The AI Search Revolution: Dan Monaghan on Why Your Marketing Funnel is Broken

Dan Monaghan, founder, investor, and author of The AI Search Revolution, joins hosts Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson to sound the alarm on how AI is quietly rewriting the rules of search and fundamentally breaking the traditional business funnel. Drawing on his experience co-founding WSI Digital in 1995, years before Google, Dan shares why the current AI revolution is the most significant technological disruption he has ever witnessed.

This episode is a masterclass in strategic thinking, urging listeners to move beyond using AI for simple tasks like writing emails and instead leverage "Einstein in your pocket" for high-level problem-solving and strategic growth. Dan discusses the importance of identifying the number one constraint in your business and applying AI to solve it, a principle he uses to guide his own ventures. The conversation also covers the need for adaptability, the power of curiosity ("think like Sherlock"), and a look at the cutting-edge AI tools Dan uses in his daily life.

Key Takeaways

• The Broken Funnel: Learn why your website traffic may be dropping and how AI-driven search is fundamentally changing the customer journey, making traditional SEO and marketing funnels obsolete.
• Strategic AI Utilization: Discover the "hierarchy of AI utilization" and why the biggest leverage comes from using AI for strategic decision-making, not just content generation.
• The Constraint Theory: Dan explains how to apply the Theory of Constraints to your business, using AI to pinpoint and eliminate the biggest obstacle to your growth.
• Adaptability and Curiosity: Hear why "thinking like Sherlock" and maintaining a high level of curiosity are the keys to thriving in an environment of rapid technological change.
• AI in Action: Patrick shares a personal, real-world example of using a large language model to create a personalized educational game for his son, illustrating the power of on-demand, personalized software.

Resources and Links

Learn more:

• Dan’s Book: The AI Search Revolution: Adaptive SEO for the Age of AI
• Dan’s LinkedIn: Connect with Dan Monaghan

Connect with the show:

• Myles’s LinkedIn: Connect with Myles Biggs
• Patrick’s LinkedIn: Connect with Patrick Patterson
• Level Agency: Learn more about Level Agency

Special Offer:

AI Visibility Audit: Find out how prepared your business is for the AI Search Revolution. Get your AI Visibility Scorecard today.

Transcript

Dan Monaghan: Most businesses don't realize if they just hit the pause button and

Dan Monaghan: go check their Google Analytics, they're realizing that their traffic is dropping, 

Myles Biggs: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. It's your host Myles and Patrick here to remind you that on this podcast, we are driven by truth. Sometimes the hard truth. We believe it's imperative to be relentless for results because if you are not your competitor is we're obsessed with being better every day because that's what our customers deserve.

Myles Biggs: And if you can set aside your ego, if you can truly be no ego, then we are the show to help you go all in because good enough isn't. Today our guest is Dan Monaghan, founder, investor, and author of the AI Search Revolution. Dan is the co-founder of WSI Digital and the founder of Clear Summit Group. And now he's sounding the alarm about what happens when AI quietly rewrites search and the funnel we've all relied on for 20 plus years. So Dan, welcome to the podcast. 

Dan Monaghan: Great.

Dan Monaghan: to be here.

Myles Biggs: So I briefly touched on this in the intro, Dan, but you've done a lot in your career, and when people meet you for the first time, like our listeners, many of them are doing right now, how do you answer the question when someone asks you, what do you do?

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, that is a good question, and it's not an easy one to answer. And it's actually especially tough when I gotta explain it to my mom and my family. Um, and, you know, there's, there's some different ways of, you know, I'm involved in different industries, some different business models, uh, but at the core of everything I do, I, I would say I'm an entrepreneur. And, uh, you know, when I was a kid, I said, when I grew up, I wanted to be an inventor. And, uh, I just realized one day after running a business for a number of years, that really, that's what an entrepreneur is. You're an inventor of businesses and, and business models and, and in the service of the customer.

Dan Monaghan: So at, at the, the core, I would say I'm an entrepreneur.

Myles Biggs: And so if you think about yourself as an entrepreneur, inventor, uh, and we go back to the early days of your career where it all started, what was that first invention of yours?

Dan Monaghan: Well, you know, I, I've been kind of, uh, playing with businesses ever since I was kind of preteen and, um, whether it was selling popsicles or, um, just, you know, pulling junk out of people's, uh, you know, roadside trash and fixing it up and selling it at auctions and, you know, so it's, it's hard to say when the first point was, but it, but the first formal business really, uh, I was a franchisee.

Dan Monaghan: I put myself through university, uh, running an ice cream franchisee appear in Canada. It was called Dickie D. And uh. And that was for me, my introduction to running a real business where I had real employees. And, um, you know, the crazy thing, this was back in, well, I don't even remember the year I, I guess 88, 89, something like that. It was the hottest, uh, summer in recorded history. And it was the, it was the, uh, first August or first April, long weekend, Easter weekend. After three days, I was in holding in my hands like $2,000. I'd never seen $2,000, much less, held it in my hands. And that was after three days of business. I grew up, my, my dad was a janitor, my mom was a part-time nurse, so I was not really surrounded by wealth, but that was introduced me to how franchising, uh, and a brand can actually open the door to, you know, you've already got that customer relationship.

Dan Monaghan: So that, for me, uh, was my first real business experience.

Patrick Patterson: Yeah. How did that, uh, you know, how did that jive, you know, being in the franchise world

Patrick Patterson: and Being an entrepreneur and an inventor, right? Because you, you come into

Patrick Patterson: somewhere where it's already pre-established. It's al there's a whole bunch of rules you gotta follow. There's a whole bunch of things you gotta do.

Patrick Patterson: How did that feel?

Patrick Patterson: And, you know, How did you

Patrick Patterson: you know, take on that challenge?

Dan Monaghan: It's a great question because you're right, franchising is really not

Dan Monaghan: pure Entrepreneurship

Dan Monaghan: You're, you're taking someone else's con concept and you're leveraging that. Um, and so it's like freedom within a framework. You've, you've got, it's like a startup with a blueprint in a sense. Um, so, but there was still a heck of a lot of things when I was like, you know. 19, 20. There was a lot of stuff I had to learn just about basics of business, how to manage people, you know, how to hire, how to fire, you know, dealing with the dairies and you know, inventory and cash management.

Dan Monaghan: and all those. So I think it was a good way to really quickly learn some basic business skills. But that was a, after I left that business, it was pretty much reinvention from that point forward. Pure entrepreneurship.

Patrick Patterson: So where did you, where did you head after that? What was the next thing and, uh, how, how,

Patrick Patterson: long were You

Patrick Patterson: selling ice cream?

Patrick Patterson: Because you, you with an ice cream hat on is like one of my, like, you know, the, the, the paper hat is one of my favorite images that I have in my head right now.

Dan Monaghan: Yeah. Yeah. Well it wasn't really like that. It was, these were ice cream bicycles and, you know, um, what a lot of people didn't realize is how big it is behind the scenes. I mean, I had a tractor trailer pulling up to my ice cream depot once a week that was just unloading skids and skids of ice cream. And one of the things I learned is, you know. Regardless of what that business is, whether it's a kid selling ice cream on the street, whether it's the woman selling roses in a bar, you know the guy selling pencils on the street corner behind that, there's an empire of some sort when you go far enough up the chain. And there was one heck of an empire behind this business. Uh, I was just on the front lines as a franchisee, but I wasn't actually selling the ice cream. I was hiring the kids, which actually was. It's probably a little bit harder. But, uh, in answer to your question after that, um, uh, after I graduated from university, my brother and I started a publishing company and I was, uh, my, one of my jobs in that [00:05:00] company was to, to create something we called the Inside Edge.

