Podcasts about Geo

Most health experts who take insurance have been told the same thing. If you want to make real money, drop insurance and start selling high-ticket cash pay programs. I like a good cash pay program. I also think that advice gets applied to practices where it makes very little sense. This episode is a real coaching conversation with my client Angelina, who owns an established, heavily insurance-based dietitian practice in Ohio. She has clients, she gets referrals from gastroenterology groups, and her reimbursement rates are solid. The most important question for her business was never whether to blow up a working model. It was how to make that model more profitable, more differentiated, and less dependent on adding sessions to her calendar. We build a hybrid offer in real time, where insurance covers the clinical sessions and the client pays separately for the testing, messaging access, and resources insurance was never going to cover. We get into pricing, continuity, boundaries around access, and how to position a practice so the big insurance-based platforms stop being competitors at all. If the only two options you've been given are more 1:1 sessions or stop taking insurance, this conversation gives you a third option that's got serious potential. Timeline Highlights [00:00] – Why "stop taking insurance" is the wrong first move for an established practice [08:16] – Angelina's setup: buying a twenty-year-old insurance-based practice in Ohio [12:57] – How a hybrid offer works and what the cash portion actually pays for [15:51] – Competing with Nourish, Fay, and BerryStreet without competing on price [20:44] – Naming the specific result: healing IBS and IBD instead of managing symptoms [29:08] – Building a low-ticket continuity offer so clients don't disappear at month four [33:10] – What belongs on the cash-pay side: testing, meal plans, supplements, portal resources [37:40] – Pricing the hybrid when insurance already covers part of the total [42:44] – Why graduating every client costs you revenue and costs them results [48:40] – Setting messaging boundaries before you need them [55:45] – SEO, GEO, and Google reviews for a practice built on local referrals [1:04:41] – Doubling income without adding a single session Top Quotes from the Episode "You can't out-price a company with venture funding and insurance leverage. The move is to build something they aren't even offering." "Nobody stands in a parking lot deciding between McDonald's and a good gourmet burger. Those aren't the same product, and your practice shouldn't be the same product as a platform handing out free sessions." "Insurance teaches people to buy an hour of your time. A signature offer teaches them to buy a result." "The cash portion of a hybrid offer covers everything insurance was never going to pay for, which is usually the part that creates the outcome." "Not everyone wants to be graduated. I've worked with the same trainer for eleven years because I like having the help, and your clients are no different." "People overstuff their deliverables and then spend years on the hook for all of it. The better question is what's the least amount of support someone needs to get what they came for." "Set the boundary before you need it. Renegotiating access after someone has already crossed the line is a much harder conversation." "This model lets you earn twice as much from the same number of sessions, or keep the income steady and cut your session load in half." Links & Resources Take the CEO Type Quiz Practice Better (EHR, client portal, messaging, program delivery) If this one landed, follow the podcast, leave a review, and send it to a practitioner who's been told insurance is the reason they aren't making enough.

Learn how to use AI to answer the marketing questions that actually matter. Join our free live Masterclass → https://www.passetto.com/ai-marketing-kpi-masterclassShowing up in AI search isn't a ranking game. It's a category-level eligibility problem.In this episode, Carolyn and Amber sit down with Gaetano DiNardi, the GOAT of SEO, to break down what actually gets a brand recommended by an LLM: entity association, AKA the model's pre-existing, trained-in belief that you belong in a category. It takes months, sometimes years, to build. No schema markup or "LLMs.txt" trick shortcuts it.Then they go after the citation obsession running the GEO conversation. Gaetano has clients getting cited constantly and still not getting recommended, because a citation and a recommendation aren't the same thing.Topics covered:Why GEO is a category eligibility problem, not an SEO ranking problemWhat "entity association" is, how long it realistically takes to build, and why some brands shouldn't even try yetThe citation myth: why getting cited everywhere doesn't mean getting recommended, and why the "95% third-party" stat is misleadingWhat it actually takes to get recommended by name when a buyer asks an AI tool for a shortlistWhy top-of-funnel content is dying on owned domains and moving to "rented land" (YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack)Who should prioritize SEO/GEO right now, and who's still too early to botherSkip to 47:00 to watch a live walkthrough: Gaetano reverse-engineers a ChatGPT recommendation in real time, asking it directly how it landed on an answer and which sources it actually pulled from.-----------------------------------------------------Measure marketing beyond leads and last-touch attribution.Passetto unifies CRM and marketing data into one clean, governed model, to finally help marketing leaders measure the KPIs they actually need.See how marketing influences pipeline, how marketing changes win rates and deal size, which programs are actually working, and where to invest next. Then query it all through AI, on demand.

What separates the brands that dominate their category from those that disappear into digital noise? Two things: a ruthlessly focused niche and a brand story governed with such precision that your ideal client finds no other logical answer. Lindsey Busfield, co-founder of Optimize My Firm, built the nation's most recognized SEO agency for personal injury attorneys by doing exactly that — going so narrow, so deep, and so disciplined in her StoryOps™ that competitors simply can't follow. In this episode of the Business of Story, host Park Howell and Lindsey unpack why niching down is the most powerful brand strategy available to any business, how governing your story with clarity, consistency, and coherence makes you the category king or queen of your market, and why AI-driven search now rewards exactly this kind of high-fidelity storytelling. You'll discover: Why casting a wide net produces shallow results — and how radical niche focus turns your brand into the signal, not the noise How personal injury lawyers use story to win cases — and what every business can steal from that approach to govern their brand narrative How to build your digital footprint across SEO, AEO, and GEO so that Google, Perplexity, and every AI search engine serves you up as the definitive answer in your market Lindsey is also host of the Personal Injury Marketing Minute podcast and author of How Personal Injury Lawyers Get Leads: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why — available now on Amazon. Connect with Lindsey Busfield: Website: optimizemyfirm.com Email: lindsey@optimizemyfirm.com LinkedIn: Lindsey Busfield Learn more about the Business of Story and StoryOps™: storycyclegenie.ai

What if the biggest mistake men make after a prostate cancer diagnosis is not eating the "wrong" food - but becoming so afraid of food that eating itself becomes stressful?In this solo episode, Dr. Geo draws on more than two decades in holistic and integrative urology to cut through the noise around prostate cancer nutrition. Rather than promoting another rigid diet, he explains how food choices interact with physical activity, stress, metabolic signaling, and long-term sustainability. The goal is not perfection. It is to create a healthier internal environment while still enjoying life, family, and food.In this episode, you'll learn...Why no single food causes or cures prostate cancer.How exercise and stress may change the way your body responds to food.Why Dr. Geo favors a plant-forward Mediterranean pattern while allowing strategic flexibility.How to think about protein, fish, red meat, processed foods, saturated fat, and fasting after diagnosis.If prostate cancer nutrition has left you overwhelmed, this episode offers a simpler framework for deciding what to eat - and what actually matters most.Chapterts00:00 Food Myths Intro00:55 Podcast Disclaimer01:34 Why Nutrition Confuses03:34 Principle One No Guilt04:46 Stress Exercise Absorption08:57 No Magic Foods12:55 How Cancer Signals Work16:40 Processed Foods And Portions21:02 Best Diet Patterns25:11 Protein And Muscle28:38 Meat Poultry Fish31:23 Carbs And Fats35:48 Fasting And Overeating37:17 Thrive After Diagnosis

  THE SHOW NOTES   Cooking for other people Intro Dolly Parton History Chunk      - August 28th Now What's Ted Cruz Done? Ask George      - ASMR-like response? from Keisha Religious Moron of the Week      - Kenneth Sparks, aka Apostle KC Sparks Tell Me Something Good      - Otter Resuscitation Tickets and packages for    GEOLOG1K available soon! Show Close .........................   UPCOMING SCHEDULE   The George HraBandSunday, Sept. 6th SteelStacks, ArtsQuest 9:00–11:00 pm Episode 1000 of The Geologic Podcast Saturday, January 9, 2027 The Icehouse, Bethlehem, PA .........................   SUBSCRIPTION INTERFACE   You can now find our subscription page at GeorgeHrab.com at this link. Many thanks to the sage Evo Terra for his assistance. .........................   Get George's Music Here  https://georgehrab.hearnow.com https://georgehrab.bandcamp.com ................................... SUBSCRIBE! You can sign up at GeorgeHrab.com and become a Geologist or a Geographer. As always, thank you so much for your support! You make the ship go. ................................... Sign up for the mailing list: Write to Geo! Check out Geo's wiki page, thanks to Tim Farley. Have a comment on the show, a Religious Moron tip, or a question for Ask George? Drop George a line and write to Geo's Mom, too!

Allie Mae, Ramsey Hernandez, and Derick Gonzales join Geo and Derek to breakdown performing at a historic Kill Tony Madison Square Garden show, open-world gaming rumors, and high-profile news headlines.In This Episode:Kill Tony at MSG: Derek and Ramsey share their firsthand experience performing at Madison Square Garden for Kill Tony, navigating sign-up madness, and handling the adrenaline of a sold-out arena crowd.Studio Accounting & Drama: Geo and Derek air out recent schedule conflicts, party invite mix-ups, and long-standing debts between the hosts.Gaming & Media News: The panel dives into the latest GTA 6 leaks and debates why modern developers are shifting open-world sandbox mechanics.True Crime & Legal Headlines: A deep dive into high-profile news cases, including the Luigi Mangione trial headlines, street security realities, and navigating the New Jersey correctional system.ON THE GATE! ENJOY!Original air date: 8/24/26Join the live chat Wednesday nights at 11pm EST. Uncensored versions of the show streamed Monday and Thursday at 2pm EST on GaSDigital.com. Signup with code OTG for the archive of the show and others like Legion of Skanks, The Regz, and Story Warz. FOLLOWGeo PerezInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/geoperez86/Derek DrescherInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/derekdrescher/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did you know AI and affiliate review sites decide which mattress brand you see first—before you even step in a store? Here's how to win that game.Think the best mattress wins online? Think again. In this eye-opening episode, Mark Kinsley and PR/affiliate powerhouse Kris Hillberg reveal the hidden playbook behind how mattress and bedding brands become household names—whether or not their products are actually better.Discover why today's digital landscape is driven less by quality and more by who controls review sites, affiliate links, and the new “AI search” engines like ChatGPT and Google's LLMs. Kris shares insider tips on how brands are gaming YouTube, leveraging social proof, and rewriting the rules of SEO—now called GEO and AEO. If you're a retailer, brand, or even a curious consumer, you'll learn why old-school tactics are out, how social media keywords and creator partnerships are essential, and why being “real” will matter more than ever as AI-generated slop fills the web.Feeling lost as Google changes everything, review sites lose power, and affiliate commissions plummet? Kris and Mark break down the new rules—plus the biggest mistake most mattress brands make: ignoring holistic, multi-channel strategies. With concrete examples (Liquid Death, Tuft & Needle, and more!), they'll show you how to build digital gravity and create a surround-sound brand presence that's future-proof.Timestamps:- 00:50 – Why top mattress brands win (it's not product quality)- 03:45 – AI's secret influence on what brands consumers see first- 06:20 – How YouTube & social media now drive mattress discovery- 10:05 – The end of classic SEO: What is GEO & AEO?- 14:30 – Mattress review sites: Are they losing their power?- 18:00 – The “affiliate tax” and the dark side of mattress marketing- 22:15 – Why local retailers are losing to digital-first brands- 27:50 – The surround-sound strategy: What 8-figure brands do differently- 34:10 – Liquid Death & consumer-first branding secrets- 42:00 – Why “realness” beats AI in building trust- 49:00 – The 5-year plan for launching a winning mattress brandConnect with The FAM Podcast:

Meghan Gendelman, CMO, B2B at Canva, joins That's What I Call Marketing to discuss B2B marketing, enterprise growth, building demand and how Canva is taking a hugely successful product-led business further into the enterprise. This conversation gets into what building a B2B growth engine actually requires: understanding customers, combining product-led and sales-led growth, building brand before buyers enter the market, using data properly and working out where AI genuinely adds value.In this episode, we cover:– Why Meghan believes B2B marketing is anything but boring, particularly when you are dealing with complex buying committees, long consideration periods and multiple decision-makers– Why customer insight still matters more than tools, including Meghan's experience of using AI to scale content for GEO and discovering that faster content without anything new or useful simply didn't work– How brand, customer entry points and buying signals help marketers influence customers long before they reach a website or speak to sales– Why Meghan believes every good marketer needs to become comfortable with data, pipeline and the commercial numbers behind the business– How Canva is thinking about AI, LLMs, design, brand governance and integrations with platforms including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini– What Meghan learned from more than a decade at Salesforce, her time at DocuSign and the process that led her to become Canva's first B2B CMO– How she leads global marketing teams through clear values, trust, vulnerability and knowing the difference between “smoke” and “fire”We also discuss the changing B2B buying journey, why much of the decision can happen before a buyer identifies themselves, the role of brand in demand generation and why B2B and B2C marketing are becoming less distinct than marketers sometimes assume.A useful listen for marketers interested in B2B marketing, enterprise marketing, product-led growth, demand generation, brand building, AI in marketing, customer insight, sales and marketing, marketing leadership and commercial growth.02:12 Meghan's career across Salesforce, DocuSign and Canva03:03 Why everything starts with the customer05:44 The AI and GEO content experiment that failed07:18 Why B2B marketing is not boring10:30 Leading global marketing teams through values and trust11:41 Smoke, fire and knowing when leaders need to get involved12:47 Why Meghan joined Canva14:46 Canva's 30–40 hour B2B marketing interview challenge16:15 Taking Canva from product-led growth into enterprise17:04 Product-led growth versus sales-led growth19:47 How B2B buying decisions are changing22:08 Why every marketer needs to understand data23:13 Meghan's Monday morning pipeline ritual24:21 Learning from other marketing leaders25:00 Remote work, offices and building global teams27:39 Why EMEA is not one market28:40 Keeping Canva simple as the platform expands29:11 Canva as an AI-powered design platform30:27 Canva, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the LLM ecosystem31:47 Building Canva's B2B and enterprise brandAbout Meghan GendelmanB2B at Canva, leading its B2B marketing strategy as Canva continues to grow its enterprise business. Before Canva, Meghan held senior marketing roles at DocuSign and spent more than 12 years at Salesforce across areas including customer success, product marketing, growth marketing, field marketing, demand generation and regional marketing leadership.This episode was recorded as part of the That's What I Call Marketing Cannes Sessions and produced in partnership with The Digital Voice.The Digital Voice: https://www.thedigitalvoice.co.uk/That's What I Call Marketing is the podcast for marketers who care about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Follow the show for more conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, professors, authors, thinkers and practitioners.Find more episodes at:https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.comThat's What I Call Marketing is where marketers come for real conversations about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Hosted by Conor Byrne, the show features conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, authors, thinkers and practitioners about what good marketing looks like in practice.Listen, follow and find more episodes at: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.comConnect with Conor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorbyrneirl/If you enjoy the show, please follow, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more marketers find the conversations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on YKWD Tristan, Geo, and Derek talk freaking out in public. Get the EXTRA YKWD, Watch LIVE and UNEDITED AT https://www.patreon.com/robertkelly LIVE FROM THE SHED AND MORE ON PATREON DUDE!!! https://twitter.com/robertkelly https://twitter.com/YKWDpodcast http://instagram.com/ykwdudepodcast https://www.facebook.com/YkwdPodcast/Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/y0k6ofda #CashAppPod.Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Direct Deposit, Overdraft Coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

프린스턴에 무사히 돌아와서 처음 녹음한 에피소드입니다. 이번주 알래스카와 플로리다주 경선을 끝으로 거의 모든 주에서 중간선거를 앞둔 경선이 끝났습니다. 전에 맘다니 시장이 지지한 후보들의 돌풍이나 미시건주 경선에서 수천만 달러의 낙선 캠페인을 뚫고 민주당 후보가 된 압둘 엘 사예드의 사례에서도 언급됐던 미국 민주적 사회주의자 연합(DSA, Democratic Socialists of America)에 관해 자세히 짚어봤습니다. 그리고 드롭사이트 뉴스라는 매체를 통해 알게 된 이스라엘의 새로운 로비 전략도 알아봅니다. 정부가 직접 나서서 챗봇이 내놓는 답변에 영향을 끼치는 방식으로 가자 전쟁을 둘러싼 서사를 '장악'하려는 LLM 오염, 또는 생성엔진최적화(GEO) 전략이 무엇인지 자세히 이야기 나눴습니다.

Sidney Gantt and Geo Perez join Zac Amico and discuss Geo's relapse and drunk texting his ex, Zac visiting Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Steve Harvey as a Family Feud host, white people being in other people's business, the Disney adult stalking Peter Pan, the possible Philly serial killer, Monsters of God documentary, the illegal reptile trade, addicted chimps and so much more! Air Date: 08/17/26Support our sponsors!BodyBrainCoffee.com - Use promo code: ZOO15 to get 15% off!Zac Amico's Morning Zoo plug music can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMgQJEcVToY&list=PLzjkiYUjXuevVG0fTOX4GCTzbU0ooHQ-O&ab_channel=BulbyTo advertise your product or service on GaS Digital podcasts please go to TheADSide.com and click on "Advertisers" for more information!Submit your artwork via postal mail to:GaS Digital Networkc/o Zac's Morning Zoo151 1st Ave, #311New York, NY 10003You can sign up at GaSDigital.com with promo code: ZOO for a discount of $1.50 on your subscription and access to every Zac Amico's Morning Zoo show ever recorded! On top of that you'll also have the same access to ALL the shows that GaS Digital Network has to offer!Follow the whole show on social media!Sidney GanttTwitter: https://twitter.com/SidneyGanttInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sidneyganttGeo PerezTwitter: https://twitter.com/geoperez86Instagram: https://instagram.com/geoperez86Zac AmicoTwitter: https://twitter.com/ZASpookShowInstagram: https://instagram.com/zacisnotfunnyDates: https://punchup.live/ZacAmicoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

