RHS 001 - A Masterclass in Communication with Marcus Sheridan

Ryan Hanley: 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.

Ryan Hanley: 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." I started replacing the phrase with it.

Marcus Sheridan: And I'm thrilled because it took us over 11 months to do our first 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 next year. It's amazing.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Pretty excited about that.

Marcus Sheridan: It's awesome, dude. I mean, I've been following along from afar, just watching what you've been doing. It's everything that you talked about a year ago. It's wild to think that a year ago I was talking to you about impact, and I was leaving Trust and Choice, and we were having all those conversations. Everything you said, just watching, it seems like it's happening. It's phenomenal.

Ryan Hanley: Well, I'm not just saying this, I feel the exact same towards you. I don't know if it's all front, but dude, it looks like you are just in your element right now, growing something that is thrilling for me to see. You're outside of the insurance space, starting to flex all those other muscles that you weren't necessarily able to flex before because you were in that box. To see you start to work on your personal brand again is very fulfilling and satisfying to see.

Marcus Sheridan: Thank you. You know, 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. Even though at the end, Gary throws in a caveat around saying yes more than he should, the essence of the piece of content was we need to say no more. I think that is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard in my entire life. Even though I understand that at a certain point you are so inundated with offers that you do have to say no to things, I think to tell people to say no to more stuff is terrible, terrible advice.

Marcus Sheridan: I've been doing this little micro blog thing on Instagram, just sharing a lot of stuff that's on my mind. I said that's bad advice. I didn't call them out specifically because it wasn't about that. I feel like I've said yes to a million things, a million meetings that drive my wife crazy. She's like, "Why are you going to that thing? That person will never do this or that." This opportunity came out of just saying yes to meetings that had no bearing on my career at the time, getting to know somebody, giving him a little bit of advice on marketing, listening to what he had going on, sharing some of my experience. There was no monetary exchange, it was just two guys having coffee and talking. That happened again and again and again, and then all of a sudden, here I am. It's serendipity, bro. I have no way of explaining how I got here other than I feel lucky that I am.

Ryan Hanley: I had to ask, what has been your biggest learning since you've become the head of this exploding company? What were the top one or two surprises, or things you never would have known?

Marcus Sheridan: I had no idea what I was getting into beyond knowing I liked the people and I believed in the product. The hard part for me with insurance was that even though I valued what insurance was, there was no love for the thing. I saw it as a commodity. With this, I saw an opportunity to share a product that has real, deep, meaningful impact in the lives of the people who need it. Whether it's community, camaraderie, or just needing to blow off steam so they're not angry at their kids when they get home from work. This product has that for them. I knew a lot of the people from just being around. Other than that, I had no idea. I'd never been part of a franchise before. I knew little to nothing outside of basic stuff about the fitness industry. But I knew the people, and that's what sold me on it. I thought, 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 the right thing to do.

Marcus Sheridan: To answer your actual question, I feel like I've been through three MBA courses in seven months. I've learned how to pivot fast, how to have tough conversations with vendors and staff. I've had to fire people, reposition people, share bad news. We're a startup, so I've had to adjust benefits, force people to make hard decisions, cut longtime vendors, and reposition capital and resources in places that didn't work. I've had to make decisions rapidly and decisively to change course.

Marcus Sheridan: This path started with our product ultimately being a franchise. We made a lot of decisions about how to present our version of a product in a box. Our core philosophy is all about people. A lot of our peers are all about technology—leveraging heart rate monitors and screens, trying to remove the human as much as possible. 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. When you put that much emphasis on the humans, things like training, brand philosophy, and buy-in matter immensely. We've had to pivot many ways because we've already started to learn certain things that work. How fast you have to make decisions has been eye-opening. Having to live with those decisions and pivot off of your pivots is tough. The decisiveness—how rapidly you have to make decisions—is probably what I've learned the most.

Ryan Hanley: How many employees do you have right now?

Marcus Sheridan: We have 10. If you count the trainers, we have 35 more.

Ryan Hanley: And how many franchises do you have?

Marcus Sheridan: 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. The major pivot we're making is away from a pure franchise model. We're going to start opening corporate locations concurrently. For our business to work, brand is all that matters. The brand has to be consistent. If you go to the Syracuse location and it sucks, then every location sucks. You go to any of our locations, the community is slightly different, but the workout, the quality it's delivered, the pace—everything is exactly the same. 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 based on who the trainers are. If you go to Syracuse and the workout is terrible, low energy, the music doesn't work, the floor is a disaster, the trainers are walking around like they don't care, that impacts the entire ecosystem.

