Loading summary
Transcript77 lines
- [00:01]
A
We recently announced our new conference, AI Business World. Here's a sneak peek at what you'll discover when you attend. Prompting Mastery Master proven strategies to get the quality results that you need every single time. AI Tool Selection Learn exactly which AI tools to use for which marketing tasks. No more decision paralysis or guessing. AI Workflow Integration Discover how to seamlessly integrate AI into your daily work, saving you hours every week. Now, there's two different ways to attend. First, if you already have a ticket to Social media Marketing World you're in, you don't need to do anything else because AI Business World is included at no added cost. But if you want to get tickets only to AI Business World, all you got to do is visit AI businessworld Live. Again, visit AI businessworld Live. I can't wait to see you there.
- [00:56]
B
Welcome to the AI Explored Podcast, helping you put AI to work. And now, here's your host, Michael Stelzner.
- [01:07]
A
Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the AI Explored podcast, brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers, creators, and business owners who want to know how to put AI to work. AI is fundamentally changing human behavior in ways that might surprise you. Some people say that it's wise to delegate AI to people who are a little bit more savvy, but is that really true? In today's episode of the AI Explored Podcast, we'll explore how AI is changing human behavior and how to prepare for a rapidly changing reality. My special guest is a futurist and the author of lots of books, including How AI Changes yous Customers, Marketing Rebellion, and Belonging to the Brand. His podcast is the Marketing Companion. Mark Schaefer. Welcome to this show for the first time. How you doing?
- [01:59]
B
Well, I am great, and I always have a discussion with you circled on my calendar because I'm so excited. We always have such a good time. You always get my wheels turning.
- [02:09]
A
I feel like this has got to be at least the 10th time I've interviewed you across one of my shows. So let's just start with your journey into AI, because obviously there's a story there, so I'd love to hear it.
- [02:19]
B
Well, I'm a curious person and there's nothing I think you could be more curious about right now than AI. Right before ChatGPT came out, I had finished writing a book called Belonging to the Brand. So the first thing I did to test it was write an essay based on one of the themes from this book, in the voice of author Marc Shaffer, and doggone it, in three seconds, it did a perfect job. And I pretty much could have used this thing right in the book. And it was one of the most depressing moments of my life.
- [02:58]
A
When was this? Was this like December or January after it had come out?
- [03:01]
B
It was November.
- [03:02]
A
Oh, like November 30th was the day it launched. It must have been like in the first couple of days.
- [03:05]
B
Yeah, well, maybe it was like December 2nd or something then. But I certainly tried it right away and it really was a wake up call because part of my meaning and purpose in my life is going through that hard work of writing a book. And when I saw how effortlessly this thing could create something that was pretty good, it made me wonder, like, what is my future? What is my role now? Since then, I've sort of figured it out and I've kind of put away a lot of that existential fear to think about how AI can make me a better communicator, a better author, a bolder, more creative consultant, someone that has a bigger impact on the world. So I'm very excited about it. But it definitely has been a journey.
- [04:00]
A
Well, and just share a little bit about like how you're using AI now because obviously those who have been following you and or us together for a while know you as a guy who's more mostly been positioning himself as a marketing strategist and futurist. So just out of curiosity, like maybe just mention a little bit about what you've been focusing on and maybe just a smidgen of of a story about why the heck you wrote this latest book.
- [04:23]
B
Well, first of all, I mean, I use AI now almost every hour of the day because I'm curious about things and I want to learn things. And one of the things I found, Mike, and maybe you've observed this too, is that a lot of people only use AI as like a glorified search engine. And I mean, that is kind of important. But I teach at Rutgers University and one of the things I found is that even young people, even mid to senior level marketing executives, really weren't trying to explore the edges of this thing. So I've been teaching a class on how to use AI to create a new business. From ideation all the way to specs for manufacturing. It's just amazing. It's breathtaking what this thing can do. I mean, for me, I think, like you to a large extent, I spend a lot of time alone. I'm pretty much a solopreneur. And so AI has become my companion, my Confidant. It's great for brainstorming. And I've sort of come so far in my journey that I've kind of taken the ultimate risk. I've created a markbot. I've uploaded, if you can believe this. I mean, I uploaded all my books, all my blog posts, all my podcasts, my speeches, my workshops, my strategic frameworks into a custom GPT and unleashed it on. On the world. I'm not trying to monetize it, it's just. And experiment. Because I'm at a point in my life where I want to teach in a bigger way, I want to mentor in a bigger way. And so it's like this is an experiment to see can I have a bigger impact in a positive way on the world? And it's, you know, and it's kind of working.
