They Ask, You Answer: A Blueprint for Escapee Solo Success with Marcus Sheridan

Brett Trainor (: 00:01

Hey Marcus, welcome to the Corporate Escapee Podcast. I'm super thrilled to have you here.

Marcus Sheridan (: 00:05

Yeah, I'm happy to be here as well. I'm sure we're going to have a very productive conversation today.

Brett Trainor (: 00:12

Yeah. And the audience is already knows how excited I am for this conversation because I mentioned to you a little bit offline that you're one of the five foundational five books that I recommend to people. used to be small business owners, but now it's escapees and actually getting you on the podcast to talk about. ask you answer is, is, you know, super exciting. So I promise not to go down too many rabbit holes with you, but,

Marcus Sheridan (: 00:34

We can go wherever you want.

Brett Trainor (: 00:38

Why don't we just start with me, how you define, know, they ask you answer. I think that'd be a good place to kick this off.

Marcus Sheridan (: 00:45

Yeah, so they ask you answer, think about who is they? They is the customer, the buyer, right? Ask in this case is everything that they're thinking, searching, feeling, fearing, the ways they're behaving, the ways they're changing. So they ask, then you, that's you, the business, the brand. Answer, answer is we meet them where they are. You know, we even mentioned this earlier when we were chatting, Brett, there's, you know, some people are still

haven't realized that it's no longer really the sales process, it's more the buyer's journey, right? They're in charge. So they ask, you answer means we're obsessed with the questions, the worries, the issues, the concerns, the behaviors of the buyers and we're willing to meet them where they are, right? And so if they've got a question, we're going to talk about it. If they've got a fear, we're going to address it. Ideally, we can do as much of this stuff as possible online, but buyers are changing, they're expecting

expectations are rising. And so the question is, are we able to meet them where they are? And a lot of people say, yeah, of course I am. But then when push comes to shove, we actually see that most companies are not obsessed with the questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, behaviors of their buyers, and they do not meet them where they are. And that's the big divide.

Brett Trainor (: 02:05

And do you think that these companies are still trying to push them through their processes versus just answering what the buyer's question?

Marcus Sheridan (: 02:13

Yeah, it's like, you know, if you like in the book, I talk about this thing called ostrich marketing with, you know, it's the classic, the ostrich wouldn't has a problem. It buries its head in the sand, which is, you know, a fun little myth. But a lot of companies do that, too. And the way that you can look at this, if you're listening to this right now, it's like, OK, how many questions do people ask you when you're face to face that you've received, where you've said, you know, we really can't address that on.

line or on my website or on social media. I mean, if they ask me in person, I'll talk about it. But otherwise, I'm just not going to go there. That mindset is problematic. If you're consistently getting a question in the sales process, especially, or just when you're talking with people in general, that's what you want to lean into. And you might say, well, what's an example of that? Let me just give you a silly example, OK? How many attorneys in the world address the question

Well, what happens if we lose the case? It's the number one question that most people have. It's like, what happens if we lose? Right? It's a major question. Nobody talks about it. It's like, it doesn't exist at all. Come on, give me a break. And so what's powerful is if you take these questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, behaviors, whatever it is, and you, instead of ignoring them, you lean into them, now they can become your competitive advantage.

Brett Trainor (: 03:17

Right.

Marcus Sheridan (: 03:38

And if you do this, the goal with the ask you answer is you become the most known and trusted voice in your market. That's what's possible. And if you have enough awareness in the market for you, if you're known enough, then you're not gonna have a problem with sales. It's gonna take care of itself.

Brett Trainor (: 03:58

Right, no, it makes sense. And when I first read the book, I was still in more of the B2B and working with small businesses. And so I've always felt that the sales and marketing process, mean, everybody defines it as a handshake or the customer would define it as a handshake, right? You got the SDR to the maybe the inside sales rep, then you get a sales rep maybe, and then you get the onboarding, then you got customer success, five different people.

