Slow marketing: why anti-hustle growth outlasts burnout + How Reddit became a top search and AI citation source

Hello everyone and welcome to the Link Through Social Podcast. My name is Paul Wright. Well, what a show we have for you today. We'll have Jen McFarland. Now, Jen's approach is something she calls slow marketing, capacity aware, ethical, and built to support a business owner's life instead of consuming it. And we will also have Ewan Finzer, and he will explain how Reddit became a top search and AI citation source, and so much more. That's episode number 35, and it will start right after this short message. Tired of stressing over what to post on social media? Meet Smart PostApp, your all-in-one solution to create, schedule, and grow your content effortlessly. In just a few taps, you can generate engaging posts, stay consistent, and keep your audience coming back for more. No more guessing, no more burnout, just smarter content faster. Whether you're a business owner, creator, or entrepreneur, SmartPost offers both premium and pro plans. In addition, we have new features that have been recently added that include instantly viewing public links to your posts on any network, weekly view allowing you to plan hour by hour, account groups, group your accounts to save time and simplify your workflow, and a desktop version, which offers a simpler way to stay consistent. Start posting Smarter Today at smartpostap.com. SmartPostApp because your content should work for you. And welcome back to the Link Through Social Podcast. Well, we have a really amazing guest for us today, Jen McFarlane. Now, Jen is a marketing strategist, former City of Portland digital transformation leader and founder of Women Conquer Business. She's featured in an international documentary, click the link below, which exposes predatory online marketing. Jen helps women, solopreneurs, and small teams replace hype and overwhelm with ethical, sustainable marketing they can maintain. Today she'll show you how to grow your business without burning out or selling out. Jen, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's uh my pleasure. Um, I've been looking forward uh to having you on the show. Uh I was looking at your bio and uh some information about you uh in the weeks leading up to this interview. Um, why don't you share with our viewers and listeners just a little bit about your background before we get into everything? Yeah, uh you shared a little bit of it. So, but there's a little always a little more to the story, you know. Yep. I started my career as a graphic designer. And after a few years of doing that, my husband and I went into the Peace Corps and we lived for two years in Kazakhstan, where we were both English teachers. My husband was in a band, like we had a really, really good time, and it really broadened our worldview and our horizons. It's always neat to have those kinds of experiences. And then when I came back, I was not sure if I wanted to do marketing still or not. And I went to grad school and got a master's degree in public administration and learned like a ton about projects because I was always running projects when I lived overseas. So then I worked at the city of Portland, but marketing was always like pulling me back, you know. So I was the webmaster for my department at the city, and I was always reading and reviewing copy and all of that kind of thing. And what happened was I was on a retreat with some friends, and the leader of the retreat was a small business owner, and she was just struggling with everything. And I was like, Oh, I can help with all that. And that was kind of the day that the business was born because I was tired of these large-scale projects without having contact with people directly, and I knew I could help, and so it's been just a journey that was about 10 years ago, and now I've I've done all kinds of things. Like, who knew you could write a blog post and end up in a documentary? I mean, that happened, you know, like it's just been a wild ride, and I I've just really enjoyed it. So that's me in a nutshell. Um, looking forward to how we can help everybody with what it is that they have going on, um, especially in this environment where you know, especially now with like AI and everything, there the bros are coming out again with like their latest trends and stressing everybody out. So it seems like a good time to to to follow up with like, well, you don't really have to do all that stuff. It's okay. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's it's moving at such a fast pace, you know. It's it's been very hard to to keep up with all the latest um uh uh innovations and and all the different things that are that AI is allowing us to do now, but to keep up with what the future is going to be, it's it's uh uh basically on a day-by-day basis. Now um you uh started women conquer business. Um, what made you start uh this business with with that title? I and and I kind of know the answer, but I'm curious to know your your um perspective on that. Yeah, well, so it's interesting. My business started off being foster growth, and I still love that name more actually. And because I my resume when I was looking for work and everything, I always said that I foster growth and change for people. Yes, um, but people were confused about what that name meant, and I couldn't buy the domain that ended in dot com for foster growth. It was it turns out it's a popular name for finance, and and I then I had people who said, Oh, do you help foster kids and like all kinds of stuff? So I was like, Okay, I gotta change it to something. So, and at the time I had my podcast, which I have it's not been around for a couple of