- [06:22]
A
Love it. Since you're obviously teaching and talking and doing, what do you see as one of the biggest misconceptions right now when it comes to AI?
- [06:31]
B
I'll tell you, Mike, it's delegating the work. And what I mean by that is, look, you know, I've had executive positions at big companies, and what leadership does is they say, okay, I'm looking at the big picture, and I am going to delegate all the doing to the people underneath me. And I understand that that's kind of been a standard operating procedure for leadership for a long time. But here's what I think people need to grasp. You don't really know the potential of these tools until you do it, until you can really push the edges of this thing. And one of the wisest pieces of advice I was ever given in my career was by the amazing marketing management guru Peter Drucker, who was my teacher for three years. He said, being an effective leader, you don't have to have all the right answers, but you have to have the right questions. And in this AI era, you can't have the right questions until you know what's possible. And you can't know what's possible until you try this stuff. So roll up your sleeves, experiment, talk to people who are into this and say, what should I try? Should I try NotebookLM? Should I try Midjourney? Should I try Sora, or should I try Perplexity? Find out some of these main tools and spend a couple hours pushing the edges of these things so you could better direct your company and your team to go deeper.
- [08:15]
A
Cool. Okay, so we're going to dig into how AI is changing human behavior. But before we go there, I want to know from your Perspective. What is the upside? When we marketers, entrepreneurs, creatives, creators, when we understand that this behavior shift is happening, what are the benefits? Because I really want people, we're going to unravel some of the challenges, but we. I really want to, like, have a carrot out there so people understand, like, if you can grapple with this thing, it's got some upside. What is the upside?
- [08:48]
B
There's an upside and a downside to every aspect of every type of technology. And unfortunately, what we see in the media and the press too often is the scary stories and the downside. But there is an upside, and I try to strike a very careful balance in my book. So a mentor told me once that there's no such thing as a weakness, there's just an overdone strength. And I think that's the way it is with AI. So if you're using AI like I am, to sort of amplify my thinking, to help me be a bigger and bolder professional, awesome. If you're a curious person and you use AI to fuel your curiosity, you're going to thrive. But if you use it as a crutch to only get the answer to pass a test, you're going to wither. So that's the positive, that's the negative. If you use AI in a time of confusion, I'll tell you a little story. I'm trying to struggle with where I go forward as a writer, because I love the writing, but I don't like the promotion and all the stuff that goes with a book. And I asked ChatGPT and ChatGPT said, well, maybe it's not really about the writing. Maybe it's how you define creativity. Could you be happy writing without scaling it? That was really interesting advice. Right. That's the positive. But if you use AI as a therapist, that starts to overrun your ethics and your values and important life decisions. If you start to rely on AI in an emotional way where you're losing connections or even the ability to relate with humans, because that takes work, that takes compromise. You don't have to compromise with an AI bot. They're always going to be there for you. But if it becomes a crutch, that's a negative. So I'm very careful in the book to show both sides. It's a book that's going to startle people if you're not immersed in the AI world, but it also shows the positive aspects of it and applicable, actionable ideas we can use as marketers. Because I think a lot of these projections of how Humans are being rewired before our eyes. They're going to come true. And as business people, as marketers, we have to understand our customers better than anybody. And if they're being rewired, we've got to know about this and start thinking about the implications.
