IAM2130 – Understanding Human Behavior and Leveraging on Technology to Widen Business Visibility

On this episode, Gresh emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions when using AI tools for content creation. He recommends using AI content writers like ChatGPT and Google Bard to streamline the content creation process.

Gresh sees AI as a tool that can free up time for more creative pursuits, allowing for greater focus on creativity and innovation. Gresh believes that SEO will continue to evolve, with a focus on understanding human behavior and leveraging technology to enhance search experiences.

Gresh shares his journey of building a media company and leveraging different streams of revenue, including digital marketing, podcasting, and affiliate marketing.

He emphasizes the importance of creating valuable resources and supporting community initiatives to drive business growth and impact.

Business Pillar: Visibility & Technology

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Full Interview:

Transcription:

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Gresham Harkless Intro 00:00

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast. I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you can do is be on somebody else's media company. So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast. And I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the Eight Business Pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content, a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing.

So make sure of course that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course you take some time out. Check out the show notes to subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well, too, and get to learn about some of those Eight Business Pillars and how you can continue to leverage and build that up. So you can go from builder to architect to a course at Rockstar and Luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoyed this I AM CEO special episode.

Daniel Bisset 00:53

Are you using AI, Gresh, in any of your content creation? If so, what tools and how?

Gresham Harkless 00:55

I think what will be the big opportunity for marketers will be for people that are creating content and even leaders in general is how to synthesize that AI information, whether to make sure that you're asking the right questions for which is like very underrated to be able to say, okay, the AI is not going to go inside your brain, at least not yet, to figure out exactly what it is that you're trying to ask. It's going to have to have that information asked in a certain type of way.

So I think that's probably the big opportunity is to be able to use the strategy and to leverage that. And it's good at everything. So we use it in different tools. We use AI content writers, of course, chat GPT and Google Bard, or of course, the biggest ones, that everyone's talking about because they're pretty much free to use to some degree. So you tested out some of those using everything from ad copy to actually looking at how blog posts are created and things like that. But I think once, if you assume that everybody's going to use AI, then it's always like, how do you go to extra mile?

And I think that's your mile is going to be coming back to those people that are able to synthesize that information and go a step further to provide a quote from this respective person only whatever that might be or what that looks like for the content is really like how you're gonna be able to go that extra mile.

Tricia Ulberg 02:18

How do you see this affecting your ability to write creative content? Do you think, feel like this is going to be something that you are going to work in tandem with your own style? Is that how you see that working?

Gresham Harkless02:30

Yeah, I think it's basically like a cheat code. It's gonna allow you to get past some of the things so that you can work on more of the creative things. I think I have this quote that I always say, the systems will set you free. And I think AI is one of those systems because I think it will allow the opportunity to be more creative because a lot of the nuts and bolts and things that we had to take more time or spend more energy on are moved to the side. So now you have a starter as far as what you want to create and then you get to add more creativity, you get to spend more energy there. So I definitely foresee myself and I think many others being able to use the AI tools that get started get a baseline maybe even kick around ideas and then you can tap in to your creativity from there.

Tricia Ulberg 03:11

Okay like that.

Daniel Bisset 03:12

So I've been using AI since it came out. I totally geeked out on it. I've got GPT Pro. I'm not going to lie. Totally. OK, yeah. All right. $29 a month. Hell yeah. Let's just see what I can do with this. And I've tested AutoGPT to see if it can basically run itself. And it does. It's neat to some degree. With content creation and the fact that we can take somebody's voice and use a tool to learn their voice and then recreate it we can take a tool to take somebody's face and then manipulate it. Where do we go from here as content creators?

Like the OG content creators, what in your opinion and I know here's the crystal ball aggression. It's all on you. You've got to get this right. No pressure. But how do we protect our clients' best interest? Yes, we can use ChatGPT, just like you're saying, to initiate a good article or tweak it or mold it. That's all well and good, but that's total short term. What's the long term game that we need to get in on the mindset right now to start advising our clients for two years from now? What do you think?

Gresham Harkless 04:37

Great question. Yeah, that's an awesome question. I almost wanna put that question in ChatGPT, to see what answer it might give. That might be the best thing, but I think that's the big part. It is just like asking the question of how you can work in tandem with all this technology two years down the line, 10 years down the line, not ignore it. And I think that even if we go far back, so many people said the internet was a fad or it wasn't gonna be a thing that we weren't gonna be using cell phones.

