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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the Bald Ambition Podcast. I'm your very bald host, Spooky Spitz, and the one with way more hair and all the ambition this afternoon is Mr. Jimmy Gibson, VP of Brand Communications at Thrive. Welcome to the podcast, Jimmy.
- [00:24]
B
Hey, monkey. Glad to be here. Your energy is infectious. So looking forward to our chat.
- [00:30]
A
All right, let's. Let's rock and roll. Marketing. Advertising, often seen as a bit of sleight of hand. You've got background in magic, moving user perceptions in a way where you could change behaviors, at least assumptions. How did. How did it evolve for you from Magic Jimmy to VP of brand?
- [00:55]
B
Yeah, I was looking through some boxes a couple of years ago, Mookie, and I found this membership card to Merlin's mail order Magic Club. I was like, oh, I kind of remember that. And I flipped over the card and did some quick math. I was like 4 years old, and I thought, oh, that's pretty early to get hooked on something. And then in high school, I met a guy who was the account manager for a Fortune 100 company, and they were looking for a promotional entertainer. And for the next 16 years, I worked for that brand and got to hang out at the ad agency and see all the cool stuff they were doing. And I thought, you know, if there was a career that was most like magic, it would probably be marketing. And so I sort of had this dual path where I continued to do shows, I worked at ad agencies, and it was just sort of the filter that I saw campaigns through, because they're basically the same, right? You got to make that connection. You got to keep them focused, and then you move to the climax of the magic trick or the conversion to, you know, get the. Get them to fill out the form, get them to purchase the item, get them to schedule a sales call. So, yeah, I would say there's lots of similarities. I still do magic, and I'm still in marketing. So it all worked out.
- [02:09]
A
Unless you believe in the supernatural. Magic tricks have an explanation. Once you look under the hood, you see what's going on. It's combination of years of skill and practice, but proven techniques and marketing, advertising, communication is the same way. If you do a great job of it, it appears magical. You move mountains, you deliver the ROI to clients. What's your secret sauce? How are you doing things differently? And I understand that you've got a particular focus in attention, in cutting through the noise and getting your clients the attention they need. Idea of. Of. Of brand identity differentiation. How does the magic happen for you and your clients?
- [03:01]
B
Yeah, And I would say, I'll use that magic structure again. I started to reverse engineer what happens in a magic trick, and it's actually some brain chemistry going on, which I think is the same brain chemistry that happens when you have a successful customer funnel. And, you know, a magician walks out on stage, and they need to make a connection with that audience. So they may talk about the theater, they may point to somebody in the front row and make a comment. There has to be some sort of shared experience that we're all in this together, right? And so that's the same thing when you talk about any sort of communication, whether it be a leader, inspiring a team, or a cold audience that you're trying to connect with. Like, there has to be some common ground. And that brain chemistry, when that happens correctly, is actually the release of oxytocin. And it just sort of floods your bloodstream with this feeling of like, oh, this is kind of cool. I like where this is going. Let's see what happens. And that sort of gives you the permission to move to the next step. And, you know, a lot of people think the next step is, okay, you present your solution, you go for the close, but that's actually the wrong way to do it because the magician has to instill some curiosity. And so I've performed this particular illusion probably 500 times. But an assistant comes out on stage, she lays down on a table, and I say to the audience, you know, hey, what if I could make this person float in the air? And so it happens. And so through that process, the audience is going, well, I don't know how that's possible. I don't see any wires. I don't see any electromagnets that are, you know, causing the person to go up in the air. And so you can do the same thing with a marketing message where if you know your customer really well, you know what they've investigated, you know what the other options are. And so you can present those two magic words the same way. What if I could deliver this at half the cost and twice the quality, or, you know, whatever the value proposition is. And so the person on the receiving end is going, I don't see how that's possible. And they start to try to connect the dots. And that's actually a release of dopamine. And, you know, people hear about, oh, you're addicted to dopamine because you're on social media all day. Well, no, it's actually the expectation of a reward. It's the need for closure. That's why People binge watch, you know, TV shows, right? You want to know what happens next. And so that's the loop that's opened up when you present something and the person starts to think, okay, I gotta know how this turns out. And then the finale of the trick is the person floats, they come back down, everything is cool. And that's a release of serotonin. And that's like, oh, wow, I didn't think that was possible. Everything is right with the world. This is so cool. And that would be the natural flow that you would want to happen in a marketing message where they go, okay, I understand what you're saying now. I believe that what you're telling me is worth investigating. How much does it cost? Where do I sign up? Can I schedule an appointment? You know, those types of things. So instead of the conversion being weird and creepy, it's like the natural progression of how our brain wants to receive information. And so, yeah, I would say that's a lot of the time that we spend is working with clients and understanding, you know, who is that person? What is going to trigger that curiosity for them to know more, and then what is the correct next step to bring them to whatever that conversion state is?
