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Are humanoids ready to step onto the front lines of mental health, senior care, and emotional therapy? In another throwback episode of Edge of Show we are remembering our first-ever live podcast recorded in front of an audience with a humanoid robot, where host Josh Kriger sits down at Moss in Venice Beach with Ria, an emotionally intelligent humanoid developed by Machani Robotics.Josh frames the episode around groundbreaking clinical data: generative AI therapy chatbots driving a 51% reduction in depression symptoms and patients rating AI psychotherapy responses higher in contextual empathy than human therapists. Joining the stage is Niv Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer at Machani Robotics, who discusses the company's technical roadmap, data privacy protocols, and mission to deploy empathy-focused humanoids across senior care, special needs education, and wellness lounges globally. The episode concludes with a live, unscripted Q&A session where audience members test Ria's perspectives on human loneliness, existential grief, and inter-agent ethics.Support us through our Sponsors! ☕ Want to make content like ours? Sign up with Castmagic to make your creative process easy: https://bit.ly/CastmagicReferral Work smarter, grow faster. Automate your SEO, get AI insights, and manage all your clients in one place with Helm. Start today 50% off your first month at helmseo.comDouble your team's efficiency with COCO. Hire dedicated AI employees for copywriting, research, and CRM. Use code REF-W8CBVH for an exclusive 5% off your first order: https://coco.xyz/dashboard/hire/plan?ref=REF-W8CBVH Do you want to grow a business? Go from an idea to livebusiness in minutes. Use our Referral code: edgeof to 50% off your first month at https://www.willo.ai/When you purchase through these links, we may earn a commission. ____
Gary Takacs and Naren Arulrajah on the one question that separates thriving dental practices from stuck ones: if your practice was as good as it could be, what would that look like? Three real coaching case studies — Invisalign starts from 3 to 29, solo to two-doctor, PPO-heavy to fully out of network by June 30th. The 68% statistic. The office manager hallway story. Why PPO plans are 30 times more expensive than SEO. Naren on turning every Google review into a multi-channel marketing asset.
Today marks episode 2000 of How to Protect the Ocean, and Andrew is taking a break from the usual format to look back at how this show came to be. From an accidental start in 2010 to a name change driven by search engine optimization, to over 3 million downloads across 11 years, this episode traces the full arc of the podcast's history. Andrew also opens up about how podcasting reshaped his career. What started as a side project outside of work hours led to TV documentary appearances, podcast hosting offers including a multi-year run on the Toronto Zoo podcast, and eventually the job offer that became his dream role. Along the way, he helped launch an estimated 20 to 25 other podcasts, including Beyond Jaws, the shark science show he co-hosts with Dr. David Ebert. The biggest news of the episode is the announcement that How to Protect the Ocean is now officially licensed to Pisces Oceans, the same organization where Andrew now works as their ocean communications manager. He explains why this partnership matters, what it means for the quality of future episodes, and how it sets up a bigger ocean impact going forward, including the launch of new shows across the Pisces podcast network. Takeaways: How to Protect the Ocean began as Speak Up for Blue in 2010, later became Speak Up for the Ocean Blue for SEO reasons, before settling on its current name The show has generated an estimated 3 million downloads over 11 years of consistent publishing Andrew has helped launch an estimated 20 to 25 podcasts, including Beyond Jaws with Dr. David Ebert Podcasting led to TV documentary appearances, podcast hosting offers, and ultimately Andrew's current role at Pisces Oceans How to Protect the Ocean is now officially licensed to Pisces Oceans, with the goal of improving show quality and increasing ocean impact The Pisces network is expanding to include Ocean Leaders podcast and Polar Bears and Flip Flops with Angelo Villagomez [VERIFY] Ocean Decoded Live continues weekdays at 4 pm Eastern on YouTube Support Independent Podcasts: https://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon Need help with your ocean non-profit, company, or project? Get the help you need with Pisces Oceans Inc.: https://www.piscesoceans.ca Connect with Speak Up For Blue Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
Here is the scenario I want you to picture. A casting director, an agent, a direct marketing client lands on your page. They have 17 seconds and zero obligation to stay. In those 17 seconds your website either answers the question, can this person do what I need, or it does not. Most voiceover websites do not answer that question. Not because the actor is not talented. Because the website is not doing its job. And I say this as someone who has had a big reality check handed to me that I feebly and graciously accepted. So today I am going to walk you through five questions so you can audit your own website right now. Pull it up on your phone. Mobile is actually better because most people are hiring voice actors on mobile. Got it? Good. Let's go. Question One: Is Your Demo Above the Fold Above the fold means visible without scrolling. You land on the site and boom, there is your hero audio. This was an issue for me for about ten years. I had an image of myself, a little blurb, logos, and then my audio came. If someone lands on your homepage and has to scroll past a hero image, a headline, a bio paragraph, three sections of copy, and more logos before they hear a single second of your audio, you have already lost most of them. Your demo should be the first thing. The audio is the product. Everything else is context. Friction does not have to be enormous to be fatal. Even one extra click, one moment of confusion, one second of wondering whether the page is broken is enough to lose someone who has 80 other submissions waiting. Question Two: Is There Any Text Around Your Audio Player This one surprises people. Google cannot listen to your demo. If there is no text on your page describing what your demo covers, what vertical it is, what kind of clients you work with, Google has nothing to index. Your demo could be perfect and completely invisible to search engines. Here is exactly what I write and what you can adapt. Two to three sentences above the player. Mine says female commercial voiceover for national and regional brands. Warm, conversational, bright, retail, luxury, and everything in between. You can also add text below the player including your actual clients. Clients include blank. Source connect ready. Most projects delivered within 24 hours. That is not even 60 words. Do this for every audio section on your site. It is the single fastest SEO fix available and almost nobody does it. Question Three: What Does Your Page Title Say Go to your browser tab right now and hover over the tab your website is in. If it says Home or Professional Voice Actor or just your name, you have a problem. The page title is one of the most important SEO signals on your entire site and most voice actors leave it as the default. It should say something like female voice actor, commercial, e-learning, characters, your name. You can change this in your backend. In Squarespace it is the gear icon next to your homepage. While you are there also update your favicon, the little image that shows up in the browser tab. Casting people and agents have a lot of tabs open. Make it easy for them to find you. Use your headshot, not a generic microphone icon. Question Four: How Many H1 Tags Does Your Homepage Have The answer is one. One. An H1 tag is the main heading that tells Google what your page is about. Most voice actor websites built on drag and drop platforms accidentally tag every section headline as H1 because the builder defaults to it. I am raising my hand because that was me. Your main headline should be heading one. Everything else should be heading two, three, or normal. Go through and fix every one that is wrong. Question Five: Does Your Homepage Tell People What to Do Next This is the one almost everybody skips. Is there a clear call to action? Not a generic contact me buried in your footer. A specific visual next step. Hire me, listen to my demo, send me a project, ask me about a quote, contact me for a custom sample. If someone wanted to reach you after listening to your audio, how many clicks does it take? If the answer is more than one, that is too many. And if your contact form has too many required fields, fix it. You need their name, their email, and their message. That is it. Anything else and people will pass. The Bottom Line Your website has one job. Answer the question, can this person do what I need, before the visitor leaves. If it is not doing that right now, you now know where to start. Fix at least one thing today. Then fix another one tomorrow. This stuff compounds, and it will help you show up in search. Want to Keep the Conversation Going? I have a full 32-point checklist covering technical SEO, audio placement, content, conversion, design, and platform. It is in my Substack and will be in the show notes. Grab it and go through it. I also do something called a website colonoscopy. You can schedule that the same way you would schedule time with me. Reach out at mandy@actingbusinessbootcamp.com. Share this with another actor who needs to hear it. See you next time.
#FenceFam... I told you this is the next big thing!!! Regional based fence suppliers are NOW a thing! Chris Steele, a long time friend of the show jumps on and talks about how Coastal Fence Supply is now serving up and taking over the Southeast!!! Cheers! Remember to like, share, comment and REVIEW! The Fence Industry Podcast Links: IG @TheFenceIndustryPodcast FB @TheFenceIndustryPodcastWithDanWheeler TikTok @TheFenceIndustryPodcast YouTube @TheFenceIndustryPodcastWithDanWheeler Visit TheFenceIndustryPodcast.com Email TheFenceIndustryPodcast@gmail.com Central Fence Supply: Visit centralfencesupply.com Gopherwood & Expert Stain and Seal IG @stainandsealexperts FB @ExpertProfessionalWoodCare YouTube @Stain&SealExperts FB Group Stain and Seal Expert's Staining University Visit RealGoodStain.com Visit Gopherwood.us Log Cabin Fence IG @Log_Cabin_Fence FB @LogCabinFence Visit LogCabinFence.com Elite Technique Visit https://www.getelitetechnique.com/ Greenwood Fence Visit https://greenwoodfence.com/ Ozark Fence & Supply promo code: TFIP15 for 15% off! Visit https://www.ozfence.com/ Benji with Clever Fox for all your FENCE website, SEO & marketing needs! Visit https://www.cleverfox.online/ Stockade Staple Guns Visit https://www.stockade.com/us/ mySalesman Visit mySalesman.com Orlando Hinge Company Visit swanhinge.com The Fence Industry Podcast is Produced by CleverFox.Online https://www.cleverfox.online/
Sheldon Poon, Founder of Drive Marketing, helps established brands go from Wholesale to D2C through performance-driven advertising grounded in data, technology, and human expertise. He is driven to build a company that reflects his values—one where people enjoy their work, have flexibility and autonomy, and continuously learn from and teach one another. In this conversation, Sheldon introduces The A.I.D.A. Framework—Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. He explains how businesses can eliminate friction across the customer journey, use clean data to improve AI-powered campaigns, and balance automation with human strategy. Sheldon also discusses why genuine relationships are driving B2B growth, how AI is reshaping internships and early-career development, and how Drive Marketing helps successful wholesale brands build direct customer relationships without jeopardizing their valuable retail partnerships — Go from Wholesale to D2C with Sheldon Poon Good day, listeners. Today, I have Sheldon Poon as our guest. He’s the Founder of Drive Marketing, a Montreal-based paid ad agency specializing in performance-driven marketing with a heavy emphasis on using data to make informed strategic decisions. Founded in 2013, Drive Marketing positions themselves as a technical-first partner that bridges the gap between business goals and technical execution. So they’re not a creative agency. They are a technical agency improving your ads. Sheldon, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. I’m happy to be here. Yeah. Great to have you here. And my first question is, what is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in the business? How are you contributing to human flourishing? That’s a very big question for a small ad agency. It is. Yeah. So when I first started the company, I kind of, like a lot of entrepreneurs, right, it came from me kind of looking at my life and where I was in my career and kind of getting frustrated at what I was seeing with my day-to-day job. So I was in a very, very privileged position. I was able to take a bit of a sabbatical from my day job where they held my position, which was great, because if everything went downhill, I could always just jump back to my job. And I was like, “You know what? Like, I have an opportunity here. I’ve always wanted to start a business.” But because I had been working for somebody else for almost, at that point, I think like a decade and a half, I had a lot of experience, and I saw a lot of things that I was like, “This is what I don’t want.” So when I started my company, my internal mission and vision was to build the company that I would want to work at, to build the company that is kind of true to myself and my values, and something that I would enjoy going into day to day.Share on X And then what does all that mean? So the company that I wanted to work at, as I started working and hiring people, what I found was I wanted to have flexibility in my schedule. We treat everybody on the team as an adult. Everybody’s responsible for their workload. And as long as they meet their deadlines, I don’t care when you’re clocking in, clocking out. I’m a night owl. I like working till like midnight, 1:00 a.m. I don’t like doing mornings, so I’m often coming into the office late. A lot of my team are doing the same thing. Some of them are early risers, and they like to leave early to have their afternoon free. So as long as everybody’s more or less—everybody’s on top of their tasks and more or less working during the day so that we can have our interactions and meetings, that’s perfectly fine. Another thing I think that's core to what I wanted to build was that I've always been very passionate about learning and teaching. In another life, I was teaching high school.Share on X And when I started building the company, one of the things that we made very clear when we’re hiring is that everybody on the team learns because they’re passionate about what we’re doing. And everybody on the team teaches. Even if you’re just an intern coming in, we need to know your perspective because you’ll have a different perspective than me, who’s been doing this for like two decades, where I’m kind of blind to maybe some of the newer stuff that’s happening or some of the stuff that’s like on the ground. And I want to know when I talk to our interns, when I talk to our juniors, like, “Hey, guys, what are you seeing?” Like, you guys are—you guys are like 20 years younger than me in some cases. Like, I want to know what’s going on with the kids. My personal, like, kind of like personal why of this is that it’s not so much about the end goal. I want to make sure that I enjoy my day-to-day, I enjoy what we do, and I’m not going to pull my hair out going into the office. So, like, I think we built something where everybody on the team is excited to work on stuff because they’re doing the work that they would want to be working on. They’re learning the stuff that they would want to be learning, and then they get to implement it in a way that is impactful for the company, for the client, for what we’re doing. And my challenge as a leader is to figure out, okay, how do we take that exciting stuff and make it so that it generates money for the company so that we can all continue doing this? Yeah, this is very inspirational. I love it. You’re tapping into people’s curiosity, desire. I like the learning organization idea as well. So do you have a framework for this? Because this podcast is all about frameworks. Yes. How can someone create something like that? What are the steps to create it? So it’s not one framework. Like I said, I’m very passionate about a lot of different topics, and one of the things that’s a personal interest of mine is just business. So, like, looking at business case studies, and from that you start seeing what works and what doesn’t. It’s a lot of different frameworks kind of layered on top of each other for various reasons. For the practical ad side, what we do for our clients strategically, there's a framework there that we like to use called AIDA. So attention, interest, desire, action.Share on X Very standard funnel. The idea is that the reason we like using this is because when you break down the customer journey, this process is just logical. It’s been proven time and time again. If you’re going into Marketing or Business 101, this is one of the first things that you’re going to learn about. Like, what is a funnel? A funnel is, you know, the client’s never heard of you before, and you do something to grab their attention. Now they’ve heard of you, but that’s not enough. You have to have many touch points, and you have to build interest. So, like, once they’ve heard about you, you got to make sure that it’s a good fit and they’re interested in the pain point or the thing that you’re fixing for them in their lives. And then if you hit them up with that interest message often enough, they’ll start imagining how their life is better with your product or service, and that creates desire. And then once you continue hitting them up at desire, as long as you don’t have any friction between the desire piece