Katherine Gruenberg: From Ranking to Being Recommended

Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Human Side of AI.

I'm Flora, your host, and today I'm bringing back a guest who's become one of my favorite return conversations. Welcome back, Catherine. And if you remember our first conversation, we talked about the house management system she built and the workflows behind them. Since then, she's lived a few lives. She and her husband have been building an app called One Chef Upload that automates pre-shift meetings for restaurant staff. And their tagline, One Chef Upload, every server ready, every guest informed. And on top of that, she's expanding into something she calls AI SEO, helping small businesses show up not only in a Google search but as an actual recommendation from ChatGPT and Claude and so many others, actually. So we get into what that shift looks like in practice, how her hospitality background shaped the app she's building with her husband, and the simple first steps she's— she would recommend to any small business owner wondering where to even start. Katherine is also offering something special for anyone listening, a free AI visibility mini check to see whether AI actually understands what you do, who you help, and her full audit, normally $299, is $69 for the first 10 JAM members who sign up. I'll drop the details in the show notes. Enjoy.

Katherine, thank you so much for being back and joining me on our show again. I know when we last spoke, I left thinking, man, we just got to the tip of the iceberg. There was so much more to cover with Katherine. And then you've lived a couple lives since then. So catch us up. Maybe give everyone a little bit of a rundown of what we discussed last time. And yeah, and kind of catch us up to where you are today.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, thank you so much for having me back. I just absolutely love being on the podcast with you. And yeah, sure. So, you know, it's been a little bit of a whirlwind over the summer. We're just, you know, struggling with the, you know, some family trials and tribulations. And my husband and I took off and we spent 7 weeks with our family back in New York. And then during that transition, you know, lots of things have been happening. So in the midst of all that, my husband's in food and beverage. And last time we touched upon, you know, how, you know, I was using AI to kind of discover how we can, you know, automate things in our everyday lives as, you know, professionals and creators. And he's in the food and beverage business. So we've been working on an app through Lovable that basically it's— so we use a tagline, one chef upload, every server ready, every guest informed.

Oh.

And basically the chef would upload his build sheet, which is basically his menu or his recipes for the night. And then from there, it automatically updates the pre-shift or that pre-meeting they have prior to the guests coming in.

Yeah.

And it, you know, serves them allergens and wine pairings and anything that's, you know, been changed on the menu. And they have certain CRMs that currently do that, but not Not this effective. So, and it's been something that's been on his mind for a really long time. So, you know, with all of the advancements in AI and, you know, having me by his side, I'm like, let's build it.

So when we last spoke, you were telling us about this awesome house management— house inspector tool.

Yes.

And what you're telling me now, I imagine you were able to use a lot of what you learned from the house management. Like, what, what's kind of the crossover there? And I'm so sorry, my coffee's just a little bit out of reach. I have to grab it. It's essential. Okay.

Got it.

And life must— life can resume. Okay. Um, so yeah, what is kind of the crossover there? Like, what have you learned to— in this— for this new app?

Absolutely. So in using, in building the house management system, right, it's kind of the same, right? We need, you know, we need a workflow obviously to kind of trigger those tasks, right? And mainly, you know, being in hospitality for so long, A lot of the current, you know, CRMs and softwares that are out there are so focused on what's happening on the outside of the 4 walls of the restaurant, which is kind of like your home, right? And so we wanted to focus on what's going on on the inside. So I kind of took those house management steps that I use to create, you know, like a daily brief and build a few automations and workflows in order to kind of like trigger what that next step is. And so I kind of use that same mentality to apply to this app. So—

Well, and I imagine you're talking like more high-end luxury restaurants, yeah?

So it would be more upscale and then fine dining, yeah, and above. But yeah, even smaller restaurants and even the smaller businesses do some sort of a pre-shift with a menu upload, yeah.

And when you and I last spoke, one of the things that really stuck out to me was that you guys had an old-fashioned diner in the past, the two of you. And so I love that. Fast forward, I don't know, maybe a couple, let's just say like a decade or so, a couple decades later, you guys are kind of back in this industry together again.

