Podcast With Dennis Yu

AI in Marketing: Dennis Yu’s 3 Must-Use Tools for 2025

Show Notes

Discover game-changing AI marketing tools with digital pioneer Dennis Yu as he reveals his top 3 must-use tools for 2025. Drawing from decades of experience in data-driven marketing, Dennis shares invaluable insights on leveraging AI for sustainable business growth.

In this exclusive interview, learn how to:

• Effectively implement AI tools in your marketing strategy
• Build authentic personal brands using data-driven approaches
• Create meaningful client outcomes with AI integration
• Scale your agency sustainably in the AI era

Dennis, CEO of BlitzMetrics and former Yahoo search engine engineer, breaks down complex AI concepts into actionable strategies. He emphasizes the importance of authentic content creation, proper data analysis, and the revolutionary "dollar a day" strategy that's transformed countless businesses.

Perfect for marketing professionals, agency owners, and entrepreneurs looking to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Gain practical insights on AI implementation, personal branding, and agency growth from one of digital marketing's most respected voices.

Learn why the future of marketing belongs to those who can effectively blend AI tools with authentic human connection, and discover how to position your business for success in 2025 and beyond.

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

01:02 - Journey Start: Personal Experiences

03:17 - Mathematics Background: Influence on Digital Marketing

07:19 - Evidence-Based Marketing: Importance for Agencies

12:26 - Googleability: Importance for Online Presence

20:04 - Knowledge Graph: Enhancing Brand Credibility

24:34 - Online Visibility: Common Pitfalls to Avoid

28:00 - Authentic Content: Definition and Creation Tips

31:10 - Small Businesses: Creating Authentic Content

34:20 - Content Factory Process: The 6 Phases

37:30 - Podcasts: Growth Strategy for Agencies

39:37 - Content Balance: Search Engines vs. Humans

40:41 - Dollar a Day Strategy: Overview and Benefits

46:25 - Dollar a Day: Optimal Duration for Success

49:23 - Personal Branding: Building Your Identity

54:35 - Storytelling: Key to Effective Personal Branding

58:40 - Scaling Agencies: Advice for Owners

01:00:55 - Leadership Lessons: Insights and Strategies

01:05:20 - AI in Agencies: Leveraging for Client Success

01:12:13 - Rapid Fire: Quick Insights

01:13:34 - Final Takeaways: Key Points Recap

01:16:31 - Episode Value: Why Listen?

Transcript

Intro

0:00 hello and welcome to the agency Insider show I your host navit kosel today we are joined by a true Pioneer in digital

0:07 marketing and personal branding danis you danis is the CEO of Blitz Matrix and

0:12 has an impressive career dedicated to helping businesses and individual optimize their online presence from

0:19 creating impactful ad strategies to mastering the art of Being googleable yeah that's a thing Denis is a treasure

0:26 Trove of insights [Applause] [Music]

0:33 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

0:39 Denis welcome to the show welcome navn and it's such a pleasure to be on your show you're you have been doing SEO

0:46 longer than almost anybody uh just 22 years yeah and and we've both been

0:51 friends with vivec for 20 some years yes so we have common friends for obvious reasons

0:58 right yes yes yes so uh uh Dennis let's start with your how you I mean started

Journey Start: Personal Experiences

1:04 so your career span uh decades in the distal marketing industry can you share with us how you started your journey and

1:11 what inspired you to focus on datadriven marketing well I started working at the airlines because the CEO of American

1:18 Airlines was my mentor and I was going to go to Goldman Sachs and do investment banking and all that kind of Finance

1:24 stuff I went to the London School of Economics you know to study finance and and do that Wall Street kind of career

1:29 but this old man told me you know there's this thing called the internet and this

1:35 was 30 years ago and I'd been building websites and he said you should build

1:40 the website for us and back then no one was buying any tickets on the internet people were just surfing porn or

1:46 whatever they weren't doing transactions on the internet right right and so I believed this old man and it turned out

1:53 he was right and that and I you know I think it would have been very good if I went to Goldman Sachs but I did this

1:59 instead because of what happened in American Airlines I was very very lucky to you know be involved in Silicon

2:05 Valley at the very beginning and because I was Associated around a lot of really smart people not because I was anyone

2:11 special but I was just I learned from all these people who were just the people who like invented the internet you know my the guy who was like next

2:19 door to me in the office at Yahoo was Rasmus lorf who invented PHP you know I

2:25 hung out with Peter elahi with the guy who uh invented Gmail I mean on and on

2:31 right I don't want to name drop but all these you know David Pho we play F frisbee twice a week right he was the

2:37 richest man on the world under 40 until Zuckerberg came along so as a search engine engineer at Yahoo I got a very

2:45 different view of SEO than these SEO Guru people who are trying to trick the search engines because I represented the

2:52 search engin so I would go to conferences and speak representing the search engine okay and I would give

2:58 advice to all these other people that would try to say here's the ways that you could trick trick you know Dennis

3:03 and trick you know the a lot of the people I trained up went to go work at Google so I have a very cynical view of

3:09 people that do SEO okay now uh you have mentioned being

Mathematics Background: Influence on Digital Marketing

3:17 a math guy in previous interviews so uh how has your background in mathematics

3:24 influence your approach to digital marketing you know math taught me that I can be very confident and I could feel

3:31 that I'm correct but the data is always going to win and I ran division one

3:37 cross country in track and you know I would beat some people and other people would beat me and it wouldn't matter

3:43 what kind of game I talked it wouldn't matter what kind of excuse I have whoever ran the fastest time was the winner and that's what this whole data

3:51 and math thing taught me the purity of performance and that everything this is

3:57 going to sound really geeky maybe people will like think like I'm some sort of weirdo but I I feel like everything even

4:04 in business even like girlfriend relationships are driven by some underlying data and cause that we can

4:10 diagnose and be able to treat okay I agree with you I agree yes

4:15 to be rational you know like Ray Del and principles one of my favorite books on how to get around the blind spots that

4:21 you have to really see the truth even if it's ugly and painful and being able to solve PE you know problems because even

4:28 I find myself I get in recurring loops and make the same mistakes and all of us in business we have these Loops that

4:34 keep causing recurring damage and we need to solve them it's the same thing okay right I agree on that end of the

4:43 day math is data and I think data is science and that's what it's all about and it's problem solving it's it's not

4:49 equations and calculators stuff people say oh you don't need you know the stuff the dentist does we don't need because I was I also did I tutored math and all

4:56 this I just love doing this we don't need that we have a calculator right no you need to learn the basic

5:01 principles right oh we have chat GPT now or whatever no you still need to be able to think so I've translated this data

5:09 thing as more intelligent problem solving Based on data and I call it metrics analysis action if you have the

5:15 data you can do analysis which is to understand why did something happen why did it happen or not happen the way we

5:21 want it to happen and therefore what should we do because of that Insight that non-obvious reason why the

5:27 conversion rate went down why we were in why this customer's not happy why like everything there's a why and so

5:33 everything I see in analytics because my whole career is based on analytics everything I I'm curious to

5:38 see what you think but everything I see in analytics is fake that Google analytics there's no analytics in Google

5:45 analytics you know what I mean there's Google charts and Google py graphs and you know there's no analytics I've never

5:52 seen I mean one of my friends the head of analytics at Disney and you know we've had some

5:57 discussions and I he he showed me his stuff and I said Brandon no analytics in

6:02 what you're doing another friend who runs the you know data mining for Capital One which is a multi-billion Dollar Bank and he told me how he spent

6:09 $100 million on the data warehouse building all this analytics and I said really show me some analysis and he went

6:15 on and on about how much data he gathered and all the how big his Hardware was and the infrastructure and

6:21 how many people got these reports and the bi and I said yes but there's no analytics let and then I asked him I

6:27 know we're off track but I'll just tell you one thing I said okay so you're so proud of the $100 million you spent with all the latest technology all the latest

6:33 vendors and of course the vendors gave you all these Awards because you were spending all this money with them but tell me

6:39 um your system that does the analytics you know for the bank how many new credit cards how much money do we have

