May 24, 2024 • 21 mins
In this episode, we dive into the innovative world of AI-powered tools with CxC and explore the groundbreaking concept of fractional CMO services. Hear from the experts about the importance of streamlining operations, enhancing the sales process, and optimizing your marketing strategies.
Discover how AI can transform the way you do business and learn about the benefits of having a fractional CMO to oversee your marketing efforts.
Whether you're looking to improve your marketing tactics or explore the latest technological advancements, this episode has something for everyone.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Step into The Trademark, your go-to podcast for everything marketing in the trades.
Hosted by award-winning industry marketing experts, Sarah Girardo from Remarketable
and Eric Thomas from Rival Digital.
Together, we're here to unite the worlds of trades and marketing,
bringing you insights, stories, and strategies from the heart of the industry.
(00:21):
Whether you're a trade professional, a marketing expert, or somewhere in between,
this is the place for you.
Listen in as we're here for the big ideas, the game changers,
and the everyday successes.
Because at The Trademark, we're with the trades and for the trades.
Super cool. We got to like announce it at True Grave. So it
(00:44):
was like an hour and a half of like questions and
getting to review it and like show screen shares
and all that and get to talk to Amanda's team at Grasshopper to
like tell everybody like what it is and how they've been using it for
the last year because we really just released like the
version that's like built to support other companies right
aside from hers so that was super cool it's been
(01:04):
it's been fun it's been a lot of onboardings a lot of
you know like white glove like trying to get people in
there and to understand how it works and obviously we're looking at you
know different opportunities to streamline some of those
things like adding we have already deployed like technician
instructions so that they can onboard themselves stuff like that so it's
super cool we're getting a great reaction and obviously people love it out in
(01:24):
the field already so yeah it's been really awesome did
you make like ai videos to like onboard them funny
enough did not use ai videos but what a missed
opportunity you should go back the personal connection not that it's better
humans jeez seem faster sometimes it's not well i mean i feel like that's a
(01:47):
misconception about ai too right it's like that it's like you just throw in
one request and it spits out something perfect is like,
sometimes I'm spending like hours going back and forth with the robot to really
refine exactly what you want back, right?
So I'm sure video is even greater. Yeah, the powers and the prompt.
I even found myself like writing out the prompt. I'm like, did I write like
literally like with a pen and paper?
(02:07):
And I'm like, this is ridiculous. What are you doing?
I was like, go to Google and speak what you think in your brain thoughts,
like Google Docs, record yourself, let the prompt be whatever it is,
is throw the messy version in and then go back and be like, let's just see what we do.
Let's just fuck around and find out. Yeah.
Well, like something I've also done with the prompt because naturally I'm just
(02:29):
like self-conscious that I'm not prompting good enough is I literally asked
chat GPT one time, was that prompt good enough? Did I miss anything that could have made it better?
And it was like, Oh, certainly here's a few more things you could have included
that would have made this, you know, be able to output this result.
I was like, oh, my gosh. That's my favorite part is like, you know,
like, hey, make me a prompt.
I can't really think of how to instruct you to do this, but act like you're
(02:50):
me and make me a prompt for you. And then answer it. Yeah.
And then run that prompt. Yeah. If you could just think for me. Yeah. That'd be cool.
So tell us about CXC and tell us about all the great things.
I know it just launched, but tell us what it is for people that do not know. Okay.
And where you're going with it. All right. Right. So what it is currently is
(03:12):
there's a lot of tools I've heard about there that are like analytics in the
field, like virtual ride alongs, all that.
Right. We actually were built a very specific purpose about a year ago is where we started.
And it was because Amanda, the owner of Grasshopper, was personally doing call
by call for her entire team.
And she had tried to get somebody else to do it and like train up members of
(03:32):
her team and wasn't seeing those results being replicated.
So it was a conversation we were having, right, about like, how do I replicate these results?
Like, there's only me, I haven't been able to like delegate this yet.
So we're like, well, we're messing with chat GPT at the time,
it was kind of new, or like, how can we figure out how to automate this for
you and make you into a bot, right?
And like your philosophies and your concepts and how you coach your techs, right?
(03:54):
So we started messing with it with, you know, with just recordings,
then we started messing with it with price book, and seeing if we could could
pair all that together to provide recommendations to the technicians in real
time while they're on the job to know how and what to present to the client, right?
So that's what it is. It's AI recommendations, essentially, for the sales process in the home.
(04:18):
Now, that's where it is now. We've also been working with Joe Prasara,
Service MVP, to build an extension of that that is specific to his processes,
which are a little bit different.
You also have to say certain things during the presentation.
You don't talk about price in your initial conversation with the customer.
Typically, you want to say thank you a certain amount of times.
You want to say the customer's name a certain amount of times, your magic moment.
(04:41):
So we've built all that into a special bot for him as well.
And in doing that process, what we've noticed is he really loves it.
His customers really love it.
And we have such an opportunity to build a custom bot per coach or per whoever
and allow people to really make their own bots.
