The New Local SEO

Tom Nixon (00:01.593)
Welcome back listeners, near and far marketers, dear and new. Curtis, I got a question for you as I like to do at the beginning of these episodes.

Curtis Hays (00:10.478)
Fire away.

Tom Nixon (00:11.705)
How familiar are you with the Dr. Seuss catalog?

Curtis Hays (00:16.934)
I mean…

Tom Nixon (00:17.445)
What’s your favorite? Do have a favorite book?

Curtis Hays (00:21.71)
There was one about retirement that, I don’t know if you know this, but I did retire before I started Kaleidoscope. I had retired from the fact that I’d never wanted to work for somebody again. I only wanted to work for myself. But I did get, there’s a retirement one. That was a good one. But I used to read Dr. Seuss to my kids.

Tom Nixon (00:24.005)
What?

Joel Waldman (00:40.195)
Is it out of the way for you,

Tom Nixon (00:43.033)
Yeah. Well, let’s see how familiar are you with this? So, this is kind of a stem winder that’s going to get us back to our guest today. So, when I went to college, we can’t mention where because of our guest today, there was a local band called South Going Yak, which was a takeoff South Going Zaks, which is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books. The South Going Yak is somebody with

This college that I went to is in Arbor, The person that we’re talking about today and with is a south going Zach who left Michigan to go down to Columbus, Ohio. And he probably now already hates me in. haven’t even talked to him yet. Curtis, bring him out of the show.

Curtis Hays (01:26.124)
Yeah, I’m excited to welcome Joel Waldman, who is kind of a colleague. We worked together previously with Matt Griffin, who was a previous guest on the show and got to know Joel and was always a pleasure to work with him. And so just noticed recently, Joel, you relocated back down to Ohio and started up a company and excited to hear what you’re doing and tell us what it’s all about. from a brand perspective, man, you’re aligned. You’ve got the

the yak bull horns right behind you, bringing you on the bull horns and bulls eyes podcast. was like, this was a no brainer.

Joel Waldman (02:02.659)
It’s a match made in heaven. That’s what it is. But yeah, good to be here. Yeah, so glad to be on the show. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been admiring you from afar, I know you haven’t spoken too much recently, but our paths crossed early on. And that was really my first role out of grad school. So I went to school at Toledo. got my master’s from Bowling Green State University. And Matt Griffin.

Curtis Hays (02:04.342)
Yeah. So tell us what you’re doing.

Joel Waldman (02:30.415)
took a flyer on me right out of grad school and brought me on the team and it was there that I got the chance to connect with you, Curtis. It’s funny. I feel it’s sobering to me to come on this show and talk to you guys about SEO and about my company to some degree because I remember having my first conversation with you, Curtis, when you were in the office. I know we’re kind of bouncing around. We were always in the office. We were sometimes working from home and whatnot.

I remember thinking, man, this guy is next level. And if I could someday get to that level, I would just be satisfied. And so it’s a full circle moment to be here on the pod with you. But yeah, I started a company here in Columbus, Ohio, although we really serve companies nationwide called Yak AI. And essentially what we do is leverage local SEO. But really we look at companies and try to evaluate the biggest constraint, the thing that is holding you back.

And so the entire basis of YACC is it operates under the theory of constraints, which means you will grow to your biggest constraint and then you will grow no more. And so we have a focus on optimizing, first diagnosing what somebody’s constraint is, optimizing for that constraint, optimizing their digital storefront, which is the way that people will see their business. We focus in the home services space. So it’s plumbers, HVAC companies, some home repair companies.

And we help them grow their local SEO so they can dominate their market. So that’s really the approach that we take at Yak. And it’s been a wild journey so far. I’m only three months in here. We’re relatively wet behind the ears in the 10-year front, but it’s been a fun ride so far.

Tom Nixon (04:12.901)
Well, first I wanted to thank you Joel for abiding by our constraint that any male that comes on the show has to shave their head before they appear on the podcast. So thank you for doing that. Just moments ago, Joel had long flowing trusses of hair and

Joel Waldman (04:28.66)
I did. really had really long hair, but I just thought, you know, I’m going to take one for the team and just chop it all off for the show. So you’re

Tom Nixon (04:35.759)
Perfect. Well, I love the commitment not only to our regulations, but the commitment to the brand. Check it out your website. You have built the whole brand around a Yak and you have the like the six sort of qualifications of a Yakker. Explain what a Yakker is before we dive into the rest of the content today.

