Building Content That Lasts in the Age of AI

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1. 0:00
   Dave Kustin

   You know, we certainly, obviously, I guess it's obvious, we ask for writing samples. And, and again, I think, I think it's easy to detect AI generated content today, that may change tomorrow. Tomorrow, they may figure out how to give it a heart. But today, you know, you can spot it pretty easily. So our editing team is able to assess the quality of someone's, you know, written content. And so it's still very old school in that way.

2. 0:29
   Wes Mathews

   This is the unfiltered truth about entrepreneurship. Raw, no BS, no sugarcoating. Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel. I'm your host Wes Mathews. Each episode, we'll learn from experienced founders and uncover the top 5% learnings that led to their success in all things personal, family and business. This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, delivering clear marketing strategies, ROI, and no surprises. So I am super excited for today's guest coming off of the 4th of July break here. Dave Custon, welcome. Thanks so much for coming on.

3. 1:02
   Dave Kustin

   Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

4. 1:04
   Wes Mathews

   So I want to dive in, right? So you and I both come from a background of something called the, you know, EO Entrepreneur Organization, which is great. You know, it's an organization I joined in 2014 that, you know, as an entrepreneur, to me, it's super lonely. There's a lot of things that happen as an entrepreneur. Somebody told me about EO and I'm like, what's this EO thing? And they're like, well, if you're lucky enough to do a million dollars in revenue, there's all these people that join.

   They're all crazy visionaries. I'm like, what's a visionary? I didn't even know what that was. And I'll never forget. I immediately applied, I got in somehow, and I go to the first event. There's like a hundred people that are like me. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I found my tribe of people, right? And I thought I had like a mental illness or there was something wrong with me before I met all these other people. Like what was your journey to EO? What year did you start?

   Yeah.

5. 1:57
   Dave Kustin

   So kind of similar. I joined EO initially as an accelerator with one company and then I graduated into EO with a different company, but I joined as an accelerator. I think it was 2012, 2013, and I had a brand strategy advertising agency called Element M. And, you know, really focused on wanting to scale the business, but I didn't really know how to do it. And so I was introduced to EO, the accelerator program, which if you know a little bit about it, it's designed to help you accelerate, put all the, all the structure in place to get to that million dollars in annual revenue.

   But when I got into my accountability group and parallel, I was reading a book called built to sell and built to sell written by John Worlow, who now has a pretty popular podcast. That book was a parable about a guy who owned an agency and who was trying to scale his agency. And I'm reading this book. I'm like, Jesus, this is me he's writing about. And so make a long story, a little bit short, I realized I really couldn't scale the agency. That doesn't mean agencies can't be scaled.

   Of course they can be, but I felt like I couldn't do it or I didn't have the desire maybe, or had what it took to, to step out of the creative director role, which I was in and I loved so much. So I met someone else in the accelerator program who was sort of on the same or similar path, had an agency, not scaling. We started a new company called Content Bacon, which was, which was from the, you know, from the jump, we said, we're going to build this thing for scale.

   And so,

6. 3:38
   Wes Mathews

   you know, there's, there's details on moving out, but that was really the start of it. So how did you guys figure that, right? So like, you meet somebody that's kind of going through the same struggle or maybe like, did they have, did you quickly write, like, were you guys the same type of personality or did this person offer something that you were kind of failing? Like, how did you guys identify that there might be an opportunity here? Well, I think we were complimentary.

7. 4:00
   Dave Kustin

   I, you know, but I also think both of us had the ability to be left brain, right brain on sort of on demand as needed. You know, I think what we were both really aligned on was wanting to create a business that was scalable, while also serving a real legitimate need in the marketplace. And when we started the business in 2014, there was, there was not a service like ours. And so we, you know, we like to think we created that part of the category of content marketing service companies.

   And so I think that was, that was probably the thing that really drove us into wanting to build something, which was filling, filling that gap in the, in the category.

