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Looking to improve performance, productivity, and profit? Go beyond just generative AI to understand how artificial intelligence can give you a competitive advantage. Chris Carr, from Farotech, is here to tell us how AI is reshaping the marketing landscape, and how you can stay ahead of the curve.
AI for Productivity, Performance, and Profit Episode Transcript
Rich: Okay. My guest today is President and CEO of Farotech and a Forbes Agency Council member. Farotech is an award-winning inbound digital marketing agency based just outside of Philadelphia with high profile clients such as Penn Medicine, the Wharton School of Business, and the Rothman Orthopedics Institute. Recently, they’ve been recognized as an Inc. 5000 Company and one of Philadelphia’s 100 fastest growing companies today.
We’re going to be diving into how to implement AI in your marketing campaigns with Chris. Chris, welcome to the podcast. I’m excited. You and I got to know each other at MAICON back in July in Cleveland. It was great getting to know you through Andy, and I’m looking forward to today’s conversation.
So I’m just curious, it feels like you’re light years ahead of me when it comes to the whole AI thing. How long have you and Farotech been using AI in your market?
Chris: I met you at MAICON, which was Paul Roetzer’s event. And I met Paul through another gentleman named Chad Pullet. But Chad said, you got to have this guy Paul, he runs a HubSpot agency called PR 20/20. So I invite him on and I’m like, “So tell me about PR 20/20.” And he’s, “You didn’t do your homework, pal.” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “I sold that agency, and I do AI.”
And I was just like, I know a little bit about AI, but mostly it’s The Terminator is going to kill us. And that’s what I thought. And then within an hour, we hung up the phone. It was me and my business partner were on the podcast with Paul, and we literally came back and said, everything is going to change. And I refuse, after 20 years of building this agency, to get rolled by this new technology. So we’re going to be ahead of it and stuff like that.
And so for the last three years, we have lived, eat, dreamed, every single thing you can possibly do has been AI related. And so I’m all in. I’m not saying I love AI, I’m just saying that I have to be ahead of the curve on it.
Rich: It’s a necessary good, or a necessary evil, however you might look at it. It is happening. So why do you feel this is such a game changer?
Chris: Almost everything that we’re seeing, it’s not even 10x, it’s 100x. And it’s a learning computer, so it’s just only going to get better and better. I’m seeing it adopted in so many pieces of technology. And the things that they were dreaming of doing in the roadmap, they’re able to actually finally get to. And I’m also seeing how the chips are lining up for the big players, and it’s both amazing and scary at the same time.
Rich: So would you talk us through some ways in which you’re using it like implementing marketing campaigns or whatever it may be?
Chris: Yeah. A lot of the things, the early things I was doing had to deal with what’s called ‘programmatic advertising’. And what we were doing with AI there is we were using something called content.AI.
And content.AI, essentially, you know how there’s this whole war on privacy and things like that, and it’s like they don’t want to know with cookies and stuff that I’m Chris Carr. But the game is rigged in the fact that I have a device. And on that device is what’s called a device ID. And while it might not know that I’m Chris Carr, it knows absolutely how to advertise to that device ID. And on that device ID, content.AI basically measures everything that I look at, how I engage, every possible thing about my behavior, my demographics, it knows everything.
The other thing it does is that when you sign up for Netflix or all these things, you almost always sign up with a QR code or they connect your phone to that platform. You think for you, it’s convenience for them, all of the tracking information, almost pretend like it’s a virus is getting spread. So that now I can advertise to people on their phone, on their computer, on their podcast, on their TV. I can get it onto newsletters, and so you can never leave this ecosystem. You can never lose this ecosystem.
And I’m going to talk to you later today about how Midjourney, like the freakish things that are going to start to happen with generative imagery in relation to ads, that are just going to be like, POW!
Rich: All right. Before we get to that, because it sounds like that’s interesting. too. But so what you’re saying, because for those people that can s’tee, you held up your phone when you talked about this ID number. So it may not know Chris Carr or Rich Brooks or who’s ever listening right here. But if we’ve used a QR code to set up Netflix or Hulu or Spotify, that QR code is also passing information along.