6:45 how many people bought different offers how much interest did you charge how many late fees you know the kinds of things that Banks care about do you even

6:52 know how many people opened your reports you even know the analytics of your

6:57 analytics system you no idea right because because when I started the

7:05 only thing I loved about digital marketing was that everything is measurable so exactly offline everything

7:10 is measurable so that's the point and anything which can be measured should be measured is right right right now uh

Evidence-Based Marketing: Importance for Agencies

7:20 your philosophy emphas also emphasizes accountability and evidence-based marketing how did you come to develop

7:26 this approach and why it's more than ever critical for agencies

7:31 today well I didn't speak English as my first language and that gave me a chip

7:37 on my shoulder because other kids were popular they'd make fun of me I wasn't cool and things that were subjective

7:44 like English I got so I was a president scholar undergrad full scholarship which

7:49 is hard to get they have to nominate you you can't even apply and I took just to

7:54 like finish my undergrad I had to take a basic English class like obviously I

8:00 spoke and wrote great English but I had to take some very basic class and this teacher gave me a D in the class and my

8:08 essays were excellent right everything was excellent full scholarship student this whole kind of thing and it taught

8:13 me that people are so subjective and the more important they are or the more political they are the more they can get

8:19 away with not making the right decision and blaming other people so then they spend all their time playing games is you know when you work with larger

8:25 companies the more of this sort of behavior which we scratch our head some people called hippo highest paid person's opinion all all the you know

8:32 people doing dumb things and and playing tricks and the government wasting money you know whatever this kind of thing and

8:37 I thought I really don't like it when it's subjective or based on oh

8:42 somebody's friends with so and so and that's why they got the promotion or that's why they made this decision because of this under thing underlying

8:48 thing that wasn't Based on data so me as like this mischievous guy I would go

8:54 into these meetings with other people and I would just crush them because I

8:59 had better data because someone would have an opinion and they would be way more eloquent than me navn right but

9:06 then I would here's so here's my here's how I would win almost any argument Whoever has the data and that's

9:14 me because I'm in the database no one has you know I control the database I know all the fields and the I design the

9:19 schema all of this I do all the queries right other people don't even know how to work they can't even write a sqle query right so if you have the data then

9:26 you are best positioned to do the analysis with is the interpretation and understanding what's going on and what

9:33 you know giving meaning out of all these numbers and charts and this kind of thing right and whoever does the analysis is best positioned to make the

9:40 recommendation of what we should do right and the trouble is other people who are more senior to me who are more

9:45 important who had more political power they would make the recommendation right they would make some recommendation and

9:52 instead of me trying to fight them on Whose recommendation was better or who was better friends or I took the boss out to the big dinner just to try to get

9:58 his opinion in or try to you know play this game instead I would start with the data saying well here's the data and

10:04 based on the data here's the analysis so nobody can argue the link between the data and the analysis because I win I

10:11 win when it come like obviously everyone knows I win when it comes to the data that's I own that I own the database I built the database right then at Yahoo I

10:17 did this you know I was able to win these political arguments so who so I'd have the analysis so you couldn't argue

10:22 my analysis right because you can't argue the data and then na I'd say well

10:28 based on this analysis obvious viously we should do this right because our conversion rate is like this our average

10:34 customer is like this this offer is going to perform better than that offer and when we did this test we saw that a did like this and B did like this so we

10:41 should clearly do this so no one can argue because I make the transition from

10:46 analysis to action right so if I go metrics to analysis to action I can beat

10:51 anybody no matter how political they are absolutely right yeah that completely makes sense

10:58 might not so a lot of people might not agree but yeah it makes sense they could disagree but they would be

11:04 wrong I've done this for 30 something years taught a lot of people this and people like me who maybe are are quieter

11:11 maybe who aren't as well versed maybe English isn't their first language they can win against people who are very

11:17 political who you know are is friends with the you know their son is the is the you know CEO of this other I mean

11:24 there you know like those those it's very hard to win against those situations but that helps you in those

11:29 situations as long as someone cares about the money so either the business owner or the CFO or somebody who cares

11:36 about whether the company's actually successful they're going to listen to you right because you're an agency and

11:42 you come into a you know like vivec and I would talk about this all the time I've been to Mumbai multiple times and

11:47 he would take me and meet the airline and the cpg company you call it fmpg these other like it was so great right

11:55 and he he taught me how to to kind of balance balance between the relationship

12:01 game which she's obviously very good at and also the data game and I've kind of learned you know it's like being

12:07 ambidextrous and I think you know for all of our agency Insider people or even the clients of paig traffic you know

12:14 that this is true too right you have to deal with like other people's opinions who may be very confident but they're

12:19 very wrong absolutely we do it every day in including the clients I agree

Googleability: Importance for Online Presence

12:26 yes all right so now let's talk about the power of being googleable uh one of your key concept is

12:34 about becoming more googleable can you unpack what does this means and why it's

12:39 so crucial in today's AI driven world oh that is a great question you are one of

12:44 the few people that had you know it takes a lot of insight to ask a question like this there's a lot of assumptions there

12:51 so that's a compliment question what you're asking so me as a search engine

12:56 engineer we trying to make sense of the and people can call us evil or that we're trying to make money on ads or

13:03 whatever they could say but here's the way it works there's all the information in this world that we have access to

13:09 social media data whatever you can pull websites right forums people's reviews

13:15 and we put them into this big Knowledge Graph which is a big database of objects

13:21 things people locations you know nouns right companies

13:27 right and then then when we have this uh big molecule of all these atoms or

13:34 actually probably better analogies like the skeleton right we have all these bones that are connected together now we're trying to add meat the data the

13:40 facts that are associated with those objects so what do I know about navnit K

13:45 I know that he runs page traffic and he's done that 22 years I know that he has the agency Insider podcast I know

13:53 that he that you you're also connected there's a node that connects you to vivec and I right and we have other

13:59 friends in India and we have 439 Mutual connections on LinkedIn did you know that that's crazy right that's

14:07 there's not many people I mean that's a lot of mutual connections most people don't even have that many Connections in total right and so all of these objects

14:14 have information about them and then the objects are all connected and so the way they're connected gives context to the

14:21 search engine when people ask a question because you could when people ask a question about an object or how to do

14:28 something there's an implied latent connection to other objects to be able

14:33 to answer that question right you know what I'm talking about but most people what I'm saying sounds like oh Dennis is going into his math thing again right so

14:40 to be googleable means that we must establish

14:45 the foundation of you your company the other people your clients your podcast

14:52 like you need to establish the the the correct connections and then the facts associated with those entity objects so

14:59 Google's Knowledge Graph which was launched technically in 2012 but it was earlier than that is they explain how

15:06 the knowledge graph works and they have an API that allows us to pull so I made a free tool just so anybody you know

15:12 it's not very hard to pull an API I mean you CBT can write the python script for you to do that and it tells us the

15:18 citation strength of any particular object so I happen to know that navni

15:23 cell has a knowledge panel on Google but you have not enriched it I'm

15:29 not sure if you've claimed it and there's other things like that page traffic has a has a knowledge panel

15:34 that's impressive but it's a partial knowledge panel right yes even though

15:40 you've interviewed all these other people you have 4,000 subscribers on your YouTube You're prolific on all like

15:45 you are a icon in Industry not even just SEO you're an icon but because you

15:52 haven't made all those connections just explicit they're there but they need to be so like for sure clear facts

16:00 associated with those different objects that you're not triggering a full knowledge panel and so most people think

16:05 you have to be a celebrity or be famous just Google me you see like all this stuff right I live I practice what I

16:11 preach I think all of us should have that and I've done this for dozens of my friends so to be googleable is any

16:18 object meaning your company the address that it's at or if you have multiple

16:24 addresses the different people your products your companies the different things

16:29 that you offer right those are separate separate objects that have information around them and they're connected to

16:36 different kinds of clients in different Industries those are other you know a conference that's an object right a

16:42 particular vehicle you own that's an object so we're just trying to connect the objects and add more attributes more meat to the skeleton there and I view

16:51 that as kind of my way of looking at SEO

16:56 not like you know whatever site Maps or backlinks or like you know

17:02 this kind of like the SEO tool ah refs majest it's not what I'm thinking I'm thinking how do I push enough

