FridAI Leadership + AI SEO

Business Brain, episode 679 for Casual Friday I, August 29, National Chop Suey Day 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to tune our business brain so that we can each keep on living those charmed lives. Our sponsors for this episode include Jerry AI Businessbrain, perfect for Friday. AI that's Car Insurance Made simple. And finally, on your side, drivers who save with Jerry save on average 110 bucks a month. And bitdefender.com brain, where you can save 30% and keep your small business safe with Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security. We'll talk about both of those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. What's the difference between chop suey and chow main?

I I, I, I, I don't know. I could ask AI yeah, you can ask.

Hang on. Yeah, yeah.

I, I, I, it's got to be.

Like the noodle type or the sauce or I don't know what it is. What I because I love chow mein. I've have it quite a, you know.

Yeah.

Whenever I get Chinese food kind of thing, but I don't know that I've ever had chop suey.

Well, we have Friday I Chop. Chop suey and chow mein are both Chinese American dishes, but they differ in ingredients, preparation and texture. Oh, the tldr, which I love that chat GPT gives me this. Yes, chop suey equals veggies and meat in sauce, usually over rice. Chow mein equals veggies and meat with noodles with a focus on texture, crispy or sauce.

So the okay, chop suey has rice and chow mein has noodles. Yeah.

But I don't know that that's right. I, I think chop suey also has noodles like. Oh, chop suey can be rice or noodles or noodles.

Okay. Yeah, that's such a, that's a typical AI answer. I know where it's, it's directionally true, but you might have to do a little more digging to tease out the right answer. Right.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

And one question to ask is, are you sure? So I'm going to ask it that before I tell it that chop suey can have noodles and we'll see what it says.

Yep.

Chop suey is not noodle focused. Chow mein noodle focused. So yes, chop suey is more like a stir fry stew over rice while chow mein is a noodle forward stir fry Noodle forward.

I like that.

Moving forward. Okay.

It's good.

Yeah.

Sweet. Yeah, that's good.

Speaking of A.I.

Yeah.

Can I make me or you or you listening a better leader?

I think, I think you, I was say yes right off the top. But I think it depends and it depends on how it's used.

Okay.

I, I, I think, think that it can help you analyze situations and look at, and look at things maybe in a different light. I think it could give you different perspective, especially from a, a leader versus, let's see, team member or employee. E. I think it can help you with that, but I don't think I also think it can make you a worse leader.

Okay.

If you rely on it, if you rely on it too much and you don't like if you use it as a crutches versus just an assistant or a knowledge base type of thing. That's my take on it.

Yeah. I mean this phrase, use it as an assistant comes up often when you and I talk about AI and I, I like I, I, that is how I use AI best these days is as my assistant.

Same.

Yeah.

Yes. So, and I question it all the time. Right?

Yes, yes. You're unreliable assistant.

Yeah. I always say, are you lying? You know, and it'll be like, oh yes, you're right.

I am right.

You know, sometimes it does that. I think it also can hurt you as a leader by agreeing with you too much. I, I'm very careful now about how I ask it questions because it can't.

Lead you, you got to be careful not to lead the witness because it will tell you what you want to hear.

Oh yeah, it will. I mentioned to you we were talking pre show about that south park bit where the, the, you know, the chat GPT is telling somebody. Oh yeah, of course. I think, you know, waffles and french fries mixed together would be a great idea for a business. Let's, let's, let's expand on that.

Let's do that.

Yeah, let's do it. And so yeah, I, I think you need to be aware of its limitations. You need to call it out when you know it's wrong. And you, you can't, you can't just rely on it. You can't take it verbatim either.

No, but I can just. I agree. I, I, I actually, I should say not, no, but yes, yes, I agree. However, could AI be your leadership or management coach?

I think that's where you really got to be careful.

Okay.

About not pumping you up. You, you, your prompt needs to have it be Critical of what you're doing. And this goes back to. I've met, we, you and I have talked about this on the show before about this concept of when you want to give a compliment, look out the window and when you want to criticize, look in the mirror. Right. It, the AI, I think has a tendency to want to flip that.

Yes. Yes.

Because it's trying to please you. Right?

Yeah, I don't want it to please me.

No, I don't.

I mean, I say on this show all the time, I, it turns out I'm a good leader, but I'm a bad manager.

Yeah.

And I don't want to use that as an excuse anymore. I want to be a better manager. I mean, it turns out I'm going to have people.

Yes.

So I want to be able to inspire them and coach them and all of those things that, that make up a good manager. And I feel like AI certainly has ingested the data that it could use to help coach me.

Yes.

But it needs to be critical. You're right.

Yeah. And, and perhaps one of the ways to, to create the prompt is to choose a leader that you know has had success and that you agree with their leadership style and have it respond in that manner. Say, okay, I, I, I really respect the leadership style and achievements of like Bob I, CEO of Disney. I want you to using his leadership style, help me solve this problem or help me come up with this solution or a presentation, whatever it is. So because I think that like ChatGPT especially is better when you give it this framework to operate with within.

