At IMPACT Live in Hartford, Marcus Sheridan sat down with three business leaders who are living proof that the Endless Customers SystemTM works across industries, company sizes, and team structures. Roofing, IT services, trucking payroll. On paper, these businesses could not be more different. But when it comes to building trust and growth, their paths share the same DNA.
We called it a fireside chat, but it felt more like a masterclass in persistence and creativity. The conversation had energy, laughter, and the kind of candor you only get when leaders are willing to admit what worked, what didn’t, and what they wish they’d known sooner.
On stage, we had:
Together, these leaders pulled back the curtain on what it looks like to practice Endless Customers over the long haul. They talked about the hardest parts of getting started, the breakthroughs that made the biggest difference, and the habits that keep them moving.
Marcus opened by asking each guest about their biggest challenge starting out. Their answers made it clear that no one walks into this with a perfect plan. And, that’s okay. The first year is less about getting everything right and more about figuring out what matters most.
Melissa, who has been on the journey for about a year and a half, painted the picture of what it’s like for a small business trying to do this with a small team. “We believed in answering the questions, but how did we do that?” she said. With just three people, everyone was wearing multiple hats. Alignment was there, but clarity was missing.
That’s a common early-stage reality. The belief is strong, the intent is genuine, but the execution feels overwhelming. Coaching gave Melissa’s team direction, especially with their website and content process. Still, the biggest breakthrough didn’t come from a new hire or a massive campaign. It came from simplifying a pricing tool that had overwhelmed prospects.
Taffy’s company, Bill Ragan Roofing, was years further into their journey, but she remembered her own early struggles just as vividly. For her, the challenge wasn’t buy-in. “We started out with everybody bought in, so that was the easy part,” she explained. The real test came after hiring a content manager.
Her new team member was a writer by trade, but not yet a content manager. “He didn’t know anything about it; he didn’t even know content writing was a thing,” she laughed. That gap meant months of trial, error, and coaching before he found his footing.
“It took about three months, but once he got it, he got it. And I truly believe he’s probably the best content manager that IMPACT has produced,” Taffy said with pride. Still, momentum didn’t really kick in until “about eight to ten months” into the role. From there, consistency became the foundation for everything else.
Both stories highlight the same reality: early progress rarely feels smooth. Melissa had the belief but not the clarity. Taffy had the buy-in but not the immediate capability. Each had to push through a messy stage where results felt slow and uncertain.
Starting is messy. You might have alignment but no clarity, or a great person in the wrong role. Your first tool might flop, and your content cadence might feel impossible to maintain. That’s not failure, it’s part of the process. The key is to keep moving, to give new roles and tools time to click, and to remember that the first year is about learning and adjusting, not about perfection.
If getting started is messy, adoption is where most teams stall. Leaders may be excited, marketing may be producing, but unless sales uses the content in their daily work, it never fulfills its purpose. Keven’s story at AIS made that crystal clear.
His challenge wasn’t buy-in from the top. “The CEO’s bought in. Marketing was bought in all the way,” he explained. The roadblock was sales. “Getting our salespeople to use content all the time,” he admitted, pausing before adding with a grin, “I would say they’re lazy. They don’t know best practices.”
It’s a moment many marketing leaders in the room recognized. Salespeople are busy, focused on closing deals, and not always eager to try new habits. Simply telling them to share content rarely works.
Keven’s response was not to fight harder, but to work smarter. “I’m using AI to do an end run on them,” he said. Instead of waiting for sales reps to figure out what to post, he created a system that made it automatic.
AIS now publishes about 35 blogs a month using an AI workflow trained on their content manager’s style guide. That scale is impressive, but the bigger win came in distribution.
Every week, the content manager used to send an email roundup: “Here’s the 10 pieces of content I created. Here’s the videos we made.” But sales wasn’t doing anything with it. So Keven flipped the script. “I built a workflow that sends them an email in their own voice, with three ways they can post it and three hooks.”
The change worked. “Now I’ve got 18 people in our organization and they’re all posting daily.” What had been a constant point of frustration became an engine of daily visibility and trust-building.
The theme echoed when Marcus turned to the audience. Jen, a marketing leader, stood up and shared her own challenge. “Right now, sales and marketing are like two different silos,” she said. “I have no idea what he’s doing on his end, and I’ve been asking to get involved with sales so I know what the questions are.”
Her situation drew nods around the room. It’s a common problem: marketing creates, sales sells, but neither side shares what the other is doing. The content doesn’t flow where it’s needed most.
Marcus gave her a simple, practical fix: a weekly revenue team meeting. “There should never be a surprise as to what content we’re producing,” he said. In that meeting, sales brings the questions they’re hearing from buyers. Marketing shares what they’re producing and how it connects. Both sides leave aligned on what to publish next and how to use it in conversations.
That’s adoption at its core: closing the loop.
Consistency pays off over time (and how to enforce it)
Of all the stories shared, the biggest thread was consistency. It wasn’t the flashiest tactic, the latest software, or a once-in-a-lifetime campaign. It was the steady habit of showing up, week after week, to answer buyer questions.
Taffy summed it up best. “Honestly, it’s the basics. It’s like being consistent with the content and watching that hockey stick.”
Her team made a clear commitment: three articles a week. Not whenever inspiration struck, not when there was “extra time,” but every week. To keep themselves accountable, they even put up a scorecard in the office between the content manager’s and videographer’s desks. “As we went through it, we checked it off until we were just like done with it,” she explained. That small act of tracking progress turned content creation into a shared mission, not just another task on a to-do list.
