How He Built a 600-page Website WITHOUT Knowing How to Code [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 175]

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

[00:00:00] What if I told you a self-described non-technical pool guy who struggles to type and has never built a website in his life built one of the best pool company websites I've ever seen in less than a month and for less than $1,000? And he did it himself just using AI. Scott Payne has followed They Ask You Answer and Endless Customers for years.

[00:00:18] He believed it was the right thing for his company. He could just never get himself to actually implement it, and then something changed. Scott found one simple AI tool that completely unlocked the way he worked. He got curious, he started experimenting, and within six months, he self-implemented everything we teach and is now the dominant player in his market.

[00:00:35] In this episode, you're gonna hear exactly how Scott did it, the AI tools and process he used, and why a little curiosity might be the only thing standing between you and what AI can help you build in your business​

[00:00:36] (Intro)

[00:01:29] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome back to the Endless Customers Podcast. Another great episode coming at you today. We have an incredible entrepreneur, um, uh, also in the pool industry, just like Marcus Sheridan. Learned a lot from him. Uh, and we're gonna learn all about that today. Uh, we're going to welcome Scott Payne from Scott Payne Pools, uh, to the show.

[00:01:49] Bob Ruffolo: Scott, great to see you.

[00:01:51] Scott Payne: Ah, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored

[00:01:54] Bob Ruffolo: And Scott, you, uh, right before this, you and I were going over your journey, um, and you've obviously have been a [00:02:00] fan of They Ask You Answer and Marcus Sheridan for a lot of years. Um, but really all the success sounds like it's happened in a very short window over these last really six months or so.

[00:02:11] Bob Ruffolo: We're gonna go into all of that today. Um, but really quick before we do, uh, give us a very brief overview of your company and how you came to discover, uh, Marcus Sheridan's work

[00:02:22] Scott Payne: Yeah, we're Scott Payne, Scott Payne Custom Pools. We're in the Philadelphia market. We are a full design and build outdoor construction company with a focus on pools. We've been in business since 2014, been in the industry about 25 years. Um, Marcus, I, I've just been a fan of since, um, I want to say around 2010, 2011.

[00:02:46] Scott Payne: I heard about him, uh, in his, uh, speaking journey and then became a fan of River Pools and everything that they offered in our industry that was so, I'm gonna say, dramatically different than traditional [00:03:00] marketing. I'm also a fan of Dan Kennedy and Magnetic Marketing, and there's a statement that I've heard so many times, and I've heard it inside the endless, uh, conversations also, and that is, a lot of people think, "Well, my business is different."

[00:03:13] Bob Ruffolo: Mm-hmm

[00:03:14] Scott Payne: What happened is it's, it's not. So I knew this all along. You know, I'm gonna say the past close to 15 years was gonna be the journey and as it's transformed with, uh, better content from blogs to, you know, and Google's journey and everything has now come together. And I think the, the start of the next journey, obviously we're gonna talk about in depth today, is AI

[00:03:39] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, yeah. We're, we're gonna-- we'll go into all of that in great detail, 'cause that's really what's been so special about your journey. So, um, you've been a fan of this material for a long time, uh, and what I came to understand before this episode is-- And by the way, Scott's not a client. We've, um, I know you've had conversations, conversations with our team.

[00:03:59] Bob Ruffolo: You've been to our [00:04:00] events before, um, so we know you, um, but we never actually coached you. You've done everything on your own, but the biggest unlocks for you have really come really in the last six months, and it has been because of AI, and that's what we're gonna go into today. Um, in fact, Scott, Tom was just on an episode w- that we recorded earlier today, and we were talking about doing Endless Customers on your own with AI versus how do you know if you need a coach, uh, to help you.

[00:04:29] Bob Ruffolo: And, um, and some people-- And we concluded that there-- it's totally possible to do this on your own without a coach and which is great. You know, we l-l-look at, um, look at companies like EOS, and you can implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System like EOS, self-implement, and that's totally fine. And if you work with an implementer, it, it adds other things that, that maybe you don't do if you don't, you know, if you're not self-implementing.

[00:04:52] Bob Ruffolo: But you've self-implemented all this yourself and have done just a masterful job over these last few months. So, so walk us through, [00:05:00] um, uh, it sounded to, to me that the biggest turning point for you was at the conference, uh, in s- in, in last spring when we were in Chicago. So what was going on before you went to the event?

[00:05:11] Bob Ruffolo: You went to the event, and what were some of the biggest things that you went back and did from that event?

[00:05:15] Scott Payne: Yeah, no, thank you. I, I think the statement should be made is success leaves clues, and I've watched Marcus' success and then, you know, I've been a, a f- the fan of the podcast, you know, since day one. And all the information out there, uh, is, is just so helpful in taking it to the next step. However, you need to take the step.

[00:05:44] Scott Payne: So I'll, I'll get the elephant out of the room, um, 'cause, 'cause Tom contacted me. I think I was on something on HubSpot, and he found, he found my email address. I would, I would say that, right? So, um, I didn't believe if I [00:06:00] signed up that I could fulfill my end of the bargain. I didn't think there was any doubt that IMPACT was, is the right choice, and we're, we're always, we're always gonna be joined at the hip.

[00:06:09] Scott Payne: You know? I, I give 100% of my credit to, to what you guys do. There's, there's no way I could have done this by myself. Um, but the success leaves clues, clues statement is that you look at these successful brands that you have coached and where they are going. Um, I, I've really just taken a step and said, uh, "How can I implement?"

[00:06:33] Scott Payne: You know? How, "How can I do it now?" Um, you know, the linchpin for me, once again, was, was Whisperflow, you know, which I, I owe Marcus a lot to turning me onto that in 2024. The ability to be able to talk to text and just get more accomplished inside of my work hours without working more. There's no way that I could have written all these articles and directed AI to help me write and things like that if I couldn't [00:07:00] talk into my computer.