years now, and I kind of wanted to unify the brand as something, and so that was kind of how it happened, you know. And I and I do help women, but I also help men too. So it's you know, it's not um meant to be exclusionary or anything like that. Um, but it is also about the fact that you know, if uh we all deserve to have a little carve a little space out in the world if we want to. Absolutely, we definitely do. Now, um you call your approach slow marketing. Uh what does that mean? Yeah, it's another, you know, it's so interesting. I didn't coin the phrase. Uh somebody named Tad Hargrave uh coined it, and it was based on the slow food movement, actually. So that's like a like kind of speaking out against fast food and like how unhealthy it is and things like that. And this is another way of looking and calling out fast marketing. Um, now fast marketing works in some contexts, you know, if you're running an e-commerce business and or you have a journey where people are buying things that are maybe like 10 or 20 bucks, like it's it's not, it's it's all about like having the right marketing approach for the right type of business. What happens is everybody thinks that all marketing needs to be this buy it now, you know, do it fast. And and that doesn't really align with the buyer's journey. And so what slow marketing is, is like take the time to understand your positioning, take the time to like learn about what's going on. And then if you are a consulting business or somebody with a high ticket price, you do need a slower cadence than what the bros and all the people are telling you to do because people take longer to make a decision, and so you're better off instead of burning out with like sales funnels and all kinds of stuff, and like trying to force people to buy things right away. You're better off with like a slower pacing, meaning fewer, more in-depth content pieces, um, things that you can point to for several years about your expertise, um, and then it and building human real life, actual human relationships so that you can be more ethical in what it is that you're doing. Um, I know that you're nodding a lot, and and so it's all based on like your business goals and and things like that. It's basically like a it's so funny that it's considered like a counterculture like idea, like, oh, let's be human and let's let's address the issues that our customers have. Um, and yet, you know, here we are talking about ethical marketing because it's not something everybody talks about. No, it isn't. And and and we should be, we really should be. And I'm glad that you're you're you're you're focusing on that when you're you're coaching or mentoring or or working with uh solopreneurs uh out there, and um there's a lot of work uh to to be done, but it's it's how you how you approach it. Now, how does a solopreneur figure out which marketing to skip and how do they know when to hand something off instead of you know doing everything themselves? Oh boy. I mean, I I think that that's that's always the trick, right? Is how do you know when you want to hand something off? What I tell people in you know classes or when I'm working with, well, I guess if I'm working with people one-on-one, they're usually trying to like hand something off, you know. Um, but but if I'm coaching somebody, it really is like, what are the things that you're just never going to do? Like, we all have things for a lot of people, it's their website, like they're never gonna touch their website. So like have somebody else do it. Like, if you have things that are falling off, you know, another common thing is if you write, if you do video, like have somebody else edit it for you. You don't have to do all of the hard stuff. And and so a lot of times it is about like what makes sense to hand off because it's taking you hours and hours to do it. Because one of the things that gets lost a lot, and this is true for a small team, you know, it every anything. I it happened to me in the corporate context too. Like, there's some things that take you far longer than somebody else, and it's costing you a lot of money when you do that, and so you have to really like be conscientious of your time and really think about it. One of the things that I tell newer business owners is, you know, as much as as social media can really be helpful, if you're sitting around on social media waiting for work to come to you, like that's not really how social media works. So don't be spending all of your time on social. You could be doing other things to help with your business development. And so it really is about striking that balance um and finding the things that make the most sense to outsource um so that you can be making money doing the things that really make you happy. Isn't that why we're all in business? Exactly. And and you know, I'll I'll speak on on a personal level here too. It's hard, it's hard to give up uh certain things. You you you you feel that you want to do everything yourself, and uh it's it's just so counterproductive. Uh, you know, there's a lot out there that can be shared out or or delegated to someone else. And uh as as um as an entrepreneur myself, uh it's I've always found it very difficult to do that. And but you have to, you really do. You honestly do. 100%. I always tell people, you don't want me to do your finances. No, you know, I mean, and so that's the big thing that like that was like one of the first things, like somebody else is gonna do that, you know. And and so for everybody it's something different, and you just have to be aware of it, and then it can really free yourself up to be more effective in your work. For sure, for sure. Now, you've said uh a service