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From Invisible to Unmissable: How This AI Tool Helps Brands Get Found Before the Search Begins
From Invisible to Unmissable: How This AI Tool Helps Brands Get Found Before the Search Begins
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- [00:00]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Welcome to Lead with AI, the show where we uncover how technology and human insight come together to shape what's next. Today I'm joined by Seth Besmertek, CEO and founder of Conductor, a platform that helps brands understand what the world is searching for before anyone else. From data driven storytelling to AI powered content strategy, Seth and his team are turning search intelligence into a superpower for marketeers everywhere. Let's get into it.
- [00:34]
Welcome to lead with AI. I'm Dr. Tamara Nall. Each episode brings you behind the scenes conversations with brilliant minds advancing AI across the federal government. Together, we're exploring the projects and innovations, modernizing public service and creating meaningful change for the American people. And let's get started.
- [00:59]
Hey, everyone, how are you? It is your host of lead with AI, Dr. T. And thank you every week for tuning in and hearing from our great founders who are telling us about their AI products. Because of you, again this year we hit number one in technology on Apple podcast and we are a gold winner for W3 awards. And it's all because of you and and our great guests such as the one we have today. So welcome Seth Besprenick, who is the CEO and founder of Conductor. How are you?
- [01:35]
Seth Besprenick
Doing? Well, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:37]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Absolutely, absolutely. And where are you, by the way?
- [01:40]
Seth Besprenick
I'm in Manhattan. You can hear the sirens. I'm on 36 and Broadway.
- [01:46]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes, very active. I thought so, but just wanted to check just to make sure. So tell us a little bit about you. Who are you at your core? What is your passion and what gave you the idea that Conductor was needed?
- [02:03]
Seth Besprenick
Okay, thanks. Well, excited to be here. Who am I about? So this. I think I was a person that was told no a lot as a child.
- [02:16]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay.
- [02:17]
Seth Besprenick
Can't do this. You shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be in this school. You can't get it here. Got in trouble a lot. Was told I was a bad kid. Was told that I wouldn't be successful. Was told that, you know, I was always put in the corner. Like when I think of recess, I think I'm like sitting in the corner facing the wall while all the kids played behind me.
- [02:41]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Oh.
- [02:41]
Seth Besprenick
So spent a lot of my life trying to prove them wrong and do something useful. And I'm someone who really believes that living a life of purpose and mission really matters. And as that relates to business, I really thought that finding the intersection between doing something that makes the world better, but making it a really good business at the same time, finding that overlap is a really great Place to spend time. So I started the company Conductor literally right out of college and have been working really for Almost the last 20 years in reinventing and iterating. We've had a wild journey trying to. And Conductor is a company that goes to companies as, hey, you know, a lot of stuff. Companies have loads of wisdom. How do you take all that wisdom and bring it to the world and lead with value? How do you sell without selling stuff but actually by helping people? And, and now in the world of AI that's really the most important thing because AI is, doesn't have any wisdom. It relies on. So it's really exciting time for us.
- [03:54]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. And when you. So you're obviously B2B correct? Yes.
- [03:59]
Seth Besprenick
Our customers are other businesses that provide. Yes.
- [04:02]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay. And then what function are you normally going into? Is it marketing? Is it sales? Is it a it? Where, where are you normally going? Because we have guests that have hold all different types of titles.
- [04:14]
Seth Besprenick
Digital marketing. Our customers tend to be big companies, but they don't have to be. And it's companies that want to figure out how to, you know, how to get in front of their customers where they are in a way that leads with value. We're not the ads guys. We're not the, you know, crack you on the head and try to try to sell you something or make you feel bad about yourself. We're the people are looking for help. How do you help them? First to build trust so then they can become your customers.
- [04:42]
Dr. Tamara Nall
And it is true like so many companies out there are just sitting on lows and lows and gold mines of, of data, most of whom don't know what to do with it. And then here shows up Conductor with your AI tools. So tell us about a holy smokes moment. What is a jaw dropping moment where one of your customers use, you know, Conductor AI and were wowed by the results.
- [05:08]
Seth Besprenick
I, I feel like every day is a holy smokes moment.
- [05:11]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay.
- [05:12]
Seth Besprenick
I mean we work with so many of the best companies in the world and, and, and, and I'd say companies, but they're really organizations. So that's someone like an organization like a St. Jude's Children's Hospital.
- [05:24]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes. Which I donate too.