[00:07:01] Bob Ruffolo: That's incredible. I mean, I, I don't mean to stop you there, but the, the biggest unlock for you to be able to do all of this is being able to talk to text using an AI tool like Whisper Flow. Like, and by the way, I am right there with you, Scott. I ty- type like a child. I am the slowest typer. For someone that owns a digital marketing company, it is pathetic how slow I type.

[00:07:24] Bob Ruffolo: My, my entire staff makes fun of me. It is not my strength. Um, uh, d- and, and Whisper Flow, I use it every single day as well. It is one of the best tools, and all it is is being able to talk to type, and an AI translates it and just . So it's amazing that that was the biggest-- one of the biggest unlocks for you.

[00:07:44] Bob Ruffolo: It just gave you the speed to start getting things done

[00:07:47] Scott Payne: Yeah, it's, yeah, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of history, and you look at these History Channel shows, it doesn't matter which one, electricity or trains or... And there's always this moment that, that turns, something happened [00:08:00] that, you know, it just made it happen. And, and I, if I look back, if I still had to type all this stuff even into AI, there's just, there's no way I could get it done.

[00:08:11] Scott Payne: And, uh, everybody in my office has accepted it 'cause they hear me basically talking to myself all day, emails and, and documents and contracts and whatever. But I get so much more accomplished and, um, you know, so

[00:08:23] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, my productive, productivity is through the roof, so I, yeah, I'm right there with you. So, so Whisper Flow... Oh, oh, God, sorry

[00:08:30] Scott Payne: Oh, no, no. It, it's, it's so... I had every... I wanted to go on an event and I wanted to go in 2025.

[00:08:39] Scott Payne: I just couldn't make it based on the schedule. So I marked this on my calendar. I'm gonna go to Chicago and I wanna learn from the best. Went for three days. Uh, day one blew me away, you know, a little, little casual. And then day two we jumped hard, hard into the basics, right? You know, yeah, you know, the pillars, [00:09:00] everything.

[00:09:00] Scott Payne: And the, the more that I'm s- sitting there and I'm, I'm watching the, the awards and, and just references to successful websites, I realize at this point I need a website. And I, and I thought this in the back of my head. Our website was about four or five years old. Uh, we had signed up with a marketing company who was, who was very good for what they did.

[00:09:23] Scott Payne: It was, "Hey, pay me X a month." W- we're gonna build you a website for free, wink, wink, and the, and then we're, we're gonna do four to five blog articles a month, and you tell us, you approve keywords. And okay, and okay, it's what it is. And, and we end up canceling it maybe a year, year and a half before any of this even started, just because I always felt we were a referral business, and I wondered if anything would fall off.

[00:09:49] Scott Payne: Nothing fell off. We were in the same position for leads. So I went there, and I had already talked to my operations manager, is a, a very good IT guy. [00:10:00] He had built our first website. He's been with me 11 years. So I started to put this bug in his ear with chat, and, and I'm, I'm a podcast junkie, right? I typically, I don't even, I don't know if I listen to music anymore.

[00:10:12] Scott Payne: I'm always listening to something, you know, informative. And I heard about Lovable, and I, I heard people using Lovable to build websites. So I was throwing this question out, saying, "Hey, Dave, what, what do you think? Could you research this?" And he's looking at it. He's like, "I don't, I don't know." He, he, he wasn't drinking my Kool-Aid.

[00:10:32] Scott Payne: So, uh, we, you know, we, we go through this thing with chat and, and we just keep going back and forth, and all of a sudden another name comes up, Open Claw.

[00:10:42] Bob Ruffolo: Mm-hmm

[00:10:43] Scott Payne: Hmm. Well, I'm not... It, it's crazy to believe that I, I built this website, but I'm not really a tech-savvy guy. I'm not gonna lie to you. Um, I, my joke, and it's on the top of my notes for the show, is, you know, what if your best friend had a 200 IQ?

[00:10:59] Scott Payne: [00:11:00] Well, my best friend Manus does, so I'm constantly asking Manus questions. And, um, so but Open Claw seemed way out of my reach. Uh, Dave's skill set, knowledge, like... But it's an agent. Well, what, what's an agent? I happened to listen to a podcast and it referred to Manus one day. So sure enough, go on, put my $20 in.

[00:11:24] Scott Payne: I had a side project that I could not get done for, to research something, put it in a spreadsheet, clean it up without sitting in front of the computer and managing it. Well, I went up to get something to eat after I had put in the first command, and it was done, and I was hooked. And that's how that, that's how the journey started.

[00:11:46] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Wow. Um, you know, it's funny, as you're saying that, one of the-- my earliest memories of working with agents, um, and I was playing around, and, and then I-- that's when I really saw the power of [00:12:00] where this was all going, was I put in a content, uh, editorial calendar, um, there was like 100 articles in it.

[00:12:08] Bob Ruffolo: And then I said, "Can you go ahead and write these articles?" And it says, "Sure, I'm gonna get to work on that right now." And then I thought everything just kinda froze. This is my first time really using Claude Cowork, and I thought everything froze, and then I came back, like two hours later, I opened up the, the app again, or I had it running in the background, and it had written 200 articles, all of them, uh, based around the principles of Endless Customers and They Ask You Answer.

[00:12:34] Bob Ruffolo: Now, they weren't good, uh, so I didn't-- I couldn't use any of them. They were short. They-- But, but it showed me where this was all going, and it was just unbelievable. So I, I know the-- that aha moment you first have when you start using this, this AI, and you're like, "Whoa, unbelievable that I could do this," and I finally got something major done.

