Business Innovators Radio - Ep. #25 – Marcus Sheridan – The Big Success Podcast with Brad Sugars

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Marcus Sheridan is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker known for his unique ability to excite, engage and motivate live audiences with his simple, yet powerful transformational business approach. Marcus has been dubbed a “Web Marketing Guru” by the New York Times and in 2017 Forbes names Marcus one of 20 “Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss.” Not one to be limited to the stage, Marcus is most often found walking through the crowd, calling audience members by name, and bringing them into his presentation.As author of the content marketing guidebook, “They Ask, you Answer,” Marcus has not only inspired thousands to achieve their potential but has given them the tools they need to get there. Mashable rated his book the “#1 Marketing Book” to read in 2017. Forbes listed it as one of “11 Marketing Books Every CMO Should Read.” Marcus has been featured in the New York Times, Inc., The Globe and Mail, Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, and more. He has inspired thousands of audiences and helped millions of people from all over the world to achieve their own success with his “They Ask, You Answer” philosophy.Marcus’ experience as an entrepreneur and business owner who had successfully saved his company led him to opportunities to share his story and help others. What started as speaking from the stage quickly turned into a Sales and Marketing consulting agency, The Sales Lion. Using his marketing principles, Marcus and his team led clients step-by-step through the process of growing and even transforming their companies. In early 2018, The Sales Lion merged with IMPACT, establishing one of the most successful digital sales and marketing agencies in the country. Within his speaking company, Marcus Sheridan International, Inc., Marcus gives 70 global keynotes annually where he inspires audiences in the areas of sales, marketing, leadership, and communication.While Marcus is passionate about his roles as co-owner of IMPACT, River Pools and Spas, and full-time professional speaker, he admittedly loves his role as husband and father even more. When not on the road, Marcus is with his high-school sweetheart and wife, Nikki, and their four children. A boating and fishing enthusiast, Marcus also takes advantage of any opportunity to have a fishing rod in hand!Please click here to learn more about Marcus Sheridan.About Brad Sugars Internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs, Brad Sugars is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9+ companies and is the owner of the multimillion-dollar franchise ActionCOACH®. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That’s why, Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you – so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. But if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone. That’s why Brad has created 90 Days To Revolutionize Your Life – It’s 30 minutes a day for 90 days, teaching you his 30 years experience on investing, business and life.Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars.Learn the Fundamentals of Success for free: The Big Success Starter: https://results.bradsugars.com/thebigsuccess-starter Join Brad’s programs here: 30X Life: https://results.bradsugars.com/30xlifechallenge 30X Business: https://results.bradsugars.com/30xbusinesschallenge 30X Wealth: https://results.bradsugars.com/30xwealthchallenge 90X – Revolutionize Your Life: https://30xbusiness.com/90daystorevolutionize Brad Sugars’ Entrepreneur University: https://results.bradsugars.com/entrepreneuruniversity For more information, visit Brad Sugars’ website: www.bradsugars.comFollow Brad on Social Media:YouTube: @bradleysugars Instagram: @bradleysugars Facebook: Bradley J SugarsLinkedIn: Brad SugarsTikTok: @bradleysugarsTwitter: BradSugars The Big Success Podcast https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-big-success-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/ep-25-marcus-sheridan-the-big-success-podcast-with-brad-sugars

Welcome to the Big Success Podcast, cutting edge conversations on business and personal success, as well as how to level up. Here's your host, number one business coach in the world, Brad Shogers. I have so much insta with you on this week's episode of the Big Success podcast. Marcus Sheridan, my buddy, the author of They Ask You Answer, a phenomenal book, ridiculous level. You know, when he's listed as one of the 20 speakers you don't want to miss, he's on when comes to web marketing strategies. He built a great pool company and he talks about that and how you use the strategies he learned and the big five questions during the podcast. But one of the

things that when you take his perspective on success and how he's applied that to business, how he's made sure he keeps some form of semblance of life and business working together. You know, if we take a look at this book and you think about that 11 books, CMOs must read, you've got to understand just how powerful this is. Marcus Sheridan is going to blow your mind for the next 30 minutes here on the Big Success podcast. So stay tuned, buckle up, get a notepad, get a pen, let's make some success happen. So Marcus, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you on the Big Success Podcast. First question. Simple question, but not so simple. What is success to Marcus Sheridan?

