How to Get Unstuck in Marketing and Actually Get Found | Dave Burnett - Small Business Pivots

Episode Transcript
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Michael D Morrison (00:00):
All right, welcome to another Small
Business, pivots, where weactually have guests from all
around the world.
And today we have a guest justa little bit north of us in
Oklahoma, up in another country.
But I know that no one canintroduce themselves or their
business like the business owner, so I'm going to let you tell
them what country that is, whereyou're from, your name and

(00:21):
company and all that good stuff.

Dave Burnett (00:23):
Thanks, michael, I appreciate it.
So I'm Dave Burnett.
I'm actually based out ofToronto, canada, and I'm sure my
accent will give it away atsome point and I'm really,
really grateful to be here.
Business is in the marketingfield.
I've been in business for 26years now to no sorry 27 years
now so I've had a little bit ofexperience, mostly mostly

(00:45):
related to marketing and thatwhole side of things, so it's
been a real fun journey.
I'm looking forward to sharingwhat I can with your listeners.

Fantastic.
Well, what do you think we'regoing to be able to help them
with today?
What are some takeaways thatyou hope they take away today?

Well, I know in our chat that we talked about,
there tends to be people who arestuck and a lot of times people
are stuck in their marketing.
You know, we got all thiscraziness going on and there's
always something new in themarketing side I can think back
to all of a sudden well, tofully date myself before Google
was invented how you got noticed.
I know, I know there was a timethere really was.

I was there, and it wasn't that long ago.
Wasn't that like 99, 98,somewhere back in there?

Exactly, my first business was in 97 and we did
the old school sampling.
So if you've ever been toCostco or any of those other
stores and somebody is therewith the hairnet on and saying,
hey, you want to try this Doritochip or whatever it might be,
that's what we used to do.
That was my very first business, except here in Canada.
I actually did it for alcoholcompanies.
I did it for Bacardi andLabatt's at the time.

(01:47):
So I was in third yearuniversity giving out free booze
and I think everybody liked mefor my personality.
I don't think it was because Ihad free booze.
Everywhere I went I had aminivan full of free booze.
It was me, I'm sure it was you.

Well, I can't wait to hear this story.
So let's go ahead and introducethe show and we'll be right
back.
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Hi, welcome back to SmallBusiness Pivots.
Hi, welcome back to SmallBusiness Pivots.
Well, my friend, I know youknow that most of us didn't just

(02:48):
come out the womb and become anentrepreneur.
We had a journey growing up andunfortunately, sometimes that
journey is what keeps us beingstuck.
We can't get over those humps,those trials and tribulations,
those maybe limited self-beliefs.
What was your childhood like?
Just briefly, so we can getkind of caught up to who you are

(03:09):
today.

So my childhood was great.
I really can't complain.
I know lots of peopleentrepreneurs had a tough
childhood and they had all thesethings to overcome and all
these challenges.
I really wasn't.
That wasn't me.
I mean, I grew up Torontohockey player, grew up all these
in that kind of a great, greatenvironment.
My father worked for Exxon, mymom was a teacher, and so a good

(03:33):
middle class upbringing that Ican't really say, you know,
isn't really that interesting,except for the hockey side of
things.
I got to a reasonably highlevel of hockey and then became
an enforcer, and that wassomething that I wasn't really
fond of.
So I ended up you know, I didn'tlike my nose being broken six
times and getting teeth knockedout and taking stitches.

(03:55):
It just really wasn't worth it.
So I quit hockey, went touniversity and things got
rolling from there.
So yeah, but childhood wasgreat.

Well, I'm glad you're a distance away from
me being an enforcer, but tellour listeners I played ice
hockey growing up, not on thescale that you did, but I know
what an enforcer is, but can youexplain what that is?

Sure, back when I used to play hockey in the
nineties, um, there was a rolethat was played that basically,
when somebody say you had areally good player on your
hockey team and that person gotbumped or body checked into the
boards or something, somebodyelse had to be their bodyguard
and that bodyguard would go outand fight whoever was causing

(04:39):
trouble out there on the ice andthat person was the enforcer.
And so that person,unfortunately, was me.
As I moved on because I fellinto that role, because I got
put into a situation where Iended up getting into a fight
with a guy who got sent downfrom the NHL and I got called up
to the league above mine and wegot into a fight and I won and

(05:00):
that showed the coach that Icould fight.
And then he's like, well,you're going to have to go fight
this guy.
And I got to go fight this guy,and I got to fight this guy and
it just my unfortunately, mycareer ended potentially
prematurely because of that,because it just wasn't where I
wanted to be and what I wantedto do.

So you're one of those guys that the
average hockey fan goes to watchwhen the fight breaks out.
If a fight didn't happen, thenthe hockey game or the match was
boring.

Yeah, it was.
It was not my finest time as ateenager growing up, for sure.
I definitely took a lot ofpunches and gave my, gave my
fair share, and uh, yeah it was.
It made for excitement.
It could swing a game, it couldsway a game, you could get the
team all riled up and everybodycheering and all of a sudden you
could start winning the game.
As ridiculous as that sounds,to say out loud.