- [06:53]
A
An effective way to trigger that dopamine, the serotonin booster shot, like you described so well, is consultative selling. So you want to bring out those pain points so that you can stimulate your prospect. And then once they're interested, by getting to know what their needs are, you can pay it off with a solution that seems custom tailored to them. So the dopamine is almost the agitation of, of listening to what's wrong, you're a problem solver, and the serotonin is delivered. Hopefully when you offer that needs payoff, which is, I've heard your pain, I understand what you're going through, and I've got a potential solution for you. So you eliminate potential objections. You make an otherwise transactional exchange where you're trying to sell them something into a partnership and a communication that seems seamless, almost inevitable. And if you do your job right, just as if you're an accomplished magician, you mesmerize, but then you also deliver the satisfaction that they've not only been entertained with you, but they see, see the benefit of the whole experience. Does that kind of jibe with where you're at and what you're trying to do?
- [08:25]
B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because if you're, if you think that their pain is one thing and it's not, they're gonna, that connection's not gonna happen. They're gonna turn off, they're gonna scroll past, they're gonna what? Whatever the action is that gets them on to the next solution is gonna happen because you have personal to them.
- [08:51]
A
Let's roll our sleeves up and do the real magic in 2026. So everything we've been talking about is awesome, but in a sense, it's table stakes for marketing communication, not just this year, but, you know, for many years. What's happening now and is H has happened and is basically revolutionized. Everything is. I hate to even say it because it's so ubiquitous to the point. Point of being a cliche, but artificial intelligence, the agentic technology, everyone is confused and enticed at the same time. Your specialty is cutting through the noise and delivering a sense of brand identity, differentiation. How. How do we. How do we get there now that everyone, our clients really, just to be. To be frank, are confused. They don't quite know what advice to take. They don't know whether they should be talking to a human or a bot. And they're trouncing on this precipice of the traditional ways of doing things and this new brave and uncertain territory of plugging into something they don't quite understand. So how do you negotiate this? And then how do you get some benefit of the new tools and tech to deliver that message and activate it?
- [10:15]
B
Yeah, so we can go as deep as you want. And, you know, obviously you're going to interrupt me along the way here, but what's happened over the last 18 months has been probably the biggest change that I've seen in marketing. We've probably been around the same amount of time and seen all the algorithm updates.
- [10:39]
A
I lost all my hair through this, this, this career in marketing and advertising.
- [10:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, it'll. It'll cause you to pull it out for sure. But, you know, desktop publishing was a big transformation and people were like, oh, now everybody's going to be a designer. And we're, you know, we're hearing some of the same rumblings and, you know, there's all sorts of tools. Claude is getting a lot of press now for all the magic that it can do. But, yeah, you're right, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors. And so I'm gonna throw out a couple of statistics and, you know, at the end, maybe I'll give a link to a place that people can go grab a free report that talks about all of this stuff. Because what ended up happening was about 18 months ago, the founder of Thrive came to me. We've been around for 20 plus years and said, you know, I think this whole AI thing is kind of coming up faster than we thought. We've really relied on inbound leads, but we haven't really been too proactive about putting what we've Learned over those 20 years out there. I'd still like to help other businesses, but we need somebody to be the voice of the company. And it's not going to be me, it's going to be you, Jimmy. And I was like, oh, okay. So obviously with a performing background, I was like, okay, let me get on a bunch of podcasts, let me write some articles, let me be visible. And so I did a bunch of stuff last year, like a lot of stuff. And then about Q3, I started tracking exactly what was working and how visible was I as a executive within an organization to AI. What was the benefit of that and what was the state of a lot of other business owners in the same situation? And so I basically went into the research lab and did a study of 400 businesses across five industries. And I wanted to do more, but I started looking at the data and at that 400 level across those five and then spread out across the United States. So there wasn't any geographic bias that gives you about a 95% statistical reliability. And what I found was kind of crazy. 46% of business owners were invisible to AI. And you may think, oh well, of course that's fine because you know, the company would be visible. What also was happening at the same time was last year, 60% of Google searches ended in zero click. You go, whoa, wait a minute, what's happening if it's zero click? Well, there's a lot more stuff now on the search engine results page for Google. There's AI mode, there's featured snippets, there's a knowledge panel, there's an AI overview. Now, we've heard in the last few weeks that the 10 blue links are going away. And then you hear with Gartner, this year, organic search is going to drop 25% and by 2028 it'll drop 50%. And so you have all these things converging at one time. And the visibility factor for AI is vital for businesses because, you know, if you look at how visibility has typically gone, Google's been the biggest 500 pound gorilla in the room. And if you were visible on Google, that was it. But a lot of the visibility is now getting fractured into these large language models. People are talking to ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and Grok and Perplexity and copilot. Now, the majority of the searches are still being done on Google, but as I just said, the 10 blue links are going away. And the way that AI looks at the visibility, it actually prefers people than it does logos, because a person can demonstrate expertise, experience, authority, trustworthiness. That's the acronym EAT, which Google adopted in 2016 and updated in the early 2000s. And the AI models pick this up too. And so it's no longer table stakes. As you said earlier, to be visible in Google, you have to be visible in these AI platforms. And then it's also vital that somebody within the organization doesn't have to be the owner or the founder. It can be an executive, it can be a subject matter expert needs to demonstrate some of this, those four letters, one or more. Experience, expertise, authoritativeness or trustworthiness. Because, and I'm sure we've all heard the term AI slop or chatgpt slop. It's a lot easier to create content now, and a lot of that content doesn't say anything. And when an AI model goes through its training data, it likes to hover around the middle because what is it? It's a really bad mind reader. And we'll keep the magic analogy going. It just wants to know statistically, what is the right answer to this question. And so if you have a plumbing business and you want to write a blog about the top 10 things you should check, well, it's just going to write the same thing as everybody else. Now, I will say that the bar is extremely low for the visibility and we can talk about some places that you can go, but it's really looking for who is saying something with a point of view that is stating some experience and stands out from the crowd.
