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How to Get Your Business Recommended by AI · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: What if you could train AI, large language models, for other people? speaker-1: One of your clients landed a hundred and forty thousand dollar project from an AI recommendation. speaker-0: You want clarity so you can be known as the expert in a certain niche. speaker-1: Today's guest is Wes Towers. Wes runs Uplift360, a digital agency that helps trades and construction businesses get found online and turn that attention into real work. But he has spent more than 20 years working across websites, search, positioning, and reputation. In our conversation, we talk about how AI decides which businesses it recommends and how you can give AI clearer reasons to recommend yours. We get into why specificity matters, how reviews, brand mentions, and real customer proof shape what AI sees. And how one of Wes's clients landed a hundred and forty thousand dollar project after being recommended by ChatGPT. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Wes Towers. Wes, thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: Fantastic to be here, Ian. That's my early morning, your afternoon, no doubt. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Other side of the world, it's pretty cool what what we're able to do when we expand the studio to the virtual and digital domain. But yeah, appreciate you taking the time. So Wes, a lot of the businesses that you work with are good at the actual work, right? They're good at what they do, but some of them get talk about and recommended while others seem to stay invisible. So why do some businesses get recommended and others don't? speaker-0: Yeah, well it's growing to be more and more difficult, isn't it, with the this day and age of AI content and marketing and we've always had a little bit of mistrust of of marketing. companies have always exaggerated, let's say, their capabilities and always obviously presented themselves in the most positive light that they can. So we knew that, but these days with rise of AI content, we don't even know if the written information that people are publishing is even checked or proofread by a person. We can't trust the the photos we see, the videos we see. It's kind of exciting to see videos of people, celebrities who are long past that look real. It's fun, but it's also terrifying. And it it means trust is being eroded in every area that we deal with. And we we deal with the online world a lot these days. You'll see most people walk walking around are are glued to their cell phone, their mobile phone. We're always engaged, always connected, being misled. and so trust is a massive problem for every for every industry and every business, just because the the lack of trust is is so great these days. And so to rise above all the noise out there, you've really got to obviously you've got to build the foundations right. So any business has to have a a solid reputation on you know, so people are saying positive things. But you really want to amplify that message far and wide. So once you've got a great customer on board, you want to think about that client or customer being the next wave of marketing because it's proof. You actually built something with this customer. A lot of our our our clients and customers are a trades, construction industrial brand. So they're building something substantial. But the the the truth is it it would work in any industry or field, but to think about what you actually deliver it. Because there's genuine value and and proof that you do what you say you do. And to showcase that is case studies, stories, examples, but also reviews, Google reviews, anything that can prove that you are who you say you are and you do what you say you do and the message you're delivering isn't just an AI, AI slop, which we're seeing we're seeing everywhere these days. speaker-1: Yeah. So in a world where trust is eroding, and I completely agree with you, right? And that goes beyond just the companies that we're considering about hiring, but trust seems to be at an all time low pretty much across the board in most domains. So what do you think and largely that is driven by AI and the fact that it's really easy to just generate literally whatever it is that you want to generate, whether it's an image, video, text, whatever, what are the things that you think AI can't fake that play into building trust with your customers, building trust with the marketplace. speaker-0: So I guess the temptation with any AI for all of us is to rely upon AI to do the heavy lifting for us and to do the thought leadership. But whenever you can introduce information gain, so what is it that only you can speak on? And authentically, so your voice really matters. The way in which you communicate, the the style in which you say things is is super important, you know. most bigger companies historically would have had a a style guide for everything, you know, the style guide for the content, the the written message, the imagery, everything would be consistent. And it's super important to have that consistency because what it creates is a is a feeling of authenticity because everything's aligned. And so ideally what you want to do is create a feel, a brand that is always consistent. So if they're bumping into you on social media or a podcast, so we're podcasting, it's two of us sharing a message, it's authentic because it's us speaking naturally. We're not AI bots. And so there's that a level of trust in that. But the way in which we communicate everywhere needs to be consistent. So if they bump into your message online and then they make a call to make an inquiry and the sales team are not aligned. i if they speak in a manner in which it doesn't feel like the same place, all of a sudden those detectives go, Is this legitimate? Is this a trustworthy organization? So thinking about your brand in every touch point and how that translates from one aspect of connection to your company to the next and to think about the way in which you deal with clients is super important because word of