Yeah, which is great. I love it. I love it. We're bouncing ideas off of each other and, you know, and it's fantastic working with him. So that's kind of like a byproduct of what we've been kind of working on after, you know, after We got back from the summer and then I've also been expanding my personal business in the space of doing AI SEO audits.

Whoa.

So, you know, we were kind of like social media management, digital marketing, but I've been getting, I actually did a really thorough audit for, a yoga studio a couple months ago, and she's been getting phenomenal responses.

Wow.

And since then, I've been really kind of leaning into the space, not just for the food and beverage industry, but also for small business owners to kind of, 'cause we're kind of in that space where like SEO obviously is still very important, and those traditional methods, You know, still, you know, aren't going away. But I think the new vision of that where, you know, AI and SEO are going together is like, it's like a different layer. So I think previously, you know, it was more about ranking and like now it's more about recommending.

Wow.

So—

I love that. It was about ranking, now it's about recommending. So, And, and something that's really sticking out to me right now, Katherine, is like your ability to shift as the market evolves. And, and, you know, it, it's only been a couple months since you and I last spoke, and your company and what you're offering has really evolved with what, you know, where, where technology is. And I just, I think that's so cool. So I didn't mean to cut you off. I just, I wanted to bring it up.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think things are moving so fast that you, you know, you kind of have to shift with what is the market asking for now. And granted, obviously you don't want to be, you know, all over the place, which it kind of sounds like I am right now. But with that being said, you also want to meet You know, business owners where they are.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, and I think a lot of them have, you know, that overwhelming anxiety. I'm kind of getting like that feedback where, you know, they're just overwhelmed with tools. They're still trying to serve their customers, but yet— And like, you have a life. Yes, and that, you know.

I mean— I wanna share something with you just to put something aside.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This idea of like you being all over the place, like I think there's definitely a balance, right? And I wanna share, you know, Club Jam started off as courses for people and for small business owners and Jam would upload these courses that people could have access to. But by the time she got the video uploaded and moved on to the next module, That module was already out of date, right? So like, she had to evolve and she had to turn this training into something that actually works for people. So I, I really think what you're doing and you're— what you're— how you're evolving is like, you need it. You need it right now in this market to stay up to, you know, up to speed.

And You know, I will say that being in the JAM community was one of the, I would say, motivating factors.

Wow.

That inspired me to move towards the AI SEO movement because I was kind— I was getting a lot of questions about it, quite honestly. I'm still getting a lot of questions about it. And I don't think many people know enough about it. And it was one of the updated courses that you had in the community that really inspired me to just kind of go all in on the space and start building that out. You know, back in the day, back in the day—

What day are we talking about here?

Back in the day, you know, AI SEO, when I started in digital marketing back when I was in Vegas about a decade ago, ranking and SEO kind of has always been at the forefront of everything that I've done, right? Because if you're building a website, if you are, you know, consulting a business owner, it always starts with the customer journey and where that journey starts in search. So that's always been very exciting to me and always has been at the forefront of anything that I do to support. So yeah, I have to thank the community, the Jam community, because that's where actually, I can't remember the exact course, but I will, uh, well, I'll just send it to you. But she had posted something in there and I was like, you know what? I, you know, took it, I looked at it and I was like, this has to be, um, this is definitely where I want to be, uh, moving forward towards. So, yeah.

So, so act like whoever's listening to this has no idea what AI SEO is. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Absolutely. So, right, SEO is search engine optimization. And originally, it is basically when a client, a customer types into Google, you know, and they're looking for your particular services, whether that be, you know, flooring for their new home or, you know, best, you know, sneakers and you're a, you know, sneaker shop. Yeah. You wanna be able, you wanna come up in search, you wanna come up as the answer or the solution to whatever they're looking for. So now it's really moving towards being recommended, right? So it was heavily, when the internet first started, like just to go back really quick, it was a lot easier to rank in search, right?

Oh.