It may not know me by name, but it knows me by this ID number. Which on some level is protecting my privacy, but not really in terms of being able to advertise to a white man who’s 55 years old, likes comic books and artificial intelligence. As a random example, I just came up with that one. Oh, and Spider Man, too.
So that’s what you were starting with in terms of being able to put the right message in front of the right person at the right time, for you and your clients. Is that accurate?
Chris: Yep. Then you’ve got to go on to large package models. And before ChatGPT was ever a thing, I was using every tool under the sun from Writer, to Frase, to Jasper, to whatever, only toying around with them. We picked Frase. Frase didn’t have the chat element to it, but it was doing a lot of the things that were prompts, were already, that were basically pre-designed prompts.
But that I remember the day that ChatGPT came out. And my business partner only comes into the office one day a week. I was like, “Dude, you got to get in here. What we thought was coming in three years is here right now, and everything’s going to change.”
So that’s some of the things. So I had advertising, then I had large language models. Then I got into Code Interpreter, which is now called Advanced Data Analytics, where I talk to my data.
Rich: So walk us through that a little bit. Because this is the part that I haven’t cracked myself. Not that I’ve cracked everything anyway. But this is the part that I’m really interested in. So talk to me a little bit about how you’re using, what it used to be called. Now, what is it called?
Chris: Yep. I can get why they did that for sure. Yeah. Let me show you.
Rich: And this is a feature within ChatGPT?
Chris: That’s right. And then, you’re going to start to see these play out. You’re going to start to see these play out in all these formats. There’s even one now that’s called Open Interpreter, which is an open-source version of this.
Let me just share my screen real quick and I’ll walk you through it. Give me one second here. Essentially what we’re looking at here is, with Open AI, it’s like having a master’s level data analyst in your pocket. And so when this technology came out, essentially what it allows you to do is upload raw data files, Excel files, data sets, whatever, into this engine that was called Code Interpreter. And Code Interpreter would essentially read these files.
And some random guy literally as it came out, found crime data from San Francisco, uploaded the files, and as you can see on the left, it basically organized all the data and figured out everything from the day of the week, the hourly crime rates, seasonal crime rates, police data analysis, so on and so forth.
And then he asked for visualizations. And you’re seeing all these charts on the right-hand side, including heat maps of certain crime hotspots in San Francisco, organized by date and time. Now it literally was just simple in natural language prompt. You literally just asked it to do things and it did that.
So I took it one step further and I went and I said, “Hey, I’m going to upload my advertising file for programmatic advertising.” And what it did was, if you’re following on here, I uploaded it and I basically said, “Give me a chart of the distribution of conversions over time.” And here’s a chart, and there’s a chart that basically just was whipped up out of thin air that I can paste into reports. Sometimes it would do an ugly report, so I’d ask for a cleaner report, and it would do that. I’m able to find outliers that way. It’ll describe it in natural language, so I don’t sound like an idiot, like my data is smarter than I am. It actually explains what I’m looking at. And then it’ll also continue to do things like my top ten creatives, or my top five campaigns, and my number of conversions an hour by day. I essentially have this raw data file, and I talk to it like it’s a human being. It’s absolutely crazy.
But here’s where it’s really important to understand. I’m a HubSpot agency. I have 25 full-service clients that essentially pay us $10,000 a month to run their entire campaigns for them. And sometimes I would have this thing where I would have an outlier. And I would look at something and I would say, hey, my local keywords are not working for this client. Are they affecting all healthcare clients? Is it also affecting larger healthcare clients? What about websites that have been built in the last two years? Is it impacting clients who use HubSpot? Only who use HubSpot? Is it affecting highly competitive keywords? Which project managers and accounts are most affected?
Rich: All right. Before you go on, I just want to pause here. Especially for people who may not be able to watch this. So you’ve put all this data in there and now you’re just asking questions. Obviously, all of this data that you’re asking questions about is data that you had already. And this is always one of the strengths and the weaknesses of these LLMs is the fact that they need to be fed a lot of data.
So you had a lot of data already and you shared it with them. And I want to remember to come back and ask you about protecting data in the system. But we’ll get to that. So that’s where we are right now. All of those questions that you just posed to the LLM were in there, and the LLM is hopefully able to extract that data for you and give you an answer.
