3-Signal Test to Spot the Next AI Mega Trend (Before Everyone Else)

Summary

Podcast Summary: 3-Signal Test to Spot the Next AI Mega Trend (Before Everyone Else)

Podcast: AI-Driven Marketer: Master Practical AI Marketing Skills
Host: Dan Sanchez ("Dances")
Guest: Michael Stelzner (Founder of Social Media Examiner, Social Media Marketing World Conference, AI Business Society)
Date: January 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Sanchez sits down with renowned marketer Michael Stelzner to explore how to reliably discern emerging AI mega trends from passing hype cycles. Drawing on decades of entrepreneurial experience, Michael outlines a practical "three-signal" framework marketers can use to spot paradigm shifts in AI before they hit the mainstream. The conversation ranges widely, covering consumer adoption signals, pattern breaks in new tech revolutions, the evolving relationship between humans and AI, and the specific skills marketers will need to focus on in an AI-powered future.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Michael Stelzner’s Framework: The Three Signals of a True Mega Trend

• 1. Excitement Among Ordinary People ([02:01])
  • A true trend isn’t driven just by marketers or paid evangelists—look for grassroots enthusiasm.
  • “Are ordinary people evangelizing it?...We're looking for your everyday people, just going out of their way, sharing it, because it's good old fashioned word of mouth.” — Michael Stelzner [02:16]
• 2. Resistance/Opposition ([04:31])
  • Meaningful innovations create backlash as some see them as a threat. Resistance confirms the trend’s disruptive potential.
  • “There has to be people that are in opposition to it in order for it to stick...When there's mass resistance to it, that's another signal that this is a megatrend.” — Michael Stelzner [04:22]
• 3. Sustained Organic Adoption ([05:45])
  • Beyond early exuberance and resistance, genuine trends show steady, organic usage and growth among diverse groups.
  • “Excitement plus resistance plus sustained organic people that just keep talking about it and it's not letting go…those are the things I'm looking for.” — Michael Stelzner [09:41]

2. Separating Hype Cycles from Real Shifts

• Examples discussed: Clubhouse (rapid fade after initial boom), crypto, Web3, and agentic AI.
• Hype is often fueled by marketers/influencers versus real users.
  • “You're not seeing excitement, you are seeing resistance...That's an example of a hype cycle and not something that I would call a trend.” — Michael Stelzner [05:45]

3. How to Use the 3-Signal Test for New AI Sub-Trends

• Apply the lens to areas like AI video (e.g., Sora): Look for organic, everyday usage, early opposition, and demographics evincing viral, sustained use ([11:21]).
  • Dan’s example: School teachers sharing Sora videos with family ([12:10]).

4. Surprises and Pattern Breaks in AI Era

• Michael’s top three “gobstopping” AI moments ([13:05]):
  • 1. ChatGPT’s initial release and its human-like responses
  • 2. ChatGPT’s voice/interaction upgrades
  • 3. Nana Banana Pro’s release (noted for its capabilities)
• Dan adds: Personalization features and "reasoning models" that can consult on past conversations and use real-time internet search ([15:29]).

5. AI vs. Previous Marketing Revolutions

• Parallels to Social Media’s Early Days ([17:01])
  • Wild West feel, massive early advantages for "knowing how" to leverage a new channel.
  • “Those who know how have a huge competitive advantage. That was exactly the case back when social media popped.” — Michael Stelzner [18:32]
• Pattern Break: AI is heavily driven by institutionally-funded major companies (OpenAI, Google, Meta) unlike social media’s startup beginnings ([19:46]).
  • “The startups are not winning...It requires enormous financial capital and resources.” — Michael Stelzner [20:48]
  • Adoption is currently business-led, with consumers lagging behind ([21:42]).

6. Where Do Marketers Go From Here?

• The Future: Human + AI Renaissance ([27:32])

  • Good marketing today will be the minimum baseline soon; marketers will leverage AI for massive increases in volume, customization, and persuasiveness.
  • Single marketers or tiny teams will achieve what took dozens before.
    • “The future marketing is only going to be incrementally more powerful...we're going to be doing 25 different channels and it's all going to be managed by one person and all their AI agents.” — Michael Stelzner [28:14]
  • Creative “unlock”—AI empowers rapid, multi-modal content creation and amplifies creative advantages, especially for those previously constrained by resources or operational skill ([30:46]).
    • “For real creative people, I honestly think the creatives are going to have a renaissance. The most creative will win full stop.” — Michael Stelzner [32:34]

• Essential Human Skills

  • Discernment ([35:50])
    • Human ability to distinguish good from great, especially in content output, remains irreplaceable.
    • “Humans are uniquely skilled to discern good from great, better than AI can.” — Michael Stelzner [35:50]
  • Emotional Intuition/Sensing ([36:41])
    • AI can replicate but not feel emotion; humans sense emotional resonance.
    • “Emotions are something that is a feeling more than it is an expression. ...AI can't sense the way humans can sense.” — Michael Stelzner [36:44]

7. Obsolescence of Some Old Behaviors

• Search behavior shifts: The “single best answer” era is coming ([39:12]).
  • Personal assistants/agents will proactively select and recommend, upending how marketers get products/services discovered.
  • “The job of marketing is to get a message in front of an audience and if there's this intermediary in the middle of it...that’s going to alter completely the way we market.” — Michael Stelzner [40:09]
• Possible pay-to-play “recommended products” ecosystem for AI assistants, especially as companies seek monetization ([43:14]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the 3-Signal Test:

  • “It's excitement plus resistance plus sustained organic people that just keep talking about it and it's not letting go.” — Michael Stelzner [09:41]

• On Human Discernment:

  • "Humans are uniquely skilled to discern good from great, better than AI can." — Michael Stelzner [35:50]

• On Future Creative Renaissance:

  • "I think the most creative will win full stop...creative people...that have any attention challenges...the AI can work as fast as their brain can work. Now all of a sudden, holy crap, look what they can create." — Michael Stelzner [32:34]

