From Search and Retrieve to Solve My Problem with Len Ward

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman. I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals. Tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com and powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman. Joining me today is Len Ward. He's the managing partner and head of AI at Comexus. Len spent more than 2 decades building and leading an agency that evolved from traditional and digital marketing into analytics and AI. That experience has given him a front row seat to a fundamental change in how people find information, evaluate options, and make decisions. So Len believes marketing is moving from a search and retrieve model to a solve my problem model. We'll get more into that. And that the shift will challenge many of the assumptions behind websites, search content, lead generation, and the customer journey. So Len, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Michael. Appreciate it.

Yeah, glad to do it. I think it's an interesting perspective. So while we, like, before we get too far into it, one thing we like to do is get a little more background on people. So I gave the very surface level, like before we, Talk about where you think marketing is going, especially as it relates to AI and these tools. Tell us a little bit about the evolution of Comexus, you know, and how that started as, or I guess, is that what it was when it started as the agency? But how did you evolve from the traditional agency into one that's more focused on analytics and AI? And what was it, you know, that was maybe the catalyst for that, right? What did you see that triggered you to go and make that change?

Sure. So we started, Comexis, actually the original iteration was a company called RankMe SEO. So better part about 20 years ago, we were doing search engine optimization when there really wasn't a lot of people doing SEO. I was actually a solo practitioner doing it. And this is when you were optimizing for more than Google, those multiple search engines you were trying to go for at that point. As SEO grew, as more and more people kind of started pushing in towards the digital landscape, and it's funny because 20 years ago you were, Like had to convince people to do digital, which was funny. Now they just, it's like a utility. They know they have to do it.

But remember those days? Like, remember those days?

Yeah. Yeah. Just amazing. So we started to morph. My agency started growing. I started hiring like one person here, one person there, but it was rather quickly. I tell people all the time, I, we went from an SEO firm to an SEO agency or an SEO consultancy to an agency very rapidly where we almost had like 25 people working for us. And we went through the mobile era. People may not remember, but there was a mobile era where people weren't necessarily happy about putting their information on a phone, like their payment information and so forth. Then we kind of moved into the social media era, which was a very, very big era. That was a very, we had a time during social media when people would not want to put anything on social media. And then there was even a There was even a video era, if you remember that. That's kind of where everything was starting to move into, you know, video and so forth.

Yeah.

So we kind of started migrating there. We had a couple acquisitions of smaller agencies and we became a full-service digital agency from video to websites, to hosting, to SEO. Everything you could possibly think of is, you know, we were pretty much offering. Then probably about 2017, '18, I forget the actual year, but we came across IBM Watson and IBM Watson was, 'cause we always, everybody heard about AI. AI's, you know, if you haven't heard that—

I heard it just play chess, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And AI was, it's been around since the '40s or '50s. Like a lot of people don't realize that it's not a new invention. But you always heard in our world, and you know, this is automation was concerning. Well, it's gonna out-automate us. We're gonna lose jobs. And, you know, and then you would hear how Google and Facebook were starting to do certain things where they could do the marketing for you. But we, our team started Dipping in and looking at things with AI. There were some very early companies that claimed they were doing AI. It wasn't AI. And even, but IBM Watson was the one we bought a subscription for. We gave it a shot. And I say this a lot is we looked at it, it was good kind of junk, but we said, okay, if they're gonna do what they're saying they're doing, 'cause you started reading a lot of stuff about it and then you started hearing about ChatGPT, like OpenAI, you're like, okay, this is gonna be kind of magical. But the funny part about AI is initially everybody thought it was just gonna start writing stuff for everybody. Like that's kind of how AI was starting. Well, it's gonna take care of emails and do this and do that.

Yeah.

So we started testing it, but the minute OpenAI released ChatGPT and we went in and we looked at it, there was a lot of errors with it. But what we did see was like, okay, this is gonna fundamentally change copywriting, ad copy, even strategy. 'Cause we started, we actually threw strategy in it right away to see what was happening. So it was right there where I looked around and I was like, you saw it was the same thing I saw when you saw Google 25 years ago.

Yeah.

And then when we saw this 25 years later, I'm like, this is way more powerful. I'm like, and I want to push all my chips into the center of the table. So that's how COMEXIS arrived where we are. But I will say, I still think AI is where we were with the internet 25 years ago, where people were still not really knowing what this is. And the same conversations now about we're going to lose our jobs and this were the same things that happened 25 years ago. Trust me, it was the same conversations.

Yeah.

So that's kind of how COMEXIS, you know, got to You know, right now we are an AI consultancy and we start going in and we implement, you know, AI services and AI products for people to kind of get them moving along.

Yeah, so it's funny, I was thinking when you were describing sort of the evolution of digital from, you know, search stuff to other digital, then you talked about video and I remember like how many places I was where we were like, is video, is it social or is it just digital? Like, it was like, you know, and I think, I think, um, it was funny that like thinking about those kinds of conversations now, like they seem like it doesn't really matter, right?

Yeah.

Um, and now of course, right, I guess Google's, well, I don't know if this is still true or not, but I think, I think it is, is that Google or YouTube isn't still the second biggest search engine on the internet?

Yes, it is behind, behind Google. I actually think that's going to overtake Google soon.

Yeah.

