129. Become a Trusted Brand with Bob Ruffolo

Are you struggling to grow your business? Is your marketing content attracting the right people? Do you need help building your marketing team? We talk with Bob Ruffolo the CEO and founder of Impact. Bob partnered with Marcus Sheridan at Impact where they are on a mission to impact 10,000 businesses all over the world.  They help businesses and entrepreneurs improve their sales, marketing, communication, and leadership.

Connect with Bob Ruffolo:
Website: https://www.impactplus.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impactbnd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/impactbnd
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/impactbnd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7g9zlgMdzeXievAF28QAxQ

BOOK: They Ask, You Answer, by Marcus Sheridan

Follow the podcast at @itsjustbusinesspodcast on all the major podcasting platforms.

Connect with us:
To get in touch with us, email the podcast at itsjustbusinesspodcast@gmail.com.
Join us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn - we appreciate your support!
www.itsjustbusinesspodcast.com

You can find Dana @adashofboss, @dana.dowdell and @hrfanatic
Dana Dowdell – Boss Consulting – HR Consulting
Google -  https://tinyurl.com/y4wxnavx

You can find Russ @reliable.remediation
Russ Harlow – Reliable Remediation – Disaster Restoration
Google: https://g.page/r/CXogeisZHEjMEB

Transcript

Dana Dowdell  00:04

Hi Russ,

Russ Harlow  00:05

Dana, happy day.

Dana Dowdell  00:06

Happy day. How are you?

Russ Harlow  00:08

Doing? Well,

Dana Dowdell  00:09

good. Good. We are joined on the podcast today by Bob Ruffolo, who is the founder and CEO of Impact and a fellow Connecticuter which I'm excited about. makers or something? Is that what they call us?

Bob Ruffolo  00:25

I think so. Yeah. Oh,

Dana Dowdell  00:27

the nutmeg sees? All right, a fellow not Mega. Bob, welcome to it's just business.

Bob Ruffolo  00:34

I happy to be here.

Dana Dowdell  00:36

Thank you for being here. So, tell us about impact how it got started, how you got started, tell us kind of your journey.

Bob Ruffolo  00:43

Yeah. You know, I heard another one of your guests. And I think, you know, we have a very similar story. You know, I was always geeky into marketing and websites. And, you know, I had opportunities to you know, even my, when I was in high school, help some local businesses, so I always loved it. Once I graduated college with a marketing degree, really was kind of a tough period, you know, the recession was just starting, I was lucky to get a job in manufacturing. And I was doing marketing for them was a solo person doing marketing, just like the tiny marketing it's very almost identical story. That was the single person doing the marketing for this manufacturing company. You know, he said, Yeah, I have this website CV you can do with it. So I geeked out learned all about SEO, when HubSpot website for HubSpot was even really a thing and learn how to drive up the traffic. And my boss said, This is great, but what I really need is leads not just traffic, so they had to go learn all about how to drive conversions. And, you know, figured all that out and really was doing inbound marketing before inbound marketing was a term. You know, even when the leads came in off the website, we didn't have a CRM, so what I would do is I'd write all the leads on a yellow piece of paper and, and pass it off to the sales team. So very, very old school back in, oh, 607. But once I started figuring that out, my boss started referring me to his friends. So I started doing some freelance websites and some light marketing and eventually built up enough of a book of business that I was like, I could go out on my own and do this. So with that I, you know, reached into thin air and grabbed the word impact. So that's a cool name, that's we're going to call this company, I had no idea what the future would hold. But I was like, you know, I started a business. So it was pretty exciting.

Dana Dowdell  02:34

So you started the business in 2009? Correct. I'm, I am a fear based person, I feel like I live my entire life in fear. And I think that there's a lot of fear in starting a business. So here you are starting a business right after, you know, a financial downturn. So can you talk a little bit about mindset at that point in your journey?

Bob Ruffolo  02:59

Yeah, um, you know, I think everything in life is risk and reward rate. And, you know, no risk, no reward. You know, I heard all that from my parents. I have wonderful, incredible parents, but that's all the questions they asked me like, What are you gonna do about health insurance? And what if it doesn't work out? And I'm, like, 25 years old, what's the worst gonna happen? I go back and go find a job, not the end of the world. Yeah, and have a lot of expenses back then I had a condo with, you know, relatively small mortgage. You know, so I was like, let's, let's take this chance. You know, and when I started off, you know, I was living off credit cards, I feel like the interest rates were actually lower on credit cards back than they are today. But I maxed out my credit card, and, you know, whatever I can do every dollar I made from the business went right back into the business. And, you know, I hustled so Yeah, certainly there's, there's risk in it, but that's everything in business is a risk, right? It's just business. It's just risks, you know?

Dana Dowdell  04:03

Just did the kind of fear if it if you want to call it that, does it? Or has it ever gone away? Do you feel like it ever goes away?