mouth has always been a a a powerful thing for for any business. Especially local businesses, everyone talks around your town or your city about who the good providers are. I mean, I was down in the car park underneath the apartment and I just heard people having a conversation. They were saying, who's the who's the best builders in town? It was some form of trades person they were speaking to. Those conversations are happening behind closed doors, in conversations at at the pub, at the at the bar, at the family barbecue. They're happening everywhere, but they're also happening online. So you there's nowhere to hide anymore. And you really gotta think about creating that consistency throughout everything. I mean, I've got a client at at one extreme. He's a really he swears a lot. He's really rough, but it's appropriate and suitable for his his clientele and his market, the way the industry he's in. It's okay for him because in his world that's an acceptable way to communicate and it's because he's authentically him, when people call him, that's the way he speaks. And so there's it's more important to be aligned with who you truly are rather than to try and present in a really super polished and professional manner. And then when they make that connection, there's a mismatch. So yeah, it's a it's an interesting world to live in. I think the goal for marketing is to create connections so people can start to know, like and trust you. That's that's been a phrase that a lot of people have used. I don't know who originally claimed that concept, but it's never been more true. You know, we've got to create those connections so the right people can find us and and choose us. speaker-1: Right. Yeah. So a big part of it is that cohesion, right? That consistency from one interaction, whether that's on your Instagram to another interaction, whether it's on the phone, creating that cohesion, that consistency across every domain that makes up your your marketing, right? Are you putting yourself out there, your public face of the business and how people will interact and feel, keeping that consistent and really the only way to keep up with that is if it is authentic. Or there's no way that you can put on like a fake face across every domain, right? It really truly has to be authentic to who you are. And a lot of a lot of times that's built around the founder of the business. Yeah. So be authentic to who you are and that's then it'll be really easy to show up the same way wherever you're at. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. For founder led businesses it should be the easiest easier than large entities because they've got to manufacture a a a style appropriate that everyone can sort of fit into a brand. But for a for a founder led business, usually the business will will be r a reflection of the founder. So you've you haven't got to look far to s find the style guide in a in a founder led business. Just look at the founder and whatever their values and convictions, their beliefs. That's what the style guide is. So you've somehow got to capture that so everyone on the team is on the same page to understand. And the beauty of AI is if you use it in the right manner, you can set up what people used to set up the style guides as I meant as I mentioned. But what would happen with those and I saw it time and time again, the style guide for a a large entity would be quite substantial because I really want to make sure everything's aligned. But because it was so substantial, it was complex. And so a a copywriter, a writer would read it, understand it, and then have to go away, do some research about the company you know, the industry because they might not be a an exact expert. And so they'd do the research, then they'd start writing and they'd forgotten the style guide and then they'd have to go back and check it and backward and forward. But these days you can use the style guide concept and it's a just a massive prompt to ha set up the guardrails for e everything you produce. And it it won't forget in the same manner a human might forget. Now it might hallucinate. That's a different challenge. Similar to forgetting, but it's a it's a different dynamic. So it's it's kind of the same, but it you know, you've still got to check things. But it's a quicker way to get things aligned and i in the same in the same style and format. speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think you should do the slow, old fashioned coming up with your style, pulling it out of you, the founder. You could maybe even use AI to kinda like interview you, to ask you the questions that you might not even consider. But get that down, get it to the point where f it truly does feel authentic, natural, easy for you to replicate as the founder. And then yeah, train your own AI around that, right? Like a obviously we're big proponents of that. Train your own AI, put a harness around it so that it can enforce that standard and enforce that consistency across all the content that it does generate. But I think an interesting idea that you talked about is the fact that in this world where trust online is eroding, I feel like there's a more of an emphasis on like real like recommendations, like human-to-human recommendations, like, who's the best builder? Right. So that idea of like referrals and being recommended in those interpersonal conversations. So I guess like going back to a different angle of that initial question of how do you be the one that people recommend? speaker-0: Yeah, so as you say, anything that's third party, like an endorsement, that that's why a referral is so powerful, because it's leveraging the trust in which you have with the the person giving the referral. So if they're a trustworthy person in your world for whatever reason, the family member or colleague, someone you you already have a level of trust, you're leveraging that trust into the connection and it's always been far more easy to close a sale when it's been referred to you. It's almost a done deal. And Things like the price become less relevant because you've got a higher level of trust and people want to know what you're d go