Is Google Killing Local SEO?

Aaron Watters 0:00
Ep updates, GLS updates, and then our move. And then I put in here more of a question for you about, like, traditional production. What are some keys to having a successful traditional production? Yeah, possibly even, like recapping a little bit of the daytime segment and like, how, for sure, like relying on the talent is, is never a great idea, and making sure that you have a good a good hit list, and then a lot of AI stuff, just because that's what I was thinking about, yeah, trashing Google's AI really is what it would come down to. Well, yeah. And I want to talk about the ultra so, like, I upgraded seo@leadhub.net to ultra last night. Okay? And that's the $200 a month plan for Google. And it just doesn't work, like it's mainly about the video stuff, and then project the video. So it's more Video Credits project Mariner, which is their deep research. But like, that's the huge difference is you have to go to a different URL to access project mariner. And it kept timing out for me. The video timed out for me last night. And like GPT, it's all in one so just like, the advantage of that. And so anyway, I think Coleman is they're trying to push it out to make money right now, and it's just not there.

Dennis Ayotte 1:25
Sweet. Okay, then I think we can open with what's new. We'll talk about the office space. They'll go into local SEO, we'll break and do traditional production, and then we'll talk about AI. And I think the segue into that, it's like, maybe you can say hey, and, like, lately, or recently, we launched a new production with rice Home Services. We left, you know, licensed New Kids on the Block. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Aaron Watters 1:50
I mean, I want to mention you've got one going, you know, giving up next week in Detroit. Heck, yeah. And then, and then, I personally kind of had the experience of the live the daily segment and just some some things to look at. Okay, dude, is it already recording?

Dennis Ayotte 2:07
Yeah? Oh, good. Alright, sweet. I think I got a burp. Hold on.

Dennis Ayotte 2:17
Alrighty, whenever you're ready, I'll jump into it. All right,

Dennis Ayotte 2:32
well, well, well, welcome everybody back to talk of the trades. It's been a minute. Aaron, I don't even remember what episode we're on, but I think we haven't recorded together in at least six

Aaron Watters 2:43
weeks. Yeah, it's been something like that, Episode 00, something,

Dennis Ayotte 2:46
00, something. So we're in the teens, I feel. So we're still making attraction. Actually, I think this is episode 13, if I'm not mistaken, but we'll update it in the show notes, either way. So thanks for everybody tuning in and watching today. So got an agenda here we'll run through and just some show topics today. Talk through what's new here at Leadhub. So as you guys probably noticed new space. So this is the bullpen here at Leadhub. HQ just moved in here. Talk about some SEO stuff, some traditional production. We just had a really awesome production we did for right home services. We got another one coming up in Detroit and then in Boston. So some good things going on Boston. You see how I said that I did. I just came

Aaron Watters 3:32
out. Man, yeah, I was concerned, but also excited. It was very nice. Doesn't your sister live there? She's in Baltimore. My cousin, she lives in Dover, so I'm going up to Atlantic City next week for a family trip, and then we're doing Christmas in Dover at my cousin's house, and my whole family, including my in laws, are going, it's gonna be very cool. They have a picture window looking out to the backyard. And I put in our dream manager. One of my dreams was for us to have Christmas there with it snowing, and it is going to happen this year.

Dennis Ayotte 4:06
Nice. Heck, yeah, dude, awesome. And then we'll talk about some AI, because everybody loves AI, and a new secret thing that people may have never heard about, but the hottest thing people are talking about H i, oh yeah. It's all about, stay tuned till the end, when we talk about H i, it's big deal, so let's talk about it. So the Leadhub office move, yeah, man, it was, it was a hall, but we made it. Yeah,

Aaron Watters 4:37
it was a doozy. I think is the technical

Dennis Ayotte 4:39
term, yeah, right, certainly a doozy, and I think we're still so most of you guys can't see but we do still have plastic on some of our doors. It's like, you know, when you go to your like, grandma's house and she hasn't removed the plastic from the couch, that's the situation we're in right now. But hopefully they'll have that resolved soon, yeah,

Aaron Watters 4:57
yeah, they will. And then we've got the environment design. And they're, they're working on that should have all that implemented in the next 60 days. And, yeah, overall. I mean, what it's my third time moving the business, maybe fourth.

Dennis Ayotte 5:10
I think fourth, right? Yeah. Give us the the history, because I've, I've heard some interesting things about previous offices, and I just know one story about the cops showing up for a burglary because rich hid the Oh yeah, safe alarm,

Aaron Watters 5:28
yeah. So our very first office was when we were about a three, maybe up to five people. We worked out of the champion AC office. So been back, you know, seven when he founded champion, they had like, two or three suites in downtown Helotes, the big city of Helotes, and we basically grew into one of those early on, the back room had no windows, and that's where we had, like, a buy team member and a developer, and we had a client that came in, and every time was like, where's the trolls at? I want to talk to some trolls. Where are they in their cave? So from then on, it was, we've got to have Windows wherever we have we got to have windows. So yeah, then we ended up moving to another space that, yeah, had a panic button underneath and underneath a desk, and one of our developers kind of did the whole side eye when the cops came in. Is everything okay? Blink twice if you're

Dennis Ayotte 6:19
okay. That is funny. So yeah, and if you guys known rich, rich and cops, I could just imagine what that frozen looks like. So it was an old bank, or what?

Aaron Watters 6:29
That's why? No, it wasn't even an old bank. It was the move for free office, but they shared it with, like, an insurance company. I don't know why. They had a

Dennis Ayotte 6:37
panic thing. Maybe they had, like they were storing money. Yeah,

Aaron Watters 6:42
it was wild, I don't know, but talking about banks. So we've moved into now this building here at the Wells Fargo property. It's not really the Wells Fargo property. They've just been the big tenant. And where we moved in is the old bank office, and we're attached to, which has been fun, and we'll have a ton of great stories in the future. The bank tellers next here, and so we share our electrical with the bank tellers and into our water so all of our utilities, yeah, shutting off the water while somebody was in the bathroom was great.

