Grow Your Business Discoverability With AI

What if customers could find your business before they even knew what to search for? 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain unpack how AI is rewriting discovery, why 60% of Google searches now end without a single click, and why that's the biggest reset for small business since the internet itself. 

Peter runs a live head-to-head between his AI assistant and Google (spoiler: Google gets embarrassed), explains GEO, the new frontier of marketing with AI,  and shows how hyper-niche businesses, from ballerina-to-astronaut courses to a retired teacher's tutoring side hustle, can now out-rank corporate giants. 

Plus: a free AI tools stack and a downloadable two-page playbook. 

If you've ever felt the marketing game was rigged for the big guys, this episode hands you the sling and five stones.

Listen For

1:05 Why AI Search Is the Biggest Opportunity for Small Business Marketing in a Generation

8:17 The Entrepreneur Mindset Shift: Why Change in AI and Search Means Opportunity, Not Threat

17:30 How Google Rankings Really Work: Why the Top 3 Search Results Get 95% of All Traffic

30:10 Google Search vs. AI Inquiry: How ChatGPT and Claude Find Customers Before They Even Search

47:33 The Free AI Tools Toolkit for GEO: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Canva, Zapier and Make

Links Mentioned

Peter's Free AI Business Audit | Storagemoguls.ai | Claude | ChatGPT

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter

idiots@successfulidiots.com 

Joe Downs

Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Email Joe:joe@belroseam.com 

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X

Transcript

Joe Downs (00:00):

About 60% of Google searches now end without anyone clicking on anything. That should be terrifying if you're a small business owner who depends on clicks. For most of the history of business, the big guys won the marketing game by default. They had the budget, the TV spots, the full page ads, the agency on retainer. A small business owner could be better, faster, more skilled, and still lose simply because they couldn't afford to be found. It's Goliath crushing David. I know David beat Goliath finally, but David didn't beat Goliath because Goliath got weaker and David didn't really get stronger. David beat Goliath because he had access to something Goliath didn't see coming. Right now, and I mean right now, not eventually, something is happening to the way your customers find your business, the way they find you. The old game, the one where your budget determined visibility, the game Goliath was really good at.

(01:05):

That game, well, let's just say the rules are changing and your budget isn't the new currency. AI is handing out a sling and five stones to every small business owner willing to pick them up. Most of Goliath's marketing department hasn't figured out that the rules have just changed. Today we'll cover what changed, why it's the biggest opportunity for main street business in a generation and some specific tools that let you walk onto that field and actually win it. I'm Joe Downs. With me is Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots using AI to simplify our lives and optimize our businesses. Peter, how are we today?

Peter Swain (01:48):

Fantastic. We had summer. It lasted three days. We're back to rain. Good old Britain. I

Joe Downs (01:54):

Thought you were going to tell me it lasted a couple hours. I was going to congratulate you, but three days. It's a lifetime.

Peter Swain (02:01):

Long enough for everyone to complain that it's too hot and they didn't have air conditioning.

Joe Downs (02:08):

Yeah, you probably don't. I remember when we traveled over there. We had to search for hotels with air conditioning. It was interesting.

Peter Swain (02:15):

Discomfort is a badge of honor. That's why we don't have suspension in our cars. Fridges don't get cold. Showers aren't powerful. I'm being pretty down. I love my country. Got to save the kick.

Joe Downs (02:25):

Let's see how much, true or false in Britain getting found online is still just someone asking their neighbor if they know a good plumber.

Peter Swain (02:37):

That's true. I once had a couple pull over in a car and ask me for directions. It was about 10 years ago and I said, "Yeah, if you drive down there, take the first left and then you park up and about 200 meters on the right, you'll find somewhere that will sell you a SAT nav."

Joe Downs (02:55):

Oh, that's cold. Peter, today your challenge should you choose to accept it is to explain to our listener why the way customers find businesses has changed more in the last 18 months than maybe the previous decade combined. And here's the thing, most people hear that and think it sounds like a threat and it is, but it's also the biggest, I think, opening for main street business owners that we've seen in a long time, probably since the mass adoption of the internet. And when I see that and before the show we were talking, I said leveling of the playing field and you made a very astute point. It's really a reset, right? It's like starting the game over for the small guy versus the big guy and saying, "Hey, you get to go first now if you want.

(03:52):

" So we're going to get into that. And then as a parting gift, we're going to get into some tools. We're going to cover some tools. A few of them I think everybody's heard of. A couple of them are genuinely newer I think for most people. I think it's going to be the first time most people in our audience are going to hear about them, but it's going to be exciting and I know you have a parting gift as well. I'm assuming you accept this challenge. Let's get into it because here's how I got here, Peter. I came across some research this week. It was a LinkedIn post. However, I'm not going to cite it because the high level headline is what caught my attention, but then it was a bunch of tech geek nerds talking about this subject that we're going to talk about in a way that I couldn't even understand, so there's no way we could make a show out of it.

