Build Businesses That Make You More Free, Not More Busy

Stop using outdated digital marketing strategy rules. Instead, learn how AI dictates brand authority and why content is now your biggest asset.

Most businesses treat their online presence as a simple marketing channel, but that approach is failing in the modern era. This video explains why content is bigger than marketing and how AI evaluates your expertise and company identity. If your current approach hasn't changed in years, you are already falling behind the competition.

We break down the new reality of how AI perceives your brand. You will learn why your content needs to be optimized to work globally and constantly, rather than just serving as a temporary campaign. By shifting your digital marketing strategy, you ensure your business remains relevant as AI continues to define the next decade of search and discovery.

Subscribe for weekly content marketing tips to stay ahead of the curve, and let me know in the comments: what is the biggest challenge your company faces with AI right now?

About Brad Sugars
Internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs, Brad Sugars is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9+ companies and is the owner of the multimillion-dollar franchise ActionCOACH®. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That’s why, Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you – so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. But if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone.

Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars: https://bradsugars.com/

Build a Business That Gives You More Time, Money & Life:
Get The $100M Playbook: https://go.bradsugars.com/100m-playbook-ebook

Transcript

The New Rules Start Now

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Does AI know who you are? Does AI know your company? Does AI know your expertise? Does AI know your content? Today we're talking about the new rules of digital marketing. Not the old rules, not the outdated tactics, the rules that will determine who wins this next decade. Your content works while you sleep. It works globally, it works every day. Many businesses still see content as marketing. It's bigger than marketing. If your marketing strategy today is basically the same as it was three years ago, you're already behind. If it's the same as it was five years ago, you're in serious trouble. And if it was the same as it was ten years ago, you know you're invisible, right? The rules have changed. Search has changed, social media has changed, and buyers have changed. All has changed, okay? AI's changed basically everything for us, okay? And the businesses that don't adapt right now will find themselves becoming less and less visible every year. In fact, every week almost you become less visible. See, today we're talking about the new rules of digital marketing, not the old rules, not the outdated tactics, the rules that will determine who wins this next decade. I know for me, I've had some trouble adjusting in the last six months. It's like, dang, why are we changing every single week? And it seems like every week we're making change, but that's the reality of speed right now. The speed of change is getting faster. I think you're probably knowing that.

Buyers Arrive Educated Without Sales

SPEAKER_00 1:24

So the biggest shift I've seen now in marketing history, let's start with the biggest shift. Customers are no longer need salespeople to get information. Think about that. For most of human history, salespeople controlled the information. If you wanted information about a car, a house, uh, software, coaching, consulting, anything, basically, you went to the dealership, you went and viewed the house, you spoke to the salesperson, they gave you all of the information. You had to speak to a salesperson. Well, not anymore. See, the way customers are today, your customers arrive educated, I guess. They do the research, they watch the videos, they read the ebooks, they download, they go on websites, your website, review websites, they go and ask questions of other people online, they jump on Reddit, they do all of these things. Sometimes they know more about your competitors than you do. Let's think about that for a second. They've already searched, watched, compared, reviewed, researched before they even reach out to you, before they even go to a salesperson. If they go to a salesperson at all. Let's think about how much Amazon has taught our customers to just buy with one click or two clicks. And I know Amazon, if you're watching, you're annoying me. That third click of do I want bananas and grapes and stuff? No, I don't want your groceries. Anyway, share that with Amazon if you know someone that works there. So before they ever speak with you, they've done these things, and that changes everything. I call this basically, I go back to the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule, okay? The average buyer today, when they connect with you, is often 60 to 80% of the way through their buying journey before they contact a company. And that's huge. They've already done more than half of the work in the buying decision. It means that marketing now does the majority of the selling. Marketing does the heavy lifting. Historically, marketing got a name, email, or name and phone number, and the salespeople did the heavy lifting. Okay. Today, marketing does that majority, not sales. Marketing is content, reviews, testimonials, videos, podcasts like this, case studies, authority articles, trust, having articles, PR, articles in other magazines about you, your social media, people on your LinkedIn, they check you out. All of those things now do the heavy lifting. And so if a customer does speak to a salesperson, they're usually somewhere in that 60 to 80% of the way through the sale already.