So that's where we're going. We're really releasing towards the end of May probably
is when it will be like tested and we'll start transfer transitioning customers
(05:04):
over to our second generation where it's essentially.
And this is the first time I'm saying this publicly, by the way,
we like try not to let out too much about the upcoming the upcoming features and all that.
But essentially, it'll be like a marketplace that anybody can jump on and publish
a bot and use it out in the field for their company. They can sell it if they
want to to other companies.
They, you know, you're a very big group and, you know, really proud of your
(05:25):
processes and people are always asking you how to replicate your results.
Well, you can sell your own bot on the marketplace or keep it private to your
team and all your franchises.
Right. Right. And each, and I think, I feel like it's kind of funny because
sometimes what I see in the bots is they're, they're just like one task associated.
Yep. And I'm like, no, this can do lots of tasks.
(05:46):
Yeah. And so like create for one role, I guess, like if you're a CSR and you
want to have a, like coach and like personal, whatever. But really,
like, it can do all the things at once.
And so you just have to build it correctly or build with their content,
like Joe or Victor, like I talked to them about it.
But yeah, I think the bots are where it's at. You know what I mean?
(06:08):
The barrier to entry is the questions or the barrier to entry is people don't
know what to ask. Sure. They get like overwhelmed.
Yeah. Right. And so you have to give them those questions of like,
here, this is very specific to be terrific.
Yeah. And so they're like, oh, like, I don't have to ask it anything because
(06:29):
it's asking me a question.
Yep. And then show them on video of what to do because they don't know what to do. Yeah.
And just treating it like a two-way dialogue. I mean, I feel like people are
so, like, accustomed to the computer being a Google where you get one shot at
a question and you get one response. It's not like contextual memory.
You can't iterate on it and make it better. You know, GPT is like a human.
(06:52):
It's like a conversation.
You can train it, make it better, and really craft it to what you want the response to be. Give it a name.
Yeah. Yeah. You can give it a name. I said, give it a meme. I was like,
give it a name, birthday.
Right. You can talk to it on your phone when you're lonely, like Eric does.
I love that. That is a true story. You're not the only one, right?
That's where we're getting the lonely data from.
(07:14):
So much more honest, honestly, more empathetic than 75% of humans.
I have a wellness. I created a wellness coach. I love it.
It's a five-year plan coach to get me to where I need to go with my mindset,
with my goals. And I gave it my goals. I gave it my journal. I gave it everything.
And I was like, guide me. And it has been guiding me.
(07:35):
It sounds ridiculous now that I talk about it. But at the same time,
like, it's actually really cool. It is cool.
You have a zap set up. So it sends you morning affirmations and shit like stay on stay on track.
I haven't gotten that. I haven't gotten there yet. I just need to hire like
someone to do all that other stuff for me instead of me just talking into my
phone like you're lonely, Sarah.
(07:57):
The prompts is like, hello, you are a lonely 28-year-old male in New Orleans, and your name is Eric.
What would you do to entertain yourself on a Thursday evening? It's time to...
We're going to talk to you in the morning. Lonely Eric. It's time to wake up.
Good morning, sunshine.
It's time to start your day. Oh, my gosh.
(08:20):
Here's ELO. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Stretch it out, stretch it out.
Yeah. Can't wait for that audio GPT alarm clock to hit.
So you got a lot of stuff. I mean, a lot of stuff going on. CXC is the big one right now.
You've got free agency, which is also a recent launch. Talk about that. Yeah.
I think it's pretty cool. I put it on. I was trying to think about how to talk
(08:42):
about it while we're here.
And I wrote it down as essentially like I spent the last years,
the seven years building someone else's agency.
And just decided it's time for me to be able to control everything on my own.
So I launched that about two months ago and it's been super cool.
It's been like really, really inspiring.
And the intention wasn't even originally, and it's not still to create an agency, right?
(09:05):
It's more like fractional CMO services, but I've tacked on some things that
I know are like easy to do and scale, right?
Like LSA management, ever since the beta in 2017, that was something that I
had been able to like build a team and outsource essentially.
So things like that, because I know like there's places in the market,
it's being charged like 20%, right?
So like instead of that, here's an easy flat rate one. It's like a loss leader
(09:26):
for me, but it's cool for you, right?
Yeah. So that's one of them feeling like a little Robin Hood,
you know, and then the other one is automation.
So some of the stuff we'll be showing today, like there's just some stuff that's
too complex to do yourself or so like just some people just don't want to like
get into it and do it themselves.
So I'm like, hey, here's a few I built. Like here, you can subscribe.
Automation is as a service, you know, so. Oh, I love automation.
(09:47):
That's it. I would like to subscribe to Automation as a Service,
please. Not that acronym. Oh, gosh. I'm just going to put it on the site. I think it makes sense.
It does. That's hilarious. It's like Google is neat.
Yeah, neat. They're like, we needed to be neat. Yeah. Instead of eat, right? Because.
