Jeff Beale and K.C. Pride - Marketology Group

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom Podcast. Have Jeff Beal and Casey Pride with us today, both at Marketology Group. I had Jeff on the podcast about what, 3 years ago? Was a great one. Talk about marketing and how he helps clients nowadays discuss about SEO, if my memory is good. So guys, welcome to the pod again. Tell us a bit more what's been new since we last spoke, Jeff.

Oh wow, we've been doing a lot of new things. We've, uh, um, started our division of, uh, I guess you would say automation and AI, uh, working a lot with building out systems. Um, and it's not really, uh, just AI focused, so I don't want everybody to think, oh, they're just another AI company out there. Really focused on building out systems, um, and helping companies that are acquiring leads Um, but can't figure out why the sales aren't coming in. Um, and usually it's leaks in between that lead acquisition and the sales handoff. And so we're doing a lot of work with building out systems, uh, a lot of work with building out visibility, a quality visibility. It's not about just being seen, but it's about who sees you. Um, and so, um, that's another thing. Uh, we've been working a lot with, uh, different Uh, divisions. Like I said, we have our, our systems division with operations. We have our visibility division. We have, um, we're working with ABJ Digital, um, which is like an online magazine. Uh, of course, y'all know us from the number one rated business show. So we have that media with the podcast and us running our mouth on online as well as on radio. So we've been doing a lot of things since the last time we talked, Charles.

Yeah, nice. And Casey, on your side, how did you meet, uh, Jeff? Uh, how are you guys a good combo together?

Uh, well, actually, I met Jeff by having him as a guest on my, uh, on the radio show. Um, we, we, uh, did an interview that day and we just had such synergy and such good chemistry, you know, me and him going back and forth. We had so many similarities in the things that we've been doing. Uh, the things that we've both done over our career. Both of us are speakers, both of us has worked heavily in the marketing, uh, area, you know. So we, we just had such a great chemistry, he ended up becoming the, uh, co-host on the show, and, uh, everything else is history. We did, uh, 3 years as the, as the number 1 rated business show.

What do you guys want to accomplish this year? What's, uh, what's on the calendar?

Oh man, when you, when you start talking about what we want to accomplish, uh, definitely, you know, dominating the market, uh, making sure that, you know, we are that, that number one marketing agency when it comes to, you know, visibility. My side of things is more about visibility, what you look like online, what that digital footprint is. Are you becoming that authority in your industry? And then Jeff is the one in the background that makes sure that we have the systems to actually capitalize on that visibility. So, uh, yeah, especially dominating in our, in our space this year is definitely our biggest thing for 2027 and helping a lot of people.

Building better systems out there actually for, for, for these clients, um, helping them understand how to, uh, put things in motion in their company that helps their company streamline, uh, help it all make sense. Um, and, and we want to be that go-to company Um, that is an arm of your company, not just a software, not just a solution, not just a, you know, agency out there. Uh, we actually a marketing partner of yours, um, that helps you get from A to Z a lot quicker, uh, and a lot smarter. So that's what we're looking to accomplish. Uh, the more, uh, we do, the more we can learn and teach. And, and just help businesses get it because a lot of them are confused out here with all the things thrown in their lap. Information is coming a lot faster, a lot of misinformation is coming, and people are getting buzzwords and, and thinking, how do I make all this make sense? And so we want to help businesses make sense of it and become that, that Focal point in the marketplace.

And, and one of the biggest things is, you know, a lot of businesses, they're getting the attention, but they're leaking. So somewhere in their, in their systems in the background is, is fragmented. They're not capturing all the leads, they're not following up with the leads the way they should too, and they're not doing that proper nurturing, uh, access. And then we run across businesses, you got systems, but nobody's looking at you. You got a great system in place, but You're not getting the visibility, you're not getting the attention that you need online. So us, you know, kind of coming together and building something like this, it's really phenomenal for businesses from all different backgrounds.

Yeah, I love that. What's your number one source of leads right now? Like, is it AEO or—

Actually, it's, it's funny. I used to hate when people used to say this. I don't know how I got all this business. But really, it's more word of mouth. It's referrals. It's you do good business, and people tell people about you. So those introductions are heavy, especially for our clientele. We're not looking at being everything to everybody. We're not looking for mass volume. We're looking for the right clients, the right fits. And that's something we really focus on. Who is a right fit?

Yeah.

Um, and so that's been our biggest, uh, source of business. Uh, of course, there's all these channels out here, marketing channels. Uh, we deal with omnichannel very much, but, uh, we focus on, can we find the right fit? Can we service the right fit the right way? And that's, that's what's been keeping us thriving.