Chris: We would export them. And then I would have to arrange the data into a spreadsheet. But imagine a spreadsheet that has a million columns. Some of these columns I only had to change one time. Like, who’s the project manager on that account? Or, what’s the budget on that account? When was the start date on that account? When was the website born? Other things I have to, in real time, I have to put in their analytics data of visits and returning visits, and mobile usage, and so on and so forth.
But if I do that at one time in one export, I can start to talk to my data. And every quarter the dream scenario is me and my business partners ask questions about what are we not seeing at a macro level.
Rich: Right. But you are able to do this because you have clients in healthcare, not just one, but you have multiple clients, some big, some small, some on HubSpot, some not on HubSpot. I’m just trying to paint this picture of why you’re able to do this with the data. If somebody was just starting, they have one client, they’re not going to get that same level of sophisticated answers that you’re able to pull because you have a good group of clients.
Now I want to get back to the question I was asking before. So I know that one of the concerns is that when you take client data and you upload it into something like ChatGPT, that you’re basically sharing that data, because ChatGPT is using us as we use it. So are there steps that you take to help protect the security and the privacy of the data that you’re uploading?
Chris: I was just de-identifying the data. So I would have all my clients in the first column, and then I would assign them a number. You’re an 80s guy. 867-5309, right? And then later on I would go in and just as I would start to ask questions, I would just have a key on the left-hand side that I could personally do that.
Now, what you could do is you could use Open Interpreter, or you could buy the Enterprise version of ChatGPT, and they’re not going to train your data on.. you know what I mean? Like now you’re in a place where you’re able to…
Rich: You’re in a private sandbox where your data is not being shared. So it’s being trained on your data, but it’s not sharing that with the rest of the world.
Alright, that is some really fascinating stuff that you’re doing with it. And you’re able to pull better information. And you’re asking intelligent questions, you’re getting great answers, and you’re staying ahead of the competition, because you’re really leveraging this power of AI.
That was a great use case. So I know that you like generative AI as well, and you teased up a little thing about that journey. So why don’t we talk a little bit about that? What’s going on there?
Chris: Let me show you one, little thing. It was deeper in my slide deck, but it was hard to make the jump to it. Here’s where I believe that AI is going. And the reason why I was saying that was, when we were at MAICON, there was a company called Akio. And Akio got me thinking. That Akio would basically, everything that has an API would all be plugged into Akio. And just like Code Interpreter, it allows you to talk to that information in natural language prompting. In other words, you talk to it like it’s a person.
But where it got me thinking is, that this is what I believe the grand scheme of AI is, is that every piece of software that you’re going to have will have an API. The API will connect to a central copilot that’s AI driven. And so now you can talk to multiple pieces of software all at the same time, all from one place.
So whether that’s your QuickBooks, or what’s going to happen if I raise a dollar an hour, what’s that going to do for my HR software? And how’s it going to affect that all of these things that you got to run a report, or you got to ask a person to run a report, and so on and so forth.
Imagine you having control to all the strengths and weaknesses that you can talk to your software and analyze things all at one place in one copilot. I believe that is going to be the future. And that’s where me as an organization, I’m trying to solve problems, not just do things more efficiently.
Rich: Makes a lot of sense. All right, awesome. Now let’s talk about generative AI and Midjourney.
Chris: I’m the most visual person you can ever imagine here. So when you think of Midjourney and stuff like that. Let’s just say hypothetically, I go here…
Rich: As you’re doing that, Midjourney, for those of you who don’t know, is a generative AI tool that creates images. It’s actually the one that I use almost daily.
Chris: And a lot of it feels like very gimmicky, right? Meaning I put in a prompt, and I get an image out. Pretty cool, right? But it’s also come a long way. What it was in version 1 versus version 5 is very real. And you can put people’s faces in it.
Here, this is a guy who’s in your roundup, I believe, Ron. I don’t know Ron’s last name. But I basically put his face on Superman. But here’s where it gets, this is a gentleman who runs Moonshots, and he’s about to talk to his AI. Now watch this. I’m sorry for the people that are just listening in. This is, I can’t think of the guy’s name, but he’s the host of Moonshots and he’s about to talk to his AI that looks and sounds just like him. Is it 100%? No. But it’s kind of freaky knowing where this is going. So let me just play this.