Joel Waldman (04:53.387)
Yeah, in short, a Yakker is one who Yaks, right? So, you know, I based it off of, if you know anything about a Yak, Yaks are really unique in the animal kingdom and they’re really unique because they thrive at high altitudes. So if you think about what we want our clients to be and what I really strive for each of our customers to do, it’s to thrive where the air is thin. So it’s thriving where it’s a little bit challenging for others to operate. So if think about a plumber who’s growing their business,

I want them to thrive in a market that feels saturated perhaps, or in a market that’s competitive. so a yakker is somebody who is comfortable being uncomfortable, comfortable being in those high altitude places. And that’s why the yak is just the perfect animal. And I’ve I’ve grown an affection for yaks. They’re underrated. They’re really rather cute. but that’s what a yakker is. It’s somebody who thrives under pressure in a high altitude environment.

Tom Nixon (05:47.299)
love it. Curtis, the timing of this episode is either like bizarre or ideal, or maybe it’s both because we had a conversation just this week where you discovered some interesting data for a client that you’re working with. It is very relevant. Like just share that story. You don’t have to name names, but share the story. It is a company sort of in the home improvement space.

Curtis Hays (06:08.204)
Yep, company in the home improvement space, seven locations. We’ve been doing lead gen for the last 18 months for them. Tracking, and that’s what we do and what we’re really good at tracking conversions and leads on the website and then getting that conversion data back to the advertising platforms. And show ROI to our clients based on their efforts. And one of the things that

I started to notice with AI and sort of AI answers and trends on the user side is I started to think to myself like, are we not capturing leads, capturing them so we have visibility to them, the clients getting the leads, but I felt like there was a gap in what we were actually collecting from a data perspective with our Google business profiles. And we do phone call tracking.

So we’re using WhatConverts, previous episode with the founder of WhatConverts we had on recently. They have a similar to a call tracking or call, well, call rail or call tracking metrics where we track all the phone calls. Most consumers start their journey with the brand, not through a form fill, but by calling to see if this company has a product or service or to schedule an appointment. And…

So I let’s actually put a trackable number in their Google Business Profile and see what happens. So I did it for their sort of flagship location and ended up finding out that two thirds of the lead volume, which is three times their normal lead volume, came from that one Google Business Profile. Significant. Out of the seven, well, so I’m not tracking the other locations, but the big thing for me that I got out of it was that

Tom Nixon (07:42.883)
out of several locations.

Curtis Hays (07:52.898)
Consumers where you think their journey sort of starts with your brand on your website is actually starting prior to the website. And that we need to start thinking about not just your Google business profile, but your entire presence. We’re going to have a PR company on here soon talking about the peso model paid, earned, shared, owned. I’m going to get this.

Tom Nixon (08:21.285)
you

Curtis Hays (08:22.592)
And just how important that is to understand the entire digital ecosystem and have control over all of that. So I’ve seen you talk quite a bit, Joel, you know, about really taking ownership for that Google business profile. And so don’t know if you have a question for Tom here, Joel, but you know, know he’s been talking a lot lately about how important that profile is because of the visibility. And we basically just proved it for this client right here. You’re not paying attention to this profile.

updating it, adding photos, making sure you’re getting reviews. You maybe have three times the number of people who see that versus see your website and you’re putting all your attention on your website.

Joel Waldman (09:03.715)
Absolutely. It is the single most important thing that a small business, especially a business that is service-based can do. So if you think about your digital storefront, if you are fortunate enough to get organic traffic, somebody searching you in Google, then going to your website, yes, that’s important. It’s important to, I think, display the quality that you expect in your website. However, to your point.

I’ve seen data in the 75 % range. So you mentioned two thirds, 66%. I think it might even be higher than that. The number of people that find out about you from your Google business profile. Now the elephant in the room is when people consider what AI is doing to local SEO, to search, to the entire search experience, there’s a lot of, I think, fear around what that’s going to do to your search results and your rankings in Google maps.

