"What Did We Get for $10,000 this month?"

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1. 0:00
   Wes Mathews

   Jon Bowerman.

2. 0:01
   Jon Bowerman

   I'm the guy that's going to be thinking, ten moves ahead and you're asking the question, why are we playing chess? You know, founders, they just deal with risk on a daily basis. Every decision that they're making has some element of risk to it. There's never a 100% certainty. You see how many of them get taken advantage of because they're just getting sold a service. And no one's really invested in the outcome of what they wrote in those clichés. The iron sharpens iron. In order for that to happen, there has to be two pieces of iron. AI at its core, it gives people the ability to delegate intelligence. That's essentially what generative search is, is it's the ability to offload the research and give you the executive summary.

3. 0:41
   Wes Mathews

   There's 8000 things you can do in marketing. What's unique about like our approach or your operational approach kind of hits on the Stealth method or platform.

4. 0:49
   Jon Bowerman

   Yeah, marketing is chaos.

5. 0:52
   Wes Mathews

   This is the unfiltered truth about entrepreneurship. Raw no BS, no sugar coating. Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel. I'm your host, Wes Mathews. Each episode will 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. All right, I am pretty excited for today because, I want to introduce Jon Bowerman. So Jon Bowerman and I have been business partners for, what, almost 20 years now?

6. 1:32
   Jon Bowerman

   Yeah. Two decades.

7. 1:33
   Wes Mathews

   Yeah, almost two decades. So Jon, I'll introduce Jon. So Jon Bauer mid Michigan native. Original co-founder in a company called High Level Marketing. He and I were partners. You know, we had that company for about 15 years outside of that, like CMO, CTO, pretty heavily exposure to all the C-suite of services and an entrepreneurial company, most recently has re partnered back up with me in a company called Stealth, as he's co founder. And, outside of that, Jon super artistic likes to give back. I wrote a couple books which we can touch on. Loves the sand sculpt and welcome Jon.

8. 2:14
   Jon Bowerman

   All right. Yeah. Look forward to this.

9. 2:16
   Wes Mathews

   So, so yeah, it's a little bit different that, you know, obviously we're business partners, but I thought that this would be kind of interesting, as I think we have a, Are you a unique dynamic in the entrepreneurial world that a lot of entrepreneurial strive for, which is, you know, you and I adopted this methodology called EOS. Let's kind of dive in and talk about that, maybe where, you know, how do you think EOS or like the visionary integrator concept has helped us scale like high level marketing and like the creation and the scale of stuff so far? Yeah.

10. 2:53
    Jon Bowerman

    I think, you know, what I found was, is that any partnership, especially business, you really have to you really have to have someone there's contemplating and there's calculating. Right. I use one of the great, you know, great ways I used to describe our relationship early on to people, which was, you know, I'm the I'm the guy that's going to be thinking ten moves ahead. Jazz. Right. And you're asking the question, why are we playing chess? Right? I'm the calculator. You're the later. And you just you we need that. I also use the example of you could helicopter both of us down into, a group of 10,000 people, and within an hour, you know, everybody's name, everybody's spouse's birthday, and their the color of their dog pounds, right? I might know two people. And, and that was an accomplishment. We just have very different personalities, very ways, different ways that we show up to the world. And also the chance that either one of us is going to be a rock star on any given day, you know, we're going to have off days and to be able to pick each other up on those days that, you know, one of us just isn't our best, you know, keeps it going. It just that that, you know, there's there's so many of those cliches. The iron sharpens iron, the everything like that will in order for that to happen, there has to be two pieces of iron. And I think that's where, you know, we really show up for each other and it and it compounds. I mean, we are the we are the classic example of one plus one is more than two. It's three.