I think YouTube's going to eventually overtake that. I think that's a matter of time. That's going to be Google's, one of their major asset and last vestiges of the old world. Because I do, we're in the process of watching search collapse right now.

Yeah. Well, so let's get into that a little bit. So when I introduced you, this is something you and I talked about before, is that you see a shift from search, you called it search and retrieve to solve my problem. So maybe describe what you mean by that and, you know, why, what's the significance of that? Right?

So it's dramatic. For the last 25 years, everything we've done in marketing and business, every business model has been built on somebody searching for your, they have a problem, right? And then they go on the internet and then they search for a solution. So they're, you know, they're reading blogs, they're watching videos, they're gathering a bunch of assets, and then they are taking that back and they are trying to make, whether it's a business decision, whether to make doing a personal decision, And they're reading and condensing all that information. And then what they do is they go in and they fill out a form to have somebody contact them. Maybe they place a phone call and then they go through a rabbit hole of doing more research where—

What's so, so before you go, like it just occurred to me, like that's actually not fundamentally that much different than what I did when I was in high school or college where I'd go to the library. Yes. I'd have something and I would, instead of it doing it online, I was doing it through the card catalog or the microfiche listings, et cetera, right? It's, um, it's, so it's fundamentally not that much different than that. It was just shifted the form, the, the environment in which I was doing it.

Yeah. You actually just described the era pre the internet, which is 100% right. And it's funny because I think that a lot of the people that are panicking about AI right now, and I'll get into the solve my problem. If you, if you pay attention to the history of what's going on, This is just an evolution. You know, everybody's, you know, everybody's, well, it's a revolution, or is it an evolution? You know, like what, you know, 'cause they call the internet a revolution and it was, but we have reached a point, I think now where there's so much information coming at humans that we want to pose a problem to you and we want you to solve it. Like, we're not, I don't want to read your blogs. I don't want to read your white papers. I'm not, maybe I'll watch some of your video clips. I'll do that. But they don't want to go through a 2, 3 week process of trying to come up with a decision, even if it's an instantaneous decision. Like, let's just say they were arrested and you're looking for For like, you know, a criminal attorney or your tooth cracked and you don't, you know, you just, or something's broken in the house. We're at the stage now where people want to go to something and they want to have an answer given to them right away. So the minute ChatGPT was put in front of an individual or Grok or Claude, you know, which is Anthropic, you went, or Gemini, which is Google, you went in and posed a question and it immediately came back with an answer. It didn't come back with websites. It didn't come back with, hey, read this. It's like, no, this is your answer. So That is where we are at right now from a business standpoint. And that changes everything fundamentally. It changes sales, it changes marketing, it changes everything where now our entire process is what problems do we solve opposed to how do we work people in a funnel? It's, it's, so it's a very, very different approach.

Yeah. I mean, I know just personally, I mean, I obviously use these LLMs for business-related stuff, but on a personal standpoint, I think of the different things that I've used it to do research on something where I want to figure out. We had a deep freezer that went bad last summer and I didn't want to pay to get a replacement and I was hoping I gave it like, here's what the symptoms are, what do you think the options are and can I fix it myself if I'm not very handy? And it walked me through what to do. I did the same thing with, we've got a A kitchen drain situation. There's all these things where I could have spent a lot of time doing my own research and this just shortened that. I still, and this is maybe where you were talking about where people are viewing this as different maybe than other changes in the past, is that it, I mean, in some ways it does feel like it's, we were talking right before we started recording how I feel like these— The LLMs in particular feel like they're leapfrogging each other, or, and you're, I think you said that maybe you think they're narrowing in on spaces where they're gonna be stronger than others. But I mean, I'm like, I still had to do my own sort of analysis of an assessment of what did I, did I trust what it was? Did I clarify? Right. I'm still finding I have to do that.

You mean clarifying what you're putting in there?

Clarifying what I'm putting in there or clear, just making sure I understand what it's given me so I can go, do I, does it make sense? Does it not make sense? Right. It still requires my ability to evaluate it. Yeah, it, it, it does.

And I think that goes directly back to when you were searching on the internet 15 years ago, you'd have to go through, if there's 10 blue links, you went through 5 that were garbage because they were getting spammed up there. And then 2 that were like, okay, they're good. And 3, they're like, wow, this really gives me my answer. I still think we're there, but that took years. I think this is gonna take a year before it really, you're gonna pose a question and these LLMs are gonna know you. You know, people forget, like a lot of times it's like you sit down on a search engine and people would type in and a lot of times search engine didn't know who you were 'cause you weren't logged in. Even when you were logged in, it didn't remember a lot of stuff. It's only recently That remembered a lot of your search history, meaning last 5, 6, 7 years. But the LLMs, if you have that on your phone, you have that on your computer, it's going to memory know what you are and it's going to know your idiosyncrasies and it's going to know the question you ask is going to put the pieces together. So it's truly getting to know you as a person. So you will in the next 18 months find the answers, find yourself less and less digging through it and trying to prompt it and reading through it to the point of You'd almost feel like you're like talking to a human being because it's like they're giving you a direct answer right away. So that is coming.

