WEBVTT
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Remember we were kids in school and the teacher
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said show your work. Are you showing your work,
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right? It's not if you go read all those posts
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on crystal .com. They're not sales posts They're
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not me pitching a product. In fact, I don't pitch
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a product more than one out of every 15 posts
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I just don't it's not there for that. It's but
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it is thinking out loud, right and the more you
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expose. So when people set up their content marketing
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plans and they're like, we got to write all these
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articles about ourselves, you're like, who do
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you imagine wants to read that? Who do you imagine
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is Googling or searching or scrolling? Who says
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I want to read that, right? That's not interesting
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or compelling. We've been to bars and parties
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and socials. The guy who's talking about himself
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all the time, that's not a guy that you want
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to hang out with. But if you're thinking out
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loud, if you are showing your work. When the
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right people come and they look at one and then
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another and then another, they go, ah, what I
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was really doing was aligning perspectives. And
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I buy the way this guy thinks. They think the
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way I think. And so then opportunities get created.
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Presented by Zapier, the AI automation company.
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Hello and welcome to the small team big scale
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podcast. It's a show where we talk about how
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tiny teams with big ambitions are doing more
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with less, scaling smarter, not harder, and building
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big businesses with teams that can fit around
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a dinner table. I'm your host Ron Schmelzer,
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and in today's episode, we're talking with Chris
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Lemma, who is a 25 year tech veteran who's built
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a personal content engine that generates hundreds
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of thousands of visitors per month. But he's
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got a lot to say on this topic of small teams
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punching above your weight. So we're going to
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get right into it. So hi, Chris. Thank you so
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much for joining us on exponential scale. It's
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great to be here. Yeah, and as we were talking
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and I'm like, I got to start recording because
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like the stuff that's coming out is amazing.
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And I think that's really the purpose of this
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podcast is to highlight that there is a lot of
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stuff going on out there. And the hard part is
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tapping into these different communities. You
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know, we don't hear a lot about them because
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the venture backed unicorns get a lot of attention.
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They get a lot of press. Big numbers always get
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a lot of attention. But honestly, those big numbers
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swing both ways. It's not just the raising a
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lot of money and having a lot of value. They're
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also firing a lot of people, letting a lot of
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people go. Those are the big numbers that aren't
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so great. And I think, honestly, the momentum,
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the pendulum is swinging back to the side of
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small and mighty. And we have all the same tools
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that are empowering the big guys to do more,
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are empowering the small guys to do more too.
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So this is gonna be fantastic. And we're gonna
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give you just a brief intro to Chris. I'm gonna
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have him jump right in and let's just dig into
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this, because it's just too amazing to hear me
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blabbering on and on. If you don't know Chris,
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he's been fantastic. He's written over 1 ,500
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blog posts, replaced his entire marketing budget
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with content. And here's the part that most people
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miss. 75 % of that traffic usually sort of hits
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one traffic and leaves, but the real business
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comes from the small segment that comes back
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and converts. So he now creates tools, AI powered
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tools and other tools that help experts package
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what they know, build authority and create programs
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that people pay for without adding. We were getting
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to some really fantastic examples. So we'll bring
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them into the story here. So his products include
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yourvoiceprofile .com, Content Agent, his new
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book, Story First, all designed to make experts
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dangerous. And in this episode, we're going to
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dig into how content can compound into inbound
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demand. We talk about that a lot. When you're
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a small team, you need the power of compounding
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of momentum. These are the things that if it
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takes you a lot of effort to get to your first
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million and it takes you twice. as much effort
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to get to your second million, that's not compounding.
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That's just a lot of brute force work. So you
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need the things that compound. We're also going
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to talk about why Google has become a competitor
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these days instead of a helper and how AI is
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reshaping the game for content -driven business.
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So enough of me. Hi, Chris. Thank you again for
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joining us. And yeah, bring us up to speed on
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what you've been doing and how you've got to
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this point. OK, I will tell you this. Let me
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start with this bottom line, because your intro
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was Powerful when we hear the stories of large
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entities doing big things and I'm not talking
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about the negative things like we fired 60 ,000
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people last month But when we talk about the
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good stuff when we hear it and this also happens
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when we hear people on stage, right? I'm a public
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speaker. I've been speaking on stages for now
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40 years, when you get on stage, even when you're
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trying to be inspirational, you go and you talk
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and you and you say stuff. And there is because
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you're often on a stage that's a little higher
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than the front row. Right. And the front row
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is often a little bit further back than the people
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on stage. There is a dynamic between the podium
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and the front row. And that dynamic of space,
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distance, elevation, all of that. ends up causing
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the front row to potentially not say, oh my gosh,
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that's amazing. I like doing that. You hear a
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big company and they do this amazing stuff. Instead
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of going, oh my gosh, that's great. I would like
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to do that. There is a real possibility that
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you just say, I'm not them. When you hear the
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big company doing big things and using AI, you
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just go, I'm not them. When you hear a guy on
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stage and he's like, I did this and I did that.
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You're like. That's awesome for you. What's clear
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at the end of this talk is that I'm not you.
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And so more often than not, we discount ourselves,
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right? More often than not, we just write ourselves
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off and we just go, that's impossible. And so
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when you're talking about the power of small
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teams, maybe the most important thing we can
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do is to make sure people feel like it is possible.
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And that doesn't happen in one shot. So the overall
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communication strategy, the overall like, you
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know, 1600 blog posts at chrislemma .com. I've
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been writing for years and over time, those topics
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have changed, right? For a while, it was all
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leadership and then it switched to all WordPress
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and then for almost a decade, it was all WordPress.
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And then it slowly started changing back to leadership.
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And now it's turned into, you know, where I focus
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on AI. And every one of those changes takes time
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for people and Google and everybody else to understand.
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But most importantly, it takes multiple shots
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at trying to equip, empower, encourage someone
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to believe that I'm not talking from a pedestal
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that says I've done it and you can't. It's standing
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next to them and saying, I think you can pull
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this off. Just take this next one step. Right.
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And when people believe that it's possible and
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man, the tools today are so much more powerful
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than they were. 10 -15 years ago when they believe
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it's possible it opens up and and I I I started
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my professional career at Berkeley National Lab,
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government research lab. I was maybe one of the
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dumbest people on the lab, because when you go
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to a government research lab, everybody there
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is PhDs, right? Everybody there is like, they
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are rocket scientists and they are propulsion
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science. My first job was in the Bevetron, which
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is a particle accelerator. And I couldn't spell
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particle accelerator right three times in a row.
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And these guys were doing like, we're splitting
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atoms. I was not that guy, right? But what you
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discover is that Super super smart people like
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the best ones. They were all like casual wearing
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shorts and t -shirts flip -flops They'd come
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up and chat with you. They didn't put on the
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airs, right? They had no insecurity They didn't
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they weren't in competition. They were just like
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oh, yeah, but so I started there and There were
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many many teams on that campus and they were
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all quite large and I had a little team of four
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people and I thought there's no way I'm gonna
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compete with any of these people right that when
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I joined it was a 94 There were 85 webmasters
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on a 3000 person campus. Right? 85 webmasters.
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Those are the early days, too. Yeah. We are the
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third dot in 94. We are the third dot of the
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Internet. Right. And then, you know, it's taking
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off and all this stuff's going on. There were
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85 webmasters on that campus. And my boss comes
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up to me and goes, hey, has it not dawned on
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you that your little team could actually do you
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could run an agency and you could do all the
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web development for the whole lab? And I'm like.
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Nobody knows us and there's only four of us and
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we're dead within two years the 85 webmasters
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were gone We didn't fire anyone. We just kept
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doing the work and kept showing you know what
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was possible and building web apps and building
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registrations building all this stuff and and
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Eventually every division and department was
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like we hey, we don't need our own webmaster
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We'll hire Chris's team. And so we ran a multi
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-million dollar agency inside a government research
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lab with four people and that's when it bites
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you, right? That bug that says small teams can
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do massive amounts of work if they're smart,
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if they're willing, if they're experimental,
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if they have tooling that helps them scale. right,
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where they don't have to put manual effort. So
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I love your intro simply because I'm like, yes,
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that is 100 % true. You have to believe it's
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possible. You have to be willing to experiment.
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And then once you find things that work, you
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need to lean in and leverage the heck out of
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everything that you can. Oh, yeah, leverage that.
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That's the whole that's the whole power of all
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this. When you're small, you have to apply as
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much force to one end of that lever to lift the
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rest. And, you know, large teams get in their
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way much more so small teams do. So that's a
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lot of that we can get into this. There's a whole
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economic argument to that, you know, not too
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long ago, like maybe 100 years ago, there were
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so many small businesses, so many small mom and
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pop shops, Main Street, America's Main Street
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around the world, actually little merchants that
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it actually wasn't seen as to be too big of a
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hurdle. to just set up your shingle and do your
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business. So it's seen as traditional. But now
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that form of entrepreneurship has been so separated
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that people feel like nobody feels like they're
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empowered anymore to start their own business,
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do their own thing. Maybe it's feeling economically
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insecure. But it's interesting how I think people
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realize that there may be more stability in self
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-employment and all that sort of stuff. That's
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a larger economic argument. But feel free to
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chime in on that. We can get into the more specifics
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of what you're doing. Yeah. Well, I know I think
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you're absolutely right. I what I have done is
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I have had a full time job since I graduated
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college. I have had a full time job the whole
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time. I have been, you know, in corporations,
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small and large startups, corporate enterprises.
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I've held, you know, titles where I've run 100
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people and I've held titles where I run five
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people. I've had it all. And yet. On the side,
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ChrisThumma .com has existed, right? I mean,
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I spun it up in 97. And you bought the domain,
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and then you're like, I have my own website.
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It didn't do anything for years, right? And then,
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you know, 10, 15 years ago, I started writing.
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Several years out of that period, I wrote every
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day. And that drove speaking engagements, it
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drove books, it drove coaching, consulting, and
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in fact, it drove jobs. job opportunities, right?
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I kept that on the side, right? Because I believe
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that there is a real value in working out thinking,
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right? Every idea sounds awesome in your head
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while it's still bouncing around your head. It's
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only when you go to actually write it that you
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develop a skill for taking a messy, sloppy idea
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and turning it into a clear, coherent argument
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that is also helpful and equipping and empowering
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all those things, right? That's a skill. and
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it needs to happen over and over and over again,
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right? To stay sharp. But doing that on the side
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meant every time I went into a company, I said,
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by the way, I run this chrislema .com, it's by,
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it generates revenue through, at one point it
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was affiliate revenue. I made money as an, you
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know, just writing articles and then putting
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links where it made sense. I made SaaS money,
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right? There were people that were like, I'm
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trying to get to 10K a month, and I'm like, I'm
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at 20K a month off just writing articles, right?
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But I was writing the articles for the customer,
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not for the affiliate revenue. But then when
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affiliates start going down, I'm like, oh, I'll
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just do it and highlight that I know what I'm
00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.379
talking about, and I can be a coach. And so the
00:12:21.379 --> 00:12:23.600
content would play out. So I would tell the company
00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:25.440
I was going, hey, by the way, I have this other
00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:27.519
website. And this website is for my coaching,
00:12:27.639 --> 00:12:29.720
my public speaking, sells my books, sells my
00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:31.279
courses, sells whatever. And they're like, yeah,
00:12:31.279 --> 00:12:34.590
that's fine, whatever. They didn't care, but
00:12:34.590 --> 00:12:40.850
I cared that my brand equity was not tied 100
00:12:40.850 --> 00:12:45.289
% to my employer. And that I had the economic
00:12:45.289 --> 00:12:48.669
freedom that when this guy is not working out
00:12:48.669 --> 00:12:50.769
great or it's just okay, but I'm a little bit
00:12:50.769 --> 00:12:52.909
bored, someone else is reading that content and
00:12:52.909 --> 00:12:55.350
going, I think we need this guy to join our company.
00:12:55.389 --> 00:12:57.009
And they're reading several different posts and
00:12:57.009 --> 00:12:58.809
going, I would like to talk to you about an opportunity.
00:12:59.230 --> 00:13:02.370
And then it creates a new... Opportunity to be
00:13:02.370 --> 00:13:06.669
my new main thing, right? So that idea that small
00:13:06.669 --> 00:13:10.250
businesses economically Should think through
00:13:10.250 --> 00:13:12.350
how to stay viable in the midst of everything
00:13:12.350 --> 00:13:15.549
else Often comes down to are you you remember
00:13:15.549 --> 00:13:17.710
we were kids in school and the teacher said show
00:13:17.710 --> 00:13:20.809
your work Are you showing your work, right? It's
00:13:20.809 --> 00:13:23.350
not if you go read all those posts on chrisman
00:13:23.350 --> 00:13:26.250
.com. They're not sales posts They're not me
00:13:26.250 --> 00:13:29.710
pitching a product In fact, I don't pitch a product
00:13:29.710 --> 00:13:33.769
more than one out of every 15 posts. I just don't.
00:13:33.830 --> 00:13:37.110
It's not there for that. But it is thinking out
00:13:37.110 --> 00:13:40.970
loud, right? And the more you expose... So when
00:13:40.970 --> 00:13:43.190
people set up their content marketing plans and
00:13:43.190 --> 00:13:44.330
they're like, we got to write all these articles
00:13:44.330 --> 00:13:46.110
about ourselves, you're like, who do you imagine
00:13:46.110 --> 00:13:48.730
wants to read that? Who do you imagine is Googling
00:13:48.730 --> 00:13:51.429
or searching or scrolling? Who says I want to
00:13:51.429 --> 00:13:54.360
read that, right? That's not interesting or compelling.
00:13:54.679 --> 00:13:58.659
We've been to bars and parties and socials. The
00:13:58.659 --> 00:14:00.419
guy who's talking about himself all the time,
00:14:00.899 --> 00:14:02.860
that's not a guy that you want to hang out with.
00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:06.879
But if you're thinking out loud, if you are Showing
00:14:06.879 --> 00:14:08.320
your work when the right people come and they
00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:09.919
look at one and then another and then another
00:14:09.919 --> 00:14:13.000
they go What I was really doing was aligning
00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:15.480
Perspectives and I buy the way this guy thinks
00:14:15.480 --> 00:14:18.200
they think the way I think and so then opportunities
00:14:18.200 --> 00:14:20.299
get created Yeah, there's actually two interesting
00:14:20.299 --> 00:14:22.500
things there because and they're related but
00:14:22.500 --> 00:14:24.480
different because you're talking about in the
00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:27.100
one hand when you're like posting on ChrisLemma
00:14:27.100 --> 00:14:29.379
.com You're sharing yourself. You're sharing
00:14:29.379 --> 00:14:31.019
your insights the things you did right things
00:14:31.019 --> 00:14:33.539
is wrong. What's typically now talked about as
00:14:33.539 --> 00:14:35.759
building in public, right? Just build in public.
00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:38.039
But at the same time, you're saying nobody wants
00:14:38.039 --> 00:14:40.860
to read the stories about like, well, here's
00:14:40.860 --> 00:14:42.960
me, like the like, here's me, my product, my
00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:45.059
service. But there's clearly a difference between
00:14:45.059 --> 00:14:47.580
the building in public and they let me just throw
00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:50.039
my products at you. So how obviously some of
00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:52.440
it comes down to authenticity. But how do you
00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.279
separate those two? So that was great. Yeah,
00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:57.679
that's a great question, because it is definitely
00:14:57.679 --> 00:15:00.600
not. building in public. When people are building
00:15:00.600 --> 00:15:02.899
in public, and that's why I say show your work,
00:15:02.919 --> 00:15:05.220
I use other phrases, but when people are building
00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:08.500
in public, it is often like watching the behind
00:15:08.500 --> 00:15:10.840
the scenes of someone building their thing. So
00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:12.740
they are talking about them, their experience,
00:15:12.779 --> 00:15:16.299
what they're doing, and unless it's really magical
00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:17.980
and compelling, that's not interesting to me,
00:15:18.360 --> 00:15:20.720
right? If it's magical and compelling, it's interesting,
00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:23.240
but often that has to be way after the fact.
00:15:23.259 --> 00:15:25.600
Right? Like you have to become magical and compelling.
00:15:25.659 --> 00:15:27.419
And then I go back and I go, Oh, look, I can
00:15:27.419 --> 00:15:29.460
read the behind the scenes. That's awesome. But
00:15:29.460 --> 00:15:32.080
while it's happening, I'm like, I, that's, I
00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:35.120
mean, if that was interesting, our whole, every
00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:37.179
television show, every television channel would
00:15:37.179 --> 00:15:39.179
be filled with, you know, here's the behind the
00:15:39.179 --> 00:15:40.980
scenes. And you're like, Nope, not going to do
00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:43.139
it. So that's why I talk about exploring your
00:15:43.139 --> 00:15:47.029
thinking. Thinking out loud. the process of taking
00:15:47.029 --> 00:15:49.029
this idea and crystallizing it into something
00:15:49.029 --> 00:15:51.470
that's useful, helpful, encouraging, all that
00:15:51.470 --> 00:15:54.730
kind of stuff. Yesterday, I wrote a post that
00:15:54.730 --> 00:15:58.549
was, I took research that I read, and the research
00:15:58.549 --> 00:16:03.350
said people could save 40 % on their AI costs
00:16:03.350 --> 00:16:06.809
if they changed how they did what they did in
00:16:06.809 --> 00:16:08.570
terms of putting the right problem in front of
00:16:08.570 --> 00:16:11.590
the right kind of model. But it was academic
00:16:11.590 --> 00:16:13.629
research, peer -reviewed journal article. Nobody's
00:16:13.629 --> 00:16:16.649
gonna read that, right? None of the people I
00:16:16.649 --> 00:16:20.090
know so I go okay How would I I mean this aligns
00:16:20.090 --> 00:16:21.809
with what I believe this aligns with what I've
00:16:21.809 --> 00:16:25.490
been doing So how do I write this? What kind
00:16:25.490 --> 00:16:27.970
of framing what kind of metaphor what kind of
00:16:27.970 --> 00:16:31.509
what so that I can tell the world this but also
00:16:31.509 --> 00:16:33.669
Point back to this is a great article if you
00:16:33.669 --> 00:16:35.389
want the details, but here's what I'm telling
00:16:35.389 --> 00:16:37.509
you Here's the main lesson you can take away,
00:16:38.129 --> 00:16:39.870
which by the way doesn't sell any of my products
00:16:39.870 --> 00:16:44.129
doesn't sell anything I'm doing but it What it
00:16:44.129 --> 00:16:47.850
did was, for me, it helped me define the paradigm.
00:16:47.970 --> 00:16:50.649
Okay, what metaphor am I gonna use? Oh, the metaphor
00:16:50.649 --> 00:16:53.970
I'm gonna use is you need a triage agent. And
00:16:53.970 --> 00:16:57.129
a triage agent, when you go into an ER, the triage
00:16:57.129 --> 00:16:59.929
agent is not a worse medical professional than
00:16:59.929 --> 00:17:02.549
a surgeon or better than a surgeon. They're just
00:17:02.549 --> 00:17:05.509
doing a different thing. What they're doing is
00:17:05.509 --> 00:17:07.869
going, broken finger, sit to the side, wait for
00:17:07.869 --> 00:17:10.849
a few hours. Internal bleeding, run right back
00:17:10.849 --> 00:17:13.670
to the back. And just that, and that, by the
00:17:13.670 --> 00:17:15.690
way, that triage agent doesn't need to cost the
00:17:15.690 --> 00:17:18.789
same as a surgeon. So you can spend a little,
00:17:19.109 --> 00:17:22.269
put this one in, split the focus, process over
00:17:22.269 --> 00:17:24.789
here, put big problems in front of big models
00:17:24.789 --> 00:17:26.349
and little problems in front of little models.
00:17:26.529 --> 00:17:30.289
And you will get the 2 % drop in efficacy and
00:17:30.289 --> 00:17:33.589
a 40 % drop in cost. Who wouldn't want that,
00:17:33.589 --> 00:17:37.059
right? But that's not me working. public that
00:17:37.059 --> 00:17:41.000
is me choosing right to take this hey I'd written
00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:43.819
an article months before that was on design time
00:17:43.819 --> 00:17:49.000
AI and and runtime AI and I was like yeah I I
00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:50.539
know what I'm talking about but I'm not sure
00:17:50.539 --> 00:17:52.299
I got it tight then I read this article and I
00:17:52.299 --> 00:17:54.299
went oh this is what people need to hear and
00:17:54.299 --> 00:17:56.299
now I need to come up with a different metaphor
00:17:56.299 --> 00:17:58.319
and then I can link back to the other one as
00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:00.680
well so I can say by the way here's another angle
00:18:00.680 --> 00:18:03.059
on so it's not building public but it is thinking
00:18:03.059 --> 00:18:08.160
out loud and it is an attempt to to equip, encourage,
00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:13.079
come alongside people as they're on that journey.
00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:16.319
And what happens is people self -select. Yes,
00:18:16.319 --> 00:18:18.539
that's a journey I'm on. No, that's not right.
00:18:18.700 --> 00:18:20.980
Right now, you likely on this kind of podcast,
00:18:21.160 --> 00:18:25.779
you don't have the head of IBM Global Services
00:18:25.779 --> 00:18:27.680
paying attention because he's like, I have a
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.539
huge staff. Why do I need to work? But you people
00:18:30.539 --> 00:18:32.920
will self -select and be like, I am a solopreneur
00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:35.940
or I have a small team. This is the material
00:18:35.940 --> 00:18:38.480
I'm here for. And so when you understand who
00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:41.480
your audience is and you focus on the pains and
00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:43.319
the challenges and the opportunities for that
00:18:43.319 --> 00:18:46.839
audience, then they will self -select in and
00:18:46.839 --> 00:18:50.299
start paying attention. And that becomes scalable
00:18:50.299 --> 00:18:53.019
and powerful. Yeah, so much. Oh my God, I could
00:18:53.019 --> 00:18:55.059
spend hours with you on this. There's so many
00:18:55.059 --> 00:18:56.880
interesting topics here I want to dig into. We
00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:58.299
do have some things that we want to get through,
00:18:58.940 --> 00:19:01.180
but so much about what you're talking about,
00:19:01.180 --> 00:19:03.220
showing your work, even the stuff we're talking
00:19:03.220 --> 00:19:05.900
about, which is this model classification, which
00:19:05.900 --> 00:19:08.440
is becoming a harder topic now, especially as
00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:10.660
you're getting less value for your token now.
00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:13.859
That's been the big conversation about the...
00:19:13.859 --> 00:19:16.200
I write for Forbes as well. One of my big topics
00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:19.000
is that the all you can eat buffet for AI subscriptions
00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:23.240
might be coming to an end soon. Gotta pay the
00:19:23.240 --> 00:19:25.599
piper at some point. That's a whole other conversation.
00:19:25.980 --> 00:19:27.559
One of the interesting things, while you were
00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:29.420
talking, I had this strange thought go through
00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:31.059
my head when you're talking about showing your
00:19:31.059 --> 00:19:32.900
work. There's been this trend. I am not part
00:19:32.900 --> 00:19:34.660
of it, because I'm not a TikToker. I don't do
00:19:34.660 --> 00:19:37.240
a lot of Instagram. You could take one look at
00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:39.859
me and know that I don't do makeup, right? But
00:19:39.859 --> 00:19:42.740
there's been this trend of get ready with me.
00:19:43.099 --> 00:19:44.559
I forgot if there's like a term for it. It's
00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:47.900
like watch me get ready. Where it's kind of,
00:19:47.980 --> 00:19:50.440
strangely enough, it's like the video. version
00:19:50.440 --> 00:19:53.920
of the showing your work vlogging and maybe that's
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:55.619
why that's hot too because you're not really
00:19:55.619 --> 00:19:57.160
learning anything they're not telling you anything
00:19:57.160 --> 00:19:59.039
they're just like watch me get ready and like
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:01.940
why do people watch watch that and I guess it's
00:20:01.940 --> 00:20:03.859
because it's part maybe it's the same story just
00:20:03.859 --> 00:20:08.079
in a different way yeah I I I will never understand
00:20:08.079 --> 00:20:12.940
I'm I'm I'm 55 I'll be 56 this year so I am definitely
00:20:12.940 --> 00:20:17.480
not the target of those videos but my my kids
00:20:17.959 --> 00:20:20.000
watch all sorts of stuff, then I'm like, why?
00:20:20.700 --> 00:20:24.019
Why are you, right? But often, right, when my
00:20:24.019 --> 00:20:25.799
daughter was watching all the makeup stuff, all
00:20:25.799 --> 00:20:27.380
the get ready and whatever, she was just like,
00:20:27.420 --> 00:20:29.240
I've never thought of that. I've never thought
00:20:29.240 --> 00:20:31.039
of that. I've never thought of that, right? So
00:20:31.039 --> 00:20:35.240
she is getting exposure to new ideas by watching
00:20:35.240 --> 00:20:38.279
someone else work out loud. And that's exactly
00:20:38.279 --> 00:20:40.359
what I hope my audience gets when they come read
00:20:40.359 --> 00:20:44.279
my stuff, is exposure to new ideas. I will tell
00:20:44.279 --> 00:20:48.269
you that my... My article on design time AI versus
00:20:48.269 --> 00:20:50.569
runtime AI is exactly what you're describing.
00:20:50.890 --> 00:20:53.190
I use Claude in my subscription to solve a problem,
00:20:53.390 --> 00:20:56.289
create an algorithm, make something magical happen.
00:20:56.349 --> 00:20:59.029
Then I literally turn around and tell Claude,
00:20:59.109 --> 00:21:02.230
assume that we're going to use AI to do this
00:21:02.230 --> 00:21:04.049
stuff, but we're not going to use you. We're
00:21:04.049 --> 00:21:06.990
going to use someone so stupid that they can't
00:21:06.990 --> 00:21:08.970
compete with you, which means we have to change
00:21:08.970 --> 00:21:11.410
our prompts. Not so that they're working for
00:21:11.410 --> 00:21:14.559
you, but so they're working for llama for scout
00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:19.180
with a limited multi -billion dollar token size.
00:21:19.559 --> 00:21:22.079
And you go, oh, that's going to be harder. I
00:21:22.079 --> 00:21:23.980
go, yeah, you made a bunch of assumptions because
00:21:23.980 --> 00:21:26.299
you're you, but I'm going to use that guy over
00:21:26.299 --> 00:21:28.059
there. And by the way, I would like to add a
00:21:28.059 --> 00:21:31.640
resource file where we pre build a whole bunch
00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:34.339
of logic, intelligence, whatever. And so by the
00:21:34.339 --> 00:21:37.220
time we give it to the dumb AI, the dumb AI is
00:21:37.220 --> 00:21:39.920
not doing super complicated work because it has
00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:45.220
this. And so when you, when you use your voice
00:21:45.220 --> 00:21:51.519
profile, your audience segments, your platform
00:21:51.519 --> 00:21:54.000
profile. When you use those products, that's
00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:56.299
exactly what's happening. I'm not paying through
00:21:56.299 --> 00:22:01.079
the nose for Cloud's API and those tokens. I'm
00:22:01.079 --> 00:22:04.460
getting it from Cloudflare Workers AI using...
