Navigating the Digital Landscape: AI and Misinformation | Philippa Gamse

We should say that there are some applications for AI where it's incredibly helpful. Oh yeah. I mean, if you, again, on my side of things, if you have to crunch tons and tons of data and you're looking, for example, for patterns or trends in what type of people buy what kind of products from you, AI is extremely useful in that.

Right. It can see things that you and I can't see.

Right. And much faster.

Yes.

I've used it a little bit when I'm writing. I mean, as I said, I'm writing a book, not to write the book, I hasten to add, but give me some starting ideas. I want a paragraph on such and such. Give me a, "What do you think should be in the paragraph?" kind of thing, and then I can take it from there. And sometimes that is very helpful.

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. A special shout out to my one listener in Broomfield, Colorado. I hope you're not under snow at this point in the year. I am your host Christian Brim, and joining me today is Philippa James of Websites That Win International. Did I get that right?

You did, thank you.

Yes, yes, I win. So Philippa, tell us, you don't sound like a native of California, so tell us, Why don't you give us the journey of how you got here?

Well, right. I'm happy to hear that I actually don't sound like a native of California. I've actually been in California for about 25 years. So it's good to know that I retain— you know, for some reason Americans like British accents.

Absolutely. It makes you sound smart.

Yeah. Well, of course I am smart. No, no. Right. No. So yes, I'm originally from London. Been in the US for for 30 years or so, living in California for most of that time. So.

Very nice. Yeah. I'm a bit of an Anglophile. My, my mother put me in front of, uh, Monty Python's Flying Circus when I was young, and it has warped my sense of humor ever since.

Yes, yes, yes. Right. And unfortunately, you know, there's not many of them still around, but, uh, No. Still love watching it.

Yes, you either love it or you hate it. Like, see, I liked the original Office better than the US Office, but they're both very funny, but they're very different audiences. So what do you do in California at Winning Websites International?

So I'm a digital strategy and analytics consultant, which I know sounds terribly boring, but basically, But if you say it in a British accent, it sounds okay. What I do and what I hope I can help your listeners with for a few minutes is helping you figure out how to make your website sing better, both in terms of making more of what you want to make, which is usually money, but sometimes various other things too, and wasting less resources on it if some of the things that you're doing aren't actually working for you.

Okay. I have an interesting question on that, but I'm gonna wait to ask it. So how long have you been doing this?

Oh, too long. No, long time, long time. Which in some ways has its benefits because you can kind of see, you know, the internet is this world where everything changes all the time. So, you know, I do a lot of teaching, which I really enjoy. But every time I teach a course like digital marketing or analytics or whatever, I have to revise. Excuse me. I mean, I have to check and make sure that all my material is still up to date and everything, even if I only taught it a couple of months ago. I once met an English as a second language teacher who told me that she hadn't changed her lesson plans in 20 years. So, you know, there's the difference.

Yes. So when you started your business, were you working as an employee somewhere else?

So I mean, when I first came here, obviously I was employed actually at a major national nonprofit organization until I got my green card. And once I got my green card, I hate to say this, I'm not a very good employee.

Yeah. No, most entrepreneurs aren't.

Right. I like working on my day, my sort of biorhythms and the way I want my day to be. I hate politics, the politics in the workplace, right? And I like, one of my primary motivations was to say to myself, if I'm a consultant, people are gonna hire me hopefully for my expertise and my evaluations, you know, these performance review things that you have to do in a corporate world, my evaluations are gonna be A, do they come back and ask for more? And B, do they tell their friends and colleagues about me? And if the answer to both of those is yes, I'm doing all right.

You know, it's instant real feedback as opposed to the contrived bureaucratic one. So did you start out doing website analytics?