- [11:27]
A
Now, I love this, and I look at marketing, smart marketing, as understanding human behavior. And when you understand how human behavior shifts and changes, you have an opportunity to take advantage of it. For example, you and I both know that there was a change towards video over the last five or six years and specifically towards shorter videos, right? And for those who really understood that and got on that bandwagon, they were able to ride that wave. Now, we're here to talk about how, again, is this technology AI? We're talking ChatGPT, we're talking Google, Gemini, we're talking Claude Grok, whatever, you pick your poison. But how are these powerful LLMs, these tools, fundamentally altering human behavior? Because this is the part of the conversation that I'm really excited about and.
- [12:22]
B
I want to be clear that what I articulate in the book, this is just felt like Mark Schaefer's view of the world. This comes from a very important piece, research. Earlier this year, Elon University brought together 300 futurists, technologists, psychologists, philosophers, academics, to answer one impossible question, how will AI change humanity by 2035? Well, the resulting report was amazing. And I asked the sponsors of the report, can I turn this research into a book? And I got their permission. So this is really built on the consensus ideas of 300 global futurists. So that's important to know because we don't really know where AI is going to head. Even the people, the insiders in Silicon Valley really don't know. But I think when these futurists reach consensus on some big ideas, we better pay attention. So, you know, a couple of the ideas in the book, number one is cognitive offloading. So what I mean by that, and again, this is the plus and minus thing, right? So when AI can do special tasks for us, we tend to lose our ability to do them in the future. A great example is reading a map. I, I haven't had a paper map in my cart in 10 years, and I'm so happy about that. I can use Google Maps, I can use Waze and get to where I need to go. And there's a probability that there's a generation of people that don't know how to read maps.
- [14:06]
A
Well, they might not even know what roads they're supposed to take, even though they've taken them a thousand times, right?
- [14:10]
B
Yeah. I mean, you don't even need to know road signs really. I mean, so we're being de skilled. An example I give. And this is very natural in some ways. I mean, before I got married, I always did the taxes. When I got married, my wife said, you know, I like to do the taxes now. She's been doing the taxes for years. If I had to do the taxes right now, I'd be lost. I've been de skilled in that area. So there's a positive to that. Right. Because it gives me time to do other things. Same with AI, what the futurists are worried about. And this is the crutch part, this is the over functioning part where if we turn over too much of our skills, then we're going to lose important functionality as human beings. One of these futurists went so far as to say, he sees in the future AI is going to be so capable. As we adopt AI, it's like self imposed dementia, this cognitive offloading. Another person said, he sees in the future, deep thinking is what the weird people do.
- [15:23]
A
And by the way, we should distinguish. You're not talking about deep research, right? This is an AI phrase, deep thinking. You mean actually sitting in a corner in your favorite chair and actually contemplating something? That's what you mean, right?
- [15:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because here's the most profound quote in the entire book. I met this young woman, she's a junior in college, and she said, I use AI every day. I met her at a community event. I said, I'd like to interview you for my book. So when I called her up to interview her for the book, she said, you know, Mark, would you ask me for an interview? My first thought was, I must have chatgpt give him the answers.
- [16:07]
A
Wow.
- [16:07]
B
She said, it made me realize I've crossed a line. I use ChatGPT to do emails, really to communicate to the world. She said, I have made myself dumber. Where am I? And she said, all my friends are adopting this the same way. So we begin to see this de skilling, this de skilling, this cognitive offloading. Your mind can go a million directions of what this means for business and what this means for marketing.
- [16:45]
A
Well, I mean, and just let me just pause you for a second there. Here's what it might mean for marketers and content creators. If it's true that we're relying on AI to give us insights and answers, we better make sure that our company and our brand are part of that. Don't you agree?
- [17:05]
B
Yeah, and I get into that in great detail in the book, both online tactics and the general idea so far is that good marketing that's going to show up in AI too. I mean, there are a few nuances of things that are different. AI doesn't seem to like backlinks.
- [17:27]
A
Yeah. And I just realized we're going to get into this in a few minutes, but that's just. I'm planting a seed there.