00:22:04.759 --> 00:22:07.660
you know, models that are included for free because
00:22:07.660 --> 00:22:10.720
I figured out the difference between when do
00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:14.579
I use the powerful AI and when do I use the simple
00:22:14.579 --> 00:22:17.779
AI. But that's a pattern that you have to articulate,
00:22:17.960 --> 00:22:20.119
explain, and make visible to other people so
00:22:20.119 --> 00:22:22.359
they go, I never thought about that. They're
00:22:22.359 --> 00:22:24.519
they're putting everything, including who was
00:22:24.519 --> 00:22:27.339
in that movie into Opus four point seven. And
00:22:27.339 --> 00:22:29.700
you're like, what are you doing? Right. Exactly.
00:22:30.220 --> 00:22:31.619
Well, well, this actually brings us to one of
00:22:31.619 --> 00:22:32.920
the topics I do want to talk about, you know,
00:22:32.940 --> 00:22:34.480
even more specifically, which is about getting
00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:36.220
attention. You know, when you when you write
00:22:36.220 --> 00:22:37.559
for your audience, one of the things you need
00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:40.259
to have is that audience. Right. And I know we've
00:22:40.259 --> 00:22:43.440
all noticed that it's becoming more difficult
00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:46.259
towards the the the ways of getting to that audience
00:22:46.259 --> 00:22:48.980
and getting interest and getting their attention
00:22:48.980 --> 00:22:52.559
is becoming I don't know if it's harder or not,
00:22:52.619 --> 00:22:54.480
but it's definitely becoming different. And when
00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:56.180
we were having a back and forth over email, you
00:22:56.180 --> 00:22:57.920
mentioned something that really grabbed me that
00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:01.079
you mentioned a few years ago, 90 % of your traffic
00:23:01.079 --> 00:23:04.539
came from Google. 5 % direct and another 5 %
00:23:04.539 --> 00:23:06.440
through your socials. But now you're telling,
00:23:06.519 --> 00:23:08.279
now you just mentioned to me, which I've heard
00:23:08.279 --> 00:23:10.380
from others as well, is that only 40 % of that
00:23:10.380 --> 00:23:12.400
traffic's coming from Google, 40 % is coming
00:23:12.400 --> 00:23:14.259
from your socials, and then the direct is sort
00:23:14.259 --> 00:23:16.359
of filling that gap. And you said in many ways,
00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:18.420
Google has become more of a competitor than a
00:23:18.420 --> 00:23:22.210
helper. the zero click and now direct AI answers.
00:23:22.589 --> 00:23:24.349
And I think I'm guilty of that, too. So I'll
00:23:24.349 --> 00:23:26.329
type something in, but I'll type something into
00:23:26.329 --> 00:23:28.710
search. And I'm like, I'm not going to go open
00:23:28.710 --> 00:23:31.769
up 20 tabs and try to digest this gunk and figure
00:23:31.769 --> 00:23:33.769
out what's real now. Just give it to me. Right.
00:23:34.869 --> 00:23:38.369
So I do it, too. Yeah, I do it, too. I go I go
00:23:38.369 --> 00:23:40.529
to Google. I search for something. It gives me
00:23:40.529 --> 00:23:42.769
an answer. And I go, that's that's good for what
00:23:42.769 --> 00:23:46.910
I was doing. That's good enough. Right. But that's
00:23:46.910 --> 00:23:50.240
good enough means I don't. I don't even click,
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:53.559
right? And so all of that traffic disappeared,
00:23:53.779 --> 00:23:57.180
on top of which some of the answers are from
00:23:57.180 --> 00:23:59.799
the content we're giving it. Right. So you're
00:23:59.799 --> 00:24:02.140
like, wait, wait a minute. Initially, when they
00:24:02.140 --> 00:24:04.380
first started the zero click thing, they would
00:24:04.380 --> 00:24:05.960
give you an answer, but they would also put a
00:24:05.960 --> 00:24:08.319
link to where we got it from. Right. Right. So
00:24:08.319 --> 00:24:11.140
the initial stuff, I didn't freak out. My traffic
00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:13.799
came down a little bit and my and where it was
00:24:13.799 --> 00:24:16.279
coming from. And I was like, OK, it's not the
00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:18.299
same thing. The SEO people were all over it.
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:20.099
Right. The people that are smart, they were like,
00:24:20.119 --> 00:24:21.660
hey, this is a big deal and this is the future.
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:24.279
And I'm like, yeah, I don't really care. My discipline
00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:27.490
is to write. That's what I do. And. If it works,
00:24:27.569 --> 00:24:29.329
it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And then
00:24:29.329 --> 00:24:31.150
the AI answers came out. And I'm looking and
00:24:31.150 --> 00:24:36.049
I'm going, whoa, this has really affected my
00:24:36.049 --> 00:24:38.690
stuff, right? It used to be that I could just
00:24:38.690 --> 00:24:40.369
write and that was it. I didn't do anything.
00:24:40.470 --> 00:24:42.390
I didn't put it on all the socials. I didn't
00:24:42.390 --> 00:24:44.170
put it anywhere else because I'm like, no, Google
00:24:44.170 --> 00:24:46.589
will find it, track it, index it and send people
00:24:46.589 --> 00:24:48.970
here. And when that stopped working, you're like,
00:24:49.490 --> 00:24:52.009
okay, I guess I got to write and publish it somewhere
00:24:52.009 --> 00:24:54.029
else. But then you get into all these other complexities
00:24:54.029 --> 00:24:57.420
like... What you write for LinkedIn to cause
00:24:57.420 --> 00:24:59.160
them to click a link or whatever is different
00:24:59.160 --> 00:25:01.480
than what you write for Twitter, which is different
00:25:01.480 --> 00:25:03.079
than what you write for Facebook, which is different
00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:04.819
than what you are allowed to write on Reddit.
00:25:05.299 --> 00:25:09.180
Right. So my product, your platform profile does
00:25:09.180 --> 00:25:11.099
that. It goes, which socials are you on? And
00:25:11.099 --> 00:25:13.059
then it asks you questions and then it generates
00:25:13.059 --> 00:25:15.779
the strategy and then it gives you the actual
00:25:15.779 --> 00:25:19.960
file for your LLM that tells you. Here's how,
00:25:20.039 --> 00:25:21.660
now that you've written this article, how do
00:25:21.660 --> 00:25:24.740
you. promote this article or open up hooks and
00:25:24.740 --> 00:25:27.319
callbacks and whatever else in these different
00:25:27.319 --> 00:25:30.400
pieces. But back to the reality is Google is
00:25:30.400 --> 00:25:32.900
no longer my friend, right? Google is no longer
00:25:32.900 --> 00:25:35.819
my, oh, let me send you over to Chris Lema for
00:25:35.819 --> 00:25:40.359
stuff. The only way that people get Chris Lema
00:25:40.359 --> 00:25:43.059
content from Google now is if they write, you
00:25:43.059 --> 00:25:49.069
know, like this AI vibe coding space. Chris Lema.
00:25:50.190 --> 00:25:52.029
And those are only people that have been several
00:25:52.029 --> 00:25:53.950
times to the site that they're like, I want to
00:25:53.950 --> 00:25:56.029
know if Chris Lema has a take on this. And then
00:25:56.029 --> 00:25:58.190
Google go, here's his takes. And you go, OK,
00:25:58.250 --> 00:26:03.410
thank you. But cold traffic? Google's not solving
00:26:03.410 --> 00:26:06.869
that problem. They've decided. And I think they've
00:26:06.869 --> 00:26:08.730
said this from the beginning. Our goal is to
00:26:08.730 --> 00:26:11.029
make sure that the person who comes to our website,
00:26:11.589 --> 00:26:13.930
comes to Google, gets their answer as fast as
00:26:13.930 --> 00:26:16.660
possible. When that required, Routing them to
00:26:16.660 --> 00:26:19.359
a website. That's what they did when that was
00:26:19.359 --> 00:26:22.359
able to just be presented on the screen That's
00:26:22.359 --> 00:26:24.779
what they did right and and none of us are mad
00:26:24.779 --> 00:26:27.059
when we're going to Google We're not mad to get
00:26:27.059 --> 00:26:29.019
the answer right there Hey, I'm trying to fix
00:26:29.019 --> 00:26:30.900
this thing and my plumbing and I have this thing
00:26:30.900 --> 00:26:33.480
is there such a tool that does this and it goes
00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:35.160
Here's your answer. You're like great. I didn't
00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:36.380
want to go to a website. I didn't want to go
00:26:36.380 --> 00:26:37.779
to YouTube I didn't want to watch a video. I
00:26:37.779 --> 00:26:39.119
just wanted to know what it's called So when
00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:41.640
I go to Home Depot, I know do you have X and
00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:43.539
they go? Yeah, it's right over here aisle 13
00:26:43.950 --> 00:26:48.049
But it changes how we drive attention. Today,
00:26:48.289 --> 00:26:50.250
a majority of the traffic that comes, especially
00:26:50.250 --> 00:26:53.849
to the new stuff, the AI stuff, is from social.
00:26:55.009 --> 00:26:58.589
And the other thing that the reason I write and
00:26:58.589 --> 00:27:01.329
the way in which it's powerful is because we'll
00:27:01.329 --> 00:27:03.410
be in this conversation. Yesterday, I was talking
00:27:03.410 --> 00:27:07.509
to a $3 billion company, massive company. They
00:27:07.509 --> 00:27:11.509
are over 250 different companies and they want
00:27:11.509 --> 00:27:13.009
to talk about AI. And they want to talk about
00:27:13.009 --> 00:27:14.809
this stuff. Well, they found an article, read
00:27:14.809 --> 00:27:16.630
the article, came back, read a couple more articles.
00:27:16.789 --> 00:27:20.029
Okay, this guy is thinking in the right, they're
00:27:20.029 --> 00:27:22.410
thinking in the way that we're thinking. We would
00:27:22.410 --> 00:27:24.849
like to get on a call with him and ask more questions.
00:27:25.420 --> 00:27:28.319
Then I get to say in the call yesterday. Well
00:27:28.319 --> 00:27:32.200
in today's post I wrote about a 40 % reduction
00:27:32.200 --> 00:27:35.700
on AI costs with a very simple strategy and that's
00:27:35.700 --> 00:27:38.400
all I have to do for them to say Okay, I'm pulling
00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:41.700
it up. I'm going to the thing. I'm reading right
00:27:41.700 --> 00:27:43.880
two or three days ago. I was on a pot three days
00:27:43.880 --> 00:27:48.839
ago I was on a podcast. Yeah and They asked something
00:27:48.839 --> 00:27:52.259
and I go. Oh, well in yesterday's post Right?
00:27:52.460 --> 00:27:55.019
I wrote it. And you're verbally articulating,
00:27:55.160 --> 00:27:57.440
but what you're articulating is not, let me give
00:27:57.440 --> 00:27:59.339
you the whole PhD of what's in the article. You're
00:27:59.339 --> 00:28:01.619
simply saying, I've already written this down.
00:28:01.660 --> 00:28:04.400
You can go look at this and get into it. And
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:07.299
if that's interesting or compelling, we can talk
00:28:07.299 --> 00:28:10.859
some more. And it often creates the, I want to
00:28:10.859 --> 00:28:14.119
talk some more. Right? So it is a, is a trust
00:28:14.119 --> 00:28:18.039
bridge. It is a a proxy for more time with me,
00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:21.019
but it allows me to scale because I don't have
00:28:21.019 --> 00:28:22.759
to explain every single thing and I don't have
00:28:22.759 --> 00:28:25.819
to give every insight. I can point people to
00:28:25.819 --> 00:28:28.339
articles and when I'm coaching, I don't have
00:28:28.339 --> 00:28:30.440
to explain every framework. I can point them
00:28:30.440 --> 00:28:35.019
to you. The scalability of my thinking via my
00:28:35.019 --> 00:28:37.900
writing allows me to have way more touch points
00:28:37.900 --> 00:28:39.680
and way more experiences with people than if
00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:41.759
it was just we need to talk in order for you
00:28:41.759 --> 00:28:43.160
to trust that I know what I'm talking about.
00:28:43.240 --> 00:28:46.380
Yeah, it's definitely definitely changing the
00:28:46.380 --> 00:28:49.319
business malls for quite a bit. You know, I think
00:28:49.319 --> 00:28:51.720
back in the day, like this is like five years
00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:55.839
ago or like back in the day, you know, the way
00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:57.660
that, you know, Google worked is that they still
00:28:57.660 --> 00:29:00.160
do they sell advertising and, you know, they
00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:02.299
didn't generate the content, you know, the the
00:29:02.299 --> 00:29:04.599
content came from the websites and the videos.
00:29:04.599 --> 00:29:06.779
And then basically what they would do is they
00:29:06.779 --> 00:29:09.250
would sell the advertising. Send them to your
00:29:09.250 --> 00:29:11.950
site and then share some of that money with you.
00:29:12.269 --> 00:29:14.269
But then, you know, one of them got the bright
00:29:14.269 --> 00:29:16.269
and they got the light bulb moment went out like,
00:29:16.410 --> 00:29:18.029
wait a second, what if we can get the ad revenue
00:29:18.029 --> 00:29:20.250
without having to share that with the content
00:29:20.250 --> 00:29:22.130
owners? What if we could just munch together
00:29:22.130 --> 00:29:24.269
content from many different sites, put it together
00:29:24.269 --> 00:29:26.690
in a summary? And this is coming for YouTube.
00:29:27.029 --> 00:29:29.549
It's very obvious right now. Most YouTube creators
00:29:29.549 --> 00:29:32.849
make their money selling videos, which adds.
00:29:33.069 --> 00:29:34.730
And the thing is, like, at some point, Google
00:29:34.730 --> 00:29:36.109
is going to do the same thing with videos. Like,
00:29:36.109 --> 00:29:37.650
wait, wait a second. We could sell advertising
00:29:37.650 --> 00:29:40.589
on video that does not come from creators, human
00:29:40.589 --> 00:29:43.890
creators, and people are still engaged and everybody
00:29:43.890 --> 00:29:47.130
everybody wins by everybody. They mean that we're
00:29:47.130 --> 00:29:49.289
not content creators. Right. We're 10 seconds
00:29:49.289 --> 00:29:55.569
away from an A .I. ingesting. every idea on a
00:29:55.569 --> 00:30:00.089
topic, generating compelling scripts for non
00:30:00.089 --> 00:30:02.549
-talking head videos, sending it to an API to
00:30:02.549 --> 00:30:06.089
generate an interesting and compelling script
00:30:06.089 --> 00:30:09.569
into a video, and with all the right beats, publishing
00:30:09.569 --> 00:30:12.170
said video back on, and then sending traffic
00:30:12.170 --> 00:30:15.130
to it all without us. Yeah, that's like Notebook
00:30:15.130 --> 00:30:18.349
LM with an ad model on top of it. That's it.
00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:21.539
We're there. It's seconds away. And you're like,
00:30:21.559 --> 00:30:23.839
no, no, that's not that's not next week. That's
00:30:23.839 --> 00:30:25.940
not next month. That's not next quarter next
00:30:25.940 --> 00:30:28.920
year. That's possible today. It's just a function
00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:32.640
of who's doing what. And so what you have to
00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.619
figure out. Right. Before we started the show,
00:30:35.619 --> 00:30:37.359
I was telling you about two two people that opened
00:30:37.359 --> 00:30:40.000
my eyes to this. Right. There was a gentleman
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:42.299
that I worked with years ago, more than 10 years
00:30:42.299 --> 00:30:46.579
ago. And and all he did was he was a barber for
00:30:46.579 --> 00:30:49.539
African -American men. cutting their hair. And
00:30:49.539 --> 00:30:54.119
he taught other barbers who cut black men's hair,
00:30:54.220 --> 00:30:56.940
he taught them all the different ways to do fades
00:30:56.940 --> 00:30:59.339
and cuts and patterns and whatever else. And
00:30:59.339 --> 00:31:03.559
he had he had like 16 DVDs. And he sold that
00:31:03.559 --> 00:31:06.339
stack of DVDs to barbers. Not a course, not a
00:31:06.339 --> 00:31:09.400
certification. Just literally here's how here's
00:31:09.400 --> 00:31:13.579
how I do what I do. And He came to me because
00:31:13.579 --> 00:31:15.460
I know a lot of stuff about online courses. I
00:31:15.460 --> 00:31:16.880
know a lot of stuff about memberships. And he,
00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:18.240
and he said, can you help me with this? And I
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:19.599
said, sure. And so we were talking it through.
00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:22.460
And I said, casually, how, how much, how many
00:31:22.460 --> 00:31:23.960
customers do you have? How much does this make?
00:31:24.599 --> 00:31:26.180
He's like, last year I did 1 .2 million. And
00:31:26.180 --> 00:31:30.339
I go, wow, I'm sorry. I'm in the wrong business,
00:31:30.660 --> 00:31:33.559
right? One guy and not even one guy who is working
00:31:33.559 --> 00:31:37.359
every day. It's one guy who sends bundles. Right.
00:31:37.460 --> 00:31:39.460
I mean, he doesn't even he doesn't even create
00:31:39.460 --> 00:31:41.579
videos every day. The videos are already built.
00:31:41.700 --> 00:31:43.720
They're done. Right. He every year he might create
00:31:43.720 --> 00:31:46.079
a couple more and add another DVD to the list.
00:31:46.140 --> 00:31:48.740
But then you're like, that's an infinite amount
00:31:48.740 --> 00:31:51.900
of scale for single operator businesses. Another
00:31:51.900 --> 00:31:53.859
guy was doing stuff with wine and he's like,
00:31:53.859 --> 00:31:56.059
look, I do this wine event, but you can't get
00:31:56.059 --> 00:31:57.839
the tickets to the wine event unless you're part
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:00.400
of my wine club. And so I make recurring revenue
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:03.079
on the wine club. But then the big deal is unless
00:32:03.079 --> 00:32:04.720
you're there, you can't get to the event. The
00:32:04.720 --> 00:32:06.910
event is where I sell even more wine. And you're
00:32:06.910 --> 00:32:09.269
like, how much? Oh, it's just me. But we did
00:32:09.269 --> 00:32:10.490
over a million dollars last year. And you're
00:32:10.490 --> 00:32:13.609
like, this is crazy. Five years ago, Brian Clark
00:32:13.609 --> 00:32:17.390
of copy broader fame invited me to speak on his
00:32:17.390 --> 00:32:19.190
on his podcast and his courses. And we were talking
00:32:19.190 --> 00:32:22.730
about outsized scale and tooling and what was
00:32:22.730 --> 00:32:24.450
possible. And he had this thing called seven
00:32:24.450 --> 00:32:26.130
figures small. And I'm like, what does that mean?
00:32:26.230 --> 00:32:30.230
He goes, I'm targeting individuals and how they
00:32:30.230 --> 00:32:34.109
can generate outsized results. Millionaire level.
00:32:34.329 --> 00:32:37.529
you know, results off one person. So that's seven
00:32:37.529 --> 00:32:41.190
figures small. Now, if it had taken off the way
00:32:41.190 --> 00:32:45.430
copyblogger had, we would all know the name seven
00:32:45.430 --> 00:32:49.150
figures small. We don't. Because it's not just
00:32:49.150 --> 00:32:51.809
the idea. It's not just that there's a role model
00:32:51.809 --> 00:32:55.009
or example. It's not just the technology does
00:32:55.009 --> 00:32:57.069
or doesn't do what it does. Today, the amount
00:32:57.069 --> 00:32:59.240
of technology that's available Most of the time
00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:00.599
when I say to someone, Oh, you know, you can
00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:03.000
do that. My son last year, I'm talking about
00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:06.319
a year ago, my son did spring break and he said,
00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:08.839
I want to be the director of my high school musical,
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:12.700
but the school doesn't have rights to pay for
00:33:12.700 --> 00:33:15.799
the licensing of a musical. And I don't want
00:33:15.799 --> 00:33:17.460
to do a couple of these. And I said, well, why
00:33:17.460 --> 00:33:18.799
don't we make our own musical? And he's like,
00:33:18.839 --> 00:33:21.059
how would we make a musical? I'm like, Oh, come
00:33:21.059 --> 00:33:24.619
here. Right. And so we wrote, we, we used AI
00:33:24.619 --> 00:33:27.839
to generate a script, a full script. We then
00:33:27.839 --> 00:33:30.960
took each act, generated song lyrics for each
00:33:30.960 --> 00:33:33.700
one, then went to another AI engine and generated
00:33:33.700 --> 00:33:37.480
music for each one. And he turned it all in and
00:33:37.480 --> 00:33:40.940
the school said yes. And then, you know, at the
00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:44.420
end of the year, they performed a musical that
00:33:44.420 --> 00:33:48.119
was and that was a year ago. Right. And there
00:33:48.119 --> 00:33:50.859
were people that were singing songs in the hallways
00:33:50.859 --> 00:33:53.380
because it was catchy and cool. And you're like,
00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:55.440
this is bananas. Most of the time when I'm talking
00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:58.529
to people. They're just not even aware of what's
00:33:58.529 --> 00:34:00.890
possible. But in order for seven figures small
00:34:00.890 --> 00:34:03.750
to take off, in order for single individuals
00:34:03.750 --> 00:34:05.809
to be massively dangerous, in order for small
00:34:05.809 --> 00:34:09.050
teams to have outsized results, you not only
00:34:09.050 --> 00:34:11.190
need the technology, you not only need the role
00:34:11.190 --> 00:34:13.809
models, you not only need the right thinking,
00:34:13.909 --> 00:34:16.510
but it all has to come together in the right
00:34:16.510 --> 00:34:19.550
way at the right moment so that people feel like
00:34:19.550 --> 00:34:22.670
it's not too far of a stretch. It's possible
00:34:22.670 --> 00:34:26.179
for me. versus someone else might do it, right?
00:34:26.460 --> 00:34:28.739
And that's where podcasts like this, it's where
00:34:28.739 --> 00:34:31.380
hopefully my articles, it's hopefully where what
00:34:31.380 --> 00:34:34.860
Brian's doing in his newsletters, all of it converges
00:34:34.860 --> 00:34:39.219
into telling people it's possible. It's like,
00:34:39.420 --> 00:34:42.280
it's right here. It's not next quarter, not next
00:34:42.280 --> 00:34:46.090
year. It's right here. Let's get you there. Yeah.
00:34:46.489 --> 00:34:48.570
Well, I think that's what a lot of people are
00:34:48.570 --> 00:34:50.929
looking for. And I think, you know, we talk to
00:34:50.929 --> 00:34:53.769
small businesses, small teams are trying to,
00:34:53.769 --> 00:34:56.269
you know, get those outsized results. A lot of
00:34:56.269 --> 00:34:58.110
them are like they don't need to be billion dollar
00:34:58.110 --> 00:35:00.230
companies or even 100 million dollar companies.
00:35:00.369 --> 00:35:02.510
You know, it's like a 10 million dollar company
00:35:02.510 --> 00:35:05.690
or 20 million dollar would be a fantastic success
00:35:05.690 --> 00:35:08.110
for a lot of them, especially if it's sustainable.
00:35:08.389 --> 00:35:10.510
But it's like it's like the the know how of how
00:35:10.510 --> 00:35:14.010
to do that. People know the technology is there.
00:35:14.010 --> 00:35:15.849
They know the general thing. but it's that know
00:35:15.849 --> 00:35:17.949
-how that's difficult. So maybe let's transition
00:35:17.949 --> 00:35:19.309
a little bit into that, because that's one of
00:35:19.309 --> 00:35:20.789
the things that you've been looking at quite
00:35:20.789 --> 00:35:22.230
a bit yourself. That's why you're here on this
00:35:22.230 --> 00:35:24.710
podcast. I'm so excited to have you. And one
00:35:24.710 --> 00:35:27.789
of the things was the shift from WordPress, because
00:35:27.789 --> 00:35:30.909
for a while, a lot of that WordPress community,
00:35:31.369 --> 00:35:33.469
there's some interesting overlap there. People
00:35:33.469 --> 00:35:35.309
who built their own blogs and their own sites.
00:35:35.730 --> 00:35:38.809
I was big on WordPress for about 20 years myself.
00:35:39.369 --> 00:35:41.929
Two or three companies that just had a shared
00:35:41.929 --> 00:35:46.619
host. WordPress was already there. Put it on.
00:35:46.900 --> 00:35:49.340
Yes, you had to be an admin. You had to wrestle
00:35:49.340 --> 00:35:51.719
the plugins. You had to deal with the quirks
00:35:51.719 --> 00:35:54.159
and the performance issues. And then the this
00:35:54.159 --> 00:35:57.000
was it wasn't, you know, all roses, that's for
00:35:57.000 --> 00:35:59.980
sure. But I think the stat was I don't know what
00:35:59.980 --> 00:36:02.519
the status right now, but that was like 70 percent
00:36:02.519 --> 00:36:05.659
of the Web was like WordPress powered. I think
00:36:05.659 --> 00:36:08.300
now it's closer to 60 or 50, but it's still it
00:36:08.300 --> 00:36:14.809
was it was it was. 70 or 80 % of websites using
00:36:14.809 --> 00:36:18.050
a content management engine were using WordPress.
00:36:18.489 --> 00:36:21.050
Of all the sites on the planet, it's like, you
00:36:21.050 --> 00:36:25.769
know, 43 and I think recently it became 42. But
00:36:25.769 --> 00:36:29.869
there is no question that WordPress ushered in
00:36:29.869 --> 00:36:34.170
and rode a really long wave of making it easy.
00:36:34.289 --> 00:36:36.889
And what we were making easy was business owners,
00:36:37.130 --> 00:36:39.550
site owners, could edit their own content. And
00:36:39.550 --> 00:36:42.519
that was awesome, right? I've been using AI.
00:36:43.139 --> 00:36:46.960
Well, I wrote AI rule engines, which was forward
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:48.360
chaining and backward chaining, which is completely
00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:50.539
unrelated to machine learning and the stuff we're
00:36:50.539 --> 00:36:52.539
doing today. But I did that 20 years ago. I mean,
00:36:52.639 --> 00:36:54.599
one of my first patents was literally on a forward
00:36:54.599 --> 00:36:57.340
chaining AI recommendation engine. But the world
00:36:57.340 --> 00:37:00.800
that we're living in today with LLMs and chat
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:05.340
interfaces and APIs and that stuff, I've been
00:37:05.340 --> 00:37:08.039
working with it every day for three years, right?
00:37:08.039 --> 00:37:11.619
Three and a half years. But... something magical
00:37:11.619 --> 00:37:15.119
kind of changed somewhere around November of
00:37:15.119 --> 00:37:18.599
last year, where I was like, I can define my
00:37:18.599 --> 00:37:21.039
agents, their internal constitutions, their handoffs.