Marcus Sheridan: Because of the intensity in the training process, we decided on a major course correction. We're going to start opening corporate locations and then selling open, operating, profitable locations to people as franchises, instead of having them open the locations themselves. That first six to 12 months is 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. Our goal is in the next 12 months to open 23 corporate locations.

Ryan Hanley: 23 in 12 months? Okay.

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: So you're franchising River Pools. I did not know that. Talk to me about that process.

Marcus Sheridan: We started the legalese of that sometime last year. 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. They have franchisees all over the U.S. and North America. We went from being a local installer in Virginia, to manufacturing our own pools, to manufacturing for other dealers. Now we are leveling up further to offer the franchise. We have franchisees in Utah, soon two, one in Texas, probably four or five soon, one in Arizona, with a few more on the way. We have another handful on the East Coast. We probably have like 10 right now. This is really our first year selling our franchise model. The buy-in is low right now, only $30,000. They have to pay a percentage of their business back to us. What they're getting is all the systems they don't have to learn. No pool guy is system-minded for the most part. They get the marketing machine, the lead generation, all that we do for them, and we're working on a more refined sales model we can teach them. That's been a little bit of a challenge.

Marcus Sheridan: Overall, it's pretty exciting. I find that it sells itself in a lot of ways. The issue we're having is scale. We bootstrapped the manufacturing of all this stuff, which puts a cash crunch all the time because manufacturing makes you a logistics company. You have to ship the crap all over the country. It's a set of headaches. You have to be able to inventory, which is expensive. You have to have distribution yards around the country so there's a point where you could grab a pool near you in New York instead of shipping from Virginia every single time. We're still green, but it's an actual company that will pay taxes on it this year. It's pretty exciting. I thought about franchising about six or seven years ago and let it go. My business partner Jason got real excited about it after I got out of it and pursued it aggressively. That's where we are with it right now. Luckily, I've got a really strong relationship with Premier Pools. I've spoken at their dealer conference a couple times now. We have a very open source sharing between us right now. They can benefit from our marketing know-how, and we can benefit from their franchise know-how.

Ryan Hanley: I think this is a conversation you and I will want to have more and more in the future, just learning from each other as we go through this. Maintaining the brand and handling the logistics that come with it.

Marcus Sheridan: I've probably read about a thousand articles, listened to podcasts, been to franchise trade shows down in New York City. We have a franchise consultant that we work with. You get a thousand different perspectives. It all comes down to this: you have to maintain the quality of the product and you have to maintain the quality of the brand. Those two things, at the cost of all other things. As soon as either one of those things falls apart, the franchise is hosed. Many of the decisions we make come back to that. We would rather grow slower, grow regionally, then super regionally, then nationally, versus expanding out quickly so we can keep that quality control. If someone goes to one of our locations in Buffalo and then has a business trip to Boston and there's a Metabolic in Boston, they're getting the same experience. The moment they don't, the entire ecosystem falls apart. That's been an interesting thing to think about because I haven't had to solve that problem before.

Ryan Hanley: It's exciting times, man. It's cool to see what's happened with us since we met and the journey we've been on. We're so outrageously similar. We're both, on a healthy level, obsessed with personal development and progress. We love our families and we're trying to do our best on both ends. We have a little bit of a stallion in each one of us that just wants to run and run really hard.

Marcus Sheridan: It's pretty cool.

Ryan Hanley: It's hard to stable that sometimes.

Marcus Sheridan: They buck. That's what they do. No doubt about that. But it's fun.

Ryan Hanley: One of the things I've enjoyed about this particular challenge is that 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, there was always someone else who had the potential to throttle what you were doing. I've talked to you about this hundreds of times and how frustrated that made me. Basically, the downfall of my career in the insurance industry, to a certain extent, was my unwillingness to yield to that process. You make enough noise, you rattle enough cages, and eventually they just kick you out.

Marcus Sheridan: So they love you until they don't.

Ryan Hanley: Yes, exactly. That's basically what happened. Did I want to be this rebel without a cause, or move on? That was the decision I had to make, and I'm glad I made the one I did. What's so interesting about this particular challenge with 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. Technically, they could take away our franchise registration, but we can just open corporate locations and be a non-franchise if we wanted. As long as the Metabolic product is good, we are delivering results, we're building the communities we know how to build, we're taking care of our people, we can grow as far and as fast and make this thing as valuable as we want without anybody throttling us. It feels like I had a sandbag on my back and I got to schlump it off. There was no longer this person who 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. We want to try something, we try it. If it doesn't work, we toss it out the window and move forward.

Ryan Hanley: I envied people who had that ability, you in particular, for a long time. You always seemed 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 red tape. I always felt like there was someone holding my arm behind my back. When I got here, it was like all of a sudden I was unchained. It's like, what do I do now? That's been really interesting. You bastard, this is what you've been experiencing for the last 15 years. That's amazing, bro.