Search Moves Beyond Google

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And as you know, Google isn't the only game in town anymore. I mean, it's still massive, it's still most, I mean, it's still mighty important, but people search on LinkedIn, people search on YouTube, people search on AI so much. For years, digital marketing meant get ranked on Google, get first page, get above the fold, top three, pay for ads, do that thing. That was the game today. People search everywhere. They're not just searching Google and Bing, I guess. They're on YouTube. I know that's a Google asset. They're on LinkedIn Reddit. Reddit's gone through the roof since the invention of AI search capabilities. They're searching on TikTok, for goodness sake. Like who would have thought? Instagram, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, pods. They're going through it all. Apple Pods, Spotify, you name it. They're searching for searching top of funnel on all of these platforms, then mid-funnel, and then bottom of funnel. Now the AI tools are helping in that bottom of funnel stuff massively. So increasingly they search ChatGPT or Claude, whatever your preferred method is. Now Gemini is obviously racing up the charts because it's a Google product, and your Google search is now really a Gemini search. Search behavior has fundamentally shifted, and we've got to shift with it.

AI Discovery And Authority Marketing

SPEAKER_00 5:46

So how much has AI changed discovery? Well, let's be blunt. At the time of recording this, AI is said to be used by 70 to 80% of businesses, right? Now that's great to know, but we're also at a place where it's somewhere less than 10% of AI users are using paid AI. So we're moving in that direction, but we're moving fast. See, you think about it, AI's change discovery. Think about how many times you've asked AI a question recently. Now imagine your customers are doing the same thing. The question becomes: does AI know who you are? Does AI know your company? Does AI know your expertise? Does AI know your content? Because if ChatGPT and Claude and these, if they don't know you exist, then obviously you won't be recommended. And if you're not recommended, you're invisible. So I guess the simplest way to put this is that we fought for years to win on Google, and now we're fighting to win on AI. But winning on Google is a big part of winning on AI still. AI is still having to do the searches itself. So it does, I mean, there is definitely the I mean the rise of authority marketing is here. Old marketing focused on interruption, okay? You know, you ran it out, you interrupted people. Today, new marketing focuses on authority. The question is no longer can people just find you? The question is when they find you, do they trust you? Authority is now one of the most valuable assets in business because authority influences, okay? When someone is searching you out and they find that you have no ratings, no rankings, no awards, uh, you're not an authority in your space, then how do they trust you type thing? See, authority influences search rankings, AI recommendations. It influences referrals, conversions, it influences partnerships that you build. Authority basically is a way to lower resistance. And that's why content has become infrastructure out there in the world. It's crazy to me to think 10 years ago I would never have contemplated the amount of content we're putting out today, the number of articles, ebooks, all of these things we're doing. Yeah, AI makes that stuff easier. It interviews me and turns everything I say into an article. But many businesses still see content as marketing. It's bigger than marketing. Content is infrastructure. Every piece of content becomes a salesperson, a trust builder, a lead generator, a referral engine, uh a search asset.

Content As Infrastructure Not Campaigns

SPEAKER_00 8:27

I literally yesterday was on the phone to someone who's joining us as a partner for Action Coach in Senegal and the Ivory Coast, who found a video that we'd put on YouTube eight years ago, and that led him to our business. See, your content works while you sleep. It works globally, it works every day. The business creating content consistently are building assets. Think of every video as like a billboard out there for your business. Every article on your website, every pillar page on your website. Businesses not creating content, you're only renting attention. Those ads are renting attention. And this brings up the distinction between permanent marketing and instant marketing. Okay. So if you think of it this way, I'd I like to think of it as the death of random marketing. One of the biggest marketing mistakes businesses make is random activity, okay? Random posts, random emails, random ads, random videos. They're not planning. You can't just be random in marketing anymore. You if if you've if you're not planning, you've got no strategy, no consistency, no direction. The modern world of marketing rewards consistency, not randomness. I've said it for years. The only marketing that works is consistent marketing. The businesses that win have systems, not just campaigns. That is something that I have to drum into people time after time. This is where it is systemic, it is done, it is always done, it is it's no longer random,

