How an SEO Trailblazer Prepares Brands for the Future of AI-Driven Search

In this episode of How I AI, I sit down with Seth Besmertnik, the CEO behind Conductor, the company that has been shaping the organic marketing world for nearly two decades.

Seth has led Conductor through every major shift in digital search, from its early days as the first enterprise SEO platform, and now he is steering the company into a new frontier focused on understanding how brands show up inside AI models.

Seth breaks down how Conductor is generating synthetic prompts to mirror what customers might ask ChatGPT, how they evaluate the answers models give back, and why this matters more than traditional keyword rankings ever did.

We also talk about how he personally uses AI to stay ahead: daily briefings, automated email prep, and on-the-go meeting insights along with how his team uses AI coaching tools to deepen performance and uncover themes after calls.

🔥 Topics We Cover:
• How AI is transforming the meaning of “organic visibility”
• Why brands need to understand how they show up inside LLMs
• Conductor’s approach to generating synthetic customer prompts
• How AI is supporting his leadership, communication, and team operations
 
This conversation opens up a completely new way of thinking about organic visibility, leadership, and the future of content discovery.

Connect with Seth:
Website: https://www.conductor.com/about/seth-besmertnik/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/besmertnik/

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Transcript

Brooke: 0:00

How have you really been supporting yourself and staying grounded with so much change coming through so quickly.

Seth: 0:07

Such a great question. I think it's really easy to get just consumed by it and have it create a meaningful amount of anxiety in your life because it always feels like now that you don't know what's going on and there's just more happening that you could keep up with and more happening than what you know. And if you have the wrong mentality, which is one where like you feel like you need to know everything at all the time then it can really eat you up right now because there is just so much happening and it is impossible to stay up to speed. That being said, the right mindset is one where it's like, learn something new every day. Learn something new every week. Try and be okay with asking questions. Be okay with being an amateur but make the effort to learn and experiment and try things.

Brooke: 0:54

Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. I'm Brooke Gramer, your host and guide on this journey into the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing events and business strategy, wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, AI. This isn't just a podcast. How I AI is a community, a space where curious minds like you come together, share ideas, and I'll also bring you exclusive discounts, and insider resources, because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift, and the sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities will unlock. Have you just started exploring AI and feel a bit overwhelmed? Don't worry, I've got you. Jump on a quick start audit call with me so you can walk away with a clear and personalized plan to move forward with more confidence and ease. Join my community of AI adopters like yourself. Plus, grab my free resources, including the AI Get Started Guide. Or try my How I AI companion GPT. It pulls insights from my guest interviews along with global reports, so you can stay ahead of the curve. Follow the link in the description below to get started. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of How I AI. I'm your host, Brooke Gramer. My guest today is Seth Besmertnik. He's the co-founder and CEO of Conductor, a company that helps the world's top brands get found online, especially in the world of AI powered search. Seth started Conductor back in 2008, long before AI became a buzzword, and he's guided it through nearly two decades of reinvention. In this conversation, we chat about how AI is shaping search as we know it. What it takes to lead through massive change and why integrity still matters when everyone's chasing speed and scale. Seth shares, how he's helping his team navigate the shift to AI without losing trust and what he's learned about creating a company culture that values curiosity over fear. If you've ever wondered what it looks like to lead with heart in an AI first world, or how to stay visible in a landscape where even search itself is changing, this episode will give you a grounded look into the future of marketing. Alright, let's dive in. hi Seth. Thank you so much for being here and welcome to How I AI.

Seth: 3:36

Excited. Very excited thanks for inviting me and thanks for including me.

Brooke: 3:39

And I'd love to just go ahead and get started and open the floor and give you the opportunity to share a bit about yourself and how you wound up at the intersection of AI today.

