LAURA SUTHERLY
1:02
It’s another episode of the AI Marketing Experts. I’m Laura with this fine group of fellow co host and we’re here ready to dump jump right into some really big topics today. So there’s been a lot going on as usual with the AI world and we aim to provide a strong foundation so that you as small business owners can take grab these gold nuggets and run with them in your business or give some thought and ponder as to wait a minute, will that work or will it not? How can I make some adjustments as that business owner? Because we know you’re all busy so we really appreciate you liking subscribing, sharing these episodes with your fellow co workers, other business owners that you know that would gain something from here. So today we are going to let Brad kick off with a show and tell which we know that everybody will be excited about and then we’ve got some other things going on with this episode. So Brad, would you like to jump right in?
BRAD KILGORE
2:01
Thanks Laura. Yes I would. Nice to see you all. I’m a little froggy today but you know it happens. So before I pull up the screen share, I know we’ve touched on this before. AI Overview AI mode in Google Search is a gold mine because we all have been using Google Search for, I don’t know, a few decades or 10, 15 years. 15 years at least. Where that’s, that’s been the go to all these years, right? Oh just Google it, right? Well now that AI has supercharged into all these different platforms including Google specifically because they’re the boss.
BRAD KILGORE
2:45
I’ve always called them the boss. They have Google Docs Gmail, Google Slides, Google Sheets, you know, all these different things. Google, Gemini. So now what they’ve kind of rolled out is when you’re looking into a Google search, or specifically if you’re more asking a question or you’re trying to research something, you’re trying to find a business, all these different types of queries, they have expanded how that lays out. And so these are going to be kind of some nuggets, gold nuggets, for the business owners to see ways where you can now show up in these searches. Whereas a week ago, two weeks ago, this didn’t even exist. Right? So let me just jump into my screen share here and see what we can come up with. So, you know, we’re used to the all button, right? The all is what was.
BRAD KILGORE
3:43
It’s been there forever. They’ve got all these different new tabs now, including AI mode that we’re going to jump into. But one of the big things is in this case, I’m asking it a question, it’s becoming more of an answer engine versus just a search engine, in my opinion. Now when I’m doing this, I haven’t even gone to the AI mode yet. I’m just in awe. But above any of the other results is giving me this information here. So if I click show more now, it’s showing me other information, right? And essentially still an AI overview, it’s giving me a lot of information. But what’s happening is the sources that it’s pulling from now, they’re doing their best to give you information from people you know, like or trust, essentially.
BRAD KILGORE
4:37
So when you see these, you’ll see Facebook posts, even YouTube go over here. Facebook, YouTube. If you were to go show all, you get an even bigger list, right? You’ve got websites still. But in this case, since it’s more of a question, you’re getting a lot of information from social media posts, right? YouTube, Facebook, Reddit. Reddit is now a very important piece to showing up in Google Search because Reddit’s always been something where you can ask questions or share information, but it’s becoming, you know, even more relevant. I mean, this was kind of an eye opener that now this one’s showing up. So websites, social media, Reddit, and I’ve seen some other ones, but this is rapidly evolving, right? I still haven’t even gone over to the full AI mode button. And if I do, then it’s giving me similar information and again, show all is going to give me stuff over here.
BRAD KILGORE
5:42
But the cool thing I like is now I can Have a conversation right in Google Search about this information. It’s even giving me ideas of do you have a check engine light on or you’re just hearing a loud noise. So it’s becoming something where I’m communicating with it and I’ve still never left Google search, so that is really cool. And then in closing, you look at this one. I just did a search for AI marketing experts. Right. Well that’s the name of our show. And if you look down here, right here, it’s showing the sources like I said.
BRAD KILGORE
6:22
But look there, right there is our syndicated show on Apple, podcasts on Spotify. I saw some on YouTube a little bit ago. So it’s. And again, if we go to the very top up here, looky there, right? So I think this is really cool because this is giving you street cred because we are the experts. Right? But whatever you are trying to promote, you know, getting good information on your website, whether that’s FAQs, whether that’s how to’s, whether that’s YouTube videos that you put on blog posts, I think that YouTube is making a smart move as to how they’re going to start showcasing not just SEO results because we’ve all been looking at that for a number of years and. But now I think that they’re bringing in expert level information. If you so choose to look at it to where anybody, if you want to really rank for something, so to speak, you can do it now differently and effectively.
LAURA SUTHERLY
7:29
Brad, I think that was some really valuable information for people to realize that it’s no longer. If they’re questioning why are my website links click throughs traffic dropping. You just showcase exactly what visitors to Google are actually now seeing. It’s not that they don’t have to go to gemini.google.com, it’s starting to really be seamlessly presented to them. They’re not realizing that they’ll have to scroll down a ways in order to actually click through to a specific website unless they are offered up or cited as a resource or a source that can be providing more value. So thank you very much for sharing that. I know that I was supposed to go ahead. I’m sorry.
BRAD KILGORE
8:15
No, I just said absolutely. I totally agree.