Well, you know, every sport needs
something, and hockey that'swhat they need.
So well, that kind of rolls usinto business, because every
business needs enforcement.
They need something that breaksthrough the boring, you know
digital world.
So let's talk about marketing.
And but let me start with howdid you get into marketing and

(06:15):
what were some of those pivotsor things that you learned right
away when you started being anentrepreneur that could maybe
help our early seasonedentrepreneurs?

Yeah, well, my first business I was basically I
mentioned earlier I was doingsampling.
And what happened was I wasworking for a company that was
doing sampling for othercompanies and I thought to
myself this is ridiculous, I cando this, I can do this better,
no problem.
So I went out and I cold called, I went and knocked on doors, I
went and actually drummed upbusiness and ended up getting
Bacardi and Labatt's as clientsand representing them with 50

(06:47):
employees across the province.
You know, you guys think ofacross the state, but across the
province.
And so I was in third yearuniversity, full-time, 50
employees, running my businesson Thursday, friday, saturday,
and so that was that's what Iwas doing.
So I got into that.
My first pivot was going fromsomebody who worked for somebody
to just saying, hey, I can dothis, I can do this better than

(07:08):
they can, and so I did.

And then you got out of that and you got
into marketing.

Well, yeah, it's not that far of a jump.
It probably sounds a little bitfarther than it actually is
because I was in marketing.
I was in point of purchasesales as we were doing on the
sampling side of things.
So I ended up getting out ofthat business, selling it to my
partner at the time and thengetting into the promotional
products side of things, sopromotional products being

(07:36):
t-shirts, hats, pens and as aresult of that, I was doing more
sales because I didn't have aproblem with no.
I heard no a lot.
You know this is back in theday where I literally would have
like a suitcase full of stuffand I'd be knocking door to door
on businesses.
So imagine a strip mall ofbusinesses.
I'd knock on the door hey momand pop, shop that does dry

(07:57):
cleaning, do you want some pens?
You know.
Knocking on the next door hey,mom and pop shop that you know
sells groceries, do you needsomething else?
Like I literally went door todoor to door knocking selling
promo and then went in-house anduse the phone a lot more
efficient to to sell promo, andthat's that's how I got started.
So the promotional productsbusiness was the second business

(08:19):
that I was involved in and thenI did the same thing that I was
like, hey, why am I doing thisfor somebody else?
I can do this myself.
So I started my own businessthat's now called
promotionalproductscom back in2002, after various other
adventures.
So that was how I got involvedand started on the marketing
side of things.
Now how I got into digitalmarketing.

(08:42):
So I also own AOK Marketing.
Digital marketing happened backin the Great Recession.
So I realize I'm completelydating myself here.
I'm telling stories from beforeGoogle was invented and telling
stories about knocking on doorsand things.
But when the Great Recessionhappened, all of a sudden I went
from a great business, nice,profitable business, to losing
$70,000 a month in my business.

(09:03):
That's not sustainable, youknow.
It just wasn't great.
So I had to pivot.
I realized, okay, the way wewere doing things before cold
calling, cold outreach, knockingdoor to door which worked in
the promotional productsbusiness it just really wasn't
working anymore, especiallyduring that hard time.
So what I did was I went outand I bought 3,000 URLs and I

(09:25):
put up 500 websites and got goodat SEO.
So that's how my digitalmarketing business got started
is we were doing SEO forourselves, for our promotional
products company, and then, allof a sudden, everybody started
noticing us and they're like,hey, we found you, can you do
this for us?
And it actually was ourcompetitors who originally
started reaching me, becausethey're like, hey, all our
customers are all finding you.

(09:46):
How are you doing this?
I was like, well, I'm not goingto tell you Right.
And then, and then like,honestly, the sixth, seventh,
eighth time I got this phonecall, I'm like, okay, fine,
there's a business opportunityhere.
Just, I'll just capitalize onit.
I'll use their marketingdollars to learn how to do SEO
even better.
So I started an SEO companydoing it for my competitors in

(10:06):
other geographic regions, mostlyin the US, and at that time I
didn't have a US presence, a USoffice or anything.
So we were doing it for ourAmerican counterparts from
Canada, and that's how we gotstarted.
Then we got into digitalmarketing on the like.
Once we started with SEO, wegot into the paid search side of
things.
And then social media was abigger thing, because that also

(10:32):
had been invented, and so westarted doing paid social,
conversion rate optimization, abunch of other things on that
side.
So we had to pivot severaltimes to adapt to what was
happening and right now we're inthe midst of yet another pivot,
as search is gettingtremendously fragmented due to
what's happening with AI and AIsearch.
So we're right in the middle ofthat right now, which is
exciting and fun and crazy andscary and all those other things

(10:55):
that happen when the world getsturned upside down.

So you used a word adapt and that's what a
lot of business owners justcan't seem to do, especially
when they feel like they gotsomething figured out for you.
It was knocking on doors,getting your nose bloodied, as
they say in sales, which that'sprobably where your enforcer

(11:18):
part comes in.
It's like I've had the realnose broken, I don't know.