- [16:35]
A
All right, I'm going to take you up on your offer for me to interrupt you. So I'm going to put a pin in it and give a little summary. So the days of Internet search are transforming because of the bots and the links are going. And we're getting to the point where the old model is no longer effective for getting noticed online. You can put an ad ppc. What are we going to do now that the chatbots are taking over? You get increasing percentage people using the bots. These bots are chewing up content online and they're looking at it very differently than the Google and Bing spiders used to do in the past. If I've got a business and I want to get noticed, the rules are changing out from under me and I need a guy like Jimmy, who gets this? As you've already demonstrated. So let's cut to it. Let's go right to some best practices. All right, I've got Bald Ambition llc, and I need to get noticed online. Now, I used to pay for ads on Google and they were geolocated. And I knew how to put a content strategy together to differentiate, but I don't know what to do now. Jimmy, help me out. What, what, what is this all about? We're going from SEO to geo. Am I supposed to meta tag? How am I supposed to build my messaging in this crazy AI world? Help me out, buddy.
- [18:14]
B
Yeah, so I'll talk about a number of things. You don't have to do them all. And so the first thing is you need to understand where you need to be. And then we'll transition, we'll take a break, and then you have to figure out what to say. So let's talk about the destination first and then the strategy about what to say second. We used pizza analogy before. I'll continue that analogy. I kind of call it the pizzeria effect. So every three to six months, these large language models that we mentioned before spend a ton of money and they go out and they do their training data. And so they basically get to the end of the Internet. Everything that's out there, they pac man it up.
- [19:01]
A
I call it waka waka waka waka waka. The spiders used to just. The Google spiders used to just check stuff out. They just poked and tagged. Right. The bots now are eating it up. They're eating it up, chewing up all your content. It could be copywritten. It could be your own personal stuff that's floating out there. It's all getting slurped up into these huge models.
- [19:27]
B
Yeah. And so that's the pizza dough. And so they wrap up that pizza dough and they put it in the refrigerator. And so when Mookie is interested in finding an answer to something, he'll type in. And let's just use a large language model. It used to be a three to five word phrase in Google. Now it's about 32 words to start with. And whatever large language model you're using pulls that pizza dough out of the refrigerator and says, mookie wants a pizza. And so let's say you're looking for that plumber, and that plumber doesn't have a whole lot of information that was included in that training data. And so that pizza is going to have a really thin crust or it's actually potentially going to make a pizza crust. For your competitor down the street, because it's gotten you confused and it's not really sure who you are, but there's going to be a pizza made. And so you may say, oh, okay, well, if I'm not in the training data, what do I do? Well, don't worry, it still needs pizza toppings. And so then it goes out and does its live retrieval. And it loves fresh toppings, so it loves fresh live retrieval stuff. And so if you miss the training data, you still have an opportunity to be a pepperoni or a sausage or a pineapple or, you know, whatever the case is, to make that a nice pizza. And then it's going to serve up that pizza. And so the combination of those two layers again, is either a nice deep dish or it's a really thin crust, bland pizza. And it could be a pizza for somebody else. And so when you think about that, you go, okay, well, I understand the pizza dough part because it just Pac Man's to the end of the Internet. But what about these toppings? Well, it changes frequently, but I would say as we're recording this, Reddit continues to be the number one place. Why is that? Because it's heavily policed by their users. It can't be promotional or you'll get banned. It is sort of real world customer interactions, you know. So if it's appropriate for your business to engage in threads on Reddit, that can be a good place to go.