Dennis Ayotte 7:17
Yeah, I know you heard about that

Aaron Watters 7:19
one. Yeah, I was in the attic with the guy, and

Dennis Ayotte 7:22
we get at least one to two people a day coming in here and say, Hey, are you the bank? So we had to get a specific sign just for that. So we'll see. Maybe that should be a new segment. How many people came in for the bank this week

Aaron Watters 7:35
stream our entrances. But overall, like some huge, huge wins on and the last place we were at was really awesome as well. And it was but it was retail, so we were paying a little bit more of a higher premium. And with the glass windows we were showcasing to the highway, all the computers and technology we had. But this step up from two offices ago to last office was amazing. And then the step up from the last office to here, yeah, it's just wild when you move to an actual office space where, you know, we were paying almost $750 for cleaning services at the last office because it was retail. And, yeah, it's included with with the agreement. So just moving in here, it feels really cool. Got to design it out again, and I really like the segmented space. For

Dennis Ayotte 8:26
sure, it's coming together. We're sitting in our bullpen section, so SEO content sits there. All of our buy team members are behind us, our media buyers and whatnot. We have account services over here, up top, up there, if you guys can kind of see a little bit. Is where Aaron and Ryan and Ben sales teams up there. We got offices along the wall here. So definitely loving the space. We're, you know, kind of getting our groove finally, and so we're sitting in like the little seating area for our clients, which is nice. And so what's

Aaron Watters 8:57
really funny is my mother in law, she's worked in the travel industry her whole career. Oh

Dennis Ayotte 9:02
yeah. Shout out. Dottie here. Dottie, her book in all of our travel. Dottie, she's

Aaron Watters 9:07
been awesome. She's with AJ travel, and they, they are. She's probably gonna retire here as soon as she'll allow herself to so. But her desk used to be right where the camera is, because she used to office out of this building, really, yeah, because she knew she could hustle and make more commissions. She wanted to be the first person closest to the door, and everybody else wanted to hide. And so talk about, like, wanting to win. She's high energy, high spirit. She wanted to sit right at the front of the door and said, send everybody my way.

Dennis Ayotte 9:40
Wow, that's like the kid that sits at the front of the class, so they can, like, be learning the most. So that's

Aaron Watters 9:47
cool. That was her daughter. Yeah, Allie likes to sit in front of class. The

Dennis Ayotte 9:52
apple doesn't fall far from the trees does. Is it so very cool? Well, yeah, so more to come on our space once we get grass. Fixing stuff in place. Maybe we'll throw some stuff on social for everyone to check out. So cool. All right, let's, let's talk about some SEO stuff. So lot of chatter just happening on local, especially in the GBP space. Also latest Google core update as well, rolled out not too long ago. I don't even know what the status is right now on that thing, but yeah, let's talk about SEO and just GBP in general. I think it's, you know, from my perspective, and what I've seen, the barrier to entry and getting a GBP verified is gone to another level in terms of what you know they're wanting. So now I think it's up to like two or three official government documents. You gotta go shoot a video. There's so much more, which inevitably has led to more suspensions. And so on that part, Aaron, do you think more suspensions because the bar is higher or more suspensions? Because maybe, like, AI is actually reviewing this stuff now, and it's not like a human What are your thoughts? I

Aaron Watters 11:03
think it's a lot of a lot of factors, and thinking about, yes, the access to the platforms you can create profiles a little bit easier than you could in the past. I think also some of the support getting laid off, and the less human support, and Google moving more to automated support is another thing. I think just the getting changes done at the wrong time is the biggest issue. Even as you have more in house marketers, you also have stuff like Yext, any changes to a Google business profile before you're actually ready to push it out, can really damage your account, and just your email address associated to the accounts you don't want the accounts flagged in your profile. And so some of the things we've been seeing, and I mean, Darren Shaw at White Spark, I always shout him out. He is him, and joy Hawkins, he always refers to her, so I'll funnel it down, but talks a lot about how to do it right with Google business. And the main thing that we sometimes struggle with when our client has access to their Google is we don't want to make too many changes. And we've seen that happen a lot, where if you make multiple changes within the same 72 hours, Google sees it as a little bit shady, and so that's been happening. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 12:25
it's interesting that that sort of activity is a factor, especially from people associated with the profile. But I mean, we've seen it firsthand. You know, you get too many people, too many hands in the cookie jar, and then it seems like it has an effect, and then boom, page is suspended. We just had a client, you know, who's been in business for many, many years. His other profiles got over 4000 reviews. We're trying to open up a new one for his new showroom. Get to the very last step to upload the video, and then boom, we get suspended. So that was a bummer, and we had to basically start over from scratch, because the support has been underwhelming, to say the least. So what do you think, Aaron, are some things like that people need to, like, look out before, before they even like, initiate the process through like Google, per se, and they're like formal process, because I know there's some important things to look at, like listings and making sure that all those addresses match at least on the top five or four before you move forward. What have we kind of learned?

Aaron Watters 13:28
Like, yeah, and we've, we've talked about this for probably the last couple of years with our SEO team. It's just when you're in a business, especially in this climate, and you just open another location, it's what are you thinking first Google running straight to it, get your Google business profile set up. In reality, what we really need is the documentation and signage on the building first. And when you're doing that, what we can do is build out the citations, like get let's get your BBB aligned, let's get your Yelp, your apple, maps, Bing, anything that's not Google. We want to cascade your new location to those properties first and then do Google last. And really we can say it. Our clients can know it. We can know it. It's just that knee jerk of God. I really want to get this thing going. You know, speed can sometimes kill efficiency, for sure, if we can get the citations up and running externally and then do Google last that is, that is the key.

Dennis Ayotte 14:30
Okay, yeah. So pro tip to all you contractors out there. You know when you're going to open up a second location, really make sure you understand number one, what all the documentation that you're going to need in order to get your profile verified. Also know that you'll likely need to submit some sort of video. You're going to need some sort of signage on the building as well when you do that. So those are all key the other thing too, while you know, as Aaron mentioned, while you're waiting on some of that, because there's some lead time to get things printed. Could, meanwhile, be setting up some of those other big core listings that you mentioned with that address. Because, you know, the more I started thinking about it's like, man, well, if AI is the one evaluating this, I'm sure, like, the AI's got to learn from somewhere. So it's probably going to the internet, looking for, you know, other sources attributed to this address and then trying to make that connection. And maybe, if it's not seeing that, then potentially that's what's leading to it, to flag it or suspend it. So not sure if you know how true that is, but that's just what was going through my mind as we've been like, struggling with some of this stuff, because, you know, it's especially frustrating to to our clients when, you know, they're excited about getting, you know, a new location up, because you know, the impact that it could have on local SEO is, could be, you know, big time. So what do you think about, you know, what are the best practices once you get it all set up, and then from, you know, optimizing that profile from a local SEO perspective, what do you think are like? Maybe top three things to do right after it's been verified. Yeah,

