Latest / Social Proof Podcast / How to Rank #1 on AI Search Engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google Gemini)

Transcript

How to Rank #1 on AI Search Engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google Gemini) · Social Proof Podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You started this company when you were 17, now you don't 20 million dollars a year, are you doing it 17?
0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Between homeless camps, couch surfing and sleeping in the streets.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's bizarre that I'm sitting here talking to you thinking about that moment.
0:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We help work with brands to make sure that they're coming up and getting discovered when people are searching for what they do in those LLMs or in Google.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what's crazy?
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I do podcast on it, right?
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's literally one of the biggest podcast conferences in the country.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I put in chatGBT.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the conferences for podcasting?
0:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even show up in the list.
0:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all about building that digital authority.
0:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You might have the most awesome podcast conference.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you don't have the authority signals that AI is looking for, it doesn't come up.
0:47
[SPEAKER_00]: AI looks at the same similar signals to Google.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be making sure that all the content being published on the about page, it's got a section about you, a word you've done, expertise, credibility.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm trying to tell and educate people, how to build those authority signals so that you do start coming up.
1:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe by the end of this part, you'll be implementing this David and you'll be coming out next time I see you.
1:27
[SPEAKER_01]: and I am the best in the world, but for some reason, super talented people don't really get the exposure that they're looking for.
1:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It used to be, it used to be.
1:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe 40 years ago, 30 years ago, the best musician in your town would get signed.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Or the person who could sing the best will get most notoriety, like nobody can sing like this person, nobody can rap like this person.
1:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But things have changed drastically.
1:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it really doesn't have a whole lot to do with talent.
2:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It has everything to do with your ability to be found by the right people, your customers.
2:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much noise online.
2:09
[SPEAKER_01]: How you cut through the noise and allow your people to find you, your ideal customers, your fans, things at nature.
2:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I think this conversation is so important because the most talented people don't win anymore.
2:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the person who could be found.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not about finding your customer.
2:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more so about making it easy for your customer to find you.
2:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is the conversation today.
2:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So today, we have a very special guest all the way from Australia.
2:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Sitting down to catch couch.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you?
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, awesome.
2:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thanks for being here, man.
2:45
[SPEAKER_01]: First and foremost, you're younger than me, but more successful.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: If all the haters, I'd hate a little bit.
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, but you've got an incredible journey, man.
2:54
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you introduce yourself, typically?
2:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I just say I'm Harry Sand as I found a company called Studio Hook and just love educating in the space.
3:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Studio Hook.
3:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Where'd you get that name from?
3:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, so it was something I just came up with in five minutes.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't think it'd be a big thing called it studio because it was just me like studio one and then the whole you know was low syllables and I loved I just liked Hawks and that was a name You know nothing remark I had no idea it would just be this big thing.
3:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny.
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh Well, it's been a week's months coming out with the right name and I know what do you think about this and you just
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean studio because it was one person.
3:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd been a like hawks.
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then I and I registered You know in Australia we got dot com did at you and that was like 10 bucks and I didn't register the dot com because I thought Well, I would I need the dot com that cost me like 30 grand later, man
3:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So register the duck com people register the duck com.
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did it cause you 30 thousand you bought the company then someone took it?
3:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Built the company in Australia in the UK someone saw that we were growing.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: They registered the duck com and they They said hey, you know, I'll sell this back to you.
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good fun.
4:04
[SPEAKER_00]: 30 grand 30 grand later Yeah, I'm this great.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They're making my mistake Okay, um, so Harry tell us what you do
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so I founded the company StudioHook, which we said, and it helps brands with SEO, and now a lot of AI search.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's no surprise, it's billions of searches now in chatchipyT and Google's new AI mode.
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Berkshire Halfway, just today, backed Google in that AI frontier.
4:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we help work with brands to make sure that they're coming up and getting discovered when people are searching for what they do in those LLMs or in Google.
4:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, make the money.
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's what we do and we're one of the biggest independent firms in the world now One of the biggest independent firms in the world.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah How okay, so when did you start this company?
4:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 17 10 years ago 11 years ago.
5:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 11 years ago.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a baby man.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a baby.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god So 17 years old Today how big is your company?
5:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got 150 engineers around Melbourne, Sydney, London, and Atlanta, shout out to the US, Atlanta, and we do about 20 more rev and rapidly growing.
5:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Still growing about 40% year on year.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
5:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:28
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you start at a company that's 17?
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: When you say you have 150 engineers, what's that mean?
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: 150 staff, you know, we can all imagine this.
5:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We can all pull some nerds, actually.
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a company of 150 staff employees, 20 million revenue a year.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
5:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Wowsers.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been nuts to say a lot, man.
5:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nuts.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, and you're not even 30 yet.
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: No quiet, no, I got another what year and nine months.
5:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I got work to do, man.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I go work to do.
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations, first and second.
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I want to get into the nitty gritty of what it is that you do, because obviously you're doing something well.
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And do you work with people, companies, and mix up both what?
6:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly companies, some hope high profile individuals, but mostly companies doing a million plus.
6:19
[SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of spending about 100 grand on paid ads, at least, and now they're trying to figure out how they can lower that cost-prequisite or start dominating this new frontier of search.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I'm doing a webinar, challenge something like that, you're saying they bring you in to have to lower the ad spin.
6:40
[SPEAKER_01]: How does that work?
6:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't understand.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So because you like, in Google search you have to pay for visibility, right?
6:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But you could do that through organic.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's actually higher converting.
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So the organic is just everything on Google.
6:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not ads.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Same as AI search, because AI search doesn't even have ads right now.
6:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just about optimizing for that so that you're not paying Google and getting them rich, you're getting that.
7:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll talk about that, but you build authority, and you do
7:06
[SPEAKER_00]: also it's a cool stuff to actually get that and what's really cool David is is now you know we talk about the discovery phase not just when people are finding you but when people are comparing you that's when AI searches a big big part of the process now you said when they're comparing you yeah yeah to your competitors say
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
7:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So people now, especially B to B, if you're searching for, you know, let obviously this is the best podcast you can stumble upon, right?
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where you want to be watching for entrepreneurs.
7:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But you might have compared different podcasts to see where you're spending your time.
7:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You might have done that in AI.
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And that'll give you all these recommendations based on what you think.
7:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the new frontier of that discovery phase.
7:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what's crazy?
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do, I do podcast on it, right?
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's literally one of the biggest podcast conferences in the country, right?
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not even saying it because it's mine, and you're saying like numbers, why is it?
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And impact things in our nature.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I put in chatGBT just out of kicks and giggles.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the biggest, you know, where can I go to learn podcasts?
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the conferences for podcasting?
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even show up in the list.
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm seeing stuff that I've never seen before, they're not going to hear a social platform.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't even, there's maybe like 30 people in a crowd.
8:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, we got 1500.
8:33
[SPEAKER_01]: What's happening there?
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't understand.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is, this is a name in the game David, like this is, it's all about building that digital authority.
8:42
[SPEAKER_00]: You might have the most awesome, and I'm sure you do.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The most awesome podcast conference, but if you don't have like the authority signals that AI is looking for, it doesn't come up.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what I'm trying to tell an educated people how to build those authority signals so that you do start coming up.
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe by the end of this part, you'll be implementing this David and you'll be coming out next time I see you.
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% authority signals explain that so AI looks at the same similar signals to Google and I'm gonna go into weeds for a second here I'm gonna keep it like trying keep it easy So Google when we do a Google search it just does one search right it searches the keyword you look at and it comes back with the results Right we call that traditional search
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: AI does what's called a fan-out query.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Sound super cool.