Bob Ruffolo  04:14

Well, I think we mature I think we mature and I think that's a term I use a lot. It's like this this maturity. You know, I think when I first started the business, I really didn't know anything. I had no clue I was doing. Like most starting entrepreneurs, and you know, anyone that's starting a business thinks they know everything, you know, newsflash, you don't know anything yet. And the more you go along your career, you realize though, the less and less you actually know. But I think as you know, when I first started, you know, I had a fear of failure. You know, I think I was obsessively working, enjoying every second of it, but obsessively working to make sure that this thing didn't fail because I'm prideful person. I wasn't gonna go tell everybody that I started a business like Oh, it didn't work out, right. So it was going to work one way or another, no matter how much effort I had to put in, because I wasn't that good. I had put a lot of effort in to make it work. And, you know, but as you mature, you know, you realize failure is part of the game, you know, if you don't fail, you don't learn. If you if you're not failing, you're not trying things, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. So you know what every failure becomes failure. So just experience. So when someone says I'm very, very experienced, what they're basically saying is, yeah, I effed up a lot in my career, and now I know better.

Russ Harlow  05:36

So was it hard, you know, businesses during an economic downturn tend to cut in areas that they look at as fat. And sometimes marketing can be put under that category. I happen to think that's counterintuitive. I think you need to double down in those areas, you know, to make sure you're finding the right people. And, but so what was your did you have challenges there, you know, finding clients and convincing clients? No, we actually really need to do this, if you want to stay

Bob Ruffolo  06:05

open. Actually, no. And I think this is an interesting dynamic for people who maybe are thinking about starting marketing businesses. And right now, I mean, you know, if you turn on one channel, we're in a recession turn on another channel, we're not in a recession. So you know, it's debatable, and but it certainly is an economic downturn from where we were in the last couple of years. You know, actually, it's a great time to start a business, especially in marketing, I think the reason why we had a lot of luck in the beginning is because we were a low cost provider, you know, so I'm sure if you're an expensive agency, or, you know, you might have felt the pressure and the pain, I think we feel a lot more an impact in our size right now. And being an $11 million company, we feel a lot more now than, than we probably would have been, we were really, really tiny. Because our prices are a lot more higher, we're working with more mature businesses, and, you know, they're being very conscious of their budgets. But I think when you know, you're small and scrappy, and you're charging $500 for this and $700 a month for that. And, you know, in you're able to attract a lot of, you know, startup businesses that are, you know, have upon their savings and their businesses. And, you know, it's it was kind of a an interesting, wild, wild west time.

Russ Harlow  07:22

So you mentioned the connection with impact. And I've Rick, I recognize the logo on the site. I'm like, Why do I recognize this? Why do I recognize this? And I clicked it and I saw Marcus Sheridan, don't you know, you ask, they ask you answer. And so great marketing book that one of our other guests turned us on to and I was like, Oh, wait, you're associated with Marcus. So tell me how did

Bob Ruffolo  07:42

that happen? Yeah. So I mentioned HubSpot earlier. 2011 We became a HubSpot partner. In 2012 we actually, you know, I told you how hard we had to work to get the business started. We worked even harder to become a really good HubSpot partner. You know, at five we do all of our work and at five o'clock. You know, bunch of people at the office would stay for the next two hours. I buy pizza we do all the HubSpot courses. We were learning inbound marketing, learning how to use tools, and we dedicated ourselves to be one of the top tier HubSpot partners. Marcus was also in the HubSpot community as well. He was also a HubSpot partner. And you know, he had a very different business model all those years and we all knew it, you know, as impact was a marketing agency. Clients would hire us to do their marketing for them, use their HubSpot create their content, do their inbound marketing for them, they pay us a retainer to do that. Well, Marcus had a very different journey where he was a first came out of the pool industry. During the recession, he had to save his business discovered inbound marketing, not only do you save his business, but he created the most trafficked swimming pool website on the planet. And got all this notoriety for it was in the Wall Street or New York Times. And you know, he was speaking at all these big conferences, and Marcus is just a dynamic speaker. When people started saying, Hey, can you do this for me? What you just have a row pulls up, Hey, you. And Marcus is very, very smart, saying I won't do it for you. But you could pay me and I'll teach you how to do it. So Marcus developed a coaching and training business. So while we were going along similar journeys, we both started our companies in 2009. We both became HubSpot partners in 2011. And he was going along this very, very similar journey, but he was teaching people while we were doing it. So fast forward to 2017 we had a conference that were coming, it was coming up called Impact live. And I needed a really good speaker. So I invited Marcus to come and be part of it. Marcus got even more involved in the bank. He's really excited about we found out we've worked really well together? And I just mentioned him, like, do we merge our businesses together? And I never thought he would actually say yes. And we decided that you know what, we're gonna do this, we're going to merge the sales line his company into impact, we were about 30 Something people at the time he was four people, we merge them together, we're gonna have we said, we're gonna have this small coaching training business over here, we'll have impact over here, we have two options, we can have a do it for you model, or we can teach you how to do it, which we thought was brilliant. And Marcus would be out speaking, he didn't have to manage anybody, I would take on all the management responsibilities. And then it was maybe two months into it, we found it was so obvious that the people that were doing coaching and training were the happiest employees. All the case studies of the business were coming from the coaching training side of the business. And that was light years more profitable, the coaching and training side of the suit, happier clients, happier employees, and more profit. So then we decided to take the next two or three years, sunset, the entire agency where most of the employees were working, and go all in on the coaching and training side of the business. And that's what we are tonight, we are an $11 million coaching and training business, teaching businesses really how to do inbound marketing, but that terms can gone away. And since Marcus wrote the book, they asked me answer people come to us and say we need to be doing they asked me answer in our business. And they pay us to train them how to do they asked me answer in their business.

