then it's just the end.

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Mike Ritzema
Like that's not sticking landing

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Mike Ritzema
there's got to be a next step. And that was part of what they were really good at explaining was

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Mike Ritzema
the idea of the prospect journey to becoming a customer.

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Mike Ritzema
You've got to bring them along the journey.

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Mike Ritzema
you don't just have to ask for their business in every single piece that you write, but you want to get them

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Mike Ritzema
into your pipeline somehow. And then funnel your pipeline through. And just

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Mike Ritzema
the idea of taking them that way. I thought that was like that's really the idea is having some purpose for us behind it, where,

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Mike Ritzema
this article is going to bring them to our website for this thing and then that thing is going to bring them somewhere else.

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Mike Ritzema
And then after they've seen three or 4 or 5 things or whatever, now we're going to start asking for business, because now they know us. And that's which was not at all what I it's what I wanted to do and had not thought about it that way. And was not in any way doing.

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Alex
What were you doing before, if you don't mind me asking,

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Alex
also I appreciate your candor. I love how open, honest you're being. It's wonderful.

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Alex
it's refreshing, honestly, because

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Alex
depending on the CEO or the person you're talking to, some people don't like to admit their faults.

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Alex
I suffer from this. Sometimes I'm like, oh, let's not pay attention to that.

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Alex
But that's that's where you learn the most and that's where you gain the most experience. So you have to

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Alex
be open to that.

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Mike Ritzema
Yeah. There's no there's no gain in telling you. Oh we, we were perfect. And then we you talk to impact and now we're perfect. You're like you know that's it doesn't work that way.

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Alex
No.

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Mike Ritzema
But what was your question.

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Alex
what was it like numbers wise? If

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Alex
what you were doing beforehand. Right.

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Mike Ritzema
So yeah, I got a couple of metrics for you. Yeah, I'd love to that I think are worthwhile.

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Mike Ritzema
Are new visitor count. It's the way that our web host counts visitors and they count new website visitors every week went up about 18%. I looking at second quarter 2024,

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Mike Ritzema
We started the impact coaching in June of 2024.

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Mike Ritzema
So really those first weeks you're not like there's no magic in the first week. So I figured that's a good comparison.

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Alex
Yeah. You get a ramp up. There's

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Alex
definitely a ramp up. Yeah.

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Mike Ritzema
Right.

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Mike Ritzema
Yeah. If and only if only it worked the first day.

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Mike Ritzema
Right. The idea. But yeah, we went up 18%. I believe it is from 2024 to 2025, in a time when Google traffic is going down,

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Mike Ritzema
in a time when website traffic is going down.

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Mike Ritzema
and I think Marcus has shared this on stage, that a lot of even impacts website traffic had been going down.

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Mike Ritzema
Because and so and I was just going up.

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Alex
it's true. Our traffic has gone down. And I think across the board for most companies,

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Alex
a lot of people out there watching and listening are feeling it too.

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Alex
I wouldn't say that Google is dead,

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Alex
but air is shifting the way that people search and educate themselves on things. And because of that

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Alex
ranking in Google was used to be the number one most important thing isn't as important as it used to be.

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Alex
And there's a shift happening. So

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Alex
to have an 18% increase while that's going on is is not the norm, which is pretty cool to hear. So good for you. Yeah.

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Mike Ritzema
That that's you know, it's fantastic. And the better part is

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Mike Ritzema
our lead count that we got in second quarter of 2024, we got 24 leads from our website.

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Mike Ritzema
these aren't even necessarily qualified leads. I'm just giving you Ron leads. We weren't counting qualified yet, which we do now. Okay. So we got 24 leads, which is not great.

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Mike Ritzema
The trucking economy's been terrible, which is our customers.

00:12:16:22 - 00:12:19:11
Mike Ritzema
It's been terrible then. It's terrible now. So that's still the same.

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Mike Ritzema
In the second quarter of 2025, we went from 24 and 24 to

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Mike Ritzema
or 64 and 25.

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Alex
Wow.

00:12:25:13 - 00:12:34:04
Mike Ritzema
Of which I think 48 were qualified as a qualified lead, as an actual trucking company owner or someone who works for a trucking company, that's not just a driver looking around looking for information or

00:12:34:04 - 00:12:37:04
Mike Ritzema
not some random yeah, whatever. Whoever at your website. Yeah.

00:12:37:04 - 00:12:38:13
Alex
You're more than doubled in one year.

00:12:38:18 - 00:12:40:01
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, we almost tripled. Yeah.

00:12:40:01 - 00:12:40:20
Alex
That's impressive.

00:12:40:20 - 00:12:43:09
Mike Ritzema
I mean I think that that's clearly because of the work that we've done

00:12:43:09 - 00:12:47:03
Mike Ritzema
our coach and hearing Marcus in the impact plus community stuff.

00:12:47:03 - 00:12:49:06
Mike Ritzema
there were some things in there that were really key to that to.

00:12:49:06 - 00:12:51:12
Alex
And what does that done for your business? It sounds like

00:12:51:12 - 00:12:52:07
Alex
you must have

00:12:52:07 - 00:12:55:00
Alex
a much better piano than you did from 24 to 25.

00:12:55:00 - 00:12:56:18
Mike Ritzema
there's some time in the sales process.

00:12:56:18 - 00:12:59:15
Mike Ritzema
some of that's come in and some of it hasn't. Yeah. But

00:12:59:15 - 00:13:08:16
Mike Ritzema
what it's done now is. And you you mentioned it in your intro is that it's enough qualified leads that Melissa did sales and marketing before because we didn't do outbound sales.

00:13:08:16 - 00:13:18:18
Mike Ritzema
was trying to do this without outbound sales, and but now we have enough inbound leads coming in that are qualified that we hired, sales rep for the first time in four years.

00:13:18:18 - 00:13:19:22
Mike Ritzema
We didn't have one for four years.

00:13:20:01 - 00:13:20:11
Alex
Wow.

00:13:20:11 - 00:13:30:12
Mike Ritzema
now what he's going to do is follow up on those inbound leads, as well as when he has extra time beyond that, then he can do prospecting and things like that. But that way, let's Melissa, just focus on building quality content

00:13:30:12 - 00:13:34:09
Mike Ritzema
working on video and working on things like that to make us more successful.

