Phil RisherPhlash Consulting · No. 1 Digital Marketing Consulting Company For $1m-10m Home Service Businesses 🚀

There are three phases of how customers find you.

17 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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1:02

In this short presentation, Phil Risher outlines a three‑stage evolution of how customers locate and interact with businesses. Phase 1 is the traditional web era where humans manually search via Google and click through websites to find information. Phase 2 introduces AI agents (e.g., Muse, Gemini Spark, Instinct) that act on behalf of users, automatically gathering data and making recommendations before the user even visits a site. Phase 3, which Risher predicts will emerge within the next 12–18 months, is an agent‑to‑agent protocol: autonomous business agents (such as a Target agent and a UPS agent) communicate directly to resolve issues like missing packages, then relay the outcome back to the user’s personal agent. Risher asserts we are currently in Phase 2 and anticipates a rapid shift to Phase 3.

Chapters

The website era is ending. There are 3 specific phases that we're going through. Phase 1 is humans use websites and find information. They go to Google search, they search for things, then they click. Phase 2 is agents are going and finding information. Humans use their agents, the agents make recommendations, and then they go and find information. That's phase 2. With Muse, Gemini Spark, Instinct, all these agents, these platforms are going and finding out businesses, doing the research for them. Phase 3 is what we call agent-to-agent protocol. An agent, let's say Gemini, Spark, Muse, Instinct, that agent is going out and interacting with other agents. Imagine Target has an agent, UPS has an agent. These agents have to talk to each other to figure out why your package hasn't showed up yet. Is it a Target issue? Is it a UPS issue? And then they have to come back and tell you information. These are the 3 phases. Right now we're in phase 2. In the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to be into phase 3.