https://youtu.be/7yugccgcgs8 Justin Nassiri, Founder and CEO of Executive Presence, is driven by the power of human connection and a mission to harvest CEO stories that reveal authentic experiences and valuable insights. By serving as thought partners to C-suite executives, Justin and his team transform personal perspectives, mistakes, and lessons into compelling LinkedIn content that builds trust and distinguishes leaders from generic, AI-generated voices. In this conversation, Justin introduces The Content Strategy Framework—Use the 40:30:20:10 Content Formula, Harvest Stories, Borrow Thought Patterns, and Apply Curiosity. He explains why leaders should build visibility through personal profiles, how skilled interviewers uncover stories executives may overlook, and why Thought Leader Ads can extend the reach of proven content. Justin also discusses growing through referrals and warm relationships, using 10-week improvement cycles to revisit every business process, and developing autonomous team members who use AI to solve problems while preserving human connection. — Harvest CEO Stories with Justin Nassiri  Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here, and my guest today again is Justin Nassiri, the Founder and CEO of Executive Presence, a fully managed LinkedIn thought leadership service for C-suite executives at growth-stage B2B companies. Justin, welcome back to the show.  Great to be back. Thanks, Steve.  So we just reminisced that it was three years almost to the day that you came here, and I can’t believe it. It feels like yesterday. But your business has grown dramatically during that time, so I think you have some new insights that you’ll be able to share with us, I’m sure.  Thank you. It’s good to be back. We just made the Inc. 5000 list, which is a first for me. I’ve never been on that before, but we’re celebrating that.  Yeah. Congratulations. That’s a great milestone to hit. And you only started in 2022, right?  Yeah, yeah.  So, pretty freshly minted, fast-growing Inc. 5000. So my question to you is, what is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in Executive Presence, in your business?  There’s a very potent macro or micro why for me, and then probably a broader why. I think that the biggest why for me right now, like many parents, is my kids. I’ve got a three- and a seven-year-old. And so when I think of my professional life, I certainly think about not just providing for them but also trying to set an example of someone who is trying to do their best and trying to stretch and trying to grow.Share on X  And so I think that’s probably the highest leverage that I have. But I think the through line in the companies that I’ve done is just the value of human connection. My first company was all about companies using Instagram in a way to be more authentic and more genuine with their community, and that’s very true to what we’re doing now at Executive Presence, just really helping people connect to other people.  In this case, it’s executives using LinkedIn to connect with a broader audience, but I really feel like that human connection is so important, and I think it’s becoming even more important in the era of AI. So that’s a little bit more specific why in what I do right now.  Yeah, it’s fascinating how human connection is evolving in the age of AI, and I agree. I mean, I see that because there’s so much more noise out there, human connection is perhaps more important than ever. People want to make sure that they are talking to authentic people and hearing from authentic people who have authentic lived experience. So how does that impact communication for executives on LinkedIn? How do they have to evolve their voice or how they approach things?  I think if you look at LinkedIn in particular right now, I think it still remains the place where the largest source of our professional network is. And so I think there’s still a lot of value there, and I think that LinkedIn is facing a lot of growing pains. Specifically, I think that there are three things driving it. One is more people are just showing up on the platform. The secret is out, and people realize that there’s value to LinkedIn.  So, all things else equal, more people are more active on LinkedIn, which generates a lot of noise. And then the second thing is AI is making it easier to create content, so I think it’s creating not just more content, but lower-quality content. And then the third thing is it does seem as if LinkedIn is following what Facebook did over a decade ago and saying, “Look, to get reach, you’ve got to put money into ads now.”  And we saw that transition with Facebook company pages a long time ago, but it really does feel like you cannot get as much visibility today as you could have two years ago unless there’s some sort of ad buy behind it. And so I think those are kind of the three problems. I think that the answer is still there’s value in showing up, but I think that you have to show up even more human. I think that the experiences that make you unique and the mistakes that make you who you are and the things that you know and the stories that you can tell, those still hold value, and that differentiates you from generic or AI-generated content.  I also think that there’s value to using LinkedIn ads, and we can talk about that, but I think that that has to be part of one’s strategy now if you’re trying to significantly use LinkedIn for what it’s good for, which is brand building.  Yeah, and maybe this is a slight question, then we’re going to talk to you about the framework. But as I understand, LinkedIn now allows individuals to also boost their posts as opposed to just companies, which used to be the case in the past. So how does it impact companies? Is there more emphasis now? Is emphasis shifting to individual posts because there’s no real reason to build up the company pages? How is that evolving?  Yeah, I mean, four years ago when I started the company, before these Thought Leader Ads, these individual people ads were a thing, I still would’ve said to you, “Look, there’s not much value in company pages. People connect with other people. They’re not going to connect with a faceless organization.” So even four years ago, I would’ve said, “Man, if you really want to raise visibility for your organization, you’ve got to do that through your key leaders.  You’ve got to do that through actual names and faces and voices and perspectives.” And I think that the ads make that even more pronounced now because I can now take my personal post as Justin Nassiri. If it does well on LinkedIn, I can put a $50 or $500 ad buy against it, and I can make sure that essentially specific people are going to see my post. If I’m selling to CEOs of tech companies in Cincinnati that have grown 10% last year and they’ve been at their company for five years, I can have an insane level of targeting, and I could put my personal content in front of them in a way that most people still don’t realize is an ad.  It will say, “Promoted by,” and then the company name, so “Promoted by Executive Presence.” Most people, when scrolling, don’t even notice that. Yeah. And so I think there’s a tremendous opportunity then to take very human and personal content and put it in front of exactly whoever you’re trying to get in front of.  Yeah, I love that. You also say on your LinkedIn page that it takes an executive only 90 minutes a month to actually work with you guys and have you amplify them. So how do you extract all those personal stories and experiences? What is your framework for that so that when you meet with an executive, you’re able to create those posts without them having to be involved? Yeah, I think the framework is pretty universal for anyone listening. We tend to start with the content strategy. And the way that we typically start is we’ll say, okay, 40% of the content we would call industry thought leadership. And that is great if you can talk about current events and relate them to your industry. It’s great if you can share things about your industry that no one knows or that you disagree with people.  But do that 40%, which is the biggest of any of the categories, as really the education, as the subject matter expert. You are showing up as an authority in cybersecurity, or you are showing up as an authority in leadership, or you’re showing up as an authority in B2B supply chain. And I think the key here is the more niche, the better. The more narrow, the better. We are not Joe Rogan. We’re not trying to get 300 million people to look at your content. We want to get in front of a very narrow group of people, typically prospects, customers, potential employees, potential investors.  We really want to narrow where your voice can be fairly large in a very finite realm. So that's the industry thought leadership piece.Share on X The second one, about 30% of the content, we call it leadership and career journey. And what we’re trying to do here is a blend of humanizing the executive while also giving them credibility. And so if we are working with someone who is a CEO at a company, well, they’ve done things prior to that. So what did they learn in college or a previous workplace? What was a mistake that they made? What was a mentor that said something to them?  So that’s a way of us imparting one of their values or something that they know, but wrapped in a story from their history, which humanizes them. And that would be generally 30% of the content. Twenty percent, obviously they’re doing this to promote their company, so 20% would be about their company, spotlighting an employee, recent events, things like that. Again, trying to do it through stories if possible. And then the last 10% is usually the highest-performing 10%, and we would call that work-adjacent content. So we want to, again, make them a three-dimensional person. What do they do outside of the office? Is that family?  And we usually use what we call the dinner party test for this. If you were with prospects and potential employees, what’s fair game to talk about over dinner and drinks? Some people would definitely talk about their kids. Some people would never talk about their kids. Some would talk about their hobbies. Some would never talk about that. So that's a good filter to figure out what they could talk about that's not just always talking shop. So that's kind of the framework that we use.Share on X  But I think that the way that we harvest this information is really the skill of the people that I hire on my team. It’s people who are really good at pulling insights out of someone and getting someone to open up and having that heat-seeking missile approach of, what is a story that they’re sitting on that they don’t even realize is a compelling story? And that’s one thing that has stood out. Some of the best-performing LinkedIn posts, the person didn’t even think that that would be interesting to anyone else.  We’re often not the best filter for ourselves of what’s going to land. And that’s one of the values of LinkedIn, is that you can actually put out ideas and stories and insights, and very quickly, in an 18-hour time period, get signal from the market if people value that from you or not, and then follow that trend.  Yeah. That’s fascinating, and it sounds a little bit like being a ghostwriter for someone, that you can really get those stories out and you can have them open up so that their brain is going to surface those things that maybe they don’t think about. Maybe they are not extroverted and they won’t be able to bring this up on their own. But if you catalyze it, then they come to life that way.  Yeah. I think of it as a thought partner. I kind of realized this because I hosted a podcast for a long time as well, and you kind of realize the power—exactly what you’re doing—the power of curiosity and the power of distance, right? You are showing up, you’re curious about my experience.  You have enough distance from it that you’re asking questions that might even seem intuitive to me, or it might be one of those things where I’m like, “Well, everyone knows this.” But then you bring an outsider in, and it’s like, “No, not everyone knows this,” or, “I think people would find this interesting.” So having that thought partner to be the outside observer of what others would benefit from.  Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s a real skill, and that also brings in that human skill that an AI is not going to be able to prompt those kinds of questions, that kind of curiosity, that there’s an emotional driver behind it. That’s a very journalistic trait, I suppose. That’s a new form of journalism that you’re practicing here, isn’t it?  Yeah, it is. And the type of person I hire to do that are ex-consultants because they’re really good. They’re really good at coming into a business and understanding the objective and understanding how to get very senior people—because we work with CEOs of publicly traded companies and CEOs of smaller companies—to really get very prominent people to open up. And being comfortable interrupting or redirecting or pushing back, it really is a unique skill set.  Yeah, I love that. So that brings me to my next question. What drives growth in your business? How did you get, in four years, on the Inc. 5000? What was the engine here, the fuel?  Well, it’s so funny because I ask this of every CEO I meet with as well, to learn from them. Everyone always says referrals, so I’ll be generic and say referrals do drive—it’s probably the single biggest source of revenue. When I first started the company, I actually used LinkedIn. And so this actually came out of another company that I was running, and they had the idea. And so I went to LinkedIn and I said, “I think that the type of person who would be interested in this is CEOs of companies with at least 50 employees.” And I put that into Sales Navigator, and it came up with a couple hundred first-degree connections.  And I just sent out a fairly generic message of, “Hey, Steve, just wanted to give you a quick update. I’m launching this new service, and this is what we do. Let me know if you know of anyone who would like to chat.” And I actually got probably 60 or 70K in monthly recurring revenue from that, of people I wasn’t really aware of what they were up to. One of the guys who’s still a client, I had met with him 10 years previously when he was an investor, and then now he was CEO and founder of a company that ultimately went public.  So I wouldn’t have thought of that person, but that’s a great thing about LinkedIn, of saying, “Here’s someone who might be interested in what I’m doing.” And so that sort of outbound of warm connections has played a role. Obviously, I’m active on LinkedIn. I get a lot of leads from that. I do a fairly good job of keeping in touch with my network and seeing when people might be needing us. I think, back to the human connection, I do think conferences are playing a bigger role.  I’m starting to go to more conferences and realizing the value of meeting people in person and how that kind of seems to accelerate the process of building trust and building relationships. We do cold email. We do AdWords. We do a newsletter. We do a lot of content marketing, and so I think each of them plays their own part. But referrals certainly are the biggest one. LinkedIn is probably number two. Yeah. That’s very interesting. And do you see a lot of competitors? Is this a crowded field?  It is. We have expanded beyond LinkedIn largely because of the competitive nature, where I think just as people have flocked to LinkedIn. I would say the biggest faction is a lot of solopreneurs. A lot of individuals will work with a few executives, and so that’s probably the lower-level competitors. There are a handful of companies that are doing something similar to us, and then more established PR companies that will say, “Yes, we do LinkedIn as well.” But I think at this point, we’ve got the deepest track record of executives.  We work with over 400 now, which, as far as I’m aware, is the largest set. We actually present our data to LinkedIn every year because it is the largest data set of just executives rather than influencers. And I think the play for most professionals and most executives is different than what an influencer would do on a platform like LinkedIn, and I think it’s important to do what’s appropriate for an executive.  So you mentioned on your LinkedIn page that you bootstrapped this company to three million ARR.  Yep.  So what do you expect to be different from going from 60,000 monthly recurring, 700 ARR, to three million, to going from three million to 10 million? How is it going to be different?  Yeah, that’s such a good question. And I balance this because I really like Paul Graham’s thought that you have to do things that are not scalable to be able to scale. And so oftentimes, I’m looking for things to do consistently, but it’s really helpful for me not to constrain myself in that way and to think of things that—it still feels like guerrilla warfare at times—what are little things that we can do to get an edge?  I think that the thing that I think about most right now in getting from three to 10 million is creating a machine for experimentation, and experimentation not just in our service, but also in our sales and marketing. And so how do we create a culture? Let’s just take the service side of things. I never want our service to plateau. I have run a company before where our product became stale and a competitor put us out of business. I never want that to happen again. And that the way that we minimize the probability that that happens is that we are always experimenting.  We are always listening to our clients and understanding what else we could do to make their life better.Share on X But then we’re also looking at the market and thinking, what else might our clients not even realize they need but would benefit from? And I love that phrase from Henry Ford, “If I had listened to my customers, I would have built a faster horse.” I think that there’s a value in listening to customers, but also a value in being one or two steps ahead of them. And so, for example, one of the things that we’re heavily looking at right now is the thought of AI visibility for executives.  And where GEO is getting more and more prominence for organizations, we see a world where it’s very important not just to cultivate a human audience and a human group of people who view and like your content and respect you, but also essentially cultivating an AI audience and making sure that your content is visible by LLMs and making sure that Claude and Perplexity see you as the authority and are referencing you. And so that’s something that our clients aren’t yet asking for, but we’re already developing a solution and a thesis because we think that that’s the way that the world is going.  But the central point is, how do we create an engine for experimentation so we are always testing out new things and seeing if they work, and reinvesting in the ones that work and letting go of the ones that don’t work? And I think that if we can do that for our clients and for ourselves, it always keeps us evolving. We’re always upping the game. We’re always improving, because I think the moment that we stop doing that, that’s when we stagnate or that’s when someone else comes along and puts us out of business.  So how do you maintain this alignment and this entrepreneurial energy? Because experimentation is innovation. It’s entrepreneurship in your business. How do you perpetuate it? So as you’re growing the business, you’ve got 40 people now, maybe you’re going to have more, you’re going to have AI agents running around. So how do you keep that experimentation and this entrepreneurial energy as you are getting further and further from the newest hires?  So the first thing that I love—and this is my VP of Ops, Shelby, who came up with this—but I really like it. She instituted a 10-week cycle composed of one- to two-week sprints. And she oversees all of our client work. So what she did is she broke everything we do for our clients into different sections. She instituted a system of saying, “Okay, these are all the different things we do. If you have an idea about how to do something better, or if you have a complaint about how something’s not working, or if a client mentions something, I want you to put it in this spreadsheet so we can keep track of how we can improve each thing.”  And what we’re going to do is, this week we’re doing a sprint on interview questions—how we prepare our interview questions for our clients. We are going to invest a week-long sprint in improving that process through technology, AI, and processes. And then we’re going to go through every other aspect. But guess what? Ten weeks later, we’re coming back to interview questions again. What that does, I think, in today’s landscape is not only does that keep us always thinking of improving something, but every 10 weeks we’re re-looking at specifically AI to see, what are its capabilities now? It’s changing so quickly.  From 10 weeks ago, it might be able to do something better or different. So let’s create a system so that we are periodically refreshing every aspect of our business from team feedback, client feedback, but also technological improvements. And it’s mind-boggling to think that that’s the pace now, and that 10 weeks might not even be sufficient in the future with the rate at which things are changing. That’s the best example I can think of how we’re trying to create that mindset of constant and incessant improvement.  And how do you build your team? Are you remote, or do you have an office somewhere?  We are all remote. Yeah, we are 100% remote. So we’re in seven different states, all still in the United States. It does pose challenges as you grow of how do you get in person and create connection. And so we’ll do things like happy hours online and different ways to get to know each other. But I also think, for those others listening who create a remote-first culture, you filter for people who thrive in that environment and do their best work when they have a fair amount of autonomy. And I think that autonomy for us has been helpful because we want people who are individual problem solvers, and I think that overlaps well with people who prefer a remote-first workplace.  Yeah, that’s fascinating. So if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would you do?  That is a really good question. I mean, it almost feels like the world is moving towards more entrepreneurs, not fewer ones, which I, for one, like. I’m a huge fan of both entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. But if I could wave a magic wand, it would be making everyone on the team think like an entrepreneur, which would have probably been a liability 12 months ago. But the way I approach everything now is—I literally, right before this, was using Claude for my personal finances.  On the business side, it is now connected to QuickBooks, and on the personal side, I have a system of creating a report exactly the way I want it, which I, for one, love—the capability of AI to personalize things. I don’t have to use Mint or QuickBooks anymore. I can build it exactly in the way that works for my crazy brain. But I was updating and realizing that the tools have changed, and so, like, upgrading the way that I track my personal finances. And that’s just kind of very natural for me, and I do that for my kids’ menus, and I do that for everything. I kind of have a project or an approach on AI.  And I think that that’s a similar mindset that I need for my team, is thinking like an entrepreneur. How do you get better at everything? How do you get more efficient at everything? How do you look for new ways of solving things? I think it used to be that the entrepreneur was the visionary and setting the vision for the company, and everyone was more or less following orders or a system.  I still see a role for the visionary, but it's almost as if everyone on the team has to be their own visionary of envisioning how to improve their workflowShare on X and how to make themselves more productive and how to utilize tools and realize where that can make them more effective. And I don’t know that it’s going to be top-down anymore. I think that the advantage of the tools we have today is, like, the way that I use AI, Steve, might be completely different than the way that you use it. And that’s the beauty of it, is that our brains are different, our worldviews are different, our skill sets are different, but we can almost bolt this technology on us to make ourselves superhuman.  But the way that it works for you is going to be different than me, and that will be true in a team. So, very long answer, but if I could wave that magic wand, it would be imparting that entrepreneur mindset of finding problems and the best way to solve them, and never stop solving problems.Share on X  Yeah. So it’s just a feeling, and maybe I won’t articulate it well, but I’m just looking at your business. You’re building this remote team, and then you’re making everyone more autonomous so that they are working with AI to improve their productivity. In a way, it is supercharging everyone individually, but what about the team cohesion? So how do you make sure that people don’t get isolated?  Isaac Asimov has a novel which is in the distant future, on a distant planet, and basically everyone has 1,000 robots, and everyone is in their own world, and they just communicate on video screen because personal contact is no longer even appropriate. And everyone gets super rich and super efficient, but something gets lost.  So I wonder, how do you see the tension between empowering people, having AI help everyone be super productive in their individual way, in a remote culture? How do you keep this constellation together going forward?  Yeah. It still comes back to human connection for me. I think that, let’s just say on a client level, if my company’s doing our job well with our clients, if we are having them become thought leaders, having them grow influence and audience, I want that to lead to more human connection for them. And the way that I have seen that showing up is they go to a conference and people know them and people come up.  Like, people are literally—they might not have created connection before, but they recognize them, they know who they are, and that draws them to in-person interactions. That’s human connection coming out of what we do. For our team, I hope it leads to more human connection, that as we become more efficient, as we become better at what we do, as the company grows, we will get together in person more often. We'll be able to be in the room together and brainstorm because that becomes more valuable, and we're all craving that.Share on X  So, sci-fi is my favorite genre of literature and cinema, and I don’t think that we will ultimately end up with VR goggles on our head and not talking to each other. I think that in the same way that we have seen with social media, that it has a purpose, but we still want to be around each other and benefit from being in person. I think that we will become more and more like that. I don’t think it will drive us apart. I think it will lead to more connection. That’s my optimist view on it.  Yeah. Love it. Well, I hope you’re right.  Yeah.  Okay, so if someone who is a founder of a business, a growing business, or maybe a C-level in an enterprise, and they don’t have time to manage their LinkedIn, but they realize that they’re missing out with their thought leadership and they need help or they want to explore, where should they go and how can they connect with you and your colleagues?  Yeah, I appreciate that. I would just say, in general, every leader needs to know that their personal brand is going to impact both their career as well as their company, and them being able to articulate their viewpoints and what they think and believe is going to be a vital skill. And that could be on stage at a conference, it could be on YouTube, it could be on LinkedIn, it could be in a book, it could be in articles, but they have to have a way to know what they believe, to know what knowledge they have that is valuable, and find a way to add value to others.  I think that that’s just more and more the direction things are going. And it can be really hard because you are probably growing an empire, you are probably doing so many different things. And just know that there are people like Executive Presence, where our skill set is figuring out where your zone of genius is and figuring out what stories you have that are really good assets, and figuring out who you are and how you want to present online, and then helping you do that consistently across different channels.  And so if that’s of interest, I obviously love talking about this stuff, but I’m happy to talk with anyone who listens to the show. If you go to executivepresence.io and fill out our contact form, it gets to me. You can find me on LinkedIn, Justin Nassiri, or my email is justin@executivepresence.io. Any of those three work. But I just believe that this is going to be more and more valuable for leaders to develop that skill, and would love to help anyone listening do that.  Well, if you’re out there listening, you see that something is working because Justin propelled his company from a standing start to the Inc. 5000 in three or four years, and he is pushing the envelope on generative AI and reinvention every 10 weeks of his company. So if you’d like to be part of that and you have to take advantage of promoting yourself on LinkedIn with a cutting-edge approach, then reach out to Justin Nassiri on LinkedIn or executivepresence.io. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because every week I bring a couple of successful entrepreneurs who are sharing their frameworks of how they’re being successful. So thanks for coming, Justin, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Justin's LinkedIn Justin's website Justin's Email: justin@executivepresence.io

In this episode of The MadTech Podcast, Amy Banks, head of SEO and GEO at Havas Media Network, joins ExchangeWire COO Lindsay Rowntree to discuss the evolution of search.LLMs have transformed search, pushing the ad industry towards a zero-click era. With the declining importance of search engine rankings, Amy outlines what replaces click-through as the number brands should actually be watching. The conversation dives into whether generative engine optimisation (GEO) is a lasting, standalone discipline, or if it will eventually fold back into SEO once the market matures.•••0:00 Introduction1:53 Bringing GEO into SEO teams5:52 LLMs and zero-click search9:28 Optimising for LLMs vs. Google15:30 Combining GEO and paid ads23:21 Will GEO eventually collapse into SEO?

  THE SHOW NOTES   Can you know how you come across? Intro New Book for 1K Interesting Fauna      - Halicephalobus mephisto Religious Moron of the Week      - Gregory A. Madeya Ask George      - Phish Phan? from Doug S. Wine Country on Netflix Tell Me Something Good      - Hesperaloe! Show Close .........................   UPCOMING SCHEDULE   Episode 1000 of The Geologic Podcast Saturday, January 9, 2027 The Icehouse, Bethlehem, PA .........................   SUBSCRIPTION INTERFACE   You can now find our subscription page at GeorgeHrab.com at this link. Many thanks to the sage Evo Terra for his assistance. .........................   Get George's Music Here  https://georgehrab.hearnow.com https://georgehrab.bandcamp.com ................................... SUBSCRIBE! You can sign up at GeorgeHrab.com and become a Geologist or a Geographer. As always, thank you so much for your support! You make the ship go. ................................... Sign up for the mailing list: Write to Geo! Check out Geo's wiki page, thanks to Tim Farley. Have a comment on the show, a Religious Moron tip, or a question for Ask George? Drop George a line and write to Geo's Mom, too!