- [17:31]
B
We'll get into more detail on that. So let's go into like another one of the ways humans are being rewired. And this would. Another idea would be empathy. So the good part of empathy is that human beings is being shown often prefer the empathy demonstrated by an AI bot because the AI bot is always patient and it never gets tired and it kind of knows the right things to say. And you're sure it can be very helpful. But if you rely on that as a crutch, if you begin to create an emotional dependency. We're now seeing 31% of Gen Z say, I have an AI bot that is a friend. 8% say, I have an AI botthat is a romantic relationship.
- [18:27]
A
Wait, what percentage?
- [18:28]
B
You said that was eight.
- [18:29]
A
Oh, I thought you said 80. I was going to be like, we're in trouble with 80.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah, yeah. If it's 80, we're in trouble. If it's 80%, I retire. I'm announcing my retirement. But. But 8% still seems a lot. Especially like, again, if not immersed in this world and haven't looked up to see what's really happening here. Now think about one of the implications for marketing and business. Okay, what are we trying to do? We're trying to create customers. We're trying to create a great appeal that will get people to pay attention to us, hopefully buy something and maybe even someday be loyal to us. I'm working on a blog post right now, Mike, that's going to be called we're all in the Diaper Business Now. And what I mean by that is that I have a new grandson. He's a beautiful, wonderful, angelic child and he is an expert pooper. He goes through a lot of diapers. Now, if you're a company selling diapers, you're not marketing to the end user. That's not the decision maker. You're marketing to mom and dad. Now, here's what's happening. Increasingly, the trust in AI is going up. Even to view it as a friend, even to view it as a romantic relationship. Trust in AI is going up. They are often the decision maker and not just small things, especially younger people are turning to AI. What kind of car should I buy? What college should I go to? What city should I move to? Who should I marry? And so we have to start thinking about how AI is becoming the decision maker. It's like marketing diapers. Somehow we've got to show up in these results. It's different than Google, right? Because Google is more like a suggestion. It's like, oh well, you know, here's five links or here's 10 links you can check out. Of course, AI is increasingly being embedded in the Google results as well. So I mean, that's going to end up the same way. And so it does suggest a certain amount of urgency to understand how this is going to play out. And of course, big announcement last week. ChatGPT is embedding e commerce right into their answers. And it's starting out small with like Shopify and some and ebay and some other. It's not like Amazon yet or Walmart or something like that. But I mean that's coming. So profound, profound implications for the marketer.
- [21:23]
A
What if I told you while your marketing peers are still fumbling with basic AI prompts, you could become the AI expert your entire company depends on? That's exactly what's happening inside the AI business society. Our members aren't just using AI, they're mastering it. They're automating repetitive tasks, creating professional videos in mere minutes and making data driven decisions that leave everyone on their team completely amazed. Most marketers are barely scratching the surface of what AI can do for them. While they're stuck creating mediocre content. You could be leaping so far ahead that people look at you as if you're from the future. Here's how we make that happen. First, you get monthly live training from leading AI experts who actually use these tools in real marketing situations. Secondly, there is a incredible community of innovative marketers who are pushing the AI boundaries every day that you have access to. Third, we have multiple meetups per month where you get a chance to interact with your peers and ask questions from our experts. As member Lisa Kanda said, quote, the quality of training offered is the best I've experienced and from an organization that I can trust.
- [22:33]
B
Here's the truth.
- [22:33]
A
The marketing landscape is changing very quickly. Don't get left behind while others race ahead. Visit social mediaexaminer.com AI and become the AI Enhanced Marketer your company or your clients need. Future you will. Thank you. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI to learn more. Okay, so what I'M hearing you say so far is that there is this mental offloading you call cognitive offloading or deskilling that is happening right now with people that are over reliant on AI. And there's also this desire for the empathy that AI provides. One other observation that I'll make, I don't know if you agree with me or not, but good communicators are becoming better communicators as a result of understanding prompting. I am finding that actually when I prompt an AI, if I use the same level of detail when I communicate with a human, I actually get better results. And I'm wondering whether or not AI is teaching us the importance of context and clarity when we communicate. At least those of us are decent communicators. I feel like we're becoming better communicators as a result of understanding that the way we communicate with AI has a lot to do with the results that we get. That's just a side observation. I am not a futurist. It's just something I've noticed. I'll throw it out there. Now I want to ask this question. So you kind of hinted at the results a little bit, which is that humans are changing the way that they make decisions as a result of their interactions with AI. And I want to know what your thoughts are on this, because I believe this is something you might have addressed inside the book.