Well, I heard this probably early on in my career. Here's my simple answer for you, Mr. Schroeder. which is success has been to say yes when you want to say yes and no when you want to say no and you don't have to hesitate on either one of the two dang that's very that is actually a very simple answer um so is that when did you when did you learn that like at what approximate age and how to that was probably in my i was probably in my 30s and you know what happens is the the more let's say your, let's call it your brand grows, right? As you know, the more opportunities you have. People start to come to you with different opportunities and ideas. And you think early on, I got to say yes to these things, right? And then oftentimes those yeses become, you know,

the biggest petas of your life, right? Just like, why did I say yes to that? Why did I, you know, why, why am I even doing this? Why did I accept this invitation on my calendar? Why am I doing this right now, right? And so when we live a life that we can just say yes only to the things that we're incredibly passionate about. So it's either a hell yes or a hell no, nothing in between. You say to me, Marcus, you want to be on my podcast? You and I are friends. Hell yeah, dude. I'm all about that. I love some time with Brad. It's great. But where we get in trouble is if somebody reaches out to us and we're like, I just don't know about that. this and then we're not looking forward to the appointment and it becomes it sucks away our energy,

right, and our thoughts because you can only do so many things. You can only put so many things on your calendar, only have so much focus. So that's why, you know, that's really become clear to me over the last 10 years or so. Yeah. So let's go back then. What was your definition or what were your thoughts on success before that? Is this, did it change? How did that work? The interesting thing about the success question, which I've always found interesting, is it is generally defined by society, right? Society defines oftentimes success, where I think what's really key is we have to, for ourselves, define what that means early on. And I did have some sense for what success would look like for me financially early on. This is going to sound really basic, but I think oftentimes it's the basic, like, things that sound most simple tend to be the most effective, especially from a communication standpoint.

The way I defined financial success early on was my wife could go to the grocery store and not look at any of the prices for the food. So that was a goal that we set as a couple early on. And of course, today she doesn't have to look at the prices for the food. It doesn't mean that she doesn't look. Yeah, yeah. It just means she doesn't have to look. And that's a big deal, Brad, as you know with many children yourself. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So let's go back then. When do you think you chose success? Like when was there a specific incident in life or was there a graphic? gradual thing. When did you choose that success was your path? I think I fell in love with success and we'll call it personal development. When I picked up in college a book at a garage sale for 75 cents, how to win friends and influence people. And 75 cents is what it was. And the copy at the time, because this

It's been over 20 years now for me. The copy at the time was something like 40 years old, right? Somebody was thrown away, right? It's one man's trash, another man's treasure. Right. And so I read that book and immediately fell in love with this idea that I could improve myself. I could make myself better. And so I read How to Win Friends and Influence People three or four times the first year.

And then I started, I've pretty much read it once a year probably since that time. And just many, many other books since then. And then shortly thereafter that, I discovered Jim Rohn. And Jim Rohn became the great mentor of my life even to this day. And I listened to Jim Rohn every single day almost probably, probably every single day of my life, for the most part, over the last 25 years. I've listened to something from Jim Rohn. That's funny because I was Jim Rohn put me onto How to Win Friends and Influence People. It was one of the first two books.

I think I grabbed off to him. So let's go to your formula for success in or your methodology. How does success happen? Well, that is a loaded question, isn't it? Right. Yeah. Yeah. All these podcast questions have to be loaded.

They have to be loaded. I think it's interesting to me that I find society, Brad, teaches us to not embrace our genius, which is a huge mistake. Say things like, be humble. We're almost afraid to say, there's exceptions to this, but we're almost like we're afraid at this point to say, you know, I'm really gifted here. This is my genius.