00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:23.780
I can define the guardrails. I can define all
00:37:23.780 --> 00:37:25.400
this stuff. And then I can have it run all night
00:37:25.400 --> 00:37:29.280
when I go to bed and generate code that is exactly
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:31.659
what I want. There's no slot because I run evaluations
00:37:31.659 --> 00:37:33.719
against it and I make sure it hits all these
00:37:33.719 --> 00:37:38.099
criteria. Like something changed. And November,
00:37:38.179 --> 00:37:40.579
December, January. I didn't almost sleep, right?
00:37:40.860 --> 00:37:43.400
I was coming to bed at like four in the morning
00:37:43.400 --> 00:37:45.179
and my wife would wake me up in the next morning
00:37:45.179 --> 00:37:47.199
and be like, what time do you come to bed? And
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:49.340
I'm like, I'm telling you, there is something
00:37:49.340 --> 00:37:52.599
about what's happening right now that is very
00:37:52.599 --> 00:37:56.699
much like 94, 95, 96 with the web. It does feel
00:37:56.699 --> 00:37:59.800
like the early internet days. Early internet
00:37:59.800 --> 00:38:02.780
days and when we were doing that stuff at Berkeley
00:38:02.780 --> 00:38:05.239
lab when we were working on early internet stuff
00:38:05.239 --> 00:38:08.519
there was a point in time where Yahoo was called,
00:38:08.519 --> 00:38:11.179
you know Jerry's list of links and I could look
00:38:11.179 --> 00:38:13.400
through all the links of the entire web in a
00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:16.860
day and and we went to all the sites right and
00:38:16.860 --> 00:38:18.840
then and then every day it got bigger and more
00:38:18.840 --> 00:38:21.019
and then it was Yahoo and Excite and Altavista
00:38:21.019 --> 00:38:22.900
and everybody else and and everything changed
00:38:22.900 --> 00:38:26.360
right, but it took over everything. And the web
00:38:26.360 --> 00:38:28.679
has since then taken over all sorts of stuff.
00:38:28.840 --> 00:38:32.300
And SaaS, which we called applications in a browser,
00:38:32.460 --> 00:38:35.099
and then it became ASP, application service providers,
00:38:35.139 --> 00:38:37.079
and then it became SaaS, software as a service.
00:38:37.699 --> 00:38:40.460
We wrote that forever, right? And all of that.
00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:43.300
But you have to remember that what was happening
00:38:43.300 --> 00:38:45.460
at the time was in order to have a website, people
00:38:45.460 --> 00:38:48.179
didn't know HTML. So someone else had to build
00:38:48.179 --> 00:38:51.199
it. And then when I wanted to change it, I had
00:38:51.199 --> 00:38:52.699
to call that someone else and say, can you change
00:38:52.699 --> 00:38:54.059
my website? I want to change my phone number
00:38:54.059 --> 00:38:57.219
on the website. And that costs time and money.
00:38:57.400 --> 00:38:59.500
And then WordPress showed up and it was like,
00:38:59.500 --> 00:39:01.139
well, yeah, you have to spend some money for
00:39:01.139 --> 00:39:03.239
us to build the site. But once your site is there,
00:39:03.519 --> 00:39:07.239
you can go edit it yourself. And we've run that
00:39:07.239 --> 00:39:09.360
for, you know, 20 some years. It's been it's
00:39:09.360 --> 00:39:11.360
been absolutely amazing. Right. I got involved
00:39:11.360 --> 00:39:16.380
with WordPress started using in 2005. And I built
00:39:16.380 --> 00:39:21.119
a new version of a new website. in 2025 that
00:39:21.119 --> 00:39:24.019
was not WordPress for the first time after 20
00:39:24.019 --> 00:39:26.260
years. I mean, it's 20 years of using WordPress
00:39:26.260 --> 00:39:28.440
for everything and going, this is amazing. But
00:39:28.440 --> 00:39:30.380
at the end of the year, when I went to rebuild
00:39:30.380 --> 00:39:32.920
chrislema .com, I said, I don't, I don't know
00:39:32.920 --> 00:39:36.059
that I need a CMS, but more importantly, I don't
00:39:36.059 --> 00:39:38.980
know that I need to edit anything. I built something
00:39:38.980 --> 00:39:43.380
called an MCP, which is a connectivity tissue,
00:39:43.539 --> 00:39:48.179
right? A way to connect to a platform. that I
00:39:48.179 --> 00:39:50.760
could do from within an AI engine like Claude.
00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:54.000
And I would just say, hey Claude, I want to change
00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:56.860
this text in the bottom of my footer of my website.
00:39:57.119 --> 00:39:59.960
You have access to this website and it would
00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:02.579
go change it. And then you'd hit refresh and
00:40:02.579 --> 00:40:05.699
it changed. And you're like, this is bananas.
00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:08.159
So the other day, last weekend, I wrote an article
00:40:08.159 --> 00:40:12.579
that was how to build the non -developers guide
00:40:12.579 --> 00:40:16.500
to building and managing a website with Claude.
00:40:16.619 --> 00:40:19.980
And it uses Cloud Cowork on your local computer.
00:40:20.420 --> 00:40:25.860
It even uses GitHub and Cloudflare for pages
00:40:25.860 --> 00:40:28.480
so that any time you push something to GitHub,
00:40:28.739 --> 00:40:31.679
it automatically pushes it to Cloudflare. And
00:40:31.679 --> 00:40:34.239
one of the tech guys read it and went, I don't
00:40:34.239 --> 00:40:36.260
know if non -developer can do this. And I go,
00:40:36.579 --> 00:40:39.460
whoa. First of all, there's 24 screenshots. I
00:40:39.460 --> 00:40:41.800
mean, every step has a screen. So nobody's freaking
00:40:41.800 --> 00:40:45.679
out. But I said, I had two friends. who were
00:40:45.679 --> 00:40:48.019
like, what magic is this? They went through all
00:40:48.019 --> 00:40:50.400
the steps and they were like, signing up for
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:52.619
GitHub doesn't mean I know what it is. I just
00:40:52.619 --> 00:40:54.840
clicked and said, here's my name and then hit
00:40:54.840 --> 00:40:56.920
done. And I had it. And then I went over here
00:40:56.920 --> 00:40:59.039
and I clicked CloudFlare. Here's my name and
00:40:59.039 --> 00:41:01.480
email. Click done. I have it. I didn't have to
00:41:01.480 --> 00:41:04.800
do more than that. Right. And you go to cloud
00:41:04.800 --> 00:41:06.579
and you say, I want to connect to CloudFlare.
00:41:06.599 --> 00:41:08.420
And it pops open a window. It goes, do you accept?
00:41:08.619 --> 00:41:11.380
Yes, I accept. I want to connect to GitHub. Do
00:41:11.380 --> 00:41:13.869
you accept? Yes, I accept. And I'm like, These
00:41:13.869 --> 00:41:16.309
people are changing. A buddy of mine is like,
00:41:16.349 --> 00:41:20.289
I told my wife I'm a webmaster. I'm like, that's
00:41:20.289 --> 00:41:22.750
awesome, right? That's awesome. Yeah, I feel
00:41:22.750 --> 00:41:24.190
the same way. Like, when I was putting my sites
00:41:24.190 --> 00:41:26.170
together, I'm like, I think I'm sort of past
00:41:26.170 --> 00:41:28.989
the WordPress days of like managing a MySQL database
00:41:28.989 --> 00:41:32.250
and the migration plugins and dealing with security
00:41:32.250 --> 00:41:35.329
issues. And yeah, we're at this point now where
00:41:35.329 --> 00:41:37.650
it's we're like, this is like the ultimate vision
00:41:37.650 --> 00:41:39.449
of the no code movement, where you're literally
00:41:39.449 --> 00:41:42.070
not coding at all. And it's kind of funny. Yeah.
00:41:42.230 --> 00:41:45.429
There are certain sizes of companies that still
00:41:45.429 --> 00:41:47.610
need, you know, if you worked at Disney, when
00:41:47.610 --> 00:41:51.070
we built software for Disney, they had seven
00:41:51.070 --> 00:41:53.889
different reviewing departments before something
00:41:53.889 --> 00:41:56.230
went live. The technical people had to review
00:41:56.230 --> 00:41:58.250
how the plugin was written and the marketing
00:41:58.250 --> 00:42:00.730
people had to review the copy and the legal people
00:42:00.730 --> 00:42:03.090
had to review any promises and what graphics
00:42:03.090 --> 00:42:05.369
were used. You're not going to, you're not going
00:42:05.369 --> 00:42:08.940
to vibe code that website. So WordPress becomes
00:42:08.940 --> 00:42:11.400
really powerful for that or any other content
00:42:11.400 --> 00:42:13.219
management based solution. But there's a ton
00:42:13.219 --> 00:42:15.920
of people that have a five or six page website
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:18.380
that doesn't change very often and they don't
00:42:18.380 --> 00:42:20.440
need to spend 10 or 20 ,000 hours to build a
00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:22.159
website when the only thing they're going to
00:42:22.159 --> 00:42:24.400
change is their phone number or their email every
00:42:24.400 --> 00:42:27.219
now and then. And you go, well, for that audience,
00:42:27.420 --> 00:42:29.420
WordPress was overkill to begin with. It just
00:42:29.800 --> 00:42:33.340
We didn't have a way for them to no code, not
00:42:33.340 --> 00:42:35.059
touch their stuff. Even when you look at web
00:42:35.059 --> 00:42:36.940
flows of the world, the fact that you have these
00:42:36.940 --> 00:42:40.710
tiny little boxes, tiny little boxes for. uh
00:42:40.710 --> 00:42:43.030
padding and spacing and you're like how would
00:42:43.030 --> 00:42:45.210
how would my buddy steve know what the difference
00:42:45.210 --> 00:42:47.429
is between padding space like that's just never
00:42:47.429 --> 00:42:49.590
gonna work yeah but now he just goes to claw
00:42:49.590 --> 00:42:51.550
and goes hey can you move that in a little bit
00:42:51.550 --> 00:42:53.389
i mean i just want a little more white you know
00:42:53.389 --> 00:42:55.570
breathing room around it and it does it and he's
00:42:55.570 --> 00:42:57.849
like this is amazing and yeah you can say oh
00:42:57.849 --> 00:43:00.289
and by the way make it responsive so it works
00:43:00.289 --> 00:43:02.639
in a mobile browser and it does yeah Yeah, I
00:43:02.639 --> 00:43:05.300
think we're definitely in this era. Actually,
00:43:05.639 --> 00:43:07.760
this conversation is nicely full circle because
00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:10.440
we talked about how big companies like Disney
00:43:10.440 --> 00:43:12.780
have this department and that department disapproval.
00:43:13.239 --> 00:43:16.440
Again, we get down to, well, small teams can
00:43:16.440 --> 00:43:19.179
have access to the same tools, maybe even better
00:43:19.179 --> 00:43:21.400
tools, because large organizations might not
00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:23.500
even allow them to use it, even though they're
00:43:23.500 --> 00:43:25.780
all decrying the use of AI for getting rid of
00:43:25.780 --> 00:43:27.139
their teams. They're still getting in their own
00:43:27.139 --> 00:43:29.300
way and they're not even using those tools. It's
00:43:29.300 --> 00:43:31.519
a crazy argument. Like, OK, then you could just
00:43:31.369 --> 00:43:34.210
Nowadays, you can move faster than a big organization.
00:43:34.389 --> 00:43:36.769
You have access to the best tools, the same tools
00:43:36.769 --> 00:43:39.530
at the same. Prices too. It's not like you're
00:43:39.530 --> 00:43:42.050
paying $20 ,000 a person a license for something,
00:43:42.050 --> 00:43:44.650
right? I mean, we'll get into maybe tokens will
00:43:44.650 --> 00:43:46.969
become more expensive. It may not be but then
00:43:46.969 --> 00:43:49.150
again, a lot of us are playing with local models
00:43:49.150 --> 00:43:51.429
and open source models and they're getting better
00:43:51.429 --> 00:43:53.289
and better every day. So let's actually like
00:43:53.289 --> 00:43:55.150
shift this a little bit because I want to talk
00:43:55.150 --> 00:43:58.110
a little bit about how you're getting this leverage,
00:43:58.110 --> 00:44:00.449
you know, one of your philosophies, especially
00:44:00.449 --> 00:44:03.570
on experts is that experts don't need more knowledge.
00:44:03.570 --> 00:44:06.449
They need more leverage. And so you were talking
00:44:06.449 --> 00:44:08.739
about how your blog was your first leverage system.
00:44:08.860 --> 00:44:11.320
And of course, AI tools now are the second. So
00:44:11.320 --> 00:44:13.000
what do you see as this common thread? Like,
00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:15.539
what do you see as like, what are these other
00:44:15.539 --> 00:44:17.940
things, especially these high performance that
00:44:17.940 --> 00:44:20.199
you're seeing, that you're working with, they're
00:44:20.199 --> 00:44:22.599
getting more bang for the buck. They're able
00:44:22.599 --> 00:44:25.320
to do a little bit of work and get a huge amount
00:44:25.320 --> 00:44:27.340
of return. There's a lot of things we talk about,
00:44:27.340 --> 00:44:29.559
but I'm very interested in what you're seeing.
00:44:29.639 --> 00:44:33.159
Yeah, absolutely. So if you sent or if one of
00:44:33.159 --> 00:44:36.699
your listeners went to yourcontentagent .com,
00:44:37.039 --> 00:44:40.360
If you go to that, that is a skill graph. So
00:44:40.360 --> 00:44:43.539
it's 16 files that you drop into an LLM and then
00:44:43.539 --> 00:44:45.539
it helps you write articles or edit articles.
00:44:45.780 --> 00:44:48.719
It takes your partial idea, turns it into a full
00:44:48.719 --> 00:44:50.719
fleshed idea, and then it gives you a human in
00:44:50.719 --> 00:44:54.420
the loop spot to edit the idea. And then it writes
00:44:54.420 --> 00:44:57.119
the final one, right? And if you add your voice
00:44:57.119 --> 00:44:59.900
profile and your audience segments files to that,
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:01.900
it leverages those and it becomes even better,
00:45:02.019 --> 00:45:05.159
but that's not the point. If you go to yourcontentagent
00:45:05.159 --> 00:45:08.260
.com and you go to how it works and you're going
00:45:08.260 --> 00:45:11.739
to read the pipeline, it's a seven step pipeline.
00:45:11.780 --> 00:45:13.659
And then you're going to see all the different
00:45:13.659 --> 00:45:15.599
tournaments and the competition and the frameworks
00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:17.199
that are being used. And it doesn't give you
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:18.840
every single framework. It just shows you that
00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:21.480
these different things exist. What you're going
00:45:21.480 --> 00:45:25.960
to see is that I took 96 different frameworks,
00:45:26.699 --> 00:45:29.539
rules, approaches, strategies, extracted them
00:45:29.539 --> 00:45:32.309
from me. turn them in the files, then because
00:45:32.309 --> 00:45:34.909
ChatGBT doesn't let you put in more than 20 files
00:45:34.909 --> 00:45:38.190
into a project, combined it into a skill graph
00:45:38.190 --> 00:45:42.289
of 16 files, right? So it stayed under. And you
00:45:42.289 --> 00:45:44.230
go, wait, wait, wait. You're selling that? I
00:45:44.230 --> 00:45:46.869
go, that's not the point. I don't care. Someone
00:45:46.869 --> 00:45:48.309
uses it, it's great. If they don't like it, they
00:45:48.309 --> 00:45:49.989
don't like it. If they want to go and start tweaking
00:45:49.989 --> 00:45:51.889
it and changing it, that's great. They have the
00:45:51.889 --> 00:45:54.949
rights to do all that. But it is a demonstration
00:45:54.949 --> 00:46:00.710
of what extracted expertise is. It's the ability
00:46:00.710 --> 00:46:04.250
to think, the term is metacognition, right? To
00:46:04.250 --> 00:46:06.630
think about your thinking. And it's that, how
00:46:06.630 --> 00:46:08.809
do you step back and go, I know you're doing
00:46:08.809 --> 00:46:11.989
this, but how are you thinking about it when
00:46:11.989 --> 00:46:14.369
you're doing it, right? Gary Klein, an incredible
00:46:14.369 --> 00:46:18.449
guy, who wrote, created a decision -making framework
00:46:18.449 --> 00:46:21.610
called Prime, oh my gosh, I'm gonna forget the
00:46:21.610 --> 00:46:25.000
official name of it, but... Gary Klein, K -L
00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:27.139
-E -I -N, is the guy who did it. And what he
00:46:27.139 --> 00:46:29.940
did is he went and interviewed fire chief captains
00:46:29.940 --> 00:46:31.739
who show up on the scene. And if you know anything
00:46:31.739 --> 00:46:34.019
about fire and fire departments and whatever,
00:46:34.179 --> 00:46:36.539
is they show up on a scene and they get 60 to
00:46:36.539 --> 00:46:39.440
120 seconds to figure out what's going on. And
00:46:39.440 --> 00:46:42.239
then they huddle and there's a minute of instructions.
00:46:42.300 --> 00:46:43.800
You go here, you do this, you do that, you do
00:46:43.800 --> 00:46:45.619
that. And then they all go. And you're like,
00:46:45.679 --> 00:46:48.460
how are they figuring that out? And what Gary
00:46:48.460 --> 00:46:52.800
Klein did was... How do I extract expertise from
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:55.039
these guys? So he's interviewing them and he's
00:46:55.039 --> 00:46:58.059
thinking, right, recognition prime decision model
00:46:58.059 --> 00:47:01.119
is what his thing was. And he was thinking they're
00:47:01.119 --> 00:47:02.719
going to do the fire captain is going to do pro
00:47:02.719 --> 00:47:04.880
and con pro and con. I could do this or I could
00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:06.420
do this. And that's not how the interview went
00:47:06.420 --> 00:47:08.179
at all. Right. He's interviewing all these different
00:47:08.179 --> 00:47:10.260
fire captains. And what they're doing instead
00:47:10.260 --> 00:47:12.920
is they go. Oh, I'm looking and I see a billboard.
00:47:13.119 --> 00:47:15.460
The billboards on metal. What I know is that
00:47:15.460 --> 00:47:17.320
metal, even if it's next to a building that's
00:47:17.320 --> 00:47:19.119
on fire, is going to heat that metal. And then
00:47:19.119 --> 00:47:21.219
that billboard is going to come down. So instruction
00:47:21.219 --> 00:47:23.400
number one is a pattern I've seen before. So
00:47:23.400 --> 00:47:24.820
instruction number one, get all those people
00:47:24.820 --> 00:47:26.400
and pull them way back because that thing could
00:47:26.400 --> 00:47:28.739
come down. Next thing, next thing. And you're
00:47:28.739 --> 00:47:30.639
like, that decision making is completely different.
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:33.920
And what Gary Klein was doing was figuring out
00:47:33.920 --> 00:47:37.659
how to extract that so that you could articulate
00:47:37.659 --> 00:47:40.119
it, then he could go to other fire cabinets and
00:47:40.119 --> 00:47:43.639
validate it. There is something incredibly powerful
00:47:43.639 --> 00:47:46.840
about expertise extraction that every single
00:47:46.840 --> 00:47:48.579
AI tool out there in the world is going to need.
00:47:48.880 --> 00:47:50.980
Because if you don't do that, if you say, hey,
00:47:51.199 --> 00:47:54.079
AI, I want you to code me a to do app, it's going
00:47:54.079 --> 00:47:56.139
to go, great, I've been trained on this. I have
00:47:56.139 --> 00:47:58.039
read all of GitHub. And you're like, oh, wait,
00:47:58.159 --> 00:48:00.599
time out. You read. all of the GitHub. Is there
00:48:00.599 --> 00:48:02.739
a way I could get you to only read the top 10
00:48:02.739 --> 00:48:05.159
% of GitHub from the top developers? And they're
00:48:05.159 --> 00:48:07.039
like, Nope, I got you. And you're like, so you're
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:11.380
an average app best developer. And you're going
00:48:11.380 --> 00:48:13.400
to bring me every security issue and every problem
00:48:13.400 --> 00:48:15.860
because you got trained on on not only great
00:48:15.860 --> 00:48:18.559
stuff, but dribble. Right. So you go, no, no,
00:48:18.559 --> 00:48:20.039
no, I don't want that. You're great. Well, then
00:48:20.039 --> 00:48:22.179
what do you want? I want it to code the way I
00:48:22.179 --> 00:48:24.710
would code it. Well, what does that mean, right?
00:48:25.030 --> 00:48:29.389
So there is this need to extract expertise and
00:48:29.389 --> 00:48:33.769
then give it to AI so that it can leverage it,
00:48:33.769 --> 00:48:37.429
put it in play, scale what you're doing because
00:48:37.429 --> 00:48:39.269
you've you've checked that. But that's hard because
00:48:39.269 --> 00:48:41.809
here's the thing, right? If I were to ask you,
00:48:41.889 --> 00:48:44.170
hey, Ron, how do you do this? How do you do that?
00:48:44.550 --> 00:48:46.469
How do you how do you prepare for a podcast interview?
00:48:46.789 --> 00:48:48.489
You're going to first of all, you're going to
00:48:48.489 --> 00:48:50.469
go, well, Chris is not a podcast interviewer,
00:48:50.530 --> 00:48:53.400
so I can't give him the low level details because
00:48:53.400 --> 00:48:55.199
he's going to get bored really quick and he's
00:48:55.199 --> 00:48:58.739
going to hang up. But also you go, he probably
00:48:58.739 --> 00:49:02.119
just wants big, big picture stuff. So cognitively
00:49:02.119 --> 00:49:03.760
you're going to shift into teacher mode. And
00:49:03.760 --> 00:49:04.739
then what you're going to do is you're going
00:49:04.739 --> 00:49:06.900
to give me platitudes. Now they're going to be
00:49:06.900 --> 00:49:09.739
truths, right? Everything I've told you on this
00:49:09.739 --> 00:49:11.840
call has been a truth, but almost none of these
00:49:11.840 --> 00:49:14.760
truths would be super valuable to an AI engine
00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:17.219
because they're too high level. There's too many
00:49:17.219 --> 00:49:21.099
exceptions. So How do we extract? This is the
00:49:21.099 --> 00:49:23.780
problem I spend my evenings and weekends on is
00:49:23.780 --> 00:49:28.239
how do we extract expertise from an expert which
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:31.699
doesn't trigger the lecture mode and platitudes
00:49:31.699 --> 00:49:35.599
mode but instead gives me the low level details
00:49:35.599 --> 00:49:38.059
that allow me to encode that into stuff, right?
00:49:38.119 --> 00:49:40.980
And I experienced that while building your content
00:49:40.980 --> 00:49:42.739
agent. I experienced that as I was building all
00:49:42.739 --> 00:49:46.230
the other tools is like, God. So first I built
00:49:46.230 --> 00:49:48.070
the tools just to make it better for other people
00:49:48.070 --> 00:49:50.409
and make it easier and all that. But then I realized,
00:49:51.150 --> 00:49:53.929
oh, we have a problem. All of AI needs expertise
00:49:53.929 --> 00:49:56.269
extraction. And what Gary Klein did is helpful,
00:49:56.269 --> 00:49:59.590
but it's not enough. I got to dig in deeper and
00:49:59.590 --> 00:50:02.369
figure out what's the tooling that allows me
00:50:02.369 --> 00:50:04.650
to interview an expert and extract something
00:50:04.650 --> 00:50:08.349
that AI can actually put into practice. So that's
00:50:08.349 --> 00:50:10.360
the problem space that I'm living in. Well, that's
00:50:10.360 --> 00:50:12.960
great. Well, that's a common place. A lot of
00:50:12.960 --> 00:50:15.320
us are sort of coming to this from different
00:50:15.320 --> 00:50:16.940
perspectives. We've had some interviews where
00:50:16.940 --> 00:50:19.159
we've talked about, this is the idea of SOPs,
00:50:19.320 --> 00:50:21.519
standard operating procedures. And then you give
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:24.019
that. And of course, the problem with AIs, you
00:50:24.019 --> 00:50:26.400
know, is it's not deterministic. It's probabilistic,
00:50:26.400 --> 00:50:28.119
which means it doesn't always do the same thing
00:50:28.119 --> 00:50:30.280
twice. And then, of course, a model change happens.
00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:33.300
And the thing that it was doing perfectly well
00:50:33.300 --> 00:50:35.980
yesterday just can't seem to do anymore. And
00:50:35.980 --> 00:50:37.880
your instructions are like, for whatever reason,
00:50:37.900 --> 00:50:39.530
they were fine before, but they're not. good
00:50:39.530 --> 00:50:41.710
now or they're too much or they're conflicting.
00:50:42.289 --> 00:50:44.610
And so there's another, all the stuff you're
00:50:44.610 --> 00:50:47.570
talking about is like right in the midst of where
00:50:47.570 --> 00:50:49.469
we are. You're right. It's like where the internet
00:50:49.469 --> 00:50:51.210
was in the late 1990s. We're all just figuring
00:50:51.210 --> 00:50:53.590
this out. We're figuring this out at the same
00:50:53.590 --> 00:50:56.030
time. I tell people all the time, I wrote an
00:50:56.030 --> 00:50:59.289
article that said, hey, heads up, do not use
00:50:59.289 --> 00:51:02.650
AI to do what deterministic code should do. So
00:51:02.650 --> 00:51:06.670
you have to split all the work between where
00:51:06.670 --> 00:51:09.849
do I want AI to do something and where do I want
00:51:09.849 --> 00:51:12.809
my code to do something and if my code? Sees
00:51:12.809 --> 00:51:14.949
if this score is greater than this do this if
00:51:14.949 --> 00:51:16.710
this code is let you know lower than this do
00:51:16.710 --> 00:51:18.750
this I don't need AI do that in fact. I don't
00:51:18.750 --> 00:51:20.869
want AI to do that. I don't want probabilistic
00:51:21.759 --> 00:51:24.360
machinations. I want my code to be my code. But
00:51:24.360 --> 00:51:27.159
then I go, hey. And sometimes you'll see AI goes,
00:51:27.380 --> 00:51:29.940
oh, I wrote this keyword parser. So if I see
00:51:29.940 --> 00:51:31.380
this word, it means this. And I go, no, no, no,
00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:33.559
time out. Now you're writing code like these
00:51:33.559 --> 00:51:35.780
guys. But if I wanted that kind of code, I could
00:51:35.780 --> 00:51:37.659
write that code. I don't want that code. I want
00:51:37.659 --> 00:51:42.000
you to reason on the overall tenor of this paragraph.
