Strategic AI: How to Change Your Business and Your Thinking in 2026 with Len Ward

AI in 2026. What you need to do, where you need to go. This is. Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. We have an amazing episode today with Len Ward, who is going to talk to you about what is happening in the AI world, how you need to change your business, how you need to change the way you think, and what steps you need to do to get started in it.

There is so much in this episode. It truly is one you do not want to miss. Let’s get into Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. And I truly have a thought leader with me today, very much in the AI and marketing space. Something we are going to unpack in great detail over the coming minutes. But let’s first introduce Len Ward, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Now, Lynn, I suppose we need to start by telling everyone a little bit about you. So do you wanna go and give us a bit of an introduction?

Sure. I am the managing partner of conexus. We are an AI agency. I like to say we used to be a digital agency. Now we’re more of an AI marketing agency.

We help clients go from the search and retrieve world to the solve my problem world, and that’s by installing a bunch of AI stacks, problem solving solutions on their websites, and then help them in consulting with everyday workflows to see where we can integrate ai. So everybody’s running an AI and we’re doing it as well.

Yeah, it’s become such a big area for so many people and I want to dive into that, but I think in order to give it a little bit of context, let’s just talk about how you got there because that’s the interesting thing about ai. It’s so new in generally speaking for most people that are into that space.

So there’s a usually a history that’s behind it. And I know your history’s a little bit more interesting ’cause it was in a different kind of space. ’cause you’re on Wall Street, weren’t you at one point?

I was, I started on Wall Street during the.com era. So I literally, I like to say I grew up with the internet.

I watched the internet grow. I watch a lot of companies go public companies like Amazon, Google. I remember years ago when you were on the line, you were trying to optimize for 25 to 30 different websites opposed to just Google or search engines. I started there. Once my time on Wall Street wrapped up, I moved over to an e-comm startup, which was great.

At that point I taught myself how to do digital marketing. And the buzz you would hear over the last 20 years was at some point marketing is gonna get automated. That buzz turned into the term ai, AI’s always been out there. I think the term’s been out for something like the forties or something, but AI was science fiction.

Automation was the term we were more concerned about Then, right around 2016, 17, I think right around there. I played around with a product called IBM Watson, and I looked at IBM Watson. I paid like a licensing fee, played around with it. I thought it was horrible however, but what I always tell people is that if it can do what it says it’s gonna do, this will revolutionize everything we’ve ever thought about.

And then you were seeing all this automation going with HubSpot and companies like that, where you were seeing that they were automating things. But then when I saw the IBM Watson. That really opened up my eyes and I started really doing a lot of research on AI and trying to pay attention. And to be honest with you, quite selfishly I was researching it ’cause I was investing in the stocks.

That’s what I was doing. I was, because I really knew that this is something to look at. Next thing you know, about three and a half years ago after chat, GPT started count coming out and AI really started hitting the forefront. As an agency owner, I looked around to my team marketing team and I was like, if we don’t make this pivot now there will be no agency to think of.

And it, it’s a shame because I still know of a lot of agencies that really even made this full pivot over to ai. So from Wall Street in a.com era now to this era that’s how I arrived. And here I am.

And it’s fascinating what you say there about agencies needing to pivot. So do you truly see that traditional marketing is almost gone?

I.

I I don’t think the human creative element’s ever gonna be gone. I believe the great artistic directors creative directors, great copywriters, I still think the great concepts are gonna come from the human mind. I, as much as I thoroughly believe in ai, and I really believe it’s the future, I just have a hard time believing that.

The rational thought and how humans really come up with something creative. I think that’s always gonna be there. With that being said, if you were to go walk into a Madison AAV agency right now in New York, you know you’re gonna walk into a floor, it looks like a Wall Street trading floor.

You’re gonna see hundreds of people up and down. Copywriters, designers, coders, artistic directors, that’s all gonna come to an end. So where you maybe had two, 200 people working at your shop, I think now you’re gonna have maybe 10 to 15 that are gonna be the ones that are gonna say, that are gonna talk to the AI saying, here’s my concept.

And they’re gonna kind of work with AI to create basically mass scale type items. So that’s where I think it is. So I don’t think it’s gonna end. But I don’t think there’s gonna be nearly as many people are gonna quote unquote say they’re in marketing in the next two, three years. ’cause you’re just not.

Yeah, it’s been a really interesting journey in marketing because marketing started off as this, probably. A long time ago, but 30, 40 years ago, marketing was still this idea that you could cover a whole lot of things under the marketing umbrella, and there was even, I think up until 20 years ago, there was a lot of confusion between marketing, pr, and advertising marketing.

Then in the last 20 years has developed into so many subsets with. Not just social media marketing, but I’m the specialist in Facebook versus LinkedIn. And so it’s become very specialized in lots of different areas. But I think it’s evolving again, isn’t it? Because how people think about marketing and the implementation of it particularly with AI is completely changing that focus.

Yeah, I think one of the things that happened in marketing over the last, I’d say 10 years, that in my opinion really ruined a lot of creative creative work and a lot of really great strategy is the rise of lead gen. And I, as much as you need leads for your company to go, I think lead gen has literally poisoned the well when it comes to marketing because companies.

Took this point where they were so concerned about generating leads coming in the into the front door, that they forgot all about their brand. They forgot that you have to build some sort of brand because when you go to sell your company, your brand, and most people wanna sell their company, your brand is worth something.

It’s an asset. So over the last 10 years, we’ve been so focused on lead gen, especially digital marketing. And not focusing on brands so much that it’s been the search and retrieve world. And so it’s search for my, I have a problem. I’m searching for something. I’m retrieving all the links, and I’m researching all the information blogs.

I’m looking at videos. Maybe I’m going on social, I’m reading your post, and then I’m gonna formulate a. Decision and say, okay, this is how I’m gonna solve my problem. AI is flipping that on its head. AI is, you’re going directly to one spot and you’re saying, solve my problem. And AI is coming right back with a solution.