11. 4:32
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. No, that's a good point. I think, you know, what I think we discovered was like 2014 or something was probably one of my like visionary tirades or like, let's try this because something is not feeling right. Right. Well, I think for whatever reason, EOS stuck with me because I saw a lot of success with a lot of other companies, you know, and, I think even before that, though, like, you and I were kind of operating as like visionary integrator, CEO, CEO before we even knew what that really was. But I think learning about what it really was and putting some like organized structure around chaos of entrepreneurs. And look, we're we were young. We're kind of young now still. But you know, we're I really didn't know what I was doing. Like we had an idea, I want to make a bunch of money I think are like, yeah, let's like make $1 million or millions of dollars. And all of a sudden we wake up and there's a lot of employees and a lot of problems. And. But I think for us, you know, because I get that question a lot of like, you know, I should just do this thing myself, you know, and I'll make all the money. And it's like, yeah, but that's like, that's, that's even harder. And it's also like kind of lonely. And I think at some point, like, you have to take a step back as a, as an entrepreneur and be like, I'm best in the world at these like three things. I think when you first start, you think you're awesome at everything and then you realize, like, you're not. And then I think what we did really well was like, okay, I think, or I, you know, I thrive when I'm here. And I think for you. And I was like, I thrive to the point of like, you know, landing in the jungle of 10,000 people, like you were able to kind of dive in on delivery and operations and like, you know, keep the trains on the tracks and all that stuff, which I think is like a true SEO. And I've always had that ability of like vision and like seeing things differently as other people didn't see. And you know what I want to note on that, though, that doesn't mean, like, you don't think like that or I don't think operationally it's just that's not our defaults and that's not where we thrive. So I think what we do really well is compliment each other on like challenging those when they need to be challenged or like. But I also think we've had a great job. We've done a great job. I think like the give and take, right? You know, probably more recently than before where it's like, yeah, I don't really care how the sausage gets made sometimes. And you're probably I don't care how he lands into the jungle, like whether it's helicopter by jet or by camel, like, who cares? Like there's a certain things that you don't care about. But thinking about that. Right. So, like, we had a really successful digital marketing company started in 2009. We sold in 21. We both stayed there for a couple years. Right? Some good, some bad, some ugly. But when we started talking about Stealth again and partnering like what was sort of like your the vision of the future, right? Because we're both kind of we both kind of left this world of digital marketing, website SEO, which was really prominent in the era. We did it. But we, you know, we both kind of made a decision on like, you know, it's probably time to like, take some chips off the table, sell this company. The crystal ball was kind of telling us either there might have been some impending doom or like I, you know, before I was really a thing. Like we both had those, like, senses. So, like, why Stealth or like what? What did you kind of see differently, coming out from the experience we've had?

12. 7:47
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, I think, you know, one. Yeah. I mean, how many? We probably plotted out a thousand different growth models and this is what our company is worth and how exciting that is. Right. But there's, there's the idea that you're going to get an offer and then there's an actual real offer. And those are two very different things. And a lot of people who have an idea of getting an offer never get one. And you have to, you know, we weren't looking to sell. And it came upon us. And I'm extremely glad that we did, because it offered the opportunity for a reset into something that would align more with, with our values. Like you said, we started, this thing is basically kids, where both of our motivations were how can we pay our mortgage and, and, and feed our kids that are on the way? Right. And that evolved to how can we maximize EBITDA and all these concepts that you just learn, learn along the way? Well, once you've developed that, you just see the world completely different. You know, we probably would have re architected our company completely different in hindsight as, as with nearly anyone, and I think with Stealth, one of the things that that the two of us have kept, you know, that we acknowledge, as you mentioned, going about it alone, it's not just about having to solve challenges and everything rolling up to you alone at the top, but it's also about celebration. I mean, it's it's lonely enough. There's such a small percentage of even, you know, entrepreneurs that that grow successful companies, and who you can talk to about challenges, it's a completely different world. And then to, to go through something incredible and then to not really have anyone who cares as much as you do to celebrate that. You know, when we land a really incredible client, we call each other and celebrate. That's a micro celebration. But that's that's what keeps you going. And I think with Stealth, we had the opportunity to see so many bad decisions happen in the agency world. And by bad decisions, I mean clients that would be getting fantastic results but not understand them. And we could only offer the services we could offer and we could only go so far. And when you see, you know, these business owners that you empathize with because you are one and you see them struggling and you see how many of them get taken advantage of, because they're just getting sold a service and no one's really invested in. And the outcome of what they, what they're growing. And I think with Stealth, we're, we're, you know, we stand for justice as it relates to business owners getting value for what they're investing in. And this was the opportunity for us to say, yeah, we're we're you're not just you're not just paying us for a service. You know, you're you're investing because we're going to we're going to give it our all. We're going to make this work.

13. 10:58
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. It's interesting because as you say, that I started to think about just, you know, our experience in the trenches and just knowing how much we know coming out of that industry, you know, we know where the bodies are buried, right? Like we weren't the biggest, but we're a player in that space. And you know, we had a lot of success. And we did a lot of high volume of projects, that we had exposed to we had some really good scale and technology that you actually wrote. All of the technology that our platform was powered off of, which create a lot of value within the organization, and also to make our client base really sticky. You know, that was also a unique thing that we had, right? Like people were on our platform. So like as we started to think about that and the shift was like, you know, we started to kind of idiot around staff was like, man, all these entrepreneurs like, I see the same problems, which are like every entrepreneur, right? Let's just keep on the visionary CEO. Like if that person's in the marketing seat, something's going to blow up at some point. Like that's just the reality. Like that's not a long term solution, you know, or what I, what I saw a lot of clients do in our experience was they would hire a really well, they thought that they were a great marketer and they'd stick them in that seat and have all these expectations that, you know, this person's going to do X, Y, and Z to come to find out. They just do a lot of nothing. And they spent a lot of money wasted time. But like the big one I saw was, you know, and I spent a, you know, we're spending a lot of money with, you know, this agency or this company. And like, we have no idea what we're getting in return. And I think what was interesting as we started to develop this concept, it's like every entrepreneurial company, for the most part, falls into one of those buckets. It's like thinking back, you know, we're kind of rounding out like our second full year. But, you know, maybe think about from a delivery perspective or like an operational perspective of some of the things that, you know, you touched on a minute ago about, you know, certain things within, you know, the web world and just what happens on the like when we're dealing with companies and they're spending money on the agency world. You know, just that gap you saw operationally, you know, which kind of led us to where we're at today and like the how we've kind of morphed and our deliverable now and how we're solving a problem, if that makes sense.