Video Becomes The Default Medium

SPEAKER_00 10:07

it's planned. Okay, so now that brings me to this point, though. Video has become the default. Video is no longer optional. Why is it the dominant communication medium today? Well, because video creates a whole bunch of things. If you think about its domination out there in the marketplace ever since the days of television being invented, why? Because video creates trust, it breeds familiarity, okay? People get to know you more, they get to feel like they know you. It breeds authority, it gets an emotional connection between people. Yes, I love podcasts, and there's a reason I film every podcast and it goes up on YouTube. I believe that the video gets more results. See, think about that emotional connection. It's it does all of these things faster than pretty much anything else. People feel like they know you, even if they've never met you. And that's powerful. For years, I did a social media thing called drive time. And every time I'd drop my kids off to school, I would film a video on the way home. And literally, I would go places. People would come up to me at conferences and say, I follow every one of your drive times. And because it was live, people would schedule themselves being there live for it type thing. So, and and that brings up to the short form revolution. There is a revolution to short form video because it, I mean, essentially it changed everything. TikTok seemed it people think TikTok started it. If we go back to Vines, though, that's really where it started. Snapstar, like all of these things. But TikTok made it the thing. Instagram obviously copied it, YouTube copied it. Now everyone's copying it, even uh X is copying it, type thing. Why? Because attention spans changed. Long form still works, especially for people who are at the bottom of funnel, okay? Long form, definitely powerful. But that short form and TikTok changed everything from a perspective of social media where your followers got to see your views. TikTok changed the whole algorithm to attention media or interest media. What you paid attention to, you got more of it. Okay. What you're interested in, you got more of it. And now we see all the platforms moving to interest media. See, people consume information differently today. The challenge isn't creating information, the challenge is earning attention. Short form earns attention. Long form builds trust. So you need both. So let's do the debate short versus long form, okay? Most businesses choose one. Elite businesses obviously use both. Short form creates awareness, creates reach, discovery. People find you with short form. Long form creates authority, it builds the trust. And long form helps with conversion. I think that's really important. Think of short form as the invitation and long form as the relationship. And that's why I do podcasts, obviously. Yes, we have a lot of short form media going out there in the marketplace to grab people's attention, to invite them into the group, okay? But once we invite them in, we then give them more long form stuff, including ebooks, including surveys, including to get them into mid-funnel, bottom of funnel type things so that they build the trust with us. The podcast definitely has advantage. A podcast is one of the most powerful trust-building tools in business. Why? Because people spend 30, 60, 90 minutes with you. I've I've and it's not just doing your own podcast, it's also going on other people's podcasts. I would probably go on two podcasts a week that I would appear on, and that reaches a totally new audience for me. So repeatedly they hear you and they hear your thinking, they hear your philosophy, they hear your stories, your values. By the time someone who's been on your pod calls you, they often feel like they already know you. They're very high on the trust scale. And that trust scale today moves the sale along much faster. I've had people who were ready to buy because they'd listen. Like, if you haven't done this, I would highly suggest go back to the very first episode of the $100 million podcast and treat it like a school of business. Go back, listen to the whole thing from episode one as a school of business. Go back to my previous podcast, The Big Success. That's a school of success. If you want the school of success and the school of business, you got to go back and listen to them. So let's think about this.

Reviews And Social Proof Drive Trust

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Social media isn't just social media. It's not just about posting content, it's also social marketing. It's also about social mentions. Like when people mention you is just as or more important than you mentioning yourself. But I think of it as social proof. I think of the social media as being like an explosion of social proof. Customers trust other customers. The more they more than they trust companies, that's for sure. More than they trust ads, more than they trust websites. Reviews matter more than ever. Testimonials matter more than ever. Case studies, oh my God, they matter more than ever. Proof matters more than ever. The ev see, the internet has made trust visible, and AI has made trust. It's in your face, okay? Reviews, testimonials are the new word of mouth. 20 years ago, people asked their friends. Today, it's like word of mouth. Where am I going to? Today, people they they read reviews. Reviews are the new public referrals, and they influence, they they influence with rankings, trust, conversions, AI recommendations. Like someone going on Reddit, talking you up is great. Someone on your LinkedIn giving you a review and profiling you and telling the world. Someone mentioning your business and how much they liked doing business with you, referring you, grading you, giving you a score. In fact, if you're watching this pod, give me a full score of five. Rate me, review me, give me the five out of five. Yeah, don't give me that three out of five thing. Don't do that. So the businesses with more reviews win. Not always, but very often. And this is why I think there's a big opportunity with LinkedIn. See, LinkedIn's quietly become one of the most powerful platforms in business. Why? LinkedIn is open to AI. I see, uh, if you look at Meta and you start to think about what they're doing, now uh AI can also read on YouTube all of the transcripts, but LinkedIn, it's especially valuable for, say, consultants, coaches, executives, professional services, B2B companies. You've got to be doing this. And the reason is simple: business conversations happen on LinkedIn. Decision makers spend their time on LinkedIn. Authority gets noticed on LinkedIn. And yes, I'm giving LinkedIn a massive shout out. I think it's really valuable. And I think the paid version of LinkedIn is crazy cheap for what you get. Many business owners still underestimate LinkedIn today, and I think that is a big mistake. That then brings us to say, I've mentioned them a few times, Reddit and community search, because Reddit is basically the biggest community for people on the planet. Now, every industry has communities out there, every different type of business has communities. So be certain you're out there. And I mean, it's another shift that we've got to take. People are increasingly trust communities and communities that not just are instant, but communities that stay forever. Those conversations are there forever. Your Facebook group, those conversations disappear after a few days. But Reddit, those conversations are searchable. Okay. Before making decisions, people ask, what are other real people saying? Not what does the company say. This is why forums, communities, Reddit groups, and conversations matter more than ever. If you're not on Reddit, get on there now. Set up an account. Just start playing. Set your AI up to measure how many conversations there are in your space about your business, about your competitors. People trust people. Always have, always will. And this brings me then the rise of personal brands.

