How AI Search Is Reshaping Small Business Marketing with Pete Kleinjan

Why AI Search Transforms Small Business Marketing

Pete Kleinjan joins Jesse Dolan to talk about how AI search is reshaping and impacting small businesses’ visibility in local search and Google search. Learn to optimize content, leverage AI tools, and monitor metrics to attract qualified leads. Ideal for small businesses, these insights boost your digital presence.

Key Episode Takeaways:

• Use AI search tools like ChatGPT to see how small businesses appear in results.
• Optimize NAP data to enhance trust in AI search and local search rankings.
• Create authentic social posts to influence AI-driven local search recommendations.
• Update website content to ensure accurate AI search responses for small businesses.
• Track AI search visibility in Google Search Console to stay ahead locally.

Find the transcript, links to resources, and more on the show page at https://luminatelocal.com/how-ai-search-is-reshaping-small-business-marketing/

Episode Transcript

(00:19):
Welcome back everyone to Luminate Local.
And we're going to help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever changing world of digitalmarketing.
Today we're talking about something that's, I guess, moving fast.
AI isn't just about streamlining your operations anymore.
It's becoming the new sales and marketing channel where you need to get found, gobble upthat digital real estate that is available.

(00:40):
And, stay ahead to gain or keep your competitive edge.
Today, my guest is Pete Kleinjan, founder and owner of Tiger29.
Pete's an experienced SEO and marketing expert who has been helping businesses navigate,in general digital, digital visibility for years.
And obviously is getting into AI search where this is converging and reshaping, the waybusinesses get found online.

(01:03):
Pete, welcome to the show.
Glad to have you.
So I'm excited to have you.
on here today because this topic is something that people are talking about yet.
I feel like it's definitely something people are really starting to talk more about, whichis how AI search is creating basically a whole new digital area, new digital real estate

(01:24):
for businesses to again capture and stake their claim in.
I'd like to start if we can with kind of that landscape.
Most people have been thinking about AI as an operational tool.
How can we use it to do things, right?
Replace human beings, replace labor, improve processes, saving time to write content,things like that.

(01:45):
And we're going to get into some of that a little bit.
got some great questions for you.
hope, that will unlock some secrets or teach some people some things there, but, let'sstart with you.
You've seen a shift into something bigger right now.
Can you talk about how AI is starting to reshape the way that people search and discoverbusinesses, maybe how that compares to traditional Google search?
And just set the stage for everybody there and what we're seeing happening here morerecently than anything, right?

(02:10):
Yeah, and I think it's something that's been tickling at the back of my mind since Octoberof 2022 when ChatGPT really hit the scene and started making waves with people is that,
hey, here's this thing.
It's a tool.
And I've always had this opinion that a tool is a tool.
What you do with it is what makes it useful or not.
So everybody for the last two, three years has been figuring out how to use this toolinside their business to create more efficiency,

(02:37):
improve processes, know, save money, reduce staff, whatever.
And I've been watching closely to see if this tool would become a potential marketingchannel for acquiring new customers.
And people have been talking about it kind of throughout here, like, hey, this is coming.
It's going to be a thing.
You know, watch out.

(02:57):
A.I.
search is going to be a thing.
But beyond anecdotal evidence, you know, somebody post a screenshot on social mediathat says, hey,
I just had a customer reach out to me and they said they found me on ChatGPT.
And that's great.
Like who wouldn't take that?
But it's anecdotal.
Can you repeat that process?
Can you measure that process?
And so that's what I've been watching for.

(03:20):
And we've been doing that with our clients in our reporting where we're watching.
Is traffic coming in from AI?
Are you getting leads from AI?
Are there signs coming through your site that are indicating that you're getting newcustomers from AI?
And really in the last couple of months, we've seen that heat up a little bit.
And it's still nowhere near traditional Google search.

(03:40):
But it's starting to build a little bit.
And it's something that small business owners should probably start to pay attention to alittle bit that like, hey, more and more regular consumers are starting to use these tools
in their everyday lives.
And a part of that is they're going to start looking for service providers.
The big change that I'm seeing is that

(04:03):
You know, when people use traditional Google search, they might go to Google and theysearch for DUI lawyer, Sioux Falls.
And when they do that, they get a list and they kind of narrow down their list of whatthe options are and who might be a good lawyer.
They look at reviews, that kind of stuff.
Well, when somebody's interacting with ChatGPT or Gemini, what they're doing is they'resaying like, Hey, I just got my second DUI.

(04:27):
I live in South Dakota.
My first one was in Tennessee.
What do I need to know?
And then the AI is going to come back with some stuff and then they're going to ask itsome more questions.
And then they're going to say like, who's somebody I should talk to in my area about this?
And the AI is going to pre-qualify all that stuff that people used to do on a searchresult page.
I'm going to click on this website.

(04:48):
that's a good looking site.
Like I trust these people.
I'm going to make an appointment.
They go to the next one, make an appointment with that guy.
And then they're like, Hey, I'm going to choose, you know, one of these two based on how Ifeel after meeting with them.
Well, a lot of that pre-qualification is going to happen on the AI platform, where by the timethat a customer reaches out to you, they're going to be teed up.

(05:08):
They're going to feel like they have all the information they need to make a decision.
And really like if you're that DUI lawyer, you just try not to screw up in that initialmeeting and you probably got yourself a customer.
And so it's really shortening the sales funnel.
again, it's not huge volume yet, but it's shortening that sales funnel.

(05:29):
It's much easier to close on those service opportunities for local businesses a lot oftimes when those customers come to you through AI.
And so it's something that's emerging and I think small business owners need to be awareof it.
And just like everything else, whether it was Google ads, Facebook ads, Zillow ads, likeif you can be that small business early adopter, you're going to get the cheapest leads at

(05:52):
the start.
And then when everybody else floods in,
it's going to get more and more expensive, even on the organic side of search when it comes toAI.
Yeah, I think you're pointing out some pretty interesting nuances, right?
With, cause let's be, let's think about it here.
You know, us, well, I'm not trying to say this even Pete.
If we think about this, us as digital marketers, right?

(06:14):
We have made a career in getting people found in Google.
And inversely, I feel like I'm a pretty good Googler, right?
If I'm trying to search for something or find something, I'm sure you've had experience,friends, family, whatever, where somebody is trying to look something up and you're like,
no, no.
Type in this, right?
And like, you're going to get your results.
Trust me.
I know what I'm doing here on the reverse end of this.
Right.

(06:34):
And so I think we can pick up on how people search quote unquote in ChatGPT or Gemini orany AI tool.
They search differently than they search in Google because as you're pointing out, ifsomebody is doing a Google search, you're kind of starting your research process and
you're, you're, looking for, you know, entrances to businesses.

(06:54):
Where am I going to start asking questions or anymore?
Whereas.
When somebody is searching in ChatGPT, like it's aiding in that, right?
It's doing some of the research, like you're saying that pre-qualification, the searchitself that the human is doing or the kind of their intentions and what they're doing when
they're sitting down on the other end of the keyboard, it's different, right?
Than just going to Google.
So the results are going to be different for once they do knock on your door or call youor email you as a business owner and a marketer, right?