17:10 information to Google to show that I am who I say I am and that I do the thing

17:16 that I actually say I do in the city that I do with so much

17:22 corroborating referential reinforcing Authority because other people are saying that that these facts are true

17:28 these these uh attributes associated with the object are true that it must be

17:33 true and therefore Google can show that as truth because everything in the knowledge panel is true it's a fact it's

17:39 not like oh I like this person or like no it it's a it's a fact like you know it'll show like I'm an author that I

17:46 have a best-selling book that I have ownership in certain companies these are all facts right it shows that I just

17:53 turned 50 on October 6 that's a fact it shows I was in Vietnam and China last

17:58 week fact right it shows uh you know yesterday I was on this other podcast

18:05 for franchises who have lots of locations it's a fact right so we're

18:10 just trying to establish the fact not trying to like use chat GPT to make up all this stuff so if we establish if

18:16 this information layer is organized properly visible and connected with the

18:21 proper entity objects and all this into this layer to be googleable then we have

18:27 pretty much automatically uned locked the AI layer too right I have a friend

18:32 who who um my buddy Danny we we were at the

18:37 Great Wall of China just over a week ago and I was in four countries a week ago

18:43 in Asia and I'm back in America today I don't even know what time it is and he was looking for oh yeah we were looking

18:49 for a restaurant and he asked Chachi PT and Chachi PT recommended you know when

18:56 you're in Beijing you really got to try this kind of food right so we went there and it amazing and we talked to the the

19:02 owner they said how' you find us well we ask chat PT right and all these people are saying oh well people are not using

19:09 Google anymore or anthropic or whatever is going to kill search I don't know

19:14 whatever but the way you win in the AI layer is you win in the search layer it does it's not that AI replaces search AI

19:20 is a layer that's built on top of search and the way the same way that um you know AI pulls out a social or like all

19:27 all these things are l on each other right yeah best way to think about it

19:34 right right right right I I I also been on a podcast with Jason Bernard if you

19:39 know guy so he also does lot of he also preach a lot of knowledge graphs he's

19:44 the brand Ser guy yeah he wears the red shirt you know and every time I've interviewed him he's worn his red shirt

19:50 I've seen him in person multiple times he's wear I said how many red shirts do you have I'm G to have I I had done

19:57 previously I'm going to have him shortly on another podcast he's great yeah he's great right now now of course uh uh of

Knowledge Graph: Enhancing Brand Credibility

20:06 course you talked about knowledge and I believe because with AI and with Google Now with Google new algorithms talking

20:13 more about brand and credibility to brand and ranking more websites which

20:18 have brand credibility I think do you think this knowledge graph becomes a part of that credibility as well it

20:24 becomes even more important what I've said and you can see this you can gole Google it and see this is not something

20:30 I said just like a couple years ago I've said for 15 plus years that brand

20:36 strength that the S the power the value of a brand is the sum of all the

20:42 positive and negative interactions with customers employees Community everybody so the brand is not the logo that you

20:49 pay to have designed the brand is not like the slogan or whatever it is the brand is actually these little

20:56 microtransactions like reviews what other people are saying engagement on social media people watching a YouTube

21:01 video every one of those is a vote it's a review right so I think that if you

21:07 have if you're able to round up and collect the key people that are associated with that brand and not just

21:14 the founder not just the top executive people but the all the people the different customers the janitor all

21:20 these people that's actually what builds the brand because those are all corroborating signals and therefore

21:26 curious to see if you agree a lot of people disagree with me but because they're biased and wrong but they I

21:32 believe that brand power increasingly comes from third party signals and

21:38 there's less and less trust from what the brand says themselves I agree with you but now now now here's the thing how

21:46 does a small business go about doing it because it sounds third party and credible very easy a friend I was in two

21:55 days ago I don't even know I was in uh Philadelphia okay and I have a friend who has a painting company okay not a

22:02 huge company right you've probably never heard of it Davis painting and his

22:08 company grew something crazy like 80% in the last year and a lot of it has to do

22:16 with a he's very good at training his workers and having showing up on time and doing good work and all which lead

22:22 to good reviews right but in the last couple months he created a challenge for

22:28 his different now now these are painters these are not marketing people these are people who go to a house and paint what

22:34 color do you want the wall light blue okay right these are painters and he incentified them to collect more reviews

22:41 I think every review that he was able to get that each person each you know he all these painters got $10 for every

22:48 review and then $50 every week to whoever got the most reviews and that

22:54 significantly improved his SEO which then we see how many calls came into this Google business profile came into

23:01 all the other channels and his analytics and some people would claim it was SEO but I call that to your question the

23:09 increasing volume of third-party analytic signals so when you post you know a

23:16 podcast talking about how you grew a restaurant chain that has 120 locations or whatever and there's true facts

23:23 behind it and it connects to that actual person and then you interview Jason Barnard and then uh shul I saw you you

23:30 pushed that out there recently right and he changed he used to be it's sem Rush then he moved to Duda and all this but

23:36 you're showing trust because of the nature of your relationships and people are engaging on this people who are

23:42 important are engaging people who are already verified and not not blue check

23:47 verified but like trusted in certain areas of expertise that sends corroborating signals all over right

23:54 right just like Google in that big leak they had to reveal reveal the Chrome click data you know the actual Behavior

24:01 data counted more than the backlink signals like we've known this the whole time right I don't know why these SEO people want to declare this some big

24:07 Revelation we' always known this right or maybe because I'm at the search engine I'm like because I always distrust all the links people try to

24:13 build because I know they're there to try to trick me right yeah because you can trick links but you can't trick user

24:20 data well there's ways to do it there's a CTR black hat thing and all that

24:26 but right right do any black hat never okay okay so now we talked about how we

Online Visibility: Common Pitfalls to Avoid

24:34 can Google and how we can trigger a knowledge panel now what are some of the common Pitfall people faces when trying

24:40 to enhance their online visibility or credibility oh we could spend the whole

24:46 episode just on this but I'll list the top few one is going for vanity lots of followers lots of views there's lots of

24:52 tricky things like panels that you can use to get a million followers for like $50 or whatever it is this garbage

24:58 things to try to make it look like you are bigger than you are but those are detectable and they actually hurt you

25:03 it's like drinking poison so I see a lot of people doing that for their competitors to ruin the engagement because it hurts the engagement rate and

25:09 this kind of thing another thing is that they mix the entities of personal brand

25:15 entities like people versus company entities versus other schema level objects right so if you look at the

25:22 company's about page it'll say oh this company was founded by so and so Mr

25:28 Smith and Mr Smith all this information about M Mr Smith's bio but that really

25:33 should be on Mr smith.com and then his company should be stuff about the company and Jason Barnard talks about

25:39 this as well so it just creates confusion and anytime there's a little bit of confusion Google will by

25:44 definition sort of pull back and go I don't think I want to show the knowledge panel because the these things are mixed

25:49 up together and so if you do a search on on your name you may find we have a tool

25:56 that does this or whatever Jason has a tool there's lots tools you'll find there's a lot of people that might have

26:01 the same name and you'll find that your entity objects like your Facebook or a

26:06 particular post you made on Instagram or a YouTube thing or a podcast you're on those objects that act that have you are

26:14 actually mixed across multiple Knowledge Graph IDs and that's just a sign that Google's

26:21 confused right if I see friends of mine this friend who owned the painting company I want to say that there are 24

26:29 of of uh Colby Davis that's his name was and and there were other people with the

26:35 same name because that's a common American name but the things that that were his his LinkedIn the about on his

26:41 website all these things were mixed between all these TW these 24 so it just Google was confused of the there weren't

26:48 actually 24 Colby Davis's there were maybe like seven or eight but the

26:53 information was mixed so it just couldn't disambiguate the different IDs because most of that information was

26:59 not linked together properly like a proper link structure is you know we have navni K

27:06 shaw.com as the Hub the center you know and then all of the socials linked to

27:12 this and then the the about on page traffic links to use the founder like everything points towards this is the