Personal Brands And Omnipresence Win

SPEAKER_00 18:35

If you go back and watch this one of my podcasts, it's me and Gary V, and it's literally him beating the living heck out of me in his uh Gary V language, let's say. See, it is another major shift. People follow people, not logos, not corporation. People follow people. And that's why founder-led businesses can explode. Customers really want authenticity. They want personality, they want values, they want leadership. People trust humans faster than they trust organizations. When Gary told me, listen, Brad, making Action Coach famous is one thing. People will follow for the education, but you got to make you famous, your opinions, your thoughts, what you do. People trust people. And it was like, dang, Gary, I've always fought trying to be the face, but it's like, all right, I will do pods, I will do all these things, I'll go on podcasts, I'll go on interviews and I'll do that. Why? Because omnipresence wins. The businesses that dominate aren't always the best. They're often the most visible. And I know it in my space. If you're watching my pods and you go on some of my, well, I won't say competitors, but some other influencers' pods, it's like, I'm here teaching exactly what works. And over there, there's fluff. It's like, but hang on, they've been visible more than you did, Brad. They were out there doing this when you were making action coach famous rather than building your personal brand. Like, damn, thanks, Gary. Appreciate the slap in the face in front of, and literally that was filmed in front of a thousand people. So it was like lots of fun. But when customers see them or you on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on podcasts, in search, in AI results, in reviews, in conversations, visibility really compounds, trust compounds, authority compounds. Omnipresence creates real momentum for you out there in the marketplace. And that's why you'll see me putting in this energy and effort. And if you can share my stuff, that would be great. I'd really appreciate it. And then I can say, hey, Gary, see, look, it's working.

Your Future Marketing Stack Checklist

SPEAKER_00 20:37

You know, every now and again I have to face the music. So the marketing stacks of the future, let's think of it this way. The future marketing stack looks something like website, obviously, and way more on your website than you ever thought before. Content, which might be videos, podcasts, your social media posts and social media articles and social media newsletters, your emails, your reviews, your AI visibility is going to need to be high. Communities that you build or communities that you are a part of, all of these things. It's not going to be a singular platform. There is a marketing stack and it includes all of these things: white papers, ebooks that people can download, your newsletters, your daily emails. It's not one platform, gang, it's an ecosystem. It's like you're building a trust ecosystem out there in the world. So think about these questions during this week or ask yourself these questions so that you get a better understanding of where you're at. Number one, would AI recommend me? In fact, open your AI. If you go to my website, you can download my AI prompts. Okay. There's an ebook there under the uh freebies, and it's got my AI prompts. You just get the prompt, you download it, and you put the prompt into your AI, and it'll tell you what AI thinks about you. Okay, there's four different prompts you need to use all four. Um, would customers trust me after finding me? I think that's really important. How much, see, do I have enough content? Do I have enough authority? Do I have enough proof? Am I visible enough? Am I creating enough assets, or am I just creating campaigns? And that brings me back to the common mistakes that I'm seeing way too often out here in the marketplace. If you're depending upon a single platform, ignoring video is just so one platform and no video, it's it's going to crush at some point in time. Ignoring AI right now. I know it's not massive yet. SEO is still the thing. If you believed everyone, you'd be like, oh my God, SEO is dead and AI is the only thing. No, no, it's still out there. Uh, you're not planning it. So you have no content strategy, no authority strategy, no review strategy. You're just random posting. These are the mistakes that people are making. And that's really short-term thinking. So the future belongs to those of us and businesses that build digital assets, not digital activity. Be clear on that. Build digital assets, not just digital activity. Okay, so your action challenge this week. Ask yourself and work on this during this week. If someone searched for the solution you provide, would they find you? Okay. Would AI recommend you as the number one? Remember, download that ebook off my website. It'll ask AI about where they rank you and that sort of thing. If they found me, would they trust me? See, those two questions, they are the probably the exactly where your marketing needs improvement will come out of those two questions, all right? And use the AI for it because it's going to help you. So download the ebook, use AI and play with those four. Um, make sure you use all four of those prompts to help you build the business. So the old game was visibility, the new game is trust. The old game essentially was interruption, the new game is authority. The business that's win in the next year, five years, basically the next decade, won't be the loudest. Okay, they will be the most trusted. Thanks for joining me on the $100 million podcast. If you've got value from today's episode, make sure you've subscribed and share this with all of your friends. Never miss a strategy that could change your business and your life. And remember, the fastest way to scale is to learn from those who've done it. That's what this show is all about. See you on the next episode.