Dana Dowdell  11:41

I'm curious when this relationship happened, right, because I knew we were talking about starting working after college, how you taught yourself so much about lead generation and all of that stuff. Like in hindsight, knowing what you know, now that training people and teaching people in the education component is such a big part of being a business owner, do you wish you had started doing coaching and training and all of that earlier?

Bob Ruffolo  12:09

Maybe, maybe, um, you know, I think what used to work for us before might not work in the future. And I think you guys kind of realized that, you know, when inbound marketing was new, and companies first started blogging, it was a blue ocean, I remember, we used to write some of the worst blog articles, but they were generally traffic and leads for our clients. It was unbelievable. You know, you go 2012 2013 2014. And all sudden 2015 2016 comes around, it's like, this isn't working so well anymore. Google got smarter, there was more saturation and content marketing. And you know, where what most agencies were producing for their clients started having declining results. And you start seeing a lot of HubSpot partners, at that point, start changing from being inbound marketing agencies that does your content for you. Most of them say, Okay, we're only web designers. Now we're going to, you know, we're a Reb ops agency, now, we're only going to, you know, get your HubSpot set up for you. What Marcus was doing was continuing to work, he was one of the very few that was still producing clients, that were just incredible case studies on how to do content marketing. And the reason being was, at the end of day, it was all about trust. You know, if you're paying an agency just to you know, set it and forget it and run your blog for you. You get lackluster blog articles. And you know, there's the sound like everything else on the internet. And there's nothing special about it. And as Google got smarter picked up on all that. Well, you know, as Marcus was teaching, it's you know, you've got to take a strong stance in your perspective, you've got to involve your subject matter experts in the content, you got to show, not just say, but you got to prove in your content, you guys start integrating more videos, people can build relationships with the people inside your organization, you've got to be the best teachers in your space. And because he got buy in from these companies top the bottom, from the CEO to the sales team, to the marketing team. Everyone was working on the same content marketing strategy, and it was all about being the most trusted brand in their space. They just continue to produce just incredible results. Now, as time has gone on, some of the mediums have changed. Obviously, podcasts have become much, much stronger, and you got platforms like TikTok and YouTube and social media has evolved and, you know, so it's not all just blog articles anymore. But you know, the same foundational principles are true, it's if you lead with trust, and your goal is to be the most trusted brand, the best educator in your space. Those are the brands that win and that's 100% what we teach tonight, but much harder sale For us, because, you know, when people are running small businesses and they say, you know, we need help with marketing, the first thing they think of is we have to hire a marketing agency. So, you know, it's not like we're winning those, those conversations right away, you know, we have to really reframe the whole mindset that, no, the best thing for you to do is to do it in house, you need to, you know, if you're really going to be trusted by these prospects, you're going to win really earn their business, you know, they gotta build a relationship with you before. And the only way to do that is if everyone's involved, and you do it in house. And that's a much longer sale.

Russ Harlow  15:39

Yeah, you know, I want to say a few things to our listeners right now. Because you're, you're saying, oh, I want you to do all this extra stuff. And I am a small family owned family operated business, you know, me, my boys, it's, I wear a lot of hats, I'm trying to grow, and, you know, share some of those hats. But to our listeners, I want you to know that I listened. Because I do all my books by audio, I listened to Marcus's book multiple times. And I, I started to implement some of those things. Right, I left a franchise brand and got to create my own website. So when we created the website, and I have somebody, I pay somebody to help me with that, and to keep it up to date. Because that could go wrong really quickly. But I started putting in really strong content to help build rapport with clients. I started, you know, one of the things that I was so amazed with, and in a service industry, like the pool industry was the pricing. Like, this is what the price is. And my business coach at the time was like Ross, do not put your pricing on your website, your competitors are going to just cut your, you know, cut your throat. And I said, no, I put a range. People just want to know; they want to have an idea how much is mold remediation. So, I created pricing pages for all of our services, so that they can have an idea what they're looking at. It's one of the top things in search, it comes up in Google questions now how much is mold remediation? Our webpage. And then I started doing a little bit, I started doing a little bit of education on YouTube, I get calls from all over the country because of our video content on Tik Tok and YouTube. It doesn't take a lot you take little baby steps do this first do the next thing. So, I just want to encourage people this can be done. I I'm not, you know, a multimillionaire right now. But the these positive things help you go oh, crap. Yeah, that's working. I want to keep doing that. So, I tell are there some more success stories like that, that you hear with your clients who are like, Oh, I get it now and that the light goes on?