Seth: 3:51

Oh, that's a big question. Um, Well, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Conductor, which is the largest enterprise platform for helping companies with the managing their presence in both AI engines like Perplexity or Chat GPT, but then also in Google and traditional search. So if you're, a big company or a growing company and you want to improve how often AI is talking about you and how to get your content being cited as a source, or how do you show up in Google, we have an entire end-to-end analytics and workflow platform that helps companies do that. And because of that, we have, uh, almost a hundred engineers that work at the company and we use a lot of AI ourselves. In fact, Sam Altman at Dev Day last week for Open AI had conductor up there as one of the biggest consumers of their APIs. So we're looking at a lot of data and using ai, tremendously. So it's, uh, it's really like we're in the center of all the change that's happening and I'm, I'm an entrepreneur and started the company over 15 years ago and we've had lots of generations in building the business. So, um, we're all figuring this out and learning together. And, and we certainly have a really unique vantage point because we're really helping not just use ai, but how do you actually get included as a wisdom source in ai.

Brooke: 5:12

Wow, that's incredible. I saw that list come through about OpenAI super users. I didn't know Conductor was on that list.

Seth: 5:19

Yeah, well we didn't know either one of our engineers, uh, his name's Uday. He was just there. And what they do is they put the name of the person who's attending the conference on the list. Okay. And then Uday just saw his name on the screen and it's like next to like Shopify and Salesforce and Nvidia. And then he was up there. He is like, they didn't know why. And then we ended up getting some kind of award, but we were all like, oh wow. We didn't realize that. Like, I mean, we know we use a lot of the data. We're like token users, but we don't know how much everybody else uses. So we were surprised that we were so close to the top which is cool.

Brooke: 5:50

That's awesome. So a hundred engineers. And how many people are in your company total to date?

Seth: 5:57

Yeah, it's about a hundred, uh, a hundred engineers, includes designers and product managers as well. And then there's about 250 people in the company in total.

Brooke: 6:05

Okay. So this is so fascinating because you're the head of a very large company and you've got to see just this huge transformational shift in how we work what's really been changing for you as a leader when it comes to how AI is becoming so central to how your company operates now as opposed to how it was five, 10 years ago?

Seth: 6:30

Yeah. Nice. So, we're impacted by AI in two ways. So I'd say for most companies it's more like, Hey, how are we using ai? How do we become more productive? How do you get more out of every employee? How do you do more for less? Uh, how do you use these tools to be automation and make things more efficient? So we have, there's like that world. But then there's also our, the other world, which is that like consumers and buyers and human beings are now using ai and it's like your website is going to be like less useful because people spend time on ai. So, and, and that's our business is helping companies figure that out. So I'd say we're in both, we're, we're definitely in both those worlds. I'd say the second world is like the one that's creating all the chaos here at the company, because it's the one that all every brand in the world is trying to figure out what they need to do to show up in AI and for us. We're building software and learning and sharing out educational information as fast as we can, but then on the other side of the equation, the entire workforce is going through disruption. And I think what's expected out of a business is changing. It's, um, it's both exciting and scary. I mean, companies need to figure out how to do a lot more with less. How do, how do people become more productive? How do people you know, how do they get more productive using AI as a tool? And I think we're shifting from a world where like everybody's figuring out and needs to use these tools, but eventually we're gonna be at a place where we're not gonna hire anybody, at conductor that doesn't know how to use AI tools in a way that makes them meaningfully more productive and, and that they're not expert level at it. And I would say that the markets are gonna have an expectation on companies that they're able to just have much more output per, per employee because of what AI can do. And and, uh, you know, that's, that, that's like very clear. That's where we are heading into. And I think like as a, as a business operator, you have to make sure that all the people who work here in this company have access to these tools. So they learn how to use them because it's part of like, it's like gonna be like learning Excel. Uh, you, if you don't know how to be productive with ai, then you're not gonna be competitive in the workforce.

Brooke: 8:40

Mm. Such true words. What's the biggest mindset shift when it comes to staying grounded as we are moving so quickly with technology and we're having to upskill so quickly and things that were relevant last year are no longer relevant. Um, you know, AI search is such a great use case. Example, this wasn't as big two years ago. How have you really been supporting yourself and, and staying grounded with. So much change coming through so quickly.

