Latest / Exit Algorithms / Marketing Psychology, AI Visibility & Brand Storytelling for Business Owners | Jimi Gibson (#53)

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Marketing Psychology, AI Visibility & Brand Storytelling for Business Owners | Jimi Gibson (#53) · Exit Algorithms

• speaker-0: Welcome to exit algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera. And today I'm excited to bring on Jimmy Gibson as my guest. He's a TEDx speaker, Forbes agency, council contributor, author, lifelong professional magician, and the VP of brand communication at thrive internet marketing agency. Jimmy, super excited to have you. Welcome to the show. speaker-1: Thanks, Pete. Thank you for having me and look forward to our chat. speaker-0: Absolutely. Yeah, me too. I'm excited to get into this. Yeah, could you start off and share a bit about your background and your journey? a very unique professional career. I'd love the audience to hear about it. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, let's rewind that and we'll get into the way back machine. I was looking through some boxes a couple of years ago, Pete, and I found this little membership card. was to Merlin's mail order magic club. And I flipped over the card and I did some quick math and I was like four years old. I'm thinking, wow, that's pretty early to get involved in something. I mean, I'm sure my parents signed me up and you know, back then there was no Amazon prime. You cut a little ad out of a probably a comic book or something and shove some dollars in an envelope and waited six to eight weeks for it to come back. But yeah, I was just fascinated with magic. If my parents had a garage sale, I would sell tickets for 25 cents and sort of heard everybody over and do a little show. in middle school, I was actually by my friends' parents to entertain my friends at their birthday party, which was kind of cool. I would have probably gotten an invite anyway, but I was making like 25 bucks a show. I'm like, ⁓ my gosh. So there was always this performance, but then there was a conversion or a dollar associated with it. And I thought, wow, if I could keep doing this, this would be really cool. So in high school, I met a guy who was the account executive at an ad agency for a large Fortune 100 company. And they were looking for a promotional entertainer. And so I guess I checked all the boxes and that lasted about another 16 years, but I got to hang out at the ad agency and you know, all these creative people thinking through campaigns. And I thought, you know what, if there's a industry that's most like magic, I think it would be marketing. And so I working at ad agencies and actually started out as a designer and worked my way up to creative director and then ran an agency. yeah, so I think there's process that a magic trick goes through where you have to gain that attention, you have to elicit curiosity, and then you have to present the finale to the illusion, which is much like a call to action or conversion that you have in business. And so I think that's the lens that I see marketing through. And yeah, that's a quick flyby. speaker-0: Yeah, wow, I love that. You ever since four years old, that's really unique. Yeah, I was recently reading that book, Mastery by Robert Green. I'm not sure if you've read that one, but he talks about, you know, going back to when you were really little and finding out your interests. It's funny that you, you you found something you're interested in so young. I think that's not always common. speaker-1: Yeah. you reminded me of a story ⁓ a magician that I remember when I was a kid, it was Richard Ross and he did this. He was like a four time world champion. And, one of his illusions was the multiplying billiard balls where balls appear and vanish and change color. And, I was like, ⁓ yeah, I do that. And so I used to practice that over the bed because, know, you're going to drop and you're going to be bad at a thought, ⁓ well I'll just, you know, practice over the bed and when the ball drops, just reached down and pick it up. And so I'm reading this about him and a magician trade magazine. And he says that when he was learning how to do that illusion, he would stick his hand out of his bedroom window on the second floor of his apartment. And if he dropped a ball, he would have to go ⁓ his door down the stairs out the front door, pick up the ball, go back upstairs. And so that always reminded me of setting yourself up for excellence and really raising the stakes on how you go about doing what you do. So I don't know why that triggered that memory, but when you said the title of that book, it reminded me of kind of our mindset and always trying to push to that next level. And that's probably the same mindset, you know, some of the audience and wanting business growth and looking at that exit and yeah, so. Anyway, side little tangent there, but you triggered a memory. speaker-0: Yeah, good. ⁓ awesome. Yeah, as you perfect your craft and, you know, ⁓ find that line of your you're trying to improve. you're you're like, right, you're basically ⁓ uncomfortable. Yeah, edge. I like that a lot. But anyways, I'm really interested in the the connection you've made between magic and marketing. Yeah. I saw in research, I saw that was the magic script you And I was curious if you could talk about that or just maybe a little more about your philosophy around marketing. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, let's try something, Pete. are you located? Where are you sitting right now? speaker-0: in South Carolina. ⁓ speaker-1: I'm in South Carolina, what part of South Carolina? speaker-0: Bluff'd in South Carolina? speaker-1: Right outside, well, across the river from Savannah and near Hilton Head. And I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. I used to live in, a wife and I had a favorite restaurant in Bluffton we would go to. I'll remember the name. I haven't been there for a few years, but do you have a family member that was sort of instrumental in your life? I was always really. Kind of idol worshiped my grandfather. He was sort of very instrumental in my life. Do you have anybody like that in your life? speaker-0: I have, yeah, I definitely look up to my oldest brother. I went to the same college as him. speaker-1: Nice. Well, believe it or not, you're going to walk out on your front porch and there's a box sitting there. And that box is addressed to you, but the return address is something that you don't recognize. So I want you to grab that box and take it inside, put that on the kitchen table. And as you open the box, you realize that these are letters that belong to your brother. And you're thinking how in the world did I get these letters? And you pick it up, there's four packets in there and sort of bound up with a ribbon. And as you look at the first packet, ⁓ you at the return address and there's like a secret society or a secret club as the return address. You're like, ⁓ I had no idea. That's kind of strange. And so you put those letters down on your table and then you pick up the next one, and it's quite clear that these are all love letters. And you're a little bit curious about that. And you're thinking, probably shouldn't open these. Let me put these down. The next packet you open up, these look a little bit older and ⁓ kind ⁓ been a little bit of wear and tear. And in the upper left corner for the return address, it's actually a private investigator. it's got the cheesiest logo on it. There's like a little shovel or spade. And it says, dig up dirt on anyone. And you're thinking, okay, is this about my brother or is this about somebody else? I'm curious about that. And then the last bundle you pick up is actually from a diamond mine in South Africa. And now has really got you interested. So you've got these four packets of letters and just for the sake of our conversation, you get to open one. And so which packet are you going to go for? Are you going to go for the secret club, the love letters, the private investigator or the from the diamond mine? speaker-0: Hmm the secret club is what comes to mind first speaker-1: Okay, all right, that sounds pretty cool. Maybe you want to join that club. So you untie that ribbon from those letters and you turn them over to open one of them. And you suddenly realize that there are 13 numbers, number from one to 13 on the backs of these letters. Which one do you pick? speaker-0: seven. speaker-1: Great, so we went through some crazy story, sort of a choose your own adventure. I said there were four packets of letters, club, club, then love letters or heart. Then I said a private investigator and there was a shovel or a spade ⁓ those. And then there was the South African diamond mine. Where are we going with this, Pete? speaker-0: the just your card suits. speaker-1: Card suits, And so then I said, when you turn them over, they're numbered from one to 13. Well, if you take aces low and king high, that's 13 numbers. And I ask you, which one do you pick? And you said the seven. So in effect, what you've done is you've chosen what? The seven of clubs. speaker-0: except now. speaker-1: I don't know if you noticed this earlier, but there's a deck of cards right there on this table right behind me. I'm just going to grab this deck of cards. I'm gonna pull these of the pack. I'm just gonna go through them, ⁓ of one by one here. wow, as I go through them, there's one card one card ⁓ only that's over. Now we didn't pre-arrange this. You had complete control ⁓ over what said. ⁓ And if that was the time of clubs, that would be pretty crazy. speaker-0: It is, yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: All right, so you asked me to explain the magic script. Conceptually, I could go through that and I could tell you what's involved, but I think it's better if I let you experience something. And so probably the folks watching or listening may have been on their own journey, right? They may have picked somebody close to them. They have chosen a different pack of envelopes, but I want you to kind of rewind in your mind, what was the first thing After you asked me about the magic script, what did I start doing? speaker-0: you started getting information about me. speaker-1: you know, where you lived. We ended up having, ⁓ know, a very close proximity and geography, right? Let know that I knew something about the area and where it was located. How did that make you feel? speaker-0: Yeah, guess like a kind of a connection. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah. So that's the first step of the magic script. It's the connection. And then I ask you about a family member I shared with you about my grandfather, you shared about your older brother. And so kind of difficult for us not to continue our conversation because I'm truly interested in you and ⁓ relationship that you have. But there's also some chemistry that's going on. and you hear about chemistry and our relationship, this is a release of oxytocin and that's a neurotransmitter that basically is released into your bloodstream that says, wow, okay, everything's going well, this is kind of cool, we'd go out and have a beer together or something like that, right? And so that gives me permission to then move to the next phase, okay? So there is a connection established. And so when a magician presents ⁓ an illusion, they may walk out on stage, they may make a comment about the theater, they may talk to somebody in the front row, same thing in a business situation, right? You need to have that connection, you need to have that common ground, you need to meet them where they are, that kind of thing, so that you want that release of oxytocin. Now we move into the next phase, and what happened there? I started to give you some scenarios, probably different than you thought. we were going, I asked you to pick up a box on the front porch. We talked about these letters are addressed to your brother. We went through four, like what's going on in your head as you're thinking about these scenarios that I'm presenting to you? Could you imagine them? Did it seem weird? Were you just going with the flow? Give me some feedback. speaker-0: Yeah, I did put myself in that scenario. I imagined my front door and ⁓ a package and as walked me through each of the scenarios, I ⁓ did of visualize what you were saying. speaker-1: Yeah. Now at some point, did you ever think like, where is this going? Why are we doing this? speaker-0: Yeah, immediately, really. speaker-1: And what were you, what were you trying to figure out? speaker-0: I, what point was that you were, that we were doing this thought experiment. speaker-1: you were you bored or were you engaged? speaker-0: as engaged. speaker-1: So this is the second phase of the magic script and it's the curiosity phase. And that's actually a release of dopamine. And so we hear about dopamine on social media, know, ⁓ they have a dopamine addiction. No, it's not the dopamine addiction. It's the expectation of closure or an expectation of a reward. Okay. And so when you post something on social media, you're looking for somebody to like, share, comment, and you're expecting that. And so if you're constantly in this state of expectation or reward, I can wear you out. And so I know we're on a podcast that, we can't go on for three hours. can't have 27 different scenarios. Number one, the audience is going to get bored. Number two, you're going to go, okay, I've had enough. I like, I've given you enough rope. Bring this thing in for a landing, Jimmy, right? And so I gave four scenarios, but again, I know where I'm going. You don't know where I'm going. So that elicits that state of curiosity. Now, you've invited me on, we've had that connection, you trust that I'm gonna bring this to a conclusion at some point. And then I start to talk about a recap of the different sets of envelopes. At what point do you put two and two together and realize that we're talking about the suits of a card? speaker-0: Not until the ⁓ when you started explaining the club's, know, diamond's heart, spades analogy. then I was like, okay, it's got to be a magic trick. speaker-1: Right. And so you came to that conclusion on your own. I never said, and here are the four suits. This one is this one, and this one is this one. I gave you enough information for you to connect the dots yourself. And so you're starting to make that closure and you're starting to move towards the climax of the magic trick. Now I'm stretching that out. I'm building the tension, right? You've already connected the dots. I asked you to pick one through 13. You pick number seven. I lean over and then there's a deck of cards on this table behind me. I'm very slow. bring it to the camera, open it up. I spread them out all the while you and probably people watching or listening going, is it going to be the seven of clubs? When I turn it over, there's a release, right? That's a release of serotonin. That is the chemical that flood your bloodstream with. ⁓ it all makes sense now. everything was structured in a way that everything is right with the world, the seven of clubs. You've also got this trigger of like, how the heck did he do that? it's