Bob Ruffolo  17:39

Well, Ross, first off, congratulations for doing all that. One of the things that came to my mind as you're sharing that story is, you know, you have a local mold remediation company. However, you know, you're getting contacted from all over the country. A lot of people say it's a bad thing. These are all bad leads; I can't serve them. But what some smart entrepreneurs that really want to grow their business do they say is there opportunity in all of this. And what we found with some of the best companies I've done, they asked us to really well, even if they're local businesses, they find ways to capitalize on that opportunity. Obviously, starting with Marcus Sheridan, one of the things that he was able to do with this pool company was he was a local pool company, installing pools in the Virginia area, or the Richmond Virginia area. But because of all that authority, he got into the manufacturing and distribution of fiberglass pools, and he franchised his business. And that is how you really build wealth as a business owner. And he was actually able to sell that part of the business and, you know, changed his life. You know, we had another client, we were working with a lazy boy store chain down in the southeast, you know, and at first, you know, they're doing this and they're talking about their competitors, and they're talking about, you know, all these big five topics that, you know, is taboo, you're not supposed to talk about these things. But when they ended up doing was they were outperforming the corporates, marketing, so they made him like shut it off. They were outranking you know, what corporate champ put out there. So, you end up coming up another brand called furniture Academy. And they had took a small step back in their stats, and now they've completely crushed anytime you ask about anything on furniture. They are ranking number one they they're controlling the market and dominating. And for them I was like, you know, corporate should actually buy their website now. And they can cash out on that right it's a huge opportunity. You know, we see people able to open up multiple stores like yellow appliance has gone from one store their three notes of net fourth. So, you see all these things that come. Because you build so much trust and authority, you have that dominance in the market, that you can really capitalize on it.

Dana Dowdell  20:10

I'm thinking about versus comment of what the feedback that he got from his business coach, because I got the same feedback from my business coach, like don't put your pricing on your website, because you want them to schedule an introductory call with you. But then I'm also thinking about the rationale behind that, that feedback, and it's, it's that you're creating content, or you're creating your website for your competitors, instead of the actual people that are going to buy your, your services. And is that I mean, I admittedly have not read. They asked you answer. It sounds like I frickin need to like today. But you know, that idea. I'm a big fan of like, the trust in the client? Is that kind of the general premise? Is that like you are, you're literally creating the content and the marketing for your client, not what you think,

Bob Ruffolo  21:05

Yes, let's think about this. So, you know, Dan Ross, we're both buyers, and we're all buyers here, right? You know, we go on the internet, you know, when we're doing our research, we want to make a purchase of something, you know, and what happens if we're looking for something on somebody's website, and we can't find it? What what's the what's the feeling that we feel?

Dana Dowdell  21:24

I mean, I get annoyed. Yeah. And, and I frustrated, yeah, I go to another website, and you just give it up?

Bob Ruffolo  21:32

Yeah, you give up, you hit the back button. So, when we're not willing to address the things that buyers, real buyers in the research phase, are trying to find they don't want to talk to a salesperson, they want to do as much of this on their own. So, they can, when they do give it the time to have that phone call, they're not wasting their time. So if they don't know if your product and service is, you know, $500 a month, and they don't know if it's, you know, $15,000 a month, and you're not addressing that, or mold remediation, you know, they don't know, if you're the low end or the high end, and they don't know, if you are in the high end, while you're on the high end, what they're gonna get for that they don't understand that they're not actually going to become your customer, they're gonna hit the back button. So, you know, not addressing the question is actually what causes the business to struggle. And that's just one of the big five pricing is just one of the five main areas, talking about competitors, you know, how do you how's this thing compared to that thing? Has this company or that company? Talk about the problems, problems in the industry problems with your product? You know, are you a fit or not a fit, right? Because, you know, you can go on mute and say we're a fit for everyone. That's not true. And we actually find that we say, Hey, listen, this is who we're not a fit for, tends to actually make real buyers, you know, understand and appreciate you more so and then the other ones are best. So, we're the best in class. And oh, of course, I'm forgetting the other one. Patterns, problems, pricing best and missing.

Dana Dowdell  23:11

Well, we'll add it will debit in over the audio, don't worry.

Russ Harlow  23:15

Well, and I think what's interesting, too, is, if I remember correctly, when Marcus was talking about talking about competitors, one of the highest clicked on and read pages on the website was, you know, top five pool installers in the Virginia area or whatever it was, and his company was not one of the five listed. And, but they realized that they were on their website reading about these other companies and stayed there anyway. Yeah. And I was like, it's totally counterintuitive. It blew my mind.