And the solutions that are typically coming back are the ones that are giving the right answers and the ones that have built a brand, not the ones that have been going in there and just doing. Gobs and gobs of lead gen. So we’re in a really tedious world right now where the companies that actually invested in their brand still do lead gen.

But understand the world of AI opposed to just lead gen companies. There’s gonna be a moat that are gonna come around these that are gonna build around these companies and the classic lead gen type companies are gonna find themselves in a little bit of trouble in this new world ’cause it’s a very different world.

Yeah, it is very different. And I and I wonder as well whether there’s this move, particularly in marketing, where traditionally you’ve got this very low response rate to anything, whether you’ve done, in the old days doing the letterbox drops to the mass emails, out to the phone calls. It’s all typically got a 1% kind of response rate, sometimes a lot less than that.

The question is whether AI. Is going to improve that because efficiency wise, yes, AI can definitely do things a lot faster. And and that’s where the great thing about AI is, but is it going to improve response rate, particularly when you’re starting to look in areas like lead generation.

I think that’s a kind of, that’s a good question ’cause it leads to a larger question or like I we’ll call it a bit of a, AI futurism, and I’m not the only one saying this futurist, there’s a few people saying it.

Marketing’s moving in the agent to agent, within the next 18 months, as much as you walk around with your phone, you’re gonna have some sort of wearable apparatus on you, whether that’s from Google, whether it’s from open ai, who, apple, whoever it may be. And that Apparat ATUs is gonna see and hear and interact with everything you’re doing.

It’s gonna be, you’re gonna be used to seeing people with meta glasses, you’re gonna be used to people with ear pods that are actually have little cameras on them. It’s one of those things where when you walk outside, you’re just gonna know that you’re, you like everything’s wide open. But what’s happening is that this is gonna start.

Harvesting all the information about you, and then they’re gonna be intertwined with, they’re gonna understand your credit cards, they’re gonna understand the points, they’re gonna understand things you like, don’t like, and so forth. And that agent, when you want something, you’ll look up and be like, you know what?

That’s a show I want to go to. Or, you know what? I gotta take my car to the shop agent. Go do this for me. Go find me tickets, where I like to sit or go book me an appointment to get my car fixed. That agent is going to then negotiate with the company’s agent. So it’s gonna basically go in and that’s how the marketing’s gonna happen.

You’re gonna look at your calendar and be like, oh, okay, I got a Saturday, I’m open. I gotta bring my car in. Or Hey, you tell your wife or your husband, Hey, I have great, I have tickets for the show. We’re gonna go see it. I think that’s where it’s going. When it comes to.

Lead gen, like that’s the type of stuff that’s not being thought about and not being looked at. So when you go to 1% open rate or 2% of brand, you are right. We’re to the point now where the, any type of impact is at best 1% on a great campaign. We’re not even gonna have those conversations anymore.

Like those conversations of those types of metrics are not. Gonna be discussed. It’s gonna be discussed. How can we better do something with our agent? What are we doing? I’ll be completely transparent. I don’t even know what that looks like. It’s, I think we’re all trying to figure that out right now, but, so it’s almost like the metrics we’ve been living, buying, living and breathing, buying and making business and marketing decisions, are, these are metrics that we’re gonna look at the same metrics as.

How many people got my yellow pages or how many people read that ad in the paper? Like that stuff we wouldn’t even have a conversation about right now. You’d be laughed out of a room, you’re gonna be laughed out of a room on bounce rate and stuff like that going forward and hard to believe, but it’s gonna be here sooner than later.

It’s such a fast changing landscape in that respect. And it’s interesting too, because of the efficiency of ai. People are said, not really focused on those numbers and saying, oh, it doesn’t matter if it’s 1% because the AI can send out a million things over the next, day. So what does it matter that’s gonna give us more than enough?

Which I think is problematic as well because it means that the, and I’ve already hearing it regularly about the amount of spam that people are seeing and trying to cut through all of that, and people’s ability to recognize what is real and what is. Generated by an ai. I think we’re tuning into that AI radar, if you like a whole lot more.

I agree. And here I actually think AI is gonna distill the noise from us. You are right, right now. The noise is, even the noise on AI is deafening and I’m living, breathing, wallowing in it 24 7. ’cause I just truly like it. But there are times I step up, I’m like, oh my God, this is just insanity. What’s coming at me?

And I even gotta, I, as a digital marketer, I truly unplug as much as I can. I just try to put it down ’cause I see the noise. I think. Your message is not gonna resonate that way. You’re not gonna be able to start screaming in the wind like we do right now. I think AI’s gonna filter that out back to that agent type thing.

It’s gonna really screen out what type of emails you’re gonna read. It’s gonna screen out what type of texts are coming in. And I’m not gonna say it’s gonna stop the ads from being shown. Like I, I just, it’s funny ’cause I actually think the rise of billboards and digital ads, I think that’s good because you’re looking around there’s a future there.

But. If you’re doing email marketing, if you’re doing top of the funnel, tough stuff online, it’s, I wouldn’t say stop it, but I’m gonna tell you that the AI apparatus, whatever we’re wearing, whatever this is gonna look like, that’s gonna screen it out. And how are you gonna be known from there? Solving problems.

If you’re a company that’s solving a problem, AI agents are gonna find you because they know you’re solving problems and your answer is correct and they’re gonna keep coming back to you. So it’s very weird world we’re entering into right now, and I don’t think a lot of people have a blueprint.

We’re starting to, the path is lighting up a little bit for us, but by no means am I saying, Hey, this is the direction we have to go in, because I don’t care who you are. Nobody knows the answer to that right now. No, I don’t even think Sam Altman knows where, where this is all going in the next two years.

