From Bankruptcy to $30 Million in Revenue

Jared Flinn: You're listening to the Bolt Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything, bolt freight trucking. Hey, guys. Jared Flynn with the Bulk loads podcast. Tyler with me. Tyler Allison: What's going on, dude? Jared Flinn: New hats. Tyler Allison: New hats are in. They're. They're pretty sharp. I like them a lot. I like this batch. Jared Flinn: I was just at the coffee shop early this morning in my small group, but one of the guys I gave one of these hats to said it's like his favorite hat. Tyler Allison: Nice. Jared Flinn: Said it fits. Tyler Allison: Well to hear that we are actually gonna give a couple away this episode. Nice. We'll talk more about that at the end. So stay tuned and see how you can get one of these. Jared Flinn: We love giving hats away, and these are really cool fall colors, too, so be really cool at all the events. So, as always, we do a truck feature. This truck feature today. This is Rusty Moose. He's out of Glendale, Arkansas, and looks like. What kind of truck is that? Tyler Allison: I'm not sure. It's definitely an old antique looking truck, though. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Nice. It's got a different color hood, cab lights. Is this. Is that a deal on the back? Tyler Allison: Yeah, sure. I don't know. It's definitely. It looks like it's been sitting there for a little while. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well, man, rusty, thank you for sending this truck in. If you would like a truck featured, just send us an email at bulk loads. Excuse me, podcast.com, or just send it through any type of social media, and we would be. We would love to get you featured on there. Tyler Allison: Thanks, Rusty, for sending that in. Jared Flinn: So cool. Well, today's podcast we're going to bring on Marcus Sheridan and a little bit of story. So I was actually listening to a podcast, the business made simple podcast. Donald Miller. If you followed me for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Donald Miller and his platform business made simple. And one day I was mowing the grass one Saturday and flipped it on this podcast and started listening to this guy. And within the first ten minutes, I was wowed. Like, this guy, his energy and his enthusiasm just made me want to keep listening to it. Jared Flinn: But he had this super compelling story, and if you. If this drawn you in by this title, like, this guy was nearly bankrupt in 2008 business, and we all remember the 2008 recession and how bad that was and did a couple things and turned it around. And now he's a world class speaker, still owns a pool business. And anyways, I actually went for broke. I saw. I saw. I listened on podcasts, which I know this guy's pretty well known speaker, but went to LinkedIn and sent him a message and said, I'd love to bring on podcasts. And he responded. Tyler Allison: That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. I think during this episode, Marcus, you can tell, like, this dude is just full of energy all the time. So, like, there's. There's no dull moments. Like, he just. I mean, it's. Tyler Allison: He's so easy to listen to, I think. And I think this episode really pertains to a lot of truckers kind of forget that they're business owners as well. And so some of them, you know, might not realize how important marketing and sales is still within their business. And so this is a good one just to remind people of the importance of marketing and how you can always find, tune it and get better and more importantly, do stuff that your competitors are not doing. Jared Flinn: The days of sales, like salesmen and all that are over. I mean, it's all about transparency. It's more about being kind of a coach. Yeah. More than a salesman. And that's what I think Mark's really kind of empowers and brings to this. This is like. It's kind of like, kind of gets your blood boiling in a good way. Jared Flinn: Listen to this, because you're just like, really. And we're going to go over this, but, like, talking about, like, how you actually talk about your competitors and some of the things that he said, but it creates fully transparent or makes you fully transparent with your customers and makes you more trustworthy. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So with that said, here is my conversation with Marcus Sheridan. Hey, Marcus, thanks for coming on. Marcus Sheridan: Happy to be here. It's going to be a great chat. I got a feeling, Jared. Jared Flinn: Well, I just finished your audiobook, and I'm not tooting your horn, but I love, like, sometimes you read or listen to an audiobook and it's kind of a monotone, but I loved your inflections in listening to. To it. But more than anything, you could tell your heart was in it. I mean, obviously wrote the book, but, like, I loved how you gave these scenarios and even had some chuckles. But we're talking about your book. You know, they ask, you answer. But, man, talk about just for our audience how all this started. Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. Hey, real quick, I gotta say, if you ever want to, like, be judged across the board, do your own book. Read your own book. As an audiobook, the amount of people that either love or hate my voice is truly astounding. You know, you find the person that says love listening to this guy, I just love his style. Like you just said. The next person says, I don't know what it is. This guy's voice, the way he reads, he drives me crazy. Marcus Sheridan: I couldn't listen to five minutes of the book. So that's the world in which we live, man. It's just wild. Which means you can't be everybody's cup of tea, you know what I'm saying? You gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. So here's my quick story for those don't know. And I'll try to give you the 62nd version. Jared? I started with two buddies, a swimming pool company, in 2001. Marcus Sheridan: And, you know, we struggling to grow it, 2008 comes along, economy crashes, I think we're screwed. Looks like we're going to have to file bankruptcy. It was during this time, though, that I started to really learn about the Internet. I was changing as a buyer, and I was like, I know my customers are changing. And so I said, I'm going to study. And I was reading all these phrases like, you know, inbound marketing, content marketing, social media. And what I heard in my mind as I was reading this stuff was, you know, Marcus, if you just obsessed of your customers questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, and you're willing to address them on your website through text or video, you might save your company, right? And so I