Aaron Watters 16:05
right after it's been verified. Number one, you can do this even as you're creating it. Just make sure your categories are correct. Primary category has to be 100% accurate, and your top revenue driver. So if you're an HVAC contractor, make sure that you're leading with if you're doing 80% revenue, obviously, make sure the HVAC contractor is the primary category, and then have electrical be your secondary. Yep. But really, 1b if that's one A, 1b is making sure that your CRM is accurately requesting reviews and sending them back to your Google Business Listing, troubleshooting an account just this week where, when they onboard a client, their CRM is using one number to text. And let's just say it's 5533, and so they're texting throughout Hey, your tech is dispatched from 5533, and they're going back and forth. Okay, your job's completed. 5533, all of a sudden they get a review invite request from 6521, a completely different phone number, yeah, and the likelihood, like they've already accepted the back and forth in the other number, but then using a different number to ask for the review. Little steps like that, like one, it's great to do it, so happy that the clients doing it. But how can we make sure that we're getting the most reviews and activity on those reviews? A really good example of barbershop that actually, this is how I got my hair cut for free. This this last week, but they opened a new location, it wasn't showing up, and everything was set up properly. Wasn't showing up. And I said, Well, of course, you have one review, and it's yourself. So overnight, he's very well connected within a specific barber community. He got like 20 reviews, and it's showing up regularly now. But since it was a second location, he would search it while he's cutting people's hair, specifically mine, he'd be searching for his new location, and only the one he was in was showing up. So all that said reviews, and it's not just total reviews. This is where I think it is a good thing for a lot of other contractors, especially new or younger contractors, like the people that have their private equity owned, have already 4000 Google reviews. They are humming, and they're gonna get the massive majority of the leads. However, Google does prioritize frequency and recency of reviews, so do not give up on it. If you're getting reviews at a regular cadence, then it's gonna help your GBP visibility.

Dennis Ayotte 18:34
Nice, yeah, one important thing I think you mentioned in there that just sounds like such a little thing, but making sure that those numbers match, and you're not opening up a whole second thread. It's those like little fine detail things, because it's already hard enough to get reviews and people to fill them out, right? And so now you got to try to build trust on a whole nother number that they might be getting something from. So just the minor things like that can make a big difference in that kind of overall customer journey, right? Because it's really never over. But, you know, because you always want to nurture that person, but at least after you complete the job, how do you like, streamline that? So, yeah,

Aaron Watters 19:11
and then something that. And it depends on what tool you're using. Like, if you're using Service Titan, their rep man is different than a podium, which is different than in house call Pro. Most of them will allow you to enable a sequence to follow up on unopened requests. And so I highly recommend turning that on. That's something that I'll typically see in podium turned off. And I know you don't want to harass your customer, but if they haven't opened or at least there's no red receipt on it, fire it off again two days later. And I mean, I'd even fire it off again three days after that, at least three touches to try to get the review.

Dennis Ayotte 19:44
Yeah, I think we've historically said, like three touches in seven days is pretty good, and then after that, it's kind of a good point. The other thing, if you're very ambitious in getting reviews, I know some clients have had success. So one thing I always hear in the trades is, like, your call center shouldn't. Ever have idle hands? And so, having your CSR folks following up with people, I forget what type of calls they call them,

Aaron Watters 20:07
yeah, the happy call is one, something like that. And,

Dennis Ayotte 20:11
and, yeah, being able to, like, create that connection going like, one step further and trying to also get that review. And then, you know, potentially looking at spiffing your CSRS five bucks a review or whatever. You know, I've asked clients before, like, Hey, would you, you know, pay for, you know, $5 for review if you could get one? And most of the time, the answer is yes, because they become so valuable. And so we're not saying pay customers all right, against Google's guidelines, but spiffing your internal team to, you know, just hustle a little bit extra and help you kind of build that so cool. And on the topic of reviews, so kind of big news that GS, excuse me, but GLS reviews, so Google Local Service reviews are now going to be migrated over to GBP as well. So historically, which is the weirdest thing is, like GLS reviews only showed up on GLS, but GBP reviews showed up on GBP and GLS, right? So now, full marriage of both platforms so interesting. Do you have any take on whether, like, It's starting now that they're going to get over, or anything historically, will be migrated

Aaron Watters 21:22
as well. Yeah, it's gonna become one. So they're coming them over, but it's gonna be few and far between. I think they're gonna depends on industry and GEO. They typically roll things out by location. But, I mean, it's been something that's been a concern, frustration of, Hey, why are these two different platforms anyway? You know, they have to be connected for a reason. So whether it was because maybe initially they thought that GLS would become a CRM where people were actively in there, which we recommend you do, but then doing email out and actually GLS getting the review themselves. I mean, that whole thing was a little bit of a cluster. So I like that they're consolidating it. It gives us less to worry about. But also, man, if you've got your GBP humming, GLS is a very good way to get those low cost leads.

Dennis Ayotte 22:14
Yeah, for sure. So from your experience on, GLS, Aaron, so we know GLS is a bit of a black box in terms of, like, how do you get the thing to start spending? I mean, we've tried so many different things, and Google has told us limited information, at least from our reps. But one thing that we have, I guess, you know, Inferred or assumed, is that activity on the profile is super important in sending out review requests. So is that, do you know if that capability is still going to be there? Is like sending out review requests from

Aaron Watters 22:47
GLS, or is, no, I don't think it's. I think they're going to pivot away from that and just actually normal. I mean, that's, that's at least, from what I can tell. I think the reality is speed to the lead, some of the, some of the normal things, you know, the the saying of when I when they tell you who they are, believe them, kind of, yeah. So, so Yelp did this for a long time, and now now GLS has it as well. But Yelp, typically, for their their lead messages, has on this profile, the contractor responds, typically in less than five minutes, or less than 15 so that response rate, clearly, is a ranking indicator from my perspective, especially when you do a search, you see who's on the top. Okay, well, all these guys respond quickly, and then it starts to fiddle off. Well, GLS has that as well. So if you've enabled if you've enabled messaging, it will tell you the response time for those contractors. So if that is something that Google is telling you, you better believe we should be optimizing for message leads and making sure that there's an auto responder on the back end to bring that time down. For

Dennis Ayotte 23:53
sure. Yeah, that is for sure, one of those other key elements to make sure that there's constant activity on the profile in that it's, again, like, it's timely activity, right? Even with disputing, you know, potential leads, because I didn't, they roll that back where they were going to auto classify leads, like, let you dispute them. And I think, at least from what I read last, they haven't, like, fully gone

Aaron Watters 24:19
into that. I haven't seen where I could dispute. Whenever you rate it afterwards, you can, you can give it a low rating, and then they'll take that into consideration. Okay, not outwardly. Like disputing, at least any of the clients that I've been watching. I watch about five accounts, okay, just so I can stay in the know on GLS, yeah, there may be some other accounts in different industries where you can still do it gotcha, but I've been definitely repeating this too much, but just it's roll call, it's got to be Roll Call. Any client that kind of pushes back on GLS, I would typically want to question the lead flow process and how quickly are we getting back? Yeah, not saying it works absolutely. Way, but I haven't seen a position where it doesn't work. And the only times we've gotten a negative return is when clients haven't had tracking accurately in the CRM, so yeah, and the sad truth is, this is what Google's really going to push. And we've been afraid of this as SEOs for the past, what, three to five years, but GBP organic is gonna go away, and it's gonna be led with the map pack. And if they're consolidating reviews, they're gonna be consolidating GLS into being ads driven.