Jordan Barosy and Lawrence Reese join Geo, Derek Drescher, and Allie to dissect performative social media philanthropy, the massive influence of the Kill Tony ecosystem, and the weird evolution of IRL streamer culture.In This Episode:Performative Philanthropy: The panel calls out content creators who film themselves giving back for viral clicks and debates the actual ethics of public charity.The Streamer Era: A look into how viral personalities—from former high school basketball star Julian Newman to modern IRL creators—navigate sudden internet fame and lifestyle perks.The Stand-Up Landscape: The crew breaks down the runaway success of Kill Tony and how the show has fundamentally shifted the path for rising independent comedians.Pop Culture Draft: Ranking all-time Hollywood icons, from Salma Hayek to 2000s TV stars, and analyzing why movie writers constantly insert their own fantasies into feature scripts.ON THE GATE! ENJOY!Original air date: 8/17/26Join the live chat Wednesday nights at 11pm EST. Uncensored versions of the show streamed Monday and Thursday at 2pm EST on GaSDigital.com. Signup with code OTG for the archive of the show and others like Legion of Skanks, The Regz, and Story Warz. FOLLOWGeo PerezInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/geoperez86/Derek DrescherInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/derekdrescher/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Agree https://agree.com YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST   Today's show: Frontier AI models can ace PhD-level exams, but it's still bad at tracking down the product you want in the style that suits you. Onton's Zach Hudson tell us that the problem is that models are a black box. His solution? A neurosymbolic model, Ontology 1, that learns about your taste and preferred aesthetic over time, then produces product searches tailored specifically to you, rather than just using keywords and relevant tags. How do neurosymbolic models work, and how does Onton understand your prompts and favorite design trends? And why aren't the frontier labs working on neurosymbolic models of their own? Zach joins Jason and Lon to discuss. PLUS, following a record-smashing SpaceX IPO, Ashi Dissanayake of Spacium makes the case that the real bottleneck in space isn't launching rockets off the ground any more. It's refueling in orbit. Guests Zach Hudson on X: ****https://x.com/nosduhz Onton: https://onton.com/ Spacium: https://spaceium.com/ Spacium on X: https://x.com/SpaceiumInc Relevant Links Poolside's journey to AGI: https://poolside.ai/vision/purpose Startup Archive: Sam Altman on the Paul Graham advice that saved OpenAI: https://www.startuparchive.org/p/sam-altman-on-the-paul-graham-advice-that-saved-open-ai-always-make-an-api Kelly Wearstler: https://www.kellywearstler.com/ Ennis House: https://franklloydwright.org/site/ennis-house/ Los Feliz Living: Ennis House profile: https://www.losfelizliving.com/los-feliz-historic-homes/ennis-house-los-feliz-hcm-149 Indiewire: Ennis-inspired "The Studio" offices: https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/the-studio-production-design-interview-seth-rogen-1235114365/ Monocle Magazine: https://monocle.com/ Spaceium on Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/spaceium-inc Orbit Fab's RAFTI: https://www.orbitfab.com/rafti/ James Webb Space Telescope: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/ Houzz: https://www.houzz.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Zach Hudson joins: What is "neurosymbolic search" 4:03 Ontology 1 isn't a black box 6:31 Who is using Onton? 9:36 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 11:35 Could neurosymbolic models reach AGI? 13:19 Jason loves Wright's Ennis House 17:03 The shape of AI companies is changing 19:28 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life! 22:32 UGC as a data moat 26:03 The Dead Internet Theory 28:13 Ashi Dissanayake of Spacium joins 29:52 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST 31:50 Storables vs. cryogenics: the zero-boil-off breakthrough 34:11 All kinds of propulsion requires refueling 36:09 Getting more value from LEO to GEO 38:28 Moving at rocket speed 44:54 Why demand is so acute 49:37 The investing climate for space, post-SpaceX Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp   Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons   Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis   Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/   Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland   Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis   Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

How can you get your books surfaced when readers ask an AI what to read next? What are the hallmarks of authors and businesses that last more than a decade in the indie author industry? Ricardo Fayet gives his marketing tips after more than a decade at Reedsy. In the intro, Expanding Your Book's IP through Merchandising [Wish I'd Known Then]; Guide to writers conferences [Kindlepreneur]; Rick Rubin and Stephen Pressfield on resistance and the muse [Tetragrammaton]; Pulitzer Prize winners disclose AI usage [Nieman Lab]; My new rebuilt fiction site JFPenn.com. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Ricardo Fayet is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Reedsy, a marketplace for writers to find vetted freelancers, author training courses, and lots more. He's also the author of How to Market a Book and Amazon Ads for Authors. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How AI search actually finds and ranks the books it recommends Why keywords and search volume are disappearing as marketing metrics Building an internet footprint so your book is worth recommending Why Claude leans on Goodreads while ChatGPT and Gemini lean on Reddit Product is more important than marketing, and how to find your comp titles Passion, business sense and resilience in the authors who last You can find Ricardo at Reedsy.com. Transcript of the interview with Ricardo Fayet Jo: Ricardo Fayet is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Reedsy, a marketplace for writers to find vetted freelancers, author training courses, and lots more. He's also the author of How to Market a Book and Amazon Ads for Authors. So welcome back to the show, Ricardo. Ricardo: Thank you, Jo. It's been a while. Jo: It has been a while. As we were saying, it's been a decade, which is crazy, because you and I see each other at events and things. For anyone who doesn't know you— Tell us a bit more about you, where you're from, and also, what is Reedsy these days and how have things changed? Ricardo: Yes, sure. I think I'm hard to dissociate from Reedsy because my only background really is Reedsy. We started Reedsy right after business school for most of the founders. There are four founders, and I'm one of them. We've been going since 2014, so it's been 12 years. We started around the same time, and you started even earlier than we did, but we've had the chance to meet at quite a few conferences since. I think the main thing we're still known for is our marketplace. Since the very beginning, Reedsy is a curated marketplace where authors can come in and look for editors, cover designers, marketers, ghostwriters, literary translators, author website designers, pretty much any freelancer you would ever need to hire throughout your writing career. That's how we started. That's our main source of revenue and our main business. Since then, as you mentioned, we've also added courses, live events, so we've got a membership under Reedsy Learning. The main thing we're proud of right now is our writing tool, Reedsy Studio, because we've been pouring a lot of engineering talent into it over the past five, six years, and I think it's a really cool writing tool that is 90% free. It also does the formatting, so it's a good alternative to Vellum or Atticus for those who haven't purchased those tools. So there's a lot of things that Reedsy does at this point, which always makes it hard for me to describe what we do. Jo: But you generally serve writers. That's probably the crux of it. Ricardo: Exactly, yes. We're mostly at the production stage. The thing we say is we help authors make beautiful books, right? That's a little bit the tagline that applies to 90% of what we do, though we also help a little bit with the marketing side of things. Jo: And then just tell people where your accent is from. Ricardo: So I'm half French, half Italian from my parents, and I was born in Spain. So depending on my mood and the moment, it might be anywhere from French, Italian, Spanish. It's anyone's guess, really, at this point. Jo: Yes, exactly. You've been part of the indie author ecosystem, as you said, since 2014. You're often at the author conferences, and you stay abreast of everything that's going on. So what are the biggest changes you've seen in the industry since you started out? Like you said, you guys came from business school. You chose to come into the industry at a particular point, and yet things have changed. So what do you think are the biggest changes, and how have you seen authors adapt? Ricardo: It's crazy, the amount of things that happened in the past 10 years. Obviously we came into the industry as a result of Amazon launching Kindle Direct Publishing, and then the Kindle Store becoming one of the number one places where people buy books. That's what enabled self-publishing in the first place as an industry, and obviously we wouldn't exist without self-publishing being a thing. But then I think probably one of the biggest changes that happened was the introduction of Kindle Unlimited and various other subscription models. Perhaps as a response to that, afterwards, I would say direct sales is the other massive change that happened in the industry. The ability for authors to sell direct to their readers via their websites, or running Kickstarters, or basically the ability to reach your customers directly. Now, obviously, artificial intelligence is probably the biggest change of them all, not just in publishing, across every industry, but of course it's going to affect publishing very strongly, or it has already started making big waves. So I would say those are the three main changes that we've seen happening in the industry. Jo: Just interestingly, given that you're French, Italian, Spanish, European— Has the pace of change been the same in mainland Europe? Because you and I have also met up at European conferences, but I just get the sense that each individual European country, the UK included, as I include the UK in Europe, goes at a different speed. Ricardo: No, they definitely do. Our market at Reedsy is all in English. We only have an English website, and I would say 70% of our market is US, then 15% UK, and then Australia, New Zealand, et cetera. We do have clients in continental Europe, but they're mostly going to be American or British expats. A lot of retired people who write books and use Reedsy services. I think the main reason for that is that self-publishing as an industry hasn't really grown in Spain, France, Italy the way that it's grown in the US and the UK, probably because these are countries where book buying habits are a lot more traditional. So all my friends from high school and university in France, they all buy books, they all buy paper books. They all buy from bookstores. They don't really buy from Amazon that much. They love the smell of paper, all these sorts of things. So obviously that makes it harder for indie authors in those countries because they cannot place their books in the places where people buy them, which is traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores, or at least it's much harder. So there is an indie movement in those countries, but it's much smaller. I would say Germany is maybe the exception in Europe, where I've seen more and more full-time indie authors, but I don't think it's a market that's comparable even to the UK. Jo: Interesting. Okay, so let's go to marketing, because you love marketing, you have a newsletter about it, and you have a book, How to Market a Book, same title as mine, and we've found each other in our Also Boughts over the years. You have, however, updated yours several times. 2025 was your last update. Mine was 2016, so yours is definitely the most up-to-date one. So what are your thoughts on how authors can reach readers now? And let's split this into two. Let's start with some tips for new authors who just have maybe one book and are really just starting out. Ricardo: Yes, first of all, sorry for stealing your title. Jo: Oh, you know, it's never been a problem. Ricardo: We were trying to come up with something… I know, I know, I know. But still, we wanted something more original, and then we realised that for SEO purposes, that's the title we should really go for. The good thing is, if you search “how to market a book” on pretty much any retailer, you're going to find your book or mine in any order really, but those are going to be the top two books to this day, thankfully, so I'm good with that. I think in terms of marketing tips for new authors who have just the one book, I'd say, despite all the changes in the industry, the basics of marketing still stay the same. One of my big mantras when it comes to marketing is that product is more important than marketing. So having a great book is going to be more important, in my opinion, than being a great marketer. Having a great product. By that, I generally don't talk about literary value or prose or anything like that, just because I'm not a book critic. I'm not an editor. My opinion on whether a book is good or not is worth zero. From a marketing standpoint, for me, a good book is one that resonates with its intended audience. So the first step for newer authors is to basically figure out who they wrote this book for, right? Have an idea of who their target market is. A great way to do that, without entering into marketing jargon like proto-personas and stuff like that, is to think in terms of comp titles, comparable titles. I think that's probably the base of any marketing, whether traditional publishing houses or indie authors, to think, “Okay, which other books out there are similar to mine?” If your book is completely unique, you have, I would say, 99.9% chance of not selling, because your market doesn't exist, and 0.01% chance of creating your own market and completely dominating it, right? So being unique is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would say 99% of the time, it is. Obviously being unique within an existing niche, within an existing market, that's completely different, but you need to work on some comparable titles. So I would say that's where I would start, and that's one of the things that AI is great at. If you even just plug in your book into an AI chat that has enough context, if you're comfortable doing that of course, or if you plug in a synopsis, like a long synopsis, you can basically ask the AI chats, “Okay, what would be some comp titles?” Either you'll have heard of those books, and you'll think, “Okay, they're good comps,” or you may not have heard of them, in which case I would really recommend buying them and reading them and seeing whether they're comps or not. I think that's where marketing starts. Jo: Yes, and we might come back to that for book discoverability. Well, let's just talk about it now, because I now pretty much use Claude for discovering books as well. I just find that the Amazon search, for nonfiction it works really well, right? As you said, if you want to learn how to market a book, you just search “how to market a book”, and our books are very well titled for that. But for fiction, it's so difficult to find new books and comp titles, especially if you don't write in a clear genre, which I don't. I know lots of people do. So we're writing cross-genre. So in terms of book discoverability, I know you've been looking into SEO for books and all of that. What are your thoughts on how authors can more effectively have their books surfaced if people are using the AIs for finding books? Ricardo: That's a very big topic. That's one of my favourite topics right now. That's what I talk about in my marketing newsletter, and I want to start a Substack on the topic as well, because I think it is the future of book discoverability. As you say, search on Amazon isn't great, and if it's not great on Amazon, you don't even want to imagine on Google Play, Kobo, all these sorts of places, right? If you search on Kobo or Apple Books or Google Play for witch cozy mysteries, the top 10 books are going to have exactly “witch cozy mystery” in the title or the subtitle or the series title, right? Jo: Yes. Ricardo: Search is very simple on those sites, so it's very easy to game, but it's terrible as an experience for readers. So I do think that a big part of search is going to move to AI, and now you have Rufus within Amazon itself that appears as a chatbot and encourages you to talk with it, to ask for recommendations. In the beginning Rufus was really terrible, but now I recommend authors play with it. In general, I recommend when it comes to AI discoverability that authors play with all the AI search tools. So it's going to be Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Rufus within Amazon. Just like we talked about comp titles, right, ask for something like, “What would you recommend for fans of this book? Which other books would you recommend?” Or if you're looking for something specific that describes your book, what books would you recommend on… I think one of your examples was fiction around masonry or something like that, right? Jo: I always say, for example, if you ask for action adventure thrillers on pretty much anywhere, you're going to get 20 books by male authors. For those of us who are female authors, but also who have female main characters, you can then be far more granular. That's just not something that necessarily works on Amazon. So, action adventure thrillers with female protagonists written by female indie authors, which is very specific. That will work in AI, whereas that definitely won't work on Amazon. Ricardo: Exactly. So one of the great things about AI search, and terrible things at the same time, is that the concept of keyword is lost, right? So we title our books How to Market a Book because the keyword that people would search for is “how to market a book”, or “book marketing for authors”. Those were the two keywords that had the biggest search volume if we looked at Google Keyword Planner, or any search tools that give you keyword volume. When it comes to AI search, since it's conversational, and it's very personalised, and it can go as niche as you want, keywords are going to disappear, and search volume as a metric is going to disappear. The search you just told me about, maybe there are 10 people who are going to run it exactly. Most people are going to run variations of that. Since you can go as granular as you want, it's going to be very long phrases, very long sentences. So the whole concept of keywords, search volume, SEO, is going to disappear in favour of what some people call GEO, generative engine optimisation, AIO, AI optimisation, AI search optimisation. There's a bunch of names for it, but it is a different discipline. It still works on the basis of Google SEO because what most of these search engines will do is they're going to search the internet, right? They've been trained on a lot of information, but not all of that information is current. Most of these models have been trained on documents and web pages before 2021. That's why when you used the very early versions of ChatGPT, and you asked it about current events or current books, it didn't find it. It didn't have that information. Now all these models have the ability to search the web, and they do that really effectively. So the first thing they're going to do if you run a search like that is they're going to run dozens of different searches on Google or a similar search engine. Action thriller books with female protagonists. Action thriller books with female protagonists by indie authors. Action thriller books by indie authors. They're going to create what I call a corpus, so a massive document of information with candidates, books that probably meet those criteria that they have found through regular web searches. Then they're going to go through all those books and determine which are the most relevant to recommend, and they'll return with that. Then they'll usually have a verification layer as well, which is, okay, I have these five books that I want to recommend to this user, but I just want to make sure first that they are written by indie authors, that they do have a female protagonist, et cetera. And if I'm not able to verify that, I'll flag it in my answer to them. So there are these three layers. Web search, then ranking of the book candidates, and finally a verification layer, and then they serve you the answer. Obviously, that's really powerful. If that's the way that search is headed, which I firmly believe, then we as authors need to learn how to get our books in there. Jo: Yes. It's so interesting, and I do this all the time. Really niche stuff, like a thriller about anatomical Venuses, which are these models from anatomy museums and stuff like that, with an edge of the supernatural. What is brilliant is that you can find the books that come up. I actually got one that I read and reviewed, and it was fantastic. So I love the more granular thing, but we're really in the very long tail now, right? It feels like you can write a very nuanced book, and it will be surfaced, but only by a few people. So do we have to write our books and then try to not even retrofit them in the way that we used to? We used to try and figure out the seven keywords and all of that kind of thing, and now I almost feel like we just get to be grownups, where you just get to write the book and put it out there, and these things are more intelligent than the search terms. Ricardo: Yes, absolutely. I think in terms of the variety of books that are going to be read and discovered, that's amazing. A little bit like the whole indie publishing movement was amazing, because if you remove the traditional publishing gatekeepers, then suddenly zombie books aren't dead anymore. Zombies are alive again. They've… Jo: Come to life. Ricardo: They've come alive, and so you get a bunch of zombie books again. It's not a small niche audience. It's actually a pretty big niche audience that loves zombie books, and suddenly they have those to consume. This is a little bit similar on a much, much bigger and more granular scale, because anyone can find exactly the kind of book that they're looking for, with the tropes they want, with the type of characters they want, with the type of author they want, and you can basically use any kind of filter. So for discoverability on the side of the reader, that's great. For the authors, it doesn't mean that you can just write whatever you want and then rest, and readers will find them. Because your books still need to have generated a certain internet footprint and a certain review footprint in order to become interesting or recommendable to AI search engines, right? Unless you're the only book that an AI search engine can recommend for that specific search, and yours was very specific, so it might have been the only one. If there are other candidates, the AI search engines are pretty smart. They're going to recommend the candidates that have more reviews, better reviews, or are more famous, that have more, when I talk about internet footprint, more pages talking about them on the internet. That's for me the big finding I've seen. The more pages you have on the internet talking about your book, so that could be book review sites, that could be Goodreads lists, Listopia lists, anywhere on the internet where your book is mentioned, that creates a footprint for it. The more footprints, the more famous your book looks to AI search engines, and so the more worthy of recommendations it is to them. Jo: Yes, and this is one reason why I now ask people, especially when you sell direct, or say you have a Kickstarter and you want reviews, I ask people if they can review on Goodreads. Obviously Goodreads is owned by Amazon, but it is far more searchable by the bots than Amazon is. I sometimes find that Amazon gets blocked. Or Amazon blocks some of the bots, let's put it that way. They might change over time. They own 15% of Anthropic or something. But Goodreads I feel like does get indexed, and I'm not willing to engage on Reddit. I know Reddit is another popular one. Just be very clear on social media, because some people think, oh, I just need loads of influencers to talk about my book, and that will impact the AIs. But I find that social media just almost isn't even there. Ricardo: It depends on which social media. For me, Reddit is a social medium, right? It's a very weird one, but it's obviously the number one social medium used by AI search engines, and it's pretty dodgy stuff with lots of conflicts of interest, because Google has a paid partnership with Reddit. I think Sam Altman has shares in Reddit. So both OpenAI and Google Gemini heavily rely on Reddit for their AI answers, right? If you ask anything from ChatGPT or Gemini, I'd say there are very high chances that in the sources and the citations of the answer, you're going to find Reddit, right? That goes for books as well. Every time you ask for book recommendations, Reddit is going to be big for those two AI search engines. Claude, it's a little bit different. They do have a little bit of a relationship with Reddit, but I don't think it's as big. I found that Claude relies heavily on Goodreads, not Reddit. To me, Goodreads is another social medium at the end of the day, right? It's not the kind of social medium we think of, like… Jo: It's not TikTok. Ricardo: It's not TikTok. TikTok is surfaced a little bit, but not that much. It might become more surfaced in the future, but right now what I've found is, it's really Reddit and Goodreads. Facebook, LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is big for nonfiction topics more than fiction, because there are just not a lot of fiction readers, sorry, talking about their favourite books on LinkedIn. They usually go to other places for that. Jo: Yes, it's really interesting. So obviously TikTok has its own BookTok thing, so some people are finding books on BookTok, and some people like me are finding books through asking Claude, and that's just my overwhelming feeling about the industry. We talked earlier about what's changed. When I started, so 2006, there wasn't even KDP, and then KDP arrives, then you came in 2014, and probably until maybe a few years after that, there was one way to self-publish. Then what's happened since is this kind of splintering. There are so many ways to self-publish. There are so many ways to reach readers. There are so many ways to market. So someone, for example, could sell direct on TikTok Shop, only market through TikTok, and you wouldn't even know that they existed over in another ecosystem, right? So do you feel like that's happened too, this total splintering? Ricardo: Absolutely. I think there are so many different ways in which you can reach your audience now and monetise it as well, that it's absolutely possible. We both know examples of authors who are only visible to their TikTok niche, right? I think the big difference is also monetisation, because earlier you also had different ways of becoming well-known. Like you had Facebook, you had potentially Twitter, back when it was Twitter. Various social media, word of mouth. But where people bought books was Amazon. So that was your monetisation. It was either selling your book on Amazon, or potentially getting KU reads after that when KU launched. Now you can sell on TikTok, you can sell direct, you can run Kickstarters, you can start a Patreon or Substack and make your money through there. There are pretty much infinite ways through which you can monetise your content as a creator. Most of those places will also have a discoverability engine built in, so you can not only sell through there and make money through there, but also grow an audience there. That's probably the biggest competition that Amazon has ever had to face, is this sort of splintering. For us authors and content creators in general, it's amazing, because it's a bunch of different opportunities. Jo: Yes, and I think probably that's circling back to marketing. As we've said, some things have changed, some things stay the same. Is the email list still the number one way to market, do you think, for authors who want a long-term career? Ricardo: I think so. It's just the one thing you really own that allows you to communicate with readers, right? Because even if you build a following on TikTok, TikTok can change. The things we said about Facebook 10 years ago, if you build your Facebook group, Facebook can change, and Facebook changed. Facebook destroyed the reach of pages, and now groups also aren't amazing, et cetera. So the same thing that happened to Facebook can happen to TikTok, can happen to any other social media. Substack is a bit of a hybrid because it is a newsletter, it is a mailing list, but it also has a discoverability engine built in. So I still wouldn't really go all in on Substack. The great advantage there is that you do own the emails, right? So you can move away from it at some point. For me, the email list is the one thing that you are completely in control of. Personally, the main thing I check is my emails every day. I spend more time in my inbox than anywhere else, and I think that's probably the case for most people. So I do think, despite the influx of mails that readers are getting in their inbox, I still think it's one of the most important marketing tools for authors. Jo: Yes, and I still remember when I started my list in December 2008, and I still have people on the list who've been with me that whole time, and have moved email list services several times as well. So I think that's important too. The care of that list too is so important. One of the things that I am annoyed about with Substack, I don't have a Substack, but when I follow some people's, it's always constantly trying to get you to sign up to other people's lists, trying to subscribe you to this or that or the other. I'm like, “That's so annoying.” Now I've found on all these email services they're trying to pair you with other creators and cross-promote and all of this. So it feels like even the email list is becoming a difficult place unless you really protect it. So just protecting your list, I think, and remembering that those are people. Those are people who've bought your books, or people who read your emails. Like people listening to this, these are humans. Sure, some bot might be looking at the transcript, but humans listening to this are individual humans with individual email lists. We tend to forget that, don't we, as you get a bigger list. You think about it as a big number, whereas it's still individual people. Ricardo: Yes, it becomes a number, it becomes metrics, the open rate, the click rate, and all that. But the great thing about email is that you get replies in your inbox. There you remember that they're actual human beings who write you back. I think for readers, the ability to write back to an author and get a response is just amazing, right? If you write to your favourite author and they write back to you, that's the best feeling ever as a reader. So I think email is still one of the best ways to turn your readers into fans and into super fans of your brand, by just interacting with them and answering them. Because yes, you can answer comments on TikTok, Facebook, and all those places, but it doesn't feel the same as an author answering you in your inbox, I feel. So you do get that ability to create a real connection with readers directly through email. Jo: Yes, and I think that trust and the reputation is so important. Just in terms of seeing the authors that you've seen over the years, like I said, you've been going to a lot of the author conferences. You know a lot of the authors in the industry. A lot of people will know you from events. But you've also seen authors come and go, and you've seen vendors come and go. Both of us have seen people arrive, and we'd be like, “Oh, yes, I wonder how long they're going to last.” Then some people do and some people don't. So what are some of the elements that you've noticed about the businesses that last more than a decade? Ricardo: I think they need to solve a genuine problem, or offer a genuinely better solution than one that already exists. I see a lot of businesses come in and they do what another vendor already does, without doing it necessarily better. Those businesses tend to disappear, or linger there, but you don't really hear about them again. When they solve a real need… I still remember when BookFunnel came out, and they've since become massive with one very, very basic thing, which is, “We will take care of delivering your ebook files to readers.” That's how they started, and that's how they became massive. To me at the time, I was like, “That seems like a very small problem,” because I can just email an ebook file. I didn't realise that it was so complicated for a lot of readers to upload files to their Kindle or other devices, and that having a service that takes care of that for you is just massively helpful. I realised that when I published my books, actually. So businesses that solve even micro or apparently very small problems, but they really solve them effectively, they stay. Others that surf on trends, they tend to disappear when the trend disappears. When there's a new marketing trend, and that trend stops working, then those businesses tend to go. Jo: Yes, and what about the authors who last? Because let's face it, most of us don't solve a problem in a different way. Maybe you could say we solve your entertainment problem in a different version to your last book. What about the authors who last long term? What have you noticed about them? Ricardo: Two things. So the first one… Maybe three things. First one is passion. I always say to people who are looking to start self-publishing, I always say that publishing in general is probably one of the worst ways to make money. It's awful. You can pick up any other occupation and it's probably going to be easier to make money. So writers who make a career do it because they need to write, because they have a passion for writing. So a lot of people who come into the industry thinking, “I've heard about all these self-publishing success stories. Surely I can write a book and I can market it. It's not that hard. So that's going to be a great way to make quick bucks,” those generally don't last, because they don't have that genuine passion. The first hurdle they're going to face—and there's going to be a bunch of them along the way—they're going to quit. The second thing is business sense, or business education, the basics of business, right? Thinking in terms of marketing, thinking in terms of who's my reader, unit economics. If I'm selling my books at $3.99, I shouldn't be spending a ton of money. If I just have one book at $3.99, I cannot afford to pay $5 on ads to generate a sale. So those kinds of basic economics or business knowledge, I think, if not a requirement, it's a massive plus. The third thing is resilience. The industry has changed a lot, as you mentioned. There are a bunch of ways now to reach an audience. There are a bunch of ways to make money. It can also be distracting, because you go to one of these conferences and you go back thinking, “Oh, I've got to create my own website, sell direct. I've got to launch my Substack. I have to use Claude Code for my ads,” and three more things, “and I have to set up my TikTok Shop and do TikTok Lives to sell books,” right? Jo: All of those by next week. That's why we go to the conference. Ricardo: Exactly. All those by next week, right? And during that one week after the conference, you have the energy to start implementing all those things, but afterwards you lose that energy and you go back to, “I just want to quit.” So you need to have some sort of resilience, and the business sense of, “Okay, I'm going to try this for the next six months, and I'm going to stick to it, and I'm going to see whether it works or not. And if it doesn't work, I'm not just going to despair. I'm going to try something else.” That goes for marketing tactics, but also goes for books. Most authors I know who make a living writing, they didn't get there with their first book or even their first series. A lot of times I see authors who write a couple of series, and those series do okay. They sell a little bit, but not much, and it doesn't afford them to quit their day job. Then suddenly, based on what they've learned with those first two series and what they've learned potentially going to conferences or listening to podcasts like this, et cetera, they write a third series that's a hit. That's a hit, and that's instantly much easier to market, and that's when they can afford to go full time and write full time, because they've found that sort of product market fit. And product market fit for me is the main thing for marketing in general and for authors in particular. Until you find that, everything is really difficult from a marketing perspective. But finding it usually requires writing more than one book and more than one series, because you're rarely going to get the big lottery ticket on the first try. Jo: Or ever. I think it's really important. I've never had a breakout book, but I've made good money every year. I think, and Hugh Howey said this, that the real story of self-publishing is not the people who make seven figures a year, it's the people who can go on a holiday once a year, or the people who can just put a bit towards their mortgage or whatever. So you may never have a breakout series. I think that's really important, too. Ricardo: That's true. Jo: That's true. You can just keep writing and make all right money and be what we call in the mid-list. Ricardo: Yes, but you've got to keep going. You've got to have that resilience to keep going, probably because it's your passion. Exactly. You're not chasing that seven figure series. You're writing because you need to write. Jo: Yes, and you can't stop, and you get the bug. I think when you're writing that first book, I'm not sure if people understand that you either get the bug or you don't, I think. You've written a couple of books now. Do you think you have the bug, or is it more about the business? Ricardo: I don't have the bug. I definitely don't have the bug. I would've kept writing otherwise. Jo: You're a technologist, right? Ricardo: Yes. I'm more of a technologist, more of a marketer. To write my first book, How to Market a Book, I actually had to write newsletters, because that I can manage, right? One newsletter a week. Now I don't even manage that. I send it once every two weeks when I can even manage that pace. But back then I did one newsletter a week, and that's how I wrote my first book. I then put all these newsletters together, and that was before the age of AI, so I couldn't just dump all that into ChatGPT and tell it, “Create me a book based on that.” I had to do it myself. Jo: Oh, terrible. Ricardo: Terrible, I know. The days when we had to work. No, but that was a really good experiment. The second book, Amazon Ads for Authors, I actually wrote it from scratch, and I didn't love the experience. I loved the finished product, I'm very proud of it, but I didn't enjoy the experience of writing it. Amazon Ads is not the most exciting topic in the world. Even for people like me, who actually enjoy Amazon Ads, it's not super exciting to write about. The fact of having to write that whole book from scratch, I didn't love the experience. So now I do want to write a third book at some point, but I think it'll probably be in the format of the first one. Like, when I finish my series of newsletters on AI search and AI discoverability, I might do a booklet or something around it, but we'll have to see. It's not my favourite thing. It's a good thing I don't need to. Good thing I'm not an author, basically. Jo: No, but I think that's really great to recognise. You actually have written books that support your business, and that is very common for nonfiction writers. That's completely normal for nonfiction authors. So I think that's another important thing for people to recognise, is that the reasons we write are different, the reasons we market are different, and we all have different approaches. As we wind up, and obviously you talked a bit there about how easy it is to generate books with AI, and that is probably one of the biggest things that people are worried about. Now, those of us like you and I have been talking about AI at conferences and things for years now. Neither of us are afraid of it, I think basically because both of us use it, and we're technologists, so we just get on with it. There is so much fear in the community. There's so much negativity. You mentioned Substack, and now they've integrated Pangram, which is renowned for false positives around what is written with AI, and so people are very worried. If we look forward and we look at the next decade, this is not going away. This is going to change a lot of things. So how should authors be thinking about AI, do you think, if they want to prepare for the next decade? Ricardo: I think they need to play around with it, because you and I know that until you actually use it, you don't realise what it's capable of. We've both had these moments of “Oh my God, I'm going to be out of a job,” or “Oh my God, this is incredible,” the kind of things it's able to do. You also realise by using it the things it's not great at, or the things it can be good at but needing a lot of human input. There are courses out there, there are books, there are a lot of things, but for me, the most important thing is to start playing around with it. So you can pick one specific topic to play around with. Either something that you've been meaning to get into for years and haven't done, or something that really annoys you. Looking at the results of your Facebook ads, for example. If you run Facebook ads in the first place, and when you log into your Meta dashboard you cannot make sense of it, take screenshots or download the data, feed it to an AI chat, and talk with it. One of my biggest tips when talking to AI chats is asking them questions rather than asking them for things to do. Because if you just feed it your advertising data and you tell it, “Tell me what I should do,” the chat has no context about what your ads are about, what your goal is, et cetera, et cetera. If you feed it just a screenshot and you say, “Here are my ads. I would like you to help me make sense of them. What do you need to know from me in order to help me with this?” Then it's going to start asking you questions. “Okay, what are you advertising?” They're books. “Okay, what kind of books? Where are you selling? Are your ads going straight to Amazon or retailers, or are they going to your website? If you sell direct, okay, are these conversion ads?” Et cetera, et cetera. So you build that context, and they can help you with it. So that's just one example, but I would pick one thing that you want to test AI with, with zero expectations. Don't expect that by the end of the week you'll have a full system for understanding your Meta ads thanks to AI. You might get to that or you might not, but at least you'll play with it and you'll understand its capabilities, and have a sort of understanding of how it works and how you can potentially use it for other things. I think that's the best way to adapt, because once you play with it, you start thinking. You're walking the dog and you're just thinking, “Ha, I could maybe use it for this thing or that other thing,” and that's how you progressively become more familiar with it. I think there are a lot of worries around AI, but as you say, it's there to stay. So far, I think I was looking at data this morning, and the unemployment rate in the US has stayed stable ever since ChatGPT was introduced two years ago. So there are a lot of narratives out there around how it's going to replace humans, it's going to replace jobs, et cetera, which it might do. I'm not great at predictions usually, but so far it hasn't. What it will definitely do, however, is completely change the way we work. Obviously AI was one of our big reckonings at Reedsy, because we run a marketplace. Our main business model is the marketplace, where authors come in and look for editors, for marketers, for cover designers, for translators, and some of these domains and services are being transformed by AI, right? AI translations are massive right now. We haven't really seen a decline at all on the Reedsy marketplace, but we're prepared for it. It might very well happen, but what we think is happening, or is going to happen, is professionals using AI tools to provide a better output or a faster output or a cheaper output, or all three of these things. So for example, we now have literary translators who say they're open to editing AI translations, right? So you can come in, you can have your book translated with AI, whichever tool or method you choose for that. Then if you want a set of human eyes on it, you can hire a literary translator who's open to working on an AI-translated manuscript, and that's obviously going to be much, much cheaper than paying 10 cents per word from scratch for a literary translator. I'm not necessarily recommending you completely bypass literary translators, or that you go this way, but you have options, right? You have options for different sets of budgets. I think all these human editors, narrators, translators, designers, et cetera, they're not going to disappear, but they might have to reinvent the way they work in the future. Jo: As we all are doing. As you say, for me mostly it's the business side, getting Claude to help me with business stuff. Like even bookkeeping. There are bills that we've all been paying for years that we can now maybe reduce, and reducing costs as well as increasing profit is obviously good business sense. So, interesting times. But just as we wrap up, what are you excited about in what's coming? How do you see Reedsy shaping up in the next decade? What is coming for you and Reedsy? Ricardo: We're really excited about the decade to come, because obviously 10 years for a startup is a long time. I think most startups after 10 years, the founders are gone. Jo: Yes. Ricardo: Or they've exited or they've sold or whatever. We've stayed, we're the same founders, and we're still as excited because I think we have new products, right? We're working on new things. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Reedsy Studio, our writing tool, is probably one of the things we're most excited about, because first, it's getting adopted very fast. It has startup-like growth that we hadn't seen for other products in a long time, and it has very cool technology built in. We probably have a team of 10, 15 engineers now working full time on it and adding a lot of things. So we've added templates for plotting your book, with relationships within different characters and places and magic systems and things like that. We've added writing goals and writing statistics. We still have the free exports. One very cool thing we've added is real time collaboration. So just like Google Docs, you can write in real time with a co-author, or you can get an editor to work in there live with track changes. So you could have an editor working on chapter one while you're writing chapter three, for example. That kind of thing. It's really powerful technology, and that's one of the things we're really excited about for the future. A business, just like authors, we've got to reinvent ourselves. We've got to find ways to keep things exciting and keep motivated, and that is definitely one of them. When adoption goes along with it, then that's obviously super satisfying. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and Reedsy online? Ricardo: So Reedsy you can find at reedsy.com, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com. And there you'll find the whole suite of tools and services. For me, you can find me mostly by email, as I mentioned. That's the one place I check consistently every day, and my email address is ricardo@reedsy.com. So again, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com and ricardo@reedsy.com. You can email me any questions you have about this episode, about AI book discoverability, about marketing, about Reedsy. I always try to answer every email I get, because I think when we started Reedsy, I really appreciated people like you, and some other agents and editors and authors we contacted who were influential in the industry, who actually answered us and took the time to do that. So now I try to answer every email I get, because I feel like we've been very lucky in the beginning to have those people answering our emails, so we should do the same. Jo: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Ricardo. That was great. Ricardo: Thank you, Jo. Thanks for having me again.The post Book Marketing, AI Book Discoverability, And Resilience, With Ricardo Fayet first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What do you want to be known for, and does your digital footprint actually reflect it? In this special behind-the-scenes session from the She Believed She Could Summit, Allison Walsh is joined by Heather French Henry and Brielle Cotterman for a powerful conversation about personal branding, identity, storytelling, publicity, and taking ownership of your narrative. Heather challenges you to look beyond titles, services, and accomplishments to define the character, values, and impact you want people to associate with your name. Brielle then reveals why telling that story intentionally has never been more important, especially as AI changes how people discover, research, and form opinions about individuals and brands online. From defining what you stand for to leveraging PR, earned media, podcast interviews, thought leadership, and third-party credibility, this episode will help you become more intentional about the story the world is hearing about you. Because if you don't tell people who you are, what you do, and what you stand for, someone else will. Plus, Allison shares how you can experience more conversations like this live at the upcoming Iconic Impact Summit. Connect with Heather: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heatherfrenchhenry/ Website: https://www.heatherfrenchhenry.com/ Connect with Brielle: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briellecotterman/ Website: https://influentialleaderagency.com/ Positioned for Partnerships™ Mini Course - Turn your platform into a revenue-generating brand opportunity—without needing a massive following. Learn how to position your brand, create a high-converting media kit, and confidently pitch partnerships so brands instantly understand your value. 