[00:12:53] Bob Ruffolo: Good. So let's go back to the website. So you had told me that in s- the, the spring event, [00:13:00] um, you saw these websites, and then you went and you figured out Lovable, and you built the entire site yourself.

[00:13:07] Scott Payne: Yeah, so I just, um, you know, I, I kept talking to Manus, asking him questions,

[00:13:16] Bob Ruffolo: How can this be better? How can this be better? What am I missing?

[00:13:20] Scott Payne: you know, yeah, it, it was so much h- you know, how can we make this ours?

[00:13:24] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah

[00:13:25] Scott Payne: you know, we, we took... We kind of cherry-picked as, as we went through. W- when you guys spoke about a pricing page, perfect pricing page, um, I took a picture. Okay? I already had the checklist from the book. And so w- when we went to build a pricing page, put the picture in and said, "Hey, let's, let's make this, make this ours with our content." I mean, right now, we're 15 out of 16. The only thing we're missing is, uh, is the video. Um, the estimator's been up for maybe a [00:14:00] month, okay?

[00:14:01] Scott Payne: I could not get the estimator done. The website was up. It was rolling, bringing in traffic, and I, I just could not find the time. And one day, I did a browser login with, um, with Manus and said, " Hey, let's just get the basics done." And, uh, this, this whole ti- our time together is gonna be filled with cliches and stories, but it's a Steve Jobs line, and that is, you know, "Never, never let perfection stand in the way of greatness."

[00:14:28] Scott Payne: You know? First iPhone didn't have copy and paste. So my philosophy's been like you just said, okay. I, I helped it write some content. I gave it pieces, nuggets. This is what I wanna write, and it came out. Was it the best it can be? No. But tell you what, it was 100% better than what was on there now, which was zero.

[00:14:49] Scott Payne: Let's get it up there. Let's g- Google find it, and let's keep improving it. So now we actually have a scheduled improvement prompt that we go through, look at [00:15:00] every article, e- every chunks of them, and we improve them. We, we find more information. We keep building. And it-- I just talked, I I just talked through this, like page, page for page, homepage down, header, trust bar, uh, nav bar, and then got all the way to the bottom, did the footer, came back up to the nav bar, went left to right.

[00:15:27] Scott Payne: You know? And at this point, when, you know, Marcus day three, um, privacy policy, uh, policy and ethics, blah, blah, blah. Okay. It- I just used, used the blueprint and, and filled them in for, for our business.

[00:15:42] Bob Ruffolo: Outstanding. So I hope everyone's hearing what Scott is saying here. Uh, uh, I'm not sure what your budget was for doing any of this, but it sounded like you're, you weren't ready to invest into coaching. You weren't ready to invest in staff to do this for you. You s- and what I also admire [00:16:00] about this, and I think this is one of the most important things because I teach this a lot, um, the fastest way to waste money as a business owner is to hire somebody to do something because you don't know how to do it, 'cause that person, you have no idea if they know how to do it either.

[00:16:15] Bob Ruffolo: They might have just talked a big game, and then you could be wasting money, and I have learned that lesson the hard way many times amongst my career. So I admire what you're doing for so many reasons. Um, one, you knew it was important for your business. Two, you went out and you got yourself educated. You went to the conference.

[00:16:34] Bob Ruffolo: You went beyond the conference, and you kept learning these things. You saw what other great companies were doing, and you were getting inspired by them and learning from them. Um, and then three, um, you went to AI, and you said, "Help me figure this out." And, you know, you're, you're a business owner, Scott. You, you can figure things out.

[00:16:54] Bob Ruffolo: That's what part of our job is, right? To figure things out. And some... It might be figure out something [00:17:00] operationally with your, the installation of, of pools and sales inside of your business, but you just figured out how to build a website. And, and this is the world we're living in. Like, you don't have to go to web design school anymore.

[00:17:11] Bob Ruffolo: Anybody can build a website. Scott, you've never built a website before. It's your first one, and you did it in a month

[00:17:18] Scott Payne: Yeah. Well, thanks. It, it's, I, I pinch myself some days and it's... I g- I get a lot of crazy looks

[00:17:25] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah.

[00:17:26] Scott Payne: even my ops manager, when I sent him, I sent him a couple screenshots, he's like, "Well, who did that?" I go, "I, I did it. Like, I, I did it with Manus." And he's like, "That's impossible." I'm like, "It's not."

[00:17:39] Scott Payne: Like, you know, and it, it... I, I'd say now, like at this point, everybody's like, "When are you gonna, when are you gonna jump out?"

[00:17:45] Bob Ruffolo: Well, now it's, it's, incredible

[00:17:48] Scott Payne: now, it, and it's... You know, you don't know all my history, right? We've been on this a short time, but I always thought I would be an internet marketer.

[00:17:55] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, really?

[00:17:55] Scott Payne: Like, I, so I train- you know,

[00:17:57] Bob Ruffolo: See, I always thought I'd be a rock star or a basketball player, but [00:18:00] yeah.

[00:18:00] Scott Payne: I don't have the hair for a rockstar. Um, but you know, I, I was a fan of Frank Kern and Eben Pagan and, and I watched these guys when I was in my 30s and 40s, you know, internet marketing. Dan Kennedy, right, my idol. Brunson, these guys. So I, I, I have a passion for this and, uh, it's, it's become very, very fun to me 'cause I see the results.

[00:18:24] Scott Payne: A- and it's, it's, it's cool. Like we're, we're, we're chugging along. We're learning. I'm learning every day. Um, you know, I've used every tool out there that I couldn't even spell. Like I had Zapier and, and Manus going back and forth yesterday between Copilot and Manus, sharing screenshots, just talking back and forth, and I didn't touch a key, and did like six zaps and connected Google Search Console to be able to run a dashboard report, which, you know, obviously I sent you a copy of.