Dennis Ayotte 25:32
Interesting. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 25:33
there's some I was thinking of when you had mentioned that, but I totally forgot it. That's okay. So I want to,

Aaron Watters 25:41
I want to mention another tactic, though, with GLS, because, you know, we'll have accounts sometimes that, you know, typically bigger accounts that have the ecosystem, we get reviews, they get visibility, right? Yeah, but to start off a new account, and this is where we sometimes get friction when clients haven't seen it, to believe it first, yeah, just turn everything on like direct business search. I know a lot of our clients, I don't want to show up for direct business search and pay for somebody that's already repeat customer,

Dennis Ayotte 26:08
which direct business search equals branded

Aaron Watters 26:11
search. Branded search, absolutely. So you can turn that on or off, but if you have no action on your profile, I would turn that on, turn messages on, turn bookings on until you get traction, then pull some of those things away. Yeah, but Google does say that they're not going to charge you for repeat customers. So I haven't I haven't seen exactly how to question that interesting, but for the most part, turn everything on and optimize. I remember

Dennis Ayotte 26:39
what I was going to say. So one thing that I saw that rolled out not too long ago, and I think I shared it in our group chat, was now in some markets, at least on mobile specific I believe they are kind of doing the Andrews thing, where it's like, hey, we'll send your lead to like, four different contractors. And so I haven't tested it out to see, like, how that happens. And, you know, from a consumer perspective, you know, I'm really interested to understand what happens on like, the back end. Is everybody getting charged 100 bucks per lead, you know, at that point, or is it 100 divided by four? Like, very interested to kind of, and then I wonder if even, like, Google is telling contractors, like, hey, we send it out to you, plus three other people, you know. So something I haven't really jumped into, but I saw it rolled out in LA first and then now it was definitely in Spokane, because when I talked to Chris at raptor rooter not too long ago, showed him that, and I'm pretty sure it's here in San Antonio now. So

Aaron Watters 27:40
yeah, I haven't seen on the accounts I'm watching, I haven't seen that populate because typically the accounts I'm watching either they're not getting visibility or they are, and we don't have messages turned on because they feel happy with the lead flow coming in through calls. Yeah, but my assumption is it's going to be primarily through the messages and but that just points even more of a light, especially light, especially if you're a smaller contractor. How are you responding to messages? How quickly do we have an automation set up through your CRM? Those are the things that I would prioritize early on. Yeah,

Dennis Ayotte 28:13
in kind of talking about that direct. What was it, direct Company Search, or direct business search, direct business search. So this will kind of segue into kind of some of the traditional media and top of funnel stuff. And one, you know, the conversation I have with clients often is like, you know, at the end of the day, you have to defend, like, your brand name, and there's going to be a cost to reacquire customers. And, you know, if they're searching from us, from a branded perspective, you know, why not invest to try to, you know, double down and make sure that we get that person. And so, you know, that's where this kind of traditional media opportunity comes in, and building, like top of mind awareness around your brand. And so here at Leadhub, you know, part of our process is when we have a client who is ready to kind of branch out into kind of more upper funnel tactics, which we would consider, like TV, radio, outdoor, OTT would be one. Direct Mail is another one. So all those things are things that aren't going to be so centered around direct lead generation. And the goal is, you know, you create this top of mind awareness. So when somebody is ready to make an action, whether it's a demand service or they're thinking about, you know, upgrading their water heater to, you know, what is it? The the on demand water, I don't know why. I can't think of it right now, tankless, right? So because one question I always like to ask people, and it sometimes it gets difficult in the trades, because we're all in there and we're watching companies, but usually what works is like water filtration. So I'm like, if you needed to get, like, a water filtration, whole home system, like for your house, like today, give me like, the. Three contractors you would call, and a lot of times they have no idea who would be. And because there's no like, top of mind awareness, and me, coming from a more like traditional background, what I have found is that there is a major lack of brands who have top of mind awareness in, you know, markets, and even the ones we work with. And so our, you know, goal has been trying to educate our clients and understand, like, hey, top of mind awareness is, like, very important, because it's going to help us cut down on having to do like, the competition within these non branded search terms, AC services near me, that sort of stuff. So to bring it all back. You know, we recently launched an awesome campaign for right home services, so they've been around for quite some time. And, you know, we came up with a concept to play off of right in the right stuff specifically. So for all my blockheads out there, that's what they call it, blockheads. So we actually licensed the song. You got it the right stuff by New Kids on the Block. So if you haven't heard that song, check it out. It's one of my favorites as a kid, for sure. I don't know if I consider myself like a blockhead, because I didn't know, but I know there's, like a lot of

Aaron Watters 31:18
people out there that were blockheads, might have to consider yourself now. Okay,

Dennis Ayotte 31:21
done. Yeah, sign me up for the blockheads. So yeah. So we were able to work with that client, and we've done, like, a full 360 campaign. So we did radio, TV, we're doing outdoor. We have display ads going. We've even worked it into some of our branded search copy. We got stuff on social going, so all over the board. And, you know, our goal is to re to try to obtain a certain like reach and frequency within the market, to start, you know, creating top of mind awareness. And we track all of our calls. We got an awesome vanity number as well. And we really wanted to focus on something that you could recall easy that worked in with our campaign. So we ended up landing on 2104440, right. Maybe that was too many O's, but it also was able to sync up with the song nicely, because there's a lyric in there that matches. And honestly, I was surprised, because I started looking in our call tracking software, and there's some calls that are coming in and people are saying, Hey, I heard you on the radio. I heard you on the TV. Now it's not like gangbusters, because want to set expectations like once you launch these types of campaigns, you know, there is time it takes to build top of mind awareness and for people to remember you, you know, because you're not only competing against for sure voice in the sea of just advertisers in general personal injury. I bet we all have somebody in our market who just dominates the airways from a personal injury perspective, but also just your own category. You know, it's like we're on TV. But then there's also the ghettos of the world on TV, and then other real, local, successful shops. So, you know, the traditional media game is very much a long game as well. We're top building, top of mind awareness. I should say, I

Aaron Watters 33:07
think in most markets, and at least before the summer, I was feeling a lot more firm and strong about this. But what we've seen in a lot of the markets is the consolidators have exited more of the traditional and have gone more to bottom of the funnel tactics, and that creates an open space. So you start to see more of the advertisers that are between the three to $6 million range doing more TV or more traditional than maybe they have in the past. And typically that shuts off in the shoulder seasons. So if you're storing those chestnuts away to stay busy in the shoulder seasons, then keep firing off. But we do see that, and that's what I want to mention. As well our team did, since we are local, did a live day daytime spot. Basically, we did it at my house. It fired off some things, basically on, since you've been in the company, some of the tactics that we use, or at least coach on for, like, a production book and, like, what are some things with those? Because I had some pretty firm takeaways. But interested to see what you typically tell the team for something like that.