And it just never made sense to me. It may be in the early days when you had some specialties, but as the customers tried to figure out, you know, they just want pricing on the website or how it works. And even most recently, before I exited corporate, wouldn't spend a year and a half in management consulting.

Thinking I could change the world because B2B and digital transformation was coming and these companies weren't ready for it Especially the legacy old legacy companies silos everywhere. They couldn't but what I found was it was just You can change them because the operating budgets, right? Everybody owned an operating budget. They didn't really care when it went across and it's that point I'm thinking, you know what? I'm gonna go work with smaller companies that can just cut all these silos out and and reframe the way

Marcus Sheridan (: 04:50

Yes. Yes.

Brett Trainor (: 05:10

know, customers buy, not even reframe, buyers want to buy differently. So why are we making them go through the sales process? Cause that's what it used to be. Right.

Marcus Sheridan (: 05:18

Well, to your point, Brett, if you're a solopreneur, right, what's so glorious about this, because, you know, lots of times when we're solo or really small shop, you we might complain like, yeah, I'm like, I'm just small outfit and I don't have the budget and I don't have the resources, but I'd argue with that because what you have is no red tape, which means you can be as creative as you want to be.

You can be a digital David and a land of Goliaths. That is extraordinarily fun. I mean, that's what I did with my swimming pool company. We broke all the rules. We were a complete disruptor in the space. And I was talking about things that no one ever talked about. Why? I didn't have any red tape. You know, if I had a board that was there to tell me what to do, I'm sure I wouldn't have done 90 % of what I did. And so I think there's just incredible advantage in today's market.

where you can get extremely creative as a solopreneur. That's very fun.

Brett Trainor (: 06:22

Yeah, a hundred percent agree. And I know you talk a lot about being our own media companies as well, right? Which is kind of the perfect tie in is I tell people as you're transitioning from corporate, most of us didn't have to do any of our own marketing or sales. And so when I get people exiting, the first thing they like to ask is why I need the fancy website or I need, I'm like, no, not necessarily. And like I said, I was rereading your book and it dawned on me and like, got away from a lot of the principles that you said, just answering the core questions that your customers are have are going to put you light years ahead.

because still most everybody I come across wants to lead with their features and benefits right what their solutions are not solving the problem but this is what we do and it's just I don't know it's a fundamentally it's an opportunity especially for a solo business to connect quickly with their potential customers

Marcus Sheridan (: 06:59

yeah.

Marcus Sheridan (: 07:10

Yeah, very much so. like, to your point, you don't have to have this incredibly robust website to generate leads and to be effective, especially as solprenor. What you should do though, is you should understand exactly this whole concept of questions, fears, issues, concerns, right? And the way you do that is just a simple, if you just sit down and brainstorm every question, worry or fear somebody would have in your market for that thing that you sell.

and really tap into it. Now, once you do that yourself, then yeah, maybe go to AI and have it fill in the blanks for you, right? Because if you give it the right prompts, it's a great ideation tool. I mean, it's just tremendous in terms of understanding, you know, the content ideas. And then, you know, there's not a person in the world that can't whip out their cell phone and record a couple of videos a week and put them on LinkedIn. There's just not a person in world that can't do that. If you're not doing that, whatever excuse you have, it's all gonna end up in the same place.

And that is, it's just not that important to you. That's the reason why you would not do that. And so we have that capability. And if you do that activity, you can come up with 100 questions all day long. I've never been able to have, I've never not been able to come up with 100 questions in an industry. Doesn't exist. Questions again, questions, fears, issues, concerns. 100, there's 100 in your space. And if you looked at your, let's say your competitors, especially some of these bigger companies, out of those 100, I guarantee you they haven't answered.