Dan Monaghan: It was an audio magazine. Now, this was actually the days before podcast. The concept of 

Dan Monaghan: a podcast didn't exist, but that's what it was. I would, uh, devour information, everything on, you know, psychology and business and economics and technology. And then once a month I'd go into the studio and I would record this, you know, 40 minute audio called the Inside Edge. And then we would, uh, send it out to, you know, thousands of subscribers that we had across North America. This was the early nineties, and I was talking a lot about this thing called the information superhighway. And nobody knew if it was gonna be a fiber optic network, if it was gonna be satellites, if it was gonna be microwaves. And some people said it could be this like internet thing that, where at the time it was just for sending email messages. But then, uh, in, I think it was 93 when Mark Andreessen and, and a team of researchers from University of, from Illinois, they, they invented Mosaic, which was the first internet browser.

Dan Monaghan: And at that point I could see that this thing was gonna be [00:06:00] the worldwide web, this was gonna be the information superhighway. 'cause we could send images and we could send, uh, audio and video. And so even though it was extremely slow at the time, I kind of saw where that was going. So first thing I wanted to do was build a website for our company. And what I realized is that the designer, the, the website might have looked good, but it downloaded down the page. It took forever. And the, and, and the, the programmer who could program it, it looked terrible. And even if you could get both of those people on the same page, neither of them knew anything about internet marketing, like how to drive traffic to that site. So after learning all about that, I realized, you know what? Other businesses are gonna have the same problem. They're gonna need websites. And that's why in 95, a couple of years before Google, uh, we founded WSI, myself and my younger brother, uh, and, and essentially because of my franchise experience, I decided, Hey, we're gonna, let's franchise this thing. And uh, and that's where it all started.

Myles Biggs: so it's 95 [00:07:00] and looking at your LinkedIn, that was five years after you graduated college, uh, which most 27 year olds are not starting franchise companies. What was that moment when, like you, how'd you go from that?

Myles Biggs: I have the idea for this to then you've got your first franchisee.

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, well, you know, first of all, people told us we couldn't franchise the internet. Um, and because it, it didn't make sense to them. And there was basically two models at the time. You either, and there was a, we weren't the first one to try this. We were actually the third. Um, and, uh, some of the others were franchising the ISP side, the connectivity to the internet. I realized that that was gonna be commoditized over time and the opportunity was really on the content creation side. Um, and so we recruited a handful of

Dan Monaghan: franchisees and, uh, we started realizing pretty quickly that this was gonna be international because

Dan Monaghan: we started getting,

Dan Monaghan: inquiries from outside the country.

Dan Monaghan: And if you live in Canada where we do, um, you realize pretty quickly, you know, [00:08:00] the real opportunity is south of the border in the us. And, uh, so we started selling franchises in the US as well in the uk.

Dan Monaghan: and then we realized British Airways at the time had a round trip ticket where for $6,500 you could go stop as many times as you wanted, as long as you kept going east. And so we would buy these

Dan Monaghan: tickets and just go

Dan Monaghan: east and stop country after country after country and give seminars about this thing called the internet. And it was funny because, you know, people didn't really understand

Dan Monaghan: it back then. And I remember trying to help

Dan Monaghan: them understand, I'd say, okay, how many of you uh, had a fax machine five years ago? And there'd be no hands in the room. And I'd say, how many of you have a fax machine today? And then, you know, a lot of the room would raise their hand. I'd say in the next five years, everyone is gonna have an email address on their business card. People just, I would get like blank stares. People just didn't get it. But that was really kind of [00:09:00] where it all started.

Dan Monaghan: And It was interesting.

Dan Monaghan: about our vision at the time was to become the McDonald's of the internet. That's, that's the way we described it to people. We're not selling burgers, we're selling websites. And it was funny, I still remember sitting, uh, in the, in the breakfast restaurant at, uh, a hotel in Singapore and I was reading the Singapore Straits Times, and across the front of the business section was the headline, the McDonald's of the internet. That was where it was really, it's kinda like when, when you're a musician and you hear your song on the radio, it must be kind of like that. But when I saw that, it was like, wow, okay. The world's starting to get it. So that was kind of around 90, 97, 98. We ultimately grew into about 80 countries around the world where we had a franchisee presence. And um, and it actually, one other interesting Anecdote

Dan Monaghan: Is, um, when I.

Dan Monaghan: was a kid, I used to, uh, ride my bicycle to a secondhand bookstore and I'd buy Entrepreneur Magazine and I'd bring these books home and then, uh, you know, magazines home. And after, you know, my parents would turn the lights off, I'd with a flashlight onto the covers.

Dan Monaghan: I'd be reading like the Entrepreneur magazine. And Entrepreneur [00:10:00] has this franchise 500 where they, where they list the top 500 franchises. My dream was to be a Dickie d or was to be a, um, dairy Queen franchisee. I ended up becoming a Dickie d. It was ice cream. But anyhow, my goal was to be a Dairy Queen franchisee. And so I would look at these rankings to see where Dairy Queen is ranking all that to say, fast forward 1999, entrepreneur Magazine comes out and there we are listed not only in the franchise 500, but we were listed as the number one internet franchise in the world. And that was one of those second surreal moments like, whoa, that was pretty heavy.

Dan Monaghan: But those those were the early days.

Myles Biggs: Yeah. 

Patrick Patterson: Yeah. So like during that time, Dan, like

Patrick Patterson: I'm, you had competitors,

Patrick Patterson: you said you were even the third into the space, right?

Patrick Patterson: So what do you what do you think it was about

Patrick Patterson: what, what you were doing

Patrick Patterson: and the

Patrick Patterson: the, the, that was different than what the other folks were doing? You know,

Patrick Patterson: what did you see? You know, you've obviously been a pioneer and we're gonna talk about how you're pioneering now in, in, in the next re EE evolution, revolution that's happening,

Patrick Patterson: in ai. but

Patrick Patterson: you, know, what did you, what did you [00:11:00] bring to the table? Why, why were you the number one in, in, as you post hoc rationalize, uh, that moment?

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, no, that's a great question because we've actually had over 40 competitors over the years. There's normally about three at any given time. We've had over 40 some, especially in the.com era, highly capitalized. You know, uh, pre one did a pre, uh, IPO private placement of like 60 or 70 million. So there was like real capitalized competition and where these little guys from Canada, all of those companies have gone outta business, uh, within, you know, their own little lifecycle. Um, again, there's three at any given time. The difference is that. The way I explain it to my friends in, in the franchise world is I say, imagine your McDonald's. And every three years the menu board completely changes. And I don't mean adding a different type of burger. I mean it goes from burgers to now entirely sushi and now it's entirely Italian, and now it's entirely, you know, something else, right? Not only do you have to understand the customer, understand the market, understand the [00:12:00] supply chain, have the unit economics that work, all the equipment that aligns with that. So in the internet, as you can imagine, I mean when we started the company, this was before Google, so people used to find things with the internet, yellow pages. It was like a two inch thick book. And, um, and then Search engines came.

Dan Monaghan: along. And so SEO comes onto the scene and then obviously e-commerce and then e-business and then, you know, social and then mobile and everything that kind of, and each one of those times, the needs of the customer continued to change.

Dan Monaghan: We needed to retool our business. And so, in answer to your question, I think what has allowed us to be successful is that we, we are platform and technology agnostic. We have not hitched our wagon

Dan Monaghan: into any, as much as we're like HubSpot partners, you know, we were partners with other platform companies before then. So we haven't embedded to any one technology or platform or even surface offering. Uh, we are continuing to learn, be curious, and look at where the market is going. I, you know, one of my favorite quotes [00:13:00] is by Peter Senge, the, the author of the Fifth Discipline, and he says, the only sustainable competitive advantage we have is the speed at which we learn. And, and so we have really positioned ourselves as a learning organization,

Dan Monaghan: all of our franchisees.

Dan Monaghan: as well. We're all continually learning from each other, learning from the customer, and evolving faster than the competition.

Patrick Patterson: I love that so much. You know, sometimes I think that we're a change management company.