business website behaves like a dating site. What do you mean by that? Yeah, you know, so a lot of times if you have a service business, so if you're a coach or a consultant, people are meeting you in another context, usually. You're building some relationships, maybe you're doing some networking or podcast interviewing or something like that. So they're checking you out as much as you're checking them out, you know, and that's what I mean. So is it consistent with what it is that you have said that you're doing? Is it is it putting your best foot forward in terms of what it is that you offer, what it is that you do. Now, I will say, and this is common, especially among women, but I think among everybody, is if you don't keep your website up to date, then you kind of like get all tight and you're like, oh, I don't really want to share that with anybody. You have to keep doing your work anyway. You have to keep share, like if your website isn't up to date, it should never stop you. But just understand that it's a it's a relationship that you're building at that stage too. People are looking to see like, is this the right fit for me? Is this really what I want to do? Is this really where I want to go? Um, and and that's really for some time, you know, for some people, if they find you through AI or through Google, it is maybe the first time that they come into contact with you. No, for sure. Now, you you said about finding the finding you through AI or Google. Uh, the search is really shifting fast. Uh, people are asking AI tools for recommendations now instead instead of scrolling for hours. Um, what do small business owners need to understand about showing up in an AI search as opposed to the traditional Google or other search bot engines uh that we're we've been used to for many, many years now? Yeah, you know, it's so interesting because they're actually at this point, and it's something that's probably going to change, is very consistent, like what it is that that works, and Google also works um when it comes to Chat GPT or Claude or whatever. Um the difference is you're being cited. So Google's more like a library, they're just showing you all the books, you know, and AI is giving you very specific answers based on exactly what you've asked for. So, what does that mean? It means that you need to spend time answering custom direct customer questions and be thinking about things in terms of questions and answers. Now, for me and my customers, that's I mean, I've been telling people that forever. SEO is answering customer questions again and again. And then when you're tired of it, you do it again. So it's not just how it works, you know. Um, but it also means that sometimes on the back end, you need some of the techie bits as well. So we work on things a lot that are called schemas, and it's a piece of code that you put on the back that's like, I'm Jen McFarland. I went to Portland State University and the University of Idaho, and I'm I have knowledge in these areas. Yeah. Um, and then you build things a lot on expertise. So it means that places like your Google business profile, your website, and even things like social media, you need to have consistency about what you're talking about, how you describe yourself. Because at the end of the day, whether it's Google or you know, Chat GPT, they're all robots and they're trying to line everything up. I got a cold email. So there's a woman named Jen McFarland, she runs Merit Digital. Um, she's in North Carolina. We started showing up in each other's like press clippings. I got a cold email. Yeah, you know, and so I reached out to her. We had a meeting because I just thought it was fun, you know, and and I got a cold email um last week that was for meant for her, but went to my email. So, like, you know, there's things like that, you know. So so obviously we have to kind of shore something up. I think it's also that they just didn't maybe know what they were doing when they did it, because we're both very clear about what it is that we do. Um, but that type of confusion is why you need to have some of these pieces in place so that um you're getting the right person who does the right thing in the right location. Right, right. Now, a business owner shows up, contacts you completely overwhelmed. Uh, they're staring at a huge, giant list of marketing to-dos. What's the first thing you do to try to help them get through this? Yeah, well, well, I mean, the first thing is take a deep breath. It's gonna be okay, you know. And then we start to focus on the goals. Uh, a lot of times people start doing all of the marketing, you know, or all of the things, and we need to set up some priorities first. You know, when you're a solopreneur or a small team, you don't have the same bandwidth as large companies. And a lot of times when people talk about marketing, they talk about it thinking that people have all these big teams. But if you don't, you know, then it's really about like what's the most important thing in my business right now, and what marketing strategies can I use to support that specific goal? And so a lot of times it's about stripping away all of the extra stuff and really just focusing on a few simple things so that we can start to do it. And the people start to feel a lot more confident when you do that. You know, it is about boosting your confidence because marketing is really about energy, you know, how and and your customers can feel that. You know, how do you feel about your products, about your services? How excited are you? And if you're wearing yourself out, it's it's not gonna be as attractive to the people that you're trying to get. No, for sure. Now, ethical marketing. Uh there