(04:45):

But I want to use that as a frame here anyway, because the natural reaction when you hear that there's going to be this great reset or that it's actually happening and the old way, the way that me as my business doing whatever it is I'm doing with advertising on Google or Facebook or wherever and I've got my website all SEOed up and optimized for SEO, when you hear that, wait a second, that's all changing, your first reaction is shit.

(05:26):

It's a threat, right? And that's true and I want people to take that seriously because it is a threat. However, it's also an incredible opportunity and my brain immediately went to the opportunity and away from the threat because it's not an on/off switch, this threat. It's just happening. It started, I don't know how long ago. I love you to get into that and it's going to happen I think slowly all at once, but it's happening and we need to be in position forward if we're in business and to the some extent we all are. So here's the headlines, Peter. About 60% of Google searches now end without anyone clicking on anything and that should be terrifying if you're a small business owner who depends on clicks.

(06:17):

How does that happen if you're in disbelief right now as a listener? Well, just imagine you type something in, got an answer built by AI right there in the search result, if you notice it, you go to Google now, you're getting the answer above the links and then you move on. No website, nothing clicked, no need to. And that number's growing because AI is now doing what search engines used to just gesture at, which is actually answering the question in plain English on the spot. So for a big company with a huge marketing department, that's a genuine problem. They built empires on clicks, on paid traffic, on the assumption that you'd always need to visit their website and that assumption is slowly again all at once, slow at once, being yinked out from under them.

(07:10):

And I'm apologize for being long-winded because I need to paint the whole picture for everyone here, but for the small business owner who's credible, specific and clear about what they do on their website and who they serve and Peter, I know you and I want my listener to know that I use those exact words measurably and I'll say them again, the small business owners who is credible, specific and clear about what they do and who they serve on their website, if that's what you are, this is the first time in decades that that playing field is actually resetting. As Peter, the premise I want you to explain to our listeners the concept that AI doesn't pick winners based on who spent more money on Google Ads now or ever, I guess if it's AI. It picks winners based on who it trusts and trust is something a solo operator can earn just as fast as a corporation.

(08:07):

If they know what to do, walk us through what's actually happening here because I want our listener to understand the opportunity before they hear the homework we'll give them.

Peter Swain (08:17):

Okay. So the first thing just to talk into something that I've said a few times in different spaces is that the only difference I can see between an entrepreneur and a non-entrepreneur is an entrepreneur sees changes opportunity and a non-entrepreneur sees change in through the face of fear because you can't make money if there isn't change. We just did a great episode talking about real estate in New York. Well, if the same person owns the same building and never sells the building, literally you can't- Can't make money. If you're a roofer in Boise, you are going to earn significantly less than if you're a roofer in Florida because every year hurricanes sweep through Florida and roofers go to work and you can see, and it's true that hurricanes sweeping through Florida is a bad thing. Of course that's a bad thing and you can be fearful of it, which you should be because it's a hurricane, but you can also go, "Wow, okay, what's the opportunity?" And if you think about it across all business, it's the same thing.

(09:29):

Change is opportunity, that's where it lives. So this is a change. So yes, you should be scared of it and fearful of it and respectful of it, but you should also, as you said, see it as an opportunity. So right, let's unpick some of this.

Joe Downs (09:45):

Maybe start with, maybe quickly frame for us, me, the primary idiot here. How did it work before? I mean, I alluded to it with SEO and this that. How does that actually work without getting too technical? What's changing now and then we can get into obviously why it's so important is it should be obvious, but what we can do about it.

Peter Swain (10:15):

I'm going to go so far back that I hope is helpful.

Joe Downs (10:18):

Yeah, great. So

Peter Swain (10:18):

You've got Paige and Brin. Paige and Brin met at university. One of them had the desire to catalog information. How do I download webpages and categorize it? And one of them had the desire to rank the information and they were working on separate projects and they went, "Hey, these projects could work really well together." So the way that Google started ranking stuff was a system called Page Rank and what Page Rank was based on was based on academic papers. So what I mean by that is you know if an academic paper is good by how many other academic papers cite your paper.

(11:10):

So if Joe wants to study biology, Joe doesn't need to develop an expertise in biology to be able to evaluate the source material. What Joe can do is say, "Hang on a second, this is cited by 750 other academic journals. Well, then I can trust it. " So Google developed this system called PageRank, which looked at how many sites linked to your site, what's called a backlink. So that's the first decision and that still propagates and is still very relevant today. The system of page rank has become more obfuscated. It's not as obvious anymore, but that is still happening. So there are two things that you need to do to rank on Google historically and those two things still the streams of work still exist in ranking on ChatGPT, Claude, et cetera, but the tactics to do it are slightly different. The first is what's called onsite, which is stuff that you do on your website.