14. 13:32
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a, you know, there's this there's this big misunderstanding that there's that there's there's someone that you call a marketer. And anyone in marketing is a marketer. These are marketers, right? It's the same thing as if I were to say, oh, you're a hockey player, right? If you were to put Wayne Gretzky, between the posts to stop pucks, guess what? He's probably not making it to the Hall of Fame. If you're Patrick WA Hall of Fame goaltender, it's Darren Gretzky's position. He's probably not scoring enough goals to make it to the Hall of Fame. And there's this idea. But yeah, he's a hockey player. So every position, he should be an incredible coach. He should be an incredible scorer, a defenseman, a goalie. All of these things because he's a hockey player. People have that same perception about you're in marketing. You should be this incredible marketer in every aspect of it. And it's really just not it's not realistic. There's marketing is one of those, those few departments that really touches almost every aspect of a business. You have such a, an incredible technology component to it. You know, you got to wire up 1500 things to make sure that they all work. You've got to be a behavioral psychologist and know how to use language to connect with people and their emotions. You've got to have a visual, esthetic of color theory and how the world works. So then you've got to stay on top of all the modern technologies and devices and everything new come into the market, and all the disruptions. Then you have to be able to lead people, and you have to be able to explain concepts that people don't understand and be a translator. And when you write all those things down, it's really, really impossible to try and find that all within one person. It doesn't exist myself or anyone. And then to try and have the expectation that I'm going to find that within a, a junior marketing coordinator who's two years out of, school is even more, more unrealistic, to yourself and to that end, to that person. And we've seen so many times where that just goes, it goes very wrong. And because of that perspective.

15. 15:45
    Wes Mathews

    Well, I think what we learned early on too, right. If we if we reflect back like the first 6 to 12 months of us coming out of the and creating Stealth in this concept, it was, you know, there's this big void in the marketplace and it's called the fractional CMO. Right. And I think what we quickly realized and learned, and I think our experience led us to do this in an expedited fashion, which was, you know, you can't just plop in to your point of the Wayne Gretzky. And Patrick was a perfect analogy because CMO has this connotation to it that, you know, I've I've become a CMO and like, I'm not going to like, roll my sleeves up and do the dirty work. I'm really good at strategy. Right? Like, that's the kind of what happens in that world. And I think what we realize it's like, well, for me anyway, as a visionary and not getting too far in the weeds of marketing, it's you need somebody that's a good at strategy and that's their highest, best use of their, their time. You also need somebody that's really good at just getting stuff done. That's just execution, which we call a marketing director. And then you also need a project manager to make sure that the trains are on time and, you know, everything's happening. And then on top of that, you need somebody to lead it, manage it, hold it accountable. So we're not just talking about like one fractional person, like we're talking about dropping four people into an engagement. But you need the goalie. You need the defenseman. You need the forward. You need the center. Like and I think like there's such a gap in the marketing world of, you know, the fractional arena and or even a client that says, oh, I've got, you know, Susan in marketing and we're good. But like they have so many gaps in that ecosystem is that is that kind of how you see it?

16. 17:27
    Jon Bowerman

    100%? I mean, I look at it like, I'm going to be making you the, you know, the most incredible birthday cake you've ever had. Well, you don't need the same amount of eggs as you do flour and sugar and everything that goes into it. If you took a equal amount of every ingredient that goes into that recipe, it would be terrible. And most companies don't need you don't need a full time project manager, a full time marketing tech stack person, a full time designer, and a full time developer. You get you create this massive cost imbalance to where you're investing, right? You might only need 10% of the time of a marketing tech stack first. You might only need 5% of the time of a designer. Beside that, 80% of your time as a as a writer. And finding that what is the right recipe, is really, you know, where companies need to be focused. And that's what the advantage of, of a team does, without the investment cost of that, of that full team and then expecting that, oh, I'm just going to bring in, you know, on the cake example, I'm just going to bring in flour and hay. Flour. It's your job to, to be an incredible cake. And flour can't do that.

