Zero-Click SEO Explained: How to Win the AI Overview [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 159]

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

00;00;00;03 - 00;00;08;06

Scott Merritt

Ultimately, when a buyer asks ChatGPT who to call. I mean, are you the answer or are you invisible? Yeah.

00;00;08;09 - 00;00;26;26

Stephanie Baiocchi

You're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, brought to you by the team at impact. Endless customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. If you want to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business. Pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller wherever books are sold.

00;00;26;27 - 00;00;48;14

Stephanie Baiocchi

Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impact about how our coaching program can help you implement endless customers to success. And if you want to experience endless customers in person, don't miss our upcoming event, Endless Customers Lied in Hartford, Connecticut, October 5th through the seventh, 2026. Registration is now open. And now on to the show.

00;00;48;16 - 00;00;51;03

Stephanie Baiocchi

Here's your host, Bob Ruffolo.

00;00;51;05 - 00;01;11;11

Bob Ruffolo

We have an incredible episode coming your way today, and I'll be honest, by the time you reach the end of this conversation, I think your mind will be blown. This episode is loaded with insights on AI. We talk about building a company. AI first had dominate AI search results in your market, and how to build a digital moat around your business.

00;01;11;13 - 00;01;32;16

Bob Ruffolo

But this conversation goes well beyond AI. It's about learning grit and perseverance. It's about what it actually takes to build a business that's period to the competition in every way. Today I'm joined by Scott Merritt from Honest Fix. Scott has been part of the Endless customers community since 2020. Back when he was leading his previous company and he was a client of impact, being coached on They ask you answer.

00;01;32;19 - 00;01;52;01

Bob Ruffolo

He had tremendous success with it and eventually sold that business. Now he's taking everything he's learned and applying it to his new venture. I have known Scott for a long time and I'm incredibly proud of what he's doing. He's kind of leader who keeps learning, pushing and raising the standard for what's possible. This is a bit of a longer episode, but stay with it because the value keeps building right up until the end.

00;01;52;03 - 00;02;15;29

Bob Ruffolo

Scott, welcome to the show. So glad to have you on on, Scott. You and I have known each other now, man. Probably seven years or so. I have to assume it's been. Right around there. Yeah, yeah. So, No, Scott is somebody I admire a lot. He's a true entrepreneur. He's a true learner. School of hard knocks learn things his way.

00;02;16;02 - 00;02;39;01

Bob Ruffolo

And, you know, I really think it would be great to start the episode, give him a little background of who you are and how you built your first company. It's fire and ice. Spent a lot of time talking about them today because we have a great new company we're building from the ground up, and we're going to talk about which is honest fix, but talk about your journey to how you started that company in the first place.

00;02;39;04 - 00;03;15;26

Scott Merritt

After school was spent, you know, high school and so forth, spent a few years in restaurants and so forth, kind of spent a bunch of time drinking, wasting my life, just not doing, you know, what's best and not really focused on a career to the point where I just basically destroyed my life. Right. And then, I basically hit rock bottom, and then I went and had a long prayer with my maker and.

00;03;15;28 - 00;03;38;25

Scott Merritt

Asked for, you know, something different and so forth. And I woke up the next morning and I went, I was just walking down the road here in town in Columbus, Ohio, and, and I passed this building and said, you know, class is starting Monday. And I was 25 at the time. And I'm like, I just walked in and I'm like, hey, what's what can I you know, what?

00;03;38;25 - 00;04;03;25

Scott Merritt

Can I start on Monday? I didn't even know what the classes were for. Right. You know, they said, well, there's medical assisting and then there's HVAC, which is heating, ventilation and air conditioning. So I said, okay, I'll take HVAC, you know, but, and then I started that and I went through a year long class and then, and then I got a job in, in the field as a service technician.

00;04;03;25 - 00;04;16;03

Scott Merritt

And I spent the next, you know, ten, 11 years in the field or no, ten years in the field. And then, you know, I always had a plan of once I was in the field for ten years, I would open up my own business.

00;04;16;08 - 00;04;16;19

Bob Ruffolo

Wow.

00;04;16;20 - 00;04;38;29

Scott Merritt

Yeah. So ten years and one day later, I opened up my HVAC or fire and ice heating and air conditioning here in Columbus, Ohio. And I owned and ran it, and I did. I was always kind of in charge of marketing because I always loved that part. And I did that for 21 years until I sold it mid last year.

00;04;39;04 - 00;04;40;21

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah.

00;04;40;23 - 00;05;12;00

Scott Merritt

Worked there for a few months after that. And then left there and then helped found this new HVAC, HVAC company 2.5 hours away in eastern Ohio. It's been it's been quite the quite the change just because I left a 2 million person tier one market and we've moved, you know, I moved to a, you know, 80,000 person tier three market.

00;05;12;06 - 00;05;29;07

Scott Merritt

You know, so the economy is just way more economically challenged. And we opened eight months ago and we are still really done. Any paid advertising. Everything that we've been doing is the endless customers format.

00;05;29;08 - 00;05;30;00

Bob Ruffolo

Wow.

00;05;30;02 - 00;06;02;16

Scott Merritt

So what did you just take one second, please? I want to thank you, Bob. So you know what? You what you built, you know, and what you built with it, with impacts and your EOS aligned structure, with your 90 day markers and your roadmap. It's truly been the bedrock of how fire and ice excelled in the last 5 or 6 years, and is completely the bedrock on which I build everything with the new company.

00;06;02;16 - 00;06;19;15

Scott Merritt

So thank you for that. I probably would not have been able to sell my old company for what I did without the website being so extremely strong compared to, you know, everything else that was out there.

00;06;19;17 - 00;06;41;29

Bob Ruffolo

Well, Scott, that that means more than, you know, you know, the reason why we do what we do is to work with people like you. And, you know, I think I speak for Marcus and the rest of the coaches that, you know, it's an honor to be able to do what we do every day and to be able to work with just incredible entrepreneurs such as yourself.

00;06;42;02 - 00;07;12;22

Bob Ruffolo

And we learn as much from you all, especially when you have a journey, a story like you, we learn more from you than in our job is just to share, you know? So, so it's a it's a heck of a partnership and we're really incredibly proud of you. And, you know, your story is so incredible because it's a story of of learning, not giving up, persevering, trying new things, being open minded, being curious, exploring, experimenting all these things.

00;07;12;23 - 00;07;49;09

Bob Ruffolo

Your whole life has been that. And that's what it takes to be a great business leader. And that's why, you know, even through the things that challenging. I didn't know you then, obviously, but I can I can imagine who you were going through and seeing that sign in the classes and going to classes, and you're probably at the top of the class and, and you just worked so hard with that grit and that energy and all the things that we teach, it takes that there's no magic pill to run, a great business, to run great marketing to, to build something excellent that could be sellable.

