The Story of 'They Ask, You Answer'

partner? Right, and I say my partners, but they eventually became my partners.

Marcus
And this was the first time, this was the first moment. I was just an employee. And they said, do you wanna be a partner? I was like, no, I don't know if I want that stress. I turned them down at first. No kidding. And then they came back to me again and they said, really, we want you to be a partner.

Marcus
Would you, you know, would you consider it? And so I said, yes. And that was 2001, that was 2001. And so we worked hard to grow this company, but we had a lot of struggles. Specifically, a couple of years after we opened up the company, one of the big Achilles heels that we had as an ownership group is we weren't very good with finances.

Marcus
Not that we were irresponsible with money, we just didn't understand things like cash flow statements, P&Ls. P&L reports, right. It was just none of us had that as a skill set. And so we had hired a bookkeeper and we made this huge mistake of giving her a check signing authority. We didn't know that's not really something you're supposed to do. And it turns out that she was with us for about a year and a half and she embezzled a lot of money from the company. No kidding. And it happened right underneath our noses She didn't pay our taxes.

Marcus
So she would go to the bank every Friday and she would tell me, hey, I'm gonna make some deposits and I've got the taxes I gotta pay and so I'm gonna go take care of this. Okay. So she would file our taxes and she wouldn't pay them. And so it turns out that she had this online gambling addiction

Marcus
and she was opening up another company with our money and we were financing it. And we could never figure out why can't we get ahead? And it was just constantly grinding and grinding. And so by 2000, I guess it was 2005, not only were we in debt, but we had liens on our homes from the IRS. The IRS, you don't want to they don't have any compassion if you've been embezzled from or stolen from.

Marcus
They just don't care, which I understand to a degree because everybody could say, oh, I was stolen from, right? If they try to cheat the IRS. Right. But that wasn't the case in this. Clearly wasn't the case. It was, you know, three ignorant guys when it came to financing gave too much trust to someone and she put us in this incredible hole and she, you know, she actually went to jail. The feds came and they got her and they, you know, she ended up going to jail for a period of time. But it set us way back. Wow. And it really affected me in a lot of ways and it it it stunk because

Marcus
2005 six seven At the beginning of eight were really prosperous times in the swing pool space The economy was really strong if you could breathe you could get a loan for a pool at that time Yeah, they were given out loans for houses. Oh, yes, crazy. It's crazy. It's stupid and so it was during this time that we were just trying to pay back these, like we were trying to pay the IRS. We're trying to get these loans released. And then boom, we got the crash of 2008, right? Just when I think we are starting to catch up, we're going to have a good year, we're

Marcus
finally going to turn a profit, we have a crash. And so we're nine years in now. Yeah, we're nine years in and we're in huge trouble and I think I think we're gonna have to file bankruptcy at this

point. The problem was we filed bankruptcy because how it works is you've got all these loans that are business loans that are attached to your home. So now I'm gonna lose my home. So I had the IRS with the still with the lien on my house and I was gonna lose my home with the bank. It was a double double whammy. How did that feel you must have been overwhelmed? I'm overwhelmed just hearing you tell ya

Marcus
There was there was a lot of like there was a lot of moments I mean, I remember the the time that the IRS agent first came into our show or a little hot tub showroom and She says I'm putting liens on your house and My My partner, Jason, his parents had co-signed one of our loans and they even said we could come after your parents, Jason. And Jason actually had a almost like a mild panic attack in that moment. And that's when I realized how ruthless the IRS really is. Most people hopefully will never experience this.

Marcus
It was it was a bad time and my wife was always on edge because she felt like The house that we were in could be taken at any time. Yeah, that's not very fun. No, I can't even stop him Yeah, wow, and you know in 2009 it was so bad my wife. She wouldn't even ask me when I got home How was your day? She knew how my day was I? Would I would literally? You know check the account each day by calling the phone, like online system, to see what our balance was.

Marcus
And this is before we had things like Mint or whatever. Right, you know, I think we just couldn't check in immediately. Right. So I had to call in and I was constantly anxious about it. Man, it was a really rough time, but there is always a silver lining, right? Because when we go through pain, it forces us outside of our comfort zones.

7
That's true.

Alex
Yeah, it's true. Even though it's difficult, it does force those growing opportunities, right?

Marcus
Yeah, at this point, we really had nothing to lose. I thought we were going to lose the business anyway. And so I became very willing to do something different and to think outside the box. And it was at that same time beginning of 2009 that I had found HubSpot's website and this phrase inbound marketing. And I was just immediately like, yes, yes, yes, this is it. This is how I have changed as a buyer. I can see where this is going.