27:19 definitive object for this guy right right and then for this company if it's clean like here's the company page

27:25 traffic and then everyone links here to P you know so that's the one for page traffic it's like okay I'm pretty confident about this right so so so just

27:33 just to followup question so do you think it's it's always good to have personal branded website along with your

27:39 company yeah it's a good thing it's not a vanity thing it's not I'm a big CEO and look at my Lamborghini and I flew

27:46 the private jet no it's you're trying to train Google on who you are and it's not

27:51 about your lifestyle or how much money you make or it's nothing to do with that

27:56 okay okay all right now let's move to next section called uh one of again

Authentic Content: Definition and Creation Tips

28:03 you've been emphasizing and you often talk about content creation and amplification yeah now uh you often talk

28:10 about the importance of authentic content now what does authentic content mean to you and how can businesses

28:17 create it there's a lot of BS around being authentic and you know just be real and it sounds good but it doesn't

28:24 actually mean anything it's just cotton candy so when when I think of authentic I'm a math guy so it needs to be a

28:30 provable very clear standard I think of Google's eat standard it used to be e

28:36 you know they added the extra e three years ago for experience expertise Authority trust so

28:43 authentic is sharing the actual experience of in so what's the most

28:48 authentic most raw most real most like unable to be chat cheed kind of

28:54 content cell phone video showing the actual people doing that

29:01 certain thing with other people corroborating that on social media right

29:06 I feel feel like that maybe someone will find like a higher source of pure truth

29:12 but I think that not edited including the metadata some

29:18 people argue about does the metadata like okay whatever but like just just an

29:23 hour ago nav let me show you one hour ago okay was in Las Vegas making videos

29:31 in front of the Las Vegas sign you see this right with the friend of mine and we're doing training videos and we're

29:37 talking about his journey his name is Elias and he has been doing this now for

29:43 two years and you know he's sharing he's sharing his journey and

29:50 what he's learned right okay and if we look at the information on this we can

29:57 see I click on the eye so this is you can do this in in Google photos do it in the iCloud do it whatever it is I click

30:03 on the eye notice it shows where it is right

30:09 show where at the sphere right it shows it was an iPhone 16 Pro Max it shows

30:14 exactly the date and time you could see it was an hour ago we made these videos right and I believe that when we take

30:20 that raw information not process it you know I really don't like processed food because you know then it's not healthy

30:26 and pure and all this kind of thing you know in a box food in the box is not healthy right so pure raw video showing

30:33 an experience of what happened with these other people that are tagged properly when that raw information gets

30:40 put to YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and your Google business profile and your blog and these other places and it

30:46 collaborates and it links together the right way not because you're trying to trick the search engine and it actually gets real engagement because we promote

30:52 it via our newsletter or you know social media works or you know on YouTube you mention hey here's what I learned last

30:57 week from Anton schul whatever then I think that sends a very very pure trust

31:03 signal and so when you say authentic content that's I don't see how you can get any more authentic than

31:09 that agree now now how does this translate again going back for a small business

Small Businesses: Creating Authentic Content

31:15 easy no need for a fancy camera no need for anything fancy you just need an iPhone or you know a laptop that has a

31:21 how do you think the businesses can create outside video the authentic content they don't have to create this

31:28 outside video I think they do this so your brand is the sum of all the things that anyone has to say about you and of

31:34 course you would like them to create video and post it on their own channels and because you know any content created

31:40 by the brand that's been heavily edited it's like you know the testimonials page on the company's website like come on

31:45 nobody believes this it's like you know when you interview people and they give references nobody come on now right

31:50 that's not trustworthy so what you have to do is you have to incentivize in a

31:58 way that doesn't get you in trouble like obviously you can't pay consumers to leave reviews that's obviously against the to but you can pay your employees

32:05 and you can incentivize them you can do things where you honor people in your community for achieving certain things

32:11 so I have a friend her name's Kim Butler and she is a finance podcast person she

32:18 also has some software that she's built and she advises people on life insurance an investment vehicle and so instead of

32:24 selling her Services outright hey sign up for me and I will help you buy insurance and make a commission because

32:30 that's what an insurance agent does instead she interviews them on her podcast and she's interviewed all the

32:36 top names in financial services in the United States she's spoken at the big conferences I think she's at book number

32:42 six now and so that's generated a ton of trust and she's not a big deal she's a

32:48 small business it's a two person two and a half person company her her husband

32:54 and someone who's basically a VA part-time that's it that's their company

33:00 but her key for driving sales is is interviewing other people on her

33:07 podcast and that generates real signals because it's with people that are wellknown that already are not just

33:14 because they already rank on those terms related to whole life insurance and you know investment and avoiding taxes and

33:20 all these kinds of things that wealthy people care about right right that sends a ton of trust

33:27 and it's not hard like you you I like the underlying angle what I hear from you navn is that well I'm a small

33:32 business I can't do this you can you can look we're on freaking streamyard we were on Zoom a little

33:38 earlier that costs nothing just get someone you know ask them questions chat gbt can generate the questions you ask

33:44 talk to them for 15 minutes they're the expert not testimonial oh you know na tell me tell

33:50 me how awesome I am tell me you know like that no one that's that's just that makes me want to throw up right and but

33:56 you're honoring other people right so small businesses out there call up your friends call up other people in the

34:02 industry do it with your competitors even honor them abundance mindset put

34:08 that content on YouTube very lightly edit it put it on all the socials that's authentic content anybody can do it very

34:15 webcam that's it I agree right

Content Factory Process: The 6 Phases

34:20 now you have mentioned a six-phase Content Factory process in previous

34:26 interviews and of course on your website as well you talk about content Factory can you walk us through these phases and

34:32 what exactly does content factory mean yeah you know what's cool is that if I

34:38 open like we've trained the AI and search so well okay I could literally

34:43 come in here and say oh we're doing good I'm with nav n who's the CEO of page traffic and he asked me what the stages

34:50 of the content Factory are creation editing and distribution if you want more details I'd be happy to dive in

34:58 well I know you already know all the different pieces because we put it out there on web pages that Chachi PT is

35:04 able to pick up on and all the Social Media stuff so I'll just take it from here actually first off um what do you

35:10 know about page traffic and what do you know about navn free to let me know so we were joking about our mutual friend

35:15 Vic barava what do you think uh would be a fun thing that navit and I can say on

35:21 his podcast which is live right now about vivec light his unique personality it could add a personal touch to the

35:27 podcast great idea you know we were in Singapore and we've always joked about having salt and pepper crap we've had that multiple

35:34 times the salt and pepper crab and at the Raffles Hotel the Singapore Sling which is the classic drink in Singapore

35:41 and also hanging out in Mumbai so I can tell you some fun stories and I have proof pictures and videos from my

35:48 iPhone that sounds like a fantastic story sharing those memories of enjoying salt and pepper crab the Singapore Sling

35:56 Andre time in Mumbai will definitely add a warm Personal Touch now I have a lot

36:01 of these on my phone but I want to run the content Factory process to be able

36:06 to put it out there so that I can build my own brand show that I am someone who is trustworthy in digital marketing

36:13 because I'm you know with navnit and I'm eating salt and pepper crab with vivec how might I apply the different

36:18 experiences I have with other people in the industry using the content Factory to grow my personal brand to be more

36:24 googleable and also to help my company as well because of course I want to drive leads and SEO traffic and this

36:30 kind of thing key stories and moments you want to highlight create engaging content around these experiences like

36:36 blog posts social media updates or videos make sure to edit them to highlight your insights and expertise

36:43 finally distribute this content across various platforms to reach a broader audience this will help build your

36:48 personal brand make you more googleable and drive traffic and leads to your company if you need help with specific

36:54 steps feel free to ask so a lot of people say using AI tools I can just generate tons and tons of content that

37:01 seems authentic because it seems so believable right because now the AI is so good it generates video it can hop on Zoom calls with you but what I've

37:07 preached is if you have the raw ingredients the actual experiences the actual relationships and you use the AI

37:14 to lightly process and repurpose those raw ingredients that's how the AI multiplies your experience in brand and

37:22 and helps you win in the world of AI instead of being caught for penalties trying to trick The Surge engines and

