RHS 001 - A Masterclass in Communication with Marcus Sheridan

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Excludes Hawaii. Welcome to the very first episode of The Ryan Hanley Show.
I am Ryan Hanley, and today I give you Marcus Sheridan. My friend, my mentor, and honestly, one of the most decent human beings in the entire world.
He's also

incredibly smart, one of the best marketers, business owners, leaders, and certainly public speakers I've ever met. And today we talk about why communication is the future of your business.
my thing has been digital sales and marketing for a while right and in fact in the revised version of they ask you answer i started to say digital sales and marketing a lot more than inbound right started replacing the phrase with it and um i I'm thrilled because it took us over 11 months to do our first a hundred thousand dollars in sales for the event last year. It took us four days to do a hundred thousand dollars in sales for the event for this, for this next year.
It's amazing. Yeah.
So, um, pretty, it's pretty excited about that. Pretty excited about that, man.
It's awesome. It's awesome, dude.
I mean, I've been following along from afar, essentially, you know, just watching what you've been doing. And it's awesome.
It's everything that you talked about, you know, a year ago or whenever it was. It's wild to think that a year ago I was talking to you about impact and I was leaving Trust and Choice and stuff and we were having all those conversations.

You know, all that stuff that you were talking about, everything you said, just watching seems like it's happening, which is, it's phenomenal.

Well, I mean, honestly, I'm not just saying this.

I feel the exact same towards you.

I don't know if it's all front, but dude, I mean, it looks like you just just in your element right now and growing something that it's it's like thrilling for me to see you outside of the insurance space yeah and to you know to really start to just flex all those other muscles that you have um that you weren't necessarily able to flex before right because you in that box. And to see you start to work on your personal brand again, it's very, just for me, it's very fulfilling, satisfying to see.
Thank you. You know, it has been, this is, you know, actually, I just wrote about this the other day.
I saw this exchange between Casey Neistat and Gary Vaynerchuk. And they were talking about why you need to say no more.
And even though at the end, Gary throws in a caveat around, you know, he says yes, more than he should or whatever. The essence of the piece of content was we need to say no more.
And I think that that is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard in my entire life. And even though I understand that at a certain point, you are so inundated with offers that you do have to say no to things.
And I can appreciate that. I think to tell people to say no to more stuff is terrible, terrible advice.
and I, so I wrote a little, I've been doing this little micro blog thing on Instagram or whatever, or just share a lot of stuff that I've done on my mind. And I just said like, that, that's bad advice.
Like I didn't call them out specifically because it wasn't about that. It was about, you know, I just feel like I've said yes to a million things, a million meetings that, you know, drives my wife crazy because she's like, why are you going to that thing? You know, that person will never, you know, you're never going to do this or that.
And this came out of this opportunity that I couldn't, I couldn't feel more fulfilled right now. Um, this opportunity came out of just saying yes to meetings that had no bearing on my career at the time and getting to know somebody who I couldn't, you know, other than just getting, you know, giving him a little bit of advice on marketing and stuff, just listening to what he had going on and sharing some of my experience.
You know, there was no monetary exchange. It was just two guys

having coffee and talking and that happened again and again and again. And then all of a sudden, here I am, you know, and I just think I, it's serendipity, bro.
And I couldn't, I have no way of explaining how I got here other than I feel lucky that I am. Dude.
So I had to ask, what has been your biggest learning since you've become like the head of this like exploding ideally company? Like what's, you had an idea going in and I'm sure you also knew there's just so much I don't know right but what's what's been the top one or two that were either surprises um or just clear like wow I never would have known that or thought to know that I had no idea what I was getting into beyond like I knew I liked the people and I believed in the product,

right? So the hard part for me with insurance was even though I valued what insurance was, there was no love for the thing. And ultimately I saw it as a commodity and in all the stuff we talked about a million times with this, I said, this is an opportunity to try to share a product that has real deep, meaningful impact in the lives of the people who need it, right? Who, who, for whatever reason are looking for something, um, whether it's community or camaraderie, or they just need to blow off steam so that they're not angry at their kids when they get home from work that day.
Like this product has that for them. And, and I knew a lot of the people I'd gotten to know the people from just being around.
So other than that, I had no idea. I'd never been part of a franchise before.
No idea what it meant to franchise a business. I knew little to nothing outside of, you know, kind of what you, the basic stuff about the fitness industry.
I didn't really know the inner workings of the business. But I knew the people.
And I think at the end of the day, you know, that's what sold me on it was the people. I just said, gosh, if I get to work with these people every day and I don't have to get on airplanes all the time anymore, this is a, this is the right thing to do.
Um, and so, so that's kind of where I came at it from. So I didn't have, I didn't, other than I knew I was going gonna have to learn a lot fast.
I didn't, I didn't have a ton of expectations. That being said, to answer your actual question, now that I've been in what I've learned, I've learned, oh my gosh, I feel like I've been through three MBA courses in seven months.
You know, we, I've, I've definitely learned how to pivot fast, you know, how to have tough conversations with vendors, with staff. I've had to fire people.
I've had to reposition people. I've had to, you know, share bad news.
You know, we're a startup. So, you know, I've had to adjust benefits that people were used to getting because of transferring.
I've had to force people to make hard decisions. I've had to make hard decisions.
I've had to, you know, cut longtime vendors.