00:13:34:11 - 00:13:42:08
Mike Ritzema
Which is really good anyway, because it's hard to be really good at content generation and be a good salesperson. Those are two very different things.

00:13:42:08 - 00:13:47:18
Alex
It's so true. And they go hand in hand so much, but they're still two very different stripes. So there is definitely some overlap.

00:13:47:18 - 00:13:48:19
Alex
I, I totally agree with you.

00:13:48:19 - 00:13:51:18
Mike Ritzema
Yeah. Marketing like content creation requires deep work time.

00:13:51:18 - 00:14:01:06
Mike Ritzema
you can't just write a third of an article. Oh, the phone rings. It's a potential client. And talk to them for half an hour and come right back and go back to this for two minutes and something else happens. You can grab the phone or go have to do something.

00:14:01:06 - 00:14:06:06
Mike Ritzema
Exactly. I can't write that way. If you can write that way, that's a whole class. You guys should have an impact live. But

00:14:06:06 - 00:14:08:10
Mike Ritzema
I can't do it and I don't. I don't know people who do. I

00:14:08:10 - 00:14:09:00
Mike Ritzema
don't think.

00:14:09:02 - 00:14:09:21
Alex
Most people can.

00:14:09:22 - 00:14:13:09
Mike Ritzema
Yeah. So just let it. If she can just write her content, have deep work time

00:14:13:09 - 00:14:18:12
Mike Ritzema
and then Calvin, our sales rep, can take the calls that come in and he can schedule things and he can,

00:14:18:12 - 00:14:24:19
Mike Ritzema
follow up on people because it's not just the phone call when they call and you go, yep, we're at yes, we're really a payroll service just for trucking companies.

00:14:24:19 - 00:14:29:21
Mike Ritzema
Yes we are. Yes, we do all the payroll things. Yeah, it's all the same. Six for six questions.

00:14:29:21 - 00:14:37:09
Mike Ritzema
Calvin could do that for for us. And he can. And then he can push to make the sale, get on the proposal, on the follow up, on others all the time in that. So

00:14:37:09 - 00:14:39:04
Mike Ritzema
it was a good time to break those up.

00:14:39:06 - 00:14:40:23
Mike Ritzema
Because that Melissa

00:14:40:23 - 00:14:44:11
Mike Ritzema
she's many gifts and she doesn't love doing sales. Yeah, she likes helping people.

00:14:44:11 - 00:14:52:13
Alex
It sounds too, like there's an opportunity for assignment selling to be in there, too, so that some of those questions you keep having to answer you, you can get ahead of, especially with these inbound leads.

00:14:52:13 - 00:14:58:06
Mike Ritzema
we've made like a selling seven video and we've made we've got we just put a new video up on our price page and things like that.

00:14:58:06 - 00:15:03:00
Mike Ritzema
But yeah I agree. Yeah. We're, we're going to start working towards assignment selling. I'll tell you about assignment selling for me,

00:15:03:00 - 00:15:06:05
Mike Ritzema
I never really worried about it because I remember reading it and they ask you answer.

00:15:06:05 - 00:15:11:20
Mike Ritzema
He was spending too much time chasing down man leads. Well, we weren't having enough leads that chasing him down really cost us that much time.

00:15:11:20 - 00:15:21:09
Mike Ritzema
But now we have more leads. So now it matters more. And this is where it really starts to come in. Is is now that we've got a steady lead stream coming in, you know, I think that's it's going to be even more important.

00:15:21:09 - 00:15:22:03
Alex
Absolutely.

00:15:22:03 - 00:15:25:04
Alex
You had said something earlier too about how you weren't tracking qualified leads.

00:15:25:04 - 00:15:26:20
Alex
So can we talk a little bit about

00:15:26:20 - 00:15:31:06
Alex
how that shifted to like, okay, we need to have a pipeline. We need to clearly identify

00:15:31:06 - 00:15:36:06
Alex
mql skills like and like just what that look like for you as you were implementing and with customers.

00:15:36:06 - 00:15:39:01
Mike Ritzema
we have speaking of coaches, we I have a business coach who

00:15:39:01 - 00:15:40:05
Mike Ritzema
comes in every three months.

00:15:40:05 - 00:15:41:10
Alex
Nice.

00:15:41:12 - 00:15:43:23
Mike Ritzema
We do we do something very similar to EA's.

00:15:43:23 - 00:15:50:01
Mike Ritzema
And when we're about six years in on it and it's it's really helpful. We could do a whole other podcast about that. But it's been really good.

00:15:50:01 - 00:15:56:17
Mike Ritzema
Reach out to me if you want me to, if you need a recommendation. Sounds, but, you're right. But the, he was the one, actually, who did put us on that.

00:15:56:17 - 00:15:57:09
Mike Ritzema
He said,

00:15:57:09 - 00:16:01:13
Mike Ritzema
you know, you really need to be checking qualified leads, and I'm sure I would. I am sure that

00:16:01:13 - 00:16:05:22
Mike Ritzema
if Ali or Mandy are watching there, like we told him that too. And I'm sure they're right.

00:16:05:22 - 00:16:07:10
Mike Ritzema
I needed to hear it one more time.

00:16:07:12 - 00:16:08:04
Alex
Yeah.

00:16:08:06 - 00:16:11:18
Mike Ritzema
But now we started that, second quarter of this year.

00:16:11:18 - 00:16:15:16
Alex
since you started doing it, it sounds like you've you've really been able to identify

00:16:15:16 - 00:16:21:23
Alex
stronger leads and have a clear sense of, like, where to strategically target your time and know which ones are worth

00:16:21:23 - 00:16:25:21
Alex
these calls and spending the time to nurture them versus, you know, which ones aren't.

00:16:25:21 - 00:16:31:07
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, yeah, it helps us. It little helps us know is our content working. You know, because if I'm getting

00:16:31:07 - 00:16:37:16
Mike Ritzema
a bunch of leads but they're not potential buyers. In our, in our ideal client, you know, client profile,

00:16:37:16 - 00:16:41:15
Mike Ritzema
we're not hitting the mark. We're doing we're writing a good article for somebody, but not for us.