00:51:44.079 --> 00:51:46.920
to tell me if they are happy or sad or frustrated
00:51:46.920 --> 00:51:49.480
or engaged. And you go, oh yeah, because my code
00:51:49.480 --> 00:51:52.099
can't do that. Right. So figuring out which problems
00:51:52.099 --> 00:51:54.340
are problems for LLMs and which problems are
00:51:54.340 --> 00:51:56.340
just code problems. That's hard because most
00:51:56.340 --> 00:51:58.079
people are just throwing it all into AI and letting
00:51:58.079 --> 00:51:59.539
it doing it in the same way they're throwing
00:51:59.539 --> 00:52:01.780
all into Opus and then paying for it. And you're
00:52:01.780 --> 00:52:04.840
like, no, to do this right, you're going to have
00:52:04.840 --> 00:52:07.019
to be able to say this is an Opus problem and
00:52:07.019 --> 00:52:09.579
this is a sonnet problem, or this is a llama
00:52:09.579 --> 00:52:11.039
four problem. And you have to be able to say
00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:13.590
this is deterministic and should be code. This
00:52:13.590 --> 00:52:18.510
is non -deterministic and evaluative. And I want
00:52:18.510 --> 00:52:20.610
AI to be involved. But then I want AI to have
00:52:20.610 --> 00:52:22.710
its own guardrails. Like, don't fall into, I
00:52:22.710 --> 00:52:24.789
just look for a key word, because you're not
00:52:24.789 --> 00:52:27.690
giving me what you're good at, right? And that's
00:52:27.690 --> 00:52:30.730
hard. That's hard to do. Yeah. Well, I have like
00:52:30.730 --> 00:52:32.989
dozens of questions. I want to be mindful of
00:52:32.989 --> 00:52:34.869
your time and our audience's time. We're not
00:52:34.869 --> 00:52:35.989
going to get out, so I'm going to have to get
00:52:35.989 --> 00:52:37.949
Chris back. That's for sure. I can get you back
00:52:37.949 --> 00:52:40.010
in a future episode because there's just so much
00:52:40.010 --> 00:52:42.369
here. And actually, probably if I had you back
00:52:42.369 --> 00:52:43.750
in a couple of months, a lot of these things
00:52:43.750 --> 00:52:47.940
might be changing. Which is fantastic. So we've
00:52:47.940 --> 00:52:49.199
got one general question. Then we're going to
00:52:49.199 --> 00:52:51.599
do our little rapid fire. And let's talk about
00:52:51.599 --> 00:52:53.480
the attention problem, because we were we were
00:52:53.480 --> 00:52:55.019
talking we were kind of hovering around it a
00:52:55.019 --> 00:52:57.219
little bit. But like how how do we get around
00:52:57.219 --> 00:53:00.820
that problem now, especially that are the the
00:53:00.820 --> 00:53:03.119
great intermediators now are not intermediating
00:53:03.119 --> 00:53:04.960
as much as they used to. The gatekeepers are
00:53:04.960 --> 00:53:07.260
gatekeeping a bit too much and not providing
00:53:07.260 --> 00:53:09.400
as much access. And by the way, as a side note,
00:53:09.539 --> 00:53:13.079
there was something posted recently about LinkedIn's
00:53:13.079 --> 00:53:16.500
discovery algorithm and AI systems. that are
00:53:16.500 --> 00:53:18.760
accessing LinkedIn. And one of the biggest insights
00:53:18.760 --> 00:53:21.000
is that actually video is not performing very
00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:22.920
well. There was a while that LinkedIn was trying
00:53:22.920 --> 00:53:24.679
to push people to short form video. I guess they
00:53:24.679 --> 00:53:27.599
were trying to tick tockify or whatever, LinkedIn.
00:53:28.239 --> 00:53:31.599
But AI systems can't read video and listen, pay
00:53:31.599 --> 00:53:33.940
attention to video. And the engagement was apparently
00:53:33.940 --> 00:53:36.099
not that great. Now they're shifting people back
00:53:36.099 --> 00:53:38.880
towards long text posts and documents. But then
00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:42.500
the other insight was that company pages, which
00:53:42.500 --> 00:53:48.199
people put together get zero at this. So now
00:53:48.199 --> 00:53:50.460
there's like, well, social media is performing
00:53:50.460 --> 00:53:52.880
differently, search is performing differently.
00:53:54.239 --> 00:53:58.480
So how do we deal with this now? All right. So
00:53:58.480 --> 00:54:02.460
my answer is in a book I wrote called Story First.
00:54:03.139 --> 00:54:08.059
What I will tell you is there is a core dynamic
00:54:08.059 --> 00:54:12.190
to humans and human interest. And that is, is
00:54:12.190 --> 00:54:15.030
your facts, is your paradigm, is your opinion
00:54:15.030 --> 00:54:18.170
wrapped in a story or not? If there's a story,
00:54:18.170 --> 00:54:20.769
we get interested. If there's not a story, we
00:54:20.769 --> 00:54:23.769
don't. And every person can evaluate on their
00:54:23.769 --> 00:54:26.630
own, right? What do you stop scrolling for and
00:54:26.630 --> 00:54:29.710
what gets you to stay longer on those on those
00:54:29.710 --> 00:54:31.889
videos that you're looking at? What when you're
00:54:31.889 --> 00:54:34.230
scrolling through articles and on LinkedIn or
00:54:34.230 --> 00:54:37.349
when you're looking at what causes you to pause
00:54:37.349 --> 00:54:40.690
and stop? And I think what you discover is It's
00:54:40.690 --> 00:54:43.510
the story, right? There are stories I already
00:54:43.510 --> 00:54:45.329
know. I'm a big fan of basketball and the NBA.
00:54:46.349 --> 00:54:47.530
And here comes an interview with Michael Jordan.
00:54:47.650 --> 00:54:50.670
I'm like, oh, oh, I know this story. I still
00:54:50.670 --> 00:54:52.769
watch it, right? Because I'm like, I just want
00:54:52.769 --> 00:54:55.349
to see it again. I love it, right? So I wrote
00:54:55.349 --> 00:54:57.530
a book called Story First, which is for business
00:54:57.530 --> 00:55:02.570
leaders. And it's how do you craft the story
00:55:02.570 --> 00:55:05.210
so that you are educating and supporting and
00:55:05.210 --> 00:55:08.179
empowering and all that stuff that gets interest
00:55:08.179 --> 00:55:10.119
and get and create something that people will
00:55:10.119 --> 00:55:12.679
remember for a long time, rather than just selling
00:55:12.679 --> 00:55:14.860
from stage. In fact, I tell people don't sell,
00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:17.099
don't sell at all. Stop selling. Don't sell in
00:55:17.099 --> 00:55:19.400
your emails. Don't sell in your LinkedIn. Don't
00:55:19.400 --> 00:55:21.280
send your socials. Don't sell when you're on
00:55:21.280 --> 00:55:24.800
stage. Just stop selling because all of us are
00:55:24.800 --> 00:55:29.119
completely immune to selling the first hint at
00:55:29.119 --> 00:55:32.460
a pitch mode. And we're like, we're done. Right.
00:55:33.219 --> 00:55:36.940
So you have to change to be interesting, compelling,
00:55:37.460 --> 00:55:40.400
challenging. Learn to tell your story and any
00:55:40.400 --> 00:55:43.199
other story in a way that people go, ooh, I'm
00:55:43.199 --> 00:55:47.980
leaning in, I want more. And so that story first,
00:55:48.360 --> 00:55:53.659
again, is 20 bucks. What I find, we did this
00:55:53.659 --> 00:55:55.800
research years ago, and I'm gonna tighten this
00:55:55.800 --> 00:55:57.239
up and wrap it up so you can do your quick questions,
00:55:57.280 --> 00:55:58.860
but we did this research years ago with membership
00:55:58.860 --> 00:56:01.500
sites, and I was big in the membership space
00:56:01.500 --> 00:56:04.000
and WordPress and all that stuff, and so we worked
00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:05.400
with a couple of companies that did this research.
00:56:05.719 --> 00:56:08.579
And we looked at membership websites where people
00:56:08.579 --> 00:56:14.219
paid zero. And those membership sites, they decided,
00:56:14.420 --> 00:56:17.179
right? A handful selected that we're gonna raise
00:56:17.179 --> 00:56:21.239
the cost of the membership to $1 a year. $1 a
00:56:21.239 --> 00:56:23.579
year. And the average across all these different
00:56:23.579 --> 00:56:26.079
sites was that they lost 30 % of their audience.
00:56:26.219 --> 00:56:30.570
30%. There's 30 % of these people... who had
00:56:30.570 --> 00:56:35.730
no interest in ever giving you even one dollar.
00:56:35.809 --> 00:56:38.289
You're like, well then that's a tax. Why am I
00:56:38.289 --> 00:56:40.849
supporting 30 % of people that don't have any
00:56:40.849 --> 00:56:44.309
interest? So I build what are called on -ramp
00:56:44.309 --> 00:56:47.409
products. You can't go on a freeway 65, 75 miles
00:56:47.409 --> 00:56:51.090
an hour from zero. You have to speed up and you
00:56:51.090 --> 00:56:53.090
have to get in with the flow of traffic. And
00:56:53.090 --> 00:56:54.989
that means you need an on -ramp. And in order
00:56:54.989 --> 00:56:56.590
to do an on -ramp, you got to build an on -ramp
00:56:56.590 --> 00:57:00.380
product. I keep that book at $19 .99. I keep
00:57:00.380 --> 00:57:03.300
your voice profile at $19 .99. I keep these products
00:57:03.300 --> 00:57:06.119
because I'm measuring for a muscle. And the muscle
00:57:06.119 --> 00:57:08.679
is this one right here. And they got to reach
00:57:08.679 --> 00:57:11.539
for their wallet. And if they don't have the
00:57:11.539 --> 00:57:13.239
muscle that lets them reach for their wallet,
00:57:13.940 --> 00:57:15.500
$19 is not going to break their bank. And it's
00:57:15.500 --> 00:57:17.860
not going to make me rich. But if I can't, the
00:57:17.860 --> 00:57:20.840
other term I use when I'm not talking about it
00:57:20.840 --> 00:57:22.860
as an on -ramp product is I call them segmentation
00:57:22.860 --> 00:57:25.940
products. it segments the audience. It tells
00:57:25.940 --> 00:57:27.739
me who knows how to reach for their wallet and
00:57:27.739 --> 00:57:30.199
spend money and who doesn't. And you can build
00:57:30.199 --> 00:57:32.880
a product ladder from there, but you can only
00:57:32.880 --> 00:57:36.079
build it from someone who knows how to part with
00:57:36.079 --> 00:57:39.420
money. So in the game of attention, not all attention
00:57:39.420 --> 00:57:42.139
is equal. In the game of attention, you want
00:57:42.139 --> 00:57:44.380
people to have the muscle right here. And so
00:57:44.380 --> 00:57:46.039
you need to build just a little bit of friction,
00:57:46.320 --> 00:57:48.340
just a little bit of something that first you
00:57:48.340 --> 00:57:50.960
need to not pitch, be out of pitch mode, start
00:57:50.960 --> 00:57:54.340
with story. And once you story, create an approach
00:57:54.340 --> 00:57:56.539
that allows them to hit a speed bump, right?
00:57:56.539 --> 00:57:58.380
None of us stop our car at speed bumps, right?
00:57:58.460 --> 00:58:00.039
You're like, okay, I'm gonna go over it. But
00:58:00.039 --> 00:58:01.559
you need to put just a little bit of friction
00:58:01.559 --> 00:58:04.559
so you can see who's the goer versus not and
00:58:04.559 --> 00:58:07.679
check for the muscle. And then with an on -ramp
00:58:07.679 --> 00:58:10.940
product or with a segmentation product, determine
00:58:10.940 --> 00:58:13.760
that, oh, this is the audience that I want their
00:58:13.760 --> 00:58:17.289
attention. Not. that audience that 30 % were
00:58:17.289 --> 00:58:18.829
never going to give me a dollar to begin with.
00:58:19.090 --> 00:58:20.869
That's fine. That's why I don't mind. 75 % of
00:58:20.869 --> 00:58:22.710
the traffic comes to the website, visits once
00:58:22.710 --> 00:58:25.050
in a whole year and leaves. And I go, that's
00:58:25.050 --> 00:58:26.869
fine. They're not for you. They're not for you.
00:58:27.329 --> 00:58:29.300
That's good. Not a problem. Well, that's good.
00:58:29.420 --> 00:58:31.420
Well, we're going to link to those articles in
00:58:31.420 --> 00:58:32.920
our show notes here. So for those of you that
00:58:32.920 --> 00:58:34.579
I know we could be talking for another hour,
00:58:34.699 --> 00:58:36.460
but Chris has got to go and you got to go. Everybody's
00:58:36.460 --> 00:58:38.420
got to go. So I won't do that, but we will share
00:58:38.420 --> 00:58:40.699
those articles and those links in the book and
00:58:40.699 --> 00:58:42.840
the resources, the website, all that sort of
00:58:42.840 --> 00:58:44.639
stuff. So you can definitely dig into it more
00:58:44.639 --> 00:58:46.739
because there's a lot of synergy between what
00:58:46.739 --> 00:58:48.360
you're saying in our audience. OK, the rapid
00:58:48.360 --> 00:58:50.380
fires real quick. Here we go. Everybody wants
00:58:50.380 --> 00:58:52.420
to know about tools. So what's one AI tool or
00:58:52.420 --> 00:58:54.780
automation that you absolutely can't run your
00:58:54.780 --> 00:58:56.940
business without? The one that gives you and
00:58:56.940 --> 00:58:59.920
your team the 10x level. every single week. There
00:58:59.920 --> 00:59:02.920
you go. Just cloud code, cloud co -work, the
00:59:02.920 --> 00:59:06.239
whole thing, all of it? All of it. I use every
00:59:06.239 --> 00:59:09.000
face that it has all the time, like every day,
00:59:09.260 --> 00:59:11.219
multiple times a day. Can I ask what plan you're
00:59:11.219 --> 00:59:15.820
on and what's your total? I'm on the $200 subscription.
00:59:18.469 --> 00:59:21.429
And I'm telling you, it will tell you, oh, Chris,
00:59:21.889 --> 00:59:23.909
you came to us from ChatGBT because you asked
00:59:23.909 --> 00:59:27.110
these questions two and a half years ago. And
00:59:27.110 --> 00:59:30.369
you started by doing 10 sessions a month. And
00:59:30.369 --> 00:59:32.409
then very quickly, you went to 50 sessions a
00:59:32.409 --> 00:59:34.230
month. And then you're like, now 200 sessions
00:59:34.230 --> 00:59:38.230
a month. And you're like, yeah, whether it's
00:59:38.230 --> 00:59:42.239
Cloud Code, Co -Work, or Cloud .AI. Max it a
00:59:42.239 --> 00:59:44.340
day every day. There you go. Okay, processes.
00:59:44.420 --> 00:59:46.420
Now let's talk about ways of working. So what's
00:59:46.420 --> 00:59:48.960
one system or process that you think every lean
00:59:48.960 --> 00:59:51.480
leverage first team should have in place by the
00:59:51.480 --> 00:59:53.739
time they hit that first million dollars in revenue
00:59:53.739 --> 00:59:56.280
that separates those scalers from the grinders?
00:59:56.320 --> 00:59:58.699
You know, the ones that are just going to continue
00:59:58.699 --> 01:00:00.559
to work hard even if they've made it. So what
01:00:00.559 --> 01:00:02.699
would you maybe tell them to stop doing or something
01:00:02.699 --> 01:00:04.300
you think that they should start doing today?
01:00:04.360 --> 01:00:06.179
They need to create content. They need to create
01:00:06.179 --> 01:00:08.460
content like their life depends on it. It's not
01:00:08.460 --> 01:00:10.579
going to give you rapid results two days after
01:00:10.579 --> 01:00:13.079
you publish. It is going to give you all the
01:00:13.079 --> 01:00:15.519
time about compounding benefit. But you need
01:00:15.519 --> 01:00:18.400
to be able to do it and not spend two days for
01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:21.099
an article. You need to not be able. You can't
01:00:21.099 --> 01:00:23.980
spend eight hours on an article. And so all the
01:00:23.980 --> 01:00:25.960
tools that I've built, right, and including that
01:00:25.960 --> 01:00:28.340
content agent, all of those are are designed
01:00:28.340 --> 01:00:31.980
to help you generate content faster while keeping
01:00:31.980 --> 01:00:35.510
your authenticity, your voice. Writing to your
01:00:35.510 --> 01:00:39.369
audience and and internalizing your takes in
01:00:39.369 --> 01:00:41.429
that content, but content is it you got to do
01:00:41.429 --> 01:00:44.030
it I'm gonna check it out myself and then final
01:00:44.030 --> 01:00:46.329
tip So if you can give one piece of advice to
01:00:46.329 --> 01:00:48.250
the founder who's running that dinner table size
01:00:48.250 --> 01:00:50.230
team right now who wants to scale Maybe what
01:00:50.230 --> 01:00:53.010
would you share um? Stop listening to the people
01:00:53.010 --> 01:00:55.789
who say you can't do it find two or three people
01:00:55.789 --> 01:00:59.289
who know you Believe in you know something about
01:00:59.289 --> 01:01:01.719
the tools and are willing to come alongside the
01:01:01.719 --> 01:01:03.860
journey, even if it's just a once a month call
01:01:03.860 --> 01:01:05.400
to be like, tell me what you're trying now, tell
01:01:05.400 --> 01:01:07.760
me what you're doing now. I sit in that role
01:01:07.760 --> 01:01:11.659
for, I don't know, 20, 30 people. And, you know,
01:01:11.800 --> 01:01:15.019
the goal is simply to say, yeah, that's good,
01:01:15.139 --> 01:01:17.820
try that, like, let's go. The encouragement is
01:01:17.820 --> 01:01:18.960
what's out there because the rest of the world
01:01:18.960 --> 01:01:21.260
is filled with, you know, people that are taking
01:01:21.260 --> 01:01:23.599
easy potshots, right, and telling you that you
01:01:23.599 --> 01:01:27.059
can't do it. A lot of times the only difference
01:01:27.869 --> 01:01:30.150
between someone having success and someone not
01:01:30.150 --> 01:01:34.250
is believing that it's even possible. And so
01:01:34.250 --> 01:01:35.750
bring some of those people in your circle and
01:01:35.750 --> 01:01:38.110
get rid of the people that are constantly going,
01:01:38.110 --> 01:01:39.469
yeah, but that's not going to work. That's not
01:01:39.469 --> 01:01:41.730
going to work. I don't need anyone for that.
01:01:41.829 --> 01:01:43.909
So get rid of those guys. I'm with you on that.
01:01:44.150 --> 01:01:46.150
Well, this has been fantastic. That's why we
01:01:46.150 --> 01:01:47.849
have you on this podcast, because you can hear,
01:01:48.030 --> 01:01:50.429
yes, you can do it. So for those of you that
01:01:50.429 --> 01:01:51.789
are interested, first of all, Chris, I want to
01:01:51.789 --> 01:01:53.530
thank you so much for joining us on the exponential
01:01:53.530 --> 01:01:55.929
scale podcast. Give you that final word there.
01:01:55.949 --> 01:01:58.400
Thank you. Yeah, and it's been awesome. It's
01:01:58.400 --> 01:02:00.780
been definitely awesome So for if you're looking
01:02:00.780 --> 01:02:02.679
to find Chris you can go to his website Chris
01:02:02.679 --> 01:02:06.920
Lemma. That's chrislemma .com You can learn more
01:02:06.920 --> 01:02:09.860
about your voice profile his 1999 on -ramp product.
01:02:09.880 --> 01:02:11.880
You just heard about it go from 0 to 65 before
01:02:11.880 --> 01:02:14.050
you hit that highway Definitely check out the
01:02:14.050 --> 01:02:17.690
story first book also 20 bucks on Amazon or wherever
01:02:17.690 --> 01:02:20.309
else. And it's on he's on Twitter at Chris Lemma.
01:02:20.329 --> 01:02:23.469
He's on YouTube at Mr. Chris Lemma. And I will
01:02:23.469 --> 01:02:25.510
give you all that final mantra. So here's your
01:02:25.510 --> 01:02:27.949
mantra for the week. Create interest, create
01:02:27.949 --> 01:02:31.929
the story. Don't sell, communicate and stay aware
01:02:31.929 --> 01:02:34.570
of how this whole ecosystem is changing and find
01:02:34.570 --> 01:02:36.250
that buddy friend who's going to help convince
01:02:36.250 --> 01:02:38.630
you to keep on going. So if you've loved this
01:02:38.630 --> 01:02:40.050
interview with Chris Lemma, I want you to hit
01:02:40.050 --> 01:02:42.130
that subscribe button, leave a review and share
01:02:42.130 --> 01:02:44.269
with them. that founder friend who's still chasing
01:02:44.269 --> 01:02:46.409
traffic when they should be building for the
01:02:46.409 --> 01:02:48.849
people who already care. So I want you to think
01:02:48.849 --> 01:02:52.570
big, stay lean, and scale smarter. Small teams
01:02:52.570 --> 01:02:55.710
that scale big aren't the future. They're the
01:02:55.710 --> 01:02:58.730
now. If this episode has you inspired to learn
01:02:58.730 --> 01:03:01.269
more, hit that subscribe button, share it with
01:03:01.269 --> 01:03:04.010
your crew, and join the movement over at ScaleBraid
01:03:04.010 --> 01:03:09.059
.com. That's S -C -A -L -E -B -R -A -T -E dot
01:03:09.059 --> 01:03:12.980
com. Until next time, think big, stay lean, and
01:03:12.980 --> 01:03:16.079
scale smarter. Because small teams have mega
01:03:16.079 --> 01:03:19.179
potential. And thanks for tuning in to the Small
01:03:19.179 --> 01:03:20.840
Team Big Scale podcast.
00:00:02.919 --> 00:00:05.139
Remember we were kids in school and the teacher
00:00:05.139 --> 00:00:07.620
said show your work. Are you showing your work,
00:00:07.679 --> 00:00:10.740
right? It's not if you go read all those posts
00:00:10.740 --> 00:00:13.380
on crystal .com. They're not sales posts They're
00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:17.059
not me pitching a product. In fact, I don't pitch
00:00:17.059 --> 00:00:20.079
a product more than one out of every 15 posts
00:00:20.079 --> 00:00:23.420
I just don't it's not there for that. It's but
00:00:23.420 --> 00:00:27.820
it is thinking out loud, right and the more you
00:00:27.820 --> 00:00:30.699
expose. So when people set up their content marketing
00:00:30.699 --> 00:00:32.000
plans and they're like, we got to write all these
00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:33.579
articles about ourselves, you're like, who do
00:00:33.579 --> 00:00:35.939
you imagine wants to read that? Who do you imagine
00:00:35.939 --> 00:00:38.960
is Googling or searching or scrolling? Who says
00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:41.799
I want to read that, right? That's not interesting
00:00:41.799 --> 00:00:44.880
or compelling. We've been to bars and parties
00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:47.659
and socials. The guy who's talking about himself
00:00:47.659 --> 00:00:50.259
all the time, that's not a guy that you want
00:00:50.259 --> 00:00:53.140
to hang out with. But if you're thinking out
00:00:53.140 --> 00:00:55.520
loud, if you are showing your work. When the
00:00:55.520 --> 00:00:57.219
right people come and they look at one and then
00:00:57.219 --> 00:00:59.219
another and then another, they go, ah, what I
00:00:59.219 --> 00:01:01.979
was really doing was aligning perspectives. And
00:01:01.979 --> 00:01:04.120
I buy the way this guy thinks. They think the
00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:07.439
way I think. And so then opportunities get created.
00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:15.480
Presented by Zapier, the AI automation company.
00:01:16.099 --> 00:01:18.379
Hello and welcome to the small team big scale
00:01:18.379 --> 00:01:20.659
podcast. It's a show where we talk about how
00:01:20.659 --> 00:01:23.260
tiny teams with big ambitions are doing more
00:01:23.260 --> 00:01:26.260
with less, scaling smarter, not harder, and building
00:01:26.260 --> 00:01:28.319
big businesses with teams that can fit around
00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:30.459
a dinner table. I'm your host Ron Schmelzer,
00:01:30.459 --> 00:01:32.140
and in today's episode, we're talking with Chris
00:01:32.140 --> 00:01:35.579
Lemma, who is a 25 year tech veteran who's built
00:01:35.579 --> 00:01:38.640
a personal content engine that generates hundreds
00:01:38.640 --> 00:01:40.180
of thousands of visitors per month. But he's
00:01:40.180 --> 00:01:43.140
got a lot to say on this topic of small teams
00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:44.739
punching above your weight. So we're going to
00:01:44.739 --> 00:01:46.620
get right into it. So hi, Chris. Thank you so
00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:48.400
much for joining us on exponential scale. It's
00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:51.540
great to be here. Yeah, and as we were talking
00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:54.000
and I'm like, I got to start recording because
00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:55.780
like the stuff that's coming out is amazing.
00:01:55.780 --> 00:01:57.319
And I think that's really the purpose of this
00:01:57.319 --> 00:02:00.859
podcast is to highlight that there is a lot of
00:02:00.859 --> 00:02:03.920
stuff going on out there. And the hard part is
00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:06.780
tapping into these different communities. You
00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:08.340
know, we don't hear a lot about them because
00:02:08.340 --> 00:02:11.080
the venture backed unicorns get a lot of attention.
00:02:11.319 --> 00:02:13.939
They get a lot of press. Big numbers always get
00:02:13.939 --> 00:02:16.199
a lot of attention. But honestly, those big numbers
00:02:16.199 --> 00:02:18.680
swing both ways. It's not just the raising a
00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:20.300
lot of money and having a lot of value. They're
00:02:20.300 --> 00:02:22.740
also firing a lot of people, letting a lot of
00:02:22.740 --> 00:02:24.460
people go. Those are the big numbers that aren't
00:02:24.460 --> 00:02:26.620
so great. And I think, honestly, the momentum,
00:02:26.740 --> 00:02:29.639
the pendulum is swinging back to the side of
00:02:29.639 --> 00:02:33.080
small and mighty. And we have all the same tools
00:02:33.080 --> 00:02:35.419
that are empowering the big guys to do more,
00:02:35.780 --> 00:02:37.639
are empowering the small guys to do more too.