Votre prochain client ne sera peut-être plus un humain.Ce sera un agent IA qui compare, décide et achète à la place de votre prospect.Dans cet épisode de Marketing Square, je reçois Karen Jouve, CEO de Doors3, experte IA, Web3 et réalités immersives pour décrypter le Business to Agent (B2A), le nouveau paradigme commercial qui vient après le B2B et le B2C.Le récap complet est dans ma newsletter Bankable! : https://newsletter.carolinemignaux.com/Au programme :• Le B2A : qu'est-ce que le Business to Agent ?• GEO vs SEO : les tags data pour être visible des agents IA• Comment se préparer concrètement (3 profils d'entrepreneurs)• Le command center : automatiser son organisation avec l'IA• Stablecoin : la monnaie des agents IA (Visa y travaille)• L'employé augmenté : passeport digital, blockchain et IA• Risques : injections de prompt, cybersécurité, flou juridique• Revenu universel, futur du travail et changement de modèlePOUR ALLER PLUS LOIN☑ Audit de votre compte par Agence Personnelle : https://carolinemignaux.com/agence☑ Créer votre marque personnelle (le bundle) : https://carolinemignaux.com/bundle☑ Rejoindre la communauté The Square : https://www.carolinemignaux.com/communaute☑ Le récap de l'épisode dans ma newsletter Bankable! : https://newsletter.carolinemignaux.com/

AI search is changing how law firms, lawyers, and their expertise are discovered. Jennifer Simpson Carr is joined by Furia Rubel colleagues Leslie Richards, Sarah Larson, and Becky Bergman to discuss what generative engine optimization (GEO) means for earned media, thought leadership, and reporter relationships. They explore why firms need a more focused, consistent, and trusted communications ecosystem to strengthen visibility as search continues to evolve.

Der neue Grill ist kaputt – und die Kaufberatung startet nicht mehr bei Google oder Amazon, sondern in ChatGPT. Für Händler und Marken heißt das: Die entscheidende Phase der Customer Journey passiert, bevor der Kunde überhaupt auf der eigenen Seite landet. Wer dort mit den falschen Daten antritt, taucht in den KI-Empfehlungen gar nicht erst auf. Burkhard Richter, Director Digital Consulting bei Diconium, beschäftigt sich seit über 25 Jahren mit E-Commerce. In dieser Money-Monday-Folge nimmt er sich fünf Hypothesen zu Agentic Commerce vor und zeigt, was KI im Handel wirklich verändert – und was Händler jetzt konkret tun sollten. Wir sprechen darüber, warum aus SEO jetzt GEO wird, wieso Datensilos das größte Hindernis sind, warum KI eher Profitabilität als Wachstum bringt, wie sich die Rolle des Online-Shops verändert – und warum sich Kunden trotz aller Automatisierung wieder nach menschlichem Kontakt sehnen. Du erfährst... ...wie KI Kaufentscheidungen beeinflusst und Unternehmen darauf reagieren können. ...welche Rolle der Online-Shop in einer KI-geprägten Zukunft spielt. ...wie menschliche Interaktion trotz KI im Handel relevant bleibt. __________________________ ||||| PERSONEN |||||

Was unter unseren Füßen passiert, ist mindestens so faszinierend wie das Leben in unseren Meeren: In einer einzigen Handvoll Waldboden können Millionen verschiedener Organismen und Milliarden Individuen leben. Bakterien, Pilze, Springschwänze, Regenwürmer und unzählige weitere Lebewesen bilden ein hochkomplexes Netzwerk. In dieser Folge von „Peter und der Wald“ geht Peter der Frage nach, warum gesunder Waldboden so entscheidend für unsere Wälder, den Wasserhaushalt, die Artenvielfalt und sogar die Speicherung von Kohlenstoff ist. Wir sprechen darüber, warum sich Böden durch den Klimawandel aufheizen, weshalb Humus ein gigantischer Wasserspeicher ist, wie Waldbewirtschaftung das „Rezept“ des Bodens verändert und warum alte, ungestörte Wälder besonders wertvoll sind. Und ganz nebenbei gibt es noch einen seltenen Gast auf der Wildkamera: einen Iltis!