I think that AI provides the biggest advantage that we’ve ever had in this space by providing a moat for the top four. So what I mean by that right now, if you were to go search plumbers near me in perplexity in grok and chat, UBT in Gemini, name your AI tool. And you were to pull up Google maps next to it and say plumbers near me. Every single one of those AI search experiences will pull the top four, sometimes three, most times four.

Tom Nixon (10:09.167)
Mm-mm.

Joel Waldman (10:28.205)
from the Google Maps right next to it. So if you are in that top four, you now have a moat where more than half of people are now searching through these AI tools. You have a moat that’s gonna allow you to list and rank in that set of AI search results or AI preview in Google that before you would have had to then somebody who, if they’re scrolling down Google Maps, like you just need to be in that list somewhere. Now you’ve got a moat. So if you can get in the top four,

That is a huge advantage for your zip code for your service area. So I think AI actually provides a really compelling advantage to incentivizing you to care more about your Google business profile. So it’s huge. And there are a lot of things that people don’t think about with their GBP and I’ll use the acronym because I’m talking about all the time. For their GBP, I think a lot of people don’t realize there are offers and updates that you can post in your business profile that

is separate from your Facebook page or your website or a blog. And Google is using that as part of their EEAT algorithm to show relevance, show trust, show, you know, authoritativeness. And so that’s a big thing that people are not spending a lot of time looking at. That is the single biggest low hanging fruit that you can take or that you can do as a business owner. So it’s huge. And I think it’s AI proof. And so that’s why I’m harping on it.

I’m using LinkedIn as sort of my like sounding board and diary of sorts now. So it’s been a lot of fun. But that’s, you know, I’ve heard a lot about that because I think that people are not appreciating the power that having a strong business profile can have. And by the way, it’s free, right? think these are free tools that, you know, the plumbers and the HVAC tax and, and these small owner operator businesses can take advantage of. you know, I specialize, you mentioned Curtis, the

the business you’re working with had six or seven locations. I specialize in those businesses that have maybe between one and 10 employees. are very much owner operator driven. And so they don’t have a ton of marketing spent. They don’t have, you know, a whole back office receptionist crew to answer calls. And so those are the things that really move the needle when you’re trying to stand out against, you know, companies that have six or seven locations, the the rotor readers of

Curtis Hays (12:37.624)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Waldman (12:54.807)
plumbing world that just have nearly unlimited marketing spend. And so that’s how we’re able to get these small mom and pop, you know, plumbing shops to show up or home services business to really start to rank in some of these areas. So it’s huge. It’s, it’s absolutely paramount to do. And yeah, I think that’s something that people aren’t thinking enough about. And there’s just so much opportunity there.

Tom Nixon (13:16.357)
Yeah, I think most people, this is going to be just an anecdotal guess, but I’m going to estimate that 99 % of business owners think that getting the Google business page was a one time event and they got it. It’s done. So maybe I’ll go check and see if we have reviews every once in a while. Maybe that number is too high, but that’s what it feels like. This particular client, as soon as we were getting off the call, she said, I got six other business pages. I got to go optimize those things. So.

it’s like when you see the data, which is now we’re starting to see because of AI, I think it’s a real eye opener. So could you just expand a little bit, Joel, on some of the free tools that you said you mentioned a bunch of them and kind of passing, but what are some of the things you dig in on on a GPP? I have my new acronym to enhance it and make sure you’re getting inside the moat in that living outside of

Curtis Hays (14:03.884)
Yeah, let me add Joel, what a lot of our clients are, they’re asking these questions, right? It’s like, what do I need to be paying attention to when it comes to AI and knowing that my target audience is shifting their behavior from just a search in Google into these LLMs? And so what do I need to do? What do I need to do to optimize my presence so that I’m discovered in an LLM?

Joel Waldman (14:28.033)
Yeah, the thing that you want to think about is how could you decrease the friction in which it takes for somebody to find you, also get in contact with you. So, you know, I run through a playbook with a lot of our clients right out the gate. And I need to take a step back and say the importance for me diagnosing somebody’s constraint is, is because perhaps generating leads isn’t the most important thing that the business should focus on. And maybe that’s actually going to cause more problems because they can’t handle it from an operational capacity standpoint.