said, well, if there's one thing I can do, is I can listen well and I can address these questions online through articles, through video, etcetera. And so I sat down on my kitchen table one night, brainstorm like 200 questions, Jared, that I'd received over the years, you know, from people that were looking at a pool. Marcus Sheridan: And I use that as the listen to essentially become the editorial calendar, if you will, for all the content that I would put online. Make a long story short, we became the most traffic swing pool website in the world. Within a couple of years, business blew up. Blew up so much that I became a manufacturer, became the first franchise of fiberglass pools in the US. Ended up selling the manufacturing and franchise. But I still have the original company, which is river pools of Virginia, basically is what it would be called. It's a good business. Does about 150 pools a year. Marcus Sheridan: It's funny, too, because, you know, when you get in fiberglass pools, you become a little bit of a logistic company, shipping company, because you got to ship these shells all over the place. So, like, we have our, you know, we've got our own, you know, trucks now. We ship them. We've got a distribution point where we are and we ship these shells up and down, you know, the state and you know, North Carolina, you know, Pennsylvania. And along this whole journey too, though, I started a company that teaches people how to implement the teachings of my book, which is they ask, you answer right. And that's been cool. I speak full time professionally around the world and I've got some great business partners that run the swimming pool company for me. So it's been a really, really crazy ride, Jared. Marcus Sheridan: I just can't even believe myself sometimes. Jared Flinn: Yeah, there's a couple of things I want to camp out and really talk about. But like one thing, when I listen to this book and you preach, it's talking about transparency with clients. But speak of that because that's something that people can get very intimidated by about. And I'll give you a couple examples and I'd love to hear your answer. In the trucking industry, truck rates are big. Knowing the freight rates, but it's kind of a little secret. We run this website where, you know, loads get posted and then put the freight rate on there. A lot of times the freight rate doesn't get put on there. Jared Flinn: Light truckers, they don't like to talk about their freight rates, but there's like this real kind of hidden secret about, you know, what freight rates are, who's getting what. How would you respond to that? Because a lot of times people don't want to disclose freight rates publicly, especially on a website. Pricing, basically, yes. Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. The trucking industry is stunningly backwards when it, when it comes to their approach to pricing. And I say this as someone, again, that I've got a few semis myself, it's just like, let's take a step back and then we're going to go back into pricing for trucking. If your audience was in front of me right now and I said to every single one of them, have you gone online last year and research how much something cost? Everybody would say yes if I said so. When you're on a website and you're looking for cost and price information and you cannot find it, what's your emotion? Every single person would say, frustrated, pissed, right? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Marcus Sheridan: And why are they frustrated? Why are they pissed? Well, they'd say, because I'm the buyer and I'm trying to get my information and you're making it very hard on me. So what everybody would say now, if I said to you now, in that moment of frustration, do you as a buyer, you just keep on looking on that website like, no, I don't keep looking. If I'm not finding it. It's not going to be there. I'm just going to move on. Okay. If I said to you as a buyer, in that moment of frustration, do you say to yourself, well, of course they can't talk about cost and price. They're a value based business. Marcus Sheridan: I'm going to call them on the phone instead. Do you do that? No, you don't do that. Because instead of calling them or digging further on the website, use the buyer, use the searcher. You keep searching, you search until you find what you're looking for. And generally speaking, whoever gives you what you're looking for, they're going to get your business, right? They're going to get first contact, first phone call, at least. Now, I talk to most companies, though, especially that offer a service like trucking. And if you say, well, do you currently talk about cost and price on your website? They're going to say, well, no, Marcus, but you don't understand my industry. You don't understand my business. Marcus Sheridan: You don't understand my buyer. That's not the way that it works, folks. If there's one thing that I know is this, if you want to become the voice of trust, the most known and trusted brand in your space, you got to be willing to talk about, you got to be willing to show, and you got to be willing to sell in a way that nobody else is. And you got to be more human in the process. Talk about show. Sell. You can't do it like your competitors. And so why do people not talk about cost and price? Well, first reason is they say, well, every job is different, and there's a lot of variables that are going to drive those costs. Jared Flinn: We're saying trucking, too, because I think. I mean. Marcus Sheridan: But here's the thing, Jared. It's not especially in trucking. It's especially like that in every industry in the dang world, unless you're selling gumballs. Okay, so it's every industry, it's the same way for swimming pools. It's the same way for an agency. It's the same, you see, when companies sit there and think their industry is so special and different, they fail to do innovative stuff. That's reality. Whereas when you say, you know what, my buyers, they're rooted in the same psychology as everybody else, is it possible for me to take advantage of that psychology? Now, you get innovative, right? Look at cost and price as a trucker, can you explain the factors that drive the cost of a load up? Yes. Marcus Sheridan: Could you explain the factors that drive the cost of a load down. Yes. Can you explain why some companies are more expensive? Yes. Can you explain why some companies are less expensive? Yes. Could you give a general range as to where you fall? Yes, you could, right? That's the whole. It depends. It's easy to explain why it depends. Sometimes people say, well, I can't talk about cost and price because I'm afraid I'm going to scare them