- [24:10]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm so glad you brought this up because I'm really interested and passionate about this and I think marketers are overlooking an important aspect of this. So there are really two parts of influencing this decision. One is online and one is offline. So the online piece, this is where we get into the tactics. This is where we get into the strategies around content. How does content show up with AI? What are the differences? I mentioned briefly that AI doesn't really care about backlinks so much. It's looking at validation of what context you're being mentioned in in other parts of the web. So here I am on your show. Maybe AI will pick up. Oh my gosh. Mark Schaefer was on my Mike Stelzner show. That's kind of the vote for him. It's a social validation that to earn his way onto a popular show like this, he must kind of have some expertise. So that sort of contextual relevance seems to be more important than backlinks. The other thing I think this is going to be a struggle is you and I both are creating content for an audience. We're creating something that's compelling and interesting and maybe even a little entertaining. AI doesn't care. AI doesn't want to be entertained. It never gets bored. It never gets tired. It just wants the data. It just wants the details. Endless, endless, endless details. So how do we bring that together? And the way I'm handling it, and I'm not saying that this is for everybody, but I think it's two audiences. I am not going to compromise to my audience. I have a blog audience, I have a podcast audience, I have an audience for my books. I will never let them down. My content will always be worth your time. It will always make you think. Now I think you need like a separate content strategy for AI because AI is the customer and that customer has a different expectation. So it almost suggests we need a separate content stream. And again, I'm not being prescriptive here, but that's the way I'm thinking about it.
- [26:39]
A
Okay, wait real quick before you go too far down this trail, because I know where you're going, I want you to back up a little bit and talk about how people are making decisions with AI, because I feel like we might have slightly kind of gone over that because I feel like this is going to connect to that. When you explain how that works, does that make sense? Yeah, because we've talked about cognitive offloading, but we haven't really talked about the, the way people are actually using AI to make their final decisions. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Because you, you were talking about how this, when we were prepping about, you had this trip to Paris and all this kind of stuff. You know what I mean?
- [27:13]
B
Thanks for bringing me back down to earth. It's okay.
- [27:15]
A
We'll come back. We'll come back. I'm putting a pin in it, but we're going to come back to that.
- [27:19]
B
So this is a story I tell a lot to explain how things are going. So two things, two interesting things about this trip to Paris. So I was going to give a speech over in Europe. I thought, you know what, I'm going to enjoy the journey. I'm going to spend five days in Paris. So I went to ChatGPT and I said, I love art, I love history, I love music, I love nature. Plan a five day trip for me in Paris and tell me where I should go and what time I should do it. And give me restaurants along the way and also tell me how to get to everywhere the metro stops and tell me everything. So laid out this entire plan and it was fantastic.
- [28:04]
A
What other little nuance did you Just go with it. Not even checking it. I'm just curious.
- [28:08]
B
I went with it 100%.
- [28:10]
A
Side note, what does that tell us about.
- [28:12]
B
It was absolutely stunningly perfect. Really good, even down to, like, how much time it would take to walk from a museum to the train station. Right. And, like, go this hour instead of that hour. And, like, here was an amazing one. So I got to go to the Louvre before, you know, they had a theft there. And it said, look, don't go to the main entrance. Go to this other entrance that's by the subway station, and you'll get in much faster. And it was like, wow. And it was true. So, I mean, it just looked at all the wisdom of the web. You know, it just reads the web and gives me the best ideas. And I followed it exactly, kind of. So here were the two exceptions. And this is a powerful lesson. And this is the part I was hinting at the. That most marketers are going to overlook because we're so obsessed, typically, with the tactics, with the content and the optimization and, you know, getting in there. But what's happening offline. So it organized this whole trip for me, except I said, I want to fly Delta Airlines. So brand preference is an override. No matter what AI says, I am going to follow the brands that I love. The car companies, the hotels, the retail brands. I'm going to follow the brands that I love. And when I was walking around, I went to a store that sells like those on shoes, you know, the cloud shoes. I mean, they're just amazing shoes. Why did I go to that store?