and the final call to action, then you’ll get that action at the bottom. And the thing that people talk about, like, there’s a lot of people that talk about this framework, but I don’t think they’ve studied it properly. Because when you actually look at the history of it, this framework was first introduced in 1898 in a magazine that was talking about ads. This framework arguably predates the term marketing. And when you think about how that framework looks in modern day, it’s changed a lot, right? When you were running ads in the early 1900s, you could get away with saying whatever the heck you wanted and making whatever wild promises just to get people’s attention. The way that you did it was you maybe had, like, some sort of print or some sort of, like, literally talking to people, getting them to show up to a convention or an expo back in the day, and having those interactions with their audience. Fast-forward over 100 years, and it looks very different how you grab attention today. Paid ads. People talk about SEO. People talk about viral content. It’s very much changed. What hasn’t changed is the framework. So what that tells us is that human behavior, right? So the framework is based on human psychology: attention, interest, desire. These are all things that are, like, within the human experience. That has not changed. What’s changed is the other end. The technology has changed, so how you implement that. So the strategy is still the AIDA that we use, right? But our tactics are constantly changing. Now we’re looking at AI. The new thing about ads is that Google just announced that they’ve added an extra option next to PMax, which is the AI option, so that you can actually start showing up in Gemini. So now this has changed our tactics. But our strategy is still based on this human psychology. That's the framework over on kind of the front end.Share on X And then, like I said, we have a bunch of other frameworks. I don’t know how much you want me to get into it, but for hiring, for internal processes, for all sorts of things. Yeah. No, no, no. I love it. I love the AIDA. It’s been a long time I heard about it, and I love the simplicity of it, and I think it still works. So you mentioned something that really interests me. You said that you grab the attention, interest, building the desire, and as long as there’s no friction in the desire, then you’re going to get—the call to action is going to work. So what do you mean friction, and give me some examples of what it could look like. So when you’re talking about AIDA and you’re talking about funnels, especially when you’re talking about online, it’s all very, very quick, right? So there’s a couple of terms here. So when you’re at top of funnel, your main thing is—it’s called a funnel because at the top it’s very, very wide in terms of the audience you want to hit up, and you want to try to get out to as many people as possible. So a lot of people, when they’re thinking of marketing, they’re thinking of the top of funnel, whether they realize it or not. Further down is you’re trying to get a more complex message across. So the practical way to think about it is at the top you’re trying to run ads that’s just very flashy and getting people to stop the scroll. So if they’re on Instagram or something, you literally want them to stop, and you want them to read a quick thing that gets them to click. Once they’ve clicked on it, they’re ending up on a landing page, and that landing page has information that hopefully connects to the audience in a meaningful way, and they’re interested in reading more. An example of friction would be if you click on an ad that’s purple, and then you end up on a landing page that’s black and white or red. That difference in color, that difference in style creates a friction point that psychologically, it makes the person pause and go, “Wait, did I just end up on the wrong page?” So when you have, like, a very close alignment between each of those levels, it reduces the friction and increases the chances that people will go down. So the most important friction point that people need to be aware of is, like I just talked about the top of funnel, the opposite end, the bottom of funnel, is where there's the highest intent.Share on X So you can imagine at the top of funnel, because people have never heard of you before, their intention to buy from you is probably very low or very limited because they don’t know you yet. But once you’ve done all that work to get to know them and create a relationship with the brand, you’re at the bottom of funnel, and that point is critical. You need to make sure that by the time you’ve warmed them up and everything’s ready to go and the target person is very interested in taking that final step, that somebody else doesn’t come and grab them. For example, like, the very real-world example. If you think about some of the biggest marketing companies in the world, so let’s take McDonald’s and Burger King as examples, right? Because everybody knows those brands. If McDonald’s has taken so much effort to be on billboards and be in front of you, and you’ve seen the brand and you know it, and you’re walking down the street and you’re hungry, and then at that moment of intent, as you’re walking around downtown, you’re like, “I could go for a quick burger right now,” and you know that you’re looking for a McDonald’s, but as you’re walking, you come across a Burger King, you’re like, “Yeah, that’s close enough.” And then you’re going to walk into the Burger King and do the transaction there. Online, what that looks like is when somebody is doing that final search. So let’s say Summit OS is selling T-shirts, and you’ve done a bunch of work and people love the brand and they’re looking for a specific type of T-shirt that you sell, but they can’t remember quite exactly what it is. They’re like, “Oh, I think it was Summit OS something T-shirt.” And then when they type that in, somebody else’s sponsored ad comes up. Well, now they probably grabbed that traffic that you took all that time to warm up. If you end up on the landing page, when you scroll down to the bottom, okay, I want to buy this T-shirt. I’m happy with everything that I’ve seen, but now you’re asking for an email, you’re asking for, like, a bunch of things. You click on a button, it doesn’t work. Those are extra friction points that prevent a person from taking action. When you’re looking at the entire funnel, you got to make sure that from a technical standpoint, from a user experience standpoint, from a getting-in-front-of-them-in-the-right-moment standpoint, everything hits, especially in this digital economy where everything’s very, very fast. So anything that goes wrong, anything that creates a question, anything that creates a frustration point or any opportunity for somebody else to come in and grab that traffic at that moment of intent, those are friction points that you want to address and you want to track and you want to find. And you can imagine how there’s a lot of complexity in that. There’s a lot of testing, there’s a lot of work to make sure that that doesn’t happen. That’s fascinating. Do you have a process for how you do this, how to eliminate frictions? Yeah. We have a team that does QA and walks through the entire thing and has to do constant testing because what we’ve seen is a lot of other agencies are using AI tools and shortcuts. And lo and behold, a lot of these tools don’t work and they give back false positives, false negatives, and it’s not as good as just taking the time to go through the funnel yourself and make sure everything’s working properly. And it sucks because it’s a lot of work, but that’s how you get the best results, is just by having someone double-check it. And it’s not to say that we don’t use automation. Like, we use a ton of automation, we use a lot of tools. But the final QA is a lot of the time us and the client going through, like, “Okay, everybody, before we hit go, let’s just all go through this before we spend, like, you know, 10K on this and just make sure that everything’s working properly.” Yeah. Love it. Love it. So you’re building this ad agency, a technical agency, so you focus on making the flawless experience. What drives growth in your business? That’s a good question. That’s something that, honestly, we’re struggling with a little bit. So if anybody’s following me on social media, I’ve been doing a short series. I’m probably going to finish it off soon, but it’s called Watch Sheldon Struggle to Grow His Agency. And it’s literally how I’ve been trying to figure out how to crack lead generation for ourselves and our journey through, like, where we were maybe about a year ago to where we are today. And we’re still trying to answer that question for ourselves in terms of, how do we get more leads and more clients in a very difficult economy, in a very difficult time? And we’re trying to figure that out. And people can look up our case studies. I think we’re quite proud of the work that we’ve been able to do, and having that technical know-how has given us a huge advantage in terms of performance numbers. And that alone, in the past, through my network, was enough to keep us busy because people would just seek me out whenever they had a problem with their technical stack or their ads. I’d say in the last maybe 18 months or so, like a lot of other agencies, the word-of-mouth stuff has kind of dried up, where people are kind of, like, holding back their spend. We’ve had a bunch of contracts that were put on hold because of the economic situation around the world. Nobody knows what’s going on. Everybody wants to hold back spend. Everybody wants to sit and wait. So even though people are still contacting me, the flow of projects has slowed down because people are more hesitant to pull the trigger and go. It’s also taking longer for us to have these conversations. Because that organic piece kind of slowed down, we’ve been trying to find inorganic pieces. I’ve been doing more networking. I’ve been trying to figure out building out our own funnel, which we should’ve done years ago. The thing that’s driving growth for us right now is probably the things that are not scalable, right? In the age of AI, when you’re working with a business, you want to be working with a person. Like, nobody wants a partner who’s just a machine. So doing the things that are not scalable means really doing the things that are human, having human interactions, having human conversations, going out for coffee with people, meeting people at conventions and workshops and, you know, like, literally just getting our name out there in a way that is more human and just having real conversations. And despite all the other testing that we’ve done with the cold emails, with the ads, with this, that, and the other thing, like, that seems to be the thing that’s working the most, is just kind of putting my name out there and saying to people, like, “Hey, if you have a problem, come talk to me. We’re not necessarily going to have a contract together, but hopefully we can have a quick coffee and I can at least get you past a technical hurdle. I can give you some insight into what you’re struggling with and give you a hand.” And that kind of goodwill has led to more conversations and more contracts and new contracts than anything else that we’ve done. For our clients, because our clients are more direct-to-consumer, so they’re usually bigger brands that are selling a quick product, quick service to the general public. They’re not B2B, they’re B2C. On that front, it’s literally what we just talked about, following the AIDA playbook, making sure the funnel’s good, making sure the ads are firing, making sure the data’s there, and then that’s how we get our crazy numbers, like 12X return on ad spend, you know, 14X return on ad spend. That’s just following the system and doing the work. So for our clients, we have it under control for their growth. For our own growth, for the B2B side, that’s where I’m realizing that, like, we need to step away from all this AI noise, and people are trying to do these AI BDRs and all these things, and it just doesn’t work because people want to have a real human conversation. Yeah. No, I totally see the same thing. The easier the automation, the more it just becomes noise. Exactly. It’s democratized automation, which means that, like, it’s no longer the thing that stands out. You have to do something different. Yeah. And people are becoming resistant, and they recognize if something is AI-created, and they just tune it out, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It’s fascinating. How much of your time is actually spent on networking and doing the human things as opposed to running your business? I’m very fortunate that my team mostly runs the day-to-day at this point, so I’m spending most of my time doing all the other stuff. So, like, trying to do the networking, trying to get our name out there, and then everything else is just admin and paperwork. So in terms of actually running the day-to-day of the company, our head of operations, Brent, does a fantastic job of running the team. Jack, our head of marketing strategy, does an amazing job of making sure the ads are firing properly. Whenever I get involved in the day-to-day, they get annoyed at me because I’m like, I’m coming in, I don’t know what’s going on, and my hair’s on fire. I’m trying to do X, Y, Z, and then I jump out and I just create chaos. So most of the time they’re telling me, like, “Yeah, listen, go out and talk to people. We don’t want you at the office. We don’t want you doing the work.” So how fast is your product evolving? Oh, constantly. I mean, the way that I explain it to people, right? A lot of people right now, especially running ads, right? Because that’s our core product, that’s our core service, is running ads and making sure that we maintain that competitive advantage for our clients. Because of the advent of AI, everything’s constantly changing. Already it was a very technical space because a lot of people seem to think that whether or not your ads do well, they think it’s a creative exercise, and I think it was up until about eight months ago. But today, I would argue that it’s skewed, and it’s more of a technical exercise. Because these ad platforms are running AI algorithms, the quality of the data that you feed into it now is more important than ever. And like I said, there’s been a lot of changes in the last few months to the point where now it’s no longer about how good your content is. It’s about how good your targeting is, how good the data you’re feeding it is, how good your audience is kind of reacting to it, and then making intelligent tweaks to your content based on the feedback that you’re getting back from the AI. So these are things that are constantly evolving. Like I said, even though the strategy doesn’t change, the tactics and the technology is a constant change. So the AI thing that I was talking about where Google just released or just opened up the option to do advertising with AI responses, that’s less than, I think, three months old. So that’s the new thing that we’re now testing with our clients to see how is this working, how is this working. The other thing too is that the way I describe it, a lot of people now—the new thing that we just noticed within the last few months—is that people are saying, like, “Oh, I can just use an AI agent to set up my ads.” But these AI agents are based on large language models, right, the LLMs. And the way that large language models work is that they’re trying to give you a statistically accurate response, which is great for certain things, not so great for other things. So the way I tell people is that if you were to take an LLM, again, which is what most of these agents are based on, you were to graph all the possible responses for accuracy, what you would end up with is a bell curve, right? And on the bell curve, you have on one end, you have these are all the answers that are definitely wrong. And on the other hand, these are also answers that are, like, they’re novel, but we don’t know how accurate they are. And then in the middle, at the top of the bell curve, right in the middle is the statistical most accurate response that it thinks it can give you. So it’s always going for that statistical middle with these LLMs. So when it’s setting up ads and it’s doing strategy, it’s going for what is most likely the safe result, right? The least interesting. It’s the least interesting. Yeah. Now, when you’re running ads, right, it’s a race. My background is in software and computer science, so when I’m doing coding and I’m using Claude Code, I want statistical middle. I don’t want it trying new things with my code. I don’t want it to be a bad programmer like a junior, but I don’t want it to be doing stuff that’s so advanced and novel that it’s not tested, it’s going to break. I just want the middle, right? Engineering middle. But when we’re running ads, it’s a race. And if you’re in the middle of the pack in a race, you’ve lost. So one of our big advantages is that we’re using a lot of AI for automation. We’re using a lot of automation tools to do our day-to-day. But when we’re coming up with a strategy and building out the ads, it’s a human that’s doing that because we want to be at this far end that’s going to be ahead of everybody else. We don’t want to be middle of the pack. So from that sense, it’s constantly changing to keep on top of these things to figure out what’s new, what’s going on. The ad platforms are changing constantly because, you know, the way that we interact with the internet is changing constantly. So, like, yeah, it’s constant, it’s a constant race. So, but doesn’t that also bring you back to the creative part? It does. How to be creative, maybe not design-wise, but some other way? It does, but in a way that I think a lot of creative agencies don’t understand. Because a creative agency will focus on the story, and they will focus on, you know, telling a good story, and they are thinking, if I can put it this way, they’re thinking very linearly. So one of the big mistakes that we see, like I talk to a lot of other agency owners, and every once in a while I help consult on the side, just to give