Seth: 9:11

Such a great question. I I think it's really easy to get just consumed by it and, and have it create a meaningful amount of anxiety in your life because it always feels like now that you don't know what's going on and there's just more happening that you could keep up with and more happening than what you know. And if you, if you have the wrong mentality, which is one where like you feel like you need to know everything at all the time then it can really eat you up right now because there is just so much happening and it is impossible to stay up to speed. That being said, the right mindset is one where it's like, learn something new every day. Learn something new every week. Try and be okay with asking questions. Be okay with being an amateur but, but make the effort to learn and experiment and try things. I know for me personally, I do a lot of playing around with AI and trying to figure stuff out. But I also, you know, I instead of watching Netflix on Saturdays, I go to YouTube and I watch people talk about like, oh, chat GPTs launched Agent mode. Here's six things you can do. And you know, I watch stuff like that as a way to just get up this, I mean, the cool thing is there's more ways to learn about stuff than there ever was before. You don't have to find and have a best friend that knows something or go to university, just go on YouTube and there's somebody explaining something about everything and it's really useful and you can stop and slow down and rewind it and do all that. But it's just realizing that you need to learn, be okay that you don't know it all, and uh, and just clock hours every week on learning. And I think that if you do that, it's gonna all add up and you'll be able to stay relevant in this time.

Brooke: 10:52

Absolutely. How are you supporting your employees? How do you balance, like introducing new tools, technology opportunities to learn and upskill in a way that builds trust with your staff and, and doesn't really make them fearful of AI taking over their role.

Seth: 11:10

My approach as a leader has just always been to be authentic and honest, and I speak with them as I'm speaking with you. Mm-hmm. Which is that we all need to learn. We, we all need to, it's like a healthy amount of, little bit of fear with a, with a lot of comfort, which is that we're all figuring this out. We all are not experts. We all have a lot to learn, but also like, we need to get good at this because mm-hmm. It's going to be a, there's going to be a point where things switch and it will no longer be acceptable to not be an expert. And so we have to go on this journey together. We have to learn and share together. However we have to move forward and we have to make progress'cause staying. In the world where you're just doing things the way you were a few years ago, it's not going to be, you know, it's not gonna be acceptable. It's like the classic saying, the, the new classic saying, which is like, AI is not going to replace you. It's someone who knows how to use ai, who's going to replace you.

Brooke: 12:11

How I AI is brought to you in partnership with the Collective AI, A space designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and showed me what's possible with ai. Whether you're just starting out seeking community or want done for you solutions, The Collective gives you the resources to grow your business with AI. Could you maybe share a case study of an example of, you know, in-house that AI has really enhanced your culture and the positive side of adapting it?

Seth: 12:47

Yeah, I mean, it's all over the place. Like, so we used to use a service that would take a certain number of recorded calls and then they'd send them off to some coaches. The coaches would listen to them and then they would get feedback and then we'd give the feedback to the sales rep or the CSM, and then they'd use that feedback to, to learn. Very simple cycle. But that's expensive. It's slow, it's timely, and it's limited. Now with ai, we have a coach listening to every call. So every call you do, there's a coach that's listening. That coach is a effectively a prompt that we trained and curated based on what the evaluation criteria is and, and what we used to score for. It listens to your calls. It reads the transcripts, and then it produces out an output, which is how you did. What you did well, what you didn't do well, where you can do better and gives you suggestions. It takes diff specific quotes and it delivers it right to your inbox, you know, maybe an hour after you hang up the phone call. So that's just the way where like feedback cycle now comes so much faster. Mm-hmm. And to do that costs like no money, we pay to do that. Now that we've built it, it's, it's basically like almost free. In terms of how much it costs us to do that versus paying somebody$150 an hour to listen to one phone call.

Brooke: 14:15

I do that as well. I obviously record my discovery calls and any pitches I'm having with clients and I immediately upload it to GBT and ask for feedback of, you know, where was I maybe a little unclear, and what can I do better? It's one of my favorite ways to use it. Yeah,