(12:25):

So it's stuff that's eminently in your control. How is it written? How is it structured? Does it have the right, what are called markdown things in the background? Is it a certain length of text? Does the website load quickly? There's hundreds of these things, but basically is it good? Is it structurally good?

Joe Downs (12:45):

So to the business owner, none of the things that we think makes it a good website, like is it pretty? Right?

Peter Swain (12:52):

Very not important.

Joe Downs (12:53):

Yeah. Okay.

Peter Swain (12:55):

Is it fast? Incredibly important. Also incredibly important for conversion as well. So yeah, you want to kill your website from a Google perspective and from a conversion perspective, put a modal up when the person hits the website offering them a special offer. Google will downrank you quicker than you can remove that modal back out the other side almost instantly.

Joe Downs (13:23):

Interesting. And it sounds like a great idea.

Peter Swain (13:26):

Because somebody clicked on something to get something and you decided to put something in the way. So Google now says, "Well, if I click on this, I don't get what I thought I was going to get therefore I'm going to take you out and thanks very much. We'll move on. " Anyway, so that's what's called onsite, stuff that you do on the site. Then there's these things called offsite. And if you go back to my original, the two founders, it still tracks. One of them was interested in how do we categorize information on site and one was interested in how do we rank that information off site. So offsite historically would be backlinks, sites linking to you, but nowadays social mentions count, backlinks still count, but now we've got these wonderful things called reviews that very much count. Google business profile very much counts all sorts of other stuff.

(14:31):

And the biggest change has been that ChatGPT, Claude, whatever it might be, knows who Joe is.

(14:47):

So we've added an extra dimension because Google as a general rule doesn't really know who you are as you're looking at ... And I said as a general, this can be purists like throw rocks at me in it right now. If you're one of those, this episode wasn't for you. It's okay. You can move on. I'm explaining this slightly inaccurately to make sure it still makes sense. So this is 90% the truth. Anyway, I just love these people coming and say, "This all true Google and oh, shut up." Yes, Google could do browser fingerprinting, but if you want to have a technical conversation, we'll do it somewhere else. We'll stick to founder conversation.

Joe Downs (15:23):

I'm going to ask a question that maybe isn't as relevant here or you can punt it down the line here if you want, but in summing up how it still works and used to work with the evolution of it, where does the sponsored link ... Where does the money, the corporation throwing money at the situation versus me, the local business, let's say, who doesn't have the budget, where does that factor in all this?

Peter Swain (15:51):

Well, they still have an advantage, but they have an advantage more from an engineering perspective now. Everybody should be doing what I'm about to say. The problem is most small businesses don't do it. You should be paying people to review you on Google. Now, you should not be paying for fake reviews.That's not what I just said. So for example, I worked with a dumpster rental company and we put in a little workflow that said after every booking that was completed, it would send the person a message that said, "Hey, thank you so much for working with us. Please do review us. It makes a huge difference in our ability to reach the community and help people. And as a thank you, we have a monthly draw where we pay for your gas card, I think we did, like a $500 monthly draw for everybody that reviews us.

(16:52):

And review volume goes up from one or two a day up to 20 or 30 a day. Now, why is that so relevant? It's because the average locally geo-fenced business, the majority of their traffic comes from Google Maps. Almost 90% is a map-led view. The person might have gone into google.com, but the thing that then pops up if you search for storage facility in Boise will be the Google Maps.

Joe Downs (17:21):

Yeah, of course.

Peter Swain (17:23):

Yep. Google Maps ranks people based on reviews.

(17:30):

So if you've got a hundred reviews and your competition has got 400 reviews, it doesn't matter whether you're half a mile closer, your competition will appear above you. And the distribution of traffic from first to 10th is an inverse hockey stick. So first place in Google gets around 80 to 85% of the traffic. Second gets about 10, third gets about five, and then it gets really fricking depressing. So yeah, when I used to run an SEO agency, we used to work with this. People come in and go, "Yeah, my SEO company's done great. I've gone from 28th to 23rd. And how much extra money has that made you? " And they're like, "Well, but we've been working on it for a year." I'm like, "No, you don't seem to understand. These three slots are it. That's it. There's nothing else. Everyone from there downwards is seeking a job or a university doing research." That's it.