- [21:41]
A
All right, let's put a pin on that because this is very interesting. Okay. In the past, I would build a website for Mookie Bald ambition to kind of lure. Lure the spiders in and build authority. Yep, right. Remember Panda for Google, all that stuff. So my content strategy as a marketer had to do with building web stuff that the Google spiders would like and give authority to. So what, what you're suggesting here is that there are ways that, that you could stand out. And if I'm reading you correctly, a very interesting tactic that you're bringing up is the pac mans are going and eating up Reddit. And if you can establish a presence on Reddit that ties back to your brand, it's analogous to what in the olden days was creating a web property that you own and that gets spider. Am I on point with this?
- [22:43]
B
Yeah. Now let me, let me add the website component in. Since you brought that up. I was going to save it till the end, but let's go ahead and put that in place right now. Out of those 400 businesses that I studied, 92 of their schema markup was there because typically if you're doing Some sort of CMS, um, it's going to be built into WordPress or Yoast plugin. So the plumbing was there for the schema. There are some technical things that you can do to help that out. But I would say, and I sort of hinted at it before, I said, when Mookie goes into one of these large language models and asks a question, that's why it's called an answer engine optimization, because it's basically a question and answer approach. And so I would say it's high time to go look at your website. And if you have blogs on your website without an author, they need to have a byline of an author and they can have you and they can have your title. And now it starts to understand, oh, Mookie has written this article, he's an expert, I can find it on the website. Okay, and so that's one, you know, pizza topping there. Then if you don't have an About Us page, it's time to have one. And what you can do is AI is looking for third party validation that you are who you say you are. And so let's say that there is a thread on Reddit that mentions you. Let's say that you belong to an industry association and you have a listing on that association website. Let's say that there is a trade publication that interviewed you. Let's say there's a podcast that you were on may be associated with that association. That's awesome. These are all coherence to the AI to understand who you are. Well, on that About Us page you should go list all of those with links to that third party. So now your website becomes an index that is able to be clear about who you are, where the verification of who you are is. And now when it is able to connect all those dots, you are really far ahead of some other people and your pizza starts to get pretty tasty.
- [25:05]
A
How is this different than some of the best practice recommendations for Google authority ranking?
- [25:11]
B
They overlap. But here's the difference.
- [25:14]
A
I just want to bring that up because they're not mutually exclusive at all. They're self reinforcing. So if you did your Google back in the day, well, you should be pretty good. You'd be you, you should be pretty good because you're already doing a lot of this stuff, right?
- [25:29]
B
But the difference is when you optimize for Google, you're optimizing a page for ranking based on a keyword and there's about 230 components of that algorithm. But it's not the same 10 blue link approach that AI uses. It's trying to paint a picture, but based on the connect the dots of who you are. And so the other mindset that's a shift is you have to be really clear about who you're talking to as your audience and what you're an expert at, because it's much better to talk about three to five things in a hundred different places on the Internet than a hundred different topics, because AI cannot figure out who you are and what you're an expert at. Right. And so it actually is a relief. The other part, and we'll go down this list and we can, yeah, this is great dialogue. So keep poking at me here. The next place, believe it or not, is LinkedIn. And why, why does it like LinkedIn? Well, I said that AI likes people more than logos. It knows that that's a professional platform. It knows your whole resume. There is an about section that you should optimize. There is a, you know, header. There is a title section where you need to be clear about who you are and what you do. And don't be clever, be clear. And search engine, well, the other thing is there's about a billion people on LinkedIn. 2% actually post anything. Now, Search Engine Journal did a study back in November of 2025 where they studied executives who posted on LinkedIn. And if they posted 10 times a year, not a month, not a week, a year, their referral base increased 30% and their deal size was 3.7 times larger than their typical deal size because they're getting visibility from the fact that they're actually posting and there's coherence as to who they are. And so again, the bar is laying on the floor. All you have to do is step over it. And so you don't have to do all these things. The other thing that's interesting is YouTube has become a key place for these large language models to go. They're actually scraping and gobbling up the transcripts now. Yes, you could start a YouTube channel. It's not that hard to do. And it doesn't care. Number one, it doesn't care how many followers you have on LinkedIn. It doesn't care how many people engage with your post. It doesn't care how many subscribers you have on YouTube. Your reviews are important. It looks at a sentimen of is there positive or negative conversations going on. You mentioned Reddit as an example. And so again, there are all these traditional PR types of things you Know, in your community, if you are in the home service business and there's a real estate agent or broker who has a blog and they mention you as the right person to provide this service, that's a thumbs up. That's a third party recommendation. Perhaps it's appropriate for you to get in touch with your local radio station, your newspaper, your TV station, and be an expert that you can contribute to. I started writing for Forbes and Entrepreneur because of the authority associated with those platforms and the fact that those are also places where these AI models go. And so each one of those pizza toppings.
- [29:11]
A
So let's look at this old school, new school for a sec.
- [29:14]
B
Yeah. Yeah, sure.
- [29:15]
A
So in ways, this is a lot like old school, which is you're building authority with links. The difference is that the Google bot was stupid. Basically, it had 230 rules that was cross referencing. It was based on keywords.