[00:18:57] Scott Payne: I have that on a dashboard with analytics that comes out [00:19:00] once a week with PostHog and everything. It's like, how cool is that?

[00:19:04] Bob Ruffolo: That's incredible. So, so wa- let's walk back. Manus, you mentioned that now. Um, and for those that don't know what Manus is, what is it by-- how would you define Manus, and how is it helping you on an everyday basis with your Endless Customers implementation?

[00:19:23] Scott Payne: Come, comes up daily. You know, think of ChatGPT or Claude as a question to an answer. Manus is a goal to a result. So i- it's a, it's a soldier versus a tank. And if you... I, I still, to clarify some, I still work inside primarily Chat, but, uh, a little bit of Claude. But to keep credits in check, tokens, right, the n- word everybody uses, I can do most of my thinking in Chat and then have Manus implement.

[00:19:59] Scott Payne: [00:20:00] So I might go on and think tank an article, uh, a new webpage, b- it, whatever it is, and then fine-tune it, and then push it over. So Manus, by definition, is an agent that will go four, five, six, seven, 10 wide and go attack something. Hey, write me 10 articles. Okay. It does them all at once.

[00:20:27] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Now how does this compare to Claude CoWork, or are they more one and the same?

[00:20:34] Scott Payne: I, I'm not heavy, heavy into Claude. I, I, I use,

[00:20:41] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, and I'm personally mad at Claude right now, so I am really happy to hear you say that. I think the new models have really killed my productivity, so I've had to switch everything back over to OpenAI models for the time period-- or for the time being. I'm hoping the next updates of these models will be better, but, um, so yeah.

[00:20:58] Bob Ruffolo: Okay, interesting to hear you [00:21:00] say that

[00:21:01] Scott Payne: Yeah, it's, it, I mean, I use it for writing. Like, if there's... It, it's so eloquent, you know, per... And a lot of this comes from Marcus, just I've always heard his opinion. Um, Chat- Chat's, you know, maybe a fourth-grade writer and, and Claude's a senior in high school,

[00:21:15] Bob Ruffolo: It wa- was. It was until this latest update, in my opinion, but that's just probably me. I don't know.

[00:21:21] Scott Payne: And, and there's, there, there's so many changes with this. Like, you know, a- as of this taping, I think it's next week, um, you know, Meta bought Manus in February for 2 billion. Well, the, the government made them roll it back. So Manus is gonna shut down for two days. Um, they're deleting everybody's account.

[00:21:40] Scott Payne: You, uh, you have backed it up, and, um, we're gonna upload it, and we're, we're gonna start all over again. So, um, if I go missing, you know where I am, if, if it doesn't go well.

[00:21:52] Bob Ruffolo: Oh, man

[00:21:53] Scott Payne: ' cause my life, my life is in that little, little icon right now

[00:21:58] Bob Ruffolo: All right. Well, let's, [00:22:00] um, let's switch gears here. Uh, you mentioned that you have a perfect pricing page, uh, that you have almost all the check boxes. You're missing one, which is the video. But you just mentioned that you have a studio. Um, I, I'm guessing that's a, a recent thing that you've invested in, and you've also been investing in AI avatars.

[00:22:17] Bob Ruffolo: So I'd love to hear your, um, your philosophies to getting a studio and video up and going and how you feel like AI avatars are going to mix into your, your, uh, your endless customer's journey.

[00:22:30] Scott Payne: Yeah, I, I think, um, I, I think any time you can divide and conquer, it's gonna be beneficial. So as we've written FAQ articles for the website, the, the goal would be for SEO and AEO purposes to get them over to YouTube, and that's impossible at this point. You know, I'm not, I'm not gonna lie to you. I, I can't work more hours than I'm working.

[00:22:58] Scott Payne: So [00:23:00] I, I was-- we created a podcast studio with the intention of me sitting down for however many hours a week and just rolling through. It's in the room right next to me. It's a three-camera setup, professionally done, you know, backdrop similar to yours. It, it's, you know, it's, it was done professionally. And I go in when I feel like it.

[00:23:18] Scott Payne: I turn the cameras on. I read some scripts, get it done. It would take, at this point, years to even put a dent or catch up into the FAQs. So is... A, a line that I, I often use is, you know, many a times the truth is said in jest. Um, there's some commercials out there like that Burna commercial that's all AI.

[00:23:41] Scott Payne: It's, it's not people. And w- w- what if, you know, what if I had an AI avatar? And I'd already considered this for a chat box that could learn all the FAQs, and this is one of my new projects coming up. You know, what if I can now teach a chatbot all the content [00:24:00] we've written? How powerful would that be to the client and, and, and increase the UX 100 times?

[00:24:07] Scott Payne: You know, people go on there. So, uh, I did a little research, and I, I was actually pretty settled on, um, you know, one-- a big supporter of, uh, uh, Endless Customers, Vidyard, you know, who I, I met at the show, and, and I have a subscription, and we do some stuff for, for video. But, um, the true AI avatar is, is, I use is HeyGen.

[00:24:30] Scott Payne: And in 45 seconds, uh, 20 seconds I went on and did a voiceover, and then another 25 seconds it took a video of me sitting just like I am now. And the first video that came out, I almost fell out of my chair. Um, it has me in a sport coat sitting in front of a library. I sent it to my partner and he's like, "That could be the best video I've ever seen you do."

[00:24:54] Scott Payne: I go, "It's not me." So what doing

[00:24:58] Scott Payne: now 

[00:24:59] Bob Ruffolo: has gotten [00:25:00] so great, um, specifically HeyGen. We've been using that. So for those of you watching, you may have noticed in the Endless Customers Academy, that's our, our online, uh, community, we're updating all of our courses right now, and we're actually using HeyGen because not only are we able to do what you're saying, put the scripts in, and we have the content already, but it dramatically increases our efficiencies in terms of going back and updating these on a regular basis, that we don't have to have the person come back into the studio and, and redo the whole thing.