Bob Ruffolo  23:47

Yeah, and by the way, a fifth one is reviews. Sorry about that. We were always looking for reviews. And what's this person saying? But yeah, so you know, if you're going to create a you're on your website, you're gonna create a list of the best pool installation companies and you put yourself number one on your own website. What does that say? That trustworthy? Is that biased? Yeah, absolutely. You're a weasel. Yeah. But you know, Marcus is really smart when he did this, you know, and he opened up his article and saying, listen, we're a pool building company, you know, We service the entire area. You know, we're a fit for certain, you know, customers but we're not fit for everybody. And you know, one of the questions that we often get is, you know, you know, we like everything with you, but if we don't go with you, who else would you recommend? And you know, Marcus is approach is like, listen, wherever someone asks, they ask, we answer right? They ask you the answer. If you know we get a question that, you know, we have to answer we're going to answer on the website, we answer it as honestly and truthfully as possible. So, he listed off everyone else without put himself in the list because he already gave himself all the credibility, right? Who is this company being so honest, right? And listed off all the other companies in the area that, you know, they would recommend. And what was funny was, you know, when people would Google, you know, the top, you know, his number one competitor in the area, and they would type in reviews, his website came up first. So, they're learning about the competitors on his website, you know, and Marcus makes a joke. He's like that competitor, used to come to me all the time and be like, Marcus, thank you for putting us number one on that list. And Marcus knew how much business he was going off at Oracle. He was like, No, thank you.

Dana Dowdell  25:46

It's such a fascinating mind, like an idea, right? Just to say, like, there's, this is, I'm gonna acknowledge these other great service providers that I can put my name behind, but still get a lot of the credibility for doing it.

Bob Ruffolo  26:01

And the crazy thing about this is sure the mediums may have changed a little bit, you know, we address a lot of stuff in video, and we have more technology at our disposal to really bring trust across. But the same stuff that worked 15 years ago, still works, as well today. And honestly, it's funny. I was down in Savannah, and went to the prohibition museum. And they had this like, article up on the wall. And it was just, it was like Big Five content was, so they ask you answer style content. And the article is from prohibition. So it was over 100 years ago. And it's like the same stuff that worked 100 years ago, will work 100 years from now. And it's just it's because it's so principle based, it's so like, tried and true. It's all about trust, being honest, and just answering the questions buyers have no matter what medium. And the book does such a great job of really educating you why you need to be doing these things, why not avoid it? Not you know, when you have consultancy, and don't put pricing your website? It's like, no, here's 10,000 reasons why to do it. And when you do it, here's how to do it really, really, really well, where it's actually gonna make people want to work with you. And the magic happens. So yeah, I hope that answers that

Dana Dowdell  27:23

little bit. It does. We were talking before we started to record about culture. And you mentioned that the trainers were the happiest employees. And then you also mentioned that you sunsetted, the marketing side of the business, so change within your, your culture. So, can you talk a little bit about culture and the things that you've done to really ensure the culture that you want as an employer?

Bob Ruffolo  27:51

Yeah. Before the merger, we did have a very particular culture. Or work wasn't always the best. We were hyper focused on making sure our employees were happy. We were paying, okay, we were paying what we could. And, you know, I think we defined the culture that we want that we want to be very tech startup be like you, you know, you see on TV, and we leaned into to a lot of that. And it was fine. Up until a certain point, we were all playing our, you know, late 20s, early 30s. So, you know, I think it was it was the right culture for the right time, and it got to a certain point. But when Marcus came over, you know, if you haven't met Marcus, he's just, you know, he's all about excellence. He's all about the being the best of the best, being authority being leaders being seen as leaders. And, you know, that's part of the reason why he was so successful. It's not just the, you know what to do, it's the way he was teaching people away, who's hold them accountable to why he was educating them. And again, then that really do the things and do it well. It's just being a world class teacher, a world class coach. So that was gonna be our product. That's the way not only do we want to teach our clients, you know, and be excellent at teaching clients, we want to be excellent at teaching our employees and growing our employees. So, it drastically changed every aspect of our culture, all the way down to you know, we completely reevaluate our core values. You know, in the beginning, it was you know, about being helpful and be passionate. And those things were still, you know, important, but they were more table stakes. You know, as we started looking about, you know, what we really were going to be in the future, you know, is obsessed, really obsessed with being the best successful learning. It was in getting better every single day was, you know, involved in role plays into our organization or practice, practice, practice, practice, so we get better just like good coaches. You know, we deal with their teams. It was about being candid, no sugarcoating, no not having the tough conversations like, No, we're gonna have every single tough conversation, we're going to have tough feedback. And we're not going to accept mediocrity around here. And that was a shock for a lot of former employees. You know, again, what worked, the guests to one point was not going to work to get to that next point. Plus, we had a lot more people that were now you know, in their 30s, and 40s, they had families, they're taking their work seriously, they want to make more money they want to succeed. So, we had to make some drastic shifts, we redid the core values, we, you know, a lot of people got off the bus, we had to, you know, let other people get off the bus or remove them from the bus. And everything we did from there, we had to be very definitive. You know, we set a new purpose statement and a new mission. So, the purpose statement is to create heroes, grow businesses and change lives. And every single thing we do is to do that. And the mission is something that we hope to achieve one day, but it's 10,000 businesses all over the world thriving, what they ask you answer, now you got the culture, you got the reason why we exist, and we got the big thing that we're all working on. And that really sets the entire vision for what we're doing. You know, and today, it's, you know, we're not the easiest place to work, we know that, for the people that that want to be pushed, Huami challenge, windy, great, want to be excellent, you know, you could take a lot of sports analogies, and you could probably picture, you know, certain athletes that that that would describe, they want to be the best in the game. For those types of people, we are a great place to work. But for other people, they're like, listen, I just want a job. And I want to do cool marketing. Like, you know, most people, you know, they may have been here before, but they're all gone now. And there's not a spot for them. A players, people that that demand excellence, have zero tolerance for being around anybody that's holding the team back. And I think that's one of things I'm most proud about my company right now is, you know, we have enough people, critical mass of a players that are pushing themselves to be great that they really kind of take care of the culture. For us, somebody can't keep up, you know, that person's getting, you know, they're self selecting out, because they're like, I don't fit in here. You know, not that we make, we still make hiring mistakes, I think everybody does. But I think we're much better at it now than we ever were before. We know definitively who we want on the team, and who we don't. And we put a lot tools in place to help with that. So, another thing that we did was we created 12 core competencies, they're basically based off our values, but they're much easier to score. And, you know, these are the 12 things that we value, every single impactor and, you know, whatever level you are in the company, whether you're entry level in the call team member, or a manager, or a specialist, or senior manager, or senior specialist or executive, we can define what that looks like, on each competency at each different level. And everyone gets scored on it. And if you're not, you know, it's something that you can work on, we build all sorts of training resources to get better on each of these 12 competencies. You know, some of its skill based some of its values based but all you know what we're looking for somebody. And if they're not scoring well on that they can't be on the team, they don't belong here. So, try to really do everything we can to create the culture that we want. And at the end of the day, it's, you know, our employees expect great leaders, and our clients expect Gree coaches and trainers. And you know, we can't accept mediocrity and anything that we do.