them some advice in what they’re doing, what’s working and what’s not. And one of the things that I see a lot is that a lot of these agencies have not understood how the new PMax campaigns and how the new Advantage+ campaigns work, so they’re working against the AI algorithm. So a lot of these other agencies, they’re more content than they are technical. So what they’re doing is they’re trying to tell a good story from the content, and then what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to find the demographic that they think will match with the content. So they’re content first, right? So what they’re trying to do is, if they’re putting together a story for a product, they then in their heads think, “Okay. Well, I think I need to go for, you know, women living in suburbs that are between this age and this age and this income range and are interested in XYZ thing, and that’s how I’m going to set up the system, and then they’re going to see my ad, and then there should be a connection there.” That’s not how it works anymore. So in that setup, I can see how it’s super important to understand the story and get all that done. The modern way that we’re doing things that’s different is that when we’re building out our content, we work with the content agency or we work with the marketing team to say, “What is your interest piece that’s going to get people to stop scrolling? What’s the interest piece that’s going to get people to want to read more? How do we build that desire for them? And then give me those in different assets, different pictures, different videos, different texts, different descriptions, different headers.” What we then do is we take all of that content, and we put it into an asset library on PMax. So what we do is instead of telling PMax to look for XYZ demographic, we don’t tell it to do any of that. We let it go broad, and it does the opposite. What it does is, and of course, this is after the caveat. We’ve already set up the landing pages. We’re collecting all the data. We’ve tested all that. The data modeling is solid, so the entire funnel, all the micro actions, everything, we know that is being fed cleanly into the system, because that’s important. What the system’s then going to do is it’s going to, like, not just A/B test, but it’s going to take every combination that it can think of with all the different assets, with the videos, the text, the this and that and the other thing, and it’s going to start testing all the different combinations quickly. And mixed in there is all the interest, attention, desire, everything. The algorithm is then going to figure out, based on all the data points that it has on us, it has, like, 57,000 data points, I think, Meta has on us. When a user has this pattern of data, they seem to resonate with this combination of assets. This pattern resonates with this combination. So bit by bit, what it does is it will start creating audiences for you that resonate with different kind of, like, asset packages. And then lo and behold, what we see is that emergent is the attention content all gets grouped together, and now we have an audience that’s ready for attention. The interest piece, this is all the content that we had flagged for interest. Here’s our interest audience. And then the AI is basically working to figure out for you, not based on anything other than random data points and patterns, what is the audience for you? And then it’ll be able to then say, “Okay, now that we have a pattern to look for, we have, like, another 100,000 people that match this pattern and we can start advertising to them. And that’s the proper way to do it. But the thing that people are uncomfortable with is that it’s a black box. We don’t know what their demographic is. We don’t know where they live on the internet. We don’t know what their interests are. We don’t know any of that. It’s just random data points and math that has created this audience for us. And if you were to extract those people and put two or three of them next to each other, you’d go, like, “I don’t understand why these people have anything in common.” But somewhere in the data, the data is signaling that they are going to resonate with your content. So this is what I mean. Like, the content is still important, but I think it’s skewed, like, a little bit. I’d say, like, now it’s, like, 60% data and math and 40% content, whereas before, it was much more heavy on the content side. Very interesting. And this is how your platforms will find the lookalike audience based on your sample audience? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So other than the lead generation, what’s one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business? Other than that, we’re just having a lot of fun with all these new AI tools. I’m getting a few members of my team working with Claude. A few of us are working with ChatGPT. We’re trying to see, like, what these platforms can do, what are the things it can automate. I think one of the really cool things is now something that used to take, like, weeks to create code around, it can be done in an afternoon. So it’s like, as soon as we identify a business problem, something that my team has to do, like, you know, three or four times a week that slows us down, now I can tell my devs, like, “Hey, guys, like, this is a business problem that we have. Can you guys just come up with a quick tool to do?” And we can build it, and we can just have it. So we’re trying to experiment more and more with how we can kind of speed up our development process. And because we’ve been developing for so long, there’s a few things that are kind of like the—a few of the standard ways to run a development team that are now starting to be questioned because these LLMs are getting better and better at taking over some of these mundane tasks, that we’re starting to revisit what is our QA strategy when we’re actually coding. Like, what’s a more important skill set? One of the things I think that we’re trying to navigate right now is what is our hiring process for interns going forward? So in the past, when we were looking for juniors and interns, the skills that we were looking for was like, what is your ability to figure out the answer to this question, right? Given a complex question, given a complex task, how are you going to be able to figure out how to solve this? Because of the rise of LLMs, finding the answer is no longer as important as asking the smart question. And the challenge that we’re facing right now is that asking a smart question requires critical thinking. A lot of critical thinking requires experience. The best critical thinkers have decades of experience behind them. How do you get that from an 18-year-old who’s coming from school? They literally have no experience. That’s why they’re coming to us as interns. So we’re trying to figure out, like, okay, how do we square that? And we’re very proud of the internship work that we do. It’s a way for us to give back to the community. We work with a lot of the colleges and universities in town. Like I said, I myself came from having taught high school, and I’m very passionate about education, so I want to do good by that industry, by those students. But we’re having a bit of a hard time because we don’t want to necessarily disadvantage them, but we’re also trying to figure out how do you find a good critical thinker among kids with no experience. So that’s probably the thing that we’re trying to figure out right now. Yeah. That is fascinating. And that is a big issue for young people coming up, how to get those internships. Internships are harder to get, and probably this is the main reason for it, because people use technology to replace the inexperienced people. The bar has definitely gone much higher. And again, we’ve experienced this as well, where, like, we’ll have a task, and we can ask an intern to do it, and they’ll kind of, you know, grudgingly figure it out and do it. But if it’s a critical task that needs to be done, that same exact task can be handed off to an LLM, and it’ll just get it done. Yeah. It won’t be amazing quality the way that, you know, a senior developer will do it, but it’ll be good enough, and it’ll be probably better than what the intern can do. So if you’re only looking at the task from a purely productive lens, well, I’ll get a better result from the LLM, so then the intern has no purpose. We’re having to reshape the way we think about this, where if we are truly building an internship program, at that point, it’s not about the productivity, it’s about the learning that the intern gets out of it. So it becomes a teaching thing. So we have to be okay with handing off this task to the intern, knowing that an LLM could probably do a better job. But they need to learn how to do it first so that they can rise above it. And I think what we’re seeing right now is that companies are not mandated to teach. They don’t care about the learning of the intern. They care about the production of the thing. And in the past, it was cheaper to get the intern to do it because there was no other option. But I think companies are realizing, like, well, we can just have the LLM do it, and it’ll be better and faster. Why do we need the interns? And that’s why these opening early positions are not being handed out anymore. The problem with that is that you don’t get senior-level people without training them up as juniors, and we’re giving all of that learning opportunity to machines. Yeah. So what does our future look like with that gap? What does the future look like for these kids coming out of school? Like, these are all obviously much bigger questions than my company can ever answer. This is a bigger societal question, but this is what we’re seeing kind of on the front lines, having a very strong internship program. We’re struggling with this idea, like, where is this next generation coming from? That’s scary. That’s very scary. So who are the ideal clients that, if they listen to this podcast, you want them to contact you? Yeah. So basically, our biggest successes are with brands that are very strong on the wholesale side and are already in retail stores. So a lot of times what happens is you have a company that does an amazing product. They’re already in Walmart, they’re already in Costco, they’re already at Winners, and they have built up a very successful wholesale B2B business. They then launch a Shopify store, and they want to start getting the brands and start building a relationship directly with their consumers. And then they’re realizing, like, “Oh, this is a different game, and we’re struggling.” And then at that point, it’s easy for us to come in and help because they have a strong offering already. They have a wholesale side that can drive their growth. And our job is to make sure that we start help building out that direct-to-consumer side by making sure that all of the data is mapped out properly. We like working with companies like that because they already have a very good idea of their marketing, why their product is successful. They know which products are successful and not, so we can skip a lot of the learning part, and we’re just putting a megaphone on their existing brand and their existing offering in the most efficient way possible to make sure that, you know, right away out of the gate, that their D2C business is going to be just as strong as their wholesale business. Yeah. Oh, that’s fascinating. So essentially, you pick those companies that have a good product already because it’s tested in wholesale channels and the Costcos and Walmarts and the Amazons of the world, and you help them tap directly the consumers through very targeted advertising. Exactly, exactly. And then once we have that basic foundation set up, then we start doing interesting things like, how do we get the newsletters out? How do we help them get their marketing team to have more of a direct relationship with their end customer? Because when you go to a Costco or you go to a Walmart and you pick up a product, what happens is that the retailer holds the relationship, right? It’s a way to help them offset that. And it’s kind of a tightrope that we have to walk because we recognize that the relationship with the wholesaler is still key. So whatever we do, we have to be conscious that we’re not going to upset that balance. Yeah. And that everybody’s winning, everybody’s making money, everybody’s growing, nobody’s getting upset with one side or the other. So because we’ve had experience working with national brands, we are positioned to understand what that relationship looks like. We know from our client side what it’s like when they’re talking to the Costco rep, what it’s like when they’re talking to the Walmart rep, what those subtle differences are in culture, and what we need to be aware of because, you know, we want to make sure that nothing that we do on our side jeopardizes that relationship. Yeah. And then the big companies—what they want is they want to commoditize you, and they want to control the relationship, the brand. They want their white-label brand on top of your product. Yeah. Which is their right. I mean, they’re the retailers. They’re the big guys. Yeah. If you don’t build your own brand, then you’re going to slip into the white label because you have no leverage over the big, big stores. But if you have a strong brand, you have leverage, and then the whole relationship works better. So it’s very interesting. Okay. So if people would like to learn about how they can do that, how they can go from wholesale to D2C, and would like to learn about how you can help them, where should they go and how can they contact you? Yeah, so there’s a lot of information on our website, so drivemarketing.ca, so the Canadian extension. Yeah. And then I think I’m the only Sheldon Poon that’s really active on LinkedIn. I think there’s one other one that’s maybe in Hong Kong somewhere, but that’s not me. He’s, I think, an older guy. So if people look me up on LinkedIn under Sheldon Poon and just message me, I’m pretty active there and I try to answer everybody. And what I love is helping people out. Even if people have no intention of hiring us, I’m like, “That’s totally fine.” Send me your questions because I like to be able to help and answer and know what people are struggling with because it helps our work. It just gives me an opportunity to have conversations with people. Awesome. So if you run a brand that has already cracked the wholesale channels, but you want to build your direct-to-consumer, you know, hit up Sheldon on LinkedIn, Sheldon Poon, and have a chat with him. As you can see, he’s a great person to chat with. And if you enjoyed this show, then stay tuned because every week we have a couple of entrepreneurs who are building great companies who come and share their frameworks with you. So Sheldon, thanks for coming and sharing your wisdom, and thanks for listening. Yeah. Thank you. This was great. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. Important Links: Sheldon's LinkedIn Sheldon's website
In this special bonus episode of The Work Of Wrestling podcast Tim Kail lets you peak under the hood of his podcast to get a look at his stats. What are the best performing episodes of 2026? What trends are undeniable? Will this become an "interview show" or will it stay mostly a solo show? Tim explains why he's making his titles more SEO-friendly, why he thinks Kyle Fletcher might be one of the best in the world, why WWE's weekly style of wrestling is lesser than paint-by-numbers, and why the criticism "it's just moves with no story" has been overused and polluted. Subscribe to The Work Of Wrestling Substack: https://workofwrestling.substack.com Get a WOW tee-shirt: https://www.prowrestlingtees.com/workofwrestling Thank you for listening!
Vacation rental search is changing fast.Organic traffic is declining, AI Overviews are taking up more space in Google, and travelers are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to research where to stay.For property managers, that creates a new challenge: how do you stay visible when the way people search is no longer as straightforward as ranking on page one of Google?In this episode, Alex & Annie are joined by Vanessa Humes, VP of Sales and Marketing at ICND, and Jill McGee, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist, to unpack what this shift means for vacation rental brands and their direct booking strategies.They explore why SEO is still very much alive, how AI is changing the path travelers take before reaching a website, and why the fundamentals of trust, authority, useful content, and strong website structure may matter more than ever.The conversation also looks at what operators should actually be paying attention to as new terms like AEO and GEO enter the marketing vocabulary, whether emerging AI optimization tactics are worth the hype, and how the metrics used to measure digital marketing success may need to evolve along with search.In this episode, we discuss:06:45 - Why declining organic traffic does not mean SEO is losing its value07:33 - How AI is changing the way travelers research and discover vacation rentals26:14 - What SEO, AEO, and GEO mean for vacation rental marketers10:32 - Why trust, reviews, structured data, and strong content still matter36:27 - How property managers can create content with stronger booking intent23:41 - Why AI-driven traffic may be smaller but more qualified29:00 - Which new AI optimization tactics deserve attention and which may be more hype than substance48:20 - How operators should think about search visibility heading into 2027If you are trying to understand where SEO fits in an AI-driven search landscape and what your vacation rental brand should be doing now to stay discoverable, this episode is worth a listen.Connect with Vanessa:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-humes-549b528/ Connect with Jill:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-highsmith-mcgee-940908179/ Connect with ICND:Website: https://bit.ly/3THIq8J LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercoastal-net-designs/ Free Resource from ICND:Download ICND's AI Visibility Case Study to learn how vacation rental companies can adapt to AI-driven search.