Dennis Ayotte 34:17
Yeah, for sure. So quick point on that, too, is so you know, as part of your traditional media buys, you always want to be asking for added value, because this morning show segment was a piece of added value. Now, obviously we're paying for, like media already, and this is just, you know, additional opportunities they gave us. So yeah, when we're prepping for something like that, it's super important to, you know, really understand what's going to take place, who's the talent that needs to be involved, what are the talking points, that sort of stuff. Now, when you're working with stations, in my experience, it's kind of a run and gun type of situation. So like when we do a formal production, we're having pre production meetings to ensure that i. Everybody's on the same page, and we all know what's going to happen, that we have talent, release forms, all these other things. But when you're working with stations, a little bit different, because literally, it's like a talent and then you have one cameraman kind of show up, and they're just churning and burning and trying to get to these things. So it's really important to try to get you know number one, first them to slow down. Number two, set your expectations on behalf of the client as like, this is how, you know, we expect this, you know, to go overall. Because there's so many variables when you're working with your client, you don't want them to feel like, you know, it's a waste of their time, or it's like, unprofessional, because a lot of the times for those things, it's a lot of like, sit and wait. They'll do one shot, and they're like, Okay, we're going to set up do another shot. And so it's super important to also have at least a skeleton framework of understanding, okay, this is when we're going to shoot at this time. This is when we're going to shoot at that time. Making sure you have specific call times for talent and people that. And what I mean by talent is folks that are going to be on camera from your business. So we understand that, you know, you don't want to have your top performing, you know, sales person out of the field, you know, for too long. But they're also very valuable asset to the company because they're so good on camera, right? Or they just have a natural ability in that sense, and so understanding your call times is super important. So I guess, to summarize, really make sure, off the bat, you're setting expectations with the station so they know the level of professionalism you're looking to achieve. Making sure you have some sort of schedule as to when the key people need to be there in terms of who's going to be on camera, the actual station, your internal teams, when they're going to show up. The other big thing is having potentially some sort of shot list, meaning, like we're going to shoot here, we're going to shoot here, we're going to shoot here, because that's really important to have a overall understanding of what kind of world are you trying to capture, and what are you featuring, kind of within this segment? And then the last couple things you know that are super important, which seem kind of trivial, is, like number one, make sure everybody knows where they're going. Where's the right address. I can't tell you how many times the station has called me and said, Hey, we're we're lost right now, like, you know, and so that is never fun. The other thing making sure that you have all the right contacts for the people that are going to be their day of the shoot. Sometimes you're coordinating, you know, through an account executive at the station who's talking to the producer, who's talking to this cameraman, and so trying to get the contacts of the people who are actually going to be there, make sure that's documented. Because if something you know, somebody's late or something goes wrong, you want to make sure you have, like, the contact. So I would say those are probably the main things when working with a station that you want to try to establish for sure. So, but yeah, we had a really great segment. I think we got two or three segments out of that one. And here's the other thing I wanted to touch on, too. And so going back to the idea of like, added value, or how do you maximize this investment that you have, like on the traditional media side, and how can you take advantage of it in other areas to help promote your business or to help more so with your visibility. So one thing that there is value with is getting the backlink of where this video is going to be embedded. So for instance, locally we work at the TV station, they ended up putting it on one of their web pages, so with a link, obviously back to our site. So we were able to have that we were able to then take that post, post it on social, organic social for, you know, not necessarily like badge bait, but you know, when a organization co signs you like that, it's nice to show like your clientele like, Hey, we're aligned with a trustworthy source within our community. We're local, you know, we understand, you know, the market we're in. So I think there are some tertiary, I guess, benefits to doing something like that. From an SEO perspective, it can benefit organic, social, those sorts of things. So anytime you're doing something like that, really make sure you're trying to maximize every little piece of it that you can and even potentially using that media for paid social to try to get it out, just to get you a little bit of extra reach. And nothing you know incredible, maybe picking out your top zips and doing a small boost on that post to kind of help get some some reach and frequency on it. Yeah, so and

Aaron Watters 39:39
the stations have gotten better about blocking external ads, but you can, typically, if you're on a wai.com or some kind of station, you can create specific targeted ads to show up on their website, or at least create a target audience there. It used to be real easy to do. Do it now, they try to, that's a core part of what these stations sell, is self serve ads. But there's always, there's always a tactic

Dennis Ayotte 40:08
there, yeah, direct to site, certainly. And it's so funny because before, I would say, like, maybe 1015, years ago, like they couldn't give away their ads, like, on their side, you know, because they're the over the air station, is like, what dominated, and they weren't really viewed as, like, online kind of news sources, but that's changed, like, drastically over the years. So that was another thing. We got added value. We got a homepage takeover on their site. So for a whole day, it was nothing but right ads on that site, which was cool, but you're right, there is a backdoor in through, you know, targeting specific news sites is a potential, but also, you know, that's another thing to ask, added value for. You know, try to get a million or 2 million impressions on their site, and try to get some run of site ads. So something definitely to look at too. So sweet. Yeah. So I think that those are the main points on the traditional I

Aaron Watters 41:05
know you've got a big production coming up next week you're going to do, yeah, yeah.

Dennis Ayotte 41:09
So super excited for that. So we got a an exterior remodeler that we're working with. And you know, what makes this one's pretty fun is that we're also working with kind of a we're working with, like a micro celebrity or a celebrity, I don't know how to specifically label it, so that's going to be cool. And, you know, that's a whole another thing about getting a spokesperson for your brand, and somebody you know who's already trusted in the community can help out a lot. So we'll be up in Detroit doing that, which is going to be a lot of fun. So we're doing some commercial spots for them, and then we have a really fun project where we're doing some brand story videos to where we're kind of doing something that's like adjacent to this company to help highlight some of, like, the really cool local businesses there. So that's going to be fun. And then two weeks after that, we go out to Boston to visit one of their distributor showrooms to film some stuff there. So a lot of really good stuff cooking. And, you know, we have plans again for a full 360 campaign to, you know, top of funnel tactics, bottom of funnel tactics, just to really get all that out there. So that one's going to be a fun one, and once we get it all kind of wrapped up, we'll definitely share it on the pod. So cool, awesome. Next up, AI, so we got Google's Gemini Ultra AI, which maybe not, might not be so Ultra. And then some of the stuff Google is launching for search live with video using Google Labs looks like. So yeah, tell me about your experience with Gemini Ultra, because I know we just shelled out 220, bucks for it, and maybe it wasn't