- [05:26]
Seth Besprenick
So yeah, it's a phenomenal organization, but they also have marketing problems. So when people are in these incredibly life kind of crossing moments where they have these problems, they go to look for help. And it's not just obvious that you know where to go and who to go for what. So moments where we find out where someone's looking for help. And we're able to help activate the knowledge and the wisdom of an organization like St. Jude's and bring that to the surface so people can find them and, and get, get best care. That's just another day on the, on the job for us. And we work across almost all industries where we're helping these great companies with great products and services get seen and get found and get visible from our customers. And, you know, when you work at Conductor, you get these NPS results that come in on a daily basis. And these are our customers telling us about some kind of success or something that they've had. And we see them coming in and I'm like, wow, that's happening. Wow, that's happening. So it's really, it's really exciting.
- [06:31]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah. And, you know, I just got chills hearing you talk. And the reason is because a lot of times you'll interview someone and you'll say, you know, so, so tell me about the company. Tell me about your AI tool. And then they'll say that adds value. And a lot of times they're talking about value in terms of revenue or how they can get more revenue. And in this example, you're saying, no, when I say value or impact, I'm talking about the people who need them, who don't even contribute to their revenue, but can use the services of St. Jude or the resources or the connections and the links to actually get the care that they need or the cancer care that they need. Like, I got chills hearing that. I mean, that really is impact, and it's not even from a revenue. I mean, eventually, I guess it will come because you have success stories, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it really is trying to let people find them that might not know that they offer certain services.
- [07:24]
Seth Besprenick
Yeah. And don't get me wrong, we have. I mean, St. Jude's is a, is, I'd say, one of the. You know, all of our customers are noble in their own right, but they all are serving different products and services and industries and, and again, it's. Marketing comes from a place of advertising, comes from a place where you have to buy your customers attention through commercials and ads and then hit them with something. And we've, we've been in the business since we started of saying give them something useful, give them something knowledgeable, help people. And if you help people first through marketing, then actually they will, you will build trust, you will build respect. And that's. And it's actually more profitable to, to do that. So for Us the more when we see, when someone works with us, we get them in the spirit and in the motivation and in the, in the operations of saying, how do I take all this stuff that we have? I call it wisdom. And how do I bring it to the surface? How do I share it out? White papers and knowledges and, and transcripts of, of, of podcasts like this? And how do I bring that stuff out there so I can help people as the foundation for marketing? I think that's exciting. Wow.
- [08:31]
Dr. Tamara Nall
That is amazing. Wow, wow, wow. So talk to us about how it works. My, my, my listeners are very, very curious, nosy people. If we were to open up the brain, you say you've been in business now for over two decades and you have AI that drives a lot of your work. How does it work? Open up the. We're opening up the hood. We're looking at the brain. How does it all work so that you can provide this value or this impact? Sure.
- [08:59]
Seth Besprenick
Well, it's a big brain. We got, we got a lot of people working on it for, for quite some time. The simple surface level of the brain is that we go out and we crawl a lot of, we get a lot of information. If you think about a search engine like Google or an answer engine like, like ChatGPT, it goes out and gets information. And what it does is it gets that information and then you ask it a question and it gives you some kind of link or some kind of answer. We do the same thing. We go out and get a lot of information, except instead of giving a consumer an answer, we give you knowledge about your business. We help you understand. Well, when people are looking for things that you. Products and services that you sell or problems that you solve, do they find you? Do they find the competitors? What do they say about you? What do they say about your competitors? What content do you have that they like? What content don't they like? What kind of content do they like that? What are the elements of that that can help you with your content? You make a piece of content or when you make your website or you share some kind of information online, does that have any impact? And we get all this information and we use it for the benefit of helping you manage your digital presence, helping you manage your visibility and AI systems like ChatGPT and Instagram, like Google. And it's for brands, it's really exciting because for them they can see the reality. Just because you're the market leader in something doesn't mean that that's that, that you're the One being discovered first. And a lot of times companies find themselves scratching their head and say, well, we're the best at this, but we don't show up. And we help bring that reality to you. Whether it's good or bad, it's the truth about what the consumer sees. And that we all companies who really care about not what they think of themselves, but, but how other their customers experience them. That's what we help our customers accomplish. And then ultimately they can take action and change the outcome.
- [10:49]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right? Right. No, yeah. That's amazing. Now talk to us about the real world magic. So you said you hear stories every day of how Conductor is helping and making impact. Take us to a time where you saw that the impact and you got chills. And if you have a happy dance, you can do that. Whatever your cheer is, whatever it is. But take us to that moment where you were like, wow, at what you've done.