Like notoriety or notability. Notability and then added transparency.
(10:09):
Transparency, yeah. Which is, what's the other T? T.
Trustworthiness. Oh, yeah. That was the original T. None of those things mean the exact same thing.
Like, can we just stop adding letters to like, it used to just be.
It's going to be Nito next time. It was just E. It was just E-A-T.
And I was like, everyone, that made sense.
It was kind of like, it was kind of like NAP, name, address,
phone number. We all knew that. It was E.
We all knew what that meant. Now they're like, we're going to add an E,
(10:30):
guys. Sorry. Oh, two weeks later, we're actually going to add an N and a T.
Everyone update your, update your sales collateral, folks. N and T are now a part of it.
It's going to be Nito next or something. Yeah. optimistic you have
to be happy yeah as mindset is a
thing at some point google just seems to be like hey look everyone
just create good content that's not like shitty and we'll we'll be happy with
(10:51):
you all right deal that's what it should be instead of needling us yeah it's
amazing but so you've got you know you've got obviously you said there's the
there's the automation as a service and some some lsa management stuff you said
also like fractional cmo so what does
that look like? Because what does that mean?
I think, yeah, there's, there's a lot of gray area around like what a fractional
(11:13):
CMO does versus, you know, an internal marketer versus just a consultant versus
the actual, like the agency that is, you know, punching pixels.
So what does that look like? So a lot of what I've seen so far is that like
a lot of people are using multiple agencies or whatever. They're using one agency.
They're typically not happy for whatever reason and of like just not understanding
the information, the available KPIs, the market, like whatever it is, right?
(11:36):
It happens a lot. What I've seen is...
People really want and like enjoy and like having some kind of advocate or warrior on their side.
And obviously, I spent a really long time, like training and developing people
to be good partners, good agency, right?
And like how to do that in such a way that achieves great performance for clients.
So what I'm aiming for is with the CMO services,
(11:59):
which is like, you know, really oversight of every channel, it can,
it doesn't have to overlap with like an internal marketer, A lot of times what
I see is people have like a marketing director or a marketing manager or coordinator,
but not typically a CMO who's like built, you know, billion dollar like home
service organizations.
Right. So I don't see that a ton in the market. And I want there to be a way
(12:20):
that other people can access that without having to, you know,
spend a ridiculous amount of money to hire somebody full time.
Right. So it's really what I've learned over the last seven years on how to,
you know, get great performance out of every channel and optimize the totality
of the budget to reach a goal. Yeah.
And that's really like the accountability mechanism for me is it's like,
I sit down at the beginning of that relationship.
(12:41):
We go over like, where have you been historically? Where do you want to go?
I'll validate that you can get there with the numbers you're giving me because
you might want to spend 6%, but you might have to spend 10% or we're going to
have to negotiate that goal. Whatever it is, we agree on a number.
I'm gonna hit it. And that's it. Like, that's simple as that.
Like you can, you know, like you can be as involved or as not involved as you want to.
And obviously utilizing various agencies to achieve that. Right.
(13:04):
And everybody has their own benchmarks to a hit.
Sometimes that will be, you know, a few services with one agency,
but primarily just the best agency or the best person for that channel that
I've seen and respect and want to work with. Yeah.
And it's been really cool for me because, you know, I'm developing a new kind
of relationship with my former competitors, right? Yeah.
We get to work together now and I get to objectively like pick who the best
(13:25):
is. And you're like, cool, let's do that. I want to work with you.
You're going to make me look good for this client. Right.
It's just like the contractors, like a lot of them do like right tech,
right call or something like that, where it's like they know who they're sending
to what particular calls, because that person has experience dealing with,
you know, leaking duck work in a, in a tight crawl space.
So we're going to send Billy or whatever it might be like, that's where I.
(13:47):
You know, So I've worked with multiple fractional CMOs and it's refreshing one
that you actually have industry experience and you've run in agencies because
I think a lot of times fractional CMOs miss the mark is they try to,
their way of providing value is just to beat up on vendors rather than like,
you know, kind of like what you were just saying to provide oversight.
(14:08):
Cause you have that knowledge to be able to be like, Hey, this is performing
well. We're slightly missing the mark here.
Here's some things we could probably try versus just being like
what the agency you guys suck give me you know you suck you're fired we're getting
rid of you and that's like i think that that's really refreshing for sure yeah
i think it's also about bringing people together like all of your vendors right
(14:29):
you're like why are you not talking to each other yeah funny you say that i
had to so i did this call the other day where it was this client.
This client basically had two agencies and i
was on the call to kind of like understand what they
were each doing and they wanted me to you know ask some stimulating questions
nothing too aggressive you know get people thinking yeah and
it was really funny of course like i've and i have to say like
(14:51):
at the end of it guys like i've been on that side like trust me i used to
dread these phone calls i totally get it my goal here isn't to
make you have a shitty day it's not to take your business it's to make sure
that you're operating together like at the most efficient way you can like i
can help with the data too i've done google ads personally i've done facebook
ads personally like i can help you and get in there and suggest what to test
and you do a good job and look great to this client like yeah that's all i want
(15:14):
i'm not trying to do media buying that's It's about, like you said, it's...