17. 18:46
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. Well what I think is really interesting about this is, you know, I don't know the correct number, but I like the number 8000. I don't know why, but there's 8000 things you can do in marketing, right. Like and I think the biggest dilemma and challenge for an entrepreneur is like, where do we begin? And like they're so used to just throwing crap at the wall, hoping it sticks even when they have a smart marketer in. And here's the biggest challenge, I think from an entrepreneur perspective, they hire these marketing people and they could be the best marketing people, but they need to be led and manage, and they need a strategy and they need to know where the company is going. And that's really hard for the owner to figure out. So, you know, I think, you know, when we talk about our delivery team and we look at that, right, like, how are we looking at that from a yeah, out of the 8000 things. Because marketing means different things to different people at different times and different levels of the company. Right. So like what's what's unique about like our approach or just what's different in the marketing world that that, you know, your operational approach kind of hits on the Stealth method or platform?

18. 19:55
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, market marketing is chaos. Marketing can just be pure chaos from two different sides, right? There's the you know, you get you really observe two big spectrums that are just where marketing is chaos. One is where someone's trying to do what you described as 8000 things, or trying to do a all 8000 things, everything all at once. All right. Now, because there's that feeling if we don't, then we're behind and then our competitors are going to get ahead of us because we're not doing everything that they are. And then what happens is you end up trying to do 200 things and nothing quite works, right? Because you're spread way too thin. There's no there's no prioritization. The other side of the chaos is there's no shortage of 100 people trying to sell you something in marketing or some blog about what you should be doing, and you're not doing the top ten ways. You're falling short of your employees expectations of marketing. And so that chaos, that noise just leads to, you know, I'm not going to do anything because I don't I'm not even sure what I should do. So, I'm not I'm not going to do anything and, and, you know, I think, one of the, the first things that any when you talk about marketing accountability, someone comes in and brings that with the strategy is some of the bulk of the work is simply just prioritization is that if we did this thing first, it would lead to these other paths, and then those paths would lead to these paths. Instead of trying to take walk every path at the same time, let's let's do the one that that makes the most sense. That's gonna compound all the other ones that that come after it.

19. 21:43
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. You bring a good point. And I also think too, I think there's a big value where, you know, when we're around a founder, like, who do they talk to? Like, like take us out of the equation, right. Or like, you and I have had an opportunity to, like, leverage each other because we're partners and we both have been, you know, through some experiences. So, like, we can kind of have those conversations that we can have with some other people. Right? But if you're an owner doing $5 million and you've got a marketing question to your point, everybody in there, brother is trying to sell you something. They're going to tell you whatever you want to hear. But like, who do they go to, right. That's going to shoot them straight. And I think that's, there's a big value there that just being able to be what they are, a company individual that will just shoot you straight, that's not trying to sell you anything. But like, hey, we're.

20. 22:33
    Jon Bowerman

    We're a partner.

21. 22:34
    Wes Mathews

    Like, we're not sitting across the table from you trying to sell you this widget. It's this is how we would make a decision if we were in your shoes. And, oh, by the way, we have some experience, so we're not, like, talking out of our assets. You know, we have some proof in the pudding. What do you think about that? Because you said really heavily in the operations. So like, we onboard a client and we start to, like, do our thing. Like, what do you typically start to see when we start to do our thing?

22. 23:02
    Jon Bowerman

    It's amazing how much risk influences marketing. And that's really where that, you know, that founder is. They get to some peace of mind. And that is where every, every time, even if you've executed something in marketing, 10,000 times before it, there's always some risk that some variable, some something is going to negatively affect it or it's not going to work exactly as you thought. All right. So any time you're saying let's go forward, you know, there's some element of risk to that. And, you know, founders just they just deal with risk on a daily basis. You know, every, every decision that they're making has some element of risk to it. There's never a 100% certainty. And I think when, you get to show up for the founder, and then they're really battling with this thing that's been spinning around in their mind, should I, should I, and to be able to, to bounce that off of someone that's, going to approach it with honesty and say, hey, here's I'm not it's not a no, it is a, it's a it could be a yes. And here's what we risk or you know, here's, here's, here's something else that, that maybe we can want to consider or here's how it impacts everything else that that we're doing it might add risk to everything else that we're doing. And that's a, that's a very and also, founders especially as soon as you it, as soon as you get to a, a new achievement in your business, you're at it, you're at a new level. It's often you forget the, the costs and the resources and the energy and effort that it goes to maintain that level. Yeah, because as soon as you reach a level as a founder, typically you're looking at what is the next one. And then so all resources go to the next one where you know, you still have to be conscious of, of, of what's gotten you there. I think it's, believe it's Warren Buffett that says, it takes, 20 years to build a reputation. It takes 20s to destroy one. And the larger the company and the more that's at stake or at risk, the more carefully that has to be considered. And, and as a founder, it's, it's beneficial for you to offload that consideration.