00;07;49;11 - 00;08;05;26

Bob Ruffolo

It takes a lot of grit and you have it. And that's the biggest lesson that we can learn from you. We're gonna learn a lot more lessons because we're going to talk a lot about AI today. But if nothing else, I mean, even when it comes to a whole new world we're entering with AI, it's going to take grit.

00;08;05;29 - 00;08;27;18

Bob Ruffolo

It's going to take experimental. So let's let's dive into a little bit. How did you first discover. Originally when we first met, we were doing They Ask. We answer was even endless customers yet. So how did you first discover? They asked me. Answer what resonated with you? And why did you make that the bedrock of what you were doing at Fire and Ice.

00;08;27;21 - 00;08;53;29

Scott Merritt

So well? Covid. So right at the very beginning of Covid, I mean, I mean like February of that year. So before it even really got super big, right? It was just the first time people just started wearing masks and so forth, and we didn't really know how bad it was going to be. But I was already looking for.

00;08;54;02 - 00;09;18;10

Scott Merritt

I could I could just tell I was going to get worse. I've been in I spent a decade or so running a disaster response team and search and rescue team on the side, and just human nature goes in certain directions at certain times. So and then, of course, business just started dropping off. And I mean, just the phone just stopped in a completely pretty much.

00;09;18;10 - 00;09;41;05

Scott Merritt

And I was searching and I was searching for a search for an answer. I'm like, what? Something, something will fix this, right? So I looked at two different things. Well, my general manager at the time handed me the book they asked you to answer, and I read that, and I read it in one night. I stayed up very, very late.

00;09;41;05 - 00;10;09;18

Scott Merritt

And I read it one night and I'm like, wow, why did I not know this? And why have I not been doing this? And you know, I'm an idiot, you know? So I got to do this, you know, and I got to do this now. So I read it like 3 or 4 more times. At the same time, I also started taking some AI classes at MIT and a few other places and just start to learn about AI.

00;10;09;18 - 00;10;09;27

Scott Merritt

And that.

00;10;09;27 - 00;10;13;29

Bob Ruffolo

Was back in. Yeah, say back in 2020, 2021.

00;10;14;01 - 00;10;14;12

Scott Merritt

Yeah.

00;10;14;12 - 00;10;15;15

Bob Ruffolo

So before.

00;10;15;17 - 00;10;16;18

Scott Merritt

GPT ever came out.

00;10;16;19 - 00;10;18;28

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. Wow.

00;10;19;00 - 00;10;33;03

Scott Merritt

Because I'm a I'm a space nerd and AI nerd and, you know, so that kind of thing. So I was just I knew that it was common. So I read a book.

00;10;33;06 - 00;10;42;09

Scott Merritt

Called marketing for Artificial Intelligence for marketing, and that was that was before ChatGPT came out and, you know, and.

00;10;42;11 - 00;10;42;23

Bob Ruffolo

Was that.

00;10;42;25 - 00;10;43;17

Scott Merritt

Was that.

00;10;43;20 - 00;10;46;28

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. Paul racer yeah. Yeah, yeah, I remember because we saw each other at the conference.

00;10;47;02 - 00;11;09;29

Scott Merritt

Yeah, yeah. Go every year. Yeah. So I read that and that, that got me interested. And that was right after I was just kind of in the middle of taking some classes, digging into it. So either way, I was, I was digging into both. And the AI thing didn't really go anywhere for a couple of years. Right. And but but the, the they ask you to answer at that time for those customers that just took off in my mind.

00;11;10;01 - 00;11;31;22

Scott Merritt

So we went out and you know, we we got a coach right away and we started writing content before we knew, you know, before we even had a coach, really. And so we screw up some content early on. But we were just we were just starting to write it. But I went out and hired a content writer, and then I went out and hired a videographer.

00;11;31;26 - 00;11;56;21

Scott Merritt

And, you know, again, got them both coaches and said, you know, let's let's just go full blast. And, you know, and I, I worked with the sales team to make sure that we were getting the assignment, selling. Go on. And, you know, we definitely had full company buy it. Yeah. And luckily we were the first ones to bring this type of marketing to the city.

00;11;56;23 - 00;12;33;23

Scott Merritt

Yeah. So we really benefited. So our website was nothing really. We had never really done anything digital. We had never even really done digital ads. We still don't do digital ads even with the new company. Yeah, I haven't found a need to in general. So we just we just build off of of organic and now AI traffic. So we just started plugging away and then within about four months, you know, because it's a slow build, you know, that that snowball effect takes a little bit of time before it starts rolling really, really fast.

00;12;33;23 - 00;12;34;19

Bob Ruffolo

All the great things do.

00;12;34;23 - 00;12;54;29

Scott Merritt

Starting to see we're starting to see traffic, right? But I went ahead and hired another content writer and another videographer, you know, just to speed up the process. Anyway, so, you know, that first year we didn't really get started till mid year. I mean, we did a few hundred thousand dollars just from articles we had written. Yeah, right.

00;12;55;01 - 00;13;19;24

Scott Merritt

But that we could track. Right. We didn't even know how many people have written articles or read articles and then just call us. Yeah, right. And but then a couple of years, we were doing a million plus just from articles that we could track. And we knew based on our assignment selling and all these other things that we were doing with the whole system, that it was, it was working in, in the whole system was working.

00;13;19;26 - 00;13;22;09

Scott Merritt

And we just leaned into it very hard.

00;13;22;10 - 00;13;24;01

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah.

00;13;24;03 - 00;13;47;07

Scott Merritt

And then Covid kind of ended, you know, so Covid was great for us once we got through that initial few months. And, you know, everybody stuck in their home. So they were doing a lot more research these days. And we had that system and we were benefiting greatly for the next few years. And then I guess what Marcus calls the pride cycle kind of took effect.

00;13;47;08 - 00;14;16;17

Scott Merritt

Oh, wow. We just me and it's pretty much me, you know, I'm like, hey, everything's going great. Let's have my videographer work on some other stuff. Right? You know, some commercial TV commercials for this or, or for our mascot or just other things that won't pay to or endless customers content. Yeah. And over time, you know, our our traffic, we went up to a quarter million in traffic within the first.

00;14;16;19 - 00;14;44;25

Scott Merritt

Well, two years. Yeah. Per month. And, you know, that's very good. Incredibly good for the HVAC industry. Now, at that time, a lot of the traffic was national. And I have solved that problem with the, you know, with getting that localized here with the with the new company. But either way and national traffic helps your website, helps your ranking, helps your thoughts.