You would build your website, you'd have, you know, information on there about you, you know, FAQs, frequently asked questions, and it was a lot easier to come up. Paid ads were easier, everything was easier. As things started to evolve, it started to get a lot harder because, you know, paid ads started to get a little harder. You really wanted to make sure that you ranked for specific keywords where you still wanna do that now, But now you're not only just optimizing your business and your website for Google, right? But now you also need to optimize it for Perplexity, for Claude, for—

Individually. Right? And— Because you can't just do it for all-encompassing, you have to do individual LLMs.

You do. You have to kind of You know, cater to make them all happy. I would love to say that, you know, each one of them, you know, you can just, you know, optimize for all of them and it would be great. But that's not what I'm really seeing right now. So, you know, right now I think the focus would be like ChatGPT, Claude, And Google.

So you mentioned customer journey. Are you, you know, and you, and I love what you said. You said, you know, something along the lines, I never want to like quote you, but you said something along the lines of having to like, or recognizing customer journey, right?

Yes.

So as you are working on these recommendations through each of these LLMs through AI SEO, And you're doing it through Claude, you're doing it through ChatGPT. Are you considering different customer journeys for different, like, potential customers that use each of those LLMs? Are they different customers? Am I making sense? Like, is the customer who uses ChatGPT to search for shoes different than the customer who uses Gemini to search for shoes?

So that's a fantastic question. And I'm going to answer that with a yes. Because it really depends on your business.

Yeah.

And the type of customer, right? Because some clients, a small business owner may, you know, their, I should say their ideal client may not even use ChatGPT or Claude yet.

Wow.

They may be more specific towards, I'm still very comfortable with just using Google and whatever Google recommends. And I'm, you know, what I'm seeing in, you know, in the small business owner space, their clients may not be as comfortable using Claude, Perplexity. They don't, they may not even know what that is. And I get a lot of feedback like they're, you know, in that space where They're still even like a little nervous even using ChatGPT. So I think it really just depends on the type of business and then really getting, you know, you have to know who your ideal client is and how they search in order to optimize for them.

That's so interesting. So before someone reaches out to you, To do an AI SEO audit, and I do want to learn more about that. What can they do for their small business first?

Absolutely. So when we're looking at, you know, a small business owner, I think starting with your website is number one.

Okay. Always.

So if you don't have, you know, an FAQ on there, the LLMs love pulling information from, you know, frequently asked questions. I would highly recommend doing that. If you haven't updated your website in a long time, now is the time.

Wow.

You know, and you want to ensure that, you know, if you have a variety of products and services, that maybe those specific products would have their own dedicated page, or maybe you know, 1 to 2 products or services on a specific page, right? Homepage, super imperative, right? Make sure that it's dialed in on specifically who you help, what you do, how you can support that, and how they can get in touch with you. I was looking for a, A mover locally, and I had to search all the way on the bottom of the page just to get a phone number.

Did you reach out to them with an audit? You know what?

I didn't, but I should. I was a little frustrated because I'm like, I just wanna, you know, the first 5, no one even called me back, which was awesome. And then this gentleman, I had to scroll all the way down to his page to get the phone number. He actually wound up being fantastic and had amazing Google reviews, but I had to share with him, I was like, your phone number needs to be right on top. I didn't wanna scroll all the way on the bottom, you know? Luckily, that all worked out. But yes, I'm putting that down. I am reaching out to him for an audit. But with that being said, yeah, so I would definitely start with your website. And then from there, There's some fantastic, you know, Google and Gemini have come up with some fantastic, you know, updated quick tip resources I can send over to the Jamf community that you can do that are super simple that will, you know, that will literally start helping you, you know, become higher in search. Within a week. So, um, and just like few little tweaks.

Yeah. So, so people, if people do these, what are questions they could ask themselves to know if working with you would actually be the good next step?

Oh, that's a great question. Uh, so at this, at, at this level, you know, so some of the questions are, um, are you currently getting You know, is your phone ringing? Are you getting leads? If you are not, that is a great way to reach out to me because there's some simple things that we can do on your Google My Business profile alone that will help with that. So it'll help you stand out from businesses that are not doing you know, anything or any activity. If you're not sure, so there's something called schema, right? And that's basically a piece of code that tells LLM, the LLMs, you know, basically in their language, what you do, how do you help, And they actually crawl that, you know, first, and that's on the backend of your website. So there's a couple of technical things that you can kind of do behind the scenes. That would be a wonderful way to connect with me, right? So we can update that code or the metadata that actually goes behind the scenes that works for you for your website.

