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All right, welcome back to Day-Tay with Greg Michaelelsson. I'm here with my friend Adam Davis. Uh we actually haven't known each other very long. We met off Pod Stars, right?

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Yeah. Uh through uh Rebecca, I think introduced us.

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Yeah, exactly. I'm glad she did. It should be a good conversation today. Why don't you give everybody sort of a background on you and and what makes you tick?

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Uh oh, okay. That's interesting. Um I I like to talk about content. I like ingesting content. I like producing

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content. Um I'm subscribed to over a 100 YouTube channels. I read books all the time, listen to podcasts, all that kind of stuff. And I've been in content

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marketing for about 12 years. Um so I just like creating stuff that, you know,

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really resonates with people, really makes people feel something. And lately I've just been absolutely obsessed with AI like the rest of the world. Um I had

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the unfortunate fortunate circumstance of being unemployed last year so I could really dive in 8 n hours a day. Um and

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it really made a difference. So yeah it's all I talk about these days basically.

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Okay. Wow. So what did you learn over those eight nine months I or that the time you said eight nine hours over the period when you really

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deep dive? Yeah, it was probably about eight or nine months. Um, well, no kidding. I made that switch from, you know, my CEO telling me you have to use

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AI like every other CEO in the world to really understanding how it's helpful,

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why it's helpful, how to build automated systems that really work for any sort of use cases. Um, doesn't have to just be

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marketing or content or things like that. Um, and just kind of opening myself up to this learning and wanting to be ahead of the curve all the time.

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you know, everyone's trying to adopt new tools and coming out with new tools and I love being that guy who's like, "Yeah,

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I tried this already. It's not what you need or it's here's a cheaper solution or a more efficient solution." Um, I just love to learn stuff like that and

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figure out solutions. So, um, it's been a crazy journey of finding new stuff and not getting bogged down or overwhelmed

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or sometimes getting overwhelmed and trying to figure out the best way around it. So, yeah, it's been fun. Now my view sort of is that large language models

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have kind of turned content marketing on their head a little bit.

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Yeah. I think specifically with content a lot of people are selling fear, you know, that content writers or social media managers or things like that are

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going to be the first ones to go in this robot revolution that we're all facing.

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Um, and I keep telling people that I'm specifically not doing that. I want to shift. I want content writers to become content managers. I want social media

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managers to be social media planners and community managers and still having that engagement and that human aspect of it.

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But a lot of the busy work, you know,

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coming up with a content calendar or looking for keywords for blog posts or finding holes in what our competitors

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are doing that would be a really good idea for us to create a white paper on or a YouTube video or things like that. That is where AI saves a lot of time.

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Um, and it's not like replacing the work that we were doing. It's just giving us some of our time back to really focus on

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making content that really does sound human and that really resonates with people. Well, I'm actually interested.

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So, maybe we have people listening that aren't content marketers. If you were if you're a content marketer 5 years ago,

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what are the three things that are like the top of mind most important things that you focus on? And how are the three things that are most important different today?

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I think I'd probably say the number one thing is SEO. Um, hopefully you work at a company or you worked at a company five years ago that had a good marriage

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between the content team and the SEO team. Um, or you were in charge of that or it just made sense because everybody wanted to be that number one ranking on

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Google. Um, you wanted to have the proper keywords, you wanted to be ranking, you wanted your content to really be out there. I think that kind of ties into branding a little bit,

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which is probably number two on my list of having a specific brand message, a brand identity, and having a uniformity to that message that it's shown across

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everywhere and really nailing different social media channels and how their content should be differentiated for

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each of those. Um, that was that's what I would say is like the top three things that I was focusing on 5 years ago. Um

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it's actually 5 years ago was when I made my shift from B2B to B to C. Um which is a really interesting differentiation in content because even though in the end of the day you're

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talking to people selling someone from you being point A to point B being the person you buy who buys it from you is a very different way of speaking to

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customers. Um so yeah that's what I would say my list is. And those things haven't really changed. They've just kind of shifted.