00;14;45;00 - 00;14;46;01

Bob Ruffolo

On of course. Yeah.

00;14;46;07 - 00;14;56;05

Scott Merritt

It was all good. And it definitely got, you know, plenty of attention. And well, you even put us in the, you know, in the endless customers as a case study.

00;14;56;06 - 00;14;57;09

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah.

00;14;57;12 - 00;15;22;25

Scott Merritt

So it was great. Brought us millions of dollars in revenue. And, you know, then, like I said, built help build that company and helped gave us some structure that we didn't even have really when it came to marketing. Because once you once you commit to the structure and it is a commitment, but once once you commit to this structure, everything kind of fits into it.

00;15;22;26 - 00;15;45;05

Scott Merritt

Yeah. Like from from every, every department, every part of the company. They all have a piece and a part to it. And, and it really helps, give everybody something to work towards. Yeah. Give everybody something to work together on. Besides, they're just day to day, you know, doing this portion of their job or this portion of the job.

00;15;45;05 - 00;15;50;17

Scott Merritt

It brings everybody together in certain ways. That's really very good for morale, at least what I have found.

00;15;50;18 - 00;16;09;08

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. No. And we did put you in the book, but we also went out and filled in the case study. I remember that, and that was a lot of fun going out and meeting your entire crew in person. And Alex and I came out with and we filmed the whole case study. What I loved about, again, when we're talking about Scott, Scott goes all in.

00;16;09;09 - 00;16;28;15

Bob Ruffolo

If he's going to do something, he's going to do it because he's going to do it right. Let's, you know, a little pride cycle towards the end there. But but we refocused and, you, you had a beautiful section of your building dedicated to your marketing team. They had a very comfortable spot to work. You had a beautiful studio similar like what we have here.

00;16;28;15 - 00;16;52;27

Bob Ruffolo

You had your own studio and you were filming videos, and they're constantly and I'm not surprised that you were the most known, trusted and recommended each company in the Columbus area. You did everything right online. I'm not sure if it's still there anymore. I have to imagine maybe you're not owning the company anymore, but your website at the time had the most organized learning center I think I've ever seen.

00;16;52;28 - 00;17;23;25

Bob Ruffolo

It was just beautifully structured and on top of. They did a lot of offline things too. I remember we went to Columbus scheme. You had the mascot as well, and you just you hit on all cylinders again, just again, credit to how much you learned and applied. And, and then we, we got to a point where you got to a point where you had your exit and, and that brings us to the last eight months, which is incredibly exciting, because now you take everything that you've learned about HVAC.

00;17;23;28 - 00;17;53;05

Bob Ruffolo

Now, all the stuff you've learned about AI that's been saying your back pocket, your journey, would they ask you answering endless customers and all those mistakes you made. And now all behind you and you've got a fresh slate. How freaking cool is that? So you're saying I'm going to open this up in a new market and tell us about your strategy and things you're doing differently this time than you would have done than you did in your previous company.

00;17;53;08 - 00;18;11;01

Scott Merritt

Okay. So before so in order to open, honest fix, my mindset really is based on everything I know. New at the time was

00;18;11;03 - 00;18;37;05

Scott Merritt

In the future, right? AI is is going to displace I mean displace the need for new employees, right? So for me with a new company, right. We're very small. There's like, you know, five of us. Yeah. So we don't need to. It's not about replacing people we have. It's about not hiring new people. As we grow now, we're in fact company.

00;18;37;05 - 00;18;44;00

Scott Merritt

So we're going to need we're going to need technicians. We're going to need, you know, a certain amount of people and field people all day long, forever.

00;18;44;01 - 00;18;49;18

Bob Ruffolo

And, well, until next ten years in his robots, that can do it. But yes. Right.

00;18;49;20 - 00;19;12;21

Scott Merritt

But I believe that in the future. Well, it's already happening, but I believe in more so in the future. The websites are going to be visited more by people's AI agents. Their assist, their digital assistants, which will be called AI agents. It'll be they'll send them out to do their research. They'll send them out to book their calls.

00;19;12;21 - 00;19;25;04

Scott Merritt

They'll send them out to to even purchase things. Right. Once they train that agent or that assistant to, you know, like their preferences, right? For sure.

00;19;25;07 - 00;19;42;14

Bob Ruffolo

And you're right. You're right that agents yeah, you're right that you're right. That's already happening now. And and quite frankly, we're doing it. And we don't even realize we're doing that when we go to a Claude or chat and we say, hey, can you recommend a company for this? It's doing all the research that humans used to do, and it just gives us the recommendation.

00;19;42;14 - 00;19;48;15

Bob Ruffolo

We're like, oh, good enough. That's one. Let's go with that one, right. So you're spot on with that, right?

00;19;48;17 - 00;20;12;09

Scott Merritt

So Gardner did some research. It's a research institute, and they did some research at the beginning of last year and said by 2026, 25% of online searches will start with AI by 2026. Right. And it's it's at 38 instead. Yeah. So it's it's they're starting with AI. So they're starting on the ChatGPT or the Gemini or the grok or whatever.

00;20;12;16 - 00;20;20;03

Scott Merritt

And the or Google, right. Use an AI mode and so forth. So they're, they're starting their,

00;20;20;05 - 00;20;34;18

Bob Ruffolo

Which is kind of ambiguous because even traditional search is so AI loaded in the, you know, the algorithms anyways. Right. So I mean really that, that numbers I would say is even lower than it probably really is, but totally agree.

00;20;34;20 - 00;20;58;11

Scott Merritt

Right. Well, yeah. Because you don't know. Yeah. There's there's certain things you can't track yet. Yeah. And so forth. But you know, I believe that the companies that focus on AI mediated discovery in the next 24 months and really hit it hard are going to have a.

00;20;58;13 - 00;21;05;15

Scott Merritt

Almost a monopoly in certain parts of, of.

00;21;05;18 - 00;21;07;15

Bob Ruffolo

That whole process.

00;21;07;19 - 00;21;35;25

Scott Merritt

Basically digital monopoly on the real estate that exists. Marcus use the the term digital real estate, you know, getting getting the, if you could get Manhattan, you know, back before there was any buildings, anything, you know, you could be that base layer, which is what we're looking at. Yeah. And then everything else is built on top of that.

00;21;35;25 - 00;22;04;29

Scott Merritt

That's right. So we are really focused on optimizing all our content, all our endless customers content for for how I can find it and process it and make sure our machine readable, it's also very readable by by humans, right. Yeah. Like humans don't have as long as attention span as it had just like five years ago. So they don't, you know, so our, our content is more condensed a little bit.