You're telling me no, I think I had a higher
tolerance than most.
Yeah, exactly.

But how did you learn to be adaptable and
actually make that pivot?
Was there anything special?
Or you just said we're hurtingtoo bad.
I got to do something.
What was it?
Because a lot of people can'tswitch.

Well.
So I've had several pivots thatare mostly environmental, right
.
So back before Google wasinvented, we had to adapt to the
AI boom or sorry, not the AIboom, the dot com boom.
That's totally dating myselfagain, right the dot com boom.
So you had to adapt and go andget online.
So that was the first kind ofthing that I had to do to adapt,

(12:03):
and for me it's always beenabout learning.
But learning is only as good asthe actual behavior change that
you do.
You can read books.
I have read a lot of books.
Most of them have one or twogood points in them, but really
the important thing is, whatbehavior change do you actually
have as a result of having readthat book?

(12:23):
So the behavior change theability to adapt is really comes
down to what you do.
So for me it came down to okay,we realized, you know, that we
had to stop the cold calling.
The same way as it was,marketers destroyed the phone
right, like you can't answeryour phone.
The same way as they destroyedthe doorbell you can't answer
your door because you don't knowwho's going to be there.

(12:44):
All that stuff, right, I blamemarketers.
Speaking as a marketer, Iapologize for our industry.
They really did wreck all thatstuff.
But, that being said, you know,it was very important to realize
okay, this is a new change inconsumer behavior, so how am I
going to change to adapt?
So when I was learning how todo SEO which really comes down

(13:07):
to your website authority, whichreally comes down to being able
to speak uniquely about whatyou do I realized, okay, if I'm
going to speak uniquely aboutwhat we do, we have to do some
unique things and, as a result,we had to learn and change.
We had to adapt to the newmarketplace Because, if you
don't, I know lots of companiesthat went out of business in the

(13:29):
Great Recession.
I know lots of companies thatwent out of business in COVID.
I know lots of companies thatwent out of business and are
going out of business right now,just because of how things are
changing.
So adapting comes down tounderstanding, which then you
need to apply that understandingin terms of what you're going
to do.

Absolutely.
Well, let's talk aboutmarketing for a second, because
for those business owners thatare stuck, they're still trying
to figure it out, if you will.
But there's a lot of things inmarketing that you don't have to
figure out, it's just they'rethe essentials of knowing,
understanding your target marketand this, that and another.
So what some insights and tipsthat you have for those business

(14:11):
owners that might quite not beready, revenue wise, to hire a
firm or an agency that they canbe doing now until they can,
because there are quite a fewbusinesses like that that just
don't have the revenue.

So if people aren't buying enough from you,
you have a fundamental problem.
I think of there's kind of likea funnel, right, in terms of
how marketing works.
It's the easiest way to thinkabout it.
The very top part of the funnel, the widest part of the funnel,
if you will, is awareness.
Right, people have to know youexist to be able to then

(14:47):
potentially buy from you.
Now then you have problem aware.
There's the next level, down.
So people realize they have aproblem and so you know, let's
just take any business.
So say, like an electricalcontractor, okay, say you have a
contracting business and yousell your services to homeowners
and other small businesses.

(15:07):
We'll use them as an example.
Right, unaware, people don'trealize that they need an
electrician for anything becausetheir lights and switches work
right, they can change the lightbulb, whatever.
Then people become problemaware.
All right, that switch in theirroom isn't working.
That's the next level.
Is problem aware?
Okay, solution aware is thenext level.
They realize that there arepeople out there who can help

(15:30):
them fix this right, so they'vegot their aware that electrical
exists.
Then they've got the problemthat their thing isn't working
and then you know there arepeople who offer this.
Then you have product aware.
Okay, so who is a localsolution provider, a local
electrical company that can helpyou, because you don't want to
go necessarily national, but youmight, but you really just need

(15:51):
your switch fixed.
And then, once you realize whoyour local solution is, you're
product aware and then you getthem in.
They do a great job.
You are now most aware,basically the easiest way to
think about it.
And if you have another problemthat's similar to that, you
need your electrical panelreplaced or some other wiring
done you will be very aware,most aware of the people who

(16:13):
helped you before.
So those are kind of the fivestages You've got unaware,
problem aware, solution aware,product aware and most aware.
So, depending on what stagepeople are at, I went through
that whole exercise because ifpeople aren't buying from you,
not enough people know you exist.
So you as an individualpractitioner, whatever it is

(16:35):
that you're doing, the questionis what are you doing every day
to make people aware of yourproduct and or service?
Are you actually doing outreach?
There's really only so manythings that you can do to make
people aware of your offering.
You can do cold outreach, likeI was talking about earlier.
You know it's slightly changedthese days, because it's not

(16:56):
only cold calling via phone.
It could be cold email, itcould be cold direct messages,
it could be reaching out viaLinkedIn, whatever it might be.
That's cold outreach.
There's warm outreach.
People who know you alreadyexist.
You can say people who are inyour Rolodex Warm outreach.
People who know you alreadyexist.
You can say people who are inyour Rolodex Again, dating
myself.
People in your phone, right?
People who are in your phoneand you could be like I have all