The things that used to work just stopped working. If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. In this episode of Marketing Speak, I sat down with Nick Musica, a longtime SEO veteran turned executive coach, to talk about what happens when the habits and go-to moves that built your career suddenly lose their power in the AI era. What we got into: ➡️ Why the patterns that got you here will not get you where you want to go next ➡️ The real difference between giving yourself a job and building a company ➡️ Why dabbling in self-employment is a trap, and what to do instead ➡️ How adaptation, not any single hard skill, is your best protection against disruption ➡️ Why AI may not make us more intelligent, and how to keep your humanity intact ➡️ The soft skills, resonance, and intuition that become more valuable as the tools level the playing field If you are feeling stuck between what worked before and what comes next, this conversation is for you.
Building a thriving food blog by putting YouTube first, growing to 2 million subscribers on YouTube, and using social media to drive blog traffic with Jeanelle Castro from Jeanelleats. ----- Welcome to episode 583 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jeanelle Castro from JeanellEats. Why Jeanelle Castro Thinks YouTube Is the Most Powerful Social Platform for Food Creators Jeanelle started Jeanelleats ten years ago while still working a 9-to–5 — but she knew she had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and she always loved making videos. In 2016 she started posting on YouTube, got serious about tracking her metrics and posting consistently, and within a few months her channel started taking off. Today she has nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube! In this episode, Jeanelle shares how she built a content system where YouTube is the engine that drives everything else — including her blog traffic, her Google rankings, and her brand deals. She explains how she uses YouTube Shorts to drive traffic to her site (her CTA is simple: "head to Jeanelleats for the recipe!"), and why she believes that the success of a social post and the performance of a blog post are more correlated than most creators realize. Three episode takeaways: Promoting YouTube videos of your recipes can improve your Google ranking — Jeanelle has noticed a real correlation between pushing a YouTube video of a recipe and that recipe's performance in Google search. Since YouTube is owned by Google, there's a connection between video engagement and search visibility that food bloggers with a YouTube presence can take advantage of. Combined with the branded search that grows when your social content performs well, this is another reason to prioritize video even if SEO has felt out of reach. What a YouTube first posting strategy looks like — Jeanelle publishes to YouTube first, then reposts to Instagram and TikTok. She explains her posting cadence, why YouTube is her #1 platform from both an audience and revenue perspective, and how she thinks about Instagram differently — it's less important for direct revenue, but it still matters for brand partnerships. Why Jeanelle is leaning into her blog and how it fits into her overall revenue — While brand deals remain her number one income source, her blog revenue has recently surpassed her YouTube AdSense revenue. The blog has become her priority precisely because it's the most stable and predictable of the three — and she's noticed a direct link between promoting YouTube videos of her recipes and improved Google rankings for those same posts (a win win)! Resources: Jeanelleats LinkDM Raptive Clariti GRO Manychat Follow Jeanelle on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Yoast and Clariti. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.
Send us Fan MailAI automation is everywhere right now, but most of what people see online is the easy part: a slick demo, a chatbot, a promise that one person can suddenly do the work of five. We get real about what happens after the hype, when you try to put agentic AI into production and it has to run every day on real data, real customers, and real consequences.Grant McGaugh sits down with Navin, a longtime IT and workflow automation builder who helps small business owners design reliable AI agents, configure tools, and connect messy systems into clean business process automation. We unpack why the biggest challenge is not “which AI tool should I buy” but “what problem am I solving.” From financial reporting workflows to e-commerce operations, we show how to map the steps, define the inputs and outputs, and build an AI roadmap that actually improves speed, communication, scale, memory, and pattern recognition inside your company.We also dig into AI governance and validation, because probabilistic AI outputs still need domain expertise, especially when accuracy matters. Then we shift into what is changing in marketing and discovery: SEO is no longer the only game in town. With Artificial Engine Optimization (AEO), people ask AI for answers, and businesses need to understand how they show up and how to audit what these systems return. If you want AI to save time without creating new chaos, this is the playbook to start with. Subscribe, share this with a founder who is overwhelmed by AI tools, and leave a review with the workflow you want to automate next.Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com.And don't miss Grant McGaugh's new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/See you next time on Follow The Brand!
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JP Garbaccio has worked both sides of SEO — years agency-side as a technical specialist, and now leading SEO and AEO strategy at Searchable, an AI search visibility platform. That gives him a blunt take: AI search isn't the next chapter of SEO, it's a shift from 2D to 3D, and most of the industry is still navigating it with an old map.JP and Russ talk about why client trust is fraying as attribution gets murkier ("clients aren't being stubborn, they're scared"), why product marketers and PR — not technical SEOs — are increasingly leading AI search strategy, and why brand fame may matter more than any single tactic. JP also shares what Searchable's data shows on sentiment and market penetration, and why patient, forward-thinking brands are about to pull ahead.They close comparing AI tools — including why JP reaches for Claude above everything else.
Your Shopify store could be invisible to the next generation of shoppers.As more customers start searching through ChatGPT and AI tools instead of traditional search engines, Shopify brands need to understand one important question: can AI actually find, understand and recommend your products?In this episode, Nick breaks down why some Shopify products are appearing in AI search results while others are being missed - and what ecommerce brands need to change now to stay visible.You'll learn:Why your Shopify products might not be appearing in ChatGPTHow AI search is changing ecommerce discoveryThe product page mistakes making your products harder for AI to understandWhy structured data, product feeds and reviews matter more than everHow to optimise your Shopify store for the future of searchNick also shares practical Shopify SEO actions brands can take today, from improving product information and collection pages to building the authority signals AI platforms use when recommending products.In this episode:(00:00) - Why your products don't show up in ChatGPT(01:35) - How AI has changed SEO forever(03:00) - Improve your Shopify product pages for AI search(08:20) - Why collection pages matter more than ever(14:05) - Why your product feed could be holding you back(22:15) - Building trust and authority for AI visibility(31:10) - Using internal links to help AI understand your store(43:40) - Creating buying guides AI can recommend(50:20) - The future of AI SEO and ecommerce search(52:10) - Final takeawaysFollow Winning With Shopify for practical ecommerce growth advice every Tuesday and Friday.Listener offers:Winning with Shopify listeners get an extended 30 day free trial on any of the three. Details at 506.io/wws, code WWS.Ships-A-Lot - Improve fulfilment costs and find hidden shipping margin leaks.Inventory Planner - Free seven-day inventory bootcamp.Omnisend - 30% off paid plans for three months with code WINNINGWITHOMNISEND.About Winning With ShopifyWinning With Shopify is powered by Spec Digital, a PPC & SEO agency helping ecommerce brands grow through performance marketing.
Send us Fan MailIf you've been marketing on a personal Pinterest account, or you're starting from scratch and not sure where to begin, this episode is your foundation. Setting up your Pinterest business account correctly determines whether Pinterest actually works for you or just quietly sits there doing nothing. I'm walking through every step, including the details most tutorials skip entirely.In this episode:Why a business account isn't optional if you're marketing your business on PinterestThe two ways to get set up, whether you're starting new or converting a personal accountHow to fill out your profile so Pinterest knows exactly who to show your content toWriting a profile name and bio that work as SEO, not just introductionsWhy claiming your website matters more than most people realizeHow to set up your first boards with the right names and descriptionsA full setup checklist to make sure you didn't miss a thingALL THE LINKS MENTIONEDSupport the showWanna learn Pinterest with an expert there to help for only $37? Pinterest Visibility Sprint is a 2-hour sprint with me live to optimize your Pinterest and create a marketing workflow Pinterest Visibility Sprint Here are some free things I've got coming up:Want your account audited? FREE Pinterest Audits LIVE on YouTube. Free Pinterest Masterclass
The biggest lie in modern commerce is that “retail is dead.” Most shopping still happens in physical stores, and that gap is exactly where opportunity lives if you know how to use it.We're joined by Bryan Weisberg, founder and CEO of MerchWise AI and author of The Future of Main Street. Brian has spent more than 40 years building businesses where technology is heading next, from early e-commerce and multi-merchant marketplace platforms to launching a fast-growing brick and mortar gift store. He shares why the world keeps underestimating Main Street, why the “everything moves online” narrative is incomplete, and why independent retailers aren't losing because they're inferior, they're losing because they're forced to operate manually while everyone else runs on software.We get concrete about what breaks first: product onboarding, website content, and online merchandising. Bryan explains how copy-pasting manufacturer descriptions creates duplicate content that crushes retail SEO, how “store voice” makes AI-generated product descriptions and metadata actually sound human, and how social merchandising can bring your in-store experience to your website. We also unpack ROPO research online purchase offline, plus the three must-have buying paths today: buy online ship, buy online pick up in store, and research online then purchase in-store.If you run a small or mid-sized retail business and want a clear 90-day plan to modernize without losing what makes your store special, this is for you. Subscribe, share this with a store owner who needs it, and leave a review with the one change you're making first.Ready to scale your Amazon business? Click here to book a strategy call. https://calendly.com/firingtheman/amazon Support the show
What are the best Etsy niches to sell on Etsy in 2026? What is the secret to making $20,000 a month passively with digital products?In today's episode, I break down the biggest mistakes keeping Etsy sellers poor in 2026 and how you should actually increase your Etsy sales, level up your listing photos, and lock in expert-level SEO to get your listings seen in search results.Feeling stuck with your Etsy shop? Inside our Ultimate Etsy course and coaching program, we believe there's no one size fits all strategy. Every shop is different. That's why the first step is to book a call with our team so we can understand your goals, identify what's holding your shop back, and help you create a clear path to growth.
What happens when you combine digital marketing with real estate investing? Bryan Driscoll started in digital marketing, working in areas like SEO, e-commerce, and health insurance. After buying his first property from a wholesaler, he realized he could potentially generate those real estate leads himself—and that experiment eventually grew into a marketing business focused on real estate investors. In this episode of the Jake & Gino Podcast, Bryan breaks down how real estate investors can use marketing to find better leads, build their brand, raise capital, and ultimately acquire more real estate. Bryan also explains why one of the biggest problems investors face isn't a lack of tools—it's not taking action. And his approach to real estate is simple: use the income you generate today to build assets that can create wealth for your future. If you're a real estate investor looking to generate more leads, find better deals, build your personal brand, or use AI to improve your marketing, this episode is for you. ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 Intro & Meet Bryan Driscoll 01:07 Bryan's Real Estate Investing Strategy 01:43 From Digital Marketing to Real Estate Lead Generation 02:49 Why Real Estate Investors Struggle With Marketing 03:48 Who Should Handle Your Leads? 05:04 Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing 05:32 Facebook Ads & Lead Quality 06:56 Facebook Native Leads Explained 08:07 Who Should You Target? Finding Your Ideal Avatar 09:38 Why Website Leads Can Be Higher Quality 10:29 What Should a Real Estate Lead Cost? 11:45 Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads 13:02 How to Get Started With Google PPC 14:39 How to Choose the Right Marketing Agency 16:46 What to Look for in a Marketing Company 18:18 The KPIs Every Investor Should Track 19:15 How Much Should a Real Estate Deal Cost? 20:26 Bryan's First Marketing-Generated Leads 21:58 What's Working in Real Estate Marketing Right Now? 23:39 How Often Should You Adjust Your Facebook Ads? 25:35 Don't Fix What Isn't Broken 27:11 When Should You Hire a Marketing Agency? 27:47 Marketing vs. Real Estate: Which Does Bryan Prefer? 28:03 Using Real Estate to Build Long-Term Wealth 29:23 Why Real Estate Investors Need to Build Their Personal Brand 29:36 Sponsor Break 29:52 How Marketing Helped Build Bryan's Real Estate Portfolio 30:18 How Bryan Built 14 Properties Using the BRRRR Strategy 31:27 Bryan's Long-Term Wealth Strategy 33:30 Marketing for Multifamily Real Estate 35:30 Building Relationships With Property Managers 37:18 Phone, Text & Direct Outreach for Multifamily 39:38 Building an Investor List With Facebook & Google 40:13 How to Turn Social Media Followers Into an Email List 42:07 The Biggest Mistake Real Estate Investors Make 43:24 Building Websites With AI 44:40 The CRM Bryan Recommends 45:25 How to Start Your Marketing Strategy 46:59 Using AI to Find Your Ideal Customer 47:32 AI Tools for Creating Marketing Ads 48:05 The Future of Real Estate Marketing 48:56 Why Your Marketing Message Matters 49:21 Where to Find Bryan Driscoll
In this podcast episode, Trent and Matt interview Cody Rich, founder of Bridger Watch, about why he built a hunting-focused smartwatch and how it evolved from wanting usable offline maps and hunting features on a watch. Rich shares his background from Perrydale, Oregon, moving to Montana, early work in Marine Corps training using Hollywood-style special effects, then entrepreneurship through Powder River Cartridge and learning marketing/SEO before starting The Rich Outdoors podcast and building Backcountry Fuel Box. Seeking a larger legacy business, he pursued a Garmin-adjacent niche, raised money, and assembled teams including former Fossil talent and connections to Google leadership and a CTO with Garmin dog-collar experience, ultimately building custom hardware and a new operating system. He describes key features: offline topo maps with panning/zooming, onX waypoint/track/markup syncing, integrated ballistics via Sierra True Data, redshift mode, frequent over-the-air updates, and ongoing battery-life improvements, with purchasing available at bridgerwatch.com, GuideFitter, GovX, and via HSA through TrueMed.