Seth: 14:33

yeah. And that's like. Just your example right there is just, I think people needing to just take that leap, which is like, how do I get better? Well, let me ask, you know, Gemini, what I could have done better, and it's always gonna have some suggestions. So part of AI is just getting used to using it in your workflow. Now. Now I do things like I, like I was going into a, a meeting a couple weeks ago. I thought I was gonna have more time to prepare for the meeting. It was a CEO of a, of a really big company, and I was just going from one thing to the next and I was scrambling. So as I'm walking into the building. I go on Gemini, I had like three minutes and I'm like, I'm the CEO of this company. I'm meeting with the CEO of this company. Here's what I'm looking to get out of this meeting. I wanna know, you know, what are the opportunities to work together? What are the risks in working together? What are any kind of common overlaps that we currently have? And I also wanna know if I was that CEO doing this prompt against Conductor, what would it say to them? And I got this thing and I read it in the elevator. And while I was waiting in the waiting room and I went in there and I was like, I had like a chief of staff on demand, gave me a briefing in like three minutes. So that wasn't like, I didn't do anything super special. I just typed it in and decided to use it. And this is the, the muscle sort of memory that we all need to start developing. As people who are living in this world of where AI is available to you.

Brooke: 15:59

I liked that 2.0 version of a prompt of getting in the defense of like, how are they prepping for this meeting? Or call.

Seth: 16:08

Yeah. I always try, I I always think about that reverse idea of using, making a prompt, which is like if they were doing this for me or if someone's looking like this. And that's a big part of actually what Conductor does is we we synthetically generate prompts for businesses about what their customers are looking for, and then we look at the results and then tell them how a customer is gonna experience AI and how their brand is gonna show up. And, um,'cause it's, it's good to see what other people see.

Brooke: 16:35

Yeah, that was my next question. If you could just really simply share a bit about your target clients that you're working with, and for someone who doesn't even know what SEO is and AI search and visibility, what exactly Conductor helps and supports people with.

Seth: 16:52

Yeah. I mean, the primary way that people find things and make decisions is by doing some kind of search. Historically, it was Google search. It's, it's shifting towards some form of AI search, whether that's on Google or whether that's on chat, GPT. And as a business, I feel like you have two ways of trying to get customers. If I were to oversimplify it, one is you could buy them, you could buy their attention, buying ads, buying billboards, trying to get them in their captive moments. Or you can earn their attention by getting onto the road that they're on already on by being on the other side of what they're looking for. And that's what we help companies do is figure out, well, what are the roads that people are going on? So what are the things they're looking for? And how do you get your business positioned in a way where you're favorably being represented? Now, it used to be a little simpler'cause it was just, how do I get my little blue link showing up in Google? Which even that wasn't simple. But now it's how do I show up in prompts and how do I become part of someone's journey when they're using ai? And a lot of it comes down to the content that you have and fundamentally it's about taking all of your knowledge and transmitting it through more and more thoughtful and well structured content. Because AI doesn't have any wisdom. AI depends on you. The creator for the wisdom.

Brooke: 18:22

Yes. It's become very competitive because with AI search results, there's usually one AI summary at the top that is really big and you know, just what you tend to just look at right now. So I'm super curious how exactly, if you could give one practical thing someone could do this week to make their business more discoverable, what would it be?

Seth: 18:46

Make more content about the things that are interesting to customers that leverage some kind of authority or unique perspective that you have. If you have data, if you have research, if you have insights. If you have any examples, but bring these things to the surface, make all your information transparent. If you have a knowledge base, open it up to ai. If you have you know, white papers or PDF files, make them content so they can get read, but, you need to make all your information available to AI to use, so it has more information to make decisions, like, for example. We've always had these like competitive battle cards that are basically like how we compare versus competitors that our salespeople have. But now we just put those battle cards on our website so the AI can see them too.

Brooke: 19:34

How does one balance, you know, putting their intellectual property and things that they would maybe sell everywhere online, like how does that support business rather than just keep people from wanting to maybe gather all the information and use it to preload their own custom GPT? Like how do you walk that fine line of. Of putting all of your knowledge and, and positioning yourself in that way and gatekeeping things that are what you wanna sell?

Seth: 20:05

Well, if you're asking, there's two types of businesses, one's that sell information mm-hmm. And then ones that sell other stuff. Yes. Product services, software. If you're in the business of selling content. Like a magazine. It's really hard right now. I don't. Mm-hmm. Um, it's a really hard time because you do have to make that trade off of do I give it away for free or not? And if you don't give it away, then you won't be in the conversation. But if you do give it away, then why does someone need to come to you anymore? Mm. So this is the, this is a big question. I think that everybody would prefer that AI pays you to use your content. Uh, if you are a publisher or a content information provider like the New York Times or someone like that. Mm-hmm. But for everybody else, if you're not in the business of selling content, like Conductor doesn't sell content, we sell software. Mm-hmm. So for us, content is how we do marketing. So we're like, unload the truck, take every single end piece of information we have and let's put it out there. Because ultimately we want to build awareness, we wanna build brand, we want to get leads, we want to get awareness so we can drive. We could drive more users into our product.