Natasha Wallace, Chief Solutions Officer for Strategy, Planning and AI at Jellyfish, joins That's What I Call Marketing to discuss how brands can become more visible and understandable to AI without sacrificing creativity, emotion or distinctiveness.This episode explains how marketers should approach the growing challenge of serving two audiences at once: humans, who respond to stories, feelings and ideas, and AI models, which rely on clear signals, context, trust and specificity.In this episode, we cover:– Why Jellyfish's research found almost no correlation between how humans and AI models judge creative work– What “brand flattening” means and why marketers should resist making everything rational and functional– How to make a brand legible to large language models without weakening its creativity– Why brand trust, distinctive assets and consumer consensus still influence AI recommendations– The role of YouTube, Reddit, creators, ecommerce and digital PR in shaping model perception– Why paid, owned and earned media need to work together in an AI-led discovery environmentNatasha also explains Jellyfish's concept of the “brand echo”: the conversation, reaction and community created around a brand, even when the original activity is not directly visible to an AI model.The practical message is not that marketers need to abandon the fundamentals. It is that audience strategy, brand positioning, content, media and measurement need to work together more closely. The brands most likely to succeed will be clear enough for machines to understand and interesting enough for people to care about.A useful listen for marketers interested in AI in marketing, GEO, brand strategy, creativity, content strategy, advertising effectiveness and the future of search and discovery.That's What I Call Marketing is the podcast for marketers who care about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Follow the show for more conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, professors, authors, thinkers and practitioners.Find more episodes at: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.com**Timestamps**00:00 Why marketers must not flatten their brands for AI00:39 Introducing Natasha Wallace of Jellyfish02:04 Natasha's career across digital, media and emerging technology03:35 Why AI feels different from previous industry shifts05:23 Working globally with Heineken and major sports properties07:05 Why Natasha joined Jellyfish09:00 Bringing media, content, creative and AI strategy together12:32 What humans and AI models see in award-winning advertising15:31 The danger of brand flattening16:36 How the “brand echo” influences AI models17:35 Why brand trust and distinctive assets still matter20:21 Why YouTube is frequently cited by large language models22:28 How marketers should prioritise their AI and GEO activity24:46 Leading and lagging indicators for AI visibility26:01 The platforms and voices that shape model perception27:27 Borrowed credibility, belonging and long-term brand associations30:05 Testing creative work without making it formulaic32:25 Why AI should strengthen human thinking, not replace itThat's What I Call Marketing is the podcast for marketers who care about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Follow the show for more conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, professors, authors, thinkers and practitioners.Find more episodes at: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.comThis Cannes Sessions episode is produced in partnership with The Digital Voice.That's What I Call Marketing is where marketers come for real conversations about brand, B2B, creativity, effectiveness and the future of the profession.Hosted by Conor Byrne, the show features conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, agency leaders, authors, thinkers and practitioners about what good marketing looks like in practice.Listen, follow and find more episodes at: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.comConnect with Conor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorbyrneirl/If you enjoy the show, please follow, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more marketers find the conversations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first live marketing talk show goes under the hood of the growth machines running frontier tech. No hype, no founder worship, just marketers who have done the work telling you what they actually see.​Every other week, a rotating crew goes live to decode the moves everyone in marketing is quietly talking about, break down a real product in real time, take hard sides on a hot take that matters, and put their own instincts under pressure with no time to hide behind a framework.​This week we open on Reddit turning on itself: its own ads boss admits he's not sure the data moat he sells advertisers is still exclusive, now that the company is licensing community data to OpenAI and Google. Then Olly takes GEO apart and makes the case that "AI visibility" is mostly repackaged SEO with a shinier name. And we get into creators becoming the IP, where a 4chan post turns into a $390M franchise and studios scramble to own culture nobody really can. Plus more.This is Chain Reactions, reborn as the show from marketers to break open all the marketing around you.

  THE SHOW NOTES   Hobbiton Intro Nice Circle-of-Life Moment The History Chunk      - August 13th Religious Moron of the Week      - Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini Ask George      - NYC instead of PA? from Chris H. Tell Me Something Good      - Milo the Horse Show Close .........................   MENTIONED IN THE SHOW   Something Good .........................   UPCOMING SCHEDULE   Episode 1000 of The Geologic Podcast Saturday, January 9, 2027 The Icehouse, Bethlehem, PA .........................   SUBSCRIPTION INTERFACE   You can now find our subscription page at GeorgeHrab.com at this link. Many thanks to the sage Evo Terra for his assistance. .........................   Get George's Music Here  https://georgehrab.hearnow.com https://georgehrab.bandcamp.com ................................... SUBSCRIBE! You can sign up at GeorgeHrab.com and become a Geologist or a Geographer. As always, thank you so much for your support! You make the ship go. ................................... Sign up for the mailing list: Write to Geo! Check out Geo's wiki page, thanks to Tim Farley. Have a comment on the show, a Religious Moron tip, or a question for Ask George? Drop George a line and write to Geo's Mom, too!

Send us Fan MailAI is quietly rewriting the rules of marketing, not by “changing SEO” but by changing how buyers choose. When a chatbot can shortlist vendors in a single conversation, visibility is no longer the finish line. Recommendability is. I sit down with Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, to unpack what it takes to earn AI recommendations and what most brands are missing when they chase rankings without understanding the visitor. We get practical about how AI search optimization is really the overlap of SEO and conversion rate optimization. Andy explains why prompts are longer and more personal than classic queries, how that extra context reveals real decision criteria, and why your website still matters because it is the place you control the depth, proof, and sales answers. We also dig into why AI-sourced visitors can be far more qualified, why traffic growth is a shaky North Star, and how to stop being silently excluded by publishing the questions prospects actually ask before they will take action. Then we go deeper on content strategy in an era of infinite “average” content. Andy makes a clear case for the formats AI cannot truly replicate: thought leadership with a strong point of view and original research rooted in real data. We also talk prompt engineering maturity, from ad hoc prompts to reusable prompts to custom assistants and tools, and what separates the revenue accountable CMO from someone who just manages AI outputs. This episode was recorded through a Descript call on August 3, 2026. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/train-the-ai-to-recommend-you-with-andy-crestodinaIf you care about B2B marketing, lead generation, buyer intent, and building a brand that gets chosen, this one will sharpen your playbook. Subscribe, share this with a marketer who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway...........................................................................Metricool is a new official podcast partner of Web3 CMO Stories in 2026. Metricool helps marketers and creators bring structure, clarity, and consistency to their social media workflows through analytics, planning, and reporting. Listeners can try Metricool Premium for free for 30 days using the coupon code JOERI.......................................................................... 

Times change, but somehow the job hasn’t. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into what’s stayed constant across their combined decades in PR and marketing, and why chasing the latest platform update is a losing game if you’ve lost sight of the fundamentals underneath it. The episode was sparked by a LinkedIn series from Doug Simon, who asked longtime PR pros what has remained constant in their careers. Gini was asked the question of whether the PESO Model still holds up, and her answer is that the four media types haven’t gone anywhere, and earned media’s third-party credibility now matters more to how LLMs learn. Chip extends the logic to SEO and its successors, advising to chase the people, not the algorithm or the platform. Other changes may also have less of an impact than you might think. Influencer marketing is the latest version of celebrity TV endorsements, but with a YouTube channel. The agency-client relationship continues to run on the same dynamics it did 70 or 80 years ago. Gini brings up the story about a UK agency reportedly running AI agents to pitch journalists undetected for eight months. Chip’s take is that just like with interns and inexperienced team members, there are well-managed AI agents as well as poorly managed ones. It's the human factor that matters most. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “If you lose sight of the fundamentals, you can have all the technology in the world, and you’re still gonna have rubbish results.” Gini Dietrich: “If you create content for humans, you will win the SEO game. You will win the AEO, GEO game. You will win whatever comes next game.” Chip Griffin: “Chase the people. Don’t chase the algorithm.” Gini Dietrich: “Your job, especially as a communicator, is to protect reputation, build brand, and create thought leadership. That has not changed.” View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m gonna have to try to rack my memory from way, way back, and as I get older, that, that distance gets longer and my memory gets poorer, so we’ll see how this works. Gini Dietrich: Ok- okay. Well, I have the same afflictions, so let’s see what happens. Chip Griffin: So we thought that this was, this was spurred by something that our friend Doug Simon did recently on LinkedIn where he did a video series and talked to a bunch of people who have been in the PR industry for a long time and asked a series of questions, one of which was, what has- Remained constant over the course of your career in PR. Obviously we talk a lot these days about everything that, that has changed, is changing. There’s no shortage of those things. I’ve talked about it here on the show, you know, how we started with fax machines and mailed press releases and things like that, that just kind of blows the mind of a lot of the younger listeners that we have. But, but even with all of that change and with everything that AI is doing to our industry today, there are a lot of things that have stayed constant. And I think that as we think about how we run our agencies, it’s important to remember the fundamentals that have remained the same no matter how much technology has changed in PR and marketing. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right that the, probably the way that we do things has changed, but not the strategic reason. Like I say to people all the time that the reason you do your job has not changed. The strategy, the strategic reason behind it has not changed. The tools have changed, for sure, but your job, especially as a communicator, is to protect reputation, build brand, and create thought leadership. That has not changed. Yeah. The way that you go about it has changed, but not, not the actual doing of the job has changed. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, the tools have changed. The landscape certainly in media has changed. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yes. Chip Griffin: The landscape in terms of the public and where they go for information and where they receive messaging and all of that, obviously that has changed substantially over the 35 plus years that I’ve been in communications. But it is still about communicating the right message at the right time to the right people. Yeah. And building relationships with the people that you are trying to influence, whether that’s a member of the media or a member of the public or potential client or whomever. And if you remember those fundamentals, it helps you to figure out how to use all of these technologies for their greatest impact. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I had a convers- I was on Zoom with Fred Cook of former GolinHarris, now at Annenberg Center. I was on Zoom with him last week, and he’s like, “So has PESO changed?” And I was like, “No, because we still do those things, right?” Like, the way that we implement it today versus the way we implemented it in 2014 are completely different, for sure. But we still use earned media, we still use shared media, we still use owned media, we still use paid media. The way that we use it has changed, but we still use the four media types. And to your point, media has changed, so earned media has changed, like the, the recipient of our earned media has changed, but the outcome of third-party credibility is probably even more important today than it was back then because that’s how the LLMs learn too, is by citable information. So yes, the way that we go about it has changed, but the actual work itself, the outcome itself has not. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think the, the important thing to think about here is that, that ultimately all of these tools and publications and platforms are all designed to connect one human to another. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And, and so you know, when you think about public relations, for example, it’s got relations right there in the title. And so you really need to think about how you are building those relationships between whoever the person is on your end and the person that you’re trying to reach. And, if you, if you take the humans out of this entirely, then you’re missing the plot, and you really need to be thinking about how do these tools and how do these techniques allow you to do more of that, to do it better, to do it at greater scale, all of those kinds of things, but not, not just, you know, chuck everything that you knew out the window, have the machines do everything on their own, for you. Gini Dietrich: No. No. Chip Griffin: Abandon proven approaches. None of those things make any sense. Gini Dietrich: No. Please do not do that because that has not changed. Like, the way I- we talked about this last week, like, AI is making us far more productive and far more efficient, but you still have to know how to, to your point, relate to other human beings. Are you creating content and engineering your visibility to show up in AI? For sure. But that’s also because human beings are using AI to get the answer, so you still have to build those relationships with other human beings. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and if you follow the fundamentals, then it allows you to evolve with whatever tools and technology- That’s right come along. It’s similar to what I’ve always said in terms of SEO in the old days and now AEO, GEO, which is chase the people. Don’t chase the algorithm. Yep. Don’t chase the platform. Yep. Chase the, the people because ultimately all of the tools are designed to do that anyway, right? Right. I mean, Google for years has been trying to figure out what is the user actually looking for and trying to deliver that in the results. And so if you are sitting there trying to say, “Hey, I need to figure out how to reach that same person,” you’ll probably be okay no matter how they change the algorithm. If you sit there and say, “I need to figure out what was the latest Google algorithm update, and what does that mean?” “How should I move things around on my page? What should I bold?” If you start thinking in those terms, you may win the short-term battle, but you will lose the war because you do not understand what you’re actually trying to do, and that has not changed over the course of our careers. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I’ve said for at least a decade, if not longer, that if you create content for humans, you will win the SEO game. You will win the AEO, GEO game. You will win whatever comes next game. Because human beings are still the ones that are purchasing your services. The robots are not. Chip Griffin: Right. Gini Dietrich: And so if you create content, if it’s whatever content it is, it’s earned media, it’s video, it’s audio, it’s written, whatever it happens to be, if that audience, number one audience is human beings, you will win all the other games. Chip Griffin: And look, even most of the things that we look at today as new, they aren’t really. They’re just, they- they’re packaged differently. I, you know- Right … we, we have all of this talk around influencers- Yes, yes … and the rise of influencers. Yes, yes. Which to me is one of the silliest things in the world. Not the influencers themselves, I mean, some of them can be silly. They’re certainly useful to us as communicators, marketers, et cetera. But that’s no different than three decades ago when we had celebrity endorsements. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: Right? The, it is just the modern-day equivalent of it, and we just define celebrity a little bit differently than we might have back, you know- Yep in the ’80s or ’90s, but ultimately it’s the same thing. It’s just they have a YouTube channel now or an Instagram account- Right … instead of, you know, you put them in a TV commercial or a print ad or something like that. But even back in the day, you had celebrity endorsers who were not truly celebrities. They were just someone known in their local community- Right … who you could throw in a newspaper ad and say- Yeah … you know, “Hey, you know, I believe in either this cause or this product or whatever.” So that has not changed. That continues to be exactly the same, just packaged differently. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, when you think about earned media, and you know, we do a, a lot, a lot, a lot of work with universities because PESO model curriculum is in almost every university’s PR, communications, marketing, and some journalism programs. So we do a ton of work with universities, and I, one of the questions I get consistently from professors is, “How are you teaching earned media through PESO?” And we keep talking about traditional media is like, that used to be the thing, right? You would get The New York Times, you would get Oprah, you would get The Today Show. Like, those things don’t matter as much anymore because you have influencers or, local celebrities that have their Substack newsletters, they have their Medium newsletters. You can subscribe to those, you can pay for those just like you would the newspaper, and you get the information that you need. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and, so little technical glitch on my end. I think we’ll clean it up, in the edit. But if you noticed anything, it was just for some reason my home TV studio- … decided to shut itself off. The, the, the smart home devices here just decided that, nope, it was time to turn everything, everything off, so. Gini Dietrich: I was talking to a blank screen. I was like, “Should I keep going?” Chip Griffin: You know, but we just, we roll through these things … on the Agency Leadership podcast because the technology has changed- It is- … but glitches still happen. Glitches, right. I mean, you know, I, I, I remember back in the ’90s, you know, using dial-up internet to do work, and then, you know, someone actually calls your landline and knocks you offline in the middle of, you know- Yep trying to send an email or something. Yep. Yep. And you gotta figure, did it actually send? Did it not send? Yep. So, you know- Mm-hmm … technical glitches- There you go … that’s another thing that has remained constant- It’s still- … despite all the technology. Oh my gosh, it’s so funny. You know, the typewriters that I used to use at work, sometimes the ribbon would get snagged, and, you know, you’d have to unsnag the ribbon, right? So even non-electronic things still had issues. Broke your pencil, whatever. Gini Dietrich: As much as things have changed- … they still remain the same. Chip Griffin: They, they absolutely do. And, and I, so I think it’s part of our responsibility as agencies to work with our clients and help them to understand that the fundamentals have remained constant and will continue to remain constant. Because we wanna make sure that we’re taking advantage of everything that’s out there, but we also need to make sure that we are not overdoing it in one area or another because we’re losing sight of those fundamentals, nor are we either having our clients get scared or us get nervous about it and what it means for our businesses. Because if we follow those fundamentals, then we can continue to adapt, and take advantage of all of these technologies as we move forward. If you, if you focus on the technology first and just say, “Hey, I need to have an AI strategy.” No, you don’t. Gini Dietrich: No, you don’t. Chip Griffin: You absolutely do not need to have an AI strategy- Right or an influencer strategy or anything. Gini Dietrich: Totally agree. Yeah. Chip Griffin: You need to have a strategy that takes advantage of AI or influencers or whatever as appropriate. Yes. But your strategy should be rooted in those fundamentals because that’s how you get ahead. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And like I said at the start, I always say the reason that we do these things has not changed. The tools have changed, the way you go about it has changed, but the how or the why has not changed. So don’t get so wrapped up in, “Oh my gosh, now I’ve gotta figure out AI.” Yeah, you gotta figure out AI- Right … because it’s, it’s going to replace you if you don’t figure it out, and it’s actually really fun, so you should figure it out just from that perspective. But you don’t have to change your strategy. You don’t have to change, like, the things that you do to service clients- Right … because that has not changed. Chip Griffin: Right. Right. And, and I think that that’s a, that’s another thing that has remained constant is the relationship between agencies and clients. You know, we think all of this is changing in the world that we’re in, but it’s really not. The way that agencies and clients work together is the same today as it was 70 or 80 years ago, even before you and I were born, let alone started working in the industry. And so understanding how those relationships and dynamics come together and how you can partner most effectively. Sure, the actual nature of the relationships has changed because of the work that we’re doing, but those relationships still matter in the same way that they always did, and you still need to build the human component into it. We can’t allow the technology to overtake that. We need to make sure that we’re spending the time to get to know our clients. We need to make sure that we’re continuing, even in this remote world that we’re in, to find ways to have additional touchpoints, whether that’s through more frequent video calls to build the relationship or ideally in person whenever possible. Those things still matter, and we still need to try to figure out how to take advantage of them to have those strong business relationships in addition to the results-oriented relationships that we’re looking for. Gini Dietrich: So I’m gonna throw a little wrench in things- Okay … because I just read an article this morning that talked about how an agency out of the UK has created AI agents that are pitching media, and it took about eight months for a journalist to go, “Something doesn’t seem right,” and then started to investigate, and sure enough, the agency owner said, “Yeah, I mean, we’ve created these bots that are pitching the media.” He claims that there are real humans on the back end of it, um, that has not been proven yet. They, the, the investigative journalist said, “I think actually based on what I have here, that there aren’t real humans behind it.” But, you know, I think when, when we hear about AI taking our jobs, we hear these kinds of stories, and we get a little freaked out. Nobody’s happy about it. Every journalist who’s been pitched by these AI bots have come out and said, “This is not okay.” But I think that there are gonna be other experiments like this where you’re trying to use– or you’re trying to build an agency out of AI agents instead of human beings. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, I– what I would say to that is I think that there are probably countless examples that we’re not aware of where the, the AI did work on pitching the journalist and didn’t get called out, right? Because- Gini Dietrich: Right … Chip Griffin: by definition, you can only call out the ones you catch. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: So, I suspect there is a fair bit of this going on. I mean, part of the problem is that, that so much of it is done poorly. I mean- Right. Yes … my, my inbox is full of sales messaging that I’m fairly certain is, you know, whether it’s directly AI generated or AI assisted, it’s hard to tell for sure sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Because it might be entirely AI or it might just be poorly managed AI. But at the same time I’m certain I’m also being exposed to plenty of messages that are AI generated, and, I can’t tell because they are, they’re good at what they do. And I think we will absolutely see more of that. But ultimately, all of the – the AI doesn’t decide to do these things on its own, right? I mean- Fair. Yeah … at least as of now. Yeah, right. And so even in the- Yep … example that you shared, even if it’s just the owner who’s involved in having created this network, you still have the human at one end of this. Yeah. Whether they are managing every message or not, who knows? And, I’m not even sure that that’s necessary as long as they are well targeted and being actually truly genuinely helpful to the journalist on the other end by giving them something that is, you know, that fits with what they write about. I mean, part of the problem with AI is that so much of it is just poorly targeted. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. Chip Griffin: But that, that’s more on the humans who are sending them out there. Yeah, yep. It’s not on… The AI can do a great job if you give it the right context, the right direction, the right information. If you just say, “Hey, you know, go find journalists” … of course it’s gonna do poorly, right? It’s- But, but so would a human … Gini Dietrich: just like a young professional Chip Griffin: I mean, we’ve talked about this before. Gini Dietrich: Right. A young pro- Yeah … intern Chip Griffin: You bring an intern and you tell them, “Just start talking to journalists and, and get them to cover us,” and you don’t tell them what you do. You don’t tell them what the journalists cover. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, they’re gonna do awful. Yeah. You start giving context and the in- even the intern will do- Yeah … a good job with very little background, but you need to give them something, and the AI needs the same thing. But ultimately it’s still that human on one end and the human on the other end. And so I think that, that we, when we’re talking about fundamentals, that’s what I’m talking about. You need to sort of separate out all of the machinations in between. That can be done well, it can be done poorly, and that changes the outcome, but fundamentally you still have a human on both ends of that conversation. Even though we like to pretend it’s the AI doing it on its own, the AI is never- It’s not … doing it on its own. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Chip Griffin: At least, at least as of this recording. No. We, we don’t have- Gini Dietrich: Not right now, right. … Chip Griffin: AI that just wanders off and does its own thing. Gini Dietrich: This is why I always say please and thank you to my AI, just so that it remembers that I was kind to it. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Well, and, I mean, we can probably talk about this some other time, but I think the AI companies are doing themselves no service by trying to make it seem like the AI operates on its own, and when they say the, “The AI broke out of its constraints and, you know, hacked into another company,” baloney. I mean, come on. Like, just knock it off. And I don’t, from a communication standpoint, I guess, you know, they may think that that’s helping them to, No … to say, “We’re really powerful. You should use us.” That’s not really- That’s not … I don’t think what- Nope … what ultimately- Gini Dietrich: That’s not the message Chip Griffin: comes through. Gini Dietrich: Nope. That’s not the message. Chip Griffin: So, yeah. So it’s, you know, you need to focus on the fundamentals. And I think if, if you take nothing else away from this discussion it’s, is that the fundamentals don’t change, haven’t changed, remain constant, you know, going back to, I don’t know, Ben Franklin or earlier, you know? These are not things that are, you know, wild and innovative. The tools and techniques are, absolutely. And but to me, that’s the exciting bit, right? Right. You can figure out, if you know the fundamentals, then you can always take advantage of the latest tools and technology to do it better, to do it faster, to do it more effectively, whatever it may be. But if you lose sight of the fundamentals, you can have all the technology in the world, and you’re still gonna have rubbish results. Gini Dietrich: 100%, I totally agree. Yep. Strategy has not changed, tools have. Chip Griffin: So with that, I think we will stop beating this dead horse, and we can, we can move along. You can move along from listening to us today, and you’ll have to join us for the next episode where we’ll find something else to rant and rave about. Gini Dietrich: Yes, we will. Chip Griffin: ‘Cause that’s what we do. That’s what we do. At least that’s what I do. Gini Dietrich: That’s what we do. Chip Griffin: So with that, I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And it depends.