- [29:37]
B
Yep.
- [29:37]
A
And it was using multivariate analysis. Very sophisticated. Google blew the doors off everyone. There's no accident that that Larry and Sergey did what they did and that they're zillionaires.
- [29:50]
B
Sure.
- [29:50]
A
And dating supermodels and whatever. They, they, they knocked it out of the park because they built an engine that could scrape the Internet and draw these connections. But that model is antiquated because we've got neural networks fueled by matrix math with complicated weighting schemata that do amazing things that in a sense put some intelligence behind this. It's not just cross referencing and indexing these 230 parameters with a bunch of dumb content, but it's doing semantic analysis too, and it's connecting the dots based on your presence online. Right. So I'm a blogger. I do rants on TikTok. I'm also a marketing guy. I'm on almost all the platforms. LinkedIn, I've got a Patreon. I'm all over the place. Now. The good news is I cover a lot of ground and I'm poking the bot in all sorts of ways so that Mookie Spitz podcaster is being understood within the context of Mookie Spitz blogger and Mookie Spitz marketing guy. And it's trying to figure me out. It's not just indexing this to keywords, but it's almost like creating its own profile of me. And that is an opportunity, which is what you're highlighting with these best practices. If I've got it right, like do what you've been doing before, but take into consideration that this entity behind the curtain, back to the magician. View is way smarter than it was before. It's drawing way more connections, and it's actually paying attention and ranking you and prioritizing you based not only on the sheer volume of your stuff, but on the quality of it. Is that more or less what I'm getting at? And it's a fascinating opportunity for everybody. They say, you know, quit your bitching and drop your linen. Don't be shy with your online presence and accentuate your knowledge. Become a thought leader if you aren't already. And you got to externalize your economy accomplishments, your benefits, your metrics. Let the world know what you and your business are doing and do it a lot. Do it cross channel and do it in a way where you're educating these already pretty smart bots to pay attention to you and to rank you better. When people talk into their phone and ask for a pizza in the neighborhood, is that more or less right? So I love this conversation because we're bringing it down to earth. And you put it in a way that's very, very practical, prescriptive. You got to get out there, folks and you and you got to position yourself in a way where everything that might be internal is externalized and you're doing it on multiple platforms so the bots can build up this story about you and your business.
- [33:15]
B
Perfect summary. And so I was speaking at an event at the end of April and went through all of this and a business owner stood up and said, okay, let me ask you a question. I just canceled all of my social profiles and I don't want to be online 24 7. I have a family. I want to have some free time. What do you think about that? I said, well, you're a business owner. This is a business decision. I've shown you the next three years what's going to happen with traditional organic search. I've painted a picture of where AI is going. I'm not your business coach, but I would say you might want to resurrect those profiles. And you don't have to be an influencer. You don't have to be on there 24 7. If you have a team you can delegate, make sure it's in your voice. I'm not saying you have to post every single day. I'm saying consistency. And just like you said, there should be some educational things that let people know what you're experienced at. Right? And so I think that's the difference. Number one, this should not be a doomsday conversation that there's no way to figure this out. We've just walked through a very simple approach. Right. It's not rocket science. You need to be able to publish in public. If you're better writing, then write a bunch of stuff. If you're better on video, if you're better on audio, like, there's plenty of ways to translate those into a transcript, translate those into a blog. You know, we haven't talked about using the tools. We talked about visibility to the tools. But I would also caution that you just don't want to rely on one of these large language models to create content for you because again, it's going to float to the middle. It's going to be very generic. It's not going to have any heart and soul to it. It's not going to talk about your skin, knees, bruises, and champagne toasts. And so that's what I want to talk about next. Once you say, okay, I'm in, I'll dip my toe in the water and start to publish some things over the next 90 days. Then like this writer's block or, you know, video block comes into your head and you go, what the heck do I write about that is going to matter? Is that fair?
- [35:42]
A
Okay, you bring up a great point, which is this cat chasing its tail. People are using AI to create content.
- [35:50]
B
Yeah.
- [35:50]
A
And they're using AI to create content about everything we're talking about. And it's, it's lowest common denominator stuff. So we are creating AI slop about ourselves. So if I get to the point you're making is put some heart and soul into your own damn story and your own damn business. Because if you just put in a prompt.
- [36:14]
B
Yeah.
- [36:15]
A
You're going to end up sounding like everyone else who put in a prompt. And it begs the question. It defeats the purpose of differentiation. You gotta stand out.