00:16:41:17 - 00:16:51:05
Mike Ritzema
You know, and so we really want to get zero in on the small trucking company owners, small trucking company accountants, small trucking company, you know, the billing people or whatever the office manager, whoever,

00:16:51:05 - 00:16:55:08
Mike Ritzema
those are the people that we really want to reach with these things. Small company, a small training person,

00:16:55:08 - 00:16:57:09
Mike Ritzema
I love the drivers, love them to pieces.

00:16:57:09 - 00:17:02:15
Mike Ritzema
They do a job I could never do, but they're not my target. So when they go and look at something, just because they're curious,

00:17:02:15 - 00:17:06:21
Mike Ritzema
They're not going to do payroll. They don't. So I'm glad that they find the information helpful.

00:17:06:21 - 00:17:09:07
Mike Ritzema
Probably helps me in my SEO, but it's,

00:17:09:09 - 00:17:10:02
Alex
Yeah, definitely.

00:17:10:02 - 00:17:12:22
Alex
It might have those drivers to the if they're with a company that

00:17:12:22 - 00:17:13:07
Alex
maybe it's.

00:17:13:07 - 00:17:13:18
Mike Ritzema
Always the.

00:17:13:18 - 00:17:14:18
Alex
Hope need to make a shift.

00:17:14:18 - 00:17:17:19
Mike Ritzema
But but we don't count them as, as, as qualified leads.

00:17:17:19 - 00:17:22:02
Alex
You had mentioned to I heard, that you have video in the mix as well. So you have your content manager.

00:17:22:02 - 00:17:27:06
Alex
Can you talk a little bit about how video plays into this content mix and strategy that you're, that you're working?

00:17:27:06 - 00:17:33:21
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, we are. Every time I come to an impact live, I come back and I gotta do more video, I gotta do more video.

00:17:33:21 - 00:17:39:04
Mike Ritzema
And so we are really trying to evolve that as, as we keep going.

00:17:39:04 - 00:17:41:19
Mike Ritzema
I've gotten past the idea of it's got to be perfect.

00:17:41:19 - 00:17:45:07
Mike Ritzema
I just need it to be quick so I can knock this thing out quickly.

00:17:45:09 - 00:17:48:15
Mike Ritzema
I feel comfortable. If I don't have a script, I can vamp on the subject,

00:17:48:15 - 00:17:51:10
Mike Ritzema
as long as I stick the landing. The CTA call to action again.

00:17:51:10 - 00:17:57:04
Mike Ritzema
But I feel pretty good about it. And so we we try to do a couple videos a week that are each a minute or two long,

00:17:57:04 - 00:18:00:12
Mike Ritzema
but my goal is actually to do 30 published video minutes a week.

00:18:00:12 - 00:18:02:08
Mike Ritzema
Okay. Haven't I don't hit it. Most weeks

00:18:02:08 - 00:18:06:03
Mike Ritzema
I will share that I'm working on it. I actually assembled this morning

00:18:06:03 - 00:18:16:15
Mike Ritzema
a desk for my podcast studio that I'm going to build. Oh, that I just I put the preview out the trailer podcast episode out last week, and I'm going to do it, I want to get an episode out a week.

00:18:16:15 - 00:18:18:19
Mike Ritzema
I've got 20 episodes ready to go. I just gotta film them.

00:18:18:19 - 00:18:27:03
Mike Ritzema
And so I'm excited about that. But I'm like, that's going to be the best content distribution for that kind of stuff, because I used to do webinars and webinars, which went pretty well for me,

00:18:27:03 - 00:18:31:15
Mike Ritzema
but it's not 2010 anymore. Yeah. Webinars. Webinars are tricky because

00:18:31:15 - 00:18:34:23
Mike Ritzema
people want to watch it on demand anyway, so you may as well turn it into bite sized pieces.

00:18:34:23 - 00:18:36:09
Mike Ritzema
And for me, making a podcast.

00:18:36:09 - 00:18:39:11
Alex
absolutely. And the, the way that you can repurpose a podcast, I mean

00:18:39:11 - 00:18:41:12
Alex
That's what we're doing here. And it's in the new book as well.

00:18:41:12 - 00:18:50:02
Alex
it's fascinating, especially with some of these AI tools, to be able to have a really meaningful conversation like this and then to be able to repurpose it across video and social and written

00:18:50:02 - 00:18:53:00
Alex
it really just makes things a lot easier and also cohesive,

00:18:53:00 - 00:18:56:01
Alex
you're putting stuff out across all your platforms on the same subject

00:18:56:01 - 00:19:00:08
Alex
at a given day or a given time, so that it's not like, you know, the blog is talking about

00:19:00:08 - 00:19:07:21
Alex
this and the videos that are going out or not even on the same subject. And it's it feels a little disjointed at times. So it's really helping to pull all that together.

00:19:07:21 - 00:19:14:07
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, absolutely. And I got the idea of I could never get my head around shorts. I just couldn't do it. And finally it occurred to me,

00:19:14:07 - 00:19:20:18
Mike Ritzema
okay, go watch Impact Shorts, see how they do it. It just do it like that. And it occurred to me that you pull out the meat of a point

00:19:20:18 - 00:19:23:05
Mike Ritzema
for the 32nd meat of the point, and that's your short.

00:19:23:05 - 00:19:23:15
Alex
That's it.

00:19:23:20 - 00:19:24:17
Mike Ritzema
But then I'm like,

00:19:24:17 - 00:19:26:23
Mike Ritzema
man alive. I'm making this so hard.

00:19:26:23 - 00:19:37:06
Mike Ritzema
but I got opus you guys had so I think one of somebody an impact somewhere on the community or something had mentioned to opus. So I got that love that as far as making shorts out of longs. So easy.

00:19:37:08 - 00:19:45:15
Alex
It does make it easy. And you don't have to be a video expert to use it. It really does make it easy and it has good suggestions. I like the little ratings that it gives for the different clips.

00:19:45:15 - 00:19:52:18
Alex
But that's something that we that we've been some similar to you. It's like you just have to do it and it's not going to be perfect, and that's okay.

00:19:52:23 - 00:19:57:04
Alex
And if you look at the podcast today from where it was when we started it a year and a half ago,

00:19:57:04 - 00:20:02:14
Alex
it's come a long way. And there's things that we've learned. There's things that we've messed up and we we own those things and we just keep

00:20:02:14 - 00:20:05:22
Alex
working to make it better every time. And that's, that's all you can do.