*recording*
“… AI on my podcast called, Moonshots. Hello Peter, it’s an honor to have you on Moonshots. This is Peter Diamandis, and I’m thrilled to be speaking with you. Let’s dive into the world of exponential technologies, moonshot thinking, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. So, what’s on your mind today and how can we inspire our listeners to embrace a mindset of abundance and boldness?
I appreciate the fact that you think you’re Peter Diamandis, but I’m the actual Peter Diamandis, and you are an AI on my podcast called, Moonshots. And just to make it simple, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call you “PeterBot”, so the audience can understand who’s who.”
Rich: So for people who aren’t watching, there was a video split screen of a person and then his avatar. And the avatar, honestly, I wouldn’t have known was an avatar if I just came in cold and saw the beginning of this. And if I can have my avatar, I just want it to have slightly better hair than I have, and I think I’m good to go.
Chris: So that’s what it looks like in video format. And obviously we can talk about how it’s going to affect Hollywood and stuff like that. But here is what I believe is the big deal. So where am I using it from a use case? Here for example, I’m sure you’ve seen this picture here, but give me one second.
You’ll see a picture of a gentleman basically cycling in Montana and there’s no lines on the road. Then you can just literally just ask for lines on the road using Adobe Firefly. I have clients in the orthopedic space, and they don’t wear stethoscopes when they consult with clients, so we have to use generative AI to basically remove the stethoscope.
Rich: So what we’re looking at here is a photo, stock photography, of a doctor wearing the stethoscope. Because every doctor who is in stock photography is always wearing a stethoscope. And what you’ve done is just using this new generative AI tool from Adobe, called Firefly, is select that stethoscope. And then the very next picture it’s gone, and you literally would never know it had been there.
Chris: Now let’s get once we get past all the chip sets, I’m going to fast forward here. So what is the goal here? All right this is my business partner, Todd Smith, and Todd loves to golf. Now Todd is just like everybody else. He buys from businesses or companies that they know that they like and that they trust. So who does Todd know and trust more than anybody on the planet? Himself. This is the human condition. He’s not a narcissist. This is the human condition. This is the same reason why, when we look at a group photo, you always look for yourself. It’s just, unfortunately, that’s just the way life is.
So now where does Midjourney come in? It is not just to create cute unicorns. What Midjourney is going to do is they’re going to look, and using content.ai and things like that, they’re going to know all the demographics about Todd. They know he likes golf, and all of a sudden the ads that he gets are going to be generative AI, except for it’s going to be someone who looks very similar to him in the ads. If I’m an Asian woman who loves kids, my ads will be shockingly similar to my demographics and who I know, like, and trust, which is myself.
So the chipsets aren’t fast enough to do this yet, but we’re starting to see this in responsive ads on Meta. Because Meta knows more about you than anything. But you’re going to see this in all display advertising that your ads will look like you.
Rich: So instead of having stock photography or non-stock photography that is diverse, it’s actually going to be very specific, just specific to the way we look.
Chris: Hyper specific to you.
Rich: Very interesting change.
Chris: It’s some crazy stuff though, right?
Rich: Absolutely. Absolutely. And actually, that makes a total use case scenario. That makes total sense. Like, why wouldn’t you show people who either are you or look like… are you might be a little creepy, but look like you, so that you see yourself more likely in those ads and you can imagine yourself in that new car, or picking up that new golf club, or whatever.
Chris: They will do them aspirationally different than you. I bet you they’ll be 3%-5% less body fat. You know what I mean? They will do things that are just out of your reach, intentionally.
Rich: Perfect. I’m curious, do your clients know that you use AI? Are they excited about it? Is this something that you’re using as part of your promotion, or is this something that you hide and only talk about if they say, “Hey, have you been using AI?”
Chris: Well, I use AI a lot for ideation. I wouldn’t say that it’s not there yet. It’s about a 30% increase in I guess you would say the power. And so let me, because I can’t do anything without a visual. This is my last visual, I promise.
