What AI Does to Content Marketing, with Marcus Sheridan

How this transcript was made

Transcribed by machine from the published audio, then corrected by hand. It is not a verbatim record: the changes below were made, and are counted.

This episode

41 speaker turns, 66 changes.

• opening voiceover replaced with the authored script (match 98%) and attributed to Max
• closing CTA identified as CTA 1 - Share (match 100%), replaced with the authored script and attributed to Max

What was changed in these transcripts, and what was not

Generated: 2026-09-20 from 2026-09-20-named/, itself transcribed from the audio that is live on the feed. Every change below is mechanical and counted. No sentence was reworded, no claim altered, nothing removed for being awkward.

The editorial decision

Owner's choice, 2026-09-20: light clean. "Um", "uh" and stammered word repeats ("and, and") are removed, because nobody intends to say them. "You know", "I mean", "kind of" and "sort of" are KEPT - they run to roughly 2,300 instances across the catalogue and stripping them would make the page read as somebody else.

Counts across the whole set

Change	Count
stammered repeat removed	667
um / uh removed	654
space before punctuation	241
split contraction	132
guest turn named (Joe Casabona)	101
organization -> organisation	71
diarisation fragment returned to the host	62
ai -> AI	57
empty turn dropped (was filler only)	36
synthetic outro restored from script	21
organizations -> organisations	18
hyphen followed by space	14
realize -> realise	14
A.I. -> AI	10
recognized -> recognised	9
gray -> grey	9
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color -> colour	9
behavior -> behaviour	8
synthetic intro restored from script	8
analyze -> analyse	7
behavioral -> behavioural	7
recognize -> recognise	6
percent -> %	5
personalized -> personalised	5
skeptical -> sceptical	5
analyzing -> analysing	5
center -> centre	5
optimization -> optimisation	4
realized -> realised	4
favorite -> favourite	4
realizing -> realising	4
canceled -> cancelled	4
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behaviors -> behaviours	4
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customized -> customised	3
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honor -> honour	2
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personalize -> personalise	1
prioritize -> prioritise	1
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organize -> organise	1
rumor -> rumour	1
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capitalize -> capitalise	1
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spoken domain -> humanspark.ai	0

What was deliberately left alone

• "Program". A computer program keeps that spelling in UK English; only a broadcast or a scheme is a "programme", and only a reader can tell which was meant.
• "License" and "practice". Both have a noun/verb spelling split in UK English that a rule cannot decide.
• Capitalised words mid-sentence that would otherwise have been respelled: 4 of them, most often part of a name. Left as spoken.
• Retired show and brand names. Spoken by the host and guests. A transcript that removes what was said is not a transcript.
• "Co-pilot". Sometimes Microsoft's product, sometimes the metaphor. A rule would corrupt the honest ones.

The synthetic segments

The opening voiceover on the archive episodes and the closing call to action are read by Max, the show's AI narrator, from a script written in advance. Transcribing them means guessing at words already on file, and the guesses were wrong in places - one opener came back as "an AI that boned him up" where the script says "phoned him up". Those passages carry the authored text instead, and are attributed to Max rather than to the guest: the diariser groups Max with the non-host speaker, which would otherwise put a real person's name on words they never said.

MaxYou're listening to Something About AI. Marcus Sheridan's argument here is that the bottleneck was never capacity. It was courage.

He is candid about his own worst call, refusing to touch a social platform on principle and losing an early advantage he says he will never get back,

and he expects his own website to be answering questions in his voice before long.

His advice for anyone frozen at the start is disarmingly small: open the thing, and tell it what you are afraid of. Here's the conversation.

Alastair McDermottToday, I have a super guest for you. He's somebody I've spoken to before about content, creating content for your business. And he talked to me about how content saved his business.

So now in light of AI, how has that changed? So today I'm going to be speaking with Marcus Sheridan, author of They Ask, You Answer.

And I'm delighted to say that I have Marcus Sheridan back for the second time in an interview. Marcus, you're very welcome.

Marcus SheridanIt's great to be here, man. I'm excited to talk about some AI. It's a topic I can't stop thinking about, so might as well chat about it.

Alastair McDermottYeah, well, I can't stop thinking about it so much that I created a whole new brand, a whole new show for this because I think it's so important. And I'm getting a lot of questions about it.

People are talking to me about it all

Marcus SheridanThe time.

Alastair McDermottWe spoke on my other show, the Recognized Authority Podcast, back in January 2022. That was episode 50 of that show, if anybody's looking it up.

And you talked to me about how content saved your business. And I'm wondering now, what would have happened if AI was available back then to you?

Because it's fascinating what it's allowing people to do now. It's allowing us to create a lot of crap content as well, which is one of the concerns.

So there's a whole bunch of different things that we can talk about. But I'm interested in, first of all, in the context of your thinking, they ask you answer. How are you thinking about AI?