00;22;05;00 - 00;22;31;23

Scott Merritt

There's some more bullet points, you know, and because of that that's also what AI needs, right? AI needs schema AI needs very good structure. And AI also needs to know how to use your website. For instance, we have, you know, on our footer of our home page, there's a little file at the bottom. It just says text. And it is a file specifically for AI to read.

00;22;31;25 - 00;22;56;04

Scott Merritt

Wow. And it just tells the AI how to read the website where the main main pages are, where to get identifiable information. You know, it talks about the different things. You know, where the author pages are or the, how our website is structured. Right? Yeah. And that makes it super easy for the AI to go in and look at every page.

00;22;56;08 - 00;22;57;02

Bob Ruffolo

Incredible.

00;22;57;09 - 00;23;10;26

Scott Merritt

Instead of trying to digest an entire website, you know, because we have in the eight months, we've got quite a few pages. I mean, right now we have 1769 pages live on our website.

00;23;10;26 - 00;23;12;18

Bob Ruffolo

That's a couple. Yeah, yeah.

00;23;12;19 - 00;23;24;21

Scott Merritt

And and a lot of those are blogs and quick answer articles. Yeah. You know, obviously, which is all endless customers content. Yeah. But it all has to be structured for AI.

00;23;24;23 - 00;23;50;09

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. I like the way you phrase that. It's almost like building a moat around your business right now. It's a blue ocean to dominate AI. Claim your stake in the ground. So that way it's recommending you or anyone else taking advantage of that right now, doing all the things before anyone else does it. And then you're just building on, building up, building on it, and no one's going to be able to catch up.

00;23;50;11 - 00;24;06;06

Bob Ruffolo

And you've always had that mindset. You had that mindset going back when I first met you in the previous business, and now you're bringing that same mindset here. It's like, how do we create so much distance between us and our competitors that they can't possibly catch up?

00;24;06;09 - 00;24;25;15

Scott Merritt

Yeah, with the with the team here, I use the word moat. Yeah, probably a couple times a week, you know, and I'm lucky. So in 2020 when we started to, you know, we were the first ones to bring it to Columbus. Right. And then bunch of other companies, you know, they're now doing it in Columbus. Yeah. And that's fine because I'm not even in Columbus anymore.

00;24;25;15 - 00;24;59;21

Scott Merritt

So but I was lucky that now going to this tier three market and, you know, nobody has really done I mean everybody's website is is almost like 1990 static brochure type websites. So I get to bring the same strategy to this other market. And I'm still first, even though this, you know, this thing has been going on. But now I'm even further ahead because not only am I first, with all the endless customers content, the only one answering questions, but now optimizing it all for AI.

00;24;59;25 - 00;25;20;23

Scott Merritt

Yeah, which is only building that moat deeper, wider. Wow. And so forth. And I mean, we already have interaction from AI. We've already sold jobs because of AI as founders and recommended us and and so forth. So it's it's going well.

00;25;20;23 - 00;25;23;07

Bob Ruffolo

And the company is eight months old.

00;25;23;09 - 00;25;31;00

Scott Merritt

And the company is eight months old, and we don't pay for marketing. And this is a marketing strategy. So we're paying you know, but the.

00;25;31;02 - 00;25;34;19

Bob Ruffolo

Investment of time. Yeah. Yeah. In focus for sure.

00;25;34;21 - 00;26;07;13

Scott Merritt

The whole digital team is me and one other guy. Wow. And he, he builds the, he builds the web pages. Right? I write all the articles. We strategize together in a regular basis, but I'm. He'll go do the schema and the other things, and there's a whole list of things, you know, for that. But we built that in in eight months, the 769 pages, all optimized for exactly how AI searches these these days.

00;26;07;13 - 00;26;34;02

Bob Ruffolo

So in endless customers, and this is definitely rapidly changing. We used to advise three pieces of content per week, and that was when it was more human created. Now we're living in an AI world, we're assisted. And I know you're signing off in every piece of content it gets published. But what's your content workflow that you have right now that's allowing you to create 1700 pieces of content, but also running your business.

00;26;34;05 - 00;26;46;19

Scott Merritt

So I don't I don't do a lot of the day to day running of operations anymore. One of the other founders does that.

00;26;46;20 - 00;26;48;16

Bob Ruffolo

Are you doing as well?

00;26;48;18 - 00;26;59;06

Scott Merritt

I do some, yeah. He's not he's involved in more of the field operations and so forth. But my, my.

00;26;59;09 - 00;27;27;07

Scott Merritt

Writing, you know. Yeah. So I can say, okay, and I'll train. We'll just talk about GPT for saying I'll train my GPT. And you guys helped. I mean by by large margin, it was endless customers that helped build my my GPS. And, you know, here's here's everything of how to write a big five article. Here's, you know, and a bunch of years our brand voice and here's, here's all these other parameters, here's who I am.

00;27;27;10 - 00;27;48;16

Scott Merritt

Here's, you know, here's my experience. So and then I'll be like, okay, now write an article about X, Y and Z. Right. We'll get into the technicals of anything in particular. HVAC is a technical field. But write this article. Now of course I have to go through from from the top to bottom. And then I have to make 50 changes on the first one.

00;27;48;19 - 00;28;11;00

Scott Merritt

Right. So it pretty much gets rewritten, but it learns. It learns on the changes that I make. So I mean, AI can make a if you leave it up to a AI will make a bunch of AI slop and they can make, you know, billion pages of content that are worthless and are not optimized and don't do any good.

00;28;11;02 - 00;28;25;21

Scott Merritt

Right? So you have to be very, very specific about the content you're making. AI is assisting you, and it can help you speed up the process by a great deal to where I can do many articles a day. Yeah.

00;28;25;23 - 00;28;41;24

Bob Ruffolo

And that's that's why I was just doing the math here on my end. You've been in business for eight months. That's about 240 days. And if you did 1700 pieces of content, that is over seven pieces of content a day.

00;28;41;26 - 00;28;53;16

Scott Merritt

Yeah. So one of the things that's one of the issues that I had had. So I was doing about 11, 11 pieces a day on average. Wow.

00;28;53;19 - 00;28;58;04

Bob Ruffolo

But you're really building that moat. So yeah.

00;28;58;08 - 00;29;16;28

Scott Merritt

Well, but there's a reason there's a reason why I had 11. Yeah. So, which which I'll, I'll tell you. So one of the whatever, you know, you build depending on the type of business, you have something you want national traffic. Right. Some businesses want national traffic and that's what they want tell you is 100% perfect for that.