So let’s say you’re coming in operational capacity, isn’t the issue. are ready for more leads. have bandwidth within their team. So then it’s, you know, I’ll come in look and see, okay, how are your reviews? of all. So, you know, if you’ve got four or five reviews, then the first thing I’ll say is, well, you know, have you asked your previous 300 customers for a review? Have you tapped your existing audience? People that you know, have had a good experience. Now you may have, you know, I have this theory that there, should actually be.

ratings both ways. So, you I talked to lot of people in this space now, a lot of them are saying, I wish that had I known that this person wasn’t going to be a good customer, they would have been more of a liability. I would have said, no, I would move on to somebody else. So some of those customers and previous experiences aren’t going to be great. Sure. However, the ones that are, those are untapped potential to get your business to rank higher. So if you have very few reviews, it’s how are you leveraging your existing or previous clients?

to tell the story of your brand, to tell their experience. When you think about Google’s rankings, it’s the experience that people had. Was it a positive experience for them? Do they trust you? So if you have a few reviews, I’m going to ask how you’re leveraging previous clients. And again, we use Go High Level as our back end. And so very, very easy to say, if you’ve had 1,000 previous customers in the last 12 months, let’s think about marketing to them and make it really easy for them to leave a review.

I know we visited you last month and we fixed your furnace and it sounds like everything went really well. The biggest way to say thanks is to write us a five-star review in Google. Here’s the link. Thank you. Those are easy ways to start to rank higher. The next thing I’m to look at is, are you responding to our existing reviews, good or bad? If you think about when you guys are looking for plumbing services near you, you want to see somebody that has an established brand in the area, they’re responsive.

Joel Waldman (16:56.163)
You know that they are going to do the job right. They’re going to do it for a fair price. And so that is a way that you can show potential people in your service area that this company knows what they’re doing. They know what they’re talking about. People seem to really enjoy the experience that they get with them. So I need to see responses to those reviews. So that’s an easy thing, right? If you come in and you’ve got 20 reviews, takes you an hour or two to go and respond to every single one of those. The next thing we’re going to look at is are you posting offers and updates on your profile?

Again, most people don’t even know that you can do this. There was a button that says, what’s an update? And in that update, you can say, is it an offer? Do you just want to show a picture of what you’ve done previously? Do you just want to let customers know about a new promotion that you’re running? Those things again, help to help you to rank higher in your local service area, because it shows that you’re actively engaged with your customers and with your business profile. So we’ll talk about some offers that you can list in your profile. And then the last one is.

Tom Nixon (17:28.965)
Thank

Joel Waldman (17:55.171)
Show pictures of your work. I this is a really easy thing. If you’re training your technicians, if you’ve got three or four technicians, or you have six or seven locations, each location should be showing pictures of what they’ve done previously and answering FAQs on their site. So there’s an area where you can ask a question, right? So if I come in and I’m saying, hey, are you able to do furnace services for a cabin in…

Northern Michigan or wherever your service area is, I have a nuanced furnace. You handle these furnaces. Asking those questions allows people to see, there are FAQs that this person has or specific services this person has experience in that maybe I don’t know right off the bat because it’s a unique situation. And I’m above my skis or over my skis a little bit because I don’t know furnaces really that well. But the point remains, you need to show your customers that you do know.

that specific area better than anybody else. And so making sure that you’re answering FAQs, you’re posting pictures, you’re posting offers, that’s just on the business profile side. So there’s just so much that you can be doing. But I think the biggest one is if you have very few reviews, you’ve got to tap your existing audience and you’ve got to work it into your work process moving forward, where your technicians are making it as easy as possible for happy customers.

to share their experience via a review with a QR code, with a link, whatever way possible. And I’ve coached, I’m working with somebody in the home repair space right now, he’s a handyman. And so I’m working with him to say, hey, when you’re done, a simple way you can work it into your workflow is, hey, I just finished up the job, I’m gonna head out to the truck and get the invoice ready. the meantime, everything’s looking good. This was a pretty straightforward fix for me.