away. Marcus Sheridan: That's not how it works online. What scares people away is when the company isn't willing to talk about the thing. Third component to this, why companies don't talk about cost and price, why this happens in the trucking space, is because we say things well, I don't want my competitors to see it. Well, that's ridiculous, because if I go to anybody, especially a trucker, and I said, do you have a pretty decent sense as to what your competitors charge? They're gonna be like, yeah, of course I do. I'm not dumb. And so if you have a good sense as to what they charge, it means they've got a good sense as to what you charge. This is the big secret, non secret. Everybody acts like nobody knows what everybody's charging, but in reality, everybody knows what everybody's charging. Marcus Sheridan: Now, here's where it gets frustrating for me. You know, wasn't long ago, I guess it was like, I don't know, I guess it was a year ago now. I bought a twelve passenger van, and I got this van for my church youth group. And I was like, they always go in different vehicles and I want them all to go together. Activities. I've located a van in Wisconsin. And I was like, sweet. And now I bought this thing sight unseen. Marcus Sheridan: But just as a side note, the reason why I bought it is because the dealer that was selling it, he started the video of the walk around with what was wrong with the vehicle. He said, before we look at this vehicle, like, and everything that you might want to see about it, let me show you any nick, any scratch, any dink. I want you to see exactly what's wrong with this vehicle. He had me in the first 30 seconds, I'm in love, right? I'm like, I want to buy from this guy. Because that's how you are in trust. You say things that people least expect, but what they really want to hear, okay? And so he did that, and I bought that. Now, I went, for the first time in my life, I did one of these online quote things where you say, hey, I've got this load. And I suddenly started getting 4 billion texts right you all know the story and I'm like, this is so uncomfortable. Marcus Sheridan: I'm getting phone calls, I'm getting text, I'm getting hammered, right? I swear it's a year late and I still get texts and from this one time. So I go with this one company just because I'm like, man, I get confused and I wanted to get it within a certain period of time. So I go with this one company. Jared Flinn: Hey guys. Jared Flynn, thank you so much for listening to the bulk loads podcast. Many of you all may not know, but we started a permitting business and insurance business. We know that many of you are in different stages of your life and we want to simplify and take those friction points away from you. So if you have interest in permitting, allowing a company to take care of your IFTA reporting, all your tax documents, all the back end work that quite frankly I don't like doing, and I subcontract out to other people's to do, we want to do for you. So if you get a chance, click the permitting link below and you'll be directed to that. And then on top of that, we also offer commercial truck insurance. We represent really good truck insurance markets to give you the most affordable and best price on insurance. Jared Flinn: So we know insurance rates are climbing. We know every year at renewal times people are sticker shocked to see the renewals. We want to walk you through that process, give you a better experience and hopefully better affordable coverage. So go ahead and click the link below for bulk Insurance group. Let us quote your insurance for you. Thank you and God bless. Marcus Sheridan: This company shows up to pick up the truck and like they're picking up a twelve passenger van with like a Toyota tundra. I mean, it was just like, it was stunningly too small. And the seller's like, yo, Marcus, you know, this is really, really shady. I don't know how I feel about this. Right? So I've got all these emotions that are going on, okay. Complete distrust, terrible experience. I could, the problem was in this experience, people kept giving me like variables and different ranges and I couldn't tell if the price was guaranteed and I couldn't tell what that included. And it just was a total, you know what show. Marcus Sheridan: Now, is that the entire trucking industry? No, but that's a lot of it. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be that way. And so if people are willing to step up, they can change the game. Let me give an example of a company that changed the game from a recruiting perspective. You ever heard of ATS. Really big trucking company in the US. Yeah, they're a really big client of mine. Marcus Sheridan: Okay. They've been working with me for years now. ATS realized they had a. They had a problem getting drivers. Right, like every trucking company does. Drivers is the name of the game. And so how do you become the thought leader for drivers? Well, you gotta be willing to talk about, show and sell in a way that nobody's willing to do it. So they had to be willing to talk about what nobody else was in their space. Marcus Sheridan: So ATs started producing content that was just, like, stunning. So they would literally produce videos. Like, who are the best trucking companies to work for in 2023? They would list their competitors, Jared, their competitors. They have articles on there that explain, here's exactly how you get paid at ATS, your entire compensation. Like, you know how many of these trucking companies are literally explaining their comp package? Very few. But this company was just doing complete articles and videos explaining it. And, I mean, they became such a definitive thought leader within the trucker driver recruiting space because they were so leaning in to what nobody else was willing to do. All right, that's ATS. Marcus Sheridan: They went all in on the ask you answer. And so my point in saying this is, if I'm just a single trucker, I'm saying to myself, I got to remove all fear and doubt, because fear and doubt is what leads to inertia. It's what prevents people from taking action. Let me give you a ridiculous example of this. When I say fear and doubt, Jared, you people that are listening to this right now, they've probably been on a landing, a shopping cart page before. They were going to buy something online. But in the process of whipping out their credit card, they noticed that there was a promo code for that product that would save them money. But they didn't have the promo code. Marcus Sheridan: So what they do in that minute stopped. Now, all of a sudden, they stopped. Where'd they go? They started looking for the promo code online. Now, here's what's crazy. We've done the studies on this, Jared. 