It’s quite amazing. I know my first real experiences with what we’re seeing and have seen around like chat, GPT and the like was a few years ago prior to all of this stuff, was working in a, with a legal entity that works for the legal profession and had put all of the legal documents and things and various rulings.

Into a effectively what we now know as an ai. And it, you had this ability to ask it questions and it was there purely to guide lawyers who were not connected. They to, into the cities, for example. So they might be in more rural areas being, needing to deal with problems that are perhaps larger and out of their normal area of expertise.

So it would give them enough to build some information to then pass on to the next. Lawyer who was the more specialist. Really great concept. And as far as I know, it’s still operating, but it’s interesting how we’ve come from that really very specific problem solving to now this kind of broader expectation that AI will answer anything and everything.

Yeah, it’s, if you get really good on an LLM chat, large language model chat, CPT, Claude Gemini, Geminis, by the way, the no one out is tremendous 3.0. But you realize how smart these things are. You realize the answers. I know from a. From a business process standpoint, from a sales and marketing standpoint, two years ago, three years ago, our team was cleaning up nonstop.

The hallucinations and everything coming through, it’s getting less and less. It’s getting to the point now where you still need to screen it because God forbid you start putting stuff out there without screening it. That’s a problem, but it’s learning and it’s getting smarter and smarter.

And I know there’s this fine line of, is it really just if you look because it’s a tokenized process, is it just. Make, making sure that the next word is the most accurate word. After that word or that word, or is it really using some sort of intelligence to really generate the answer and nobody quite knows?

I’m sure they know, but I don’t really know the answer to that. But it’s getting smarter and the best case scenario I can give you is we put AI chat bots on a website and we actually had an AI chat bot on one of our client’s website that does a high volume e-commerce. So they sell lots of small parts for trailers and trucks and things like that.

Lot of tiny problems, a lot of crazy nuanced questions come in to the AI chatbot. So for the better part of the first four or five weeks, we kept sending over the questions what was right, what was wrong, and the owner of this company knows the parts so well that he would go in and be like, this is the answer, this is the answer.

We would then take the answer, retrain the chat bot. We have not sent over a question and answer to our client in two months. That chat bot now has learned every single thing, and it almost hits on a 98% accuracy every single time a question comes through. So that’s how smart these things are getting. So with me just telling you that on a chat bot that’s built on top of open ai, I can’t even imagine how smart the AI is getting.

So to answer your question, a long-winded answer, they’re getting smarter and it’s getting to the point where, yeah, they can almost answer anything.

I guess what’s also interesting is our willingness to engage with the AI because it’s gone from novelty value to now. Okay. Are we accepting it? And I liken a little bit to, it wasn’t that long ago that we were all reticent to put our credit cards onto the internet.

No, we won’t do that. There’s no way we’ll ever put that there. Now our credit cards are everywhere, right? They’re, we’re saving them on here, there, and everywhere, and people don’t seem to question it that much. So the engagement with ai, do you see that as becoming just completely normalized for everyone and everyone’s prepared to accept it?

Or do you think there’s going to be this? We need to define very clearly when you’re engaging with an AI versus when you’re engaging with a human.

I think it’s gonna be both. That’s actually a good question. I think it’s gonna be both. I think you’re going to, people are gonna quickly realize that.

If they engage with AI and they get the answers and then they say, Hey, I’m not gonna engage with it anymore. They’re gonna realize how quick they come back. It’s the same thing I tell people. Imagine pulling the internet away from you right now, or pulling text away from you right now, how ingrained it is and or ingrained it is.

And I know it took you time to get to that point. If you think about it, digital marketing from when it started, or the digital exception of it, really took from 98. So I’d like to tell the story of time to COVID. There’s a lot of companies that didn’t have websites in COVID. They, a lot of people like, ah, just send me an email.

They didn’t have a web, websites, which used to blow me away. Now we’re moving so rapidly, so fast that you’re not gonna have 25 years, you’re gonna have 18 months to maybe two years. And I do think there’s gonna be a large portion of people because of the job loss and people being afraid of job loss, they’re gonna push back on it and they’re gonna say, we don’t want this technology.

If you’ve taken any history class in your life, let me, I can, the minute I’m gonna go through every, not on this call, but I can go through 1,000,001 times how ev the dawn of a new technology or some sort of revolution, that man would push back and that would always get wiped away and this will get wiped away as well.

So I think it’s gonna be back. I. Back and forth. I think some people are gonna accept it, some aren’t. There’ll be a bit of a rebellion because of the job loss. Much like the internet, much like the car, much like the plow, we can go on and on. And that’s gonna quickly subside when you realize the absolute intelligence of this thing coming out.

Now it’s not foolproof or fail proof, and I do think humans have to be involved, but I think that’s what I’m predicting is gonna happen on the acceptance of AI over the next year or so.

It’s definitely changing the landscape and there are undoubtedly going to be jobs that are going to disappear, but it’s the jobs that are going to be created, which I think people are overlooking.

For example, in your agency you’ve made this shift. So when you look at numbers of people that are involved in your agency that were, five years ago to where they are now, there might be different roles, but has it vastly changed

the numbers? I will be completely honest. I don’t see my agency hiring any more people.

If we do it would be, they would be considered AI pilots, meaning because we work, we have a lot of AI stacks that we build for clients. Not as complicated as people think. It just, it’s just a, it’s just a lot of work to put ’em together. So I need people to pilot those things. So a lot of. My internal team, like my SEO manager, she’s now literally, we call her my data engineer, managers ’cause she’s making sure that all the data’s being fed into our custom gpt, making sure Zapier hookups are working and things like that.

My lead designer is actually our, my business partner bill designer, developer coder, he’s now to the point making sure that he’s trying to start building AI agents for people. So what is his title? It’s not really coder anymore. More, he’s an agent builder. Yeah, I, I think. The, your names are gonna change, but am I gonna go hire a bunch of copywriters?