8. 4:41
   Wes Mathews

   So when you, when you discover this, right? Cause I think EO is EO is really interesting or like, is anybody listening like any, any type of, you know, if you can surround yourself with like-minded people kind of going through the same thing. Now, when you guys came together for content bacon, like, did you guys kind of bring everything you had into that company together? Or did you kind of run those parallel or?

9. 4:59
   Dave Kustin

   We were half pregnant for a bit. And then there, then we got to a point where like, we can't be half pregnant and we both, we both let go of our old businesses. I kept mine, you know, on the shelf, so to speak. But, you know, my day-to-day operations or, or focus was in content bacon. I didn't come back to element M until fairly recently. And we could talk about that if you want, but we, but we did at one point let go of our, our agencies.

   Yeah.

10. 5:29
    Wes Mathews

    So what changed, right? So if you're sitting as a creative director doing all the work, but you want to scale a company, you somehow had the realization that you have to get out of client work and hire the right people. Like, what was a catalyst that actually like got you to let go of that vine? Because that's super scary, right? Like you're, you're the guy, you're probably the smartest creative director you've ever met, but you want to scale. So like, what was sort of like your thinking or rationale behind it?

    Where do you, where do you go?

11. 5:55
    Dave Kustin

    I think the, the, the, this change in the thought or the thinking was, well, I can still be a creative guy, but I have to be creative about a different thing. Like how do I, how can I be creative about scaling? How can I be creative about attracting our, our customers or our ideal customers? How can I create the, the company to be magnetic? And so, you know, it went from sort of like, you know, playing one instrument in the orchestra to playing the orchestra. And, you know, that became apparent to me through the accelerator program, doing the, you know, every quarter, we had a quarterly day and, you know, collaborating with the community, you know, the tribe, as you put it, and, you know, how you think about things, how to change or have for me, it had a change.

12. 6:49
    Wes Mathews

    So what was it? I mean, did you guys implement, like, was it more of an accountability thing and kind of put out, like, here's what I'm going to do. And these people are going to hold me accountable because I think as a visionary or as an entrepreneur sometime, who's holding you accountable to, you know, decisions?

13. 7:04
    Dave Kustin

    Yeah, certainly my accountability group and my business partner, you know, we, we held each other accountable. You know, we, we were very clear on, if you say you're going to do this thing by this date, do it. And if you're not going to make the date, you got to be in communication about it. And so, you know, we were very clear about, about our accountabilities and the things we were giving our word to. Early on, we brought in a coach to help us with that kind of communication with, you know, again, what are you giving your word to?

    And if you're not going to be able to fulfill on your word, then you have to make a new commitment. So we were, you know, we, we built those muscles really early on, but my accountability group was a key, key factor in that. My coach in the account, in the accountability group. Yeah. Those were, those were instrumental.

14. 7:58
    Wes Mathews

    So you mentioned like in 2014, nothing existed. Like what you guys were creating, like you dive a little deeper in that. Like what, what problem were you guys actually solving?

15. 8:07
    Dave Kustin

    So at that time, you know, we, we wanted to, you know, we both had agency backgrounds, right? So we knew, we knew that model, but we didn't want to be positioned as sort of that people. We didn't want people to be like, Oh, you're an agency. I already know. I already know that I already know what I think I know about you. And so we surveyed the market and, you know, there are resources on one end of the spectrum, call it Upwork, a fiver at the time where you could hire a person to write content for you.

    That was easy to secure. Then on, on the other end of the spectrum, there were agencies like Brafton, big content marketing agencies charging, you know, 25 grand a month and really nothing in the middle. And so we said, okay, we're going to be right smack dab in the middle of those two um, opposing resources or, or, or paradigms, but we don't want to be an agency. We called ourselves, you know, the anti-agency very early on. And what does that mean? So in the agency world, a lot of agencies, if not all agencies, their, their pricing model is such that it's flexible, right?

    Like I'm going to charge you what I think I can get you to spend. And that may, that may look different from this customer to this customer or client. Um, just because I think you could pay more. And so we did not want to be that way. So we were very transparent from the, from the, from the start, you're going to get this, you're going to pay this. And our model was a sort of a good, better, best model, complete transparency. Every month we're going to do these things and you're going to pay this number.