going to deliver, particularly in the service related businesses where a service can vary significantly. Now, if it's a if it's a product and it's the same product, it's a widget that's consistent everywhere. Well, they're gonna just gonna compete on a price to a large degree. But once it's a service and there's varying levels of and nuance in the delivery, you know that that referral's always been powerful. That's why it's really important for construction people. But to think about the same concepts that you would do to encourage referrals is the same ways you should think about marketing in in my view. So when you do I think I said before, w when you do deliver a great outcome, think about that as the next as the next wave of of marketing. So we used to think about marketing and and it's still Somewhat true, but we thought about it in a sales in a funnel, a marketing funnel, sales funnel, lead funnel. So the concept was you would capture lots of leads at the top of the funnel and then you would ongoingly market to them, have various touch points. And the philosophy was it takes a number of touch points before someone becomes a customer, buys something, parts way with some money, which is the the goal for most businesses. So the funnel concept, you'd have lots of leads captured and whittle them down until they eventually become a customer or a client. And that was the end goal. But I don't like to think about it that way anymore for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons why the funnel is broken in a in a way is that we don't need to download that lead magnet anymore, a free ebook or resource, because we can get that information at our fingertips, you know, through AI. You know, most of those resources that we once downloaded because they were they they fulfilled a need, a perceived need. We can get that information elsewhere. The other thing too is Whilst those lead magnets were f were free, they weren't really free because we w were exchanging part of our privacy. And so all of us place a higher value on our privacy these days. So the value of our privacy is increasing and the value of the lead magnet is diminishing. So the lead funnel is broken in some ways. Now if the lead lead magnet is strong enough, then yes, of course, you'll still capture leads. But there's other ways to think about that funnel linear process to think about it more of a a cycle. The way I like to think about it is a cycle. So your next future clients are likely the best future clients are likely going to look just like your best current clients. So what you want to do is showcase the work you're actually building. So to think about the client and what you what you actually delivered. And how can you use that as a as your next wave of marketing material, what you might publish some things about that that project on on you know the social platforms and in your blog potentially a case study. It's validating and proving. You're actually deliver delivering upon the things that you say you do. And obviously we're we're big on optimizing for Google, so we encourage our clients to attract as many Google reviews as they possibly can because Google will love anything within their ecosystem. Of course they do. And there's other reviewing platforms and some of them are are particularly relevant for some industries. But Google Reviews is always pretty powerful for for construction and trades, especially local businesses, particularly when you can show up in the local search. So we're always thinking about it thinking about it in that way. Just this morning it hit my desk, and this is a common way of thinking about it. The tradesperson sent some photographs and a short description of what he just worked on. And then we've already got prompts for him to write a a beautiful case study that's all aligned to exactly what he does. Now In his his short message to us, he didn't capture a lot of the information, but we've got enough of an understanding now to flesh it out to be something meaningful and tangible. And whilst the the work isn't all that exciting, sometimes people are concerned about publishing this information because it might be perceived to be boring, but it's it's only boring to those that it's not relevant to right then and there. And all the tools working towards surfacing the right information to the right people at the right time that's relevant. super targeted and aligned to precisely what they're looking for. All the tools want to achieve the same outcome. The very best information to the to the people looking for that information. So we think about training our own AI so it's aligned to who we are and giving us the outputs that we want. That's really important. But what if you could train AI large language models for other people? And that's the beauty of doing content marketing right, because it's training them about all about your company and your business and you what you're delivering and to realise that even if you're delivering a service that's not super exciting, plumbing for example, it's pretty boring for the most part unless you've got a burst pipe and you need that pipe fixed right away. You know, so you've got to publish it in the in the right manner, knowing that not everyone's gonna read or engage with it, but the right people will and and the large language models are learning all the time. So it's a really it's a really fun and interesting thing just to jump on. any AI platform and ask it about about yourself, your your company and and see what pops up. speaker-1: Yeah. Wow, I mean that was a lot to unpack there. That was but that's I think that's a really interesting insight there that you ended with with the fact that no matter like I feel like for myself even, when I'm going into putting content out there, it's like, okay, I have this expectation built up in my mind that it needs to get thousands and thousands of views, but like no nobody really cares about what it is that I do. But the fact is that the people that do care about it Are going to be the ones that see it, are going to be the ones that are seeking it out. And when they find it, it's going to resonate