Here’s a link to my profile. I’m just starting out. It would mean the world to me if you could list, you know, just your experience just in the five minutes while I’m running the invoice on my truck and I’ll come back in a little bit. Like work it into your workflow in a way that it feels very natural. And you’re going to get nine times out of 10 when you ask face to face for a review from somebody, you’re going to get it. So those are just little things that I think people are overlooking again that are just, that are huge for, for ranking.

Tom Nixon (20:09.155)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (20:09.837)
Yeah, and you can make it easy for them because you can have them scan a QR code or you send them a text that takes them right to the review right on their phone. They’re going to have their phone in their hand anyway and they can hit the stars or leave a comment right there. So 100%. Make it easy for them.

Tom Nixon (20:25.857)
Joe, I was telling Curtis and this other client, I have a law firm client of all things. So pretty sophisticated services, right? That is killing it on this. And they sort of lucked into it because we inherited the client from another agency that was just keeping up their LinkedIn and Facebook in their Google plus profile. Remember that? Are you guys old enough to remember Google Plus? So that sort of obviously went away with the client didn’t realize it and kept asking this former agency, are you making sure all this stuff is going up on Google to?

they didn’t know how to like explain it to him that there is no Google Plus. So they just started putting it in the Google business profile and it became a habit. And then they started getting all of these phone calls and all of these reviews. So it happened organically. So that’s just sort of proof that this works. And even if you don’t know what you’re doing, just by the fact that you’re doing it is better than doing nothing. Let’s step back just a little bit. Curtis, I’m going let you start here. So let’s like pan back. We’re talking specifically about Google business pages, but

Because of everything we’re talking about, what you’ve been seeing is the whole SEO, local SEO game has been completely reinvented, seemingly overnight. So like, how do we need just from a mindset standpoint, how do we need to just rethink optimizing what the whole internet now for our business or how are you approaching it?

Curtis Hays (21:42.188)
Yeah, you pretty much need to. So I thought of an example, Joel, as you were kind of describing a niche service that you might provide. have a client HVAC that they can repair boilers. Most HVAC companies aren’t touching boilers these days. So they can, and that helps them both on the commercial side, but there’s some older homes that still have a boiler. And they get a lot of leads from it simply from the fact that they have a page on their website, know, caught up.

service page or landing page that talks specifically about boilers. So they rank well from an SEO perspective, but you’re 100 % dead on that they should be taking that content, FAQs, different things about boilers and putting that content up on their Google business profile, particularly in seasonality when that’s going to come up, Tips on, you know, maintenance for your boiler or how to self-inspect your boiler or, you know, different things like that that are going to help with the ranking. you’re, you,

can no longer just use your website as that storefront or that place where information needs to reside because the LLMs are crawling a number of different properties and then aggregating that together to provide their results in what I’m seeing and doing some experiments with this for clients. In particular, I did a service in a company in the decking industry.

Joel Waldman (22:48.611)
are crying.

Joel Waldman (23:01.277)
it.

Curtis Hays (23:09.606)
deck repair, as well as new builds, they’re a Trex supplier, and premium, I don’t know, platinum provider. And they had issues with their how their name was specified within the directory on Trex. So when I did an experiment in the LLM and said, which wasn’t just deck builders near me, which is what I might do in Google.

in an LLM, you’d have a consumer who would say, well, I have this size of home and I’ve got this existing deck and these boards are rotted. Can you help me figure out what’s going on? then this sort of the LLM is personalized to know all this stuff about you. And then you say, okay, I think I need it repaired. Who are the top three to five companies in my area who can help me repair that? This company wasn’t getting results in the LLM because their business name

didn’t match exactly their Google business profile on their website, on the Trex website. And so I then said to the LLM, hey, why didn’t you recommend this company? And then it went and did another check. It was like, oh, I’m sorry, I was confused. It actually is the same company, but I noticed their names are different, so I didn’t mention them. And that was an immediate phone call to my client to go, hey, you need to go on the Trex website and update your business list, your listing there.

and your name, which was really easy. you’re right in what you said, Tom. And they’re like, this isn’t a set it and forget it kind of a thing. You always need to be monitoring these profiles and making sure they’re accurate and they’re up to date. But you have to know that the LLMs are going out into that entire internet ecosystem. They’re looking at sentiment across reviews, not just your business profile, but Yelp or any other websites where they can get reviews. They’re going to pull your directory listings and those types of things. Citations now become important.

and then provide those results to a potential user. So it is your website plus all of these other properties that are going to come into the mix.