[00:25:30] Bob Ruffolo: We can update these much more efficiently, and, and, and the audience might even notice that there's a, a, a been an update. It's just the latest content is always just being fed into the, into the videos

[00:25:42] Scott Payne: Yeah. And I, I look at it as a future tool for a lot of different things, for training, for customer, uh, manuals, you know, things that need to be explained. Because as we already talked about, I, I now have leverage with [00:26:00] talking to my computer through Whisperflow. I can create scripts and Word documents and feed them into, to AI.

[00:26:08] Scott Payne: Now, it's not something you wanna be doing 20-minute videos with , you know? Uh, the, the, the credit, the credit intake would probably outweigh the gain. But, you know, you wanna do something two minutes, three minutes, ex- explain something, I'm v- very excited about it. And the technology's only gonna get better and less expensive.

[00:26:28] Scott Payne: That- that's how I feel

[00:26:29] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, I, I agree. I mean, there's a saying that the-- whatever AI you're using today will be the worst version of AI that you use because six months from now it's gonna be so much further advanced. Unless you're the Claude models, which I think took a giant step back, but that's just me personally being bitter at Claude.

[00:26:45] Bob Ruffolo: Um,

[00:26:46] Scott Payne: You are, you are a little salty with

[00:26:48] Bob Ruffolo: I'm a little salty with them, yeah, 'cause I had set up so much stuff, Scott, and everything was working so well, and then the models were updated, and then it was like, "Why are you writing like that?" And, you [00:27:00] know, it was just... Anyways, um

[00:27:02] Scott Payne: Yeah. My, my wife heard me yelling at Manus the other night. She thought I was on the phone. It... I was, no, I was yelling at Manus. So i- it's- and let's, this stuff's not perfect. It, this, this isn't an, this is not an end-all be-all, um, hey, let's talk in AI and, and, um, come out with good results. Like, I have 25 years of industry experience.

[00:27:20] Scott Payne: Like, we're, we're feeding it really good information a- and having it organize it in a way that when it goes out to the reader, it's gonna make sense, or it would not make sense. And that's what I was experiencing with Chat 'cause, you know, I had, I tried this, and it just wasn't, wasn't strong enough at that time

[00:27:38] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. You know, one of the things that Tom and I talked about in that other episode, um, there's, there's judgment and experience that goes into doing Endless Customers on your own using AI as your primary thinking vehicle opposed to working with a coach. Um, what are the things that you're doing when you're [00:28:00] working with AI to verify that this is actually the right thing?

[00:28:04] Bob Ruffolo: 'Cause we've all had these experiences with AI where we ask it to, to do something, and then-- but we know whether it's going to be right or wrong when it outputs, and sometimes we catch it, and it's like, "Oh, how come you forgot to put that in there?" And then the response is, "You're right, I should have included that, that in there."

[00:28:24] Bob Ruffolo: And then it goes and updates, and we might have to do that a few times until we get it right. And we say that's one of the values that a coach brings in because they've got the experience of Endless Customers and all that, and they, they know what right is supposed to look like, and they, they help our clients do that.

[00:28:39] Bob Ruffolo: But how, how do you think about that when you're doing AI a-and you're, you're building your Endless Customers program inside your business? Um, I mean, do you have to just trust the stuff comes out is correct, or how are you able to filter that to make sure that it is correct when it's all said and done?

[00:28:58] Scott Payne: But you gotta double-check [00:29:00] it. I mean, it, it's, it's not a set it, forget it system. You know, I, I, you know, uh, it, it's-- When you're doing static things that you're gonna proof, it, it's fairly simple. You know? It, there's an input and output. I, I want a good output. Um, when you're doing things like, "Hey, go write these articles," um, it's taken a lot to create the back end with a voice, the content, the parameters, um, word contents, uh, word counts, I'm sorry.

[00:29:36] Scott Payne: It's just taken, uh, continually refining it and, um, today prepping for the call, like, I was in the background refining our weekly report because it's, it... Listen, it forgets. It falls off. It, it's, you know, back to a couple minutes ago what you were saying, like, I almost feel like I'm old enough to remember a 14.4 modem, right?

[00:29:58] Scott Payne: We're, we're at a, we're at a [00:30:00] 14.4 modem right now, and my God, probably in the next three months we'll jump to a 20, 28A, then to 56, and then, you know, uh, DSL and T1 and, and right down the line. But it, it's, it's not a, it's not a perfect-- Although it has a 200 IQ, it, it doesn't think straight some days. So

[00:30:19] Scott Payne: I've went 

[00:30:19] Bob Ruffolo: for, having a million token context window, there's not a lot that fits in that.

[00:30:24] Scott Payne: No, no. It's, and, and it's... Hey, listen, it, it apolo- you know, Manus apologizes, but I tell you what, it doesn't send you tokens back either.

[00:30:31] Bob Ruffolo: No, certainly does not

[00:30:32] Scott Payne: it, it messes something up. It's,

[00:30:35] Scott Payne: it's 

[00:30:35] Bob Ruffolo: stuck in a loop, you're just burning cash. Yeah

[00:30:38] Scott Payne: it's, I've had it, I've had it happen. I mean, you know, it's, it, you know, if, if anybody's wondering, 'cause I've been asked, like, how many tokens did it cost?

[00:30:49] Scott Payne: What, what did it cost to build the original website? It was under $1,000. It's 600 pages

[00:30:57] Bob Ruffolo: And,

[00:30:58] Scott Payne: the first hit

[00:30:59] Bob Ruffolo: [00:31:00] you learned how to build a website. You learn through doing that, doing that what great website, uh, anything, strategy, the user flow, the, um, the technical aspect such as schema, the right pages that need to be on there and what needs to be on the right page. So there was an investment in time, but once you start learning those things and it does it, it does it really, really fast, and then you're onto the next thing, and it's an incredible experience building a website with AI.