and be the right fit for them. So that's all that really matters. speaker-0: Yeah. We can all get caught up on the vanity metrics, can't we? It's so you know, you publish something and if it gets thousands of views it's perceived to be better than something that, you know, was only viewed a capture of ti a couple of times and maybe a couple of comments here and there. but it's it's not necessarily true. And it's it's surprising sometimes what takes off and some things just take off just because it was a timing thing and it got a little bit of engagement thinking about social media. It just was the right time and it got a little bit of in engagement in the early steps so the so the platform thought, well this is this is useful and relevant and interesting so that more people see it but then other times something is genuinely useful and then it it just didn't sit, you know, it didn't get the engagement early. It doesn't mean the content was wrong or or less powerful. It just maybe was a timing thing and But what it's also doing is is it's training AI. more broadly about what you're doing as well. So you you publish content firstly for humans. That's always the best safeguard to make sure it's quality. but also think about how it's training large language models, because that's exactly what they are, and they're wanting and looking for content and information. And you've always got to think about information gain. What are you adding to the conversation? What are you publishing that's different to everybody else? Because you can get AI tools to do all the writing for you. You just plug and play and and you know, you put your domain name in and out pops regular content published on various platforms. There's all s all these sorts of tools being made, but they're they're never going to create a high level of trust because it's all generic and bland. You know, it might get you to a level but eventually, you know, you you rise to a a certain level, but you've got to get beyond that basic level, you know, so And every everyone's got the capability to use the same tools. So what happens when everybody's using those same tools to produce the generic and bland content? How are you going to rise above it? That's what you've got to think about. speaker-1: Yeah. And you've made points in other podcasts that you've been on that if you do that, you're just gonna sound like everybody else, right? The average AI output is just the average of everything that's out there, right? So if you're just using that generic AI content, there's no way that you're ever gonna sound different than the other people, right? Which is critical in separating yourself and differentiating. And I would love to explore the idea a bit more on on what you've learned so far and how you can get your business recommended by AI over other businesses. But before we get to that, you made a point earlier that the lead magnet is dead. And that is a pretty profound insight and I I couldn't agree with you more because most lead magnets like the checklist, right? The how to thing, the gatekeeped information that really doesn't have much value anymore. So what is the alternative? The so the lead magnet's dead, what is the alternative? speaker-0: Yeah, well some of the the the few lead magnets that still work are usually tools that do something significant. They they're not static pieces of information. So they some form of tool that does something has an output that you can't get in in yourself through a through a chat GPT or things of that nature. So just thinking about a couple of them that are bumped into for the trades. There's some out there that will assess your lot of land. And so you put in your lot and it will tell you everything you you can do within the regulations of for that allotment. And so those sorts of tools are really powerful because you know it's fed i fed in specific information that delivers a specific outcome. So at that level it's still going to work. But for the most part, people are producing the lead magnet through AI AI itself. You know, as you said, the the checklist and so on. So that's there's no value in that. To think about as I said, the the sales funnel it was a linear process, but to think about that more of a cycle and people will enter your world in all sorts of different touch points. They might first bump into you on social, they might bump into you from a podcast like we're doing right now. So many different ways they might initially find out about you and they probably will it's still true that they're likely going to have a few engagements with your brand before making a a a purchase, particularly for something of high higher value. You know, if it's an impulse buy, if you're selling a widget so it's five dollars, you you know, you can buy that on Timu. that's an impulse buy. It's a completely different thing. The further you move remove yourself away from an impulse buy, so and that's typically a higher dollar value investment, the more likely there will be various touch points. And it's more likely they will visit your website and read the bigger their expense or the the cost of the the service or the product, the more they will read your website. So you need things in there to prove you are legitimate. You know, any credentials, logos, even if people don't know what the logos represent and the qualifications and the standards and and all of these things, just by seeing a whole bunch of accreditations can be really helpful to elevate the trustworthiness, the perceived trustworthiness of of your brand and business. And so thinking about it in those ways, that every business is slightly different. I mean there's Some companies they're delivering a emergency service. So in those instances, they're not going to read everything. They just want to know you're there and you can get you can arrive on site fast and get the job done. And the things that people would potentially read on a, you know, a more thoughtful process, it's completely different. So and and some businesses are a combination of both. So you've really got to think about what your ideal client who they are, what they are likely going to do, and how how are you going to guide once you do capture them into your website, how are you going to guide the eye through the most important messages so they grasp the most important things. But what are they going to do next? What's the call to action? What's the next logical step that they might take? That's the most important piece of the puzzle. And to design in a manner that guides the eye rather than design in a manner that's just visually appealing for yourself. Because if Without any marketing know how or understanding, you'll just design your website according to your own personal flavor and and style. And that's cool. You can have your own flair and style and and preferences and and that's perfectly fine, but not at the expense of what's going to convert really well. In my view, that's the that's the priority. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. You always want to prioritize the what's gonna produce the best outcome, really in anything. But it's really interesting just to underline this point that one of the common threads across every conversation that I've had on this podcast, whether it's about writing a book or starting a business or, you know, marketing, kind of what we're talking about, everything starts with the customer. Right? Everything starts and finishes with the customer. It's like who it is that you're talking to, having complete clarity on who your target ideal customer is. That's gonna inform what product and service it is that you build, how your website is laid out, what people are gonna care about, right? It's just really important to have complete clarity on that and what we're talking about today and everything else down the line. It's just having that clarity and a detailed, deep understanding of who your customer is. And then also a commitment to that niche, right? A commitment to that I I ideal customer. Not trying to be I'm gonna work with everybody, but committing to that niche, committing to that specificity is going to yield positive outcomes across every part of the business, right? Your marketing, your s standardized process, right? The happiness and satisfaction of your customer. Right. Is that something that you would agree on? Like the commitment to a specific niche is critical. speaker-0: Yeah, what what you say no to is almost more important than what you're saying yes to. I know that th there was a philosophy for a while running that you just say yes to everything and figure it out later. And and whilst I get the concept, because we never feel ready. So that that deals with that never feeling ready piece really well. But also saying no to projects or or things that are not ideal for you. I I've had horror stories of taking on clients in the earlier days. Where they just weren't a good fit and whilst there was enticement, maybe monetary enticement, what those things typically mean is it's more of a stressful process. There's usually more time investment because it's outside of your wheelhouse. Typically you will move you'll have the parameters of your ideal and they'll be on the things on the edge, which are okay and you you can and there's allowance for that. But sometimes things are just way, way too far outside of what you what you really want to do. And so it's best just to say no to those because by saying no to those projects, you're freeing up time and and capacity for the things that truly matter. And it's just a scarcity mindset sometimes. You just so, you know, starting out particularly, you're fearful oftentimes of just not having enough enough sales, enough income. And realistically you might need to to do some things just to keep things ticking over in the early days, but to have the long term vision of exactly who you want to serve, get that clarity. The other thing too about clarity, it's it's really, really difficult to get sometimes on your own. It's good to have people who can speak into your life and your your business and have a good understanding because I mean you can't see your own eyes without a tool, without a mirror or someone to tell you what your eyes look like, you know? So we can be so close to our own stuff that we really need external perspective, whether that be through tools or whether that be through people who can tell us. So I think those two things are really important to build into your business, particularly in the early days when, you know, you want to build yourself a team of mentors. You don't go out and say, Hey, will will you be my mentor? It's not kind of like that, but it's about getting yourself into rooms where joining groups, masterminds, networking groups, get yourself into rooms with powerful people, people that you want to become like. Because just by observation you'll learn so many things, but as they eventually become friends. You have coffees, you have beers, you have conversations with these people and you can ask them questions and they can help guide and encourage you in your entrepreneurial endeavor. speaker-1: Yeah. Absolutely. And they'll be the ones next to you, giving you the confidence you need when you're making hard decisions like committing to a niche, right? Which is a scary thing to do because you're totally right. In the first couple of years of your business, I'm going through it for the second time right now, right? I thought it'd be easier the second time around. It's absolutely not. But like for the first couple of years, right, you just kinda say yes to everything. Do whatever it is you can to get money coming in the door, keep the lights on. But then eventually you have to make a commitment to be more specific, right? It's the only way to create standardization in message, how you show up in the public domain, and then standardization of pro standardization of offer, which then enables standardization of process, which is how you can enable scale and growth in your business. Because if you're doing something new every single time, and I've been there and I'm still partially there with the second business, like I'm kind of taking on new projects still every once in a while, you just sit down and it's like, okay, now I'm reinventing the