Marcus
It clicked. It made sense. Oh, it was like it was totally like, yes, yes, I got it. And of course, me, the way I think, I boiled it down even further. I started studying HubSpot, inbound, content marketing, and really what I heard in my mind was, all right, if you just obsess over your customers'

Marcus
questions, worries, fears, and you're willing to address them on your website through what we called back then a blog, well, you could possibly save your business. So I literally one night, I said, all right, I sat on my kitchen table and I had a sheet of paper, pencil and brainstormed every single question I can recall receiving as a pool guy because I was doing the in-home sales at that time. So I was getting questions all the time.

Marcus

Right.

7
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Alex
You had your finger on the pulse of.

Marcus
Yeah, I mean, I knew the customer. Right. I knew what they were fearing.

Alex
Had you ever blogged before? Have you ever written any content before?

Marcus
I had, not much. Not much. In fact, if you look at the early days of the River Pools blog, it's not very good. I wasn't a very good writer at first, but I've always been a pretty solid communicator. And just the written word had to catch up to my verbal I brainstormed well over 100 questions. And then, one by one, I would just knock them out, usually somewhere between 10.30 and 12.30 at night. It's funny, my wife says during that time, because she knew, I told her about this inbound thing and I said, I need to stay up later and I need to start blogging and writing these

Marcus
articles and educating the market. And she said, OK, if that's what you feel like we need to, you need to do to save the company. But what's it's always been just comforting to me is she said, I would, as her words, I would go to bed at night, I would lay there in bed and I could hear the sound of your finger sitting the keys to the keyboard and it would bring me comfort knowing that it might get us out of this debt that we were in and the struggle that we were in.

Marcus
And so she says, I still can look back and feel that same feeling of the comfort of the keys. It's really just neat for me to hear her say that.

Alex
Well, you were also putting in extra time.

Marcus
I mean, you're really. Yeah, by this point I was working probably 65 hours a week, consistent, I mean, I was just always on the grind. Yeah, everything you could. And that was the season of life, right? Right. That's what we do. Up to that point, I'd only worked harder

Marcus
as a business owner. That was always my solution, work harder. And I think Inbound was the first time I started working smarter. Right. And but I wanted everybody in the company, my two business partners, to understand what we were doing. So that's when I that's when I basically said, we're just going to take all the questions that we've been asking. We're going to answer them on their Web site. And so I started doing it and I started to get great momentum and I could quickly see that this is this is taking off. I mean, we're starting to get more traffic.

Marcus
I could see the trust. I could see the leads start to come. I'm like, wow, this could actually save the business.

Alex
Just by answering people's questions.

Marcus
Yeah, just by answering questions. And so that was March 2009 when we started. We were HubSpot customer like 600 and something. And today they have a couple hundred thousand, right?

4
It's exploded.

Marcus
It's pretty crazy. And by November of 2009, I said, I need to tell the world what I'm doing. So I started a personal blog, I called it The Sales Lion because I had this fascination with lions and sales sounded better than marketing lion. Good name though, I like the name. Yeah, well, first book I ever read

Marcus
because I had a reading disability as a kid was The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Yeah. And so Aslan had this big impact on me and that book had a big impact on me. And so I started a blog and I started to write about what I was doing. And then I started to get attention

Marcus
from different people. And one of them was HubSpot actually, and they became like this early HubSpot influencer, if you will. And they invited me to speak at Inbound one time. This was before it was Inbound. I think it was called like HubSpot user group or hug or something. But it was it was when they started having a conference.

Marcus
And I've I've literally spoken at every single one of their conferences since they've had it. But this was the first one. And I can remember being on a panel and I was I was teaching people what I was doing. And I said, you know, so I just wrote all the questions down and I just answered them. It's essentially like they ask you answer. That's just what I did. They asked, I answered. So they ask, you answer.

Marcus
And I could immediately see like everybody in the audience was, they were just writing stuff down. They were like scribbling, like they ask, you answer.

Alex
They were vibing with it.

10
They were vibing with it.

9
Yeah, they just knew it.

Marcus
And I am the type that is very, very aware of my audience. Right, I've always just been very keenly aware. And I said, that just landed. It was so simple and so understood by that audience I said this is it this is what it's called. You had that light bulb. It's called they ask you answer and that was the that was the moment I started saying the phrase they ask you answer but a lot of people don't know that it came from just being on a panel and answering a question about blogging and brainstorming

questions at a HubSpot event.