Patrick Patterson: and not a marketing agency at, at level, right. With the, the speed spec specifically now of how things

Patrick Patterson: are changing. So

Patrick Patterson: you know, at this point, how many franchisees do you

Patrick Patterson: have? Uh, at WSI,

Dan Monaghan: There's over 500, uh, franchised offices around the world and um, and that's part of our broader group, which owns other franchise brands as well, which is about 1500. But WSI is is about 500. 

Myles Biggs: My goodness. 

Patrick Patterson: goodness. So, you know.

Patrick Patterson: you talk about a world

Patrick Patterson: where you need to continually adapt

Patrick Patterson: continually change 

Patrick Patterson: continuously

Patrick Patterson: learn, How do

Patrick Patterson: you do that in a

Patrick Patterson: world of 500

Patrick Patterson: plus franchisees that are all doing their [00:14:00] own thing, How do you, you know, there is a large uh, change management happening

Patrick Patterson: in the world right now where people are trying to get, get upskilled

Patrick Patterson: and, you know, stay ahead of this. How are you doing that internally

Patrick Patterson: and like, what's your secret sauce there?

Dan Monaghan: You know, it's, it's, uh, in franchising we have a unique opportunity to learn from our franchisees. So a lot of people don't realize that the Big Mac, the Filea Fish, the Quarter Pounder, Ronald McDonald, uh, breakfast at McDonald's, uh, even Ronald McDonald himself, the, you know, these were all franchisee ideas and the, the franchisor was smart enough to listen and learn from the franchisees back in the early. Two thousands. This was before cloud computing. There was this concept called grid computing where they connected the, the, the idea is that, uh, they were doing big projects like protein folding and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the SETI project, and they said, if we can connect all these computers together over the internet in their downtime, we can leverage the CPU power of all these computers and have like a super computer capability.

Dan Monaghan: Right. We kind of think of franchising that way [00:15:00] because we're leveraging the brainpower of all of our franchisees around the world. And if each one franchisee has a great idea, well that's 500 great ideas collectively. So for us, it's leveraging the intellectual capital of our network that gives us the competitive advantage to learn faster than the competition. And so, yes, there's a change management piece around teaching them the new and best approach, but there's also the opportunity for us to learn that new and best approach from from them.

Patrick Patterson: Yeah. Have you

Patrick Patterson: found over time That there's certain individuals that make are,

Patrick Patterson: are better at that than others as, as they become on that, come on and become franchisees.

Dan Monaghan: Absolutely. And franchising, oftentimes franchisors will say, we we're not interested in bringing entrepreneurs into our system. You know, this is a completely black box. You know, you follow it step by step. Um, and where there's zero latitude, WSI would be a little bit more on the other end of that spectrum.

Dan Monaghan: We've got a, a [00:16:00] framework, but there's freedom within the framework. And, and we encourage our franchisees to, to iterate and specialize. And in many ways, they're kind of like stem cells, like, you know, we'll have one franchisee that really specializes in social, another specializes in, in an industry like banking, another one in e-commerce, et cetera.

Dan Monaghan: So, um, the, there's probably more latitude within our system, uh, for flexibility than there is in most franchise systems.

Patrick Patterson: That's great and when, when folks start, you know, what are. What are your top

Patrick Patterson: three? Like, Hey, this, if you do these three things, you're gonna be super successful. Like, what do you, what advice are you giving them when, when they start?

Dan Monaghan: Well, uh, absolutely. They, they need to just never stop learning, right? So a lot, we, we really underline the point that the, the training doesn't end when you leave the training class, that's when the learning really begins. So you've gotta be plugged into all the kinds of things that you're plugged into.

Dan Monaghan: And, and other digital marketers would be, in terms of the thought leaders out there. Um, they need to be plugged into us attending our conventions and our biweekly calls and all those. That we have so many different channels for them to learn. So [00:17:00] learning is a key, uh, criteria. They've gotta be out in their community, uh, you know, at those local networking groups, the chamber of Commerce groups, they've gotta be prospecting and networking. Um, and uh, so I, I would say those are really the biggest things. Leaning on each other. Leaning on the power of our network, our suppliers, uh, the other franchisees. 'cause they're gonna continually come up against things they don't know, things they've never seen before. But there's nothing that someone within our community hasn't seen or done. So it's, it's leaning on the community is really a key part of the success as well.

Patrick Patterson: That's

Patrick Patterson: great. So

Patrick Patterson: you know, it's it's been 30 years, is that

Dan Monaghan: Yeah. We're just celebrating our 30th anniversary now.

Patrick Patterson: 30th anniversary. Congratulations.

Patrick Patterson: Uh, uh,

Myles Biggs: You know,

Patrick Patterson: you know, it in levels 15 years

Patrick Patterson: uh, we have, there have been some moments where,

Patrick Patterson: you know,

Myles Biggs: things 

Patrick Patterson: things change

Patrick Patterson: or things happen, maybe

Patrick Patterson: we lose a large account that was a large percentage of our, our, our, our revenue.

Patrick Patterson: Which, you know, when you're not, you know, a network of 500 franchisees, it's, uh, that that could be, that could be a, a death sentence. Have there been moments [00:18:00] in Ws i's history, uh, where you really needed to fight and claw your way back?

Patrick Patterson: Um, or has it all. been Easy sailing

Patrick Patterson: no issues, uh, and, and, and, and smooth the entire way.

Dan Monaghan: Well, there's all kinds of stories I can tell you. Uh, you know, where we've had to claw our way back. Um, one of, you know, probably one of the most existential was, um, in 1999, you know, we were, we were a profitable business. We had $5 million in the bank. We were, you know, making money and e everyone's raising capital to do the, you know, the, the.com IPOs, right? It was crazy. And we're thinking like, we gotta get on this train. And everyone's saying, you guys gotta go public because everyone who's going public, they're not even making money yet. You guys are generating revenue and you're profitable. You should be like, you know, a shooting star of success. So. We, you know, we're young kids at the time.

Dan Monaghan: We don't know a lot. So we start, we go down to Bay Street, which is, you know, Canada's Wall Street, and we start learning from the smart guys that are taking the companies public. And they said, guys, you got, here's your problem. You're profitable. said, what do you mean? Like, well, you, you have to, to, first of all, before you go public, you gotta do a pre IPO private placement.

Dan Monaghan: So we're gonna raise $10 million for you, but you can't raise [00:19:00] money unless you're burning cash. You have to have a burn rate. And we're like, what's a burn rate? Oh, you, okay, well why do we wanna lose money? And No, but you have to lose money to bring in money. And then it. So we start learning As much as we can, and we finally start to understand this, okay, the goal is to lose money.

Dan Monaghan: So we can put together a plan and we bring it to the guys on, you know, bay Street and we say, does this make sense? So we started, uh, hiring all kinds of people because we're gonna build industry specific products for the automotive industry, for, you know, all different segments. And, uh, we, we built our team up.

Dan Monaghan: We had like about 150 people and, uh, and we've got hired a CFO who's taken companies public before. And, uh, he starts, you know, working with the guys down on Bay Street and they've got some of the big banking firms, you know, HSBC and these others that we're committing 3 million. Okay? We're committing two. And, and so basically he's got this packaged up for the 10 million that we're gonna bring in. Well, we went from being profitable to now a point where we were losing about 700 grand a month. But that's no problem. 'cause if you bring in 10 million, then you've got some, you got [00:20:00] over a year's runway, right? And that was, uh, in the early part of 2000. And all of a sudden the bubble bursts right now, nobody knows that the bubble's bursting at the time. We just think that there's a bit of a correction and everyone's wondering, when's it gonna come back? When's it gonna come back? By about three or four months later of our CFO kind of talking to these guys, we realize it's not coming back. We had 5 million in the bank right now we've got like less than a million and we've got a $700,000 a month burn rate. So we start, you know, layoffs and cutting things back and all kinds of things. Long story short, um, we went to a point where, and this would be, you know, if I was to write another book on this story, there'd be a chapter called 17 Hours. Because we went to a place where we had an average bank balance. We had a weekly burn rate, uh, or a weekly cash requirement of about 250,000 a week. That was, uh, our cost structure at the time and. We had at on average bank balance of 200,000, which means on average we had four days worth of cash in the bank. Um, we got to a place where at one night, I remember this, we had 35,000, and I called up my brother. I said, that's 17 hours.