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Okay. How so? Um, well, with SEO specifically, the one thing that AI and LLM is really pointing out is how much

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of the internet is built for SEO. Like when you go and search a topic or you look for something, you're not getting

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the best information. You're getting the best SEO optimized links. Um, which is why you see on a lot of this data now from LLMs,

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taking stuff from Reddit and taking stuff from best practices and articles and people as opposed to just Google, right? So, you want with boots

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on the ground, people are actually saying and doing. And doesn't matter what you're searching, whether it's marketing or sales or um R&D, anything that you're searching for, the internet

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until now has been like, well, if we're the best at keywords, then people will read our content, even if it's not the best. And now those companies are getting penalized for not having you

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know quote unquote the best content. Um so a lot of people also now are saying that SEO is dead because of this whole

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process which is again not true. It's just shifted because you have to just kind of focus on a different angle or add in I'd say a different angle than

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you were beforehand. Um, and branding is more important than ever because when everything kind of seems the same or

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very robotic or very cut and dry AI content, you want to be the brand that stands out. Um, you want to feel unique,

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you want to feel human, you want to feel different. Um, and doing that in a way that really makes

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sense in how you market your company is the way that you're going to succeed with this whole AI um, adoption, which is where social media really comes in.

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Social media is not going anywhere. Um,

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the way people use it is obviously shifting. You shouldn't post the same things on LinkedIn that you're posting on YouTube or Twitter. You know, those

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are completely different places. like Twitter, people are gravitating a lot to Grock as their go-to LLM these days because it's focused on pop culture.

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It's focused on news. It's focused on the latest updates. Even though it's not going to give you the sophisticated background answers as maybe Gemini or

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Claude, but it's real time. So the conversations you're having on Twitter about your brand or about your business or your product should reflect that as

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opposed to LinkedIn, which is a whole different vibe. So, um, yeah, like I said, these those three things are still top of my list for content. Um, but I'm looking at them from a different angle.

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Gotcha. And what about actually producing content?

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A lot of the content out there, one of the things I've seen is that content writers are now deliberately making themselves sound less formal and more

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sort of uh maybe extemporaneous or more kind of like dopey or like a college student,

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right? so that people don't think that it's large language model generated content.

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Yeah, I see. You know, I've got I've got one person in my network that she writes she she's like constantly nashing her teeth because she writes with M dashes.

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Like she that's like her thing. She always has. I've always used them, too.

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But now anybody anytime anybody sees an M dash, they're like, "Ah, that's that's written by Chad EPT. You're uh you're a faker. You're a loser." You know what I

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mean? People are highlighting all these things like apparently you can't use the word clarity anymore because clarity is

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a big chatbt word. So that's also the same kind of thing. I use m dashes all the time. I think clarity is a great word. I mean it's it's tough and I think

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um it's shifting content creation in going back to what I was saying earlier in the process for me that it's changing

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because people aren't well let me change what I'm about. I was going to say people aren't dumb and they can see through AI content, but a lot of I mean,

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yes, it depends, but um content creat,

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right? Yeah, of course. I think I I worked in in e-commerce for four years and I managed a content team and I hired them from one person to four people and

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we were just had this engine that was just crazy. I mean, with e-commerce,

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there's non-stop content that you're creating. You know, I'm sure anyone who signs up to a company's email list around Black Friday and Christmas, you know that you're just getting emails

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every single day. So, we had to understand that pace and now translate

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it into what we've learned from that into this AI world. And I'm sticking with my whole theory and plan that the process is where you need to optimize.

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You shouldn't be having AI write subject lines for you. It should be figuring out what the best subject lines are that

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you've written in the past or that your competitors are writing that are resonating with customers. Um, it's building out a content calendar or a blog post calendar for the next 6 months

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so you can free up time instead of brainstorming and ideulating and things like that to focus on what you're

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actually creating. Um, so and yeah, I listen I even despite all that, I still use AI to create content, but I I do it in more of like a a foundational sense,

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like write me a LinkedIn post or write me a blog post and then I review it and tweak it or change it to my voice or change it to how I think makes more

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sense for what I want to talk about this week. um not because I'm out of ideas,

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but because it can quickly look through what I've posted recently or what other people are posting or what will resonate with my ICP and things like that instead of me

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having to do that research and a 4-hour job becomes a half an hour job, you know?

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But it's interesting to me that the top thing on your list was search engine optimization. And a lot of that is like playing games with the content that you

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write in order to rank at the top of the list and not so much writing the stuff that's really relevant and useful. Yeah.