• Dan, referencing "Good Will Hunting" on human experience:

  • “You don't know what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel...” — Dan Sanchez [37:41]

• On the transformation in search:

  • “We are moving towards an era where only a answer or only a few answers are going to be the result. And that is going to fundamentally alter the way that we market.” — Michael Stelzner [40:09]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intro & Credibility (Dan introduces Michael) — [00:05]
• Three-Signal Test Explained — [02:01] to [09:41]
• Evaluating AI Hype vs. Reality — [05:00]–[10:39]
• Sora & AI Video as Example Sub-Trend — [11:21]–[13:05]
• AI Innovations That Surprised Michael — [13:05]–[15:47]
• Historical Parallels & Pattern Breaks — [17:01]–[22:48]
• Consumer Adoption & Character AI — [22:34]–[24:11]
• Agent-to-Agent Web – Future of Sites — [24:11]–[26:28]
• Five-to-Seven Year Marketing Future — [27:32]–[33:20]
• Essentially Human Skills — [35:50]–[38:12]
• Obsolete Behaviors & New Search Paradigm — [39:12]–[43:19]
• What Leaders Should Do for 2030 — [43:57]–[48:03]

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Actionable Takeaways for Marketers

• Don’t chase every new AI trend. Watch for the 3-signal combo: grassroots excitement, visible resistance, and sustained, cross-demo adoption.
• Sharpen uniquely human skills: Cultivate taste, discernment, and emotional intuition—complement your AI toolkit, don’t rely on it alone.
• Get training now. The marketers who thrive will be those experimenting, rep-surfing, and building up AI fluency ahead of the pack ([44:04]).
  • “Those that survive are those that adapt…[AI] stuff is not intuitive…carving out time and taking this seriously now…is going to be absolutely essential.” — Michael Stelzner [44:04]
• Anticipate business model shifts: Prepare for AI-driven changes in how consumers discover, compare, and choose, including single-answer recommendations and pay-to-play exposure.

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Overall Tone & Closing Thoughts

The episode is rich with humility, practical wisdom, and optimism—blending caution against hype with encouragement to dive in and experiment. Both speakers emphasize that no one has it "all figured out," but early, ongoing learning and experimentation will create outsized advantages in the transformative AI era.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for so many people that are listening.” — Michael Stelzner [47:42]

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For more resources and a discount on AI Business World Conference:
Visit socialmediaexaminer.com/aidriven ([48:03])

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome back to the AI Driven Marketer. I'm Dan Sanchez. My friends call me Dances. And today I'm stoked to have Michael Stelzner as a guest on the show. If you don't know who he is, I'd be amazed. But he is the founder of Social Media examiner, the Social Media Marketing World Conference, and the AI Business Society. Mike, I'm stoked to have you on the show.

[A]

Dan, thank you so much. It's super awesome to be here.

[B]

Awesome. I actually asked when I was working for you and then reporting to the marketing director, John actually asked him probably 10 months ago. I was like, hey, do you ever think Mike would come on my show? And he's like, Dan, I've seen Mike on maybe one guest interview in like three years, so I don't know if he's probably gonna do it. I'm like, okay, okay. So I'm so excited to finally have you on. Cause I have questions for you that I think everybody will wanna know the answer.

[A]

I'll provide answers. Like, I'm really looking forward to this, Dan.

[B]

Yeah. So having you on is different than having someone who's deep in the weeds. And I know you are deep in the weeds. You play with Claude and make projects and you're doing a lot of stuff with AI, But I think the perspective that you can provide, Mike, is one that truly excited about because you've been in the game for a while, you've seen things come, you've seen things go. You've been consistent on the podcast, talking to all kinds of experts, big, small, and everything in between for over a decade now. Like since you started Social media and examiner back in 2010. I get that timeline right?

[A]

2009, pretty close.

[B]

2009, close. So you've seen things come. So I want to. Now you're digging big into AI. Like, I want to kick it off by asking like these big picture questions, the things that you see that nobody else sees, because no one's ever been paying attention into the small and the big things going on in the marketing landscape quite like you have. So to kick it off, when you're evaluating a new trend, like AI included, what are some early signals that you look for and what do you trust the most?

[A]

Well, it is a really, really good question. And I have been an entrepreneur since 1996, so I saw the emergence of what we know as the Internet. I saw the emergence of the social media thing, I saw the emergence of the mobile thing. I saw the, the AI and I saw all the. All the in betweens. One of the benefits to being a gray hair is to kind of like start to notice certain patterns and trends that happen. And whenever there's a really, really, really big breakout trend, usually the. The things that you want to look for that seem to be consistent are, number one, how are everyday people responding to it, consumers. And if you think back to November 30th of 2022, when ChatGPT dropped, this was kind of like, holy crap, what is this thing? Moment, right? You had that moment. I had that moment. Everybody I know had that moment within the first couple of weeks. And so what we look for is this incredible excitement in the early days. And we ask ourselves, are ordinary people evangelizing it? Because, Dan, we're both marketers and we know that we're really good at evangelizing things that we get paid to evangelize. But we're looking for your everyday people that are just going out of their way, sharing it, because it's good old fashioned word of mouth. And Dan, I don't know if during COVID you ever got into Clubhouse. Did you ever get into Clubhouse for.

[B]

Like a brief moment? That clubhouse was because I was in the marketing game.