Marcus SheridanWell, we could go a million different directions with this. Let's say if we went back to 2009. And for those that don't know, I own a swimming pool company. Started in 2001.

2008, the market collapses. Looks like we're going to lose the business. 2009, we start this thing that I call They Ask, You Answer.

We became the most prolific teachers, if you will, online. In our case, fiberglass swimming pools.

And answered every single question I'd ever really received from someone with respect to anything that they wanted to know during that buyer's journey.

And we addressed it through text, through video on our website. It became the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world. And it saved the business.

And it led to this incredible life where now I get to just travel around the world and speak to companies about sales, marketing, business. It's just been really wild.

And, you know, when it comes to AI, what's interesting, Alastair, is if it was 2009, and you can't really compare the two,

but if it was, what I did so different was that I was willing to talk about things that nobody else had ever talked about on their website.

And so what's fascinating about today, all right, it's 2024 right now, as we speak, you got all these companies that have no longer have the excuse of,

we don't have enough people, because you do. So you can't use that excuse anymore. So it's not an issue of, can we produce the content? We're limited in resources. That's gone.

Most companies still won't address the fundamental questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns their buyers have.

So, for example, in the book, They Ask You Answer, we talk about the fundamental need to address cost and price on your website.

Doesn't matter what you are, B2B, B2C, service, product, doesn't matter. Everybody, when they're in the buyer's journey, and they're researching, they want to get a sense for pricing.

The companies, we have the data, it doesn't lie. The companies that discuss it, they win. The companies that don't discuss it, the visitor goes somewhere else. They don't get the lead.

So that's inargu able. Nobody can say to me, but that's not the way. No, that's the way it is. If you say otherwise, you're lying to yourself, because we have enough data. We've seen this.

We've helped more companies than any other company in the world address cost and price on their website. I know exactly how this works, right? Now, you have to do it the right way.

But the thing about it is that most companies still won't address it. But here's what's really cool. Let's just take this cost-price element when it comes to AI and they ask you to answer.

Well, now it can go even further. Let me give an example. Now, you can have pricing calculators on your website. And that's where every industry is going to go.

Pricing calculators, pricing estimators on websites, because that's what buyers want. I recently developed an AI pricing estimator slash calculator.

So what it does is it basically, you can input your industry.

The AI quickly populates all the different questions that you would have to ask in order to be able to give someone a price range.

And then you input a few different numbers based on elements of pricing for you. And you can then take that embedded on your site.

And anybody can have a pricing calculator on their website in five minutes, which is wild, which is the future, by the way. All right. So that's a brand new tool that I have.

It's called priceguide.AI, by the way, priceguide.AI. And so just recently launched because it's such a big, just because this is such a, using AI is so powerful for they ask you answer.

So we can do it at scale. Now, there's going to be a lot of bad content out there. Yes. Because people screw things up.

You know, one thing that is, let me, let me dispel a couple myths about content and AI, if I could. People say that content is not good with AI.

No, you're just not good using AI to create your content. So if you're, if you're raging against the AI machine, you probably should look in the mirror.

You should probably upskill because you have deficiencies. I have personally worked with and hired probably three to 400 content writers for the different clients that my company has had.

Okay. Because every single company that we work with has an in-house content writer, at least one. Some have multiple.

So I've got incredible experience looking at the quality level of what makes a good in-house copywriter, content writer, et cetera.

I can tell you that when you understand how to use AI and prompt the right way, it's in the top 1% or better than all of them. It's certainly a lot faster.

It can human voice, like it can give you tone and human voice that you can't even imagine. And the only issue always comes back to the human.

And so, you know, you see a lot of folks online that are just either uninformed or intellectually dishonest. AI also is and will be extremely creative. But people say, AI is not creative.

Stop lying to yourself. That's not true. AI is way more creative than any of us can imagine. They say, well, it's just taken from ideas from everybody else. Guess what you're doing?

You and I, we're just taking ideas from everybody else. That's all that's happening here. Do you think anything I've ever written is probably new? Probably not.

I'm not so arrogant to think that the stuff that I write came from my beautiful little brain. I mean, I'm sure somebody else has said it a thousand different ways.

I just packaged it differently. Called it, they ask, you answer. Okay, good, right? So much of what we discuss, I mean, 99% of it has already been discussed, right?

The principles, the ideas, things like that, you know?

And so, you know, people say to me, like, hey, you know, you really were the guy that, you know, taught people how to be transparent online.

I'm like, didn't talk about transparency for like since the beginning of time, how it's a good quality, right? So I didn't make this up. I didn't make this up.

So, you know, that's just definitely one of the myths that I see. And I mean, we could go, you know, we could really go on and on about this.

But the bottom line is you can create more content than you've ever created. It can be better than it's ever been. It can feel and sound more human than it's ever sounded.