Dan Monaghan: And so at That point.

Dan Monaghan: you're thinking about, like, I don't even know how that happens. Like, [00:21:00] do people lock the doors or, you know, what do we tell the staff? Right? Long story short, uh, we just, we ran with that average bank balance of $200,000.

Dan Monaghan: We ran like that for about a year and a half. So 

Dan Monaghan: just think about like the stress level during that period of time as we're going up and down the lowest point being 35,000. All that to say, we never. Uh, got any external capital, we bootstrapped the business from the bottom

Dan Monaghan: up. I think

Dan Monaghan: if we would've gained that, it's interesting.

Dan Monaghan: We were partners with IBM at the time

Dan Monaghan: and they told us

Dan Monaghan: that they had

Dan Monaghan: 400 partners that came in under that partnership program. We were one of three that were left after the.com bubble burst. Uh, that digging our way outta that hole. So all that to say, um, the good news is I don't know if, if we would've taken that money, I don't know if we'd be around today. We might have been just a casualty like everyone else, not, you know, one of the things I've learned over the years is that resources sometimes reduce resourcefulness and we

Dan Monaghan: didn't have resources, so we had to be incredibly [00:22:00] resourceful. But at the end of the day, we still own the company. No debt, you know, no other shareholders.

Dan Monaghan: Uh, so it was a hard struggle, but that's just one example and I can give you, that's probably the worst, but some o

Dan Monaghan: other very existential, uh,

Dan Monaghan: scenarios over the years that we've had to dig through.

Patrick Patterson: if you could Go back to

Patrick Patterson: you know, yourself when that started. Any advice you would give

Patrick Patterson: yourself or, you know, now that you, you've gotten through it.

Dan Monaghan: So I met a guy years

Dan Monaghan: ago who, uh, was the first. Guy to sail across the North Pole

Myles Biggs: And

Dan Monaghan: he, uh, he,

Dan Monaghan: came,

Dan Monaghan: and spoke at one of our conferences and he was a friend of a friend in this organization that you and I are part of. He was a friend of, of a, a buddy of mine

Dan Monaghan: and, um. He talked about how he almost died multiple times because he is sailing a catamaran and he is by himself and he is dragging it across ice flows. Okay? And his, his sail ripped once and there was a polar bear on another ice flow. His sail ripped. He fortunately had some thread that he threw in last minute into his, into his [00:23:00] pack, and otherwise he'd be dead. But long story short, here's the lesson that always stuck with me that he said. He said, if I knew how difficult it was gonna be, if I knew how scary and treacherous it was gonna be, I never would've set out on the journey. And I'm glad I didn't know because I'm so glad I completed it. And truthfully, I don't know, if I was going back to my early self and telling myself the story, it would've taken a massive amount of courage to continue on that journey because there's some very, very dark. Periods and, uh, so, you know, whether it's a music star or a business success or whatever, it always looks good on the other

Dan Monaghan: side, But you don't really know what they've gone through to get there.

Dan Monaghan: And I would say that, that story he told me really resonated in my own life. I, my,

Dan Monaghan: if I was telling my younger story, my, my younger self say, don't

Dan Monaghan: worry, it's gonna end well. Ho 

Dan Monaghan: fingers crossed it's not over yet.

Patrick Patterson: well Well, I think, you know,

Patrick Patterson: you know,

Patrick Patterson: uh, steel is forged in fire, Right,

Patrick Patterson: And I, I think there's a lot of [00:24:00] truth in,

Patrick Patterson: you know, I look back at my hardest,

Patrick Patterson: professors or my, you know, the, the, the times it was the hardest. That's when I learned the most. And,

Patrick Patterson: you know, I, I, it's very interesting. I've never 

Patrick Patterson: done that 

Patrick Patterson:  exercise. Like, If I would've known how hard it

Patrick Patterson: was gonna be

Patrick Patterson: prior to, going into it, would I have chosen to do it,

Patrick Patterson: right? I'd like to think that I would've chosen to do it,

Patrick Patterson: but maybe 

Patrick Patterson: not right? And then you miss out on that learning opportunity. 

Patrick Patterson: You miss out on that great thing that happened afterwards, um, and you miss out

Patrick Patterson: on, uh, A tremendous story 

Patrick Patterson: as well. Right? So,

Patrick Patterson: so, you know, you described. what I hear when you describe

Patrick Patterson: what you're, what you've built and probably what came out of that.com boom, was adaptability, resilience

Patrick Patterson: and thinking about, you

Patrick Patterson: know, how do you

Patrick Patterson: make make an organization that is less fragile

Patrick Patterson: And, um, so talk me through 

Patrick Patterson: kind of the next, 

Patrick Patterson:  now 20 of, of doing that

Patrick Patterson: what were three or four things that you were

Patrick Patterson: like, Hey, from that learning,

Patrick Patterson: this is what we're gonna do going forward.

Patrick Patterson: 'cause you, you, you know, you [00:25:00] survived 2009, you, you, for, you survived 2020

Patrick Patterson: We're

Patrick Patterson: all hopefully gonna survive, you know, artificial super intelligence in 20,

Patrick Patterson: whatever it is. uh, so, you know, so what is, what are those things that you

Patrick Patterson: instilled inside the organization?

Patrick Patterson: that, that added that anti

Patrick Patterson: fragility? 

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, so definitely the, the learning organization piece that we've already talked about agility is, is critical. So like, like I mentioned, how we haven't hitched our wagon to any

Dan Monaghan: particular technology

Dan Monaghan: or any particular

Dan Monaghan: partnership.

Dan Monaghan: or any particular, um, you know, area of, of specialization in the digital world. Um, we've, we've wanted to continue to go to where the customer needs are. And it's interesting that if you look at. know, everything that we've been successful with over the years,

Dan Monaghan: uh, Including

Dan Monaghan: what we've done

Dan Monaghan: in the ai.

Dan Monaghan: space, it all began with identifying a problem for ourselves. And, you know, most, the, the biggest successes I've had is when I. Found a problem that I solved for [00:26:00] myself, and then I realized I could solve that for others. and, and and so I think really being connected to the customer, what are the needs of the customer? Listening to the customer. I, I, you know, there's, there's startups and, and we've had a lot of startups that have spun out of our ecosystem. So there's, there's other businesses that we own as part of this. And I can think of, you know, several instances where I've just listened to every phone call with the customer that the frontline was making, the salespeople were making the support people were making, where I knew the customer better than my team knew the customer.

Dan Monaghan: 'cause they were only listening to the calls they were doing. I was listening to everybody's calls. Um, and so I think that that's really key because it's, it's interesting, you know, sometimes you can over build. You can actually build things that you think the customer needs when they really don't need it.

Dan Monaghan: There's 20% of it that they really need, and you need to lean into that instead of all the other stuff that you think is cool, but the customer does, doesn't really care about. Um, so, you know, I, I, I would say that issue of agility and then knowing the customer deeply, I mean, those are [00:27:00] some of the key principles, uh, that have been important,

Patrick Patterson: Those are

Patrick Patterson: Hugely valuable lessons and, 

Patrick Patterson: you know, one

Patrick Patterson: lessons you win from making mistakes I'm sure.

Patrick Patterson: and, and, and, and getting there. So,

Patrick Patterson: all right, So fast forward, you know, ChatGPT 3.5 comes out,

Patrick Patterson: The world has changed forever.

Patrick Patterson: where were you, uh, what were you doing?

Patrick Patterson: Uh, how how quickly did you

Patrick Patterson: jump into it

Patrick Patterson: and what did you think when you, when you, when you saw it for the first time?