Marcus Sheridan: It's great.

Ryan Hanley: I think this is supposed to be a podcast we were recording too, but I could just rap like this the whole time.

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, 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 tell me.

Ryan Hanley: I guess we probably have already started. The reason I wanted to have you in particular on, and why you'll be the first guest of this show, is for a bunch of reasons. One, you have certainly been my longest tenured friend in the digital space. Someone I have admired for a very long time, not just in the work you do, but in your ambition and the way you manage ambition with also being an incredibly high quality person, which is very tough to do. Your discipline, the way you have gone for things. I look at some of the decisions I've made in my own life, and I haven't invested in myself at certain times. I watched you do it and envied it in a good way, in an inspiring way, not in a jealousy way. It pushed me harder.

Ryan Hanley: The crux of what I want this iteration of a podcast to be is talking around leadership, development, and personal development. These are the topics that get me up in the morning. It's why I write every morning at 5 AM. I don't think today we as people think enough about ourselves. We think, "Hey, Marcus has this. I want that. Why isn't my life like Marcus's?" I think that's what social media has driven us to. It's why we're so divided as a country politically. I think you are someone who is very introspective. The way you talk about dissecting one of your performances on stage as a keynote speaker—maybe that's a good place to start. We've sat in a bar at different events, and I've listened to you break down different performances. The way you think about them, I think it would be unique for a lot of people to hear. You delivered this type of business performance, and now you're going to tear it all the way down and think about ways to do it better. Maybe you could start there and talk about how you're able to dissect something like that with humility and personal honesty to grow. Very few people, myself included at times, are able to do that.

Marcus Sheridan: There are so many things I feel like talking about right now. One of them is this: I think one of the greatest challenges that individuals and brands have, and most don't realize they have it, is that when they put themselves in a public situation to be seen or heard, they try to sound smart. If you ask most people, "Are you trying to sound smart?" they would say no. But it manifests itself subconsciously all the time. This is the same reason why you could look at a thumbnail for a YouTube video and say, "I don't like that guy." You haven't even clicked play yet, but there's something about that person you don't like. It's because they're trying to appear or sound smart. Brands do this all the time. When we let that go, the magic starts to happen.

Marcus Sheridan: I have a company, a few different ones, one of which is an agency that's very heavy into consulting. I have a huge amount of 20 to 40 somethings working for me. The biggest coaching issue I have when we are analyzing a call they had with a prospect or a customer is I have to say over and over again, "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. When you release the need to feel smart, it immediately puts you on the same plane as the person you're speaking to. It doesn't matter if you're speaking to the CEO of a powerful company or the lowest level employee. When you are not trying to speak with that authority or with "look at me, I'm intelligent," that's gone. Now you're on the same plane. You get immediate respect from that person. This is how you can go in any situation and engender authority, because authority comes from releasing the need to prove yourself.

Marcus Sheridan: As a speaker, you can tell at times when somebody will get up there and they're trying to look cool, trying to look intelligent, 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. When I'm speaking, there are two things happening. I'm obsessing about how the audience is interacting with me in that moment. I'm noticing all these little things. It's almost like I'm looking from above down at myself and the audience, seeing the little things that are happening as I'm going through it. 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 they land in one moment but didn't land in another. I'm looking at it the whole time. It's this beautiful science. I'm trying to understand the why because I'm so curious and obsessed about this thing you and I call communication. I'm obsessed with why that is working in that moment, but I'm also obsessed with what I am doing right then. I'm looking at the audience and I'm looking at myself, watching what I am doing and analyzing if it is or is not working. Not in a way of concern, because it's never like that. It's always just the observer saying this is or is not working without emotion. Rarely is there any emotion in the observer in this context.

Marcus Sheridan: 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. If you do that enough over time, you start to see what works. A great comedian would do the same thing. People think they just come up with this stuff. No, they're working it. 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 I also want to know why it landed. Why did it resonate? Or why did it fail miserably in that moment? These are the things that fascinate me. I think about them an obscene amount of time.

Ryan Hanley: I think when you stop having to prove yourself, you start listening. That's really what I heard you just say. 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." Think about how what you just said affects every facet of society. A lot of people know me as a sales and marketing guy. One thing you and I haven't talked much about is that I'm speaking a ton now on communication, leadership, and communication in the workplace. I'm really passionate about this. I love helping speakers, helping presenters, helping leaders, helping managers say it better, express the thing better than they otherwise would. The principles we're talking about right now are completely aligned with it.

