Helping Businesses Achieve Endless Customers

Hey there -

I'm Bob Ruffolo, founder of IMPACT. Our story is nothing more than a series of lessons learned over the years. Many of them learned the hard way, but they’ve all come together to shape who we are, what we stand for, and how we serve our clients today.

IMPACT was founded in 2009 as a simple web design company, but it didn't stay simple for long. Quickly, a bigger vision set in: build something world-class. We wanted to be the company that truly helped every business owner who hired us achieve their goals and grow their business. We wanted to set a new standard for what a marketing partner could be, not just build decent-looking websites.

The first step of this journey happened in 2011 when we signed on to be one of HubSpot's first partner agencies. Even that early, we could see they were building something special. Great people, a best-in-class product, and a vision that got stronger with every iteration. To this day, we're proud to be a top-tier HubSpot partner and even prouder of what their platform has become.

At the heart of HubSpot's approach was the inbound marketing philosophy, and at the time, it was groundbreaking. The idea that you could grow a business by earning attention instead of buying it felt like the future. We were determined to help our clients put it into practice.

But we also knew that if inbound marketing was going to be our thing, we had to go all in. We had to prove that we were the best at it. And the best way to prove that? Do it great for ourselves.

At the time, there were many companies shifting their focus and positioning themselves as “inbound marketing agencies,” but what’s funny is, none of them were doing it particularly well for themselves. While all their packages said something like “8 blog articles a month,”  very few of them were blogging for themselves at all. When I asked many of them why not, I always got the same response: “You know, the cobbler’s kids.”

This seemed like a massive opportunity for us. If we did inbound marketing really, really well for ourselves, we wouldn't sound like everyone else claiming we’re the best at it. We would show it.

And that’s exactly what we did. Even when we were small, I'm talking less than 15 people, I always made sure we had at least 2 people full-time and dedicated to our own marketing. There was a point where we were cranking out 3 articles a day!

Did it work? You bet! There we were, every time you searched any terms related to inbound marketing. In most cases, the search results went: HubSpot #1, and IMPACT #2.

Our website traffic was approaching a million visitors a month! And we had more sales opportunities than we knew what to do with. It’s safe to say that at that time, generating customers was not a problem.

But was it all daisies and roses? No. Not even close.

Because, to be honest, as easy as it was to bring on clients, sadly, we were losing them just as fast.

Not every client left. We had a solid portfolio of companies that did well and stayed with us for years. But we also had a lot of cancellations, and even a handful of refund requests. No bueno. This was not why I started this business.

In retrospect, what we were doing wrong was very clear.

For starters, we would work with anyone who would pay us.

👎 One star, would not recommend.

As we looked at the clients we struggled with, a common theme emerged.

Often, the business had no one on staff in a marketing role and treated us as its outsourced lead-generation department. The business owner had little interest in understanding how digital marketing works, rejected many of our strategies, and complained that the content “didn’t sound like it would be from them.” And to be fair, it didn’t. We were not as immersed in their business as they were. 

But then there were the clients who valued what we were doing. They had in-house marketing people. They wanted to learn. They were involved in the content creation process, and along the way, we helped them develop their digital marketing skills.

You would think we would have caught on to this earlier, but nope. I'm embarrassed to say I let this cycle go on for far too many years.

Being so ingrained in the HubSpot partner community, we knew a lot of agencies, and everyone was in the same boat. We'd go to conferences and talk about the same challenges with similar clients, the burnout of our young staff, and the constant turnover. That was just "agency life," and it was completely normalized.

But I knew in my heart there had to be a better way, and I was determined to find it.

When looking around, I kept asking, has anyone cracked this code?

And the answer to that question was yes, one person had. Marcus Sheridan.

I had been familiar with Marcus for a few years. He was notorious in the content marketing community for his incredible story. His swimming pool company, River Pools, was on the brink of bankruptcy during the 2009 recession. Through some incredible inbound marketing, he turned his website into the most-visited swimming pool website on the planet. Sales came pouring in, and he saved his business.