00:02:37.659 --> 00:02:39.400
So this is gonna be fantastic. And we're gonna
00:02:39.400 --> 00:02:41.020
give you just a brief intro to Chris. I'm gonna
00:02:41.020 --> 00:02:43.340
have him jump right in and let's just dig into
00:02:43.340 --> 00:02:46.099
this, because it's just too amazing to hear me
00:02:46.099 --> 00:02:48.919
blabbering on and on. If you don't know Chris,
00:02:48.939 --> 00:02:51.479
he's been fantastic. He's written over 1 ,500
00:02:51.479 --> 00:02:54.020
blog posts, replaced his entire marketing budget
00:02:54.020 --> 00:02:56.280
with content. And here's the part that most people
00:02:56.280 --> 00:02:59.300
miss. 75 % of that traffic usually sort of hits
00:02:59.300 --> 00:03:01.780
one traffic and leaves, but the real business
00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:04.460
comes from the small segment that comes back
00:03:04.460 --> 00:03:08.800
and converts. So he now creates tools, AI powered
00:03:08.800 --> 00:03:11.219
tools and other tools that help experts package
00:03:11.219 --> 00:03:14.419
what they know, build authority and create programs
00:03:14.419 --> 00:03:17.840
that people pay for without adding. We were getting
00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:20.360
to some really fantastic examples. So we'll bring
00:03:20.360 --> 00:03:22.780
them into the story here. So his products include
00:03:22.780 --> 00:03:26.240
yourvoiceprofile .com, Content Agent, his new
00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:29.400
book, Story First, all designed to make experts
00:03:29.400 --> 00:03:32.599
dangerous. And in this episode, we're going to
00:03:32.599 --> 00:03:35.479
dig into how content can compound into inbound
00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:37.580
demand. We talk about that a lot. When you're
00:03:37.580 --> 00:03:40.879
a small team, you need the power of compounding
00:03:40.879 --> 00:03:43.139
of momentum. These are the things that if it
00:03:43.139 --> 00:03:45.300
takes you a lot of effort to get to your first
00:03:45.300 --> 00:03:47.030
million and it takes you twice. as much effort
00:03:47.030 --> 00:03:49.129
to get to your second million, that's not compounding.
00:03:49.150 --> 00:03:51.430
That's just a lot of brute force work. So you
00:03:51.430 --> 00:03:53.689
need the things that compound. We're also going
00:03:53.689 --> 00:03:56.270
to talk about why Google has become a competitor
00:03:56.270 --> 00:03:58.849
these days instead of a helper and how AI is
00:03:58.849 --> 00:04:01.569
reshaping the game for content -driven business.
00:04:01.750 --> 00:04:04.349
So enough of me. Hi, Chris. Thank you again for
00:04:04.349 --> 00:04:06.710
joining us. And yeah, bring us up to speed on
00:04:06.710 --> 00:04:08.810
what you've been doing and how you've got to
00:04:08.810 --> 00:04:12.250
this point. OK, I will tell you this. Let me
00:04:12.250 --> 00:04:14.949
start with this bottom line, because your intro
00:04:14.949 --> 00:04:18.589
was Powerful when we hear the stories of large
00:04:18.589 --> 00:04:20.829
entities doing big things and I'm not talking
00:04:20.829 --> 00:04:23.009
about the negative things like we fired 60 ,000
00:04:23.009 --> 00:04:25.310
people last month But when we talk about the
00:04:25.310 --> 00:04:27.790
good stuff when we hear it and this also happens
00:04:27.790 --> 00:04:30.490
when we hear people on stage, right? I'm a public
00:04:30.490 --> 00:04:32.769
speaker. I've been speaking on stages for now
00:04:32.769 --> 00:04:36.569
40 years, when you get on stage, even when you're
00:04:36.569 --> 00:04:38.769
trying to be inspirational, you go and you talk
00:04:38.769 --> 00:04:41.490
and you and you say stuff. And there is because
00:04:41.490 --> 00:04:43.269
you're often on a stage that's a little higher
00:04:43.269 --> 00:04:45.129
than the front row. Right. And the front row
00:04:45.129 --> 00:04:47.769
is often a little bit further back than the people
00:04:47.769 --> 00:04:50.490
on stage. There is a dynamic between the podium
00:04:50.490 --> 00:04:53.730
and the front row. And that dynamic of space,
00:04:53.889 --> 00:04:57.649
distance, elevation, all of that. ends up causing
00:04:57.649 --> 00:05:01.350
the front row to potentially not say, oh my gosh,
00:05:01.370 --> 00:05:03.649
that's amazing. I like doing that. You hear a
00:05:03.649 --> 00:05:06.350
big company and they do this amazing stuff. Instead
00:05:06.350 --> 00:05:08.470
of going, oh my gosh, that's great. I would like
00:05:08.470 --> 00:05:11.709
to do that. There is a real possibility that
00:05:11.709 --> 00:05:14.350
you just say, I'm not them. When you hear the
00:05:14.350 --> 00:05:17.509
big company doing big things and using AI, you
00:05:17.509 --> 00:05:20.410
just go, I'm not them. When you hear a guy on
00:05:20.410 --> 00:05:22.149
stage and he's like, I did this and I did that.
00:05:22.769 --> 00:05:25.300
You're like. That's awesome for you. What's clear
00:05:25.300 --> 00:05:27.639
at the end of this talk is that I'm not you.
00:05:27.759 --> 00:05:31.220
And so more often than not, we discount ourselves,
00:05:31.379 --> 00:05:33.759
right? More often than not, we just write ourselves
00:05:33.759 --> 00:05:35.860
off and we just go, that's impossible. And so
00:05:35.860 --> 00:05:38.699
when you're talking about the power of small
00:05:38.699 --> 00:05:41.519
teams, maybe the most important thing we can
00:05:41.519 --> 00:05:45.300
do is to make sure people feel like it is possible.
00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:50.839
And that doesn't happen in one shot. So the overall
00:05:51.759 --> 00:05:53.740
communication strategy, the overall like, you
00:05:53.740 --> 00:05:56.800
know, 1600 blog posts at chrislemma .com. I've
00:05:56.800 --> 00:06:00.660
been writing for years and over time, those topics
00:06:00.660 --> 00:06:02.879
have changed, right? For a while, it was all
00:06:02.879 --> 00:06:04.740
leadership and then it switched to all WordPress
00:06:04.740 --> 00:06:06.860
and then for almost a decade, it was all WordPress.
00:06:07.220 --> 00:06:08.980
And then it slowly started changing back to leadership.
00:06:08.980 --> 00:06:11.139
And now it's turned into, you know, where I focus
00:06:11.139 --> 00:06:14.800
on AI. And every one of those changes takes time
00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:18.000
for people and Google and everybody else to understand.
00:06:18.240 --> 00:06:22.079
But most importantly, it takes multiple shots
00:06:22.079 --> 00:06:27.740
at trying to equip, empower, encourage someone
00:06:27.740 --> 00:06:30.680
to believe that I'm not talking from a pedestal
00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:34.000
that says I've done it and you can't. It's standing
00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:36.220
next to them and saying, I think you can pull
00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:38.720
this off. Just take this next one step. Right.
00:06:38.819 --> 00:06:42.579
And when people believe that it's possible and
00:06:42.579 --> 00:06:45.740
man, the tools today are so much more powerful
00:06:45.740 --> 00:06:48.620
than they were. 10 -15 years ago when they believe
00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:51.819
it's possible it opens up and and I I I started
00:06:51.819 --> 00:06:54.529
my professional career at Berkeley National Lab,
00:06:54.750 --> 00:06:57.129
government research lab. I was maybe one of the
00:06:57.129 --> 00:06:58.610
dumbest people on the lab, because when you go
00:06:58.610 --> 00:07:01.009
to a government research lab, everybody there
00:07:01.009 --> 00:07:03.269
is PhDs, right? Everybody there is like, they
00:07:03.269 --> 00:07:05.389
are rocket scientists and they are propulsion
00:07:05.389 --> 00:07:08.370
science. My first job was in the Bevetron, which
00:07:08.370 --> 00:07:11.389
is a particle accelerator. And I couldn't spell
00:07:11.389 --> 00:07:14.149
particle accelerator right three times in a row.
00:07:14.189 --> 00:07:16.250
And these guys were doing like, we're splitting
00:07:16.250 --> 00:07:20.250
atoms. I was not that guy, right? But what you
00:07:20.250 --> 00:07:24.220
discover is that Super super smart people like
00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:26.860
the best ones. They were all like casual wearing
00:07:26.860 --> 00:07:29.019
shorts and t -shirts flip -flops They'd come
00:07:29.019 --> 00:07:31.079
up and chat with you. They didn't put on the
00:07:31.079 --> 00:07:34.139
airs, right? They had no insecurity They didn't
00:07:34.139 --> 00:07:36.120
they weren't in competition. They were just like
00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:39.439
oh, yeah, but so I started there and There were
00:07:39.439 --> 00:07:41.779
many many teams on that campus and they were
00:07:41.779 --> 00:07:44.100
all quite large and I had a little team of four
00:07:44.100 --> 00:07:46.360
people and I thought there's no way I'm gonna
00:07:46.360 --> 00:07:48.399
compete with any of these people right that when
00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:54.670
I joined it was a 94 There were 85 webmasters
00:07:54.670 --> 00:07:58.550
on a 3000 person campus. Right? 85 webmasters.
00:07:59.350 --> 00:08:02.129
Those are the early days, too. Yeah. We are the
00:08:02.129 --> 00:08:04.329
third dot in 94. We are the third dot of the
00:08:04.329 --> 00:08:07.430
Internet. Right. And then, you know, it's taking
00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:09.009
off and all this stuff's going on. There were
00:08:09.009 --> 00:08:12.350
85 webmasters on that campus. And my boss comes
00:08:12.350 --> 00:08:15.029
up to me and goes, hey, has it not dawned on
00:08:15.029 --> 00:08:17.750
you that your little team could actually do you
00:08:17.750 --> 00:08:19.670
could run an agency and you could do all the
00:08:19.670 --> 00:08:21.370
web development for the whole lab? And I'm like.
00:08:21.870 --> 00:08:24.069
Nobody knows us and there's only four of us and
00:08:24.069 --> 00:08:27.709
we're dead within two years the 85 webmasters
00:08:27.709 --> 00:08:30.250
were gone We didn't fire anyone. We just kept
00:08:30.250 --> 00:08:32.309
doing the work and kept showing you know what
00:08:32.309 --> 00:08:34.529
was possible and building web apps and building
00:08:34.529 --> 00:08:37.570
registrations building all this stuff and and
00:08:37.570 --> 00:08:40.129
Eventually every division and department was
00:08:40.129 --> 00:08:41.549
like we hey, we don't need our own webmaster
00:08:41.549 --> 00:08:44.509
We'll hire Chris's team. And so we ran a multi
00:08:44.509 --> 00:08:46.789
-million dollar agency inside a government research
00:08:46.789 --> 00:08:49.940
lab with four people and that's when it bites
00:08:49.940 --> 00:08:53.539
you, right? That bug that says small teams can
00:08:53.539 --> 00:08:58.179
do massive amounts of work if they're smart,
00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:00.580
if they're willing, if they're experimental,
00:09:01.120 --> 00:09:03.820
if they have tooling that helps them scale. right,
00:09:03.940 --> 00:09:06.100
where they don't have to put manual effort. So
00:09:06.100 --> 00:09:08.120
I love your intro simply because I'm like, yes,
00:09:08.519 --> 00:09:11.100
that is 100 % true. You have to believe it's
00:09:11.100 --> 00:09:13.340
possible. You have to be willing to experiment.
00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:15.179
And then once you find things that work, you
00:09:15.179 --> 00:09:18.860
need to lean in and leverage the heck out of
00:09:18.860 --> 00:09:21.200
everything that you can. Oh, yeah, leverage that.
00:09:21.419 --> 00:09:23.159
That's the whole that's the whole power of all
00:09:23.159 --> 00:09:25.200
this. When you're small, you have to apply as
00:09:25.200 --> 00:09:27.000
much force to one end of that lever to lift the
00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:29.179
rest. And, you know, large teams get in their
00:09:29.179 --> 00:09:31.980
way much more so small teams do. So that's a
00:09:31.980 --> 00:09:33.799
lot of that we can get into this. There's a whole
00:09:33.799 --> 00:09:36.220
economic argument to that, you know, not too
00:09:36.220 --> 00:09:38.980
long ago, like maybe 100 years ago, there were
00:09:38.980 --> 00:09:41.940
so many small businesses, so many small mom and
00:09:41.940 --> 00:09:44.759
pop shops, Main Street, America's Main Street
00:09:44.759 --> 00:09:46.960
around the world, actually little merchants that
00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:49.059
it actually wasn't seen as to be too big of a
00:09:49.059 --> 00:09:51.639
hurdle. to just set up your shingle and do your
00:09:51.639 --> 00:09:54.039
business. So it's seen as traditional. But now
00:09:54.039 --> 00:09:57.039
that form of entrepreneurship has been so separated
00:09:57.039 --> 00:09:59.480
that people feel like nobody feels like they're
00:09:59.480 --> 00:10:01.500
empowered anymore to start their own business,
00:10:01.620 --> 00:10:04.220
do their own thing. Maybe it's feeling economically
00:10:04.220 --> 00:10:08.419
insecure. But it's interesting how I think people
00:10:08.419 --> 00:10:11.519
realize that there may be more stability in self
00:10:11.519 --> 00:10:13.139
-employment and all that sort of stuff. That's
00:10:13.139 --> 00:10:15.539
a larger economic argument. But feel free to
00:10:15.539 --> 00:10:17.539
chime in on that. We can get into the more specifics
00:10:17.539 --> 00:10:19.960
of what you're doing. Yeah. Well, I know I think
00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:22.259
you're absolutely right. I what I have done is
00:10:22.259 --> 00:10:26.320
I have had a full time job since I graduated
00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:28.879
college. I have had a full time job the whole
00:10:28.879 --> 00:10:31.860
time. I have been, you know, in corporations,
00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:34.580
small and large startups, corporate enterprises.
00:10:35.419 --> 00:10:38.259
I've held, you know, titles where I've run 100
00:10:38.259 --> 00:10:40.059
people and I've held titles where I run five
00:10:40.059 --> 00:10:43.720
people. I've had it all. And yet. On the side,
00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:45.960
ChrisThumma .com has existed, right? I mean,
00:10:45.980 --> 00:10:50.340
I spun it up in 97. And you bought the domain,
00:10:50.360 --> 00:10:51.679
and then you're like, I have my own website.
00:10:51.759 --> 00:10:53.799
It didn't do anything for years, right? And then,
00:10:53.799 --> 00:10:55.779
you know, 10, 15 years ago, I started writing.
00:10:56.700 --> 00:10:59.080
Several years out of that period, I wrote every
00:10:59.080 --> 00:11:04.080
day. And that drove speaking engagements, it
00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:09.000
drove books, it drove coaching, consulting, and
00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:13.309
in fact, it drove jobs. job opportunities, right?
00:11:13.750 --> 00:11:16.950
I kept that on the side, right? Because I believe
00:11:16.950 --> 00:11:22.690
that there is a real value in working out thinking,
00:11:23.149 --> 00:11:25.210
right? Every idea sounds awesome in your head
00:11:25.210 --> 00:11:26.690
while it's still bouncing around your head. It's
00:11:26.690 --> 00:11:29.350
only when you go to actually write it that you
00:11:29.350 --> 00:11:33.710
develop a skill for taking a messy, sloppy idea
00:11:33.710 --> 00:11:36.629
and turning it into a clear, coherent argument
00:11:36.629 --> 00:11:39.429
that is also helpful and equipping and empowering
00:11:39.429 --> 00:11:41.789
all those things, right? That's a skill. and
00:11:41.789 --> 00:11:44.110
it needs to happen over and over and over again,
00:11:44.470 --> 00:11:48.669
right? To stay sharp. But doing that on the side
00:11:48.669 --> 00:11:50.690
meant every time I went into a company, I said,
00:11:50.809 --> 00:11:53.730
by the way, I run this chrislema .com, it's by,
00:11:53.850 --> 00:11:55.309
it generates revenue through, at one point it
00:11:55.309 --> 00:12:01.250
was affiliate revenue. I made money as an, you
00:12:01.250 --> 00:12:03.029
know, just writing articles and then putting
00:12:03.029 --> 00:12:05.960
links where it made sense. I made SaaS money,
00:12:06.100 --> 00:12:07.320
right? There were people that were like, I'm
00:12:07.320 --> 00:12:08.840
trying to get to 10K a month, and I'm like, I'm
00:12:08.840 --> 00:12:11.139
at 20K a month off just writing articles, right?
00:12:11.340 --> 00:12:13.019
But I was writing the articles for the customer,
00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:15.139
not for the affiliate revenue. But then when
00:12:15.139 --> 00:12:16.399
affiliates start going down, I'm like, oh, I'll
00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:19.000
just do it and highlight that I know what I'm
00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.379
talking about, and I can be a coach. And so the
00:12:21.379 --> 00:12:23.600
content would play out. So I would tell the company
00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:25.440
I was going, hey, by the way, I have this other
00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:27.519
website. And this website is for my coaching,
00:12:27.639 --> 00:12:29.720
my public speaking, sells my books, sells my
00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:31.279
courses, sells whatever. And they're like, yeah,
00:12:31.279 --> 00:12:34.590
that's fine, whatever. They didn't care, but
00:12:34.590 --> 00:12:40.850
I cared that my brand equity was not tied 100
00:12:40.850 --> 00:12:45.289
% to my employer. And that I had the economic
00:12:45.289 --> 00:12:48.669
freedom that when this guy is not working out
00:12:48.669 --> 00:12:50.769
great or it's just okay, but I'm a little bit
00:12:50.769 --> 00:12:52.909
bored, someone else is reading that content and
00:12:52.909 --> 00:12:55.350
going, I think we need this guy to join our company.
00:12:55.389 --> 00:12:57.009
And they're reading several different posts and
00:12:57.009 --> 00:12:58.809
going, I would like to talk to you about an opportunity.
00:12:59.230 --> 00:13:02.370
And then it creates a new... Opportunity to be
00:13:02.370 --> 00:13:06.669
my new main thing, right? So that idea that small
00:13:06.669 --> 00:13:10.250
businesses economically Should think through
00:13:10.250 --> 00:13:12.350
how to stay viable in the midst of everything
00:13:12.350 --> 00:13:15.549
else Often comes down to are you you remember
00:13:15.549 --> 00:13:17.710
we were kids in school and the teacher said show
00:13:17.710 --> 00:13:20.809
your work Are you showing your work, right? It's
00:13:20.809 --> 00:13:23.350
not if you go read all those posts on chrisman
00:13:23.350 --> 00:13:26.250
.com. They're not sales posts They're not me
00:13:26.250 --> 00:13:29.710
pitching a product In fact, I don't pitch a product
00:13:29.710 --> 00:13:33.769
more than one out of every 15 posts. I just don't.
00:13:33.830 --> 00:13:37.110
It's not there for that. But it is thinking out
00:13:37.110 --> 00:13:40.970
loud, right? And the more you expose... So when
00:13:40.970 --> 00:13:43.190
people set up their content marketing plans and
00:13:43.190 --> 00:13:44.330
they're like, we got to write all these articles
00:13:44.330 --> 00:13:46.110
about ourselves, you're like, who do you imagine
00:13:46.110 --> 00:13:48.730
wants to read that? Who do you imagine is Googling
00:13:48.730 --> 00:13:51.429
or searching or scrolling? Who says I want to
00:13:51.429 --> 00:13:54.360
read that, right? That's not interesting or compelling.
00:13:54.679 --> 00:13:58.659
We've been to bars and parties and socials. The
00:13:58.659 --> 00:14:00.419
guy who's talking about himself all the time,
00:14:00.899 --> 00:14:02.860
that's not a guy that you want to hang out with.
00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:06.879
But if you're thinking out loud, if you are Showing
00:14:06.879 --> 00:14:08.320
your work when the right people come and they
00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:09.919
look at one and then another and then another
00:14:09.919 --> 00:14:13.000
they go What I was really doing was aligning
00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:15.480
Perspectives and I buy the way this guy thinks
00:14:15.480 --> 00:14:18.200
they think the way I think and so then opportunities
00:14:18.200 --> 00:14:20.299
get created Yeah, there's actually two interesting
00:14:20.299 --> 00:14:22.500
things there because and they're related but
00:14:22.500 --> 00:14:24.480
different because you're talking about in the
00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:27.100
one hand when you're like posting on ChrisLemma
00:14:27.100 --> 00:14:29.379
.com You're sharing yourself. You're sharing
00:14:29.379 --> 00:14:31.019
your insights the things you did right things
00:14:31.019 --> 00:14:33.539
is wrong. What's typically now talked about as
00:14:33.539 --> 00:14:35.759
building in public, right? Just build in public.
00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:38.039
But at the same time, you're saying nobody wants
00:14:38.039 --> 00:14:40.860
to read the stories about like, well, here's
00:14:40.860 --> 00:14:42.960
me, like the like, here's me, my product, my
00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:45.059
service. But there's clearly a difference between
00:14:45.059 --> 00:14:47.580
the building in public and they let me just throw
00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:50.039
my products at you. So how obviously some of
00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:52.440
it comes down to authenticity. But how do you
00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.279
separate those two? So that was great. Yeah,
00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:57.679
that's a great question, because it is definitely
00:14:57.679 --> 00:15:00.600
not. building in public. When people are building
00:15:00.600 --> 00:15:02.899
in public, and that's why I say show your work,
00:15:02.919 --> 00:15:05.220
I use other phrases, but when people are building
00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:08.500
in public, it is often like watching the behind
00:15:08.500 --> 00:15:10.840
the scenes of someone building their thing. So
00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:12.740
they are talking about them, their experience,
00:15:12.779 --> 00:15:16.299
what they're doing, and unless it's really magical
00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:17.980
and compelling, that's not interesting to me,
00:15:18.360 --> 00:15:20.720
right? If it's magical and compelling, it's interesting,
00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:23.240
but often that has to be way after the fact.
00:15:23.259 --> 00:15:25.600
Right? Like you have to become magical and compelling.
00:15:25.659 --> 00:15:27.419
And then I go back and I go, Oh, look, I can
00:15:27.419 --> 00:15:29.460
read the behind the scenes. That's awesome. But
00:15:29.460 --> 00:15:32.080
while it's happening, I'm like, I, that's, I
00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:35.120
mean, if that was interesting, our whole, every
00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:37.179
television show, every television channel would
00:15:37.179 --> 00:15:39.179
be filled with, you know, here's the behind the
00:15:39.179 --> 00:15:40.980
scenes. And you're like, Nope, not going to do
00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:43.139
it. So that's why I talk about exploring your
00:15:43.139 --> 00:15:47.029
thinking. Thinking out loud. the process of taking
00:15:47.029 --> 00:15:49.029
this idea and crystallizing it into something
00:15:49.029 --> 00:15:51.470
that's useful, helpful, encouraging, all that
00:15:51.470 --> 00:15:54.730
kind of stuff. Yesterday, I wrote a post that
00:15:54.730 --> 00:15:58.549
was, I took research that I read, and the research
00:15:58.549 --> 00:16:03.350
said people could save 40 % on their AI costs
00:16:03.350 --> 00:16:06.809
if they changed how they did what they did in
00:16:06.809 --> 00:16:08.570
terms of putting the right problem in front of
00:16:08.570 --> 00:16:11.590
the right kind of model. But it was academic
00:16:11.590 --> 00:16:13.629
research, peer -reviewed journal article. Nobody's
00:16:13.629 --> 00:16:16.649
gonna read that, right? None of the people I
00:16:16.649 --> 00:16:20.090
know so I go okay How would I I mean this aligns
00:16:20.090 --> 00:16:21.809
with what I believe this aligns with what I've
00:16:21.809 --> 00:16:25.490
been doing So how do I write this? What kind
00:16:25.490 --> 00:16:27.970
of framing what kind of metaphor what kind of
00:16:27.970 --> 00:16:31.509
what so that I can tell the world this but also
00:16:31.509 --> 00:16:33.669
Point back to this is a great article if you
00:16:33.669 --> 00:16:35.389
want the details, but here's what I'm telling
00:16:35.389 --> 00:16:37.509
you Here's the main lesson you can take away,
00:16:38.129 --> 00:16:39.870
which by the way doesn't sell any of my products
00:16:39.870 --> 00:16:44.129
doesn't sell anything I'm doing but it What it
00:16:44.129 --> 00:16:47.850
did was, for me, it helped me define the paradigm.
00:16:47.970 --> 00:16:50.649
Okay, what metaphor am I gonna use? Oh, the metaphor
00:16:50.649 --> 00:16:53.970
I'm gonna use is you need a triage agent. And
00:16:53.970 --> 00:16:57.129
a triage agent, when you go into an ER, the triage
00:16:57.129 --> 00:16:59.929
agent is not a worse medical professional than
00:16:59.929 --> 00:17:02.549
a surgeon or better than a surgeon. They're just
00:17:02.549 --> 00:17:05.509
doing a different thing. What they're doing is
00:17:05.509 --> 00:17:07.869
going, broken finger, sit to the side, wait for
00:17:07.869 --> 00:17:10.849
a few hours. Internal bleeding, run right back
00:17:10.849 --> 00:17:13.670
to the back. And just that, and that, by the
00:17:13.670 --> 00:17:15.690
way, that triage agent doesn't need to cost the
00:17:15.690 --> 00:17:18.789
same as a surgeon. So you can spend a little,
00:17:19.109 --> 00:17:22.269
put this one in, split the focus, process over
00:17:22.269 --> 00:17:24.789
here, put big problems in front of big models
00:17:24.789 --> 00:17:26.349
and little problems in front of little models.
00:17:26.529 --> 00:17:30.289
And you will get the 2 % drop in efficacy and
00:17:30.289 --> 00:17:33.589
a 40 % drop in cost. Who wouldn't want that,
00:17:33.589 --> 00:17:37.059
right? But that's not me working. public that
00:17:37.059 --> 00:17:41.000
is me choosing right to take this hey I'd written
00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:43.819
an article months before that was on design time
00:17:43.819 --> 00:17:49.000
AI and and runtime AI and I was like yeah I I
00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:50.539
know what I'm talking about but I'm not sure
00:17:50.539 --> 00:17:52.299
I got it tight then I read this article and I
00:17:52.299 --> 00:17:54.299
went oh this is what people need to hear and
00:17:54.299 --> 00:17:56.299
now I need to come up with a different metaphor
00:17:56.299 --> 00:17:58.319
and then I can link back to the other one as
00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:00.680
well so I can say by the way here's another angle
00:18:00.680 --> 00:18:03.059
on so it's not building public but it is thinking
00:18:03.059 --> 00:18:08.160
out loud and it is an attempt to to equip, encourage,
00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:13.079
come alongside people as they're on that journey.
00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:16.319
And what happens is people self -select. Yes,
00:18:16.319 --> 00:18:18.539
that's a journey I'm on. No, that's not right.