00;29;17;01 - 00;29;42;05

Scott Merritt

You know, and then those customers is perfect for that. But we just needed to make a tweak because we are I mean, we service a ten mile radius, right? We don't really want any business outside that ten miles. Yeah. And inside that ten miles is 11 little cities, 11 little towns. So I will write an article about whatever the big five cost of an air conditioner in Steubenville, Ohio.

00;29;42;11 - 00;30;14;05

Scott Merritt

And then I'll write an article for the other ten cities for how much does an air conditioner cost in those cities? So yes, the content is very, very similar as far as the basic big five structure. But now if you just do it and leave it at. So that helps with local traffic, local relevance, but you will 100% get dinged for thin content and doorway pages from Google and so forth, which basically means you're just duplicating content, right?

00;30;14;06 - 00;30;36;02

Scott Merritt

So you have to make it unique. So the way to do that is 100%. So it's not about just putting, hey, this town has this monument in it, and this town has this building in it. And, you know, it's not really about landmarks and so forth. For us, we're in heating cooling. So we're in, we're in we're about indoor weather.

00;30;36;09 - 00;31;03;16

Scott Merritt

Right. So but indoor weather is very much how it works, very much based on outdoor weather. So we look at different things from each of these 11 little towns, like the humidity on in this town, because they're right on the Ohio River, right ten feet away is the high river. So the humidity in this town, because they're a low lying area, is much higher during these parts of the year than this other town two miles away.

00;31;03;20 - 00;31;18;13

Scott Merritt

That's up, you know, kind of up on a hill for the most part, because none of these big towns. Yeah, right. So there's different there's difference between, water hardness because we also do water heaters. There's differences between humidity.

00;31;18;15 - 00;31;20;16

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. Every town is different. Yeah.

00;31;20;17 - 00;31;27;04

Scott Merritt

Every town has different. And you know how the houses are built because these are mostly old houses back in steel mill days.

00;31;27;05 - 00;31;29;19

Bob Ruffolo

This is a master class right now. Keep going.

00;31;29;25 - 00;31;55;08

Scott Merritt

So in order to make sure you don't have to in content in order to make sure you don't have doorway penalties, you just have to make sure you're looking at geological. Yeah, not just geographical, not visible stuff. So stuff that truly makes that content unique. Now it can be whatever. It could be 600 words, you know, in 200 words.

00;31;55;08 - 00;32;17;11

Scott Merritt

Is that truly unique thing. Right. And the other 600 words are very, very similar to the other ten cities, right? Wow. Yeah. For me anyway. But that 200 words that that talks about how humidity is different or the hard water is different, or here's the level of in the water or and all these different things that are different.

00;32;17;11 - 00;32;48;09

Scott Merritt

That is information gain. Yeah. And AI wants information gain. AI wants to go, okay. This is truly different. So it truly does give real value for that city. Right. For people searching in that area. So it doesn't ding it for for those penalties. Incredible. So when I do 11 articles in a day, I'm writing the same article and I, and I take a lot of time building that first order, right.

00;32;48;11 - 00;33;15;06

Scott Merritt

Making sure everything's perfect and all the pricing and all the other things big five things are in there and making sure that the quick answer is in there. Every article starts out with a quick answer, which is about a 40 words. That helps with zero click optimization, zero click, zero click optimization is when you go to Google, you type in something and you ask it a question and automatically gives you an AI overview.

00;33;15;07 - 00;33;39;24

Scott Merritt

Yeah, that is zero click. So yes, we build it so that we can give an answer right away. So yes, that customer might not go to our website because they have their answer, but generally they have more questions. That's right. They have more than just one question. And then because we're the in the AI overview, which is our quick answer, then we're off to the side where it says where they got that information.

00;33;39;27 - 00;33;50;13

Scott Merritt

And because we're very thorough and we touch every little portion of the subject, oftentimes, I mean, in our area we're competing against silence. Nobody I mean, we're the only competition.

00;33;50;18 - 00;33;52;14

Bob Ruffolo

You are the side.

00;33;52;17 - 00;34;14;06

Scott Merritt

For for this space. Yeah. So when competing against silence, we are number one. Number two, number three and number four on the side. Yeah. Right. So we're owning that space. So and they, they do go to the website. Yeah. You know but if you're not the you're not in the AI overview for zero click. Well if you're not being found you're not in the you're not in the conversation.

00;34;14;08 - 00;34;34;13

Bob Ruffolo

So I got I got pause here for one quick second. I'm going to talk directly to the audience. If you want to succeed with endless customers or just get more customers and grow your business, look at what Scott's doing. He's learning this stuff. He's figuring out he's not just delegating it to somebody. It's his business. It's his livelihood.

00;34;34;13 - 00;34;53;22

Bob Ruffolo

He put everything on the line to start this new business. He's taking this seriously. He's learning it. He's figuring it out, and this is the level it's going to take if we're going to compete in the future, even if we're business owners, we have to have this level of understanding to be able to to thrive in the world we're entering into.

00;34;53;23 - 00;35;11;16

Bob Ruffolo

I give you a lot of credit for that, that, you know, all the technical details. Now, this might be a as an entrepreneur, you might not have to go as deep here, but you got to know this stuff. You got to care about this stuff. And that's the that's the lesson. I'm that's a through line of this episode Scott, is your ability to learn and apply.

00;35;11;18 - 00;35;22;13

Bob Ruffolo

So please keep going because this is an absolute mess because I'm gonna have questions on how you have structured on your site and everything to. But, please. I didn't mean to cut you off there, but keep going. This is incredible.

00;35;22;15 - 00;35;47;12

Scott Merritt

Well, for your for your listeners, I mean, the key thing is, is, you know, I've learned about AI and I learned about endless customers and so forth, but the pieces did not come together without Tia and endless customers and without some of the coaching that I had over the years. From the coaches you have on staff right now, that really just kind of put the pieces together.

00;35;47;12 - 00;36;14;05

Scott Merritt

And then, you know, as I'm working on that endless customers content, I just ask AI other questions. Right. And, you know, I ask it a few, you know, when I before I finish an article, I will ask it. I said, okay, what will make I'll ask the AI. So I use GPT, I use Gemini, I use Claude and I use grok.

00;36;14;06 - 00;36;14;29

Bob Ruffolo

Use grok.

00;36;15;02 - 00;36;44;28

Scott Merritt

Most of the writing just use GPT, but I'll often put it through the other things after I'm done to see how you know how it goes. But I'll say, okay, what else do I need in this article for clarity? Because clarity is of course it's important to humans, but it's also super important for AI because AI will hallucinate and just make up stuff if it's not very clear, you know, each each thing is not very clear.

00;36;44;28 - 00;37;09;11

Scott Merritt

So clarity is sure how to make the point more clear, but it's also about how to make the content more structured and written in the right way to where it's machine readable. Yeah. And then I ask it for, okay, how do I make this more hyperlocal? Right. I need it to be hyperlocal. Right. So I need to be about that little town that I'm working on right then.