[00:31:30] Bob Ruffolo: I've done, and I've done it a few times. It's an incredible experience. You learn a ton

[00:31:35] Scott Payne: Yeah. It, it, uh, and I, you know, something that came up earlier and I wasn't really thinking like you're thinking right now, but, you know, once again, you know, thanks to you guys, hey, needs to be schemaed, breadcrumbed. These are all terms I, I fr- I walked into Chicago, I wasn't even thinking about. You know, look at our pages.

[00:31:53] Scott Payne: Everyone has a quick summary at the top of it. Um, you know, the, the service pages. [00:32:00] Every, every affluent ZIP code in, within 50 miles, there's a city page for. Then we wrote backup city pages. Then we wrote, uh, we wrote four question city pages. My designer, who's been with me about two months, he's the greatest kid.

[00:32:15] Scott Payne: He just graduated college. I asked him to, um, go look up setbacks for a specific, uh, city close to us, Dresher, PA. And he came back and he goes, "You're not gonna believe this." And I'm like, "What, what, what happened?" Like, I'm thinking he's gonna say the setbacks are 25 foot, it's a very small yard. He goes, "You're the number one response."

[00:32:36] Bob Ruffolo: Wow.

[00:32:39] Scott Payne: 'Cause we wrote build, we wrote building permit pages. You know, and, and, and there's a balance. Like, I, I have it in my notes here. Like, you know, you have a target customer, but you need to talk to... You need to target AI. And sometimes, and, you know, uh, for AEO, let's, let's be clear, and, and Google [00:33:00] SEO maybe the third here.

[00:33:01] Scott Payne: So the writing is slightly different. It's not one path fits everything. You know, you, you want that customer to have a great UX when they get on there with good content, but for that customer to show up on a website, we gotta write a little differently so we, you know, become an AI choice. I don't know how you guys see that in impact, if, if that's happening now.

[00:33:24] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, yeah. You know, and by the way, I'm looking at the site right now, and, um, we gotta make sure we demo this when we do the post-production here. Um, I'm looking at your custom pool builder in, uh, Doylestown, PA page. Now, one of the things we talked about right before this, I love, if you just go down the homepage, um, this is really important for, for AEO, and you're, you're doing it brilliantly.

[00:33:45] Bob Ruffolo: You have county service area, and then you have, um, a page for every, um, every town you serve. Um, so that way, this is incredible signal to AI, uh, when they're looking for [00:34:00] a, a, a pool installation company in those towns that you're being very clear that we service this town. You're doing this exactly right.

[00:34:09] Bob Ruffolo: And if you click on... Again, I, I'm picking Doylestown 'cause that's the first one in Bucks County. And there it is, the quick summary right at the top of the page. Very well done. Great content that's localized, so it's not just the same content every page. It's very specific to Doylestown, PA. Um, you've got, on the sidebar here, you have additional resources.

[00:34:31] Bob Ruffolo: As you go down, you have a table, and you can see the price ranges, and every question that a buyer would have is all beautifully answered on this page. Um, and you have one of these for every town. You got images, um, and you've done, from a technical standpoint, as far as I could tell, everything is just right.

[00:34:50] Bob Ruffolo: These pages are probably absolutely slaying for you right now. Are they not?

[00:34:54] Scott Payne: The, the, the site, the site within first two, three [00:35:00] weeks was in the mid-90s for score. Um, and we, we score it every week

[00:35:06] Scott Payne: just 

[00:35:06] Bob Ruffolo: when you say scoring, you're, you're using what to score it?

[00:35:09] Scott Payne: Uh, we use a, um, a Google Search Console and, uh, we use SE Ranking for, for general reporting. So

[00:35:16] Bob Ruffolo: Got it

[00:35:17] Scott Payne: broken links, you know, 404s, we, we... Once again, we do a weekly, and it, it- Actually, I get a daily report that swipes the whole website to make sure nothing's down, and there's days it's been down. Um, we, uh, you know, we host through, uh, Netlify and, and GitHub.

[00:35:38] Scott Payne: And, you know, listen, I know we're gonna talk about it. It's gonna come as a question. We made mistakes. Like, there's things, you know, I just say we didn't understand at the time. Like, you know, I'll, I'll throw out the biggest, I'd say, embarrassment. It's funny. So we had a WordPress website, and

[00:35:56] Bob Ruffolo: And this is not on WordPress, this is not on anything right now.

[00:35:59] Scott Payne: No,

[00:35:59] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, [00:36:00] you built your own CMS 'cause you have a learning center, but this is all custom, your own CMS that you built

[00:36:04] Scott Payne: So, uh, I didn't, I didn't think about it really, and, and it wasn't really i- in my vocabulary, right? I'll make it... You know, I can't spell CSS. So get three-quarters of the way through the build, I, I asked, I asked, uh, Manus one day, I'm like, "Hey, how are we gonna get this in the builder?" Like, uh, you know, like I know a little bit about WordPress, right?

[00:36:30] Scott Payne: You know, how, how... He's like, "Scotty, we're not, we're not using WordPress." I'm like, "Get out." Like, "What are, what are we using?" He's like, "This is an HTML site." He goes, "It's gonna be lightning fast." I'm like, "No kidding. So, so now what?" He's like, "Well..." It, it had outgrown the sandbox, you know, because the development.

[00:36:50] Scott Payne: So we had already temporarily hosted on Netlify to build it. And then he's like, "Just go on and, you know, sign up for..." [00:37:00] Just tell me... I mean, basically like we're talking right now, tell me what to do. "Go on, sign up. Uh, when you get here, do this, and then, uh, hey, whenever we get it to the point, hit the button."