00:18:18.700 --> 00:18:20.980
Right now, you likely on this kind of podcast,
00:18:21.160 --> 00:18:25.779
you don't have the head of IBM Global Services
00:18:25.779 --> 00:18:27.680
paying attention because he's like, I have a
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.539
huge staff. Why do I need to work? But you people
00:18:30.539 --> 00:18:32.920
will self -select and be like, I am a solopreneur
00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:35.940
or I have a small team. This is the material
00:18:35.940 --> 00:18:38.480
I'm here for. And so when you understand who
00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:41.480
your audience is and you focus on the pains and
00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:43.319
the challenges and the opportunities for that
00:18:43.319 --> 00:18:46.839
audience, then they will self -select in and
00:18:46.839 --> 00:18:50.299
start paying attention. And that becomes scalable
00:18:50.299 --> 00:18:53.019
and powerful. Yeah, so much. Oh my God, I could
00:18:53.019 --> 00:18:55.059
spend hours with you on this. There's so many
00:18:55.059 --> 00:18:56.880
interesting topics here I want to dig into. We
00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:58.299
do have some things that we want to get through,
00:18:58.940 --> 00:19:01.180
but so much about what you're talking about,
00:19:01.180 --> 00:19:03.220
showing your work, even the stuff we're talking
00:19:03.220 --> 00:19:05.900
about, which is this model classification, which
00:19:05.900 --> 00:19:08.440
is becoming a harder topic now, especially as
00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:10.660
you're getting less value for your token now.
00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:13.859
That's been the big conversation about the...
00:19:13.859 --> 00:19:16.200
I write for Forbes as well. One of my big topics
00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:19.000
is that the all you can eat buffet for AI subscriptions
00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:23.240
might be coming to an end soon. Gotta pay the
00:19:23.240 --> 00:19:25.599
piper at some point. That's a whole other conversation.
00:19:25.980 --> 00:19:27.559
One of the interesting things, while you were
00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:29.420
talking, I had this strange thought go through
00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:31.059
my head when you're talking about showing your
00:19:31.059 --> 00:19:32.900
work. There's been this trend. I am not part
00:19:32.900 --> 00:19:34.660
of it, because I'm not a TikToker. I don't do
00:19:34.660 --> 00:19:37.240
a lot of Instagram. You could take one look at
00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:39.859
me and know that I don't do makeup, right? But
00:19:39.859 --> 00:19:42.740
there's been this trend of get ready with me.
00:19:43.099 --> 00:19:44.559
I forgot if there's like a term for it. It's
00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:47.900
like watch me get ready. Where it's kind of,
00:19:47.980 --> 00:19:50.440
strangely enough, it's like the video. version
00:19:50.440 --> 00:19:53.920
of the showing your work vlogging and maybe that's
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:55.619
why that's hot too because you're not really
00:19:55.619 --> 00:19:57.160
learning anything they're not telling you anything
00:19:57.160 --> 00:19:59.039
they're just like watch me get ready and like
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:01.940
why do people watch watch that and I guess it's
00:20:01.940 --> 00:20:03.859
because it's part maybe it's the same story just
00:20:03.859 --> 00:20:08.079
in a different way yeah I I I will never understand
00:20:08.079 --> 00:20:12.940
I'm I'm I'm 55 I'll be 56 this year so I am definitely
00:20:12.940 --> 00:20:17.480
not the target of those videos but my my kids
00:20:17.959 --> 00:20:20.000
watch all sorts of stuff, then I'm like, why?
00:20:20.700 --> 00:20:24.019
Why are you, right? But often, right, when my
00:20:24.019 --> 00:20:25.799
daughter was watching all the makeup stuff, all
00:20:25.799 --> 00:20:27.380
the get ready and whatever, she was just like,
00:20:27.420 --> 00:20:29.240
I've never thought of that. I've never thought
00:20:29.240 --> 00:20:31.039
of that. I've never thought of that, right? So
00:20:31.039 --> 00:20:35.240
she is getting exposure to new ideas by watching
00:20:35.240 --> 00:20:38.279
someone else work out loud. And that's exactly
00:20:38.279 --> 00:20:40.359
what I hope my audience gets when they come read
00:20:40.359 --> 00:20:44.279
my stuff, is exposure to new ideas. I will tell
00:20:44.279 --> 00:20:48.269
you that my... My article on design time AI versus
00:20:48.269 --> 00:20:50.569
runtime AI is exactly what you're describing.
00:20:50.890 --> 00:20:53.190
I use Claude in my subscription to solve a problem,
00:20:53.390 --> 00:20:56.289
create an algorithm, make something magical happen.
00:20:56.349 --> 00:20:59.029
Then I literally turn around and tell Claude,
00:20:59.109 --> 00:21:02.230
assume that we're going to use AI to do this
00:21:02.230 --> 00:21:04.049
stuff, but we're not going to use you. We're
00:21:04.049 --> 00:21:06.990
going to use someone so stupid that they can't
00:21:06.990 --> 00:21:08.970
compete with you, which means we have to change
00:21:08.970 --> 00:21:11.410
our prompts. Not so that they're working for
00:21:11.410 --> 00:21:14.559
you, but so they're working for llama for scout
00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:19.180
with a limited multi -billion dollar token size.
00:21:19.559 --> 00:21:22.079
And you go, oh, that's going to be harder. I
00:21:22.079 --> 00:21:23.980
go, yeah, you made a bunch of assumptions because
00:21:23.980 --> 00:21:26.299
you're you, but I'm going to use that guy over
00:21:26.299 --> 00:21:28.059
there. And by the way, I would like to add a
00:21:28.059 --> 00:21:31.640
resource file where we pre build a whole bunch
00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:34.339
of logic, intelligence, whatever. And so by the
00:21:34.339 --> 00:21:37.220
time we give it to the dumb AI, the dumb AI is
00:21:37.220 --> 00:21:39.920
not doing super complicated work because it has
00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:45.220
this. And so when you, when you use your voice
00:21:45.220 --> 00:21:51.519
profile, your audience segments, your platform
00:21:51.519 --> 00:21:54.000
profile. When you use those products, that's
00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:56.299
exactly what's happening. I'm not paying through
00:21:56.299 --> 00:22:01.079
the nose for Cloud's API and those tokens. I'm
00:22:01.079 --> 00:22:04.460
getting it from Cloudflare Workers AI using...
00:22:04.759 --> 00:22:07.660
you know, models that are included for free because
00:22:07.660 --> 00:22:10.720
I figured out the difference between when do
00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:14.579
I use the powerful AI and when do I use the simple
00:22:14.579 --> 00:22:17.779
AI. But that's a pattern that you have to articulate,
00:22:17.960 --> 00:22:20.119
explain, and make visible to other people so
00:22:20.119 --> 00:22:22.359
they go, I never thought about that. They're
00:22:22.359 --> 00:22:24.519
they're putting everything, including who was
00:22:24.519 --> 00:22:27.339
in that movie into Opus four point seven. And
00:22:27.339 --> 00:22:29.700
you're like, what are you doing? Right. Exactly.
00:22:30.220 --> 00:22:31.619
Well, well, this actually brings us to one of
00:22:31.619 --> 00:22:32.920
the topics I do want to talk about, you know,
00:22:32.940 --> 00:22:34.480
even more specifically, which is about getting
00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:36.220
attention. You know, when you when you write
00:22:36.220 --> 00:22:37.559
for your audience, one of the things you need
00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:40.259
to have is that audience. Right. And I know we've
00:22:40.259 --> 00:22:43.440
all noticed that it's becoming more difficult
00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:46.259
towards the the the ways of getting to that audience
00:22:46.259 --> 00:22:48.980
and getting interest and getting their attention
00:22:48.980 --> 00:22:52.559
is becoming I don't know if it's harder or not,
00:22:52.619 --> 00:22:54.480
but it's definitely becoming different. And when
00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:56.180
we were having a back and forth over email, you
00:22:56.180 --> 00:22:57.920
mentioned something that really grabbed me that
00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:01.079
you mentioned a few years ago, 90 % of your traffic
00:23:01.079 --> 00:23:04.539
came from Google. 5 % direct and another 5 %
00:23:04.539 --> 00:23:06.440
through your socials. But now you're telling,
00:23:06.519 --> 00:23:08.279
now you just mentioned to me, which I've heard
00:23:08.279 --> 00:23:10.380
from others as well, is that only 40 % of that
00:23:10.380 --> 00:23:12.400
traffic's coming from Google, 40 % is coming
00:23:12.400 --> 00:23:14.259
from your socials, and then the direct is sort
00:23:14.259 --> 00:23:16.359
of filling that gap. And you said in many ways,
00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:18.420
Google has become more of a competitor than a
00:23:18.420 --> 00:23:22.210
helper. the zero click and now direct AI answers.
00:23:22.589 --> 00:23:24.349
And I think I'm guilty of that, too. So I'll
00:23:24.349 --> 00:23:26.329
type something in, but I'll type something into
00:23:26.329 --> 00:23:28.710
search. And I'm like, I'm not going to go open
00:23:28.710 --> 00:23:31.769
up 20 tabs and try to digest this gunk and figure
00:23:31.769 --> 00:23:33.769
out what's real now. Just give it to me. Right.
00:23:34.869 --> 00:23:38.369
So I do it, too. Yeah, I do it, too. I go I go
00:23:38.369 --> 00:23:40.529
to Google. I search for something. It gives me
00:23:40.529 --> 00:23:42.769
an answer. And I go, that's that's good for what
00:23:42.769 --> 00:23:46.910
I was doing. That's good enough. Right. But that's
00:23:46.910 --> 00:23:50.240
good enough means I don't. I don't even click,
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:53.559
right? And so all of that traffic disappeared,
00:23:53.779 --> 00:23:57.180
on top of which some of the answers are from
00:23:57.180 --> 00:23:59.799
the content we're giving it. Right. So you're
00:23:59.799 --> 00:24:02.140
like, wait, wait a minute. Initially, when they
00:24:02.140 --> 00:24:04.380
first started the zero click thing, they would
00:24:04.380 --> 00:24:05.960
give you an answer, but they would also put a
00:24:05.960 --> 00:24:08.319
link to where we got it from. Right. Right. So
00:24:08.319 --> 00:24:11.140
the initial stuff, I didn't freak out. My traffic
00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:13.799
came down a little bit and my and where it was
00:24:13.799 --> 00:24:16.279
coming from. And I was like, OK, it's not the
00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:18.299
same thing. The SEO people were all over it.
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:20.099
Right. The people that are smart, they were like,
00:24:20.119 --> 00:24:21.660
hey, this is a big deal and this is the future.
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:24.279
And I'm like, yeah, I don't really care. My discipline
00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:27.490
is to write. That's what I do. And. If it works,
00:24:27.569 --> 00:24:29.329
it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And then
00:24:29.329 --> 00:24:31.150
the AI answers came out. And I'm looking and
00:24:31.150 --> 00:24:36.049
I'm going, whoa, this has really affected my
00:24:36.049 --> 00:24:38.690
stuff, right? It used to be that I could just
00:24:38.690 --> 00:24:40.369
write and that was it. I didn't do anything.
00:24:40.470 --> 00:24:42.390
I didn't put it on all the socials. I didn't
00:24:42.390 --> 00:24:44.170
put it anywhere else because I'm like, no, Google
00:24:44.170 --> 00:24:46.589
will find it, track it, index it and send people
00:24:46.589 --> 00:24:48.970
here. And when that stopped working, you're like,
00:24:49.490 --> 00:24:52.009
okay, I guess I got to write and publish it somewhere
00:24:52.009 --> 00:24:54.029
else. But then you get into all these other complexities
00:24:54.029 --> 00:24:57.420
like... What you write for LinkedIn to cause
00:24:57.420 --> 00:24:59.160
them to click a link or whatever is different
00:24:59.160 --> 00:25:01.480
than what you write for Twitter, which is different
00:25:01.480 --> 00:25:03.079
than what you write for Facebook, which is different
00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:04.819
than what you are allowed to write on Reddit.
00:25:05.299 --> 00:25:09.180
Right. So my product, your platform profile does
00:25:09.180 --> 00:25:11.099
that. It goes, which socials are you on? And
00:25:11.099 --> 00:25:13.059
then it asks you questions and then it generates
00:25:13.059 --> 00:25:15.779
the strategy and then it gives you the actual
00:25:15.779 --> 00:25:19.960
file for your LLM that tells you. Here's how,
00:25:20.039 --> 00:25:21.660
now that you've written this article, how do
00:25:21.660 --> 00:25:24.740
you. promote this article or open up hooks and
00:25:24.740 --> 00:25:27.319
callbacks and whatever else in these different
00:25:27.319 --> 00:25:30.400
pieces. But back to the reality is Google is
00:25:30.400 --> 00:25:32.900
no longer my friend, right? Google is no longer
00:25:32.900 --> 00:25:35.819
my, oh, let me send you over to Chris Lema for
00:25:35.819 --> 00:25:40.359
stuff. The only way that people get Chris Lema
00:25:40.359 --> 00:25:43.059
content from Google now is if they write, you
00:25:43.059 --> 00:25:49.069
know, like this AI vibe coding space. Chris Lema.
00:25:50.190 --> 00:25:52.029
And those are only people that have been several
00:25:52.029 --> 00:25:53.950
times to the site that they're like, I want to
00:25:53.950 --> 00:25:56.029
know if Chris Lema has a take on this. And then
00:25:56.029 --> 00:25:58.190
Google go, here's his takes. And you go, OK,
00:25:58.250 --> 00:26:03.410
thank you. But cold traffic? Google's not solving
00:26:03.410 --> 00:26:06.869
that problem. They've decided. And I think they've
00:26:06.869 --> 00:26:08.730
said this from the beginning. Our goal is to
00:26:08.730 --> 00:26:11.029
make sure that the person who comes to our website,
00:26:11.589 --> 00:26:13.930
comes to Google, gets their answer as fast as
00:26:13.930 --> 00:26:16.660
possible. When that required, Routing them to
00:26:16.660 --> 00:26:19.359
a website. That's what they did when that was
00:26:19.359 --> 00:26:22.359
able to just be presented on the screen That's
00:26:22.359 --> 00:26:24.779
what they did right and and none of us are mad
00:26:24.779 --> 00:26:27.059
when we're going to Google We're not mad to get
00:26:27.059 --> 00:26:29.019
the answer right there Hey, I'm trying to fix
00:26:29.019 --> 00:26:30.900
this thing and my plumbing and I have this thing
00:26:30.900 --> 00:26:33.480
is there such a tool that does this and it goes
00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:35.160
Here's your answer. You're like great. I didn't
00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:36.380
want to go to a website. I didn't want to go
00:26:36.380 --> 00:26:37.779
to YouTube I didn't want to watch a video. I
00:26:37.779 --> 00:26:39.119
just wanted to know what it's called So when
00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:41.640
I go to Home Depot, I know do you have X and
00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:43.539
they go? Yeah, it's right over here aisle 13
00:26:43.950 --> 00:26:48.049
But it changes how we drive attention. Today,
00:26:48.289 --> 00:26:50.250
a majority of the traffic that comes, especially
00:26:50.250 --> 00:26:53.849
to the new stuff, the AI stuff, is from social.
00:26:55.009 --> 00:26:58.589
And the other thing that the reason I write and
00:26:58.589 --> 00:27:01.329
the way in which it's powerful is because we'll
00:27:01.329 --> 00:27:03.410
be in this conversation. Yesterday, I was talking
00:27:03.410 --> 00:27:07.509
to a $3 billion company, massive company. They
00:27:07.509 --> 00:27:11.509
are over 250 different companies and they want
00:27:11.509 --> 00:27:13.009
to talk about AI. And they want to talk about
00:27:13.009 --> 00:27:14.809
this stuff. Well, they found an article, read
00:27:14.809 --> 00:27:16.630
the article, came back, read a couple more articles.
00:27:16.789 --> 00:27:20.029
Okay, this guy is thinking in the right, they're
00:27:20.029 --> 00:27:22.410
thinking in the way that we're thinking. We would
00:27:22.410 --> 00:27:24.849
like to get on a call with him and ask more questions.
00:27:25.420 --> 00:27:28.319
Then I get to say in the call yesterday. Well
00:27:28.319 --> 00:27:32.200
in today's post I wrote about a 40 % reduction
00:27:32.200 --> 00:27:35.700
on AI costs with a very simple strategy and that's
00:27:35.700 --> 00:27:38.400
all I have to do for them to say Okay, I'm pulling
00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:41.700
it up. I'm going to the thing. I'm reading right
00:27:41.700 --> 00:27:43.880
two or three days ago. I was on a pot three days
00:27:43.880 --> 00:27:48.839
ago I was on a podcast. Yeah and They asked something
00:27:48.839 --> 00:27:52.259
and I go. Oh, well in yesterday's post Right?
00:27:52.460 --> 00:27:55.019
I wrote it. And you're verbally articulating,
00:27:55.160 --> 00:27:57.440
but what you're articulating is not, let me give
00:27:57.440 --> 00:27:59.339
you the whole PhD of what's in the article. You're
00:27:59.339 --> 00:28:01.619
simply saying, I've already written this down.
00:28:01.660 --> 00:28:04.400
You can go look at this and get into it. And
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:07.299
if that's interesting or compelling, we can talk
00:28:07.299 --> 00:28:10.859
some more. And it often creates the, I want to
00:28:10.859 --> 00:28:14.119
talk some more. Right? So it is a, is a trust
00:28:14.119 --> 00:28:18.039
bridge. It is a a proxy for more time with me,
00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:21.019
but it allows me to scale because I don't have
00:28:21.019 --> 00:28:22.759
to explain every single thing and I don't have
00:28:22.759 --> 00:28:25.819
to give every insight. I can point people to
00:28:25.819 --> 00:28:28.339
articles and when I'm coaching, I don't have
00:28:28.339 --> 00:28:30.440
to explain every framework. I can point them
00:28:30.440 --> 00:28:35.019
to you. The scalability of my thinking via my
00:28:35.019 --> 00:28:37.900
writing allows me to have way more touch points
00:28:37.900 --> 00:28:39.680
and way more experiences with people than if
00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:41.759
it was just we need to talk in order for you
00:28:41.759 --> 00:28:43.160
to trust that I know what I'm talking about.
00:28:43.240 --> 00:28:46.380
Yeah, it's definitely definitely changing the
00:28:46.380 --> 00:28:49.319
business malls for quite a bit. You know, I think
00:28:49.319 --> 00:28:51.720
back in the day, like this is like five years
00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:55.839
ago or like back in the day, you know, the way
00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:57.660
that, you know, Google worked is that they still
00:28:57.660 --> 00:29:00.160
do they sell advertising and, you know, they
00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:02.299
didn't generate the content, you know, the the
00:29:02.299 --> 00:29:04.599
content came from the websites and the videos.
00:29:04.599 --> 00:29:06.779
And then basically what they would do is they
00:29:06.779 --> 00:29:09.250
would sell the advertising. Send them to your
00:29:09.250 --> 00:29:11.950
site and then share some of that money with you.
00:29:12.269 --> 00:29:14.269
But then, you know, one of them got the bright
00:29:14.269 --> 00:29:16.269
and they got the light bulb moment went out like,
00:29:16.410 --> 00:29:18.029
wait a second, what if we can get the ad revenue
00:29:18.029 --> 00:29:20.250
without having to share that with the content
00:29:20.250 --> 00:29:22.130
owners? What if we could just munch together
00:29:22.130 --> 00:29:24.269
content from many different sites, put it together
00:29:24.269 --> 00:29:26.690
in a summary? And this is coming for YouTube.
00:29:27.029 --> 00:29:29.549
It's very obvious right now. Most YouTube creators
00:29:29.549 --> 00:29:32.849
make their money selling videos, which adds.
00:29:33.069 --> 00:29:34.730
And the thing is, like, at some point, Google
00:29:34.730 --> 00:29:36.109
is going to do the same thing with videos. Like,
00:29:36.109 --> 00:29:37.650
wait, wait a second. We could sell advertising
00:29:37.650 --> 00:29:40.589
on video that does not come from creators, human
00:29:40.589 --> 00:29:43.890
creators, and people are still engaged and everybody
00:29:43.890 --> 00:29:47.130
everybody wins by everybody. They mean that we're
00:29:47.130 --> 00:29:49.289
not content creators. Right. We're 10 seconds
00:29:49.289 --> 00:29:55.569
away from an A .I. ingesting. every idea on a
00:29:55.569 --> 00:30:00.089
topic, generating compelling scripts for non
00:30:00.089 --> 00:30:02.549
-talking head videos, sending it to an API to
00:30:02.549 --> 00:30:06.089
generate an interesting and compelling script
00:30:06.089 --> 00:30:09.569
into a video, and with all the right beats, publishing
00:30:09.569 --> 00:30:12.170
said video back on, and then sending traffic
00:30:12.170 --> 00:30:15.130
to it all without us. Yeah, that's like Notebook
00:30:15.130 --> 00:30:18.349
LM with an ad model on top of it. That's it.
00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:21.539
We're there. It's seconds away. And you're like,
00:30:21.559 --> 00:30:23.839
no, no, that's not that's not next week. That's
00:30:23.839 --> 00:30:25.940
not next month. That's not next quarter next
00:30:25.940 --> 00:30:28.920
year. That's possible today. It's just a function
00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:32.640
of who's doing what. And so what you have to
00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.619
figure out. Right. Before we started the show,
00:30:35.619 --> 00:30:37.359
I was telling you about two two people that opened
00:30:37.359 --> 00:30:40.000
my eyes to this. Right. There was a gentleman
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:42.299
that I worked with years ago, more than 10 years
00:30:42.299 --> 00:30:46.579
ago. And and all he did was he was a barber for
00:30:46.579 --> 00:30:49.539
African -American men. cutting their hair. And
00:30:49.539 --> 00:30:54.119
he taught other barbers who cut black men's hair,
00:30:54.220 --> 00:30:56.940
he taught them all the different ways to do fades
00:30:56.940 --> 00:30:59.339
and cuts and patterns and whatever else. And
00:30:59.339 --> 00:31:03.559
he had he had like 16 DVDs. And he sold that
00:31:03.559 --> 00:31:06.339
stack of DVDs to barbers. Not a course, not a
00:31:06.339 --> 00:31:09.400
certification. Just literally here's how here's
00:31:09.400 --> 00:31:13.579
how I do what I do. And He came to me because
00:31:13.579 --> 00:31:15.460
I know a lot of stuff about online courses. I
00:31:15.460 --> 00:31:16.880
know a lot of stuff about memberships. And he,
00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:18.240
and he said, can you help me with this? And I
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:19.599
said, sure. And so we were talking it through.
00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:22.460
And I said, casually, how, how much, how many
00:31:22.460 --> 00:31:23.960
customers do you have? How much does this make?
00:31:24.599 --> 00:31:26.180
He's like, last year I did 1 .2 million. And
00:31:26.180 --> 00:31:30.339
I go, wow, I'm sorry. I'm in the wrong business,
00:31:30.660 --> 00:31:33.559
right? One guy and not even one guy who is working
00:31:33.559 --> 00:31:37.359
every day. It's one guy who sends bundles. Right.
00:31:37.460 --> 00:31:39.460
I mean, he doesn't even he doesn't even create
00:31:39.460 --> 00:31:41.579
videos every day. The videos are already built.
00:31:41.700 --> 00:31:43.720
They're done. Right. He every year he might create
00:31:43.720 --> 00:31:46.079
a couple more and add another DVD to the list.
00:31:46.140 --> 00:31:48.740
But then you're like, that's an infinite amount
00:31:48.740 --> 00:31:51.900
of scale for single operator businesses. Another
00:31:51.900 --> 00:31:53.859
guy was doing stuff with wine and he's like,
00:31:53.859 --> 00:31:56.059
look, I do this wine event, but you can't get
00:31:56.059 --> 00:31:57.839
the tickets to the wine event unless you're part
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:00.400
of my wine club. And so I make recurring revenue
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:03.079
on the wine club. But then the big deal is unless
00:32:03.079 --> 00:32:04.720
you're there, you can't get to the event. The
00:32:04.720 --> 00:32:06.910
event is where I sell even more wine. And you're
00:32:06.910 --> 00:32:09.269
like, how much? Oh, it's just me. But we did
00:32:09.269 --> 00:32:10.490
over a million dollars last year. And you're
00:32:10.490 --> 00:32:13.609
like, this is crazy. Five years ago, Brian Clark
00:32:13.609 --> 00:32:17.390
of copy broader fame invited me to speak on his
00:32:17.390 --> 00:32:19.190
on his podcast and his courses. And we were talking
00:32:19.190 --> 00:32:22.730
about outsized scale and tooling and what was
00:32:22.730 --> 00:32:24.450
possible. And he had this thing called seven
00:32:24.450 --> 00:32:26.130
figures small. And I'm like, what does that mean?
00:32:26.230 --> 00:32:30.230
He goes, I'm targeting individuals and how they
00:32:30.230 --> 00:32:34.109
can generate outsized results. Millionaire level.
00:32:34.329 --> 00:32:37.529
you know, results off one person. So that's seven
00:32:37.529 --> 00:32:41.190
figures small. Now, if it had taken off the way
00:32:41.190 --> 00:32:45.430
copyblogger had, we would all know the name seven
00:32:45.430 --> 00:32:49.150
figures small. We don't. Because it's not just
00:32:49.150 --> 00:32:51.809
the idea. It's not just that there's a role model
00:32:51.809 --> 00:32:55.009
or example. It's not just the technology does
00:32:55.009 --> 00:32:57.069
or doesn't do what it does. Today, the amount
00:32:57.069 --> 00:32:59.240
of technology that's available Most of the time
00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:00.599
when I say to someone, Oh, you know, you can
00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:03.000
do that. My son last year, I'm talking about
00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:06.319
a year ago, my son did spring break and he said,
00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:08.839
I want to be the director of my high school musical,
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:12.700
but the school doesn't have rights to pay for
00:33:12.700 --> 00:33:15.799
the licensing of a musical. And I don't want
00:33:15.799 --> 00:33:17.460
to do a couple of these. And I said, well, why
00:33:17.460 --> 00:33:18.799
don't we make our own musical? And he's like,
00:33:18.839 --> 00:33:21.059
how would we make a musical? I'm like, Oh, come
00:33:21.059 --> 00:33:24.619
here. Right. And so we wrote, we, we used AI
00:33:24.619 --> 00:33:27.839
to generate a script, a full script. We then
00:33:27.839 --> 00:33:30.960
took each act, generated song lyrics for each
00:33:30.960 --> 00:33:33.700
one, then went to another AI engine and generated
00:33:33.700 --> 00:33:37.480
music for each one. And he turned it all in and
00:33:37.480 --> 00:33:40.940
the school said yes. And then, you know, at the
00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:44.420
end of the year, they performed a musical that
00:33:44.420 --> 00:33:48.119
was and that was a year ago. Right. And there
00:33:48.119 --> 00:33:50.859
were people that were singing songs in the hallways
00:33:50.859 --> 00:33:53.380
because it was catchy and cool. And you're like,
00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:55.440
this is bananas. Most of the time when I'm talking
00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:58.529
to people. They're just not even aware of what's
00:33:58.529 --> 00:34:00.890
possible. But in order for seven figures small
00:34:00.890 --> 00:34:03.750
to take off, in order for single individuals
00:34:03.750 --> 00:34:05.809
to be massively dangerous, in order for small
00:34:05.809 --> 00:34:09.050
teams to have outsized results, you not only
00:34:09.050 --> 00:34:11.190
need the technology, you not only need the role
00:34:11.190 --> 00:34:13.809
models, you not only need the right thinking,
00:34:13.909 --> 00:34:16.510
but it all has to come together in the right
00:34:16.510 --> 00:34:19.550
way at the right moment so that people feel like
00:34:19.550 --> 00:34:22.670
it's not too far of a stretch. It's possible
00:34:22.670 --> 00:34:26.179
for me. versus someone else might do it, right?