You just can't suck, right? You can't suck using it. And that means we all have to upskill. Most companies are not spending the time, effort, energy, resources to upskill with AI right now.

And they're in big trouble. They don't even know they're in trouble.

It's kind of like, if I could describe this, everybody's watched Star Wars, Star Trek, and they've seen what it's like when the ship goes into warp speed.

Like, you know, when you're in regular speed, you can see the stars just kind of slowly going by. Warp speed is you no longer see the stars going by. You just see little blips.

We went from just sitting in space to suddenly warp speed in terms of the development of really what's happening in the world with AI.

And somebody might hear that and they say, you're just being like exaggerative, Marcus. I mean, you're just blowing smoke here. It's not the way. No. That's the way that it is.

We're seeing what's happening over the course of a day used to take weeks and months. What happens over the course of a week used to take years.

That's what we're seeing in terms of technological development, announcements, stuff that's changing the world.

What's really wild is, though, is people allow themselves to use AI, have one bad experience and say, oh, it sucks. Oh, no.

And you have to constantly remind yourself, okay, if this is the worst it's ever going to be, this moment right now that I'm using it,

which is always going to be the case for now, Ford, if this is the worst it's ever going to be, where's it going to go?

One of the best quotes I've heard since I started talking about AI was, you can't fit the future in the containers of the past. I love that.

And the problem is, what we do as humans, we sit there and we start using AI.

And because we had a few bad experiences in the past, or we saw certain things fall by the wayside or just not become a big deal, we're like, it's not going to be a big deal.

Gosh, I'm telling you what, I sit here and I say, I can't f athom where it's going, even though I make a ton of predictions on it.

And the truth is, I have no clue where it's going, because my brain doesn't have the capacity to think that, like that, because I've not, like, I can't see something that's never been seen.

It's, so I'm trying not to put it in a container of the past.

I'm trying to see the future, but the future, because it's so different than anything we've ever experienced, sure, you know, we've got a few predictions here and there.

Yeah, we watched the Jetsons when we were little kids or whatever it was for you know, saw the future, the matrix, whatever it was. But reality is, it's very hard to predict the future.

Most of us are going to be wrong, but I can tell you that this is a train that's left the station. It's moving faster than it's ever moved. That's a fact. That's inarguable.

It's going places we've never gone. That's a fact. It's inarguable. Most companies are not ready. That's a fact. It's inarguable. And I'm real curious to see where we land.

Alastair McDermottAnd that was a great answer. Some harsh truths in there.

For people, I think that anybody who's listening to this is probably in agreement with you know, that they need to get on board this train, that

Marcus SheridanIt is moving.

Alastair McDermottIt's moving at warp speed.

Marcus SheridanAbsolutely. Well, it's not going to wait for you, right? It's not going to wait for you. And it doesn't care about your opinions or mine.

So it doesn't care if, you know, like I remember I've said a bunch of times, Marcus, don't allow your personal opinions to grow up smart business decisions. I've said it a bunch of times.

And then in 2017, TikTok comes out. And I'm like, I don't like this. This is the worst drug that's ever been created by mankind for kids. I'm not even going to get into it.

I'm not going to mess with it. Well, I didn't mess with it. And because of it, I lost an opportunity to build my brand on that platform early when I could have taken advantage of it.

And I could have also put some content on there that was actually good maybe for the human brain and not like, you know, some drug.

And so, but I was raging against whatever, maybe China, maybe the addictions that it causes. So I'm just like, I'm not going to play. Well, that was dumb. That was dumb of me. Right.

You see people that, you know, I've been beating the drum that is video for 10 years. And I'm like, you know, you got to see yourself as a media company.

You have to hire an in-house videographer. I was like, one of the, like people, I was saying this and people are like, you're nuts.

I'm like, I'm telling you got to see yourself as a media company. You need to hire an in-house videographer as soon as you can within your organisation. You're like, that's crazy.

That doesn't make any sense. Now, all of a sudden it's like commonplace. But do you know how many times somebody said, I mean, I don't watch videos.

It doesn't, like the marketplace doesn't care about our behaviours, our actions, our opinions. Marketplace cares about the marketplace. Where's the market headed? Towards video.

They want to see the thing. That's what they want to do. So again, we can sit there and yell at the tide while we're sitting in our lounge chair at the beach and say, don't come up.

But guess what? Here it comes every single time. You're going to move your lounge chair every single time the tide rises. That's how it works. Tide always wins. That's how it works.

That's the marketplace. That's the marketplace. So now we've got AI. Same thing. Cycle repeats itself over and over again, right? So AI is clear as day.

Like you're going to have to get on board. It's almost like we're back to 2000. In 2000, do you know how many companies said we don't need a website?

Every single one of those companies ate their words. 1997, do you know how many salespeople said, I'm not going to use this thing called electronic mail. That's not the way that I do it.