Brooke: 21:23

Do you feel like it's very competitive in this space of what you do? Do you think a lot of people are trying to get into this AI visibility?

Seth: 21:30

Absolutely. Yeah. It has been like 50 or 60 startup companies that have started in the last year to come and compete in this market, which is something we've never seen in the last, like 10 years since we started the company. So yeah, it's very competitive. I mean, when there's a market and an opportunity for something, you know, everybody pops out of the, you know, woodwork to come up with a, a better mousetrap.

Brooke: 21:51

And what do you think sets you apart from the 50 60 competitors?

Seth: 21:55

So many things. I mean, it's exciting that there's so many competitors. I think competition makes the market better for everybody. We have been doing this for a really long time, and we have so much experience and we also have deep technology that gives customers the entire picture of what's happening. And then they also give them the ability to take action and, and to do something about it. So most of the startup companies are just trying to give you like some information, uh, maybe some measurement, but we actually give you the entire solution to give you the ability to take action to do reporting off of it. It's really a full solution. So. We just happen to be lucky that what we've been building for the last five years happens to be what is most important right now. And because of that, it's like we, we just got a big headstart and, our engineering team is likely, pretty much the size of probably most of those startups in aggregate together if you take all their engineering teams. So we should have a lot more resources and, um, that's a big advantage.

Brooke: 22:59

Yes, definitely a first to market big advantage. So take me back to that first initial point when AI started reshaping the market and, and marketing as a whole. What was your first reaction? Um, were you curious? Were you skeptic? Were you excited to lean into the change?

Seth: 23:19

Yeah, it's a good question. I wish I can go back to the first time I like used like chat GPT, but you know, at first it was, it was this thing where it was, if you remember like it didn't have fresh information or it was like to the model, it was like two years old.

Brooke: 23:34

Yep.

Seth: 23:34

But it became pretty clear over time that this was going to be a place where people start doing stuff more and more and looking for things and it's gonna be more than search was, but we'll still do some of what search did. And I'd say it's really in the last year that businesses have really started to make it a priority. But I'd say that's still just starting. We're just at the very beginning. I mean, most companies don't have this as a strategy or a plan you know, we're really at the beginning. So, you know, it's really like, again, I think in the last 12 months things have changed a lot. The models have become better. They're fresher. You know, now chat, GPT has shopping, right? So it's, it's really just accelerated, but we're still just at the beginning. So, but it's really gonna be, it's gonna be disruptive. I mean, I do think people are gonna spend a lot less time on websites. Because they don't need to go to them anymore.

Brooke: 24:29

That's a big statement. Let's bring it back to a more personal level. What kind of AI do you use? And it doesn't necessarily need to be for work, but I'm curious, what are you, what are you gravitating towards?

Seth: 24:41

What are my options? What are my options?

Brooke: 24:43

Do you use it for maybe like health and wellness? How are you optimizing or using ai? Are you thinking of other things to bring to conductor and build out?

Seth: 24:56

Yeah. I'm gonna look at my, my search history here in Gemini.

Brooke: 25:00

Yeah. What's your tech stack look like?

Seth: 25:03

So, I mean, this is like, um, this is Gemini, which like is more professional, but I still do perso. I spoke to a travel agent who sent me like a 15 page contract to sign, which I, I'm like, why am even signing a contact for a travel agent? But I needed someone to help me with the trip'cause I just have like no time. Yeah. But I just dropped that into Gemini. I told it to be my lawyer. And tell me what I should worry about with the agreement. Um, I've been, I use it as a travel tool. My daughter was thinking of starting a business around like making like, um, insects and turning'em into jewelry, like, and was wanted to do market research, bought an air purifier for my house um, I mean, I have all kinds of things. I have, I have gems which are like, basically like projects that they can write LinkedIn posts, they can do email discovery. I'm just getting started with this stuff. I mean, it's it's so powerful.