Okay, so, and what's your number one GTM source of leads nowadays?

I would say number one would be probably media. It's, it's probably the, the podcasting, the, the media out there. What would you think, Casey? I would say analytic-wise, I'd have to look at it, but it's probably the media.

Definitely, uh, heavily, heavily in, in media. Uh, one thing that most businesses are looking for nowadays is they're definitely looking for attention. They're looking for ways to get their message out there. They're looking for ways to, you know, speak to their audience. And one big thing that we did with the Number One Rated Business Show, and the same thing that we're doing with our podcast, is giving those, giving those businesses that chance to have that outlet to speak about, you know, this is our story, this is what we do. But we also use that as a prospecting tool along with, uh, working with ABJ Digital, you know, being able to, you know, relay that, um, that, that visibility into a magazine that we're sending out to, you know, 50,000 to 100,000 people. You know, these type of things are invaluable for businesses. People think it's just, you know, social media nowadays that moves the needle, but it's not. Social media doesn't work for a lot of people. Sometimes being in the magazine, getting sent to the right businesses is going— what's going to change something for you. Sometimes it's being on the podcast with the right audience looking at you. So we try to, we try to have that multi-level approach for businesses to be seen, to get their message out there, and then once again, uh, turn around and convert that into some type of system that converts that into customers, which converts it into revenue.

And one thing we realized, Charles, is— and, and one thing that you do very well is it's relationship-based. It's building those relationships. And, you know, that's really what, what keeps your business going. Um, like I say, it's one thing that you do well on your end. is building these relationships.

Right. I have a system for it though, right? Like I have AI agents running the show and it's like qualifying guests, right? Like having them answer this question. I have very predictable numbers, right? Like 50 leads a week, right? So I can say that 10% will close. That is 5 clients a week, right? Do you feel like media appearances have that predictability in them as well?

I think they do. Well, they definitely do it as long as you have your backend in place. The challenge is a lot of people do media and have no follow-up, no backend, no system. It's just, you throw it out there, you get a little spike in influx, and that's it. So if you have everything else in place to, uh, take them through that customer journey, then yes, it does work. It does work very well. Because you're building authority already. You have some sort of influence and you have some sort of relationship that's being built, uh, at the front end. It's just what you do after that is what turns them from somebody that is aware of you to somebody that is actually doing business with you.

And how's the business grown since you started it, Jeff? I think it was like 20 years ago or something. How's it grown and, uh, how, how do you feel that AI agents are changing the game nowadays?

Oh, business has definitely grown. Um, it's, it's grown in so many different ways. Uh, at first it was like a one-man show, and then it grew into where outsourcing was the big thing, and I had all these people I had to manage. And, and then it grew to where we started to scale down on the amount of clients And having bigger and better clients. And I don't say that in a derogatory way, but it's just a better fit. Uh, less work, more results versus more volume and pretty much, uh, diluted results, uh, because of volume. And then AI has changed the game. Having AI do a lot of the repetitive work, a lot of the research, a lot of the grunt work. Having AI work from data, not from assumptions, to make better decisions has definitely changed the game.

How are you guys deploying AI agents for yourself and your clients to do some of that work, and in what space of the business precisely are you deploying them?

Oh, go ahead.

No, one thing is, I mean, AI, Uh, you know, when, when everything first started coming out and, you know, you had all these rumors and you had all people talking about AI and all this type of stuff, it, it was a scary process in the beginning. And you, you get all these people saying, well, we making millions of dollars from AI and this type of stuff online, you know. But once you really, really figure out how this works in your business, that's when the game actually changes. So the, the level of research, the level of outreach, Like we can literally take a prospect, you can research them, find out everything, public information that you can about them. Then you can turn around and formulate that into personalized emails that goes out to this person, personalized outreach, then turn that into, you know, an actual proposal for work that they, that they actually need. I mean, it's really about finding your process in AI and figuring out how this AI actually works for you and not so much Of just the generalized thoughts of, hey, it can do my social media for me.