50% of the people, if they can't find the promo code, guess what they don't do? Jared Flinn: They don't buy. Marcus Sheridan: They don't freaking buy. And they had their credit card out, Jared. It doesn't make a lick of sense. They were just getting ready to buy. But what happened with that little box? It planted a seed of doubt. Hmm. You know, if I was a trucker right now, and I wanted to flip the industry on its head. Here's what I would do, and I'm biased because this is heavy on my mind right now, but I'm just having all these crazy experiences. Marcus Sheridan: So I've been known as the cost price guy for a long time. I've taught all types of companies, all types of brands, how to get more comfortable talking about money. And I recently developed something that I've been wanting to develop, which is an immediate price estimator tool for your website that you can put on your website, and in less than 30 minutes from start to finish, you're now generating leads that you weren't generating before. All right? And it's called price guy AI. Price guy AI. Any trucker could actually use this tool right now. How the tool works, it uses AI. You go to it and it says, what's your industry? And you put in your industry, and you might say, you know, trucking transportation. Marcus Sheridan: And then it says, okay, well, if you're in trucking transportation, here's all the different types of trucking transportation services. Which ones are you? And then says, you say, okay, well, I do this one. I do this one. Like, let's say I do OTr. Okay, good. And so you choose those, and then as soon as you choose those, the AI says, okay, well, if you're trying to give somebody an estimate, key phrase, not price, but estimated. All right, um, here's the questions that you probably want to ask them. Just like if somebody called you right now, Jared, and said, hey, I've got this load that I need to run, how much is it? You're going to ask a series of questions, right. Marcus Sheridan: For example, what would be some of the questions you would ask Jared? Jared Flinn: What type of trailers needed? Okay, what type of loading times, the origin destination? Marcus Sheridan: What's the weight of the load? What's the size of loads? Like all this stuff. Right, right. So those are the questions you would ask so as to be able to give them at least an estimate. And so that's what this tool does. It gives you those questions. You can modify the questions. You can add questions you could take away, and you can give price ranges as the, as the variables. And then you take that, and it immediately gives you the code to put on your website. Marcus Sheridan: And now you've got a pricing estimator on your website. I had this lady, and it cost dollar 19 a month. And you'll make that probably in the first day. In the first day, I had a lady. It was crazy. She owns a little custom shed company. She builds little custom sheds, and she's in Scotland and true story, she put this pricing calculator on our website and she has a good website and she even talked about prices and stuff. But she put this pricing calculator on her website on Friday. Marcus Sheridan: Over the weekend, she got 23 leads from the pricing calculator. Alright? Then over the next couple days, two of those people surprised her and walked in, like came to her location out of the blue and they bought and they said, I'm buying because you were the only one that I could get this information from. That's what happens when you removed out. I followed up again today with this person and she says, it's crazy. We're getting ten leads a day right now. Ten leads a day. If you look at all these truckers, they've allowed their future, their success, in many cases to be dictated by third party sites and not their own. That's right. Marcus Sheridan: Good friends. That's not good. You got into business, you became an entrepreneur, you became a driver because you want to own the frickin road. You want to dictate the terms of your life. That's why you got into business. You got into business because believe it or not, you're control freak and you don't want a boss. And so in the course of doing this, somehow you lost some of that control and you're having to give it a to these third party sites. No bueno. Marcus Sheridan: So instead of that, dictate your own terms. You do that by putting content out there on your website, online that other people aren't willing to do. Offering experiences that others aren't willing to do. Having tools like a pricing calculator on your site that gives them an estimate. Listen, that tool might end up saying, okay, your load is going to cost 1000, $1,500. That's more than anybody else has given them. And then now it's got a call to action. Says, if you want an exact price based on this, call this number, fill out this form and I'll follow back up with you immediately. Marcus Sheridan: And now all of a sudden, because here's the thing, this is crazy, Jared. People constantly won't call companies directly because they don't want to be embarrassed if they ask how much it is, they don't want to be embarrassed to say, geez, that's more than I thought, I can't afford it. So instead of that, they just don't call it all wild, man. Wild. Jared Flinn: Talk about, and this is one, when I read this, I was like, it was convicting, but like, it just, it almost like stirred. You talk about like, there was a situation where some clients came into the pool store, and at the end of the conversation, they asked, hey, who else does pools? And, like, you gave them all of your competitors. I'm just thinking from. From my context, like, we have competitors in our space, like, for someone to be. And for years, we've always been like, well, you know, we're kind of different. We don't, you know, we're. We don't really have. But that's not true. Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, yeah. It's not true at all. And let me see here if. Jared Flinn: That'S a tough one. You're saying, like, it's okay to talk about your competition to. Marcus Sheridan: No, you should. You should. In every industry, it's why it's called. They ask, you answer, because they're thinking this. People are searching for competitors, the best, etcetera. There's basically five subjects that everybody research. Call them the big five. When they're looking to buy something, they want to know how much does it cost. Marcus Sheridan: They want to know what are the negatives, the problems, the issues with it, what could go wrong. Okay. They want to know how does it compare to this other thing that they're looking at. They want to know what's everybody saying about it, and they want to know what the best it is. Okay. And so for trucking companies, they might say, how much does it cost for such and such delivery? Right? Right. So let's say, like, I had a boat delivered to me one time from the northeast, and, you know, like, I might go online and say, how much does it cost to have a, you know, a small boat delivered to, you know, 500 miles from Maine to Virginia? Right. They want to know, once they start to get into it, what are some of the factors that could go wrong? Do I need my own insurance? Do they have their own insurance? Like, these are the problems, the fears that they have. Marcus Sheridan: Right? What happens if there's an accident coverage, things like that. They want to know, how does that one trucking company compare to the other company, or how does that one type of trucking company compare? Because there are different types of, as, you know, trucking companies, and there's. So there's different offerings that people are confused about. The different types of offerings, you know, shared, single, stuff like that. So people compare that stuff. They want to know reviews about your company, and they want to know the best company. So, so, for example, if I'm doing this, I might say, I might go online right now and say, you know, what are the best trucking companies for? And I might say, whatever it is, that I need. By the way, that's a super common search, okay? I mean, people that search thousands and thousands of times a day. Marcus Sheridan: Well, people ask this in person, too. And some of your friends, listeners, might have heard this. They might have had somebody ask them before, hey, I think I want to use you, but if it. If we don't work out, is there anybody else you might recommend? Listen, if you've been asked the question, it means people are searching it online. And so I said, I am not going to be afraid to talk about anything. So, people ask me, Marcus, in this case, the one example in the book, who are some of the other, you know, who are some of the other builders in the Richmond area you might recommend? I literally went home that night. I said, huh? Okay, here we go. Came up with an article title. Marcus Sheridan: Who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia? Review slash ratings. And I listed my five top competitors. Like, literally the ones that I lose jobs to the most. That's who I listed on there. And here's what was wild about it. Now, all of a sudden, when you were searching best bull builders, Richmond, Virginia, guess who you were finding? Me. My website. Furthermore. Marcus Sheridan: Now, if you were searching a competitor, let's say, play more, was one of the ones on the list. If you went online, you search, play more. Pools, reviews, Richmond, Virginia. Guess whose website you were coming to? Mine. So now, when you are researching my competitors, you are learning about them on my website. That article made me over a million dollars in sales. And to this day, I'll have competitors come to me and say, man, I don't know why you put me on that list, man, but thank you. And I'm like, no, thank you, dude. Marcus Sheridan: Because what you don't realize is, you made me a ton of money off of your name. That's how it works. You gotta be willing, though, Jared, to talk about what others are not willing to talk about. Jared Flinn: I wanna add one more I'm gonna ask you about, because I think this one's just as crucial. A lot of these truckers, you know, they haul for multiple companies. But you gave a scenario. I'm just where you actually did an article on the vendors. So you're ranking the pool manufacturers. But I think about the same things. Like to ask a trucker to go out there and rate the top five, you know, companies that they haul for and they recommend. I mean, number one, they're talking about who they're doing business with. Jared Flinn: And then number two, you know, they're going to create maybe a stir. You know, if they're not. If. If one company is rated two and they think they should be number one. But how would you respond to that? Marcus Sheridan: First of all, you can say top five without putting them one through five. You can just say, here's the top five. No and no. You know, order. Right. So that's one option that you have. Let me give you a couple quick stories on this. Um, one of the. Marcus Sheridan: One of the great companies that I've worked with is a company called Yale Appliance. They do kitchen appliances in Boston, Massachusetts. And when he came to me, said, you know, Marcus, I'm just kind of stagnant. Businesses growing my content's not working online. What do you suggest? I'm like, well, I've got the way. I've got the framework. It's called. They ask, you answer. Marcus Sheridan: But you gotta be willing to do some things that's never been done in your industry. He's like, okay, game on. Let's play. And so one of the questions he was getting all the time is a, as a kitchen appliance retailer was, which of these brands that you sell break down the least? Which ones do you service the least? Right. Because nothing worse than your refrigerator break in. Right. Your dishwasher break in on stuff. And so he says, okay, all right, people want to know. Marcus Sheridan: So here's what he did. He came up with a list. The title of this article was the least serviced, most reliable appliance brands. And he started in 2019. He's done every year since. Of 2019. He took every brand that he has sold. He counted the total units he has sold for each one of his brands, and then he counted all the service calls that he ran for each one of those brands. Marcus Sheridan: And then he gave a list showing you the least service brand that he sells, all the way to the most serviced brand that he sells, which, by the way, was kitchenaid. Right? So if you have a kitchenaid pair yourself. And so he did this. And let me tell you, did the manufacturers freak out? Yeah, but that's how you become a linchpin. They weren't going to drop them. They couldn't drop them. They're like, why'd you do this, Steve? How could you do this? Like, well, how could you give me a product that I have to keep on servicing? I guess you're going to have to do better next year. Every year, he does this. Marcus Sheridan: The first. His first. When he did this first. The first time he did it, that article, for 18 straight months. Jared, check this out. Was read 50,000 times a month. 