37:27 trick the social media why why do I say that and why is the content Factory so key in being able to win the right way

Podcasts: Growth Strategy for Agencies

37:34 experiences in relationships you're providing genuine valuable content AI

37:39 can enhance and amplify that but starting with authentic material ensures your content remains trustworthy and

37:46 engaging all right I'm going to interrupt you so we get to distribute this all over the place repurposing and then promote for a dollar day which is

37:52 the last stage in the content Factory so right now we are on the agency Insider

37:57 show which you know is nav n show and it's being recorded on streamyard how

38:02 might anyone else who's listening other agencies where they interview other people in their vertical employees you

38:09 know other people that are well known and SEO or whatever H how might they Leverage The these podcast episodes to

38:17 grow their agency using the content Factory steps start by repurposing podcast content into various formats

38:23 blog posts social media Snippets and short video clips highlight key insights and moments to engage different

38:30 audiences promoting these across platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter can attract a wider audience finally using

38:36 targeted ads like the dollar a day strategy helps boost visibility and reach this systematic approach ensures

38:43 consistent growth and engagement right so then when this episode finally launches across Twitter

38:50 and Facebook and Linkedin and wherever it is because I see you've posted you're very good about that a lot of podcasters don't do that I'm going to spend my own

38:56 money n need a dollar a day big money2 doll a day even and I'm going to Target

39:01 everyone who knows you I'm GNA Target everyone who follows page traffic and it's going to give me super high

39:07 engagement which sends great signals and helps both me and navn is that right chat

39:14 gbt absolutely using targeted ads okay enough enough okay okay proof right right the

39:23 proof is in the pudding I didn't just tell you I proved it right right right I agree with you I agree with you so uh

39:31 that was fun has anyone ever done that to you in a podcast

Content Balance: Search Engines vs. Humans

39:37 right so now uh how do you balance creating content for search engines

39:43 versus creating content for human readers I've never created content for search engines I only create what I

39:50 think is the most interesting content that solves a particular problem for a

39:55 particular user base show going the particular steps on how to solve that problem okay and as long as I create

40:02 that and it's helpful content I even hate saying helpful content because Google has made it this helpful content

40:08 thing into some other definition but if I have that and I repurpose it and all that then if I take care and this if I

40:16 say this people get mad at me because they oh this is what the search engines say Matt cuts and these other people say this no but I truly believe this if it

40:22 truly is helpful I'm trying to do this for the users it will work for the search engines mostly I mean this you

40:28 know there's obviously a gap between humans and with the robots and the AI but it's close enough now that I think

40:34 it's better just to try to serve the users don't worry about the search engine part right right so now you you

Dollar a Day Strategy: Overview and Benefits

40:42 also talked about dollar a day so if you could little bit tell us more what exactly does do you mean by that well

40:49 think about this so if you and I talk about you know getting knowledge panels

40:56 for founders of agencies right and we have a really good discussion about this

41:01 let's say it's actually factually very good helpful people say wow this is really good well you and I could think

41:07 it was a great discussion but how do how do we know and how would Google know

41:13 that that's actually good content they're not going to you know scan for LSI or other sorts of things like that

41:19 there's all kinds of ways to trick that using AI tools instead if people who are

41:24 actually reputable like actual agencies that are on the agency Insider show and

41:31 people that actually do SEO and people that have actually followed our techniques to get knowledge panels and

41:36 there's a signal where we see that they're engaging on LinkedIn we see that they're you know staying and watching

41:43 the YouTube video all the way through right because YouTube's part of Google and we see that there's traffic and all

41:49 these everyone else can see you know Google and Facebook and all that can see that it's not just bot traffic that I'm

41:55 getting from you know Bangladesh or something but it's actually real the

42:00 most relevant people and it's the highest engagement then that's a really really

42:07 strong authentic non-fake signal right so how do I get that well if I

42:13 don't have a big email list if I don't have a big brand if I'm not welln then I run dollar a day against the related

42:20 audience okay so Michael stellner runs social media examiner he's the biggest name in social media marketting he's a

42:27 big deal right I'm not a big deal but I happen to catch him in San Diego and I

42:33 said Mike I would love to interview you on my podcast and I want to ask you these questions which I know he already

42:38 knows the answers to right how did you grow this thing it was you know very complimentary to him because it showed how he uses data to make decisions to

42:44 decide what the Hot Topic because he's he's he's always been very good about knowing what the next thing is like how come he's like of all the people how how

42:51 come he's like Warren Buffett predicting the next correct thing right and I asked him about how how did he know and how

42:56 how did he become the biggest guy and a very competitive this whole social media marketing thing so competitive how do you be the number one guy right and so

43:03 he answered all that and I thought it was a b good podcast but uh when I

43:09 released it Navy almost no one saw it like a few hundred people saw it and then I used the dollar day

43:17 strategy and I targeted all the people who follow Michael

43:23 stellner on Facebook on YouTube on Twitter LinkedIn and I just spent a

43:28 dollar a day on each of those channels pushing them to that video I think he

43:33 and I talk for 32 minutes something like that okay and the engagement rate and

43:39 the average watch time and all of this very high right is is it because like we had really good professional video

43:45 editing is it because of the thumbnail was exciting was it because we would clickbait with the headline like it was

43:52 none of those things it was because they trust Michael stellner they already know who Michael Stoner is they spent money

43:59 thousands of dollars to come to his conference every year right they already trust him I targeted just them I didn't Target everyone in the world I didn't

44:06 Target all the followers of HubSpot or whatever no I targeted his followers and

44:11 his company and the conference like what percent of the people who go to social media marketing

44:17 World know who Michael stellner is 100% right right so if I if I have a super

44:24 super relevant Target which I'm using a dollar day ads because I can do this kind of targeting what kind of Engagement rate

44:31 can I expect what do you think like what is a good standard it would be more than 10% at least 10% is the rule right if

44:38 it's at least 10% it's good but I often get 20% sometimes I get 60% wow like what's a good CTR in an ad

44:45 if you're lucky to get 1% right one one.5 right but I often get 40

44:51 50% and it's not like people like oh yeah I got a 50% CTR yeah two impressions you got one click that's not

44:58 statistically significant I'm targeting 10,000 people and I'm getting 5,000 of them to engage

45:05 how's that what kind of signal do you think that sends to Google that again the authenticity and

45:12 uh the genuine it's the authentic content of course that's the signal which but it's not advertising so that

45:18 the way people fail on this dollar day thing is that a you know advertise why would I spend money navit to promote

45:25 someone else's content I'm going to spend my money when this episode goes live or whatever I'm going to spend my

45:31 money promoting your show why would I do that because it builds trust for me it

45:37 builds my SEO too right yeah my link is pointing to you yeah it still helps me because it the signal of trust is

45:44 stronger than the link signal who cares if it's a Dr like I have sites that I

45:50 think you're like a Dr 64 or something like that I have sites that are way higher than that I don't care that's not

45:55 the main thing right so you checked all the DRS as well all of these of course

46:01 anytime I go on someone's podcast obviously I want to look them up right right right right right right yeah yes

46:07 so basically I've been an author on lot of search engine Journal search engine

46:13 watch and all those so those builds credibility I was doing those authors that's why the prdr became High yeah yes

46:22 right all right now so when you talk about this dollar a does it means to be

Dollar a Day: Optimal Duration for Success

46:28 for our audience run for just one day or run for like five days you run for a week which so you spend $7 to test and

46:35 then if it's good if it meets the 10% criteria at least 10% even if you think

46:41 it's amazing but it's less than 10 Perc you know let the data tell you what's correct then you can put more money on

46:47 it subject to the size of the audience sometimes the audience could be like um

46:52 my buddy Brian Eisenberg right his his mom got ill and had a problem with Sears

46:57 and we targeted the executives who worked at Sears in Chicago and I couldn't spend more than a couple dollars a day because it was a very

47:03 limited group of people maybe a couple dozen people so I couldn't spend $10 a day if I wanted to so dollar a day

47:10 subject to the the size of the audience you want to reach so it's everyone who attends a certain conference like all