[A]

So Clubhouse is an incredible example of how this happened. We were on lockdown. The whole world was. And this thing came about called Clubhouse, and it allowed people to enter into these rooms and have conversation, which they were desperately missing. And it was actually highly viral because everybody was talking about. Solved a real problem at the time. Okay? You had people from every kind of walk of life, every background. It wasn't just marketers. It was all sorts of genres of people that were coming into this space and having conversations on every conceivable topic. So why did Clubhouse, why was it like magnesium? Why did it come and stop, and why do other things like social media or. Or AI stick? Right? So the excitement, first of all also has to be followed by resistance. Okay? So there has to be people that are in opposition to it in order for it to stick. Okay? When social media first popped out, there were a lot of people in opposition to it, Dan. There were people saying social media is bad. Social media is horrible. Why would I go on there and just post pictures of my cat? Right? Same thing with AI. There was mass resistance to AI. So when there's mass resistance to it, that's another signal that this is a megatrend. Why? Because people see it as a threat. Okay? So when something happens, at first there's excitement and then very quickly resistance. Those are two signals that typically mean there Is a megatrend happening here? When the Internet first came out, guess what happened? A lot of people said, oh, that's horrible. I would never put my credit card on the Internet. Right. Like all this resistance was happening. I would never buy a product on the Internet. Right. So it's the excitement plus the resistance. And then the next thing that separates, like Clubhouse from everything else is the adoption. That's the other side of it. Like, there has to be excitement and resistance, but there also has to be growing adoption. So in the case of Clubhouse, it grew and then it stopped. In the case of social media, it always grew. It never stopped growing. In the case of AI, it's always been growing. It's never stopped growing. But if we zoom in even deeper into AI, let's take a look at some of the hype cycle inside of AI. So agents is a great example. For the last year, everybody's been talking about agentic AI, but guess who those everybody's were? They were paid marketers. Yeah, they were marketers that were working for companies like Salesforce or HubSpot or other companies that were basically paying people, thought leaders to go out there and evangelize the concept of agentic AI. And the reality is that you are not seeing adoption. Okay. You're not seeing excitement, you are seeing resistance. Okay? So that's an example of a hype cycle and not something that I would call a trend. Any reactions to any of that?

[B]

It reminds me of when AI first got its first kind of like big hype kick in about 2017, 2018. Remember that? When Einstein was becoming a thing within Salesforce and they were hyping it up.

[A]

And I remember, I know that was something around that time probably too, there.

[B]

Was an AI push. And that's back when machine learning really started to become like a term people were starting to use, taking advantage of this big data. And I don't know about you, but at that time I looked at it and I was like, seems pretty dumb to me. I don't know how this is useful unless maybe your target, but is that really AI when it can just kind of predict what maybe three products you'd be most likely? Like, is it a big leap to predict that if you buy a baby bottle, maybe you'd be interested in buying some diapers, you know? But that's what it was. It was hype. And then it didn't last. Yet here we are and AI's sticking around. But you didn't jump in right away. It wasn't like chatgpt. You gave it some time to see if it was going to stick. Is that what was going on?

[A]

Well, you and I know more than we're alluding to because we've had lots of private conversations. But, yes, I sensed that this could be a trend, but I did not want this to be another clubhouse trend. Yeah. Because I was on the clubhouse bandwagon and I was evangelizing it organically. Right. And I. I went out and created videos and wrote emails, and I thought it was really going to be a big deal, but it didn't stick. So I. And I did the same thing in crypto, you know, in the web3 space. Right. So I'm like, I'm not going to get it wrong this time. So it was a slow boil. I wanted to see that there was actually sustainable growth over a period of time. Dan, you and I both know you got started before I did because I'm about a year and a half in since I started AI Explored podcast, and this show's been longer, but you got in a little earlier than I did. But I wanted to proceed with caution because I was facing a lot of resistance from marketers and from a lot of my friends who are former writers, because I'm a former writer. So I just wanted to make sure that this thing was going to stick. And I just was tracking all the metrics, and I saw that there was a sustained, consistent growth and that there were just so many people, random people from every walk of life that were having transformational moments that were happening in their life. And it wasn't subsiding. It wasn't because of OpenAI's brilliant marketing. OpenAI is really good with marketing, but they suck working with influencers. So it was all organic. So that's how I knew that we were onto something.

[B]

Gosh. I remember it was. I remember immediately using it and seeing the. I didn't see how it was going to be practical, but I knew it was different and I knew it was good. It took me about a year to see enough practical. Practicalities of it or how it could be useful to actually be like, I'm doubling down on this and this is going to be the thing. So essentially, what I hear you saying is like, in order to really separate the hype from things that are truly helpful, the new parameter you've put in place is essentially you kind of wait for it to stick, and you're giving it a certain amount of time to see if it goes beyond six months or a year before you're. But you're probably dabbling before that?

[A]

Well, I'm looking for extreme resistance from certain audiences. Okay? That's actually something to look for. Not just excitement, but extreme resistance. Because there's been extreme resistance in every one of these major innovations that we're talking about with the Internet, with social media and with AI. Because resistance is people don't resist something until they see it as a threat. Does that make sense? So when people see it as a threat, that's a signal to you that this is a trend that they think isn't going away. It's a really crazy signal that most people have no idea to even look for. So it's excitement plus resistance plus sustained organic people that just keep talking about it and it's not letting go. You know what I mean? And you can just tell that they believe deep down that this is gonna be transform. Those are the things that I'm looking for in order to know that this is actually a shift. That's a consumer behavior shift. Because it's really hard to get consumer behavior to shift.

[B]

It's really important for everybody listening right now, because right now it's like, okay, now it's obvious you're a person listening to an AI marketing show. You get it? But there's going to be sub trends because this AI thing is going to be so big that there's going to be multiple sub trends within this AI trend that any of us could ride and bet our career on. Like AI Video, especially the Sora thing. Gosh, that's one right now that I'm like, that's a thing in and of itself. Just Sora and you in AI videos, that will be a thing. How it plays out. We're still in the early days. It felt like Sora feels like the early days of ChatGPT where we're playing and not quite sure exactly how that's going to be a thing, but it could be nothing. You don't know.

[A]

But this is what you look for. First of all, you look for people that are evangelizing this, that are not the obvious targets, right? You're not looking for the influencers who are out there actively normally covering all the news that's related to AI video. You're looking for everyday people talking about it organically without any motivation at all. That's the first signal. The second signal is you're looking for people that are in extreme opposition to it, which will come eventually, right? Because they'll say, oh, this is bad, because it's indiscernible from real stuff, right? You're looking for that. And then you're also looking for that growth data. Like, there needs to be entities that are starting to publish information about the growth data. When all three of those things are in alignment, then you know, it's still early and it's a good time to latch onto that trend.