23. 25:26
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I think what's interesting is like there needs to be, you know, something between a, between a client and then, like, an agency, right? Like, if we've experienced it on so many different levels, but it's almost like I love a good analogy. And we talked about hockey, but like you've mentioned drywall or like without the architect understanding the needs of that homeowner, that home buyer, like, and if you let that drywall or again, the best drywall in the world build a wall randomly, like it's not going to do you any favor. So I think it's there's a deep level of architecture flushing out ideas, growth. That's why I think you and I both agree that we love clients that are on EOS, because they've already baked that cake, they've done the hard work, they've had the challenging conversations they've met with leadership. They've kind of laid out their ten year crazy target. They have a three year goal and revenue, and there's all these things out there that like always talk about revenue growth. But I've yet to find anything outside of us that really focuses in on, you know, spending time in marketing and actually planning and doing it the right way. So we created like a blueprint talk a little bit about that design and the architecture and why that's so important. Because I think that's what we realize what companies miss. And that's really, you know, the architecture of the success of somebody's marketing. Like share a little bit about that.

24. 26:47
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah. There's the expression nobody's smarter than the market, which I completely believe in. And one of the things that always comes up in blueprints, like I tell everyone that's in there, is, you know, ask everyone what, what, what line of work for you and what business are you in? And everyone's got through it. I'm, in Hvac and this and really, what the answer to that as well. You're in the pain relief business. We're all in the pain relief business. We all just have a different kind of pill. And often we forget that is that it's it's the is success means that you have to be customer obsessed and the blueprint is our way to show up as the advocate of, of a business's customer and say you might understand it, but as a customer, I don't understand it. And if I don't understand it, I'm definitely not going to buy it. And so the blueprint allows us to really get to what is the heart of what you do, what is the pain that you're really solving for people? Because that's what we're going to that's what we're going to go out there and communicate, and that's what's going to get people interested. And often, consistently is that the people we take to the blueprint, it's one of the most thorough ways that they've ever looked at marketing, because the typical agency approach is, what do you sell? Okay, here's how many people are searching for what you sell. We're going to be $10,000 a month and let's go buy some ads for what people are searching. And that that really just doesn't work, any more like it used to, if you're not. What we've forget is that we're not selling the companies. We're not selling to tech now. We're selling to people, and people have emotions. People, I, you know, use this example and blueprints is that I can say the same thing that will be received differently by everyone else in the room. If I tell a team of executives that we're going to be implementing HubSpot, the CEO is going to be like, you know, crap, like, how much is that going to cost us? The CMO is going to say, sweet, this is incredible. The chief information officer is going to say, great, just another platform to maintain, you know, you're going to have. So I'm saying the exact same thing. But because it's people showing up, they're all going to hear it and interpret it and feel it much different and different. And that is where marketing has to start. It's however, it's not enough just to get a message out there. You really have to be conscious of how people are going to hear it, or even if they're going to hear it, because that's where success is all driven on that. Well, if it's Google, if it's Facebook, any of those, they're just they're just vehicles to deliver that message. But what that message is and understanding your audience, that's really where it needs to start.

25. 29:45
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I mean, we've been around the block ride for a while, and I think one of the biggest questions I would always get is how much should I be spending on UX? And I'm like, I don't know, like I don't know if you should be on that platform. Like there's a lot of questions and I think that you're following back up on that example of spending 10,000 a month. I think nine and a half times out of ten, those are the people I talked to that said, I've been spending 10,000 a month and I have no idea what I'm getting. Which leads to my next question, which is what's the best CRM? And I'm like, well, something you actually use number one. But number two, like talk a little bit about HubSpot because we come from a wide range of like our own custom proprietary software that we use to, you know, we've been all in deep in the Salesforce ecosystem and all these challenging technologies. But, you know, we've landed on HubSpot. Why? Like, what is that? You know, as a Stealth, as an organization. And to our clients, why are we putting HubSpot on a pedestal above everything else?

26. 30:43
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, it's stability and convenience, right? It's, you know, often companies say we're going to develop our own. I fall into this trap as a younger person, which is we're going to develop our own, CRM and we're going to develop our own technology. Why? Because our process is so unique to anything, out there that there's no possible way anything else would work for us. What people don't realize is when they make that decision, you're you're deciding to now be in the technology business, which means everything else that comes around with it. Developing a system is 5% of the effort. Maintaining and supporting a system is the other 95% plus, that that is the real reality. And, you know, if you have the opportunity to offload the accountability and the stability of something like that, do it. And also, there's a reason platforms become market leaders, because they, they spend an immense amount of time they have an immense amount of data that many people making decisions that in your lifetime, you may not ever even learn why they're the best decision, but you just have to trust that they are. And, you know, there's a great, great expression. One of my mentors, told me, which was, you know, a good plan and actions better than a perfect plan on the grease board. And the same is true with HubSpot. It, you know, it might not be perfect in every single nuance that you would prefer, but it's sure a lot better than mass confusion and disorganization.