LAURA SUTHERLY
8:18
Yeah, I know I was supposed to do a show and tell here, but I think that what you just presented is so strong and we’ll go right into some latest AI news that Jen has that I think we’ll go into that conversation and if we have time, then I’ll do my show and tell at the End. Because again, showcasing where the information is now presented to viewers, whether it be through Reddit, YouTube, social media, websites, is all playing out. And why is it playing out differently now, Jen?
JENNIFER CREGO
8:48
Well, speaking about these AI, these big, huge AI updates in the last month, one of, one of the biggest, I think, is that Google has started disappearing pages. Full, full pages. They’re just, you know, it’s not that they have necessarily dropped really low. It’s like they, they’re, they’re gone from the, from the index and it is due to AI. However, it’s not the, you know, we, we, for a long time we talked about AI slop, right? Like that was the big thing. Like, oh, well, that’s what, that’s why it’s not getting engagement or it’s not getting, you know, index or something like that, because it’s AI slop. But no, these are pages that are actually well written, they’re grammatically correct, they’re well done. However, there’s nothing unique about them.
JENNIFER CREGO
9:54
They’re just redundant information that’s just the same thing that you can read anywhere. And so those, there’s a lot of pages that are at the bottom of the ocean with a. Brick or what is it, a cement block, basically.
BRAD KILGORE
10:17
Cement shoes gone.
LAURA SUTHERLY
10:19
Yeah, that is, I mean, our listeners and our viewers, I do hope that they take in consideration as to how the deep part of the ocean is a great way to think about it. Because again, so as everybody races and rushes to update their website content, put more blogs out to put everything, what is authentic? What is commodity versus non commodity? I know we’ve talked about a little bit about that in the past. So really think this information, even if you feel there’s been a high percentage of human touch, human editing involved, what does it bring that’s authentic about my business, my area, my services? So we really want to stress those videos, those photos, the content that you’re putting online, is it yours or did you just allow AI to write it and say, great, because if it is exactly what could be used on another roofing company, another carpet cleaner, another shop, if it cannot say, no, no, it only is in Ohio, or nope, it is only in this area of Colorado, then it isn’t unique. It’s going to start dropping to the bottom of the ocean.
JENNIFER CREGO
11:34
Yep, absolutely.
LAURA SUTHERLY
11:36
Very valuable, Very valuable.
JENNIFER CREGO
11:37
The quality of the content and the, the authenticity of it is more important than ever. And the, yeah, the, the number of pages on your website will not save you in this case.
LAURA SUTHERLY
11:53
So no, no, it will not broaden that. So before we go into John, who’s got a different kind of viewpoint. Chris, do you have, how would you like to add to that conversation of what you’re seeing?
CHRIS HUNTER
12:04
Well, I mean, obviously, you know, it’s, it’s important to talk about your community if you’re a local business and, and talk about, and tie things in to your community, to your, what you’re talking about, you know, in your content. I think that’s more important really on that conversation. But I mean, talk about stories, what’s going on in your business, about, you know, the, the jobs that you’re doing and, and stuff like that. I think that’s really the content that Google wants to see. And we had this conversation before we jumped on here and but I mean it’s just important to not just talk about the same stuff that everybody else is talking about. And that’s really where the, where this update is, is coming from. And you know, not indexing pages because it’s nothing new is really nothing new to Google. They’ve been doing that for 20 years.
CHRIS HUNTER
12:56
But you know, having it localized to you, your company, even your family. Right. I mean, just talk about things that no one else talks about.
LAURA SUTHERLY
13:08
Absolutely. And to your point, talk about the jobs that you’re doing and how you’ve helped. What was their problem that they called you about, what was the solution you offered? And that’s what Google will, you know, showcase when people are also asking for solutions to the same problems. So okay, John, you want to come at us with that reality versus hype and tell us what your viewpoint is.
JOHN CLENDENNING
13:32
How did we get here? So Chamath Palapatala, however you pronounce his last name, was on Joe Rogan recently. Really good episode to go listen to. But he talked about all we’ve ever been seeking for the last 30 years in all of these evolutions of technology’s attention. Right. So Google was who got the most attention went ahead. When you boil it down, it’s, there’s games and all that kind of stuff. But 10,000 backlinks from Russia 20, 25 years ago would rank your website, whatever, you know, hidden text on the page because it, it was trying to game the system of attention. Facebook came along when, when Zuck and then Chamath was worked with him.
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:11
That’s where he got his background. They were just an attendant who, who gets the most likes and shares and your content must be better. We’re going to show that more often and we’re going to let the algorithm feed on that. Right. That became that whole Engine AI, at the core of it is actually in what they call, at the very, very core of AI is an attention mechanism. That’s what they call the center node of the entire AI buildout. So when you, when you understand that we’re good, bad or ugly, we, we’re deciding attention is the, is, is the capital, is the asset. And what that means is like what Jen is saying, like, hey, all of a sudden, if that content like Google’s tried to do this for a long time, how can we be authentic that really the things that people are really engaging with and getting value from move up and the things that are watered down and just commoditized move down.