Aaron Watters 42:59
worth it. I mean, it's, it's one of those things that I feel like we've got to test it, you know, as an agency, and we got to try to stay ahead of the curve. Yeah. And, you know, I got real frustrated with Google because they tried to upsell our explore on Google workspace. Yes. Well, let's just say 15 bucks a month per user will cross like 37 users. They then immediately tried to bump us to 30 bucks a month per user, because, well, now we're using Gemini, okay, but Gemini is trash. Why? Why would you double our rate? So they pulled that back. They decided that wasn't the right route to go. And then I think they increased the cost, like two bucks a month per user, and then they pushed out Ultra. And that's what they're doing right now, is trying to get people on Ultra. And they're using the flashy thing of VO, the video creation tool. Yeah, you get higher throttles. You get to use that a little bit more with less limitations. And but the the route they're going this time is it's about 200 maybe 220 a month. It's there give like a discount for the first three months. Okay, but you can select the users in your organization, so you don't have to do everybody like we were going to have to do for Jim, but it's going to be 220 a user. Wow. For a user, which you know, GPT, their advanced plan is 200 a month per user as well. So they're really allowing GPT, from my perspective, to drive the narrative from a cost standpoint, but I just think their rollout and the way that they're fragmented, it's kind of how we talked about GLS and GBP, that they're completely different frameworks, and it feels like that's everything that Gemini has done, because VO, at least, is inside the video generator at eight second clips at least that's inside Gemini. But one of the things I was really excited about with Ultra and why I wanted to test it, was their deep research in Project mariner. Yep, so project mariner. Owner is supposed to be their agent. That is more of a deep, contextual reasoning thing. I've tried using it three times now, and it has failed each time.

Dennis Ayotte 45:11
What are you asking it to do? I'm auditing a

Aaron Watters 45:13
client's search engine optimization, so I'm basically just looking at their search visibility uploading, and you can't upload documents to it, so you got to copy and paste from CSVs and stuff. But it's the same as like their notebook. LM is a different property, and I feel like they're just trying to connect this bundle that really isn't built the way it should be, and then just try to up charge people, because they probably have an earnings call at some point here soon. Yeah. So I think it's just a I think it's poorly executed. I think the result is trash. I was trying to make fun of my wife, and had her we were at the stock stockyards in Fort Worth, and so she's on like a Longhorn, and I was trying to have it do a video of her, like, bucking on, yeah, jumping around and it like timed out. Sorry, our quota is that capacity, whatever. I'm like, Yeah, but I'm paying 200 a month. Yeah, let's go. That's crazy, yeah. Anyway, that's,

Dennis Ayotte 46:10
yeah. Have you tried gbts Agent mode yet? I didn't. They roll that out, like, a week or two ago as well. Yeah,

Aaron Watters 46:18
yeah. It's, I really like it. I think GPT is way ahead of Gemini right now, because it's all in the same ecosystem. And so the agent mode is very cool. It literally just takes control of of your browser and has a window inside of your chat, and it will say, it'll, the Cloudflare pop up notifications will say, Okay, are you a human? And it'll it'll wait and say, waiting for authorization. Then it'll click the bubble like it is full blown. What I was having it do was we had a client change their name recently, and I had it basically look for the old business name and put that into a sheet to where we can then push it over to the virtual assistants to get some information updated, right? Yeah, the agencies is very, very cool. Throttling and limitations, like, we're just on the $30 a month plan for the organization per user, so I think the limits are going to be pretty tight there, yeah? But yeah, it's, it is cool. It's very neat, man.

Dennis Ayotte 47:20
It just seems like it's not going to get cheaper, you know, and so it'll be interesting to see eventually where some things shake out. Because I think GPT even has, like, a more expensive, like, version that you can use

Aaron Watters 47:34
than the 200 I know they've got an enterprise plan that has, like, privacy controls and things along those lines. Nice,

Dennis Ayotte 47:41
yeah, very interesting. Cool. What's going on with some of the Google lab stuff and launching in search live? I don't know if I've heard about

Aaron Watters 47:50
Yeah. So this is the Google IO, which I was not at, but this was shared by, I think, Katie, talking about the Google Live. And basically, as much as I trash Gemini, and I do think it is trash right now, and this is probably why it's trash for me, is it has all the recordings of me talking poorly about it, and we're on Google workspace, so

Dennis Ayotte 48:10
you know the robots are gonna take down like the humans who never said

Aaron Watters 48:14
thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah.

Dennis Ayotte 48:17
So I always thank Chad GBT

Aaron Watters 48:19
saying I want to be first, so I don't think finally, but, but one of the things I do like about Gemini is, if you use it on your mobile device and you do the live chat, you can share your camera in trouble. Gotcha. And so I was testing it yesterday on I was in Google Tag Manager just seeing if things would fire off properly. And I just put it up next to me as I was, I was I was doing it, and it was walking through, okay, I see you're here. I see you're there. Now it didn't get me to the finish like I had to figure it out. It led me down the wrong path a few times, which I think is where the H i comes into play, which we'll mention a little bit later, but, but it is a really cool tool, and being able to cascade your camera, so what Google Search live is basically that of you're able to have that and then show the camera, and then it will search and give you information about the product or what you're doing.

Dennis Ayotte 49:16
Gotcha, okay, yeah, I haven't messed with that at all yet, so I'll definitely want to check that one out, because usually I'm just, like, screenshotting, uploading and saying, Hey, like, what, what error is this? How do I, like, solve it? So seems like that's gonna help skip a whole step. And if it's watching you live, like, man, that's, that's incredible. So,

Aaron Watters 49:39
yeah, it is, it's, it's pretty insane. And I mean, again, it's asking the right questions at the right time, giving the right context always matters. But yeah, it I used it, oddly enough, we got a bouncy castle for my daughter's five year old birthday, and then in the back of the the in the yard, and one of the plugs. Yes, I think we got the reservation late, so let's just say that the company that came and dropped it off, it had duct tape all over it. Yeah, so there, the plug on the extension cord wasn't working, so my father in law and I swapped it out with a new plug because the the grounding, the ground wasn't connected, whatever that's so we stripped the cable, got a new plug on it. Wow. And he was struggling with something. So I was alright, I'm going to show you. So I had put Gemini live up, and is he going to electrocute himself, or are we good? And it walked us through it and said, No, that's right, just here. So

Dennis Ayotte 50:34
that's crazy. So, yeah, yeah, I've done it with pictures before. I'm trying to remember, Oh, I was trying to disconnect my so I switched to simply say, from ADT. And but ADT was still, like, being powered, and so I had to go to the box and, like, disconnect a bunch of stuff. So I literally took a photo of the box, uploaded it, and it was like, okay, unhook this, unhook this. And like, you're good. And it works so crazy, crazy to think and so which, you know, kind of goes into our next point. It's like, as we see, all these new opportunities with it. You know, one of the the backbone of the mall is, like the different models that these things are leveraging. So I'm most familiar with, you know, obviously the GPT models for Oh 303, pro, I think Gemini even has some some different models now as well. And so what, what's your take on, you know, let's just start with, you know, the GPT models. And, I mean, I guess, what should people know, just from using different models