This is the thing that I'm supposed to do with my life, right? And if you look at the great ones, they identify that thing. They own it. They make it part of their identity. And then they continue to pursue that. They're not embarrassed about the thing. And so the earlier you can identify what that is. And of course, for me, what I realized early on is I had the ability to explain complex things in a simple way.

so that they were easily understood. So early on, I could tell that was my gift right around 19, 20 years old. I have everything, like my entire career has been built around understanding that simple, that simple genius that I have been given. And because I know that, I also recognize that I'm not a bunch of other things. And I don't try to be those things, right? I'm not the guy that puts your IKEA desk together because it takes me twice as long as the next person. And I'm okay with that. I don't really care anymore.

It's just not my zone of genius. It's not where I'm really, really great. Really great is explaining a thing to an audience of one or many in a way that they can understand it. Love it. Love it. Find your genius. So let's flip it over then. How does failure teach success?

How do we learn from Mama's day? Well, generally speaking, I think like 90% of our learning comes from the failures. As you know, it's just like you have to do those things. And I remember when I started off my career, my first journey into entrepreneurship was a swimming pool company out of college, out of university. And I had two partners. And I was reading some books at the time. And they talked about writing your goals down. So I wrote all these goals down, you know, wrote it down in the book because that's what you're supposed to do.

And I had a one year goal and a two year goal and five year goal, 10 year goal. And I remember I had one of my goals was to have all these retail swimming pool and hot tub locations throughout Virginia. It's my goals. And I wanted to have all these like all these retail buildings. And it didn't take me, well, I guess within seven years I realized that retail was the thing that was the noose around my neck. It was these buildings that were destroying our cash flow. And I discovered I had what I would refer to today as an edifice complex. In other words, I thought that the more buildings I had, retail stores, the more successful I was and also appeared to the world.

Yeah. And of course, that was the thing that almost cost me the business. What's cool is I read a book and it might have been good to grade or it might have been another one. But the phrase in the book was, sell the mills. sell the mills. And so I got rid of the retail stores and I said, based on that hedge hall concept and good to great, what could we be the best in the world at? And we, we didn't start focusing on one thing. And I became less concerned with the perception of the world and way more concerned with what was on my actual P&L. That became like how I derived by, you know, approval.

It's like, what's the B&L say versus the fact that my friends are like, man, you got all these stores located in the market. Great, right? You have to learn from... Go past one of your stores. You must be killing it. You must be killing it, right? It's killing me, but yeah.

It's helpful to get your teeth, you know, kicked in a decent amount as an individual, as a business person, whatever you might want to call it. You're on the big success podcast. We're going to take a break. We're going to be back with Marcus Sheridan, to dive into marketing, web traffic, communication, all this stuff, and we might even dive into a little bit about AI. Marketing is the lifeblood of a business, and when done right, it's a phenomenal investment.

It's profitably buying lifetime customers. How you get prospects to identify themselves as needing you is what raise your hand marketing by Brad Sugar's and Josh Bardsley is all about. Getting your suspects to become prospects and raise their hand to say, I'm ready to engage with you. And you're back on the Big Success podcast. He's the author of They Ask You Answer. This was the book that was told that every CMO needs to read.

It's the number one marketing book in 2017. And here we are in 2023 and it's still like you've revised it. You've updated it, all that. Marcus, how do we succeed in this day and age with marketing? Well, I think we have to understand that ultimately marketing is a battle for trust. And so you've got to have like this center point. of your marketing philosophy, strategy, framework, trust. And ask yourself, okay, what do we need to do

to become the most trusted voice in the world? Okay. Now, the beautiful thing, Brad, is if you start there, it doesn't really matter what happens next. It doesn't matter what new platform pops up because you have a guiding strategy that will not change. Many companies don't have that compass set. So because of that, they're constantly changing the brand and like who they are and they're