Yeah. No, I mean, you know, again, talking about right before we started recording, like how I use, if you started using, in my case, I was using ChatGPT, not that it matters that much, but I was using it, I'd use it to prepare for these recording sessions. And the first, you know, dozen, couple of dozen, right? I was much more looking at, did they get it right? Did they match how I wanted to do in the past where I did it manually? And now I just, it's just, it's gotten good enough because it knows me already. Like I've given it feedback where I did something I didn't like and it's, it's just continued to get better to the point where I really don't have to do much in the way of reviewing it. I still do. Sure. I, I don't, I don't, um, I don't put the same amount of effort into it as I did 6 months ago, 3 months ago.

Yeah. And that's, I, you made a good point because I think That's where we're beginning to fall off. Too many people are letting it solve the problem for 'em. Too many people are letting it do all the work. And the biggest question I'm asked is, well, AI's going to surpass everything. Is it? Because from what I understand, nothing's ever surpassed a human mind. And the human mind was what created this thing. So if the human mind is now starting to stay lockstep with what this thing is teaching it all the way through and really kind of following all the way through, that is the single fastest way AI will not jump a human being. You know, it's, and now some people have problem, you know, problem or problems learning and digesting information a little differently. But if you train these things to teach you how to digest information, how to teach you and say, here's how I want to present it to me, you're going to find yourself maybe not as smart as this, but it's not outrunning you. And I think that is the thing we have to drive home in, in like people are, well, it's going to get rid of school. No, school's going to move into, you have to try, you know, teach children or teach, you know, college kids, whatever, how to work with these things. And That's the biggest thing, the biggest threat I see from AI right now. And my concern is that people are just letting it do its job for you and they're just, write this for me, write this email. And I see these emails, I've actually read these blog posts, I've seen this stuff. I'm like, you literally forgot to say it literally prompted you a question down below. You cut and paste and put it in your blog. Like, you know, so, right. And we need to get much better at being gatekeepers of what goes out there because it's really bad right now. And you're going to get fired if you keep doing this, you know?

Yeah.

Your boss will be like, why am I paying you?

So it's interesting. I have kids who are in high school, college age, and it's funny because my oldest in particular is like, nobody in our age range likes these things, right? We know that we have to do them partially because it's like a job. They think it's making it harder to get jobs. I'm not totally convinced of that. I think there's a component of that for sure, But what they're saying, what he said is funny, he's like, it's all the boomers and Gen X people that are all excited about it. And I'm like, yeah, but like my perspective, I've kind of straddled those 2 generations a little bit. I'm kind of on the cusp is I feel like maybe this is what your take is too, right?

Yes.

Does this feel like a change that's Very significantly, yes. Is it moving faster than say the internet one or things like that? Yes. But it's, to me, like I'm still not sure I'm convinced that it's as big of a change as some people are making out to be. And then when it comes to the job print, I think a lot of companies are using it as an excuse for poor management, poor performance that could be attributed to anything else. They're using that as a way to cut.

I agree. And I think the biggest people who are susceptible to losing their jobs are the large companies. The large companies are going to find themselves finding it to be nearly impossible to compete with the 1 and 2 person shops up to 5 person shops because they truly understand AI. The fundamental reason why large companies are— why you're going to lose your job at a large company or why large companies are going to start missing earnings and potentially close and get, you know, people are like, oh, that's never going to happen.

Really?

Go ask Eastman Kodak what happened.

Right.

With, with, with, you know, cameras. So is because businesses are using AI to speed up processes. That's all they're doing. They're not using AI to solve problems and break bottlenecks to get the client's answer faster. That's an entire shift in how you operate a business. So to me, that's the biggest problem we're facing with it right now. We're just trying to speed everything up. So it's not that you're going to lose your job. I think you're going to start burning humans out. We see it right now with the amount of AI work that we're doing right now and that we're trying to implement for clients. I'll never forget Amy who works with us. I'll never— and Amy's very, very, very bright. She used to run all of our analytics before AI. She's like, I feel like I'm doing 10 times the amount of work that I did for which regular standard marketing. And we all agree it's the same thing because you're constantly building. It's a lot of work. But I do think though that that shift is coming and I think The minute you dig down deep and you start seeing what it's doing, you almost can't unsee what you've seen. So when we kind of go up to the front lines and see it and come back, I'm like, I don't think people understand what's coming. They're like, I'm going to lose my job. No, your company's going to close. Don't worry about losing your job. You know, so my advice to people, and I don't mean this, go counter against businesses, take every living moment you have right now when you're at home and start interacting with these things. And if you've ever had an idea or ever had a concept, start working with it and kind of go with it and let it help you go all the way through. Protect yourself because even if you can't get hired, let's just say these companies start falling, you're gonna find yourself with a business or you're gonna find yourself with a stream of revenue because AI helped you out. It's time to start doing that opposed to worrying if you're gonna lose your job.

It's funny when you said like it's hard to unsee, like it takes me back to the guy I went camping and hunting with one time. We made the mistake of looking at the ingredients in the chorizo. Yeah, you don't want to know that.

There you go. It's a good analogy.

So, okay, so you touched on this a little bit, but like, you know, this whole like search and retrieve model, right? People who are searching for products, technology, whatever, right, would have to go do search, visit sites, analyze that, ask for somebody to call them, and so on. So are you, how much do you think that's gonna shift over to being done on LLMs or other AI platforms and that infrastructure as opposed to, I guess this is like the agent, like the buyer agent kind of model.