80 to 90 on their website online. They've just ignored them. They just haven't talked about them. Could you be the person that's willing to talk about it? Yes, I do. I do believe that's you. If you're listening to this. Yeah, that's why you listen to this. And that immediately makes you a rule breaker in your space because everybody else is not doing it. But what's what's so wonderful about the disruptors and the rule breakers is because, you know, in every industry, you've got these rule these rule makers, right. And they're just like

Brett Trainor (: 08:46

Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan (: 09:02

establishing the norms and everybody's following them. But then somebody comes along and they break the rules, right? And that's the solopreneur oftentimes, the smaller company, the one that doesn't have the red tape. So you break the rules. And then, and then suddenly, you know, you get complaints from everybody in the industry that's your competitors like, No, you can't do that. But eventually, the market always wins. And when the market wins, everybody else has to fall in line. And so that's how the rule breaker

becomes the rule maker and the previous rule maker becomes the rule follower. And if you look at the history of industries, they repeat themselves over and over again. That's how it works, right? And so it's like, you can complain all you want, but eventually Uber wins out over the taxi, right? That's just how it goes. The marketplace generally 99 .9 % of the time they win. And that's why I'm very, very obsessed with buyers. And the key though, Brett, is

I start with myself though, my own behaviors. I try to be extremely self -aware and how am I evolving in terms of like the way I'm vetting companies, the way I'm using the internet, why I click on ads even, what makes me erase an email versus click on an email. Like I literally think about these things as I'm going through the process because knowing your own psychology is one of the greatest strategies that you can have.

to market your business and to build your brand. Problem is a lot of people go about their day to day, they're not even paying attention to what they themselves are doing and why they're doing it. Don't be a blind consumer, it's not very healthy at all. But if you're an extremely self -aware consumer, you can be a phenomenal marketer without ever having gone a day of marketing school in your life.

Brett Trainor (: 10:47

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And it's so true, right? Cause we just are numb going throughout the day, just emails to two point, never read that one. Won't we delete, delete, delete. It could have been the subject line. could have been the first sentence, whatever it is. And kind of the beauty of what we're doing is most of us only need, you know, as a solo business, five or six customers. So it's not like we have to reach like with your pool company where you needed to steady flow of year after year customers coming in. So we've got a unique opportunity to.

really connect with the folks that we want to connect with. And again, one of the things that kind of I use the called the methodology from your book is, the six videos that every business needs. And I was wondering if we could go through a few of those. I'm curious is one would all six apply to a solo business? And I know you wrote the book a little bit ago. Have you, is there any additions or changes to that?

Marcus Sheridan (: 11:39

Yeah, yeah, we so yeah, and the third in the third edition is coming out later on in the year. It's going to be called Endless Customers. So there's essentially it's a they ask you answer to point out it's called Endless Customers. And we actually have seven videos, we call them the selling seven, the selling seven. And I'll just highlight a couple that I think are pretty relevant. One of the best ones is what we call the 80 % video. 80 % video is if you talk to anybody,

It's never done any sales. And then meet with the prospect. Prospects generally, assume it's the same industry, same product, service, they generally ask the same questions every time. Like 80 % of the questions are pretty redundant. And so what you wanna do is you wanna say, okay, what are the most repeated questions that I get when I'm on a, let's say a sales call or some type of discovery call, talking with a prospect? Could I produce a video that addresses

all of those questions. And I would suggest choosing seven to 10, 10 being the most, seven being the minimum. Could you address them in a longer video, something that's 10, 15 minutes long? If you do that, you're gonna spend less time teaching them things they should already know and more time really getting down to business as to like their unique needs and selling to them versus teaching them the basics, right? So that's one of the keys.

to the 80, that is the key to the 80 % video. It's very powerful and it's pretty easy to produce, especially with all the simple video tools that are out there today that anybody has access to essentially for free, right? A couple other, a couple other ones that you can do. You can do a simple bio video that you put in your email signature, right? So there, you know, you're sending out all these emails and a lot of these people that you're sending your emails,

out to, they haven't necessarily heard your voice or seen your face. And if you look at your email signature right now, you should have not just your contact information, but you should have an image of yourself. But you should also have a video that is just introducing yourself, just telling the world who you are, you know, what you believe in, what your philosophies are. It doesn't have to be long, can be like 90 seconds. But you can embed that right into your email signature and sounds totally basic. It is, it's incredibly effective, though. It's very, very personal.