- [11:15]
Seth Besprenick
Well, I would say that, I'd say that the St. Jude's example is certainly one. I'd say some other places where I get chills just as an entrepreneur is, you know, for us, I look at the judge of whether we're doing a good job based on the feedback our customers give us. You can always get people to pay you for something, but paying you and being happy with the service is. And the software is not the same thing. And that takes some time to figure out. But I mean, we've gone through a tremendous amount of evolution and rapid development here over the last few years. And for example, we historically were the enterprise leader in SEO software. We've changed and evolved to now become the leader in AEO and geo, which is the practice of how do you show up in AI engines in addition to search engine?
- [12:03]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, that's big these days.
- [12:05]
Seth Besprenick
And I'm seeing our customers now give us feedback like in our MPS and in our conversations, talking about how we've helped them establish and build an AI visibility practice. We've gave them the tools to start doing aeo, GEO at scale. We've, we've helped their executive team decide to make investments and move dollars from the old way of marketing into a customer centric value way of doing marketing by showing up in search engines and AI systems. That kind of stuff gives me the chills because you can see that what we're doing is starting to work and it's driving change in our customer base.
- [12:37]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. And question, when you say AI visibility practice, is the practice like they're forming teams or does it mean like policy? What does that mean?
- [12:46]
Seth Besprenick
Everything it's forming, everything, it's refocusing their energy. It's like, well, if my customers are here and I'm over there, I got to go be where they are. And I need a team of people to do that. You can't just say, I'm going to have a one person army. Go and say, I'm going to go and manage my presence in chat GPT, it's much more complicated. It takes a much broader brand effort to be successful.
- [13:08]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. Okay. Awesome. That's really, really helpful. Now let's talk about the ethics of it all. I mean, obviously like you said, y' all sit on rings and rings and just all of these, all this data for all of your customers. How do you think about ethics? How do you think about guardrails as you're working for your customers?
- [13:27]
Seth Besprenick
I mean, I love the ethics of our business because we don't have to think about ethics too much in the sense that we're generally doing the right things. The simple part of our business is that we try to help you take your companies and organizations knowledge, the facts, your expertise, and turn it into digital assets. That's generally some form of content. And we use AI and we use technology and data to help you do that and help you do that at scale. Now we always have some element of human in the loop and human involvement and we really want to work as like, as a, as a partner, as a co pilot with our, with our unit. But generally, you know, I love the ethics of our business in the sense that coming back to the same theme, I've had this whole sort of talk so far. It's just like we're in the business of helping you take your wisdom and help people with it, share it out there. And generally speaking, that results in good outcomes. And the kinds of companies that we tend to work with are all companies that are looking to not take advantage of the system, but they just actually have so much. They don't have to spam or make stuff up. They just have to do a better job of unlocking all their organizational knowledge.
- [14:41]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. Yeah. And I love that, I love when I talk to founders and you can just tell that ethics was there at the very beginning. It's not just like an afterthought. It's not, oops, we better do this. But you kind of started the company with ethics in mind.
- [14:55]
Seth Besprenick
I mean, every, I mean, it just, I don't, again, I don't even really think about it because everything we do here is about integrity and respect and Honesty and transparency. It's the way we operate with our staff, it's the way we operate with our customers. It's the nature of the business we're in. So fortunately, I don't have to deal with that conversation all the time.
- [15:17]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right, right, right. And that's good to hear. It's. It is common, but there are situations where people don't. So kudos to you.
- [15:25]
Seth Besprenick
Yeah, I presume that. I mean, there could be. It's possible that in the future someone could maybe try to take advantage of what we do and use it in a bad way, but that doesn't happen. We have a lot of oversight and security, access to information. Again, I think the kinds of companies that we tend to work with tend to preclude that kind of activity.
- [15:46]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, that's true. That's true, too. Awesome. So what is the big future power by Conductor look like? You know, and the future with AI is just so changing so rapidly. Right. So it could be five years from now, in 2030, it could be next month, it could be tomorrow. But what is the future and how will the world be changed by what Conductor is doing?
- [16:08]
Seth Besprenick
Sure. Well, trying to stay focused on what we were, you know, our little corner of the world. I, the, the, the digital marketing and optimization cycle is going to be much faster. We come from a world where you make a piece of content and you put it up on your website. Usually people look at it, they find it helps. Maybe every six or every 12 or every 18 months, you come back to it, try to make it a little better. That's if you're a good company stuff. They never look at it ever again.
- [16:41]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right.
- [16:42]
Seth Besprenick
That cycle is going to go from 18 months to 12 months to six months to one month to one week to one day, to one hour.
- [16:49]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes.