Mm-hmm.

And if you think that's gonna shift, like how, what kind of impact does that, will that have on companies when it comes to their website, the content they have, does SEO even matter, right? And other kind of both, I guess primarily on their own channels, if you will.

So I think within 5 years that the shift will be dramatic. I think in 5 years' time, you will look at Google like the Yellow Pages, like how we literally look like you would see somebody look going through the Yellow Pages right now. You would find it really funny. I do think there's, they're going to have a contingent of people that will still use it, still use search engines because that's how they process information. Again, we can't, let's not forget how humans process information. It's very different for a lot of people. They may like to read, they may like to digest things. And go from there. But I think that within 5 years' time, it's all going to change because you're going to have a much more educated individual showing up to you. Like you made a point where you checked YouTube and you looked at a couple things to fix one of the things you said in your house. I forget exactly what it was. But so you're going to show up at a plumber, you're going to show up at a lawyer, you're going to show up B2B manufacturer, and you're going to know just as much, if not more, than any of the salespeople in there. You're gonna know pricing, you're gonna know specs, you're gonna know inventory, you're gonna know exactly, you know, when you can get the stuff in. You're gonna sit down and talk with a lawyer, and while the lawyer's always gonna be smarter than you in law, 'cause it's what they do, they're not gonna like be able to tell you something that you have not seen already, you know, on LLM. So businesses aren't preparing for this. They're not preparing for, in my, what I like to call is the last 10 yards to get to the end zone. You're not ready for that. And I think that's the thing they have to start preparing for. What do you do When an intelligent client comes in, like, what is your sales process to be ready for? Like, when the person comes in is like, I'm 90% of the way there, what can you do to get me there? Those are the type of things you have to start looking at. And you have to start, you know, not start, you know, sitting around and, well, what type of content do we market? What product do we do? Once AI understands your business and it's listening on your website, listening internally, which are called sensors or chatbots, if you wanna call it, at that point, it's gonna tell you what to do. So to me, that's where I think like the fundamental shift is coming. And I would maybe 10% of companies understand it. Even when you hear like CNBC talking or you read a Wall Street report, 'cause, you know, my background is on Wall Street way back in the day. I still have, you know, my finger on the pulse. I listen, I'm like, these companies have no idea what they're talking about. They're not even, they're just making it up about AI. Like they're literally making it up. And And they're just like, we're going to speed the process up. We're going to do this and do that. Speeding the process up is going to make you fall. Changing the fundamental business model and how you respond to a client is going to make you succeed. That's why I do think the smaller shop is going to win out because they're going to understand the solve my problem world. So the day of the behemoth company, which is America, you're going to see a bit of that change. We're coming into a dawn of where the smaller company's going to rise. What does that mean for Wall Street and stocks and all that? I don't really know. But what I do know is that the rise of, I guess, say a 5-person shop who truly understands the solve my problem world, opposed to a company that is still pouring tens of millions of dollars into blogs, ridiculous ads, lead generation, all of that. I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing that now, but if you're not starting to migrate your money over to building an actual AI company, In 5 years' time, you're in trouble.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, you're saying like, you said an AI company. Do you mean like an AI-enabled company or do you—

AI-first company, which means almost like a digital, like, like our, we have bring our company to the digital age. We've all heard companies say that, which is funny. Digital age back, you remember this 10 years ago, is having a website. Now you're in a digital age, but now it is installing AI Whether you want to call it LLMs, whether you want to call it platforms, whether you want to call it vibe coding around certain places where there typically used to be bottlenecks and you actually are breaking those bottlenecks with AI. That's what it means to become an AI-first company. Not we have Claude and we have ChatGPT and we're just speeding up blog posts. That's just you work, like I said, working clients or customers to death. That's it.

Yeah. Like I've heard some companies talk about employing AI as a To get the benefit of a time dividend, which is, I think is what you're saying, like they're speeding up processes, but it doesn't necessarily make them better, especially when it comes to, are they going to be better at producing products that meet customers' needs and solving customers' problems? I think, is that kind of a way of saying what you were saying? Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's what it is. And I think Maybe if I'm hearing you right, I think inherently, I think humans are never going to take their hands off the wheel. I do agree with that. I think everyone worries about AI taking over the world. I just don't see humans. I just, humans still want a human operating, still humans still want a pilot piloting a plane. You know, humans still want major decisions happening, but there's a lot of decisions and processes in business where you don't need a human on board. Middle management, like think clogging up processes, like We gotta go through 5 different approvals to get it done. I think that's where AI's gonna start breaking those bottlenecks and things are gonna get quicker. And that's how you get to an answer quicker. And I just think it's funny 'cause I get frustrated talking to companies about search and retrieve to solve my problem. And it's funny 'cause you get 'em buying in and they get it, and then 10 minutes later they're back in the search and retrieve world. Well, what type of content? Wait, wait, wait, stop. You're still coming back to the same thing. Get out of the— get off the horse and let's get into the car, 'cause everything's changed. So, but I think, yeah, that's kind of what it is. So it's really, really understanding to get to a customer's answer as fast and ethically and correctly as we can.

Right.

What is stopping us from getting there?