JOHN CLENDENNING
15:05
So every business that is, I want my marketing company to do that work for me. Just go do it. I don’t want to have any interest in it at all. Are all calling their marketing companies right now going, well, why am I not ranking? What is your problem? What are you doing wrong? Right. And that’s unfortunately, quite seriously, the vast majority of businesses stood in front of a money train from 2010, 11, 12, end of the recession to now. Then, you know, and now all of a sudden, you know, the 2008, 9, 10 sentiment of, hey, things are a little bit tougher, people are a little tighter with their, their money. They’re a little bit concerned about this and that and the other thing and, and interest rates and whatever, and all of that stuff is hitting again. And there’s a whole bunch of people that didn’t even know that, hey, that’s the way it used to be.
JOHN CLENDENNING
15:50
How grandpa ran a business was different. Right? It’s. So what we want is like Google Maps, like they’re saying like, you know, you Google Maps, Google Ads, if you’re not getting engagement, we don’t care how much money you’re giving us, you’re going to the back of the line. And that’s the word that Google is saying on everything now. It’s like, I don’t care. Like, you can have a Google Maps listing that ranks number 1, 2, 3, one day, 15, the next, 12, the next. We were just talking about this. It’s the latest iteration that changed in the last 30 days.
JOHN CLENDENNING
16:18
These are all changing super fast, faster than ever before. It used to be that a Penguin update and a Panda update, we had to figure out, okay, what was that all about? Let’s fix the client sites if they went up or down or sideways, and then we’re good for the next six months, year, two years. Because we, we matched the new algorithm. There is no way to match an algorithm that will be changed by Monday, right? So it’s not an algorithm, it’s authenticity. So if you’re authentic, right, and you can help your, your, your, your digital marketing team, like, hey, tell us more stories. Do like, how can we put that into your content? We’ll do the work for you, we’ll help you out. But you should, you have to be willing to be part of the conversation, not just, I hope somebody else handles that for me. So it is the 5% of the top 3 to 5% of businesses that will go, no, we’ve always been authentic and we really, right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
17:06
Care and all that kind of those businesses, Contrarian view right now also do it offline. They also do what grandpa did to run a business. They also know other business owners and have referral partners and, and maybe they’ve, you know, they, they work with local influencers and like in the carpet cleaning world, you know, maybe you’ve got the, the, the gal that does the, is the beachbody coach and also does some pampered chef and all. And she’s got 5, 10, 15,000 local followers that are ideally suited towards the, one of the best carpet cleaners. And they, they know this. They get attention for that. They legitimately and authentically do a great job. She shows it up on their, on, on her Instagram and stuff like that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
17:49
Next thing you know, you get 50, 100, 200, 500 new customers over the next three, six months, right? Because you’re authentically reaching out. You’re. And everybody else is going, I just want my, my, my Groupon to work better. I want my thumbtack to get me more, you know, $99 whole house cleanings, right? And these guys are going, hey, my average job’s 800 bucks. A thousand bucks, right? Because they’re real. They flip hamburgers and pancakes at the local charity auction and talk to everybody. And like the way, you know, dad, mom, dad, Grandpa, grandma would run a business and be authentic in the marketplace is how you need to be telling stories online and really connecting offline. You do that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
18:29
And none of this changes in algorithms matter at all because you’re still the top of the heap.
LAURA SUTHERLY
18:35
That is very, very much a pile of gold nuggets there for. I think that all of our listeners or viewers can, you know, it’s, they can brag about what they do so well. So it is okay. Yes. We offer, the service will say oil change, you know, and everybody’s doing an oil change. Tell them why it’s different. Like you’re bo. The price points can be different but tell them that story.
LAURA SUTHERLY
18:56
Tell them why you got into it. There is some history and take pride in how you solve somebody’s. You had the solution, you solved their problem. I think that that is a great thread that everybody have car wash day
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:11
and you give back to the local, you know, autism society or whatever. How many like you, you do oil changes. How many oil change centers do that? That one Gu, you know, because he’s authentic. He went and cleaned up his. Him and his team went and cleaned up the beach. Like think of that like the real businesses and real people doing real things and you’re not hiding behind a bunch of I want, I want my pay per click ads to do better. I don’t want to do any of that other stuff.
LAURA SUTHERLY
19:36
Right, right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:37
We’re back to that. Which is good. It’s a good thing.
LAURA SUTHERLY
19:40
So I’m going to ask Brad if you wouldn’t mind showing your example of what you put up again and then I think we should need to talk about that a little bit because unlike as John was saying it used to be we can make this adjustments. It could hold and sustain a website for many months on end because it was, you know, we researched, we knew how to diagnose it, we made it, got the solution. But with what Brad was showing, it’s more of a question that’s put in not so much a search any longer. So it is, it comes down to really thinking what is your business wanting to solve what problems, what solutions. So Brad, if you want to show your screen, we’ll just adjust that question a little bit and you’ll see how it can change who would be brought forward. And granted we’re doing this live. I did not give Brad a heads up that we were going to try this but if we look at you had a particular question about the exhaust and if so say that it wasn’t an exhaust link, let’s pick another issue that they might run with a 2018. So would it be suspension or it would so just change what they might be looking for because again if you’re saying thinking I don’t want to deal with exhaust systems and vehicles, maybe that’s not where you should put your focus to.