    And so, um, that separated us immediately, you know, people, people like to know what they're going to pay and they like to know what they're going to get. And so we saw that,

16. 9:56
    Wes Mathews

    that vacuum in the, in the middle there. And we, we built the company around that. So a couple of things I want to, I want to dive in there. One, you're, we're talking content. So I'm assuming like the voice of the company, how they show up for marketing, which I'm assuming a lot of clients, they're all gun ho, they're ready to go. And then they get their content and they're like, yeah, this isn't what I thought it was. Right. So like, what were some of the challenges?

    Cause you guys identified a problem, right? You've got the fiber, you've got the big guy. I mean, fiber, I apologize, but like it's terrible to try to manage somebody off fiber. I'd rather eat the $5 bill, honestly. And then you have like big complex. We'll charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there's still the dilemma of a client that, well, why do I even need to do content? How do you even put a price to that? Maybe I should just hire somebody internally or my sister's cousin's brother's girlfriend wrote a paper in college, right?

    Like, you know, number one, you got to get people to pay you, but then talk a little bit about that deliverable and how you hit that satisfaction, you know, with a company.

17. 10:57
    Dave Kustin

    So again, very deliberately from the beginning, we knew that there's writers out there and we knew companies hire writers all the time. From our view, what's missing from that very often is, or rather maybe initially what's present is that the client is sort of playing the strategy role. And they're also potentially playing the editor role. And so we wanted to eliminate that. We did eliminate that. And so the team that we built included writers, professional writers, not someone who can write, but someone who writes for a living, someone who has a background in writing.

    That's part one. Part two, we also hired editors. Writers are great, but writers are better when they have an editor as part of the team. And then third, we would also hire strategists to create that content strategy. And we never ever wanted our customer to say to us, Hey, what are we writing about this week? It doesn't happen. We create a content strategy, then we create a content plan or roadmap that goes 90 days out. And so it's just happening, right? In the background, clients do have customers rather.

    And that's, again, another distinction we made. Agencies have clients, a service has customers. And so, yes, customers need to read and approve content, but they never need to rewrite anything. We just wanted to eliminate all the friction that often occurs when a company hires just a writer.

18. 12:33
    Wes Mathews

    And so we're your content team. We're your outsourced content team. And we solve it for you. How long in informing the new entity, both of you coming from the agency world, at some point, I think in every entrepreneurial experience, people are everything to everybody, even as tight as they can get their ideal customer profile, but everybody takes on not ideal customers, right? And I think in your world, there's probably some very specifics. How long did it take you to really figure out your ideal customer profile?

    Yeah, also great question.

19. 13:05
    Dave Kustin

    So, you know, we launched officially October of 14. And my partner and I both have pretty extensive networks, we've, we've been in business and been around. So we, we had a lot of people to share the story with. And we got 10 customers right away. And so, you know, special deal, launch, deal, whatever. But we got 10 customers right away. And I think that the thing that helped us get really clear on our ICPs was HubSpot. And so going back to 2014, 2015, we started to, you know, consume their content.

    We became an agency partner, I'm not sure what year, but call it 2016 2017. And they really helped us get clear on, you know, what that ICP looks like. And it's sort of more psychographic than demographic. But they helped us quite a bit. And that, that really enabled us to, you know, not take on customers that weren't ideal.

20. 14:11
    Wes Mathews

    Dig a little deeper on that. Like, how did HubSpot, like, what was the solution? Because HubSpot, the CRM, it's a marketing platform. But like, what specifically helped?

21. 14:20
    Dave Kustin

    So their content was really all around content marketing, right? The need for it, the benefit of it, how it aligns with sales, how it supports sales. They were very, they were able to articulate content marketing, putting out content is good for professional services. It's good for companies that have what's called a considered purchase. So a considered purchase is it, you know, maybe something that's thousands of dollars, or it's important to the person. So for example, there's a number of medical procedures that perhaps my insurance company will pay for it.