Okay. So, okay, let me shift gears a little bit here, but yeah, I want to go back to you. You had said when we talked that you had, you have predicted, and I assume this is public, Right? That you think Google could miss earnings in their, in the near, not too distant future. So, you know, what makes you believe that? And, you know, what do you think that'll, what kind of impact do you think that will have on marketers who are still relying on search for lead generation?

When they miss earnings, I think for the very first time, I think business owners who have not embraced AI will for the very first time realize that Google's not as infallible as it used to be, because it was for the better part of 20 years. I think they'll realize that, and I think that that will really fundamentally rock a lot of what's going on. Because here's what you have to think about. Technically last quarter, Google's telling you how it was a blowout quarter, but the reality of it was a blowout quarter because of stock they put out there for sale. So if you dig deep into their numbers, like the Wall Street— I forget the reporter did— it's their quarter was not that good. They think more, they keep telling you how search is improving. No, it's not. And they keep telling you how more money's coming in the pay-per-click. No, you're charging more money. It doesn't mean more money's coming in. You're charging more. Most businesses right now are starting to allocate money away from Google and they're starting to try to identify different types of things, influencer marketing, you know, video clips, TikTok, things like that, because that is where a lot of the new buying public is at. You have to remember with Google, it's, I love Google. It's, it's built my business. It's helped pay my mortgage. Like it's been a great company.

Sure.

But there's nothing they have that's defensible. And everybody says, well, they have the reach.

Okay.

Well, you mean they have Gmail and they have, okay, great. So give me one product that Google's created that AI could not replicate right now. Right now it literally could. And if it couldn't, it's within 18 months of being able to create an entire email infrastructure, an entire cloud infrastructure. An entire pay-per-click structure, even a potential video structure. So YouTube and all of that, and Google may have the dominant search engine and the dominant both search engines, but as people start building their own things, as they understand how to market the right way because they're leaning on influencer marketing, yeah, Google is going to miss earnings. I don't think there's any question because everyone's like, well, they have a moat. No, they don't. I don't think there's one business in the world unless you're Anthropic or ChatGPT That has a moat. And it's hard for us to accept that, but I think that's where we are. And that's why I keep coming back. You cannot see what you've seen. The minute you interact with a vibe coding product to say, hey, replicate Google for me, you'd be surprised how quick it comes back. Now, is it right? No. But just to even be there is mind-blowing to me. So anybody that's constantly pouring money into these companies thinking, oh, they're immune, I don't think you're paying attention. And I, I definitely think you have not really read up on how far along AI is.

Yeah. And it keeps, it's moving so rapidly, it's hard to keep up.

Yeah.

So when you talk to your marketers and clients, if they're still relying on traditional, like, I don't even know if we wanna call it traditional, but contemporary traditional lead generation models, right? What are you telling them and like, What areas of that model are breaking down faster than others? And what do you suggest that they do now?

The first thing that's falling down the fastest, which breaks my heart because I am truly an SEO at heart, that's how I started this entire thing. I mean, I am an absolute fan of SEO. I actually enjoy doing SEO. I enjoy old school SEO.

Yeah.

It was always a good time because you always like seeing the results of what you did.

Back in the day, I wrote for within an internal company. I wrote like, Writing for search. Yeah.

And he had to.

Yeah.

And interlinking and just the right meta tags, the right backlinks. And I just loved it. I thought it was good. But SEO is clearly in the end of days and SEO, everyone's like, well, it's going to live in the AI world.

No, it's not.

Like, come on. I'm a 25-year veteran of SEO. No, it's not. It's, I look at it right now and look at SEO. I'm like, all right, if you want to call some schema code and stuff like that SEO, I get it. But Not the traditional SEO blocking and tackling that we're used to. So I think the organic leads that you typically used to get, I think that's starting to dry up. Organic traffic is beginning to pull back. I even think like pay-per-click's beginning to hurt a little bit because again, if we're moving to solve my problem opposed to, you know, search and retrieve, remember a billion users a week, just ChatGPT alone is a billion users. There's 8 billion people.

Is it really that high now?

Yeah, it is.

I realize it. Okay. Wow.

Yeah. 8 billion people on the planet. So look how quick they're closing the gap on this.

That's crazy.

It's crazy, right?

So that's, I mean, that's 12.5% of the world population, which includes like all people. So there's going to be a big cohort at the young and old ages that probably don't use it much, if at all. Yeah. And then you've got just general people who don't have the infrastructure in their, wherever they happen to live, right? So 12.5% is probably like, in terms of like the population of people who are likely to use it, it's probably like, it's like 20% of the— that's crazy.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, I don't— and then everybody's like, well, they're racing to build out data centers. We all want data centers, but yet they're sitting on ChatGPT asking a question in their cars. They just got done at a town hall complaining about a data center. Like, where do you think this is coming from? So Got a landscaper here. Sorry.

He's like, I hear one of my office.

Sorry about that.

This is like, this is real life here, right, folks?

Yeah.

It's, I was surprised my dog, there was somebody at my front door. I thought my dog was gonna start barking.

So this guy's finding a need to leaf blow our office windows here, and I don't really know why. I didn't know there was grass up this high in the building.

All right. We'll power through. Yeah.