Dana Dowdell  34:05

I love it. I might, the HR and me is like, just so excited. I am curious, when you made that decision to really shift the culture and kind of realign things. What was the timeline for you? Like I always culture shifts and change in general, I am always telling clients, it's a long game, right? You can't you can't fix your culture overnight. So, I'm really curious to how long it took you to get from where you were, to where you want it to be.

Bob Ruffolo  34:31

Yeah. You know, it's funny, we had you know, the merger and it was like for people coming to a 30 person company be had for very successful loud and right people coming in that really pointed out that you know, we have a lot we are improve. So, you know, when they came in and you know, some of them are on the leadership team. They opened up all the conversations. So, I think it was probably, you know, between 2018, when we did the merger, we started doing a lot of work that year, because we started realizing, you know, I joke around, it's probably kind of true. You know, I always said, we're really good at marketing. Because, you know, on the outside, we looked like we had all of our stuff together. For all these years, we were top HubSpot partner. And you know, everyone needs a logo, and we had a lot of traffic come to our website. So, we looked like, we are a lot better, we really were, when Marcus and I completed the transaction, he started getting in the weeds have impact, he probably had like buyer's remorse immediately. Because like, Oh, I thought this copy was really good. But it's like, no, this and so just, you know, a coat of paint, we got a lot of problems over here. And I think the more we work together, the more problems we realized we actually had, and his credit. And I think, to the credit leadership team, no one quit, no one said, we're not going to work through this, we just had to take it one step at a time. You know, it's not like there's a beginning and an end, it's just a continuous journey of continuous improvement. And you know, you have your setbacks, you have external setbacks, that you know, might be economic based, and things are outside of your control. But, you know, good businesses can find ways to thrive in those situations. And then you have just things that just kind of, you know, internal stuff, you know, you make mistakes, you forecast wrong, your project wrong. And, you know, you have to, you know, rebound from that. So, you know, but I think it's continuously, you know, addressing the elephant in the room, not being afraid to admit that we have problems inside this company. And just saying, Okay, what are we going to tackle first, because if you don't have problems, you're not growing. You know, it's just the reality of it. You know, there's as many books on business that there are, there's no book that tells you how to run a business, there's just, you know, you got, you can read them all, and they're all going to help. But, you know, until you actually do it, maybe it's easier the second time, but then it's gonna be all kinds of new challenges, like, who knows what's gonna happen, the future the world now with AI? You know, it's, you know, people talked about crypto a few years, and that's gonna change the world. But AI is real, it's not going anywhere. And it's, it's gonna be very scary for a lot of people. And it's gonna be a massive opportunity for a lot of other people to a

Russ Harlow  37:34

couple of things, Bob. Well, one last comment on AI, I just do some news, things going around. Ai make stuff up. So, don't ask it things that you need to know. Because it might not be correct. It's like, AI doesn't like to say, I don't know, it'll make something up to answer your question. But just listening to you talk about your business, your company and the culture, I was kind of inspired. Like, I would like to work at a place like that. I want to build a place like that for people to work out. Right. So, I love that. But I also heard a couple other things like, not only is building a great culture important for any business, there's also the they ask you answer kind of aspect of the culture too, right? Because everybody's involved in the culture in creating the message, and everything else that you do. So tell me how that also ties into culture? For you guys.