As he shared that story, people started asking Marcus if he could help them do the same. That led him to start his own agency, The Sales Lion, which also became a HubSpot partner.

But Marcus drew a line in the sand. And I'm not sure he knew it at the time, but it was absolutely genius.

He said, "I will help you. I won't do it for you, but I can teach you how to do it."

🤯

All of Marcus's clients produced their own content in-house. Otherwise, he wouldn't work with them. If they didn't have time to create content, he told them to hire a content manager.

Then he taught them the secret behind all of his success. Just answer the questions your buyers are asking, on your website, honestly and transparently, the same way you would if a prospect were standing right in front of you.

Stop writing about nonsense that doesn't matter. Stop being self-promotional. Instead, answer the questions people actually care about. How much does it cost? What could go wrong? What are my options? What are other people saying?

Time and time again, it worked. Marcus had the best case studies in the space.

Marcus took everything he'd learned and put it into a book called They Ask, You Answer. It became a bestseller and quickly turned into one of the most influential marketing books of its time.

While I was running IMPACT and Marcus was running The Sales Lion, we became friends. IMPACT was just starting to run conferences in 2017, and I had asked Marcus to keynote IMPACT Live in 2017. He wanted to co-run the event together, which we did. The event was a success and our teams worked incredibly well together.

After the event, I asked Marcus to merge our two companies.

Okay, it was more like I pleaded with him to do it.

In early 2018, he said yes.

Originally, the idea was to keep running the “do it for you” inbound marketing model alongside Marcus’s They Ask, You Answer coaching model.

Again, it took us a long time to realize we needed to move away from the traditional agency model. But months into working with Marcus, it finally clicked.

By the end of 2018, we were no longer an outsourced marketing department. We were no longer creating content for clients. We were no longer an inbound marketing agency.

That decision changed everything. For the first time, we were genuinely proud of the work we were delivering to every client. We could fulfill our promises.

The businesses that have gone through our program come out completely transformed, with their visions becoming a reality, and that is the most rewarding work we have ever done.

Now we're entering the next evolution. The rise of AI is changing everything about how businesses market, sell, and show up online. For a lot of companies, that's scary. For us, it's exciting because we've been here before. The rise of inbound marketing in the early 2010s created a massive window of opportunity for businesses willing to do things differently.

AI is creating that same window right now.

For businesses that are new or have struggled, it's almost like a fresh start. For companies that have established themselves as market leaders, it's a chance to defend and strengthen that position in a completely new landscape. We are going all in on helping businesses navigate this era, just like we always have.

In 2025, we knew They Ask, You Answer needed a major revision for this new world. Together, we rebranded and rewrote it as Endless Customers, which quickly became a USA Today national bestseller. Endless Customers builds on the principles of They Ask, You Answer for an AI, video, and social media-first world, where competition is fiercer and earning trust has never been harder. And unlike a book you read and put on the shelf, Endless Customers is a complete system that businesses can implement, step by step.

And along with the new book came The Endless Customers Coaching Program, an updated version of our They Ask, You Answer coaching program.

To say we've learned a lot since 2009 would be an understatement. But everything we teach, everything we coach, and everything we help our clients implement comes from our own learned and lived experiences.

We like to say we help the good guys win. We work side by side with business owners and their leadership teams to help them achieve their goals, navigate their biggest challenges, and make their vision a reality. We train and develop members of their teams and watch them grow into some of the most talented marketers in their industries.

We see these businesses grow, create more jobs, do more work in their communities, and serve more people. There is no greater thrill. This is what we mean when we say our mission is to create heroes, grow businesses, and change lives.

Our Core Target, our Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG), is to help 1,000 businesses complete our program and become the most known, trusted, and recommended businesses in their markets using the Endless Customers System.

We are just getting started.

It is an honor to do this work every day. We love the people on our team, the clients we serve, and the community of thought leaders and partners we get to collaborate with.

Thank you for reading this. If our story resonates, please continue to explore our content, listen to our podcast, attend Endless Customers Live, or simply reach out. We always love hearing from the people who find their way here.
 

Bob Ruffolo
CEO & Visionary