00:20:05:22 - 00:20:12:03
Alex
That's the best you can do it. I think, frankly, that's better. It's better to do that than to not put anything out and to have no voice and have

00:20:12:03 - 00:20:14:19
Alex
no noise in whatever industry or stripe that you're in.

00:20:14:19 - 00:20:24:20
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that completely. I expect my first episode to be my worst one, and then it just gets better from there. But if you listen to any podcast, listen to episode one again after they're on episode 200 or whatever,

00:20:24:20 - 00:20:29:14
Mike Ritzema
you'd be like, oh my gosh, what was that exactly? And so I fully I'm, I'm cool with all that.

00:20:29:14 - 00:20:33:10
Mike Ritzema
Like I will look at it later and laugh. I hope it's 200th ones better.

00:20:33:10 - 00:20:35:13
Mike Ritzema
If I didn't improve in 200 episodes. Good grief.

00:20:35:15 - 00:20:38:03
Alex
Yeah, I know,

00:20:38:03 - 00:20:46:23
Alex
I can't wait to check it out. I'm definitely gonna be checking out. Allison told me a little bit about that. You were. You were getting into launching that she wasn't sure when. So it sounds like sooner than later, which is really exciting.

00:20:46:23 - 00:20:51:21
Mike Ritzema
Yep. I just gotta make time. I hope to recover. I'm going to be gone beginning of next week, but I want to have the first episode launched.

00:20:51:21 - 00:20:53:18
Mike Ritzema
before I come to Impact live in a week and a.

00:20:53:18 - 00:20:56:03
Alex
Half, that'd be cool. I. You're coming to Hartford? Awesome.

00:20:56:03 - 00:20:57:00
Mike Ritzema
I'm coming to Hartford.

00:20:57:02 - 00:20:58:18
Alex
Nice. Oh, I can't wait to see you there.

00:20:58:18 - 00:21:09:20
Alex
And for everybody watching and listening in. Pack live 18th through the 20th in Hartford, Connecticut. It's going to be a great show. And if you can make it to that one, don't worry, we have two a year. You would mention Chicago. We do one in Chicago every year as well.

00:21:09:20 - 00:21:15:15
Alex
So you can go to Impact plus.com backslash live I believe. And you can check it out and get your tickets.

00:21:15:15 - 00:21:20:21
Alex
definitely worth checking, checking out and being there. And you get to meet awesome people like Mike care. All right, enough of this.

00:21:20:22 - 00:21:24:21
Mike Ritzema
Other than awesome people. And Mike. Awesome people. And him.

00:21:24:21 - 00:21:30:17
Alex
Too. Yeah. And Mike. Mike will be there, too. Yeah, maybe I'll be there. Yeah. Who knows? We'll say no. No, it's going to be a lot of fun.

00:21:30:17 - 00:21:33:01
Alex
All right. Enough shameless plug. Let's go back into. So

00:21:33:01 - 00:21:38:18
Alex
I want to talk a little bit about the value of the coaching program. Right. So you went from DIY to

00:21:38:18 - 00:21:42:05
Alex
trying it a little bit more seriously with a content manager to go into Impact Live.

00:21:42:05 - 00:21:55:06
Alex
So we've heard the journey of like you implementing it. What's it like day to day, week to week, working with Allison, working with Mandy, working with the team here at impact. As far as like how it helps your team and pushing on all this content because it is a lot of content you're going to push out every week.

00:21:55:10 - 00:22:02:03
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, it's it's a lot in the beginning because you feel like you're doing all these things wrong and you know, the things that aren't working and you want to fix them all.

00:22:02:03 - 00:22:10:21
Mike Ritzema
And so in the beginning like Melissa owns everything that she does and she wants to do it really well. And so the first couple weeks for her were hard because

00:22:10:21 - 00:22:17:10
Mike Ritzema
she was wanting to fix all these things and do everything right. And so she was it was almost like double work, fix the old things and do new good things.

00:22:17:15 - 00:22:18:11
Mike Ritzema
And

00:22:18:11 - 00:22:22:03
Mike Ritzema
what I think Mandy and Allison told her finally was just like, slow down,

00:22:22:03 - 00:22:27:09
Mike Ritzema
we're going to get there, just do this thing this week. So all you got to do this week is do this thing,

00:22:27:09 - 00:22:34:05
Mike Ritzema
and the next week we'll do the next thing. And so the that that which was great for her I think a lot of people are probably other way where

00:22:34:05 - 00:22:35:07
Mike Ritzema
they don't get it done.

00:22:35:07 - 00:22:47:08
Mike Ritzema
If you said get this done by the end of October, you know, three months down the road, everybody starts it October 20th. Right. And so the weekly, the weekly or summit or every other week meetings, however often the cadence is in with the with the coaching,

00:22:47:08 - 00:22:51:22
Mike Ritzema
you know, keeps you on track. It's the biggest thing in any coaching is accountability.

00:22:52:00 - 00:22:58:19
Mike Ritzema
You've got to be I mean, the wisdom obviously helps because you need to know what to do, but the accountability of actually doing it

00:22:58:19 - 00:23:04:10
Mike Ritzema
was, where the rubber meets the road. Because it's just yeah, that's that's what keeps it going. Because again,

00:23:04:10 - 00:23:19:07
Mike Ritzema
I've read both books. I and this customers wasn't out yet when we started coaching and I read they ask you answer and I thought I felt like I understood it, but I was there was no accountability for us to get anything done other than me wanting to do it, and then me being annoyed with myself when we didn't.

00:23:19:07 - 00:23:25:21
Mike Ritzema
But that wasn't enough. And so it's the same thing with my business coach to where it's the accountability is really the big thing, and it just keeps you on track

00:23:25:21 - 00:23:28:13
Mike Ritzema
It's not long before you realize the progress you're making.

00:23:28:13 - 00:23:29:05
Alex
Right.

00:23:29:07 - 00:23:32:14
Mike Ritzema
And that's really the key. If you can just suck it up for the first 3 or 4 weeks,

00:23:32:14 - 00:23:35:14
Mike Ritzema
We knew that once we were

00:23:35:14 - 00:23:37:07
Mike Ritzema
doing things, the way you guys told us to do.