Brett Trainor (: 14:00

Hmm.

Marcus Sheridan (: 14:01

And it humanizes you, it humanize your brand, and it separates you from some of these soulless corporations that are out there, right? And so I would do that. A tool that I recommend for email signatures is ByStamp, WISC Stamp. Super simple tool to use. Really, really great, really effective. Okay, really like that one a lot. There is product service videos. So let's say you have some type of service that you offer. Let's say you offer three of them in total.

Well, for any service that you offer, you wanna have a service video that explains that service, but here's the key. You wanna explain who it's for, but more importantly, who it's not for. And this is the way that you engender the fast trust, mean, immediate trust. Everybody's used to hearing like, here's why it's awesome, here's why it's great, here's why you need it. It's what everybody says. But almost nobody says, listen, here's why we're not a good fit for you, right? So let's take my agency Impact. My agency Impact is a coaching company.

Brett Trainor (: 14:41

like that.

Marcus Sheridan (: 14:59

helps companies do implement, ask you answer. So if I was doing this, I would say, you know, something, I'm just gonna like gloss this really fast. I might say something like, you know, at, at Impact, we're gonna teach you how to become the most trusted voice in your space. And so if you're looking to do that, and you want to become that most trusted and known voice, then we might be a good fit for you. But let's talk about what we don't do. What we don't do

is we don't actually produce your content. We don't produce your videos. We don't produce your articles. We don't produce your copy. We're going to teach you how to do those things. And so if you're looking for someone to do those for you versus teaching you how to do those, well then we're probably not the best fit for you. So that simple language that I just used is going to make somebody say, huh, OK, that totally makes sense. I get it. I'm aligned or not a good fit, both of which are a good outcome because now we've say

everyone time and we're advancing the conversation, right? So that's a great one. So the service or the product videos that you offer, talking about who you are and who you're not a good fit for. I'll just mention, I'll mention one other one. Claims we make. Every company, every person makes certain claims about their product, their service, their brand, whatever. How many have you visually proven to be true?

Right? And so what you want to do is you want to create a video that explains why these things are actually true. Because again, if everybody's saying it, well, then it's just noise to the marketplace. And as the old saying goes, seeing is believing. So those are just a few videos that if you create, it immediately sets you apart from your competition. Again, you can create these with your cell phone. Doesn't have to be anything that's highly produced, but they're quite magical.

Can I mention two other tools, Brett, that I'm a huge fan of right now that just for lead generation, you one of the major stats that came out not too long ago from Gartner, they do these, all these studies and it said 75 % of all buyers would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. 75 % of all buyers would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. So what's this mean? Well, I don't necessarily think it means we hate salespeople. We just don't necessarily want to

Brett Trainor (: 16:55

Please, absolutely.

Marcus Sheridan (: 17:22

talk to them until we feel good and ready. And so what defines good and ready? Well, there's certain things that we want to know when we're going through this buyer's journey that give us comfort, give us awareness, and give us a sense of, okay, now I'm ready to move. And with this whole movement towards seller free, the smart businesses are giving their potential customers more

self -service options. Whereas in the past they might've had to talk to a person to get an answer. Now they can do it through some type of tool. And let's say you can put this on your website, but you can also do it on social media. So let me give you an example of this. Let's say you're a financial planner, you're on your own and that's what you do. You could create an assessment tool that tells someone their financial score. So in other words,

maybe like there gives them assessment as to whether or not they're ready for retirement or gives them an assessment on their current investing strategy, right? Things that normally you might have talked to them in the past. Now, one of the best tools that I've seen for this that I love, I just love this tool. It's called ScoreApp, ScoreApp, super effective and for a very low price, you can build these wonderful scorecards or assessment readiness.