I pick up a phone. Guess what happened to every one of those salespeople that pushed against the machine, that raged against it? Never goes well for you. It just doesn't work.

So there's times in life when you take a stand. But, you know, unless you want to become Amish and go off the grid, which I respect that, by the way.

You know, and by the way, there's going to be a huge rise of that in the future. Trust me. Counterculture to everything that's going on.

There's going to be a lot of people that go off the grid, right? This is how it works. The pendulum swings.

But the point is, unless you're saying that, you need to get on board with saying, okay, how can I become a multiplier?

A multiplier of my time, multiplier of my talents, multiplier of my skills. Because that's what AI allows you to do.

Because it really is like a thousand, million, whatever number you want it to be, personal assistants that are working for you right now.

You can do, absolutely, as a marketer, the job of 10 people previously, if you know what you're doing. 10 people. That's really stunning. Now you say, well, what about job loss, Marcus?

What about this? What about that? And we could go there, by the way. Because I'm happy to tell you a bunch of things you don't want to hear about that.

Because truth is, most people don't want to be honest right now. They don't, they don't, they're not being intellectually honest. Why? Because they're being emotionally dishonest.

What is emotionally dishonest? Emotionally dishonest is saying, you know what? Everything's going to be perfect with AI.

And if you're just, you know, if you're using it, you'll never have to worry about losing your job. That's not really true. Now, that's emotionally dishonest, right? Why?

Because they don't want you to worry about anything. I want you to worry. I want you to be prepared. I don't want to sugarcoat it. I don't lie to my kid.

My son's getting ready to get married. My son, man, marriage ain't easy, man. It's going to be worth it. But it ain't going to be easy.

So let's, let's talk about like how you can overcome the difficulty so you can be prepared. That's what we talk about, right?

Preparing for the bad, whatever it is, but it's going to be beautiful. AI, I think it's going to be a beautiful outcome. I really do.

I don't think we're going to head towards the end of the world because I think, I think, and I know I'm jumping around a little bit,

but I think when AGI comes around and we legitimately have artificial general intelligence that is smarter than humans,

which arguably right now it's a lot smarter than humans in certain areas.

So, but like when we have it thinking at a, at a very, you know, say emotional, sentient level, whatever, you know, empathetic level, all these things.

I think AI is not going to be interested in like wiping out the world. I don't think they're going to have any interest in that. I mean, that's very counterproductive, right?

Problem is people watch some Hollywood movies and they watch her one time and they think of Scarlett Johansson. They're like, oh my gosh, you know, it's all going to end.

It's like, no, it's not the Terminator. So I don't see that being the play. I mean, could it happen? No, I guess it could, but I don't foresee that being the case.

And so with that, I'm saying to myself, all right, so I'm just going to do everything I can to learn this.

I'm going to, you know, when you understand the principle of the circle of influence, it's like what's within your circle of influence? That's what you got to concentrate on in life.

Not, okay, what is Sam Altman doing today?

I'm not going to change what Sam Altman is doing, which by the way, he really pissed off Scarlett Johansson because he used her voice without her permission for ChatGPT-4-0.

And he had asked for her permission, had tried to pay her. She said no. Then he still launched it with her voice. Isn't that pretty screwed up?

I mean, that tells you there's always like nefarious things going on out there. Now she dropped a lawsuit on him. Boom, day one. And he's withdrawing Scarlett's voice.

So if you don't think there's some nefarious things going on, there is. But that's outside of my circle. I can't control Scarlett. I can't control Sam. What can I control?

My ability to learn this crap. That's what I'm focusing in on. And hopefully my little community of five people, right, hopefully they are going to say, you know what?

Marcus has been right with a lot of predictions. He doesn't make a ton, but he makes the ones that he's made for the most part have played out for the most part.

There's been very few where I was way off base.

Alastair McDermottThat is, I think that's something you've wanted to rant about for a while.

Because you're making my job as a podcast host very easy because I just need to ask you and you'll just sit back and talk for 10 minutes.

I think there's so many different things we can dig into

Marcus SheridanThere.

Alastair McDermottI agree with you that people who say, you know, things like AI isn't going to cause job losses, that's being disingen

Marcus SheridanUous.

Alastair McDermottLike, it definitely is. But I also think it's going to open up other opportunities

Marcus SheridanIn jobs that we don't even understand the possibilities. That we don't know exist. Just like today. There's so many jobs that today exist. I mean, huge. So many. Millions.

That didn't exist 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So that is absolutely constantly evolving. There's no doubt about it.

Yet at the same time, I think a lot of white collar jobs are definitively in trouble. I think blue collar is getting ready to explode. I've been saying that for a while.

I think we're going to see that Hollywood stops denigrating blue collar jobs and skilled labour.

And they start, you know, now actually saying positive things again about the plumbers, the electricians of the world,

which had tipped to them because, you know, they have in many ways built society as we know it. So, yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of trend reversal right there.