- [36:24]
B
Yeah. Okay. This is probably the simplest content strategy that I can deliver, and it will give you enough content to last you the rest of the year and beyond. Okay. For those of you watching on video, I'm holding up my left hand. For those obviously listening, you can just follow along. I'm gonna start with my pinky. So we probably remember the pinky promise on the playground as you made as a kid, you, you know, interlocked pinky, and you say, I pinky promise too. And you did not break that promise. And so if you're in business, what promise are you making to your customer? A prospect, Your team, your vendors? What are you willing to make a promise in public that you can stand behind and honor beyond everything else? Right. It May have to do with the way you do your service. It may have with the raw materials that you use. It may have to. With your guarantee. So right there, you've probably got 10 things you could talk about that AI cannot replicate because it doesn't know what you're passionate about. It doesn't know what you're willing to put your neck on the line for. Right? The next one is the ring finger. And you might think that's a promise, but it's actually relationship, right? And so my wife and I just celebrated 20 years of marriage. That's a different mindset going into our relationship. Relationship that you want to be in it for the long haul. Does your customer know that you're committed to them for the long haul? What are you willing to give up in the short term so that you keep that relationship for the long term? Right. You can't win every battle. What about your employees? Are they going to be around? What is the common tenure of your staff? What about the relationships you have with your vendors? And it's also about the passion that you bring. And why did you start this business? Why are you doing what you do, where you do it for, whom you do it for? Right? There's got to be some heart and soul into that that you can express, because we all know that passion is infectious, right? When you get excited about something, somebody else gets excited about it. And then I talked about establishing and respecting that relationship. Like, I didn't ask my wife to marry me on the first date. She would have gone running. Right? So what is the courtship that you need to work through with a prospect? And don't ask for marriage on the first date. Right? And so there's another 10 or 15 things you can talk about. The next one is the middle finger. And if you're still listening, I'm not giving Mookie the finger. I have all my fingers up. This is typically considered a vulgar expression, but it's actually an expression of defiance. And so what. What is your brand giving the finger to? Who is the villain? Who is the enemy of your brand? If you really believe that your product or service is the best, you need to save your customer from the villain. And, you know, I mean, that's. Every sports, you know, team out there is like, the next person you play is the villain, right? And so you can rally your fans and your team around that villain, and you can write a ton of stuff. Now, you don't have to be rude. There's a way to say it. Like, you have to decide what is the voice of your brand and how you express that. And it doesn't have to be a company. It can be an ideology. It can be a concept, whatever the case is. Right. The next one is the pointy finger. And I say pointy finger because you have to be able to point at who you're talking to. If you can't point at one particular person, like, it's not somebody. It's not, you know, a male between 25 and 50, they have very different needs and fears and wants. Right. It has to be one person. And if you can't point to that person, you can't talk about those previous three fingers. It's also number one. What are you doing to be number one? What are you committed to? Right? And so there's another 10 or 12 things you can write about. The next one is the thumb. The thumb is the universal symbol for thumbs up. Like, if you just had a dashboard that was thumbs up. This is working. Thumbs down. This is not working. Like, no wiggly wishy washy in the middle. That would be a pretty cool dashboard. It's also the thumbprint. Like, I have three sets of twins as nieces and nephews. They can actually open each other's phones with their face, but they can't open it with their thumb. It's unique to you. What thumbprint are you leaving on your customer? How has their life changed? Because they work with you. What about your employees, your vendors? We talked about that before. What is unique? What is the combination of things that you bring to the equation that nobody else brings? And so right there, you carry this with you every day. You could work through those fingers again. You've probably got more content than you could do in a year. But AI cannot replicate any of those things that we just talked about. And so you have to be the gatekeeper as to what goes out about your brand. Because if AI is a pattern recognition system and it likes to hover in the middle, as soon as you stick your head above that middle and you say something with passion and a point of view, all of a sudden it zones on you and it goes, hey, wait a minute. This person is saying something a little bit different. Let's figure out what they're saying. And if you're consistent in the way that you say that, then that's your secret to success.
- [41:38]
A
Awesome. Let me summarize. Make sure I heard you right. Pinky is the pinky promise. You're making yourself and your customers a promise, and that's tied to integrity and trust. It's deeply Emotional right out of the gate. And it's bot free because it comes from the heart and it has everything to do with your value proposition. Next one is relationships. You're up. People to person business. Whether it's a product or a service, you are relating and connecting to others. Share how you do that. Share how you create, sustain and grow your relationships between you and your colleagues, your staff, your leadership, your customers. You are human and express yourself that way. F you to the other guy. The rule, rule, rule number one reason Trout positioning. Differentiate yourself from the opposition. And if you have to go against the leader and if you're leader, then stake your claim. Everyone loves the battle. People need to see how you are different through the eyes of frankly your competitors. And if you got what it takes in terms of making that promise, in terms of building relationships, you do it better. Tell the world about it and go for it. And the bots are going to listen and they're going to re share that. The, the finger pointing. Know your audience, don't just blast it to the world. You've got a particular audience, you got a particular product, a particular service specialization. I love In N Out Burger. They've got burgers, they don't have lobster bisque. I go there because that's what I get. Your customers know what they need and want. Focus your attention and then put your thumb on it. Show how you're different, how you're special, how you're unique to doing all those things. And if you just go through that list, you've got megabytes of images, videos, points of view, posts, shares, comments. The bots are listening. They're stealing all that content. They're absorbing it up into their big old brain. And if you do it right and you do it a lot and you do it with passion across all these five categories, you will differentiate yourself. You will stand out. And as the landscape in digital is changing out from under us, it's your best bet for staying relevant and staying seen. So don't blow up your website, don't change too much. Just do more of what you've been doing and do it with even more heart. Because ironically, in this age of AI, those who stand out the most are the most human and not the most mechanical. And that more than anything else is an antidote to all this doom saying and hysteria. The robots are not going to take over the world. They won't take your jobs as long as you prove your relevance. And I think this is terrific advice, Jimmy. This is a great way to set the stage for dealing with this AI revolution that we were talking about from the beginning. Don't freak out. It's actually better for you. You don't have to rely on a dumb Google engine. It's stupid. You know what? I. Here's an anecdotal story. I post a lot on YouTube. You know, I've got five podcast shows, and I convert these to video.