00:34:26.460 --> 00:34:28.739
And that's where podcasts like this, it's where
00:34:28.739 --> 00:34:31.380
hopefully my articles, it's hopefully where what
00:34:31.380 --> 00:34:34.860
Brian's doing in his newsletters, all of it converges
00:34:34.860 --> 00:34:39.219
into telling people it's possible. It's like,
00:34:39.420 --> 00:34:42.280
it's right here. It's not next quarter, not next
00:34:42.280 --> 00:34:46.090
year. It's right here. Let's get you there. Yeah.
00:34:46.489 --> 00:34:48.570
Well, I think that's what a lot of people are
00:34:48.570 --> 00:34:50.929
looking for. And I think, you know, we talk to
00:34:50.929 --> 00:34:53.769
small businesses, small teams are trying to,
00:34:53.769 --> 00:34:56.269
you know, get those outsized results. A lot of
00:34:56.269 --> 00:34:58.110
them are like they don't need to be billion dollar
00:34:58.110 --> 00:35:00.230
companies or even 100 million dollar companies.
00:35:00.369 --> 00:35:02.510
You know, it's like a 10 million dollar company
00:35:02.510 --> 00:35:05.690
or 20 million dollar would be a fantastic success
00:35:05.690 --> 00:35:08.110
for a lot of them, especially if it's sustainable.
00:35:08.389 --> 00:35:10.510
But it's like it's like the the know how of how
00:35:10.510 --> 00:35:14.010
to do that. People know the technology is there.
00:35:14.010 --> 00:35:15.849
They know the general thing. but it's that know
00:35:15.849 --> 00:35:17.949
-how that's difficult. So maybe let's transition
00:35:17.949 --> 00:35:19.309
a little bit into that, because that's one of
00:35:19.309 --> 00:35:20.789
the things that you've been looking at quite
00:35:20.789 --> 00:35:22.230
a bit yourself. That's why you're here on this
00:35:22.230 --> 00:35:24.710
podcast. I'm so excited to have you. And one
00:35:24.710 --> 00:35:27.789
of the things was the shift from WordPress, because
00:35:27.789 --> 00:35:30.909
for a while, a lot of that WordPress community,
00:35:31.369 --> 00:35:33.469
there's some interesting overlap there. People
00:35:33.469 --> 00:35:35.309
who built their own blogs and their own sites.
00:35:35.730 --> 00:35:38.809
I was big on WordPress for about 20 years myself.
00:35:39.369 --> 00:35:41.929
Two or three companies that just had a shared
00:35:41.929 --> 00:35:46.619
host. WordPress was already there. Put it on.
00:35:46.900 --> 00:35:49.340
Yes, you had to be an admin. You had to wrestle
00:35:49.340 --> 00:35:51.719
the plugins. You had to deal with the quirks
00:35:51.719 --> 00:35:54.159
and the performance issues. And then the this
00:35:54.159 --> 00:35:57.000
was it wasn't, you know, all roses, that's for
00:35:57.000 --> 00:35:59.980
sure. But I think the stat was I don't know what
00:35:59.980 --> 00:36:02.519
the status right now, but that was like 70 percent
00:36:02.519 --> 00:36:05.659
of the Web was like WordPress powered. I think
00:36:05.659 --> 00:36:08.300
now it's closer to 60 or 50, but it's still it
00:36:08.300 --> 00:36:14.809
was it was it was. 70 or 80 % of websites using
00:36:14.809 --> 00:36:18.050
a content management engine were using WordPress.
00:36:18.489 --> 00:36:21.050
Of all the sites on the planet, it's like, you
00:36:21.050 --> 00:36:25.769
know, 43 and I think recently it became 42. But
00:36:25.769 --> 00:36:29.869
there is no question that WordPress ushered in
00:36:29.869 --> 00:36:34.170
and rode a really long wave of making it easy.
00:36:34.289 --> 00:36:36.889
And what we were making easy was business owners,
00:36:37.130 --> 00:36:39.550
site owners, could edit their own content. And
00:36:39.550 --> 00:36:42.519
that was awesome, right? I've been using AI.
00:36:43.139 --> 00:36:46.960
Well, I wrote AI rule engines, which was forward
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:48.360
chaining and backward chaining, which is completely
00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:50.539
unrelated to machine learning and the stuff we're
00:36:50.539 --> 00:36:52.539
doing today. But I did that 20 years ago. I mean,
00:36:52.639 --> 00:36:54.599
one of my first patents was literally on a forward
00:36:54.599 --> 00:36:57.340
chaining AI recommendation engine. But the world
00:36:57.340 --> 00:37:00.800
that we're living in today with LLMs and chat
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:05.340
interfaces and APIs and that stuff, I've been
00:37:05.340 --> 00:37:08.039
working with it every day for three years, right?
00:37:08.039 --> 00:37:11.619
Three and a half years. But... something magical
00:37:11.619 --> 00:37:15.119
kind of changed somewhere around November of
00:37:15.119 --> 00:37:18.599
last year, where I was like, I can define my
00:37:18.599 --> 00:37:21.039
agents, their internal constitutions, their handoffs.
00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:23.780
I can define the guardrails. I can define all
00:37:23.780 --> 00:37:25.400
this stuff. And then I can have it run all night
00:37:25.400 --> 00:37:29.280
when I go to bed and generate code that is exactly
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:31.659
what I want. There's no slot because I run evaluations
00:37:31.659 --> 00:37:33.719
against it and I make sure it hits all these
00:37:33.719 --> 00:37:38.099
criteria. Like something changed. And November,
00:37:38.179 --> 00:37:40.579
December, January. I didn't almost sleep, right?
00:37:40.860 --> 00:37:43.400
I was coming to bed at like four in the morning
00:37:43.400 --> 00:37:45.179
and my wife would wake me up in the next morning
00:37:45.179 --> 00:37:47.199
and be like, what time do you come to bed? And
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:49.340
I'm like, I'm telling you, there is something
00:37:49.340 --> 00:37:52.599
about what's happening right now that is very
00:37:52.599 --> 00:37:56.699
much like 94, 95, 96 with the web. It does feel
00:37:56.699 --> 00:37:59.800
like the early internet days. Early internet
00:37:59.800 --> 00:38:02.780
days and when we were doing that stuff at Berkeley
00:38:02.780 --> 00:38:05.239
lab when we were working on early internet stuff
00:38:05.239 --> 00:38:08.519
there was a point in time where Yahoo was called,
00:38:08.519 --> 00:38:11.179
you know Jerry's list of links and I could look
00:38:11.179 --> 00:38:13.400
through all the links of the entire web in a
00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:16.860
day and and we went to all the sites right and
00:38:16.860 --> 00:38:18.840
then and then every day it got bigger and more
00:38:18.840 --> 00:38:21.019
and then it was Yahoo and Excite and Altavista
00:38:21.019 --> 00:38:22.900
and everybody else and and everything changed
00:38:22.900 --> 00:38:26.360
right, but it took over everything. And the web
00:38:26.360 --> 00:38:28.679
has since then taken over all sorts of stuff.
00:38:28.840 --> 00:38:32.300
And SaaS, which we called applications in a browser,
00:38:32.460 --> 00:38:35.099
and then it became ASP, application service providers,
00:38:35.139 --> 00:38:37.079
and then it became SaaS, software as a service.
00:38:37.699 --> 00:38:40.460
We wrote that forever, right? And all of that.
00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:43.300
But you have to remember that what was happening
00:38:43.300 --> 00:38:45.460
at the time was in order to have a website, people
00:38:45.460 --> 00:38:48.179
didn't know HTML. So someone else had to build
00:38:48.179 --> 00:38:51.199
it. And then when I wanted to change it, I had
00:38:51.199 --> 00:38:52.699
to call that someone else and say, can you change
00:38:52.699 --> 00:38:54.059
my website? I want to change my phone number
00:38:54.059 --> 00:38:57.219
on the website. And that costs time and money.
00:38:57.400 --> 00:38:59.500
And then WordPress showed up and it was like,
00:38:59.500 --> 00:39:01.139
well, yeah, you have to spend some money for
00:39:01.139 --> 00:39:03.239
us to build the site. But once your site is there,
00:39:03.519 --> 00:39:07.239
you can go edit it yourself. And we've run that
00:39:07.239 --> 00:39:09.360
for, you know, 20 some years. It's been it's
00:39:09.360 --> 00:39:11.360
been absolutely amazing. Right. I got involved
00:39:11.360 --> 00:39:16.380
with WordPress started using in 2005. And I built
00:39:16.380 --> 00:39:21.119
a new version of a new website. in 2025 that
00:39:21.119 --> 00:39:24.019
was not WordPress for the first time after 20
00:39:24.019 --> 00:39:26.260
years. I mean, it's 20 years of using WordPress
00:39:26.260 --> 00:39:28.440
for everything and going, this is amazing. But
00:39:28.440 --> 00:39:30.380
at the end of the year, when I went to rebuild
00:39:30.380 --> 00:39:32.920
chrislema .com, I said, I don't, I don't know
00:39:32.920 --> 00:39:36.059
that I need a CMS, but more importantly, I don't
00:39:36.059 --> 00:39:38.980
know that I need to edit anything. I built something
00:39:38.980 --> 00:39:43.380
called an MCP, which is a connectivity tissue,
00:39:43.539 --> 00:39:48.179
right? A way to connect to a platform. that I
00:39:48.179 --> 00:39:50.760
could do from within an AI engine like Claude.
00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:54.000
And I would just say, hey Claude, I want to change
00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:56.860
this text in the bottom of my footer of my website.
00:39:57.119 --> 00:39:59.960
You have access to this website and it would
00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:02.579
go change it. And then you'd hit refresh and
00:40:02.579 --> 00:40:05.699
it changed. And you're like, this is bananas.
00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:08.159
So the other day, last weekend, I wrote an article
00:40:08.159 --> 00:40:12.579
that was how to build the non -developers guide
00:40:12.579 --> 00:40:16.500
to building and managing a website with Claude.
00:40:16.619 --> 00:40:19.980
And it uses Cloud Cowork on your local computer.
00:40:20.420 --> 00:40:25.860
It even uses GitHub and Cloudflare for pages
00:40:25.860 --> 00:40:28.480
so that any time you push something to GitHub,
00:40:28.739 --> 00:40:31.679
it automatically pushes it to Cloudflare. And
00:40:31.679 --> 00:40:34.239
one of the tech guys read it and went, I don't
00:40:34.239 --> 00:40:36.260
know if non -developer can do this. And I go,
00:40:36.579 --> 00:40:39.460
whoa. First of all, there's 24 screenshots. I
00:40:39.460 --> 00:40:41.800
mean, every step has a screen. So nobody's freaking
00:40:41.800 --> 00:40:45.679
out. But I said, I had two friends. who were
00:40:45.679 --> 00:40:48.019
like, what magic is this? They went through all
00:40:48.019 --> 00:40:50.400
the steps and they were like, signing up for
00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:52.619
GitHub doesn't mean I know what it is. I just
00:40:52.619 --> 00:40:54.840
clicked and said, here's my name and then hit
00:40:54.840 --> 00:40:56.920
done. And I had it. And then I went over here
00:40:56.920 --> 00:40:59.039
and I clicked CloudFlare. Here's my name and
00:40:59.039 --> 00:41:01.480
email. Click done. I have it. I didn't have to
00:41:01.480 --> 00:41:04.800
do more than that. Right. And you go to cloud
00:41:04.800 --> 00:41:06.579
and you say, I want to connect to CloudFlare.
00:41:06.599 --> 00:41:08.420
And it pops open a window. It goes, do you accept?
00:41:08.619 --> 00:41:11.380
Yes, I accept. I want to connect to GitHub. Do
00:41:11.380 --> 00:41:13.869
you accept? Yes, I accept. And I'm like, These
00:41:13.869 --> 00:41:16.309
people are changing. A buddy of mine is like,
00:41:16.349 --> 00:41:20.289
I told my wife I'm a webmaster. I'm like, that's
00:41:20.289 --> 00:41:22.750
awesome, right? That's awesome. Yeah, I feel
00:41:22.750 --> 00:41:24.190
the same way. Like, when I was putting my sites
00:41:24.190 --> 00:41:26.170
together, I'm like, I think I'm sort of past
00:41:26.170 --> 00:41:28.989
the WordPress days of like managing a MySQL database
00:41:28.989 --> 00:41:32.250
and the migration plugins and dealing with security
00:41:32.250 --> 00:41:35.329
issues. And yeah, we're at this point now where
00:41:35.329 --> 00:41:37.650
it's we're like, this is like the ultimate vision
00:41:37.650 --> 00:41:39.449
of the no code movement, where you're literally
00:41:39.449 --> 00:41:42.070
not coding at all. And it's kind of funny. Yeah.
00:41:42.230 --> 00:41:45.429
There are certain sizes of companies that still
00:41:45.429 --> 00:41:47.610
need, you know, if you worked at Disney, when
00:41:47.610 --> 00:41:51.070
we built software for Disney, they had seven
00:41:51.070 --> 00:41:53.889
different reviewing departments before something
00:41:53.889 --> 00:41:56.230
went live. The technical people had to review
00:41:56.230 --> 00:41:58.250
how the plugin was written and the marketing
00:41:58.250 --> 00:42:00.730
people had to review the copy and the legal people
00:42:00.730 --> 00:42:03.090
had to review any promises and what graphics
00:42:03.090 --> 00:42:05.369
were used. You're not going to, you're not going
00:42:05.369 --> 00:42:08.940
to vibe code that website. So WordPress becomes
00:42:08.940 --> 00:42:11.400
really powerful for that or any other content
00:42:11.400 --> 00:42:13.219
management based solution. But there's a ton
00:42:13.219 --> 00:42:15.920
of people that have a five or six page website
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:18.380
that doesn't change very often and they don't
00:42:18.380 --> 00:42:20.440
need to spend 10 or 20 ,000 hours to build a
00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:22.159
website when the only thing they're going to
00:42:22.159 --> 00:42:24.400
change is their phone number or their email every
00:42:24.400 --> 00:42:27.219
now and then. And you go, well, for that audience,
00:42:27.420 --> 00:42:29.420
WordPress was overkill to begin with. It just
00:42:29.800 --> 00:42:33.340
We didn't have a way for them to no code, not
00:42:33.340 --> 00:42:35.059
touch their stuff. Even when you look at web
00:42:35.059 --> 00:42:36.940
flows of the world, the fact that you have these
00:42:36.940 --> 00:42:40.710
tiny little boxes, tiny little boxes for. uh
00:42:40.710 --> 00:42:43.030
padding and spacing and you're like how would
00:42:43.030 --> 00:42:45.210
how would my buddy steve know what the difference
00:42:45.210 --> 00:42:47.429
is between padding space like that's just never
00:42:47.429 --> 00:42:49.590
gonna work yeah but now he just goes to claw
00:42:49.590 --> 00:42:51.550
and goes hey can you move that in a little bit
00:42:51.550 --> 00:42:53.389
i mean i just want a little more white you know
00:42:53.389 --> 00:42:55.570
breathing room around it and it does it and he's
00:42:55.570 --> 00:42:57.849
like this is amazing and yeah you can say oh
00:42:57.849 --> 00:43:00.289
and by the way make it responsive so it works
00:43:00.289 --> 00:43:02.639
in a mobile browser and it does yeah Yeah, I
00:43:02.639 --> 00:43:05.300
think we're definitely in this era. Actually,
00:43:05.639 --> 00:43:07.760
this conversation is nicely full circle because
00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:10.440
we talked about how big companies like Disney
00:43:10.440 --> 00:43:12.780
have this department and that department disapproval.
00:43:13.239 --> 00:43:16.440
Again, we get down to, well, small teams can
00:43:16.440 --> 00:43:19.179
have access to the same tools, maybe even better
00:43:19.179 --> 00:43:21.400
tools, because large organizations might not
00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:23.500
even allow them to use it, even though they're
00:43:23.500 --> 00:43:25.780
all decrying the use of AI for getting rid of
00:43:25.780 --> 00:43:27.139
their teams. They're still getting in their own
00:43:27.139 --> 00:43:29.300
way and they're not even using those tools. It's
00:43:29.300 --> 00:43:31.519
a crazy argument. Like, OK, then you could just
00:43:31.369 --> 00:43:34.210
Nowadays, you can move faster than a big organization.
00:43:34.389 --> 00:43:36.769
You have access to the best tools, the same tools
00:43:36.769 --> 00:43:39.530
at the same. Prices too. It's not like you're
00:43:39.530 --> 00:43:42.050
paying $20 ,000 a person a license for something,
00:43:42.050 --> 00:43:44.650
right? I mean, we'll get into maybe tokens will
00:43:44.650 --> 00:43:46.969
become more expensive. It may not be but then
00:43:46.969 --> 00:43:49.150
again, a lot of us are playing with local models
00:43:49.150 --> 00:43:51.429
and open source models and they're getting better
00:43:51.429 --> 00:43:53.289
and better every day. So let's actually like
00:43:53.289 --> 00:43:55.150
shift this a little bit because I want to talk
00:43:55.150 --> 00:43:58.110
a little bit about how you're getting this leverage,
00:43:58.110 --> 00:44:00.449
you know, one of your philosophies, especially
00:44:00.449 --> 00:44:03.570
on experts is that experts don't need more knowledge.
00:44:03.570 --> 00:44:06.449
They need more leverage. And so you were talking
00:44:06.449 --> 00:44:08.739
about how your blog was your first leverage system.
00:44:08.860 --> 00:44:11.320
And of course, AI tools now are the second. So
00:44:11.320 --> 00:44:13.000
what do you see as this common thread? Like,
00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:15.539
what do you see as like, what are these other
00:44:15.539 --> 00:44:17.940
things, especially these high performance that
00:44:17.940 --> 00:44:20.199
you're seeing, that you're working with, they're
00:44:20.199 --> 00:44:22.599
getting more bang for the buck. They're able
00:44:22.599 --> 00:44:25.320
to do a little bit of work and get a huge amount
00:44:25.320 --> 00:44:27.340
of return. There's a lot of things we talk about,
00:44:27.340 --> 00:44:29.559
but I'm very interested in what you're seeing.
00:44:29.639 --> 00:44:33.159
Yeah, absolutely. So if you sent or if one of
00:44:33.159 --> 00:44:36.699
your listeners went to yourcontentagent .com,
00:44:37.039 --> 00:44:40.360
If you go to that, that is a skill graph. So
00:44:40.360 --> 00:44:43.539
it's 16 files that you drop into an LLM and then
00:44:43.539 --> 00:44:45.539
it helps you write articles or edit articles.
00:44:45.780 --> 00:44:48.719
It takes your partial idea, turns it into a full
00:44:48.719 --> 00:44:50.719
fleshed idea, and then it gives you a human in
00:44:50.719 --> 00:44:54.420
the loop spot to edit the idea. And then it writes
00:44:54.420 --> 00:44:57.119
the final one, right? And if you add your voice
00:44:57.119 --> 00:44:59.900
profile and your audience segments files to that,
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:01.900
it leverages those and it becomes even better,
00:45:02.019 --> 00:45:05.159
but that's not the point. If you go to yourcontentagent
00:45:05.159 --> 00:45:08.260
.com and you go to how it works and you're going
00:45:08.260 --> 00:45:11.739
to read the pipeline, it's a seven step pipeline.
00:45:11.780 --> 00:45:13.659
And then you're going to see all the different
00:45:13.659 --> 00:45:15.599
tournaments and the competition and the frameworks
00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:17.199
that are being used. And it doesn't give you
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:18.840
every single framework. It just shows you that
00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:21.480
these different things exist. What you're going
00:45:21.480 --> 00:45:25.960
to see is that I took 96 different frameworks,
00:45:26.699 --> 00:45:29.539
rules, approaches, strategies, extracted them
00:45:29.539 --> 00:45:32.309
from me. turn them in the files, then because
00:45:32.309 --> 00:45:34.909
ChatGBT doesn't let you put in more than 20 files
00:45:34.909 --> 00:45:38.190
into a project, combined it into a skill graph
00:45:38.190 --> 00:45:42.289
of 16 files, right? So it stayed under. And you
00:45:42.289 --> 00:45:44.230
go, wait, wait, wait. You're selling that? I
00:45:44.230 --> 00:45:46.869
go, that's not the point. I don't care. Someone
00:45:46.869 --> 00:45:48.309
uses it, it's great. If they don't like it, they
00:45:48.309 --> 00:45:49.989
don't like it. If they want to go and start tweaking
00:45:49.989 --> 00:45:51.889
it and changing it, that's great. They have the
00:45:51.889 --> 00:45:54.949
rights to do all that. But it is a demonstration
00:45:54.949 --> 00:46:00.710
of what extracted expertise is. It's the ability
00:46:00.710 --> 00:46:04.250
to think, the term is metacognition, right? To
00:46:04.250 --> 00:46:06.630
think about your thinking. And it's that, how
00:46:06.630 --> 00:46:08.809
do you step back and go, I know you're doing
00:46:08.809 --> 00:46:11.989
this, but how are you thinking about it when
00:46:11.989 --> 00:46:14.369
you're doing it, right? Gary Klein, an incredible
00:46:14.369 --> 00:46:18.449
guy, who wrote, created a decision -making framework
00:46:18.449 --> 00:46:21.610
called Prime, oh my gosh, I'm gonna forget the
00:46:21.610 --> 00:46:25.000
official name of it, but... Gary Klein, K -L
00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:27.139
-E -I -N, is the guy who did it. And what he
00:46:27.139 --> 00:46:29.940
did is he went and interviewed fire chief captains
00:46:29.940 --> 00:46:31.739
who show up on the scene. And if you know anything
00:46:31.739 --> 00:46:34.019
about fire and fire departments and whatever,
00:46:34.179 --> 00:46:36.539
is they show up on a scene and they get 60 to
00:46:36.539 --> 00:46:39.440
120 seconds to figure out what's going on. And
00:46:39.440 --> 00:46:42.239
then they huddle and there's a minute of instructions.
00:46:42.300 --> 00:46:43.800
You go here, you do this, you do that, you do
00:46:43.800 --> 00:46:45.619
that. And then they all go. And you're like,
00:46:45.679 --> 00:46:48.460
how are they figuring that out? And what Gary
00:46:48.460 --> 00:46:52.800
Klein did was... How do I extract expertise from
00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:55.039
these guys? So he's interviewing them and he's
00:46:55.039 --> 00:46:58.059
thinking, right, recognition prime decision model
00:46:58.059 --> 00:47:01.119
is what his thing was. And he was thinking they're
00:47:01.119 --> 00:47:02.719
going to do the fire captain is going to do pro
00:47:02.719 --> 00:47:04.880
and con pro and con. I could do this or I could
00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:06.420
do this. And that's not how the interview went
00:47:06.420 --> 00:47:08.179
at all. Right. He's interviewing all these different
00:47:08.179 --> 00:47:10.260
fire captains. And what they're doing instead
00:47:10.260 --> 00:47:12.920
is they go. Oh, I'm looking and I see a billboard.
00:47:13.119 --> 00:47:15.460
The billboards on metal. What I know is that
00:47:15.460 --> 00:47:17.320
metal, even if it's next to a building that's
00:47:17.320 --> 00:47:19.119
on fire, is going to heat that metal. And then
00:47:19.119 --> 00:47:21.219
that billboard is going to come down. So instruction
00:47:21.219 --> 00:47:23.400
number one is a pattern I've seen before. So
00:47:23.400 --> 00:47:24.820
instruction number one, get all those people
00:47:24.820 --> 00:47:26.400
and pull them way back because that thing could
00:47:26.400 --> 00:47:28.739
come down. Next thing, next thing. And you're
00:47:28.739 --> 00:47:30.639
like, that decision making is completely different.
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:33.920
And what Gary Klein was doing was figuring out
00:47:33.920 --> 00:47:37.659
how to extract that so that you could articulate
00:47:37.659 --> 00:47:40.119
it, then he could go to other fire cabinets and
00:47:40.119 --> 00:47:43.639
validate it. There is something incredibly powerful
00:47:43.639 --> 00:47:46.840
about expertise extraction that every single
00:47:46.840 --> 00:47:48.579
AI tool out there in the world is going to need.
00:47:48.880 --> 00:47:50.980
Because if you don't do that, if you say, hey,
00:47:51.199 --> 00:47:54.079
AI, I want you to code me a to do app, it's going
00:47:54.079 --> 00:47:56.139
to go, great, I've been trained on this. I have
00:47:56.139 --> 00:47:58.039
read all of GitHub. And you're like, oh, wait,
00:47:58.159 --> 00:48:00.599
time out. You read. all of the GitHub. Is there
00:48:00.599 --> 00:48:02.739
a way I could get you to only read the top 10
00:48:02.739 --> 00:48:05.159
% of GitHub from the top developers? And they're
00:48:05.159 --> 00:48:07.039
like, Nope, I got you. And you're like, so you're
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:11.380
an average app best developer. And you're going
00:48:11.380 --> 00:48:13.400
to bring me every security issue and every problem
00:48:13.400 --> 00:48:15.860
because you got trained on on not only great
00:48:15.860 --> 00:48:18.559
stuff, but dribble. Right. So you go, no, no,
00:48:18.559 --> 00:48:20.039
no, I don't want that. You're great. Well, then
00:48:20.039 --> 00:48:22.179
what do you want? I want it to code the way I
00:48:22.179 --> 00:48:24.710
would code it. Well, what does that mean, right?
00:48:25.030 --> 00:48:29.389
So there is this need to extract expertise and
00:48:29.389 --> 00:48:33.769
then give it to AI so that it can leverage it,
00:48:33.769 --> 00:48:37.429
put it in play, scale what you're doing because
00:48:37.429 --> 00:48:39.269
you've you've checked that. But that's hard because
00:48:39.269 --> 00:48:41.809
here's the thing, right? If I were to ask you,
00:48:41.889 --> 00:48:44.170
hey, Ron, how do you do this? How do you do that?
00:48:44.550 --> 00:48:46.469
How do you how do you prepare for a podcast interview?