(18:37):

But where GEO, and it has different words, how do you optimize for the generative engines called ChatGPT is when you, Joe, say, "I'm looking for a storage facility," it now understands who you are because it has memory around who Joe is. So it knows where Joe lives, but it also might know where Joe has a summer house and it also knows the size of your family so it can now start tailoring its suggestions way more than Google ever could. Now what that means is that this is where it gets really exciting. There isn't currently more traffic available from ChatGPT or Cloud, although it is getting very close to parity competitive with Google, but the quality of that traffic is a thousandfold because if somebody comes through Google, say they look for AI coaching for entrepreneurs, they're going to hit my website and then they're going to click around my website and maybe they fill in a contact form.

(20:01):

Whereas if they go into court and say, "I'm looking for an AI coach for entrepreneurs," and it says, "You should probably think about Peter Swain," they're then going to say something like, "Why?" Who is Peter Swain? Or who's Peter Swain? But it's going to take for example, my client list and it probably wouldn't talk about AEG, but it probably would talk about Gordon Ramsey. So it's going to tailor the information it presents back to the user based on its understanding of that user. So I'm getting essentially, this is the best way for me to put it, the perfect hype man.

Joe Downs (20:53):

Specifically tailored-

Peter Swain (20:54):

Doing the work for me.

Joe Downs (20:56):

Specifically, this is the part I think that I want you to explain, specifically tailored to what my search, or I don't know if search is the right word, my inquiry, my conversation with said AI, the context within that conversation specifically tailored to the context within the conversation that I had with my AI chatbot, whatever, whether it was chat or Claude or whoever.

Peter Swain (21:30):

And I'm not talking anecdotally. I'm saying evidentially when we say to people, "Where did you find us?" We do $20,000 sales through the website of people that have talked to ChatGPT or Claude and hit a buy now button. Whereas

Joe Downs (21:50):

With Google,

Peter Swain (21:51):

We book a discovery call.

Joe Downs (21:52):

Yeah. Right. I want to come back to that part in a second, but the example you gave a minute ago was a little creepy because it was me personally in my beach house and my kid, whatever it was. Let's make that my business. I'm launching storage moguls. I need an AI consultant or coach. I'm doing all of this in a Claude project. In my Claude project, now I already knew you, but had I been, if I didn't already know Peter Swain, wasn't already on a podcast with him, I would be asking for advice and guidance from Claude as to, "Look, you now know this entire project I'm launching, this business, this is what it's going to do. It's going to be AI infused, multimodal learning. We're still teaching storage. We're doing this. Who can help me launch this platform, community, education business? I need the best in the business at launching this type of business." And this is what I wanted to tie back together.

(23:12):

And what you said a second ago, that query, that conversation might return, here are the top three names, businesses that I've curated for you based on what I need specific down to the context and the detail, not just who ranks the highest with the best reviews, who knows how to launch an online business education platform, but maybe somebody with my size and my specific niche, with my budget, with my goals, dreams, and aspirations and whatever else context I put in there that would match me with you and not 500 to a thousand to 10,000, I have no idea other Peter Swains out there. Is that a fair

Peter Swain (24:04):

Description? A hundred percent. But it gets even more exciting because if people have listened regularly, which obviously hope they have, if you're first time here, hi, I loved our mustard episode. Can you explain the concept behind that, Joe? Just for people that didn't

Joe Downs (24:29):

Catch it.

(24:30):

So when you're in the mustard business, you sell mustard and you're exceptional at selling mustard. That's what you do. It's what you're known for. It's all anybody knows you for. When you're a sandwich shop, you probably started with a special tea sandwich, but most sandwich shops become just that sandwich shop because Peter likes ham and cheese and Joe likes roast beef and Tom likes turkey and this guy likes that. And well, I want to please not just Peter, I want to please Joe, Tom, Bill, Ted, Fred, whatever. And so I start expanding what I do and in doing that, I dilute what my specialty is, what I'm really good at. And when competition comes along that's really good at making better sandwiches, my moat around my business of being the best at something is now gone.

Peter Swain (25:28):

Perfect. Now the reason I think this concept is so important is because of two things. Number one, that's where your money is, that's where your motives, as you said, but number two, that's also where your fun and your passion is. I don't know about you, but I like nothing more than when I meet a geek in a subject. I met a guy once that built cabanas for pools and he tacked the cables inside the stud wall so they were all in parallel lines. I was like, "Why are you doing that? No one's going to see them." And his answer was, "I'll know it's there." He loved his craft.