00;37;09;14 - 00;37;39;27

Scott Merritt

And it'll say, well, we need to talk about, you know, because I'll do a big research project on. Okay, this little town, Mingo Junction, Ohio, you know, here's the certain properties about it geologically, geographically, you know, humidity, water, all these other things. And then I'll have that as a, you know, in my database that'll say, well, you don't really touch on, you know, anything geologically here that would be important in this particular scenario depending on what I'm writing about.

00;37;39;29 - 00;38;02;11

Scott Merritt

Right. So I'm just doing it through a check. And you guys have a very good endless customers check. You know, that you put the articles through. This is just a little bit more specific for my hyper localization. And then also just as important that we haven't really talked about at all is voice.

00;38;02;12 - 00;38;02;26

Bob Ruffolo

Oh, yeah.

00;38;02;27 - 00;38;28;02

Scott Merritt

So voice optimization, I mean, you, you use even though series absolutely horrible. Everybody still just ask Siri. Right. Because they're in their car. They're doing whatever. They're never happy with the answer. But you know, it it's only going to get bigger. Right. And supposedly in a couple of years series supposed to be able to use whatever LLM, AI that you want it to use.

00;38;28;08 - 00;38;57;26

Scott Merritt

So you'll be able to get your answers from the one that you like. So then I'll ask it, okay. Okay. So to make sure it's more voice optimized, you need to basically everything needs to have FAQs. FAQs is the simplest way and FAQs everything is long long tail questions. Right? Just like just like endless customers is all long tail questions.

00;38;57;26 - 00;39;19;08

Scott Merritt

So you just put more long tail questions FAQs in there structured right so it can read it. So voice when it's doing a voice search it can it can find it. You can do it. And then I'll ask. Okay. What else can I add to do. Add more trust. So trust is that trust is huge. You know you guys are all over that.

00;39;19;09 - 00;39;38;24

Scott Merritt

You know you know you the way I kind of look at it is, you know, Marcus taught us how to be the answer, you know, when he wrote that original book. But you and the impact team and endless customers, not that Mark is not part of that, but you guys have turned us to, you know, we need to earn the trust, and we need to show the trust.

00;39;38;24 - 00;40;05;09

Scott Merritt

And, you know, and trust. Trust for customers is is really details. Trust for AI is really details. Yeah. Right. So when you ask a GPT or whatever say hey, who's the best HVAC contractor in Steubenville, Ohio, right. It's going to come back and it'll say, okay, well, this guy's got X amount of Google reviews, this guy's got X amount of Google reviews, right.

00;40;05;10 - 00;40;28;06

Scott Merritt

And it'll do that. But on ours it'll say, okay, this one guy has X amount of Google reviews. Honest fix has X amount of Google reviews. They also have this 15 year labor warranty, which is the longest in the industry. They also have licensed technicians. They also have all these other little details that are trust factors that most companies have.

00;40;28;07 - 00;40;30;23

Scott Merritt

Yeah, but they're not they're not on their website.

00;40;30;24 - 00;40;31;09

Bob Ruffolo

On the website.

00;40;31;11 - 00;40;33;25

Scott Merritt

That's right. So details build trust.

00;40;33;26 - 00;41;00;07

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. You know you mentioned that warranty. This is something I've been talking a lot about with our staff and with our clients, is having that compelling reason to pick you over a competitor or to switch from one company to your company. There's got to be a compelling reason and certainly in the trades, a warranty, something, a promise, a guarantee, something you could stand behind is a very compelling reason.

00;41;00;14 - 00;41;19;02

Bob Ruffolo

So if you're just starting a business figuring out what that's going to be, that's going to we also talk about and then as customers, we say the four pillars say, well, it's not willing to say, do not, you know, show others not willing to show. I will say there's like an umbrella one. It's do what others are not willing to do.

00;41;19;02 - 00;41;38;00

Bob Ruffolo

But that's what your, your market wants and needs. And, and that's starting with some kind of big promise, some big differentiator. So critically important. And then you make that the to your point, the tip of your marketing. You're just saying exactly what I've been telling everybody is. It's got to be the thing that you lead in all your marketing is.

00;41;38;00 - 00;41;45;13

Bob Ruffolo

So people know you for your 15 year warranty and like, you got to go down as fix. They have a 15 year warranty.

00;41;45;15 - 00;41;49;09

Scott Merritt

And well it's the it's kind of like the center. I got a short story for you.

00;41;49;10 - 00;41;49;16

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah.

00;41;49;17 - 00;42;14;24

Scott Merritt

Please. Two two days when my birthday is in March and two days before my birthday, this customer contacts us. So they didn't do a form field. They didn't they, you know, they just called on the phone and they're like, hey, I looked for HVAC contractors in Steubenville and on ChatGPT, and it recommended you and a couple others. And I had told me that you guys have this great warranty, right.

00;42;14;25 - 00;42;37;10

Scott Merritt

And and so we asked the more questions. Right? We're very interested in his, you know, how he went about that process. Yeah. But and he said long story short, he's like, I'm going to I'm going to get multiple quotes. I'm going to feed them all back into my ChatGPT probably have some questions after that, which he did, and he had a lot of questions that generally are not asked.

00;42;37;11 - 00;42;58;01

Scott Merritt

Right. But they're very technical and they're very good. And it was you know, we had most of our he's like most of the answers already came to me because of your website, where I had to reach out to these other customers or these other companies to get these answers. And they didn't, you know, they either didn't get back to me very quickly or, you know, people want instant satisfaction.

00;42;58;02 - 00;43;28;29

Scott Merritt

Yeah. So either way, we sold the job $14,000. It was it was good. And I mean, he had just seen and it all started with you guys. Were Chad recommended you because of your warranty? Yeah. And if we didn't have I mean, our warranty is better, but then the it's the best in the industry. But the point is the other companies didn't even have anything on their websites about warranties.

00;43;29;01 - 00;43;42;22

Bob Ruffolo

So even if they had a warranty. No one would even know it's not being recommended because it's not published anywhere. Oh, we'll just we'll just wait till we're in a sales conversation to tell about our warranty. That sales conversation is never going to happen because they're never going to reach out to that company.

00;43;42;24 - 00;44;11;18

Scott Merritt

I mean, I've done it. Of course, I've done a million searches in this little ten city or 11 city area about, you know, every possible HVAC question. You know, how it comes up, how we come up, how our competition comes up. And you know most of it because none of them are savvy, you know, towards any of this and the customers answering questions or definitely AI, you know, everything coming back from GPT and the other LMS is just no information available.