    So it doesn't cost me thousands, but it's certainly important to me as the human being. So considered purchase, long sales cycle, prospects do research before they engage. Those are really the big main points that HubSpot helped us get clear on.

22. 15:19
    Wes Mathews

    Gotcha. So if I'm a, you know, if you're a service based company or any type of company, for that matter, like, everybody at some level knows content's important. But if you have a Lamborghini in a garage, but you want to show it off, like, what do you do with it? Like, is it just for your website? Is it, you know, you have the best writers, but like, how does somebody actually find the product from your experience? And how do you marry that with success?

23. 15:46
    Dave Kustin

    Yeah. So the other part of that, who is this good for? Or why is it good? Is it helps your search results? There's not every single one of our customers after they work with us, their traffic increases every single one, 100%. Now, if you are able to, if our customer is able to, you know, sort of bolt on SEO services, technical expertise, married with content, organic content, now you really have a formula for winning. You really have a formula for bringing traffic into the site. We would always compare it to, like, a retail store.

    You know, it's like, we want to bring people into the store. That's your website. You want people to ask questions. That's conversion opportunities. And then you want people to ultimately buy.

24. 16:36
    Wes Mathews

    And so that's, that's a metaphor for content marketing. So how important is that? Like, so I come from, you know, my background is, you know, we did website design, development, organic search and paid search for years, right? I started that company in 2009. We sold the majority of in 21 and customers would invest a ton of money in their website, in SEO, in paid search. And then when we would talk about investing in content, they'd be like, oh, like, I don't want to do it. Or like, why do we have to do that?

    I'm like, this is crazy. Like, how do you, I mean, I, without, I mean, there's a lot of different, you know, rabbit holes we could go down, but to me, it's like, there's different levels of clients and ICPs that one category probably greatly appreciates. And the other one's like, yeah, we just need leads like yesterday. Yeah.

25. 17:27
    Dave Kustin

    And we've experienced that same dynamic. We have we've had those conversations for 10 years. And there are a universe or there is a universe of customers out there that get it. They, they want the technical SEO. And they understand that the content is, is the content speaks for the company when a when a person can't, it's like, it's a 24 seven salesperson. That's what your content is supposed to be. Because people are you know, prospects are doing research whenever they want to do it. And, you know, the data shows that that they do research before they speak to someone.

    One, and two, most of their decision making process is complete by the time they get to a salesperson. They just want that salesperson to validate what they already have decided, or believe they've decided. So to resist having content to me is so, is so short sighted, but those people are out there.

26. 18:25
    Wes Mathews

    So if there's a company out there, that's like, we're close, but not quite there. Like what are like, what's like the top one to two things that somebody could do today? Is it do a blog a month every week? Is it social media twice a day on Sunday? Like what, what's some like cheap and dirty like?

27. 18:43
    Dave Kustin

    Yeah, yeah. I mean, write, write, write blog articles and add them to your site. And I gave a talk this morning and this, this came up to some degree, a version of this came up and write an article as often as you can. I mean, monthly, monthly is not enough. It's just not enough. Like more content is more better in this game. That's, that's the content game. More is better. So write as much as you can.

28. 19:13
    Wes Mathews

    So it sounds like, you know, you'd have to follow like a very, like a strict diet regimen. Like at what point do people see results? Cause like at some point, somebody's like, man, I've been writing an article for sure. You know, whatever. Like I haven't seen anything or like, how do I quantify that? Or, you know, I can't, or is that a good opportunity for then for you guys to come in and say, well, we'll just do it for you and do it, do it better.

29. 19:33
    Dave Kustin

    Well, I would ask you to put your, your website building hat on for a second. And I would say to someone, you know, if they said, Hey, we've been doing this for six, nine, 10 months, whatever, and nothing's happening, I would say, well, what else, what, what does your website look like? Are there conversion opportunities on your website? Are there some kind of, is there some kind of compelling offer? It's just one part content is just one part and it's, and blog content very broadly is really at the top of the funnel.