(07:23):
I think you're, you're, you're hitting it right on the head for it's a,
It's much more qualified lead.
know, it's, it's try not to screw it up when they come to you through that channel becausethere's so much more educated and further downstream, whether they've done it themselves
or GPT, for example, has done it for them.
Right.
So.
Yeah.
I think too, if I could Jesse, that we as SEOs or digital marketers, we have this likekeyword mentality and we know that X percentage of people who are looking for a DUI lawyer

(07:52):
are going to go to the search engine and search DUI lawyer near me, you know, or whatever.
With AI, my opinion is, is that there is going to be an infinite number of things thatpeople put in to the search box and an infinite number of outputs that they get back.
And so how do you measure that?

(08:12):
The rank tracking that we've traditionally done, I think is going to be thrown out thewindow.
And you're going to have to figure out better ways of understanding sort of the funnelthat people are moving down when they come to your site.
What are they doing?
How can you do the lead attribution coming from this AI stuff is going to be a big thing.
And that's really a big mystery right now.

(08:33):
All the big companies, SEMrush, Ahrefs, like all of them are trying.

super excited about what I'm seeing yet.
And that doesn't mean it's in its final form, you know, they're learning and figuring itout too, just like we are.
But it's really an opportunity right now for small businesses or all businesses.
Yes, use AI as a tool inside your business, but also think about it's an emergingmarketing channel where you can reach new customers.

(09:03):
Yeah, I think to that regard, a thought that's been bouncing around in my head Pete islike talking about attribution.
If I compare it to Google Search Console, right, just for a different analytics approachin there, we have the impressions and the clicks, right?
I'm really curious if somebody can figure out on the AI side how to measure thoseimpressions because.

(09:26):
You're not getting as many clicks, right?
People are just maybe reading some of this, not even visiting your website.
They're just reading the overviews or the snippets that come out, which is still great foryour brand and your products and services if you're the one being featured, but it's
completely invisible to you.
If you had a hundred people a day seeing you in, you know, AI search results to, here'ssome great options.
And here's what they say.

(09:47):
If they never click, they may have consumed all the information you had on your websitethat you wanted to put in front of them, but they never visited your website.
And so I think as you're saying, things are going to change quite a bit from an analyticsstandpoint.
feel like that's something we're going to look at more is not the attribution of theactual click, but how many impressions, how much visibility, you know, how much
advertising will, right?

(10:08):
Am I getting out there?
I don't know.
We'll get that.
That's going to be so hard to capture.
Almost like a share of voice thing.
How does my voice compare in the market to others?
think too, and you mentioned Google Search Console, and we actually told the team ah and Ihad a conversation about it on Monday, is like, hey, let's keep an eye on Google Search

(10:28):
Console.
Because I believe in the next 30 to 90 days, we are going to see information in SearchConsole about AI visibility.
uh And in the same way that uh we have the performance
tab or the section in Google Search Console where you can see those impressions andclicks.
We also have the Google Discover section in there, which is not Google Search, but itshows you what your visibility is on Google Discover and the click throughs and that kind

(10:54):
of stuff.
uh I think we're going to see AI information in Google Search Console soon.
So for, so that's a little bit of, you know, marketing nerd uh speak there really, butback there business owners and marketing managers listening, this can probably feel a
little bit overwhelming.
A lot of change happening, a lot of change happening fast.
uh Generally speaking, whether it be the visibility, you know, we're talking or how to usethe stuff for operationals, things like that.

(11:22):
A lot of things happening quickly with AI, maybe.
can feel a lot of anxiety if you're listening or watching this here, right?
Like there's so many things I gotta take advantage of or try to implement here.
What is some advice?
What do you say to the business owners who are feeling anxious, trying to get ahead?
Again, like if this is real estate, that means that's not finite, if you will.

(11:43):
Like there's people that are gonna get in there and people that will be left behind,again, could cause some anxiety, some scary thoughts.
What would you say to the entrepreneurs and the managers right now?
having that feeling and looking at this.
I'd say like I have the same feeling in my business and it happens probably once everycouple of weeks or once a month where we're working on something with AI and we think we

(12:07):
really got something and like we're really onto something and then we come across apodcast or a social media post or something we're like my gosh these people are 10 miles
further down the road than we are with this like what are we doing?
ah
And so that the anxiety is definitely there.
think for us, what we're doing is we're just, we're just using it and we're doing thethings um that we need to do inside the business to make ours more effective as a tool.

(12:32):
um We're using it as much as we can.
And one of the things that we keep top of mind too is we can't just use AI operationallyas an easy button.
Like people talk about a human in the loop, like, Hey, create a blog post for me.
But then you want a human to like read that blog post too.
And I think especially for small business owners, marketing managers, it's almost more oflike human along for the ride when you start, where you're just like going back and forth

(13:01):
in that chat window, um starting to understand like, when I put this in, this is what Iget back out.
Oh, if I change this word, this is what I like the output better, um which is what a lotof us, you
that are deeper into AI we're doing back in December of 2022 is we're like, hey, how doesthis thing work?
How can I manipulate or influence this input output to get what I want?

(13:25):
And I think a couple of things, Jesse, is like those marketing managers, those businessowners, they know how their business works.
And so it's really just more so about, all right, how do we use this new tool insidewhat's already working to make it better?
It's not unlike, and I'm old enough to,
really kind of be on the verge of when email came out with businesses and that kind ofstuff.

(13:48):
And there was early adopters, there were late adopters, and there was kind of the glut ofpeople in the middle.
And it wasn't like they said like, we're going to completely change how we communicatewith customers.
Like we got to change the words we're using and all that.
It was just a new tool and a more efficient way to communicate both inside and outsideyour organization.

(14:11):
And everybody probably implemented it.
a little bit differently in those early days.
I mean, how long did it take Google to come out with Workspace and like be able to have Gmailfor a business and that kind of stuff?
We are far from the final form of all this stuff and how it's going to work.
But if you can get in there and even just play around with it, ask it what it knows aboutyour business, you know, what's what's the good, the bad, the ugly about your business and

(14:34):
what does AI know about it?
You'll start to like get ideas about how you can use it inside your business foroperations.
ah
Even like HR stuff, I don't know anything about HR and I don't want to, but if I have anissue with uh one of our team members, I can go to AI and be like, Hey, this is what

(14:56):
happened.
Here's what I was going to say.
And the AI says like, Nope, you should say this and this instead.
You're going to better outcome with that person.
You know, if somebody's showing up late for work or not putting in their time sheetcorrectly or whatever, that's a difficult conversation to have.
Especially if you're not accustomed to it, you got a small team and everybody's um AI canhelp even with that little stuff of like, hey, how do I have this conversation?

(15:19):
You could ask it, hey, my kid isn't putting their shoes away.
What can I do?
And it'll come up with some ideas for you.
You can spend two hours sitting on the couch arguing with your wife, looking at blog postsabout what to do.
Or you can just ask AI and it gives you some ideas and then ask it some more, ask it forclarification.
No, I didn't like that.