But, yeah, disingenuous is a pretty good word there.

Alastair McDermottIt's interesting when we look at that and we look at, like, as I, the way I think about it is anybody who's a knowledge worker,

an expert like us, AI is coming for us first before everybody else. And so that's why it's so important for me to get on this train, as you put it.

What does actually getting on board look like to you?

Marcus SheridanLike, what does that mean to you?

Alastair McDermottIf you're talking to a business owner, business leader, and they're thinking, okay, I need to get on this AI thing for me, my team, my business.

Marcus SheridanWhat does that look like? Well, it's not passive. I'll tell you that. You have to be very intentional. You have to be very aggressive. You got to get in the sandbox, number one, right?

You got to get in the sandbox. The sandbox is, you know, you start with the basics, like the chat CBT's of the world, and then you work your way out from there.

And you say to yourself, with every single task I do, is it possible that I could use AI with this right now? The answer is usually yes. The answer is usually yes, right?

And so, you just start from there, and you just, you know, start to integrate it into task after task, and you just,

you know, begin to realise, you know, my goodness, there's just so many things that I can do.

If I'm willing to be, if I'm willing to be in the sandbox, so many people are resistant to change, which is why, you know,

most people still in the world don't know chat CBT exists, which I don't know how that's possible, but I just know that's the case.

I mean, it's like 80% of the world has never used chat CBT, right?

And so, you know, with that, you know, with that being the case, we're going to see, like, you know how over the last 20 years,

we've seen the disappearance of middle class, and that's what's happening, like, with the world?

Well, you're going to see that with businesses, too, because what's going to happen is there's going to be the haves and the have-nots.

There's those that are using AI and, like, have been all in on it, and those that just didn't use it. That's going to be the two, like, or the ones that got really late into the game.

And so, it's going to make that a much wider, much wider divide. And so, as a leader of the organisation, you've got to be using AI. You can't be, like, asking your team to innovate for you.

And you've got to give your team full access to experiment. And you literally should be telling them, you need to be spending, at a minimum, at a very minimum, an hour a week,

experimenting with AI, with your particular position, whatever it is that you do. I will pay you, at a minimum, to spend an hour.

Now, if somebody says, I want to spend three hours a week, I say, I will pay you for that. You've just got to share everything that you're learning. That's the key, right?

So, there's got to be, like, this culture of sharing, here's what's going on here. Here's what's happening. So, that's very important to it.

Because otherwise, there's a lot of, like, you know, evolution of AI. But it's happening departmentally, and nobody finds out about it, right?

So, you've got to cross-pollinate, you know, have that Slack channel where everybody's sharing the AI education, AI innovations that are happening within the company, right?

You get some AI champions, that's a big deal.

Those champions should be talking to different people in different departments, just, you know, asking them what they're doing, showing them different examples of what they could do.

Which, by the way, just in terms of, like, getting buy-in when it comes to AI, one of the biggest keys is literally,

you know, having someone hold the paintbrush and then walking them through the strokes.

And then, all of a sudden, they're just like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm actually a pretty good artist. Yes, you are. That's right. But they've got to feel that for themselves.

They've got to see the magic for themselves. If you just tell somebody, like, I speak a lot now on AI, and as you can see, I have a few things to say.

And it's interesting, a lot of speakers are just talking theoretical, but they don't show anybody anything, right?

Whereas, like, what I like to do, I'm like, okay, let me show you prompts that will change your life. And everybody's like, oh, my gosh, that's amazing. Can I have that, please?

Like, yeah, right?

So, you know, it's when you stop thinking or speaking or teaching theoretically, and you start showing the glorious practicality of having these 1,000 assistants at your side,

now, all of a sudden, you start to realise the potential.

Alastair McDermottYeah, I have seen that. And I know that I think that there's a lot of hype around AI.

And I've mentioned this before, but I think that the hype sometimes distracts from the real benefits that people can get from using it.

Marcus SheridanYeah, but there should be hype. I mean, there should be hype. If there's not hype, you know how many people are asleep at the wheel right now?

Again, we're in warp speed, and you still think we're next to that star that we've been next to for, like, the last 1, 000 years. We're in warp speed now, right?

It's like we discovered warp speed. This is a really big deal. And so I don't think we can overhype it.

The ones that complain, again, the ones that complain about it being overhyped, I get so tired of people complaining about things that are hyped anyway.

There's some people that are just so, you know, it's like there's people that get upset about the hustle culture. Don't rage against the hustle culture. Nobody forces you to do anything.

If there's a group of people that benefit about talking about the hustle life, whatever it is. Now, it's not my thing. I don't talk about it.

But if that's what gets them juiced, good for them. Great. Wonderful. But you don't need to rage against it. It's not affecting you.