are businesses out there that will just follow the follow the norm with the different trends and and might be going uh against their own personal uh um ethics, their personal views, their standards. Uh how important is ethical marketing uh when you're out there trying to market your service, your business, your you know, your retail outlet. Um what's your thoughts on that? You know, ethics are it's always kind of squishy, right? Everybody what's ethical to me is different than what's ethical to you. And some people maybe don't have strong ethics at all, you know. So, you know, it's all it all depends. I think that if you are a person who feels icky about certain things, then that's a sign that something is out of alignment and you need to start focusing on what it is that you can do to feel good about putting things out there. A lot of times when I talk to people that are feeling, you know, because for other people, like if you don't feel icky doing anything, you're in alignment, you're fine, you know. For other people, I'm like, this is like lemonade marketing. Think about when you were a kid and you're selling lemonade on the street and you were so excited about it. Like, it's really important philosophically to understand that all marketing is is sharing about the things that you care about. So, and there are people out there who need you. So, how can you be talking about these things in a way that you feel comfortable about that is guiding people towards the solutions that you need so that when they think of you, those so that when they need you, they'll think of you basically. How do you stay top of mind? How do you guide people through things so that they understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them? And for a lot of people, they don't understand that it's really as simple as that. Now, there's a lot of complexity behind all of that, but like really that's that's fundamentally what it's about. The how that you do it is where the ethics come in, you know. And for a lot of people, it's like, well, just think about how you would feel if so if you're like talking to somebody on the street and they're just like jamming their like business card at you all the time. Like it's really annoying. So you have to balance things out a little bit, and that's really where the ethics come in is like balance, you know, it's a marketing mix, is what we call it. Like, kind of you have to talk about things that are different, you have to weave some stories in in a way that is interesting to people so that they know that they're human. You have to comment on other people's posts and social media, you can't just be pushing things out there, you have to be part of the community and part of the conversation. So it's really when it comes to ethical marketing, it really is like how can you feel good about what it is that you're doing and sharing about it in a way that's attractive to others. And that's why, like, you know, it can be slow marketing, it can be another way. Um, but for some of some of us, you know, it can be a challenge, sales can be a challenge. And so it's really like if you stay um true to your ethics, then you'll be a lot more successful. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, your your website is uh womenconbiz.com. That's B-I-Z. Um if our viewers or listeners visit your site, what are they gonna find there? And tell us uh a little bit about some of the services that you do offer. Sure. Yeah, so you'll find a really robust blog. I've been blogging for about 10 years, uh, and you'll find a lot of really great podcast interviews. And last year of my show, we did a lot of marketing how tos um that were on YouTube. So you can see like how to how to create a content calendar, how to do like all different types of things. So there's a lot of instructional stuff on there, and then in terms of the services. We have um local SEO for people who have like a service area and want to do like a Google business profile and things like that. Um, we have marketing strategy, coaching, and then a fractional CMO service where it's like, well, we'll just do it for you. What do you need? So um so there's kind of runs a gamut. And then I also work with a lot of people who are really committed to doing their own marketing, and we have a community for that as well. So that's with like ongoing training and group coaching. So there's there's kind of a range of pricing and different offerings depending on where you're at and what it is that you want to do. I'm sorry. Um, we really appreciate you taking the time. And uh maybe you can uh just wrap things up with a um message uh to our viewers and listeners. Yeah, I hope that you are getting a lot out of this. I hope this was a helpful conversation for you. It's really important that you understand that you can you can mark it however you want, um, but it does help if it feels good. And so that's really like the message that I want you to take away from this is show up, put your best foot forward. If things aren't done or you feel a little uncertain, go ahead and do it anyway. You know, it's really important to just keep keep going and keep at it and really be responsive to what your customers are looking for. Wonderful. Well, Jennifer once again everyone's a website.com. You've worked hard to build your audience. So why send your customers somewhere else introducing white-labeled digital storefronts from Ticket Ortex? Now you can process tickets, registrations, donations, merchandise sales, and collect valuable customer data directly on your website or custom landing page, increase brand visibility, create a stronger connection with your customer, deliver a stable-the user experience, and