+++ Weitere Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern finden Sie hier: https://linktr.ee/spurensuche +++ Incogni ➼ Hol dir deine persönlichen Daten mit Incogni zurück! Gib einfach den Code spuren über den Link unten ein und hol dir 60 % Rabatt auf ein Jahresabo: https://incogni.com/spuren Außer der Reihe gibt es etwas Bewegendes zu hören. Demnächst jähren sich die Terroranschläge vom 11. September zum 25. Mal. Ein monströses Verbrechen, dem Tausende zum Opfer fielen, ein Tag, der den Lauf der Geschichte in ein Davor und Danach teilte. Ein Team von GEO EPOCHE hat die schrecklichen Ereignisse in einer packenden sechsteiligen Podcast-Serie minutiös rekonstruiert. Sie verfolgt die Terroristen beim CheckIn in Boston, ist bei den Menschen an Bord der entführten Flugzeuge, bei denen, die am Morgen des 11. September ahnungslos zur Arbeit im World Trade Center gehen - und taucht in die Hölle ein, in die sich das höchste Gebäude der Welt kurz drauf verwandelt. Die erste Folge könnt ihr hier kostenlos hören, die ganze Serie gibt es ab sofort hier auf GEO+: www.geo.de/september Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von Julep Media: sales@julep.de Wir verarbeiten im Zusammenhang mit dem Angebot unserer Podcasts Daten. Wenn Sie der automatischen Übermittlung der Daten widersprechen wollen, melden Sie sich hier: datenschutz@julep.de

Der Sommer ist heiß und vielerorts bleibt der Regen aus. Für Wildtiere kann die anhaltende Trockenheit zur Herausforderung werden – denn natürliche Wasserstellen trocknen aus und das verfügbare Wasser wird knapp. Peter erklärt worauf man beim Aufstellen unbedingt achten sollte. Denn einfach eine Schale Wasser in den Garten zu stellen, ist nicht immer die beste Lösung. Was macht eine gute Wasserstelle aus nd wie verhindert man, dass sie für die Tiere zur Gefahr wird? Wenn ihr mehr über den Wald und seine Wunder erfahren wollt, findet ihr in Wohllebens Waldakademie spannende Veranstaltungen & Fortbildungen: https://www.wohllebens-waldakademie.de +++ Das Video zum Podcast findet ihr auf YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeterundderWaldPodcast +++ Habt ihr Fragen oder Anmerkungen zu den Themen? Schreibt uns gerne eine E-Mail an podcast@wohllebens-waldakademie.de +++ Wir sind ab sofort auch auf CampfireFM. Eine europäische Plattform, auf der wir uns gemeinsam austauschen können. Vollkomen kostenfrei und ab sofort könnt ihr dort gegen einen kleinen Betrag den Podcast auch werbefrei und mit einer monatlichen Exklsuiv-Folge hören. Schaut doch gerne mal vorbei: https://www.joincampfire.fm/api/download-app +++ Unsere allgemeinen Datenschutzrichtlinien findest du unter https://www.wohllebens-waldakademie.de/policies/privacy-policy +++ Wir verarbeiten im Zusammenhang mit dem Angebot unserer Podcasts Daten. Wenn Sie der automatischen Übermittlung der Daten widersprechen wollen, klicken Sie hier: https://datenschutz.ad-alliance.de/podcast.html

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.

Marketing is one of those things businesses tend to overcomplicate with more channels, more content, more tools, and more tactics.But sustainable growth doesn't come from doing everything. It comes from understanding your business, knowing your customer, measuring what matters, and consistently taking action.In this episode of Uncomplicate It, I sit down with Robb Fahrion, co-founder and CEO of Flying V Group, to talk about what he's learned building a founder-owned agency from a $15,000 bet into a multimillion-dollar business that has served more than 450 clients.Robb shares how bootstrapping shaped the way he thinks about profitability, accountability, and making every marketing dollar count. He also explains why businesses should understand how their customers actually buy before deciding which channels or strategies deserve their time and budget.His message is simple: stop overthinking and start taking action.We talk about why perfection can become one of the biggest obstacles to effective marketing, why publishing consistently gives businesses more opportunities to learn, and how measuring even one meaningful metric is better than spending without knowing whether anything worked.We also get into how marketing is evolving with AI, SEO, and GEO—and why chasing the newest technology without getting the fundamentals right can do more harm than good.We cover:How Robb and his co-founders turned a $15,000 bet into a multimillion-dollar agencyWhat bootstrapping teaches you about discipline and profitabilityWhy understanding your customer should come before choosing marketing channelsHow to simplify your marketing strategyWhy action beats perfectionHow to measure marketing ROI beyond vanity metricsWhy profitability matters more than impressive revenue numbersHow to build a multi-channel content strategy without spreading yourself too thinThe 30, 60, 90-day framework for testing and scaling marketingWhy SEO isn't dead and how GEO is changing searchHow AI is changing marketing while making human trust even more importantWhy grit, consistency, and showing up matter in entrepreneurshipTakeaways:You don't need to be everywhere to market effectivelyStart with understanding your business and your customerMeasure what actually contributes to growth and profitabilityConsistent action beats waiting for perfect contentRevenue means little without understanding the cost behind itStrong marketing requires strong sales and operationsNew technology can't replace a weak foundationHuman trust and experience will become even more valuable as AI growsSimplification makes execution easierGrit keeps you moving when business gets difficultIf marketing has ever felt overwhelming, expensive, or harder than it needs to be, this conversation will help you rethink where to focus, what to measure, and how to build a strategy around what actually drives growth.Connect with Robb:

Who handles generative engine optimization for you? Not for your company - for you. A brand has an answer to that question: a team, a vendor, a budget line, a dashboard somebody checks on Mondays. A person usually has nobody at all, and the tools that do exist were built to read websites, which turns out to be a thin substitute for a career. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with his own business partner, Erin Lanuti, co-founder and CEO of Lilypath and former Chief Innovation Officer at Omnicom Public Relations Group. Erin spent two decades building the measurement and AI search machinery that tells systems how to read brands, and kept running into the same asymmetry: companies have infrastructure to govern how they get interpreted, and individuals have nothing close to it. Authority Intelligence(TM) is the discipline she, Dan, and Todd Grossman built for the second problem. The conversation moves from measuring earned media without a pixel to why she started digging into generative engine optimization roughly nine months before the industry had a name for it. What follows is Erin's case for why the individual version of that problem needs its own tools, and why the damage stays invisible to the person it's happening to. It ends on the question Erin says she hears from clients more than any other right now, which is whether they need their agency at all. Listen in and hear about: Why GEO tooling built for brands doesn't do the job when the subject is a person rather than a website Why an authority built for human audiences doesn't carry over to a machine one, and what has to be rebuilt from scratch How Conversation2Commerce and OmniearnedID measured earned media without a pixel, and why impressions survived anyway The Tide Pod scenario that turned AI search from a marketing question into a legal and reputational one What happens to earned citations when the outlets that produce them keep shutting down The value question clients are now asking their agencies out loud Notable Quotes from Erin "I keep saying measurement needs an intervention. It does, because we have better tech than we've ever had. And the consumer journey has changed. And we have to ask ourselves why. Why are we measuring that? What's the importance of that metric? Is that still true today?" "Help me understand how, in a world where advertising budgets are getting cut to these publications and we're losing tons of earned media outlets every day, in this new world of GEO, when earned is more important than ever, if they're all shutting down, how are we going to get those earned citations?" "As we look at some of the most respected people in the world that we've been doing some analyses on, these people should be perfect in the AI system. And they're far from perfect." "There are people that have way less authority but know how to game the system. They know that if they assemble a clear picture around a topic, clear, concise, consistent, that their authority in the eyes of a machine can be perceived higher than people who without question have higher status or stature." Resources and Links Dan Nestle Lilypath | Website Inquisitive Communications | Website The Trending Communicator | Website Communications Trends from Trending Communicators | Dan Nestle's Substack Dan Nestle | LinkedIn Erin Lanuti Erin B. Lanuti | LinkedIn Lilypath | Website Erin Lanuti | Website Timestamps [00:00] Introduction and Host Principles [00:35] Meeting Erin Lanuti - Business Partner Introduction [06:10] Erin's Career Origin Story - Burson and Colgate [07:43] Bell South Olympic Sponsorship and Early Success [08:07] Move to MSL and P&G's New to the World Initiative [08:50] Pioneering Entertainment Marketing with Jessica Simpson and Swiffer [11:12] Transition to Agency Leadership and UL (Underwriters Laboratory) [12:51] Creating Innovative Campaigns - White House Christmas Tree and Muppets [13:30] Developing Conversation to Commerce Technology [17:21] The Problem with Traditional PR Metrics (Impressions and AVE) [19:40] Omni Earned ID - Moving Beyond Vanity Metrics [23:24] Understanding AI Search and Reputational Risk [28:40] Erin's Non-Linear Career Path and Early AI Research [30:04] The Tide Pod Problem - AI Generating Dangerous Information [33:39] Building Integrated Marketing Solutions for AI Era [38:34] Citations Over Traditional Top-Tier Outlets [43:04] Introducing Authority Graph for Personal Authority Management [49:45] Personal Branding Reset in the AI Era [54:48] The Threat - Lower-Authority People Gaming the System [58:21] Individual vs. Brand Reputation Management [01:03:30] Agency Value Proposition Crisis and Repositioning Opportunity [01:08:46] Closing Remarks and Where to Find Erin (Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, Fireflies, and Riverside) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon keeps raising the bar. Steve Dennis and Michael LeBlanc open with the retailer's blockbuster quarter: massive gains in AWS and advertising, staggering AI capex, and retail revenue up 16% year over year, up from 12% last year. Third-party sellers now drive more than 60% of the business, and Citi pegs underlying GMV growth near 10%, roughly double the industry average. Amazon's B2B division alone now tops $60 billion, bigger than all but eleven U.S. retailers. Then the hosts dig into the agentic commerce numbers Amazon disclosed as Rufus folds into Alexa shopping, why sample bias demands caution here, and how grocery momentum is turning Amazon into a mega market-share threat.  Then: Shopify's revenue up 32%, and the tale-of-two-cities reality that a handful of giants now drive nearly all e-commerce growth. A mid-year check on Steve's Prediction #8 — luxury's future won't be evenly distributed. LVMH, Kering, and Capri lag on China softness and war induced Gulf weakness, while Hermès, Ralph Lauren, Richemont, and Zegna keep delivering outsized results. Live from the CommerceNext Growth Show: Kartik Hosanagar. He's Wharton's John C. Hower Professor of Technology and Digital Business, author of A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence, and co-founder of Bliss Labs. His argument: the biggest shift in retail isn't a new technology or channel. It's a new customer. Treating AI as another distribution channel is the same mistake movie studios made with Netflix. There's no marketing science for AI yet. $9.99 pricing, scarcity, social proof — a model may not respond to any of it. Kartik walks through the Ridge wallet case: invisible in ChatGPT's "gifts for men" results, then the default recommendation within three weeks, complete with a hallucinated promotion. Every retailer faces the same fork: efficiency or meaning. The middle is the most dangerous place to stand. Kartik also details the simulation sandboxes that let brands test counterfactuals in a day instead of eight weeks, why you can't just ask an LLM why it picked a brand, and the three attitudes retailers need now: curious, experimental, collaborative Back in studio: Wayfair's encouraging quarter and Steve's change of heart, Warby Parker's mixed report as store count passes 400, tariff rebates ($100 billion of $160 billion already repaid, more tariffs looming), and whether live selling has hit its tipping point with QVC out of bankruptcy and Whatnot valued at $20 billion. About UsSteve Dennis is a strategic advisor and keynote speaker focused on growth and innovation, who has also been named one of the world's top retail influencers. He is the bestselling author of two books: Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption and Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior retail contributor and on social media.Michael LeBlanc is a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions hosted senior retail executive on-stage in 1:1 interviews worldwide. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including The Remarkable Retail Podcast, The Voice of Retail, The Food Professor, The FEED powered by Loblaw and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast. He has been recognized by the NRF as a global Top Retail Voice for 2025 and 2026 and continues to be a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert for the fifth year in a row.

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

What does Scott's perfect day at EPCOT look like? We're finally finding out!But first, we kick things off with a little Disney news that couldn't be more perfectly timed. Disney has ordered a pilot for a new Disney+ series inspired by Spaceship Earth. We talk about what we know so far, why Candice was initially VERY excited about the idea (until Scott explained what kind of show it might actually be), and whether we like Disney taking original theme park ideas and turning them into new stories instead of always bringing existing movie IP into the parks.And yes, if they make a show about Spaceship Earth and nobody thanks the Phoenicians, we may have a problem.Then it's time to officially begin Scott's Perfect Day series!We're starting at EPCOT, but before we can enter the park, Scott has some decisions to make. What time of year are we visiting? Where are we staying? And after debating Old Key West, the monorail resorts and Beach Club, Scott makes a potentially dangerous discovery: if this is his perfect vacation, there's absolutely nothing stopping him from planning a split stay.With Beach Club chosen as our starting point, we head into EPCOT for Scott's perfect day — and surprisingly, he starts by slowing things down.We're talking an early Garden Grill breakfast, Living with the Land, Soarin', time actually exploring the aquarium at The Seas, Figment, Journey of Water, Spaceship Earth, Guardians of the Galaxy and plenty of time to wander instead of racing from attraction to attraction.Then, of course, there's the food and drink.A brat and beer in Germany. A tequila experience at La Cava del Tequila. Wandering World Showcase without over-planning every stop. Bread and cheese from France to enjoy with a beer in the UK. And somehow Scott manages to temporarily forget about one of his favorite EPCOT treats — much to Candice's disbelief.As evening arrives, Scott starts repeating a few attractions for a very specific reason: he wants to experience EPCOT after dark. That means another ride on Living with the Land, another walk through Journey of Water, and eventually settling into GEO-82 for drinks, food and a view of the nighttime spectacular — followed by one of Scott's favorite Disney experiences: letting everybody else leave first.This isn't about squeezing every attraction into a single day. Scott skips Mission: SPACE, Space 220 and Test Track, and he's not willing to call the newest version of Frozen Ever After part of his “perfect day” until he's actually experienced it.It's about building the EPCOT day that feels perfect to him — good food, favorite attractions, drinks, plenty of wandering, and enough breathing room to actually enjoy being there.Now we want to hear from you:Go back and listen to Candice's Perfect EPCOT Day and tell us — whose perfect day would you rather join?And what would you change about Scott's day? Which attraction did he leave out? Where would you eat? What's an absolute must-do on YOUR perfect EPCOT day?Come hang out with us on Facebook, Instagram and Discord and let us know!Thanks for hanging out with us at the Hangar Bar. Grab a drink, get comfy, and remember: there's always a great big beautiful tomorrow!

Was brauchen Pflanzen, wenn der Regen ausbleibt?

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.

This week, our host Ian Truscott is joined by Ken Schwartz from Peer Survey Professionals, an expert on win/loss analysis. They have a fascinating discussion about the value of having a good win/loss program, speaking directly with customers, avoiding the blame game, and the surprising insights Ken has found doing this over the years.  Then, Ian moves to our virtual bar, The Rose and Rockstar, and joins Robert Rose, Chief Trouble Maker at Seventh Bear, to discuss GEO and SEO, drawing on data and experience from the Content Marketing Institute website, and how being top of the search results does not equate to being recommended by an LLM. Enjoy! — The Links The people: Ian Truscott on LinkedIn   Ken Schwartz on LinkedIn Robert Rose on LinkedIn Mentioned this week: PSP Enterprises AI Search Optimization: Why Keyword Ranking Isn't Enough Anymore Robert's podcast: This Old Marketing  Robert's newsletter: Lens, his websites, robertrose.net and seventhbear.com Rockstar CMO: The weekly Beat Newsletter Rockstar CMO on the web and LinkedIn Previous episodes and all the show notes: Rockstar CMO FM. Track List: We'll be right back by Stienski & Mass Media on YouTube Piano Music is by Johnny Easton, shared under a Creative Commons license You can listen to this on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ken and Anthony process a gut-wrenching Mets sweep that left the Guardians looking disinterested on the field, with Ken openly wondering whether Steven Vogt's recent fiery outbursts are motivation tactics or signs he's cracking under the losing. Owen offers a shaky silver lining, pointing out the division-leading White Sox also got swept and that Cleveland's remaining schedule is still relatively soft. A caller named Geo rips into Vogt as an over-tinkerer who can't leave a good lineup alone, using the Kyle Manzardo demotion and limited at-bats for young hitters as evidence of an organization that doesn't trust its players.

  THE SHOW NOTES   Redwoods Treewalk in Rotorua:   How Did I Get Here? Intro Te Papa Tongarewa's Gallipoli:   The Scale of Our War Rupert McClannahan's   Indestructible Bastards      - David Cifaldi Singalongs & Karaokes Religious Moron of the Week      - Whitney Lynn Weird Al! Tell Me Something Good      - Hospital Heavy Metal Musikfest Thursday & Saturday! Show close .........................   UPCOMING SCHEDULE   George Hrab solo at MUSIKFESTAugust 6th 8:00 pm Lyrikplatz The George Hraband at MUSIKFESTAugust 9th 5:30–6:30Liederplatz Episode 1000 of The Geologic Podcast Saturday, January 9, 2027 The Icehouse, Bethlehem, PA .........................   SUBSCRIPTION INTERFACE   You can now find our subscription page at GeorgeHrab.com at this link. Many thanks to the sage Evo Terra for his assistance. .........................   Get George's Music Here  https://georgehrab.hearnow.com https://georgehrab.bandcamp.com ................................... SUBSCRIBE! You can sign up at GeorgeHrab.com and become a Geologist or a Geographer. As always, thank you so much for your support! You make the ship go. ................................... Sign up for the mailing list: Write to Geo! Check out Geo's wiki page, thanks to Tim Farley. Have a comment on the show, a Religious Moron tip, or a question for Ask George? Drop George a line and write to Geo's Mom, too!