Marcus
So that's where they ask you answers.

Alex
Like the serendipitous moment that just happened. It was like organically came to be.

Marcus
Wow. Yeah, it was really cool. You know, and so by this point, you know, around 2011, I really started to get momentum. Momentum, because the pool company is now making a major comeback, right? We're just dominating the industry. We're dominating the conversation Nobody you want to talk about a blue ocean?

Marcus
No, swing pool companies were producing content like this and I was going so far beyond what anybody had ever thought to do I mean just crazy original stuff like it gives you a good Yeah, like like of course everybody knows that I was you know Our company was the first company to talk about how much does an in-ground pool cost? How much does a fiberglass pool cost? I mean, that was a huge barrier. But I did stuff that was really outside the box. Let me give you an example.

Marcus
I was in a store looking at magazines, and I saw, I think it was like car and driver, and it said car of the year or something like that.

8
I said, you know what?

Marcus
I bet you I could do that with pools. And so I said, I'm gonna come up with an award system for the best fiberglass pool shapes and sizes. And I'm going to give an award basically out to all the different manufacturers I feel are worthy of it. Now keep in mind this is almost like if you can imagine it, I was like a Ford dealer, right? And I said as a Ford dealer, I'm going to give out awards to Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, et cetera.

Alex
Right, brand agnostic, you were just gonna be unbiased.

Marcus
I was literally gonna give who I was selling against awards. So I gave out awards like, best rectangular shaped fiberglass pool, best diving fiberglass pool, best freeform shaped fiberglass pool, and I did it for the year. And I think the first year I did it was like 2011 or 12, something like that.

7 Okay.

Marcus
And suddenly, I got the craziest reactions. So I had some manufacturers that were saying things like, well, what gives you the right to say that? And of course, I'm thinking, well, the internet did. That's what gave me the right. And then I had other manufacturers and they didn't know me from Adam at the time, but other manufacturers were like,

Marcus

hey, Marcus, I see we weren't on your list we'd like to invite you to our factory to come do a tour. See now that's really that's really intriguing. So I was becoming this influencer. Did you expect that type of reaction to happen from? I didn't overthink of it overthink it at the time but I did know it was really outside the box like it was it was it was pretty bold nobody was doing it but to me it was very exciting I was nervous usually when I hit the publish button almost like all the time, which is a really good sign.

Alex
But you were also being honest. You were keeping it real.

Marcus
Yeah, I was totally keeping it real. And so I started getting crazy requests. If you think about it, it's 2000 and 2011, I'm in my early 30s. I remember I got a call one time from this person that was in the Virgin Islands and they said, Marcus, I'm having a fiberglass pool installed. I don't really trust my installer like I trust you. I feel like everything I've learned about fiberglass swimming pool installation. That doesn't suck. That's crazy, right?

Alex
I mean, that's

Marcus
Here's what's wild. I couldn't even turn on an excavator. Like, I knew I had no skills to install the pool.

Alex
Right, like the actual physical installation of the pool.

Marcus
Yeah, but what I could do is I could talk to people in my team and I could translate what they said. So, you know, I'm like 33, 34 years old and the foremost expert of fiberglass pools in the world. But I knew almost nothing as to how to install them. In fact, I didn't know much at all. I just knew how to take people's information, mainly my business partners, like Jim and Jason took their information.

Marcus
And I could, you know, I could just, I just wasn't afraid to talk about everything man everything I compared manufacturers against each other I Talked about how we compared as as a company as an installer versus other installers in our area I didn't see I didn't say negatives about our you know other installers And so we had this incredible momentum And I learned really early on what it meant to influence online what I meant to become a thought leader and at the time no one was really doing this you were Still to this day. Yeah, I mean nobody was doing it, but in terms of really talking about your competitors online I know for a fact I was the first person in the world to do that. You know as a as a traditional business

Marcus
I mean nobody was coming close to doing anything like that Right and man, I got threats to from lawyers and stuff like that like you can't say these things. I'm like, come on. And I was like, I haven't said anything. You know, it was pretty wild, pretty wild. And so by 2017, 18, by this point, I've got an agency. It's grown. I'm a HubSpot partner.

Marcus
Yeah, talk about the growth a little bit. So Riverpool is when you started it,

Alex

when you started this initiative. So after that first speed bump with your finance person. Where did this new initiative take the company and it spanned into an agency and everything that it blossomed?