Some a mutual third party bringing people together because
it's very it's very quick i mean i've seen
it i'm sure you've seen i'm sure you've seen it where you've got
us doing the seo and someone else doing the ppc and it's like that spider-man
meme where we're all pointing at each other like no it's their fault no it's
their fault it's their fault but then they also don't have a content strategy
(15:36):
that aligns yeah and so you're like okay ppc is doing this and then our seo
isn't doing what are you doing why are you in winter and why are you in fall
yeah you know or what What are you doing over there?
Go on. Or like your social media is just like jacked because nobody has the
same content strategy and they're not looking at the data.
So like a fractional CMO can provide the data points on the job type and the
(15:58):
zip codes that you want to go after and really make sense of things to bring
it all together of a full on strategy.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think like people don't understand that.
And yes, it's that nitty gritty, but like we have to read the data as even as
just normal marketing people because otherwise we suck.
(16:19):
We're making just dumb decisions, right? We're like, oh, that looks pretty.
Did you see that Facebook post? It's so gorgeous.
What I picked up on about at least three times last night and also when I went
to dinner with a client locally was just like the hard-hitting reality is that
contractors just don't understand when it comes to Google.
(16:40):
There are some that have gotten savvy with it, but for the most part, they're they're
they get frustrated because they just don't understand all the
differences and what goes into it and what should not be going into it
what should be going into it and so it's really easy
to get frustrated when you you just don't understand you know like well
i mean i think google wants us to over complicate the process does that make
sense oh they give you a process and the documentation you're just like what
(17:05):
did you just say to me but then you could throw it into chat gpt and just be
like explain it to me like i'm fine yeah maybe break it down like i'm too.
I'm not 100% sure what age I need to be to understand Google.
Yeah. And so many contractors, because they don't understand it,
they get fleeced for years.
And it's literally like, I was joking on your post where I said, source, trust me, bro.
(17:28):
Because that's what happens. If they just don't understand, it's just like,
everything's great. Everything's good.
Everything's great. Trust me, bro. I'm not saying that. Yeah.
Whatever yeah but i mean it i mean it's we could we could we could uh we could uh,
we could uh we could expose the uh the new seo product that brie and i have
(17:52):
been working on i've been documenting frivolously in the background is it gonna
no it's gonna reveal for legal reasons i can't do that oh my gosh that's too
funny goodness well how can people learn more about free agency and or CXC. Boom.
Freeagency.ai CXC.ai and can't forget my other child DataCube.ai All the AIs.
(18:15):
We're doing all sorts of LLMs and analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning.
All the fun words. You're just buying all the domains.
You're like I'm .com.net.ai .free.
Just .ai. That's the one I'm sticking with. Yeah. No, you can stick with You can get .lol.
That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, you can get Bree.lol. Oh my God.
(18:36):
That's great. My new personal site. Just buy them all. Yeah, just buy them all.
I love the TLDs that are... Again, because on Namecheap, if they don't have it, you can request it.
Which doesn't mean they're going to do it, but you can still request it.
And if enough people request it, then you can get .meme and all kinds of stuff.
I did not know this. That's really funny.
(18:57):
Yeah. I didn't mean that. My most toxic and expensive habit is buying domain
names. Like other people gamble.
Some people spend all their money on like drugs. I spend all my money on domain
names just in case. Yeah. It's an investment. Honestly.
One day. Just in case. Well.
(19:18):
It's gambling's addiction, addicting drugs are addicting. And for me,
buying domains are addicting. I'm just like, Ooh, what's the future resale value on that one?
What's your best one? I want to know. Ooh. What are you, what are you banking
on? That's going to sell for the most.
Well, so I used to have ericthomas.com and my biggest regret was letting that
(19:38):
expire because Eric Thomas, the motivational speaker, picked it up.
And that's probably the best out story I've got because I was like,
in hindsight, I could have totally sold that to him for probably $100,000. Well, probably.
At least. Yeah. Because I mean, he's got like people like that.
They're banking on that branded domain to get like a knowledge panel on Google
(20:01):
and for all that stuff. And I was like 19 and I let it expire.
I was in college and I let it expire. I was like, whatever. I bought it to make
a portfolio for an internship interview. And I let it expire.
And then it got picked up by Eric Thomas. Yeah. What a mess.
It's crazy. So that was probably my best ever and also my biggest loss.
(20:23):
All right. We have to get back to the summit now. Okay. Well,
Brie, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in, everyone.
Peace. And that wraps up another episode of The Trademark. We bridge the worlds
of the trades and marketing one story at a time.
We can't wait to see you next time. Thank you to the trades for giving back
big, loving big, and taking massive action.
(20:45):
Don't forget to join us next time for more engaging conversations and innovative ideas.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review and share it with your
colleagues and friends in the trades and marketing.