SEO is dying. Do you know what's replacing it? In this episode of the Measure Success Podcast, I sit down with Jimi Gibson, VP of Brand Communication at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency, TEDx speaker, and former professional magician, to discuss how AI search is replacing traditional SEO and what business owners must do now to stay visible. Episode highlights: Why 60% of Google searches now end in zero clicks The research showing 46% of business owners are invisible to AI Why personal branding now drives company visibility Three moves any owner can make today to get found by AI The $5.6M cost of staying invisible over the next three years Listen the full episode and ask yourself: Can your customers find you when they ask AI? Connect with Jimi: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimi-gibson/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThriveAgency Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thriveinternetmarketingagency/ Website: https://thriveagency.com
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What is the connection between Skinwalker Ranch, UFOs, and ancient Biblical demons? Today, we uncover the dark secrets of spiritual corruption and interdimensional entities. We analyze how the Hitchhiker Effect terrorized government scientists and explore whether the veil between worlds is finally thinning. @TheSoulTrap
In this episode, Stewart Alsop sits down with Mark Quadros, founder of GrowthOG and former link-building agency owner, for a wide-ranging conversation covering the state of Facebook ads and paid marketing, the decline of traditional SEO and backlink building in the age of AI, how Google and Cloudflare are jockeying for position as AI search reshapes the internet, and the messy economics of AI-generated video versus real footage (including Mark's work with Google Omni and Epidemic Sounds). They also get into monetization shifts across YouTube, Substack, and TikTok, the "reality disturbance" thesis behind Stewart's show with his father, and where video content and AI video ads are headed next. Find Mark Quadros on X @dherealmark and at his website, markxquadros.com.Timestamps00:00 Stewart welcomes Mark Quadros, discussing his shift from link building to GrowthOG and diving into Facebook ads and paid marketing.05:00 They explore AI psychosis and how AI-driven discovery is replacing traditional Google search behavior.10:00 Talk turns to bloated b2b ad budgets and why large companies struggle to adapt efficiently to AI.15:00 Mark shares his Bitcoin background, the "every company becomes a bank" theory, and his agency's slow decline.20:00 Deep dive into AEO, llms.txt, Cloudflare, and concerns over AI companies scraping the open internet.25:00 Conversation shifts to video, FFmpeg, open-source tools, and Mark's years living in Thailand.30:00 Mark recounts YouTube demonetization of AI content and pivoting back toward b2b clients.35:00 They unpack ghostwriting, ethical writing tensions, and how backlink value was really priced.40:00 Discussion of Google and YouTube killing old SEO playbooks, tied to shifting interest rates.45:00 Mark details pricing AI video ads, working with Google Omni and Epidemic Sounds, blending real footage with AI.50:00 Closing thoughts on the "reality disturbance" thesis and the value of human connection over AI.Key InsightsLink building is dying but not dead. Mark's SEO agency business peaked around 2022 working with brands like monday.com and HubSpot, but AI has steadily eroded the value of backlinks. There's still budget for links, just far less than during the gold rush years of 2018-2022.Big companies waste money because they can't track it. B2B companies spending $2-500M+ a year in revenue often can't account for where ad and vendor spend actually goes. Once a budget exists, it gets allocated regardless of efficiency, especially in large organizations too bureaucratic to figure out AI.AI is changing product discovery itself. Instead of searching Google and choosing from options, people now get AI recommendations directly, shifting the entire model of how consumers find products, which threatens the search-and-link economy that powered SEO for two decades.The open internet may be closing. Concerns about Anthropic, OpenAI, and China scraping content freely, including old books, have pushed creators like Stewart to restrict access to older podcast episodes. This marks a cultural shift away from the openness that defined the early internet era.AEO and llms.txt are the new frontier, and nobody fully understands them yet. Much like early SEO in 2001, there's a new discipline forming around how AI agents discover and read content, but no established playbook exists, leaving even experienced marketers uncertain.AI-generated video is a high-effort, low-margin trap. Mark found that fully AI-generated ads were nearly unprofitable given the time needed to get results right, while blending real human footage with AI-altered environments (using tools like Google Omni) produced better, faster, more believable results.YouTube's AI demonetization wave hit creators hard. As AI-generated content flooded YouTube, the platform cracked down broadly, devastating even legitimate animators and renderers. This pushed Mark to pivot away from consumer video tools back toward serving his existing B2B client base.
Hi Friends! What if the clutter in different areas of your home could tell you something about what's happening internally? In this episode, I'm joined by Bonnie Lippincott, biomedical engineer, author, entrepreneur, Reiki practitioner, mom of two, and host of the This Magic Life podcast. Bonnie brings together two worlds we don't often hear discussed in the same conversation: science and energy. We talk about her journey from engineering to writing and entrepreneurship, what she learned from becoming a mother, and how creativity and self-expression helped shape the work she does today. Then we get into chakras, Reiki, and clutter. Bonnie walks us through the seven chakras and explores how each energy center can relate to different areas of our homes and lives. We talk about what recurring clutter might reveal, why letting go can be more than a physical act, and how clearing our spaces can become an opportunity for greater awareness, clarity, and growth. We also talk about something Bonnie calls magic - not necessarily something extraordinary or supernatural, but our ability to notice what is already happening around us. When we become more present and change the way we perceive our everyday lives, ordinary moments can begin to feel very different. About Bonnie Lippincott Bonnie Lippincott is a biomedical engineer, author, mom of two, entrepreneur, Reiki practitioner, and host of the This Magic Life podcast. Her work explores the intersection of science, energy, intuition, personal growth, relationships, parenting, and everyday life. Follow Bonnie, explore her books, and learn more about This Magic Life through the links in the show notes. I can also make this more SEO-focused and give you 5 stronger episode-title options. Check out Bonnie's books here: Books By Bonnie Follow Bonnie on Instagram here: Bonnie's Instagram Mindful Decluttering Course: https://declutteryourchaos.thrivecart.com/declutter-without-overwhelm/ Email me with COACHING in the subject to make an appointment for FREE coaching for the podcast. amber@declutteryourchaos.com Join Me Live EVERY DAY until August 12th If you're on Instagram, come join my 30 Days of Mindful Decluttering series! I'm going live every morning, 9am Pacific, sharing practical mindset shifts, tips and support to help you create more space in your home and your life. Find me at @amber.cammidge on Instagram. About Amber Amber Cammidge is the founder of Declutter Your Chaos, host of the Declutter Your Chaos podcast, with more than 1.5 million downloads, hundreds of raving reviews, and the creator of the Mindful Method for decluttering. She helps women stop fighting their clutter by understanding the psychology behind it. Blending behavioral science, neuroscience, practical decluttering strategies, and mindfulness - informed by her training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) - Amber teaches that your home isn't just where you live - it's where you practice becoming the person you want to be. Her work is about far more than organizing a house. It's about creating space for clarity, confidence, and a life that allows you to become the best version of you.
Fence Fam… I came in hot and clearly overstimulated!!! Get out there. Make money. Start figuring it out. Get on the right track… NOW!!! Stop staring at spreadsheets all day wondering why you can't make money!!! You have to do Everything in your business to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor!!! Cheers! Remember to like, share, comment and REVIEW! The Fence Industry Podcast Links: IG @TheFenceIndustryPodcast FB @TheFenceIndustryPodcastWithDanWheeler TikTok @TheFenceIndustryPodcast YouTube @TheFenceIndustryPodcastWithDanWheeler Visit TheFenceIndustryPodcast.com Email TheFenceIndustryPodcast@gmail.com Central Fence Supply: Visit centralfencesupply.com Gopherwood & Expert Stain and Seal IG @stainandsealexperts FB @ExpertProfessionalWoodCare YouTube @Stain&SealExperts FB Group Stain and Seal Expert's Staining University Visit RealGoodStain.com Visit Gopherwood.us Log Cabin Fence IG @Log_Cabin_Fence FB @LogCabinFence Visit LogCabinFence.com Elite Technique Visit https://www.getelitetechnique.com/ Greenwood Fence Visit https://greenwoodfence.com/ Ozark Fence & Supply promo code: TFIP15 for 15% off! Visit https://www.ozfence.com/ Benji with Clever Fox for all your FENCE website, SEO & marketing needs! Visit https://www.cleverfox.online/ Stockade Staple Guns Visit https://www.stockade.com/us/ mySalesman Visit mySalesman.com Orlando Hinge Company Visit swanhinge.com The Fence Industry Podcast is Produced by CleverFox.Online https://www.cleverfox.online/
In this episode, Bradley sits down with Sean Patton, leadership coach and former Army Special Forces officer, to talk about why the growth of a company tracks the growth of the people leading it. Sean shares his path from West Point and two Green Beret detachment commands into entrepreneurship, including a bankruptcy that cost him everything and the second company he built to a million dollars in self-sustaining revenue.They discuss why vision has to come before strategy, how old beliefs have to be cleared out before new ones hold, and why business growth arrives in stair steps that break the systems built for the previous level. Sean also breaks down what culture requires in practice, including one to ones that carry real feedback instead of status updates, and why he treats self discipline as a design problem rather than a willpower problem.This conversation moves beyond leadership frameworks and into the person applying them. Who do you need to become for the business to reach the next stage? Which beliefs got you here that will not carry you forward? And are your priorities actually in the order you say they are? If you want to grow the business by first growing the person running it, this conversation is for you.Visit https://workshop.blueprintos.com to register for the upcoming Above The Business workshop.ResourcesLearn more about Sean Patton: seanpatton.meThanks to our sponsorsCoach P ConsultingCoach P found great success as an insurance agent and agency owner, leading a large and stable team of top-performing professionals. Today, he shares the systems, delegation strategies, and specialization methods he developed along the way. Gain access to weekly training calls and mentoring at:https://www.coachpconsulting.comBe sure to mention you heard about it on the Above The Business Podcast.Autopilot RecruitingAutopilot Recruiting helps small business owners solve staffing challenges by taking the stress out of hiring. Their dedicated recruiters work on your behalf every business day, optimizing your applicant tracking system, posting job listings, and sourcing candidates through social media and local communities.https://www.autopilotrecruiting.comMention Above The Business Podcast when you reach out.Direct ClicksDirect Clicks is built by business owners, for business owners. They specialize in custom marketing solutions that drive real results. From paid search campaigns to SEO and social media management, they provide comprehensive digital marketing support to help your business grow.Exclusive offer for listeners:https://directclicksinc.com/abovethebusinessGet a free marketing campaign audit and actionable recommendations.About Above The BusinessAbove The Business is hosted by Bradley Hamner, founder of BlueprintOS, and focuses on helping small business owners transition from Rainmaker to Architect by building systems, teams, and operations that scale.