50,000 times a month. When I was. Marcus Sheridan: When I was. I was one day. Again, this is back in the day. Now, I was in the grocery store, and I noticed the magazine rack, and I was like. And I saw this one magazine. It was car and driver of the year. And it was like, all these cars, best in class and stuff. I was like, huh? You know, they ain't got that for pools. Marcus Sheridan: Fiberglass pools. We got these manufacturers. They're like the Fords and the Chevy's, and I'm like a Ford dealer. I think I could probably come up with my own best in class. And so I created this. This. This big hoopla article, and I gave out awards of best in class for the year. Best kidney shape pool, best rectangle pool, et cetera, et cetera. Marcus Sheridan: I was giving them out to my competitors, my competitors, the manufacturers I was selling against. At first, everybody was like, who's this kid think he is? But then suddenly, these manufacturers started seeing how many people were reading it. I mean, it was getting rid of thousands of people. Like, thousands. It's a big influence in the industry. They're reaching out to me, and they're like, Marcus. Jared Flinn: Yeah? Marcus Sheridan: I noticed we're not on your list. Would you like to. You know, we can fly you out to the factory, and we could show you some of these shapes and sizes. Maybe they could be on your list next year. See, that's how you become a linchpin. By the time I was 35 years old, Jared, I was having people all like, I got a call from the Virgin Islands one time. This lady, she's like, hi, Marcus. I've learned everything I could learn about pools from you. Marcus Sheridan: I'm getting a fiberglass pool, but I don't really trust the company that's doing it. Could you come out to the Virgin Islands and oversee my swimming pool installation? Jared, I couldn't even turn on an excavator. Dude, I don't know how to install a pool now. What I can do is I can take what's in someone else's head, and I can put it up on a screen in a text or video format or podcast format. I can explain in a way that people understand. That's my gift. My. My zone of genius is explaining complex things in very simple, clear ways so that people can understand them, right? And so. Marcus Sheridan: So, in the process of doing this, we became the most influential pool company in the world, and it just took off. Can anybody do this? Yes. Yes, you can. And you don't have to write a bunch of articles, but if I was a trucker today. I would leverage video, I'd leverage social media, and I'd have a pricing calculator on my website. And that alone would give me so much business that I would have to scale, scale, and scale some more. Jared Flinn: That's awesome. Well, we're about out of time. I'm going to ask you one last question, and this is kind of how I started the conversation, but I want to end it here. Man. You have a servant's heart, and I can just tell by your enthusiasm, and you mentioned your church bus and all that. But if you don't mind, how does your faith roll into your work? Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, faith is a. Is a big deal to me because like most of us, I'm sick and I need the hospital. And that's what my lord and savior Jesus Christ is to me. He is the doctor who can fix all things. And I got serious about God when I was 19. I was a. I Washington, a bit of a party animal or whatever in high school, and I actually became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day Saints. And I went on a mission for two years in Chile. Marcus Sheridan: That's where I learned to speak Spanish, and that's where I learned that I had this particular skill because I had massive success as a missionary. Unusual amounts of success when I was doing. And this was pointed out to me until I. Until I, like, took the time to notice it. I just had this knack for teaching the gospel in a way that it just made sense to the people that were listening to it. And by the time I was done in Chile, I said to myself, I want to speak for the rest of my life. This was what I want to do. But I didn't have a story. Marcus Sheridan: I didn't have a story. And so I became a pool guy by accident. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Marcus Sheridan: Little did I know this, that the pool guy would become. That would become the story that I would share around the world. But faith is a really big part of it. And, you know, God has a plan for all of us. We can't. And I don't think we're supposed to very clearly see the plan in front of us, because if we could, we wouldn't have to have any faith, right? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Marcus Sheridan: And we wouldn't have to do our part. But if we trust in him, man, hindsight is really cool when you get to look back, and I didn't. I was kind of bummed about being a pool guy at first, but suddenly people all over the world, like, you're that pool guy, right, Marcus? Right. That's his plan, man, that's his plan. That wasn't my plan. It's his plan. So his, his ways are greater than ours, you know, man doth not understand his ways. It's, we can't, we can't conceptualize it, but at least we can do is look back and say, man, you had it, you had it figured out. Marcus Sheridan: And next time I'm going to be a little more trusting along the way. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, well, and I can just tell from, from the way you speak in your heart and uh, mine is similar with trucking. I mean, I had no idea that I was going to be, you know, the bulk truck freight guy in the space, but it's been a platform that I've been able to share the Lord as well. And I'm so thankful for that. Marcus, man, thank you for, number one, just responding to my message when I messaged you through LinkedIn and I was actually just hoping but not having no expectation that you would reply, you replied to come on. So, man, thank you for taking the time to come on this show for our listeners are listening to this, obviously. I got the book up. It's found anywhere. Jared Flinn: Books are sold, the audiobook as well. But where else can people find you if they want to connect with you? Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. Like you did. LinkedIn is a great place for me. I know there's not a lot of truckers there, but, you know, it's a great place to learn about business and proven your business, proving your life. You can reach out to me directly if you want. Easiest email to remember is Marcus Arcas sheridan.com dot. It's Marcus at Marcus sheridan.com. and again, I recommend to everybody try that, that tool price guy AI. Marcus Sheridan: Try it on your website. You know, you don't have to give exact prices, but you give a range. It's going to put you in the 1% of all truckers and you're going to start to see a lot more leads. And leads is key. And that's the thing. They're the lifeline of a business. You gotta have leads, leads dry up, things go bad. But man, this was so fun, Jared, and I hope we can do it again. Marcus Sheridan: I hope we can cross paths in real life and that would, that would bring me a lot of joy. And I can tell you've got a really great spirit about you. Jared Flinn: Awesome, man. I sure appreciate it. And we are going to put that link to the Price guide AI in the show notes. So if you're listening right now, you should be able to drop down there, you'll get all the markets information into this so you can quickly access that. Marcus, again, man, appreciate you coming on the show, man. It's just been a pleasure and honor to meet you. Amen. God bless you. Marcus Sheridan: You, too. Thank you. Jared Flinn: Tyler. I think I try to be as transparent as possible. I mean, I don't want to give myself credit, but, like, I always tell people I'm an open book. I think things I speak of on this podcast and my writing and all that. And I guess I've been in those situations, and nothing's cringier when you're in a conversation with somebody and you feel like they're holding something back. Tyler Allison: Exactly. Jared Flinn: Whether you're trying to purchase something or you're in a business meeting. And then there's just like, this wall, like, there's something said where, like, there's these. And I think I've always been one. Obviously, I'm a jokester prankster, but, like, humor is where I try to get in, you know, open up the doors. But, like, you just know when you're in situations where the conversation, like, there's a, there's a trust barrier going on and then that leads to really less business. Like, if you can't trust that person, you're not going to be fully transparent with them and maybe not build the relationship to do business together. Tyler Allison: Yeah. And I think that speaks the origins of bulk loads of how you and Matt kind of created this is by handshake. You know, you guys created the business without even meeting each other and really just, you know, two farm boys, and you were always holding true to your word. And that's, you know, same thing with smart freight, with Rachel, you guys all got together and said, we are going to do it different. We don't want to have contracts. We don't want to tie people and hold people against their will. We want people to use our services because they want to, not because they're forced to. But, yeah, I think trust is a huge thing, and that's really what salesmen are even there for. Tyler Allison: Right. Like the salesman job is to gain trust and show transparency. We don't want to fool anybody of what our product is not. You know, we want to let them know that we can help them. That way they can decide for themselves. Jared Flinn: Yeah. And I think we still have ways that we can improve. So I'm not saying we're the best at being transparent, but I think it just shows that, man, if you're open and honest with people and really, at the end of the day, like, what are you really hiding that somebody else doesn't already know? And I think it's, I love what Mark said. Like 999 percent people already know whatever you're trying to hold back or not tell them about. So I think that's so cool. Tyler Allison: One thing I will say is Marcus Washington kind of diving into, you know, all these different tools that he's used and he's created. He started talking about websites and stuff and it just clicked. You know, a lot of carriers, especially smaller owner operators, they don't have websites to build. So I would encourage, you know, they really don't cost a whole much, a whole lot. But I would encourage, if you are a business owner, you should probably have a website to just showcase your product and your services. Jared Flinn: Help people, right? Tyler Allison: I have, yep. And if you guys need help, you can contact us. We'll see. Jared Flinn: Super simple. Tyler Allison: Yeah. What we can do, but also we can also point you in a right direction to get help, to actually get one built. Or I'd even teach somebody how to do. It's really not that hard. Jared Flinn: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The other thing I was going to bring up and, you know, we have kind of the rates tab on ours, but we are overhauling that and we are in the works of figuring out a better way to provide pricing on our website. So a trucker can go on there and say, you know, hey, what is the current price for a hopper from Kansas City down to Dallas? And it can spit that out. So that's something that we are in the works of. I think we have the data plus with some of the technology today, so be on the lookout for that. I think that's something that's going to be super beneficial for our audience because again, there, there's always that discrepancy and we want to make sure and provide as much information as possible so people know what the current market is. So cool. A couple things for your head out. Jared Flinn: I was, I forgot to end the intro, but like this last week, I was doing some traveling up in Erie, Pa. I wanted to throw some photos, actually got to visit Barnhart Inc. Up in Erie, Pa. They were at our conference or a couple of those guys, and they invited us up, be on the lookout for a video shoot. We went up there and did a video with those guys. But another ten x business these brothers started 20 years ago, almost or a little over 20 years ago, and just have built this company now with 150 plus drivers and all these different business units that they're doing. So just encouraging and inspiring to see the growth in that, and that was one of the reasons we wanted to highlight them and just see that these opportunities that they're doing up there, and maybe it's something that you can take away. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Whenever you came back and you were kind of talking about the trip, I didn't realize it's like wine country out there and there's so much vineyards and everything surrounding that area. I don't know why I just said, like, Pennsylvania. I just wouldn't think that, you know, that's all that's happening there. Jared Flinn: That's part of their business. They actually haul a lot of juices and stuff. That's why they have a big fleet of tanker trucks. It's part of their operation. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Jared Flinn: I also got to stop by us bulk transport there in Erie as well. So stop by their office just for a brief visit. A couple of guys, Chris Cavalla and some of the upper management, they were gone, but Lewis with their company, gave us a tour. We can throw that picture up. But then ended the tour in Buffalo where our flight was, but got to visit Lackawanna products. Tyler Allison: Very nice. Jared Flinn: And the one thing I want to say just about them, I want to give them a big shout out because Randy Hobbs with Lackawanna, he was one of our first adopters on bulk loads and really one of the first big posters on there. And so I told Randy, got to shake his hand and just said, buddy, thank you so much for trusting us and using our platform, because it takes both people, people posting loads and people searching loads, but he was wanting to really provide those loads and get that interaction going. So it was super cool, but it was also cool, like, and he was so supportive. Sometimes we go on these visits and your site needs to do this better. And we love hearing feedback. I'm not discrediting that, but it was cool to see, like these guys said, man, you all have helped us grow this business. You guys have helped us grow so much with your tool. And it was just rewarding and humbling to hear that. Jared Flinn: And they were just, they were true. Like, we went around and there must have been 20 people in their office all had bull clothes up. Like, actually had it up live using it, and it was cool. And there's a couple pictures that you can see. Tyler Allison: Yeah, that's all I took there. Jared Flinn: So, Randy, thanks for hosting us, man. Thank you for being a bulk loads user for really pretty much since our very beginning. So awesome. You'd mentioned in the intro, how do they get these hats? Tyler Allison: Yep. All you have to do is comment down below and all I want you to do is just from this podcast, what is your favorite thing or favorite tip that Marcus shared on this episode that you can take back to your business. It can help you grow or something that you may not be doing that you want to start doing. Comment that and we're going to go through and we're going to pick, we don't have a set number, but we're just going to go and pick some random people and we'll comment below and we'll send you a hat and we'll even let you pick the color. Jared Flinn: That's a really great idea. Maybe I'll comment on there what I. Tyler Allison: Think you can't get a hat, Jared. Jared Flinn: Also, I forgot we'll put the link to Marcus's book. They ask, you answer. I did the audio version which Marcus narrates. It was funny when we first started, he said that like some people, he's got good positive reviews and some people like can't stand his voice because he's kind of got a lighter picture. I really enjoyed it because sometimes when the author reads the book, it's, you can tell his emotion and passion and that's the way he was in that podcast. I listened to an audiobook, so really encourage you if you consume audibly, you know, which I do, I assume a lot of our listeners do that are on the road. It's the best way to do it. But we'll also put the link to the book below, so really encourage you to go out and get that book. Tyler Allison: Cool. Jared Flinn: So awesome. Well, last, not least, as we always do when we close out of here, if you have something going on in your life and would like help, we would love to pray for you. We say this every podcast and we get them every week. But yeah, simply send us a prayer to prayer owes.com. we, it's completely anonymous. We take those and we have a team that prays over that. And man, we would love to be alongside of you and help you in those prayers. And man, I can't say that enough. Jared Flinn: I actually, when I was on the road, I actually had a, some prayers that for some reason when I'm home there's so many distractions. Like when I'm on a plane, I can sit there and actually meditate and pray. And that was something that I need to do more often. But it was good. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Jared Flinn: So yeah, send a prayer to bro prayer oclos.com. anything else for close out? Tyler Allison: I think that's it. One last thing is the conference we're starting to think about that we're getting some dates put together, things booked. I know. I've been trying. Jared Flinn: I know you. Tyler Allison: I'm already like, as soon as I start thinking about it, I get so excited. But I like all the things. I'm just like, man, there's so many things I got to do. So we are starting early April, right? Yes, early April. We haven't got the dates finalized. We're thinking April 2 through the fourth. If everything works out, the venue can work with us. But go ahead. Tyler Allison: Go to bulkfreightconference.com dot. You can enter your email to basically secure a ticket that they're going to go first come, first serve. If you sign up on the email, we're going to give you the chance to buy a ticket first. That way you won't miss it. Jared Flinn: Yeah. So just go the links down below in the episode notes, but click on that, put your email in there if you haven't, you're not obligated or anything. That way you just know when we get everything finalized and you can get that ticket secured so you're not going to miss out. And every year we've done this two years, and every year it's like we still hear people saying like, I didn't know about this. Why didn't I know about this? I wish I would know about this sooner or so. Get subscribed. That way you don't miss an episode. Tyler Allison: Awesome. Jared Flinn: Cool. Awesome. I'll close us in prayer. Heavenly Father, we love you, Lord. Thank you for people like Marcus to be a light out there for others. And thank you for his encouraging words, Lord, and just his passion for this industry and just to help others, Lord, you can just tell it in his, in his voice and the content that he produces out there, Lord, we know that. We see the industry getting better, but there are still companies out there that are struggling. We see the foreclosures and bankruptcies and cancellations even through our load board, Lord, and we just pray over them. Jared Flinn: Lord, we pray that you be with them. Lord, we pray over our leaders in this country, Lord, we know that there was an election last week, or, excuse me, not election, a debate last week, Lord. And honestly, Lord, we just, we pray over both candidates. We pray that your hand be involved in this, Lord, and we trust in that. Heavenly Father, be with us as we go throughout. Be with all of our drivers, their family members. And Lord, thank you for all that you do in your precious and heavenly name. Amen. Jared Flinn: Thank you as always for listening to the Bulk Loads podcast. If you haven't yet. Since it's the first time you're watching, click the subscribe button down here in the left hand corner. That way you never miss an episode. And, man, if you do us one single favor, just one little favor, and share this out there, just one person that can help them in their business or in their family, we would totally appreciate that. Thank you, as always, and God blessed.