So this one I also stole from MAICON, and this is what we believe should be used for AI, when you think about great content, right? So we always believe that great content should have been born out of great ideas and then great research. And then great, you’re composing it, you’re editing it, and then you’re distributing it. But the reality is that no matter how hard you try, you got to get an idea, but it’s on an editorial calendar, so you got to pump it out. You try to research like crazy, but you don’t have the time to do that. You spend a crap ton of time writing it, you send it off to your editor who’s got to do it within an hour to stay within budget. And you hope to distribute it and promote it, but you got another article to write.
Now, if the AI world basically has it so composition is faster, you can spend more time on those extra ingredients like better ideation, better research, better editing, and better distribution. And so you can reinvest in places that are going to be more consequential. Because everyone has access to these AI writing tools. So you can either be more efficient and save money, or know that the competition is coming and then you would reinvest to make basically your spear bigger, stronger, and faster.
Rich: Chris, one of the things I know about OpenAI, and ChatGPT, and Claude, is that they have cutoff dates. They only know information up to a certain date. Like me, you have a wide variety of different clients. You might have a focus on healthcare, but you have other types of clients. Things change all the time. Healthcare changes all the time. Are you concerned, or how do you overcome, when you need to create content that might be a little bit more up to date than the latest cutoff date for some of these AI tools?
Chris: So ChatGPT, in my opinion, is the best writing on the planet right now. It’s not even close. So what I do when I have to use something that is more modern, I will go and I’ll do research out of BARD, which is connected to the internet. Or Bing AI, which is connected to the internet. I’m a huge fan of Pi.ai in my research.
Remember when I showed you that really creepy phone? It’s what Siri will be. But you can talk to this thing, it talks to you like it’s a person, and it’s really creepy. They connected that to the internet. And so I’ll say, “Hey, I’m going to write a blog today about how AI is going to change the automobile industry.” And Elon is changing this thing by the minute, right? So if it’s 2021, I’m going to be way out of date. But it’s connected to the internet. And we’re talking about Dojo, which is Elon’s new supercomputer.
We’re talking about all these modern things. And everything that I talk to on the device, it also has the written version. So when I get to my office – I do it while I’m driving – when I get to my office, all the text is there. I do a ton of research by talking to AI. It’s crazy.
Rich: And for those of you who haven’t tried this, Chris showed it to me at MAICON. It’s PI, it’s an app that’s definitely on iOS, I assume. It’s also on Android as well.
Chris: I know there’s a web version.
Rich: We think so. If not, get an iPhone. Yeah. But yeah, it is incredibly conversive. And I remember one of my first days back from MAICON, I sat on my back patio, put my phone on my chest, and had a 45-minute long conversation with PI about a wide variety of different, sometimes nuanced topics. Like, how do I introduce AI to my team, and also what were some of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movies of all time. It’s really crazy how real and how authentic these conversations feel. I recommend everybody go and check that one out as well.
Chris: The answer to that question is [inaudible].
Rich: I say, Civil War, but anyways. We can discuss that later. Which is actually my daughter’s least favorite, because she doesn’t like when heroes fight.
Okay. So there are a lot, and I know we could talk about a lot of different things, but I am curious to get your take on this. There are a lot of concerns around generative AI these days. Things like biases, copyright issues, job loss, hallucinations. How do those concerns impact your use of AI, or are you just not worried about some of those issues?
Chris: I think certainly in the editing process, I try to catch it there. But what I think from a hallucination standpoint is that we use a program called Claude by Anthropic. Claude allows you to upload a file that has 75,000 words. So I believe that hallucination issue is a big issue.
And so what I did is I trained my staff to create what’s called the ‘super document’. And in the super document, I’m going to get things like case studies, testimonials, my bestselling blogs, our core values, every single thing about our company, our client’s company, their brand, their messaging, every single thing I could possibly think of, their buyer personas, interview questions. I put that all into a super document.
And then the first thing I do is, Anthropic or Claude, rather than you scouring the AI, I want you to always reference the super document when you create the following content. Therefore, it’s always referencing things that are already known and approved and so on and so forth.
Rich: And Claude is actually my favorite. So I’m curious to know how you do this. So you’ve uploaded this super document, as you said, and it basically has everything that Farotech is all about. And so everything then is created, generated, through that lens.