Myles Biggs: Yeah,

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, well, uh, you know, I've always been a little bit of a

Dan Monaghan: geek and not not as technical as you are,

Dan Monaghan: Patrick, and not as

Dan Monaghan: advanced 

Dan Monaghan: in a lot of the areas that, that you, you're

Dan Monaghan: specialized in. But I've always had a kind of fascination with where things are going and, and tried to, you know, uh, be on an early adapter on things.

Dan Monaghan: I remember I was speaking at a conference in Las Vegas, a marketing conference back in, I think it was 2017, and, and I ended my, my talk and I was talking about AI in marketing. And at the time we were using classical ai, you know, machine learning based, which was [00:28:00] really good at patterns and predictions, right?

Dan Monaghan: It was used, you know, for Netflix and content on your Facebook recommendations, that kind of thing. Uh, it wasn't generative at that time. uh, I ended my talk by, uh, re reliving that last moment of Les Mis, where the Bishop and Jean Paul Zong, uh, were, were basically speaking. And it was, it's really all about, uh, redemption, right? And uh, and then I said, it's the key essence of marketing is the ability to tell stories. And I said, it's gonna be a long time, if ever, where AI will actually be able to engage in storytelling, right? So when I first saw chat GPT, and we were talking about it back with GPT, I think it was GPT two and a half or three when we were using Jasper for writing content.

Dan Monaghan: But I didn't really connect the dots on that. And then when I saw chat GPT, it just echoed back to me like. aI

Dan Monaghan: Is now becoming,

Dan Monaghan: a storyteller because it's learned on all of humanity, right? Um, and [00:29:00] so,

Dan Monaghan: you know, it it does, it tell stories as good as us? Probably not, but, but, but the point is, that's where it's going, right?

Dan Monaghan: So when I first saw it, it was really mind-boggling and, um, like wheels just spinning a million mile miles a minute because I started to connect dots about what this could mean and, and, and all the things that it could do. And so the first place we wanted to put it to work was in our own business, right?

Dan Monaghan: Looking at all the workflows we have in our business and, uh, and figuring, you know, how can we do automations? I mean, we now have, everyone has access and, and it wasn't as smart as, you know, it wasn't as smart back then as it is today, but it was still pretty darn smart. And we could tap into that brain power through APIs and, and workflow automation.

Dan Monaghan: So we just started to build stuff and, and improve the operations of our own business. And, uh, and that's when I realized, you know what, our clients had that same opportunity to gain

Dan Monaghan: market share.

Dan Monaghan: gain competitive advantage being kind of the first in on ai. So we started a, a whole line of the business that was around AI consulting as well.

Myles Biggs: Amazing. 

Patrick Patterson: amazing.

Patrick Patterson: [00:30:00] So is this something that you outsource?

Patrick Patterson: to, like your Chief Technology Officer,

Patrick Patterson: or, uh, and, and he reported back to you, you know, every

Patrick Patterson: week on

Patrick Patterson: the new updates on ChatGPT, or, you know, how did

Patrick Patterson: or, or did you

Patrick Patterson: dive in and do it yourself?

Dan Monaghan: I dove in and did it myself. Now I, again, I'm not as, uh, you know, as good with the, you know, the N eight Ns and all the other stuff as you would be. So I haven't gone that deep in it. Uh, but I, the one thing I've always done, so I, I've overseen the building of a lot of software over the years and, and overseen software teams. You know, I used to program in basic, which would be before your time, but there 

Patrick Patterson: Oh, I programmed in basic, Dan, come on. Don't get

Dan Monaghan: okay. So, 

Patrick Patterson: It was 1991.

Patrick Patterson: Uh, 1990.

Patrick Patterson: is when? 

Dan Monaghan: so, so I built a checkout system for my ice cream bicycles, uh, where they could check out, you know, and back in those days, in a Vic 20, Commodore Vic 20, we had three and a half K of memory.

Dan Monaghan: So you had to use subroutines and all kinds of super efficient programming to do that. So all of a sudden ai, so I leave that world, I get into publishing and, you know, then [00:31:00] start the internet business, but. Every time I walked into a bookstore, I would see that book, LA Java for Dummies, or HTML for Dummies.

Dan Monaghan: And I'm like, I can learn this stuff. The problem is, I also knew that if I got into that, I was gonna go down rabbit holes. That would just be endless and suck my time. It's the same reason I never actually got into video games. I was as a kid, but I knew like, you know, it would be a black hole for me. So I've stayed out of that.

Dan Monaghan: I know what it can do and I direct the people to build what I wanted. So maybe I'm more of an architect in that sense. Um, but I've got some great people that are really solid on the AI stuff and I just watch what other people are doing, whether it's online or YouTube videos or thought leaders. And I say, I want you to build this.

Dan Monaghan: And they, well, we can't do it. I, no, you can do it. Here's you patch these things together. I'm not gonna do it. And I can't like, you know, code it myself, but we've found some really good people over the last couple of years that are just, and most of them by the way, are not as long in the tooth as me.

Dan Monaghan: They've got, you know, a little [00:32:00] less gray hair. I mean, these are young people that are just rocking and rolling with this ai and it's incredible the kind of stuff that they can build with is, whether it's vibe, coding stuff or, you know, prototypes, uh, you know, minimum viable products on different applications. 

Dan Monaghan: So, yeah, I,

Dan Monaghan: in in answer to your question,

Dan Monaghan: I

Dan Monaghan: dive into

Dan Monaghan: the deep end pretty deep all the way up until the coding.

Dan Monaghan: Who knows, maybe a couple months from now I'll take the leap. I'm always tempted to actually, when I, when I see what can be done with the reps

Dan Monaghan: and the N eight Ns and this kind of thing, I just need a, we, I just need a weekend. 

Myles Biggs: Yeah, 

Patrick Patterson: Yeah, well, you know, and then as soon as you learn it, there there'll be a new technology.

Patrick Patterson: that comes out. Right. So, you know, I'm currently deep into Vibe coding

Patrick Patterson: and, uh, I've moved on from

Patrick Patterson: Rept. I'm using a combination

Patrick Patterson: of open AI Codex, uh, max, which is their latest

Patrick Patterson: model, and then Gemini three Pro

Myles Biggs: and,

Patrick Patterson: and, uh, using Gemini three.

Patrick Patterson: for more creative tasks and, and open AI for [00:33:00] more,

Patrick Patterson: uh, technical tasks. And I'll tell you, I,

Patrick Patterson: I,

Patrick Patterson: am like a kid in a candy store right now,

Patrick Patterson: and it, it is literally like, you have an idea and like, I could be doing it while we're doing this podcast, have an idea. I'm like, okay, edit, edit this. I, you know, then I go back to the podcast and I look back

Patrick Patterson: over and the website's updated, or the app's

Patrick Patterson: updated. Um, and like for those listening, if you have not played with Gemini three

Patrick Patterson: Pro, uh,

Patrick Patterson: you know, I I, I did the same prompt,

Patrick Patterson: in Rept. Uh, Claude Code

Patrick Patterson: Open AI Codex Gemini three Pro

Patrick Patterson: and Base 44,

Patrick Patterson: Uh, and it was just a simple app. I just wanted to see which one

Patrick Patterson: would do better

Myles Biggs: with hours at Rep

Patrick Patterson: at Rep Lit. you know,

Patrick Patterson: I, you know, I, I finally got frustrated, Base

Patrick Patterson: 44 was better than Rept, but not as good as Codex. and then Gemini three, one, prompt

Patrick Patterson: one shot,

Myles Biggs: the output, 

Patrick Patterson: the output was amazing. I, I, I have, I'm just blown away by, by the, uh, the, the, the newest models

Patrick Patterson: And like, and then like, you know,

Patrick Patterson: I think, uh,

Patrick Patterson: uh, [00:34:00] Claude's coming out, philanthropics gonna come out with a new, with a new

Patrick Patterson: one, uh, here shortly as well.