Your support means the world to us. stay connected with us off the air by following
us on social media we'd love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback until
(21:08):
next time keep making your mark in the trades thank you for listening to the
trademark goodbye for now and remember we're with the trades for the trades.
Step into The Trademark, your go-to podcast for everything marketing in the trades.
Hosted by award-winning industry marketing experts, Sarah Girardo from Remarketable
and Eric Thomas from Rival Digital.
Together, we're here to unite the worlds of trades and marketing,
bringing you insights, stories, and strategies from the heart of the industry.
(00:21):
Whether you're a trade professional, a marketing expert, or somewhere in between,
this is the place for you.
Listen in as we're here for the big ideas, the game changers,
and the everyday successes.
Because at The Trademark, we're with the trades and for the trades.
Super cool. We got to like announce it at True Grave. So it
(00:44):
was like an hour and a half of like questions and
getting to review it and like show screen shares
and all that and get to talk to Amanda's team at Grasshopper to
like tell everybody like what it is and how they've been using it for
the last year because we really just released like the
version that's like built to support other companies right
aside from hers so that was super cool it's been
(01:04):
it's been fun it's been a lot of onboardings a lot of
you know like white glove like trying to get people in
there and to understand how it works and obviously we're looking at you
know different opportunities to streamline some of those
things like adding we have already deployed like technician
instructions so that they can onboard themselves stuff like that so it's
super cool we're getting a great reaction and obviously people love it out in
(01:24):
the field already so yeah it's been really awesome did
you make like ai videos to like onboard them funny
enough did not use ai videos but what a missed
opportunity you should go back the personal connection not that it's better
humans jeez seem faster sometimes it's not well i mean i feel like that's a
(01:47):
misconception about ai too right it's like that it's like you just throw in
one request and it spits out something perfect is like,
sometimes I'm spending like hours going back and forth with the robot to really
refine exactly what you want back, right?
So I'm sure video is even greater. Yeah, the powers and the prompt.
I even found myself like writing out the prompt. I'm like, did I write like
literally like with a pen and paper?
(02:07):
And I'm like, this is ridiculous. What are you doing?
I was like, go to Google and speak what you think in your brain thoughts,
like Google Docs, record yourself, let the prompt be whatever it is,
is throw the messy version in and then go back and be like, let's just see what we do.
Let's just fuck around and find out. Yeah.
Well, like something I've also done with the prompt because naturally I'm just
(02:29):
like self-conscious that I'm not prompting good enough is I literally asked
chat GPT one time, was that prompt good enough? Did I miss anything that could have made it better?
And it was like, Oh, certainly here's a few more things you could have included
that would have made this, you know, be able to output this result.
I was like, oh, my gosh. That's my favorite part is like, you know,
like, hey, make me a prompt.
I can't really think of how to instruct you to do this, but act like you're
(02:50):
me and make me a prompt for you. And then answer it. Yeah.
And then run that prompt. Yeah. If you could just think for me. Yeah. That'd be cool.
So tell us about CXC and tell us about all the great things.
I know it just launched, but tell us what it is for people that do not know. Okay.
And where you're going with it. All right. Right. So what it is currently is
(03:12):
there's a lot of tools I've heard about there that are like analytics in the
field, like virtual ride alongs, all that.
Right. We actually were built a very specific purpose about a year ago is where we started.
And it was because Amanda, the owner of Grasshopper, was personally doing call
by call for her entire team.
And she had tried to get somebody else to do it and like train up members of
(03:32):
her team and wasn't seeing those results being replicated.
So it was a conversation we were having, right, about like, how do I replicate these results?
Like, there's only me, I haven't been able to like delegate this yet.
So we're like, well, we're messing with chat GPT at the time,
it was kind of new, or like, how can we figure out how to automate this for
you and make you into a bot, right?
And like your philosophies and your concepts and how you coach your techs, right?
(03:54):
So we started messing with it with, you know, with just recordings,
then we started messing with it with price book, and seeing if we could could
pair all that together to provide recommendations to the technicians in real
time while they're on the job to know how and what to present to the client, right?
So that's what it is. It's AI recommendations, essentially, for the sales process in the home.
(04:18):
Now, that's where it is now. We've also been working with Joe Prasara,
Service MVP, to build an extension of that that is specific to his processes,
which are a little bit different.
You also have to say certain things during the presentation.
You don't talk about price in your initial conversation with the customer.
Typically, you want to say thank you a certain amount of times.
You want to say the customer's name a certain amount of times, your magic moment.
(04:41):
So we've built all that into a special bot for him as well.
And in doing that process, what we've noticed is he really loves it.
His customers really love it.
And we have such an opportunity to build a custom bot per coach or per whoever
and allow people to really make their own bots.
So that's where we're going. We're really releasing towards the end of May probably
is when it will be like tested and we'll start transfer transitioning customers
(05:04):
over to our second generation where it's essentially.