Brett Trainor (: 18:46

Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan (: 18:47

If you will for whatever that product or service is and allows you to create really simple landing pages campaigns is great It's like 30 bucks a month. This thing is awesome. So I love score app. It's a great one also, if anybody knows my stuff you know how much I talk about the importance of Discussing with buyers and things that they want to know so that they will feel comfortable enough to reach out to you one of the majors is cost and price of

your service, your product. But it's not just your service, your product. It's the industry as a whole. I think it's our job as businesses to help someone understand and get a sense for, hey, this is how much you can spend. So if you've read, they ask, you answer, know that I would always suggest that you create content, specifically articles and videos that teach someone what drives costs up for your service or product, what drives costs down, why are some companies so expensive, why are some companies so cheap, and then finally, where do you fall? Okay, so that gives them the entire value of

proposition of the industry and where you fall within the industry. You don't have to give exact prices, but you just need to teach people here's how you define value, here's how you go shopping and make buying decisions in this industry. Now in conjunction with that when it comes to self -service, well pricing calculators and pricing estimators are amazing. They're incredibly effective. I've had huge success with my clients. So imagine

if you could just give someone a general price range as to how much they might spend and use this estimator as a means of capturing the lead as well. Think about it for a second. How many people in your industry are willing to give any type of like a tangible price range before they've talked to them on the phone? Not a lot. An actual estimate, not a lot. And so could you do this? Yes, you could. I actually,

Brett Trainor (: 20:32

Not many here.

Marcus Sheridan (: 20:38

have recently developed a tool. It's just come out and the next version is releasing here soon with more features. But it's called priceguide .ai. Priceguide .ai. Here's what it does. You go to priceguide .ai and you say, okay, I want to create an estimator or a calculator tool. It says, okay, what industry are you in?

And you say, well, here's my industry. And it says, OK, well, what specific products do you or services do you offer within your industry? You say, well, here's the ones that I offer. And then it says, well, based on that, for you to create any type of estimator, here's some of the questions that you probably need to have answered by the prospect. And so through this, AI is helping you build out a calculator. You can input your specific numbers. But within 30 minutes,

you can have a working estimator tool that you put on your website that helps someone get a sense for how much they're going to spend with you or generally speaking in the industry. So you can make it general to the industry or you can make it specific to you. It's a great lead generation tool in terms of getting the email, building the database so you can remarket them. But again, nobody's probably doing this in your space or very, very few.

So priceguide .ai, I just developed that tool and I did it as a counter to all these expensive ones that you can find out there because usually you have to build something customized, cost you at least 10 ,000 bucks to build a pricing calculator. I wanted something that you could like, that wasn't fancy, that you could just put on your website, you could put online immediately and people would get value from and you would earn more trust, connect deeper, build your database. So it's priceguide .ai.

So that's the type of thing that I'm thinking about. It's like all these things, like my mind is always going towards like, what do they want to know? What haven't they been given? Could you be a disruptor and give it to them? And I think you can. And again, that's the beauty of being small. That's why I love it. That's why I hate, like me personally, I don't work with many enterprise companies because they're no fun. They're just terrible to work with, right? And so it's way, way better when you have that, that.

Brett Trainor (: 22:24

Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan (: 22:52

red tape free zone that allows you to exercise this incredible creativity which is probably why you became an entrepreneur in the first place or one of the major reasons because you didn't want to handcuffs and you wanted to run when everybody else was telling you to walk.

Brett Trainor (: 23:06

Right. what I really like about that is because where we're taking escapees, right? Because the old adage, if you left corporate, you had to start a traditional company, pool company or a cafe or Google or software. But like I said, with small businesses not earning to embrace the fractional communities, we can build small service companies, solo service companies.

Marcus Sheridan (: 23:24

Mm -hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 23:28

that it just makes sense. And guess what? Those business owners have a lot of questions, right? As part of this is going to be education. So this is a perfect plan or pathway to start disrupting and provide that education, right? Because that's where the first question I get a lot of times is, well, where's the job boards for fractional? No, I mean, if we get to that, then you're just competing with everybody else. And if you can do some of these and tell your story a little bit differently, that's why, again, when I went back in and like,

Marcus Sheridan (: 23:33

Absolutely.