- [30:02]
A
I don't even know what that is. What is that? What's an on shoe? I don't even know what that is.
- [30:06]
B
You have to look it up.
- [30:07]
A
Okay. They just feel really comfortable, I guess, huh? Okay.
- [30:09]
B
Yeah. Though they're the most comfortable shoes. And I first saw them a few years ago when I was traveling in Europe and everybody was wearing them, and they looked so cool. I thought, well, I want to look cool because I need all the help I can get. So I tried these shoes. I loved them. So I went to this why I love that brand. So don't forget branding. Branding is more important than ever. It's the override. Don't get caught up in the weeds of the content strategy and forget about branding. Now, here's the other exception. I have a good friend in my marketing community, and she knows that I have to eat gluten free. I have celiac disease. My gift from COVID she's celiac. She said, oh, when you go to Paris, you've got to go to this bakery. It's a gluten free bakery. It's absolutely amazing. Not only did I go there once, I went there twice. And let me tell you something, I'm always going to look for that bakery now because it was just so outstanding. Now that was not on the itinerary. Somehow there's not enough information about that bakery to make it into the AI hit parade. But it doesn't matter because I will consider what AI tells me, but I will act on what a trusted friend tells me. Word of mouth, marketing more important than ever. So don't act, overlook the basics of marketing, the big strategy, don't get caught in the weeds about, you know, how am I going to beat out a hundred thousand other businesses and become the recommendation on AI when there's, you've got other strategies, you can become an override if you, you know, advertising plays part of that brand community is a part of that experience. Personal branding, experience, branding, word of mouth, those, that's basic good old marketing. And so don't overlook the override aspect. And you'll probably have more success with that than beating out those hundred thousand people to be the name on, you know, Mark's itinerary on a trip to Paris.
- [32:34]
A
Okay, so really interesting concepts. What I'm hearing you say is that AI is helping people make complex decisions like where should I go when I'm visiting this city or which experiences or restaurants should I visit or. And it's really, really valuable and it's really unique and it's allowing people, humans to have great offline experiences with products and services and experiences. And it's not a, but it's an. And humans still matter here, right? Because people are still going to ask their friends, they're going to ask on social, what do you prefer? And AI can help kind of work that into the model. And that's good news, right? Because it means that in some regards, I mean it's great news actually because if AI is going to help us make decisions and we only have so much brain power and our friends are also going to help us make decisions because we're social creatures and we do care about social proof, we care about what other people think. If these things can come together, it can be a power play. Okay, so now we're getting to where I put a pin in it. So earlier you said, hey, you know, there's this online world and this offline world. And you said, I'm always going to have an audience that wants to listen to my podcast or read my books or read my newsletter, you know, and I want to serve those people or come to my events and my experiences. So this leads us to the how do we as businesses today, we're entrepreneurs or creators or marketers. How do we think through this? And you started to say, well, I wonder if we should have content for two different audiences. And that's where I cut you off. I feel like that's where we left.
- [34:18]
B
And again, look, I mean, there's a cottage industry emerging about figuring this out. You know, just like SEO, you've got ahrefs, so you had Semrush, and they're trying to figure out the Google thing, and now everybody's trying to figure out the AI thing, and there's specialists emerging. And so this is all developing. But we do know those customers are different. Our human customers want something that's interesting and entertaining. Our AI customer that's making decisions, sometimes, like my trip to Paris, they just want data. They just want, you know, opening times and closing times, extreme data. So an example of something that I did to try to differentiate is I created a new FAQ for my website. I didn't really have a big FAQ before. I figure if you go to my homepage, it's kind of intuitive what I do, because it has, like six big blocks. You know, Mark's a speaker, Mark's an author. Mark, you could. He's a consultant. But AI doesn't do so well with images. Also, Mike, at Least right now, AI doesn't do so great with video and podcasts for two reasons. ChatGPT. Sam Altman came right out and said AI has a difficult time with facial expressions and sarcasm and tone. So we don't always get it right with video and podcasts. We prefer text. The second reason is the firepower. The expense of AI processing video or podcast is 10x compared to the written word.