just what they're trying to do. They don't really, because it's not clear. So I tried to help companies say, okay, with your marketing, let's become the most trusted voice in our space. Now, in order to do that, especially in 2023, I would argue there's three fundamental things that we have to do. Just in a nutshell, So three things. Number one, you got to be willing to talk about what others in your space are not willing to talk about. This is especially true with your website and social media, et cetera. Number two, you got to be willing to show specifically through video what others in your space aren't willing to show. And finally, number three, you got to be willing to sell in a way that others in your space aren't willing to sell. So again, you got to be willing

talk about tell what others in space aren't willing to tell show others aren't willing to show and sell what others aren't willing to sell in a way that they're not willing to sell now if you do that quickly you're going to become the voice of trust in your space and generally speaking when i ask any audience brad so how many of you in this audience right now could honestly say that we show tell and sell in a way that the majority of our competition does not no one can raise their hand so we've got this incredible sea of sameness in most industries, and then people wonder, why am I not standing out? Let's dive over then to blogs. If we're going to show and tell and do that, how do we succeed at creating great blogs out there that help us make sales, not just put up content?

Yeah. So when it comes to your blog strategy, your content strategy, you want to focus with what we teach they ask you answer the framework, very simply, is the Big Five is where you start. The Big Five are the five subjects that drive the needle and pretty much every buyer's journey. The things that they want to know, that they want to understand, that they want to research before they reach out to you. So what are those five subjects? Well, buyers are obsessed with understanding cost. They have all these cost, budget pricing questions. So you've got to be willing to talk about a way that at least gives them enough to say, I feel like I have a sense for things. They don't need to know exact, but they've got to have a strong sense for things. Otherwise, they won't trust you. Number two, buyers want to know

the problems or the negatives or the issues. How could this go wrong? How could this blow up in my face? See, when we get very serious about buying something, that's also when we get very serious about how could this go wrong. So number one is cost. Number two is problems. Number three, comparisons. We love to compare stuff online. Think about how many times you've compared something online. We're constantly comparing. People are asking you, okay, if you're me, which would you choose? constant comparison-based questions. So make sure you address comparison-based questions online. Your product versus your product, their product versus your product, et cetera, et cetera, goes on and on.

Number four, reviews, people are obsessed with reviews. They want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly, though, not just the good. Okay. And then finally, number five, best, best, most, top. Think about how many times you've gone online and search best, such and such. So cost, problems, comparisons, reviews, and best. That should be driving, certainly any type of business blogging strategy in 2020. This is what buyers want to know.

This is what they're researching. And unfortunately, this is what most companies are not willing to talk about. So if you do, you're going to become that voice of trust. So web traffic then overall is the blog is one part of it. What else do we need to do then to succeed at creating great traffic to our side? Well, the cool thing about this they ask you answer type of mindset and addressing their questions, worries, serious issues, concerns. that is a beautiful SEO strategy in and of itself because that is Google's obsession. They're trying to give you the best, most specific, relevant answer to your question as quickly

as possible. And so when you do this, it forces you to think like your buyer, their questions, their worries, their fears, their concerns, their issues, and address those questions through text, through video on your website. So that is, from a traffic perspective, that's one of the best ways you can do it. Now, in 2023, if you said to me, Brad, what's the quickest way to get awareness, what's one of the things that's easily working the best. It's short form vertical style video. It's just incredible in terms of how effective it is if you do it the right way. We're talking YouTube shorts, Facebook and Instagram, Reels, and TikTok. The cool thing is, is you can take a vertical video. You can produce it for almost nothing. And you can upload it across all four of those

particular platforms, which is, you know, very, very efficient. And what's interesting is the exact same video is going to do different most of the time on Instagram as it would on, let's say, YouTube short. So I would strongly suggest that you consider doing vertical style video. Now, if you're going to do that, though, three quick suggestions for you. This is the keys to vertical style video, short style videos. Number one, you have to take what you do within your business, within your world, which you think is normal and you got to be willing to show it to everybody else and understand that it's not necessarily normal to them. So overcome the curse of knowledge, show that which you do, that's number one. Now, that sounds obvious, but let's go to two and