I've had to readjust. I've positioned capital and resources in places that didn't work.
And I've had to make decisions rapidly and decisively to change course. And, you know, where we are today is really interesting.
This product started or this path started with our product ultimately being a franchise. So Marcus Sheridan wanted to open a metabolic location in his hometown.
You'd become a franchisee and everything that comes with that. Okay.
Well, philosophically, we made a lot of decisions as to how to present you with this version of our product in a box, which our core philosophy is all about people. So a lot of what would be considered our peers, even though many of them are much larger than us today, are all about technology.
They have, they're leveraging heart rate monitors and screens. And if anything, they're trying to remove the human as much as possible from the process while still keeping them there in what I would consider a fairly shallow way.
We are the opposite in every regard. It is all about the human beings.
There is limited technology. It is about human trainers giving everything they have, every class to 48 people.
And when you put that much emphasis on the humans, things like training and brand philosophy and buy-in matter immensely. So we're positioning our business or repositioning our business and had to pivot many ways because we've already started to learn certain things that work.
It's, it's just, you know, how fast you have to make decisions has been eyeopening to me. And then having to live with those decisions and pivot off of your pivots, or just course off of, you know, course adjustments, it's tough to keep it all together.
But I think the decisiveness is probably the how rapidly you have to make decisions is probably what I've learned the most. How many employees do you have right now? We've 10.
If you count the trainers, we have 35 more. Yeah.
And how many franchises do you have? We have, we've sold two locations and we have six current locations.

We have a total of eight.

We have our ninth, which hopefully we'll sell in the next week or two.

But I'd say the major pivot that we're making.

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Help keep your teens safe. Sign up for green light infinity at greenlight.com slash podcast and our business is away from a pure franchise model and we're going to start opening concurrently corporate locations because really when what we're trying to do for our business to work brand is all that matters i mean the brand has to be consistent if you go to the Syracuse location and it sucks then every location sucks if you go to the you know in the capital district where I am that's they call Albany you go to any of our locations the community is slightly different but the workout the quality that it's delivered pace it's delivered in, everything is exactly the same.

Like if you go to Saratoga, Clifton Park, Del Mar, it doesn't matter.

You're getting the same workout, just maybe a slightly different version of it based on who the trainer is.

Okay.

If you go then go to Syracuse and the workout is terrible, it's energy the music doesn't work the floor is a disaster the trainers walking around like they don't care that impacts the entire ecosystem of of the gyms and because of the intensity in the training process what we decided is and this is this has been a major course correction for us, is we're going to start opening corporate locations and then selling open operating profitable locations to people as franchises. Oh, wow.
Instead of having them open the locations themselves, because it's that first six to 12 months that's really where things can fall apart. But if we've established an operating model with a studio manager who we know can do the job, all the back office stuff is incredibly easy to transfer over.
So that's been a major pivot for us. And our goal is in the next 12 months to open 23 corporate locations.
23 to 12 months to a month. Okay.
Yeah. So, yeah.
So, So know, I'm franchising river pools, right? I did not know that. Yeah.
Talk to me about that process. Yeah.
So we started the legalese of that sometime last year. And so there's only one other good franchise model in the swing pool industry called Premier Pools.
They're the largest concrete pool company in the world because of it. So they have franchisees all over the U.S., North America.
And so we went from being a local installer in Virginia, then we started manufacturing, manufactured our own pools for a season or two. Then we started manufacturing for other dealers.
And now we are taking leveling up further to offer the franchise. And so we have franchisees,

one in Utah, two soon, and one in Texas, probably four or five soon. one in Arizona with a few more quickly on the way.

And then we have another handful on the East Coast.

So we probably have like 10 right now.

This is really our first year selling our franchise model.

Buy-in is low right now.

So it's only a $30,000 buy-in.

And they have to pay a percentage of their business back to us. And really what they're getting from us is we're handling, they get all the systems that they don't have to learn, which is no pool guy for the most part is system minded, right? They just don't think that way.
So you get the systems, they get the marketing machine, the lead generation, all that, you know, we do for them and working on a more refined sales model that we can teach to them as well. That's been a little bit of a challenge, right? So doing that.
But overall, it's pretty exciting. I find that it sells itself in a lot of ways.
The issue that we're having is scale because we bootstrapped financially the manufacturing of all this stuff, which puts a cash crunch on all the time because manufacturing makes you a logistics company as well because you have to ship the crap all over the country at that point and so it's it's a set of like headaches that come with that and um and you've got to be able to inventory um which is it's expensive to inventory pools because it's not like you're it's not like many products it's just like you have to have yards you have to have distribution yards around the country so that there's a point where you could grab a pool near you in new york instead of having to ship from virginia every single time as Right. So, um, we're still green, but it's going, it's an actual company, you know, that will, will pay taxes on it this year and all those things.
Right. And, uh, but it's pretty exciting.
And, um, I think it's, it's, it's, you know, I thought about franchising about six or seven years ago, let it go. And then my business partner, Jason, got real excited about it after I got out of it and pursued it aggressively.
And so that's where we are with it right now. And luckily, I've got a really strong relationship with Premier Pools, who's that other big, big franchise.
I've spoken at their dealer conference a couple times now. So we have a very open source sharing that we're doing between us right now.
Because, you know, they can benefit from our marketing know-how and we can benefit from their franchise know-how. But I think this is probably a conversation that you and I will want to have more and more in the future, just learning from each other as we go through this.
And to your point, maintaining the brand and, you know, just how to handle so much of the, that comes with it, the logistics that come with it. Yeah.
I, you know, it's been, this has been, I mean, I know you're the same way, but I probably read about a thousand articles, listen to podcasts. I've been to franchise trade show, uh, down in New York city.
We have a franchise consultant that we work with