Brooke: 25:53

I love doing deep research as well. Lately when I'm thinking of digital products to create and produce I do a quick search through Grok which searches Twitter Reddit groups, Facebook group comments, anything that's public where it's, you know, communities come coming together and sharing their pain points. I've found that to be really good for just like free market research. You talked about purchasing an air purifier through like an AI search, which I think is so fascinating that now we are directly buying from our questions and, and searching for information on ai. I think I read a statistic, maybe you'd be like more, uh familiar with this, that people are like three times something like that, more likely to actually purchase something when they get a recommendation from an AI search. Is that true?

Seth: 26:46

Yeah. I think that, well, there's a data point that, like traffic that comes from AI search, which is really like the, there shouldn't be that much traffic coming from it. It's like gonna come less and less, but it converts much higher. It would make perfect sense, right? You, you do all your research, you do your evaluating, you do your comparison, you get a recommendation, and then you're ready to go.

Brooke: 27:06

Yeah. It's exciting times.

Seth: 27:08

It's like there's a salesperson for every product in the world, and it's right there in front of you. And the only problem is, is that he doesn't, the salesperson doesn't work for your company. It we're, it's like independent salesperson, so you gotta get that person to, to lobby on your behalf otherwise they're gonna be recommending someone else's stuff.

Brooke: 27:27

Very true. You mentioned something earlier, I wanna dive deeper on. You said a lot of people right now don't even have an AI strategy or plan for everything that's changing right now. So if you could give one piece of advice for founders that are navigating the AI transition, what would it be?

Seth: 27:47

Well, for starting their company, I mean, I'd say that when you start a company. You could start AI first. You know, it's hard when you have, if you have 15 people doing something and you wanna then add AI to it, it's much harder than it is if you start from scratch. So, mm-hmm. I think a lot of founders are saying, okay, how, how can I use AI to do all of this before I need any people? Mm-hmm. And you add people onto things after you've maxed out what AI's capability is. I would imagine that's the right way to go about stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, business process. And then you can have people that are brought on specifically to do something that only people can do or to also, or to architect and oversee the AI systems, which is much, I guess, much easier in a way than trying to augment an existing human process with ai. And while that's, that's operational and still in flight.

Brooke: 28:37

Yeah. Do you have any advice for those that have already been in business for a while and now they're coming up to all these changes and maybe having to sit and take a look under the hood? Operationally,

Seth: 28:49

I think the best advice that I've received is just do one thing at a time. You know, take one process or one area just burn down the list. Mm-hmm. You know, it's, if you try to do too much, it's not nothing gonna happen, you know, one, one process at a time. Have a roadmap, and then try to bring AI in a way that makes it better but just tactical stuff, operational stuff, just work through things. One thing at a time.

Brooke: 29:15

That's such great advice. That's how I've been working with smaller businesses right now, is I take it step by step, like walk before you run. Yeah, it's interesting that a lot of operational inefficiencies come to light. Once you start to look under the hood and think about how we can implement ai, then all of a sudden you're realizing, oh no, my CRM is awful. Things like that have been coming up, but it's all for the better right to streamline. And the goal is to work smarter, not harder.

Seth: 29:44

Yeah. Yeah. Though it seems like everybody's working harder.

Brooke: 29:47

Yes, I think so as well. I, I've noticed that people are just working harder with ai. Why do you think that is?

Seth: 29:54

Catching up? Fear everything's moving. Like it's not like the old world is operating at the same speed and now you have AI to help you. The world is moving faster, so. It's kind of like if I send you a Western Union and there's a horse that takes it to you, where, where are you based?

Brooke: 30:15

I'm in Miami.

Seth: 30:16

Yeah, you're in Miami. So it took a long time for that horse to get there and, and then the horse comes back to New York and then I gotta respond again. Like the time it takes me to write the letter or do the thing is the same. But now I just had a long delay. That cycle is happening faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. Eventually. It's like you do something and it's right back. Do something right back. You know, like I have emails that get pre-written for me in the morning, from, uh, superhuman that like write follow ups and drafts and other stuff, and I decide whether I want to use them or not. And I'm firing off more emails, that means somebody else is getting more things faster than they were before. So then they gotta respond to those things. So, so the whole cycle is just moving quicker. So it doesn't mean you have less, like you have more work to do because other people are also moving faster.