00:23:37:10 - 00:23:51:05
Mike Ritzema
As far as just even, just writing the articles, forget about we're a WordPress shop instead of a HubSpot shop or Zoho People and all that. Forget about all that and the CRM, which is a super important, but that's just start with writing better content. And we didn't know what better content was.

00:23:51:07 - 00:23:51:15
Alex
Yeah.

00:23:51:18 - 00:23:53:01
Mike Ritzema
And so

00:23:53:01 - 00:24:08:09
Mike Ritzema
having Mandy and Alison and Jan and all the, you know, the whole team and just knowing what just like man, we feel like our content's really so much better than it was a month ago before we started. And that's a great feeling like that's done. I feel like we're writing things that

00:24:08:09 - 00:24:12:02
Mike Ritzema
man, people really should be finding this and reading this and and it's going to help them.

00:24:12:02 - 00:24:12:04
Mike Ritzema
A.

00:24:12:04 - 00:24:20:03
Mike Ritzema
And it's going to. It's more focused. And it's it's not just me rambling on about something, right. It's a it's a very well-written article.

00:24:20:04 - 00:24:22:19
Alex
Well, and also, you're the CEO, it's your company. So

00:24:22:19 - 00:24:31:12
Alex
you're trying to run a business on top of trying to write all these articles and do everything by, by yourself. That's when you when you're wearing those that many hats at one time,

00:24:31:12 - 00:24:40:12
Alex
doesn't always work out so great. And I've been in that spot too, where if you're, you're giving, you know, 50% of your time in one spot and 50% your time in another spot, you're never giving 100% of your time anywhere.

00:24:40:12 - 00:24:49:19
Alex
And that's that's tough, especially when you're trying to scale a business. So I, I think it's very commendable that you you saw that and you were like, hey, I want to bring in the right people and I want to I want to do this the right way.

00:24:49:19 - 00:25:00:11
Mike Ritzema
I've always believed it was because it was, it was a better version of what I wanted to do when I started the business. I, I feel like this is the way that you want to sell. And again I didn't have the words that you guys have the idea of

00:25:00:11 - 00:25:01:11
Mike Ritzema
no one wants to be sold.

00:25:01:11 - 00:25:11:23
Mike Ritzema
Everyone wants to buy, right? That's what I that's right. What I was going for. But I just couldn't get there because writing is not one of my gifts. And so same.

00:25:11:23 - 00:25:18:03
Mike Ritzema
I'm the subject matter expert on a lot of things and that's fine. And then they they talk to me and I have a question about a clarifying question about the article.

00:25:18:03 - 00:25:33:21
Mike Ritzema
And then and then Melissa writes and Melissa knows a lot of the stuff too. She's worked here for 13 years so. Well she's she. Yeah. She, she knows almost all of it anyway. She'll just run it by me to make sure sometimes and but yeah, just that's the I can be the subject matter expert in two minutes of answering questions, and then she can read the article

00:25:33:21 - 00:25:39:06
Mike Ritzema
and get it posted and get it on socials and all that other all the death by a thousand cuts things, right?

00:25:39:06 - 00:25:47:07
Alex
you got me thinking here, and I'm just curious, what's what's the vision for the future? Where do you see yourself in the next 12 months? In the next five years? Like what's what's the

00:25:47:07 - 00:25:50:13
Alex
future for your company look like within those customers?

00:25:50:13 - 00:26:00:21
Mike Ritzema
We we have one of the things that we've had that really worked, and I think it was one of the biggest things, and driving our leads up was there with you guys in the community.

00:26:00:21 - 00:26:01:14
Alex
Impact plus.

00:26:01:14 - 00:26:05:20
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, yeah. Marcus did, talk in February

00:26:05:20 - 00:26:08:09
Mike Ritzema
We had a price thing up already. It was a little wonky,

00:26:08:09 - 00:26:12:20
Mike Ritzema
but it worked. It wasn't as visually pleasing as it might be now, but it was. It was still effective.

00:26:13:00 - 00:26:15:08
Alex
Okay, so some type of pricing calculus. Yeah.

00:26:15:08 - 00:26:19:00
Mike Ritzema
The pricing calculator. Yeah. And it would tell you the price if you had because there's in payroll

00:26:19:00 - 00:26:27:10
Mike Ritzema
there's only so many things you need to know to generate a price. It's not like putting on a metal roof like some of your clients do. It's not like buying an appliance or putting in a fiberglass pool.

00:26:27:10 - 00:26:28:16
Alex
Yeah. So there are a lot of variables.

00:26:28:16 - 00:26:42:17
Mike Ritzema
And there's going to be a lot more variables, for a fiberglass pool than there is for payroll. How many people are you paying? How often are you paying them? Do you have any other goofy things like are you in 20 states? You know, something like, I think that's really about it. For the pay for the core payroll piece, it's all you gotta know.

00:26:42:17 - 00:26:56:01
Mike Ritzema
every payroll service. Who doesn't know you guys seems to, call for price, call for demo, call for the number. And I'm like, nobody wants to know that. So we did have a price thing already set up, and it was a little wonky, but it worked and it gave him the price right on the screen right away.

00:26:56:02 - 00:27:09:00
Mike Ritzema
And Marcus saw it during the it was one of the, CEO. I can I'm sorry. I don't remember the terminology. It was like the CEO meeting. Okay. And there weren't a ton of us in there. So he looked at all of our websites. All the people said they had pricing things,

00:27:09:00 - 00:27:10:18
Mike Ritzema
and he some of them, he said, no, you don't.

00:27:10:22 - 00:27:16:18
Mike Ritzema
That's not the regular pricing thing. That's just something. It talks about price, but it's not a price calculator, as Marcus will say. Yes, with love.

00:27:16:18 - 00:27:17:13
Alex
Of course.

00:27:17:15 - 00:27:18:15
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, absolutely.

00:27:18:15 - 00:27:23:21
Mike Ritzema
And he looked at mine and he's like, this is a complicated mess. And I'm like, okay.

00:27:23:21 - 00:27:35:05
Mike Ritzema
And he goes in, you're not asking for an email. I'm like, no, I, I undated it because I want it to be available to everybody. And he where he turned me around and he said, you know what? You're giving them something they can't get anywhere else.