(17:18):
these contacts, people whofollow you, you're connected
with on social media, people whoyou've got their contact
information somehow.
That's all warm outreach.
You've connected with them.
That's warm outreach.
Fourth and third way that youcould do it, sorry, is content.
Something like this podcast,right?
People create awareness becauseof something like this podcast.
It's free content that we'reputting out on the internet,
sharing expertise, and peoplehopefully stumble across this

(17:40):
and say, hey, that's somethingthat you know.
Michael and Dave, these are twocool guys.
Whatever it may be, whateverthey're going to say, I don't
know, we'll see in the comments,right?
It's not the booze, though.

It's not the booze, no no, I gave that up
years ago.

And then and then the last way is paid ads.
So if you've got content andyou've got information, you've
got your website, whatever itmay be, you can actually do paid
ads to drive people to yourwebsite.
Those are four things that youas an individual practitioner
can do to raise awareness.
So then it comes down to allright, what are you actually

(18:14):
going to do?
Because I can hear everybodyout there going like Dave, I
have so much to do already.
It's crazy.
Like literally I have no life,you know.
Yeah, what you have to do isprioritize your time.
Like, if your priority is togrow your business, you need to
set aside hours a day to be ableto grow your business.
You need to set aside chunks oftime, focused effort to be able
to do this, and I like the ruleof 100.

(18:36):
And I know there's people whocan't see this because it's
audio, but I actually, on mydesk, have a block paper that is
100 blocks.
So if you sleep for seven hoursand 20 minutes a night and then
you're awake for 16 hours and40 minutes, the rest of it makes
up 24 hours.
16 hours and 40 minutes.

(18:57):
In 10-minute chunks is exactly100 chunks.
So every day you have 100blocks of 10 minutes that you
can allocate your time, blocksof 10 minutes that you can
allocate your time.
So what I recommend is,whenever you get up and whenever
you go to sleep, get sevenhours and 20 minutes or more if
you need it, but get seven hoursand 20 minutes of sleep because

(19:18):
you need to sleep and thenblock your day.
Spend the first four hours likeeach block of a hundred, like I
think of them as chunks, likeeach line.
You have 10, 10 chunks of 10every day.
You can spend the first hourand 40 minutes of your day doing
something that might be coldoutreach.
You could go to LinkedIn.
You could go to message people.

(19:39):
You could spend the nexthundred minutes working on your
content, what is unique to you,what experience to have that you
could share.
And there you've got 200minutes of your.
You still have 800 minutes leftin your day that you're going
to be awake, so you still havelots of time.
You know you may have to giveup the most recent hit on

(20:00):
Netflix instead of growing yourbusiness, but it's really how
you spend your time and what youspend your time doing.
I like doing it.
First thing, it's when it'squiet.
Still, the day hasn't gonecrazy.
There's nothing that's kind ofexploded in the work that's
going to take you the middle ofyour day to the afternoon and
whatever may be.
So if you spend and say youknow what, I'm going to wake up,

(20:20):
I'm going to have my morningcoffee, whatever you need to do,
and sit down and get to workand then I'm going to spend the
first hundred minutes workingsolid on something.
That's what I would recommendyou doing.
And the other thing that I'vegot on my desk which I can also
share is my block timer here.
Hang on, it's right there.
So a hundred minutes, just asimple thing that you get off

(20:42):
Amazon.
You just press the button andit starts counting down.
I cover this up and sit thereand I don't look at my email.
I'm running down.
I cover this up and sit thereand I don't look at my email.
I turn off notifications and Ijust work on this until I'm done
the time.
Then you can sit back and say,okay, I was right in the middle
of a flow, I'm going to doanother hundred minutes or
whatever may be.
And if you don't have youremail open, you don't have your

(21:03):
notifications on, you don't haveanything for your phone
whatever, you'd be amazed at howmuch you can actually get done
anything for your phone whatever.
You'd be amazed at how much youcan actually get done.
So, for the people out therewho are struggling with
marketing, it's because nobodyknows you exist and you need to
let people know you exist.
That's the very first thing youneed to do.

I love questions about that.

Does that make sense?

I love that time management.
I do a a day planner the nightbefore.
So, for those that arelistening, any kind of prep for
your day works.
Just find one that works.
But for those that are doingmore than others, that seem to
get more done than you, ifyou're a listener it's probably

(21:45):
because they're using some typeof accountability chart, like
you kind of discussed.
So that's great advice, greatadvice.
Well, moving into the socialmedia, can you share the value
of using the, a company likeyourself, versus?
I see a lot of small businessowners trying to do it

(22:06):
themselves and they spend somuch time taking pictures,
writing content using AI and getno results.
Can you kind of share what thatadvantage of that you have over
others?

Yeah, and it's not just us.
I think it has to do with thecontent that people choose to
share it's.
I view content in kind of threebuckets, one being kind of the
lowest level bucket where youcan.