(15:39):
What else you got for me?
It's, if you start using it, it becomes pretty clear, like how it can be helpful in a lotof different ways.
And then it's just a matter of like looking for more ways to use it.
You don't have to be like a coder and like worry about make operations and connecting itto Google sheets and like all these crazy things that people are doing with it.
Just use it a little bit and you'll start to see the value of it.

(16:01):
And it's free.
Like go to ChatGPT, use it for free.
Yeah, like you're saying, you can really automate.
You put that phrase, you know, a human in the loop.
And that's something I really try to impart on a lot of people is yes, there are tools,there are people, there are systems, there are courses, right?
Where you can just completely automate things and have AI replace a human being likefully, you know, from a decision-making process, quality control, everything else.

(16:30):
I think we're a little early for that kind of stuff yet.
And kind of that human in the loop and then using AI, like we're saying, is more of a
as a sounding board, as a research function.
And if we were to think about a traditional office, it's like having an assistant rightnext door to you that you can go to kind of for anything.
It's an assistant, not your boss, not your mentor, right?

(16:52):
But somebody who is, you I would say you're equal or lesser, not to minimize or whatever,put somebody in a box there.
But if you treat it like that, like, hey, it's really good at basically any question oranything I want to know, but.
It's an assistant to help me out where I can make the final call and the final decision,push the final buttons, you know, things like that.

(17:13):
And if you, you know, kind of position it at that as that, if you will, and not somethingthat's going to do everything for you, I like it's more approachable because you're still
in control.
If you will, right?
You're still, you're still there to make that final call.
And then you'll learn, you'll learn a ton of crap.
start getting in there, like you're saying, and just using it.
you're really going to see what it can do.

(17:34):
So.
too.
some of the, mean, we run in circles of people who are a little more advanced with AI andstuff, right?

(18:17):
And so, and we do some things on social media, what we were talking about earlierbefore the call.
And I've had people say to me like, hey, how much AI do you have in this?
Or like this post sounds AI generated or whatever.
And I'm like, that one that you're talking about actually wasn't.
Like that was one that we did manually, you know, or whatever.

(18:38):
and which is another thing is like, everybody's in this thing of like, I can spot AI.
I know when it's AI or when it's not.
So I'm not going to use it.
It's like, well, that's, that's not what it's about.
It's about getting better.
It's just like SEO has been in my mind for as long as I've been doing it is like, it's notabout perfection.
It's not about like this, this perfect outcome that you're looking for.

(19:00):
It's about like, Hey, how can I use this tool to make me better?
How can I use this tool to improve my, way that I'm talking to my team or to my customers?
How can I use it to generate more prospects for my business?
Doesn't mean you get all the prospects from AI, just because you're on top of it orwhatever, but it's about getting better.
Yeah.
And you're evolving, right?

(19:22):
You're riding the wave.
There's no finite end to this.
can't be like, I'm going to catch up on AI and use it how everybody else is every day,every day that's changing.
So it's just get started, get in there.
Um, so shifting gears slightly a little bit, to kind of hone in on the AI here.
You've been working with businesses for years.

(19:42):
I don't want to say decades because I don't want to really age you too much.
We'll just, we'll just say for a number of years, uh, and SEO and digital.
visibility in general, how are you advising your clients without maybe giving away yoursecret sauce and stuff here, but how are you advising your clients today to start thinking
differently, particularly about AI driven search, right?
And again, being found in that, getting that visibility, maybe getting that click, but howare you starting to talk to your clients about AI search, not so much the operational

(20:10):
side, which I will, I want to circle back to that, but yeah, what are you, what are yousaying to people right now to get them going in this?
So, and we're actually right now in the process of creating, we're calling it an AI, whatdo we call it?
AI optimization workbook for small businesses, which is basically just like, hey, here's aseries of half a dozen questions.

(20:31):
Go to chatgpt.com, put in the first question, check out the response, um and then writedown, like, here's the things that it said that I like, here's the things that it said
that I didn't like, and here's some things that we're missing.
And then you start to think about just, like if, uh, if you got feedback from a businesspartner or a friend or whatever, like, Hey, um, this is something you should be doing in

(20:56):
your business.
Well, you look at it you go like, I liked that part of what he said.
I didn't like that part of what he said.
And I'm not quite sure about that part.
Well, then you have like an idea of how you go back and influence people to like thinkdifferently or think the way that you want them to think.
And so that that's kind of a big one is, is just like, start to use these tools.

(21:17):
chat, GPT, Gemini perplexity, whatever.
And just imagine that you're a consumer.
Next time you need to call the plumber or next time you need to call the HVAC guy, go inthere and pretend like the system, the AI is that HVAC guy and be like, hey, uh I noticed
it's starting to get hot outside.
And last night when I went to bed, it was 78 degrees in the house.

(21:39):
uh And then when I woke up in the morning, it was 64.
Like what are some issues do I need to call the HVAC company?
oh And it'll tell you like, it's probably your thermostat, you know, to check theschedule, check the settings, that kind of stuff.
If it's not that, like you can check this and that.
If it's not that, like you probably need to have a service professional come in.

(22:00):
And so you start to like get in the same head space as people who are using it.
And then once you're sort of there, you can start to think about how you influence thoseanswers.
And like, hey, we're...
Where did it come up with that answer when I asked it about my bookkeeping service?
it's on our about page.
I haven't updated that about page in 17 years.
ah Maybe I should go back in there and update that with our current information.

(22:23):
We don't have two employees.
We have 35 employees.
That might be an important piece of information for somebody that's looking for abookkeeper.
They want to know they have a team that can help them with a lot of problems.
If you got bad information going into the...
the AI systems because of your website or listings or wherever they're getting that data.
And you can learn where it's getting that data based on the response.

(22:45):
Then you go out and you change it so that it's more accurate.
And then in the future, people are going to get better information and be more likely tochoose you.
And frankly, if you give that good information, not only are you going to attract theright kinds of customers and prospects because they get who you are, but you're also going
to repel the bad ones.
You know, like if you've got somebody that's looking for like, Hey, who's the cheapestbookkeeper in my area?

(23:09):
That's a customer that a lot of bookkeepers actually don't want to talk to.
And so if you're on your, on your website and you got a pricing page or an about us pageor something like that, and you just are clear about who you are and who you serve, it's
going to weed out a lot of the people who were time wasting prospects for you too.
Yeah.
And that's back to again, the better qualified leads in prospects coming to you, you know,through AI driven search results, more educated prospect base and increasing leads.

(23:41):
I like the way you frame that up too, because we always assume we want to positionourselves, to be found, you know, and then just, yeah, you're going to have that
attrition, you know, certain amount of closings, whatever, but you know, this is, this isable to.
just kind of make that first interaction that much better by reading out the ones youdon't want and also catering to the ones that you really have the service for, right?

(24:03):
If it's HVAC, you know, for somebody that commercial versus residential, you know, their,their website and their persona is going to put all that forward and you're not going to
get the wrong, wrong people visiting or, or calling out to you, things like that.
Uh, yeah, it really does allow you to kind of better align.
So you were talking about.

(24:23):
working with your clients, recommending that they kind of get to know this, explore this,learn it, use it.
ah And then ultimately, if I understand correctly, just to be clear, are you wanting themto do some research on their own brands and entities to see how they're represented as
well?
uh And then go back and give you some feedback to maybe implement as the SEO and the ofthe marketing team.