who, who I enjoy and you get a thousand different perspectives. And basically,

basically what it all comes down to for me that the rub is you have to maintain the quality of

the product and you have to maintain the quality of the brand. And it is those two things at the cost of all other things, because as soon as they, those two, either one of those things fall apart, either one, the franchise is hosed.
And, um, and you know, many of the decisions we make come back to, we would rather grow slower. We would rather grow regionally and then super regionally and then nationally versus expanding out quickly so that we can keep that quality control.
So that if someone goes to one of our locations in Buffalo and then has a trip, a business trip to Boston and there's a metabolic in Boston. They're getting the same experience because the moment they don't, the entire ecosystem falls apart.
And, um, you know, that's been an interesting thing to think about because I've never, um, I haven't had to solve that problem before. So it's been, it's been very interesting.
It's exciting times, man. It's cool to see what's happened with us, you know, since, since we met in the journey we've, we've been on and we're so outrageously similar and we're both, you know, I would say health on a healthy level, obsessed with personal development and progress.
Yeah. You know what I mean? But we love our families and we're trying to do its best on both ends.
And we have a little bit of a stallion in each one of us that just wants to run and run really hard. Yeah.
It's pretty cool. Yeah.
It's hard to stable that sometimes. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, they buck.
That's what they do.

There is no doubt about that. But, you know, it's fun.
You know, one of the things that I really enjoyed about and I don't. One of the things that I've enjoyed about this particular challenge has been in my previous life in the insurance industry, you were always beholden to someone.
There was always a gatekeeper, even if you were at the top of the chain, your gatekeeper was, was, there was always someone else on the chain who was, who had the potential to throttle what you were doing at all times. And I've talked to you about this hundreds of times and how frustrated that made me.
And, you know, I mean, basically probably the downfall of my career in the insurance industry to a certain extent was my unwillingness to yield

to that process. And just, you know, you make enough, you rattle enough cages and eventually

they just kick you out. Yeah.
So they love you until they don't. Yes, exactly.
And that's,

you know, and that's basically what happened was, did I want to be this rebel

without a cause or move on?

And that was the decision I had to make.

And I'm glad that I made the one I did.

What's so interesting about this particular challenge about metabolic is that there's

no one that can stop us except for us.

As long as our product is good, there's no regulatory body because I guess technically they could take away our franchise registration. We could just open corporate locations and be a non-franchise if we wanted.
You know what I mean? As long as the metabolic product is good and we are delivering results and we're building the communities that we know how to build, and we're taking care of our people and all the things that make that I believe make our business special. As long as we're doing that, we can grow as far and as fast and make this thing as valuable as we want to without anybody throttling us.
And that feels very, it's like I had a sandbag on my back and I got to kind of like schlump it off, right? There was no longer this, this person isn't going to like what you're doing or saying or isn't going to agree with your methodology, so they're going to stop you from doing that. You know, we want to try something, we try it.
If it doesn't work, we toss it out the window and we move forward. And there's, that is a, I envied people who had that ability, you in particular for a long time that you always seem to be able to go as far and as fast as you wanted because you were in a space that allowed you to do that there was no one you know and again from the outside and I know that's not always exactly the case but it always you know red tape wasn't there yes and I always felt like there was someone holding my arm behind my back and when I got here it was like all of a sudden I was unchained and it's like what do do I do now? You know, so that's been really interesting.
That's been an, you know, you bastard, this is what you've been experiencing for the last 15 years. That's amazing, bro.
It's great. So, so I think this is supposed to be a podcast um um, that we were recording too, but, uh, I could just, I could just rap like this the whole time.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we can start now if you want, or we can do whatever you want to do.
You're the boss. You're the star of the show.
So you just tell me, I mean, I guess we probably have already started. I, uh, you know, the, the, the reason that I, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll bring in, um, you know, maybe I'll, I'll talk to the, talk to the people who are listening because there's probably certain parts of this that are worth sharing but that we've talked about already.
But the reason that I wanted to have you in particular on and why you'll be the first guest of this show. So your episode will be the very first one launched in the launch week, which is coming up in a few weeks from our recording of this, but the people are listening to it.
It's today.