Pretty much so. Not to date myself, but analytics was pretty young. And, you know, it's not the sexiest of subjects, I have to be honest. And I know that one of the things that I'm very aware of, and in fact, I'm writing a book right now, is that most business owners, many business owners, you know, you look at a load of data and charts and graphs and stuff like that and you glaze over. And especially if you're a creative type, right? Yes. And yet in those numbers and charts and graphs and stuff is some very helpful information. So what I'm trying to do is to make that accessible. Like, you know, you don't have to get involved with the charts and graphs, but the kind of client I really enjoy is the one who comes and says, "Philippa, what do I need to know to make my business better?" Yes. I think it's a great question. What do I need to know to make my business better? Nobody has ever said to me, "Philippa, I want to hire you to produce 50 pages of graphs and charts." Oh Lord, no.

I've had that conversation with multiple agencies over the years that I've hired, and it's like nobody cares about the customer. Nobody cares about the metrics. Like, you can produce all the metrics that you want, but if it's not producing something valuable to me on my end, you know, don't just produce numbers to show you're busy. I don't care about that.

And that's the point because yet at the same time, in those numbers can be some really, really helpful insights.

Oh, yeah.

And that's what I want to kind of persuade people of so that, you know, their eyes don't glaze over so quickly because, you know, if we can communicate this in the right way, analytics is actually really important because the truth is, if you're not intelligent, if you have a website and it's, and it's somewhat critical to your business, if it has an important role in your business, if you're not looking at how it's performing, then you're honestly shooting in the dark with everything that you're doing with it. And it's still amazing to me how many businesses are really not looking at how their website is performing. So, you know, that, that's the key.

Yes. And what do you want that website to do? You know, what is the outcome that you're looking for? I think I know, and I think you've kind of answered this, but what was your motivation to go into business for yourself?

As I said, independence, and I was just fed up of playing the corporate game, you know. I'm not good at commuting. I like working from home. I'm not honestly, as you can see, particularly interested in dressing in corporate suit every day.

Do you Do you have pants on?

Do I have pants on?

Yes. Okay.

All right.

I mean, I've heard that some people show up to these and they're not wearing anything below the waist.

I'm assuming you're talking about what I would call trousers.

Yes. Trousers, skirts.

Yeah. Whatever. You're not asking a very intimate question there. No, no, no, no. No. And I mean, I have a dog, right? I like to walk my dog when I feel like it or when the dog feels like it. I like working in a way that says, here are the deliverables that I need to get done. Here's the deadline for when that has to happen. How and when I do it is up to me.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Which is interesting because when you apply that thought process to regular old employees, it's fascinating what happens. We had, uh, implemented a process called ROW, which is Results Only Work Environment. It was outlined in a book called Work Sucks and How to Fix It. A brilliant book, but it's essentially this idea that you don't control how and when and where your employees do their work. You have clear expectations of the outcomes and you manage the outcomes.. And then COVID happened and we were very thankful that we had that in place and it really just kind of pushed it into its maturity. And, you know, it's, it's fascinating. Most of our workers are remote now, spread out across the country. And, you know, as, as a, as an owner or a manager, it could feel like you just don't have any control. Like, I don't know what anybody's doing, or, you know, but, uh, as long as there's good communication and trust and you're, you're managing to the outcomes, you know, you definitely have to have accountability in that situation. It's remarkable how things get done, and you don't have to worry about when and where everybody is. I mean, this, this idea that, that people are, are having their keystrokes and mouse movements monitored by their company. I'm like, what?

You know, I mean, I will confess there are times during the day when I play computer games or I do a jigsaw on my computer because it actually helps me to think. Sure. Not to be staring directly at the problem that I'm thinking about, but just to walk away, look at something else and think about it. And so, you know, if you were logging my mouse strokes, you'd be horrified. But that's why. And the other thing that I also do because of this philosophy is as a consultant, I will not charge by the hour. People say, "Can I borrow it?" You charge by the, again, by the deliverable, by the, "Here's what you want me to do. I'm going to do it.