Joe Downs (26:14):

We had an electrician and Amish guys in Pennsylvania, a big Amish country, not far from us. They did the same thing when they were redoing our kitchen and I looked at it and said, "I've never seen craftsmanship like that that's going to live behind a wall and no one's going to see it but them and me because I know it's there." And by the way, I need to add something to the mustard example because it's critical to your point and I left it out. The sandwich shop starts trying to please everybody because they want to grow, right? It's a way to grow revenue is to add additional products. When you're only selling mustard, your growth is limited to the growth of the mustard demand market. And I think that's important for what you're about to say because-

Peter Swain (26:59):

It absolutely

Joe Downs (27:00):

Is. Yeah, go ahead. I won't

Peter Swain (27:02):

Still- No, thank you. It's good. So previously, essentially what you just said boils down to this for me, the more scarcity we live in, the more we have to dilute our offering in order to capture larger market share in order to make money. That's basically what we're saying. The more abundance of opportunity you live in, the less you have to dilute in order to increase margin and profitability. So let's take storage margins as an example. It's quite niche to turn around and say community sites that are AI infused. I mean, it's not niche niche, but it's not AI training. What my point is to everybody listening is if you love that and you're great at that, wouldn't it be super cool if that's all you did? If you worked with 10 to 20 people a year at 50 to 100 to 200K contract sizes and you didn't have to say, "Oh, we also do insert blank here and we also do insert blank here and we also do this and we also do this in order to make money, you could just do that.

(28:26):

" And I truly believe that in this AI first world that we're walking into where AI has crossed the chasm from being a productivity tool to being a discovery tool and very soon, this is beyond the scope of our conversation today, it will jump from being just a discovery tool to also being a consumption tool of we'll be able to actually embed forms and experiences inside ChatGPT and Claude. It will shortcut the need to even go to the thing eventually, but right now it is a discoverability tool. So what if you could just be discoverable for just doing the one thing you did? What if you could just do one type of hat

Joe Downs (29:16):

What was the example you used a few episodes ago about the ballerina and astronaut or some ...

Peter Swain (29:21):

Oh yeah, we did this research once of trying to work out how if you were to do a course for ballerinas that wanted to become astronauts, how many potential customers would you have? And it was thousands, you could just do that if you could reach all of them.

Joe Downs (29:39):

If you could reach them, yeah. That could be your primary sole business. You can make an incredible living.

Peter Swain (29:44):

Which with ChatGPT or Claude, you can, because if you produce a website called ballerinastobecomeastronauts.com, then ChatGPT Claude reads it and then ballerinas when they go, "I was thinking about a different career, It'll come up with saying, "Why don't you consider this? Click

Joe Downs (30:02):

Here." So let's take that example through the old way and the new way. So I have a ballerina-

Peter Swain (30:10):

Sorry, Joe. What I just said is a great example and we hinted on it and we worked around it and my brain's been spinning on it. Here's the biggest single difference. Google requires a search. ChatGPT requires an inquiry because the sentence I just said is a ballerina saying, "I'm thinking about changing career. What Google would give you for that historically is careerchoice.com or sports athletes/next steps. It would be an answer to the query of career change for an athlete or a ballerina. Whereas in ChatGPT and Claude, it's the inquiry. It's, I'm thinking about changing careers. You're jumping up six steps earlier in the conversation before the person has even formed a search phrase in their brain.

Joe Downs (31:13):

And let's take a side tangent on that. So let's compare the old way versus the new way, but let's get even more specific. So I own a ballerina to astronaut transformation education platform. I'm the only one because I can't imagine there'd be more than one in the world.

Peter Swain (31:38):

After this episode, we're going to see the spring up.

Joe Downs (31:40):

Right? And let's take your statement earlier that there are thousands of ballerinas who would like to become astronauts someday. If I go to Google as the ... So I'm the business owner and you're the ballerina and now I'm picturing you in a tutu. The old way, Peter, is you're Googling, I'm a ballerina or actually you're not even probably conversing. You're probably just saying, how do I become an astronaut? You're probably not even telling Google you're a ballerina who wants to become an astronaut. You're just saying, how do I become?

Peter Swain (32:24):

NASA.gov/astronaut.

Joe Downs (32:25):

And then maybe four links down career change because it sounds like a career change like you were saying a second ago. But you're going to get space programs, this and that. But nothing specific that says, oh wait, you're a ballerina. Who wants to become an astronaut? Well, that's different. Let me take you over here. And I think that's what we're saying. The new way is, oh, you're not a Navy fighter pilot who wants to become an astronaut, which has a very small gap of a learning curve, I imagine, since that's the first astronauts we're Navy fighter pilots. I'm assuming that's the smallest gap. The ballerina astronaut sounds like a different gap to me. Sounds like there's a little more distance there. And there might be some very specific things that I might need as a ballerina who wants to become an astronaut that my school happens to teach, train, and put you on your way to.