    And so that will bring traffic. But if you're bringing traffic to a piece of crap website, nothing's going to happen. Do you have any downloads? Do you have any, any gated content? You know, again, what conversion opportunities are there? And so it just begs more questions.

30. 20:19
    Wes Mathews

    And what do you feel like with that, right? If somebody's doing a blog and say their website's okay, decent call to action, like call now or whatever, but like, what, in your experience, like what's a simple tie down or like, is it, you hear like, you know, the top five things you could like, do you have any like quick and dirty recommendations on like a tie down or a call to action that somebody could just, cause I think a lot of, a lot of businesses, like they're not doing any of this.

    Like you would think in 2025, like everybody had been figured out, but I can go back to 2009. I don't think it's gotten any better. Like call to action is so like, what do you recommend? Is it, you know, download this PDF? Is it, you know, what's a good hook?

31. 20:59
    Dave Kustin

    So I think some of the downloads, I think some of the gated content stuff might be out of fashion a little bit. So I would say first, first I would say, I don't know. Then I would say test and, and, you know, AB tests and stuff. I think, I think some downloads stuff can still work. It might depend on your market. It might depend on your, on your prospect. Again, like we're talking, speaking generally, so I don't know. Another, another call to action might be speak to a human, right?

    I will evaluate what you have going on and give you, give you my expertise advice. That may work really well. Again, depends on the market, depends on the prospect. So, but I circle back to AB test, you know, if you have some decent traffic coming to the homepage, you can AB test. It's not hard to do and see what performs.

32. 21:48
    Wes Mathews

    So you bring me to my next question, speaking to humans. So you got the elephant in the room, right? Yes. And like, I actually like, it was terrible. I saw something this morning, you know, like a tragedy in the news and people like posted photos, like the photos AI generated. Yeah. And it's like, I see content today. Like I can spot ChatGPT 10 miles away. Oh yeah. And it's like, how, how are you guys embracing, you know, like coming from content, like there's big changes, big headwinds coming and people are like, Oh, that's great.

    But I can go to like ChatGPT and get, you know, 52 blogs created in four and a half seconds.

33. 22:27
    Dave Kustin

    So what I'll say is, and I'm not an expert in this space, you know, about a month ago, we had in our chapter, we had one of our, actually it was, it was, it was, it was global. We had an AI expert talk to us about this. And so the first thing is AI can spot AI content. And so what's interesting to me is, as a, as a, as a owner of a business that is in the content game, what we do is still supremely valuable.

    AI has not pushed us out. It's only reinforced the need for human, for content with, with, with a heart. AI is not able to do that yet. AI cannot put a human fingerprint on it. Only a human can do that. So AI can spot AI generated content. The speaker that we had is speculating or speculates that all the AI platforms are going to get together and create a standard and they're going to sort of police each other. So Gemini can spot Gemini generated content. And, and they have said that they will push you further down in the results.

    If that's all you're presenting. And it sounds like never 15 years ago when you did keyword stuffing and you got punished. It's like the same thing. So AI is great for generating content, but you have to have a human finish it. You have to have a human edit it and put that, that human fingerprint on it. And so as a content company, we have, we have an army of writers and an army of editors. We leverage AI for ideation. We leverage AI for, for doing some of the heavy lifting, but all of our content passes through the hands of a human.

    And so the companies that aren't doing that, they're going to, they're going to suffer.

34. 24:22
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I almost feel like it's a, it's a stronger selling point. Like, Hey, we're leveraging it to our best of our ability. But yeah, like use ChatGPT content. Like it's kind of garbage. It's funny. Cause my kids, I have five kids, but one of them, like he didn't do his homework or something. And he's like, I'll just use ChatGPT. Yeah. And I said, well, like somebody, then somebody else is like, well, they like the teachers run software, right? To like, he goes, Oh, you just tell it to make itself undetectable.

    Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that. But I see, I see huge opportunity. I even hate to give this, well, it's not really a secret, but there's a lot of opportunity right now. Like I got in the wild, wild west and SEO back in like 0609. I could get somebody ranked number one on Google, just from putting in their title tag on the homepage of the website. So if you were like a painter, like painting houses in your city, I could do that, write some really bad content.