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Yeah, I'm kind of on a crusade to stamp out the hourly concept. Uh, I was having an online discussion on LinkedIn with a lawyer, and she, she had— she's a tax attorney— and she had resolved this, issue for her client, and her post was about how she had returned part of the retainer and how surprised client was and how, uh, virtuous she was because she was ethically giving money back. And I'm like, okay, great, you're ethical, but did you ever stop to think that you might have been leaving money on the table? Like, you— your client was surprised, meaning they had paid you what they thought it was worth And then you come back and say, I did my job quicker, it didn't take as long, so here's your money back. I'm like, that just doesn't make sense to me.

I always remember getting a legal bill for photocopying hours, and I just like, please, the machine has to get paid too, Philippa. I mean, you know, you know, can I do my own photocopying then?

Yeah, send it to me, I'll make my own copies. Um, so, okay, and now I'm going to pivot back to the, the, your area of expertise. And one of the things intriguing me in the current landscape around SEO and content is the advent of AI in search results and zero-click. So what do you see and what do you, how are you approaching that problem for businesses?

Yeah, I guess it depends on what you're trying to sell. I mean, to some extent, zero-click could still get you a a visitor in the sense that if you're selling products and you've got the shopping carousel, people can still click on the product and that's your product. I mean, yeah, it's one of those where, I mean, I personally sometimes quite like the AI search results because it gives me the answer I'm looking for as a user. It's very helpful. Now, and again, I think it depends what area you're in. Like this podcast hopefully will be found in search results at some point maybe, But if somebody actually wants to listen to the podcast, they're going to have to come to your site and listen to it.

Correct.

I mean, where AI is really helpful in search is for providing information. So if I have a question, right, it's going to give me good answers. If I'm looking for a resource, then it's limited because it gives me snippets. And I tend to still look and sort of, okay, but where can I learn more about this?

Yeah, and I guess one of the things, and this is not different than pre-AI, but it is the veracity of the information, especially when you're talking about technical things like, you know, accounting and finance or marketing even. Like, it's how much do you trust the search results that you're getting, right? And how accurate are they? Because the AI that existed before the one that we're seeing presented you results based upon what people, how people interacted with that content. But that doesn't mean that that is necessarily good content or accurate content. So I don't think in that way it's really changed.

Yeah, I should say, I mean, I'm not, I wouldn't, I'd definitely not call myself an expert on AI. And you know, the whole kind of how do you know what to believe these days is a rabbit hole that I'm sure we could go down extremely deeply. And because it's very scary. And I mean, just looking at what AI can do now, is pretty scary in some ways, you know, I mean, in terms of misinformation.

Oh, well, and, and, you know, I, I made this comment a decade ago, was, you know, the idea that, that the internet and Google allowed us the ability to not remember things. Like, you don't need to know what the capital of Zimbabwe is. You don't have to retain that in your head. You can just search it. But the thing that really always scared me about that was that what happens when the tech overlords start feeding us information that's not accurate, either intentionally or not intentionally? Is there, is there going to be a baseline knowledge to say, you know what, that, that's not actually the capital of Zimbabwe, right?

You mean there are the facts and there are the alternative facts, right?

It's, it's frightening.

I tell you what is, I mean, I saw an extremely well-produced video of President Trump speaking. Okay, I'm not gonna get political about whether I agreed with what he was saying, but the fact of the matter was it looked really, really good. It was very convincing and apparently absolutely none of it was true because all of it had been pieced together by an AI tool. So he had never actually said the words that were in this video in that order. He'd said all the words, But not, yeah. And once you start doing that, that's really worrying.

Well, and I think I was actually just talking to my marketing director this morning. I think that what all of this is driving towards is this need for authentic connection. Like people are already craving it, and I think it's going to become more of a necessity, uh, as these tools get better and the disinformation, the manipulation, you know, is, is more and more. I— there's, there's a, an accounting firm, I don't even know their name, I wouldn't say if I, if I did, but I found them because one of our clients left us for them and said, you know, they're, they're going to do all these great things for us. And as I research them, I'm like, these guys are going to get arrested. Like, there's— they're doing some very shady shit. And but, but the problem is that if someone wants something and someone tells them what they want to hear, they're, they're going to buy, whether that's marketing or accounting or, you know, a fat loss gummy. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, they're, they're, you know, people, people will be sold if they want, want the outcome.