(24:46):
How's that interaction going?
If you can maybe spend a few minutes breaking that down and what things you're looking forthere.
Well, and I think that's one of those things that we're really in the early stages of thisas a marketing tool where there are so many unknowns, whether it's, you know, are the
clicks happening?
Are they being attributed properly in analytics and that kind of stuff?

(25:07):
There's so many unknowns that it's really hard to nail some of that stuff down.
ah I think really like what we're looking for is present yourself in an authentic wayonline.
You you could even have an about page or like who we serve page, which is a lot of, youknow, a lot of small businesses have that type of page.

(25:29):
Hey, these are the companies we work with bookkeepers, bookkeepers, income tax preparers,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We don't work with veterinarians and we don't work with these people.
Well, if you're not like really, you got to talk online.
Like you talk in the real world, you go to a chamber of commerce mixer and you're having aconversation in the corner, you know, over a beer with somebody.
And, and pretty quickly they get an idea of whether or not you can help them or not.

(25:52):
And we have these conversations in SEO all the time.
You have a talk with somebody and you say, hey, I do SEO.
And they go, my gosh, I'm so glad I met you.
I've been looking for someone to do SEO for years.
I have an e-commerce company.
And I go, well, wait a minute.
We don't do e-commerce SEO.
Well, they're pretty quickly, like they understand.

(26:14):
Well, am I saying that online?
Am I saying that on my website?
Well, I have a bookkeeping company and we work with a lot of different people.
But wait a minute, we don't work with owner operator businesses.
We only work with companies that have employees.
okay.
Well, you're not for me then.
Well, the AI is sorting out all that stuff for you before that person ever calls.

(26:34):
And so really it's about just at, if you want to do those sort of calling brand audits,you know, you go to ChatGPT and you say like, Hey, tell me about Tiger29 in Sioux
Falls, South Dakota.
That's my company.
See what it says.
If there's good information in there.
kind of get an understanding of where that information is coming from.
If there's bad information in there, try to get an understanding of where that informationis coming from and then go change it, which is similar to what we've done in SEO for a

(27:03):
long time, where it's like, why isn't this working?
Well, you got a different phone number on your Google business profile than you have onyour website.
That could be a problem because of this and this and this.
Let's change it and see what happens.
look at that.
Things got better.

The danger with this AI stuff is people think it's an easy button.

(27:24):
And really, it's just another tool that you can use to get a better understanding, tocreate better online influence with people.
And the way to do it is just get started.
We've built some tools in-house here.
they're pretty, we think they're really cool to try to track these things forpeople and to see like, hey, here's.

(27:48):
Here's what we're seeing when we asked the ChatGPT about your company.
Here's what it was two weeks ago.
Here's what it is today.
We think we're making progress on this front.
used to say that you did, you know, X, Y, Z.
You let us know that you don't do Z like all the other competitors in the area.
Let's get that.
it came from an old page on our website that we forgot about.

(28:09):
Let's get that off of there.
And lo and behold, the AI learns and realizes like, they don't do service Z anymore.
uh
We're not going to serve them up for people looking for that.
It's so new that, and maybe I just don't know enough yet, Jesse, but I'm kind ofskeptical of people who stand up at this point and say, I have the answers to AI

(28:31):
optimization.
Because I'm not, maybe, maybe, but we've seen that in SEO before too, where people say,I've got this incredible tool or this amazing tactic or strategy or whatever.
and you'll be number one in 30 days.
Maybe.

(28:51):
But I'm skeptical.
And so it's really a figure it out stage right now for a lot of people.
I think over time, I think we've both done SEO long enough to see, yeah, maybe there canbe some, some software products, some SaaS, um, some, trickery, some services people
provide to, yeah, maybe very quickly get you some SEO rankings compared to how I would doit.

(29:15):
Maybe kind of fundamentally building, you know, the, business entity and stuff, whatever.
Um, but I think we've seen those come and go, you know, they, whether it be a Googlealgorithm changes or just market stuff, whatever.
those tricks, those guaranteed to get you a blank by X days, whatever, they can work, ahbut then they don't work too, you know, eventually.

(29:37):
And just doing it the right way, maybe the gold marathon versus a sprint type analogy, youknow, really does fit, but it seems more future-proof, you know, more stable over time,
because at the end of the day, Google has always just wanted the better businesses, themore legit businesses to be presented.
uh And as SEOs, you know, we've really worked with
keywords and content to kind of jockey those rankings and help people.

(30:01):
Now we translate that over to AI and I think you're saying the same stuff here toparaphrase, but doing things the right way to still have a great business is the A one.
You know, you just gotta explain yourself, be clear in what you do, like you're sayingwhat you don't do.
And really, I think these things that, um, at least, you know, in the firms I've beenengaged with.

(30:24):
We've always tried to pull this out of our clients.
Like who's your avatar?
Who do you serve?
Right?
What are you good at?
What are you bad at?
And it's always like, look, I just want to rank for these five keywords.
Let's quit with all the esoteric philosophical, you know, whatever.
I'm not wanting a mission statement from you.
I just want to be ranked number one by for blank near me.
And I think with AI, the optimization isn't just going to be keyword based.

(30:47):
It really will be like you're saying more knowledge based like
Have a good about us page.
Have a good history page.
Like what are these things that you're saying?
You're sitting down in front of somebody with a cup of coffee.
The questions are going to be asking this needs to be readily available because when AIdoes a search for you or does some research for you as a user, you may not be asking all
those things, but it knows those are the things that it's looking for.

(31:09):
If it's comparing Jesse versus Pete.
Look, Pete's been around for a while.
Look at his great about us page.
Look at all the information about his company.
Like I trust Pete more than Jesse.
So I'm going to.
tell this person about Pete, right?
For the, for the AI result.
And so yeah, optimization is going to change.
Um, but still back to our point of there's no easy button for this.

(31:29):
It's still optimization, right?
It's the small levers, the small buttons.
mean, just the definition of optimization doesn't mean easy and quick, right?
It's granular.
Um, it's nuanced.
And on top of that, all this crap is changing on the daily, right?
Whether it's you use grok, uh,
Open AI, right?
There's different partners.
have different specialties.
They're all advancing in different paces.

(31:50):
ah I agree with you.
I don't believe the person that stands up championing that they have the recipe or thesome software tool.
Like don't touch it.
We got your SEO and AI optimization.
You don't even have to lift a finger anymore.
I feel like it was very short-sighted if it even is that plausible.
So anyways, not to rant too much, but I do think yeah, the, the optimization.

(32:14):
And what we need to be working with clients on for AI visibility going forward.
Super complex.
But at the end of the day, it's still back to kind of like I say, when people for reviews,Pete, if you want five star reviews, you got to be a five star business.
Same thing here.
If you want AI to say like, that's the business I recommend, you need to be recommendable,right?
In all these different ways.