No. Am I gonna hire a bunch of designers like I was doing right before COVID? No. Am I a bunch of salespeople? No. I’m not gonna be hiring that. So I think the people that are at their jobs now, if you’re working at a smaller company, I think you’re gonna be okay as long as you’ve embraced AI and you take on that, Hey, I’m gonna be a pilot type thing for this.

But if you work at a larger company and if AI is easily doing your job. Copywriting, certain types of design, a million different things. Lawyers, accountants. That’s concerning too. Unfortunately, if you’re not embracing AI and if you’re doing a repetitive task that an LLM can do really quickly, unfortunately, I think you’re gone on the flip side of that I tell this to everybody.

I think the rise of entrepreneurialism throughout this world is gonna to be unlike anybody, anything anybody’s ever seen. It’s gonna be very common to say, I work for myself. Oh how big’s your company? Two people. How much revenue do you do? 5 million a year. It’s gonna be very common for you to hear that.

So we’re moving into a world where you should feel really good because you’re gonna have a lot of time on your hands. You’re going to make money, you’re going to do well. The blood bath to get there, though, there’s a war coming with this, and we’re going to lose some stuff. But once we get over the hump, it’s gonna look really good.

It’s so fascinating all of that, because to me what I also see is the areas that you spoke about, the pilots and the like, that’s gonna become normal for businesses to have. So where there might be some jobs that get lost in, like copywriting or those kinds of areas that might happen in larger companies, it’s going to be replaced by an, an AI department because there has to be people that are looking at new software that are testing the new software, showing people how to implement it.

All of those things. There’ll be an AI department that will sit somewhere between marketing and it. Yeah. But that will be the norm.

Oh, I agree. And if you’re a copywriter I’ve given this advice. Wow, that’s gonna be it for me. ’cause AI writes all this stuff and I’m like, first off, you gotta train a GPT on what it to what to write.

Then you gotta build the brand voice within there. Then you have to test it, then you have to make sure you’re coming up with the right topics. ’cause you can’t just say, write me five blogs. It’s gotta be relevant topics that are going towards your goal. So I tell copywriters. Why don’t you engage with it?

Why don’t you become the head editor that rather than you having to be stressed out and writing 55 blogs for a law firm, which is what law firms, they just want vast amounts of content and now more than ever with the LLMs, you really gotta create content and it’s gotta be created the right way. Why don’t you become the head editor and understand how to start pumping this stuff out and interacting with it and say, maybe it comes up with the 10 ideas, but you tweak it a little bit, become that, that copywriter pilot, be the first one to do that at your company.

And then your, your boss is gonna look at you and she’ll look over you and say, you know what? We’re gonna keep Mike. Mike’s doing a kick ass job. He’s adapted this and this is good. And Mike’s gonna look around and be like, we have all these clients. I’d like to keep five pilots with me. And you may never have to hire a copywriter again.

Do that stuff now. Too many people are like running in fear or what do I do? Be that person. Because if the company doesn’t have AI pilots and they’re not offering AI services to their clients, don’t worry about them firing you ’cause they’re gonna be outta business. That’s the type of stuff you want to try to jump in now.

So if you’re afraid, don’t be because AI is the great equalizer. It, it’s levels, the playing field for every industry, everywhere. You just gotta be the first to stake your claim.

That is and I think that’s the interesting thing, right? Is that what you’ve demonstrated there is creative thinking, which is what you said in the beginning is going to see more of a rise in that.

And I think that’s the important element here, isn’t it? That creativity has been pushed aside in many respects over the last few decades. We’ve been, catching up with various bits of technology and creativity hasn’t really flourished in the same way. But I think now. AI being able to do a lot of these tasks that are more repetitive and do it more efficiently, it enables that space to be more creative.

Oh, yeah. I look forward to the great creative minds that have so much on their mind. They may wanna come back and sketch the great ones, still sketch it out by hand. They’ll sit down and start sketching, draw, they’ll come up with a concept. But they always knew that the bottleneck was I gotta get it to my designer.

I gotta get it to my coder. Or okay, this is a great concept, but how long is it gonna take to do a video? Or how long is it gonna take to do like a photo shoot? Now you don’t have to do that anymore. You’re opening up soa. You’re opening up chat, GPT or whatever it may be. So think of these great creative minds and.

This stuff that they’re gonna put out there. Like how many times did I sit in a room and a great artistic director would be like, this would be great if we could do this, but it wasn’t physically possible. We can’t do that. Years ago, I remember if we had an angle shot and years ago you’d be like you gotta hire a helicopter if we’re gonna do that, now you do drones.

And now, think about if we just had this angle and that angle and so forth and they just let it, all the creative stuff just get thrown into an LLM. Now you gotta think about what type of creative stuff they’re going to make from there. So forget what Soro and AI’s doing right now with Creative.

Go look at the great creative mind in your shop right now and where they’re gonna be in about a year. Once they embrace it, once they realize they can just brain dump on their phone and this thing’s gonna, this agent’s gonna start working for them. By the time they get back to their desk, they’re gonna be like.

That’s it. But now I want it one step higher. I think the ads, which I do think will be relevant in some weird capacity, but not the way we’re used to right now, are gonna blow people away. They’re almost gonna look like 32nd motion pictures type things. And that’s coming from the human mind, not ai. So if that makes sense.

That’s I, I. Look forward to where creative’s gonna be, but I, my caveat is this, if there was a thousand great creatives in a room with ai, there’ll be five left and those five will be Martin Scorsese. They will be the absolute best you’ve ever seen in your world. But unfortunately, no, there won’t be a, the mill anymore where you see hundreds of creative.

I think that’s coming to an end.