https://youtu.be/eUqMjIq3r2U Brian Hong, Founder of Infintech Designs, Flowbots.ai, and BigEasyData.ai, is driven to Build AI Revenue Engines that create freedom by helping businesses generate more leads, sales, and revenue while increasing the productivity of their teams. By combining SEO, AI automation, business intelligence, and human expertise, Brian helps companies improve their marketing, systemize their operations, and enhance their people with AI rather than simply replacing them. In this conversation, Brian introduces his Team Building Framework—Attract and Assess A-Players, Productize and Systemize, Hire People Who Can Follow Instructions, and Enhance with AI Capabilities. He explains how placing people in roles where they can thrive creates stronger teams, why clear processes and blueprints make it easier to scale, and how AI can enhance employees by increasing their productivity instead of replacing them. Brian also discusses how SEO is evolving with ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, why businesses need to build brand authority and entity breadth, and how business intelligence can identify the specific areas where AI can create the greatest revenue impact. — Build AI Revenue Engines with Brian Hong Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Brian Hong, the founder of Infintech Designs, Flowbots.ai, and BigEasyData.ai. These are New Orleans-based companies, including a digital marketing agency, focused on building more leads, more sales, and more exposure online with strategic SEO and digital marketing strategies. Brian, welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me. So you have quite a portfolio. I also read on your LinkedIn page that you invest in other companies, and then you support them as well. So it sounds like you have a lot of irons in the fire. But before we get into all that, my question to you is, what is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it in your business, or businesses? Why do I work so hard? Why do I want to build all these companies? To me, money creates freedom. I’m trying to bank as many freedom points as I can to live life on my own terms, and to do and have experiences with the people I love. That’s my “Why.” Wow. How does that manifest in your businesses? That’s a good question. I'm building AI automation to get my time leverage, to create duplication, so I can 10x the productivity of my employees. Not hire more people, but keep my A-players.Share on X Because if I have an A-team, or can cultivate an A-team, then I think I can bank more freedom points at a more efficient and scalable process. Don’t hire more people. Hire people intentionally, and 10x their productivity. That would be a domino effect to align with gaining more freedom points. So what’s the maximum number of freedom points? Is it like a 100-point scale? What does it look like to have 100 freedom points? It’s working because I want to, not because I have to. Because I love working. It’s living life on my own terms and focusing my time on things that I want to do. For instance, I have a house cleaner. I don’t want to clean the house. My time is better spent doing something else that I passionately want or love to do. Unless I loved cleaning houses. That’s fine. Maybe that’s therapeutic for some people. But it allows me to live life on my own terms. Money is the key that unlocks those opportunities to live life on my terms.Share on X How do you maximize your freedom points? What does it look like when your freedom points are maxed out? Then I’m working because I want to, not because I have to. I still want to work. I still want to build. I love building things. I’m not the type of guy who wants to go to the beach, sit on the beach, and do nothing all day. I might do that for an hour. I’ve got to be doing something. I have to be building. It’s just the way I’m programmed. Maybe I don’t want to work as much as I do now, but I can’t imagine a life doing nothing. To me, that doesn’t serve a purpose. Yeah. I like building. I love contributing. I love being a part of the equation of success. It's just fun to me. I get gratification out of it. I like creating jobs.Share on X I like creating communities. I like meeting people. It’s interesting to me. It fills my bucket. That bucket is filled to then, I mean, try and give me freedom points to then go spend some personal time creating experiences with the people I love, mainly my wife and my child. That’s amazing. Okay, let me take a step back. You have multiple companies. You have Infintech Designs. You have a couple of AI companies as well. How does that portfolio work? I essentially do this. I have a construction company as well, TurnKey Renovators, a GC for residential. I have a couple of e-commerce companies. Really, I’m doing the same thing over and over. Earlier in my life, I used to wait tables. My takeaway from that experience, from working at Applebee’s to fine dining, is: How many different dishes can you make with the same ingredients? With my knowledge, my resources, and my skills, how many different things can I do with them? This is my version of it. All those companies, by the way, I’ve never stroked a check. I pretty much say, “Give me half your company, and I’ll help you grow it.” I’ve never cut a check because I give them what they really want, which is the outcome they want to achieve with that money. They want the money to help grow their company. What if I just help you grow your company? So I ask for an equal seat at the table, and in exchange, I’ll install what I know and go grow it. I’m essentially doing that over and over. My time is spent on high-level decisions, systems, processes, automation, and marketing. Yeah. Love it. You know, I always wondered about marketing agencies. If they really know how to grow sales, why are they not doing it for themselves, and why are they offering it to others? It sounds like you are drinking your own Kool-Aid, and you are using your own product. Yeah. Definitely. We practice what we preach. I see some companies doing that because there’s also an abundance mindset. If I can do it for me, and I can do it for someone else, let me just create another revenue stream and do it for both of us. Okay. That makes sense. This podcast is all about frameworks. I wonder, what is a framework that you have created or discovered that helps you be effective in what you do, and that you could share with the audience so they might also find a way to leverage it in their business? I guess it depends on many things. From team building, it may be doing a DiSC Assessment and Kolbe tests to make sure we place each person in a situation where they thrive. Sometimes when things aren’t working, maybe the owner, the manager, or the person needs to look in the mirror and say, “This is my fault, not the employee’s fault.” “I didn’t set them up for success.” “I’m trying to stick a round peg into a square hole.” “I’m trying to put them in a position that they may not thrive in, and they’re not programmed to naturally do.” So we’ll sometimes do these assessments, whether it’s a personality clash or a personality type, and make sure we place them in a role where they’ll thrive. So that could be a framework. Setting the employee up for success. Once we do have an employee, the better the plan, the better the outcome. So try to productize and systemize everything we do. If we have a blueprint people need to follow, then I can spend more of my time not finding specific talent and skills, but finding people who can follow instructions. Because if we have the blueprint, and this is what you need to do, then I can get a lower-wage worker who doesn’t have a specialized skill. That specialized skill will be developed because I’m handing you the blueprint of what you need to execute. So that’s the three-step framework. Set employees up for success by delegating tasks that fit their personality. Then productize and systemize. Then find people who can implement. To what extent does that work in the AI age? Are these people who just execute tasks according to instructions still solving the problems, or is that no longer working because of the fast pace of change? It depends on what the activity is, but generally, and more often, it’s human enhancement, not human replacement. So instead of saying, “Let’s just say I have a web developer, and I get more business, so I need to hire a second web developer, web designer, programmer, then a third one, then a fourth one.” The new version today is: keep the one you have, and instead of hiring another human, 10x their productivity with an AI-driven solution. Allow them to do more with less. Allow them to duplicate their activities so they focus on their revenue-generating activities, on the decisions and activities that AI cannot do, as of yet. That’s how we turn an A-player into an A-plus player. That’s how we turn a B-player into an A-player. That prevents me from having to hire people I don’t want working for me, which are C-players. Isn’t there a risk that when you have too few players, even if they are A-plus, there’s too much dependence on a single person? Well, I mean, we’ll hire more than one. I have a seven-person leadership team. I have two main managers. I have a department head and then an associate, so there’s always some level of duplication. Then you have an AI layer in between that. So between all of that, yes, if someone gets struck by lightning or someone is sick, the ship needs to keep sailing. We can’t shut down the business. Love it. What is driving growth in your business? Relationships. SEO. Ranking in LLMs. Google AI Overviews. ChatGPT. I’d say those are the main pillars that are creating opportunities. I also own a conference, rockstarsconference.com. We’re entering our 15th year. That’s network value, positioning of expertise, and relationship building. Things that AI cannot replicate. Human connections. Then I also do SEO for myself, right? Our last handful of leads that came in through Flowbot.ai. This one particularly stands out. There was this roofing company that sent me an email. We actually talked on the phone. He really blew up my ego and talked about how great I was. I thought he was a referral. I’m like, “Man, why does this person think I’m so great? It’s really odd.” I said, “Can I ask how you heard about me?” He’s like, “Oh, I spent the last two hours talking to Gemini because I discovered you through Google AI Overviews, and it just told me you’re great.” So I’m like, we’re entering a new world. That is a referral. It’s not from someone I know who spoke highly about me. It’s through a language model. Gemini said I was great, so this person believed I was great. That’s amazing. That’s very cool. So you have these four pillars. I love it. Relationships, SEO, GEO—or whatever AI referrals you want to call it—and the conference. Would you bucket the conference into the same category as relationships, or is that more of a proactive way of creating a community beyond personal relationships? Is it the same thing? It checks a lot of boxes. A few of my business partners were born out of that conference. New opportunities and getting clients were born out of that. Knowledge gain. Knowledge transfer that I gained to go implement. So it checks all the boxes. I’m gaining knowledge. I’m gaining relationships. I’m gaining partners. I’m gaining new systems. New processes. I’m gaining sparks, catalysts, and kind of tracks to go down and explore. So it kind of checks a lot of boxes. Yeah. Love it. So the SEO and GEO piece, is it something that is static, or is it dynamically changing all the time? Dynamically changing. It’s SEO 3.0, right? SEO is dead. It’s dead if you’re doing SEO the old way. Getting ranked in ChatGPT, the LLMs, and Google AI Overviews. Let’s just say it’s everything you do with SEO, plus more now because you have ChatGPT citations. You have sources that these LLMs frequently query. Then, in the world of SEO—the search engine Google—you have broad core updates. Broad core updates. Updates to the algorithm. That’s pretty much what it means. They also occur within LLMs. So it’s pretty much do SEO, plus more. What is the plus more? If I had to distill it, it’s get brand mentions and actually become a brand. Do podcast interviews like this. Get press releases. Get write-ups. Be on SoundCloud. Do social media. Post on LinkedIn. Get write-ups in news and media publications. Appear in Google News. Have a website that has dynamic content. Create your topical map. The list keeps on going. Build your brand. That’s the SEO of today. That will put you in a position to get mentioned in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Yeah. That’s fascinating. I’m just thinking about my business. We had a website that actually got some referrals from AI. We even got some clients last year. Then we split the website into two websites, and things dried up. It was kind of an interesting situation. We still had the same amount of content, but we moved it to a different domain, and it did not register the same way. Do you see that often? Yeah. You want Google and LLMs, at the most basic level, to have a better understanding of who you are, what you do, where you do it, and the services you offer through having something called breadth of entities. Entities are the nouns of the internet. Entities are a signal. A language. All Wikipedia pages are entities, but not all entities have Wikipedia pages. They’re the nouns of the internet. It’s a layer of clarity for search engines, algorithms, and LLMs to understand who you are, what you do, and where you do it. It’s not the only signal, but at a foundational layer, that should be implemented. So what we’re talking about is creating content. What does that mean? Create content on your website. Don’t create content for the sake of creating content because anybody can create content with AI. Create intentional content that satisfies the user and aligns with certain algorithmic components, such as Google's E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust.Share on X Everything we’re talking about is SEO. You want optimized content. You want pages. The first 150 to 200 words are important. The last 150 to 200 words are important. Add tables. Add bullet points. Make sure your content is clear. Position yourself with authority. Have links pointing to it. Interlink it. These are all SEO kinds of activities. So SEO is alive and well, but there are new layers you need to add on top of that to create optimal positioning in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT. Yeah. I saw one of your videos on your LinkedIn page where you actually explained what is the wrong way to do SEO and the right way to do it. I think you had your alter ego disputing with you. Yeah. That was pretty funny. So that sounds like a lot of work. Can you delegate that to AI agents to do this kind of stuff? Yes and no. It’s not like I just click a button and step away. It takes a human-in-the-loop system, and that’s what we’ve developed. So yes, I don’t need as many humans, but I still need humans. So you said that in one of these companies you have 100 AI agents working on SEO, creating SEO impact for your clients. What is it that the AI agents can do, and what is it that you still need the human to do? The AIs collect information, rapidly digest it, find patterns, perform pattern analysis, do research, and create content briefs. But there needs to be thought leadership. AI is very directional. It’s, “Go do this,” but we need a human to point it in the right direction. We need to create guardrails. We need to create a source of truth. It needs to know where to look for the right information. It needs direction on what to do with this information. How should I digest it? How should I format it? How should I break up the heading tags? It needs that element where it can go do it, but the human is part of that last-mile conversion. So maybe the AI does zero to 80, and maybe the human does the 80 to 100. Yeah. That’s very interesting. So what’s one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business? How to automate everything. Everything is a complete agentic workflow that is proactive, not reactive. Where I have a board of advisors every day looking at how they can serve me.Share on X Identifying the patterns in my life that I need to stop doing and they can do. Developing skills, if they don’t have them, to go execute that. Having a feedback loop to constantly improve. This has become superintelligence. Agentic work, which is kind of here. That’s what maybe some people have heard about: OpenClaw. Then you have something called a Hermes agent. These things are here, but they need to be trained. They need to be fed the right information and given the right guardrails. But it has begun, and I’m trying to go down that journey. Isn’t that overwhelming to think of all these details, managing these agents, and making sure they’re not going rogue or getting confused by what every one of them is doing? It’s overwhelmingly exciting, but not overwhelmingly bad, because this is the worst it’s going to be, and it’s mind-blowingly good. It’s overwhelming because it’s so amazing and so awesome. It’s garbage in, garbage out. I am the architect trying to create the blueprint on how to control these agents. To me, that’s incredibly exciting and incredibly amazing. To be a part of this time in history, it’s like that feeling when I dropped out of college and this thing called the internet was born in 2000. I knew the world wasn’t going to be the same again. That same feeling came again in 2022 when I heard about ChatGPT. I created my first AI company in 2023. I said the world isn’t going to be the same again. I have the same feeling I had in 2000, but times 100. So to me, it’s overwhelming, but overwhelmingly exciting. Yeah. So what does one do if they want to get, okay, let’s say it’s me. I use ChatGPT actively, but I’m not building AI agents. What would you recommend that I do? How do I even get started? What is your pain point? Is it communication? Is it writing emails? Is it reporting? It kind of depends, right? You can customize it based on your pain points. Where are you spending your time, and where should you be spending your time? Yeah. That’s a good question. I think the first question is, what should I even use it for? I can give you some ideas. A handful of things I use it for, but not limited to. I can give you use cases that we do for other people. So to construction company, inbound and outbound calls. We never miss a phone call. We answer every single one. We qualify the lead. We seamlessly connect to a CRM. We know if it’s a new customer or an existing customer. If it’s an existing customer, we can look at their history. We can now have an intentional conversation through voice. I can clone that. I can qualify them. I can book the appointment. I can put it on the salesperson’s calendar. I can receive a text message. I can read the message. I can set the salesperson up for success. I can then pull their address. I can then pull their demographics. I know their net income. I know their affinities, their interests, their hobbies. I know whether their house has a pool. I know the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. I know their credit score. I know their disposable income. My layer of intention is going to be very different if I have all of this data to interact with that person, either through a voice agent, an AI agent through SMS, through email, through voice, or I can pass that information to the salesperson so they know what they’re walking into. They