Aaron Watters 51:39
at a high level? Yeah, just know that GPT five, one of the things that they are working on and releasing is advanced understanding in the model of trying to find out, what do you really need, in the same way that, like Google search of old, they have the intent type. So if we're we're an agency that uses SEMrush, it'll say, if it's a consumer intent, somebody that's looking to buy, if it's an informational intent, if they're just looking for FAQ type stuff and trying to educate themselves in the same way chat GPT is so big that they built different models for different tactics. So they have one for coding, they have one that's better with visual reading. And I think really, that's the same as, like, visual analysis and coding is, like, I don't even remember the number because I don't, I don't use it as much. But like, four oh and 4.5 are kind of the basic ones, and the one that's the default for GPT of four Oh, right now, yeah, that's just like, doing a Google search. Yeah, you're gonna have to ask a really good question, or you're going to have to go a couple pages deep and update your query to get what you're really looking for. Four Oh is just for quick responses. I rarely start my chat with chat GPT with four Oh. Unless it's just a driving in the car or I want to Google search something, I just use four Oh instead.

Dennis Ayotte 52:59
Gotcha. Okay, so what is your favorite default?

Aaron Watters 53:02
So if we had the bigger plan, oh three Pro, if you have the time. So oh three Pro is the advanced, advanced reasoning, if you will. And that's the one that you may ask. It a question it may take six to eight minutes to get back with you, because it's doing deep research. Yeah, Gemini has a deep research button that you can do. Rarely works for me, but hey, maybe, maybe your account. Maybe you haven't talked as much trash about Google as I have. So. So what I'll typically do, though, is start with oh three, which is a light version of oh three pro because I ran out of our oh three pro credits pretty quick last month. But oh three is more contextual and advanced reasoning. And it goes and says, okay, they asked me this question, and it will show you the readout. Why did they ask me? What are they looking for? Should I ask these questions? It will even ask you some questions ahead of time, and then go, once I get done with 03 then I can switch it back to four zero, because then you've got at least some contextual information in the chat and it's gone through that reasoning. So then, if you just need quick answers, go back to four Oh. You're not wasting your credits on oh three anymore, and it's going to be faster. Those are the main ones that I use right now. And then five. We'll see what happens with that

Dennis Ayotte 54:19
one. Interesting. Yeah, I typically use, like, oh, three by default, it seems like, but, yeah, I was using a three pro the other day. It was, like, the amount of time it was taking. I was like, wow, this is, you know, interesting, because I'm used to, like, bam, speaking answers. But then you start seeing, like, the downsides of a four, and you're like, Okay, that's why it's sometimes, because, you know, sometimes it's not accurate. And, oh, for I don't know what it is, but over the past couple weeks, it's been like, for me, at least hallucinating more and giving me, like, the incorrect information. Like I had it examine like a spreadsheet, and it came back and it was like, clearly the wrong thing. You know. Was like, double check your work and look at it again. It was basically, oh, I'm sorry. Like, you're right. Here's the other data. And so immediately I was like, Man, I don't know if I can trust some of the other information I got so super important to to be looking at that. Which brings us to kind of the big the big reveal, I think, of the show today, is this new term, H i and if you guys haven't heard of it, it's called human intelligence.

Aaron Watters 55:28
Yeah, there's not a lot of it out there.

Dennis Ayotte 55:31
There's necessary where I think we're at a low for it right now. So, but in all seriousness, you know, one conversation that we've been having, you know, is, how do we use AI responsibly? How do we make sure that we're integrating our team, you know, with using it? And we've obviously come to the conclusion that there's no way for us to, at least right now, where we're at to live in a world where we can trust AI all on its own, and it's important to still have that HR part the human intelligence, right? Actually, somebody looking at it and making sure that the data is correct, because I will be honest, we have produced some content with AI for our clients, and it's hallucinated, and we've published it, you know, not proud of it, but that's what happens when you move fast. You know, you fail faster, and you kind of learn from it. So blessing in disguise that we kind of understand that, and we can put more guardrails around our prompts, but also just like a reminder, like hey, from a, you know, human level, we gotta have more attention to detail. Because I think you know, at least for me, something that's top of mind is just us not getting lazy, as you know, a team to solely rely on that and making sure that we are double checking that stuff. So human intelligence, it might sound, I don't know what the word is like, a no brainer, but think about like, without human intelligence, like, AI would have never been born. So I think it's that whole, like, full circle thing. It's like, we got to have some

Aaron Watters 57:18
level of it. Yeah, I think it's, it's super important, and one from just a culture standpoint, like we're, we're asking here at Leadhub team members that may be resistant to change that, hey, we know what works. We've been doing it for a long time. Why would I change? What's the reason? Well, our clients are asking us to work faster. Our clients are asking us to put more content out. But what's the risk? The risk is putting a service area page out there that has a high school mention that's not existent, yeah. And, you know, there's some things in there that we can do. Like, this was my initial thing when I heard about that scenario was, well, we should be using oh three on the front end, and then four Oh, like, Yeah, let's why not? Like, using four, oh, it's gonna hallucinate unless we give it more context. But I think any automation and any kind of AI tool, moving forward we talk about, we want the human intelligence to drive the initial query, but then human intelligence to safeguard it. So we're also putting in the middle, though, the human intelligence of the processes we've created over the last 1314, years, and that sweat that the team has put in, like, if we're asking an SEO expert to create an automation or some kind of tool that has a prompt, okay, well, the human intelligence is going into the prompt, but we also need it to go on the front End and to just double check for accuracy on the back end. Yeah, there's a lot going on

Dennis Ayotte 58:45
there, for sure. Yeah, somebody like me with, like, my personality, it's like, man, there's just, like, mundane tasks that I just wish did not exist on this planet anymore, and and my hope is that we can, like, replace those so our team members are able to like, focus on things that drive even more impact and that they're more passionate about. And that's like, what I want our team to understand more than anything. It's like, man, like, imagine the opportunity for this thing to like, free up, you know, 50% of your time to now work on more things that you love and that are going to have even, like greater impact, because that's my goal. Like, I'm just like, thirsty to have like, more capacity to do, like productions or, you know, work with people one on one, as opposed to, you know, just like replying to so many like emails or things like that, because there's agents now that will create drafts for your emails. You can go look at the draft real quick and boom, just send it off. So that's what I'm most excited about. I think, as we move into agentic,