[B]

That makes sense. So if I'm gonna. Using your own criteria, I'm thinking like, okay, Sora specifically, I've literally had normal people, school teachers come and be like, oh, look what my son sent me. It's him fighting a bear. Ha ha. Isn't that funny?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're just like kind of sloppy AI videos. But to him, it means the world because it's his son's face in the video and he thinks they're funny. To me, I was like, okay, I don't even know who this is.

[A]

Continues to happen for months instead of just for a couple of weeks. That's going to be the key thing you're looking for. And also, if people start saying, I don't know how I feel about this. You know what I mean? That's going to be another thing. Because if it threatens, then it probably means that people take it extremely seriously.

[B]

Yeah. So I think we're on the early days of that, but I am watching it now. I've gotten some better signals to pay attention. So I'm curious with. When it comes to the development AI, has there been anything that's genuinely surprised you or even contradicted your expectations?

[A]

Well, there's been three moments in the AI journey for the last three years or so since ChatGPT moment came out. That surprise that shocked me. I can't see there's anything that contradicted my expectations because I don't think any of us know what to expect until these things happen and then we get shocked. But the first moment was obviously the chatgpt moment. Like, I was gobstopped when I saw how good it was. Like, I'd previously worked with AI models that were not very smart. But the fact that I could talk this thing and it sounded like a human and it was articulate and stuff, it just blew my mind. The second moment isn't going to surprise you, Dan, but it was when ChatGPT rolled out. The ability to talk to it and interact with it, the ability to actually talk to it, and it sounded like a human, responded like a human. It had emotions, it could laugh, it could do different accents, it could do different languages. That blew my mind. It kind of reminded me of the very first time I was able to use Like Spotify kind of thing, you know, like listen to any music. But it wasn't Spotify, it was Pandora. You know what I mean? That blew my mind too.

[B]

Yes, I remember that.

[A]

And then the next one was Nana Banana Pro. Nana Banana Pro was the next major moment. Because it's ridiculous. I mean, I know you agree with me. It's crazy. So those have been the three moments that came to my mind as I was thinking, you know, about this question. But none of them have contradicted my expectations. I knew that eventually I'd be able to interact with AI and be able to talk to me. I also knew that the images were going to just keep getting better, you know. But at this point, I don't know what's going to surprise me next because I think we just get used to radical surprise. But I do instinctively feel like we're almost at the point where not much more is going to surprise. Maybe real time, maybe eventually if like they have real time AI agents that actually look exactly like you respond in real time and I can't discern the difference. That'll probably surprise me when robots get to be as good as like C3PO, you know what I mean? That's probably going to. There's R2D2, no C3PO. That'll probably surprise me. But I can't imagine that there's going to be a lot more innovation other than just continuous improvement that will shock me because at this point I feel like there's not a lot more ground to cover. I don't know. What's your thoughts?

[B]

I think one that hit me was personalization. Two in the spring was personalization. When they rolled that out, like, it can kind of take tally of everything you've had talked about and you can ask it like based on conversations we've had, what would you say about this or that? That started blowing my mind.

[A]

Ability to consult you and know everything about. Yeah, that didn't surprise me as much because I kind of could sense that's where it was all going because it's just ingesting so much about us as we interact with it.

[B]

And then the usefulness of O3, the reasoning model, once it had the capability of searching the Internet, so if it didn't know the answer, it would go and find it and help you. Like now I hear stories, that kind of stuff. No, not deep research, just. Just the thinking model with the tool of the Internet.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

So like you can ask it like, hey, like, what does the government need to get my new address? I Just moved to this state and its ability to go and figure that out and then go find Reddit forums and like, find your trip for you.

[A]

Everybody that's normal now, you know, everybody thinks that's normal now.

[B]

Yeah, but that blew my mind last. It just. Last spring hasn't even been a year that that capability has been out there now.

[A]

And if we didn't have it anymore, we'd all be upset.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, we. We'd all waste away trying to go back through the websites, especially the government websites, trying to figure it all out. So I have to ask, looking back at past marketing revolutions, what echoes do you hear in the AI era and where does the pattern break? What's similar to past ones you've seen, and where is it going differently?

[A]

Well, the one that I'm obviously the most familiar with is social media, because I started Social Media examiner in 2009, and I felt like I was late to the game, but I wasn't social media, some of the sites started in 03, some in 06, so I wasn't really late. Just helps everybody understand how early we are on this AI bandwagon. This does remind me a lot of the early days of social media. I called it the Wild, Wild west back then. As a matter of fact, my very first online event, which I had Gary Vaynerchuk keynote at, I had this guy on a horse in the Utah desert or whatever, racing across the desert, and I just called it the Wild, Wild West. And we're hearing a lot of people use that phrase, right? It's kind of the wild wild west right now, because there's people doing whatever the heck they want. You know, they're not really asking for permission, you know what I mean? They're just kind of taking things into their own hands, and that includes a lot of the companies that we rely on. They're stealing my books, you know what I mean, and using it to train the models, all that kind of stuff. But the reason it reminds me of it is for a different reason, because in the early days of social media, it was very complicated to understand this new thing. Understanding Facebook wasn't super intuitive back in the day, and it was just Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is all there was. And Twitter was ridiculously confusing. Nobody understood what the heck. You're supposed to only tweet 140 characters. What's that all about, right? And it required a lot of training. And AI is not intuitive today. It's just a little cursor, you know what I mean? You have to know how to use it. So these two parallels are kind of shockingly similar because it's only as good as you know how to use it. Know how is the key word. Those who know how have a huge competitive advantage. That was exactly the case back when social media popped. Huge advantages. Because there were so few people back then doing the kinds of things that everyone does now. And even though, yes, there's millions of people utilizing AI, you and I both know that they're just using it as a glorified search engine. That's all they're doing. 99.999% of users of of ChatGPT are asking it a question and accepting the answer. That's it. Okay? It's exactly the same. There's nothing different. So, yeah, there you go. That's my answer is that this is exactly the same as the social media era, but it's growing much faster. As a matter of fact, it's growing too fast because consumers cannot keep up. What were you about to say?