Yeah, we take, we take them as an employee from a, uh, that's top of their class from a school. And we treat it the same way. We don't treat it as a technology. That's where a lot of businesses fail. They treat it as technology. We treat it as an addition to our team. And so what we do is just like we would take somebody coming straight out of college that we're trying to train them on how we do business. We train the AI and then we train our team how to integrate and interact with the AI the same way they would interact with another employee. So we have standard operating procedures, we have knowledge bases, we have training days that we literally go back and forth with AI. And yes, we do not agree with the AI every time it brings back information. We don't say, oh well, it spit back this. We're gonna go with it. No, does this make sense? Is this in our voice? Does this you know is this the way we would do it within our company? And so that helps build a smarter AI. And a lot of businesses just take it out the box. Whatever AI spits back is what they believe. We don't do that. I mean, we we've even given some of our AI an opportunity to. come to compete with other AI. You know, we'll say, hey, you know, this one, we came back and it said this was the approach. And you said, this is the approach. Let's talk about it. What makes more sense? And then we have them help train each other. So we have different agents do different things within the company. And we treat them just like employees. We train them just like employees. We have SOPs just like we would If we didn't have AI involved. And I think that helps us get a whole lot further than a lot of companies that just put in a prompt. I remember when— you remember when master prompting was a big thing, prompt engineering was the big trend, and everybody had all these 100,000 prompts you can use and so forth and so on. We don't take that approach. We take it as if they were actual individuals sitting in seats At the company.

And, and a lot of people are failing with it, honestly, because of it is you using it generically. This thing doesn't know anything about your business. It doesn't understand your industry, your process, and what it is that you're doing. So if you're just asking generic questions to an AI, you're gonna get a great answer. It's gonna sound great, but it's not gonna be very— it's not gonna be very helpful to your business.

Right. Uh, do we even need employees nowadays with, uh, agents? Because I feel there's ChatGPT conversations, you ask them questions, not so useful, right? But there's agents that can execute tasks automatically. They can think like employees and they can be recursive if you quote unquote prompt them the right way, can improve their performance and perform 10 to 100x better than employees. I've had 2,000+ employees over the course of my Uh, decade-long entrepreneur career so far. And, uh, I can tell you that these agents are doing better and are fully replacing like most of the roles that I had in my agencies— copywriter, researchers, customer support even. Uh, have you guys A/B tested some of that?

Yeah, I think we gave everybody a promotion. So AI does a lot of the legwork, but we still have that human interaction to do the final approval. Um, you know, the, the thing is with this, and I, I know this is going to be a little bit fear-based and everybody's gonna get scared, but you now need to up your game. You now need to be an expert in your field because as far as gathering the research data, as far as doing the actual writing, as far as doing the actual grunt work, AI is going to take your cake every time. It's so much more efficient. But as far as that emotional intelligence, as far as that years in the business, as far as that— let me, let me say it in this terms. Everybody went to college, or most people went to college, and you had a professor that gave you theory. And I have an MBA, so I went for business. And I tell you, The book does not make sense in real world. It just doesn't. And AI will give you a lot of information, like Casey said, and it'll sound great, but somebody that's been out there doing it can say, yes, in a perfect world this works, but you don't have this variable. You know, you don't have— I came home and my child is sick, and now I have that on my mind. You don't have variables. It's just in a perfect world, this would make sense. And in business, we don't have that perfect world. And so that's why I say that human interaction, the email that was spit out sounds wonderful, but we don't really— we don't take into consideration that person might be having a bad day. So they may read the email and the context may be way off, you know. But in a perfect world, the wording is perfect. It's just that—

And, and we actually have been able to reduce, you know, some of, of the employee load that we've had in the past. Yeah. But at the end of the day, like I tell people all the time, you know, ChatGPT and, and Claude, they can create beautiful websites, but if you're not a web designer, you don't know if this is a good web website or not. You know, there's certain, there's certain things, not just it looking beautiful. It's gotta speak the right way. It's gotta flow the right way. It's got to lead the customer the right way.

Yeah.

So we still wanna have that human in the loop that kind of goes back and checks this stuff. And then when, when we start talking about research, we get pages and pages and pages of research. I don't wanna read all that. I really don't. When you got 17, 18 pages on one company, but somebody's gotta dig through that and somebody's gotta find the facts and we gotta, gotta make sure that we verifying this information. And like you said, even though No, I don't need a copywriter anymore, but I do need somebody to proofread this copy and make sure that it's going to be effective. It's going to have that type of emotional pull that we want on people. So when they read it, they actually take action.

Yeah. And, and you gotta look at a lot of businesses don't train properly. So they get it to do the task, but garbage in is garbage out and they don't train it. So it's just giving you based on industry benchmarks, industry trends, things of that nature. And it might not make sense for you, you know, in your business. So, you know, that having that expert to overlook it, to manage it, always helps because now you can train it with more expert intelligence. 20 years in the business, you know, I mean, think about this, Charles, how many times, you know, with the employees that you've had over your career, Have you had somebody straight out of college that thought they knew everything? And they were way off?