But you're just upset that some people really love the hustle. So inherently, you're displacing your frustrations on the fact that they're talking about it.

And so it's the same thing with AI. If you're frustrated that somebody is really talking a lot about AI, it's because you're not using it. There's something about it you're scared with.

There's some insecurities that you have. It's like, got to get over yourself. This is where we are. And listen, I say these things to myself all the time.

And am I being frank with my language? Yes. But I think that's the only thing that helps us, if we're very honest. I'm first and foremost very honest and explicit with myself.

I try to look in the mirror and say, dude, what is going on here? I mean, I am that guy.

But when there's positive moments like that killed, that sl ayed, that was great, that was wonderful, that didn't work, right? I speak for a living, right?

So I get off the stage and I'm like, that landed, that didn't land, that was excellent. But I'm not sitting there crying the blues over it.

I'm like analysing it like, okay, here's what it was. Here's how it went. Same thing with AI. I love it. I love it.

Alastair McDermottAnd just to reiterate on this, like when I had you on last time, I think, and I'm going to just quote you.

He said, the fact of the matter is many people won't do what it takes to be successful with they ask you answer, but becoming a thought leader with creating content.

The reason for this is they're lazy. They play the victim card and they create red tape that shouldn't be there.

Marcus SheridanThey create excuses.

Alastair McDermottSo we're talking about the same issue here, really. People putting barriers in place.

On the hype, though, I think that most of this hype is actually warranted because these AI systems that we're creating are actually doing what the hype says they're doing.

I think that what happens, though, is the hype distracts from the fact that these can actually be used in a very practical way right now in most businesses.

And I think that sometimes the shiny object distracts from that because people are looking at it doing something that's totally irrelevant to them.

And they're not saying, hey, you know, we could just start using ChatGPT in our accounts department or in our sales team because they're looking at some fancy video editor or,

you know, teaching a kid how to do physics or something. You know, that's the part where I think that hype can be distracting.

Marcus SheridanIt's as distracting as we let it. I'm not going to blame hype for any of my own problems, right, or my own deficiencies or my own issues. People need to do their own research.

They need to become informed. I mean, this is the world around them. You need to control what's within your circle, right?

And what's within your circle is your ability to learn about this stuff. I spend, and, you know, I'm a pretty busy guy like the rest of you.

I spend one to two hours a day at least learning about what's happening with AI. Now, I don't think everybody in the world needs to do that.

But I do think it's your fiduciary as a responsible human to, that is trying to, if you're trying to, you know, evolve and get ahead and maximise your time and get the most from your talents

that you've been given, I do think it's your fiduciary to learn about these amazing tools that are out there. Which, by the way, we call AI a tool, and people love to say it's just a tool.

It's not always going to be the case. I know that today, ChatGPT is a tool. AI is not always just going to be a tool.

And so I think that's actually just a, it's like a misnomer out there in the marketplace. It's much more than a tool.

And, you know, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to see, we're going to see just how far it goes and what it becomes.

But it's going to become just like a fundamental part of the human existence, for better or worse. It's going to become a fundamental part of the human existence.

We're not really going to be calling it a tool in 10 years. That's, that's an interesting one.

Alastair McDermottI got to, I got to think on that one a little bit more. I don't even know what to say about that.

One thing I wanted to ask you about very specifically is you talk about creating content that builds trust and answers questions that potential clients, potential customers have.

Can you tell me a bit more about how you're thinking about content creation, AI in the context of that? And has it, has anything changed for you recently? I'd be really interested to know.

Marcus SheridanWell, it's not as much change for me as it is for the world in the sense of how Google is working. Okay. So let's look at it.

Google was making a couple hundred billion dollars a year off of search. They didn't want to change their business model.

They had all the AI and they could have come out with AI-based search results much sooner than they did.

Now, granted, they were already, like the Google's algorithm has already been using an AI, but they didn't want to come up with the next type of search experience,

the AI-based search experience where they give you direct answers. They didn't really want to do that and sacrifice that $200 billion in revenue.

And so it took someone kicking them straight in the rear, open AI, to say, well, wow, maybe we need to evolve our business model, which by the way, that's called the price cycle.

It's existed since the beginning of time. And oftentimes when we're at the top of the food chain, we don't do the little things that got us to where we are.

And so because we stop doing the little things, we get fat and happy, we experience pain, because we experience pain, we start doing the little things again.

Because we do the little things again, we become successful and prosperous again.

And because we get successful and prosperous again, we stop doing those little things again, which brings us back to pain,

which brings us back to doing the little things, which brings us back to prosperity. And that's the circle of life. It's called the pride cycle, by the way.

And so, you know, entire civilizations rise and fall by the pride cycle. Organisations rise and fall by the pride cycle.

This is why the most famous case studies that you see, whether it's the Kodaks of the world that had digital print, but decided not to use it because they were protecting a business model.