00;44;11;19 - 00;44;18;05

Scott Merritt

There's nothing listed on their website, you know, and and that's the way it's only going to get worse for them.

00;44;18;06 - 00;44;18;20

Bob Ruffolo

For them.

00;44;18;21 - 00;44;46;27

Scott Merritt

Right. And we're only building that base. You know, I got 1769 pages on there. Now I have 1200 more articles I plan on writing this year just for all the little gaps. Yeah. So every single possible possible question somebody would ask, I'm going to answer it in detail. Structure. Right. So I can read it. So the moat is going to be I mean they would have to know exactly what I know.

00;44;46;28 - 00;45;07;03

Scott Merritt

They'd have to be committed to putting all this out, and they'd have to know how to do all this with AI, which, I mean, they have to start with you. Yeah, right. If I were to teach somebody the first thing, I'd be like, hey, go to impact. Because, you know, the the bedrock, the base layer, everything, everything starts with that.

00;45;07;03 - 00;45;17;23

Scott Merritt

And they'll get you 99% of the way there. And there's. And they're still adding on, you know, a little bit more every year as, as it's coming out. Right. Because AI is very new.

00;45;17;24 - 00;45;36;16

Bob Ruffolo

No, no. Scott, one of the questions I have for you is you mentioned that you're you're going to write an article and then you localize it for the 11 cities that you serve. If I'm on your site, I have to imagine I'm not going to go to a blog. I'm going to see pretty much the same article 11 times in a row.

00;45;36;19 - 00;45;54;28

Bob Ruffolo

How did you structure your site so that it's set up for these people in different cities, and that it's not just like, how much does it cost in this city and how much it cost in this city? How did you set that up, or do you just stagger the content? What do you do?

00;45;55;01 - 00;46;17;19

Scott Merritt

No. So we we post it. All right. So we post all in our blog. So we have two different things. We have a blog and a quick answers. The blog is where every article for all 11 cities is put out. And then the quick answers, it's still structured the same. It's just called something different. The quick answers is more of, you know, this, this content, whatever.

00;46;17;19 - 00;46;39;26

Scott Merritt

This article is just one article and it's for the whole area, right? It's just not a super it's not like a cost article. So, you know, cost articles big five very important. You definitely want to hone down on that hyper localization. Other things are more broad and you can just do them separately. But when you go to our learning center or first page of our website.

00;46;40;03 - 00;46;48;07

Scott Merritt

So we built Leo Leo's, our AI avatar or AI helper on the website.

00;46;48;08 - 00;46;49;20

Bob Ruffolo

He's adorable. You go to.

00;46;49;27 - 00;46;57;00

Scott Merritt

Go to Leo on the The Learning Center and just ask him the question. He'll take you to the article.

00;46;57;01 - 00;46;57;22

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah.

00;46;57;22 - 00;47;10;02

Scott Merritt

So whatever. I mean, he knows all 1700 pages. Yeah, he knows what's on every single one. And so he'll tell you, he'll show you, he'll give you 3 or 4 articles that directly affect, you know, whatever you're trying to learn.

00;47;10;03 - 00;47;16;27

Bob Ruffolo

I'm looking at Leo right now. So what tools you use for that?

00;47;16;29 - 00;47;22;17

Scott Merritt

Well, I don't know. That is that's Kahn's that's that's the technical guy.

00;47;22;18 - 00;47;45;06

Bob Ruffolo

Okay. Somebody else. But yeah, it's certainly a chatbot. Yeah, it's an AI chatbot. You picked a really adorable lion as the the guy. I love that, and I think you're on to something, too. It's, you know, and I can see I'm looking at your blog right now, so I see exactly what you're doing. Your biggest thing recently was Rheem Water Heaters.

00;47;45;06 - 00;48;11;24

Bob Ruffolo

I can see that there's a whole, line of content you've been doing around that topic. And the idea that us as as buyers and certainly as as AI agents, we're not going to go in search through pages and pages and pages of your website. We don't do that with Google anymore. We just want the instant answer. So people are going to go right to your chatbot and say, ask their question, and it's going to be trained on all this information.

00;48;11;24 - 00;48;19;04

Bob Ruffolo

So that makes complete sense that because behaviors are changing to just give me the answer from, I'm going to go find the answer.

00;48;19;07 - 00;48;52;10

Scott Merritt

So and we also connect Leo to AI's that come to the website. So an AI agent come to the website, he can connect directly to Leo. So the AI agent doesn't have to go through 1700 pages either, right? They can just ask Leo basically behind the scenes, and Leo will give it the information he needs. Yeah. You know, and that agent infrastructure, I mean, everything's coming down to Agent Commerce in the future where, you know, one agent is talking to another agent to do everything that we're doing online.

00;48;52;10 - 00;48;58;04

Scott Merritt

So the person at each end just gets the results, which is ultimately all they're really looking for.

00;48;58;08 - 00;49;09;16

Bob Ruffolo

And I'm looking at that for AI agents page. You have theirs. Is there something in there that directs them to Leo? Is that how that works?

00;49;09;18 - 00;49;12;13

Scott Merritt

No, I think it might be in the robots text.

00;49;12;14 - 00;49;16;07

Bob Ruffolo

The robots? Yep. And then you have the robots text right at the top there. Yeah, I.

00;49;16;07 - 00;49;41;00

Scott Merritt

See that. So that those are teaching. Both of those are teaching the A's what to connect to, where the information is at very quickly. It's in one of those two. And we built the yellow Lem's first and then robots a few months later, a few months ago. But we're we're getting more.

00;49;41;03 - 00;50;03;28

Scott Merritt

Interaction from Llms now. We're getting much more visits to the sites or they're on on the site longer. Yeah. So it's all I mean, it's all important, right? And there's you want to make it just whether it's whether you're doing it for an AI or doing it for customer, you want to make it as easy as possible to find information and do business with you.

00;50;04;05 - 00;50;09;14

Scott Merritt

So we're we're doing that for humans and AI.

00;50;09;16 - 00;50;16;04

Bob Ruffolo

Scott, what what what have we not talked about today that we should be talking about?

00;50;16;06 - 00;50;17;11

Bob Ruffolo

This is incredible.

00;50;17;13 - 00;50;21;01

Scott Merritt

Well, there's I could go on for hours, man.

00;50;21;04 - 00;50;32;18

Bob Ruffolo

Video. Video was something I remember you said that it was going to be something you're going to focus on in a later date. I see you do have a video on your home page. Have you invested more in video yet, or is that still something that's on the future roadmap?