Patrick Patterson: And then we'll have to I'll have to reset all of my expectations.

Patrick Patterson: but,

Patrick Patterson: Um, it, It's hard to keep up with,

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, and I and I mean, I use it for all the creative stuff, the slide decks,

Dan Monaghan: creating videos, creating, um, you

Dan Monaghan: know, explainer videos,

Dan Monaghan: uh, images, graphics, um, but the real oppor, the, the only thing I don't really do is the coding stuff yet. I haven't crossed that, uh, chasm yet. But I do use like lovable, like, I mean, for anybody who's not super technical, that is like a no brainer is so easy to use, uh, 

Patrick Patterson: So what's, what's one use case in your day,

Patrick Patterson: to day?

Patrick Patterson: So not how you're implementing it

Patrick Patterson: across your organization, but as you're using it that 

Myles Biggs: you 

Patrick Patterson: you know you can share

Patrick Patterson: that has, you know, made you a better leader, made you a better husband, made you a better father, um, all of these things. What, what is just one use case that you can share with the, with the crowd here of, uh, you know, maybe, maybe that folks aren't doing or, or it's not immediate ob immediately obvious.

Dan Monaghan: Yeah. [00:35:00] So I think the, um, if I, if I just step back from it a bit and just say, you know, a lot of people don't realize the, the capability that they have in their hands, right? So I kind of created a pyramid that, that show like a hierarchy of a AI utilization, and as people move up that at the base level is just doing work for us, writing our emails and all that kind of thing.

Dan Monaghan: And then there's several levels in between. But when you get to the top of that pyramid, it's when you're using it for strategic purposes. And, you know, when you look at the IQ of these models, right? You know, I, I think, uh, uh, uh, OpenAI 5.1 was clocking in at about 1 48 in IQ on the Norwegian MENSA exam.

Dan Monaghan: And Gemini three is smarter, right? So Einstein is said to have an IQ of one 60. So we're kind of closing in on

Dan Monaghan: that. And

Dan Monaghan: I 

Dan Monaghan: know IQ is not an exact proxy for how these models work, but essentially you've got Einstein in your pocket. And what are you using it for? So many people are using it just to write their emails.

Dan Monaghan: If you had Einstein sitting beside you, what work would you give him? Write my email, write a blog [00:36:00] post. Right. So I, I think the most leverage we get outta AI is when we use it at a strategic level, right? You know, like, why does, uh, why does Tim Cook get paid $75 million a year? It's 'cause of the quality of decisions he makes, the problem solving the vision, like all those kinds of things.

Dan Monaghan: Like he puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you and I. So it's because of a lot of those strategic elements of what he does. We can raise our game so significantly when we leverage ai. So, in answer to your question, um, I use AI for the high level problem solving, the strategic thinking, um, that I'm doing in, in the business.

Dan Monaghan: The, the last business I launched as a startup, I did it entirely on ai. The, all the strategy docs, everything was built out 140 page. And this is not AI slop, this is like really deep, uh, strategic stuff.

Dan Monaghan: And so I think that is, for me, the biggest opportunity is how I use it strategically. And then [00:37:00] the same case, you know, from a family level, like who are the experts that you're paying money to in your life?

Dan Monaghan: Is it, you know, is it your lawyer? Is it, you know, the, the person who's helping you create a will? Is it the psychologist who's helping with your kids? Like these are experts. Why are we not also leveraging AI's capability in that regard? So I'm always.

Dan Monaghan: asking.

Dan Monaghan: myself, am I using it for the most strategic purposes?

Dan Monaghan: And the other thing that's really important, you know, uh, Goldratt wrote the book, the Theory of Constraints, and, and he said basically the key to growing a business is identify the constraint and then solve that. And that's kind of how Elon builds his business, right? Every week focuses on the biggest problem in each business. So the question I ask myself is, what is the number one problem that's holding our business back right now? What is the number one constraint? And then how can I use AI to address that particular constraint?

Patrick Patterson: love that.

Patrick Patterson: I, I think that is

Patrick Patterson: such a, such a smart way of doing it. Um, you mentioned, Uh,

Patrick Patterson: using it at

Patrick Patterson: home literally last night,

Patrick Patterson: Dan, I was, uh, I had a,

Patrick Patterson: my first parent teacher conference

Patrick Patterson: [00:38:00] ever This existed. This in my life. This is, we have, we, we now, it, it will be immortalized on the podcast. But, 

Patrick Patterson: uh, and you know, my my son's in kindergarten,

Patrick Patterson: It's all sight

Patrick Patterson: words. so I went home

Patrick Patterson: and she gave me a, like a readout of how I can work on sight words with him at home. So I took a picture of that, put it in Gemini, uh, uh, three Pro and said, create a web app, uh, game for him to play that teaches him these site apps,

Patrick Patterson: uh, these site words.

Patrick Patterson: It, it spit out the code, threw it up on my phone.

Patrick Patterson: He liter, like

Patrick Patterson: he's played it for a while last night. Loved it. Literally woke up this morning I said he, you know,

Patrick Patterson: in my face saying, Hey, can I play that game again? And like that to me,

Patrick Patterson: like the, it, it's so simple,

Patrick Patterson: right? It's such a simple use case but that's gonna change the world,

Patrick Patterson: that ability to have that in our pocket. Software on

Patrick Patterson: demand, that's personalized experiences on demand,

Patrick Patterson: you know, content on demand.

Patrick Patterson: that is personalized to what the problem that we're facing, the thing that we're [00:39:00] dealing with right now, the thing we wanna watch just to be entertained. Um, like you can start to See how that just

Patrick Patterson: drastically changes

Patrick Patterson: whole, whole economies when things like that

Patrick Patterson: exist. And spoiler

Patrick Patterson: alert, it's good, Right.

Patrick Patterson: Like it's it's not slop to your point, right?

Dan Monaghan: here, here's the key thing, Patrick, is that the constraint there was not the technology, the constraint was your creativity. The fact that you actually looked at that life situation and

Dan Monaghan: said, Hey, I can apply AI in this case. Like, that's why I think it's so important for people to use AI even in everyday per, because they're gonna start thinking through the lens of how can AI help me?

Dan Monaghan: And like, that's awesome. Most people, you know, they're a long way away from that level of,

Dan Monaghan: uh, application. 

Patrick Patterson: Yeah, I'm, I'm just excited when 

Myles Biggs: you know, 

Patrick Patterson: you know,

Patrick Patterson: take us now to this, this, this new book that you wrote, uh,

Patrick Patterson: and a, what was the [00:40:00] inspiration for it?

Patrick Patterson: And 

Patrick Patterson: uh, you know, what's it about

Patrick Patterson: and what can we expect to

Patrick Patterson: gain from it after we, after we read it?

Dan Monaghan: Yeah. So it. On my mind since I began using ChatGPT. And just that I was realizing that I'm going to ChatGPT instead of Google, uh, to answer my questions. And then I wanted to get my mom to under, she's 83 now, and I wanted her to understand how to use ai. And I said, mom, instead of going to Google, just go to chat GPT every time.

Dan Monaghan: Now, I explained to her about hallucinations and that kind of thing, but I said, I just want you to understand, like you can ask it questions, right? In fact, you could call one 800 chat GPT and actually use that interface and, and, you know, and it's free. She doesn't even need her phone. So, as I am using chat GPT, instead of Google, my 14-year-old daughter's using it, my mom's using it. You know, and then last year, about a year ago, the Wall Street Journal, uh, wrote a article. The headline was Googling is for old people. Right? And then, and then, um, uh, Gartner came out with some research that they said by the end of [00:41:00] 2026, Google will have lost 25% of its traffic. And by the end of 2028, Google will have lost 50% of its traffic. So, you know, there's no question that there is change afoot in the way, like there hasn't been in several decades. Uh, in, in the way people are searching for information. And, and then, you know, if you look, most businesses are, are not realizing this change is happening. 'cause first of all, Google's traffic is dropping, but then on top of that, you've got this zero click, uh, search results where Google is now answering people's questions right on its site without even sending. People to your site, right? So you ask a question, it answers it right there, and there's no click through. 50% of searches on Google right now are not resulting in a click. People are getting the answer right on Google's page. So you got Google's traffic dropping, and then even the traffic

Dan Monaghan: that is going to Google isn't coming through to websites at the same rate.