(32:35):
So, um, so keep.
keeping going here to help everybody out.
uh I think we're talking here a lot about, again, the AI visibility, positioning yourbusiness.
A couple of questions for you here.
They're more on the operational side and kind of within marketing.
outside of being found and getting leads, right, and in that kind of visibility, are thereany tips or tricks or maybe use cases that you have experienced with AI on how people

(33:07):
listening can?
can help them improve their content, their marketing operations, right?
Still in marketing space.
You know, you're talking HR a little bit ago.
Any tips for anybody out there to start using AI for their business in that way?
maybe a story, Jesse, that literally just happened last week is I have an old friend umwho's really active in the financial advisor space.

(33:32):
And she is doing some really cool things with teaching financial advisors how to speak totheir clients and how to speak to them in a way that uh serves those clients better, but
also increases their sales.
And I've been seeing her stuff on social media and she's in the same town as me.
uh
And said, hey, I'd love to go to lunch with you ah and hear more about what you're doing.

(33:55):
I think it might relate to my SEO agency and how we talk to customers and we want to do agood job for them and increase revenue.
And she's like, yeah, let's go to lunch.
um And of course, my life's busy.
And literally 10 minutes before our lunch, I was like, crap, I'm not well versed enough inwhat she's doing to have a good lunch meeting and have a good outcome for the both of us

(34:19):
out of this meeting.
So I went to ChatGPT and I said, hey, tell me about Christina who's doing this stuff andwhat has she been talking about?
And they said, oh, there's actually three people with that name in your town.
Which one are you talking about?
I said, oh, this one right here.
Then it said, here's her background.
Here's what she's working on.
Here's who she works for, all that stuff.

(34:40):
And then I said, all right, well, I want to know specifically about GPT mentioned thething.
So that prompted me to remember like, oh yeah, that's the thing she's been talking abouton LinkedIn.
Then I said, tell me about her work with this.
And it spit out three, four paragraphs about that.
And then what I did being a 45 year old guy that grew up before email, uh, I took apost-it note and I wrote down a couple of quick notes of like, this, this is what it's

(35:05):
actually called.
And then I went down the lunch meeting was in my office building at a restaurantdownstairs.
I went downstairs and we had a fantastic meeting and we're going to meet again and liketalk more about this stuff.
Like that, that's a wait right there.
It's like.
I could have spent a half hour, 45 minutes, an hour going and trying to find the oldsocial media posts, looking at her profile page on her employer's site, like trying to

(35:31):
piece all these things together.
Instead, I was able to do it in 10 minutes when I was short on time right before meetingand was able to have the outcome that I wanted.
I don't think, especially small businesses, Jesse, they don't have to do these crazyautomations, you know, and like things like that with AI.
There's just little ways if you start to use it and think like, Hey, maybe I'll go askthat question to ChatGPT instead of searching for Christina on Google.

(35:58):
I'm going to ask ChatGPT.
And I got a much better, much faster, like much, you know, just a great outcome andexperience from it.
And that's not to say that it's for everything, you know, there's still really goodreasons to use Google and Google's got the AI overviews and AI mode and stuff like that
now.
but like that's a real world example right there of like AI saved my butt.

(36:19):
and made me look good in a real life meeting with somebody that I respect and wanted tolook good for.
It was great.
Well, I think back to my example I shared earlier, Pete, like having your assistant in theoffice next door.
That's what you did.
You say, I'm running late.
I got 10 minutes.
Um, you know, Hey, Jess, Jesse, do some research real quick.

(36:40):
I've got to talk to her.
Uh, I don't remember a couple of things.
Can you just remind me?
Like, I don't need you to give me the exact questions.
I'm not going to be a drone in the meeting.
Um, but can you just give me a couple of quick snippets to refresh me on, those topics,uh, before I run out the door and boom, you got that.
would have taken you, like you said, much longer than that.
So I think it's a great example.

(37:00):
um so we did talk about how AI is turning into a search engine, right on its own.
Do you have any other recommendations, advice, anything else we didn't touch on for peoplefor how businesses can make sure they show up in AI, not just in Google search or
traditional Google search, I should say now at this point.
So here comes the sales pitch, but not actually.

(37:22):
ah So what we're seeing, Jesse, is that a lot of the things that you do for search engineoptimization actually translate really well for better uh AI, answer engine optimization,
whatever you want to call it.
And I think the reason is Google Search has been about gathering data and understandingthat data algorithmically.

(37:48):
to create a good search engine result page, good results that people can use.
Well, AI is about gathering data and they don't use an algorithm, they use machinelearning, passing that data through filters and then spitting it back, filters isn't the
right word either, but spitting it back to people based on what it found.

(38:10):
so, yeah, things like the NAP information, name, address, phone number, website.
Is that stuff consistent across the internet?
Like it matters for SEO, I believe, and it matters for AI.
Why wouldn't it?
You know, if you, if you told 10 people, Hey, I'm on, here's my address.

(38:30):
And then you told 10 other people a different address.
Like that's going to cause problems for you in the real world when you have your birthdayparty, you know, half the people are going to show up to the wrong place.
Well, AI is going to look at it the same way.
Like, Oh, if I recommend, you know, Jesse's jewelry store to somebody.
Where do I send them?
Which address is the right address?

(38:51):
Well, I'm not going to recommend Jesse.
I'm going to recommend his competitor because I know for sure where they're located.
uh And same way with the website, this idea that content is king, I think that's stillgoing to really remain true in a lot of ways.
And you can create content a lot easier now with AI.

(39:11):
But even the AI stuff that people create, it's not just about volume.
It's not just about, but it's actually about quality and telling your story in your voice,authentically, who you are, what you do, where you do it, when are you open, how many
reviews you got, how do people contact you?
Like all these, all these things that just people are curious about in real life when theyget to know you or your business.

(39:34):
And they don't even realize they're curious about it.
Like they just, it just becomes a part of our brain.
Same thing with AI.
Like you just tell your story.
We had actually, here's another example, Jesse.
kind of related to both maybe is, so we do search engine optimization and we track thisstuff for our own company too, or we try to, and we start asking like, hey, who's a good

(39:57):
resource for SEO, for small business, in my area, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And we're consistently coming out.
Well, then I went in and I said like, hey, I'm a small business owner, just started aroofing company.
What do I need to know about marketing?
You know, all these things.
SEO was one of the things on there.
So like, hey, SEO sounds interesting and like a great way to get new customers.

(40:18):
You know, I actually, have a roofing company who's really good at roofing SEO.
And it pulled up information from our social media posts and results that we had gottenfor roofing companies and said like, oh, this Tiger29 might be a good one.
And here's why they increased phone calls 120 % year over year for a local roofer.

(40:39):
You think if that's a customer, they're going to reach out to me?
Right.
And it's really just about telling our story, you know, and telling it everywhere that wecan and hoping that the AI is going to pick up on it.
And so we didn't create those posts with the intention that like, this is going to get usbetter visibility on AI.
They were created with the intention of communicating with people on social media.

(41:03):
And AI gobbled up that data and is now part of its training data and information that it'sgiven back to people.
so.
I still go back to, talk about authority, relevance and trust.
The technical stuff in SEO is, know, E-E-A-T, expertise, experience, authority andtrust.
But really like, how do you just demonstrate that you're a good result?