monetize your brand with high converting pages, powered by ticket court access, secure hosting, payment processing, and event technology. Perfect for festivals, invention connected, retail storefronts, charity events, boarding events, and even free events. But that's not all. Introducing ticket port acts multi-day events is hosting a festival, seminar, conference, tournament, or event series. No more manually sending tickets 24 hours later, no more scrambling to issue comps and catch up with attendees. With Ticket Port X, everything happens in real time. Sell tickets for multiple events on one page, create ticket packages across different dates, manage entire event series from a single storefront, and spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. Ticket port X, powering your brand, your events, and your growth. And then welcome back to the Link Through Social Public Events. Well, we have a special guest for you today. His name is Ewan Finzer, and he's from scalevisible.com. And he has spent over a decade watching how people find brands online, and he's lived through every major shift in it. He started out in the golden era of independent publishing, built a medium operation spanning more than 150 niche sites, and 40 plus YouTube channels, and was one of the first to publicly call up what he nicknamed the Google Apocalypse back in early 2024. The moment remnant and AI-generated answers started replacing the old search play button, the playbook, instead of watching it happen, he built the response, Scale Visible, where his team now gets brand cited in the AI tools their customers actually use by building consensus. Welcome to the program. Thanks so much. It's great to be here. Yeah. So before we get started, Ewan, I briefly uh introduced you there, but uh why don't you uh give me a little bit more about your background? Yeah, absolutely. So I've been uh in kind of the SEO world, as they call it, for over a decade, which is basically helping brands optimize uh uh for Google. And I was a publisher, a media company, and so in the old environment, we got traffic from Google, and we, you know, a visitor would see an ad or click a link, and there'd be some sort of economic transaction that might occur. Um, and that was kind of the the deal with the open web. And so that was my kind of the horse I rode in on. And then uh yeah, as you said, the intro in the last uh two to three years, there's been some really big shifts, and I and I kind of look at it like almost like what happened in the early days of Google, uh, where uh you know it was early, it was messy, people were confused about what to do and and how behavior was changing. And I think AI is that that next big kind of leap forward in terms of how customers discover. And I think just at a very high level, um, what we're really interested in doing is helping helping brands uh create enough context so that they show up in the answers. And I think when most people use LLMs, they are think it's magic, right? And they oh, we got the answer, but it all comes from somewhere. And I think once people understand that, um, you know, it changes some of the thinking around well, where where should I be? What what distribution channels, social or content distribution channels, um, should I be on to maximize the exposure for uh my brand? And so we kind of created the media comp uh the agency by necessity because the economic infrastructure broke with the old media companies, the old publishing equation is gone. Um and so now we have to you know go to the brands and say, look, we have all this influence. You know, our our websites are very influential, our Reddit communities are very influential, our uh YouTube channels are very influential, but there's no economic infrastructure that that supports it, like in the old Google environment where uh bloggers could earn a living, right? And so that's basically what we've done. And and the agency's grown faster than the media company, so it's kind of like right place, right time. Um, we're kind of in this watershed moment, but yeah, that's kind of a little bit more color on uh what I do and how I got here. Yeah, no, it's it's it's exciting times, uh scary times as well for some people, but uh and I I'm very anxious to get into this, but uh you publicly called something the Google Apocalypse uh back in 2024. What did uh before we get into what's happening now, what did you see that most marketers missed at that time? Well, because we were a publisher and a small publisher, we were and we were very driven by SEO. So ranking and go think about like if you're looking for you know best running shoes or you're looking for a holiday gift guide or something, we would rank kind of create these listicles. Uh, we would have our creative team go and test all these products um and really create genuine high-quality content, but in a very kind of micro-targeted way, you know, around maybe an enthusiastic enthusiast audience, a specific point of view, uh, like a guitar enthusiast blog or a um, I don't know, a parenting blog or something like that. But what we saw shift even before this whole AI discussion was Reddit. We saw Reddit all of a sudden showing up at the top of search set search engines. And that was like the precursor and kind of like you said, the canary in the coal mine, a little bit, like where all of a sudden Joey323 says these are the best running shoes on on some random Reddit thread. And that is weighing more than the wire cutter or some big review site that's been around for decades. And so this was kind of this moment where we're like, all right, this is this has shifted. We saw it very early. Um, and again, before AI came on, it was