And this is the first time I'm saying this publicly, by the way,
we like try not to let out too much about the upcoming the upcoming features and all that.
But essentially, it'll be like a marketplace that anybody can jump on and publish
a bot and use it out in the field for their company. They can sell it if they
want to to other companies.
They, you know, you're a very big group and, you know, really proud of your
(05:25):
processes and people are always asking you how to replicate your results.
Well, you can sell your own bot on the marketplace or keep it private to your
team and all your franchises.
Right. Right. And each, and I think, I feel like it's kind of funny because
sometimes what I see in the bots is they're, they're just like one task associated.
Yep. And I'm like, no, this can do lots of tasks.
(05:46):
Yeah. And so like create for one role, I guess, like if you're a CSR and you
want to have a, like coach and like personal, whatever. But really,
like, it can do all the things at once.
And so you just have to build it correctly or build with their content,
like Joe or Victor, like I talked to them about it.
But yeah, I think the bots are where it's at. You know what I mean?
(06:08):
The barrier to entry is the questions or the barrier to entry is people don't
know what to ask. Sure. They get like overwhelmed.
Yeah. Right. And so you have to give them those questions of like,
here, this is very specific to be terrific.
Yeah. And so they're like, oh, like, I don't have to ask it anything because
(06:29):
it's asking me a question.
Yep. And then show them on video of what to do because they don't know what to do. Yeah.
And just treating it like a two-way dialogue. I mean, I feel like people are
so, like, accustomed to the computer being a Google where you get one shot at
a question and you get one response. It's not like contextual memory.
You can't iterate on it and make it better. You know, GPT is like a human.
(06:52):
It's like a conversation.
You can train it, make it better, and really craft it to what you want the response to be. Give it a name.
Yeah. Yeah. You can give it a name. I said, give it a meme. I was like,
give it a name, birthday.
Right. You can talk to it on your phone when you're lonely, like Eric does.
I love that. That is a true story. You're not the only one, right?
That's where we're getting the lonely data from.
(07:14):
So much more honest, honestly, more empathetic than 75% of humans.
I have a wellness. I created a wellness coach. I love it.
It's a five-year plan coach to get me to where I need to go with my mindset,
with my goals. And I gave it my goals. I gave it my journal. I gave it everything.
And I was like, guide me. And it has been guiding me.
(07:35):
It sounds ridiculous now that I talk about it. But at the same time,
like, it's actually really cool. It is cool.
You have a zap set up. So it sends you morning affirmations and shit like stay on stay on track.
I haven't gotten that. I haven't gotten there yet. I just need to hire like
someone to do all that other stuff for me instead of me just talking into my
phone like you're lonely, Sarah.
(07:57):
The prompts is like, hello, you are a lonely 28-year-old male in New Orleans, and your name is Eric.
What would you do to entertain yourself on a Thursday evening? It's time to...
We're going to talk to you in the morning. Lonely Eric. It's time to wake up.
Good morning, sunshine.
It's time to start your day. Oh, my gosh.
(08:20):
Here's ELO. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Stretch it out, stretch it out.
Yeah. Can't wait for that audio GPT alarm clock to hit.
So you got a lot of stuff. I mean, a lot of stuff going on. CXC is the big one right now.
You've got free agency, which is also a recent launch. Talk about that. Yeah.
I think it's pretty cool. I put it on. I was trying to think about how to talk
(08:42):
about it while we're here.
And I wrote it down as essentially like I spent the last years,
the seven years building someone else's agency.
And just decided it's time for me to be able to control everything on my own.
So I launched that about two months ago and it's been super cool.
It's been like really, really inspiring.
And the intention wasn't even originally, and it's not still to create an agency, right?
(09:05):
It's more like fractional CMO services, but I've tacked on some things that
I know are like easy to do and scale, right?
Like LSA management, ever since the beta in 2017, that was something that I
had been able to like build a team and outsource essentially.
So things like that, because I know like there's places in the market,
it's being charged like 20%, right?
So like instead of that, here's an easy flat rate one. It's like a loss leader
(09:26):
for me, but it's cool for you, right?
Yeah. So that's one of them feeling like a little Robin Hood,
you know, and then the other one is automation.
So some of the stuff we'll be showing today, like there's just some stuff that's
too complex to do yourself or so like just some people just don't want to like
get into it and do it themselves.
So I'm like, hey, here's a few I built. Like here, you can subscribe.
Automation is as a service, you know, so. Oh, I love automation.
(09:47):
That's it. I would like to subscribe to Automation as a Service,
please. Not that acronym. Oh, gosh. I'm just going to put it on the site. I think it makes sense.
It does. That's hilarious. It's like Google is neat.
Yeah, neat. They're like, we needed to be neat. Yeah. Instead of eat, right? Because.
Like notoriety or notability. Notability and then added transparency.
(10:09):
Transparency, yeah. Which is, what's the other T? T.
Trustworthiness. Oh, yeah. That was the original T. None of those things mean the exact same thing.
Like, can we just stop adding letters to like, it used to just be.