- [36:11]
A
Yeah.
- [36:11]
B
So, you know, you know, these, you know, ChatGPT and all these other platforms, they are burning money, so they're not going to spend their time on video and podcasts. So the implication is transcripts. And I want to tell you something. I've been lazy with my transcripts. I've been lazy. But I am now redoubling my efforts to create better, informative, detailed transcripts for video and podcast content on my website. In fact, I'm probably going to pay somebody to go back.
- [36:44]
A
Because you want to feed the AI? Is that what you're saying?
- [36:47]
B
Because you want to feed the AI? Because it might be enough for me to have a podcast episode on my website to say, oh, you know, I had this great conversation with Paul Raitzer. We hit these five points and someone said, oh that's really interesting, I'm going to listen to this. But that was the action that I wanted. But I have a new action that I want today that's valuable content and I want to get credit for that in AI. So I'm probably going to pay somebody to go back at least a couple hundred episodes and help me create valuable transcripts that I'll be able to put on the blog to go along with those episodes. And the other thing I mentioned is like I've created this FAQ that's like really long and detailed about what I do, broken out into different categories. I don't really think humans are going to read that. Like I said, all I have to do is go to my homepage and boom, boom, boom, you can see what I do. But AI isn't going to get it. So I created this FAQ now on my navigation bar I just thought about like, what's any question someone could ask about hiring me as a speaker? Was any question somebody want to ask about coming to my retreat or buying my books? And then so I, and I just started creating long content to answer these questions because that's what AI wants. AI wants details. It wants to know in extreme detail what you do. And so I mean that's one little thing I did that's sort of bot oriented instead of human oriented.
- [38:26]
A
This is interesting. What I'm hearing you say is that it's much easier for AI to process text, which makes logical sense because it's much more cost effective. On the other side of it, we do have Google Gemini, which is rapidly becoming a powerful force not to be reckoned with. And we need to remember that Google owns YouTube and if our videos are on YouTube, you can rest assured. Well, first of all, all YouTube videos have free transcripts built in. Closed captioning is effectively there. But what's even more interesting is you know for sure that Google is watching all those videos. I bet you that their models are being trained on all that stuff, which is why their video models are so world class right now. So I do think you're right that this is just a processing problem today as we record this in October, late October of 2025.
- [39:14]
B
Because I think it's a short term problem.
- [39:16]
A
Yeah, because pretty soon AI is going to listen and it's going to watch and it's going to read. So that is really good. News for content creators. Talk about this a little bit. If anyone who's listening creates videos, writes articles and or produces podcasts or any kind of audio, this seems to me that this could be a massive edge for the future of AI. What's your thoughts on this?
- [39:40]
B
Massive. Massive. And it gets back to one of the core points I am teaching over and over again right now, the importance of the personal brand. Working on the personal brand, which is fueled by content. Let me give you a small example. I am getting customers from ChatGPT, and a woman hired me to do a consulting project. And I said, well, how'd you find out about me? She said, well, I went to ChatGPT and I said, who are the best digital marketing consultants in the world? And it gave me a list of the top 10, and you were on the top 10. And I went to your website and I like what you do. And I saw, you know, I could hire you, so I hired you. Now, I want to tell you a little secret. I am not one of the top 10 digital marketing experts in the world.
- [40:33]
A
You know that. But AI doesn't know that.
- [40:35]
B
I could name 10 of my friends who are smarter than me in a heartbeat. However I show up, I have, with an exception of maybe one or two weeks during COVID I have blogs almost a thousand weeks in a row every week. Never miss. My podcast is in its 13th year. I've never missed an episode, not once. I've written 12 books. I create content. I engage on social media in a helpful and generous way. So that's the keys to the kingdom. It really is, is that you sort of figure out what do you want to be known for, how do you fit in this ecosystem? And it's not about how great you are, it's how you serve. You're well aware of this, right? You are teaching, you're a teacher, you're helping them solve problems, and you have a unique platform, so you're helping them solve this problem in a unique way. Boom, you've got a powerful. And now you're creating content to support that. And so you're going to be all over AI because you've been doing this for years. And some people might be thinking, oh, well, you know, how am I going to compete with all these people that have been creating content for all these years? Hey, I felt the same thing when I started, but you still have to start.