9:28
[SPEAKER_00]: All it is is really doing like 10 different Google searches.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you search best podcast conference, you know, in Google it's just doing that one search.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: In AI it's looking for best conference for podcast, what podcast or worst listening to, who is coming to the podcast, you know, all these different things.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So 10 different searches and compiling those results.
9:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, how it ranks those is very similar to Google.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So we look at three pillars.
9:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got your on site, which is all the technical stuff on the website, the page speed, you know, the infrastructure, you know, how it's laid out.
10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got the content.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is super important in our making sure you've got expert lead content that AI can pick up index and serve.
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know real quick.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm, ah, there's so many questions.
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Expert-led content.
10:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't understand.
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so you need to make sure David, you're obviously an authority in this space.
10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be making sure that all the content being published on the about page, it's got a section about you, a word you've done, expertise, credibility,
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Why just like you would do here why would someone you know listen to you where's your authority and that's what you need to be publishing on that page And then every blog post you do everything you do needs to be authored by you So the Google can see those signals across the whole web and go this day of a guy Yeah, when he talks about entrepreneurship He knows what he's talking about.
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not just someone that's just fired up an Instagram for the first time and spewing stuff
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what we call EET, expertise, experience, authority, and trust, and that's the name of the game now.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
11:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
11:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I have that on the about section.
11:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about the comfort itself, but you're suggesting that I need to have, I need to boast a little bit more about how amazing it is, the number one, this and that, because you're saying,
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Google or AI is searching all the stuff that said about this and they just take that stuff is true.
11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So somebody has better descriptions of their covers, even if they haven't even done it before and they understand this and go to different platforms and talk about it.
11:41
[SPEAKER_01]: They just compile that so when you type in chat, GBT, it is say, oh, this is the one you need to check out.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: totally right.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have, you know, what makes you special, what makes the conference unique, AI and people don't know.
11:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's impossible to pull that.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've really got to put your best foot forward.
12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't want to really subtly sell, you want to show this is why I'm the credible source in this.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, you know, if you're a professional service business, these are my case studies.
12:11
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the things I've done.
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: These are locations we serve.
12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: These are all the services we do.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's
12:17
[SPEAKER_00]: how you want to structure these stuff.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100%.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to come back to that, but wasn't the third one.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: The third one is what we call offsite.
12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we talk about this idea of digital authority.
12:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's everyone else that talks about you.
12:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
12:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe on this podcast is good for my digital authority.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it gets a, I get a link back to it and it, you know, it sends a good signal to Google.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But doing more of those things that build your digital authority digital PR is huge in this space at the moment, and I'll talk about that That is a crazy practical takeaway that anyone can do It's basically coming up with a data led story So I've got another business on the side as you do.
12:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a luggage brand, right?
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So we sell consumer luggage in Australia
13:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we didn't have a lot of budget for this, starting up.
13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, it takes so much money just to build a product.
13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So we started doing digital PR to kind of short cut our way into SEO.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So we did stories like worst time to fly, right?
13:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got nothing to do with the luggage, right?
13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: People like, well, why would you publish that?
13:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you want to publish about how amazing the luggage is?
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Jonas don't want to talk about how amazing your luggage is, but if you write out a story or dotted-led story about the worst times to fly and you get that data and you turn it into something compelling and you reach out to journalists They will publish it and you know what it says new data from caddy luggage suggests that Tuesday at one p.m. is the worst time to fly I just made that all I can't remember if that was what the study said
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But you get that authority and when Google sees that or AICs that it goes, man, these catty luggage guys, they know what's up.
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They're publishing pieces in the travel niche.
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's niche relevant and it tells me they're an authority in that.
13:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people looking for travel stuff to buy, we're going to make sure they're coming up 100%.
14:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you're saying, you build out a blog essentially, and you're talking about the worst times to fly.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And when people are talking about the worst times to fly, they're pulling data from your site and they're saying that you said this and you're the authority.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Based on data.
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll outreach them like a press release, you know, two different publications.
14:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we got like, you know, travel weekly Forbes did a write up on it.
14:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's crazy.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And this, this is something that anyone can do and people are not talking about right now.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: fours that are right up on the company or they did a right up on the topic and reference your company.
14:40
[SPEAKER_00]: On the data, so they did a right up on the data for busy professionals traveling, these are the worst times to fly data from catty luggage suggests.
14:47
[SPEAKER_00]: That was it.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It never spoke about us ever again.
14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't need to, but that link, that credibility, has already benefited us massively.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what game-changer game-changer man I would have I would have never even thought of that that's incredible so that's called digital PR digital PR yeah
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think maybe that's why the traditional PR, traditional PR industry is kind of struggling now, because like, oh, I'll get you on a radio station or like, maybe in a magazine or something like that, but someone in these really, they need to know how to navigate the internet.
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's worse, you could have so much, you know, you could have all these TV shows about you, you could have all these radio about you, but if it's not on the internet, if it's not picked up by AI or Google, it doesn't exist, dude.
15:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So you really need to be building that digital authority.
15:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you suggest we do now to start building the digital authority?
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't even know where to begin.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you saying I need to set up a website and then a blog or how does it work?
15:57
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's break it down step by step.
15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've got Caddy luggage, right?
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a luggage brand.
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I want people that are searching for suitcases, luggage, kids, you know, luggage, all that kind of stuff to find us in Australia.
16:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, you know, there's a million ways to do that in SEO, but the fastest hack right now is that digital PR.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to go, and I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do what's called ideation.
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to come up with some ideas that, you know, I could write about that are likely to get links.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So another campaign we did is airlines with the most hidden fees.
16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So see what I'm doing here.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm staying in my niche.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking at, you know,
16:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really want to talk about our products because that's boring, that's not going to get picked up, but I know that travels a massive subject that people like to talk about.
16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And people love knowing what airlines are shafting them, right?
16:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we'd airlines have the most hidden fees.
16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So we went out, it sounds super technical, but all we did was we went, okay, we're going to get an F2 Dubai and back.
17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: and we're going to compare 20 different airfares and see by the time we add all the extras and everything or add your bag how much it actually costs.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So from this is the quoted fair versus this is how much you would actually pay.
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Get that and then we do we start getting journalists details and you know that's that's a whole thing but I've got some resources that people can access for that or talk about that later.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'd get those journalist details, reach out to people that are ready, written about a travel brand, and you say, hey, I've got this data that we've done at Caddy Lugage, which talks about which airlines are the most hidden fees.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You send that email out, and you will be amazed how much publicity you get.
17:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The amount of people that want to talk about that stuff with data backed studies is tremendous.
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You can rinse and repeat this on a million different topics.
17:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's an endless amount of things that you can think about and get data on.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And the SEO credibility, like we rank in Australia now for kids, luggage, and all these terms, we've only been around for a few months, right?
18:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And we get a lot of traffic.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We're selling through chatchipyteen now, right?
18:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, what are you doing?
18:10
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you know that?
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we use something to trip away, which attributes all our data, and you can see an attribution channel from chatchipyteen.
18:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Triple whale.
18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like a dashboard.
18:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really good for e-com.
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Really good for e-com.
18:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you go into that real quick?
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to understand.
18:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So triple whale, it's a, it just lets you know where the traffic's coming from.
18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like Google Analytics but kind of beefed up so you can send like post purchase surveys and stuff to see to make sure that, you know, if Instagram or Matt is taking the conversion that the people are actually saying, oh yeah, I came from Instagram, it's a really, it's a more, you know, in depth dashboarding solution.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bit expensive, but if you've got a big e-commerce brand, it's definitely worth it.
18:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So are you saying you upload the information to triple whale and triple whale disseminates it or you're able to like it produces tracking links or something like so it's like Google Analytics you put a tracking code on your website and it just handles a rest yeah God, and you could see that these sales are coming from chat to PC of someone just randomly searching something
19:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: The only problem is, and this, this is the worst part about AI, is it's so murky, right?
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So this will say it came from chatchipity because I clicked the link within chatchipity, but I don't know about you David.
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The amount of times I search for things, but don't click the link in chatchipity and I'll like search for the brand instead.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just go to Google or just like type it in directly.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That comes through as direct traffic.
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no way of actually attributing that to Chachy B.T.
19:39
[SPEAKER_00]: God.
19:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why it's a bit murky.
19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So I actually think we've sold, you know, there'd be a lot more sales on what's been reported, but it's coming through direct.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: God, I hate it.
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's, so it's good to see the sales, but you know it's more than 100%.
19:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where the post-purchase survey comes in handy, because then post-purchase, you know, it's like, how did you find out about us and people select AI search?
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: God.
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is, which, you know, it's just, it's just picking up so much now.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You said something about the, um, what was it?
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, the journalist's something, journalist connections.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that?
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The details?
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Journalist details.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's like a handful of ways.
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a tool called Hunter.com to get journalists details, but basically you just want to go on different websites where journalists have published things and you can copy it from like you copied their details from there.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: What does, I don't understand what journalists do tell me.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, like the email address and stuff.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So then you could like reach out to them with your data.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so literally crafting an email to reach out.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of what you want to be doing.
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, we never, we never, ever have put anything out like this before.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um,
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I love giving away something practical, so if you go to harrysandas.com slash social proof, you get like there's two documents there, one's all about doing that digital PR process, like helping out crafting the actual email so that if you kind of lost about how you'd craft that that's all there and it's all free by the way, you know, but it is our internal docs, so you won't find this out anywhere on the internet and I'm going to get rid of it after a couple weeks because I don't really want to competiton us to go ahead and get to be honest.
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what was it every slash social proof slash social proof is live right now.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah And yeah, check your details in there.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get sent those documents All the odds.
21:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want anything just give me a shout out as you start getting some AI sales Be like Harry did that for me.
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a little one.
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
21:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, get exclusive access to AI search accelerator Data to get our client only secret resources to build your visibility across school
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: and this is something you're saying once they get this they can do to stuff themselves totally yeah if you're a founder of marketing manager and you've got the time you can do this yourself right like if you're a big brand i'd love for you to hire me or if you're like you know you don't have time for this great awesome
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But seriously, you can do this stuff yourself.
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The only difference is, we guarantee results.
22:09
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do it yourself, I mean, you're an earner, but you might figure it out.
22:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You might, and honestly, I hope you love doing this, because I find it so much fun to come up with different angles, different ideas, and different ways to get placements.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Jake, you put Harry Sanders.com 4 slash social proof in that, in there somewhere so that they can see that.
22:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm literally going to be doing this because I have a conference coming up and I do webinars and things that I nature and we're always trying to figure out how do we spend less money and ads?
22:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we love organic, organic customers or organic traffic, things that I nature.
22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
22:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But how, so give me some of the stuff that they're going to receive in here.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'll get that whole digital PR kind of blueprint I spoke about, everything from like helping you to it's got out again our internal process of how we do ideation so how you can use prompts and different things to come up with different ideas for your brand how to craft an email how to get journalists details how to follow up with the journalists how to track your results all that kind of stuff's in there and then it also talks about some of the easier minor hacks that you can use to come up in chat to be tea and Google's AI mode.
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can you can start employing these things, you know, over the weekend, over the week whenever you get some time and guaranteed like I I not only do this for clients.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I do this for my own brand.
23:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole case study behind it and it works and it works really well.
23:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how long for you know, if everyone starts doing this I get crazy.
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But it works really well right now and it and it's untapped in the US definitely.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: man.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me some hacks, man.
23:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I, you know, it was one that I realized that it was like super cool shots out of my home.
23:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a conundrum on Instagram.
23:55
[SPEAKER_01]: She told me to, which I thought was kind of weird, she told me to buy a bunch of domains for podcast.
24:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, she's like, think about all the things people search, like, how to start a podcast.
24:05
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the best podcast, microphone or whatever.
24:07
[SPEAKER_01]: She said, biology's websites.
24:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And then she did some magic.
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: behind there and people started coming that I didn't know to the conference based on that.
24:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So, can you break that down?
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, did you put content on those domains?
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You just had to do a mess.
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we just had to do a main pointing to podcast some, uh, yeah, redirected to podcast some.
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a lot of the time you can buy, you know, domains that have already got some more thought of that someone just let expire, like they've got credibility or authority and you can buy them and redirect them.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Some brands take this to another level like Canva, um, based out of Australia, one of their big strategies was they would buy businesses just to redirect their domain name.
24:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So if they had a business that was doing, you know, like let's say you're doing podcast mics and you had a business podcast mics.com.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And you were seeing traffic there.
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You would just buy that and redirect it to wherever your podcast studio was to get that authority.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But on small scale, you could just buy several domains and redirect them.
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It is tough.
25:06
[SPEAKER_00]: There is some magic that goes on there because then you have to kind of either they have to already intrinsically have some value or you need to build some value on them.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do that by publishing content or
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, digital PR on them and then redirecting them back to what we call your money page, which is like the way you want people to go.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a strategy.
25:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And it works.
25:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very time intensive though.
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a little, um, an Israel break this down, buying a domain.
25:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say, best, uh, let's say I do credit.
25:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, uh, I go get best credit repair dot com.
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's already
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not using that content.
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just redirecting it when someone goes to that website to my website, right?
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So why would someone sell a website that has traffic going to it already?
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people just let domains expire.
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a whole industry called expired domains.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, someone might have started a podcast a year ago, got a bit of traction and then decided, you know what, did?
26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have time to keep doing this thing, and so they let the domain expire.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You could pick that up as an expired domain, and then you could redirect that to your podcast.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You alluded to something of creating content on the page, are you saying that's a strategy?
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
26:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to, let's say you had a really good ad.
26:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you had, you know, let's say you picked up, there was a podcast called The Entrepreneurs Podcast or something, I don't know, I'm just making stuff up.
26:34
[SPEAKER_00]: and they kind of wound down, but they had so much authority and credibility.
26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you registered that domain, you took that domain, and you started building up content on that rather than straight read directing it, because a straight read erections good, but if you could, if you believed you could still build up content on that side to keep that traffic going and then refer it to your side, that's even better.
26:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, takes more time more resources.
26:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd only really do that if you saw an absolute slam dunk winner.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
27:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And the, okay, but then I have to build out, let's say I get five websites, I got to build out and keep content going on these five websites.
27:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, see that's, that's why it's really hard.
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd only do it on like really authoritative side.
27:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it, you know.
27:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you just be like cool, redirect, move on.
27:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
27:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, how do I start manipulating changey people?
27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, because I'm really upset about this thing, not holding on my website.
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, the best ways are, so, you know, we talked about fan inquiries and how LLM's work.
27:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So, again, behind the hood, all they're doing is a fan aquarium, a bunch of different searches.
27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's ranked in Google.
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So LLM's use Google.
27:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Chatchee BT free version uses Bing, cheap, but the paid version and Google obviously use Google to index.