(33:23):

So just the way in which you would search that for ... I didn't even think about that before. It was very different. You wouldn't even be having a conversation with Google. You would just be saying, I want to find my end result, not here's who I am. Now give me the best path to my end result.

Peter Swain (33:42):

100%. Now let's take our silly example and use a really specific example. Imagine, because what I'm going to say should sound absurd. You would never go to Google and say, "I fancy a new book." You do have that conversation in ChatGPT.

Joe Downs (34:03):

You're right because we haven't been trained to converse with Google.

Peter Swain (34:08):

Correct. But all of the data that's getting returned to us, when you go to ChatGPT say, "I fancy a new book," is search data. So our opportunity for ChatGPT to all Claude to recommend us in Google is search response. That's all it is. In ChatGPT, it's the entire gamut of the conversation becomes the potential inroad to our world.

Joe Downs (34:45):

Yeah. When we're on Google, as smart as Google is, amazing as the company is, we're really doing stupid, dumb searches. They're uninformed searches. They're limited information searches.

Peter Swain (34:58):

Yep. And Google is very, very smart, very good, but it can only work with what you give it.

Joe Downs (35:05):

Oh yeah. I'm not knocking Google. I'm saying we are the limiting factor in the search there.

Peter Swain (35:13):

Well, you never had the ability in Google to say, "I want to learn Italian. I've previously tried to learn French and Spanish, but it didn't quite work, but I'm going to Italy in 12 weeks and I want to propose to my fiance. So I want to be able to order for her in Italian in the restaurant. And it's really important to me that I have this nailed down." A, you would never say that in Google. You'd say, "I need to ... How do I learn Italian?" That's what you'd say in Google and you're going to get back Resetta Stone or do a lingo, which are great, but it's just lost all of what the backstory is as to why you want to learn Italian. So somebody could literally have a course that teaches a 12-week accelerated Italian program for people that want to impress their girlfriend and you could make money from it and forget the money for a second, you could serve through it and monetize at the same time.

Joe Downs (36:23):

And by serving, you're enjoying it and monetizing. I'll bet you, or I wonder how different would the results from a Google search be from I want to learn Italian to, I'm planning a trip to Italy to propose to my girlfriend in 12 weeks at a fine Italian restaurant and I want- Should

Peter Swain (36:51):

I put it in and find out?

Joe Downs (36:53):

Yeah, because I'll bet you I don't think the results will be that different. I think you'll still get Duolingo and Rosetta Stone or whatever.

Peter Swain (37:03):

Okay, let's give me a second. Hey, Jet. So I'm going to go to Italy in 12 weeks time because I want to propose to my fiance and I really want to learn Italian so that I can order for her in Italian. I can speak to the restaurant, I can speak to the hotel and I want to propose in Italian. But I'm really nervous because I've tried to learn languages before like French and Spanish and I really didn't do very well. So give me like three options, three courses, like teachers, I don't know, but give me three ways that I can get this done in the next 12 weeks, somebody that I can pay or something I can read or a course I can do or something that would help me with this.

Joe Downs (37:46):

So you're doing an AI versus Google challenge right now and what I was saying, and that's step two, I think. Step one, so I want the listener to believe this is take that exactly what you did, copy and paste that and put that into Google and then your next search just said and Google, "I want to learn Italian." And I'm wondering how different the responses would be in Google. And I don't mean the AI generated response I mean the top links you get. What are the top three positions based on two very different searches? One being what you just did with your AI assistant chet.

Peter Swain (38:27):

See, right. Okay. It's come back. The number on option it's given me is a local Italian tutor that lives about 15 minutes away from me and the logic behind it is because you've not succeeded before in French and Spanish, I don't really want to recommend you an app or a course because I think you might need someone to help you through it because it sounds like there's some, it's words, sounds like there's some psychological stuff going into this as well. And you said you want to learn very specific things because I said order hotel. I don't need to learn Italian. I just need to be able to carry these four examples. The second was PIMSLA, P-I-M-S because it knows that I'm trying to keep my steps up next to my health goals. So it wanted to recommend me an audio course because it said it doesn't want me to dodge this and not start.

(39:36):

And the third is a coffee break Italian for immersion course, which is running in London this coming weekend.

Joe Downs (39:45):

So for folks listening, the second one took into account your health because it knows everything about you. We've gone down that road before, but that's next level AI. It's not next level, it's pretty basic, but for a lot of people, it's next level and that's incredible. And it is illustrating how specific these results are based on the conversation and what everything and everything that Jet, your AI assistant knows about you. Can you copy and paste that same conversation you just had with Jet into a simple Google search and tell me the results

Peter Swain (40:32):

But I would never do that.

Joe Downs (40:33):

I know, but do it. And really what I was saying while you were having fun is I don't think your Google search would differ much with that long lengthy prompt really that you just now paste it into Google versus I want to learn Italian in Google. I don't know that you'll get different results.