the climax or the conversion of sequence of connection, curiosity and conversion. And so when we through those phases, we are setting ourselves up for a better experience. I think what is missing today is this curiosity phase, right? Where we wanna go straight to the connection. Typically, there's a time limit. Sometimes it can be inauthentic and we can sniff that out. And then we wanna move to the close when we think we've already got that connection. You've probably seen this on LinkedIn where you make an interesting, they call it a connection request. And then as soon as you accept that connection request, what happens? ⁓ they go for the conversion. They want you to buy something. You don't know this person. There's no curiosity. There's no, you know, future pacing or future vision of what could happen there's some curiosity in the mix, right? And so when realize that these are the four suits of a card, we've got the seven of clubs that you've named. There's a pacing towards the future where you're going, I wonder, what if he turns that over and it's really the seven of clubs? And so that was probably a little bit longer explanation, but I think the structure of it is important for people to understand. And this can be for a social post, that can be a blog post, it can be a team meeting that you're having, that you're trying to lead a team, right? And so I would say if there's anything that listeners can take out of this is follow the structure and the most magical phrase you can say ⁓ in that curiosity phase is what if. Because what if contrarian to potentially a common belief about something, if there's a product or service that you can do in a different way and you say, and the connection point is tell me about your pain, what state are you in right now? And you know that they've been going down a certain path. What if you could pull the rug out and say, well, what if I could provide you that service? in half the time and half the cost with a better result. And then all of sudden their brain is like looking for closure. They're going, how is that possible? What do you mean? And then as you walk them through the components of the what if, they're putting all the pieces together themselves. They're connecting the dots. They're realizing you're talking about, you know, something that they never thought could come together in the way that it did. And then the conversion or the pitch or the call to action doesn't feel as weird because we've been through these three phases. They're looking for closure you've provided something that in effect is a magical solution to something been searching for. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. I appreciate that. That's really useful. It It brings it home, for sure, the ⁓ psychology too that. Yeah, leading the prospect through ⁓ a series of events. Do you have a similar philosophy storytelling and crafting a compelling of Yeah, story for people to get on board with your message. speaker-1: Yeah. I would say it follows the same structure. There are some components of a story that you want to make sure that you understand. I just can give some basics. Any story, especially if it's business related, should have a current state, a moment where things change, and then a state at which when those changed, you're a new person. Right? It can be a person, can be a company, it can be a mindset, it can be a philosophy, but ⁓ have to ground yourself in space. What did I do? I said that there was a box on the front porch. There's a visual environment that you're bringing people into. Otherwise you're just floating in space, right? So you have to put somebody in an environment. Then I ask you to walk into the kitchen and put that on a table, right? And so we're transitioning. Now we're grounded. All the other events happen at that table. You should have no more than three characters in your story because it's hard for an audience to keep up with more than three characters. And so the characters in the story ⁓ your brother, the letters, and yourself, right? And so the letters represent this mysterious thing, right? And I say letters because we're sort of clumping them all together. And so those are the three characters. And then you want this five second moment. Most stories have something that happens in five seconds. That is the transition from where you are to where you've changed. And it doesn't have to be some big, huge thing. I broke my leg. I got in a car wreck. It could literally be, you received an email. You were expecting this and then that happened. And so think about that transition and that five second moment. And then You want to bring it to a resolution pretty quickly. And so there's a way to tell a personal story and then bridge that to a business story, right? And so ⁓ I were using the card trick as a to ⁓ a principle instead of data, I could say something, and I'm just going to make this up on the fly. You know, we walk around with all these decisions ⁓ and If you relate that to a deck of cards, you know, there's 52 possibilities. But we just went through