[B]

Does it break any patterns? Does it different than how social media does?

[A]

That's the pattern break right there is that every big business in the world has this internal belief system. We got to get there first. Okay? We're going to spend billions to get there first. Okay. What does get there first mean? Nobody knows, okay? But all they know is they need more Nvidia chips and they need more access and they need faster processing time and more memory and all the things, right? So there is no major company that we can think of that's in the top 20 companies of the world that is not investing billions in this. So this is the difference, right? When social media started, there was no major companies behind any of it. They're all startups. Today there's two startups, OpenAI and Claude. And then the other big one is Gemini, which is not a startup, okay? And then you have a bunch of. You got Facebook trying to do stuff. But the startups are not winning because it's so hard to pull this off and it requires enormous financial capital and resources. So this is the quandary that we're in right now because these companies are spending billions and billions and billions on energy chips, all these things, and consumers aren't adopting it fast enough. They got a real problem, right? They're innovating, but they don't have a marketplace for people to buy these products yet. And that is completely different than what happened in social. Social organically grew on its own and AI is trying to be grown by institutions. Does that make sense? And the institutions are not succeeding, which is why all these companies are filing to go public this year. OpenAI and Anthropic will be public companies this year because they have to, or they'll go bankrupt. And Gemini will win.

[B]

Which is an interesting conundrum because I remember social media. It was a consumer thing. We all did it. And businesses were like, why would I post? How is that good for business? And executives were making fun of social media for a while before they're like, oh, it stole the election. But with AI, it seems like businesses are more the front runners of it and consumers are kind of lagging behind of it.

[A]

Consumers are using the one tool, right. Which is ChatGPT.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And maybe they're using Gemini if they're in school because. Or Copilot, because the school is on Microsoft or on Google ecosystems. But it's ChatGPT. We know this, right? It's the one that's winning the race. And it's kind of like the early days of social people were with Facebook and that's all there was. You know what I mean? And then eventually they went to Instagram and then they went to all the others.

[B]

You know, there's one massive AI consumer app that most of us marketers don't really think about because it's not applicable to marketing, but it's actually a huge consumer one. It's a character AI. You've ever been there?

[A]

Yeah, I haven't tried.

[B]

That one's pretty big. Bigger than Gemini.

[A]

I haven't tried it, but I know what it is. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's an acquisition target by somebody.

[B]

Yeah, it's an interesting app, but it's more consumer focused versus all the other tools we. I usually talk about on this show are, you know, have business applications, especially marketing applications. But character AI is interesting because it's like talking to a fictional character, but it's actually setting plot points for you, as if you're reading a novel, but you're one of the characters in it. So now you're interacting with the character, but you can see, you can even feel it, like forcing you down a path that you know is coming based on the dialogue you're having with the character. You're like. It's like an interactive novel almost.

[A]

That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, I mean, that's. That's entertainment. That's really cool. I've never tried it.

[B]

Worth a try. I feel like marketers will get into that eventually where we're building interactive experiences for as content marketing. I Don't think we're there yet, but actually made a prediction that we would do it at some point. But I've been wrong on that prediction. Now I'm like, sometimes I guess it's.

[A]

Mostly for the younger generation that has a lot of time on their hands or the older generation, but probably not for the working class is my guess, right?

[B]

Not yet. I think we'll build, I mean, imagine a day we'll have websites that are not completely custom tailored to you. Otherwise we would just go to our own ChatGPT account. But we will have websites that might, you know, adjust themselves pretty by a lot to accommodate themselves for you or emails or whatever, whatever it might be.

[A]

Well, you know, it's funny, I had Jeremiah Oying on my AI Explorer podcast recently. He works for Reid Hoffman's venture capital. Reid Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn, a firm up in the Bay Area. And he's talking about a day where. And again, this is coming through the lens of the Bay Area, but he's talking about a day where agents will interact with your agent friendly website and humans won't go to your website at all. So imagine creating an agent friendly website that's designed so that when AI agents come knocking at the door, they know how to interact with the agents and facilitate the entire transaction without human involvement at all. That's what he's saying. Because that's where they're making their bet. You know, that's where they're making their investments. But in that era, there is no such thing as a website. You just go to your agent, the agent does talks to all its agents, which talk to all the other agents that your businesses have created and then they all negotiate deals behind the scenes and then come back and close the deal for you. That's what he's. Let's just hope that doesn't actually come true. Because I like the idea of us marketers having a little agency. But that's what, that's what they're betting on.

[B]

It will probably be things rarely ever really die, but they change. So that will probably be true. And then websites will still be true. I just got a new client that came and I'm like, how'd you find me? And she's like, chatgpt recommended you. Which is funny because like I've searched myself on ChatGPT, even blank ChatGPT, to see if I come up as AI marketing consultant. Not really. If you search AI marketing podcast through a generic ChatGPT, then my show will come up, but not marketing consultants. I'm not exactly sure what she did to, like, find me or how it was personalized to her, but it came up and then she browsed my site.

[A]

That's cool, because that's the AI basically taking all of its understanding of her and all of its understanding of everyone in the ecosystem and customers. And that's why it's going to be really hard. And I've had a number of people on my various shows talking about this. It's not going to be easy, but to kind of be the one, because there is no. It's not like a Google search. You know, the days of, like, having to work through 10 different results and all those days are gone. Now the AI is doing it all for us. Right. That's what, that's what the research does. That's the benefit.