00;50;32;25 - 00;50;59;17

Scott Merritt

So we have quite a few videos on the on the website in general, but we don't have the the deeper, endless customers. I mean, we have a few of the longer form content. It really is scheduled for me. I mean, I plan on every one of my pages, 769 page. Well, okay, there's about 1500, 1600 articles. I'm gonna do a video for everyone.

00;50;59;18 - 00;51;22;04

Scott Merritt

Yeah. And I mean, I'm just going to and but really what I'm doing. I'm not going over the whole thing. I just need to. Every article starts with that 40 word quick answer thing. So that's pretty much my whole video that I'm going to do. Is that 40 words because I'm answering whatever question they're asking. Yeah, right. And it'll be linked and so forth.

00;51;22;04 - 00;51;46;26

Scott Merritt

So that'll go on YouTube. That'll go everywhere, that'll go across our different platforms. So people can still find that, still ask that question anywhere. They'll find that video, it'll go back to the article if they want or go back, you know, the website if they want. So I'm getting ready to do that by the time I get to Hartford in October, I plan on having at least a thousand of those done well.

00;51;46;26 - 00;51;56;15

Bob Ruffolo

I hope by the time Hartford comes around that you're applying for one of our trust and transparency awards, because I think you're very much going to be qualified to win one.

00;51;56;17 - 00;52;06;11

Scott Merritt

Well, I hadn't really. I haven't really thought about it. I don't necessarily go for awards, even though awards put in awards and putting awards on your website is super important for trust signals.

00;52;06;11 - 00;52;06;15

Bob Ruffolo

It.

00;52;06;15 - 00;52;30;11

Scott Merritt

Is not a doubt. I just hadn't really put much thought into it. But there's a few. There's a few key things that we probably haven't talked about. So, you know, at least with us and anybody that works, this system, the endless customer system, I mean, you can you can anybody can outspend you on Google Ads, but nobody can outspend you on being the answer that GPT gives.

00;52;30;12 - 00;52;55;21

Scott Merritt

Yeah. Or any of these other things. Right. Those are those take those takes the commitment the time to it. And you know ads every every click is money, right. Yeah. Not that there's not a space for ads. There's definitely a space for ads. You know, certain times of the year for us since we're seasonal. But, you know, why wouldn't you want to build a system that works for you 24 hours a day free of charge?

00;52;55;21 - 00;53;12;11

Scott Merritt

Once you build it that first time and it just builds into a snowball. So that's that's one thing, you know? But ultimately when a buyer asks Chad who to call, I mean, are you the answer or are you invisible? Yeah.

00;53;12;12 - 00;53;33;10

Bob Ruffolo

And you know, you know, the other thing we've been talking a lot about to and we're going to wrap this up here in a few minutes. You can't market a bad company. And I think most importantly, you're doing it's in your name of the business. And that's not just for show. You have always done business the right way.

00;53;33;10 - 00;53;52;21

Bob Ruffolo

You've treated your employees the right way. You've treated your customers the right, right way, you've created your community the right way. And I know you're bringing that to these new markets that you're serving. And that is so incredibly important because even though you're doing all this incredible stuff from a marketing standpoint, you have to have a great business to market.

00;53;52;23 - 00;54;22;27

Bob Ruffolo

The warranty is part of it, and then you're really just tying a great business together, and then everything else is going to fall into place. When you start laying on endless customers and all the content and all this AI automation workflows, rebuilding around a great business. And I really want to make sure we shout out, because, Scott, you've always ran business the right way and people that are listening to this, and if they're in the market and they need some age back work, they should be going to you because you do run a just a phenomenal business.

00;54;23;00 - 00;54;50;25

Scott Merritt

Well, thank you for that. We we try every day try every day to be better than yesterday. But if I say one last thing to any of the business owners out there. Besides, besides you zealous customers and use, use the structure and get coaches because that is 100% how I got where I'm at and continue it. And I mean, I've had coaches for many years because there's always it's it's it's developing it's, you know, evolving all the time.

00;54;50;25 - 00;55;13;16

Scott Merritt

But the main thing when you're working on your website now is prove it. Yeah, right. Trust comes from proof. You know, I have a my license. My state license is on the website, right? Yeah. There's proof, you know, and and our warranties are on our website. Here's the here's the actual documents. Here's all the stuff. Prove it. And that is what AI loves.

00;55;13;16 - 00;55;52;23

Scott Merritt

Customers love it, but AI loves it even more. Yeah. And they will site it. Yeah. And when most of the time right now you are you are competing against silence because nobody else has proven it. Yeah. So you have a I mean it's already started, but you have a short period of time to really get better at this and get involved in this and make a difference and be that base layer of the new internet that is always going to be cited and, and build your moat to be, you know, further ahead than others because some won't get it for a long time and you're going to enjoy that whole time, and then it's

00;55;52;23 - 00;56;17;27

Scott Merritt

only going to build that snowball bigger, and it's only going to bring in more revenue and of course, profits to the company long term. So it's the best investment I've made in either my companies in the last 25 years was this. And I'm not saying that to blow smoke up your skirt, you know, I'm just saying that because it's it's true.

00;56;17;29 - 00;56;33;08

Scott Merritt

Because it does so much more than just bringing revenue. It brings your team together. It gives you a mission. Oh, yeah. And it's now if you if you don't run a good company, you don't run an honest company. Well, you stop listening because you're in the wrong place.

00;56;33;09 - 00;56;34;11

Bob Ruffolo

Exactly, exactly.

00;56;34;11 - 00;56;35;24

Scott Merritt

Because it's about being transparent.

00;56;35;25 - 00;56;54;25

Bob Ruffolo

Exactly, exactly. And by the way, bringing your company together. That's why we kick it off with the line. With that. Can I get everybody on the same page, grow in the same direction? And when you do and everyone's focusing the same things, it's amazing when a company can accomplish, especially when they have a leader like you who is just really laser focused and pushing the boundaries.

00;56;54;27 - 00;57;11;14

Bob Ruffolo

It's amazing that it all started with a flier on, hey, would you like to take this? Would you like to take this class, whatever it was? And look, we're looking where your journeys brought you. We're so proud of you and and so grateful to have you as part of this community. So thank you for everything, Scott.

00;57;11;17 - 00;57;14;26

Scott Merritt

Bob, proud of what you build as well. And I thank you for it.

00;57;15;03 - 00;57;34;14

Bob Ruffolo

Seriously. Thank you so much Scott. And wow, what just an incredible episode of the Endless Customers podcast. This is one I know I'm going to have a ton of notes to go back and listen to personally, myself. I'm your host, Bob Ruffalo. That's been the Endless Customers podcast until our next episode. Take care.

00;57;34;17 - 00;57;40;25

Speaker 2

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