The best small businesses shouldn’t be the best-kept secrets
That one line binds together everything I do.
I speak to brilliant small business owners all the time. They’ve done the hard bit. Real craft. Real care. Hundreds of five-star reviews, in some cases.
And yet, when a buyer searches Google or asks ChatGPT who to trust, those businesses are nowhere.
The ones getting found first aren’t always the best. Often they just have the biggest budgets, the loudest marketing, or the know-how to make their expertise visible online.
I think that’s a travesty.
So here’s my job in a single sentence.
I connect the UK’s best small businesses with the buyers who deserve them, by building Knowledge Centres that earn trust, prove real expertise, and get you recommended by Google and AI. Not because you shouted the loudest. Because you earned it.
What I actually do
I build done-for-you Knowledge Centres for UK small businesses, using the proven Endless Customers methodology, formerly known as They Ask, You Answer – by Marcus Sheridan.
In plain English, that means I help you answer the questions your buyers are really asking. The awkward ones. What it costs. What can go wrong. How you honestly compare to the alternatives. The opinions most companies dodge because they’re scared it’ll cost them the sale.
Most businesses hide that stuff. The smart ones publish it because it’s proven to move the sales needle.
That honesty is what builds trust long before anyone picks up the phone. And trust is the thing that makes a stranger choose you over the business down the road.
And one thing I want to be clear about, because people get this wrong all the time. I’m not a content agency, and I’m definitely not a copywriter. I’m the person who architects the whole thing, from the questions your buyers ask, to the articles that answer them, to the way your salesperson actually uses them on a call.
How I got here
I’ve been doing this a long time.
I designed my first website in 1998, in my first year at university. I graduated with First Class Honours. Somewhere in the middle of all that I won a Regional Royal Television Society Award for a student documentary called ‘Battered Cod’. (A story for another day.)
By 2002, six months after graduating and back when Google was only four years old, I was building websites professionally. I’ve built hundreds since.
For a few years I ran the online marketing for a renewable energy company whose clients included the now King Charles. Then in 2007 I started my own agency, because I’d watched too many good owners get let down by web people who simply didn’t understand their world.
I’ve spent my whole career since then with ambitious UK small businesses, not consulting for big corporates. I still work with some of my very first clients, more than sixteen years on. That tells you more about how I work than any award ever could.
Then came the piece of work that changed everything for me.
The result that made it click
In 2013 I built a multi-article Knowledge Centre for a company called Bristol Bifold. This was around five years before Marcus Sheridan published his book, so I didn’t even have a name for what I was doing. I’d just studied the search strategies of the day and found the same thing every time. Honestly answering buyers’ questions was the whole game.
One of those articles ranked at roughly number one nationally for “best bifold doors” for about three years.
Here’s the part I’m proudest of. When Bristol Bifold was later acquired, the buyer’s due diligence team put a value on the whole Knowledge Centre of around £500,000 of annual revenue impact. Worth being precise here. That’s the figure a sceptical, hostile audience reached while trying to pick the business apart. Not my number. Theirs. The site still runs today, long after the original owner moved on.
That was the moment I stopped guessing and started building this on purpose.
Proof it works, whoever builds it
Let me show you a result that has nothing to do with me. On purpose.
Phil Coleman runs Barlow Blinds. He is not my client. He read the method and implemented it himself. His website traffic went from around 400 visitors a month to around 40,000. His average sale value rose by 44%. One single article has been credited with over £1M in revenue from just one of the customers it attracted. He stopped paying for Google Ads entirely, because the organic traffic took over.
I share Phil’s story because it proves something important. The method works when a business commits to it properly, whether I build it or you do. That matters, and I’d rather you knew it.
Trained by the man who wrote the book
I didn’t just read Endless Customers and start selling a service off the back of it.
I went through a twelve-month intensive programme with Marcus Sheridan and his team, and I’m one of only a handful of people in the UK certified to implement this methodology. Marcus has endorsed the way I work from the main stage at Entrepreneurs Circle events.
Marcus Sheridan’s words, not mine:
“If you’re serious about making They Ask, You Answer work, you need to talk to Mark. He doesn’t just teach this stuff, he makes it happen.”
I’ve also been part of the Entrepreneurs Circle since 2012, long enough to be called an EC Legend, and Nigel Botterill and the EC team personally chose me to build the new EC Masterplan Knowledge Centre. Nigel put it simply:
“Mark’s the real deal, and when it comes to getting your Knowledge Centre sorted properly, there’s no one better.”
I’ve now built more Knowledge Centres, across more industries, than any other practitioner in the UK. Now, I know how that sounds. I’m not saying it to puff my chest out. I’m saying it because volume across a lot of different sectors is where the real skill hides, and it’s why I can spot in an afternoon what someone new to this would wrestle with for months.
A mistake I’ll own
I make a point of owning my own mistakes, so here’s one that still makes me wince…
I’ve delivered Knowledge Centres for a string of happy clients, and until recently I hadn’t published a single case study about any of them. Not one. I had glowing feedback sitting in my files, a video testimonial already recorded, and results worth shouting about. And I sat on all of it.
I got so absorbed in doing the work that I forgot to show the work.
Worse, I fell into the exact trap I warn clients about. I wanted the case studies to be perfect, with six months of traffic data and a full package of quantified figures, so I kept waiting. Meanwhile I had more than enough to publish something genuinely useful right then.
The lesson stuck. Publish what you have, not what you wish you had. I now build that principle straight into how I work with clients.
Have a look at my case studies that I’m very proud of.
What I believe about AI
I use AI every single day, and I think it’s a brilliant tool.
But trust can’t be automated. Content churned out in twelve minutes buys no real stories, no industry knowledge, and no understanding of what your buyers are actually afraid of. That isn’t content. It’s more noise added to an ocean of it.
The trust that makes a stranger pick up the phone comes from a human saying what only a human can say. Your real prices. Your honest opinion. The client who nearly walked away but didn’t. AI can help me build faster, but it can’t invent the expertise. That has to come from you.
If you want to see how this plays out in your own market, have a look at who Google and AI are recommending in your industry right now. It’s usually a wake-up call.
Who I’m really for
I work best with owners who are genuinely good at what they do and know it, but who feel invisible to the buyers who’d love them. People who are tired of marketing that promised the earth and delivered a nice-looking report and not much else.
Sound like you? Then we’ll probably get on.
I’m not for everyone, and I’ll happily tell you if we’re not a fit.
If you want a magic button that fills your diary overnight while you do nothing, that isn’t me. A Knowledge Centre is a sales tool you feed, not a slot machine you pull. The build gets you off to a flying start, because I carry the heavy lifting. But the owners who win biggest are the ones who keep putting the best of it in front of every prospect.
Let’s have a proper chat
If any of this has struck a chord, the next step is an easy one.
Book a 15-minute call with me. We’ll talk about your business, your buyers, the questions they’re really asking, and whether a Knowledge Centre is the right move for you. No pressure, no jargon. And if it isn’t right for you, I’ll tell you.
You’re also completely free to do nothing with this for now. Sometimes the right time is later, and that’s fine. The invitation stays open whenever you’re ready.
Because the best businesses shouldn’t be the best-kept secrets. Yours included.
Mark Reynolds builds Knowledge Centres for businesses using the Endless Customers methodology, formerly known as They Ask, You Answer. He was trained personally by Marcus Sheridan and has been implementing this approach since 2013, before the book was a bestseller.