The results speak for themselves. Six years later, Bill Ragan Roofing grew from 235 website visitors a month to more than 150,000. And they did it without ads, gimmicks, or big media buys. Just content, published consistently, with a scorecard to prove they were doing the work.
That same theme showed up in the audience. Joan, a marketing leader, shared her “one thing” from the event: blocking 7:30 to 9:30 three mornings a week for content writing. Her reasoning was simple. “If this guy [a $150 million CEO] can do it, I surely can if I’m just director of marketing.” She recognized that consistency doesn’t happen by accident; it happens when you carve out protected time and treat it like an unbreakable appointment.
Marcus smiled at her response. “Publishing is not glamorous, but the compounding effect is huge,” he said. “The boring stuff works if you keep doing it.”
That word, compounding, is key. Think of consistency in content like compound interest in investing. One article, one video, one calculator might not seem like much on its own. But three a week for six years becomes a library of hundreds of assets. Each one builds trust with buyers, earns search visibility, and makes the sales process easier. Over time, the effect multiplies until it feels like growth is on autopilot.
Implementing tools to multiply trust
Another theme that came through loud and clear was the power of tools. Not big, expensive platforms, but simple, well-designed tools that help buyers help themselves. When done right, these tools can shift results almost overnight.
Melissa’s story made the impact obvious. Her company had built a pricing calculator, but it was crammed onto one page with too many questions at once. Prospects didn’t know where to start. The tool created confusion rather than clarity. After a coaching call with Marcus, they rebuilt it as a guided, step-by-step experience. One question per screen, spread out over five screens total.
The difference was immediate. “Weekly, we’re probably seeing on average between five to eight leads. Before we were seeing like one,” Melissa said. That’s an eightfold increase in conversations from a single fix.
Keven’s example showed how tools don’t just live on your website. They can show up in search results, too. Years ago, his team added schema markup, the structured data that tells Google more about what’s on your page. In AIS’s case, it allowed star ratings to appear right under their search listings. That simple addition made their results stand out visually. “Even if we were down at nine or ten, we would get selected by a user because they’d see those gold stars,” Keven said.
Those gold stars weren’t just decoration. They acted as a trust signal. Buyers saw social proof immediately and chose AIS over competitors who blended into the search page.
Even the audience connected with the concept. Haley, a marketing professional, admitted that schema was a mystery before this event. “Whenever I’d see price, stock, and rating in Google, I thought, how’d they know I wanted to see that? Having it explained to me blew my mind.” Her reaction underscored how many simple tools are hiding in plain sight, waiting to be used.
Remember to have grace
As the conversation wound down, Marcus gave the reminder everyone in the room seemed to need: have grace with yourself.
It’s easy at events like this to feel energized but also overwhelmed. You hear dozens of ideas, see examples from companies years ahead of you, and walk away with a list of ten things you wish you were already doing. Marcus cut through that noise.
“No one here is doing any of these things perfectly well by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “We are on a journey together that never stops, and that’s okay.”
Instead of trying to overhaul everything at once, he urged leaders to slow down and pick a single next step. “Start with that one thing. Don’t do 10 things from this. Start with one and then move to two.”
Marcus also shared why this message hits so close to home for him. Years ago, when his pool company was struggling, he was close to losing his house. That fear forced him out of his comfort zone. He started writing and filming content when he didn’t feel ready, because doing nothing was no longer an option. That moment of desperation was the seed of what eventually became They Ask, You Answer and now Endless Customers.
It’s why he warns leaders against what he calls the pride cycle. The dangerous tendency to stop doing the little things that brought success once things feel comfortable. Growth comes from showing up consistently, not from waiting for the perfect plan or chasing a shiny shortcut.
And yet, Marcus’ closing words weren’t about hustle or urgency. They were about hope. “If we use the tools the right way, we will become more human,” he said. “We will feel more creative, not less. We will be connected more with our audience, not less.”
That’s the real magic of Endless Customers. It’s not about perfection. It’s about clarity, persistence, and trust. The messy parts, the slow starts, the imperfect drafts. They’re all part of the process.
Write down your “one thing.”
Maybe it’s scheduling your first revenue team meeting. Maybe it’s rebuilding that outdated pricing page into something buyers can actually use. Maybe it’s blocking three mornings a week to write content without distractions.
Whatever it is, make it specific, make it doable, and start this week.
Buyers don’t need you to be flawless or flashy. They need honesty, consistency, and tools that make their journey easier. And the only way you can do that is by giving yourself the grace to start where you are.
Want help getting started? Schedule a call, and we’ll walk you through how to implement Endless Customers SystemTM step by step.
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Learn more about Endless Customers
What is the Endless Customers System™?
It’s a proven framework that helps businesses build trust, generate qualified leads, and grow revenue by publishing transparent, educational content that directly answers buyers’ questions.
How is Endless Customers different from traditional marketing?
Unlike agency-driven marketing, Endless Customers equips your team to own your content, sales enablement, and trust-building strategies in-house. That means lower dependency on outside vendors and more authentic, buyer-focused communication.
Who is Endless Customers designed for?
We work best with growth-minded companies, typically $5M+ in annual revenue, that are serious about scaling and ready to align sales, marketing, and leadership around a single playbook.
How long does it take to see results with Endless Customers?
Most businesses see early traction within 90 days; more qualified leads, better sales conversations, and improved trust with buyers. Full adoption and compounding growth typically unfold over 12–18 months.