But when I’ve talked to Claude sometimes, it can only deal with the thread or the conversation that I’m in right there. So are you always going back to that original thread and say, okay, now I need you to write a mission statement, or now I need you to write a sales letter. But you’re always in that original thread that has the super doc attached, or you’re uploading it again to a new thread?
Chris: Yes. You know, Ironically I find that, with all AI. Look, I speak Spanish. I’m not good at Spanish. I speak it. And if you and I were talking about Marvel comics, I could maybe hang on, right? But if someone came over and said, “Hey, what hotel are you at?” If she changed the context, my Spanish can’t figure out what I just heard, right? That’s sort of the same way with AI, from my exhaustive uses.
I basically get one contextual argument in one tab, and then sometimes I find it’s better to just open up another tab, import the super document, and then go into my second content, and so on and so forth. It’s not pretty. But I just get a better result by asking it, like wiping the slate clean, uploading the super document, and then using the context that way. At the end I marry them together. I throw it into ChatGPT, and I edit in ChatGPT.
Rich: So you prefer ChatGPT’s writing to Claude, that’s what I’m hearing?
Chris: I also use their whisper technology. And for an ADD guy, you can just see how I just, I fidget like crazy. It’s the greatest invention of my entire professional career is Whisper.
Rich: I’m not familiar with Whisper, tell me about that, please.
Chris: Whisper is a button that you just basically, you click it once, and you just free form and you just talk and talk and talk and talk. And then you just say, “turn that into content” or turn that into whatever. And it is freakishly good about organizing your thoughts, organizing your words, saying it correctly, and stuff like that.
Rich: And this is within the ChatGPT universe? Or it’s just a standalone product?
Chris: Sorry, I’m trying to look at my, I think it’s called TalkBerry. But it’s using OpenAI’s Whisper technology,and Whisper technology is the reason why their dictation is so much better and stuff like that. So if you got the new iOS… do you do dictation on your phone? Like you just type a text message and you say it?
Rich: A little bit. It’s usually not the way I work, but I do know that a lot of people that love thinking out loud do it.
Chris: The reason is because it was like 60% effective. So then after you did it, you’re like, ahhh, then I’m correcting and it’s a pain in the butt. iOS came out two days ago.
Rich: Or a day later you’re like, what was I talking about?
Chris: iOS is now using the AI format. You can tell it’s a Whisper technology. It’s 99% accurate. Like, it is crazy intuitive. And so my point is that this Whisper thing is going to be a big part about how we communicate with AI. It’s changed the landscape by Dragon Dictation, and Whisper is 1,000% better.
Rich: What is the number one best way that you’re using AI today? In your opinion, in terms of creating marketing campaigns or doing any sort of content creation. If you’ve already told us what it is, that’s great, but if it’s something different, let us know.
Chris: Using language models like a combination of ChatGPT, Frase, and Claude. That’s just how I’ve been able to get a much better product faster.
Rich: And if somebody came to you and said, “but everything you’re doing is cheating.” I’m not saying that, but if somebody came to you and said, “What you’re doing is cheating. This isn’t marketing. You’re just using machines to do all this sort of stuff”.
Chris: I think you’re trying to look for the outcome, but I’m going to throw this back at you, Rich. I am your accountant, and you’ve been my client for 10 years. I just think you’re so great, Rich. So what I’ve done is, I’ve done your taxes. And do you know what I did because I love you so much, I did them by hand. What would you say?
Rich: Well, since I don’t know much about accounting, I would be like, that seems old school, but okay.
Chris: I would be like, “Do them over again!” You didn’t use a calculator? You didn’t use a spreadsheet? So in the short term, is it cheating? A little bit. But eventually it’s like a calculator for words. And if you didn’t use a calculator to do my taxes, I got a serious problem with that.
Rich: You’re either a savant or… And I understand, because I feel that I feel the same way. And I do think that there are some ways that we might be quote unquote “cheating” when we use AI. And I am concerned about how easy it is to create crap content if you’re not paying attention.