[00:37:10] Scott Payne: "Okay, cool. Thank you."

[00:37:12] Bob Ruffolo: A- and that's all you do, is when you, uh, want to update the website, you just go right to Madness and say, "I want to do another article"? So it al- already knows, it already has agents set up that it's just like, we have to do articles, just writing articles and, and you're r- approving them and revising them and, and shipping them live.

[00:37:27] Bob Ruffolo: Is that how that goes?

[00:37:29] Scott Payne: Yeah. If, if anybody really wants to understand the power of, of what's on that site, it's We have SE Ranking connected to Google Search Console, Microsoft Clarity, and PostHog. Clarity and PostHog are similar. Microsoft Clarity is free. PostHog's a, a subscription. Their, their heat map, you know, for anybody that doesn't know, they're, they're UX, um, you know, [00:38:00] j-- you know, uh, monitors.

[00:38:03] Scott Payne: Yeah, they, they monitor, you know, heat maps, you know, where somebody's clicking on a website, how long are they there, a lot of the information. So every Friday morning around six AM, the process starts. Manus goes into SE Ranking, runs, uh, three hundred words, keywords, runs a report for it, and advances and declines.

[00:38:26] Scott Payne: It also does a search of ten to twelve local competitors. It then creates a keyword gap content list, this is like X-Files stuff, to write the ensuing content, sends it to me to proof. So it might say, um, "We're only number six in, uh, Buckingham, PA." This thing wants to get to number one. It's not gonna stop and rest till it [00:39:00] does.

[00:39:00] Scott Payne: So it'll, it'll write the articles. It has permission to write up to twenty articles between, I think it's twenty-eight hundred and four thousand words with uplinking, downlinking, sidelinking, and contextual. Contextual meaning if it says Buckingham somewhere else on a website, this thing goes in, grabs it, spins it all together.

[00:39:23] Scott Payne: I think that the website, as of last count, had a hundred and twenty-five thousand internal links. There was sixty thousand the day that I sent this to Tom around mid-May, you know, May twenty-something. So that's where this really starts to snowball. And the local, you know, although we're, we're a little focused on general searches, pool builder, what does a cool pool cost, right?

[00:39:50] Scott Payne: But what does a pool cost in Doylestown, PA or Buckingham, PA or whatever is so much more important. So we're really local focused for [00:40:00] that

[00:40:00] Bob Ruffolo: Wow. Incredible. Incredible. Um, I, I would encourage all the listeners here to go to, um, scottpaynecustompools.com and play around with the site. Um, you might get some unqualified website traffic from this. D- don't worry about it. But I would encourage you to go, go to this site. You'll get inspired. Um, there's a lot of just incredible, great things going on here.

[00:40:26] Bob Ruffolo: I love that you've done the navigation. You have start here. You've got your pricing. You've got all your services. You got reviews, and when you drop down, Google, Facebook, Yelp, Angie, thank you letters, BBB. Brilliantly done. Your learning center is so incredibly organized and loaded with content. I love the service page areas.

[00:40:45] Bob Ruffolo: Um, the, uh, very, very, very well done. And you can see, I mean, it has some tells that this is an AI-built site. Um, but that's okay because you built it yourself for, you heard, [00:41:00] $1,000 worth of credits

[00:41:02] Scott Payne: Thank you.

[00:41:03] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, unbelievable

[00:41:04] Scott Payne: it's been, it's been cool. Like we, you know, I had an idea one day. I, I woke up and, you know, it, it becomes a mental focus, this thing, and I was like, "You know, how, how cool would it be to have a glossary?" You know, dude, I don't really understand all what you guys do, and you have your own buzzwords and, you know, things.

[00:41:23] Scott Payne: And so go down, I ask Mambon, " Hey, could you-- could we take terms from content written and write a glossary of substance and offer it on the website?" "Sure. When do you wanna start?" I'm like, "Go ahead. Start." It rolls through. I think there's, I, I wanna say it's around 300 terms with quick summaries. They're not one-word answers. "Hey, nice job. Thank you so much. I should buy you lunch. Um, [00:42:00] can you do me a favor? I wanna contextually link them through the entire website and the quick summaries." "Okay, no problem. Hold my beer." Comes back 45 minutes later, and, uh, there you see we had a glossary up and live in Montserrat with the proper framing, proper everything because it, it has it, it's memorized.

[00:42:24] Scott Payne: It's, it's in our master prompt, and every, every article it writes, it goes back. It has the same framework, same breadcrumbs, same TLDRs. It's, it's mind-blowing

[00:42:34] Bob Ruffolo: Unbelievable. Now, Scott, so, um, we talked about this a little bit before the episode. Um, you discovered Marcus very early on, 2010, 2011. Um, but really over the last couple years got more involved in the Endless Customers community. The spring event sounded like a big kickoff. Um, what's happened to the business, [00:43:00] um, since really going all in in the spring, and what are you excited for for the business for next year based on what you've built this year?

[00:43:10] Scott Payne: That's only getting better. Um, uh, I mean, it's, it's near impossible to go on an appointment and somebody not compliment the website, which some people I share with, you know, how, how it, how it got there. Some might, some I don't. Um, but, you know, I'm gonna use the term and say the proof is in the pudding.

[00:43:31] Scott Payne: You know, the ... everything ... You know, you, you, you know, respectfully, right? You guys run a business, and you hear any business say things, and sometimes the answer gets diluted. You know, is that really true? You know, could we have this kind of result? Are, are these people paid to say such nice things, right? So you hear-- I've heard Marcus for years.

[00:43:58] Scott Payne: People want to know pricing. People [00:44:00] want to know pricing. People want to know pricing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I get it. People want to know pricing, right? Guess what do you think the most searched articles on my website the past eight weeks are?