Lots of I, I think lots of changes coming through. And one thing that I wanted to speak to you about as well, and you touched on a little bit earlier is around SEO. Because SE o’s been this thing that’s been around for a number of years now. And I think depending on who you talk to, there’ve been varying degrees of how important it is and how well it works.

But that’s all been based on the premise that you’re going to be found in a Google search engine. Now the question is, what are you going to be found by an ai? Is it the same? Because before it was restricted to just what your website might say. Now it’s a lot broader, and I find it really fascinating when you do a search for someone and ask an AI to come back with a summary of it.

How different that can be in terms of the high level things that it’s picking out compared to what perhaps you might see visually if you just went and looked at a website.

Yeah, I’m, I, so I started years ago when I got into digital marketing. My I planted my flag on the SEO world. So I was search engine optimization.

I literally, my company, I had the term SEO in it before we morphed and bought a couple of small agencies. I was a thorough believer of it. I was one of the first people in my area even doing it. I remember getting calls on SEO and people didn’t call it SEO 15, 20 years ago. They called a co, like not even SEO, they didn’t even know how to pronounce it, but I’m gonna tell you that everyone’s oh, SE is dead.

It is dead. Because you’re going from a search and retrieve world to a solve my problem world. It doesn’t mean that SEO people are going to, that’s it. SE o’s done. No, it means before you were writing content because you were trying to manipulate the search engine of Google and trying to rank high.

And then once you got there, it was a shell game and bait and switch to try to get a, somebody to fill out a form. Let’s c the way it is. That was your job and people did the job really well. Now you gotta create content based upon people’s actual. Problems. And you have to start. And those problems have to all be connected together.

And then you have to identify the content, whether that’s text, image, video, whatever it may be, audio, whatever. And you gotta try to figure out and organize in a data room, how does this solve problems? Because before Google would go in and start pulling all your information up, like in a vacuum and organizing, you start clicking.

Now Google’s gonna start pulling up all the information, blending it together, and saying, and in a conversational tone saying. This is the answer to your problem. What does SEO, how does SEO live in that world? You live in that world by getting rid of the term search engine optimization. ’cause you’re not doing search engine optimization anymore.

You’re solving problems. What does that look like from a content standpoint and get rid of the term ranking? ’cause it’s funny, I just saw somebody on X today, they’re like, here’s the quickest way to get to have the LLM pull you in and get ranked. I’m like, you gotta just get rid of the term there.

It’s the same thing as driving a car or riding your horse. You’re not the horse’s. SEO and the car is LLLM. I know I’m getting a little wonky in my explanation, but I just think that the term SEO, we have to, and I don’t think the a EO and all these other terms I think that stuff’s gonna fade away.

It’s just another way to repackage SEO Unfortunately, again, because we do SEO, it’s still matters right now. You still get leads from it and you still have to do it, but I think now you have to start thinking about is this piece of content that I’m putting out there? The first thing you used to think about before is.

Will it rank? Will people stay on the page? Now you’re over to, is this solving the core problem that somebody may have? So it’s a very different way. So I think the SEO’s job’s gonna move more towards working very closely with copywriters, making sure, let or, and even video and so forth, making sure that yes, this solves the problem.

Let’s put it here, label here in our data room, and hopefully the LMS are gonna start picking it up. Long-winded, but hopefully you get what I’m saying.

No, absolutely. And I think this whole focus on problem solving, it goes back down to businesses and branding and things that you talked about earlier on, people missing the why.

The why are they, why do they exist? What problem are they solving? And I think that needs a lot closer attention on that for businesses in order for them to survive. Because I think that’s the interesting thing, right? If a, if you’re asking AI to solve a problem, it’s going to look. For things that are going to solve that problem.

And you want to be quoted in that you want you, you want to be one of those sources so that people then will come to you for that information in the future, right? Yeah.

No, correct. That’s it. You, that’s exactly what you want. You really want to just make sure that you are, your website, your products on there, your salespeople are that just solve problems.

You gotta remember. As AI grows, people showing up to your front door are gonna be the most educated customers you’ve ever seen in your life. They’re gonna, if, if they have a problem with their roof right, or a problem with their car. Typically you’d wait for the salesperson or the mechanic come out and say, here’s what’s wrong.

That’s not gonna happen in another year. That’s not happening right now. They’re, they take a picture, they literally have interact audio video with AI and they, if it goes down. And it’s funny ’cause it was something as funny as my son’s car broke down and his Jeep broke down and I knew it was a battery.

We all knew it was a battery, but for some reason I’m like, could this be the starter? And I’m not a mechanical guy, but I’ve had a lot of cars enough where things broke down, where I, paid enough money where I’m like, all right, I know what this is. Just by the sound of it, I know it’s gonna cost me, but I’m sitting here listening.

I was like, okay, it’s the first time we ever had a problem with a Jeep. It’s fairly new. And I put on chat g pt, I turned on the video and I started interacting with it. And I told my son to turn it on, and right away it goes, battery. I was like, a hundred percent not the starter. And they’re like, a hundred percent not, they’re like, it’s a battery, it’s gonna cost you this much.

And then I said, okay, great. I didn’t say. Give, tell me where to go. But the next step would’ve been, book me an appointment for my local mechanic. Get me in nearby tomorrow. And I’m also gonna need a TRO tuck, for a quick jump. Makes sense? That’s where your customer’s gonna be.

Not oh, my car’s making a funny sound. I dunno what to do. That customer’s gonna know what they want. They’re gonna, and by the way, they’re gonna know exactly what battery they want too. Think about the jobs that eliminate sales, customer service. Like where are we headed? So hopefully it makes sense, but that’s where we’re heading right now.

That’s the path we’re heading down.

What’s interesting too, about sales is there are now a lot of sales bots that are taking calls.

Yeah.

And that’s. That’s an interesting one. I spoke to an agency not that long ago where they had cut their sales staff down, I think it was from eight down to two.