Yes. And on the other hand, we have social media, and if people buy it and then they find it's a load of rubbish, they're going to say so loudly, and that product isn't going to stand for very long, right? I mean, you can't just lie about what you can do because ultimately you will be found out. I think.

Yes, yes. But, but I guess it seems to me that the current environment allows people to be more— I won't say fraudulent, like they're intending to be fraudulent, but that, that they can be misleading, uh, even, even more amplified than, than they, they could before.

I mean, I also saw an amazing video recently So now there's an AI tool which you can record a little video and it will translate that, using your voice, your mannerisms, your face, it will automatically translate into something like 40 languages. And I recorded a little snippet and I listened to myself speaking another language that I could understand and it was extremely convincing, but there I am, than speaking Japanese or Mandarin Chinese.

Allegedly, you don't know.

But apparently, it's pretty convincing, the accent is pretty good. And then what do you do with that? Because on the one hand, it's great, you can communicate suddenly with bazillions of people, but at the same time, if somebody was to call me up in Japanese and say whatever they say, I haven't got a clue what they're saying. So is it— I don't know, is it really helpful? Who knows?

Yeah, we're, we're, we're in a, a place— I, I kind of equate it to the late 1990s when the internet boom was going on, and there's a lot of people doing things just because they can, uh, as opposed to really knowing how they're going to make money at it and, and, and should you do it, you know. So I think there's a, an AI bubble coming, probably not mature yet, but this idea that people are pouring all this money into this technology but not having a real clear idea of what it is that they're trying to accomplish.

And at the same time, of course, we should say that there are some applications for AI where it's incredibly helpful. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, if you, again, on my side of things, if you have to crunch tons and tons of data and you're looking, for example, for patterns or trends in what type of people buy what kind of products from you, AI is extremely useful in that.

Right. It can see things that you and I can't see.

Right, and much faster. Yes. Yes. I've used it a little bit when I'm writing. As I said, I'm writing a book, not to write the book, I hasten to add, but give me some starting ideas. I want a paragraph on such and such. Give me a, "What do you think should be in the paragraph?" kind of thing, and then I can take it from there. And sometimes that is very helpful.

I'm gonna pivot again. So when you work with clients, what is the most common thing that you see that they get wrong regarding what you do?

I would absolutely say jumping into marketing tactics, something like, for example, social media, because they've heard that social media is very powerful, which it certainly is. But without a clear strategy for what they want to achieve, without maybe a clear definition of the audience they want to reach, the message that they want to give to that audience. And it can be very tempting, you know, you talked about agencies that give people lots of numbers just to show that they've been busy. You know, some of those metrics we call vanity metrics, like for example, the number of visitors that you have. Right. So the agency can come along and say, look, look, you've got more visitors this week than you did last week. We're doing a great job for you. And that's absolutely not necessarily a true statement. I mean, yes, you may be getting more visitors, but are they the right types of visitors? Before we say great, you know, if we get millions more visitors, but none of them buy anything, it doesn't really make any difference.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. No, as a matter of fact, it can be counterproductive. I, I, my previous agency was doing my SEO and writing some blog content. And, uh, the guy gave me the content and I'm like, this is not our target market. Like, this is not anything that anybody we want to talk to, a question they're asking. And he was like, oh no, no, don't worry about it. This will generate a lot of traffic and it'll help your, your website authority and, and, you know, your overall ranking with Google. And I'm like, okay, well, you're the expert. And then 2 years on, it's generating— it's still generating 70 to 80% of the, the new organic search to our website. But I actually have to filter it out, which Google doesn't make easy, so that I can see what is actually happening because I don't care about that. And then we get, we get people inquiring from that on our chat off our website. And I'm like, I don't want to talk to these people.