27:55
[SPEAKER_00]: They're pulling the websites that are ranking in that as sources and then compiling that into a view for you, right?
28:02
[SPEAKER_00]: that's all it is.
28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to be one of those sources you've got to be doing traditional SEO and coming up there and that's when it comes back to you know internal links so having good linking between different pages and your website making sure you've got a great about page building up that authority if you've got an e-commerce website this is a real easy hack for you having a category page right for all your products because Google wants to send traffic to your category pages so have a category page with text
28:29
[SPEAKER_00]: and links to other categories.
28:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know, let's say you're doing, you've got a page for dresses, you want to have, you know, links to cocktail dresses, formal dresses, whatever, on that category page, to show, we call that information architecture.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that word, it sounds super fancy.
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds dope.
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds so cool, right?
28:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But all it is is really just kind of, you know, mapping out the website so that Google and AI can see it's super easy.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's what it is.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, there's no super quick manipulation trick.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's building a good experience for people and AI that can use it.
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's showing that you're an expert, you know, if you're a B to B business, make sure you've got awards up there.
29:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you've got key studies up there.
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're a local business, make sure you've got like a portfolio of jobs you've done.
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you're a painter and you're listening to this and you're like, well, I've got images.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, do better than images.
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about the job.
29:21
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it like?
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you do it?
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you transform it?
29:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You might have seen it in their think of man that sucks.
29:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you want to work, sometimes you're going to roll up your sleeves and do this stuff.
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, sit down, consistencies, key, you know, build out these pages, talk about, why you the paint painter that I should hire.
29:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Ecom, I already gave you guys a little hack, you know, you got your category pages, but just look like a real business, look legit, that's super important.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
29:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything you can do inside chat GPT because I think, so it's just like the CJ and I can manage them and all my friends that in that space, they're doing something inside chat GPT.
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is, I don't know what it is, but like, are there some things that you can do in there?
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you can do, there's one really cool hack, and you know, I might need to like send you a video or something.
30:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a way you can, you know, using the developer tools in Google Chrome, you can inspect and you can see the network package and this sounds super complex because it is.
30:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's easy to do once you like, once I'm going to just step by step.
30:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And it will tell you the exact searches.
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we talked about that fan out query.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It tells you the exact searches that it's done in Google to come up with that.
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're, they're the things you need to be ranking for.
30:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so that's a really good hack.
30:41
[SPEAKER_00]: In chatchipity they used to be some really easy ways of just asking like putting in the same prompt multiple times in chatchipity on different devices to get an answer that's pretty much done now.
30:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Those kind of quick tricks they kind of get fixed up and patched quickly.
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I really believe in actually building up good authority.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But one good thing, one super, you know, basic, but important thing, is to put in ChachiBT and say, tell me all about this business, right, and it sounds basic, but you'll be a mazy amount of wrong information, right, just incorrect.
31:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're finding you're getting a lot of incorrect information, we've worked with a lot of big brands and we've got a lot of incorrect information, like pharmaceutical brands, right?
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: All these incorrect information is coming out, that's really dangerous for people, right?
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: and so they've got to come in and make sure that they go on their product pages and out of a queues to really make sure that the information that Google is pulling or AI is pulling is accurate because otherwise it's going to hallucinate.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not giving it the answer, it'll hallucinate the answer.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're better off giving it FA queues and stuff that it can
31:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it for one.
31:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Y'all need to learn how to manipulate ChetG, okay?
31:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Get the answer that you're looking for.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let's speak in a like what it takes.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: You started this company when you were 17, now you don't $20 million a year, almost 11 years ago.
32:02
[SPEAKER_01]: What were you doing at 17 before you started this?
32:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, it's honestly a crazy story.
32:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't even feel real when I, when I tell it.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, go back a little bit.
32:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So, 14 is when I discovered SEO, right?
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I found the world of SEO at 14, and I loved it because, you know, paid Ajay to pay money.
32:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I came from, you know, not super well off.
32:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we were, you know, you know, divorced parents single mom.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have a lot of cash.
32:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So I, and I loved computers though.
32:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just, you know, I was obsessed on this thing.
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I played a lot of this game called Runescape.
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Shout out to anyone that remembers Runescape.
32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: What again?
32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Runescape.
32:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Runescape.
32:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's game.
32:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That's game, OG.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so I've played a lot of this game and, you know, one of my buddies were telling me about this thing called SEO and it didn't cost anything and you can make a website.
32:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I had this great idea David, I was going to make a travel website because at this point of my life I'd never traveled anywhere, I'm all the way out in Australia and this island in the middle of nowhere and I'm like one day I want to travel places so I would get my friends on the game to write up you know little travel guides and where they work because they were from one of them was from Atlanta, one of them was Phoenix, Thailand, you know all over the world and they would write these guides.
33:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started learning SEO all those years ago to kind of start coming up.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people would search guide for Atlanta, you know, my website would come up, but I started getting traffic.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, long story short, I did that for about a year.
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I never actually traveled anywhere.
33:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the worst part of this story, man.
33:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And a year later, someone said, hey, would you be interested in selling it?
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 14, it's all over email.
33:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I came back to him and I said, yeah, I would.
33:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought, you know what I'm gonna do?
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna hit him with a super big offer and negotiate, you know what I mean?
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's call it anchoring.
33:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what I did.
33:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I hit him with this big price I said, listen, David, I'm willing to sell you the website, but it's gonna cost about $1,000.
33:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
33:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the big, I was, I was 14, I was a lot of money, I'm thinking I could buy a computer, I might be out for a Playstation or something, it's insane.
34:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And we said they come back to add a lot of questions, I thought that a lot of questions, because that's a lot of money, that a lot of questions, because that's not a lot of money, that's what I was scamming the most something.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway the number was so low they thought you were 100% it was so bad.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a lesson there anyway I ended up doing some work with them and so from 14 to 17 I actually worked there and when I was 17 You know the agency actually sent me collapsed and at that time I thought I would start my own agency
34:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So at this point of my life, I'm like dude, I'm set this SEO skill is awesome, I'm doing this all over and I hit an absolute just curve ball.
34:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So my mom had to sell the house when I was about 14, so I was living with dad and you know, unfortunately a common story, man, is I was 17, I was living with my dad at his partner's house because dad didn't have the place.
35:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And she decided I was baggage.
35:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She called me baggage and she said to my dad, it's out of the baggage or me.
35:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, he was homeless when he was a kid.
35:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, he thought, I think he thought it were tough for me out, you know?
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I grabbed my laptop and
35:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because she, and this is a hard thing, and this is why it's so common.
35:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I You know, I wasn't allowed to talk about my mom in the house.
35:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, she would refer to me as baggage around the house I felt like baggage, man.
35:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly I did and It just got to a point where she didn't like that I reminded Her that my dad had another relationship before her.
35:49
[SPEAKER_00]: She had two kids.
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't want me to be a part of that family
35:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And she kicked me out and Dad went along with it because I don't know whether he didn't have the backbone or whether he thought it'd be good for me.
36:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know man, but I slept on the streets under a bridge.
36:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I was homeless for eight nine months between homeless camps, couch surfing, and sleeping on the streets.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was
36:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it was a good time and it was, it feels like it happened to another lifetime to be honest.
36:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's bizarre that I'm sitting here talking to you thinking about that moment, you know, 10 or 11 years ago.
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You still talk to your dad now?
36:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tricky relationship, yeah.
36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm trying, I'm trying to work on my relationship with him.
36:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is, man, it's been so long that I don't know if I trust him, that trust isn't there.