wheel again. Now I just gotta like And while meanwhile, over here, I've done this fifty times. I've doing this now for the first time. I'm gonna be way better doing this for the 51st time. And now me saying yes to this side project is taking me away from doing that for the 51st time. But yeah, having those people, having those mentors, those people in your corner who are ahead of you, smarter than you, or have more experience than you, are gonna be there encouraging you and kind of holding you accountable to making those tough decisions. And it's absolutely game changer, right? Doing it alone, entrepreneurship's a very lonely journey. Everybody talks about the freedom that comes from entrepreneurship. Nobody really talks about the flip side of it where there's nobody telling you what to do. Right? It's on you to figure out what the next best decision is, what the next best thing to do is. And when you're surrounded by people who have been there, done that for a long time and have been successful, takes the guessing out of it. But I love that. Glad that we lingered on that point there for a bit. But Wes, thank you again so much for your time. I wanna explore the idea about what you've learned so far. about how AI goes about making recommendations to individuals. Like how can businesses equip themselves to be recommended by AI more? Right? You have a story, one of your clients landed a hundred and forty thousand dollar project from an AI recommendation. So what have you learned about it speaker-0: Research, good good good on you doing your research. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. So what have you learned about what goes into AI and how it makes its recommendations and what can businesses do to be recommended by AI more? speaker-0: Yeah, well it's l really looking for speci sp specific solutions to problems. Because it is large language models. We used to think it's kind of like what search engine optimization was, but just far more sophisticated. So back in the day you would target a keyword, say the service and the and the location, typically plumber Melbourne. And so because the tools were pretty limited in their understanding of language, there was ways to trick you away to the top almost. But as the tools understand the nuance and context. You really, as you said before, you want clarity so you can be known as the expert in a certain niche. Now, if you're a business that has to serve a local region, if you're in a small town, well, niching really precisely is going to be more difficult because for the actual service offering because likelihood is if you're an electrician in a tiny town and there's you're one of two electricians, likely you're going to do all electrical works for that town. out of necessity because that's that's how much work you need, that all all the work in town. But if you're in a a larger city, you have the liberty to be really crystal clear and precise on exactly who you want to serve. And with that clarity, you will have consistent messaging all around that topic. You'll just be creating a a well of knowledge and insights that you're publishing frequently. The AI tools are really clever at finding all this information. And so The more information you have published about what it is you actually do in the real world and precisely f who you do it for and all these things, AI will and y having this published far and wide as in in many as many platforms as you can. And the other thing too with search engine optimization, there was this concept of backlinks. So a link from another website to yours. It was almost like a vote to say, Hey, this other website must be quality because someone's linked to it. And people used to try and game that and that got More and more, you know, Google and so on got more and more sophisticated. But these days, you don't even need the backlink. You just need the brand mentioned, whether that be your personal brand, so your your name and your company name as well. And if you can get mentions in reputable places, like news sites. Not that always news sites are always that r trustworthy, but in any case they're they're large, you know, they're they're perceived to be trustworthy to a degree. So any mentions you can get about your business and your brand, but you've got to have a level of consistency with your messaging far and wide. And so that's why the the guy who who got that hundred and forty thousand dollar deal. We'd only been working for him for a short amount of time, but we really got specific for him about the exact types of clients he wanted to work with. And so what happened was someone was researching for his he's a consultant dealing with a particular type of consulting. And so someone was on their chat GPT having a backward and forward conversation saying, we've got this problem we need resolved. How do we go about it? They said potentially you should get a consultant in. W who's the very best in Australia? And so this guy popped up. This is the leading person for specifically this one thing. And so there was someone in the on a really f you know, far away from him locally. You know, we're in a s a sm smallish town Geelong. And this was someone in in Brisbane I think they were reached out and so all of a sudden, you know, he was showing up. Potentially I would assume by now I would say, you know, he would probably be recognized globally because he's really laser specifically targeted on on one thing and become known as the expert in that. speaker-1: Nice. Okay, so what I took from that is that it builds off the back of everything that we had talked about so far, right? AI reinforces and feeds off of like specificity. The more specific you can be in exactly who you're talking to, who you help, provide proof, like real world proof of how you help that specific type of person, AI is going to digest that, take it in, take it in, take it in. And then everybody's using AI, right? Maybe not everybody's asking AI yet for recommendations on who they should hire, but Eventually everybody will get to that point because it does offer better recommendations and it's a much easier experience for the user. But