So there's always these technology shifts that are happening. And as a leader, as a leader of an organization especially, I think the thing that you wanna be able to ask is, how can I really leverage the strengths of these tools but at the same time not lose the creativity and opportunity to create something new? And there's this book called Range, which has been one of my favorite reads, because a lot of what he talks about doing is that the opportunity is not in fighting a lot of the kind of specialization of technology or things, but really understanding how you can collectively put together 5, 10, 20 different things and create new solutions from that.

So I think if I'm talking with anybody, I'm saying I don't necessarily know the exact answer, but I do know that you want to be able to look at all the things that are happening, look at the strengths of the technology of ChatGPT’s of the world and other technology tools and not just say, hey, this is taking my content writing away, but instead ask a question of how can I leverage this so that I can use this ability to write a piece of content a lot quicker and couple it with other aspects that are also changing simultaneously?

And I think the gift and the curse is that it doesn't provide you an exact answer, but that's where the opportunity is in the same vein. So if you're able to be okay with not having the exact answer, but still wanting to be able to experiment and be in that spirit, I think that's really where we're going to be in two years and definitely farther beyond that because things are changing so rapidly and you're not going to know the exact answer and that's not okay for everybody. But I think for people that it might be okay with and there's a great opportunity from them.

Tricia Ulberg 06:54

I agree.

Gresham Harkless 06:54

I don't know that answer.

Tricia Ulberg 06:56

Yeah, no that makes sense to me because it is new and it's going to be interesting to see how it changes the creative world. I'll be honest, when this is gonna be interesting to see how we can leverage AI technology to help us still be creative and create bigger and better things, you're right, it's not going away. It's a technology that's here to stay. And it's going to be interesting to see how we can utilize that and still keep the creative spirit, if that makes sense. But I do think that it's possible. I think we're going to figure out how to do that.

Daniel Bisset 07:28

So my question then is with right now, our search engines work one way and tomorrow they're going to be very different. And people aren't going to be going to Google and then following through to our websites. They're going to be getting all of the answers from the AI that scraped our website. So I feel, and Gresh, I'm totally, if Tricia is saying for you, I want y'all's opinions, but I feel like I'm not gonna use the cliche SEO is dead, but the way that we've been playing the content game necessarily has to change.

And I feel that the hesitation that you can hear in my voice, yeah, that could probably be programmed in while I'm thinking that that could be faked. I'm sure. But platforms like TikTok say, or YouTube where there's a pretty good chance, probably like a 90% chance or even 80% chance that that's a real human that's speaking the content as opposed to an AI fabricated version of a real human that's providing the content. I feel like this video format is going to take on an entirely new role in all that we're doing for our clients. What do you think about that, Gresh? Concur or totally disagree.

Gresham Harkless 08:59

Yeah. I had this conversation too, and when we were having the exact same AI kind of conversation around SEO kind of being dead. And I think you're absolutely right where you hit the nail on the head, where I think the way that we look at SEO is going to be completely different. And I always go back and I try to remind myself, And I think even as we're having these chat GPT, these AI conversations where it seems like the technology is taking over, I always try to remind myself that a lot of the data, the information, the technology is trying to replicate human activity.

And anytime we think about that, we don't want to lose sight of it being the reason that SEO works the way that it does is because Google is trying to predict exactly what you're going to search for. ChatGPT, the reason that they're able to collate a lot of that information is because they looked at how we as humans are searching for certain things and they find that information. So I really say all that to say that I think SEO of course is going to be completely different.

Some would argue it's completely different every minute that we're thinking of what we're going to try to search for. But I think that the desire for people to search is not going to go away. What we're optimizing is probably going to be different. And so I think SEO, as far as making sure like your website, your title tag, meta description, all those aspects are in place, is going to be completely different. But people are searching on TikTok as the younger generations are more likely to search on TikTok. I think that there is going to be an S per se for optimizing things that from that standpoint.

So I think the big thing is just really paying attention as much as possible to like what we as humans desire and especially things that we need and then trying to work backwards from there and hopefully leverage the technology. Maybe I'm being too optimistic and the computers will take over, but that's just how I try to remind myself is that I guess I just believe that the computers are going to be behind in some form, shape or fashion if we do that deep work and understand that human part. But who knows? I might be completely different singing the Jetson song in a year or two.