00:27:35:07 - 00:27:37:02
Mike Ritzema
You're allowed to ask for their email.

00:27:37:02 - 00:27:37:13
Alex
That's true.

00:27:37:16 - 00:27:40:23
Mike Ritzema
That's a given. So that that's what we do now when we change that

00:27:40:23 - 00:27:50:11
Mike Ritzema
that was the like the biggest thing with the leads. But to go back to your question, where are we going to go as far as a website goes? More self-selection tools, more any of those tools we can, right?

00:27:50:11 - 00:27:58:21
Mike Ritzema
We just lack ideas. For what? For tools to make. Now, because I've got in Zoho, there's a thing called Zoho Forums that I can use, and I can make any kind of tool I want to make,

00:27:58:21 - 00:28:04:11
Mike Ritzema
within reason. Again, I'm not building fiberglass tools, but I can, you know, I can, I can, I can make it.

00:28:04:11 - 00:28:08:22
Mike Ritzema
I did one for for great in trucking, for example, 1099 versus W-2 is a big deal.

00:28:08:22 - 00:28:19:14
Mike Ritzema
A lot of trucking companies pay 1099 and they probably really shouldn't be doing that. So we made a test and it gives you a score and we get their email address for it. But then we follow up them because they took that test and if their score.

00:28:19:14 - 00:28:29:08
Mike Ritzema
So they really should be paying W-2 and they're probably 1099. We follow up with some articles to them and we said, hey look, read this article. This is going to this might illuminate some things for you and we'd love to talk to you about it.

00:28:29:08 - 00:28:32:22
Mike Ritzema
things like that and that that's been fantastic. But if we can think of more quizzes to write,

00:28:32:22 - 00:28:33:13
Mike Ritzema
we're going to write them.

00:28:33:13 - 00:28:41:22
Alex
Yeah, self-service is where it's at. There's a whole section in the book about self-service. It's not just pricing calculators. There's a whole lot more in there. And I love that. That's where your head's out. And I think

00:28:41:22 - 00:28:48:22
Alex
in today's today's market and in the future, especially with AI, people want to pick and choose themselves. They want to research themselves.

00:28:48:22 - 00:28:52:04
Alex
They don't want to talk to people. They don't want to call for a quote. None of that stuff

00:28:52:04 - 00:28:53:16
Alex
is going to work anymore. And the more you

00:28:53:16 - 00:28:55:16
Alex
lean into that, the less leads you're going to get.

00:28:55:16 - 00:29:04:15
Mike Ritzema
Absolutely. And it's just a it's a bad customer experience. Yeah. That's all we sell. We I don't make a thing. I have a pen in my hand. I don't make pens. I don't make something tangible.

00:29:04:15 - 00:29:12:10
Mike Ritzema
we move money around in the right way for the right people. But all we have is the customer experience. And so we want to make that as frictionless as possible.

00:29:12:10 - 00:29:20:15
Mike Ritzema
people want it to learn more. They can book their own appointment on our website. We're trying to do all of them. We're doing as many as we can do. It's just it's limited by our ability to think about them.

00:29:20:15 - 00:29:24:12
Alex
Right. That's very cool. You might need to use GPT and see if GPT can help give you any.

00:29:24:12 - 00:29:25:17
Mike Ritzema
And that's where I got the ones I got.

00:29:25:17 - 00:29:27:01
Alex
Yeah. Very nice.

00:29:27:01 - 00:29:31:13
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, yeah I wrote some of the questions for me too. And then I added them to make them make sure they're good for checking.

00:29:31:13 - 00:29:33:12
Alex
Very cool. Well, I have to circle back.

00:29:33:12 - 00:29:37:12
Alex
We're talking about impact. Plus it's a really great community. And you were talking about the different groups.

00:29:37:12 - 00:29:52:11
Alex
There's all different types of groups in there and they meet regularly and there's groups for CEOs and executives. This groups for videographers, for content managers. So if you're, not sure about what to do or if you need some help or want to talk to other great folks in parallel, this is a great place to do that.

00:29:52:13 - 00:29:54:03
Alex
And I love that you said that because we don't talk

00:29:54:03 - 00:29:55:09
Alex
about that enough on the show.

00:29:55:11 - 00:29:56:09
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, absolutely.

00:29:56:09 - 00:30:05:13
Mike Ritzema
I remember asking you a video question on there because I don't really know anything. And people got right back to me. They're like, this is what's happening and this is why it's happening. I was trying to do a two camera setup

00:30:05:13 - 00:30:12:02
Mike Ritzema
with a nice camera and an iPhone. Okay. The iPhone that always looks super blurry, like it, you know, like a, like my first iPhone or something.

00:30:12:02 - 00:30:17:23
Mike Ritzema
Yeah. And they said it's because the other camera's so sharp and they said you really need these two of the same thing. But that was really helpful

00:30:17:23 - 00:30:23:22
Mike Ritzema
Google wasn't gonna have that answer. Right. And so also in the live sessions, two people are always super helpful, like

00:30:23:22 - 00:30:26:14
Mike Ritzema
the other attendees. I mean, of course, the the impact people.

00:30:26:16 - 00:30:32:09
Mike Ritzema
I've commented before that it man, they are. You almost think it was fake, but it's not how nice everybody is.

00:30:32:09 - 00:30:32:19
Mike Ritzema
it's

00:30:32:19 - 00:30:37:15
Mike Ritzema
incredible how everybody is just from from Bob and Marcus at the top,

00:30:37:15 - 00:30:48:05
Mike Ritzema
all the way down to I don't know who the bottom is and I wouldn't name a name if I do, but everybody is over the top and Stephanie's running around doing 17 things and you ask her a question, she stops with a smile on her face and answers it.

00:30:48:05 - 00:30:48:15
Mike Ritzema
So that

00:30:48:15 - 00:30:51:11
Mike Ritzema
I mean, it's amazing. But the attendees too, they'll tell you anything,

00:30:51:11 - 00:31:01:05
Alex
Yeah, that's the cool. We're all in this together. I love that you just said that and I there's definitely an energy and a vibe, not just at the events, but the community that's part of this endless customers ecosystem, part of impact.

00:31:01:05 - 00:31:04:06
Alex
We want to help each other. And it's like the rising tide that lifts all boats.