[B]

Yeah. Remember I posted on LinkedIn a while ago, it's like, because of that, certain things in marketing will change, but then some things won't change. There are things that humans and AI care about. Positioning, for example, like positioning still widely applicable because the agents will care if you specialize in the thing that they're looking for for their client. Right.

[A]

And I also think humans want to verify too. I mean, the trust concept. Right. Like, people don't fully Trust what the AIs come up with right now. They're going to want to verify, you know, the concept trust but verify. So humans are going to need to verify with their own eyes that what the AI is recommending to them is actually what they believe to be true as well. And that's a good thing, at least for now, because that means they're still going to take those recommendations, go to your website, check you out, maybe even check out your socials, look for the things that humans look for, and then ultimately affirm or deny the recommendation of the AI agent.

[B]

Yeah, it's going to be wild. So that's good to segue into. Like, if we just zoom out a little bit more and look at five to seven years from now, what does your gut tell you the marketing industry will look like because of AI?

[A]

Well, first of all, I think all of us are going to be much better marketers because we're already getting better as marketers because we have access to all these tools. And I think that the what we call bad marketing is going to be what we today call good marketing. Does that make sense? Because what we call good marketing today is going to be the bottom standard. Does that make sense?

[B]

Yep. Yep.

[A]

And good marketing is going to be like, good marketing is going to be like 10x more than what we think it is today, right? So everything that we think that is good marketing today is going to be the bare minimum baseline, right? And the future marketing is only going to be incrementally more powerful. So, for example, today we think about marketing as just like a couple of channels, right? Like, we're going to do podcast marketing, we're going to do email marketing, right? We're going to do Facebook and Instagram marketing. Well, five to seven years from now, that's not going to be enough. You know what I mean? We're going to be doing like 25 different channels and it's all going to be managed by one person and all their AI agents, right? And anything less is going to be considered not even acceptable, right? So marketing is going to get better. It's going to be more persuasive, there's going to be more simultaneous things going on because AI is going to enable all of that, and it's going to be good because it now means one person or a small team can accomplish what in the past might have been 50 to 100 people, right? What it would have taken that many people to do. And that's good news for the small businesses that are out there, because right now, most small businesses cannot accomplish everything they want because they do not have the money to hire all the people they need to hire to be able to pull off all the things that they want to pull off. That's going to fundamentally change, which means there's going to be a lot more people buying products and services that they didn't even know existed. Because AI is going to help them be better marketers. That means there's going to be more exchange of commerce. That means there's going to be more flow of money. That means there's going to be more prosperity. All the things that are going to come from that. That's the first thing. The second thing is that I think that human plus AI is going to be absolutely essential. I think that there will probably be a resistance, major resistance against just pure AI, Right? Even though it'll be really good, I do think that it's kind of like the easiest way to describe this is you can have robots like in these movies. You can have robots and then you can have guys that are wearing robot suits. Sometimes the guys that are wearing the robot suits are actually. They got the human brain plus the robotics. You know what I mean? It's a horrible analogy, but I think, like Iron Man. Yeah, exactly. Rather than just the robot itself, right? Which has limits. So I think human plus AI will be absolutely huge. Because if we can get to a point where we as people can spend more time in our higher order tasks, the kind of tasks that normally take enormous brain power and Dan, you know those tasks, you know what they are for you. It's probably creating takes a lot of brain power, right?

[B]

That's right.

[A]

So if you can actually, if you can create 10x faster because all the difficult things are sped up for you now, right? Like the ideation stage is sped up, the actual, the video phase is sped up. Because all you have to do now is speak it, direct it, and then modify it and edit it. And then eventually you're just gonna be talking to a machine with your own voice and you're gonna say, rotate that 90 degrees, zoom in, zoom out, change my hat to a different color. Let's work on the lighting in the background, you know what I mean? That's where we're going to be. All of a sudden. You'll be able to create incredibly awesome stuff, videos, all the things, right? And creative unlock is going to be huge. It's kind of like the equivalent of the Matrix where Neo all of a sudden learns kung fu, right? I think that all of a sudden now creative marketers are going to be able to learn very rapidly how to do things and that they don't know how to do the whole thing, but they know how to do pieces of the thing. For example, let's say you always wanted to make a movie and you're really good at writing, but you suck at the rest of the movie. Well, what if you can bring on all the extra layers, like an expert in lighting, an expert in music, an expert in storyboarding, you know what I mean? All of a sudden you can be a movie maker, you know what I mean? So I think the human plus AI thing is going to be huge because I think it's going to unlock incredible creative things. People's mindsets are going to shift from I can't because I don't know how to. I can because I have access to unlimited resources. And if you have access to unlimited creative resources, what's that going to unlock? It's going to unlock new business ideas, new creative ideas, just tons of stuff. And for real creative people, I honestly think that the creatives are going to have a renaissance. The most creative will win full stop. And I think creative people, especially people that have any attention challenges, like people that are like me, that are dyslexic, or people that have ADHD or any of these kind of challenges. All of a sudden now the AI can work as fast as their brain can work. And now all of a sudden, holy crap, look what they can create, right? And all of a sudden they can have forces that come alongside them that maybe bring the operational or the follow through or all the things that they're not good at. So I really do think this is going to be an incredible creative renaissance. We're going to see things that we never even thought possible and, and it's going to be good. I don't think it's going to be bad.

[B]

I love it. I, I mean I, I'm already feeling it already because I used to work at a podcast agency and he used to take a team of like four people, A writer, a producer, audio guy, and a video guy, like two weeks to turn an episode. And I was always like so long to turn one episode, one interview, and not even like really complex editing or anything. Nothing fancy is just getting out and then writers got to listen to it after it's edited and you know, write the piece and write the social for it. And it took time to get all the deliverables back to the client. But now as a team of one, and I'm working within some constraints here, there's some things that I can't do in order to speed up the process. But as a team of one, you know, we're talking like 30 minutes of prep depending on who I'm talking to or if I'm doing a solo, I record that takes the longest time because you can't rush the production part. But then the post production is just like click, click, click. Oh, Here's a transcript. ChatGPT. Do what I've already taught you to do. Bam, bam, bam, bam, done. And then even tools that even post it for you afterwards. And it seems like what used to take two weeks in team of four, I'm now doing solo in maybe three hours. And most a lot of that's just rendering time and the time it takes to actually say what you need to say or do the interview. So I'm already feeling it. I wouldn't be able to do this podcast without those tools. And now I'm trying to champion how the people that do it.