LAURA SUTHERLY
21:03
Is there some area of your business that you’re looking to grow? I know we’ve had the discussions before regarding like for the roof industry. If you’re looking to do more industrial sites, you’re not going to spend a lot of time growing residential questions and answers or solutions for homeowners Same with carpet cleaners. If you want that particular set of homeowners, that’s what you’re going to focus on. Same with agriculture. If your soil type is more sandy versus clay versus you’re in this section of the state, you’re going to focus on answering those questions. So it’s always interesting to see with a little tweak of the question are the same companies being cited.
BRAD KILGORE
21:49
Right. And I think that YouTube, we talk about YouTube a lot, obviously owned by Google. But when you’re asking, you know, you’re asking Google search a question of how to fix something, how to remodel something, how to, you know, do whatever it is. This is amazing to me how many things it’s giving us right off the bat. Like if you hear this now, where
JOHN CLENDENNING
22:13
would I get, where would I get a sway bar near me? Or you know, cool, that sounds good. Where do I get a sway bar? Or you know, something like that? Will it now take that because you’re in AI mode. Was it going to take that and say, hey, here’s a local provider, right?
BRAD KILGORE
22:26
Yeah, I mean this one was cool. I thought too. It’s bringing in forums, right? Yeah, the forums almost seem like antiquated in some ways because they’ve been around so long to me. So in this case it’s pulling up a Toyota RAV4 forum. But again, Facebook, YouTube, this is some sort of an answer thing and, and websites too, you know, there. And even something like a motor safety one. But you know, I can’t really emphasize enough how if you want to be the go to expert in your space, get on YouTube, you know, don’t be afraid of it. I mean they’re really, really pushing where these, I mean these links are.
BRAD KILGORE
23:10
Majority of them are coming from YouTube. So even if it’s a short thing that, you know, that is helpful to your customer, in this case auto repair, you’re, you’re doing something where it gives them enough information to figure it out if they want. But I can assure you I do not work on cars. It may give me some ideas of what I might say, oh geez, maybe my control arm bushings are shot out and I do need to take it to the shop. But even if it said, hey, go tighten this, this and this, Chris and John might be gearheads and get their wrenches out and do it, but I’m not going to. So I’m going to take it to the shop.
JOHN CLENDENNING
23:48
But again, I just ran your search here and I just said, I just put a second, hey, where would I Buy one locally. Like it mentioned a Sway, it might be your Sway and it said since you’re in Woolwich area and off it like this is AI Mode, right? And it gave me listings of the down the side seven sites which are local operators and gave me some recommendations and stuff like that. And even the dealerships nearby which are a little bit farther away and a map.
BRAD KILGORE
24:15
Let’s pull it up.
JOHN CLENDENNING
24:16
So YouTube, how to do it yourself. Okay, cool. If I’m gonna do it myself, where do I get the parts? Yes, okay. I don’t want to do it myself. Who’s good, huh?
BRAD KILGORE
24:25
Let’s see. John, show us what you got. Show us what you got man.
LAURA SUTHERLY
24:31
Pull it up.
JOHN CLENDENNING
24:32
Yeah, there. Share my screen.
BRAD KILGORE
24:34
Just talk it, share it.
LAURA SUTHERLY
24:35
And to your point, Brad, I know that you’re showcasing that as John’s getting his screen up those YouTube videos. If you have the opportunity, if you are selling something such as an implement, a planter or something in my world, you can easily do a video about it, but then also take it one step further. Again, talk about why it’s good in your area, your region, why you promote and then talk about the where parts, where they’ll need spare parts and how your service technicians can assist them. So, so again now you’ve got this nice long video or you can break it up in little parts, but go back in your service bays, ask them to talk about what may or may not be maintenance on that machine. But then you’re tying in, not only you could sell it, but you can service it. So those are pieces, those are the pieces that will be broken into shorts on your videos. So to what John here showing your solution to their problem could be showcased on a side for the YouTube.
JOHN CLENDENNING
25:38
Yeah. And look at. So we’ve got Reddit because that is the forums, that’s the new, like that’s what Reddit really is, a very, very deep forum level of everything. And there’s a rav4 Reddit.
BRAD KILGORE
25:49
Rav4, that’s a three year old post.
JOHN CLENDENNING
25:51
Yeah, a three year old post is the one that came up. Right. So and yeah, motor Safety and Toyota RAV4 forum that you found Brad, and Consumer Reports and the video. So this is sort of like, hey, started the question, I have this problem, what I do, suspension issues and then okay, where would I go buy one locally to fix it? And then it started giving me the Google Maps. Right, right. Like literally there’s more deal, there’s way more in my area than, than those two locations. Right. But it said, hey, right in your Town, Elmira, These guys, West side, Ottawa, there’s about five mechanics.