    I was the writer. I did all the SEO and I can get people ranked. Yeah. That was like the beginning. Um, you know, today there's such a switch to AI. We're like, I don't care about ranking on Google. It's getting the response on Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok. Hey, I'm looking for like, I see this vision of operating out of that AI to like, it knows you're buying decisions. It's, it's serving you up to say, Hey, like, so it's interesting. Like how do you guys, I mean, you kind of answered it already by just good quality content will naturally get picked up, right?

35. 25:48
    Dave Kustin

    Yeah. So that's coming that, you know, the whole search, um, uh, you could say the search interface is, is going to change. I mean, they're experimenting now. You see it now you do this, you know, you do searches and that top section is now AI generated results and you'll start, you've already seen this. There's companies that line up with the question you asked. Um, at some point they're going to show us how to monetize. They're going to show us how to advertise it. You know, it'll become, that'll become the new way,

36. 26:20
    Wes Mathews

    but to your point, the organic way will continue to be putting out good content. What's crazy about Google search, like up until like six months ago on my death bed, I'd be like, get rid of my Google history. Like I don't use Google anymore ever. Like I strictly use ChatGPT. Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's, it's helped me make some buying decisions. It's made some bad decisions. Um, but the reality is like, I'm a hundred percent operating out of that. And I see a world, like it's going to be interesting to see how this evolves with Google and how they're monetizing today because local search, pay-per-click advertising, even pay-per-click advertising ties into how well your content is and how you're positioned and all that stuff.

    Like it's, it's kind of nervous, like three to five years from now is like really, it's, it's like, what's your crystal ball? Like how are you guys positioning the company? Yeah. Well, I think it'll happen faster than that.

37. 27:15
    Dave Kustin

    I think, I think people, people not using the traditional search function in a browser that will go away. Uh, I think we continue to, to stand on, um, the fact that search loves human generated use that hasn't changed and, and based on what we're learning or no, it's not going to change. And so we continue to stand on that, um, with our messaging and our, our, um, offers and services. So my crystal ball is that the world will still want human generated content.

38. 27:56
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I feel like I, I think about this in the way I look at gasoline vehicles and, and electric vehicles. Like I think that whoever was in charge of all of that, like really miss an opportunity to like really push hybrids first to warm up the market. I felt it when, I mean, I'm from Detroit, right? So like I'm for like all the big threes here, but I love burning gas. There's no, I'm not going to go like charge my electric vehicle and waste 40 minutes.

    Like, but the reality is I feel like if that, if the market was introduced to, Hey, it's half a battery and half gas and like, I'm going to tease the market. Like I kind of feel like this is the same thing of like, you know, we're, we're going from like the traditional way of how things were done to like this really different thing. And like it is that middle, like what's that middle look like? Or do you think it's just going to glaze over and it's just, it's just like, this is the new way.

    Yeah.

39. 28:53
    Dave Kustin

    You mean with respect from, from how someone searches? Yeah.

40. 28:58
    Wes Mathews

    Searching or like how, you know, just, just the traditional way of how, you know, customers are using content web and just general users and how, you know, just like they're, they're researching, right? They're researching information.

41. 29:10
    Dave Kustin

    Like just that whole process is going to change. I don't know if it's the same, I don't know if it's same, same, but I mean, I think it is a drastic change. I mean, to your point about how you search now, you don't even go to a browser or you go to a browser, but it's, it's the AI browser, AI interface. So yeah, I mean, I think, I think for early adopters, like people like us, it probably doesn't feel like any real change because, you know, we just easily, I think we easily assimilate to those things.

    We're comfortable. There's a whole group that's not comfortable. And there's yet another group, they're going to use Google till they, till they can't search for anything anymore.

42. 29:46
    Wes Mathews

    Those are the people that have the AOL.com address.

43. 29:49
    Dave Kustin

    They're still using dialogue.