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Yeah. It's kind of a it's kind of a perverse incentive. Yeah. Um Yeah. I think it's kind of like a subset of my belief that content is the most

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important team in any company. Um, and yes, I'm biased, but I think you could have the most beautiful product or the most amazing website, but if it looks like it's written by a four-year-old,

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nobody's going to engage or no one's going to buy from you. Um, and I think that applies in in your brand messaging and how you look online and social media

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and your online reputation management and things like that. But if you know this kind of one a of that is if people can't find you, then what's the point,

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right? So, um,

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SEO is important to me because because I've been on that other side. I've worked at companies where there was friction between my team and the cont

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and the SEO team or there wasn't an SEO expert in house and we had to kind of tread water and figure things out on our

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own. And I think when you do have a proper plan for getting your name out there,

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getting your your content seen by people and getting your product understood and made aware to the masses. That's when

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you could say like, "Okay, great. People are reading our content. Let's now give them unbelievable content." Or, "Let's give them unbelievable content so that they can read it, so that they can read

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more of our content." You know, it kind of like leaprogs in that sense. Um because I just don't want my content to not be seen, right? Um which is

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something that I learned in a previous job and it's such a classic mistake that so many marketing teams make of just

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writing content based on a whim. Like oh there was something in the news or we just have this new product update. Let's write a blog post about it. Are people

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searching about that? Do people want to know about that? Is that resonating with our audience? And so for so many years,

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people would just create content for the sake of creating content until we said,

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"No, let's look at the data. Let's look at the SEO. Let's look at what the Google search numbers are showing. What are our keywords that we're trying to rank for?"

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And so when you take all those factors in, SEO is kind of like a nice concise way of explaining it. But I mean, I want

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people to see my content. That's that's to me number one. Yeah. I hate it.

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It it definitely seems to me like it's a it's a game and that authentic content is less important than searchable

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content. And that kind of drives me nuts. I I get it. I I understand where you're coming from. I I look at it not

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so much as a game, but more of a it's keeping us on our toes, you know. Um,

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like take out everything you know about SEO and just look at content marketing and online reputation management. You

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know, like I said before, you want people to know about your brand. You want people to know what you have to say and what your product is and things like that. If you're just creating content

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based on what you think will work, you might hit the target, I don't know, 20%

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of the time or, you know, clock a broken clock is wrong twice a day kind of thing. Um, but what I think is good about SEO is that it doesn't just let

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you like sit and wait. You have to you create stuff for x amount of keywords or for certain types of Google searches or

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for trends in the market and then you're like, "Okay, that's working, but now we need to look at it next month and be like, is that still working?" Or the stuff we did six months ago, how's that working or do we need to optimize it?

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and it keeps your content fresh and authentic and interesting, especially um for financial companies or for companies that have a lot of um compliance and

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risk issues that you could if you didn't have to worry about SEO, you would just put things up there that could be illegal now, you know, or could be breaking GDPR or could be breaking

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compliance issues in different um markets and you would just be like,

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well, the content was right and people are clicking on it, so then it's fine,

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but you're not optimizing, you're not changing, you're not refreshing, And so that's why I'm not an SEO person, but I

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like working with SEO people and people who really know what they're doing to make sure that this kind of constant checking and refreshing happens.

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And what about GEO? I've been hearing a lot about GEO.

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Yeah, it's SEO just with a different mask basically. Tell me tell tell me what's different.

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What what's changed for people in terms of like so define it first of all for everybody. What is GEO? So it's generative engine optimization which

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basically means that how the LLMs and the AI tools are finding information about a given topic. Um so people are

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saying well your content has to now reflect um those new eyes that are looking at things from a different perspective. Um

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but it's just another angle of SEO. Um and if you're just creating content for LLMs, you're

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missing out on all of the humans that are still looking at your content.

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there's still billions of people using the internet every day, right? So,

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um I know a lot of people like in WhatsApp groups that I'm in and LinkedIn that I follow that are just calling out

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every single post about GEO because it's just SEO with like a fresh new title to it. Um well, what I will say is that it's you can't ignore this other angle.

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You have to include it. You have to include this whole outlook of GEO in addition to your SEO efforts. Um, you can't replace SEO, but you have to think

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about like what I was saying before where AI is taking its information from.