Tricia Ulberg 11:03

I'm with you. I agree with you.

Daniel Bisset11:06

I love what you said. And I don't think I've heard it put to me that way. But all these tools are emulating humans. So You can't take the human. So I think we will not always, but we will continue to trump the AI that's available. So we've talked about AI and content. Have you started using AI or have you been using AI in paid ad strategy at all?

Gresham Harkless 11:35

I haven't. We don't do as much paid ads as organic. However, I have been looking at different tools. So I definitely will be. That's definitely the truth.

Daniel Bisset 11:45

Yeah, I'm the same. Our focus has not been in the paid space for well over a year, really. And so I feel like that territory is going to be totally different by the time we re-enter. So you've got a lot of different, it's a media group, right? You've got a lot of different pieces in your very large puzzle. I'm curious about the strategy behind the diversification. Is it to have different revenue streams coming in, some of them more passive than others? And I see that you do a lot of work for nonprofits.

So kudos to you. We also do a lot of nonprofit work, so we appreciate seeing it and others as well. Can you give us the top 5 pieces of your puzzle and from a digital marketing, digital agency perspective, what's working best for you so that we could learn from you in that regard and others who might who might have access to this at a later point can take some notes and get some tips tricks and ideas.

Gresham Harkless 12:58

Yeah no I definitely appreciate that and I'm definitely like I mentioned you know before very much so a busybody so I have so many different interests and things that I really try to focus on. I think when I started my business, and this was 10 years ago, I fell into the digital marketing and really it was just like building websites. It was SEO at that time. And I think that's what really ended up being like the foundation of the things that I was hoping to do.

And as kind of time progressed, I really started to ask myself if I had unlimited revenue or in time to invest in something like where would I do that and that's where something I was already working on came into play so that's where the interviews I used to interviews and I still do CEOs entrepreneurs and business owners to find out like why they started their business advice that they had and at that time a lot of it was just around hoping that I would learn about business because I didn't really have that background.

I didn't really have that environment at that time to know even what you should do or things that you should think about. So that's where the CB Nation part came alive and I really started to realize that, hey, I heard podcasting is a thing. I have all these recorded interviews that I was turning into blog posts, so let me start a podcast. And it just organically happened from there. So those are definitely the 2 biggest parts to answer your question, the blue 16 and then the CB nation. And when I was asking that question of if I had the unlimited time, unlimited resources, where would I invest?

A lot of it came to, I would probably just create a lot of information that would help to serve the people that I'm trying to work with. And I would say I would buy an entrepreneur magazine. I would buy like this resource that's very, very important. And when I started to realize is that I had planted some seeds that was doing that to some degree. So I knew that still the digital marketing was still my kind of bread and butter, what kept the lights on for lack of a better term. And that's where I started to say, okay, if I could take this and maybe rebrand it into a resource that doesn't steer people away. If you don't want to work with us, don't visit our site.

I didn't want that feeling there, but I wanted to be able to say that we're help supporting this program or this sites or these community of sites. And that's just where everything took out. So I would say after that, like it was really the podcast. I had a weekly podcast that I ended up deciding to launch a daily podcast called the I AM CEO Podcast. And yeah, so I hit 1600 episodes and I said that if I could use this to maybe generate some opportunities for my digital marketing, let me try to do that.

So I really thought about, okay, this whole process that I'm going through on how to get guests, maybe I can offer them an SEO audit. So that's where I started to add little things there that could hopefully feed the other, the most foundational side of the business. But now I'm at the point where I'm looking at other different streams, affiliate marketing, I've done sponsored content, just different ways that I can continue to drive different streams of revenue.

But I think I always, like I mentioned, very optimistic, so I always say, what can I do to quote unquote take over the world? And that's like how I try to approach it. I usually bite off more than I can chew and try to find a way to nibble it on or try to readjust it and try to fit in as much as possible. So hopefully that answered your questions.

Tricia Ulberg 16:20

You sound like an entrepreneur. That's what you sound like.

Gresham Harkless Outro 16:23

Hello, Hello, this is Gresh again and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these eight pillars and show you as a builder, how you can leverage these eight pillars and really level up there. So it helps you level up your business and organization.

So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guess it on their episode and of course learn more a little bit more about us as well too this is Gresh signing out I'll be up a phenomenal rest of day.

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