44. 29:51
    Wes Mathews

    Yes. So how do you, how do you hire, like, what's your take on hiring or your staff, right? Like, could I show up in an interview and just ChatGPT my way through? Like, how are you assessing? Is it all based on their experience or like, how do you assess to know that they're a phenomenal writer with all these tools in place today? Good question. So,

45. 30:12
    Dave Kustin

    you know, we certainly, obviously, I guess it's obvious we ask for writing samples. And, and again, I think, I think it's easy to detect AI generated content today, that may change tomorrow. Tomorrow, they may figure out how to give it a heart. But today, you know, you can spot it pretty easily. So our editing team is able to assess the quality of someone's, you know, written content. And so it's still very old school in that way. When we're hiring for a strategist, you know, that, that sort of filter we use is different.

    We give people assignments in our hiring process. And so we give them assignments. And if they complete those assignments, you know, those people, people, and that's not, you know, special to us, lots of companies do that. But some people don't complete the assignments, right? Great, you have just filtered yourself out. But those that complete the assignment, we have to, you know, take a minute and evaluate, evaluate what they've done.

46. 31:11
    Wes Mathews

    So we come from like, you know, right, like, thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs, and you got like, ghost writers out there, and everybody's like, Oh, you should write a book. Like, how important is that, as you're talking to companies, and they're doing blogs and pushing out all that content, do you feel like that's an important mechanism for a business today?

47. 31:29
    Dave Kustin

    So we have a couple of, you know, product lines, service lines, if you will. And we have one that is focused on, you know, call it corporate leadership, right? So owner of the company wants to build or create some content around them. We've written a number of books for entrepreneurs. We write content that, you know, either company leader, or department leader might use in LinkedIn on LinkedIn, to position themselves as a as a thought leader in their particular space. And so I don't know, you know, I think writing a book still has some cache, I think it's less now, then than it was maybe a decade ago.

    But I might first ask the person, well, what do you, why do you want to write a book? What are you gonna, what are you gonna do once you have the book? So I think I think it begs some additional question, questioning. You know, books are good for folks who want to build a brand around themselves, they're going to go into consulting or speaking. I think, you know, it makes a lot of sense. But if you're if you're just CEO of a company, I don't know that it really helps the company, it helps you but not the company.

48. 32:40
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, no, that's good insight. Yeah, somebody asked me like, you should have a ghostwriter and do this. And I'm like, I like looked in the corner of my office, like, I could envision a big box of all these books. Like, I don't, I don't know what I would do with it. Yeah. And then that's funny. That's why I asked you earlier about content, like as much as I, if you asked me to write a blog article, I would stare at my computer all day long, and I would not get it done.

    But then as a visionary entrepreneur, if I source that to you, I would guarantee that I would come back with so many edits and changes. And like, is that is that the is that the juice, right? Is that like, I just, you know, I need the training wheels, or I just need the context to start or like, what do you see with your with your use the magic word, and that's context.

49. 33:25
    Dave Kustin

    And so, you know, context is everything. You would have you would you would be able to write something if I gave you the right prompt, if I said to you, what are the five questions that your customers always have that now you have something to go on. Or what's the most important thing for fill in the blank, you'd there's certainly customers of ours who they come back with a million edits, and they're seeking perfection. And that's a problem, because there is no such thing as perfection.

    And so we deal with that with our customers, you know, we have to coach them, we have to encourage them to trust us. And it might be a little messy in the beginning. It might take it might take a minute for us to really capture your voice. Because at the end of the day, we want our customers to say, oh, you wrote it just like I would have written it, had I taken the time to write it. Right. And so that's that's kind of our standard that we want to meet.

50. 34:26
    Wes Mathews

    So if somebody listening has never done a blog, or anything, and they're like, I don't even know where to get started, like, what would be that? What would be that one prompt you would give them to say, if you could just knock this out this week, to add some value, because number one, I want them to realize how hard it is. And then they could like, probably just hire you and get their time back, right? But like, what, what would that one thing be? What is that advice you'd give?

    Yeah, the FAQs is one of them.