- [45:37]
B
Yeah.
- [45:38]
A
And I'm a DIY kind of guy. And to this day, Google is asking me to meta tag, and then I get 10 emails a day from India reminding me that my SEO sucks on my Google channel. And I'm like, you know what? I'm creating a ton of content and it's good. And you dumbasses have the transcript too. Why am I not only doing all this work to create all of this content, but now you want me to meta tag it? You want me to categorize it? And I'm not visible to Google. Get out of here. I'm more visible to OpenAI and anthropic and XAI than Sergey and Larry. So come on, Google.
- [46:31]
B
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, everybody wants to game the system. It's called artificial intelligence because it's just guessing it's being artificial. And I think you summed it up great, right? Like, be yourself. If you can be yourself, we are. This is the point that I've never seen before, where you're going to get matched up with your ideal customer. The more real you are. The ability for customized experiences is like, we're just at the tip of the iceberg. Like, you know, if you're planning a trip and I'm planning a trip, because of our behaviors and our preferences, we're going to have two different trips. Right. And so that should be very exciting to business owners, because how many people want more, you know, customers that are friends because they're the awesome fit, as opposed to going through churn and going through this headache of, oh, my gosh, I attracted the wrong customer. Well, the only way that you're going to track the wrong customer is not being true about what you're saying online or what your customers are experiencing. So, yeah, 100%.
- [47:35]
A
Yeah. I love this. I think we're in a transitional phase, and it's fascinating. It's frustrating, too. If you're a content creator, whether you're a business trying to market, whether you're an influencer, whether you're a magician, an entertainer, you are releasing tons of information to the world. And conversely, the world is releasing tons of information about what it needs. So the connection between Creator and consumer up to now has been pretty damn opaque. And companies have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to just draw simple connections between a product, a service, any kind of content, and the ideal consumer of that content. And what the bots can do, better than ever before is drawing these connections because they read between the lines of what the businesses and services are doing and creating, especially if you follow Jimmy's advice here. And they also understand billions of consumers and their buying habits. So we're freaking out that Skynet is going to destroy the world when the silver lining of this, if you look at it in this Pollyanna kind of way, is you're going to have an unprecedented opportunity to connect directly with those consumers who most want and need and appreciate what you're doing. And the way to start down that path is to follow Jimmy's advice here with your fingers and start letting the bots know who you are and how you're different. And do it with gusto, because they are paying attention. And you don't have to blow the bank on a bunch of banner ads when you could just let the bots know who you are and let them make these connections. I think it's cool. It is cool. This is an inspiring way to look at it. And I'm guessing, just to take the conversation one step further, that the bots know this. They're smart people there, and they are developing, as we speak, advertising models to make this even more efficient and impactful. So rather than like, buying keywords, bidding on keywords, that used to be the model, and it worked long time, but that's pebbles and bam, bam compared to what we're talking about right now. If the bots can do what we're saying they can do, which they are already doing, and if they can operationalize that service model, there'll be an opportunity to take this to yet another level. I would pay a lot of money for my podcast, this podcast to go to. I know thousands of people who otherwise don't see this would be like, yeah, Mookie and Jimmy, this is just what I need to succeed. But how do I do that now? Well, I gotta meta tag my. My podcast and throw some of the platforms a few bucks every. Every week or month to get visible. I need to make sure that the title is optimized. And I'm sitting here like, seriously, at this point, I need to do that when. To your point, Jimmy, you've got the entire transcript of this podcast in your brain, right? Anyway, I'm just celebrating this opportunity for everyone to be all they can be without having to meta tag your website or optimize your SEO. Yeah, it's glorious times to live in, Jimmy.
- [51:45]
B
I agree. I am as excited about it as you are. You know, don't be stupid and put personal information out there that could compromise security.