(41:25):
And in SEO, I think you'd probably agree with this too, Jesse.
For a long time in SEO, like people have this mentality of how do I trick Google?
How do I manipulate Google into showing me on search?
Like that's like saying, like, how do I trick this girl into marrying me?
How do I manipulate this person into?
That's not going to be a long-term thing.
And I think that that's the same way with AI is you're, you might be able to trick AI fora little while, but just like the algorithm updates come along and smack you on the side

(41:55):
of the head when you trick Google, where you manipulate Google, it's going to happen withAI where eventually it's going to figure out like, Hey, these people are fake.
It's inauthentic.
It's not a good user experience, whatever.
And you're going to lose.
so the best thing to do is, be a good business, take care of your customers and spread theword everywhere that you can on the internet about what you're doing.

(42:17):
And the AI is going to reward you for it.
And it's, it's pretty generic and vague.
It's not a great answer.
know, like, you're, we love to be able to say your position went from number 15 to numberthree.
And, and aren't we smart and aren't we great.
I don't know that we're going to get there with AI where we say like, Hey, your visibilityused to be here.
And it used to be there.

(42:38):
It's got to be a much more like in-depth thing of like, Hey, you used to have twoemployees.
We started working with you and today you have 18.
Where's that girl's coming from?
Let's see if we can identify the different marketing channels that are being effective foryou.
Um, and, kind of walk beside that business owner as a, as a marketing expert and not justas an SEO technician.

(42:59):
Uh, and so at the end of the day, I think they're just going to look at a lot of the samestuff and maybe some new stuff too.
So if you can do the SEO stuff, you're going to be ahead of the competitors that aren'tdoing the SEO stuff when it comes to AI.
I think it's really smart.
You know, your example of the social media posts.

(43:22):
So I guess we've known for the last couple, few years even, Google before AI, right?
Even though it seems like it's been here for forever now already, a couple of years ago,right?
Before ChatGPT made the big waves, before AI and AI search was a thing here, we knowGoogle was still paying attention to our social profiles, right?

(43:43):
As brands, as entities.
uh
Now fast forward to today, like you're saying, they are not only aware that you areactive, that your profile exists, but, you know, pulling out the verbiage and the text off
a specific post that you had posted, right?
and, and using that through the AI as one of the decision points it's making or, you know,points of recommendation, trust, whatever.

(44:10):
And I think it's really smart for us as not even.
maybe calling ourselves SEO is anymore, but just in general marketers to help clientsunderstand like, if you make a piece of content or you have a little win or you just want
to mention a thing to somebody that goes everywhere, right?
That has to hit, you know, if you're on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, whatever, YouTube,your website, a blog, like you leverage that, use the right words, you know, to our SEO

(44:35):
roots, I think the word smithing and the intent, right?
There's, some nuance there on what words to choose and why.
is going to be important, but it'll be applying this just to marketing in general, notjust, you know, the blinders on the website, which is kind of traditionally how people
view this stuff.
Um, and that's going to be fragmented and you don't, yeah, you're not going to knowexactly which thing, you know, from where, but, uh, that, that point on that social media

(45:01):
post pulling in, uh, I think speaks volumes because, you know, you craft that, that mightnot have been an exact blog post.
That would have been on the website, just a quick little win.
but.
If you're evaluating who to choose and who to use, just like the AI results did there foryou and your example, that makes total sense.
Very logical, right?
Very as a human being, very decision-making process is kind of what I would want.

(45:24):
Um, so yeah, I think if everybody.
were that human being, roofer, small business owner, and you just stumbled across thatsocial media post, you might take action off of that.
Like it's an important piece of information for what you're looking to do and understand.
I think too, and you mentioned brand earlier, and I don't know, like it's kind of touchyfeely or whatever, but I think our job is going to change from, like I said, tactician um

(45:51):
to more of like a digital brand champion.
We're like, we are going to champion, help you champion your brand online so that the AIunderstands that you're a good result for people uh or when you're not a good result for
people.
And really it's, it's almost like the, like a lot of companies have like a businessdevelopment person and you're like, Hey, what do you do?

(46:14):
Well, I go to networking events and chamber of commerce mixers and lunches.
have lot of lunches with people and stuff like we're that person online.
where we're like, make sure that you're going to the networking spots and having the rightconversations, and you're going to attract those people.
Big businesses have known that for years, that you just put people out in the communityand have them champion what you're doing, and you're going to attract more of the right

(46:41):
kinds of clients and more of right kinds of customers.
Yeah.
Same thing here, if you will, right?
Just mirrored into the, into the digital, digital world.
I like the way you're framing that up.
So, uh, are you seeing people, we kind of answered this a little bit, but in, that respectof how you're searching, what you're searching, why you're searching, right?

(47:03):
are you, from your experience working with clients or just esoterically yourself, are youseeing people change how they search the way they phrase questions in the AI compared to
Google?
We talked about it earlier in the nuance of.
You know, I'm just looking for blank near me versus maybe explaining my problem in theremore.
I know we don't have a ton of data to show us all these queries, right.

(47:24):
from AI and how we got found, but, um, anything you can expand on there for any esotericfeedback or straight logical documented feedback that you're getting in that respect.
it's probably speculative, but the way people search has been changing since the YellowPages, the old books that came out of like, you used to look up alphabetically or that

(47:48):
kind of thing.
when we grew up, when we went to school, we had the Dewey Decimal System, where youstarted broad and narrowed it down, where you would say like, hey, if I want to look for a
Corvette, I'm going to type in Chevrolet.
Corvette, 1987, red.
You went from big to small.

(48:10):
What are you actually looking for?
Well, when Google search and people that are more accustomed to searching on Google, theyjust type in what they want.
1987, red, Corvette.
And they want a good answer out of that.
And the search engines got pretty good at that too.
think people have been talking about voice search now for 10 years or more.

(48:32):
Like, voice search.
Mobile is another good example.
Mobile phones came out.
It changed how people interact.
It didn't necessarily change the outcomes and that kind of stuff.
But I think with AI, I don't know if you see kids interacting with AI, like my kids talkto Siri.
They don't sit there with their thumbs and type out what they want to know from Siri.

(48:54):
They just talk to it.
And just like we were talking before about that roofer that goes to ChatGPT or an AI.
and they say, hey, I started a small business.
What do need to know about marketing?
It's going to be more conversational.
It's going to be more like, I'm having a conversation with this platform, and I want tohave a good outcome or understand what to do next when I'm done with this conversation.

(49:16):
And so I think that's going to be the change is that it's not going to be a search, a query.
It's going to be an interaction, whether it's happening on voice or on um
typing it out, it's going to be more of a back and forth.
I also think that, and I've tried to do this a little bit, maybe I'm just too old to likedo it well.

(49:38):
Like I love to go to Gemini.
I would love to go to Gemini and say, hey Gemini, I like the South Dakota StateUniversity, Jackrabbits.
Hey Gemini, put every SDSU home basketball game on my Google calendar for me.
And I got it kind of working a little bit.
but it wasn't good enough that I knew I was gonna have every one on my calendar.