You know what's interesting about that, though, is that I do have some stories and this may be completely irrelevant to you. But as I said, I'm writing a book. I, and I also have an ebook on my website, which is this, it's got some stories in it that are designed just to inspire people who haven't looked at analytics much to sort of say, these are some of the sorts of things that you can learn and what you can do. And I do have stories, my clients and I have sometimes taken a group of visitors that absolutely don't match our business model. Our current business model, but we have identified a side business or a new product that we do want to get into where those people are perfect and we've made money on that. So the question is, and at the same time, I also have examples where the extra visitors are obviously completely not what you want, you never will, go away, right?

So sometimes it's— So what you're proposing is more like a research And like if you generate the traffic, then you can deliver the solution.

Well, so you can say, what is the actual reason those people are coming? I mean, what content is it? What's, you know, what's— and is there any part of that that you would like to— that you could or would like to capitalize on? And if so, how would you do that? And if not, you know, the problem is if they— do they all leave very quickly from your site?

On that, yeah, it's just one article. Yes.

So, you know, actually that's not necessarily good for you because if you have You know, a lot of visitors who take one look at your site and walk away, that I think— I mean, I'm, again, I'm not an SEO expert. I, I know enough to be dangerous, but I'm not sure that that isn't detrimental in the end to your kind of, to your rankings.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Yeah, I've thought about taking it down.

If you're just filtering them out anyway, I mean, exactly. So I would, I would look at it first and I would say, is there anything we can do with them? Is there anything that we can do with the page that this content is on to direct these people to something that they might find more interesting on our site, or are they literally, absolutely literally not? I mean, I'll give you an example. So my name is Gams, and we say Gams, we spell it G-A-M-S-E, right? Don't ask, it's an old, it's from another language and it's anglicized and there's a long story to it. But anyway, I cannot believe this. I still find this very difficult to understand, but there are people who come to my website And the search term that they use is computer games, and they actually spell games G-A-M-S-E. And since there aren't that many people in the world with our name, and since I'm the web person in that group anyway, if you do search for G-A-M-S-E, you're likely to find me. Right. And so, they put in G-A-M-S, computer games, G-A-M-S-E, and my site comes up, and they click. I have no idea why they make that typo, because it doesn't feel intuitive. It doesn't feel like the sort of typo you would naturally make. But there they are. And I don't make computer games. I play computer games, but I have absolutely no interest in those people. No, I don't want to. It's not my thing. And so to your point, those people, yes, I filter them out too because they're not useful to me.

I have a similar thing with my name, Christian Brim. And I show up in the first of the results, but very quickly down at the bottom it starts showing, uh, Christian hats, you know, like hats with Christian slogans, right? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. And do those people come to your website?

Uh, sometimes, yeah. Maybe I should start a product line, I don't know. But it seems well covered out there. It's not like I have anything special to bring to the market. What, what are the key metrics that every business owner, doesn't matter what you're doing, what are they? What do we have to be looking at?

See, I don't think that's the right question. Okay.

Give me the right one then.