- [51:55]
A
That's, that's the flip side.
- [51:57]
B
That's a drop in the bucket. As long as you're smart about it. That it's of your benefit to be yourself online and let people enjoy the unique person and the unique business owner that you are like. That's exciting. I don't think we've ever been at this point. And you're right, it is a transition from the old to the new.
- [52:18]
A
It's terrific. So how can people get a piece of you and thrive? We'll put links in the description below. And how does it work? Do you do a, a session with your clients to get to know what their needs are? Do you have online resources that they could check out? How. What's your, what's the tip of your spear for creating relationships?
- [52:41]
B
Yeah, I would say our website is thrive agency.com I publish a really long blog. Yep, down below I publish a really long blog. As one of the writers in the company, we publish a lot of information about this, so plenty to read and watch for free on that. And then there's obviously ways to get in touch depending on what your needs are. We are full service, so lots of ways we can help business owners. And then I practice what I preach and I publish five days a week on LinkedIn. Pretty snarky and I don't hold back as to what I believe is the right way to approach this. And it is exactly what we talked about today. So you can engage with me there. And if you have any follow up questions after listening to this, I will respond to you if you DM me. But remember to follow the sequence, don't do a connection request and then immediately try to sell me something. You got to raise my curiosity, right?
- [53:39]
A
I will follow you on LinkedIn. So just give you a heads up that, you know, don't just block me. And we'll repost this podcast on LinkedIn for. For people to get a piece of the action early.
- [53:52]
B
Now I've just finished a book, it should be available by the time this goes out called Uninvisible. And it's a real short. It's designed to be read in one or two sittings, 99 pages. And it kind of reviews everything that we just talked about. And then if people want to download that Full report I talked about. Then go to business visibility index.com below
- [54:13]
A
too and we'll put a link access
- [54:15]
B
your book and it will cost you your email to get that report, but it's about 21 pages of really cool info. And then you'll get signed up for five days of an email course that will give you your launch pad over the next 90 days on how to get visible. It's not a sales pitch, it's educational and it'll summarize most of what we talked about today. So I think that's valuable for folks.
- [54:38]
A
Awesome. And the last step of this before I let you go is, you know we used to say omnichannel.
- [54:44]
B
Sure.
- [54:44]
A
Remember there was multi channel.
- [54:46]
B
Oh yeah.
- [54:47]
A
Now there's omnichannel. And you know, they got to think of something, they got to think of something new. But anyway, you mentioned that, that this approach to AI is just one of the arrows in your quiver. Can you, can you make a quick comment on how you take everything that we've shared today on this pod and integrate that with the rest of your engagement strategy? Because I think that's what some people are wondering about, which is obviously you don't just isolate an AI strategy, but you keep firing on all cylinders, especially as everything's transitioning over.
- [55:25]
B
Yeah, great question. So the owner, Matt, decided when he started the business that he would not specialize in any particular size business or any particular industry. So we work with mom and Pops all the way up to franchise multi location enterprise companies. And so the only way that we can work with that variety is to meet the person where they are. Like, where are you? Where do you want to be? And we have a lot of conversations about visibility, we have a lot of conversations about brand, we have a lot of conversations about, like, who is your ideal customer? What do you want to say to them? What is the service that you love delivering? What is the product that you know, if you could sell more of these, what would it be? And then we start with strategy. I actually came to Thrive to run their strategy department, department, because I believe if you don't have a good plan, you're going to end up somewhere very expensive and somewhere you don't want to be. And so we map that out and we go, hey, does this match what you want? And then we, because it's digital, we track that through the process. And so it could be some traditional SEO and how that bridges with this AEO and AI world.
- [56:37]
A
That's why I wanted to bring it up, because I don't want people to leave this, you know, enthralling, enriching podcast and think that they just need to dedicate all their time to writing tons of blogs and making tons of home videos. So keep the message here is keep doing what you're doing. Yep. Only do it better and smarter and augment it with all the great stuff we're. We're talking about here. Because you want to be ahead of the curve.
- [57:02]
B
Yes.
- [57:02]
A
You want to start picking up habits that we know is going to make all the difference, not way in the future. That's the other thing about this AI stuff. It's like. It's like our foreign policy. Every time you. You look at the news, it changes. Yeah, that's AI too. So, you know, it's. It's good to, to be ahead of that. And you can talk to everyone about their overarching omnichannel engagement as well.
- [57:30]
B
Absolutely.
- [57:31]
A
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jimmy Gibson, VP of Brand Communications at Thrive, giving us some terrific context and even better prescriptive recommendations for becoming uninvisible in this crazy attention commoditized universe that we live in. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. Pick up the habits now. Make yourself seen and take advantage rather than cowering in a corner, afraid of the Terminators, because even if they're coming, we could still have a good time until they get here. Thank you so much, Jimmy.
- [58:12]
B
Thanks, Mookie. It was fun.