Peter Swain (40:57):

Okay. So the AI search in Google, the bit we've been talking about, gives very similar, hire a newer language coach, here's two options for you to use, but they're not local to me. Second is PIMSO the audio, exactly the same one for the second and the third is another course. But the traditional results, what we're competing with is translate.com, Google Translate a Facebook post for Visit the Dollar Mites, Reddit post/Italian, Grammarly and Rick Steve's Europe for a link to a proposal. They're useless.

Joe Downs (41:44):

Right. So we don't even need to do the Google versus Google. Forget it. You've just pointed out how useless they are compared to how useful the AI search was. And

Peter Swain (41:54):

This is what we were talking about is it's not just the chance of me hitting buy now on one of those three that Claude returned to me I don't know the number infinity X, 10X, 50X, 100X.

Joe Downs (42:11):

It's

Peter Swain (42:12):

Immeasurably different.

Joe Downs (42:14):

A stat I read recently was it was 40%. It was a big number. It was a big number compared to just a Google search. I'm sorry. I

Peter Swain (42:25):

Think it's-

Joe Downs (42:26):

Not the buy now, not the act of you clicking, the conversion. The conversion, the actual sale taking place was an astronomically bigger number than just a traditional Google. And that- Yeah.

Peter Swain (42:40):

So traditional Google will be about 2% to 4%. I think this is 10x.

Joe Downs (42:44):

Okay. Oh, there you go. 2% to 4%, it's 40% on Google or 40% from AI. So 10X. Yeah. So that's the conversion Peter once. Who was the first one? The guy in Bath?

Peter Swain (43:02):

Yeah, I need to click through to find his name, but yeah, it says there's a guy in Bath

Joe Downs (43:08):

20

Peter Swain (43:09):

Minutes away

Joe Downs (43:09):

From you. So there's multiple layers here. His conversion went from two to 4% to 40% with you in this search that's happening right now, right? Yep. That's if you found him.

Peter Swain (43:26):

Yep.

Joe Downs (43:26):

You weren't finding him on Google.

Peter Swain (43:29):

Nope.

Joe Downs (43:30):

So you can't even measure what his conversion is based on the search you just put in. He's

Peter Swain (43:35):

Probably going to get 50 times the amount of traffic with 10 times the amount of conversion. So he's probably doing 500 times better with this than that.

Joe Downs (43:47):

What on his website hit based on your search, do you think? Because that's- It will be. This is the part that people need to understand. Your website isn't about how pretty it is now. It's about the information that is contained in it.

Peter Swain (44:10):

And this is where he gets to win because it will be the blog post. It will be the social post. It will be a relatively crappy website. It won't be the $50, $100,000 Burletz duo lingo million dollar production. It'll just be a guy called Brian talking about Italian.

Joe Downs (44:37):

And how he's coached people to do quotes. Why do I live in Barth? Yeah.

Peter Swain (44:44):

When I Sierra Bath

Joe Downs (44:45):

Or

Peter Swain (44:45):

Mention the proposal at some point.

Joe Downs (44:47):

I'm a local Italian, get you from zero to hero so you can travel Italy and find bathrooms and order at restaurants. Maybe he's got blog posts that say that, not, "I'll make you fluent in Italian so you can negotiate million dollar business deals."

Peter Swain (45:07):

And I think the point I'm trying to get to, and the lesson is the lack of lesson almost, is I'm sure there's no strategy informing why he got ranked and promoted. So what would normally happen after literally 30 years running marketing agencies is somebody like him would have to pay somebody like me and somebody like him probably couldn't afford to pay somebody like me. So he probably paid somebody 10 rungs down the ladder who gave him a generic strategy and made him vanilla, literally made him nah, which is why the conversion rates drop so low because he had to say the right thing in the right way in order for us to get him ranked on Google. What I'm saying to people now is, "Just be you, man. Just fill your boots. Just do your thing."

Joe Downs (45:55):

And what I'm saying is, as vanilla as he was, is his website, which means now all of AI knows is simply put what he does, not how pretty what he does is just-

Peter Swain (46:13):

And where this then-

Joe Downs (46:14):

Specifically what he does.

Peter Swain (46:17):

Where this then gets so fascinating and we're going to have to end this. I think we should do it to be continued on this, but this means for me, talking into post experience, my mom has recently retired from being a full-time teacher for 40 years. And as it happens, ironically for this subject, she was a language teacher, so she spoke French and Spanish and Italian and she is looking at how does she earn some money and stay active while she's retired. And we've been talking about tutoring students and there's certain ages that she would rather not do again. I don't want to do that again. And there's certain ages she would. Interestingly, it's the bookends. She loves the beginning of the journey and she loves the 18, 20 piece of the journey. The piece of the Hellyon years, as she refers to them, she's like, "I could leave that alone." I'm like, "Great.