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I see him more like a acquaintance rather than I think that paternal, I didn't grow up with him either.
36:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like we have that real connection.
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's still with that woman.
36:55
[SPEAKER_00]: After all the partners he dated, that was the one he ended up with.
36:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
36:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that hurts, man, that hurts.
37:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I've got a lovely relationship with my mom.
37:04
[SPEAKER_00]: First thing I did when I made money was get her a house.
37:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so she's just the most incredible.
37:11
[SPEAKER_00]: She's had such a tough life, man.
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, she was, you know, she had her own journey, which, you know, I'm sure she'll tell one day when she's ready, but she had a tough for them, me.
37:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, she had a tough for me, and she's just such a kind, generous woman.
37:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's your dad know the things that you don't want for your mom and to success your business and things are nature.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows, yeah, he knows, um, probably not how much, you know, and I'll try to keep it that way.
37:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:38
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I throw it in the sea.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I promise you, dad.
37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm having this problem in my company that's 20 million.
37:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:44
[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
37:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, but yeah, so it's been a hell of a journey.
37:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what I don't think I would have You know started the business if it wasn't for that.
37:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't find another job I couldn't even get a job at like McDonald's markets or anything like that else
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very introverted, you know, I didn't interview well, my clothes were dirty, you know, things like, did you get to smell yourself, like, such a, you know, psychological, you know, your mental health when you're going through that is just so low.
38:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so lucky I had these incredible angels help me, or who knows where I would be, man.
38:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Who knows.
38:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
38:24
[SPEAKER_01]: While you're 17 and you're a couch servant and things that I nature, were you working on the business or did you get settled first and then work on the business?
38:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't work on the business for the first few months, right?
38:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually, truthfully, didn't even have the really an idea for the business.
38:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I couched up with this guy who really helped me out, you told me like, who would say if it was trouble, we stayed together.
38:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We always had to tell this back, you know, I owe that guy a lot.
38:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a social worker called Carla and Carla, you know, do you guys have social works in America?
39:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that like a concept?
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Carla helped me like build like a planet.
39:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called like an individual development plan, IDP.
39:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And it basically is like, you know, helping you if you're mental health, because my mental health is bad.
39:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I felt like baggage, even when I was couch surfing places, I felt like sick because I felt like I was just a burden on these people, right?
39:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes I prefer just to sleep at a homeless camp or even on the streets, just because of that, my mental health.
39:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So she helped me with that, and I'll never forget just a quick story.
39:32
[SPEAKER_00]: She would catch up with me every Friday, and we would listen to R&B Fridays together, it was on the radio.
39:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was out.
39:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I was about four hours out.
39:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I was staying with someone for about a week and so I couldn't come all the way back to the city four hours there four hours back.
39:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I said, I called up St. Vincent's was the charity that gave me the social workout.
39:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I called him up and I said, hey, I'm not going to be able to make this meeting with color on Friday because I'm kind of out of town and they said, oh, you must be mistaken.
39:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Color doesn't actually work on Fridays.
40:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, no, I've been catching out with color for months.
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It turns out color was giving up her Friday, it's just to catch up with me.
40:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
40:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So busy with all these other people and she didn't want to tell me that she didn't get like she got reorganized and she doesn't work Fridays anymore.
40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And that man, like when that happens to you, it just hits you in the gut.
40:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and so that was like a real turning point for me because I was like well people really care people want to make a difference And she helped me in role in this in this government business program She told me about this program.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so funny to look back on man It's it's in saying she told me about this program because I couldn't get government funding It was awful.
40:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to go to my mom and get it.
40:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like this paperwork sanctions and unfit mom It's a worst thing I've ever done right worst thing I've ever done she was in tears.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in tears My dad wouldn't sign it so I couldn't get money
40:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so she says, there's this government program and they give you money if you ever start up.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's like, you should enroll.
40:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, color, I don't have a start up.
40:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like, well, start one.
41:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I did.
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly what I did.
41:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, I'm good at SEO.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I could come up with something around that.
41:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I joined this program.
41:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I met the third angel of my life, a guy called Graham, who was an XEO, you know, retired.
41:14
[SPEAKER_00]: and he taught me everything about building a business.
41:18
[SPEAKER_00]: He taught me how to register a company, you know, everything like that, tax, how to get your first clients, networking, all these things, man, and I owe that man so much, right?
41:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me one thing that stands out that you'll never forget that you learn from Graham.
41:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll never forget networking, right?
41:37
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone networks, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, on this 17-year-old kid, remember like, Graham doesn't know at this point, but like, you know, he knows that I'm not exactly super successful, right?
41:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing dirty clothes, dirty shoes, run down, and I'm going to need networking events, and Graham says, you gotta go up and talk to people.
41:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm this introverted guy, I'm like, what do you mean?
41:59
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you've got to go out to talk to me.
42:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, did I come up to me?
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, no, man.
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to go up to people already talking and just insert yourself in the conversation.
42:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that was just about the most horrible thing I could ever think of.
42:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is coming for a guy that was couch surfing and on the streets.
42:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
42:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, this is the worst.
42:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I did that.
42:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I went up to people and I did it.
42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, go back to grandma.
42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't work.
42:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because you're 17.
42:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm really like, everyone's like, what the hell are you doing here?
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but he just kept making me do it and that perseverance, you know, it took me ages to get a client Agents took me like two months of doing this all the time with Graham until finally I got that client But if Graham hadn't have made me do that, you know Wouldn't have happened.
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't have kicked off.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember your first year in business?
42:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, uh, my first year in business, you know, it's funny because everyone goes like, oh, 20, where you came out of no way, but this big global brand.
42:52
[SPEAKER_00]: First year of business, we did 18,000 died in the middle of the street.
42:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what, man?
42:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I was stoked.
43:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:01
[SPEAKER_00]: When I started the business,
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I wasn't sitting around thinking oh, we're going to be one of the biggest in the world one day You know, we're going to do all this cool stuff.
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have all these engineers or the software or the academies We're going to help all these all these other kids.
43:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking man if I could get enough money to get a sharehouse This would be the most freaking incredible business ever
43:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I got that client and I started working with them and they referred me to another client I was making 500 bucks a month.
43:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what that was that was enough to get a share house and that was 12 November 12 September so 12 September never forget that was just
43:36
[SPEAKER_00]: in same as a few days after my 18th birthday, I just remember just sobbing, like that was not, yeah.
43:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause yeah, five hundred above.
43:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like the time of the box and then they referred you to someone else.
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: When did the, when did the rate start going up?
43:53
[SPEAKER_00]: the rates are going up.
43:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good question.
43:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was, you know, you got that snowball effect, right?
43:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyone that does like professional service knows that if you start doing a good job for people, people refer, right?
44:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still one of our biggest lead acquisition sources today.
44:09
[SPEAKER_00]: SEO's second.
44:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we got a lot of people that we'll talk about us.
44:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it did good work for those two people and they referred people and then they referred people and eventually, you know, it's funny, I was at a networking event and I was, I met this other young guy and he was kind of in the space but not really, he was just starting out.
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, you know, it sucks that I didn't meet you earlier because I'm about to have to like move in back with my parents and he Tasmania, which is, you know, down south and Australia, because he's like, I don't know how many more money for rent and I don't know, I felt bad for this guy.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I really liked him.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm really like this kind of said, you know, what if I get how much would you need for rent and he's like, I need about a, you know, 700 bucks.
45:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you what, I'll give you seven on bucks, but you've got to work with me now.
45:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to, like, I'll teach you and you help me with these clients, because I started having a few and I needed some help on things, and I remember I gave them seven on the bucks, and I went home and I felt good about what I did, and then I like had this realization.
45:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh crap, I just hide someone.
45:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What the hell have I done?
45:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, did.
45:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even, I just put a roof above my head like eight months ago.
45:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Six months ago at that point.
45:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, and I've just hired someone.
45:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And now that's depending on me, but you know what, you know, that was one of the best things that have happened because, you know, I, you know, studio hawk became an actual company.
45:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we had two people and I taught taught him and kept growing it.
45:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that person's there around.
45:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They were with the business for six years.
45:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Six years?
45:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, wow.
45:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we got people that have been with the business eight years now.
45:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's been incredible.
46:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of my favorite things about the business is and something that's made us so successful is we have this idea of, we hire juniors from all walks of life.
46:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't look for people with a ton of experience like in a junior role.
46:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Our junior roles mean junior.
46:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll take you with just an attitude, hard work, and we'll make you into a world class SEO specialist.
46:23
[SPEAKER_00]: We partner with a lot of disadvantaged youth programs back in Australia to help give people pathways, and some of our best people, like our general manager, Chief of Staff now, he came from a difficult background.
46:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had all sorts of people, all sorts of backgrounds that have become world class leaders in the space.
46:42
[SPEAKER_00]: and I truly believe that you know people people can learn this this is such an in demand skill mark my words in 10 years when AI is just exploding and AI search is everywhere as in your meta glasses you'll be glad you learned this skill.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that, at what point did you realize, whoa, this is a big business, I'm rich.
47:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know if you ever like, yeah, I don't know if I ever say that, cause I don't know if I don't think I've ever had a moment like that.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I told her, am I rich?
47:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't think like that.
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, did you have a moment where you realized, yeah, I'm not that dirty kid at 17 anymore.
47:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a few moments, you have, and in my commandments, right?
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: To my first micro movement, I went out actually two.
47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: One, I got Uber's for the first time.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like, well, that was like, for me, getting an Uber was always a rich person thing.
47:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
47:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because we had trams and like public transport and you jump on and you would save money, you know, it might take you a long time to get some way, but you, you know, Uber's cost money.
47:46
[SPEAKER_01]: from my Uber X. I was like, it was like a big moment for me.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Uber eats.
47:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Uber eats was like, what am I even doing?
47:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's a red- I could go over and pick this food up myself.
47:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm paying someone this is insane.
48:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like a whoa.
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
48:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a moment.
48:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Go on to the restaurant and like ordering what you want.
48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like not going.
48:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, if I get the smoothie, I'm probably not going to get this.
48:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Just ordering what you want.
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a big moment.
48:12
[SPEAKER_00]: These micromembers, they don't seem like rich person things, but they are like not looking at the price.
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, going out to eat every night, you know, because you can new traveling around the world was a big micro moment.
48:23
[SPEAKER_00]: buying a house like being able to buy my mom's house in cash like you know not having to get a loan and but buying my house again those are all like I mean those come on to compare to Uber Eats those are a bit bigger I agree but you know it's all these little moments I have never been a flashy guy don't wear like a you know crazy watch or I wouldn't say I'd drive a crazy car or anything like that but
48:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the moments that I think you realize, you've got this lifestyle now that, you know, you don't look at yourself, you don't worry constantly.
48:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:57
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of that question is, at some point have you realized that money isn't as important as you once thought it was?
49:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, look, and there's so much, there's so much data around this, once you're making, what is it 70K, 60K, you know, any increase in money is like it really falls off.
49:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Up until that point, you know, having money is insane, right?
49:21
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're, if you've gone from like having nothing to having some money, you'll attest to this, it's a game changer.
49:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Like your quality of life, you know, when people say like money doesn't buy happiness, you're like, dude,
49:32
[SPEAKER_00]: you haven't not had money right because if you've not had money you realize that it gets you 95% of the way that and these rich ass people complaining about money problems like bro get real but um you know once you're making a mill two mill three mill you know it starts becoming a barrier because if you go ah you know I have met so many people they're making you know they're like I'm like what do you want to do Dave what's the next goal and they're like I want to make a hundred mill if I made a hundred mill I'd be happy I'm like
50:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but what's the difference between making 10 mil and 100 mil?
50:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that much.
50:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually not going to improve your happiness that much more.
50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, well, good community, good circle of friends doing something for your head, your heart and your soul, like those are the things that make a difference.
50:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So we do a lot of things, you know, that don't make us money.
50:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We, we have an academy called Hawke Academy, which is where anyone can learn SEO for free.
50:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That costs us a lot of money.
50:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That costs us six big as a year in money.
50:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, training these juniors.
50:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you know, you can argue that because on one side, it costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars in learning of development because we have a whole team around that, you know, paying these people away to we pay all our juniors, we don't do internships, we may, we believe in paying people.
50:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the flip side, these people are loyal and they work hard because you've given them a chance, right?
50:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I think there's, there's, there's sides to it, but yeah,
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but it is everything when you've gotten on a hundred percent sorry to say it because most of you still won't understand it until you get there and you realize even like as we look at these large companies that are going out of business, and I get your perspective on this.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: When your company is more successful, you typically get more overhead, more staff, more office and Australia, Atlanta, right, and people say, oh, you're just rolling in the game.
51:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to keep all the money that you've got.
51:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a great point.
51:30
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you navigate growing a big company and kind of securing the success, essentially?
51:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, that's, you know, when you say the company's making $20 million, I think this there's people that go, whoa, this guy's making $20 million bucks a year.
51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I ain't making $20 million bucks a year, right?
51:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm making, you know, honestly like pretty three mil of that, two three mil of that.
51:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, you know, slightly over 10, 15 percent, and a lot of that gets reinvested into the programs I spoke about before we got another two offices in Australia, Melbourne, Sydney, we're going to office in London, and
52:04
[SPEAKER_00]: an office here in Atlanta and Atlanta, you know, just to start off this office, cost, you know, 200, 300 grand just to kind of get started because you have to get visas, you have to do all this stuff, you have to kind of get the, you know, the company started.
52:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We've only been here for less than a year, but we've already, you know, broke even when we're now doing, you know, what, a meal here in Atlanta, which is awesome for us, right, but, you know, gives you an idea of, you know, you know, the cost of these things and getting started.
52:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, but coming back to it, how do you manage that?
52:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have firm thresholds because you've got profit, but then there's also cash flow, right?
52:43
[SPEAKER_00]: They say revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king, that's a good thing.
52:50
[SPEAKER_00]: because you can have 10% profit of paper, but if you've got clients at a six-month late-paying bill or they default on something, all of a sudden you're 10% you might be negative 2% and then who's floating that business?
53:02
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing?
53:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important to have profitability in the business, but you need to determine where that's threshold is.
53:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we're growing super quick.
53:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
53:10
[SPEAKER_00]: and so profit for me is not the primary motivator right now it's it's growing the team the revenue we're investing hard in in AI and R&D around that you know software we're building because we we really believe in owning that space and I think we've got a fantastic opportunity now that comes at the cost of profit
53:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, the reality is, I'm 28, you know, I'm already, you know, on the sole owner of that business.
53:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a couple other like employees that have, you know, um, you know, staking that, but we don't have any investors or anything like that.
53:48
[SPEAKER_00]: No investors.
53:49
[SPEAKER_00]: No investors.
53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I think for me, could I make more profit?
53:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what I know what to do with it.
53:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Not really, man, like I already bought my mama house, I bought me a house, you know, I took some chips off the table in that, and that was important because now we've always got a place to go, you know, no matter what happens, you know, the internet blows up tomorrow, I got a place she's got a place, yeah.
54:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's huge, and I can see why that's so important, because at one point you didn't.
54:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
54:17
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're, um, I wanted to ask this to you, you have 150, a staff of 150.
54:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What have you learned about leadership and leading this people?
54:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so much of our leadership, man.
54:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And different stages of leadership, which is something I don't think people talk about much.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you're leading a business at five people, it's completely different than 150 people.
54:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's completely different.
54:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you got thousands of people, you know, these stages of leadership are so different.
54:47
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, it's, you know, I think a company gets its values from the founders, he've always got to be very careful and deliberate with that.
54:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We hire people, you know, all around the world on the weekly, right?
55:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm floating around all around the world all the time.
55:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes I don't get to meet everyone.
55:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I, when I'm in office, I like to make sure we do a, you know, an hour with me just whoever started in the company, I'll sit down with them and I'll tell them the story about how the company started.
55:15
[SPEAKER_00]: right why we have programs like the junior program why we give back and why we care about our clients and all these things because otherwise what happens is you risk the company getting so big that people lose the why they lose like the care so it's just just another client or it's just another team member
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't want people thinking like that.
55:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I want people understanding no, it's not just another team member Like that that person you don't know what they've gone through to get here You know, and you don't know where they're gonna go and how we can be a part of that journey.
55:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That client You don't know they might be here in 10 years refers to another 20 clients.
55:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we've got a lot of clients like that
55:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's about looking after everyone and making sure everyone's boarding to that deeper mission and vision because otherwise, you know, I see a lot of people, they struggle once they get past 10, 20 staff because there's that there's not a real connection.
56:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't have a connection with every person in the company.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, but I want them to understand why the company was created.
56:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can have those same values and embody that in how they carry the company forward.
56:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm not even, you know, there's general managers in each region.
56:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even handle the day-to-day operations of anything.
56:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So I need to trust in them that they are doing what I would do to keep that company flourish.
56:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that man.
56:31
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what I'm just super inspired about one-year story to what's happening in an AI space and your knowledge of it because I do need to have a stronger conversation on how you can like assist me as a person or first up we'll get to download and check it out and I do want to figure out how I can grow my brain whether it's my speaking career, my podcast conference
57:00
[SPEAKER_01]: there's ways that you will go about that, right?
57:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.
57:04
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you see right now in the space as it comes to AI as it relates to building a brand?
57:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see something's dying?
57:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see things growing?
57:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So I see, you know, two big things emerging, right, and I'll put my cards in the table.
57:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm doing stuff like this appearing on podcasts.
57:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I previously haven't done a lot of this stuff.
57:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been focused on building Studio Hawk, but now I see the value in personal brand.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: right because in a world where AI can you can have an AI person or an AI character authenticity is so important and having expert share information rather than regurgitated stuff from chat to be too important.
57:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're an expert in your field which you should be you know it's something you know that's why you have a business that's why you have a thing.
57:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be talking about your unique expert views on that.
57:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be talking, you know, if it's a B to B business, you should be talking on podcast about that.
57:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be doing YouTube about that.
58:01
[SPEAKER_00]: All these things that we previously wouldn't call SEO and now what we call search everywhere optimization and a part of SEO.
58:08
[SPEAKER_00]: because in this age where everything's fake, real people will prevail and real brands, real personal brands will excel.
58:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's one big part of it is you're building that out, you know, even if you're an e-commerce business, it's about how do you showcase that online, how do you get real customer testimonials, real user generated content, how do you put that on your product pages,
58:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all those things just make a massive Massive difference because people you know what man people don't trust anymore People don't trust you know, and I you know you might be like, oh, Harry's this SEO guy.
58:46
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I know he's got 150 engineers go Google it?
58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much information online and you know it's I agree go out and research it because there's so many times I hear someone say something and they're like, oh, I got 400 staff and you look up on LinkedIn or something They go like two people, you know, they just make it stuff up
59:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is, it is this age of like people can say anything, but you, you know, AIs that a fact check it and you're that a help AIs fact check and by building out that authority and building out that credibility to make it as easy as possible.
59:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's why that's one thing, that personal brand.
59:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why it's so important to be doing that now and attaching your brand to everything you do.
59:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Because
59:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all this faceless YouTube stuff, I do my personal view is it a little die-off as people go, you know what, that was a cool trend, but I kind of want to listen to real people, I want to listen to the David's world that have got experience.
59:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why that's so important, that pulls into all the other SEO stuff.
59:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that SEO and AI search is just emerging and that'll still be pulling all the things I spoke about, all the digital PR.
59:50
[SPEAKER_00]: What's dying?
59:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what's dying is, um, you know, I think a lot of, you know, those, those, like fake tactics or like cheap tricks, a dying, like follow for a follow or you link to my website or link to your website or, you know, crafting a million AI videos or a million pieces of AI blog content.
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That stuff is dead or dying.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're doing that, stop wasting your time.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably hurting you more than a
1:00:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And reinvest that time into just focusing on what is a one or two things that you are going to do that are actually going to get traction if you put a month behind building out your digital PR man Like you know, personally email me and tell me that I wasted your time if you didn't get results because seriously like that that it's so effective That I know that's going to work worth versus a month of posting AI clips Yeah, which is like who wants who is that the internet saturated with that
1:00:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I think even what's it, Sora?
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was super cool.
1:00:54
[SPEAKER_01]: What I think it's like somewhat entertaining But it was almost like last week.
1:00:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like whoa, that's cool, but now you see it.
1:01:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like yeah All right 100 minutes.
1:01:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, is there anything I didn't ask you?
1:01:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we covered a lot of ground There's something that I if there's something important that I forgot to ask you that the audience really needs
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I think the audience take away?
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we recap digital PR.
1:01:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We recap the pillars of SEO and I want I want to stress SEO is not that hard guys You know, it might sound complex, but I want you to understand it is really simple.
1:01:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something you can learn on a weekend There's you know, I've got a YouTube there's a lot of YouTube content out there that'll teach you about like on-site off-site How to build content all all this amazing stuff
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not gonna happen tomorrow.
1:01:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even gonna happen next month But what'll happen is over years this will compound right like studio all for instance Our biggest source is referrals our second biggest is SEO and Fifth that the moment is AI search, but that's climbing fast That's gonna become one of our biggest resource and what's really fascinating will blue even even me away in a whole team
1:02:09
[SPEAKER_00]: is that SEO is still about 40, you know, 36, 40 something percent of all our lead sources.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And we expected that to go down, because AI search would take that traffic.
1:02:22
[SPEAKER_00]: No, AI search is 11 percent, and it's on top of that SEO, right?
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's crazy because it hasn't stolen any of our SEO traffic, it's just added new traffic, new audience that we weren't reaching before.
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if that'll hold up, but there is a lot of studies coming out saying that there's like differences, you know, people are using both traditional search,
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_00]: and AI search, and they're not using one or the other, which I thought was really fascinating, but it's a whole new frontier.
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the people that are doing it now are going to be the ones dominating just like Amazon was when they dominated the SEO game, just like zappers, all these brands that have conquered the SEO game, you'll see a new wave of these people come through that
1:03:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, last question.
1:03:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know what this is what I'm trying to do.
1:03:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking to build out the biggest podcast conference in the country and have it recognized as such.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll have the people there.