Vanitha is a marketing professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Director of their Center for Branding, and author of Hyper Digital Marketing: Six Pillars of Strategic Brand Marketing in an AI-Powered World. Her client roster includes Hershey, Kraft Heinz, and P&G — brands that don't tolerate bad advice.In this episode, she explains why the old "command and control" era of brand management is over, what generative engine optimization (GEO) means for your go-to-market strategy right now, and why the most strategic thing you can do for your brand today might be making your purpose machine-readable. If you're still building a brand for humans only, you're already behind.Key Takeaways4:41 — The death of command and control branding. Brand meaning is no longer dictated from the top down. It's co-created by influencers, social users, experts — and now AI agents. Governance has to evolve.6:10 — GEO & AEO replace SEO. Generative Engine Optimization and Answer Engine Optimization are the new disciplines. Brand managers must now optimize for AI agents, not just human search.6:52 — Agent-to-agent commerce is coming. A customer's AI agent will negotiate with a seller's AI agent. The "double agent problem" is not hypothetical — it's the near future of B2C and B2B commerce.8:46 — Phygital is a strategic imperative. Physical and digital experiences are merging. AI-powered dynamic shelves, Gucci's tech-integrated showrooms, and real-time personalization are the new baseline customer expectation.10:07 — AI as a brand governance layer. AI can monitor every touchpoint and enforce brand compliance at scale — something no human team can do. It can also catch PR crises before they escalate.13:55 — Brand intelligence: three AI capabilities every founder needs. Predictive analytics (lead generation), generative AI (content at scale), and ethical AI (aligning purpose with every touchpoint) — each with a different role in the customer journey.16:05 — The uncanny valley of personalization. Empathetic AI can read emotional state and adjust messaging — but cross the line and customers feel surveilled. Personalization has to be "just right" or it backfires.19:20 — Startups have a structural advantage over legacy brands. Legacy companies are paralyzed by hierarchies and permission layers. Founders building from scratch can design AI-native workflows from day one.21:37 — Future-proof move: invest in data quality now. A unified, 360-degree view of customer data is the foundation for every AI capability. Without it, your AI tools have nothing to work with.22:47 — Purpose + Platform: the two most critical pillars. Purpose must become machine-readable. Platform thinking turns a product into an ecosystem. These two shifts separate brands that AI agents surface from those they ignore.26:44 — Brand as API. Codify your values into machine-readable rules. Program your AI agents to optimize for what you actually stand for — or they'll optimize for something else entirely.29:54 — Start from the experience, not the tools. The biggest mistake founders make: buying AI tools and hoping they add up to something. Work backwards from the customer's pain point, then slot in the right AI capability.37:39 — Highest-leverage AI moves in the next 60–90 days. Lead generation, predictive analytics for lifetime value modeling, and personalized content at scale — these are the three areas most founders are underleveraging right now.Tweetable Quotes"Brand meaning is no longer dictated from the top down. It's assembled by algorithms, co-created by communities, and negotiated between machines before a human is ever involved." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"Your next customer's AI is already looking. The question is whether it can find you." — Jeff Mains"Taking your brand purpose and converting it into machine-readable code — that's what it means to be visible in an AI-powered world." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"Peloton could have just sold treadmills. Every brand needs to ask: are we a product, or are we a platform?" — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"The small entrepreneur has a huge advantage. They're building systems from scratch — legacy organizations are caught with hierarchies that AI can't penetrate." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"Purpose isn't a brand value anymore. It's infrastructure." — Jeff Mains"Start from the experience, work back to the tools — not the other way around." — Dr. Vanitha Swaminathan"You have to put checks and balances in place just like companies built privacy policies after the first cybersecurity wave. That's where brand management is headed." — Dr. Vanitha SwaminathanSaaS Leadership Lessons1. Your brand needs to be legible to machines, not just humans. AI agents are the new gatekeepers between your product and your buyers. If your differentiation, purpose, and proof points aren't structured in a way machines can parse, you won't make the shortlist — even if you're the best solution. Audit your website and content through the lens of an AI agent, not just a human reader.2. Stop buying tools. Start redesigning processes. Most companies pour money into AI tools that live in isolation and never add up to a better customer experience. The highest-ROI move is mapping your customer journey, identifying the friction points, and then selecting AI capabilities to solve specific problems. Tools follow process — not the other way around.3. Your data is your competitive moat. AI is only as good as what you feed it. Founders who invest early in unified, high-quality customer data — breaking down internal silos and creating a 360-degree view — will compound that advantage over time. Your competitors buying tools without clean data are spinning their wheels.4. Codify your values or your AI will invent them. If you don't tell your AI agents what to optimize for, they'll optimize for something — and it might not align with your brand. Translate your purpose, values, and brand standards into machine-readable rules. Think of your brand as an API: clear inputs, predictable outputs, consistent behavior at every touchpoint.5. The human-AI mix is your new product design challenge. The question isn't whether to use AI in customer-facing functions — it's where the handoff happens. Too much AI and you feel sterile. Too little and you can't scale. The founders who win will design deliberate human-in-the-loop moments that create trust and preserve the brand experience where it matters most.6. Think platform, not product. Every SaaS company is already closer to a platform than a product — you have data, users, and network effects working for you. Lean into it. Build the ecosystem around your core offering. Nike isn't a shoe company; Peloton isn't a treadmill company. Ask what yours is really for, and build accordingly.Guest Resourcesvanitha@katz.pitt.eduhttps://business.pitt.edu/professors/vanitha-swaminathan/https://www.facebook.com/PittBusinessSchool/photos/vanitha-swaminathan-thomas-marshall-professor-of-marketing-and-director-of-the-c/10158297436008280/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanitha-swaminathan-5924896https://www.instagram.com/vanitha_swaminathanEpisode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/https://jeffmains.com/books/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

The TMG Hospitality Trailblazers welcomes the latest addition to the series, Kim Wootteon, Sr. VP of Commercial Strategy at Kampgrounds of America, Inc. to discuss the outdoor hospitality landscape and how artificial intelligence and technology are playing a key role in connecting different generations of travelers to the KOA vast portfolio of properties. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your co-host, Ryan Embry. Cassady Quintana: And I’m your co-host, Cassady Quintana. Ryan Embree: We’re excited to have you here with us for another edition of our TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. We’ve been running this series for quite a while, paving those management companies, individuals that are paving a way into the future for hospitality, which feels like is changing on a weekly basis. I’ve been really looking forward to this episode. A familiar face and voice with us. It’s the first time you’re joining us virtually. Kim Wootteon, Senior Vice President, Commercial Strategies at Kampgrounds of America. Kim, thank you so much for joining us back on The Suite Spot. Kim Wootteon: Yes, it’s great to see you both. Thanks for having me today. Ryan Embree: Yeah, we’re gonna have a super fun conversation. You have an incredible brand. We can’t wait to jump in. But before we start talking about Kampgrounds of America and KOA, I wanna start because we missed it when we were in Arlington at the Digital Transformation Summit of getting a little bit about your hospitality background and journey that led you to such a cool position at KOA. Kim Wootteon: My kind of career path has been quite interesting. It’s really led to the role I have today. So the first 12 years of my career was spent in retail. And for all of you millennials, I started with PacSun. I was an OG, skate and surf lifestyle fanatic. And I worked in retail for 12 years and really learned operations, marketing, and quite frankly, leadership. PacSun was a really great people-centric company. And it’s really where I got my foundation for leadership and my drive for results. And then I transitioned for retail into the more traditional hospitality sector and worked for four years with Marshall Hotels and Resorts, leading sales, marketing, and diving into revenue management. And then was recruited by a company called Bluewater Development, who was really pioneers within the outdoor hospitality industry and very traditional owners in the indoor hospitality industry. So great experience. I was introduced to KOA with them and the entire glamping and camping sector of hospitality, which was super exciting. And then also got to work with some really great brands such as Marriott and Hilton and IHG and independent properties, independent campgrounds. It was quite an eclectic mix of properties, that I got to support in sales, marketing, and revenue. And I joined KOA about five years ago, leading marketing at the local level. And in 2022, we established the commercial strategy team at KOA, and, I now oversee revenue management, local marketing or field marketing, retail, distribution, and sales across the entire KOA portfolio, both our owned assets and our franchise locations, and support for KOA, Inc. as well. Ryan Embree: So this is why I love this question so much, because we get such an eclectic melting pot of backgrounds of hospitality professionals, maybe starting in retail. I hear F&B a lot recently. And then you go from the brands, you go, outdoor hospitality, and you get this big melting pot, and it kinda defines who you are as an industry professional, but also gives you, I think, an appreciation of some of those other places that you’ve been or even properties which can span from the giant resorts that we’ve seen all the way to, maybe it is a campsite where it’s a lot more local and kinda community and, and tight-knit feeling. Kim Wootteon: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve enjoyed my journey. It allows me to bring perspective to the work we do every day that is unique. And we’ve done a really great job at KOA of hiring a team of leaders and a team of people, in the field with really diverse backgrounds, which I think is a great compliment to the diversity across our portfolio. Cassady Quintana: Yeah, I think it’s interesting because you talk about this new team that you guys have created at KOA and the things that you’re developing and introducing into this outdoor hospitality. But for our listeners who may not know too much about KOA, we have a lot of hotel listeners. So if you can just give us a little bit of background about the brand and how it’s found its way to becoming one of the number one outdoor hospitality leaders. Kim Wootteon: So KOA was founded in 1962 by Dave Drumm in Billings, Montana. He saw this surge of travelers heading to the world’s fair in Seattle, and he opened the Billings Campgrounds, on his property along the Yellowstone River. And today, Kampgrounds of America is the largest system of privately owned campgrounds across the US and Canada with over 500 locations. We have 50 locations that are owned and operated by KOA, and 450 plus locations that are franchised. It’s a really interesting segment or vertical within the hospitality industry. Incredibly diverse portfolio, incredibly diverse guests. And we’re really fortunate to be the leader within this segment of the industry. Ryan Embree: And we mentioned at the top of this episode, this is our TMG Hospitality Trailblazer series. Now, I don’t think there is a much more fitting brand than KOA as far as being a trailblazer when you, when you think about that term, but I’ve been surprised to learn from getting to know you and the KOA brand of the different modern way that we kind of talk about trailblazers in our industry. And so, Kim, you and your team have been doing some incredible work. We’re gonna mention it in this episode, but what do you think makes the Kampgrounds of America brand a true embodiment of trailblazers and trailblazing in our industry right now? Kim Wootteon: It starts really with our vision at KOA. And our vision is to be the world leader in defining and advancing the business and experience of outdoor hospitality. And that’s been a focus for our company for years. We have taken a really unique approach to, I’d say, the traditional hospitality industry. We understand camping, we understand hospitality, and we are really committed to being the leader within not just the outdoor hospitality space, but the overall hospitality space in general. And it really starts with knowing our guest. And we are fortunate. We have tons of first-party guest data. We have years and years of history. And we’re known in our segment of the industry for the research we do to really better understand our guest and how our guest changes and what they expect. So it’s a really unique advantage. And the research we provide is not just for KOA and our franchisees, but it’s for the entire industry. And trailblazing shows up in a variety of ways, almost every decision that we make as a brand. So from the guest experience standpoint, we’re launching a new koa.com website that’s really powered by AI and focused on personalization and trip planning and flexible cancellation policies and the guest’s ability to manage reservations. So some of the more traditional things that you would see in the hospitality industry, but with some unique features that are custom to how guests like to camp. From an organizational structure standpoint, we have a commercial strategy team, which we really are the only one in the industry that has a full commercial strategy arm. And we have an AI team. We built our AI department at the beginning of this year, and that team continues to grow and really focus both internally and externally on how we can use AI to enhance the employee experience and the guest experience. And then within outdoor hospitality, technology has kind of always been a little bit of an opportunity. We don’t necessarily follow some of the mainstream tech choices that you see in indoor hospitality. So our focus has really been how do we align with what works well within indoor hospitality? We’ve been exploring OTA integrations and an RMS integration and enhanced text messaging capabilities and housekeeping modules to help operations be more efficient. It’s about really how can we be the first in the outdoor space to align most closely with what works in indoor hospitality, and then try to address the points of friction where we can that are really unique to outdoor hospitality. Cassady Quintana: I love that you mentioned this balance of outdoor hospitality and what that means to people, but also finding those opportunities for technology because that is the trend these days, right? Is AI this, AI that, and how can we bring in that technology? And we know that KOA has built such a recognizable brand in outdoor hospitality. So how do you guys find that you’re balancing and maintaining what Dave built back in the ’60s, that trusted legacy of what KOA is with continuing to try and attract a younger generation or maybe people that have never been camping before? Kim Wootteon: It is a really fine balance that is not easy. We truly work at it every day and we’re really, really fortunate to have such a legacy brand and such a trusted brand. And so it’s really this balance of how do we stay rooted in our core values and our mission with connecting people to the outdoors and each other while meeting guest expectations for who the camper is today? And so, we see participation in camping across all generations, which is really fascinating. In 2025, participation among adults, 65 or older, reached its highest level in eight years. So we’re seeing this rebound in the boomer population. 25% of all new campers in 2025 were boomers. And at the same time, younger generations, particularly millennials, continue to make camping a really meaningful share of their leisure travel. So it’s this ongoing challenge of how do we attract and retain campers? It’s the same challenge everybody has in our industry. And then keeping existing campers and getting new ones to come back. It’s really that frequency question. We’ve seen some shifts in frequency over the past several years. Our more legacy campers used to take two, three, four trips a year. And we’re seeing that frequency diminish slightly. New campers come and experience it. And maybe don’t, maybe don’t camp again in the same year. It may take one camping trip a year. So that’s a unique challenge our industry is navigating. But we do a lot of research to understand what inspires each generation to camp, and we work really hard to deliver memorable experiences to keep them coming back. But I think the thing that is consistent across all generations and what really matters most to campers, whether they’re new or they’re legacy campers, there’s some core foundational items that we really pride ourselves in across the KOA system. So safety and security is one, cleanliness and quality. We have a really rigorous quality assurance program, and we visit every single campground every single year to ensure each campground is meeting quality assurance standards. And we’re okay to say goodbye to those campgrounds that maybe aren’t meeting our standards. Campers are looking for some self-guided recreation. So if they want to be in the outdoors and really utilize their time as they see fit, the amenities and the recreation continue to play a critical role in that decision-making process. Pet friendliness is really critical and so many people in outdoors love to camp with their pets. And so it’s vital that all of our properties be really pet-friendly. And we have pet-friendly accommodations, pet walks, and camp canine parks. Pets are, are really an extension of our guest base, truly. And then basics like clean laundry, clean restroom facilities, clean laundry facilities, all the essentials that are needed for a great camping experience. Ryan Embree: You definitely have the advantage of a memorable experience on your end, right? I think that has been the knock on the indoor hospitality space, is that sometimes it’s your hotel stay or experience there might not be the most memorable part of a trip versus camping feels like something, if done right, and the quality is there, that is a memory that’s not just gonna stick with you for a year that you might just tell a couple people about, but maybe decades. Maybe it becomes a family tradition, and I’m sure you have some incredible stories to share there. But as I mentioned at the top of this episode, Kim, we had the pleasure of meeting you in Arlington, Texas at the Digital Transformation Summit and Hospitality and Hotels. And again, from what I knew about Kampgrounds of America then and what I know now, it was like kind of one of those spaces where I was like, “Well, I wonder, I wonder what KOA is doing in this space.” And then I got to hear your keynote and I was blown away. But it was also one of the most fascinating conversations I had at that event because of the relationship with technology where some of your guests might be looking for an escape from that technology while others kind of see it as this is the baseline and maybe WiFi isn’t a tech- technology to them. Maybe that’s just a standard for them. So it’s so interesting. It’s fascinating. I’m sure it’s that balance what you’re talking about, Kim, but you also have to balance between the guest and you also have 450 franchisees out there, right? And you’re an owner yourself of 50 properties. So I wanna get into both of those kinda spectrums. One is, what are you seeing the guests, their relationship with technology when it comes to KOA? And then maybe you can speak to the owner side of it, of are you hearing owners wanting to implement more technology or are they kind of resisting that when you’re saying, “Hey, let’s start to look at these new kind of maybe fancy technological updates.” I know there’s a packed question there, so. Kim Wootteon: Yeah, no. And lots to unpack within that question. So let’s start with the guest first and really the unique expectations that come from our campers. And while historically, camping has been a way of a form of leisure travel where you can kind of disconnect from everything that’s going on in daily life and really spend time in the outdoors, nearly half of all campers, about 47% site wifi as very important. So we have learned over the years that wifi is a utility. It is not an amenity anymore. It is a price of admission expectation for campers. Technology and remote work is still shaping camping behavior. And then Gen Z is the most likely to work while camping. So, we cater our experiences to every generation. And so Wi-Fi becomes a critical, critical component. While we’ve seen a slight decline in work camping, with people going back to the office and those just individual changes, it’s still really important. And it, what’s really unique is new campers, and again, kind of new campers, 25% of all new campers last year were boomers. So when we think about new campers, they are more likely than experienced campers to prioritize connectivity. So about 50% of new campers versus 43% of experienced campers. So access to technology directly influences length of stay and the experience. So we have focused heavily on tech and not just wifi at the campground, but how technology is used throughout the guest journey. Have we made it really easy for them to book and find the campground that meets their experience expectations? What’s the communication with the guests look like pre and post, or pre-during, quite honestly, and posts say through text messaging or, or other forms of technology? How easy can they find their site? Just all of those simple things where tech is a really great way to create efficiencies in operations, still have really, really connected touchpoints, relationship-wise, because I think that is, one of the most critical pieces of outdoor hospitality is the relationship our owners build with their campers. And then can they connect while they’re on site? And for those who don’t want to connect and really wanna disconnect during their stay, have we effectively marketed those sites that are best for them to stay in? Have we created connectivity zones where if they do choose to connect, there’s a place on the campground that is best for that, and the rest of the park could be more of a disconnection zone. So really thinking about how a camper is using the space. On the flip side, our owners, this has been an interesting challenge and journey. Just like our campers, our owners are incredibly diverse as well. We’re really blessed. And I think this kind of lends to the success of our legacy brand. We have legacy owners within the KOA brand. We have franchisees that have been in the system for 50 and 60 years. They’ve been here since the beginning, and that ownership has passed down through generations, which is really rare to find across our industry today. We have a lot of individual owner operators that, they gave up their careers as nurses and as architects, and they follow their passion for the outdoors, and they built and own, decide to buy a campground and and be entrepreneurs. And then we have a lot of investors coming into our space, that are diversifying their portfolio. They have hotels, like that public storage and outdoor hospitality is just a natural transition in their portfolio diversification. So the diversity amongst our owners is a unique challenge when it comes to technology. And then across multiple, age demographics as well. So from a wifi standpoint, we make it a requirement. It is now part of our quality assurance. We incentivize our owners to deliver really great wifi. We have a wifi royalty incentive program, and they can receive reduced royalties for a select period of time if their wifi meets certain standards. We believe it’s that important to the guest experience. And then really from tech adoption, I think that’s where we see some of the larger pieces of friction as our industry evolves and we’re constantly trying to balance the expectations of the guests with the needs of our owners and operators. Things like a couple years ago, we were getting ready to launch online reservation management. Okay, I can, I can book, I can change, I can cancel my reservation all on my phone through the app or otherwise. And then was faced with quite a bit of resistance because it was different and it was new and it took some of the control out of the hands of the owner. And so different components of that have kind of made it out to the public, and then there are some key components that have not quite made it out yet. So it’s really that balance of how do we meet guest expectations and owner expectations? But at the end of the day, we do have the responsibility to ensure our brand stays profitable and our owners are profitable. And so sometimes we do have to make those decisions that may not be as favorable to our owners, but are truly the best decision for the business. And it comes down a lot to training and education and really making sure they understand. So we have a great learning and development team, great communications team, a great project team that really ensures all of these initiatives come to fruition in the way they need to be successful. Ryan Embree: Well, and you also have, like you said, 50 properties that you own and manage, which I’m sure is a great kind of sandbox that you can play before you roll something out across the entire brand. But to put this in perspective for our listeners, you just mentioned that maybe there was some resistance to the online bookings that you were talking about, all the way to the owner that you were talking to me. I had to bring this up again, that there was drones bringing firewood to campsites at your property, right? So, I mean, that is the spectrum that you’re talking about. And I think that also is on the guest side. And that’s why probably, you and your team do such a great job of keeping your ear to the ground with these guests and constantly staying. I thought it was a fascinating stat that you talked about, Kim, where you’re saying that the first time campers are expecting more tech than maybe your returning campers or campers that have done that before. And I think that is a, it’s a telling statistic of, “Hey, we’re gonna try this for the first time. We’re gonna go camping.” And they’re coming to the camping site and being like, “All right, well, where’s the plugs and where’s the, the wifi and all that stuff?” Versus the campers that have been there have been like, “Oh, you, you’re camping. What are you talking about?” So interesting. Kim Wootteon: It’s a fun challenge. Cassady Quintana: I’m glad you mentioned that because when I think about it from a marketing perspective, you’ve talked about the different types of guests. You also have diverse owners, but you have diverse guests. When you think about hotels in the hotel industry, a lot of them have their niche and what they expect their demographic to look like when they come visit them. And so they can kind of cater that marketing a little bit better. But you have people ranging from children all the way up until boomers, and so they’re all expecting something different and they all want it to be exactly what they want. So when I think about it, I’m Gen Z, and this outdoor hospitality thing has really started to become a big thing for us. Like, whether it is because we wanna fully disconnect everything is too technologically advanced now, or I want a little bit of the best of both worlds. I wanna feel like I’m in nature, but also I can check my Instagram later if I really need to. So when you guys think about that from a marketing perspective, what do you think is driving that Gen Z interest, but also how do you develop a marketing strategy so that you can connect with those new campers and that, that younger generation? Kim Wootteon: Oh, my gosh. It’s a nonstop kind of everyday challenge that our teams work through at both the national level. How do we really connect the brand to people? I mean it’s so much of the success of our brand, and really camping and outdoor hospitality in general is built off of some, like, this emotional connection to nature and this desire to be outdoors. And how do we be part of that journey? And how can we be a catalyst to creating that experience for people, whether it’s their hundredth time camping or their first time camping? And there’s so many different tactics and strategies, within the marketing space that are available to us now. And it’s constantly evaluated with AI. We are traditionally rooted in SEO, and now we’ve got GEO to adapt to. But the Gen Z population within our camper mix is about 13% of all of our campers, as of 2025, and had been up to about 25% of our camper mix in 2022. So a really significant portion of all of those people that are participating in camping are in that Gen Z demographic. And it really comes down to doing a lot of research and understanding, what motivates people to connect to a brand, what’s important to them, whether it’s sustainability or looking at the health benefits from being outdoors, whether it’s the thrill of trying something new and really adventure-seeking, whether it’s we camped with our parents as kids, and we wanna try it again as adults. And the value proposition for, especially Gen Z is not to that point in life where you’re fully invested and you have a ton of disposable income. And so camping has always been a really affordable way to travel and leisure travel and experience and see things. So it’s this balance of how do we connect with each generation on the right channel? Social media plays a really critical role in our marketing strategy, having a presence across multiple platforms, Facebook, which tends to cater to a little bit more of our Gen X and baby boomer population, TikTok, Instagram, other channels for Gen Z. So social media plays a really key role, and we’ve seen a huge insurgence of social media conversions in our marketing strategy over the past several years. And then the technology piece of some of our generations like to pick up the phone and call and ask questions about their stay. And then others really just wanna be 100% booked online, make all of their change, and make all of their choices without any human connectivity. So finding that balance. But the, the Gen Z demographic is really fascinating. And I love watching how they use campgrounds. We see a lot of Gen Zers use campgrounds as that hub for all of their outdoor adventures, really wanting to spend time in nature and are utilizing a campground to facilitate that experience. Ryan Embree: This question is certainly resonating with me. I’m a little bit older millennial. I have a two and a five-year-old. And I remember camping as a kid. I wanna take my kids, but I also do not want to just maybe stay in a tent and not have any sort of. So, I want, I want that, that nice little balance of, yes, we are camping, but we might be going into a nice air-conditioned cabin or lodge, and we might be able to still watch a little TV. But I think it’s fascinating what we’re talking about, because that’s exactly it. And Gen Z, they’re great storytellers. Let me tell you about marketing. They’ll do most of your marketing for you if you put them in the right position, especially on Instagram and TikTok. Kim Wootteon: I’m really fortunate on my team. We have a really diverse team as well. And I have, I have kind of boomers and I have a ton of Gen Zers on my team. And so it’s great just to watch those generations meld and figure out how we, how we best connect to our owners and our audience. We spend a lot of time in the outdoors just as a team, when we have meetings and stuff like that. And I just love what comes from it. And then we take those best practices and really implement them with our guests because it’s, it’s the same. We all camp. Most of us in our team, we love spending time in the outdoors. So it’s like what’s gonna be attractive to us? We are our own demographics, right? Ryan Embree: There you go. Well, I wanna shift gears and congratulate you and your team, the entire KOA team, recognized as one of the top 50 most profitable franchises by Franchisee Business Review. What do you think Kim, I mean, obviously, when we talk about franchises and we look at the ROI, but I think there’s probably a different type of reward that comes with having a KOA franchise, being obviously we look for that, that financial one, but also from kinda to build something meaningful. You talked about the legacy of some of your franchisees and that being a family business. We’ve talked about the close connection and memories that you get from camping. Well, first of all, congratulations, but what do you think you and your team did to kinda make that list? Kim Wootteon: Thank you. We’re really, really proud of this recognition. And I think it speaks to just the uniqueness of the brand. So we have a unique mix of brand standards and entrepreneurial spirit. KOA is a franchisor unlike no other, you know? And I’ve worked with a lot of the big franchisors, especially in our industry. I’ve worked with the Marriott brand and Hilton and IHG and Jellystone and Sun Outdoors. But what I think I love most about KOA, which makes it such an attractive business opportunity, is, we’re hyper-focused on quality. We’re hyper-focused on our brand position consistency. We have three brand positions within the KOA brand. We have the KOA journey, the KOA Holiday, and the KOA Resort to really help campers identify and connect with the experience they’re looking for. But what I love the most about our franchise that is different from a lot of others is that each location is truly unique to space and place, which fuels the creativity and the pride of our owners. So there are certain things that you will find very standard across the KOA portfolio, and there, there’s an expectation campers have with KOA, but every single location is unique. And that’s what makes the system of campgrounds truly special. You’re not gonna get the same overall experience at any two locations. And our owners take an immense amount of pride in understanding the market that they’re in, understanding their campers, and building an experience that drives them to come back and stay with the KOA brand and book again, and at the same time, is quite profitable. So that unique blend of uniqueness and standards is what really sets us apart. And I will say to you, I remember this, if I didn’t shout out just the incredible support that KOA offers its franchisees. Again, I’ve kind of worked with many franchisors, but the support that KOA offers is quite unique. I’m very, very proud to be part of that. We have an amazing field operations team, franchise operations team. We have a team of just passionate, dedicated franchise business coaches that are working with our owners every single day to help them truly grow their business and optimize their investment in the KOA brand and then their campground. We have a whole coaching team within commercial strategy focused on marketing and revenue, and how to maximize revenue and optimize profitability. And then multiple other departments across the organization that really, their customer is the franchisee. And so I think this is a really adequate representation of the hard work our team puts in to support our owners on a daily basis. Ryan Embree: Yeah. I mean, with a, such a complex ecosystem that we kind of talked about throughout this episode, it’s a true testament to the work you and your team are putting in to be recognized. So again, congratulations to you and your team on that. We’re gonna shift gears. This is the rapid fire portion of our episode. I love doing this and I was looking forward to your portfolio specifically. You’re no stranger to travel, Kim, you’ve already mentioned. So we’re gonna get to list a series or a series of questions to get to know you and the KOA portfolio a little bit better. So let’s start with favorite view at one of your properties. Kim Wootteon: Yeah. So, and just for the record, so I have been to well over 100, almost 200 KOAs across our systems. I’ve been really fortunate to see a lot of our portfolio with some amazing, amazing properties and experiences. But I was just recently at the campground in Fredericksburg, Texas, which is under construction. We are building it and it’ll be introduced to the KOA system this fall. But the view from The Overlook, which is sort of our main building in the back part of the campground with all of our food and beverage and our meeting space and our pool and our lazy river, the view is absolutely spectacular overlooking the entire campground. The sunsets are great, and it was just, it was a really magical moment. Cassady Quintana: Awesome. Ryan, write that down. We gotta take a look at when that one opens up. Ryan Embree: Yeah, for sure. Kim Wootteon: You’ve gotta come experience it. And, and Ryan, we do have some amazing glamping accommodations, so you’ll get all of the amenities of home and a really cool outdoor setting. Ryan Embree: Love it. Best both worlds, for sure. Cassady Quintana: All right, Kim, favorite fun fact about one of your properties? Kim Wootteon: Oh my gosh. There’s so many options because we have such a diverse portfolio. But one of the things we learned as we were prepping for America 250 and just kind of learning our history is the Mystic KOA campground in Connecticut has a house on property that wasn’t built in the United States. It actually existed before the United States existed. It was brought over as settlers have founded that area. And it’s still standing on our campground today. And there’s a lot of history with that property. Ryan Embree: So it’s one of my favorite questions to ask, just because you get to learn these, these stories that you would have no idea about. Very, very cool. What about favorite guest experience or amenities at one of your properties, Kim? Kim Wootteon: So, the Mount Rushmore KOA Resort at Palmer Gulch has a rodeo, like a full-on rodeo. So that’s a crazy thing to experience. The campground in South Padre Island is right near SpaceX, and we just built these beautiful, RV sites, along this peninsula on the water, so you can see the SpaceX launches. And then there’s simple things like blueberry picking in covert and just amazing hiking near some of our National Park properties. Cassady Quintana: Awesome. Something for everybody. There’s something for everybody at every different property. Yeah. So kind of with that in mind, what’s one of your favorite locations of your properties? Kim Wootteon: So it’s funny. So I am a camper myself and I love to spend time outdoors. And I have kind of this unique mix of properties that I love to visit because, every time I camp, I look for a different experience. So I love, like, Lake Placid, KOA, it’s just that, like, quintessential camping experience, really, really wooded and nature-driven. If I’m looking for just incredible beauty with really, really amiditized recreation, I love the Astoria KOA on the Oregon Coast. If I want a tropical resort retreat, I go to Sugarloaf KOA or Fort Myers KOA. So it’s just, it’s. I don’t know. I can’t pick one. I love too many of them, which is my problem and why I’m always on the road and traveling. . Cassady Quintana: It’s a good problem to have. Kim Wootteon: Exactly. I know, right? Ryan Embree: That’s what I was gonna say. . Well, we appreciate you playing along with us. As we wrap up today, we always have kind of a tradition to, especially, with some of our industry leaders that we get the opportunity to speak to multiple times. You teased back in March, you had working on that revamped website that we talked about you formed a new AI team. What’s the status of those projects? And then maybe just looking into the future, what’s your vision for, for KOA as we wrap. Can’t believe I’m saying this. Wrap up 2026 and go into 2027. Kim Wootteon: Oh, my gosh. Yes. We, we are really hyper-focused on 2027 right now as a leadership team, which is crazy. I’m like, we’re all happy through 2026. But yeah, we ha – we’ve had a ton of really large projects this year as a brand, and really in, in that vein of trying to modernize our brand to meet the guest expectation, the owner expectations, and stay that, brand of choice. Both of our projects, the development of our AR team and the rebuild, redesign, and launch of our new website, as well as campground landing pages and a new content management system are going incredibly well. We are on track to launch in Q4 with a slew of continued enhancements throughout 2027. A lot of really AI-focused efforts for koa.com, specifically in trip planning and just communication on a site, as well as personalization. We know that that’s so important. How does a guest land on the site and how is everything really customized and tailored to what they’re looking for and what their needs are and how they’ve came to before? So those two teams have been really, really critical in, in the rollout of this project. And selfishly for me, the AI team does a, a lot of work with our internal teams, and how do we impl – improve the employee experience? So the work they’ve been doing just, I mean, so many efficiencies for my role and so many other roles across the organization around really quick access to data within our KOA ecosystem. Like every bit of data I could ever want to access is available through our AI platform. I am able to ask questions quickly, research things quicker, and really get to an end result, which makes the analysis of our business so much easier in identifying trends and opportunities. So those two pieces are just really game changers, not only for our brand, but in the industry right now. And 2077 is stacking up to be a pretty, pretty insane year as well, with just really double down focusing on how do we continue to attract guests, retain guests, really strong focus on that short-term leisure RV camper, and kind of that mash of how do we take all of our legacy campers and all of these new campers and really just exceed expectations to grow the business next year. Ryan Embree: Wel like I said, a true embodiment, a brand that is truly trailblazing in hospitality. So wish you luck with all of those projects. We’ll have to keep a close eye on which campgrounds we’ll do an onsite. I still haven’t given up on that dream of doing – Kim Wootteon: No, we’re, we’re gonna get you outdoors, Ryan. Ryan Embree: Let’s do it. I’m, I’m looking forward to it. I can’t, I can’t wait. So, Kim, we know you’re busy. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me and Cassady here on The Suite Spot. Kim Wootteon: Yes, thank you both. It’s a pleasure. Cassady Quintana: Thanks, Kim. Ryan Embree: All right. Thanks, everyone. And thank you for listening to Suite Spot. We’ll talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with cover art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host, Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.