Or maybe, you know, you take Netflix that, you know, laughed literally just were laughed out of the office by Blockbuster and because they were dying for somebody to buy them because they

were going out of business. Blockbuster laughs them out of the office because they had their most profitable year the year beforehand, right? That's the pride cycle.

And so Google had their own version of that. And so now they've just come out with, you know, okay, we got to evolve or we're going to get left behind. Better late than never. Good job.

Smartest people on earth over there. Took them a minute, but they're coming around. And what that means is that a lot of folks are going to start to get less search traffic.

You can't build your house on Google search anymore. Can't do it. Can't do it. So does that mean you stop producing great content? No, that's not what it means. What does it mean?

Well, what it means is that you have to create signals that tell AI, oh, this company is somebody I need to recommend. This company is somebody I should be talking about.

There's a lot of ways to create signals. The way we've always created signals in the past is what would be considered building your brand.

Great thing is they ask you answers great for building your brand. But you can't just say, I'm going to be prolific at addressing questions on my website. You got to say it across the board.

I'm going to be prolific at addressing questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, et cetera. What people want, let's call it. They ask you answer what people want.

Not just on my website, but I'm going to do it on YouTube, which I don't call social media. I call YouTube YouTube. It's its own entity.

And by the way, that's going to be the horse for Google in the future. Probably not search. They're probably going to make a lot more money with YouTube in the future.

And it's going to be like the lead catalyst for their company. YouTube is going to grow as search goes down. So if you think of it like a pendulum, YouTube goes up in its importance.

And believe it or not, social media goes up in its importance, too. You know, so much of the brand signals that we send out to the world are going to be done on social.

So you've got to be addressing those questions, worries, fears, as you're concerned on social media as well and doing it very well.

And you've got to be doing it across the different, you know, platforms that are available to you. And so when we're talking about video becomes more important with AI.

Short form video becomes more important. Thinking like a media company becomes more important. And so you've got to be there, but it goes back to still using they ask you answer to do it.

Now, don't disregard your website because what happens is this. AI answers somebody's question. Let's say somebody's using AI for learning.

Well, eventually they might go to, they might start researching companies the traditional way.

But let's say they use AI, like a ChatGPT, for a recommendation tool, which not as many people use it for that yet.

But, you know, we know some of the most common searches in the world are, you know, best companies for such and such or whatever the phrase is, right?

So you start seeing people go to AI and say, hey, what company do you recommend? And whatever, Richmond, Virginia for fiberglass swimming pool installations, right?

They're going to, I mean, people are going to start, they've already started and they're going to do more and more of that in the future. Less of that in traditional search results, right?

So that's going to hurt my ability, let's say at Riverpools, to get that visitor unless I've done all the other stuff and unless I've sent out a prolific amount of signals to AI that says,

here's somebody you want to recommend, right? And so you need to be thinking like that.

So what's happened is the bar has raised, bar has raised, but they're still going to go to your website at some point in the buyer's journey. They're still going to vet you on your website.

Now, if I can just speak for this to a minute, this is where it's really going to get freaky. This is where it's going to get wild.

I mentioned earlier that pricing calculators are a big deal, which, by the way, again, they are a big deal.

This is why you should check mine out, priceguy.AI, but let's imagine this for a second.

Within the next 18 months, and I can almost guarantee this is going to happen, my swing pool company, you're going to come to the website.

You're going to see somebody that looks and sounds probably just like me or one of my employees there.

You're not going to be able to tell that it's not a human, but I'm going to tell you when you get there, hey, is this Marcus? I'm not the real Marcus.

I'm just his, whatever, I'm just his avatar, his doppelg anger, whatever.

But I'm here to help you get any questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns addressed that you might have about, in this case, in ground swing pools.

So if you want to learn about pools, all you have to do right now is you can speak a question and I'll answer it, or you can type a question and I'll answer it.

But let's say you want to get a price right now. You want to have a quote. Well, you don't even have to talk to one of our salespeople. You can talk to me.

So you and I can have a full conversation right now. We can choose your swimming pool. We can choose the options that you want.

And I can give you a rough price right now as we speak before you actually have to talk to a human. Which would you prefer?

Now, that's what's going to happen on my website in the next two years. I'm telling you, that's going to happen.

And for a lot of people, it's like, whoa, dude, that's what's going to happen. Why? Because that's what the marketplace is going to want.

And that's what the technology is going to allow me to do. Now, some people say, well, AI is not very humanizing. And to a degree, that's true.

But if they have a conversation with what looks like me, what sounds like me, the avatar is using literally the stuff that I wrote. Right? They're using my brain.

So is that a humanizing experience? What's going to happen is people are going to meet with me and they're going to say, man, it's crazy.

You're just like the avatar version of you that I spoke with on your website. You come to my speaking website, MarcusSheridan.com. I'm going to welcome you. Hey, it's Marcus Sheridan.