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(22:52):
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I view content in kind of three buckets, one being
kind of the lowest level bucketwhere you can use AI, and we do
recommend you potentially useAI is kind of the foundational
content.
So say, you're that electrician, again going back, you know
what is an electrical standards,what is?
You know how do you replace alight switch, what do you do?
Blah, blah, blah thosefundamental things that are

(23:22):
really informational about yourindustry or what you do.
There's no reason why you can'tuse AI-based content around
that.
So if you want to give a here'show you change a light bulb
example on YouTube, perfect,right, that's fine.
It's good foundational content.
It allows the machines to knowwhat your website is about and
the type of authority you areBeyond that.

(23:45):
The second type of content isnews-based content, so content
that's related to somethingthat's exciting and happening in
the world.
So whenever you may belistening to this, there might
be something that just recentlyhappened related to the
electrical industry.
There may be something justrelated to the accounting
industry or the law firm orwhatever may be that you can
piggyback on.
You know, maybe there was someruling that came down you could

(24:06):
comment on.
This is the first level ofbeing able to share your
expertise, being able to saythings that only you can say,
that nobody else can say.
That's the really importantthing about news is what is your
spin on it, what is your takeon it and I don't mean spin in a
bad way, I mean what is yourinterpretation and how do you
you know, how is this meaningfulfor you and your potential

(24:27):
clients?
That's really, really useful.
Then the third and highestlevel is your experience.
Share your thought leadership.
So what are you doing that'sdifferent from everybody else?
Like, if you're doing what'sthe same as everybody else, then
why would they pick you?
Why wouldn't they just go forthe lowest cost provider?
But if you say you're thatelectrician and you spin your

(24:48):
morerettes a certain way, Ican't believe.
I just used that in a sentence.
But if you do something specialand you take a picture of it,
you know whatever may be that'sunique to you.
That's something that you canthen say hey, we are the best
marrette tighteners there are.
We use this special kind ofwhatever marrette that is not
only yellow or green, it ispurple and because it's purple,

(25:10):
you know we did this for you.
Whatever your thing is, beingable to talk about your thing
that makes you different, thatmakes you memorable, makes you
remarkable, because that's whatpeople will do.
They will remark about you ifyou do something different.
And that's how you get known.
Because, again, stepping back,that's how you get people aware

(25:31):
of you, because you're doingsomething a little bit different
.
So this is kind of again goingback to the fundamentals of what
you should do to raiseawareness and talking to people
about social media, posting freecontent that, just again, you
can do the same thing.

(25:51):
You can post fundamentalcontent.
That's fine.
But then what's happening thatyou want to post unique content
on or who you're speaking to,that it's unique.
And then what is the thoughtleadership associated with that?
Because that's what's reallygoing to set you apart, no
matter what you're doing, andthere's a concept that's adding
more value for each second watch.
So the more valuable you canmake something and the more
relevant to your target market,the better.

(26:15):
So that's always a question thatI start with with a lot of
people is who are you actuallyselling to, right?
If you're that electrician,smaller electrician firm you do
homes and small business, if allof a sudden, the largest
building in town came to you andsaid we want you to fix every
single thing we're replacing.
We're going from knob and tubewiring to, you know, up to

(26:36):
modern standards.
Is that something you want asyour business?
I'm sure everybody's likedollar signs.
They hear the dollar signs, butcould they really do it?
If you're an accountant and youdo local taxes, could you
really do you know, a fortune500 tax filing for somebody like
where, who is your targetmarket?
How do you serve them best andserve them really well?

(26:56):
That's, that's kind of justmarketing and operations,
fundamentals, but that's, that'san important thing.

It is, and you mentioned something in that
statement as well about findingwhat are you different, what
makes you different.
You're a differentiator.
So, on top of what you said, Iwant to make sure that our
listeners heard that part aswell, because, if not, you're
just a commodity.
Right Now, you're competing onprice versus why I picked you.
So, moving to SEO, similar butdifferent.

(27:26):
You want to be found.
That's about the only similarpart of it is you want to be
found.
But with all the technology outthere, we try to keep our
content relevant, so it has ashelf life or something of a few
years.
But I know AI is reallychanging this world, but I also
think that SEO will forever bedifferent.

(27:49):
So I think there, for a while,we kind of got stuck with
keywords and kind of followingtraditional marketing.
But what do you see?
Where do you see SEO going withall this new AI?
Because it's not stoppinganytime soon.

No, it's been really interesting because for
the last 20 years, however longit's been, we've really been
quite spoiled.
You know, you go to Google andsearch for your stuff and it's
the however long it's been we'vereally been quite spoiled.
You know you go to Google andsearch for your stuff and it's
the best answer and it's lookedbasically the same for the last
25 years.
Like honestly, it just didn'tlook that different.
I mean a little bit different,but not much.
There's highlights and bluelinks and that kind of stuff.