[A]

By the way, across every questions were amazing. I don't know if AI helped you come up with these questions or did you come up with these on your own?

[B]

Oh, Chat GPT definitely helped me come up these questions. I had to do deep research on all the interviews you've been doing because I know you've been doing other interviews. I'm like, well, I don't want to ask Mike questions that he's already answered before. I want to ask. And I kind of gave it the vision. I'm like, there's certain questions that I want to ask Mike that are big picture questions, industry questions that he's uniquely capable of answering. And that's the question that came as.

[A]

A result with this line of questions. I was like, wow, these are really good questions.

[B]

So that's, that's the power of being AI driven is you can have it go and do the deep research, analyze all the other questions. I guessed like you have already said and spoken to and then find, find the missing, missing piece that we can cover uniquely on the show. But every show's got its own angle. So every show could be doing stuff like that in a way that's unique to them. So next question is, you talked about how this human plus AI like releases new possibilities, but in your opinion, what are the specifically human skills that AI can't do, can't do well, or just complement gets complemented with AI that marketers should be focused on?

[A]

I think discernment is kind of the key word here. Knowing good from great. And I think humans know great when they experience it, when they see it, and they know good. And I think humans that exercise discernment when using AI, and you and I both know that we've all been guilty of not properly discerning the output. You know what I mean? We're just like, oh, it's so much better than I can create publish. You know, we don't read it sometimes. But I do think humans are uniquely skilled to discern good from great, better than AI can. I think it just is something that we're born with is this ability to kind of know greatness when we see it and when we experience it. The other side of it is understanding human emotions. So I don't think AI fully yet is able to understand human emotions, but it's getting there. But emotions are something that is a feeling more than it is an expression. Does that make sense? So we sense it. AI can't sense the way humans can sense. So I think when you couple understanding emotions with discernment, those become really valuable skills that AI is not going to be able to replicate. But if you are using AI and you can use your discernment and try to think about how this might feel or how it might make other people feel, I feel like that's the one, two punch. It's kind of those two things utilized by humans in relation with AI, that can result in something very powerful.

[B]

The one I think about all the time with this is that scene from Good Will Hunting. Well, Robin Williams is talking to the Will, the kid, he's like, you know a lot about a lot, but you don't know what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.

[A]

Right, There you go.

[B]

I kind of come back to it. It's that experience. Like you, you haven't experienced anything. You don't actually know.

[A]

That's a really. Because AI can only experience things through the lens in which it's trained. And right now most AI is being trained on the written word. And that means it hasn't seen the movies, it hasn't walked through your house, it hasn't witnessed the world. And they are training world models. And that's coming. But right now it's not there, which is a major limiting factor to AI.

[B]

And it'll never be able to experience it as a human because it's never a human. It'll never have the human experience, which is going to freaking count for a lot. As we write copies, we try to use our discernment to decide good from great. It'll never know because it's never actually had to grow up. It's never had parents, it's never had all these things that we've all had as humans. So human discernment and taste, is there anything else?

[A]

No, I mean, those are the big ones that I can think of. Well, not even taste as much as emotions. Right. Just the sense of knowing what is and what is not good or bad or. I mean, it's discernment. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, those are the ones I came up with. I haven't put deep processing into it, but probably upon further reflection, I might amend some of those answers.

[B]

I don't know what are some of the old marketing or creative behaviors that just become obsolete in this new era?

[A]

Okay, well, I think this one, it's a little early to tell, but I think the tea leaves are out there on this, that people are not going to be searching in the way that they used to search for information and answers. So if we think about the historical way we've done this is we've gone to Google or to Bing or whatever, and then we've been presented with their machine learnings what they think are the best answer, which have all been manipulated by marketers and that is kind of going away. And we already are seeing all the signs. Like, heck, even Gmail now. Is just rolled out. The ability to not even show your emails anymore and just to lift up kind of the things that it thinks are important to you. So the idea that that's a consumer behavior, that's going to change, right? Which is that there's going to be what I call the single best answer. And the single best answer will be always provided unless asked for otherwise. Said another way. Where should I eat some Italian food tonight? It's going to give you one answer. But if you say list out all the Italian restaurants that are good, that are nemor, that you have to know how to query the system. You know what I mean? But we are moving towards an era where only a answer or only a few answers are going to be the result. And that is going to fundamentally alter the way that we market. Because the job of marketing is to get a message in front of an audience and if there's this intermediary in the middle of it, which is this AI system that decides what to reveal to that person and we don't have any control over it, that's going to alter completely the way we market.

[B]

Don't you agree 100%? Because I'm, because as a consumer, I'm already doing it this way and already selfishly wanted to continue in that direction. So I want him to say, hey, go and find me a date spot with my wife. And it's like, huh, well, they like that Italian place last time. But Dan's trying to watch his cholesterol. So I'm going to keep that in mind. I'm going to go read some menus and try to find something Dan likes. Okay, this one, this one looks good. It's got top rated. It's going to go and find a couple that are nearby and find the one based on things that it already knows about me. And I'm like, selfishly, I want that, but as a marketer, I'm like manipulate that.

[A]

It's like having your own little personal, you know, Assistant. Yeah, yeah, executive assistant. But yeah, that's, that's going to make it really hard for us marketers, right? Because honestly, there is no way to control the input. There's a lot of people that think they've understood it, but nobody really knows.