00:48:46.789 --> 00:48:48.489
You're going to first of all, you're going to
00:48:48.489 --> 00:48:50.469
go, well, Chris is not a podcast interviewer,
00:48:50.530 --> 00:48:53.400
so I can't give him the low level details because
00:48:53.400 --> 00:48:55.199
he's going to get bored really quick and he's
00:48:55.199 --> 00:48:58.739
going to hang up. But also you go, he probably
00:48:58.739 --> 00:49:02.119
just wants big, big picture stuff. So cognitively
00:49:02.119 --> 00:49:03.760
you're going to shift into teacher mode. And
00:49:03.760 --> 00:49:04.739
then what you're going to do is you're going
00:49:04.739 --> 00:49:06.900
to give me platitudes. Now they're going to be
00:49:06.900 --> 00:49:09.739
truths, right? Everything I've told you on this
00:49:09.739 --> 00:49:11.840
call has been a truth, but almost none of these
00:49:11.840 --> 00:49:14.760
truths would be super valuable to an AI engine
00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:17.219
because they're too high level. There's too many
00:49:17.219 --> 00:49:21.099
exceptions. So How do we extract? This is the
00:49:21.099 --> 00:49:23.780
problem I spend my evenings and weekends on is
00:49:23.780 --> 00:49:28.239
how do we extract expertise from an expert which
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:31.699
doesn't trigger the lecture mode and platitudes
00:49:31.699 --> 00:49:35.599
mode but instead gives me the low level details
00:49:35.599 --> 00:49:38.059
that allow me to encode that into stuff, right?
00:49:38.119 --> 00:49:40.980
And I experienced that while building your content
00:49:40.980 --> 00:49:42.739
agent. I experienced that as I was building all
00:49:42.739 --> 00:49:46.230
the other tools is like, God. So first I built
00:49:46.230 --> 00:49:48.070
the tools just to make it better for other people
00:49:48.070 --> 00:49:50.409
and make it easier and all that. But then I realized,
00:49:51.150 --> 00:49:53.929
oh, we have a problem. All of AI needs expertise
00:49:53.929 --> 00:49:56.269
extraction. And what Gary Klein did is helpful,
00:49:56.269 --> 00:49:59.590
but it's not enough. I got to dig in deeper and
00:49:59.590 --> 00:50:02.369
figure out what's the tooling that allows me
00:50:02.369 --> 00:50:04.650
to interview an expert and extract something
00:50:04.650 --> 00:50:08.349
that AI can actually put into practice. So that's
00:50:08.349 --> 00:50:10.360
the problem space that I'm living in. Well, that's
00:50:10.360 --> 00:50:12.960
great. Well, that's a common place. A lot of
00:50:12.960 --> 00:50:15.320
us are sort of coming to this from different
00:50:15.320 --> 00:50:16.940
perspectives. We've had some interviews where
00:50:16.940 --> 00:50:19.159
we've talked about, this is the idea of SOPs,
00:50:19.320 --> 00:50:21.519
standard operating procedures. And then you give
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:24.019
that. And of course, the problem with AIs, you
00:50:24.019 --> 00:50:26.400
know, is it's not deterministic. It's probabilistic,
00:50:26.400 --> 00:50:28.119
which means it doesn't always do the same thing
00:50:28.119 --> 00:50:30.280
twice. And then, of course, a model change happens.
00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:33.300
And the thing that it was doing perfectly well
00:50:33.300 --> 00:50:35.980
yesterday just can't seem to do anymore. And
00:50:35.980 --> 00:50:37.880
your instructions are like, for whatever reason,
00:50:37.900 --> 00:50:39.530
they were fine before, but they're not. good
00:50:39.530 --> 00:50:41.710
now or they're too much or they're conflicting.
00:50:42.289 --> 00:50:44.610
And so there's another, all the stuff you're
00:50:44.610 --> 00:50:47.570
talking about is like right in the midst of where
00:50:47.570 --> 00:50:49.469
we are. You're right. It's like where the internet
00:50:49.469 --> 00:50:51.210
was in the late 1990s. We're all just figuring
00:50:51.210 --> 00:50:53.590
this out. We're figuring this out at the same
00:50:53.590 --> 00:50:56.030
time. I tell people all the time, I wrote an
00:50:56.030 --> 00:50:59.289
article that said, hey, heads up, do not use
00:50:59.289 --> 00:51:02.650
AI to do what deterministic code should do. So
00:51:02.650 --> 00:51:06.670
you have to split all the work between where
00:51:06.670 --> 00:51:09.849
do I want AI to do something and where do I want
00:51:09.849 --> 00:51:12.809
my code to do something and if my code? Sees
00:51:12.809 --> 00:51:14.949
if this score is greater than this do this if
00:51:14.949 --> 00:51:16.710
this code is let you know lower than this do
00:51:16.710 --> 00:51:18.750
this I don't need AI do that in fact. I don't
00:51:18.750 --> 00:51:20.869
want AI to do that. I don't want probabilistic
00:51:21.759 --> 00:51:24.360
machinations. I want my code to be my code. But
00:51:24.360 --> 00:51:27.159
then I go, hey. And sometimes you'll see AI goes,
00:51:27.380 --> 00:51:29.940
oh, I wrote this keyword parser. So if I see
00:51:29.940 --> 00:51:31.380
this word, it means this. And I go, no, no, no,
00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:33.559
time out. Now you're writing code like these
00:51:33.559 --> 00:51:35.780
guys. But if I wanted that kind of code, I could
00:51:35.780 --> 00:51:37.659
write that code. I don't want that code. I want
00:51:37.659 --> 00:51:42.000
you to reason on the overall tenor of this paragraph.
00:51:44.079 --> 00:51:46.920
to tell me if they are happy or sad or frustrated
00:51:46.920 --> 00:51:49.480
or engaged. And you go, oh yeah, because my code
00:51:49.480 --> 00:51:52.099
can't do that. Right. So figuring out which problems
00:51:52.099 --> 00:51:54.340
are problems for LLMs and which problems are
00:51:54.340 --> 00:51:56.340
just code problems. That's hard because most
00:51:56.340 --> 00:51:58.079
people are just throwing it all into AI and letting
00:51:58.079 --> 00:51:59.539
it doing it in the same way they're throwing
00:51:59.539 --> 00:52:01.780
all into Opus and then paying for it. And you're
00:52:01.780 --> 00:52:04.840
like, no, to do this right, you're going to have
00:52:04.840 --> 00:52:07.019
to be able to say this is an Opus problem and
00:52:07.019 --> 00:52:09.579
this is a sonnet problem, or this is a llama
00:52:09.579 --> 00:52:11.039
four problem. And you have to be able to say
00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:13.590
this is deterministic and should be code. This
00:52:13.590 --> 00:52:18.510
is non -deterministic and evaluative. And I want
00:52:18.510 --> 00:52:20.610
AI to be involved. But then I want AI to have
00:52:20.610 --> 00:52:22.710
its own guardrails. Like, don't fall into, I
00:52:22.710 --> 00:52:24.789
just look for a key word, because you're not
00:52:24.789 --> 00:52:27.690
giving me what you're good at, right? And that's
00:52:27.690 --> 00:52:30.730
hard. That's hard to do. Yeah. Well, I have like
00:52:30.730 --> 00:52:32.989
dozens of questions. I want to be mindful of
00:52:32.989 --> 00:52:34.869
your time and our audience's time. We're not
00:52:34.869 --> 00:52:35.989
going to get out, so I'm going to have to get
00:52:35.989 --> 00:52:37.949
Chris back. That's for sure. I can get you back
00:52:37.949 --> 00:52:40.010
in a future episode because there's just so much
00:52:40.010 --> 00:52:42.369
here. And actually, probably if I had you back
00:52:42.369 --> 00:52:43.750
in a couple of months, a lot of these things
00:52:43.750 --> 00:52:47.940
might be changing. Which is fantastic. So we've
00:52:47.940 --> 00:52:49.199
got one general question. Then we're going to
00:52:49.199 --> 00:52:51.599
do our little rapid fire. And let's talk about
00:52:51.599 --> 00:52:53.480
the attention problem, because we were we were
00:52:53.480 --> 00:52:55.019
talking we were kind of hovering around it a
00:52:55.019 --> 00:52:57.219
little bit. But like how how do we get around
00:52:57.219 --> 00:53:00.820
that problem now, especially that are the the
00:53:00.820 --> 00:53:03.119
great intermediators now are not intermediating
00:53:03.119 --> 00:53:04.960
as much as they used to. The gatekeepers are
00:53:04.960 --> 00:53:07.260
gatekeeping a bit too much and not providing
00:53:07.260 --> 00:53:09.400
as much access. And by the way, as a side note,
00:53:09.539 --> 00:53:13.079
there was something posted recently about LinkedIn's
00:53:13.079 --> 00:53:16.500
discovery algorithm and AI systems. that are
00:53:16.500 --> 00:53:18.760
accessing LinkedIn. And one of the biggest insights
00:53:18.760 --> 00:53:21.000
is that actually video is not performing very
00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:22.920
well. There was a while that LinkedIn was trying
00:53:22.920 --> 00:53:24.679
to push people to short form video. I guess they
00:53:24.679 --> 00:53:27.599
were trying to tick tockify or whatever, LinkedIn.
00:53:28.239 --> 00:53:31.599
But AI systems can't read video and listen, pay
00:53:31.599 --> 00:53:33.940
attention to video. And the engagement was apparently
00:53:33.940 --> 00:53:36.099
not that great. Now they're shifting people back
00:53:36.099 --> 00:53:38.880
towards long text posts and documents. But then
00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:42.500
the other insight was that company pages, which
00:53:42.500 --> 00:53:48.199
people put together get zero at this. So now
00:53:48.199 --> 00:53:50.460
there's like, well, social media is performing
00:53:50.460 --> 00:53:52.880
differently, search is performing differently.
00:53:54.239 --> 00:53:58.480
So how do we deal with this now? All right. So
00:53:58.480 --> 00:54:02.460
my answer is in a book I wrote called Story First.
00:54:03.139 --> 00:54:08.059
What I will tell you is there is a core dynamic
00:54:08.059 --> 00:54:12.190
to humans and human interest. And that is, is
00:54:12.190 --> 00:54:15.030
your facts, is your paradigm, is your opinion
00:54:15.030 --> 00:54:18.170
wrapped in a story or not? If there's a story,
00:54:18.170 --> 00:54:20.769
we get interested. If there's not a story, we
00:54:20.769 --> 00:54:23.769
don't. And every person can evaluate on their
00:54:23.769 --> 00:54:26.630
own, right? What do you stop scrolling for and
00:54:26.630 --> 00:54:29.710
what gets you to stay longer on those on those
00:54:29.710 --> 00:54:31.889
videos that you're looking at? What when you're
00:54:31.889 --> 00:54:34.230
scrolling through articles and on LinkedIn or
00:54:34.230 --> 00:54:37.349
when you're looking at what causes you to pause
00:54:37.349 --> 00:54:40.690
and stop? And I think what you discover is It's
00:54:40.690 --> 00:54:43.510
the story, right? There are stories I already
00:54:43.510 --> 00:54:45.329
know. I'm a big fan of basketball and the NBA.
00:54:46.349 --> 00:54:47.530
And here comes an interview with Michael Jordan.
00:54:47.650 --> 00:54:50.670
I'm like, oh, oh, I know this story. I still
00:54:50.670 --> 00:54:52.769
watch it, right? Because I'm like, I just want
00:54:52.769 --> 00:54:55.349
to see it again. I love it, right? So I wrote
00:54:55.349 --> 00:54:57.530
a book called Story First, which is for business
00:54:57.530 --> 00:55:02.570
leaders. And it's how do you craft the story
00:55:02.570 --> 00:55:05.210
so that you are educating and supporting and
00:55:05.210 --> 00:55:08.179
empowering and all that stuff that gets interest
00:55:08.179 --> 00:55:10.119
and get and create something that people will
00:55:10.119 --> 00:55:12.679
remember for a long time, rather than just selling
00:55:12.679 --> 00:55:14.860
from stage. In fact, I tell people don't sell,
00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:17.099
don't sell at all. Stop selling. Don't sell in
00:55:17.099 --> 00:55:19.400
your emails. Don't sell in your LinkedIn. Don't
00:55:19.400 --> 00:55:21.280
send your socials. Don't sell when you're on
00:55:21.280 --> 00:55:24.800
stage. Just stop selling because all of us are
00:55:24.800 --> 00:55:29.119
completely immune to selling the first hint at
00:55:29.119 --> 00:55:32.460
a pitch mode. And we're like, we're done. Right.
00:55:33.219 --> 00:55:36.940
So you have to change to be interesting, compelling,
00:55:37.460 --> 00:55:40.400
challenging. Learn to tell your story and any
00:55:40.400 --> 00:55:43.199
other story in a way that people go, ooh, I'm
00:55:43.199 --> 00:55:47.980
leaning in, I want more. And so that story first,
00:55:48.360 --> 00:55:53.659
again, is 20 bucks. What I find, we did this
00:55:53.659 --> 00:55:55.800
research years ago, and I'm gonna tighten this
00:55:55.800 --> 00:55:57.239
up and wrap it up so you can do your quick questions,
00:55:57.280 --> 00:55:58.860
but we did this research years ago with membership
00:55:58.860 --> 00:56:01.500
sites, and I was big in the membership space
00:56:01.500 --> 00:56:04.000
and WordPress and all that stuff, and so we worked
00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:05.400
with a couple of companies that did this research.
00:56:05.719 --> 00:56:08.579
And we looked at membership websites where people
00:56:08.579 --> 00:56:14.219
paid zero. And those membership sites, they decided,
00:56:14.420 --> 00:56:17.179
right? A handful selected that we're gonna raise
00:56:17.179 --> 00:56:21.239
the cost of the membership to $1 a year. $1 a
00:56:21.239 --> 00:56:23.579
year. And the average across all these different
00:56:23.579 --> 00:56:26.079
sites was that they lost 30 % of their audience.
00:56:26.219 --> 00:56:30.570
30%. There's 30 % of these people... who had
00:56:30.570 --> 00:56:35.730
no interest in ever giving you even one dollar.
00:56:35.809 --> 00:56:38.289
You're like, well then that's a tax. Why am I
00:56:38.289 --> 00:56:40.849
supporting 30 % of people that don't have any
00:56:40.849 --> 00:56:44.309
interest? So I build what are called on -ramp
00:56:44.309 --> 00:56:47.409
products. You can't go on a freeway 65, 75 miles
00:56:47.409 --> 00:56:51.090
an hour from zero. You have to speed up and you
00:56:51.090 --> 00:56:53.090
have to get in with the flow of traffic. And
00:56:53.090 --> 00:56:54.989
that means you need an on -ramp. And in order
00:56:54.989 --> 00:56:56.590
to do an on -ramp, you got to build an on -ramp
00:56:56.590 --> 00:57:00.380
product. I keep that book at $19 .99. I keep
00:57:00.380 --> 00:57:03.300
your voice profile at $19 .99. I keep these products
00:57:03.300 --> 00:57:06.119
because I'm measuring for a muscle. And the muscle
00:57:06.119 --> 00:57:08.679
is this one right here. And they got to reach
00:57:08.679 --> 00:57:11.539
for their wallet. And if they don't have the
00:57:11.539 --> 00:57:13.239
muscle that lets them reach for their wallet,
00:57:13.940 --> 00:57:15.500
$19 is not going to break their bank. And it's
00:57:15.500 --> 00:57:17.860
not going to make me rich. But if I can't, the
00:57:17.860 --> 00:57:20.840
other term I use when I'm not talking about it
00:57:20.840 --> 00:57:22.860
as an on -ramp product is I call them segmentation
00:57:22.860 --> 00:57:25.940
products. it segments the audience. It tells
00:57:25.940 --> 00:57:27.739
me who knows how to reach for their wallet and
00:57:27.739 --> 00:57:30.199
spend money and who doesn't. And you can build
00:57:30.199 --> 00:57:32.880
a product ladder from there, but you can only
00:57:32.880 --> 00:57:36.079
build it from someone who knows how to part with
00:57:36.079 --> 00:57:39.420
money. So in the game of attention, not all attention
00:57:39.420 --> 00:57:42.139
is equal. In the game of attention, you want
00:57:42.139 --> 00:57:44.380
people to have the muscle right here. And so
00:57:44.380 --> 00:57:46.039
you need to build just a little bit of friction,
00:57:46.320 --> 00:57:48.340
just a little bit of something that first you
00:57:48.340 --> 00:57:50.960
need to not pitch, be out of pitch mode, start
00:57:50.960 --> 00:57:54.340
with story. And once you story, create an approach
00:57:54.340 --> 00:57:56.539
that allows them to hit a speed bump, right?
00:57:56.539 --> 00:57:58.380
None of us stop our car at speed bumps, right?
00:57:58.460 --> 00:58:00.039
You're like, okay, I'm gonna go over it. But
00:58:00.039 --> 00:58:01.559
you need to put just a little bit of friction
00:58:01.559 --> 00:58:04.559
so you can see who's the goer versus not and
00:58:04.559 --> 00:58:07.679
check for the muscle. And then with an on -ramp
00:58:07.679 --> 00:58:10.940
product or with a segmentation product, determine
00:58:10.940 --> 00:58:13.760
that, oh, this is the audience that I want their
00:58:13.760 --> 00:58:17.289
attention. Not. that audience that 30 % were
00:58:17.289 --> 00:58:18.829
never going to give me a dollar to begin with.
00:58:19.090 --> 00:58:20.869
That's fine. That's why I don't mind. 75 % of
00:58:20.869 --> 00:58:22.710
the traffic comes to the website, visits once
00:58:22.710 --> 00:58:25.050
in a whole year and leaves. And I go, that's
00:58:25.050 --> 00:58:26.869
fine. They're not for you. They're not for you.
00:58:27.329 --> 00:58:29.300
That's good. Not a problem. Well, that's good.
00:58:29.420 --> 00:58:31.420
Well, we're going to link to those articles in
00:58:31.420 --> 00:58:32.920
our show notes here. So for those of you that
00:58:32.920 --> 00:58:34.579
I know we could be talking for another hour,
00:58:34.699 --> 00:58:36.460
but Chris has got to go and you got to go. Everybody's
00:58:36.460 --> 00:58:38.420
got to go. So I won't do that, but we will share
00:58:38.420 --> 00:58:40.699
those articles and those links in the book and
00:58:40.699 --> 00:58:42.840
the resources, the website, all that sort of
00:58:42.840 --> 00:58:44.639
stuff. So you can definitely dig into it more
00:58:44.639 --> 00:58:46.739
because there's a lot of synergy between what
00:58:46.739 --> 00:58:48.360
you're saying in our audience. OK, the rapid
00:58:48.360 --> 00:58:50.380
fires real quick. Here we go. Everybody wants
00:58:50.380 --> 00:58:52.420
to know about tools. So what's one AI tool or
00:58:52.420 --> 00:58:54.780
automation that you absolutely can't run your
00:58:54.780 --> 00:58:56.940
business without? The one that gives you and
00:58:56.940 --> 00:58:59.920
your team the 10x level. every single week. There
00:58:59.920 --> 00:59:02.920
you go. Just cloud code, cloud co -work, the
00:59:02.920 --> 00:59:06.239
whole thing, all of it? All of it. I use every
00:59:06.239 --> 00:59:09.000
face that it has all the time, like every day,
00:59:09.260 --> 00:59:11.219
multiple times a day. Can I ask what plan you're
00:59:11.219 --> 00:59:15.820
on and what's your total? I'm on the $200 subscription.
00:59:18.469 --> 00:59:21.429
And I'm telling you, it will tell you, oh, Chris,
00:59:21.889 --> 00:59:23.909
you came to us from ChatGBT because you asked
00:59:23.909 --> 00:59:27.110
these questions two and a half years ago. And
00:59:27.110 --> 00:59:30.369
you started by doing 10 sessions a month. And
00:59:30.369 --> 00:59:32.409
then very quickly, you went to 50 sessions a
00:59:32.409 --> 00:59:34.230
month. And then you're like, now 200 sessions
00:59:34.230 --> 00:59:38.230
a month. And you're like, yeah, whether it's
00:59:38.230 --> 00:59:42.239
Cloud Code, Co -Work, or Cloud .AI. Max it a
00:59:42.239 --> 00:59:44.340
day every day. There you go. Okay, processes.
00:59:44.420 --> 00:59:46.420
Now let's talk about ways of working. So what's
00:59:46.420 --> 00:59:48.960
one system or process that you think every lean
00:59:48.960 --> 00:59:51.480
leverage first team should have in place by the
00:59:51.480 --> 00:59:53.739
time they hit that first million dollars in revenue
00:59:53.739 --> 00:59:56.280
that separates those scalers from the grinders?
00:59:56.320 --> 00:59:58.699
You know, the ones that are just going to continue
00:59:58.699 --> 01:00:00.559
to work hard even if they've made it. So what
01:00:00.559 --> 01:00:02.699
would you maybe tell them to stop doing or something
01:00:02.699 --> 01:00:04.300
you think that they should start doing today?
01:00:04.360 --> 01:00:06.179
They need to create content. They need to create
01:00:06.179 --> 01:00:08.460
content like their life depends on it. It's not
01:00:08.460 --> 01:00:10.579
going to give you rapid results two days after
01:00:10.579 --> 01:00:13.079
you publish. It is going to give you all the
01:00:13.079 --> 01:00:15.519
time about compounding benefit. But you need
01:00:15.519 --> 01:00:18.400
to be able to do it and not spend two days for
01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:21.099
an article. You need to not be able. You can't
01:00:21.099 --> 01:00:23.980
spend eight hours on an article. And so all the
01:00:23.980 --> 01:00:25.960
tools that I've built, right, and including that
01:00:25.960 --> 01:00:28.340
content agent, all of those are are designed
01:00:28.340 --> 01:00:31.980
to help you generate content faster while keeping
01:00:31.980 --> 01:00:35.510
your authenticity, your voice. Writing to your
01:00:35.510 --> 01:00:39.369
audience and and internalizing your takes in
01:00:39.369 --> 01:00:41.429
that content, but content is it you got to do
01:00:41.429 --> 01:00:44.030
it I'm gonna check it out myself and then final
01:00:44.030 --> 01:00:46.329
tip So if you can give one piece of advice to
01:00:46.329 --> 01:00:48.250
the founder who's running that dinner table size
01:00:48.250 --> 01:00:50.230
team right now who wants to scale Maybe what
01:00:50.230 --> 01:00:53.010
would you share um? Stop listening to the people
01:00:53.010 --> 01:00:55.789
who say you can't do it find two or three people
01:00:55.789 --> 01:00:59.289
who know you Believe in you know something about
01:00:59.289 --> 01:01:01.719
the tools and are willing to come alongside the
01:01:01.719 --> 01:01:03.860
journey, even if it's just a once a month call
01:01:03.860 --> 01:01:05.400
to be like, tell me what you're trying now, tell
01:01:05.400 --> 01:01:07.760
me what you're doing now. I sit in that role
01:01:07.760 --> 01:01:11.659
for, I don't know, 20, 30 people. And, you know,
01:01:11.800 --> 01:01:15.019
the goal is simply to say, yeah, that's good,
01:01:15.139 --> 01:01:17.820
try that, like, let's go. The encouragement is
01:01:17.820 --> 01:01:18.960
what's out there because the rest of the world
01:01:18.960 --> 01:01:21.260
is filled with, you know, people that are taking
01:01:21.260 --> 01:01:23.599
easy potshots, right, and telling you that you
01:01:23.599 --> 01:01:27.059
can't do it. A lot of times the only difference
01:01:27.869 --> 01:01:30.150
between someone having success and someone not
01:01:30.150 --> 01:01:34.250
is believing that it's even possible. And so
01:01:34.250 --> 01:01:35.750
bring some of those people in your circle and
01:01:35.750 --> 01:01:38.110
get rid of the people that are constantly going,
01:01:38.110 --> 01:01:39.469
yeah, but that's not going to work. That's not
01:01:39.469 --> 01:01:41.730
going to work. I don't need anyone for that.
01:01:41.829 --> 01:01:43.909
So get rid of those guys. I'm with you on that.
01:01:44.150 --> 01:01:46.150
Well, this has been fantastic. That's why we
01:01:46.150 --> 01:01:47.849
have you on this podcast, because you can hear,
01:01:48.030 --> 01:01:50.429
yes, you can do it. So for those of you that
01:01:50.429 --> 01:01:51.789
are interested, first of all, Chris, I want to
01:01:51.789 --> 01:01:53.530
thank you so much for joining us on the exponential
01:01:53.530 --> 01:01:55.929
scale podcast. Give you that final word there.
01:01:55.949 --> 01:01:58.400
Thank you. Yeah, and it's been awesome. It's
01:01:58.400 --> 01:02:00.780
been definitely awesome So for if you're looking
01:02:00.780 --> 01:02:02.679
to find Chris you can go to his website Chris
01:02:02.679 --> 01:02:06.920
Lemma. That's chrislemma .com You can learn more
01:02:06.920 --> 01:02:09.860
about your voice profile his 1999 on -ramp product.
01:02:09.880 --> 01:02:11.880
You just heard about it go from 0 to 65 before
01:02:11.880 --> 01:02:14.050
you hit that highway Definitely check out the
01:02:14.050 --> 01:02:17.690
story first book also 20 bucks on Amazon or wherever
01:02:17.690 --> 01:02:20.309
else. And it's on he's on Twitter at Chris Lemma.
01:02:20.329 --> 01:02:23.469
He's on YouTube at Mr. Chris Lemma. And I will
01:02:23.469 --> 01:02:25.510
give you all that final mantra. So here's your
01:02:25.510 --> 01:02:27.949
mantra for the week. Create interest, create
01:02:27.949 --> 01:02:31.929
the story. Don't sell, communicate and stay aware
01:02:31.929 --> 01:02:34.570
of how this whole ecosystem is changing and find
01:02:34.570 --> 01:02:36.250
that buddy friend who's going to help convince
01:02:36.250 --> 01:02:38.630
you to keep on going. So if you've loved this
01:02:38.630 --> 01:02:40.050
interview with Chris Lemma, I want you to hit
01:02:40.050 --> 01:02:42.130
that subscribe button, leave a review and share
01:02:42.130 --> 01:02:44.269
with them. that founder friend who's still chasing
01:02:44.269 --> 01:02:46.409
traffic when they should be building for the
01:02:46.409 --> 01:02:48.849
people who already care. So I want you to think
01:02:48.849 --> 01:02:52.570
big, stay lean, and scale smarter. Small teams
01:02:52.570 --> 01:02:55.710
that scale big aren't the future. They're the
01:02:55.710 --> 01:02:58.730
now. If this episode has you inspired to learn
01:02:58.730 --> 01:03:01.269
more, hit that subscribe button, share it with
01:03:01.269 --> 01:03:04.010
your crew, and join the movement over at ScaleBraid
01:03:04.010 --> 01:03:09.059
.com. That's S -C -A -L -E -B -R -A -T -E dot
01:03:09.059 --> 01:03:12.980
com. Until next time, think big, stay lean, and
01:03:12.980 --> 01:03:16.079
scale smarter. Because small teams have mega
01:03:16.079 --> 01:03:19.179
potential. And thanks for tuning in to the Small
01:03:19.179 --> 01:03:20.840
Team Big Scale podcast.