(28:24):
So where we are now is searchis getting fragmented.
People are using ChatGPT,claude Gemini even which is the
Google one more and more everyday and by the time people
listen to this.
Who knows what else is going tobe out there.
There's going to be more things.
It's going to get more and morefragmented.
So then the question becomesokay, the way people are finding

(28:45):
us is changing.
We are going from searchresults.
So you put something intoGoogle, you search for it and it
gives you answers in the formof blue links.
So that is a search query witha search results page.
If everybody's with me here,these models, these large
language models like ChatGPT andother generative engines like

(29:07):
that, are question and promptbased, and what happens is they
come up with a different answer.
So you put a prompt into themachine and you get a generated
prompt response.
The interesting thing is, theprompt response will be slightly
different each time.
It's like me asking you whatdoes a business growth coach do?

(29:30):
You could give me an answer andit'd be a very good answer.
I could ask you that samequestion 20 minutes later.
The answer will have all thesame fundamentals, but the way
you phrased it will be slightlydifferent.
The highlights of what you saidwill be slightly different.
It's exactly the same thingwith prompts and generated
prompt results.
So everybody's like theyhallucinate.
Well, they do.

(29:51):
They make some stuff up, butthey also just answer
differently based on how they'vebeen trained.
So if you wrap your brainaround that, that's kind of one
fundamental thing.
Secondary to that is authority.
So SEO is all about buildingyour page authority or your
website authority.
So you show up higher in thoseGoogle search results.
You actually show up as one ofthose blue links sooner, because

(30:13):
somebody puts a specific searchquery like electrician near me
into Google and it will show alist of the top electricians
that are near you based on theirsite authority.
But even more important istheir page authority.
So from an SEO perspective, ifyou have like, say you live in
Miami, florida, if your websitepage for electricians is

(30:38):
optimized to say we are the bestelectrician in Miami Florida.
When people in Miami Floridaput in best electrician near me,
the odds are that electricianwill show up higher versus
somebody.
If I say I was optimizing forToronto, there's no reason why
Google would show that result inMiami Florida, right Like it,
just it's designed that way.

(30:59):
Now that's your page authorityassociated with your site.
What's different now about AIand I think this is actually
going to stand the test of timeis your entity authority.
So say, you have thatelectrician's website, or even
you know our website,aokmarketingcom.
You have a certain amount ofauthority associated with your

(31:20):
website, but it's not only whatis your page, what is that
particular website's authority,but also what do the other
things out on the internet sayabout you?
Is your address shown the sameacross all different listings,
like, is it the same on GoogleMaps as it is on Apple Maps, as
it is on Yelp?

(31:41):
Consistency is very important,so that goes into your authority
, right?
So directories how you'relisted on the directories, is
part of your authority, but youdon't control that necessarily.
You can influence it, but youdon't control it.
What about public things likeQuora, Answers on Quora, or
Reddit, the way people arediscussing on Reddit or even
Wikipedia, having a Wikipediapage.

(32:02):
All those things areindependent, third-party viable
resources that talk about howmuch authority your entity has.
So if you're that number onebest electrician on your website
in Miami, but you go online andeverybody on Quora is trashing
you and you've got no goodreviews online or any of the
sites and your website addresshas shifted, there's no trust

(32:29):
out there for the machines to beable to latch onto and say
these are great reviews, this isverified information, this is
truthful information then youwon't rank either in the AI or
in search engine optimization,because what you have to think
about is how authoritative yourentity is, what's your
reputation online associatedwith your entity, and so the

(32:52):
better your reputation is, thebetter you'll rank for all these
different things.
So that's a very long-windedanswer as to how things are
changing, like they're gettingfragmented.
But the fundamentals if you dothe fundamentals well, I think
that's going to stand the testof time.

Very well said in a short amount of time.
That would have taken me ahundred years, I think, to
explain that, but that's verywell said.
I use both AI and Google search, depending on what I'm looking
for and how specific I want itto be.
So for those out there, that'skind of what he's sharing is

(33:31):
over time, I do feel like peoplewill find their platform of
choice, like I have.
If I'm searching specificallyfor something, I'll use this,
and if I'm kind of wanting justsome general ideas, I'll choose
this, and so it's kind of likesearch everywhere optimization
right, it's gotta be everywhere.
That's a great way to put it.

Yeah, well.
and and not only that, butpeople search on social media
too right If you're looking onTikTok right, that's another
part of search If they'researching on Facebook or
Instagram, if they're searchingon Pinterest, if they're
searching on in addition totraditional Google search and
now AI-based search.
So there's a lot of things outthere and the thing about AI

(34:13):
that I also think is important,which may be getting a little
too technical, so I apologize toall of you out there, but
there's two parts of AI.
The first part is AI is trainedon a certain amount of
information.
Think about it like going tohigh school and then, at the end
of high school, you graduateand you only know so much
science, you only know so muchmath.
You know here we have to takeFrench, there you may take

(34:34):
Spanish, whatever it is.
You only have so much knowledge.
Then that's the same with thelarge language models like chat,
GPT.
What they then do is they spenda bunch of time teaching it to
answer nicely and not you know,not give away information.
It shouldn't.
So that takes a few months, andthen they release it to the
public.
So I'm not sure when you'relistening to this, but you know

(34:55):
there was a release of GPT, chatGPT originally in November of
2022.
Then there was GPT 3.5, andthen there was GPT four and then
there was 4.5 and then GPT fivein the summer of 2025.
So there was like three yearsbetween GPT 3.5 and five.
So that's because of thetraining.