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:24
So these guys are the only ones picked for that. That service. And then Fairway Auto, kitchener is about 25 minutes away, but it is, you know, to get, get. And then, then we got the Toyota. Two Toyota dealerships showing up, right? And it’s like, so there’s, you know, there. There’s your starting point of, of just anybody saying, I got this squeak. What do I do? It might be this, it might be that. So that’s our world now is like I.
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:50
And I keep telling all of our. All of our clients that, like, people don’t go carpet cleaner near me. They go, hey, chat, right? I’m on the, you know, I’m on the way home. They’re talking to their truck. The truck or whatever they call their, you know, their, Their. Their new GPS or their this or they’ve got their either Android or. Or Apple auto wired into their. Their vehicle or whatever and all that kind of stuff, right? The app and Apple Mode and all that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:18
And they’re just having that conversation. Oh, by the way, I screwed up with the wife. I got to swing by Flowers. Can you root me to the nearest flower shop? And yeah, the number on the carpet again, back end this time. And yeah, who’s just good at that? Like, I just need to get that solved. I’m done trying myself. Right? And now you’re having. And boom, now you’re having a conversation.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:36
But it’s. It’s still just pulling this up and then telling you so you don’t, you know, don’t crash into something and. Okay, cool. Oh, I’ve heard of those guys. So here’s my contrarian view again. Yeah, actually, that second one. Yeah, call them. I’ve heard of aaa.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:48
So, yeah, get. Give those guys a call. I’ve seen their trucks around. They seem pretty good, right? Because they came up in the search of. How did they come in the search? Because they told stories of jobs they did where they solved that problem. And those stories got put on their website. It got put on social media. It got, you know, they.
JOHN CLENDENNING
28:04
They have Google reviews that talk about it, and they answered back about it, and, and there’s engagement around it, and it’s just like. So there you. You become the topic authority of one topic. Well, there’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of topics that you need to become the authority of, so you got to just constantly be telling stories. Here’s what. Here’s what we did.
BRAD KILGORE
28:25
And I liked what you were showing too, because you asked It a question about, okay, where would I get this repaired in my area? And then it pulled up some map information. Then it had a question at the bottom saying, would you like more information with their address and location? Right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
28:42
And compare pricing.
BRAD KILGORE
28:44
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
28:45
So do you have a pricing page on your website? Not your exact. As I always tell our guys, do not give your exact prices on a website because again, time and materials and carpet cleaning, you really don’t know where you’re going to show up with. But teach the public what a low end vs mid tier vs premium cleaning company does differently and the ranges for the average 1500 to 2000 square foot home, 2500, you know, same as roofing. Like what’s the difference between low end, mid and. And a premium roofing company? Why, why is there a range or is it just a commodity? Should everybody be charged the same? Well, no, no businesses should charge the same. There’s a, there’s a range. So teach that, teach that in your, in your content.
LAURA SUTHERLY
29:23
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great way too, to present.
JOHN CLENDENNING
29:26
Yeah.
BRAD KILGORE
29:27
And to wrap that up, I mean, I do use Android Auto in my car. And there is the new feature live where you literally can be driving and talk to your car saying, you know what, there is a knock in my engine. I don’t know what it is. Is there a Toyota repair shop near me? And it will literally give you some options while you’re driving. Say, would you like me to go to one of these? You say, yes, I would like to go to ABC Toyota. Boom. It puts the directions in there and you’re off to the races. I mean, it’s insane because you’re now having a conversation while you’re driving safely about where you need to go and what service you want.
CHRIS HUNTER
30:06
So really it comes down to, you know, you’ve really got to think through or use AI to think through the customer journey.
JOHN CLENDENNING
30:14
Right? Yeah.
CHRIS HUNTER
30:15
How would they find you in an AI world? Okay. Because what you guys have just described is exactly what everybody is doing with chat, gbt with Gemini, with perplexity, with Claude, with whatever that they’re using. Right. That’s what they’re, how they’re trying to find you in your services. But it’s, it didn’t start with a, like you said roofer near me or carpet cleaner near me, you know, type of search. It’s like, hey, I got this problem. How do I fix it?
JENNIFER CREGO
30:46
Absolutely.
JOHN CLENDENNING
30:46
Can I share one more really cool thing then?
JOHN CLENDENNING
30:49
Of course.
JOHN CLENDENNING
30:50
Guys, can I get. I can now. I’m excited. So sorry. You did it to me. Okay. Last night on my so I have a private coaching group for carpet cleaners to teach them how to actually just be the one, the one guy in the marketplace that gets this right. And this is just stuff I used to do to run my seven figure cleaning business for about five hours a week of my time and have the team do it.
JOHN CLENDENNING
31:11
This is my beginning workshop for the guys on okay, your best customer snapshot put in. This is just sample data. I show them put in 10, ideally 25 to start with. Go with your database, go through your database, talk to your technicians, you know your customers, who they are, where they are, why you like them, what they’re all about, all that kind of stuff and just kind of fill this in a little bit. And then again this was a starting point, just a sort of a light touch so that then you can take that 25 would be better 10 if you literally, if you pooped out and said okay well at least give me 10, right? At least give me 10 guys, right? That was on the call. And then we’re going to take this prompt, right? Act as a growth strategist. Use your master prompt, that’s what we call it in the group, your master prompt. Analyze these, right? Look for these patterns and then give me.