The reason I wanted you to be the first one is, is a bunch of reasons. One, you have certainly been my longest tenured friend in the digital space.
Someone who I have admired for a very long time, not just in the work that you do, but in your ambition, the way you manage ambition with also being an incredibly high quality person, which is very tough to do. Your discipline, the way that you have gone for things.
And I look at some of the decisions that I've made in my own my own life and I haven't you know invested in myself at certain times and I watched you do it and been enviated of it in a good way in an inspiring way not in like a jealousy oh yeah yeah you know it's pushed me harder and and ultimately um and in kind of the crux of what I think this iteration of of a podcast podcast of, of what I want this show to be is, is talking really around leadership and development and personal development. And just, these are the topics that, that really get me up in the morning.
It's why I write every morning at 5am is just, I don't think today we as people think enough about ourselves. We think about, Hey, Marcus has this.
I want that. Why isn't my life like Marcus's right? That I think that's, that's what social media has driven us to.
It's why we're so divided as a country politically. And I think you are someone who is very introspective and looks at, you know, the way you talk about dissecting one of your performances on stage as a keynote speaker.
Maybe that's a good place to start. Like we've sat in, you know, I'm usually drinking a beer and you're having a Coke or something, but we've sat in a bar at different events and I've listened to you break down different performances that you've had.
And the way that you think about them, I think is, is it would be unique for a lot of people to think about, Hey, I delivered this type of business performance and now I'm going to tear it all the way down and think about ways that I can do it better. And maybe you could start there and just talk about how you're able to dissect something like that with humility and with personal honesty to grow.
Because very few people, myself included at times, are able to do that. So I'm just interested in how you think about that.
So many things that I feel like talking about right now as we have this conversation that are on my mind. One of them is this, Ryan, that I think one of the greatest challenges that individuals have and brands have, and most don't realize they have this, is that when they put themselves in a public situation

to be seen, to be heard, they try to sound smart.

Now, if you ask most people, are you trying to sound smart? They would say, no, I'm not trying that. It manifests itself subconsciously all the time with individuals.
This is the same reason why you could look hypothetically at a thumbnail for a YouTube video and say, I don't like that guy. What makes you say that? You haven't even clicked play yet, but yet there's something about that person you don't like.
It's because they're trying to appear or to sound smart. Again, brands do this all the time.
When we let that go, the magic starts to happen. I'm really serious about this, right? Because we don't feel like we have the need to prove anything at all.
So I've got a company, I've got a few different ones, as you know, one of which is an agency. and we do, it's very heavy into consulting.
And so I have a huge amount of, you know,

20 to 40 somethings that are, you know, working for me. The biggest coaching issue that I have when we are meeting with each other and we're analyzing a call they had with a prospect or with a customer is I have to say over and over again.
Now, why are you trying to prove yourself right there? If you release that need, you're going to have so many more abilities to create magic in the moment than you ever could. And so let me give an example of what I'm talking about.
When you release the need to feel smart, it immediately puts you on the same plane as the person that you're speaking to. So it doesn't matter if you're, you know CEO of a powerful company or it doesn't matter if you're speaking to the lowest level employee.
When you are not trying to speak quote with that authority or with, hey, look at me, I'm intelligent, that's gone. And now you're on the same plane.
You get immediate respect from that person. So this is how you can go in any situation and engender essentially authority because authority comes from releasing the need to prove yourself.
You've seen this yourself as a speaker. As a speaker, you can tell at times when somebody will get up there and they're trying to look cool.
They're trying to look intelligent. They're trying to be impressive.
Whereas you also see the person that is completely comfortable with who they are in that moment. And you can't help but endear yourself to that person over the course of the 45 minutes or the hour, whatever that thing is.
When I'm speaking, there's two things that are happening. I'm obsessing about how the audience is interacting with me in that moment.
I'm noticing all these little things in that moment. It's almost like I'm looking from above down at myself and the audience, and I'm seeing the little things that are happening as I'm going through it the whole time.
The people that are checking in, the people that are checking out, the people that are giving energy, the people that are taking energy,

the jokes that land versus the ones that do not.

And why do they land it in one moment,

but they didn't land in another occasion?

Like, why are these things?

I'm looking at it the whole time.

It's this beautiful science.

I'm trying to understand the why

because I'm so freaking curious as to like,

and obsessed about this thing

that you and I call communication.

I'm obsessed with why is that working that moment?