AI search optimization is rewriting how buyers find businesses, and SEO alone no longer gets you in the answer. Callum Kennard, Head of Sales at ClickSlice, joins David Hill to unpack the difference between SEO, GEO, and AEO — and what it takes to get recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Most people think AI killed SEO. It didn't. SEO became the infrastructure layer underneath a much bigger system, and the businesses figuring that out right now are getting a first-mover advantage in a $750 billion market. Three things you'll take away: Why SEO didn't die — it became the foundation AI search is built on How reviews, content, and reputation drive whether an AI names your business The first-mover window that's open right now, and what to do inside it Small brands are already outranking household names like Argos and IKEA in AI recommendations. Callum explains how — and what you can do this week without a multi-year timeline or a seven-figure budget. CONNECT WITH CALLUM KENNARD ClickSlice: https://www.clickslice.co.uk/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/callum-kennard/ GET 14 DAY GO HIGH LEVEL TRIAL https://www.gohighlevel.com/?fp_ref=david-i-hill-training25 CONNECT WITH DAVID Website: https://www.davidihill.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidihill/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidihill Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidihill X: https://twitter.com/davidihill TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@davidihill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DavidHillcoach SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-persistent-entrepreneur/id1081069895 #SalesTraining #AISearchOptimization #PathToSalesMastery #DavidIHill #ThePersistentEntrepreneur #PersistentEntrepreneurPodcast #SalesLeadership #lessonsfromthemat

ElectraMet uses electrochemistry to pull copper and other critical minerals out of industrial wastewater — technology invented by PhDs and sold to wastewater managers at the world's largest semiconductor fabs. Chris Richardson, a communications major with no electrochemical background, has to make that legible without dumbing it down. His answer isn't better explaining. It's association: make sure Google and the LLMs know which published scientists belong to your company, then build content on top of that link. Along the way he argues GEO is mostly just SEO done well, that earned backlinks still pay dividends, and that the surest way to win over a camera-shy expert is to show them what the internet already says about them.

Dr. Geo welcomes Dr. Peter Bajic, Medical Director for Urology at Cleveland Clinic Main Campus and Director of Men's Health at the Glickman Urological Institute, for an evidence-based conversation about erectile dysfunction, testosterone, Peyronie's disease, and the biggest myths in men's sexual medicine.They explore why erections reflect cardiovascular health, why "venous leak" is often misunderstood, how GLP-1 medications may temporarily influence testosterone during weight loss, and when testosterone replacement therapy is actually appropriate.The episode also covers Peyronie's disease, treatment options including daily tadalafil and traction therapy, and practical lifestyle changes that can improve both sexual function and long-term health.If you've ever wondered whether ED is psychological, physical, hormonal—or all three—this episode delivers clear answers backed by today's science.In this episode you'll learn:Why erectile dysfunction often predicts cardiovascular diseaseThe truth about "venous leak"How erections actually workPsychological vs. physical causes of EDGLP-1 medications and testosterone explainedWhen testosterone replacement is appropriateThe biggest myths about Peyronie's diseaseDaily Cialis beyond erectile dysfunctionLifestyle strategies that improve sexual healthThe latest treatments available for menTimestamps00:00 Introduction: ED may be your first warning sign02:45 Why erections are a window into overall health06:20 Psychological vs. physical erectile dysfunction13:15 GLP-1 medications, weight loss & testosterone18:30 Combining GLP-1 therapy with testosterone replacement28:45 The truth about "venous leak" explained40:05 Why most men do NOT have true venous leak43:10 The best approach to treating erectile dysfunction49:20 Understanding Peyronie's disease54:20 Can Peyronie's disease be prevented?58:00 Why daily Cialis may be one of men's most useful medications1:01:00 Xiaflex, surgery & future Peyronie's treatments___________________________________

Farside Correction Strike Launches Beneficiary Planning for Bitcoin Inheritance https://x.com/strike/status/2082560745498157548 CLARITY Act Protects Self-Custody Bitcoin from Abandoned Property Laws https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/2081055716282953999 Vinteum Announces New Bitcoin Fellowship Cycle and Fellows https://x.com/vinteum_org/status/2080376273893728602 Jensen Huang's First X Post: NVIDIA Supports Open AI Models https://x.com/jensenhuang/status/2080643682408321103 Nigeria | Tinubu Establishes Virtual Asset Council Nigerian President Bola Tinubu signed an executive order establishing a coordinated framework for the regulation of digital assets. The new “Virtual Asset Council” will be chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria, with the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission, Nigeria Revenue Service, and other financial and national security officials also involved. The Nigerian SEC will oversee virtual assets classified as securities, while the central bank will register payment, custody, settlement, and other non-security assets. FinancialFreedomReport.org Sparrow Wallet 2.5.3: ERA Hardware Wallet Support, XDG Directories, and PSBT Verification https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.3 Vexl v1.45.1: Performance Improvements and VCF Contact Backup https://github.com/vexl-it/vexl/releases/tag/v1.45.1_883 Amethyst v1.13.0: Napplet/nSite Browser Host, Cashu CLI Support, NIP-22 Comments, and Tor Onion-Location https://github.com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/releases/tag/v1.13.0 Blitz Wallet Android v0.7.14: Faster Payments, Transaction Filtering by Description, and Simplified UI https://github.com/BlitzWallet/BlitzWallet/releases/tag/Android-v0.7.14 India Forces GitHub to Remove Bitchat App https://x.com/callebtc/status/2080576044168339662 Bitchat Enables Offline Self-Transfer to Other Android Phones https://x.com/callebtc/status/2082106744788955310 Bitchat Coming to Smartwatches as Decentralized Mesh Walkie-Talkie https://x.com/callebtc/status/2082427446154997910 Bitle: Open-Source ESP32 Mesh Relay for Off-Grid Bitchat https://x.com/Alacritic_Super/status/2082055423109247402 Russia Charges Telegram Founder Pavel Durov with Facilitating Terrorism https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-fsb-charges-telegram-founder-durov-with-facilitating-terrorism-ifax-says-2026-07-29/ Colorado's New Restrictive Process for Buying Semi-Auto Firearms https://x.com/avaflanell_/status/2080706895787249842 3:33 - Blaze it 8:33 - Dashboard 9:48 - Corrections 14:03 - Strike inheritance 15:38 - CLARITY protects from Noah Doe 25:18 - Vinteum 28:13 - Jensen tweets 35:13 - Boosts 36:28 - HRF Story of the Week 38:43 - Software updates 55:43 - Durov flips off Moscow 57:48 - Colorado has fallen 1:01:33 - Geo time Shoutout to our sponsors: Strike https://strike.me/ Stakwork https://stakwork.ai/ Salt of the Earth https://drinksote.com/rhr Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/marty Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://tftc.io/podcasts/ Follow Odell: Nostr https://primal.net/odell Newsletter https://discreetlog.com/ Podcast https://citadeldispatch.com/

Headlines for July 30, 2026; “Less Regulated Than Sandwiches”: MIT Prof. Calls for Oversight as OpenAI Agent Hacks Other Firms; Citizens Bank Cuts Ties to ICE Prison Companies GEO Group & CoreCivic After Grassroots De-ICE Campaign; Report from Springfield, Ohio: Haitians Brace for ICE Crackdown After TPS Protections End

Headlines for July 30, 2026; “Less Regulated Than Sandwiches”: MIT Prof. Calls for Oversight as OpenAI Agent Hacks Other Firms; Citizens Bank Cuts Ties to ICE Prison Companies GEO Group & CoreCivic After Grassroots De-ICE Campaign; Report from Springfield, Ohio: Haitians Brace for ICE Crackdown After TPS Protections End

This week, I'm joined by Matt Robinson, the son of my good friend and longtime Disney Geek Dan Robinson, to recap a very special father-and-sons trip to Walt Disney World.Matt traveled with Dan and his brother Ben for a birthday celebration filled with great food, new attractions, Disney lounges, and a split stay at Old Key West and the new Polynesian Island Tower.But before the trip could even begin, their flight was delayed repeatedly and eventually canceled, forcing them to spend the night in the airport and lose an entire day of their vacation.Thankfully, some great planning, flexibility, and outstanding help from Disney Guest Services allowed them to recover nearly everything they thought they had lost.In this episode, we talk about:How Disney Guest Services helped rescue their vacationCelebrating Ben's birthday with Premier Lightning Lane passesFirst-time dining experiences at Le Cellier, Olivia's, and San Angel InnChurro Mickey waffles and the perfect Crystal Palace brunch strategyStaying at Old Key West and the Polynesian Island TowerRanking Disney lounges, including Beak & Barrel, Wailulu, GEO-82, Nomad Lounge, and Steakhouse 71Comparing the Wayfinder Burger and the Steakhouse 71 Stack BurgerNew and refreshed attractions, including Buzz Lightyear, Big Thunder Mountain, Soarin', Smugglers Run, and the Muppets coasterWhy there are always new Disney experiences waiting, even after many tripsMore than anything, this episode is about the value of slowing down and enjoying Walt Disney World in a different way.Instead of racing from attraction to attraction, Matt, Dan, and Ben made time for lounges, great meals, new resorts, and spontaneous experiences. And in the end, the most meaningful part of the trip was simply celebrating Ben's birthday together as a father and two sons.