But I do think that saying that marketers or students or lawyers shouldn’t be using these tools, is like saying they shouldn’t be able to Google information either. That’s just my two cents on it, but everybody’s going to come somewhere down the spectrum.
Chris: I think you’ve got major atrophy problems in the future and stuff like that. But what I will say is that if the technology is there to ignore it, it would be a big mistake, too. I think that you and I, because we’re always with our peers, we think it’s cheating, because I’m a marketer, you’re a marketer, and we think that it’s all that special sauce.
But what I think it levels the playing field. And it actually is going to make the true marketers really stand out, and the other ones not as much. Because let’s just talk about SEO. The old school SEO used to be, let’s look for keywords that have less competition and high volume. Now that everybody can write gobs and gobs of content, that real estate is going to go a whole lot smaller. So if you’re going to be in SEO now, it’s a street fight. It’s going to be harder to do our job. But it’s going to be one of those things where even the entry level people can catch up and do foundational things.
Rich: And I’ve seen this for the past 26 years as I’ve been in this industry, that there’s always some new tool that comes out that levels a playing field. But it’s the people who understand how to use that technology that really ultimately end up ahead.
Chris: Let me show you the analogy that I use a lot. This is like a building, and to our listeners, this is a skyscraper. And the quote that I have here is that the things that a lot of people that come to me are saying, “Am I going to lose my job?” And I say, “Yes, you are going to lose your job. But the new job that you’ll have is going to be so much better.”
And I say that the things we’re going to be doing on a regular basis have not even been dreamt of yet. And so here’s the deal, is that companies come to my organization, and we do some really cool marketing stuff. But if they sit down with me long enough, I say, “You know what’s really cutting edge? You could do this,, and you could do this and you could do this, and you could do this.” And they say, “I don’t even have the foundation done yet. “
What AI is going to do is it’s going to allow us to do those foundational things bigger, stronger, and faster. And we’re going to finally get around to the advanced strategy and the cool stuff that we couldn’t get to because it was probably out of budget because I always had to make the doughnuts. I always had to do foundational things. So now if we can get past the mediocrity of the foundational things, we can get to the very innovative cool things.
Rich: Absolutely. And I also think right now we’re in this phase where ChatGPT and Midjourney are so sexy and exciting from where we were a year ago, that’s where the focus is.
But I loved what you showed earlier on the analytics side, because I think that’s really a place where you still have to be creative. You still have to know the right questions to ask. And then you still have to be able to implement those campaigns. I’m sure advanced AI will help us with that, with those steps as well. But that’s where I really see where the average marketers or the average companies can separate themselves using AI from everybody else.
This has been great. If people want to learn more about Faratoch or connect with you personally, Chris, where can we send them?
Chris: You can go to info@farotech.com. That would be the email address. But here’s what I do that’s pretty cool, is I go to businesses and I give a free session. It’s about an hour. It’s an hour-long session with 30-minute questions and answers afterwards. And I give them what’s called ‘AI today’. And it’s the state of AI where it’s at now, where it’s going, and how companies can be prepared. Because you and I are on top of this, Rich. There are so many companies that are going to get rolled by this. Not because they weren’t a great company, but because they adapted too late, or they didn’t see it coming.
And it feels like a mission of mercy, but I’m trying to say this is the asteroid coming to Earth. And you can survive it, but if you wait, you burn your head in the sand. It’s going to be a really rough road for you. It’s going to be a really rough road for your employees.
So I give that free presentation. I give it almost 15 times a month now, Rich, it’s crazy. I’m also midway through my generative AI course at MIT right now, and it is absolutely gangbusters. The kind of nerd level stuff I’m hearing at the top and seeing at the top, that I’m able to apply to these lessons. It’s something that if I didn’t pay for this opportunity, I never would have seen it. And it’s certain that I can pass along, which is a lot of fun.
Rich: Awesome. And we’ll have all those links in the show notes. Chris, thank you so much for your time and your absolute expertise in everything AI today.
Chris: Thank you.
Show Notes:
Chris Carr is a strategic mastermind and CEO at Farotech, where they specialize in marketing done right, that leads companies to skyrocketing growth. Connect with him on LinkedIn, and inquire about his free, 1-hour business sessions, and don’t forget to check out his podcast.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 25+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.