really Reddit that was taking all the oxygen. And come to find out, you know, and again, you can read between the lines if you want to, but Google signed a licensing deal with Reddit uh to basically take and started OpenAI to take all those insights from those real human conversations that are happening all the time as a pipeline to feed the LLMs, to train the LLMs on, and that's what the LLMs need. And so I kind of saw it very early, and that was like yeah, that was when the old kind of rank ranking in Google playbook kind of went out the window because all of a sudden some random user on Reddit can have more sway than your perfectly optimized blog that that crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's with Google. Yeah, it definitely has changed. And and and like you said, uh these Reddit users are are making posts and they're they're there's a lot of uh people are taking a lot from that. And yeah, but what what about the on Reddit, the misinformation is supposed to buy user Black 724 or what what have you? Like how how is that going to uh um influence the the searches uh uh that are done through one of the AI um platforms like ChatGPT? It's a serious you know concern. I think um, you know, again, when we come to the publishing side, Google had all these rules about you know unspoken, some explicit, some implicit about you know high quality content. They had this whole concept called EEAT, which stood for expertise, experience, expertise, authority, and trust, which is like they want to be able to tell if they visited your web page that you know you clearly had expertise on this, and then all of a sudden they changed the rules and they said, Well, now anyone on Reddit can suddenly anonymous think about this the polar opposite, it's anonymous users. I think the reason why Reddit is having a moment, and the reason why Google signed these deals and everything is because there's wisdom in the crowds, right? So, like in any individual post, there could be a lot of misinformation, but generally speaking, across many conversations, it's kind of normalized. It reminds me of this stock picking platform called Stock Twits, where like people follow it to like it's it's like what does the crowd think? And it's not it's a day, it's a data point, doesn't mean it's the truth, right? But it's generally more accurate than having no information at all. And so um I think that is kind of an and you know, because it's anonymous, there's a double-edged sword. It's like anonymous could be anyone masquerading, you know, as an expert, but it could also be someone, an insider at a company that wouldn't publicly say, you know, this this product is garbage, but because they have this anonymity, they say, Yeah, I've been on the inside and I know this product is garbage or like whatever. So there's a little bit of a kind of a yeah, there's there's I can see why, but it does create some challenges. And of course, now all marketers are like are flocking to Reddit, yeah, you know, to try to get their message out and they're learning some hard lessons about what's possible. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's a it's a new environment, and I think that's the one thing is understanding how LLMs they don't just come up with these answers, they don't there's not they're not an Oracle. It all comes from somewhere, and it's synthesizing a lot of different sources, including a bunch of Reddit threads and YouTube and blogs, and uh, you know, uh tier one media, tier two media, Quora, LinkedIn, you know, and and so it's like I think the the bet there is that if they collate enough sources and then enough sources say similar things, it's probably true, versus this website happened to trick us into ranking number one in Google, and that happened sometimes. Uh and you know they just got the poll position, they got all the clicks. So uh help our listeners and viewers understand if someone made a post on Reddit about a brand or product, and then they're say it was a false statement or or within the post that you were saying things that weren't true. Um are the comments picked up as well as far as determining whether this is relevant and and should be pushing you up in the rankings or not. Um, does are those things uh taken into um account? Yeah. So I like to say like Reddit has this three-tier uh kind of quality control system. One is algorithmic, and so you know, the big, big Reddit will track your IP address and be like, well, no, this person is hot seating multiple accounts, you know, they're not a real person, so we're gonna shadow ban them. Or um this person is new and they don't say that like they're not gonna be able to post in these communities. There's all sorts of big Reddit rules, or this this profile is engaged in a pattern of promotion, and they're not actually you know contributing to the community. Um, so that is that filter. And then there's the each community has its own governance structure, so each community has its own moderators, and so the moderators create rules, auto rules that like you can get auto-rejected for posting about certain topics, or manual review where the not moderator can come and say, No, you know, you can't post this, or we're gonna remove your post, or we're gonna add some commentary to like you know correct it. And then the third filter is other users, and so that they have this upvoting and downvoting mechanism. Um, that kind of that's one part, but also, yeah, the comments. And so what we then tend to see is that you know what shows up in an LLM is often the ag some sort of aggregate of the post and comments, right? So it's kind of like synthesizing all that material and kind of giving a perspective and what