Joel Waldman (25:12.259)
The other thing that’s really important too is I don’t think people are spending enough time, business owners are spending enough time thinking about how is the demographic of the person that I’m trying to reach, how do they most easily or how do they prefer to connect with me? So for example, in your Google Business Profile, you can list a chat number. So that is a number that somebody can text you through. I’m a millennial and our first touch point

for researching services for our house is preferably a text, which is an uncomfortable thing for somebody who’s an owner-operator and is in the baby boomer generation. And so little things like that, that would actually be easier for the business owner as well. If you think about the case of a plumber, they may be under somebody’s sink for most of the day. And so they may not answer a call, but if they see somebody text, it’s really easy to flip over and just shoot a text back.

And those are the little things that, if you don’t answer the research that I have found, if you don’t answer a call or even a text from a prospective customer in five minutes, there’s an 80 % chance that they’re gone. So they are moving on to the next person. And so not just, you know, showing up in the rankings, but once you show up, this goes down, this goes back to not just generating leads, but converting leads on the converting side. What are you doing to making, to make sure that.

when that customer calls or texts or visits your website and interacts with your chat bot under website, what systems do you have in place to respond to that stuff immediately? That’s one of the things that we do through YAC is we can set up systems that allow a missed call to be answered immediately a text. Hey, sorry I your call. I was actually plumbing somebody’s pipe. So you can add some humor in there. I’d still love to figure out how it can help you, what’s going on. And then either they answer or I have systems where if they don’t answer within a minute,

I have a conversational AI tool that answers that potential customer with the goal of getting them to book an appointment. So that is all hands off booking on the part of the home service agent. So, you know, those are the types of things that you need to be thinking about, not just from a lead generation side, but if you have all these fish swimming by and you’re not sticking your net in, you’re not going to grow your business. You’re not going to land the client. those are some of the things that I try to coach these businesses through.

Tom Nixon (27:35.865)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (27:35.96)
Yep.

Tom Nixon (27:37.337)
I’m reading more and more about a concept that I just got introduced to. So it’s amazing how quickly these things are changing, but we’ve talked for years about SEO. And then I just wrote an article about, or read an article about GEO, which is sort of the new paradigm in an AI world, right? Generative Engine Optimization. So the things that you’re talking about, Curtis, like how are we optimizing our entire ecosystem in a way that is going to seem relevant to the LLMs that are trying to find answers for question askers?

You Joel had a LinkedIn post that I really gravitated to because I love analogies. love puns. I love what else do I love alliteration, all kinds of things, but you compared AI to a steam engine. So what did you mean by that? And what can people take away from it in terms of how it can help optimize their marketing efforts?

Joel Waldman (28:28.225)
Yeah, it’s simple. So I love steam engines. This is actually a blueprint of one of the first steam engines. So I think what steam engines did to the industrial revolution, it spurred, it really sparked the industrial revolution, allows us to get more productivity from, you know, the everyday worker. I think AI is doing to this next generation. And I think as steam engines spurred on the industrial revolution, I think AI is spurring on the intellectual revolution. And so

I do like Steve engines, but it’s because I see the parallels so clear. You’re seeing this happen. If you think about what Google’s revenue streams, or I had a post about this the other day. If you think about what Google’s revenue streams were 30 years ago, those things did not, excuse me. So maybe we can cut this from the tape, but if you think about Google’s revenue streams from when they first started, those things did not exist 30 years ago. So if you think about like YouTube.

you know, paid media, search ads, right? Those things didn’t exist 30 years ago. So I think with what AI is doing, I think the, way that businesses will generate revenue in 30 years, we may not even know that those products or services even exist. So I think it is blowing wide open a whole new, you know, industry that, largely is untapped and we’re still on the very beginning end of the jaker. So I think we’re going to see a lot of.

you know, huge movements and huge industries and entire, you know, existing industries change because of AI in the same way that, you know, steam engines completely changed what it meant to, you know, work in a factory or what it meant for working on a farm, right? It changed everything. So I think there are clear parallels between what the steam engine did with the industrial revolution to what AI is doing to the intellectual.