(35:18):
So GPT five, for example, wastrained up to October of 2024,
and then they stopped trainingit and taught it to be nice.
That's basically what they didto it.
And so that's the first thing isunderstanding fundamental,
foundational knowledge of whatthey have.
And what they've done isthey've taught it how to answer
correctly and really well, right, Really smart.
So GPT-3.5 may have been a highschool graduate.

(35:39):
Gpt-4 may have been a collegeschool graduate.
Gpt 4 may have been a collegegraduate.
Gpt 5 might be the equivalentof a master's degree graduate.
Right, it keeps getting smarterand better over time.
That's the first thing.
So it answers more questionsbetter.
Now the second thing is you getinto these engines that also
have search.
So now, for example, if theyhaven't heard of your entity,

(36:00):
your company, you, whatever itmay be, they can go out to the
internet, their own you knowsearch engine, their own
database of knowledge, come backand say, hey, I found
information.
And now, because they know howto speak and speak nicely,
because they were trained.
That way they can now give youinformation.
So there's two things thatyou're going to optimize for.
You're going to optimize to bein the original database of

(36:22):
knowledge, but then also to befound when they go out and say,
hey, you know if somebody's onChatGPT, hey, who's the best
electrician in the Miami area?
You want to also be found bythe machine, to be able to show
up in the search results once,even if you weren't in the base
search results.
You want to be found in thesearch results when it goes out
to the Internet and be found.
So that I don't think is goingto change the more authority you

(36:44):
have, the easier it'll be forthe machines to find you,
whatever that machine looks likein the future.

So I hope that's helpful too.
Very much, so I hope whatyou're hearing is.
That's great if you'reattempting and learning to do it
yourself, but you can advanceso much faster hiring a company

(37:17):
and that is a segue into measking when business owners that
we work with being a businesscoach the business owners we
work with they get a wide arrayof estimates when they go
shopping for SEO and this AIstuff.
It can be anywhere from, Iwouldn't say, less than 500
bucks now I don't know anybodyless than that but it could be
500 to thousands and thousandsof dollars.
The unfortunate thing isbusiness owners just don't know
what they're getting, other thansomeone saying, well, I can get
you the top of this page or Ican do this and do that.

(37:38):
That's all they know.
So can you kind of share alittle bit of insight on getting
them up to speed as far as youneed to look for this and this,
and here's kind of a good range.

Sure, I think it's important that people in the
past have kind of looked at SEOas kind of black magic snake oil
salesman.
I don't want to speak badlyabout our industry, but, okay,
there's a lot of that out there.
What are you really doing,right?
Yeah, so for me, that's whyit's really important to
understand how people aremeasuring your onsite and

(38:13):
offsite authority.
Right?
Can somebody look at your site?
You will know.
The best advice I can give istalk to 10, 12 different
providers and you won't knowwhat questions you should ask
until you start asking questionsand then always the first say
okay, use it.
Think about this as a processin your business.

(38:35):
You want a particular service,seo, accounting, whatever it is.
Talk to the first people, askthem the questions you think go
to chat, gpt or whoever ask itwhat questions you should ask
and then at the end ask theperson what other questions
should I have asked you?
And that will add to your list.
And then you ask the nextperson.

(38:56):
You know all those questions,including the one, and then you
ask them what other questionsshould I have asked you?
By the time you get to theseventh or eighth, you'll hear
the same things and you'll startto be able to differentiate.
The best thing is, you may haverealized that the guy or the
gal that you're speaking tofirst was the original best
answer.
You may want to go back to them, but that's the first thing.

(39:17):
So, learning what questions toask and then getting enough reps
in, enough practice in tounderstand who and how you
should hire.
Because if everybody's sayingthe same thing, they look at
your website and they say, hey,your page speed is slow, you got
to fix that.
Here's how you fix it.
If they all say that, okay,fine, check that box, that's
legit.
As soon as you get intosomebody who's like well, I have
experience, so like, for me, itwould be.

(39:42):
We worked on the SEO ofEncyclopedia Britannica.
They had 500,000 pages thatwere looking to be optimized and
they were getting 340 millionpage views a month.
And they came to us and said,hey, we got some problems, we
need more because we're going upagainst Wikipedia, which has
2.2 billion searches a month orpage views a month.
We want to beat them.
So we were like, okay, thiswill be fun.
So we dug in and we ended upgetting them up to 510 million

(40:07):
page views a month because ofsome structural changes they did
with their website and because,they're honestly, their images
weren't optimized, so weoptimize their images.
Image search is a big thingwhen you're looking for things
like encyclopedia answers, andso, as a result, we were able to
get them and grow theirbusiness by millions of dollars
a month in page view revenue,not including any of the other

(40:27):
stuff that they did.
So, talking to somebody,remember I talked about the
different types of content.
This is an example of what Ican say that nobody else can say
that they did Right.
So this is what's unique andsets us apart right?
So this is what's unique andsets us apart is I worked with.
I also worked with aMerriam-Webster dictionary
optimizing for keywords likeaardvark.
You know those kinds of thingswhich nobody else would ever be
asked to do, but we were.