then when that specific person does ask AI or their AI is gonna know what they do, when it does ask for a recommendation for, hey, I need help with this thing, who should I work with? It's gonna be able to connect the dots and be like, okay, what do I know about the user? Now I'm gonna go try and find the best fit for this person for that kind of service. Bang. Okay. So specificity is a new insight for me. The other things that I had learned. And if you want to just like verify this about AIO or whatever people are calling it, like answer engine or AEO, answer engine optimization, right? I don't think the language is exactly figured out on that. But another thing that I learned is that like you wanted to buy keywords, you might want to think about the types of prompts that people would write in for not even if they're searching for your specific service, but if they're looking for an answer, right? An answer to a question that somebody might be asking about the work that you help with. So then you just kind of think about those prompts and you can use AI to kinda help you come up with that. And then if you have the like that in an FAQ section, you have that question that somebody might type in as a prompt. And then if you answer it, you could come up as like a source or like a reference for for that type of thing. Is that also something that you've seen? speaker-0: Yeah, definitely. The F. A.Q.s are a always a powerful thing. They were for a little while there really powerful in Google, but they've sort of dialed that back a little bit. simply because you could structure the content for FAQs so that they would show up really well. But these days, you know, they you don't need those extra coding to to do it because they're smart enough to find the information. So the way to think about it is, you know, we used to try and just shove keywords in anywhere and everywhere just to to show up. But you it's not like that anymore. You really want to answer legitimate questions that people have. And and the way I often do it, and this is an easy one that anyone can do is after a client meeting, a like a face to face meeting, I'll be driving back and I'll just start to capture some of their questions and st start thinking about how I can repurpose that into some content for the website. So they might have some interesting discussion points and questions and so on and so I'll start chatting to my chat G V T on the drive back to the office and by the time I'm there I've got something worth publishing so it addresses a whole bunch of needs. You know. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, that's great. Well, Wes, thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you. It's a recurring question that I ask every guest. But before we get to that, how can people find you? speaker-0: Yeah, Uplift three sixty dot com dot AU is the website. You can book a strategy call and the AU it means it's an Australian website, but we do serve clients all around the world, so happy to happy to connect. speaker-1: Amazing. Yeah. And if anything that we you have any further follow up questions, Wes and his team are super responsive. When I reached out, we got connected, they're on the on the ball. for so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Wes about anything that we talked about today. I'm sure you'd be happy to answer those. But yeah, we'll have that link in the description. So go check out Wes his team at Uplift Three Sixty. But Wes, my final question for you is a recurring question I asked every guest. If you had a giant billboard. That everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, like one message to the world. What would it say and why? speaker-0: I would say just be clear. speaker-1: I like it. Right? Don't try and be too fancy. Just say what you're trying to say. Right. And I definitely fall into that trap all the time. I try and get really fancy, trying to sound all polished. It's like, how can I make this sound cool and really intelligent? It's just be clear. Just say what you're trying to say. Be clear. Wes, thank you so much for the time. speaker-0: Thanks, Ayan. speaker-1: Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from my conversation with Wes is that being clear about who you are and showing real proof of the work that you do are only becoming more important as the trust online gets harder to earn with all of the AI slop that's out there. Right. It's getting easier to make everything look polished and sound super good. And you can generate copy images, videos, and a lot of the marketing around a business. But I think that makes it harder to fake like what's actually valuable. Right. The things that are harder to fake are more valuable than that, like real customer reviews, the results that you deliver for customers, specific examples, right? A founder talking in their own voice and maybe showing up live in some shape or fashion. Even content that feels a little less polished, but clearly came from a real person and a real experience, I think is gonna perform a whole lot better. Wes's final answer to that billboard question, right? Be clear, tied a lot of that together for me, right? Be clear about who you help, what you do, and what you have actually done. Right. Just put it out there, be clear, make it really obvious, make it really easy for people to understand. And that in turn is going to make it really easy for AI to understand. And AI is looking for what's real, right? Like they're going to keep they are aware that people are trying to game the system, but you really can't fake real, if that makes sense. But if you want to get connected with West Towers, you can find his links in the description of this episode. You can also check out Uplift 360 through the link in the description, which is his digital marketing agency. And if you're a coach or an author, And you want more of your clients to actually engage with your ideas and get results, I put a free resource in the description that will help you build more execution support into your program without requiring more of your time. So thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.