three. Now, number two is when you're creating those vertical style video, you want people to stay, and one of the best ways to make them stay is to follow what we call the three-second rule. And the three-second rule means you want to have a cut every three seconds in terms of the scene. So you want to show an entire story in 60 seconds or less generally, but you want it to have all these different looks about it so that it constantly feels like it's changing and it's evolving really, really quickly. Okay. So that's number two, the three second rule. And if you watch some of the best short style videos out there, it's like, oh, oh, oh, it's happening really, really fast that we're seeing the change in the scene. And then number three, you want to create what's called a curiosity gap.

Curiosity gap at the beginning of the video makes the person say, how's this going to end? What's the payoff going to be, right? And so there's a curiosity. that occurs. There's the gap there that holds them and then they're able to watch the thing until the end. Right. So that's the key to short video. Incredibly effective. The algorithms want you to do short video. And it's a quick way to get incredible awareness in 2023. You know, it's amazing when you talk about the three second rule. I try to get my kids to watch movies that I loved when I was young. And it was definitely not a three second rule back then. it didn't change every three seconds, but if you don't show them that, they get so bored.

It's crazy. But even if you look at, let's say, Top Gun 1 versus Maverick, okay, right? It's like the pacing of the movie was was dramatically different. I mean, there was just a lot more action in Maverick. And this is why it could be argued that this is one of the first times we've seen, you know, an iconic movie have an iconic follow-up. That's very, very rare. but what they really understood was making sure that we're not allowing people's attention spans to dip.

We're just constantly keeping them interested. From the start, I mean, you have this unbelievable mock 10 scene all the way to the end of the movie. It never stops. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy the difference in speed. So that, okay, communications obviously shifted over the time. How do we succeed in communication in this day and age?

This is one of the subjects for me, Brad, that I'm just so utterly passionate about. Let me give you a couple of suggestions across the board, especially online. Somebody once said to me, you know, Marcus, it's dumb not to dumb it down. And I thought about that for a minute. I'm like, it's like, huh. But this is the reason why there's many people that you and I have watched before on a video or we've even read or seen on a stage where immediately they turned us off. If you said to them, well, why'd they turn you off?

If you're forced to answer, oftentimes the answer is, because that person thinks that he or she is smarter than me. When you release the need to appear smarter than your audience, and you're literally just looking for communion with the audience, the audience feels that very, very quickly. And so they lose that initial guard in that kind of, competition of this person elevates themselves above me. If you can eliminate that from the fray, you've disarmed the situation, and now you can speak from the same place and you can achieve

that community. That's one of the biggest keys. And a lot of the folks that are producing like social videos across the board, like friends that will come to me and say, hey, Marcus, can you watch this speaker reel of mine? I'm like, you're trying to sound smart. aren't. I can tell. But I didn't know I was. There's all these things we do subconsciously and consciously that give that away. If you release that, now you're going to really start to engender some trust. Love it. Love it. How about one-to-one communication? Any keys to that one? Or is it the same thing only in a different format? Yeah. I've got a book coming out probably later this year on what is transformative communication.

And, you know, we've all heard the phrase active listening before. And in fact, you talk to most salespeople and you say, are you good at asking questions? Most say yes. But then what we found, Brad, is that if you test them on this skill, most fail miserably. And the reason for that is we understand the basic questions that we're supposed to ask in our mind. Let's say as a salesperson or even as a friend, peer, how's your weekend, right? Well, we don't really know what's supposed to come next. But what comes next changes every time based on what is actually said.