is the predominant perspective. It's not perfect, so there are certainly ways that you can find examples of you know some brand kind of like very clearly astroturfing some comment, but like in general, it's it's a pretty good system, it's a better system than Google has, right? Right, you know, in terms of policing the open web. And so I think that's why OpenAI and Google both have these licensing deals because they see that Reddit has this built-in system, it's not perfect, but it does, it does layer on some mitigation to some of the concerns you raised. Right, right. And uh I've noticed uh kind of a resurgence in LinkedIn. Uh you briefly mentioned it earlier. Uh how is LinkedIn falling into this new world that we're living in as far as uh AI search is is concerned? Yeah, I mean it's a similar dynamic. I kind of put this the bucket of I call UGC or user-generated content, which is very interesting for LMs because it's like real near real-time insights into things that are happening. That's why Reddit has a seat at the table and LinkedIn is similar. Um so you know, it's like real kind of people, and then you can probably do some approximation of their expertise on certain subjects. Um, and so it kind of has a similar, similar angle. I put that in the same bucket as um, you know, YouTube or Quora, depending on how the YouTube channel is structured, you know, if it's an influencer, um, sometimes TikTok as well. And so there's like these, you know, these, these, these new tiers of media that are now much more important than they ever were before. You know, like a LinkedIn post or a Reddit thread or a well-placed TikTok video can outrank a Forbes article and or out influence a Forbes article in an LM, which which kind of means that the old power has shifted kind of to more of a bottoms-up approach versus a top-down, you know, I am an author, I'm the New York Times, and what I say is really, really important because I've been around for a long time. It's the New York Times still shows up, but it's weighted alongside random TikTok influencer and LinkedIn thought leader and uh Joey323 on Reddit. Exactly. If a business owner is listening or watching right now and has no idea about what DNI says about their company, what's the first thing they should do to start the protest? Yeah, I would say the very first thing is just to just eat your own dog food a little bit. Like open up the your chat interface, you know, of choice, and then maybe a couple others that you haven't tried, but that have market share. So maybe that would be Chat GPT, Gemini, um, maybe Perplexity and Claude, and just start searching like some of your customers uh may search. Um, so you might, you know, if you're a coffee shop, it's like, you know, best coffee shops in Raleigh, you know, or you know, and then see how your brand is positioned and then compare that to classic Google. Compare that to old school Google search and be like, what has shifted? You know, and some what we're seeing with you know businesses all over the place is like they'll do that and they'll they'll they'll notice that their traffic is down, or they'll notice that customers are suddenly all of a sudden. Like I was talking to um someone in the therapy space the other day, and they said, We used to psychology today used to drive a lot of our leads because it ranked highly in Google. And now people are using Chat GPT, and it's psychology today is not as influential in that environment. And so um and so there's like brands that are showing up, like I don't know, Calm and some of these other ones uh or you know, Headway or something, and they're they're like seeing a drop in cut in in organic customers. And so part of that why how you'd uncover that is by running some of those common user journeys. What is your and maybe you knew that in the old search environment? Um I talked to a plumbing company, they were like um some sort of like very particular uh uh drain, kind of like a I forget what it was, some sort of sewer drain repair term. They're like, that is our highest value term in in this local market, in in I think it was in Texas. And it's like, yeah, how how is that different in the in the new environment compared to the old environment? And so I'd start there and just start assessing and then look at those sources. And with all these chat interfaces, sometimes they hyperlink it and they'll reference it in in context like in the Google AI overviews, but in chat there'll be a little sources, and you can click those sources and it expands, and you can then kind of see, okay, well, what is contributing to this narrative about my brand? Or I'm not showing up in the local recommendation, you know, uh for in in chat where I was in Google. Why is that? You know, and it could be that you know, maybe TripAdvisor is more relevant, and you we didn't optimize for TripAdvisor. And so I think it starts with understanding your consensus state and then kind of determining where of your bar marketing dollars or your time start with the things that are most influential across most of the platforms. And that's where Reddit, I call it three-legged stool. Often it's Reddit, YouTube, and some sort of editorial or tier two media or blogs. And so if you can that's generally where to start, but it it varies a lot depending on your vertical. So just taking that first step um and then creating a strategy based on where your gaps are in the AI context uh environment. And I like how you mentioned there, you know, the five or six main uh platforms, you know, ChatGPT, Cloud, and and so forth. Um, and a lot of people will text me or email me or message me on on social platforms. Oh, what what is the best one? And I don't think there's