27. 32:25
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. It's me as a visionary, right? Like I just I care about my team and like, is this working? Is it not working? How are you feeling? And to me, HubSpot is like, it's the truth, right? So if you are investing in marketing, which everybody should be to some degree, you also should be tracking it. And most companies don't track it. They have no idea. Or they say, yeah, let me get back with you and are like firing emails, trying to cobblestone all this information together. Then they'll share the data with you, be like, I think this is sort of accurate, but like, I really don't know. I mean, it's shocking how many companies are like that. So I look at HubSpot and I hear all that. Right. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like, well, who's going to manage that? Right? Like that? Not now. What? Because it's a great software. But like, who in the organization is going to implement that? Keep that up to date. Like what are some challenges you see around that?

28. 33:21
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, one, things are always going to break. And you're not going to know when you could try, but you're not always going to know when something's going to break. You're not always going to like a why is something going to break. And so as an operator, so as a as a CEO staff, what I'm mainly focused on with why that system is chosen for ourselves is what is the speed at which I can get something that I don't know that is going to break back functioning, right? There is a plethora of HubSpot resources out there. We have our own internal, now, but that means that I want same day if I can. And because if the if the if the system is down, the, if everything is down, I'm losing. And as an operator, one of my key focuses is stability. And it presents itself as an extremely stable system with a massive ecosystem of people that wake up every day with a passion to continue that, that stability. So I think it's one of the one of the best choices you make.

29. 34:34
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I think for us, like one of the things I think how we solve that is, like we help clients with that, right? It's like, just like you don't need a full time person in marketing, or you're not going to find that unicorn. There's certain aspects of it that we help clients through, like specially on the architecture of the set up and designing in a way, and potentially helping them find the right resource. Long term. But kind of changing gears, right? So like, you know, from an AI perspective, I talked to a lot of people and they're like, well, are you going to use ChatGPT? And I'm like, well, I like tools that help us do our job, but are just like, if I'm going to hire a contractor to do drywall, like I want them to have the best technology, the strongest resources, blah, blah, blah, but like, what do you see? You know, because somebody said, well, like, I could go to ChatGPT and get a strategy like, absolutely, you could. And it's going to be amazing, but who's going to do it right? Like that's the challenge. Like who's actually going to see it through? So like what do you see from an AI perspective? Because you and I come from deep roots in organic SEO. Like, I would kind of say we pioneered a lot of that. But now you have geo generative, all these different acronyms, like what do you see there in the shift of like what was web SEO, etc. to like, what's kind of brewing and coming down the pipeline.

30. 35:53
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, I mean I and it's core is it gives the it gives people the ability to delegate intelligence. Right. We've been able to delegate so much. Now we can actually delegate intelligent thought. One of the big challenges is, is it's it's inherent bias. Right. Social platforms are designed to keep you, you know, like I say, addictive because it's called engaged. But they want to coming back to the platform and AI has the same motivation is to I want to the, the closer I could tailor the response that I give you to something that I feel like you will be satisfied with, the more likely you are to continue to use me. That is what Google's motivation has been for years. I, you know, I give a talk where search engines died in 1999, right? Recommendation engines were born. Google realized that it's not enough just to give you a result that matches what you're looking for. We would go out of business if we did that. I have to give you a result that you're then going to take and have a great experience with. That means that I am responsible for recommending I got to give you a quality recommendation. And that is the same thing that I deals with. You're not going to use me if the what I'm giving you, you're not. You're not actually satisfied with. So the danger of, running things like a marketing strategy or something through an AI, which you can absolutely output something that's beautiful and probably passes a sniff test. And some agencies out there charging eight grand for. But it is catering to what it thinks you want to hear and what you want to see. It is not going to challenge, what is actually reality. So the danger is, is that, you're just surrounding yourself basically with an intelligence system. That is another form of a yes man. And you have to you have to have, resources around you that are going to bring a different perspective, that are going to challenge that, not just tell you what you want to hear, objectively. And that is where, you know, you know, the other aspect, the AI is it's absolutely going to change the way that, that that we do things. There's this there's this idea that, well, with AI, there will no longer be, opportunities for junior positions. And I would argue that actually, that is that couldn't be further from the truth because we're going to need have a need for junior positions. We're going to have a need for people to be able to work their way up. And expertise of AI can be a trainer. You know, your senior people, their time is at the highest capacity. They you know what is that? What comes up in every quarterly employee survey? I wish we had more training, education. I wish there was more communication. Right. Because the senior people don't have the time to do all of the training, education, remote work has just made that even more difficult. Well, that is something where I can really come in and help, offload some of that training so more junior people can be more successful, faster. You know, there's there's a lot of, agencies out there in the market that see I as a threat, you know, and you know as well as I do it Stealth AI is not a threat. It's something that has to be embraced because it's it's only going to grow. And, you know, an agency, instead of looking at as a threat, should look at it as, man, this is this could be one of the best, most incredible efficiency enablers. This is an opportunity for us to be able to do more for our clients. That should be the motivation.