JOHN CLENDENNING
31:59
And again we tell them to put this inside a an actual project that we’ve been building over time. So it already has context of their they’ve already done competitor phone calls, they’ve got competitor analysis. Like we’re just stacking inside a ChatGPT project all of this stuff into the knowledge base. So now that the time they get to this five customer patterns, 10 local stories. So your homework this week as of last night’s call, take one one of the following and do it and report back in the group. You can do all of them for brownie points local story marketing post on social media based up because it’s now going to come up with this information one client or referral partner referral request message that is localized and authentic based on your very best clients. Find your best customers and then reverse engineer your best customers are going to tell you who your next best customer is and how. What kind of stories are you hearing from them that you can then tell the you can then tell the world.
JOHN CLENDENNING
32:58
So that’s the whole goal is like what did I do today that I can share? You know, HIPAA compliant as you know, you’re not going to say well Nancy Smith at 123 Fourth street, but you know what I mean? Like hey we’re just at a custom camera today. And this is what happened. Right? And how can you tell those stories that then become the authentic story engine of your company that AI and real people and everything pick up?
LAURA SUTHERLY
33:23
So if anybody’s listening, they may want to view about the half an hour mark because John just provided some great homework for anybody that you can adapt to your own.
JOHN CLENDENNING
33:33
Pause the screen, grab the prompts, all that good stuff.
LAURA SUTHERLY
33:36
Exactly. So thank you for sharing that. And I think that, Chris, you’re going to go ahead and give us some predictions before we circle back around and maybe leave with a. Just a quick how to demonstration. But what predictions do you have or anything else to add to this conversation?
CHRIS HUNTER
33:54
So here’s my prediction. Right? And we were talking about this before, you know, we jumped on here, but. And it’s something that we haven’t talked, you know, we, we talk about this almost every week, right. Is that AI obviously is taking over and all that kind of stuff, but in reality, it is truly taking over. Right. And by the end of this year, and this is my big prediction here, by the end of this year, most small businesses will have an agent or more built into their, into their business. Okay? So if your competitors, think about this, all right. If your competitors are sitting out there and they have what we’ve built for our clients, which is, you know, an AI executive assistant, a sales agent, an agent that, that answers phone calls, you know, as they’re coming in, if you have those three tiny agents built into your business, those are the ones that are going to move the fastest.
CHRIS HUNTER
34:54
Right? Those are the ones that are going to be capturing leads. These are the ones that are going to be capturing all of the estimates that, that are being sent out for roofers, you know, whatever. Those are the businesses that are going to start winning more and more and more, and it’s going to be really hard to catch up with them. So if you are not thinking about that, you need to start thinking about that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
35:16
Yeah.
CHRIS HUNTER
35:17
Number two. Right. And. And this is if you’re an employee sitting out there, okay. And listening to this, and yes, we’re the AI Marketing experts podcast. But if you’re an employee sitting out there and you don’t know anything at this point about AI, I highly suggest that you jump in head first because I read an article this morning that Cloudflare, which is, you know, an Internet company that pretty much the entire world uses, is laying off 1100 people like as of immediately. And it’s not to, to save money, because they’re making tons of money. It’s not because of that.
CHRIS HUNTER
35:56
Is this so that they can put the AI agents that are teamed up with humans together and they could be way more efficient. And that’s really where our world is going to right now, in the, in the, you know, maybe two, three years down the road. That might be a way different reality than what we’re talking about. But I think that it’s the employees that understand AI.
JOHN CLENDENNING
36:21
Right.
CHRIS HUNTER
36:21
And it’s happened in my own organization, the, and John and I have talked about this before, is that the employees that are not using AI in their workflows, we’re like, we can’t use you anymore. And I just built an agent that, that completely replaces you, by the way.
JOHN CLENDENNING
36:39
Right.
CHRIS HUNTER
36:40
And so it’s important, right. If you understand how AI is working, even just on the LLM side of things, not, not so much on the agent side. But I think that if you, if you can combine all of that,
BRAD KILGORE
36:54
you’re,
CHRIS HUNTER
36:55
you’re way more valuable to your organization and you will be most likely kept on. So that’s coming from small business owners.
JOHN CLENDENNING
37:03
Right.
CHRIS HUNTER
37:04
And, and all five of us on this are, are small business owners. So that’s kind of where we’re trending, just so you know.
LAURA SUTHERLY
37:11
Yes. And you definitely, the way you paired the agents with human, I think that is the way we’re focusing on things is look at your position, look at your daily task and see how you can direct AI to do it. So that does free you up to do more. What John was saying, to go back to the things that put us out there in the public, that we’re able to be in the moment, helping communities, being involved, it all starts to play off one another. But I do think that anybody that asked me my opinion on AI, it’s definitely embrace or see what interests you, learn more and see how that can make your day better, more efficient, more effective, so that you’re more of a director versus the doer. Because to your point, is there a place for somebody that just refuses to use AI at all? And most likely there’s not. Jen, I know you’ve been bicycle repair technician.