(50:00):
So I went back and did it manually myself anyways.
But like that kind of stuff, just like having the conversation and it's gonna get betterand better.
Gemini will be able to do that if it can't already.
I haven't tried it for a while.
um Where it's just gonna get better and better and it's gonna become a better part of yourlife.
I think Elon Musk said something about like, we're already like cyborgs, human machinehybrids, you know?

(50:24):
We get these phones attached to us all day, every day.
We're already cyborgs.
We just don't have a very good interface.
And so when you can start chatting with something and getting that feedback, that's thebetter interface.
uh so there's a lot of things changing.
And I think the way people search is definitely going to be one of

(50:47):
So as you're saying that it's making me think, are there in your experience yet, or yeah,if you just want to give opinion and project and speculate, uh you know, there's different
types of content that we produce as marketers, right?
Whether it be a quick social media post, maybe a long form blog post, you've got serviceand product pages, location pages, about me pages, right?

(51:10):
lot of different types of content.
uh Do you feel, or what have you seen for...
the strategy on that content for being more effective building out a presence for AIsearch.
Do you think it's just throwing everything that you have up on there or is it, I hadVictor Perez on recently and he's talking about like informational queries, like how to,

(51:31):
and some of these kinds of things to be very powerful when people are looking for answers,any insights, feedback or speculation you want to share with everybody for content
strategies, types of content, what seems to be more effective to start building.
You know, cause you gotta start, start now.
So what are we going to be, what are we typing in?
What are we going to be creating?

(51:52):
Well, I think it's worth mentioning that even in traditional search engine optimization, Italked about e-commerce earlier.
We don't do that kind of SEO.
We don't do affiliate SEO.
We don't do informational based SEO.
And those industries have really gotten hit hard with changes in the search result pages,as well as AI.

(52:12):
it's been tough in those industries.
We do a lot of local SEO with brick and mortar service based businesses.
And so I think maybe that's the first thing that I would say is you got to understand thekind of business that you have and how you attract customers.
And then that's also has to be a piece of how you create your content.

(52:33):
So like if you're an informational based website and you want to get into AI overviews,when somebody says like, how do I build a deck, you know, or whatever, that's very
different than a local hardware store that sells lumber.
Like the,
the final destination for that customer is different and your content on your websiteshould be based on that as well.

(52:56):
And so for small businesses, local businesses, what we talk about is like, first of all,you have to have a foundation.
Does your website actually talk about all your services?
You know, if you're an auto repair shop, do you have a transmission repair page or do youjust have one services page that talks about everything that you do?
So, hey, let's build out.

(53:17):
your website so that it actually talks about everything that you're doing.
that's like phase one.
think before I would go onto like blog posts and stuff like that, I would encourage smallbusinesses to establish a real social media presence and start posting on social media,
which is a challenge.
And I have the same challenge.
I don't like social media, particularly myself.

(53:38):
I don't like to be on a camera.
I don't, you know, I'm not going to walk down the sidewalk with a selfie stick, you know,talking about SEO.
Although you might see that someday on my social media channels now that we're doing more.
But like I would go there next is establish a social media toehold and get consistentabout posting on social media and hire an agency to do that for you if you can't do it

(54:02):
yourself.
In those social media posts, you want to talk about your products and services.
Don't talk about the company picnic.
You can talk about the company picnic.
But it's not fun and games when you're on social media as a business.
It should be about how are we speaking to customers on this channel and what is AIlearning from these posts and just develop a cadence for that kind of content is what I

(54:27):
would say to a small business.
If you've got that base covered, the next thing I would say is video get on YouTube.
One of the things I think this is accurate and you can correct me if you have heard orknow differently.
When you load a video on YouTube.
it creates a transcript that lives on the back end of YouTube.
And guess where that transcript goes?

(54:49):
Straight into Google's AI.
ah And so if you're creating that video, just like we're here talking about SEO, Googleknows this video is all about SEO and AI optimization.
This is going to become part of the training data for Gemini.
ah And so that would be the next thing I would say is start making videos somehow, someway.

(55:10):
I mean, just getting yourself out there talking, ah doesn't have to be crazy, highlyproduced video either, right?
You're making fun of yourself, not going to be the guy walking on the sidewalk doingselfies, but anybody listening, right?
Like do that, right?
You're saying that kind of tongue in cheek, right?
But like, if you don't have any better ideas, do that about your business and put it upthere.

(55:31):
yeah, the transcripts are automatically created.
They weren't not that long ago.
And if you just follow the evolution, like,
guess what, uh AI agents, whatever, Google bot, things like that, they're going to be ableto start parsing that stuff out in real time, regardless of a transcript, in the, in the
probably not too distant future.

(55:52):
So just putting your content out there, you know, getting on social media.
love what you're saying there because it's not just for humans.
It's not just social anymore, right?
It is content that is scraped.
You know, it's part of your encyclopedia, you know, as a business of who you are, what youdo.
uh
Okay.
So not to be fear mongering for people here, but maybe somebody's watching or listeninghere, Pete.

(56:17):
And they're yeah, like, wow, this is a lot, you know, I'll get to that next Tuesday.
We'll, do this.
What, but I'll, you know, we'll do it.
And the next Tuesday comes and they push it off, push it off.
What happens if business owners wait too long to get started here?
Uh, what do do we think there's any risk of them losing out if they don't claim thatdigital real estate early now?
Do you think they're going to get left behind?
What's your, what's your two cents on somebody's

(56:40):
uh in action here, right?
So I don't think.
I don't think you're going to get left behind.
mean, and there's it's crazy because we're digital marketers, you know, and we we knowthat this is such a great way to reach customers and that kind of stuff.
I live in uh in HOA homeowners association and there's very specific rules about howthings have to happen if you're going to build a deck or whatever, you know, that's a

(57:08):
whole nother conversation, right?
oh But what that means is we have
service providers who understand the HOA rules.
ah They know what needs to be done.
They build decks or they do siding and roofing or whatever, ah who you call when you needsomething done and they do it right.
And then you don't have any HOA problems.

(57:31):
These guys do not have websites.
They do not have email addresses.
You may be they'll text you if you text them, you know, that kind of thing.
They like phone calls and they've got
Great businesses.
Some of them I know have two and three homes.
They got a lake house and a mountain house, you know.
Phenomenal businesses and digital marketers like us would say like, hey bud, you'remissing out.

(57:54):
You got to get on this digital marketing train or you're going to be done for.
And that guy goes like, I got three houses.
You got one.
I'm going keep doing what I'm doing and you keep doing what you're doing.
And so that's like a part of this too is if you've got a great business.
Number one, keep doing what you're doing.

(58:16):
Don't lose sight of what's working to try to chase something that might work later.
ah And so that's a piece of it is keep doing what you're doing.
If you are concerned about falling behind, start to surround yourself or start to haveconversations with people who are living in this world and living in this space.
And you can't help but start to have like light bulb moments of like, hey, what he justsaid, I can do in my business.

(58:41):
What he's talking about.
My team could do that.
I got smart people on my team.
They could figure that out for me.
ah And so it's really just about exposing yourself.
Number one, get on the platform and just start having conversations with it.
Then number two, start exposing yourselves to conversations that people are having, likewe're having right here.
Hopefully people are watching this on YouTube.