just a minute ago ⁓ allowed you to make a decision very quickly and be confident that that decision was the right decision because that's what felt right in the moment. Now that you've made that decision, then we can move on, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so ⁓ it's a personal story. It could be something that happened to your kid. It could be something that happened to you a long time ago. And then the other component of a story is make sure it's in the present tense because that draws the listener into the action. There's something again, chemistry wise that happens that's called neural pairing where the storyteller and the person listening to the story, their brains will light up the same way. And so when you tell it in the present tense and you bring people into the story, then they're with you. And so when I said out on the porch, and pick up that box, bring it in, I want you to open, like we're in the moment, like we're doing this together, right? I'm not saying a week ago you picked up a box and you brought it into your house and everything is, and that's very disconnected. So I would say those are some principles that would give people at least a starting point. speaker-0: Yeah, very helpful. you. Yeah, excellent guidelines. I haven't heard it spoken like that before. Valuable for sure. Yeah, I'm you know, I feel like that can, it's a great framework in general. it, does a marketing strategy change as a company grows and gets, you know, gets bigger and bigger? you know, like if you're a very early growth stage versus a more mature company a lot of, with each individual divisions, you know, whole team doing marketing. Yeah, I'm curious how that changes, ⁓ how marketing philosophy changes. speaker-1: Yeah. I would say you're hitting on some points that all relate back to being authentic and where you are and what you want to communicate. And so I think there's a tendency today to be inauthentic and try to position yourself in a way that you're bigger than you are. But the reality is, or smaller than you are, or whatever the case may be, the reality is there should be plenty of customers that identify with where you've been and where you're going. And so I can give you a quick framework on how you can pull those stories out at whatever phase of business that you are, they can ⁓ to... ⁓ you know, the bumps and bruises and banged up shins that you've been through or the champagne toasts of the winds. And they can be very specific to you. think we're in a state now where people just want to put something in chat GPT and it spits out something that's inauthentic and really is the same as what everybody else is saying. And I would encourage folks to really dig deep and tell stories about themselves and give lessons for that journey. And so again, if you're a startup, You can use this framework if you're in growth mode or you're looking to exit. think this can also serve as a framework so that you can give the richness to the organization. And again, with magic, I'm going to hold up my left hand and we're going to start with the pinky. Probably I'll remember the pinky promise you gave on the playground as a kid, like you interlocked fingers. I pinky swear to do this. And you didn't break that promise. So as an organization, what are you promising? What is the guarantee? What are you standing behind? Did you used to stand behind something and then you have elevated that to something new? Why did you decide to do that? What about the materials that you use for constructing whatever it is that you have? What about your commitment to customer service? Like, what are you willing to plant a flag and say, we will not compromise on this? And so that gives the people who are listening an understanding of where your values are. What are you promising your... employees, your vendors that you work with, right? If we move to the next finger, that's the ring finger. You may think that's a promise, but it's actually the passion that you brought to it. And so we've heard a lot about the founder story, the origin story. Like, why do you do what you do? Why are you doing it in the town place and time that you're doing it, right? And then ⁓ committed are you to the long haul? My wife and I just celebrated 20 years of marriage. That's a different mindset. than if you just end it for the quick win and people can sniff that out, right? And so how are you pouring in to the relationships that you have with your vendors, with your employees, with your customers, those types of things. The next one is the middle finger. And seems like a vulgar hand gesture, but it's actually a gesture of defiance. So ⁓ who are proverbially flipping off? What villain are you fighting Who's the enemy? If you truly believe your product or service can save your audience from something that they are, you know, some pain that they're exposed to or something that they're seeking, then it's your right and it's your responsibility to save them from that villain. And that can be a company, it can be a person, it can be an ideology, it can be a