[B]

But I mean, it's like the, if you just think about, like, okay, well what, what are things that people would want to come here for? I think it just comes down to like, you, you just have to do more, but it's getting easier to do more. It used to be hard to set up a website now you can vibe code one, it's easier and that'll continue to be easier. But now it's like, okay, well let's get the nutrition facts of all of our menu items up and we can give something, gives the, the agent something to go and look at. Right. Because but like otherwise it's just guessing at what the nutrition value of these things are.

[A]

Yeah, it's, I think we're gonna see pretty quickly. OpenAI in particular is gonna need to monetize so they will have sponsored answers. Whether consumers will pay attention to it is really a big question.

[B]

Or continue to trust.

[A]

Yeah, but you know, we're already starting to see a little bit of this. Like when you search for products and services, you do not see Amazon in the results, but you do see Walmart in the results, which is really interesting. And it kind of signals to me that Amazon has got a competing investment that they've made inside of Claude. Right. And until Amazon makes a big investment in OpenAI, which I believe they are negotiating right now, you're not going to see Amazon products listed in the recommendations. Right? Walmart you are. So you're starting to see how this might work. Right. Once they turn on the commerce engine, they're going to for sure make people pay to play. Just like Apple made Google pay a fortune to have it be the default search on the phone, on the iPhone and on the Apple computer. So there's going to be those kind of arrangements going on behind the scenes and that'll be really interesting how that pans out on the E commerce side of things.

[B]

Probably be like a big affiliate network where it's just taking affiliate commission for every recommendation.

[A]

Hey, if Amazon for example, has the exclusive recommended products, then you can bet their bottom dollar that everybody's going to be paying Amazon to make sure that they're the ones that are recommended. You know what I mean? So there's going to be like all sorts of weird back end deals going on.

[B]

So last question, describe a business that's thriving in 2030. What are the leaders doing today to build that business? Maybe even things that are kind of like no one's, no one's let. Not a lot of people are putting emphasis in this thing right today, but it'll be the things that will be celebrated in best practice like five years from now.

[A]

Okay, well it's hard to believe that it's actually four years until 2030, which is kind of scary.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

But I'll take a stance, I'll take, I'll Take a view at this, that I think those that are going to be thriving in 2030 are going to be taking some definitive actions right now. And I think one of those actions is going to be training. I think as we mentioned earlier, using AI is complicated. It's not intuitive, especially as a marketer. And I do believe that, and all of my contemporaries believe this as well, that getting people trained up on how to use this inside of the businesses that they work for is going to be absolutely essential. Because those that survive are those that adapt, right? When social media came out, people fought against it. And those that are not on social media today are struggling. When the Internet first came out, everybody fought against it. And now the biggest companies in the world are all Internet based companies. Okay? So the biggest companies of the future are all going to be the ones that embrace where the trend line is going, which is towards AI adoption. So in order for that to happen, people need to actually train up. It starts with you. You have to figure out how to use these things. You can do that by listening to Dan's podcast. To my podcast. We founded the AI Business World Conference, which is which Dan, you're going to be speaking at, which is part of Social Media Marketing World. That's going to probably be one of the best opportunities for you to come and literally sit at the feet of 20 of the world's leading AI experts. Coming up in April, the AI Business Society you mentioned earlier, you've got pro programs and stuff like that. But take, you know, carving out time and taking this seriously now, because we're so early, is going to be absolutely essential because you are going to have an unfair advantage because this stuff is not intuitive. And I don't think it's ever going to be intuitive. It'll eventually get to the point where it's so baked into everything that it will be intuitive. But those that understand it now and start unlocking keys, it's like unlocking doors. And the more you get, it's like you get more keys, the more you begin to learn this stuff and more doors open. And when doors open, opportunity is on the other side of those doors. And that opportunity could be career opportunities. It could be entrepreneurship opportunities for you to go off on your own if you work for an existing business. Or it could be you become one of the more valuable employees inside the company because you help lead the company into this next evolution, revolution, whatever the right word is. Renaissance. So I think that the key thing is going to be training. I don't know, what do you think?

[B]

I Made my career off the back of learning all the digital tools first because the marketing directors didn't want to learn them and I was the kid in the room. They're like, well, he'll figure out. So I figured out email and text message marketing and social media and all that kind of stuff. Before long I was the one who was the marketing director. Like it just didn't take that long because that became. Now we don't even call it digital marketing anymore. Right. It's just marketing because that's just digital is standard. And doing print is almost like the niche version of marketing these days. Right. Because no one, hardly anybody does it. And I think it's that same thing with AI. Like the people who want to leapfrog over are getting trained now, but training is just the beginning. You have to get training and then go and experiment and take some reps at it and then go get more training to figure out how to do it better in different levels of it. But the ones who get training early and then start acting on it. Yeah, I could see that happening because I saw it. I mean it happened with digital, happened with social, but it starts with that first step of training.

[A]

Well, and let me just say one more thing folks. If you feel like you're overwhelmed a little bit, join the club. None of us have got it all figured out. It's impossible to keep up with. But you don't have to have it all figured out. You just need to have a little bit of it figured out. Enough that's going to give you an edge. That's it. And then once you learn it, then you learn something new. That's how we always do what we do. So I would encourage people to dive in deep. I think this is, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for so many people that are listening.

[B]

If you go to socialmediaexaminer.com AI-driven you will go to a special link where you will get a discount for a limited time. I think it's two weeks.

[A]

You just said social media. Oh, okay, you're right.

[B]

Socialmediaexaminer.com AI driven special link. You get a discount on AI the AI business world. A conference conference. So go to that URL if you want to join this conference. You want to hear spend some time with me. I'll be there both days, Wednesday and Thursday at the event. Mike, you'll be there. And a ton of awesome people that are really people. You really do a good job of finding people that are in the trenches doing the thing.

[A]

Yeah, it's probably one of the more.

[B]

Conferences I've been to.

[A]

Yeah, it'll be an extra $100 off the already discounted price, so I can't wait. Thank you, Dan, so much for having me on the show.

[B]

Thank you for being here. The same coming up.