But I'm also obsessed with what am I doing

Thank you. because I'm so freaking curious as to like, and obsessed about this thing that you and I call communication.
I'm obsessed with why is that working in that moment, but I'm also obsessed with what am I doing right then, right? So I'm looking at the audience and I'm looking at myself and I'm watching what I am doing and analyzing if it is or is not working. Not in a way of of concern because it's never like that.
It's always just clearly the observer saying this is or is not working without emotion. Rarely ever is there any emotion in the observer in this context.
And so when I'm done, I'm unpackaging all those things, playing them out, why it did and did not work, almost to a science, because there's always something there, right? And if you do that enough over time, you start to see what works. A great comedian would do the same thing, right? Because people think that they just, you know, come up with this stuff.
No, they're working it, right? It evolves. A joke evolves over time.
A talk evolves over time. Something lands just right.
And you're like, I'm going to save that. I'm going to store that for later.
But also want to know, why did it land? Like, why did it resonate? Or why did it fail miserably in that moment? So these are the things that fascinate me. And I think about them an obscene amount of time.
Yeah. I think, you know, I think when you stop having to prove yourself, you start listening.
And that's really, you know, what I heard you just say is you're, you're able to actually listen to what's happening instead of thinking, okay, here's a moment where I can inject why I should be here. Here's a moment why I can – you're actually – So, Hannah, this is a big deal.
This is what you're saying. Think about how what you just said affects every facet of society.
A lot of people know me for a sales and marketing guy. And one thing that you and I haven't talked much about is I'm speaking a ton now on communication, leadership, communication and communication in the workplace.
Just because, you know, I'm really passionate about this. Like I love helping speakers, love helping presenters.
I love helping leaders. I love helping managers say it better.
Express the thing better than they otherwise would. And the principles that we're talking about right now, this is completely aligned with it.
As a parent, let's say, your child comes to you and asks you a question. Now, the majority of parents in today's society, they do two things.
Well, they do one thing, but it has two reasons. The thing that they do is they answer the question quickly.
Now, why do parents, I'm not saying everyone, but the majority, why do they quickly answer their child's question? Number one is because they're efficient, i.e. impatient, okay, with the process.
But number two, this is the part that most don't recognize, but it's fundamentally true, I can assure you this. They want to appear smart to their kids.
They want to be the hero. What is the reason why when a team member comes to a manager and asks the question, why the majority of managers are so quick just to give the answer? The reason goes back to they think it's more efficient, which it's inherently not, and they want to feel smart, to feel validated, and to be seen as that manager.
Same thing with a speaker. My speaking style, my managerial style, my parental style, it's all the exact same principle, and it's essentially this.
What my obsession is, I'm always asking myself, is it possible for this audience in this moment? So it could be a child. When I say audience, I'm just, it could be anybody you talk to, a friend, whatever.
But is it possible for this person or this audience in this moment to discover what I am trying to tell them without me having to tell it to them first. And that is the great divide, Hanley.
Because the thing about it is, if I tell you you're an idiot and you say, you're right, Marcus, I've been such an idiot. What have I accomplished? But if you say to me, you know what? I realized something.
And I say, what? And you say, I've been a total idiot. And I say, well, why do you say that? And then you start to name a list of all the reasons how you screwed up, how you messed up that thing.
Now you own those. But if I tell you every reason why you screwed up, we have achieved no growth in that moment.
See, the reason why managers and leaders push back on this, because they think that if they see the world in this way, and they really work through the thing with that individual in that moment, that it's going to take so much longer, and they don't quote have the time. But what that does, it only teaches that person, that team member, to come to you when they have a problem and not ever work it out themselves.
When we release the need to feel smart, to be seen as this magical authority figure, this bastion of knowledge, And we essentially approach everyone that comes to us with, hey, let's go on this journey together and figure it out. Not you figure it out, but let's, you and me, let's go on this journey.
That's what it's going to be and figure it out. This is how you develop world-class leaders underneath you.
this is how people eventually replace you and you can go and sit on the dang beach. And too many leaders and too many managers, too many organizations and too many parents or relatives never quite understand this beautiful principle.
God, I could talk about this all day. So what I find so incredibly interesting about this topic is I don't know that I know the reason or know or have a say that I am 100% sure of the reason or even maybe 50% sure.
But what I do know is most of the people that I interact with who hold any type of managerial position have this underlying insecurity in their position in themselves. And it manifests as this control that you're talking about.
Yes. And, you know, I don't know.
Like, I literally just had this conversation where you're describing. I just had this conversation with one of my staff members a couple minutes ago.
And he asked me a question about how he should do something. And I said, I don't care how you do it.
I want to see how you do it. Like, what do you think the best version of this is? Here's the problem I need to solve.
I have this thing. I need this thing here and this thing here.
But I have no idea. This is your area.
I have no idea how we plug these things in. So I need you to come back to me with your best guess at what this should look like.
And he looked at me and it was like he had never heard that before. You know what I mean? He had never heard someone say to him, I looked at him, I don't know what the answer is.
I don't know. I need you to go figure out the answer.
And frankly, I'm expecting you to come back to me with your best guess and then we'll talk about it. And just look and see.
That's called liberation right there. Yes, right.
That's the moment he knows, my gosh, I'm going to grow in this company. They believe in me enough to let me screw up, to let me fall forward, and to let me figure this out.
This is how you get raving fans for employees. You know, Hanley, I'm so sick and tired of hearing about all these ways that you can build culture most of which don't include better communication in the workplace no it's ping pong tables it's freaking ping pong in it chairs in it's in it's in it's um you know escape rooms like give me a break people you might go have fun in that escape room with your team for 45 minutes, but you're not going to learn teamwork until you get foundational elements of communication.
Every marriage that ends, why? Usually starts with communication. Every bad relationship starts, generally.
Communication. why do um leadership teams fail communication always always comes back to this thing over and over again, Hanley.
So let me ask you this. I'm a manager.
I'm new to managing a team and I feel the insecurity. I'm listening to this and I'm going, I believe what Marcus is saying.
I believe it. I can see what he's saying.
I've been on the other side of it. I've had people, you know, kind of treat me with, with that controlling.
They're just going to hammer me with the answer, you know, kind of, kind of method. I don't want to be there, but they feel that insecurity inside them that says, gosh, if I, if my, if my team doesn't get this right, you know, if Johnny comes back to me with the wrong answer, and now our team's going to look terrible, and I'm going to get yelled at, and how do you start to overcome that? What are some things that someone could do to take baby steps into this, or maybe even baby steps isn't the right answer? What are a step or two or something someone can try if they feel like they are that controlling, I'm just going to give you the answer kind of manager, but they want to change? One of the principles that I teach a lot is called vanguarding.
That's what I named it. Now, a vanguard originally comes from the head of the Roman army that would go in and fight the battle first, and they formed a V, and that's how they would go in.
So they were the first to go in and solve the problem. In other words, first to go in and attack the issue.
So when you Vanguard today, you understand that the best way in life to resolve of a concern is to address it before it becomes a concern. And so you must always go about any action or any communication that you have saying, how could this go wrong? How can I therefore vanguard that from happening? So for example, let's say you're a manager and, you know, your whole time managing, you've been more of the authoritarian, like, this is what you all need to do type, right? And you recognize, well, that's not leading to any growth on my team.
And that's why no leaders ever come out of my team and go on to great things in this organization. And so you say to yourself, okay, I need to change that.
How do I change that? Well, the first thing that you do is you tell your team your realization. Because if you just all of a sudden make a switch, they're going to be like, what the heck's going on? Right? And so you tell your team, here's what I realize about my shortcomings.
You know, the book Radical Candid does a really good job with a lot of things, but one of the things it talks about is how we should praise in public and criticize in private to our team. But as a leader, we welcome criticism in public.
And so much of what we do, when we welcome criticism from our team in public, that is a vanguard for later. Because for later, when you do want to have a moment of truth, of candor with your team, and you have to speak frankly to them, they know that you are the type that is willing to receive it.
Therefore, they are much more inclined to take it themselves. I think also there's an element of you have to go in and say, so we have a choice as a team or as a company.
We can do things, quote, the easy way. I can just give you the answers, and you can just give your clients the answers, and everybody can just just give everybody the answers we could go on all day just listening to each other or we can go on a journey and we can actually help each other figure out really what is the best solution