47:16 the painters go to this painting contractors Association I had no idea this is such a big it's a huge

47:22 conference right there's so many people that paint houses right so if I targeted all of them I could maybe spend $70 a

47:29 day something like that maybe a hundred if I cut cut across all the different channels so if you're doing influence and you're

47:37 an agency and you've chosen a niche so not just like I do digital or social or

47:42 PPC for everyone on the planet but you choose a niche I do this just for real estate agents I do this just for

47:47 e-commerce companies right I do Amazon for Drop Shipping I don't know whatever it is like

47:53 the then that makes it easy for dollar a day to work if you're a a legacy agency

48:01 and you target everyone on the planet because you say we serve anyone we can do everything we do Facebook ads we can

48:06 do SEO we can do like dollar day is not going to work for you because it's like

48:12 I need the laser Precision right for it to work because I need to get that relevancy high enough to get at least

48:18 10% engagement right right so Brian enberg is the one who wrote the books

48:24 like how to make your cat bar that's right yeah I've been reading it testing

48:30 all the conversion stuff yeah the rice and beans millionaire is the latest one yeah I used to order those books from

48:38 Amazon us I'm talking in 2007 and six so you have to order them from there and I

48:44 have my content writers read those books and I love those revolving old resolution points all those things I Sly

48:50 remember a lot I'm G to snip what you just said and send that to him because I I talked to him two or three times every

48:57 week and we've been friends 20 something years yeah I'll also love to have him on my podcast I'm a great fan because you

49:04 know when he started writing I was I was reading about bran he said and all his books I still would have it those books

49:09 with me he's incredible yeah and I every copy of every book I paid for myself of his

49:17 books wow they are very good books right yes okay now uh let's talk a little bit

Personal Branding: Building Your Identity

49:25 further about building personal brand and Trust so you are a strong advocate for personal branding as a tool for

49:32 building trust and Authority now what are the foundation elements someone should focus on to establish a credible

49:38 personal brand well first off your personal brand is not what you say about yourself you want a good personal brand

49:46 I don't like it when people say personal brand because it sounds like you know

49:51 coming up with logos and slogans and dressing differently and showing your lifestyle and sports cars instead I

49:58 translate that to reputation so I ask people what's your reputation well first

50:04 off is it a good or bad reputation if I ask your customers right you're an agency if I PLL your different clients

50:10 if your turn rate is high I don't think you should be working on your personal brand if anything it'll make your personal brand worse if you you know if

50:17 you have a bad reputation if you don't deliver so first off you need to deliver consistently if you deliver the results

50:23 make the phone ring conversion rate high six 100% Ro whatever your conversion is

50:29 whatever the thing is that you do that you promise that has value people pay for then and only then can you start to

50:37 build a personal brand because then you have all these people that will talk about you and invite you on their

50:43 podcast and meet you at the conference and say good things like this other guy

50:49 who was a friend of mine he started an agency and grew it to $4 million a year but then all this money came in and he

50:55 couldn't help himself so he started spending it on all these luxury things and then took all the money and didn't deliver for the clients and it was a bad

51:01 situation the the agency's name was service Legend they went from almost $4 million to they they almost went on a

51:08 business and because this guy was so focused on building his personal brand he would post all these Bible quotes

51:15 because he knows that his group his customer base of concrete coding companies is like 50-year-old white male

51:21 Christian so he would post Bible verses while he was at the strip club and doing all these things that he thought was

51:28 building his personal brand and he made a post last week showing his Lamborghini

51:36 and showing his big lifestyle and playing golf and all of this thinking he's building his personal brand when

51:42 all the customers that he burned by taking all like imagine this these

51:47 customers who have paid him $3,000 a month for the last three or four years and have not getting not gotten

51:53 results nobody answers the phone right someone does an SEO audit and finds out nothing's happened right and meanwhile

52:00 they see this guy Ryan Davis driving around wasting all this money that they

52:05 spent how is that customer going to feel no amount of personal branding or legal

52:11 you know sued Dennis or you know come up with a new influencer campaign or set up

52:17 this donation for injured children like none of that is going to overcome the fact that you haven't done good work so

52:24 I'd say focus on making sure you do good work and then kind of the personal brand happens just automatically you don't

52:30 even have to think about it people will talk about you they refer you like almost all of the customers that we get

52:35 all the all the new business we get is people I could open my Gmail right now

52:41 and show you all these people say Dennis you need to meet Sono hey I want to introduce you to Sono who also has this

52:46 issue can you help them I know Dennis has helped me in the past so maybe he could help you and you should have a talk and so we never need to do any of

52:52 this stuff and I call that personal brand that's that's the the effect of having a strong personal brand it's

52:58 not something you don't build a personal brand what you do is do good work you take care of your customers you take

53:04 care of your people and then that automatically then because of what they're so happy that they that becomes

53:11 your personal brand like here I'll tell you two hours ago right two hours ago I was making videos with my friend Elias

53:19 and he's a young adult and he this this is proof right so this is what this is

53:28 what he said turn the sound look at this anyway so there's there's a lot of people like if you

53:34 Google my name you'll see no exaggeration thousands of people that will say how their lives are changed

53:40 because they ran dollar a day because like I'll go to conference and people will come up to me saying I know this sound kind of kind of weird but I first

53:46 started following you 10 years ago or whatever and I've since grown my business and I know we've never talk but I just feel like I owe you something I

53:52 just want to say thank you maybe I can take you to dinner whatever that's a personal brand right it it's you create

54:00 impact you help other people and then you know like Brian Eisenberg publishes a book that that you and I have bought

54:06 right and now 15 you know since 2007 how 17 years ago then uh almost two 2025 in

54:13 a few days but you know that that's that's building the brand that's like all the things you need to do to build a

54:19 reputation I I don't even want to hear people say personal brand because P to say personal brand implies all of these

54:25 like ego activities I say what do you need to do to increase your reputation that's a more practical way of looking

54:31 at it yeah okay all right now uh coming to this I mean of course uh What uh uh I

Storytelling: Key to Effective Personal Branding

54:41 mean what role does storytelling helps in personal branding

54:46 and how I know personal branding is not exactly personal branding now but how can agencies help their client craft uh

54:54 compelling narratives when it comes to personal branding and not in a negative way so people think of narrative and

55:02 storytelling as some kind of magical unique angle to you know like great

55:09 copywriting or click baiting people but I view it as the core of what problem do

55:16 you serve for what exact audience and how you do it so that's basically Niche targeting we call that goals content and

55:22 targeting also known as strategy that very particular combination right right and if that's

55:28 clear then and you have repeat proof that you you know Drive Amazon sales for

55:35 like whatever the thing is that you do you know you make the phone ring Facebook ads for painting roofing

55:42 companies whatever it is right and you've got an sop around it and you've got customers that if if you know if we

55:48 had this list of customers and we were just to call a random mix of them they would all say oh yes working with page

55:55 traffic fantastic right then this whole idea of Storytelling and narrative and personal

56:02 brand and you know strategic PR angle or whatever all ends up being the same

56:08 thing because even if you don't do this like oh let's hire Dennis for some PR

56:14 magic personal brand like no I wouldn't even do that that's just fluff what what's you know if if the

56:21 core of delivery is solid for agencies and most are not because they white label it out but pretend that they don't

56:27 know what why labeling is what they do you know they don't know how to actually do it they don't they just hire you know

56:33 you understand what I'm saying then I don't know how you can really you

56:38 know protect your reputation because you really have no ability to to stand

56:44 behind your work because you don't even know what's going on right so no amount

56:49 of hiring a PR agency to repair this or to try to trick people or design a new website with a new color logo

56:57 doesn't address the core issue right and all just goes back to reputation so so

57:02 how can so to reframe your question on how can agencies help their clients make sure that whatever you did

57:09 for that agency is an sop everything that you do should be driven by an sop and I'm not even kidding don't even make

57:16 any assumptions about that then make sure that that is repeatable across every single one of your clients now

57:22 this is where agencies get in trouble because initially when they start out they have what we call a dogs breakfast which is they take oh this is a real