(40:49):
So we did help them and helpthem with paid search and a
bunch of other things.
So there's, what have you done?
What stories can you tell?
And then, what questions do youask?
Because really, it comes downto understanding.
Now, the last thing I would sayin regards to SEO is
understanding what metricspeople use to measure success.

(41:11):
If they're not guaranteeing ortalking about metrics at all,
huge red flag If they're likethey don't know what page views
are, they don't know how to setup your Google analytics, they
don't know any of these kind oftechnical things.
Major red flag If they're likethey don't know what page views
are, they don't know how to setup your Google Analytics, they
don't know any of these kind oftechnical things.
Major red flag.
But if they say to you look, byhaving this much time on site,
this is your highest level page,this is what your content
pillar should be, et cetera, etcetera, it's important to be

(41:33):
able to understand what they'resaying and how it matters to you
.
So the amount and number andrelevance of the metrics they
use to measure is a superimportant thing, right, like,
even if it's an accounting firm,it's okay, we saved our past 20
clients X amount of dollarsbecause of you know X, y and Z.
If it's your electrician, hey,we'll be in and out in 30

(41:55):
minutes because we've done athousand jobs just like this.
Whatever, whatever it is, thereshould be something that they
can measure and do and give youthat information.
So that's.
Those are kind of the mainthings that I would look at when
you're trying to sourceanything for your business.

Yeah, that's .
That's great.
I've never heard anyone shareat the end of the conversation,
ask what questions should I haveasked or what's another
question I should have asked.
I'm going to start using that.
That's great advice.
Well, speaking of advice, I'malmost out of time, but I'm
looking at your website Forlisteners.

(42:31):
I encourage you to go there.
You have a fantastic blog pagethat looks like you put a new
article up about every few daysand it just covers all these
things you've talked about inmore depth.
But can you share what AOKMarketing does and who your
ideal client is?

Absolutely so what we do?
We only do a few things.
We try to be very specialized.
Some marketers try to be allthings to all people.
We're not that.
We do SEO for AI.
We do regular SEO, which is nowjust honestly completely
evolving into SEO for AI.
We do paid search and we dopaid social.
We also add in a littleconversion rate optimization.
So basically, in English, whatall that means is we bring more

(43:13):
traffic to your website and wehelp them buy more stuff from
you.
That's what we do, and so whoour ideal customers are?
Really we work with kind of themedium to large enterprise three
to five million dollars inrevenue and up is where we tend
to fall, just because we're notthe cheapest option out there.
So if you're looking for thecheapest, unfortunately that's
not us, but we're happy to helpand point you in the right

(43:34):
direction.
But yeah, that's, we'd love tobe able to help and take a look
at whatever it is that you'redoing.
The people we have the mostsuccess with are people who are
highly metrics oriented, so thatreally lends us well to
e-commerce businesses.
We also do a lot of lead genfor B2B, but we also work on
some other fun projects, like Isaid, about the Encyclopedia
Britannica and others like that.
So that's where we tend to fall.

Well, I know there's some listeners out
there that could use yourservices.
That's listening to us today.
What's the best place to findyou?
Follow you.

Uh, to find me personally, the best place is
LinkedIn.
I would.
I would be happy to connectwith anybody there.
Secondary to that, if you wantany of my thoughts, I built a
blog for my kids calledalgorithm for life, and also
post the odd time to X wheneverI'm feeling so inspired.
But I know X has a noiseproblem, so I feel you know,
tread with care there, so yeah,but aokmarketingcom, or find me

(44:30):
on LinkedIn.
I'm just Dave Burnett and I'dlove to be able to connect with
you.

Well, I always wrap up the show with one
final question, and that is ifyou were in front of an audience
of small business ownersdifferent sizes of business,
different seasons of businesswhat's one thing that's
applicable for all of them?
In other words, a quote, a booktip, anything.

A quote, a book or a tip, I would say work harder
than you think you have to,because the people who are ahead
of you are working just that,just as hard as you are.
And you know, people always saywork smarter, not harder.
But I think my competition isactually pretty smart, so if
they're smart and working hard,I'm going to have to work a

(45:15):
little bit harder.
So that's, that's the onlything I can say.
It's great philosophy.

Dave, you've been a blessing to many and a
wealth of information.
I certainly appreciate youtoday and your time and our
listeners do too and wish youcontinued success.

Thank you, and to you and to everybody else as
well, thanks for having me, mypleasure.

Thank you for listening to Small Business
Pivots.
This podcast is created andproduced by my company, boss.
Our business is growing.
Yours, boss, offers flexiblebusiness loans with business
coaching support.

(45:55):
If you need help growing yourbusiness, email me at michael at
michaeldmorrisoncom.
We'll see you next time onSmall Business Pivots.

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