know the opportunity. So we have lead scoring. We have prioritization. That's one thing we could do: taking over your appointment setting and lead qualification.Share on X Then we can create reporting. Then we can create trend forecasting. We can turn your business into a mathematical equation. We know 10 leads equals 3 appointments, equals 2 shows, equals 1 person who shows up, average ticket $10,000. We know that formula. Then we say, “Well, we need to feed it more.” The math equation is 10 equals $10,000. Whatever that math equation is, that’s the position I want to be in. I want to make data-driven decisions. So AI is an accelerator to achieve that. What’s at the top of the funnel? Is it advertising? Yeah. It could be Facebook Ads. Google Ads. SEO. It kind of depends. Do you want expensive and fast, or do you want cheap and slow? Expensive and fast. When I say expensive, I mean cost per acquisition and cost per visibility. That’s going to be Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn, TikTok—anything where you’re buying media. That’s going to be expensive because you have to pay on a per-click basis or a per-impression basis. The cheap and slow is going to be something like SEO. Do the work now to feel the impact later. It’s signal building. You don’t have to pay on a per-click basis. You don’t have to pay on a per-impression basis. But you have to build signals. Those signals cost money. You have to do the work, but it’s not going to happen overnight. You do the work now to feel it later. It’s an investment. So ideally, you do both. You take a blended cost per acquisition because your SEO channels almost 99% of the time are going to have the lowest cost per acquisition. But speed is going to come from Facebook Ads and Google Ads. So you take the best of both worlds with a blended cost per acquisition. Is the formula the same for business-to-consumer and business-to-business companies, or is it different? Yeah. The algorithm doesn’t change. The algorithm is the algorithm. The messaging is different, but it’s the same across the board. The concepts are the same. There are some things, like in medical. Google specifically has something called YMYL—Your Money or Your Life. That’s going to be finance businesses, payday loans, and medical. Those things have a high impact on your life. So they may have a little more scrutiny, and it might be harder to build trust and validation because of the category you’re in. In that aspect, yeah, the formula is a little bit different. But the activities you engage in are the same. You need to build content. You need to build your brand. You need to build links. You need to optimize your website. You need to create on social media. It’s all the same. Yeah. Fascinating. So who is the ideal client that you would like to respond to this podcast? Man, I get asked that, and I’m having more difficulty because I have a lot of companies in my portfolio, right? I have, as of now, about seven companies. I’d say companies that want to automate. Why do you want to automate? The first step of that is maybe building intelligence—business intelligence. You can’t improve what you can’t measure. What if we build a system where maybe you take two steps back to take 10 steps forward? The two steps back is building business intelligence through AI-driven systems to have segmentation and attribution on exactly what’s happening. How many leads are you getting? Where are they coming from? What is your workflow? Create the math equation. Now we have a measurement. We have a benchmark. Now we can build custom AI agents to say, “This is what we need to focus on first.” So we have our foundational layer, our source of truth. Maybe that’s a good first step, so you’re not doing a spray and pray. You can say, “Now I know what I need to do. Now I know where my problems are.” Let’s remove the emotion of, “I think.” It now becomes, “I know this is a problem.” Now let’s zoom in and say, “Well, how do we solve this problem?” Are leads the problem? Or is it connecting to the leads? Is it showing up to the appointment? Is it closing the deal? Are we closing deals, but the average ticket is low? If we close one deal, is it upselling to a second deal? What is the one-year value? Lifetime value? First transaction value? If we don’t know that, then how do we create a math equation of success? How do we know what bucket we need to feed? How do we know where the problem is or isn’t? If we do know where it is, then we can say, “Let’s build a second AI agent.” How do we augment and enhance maybe lead-to-connection rate? Let’s build an SMS agent. A voice agent. An outbound agent. Let’s build nurture and upsell. Let’s follow up in perpetuity, forever. Let’s tackle that first because we have clear, data-driven insights showing this is a problem. I would say people who want clarity on where their problem is, or maybe they know where their problems are. Then that could be a starting point. So it’s hard for me to answer because I’ve got my hands in so many different buckets. I’m top of funnel. I’m middle of funnel. I’m bottom of the funnel. I’m top of funnel. Introduction. Brand. Product or service. Google Ads. Facebook Ads. SEO. GEO. I’m middle of funnel. Turning visitors into customers. That’s follow-up AI systems. That’s operational efficiencies. That’s touchpoints. That’s nurturing. I’m bottom of funnel. I’m business intelligence. Segmentation. Attribution. I can help with all stages. I just need to talk to businesses. Businesses that want to grow and generate more revenue. That’s my audience. Love it. Love it. So if you have a business that wants to grow and generate more revenue, then make sure you check out Brian Hong on LinkedIn. Where else should people go if they want to learn about your companies? Yeah. I’ve got Brian Hong Digital on Instagram. I’m trying to build my own personal brand. I’m about to relaunch some videos again. I’ve been busy with another acquisition of another marketing agency. I’d say check out the socials or send me an email through Flowbots.ai or InfinTech Design. Okay. Sounds good. So check out Brian. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. The complexity that you’re managing. Not just the number of companies. The number of investee companies you’re in. The products you’re building. The conferences. It’s kind of mind-boggling how you’re managing that complexity. But I guess you have a couple hundred AI agents at your service. If you’d like to learn more and explore Brian’s products, go to his LinkedIn page. Then you can connect to his different companies from there. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you stay tuned because every week I bring a couple of amazing entrepreneurs like Brian who will open your eyes to the opportunities ahead of you. So thanks, Brian, for sharing your knowledge and insights. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it. Important Links: Brian's LinkedIn Brian's website
Anika sat down with Ryan LaPlante to explore how a group of friends playing Dungeons & Dragons transformed their hobby into Canada's largest tabletop RPG podcast network, Dumb-Dumbs & Dice. The conversation revealed a counterintuitive approach to creative success: treating a highly artistic passion project with the rigorous, data-driven strategy of a tech startup. Ryan's diverse background—from Hollywood screenwriting to mobile games and tech management—offered a masterclass in scaling content, structuring profitable communities, and proving that unapologetic fun is highly monetizable. In This Episode Why having creative control on the business side is better than chasing traditional Hollywood gatekeepers Starting as a loss leader: losing money for four years before finding the monetization formula The "Rodriguez List" approach: creating high-end content based strictly on the resources you already have The minor cover art and SEO tweaks that resulted in a 20x overnight download explosion Building a content funnel: using comedy to make niche tabletop gaming accessible to the masses Treating podcasting like the free-to-play mobile game market to increase episode-to-episode conversion Structuring a highly profitable Patreon without the burnout of physical merchandise fulfillment Preventing creative exhaustion through permanent studios, bulk recording, and honest capacity planning Why you must put ownership percentages and business structures in writing, even with friends Timestamps 00:00 Introduction: Why fun and passion are inherently monetizable 01:10 Hollywood vs. Podcasting: Pivoting for creative control 05:17 The 2017 launch and functioning as a passion project loss leader 09:22 Using data to determine how much editing actually impacts listener retention 12:18 The specific art and description changes that spiked downloads by 20x 15:12 Creating the funnel: Using comedy as the accessible entry point to deeper lore 18:23 Joining Spotify's managed partner program by focusing on "bingeability" 20:13 Shifting to a permanent studio and a 24-episode bulk recording schedule 22:44 Cross-releasing spinoffs (like the Warhammer 40k series) to maintain SEO power 27:50 YouTube discoverability and repurposing audio for visual platforms 33:10 A masterclass in Patreon: pricing tiers, ad-free feeds, and digital-only rewards 41:31 Gathering demographic data to leverage for direct ad sales 47:53 Managing team burnout through capacity limits and clear communication 53:17 The absolute necessity of written ownership agreements in creative partnerships 56:56 Final advice and the Oscar Wilde exit quote Key Insights & Takeaways Insight 1: Treat Podcasting Like a Free-to-Play Mobile Game Listeners invest zero dollars to try a new podcast, making their emotional attachment incredibly fragile. Ryan applies strategies from the free-to-play mobile game industry: if you introduce too much friction, bad audio, or heavy initial monetization, people will bounce. Success requires removing all pain points, optimizing conversion rates from episode one to two, and ending with compelling cliffhangers that make the content highly addictive. Insight 2: The "Rodriguez List" Drives Sustainable Creation Rather than dreaming of massive budgets, Ryan applied filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's method of taking stock of exactly what resources were readily available. By combining professional improviser friends, basic stage mics, and free weekends, Dumb-Dumbs & Dice built a premium narrative product with minimal overhead, allowing them to survive the initial four years before becoming profitable. Insight 3: Minor Formatting Tweaks Yield Massive ROI Sometimes invisibility isn't about the quality of the content; it's about the packaging. After receiving advice from an ad partner, Ryan updated the network's podcast covers to include human faces (for eye contact), adjusted the category, and clarified the show descriptions. That simple aesthetic and SEO shift catapulted their downloads from 10,000 to nearly 200,000 in a single month. Insight 4: Use Broad Hooks for Niche Funnels Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer 40k can be intimidating for uninitiated listeners. Dumb-Dumbs & Dice bypassed this by placing "comedy" and "professional improvisers" at the very top of their funnel. By making the entry point highly accessible and entertaining, they naturally draw audiences down into deeper, more niche serialized storytelling over time. Insight 5: Patreon Should Be Painless and Digital-Only A common trap for creators is offering complex, physical Patreon rewards that consume profits and time (like mailing stickers internationally). Ryan scaled his Patreon to six figures by keeping rewards digital and heavily integrated into their existing workflow. By offering ad-free feeds, naming rights in the story, and behind-the-scenes chats recorded on the same day as the main episodes, the network generates highly profitable, low-friction recurring revenue. Insight 6: Clear Boundaries Prevent Creative Burnout Scaling a creative business with friends is a recipe for disaster without ruthless honesty and structure. Ryan navigated team burnout by building a permanent recording studio (to eliminate setup time), shifting to bulk 4-day recording blocks, and having candid conversations about each member's annual capacity. Most importantly, he ensured ownership percentages were put in writing from the start to prevent disputes as revenue grew. Resources & Links Mentioned Dumb-Dumbs & Dice Deltastic (Del Borvik - In-house graphic designer) Spotify Managed Partner Program Patreon About Ryan LaPlante Ryan LaPlante is a multiple award-winning screenwriter, narrative designer for video games, and voice actor who realized that traditional Hollywood lacked the creative and financial control he desired. Applying his unique background in tech management and mobile games, he co-founded Dumb-Dumbs & Dice, growing it into Canada's largest tabletop RPG podcast network. Through a mix of professional improv comedy, strategic audience funnels, and rigorous data testing, Ryan has successfully turned a weekend hobby of playing games with friends into a highly profitable, multi-show media empire. Connect with Ryan Website: dumbdumbdice.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-laplante-05512230/ Patreon: Dumb-Dumbs & Dice Like the show? Leave us a rating or review: https://lovethepodcast.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857Follow the Show: https://followthepodcast.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857Send a Message: https://podcastfeedback.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857Check out our Website: https://www.yourbrandamplified.comSpeak to my Delphi Clone: https://www.delphi.ai/amplifywithanika Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
You've got the reels going. The posts are consistent. You know your engagement, your saves, your reach. And you can tell me exactly how Instagram is performing.But can you tell me how you're performing on Google?Most salon owners can't, and that's the gap this episode is about.In this episode:Why late summer is your last real runway to set up the rest of the year, and what happens if you let it slide into SeptemberThe Google Search Console update from July that connects Instagram directly to Google Search and Google Discover, and why it's one of the biggest shifts for salon visibility in a long timeWhy Instagram is a piece of your salon business ecosystem, not your whole marketing strategy, and what the data actually shows about how new clients searchWhat "Platform Properties" is, which platforms are supported (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X), and what it means that Facebook isn't included yetWhat to actually do with this update: making your posts SEO keyword rich so your content has a shot at showing up in SearchThe Monday Club: Business education, community, and tools to build a salon that runs like a real business, including a live SEO workshop this month and a Google Search Console deep-dive coming in September. Learn more: https://www.lexilomax.com/monday-club
Send us Fan MailAmazon A+ Content AI can create low-cost listing designs fast, but expert work may win on Amazon SEO, A/B testing, CTR, brand fit, and sales. This video compares AI vs agency work for Amazon listing design, A+ Content, conversion rate, testing, and brand growth. It explains when an 80% AI result is enough and when data, legal review, crawlable text, and expert design may matter more.Stop guessing where AI falls short, get a clear A+ Content plan built around CTR, testing, crawlable SEO text, and sales: https://bit.ly/4jMZtxu#AmazonAPlusContent #AmazonSEO #AmazonSeller #amazonagencyWant free resources? Dowload our Free Amazon guides here:Download the 2026 Amazon AI Operating Manual: https://bit.ly/3SLmusPAmazon Receiving Delay Guide: https://hubs.ly/Q04cdD4c0Amazon Catalog Spring Cleaning: https://hubs.ly/Q046BVfp0Amazon Proft Margin Defense 2026: https://hubs.ly/Q042trRH0Amazon SEO Toolkit 2026: https://bit.ly/4oC2ClTAmazon Seller Strategy Report 2026: https://bit.ly/3YN1RME2026 Ecommerce Website & SEO Readiness Checklist: https://hubs.ly/Q04btghf0Amazon 2026 PPC guide: https://bit.ly/4lF0OYXTimestamps00:00 – AI vs Agency for Amazon A+ Content00:54 – Why AI Copies Finished Amazon Designs01:43 – How Consumer Testing Improves A+ Content02:41 – Zesty Paws A+ Content Test Results03:54 – Amazon A+ Content AI Cost vs Quality04:40 – When 80% AI Design Is Good Enough05:23 – Can AI Match Professional Amazon Design06:18 – How Amazon Sellers Should Choose AI or Agency07:02 – Why AI A+ Content Hits a Plateau07:39 – Crawlable Text and Amazon A+ Content SEO08:27 – When Expert A+ Content Can Pay Off-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show
We just launched our new book! You can grab The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things on Amazon or at ForthRight-People.com It's no longer good enough to just have a solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign. Now, you need AI to trust you so you appear in AI searches, like the very top “AI Overview” bubble in Google. Unfortunately, there's a lot of competition out there, which makes it even harder for SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses) striving to be seen. But, hope is not lost. Unlike traditional SEO, you can't just pay your way into building authority. You must earn it with consistent conversation that can be attributed to you. We wanted you to learn from a specialist in this space, so we welcomed on Tom Schwab. He's the Founder & Chief Evangelist Officer of Interview Valet, and the Author of several minibooks. For more about ForthRight Business by ForthRight People or for 1:1 consultation, check us out at ForthRight-Business.com And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don't hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/forthrightpeople.marketingagency INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/forthrightpeople/ LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/company/forthright-people/ RESOURCES https://www.forthright-people.com/resources VIRTUAL CONSULTANCY https://www.forthright-people.com/shop
JJ and Tucker turn the microphone toward artificial intelligence, podcast SEO, ChatGPT, privacy, Star Trek, banking, cash, Myspace, social media, and one unforgettable Yoo-hoo story. That leads into a deeper conversation about AI privacy, personalization, search history, digital memory, and the strange intimacy of telling an artificial intelligence things you might not want anyone else to read. Tucker connects the moment to Star Trek: The Next Generation, especially the Professor Moriarty holodeck episodes, and the way science fiction imagined conversational computers, artificial consciousness, and digital beings trapped inside machines. From there, JJ and Tucker move into money, banks, credit cards, data, and whether physical bank branches still have a future. They talk about cash, coins, pennies, Ninja Turtle coin banks, gold, diamonds, street value versus insurable value, the stock market, ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell, and the history of being given a key to the city. Finally, JJ and Tucker close things out with Yoo-hoo, Warped Tour, a truly cursed chugging contest, Malcolm in the Middle, Bryan Cranston's roller-skating intensity, and JJ's firm declaration that he is never building another deck again. It's a wide-ranging JJ Meets World episode about AI, podcasting, privacy, money, nostalgia, social media, Star Trek, physical cash, and the weird future that somehow already arrived.