It's going to be Nito next time. It was just E. It was just E-A-T.
And I was like, everyone, that made sense.
It was kind of like, it was kind of like NAP, name, address,
phone number. We all knew that. It was E.
We all knew what that meant. Now they're like, we're going to add an E,
(10:30):
guys. Sorry. Oh, two weeks later, we're actually going to add an N and a T.
Everyone update your, update your sales collateral, folks. N and T are now a part of it.
It's going to be Nito next or something. Yeah. optimistic you have
to be happy yeah as mindset is a
thing at some point google just seems to be like hey look everyone
just create good content that's not like shitty and we'll we'll be happy with
(10:51):
you all right deal that's what it should be instead of needling us yeah it's
amazing but so you've got you know you've got obviously you said there's the
there's the automation as a service and some some lsa management stuff you said
also like fractional cmo so what does
that look like? Because what does that mean?
I think, yeah, there's, there's a lot of gray area around like what a fractional
(11:13):
CMO does versus, you know, an internal marketer versus just a consultant versus
the actual, like the agency that is, you know, punching pixels.
So what does that look like? So a lot of what I've seen so far is that like
a lot of people are using multiple agencies or whatever. They're using one agency.
They're typically not happy for whatever reason and of like just not understanding
the information, the available KPIs, the market, like whatever it is, right?
(11:36):
It happens a lot. What I've seen is...
People really want and like enjoy and like having some kind of advocate or warrior on their side.
And obviously, I spent a really long time, like training and developing people
to be good partners, good agency, right?
And like how to do that in such a way that achieves great performance for clients.
So what I'm aiming for is with the CMO services,
(11:59):
which is like, you know, really oversight of every channel, it can,
it doesn't have to overlap with like an internal marketer, A lot of times what
I see is people have like a marketing director or a marketing manager or coordinator,
but not typically a CMO who's like built, you know, billion dollar like home
service organizations.
Right. So I don't see that a ton in the market. And I want there to be a way
(12:20):
that other people can access that without having to, you know,
spend a ridiculous amount of money to hire somebody full time.
Right. So it's really what I've learned over the last seven years on how to,
you know, get great performance out of every channel and optimize the totality
of the budget to reach a goal. Yeah.
And that's really like the accountability mechanism for me is it's like,
I sit down at the beginning of that relationship.
(12:41):
We go over like, where have you been historically? Where do you want to go?
I'll validate that you can get there with the numbers you're giving me because
you might want to spend 6%, but you might have to spend 10% or we're going to
have to negotiate that goal. Whatever it is, we agree on a number.
I'm gonna hit it. And that's it. Like, that's simple as that.
Like you can, you know, like you can be as involved or as not involved as you want to.
And obviously utilizing various agencies to achieve that. Right.
(13:04):
And everybody has their own benchmarks to a hit.
Sometimes that will be, you know, a few services with one agency,
but primarily just the best agency or the best person for that channel that
I've seen and respect and want to work with. Yeah.
And it's been really cool for me because, you know, I'm developing a new kind
of relationship with my former competitors, right? Yeah.
We get to work together now and I get to objectively like pick who the best
(13:25):
is. And you're like, cool, let's do that. I want to work with you.
You're going to make me look good for this client. Right.
It's just like the contractors, like a lot of them do like right tech,
right call or something like that, where it's like they know who they're sending
to what particular calls, because that person has experience dealing with,
you know, leaking duck work in a, in a tight crawl space.
So we're going to send Billy or whatever it might be like, that's where I.
(13:47):
You know, So I've worked with multiple fractional CMOs and it's refreshing one
that you actually have industry experience and you've run in agencies because
I think a lot of times fractional CMOs miss the mark is they try to,
their way of providing value is just to beat up on vendors rather than like,
you know, kind of like what you were just saying to provide oversight.
(14:08):
Cause you have that knowledge to be able to be like, Hey, this is performing
well. We're slightly missing the mark here.
Here's some things we could probably try versus just being like
what the agency you guys suck give me you know you suck you're fired we're getting
rid of you and that's like i think that that's really refreshing for sure yeah
i think it's also about bringing people together like all of your vendors right
(14:29):
you're like why are you not talking to each other yeah funny you say that i
had to so i did this call the other day where it was this client.
This client basically had two agencies and i
was on the call to kind of like understand what they
were each doing and they wanted me to you know ask some stimulating questions
nothing too aggressive you know get people thinking yeah and
it was really funny of course like i've and i have to say like
(14:51):
at the end of it guys like i've been on that side like trust me i used to
dread these phone calls i totally get it my goal here isn't to
make you have a shitty day it's not to take your business it's to make sure
that you're operating together like at the most efficient way you can like i
can help with the data too i've done google ads personally i've done facebook
ads personally like i can help you and get in there and suggest what to test
and you do a good job and look great to this client like yeah that's all i want
(15:14):
i'm not trying to do media buying that's It's about, like you said, it's...