The rest were sales bots and that the sales the sales bots were making were, their conversion rate was much greater ’cause they were sticking to the script and that the app, according to them, 90% of people didn’t even ask or care. That they were talking to an ai, that the AI doesn’t hide from the fact that it’s an ai.

If you ask and say, am I talking to an ai, it will tell you that. But most people don’t ask and don’t care. I suppose that depends on the nature of what you’re selling, because if you’re selling bigger ticket items I can’t imagine that’s going to be taken over by an AI anytime soon. But certainly if you are selling lower ticket items.

The efficiency there, the ability for an AI to take over from sales, that’s a big area.

Yeah. I don’t see, I think people are implementing it way too much right now in the states, we’re having a really bad problem. I don’t know if you guys are seeing it now. The spam calls are outta control and the spam calls are all AI bots that are talking, and they sound tremendous, like they sound real.

That’s annoying. But I think you’re right. I don’t think that’s gonna be accepted. You’re not gonna care about. Interacting with a, an AI bot for a quick question, or you’re looking to buy a hundred dollars product, or you have to return a product, you’ll interact with that.

You’re not gonna think twice about that. Again, it comes back to if you would’ve told somebody 15 years ago, you’re gonna be able to go on your phone and text somebody a quick message. You’d be like, that’s insanity. I don’t trust that at all. Where’s that text specifically going? You’re amazed how much or we’re amazed how much humans improvise, adapt, and overcome and adjust to that. And I think that stuff, that’ll be, that’s if it’s not already common, that’s gonna get real common. And yes, that’s gonna ding the salespeople. It is.

Let’s talk about your average business and that’s thinking about, okay, I’ve got no AI being used at the moment, maybe.

Excuse me. Maybe the odd time that you’ve got a chat, GPT where you’re asking for a bit of content, but they don’t really know what they’re doing. What do you see as being the basics for a business? And let’s talk a professional services business that tends to be the core of the audience that are listening in here.

What are the core things that they should be looking at to starting point for an ai, and where can it go for that sort of

business? The easiest way we tell, ’cause we deal with a lot of B2B service businesses, B2B manufacturing and so forth. The fastest way to do it, especially in services, especially when you offer a lot of products or a lot of services, even if it gets a little complex and your client base is like complex the first thing to do in 2026 in the first half by, by the quarter, the end of quarter two in 2026, you should have all of your standard operating procedures, manuals, brochures.

Sales processes, customer profiles, Tam, ICPs, you name it. Everywhere. Should be digitized. ’cause you’d be surprised how many companies you walk into and stuff is in a filing cabinet still, which blows me away. But true, everything’s digitized and everything’s in a data room. Data room is fancy. Talk for Google Drive, Dropbox.

If you have a large enough company, you can move to a company like Snowflake, which is very interesting, but have everything. Organizing that data room and label it right. The procedure to for X, Y, Z the manual for X, y, Z product. Don’t just throw it in there and so have somebody organize that properly.

Have meetings weekly and say, this is the data that I put in a room so far. Here’s my marketing data. Here’s my sales data. This is how we have it listed. Everybody agrees. Oh, what about that? What about that? So going out a quarter. Two, you’re now to the point where you’re ready for next year. By the end of next year, you’re gonna start seeing all of these products coming onto the market, and the products are going to all types of AI products, and they’re gonna wanna plug into your data, and they’re gonna either solve problems, they’re gonna be the people talking on the phone.

And we’re gonna get to another product I’ll talk about in a minute everything. So be prepared. Don’t be the one where you’re, haphazardly organizing content because you just engage in a two year contract on an AI product. You should have all your data together in a room. Test these things out, plug them in and see what works and what doesn’t work.

That’s the number one thing you have to do. The second thing you wanna do, and you can do this. Fairly affordably, although it’s a little bit of work. So watch who you work with. We actually do this for clients and there’s a lot of work behind it ’cause there’s a lot of training. It’s an AI chatbot on your website.

It’s giving your website an actual real voice, like literally you can talk to visitors, but it can also take every single thing in your website or one of those data rooms and now talk to all the web visitors on your site. It solves problems, it answers questions. It can do whatever you want it to do. And it works 24 7.

It can handle thousands of inquiries, a minute. And it’s probably the best thing to do. And the reason I say that is this is the magic of ai. ’cause when we put that on a client’s website or prospective client’s website, I have never yet once heard the term, oh my God, we never thought about that.

Or that, that is the most craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know customers were asking for that because right then and there. This is your customer’s real problem. And the reason you may not have market share is because in the last five years, you’ve never once addressed this problem. So now the customer’s telling you their problem where AI and the company that’s gonna win is, what am I gonna do to fix that problem?

What am I gonna do to address it? What else can we put on the website? What new product can we create, if that makes sense. So those are the two easiest things you can do. The one manually. Hire, get one person internally to put all your data together. Number two, look for a company that can get an AI chat bot on your site.

Make sure that they’re training it on a monthly basis and sit down as a team and review all of those chats coming through. And then you’re off to the races. Here’s the content we have to do. Here’s X, Y, Z all the way down. And that’s the magic of ai. So if you’re B2B services, that’s the easiest, fastest way to get involved.

And the data you get out of it is worth this price and gold.

Does that mean a website’s still important? Because I know a lot of people have questioned whether, what do we still need a website? Is, how important do you think that is moving forward?

I think a website’s gonna turn into a repository.

I, I, ’cause we do we’ve made, Conexus has probably rolled off about, oh my God, by the time it’s all said and done, over a thousand websites, maybe more than that. We pride ourselves on websites. We’ve, I’ve won awards for websites if you could see me behind me. But I am the first to say. In 2026, I don’t think I would engage in building a brand new website.