(47:12):

So we can put a course up for those two." And that to me is where this gets exciting of people being asking, not the side hustle, but the ancillary revenue that comes from just doing the thing you already love doing.

Joe Downs (47:33):

You're right. We need to come back and do a part two of this. However, I don't want to leave people hanging because we did say we'd give them some gifts, but we also cannot drone on about how to use this tool and that tool. I'm going to run through some tools like a toolkit. I'm going to name them. I'm going to name them quickly. You wax over quickly about this is how we're going to connect them all. And then I know you've got a gift that you want to give away here. So Peter, the toolkit recommended for taking your business into the GEO world and this is not a heavy lift. This is really, really easy lift front end you need either ChatGPT or Claude for your copy, you need perplexity potentially or something like it. Canva AI. The two or the two types of tools, I'll name two of each that might be newer to some folks.

(48:39):

Again, none of this is going to be challenging, difficult, whatever, GravityWrite or Jasper and Zapier or Make.ai. So that's the toolkit. Can you tell us how they string together and then what your ever so generous gift is and how folks can get it?

Peter Swain (49:01):

So ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity are all going to kind of sit together in a research mode. So we're going to be using those for phrases such as, "Hey, who would you recommend to learn Italian in Philadelphia?" And we're assuming for this, it's not the person that's typing it in. So the next thing is, great, why did you recommend them? From a technical perspective, what did they do that let you recommend them? So one of the great things about the world of online is everybody's playbook is on display. So we can ask ChatGPT or Claude Perplexity, who do you recommend? And then we can ask why it recommended them, which gives us the playbook for us to then go and replicate elsewhere. Canva is where we're going to produce graphics, headers, pictures, images, et cetera. Zap or Zapier and Make Essentially Zapier and Make is where this happens, do this.

(49:56):

So it's how we're going to thread the needle and push systems together, such as I just wrote this in this system, publish it to my WordPress website, that's Zapier and Make. And then Jasper and Gravity, honestly, I prefer using Claude for my writing, but Jasper and Gravity are pretty good at getting stuff written in a good way. And the gift is we've done a few of these now where we've kind of spoke into the prompt or the tool on the podcast and a few people have written in and told us that they love it, but it's not necessarily the right format. So what I thought we'd do is start producing kind of a two-page playbook that goes with the episode and maybe we'll carry it on if people love it, maybe we won't, we'll see. But at least for this episode we'll put a link in the show notes that have the tools that we just said, links to the tools, a quick writeup, and also the prompts that we just dropped as well.

Joe Downs (50:55):

I love it. It's incredibly generous of you benefactor of peterswain.com and your coaching consulting mastermind. So it's very generous of you and folks- I need people on the beach

Peter Swain (51:09):

With me.

Joe Downs (51:12):

You need people on the beach with me. Oh yeah, I know. I know where you're going with that. Yeah. We've got to

Peter Swain (51:15):

Get everybody AI enabled, otherwise we're going to be shouting out to an empty

Joe Downs (51:19):

Room. The goal is to be able to run whatever your business is from an iPad on the beach. That's always the goal. And folks, the tools that we're going to put in this, that Peter is going to put in the link in the show notes, every one of them has a free tier to start. So there's not a huge investment to check it out, see how this can work for you. And even after that, it's not a big heavy investment either. So the investment's actually just a few hours and the willingness to show up differently than you have been before and make these changes because they're happening now. They're not coming, they've already started. And so you're already, whether you realize that or not missing out potentially, or maybe you are seeing an uptick and you don't understand why.

(52:11):

So it's going to happen slowly at once folks, so get on board. And what you get on the other side is a business that AI will find, understand, and recommend, and not just recommend, recommend with authority to a conversion rate you have never seen before. The businesses that get there first are going to have the edge and that is genuinely hard to close later, that gap that you're going to create for yourself. So the window to be early is still open, but it is not going to be open forever, folks. Again, if you want to go deeper on anything in real estate with a special emphasis on self-storage, storage muggles.ai is my company, again, peterswain.com. If you have any AI coaching needs, mastermind, highly recommend I'm not only a member of the, what is it? I'm not only the president of the hair club for men, I'm also a member.

(53:13):

That's not a joke I should be making anymore if you're watching the YouTube. Keep those emails coming idiots@successfulidiots.com. We appreciate it. Love hearing about your successes, your wins and your challenges. We are here for you. We're having fun, but we love serving you as well. For Peter Sween, I am Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.