JOHN CLENDENNING
38:05
You can be a bicycle repair. That’s going to be a while.
LAURA SUTHERLY
38:09
Yes, there’s many things, you know, they’ll say that. Yeah. Anyway, it gives them options. But Jen, you were shaking your head.
JENNIFER CREGO
38:20
I, I just, I mean, I’ve said it for a long time. If I can employ someone who uses AI and they’re efficient and effective and they’re, you know, AI helps them do everything smarter, faster, better, why would I employ Someone, someone who can’t or won’t or isn’t doing that level of work. I just as a small business owner, I can’t afford to employ someone who isn’t as effective and productive and
LAURA SUTHERLY
38:57
you
JENNIFER CREGO
38:57
know, who doesn’t contribute as much as the person who uses AI. Like I just like look at the two. I can’t afford to, to hire the person who doesn’t. So unfortunately and sometimes that hurts.
JOHN CLENDENNING
39:13
But yeah, and we get a lot of pushback from, from different again team members part of it, hey, I don’t think I want to be replaced. So maybe I’ll hold back and that’s that like you might be having that in your company. Anybody listening as well. But the other side of it is, you know, people say well I’ve got so much on my plate, I can’t stop to do that. And I just had this conversation in a team coaching today and it was like the, the answer is if you could stop for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour and solve a problem whether you’re using Notebook LM and putting up your, your slide presentation for an onboarding plus this and this and this. Put it all in. Take a little bit longer this one time and the next time you go. By the way, here’s the new client build up for me and it’s got all the context.
JOHN CLENDENNING
39:56
It’s going to be frustrating a little bit at the front end. Maybe it’ll take two or three of those iterations before go. Okay, finally you nailed it.
BRAD KILGORE
40:03
Thanks.
JOHN CLENDENNING
40:03
Right now you don’t. You’re going. Well, I don’t have the time because it takes me an hour or two to do the presentation or to get the presentation ready. Take an extra hour and give yourself a five minute task so you can then reach out to clients more often with other things. Because you’re not spending two hours prepping for this. It’s five minutes is running in the background and you’re making phone calls. Right. So there is the mindset of if you don’t be so busy doing the busy work that you can’t pause and think, how can I get that off my plate? As you know in a similar fashion with an AI tool And that to Jen’s point, that is a better employee in today’s day and age for any company who is kind of thinking hey, how can I free up more of my time to do more direct and important work?
LAURA SUTHERLY
40:50
I think that’s in all these tips. Some suggestions I would have is based on look at what your company, what systems, what software, what you Know where you log into every day, see where they’re rolling AI because you may be surprised at some agents that are there and see how it would help. And that’s one thing that, you know, we ask our team, hey, if you’re in a particular software, what is there? Have you explored to John’s point? Take half an hour, explore it. Will it matter? Is it there yet? Maybe it’s the next week that you roll back around to see if it’s improved even more. The other thing too I would recommend is if you still feel like I’m at least opening a, you know, one of them ChatGPT or Claude before you just take what it provided you and then say it wrote your blog and you’ve now edited it before you just manually take it and post it, ask can you do this for me? Or what would be the steps? You may be surprised of the LLM that you’re working in is able to take those next steps for you. And it’s not as manual or manually heavy as it once was. So those would be my two takes on what everybody’s talking about, how things are changing so fast. Brad, any other insight that you’d like to before I jump into a quick demo?
BRAD KILGORE
42:11
No, I think you tied it together really well, so I’d love to see your demo.
LAURA SUTHERLY
42:17
Well, I’m just going to give a demo. I thought that this I’m hearing more and more and I know we’ve hit several times about NotebookLM and the infographic. Well, this was a new AI twist that I learned myself this week and so I’m going to go ahead and showcase how I took and asked NotebookLM to create a monitor. Let me get to the right screen here. Okay, so hopefully you guys can see this now.
BRAD KILGORE
42:44
Yes.
LAURA SUTHERLY
42:46
So basically I just went ahead a source pull in. Now I did not check this, so please forgive me in my ag industry if something is incorrect with this particular Gen 3 setup. But sometimes you want to go ahead and add your own branding. You want to make sure that it’s authentic to your particular location. But this is a flat file. So now what you can do is take download this but so by hitting the three dots, download it, it will be an image. You can then go ahead and open up canva saying that if you select your media, upload it, bring it in, then you can look for this magic layer and it’s absolutely wonderful. So now when I did that, can you see my how you’re able to grant everything’s grouped here at the moment? If we ungroup it oops.
LAURA SUTHERLY
43:40
Now you’re able to actually change things in and out. Nice. I was so excited about this. So again, here’s a feature. You’re able to see everything. Correct.
JENNIFER CREGO
43:51
Yeah.