1:03:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also a personal brand where I speak and I teach a whole thing that I nature.
1:03:31
[SPEAKER_01]: What would it look like for someone like me to work with you?
1:03:35
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think you'd be able to do?
1:03:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And what would be the type of investment that I would look for after I get my, after I do what I can on the free resources you said?
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we start from about $2,000 a month, right?
1:03:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And as part of that, so it's not, it's not as crazy expensive as much as I thought it was 10 grand.
1:03:55
[SPEAKER_01]: No, yeah, I had a conversation with somebody that's real for Google and they're like, ask, I'm going to be about 10,000, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's going to take about six months for you to see anything.
1:04:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And they just set that expectation.
1:04:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, it's funny.
1:04:07
[SPEAKER_00]: If I can be honest, that's like that's why we've grown so quick in the US market because there's so many people charging so much money for such average quality service compared to, you know, the UK industry where people just expect high quality for less right, so shout out to the US, a bit of an incredible market for us.
1:04:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
1:04:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
1:04:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sense, William.
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:04:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So about two grand a month.
1:04:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we do this process.
1:04:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We turn down and I mean this in the best way possible about 50% of the leads we get.
1:04:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we do that from a place of kindness, we don't think we can help, right?
1:04:38
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't think we can help, we're going to be real honest, because we don't do locking contracts, right?
1:04:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, hold USP is no locking contracts just as a year.
1:04:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't do any other service, and you work directly with your specialists.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't have, you know, some account manager talking about account manager doing a thing.
1:04:54
[SPEAKER_00]: but we turn that away if we don't think we can help.
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_00]: If we turn your way we'll give you a ton of free resources, tons of cool stuff so that you can learn more, do more, and you know what?
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had a lot of brands come back 12, 24 months later say, you know what?
1:05:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I did a list of stuff.
1:05:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We're getting a lot of traction through SEO now.
1:05:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd like to have another conversation and they become clients.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so if you're spending money on paid ads, that's a good fit.
1:05:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But what we would do is we'll work with you.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I've built out that digital PR, to build out traditional links, to build out content or work with you, to get you to build that content by giving you briefs and data on what you should be producing.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll work with you to make sure that the website is optimized for AI and SEO and it's laid out correctly.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, give you a lot of strategies so like for you, I'd suggest, you know, all the speaking events you're doing.
1:05:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to have a ton of that stuff on your speaking page.
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I haven't seen your speaking page, but we need to be talking about all the places we've spoken, all the places you've spoken at.
1:05:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, having videos of that showing the crowd size, showing why you're in awesome speaking, getting feedback scores, those testimonials.
1:05:54
[SPEAKER_00]: video testimonials from people like once you once I book you for a speech for a you know speech uh speaking spot somewhere I imagine that you know cost money and you're gonna get booked from someone and you're gonna want them to do a testimony on how amazing you were for that conference and what people should take away with that.
1:06:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You should transcribe that using AI or write that up yourself and put that in there so that people with accessibility or our good friends AI can easily understand what's said in that video and pick that up and index that.
1:06:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So the when someone
1:06:24
[SPEAKER_00]: is David from social proof of good speaker.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes up with here are the 10 recent speaking engagements he did and he with a common testimonials and feedback that he got That's gonna look awesome for you, right?
1:06:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not coming from you, but it is right?
1:06:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's stuff you publish and you kind of put out there
1:06:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's, you know, credible people from other things.
1:06:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And people can call up those people to a reference.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's not just for the speaking you do this for the podcast, you know, sponsors.
1:06:50
[SPEAKER_00]: One more sponsor.
1:06:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Great interview sponsors.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_00]: How much did that attribute for your business?
1:06:56
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the value of that?
1:06:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when they talked about the results they got and how they want to come back sponsor, you will not struggle to get sponsors.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Because everyone's going to be lining up to sponsor because they're seeing the proof behind, you know, what, what they
1:07:11
[SPEAKER_01]: This is so good.
1:07:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, you know, listen, if you are watching us right now, I need you to go to Instagram.
1:07:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Harry Anderson, S. E. O. Harry Anderson.
1:07:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, I got to tell you Sanders.
1:07:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Harry Sanders.
1:07:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Harry Sanders.
1:07:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I was reading it and I got mixed up with the ended okay, Harry Sanders, okay, somebody put it in the comments right now that y'all got the correct spelling Harry Sanders S-E-O right now and if this episode did anything for you learned anything you actually went to the website and got the free resources Just send them a DM and say thank you and thank you goes a long way you spent an hour here giving out information that they didn't have to pay for right
1:07:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's important.
1:07:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Just go to his Instagram right now, hit a follow.
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, I'm a DM to say, thank you.
1:08:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It is what I got.
1:08:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you might be able to build a relationship that way, man.
1:08:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Harry, thank you so much for coming today.
1:08:11
[SPEAKER_01]: This was an incredible conversation.
1:08:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I'm going to talk to you about some things that I'm doing that I really believe.
1:08:19
[SPEAKER_01]: that you can help with.
1:08:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm after that, let's have the after this conversation.
1:08:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you can, let us know two things.
1:08:29
[SPEAKER_01]: One, how they can work with you and to leave us with a word of wisdom.
1:08:38
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:08:39
[SPEAKER_00]: How you can work with us, we've got a website studiohawk.com, you go there, it's got a ton of information.
1:08:45
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not quite ready to work with us yet, there's again, there's a ton of free resources, there's an academy, we put out so much free stuff because we really believe in educating this industry.
1:08:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many, you know, we say there's a lot of SEO hustlers, but not many masters.
1:08:58
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people say we're in a competitive space.
1:09:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you now, there are not many people in our space that are actually masters.
1:09:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we put out so much content.
1:09:06
[SPEAKER_00]: My word of wisdom, my favorite saying, and, you know, if you've heard this before too bad, you're going to hear it again.
1:09:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in five, right?
1:09:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That idea you're working on that thing you're doing.
1:09:20
[SPEAKER_00]: If you come to me and you say, I give a three months, don't waste your time binning now.
1:09:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You come to me and you say,
1:09:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe where I can take this thing in five years, studio hook.
1:09:29
[SPEAKER_00]: 18 grand first year, you know, if I said that business up today I'd be like that was a failure move on to the next.
1:09:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But here we are ten years later, twenty million dollars global team growing You know, you might look at studio hook, you know Atlanta and people the comparison is you know the thief of joy and that's another one.
1:09:47
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a freebie
1:09:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But you people look at that and you're like well you built this out in Atlanta in one year and you've got you know six staff here and you're doing a million bucks.
1:09:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but that's ten years of building other businesses before that, you know, so don't compare yourself to other entrepreneurs.
1:10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know their story.
1:10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know how much help they've had because I guarantee you everyone gets help.
1:10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be afraid to put your hand up and ask for help because that is how you get forward.
1:10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well said, man, Harry.
1:10:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
1:10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
1:10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
1:10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen y'all.
1:10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Go follow Harry Sanders.
1:10:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to the website.
1:10:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Harry Sanders dot com forward slash social proof.
1:10:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know when you're watching this, but it may not be there forever with the free resources.
1:10:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Harry Sanders dot com forward slash social proof.
1:10:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:10:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So dear.
1:10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So favor.
1:10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Go follow Harry.
1:10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Send them a DM and go to the website and also get you some social proof, meaning go build something and build it really, really big.
1:10:40
[SPEAKER_01]: but come back to your community and teach them how you did it.
1:10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the only way our community is grow.
1:10:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We are out of here, peace.
1:10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, guys.