(59:03):
Expose yourself to these conversations.
You start to have, you know, expand your mind and have different ideas.
The other thing is if you're in a city of any size,
There are groups of people who are gathering at coffee shops or startup organizations orchamber of commerce is or whatever where these conversations are happening and you're
running to real people in the real world who are doing these things and you can have acoffee with them, have a lunch with them.

(59:29):
So you're like, Hey, if I, if I had a budget of $500, how could you help me in mybusiness?
You know, start small with the, with a professional, maybe see what they can do.
And just like everything else, like you might find a dud.
the first time out and the guy doesn't follow through or whatever.
But you might find a diamond in the rough and like all of a sudden that 500 bucks is agreat leap forward for you and your business that every other HVAC company in town isn't

(59:54):
doing because they're still worried about, you know, are there deliveries coming in ontime?
Do they have the next furnace to install or whatever?
So it's really just about being active.
know, activity leads to success is something that I believe.
You don't always know what that means when you're doing the activity, but someday later.
it becomes apparent that like, I remember when I first met that guy 15 years ago, when Ifirst met you, Jesse was, you know, five, six years ago, probably.

(01:00:18):
I remember when I met Jesse, I never thought I'd be on his podcast.
I didn't even know he had a podcast.
You know, look where it brought us to today.
So you just get, get, get active, do something, have conversations with people, surroundyourself with people who are smarter than you.
And you're going to find yourself in a pretty good spot, I think in a year or two years orthree years.
Yeah, it still goes back to just building good business, right?

(01:00:39):
Doing it the right way.
Not, not taking shortcuts or quick tricks, right?
Just, um, really, really doing it the right way.
You're going to be, you're going to be well served.
That's what Google wants for businesses to show, you know, that's what AI wants when it'sgiven you the answers.
Right.
Um, okay.
So I was asking you a question that again, a little fear-mongering, a little like, what ifyou don't take action?
What's going to happen?

(01:01:01):
but on the flip side, if somebody's listening and watching here and they're like, hellyeah.
Like this, this is the thing I needed to really push me over the edge.
Um, I know we don't have a crystal ball and this is kind of a mushy topic anyways, I tryto project on, but what do you think of somebody dives in today?
They start doing some of this, just starting small practice and what you're preachinghere, Pete.
Um, there's a lot of alliteration right there.

(01:01:23):
That was actually pretty good.
what, kind of growth or competitive advantage do you think a business is going to get ifthey start right now today and positioning themselves as that authority and hitting in
these different media outlets, things like that?
What?
What do you say to those people to encourage them or let them know that maybe they'remaking the right choice versus me if I'm not taking action here today?

(01:01:44):
What's gonna happen?
So I would say the sky's the limit.
If you're somebody that like your brain works in the right way and you've got the workethic and the attitude to get after this stuff and start using it and build automations
and that stuff, the sky is the limit.
And it's a little bit like, um you know, if we had a time machine and could go back to, Ithink it was North Carolina, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and watch the Wright brothers

(01:02:09):
take their first flight, we'd be like, that was kind of lame, you know?
Great points,
years later, uh which is a blink of an eye when it comes to AI and how fast the technologyis moving now.
um We've been to the moon.

(01:02:29):
You and I could buy a plane ticket and fly anywhere in the world within a day based onthat starting point of the Wright brothers who weren't, if I remember right, Jesse, they
weren't even engineers.
They were like
farmers messing around with machines and created flight.

(01:02:49):
They were not AI experts.
didn't go to, they weren't Google employees or ChatGPT employees or whatever.
They were just people who were interested in this new technology and they wanted to seewhat they could do with it.
Like if you're that person and you're like, Hey, this, am on fire for this stuff.
This is super interesting.
It's the future.
Like it clicks in my mind.

(01:03:10):
Like it makes sense to me.
Who knows where you can take that?
And I know people in my life who are that way, where one of them, good friend of mine hasan AI organization that he trains people with AI, AI Edge, it's called.
Three years ago, he had a fireworks stand.

(01:03:31):
That was his job.
And now today he's got hundreds of people enrolled in his online courses.
Hundreds of people come to his conference every year.
He is probably one of the best AI experts in the Midwest here.
If not, I don't know, like those guys are doing good stuff.
And three years ago, he was selling fireworks on the 4th of July.

(01:03:54):
I think he still sells fireworks, but yeah, I mean, just get in there, be the rightbrothers at Kitty Hawk and see what you can figure out.
And you're gonna crash, like you're probably gonna crash a time or two, but at the end ofthe day, you might go to the moon.
So let's get after it.
That is such a cool metaphor, Pete, because as you're saying this, I'm envisioning, youknow, context for this conversation, people watching that flight.

(01:04:21):
And you got two different guys or gals, right?
One that's like, holy cow, that thing just flew, you know, whatever, however many feet itwent, right?
ah And you got the pessimist going like, uh okay, cool trick, but like, I'll still use mytractor or my horses or whatever.
Like this doesn't, this is a very novel thing.
I don't see what's going to happen with this.

(01:04:42):
then like you're saying, boom, you know, we're going to the moon off of that first flight.
You know what I mean?
Eventually.
ah yeah, whether, whether this is.
Yeah.
and sorry to take the metaphor so far, but we talked about like, hey, if you're interestedin this stuff, like surround yourself with people who are talking about it, see what
they're doing with it.
that kind of same deal with the Wright brothers.

(01:05:02):
Like they flew their plane and then all the other people who were struggling with flightloved it, wanted to figure it out, but couldn't.
All they had to do was look at what the Wright brothers did and they took a massive jumpforward.
And so if you're out there tinkering with your AI airplane and you think you're doing somegood things and you flew 50 feet or whatever it was, um and then you see somebody else and

(01:05:27):
what they're doing and how they're doing it.
And all of a sudden you're like, I'll put a jet engine on my airplane.
That'll work really cool.
And now you're way further ahead than what you were, but you would have never understoodthat a jet engine can make your plane fly higher, faster, further, whatever.
if you didn't have that Wright Brothers little Tinker toy airplane in the first place.

(01:05:48):
community of people focused on taking those next steps, right?
Like, yeah, I think some great wisdom there for everybody.
uh Pete, I think this episode and discussion here has been incredibly helpful.
I know I've learned some things.
I think anybody listening and watching has definitely picked up on some nuggets.
uh Do you have anything else that you want to share or impart on everybody before we wrapit up?

(01:06:10):
No, not really.
think just like get in and start using the tools.
Start thinking about how people are using these tools.
oh Get involved with different communities and have conversations with people.
I am more active on social media these days than I used to be.
So if you want more of this type of content, like come find me on social media, PeteKleinjan.
um You'll see some things maybe you like and some things that make you scratch your heador whatever, but we're talking about it we're doing some things and maybe we can help you

(01:06:36):
take that big jump forward in your business too.
And your agency, Tiger29, of course, we mentioned that earlier, I'll link to yourLinkedIn, your website, all this stuff in the show notes for everybody if you want to
track Pete down.
Yeah, Pete, thanks for coming on.
Pleasure talking with you today and hopefully I'll come on again in the future.
Cool, thanks Jesse.