- [16:50]
Seth Besprenick
Where we're going to be trying to get faster and faster and faster at putting our knowledge out there, putting the information out there. You know, it's. So I think that the web is going to live with a lot more autonomy. There's going to be a lot more agents out there that are doing work for us and, you know, building these systems that are able to have high ethics, have high quality, have high authority, and also do it at that kind of speed. That's going to be the challenge, building after the future. But it is very clear that the future is going to be one where things are moving much, much faster.
- [17:28]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Awesome. No, that's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. So also give us a call to action, make us believers. If one of our listeners or many of our listeners are out there and they're like, you know what? I want to give conductor a try. I lead all of the marketing for XYZ company. How can they test it, try it, get to know it today?
- [17:50]
Seth Besprenick
Yeah, well, if you're not already investing in a O Geo SEO as a priority, you're missing out. Because when you make a piece of content, when you do something to improve your organic visibility, it's not like you buy a click. What happens after you buy a click? You have to buy another one. When you make a great piece of content, how long does content last for? How long will this podcast last for?
- [18:13]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Right.
- [18:14]
Seth Besprenick
Is it going to die? This podcast? I mean, it's going to last for potentially forever. So the ROI on these investments are much better and our product is a great place to help out. You can go on the conductor.com website and get a free trial. We also have some free visibility tools that you can put your domain in and get, get some quick insights. But I think my greatest call to action would be, you know, start to shift those dollars to, to be in some combination of an organic and a paid strategy versus just a paid strategy.
- [18:45]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. That makes sense. And to answer your question, yes, Lee with AI is going to be around for a very long time because I have very great guests like you that are.
- [18:53]
Seth Besprenick
I mean, even, even if it's not around for a long time, let's just say you decide to do something else, which I know you're not going to do. This thing is still going to live. It's still going to be on YouTube, it's going to be on these places. It's not going anywhere.
- [19:06]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Correct? Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. So I love to call each of my guests a genius. And so the genius before you has a question, Seth, that they like, that he would like for you to answer. And that question is, with so much happening in the AI space, what is the one area of product development you wish you could spend more time on?
- [19:33]
Seth Besprenick
I have a interesting answer. I think it's interesting simple answer which is that things are moving so quickly. We are really shipping software now multiple times a day. It's faster than we've ever built software ever before. And that's both because of the pressures and demands of AI. That's all because of the capabilities of AI. And I actually wish we could spend even more time with our customers kind of old school style, sit them in a room, watch them, you know, on their computers, look at them like, see what they're doing. Like, very hands on In a lab and we do some of this. But I really wish we had the time to do more of this, just go to more customers offices and just watch them and learn from them and see their behavior and see their. Now there's a lot of tools and stuff that we use that that can kind of simulate this. But there's nothing like sitting right next to someone. And, and I, you know, and, and I think I would just. And I think I actually now you asked me this question, I'm going to probably do more.
- [20:34]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Oh good.
- [20:35]
Seth Besprenick
I would really like to spend time. Because the AI is a function of the human. The AI is there to make the human better. It's making it more powerful. It's, it's to learn the things that the human does that so much. So a human can do something that only humans could do. And I think for us, learning from our customers, more hands on will actually help us make things better for our customers and will help us obviously make a better product.
- [20:56]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Awesome. That's great. I love that. I love that. So let's move on to our bonus rapid fire. I'll quickly ask you four questions. Give me the first answer that comes to mind. Starting with what is the most overrated AI tech trend remote work. Okay. Okay, interesting. Elaborate on that.
- [21:15]
Seth Besprenick
I don't think companies and people are more productive working by themselves at their houses.
- [21:19]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it. All right, awesome. What is the most underrated AI or.
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Seth Besprenick
Tech trend really unified data.
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Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, elaborate on that one.
- [21:29]
Seth Besprenick
AI software used to be about the viewer level layer which is how you experience workflow ui. It used to be about the controller which is the logic and then you've got the model which is the data. But the AI experience chat, talking to AI, that's going to be the new viewer. The AI orchestration is going to be the new controller and it's all going to come back to the data you have. So having really unified data, data that actually is not just lots of data, but data that's really connected and understands each other and ways to access that data is really what's going to give people the biggest advantage in the world of AI.
- [22:07]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Love it. Love it. What's one book everyone should read on the future?
- [22:13]
Seth Besprenick
I like Jeffrey West, I think it's called Cities is the book.
- [22:18]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay.
- [22:19]
Seth Besprenick
Basically it's a book about compare cities and biology. Like why do cities last forever and get better and then why do all things like alive sort of die and. But it really is a book about scale and systems and how there's an interesting paradigm which cities just get bigger and better over time. Generally, like, as time goes on, they get bigger and better. When all things that are alive, like human beings, they all have an arc. All companies have an arc. All companies eventually die. All the data suggests they die now. Dying might be in a merger, it might be in a consolidation, bankruptcy. So I think it's like figuring out how to build systems that can last and actually get better as they go on versus smaller. There's a lot of good. And he has a good TED Talk, which is the shorter version of reading the book.