I mean, and a lot of people ask that, you know, and then a lot of people reel off a laundry list of metrics. And, you know, going back to a little earlier, you said, what are the biggest mistakes people make? And I said sort of jumping in without a strategy. And, you know, I still find that I— somebody comes to me and I'll say, what do you want your website to do? Yes, you want your website to make you money, but what else do you want it to do? Is there content that you want people to look at? Is there— do you have something you want people to sign up for? You know, if they're— do you have product specs you want people to download or free trial or, you know, what's, what's going on here? Because there's usually more than one call to action. The truth is you can't measure a ton of things at once because the point of measurement is to take action. There's no point knowing numbers if you're not going to do something about them. If you're measuring a bazillion different things at once and you say, "Okay, well, we need to try doing this," it's very difficult to figure out from The numbers, you know, if you change something, what causes numbers to change? Because you're measuring so many different things. So, it actually makes much more sense, and this is the way I approach things, to sit down and have a, you know, get really clear about what are we trying to do? What are the goals and outcomes in our specific case, your specific business? And then say, right, what are some of the key metrics that we want to measure today Because we know what we want to know today that we can take action on. And once we've done that, then those metrics might change because we'll figure something out and then we'll move on to a different priority. So, you know, yeah, we can start out and we can say, I mean, obviously, if you're getting no traffic, that's a problem because there's not much to measure, right? So that would be an initial problem. But in general, once your website is moving along a bit and you're getting some traffic, I think it makes much more sense to sort of dig into the real, what are people supposed to do here? And to also think across the spectrum of visitor behavior, because most times people focus on the big hairy goal, which is usually to sell something. Right. Which is understandable, 'cause that's how you make money. But the truth is that very few people buy something from you on their first visit, typically. And so you want to know, well, but are they interested in me? Did they take a good look around? Was I able to get their email address, you know, so that I can come back to them? Where did they come from in the first place? What are my most, most profitable or effective marketing channels? Right. Because, you know, social media may be very effective, but maybe it's Instagram and not Facebook that's working for me. So I really need to do less of Facebook and more of Instagram, right? So looking at the whole spectrum of how do I get my best visitors, how do I get them engaged in my content even if they're not going to buy something immediately? Obviously, how do I make sure that if they're thinking about buying something, they do? And then if your business is the sort of business that wants repeat customers, how do I keep them coming back? How do I keep them happy? How do I let them know other products and services that I have that they might be interested in and so on. So, so really you've got to think about and really be in touch with your business all the way along what we call the customer journey. And then we can start figuring out what are the most important things to measure to improve specific parts of that today or tomorrow, but, you know, not just making loads of lists of metrics for the sake of the metrics.

Or changing a bunch of things at once. That's often, to your point, it can confuse the data. You changed all these variables, you don't know what actually drove the difference.

And if nothing happens because something made things better, but then something else ruined it again, you don't know.

It's only showing the net, it's not showing the gross changes.

Yes.

Right.

Yes, that's— yeah. Anything else as a business owner that you— well, let me phrase the question this way. Is there anything that you would tell yourself, uh, your 20— 20 years ago to do differently? Like, uh, Philippa, don't do this, or do this quicker.

I don't know. I'm not the best salesperson for my own stuff, I have to admit that. I maybe should have hired somebody to do more selling for me. I'm really good once you get talking to me, but I have to—

yeah. Sales is a skill, right? Yeah. And a lot of people, I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs have some basic, but I think what really drives it is their passion for what they're doing. And that makes selling easier. But the, you know, like being comfortable with it, having those conversations, which a lot of times are exploratory and open-ended and you don't really know what direction they're going to go, is the active listening. Those are all skills that are a different set of tools.

Right.

Yeah. So, Philippa, how do people find you if they want to learn more about your service?

So my website, as we said at the beginning, is Websites That Win International. So it's websitesthatwin.com, which is easy. Perfect. My, and on that website, like I said, I have a free ebook, which has got 5 stories about things that people, clients, real-life stories of things that clients have done that have really made a difference to their business based on something that we found in the analytics that they couldn't otherwise have known.

I love it.

Well, you— And that's something that people can download and it's free. And then my, I also, I actually, I just sent you a connection request on LinkedIn. I really like connecting with people on LinkedIn. That's my favorite.

And there's only a few games out there.

So yes, especially if you spell it right.

Correct. Well, yeah, you and I are in a kind of an equally yoked situation in that people don't want to really understand accounting and they don't want to understand the numbers, but they do want to have something that they can use. And so I think you and I in a lot of ways provide the same service where interpreting the information and telling the story that it, that, that data is, is showing.

Yes. And, and the, I think the key is to be able to translate it for people who aren't excited by the numbers themselves. Um, but in a way that really helps them and makes sense to them.

I, I look forward to your book. When is it coming out?

Um, well, I'm in the middle of editing. The manuscript. So, uh, hopefully a few months. I will, uh, certainly let you know.

April, something like that.

Perfect. Hopefully. I'm not sure yet, but yeah.

Very good. Well, thank you very much for your time and your experience here. It has been lovely, as, as, uh, they say.

Thank you. Good chat.

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