That's a brilliant framework because you're essentially saying I want in in this example, I want Bob Iger to meet to be my mentor.

Correct.

You be the stand in for Bob Iger as my mentor. Don't please me, help me.

I don't want you, the AI to fix this for me.

Right.

I want the techniques. Jack Welch from, from GE or what is it, Maria Barra. She's the CEO of GM or whoever.

Yeah.

If you really want to be a jerk, you could be Steve Jobs, you know, however, well, he got better later.

But y, yes, but he did get.

Better later, but that using that would be a, you know, those characters or those real people.

I think Bill Campbell would be the one I would choose. He was, he was into it for a long time. I remember that I got to see him speak at actually my, my sister in law's graduation of all things.

That's cool.

He was fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit. But yeah. Then pick somebody Good.

Yeah, yeah. Pick somebody good, somebody you respect, somebody that has a body of work out in the Internet because they have. That's where it's finding that data. Right. It's not. You can't pick the guy who runs the H vac company down the street.

Good as he may be. Chat.

Yes.

He doesn't know about.

He may be killing it. And. And so that is that. That would be the way I would do it. Yeah.

I love that. All right. That's the way to do it, at least according to two random podcasters.

Well, you could also go to our brain and ask it those questions, which would be, you know, businessbrain show brain. Is that correct? Is that right?

That's right, yeah. Yeah.

Businessbrain show brain. And you can ask us our. From over 4 million bits, 4 million words that we've spoken in the last 11 years. And we'll give you. We'll give you some tips.

Yeah, we've already given you tips, but we'll give you more. Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

We have. We have more AI stuff to share in a little bit. For now, I want to talk about our two sponsors, starting with bitdefender, a global leader in cybersecurity. Did you know scammers are getting better at what they do every day? And for small business owners, everything, our sensitive client information, contracts, invoices, lives on our computers. Let me put it this way. If I lost access to my laptop tomorrow, I'd be in real trouble, right? Every detail about my business, every piece of data, it's all there. And that's exactly why I love Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security. It's an all in one cybersecurity solution designed specifically for small businesses. It protects everything, your team's devices, your passwords, your online activity, and even checks for leaked info on the dark web. You can install it yourself. It's refreshingly simple. You can add your team in minutes. And now everybody's devices are covered. Whether they're in the office, at home, on a public wi fi in Canada, it doesn't matter, right? Small businesses are easy targets. We don't always have time to worry about cybersecurity. But Bitdefender makes it simple. Keep your small business safe. With Bitdefender Ultimate Small business security, save 30% when you go to our link bitdefender.com brain that's B-I-T--E F-E-N--E-R.com brain bitdefender.com brain for 30% off and our thanks to Bitdefender for sponsoring this episode. All right, now I have a question for you. Would you rather spend an entire weekend assembling IKEA furniture without instructions or shop for car insurance? Yeah, exactly. That's how bad insurance shopping used to feel. Well, until our sponsor, Jerry arrived. Jerry makes the whole process seamless. You just answer a few simple questions once, and Jerry quickly compares quotes from 50 plus top rated insurers. No endless forms, no hopping site to site, no sales calls. You get real personalized options you can trust, plus 24. 7 support. They'll even cancel your old policy for you, which means switching is actually painless. And Jerry doesn't stop there. They proactively alert you to rate changes in your state so you know when to reshop. It's like having a proactive car insurance assistant in your pocket without the awkward need to feed it snacks. Jerry has already helped over 5 million customers shop smarter for car insurance. If you're ready to protect your business, your family, and keep living your charmed life, Jerry could help you too. So stop needlessly overpaying for car insurance. Drivers who save with Jerry save, on average, $110 a month. That's more than $1,300 a year. So before you renew your policy, do yourself a favor. Download the Jerry app or just head to Jerry AI BusinessBrain. In just a few minutes, you can compare quotes and coverages side by side from up to 50 top insurers. Jerry Car Insurance Made simple. And finally, on your side. And this is all based on drivers who switched and saved with Jerry. Over the past 12 months, over 20% of drivers who switched with Jerry found a monthly premium of $87 or less. Not all drivers find savings again. It's Jerry AI BusinessBrain. And our thanks to Jerry for sponsoring this episode. So in. Yeah, go ahead.

Hang on.

Yeah, I want to call.

I want to call an audible.

Good. Go. Much better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna change the topic. I want to talk about AI SEO. Oh.

Because it's really funny. I had that on my list for next week.

Is that right? Oh, that's good. Well, we're gonna jump in right now.

I love it.

And, yeah, because I've had several clients say, oh, I found you through chat GPT.

I love that.