31. 39:50
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I reflect back and a couple things, like, I just reflect back in our heyday on high level marketing and the amount of people we had. And I remember just like me banging my head against the wall, being like, what does this person do? Like, can't these couldn't we consolidate these four people to one? And I look at I now is like, you know, you get a B, you hate to see C players but like they need more capacity and, and if we have a tool now that gives them more capacity. Like that's really exciting to think about being like a 30, 40, 50 person company. But we operate like a 500 person company. If you look back ten years ago, pretty amazing stuff. But what I want to ask you directly though, like we entered the SEO market when like, the Yellow pages was like dying, right? Physical books were still being dropped off on your porch. Right. And we had this bet that we're going to get into this market. And we dominated local organic search, like, I don't nobody really touched us. I think from a local perspective in 2009 until like 14, probably like what do you see for like the Geo, all this other stuff that's coming down the pipeline, do you see like SEO the way we knew it, organic and just traditional Google search. Like, do you see that just I don't know. Do you see that as the new Yellow Pages or are we a little bit of ways from that or what sort of in your mind there?

32. 41:16
    Jon Bowerman

    Absolutely, absolutely. Search is, is just a more rudimentary version of Geo, of generative. Sorry.

33. 41:30
    Wes Mathews

    What's gen before you go stick on it, can you explain generative quickly?

34. 41:35
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah. Generative. Generative is essentially where you're not you're looking for a deeper recommendation than just results, a list of results that now you have to curate. You have to, identify what looks legitimate, what doesn't, generative. It is. So if you're using, ChatGPT, you're using a Siri, you're using Gemini Copilot, anything where you're using an AI based, it's a language learning model to, to do research for you. That's essentially what, what generative search is, is it's the ability to offload the research and give you the executive summary of it. Right. Like we are, we hear a lot. Everyone wants a dashboard. Or if nobody wants a dashboard, what people want are insights. They want it. They want someone to look at the information and say, here's what I recommend that that you should do. If you go to Google, what it's going to do is it's going to give you a list of results that you now have to make all kinds of decisions on. Does that look like it's a legitimate company that, you know, a known, individuals that only click on the paid ads? Why do they only click on the paid ads? Because they say, well, those are the ones I can trust because of a company's willing to pay money. That is a company that I can trust. I'm not going to click on any of the free results, because that's all. That's all the spam. With a generative search with like a ChatGPT. Is it just built in to weed out what it thinks might be spam? And, and why, why go through the hassle of looking at, a bunch of results? It's kind of like, you know, if you're, if you're working with a designer, that says, hey, here's here's 500 tile samples, tell me which one looks great. No. Thank you. Here's two tile samples. And by the way, these are ones that I've vetted there. This is what they look like in a room. And here's the top three reasons why I think this one is your choice. That's the experience people want. But the final the old school fundamentals of search engine optimization still apply to today's, generative search. And it all comes down to this is the biggest misconception I'd see with everyone that would try to do search engine optimization was it's about backlinks. It's about it's about these 300 different micro metrics and everything like that. What people lost sight of is no, it's about it's about the value of the content and how the content is structured. Because if, if a search engine, if I Google, if, anthropic if a ChatGPT if it, if it doesn't read the content and understand what the contents about you have, you have no chance of that ever, being seen as relevant. And that's where you have to start.

35. 44:41
    Wes Mathews

    So then what about everybody? Like, I can see ChatGPT content a mile away. I'm like LinkedIn and stuff. And it just like people fail to like, take out the emojis, but like what? How does that impact it? Right. Like I see all these agencies or people peddling now like hundreds of pages of content and we'll build out your blogs for you and like all this stuff that you know, we had to hire people for to manually do the right way. People are probably familiar with, like white hat SEO, black hat, SEO, but like what? How does that impact all this now? So you have like, the search function of, like, accessing it and using it, but then you have people that are leveraging this tool to like, create all that stuff, right?