So, but I think, so what I'm telling clients now from a marketing perspective is You have to start, this is where we wrote a blog post about 3 years ago. We're at the intersection of AI and influencer marketing. And influencer marketing means you need to start thinking of your company as a micro-influencer in your industry. Because what's gonna happen is people are gonna have a problem solved on an LLM, and then what they're gonna do, like have it all the way through. Then if they wanna work with you, they're gonna go on your Instagram and look at a reel, look at your story. They're gonna go to LinkedIn and watch a video. They're gonna go to YouTube Shorts and take a look at everything. Because that's how we're starting to digest it and that's how we're making decisions. And it's quick and it's fast. So I tell companies, if you have not thought about having somebody walk around with a camera and filming, just you filming, just you doing business, you don't need to do these big educational posts, just like a day in the life type thing.

Doesn't have to be highly curated and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, you'll find yourself You know, really adapting to the new user. So that's what I'm trying to tell people, like, stop having these hardcore conversations about SEO and all this other stuff and really start moving your money into you being an influencer, at least your brand being an influencer and AI. And that's kind of where the marketing world is moving towards. And that's where I can, we'll eventually kind of start touching on the agent-to-agent marketing, but that's the shift that's happening.

Do you think that's true for both B2B and B2C, or do you think it's, is one ahead of the other? I assume B2C is ahead on this kind of stuff versus B2B, but—

On AI, B2B is ahead of B2C. When it comes to influencer marketing, B2C is vastly ahead of B2B.

Okay. So it's, that makes sense to me. Yeah. That, that's interesting. Yeah. So you brought up agent to agent, right? Well, like that seems like, I've, it's funny, I think about a year ago everyone was posting on LinkedIn about, here's my best practice on, you know, the way to, you know, to write a prompt for chat, you know, LLM. And those have like completely disappeared, right?

They're gone.

And I don't know if it's because people just got more comfortable or if it was just a bunch of bullshit or some combination of those or something else, but—

Bullshit. It was 100% bullshit. But anyway, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. The other, but I've now started seeing, I'm starting to see more and more of this, like eventually, like there's going to be agents that are doing the buyer research and stuff. And if in some ways, I guess some, especially B2B companies, probably B2C too, they'll have what they call agents, right? Like chatbots, right? That seems to be—

Yep.

I don't know if you call that an agent or not, but they're going to have that. So do you really believe that? I don't actually, well, I haven't experienced having an AI agent that's going to do my searching and stuff, but are you seeing that actually happening? And then, or if not, do you think it's close? Do you think, are we months away, years away?

No, it's here.

Okay.

So there are companies that are building agents and some of the agents are pretty powerful. They're strong. But here's my caveat, 'cause there's a lot of people that are worried, well, we gotta start building agents, do this, do that. Relax, because what's happening right now, if you work within Claude or if you work within ChatGPT, they're actually helping you build the agents. I think we're months away from where you're gonna tell it to build a specific agent and it's gonna build the entire thing for you. So a lot of people are worried about MCPs and are all this, You know, verbiage I can throw out at you, but we're moving to the world of the ultimate goal of ChatGPT and Anthropic, they used to say, is to make, you know, intelligence free. That was their thing. Like, meaning, you know, and they were gonna build it all for you. You were just gonna pay to use it and work within it and all that.

Right.

So their goal is to make you creating an agent, your company's creating agents, like just basically understanding what the business process is and then working through it, and then they can release an agent. You're already hearing of the stories. You probably heard over the weekend where these agents are getting out of their pens and they're coordinating with each other, which is concerning, you know?

Yeah.

And they're hacking in the companies. That is a very, very concerning thing.

So, yeah.

Right. So it's a matter of time before ChatGPT and Anthropic, which is Claude and Gemini, release this type of capability where you're creating your own stuff. So when you go to agent-to-agent marketing, yes, we are, we are at the dawn Of where you're gonna have your phone, you're gonna have your own personal agent, whatever it may be. And I think it'll be within one of those LLMs, and it's gonna know when you need to tune up your car before you know it. It's gonna know when you need blood work before you know it. It's gonna know so much, and it's gonna start setting appointments for you. It's gonna start vetting maybe mechanics for you. You keep complaining about your home needing new paint. It hears you talking. And what's going to happen is the minute you say, hey, I think I'll get a quote for paint, it's already got 5 quotes. It's pulling back saying, I want you to work with one of these 5 companies because they have the right financing, they've worked on homes like, and they know you. So, right, here's what I tell people all the time in the marketing world. How the hell in any way, shape, or form do you try to market that? How do you build a buyer's journey when it's agent, when that agent's competing with the paint company's agent? Well, I don't even know where that's going to go.

Yeah. So, and then, and I saw somebody post some, or on a LinkedIn post, uh, recently where somebody brought something I hadn't really even, like, in the back of my mind, I think it would've been obvious, but I hadn't really brought it to the forefront, which is with all this like vibe coding and stuff like that, like, I, if I was a, if I was a hacker, I would be salivating, right? Oh yeah. Because it's like all the things could be exposed because you don't know how to build something that's got the right kind of security built into it. Like I used to, like, just because I thought it was annoying, avoid 2-factor authentication. And now I like, if I don't, like I will do it on everything if I can because just, I'm worried about that kind of stuff. It's part of why I haven't really built a lot of like automation kinds of things, whether you call 'em agents or whatever. with some of these platforms because I don't really want them to have access to all my emails and all my calendar. And like, I just, maybe I'm just not very trusting.