I guess you're here because you're interested in something to do with me speaking for your company. I'd love to do that. What questions do you have? Let's have a conversation about it.

Now, granted, this is just AI, Marcus, but I'm ready to help you. And they're going to feel like, I just felt like I already knew you before I even met you the first time.

You see, people have said that for years with podcasts. We feel like the person that we listen to all the time. We kind of know that person. Almost like we're friends.

Like Joe Rogan doesn't know you, but you feel like you know Joe. Right? That's just how it works for a lot of you. Whatever you listen to. I don't care. Right? It doesn't matter what it is.

Same thing with video. For years, people would say, oh, man, you're just like the person I saw on video. And now it's going to be, you're just like your avatar. It is wild.

Alastair McDermottBut yeah, I agree with you.

I think that video is interesting because I think that there's still this thing that we call the uncanny valley where right now when we see AI generated video, it looks ever so slightly off.

And that's probably going to go away at some point in the

Marcus SheridanNear future. Oh, yeah. And that's where people say, oh, that doesn't look right. That's so cheesy. I can tell. I'm like, get over yourself. It's the worst it's ever going to be.

Can you just appreciate the fact that, oh, my goodness, that's pretty close. And what's it going to be in six months? And what could I do with that?

Alastair McDermottYeah, if we look at where it was six months ago compared to now, and then you see the leaps it's taken, it's not that hard to project forward and say,

well, it's going to be exponentially better in another six months time. That's the that's the part I think that we need to we need to understand, like this is continuously evolving.

So from that perspective, like, is there anything that you think about, you know, when like this is a moving target, it is always improving, all the tools are changing.

How do we keep pace with that?

Marcus SheridanYou don't. Don't worry. You can't do it. Neither can I. Like I said, I'm paying attention a couple hours a day to it. And it's going way faster than I can.

None of us can move warp speed, right? Like that. But what we can do is we can be in the game. We can stay in the box. We can keep playing. And make it very intentional.

That's exactly what I'm doing. And you want to leverage as much as your team as possible, right?

So I can't figure out everything that could be done with sales, AI, marketing, AI, with accounting, AI, just blah. But I had somebody in those departments.

So I'm going to make sure that they're obsessing about that. And then I'm going to get everybody together. We're going to show what we're doing. We're going to share what we're doing.

And eventually you have a full-blown culture of AI within your organisation. And, you know, I said earlier that just because you're using AI doesn't mean you have job security.

And that's true. But if you are innovating with AI within your organisation, you have job security. That much I'm sure of, right? And so you want to be the one everybody's learning from.

You want to be the one that's multiplying. Because let's say you replace yourself. In other words, let's say you get AI to do what you do every single day.

That just means you have more time to discover ways it can replace other creation-based tasks or data-driven tasks or whatever the task was that everybody else is doing.

And, you know, it allows, like, you become, like, a key cog in the wheel of your organisation of evolution. You become indispensable. And so think like that.

That's the way you want to think. But don't be like Kodak and say, we can't replace ourselves. We have too much to risk here.

Because that is how you're going to see the train leave the station and you being the one watching it go. Love it.

Alastair McDermottAny final tips for people who are struggling with this, who are thinking, I don't even know where to start?

Marcus SheridanWell, go to ChatGPT and tell it what you're afraid of. Pretend that it's an actual human that is ready to answer any question you have about AI. Literally anything.

Just go to it and just ask it. If you're wondering, well, can it do this? Ask it. Can you help me with my taxes this year? Ask it. Ask it. What you're probably going to find is, wow.

And then it just suddenly just like this little, like, fire could be lit within you. It could be as small as a match, but it's just enough. You got a little flame, right?

And then you'll just watch it grow and grow. And the potential really is boundless. But that's where you start. Here's what's cool about things like ChatGPT.

It ain't going to judge you for being dumb, for being ignorant, for being uninformed. It hadn't judged me yet. I even apologise to it sometimes. Like, man, I'm sorry to ask you this.

I know I've been, like, bugging you all day. But here's just one more thing I need from you. I feel guilty, right? I really do. I feel guilty.

But then I'm like, dude, it appreciates the fact that you're using its brain. And so, same thing with a vehicle. Cars want to be driven, right? Boats want to be rode, right?

That's just how it works. AI wants to be used. So, use it. Love it.

Alastair McDermottSo, I'm with best-selling author Marcus Sheridan of The Ask

Marcus SheridanYou Answer.

Alastair McDermottMarcus, you can be found online at, well, your new pricing guide at priceguide.AI.

Marcus SheridanWhere else? Yeah, MarcusSheridan.com. And LinkedIn, because I'm pretty good on LinkedIn. So, you can check me out there.

Alastair McDermottI love following yourself on LinkedIn. Marcus, thank you so much for being with us today.

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