- [42:03]
A
Well, and I want to say something here, folks. This is a better game to play. Like when you go on YouTube and you're concerned because you only got 50 or 100 or 200 or 300 views. I could care less how many fricking views you've got. AI is going to analyze your content and the quality of your content up against all the other content. And it's about more about like the connections probably between all these things and what other people think about it, and less about the vanity metrics. Because we all know some great marketers who can game the system and get a million view views, but it doesn't lead to anything. Right? And I think this is a great equalizer in some regards. Because if we can create high quality content and all of a sudden it shows up in AI, do we really care if there's a million views on a video? If we're being recommended by where everyone is going for recommendations, that's a big deal, right?
- [42:55]
B
And let me add something else. So whenever AI starts consuming all our content and this created a big emotional reaction, I don't want AI to have my content. That's unfair, that's unethical. Look, there was this little app. You could put your name in there to see if your books are in AI.
- [43:18]
A
One of mine is, all of my.
- [43:20]
B
Books are in AI. They didn't ask my permission. There's no attribution, you know, I wasn't paid anything now. But you gotta look just like you're talking about. You gotta look at the long game. You gotta look at. Don't you want to be an AI? Yes, you do. So here's something all of your listeners and viewers can do right now. Every website has some sort of defense, some security software that's keeping the hackers out. And if it's something like Cloudflare.
- [43:55]
A
Yes, that's what I have too.
- [43:57]
B
Yeah, the default is keep AI out. All right? The first thing I did when they announced that I went to my web guy said, toggle that off. I want AI all over my site. The economic value of content that's not seen and shared is zero. And it might seem emotional, might seem unethical, that AI is just taking all this stuff we worked so hard to create. But you gotta give it away. You have to unleash your content and put it everywhere. That can create business value for you. That includes, especially right now, AI. Like I said, the only reason I would show up on one of these top 10 lists is because I show up. I've showed up consistently. It's not too late to start. Create content, do it consistently. Don't give up, and let AI in.
- [44:56]
A
Mark Schaefer, author of the New book how AI changes your customers. I would imagine you can find it anywhere books are sold. If people want to connect with you on the socials, where do you want to send them? And if they want to potentially work with you, where should they go?
- [45:08]
B
Well, it's really easy to find me if you can remember businesses grow. So you don't even have to remember my name. It's a hard name to spell, Schaefer. In fact, you know, it's funny, even Mark can be hard to spell. I went in a hotel, I said, my name is Mark with a K. She said, your name is Kark.
- [45:29]
A
That must have been when you're in France or something.
- [45:32]
B
So, yeah, Mark Schaefer. But all you got to remember is businesses grow. You can find, you know, my books, you can find my blog, my podcast, and all my socials, and I'd love to hear from you, love to hear your ideas about what we talked about today.
- [45:46]
A
Thank you, man, for coming on the show. I appreciate you, Mark.
- [45:48]
B
Thank you, Michael.
- [45:49]
A
Hey, I've got some exciting news. First of all, Mark Schaefer will be at Social media Marketing World 2026, so be sure to grab your ticket. And if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at Social Media examiner.
- [46:06]
B
The letter A80.
- [46:08]
A
Be sure to follow this show on your favorite podcasting app. And if you've been a longtime listener, would you give us a review on whatever platform you're listening on? And don't forget to share this with your friends. You can tag me on Facebook, LinkedIn and or X. And do check out our other shows, the Social Media Marketing Podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the AI Explored Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may AI help you become more successful. The AI Explored Podcast is a production.
- [46:40]
B
Of Social Media Examiner.
- [46:44]
A
Get your tickets to AI business world right now by visiting AIbusinessworld live.