LAURA SUTHERLY
43:52
Okay. So anyway, I just think that you can add your branding, you can change the colors. This is something, of course, very useful for if you’re putting in SOPs together that you want your team to kind of walk through. I think this is very valuable to again, look at the resources that we have available to. How will they work with each other? Right now, Slides does not work that. Because when you’re bringing down slides, you’d have to bring them down individually. So you would not be able to do a magic layer on your slides. But consider any other images being able to pull it up in Canva.
LAURA SUTHERLY
44:27
So that’s what I wanted to share with our listeners and our viewers today.
JOHN CLENDENNING
44:30
That’s great because I think of that frustration moment you have when you get a really good image from an output like that and chatgpt or anything like that, and it’s got some text on, it’s got this, it’s got that, but it keeps making that one mistake you can’t prompt it to fix. If you could just say, okay, let me just put that in Canva. Magic Layers. There we go. I spelled it right. We’re Canadian. We have extra letters in a lot of our words. Right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
44:57
So we just gotta get that other letter back in. So anyways, yeah, and that gets frustrating.
CHRIS HUNTER
45:02
What’s interesting is that that is not a new type of a feature. Ish. Right. To the industry. Because Adobe Illustrator had that, you know, for forever to convert an image into Paths. Right. And we’ve used that to create like when. When you get a logo in and it’s flat, it’s a jpeg, it’s horrible looking, but you’ve got to fix it.
CHRIS HUNTER
45:25
It’s easier just to, you know, import it into Illustrator. And I haven’t touched Illustrator, mind you, in about 10 years. So import it into Illustrator and. And convert it to Paths. So that’s a cool feature for Canva, though I. I do like it well,
LAURA SUTHERLY
45:41
and it seems that is a tool. I don’t know very many small business owners who still invest in the Adobe suite to have Illustrator as well.
JOHN CLENDENNING
45:51
We got rid of it a long time ago.
LAURA SUTHERLY
45:53
Exactly. So Canva, of course, seems to be in everybody’s vocabulary these days. And so therefore I thought that was very powerful because again, if you want to put your branding in, you want to change the colors, equipment in AG is not Exactly. Well represented when it comes to any AI generation. You know, when they generate those files, you kind of scratch your head as to what are they trying to showcase. So now knowing that I could swap out photos or to your point, change spellings, make sure that the branding’s there, rearrange steps if in our shop it’s a little bit different. I just thought that was a very user friendly hack that I wanted to share with the audience this week.
BRAD KILGORE
46:32
Well, I’m glad I stayed till the end because I just took notes on all that. That’s awesome.
LAURA SUTHERLY
46:38
Well, I know we went really deep. Say again, Jen? I’m sorry?
JENNIFER CREGO
46:41
Oh no, I just said mic drop.
LAURA SUTHERLY
46:45
Well, we are almost at our time, but is there anything else? I know that they are of course a lot always rolling out in AI and obviously we just hit some very powerful topics about being found with AEO this week and how you might think of your business a little bit different. Watching for those stories, putting up solutions for people. Anything else that the group wants to mention before we get ready to showcase our community or have John give a highlight of our community again?
BRAD KILGORE
47:15
I think John should give us the highlight of the community.
JOHN CLENDENNING
47:19
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Make sure you check in the description. Hop over to the Amy community. We’re going to have the take action with Amy notes for the episodes coming in as well and all that kind of stuff. So go a little bit deeper. I think this is a go back and re listen to it episode. I think they all are, but again, I think this one is right. So.
JOHN CLENDENNING
47:41
But listen to it again, go through the show notes. The, the deeper dives on some of that stuff as well because there is a lot of nuggets there. And these are, these are things like, you know, in my world, when I listen to podcasters and YouTubers and stuff like that, a lot of times I’ll take the transcripts and the notes, pop it into my favorite LLM of choice. It’s already trained on my master prompt. It knows everything and say what can I take out of. Give me at least three or four things that I can take action on this right now in my company or think about or hand to the team or whatever. Because I thought that was really good and I need to figure out more. Right? And it pops up a list.
JOHN CLENDENNING
48:21
It does whatever. I’m old school. I print it on the printer and walk around with it and highlight it and scratch it and put it on somebody’s desk and all of those kinds of things. And yeah, and I just think that’s what everybody should be doing with with this kind of stuff. If there’s anything that you got out of any of the nuggets shared by all of these really brilliant smart people, then put that in place, send us messages, ask us a little bit more about it, join the community and and ping us in there and show us what you’re doing with this stuff as well and where you’re taking the next steps. Let’s. Let’s make this a two way conversation.
LAURA SUTHERLY
48:54
Absolutely. I like that you reminded anybody. We’re always looking for those comments, the questions and the feedback so we appreciate you we appre taking the time to listen and as John said join the community to download the show notes because you can run them through, get your tips highlighted, ready to go for your team to use. But again we appreciate you liking sharing and joining our community. So thank you to my cohorts here and point bringing all these fine points to the table today. We look forward to seeing everybody at the next episode. Thank you.