Brett Trainor (: 23:57

I've got to create those videos. had a handful of the videos from my website, but not all of them. And it just, again, what I just like, it's so fundamentally sound, but yet nobody does this. I mean, you've been preaching and coaching on this forever, and yet it's still, a lot of folks are still stuck in the old ways of doing it. So it just creates opportunities for folks like me.

Marcus Sheridan (: 24:17

That's right.

Brett Trainor (: 24:20

to come in, especially with these types of tools. And we talk all the time about having a lead generator type of thing. So why not kill two birds with one stone? It just makes a ton of sense.

Marcus Sheridan (: 24:30

Yeah, sure does. Absolutely.

Brett Trainor (: 24:35

And even taking that I had another note about because most of us hadn't created videos before so just the thought and I know you're a big big video you actually have another book on the videos that kind of if I'm not mistaken kind of took the the video component from they ask you answer into the more video which I can highly recommend folks take a look at that.

Marcus Sheridan (: 24:51

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 24:55

So what are some of the basics that, because I think if I do a pricing video, do I need to have fancy graphics or is it just like me talking to the audience? just says, Hey, here's who I work with. Here's how I like to work. Those types of things. Any just high level recommendations as we're starting to think about the videos.

Marcus Sheridan (: 25:02

Don't.

Marcus Sheridan (: 25:12

Yeah, I mean, let me just say one thing as a, your ability to outsource today is crazy what you can do. I've got a full -time editor, video editor that works for me personally. And he, I produce live videos, he edits all my videos, puts them on YouTube, all that stuff. And he's in the Philippines. I pay him about $1 a month.

40 hours a week. He's thrilled with that. That's way better than he's gonna make in his own country. I'm thrilled with that because I'm not spending a lot of money, right? So let me, you know, if you're in the world of like being a solopreneur, just remember just how much you can outsource now in this like worldwide economy that we have. And this person speaks great English. We never have any problem communicating. I mean, it's just a wonderful experience. So I would say that.

A lot of companies and individuals really get caught up with video because they're trying to create something that's perfect. And you have to just release that need to be perfect. It is not the goal of video. The goal of video is communion. That's it. That's all we're trying to achieve. Some of the best videos I've ever produced, I'm like walking down the street and like, hey, I got this thing I just got to tell you. And we've all seen those videos because they come across as very real, very human. They connect deeply with your audience.

What's interesting too is oftentimes the fancier they are, the less you connect because it's almost too perfect, too scripted. You shouldn't script it. No, I mean, have a sense of what you're gonna say, but don't script it. And I would just say a few other things. You gotta be careful to, see folks, when it comes to video, they say things like, well, video is just not my thing. That's not true. Don't lie to yourself like that. Because if I said to you, are you good with people?

Everybody that's listening to this would say, yeah, when I'm with the customer or the prospect, face to face, I'm really good. Okay, that means you're great on video. You just haven't learned how to portray yourself on video as you do when you're face to face with that person. You're doing something different. But if you're good with people, just listen, when I see the camera, I don't see the camera. I see a person, an actual person, usually name it. Like I usually know who I'm talking to. I'm thinking about the person that I'm talking to.

Marcus Sheridan (: 27:35

And I speak to that person, that camera, as if I'm at the coffee shop, not trying to impress anyone. There's no different, literally, Brett, than you and I are discussing right now, right? We're having a conversation as if we were at the coffee shop and we're just sharing thoughts, right? It just makes for a very trusting vibe. It's very, very good. It's very effective. We can do the same thing. The other thing I would say, too, is we got to be very careful about not letting our personal opinions script smart business decisions.