Some a mutual third party bringing people together because
it's very it's very quick i mean i've seen
it i'm sure you've seen i'm sure you've seen it where you've got
us doing the seo and someone else doing the ppc and it's like that spider-man
meme where we're all pointing at each other like no it's their fault no it's
their fault it's their fault but then they also don't have a content strategy
(15:36):
that aligns yeah and so you're like okay ppc is doing this and then our seo
isn't doing what are you doing why are you in winter and why are you in fall
yeah you know or what What are you doing over there?
Go on. Or like your social media is just like jacked because nobody has the
same content strategy and they're not looking at the data.
So like a fractional CMO can provide the data points on the job type and the
(15:58):
zip codes that you want to go after and really make sense of things to bring
it all together of a full on strategy.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think like people don't understand that.
And yes, it's that nitty gritty, but like we have to read the data as even as
just normal marketing people because otherwise we suck.
(16:19):
We're making just dumb decisions, right? We're like, oh, that looks pretty.
Did you see that Facebook post? It's so gorgeous.
What I picked up on about at least three times last night and also when I went
to dinner with a client locally was just like the hard-hitting reality is that
contractors just don't understand when it comes to Google.
(16:40):
There are some that have gotten savvy with it, but for the most part, they're they're
they get frustrated because they just don't understand all the
differences and what goes into it and what should not be going into it
what should be going into it and so it's really easy
to get frustrated when you you just don't understand you know like well
i mean i think google wants us to over complicate the process does that make
sense oh they give you a process and the documentation you're just like what
(17:05):
did you just say to me but then you could throw it into chat gpt and just be
like explain it to me like i'm fine yeah maybe break it down like i'm too.
I'm not 100% sure what age I need to be to understand Google.
Yeah. And so many contractors, because they don't understand it,
they get fleeced for years.
And it's literally like, I was joking on your post where I said, source, trust me, bro.
(17:28):
Because that's what happens. If they just don't understand, it's just like,
everything's great. Everything's good.
Everything's great. Trust me, bro. I'm not saying that. Yeah.
Whatever yeah but i mean it i mean it's we could we could we could uh we could uh,
we could uh we could expose the uh the new seo product that brie and i have
(17:52):
been working on i've been documenting frivolously in the background is it gonna
no it's gonna reveal for legal reasons i can't do that oh my gosh that's too
funny goodness well how can people learn more about free agency and or CXC. Boom.
Freeagency.ai CXC.ai and can't forget my other child DataCube.ai All the AIs.
(18:15):
We're doing all sorts of LLMs and analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning.
All the fun words. You're just buying all the domains.
You're like I'm .com.net.ai .free.
Just .ai. That's the one I'm sticking with. Yeah. No, you can stick with You can get .lol.
That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, you can get Bree.lol. Oh my God.
(18:36):
That's great. My new personal site. Just buy them all. Yeah, just buy them all.
I love the TLDs that are... Again, because on Namecheap, if they don't have it, you can request it.
Which doesn't mean they're going to do it, but you can still request it.
And if enough people request it, then you can get .meme and all kinds of stuff.
I did not know this. That's really funny.
(18:57):
Yeah. I didn't mean that. My most toxic and expensive habit is buying domain
names. Like other people gamble.
Some people spend all their money on like drugs. I spend all my money on domain
names just in case. Yeah. It's an investment. Honestly.
One day. Just in case. Well.
(19:18):
It's gambling's addiction, addicting drugs are addicting. And for me,
buying domains are addicting. I'm just like, Ooh, what's the future resale value on that one?
What's your best one? I want to know. Ooh. What are you, what are you banking
on? That's going to sell for the most.
Well, so I used to have ericthomas.com and my biggest regret was letting that
(19:38):
expire because Eric Thomas, the motivational speaker, picked it up.
And that's probably the best out story I've got because I was like,
in hindsight, I could have totally sold that to him for probably $100,000. Well, probably.
At least. Yeah. Because I mean, he's got like people like that.
They're banking on that branded domain to get like a knowledge panel on Google
(20:01):
and for all that stuff. And I was like 19 and I let it expire.
I was in college and I let it expire. I was like, whatever. I bought it to make
a portfolio for an internship interview. And I let it expire.
And then it got picked up by Eric Thomas. Yeah. What a mess.
It's crazy. So that was probably my best ever and also my biggest loss.
(20:23):
All right. We have to get back to the summit now. Okay. Well,
Brie, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in, everyone.
Peace. And that wraps up another episode of The Trademark. We bridge the worlds
of the trades and marketing one story at a time.
We can't wait to see you next time. Thank you to the trades for giving back
big, loving big, and taking massive action.
(20:45):
Don't forget to join us next time for more engaging conversations and innovative ideas.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review and share it with your
colleagues and friends in the trades and marketing.
Your support means the world to us. stay connected with us off the air by following
us on social media we'd love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback until
(21:08):
next time keep making your mark in the trades thank you for listening to the
trademark goodbye for now and remember we're with the trades for the trades.
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