I would maybe do an overhaul of a website, but the number one thing you wanna do is make sure that your website is answering questions. Make sure you have all the right tools on there, whether it’s a calculator, a product finder, or whatever. I think people are gonna come to your website and that’s what they’re thinking about doing, and there’s gonna be a series of tools that they can go into and start answering questions and so forth.

The days of the beautiful navigation, the images, getting the video on the website. That’s, you’re not gonna have that conversation. Do you still need the content? Do you still need the video? Yeah, but what’s gonna happen are the LLMs are gonna be on your website and they’re gonna pull that data directly up where that’s gonna interact on your AI chat bot or whatever problem it’s solving.

But websites will exist, but there’ll be more known as data repositories for the company. And those data repositories will be linked out to your social media and so forth. So I do think the websites that we’re used to now. We’ll go by the Yellow Pages probably in the next couple years. I do believe that.

But you’re still gonna need a domain because people are still gonna know, I need content on Mike’s service. They’re gonna go right there to know that they can go in and get a problem solved. I dunno if that makes any sense, but I just think the beautiful pretty websites you’re looking at, they’re not gonna have the importance they used to.

I think that brings up then the question of the content itself that’s being written. How important is that content to. BI guess I, I was gonna say purely written by human ’cause I don’t think that’s a reality anymore. I think most people are getting some assistance from an ai to write it. But there’s talk that, Google may be trying to detect it and penalize it if it is being written by an ai.

So how do you find that balance of what the content should be that’s there? Because you talk about yes, you’ve gotta right content to pro about problems that you are solving. It may come from it. I’ve used myself as a great example where what we do is we, here we are, we’ve got a great conversation on between the two of us as a part of the podcast.

We’ll use that transcript to help create some content for the blog that goes on the website. The question is. How important is it to try and make that as authentic as possible? And do we have to try and trick Google to not knowing it’s a, there’s any use of an AI in being involved in that? Where is all of that going?

That

blend. So you do have to write the content a specific way if you want to be in the LLMs. So that’s gotta be written a certain way. There’s a certain, finess, you have to write for it. And it’s basically it’s all centered around FAQs is what they’re, again, facts solve my problem. So I’m of the belief that.

I think 75% of businesses right now are using chat GPT to create content for the entire website and their entire marketing efforts, and they’re putting it out there. The smart companies are actually, they’re great CMOs. We have a couple clients where they’re brilliant marketers. They read every piece of content that goes out.

They know that the LLMs are creating content and they’re not fighting that tide anymore. They may tweak things. They may. Say, let’s add this line in, or that’s wrong. I think it’s essential that you do have an editor on staff or hire an editor. So there’s one job that’s absolutely is gonna be more needed.

May, maybe you don’t need 10 copywriters, but you’re sure Sec gonna need two or three editors to make sure this stuff’s looking right. So you have to make sure. That a human eye has put eyes on it and you feel good about it going out. Now you could go down the road of, one of the things we do, we have a marketing stack where we call it a marketing brain, which knows everything about Drip, and we have 250 sub stacks underneath it that it can pull in and start talking to.

One of the things that it pulls in is it’s a brand guide and we make sure that when it’s writing the content, it’s truly writing in the voice of. Our client, however, we then send it over to our editor who takes a look and is yeah, approved. This is good. So that’s what’s gonna happen. I don’t think we can fight that tide anymore.

I think the days of worrying about what Google is gonna penalize and not penalize anymore, if we’re getting away from the search and retrieve, nobody’s worried about being penalized anymore. And Chachi BT is already up to a billion users a week that’s now really rivaling Google, which is amazing.

So I think the penalization, not there, but. The AI slop, and I didn’t invent this, somebody else did is out there. There’s a lot of slop out there and it’s really bad content. So I would really pay attention to what you are writing out there. But to not think that the LMS aren’t writing, 75% of the content out there is wrong.

The real good content is the one where you definitely know A CMO or an editor put their eyes on it and you’re like, wow, that looks really good. So that’s, yeah. Unfortunately, we’re at that stage now.

I’d have to say to people listening as well, that the trick is, and this is why I love the podcasting medium, is you’ve gotta base it on authentic content when you’re sending a chat bot out there to try and create some content, and it might be based on a few things that you’ve said in the past, but it’s out there just picking up stuff from here, there, and everywhere.

It’s not the same as saying, here we have a transcript of. In this case, we’ve got a, a longish podcast recording. Lots of detail that are in there. If we’re going to create something that’s just utilizing the content from this episode, but maybe focused in a particular area that we’ve discussed, that’s completely different to just create something.

Yeah, and I think that’s the point, isn’t it? You have to include the quotes. It has to be based on that authentic voice.

Yeah, I think that’s still gonna be needed. I, I think that’s inherent, human behavior where people are like every, everything you’re gonna do is ai.

I don’t know about that. If you have a great writer, who writes tremendous novels you’re, no, we’re not getting rid of that because. AI might be able to really read, write in their voice and might be able to, maybe create a book that you would think that this writer wrote.

But, the writer didn’t write it. Now they, she may use AI to help her out, but there is something about being authentic that still is gonna matter, that when. When you, when the great writers come out, they’re just tremendous. They know how to rationalize something and I’m, I’ve been steadfast when people ask me about why do you think AI will never, it’s gonna surpass human intelligence, but why do it already has, but why do you think it won’t be a human?

Because it can’t rationalize. That’s a human element. And I can’t wrap my head around and I’m not, I’m. Dumb. I can’t wrap my hand around these. These other guys are so much smarter than me in ai. I can’t wrap my head around how you can create something that can actually rationalize a situation, then put pen to paper and create a story and kind of go from there.

Sure, AI may be able to do it, but I think you’re gonna be able to point out that’s human and that’s ai. I think just because we’re human and we know what we do but the kind of. Diverge a little bit from that. The thing that you’re gonna see rise though, is this term called synthetic content, if you haven’t heard that before.