Marcus
Yeah, it was really wild because I had two coexisting paths in my life, actually three, because right around 2012, I started speaking. So I started the sales line in 2009. Within two and a half years, I get my first speaking gig. And then as soon as I got a couple gigs, I just took off. Because that's the thing that I'm best at, is being on a stage and helping an audience

Marcus
have a light bulb moment, right? And so as soon as that happened, I was just, man, I was just rocking and rolling. And I did get put in a position of, I got this agency that I'm now growing. I'm becoming a professional speaker. I'm still a pool guy, but I don't have time to do the pool stuff anymore.

6 And...

Marcus
It seems like your passions were really turning

5
more to public speaking and helping people.

Marcus
Yeah, yeah, it's like I had this calling. I had this crazy experience, if I can share it, where I gave a, almost like a conference at a, I spoke at a swimming pool conference, I was like the MC and speaker, and me and my business partner Jason, we both spoke there, but I did most of the speaking and it was really magical, the event.

Marcus
This was around 2000, maybe 12, 13. And we were on the plane coming back and we were on a high, it was just this cool moment. And he looks at me and he says, you're not supposed to be a pool guy. It's my business partner. Yeah. Saying you're not supposed to be a pool guy. He knew it in that moment. He

Marcus
He knew that I was meant to do More than just be a pool guy. What was so he says this right? You're on the plane

Alex
He says it to you. What what was the reaction? It was just for me. It was really moving

Marcus
I knew by this point. I wasn't supposed to be a pool guy either, right and so the fact that my business partner needs me but has the strength to say that is something I'll never forget. I'll always feel incredibly indebted to Jason because he said that, but also because he's been the best friend in the world to me. And so he would go on to continue to grow River Pools and I was able to step away. And since 2013, you know, I've only spent a couple hours a week with River Pools. I've not been incredibly engaged. I had some oversight, you know, on some of the strategy and therefore some of the leadership meetings.

Marcus
But as a whole, I haven't been very engaged because I was growing the speaking. I was spreading the word, the message that was they ask you answer. 2017, the book comes out, the first edition of They Ask, You Answer. And it wasn't a big launch. It wasn't a lot of fanfare, right? I didn't have a huge audience. I had some and it sold some, but I didn't get an advance for it. It was one of these things where, you know, I was just grateful that somebody, Wiley in

Marcus
this case, was willing to publish my thoughts. What's crazy about They Ask, You Answer, too, is I wrote that book in three weeks.

Alex
I was gonna ask, tell us a little bit about what inspired the book and the process of writing it and how that came to be.

Marcus
So by 2017, because of the agency, I had seen that They Ask, You Answer worked in multiple industries. B2B, B2C, man, this stuff works. Transparency, honesty, it's got legs. It's got legs. And so I said, so cool. I said, I know I need to write this book. And I felt it for a while. But I tend to procrastinate pretty bad sometimes. But, you know, finally, once I had a contract with my publisher, then I knew I had to get it done. And of course, I procrastinated my deadline up until three weeks, and I hadn't really

Marcus
done anything. And I had months to prepare. I hadn't done anything. When you're looking at a blank page, it's like... I just have a weird thing with deadlines, but once I sat down and started to write, forget about it, man.

3
Yeah, it just started to flow.

Marcus
Yeah. And think about it. I've been speaking on They Ask, You Answer now for four or five years. I knew the stories, I knew what resonated, I just understood the framework so much better.

Alex
You have real world stories too and examples to share.

Marcus
Tons of examples. So it didn't have wild success at first, but the people that read it loved it. And just to fast forward to today, not to skip too much, but what's interesting about They Ask, You Answer, it has actually sold more every single year since its existence. So in 2018, it sold more than 2017, in 2019, it sold more than 2018, and progressively, and now it's got well over 100,000 copies sold. It's pretty wild.

Marcus
It's pretty wild. And the publisher's like, how does that happen? Like how do, how does, it just doesn't generally happen with books that way.

Alex
Usually it's the opposite. It sells real big the first year and then it tapers.

Marcus

Yeah, I mean my book has sold way more than a lot of New York Times bestsellers. Wow. Right? And that's because, you know, oftentimes New York Times bestsellers are based on good marketing campaigns, not great books. All right? A great book is something that's being read five years after it's launched and is picking up in sales, right? Totally. So we know the principles of They Ask, You Answer early, with every single change that Google has made and update and all the things that we have seen evolve with the Internet, those that have focused in on obsessing over their customers' questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, and addressing them on their website, they have had the last

Marcus
laugh every single time. They've been the most prepared for every single stinking update that Google has ever offered. When every SEO is freaking out and worried, oh my goodness, how's this going to affect things?