Dan Monaghan: It [00:42:00] was. Most businesses don't realize if they just hit the pause button and

Dan Monaghan: go check their Google Analytics, they're realizing that their traffic is dropping, their traditional traffic to their site and their traditional searches are dropping. And so I kind of liken it to, 

Dan Monaghan: you

Dan Monaghan: know, metaphorically speaking, you know, I, I, if there was all of a sudden an asteroid, you know, that was coming to Earth, I mean, there could be right now an asteroid coming to Earth and nobody knows about it, right?

Dan Monaghan: There's a point in time where we find out about it. And then all of a sudden we tell the world, and some people believe it, some people don't. But even once everyone believes it, then the question is, what do we do about it? Right? Because this is an extinction level event. And, and metaphorically.

Dan Monaghan: speaking, I I, the, the comparative is, you know, a lot of businesses just don't realize the asteroids coming because it's going to change the way people search for stuff.

Dan Monaghan: And if you're fully reliant on the old way of search, then you've got a problem. And, uh, it's kind of like that, uh, uh, frog being boiled in the pot, right? It starts in a nice warm bath [00:43:00] and the bath gets hotter and by the time it realizes it needs to jump out, it's too late. So I think that's where a lot of businesses are.

Dan Monaghan: And as you know, in, in, in the business that you are in and that I'm in, uh, things like SEO don't happen overnight, right? If you're gonna rewire your SEO, that's gonna take some time. So we need to be making some investments upfront. So we talk about what we call adaptive, SEO, which is basically our. Methodology of ensuring that people are not just listed, ranked in Google. They're not just, uh, coming up on those zero click searches, but they're also being cited in ChatGPT and they're being cited, you know, in perplexity and these other large language models. So that's really what the book is about. It talks about, you know, why we need to be thinking about, I mean, it's not really a how to book. If it was, it'd be like a thousand pages, but it's really more about like, why do we need to, uh, address this and how is this different from the old school approach to SEO?

Patrick Patterson: Yeah. Well, you know, And let's dig into the, go [00:44:00] a little deeper.

Patrick Patterson: on

Patrick Patterson: The the, the extinction extinction level. event. I think that is a, that is a.

Myles Biggs: that is a, 

Patrick Patterson: Argument that you're seeing online right now. Um, and Google. Google has one narrative.

Patrick Patterson: Uh, and

Patrick Patterson: you know, so some other folks have other narratives. Uh, you know, Google owns the number one and the number two search engine in the world,

Patrick Patterson: Right.

Patrick Patterson: They own Google and YouTube. Uh,

Patrick Patterson: you know, Their, their, their push right now is, Hey, you know, automate, automate the automatable and, and then focus on, on creative and, and get getting onto to YouTube for, for discoverability. So, um, where do you, and you know, we're gonna, I'll, I'll pull this tape back three years from now and we'll see how right.

Patrick Patterson: you are.

Patrick Patterson: Uh, but uh, so you get to make your prediction. based on everything

Patrick Patterson: that you know, based on everything you've seen, 

Patrick Patterson: where do you see Google's business,

Patrick Patterson: model going? You know, there was, because the argument, the argument has been they're too big to fail

Patrick Patterson: right? and that's so much of their revenue.

Patrick Patterson: It would be impossible, uh, for, for that to go away.

Patrick Patterson: So where do you See them.

Patrick Patterson: How do you see them adapting and evolving?

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, so I think, you know, for anyone who heard what I, what I've just been saying, you know, a number of months ago, they go, well, it's time to short the Google stock. Right? Well, the reality is Google's up 50% from [00:45:00] where they were when I first started writing the book. So it's not like this is an extinction level event for Google. In fact, to your point, like Gemini three is just crushing, right? 

Dan Monaghan: I think Google's business model is gonna evolve. I mean. 2017, Google wrote the paper, attention is all you need, which gave birth to the transformer model, which was this new way that machines could learn that gave birth to generative ai. So Google actually invented this stuff.

Dan Monaghan: It was just sitting on the shelf and, and they didn't monetize it. So I think their very quickly being recognized as a heavyweight, if not the leader. I mean, there's Chachi, BT is, you know, uh, uh, has some catching up to do, I think. But um, so I do think they, they might go from the search business to the token business, you know, where they're now, or they're using ai. Amplify the quality, uh, of all of their other platforms. Uh, they're using it to better monetize advertising. 'cause to your point, you know, YouTube [00:46:00] is a advertising behemoth and if they could better target and there's always that pressure between privacy and targeting. But, you know, Google has the, the platform, the customers. The mass that if they used AI to better target customers, even their advertising business could still thrive. I think the extinction level event is for businesses that are stuck in the past, like the ostrich with their head in the ground, uh, who just are, are doing it the old way as opposed to adapting to, to the new way.

Dan Monaghan: And, and we, we know it's not just, it's not just search. I mean, there are so many other elements of AI that are disrupting business models. It's disrupting industries, it's disrupting companies. So we're kind of in this massive moment of change where there's a shuffling of the deck. I call it a David and Goliath moment because the little guy, the small business owner, has the opportunity to gain competitive advantage, uh, over the big incumbents just by being a little [00:47:00] faster, being a little smarter.

Dan Monaghan: Being a little more agile. So it when whenever there's, there's extinction for some and there's new birth for others.

Patrick Patterson: I mean, I'm always excited when technology is given

Patrick Patterson: and, and Enables folks that

Patrick Patterson: didn't have the,

Patrick Patterson: access before. And to see the innovation, the invention that comes from

Patrick Patterson: an, an

Patrick Patterson: untapped market like that.

Patrick Patterson: Um, very interested to see what's gonna happen in Africa as, as this, you know,

Patrick Patterson: this becomes pervasive and people can write 150 page, uh, business

Patrick Patterson: plans and.

Patrick Patterson: do legal and do everything from the palm of their hand because they have 17 Einsteins working 24 7 in their, in their pocket, right?

Patrick Patterson: So, um, it's

Patrick Patterson: going to be a really cool renaissance and evolution and revolution.

Patrick Patterson: that comes, uh, I'm super excited about it.

Patrick Patterson: So, Um,

Patrick Patterson: you know, there there, there are some people that are in the

Patrick Patterson: doom, the doomsayer, uh, world, where, you know, like

Patrick Patterson: everything's gonna get shut down and no one's gonna have jobs. And I'm more in the, you know,

Patrick Patterson: the people that adapt, the people that change, the people that are curious, the [00:48:00] people that are adopting this. What they're gonna be able to create. It's like when the calculator came out,

Patrick Patterson: right? I don't know if you remember that moment, Like when, like the ti I 89 I think I talked about this on the last podcast

Patrick Patterson: episode, but like, it was like everyone was like, math's dead

Dan Monaghan: Right,

Patrick Patterson: and

Patrick Patterson: I was a math major, Right, This was like dead and, and, like, and, and they were like, you're not allowed to use it 'cause you know it will kill math.

Patrick Patterson: And then what? It just enabled what the PC enabled with math as well is just for us to do more advanced

Patrick Patterson: calculation and figure out things we could never figure out before.

Patrick Patterson: They didn't Kill math. It

Patrick Patterson: invented the new level of math It invented the next,

Patrick Patterson: the, you know, the 3 0 1 became 2 0 1 and 4 0 1 became 3 0 1, and then we had to invent

Patrick Patterson: the four

Patrick Patterson: hundreds, right? like,

Patrick Patterson: and like that's the next world here, which I'm super excited about.