And I said, wow. I'm like, what did it say? Because I'm really curious about. And it came up, and they sent me the query, and it's like, I'm looking for this. You know, I want help. With this da da da da. And it was like, oh, you should talk to this person. And it just blew my mind. Right. And so I GPT what's the best way to be ready to get your business ready for AI SEO? People using AI to search instead of Google.

Yes.

Right.

Oh, it's a it. I mean it's this, this is real one one of our businesses, we get a ton of traffic from chat gbt.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

And it says of course. Since it agrees with me every time it says this is one great question. Shannon, you're a rock star. You are killing it. This is one of the biggest shifts happening right now in the in being a SEO ready means preparing for a world where people ask AI chatgpt Perplexity Gemini instead of typing keywords into Google. And I thought we talk about this for a couple of minutes.

Yeah. So I'm guessing that you have not prior to these people coming to you, you had not done any intentional AI SEO?

I had not.

Okay.

I still have not because I don't even know how to do it. I'm just so I brought it up. I want to learn.

Yeah.

I'm a beginner, Dave.

I freaking. That's what I love. And I really think most people. It took me a while to realize that. That you are perpetually a beginner. I know I said it on Wednesday, but it took me a long time to figure it out. And my guess is most of your. The people that learn from you haven't yet figured out that. And I hope they do.

That's good.

Yeah.

So it's telling me here like Converse, you know, it's more like conversational queries.

Yes.

And direct answers, not links. Which I think is very important because your people are not clicking through. Right. Like where it used to be. You go to Google, you search for it. It's on the first page. Okay. I'm going to click it and go.

There for a long time. And this has changed. Google's whole thing was to get you off of their site as quickly as possible.

Not anymore.

Not anymore. That's right.

The whole top connection is AI. So this what ChatGPT tell me is trust signals matter the most? AI is looking for authority, credibility and structure in content when choosing what to reference. And I, I would say everybody should go up and, and put this in there. They they it's telling you to write in a Q and A style that matches conversational prompts that people ask AIO FAQ sections how to guides and comparison posts works well that, that can get. It's fascinating. Start articles on your site and start product descriptions with clear two to three sentence overviews. AI loves digestible takeaways.

Oh yeah, of course it does because that's literally what it's doing. It's digesting your content.

Yeah, yeah. So instead of like maybe your bullet points on your product or whatever service it is, the first it needs like a summary, a quick two sentence narrative of something like that.

Yeah.

Right. Interesting. Other topic I thought was building topical authority clusters over keywords. Instead of one keyword article. Build a cluster of related content around a topic and a link and cross.

Link them to each other.

It says like in my example because I had it knows I did this handbag business.

Right.

So it's trying to pump me up. It says example not just handbag resale tips but a cluster on sourcing pricing.

Authenticity, marketplaces, individual articles, individuals tie it all together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's why it says AI prefers sites with expertise demonstrated across multiple related articles, not one off posts.

No, I'm, I'm hearing from folks. I mean obviously I was in you know the, the web publishing, the Mac, the Apple web publishing business for a very long time and I am hearing from people that were and are in the general tech publishing business that their search traffic has nosedived.

Oh God.

Whereas the people in the, in the niche thing, like we're only doing Apple content, they're seeing it rise.

That's wild.

Which makes perfect sense. I mean we've said for years riches, niches.

Yes. And it, this is what it's saying. This last thing I'll say it's here double down on your brand. As AI search becomes more answer oriented. The brand is the differentiator. If someone just trusts and I'll use me of course Shannon Jean's reseller mastermind instead of some blog, they'll bypass generic AI answers and go directly to you. I believe the personal brand is so important in above. I'm of course your company brand but you. We are all in the content business. We just did a whole episode on this not too long ago. Yeah, yeah, but you as a. Your personal brand is super powerful. So I agree it gives me the. The TLDR prepare by writing conversational authoritative content clusters, marking them up properly, publishing in multiple formats, web, audio, video. Then focus on building brand trust. So when people do get AI answers they're looking for your name in them. Your company name or your personal name.

Can you. Is that chat in. In a form that you can share the link to it so that we can let everybody kind of read the whole thing. Or is it in a. If it's in a custom GPT, you can't share from there.

Yeah, it is in a custom. But I can. Let me copy it and I'll put it. You could put it in the show notes. Yeah, if you want. I'll put it. I'll put it in slack.

Yeah.

Okay. Right now. Okay. Good. Yeah, it's pretty wild.

I like it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Awesome. So if you want to go read that stuff, go to businessbrain show. You'll see it in the episodes on Friday I which will be out on October 29th.

Well, we're going to do it on August 29th just because.

Not October. I don't know where that came from. I'm just so ahead of the game.

You're living in the future, man.

I am, man. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Awesome feedbackusbrain show. Let us know what you think about this, any topics you want to cover and also of course, businessbrain show review to leave your five star review and get entered to win a MacBook. Have a great weekend, folks. Keep living that charmed life.