It doesn't really matter if you do or do not like video. Your prospect, your customer has never said, if they were on your website, gee, I wish I could see a video of this person, but I'm sure they're just really nervous to be on camera. And so I'm going to give them a pass. It's never happened. They just don't care. So it doesn't matter how you feel about TikTok in China. If your market is there, and I'm not saying they are, then that's where you need to go.

Brett Trainor (: 28:19

Great.

Marcus Sheridan (: 28:31

personally on a personal level like social media. I do it for my business because that's where my market is. Right. That's what I signed up for. So I'm not going to say market I know you're over there but I'm going to be over here. It's not how it works. They ask you answer. Right. So I'm going where they are because I'm obsessed with my buyer. That's just that's just a simple rule for life.

Brett Trainor (: 28:48

Right.

Marcus Sheridan (: 28:58

This doesn't mean you don't compromise your values. It just means you got into business, you have a fiduciary to yourself and to your family to provide. That means you need to go where the market is.

Brett Trainor (: 29:12

Yeah, 100 % agree with you. I'll give you a kind of a case study you weren't asking for, but late November, I started just messing around on TikTok with videos, right? And I'm like, you know what? Because I was getting, starting to move away from the customer escapee. I'm like, there's got to be more Gen Xers like me out there, but there just wasn't a ton of traction. So I just started doing a daily video on TikTok in November. And this weekend I just passed 45 ,000 followers on TikTok. don't...

Marcus Sheridan (: 29:38

That's awesome dude.

Brett Trainor (: 29:39

edit anything in the sense of if I start and screw up the beginning, I'll just hit record. So it's a one take every video is one take video. for a while I'm like, you know, wow, this is getting serious. Maybe I should take this more seriously. And then I went more scripted. Those things, the views went down. I'm like, you know what? Off the cuff and just speaking, like you said, walking to the coffee shop is kind of the way I approach it. And it works. And like I said, folks that have known me for a long time would be like, you're on tick tock doing videos. So it's just

Marcus Sheridan (: 29:57

It's awesome.

Brett Trainor (: 30:08

Emphasizes your point that we all can do it and it's just so Yeah, so it's like said it's not one of my favorite things but not just part of what I do so Exactly. All right. I got a question for you a little bit off the beaten path because one of the things that coming out of corporate We weren't necessarily ever taught to do was network other than for jobs, right network and outreach

Marcus Sheridan (: 30:10

Great story, Brett.

Marcus Sheridan (: 30:19

It's like breathing. great. It's awesome. Great story.

Brett Trainor (: 30:34

And so all of a sudden now we're leaving corporate, we're starting this solo business and we need to connect with people that may be outside of our network. Any suggestions or I know you talk a lot about the communication, how to think about doing that, you know, initial outreach or how do we start connecting and networking more effectively than maybe we weren't any, any recommendations in that path.

Marcus Sheridan (: 30:56

Yeah, I know networking can be difficult for folks. There's in -person and there's online. What I have found is the best way to do in -person networking is through sincere direct messages on any platform, period. And so I get, and I've got a pretty decent following on LinkedIn. I get a lot of direct messages.

few are sincere, the ones that are sincere, I answer, right? I answer. And if that person continues to show up in my ecosystem and it's incredible how it can start something, so simple to do. The problem is, we oftentimes meet someone and five minutes later we're asking them to go home with us. it's gotta be a different, it really does have to be a different mindset.

how can I help you?" And really just actually helping them and giving them value or just telling them how much you appreciate them or what you learn from them or just whatever that thing is. There is value in that, right? That's one thing that I'm sure you've had to do, Brett, with your podcast is you have to outreach, but your outreach is warm.

It's thoughtful. It's not cold, right? I don't go on any podcast that comes across as cold or that doesn't know me. Right. It's so, it is so simple to give someone a signal that, you know what? I've researched you a little bit. Like that's the 1%. Those are the people that I pay attention to. And those are the ones that eventually we end up probably having some type of relationship.