- [23:12]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Okay, well, we gotta check that out. My book list with all my guests is getting longer and longer. That was very, very interesting. Okay, scare us. What is your biggest bonus prediction?
- [23:24]
Seth Besprenick
Scare you. I don't know if this is gonna be scary, but I think that, I mean, I can go off on this. I'll give you a lot of things scary. Like I think we're have robots. I think that. I think, I think robots might do some bad things. I don't know. I think more practically, like, I don't think people are gonna go on Amazon.com anymore. I think that agents will be our, like AI systems will do our shopping and purchasing and doesn't mean Amazon's going out of business because they provide the whole logistics and all the infrastructure. But I think the way that people buy things is going to go is going to be completely changing. We're not going to be on websites looking at stuff.
- [24:07]
Dr. Tamara Nall
It's just going to know from our patterns, our conversation.
- [24:10]
Seth Besprenick
Yeah. Also just you're going to talk to. You're going to talk to an AI and it's going to know what you like and you're going to deal that way. And you don't really care where it comes from. You just want to make it show up as fast as possible and how much it costs and. Right. And that would mean that to be a lot of consolidation in the viewer model of E commerce, which is going to Amazon or going to Best Buy or something like that.
- [24:31]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yes.
- [24:31]
Seth Besprenick
And then the robots will do our laundry. And I don't know what they're going to do at night. I don't know if they go to sleep or shut them off. But I do think that Elon Musk and others are building robots. And I think I might buy one. I don't know. I might buy one.
- [24:48]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, the new one that's out for $20,000.
- [24:51]
Seth Besprenick
I don't know about that. I just know if I just. If I didn't have to do the laundry and I just can Have a robot do it. I mean that sounds interesting, but I got to think about it. If I want someone else to live, you know, another, another, you know, another robot living in my house. I don't know, I got to think about it. But I probably will get one.
- [25:07]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, well I'm beaming because you might not know this, but my area of research and passion is around human AI relationships. From your best friend companion all the way to your romantic lover.
- [25:18]
Seth Besprenick
Yeah, and it's gonna be a female robot though. I, you know, I, I, they'll eventually.
- [25:23]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Be male and female to be honest. But I also have attended conferences and the robotic technology is, is still linear. It's still linear. Sequencing, it's not quite there. It can pick up an orange, it can do something monotonous in manufacturing and stuff. But the let me come hug you, then I'm gonna go wash clothes, I'm gonna do laundry, mow the lawn. It's not quite there. But I have been a part of some conversations where the issue there is like our consumers expectations being here and the developers like yeah, no, but we're not quite there. So yes, we will be there, we just don't know how.
- [26:01]
Seth Besprenick
I mean I remember 10 years ago Elon Musk talking about self driving cars and whether you like Tesla or not doesn't matter, but that matter. Tesla you can put in a city or an address, you press the button twice, it takes you there perfectly, like literally perfectly, flawlessly. And I'd say better than a lot of human drivers. And when you have people like him talking about how that's going to be and whether it's five years or 10 years or 15 years, like I think, I think it's going to happen.
- [26:30]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Yeah, no, it's going to happen. It's costly and it's going to take time. It will happen. Even with that, it's still kind of more linear than as complex as most people expectations. At least mine. Particularly if I'm talking to somebody about okay, this is my spouse now and I want you to do all the things that a real spouse would be. It takes a little bit time.
- [26:51]
Seth Besprenick
I don't know about that. I was thinking more about doing the laundry and floors, not fulfilling all of my human emotional needs. That I think is a stretch.
- [27:03]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Got it.
- [27:04]
Seth Besprenick
Well that's coming, that's where humans are. You know, humans need other humans, we need serotonin, we need, you know, skin to skin contact to function. Right. So I don't know about that but I'm sure, you know, maybe they'll figure that out, too. But first, doing the laundry. I think that will help.
- [27:21]
Dr. Tamara Nall
He said that's enough. Let's start with that first self. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. Tell us about yourself, your passion for and then all the great things that conductor is doing for the world. So I appreciate it and look forward to hearing more about what you're doing.
- [27:41]
Seth Besprenick
Sounds good. I appreciate the opportunity.
- [27:43]
Dr. Tamara Nall
Thanks, Tamara. Absolutely. To everyone else, until next time, Lead with AI.
- [27:50]
Thank you for joining us on Lead with AI. I'll see you next time as we continue bringing you stories that matter in public sector innovation.