And so learning how to go deeper in a way that you really get to the core of the matter. and if you get very skilled, you can get there quickly. That makes for a great communicator. And one other thing that I would say is you want to, ideally, the best communicators, essentially what they are is their pathfinders. And what I mean by a pathfinder is, and that's a military phrase, and the pathfinders were the folks that went in early and figured out the routes that, let's say, the army could take or whomever would take in order to achieve the mission. So if you see yourself

as a pathfinder, you know it's not your job to give answers. It's not your job. As a leader, it's not your job to give answers. I mean, sometimes it is yes. You know, bottom line is you've got to make a call. But if you want to develop anybody around you, you have to become a pathfinder. And Pathfinder understands how to ask questions in such a perfect way that the individual they're talking to, that singular person or even their audience, is able to come up with the answer themselves. And they're able to do it in such a way that they're, to make it really simple, and this is how you know that you do this well, Brad, how often does somebody say to you, and this could be a child, this could be a loved one, this could be a coworker, how often does somebody say to you,

you're right, you're right, that's right, that's what I should do. Now, whose answer was that? That was Brad's, right? That was Brad's answer. If they're saying you're right, they're giving you the credit. They don't own the answer. It's not their thing. Yeah, they might do it, but it ain't their thing. Whereas if someone is saying in the midst of talking with them, if you're the leader and just asking questions, and suddenly they say, you know what? I know what I should do. That's magic. That's what we call a light bulb moment. Well, how many light bulb moments do you induce on a regular basis with your friends, with your family, with your peers? If you can induce light bulb moments, you are changing the people's lives around you.

Love it. Sales. Something you talked about when we did that tour of the UK was how using marketing to help sales these days, especially when you look at the stats that you teach around, you know, 40-odd percent of the market doesn't want to deal with a salesperson and people are 70 to 80 percent sold before they go in to buy. How do we succeed in sales today? Yeah. So a bunch of different fronts here that we could go on. Number one, you have to accept that buyers don't want to talk to a salesperson until they feel like they are ready. They're informed and they're not going to make a mistake. So it means you've got to give them more information than you did in the past on the front end. You've got to allow them to do things like maybe something like a pricing calculator or a product selection tool that has a series of questions that makes a recommendation to them. those types of tools are incredibly powerful. They're incredibly effective. And that's what people want. So that starts the sales process. Now, once you have that one to one, a couple things have to happen. You better be a stinking expert. Every single person that's listening to this right now, Brad,

has an experience in the last year where they said, yeah, I can tell that I know more than the salesperson knows about the thing that I'm asking them about. That's not a good feeling. I had one yesterday myself. I'm like, this person, he's answering my questions, but he doesn't. to know. He doesn't know the answer. He's winging it right now. I can tell he's winging it. And so that's hard, it's very, very hard for me to want to do business with somebody like that. So you better be an expert. And then you better understand how to ask, this goes back to our previous conversation, deeper, better discovery questions than your peers. You can't just be on a conveyor belt. We've got those five main questions you're going to ask. You're going to ask every single time.

You know, it's a tragedy. I see a lot of these, you know, sales call recordings. I, you know, watch them. especially with AI now, you can do a lot of that at scale. And most like sales demos are just an utter train wreck. They're not a back and forth. There's just, hey, I'm going to show you this thing. And then at the end, you say, you have any questions. And it's just like it's a disaster. And that's because we don't understand how to ask better, deeper, more effective questions.

We got to get back to that. Part of the reason for that is sales training is almost dead. on arrival. Role plays are almost non-existent within organizations around the world. People for some reason are afraid of a little bit of feedback. And that's got to change if people want to change their results. Love it. You're on the Big Success podcast. We'll be back in just a moment with Marcus Sheridan. We're going to dive in to going from good to great. Marcus Sheridan is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker known for his unique ability to excite, engage and motivate live audiences with his simple yet powerful transformational business approach.

To learn more about Marcus Sheridan, please visit Marcus Sheridan.com. And you're back on Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugar's your host. We are with Marcus Sheridan. They ask you answer is the book. It's a best seller all over the world. We've been talking a lot about success, Marcus. I want to dive into, though. What's the difference in your mind for people that go for good versus people that go for great? Right. It seems to me the difference between good to great and a nutshell is it goes back to personal development for me. So a lot of folks I have found when they achieve a certain skill level, they stop working on the skill. Let me give you a really simple example. When I was 19 years old, I was a missionary for my church in Chile.