36. 45:24
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah. There's the trinity of delivery is fast, cheap and good. Pick two. Right. And those kinds of thing what you know, one of the byproducts of ChatGPT is it's allowed a lot of people to create things very fast and very cheaply. But it's still it lacks that. It lacks that quality. So while you can create something like that, it's it's always about what can what can everyone else do to. So if the barrier to entry is so minimal, then it is, it does not have it does not have a future, because it is too, too far, easily replicable. By, everyone else, everyone else out there, and to the, to the point that we're all becoming experts of being able to recognize it. I mean, this as soon as I see, an emoji or a, a double dash in a, in a word, doc, if you're not, you already. Yeah. That's AI, you know, and it starts to have its, it's its signatures.

37. 46:38
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. There's nothing like an employee sending you a follow up email to where it's all ChatGPT and emojis to. That's that's like the worst.

38. 46:46
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, you're. We'll take the Stanley mug. Really cool. Until everyone has one. It's and it's really the truth about many things is that it can be really cool until everyone has one. And when it becomes so easy for everyone to get one, it's no longer that that cool. And it's a and it's just a it's a shortcut. In marketing, the founders, they're just that really are not shortcuts.

39. 47:21
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, yeah, we covered a decent amount today, but I think maybe we could price it here for 24 hours and talk about a lot of different things, but kind of wrapping to this, like you just recently wrote a book, you want to talk about the book you created. Like, obviously there's passions outside of AI and CMO ING and solving entrepreneurial challenges. But like, talk a little bit about your book and how people get in contact with you.

40. 47:44
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And you can get the book at Not Lost starting.com. And I the really the big driver of this the book is called you're not lost. You're just starting how to make anything possible is, I've got two teenage kids. And the biggest question that was going around school, especially for my son, thank you, was, is, where's he going to college? Where's he going to college? And you know what? School of hard knocks. And, I have an architecture degree that I had. I've never done anything with. Right. Bussing.

41. 48:23
    Wes Mathews

    We know you kind of have, though.

42. 48:24
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, a little bit. But in hindsight, the value I got from college was not the degree that I think is in a box in my basement somewhere. It was the, it was the acclimation, to life and to and to meeting friends. But the way people ask, where are you going to college today is, basically what career you choose a what is your path to financial, gain? And that's really what they're asking. What are you going to do for the rest of your life? And I found that, I don't know what I'm necessarily going to be doing in five years. I have a thought, but I want. I wanted my kids to be ready for anything. And in the age of, I, we may we may have no idea today what the job was ten years from now with the impact of I have and I want my kids to be able to be very prepared to say I need to make a pivot or this is the way, this is the way I'm going to go. Not, oh man, I have one shot at life. I made this big decision and now my entire life plan is derailed. That that wasn't what I wanted to set them up for. And the, the lessons in the book are really all the things that we've learned as entrepreneurs, which are, you know, just you can't be afraid to ask. And, and if there's a setback, just learn from it and keep moving on because we can't do anything about the past. All we can do and golf, it's the expression is all that matters is the next shot. That's all we've got. And that's what we got to keep a focus on. And, and the book is really designed for people that are, you know, man, I'm not I'm not happy. You know, I'm a teenager. I'm thinking about where is my life going to go next, or someone that's been in a position for ten years and saying, I'm not really that happy here, but I don't know where to start to make a change. Well, to show up to the world like an entrepreneur and to live as free as we do. You don't have to start a business. You don't have to quit your job. You don't have to mortgage a house. You have to go all in on something. You can start applying. You can start showing up like an entrepreneur first. Just be the CEO of yourself. Like last year, Wes, CEO of Wes Mathews. And that means that even if you have to work for someone, you still represent yourself. Look, I had to work for, three years at one biggest multi career, wireless companies. And, they were really just my biggest client. They were my employer. But your employer is really just your biggest client. And if you show up like, it's a.

43. 51:04
    Wes Mathews

    Really unique way to look at it.

44. 51:06
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah.

45. 51:08
    Wes Mathews

    You know, that's your biggest client. You know, it's not everybody's right to be an entrepreneur, but you still have to have that passion and kind of have that ownership behind whatever it is you're doing and have passion. Otherwise it's like, yeah, it's like my 9 to 5. I hate my life. I hate my job. I hate what I'm doing. That's interesting. So yeah. So you reach out to John Jay, Roger, go to Amazon, get the book, reach out to start or sign a copy. But how can people get in contact with you? We covered a lot today. There's a lot to talk about, but what's the easiest way to get in contact with you or not get in contact with?

46. 51:39
    Jon Bowerman

    Yeah, easiest is, a website. John Bauer, Mint.com. Or you can go to self consulting.com, as well.

47. 51:48
    Wes Mathews

    Cool. All right, I appreciate it. Thank you.

48. 51:52
    Jon Bowerman

    All right. Thank you. Awesome.

49. 51:54
    Wes Mathews

    This has been another episode of Entrepreneur Intel. Thank you for joining us. For show notes and other episodes, please visit us at entrepreneurintel.com. Until next time.