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Um, I was at a conference recently that specifically spoke a ton about GEO and they were basically giving this whole

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breakdown of where AI learns from and how it gets its information and major um Fiverr which is a massive company tech

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company in Israel um which is if in case anyone doesn't know is basically started as $5 to do simple tasks like you know

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writing a post or creating a logo or things like that. um now has like a whole marketplace of offerings. They realized that in their help center about

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certain topics, those articles were getting sourced by AI and that's why they were getting a ton of traffic to

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their website. So now a lot of companies are starting to build up their help centers and build up these kind of um encyclopedias of content about what they

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do and about their product. um which 2 years ago would have just been robust SEO, but now it's this added layer of

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GEO because they know that the the LLM are looking at those. They're looking at Reddit, they're looking at Kora, they're looking at YouTube, and so it's just kind of like giving it another lane.

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Talk to me about Reddit. I I've I've been on Reddit for a long time. Uh a long longtime lurker

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and uh I'm a member of lots of subreddits. I post occasionally. I've got I think I have like 800 karma. So,

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virtually no karma, but you know, not not none. So, you know, I'm like a I would say I'm a not a noob, but also not

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experienced as a as a Reddit user. How can how could somebody like me use Reddit for improving their uh their content marketing strategy?

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Reddit is a terrifying place. I'm going to be honest. I I love it. I use it every day, all day. I have a million and a half hobbies. So, I'm in a ton of

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different sale credits and I'm on there all the time. Um, and I think that personal use of it has really helped me

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feel comfortable with using it for work or for my AI learning and things like that. So, I've joined subreddits for specific tools like Base 44 and Lovable,

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which are AI web development tools, um,

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that are built for the masses, just to kind of hear what people's gripes are and what people what issues they have, cuz I'm not a power user of anything,

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but the people in subreddits are the cream of the crop of people who use or talk about a specific thing. So, I've

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learned a lot about um, it's really helped in my learning, I would say, for sure. Using it for business is something that is very

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difficult because in case anyone doesn't know enough about Reddit, it is the most hostile.

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That's a great word. I was going to say cutthroat, but yeah, hostile is great.

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Like they will see through your BS in a second. And so finding a way around that and to navigate to actually promote your

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product um is very difficult. A lot of people fail and then once you fail on Reddit, that's it. There's no coming back from that. So, um I think I love it

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as a tool for personal use. I think it's an amazing tool for learning and growth and for understanding things that, you

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know, maybe for me as a marketer, I'm not a coder, but I've learned a lot about coding and web development and machine learning and all this kind of

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stuff from just my time learning about AI. And it's a great resource for any of these very specific topics that you want to learn about. Um, and I think if you can succeed there with your business,

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then you're going to just be miles ahead of everybody else in this new kind of AI GEO LLM looking at Reddit world that we're in.

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Um, it's it seems to me I get the same vibe from Reddit that I got from Stack Overflow back when Stack Overflow was actually a successful company.

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Yeah, of course. now now 95% of their users are gone because you know like I've tried to post on Reddit and half the time the post gets immediately taken

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down uh because you broke some obscure rule and about a half the time of the remaining times you get uh pillaried

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because you didn't use the right word or you didn't include the right details or whatever and maybe 5% of the time you actually get some legit answers to the

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post that you make. Uh Stack Overflow is the same way, right? you post and it immediately gets marked as a duplicate of a question that was closed eight

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years ago and and you know like it's a I don't know it seems to me like the culture on Reddit is so sort of toxic

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that it's it's incredibly hard to be out there and I wonder if they're going to go the same way Stack Overflow did.

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I'm not sure that it will because if because of how specialized it is, if you're one of those people who's a power user or a super nerd about a given topic

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or things like that, then you feel like you belong there and you're the one who's gatekeeping or you know, it kind

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of you kind of feel like among your people there. Um, I think the shift that's going to happen is the community

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aspect that people are looking for on Reddit. um which is why Reddit is so popular because it's just about one specific topic is going to be what people focus on like using things more

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like Discord or building up bigger communities online or offline even that people have um to get more of that human

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connection um because it's not just about information. It's about connecting with people who are interested in a certain thing that you're interested in

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or learning from them if you're if you're new to it. And I think um excuse me, Discord

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and other sort of community like WhatsApp groups or offline communities like in events and things like that, that's what people are looking for now,

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that human connection with people who are interested in the same specific space. Um I' I use Discord for a bunch of different things and I feel like it's

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what I wish Reddit was, but it's almost a little like too closed because you have to just join a server and then you're in it and that's it. Um

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but I mean I don't think Reddit is going to change. That's just the way it is.