Now, I didn't know any English when I went to Chile. And a lot of the people I was with, they did. Actually, I didn't know any Spanish when I went to Chile. And a lot of my friends, they did not know how to speak Spanish when they, you know, went to Chile. And what we saw was a pattern. There was a pattern of most missionaries stopped improving the English speaking. missionaries, the native, the, the, if your native tongue was English, after about six months of being in, in the country, your skill level, your proficiency level stopped right there in terms of speaking a second language. Why? Because most of them stopped learning the language. Whereas there was a smaller few that said, I'm not satisfied with now being good enough. I'm going to continue. you to really learn this language, study it every single day that I'm out here. And those are the ones that became truly world class with the language. Some of them became better speaking at Spanish than the native speakers, right? And that is actually possible to do. I think we do that a lot of times with life,

Brad, right? We reach a certain point. We're like, I'm good. We check out for the most part in terms of the personal development. And that's it. So let's flip that to goals then. What What's the difference between the person that sets the million dollar goal versus the person sets the billion dollar goal or the 100,000 versus the million? What's the difference between people that go for those massive results? Well, I actually think for that specific example, the biggest difference is their circle of friends. They just haven't seen what's possible from others. and so what they're thinking is I'm striving for something really big here in my mind because that world hasn't been opened up to them.

Whereas you know how it is. It's like, you know, billionaires have very different conversations in millionaires. Very, very different conversations. And so it goes back to Maxwell's law of the lid, right? It's like we become the sum total of our five best friends. And I think when it comes to those business circles, it's, and I know you've had this like incredible like journey over the years. And I would assume to a degree your business circles have changed over time simply because you wanted to have deeper conversations that reached further out than you otherwise would have had. had you stayed at the same level.

Yeah. I think the greatest thing of success is it allows you to reach other successful people and allows to do that. One of the reasons I did this podcast is I think there's a lot of people out there that need that circle, Marcus, that just can't access. They can't call Marcus Sheridan and go, hey, Marcus, can I ask you a few questions, whereas I can do that? And that's why I love this podcast. So let's dive then across to a different subject just for a moment because it's topical. You bought it up earlier, AI. How do you think that's going to play out with, specifically with marketing, I guess,

is the main thing we want to look at. AI is not a fad, friends. And if your listener is thinking it's a fad, you will be sorely mistaken. It's affecting us in ways that we can't even fathom. We can't imagine right now. And one of the ways that you know it's not a fad, Brad, is because, you know, there's lots of stuff that have been overhyped. I mean, even within the last few years, stuff's been overhyped.

Take, for example, VR and AR, the Metaverse, 3D printing. Everybody wanted to talk about them for about five minutes, but they didn't really catch fire. And one way you know that something is absolutely going to catch fire is by watching youth in their application of the thing. So, for example, they've done studies and they know that over 80% of students right now that are high school or college are using chatGBT. Over 80% are using it right now. So we had adoption at rates we've never seen before with chatGBT. And if you ask college high school students are using 3D printing right now, almost nobody is. are you doing ARVR? Very, very, very few are. Metaverse, very, very few are. Right. And so this is how you know very, very quickly, that this is going to be a big, big deal. The ones that are pushing back on it just simply haven't used it and haven't played with it enough or are trying to make a name as a contrarian. But the reality is nobody knows where this is going to go. I do know that I've already had a lot of conversations where people have said to me things like, Marcus, do I really need these people?

or this person on staff if AI can do this. And there's been times what I've had to be honest and say, yeah, you really don't need that person. I wouldn't want to be a paralegal right now. You know, you know this probably, Brad. It's just like as you're in business, you own multiple companies, you know, you're dealing with legal stuff at different times.