57:27 estate agent oh this is a restaurant oh my mom has a business oh this like and they just take and then there's no

57:33 single s so so have you been in America and and been to Chick-fil-A

57:39 right I've been to America but not to Chick-fil-A but or like in and out right

57:45 okay people you know in and out has a cult-like following people just wow they

57:50 they the line is so long to try to go into this restaurant or the drive-thru and that's because they make just the

57:56 hamburgers they don't do spaghetti and pizza and chicken sandwiches and barbecue beef they they do the one thing

58:04 very very well over and over again this is the whole thing about niching so if agencies take on multiple types of

58:10 clients and sell multiple types of services then it's going to be very hard

58:16 to deliver a consistent I mean then then this whole idea of story and narrative like every one's different like if you

58:22 have 10 different you have 10 clients that are all in different Industries you have have 10 agencies right right so then no you

58:29 can't have a story or a narrative because there's no there's no foundational repeatable thing to build

58:36 around right okay so on to the topic of uh

Scaling Agencies: Advice for Owners

58:42 agencies let's talk a little bit more into it now leading an agency comes with

58:47 of course its unique set of challenges what advice do you have for agency owners looking to scale their business

58:54 sustainability well I wouldn't say anything different than what all the other guys you know

59:01 Josh Nelson JC height me the we all say the same thing choose that Niche do one

59:10 service against that thing one package not like five different tiers of things that you could do one thing for one

59:17 Niche you know one price point and just do it just inhouse

59:22 initially and then you can white label it out after after you understand how to do it yourself that's the scaling part

59:29 scaling so so agencies ask me all the time how do I scale I'll say what are you scaling let's look at the thing that

59:37 you're scaling let's look at your revenues where are the leads coming from how

59:42 strong is your referral base is your delivery you know inconsistent is it in-house how much is outsourced do you

59:49 have key bottlenecks in your people scaling assumes that so people come to me all the time they say how do I scale

59:56 and then I look at their operations and look at their revenue and all this and I'll say you don't have a scale issue

1:00:03 you have a basic delivery issue once you have basic delivery in place then you can scale to say to ask the question of

1:00:10 scaling assumes that your operations are already consistent okay and of course the Sops are in place

1:00:16 then only it makes sense well they say they have Sops but when you usually when you ask and then say okay show me then

1:00:23 they they have trouble showing you but they people agencies lie to me all the time they you know I don't think they're

1:00:28 trying to lie but they say they have Sops or it's in their head or people know it they just didn't write it down and sop that isn't written down does not

1:00:35 ex doesn't count right right right we have all our Sops in notion now and

1:00:42 sheet so we do all that I'm a big sop and a process guys from day one so I

1:00:47 like that and we also have every Loom recorded for every process fantastic we

1:00:52 love it right now uh so what are some Leadership Lessons you

Leadership Lessons: Insights and Strategies

1:00:58 have learned over the year especially when it comes to building a team that shares your vision so we have something

1:01:05 we call the nine triangles which I learned from other mentors they're nine principles so if you Google nine

1:01:10 triangles Dennis youu you'll see what they are but I'll tell you a couple of them one of them is learn to teach so

1:01:16 learn how to do the thing yourself competently ideally from first person

1:01:22 sources like someone who actually has done the thing right not just someone who's charging you lot of money promising you're going to get rich but

1:01:27 someone who's actually done the thing that you want to do do it repeatedly so it can then be documented in notion or

1:01:34 whatever it is for your sop so other people can then repeat what you did and if that's in place then that's how

1:01:41 you're going to succeed as an agency because then you can attract other people you can develop them and give

1:01:48 them a path upward where they can make more money you have a clear way of measuring performance as your company's growing

1:01:55 that creates up opportunity if your company you know if your agency is not growing you're not going to be able to

1:02:01 attract a players you must be in an environment of growth for for that to

1:02:06 happen and most agency owners they they're very talented they work very

1:02:12 hard but they normally know how to do one thing they're good at selling they're

1:02:17 good at optimizing they're good at you know Facebook ads or but they suck at all the other ones they they suck at the

1:02:23 accounting they suck at you know doing illegal things or they suck at you know

1:02:28 whatever it is and so I I usually see with agencies that are say like below $5

1:02:34 million a year there is often um one I'm stereotyping here but it's generally

1:02:40 true there's like one person who's like really good at selling and talking maybe there's someone else who's like more

1:02:46 like operational make sure you know project management and then there's maybe like a marketing person maybe even

1:02:52 a technical person too like and they tend to be different people people and you can tell like when the CEO is a

1:02:59 salesperson that they lose a lot of these details and their return rate is high and you see when you have an

1:03:05 operator they have trouble with growth and they have trouble with you know changing and whatnot so you know it's

1:03:12 like whatever you are if you're a leadership Visionary person you have to hire an integrator to balance the other

1:03:19 side because you can't be a good CEO and a good co at the same time because they're completely when you optimize for

1:03:25 one you subop for the other right just like a good accountant you probably don't want them to be creative then

1:03:30 you're going to go to jail right right so I mean you see what I'm saying like so when you get to a certain

1:03:37 size like okay if you only make $50,000 a month you don't have enough room to

1:03:42 have three or four role players like that you have only enough room for yourself a few Freelancers you know

1:03:47 that's about it a project manager you know maybe one account manager if that right when you get to $100,000 a year

1:03:55 you can start you then have a COO you can have two or three account managers you know 10 vas right but those problems

1:04:02 happen at bigger numbers so does it make sense to set

1:04:08 yourself for a bigger number or you do these type of changes when you approach

1:04:13 those numbers if you can afford it I believe

1:04:18 in hiring in advance which even though it's less profitable because it there's ad

1:04:24 gustation time for people to get ready and usually like even for junior roles

1:04:29 it's probably three to six months and for senior roles it's six to 12 months I'm you know what do you see in your agency probably something like that

1:04:35 right right right so if you hire at the time of need it's going to be another six to 12 months before that person's

1:04:42 truly operational and by then you're already in pain absolutely I've been through some

1:04:48 of these so I can correlate I have the scars on my back to prove it we all would in 20 years working for

1:04:56 20 plus years I'm sure these young adults they don't listen to us I give them this advice and they don't do it

1:05:02 and then they get in trouble and they grow and they they bring in all these customers and then they didn't hire the people I'm like you sold why did you

1:05:09 keep selling and you know you couldn't Deliver come on now you've hurt your reputation right right right right right

1:05:18 so uh now ai and future of marketing in your opinion what are some practical

AI in Agencies: Leveraging for Client Success

1:05:23 ways agencies can leverage AI to create a meaningful client outcomes to create a meaningful what

1:05:30 client outcomes so for client outcomes ah yes yes this is going to sound kind of cheesy because everyone's like oh AI

1:05:37 this and AI that and hype about Ai and all this I tend to to look at it in terms of AI still in the uncanny valley

1:05:45 meaning it does some things that that are pretty cool but it's just ah it's like not quite there I mean it does it's

1:05:52 like it does these things but there's a couple things that is the memory is not high enough it doesn't have enough

1:05:58 connectivity it doesn't integrate with our project management systems there's limitations on how much you know like

1:06:03 the think is slow when you use it to answer the phone and do lead appointment setting and all this like it's good but

1:06:09 it's like ah there's always you know so my view is everyone in the company

1:06:16 should be learning how to have conversations with Chachi PT and I'm a big fan I have no ownership in open AI

1:06:23 but I'm a big fan of the teams plan I I think pro at $200 a month per user is a

1:06:28 little ridiculous the price will come down but $30 a month for teams way better than $20 and I know you know

1:06:36 Microsoft has their thing with the co-pilot and Google Gemini and anthropic and you can argue about Claude and all

1:06:41 these other folks but I think it's as simple as saying say it's you know it's

1:06:47 like Nike versus Adidas oh well I think Adidas is a bit no if you suck at basketball switching from Nike to Adidas

1:06:52 is not going to improve your game okay it's really in the in the user of the tool not the tool you can argue about

1:06:57 the which Hammer is the better Hammer like they're all hammers okay they're all llms okay so which is a whole