Patrick Patterson: and you're, and you're part of the one writing the book about it. I love it. 

Dan Monaghan: well, it's like, uh, I, I, one of, one of my other favorite quotes, the Charles Darwin, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, it's not the strongest that survive. It's not the smartest surf that survive. It's those that are most capable to change, those that are most agile, [00:49:00] that are most adaptive to change.

Dan Monaghan: And, and, you know, being.

Dan Monaghan: in, in this the same industry I am, like there's a huge percentage, 90 per, or I don't know about 90, but a big percentage of agencies that are freaking out thinking this is an extinction level event for them. And then there's people lining up to learn how you're doing what you're doing, which are actually giving your, your, your, you're taking this moment to change, to give your customers a competitive advantage because you're actually on it.

Dan Monaghan: You're ahead of it. So, you know,

Dan Monaghan: when change happens, there are those that actually thrive in that new environment. And to your point, I think it comes down to, you know, stay curious, right? Keep learning. And, uh, and, and that's where I think you're gonna recognize the opportunities.

Myles Biggs: Something you said earlier, Dan, you were talking about when you're listening to calls back and so you knew everything about that one customer 'cause you weren't just listening to the one call. Um, in the position you're in with 500 franchisees right? For the, the person listening that just has their business and they're just stuck with the blinders on.

Myles Biggs: 'cause all they can think about is their day to day. What are [00:50:00] you seeing from the 500? Like that is helping you see around corners in ways others might not be able to.

Dan Monaghan: Yeah, so we. We have this principle we call think like Sherlock, and we inculcate this in amongst all of our staff because I'm just one guy. But what I wanna make sure is that everybody on my team is curious and, and we talk about looking for those clues that are think like why is this franchisee outperforming the others?

Dan Monaghan: How he just talked about the, see, what happens is oftentimes the success leaves clues, right? And yet oftentimes people don't

Dan Monaghan: realize that they're uniquely successful in something. They just think, Hey, that's the way it is. So we have to continually be looking at those 500 franchisees and seeing what's going on that's different here.

Dan Monaghan: What can we learn there? And then we pull that together and we learn from each other. We bring those people into. Into what we call thought leadership committees, where they all learn from each other. So they're gaining, you know, there might be a dozen people [00:51:00] in a room. They're each sharing their little innovation.

Dan Monaghan: So everyone is learning, but we're sitting there, you know, as a front row student that's learning from all of them. So we've built frameworks into how, uh, how we basically leverage that intellectual capital. And we're spotting innovation in some cases where it's an accident, like people don't even realize that they just innovated on something. Uh, and so it really takes active listening and, and what we call that think like Sherlock principle.

Myles Biggs: Yeah,

Patrick Patterson: has been absolutely 

Patrick Patterson: phenomenal. I feel like this has been a masterclass in an hour.

Myles Biggs: It really has. Yeah.

Patrick Patterson: and, and I, and, and I know you know. We're very lucky to have you on the podcast because I know you do a lot of, you know, large keynotes and to sell out crowds, and you, you talk about these things. Um, but man, if I could, if I could just have you every Monday at 9:00 AM just come get, come, come give me a lesson, man.

Patrick Patterson: I don't know what I'd pay for that, but, you know, I don't even know if I could put a price on what that would,

Patrick Patterson: what that would be worth. Um, so, uh, this is awesome. Um, uh, pitch the new book. What's the, what, [00:52:00] what's the name of it? Uh, where can people find it And, uh,

Patrick Patterson: you know, how, how can they send it to you so you can sign it and send it back to them?

Patrick Patterson: Uh. 

Dan Monaghan: it was, it's called the AI Search Revolution. Uh, you can find it on Amazon, uh, or you can just search my name, Dan Monaghan. And, uh, if you wanna reach out to me, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty easy to find. M-O-N-A-G is the silent G there. So Dan Monaghan, and, uh, happy to, if anyone has any questions or want me to connect some dots, connect you to people.

Dan Monaghan: Happy to do that.

Myles Biggs: that's great. 

Patrick Patterson: Well, before we, before

Patrick Patterson: we, uh, wrap,

Patrick Patterson: uh, I'd love to hear what,

Patrick Patterson: what's your tech stack right now? What are the tools? And this will be obsolete by the time people 

Patrick Patterson: hear it because you'll, you'll be moved

Patrick Patterson: on to the next, uh, greatest thing. But

Patrick Patterson: what's your current stack today? What tools are you excited about that you use on a daily, daily basis?

Dan Monaghan: Well, the core is probably chat, GPT, just because I, I've had to kind of standardize on one platform, so it has so much context of my different, different businesses. I mean, I love projects. Um, and in fact, I, you've probably done the same, Patrick, uh, we're building

Dan Monaghan: out an AI

Dan Monaghan: board. Um, it, it's a super powerful tool where you

Dan Monaghan: [00:53:00] can actually

Dan Monaghan: Take a, uh, I've got six people on my board, Elon Musk, 

Dan Monaghan: Warren Buffet, et cetera, right? And so taking some, using deep research to create, you know, a 50 page

Dan Monaghan: document.

Dan Monaghan: on each one of those guys and their frameworks of thinking, uploading all six of those documents, one of each into my projects in, in ChatGPT.

Dan Monaghan: And so that draws me back into ChatGPT because I'm asking my board questions, uh, a lot. Um, obviously like Nana Banana and, you know, Gemini three just upgrade, you know, to the pro where you gotta have your key now and, you know, to use the advanced stuff. I just did that last week.

Dan Monaghan: That, I mean, that's.

Dan Monaghan: just killer.

Dan Monaghan: Uh, the Gemini, uh, three version anthropic for anything financial, anything where it's writing quality, I mean. It, it is incredible what you can do with, you know, the, your financials and stock portfolios and pushing everything into a giant spreadsheet. Like it's amazing, um, what philanthropic can do. And, uh, and then, you know, [00:54:00] the standard extensions like fireflies and, you know, the, the Canva and the different tools that are AI enabled, you know, um, but those are, oh, Grok of course.

Dan Monaghan: I mean, I always use Grok, uh, for a, because it seems to have the best pulse on, you know, real time sentiment. Right. Whether it's coming from, and a lot of them pull from Reddit now, but Grok also has the, uh, x, uh, feed as well. I actually, I actually have, uh, Grok now for anyone who has a Tesla. You probably have Brock in the Tesla now, which is super cool. Um, so

Dan Monaghan: I, I would say that is, I

Dan Monaghan: think that's the, the main pieces of my stack. Unless I'm kind of geeking out a little bit with lovable and, and, uh, and it's some point rept, but maybe I'll, maybe I'll skip based on what you said here today, maybe I'll just jump over Rept straight to 

Dan Monaghan: Gemini. 

Myles Biggs: yeah, 

Patrick Patterson: Yeah, it's great. I, I just, you know, antigravity.

Patrick Patterson: is their new ID and it's, it's super easy to integrate with the GitHub and, um, you could even throw ChatGPT PT into it. So I have Codex in there as well. So, um, absolute pleasure having you

Patrick Patterson: on. Thank you so much. Uh, hopefully I, you know, we should just make this.

Patrick Patterson: a, you know, every month you come on and you, you do a podcast and teach us all a ton of stuff.

Dan Monaghan: Well, I've learned so much, [00:55:00] I've learned so much from you, Patrick, over the years and when we've had an opportunity to talk about this kind of stuff. And I know you do the keynotes and, uh, and your presentations are always just incredible and so happy to contribute wherever I can to your community and your team.

Myles Biggs: I mean, you said Mondays, Patrick and Mondays with Monaghan has a nice ring to it. You know,

Patrick Patterson: I like it. I like it.

Myles Biggs: uh, well check the show notes of the, of the, this episode for the link to the book and Dan's LinkedIn that he mentioned previously. You can find them in those show notes as well. And while you're there, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode of Good enough isn't. We'll see y'all next time.