00:31:04:06 - 00:31:07:16
Alex
You know, we want to help each other. And that's something that we pride ourselves on.

00:31:07:16 - 00:31:18:05
Alex
don't have anything. It's it's a principle in the book trust to build trust you have to be transparent. So like if you have a question, we're going to help you solve it as best we can. And if we can't, we're going to try to find somebody or plug in with somebody that can help you.

00:31:18:05 - 00:31:19:01
Alex
that's what it's all about.

00:31:19:01 - 00:31:26:02
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. I got video advice from a guy there who was half my age, but he was do everything about cameras and things.

00:31:26:02 - 00:31:32:04
Mike Ritzema
I started tell him what camera I had and I'm sure I misnamed it. And he Jerry nicely corrected me about it, you know, things like that.

00:31:32:04 - 00:31:35:16
Mike Ritzema
it's just great to be able to know that they understand what you're going through.

00:31:35:16 - 00:31:36:11
Alex
Absolutely. Yeah.

00:31:36:12 - 00:31:38:01
Mike Ritzema
And so they can help with that problem.

00:31:38:01 - 00:31:38:14
Alex
That's right.

00:31:38:14 - 00:31:44:05
Alex
So we've covered a lot of ground. This has been an amazing conversation. My last question for you here. If

00:31:44:05 - 00:31:46:16
Alex
someone listening to this or watching this is

00:31:46:16 - 00:31:50:03
Alex
doing what you did, maybe they're stuck. They read the book they're trying to implement

00:31:50:03 - 00:31:52:22
Alex
endless customers, they rolled up their sleeves, but they're

00:31:52:22 - 00:31:53:11
Alex
hitting that ceiling.

00:31:53:11 - 00:31:54:02
Alex
They're not really

00:31:54:02 - 00:31:56:09
Alex
getting it to stick. As we were saying earlier.

00:31:56:09 - 00:31:57:10
Alex
what advice would you give them.

00:31:57:10 - 00:32:01:18
Mike Ritzema
Assuming that they have the book? They don't have the book. Get the book first,

00:32:01:18 - 00:32:05:14
Mike Ritzema
okay, book first, book first. And I and I would even just by the way

00:32:05:14 - 00:32:08:02
Mike Ritzema
get both they ask you answer. And I love customers.

00:32:08:02 - 00:32:10:08
Mike Ritzema
I remember when Marcus talked about the book coming,

00:32:10:08 - 00:32:19:11
Mike Ritzema
I heard it as it's going to be. They ask, you answer 3.0 and it's really not because they asked. You answer is a whole different journey

00:32:19:11 - 00:32:20:18
Mike Ritzema
that endless customers and it's

00:32:20:18 - 00:32:25:05
Mike Ritzema
they're both super helpful. I mean, there's so much in the story of how we got there.

00:32:25:05 - 00:32:29:23
Mike Ritzema
the guy sold fiberglass pools like that seems like an incredibly hard sell, so.

00:32:30:02 - 00:32:30:20
Alex
And inexpensive.

00:32:30:21 - 00:32:31:21
Mike Ritzema
Amazing. Yeah.

00:32:31:22 - 00:32:34:01
Alex
Yeah. Pools are expensive. Yeah.

00:32:34:01 - 00:32:42:18
Mike Ritzema
And so and he was able to do that and we use this system to make it that successful. It seems like it works for everybody. But there's so many bite sized little nuggets in there

00:32:42:18 - 00:32:48:21
Mike Ritzema
that I would tell them to read. They would think or write in an honest customers almost. It's like a sequel to me, more than a 3.0.

00:32:48:22 - 00:33:05:16
Mike Ritzema
I would say do that first. The second thing they should do is I would tell them to get on the community. It's not free, but I think there might be a free trial or something. I don't know that you guys have business, but it's not free. But it's, you know, it's it's worth you can see kind of what's going on and you can get a pretty good vibe and you can see the things that get discussed.

00:33:05:16 - 00:33:07:08
Mike Ritzema
usually it seems like once a month

00:33:07:08 - 00:33:09:21
Mike Ritzema
you do a live video thing, whether it's

00:33:09:21 - 00:33:14:03
Mike Ritzema
Bob or Marcus or Allison or anybody, whoever it is.

00:33:14:03 - 00:33:18:22
Mike Ritzema
that will give you a vibe for how it's going to work. And it's a pretty low cost way to figure this out.

00:33:18:22 - 00:33:22:01
Mike Ritzema
just start asking a million questions and see how quickly they get answered.

00:33:22:01 - 00:33:30:01
Mike Ritzema
You know, you're going to see an answer like, I mean, I don't want to guarantee your time, but it's quicker than pizza delivery. So. Right is it is.

00:33:30:01 - 00:33:37:11
Mike Ritzema
put one up today and I had to respond to only two questions just to comment and, how you guys had inspired me with my new salesperson to do role playing

00:33:37:11 - 00:33:41:08
Mike Ritzema
and also feeding the audio into ChatGPT to get feedback and things like that, too.

00:33:41:10 - 00:33:43:07
Mike Ritzema
So which I never would have thought to do,

00:33:43:07 - 00:33:46:13
Mike Ritzema
he's receptive to it, which is great. And he wants to do it. He wants to be better.

00:33:46:13 - 00:33:47:04
Alex
that's amazing.

00:33:47:08 - 00:33:50:18
Mike Ritzema
Feeling good about that. And, so but then I get comments back right away

00:33:50:18 - 00:33:51:22
Mike Ritzema
these people are involved.

00:33:51:22 - 00:34:00:23
Mike Ritzema
the impact staff and the other attendees or the members of the community. So I would do that. And then if there's an impact live coming up soon, go to that.

00:34:00:23 - 00:34:03:12
Mike Ritzema
Hartford is not the most exciting city. I'm not going to oversell it.

00:34:03:12 - 00:34:08:11
Mike Ritzema
It's insurance capital of the world. However, you're not going there for the tour. You're going there to go learn.

00:34:08:11 - 00:34:12:20
Mike Ritzema
And so you'll go learn. You're going to drink from the firehose. It's going to be overwhelming. Stay with it.

00:34:12:20 - 00:34:15:23
Mike Ritzema
Just take a few key things out of there that you're going to do differently when you get home.