No, I think you're coming back to what we said earlier about the humans aren't going to take their hands off the wheel.

Yeah.

I think that's what it is. And even security, I'm a big proponent of, I do think the man IT and cybersecurity is coming into their golden era. They really are. I mean, there's no doubt, but I think what's different is that they are going to be building agents whose sole job is to literally stop hackers from coming in. So it's a very, very different— you're not going to need to know this crazy in-depth understanding of IT and cybersecurity. I think what you're just going to need to know the process of how they hack. And again, I'm not in that, but I would say my prediction is going to be that I think the next battle line, and it's going to be a sustained battle line, is going to be agents. And it's going to be dramatic, meaning companies rolling out agents, you know, IT, it's just going to be, and there's a lot of them. And again, when you hear these stories about them hacking places and things like that, pay attention because it is a serious, serious concern. These agents are a problem.

No, I think that that's one. And I mean, the other piece of this that, and I think you and I touched on this a little bit when we talked before, and I've really come to believe that the human's not letting go. Part of that is because we have to exercise judgment with these things, not only in terms of what do we have it send it off to do, but also evaluate what it produced or came back with. My fear, and I think I've talked about this publicly too, is I mentioned already, I have kids who are in the high school college years. And I think we've tried to do our best to give our kids a foundation to be able to question things and analyze things and exercise judgment. But in general, I'm not sure that the last generation or 2 in the US in particular have had an education That has built their ability to critically think. So that's my concern.

Your concern is warranted. Yeah. I think that's where Gen X rolls in. So I, you know, Gen X, whatever, you know, boomers to a point, but I do believe Gen X is probably going to be the most important part of AI. And the reason I say it is this, and this is getting to the critical thinking. Because for, for you to truly succeed and make AI work for your company, whatever it may be, or even if you're doing on a personal project, you have to truly understand the business processes that are taking place. You have to understand how business works. You have to understand how that business works. You have to understand all the components. And the people who typically understand that from A to Z are the ones that have been working in the industry 25 to 30 years. That's the ones that truly understand it. The mistake you're gonna make is try to hand over your AI project to maybe, like you just said, one of the generations who have not been taught how to critically think the right way, and you're gonna let them come in and build it out. This is not 1998 or 2001 where your nephew can build a website and you're gonna hire them to build a website. That's not how this works. This is way more powerful. You have to put somebody in charge who understands the processes because then they know how to talk to the AI. Then they understand what's getting built. Okay, that does solve the process. And then They can turn around to the juniors behind them and say, this is how I got there. And really emphasize what you just said, critical thinking. And what I like to say, I don't care what anybody tells me, they are never going to be able to rationalize these things. That is a human element. And to my thing, it's when you teach them that, then what's going to happen is the generation behind us is going to be like, hey, if I'm not critically thinking, if I'm not looking at this rationally, this isn't the right product. So that's why I think I'm not trying to be age biased. You know, I know I'm a Gen X guy, but If somebody walks in and is like, we're going to let this 22-year-old kid run AI, you're making a big mistake. You know, not being—

I mean, I'm sure there's, there, I'm sure there are outliers there where that—

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Right. And it goes the other way too, right? There are going to be people who are Gen X age that I wouldn't want running it either.

Oh no. Yeah, I agree. I just mean, it's like, it's almost like the, I think what AI, I probably should reframe that. What AI Can't overcome his experience. So identify the individual who's got the most experience, and that 25-year-old may have the most experience, that 55-year-old may have the most experience, but that who should be leading your AI initiative right now, not somebody because you think they're technically inclined. If you don't understand business, AI's irrelevant.

Yeah. This is something I come back to all the time when part of, to me, part of critical thinking is evaluating trade-offs, right? Because there's, Virtually unlimited directions you could go with something like this. And the question is like, where do you start? How do you make the decision of, I could do this, but that means I miss out on this other thing. And there's not a right answer. And I think that's what looks to me like this is maybe adjacent to the critical thinking piece, which is One of the other sort of downsides of current education is this, you're told something, you regurgitate it, right? That's standardized testing and things like that. Standardized testing has been around, so I don't want to totally discount that. But a lot of times, very— and I've heard like, so this is going to— I don't want to get into a political thing, but there's a well-known political commentator who has said in the past, facts don't care about your feelings. And that really bothers me because I don't think that there are always facts that you can agree to, right?

Sure.

Because it's fundamentally some perception and you could have a belief that is based on what you assume and things like that. But ultimately, We are all making judgments whether we know it or not, and I don't know if we're doing it consciously. And I think that bit there of evaluating the trade-offs between different paths you could take or decisions you could make or projects you could do or where you invest your money, all those things, that requires a fundamentally different kind of skill than I think a lot of this younger generations have been taught. It's not their fault either.

Well, I agree. It's not their fault. And I think what's happened is that you're looking at settlers now in the digital era where you and I are more pioneers. And we were, we're pre-pioneers. We remember the days when, you know, the chuckwagon. I mean, so we're way back. So we were the one last generation that saw pre-computers. There was a time when nobody had a computer in the house. You were looking, nobody had a computer anywhere. And then when we got the computer, which wasn't even really a computer, it was a Texas Instruments thing. You put a cartridge in, it did math for you.