Tom Nixon (30:19.503)
Fun fact, Joel Curtis listeners that my great, great, great, great grandfather invented the first self-propelled vehicle. He’s in the Guinness book of world records using a steam engine. And it was a little three foot model for what we now know to be the vehicle of the car. So how about that for fun fact? You guys thought I was just famous for. Yes, it’s a, well, we’re, we’re on a different river.

Curtis Hays (30:37.45)
And you live in Grosse Pointe. Are you in one of those big mansions there on the Detroit River?

Do you still get patent money from that?

Tom Nixon (30:47.223)
It’s a, it’s called the milk river. If you’re familiar with girls point and it’s a 1200 foot bug below. So close. Yeah. so anyways, yes, father, Ferdinand Verbeest, if you want to check my math. so piggyback off what he said, how this steam engine of ours, it’s going to become the new whatever Curtis you’re like, how this has got to be like revolutionary for you as somebody who I think, you know, in my mind, cut his teeth in SEO for the longest time.

Curtis Hays (30:50.094)
The Milk River.

Hahaha

Curtis Hays (31:16.982)
Yeah, well, it completely makes me rethink SEO entirely. I think one of the things that we’re starting to have conversations with clients about, which connects into the way that consumers want to connect. Like if you take a look at those buyers you talked about Joel and the younger generation and how they want to interact with the brands that like AI is this opportunity, not just from a discovery perspective, but you know, let’s say

Joel Waldman (31:31.395)
Thank you.

Curtis Hays (31:45.486)
Paradox is a HR tool on the recruiting side. There’s a lot of companies that are using their AI bot that you can personalize and brand so that you have this avatar that handles all the questions that somebody would have as they’re coming through and looking at open positions and careers and what are your benefits and how does the interview process work? And then it takes you through that whole process as well. And so it emails you.

Joel Waldman (32:07.009)
and I was like…

Curtis Hays (32:15.386)
and converses with you as you go through that interview process and reminds you when you have, an interview coming up and an appointment and asks you if you need to reschedule. Like all of this is automated, but it’s automated and personalized, not through a series of necessarily steps, some of which you do program, but others that is generated, you know, via the AI. And it’s an avatar that you feel like it’s another human being at the opposite end.

reality, it’s not. And so it’s really interesting in the direction that we’re going. And some companies, think, really taking the reins or taking the, you know, grabbing the horns and running with it and, you know, really diving into AI. And some of us are just dabbling with it. But I think the opportunity for brands to start creating these avatars and interacting with

clients in this sort of like pseudo personalized way before they touch with a human being is definitely in the future. And Gary Vee is talking about this world where we’ll live in in 10 years where there’s a billion virtual influencers. I mean, we already have AI influencers that are AI generated that everybody’s going to have potentially their own. It won’t be us on

social media, it’ll be our own avatars who are on social media. I mean, it’s hard to even fathom what the future might look like.

Tom Nixon (33:40.495)
you

Oh good, thank God. That means I can finally get off Twitter. All right. I can’t call it X. It sounds stupid. I’m sorry, Mr. Musk, but it’s just.

Curtis Hays (33:49.326)
You’re still calling it Twitter?

Curtis Hays (33:54.926)
For us old folks who grew up with Twitter, it’s hard to let that go.

Tom Nixon (33:59.685)
Yeah. Joel, what about you? go ahead. Sorry,

Joel Waldman (34:00.812)
And courtesy of

Yeah, I was going to say to your point, did you guys notice two weeks ago, the Meta Conference, the marketing conference that they had? It was interesting to hear Zuckerberg talk about where he sees Meta ads going in the next year too. And I think he painted a vision that could be further out, maybe five years. But I think it’s very much driven by what AI is doing in the advertising space. If you’re seeing what VO3 did to

video generation, it’s insane. And so what Zuckerberg talked about is imagine a world where you just say, Hey, this is the outcome that I want to drive for my clients or for my advertising or for my, for my own company, go do it. And it would generate the video and it would be so seamless that you may not even have to approve a proof because you know that it’s going to work to, to create the video itself, to drive the necessary action.