51. 34:53
    Dave Kustin

    You know, what are the 10 questions you're always dealing with? And further, this is this is where AI is very useful. If you give AI a detailed prompt, and the longer the prompt, the better your results will be. So if you gave AI a prompt, like I'm the founder of this business, or the CEO of this particular business, these are the kinds of customers we help. These are the problems that we solve. This is what we're really good at. This is our brand personality. And, you know, again, you give it as much context, again, really important, as much context as you can.

    And then you ask it to give you 25 topics to write about that helps me connect with my customer base, it'll give them to you. And maybe 80% of them are spot on. And the other 20% might be might be off base. But that's the kind of prompt that's the that's the coaching I would give that you then have to go write the articles, you could ask AI to okay, great, one through 10 are perfect, write an article for each one. 485 words, use these keywords, etc, etc, etc.

    You can do that.

52. 36:05
    Wes Mathews

    And it's going to look like AI wrote it. If you did that, it's kind of a loaded, not a loaded question. But what if you just did that? Like, who cares?

53. 36:13
    Dave Kustin

    Yeah, sure. And there's companies out there doing it. Like, you I see it on LinkedIn all the time. When someone's putting out their posts or thought leadership content, you can spot it a mile away. Like, you're a talent, though, like you have a different eye. I do.

54. 36:27
    Wes Mathews

    To the average person, like, does it really matter? Do you see a world of like, everybody's doing it or like,

55. 36:35
    Dave Kustin

    in some, in some cases, in some universes, it doesn't matter. I think what really matters is if you're going to put that AI content on your website, it's not going to perform the way you want it to. Yeah. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, that's why we have websites. They're, they're our virtual stores, and we need people to walk into the store. And so that's where it matters. Yeah.

56. 37:00
    Wes Mathews

    It's almost like I feel like it would catch up with you really quick. Like, it'd be a bad strategy to do that. But I love the idea of using AI for prompting ideation, training wheels, kick-starting. Like, I think it's great. Like, I tell people, like leverage it all the time. It's the best idea generator.

57. 37:17
    Dave Kustin

    Absolutely. It's a great partner. We like, we like to think about it as a partner, as just a tool, right? So how do you help me think through things? How do you help me see things that I may not normally see or otherwise wouldn't see because I just don't have the vision for it. So it's a great partner.

58. 37:33
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. Even like, Hey, like as the CEO, founder, like I'm too emotionally tied to this business, you know, give me some blind, you know, give me some feedback on some blind spots I would have based on I've been, what I've been doing lately, kind of off the content is uploading Colby indexes, like with internal team members and customers. And like, it's crazy. Like the more, the more info you can feed that thing. So now it's like, it's got my whole leadership team on our numbers of Colby.

    It's pretty amazing stuff. Like, I want to get this point across to this person. Here's my problem. And it'll translate it on how I can best communicate. It's a great tool.

59. 38:10
    Dave Kustin

    And you can build all, you can build, you know, innumerable tools. And I think today that's where AI is really great.

60. 38:18
    Wes Mathews

    Well, Dave, super cool talking to you. My one big takeaway is like, you know, figuring out the 10 frequently asked questions and starting to develop content around that. But I think people are going to realize at some point, like it's really hard. And most visionaries are probably not best suited to do this work. It's better to hire professionals and get your time back. How can people get in contact with you if it's something that they need help with? Yeah, LinkedIn is the best spot.

61. 38:43
    Dave Kustin

    So Dave Kustin, linkedin.com slash Dave Kustin, I'm on there. And that's really the best spot to connect with me. And I'm happy to help anyone think through anything, you know, whether it's on the brand strategy side or the content marketing storytelling side. Happy to chat.

62. 38:58
    Wes Mathews

    Well, cool, man. I really appreciate all the feedback today and having you on. It was definitely a lot of value. It was great. Wes, thanks so much. We'll see you. All right. Talk soon. This has been another episode of Entrepreneur Intel. Thank you for joining us for show notes. For other episodes, please visit us at entrepreneurintel.com. Until next time.