without always giving the answer now one's going to take a little bit more time at first

but long term which one do you think is going to be beneficial team is going to every time say

Well, I think the latter. Why is it going to be more beneficial? And they're going to say, because that will really enable me and force me even to grow.
And you say as the manager, is that what you want? And they're going to say, yes. And I have your permission to do that? They're going to say yes.
It's no different, Ryan, than, you know, sometimes people say to me, because, you know, I see the world in the form of a question. And when I teach management, when I teach leadership, everything is based on how well you ask the question in the moment, right? And so when it comes to this, oftentimes people say, well, isn't it going to feel like an interrogation if I ask people lots of questions, which is why, once again, you Vanguard.
And so if you come to me, Ryan, and you say, you know, Marcus, I've got this issue, this, this, and that.

Instead of me maybe just jumping into a million questions, I'll say something like this.

Okay.

I'm really glad you came to me with this. Now, I have a strong feeling that we can figure this out together.
But in order to do that, I'm going to have to ask you a bunch of questions, and I'm going to need your fullest, most honest, most self-aware responses. Are you willing to go on that journey with me right now? Do you think the social contract is that important? You've done that twice now where you've done that permission thing? I mean, I'm assuming a critical piece of it.
It is fundamental. It is because otherwise they haven't given you the reins.
They haven't said you are in charge and I am giving myself to this thing right now.

See what I'm saying?

So this is absolutely, absolutely critical.

Absolutely critical.

And when you do this, though, when it comes to management, here's the second part to it.

And leadership and any communication. I don't want anybody to get caught up on just management right now because this is across the entire board.
Is you have to be willing to release where you think the answer needs to be. And you see, once again, you might think you're good at asking questions.
You might say, yeah, Marcus, I've been working on this question thing and I get them there every time. So is there where you thought they were supposed to go when you started the conversation, or is there oftentimes where you had no idea this was going to go? I'm going to give you an example of something that happened to me last week, Ryan.
And this was a powerful conversation. It might sound a little bit odd to you at first, but I think you're going to appreciate it once we get there, especially you as a leader.
So because I talk about communication so much, what happens is people, when they realize that you care about their discoveries, they will open up to you and they'll tell you things they wouldn't tell anybody else. And it happens a lot to me.
And I don't say that in a bragging light. I say that in a self-aware statement of why are people coming to me all the time and saying very intimate things? So one happened last week after I was teaching.
I had a man came up to me after a conference and he had his wife there because she's a co-business owner with him. And he says to me, when I'm packing up my things, he says, Marcus, can I ask you a personal question? I say, sure.
I can tell he's very intense, serious moment is happening for him.

Something's really happening in his head right now.

So what can I help you with?

He says, I'm really not sure how to say this, but my wife and I have been remarried for quite a few years. We were separated.

We got back together.

But I have a major problem. She bites her nails all the time.
And it bothers me so much. And I don't want it to bother me.
But it's getting under my skin so much that I really don't know what to do. All right, so let's take a timeout.
And this is a completely odd question. Now, he was saying this with sadness on his face and seriousness, right? So you might be listening to this right now and thinking, this sounds goofy.
This is a real dilemma for this person in his marriage, right? And my question for you is, what would you have said? If you're listening to this, what would you have said? Now, I'm not going to put you on the spot, Hanley, unless you feel like you have something. I mean, I'm going to preface it with this.
You don't have much time because you got to leave.

Yeah.

Okay.

But you want to help this gentleman and he needs help. He wants help and it's riding on you right now to help this person.
Let me, I want, I'm going to give you my answer and then I want you to critique it based on what you said and the reaction that you got. because I knowing that I don't think that I can come from a position of power with this answer like I don't feel like I have a good good handle on it what I would have said was you're never gonna be okay with it but you need to talk to her about the fact that it bothers you this much like for the thing that he said that what I would have keyed in on was I don't want this to bother me and I don't know from my own experience being married for as long as I have been I would say you're never you're not gonna just all of a sudden be okay with it but what you can do is communicate to her that it does bother you and find ways that maybe she can do it in places where you don't have to watch or something.