So you are running outta content for these LLMs to digest, and that is the oil that keeps these things going, right? So people are putting out this AI slot. So some of the answers that are coming back, when you’re looking at it, you’re like, it’s not that it’s hallucinating, you’re like. They’re relying on the, because you go look at, sometimes they’ll put links and you go click that link and read it, and you’re be like, oh God that’s not good at all.

So they’re talking about the LLMs that are gonna have like the mini GPTs underneath, or whatever term may be, and it’s gonna tell it what content to write. In what voice and it’s actually gonna instruct these agents to create this synthetic content. I’m gonna be interested to see how good that content is.

That’s coming sooner rather than later because it knows for it to live, it needs more and more content to digest. It’s already ripped through all of YouTube. It’s ripped through all of Google. It’s ripped through every single thing man’s created. Where are we at now? So now it’s gotta create the synthetic content, but I don’t know if that synthetic content is gonna create, is gonna be meant for human digestion opposed to more meant, almost like a coding type content that it needs, if that makes sense.

So just something to put on your radar. That term synthetic content’s gonna really start rising in the next year or two where you’re gonna hear of it and it’s gonna be, it could be a bit of a problem. Just to wrap

things up, I’ve got two couple of questions just to finish things up.

So one is just give me some predictions. 2026. I know it’s probably a bit hard to forecast, much further into the future, but what do you think for businesses out there at the moment, 2026, what is the thing that they should be focusing on and where do you see us advancing over that 12 months?

The thing I think business people have to pay attention to in 2026 is I know a lot of business people who invest money in marketing definitely pay attention to when Google comes out with their earnings because you are seeing that Google, whether they had $70 billion or something like that this quarter for advertising.

By the end of 2026, you are gonna start seeing that their advertising dollars are pulling back and that they’re not making the money they used to make. They may be making money in different areas, but they’re not gonna be hitting that number anymore. And why is that important? That’s important because you’re realizing less and less people are using Google to find your product.

And it’s not your marketer, it’s not your ad spend, it’s just it’s a capitulation point where more and more people are moving over to some sort of LLM. Now, I’m sure that there’ll be advertising. In there in some capacity. ’cause advertising, we find our way to worm in anything, but really pay attention to that.

Pay attention to Google’s earnings as it starts getting, pulling back and pulling back. That’s gonna be a problem because you’re gonna look at your marketers and say, what’s next? What’s next? So if I’m predicting that out to the end of 2026 that Google is no longer gonna make the money in advertising that they used to.

Where do we go to go solve that problem? That’s when it comes back to build a data room, start solving problems, start preparing for this because it’s coming. So that’s number one. I think by the end of 2026, I do believe that the first wearable device will be out. I think it’s gonna be by chat, GPT. I can’t remember the John Ives.

I think his name is John Ives. He was the lead designer. I’m saying I’m butchering his name. He was the lead designer for Apple. I dunno if you know that now he works with Chad T and I believe that they’re gonna come out with that first product. Somebody showed me a blueprint. It looks like a little disc that you’re gonna just pin on, you almost look like a, like a little button or something.

They said that’s what it’s gonna be. But I think the that, and that’ll be the very first thing where people step back and they’ve actually cracked into the armor of Apple because they have said. They’re coming after the iPhone. A lot of people miss that term when they say it, but they’re coming for the iPhone.

So I think that by that end, by the end of next year, business owners are gonna say, what do we need to start doing with our marketing dollars? Because Google is clearly becoming an issue. And the second thing is, your kids, your wife, your husband may be, you’re gonna see them walk in the front door and they’re gonna have this device on ’em.

And now we’re off to the races on ai and I think that’s gonna happen all within the next 12 months.

I think it’s huge. I think I know what you mean about the iPhone because I look at my phone and it’s cluttered with that many. Apps and things that are on there, half of which I haven’t looked at in two years probably.

Yeah. Photographs that are in their thousands now and not enough energy to sort them out. Having something that’s gonna be able to come in and do all of those things and just be able to focus on what I need is going to be huge. So it’ll be a question of whether it interplays and reconfigures the iPhone to suit a much more considered.

Version for an individual that will be the interesting thing of where that takes us. So some great predictions there for next year. One final question to ask you. What’s the aha moment that businesses have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were gonna have?

I think it comes back to that chat bot and it comes back to how that is the big aha moment. Like when we go through that and they see what the customer’s asking, or when they ask the chat bot a question and the website comes back, chatbot goes back and gives them the answer, that’s the aha moment.

And that’s when they’re like. Oh my God. They’re like this. This changes everything. I’m like, and I say all the time, I’m like, yeah. To me, if it’s literally telling you what to do, it’s it’s like you say which, which path should we take in ai? Listen to what your website is telling, or listen to what your consumer is asking.

Your website that will literally light the path right in front of you. Follow that all the way down and you’re gonna be fine. So that is the real aha moment. We put that right on a client’s website. We don’t sell ourselves too hard, we only take. Maybe 10 clients a year if we can, new.

Not even that next year it’ll be five and we put that on our website. I, we won’t, it’s not me being cocky or condescending ’cause I didn’t invent ai. But put on your website, we’ll send you the chat log and never fails. Within one minute later, let’s have a phone call. It’s ’cause it’s just it’s magic.

Amazing. So many tips in there for business owners. I love all of this space around ai. I think it’s that’s great. Less about overwhelm and being scary and more about excitement and opportunities and changes that you can make to really take your business to the next level. So thank you so much for sharing all of that information.

I know we probably could have talked for another few hours Quite Yeah. Quite frankly, on all of this stuff, and I hope we get the opportunity again. Thank you. Appreciate it. And we’ll, of course we’ll include all the information on how to get in touch with Len in the show notes. And we look forward to your company next time.

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