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Thankfully, it's not as toxic as Twitter is sometimes, but it's kind of different. Toxic.

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Yeah. Uh yeah. I don't see. It's weirding me out that you're talking about desk discord and WhatsApp because

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to me those apps seem like just refu in terms of like content, you know, because the only exposure I have to WhatsApp is

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texts from people that live overseas a and uh spam like Bitcoin spam and and

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all these, you know, these obviously fishy uh this content that I get. Uh,

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and I think that's common to a lot of folks, but to me and Discord is to me is for gamers and that's basically all that it is. So, I think there must be more

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there that I'm seeing because but largely this stuff is undiscoverable unless you go and look for it.

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Yeah, that's fair. Also, the WhatsApp thing is very I mean, you're not wrong in how you feel because it's a American thing because I live in Israel. Everyone uses WhatsApp literally all day long.

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Um,

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which is weird completely not user friendly. It's the worst.

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I I'm so used to it now. Like I can't imagine any other way. Um and so I have I'm in a bunch of groups that I actually joined when I um was unemployed last

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year for finding jobs and also just kind of meeting or interacting with other people like me who were marketers or content people and things like that.

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They've been super helpful, super super helpful. um amazing community of people who um actually Rebecca who introduced

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us is added me to a bunch of groups and she's in a bunch of them that I was already in and like just people that I never really would have interacted with.

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Um I'm now learning lessons from and setting meetings with and kind of building this community and

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yeah, so that's been really great. And Discord, it's true. Yes, I know what you're saying about gamers. I think

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that's kind of where it started. Um, but I was in I joined the base 44 Discord.

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Sorry, getting over a cold. Um, that's fine. The AI will take them all out. It's fine. Oh, okay. Good.

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I joined the Bass 44 group. Actually, my even before that, my first real dip into Discord was with MidJourney um like a

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year and a half uh two years ago even when that was really the only way to create really good AI imagery.

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Blew my mind like if you're if you're midjourney, why in the world would you choose Discord to be your user interface? Like it makes no sense. I I

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never understood that. probably because it was like free in a sense that they could just kind of build it up there and

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um not have to worry about hosting some sort of big platform. Um because so much like that's the thing so much of using

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Midjourney and other AI tools is really social. Like even though I'm not using Midjourney

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anymore, I still am in the MidJourney subreddit because I like learning from the way other people create images and

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videos. Um so the people who are still using it or who are using it in conjunction with other things like VO and stuff like that um or Nano Banana.

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Um, so I just, yeah, like I built up my use of Discord and understanding of AI image creation in dis uh, in Mid Journey

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and then took all of what I learned and what I enjoyed from it and I'm now kind of pulling from that on Reddit.

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Um, which is going back to what I was saying about this community aspect. Like I am just learning from all these people

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who have been doing this non-stop for two years. Um, which has been very helpful. You know, it's interesting

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because one of the things I think that characterizes things like WhatsApp and and Discord is that they're not discoverable.

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And you know, you like you never get a Discord link or a WhatsApp group when you search on Google. You just don't.

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And so I think that makes them sort of less me, you know, that reduces their their attraction for people that are

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writing commercial content trying to uh advertise, I suppose. Um, Reddit does come up on on Google and so that's I

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think growing interest in trying to use Reddit commercially. Um, maybe there's like a spectrum there because I I would

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say WhatsApp and Discord are more authentic uh but also much more closed. And I wonder if there's an inverse relationship between openness and

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authenticity. What do you think? I think these um I think they started with that in

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mind and that was probably something they looked at as a positive. You know that Reddit you could have a specific let's say base 44 subreddit. Um it's

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unique to people who use it and who are interested in it but it's open to the public right anybody could just join if they want. Obviously, you could just

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join the base 44 Discord as well, but it feels like you're joining a community where you're expected to interact and

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you're expected to kind of you have to do certain things before you're allowed to post or answer questions.