Brett Trainor (: 32:47

Yeah, that's such good advice and it's so true. I exactly right. If I hear somebody on a podcast, I'll message them just say, I loved your interview on X, Y, and Z. cause I get inbound all the time for the podcast and half the time they get the podcast name wrong or they've got guests that just don't make sense. And to your point, that's delete, delete, delete until, you know, but if somebody said, Hey, I heard your last six episodes or these two, all right, you got my attention. You've at least again, made that right connection. You made the effort.

And it's authentic. And I think that's what also resonates with escapees is that's what we just want to be. We want to be ourselves, right? We've been in the corporate game forever where we had to pretend we had to play the games and now we just want to help people and do what we want to do, take our time back. So I think every chance we get that somebody says, yeah, you can be yourself and you can be successful is just another reason to get out of corporate.

Marcus Sheridan (: 33:41

Yeah, % man, 100%.

Brett Trainor (: 33:44

Awesome. Well, Marcus, I do want to be super respectful of your time. So is there anything that we didn't cover? I know I could talk to you for about two hours. So I want to make sure we hit the basics. Is there anything that we didn't cover or any recommendations?

Marcus Sheridan (: 33:57

I just want to mention one thing I think is to your audience if you're listening to this right now. If you really want to become a known voice in your space, if you want to build your brand, I would challenge you to do four things. Number one, are you talking about online what others in your space are not willing to talk about? That's number one. So test yourself on this. Do a little self audit. Number two, are you willing to show

through video what others in your space aren't willing to show. That's number two. Number three, are you willing to sell in a way that others in your space aren't willing to sell? And usually that means removing any friction, removing any fear and making it faster. Okay. Three F's. Okay. And then finally, are you coming across as more human?

than anyone else in your space? Do you have soul? It's funny since AI came out, I get these messages on LinkedIn like, you know Marcus, I just love your content. It's just so real. That's where we're headed, Because it is, right? It is. And I'm not trying to impress. I'm not trying to use the right grammar. I'm trying to talk like me.

Brett Trainor (: 35:19

Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan (: 35:28

You see what I'm saying? And it resonates with a certain group of people. And so talk about, show, sell, and be more human. That's the challenge that I would say to give to yourself. If you really want to build that brand, stand out, become that most known and trusted voice.

Brett Trainor (: 35:29

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 35:46

I think it's so true. mean, again, back to the testament of your book is I know more about pools than I ever thought I would know about pools and fiberglass and why I don't need fiberglass or I should consider it. But I mean, that was you connecting with stories talking about, it might obviously it relates and I can understand and apply it to the things that I'm doing. But, you know, think that's where we get hung up sometimes. Well, people aren't going to be interested in what I talk about. Well, again, if you're not interested in pools, you would think you wouldn't like this book. And I know there's a lot more to it. But the point is

Marcus Sheridan (: 35:56

That's right.

Brett Trainor (: 36:16

Yeah, it was you that I was connecting with and you know, I'm also really glad you did the audio book. prefer authors that do their own audio books just because again, it's that connection. can relate better to it. So, no, this is fantastic. All good advice. I have some homework to do for myself to clean up the process a little bit. But like I I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and where can folks, what's the best way for folks to track you down or learn more about you?

Marcus Sheridan (: 36:24

Mm -hmm.

Marcus Sheridan (: 36:43

Yeah, to connect with me on LinkedIn, that's one of the best places. I'll read your direct messages there. I'm a pretty good follow. You can also email me, easiest email to remember, Marcus at Marcus Sheridan dot com. Marcus at Marcus Sheridan dot com.

Brett Trainor (: 36:57

check out the YouTube channel and the books for sure again like I said it's part of the foundational five so make sure that you you read this book if you haven't done it so and we're looking forward to that the third edition that's coming out here pretty quick so awesome all right well thank you Marcus and have a great rest of your day

Marcus Sheridan (: 37:02

Mm

Marcus Sheridan (: 37:07

Yeah, me too.

Marcus Sheridan (: 37:12

Thank you.