Not, not so many times. But I know I was like that, though.

You know, because in theory, it makes sense. And so, you know, if you're running your AI, and in theory, what they're telling you makes sense, but you're like, that doesn't work for my audience, though. That doesn't work for my business. You know, think about— have you been to Atlanta? I'm not sure if you've been to Atlanta or not, but there's a restaurant here called the Varsity. We love the Varsity. It's a staple in Atlanta. But one of their business models is to be very rude to their customers. Their biggest thing is when you walk in, what do you have? What do you have? What do you have? And they're yelling at you the whole time and they're rude. But we love it. But AI can say, well, you want to be like, uh, you want to open up a restaurant, you need to be more like the Varsity.

It might—

it probably is not going to work for your business because that's just what they're known for. But you don't have an expert to say, I have years in the business, and let me tell you, with these variables, this might not make sense for you and your business, or maybe it does. But You have an expert that has bumped his head or her head so many times, they know these are some things to also look for where AI is just gonna say, this makes sense by stats. This makes sense. Let's do it. And if you have somebody that doesn't have experience, they're gonna say, yeah, let's do it. And you'll have people being yelled at and you'll go out of business quickly. You know, just listening to something on paper made sense.

Right. Yeah, leverage the technology but keep the common sense, right? So us humans, we're sort of the bridge in between this AI's output and productivity and make— and making sure that makes sense once it reaches the client. Hey, last question for both of you. What's been the number one challenge in the business in the last couple of years?

Ooh, that's a good question. I would say staying The quote that has been told to, to me that sticks in my mind, it's not what you can do, it's what you should do. With, especially with AI, there's so many opportunities out there. There's so many things we can offer. There's so many people we can service. It's dialing down and saying, this is the ideal client. This is the offer that's ideal for that client. This is what we can do. Because with a blue ocean like that, it's so easy to get distracted. It's so easy to offer so much more than what you're actually wanting to offer, because you can. Because with AI, like Casey said about web design, we can do web design all day. But is that our business model? You know, and now you get distracted. And you're doing all every, you know, it's just like a handyman that can do everything. The value that you bring is, is starting to diminish because now you look at a guy that just comes in, he can fix your, your lights, he can fix your plumbing, he can fix your roof. If you give him a 6-pack of beer, he'll even work on your car, you know, but you don't look at him as an expert at all at that point. And so that's one of the biggest things that I think has been a challenge. With so many resources and so much out there, staying focused to say, this is what we offer to this ideal customer?

Oh yeah. I, I'd say one of the biggest challenges, honestly, it, it, it's a couple different things, but I'd say the biggest is cutting through the noise. Everybody's an expert now. Everybody's got their own channel. And, you know, social media gives people a platform without any type of barrier to entry. So everybody gets to jump on here, everybody gets the expert, and a lot of times what they say sounds good, but it don't work. It doesn't work. You know, for most people, posting videos is not gonna get you customers. It's not. But we have to compete with that constantly because everybody wants social media. I don't do social media. I'm not going to do social media. That's not— that's not how we build an actual business. That's not how we build a brand. But we will get you in the right position. We'll put you in front of the right people. We'll make sure that you connect with people that will actually buy your products and services. But I'm not going to sit up here and waste my time running behind you trying to record videos. So I think like right now it's just so noisy in this environment and being able to really, really get, get to a place where we can actually speak to business owners and show them, look, understand your business, understand your model, understand what it is that you're selling, who you're selling it to, and why they buy it. And once we are able to kind of connect with people on that level, then, uh, 2027 is gonna be a big year for us.

Thanks to both of you for showing up to the podcast. Where can people find out more about you?

Oh, definitely. Um, you can come to us and find us on the Marketology Group. Um, you know, we have, uh, uh, Influencer 365 if you're looking for visibility. Um, and then of course our channels. He's KC Pride and I'm Jeff Beale, but I'm more known as Mr. Marketology. So everybody knows me as Mr. Marketology. Um, and that's the best ways to find us. Of course, come through Charles. We definitely want you to come through Charles. Keep watching his show and also keep in touch with him. He has a great platform, has a great system in place. So, you know, anybody that you know that you make introductions, that's the way we love it. We love introductions. Uh, we don't want to be found just out the blue, and, and, uh, we want that personal relationship. We want that introduction.

There you go. That was Jeff, uh, Casey, and Charles.