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So, it feels like people who are focusing more on Discord are probably trying to maintain that exclusivity or that closeknit community aspect to it,

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which is why they're probably fine with it not being as discoverable. Um, and which is why you find the best answers

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there. I mean, think about it. Anybody that you go to for advice or for help with a given topic, you want the people

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who are in the know, right? And those people are not just finding an answer on Google and sending it over to you. They're the people who are, you know,

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mods for subreddits or who are in these um in these Discord channels. Like for

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me, I spent a few weeks building stuff on base 44 and lovable and tried. So, I

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built a bunch of stuff there and then I wanted to build a website for myself and for my AI offerings and my kind of side

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business that I have and I ended up not using those tools because what I learned and what I learned from those

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communities is basically I understood the concepts of what didn't work there and I just wanted to find something that would work simply and quickly and free and ended up

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building it with Google AI studio um in just a few hours using claude and chatbt

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at the same time. And that kind of that ability to say like I know enough to not

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use a tool because I've like done so much research and been in those communities and the Discord and subreddit and stuff like that. Like that

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was very valuable to be able to tell people now like here's what I did not using these things, you know?

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Yeah. It's still a black box to me and I wonder how how so the best like for

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example chat GPT wildly popular amazing product 200 million users if not more uh

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no content marketing at all really uh and you know like it seems to me that the more content marketing you do the

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less useful your product is because you have to do it one if a truly useful product doesn't need it is that a So I I

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realize I'm speaking to a content marketer.

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What uh what do you think about that? I did I just de demean your entire provision?

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No. No. I mean I think like any good content marketer, the answer is it depends. Um because for people who are

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outside of marketing or people who are just end users, all you see is the final result, right? Like you see a Coca-Cola

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commercial, but you don't think about all of the work that they've done for over a hundred years to get to where you see a bottle that's a certain shape and you just know it's a Coke bottle, right?

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So, um, which is where content and marketing kind of blends into brand and everyone has heard of the term brand

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awareness, but people don't think about the other sides of branding. Like brand awareness is of course everyone in the world is aware of Coke and Nike and

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Apple and things like that, but why do you choose Coke over Pepsi if you don't know the taste difference, right? Like why would you choose Adidas versus Nike?

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Um they both make excellent shoes or clothes or products or whatever. So but understanding like why a certain thing

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resonates with you more that is where content comes into play.

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you know, like when you think of running shoes,

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you think of Nike because their commercials are built around running.

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Um, and then, you know, we're not talking about the like people who are like, "No, I wouldn't even look at Nike for running shoes cuz I want AS6 or Brooks or like the top level, you know,

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Nike running shoes, but if you're a general person who wants to start jogging, you don't know what to do,

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you'll probably buy Nike shoes because their commercials are built around that." Whereas Adidas is not really built like that. So, that kind of that and that is content. That's like a content and branding direction. Um,

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where Nike is not telling you about Nike. They're telling you that Nike is your number one source for running shoes, right? So,

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that's where content comes into play.

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And that's where you really need to kind of put your stamp on

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um what you're doing and what your product is capable of. You know, look what you were saying about CHBT. like everyone's heard about it and it blew up

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and it's great but and I haven't given up on it but there are other LLMs that I use for different things right like I don't create images in chatbt I use

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Gemini because it has nano banana and when I saw what they put out for their latest release I was like why would I use anything else and that's content and

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that's advertising and marketing and things like that. Um same thing could be said about Claude and Claude doesn't really do any marketing. I don't think

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I've seen a single thing that they've put out on the internet about them, but I just get better results with them. And

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I basically do marketing for them, you know, like I'm telling people that a lot of my workflows that I built to automate a lot of my processes use were either

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built using Claude or use Claude as like the brains within the automation. Um,

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so I think I think it's about um how do I put this? directing the conversation.

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You know, um, Chatbt either subtly or not really so much marketing wise,

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basically put itself out there as the number one LLM for people to use, right?

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Um, now all these experts are saying Chat GBT is dead. that I've moved over to CL what everyone loves sensationalizing things like that but

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you know if you talk to um like your uncle or someone who's not in tech

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they only know about chatbt which is a certain form of marketing or content or branding something like that

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yeah so those are for big company like KO's a huge company uh you know like Oracle Microsoft uh even the old school

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ones you know anthropic is huge open AAI is is in the news for sure for smaller companies. So my company Zerve uh you

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know we're a development platform. We do agentic coding uh for in the data space it and it's you know it's an amazing

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platform. It does amazing things. But would a company of 30 people uh that uh is a startup market in the same way as

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like an open AI or a uh or a Coke? Like what are the differences between a you a

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huge company and a small company in terms of the way they should be thinking about content?