I don't know.

That's probably something around what I would have said.

Okay. Right.
Right.

And I think there's probably a lot of people that would have said something around that.

Now, when you analyze what you just did,

was that what you felt like he should do or was that what he felt like he should do?

Now, let you analyze what you just did, was that what you felt like he should do or was that what he felt like he should do? That was me taking my experience and putting it on his situation. That's correct.
That's correct, right? And so if he actually does this, if he takes what you said, is he going to have a moment where he's going to say, you know what, I have the answer? Or is he going to say at the end of this, you know what, you're right. That's what I need to do.
Because the way that you presented that to him, he's going to say, yeah, you're right. That's probably what I should do.
He's helpless. He's probably going to do whatever the heck you tell him to do right now.
You with me so far? Yes. Okay.
When you shift the way that you think and you release the need to give an answer and show authority, you can produce magic. I asked two questions.
First question,

does she know how you feel? He said yes. Okay.
Second question. Now here's the crux.

This is, as you would say, Hanley, the rub. Next question was this,

has there ever been a time when she did not chew her nails?

And then he said, she did not chew them when we got back together for two years.

And I said, ah, now it's clear. And then I said, what were you doing differently during those two years? There it is.
And here's what's happened next. He said, I was different.
Now he has made the discovery, which gives me a green light. And once I saw the green light, I said, my promise to you, sir, is this.
If you go back to treating her exactly like you treated her when you got back together because you were trying to win her love again. I promise you within the next six

months, she will stop chewing her nails. And Ryan, I'm not kidding you when I say this.
He was fully sobbing. Grown man, fully sobbing.
Looks at me, he nods, and he walks away. That's the difference.
Yeah.

And that's the type of transformational conversations and communication that you and I can have as leaders, as friends, as family, as speakers, if we choose to make this a major part of our life in how we view the way we communicate. Now, you might be listening to this and you're saying, how do I get there? You have to start with a few litmus tests, right? And one that you start with is this.
How often when you have conversations with others, do they say something like, wait a second, I've got it.

I know exactly what I need to do. Now, you can paraphrase that however you want, but how often

does that occur with your family, with your child, with your team member, with your friends?

Or on the other side of that, how often do they end up saying you're right that's what i need to do hmm i got some work to do, bro.

We all do.

Yeah.

We all do.

But when you see the world in the form of a question,

everything changes, Hanley.

And this is one of my messages to people.

And what's beautiful is a lot of people know me as a sales and marketing guy.

And I was a pool guy for really 10 years.

I'll see the next 40 years on changing lives with better communication in the home, in the office. That is my goal.
And that's what I'm going to do. And I say that because when I talk about this, the feelings in the room and the things people say are befuddling.
You can't even put words on them. you know, and it's cool seeing people say are befuddling.
Can't even put words on them, you know? And it's cool seeing people save their business through they ask you answer, right? Right. For those that don't know that's my book, that's cool.
But when somebody says to me, my entire company culture and relationships with my friends and my wife has changed because of that thing that you said, then now, now we got something special. This may have been meaningless, uh, in terms of your leaving it out, but, um, spending spending the next 40 years you said you're going to spend the next 40 years of your life working on how people communicate uh in their family and in their office um was it intentional to leave out how we communicate in our community and with the people who aren't close to us.
Oh, good point. Across the board.
Just this idea of communication, trust, leadership. I see what's happening in the world.
It bothers me deeply. although I have political views