Bob Ruffolo  38:27

Yeah. You know, I think you gotta have top down buy in anything that you do. You know, I think when we talk about, they ask you answer in culture, you know, it starts with senior leadership, saying, This is a priority in our organization, we're going to mark it and sell this way, because it's the way that's going to win, it's the right way of doing it. And it requires a lot of buy in from everyone in the organization, the subject matter experts, the sales team, everybody in order for it to actually work ends up becoming a culture, because when you start seeing that, when we educate and we create content, and we put ourselves out there, and we work on our skills, and we get better, every single thing that we do, we start getting rewarded, you know, sales teams, like wow, those these sales are becoming easier, I should do more of this stuff. And my job is gonna continue to get easier. And, you know, if I do a few more of these things, I'm going to actually have a lot more time to go spend my family. So, you know, so some of that becomes the culture. And we talked about that what they asked me answer, but I think that that goes for anything in a company, you know, when, you know, they asked me if there's an initiative and, you know, 10,000 visits over the world private, they asked me answer is a mission. You know, it's like when you get your whole company aligned around a single mission doesn't mean that everything's going to be clear all the time. But at least we all know where we're going. And at least we all know from making progress towards our mission, especially if you're sending missionaries trackable, that's God, you know, start from the top. Everyone in senior leadership needs to be consistent with the messaging, going to everybody because you can't have one leader saying One thing is important earlier saying that some totally different is important, you know that that's a great way for a company to stall out. So, if everything is aligned, and you really you get buy in for it, you get wins from it, you celebrate those wins, you keep pushing. And you have a culture of a company that's winning together. Again, easier said than done.

Bob Ruffolo  40:25

And there's a lot of failures along the way. But you know, every day every month, you just get a little bit better.

Dana Dowdell  40:33

I love it. But we do a lightning round with every one of our guests. So, we will throw the same five questions at you. So, the first, the first question is, what's one thing that you wish you had known before starting a business?

Bob Ruffolo  40:46

Um, one thing that I wish I had known before starting a business I wish list 100 things going through my mind. And you sent me the questions right before this podcast, and I didn't look at him. So, I should probably look him now.

Russ Harlow  41:10

You know, I just don't say it's marketing. But that's all.

Bob Ruffolo  41:15

I think the biggest mistakes for me were that I have perception that the boss needed to call the shots, and need to be that type of boss, and I'm paying you to do the job. And you got to realize that every single person, you know, has goals and aspirations and you know, they want something out of their life. If you really want to get the best, somebody you gotta understand where we're the vision that they see for themselves, and what their goals and aspirations are. And the role of a leader, you know, is obviously, we've got to make sure the company is productive. But we've got to also at the same time, it should, the people in the organization that are part of the company, are in route to achieving that. And it's our job as a leader to lead them to that. So, I think that's probably that's the first thing that really stands out. That I wish I knew that when I started because I came in, I was terrible boss, my first 10 employees would tell you, you know, old Bob was just an awful human being.

Russ Harlow  42:14

I wish I could tell all my old bosses that that's not how you do it. What's your favorite way to market your business?

Bob Ruffolo  42:23

The best way of speaking, that's what we found for us. You know, it probably is because of what we do, we're teaching a framework and it's not something that you kind of just learn in a sales call or you know, so I enjoy these have enjoyed podcasts. So, this is for this is fun for me. So, I will say my personal favorite way is doing this, I think is a great medium for anyone who's trying to promote their business. But you know, for us speaking is where we actually generate the most business.

Dana Dowdell  42:55

What is one business platform that has changed your life?

Bob Ruffolo  42:58

When you say platinum, you're talking like a technology. It we've had

Dana Dowdell  43:03

people say like, how you know HubSpot. We've had people say zoom, we've had people say, you know, Wix, WordPress, what, you know,

Bob Ruffolo  43:11

mine would be HubSpot. Hands down. You know, I was very blessed when you got into that community that they were so supportive, the CEO, the leader, the partner team, the products, you know, thank God took off because we put all of our eggs in the HubSpot basket. And, you know, Halligan, Dharmesh run the company, or just to the most wonderful people in the whole world. Pika Buddha, who also led the partner channel the time, just three the most amazing people. So, I wouldn't have my career today. If it wasn't for those three individuals in HubSpot.

Russ Harlow  43:49

We should we should have a HubSpot episode because I just started dipping my toe in the HubSpot. And I realized this is a really powerful software. And there's a bit of a learning curve on it.

Bob Ruffolo  44:01

It's come a very long way. And if you want me to help it episode you happy. Cool.

Russ Harlow  44:06

All right, so what's your favorite business book of all the many that don't teach you how to do business?