I have, like, the paralegal work I've been able to do with AI alone. blows my mind. I'd love to be an attorney right now. You could have a full-blown law firm with, you know, 30 different paralegals working for you, but nobody's employed and not paying any of them. I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say that. Your research department is better than it's ever been, and it costs you nothing now. So AI's change of the world. It's going to change the world as marketing, but listen, folks, if you're going to do that, you better become dang good at storytelling because you've got to add the human element to it. You need to speak in first, person, not in third person, I shouldn't feel like I'm reading something that came from

chat GPT or AI. I should read something in your voice, your tone, your style. So I'm not anti-AI. And in fact, I don't think search engines like Google are going to have any sustainable like, hey, anti-AI approach. It's just not really viable. They're not going to be able to do that. They're not going to, I don't even think they're going to be able to distinguish in large

degrees in the future between AI and human. and there's going to be mistakes on both sides of that. And so my point to this is start experimenting, get in the sandbox, start using it. If you have the ability as a business owner to give your team 30 minutes, 60 minutes a day to play an AI for the purpose of becoming more efficient at that thing they do, then you should, I'd highly recommend. I know for us we find it just makes people able to achieve five times, six times the amount of work. If 80% of the work is done by chat, GPT, and then all I have to do is edit that. Life is very, very simple. Yeah, yeah, that's a win.

So let's go to the quick fire round. How do you succeed? Short question, short answers. How do you succeed at health? Set up religious disciplines. religious disciplines, you cannot break away from that. You do it, you do it every time. Really quick, when it comes to, for example, I travel a lot.

I have a religion that first thing I do when I get to the hotel is work out. That's the first thing I do. I'm not allowed to do anything else. That's number one. How do you succeed at self-development? Well, I don't believe in this idea of you have to read a lot of books, but I do. do believe in the idea of there's two ways to read a book. You can read a book to get through it, or you can read the book so it goes through you. And certainly the latter is the goal.

So I'd much rather read a book five times over the course of a month than say, hey, I read five books this month. Got it. How do you succeed in goal setting? Well, I think the nerdy answer here, but it's really the best answer is you want to set smart goals. And if you've never heard of smart goals before, Google it. But the key is a good goal. I think you should be able to measure it. It should stretch you. It should be achievable. You should have a time frame. Right. To me, those are good goals. If you make them smart goals, generally, that is a proven system that's worked for many, many years. How do you succeed at fun, vacations, enjoying life? I have a belief on this that doesn't isn't necessarily shared by others.

I don't try for work-life balance. I think that's unattainable. What I try to do is I try to have as much fun as possible and integrate personal and professional as much as possible. And so if I'm going on a trip, I'm going to try to take a family member, if not like more than one. because I want to integrate the two together.

I don't believe that they should be completely separate. And so for me, that's allowed me to have, that's allowed me to have a ton of fun. And one other thing is, I once heard early on that somebody tell me, he's like, my goal is to have a new career every 10 years of my life. Now, that was a really, really cool one.

And so for me, I was a pool guy from 25, to 35 years old. And from 35 to roughly 45 years old, I had a marketing agency in speaking, and I continue to do that, and I still own the pool company. And then from 45 on, I've got, when I was roughly 45 years old, I started an offshore fishing brand and company because I love fishing, and I wanted to find a way to do that thing that I love fishing, but build something really fun and cool out of a business. And so I'm going to have a career every 10 years. I might keep the previous ones, right? Keep those. But this keeps me invigorated and I keep having fun. So final question. What's the best advice you ever got on success or the best quote you ever got on success?

I would say, I'm going to botch us up a little bit, but no success in life is more important than success within the walls of your own home. nothing needs to be added to that perfectly said Marcus Sheridan thank you for being on the big success podcast you're on the big success podcast we'll be back next week more learning more success keep learning keep growing and the success will come and that's the big success podcast for today hopefully you took a lot of notes hopefully you learned a bunch and hopefully you're going to take action on it

BS Brad sugars big success take action check all the show notes for all of the links so make sure that you have links to every single thing that every speaker has in our show notes. Check them now, click the links, take advantage of it. And I'll speak to you again next time on the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugar. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.