So we are truly on the cusp of, I think what’s going to be no less than earth shattering. like VO3, if you played around with it, is insane. I I’ve spun up a couple of videos just because I like to test a lot of these tools. I had a production ready commercial that was 30 seconds long, right? And an eight second snippets, because that’s the limitation right now, in half an hour, right? And that’s like, that’s the area and the frontier that we’re moving into. And it’s getting better.

week, right? So these things are just propagating and the flywheel is turning so fast. know, GROCK4 came out two days ago, right? And now the quote that I keep saying about GROCK4 is it is now smarter than every PhD on the planet together in every subject, right? So think about the implications of what that’s going to mean for, you know, for marketing, for advertising, for, you know, for video production, right? It’s just, this is truly a new frontier.

Tom Nixon (36:00.729)
Yeah, Grox had a bit of a week. If you’re referencing the week of July 7th, 2025, we won’t go there. And that’s part of the reason I want to get off X. But before we get off this podcast, final thoughts, Joel, if you either the single most important piece of advice you would give a small medium sized business owner or the first thing you would have them go do, which I think you kind of talked about with the reviews. But what’s the single most important thing you want business owners to realize when it comes to this new world that we’re living in?

Joel Waldman (36:03.939)
Yeah.

Joel Waldman (36:29.985)
Yeah. Yeah. I talked about earlier, but don’t sleep on your Google business profile. There are five things, you know, I talked about the things that you can lean into to optimize your business profile. That is how most of your customers, 75 % of your customers are going to find you. So if you are not optimizing your business profile, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. So that is the single biggest tip. If you want more advice on how to optimize it, Dr. Tom talked to Curtis, talked to myself. I’m happy to provide some assistance there, but they’re just.

There’s so much leverage with this new CEO world where you can create a moat that can allow you to be more competitive in your area for the local businesses.

Tom Nixon (37:11.107)
Love it. Yeah. We will link to Joel’s website and his LinkedIn profile. So if you want to connect with him, please do so. Curtis, my final thoughts going to be a final question for Joel. So I’ll turn it over to you first. What’s your final thoughts to party words of wisdom?

Curtis Hays (37:23.212)
No, I think definitely follow Joel on LinkedIn. You’re putting out some great thought leadership, Joel. And that’s been our advice over the last two plus years to our clients, previous episode guest. He’s talking a lot about thought leadership and founders who need to be on LinkedIn producing content.

And so been really impressed with the content that you’ve been posting and definitely got to follow for me and you’ll get future comments as well. So keep it up and keep doing what you’re doing there. So to our audience, definitely we’ll link to your profile and go connect and follow Joel.

Tom Nixon (38:07.427)
Yeah, and I remain a big believer that content development and publishing is still a great way to train these LLMs on who you are, what you think, and why you matter. So, but my final thought

Curtis Hays (38:15.638)
Well, and the LLMs here, I’ll add this too. think that Google announced that they’re now indexing content on Instagram. So, you know, as we’re posting content on LinkedIn, is it possible that not just our profiles, but actually our content that the LLMs and Google and the search engines start crawling and indexing that content? So, yeah. So I mean, just

Tom Nixon (38:25.636)
Tom Nixon (38:40.621)
I would think for sure. bet they already are. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (38:46.072)
Find where your audience is, create the content and publish it. People will find it.

Tom Nixon (38:51.257)
Yep. All right. Final question. Post to Joel. So if you use hypothetical, if you were going to build a professional football team from the ground up and you had to brand it and you had to choose a mascot, would you choose a yak? A South going Zach’s a Wolverine or a Buckeye.

Joel Waldman (39:00.675)
You’re it.

Joel Waldman (39:12.439)
I’m gonna go with the yak eating a buckeye. mean, that’s just the odd.

Tom Nixon (39:15.525)
All right. I’m with you on that one. All right. Cool. The fighting Buckeye eating yaks of Detroit, Cool. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Joel. We’ll see you again. I’m sure this is going to continue to evolve. So we’ll have you back. You know, maybe we should probably give it a couple days for something new to happen. But yeah, we’ll have you back soon.

Joel Waldman (39:20.323)
There we go.

Joel Waldman (39:36.131)
Very good. Yeah, enjoyed the time. Thanks a lot, guys. Let’s do it again.

Tom Nixon (39:37.125)
See you next time on Bullorns and Bullseyes.