Ryan Hanley: As a parent, let's say your child comes to you and asks you a question. The majority of parents in today's society do one thing, but it has two reasons. The thing they do is they answer the question quickly. Why do parents quickly answer their child's question? Number one is because they're efficient, i.e., impatient with the process. Number two, and this is the part most don't recognize, is 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 a question, 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.

Marcus Sheridan: My obsession is this: I'm always asking myself, is it possible for this audience in this moment—it could be a child, when I say "audience" I just mean anybody you're talking to—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? That is the great divide, Hanley. Because 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?"

Marcus Sheridan: 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 because 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.

Ryan Hanley: So what I find so incredibly interesting about this topic is I don't know that I know the reason or know or have you 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. He had never heard someone say to 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."

Marcus Sheridan: That's called liberation right there.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, right.

Marcus Sheridan: Yes, right.

Ryan Hanley: 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.

Marcus Sheridan: 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. Or the chairs. And it's, 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 leadership teams fail? Communication 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 kind of treat me with that controlling, they're just going to hammer me with the answer method. I don't want to be that." But they feel that insecurity inside them that says, "Gosh, if my team doesn't get this right, 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." 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 that someone could 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?

Marcus Sheridan: 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, the first to go in and attack the issue. So when you vanguard today, you understand that the best way in life to resolve 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?"

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 that's not leading to any growth on your team. And that's why no leaders ever come out of your team and go on to great things in this organization. And so you say to yourself, "Okay, I need to change that." How do you 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."

The book *Radical Candor* 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, 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 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?" The 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 do 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 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, "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?"

Ryan Hanley: Do you think the social contract is that important? You've done that twice now where you've done that permission thing. I'm assuming it's a critical piece of it.

Marcus Sheridan: 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. 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 just 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 could tell he's very in, like, 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.

Ryan Hanley: 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 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 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 handle on it. What I would have said was, "You're never going to be okay with it, but you need to talk to her about the fact that it bothers you this much." For the thing that he said, 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 not going to 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.

Marcus Sheridan: 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?

Ryan Hanley: That was me taking my experience and putting it on his situation.

Marcus Sheridan: 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?

Ryan Hanley: Yes.

Marcus Sheridan: 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 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.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan: 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 and 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"?

Ryan Hanley: Hmm. I got some work to do, bro.

Marcus Sheridan: We all do. Yeah, we all do. But when you see the world in the form of a question, everything changes, Hanley. And you know 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 was a sales and marketing guy for the next 10 years. But I think I'll spend 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. And it's cool seeing people save their business through *They Ask, You Answer*, 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 we got something special.

Ryan Hanley: This may have been meaningless in terms of your leaving it out, but spending the next 40 years you said you're going to spend the next 40 years of your life working on how people communicate in their family and in their office. Was it intentional to leave out how we communicate in our community, with the people who aren't close to us?

Marcus Sheridan: 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 give us tremendous joy or energy, right? And I watch division and I watch what's happening 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.

I don't know about you, but I came to realize 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. I 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 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.

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, our own existence. I don't mean this in some mystic way. I just really mean it for what it is. And 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, 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. Now, you and I are wired in a way that certain things will fulfill us. That's why we're 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.

Ryan Hanley: It's interesting you said that thing about FOMO. We'd started our conversation today and I'm 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 of questions about my current position and I shared some of that in my much more meandering style than yours. But it's funny you spring up that thing about FOMO. 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. 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 as well, for those listening who care particularly about that, I found that 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 an ego thing where I'm like, "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 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.

Marcus Sheridan: And that's a good place to be, right? Because this world in many ways forces you to do just that oftentimes. Especially when it comes to, 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 could not even comprehend that. And what has happened today? Most blogs have now turned off comments.

Ryan Hanley: Right. Right. I mean, not most, but 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.

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. I think what it has helped me do is be more okay with dissenting opinions in my work. It's nice. With my wife 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.

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 there's so much, 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... when all I really need you to do is agree with one thing that I do. And then we're good. Like, just let's just align on one issue. And I guess that's what I don't understand about where we are as a society.

Ryan Hanley: Best talk I've ever heard on this, Brene Brown. Unbelievable talk. And she said, "The problem is, and this is 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."

Marcus Sheridan: I couldn't agree more. And that's where we got to get back to. My friend, it is always an amazing, 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?

Ryan Hanley: 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 marcussheridan.com. That's my direct email. Marcus at M-A-R-C-U-S S-H-E-R-I-D-A-N dot com. You can find me on the Twitter at @thesaleslion, 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* 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 questions.

Marcus Sheridan: That's exactly right, brother. I'm a man.

Ryan Hanley: Hey, be good. Thank you very much. I'll catch you.

Marcus Sheridan: We'll see you next time.

[End of interview. Promotional content follows.]

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