00:34:15:23 - 00:34:17:17
Mike Ritzema
1 or 2, three at the most

00:34:17:17 - 00:34:19:13
Mike Ritzema
and then try and do them. And when you get stuck,

00:34:19:13 - 00:34:20:15
Mike Ritzema
there's a coach waiting for you

00:34:20:15 - 00:34:24:01
Mike Ritzema
for me. I had to know I needed the help. I would not have just done it

00:34:24:01 - 00:34:25:03
Mike Ritzema
if I had it right. They ask you answer.

00:34:25:03 - 00:34:35:09
Mike Ritzema
And there was coaching them, which I don't know if there was or not, but let's say there was. I don't know, I wouldn't have gone to a coach that I would have. I'm somebody who would have tried to do it myself, and I had to fail it a little bit myself before I was willing to go get a coach.

00:34:35:11 - 00:34:36:15
Mike Ritzema
But once I did, man,

00:34:36:15 - 00:34:37:19
Mike Ritzema
it was an easy decision.

00:34:37:19 - 00:34:38:08
Alex
Game changer.

00:34:38:18 - 00:34:46:22
Mike Ritzema
You know? Absolutely. It just it just helps us do the things we're trying to do. You're not, like, telling me, oh, don't talk about this thing. Of course they're going to tell me. Absolutely talk about that thing.

00:34:46:22 - 00:34:52:22
Mike Ritzema
the sooner you go through all those steps, it sounds like a lot, but it's really not the sooner you go through them, the sooner

00:34:52:22 - 00:34:54:18
Mike Ritzema
your business sees the benefit of it.

00:34:54:18 - 00:34:59:04
Mike Ritzema
I mean, you can scuffle for two years or four years or whatever and then decide you need help

00:34:59:04 - 00:35:02:16
Mike Ritzema
or I mean, those 2 or 4 years are going to go by anyway, so you may as well get the help. Now

00:35:02:16 - 00:35:03:12
Mike Ritzema
and ramp it up.

00:35:03:16 - 00:35:03:23
Alex
Yeah.

00:35:03:23 - 00:35:08:00
Mike Ritzema
You know, and get some good things going because you, you guys know anybody who's watching this,

00:35:08:00 - 00:35:11:09
Mike Ritzema
You know what you're doing and you know, and you can go look what your competitors are doing

00:35:11:09 - 00:35:16:09
Mike Ritzema
and you can see that they may not be as different right now as you want them to be.

00:35:16:13 - 00:35:17:06
Mike Ritzema
And

00:35:17:06 - 00:35:21:18
Mike Ritzema
would you make some changes and get some coaching? It's going to be different. You're going to be better and you're eventually you're going to stand out.

00:35:21:18 - 00:35:24:18
Mike Ritzema
And they're also going to be encouraging too. So that's that's never bad either.

00:35:24:18 - 00:35:29:09
Mike Ritzema
but just get on with it. Like don't just wait for it. It's not going to naturally get better through,

00:35:29:09 - 00:35:30:03
Mike Ritzema
manifestation.

00:35:30:03 - 00:35:36:17
Mike Ritzema
I think it is the manifestation of the manifestation. As you hire the coach, that's that love. That's what you need to manifest.

00:35:36:17 - 00:35:38:01
Alex
I love it, yeah.

00:35:38:01 - 00:35:41:09
Alex
And if you don't like reading the books and easy read, and there's also audio versions of the book,

00:35:41:09 - 00:35:41:23
Alex
so

00:35:41:23 - 00:35:43:09
Alex
no excuse, I love it.

00:35:43:09 - 00:35:53:09
Mike Ritzema
I want to get Marcus's audio of endless customers to see if it sounds like him or not. I just got into audiobooks. In the first one, I got the guy to sound like he was reading it pretty monotonous. I'm like, I bet Marcus would be more fired up.

00:35:53:09 - 00:35:57:12
Alex
he's pretty animated character. I yeah, I actually.

00:35:57:12 - 00:36:00:04
Mike Ritzema
Have a message for him. He was just reading it. If he was just like,

00:36:00:04 - 00:36:03:00
Mike Ritzema
welcome to endless customers. I do like not

00:36:03:00 - 00:36:04:01
Mike Ritzema
very monotone.

00:36:04:01 - 00:36:08:07
Mike Ritzema
Yeah, that wouldn't be him at all. I think there's a high version of him that was on lots of, depressants.

00:36:08:10 - 00:36:10:13
Alex
Yeah. No, that's not Marcus.

00:36:10:15 - 00:36:12:04
Mike Ritzema
No. He's awesome.

00:36:12:04 - 00:36:18:13
Alex
well, you're awesome too. And thank you so much for sharing all your insights and your story with our audience and our community. We really appreciate you being on the show.

00:36:18:13 - 00:36:21:12
Mike Ritzema
I'm super glad to do it. I'm glad that I can be a success story.

00:36:21:12 - 00:36:23:03
Mike Ritzema
if you're going to Hartford, look for me.

00:36:23:03 - 00:36:27:11
Mike Ritzema
Ask me any question you want to ask me. As you can tell, I'll answer it even if it doesn't look good on me.

00:36:27:11 - 00:36:32:07
Mike Ritzema
Also, the the payroll people. I know, there's a bunch of payroll people going, let's all get together, man.

00:36:32:07 - 00:36:33:07
Mike Ritzema
We can share ideas.

00:36:33:07 - 00:36:40:13
Mike Ritzema
Zoho people. I'm not a HubSpot guy, so those are impact. Loves HubSpot and Hubspot's been really good, but I was into Zoho before they got there.

00:36:40:13 - 00:36:47:22
Mike Ritzema
So if you're as a whole person and you see me in Hartford, come say hi, let's let's trade ideas. I've got some great things and I bet you have great things to in between us will be even better.

00:36:47:22 - 00:36:52:12
Alex
I love it, Mike. Thank you again for all your insights and for being on the show. This is a great conversation and

00:36:52:12 - 00:36:53:22
Alex
I'll see you in Hartford in a couple weeks.

00:36:54:00 - 00:36:55:11
Mike Ritzema
Awesome. Look forward to seeing you soon.

00:36:55:13 - 00:37:01:10
Alex
Awesome. And for everybody out there watching and listening. This is endless customers. I'm here. Host Alex Winter. Catch you on the next episode.