I'm apolitical in terms of the way that I elect to approach the world because I'm a big believer in things give us and take from us energy. They can rob us of our happiness or they can, they can give us tremendous joy or energy.
Right. And you know, I watch, I watch division and I watch what's happening, you know, with people today and I don't like it.
It bothers me a lot. Right.
And I think this is how I can help. This is how I can make a difference.
You know, I don't know about you. I came, ultimately, I'm not very good on social media.
And I've always wondered why that was. And I finally figured it out.
And I don't mean this in a way that would at all be a knock on somebody else because my situation is different than somebody else's. So what I'm about to say doesn't necessarily apply to you if you're listening to this.
But I realized the reason why I am not good on social media is because I have 0.0 fear of missing out. I don't have FOMO whatsoever at this point in my life.
Don't look at people at a beach or at a conference or with a group of friends and think, I'd like to be there. I just don't feel that, right? I'm not sure when that happened.
I don't think I always had that. I absolutely feel that today.
It's gone. I don't know where it went.
It's gone. 0.0 FOMO.
And so I don't have, I don't feel an urge to share. I do it because I know sometimes people want to know.
And sometimes if I do share, it's based on something that brings me joy. So I'm trying to share something that might show joy, right? But that's really it.
That's really it. This is a struggle.
And I think that if we as a society can, because you started with this today, you mentioned this a little bit. If we can release not only the need to feel smart, but we can release the need to feel what others feel.
And we can learn to be truly satisfied, but also at the same time curious about our own lives or own existence. I don't mean this in some like mystic way, I just really mean it for what it is, then we're going to find so much more fulfillment, right? I don't say success because success is defined on the outside, right? Like somebody asked you if you're successful.
Well, I mean, people generally define what they think is successful. Only you can say if you're fulfilled.
People look at you, Hanley, all day long and say, this guy, man, wow, he's so successful. Yeah, but that doesn't really mean anything.
Is he fulfilled with his life, right? Because that's the big question. You could be on the street right now, but you could be outrageously fulfilled, right? Now, you and I are wired in a way that certain things will fulfill us.
That's why we on this mission you have yours i have mine this is why we're so very very aligned but these are the things that i think about man this is stuff that's on my mind you know it's it's interesting you said that thing about fomo you we'd started our conversation today and not really sure where i'll pick up in this conversation with what we actually put publicly, but our conversation started with you asking a couple questions about my current position. And I shared some of that in my much more meandering style than yours.
But, you know, it's funny you bring up that thing about FOMO. And I have felt that way lately because I've had it at different times, especially times when my tank was empty.
I have found that in moments of feeling the least fulfilled with my own life, my FOMO or all the things that kind of circle around that term goes way, way up. And I think that intrinsically makes sense.
And as I've become more fulfilled with my life, for me, that was traveling less, being part of this particular company, Metabolic, and some of the things we talked about with kind of whatever. And in return, I've also, you said we each have our own journey.
And what I found interesting about this, and this has a business application, I promise as well. But for those listening who care particularly about that, I found that I care, I do not care at all what people think of the work that i'm doing yet at the same exact time i'm watching and listening to how everyone reacts to the work that i'm doing if that makes sense because i want them to find value so it's not i'm not just it this isn't um it isn't an ego thing where i'm like i don't give a i don't give a shit what you think about my work.
I'm going to do what I want. That is one way that some people approach their work.
That is not what I mean. What I mean is I've started to, I've been able to create because it's what I have to give and I'm listening for what people find value in and trying to give them more of that when it's there but I'm not forcing it to try to be something that I'm not um and that's a good place to be right because this world in many ways forces you to you know it forces you to do just that oftentimes you know especially when it comes to like you know, it forces you to do just that oftentimes, you know, especially when it

comes to like, you know, I think you might remember this. Everybody kind of got on Seth Godin, like, I don't know, almost 10 years ago when he turned off comments.
Like that was a bad thing. He has this outrageously popular blog.
He turned off comments before anybody else. And he said, because I don't want the community to dictate what I write about, because I want it to be inherently from here and not for comments, not for clicks, not for social.
And at the time, most people just couldn't, they could not even comprehend that. And what has happened today? Most blogs have now turned off comments.
Yeah. Right? I mean, not most, but many, many have.
For that reason, I know I did, right? Because I didn't find that it brought me to a place of deep satisfaction. Yeah.
I think, i think what what i've found is um what it has helped me do is be okay more okay with dissenting opinions in my work it's nice with my wife and and my kids with people in the social space with people i interact with on a day-to-day basis, people have all different kinds of opinions, political opinions, social opinions. They just operate differently.
And I think when you come from a place of caring so much about what other people think of you and your work, if it's at all negative, you immediately start to position yourself against them. It's that person versus me.
When you stop, like I said, it's not that you're not listening, but it doesn't impact who you are. You're not letting it change what comes from here.
Then, you know, and again, I do follow some of the political stuff more from listening because I'm interested in how people communicate and what's going on. Today, you can't disagree about one thing or we're not the same.
You and I disagree about a lot of things, but we also agree about a lot of things. And that's completely okay.
And I think that's the nuance of communication that we've lost. Bring it all the way back to the business standpoint.
Someone in your organization can disagree with how, you know, I'm the leader. This is the way it's got to be because this is my company.
I've ascended to this position and then they become unwilling. If you disagree with one thing that I do as a leader, you're not on my team.
You're not playing by our rules. This is how we, where all I really need you to do is agree with one thing that I do and then we're good.
Like, like just, let's just align on one issue. And I guess that's, that's what I don't understand about where we are as a society is, you know, and again, it's not like- Best talk I've ever heard on this, Brene Brown.
Unbelievable talk. And she said, the problem is, and this is like almost like encapsulates everything you just said.
The problem is with society is almost everyone has bought into this idea of you're there with me or you're against me. And the reality is you're with me and you're against me.
And that's a beautiful thing. I couldn't agree more.
And that's where we got to get back to. My friend, it is always an amazing, just it fills my love bucket to spend time with you whenever we get to chat, whether it's in a public forum like this or privately and certainly when we're in person.
I wish you nothing but the best. I will make sure that we have everything linked up and people can find you, but just where's the best place if someone's just listening that they can connect with you? Well, if you're listening to this and you have a question, or if you want to say, Hey, Marcus, come teach a workshop to my team on this, this, or that, you can find me at Marcus at Marcus Sheridan.com.
That's my direct email. Marcus at Marcus Sheridan, S-H-E-R-I-D-A-N.com.
You can find me on the Twitter at the sales lion, L-I-O-N. But that's the best way to find me.
And make sure you get the book too. They ask, you answer.
It just came out, revised format, 30,000 new words. If you have a business, if you're in sales marketing or leadership, you will absolutely love that book.
It has taken off like wildfire. It's selling more today than it did three years ago.
It's just amazing. It's the revolutionary new business success concept.
Answer question. That's exactly

right, brother. All right, my man.
Hey, be good. Thank you very much.
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