1:07:05 another discussion for engineers who want to have this discussion we can but it's a waste of time what matters is

1:07:11 having empathetic conversations pushing enough data so

1:07:16 that the AI can actually you if you push the correct data there's all these tools that will help you connect these things

1:07:22 together push the correct data have empathetic conversation ations that are driven by an underlying sop and then

1:07:29 have the ability to take action so you're hearing in 2025 it's all about

1:07:36 agentic AI which is like actually make the phone call actually do the purchase actually

1:07:42 call up the customer actually build a website do do the things the tasks but

1:07:47 the the execution of the task means integration with the CRM integration

1:07:52 with the the system that manages like where you send your people to go do different things right you know that's

1:08:00 that integration is slow it always is but that's where everything is headed with the AI so all of us who run

1:08:07 agencies I coach a lot of agencies right need to have all of our people I don't

1:08:12 care who they are whatever role they need to learn to have conversations so that the AI can coach them not to

1:08:18 generate content which is the dumbest thing to use it for use it to say you know what I'm having a meeting tomorrow

1:08:24 you know I'm on nav podcast this agency Insider tell me about what do I need to know about what kinds of questions do

1:08:30 you think he'll ask or hey I'm interviewing this candidate what do you think about him here let me show you his resume what do you think you know or of

1:08:37 all the people that you know should I hire this person or that person or you know I'm I'm planning a trip for for a

1:08:43 spring break should I go here that what do you think like what questions am I not asking you know I'm trying to make this decision should I buy this company

1:08:50 or not and this is this is what the deal looks like but what what what am I not

1:08:55 looking looking at what kind of risk is not like so you're asking the advisory component coaching or whatever you want

1:09:01 to call it I think's the most important thing of all the people I know that use the AI the right way they always point

1:09:07 to The Advisory piece I use it when I just go for a walk you know in the

1:09:12 morning I go for a walk and I'll have a conversation like with a mentor and that's the way we look at it so everyone

1:09:17 should do that to be able to grow and if they don't it means they're not intellectually curious and they're

1:09:22 locked in a box and fine if they're doing something some $ Dollar an hour work that a VA can do then the AI is

1:09:28 going to replace that eventually absolutely I think in 2025

1:09:34 most of these jobs will be replaced by a when the agents games in in all of the aspects we you can it's coming The

1:09:40 Matrix you know all of this is coming the robot Invasion Elon Musk

1:09:47 robot all of this right so are there any emerging Technologies or platform that you are

1:09:52 particularly excited about I think that open AI is as much as we can hate Sam

1:10:00 Alman and some of the dirty things that have happened and his fight with Elon Musk I think right now they're so far

1:10:07 ahead of everyone else they are the Swiss army knife of AI and yes hey Jen is better at generating video and Sora

1:10:14 just launched and 03 is very expensive like people okay fine people were saying

1:10:19 the same thing they've been saying for the last three years so I'd say learn

1:10:24 how to talk to the AI like literally you can FaceTime with the AI and that has

1:10:32 unlocked so much for me in having conversations than in than like the chat

1:10:38 bot thing like a friend of mine I won't name him sent me a chat bot that he built this morning and I you know I

1:10:45 chatted with it it was pretty smart I said so what do you know about me and this guy oh well you guys did this and

1:10:51 this and I'm like oh wow it's actually pretty smart it has a lot of training information but it just failed in so many areas and

1:10:58 then and just felt like a really smart chatbot you know I feel like chat bot's like don't want to chat with a freaking bot okay like I know it's a bot it's not

1:11:06 real it doesn't look real you know I think we're we need we need something better than that so there's so many guys

1:11:13 that promis me every day they hit me up how you going to try this AI TR because they want me to promote their AI right

1:11:18 because they think I have influence with agencies people ask me to be on their podcast because they know a lot of agencies follow me right and and and

1:11:26 I'll say like look uh I'm not here to promote your tool I'm sure you believe your tool is the best AI tool chatbot

1:11:33 out there but I'm chat botted out I feel like you could make something a little bit better but it's got to be 10 times

1:11:38 better for me to really care at this point what I care about is a gentic AI show me that man I'm very interested in seeing

1:11:45 what you have yes I'm also excited about that but it's not there I've been

1:11:51 waiting for this I've been demanding i' I've been in the wandering in the desert thirsty waiting for this for several

1:11:57 years it's coming next year they tell me that's they keep saying this but every

1:12:02 time they're late on on their thing you know GPT 5 was supposed to be here already what's going on you know

1:12:09 right okay I want to go to Mars you know come on to the final segment of our show

Rapid Fire: Quick Insights

1:12:16 rapid fire segment okay so all right Dan it it's time for a quick rapid fire round I'll ask you some fun and fast

1:12:23 questions and you can respond with the first thing that comes in your mind okay describe yourself in three words

1:12:30 energetic open young one book you believe every marketer should read principles by

1:12:37 Ralia if you weren't in the digital marketing what you would you what would you be doing i' be buying other

1:12:42 companies in Investment Banking your favorite productivity tool base camp I've used it for 20 some

1:12:51 years lots of Integrations I I I is using it

1:12:58 2006 yes so uh a brand you admire for their digital

1:13:03 strategy Starbucks because they have the best app loyalty program I've ever seen

1:13:09 full disclosure they were a client of ours so I'm biased okay one habit that keeps you grounded I play golf it shows me how

1:13:16 many mistakes I make okay uh if you could give your

1:13:21 younger self one piece of advice what would it be delegate out as much as you can no need to be

1:13:27 perfect I agree okay that was amazing then thank you for playing along now let's wrap with some final takeaways uh

Final Takeaways: Key Points Recap

1:13:35 you have built a robust toolbox for marketers from strategies to actionable tips if you were to give our listeners

1:13:40 three tools or strategy they must use today what would they be one is boomerang which is a Gmail

1:13:48 plugin that helps you manage your messages so you never lose track of

1:13:54 anything right two obviously is the integration of chat GPT but especially

1:14:00 the The Voice video chat which I consider I I use it more than any other

1:14:06 tool that I use okay and uh three is Apple iCloud

1:14:14 for the photos because everything that's on my phone I find as the bottleneck to distribute to the team to be able to

1:14:20 process to edit and everything that's the bottleneck and every entrepreneur I know

1:14:25 they don't have a good answer for this so they end up not making these videos or they do it sporadically and it's not

1:14:31 very good so I've learned a lot of hacks with iCloud for example I can get a 4

1:14:36 terabyte iCloud account and most people think that's not possible okay you have an apple one

1:14:43 family plan and you put the extra two terabytes against your regular two terabyte plan problem solved I have an apple one family plan

1:14:50 for sure yeah but didn't that right okay uh uh looking ahead what do you think

1:14:57 will be the most significant challenge for digital marketers in the next year they won't know what to do with AI

1:15:05 they can't keep up their customers are going to expect them to know and they're going to be dis interated between the AI

1:15:12 That's run by the networks and the AI That's from these other AI companies they won't know what to do because the

1:15:18 CL clients will just be doing it themselves and agent you know the agents are going to be the agencies are going

1:15:24 to be like the horse and buggy you know with people okay okay and what is one piece

1:15:31 of AD advice you would give to agency owners who want to stand out in this competitive uh world or a space focus on

1:15:40 that one very amazing customer that loves you and just laser focus even though you

1:15:47 the the Temptation is to try to do everything for everybody and then that will drive the relationship well

1:15:52 documented will drive you a 100 more of the same thing okay that's good

1:15:59 advice okay danis uh this has been an incredible conversation filled with actionable insights thoughtful provoking

1:16:06 ideas having a chat with chat GP and thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today and to our

1:16:13 listeners thank you for tuning in to the agency Insider show be sure to check out Dennis website and resources at Blitz

1:16:19 matrix.com for more insights and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more indust leading conversations until

1:16:26 next time take care and keep innovating and thank you once again D for you thank you n if you were to summarize in one

Episode Value: Why Listen?

1:16:33 sentence why should people listen to this episode because it's filled with

1:16:38 something which is coming to summize that's good yes that has enough H to

1:16:44 cause people to want to learn more right right right right uh