any real answer to that at this point. Like it's it's it's a it's a race. It's uh I I like to compare it to the um the space race back in the in the 60s and 70s. Who's gonna get to the moon the the quickest? You know, it was between the Soviet Union and the Americans, and and um I don't think there's a definitive answer right now. It's try them all out. You know, they they all have free um uh trials and what have you, if if you're not gonna do the paid version. Try them all out and see which one uh best matches your uh type of business or brand or or your company. And um I think that's important. Well, you hit on something uh because the Cold War, it's kind of like I say it's we're in a multipolar world, you know, to use like a foreign policy term, where we've gone from a unipolar world. Google was the search engine, like being yes, it you some people used it, but not on purpose, usually, you know. Um and so now we have it's like a wild, like you said, wild race, and chat GPT was the early winner, but then they're getting eroded by others. And um, you know, it's it even reminds me of the early days of search, you know, where we had Ask Jeeves and Yahoo and all these different search engines, and yeah, who knows which one. And I think it's multipolar is probably a better world where there's not just one monolithic search engine where people can, you know, there's the they kind of play off of each other and that keeps everyone in check a little bit and they innovate differently. And um, so yeah, but I would yeah, definitely try all of them. And sometimes it's by market share too. So like if in certain segments, you know, maybe copilot is more relevant uh because or because it's a Microsoft product, and for uh corporate users, they're usually logged into a corporate computer, and if they're making big purchasing decisions, you know, around you know IT infrastructure, they're probably logged into a to a Microsoft works workstation that's using Copilot, and that's what the sanctioned AI platform. So it's like little nuances like that, but I would yeah, I would kind of create you know a top three or four and just kind of and and you might find there's overlap, but sometimes it's not. And that's that's also very interesting too when there's not overlap, very different results. And sometimes I do that just personally, I'll put a cloud or I'll put it in Gemini, and I'll take, let me try the same query, the same context, and see what's different. Like even just like purchasing a bike or something, you know, it's wild how you know that could be so different in these different environments. Some of it's similar, but some of it's not, and that's really interesting to me. For sure, absolutely. Now, um, your website is scalevisible.com. Uh, tell our viewers and listeners, uh, if they visit your site, what they're gonna find and some of the the services in that that you offer. Yeah, so we, I mean, we're in the kind of I call them as a chief education officer. I'm just like trying to, because we're in this new world and I'm not a salesperson, but I just I want to share with Modesh. I have a book coming out soon. I'm really excited that's on GEO and this new kind of changing uh landscape. Um, but yeah, if you go to our website, we do have a form you can, if you're interested in getting an audit or you know, just some free advice about you know where you are. Um, we do work with a lot of big brands. Um, we also have some, you know, some smaller brands or startups. Um we love working, we call it we say we love working with a challenger brand because the challenger brand is willing to take a risk. And this is a risky time, you know, this is a new channel, this is not a proven channel. Um, and so but that's also the opportunity for a new brand trying to figure out how to get market share. Um, take a little bit of a risk on on chat because yeah, we might not have it all figured out today. We there's no the book hasn't been published yet. Um but but it that's also where the opportunity is. When you think about the early days of Google, when businesses figured out Google, the ones that figured it out first, had such an advantage and time can be a huge advantage in in a in a market shift like this. So that's what you'll find and happy to kind of um share any audit uh or audits with with folks that are curious and just have a conversation. And um, yeah, that's that's a good place to find me. And I'm also on LinkedIn if you want to look me up that way. Okay. Well, Ewan, I I really appreciate you coming on the show today. Once again, to everyone, it's skillvisible.com. I encourage everyone to go there. And uh you can reach out to uh you and through the website or as you mentioned, uh LinkedIn. And um it's exciting news that you're coming out with a book. I'd like to right now invite you on again uh when the book is released, and we'll uh we can definitely talk about that and let our viewers and listeners know uh about what it's gonna be about. Amazing. I'd love to. Thank you so much. Well, appreciate it, and thank you for the time once again. And uh link through social podcast will be back right after this short message. Introducing Ticket Port X multi-day events, hosting a festival, seminar, conference, tournament, or event series. No more manually sending tickets 24 hours later, no more scrambling to issue comps and catch up with attendees. With Ticket Port X, everything happens in real time. Sell tickets for multiple events on one page, create ticket packages across different days, manage entire event series from a single storefront, and spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. Ticket port X, powering your brand, your events, and your growth.