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Um, it's a good question. I think I think the number one answer to that is not even thinking about content right away. It's about understanding who you

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are as a company and what your message is and what you're trying to get people to understand. Um,

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because you're not competing with the big companies, right? You're competing with the companies that are your size or your

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main competition, right? Like you could say that giant companies are your competition because that's your plan and that's your, you know, focus and that's

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where we want to be in 5 to 10 years or even less, but they're not the people you're trying to pass. You know, like think about it in a race right now. If

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you're like 16th in a race, you're not looking at number one, you're looking at 15, right? So, um, how do you accomplish

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that with content marketing? You do it by being authentic. Authentic in the sense of who you are, what you're

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offering, who you're talking to. and how you're conveying that message and making sure that it's universally conveyed across every sort of content or branding or advertising that you're doing. Um,

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and that and finding kind of your niche,

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right? Because when Coke and Apple and Nike and Oracle and Microsoft started,

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how much competition did each of them have? A couple companies, maybe at most.

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Um, but now I'm sure Zerve has a lot of competition. You know, it's a space that it just like the way the world and the

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tech world or community works is that there's just companies popping up all the time. So, who are you in that space?

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What are you offering that's different?

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Why would someone choose you versus a competitor? Why would people even f search for something to find you to help

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them with a solution that they need? Um and and I think that comes from an understanding and a lot of times like

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sea level and um CEOs specifically don't really understand that. They just say this is who we are. Why are we not here?

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Right? And you're saying well we're not going to get there without understanding like why we belong here first, right?

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And why we differentiate from the people that are just above us or directly adjacent to us in terms of the competition. Um, and so when you kind of

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carve out your space and understand who you are and convey that to people, it gives kind of an authentic and meaningful message to

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people. Um, and then you just do it across the board in a very uniform and interesting way and that's how like your message will get out to them. Yeah. As a

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founder, I love the idea of authenticity and I hate the idea of playing games in order to like SEO makes me angry,

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irrationally angry. I know it. So, it's good to hear you say that for sure.

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All right. I think Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

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No, I was just going to say like I wouldn't consider myself a real content person if I didn't say authenticity and that human aspect and the messaging and things like that.

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You'd be surprised how many content people don't say authenticity. Yeah, I try. I try to differentiate.

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Nice. Nice. So, you're authentic. I appreciate that. All right, let's do a let's do a forecast. What do you think in the next five years? How is how are

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improving large language models and improving AI going to impact the the way that the marketing uh world works, the way that that we do our we do our jobs.

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I think it's going to continue to improve our processes and make work a lot more efficient. Um, I think, you know, not to sound all doom and gloom,

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but I think it's going to weed out the people who are against change. I think um whether you like it or not, this is the way the world is not even headed.

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It's where we are now. And I think if you're not adopting and learning and trying to understand what tools are available to

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you, you're just going to you're just going to be overwhelmed and left behind and not really know what's working. Um,

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and I think it's going to just drastically shift the way people look at

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authenticity and content and branding and advertising. And I mean, how many times a day do you see pictures and you're just like, is that is that?

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Yeah.

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Um, and you know, showing a real human side and real human connection and real interaction with

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people is going to be what really keeps winning. Um, but I think if you're doing that without

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embracing the tools to make your life faster and more efficient and to learn more things about your competition that you weren't doing beforehand or figuring

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out solutions that you didn't have time for, then you're just going to fall by the wayside. I think. Lovely.

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Well, Adam, it has been such a good time to uh uh to chat with you and learn a bit more. Marketing is uh is voodoo to me and and I' I feel like I've learned a

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good bit from you. So, thanks for coming on and thanks for talking to us about it.

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Yeah, thanks for having me. This was great. I appreciate fun.

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All right. Well, best of luck to you. We look forward to seeing the good things from you in the future. Uh anything you want to promote? Any uh any socials you want to send people to? Any anything interesting?

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Um wow. Yeah, I mean you could I'm starting a new brand called Firstman Marketing. Um you can go to firstmanmarketing.com.

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It's where I basically offer AI workshops and AI workflow building for anyone who wants to learn about AI or make their job more efficient. That's

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what I'm trying to do to just spread the gospel of AI basically. Um and yeah, that's it basically. Sounds good. Well,

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thanks again for coming on. It was a real pleasure. Thanks. I appreciate it. Take care.