behavior. And, you know, there's ways to do it in a nice way, but to rally your... team to rally your customers around your company, got to identify the villain. Next one is the pointy finger. And I call it the pointy finger because it has to point to somebody, right? You have to know who you're talking to. You have to identify them. You have to know what their pains and their dreams are, right? And you also have to be clear that in any communication, whether it be a sales presentation, an whatever the may be, you should identify ⁓ one pain, thing that you're solving, one offer and one call to action. So a singular point of focus, right? And then the next one is the thumb. And so, you know, that's the universal symbol for, hey, things are going great or thumbs down, things aren't going so great. And so what should your ideal client do? Thumbs up or not do thumbs down. And it's also a thumb print. What thumb print are you leaving on your community, your world? You know, the businesses that you work with, the customers that you have. And what's unique to you, I have three sets of twins that are nieces and nephews. They can open each other's phones with their face, but they can't open it with their thumb. And so what is unique about you? If you're small, embrace being small. If you're large, embrace being large. And talk about why what is a perceived weakness may actually be a strength. We go back to the what if. in the curiosity. What if a big company could actually give customer service like a small company or vice versa? What if a small company is like the David and Goliath story and we could actually outperform because of, ⁓ da da da da da. So. ⁓ speaker-0: Mm. speaker-1: Is that helpful? speaker-0: Very helpful. Yeah, wow. I love that framework. It's so many good nuggets in there speaker-1: Yeah, there's probably about 50 or 60 things that, you know, if you get lost, just look at a finger and go, ⁓ okay, I'm going to talk about this. And it's going to not be something that chat GPT can replicate because it comes from your heart and soul. speaker-0: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. And it applies to both, you know, no matter what size of business you are, stage you're at. Yeah, incredible. Yeah. And you mentioned chat GPT. Let's go down the AI rabbit hole. I'd love to hear, you know, how are you guys at Thrive using AI today? I guess we can start there. speaker-1: ⁓ sure. Yeah, I would say, you if we were talking two years ago, it probably would have been chat GPT and all the of we've got a whole lot of new tools in our repertoire. What we don't want to do is we don't want to produce content that is what we just talked about, right? That's very bland and generic. And so we view it a partner in the work that we do. And certainly it has its place for efficiencies and things like that. I would say the big thing that we are discussing now with businesses how AI relates to their visibility as an organization. And so we've seen a huge drop off on web traffic with clients and they're upset because they're like, what in the world is going on? And so ⁓ Gartner did study and they said, you know, by 2026, web organic traffic is going to drop 25 % and by 2028, it's going to drop 50%. And so we're having different areas where search is happening, right? And so it used to be you would type into Google and you would get 10 blue links and you would decide which link. Now we've got AI mode. Now we've got all these large language models like chat GPT and grok and Gemini and perplexity and copilot and all of these different areas where people are asking questions and seeking information. You know, there's a stat that came out recently that 60 % of searches don't end in a click. like, ⁓ well, that's crazy. Of course, website traffic is dropping off. And so that traffic is happening ⁓ answer engines, AI overviews, ⁓ information being presented on that page in a different way. And you have to understand like, how do you become visible? Now the other component to that is SEMrush, which is a huge player in the SEO world, tracked referrals that come from these large language models convert at four and a half times the conversion rate of organic traffic. And so what it's doing is it's sifting out people into buckets ⁓ of already their research, they've already done their homework, they're coming to your site. pre-sold, so it might be less traffic, but it's traffic that's richer with intent. And so yeah, I would say that's a lot of the conversation that we're having. And there is a multiplier when the business owner steps out ⁓ is visible in social media, producing content. I know when you're talking about exits, typically there's a discount if there's a person within the organization that- is sort of too well known because then how do you transfer that? And I would say there are stages to be able to transfer that visibility to the business. And it actually will help increase the value of that exit when do it in the right way. So it was a long answer to a question and maybe there's some things you want to dig into. speaker-0: Yeah, what exactly do you mean by that transfer? Do you mean kind of like a custom GPT with a lot of data from that person maybe a of a company that the employees are able to ⁓ ask questions and can respond in a way that the CEO might? Is that kind of what you mean or? speaker-1: No, more about the visibility. So one of the things that's different from a typical keyword search ⁓ a keyword search in Google ⁓ basically headed towards a page on a website, right? And so you would optimize keywords and people would get used to searching related want to end up on a website. When people ⁓ use a language model, the difference is in a typical Google search, it might be five to six word phrase. in a large language model, the average is 32 words. And so when these large language models are trying to figure out who ⁓ the best business or person to recommend, they're looking for all the places where that business or that person in the business exists online. And so the big places, so there is training that goes on and so there's a base level training. But then if you think of it like a pizza, So the dough is what it's been trained on, but then there's toppings. So there's pepperoni and green peppers and mushrooms. And so it's going to all these different places to look for the toppings for the pizza to decide who is demonstrating experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. And Reddit is a popular place. And so if you're not engaged in your industry in conversations on Reddit, it's time to start LinkedIn. is the second one at this point because it can triangulate the fact that this person has experience, they're attached to this company. so Search Engine Journal did a research study with LinkedIn at the end of 2025. And they said, if an executive posts 10 times a year, not a month, a year on LinkedIn, their referral rate will increase by 30 % and their deal size will increase. And so that visibility is important. All of these, YouTube is another one. So I think what I'm saying is personal branding used to be a fluffy okay. Now it's a differentiator. ⁓ let's say the business is thinking about an exit three to four years out is to really pursue personal branding and visibility across various places on the internet. If you're one to two years out, start to bring your other executive. executives in, start to bring in subject matter experts. you have a framework and the way that you do things. So let's say you're an HVAC company and you have a process for diagnosing any situation and it's called the XYZ framework. Trademark those frameworks. That becomes assets with the AI loves frameworks. And so start to go from speaking about I as the CEO or founder or owner to we as the company. And now you're starting to transfer that ownership or visibility, but there's still a footprint that's out there. And so I think strategically, a lot of studies that show that the valuation of a company is about 45 % of the CEO. So you can actually increase the value of the company. But then you want to demonstrate to whoever's buying it that the visibility of the organization is going to transfer when they buy it. And so maybe some of the techniques that I just described would help them compartmentalize that. Because I think there is a legacy belief that the owner should kind of be invisible and start to step back a little bit. so operationally, you should be not in the mix. getting all your systems in place. But visibly, I think you'll be losing out on a higher valuation that you can then transfer to the organization. speaker-0: Fascinating. Okay. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I appreciate the explanation. Yeah, I love your data-driven insights that topic too. It's fascinating. Going back to the first thing you said too, definitely am one of those contributing to that statistic. I ⁓ mostly do my research on, I use perplexity primarily ⁓ and oftentimes, speaker-1: Yeah, sure. speaker-0: I don't even look at the direct website that it's pulling the information from. It's awesome. Man, yeah, so many cool insights. Thank you for sharing all that. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, we've got a report that's coming out today that talks about that company and owner visibility and we'll update it every quarter, but it's an interesting read. ⁓ get you that link if you want to be able to share it and folks can dig into that. It's about 21 pages. And again, it's all research-based and there's a methodology that we went through and we studied 400 businesses across five industries. And yeah, it's kind of wild in the direction things were going. speaker-0: Awesome, absolutely, yeah, please. Sounds fascinating. Yeah, I'm curious how you're, maybe recommend people leverage AI in marketing sense, other than of course, I mean, you can see when people are using AI to generate content, it's like, you know, so obvious and kind of cringy sometimes, but what is a good way maybe to use AI? ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah. And I would say you mentioned it, a custom GPT that knows your brand voice. knows tone. It knows some of the industry information, knows how you operate, put in, you know, have it quiz you on your five fingers. And then the information that comes back, really what you put in is what you get out. And so if you want the magic prompt to give you everything you need, it's not going to happen, right? And so I think training, sure the knowledge base, if you're in a sensitive area of business, whether it's medical, financial, legal, whatever the case may be, you can build GPTs that have a closed environment. They're not the web. They're not publishing that information out there as part of their own learning. ⁓ There's ways to be careful about that. And then I think sort of the new wave is getting into agents and having these agents, which is basically a little robot that has an assignment and they're going to do some things for you. That can speed up a lot of workflows. ⁓ know, not that you can ⁓ set it forget it. ⁓ You have constantly whip them into shape and, ⁓ you know, with them to make sure they do what you want to do. ⁓ But I think activating of these workflows can really allow the team to think at a higher level and be more creative. So would say those are some of the ways, certainly within the area of video and image creation, it's amazing. We use We had a client request all AI video for a campaign that they were doing. And I look it and I go, wow, the amount of time that it would cause to... have a photographer, a videographer come in, hire actors, scout a location, go through all the process of everything that's required in a photo or video shoot. It really opens up possibilities for companies to leverage it in the right way. And I think those are gonna continue to amaze us as the months go on. speaker-0: Yeah, 100%. ⁓ Man, that's super valuable what you just said there. Yeah, I think people go wrong. People are learning more and more, people, especially at the beginning, went wrong with just using it as kind of like a search engine or ⁓ expecting to have this ⁓ really outcome when in reality you have to train it. ⁓ It time for it to know you and know how you speak. So. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. If we go back to the magic analogy, it's just a really dumb mind reader. it doesn't know what you want. ⁓ has no emotion. It has no empathy. It's literally a prediction engine that when you feed something in, it is calculating what the ⁓ statistical best ⁓ word word that I can give in relation to the assignment that was given to me. and it'll throw some weird stuff in there. It'll hallucinate. It's trying to learn. But yeah, if you just understand what's going on in the background, then it's a different way to interact with it. know, when ChatGPT upgraded to the 5.0 version, it lost some of that touchy feely and people were mad. They were like, wait a minute, this used to be my friend. Like, okay, yeah, it's kind of funny the way it interacts with you, but they put it back in there because... people personify the relationship that they have with these LLMs. speaker-0: Yeah, fascinating. Yeah. time we live in and ⁓ exciting to see where ⁓ heading. ⁓ Jimmy, I know we're coming up on time here. We could probably talk all day long. ⁓ I definitely appreciate all the insights you've given today. I always leave ⁓ the at the end for the guest if they could just share one ⁓ practical to business owners listening. speaker-1: Yeah. Of Yeah, I would say talked a lot about AI. We've talked a lot about storytelling. I would say it used to be that you could think through where you were going, maybe yearly, and then evaluate quarterly, ⁓ or monthly and change quarterly. I would say at the speed at which things are going on, especially from a marketing standpoint and all the new opportunities, I would tighten that window a little bit. and keep an eye on things and yeah, just educate yourself on what's possible and look at it as an ally and not an enemy. And yeah, would say there's exciting times ahead, but keep some reins on it and don't throw, what's the expression? Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Make decisions, be careful ⁓ and proceed in way is right for your business. speaker-0: Well said. Jamie. Thank you so much for your time. Working listeners ⁓ learn about you. speaker-1: ⁓ well, I post on LinkedIn, taking a little bit of break this week to kind of get some things reconfigured, but I'm usually posting something of educational value through Friday on LinkedIn. post at 10 AM Eastern. And then, ⁓ we'll love people to reach out to me. If you have a question about anything that we've talked about, just DM me. I'm available to, you know, go back and forth with you and then thrive agency is the website. Lots of great information. publish a blog every month. That's followed up by about a 20 minute video. Again, educational and if we can help anybody out with their marketing, we'd love to have a chat. speaker-0: Great. Yeah, I'll be sure to leave that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on, Jimmy. speaker-1: Yeah, it was great. Thanks, Pete.