Aaron Watters 59:55
AI, there's so many things in there that like, they're all going to be different. Habit trails. But like, I was talking again with my wife, who's in corporate giving and charitable giving here at Whataburger, and she had a vendor, a nonprofit, you know, kind of asking for funds and and there was a misspelling, a couple of them that were egregious. And my wife was like, you know, I get so many GPT written emails that it was actually endearing to see that she wrote it herself. Yeah, clearly that was her. So human intelligence, you could see that's a great way to show that you're putting effort in,

Dennis Ayotte 1:00:31
dude. That makes me wonder if this will birth like a whole new kind of term. Like, remember when I talked to you about, like, it was kind of like, comment hacking, where, like, somebody would be on a video and they would, like, purposely say something wrong, or, like, they purposely misspell something in their title, just to bait people into that. I think there's gonna be some term eventually that's born where people are, like, purposely, like misspelling stuff to try to, like, stand out and really show is, like, human,

Aaron Watters 1:00:59
yeah. I mean, I got blitzed, and it hurt me a little bit by one comment on Reddit where I was just responding, but I was driving, and I saw a Reddit thread, and so I did a voice memo, had GPT transcribe it in a comment format. I even used my, not another marketing bro, custom GPT. So I didn't sound like a marketing bro. And some dude said, I love, I love reading GPT questions answered by GPT answers. I was like, no, no, like, I had a voice memo with my unique answer. But anyway, that's, that's something that I do think you're going to see the formula, and we're going to pick it up, and we're going to adapt. And, yeah, I think that's that's the cool part of it is AI is going to be a tool, but if I can get stay on the soapbox a little bit more, the other thing that's an issue, I think, for anybody using AI regularly, is losing the human intelligence and spending time, wasting time going through this chat with your AI assistant, and then realizing, well, crap, it's something I would have checked if I would have followed my old process. And I'm I'm saying that just from my own experience of I was doing an audit the other day from from an organic standpoint, and I pulled up 03 I'm like, let's talk about it. You tell me where to go. And if I would have just started at the beginning, where I would have a year ago, I probably would have caught it a lot earlier, and it was just like a tagging issue. And so I think what I want to encourage is, like, don't rely on it for the critical thinking, use it as an assistant still,

Dennis Ayotte 1:02:43
yeah, for sure, especially if you have experience, like, rest on that and, you know, try to leverage that with with the AI. So I've been really enjoying, like, conversations with with my AI chat GBT bot lately, which has been kind of spooky in a way, because I'll be, like, driving home, and I don't know it was maybe, like, about a month ago, the voice changed, and they had some sort of update to where they're actually saying um and ah, and it feels insanely conversational. So, but I had to pump me up the other day, because we just had all of our, like, quarterlies, and I was like, give me, like, some motivation to pump me up for, like, this quarterly. And dude, did it get me, like, in the right mind frame? Heck yeah, it like reminded me of a bunch of things. And I said, okay, like, let's, let's go do this. So I really been enjoying it, just like bouncing ideas, and maybe not necessarily, like stuff so technical. But I just love to tell it to be like, hey. Be like, you know, a top tier, C level or C suite coach. Here's my problem, like, what do you think type of stuff? So,

Aaron Watters 1:03:53
yeah, you can build some of that stuff. Like, if you know your own, you know, we do culture index, we've done disc if you know your own, your own personal wiring you can bake into your personal instruction set. Like, for me, I ask it to give me both sides of the coin. Like, let's say, tell me why this is a good idea. Tell me why it's not. And I have that for certain chats, but, but I think it's important to understand our own like, if you're overly detailed, yeah, ask it to pull you back and look at it from a big picture. God, do the opposite, because we're still uniquely wired to feed it where we are coming from and put our bias in

Dennis Ayotte 1:04:29
there. Yeah. Speaking of that, I have been seeing more people specifically telling it, like, don't tell me what I want to hear, kind of stuff. And like, you know, I want to hear both sides of the coin, because I think that's the other thing with AI is it's kind of people pleaser, in a sense that like, it wants to tell you, like what you think you want. So pretty

Aaron Watters 1:04:52
interesting. I do want to like one more mundane task that I'm very conflicted about, and I just need maybe therapy or feedback on. I. Uh, like, am I a terrible dad? Is real question, because, you know, we switch off story time, and it's either we read at night, and she just turned five, we read at night, she picks a book or whatever, and it used to be that she loved having me tell her stories. Now she only wants GPT to tell her stories. Oh, wow. So she only wants to hear stories about Mario and Princess Peach, and she wants the guy's AI voice to read it. She doesn't like any of the female voices, okay? And she doesn't want to hear my authentic, organic stories anymore.

Dennis Ayotte 1:05:36
Wow. What you could try to do maybe, is like, clone yourself in 11 labs and see if you can make that happen. That might make you feel a little better. But, man, so that's cool, though. So you got a male voice, and then is it just now unlimited stories about Mario and Princess Peach? Like love stories?

Aaron Watters 1:05:56
Yeah. So what I'll typically do, because I think what really happened is I screwed up. I used to only tell her stories that all ended in a Mario Kart race. She got tired of Mario kart races, but, yeah, I've got one thread that I keep up. I use 03 so it takes a little longer. So while she's brushing her teeth, I'll say, okay, tonight I want a story about this was last night's story. Mario and Princess Peach get turned into Pikachu and Bulbasaur, and they had a crossover event. It was really happened. I'm gonna tell you I fell asleep in the middle of the story, but she turned over. That was a great story, so I couldn't tell you the ending.

Dennis Ayotte 1:06:37
Great job. Chad. GBT, yeah. So do you have a custom GBT for

Aaron Watters 1:06:41
this now, or No, I just have one thread, but I probably should create, wow,

Dennis Ayotte 1:06:44
that is incredible. So, love it. Awesome, man. Well, anything else top of mind for you, or that we should share with the people?

Aaron Watters 1:06:53
I think, I mean, yeah, I don't know if there's any people in the field that really would ever listen to the podcast. I know mostly we're talking to the marketing side. But like, if you've got windshield time and you're a sales guy, yeah, like, use it to pump you up before you go into the home. Heck,

Dennis Ayotte 1:07:06
yeah, I did, for sure. I think it's a good kind of coach and just sounding board a lot of times. So very good. Alright. Well, that is episode, maybe 13, maybe 14, or maybe not, either of those who knows, but thanks for tuning in to another episode of Talk of the trades. Hope you guys found some value and like, subscribe. Drop us a comment. Yeah, give us ideas for stories. Yeah, Mario and Princess Peach. Love Stories, you drop your best one in the comments. So thanks for watching y'all

Dennis Ayotte 1:07:49
missed.

Dennis Ayotte 1:07:52
All right, that was solid.

Aaron Watters 1:07:53
Yeah, I was curious if Brendan was back there the whole time.