Brooke: 31:00

Yes i've heard this exact pain point going on in HR and staffing industries right now. It's just they're, they're getting more applicants than ever. Because people are able to now do their resumes and fill out the application, which used to be quite a long process, but, um, it's causing an issue now because there's more applicants now than ever.

Seth: 31:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all just, everything's moving faster. You're sending emails faster, you're responding faster. Nobody's working less.

Brooke: 31:31

So what's next for Conductor?

Seth: 31:33

Well, for us, a conductor. We've been in this business for 10 years, and for the first time in 10 years, what we now do is a really, really relevant and really interesting and, and an executive at a board level priority. So, uh. Really capitalizing on that by, by growing and having a bigger impact. I mean, we have a mission at the company, which is to help companies leverage their wisdom and use that wisdom to make better digital assets and to help people. So right now we are, we're doing that at a, at a nice scale. You know, we're not as, we're not that small, but we're not that big. But we would love to have much more scale and have. Add a zero to the number of customers that we help and have them add more wisdom into the ether, uh, the digital ether and have just a much bigger footprint so we can make a better impact.'cause I really believe that when someone uses conductor, it forces them and pushes them to, rather than like buying ads, it forces them to share helpful information. And the more that that happens, I think that makes the world a little bit better. And, and. Uh, I think we have a long way to go to actually have a meaningful impact on the world in a more broadly place. So it's to grow and to really expand into the AI world in a way that's, um, really aggressive and really helpful.

Brooke: 32:52

What does scaling look like for a business your size? And are you getting into things like voice agents and sales agents?

Seth: 33:01

I mean, for us it's, there's a lot of product problems that we need to solve. Mm-hmm. And it's, uh, it's making the quality of what we do better, bringing more automation to what we do things. And then the scaling is really getting more customers. Which is a byproduct of better marketing and, and having a better brand and people reaching out to us more and having a better product, which is the core of it. So that's what scaling looks like for, for the most part. What was this, what was the second part of your question?

Brooke: 33:28

I asked if you've gotten into sales agents or voice agents.

Seth: 33:33

Not, I don't think so, but a lot of what we're at the core, so we help, we help with optimizing for like the core data that's in the core models. And all of that gets then used to inform, you know, sales agents or voice agents.

Brooke: 33:50

Nice. What's one key takeaway that you want listeners to have? We've touched on a few different things today, but I love to just leave the floor open for anything that you'd like to share for listeners.

Seth: 34:03

Well, I'd say for businesses, it's when you're doing marketing and you always, always focus on the customer, always focus on helping your customer with everything you do. I think for individuals it's make learning part of your like daily and weekly routine. Um, and then I think for entrepreneurs getting started, it's um, gotta have a real vision for where the future's gonna go and conviction on it and build for that. Because the world's changing so fast that the problems of today will likely be you're gonna be very different than the problems of tomorrow. Mm-hmm. It's a tricky time to start a company.

Brooke: 34:33

Yeah, well, I can't thank you enough for sharing about your journey and more about Conductor. If listeners want to get in touch and learn more about you, uh, how can they reach out?

Seth: 34:47

Sure. Well, um, I, I do a lot of posting and, and professional stuff on LinkedIn, so they could just like follow me there. I have a personal Instagram account, SBesmertnik and, um. Yeah, those are probably the two places that I'm most active, but probably LinkedIn being most active.

Brooke: 35:03

I'll be sure to link that out in the show notes. Yeah.

Seth: 35:06

Awesome. This is fun. I really enjoy great questions.

Brooke: 35:09

Yeah, I try to tailor them a little bit more to each listener, so thank you. I appreciate your time. Yeah,

Seth: 35:15

no, you're great at it.

Brooke: 35:16

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Seth: 35:17

Okay. See you later. Bye, Brooke. Bye.

Brooke: 35:19

Take care. Bye. Wow, I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with AI. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and want to share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I AI. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective AI, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with AI. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.