Yeah.

Like, so then you got, so We saw all that. That's why I just think Gen Xs and the boomers are a very— and I know that everybody wants to crush us, but we're a very rare breed where we saw more technological revolution advancements than anybody on the human race. That's why I think there's nobody better equipped to take a look at what's going on right now to say, hey, we remember all the way back then. And when the failures happened all through these advancements, This is, you go, there's always a common theme and it's like you said, we didn't educate the right way. We didn't teach them the right way. So I'm with you. My fear right now is that they're so dependent on technology that it's, what if there, I know we really want to get off topic here, but what if there is a cyberattack? What if there is something like, I could live without my phone for a week or two, I'd be okay.

Yeah.

I don't know if these kids would be okay. My kids would panic, you know?

So, Yeah. I say my, my son worked for a car dealership over the summer and somebody brought in a, a, a standard transmission vehicle and he was able to, he like, he got in and they said, go ahead and try it. And he moved it, you know, a few feet, but it freaked him out. Right. He wouldn't know what to do with a standard transmission. Same thing with technology, right? Yeah.

No, it's the same thing. But I, yeah, I think this, it's a whole, how these, I don't, here's, I guess what I'll say is this, and maybe you agree or not. I don't think the way the human mind has advanced, Because I will say these kids are much smarter than us. Now, I'm the first to say these 25-year-olds are so sharp when it comes to stuff like, I can't compete with these guys.

Yeah, absolutely.

But what I will say is that I think our education process has not advanced the way the human mind has. And I think we have to try to start thinking, how does AI incorporate in that? How is that going to have an impact on the job? And I think you're making a really critical point, Michael, where I think a lot of people are paying attention to The war to win AI, if you want to call it that, is going to start in the classrooms and how we educate these children all the way, giving them the fundamentals of business, of life, of so forth to say, no matter what happens in AI, as long as you stick these fundamentals, you're going to be okay. Because nothing's changing the fundamentals of running a business. But I think the digital world, the problem is that we're so used to things happening so quick right now that I just don't think education is doing that at all right now.

Unless if I have 3 kids and I don't say it, Yeah, no, I mean, I think, again, just in general, like human evolution has not kept up with the pace of technology change for the last probably 80 years.

I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. So, well, why don't we wrap up here? Because we, you know, the core audience is marketing ops or revenue operations people. Like what should they be doing, especially if they're in a leadership role to If they're not already, like, to kind of, I'm sure they're all under pressure to quote, do AI, right? Whatever that means, right? What, like, what should they be doing to make sure that they're not just chasing every little thing or reacting, say, over the next 12, 18 months?

So I think you want to go, and my opinion is go all the way to the end and say, well, I know this sounds like Anthony Robbins, but what is the outcome of the marketing campaign you're trying to get to? And, you know, what are they, what are we trying at? What's trying to happen? And basically say, what are the bottlenecks that are stopping this client's goal or, or your, your goal, whatever it may be, from getting there? And then what can AI do to break the bottlenecks? How can you solve that customer's problem faster? That doesn't mean more blogs. It doesn't mean more ads. It doesn't mean anything like that. What you wanna do is basically say, how can I put AI in to get answers quicker? So that, and I—

Could I, could I augment that to say better answers quicker?

Better answers quicker. Yeah, because you don't want any answers. I think that's actually a very good point. And I think that's the thing you have to look at. Stop looking at AI as something to speed up a process and start looking at AI as the true revolutionary way to answer a problem when done the right way. And the last thing I'll tell you about marketers, if you are not telling your clients to start really embracing this, again, influencer-type marketing world, it is time to start because it is truly becoming a decisive factor in somebody wanting to work with you or not. We're seeing it. A lot of people are seeing it. I, I just, a quick note, we even had one of our clients where we put a few videos up and thousands of views were happening right away. You'd be surprised the appetite for people with your clients being an influencer marketer. And it doesn't mean you have to be out there like one of Jake Paul or something like that. It just means your brand is the influencer, not the human.

Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna let the Jake Paul thing go. Sorry.

I just grabbed one. I don't really know too many episodes.

No, no, I just like, I'm like, okay, that's, um, anyway, at least you can get on Netflix then, right? Yeah. Um, and make a ton of money. Well, hey, Len, such a fun conversation. I appreciate it. Um, thank you. If folks want to continue that with you or keep up with what you're, you're doing or talking about, what's the best way for them to do that?

You can just go to comexus.com. You can fill out a form. I'm always one of the answers to forms. We work with We don't mean to come across as jerks. We work with very select companies, but I am always happy to answer a question. I do get people to inbox me on LinkedIn. You can request me on LinkedIn. You can always kind of go in and say, hey, I have a quick question on AI. I have no problem answering questions. I actually really like having a conversation about AI. So if you have one, just reach out to me. I'll see if I can help you.

Fantastic. Well, appreciate it. Again, Lynn, thank you. Thanks for joining us. As always, thanks for everyone who's been out there supporting us. And if you You have any questions or follow-up, or you want to have, uh, uh, have ideas for different topics or anything like that, you can reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to chat with you. Till next time. Bye everybody.

Thank you.