Bob Ruffolo  44:11

I'm a huge Jim Collins fan. And you do great. Yeah, but I'm gonna pick a different one. So, he wrote a book called Beyond Entrepreneurship is actually the first book I think he ever wrote, I believe it was. Then he wrote Good, the Great then he wrote, you know, built the last good, the Great, Great by Choice how the mighty fall he wrote all those. And then my favorite business book, he went back and redid Beyond Entrepreneurship, and it came out as b e 2.0. And he kept the original book intact. And then he did Jim's view from 2020. And he integrated all the learnings from all of his other books into one book is a MBA in a book. I have my entire company read that several times a year, and every time you read you're gonna pick up new things, is the best business book that has ever existed and no one knows about it.

Dana Dowdell  45:02

It is literally in the background right over your left shoulder at the very top. So, it's, oh, it's signed. Look at that. I love it. This I think this is our favorite question because we it's Russ and I are just like compiling a library of resources. So, it's grateful for that that contribution. Okay, last question. When did you feel like you had made it?

Bob Ruffolo  45:28

A memory comes back to me, it's not that we actually made it at that point. But we had a year we had our holiday party, it was our first year where we did over a million dollars in my first employee, who's now a business partner and I were the last to leave the party. And we were just kind of sitting there drinking whatever champagne it was. And I'm just like, can you believe that we did this. So here's my first play very early on, and he would stay with me day and night working on the business, he would be, we would go in at 7am. We'd work on the business till five. And then you know, I started working on the business or whatever it was, after hours, we'd stay until 11. Sometimes we're building furniture didn't matter. And so him and I were just do the cycle for two years of just grinding by having fun becoming best friends. And I think, you know, that year, the first year, we did over a million dollars and just sitting there after the holiday party drinking champagne, we're like, we made it. But you know, there's several milestones after that, that are much bigger than that. But that was the that was a really proud moment, because that's when I think we actually knew we were probably not gonna go out of business.

Russ Harlow  46:38

That's a solid feeling. It doesn't hurt. Alright, so now we were talking, you have a conference coming up soon. Right? Can you tell us a little bit about what what's happening there?

Bob Ruffolo  46:52

Yeah, so we did impact live for three years in Connecticut, we did 2017 2018 2019. And of course, the pandemic happen, I got cancelled. So, you know, it was events had a hard time rebounding after the pandemic. So, we did some smaller ones. And you know, this is gonna be the first time we bring impact live back. But it won't be in Hartford, because, you know, we did three of them there. And Harvard's, okay. But we had to pick up more fun spots. So, we're gonna go in New Orleans. So, I believe it's October 2, through fifth impact live 2023. The entire event, they asked me answers the far majority of the event. So, if you are familiar with a asked me answer, and you want to be around other companies are doing they asked me answer. All the best companies do they ask answer will be there. Or if you're just want to learn the framework, you heard good things today, and you're like, man, we got, I want to meet Marcus and I want to learn more about this, a great event for that. But some of the other material that we teach is that we have a certain way that we do sales communication, the way we you know, a style of doing that. So, there's gonna be a heavy component on sales, we're going to be talking a lot about AI, we brought AI to our last event. And that's obviously gonna be a very, very heavy component, how AI and they asked me to work together, so it'd be lots of topics on AI. We talked about HubSpot. And then the last component is around a communication framework called question first. So if anyone's ever seen Marcus talk, you know, he's got a very, very particular way that he communicates. And that's all principle driven again. So, he's gonna teach the principles of question first at this event as well. So, I'm really excited about it. Tickets are on sale. Now, if you're an impact client, they're free. If you're a member of our impact plus community, they're you know, certain level they're free, or you can buy a standalone ticket.

Russ Harlow  48:57

I wish that I had known they were in Hartford at that time, because that would have been a good time to go see you guys. If it comes back to Hartford. New Orleans sounds wicked fun. I don't know might be worth just taking the extra to fly down there. And

Dana Dowdell  49:11

let's do it. Ross. Okay. Yeah, yes.

Russ Harlow  49:15

That'd be a great time. But where can people find you? Where's the best place for people to connect with you?

Bob Ruffolo  49:21

LinkedIn is easiest. So just search my name. Oh, well, Mark buffalo spells a ll I spell it Oh, my buffalo. And yeah, connect with me. Send me a message. Tell me you heard me on the podcast and let's have a combo.

Russ Harlow  49:36

That's fantastic. Bob, thank you for being here and sharing your expertise with our listeners and with us. We love meeting great people and it's nice that you're local to us. Fellow nutmeg or New England are right here in Connecticut. Fantastic stuff. I want to thank our listeners for being here and taking the time to you know, share their time with us. And I know you've gained something some insights something to help you grow your business. Something that you know someone you know can also grow their business because of the information you've heard here today. So, we would love if you just liked it, share it, it got the word out there, connect with Bob all everything will be in our show notes where you can reach out to impact. Hey, read the book. They ask you answer because it's really great stuff. And remember, it's not personal. It's Just Business.