[00:44:11] Bob Ruffolo: Um, I, I would have to imagine. Yep

[00:44:15] Scott Payne: Proof is in the pudding, right?

[00:44:17] Scott Payne: It-it's ... So to answer your question, um, impressions are huge. You know, we're ... Uh, I don't-- I didn't pay attention in the past, so I'd be absolutely fibbing if I said, "Listen, it's up fifty percent, a hundred percent, two hundred percent." I can say this. My, my calendar is stuffed with new calls and leads. Um, we track incomings.

[00:44:43] Scott Payne: Most of them are Google. Uh, our Google is now, our organic is starting to overshadow direct, which I would s- I would have said before we were probably seventy, eighty [00:45:00] percent direct. It, it might could have been higher than that. Now we're fifty/fifty, so organic will pass it any time soon. You know, Google's still crawling articles, and we, we put a new site map up every week.

[00:45:13] Scott Payne: It's still crawling. It's, it doesn't have all sixteen hundred pages yet. So that's one thing. Our AI search, because the content, is absolutely through the roof. Um, I'm gonna say three out of ten, and it used to be a third out of ten, uh, you know, a third of one out of ten was, "I, I got you on chat." Now it's Chat, Claude, Grok.

[00:45:36] Scott Payne: Doesn't, doesn't matter. They're, they're finding us. Um, I'm gonna say because of this training and, and the, the exercise, twenty twenty-seven will be a thirty-five to forty percent net gain. And I, and I have to look at this and say, "This is why." We, we're not doing anything different. We're not building better pools, right?

[00:45:55] Scott Payne: We're not putting up more signs. We're not spending a- We're not really spending anything on [00:46:00] marketing. We don't ... We, we never have. What can I attribute it to?

[00:46:04] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah.

[00:46:06] Scott Payne: Endless customers.

[00:46:07] Bob Ruffolo: Incredible. Well, um, we are incredibly proud of what you're building over there. Um, and thank you for coming on and sharing your journey. I think you're still very early in your journey. I think you have a very bright future. Um, I think the biggest lesson that anyone could be taking from this episode is to be curious about AI.

[00:46:29] Bob Ruffolo: Go ask AI how to use AI. Give it some information that you've learned of what you're trying to accomplish and say, "How can you help me accomplish this?" And when it teaches you something, you're like, "I don't know what that means." And, and, and it'll explain it in a different way. And say, "Slow down. Walk me through how to do that."

[00:46:47] Bob Ruffolo: And then all of a sudden, a few months go by, and now you're like Scott, one of the best people, like top 5% of the world using AI. He's using Manus, he's building websites, he's running his business, he's doing AI [00:47:00] avatars in six months. And maybe if you're slow to type, the unlock is use Whisper Flow, right?

[00:47:08] Bob Ruffolo: And then all of a sudden now you can do all this stuff, right? It's, it's absolutely incredible, and you're going to have the best year in your business you've ever had because six months you've spent figuring this out that anybody can do. It's absolutely incredible, Scott. We are so proud of you

[00:47:26] Scott Payne: No, man, I, I can't thank you guys enough. I'm, I'm looking, looking forward to Hartford and some hugs. And, um, uh, just the stuff Marcus has put out, there's been... I, I, you know, I almost get dusty talking about it, you know. It's, it's funny is although I, I knew about him, a friend of mine, I had moved my office back to my house for a couple months 'cause my wife had, uh, surgery, so I was working from home, and my, my grass guy, um, knocked on the door and just to, you know, BS a little bit, and we were talking about marketing, direct mail, and some [00:48:00] other things.

[00:48:00] Scott Payne: And he said, "I was just at a seminar and, and this, this guy spoke, and he's got a book." And I'm like, "What's the book? I'm- I got 400 books behind me." And, uh, he's like, "They Ask You Answer." And man, I, I read that, and within three or four days, um, I had put a contest out to our staff and said, "Hey, can..." Uh, I think it was a $100 gift card.

[00:48:24] Scott Payne: Whoever comes up with the most questions wins. And I think we ended up with like 4- or 500 questions that people were asking us every day. But once again, I, I couldn't implement. I, I just couldn't get there. I couldn't sit still long enough to think about it. And then, um, once again, we keep going back to WhisperFlow and Marcus, and you know, that, that was, that, that freed me.

[00:48:44] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

[00:48:50] Scott Payne: Anytime, pal

[00:48:51] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, this has been great. And we will see you in Hartford for the Endless Customers Conference, uh, the first week of October. So, um, if anyone wants to meet Scott in person and [00:49:00] pick his brain, come to Hartford, the Endless Customers Conference.

[00:49:02] Bob Ruffolo: And, um, and, and I'm sure Scott would be happy to share just like he was today.

[00:49:06] Scott Payne: Absolutely

[00:49:08] Bob Ruffolo: Great. And Scott, if someone wants to get in touch with you, obviously scottpaynecustompools.com. Uh, but is there anywhere else that they can get in touch with you if they want to follow up with you?

[00:49:15] Scott Payne: Yeah, on LinkedIn. Um, if you, uh, go on the website and click on, the email is, um, in the footer, the bottom left of the footer, and I'll, I'll respond to anything, whether it's a talk or chat or tell some war stories. I, I, I'd love to. I've met such great people through this journey, some I still stay in touch with from Chicago, people I sat next to.

[00:49:38] Scott Payne: So what a, what a great community

[00:49:40] Bob Ruffolo: Awesome. All right, Scott, thank you so much.

[00:49:43] Scott Payne: You're welcome

[00:49:44] Bob Ruffolo: All right, well, this has been another episode of the Endless Customers Podcast, and we will see you at the next episode 

[00:49:49] Stephanie Baiocchi: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.