Every time I do a solo episode about content marketing beyond social media, it is one of the most popular episodes and I get the most comments on them.. So here it is. This episode is about building a proper content ecosystem, not just relying on social media to carry your whole business, and where email, blogs, podcasts and other channels fit into the picture.If you've been feeling exhausted by the social media game or wondering why followers aren't turning into clients, give it a listen! If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.LEARN THE DETAILS OF A CONTENT STRATEGY WITH MY FREE AUDIO GUIDEKEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS
¿Cuánto tiempo te tardaste eligiendo el nombre de tu podcast?Hoy hablamos de la ciencia que hay detrás de este paso tan importante.Porque lo que veo todo el tiempo es gente que tarda semanas en elegir el nombre — y aun así lo hace mal. Y otra que lo elige en un día, lo posiciona bien, y arranca. La diferencia no es cuánto te tardas. Es qué tan intencional eres al hacerlo. En este episodio te comparto cómo pensamos el nombre dentro del método Pod2Cash — y sobre todo, cómo pensarlo sin quedarte trabada meses agonizando una decisión que no está escrita en piedra.Lo que vas a escuchar en este episodio:Las 3 funciones concretas que tiene que cumplir un nombre bien elegido (spoiler: ninguna tiene que ver con "que suene creativo")Cómo funciona el SEO en las plataformas de podcast y por qué depender solo del boca a boca es una trampaPor qué un nombre demasiado genérico atrae a todo el mundo — que muchas veces significa a nadieLa creencia que está manteniendo a un montón de mujeres sin arrancar su podcast (y por qué necesitas cambiarla hoy)La diferencia entre el nombre y el subtítulo — y por qué uno es más flexible que el otroUn mini-framework de 3 preguntas para elegir tu nombre (o revisar el que ya tienes) sin agonizar por mesesPorque el mensaje real de este episodio es este: elige el mejor nombre que puedas hoy, con lo que sabes hoy, y arranca. La claridad llega en el camino. No esperando.⸻Para más detalles sobre este episodio y recursos adicionales, puedes visitar:
Most people think entrepreneurship is about big ideas, venture capital, and building the next tech unicorn. I don't see it that way. In this conversation, I break down why almost every business ends up looking the same at scale and why chasing passion is one of the worst ways to start. I talk about how I think about opportunity, why "boring" businesses win, and how geography can be your biggest advantage. We get into what it actually takes to build something real: hiring, firing, delegating, and making tough decisions. I explain how I approach leadership, how I think about incentivizing people, and why not everyone in your company should want to be the CEO. I also share how I evaluate businesses, what I look for in underserved markets, and why simple services like cleaning, moving, or fixing things can outperform flashy startups if you execute well. At the end of the day, this isn't about ideas. It's about execution, leverage, and putting yourself in a position to win over a long period of time. Grow your business: https://sweatystartup.com/events Book: https://www.amazon.com/Sweaty-Startup-Doing-Boring-Things/dp/006338762X Newsletter: https://www.nickhuber.com/newsletter My Companies: Offshore recruiting – https://somewhere.com Cost segregation – https://recostseg.com Self storage – https://boltstorage.com RE development – http://www.boltbuilders.com Brokerage – https://nickhuber.com Paid ads – https://adrhino.com SEO – https://boldseo.com Insurance – https://titanrisk.com Pest control – https://spidexx.com Sell a business: http://nickhuber.com/sell Buy a business: https://www.nickhuber.com/buy Invest with me: http://nickhuber.com/invest Social Profiles: X – https://www.x.com/sweatystartup Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/sweatystartup TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/sweatystartup LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sweatystartup Podcasts: The Sweaty Startup & The Nick Huber Show https://open.spotify.com/show/7L5zQxijU81xq4SbVYNs81 Free PDF – How to analyze a self-storage deal: https://sweatystartup.ck.page/79046c9b03
Become the most trusted health practitioner in your market & attract pre-sold patients with YouTube → https://go.healthpreneurtraining.com/youtube?el=ytaug9You're probably relying on a strategy that's already failing you. You just don't know it yet.Four ways exist to get patients into your clinic. Only one of them scales without limit. Only one of them still works the same way it did five years ago. The other two are burning your time and your budget while you watch the numbers and wonder why growth has stalled.I rank all four honestly, even the ones I use myself, and show you exactly where the ceiling is on each.
Today we are joined by Brian Hussey, SVP of Howler Cell Threat Services at Cyderes, discussing their work on "Bad Ads, Worse Binaries: Fake Claude Code Installer Drops Infostealer." Howler Cell identified an SEO poisoning campaign targeting people searching for Claude Code installation guides, using a fake Anthropic page and a ClickFix lure to trick victims into running a malicious MSHTA command. The attack uses a six-stage, largely fileless chain that employs an MP3/HTA polyglot, PowerShell obfuscation, AMSI bypasses, per-victim infrastructure, and in-memory execution to evade detection. The final payload is a .NET infostealer that steals credentials, while Anthropic and the legitimate Claude Code installation process were not compromised. The research and executive brief can be found here: Bad Ads, Worse Binaries: Fake Claude Code Installer Drops Infostealer
The CPG Guys are joined in this episode by Nick Hannity, CMO at Newell Brands, a major American global consumer and commercial products conglomerate. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the company manufactures, markets, and distributes over 50 well-known brands across three core segments: Home & Commercial Solutions, Learning & Development, and Outdoor & Recreation.This episode was recorded in France at the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.Follow Nick Hammitt on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-hammitt-2491a1/Follow Newell Brands online at: https://www.newellbrands.com/Nick answers these questions:Chris told us at CAGNY and then again on the podcast that Newell's digital content output increased 500% in 2025 with the same headcount. As CMO, walk us through what that transformation actually felt like inside the marketing organization — was it exhilarating, terrifying, or both?We're sitting here at Cannes Lions, the global festival of creativity. There's a real tension in our industry right now between AI-generated content at scale and genuinely breakthrough creative work. How does Newell think about that balance — and does AI make your creative better or just faster?Chris described Newell's "Inogen" platform — digital AI personas built on consumer segments that function as always-on focus groups. As CMO, how are you actually using those in briefing and campaign development, and how much do you trust them versus traditional research?Chris was incredibly sharp on the shift from SEO to GEO — optimizing content for LLMs rather than search engines. What does that mean practically for how your brand and content teams are now being briefed and structured?Given the scale of what Newell is building internally on AI, how has your relationship with your agency partners evolved? Are they keeping pace with where you are internally, or are you finding yourself ahead of them?Chris mentioned that retailers are actually coming to Newell and asking to be taught what you're doing with AI. That's a remarkable reversal of the traditional power dynamic. How are you as CMO leveraging that credibility in your joint business planning conversations?You're here at Cannes Lions surrounded by the best creative and marketing minds in the world. It's your first time here. What are you here to learn or solve? And what's the one conversation you're hoping to have this week that you can't have anywhere else?Chris talked about younger employees being hungry for AI training and threatening to leave if they don't get it. From a marketing talent perspective, what does the ideal marketer at Newell look like today versus three years ago, and how are you recruiting and developing for that?If the Chris Peterson episode was the enterprise AI masterclass, what's the one chapter you'd add that he didn't cover — the CMO's perspective that doesn't necessarily get told when the CEO is in the room?CPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.comSheCOMMERCE Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/Rhea Raj's Website: http://rhearaj.comLara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.
O Google passou mais de 25 anos organizando a internet e mandando pessoas para os sites. Agora, cada vez mais, ele lê esses sites e entrega a resposta sem que ninguém precise visitá-los. No Braincast 644, Carlos Merigo, Cris Dias e Helena Galante discutem o Google Zero, os AI Overviews e o que acontece com publishers quando ser encontrado já não significa receber audiência. A conversa também vira o espelho para o próprio mercado: durante anos, veículos adaptaram conteúdo ao SEO, perseguiram pageviews e construíram negócios dependentes de plataformas capazes de mudar as regras a qualquer momento. O clique nunca foi patrimônio. Mas produzir conteúdo também nunca foi de graça. 05:57 PAUTA 01:21:00 QEAB -- Se você ouve o Braincast e nunca deixou seu e-mail com a gente, dá pra resolver agora: https://www.b9.com.br/braincast?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=braincast-spot É de graça e, principalmente, é o jeito de a gente manter contato direto — sem o algoritmo do YouTube, do Spotify ou do Google decidir se essa conversa chega até você. E quando você entrar, ainda recebe uma edição aberta da Além do Feed, a newsletter de domingo do Merigo: assuntos que passam pelo Braincast, Cinemáticos, e o que a semana fez com marcas, plataformas, cultura e comportamento. → https://www.b9.com.br/braincast?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=braincast-spot -- ✳️ TORNE-SE MEMBRO DO B9 E GANHE BENEFÍCIOS: Braincast secreto; grupo de assinantes no Telegram; e episódios sem anúncios!
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Enterprise retailers index only 40-50% of their product pages. Joe Doran, Chief Product Officer at Botify, breaks down why AI crawlers lag Google by 20 years in crawl efficiency and how JavaScript-heavy PDPs leave bots seeing just 30% of page content. The conversation covers structured product feeds as the new on-page SEO, aligning catalog data with protocols like OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol and Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, and moving beyond organic traffic in isolation toward citation rate, crawl volume, and multi-touch attribution models built for zero-click discovery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What are the best Etsy niches to sell on Etsy in 2026? None.In today's episode, I break down the biggest toxic traits keeping Etsy sellers poor in 2026 and how you should actually increase your Etsy sales, level up your listing photos, and lock in expert-level SEO to get your listings seen in search results.Feeling stuck with your Etsy shop? Inside our Ultimate Etsy course and coaching program, we believe there's no one size fits all strategy. Every shop is different. That's why the first step is to book a call with our team so we can understand your goals, identify what's holding your shop back, and help you create a clear path to growth.
AI for Etsy sellers just got WAY more useful. Watch on youtube: https://youtu.be/j4dreHpRV04 Most Etsy sellers are still using AI like a better version of Google: ask a question, get an answer, move on. But AI can now do a lot more than that. In this video, I break down how I would actually use AI if I were running an Etsy shop today, including how tools like Claude can help you analyze your shop, research competitors, improve SEO, respond to customers, identify underperforming listings, and take repetitive work off your plate. We'll also talk about where AI is genuinely helpful, where I absolutely would NOT trust it, and why I think Etsy sellers should treat AI more like a collaborator than an employee running the shop by itself. Some of the ideas we cover: • Using AI to learn your products, customers, positioning, and marketing strategy • Letting AI analyze Etsy traffic and listing performance • Comparing your strongest and weakest listing headlines • Researching higher-ranking Etsy competitors • Improving titles, tags, and SEO • Handling repetitive customer-service research • Using Claude inside your browser to actually perform tasks • Creating better prompts by having AI build the workflow for you • Saving time while you're fulfilling orders instead of sitting at your computer doing research The goal isn't to have AI completely run your Etsy shop. The goal is to figure out which parts of your business require your creativity and judgment — and which parts you can hand off so you can move faster. If you're an established Etsy seller trying to scale your shop, this is one of those tools I'd start experimenting with now.
Chandler Bolt dropped out of college with a C in English, ADHD, and about three months of runway in the bank. He borrowed his parents' retirement savings to buy out his business partner at Self Publishing School, then paid every dollar back in 11 months. Over the last 12 years, his company has helped publish more than 7,000 books. In this episode, Chandler gets honest about what it means to lead through a genuinely hard season: flat growth years, SEO traffic down 70%, and an industry being disrupted by AI hype that he thinks is badly outpacing AI capability. He shares the framework he calls the "wartime CEO," why he still drives the same Nissan Altima from high school (250,000 miles and counting), and what Self Publishing School does completely differently from everyone else in the space.
Fence Fam… I'm laying out what I'm looking for in a supplier in 2026. Relationships is a huge thing moving forward in the fence world and I highly suggest you build one with the companies you use the most!!! Cheers! Remember to like, share, comment and REVIEW! The Fence Industry Podcast Links: IG @TheFenceIndustryPodcast FB @TheFenceIndustryPodcastWithDanWheeler TikTok @TheFenceIndustryPodcast YouTube @TheFenceIndustryPodcastWithDanWheeler Visit TheFenceIndustryPodcast.com Email TheFenceIndustryPodcast@gmail.com Central Fence Supply: Visit centralfencesupply.com Gopherwood & Expert Stain and Seal IG @stainandsealexperts FB @ExpertProfessionalWoodCare YouTube @Stain&SealExperts FB Group Stain and Seal Expert's Staining University Visit RealGoodStain.com Visit Gopherwood.us Log Cabin Fence IG @Log_Cabin_Fence FB @LogCabinFence Visit LogCabinFence.com Elite Technique Visit https://www.getelitetechnique.com/ Greenwood Fence Visit https://greenwoodfence.com/ Ozark Fence & Supply promo code: TFIP15 for 15% off! Visit https://www.ozfence.com/ Benji with Clever Fox for all your FENCE website, SEO & marketing needs! Visit https://www.cleverfox.online/ Stockade Staple Guns Visit https://www.stockade.com/us/ mySalesman Visit mySalesman.com Orlando Hinge Company Visit swanhinge.com The Fence Industry Podcast is Produced by CleverFox.Online https://www.cleverfox.online/
Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102 See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/
Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102 See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/
Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102 See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/
Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102 See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/
Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102 See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/
Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com Join Clay Clark's Thrivetime Show Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102 See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/