Alex
The algorithm's changing.

4
That's right.

Marcus
That's right. Those that we're doing, they ask you answer. They say, man, we were born for this, right? This is what we need. Because ultimately, if you think, what does any search engine want? What does Google want? What does the searcher want?

Marcus
They want to find the best, most specific, relevant answer to their question. And they want to find it as quickly as possible. That's what they want to do. That's what they want to feel when they go to your website. That's what they want to find when they're doing any type of search online. And that's certainly the experience that Google wants to offer,

Marcus
and AI wants to offer that as well, right? And so it's been a really amazing ride to watch it happen and to see how it's grown. And now at this point with the agency, with the impact and coaching now, hundreds and hundreds of companies all over the world of such diversity to become the most trusted voice in their space and to attain what we like to say

Marcus
is endless customers, right? And in fact, seeing other companies use it to attain endless recruits because they ask you answers is phenomenal recruiting tool because it turns out that people looking for a job do a heck of a lot of research, especially on your website if they're interested in you. And so we've seen the marketplace take the framework and just run with it and turn it into more than I even realized it was going to become. And I'll say one more thing about this.

Marcus
If I had written they ask you answer in, let's say 2014. It would've just been a book about blogging. What it became over the course of time was a definitive framework for trust and brand authority, which equals growth. Those are the two biggest things. That's right.

Alex
Yeah, absolutely.

Marcus

That's right. And it affects sales, it affects marketing, it's so much more than a stinking blog article.

Alex
It sounds more like it's a mentality, it's a way to drive your business and company culture and mission. It's like it's much bigger than just writing blogs and being honest online.

Marcus
That's right and that has to me been one of the most satisfying things and when the next version of it comes out, it's going to have that same like continuum feel to it that wow this really is evolving. The framework is evolving with the marketplace. The beauty though is because it's rooted in trust, I know it's always gonna be valid, but we're just going to have to continue to evolve it as the marketplace evolves, as our behaviors evolve.

Marcus
And I have no concerns that it's, you know, people say, is it going to still be effective in 10 years? And my answer to that is, is trust going to still matter to your business in 10 years? And the answer is immediate.

Alex
Yeah, I would hope so.

Marcus
Well then do they ask you answer, daggone it.

3
Do it.

Alex
I love it. Marcus, thanks for sharing this story with us. It's fascinating. I can't wait to read this new book that's going to be coming out soon, hopefully.

Marcus
Yeah, yeah. It's a let me just I'll give a teaser. It's going to have a lot about AI. And we we've seen so many agencies out there afraid to speak about AI and teach AI to their clients. Right. Totally. And why is this? Because they think they're going to become redundant.

Marcus
Whereas at Impact, we feel like as a coaching and training company, we feel like it's our fiduciary to make sure our clients are prepared for the future. And so they ask you answer the next version of it. They ask you answer is evolving. And one thing that's held it back, though, is a lot of people haven't understood the power of the book because the book shares the framework, not the payoff. And so we want to make sure that the book gets in the hands of a million people, not just a couple hundred thousand people.

Marcus
And so you should look forward to that. I'm excited about the book. I'm excited about the future. And I think there's going to be a lot more they ask you answers in the future. This is not something that's going to slow down anytime soon because trust isn't going to slow down anytime soon.

Alex
I couldn't agree with you more. I'm really excited to hear all this breaking news about the book. If you could just take a look at the camera, let people know what's going on in your world and how they can get in touch with you if they have questions or they want to reach

3 out.

Marcus
Yeah, if you want to reach out to me, I'd love to just speak with you directly. You can find me at Marcus@MarcusSheridan.com. That's my personal email, Marcus at MarcusSheridan.com. You can also see me a lot on LinkedIn and I've started to do more on social on other areas as well like Instagram and TikTok. And so I hope to connect with you if you're watching this and maybe we'll see each other at an event as well. That'd be nice.

Alex
Marcus, thanks again and thank you to everybody out there listening to the Endless Customers Podcast. And hey, don't forget that we have episodes every Monday and Wednesday releasing on all major platforms so be sure to go subscribe that way you won't miss out on how you platforms so be sure to go subscribe that way you won't miss out on how you can earn trust and win customers in the age of AI.

Transcribed with Cockatoo