And what should people expect to invest in a service like this, like working on AI SEO audit?

Absolutely. So it really, so for me, it's a little custom, right? Because it really just depends on how robust your business is. So, you know, if you're a small business owner, you have a smaller website, you offer local services, I have an audit that's $299. that basically will give you a quick rundown of where you're, you know, if you're coming up in search.

Awesome.

And where you are versus, you know, some of your competitors. And then I give you a blueprint that basically details or a checklist of things you can execute that would, you know, really help you stand out if you wanted to, move further with that and work along with me, we can, you know, discuss those details based on what the audit revealed and, you know, what your goals are moving forward.

Yeah.

Larger companies, you know, that have more robust, I would say like, you know, restaurants or hotels, anything of that nature, that usually starts around $1,500. Yeah.

So, so are you seeing people moving away from like Google Ads to solely AI SEO?

So I think they're two different, you know, they're two different spaces.

Yeah.

So I think you really need to, you know, kind of optimize for search before you, start advertising. You don't necessarily have to, but I think they both complement each other. I don't necessarily really work with ads, so I have done them in the past, but I do know that some of the clients that I have been working with are doing both.

What about Google keywords? Have you seen people move away from like Google keywords to just AI? AI SEO?

So Google Keywords is a huge part of it, right? So you always want to, so I think that's the, like, the initial layer, right? You always wanna have those keywords because, you know, that's what you wanna show up for. So those should always be at the forefront of, like, your optimization. And then even long-term, long-form keywords, fantastic, right? So for showing up YouTube search, Long-tail keywords show up, you know, LinkedIn, you know, Instagram is now coming up in search as well. So I think that's always something that you want to have at the forefront. And like I said, like AI SEO now is just like that additional layer. Oh my gosh.

Well, okay, I want to close this out kind of full circle because Honestly, Katherine, I could sit here and like poke your brain all day long. Um, and, and something you said earlier reminded me, we're living in, in an age now, we're living in a society now where it's very rare people just have their one thing they do, right? Like, I mean, even the doctor we work with here, he has like a clinic and a thing, like, you know, it's like so rare that people just like have their one thing anymore, you know?

Yeah.

And I love that you have this AI SEO services. I love that. And correct me if I'm wrong, that came from like you were doing social media content for a while too, yeah?

I was. We still are.

Amazing.

We still are. But I think this is like an added layer to the services because, you know, again, you need to kind of like evolve with what the market is asking for. And I had, you know, more than a couple of clients ask me like, is this something you can do? And it's always been like a passion of mine just because, you know, you're ranking in search, right? So yeah, so just adding this additional layer and just, you know, being more, you know, just I'm talking more about it, I'm connecting with people more about it, and I'm seeing that, you know, they're more strict. You know, it's a stress moving into the next phase of AI and where that's bringing us in our businesses, so.

Well, and you also have this new passion project that you're doing with your husband for the app. So I mean, I just think it's so cool how many things you're involved in and the, the, the connections between them, right? It's not like, it's not like 3 different completely things, you know, they're all connected. And I'm just curious, like, how do I, how do I, how do I phrase this? Do you find yourself— and I'm speaking from personal experience because I also have all the things, you know— do you find yourself Like getting energy from kind of these like side projects to give you more energy to focus on like the main, main offerings that you offer.

Did that make sense?

Yes, 100%. Because if we're not leaning into, I think what excites us, right, as, you know, being builders in the AI space, And, you know, with the way things are changing in our environment, what are we doing?

I love it. I love it.

I love it. And Jam, Jam, not to cut you off, but Jam had a lot to do with that as well. So because we're all builders in the community, right? Whether you're just starting out or a little bit more advanced, and the Jam community has a lot to do with that.

Katherine, I am so excited to stay in touch with you and let's connect in a few more months and see where, where everything has evolved again.

Fantastic, Flora. Thank you so much for having me again.

Thank you again.

Talk soon.

Okay.

Okay. Bye-bye.