Mastermind Session: Is Entrepreneurship Worth It?

[00:00:00] Cassie: So there's no more digging. There's nowhere more looking through links. There is you're either there or you're invisible. That's literally it, and sometimes people aren't even going to your site, before they make a call.

[00:00:11] Intro - Outro: You're listening to the Seven Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Riechmann.

[00:00:35] Dustin: Will AI recommend you? That's the key question. It's a very important question, and it's an emerging important question, in my own experience in a lot of the conversations I've been having lately.

[00:00:48] Dustin: So I'm really delighted to welcome Cassie Egle in to the podcast today, and Cassie is a client of mine. She's part of our community. I'm also a client of her. She's helping me answer this question with yes, more and more often, and we're gonna talk a lot today about the realities of AEO, AI search, GEO.

[00:01:06] Dustin: There's a lot of ways that people talk about this. And so Cassie, before we kinda get into your background and, and provide that context, kinda open with, a scenario that I think is very real, for our listeners. And so if we think about one of our listeners who's maybe like a really niche consultant and they're really good at this work that they do, they've got a great reputation, and their perfect prospect is out there tomorrow.

[00:01:28] Dustin: They're in ChatGPT and they're like, "Who can help me with X," this problem, right? What is going to influence whether our listener shows up as the result that gets recommended, or they just remain invisible and they, they miss out on this opportunity for AI search to feed them their perfect prospect? I'm gonna open with that, Cassie, and, and let you give us a high over- high-level overview, and then we'll get into all the good backstory.

[00:01:51] Cassie: Okay. So I will answer it, and this is my theory, in probably a unique way. I think that chat tools, we're just gonna s- use chat or whatever, but like Chat, Claude, Perplexity, et cetera, I think it's very human in its approach, and it wants to be able to clearly understand who you are, the problem you solve, and w- who it should recommend to you, and it needs to show, it needs to see several trust signals that other people- Feel the same way.

[00:02:24] Cassie: Like, it can't just be you putting your information out there, it has to be other people that are also saying how great and wonderful you are in said niche. so if you have all of that, if you have a lot of online information out there, it's all cohesive, it's all, shooting the same visibility signal, is what I call it, then just like a human, chat is going to say, "Hey, Dustin looks great for helping people get on podcasts.

[00:02:53] Cassie: I'm going to go ahead and recommend him." If for some reason you, do not have a strong marketing foundation, that your website says one thing, your LinkedIn says another, your Google b- business profile says something, your testimonials are old because you used to sell meat sticks and you only have your meat sticks testimonials on there then, then, you confuse, you lose, right?

[00:03:16] Cassie: So just like a human, if you're confusing them, they're gonna skip over and they're gonna go to somebody else. strong marketing foundation, consistent online, having others Talking about you as well is going to put you leaps and bounds against anybody else in your niche.

[00:03:34] Dustin: Beautiful. And obviously we'll dig more into, like, how to do that.

[00:03:38] Dustin: I know you've got a really powerful framework. You've got some tools that you're gonna give access to for the audience so they can really go take action. So we'll tease people with that. But what I really want to do leading into that i- is provide context. There's a flood of people, on the internets who are like, "I know everything about AI.

[00:03:56] Dustin: I'm an AI expert of the f- you know, flavor of the day." but Cassie, you have not always positioned yourself as an AI search expert, as a visibility expert, which I think is a huge benefit because, you have a unique background that I think really plays into understanding context and what you even do with this visibility when you get it.

[00:04:16] Dustin: Right? So let's just talk a little bit about your backstory and some of the entrepreneurial journey that you think is relevant, and we'll, we'll work our way up to what the work that you're doing today.

[00:04:25] Cassie: Okay. Yes. I think that I'm in a position that a lot of people are in, especially the clients that come to me, where I'm, I'm in a pivot, and I would say I'm actually mid-pivot right now.

[00:04:35] Cassie: So you're correct, I wasn't always doing AI visibility. and I actually became an AI visibility specialist, honestly because I was my own worst client. And I did something that if my-- if I was my client and I would have-- somebody would have come to me and said, "This is what I'm going to do," I would've said, "Don't do it."

[00:04:56] Cassie: But I didn't listen to myself. I didn't even think to ask myself, and I thought, "This is a great idea." So what did I do? I have had my digital marketing agency for, oh, about seven years now. And when I first opened up, I was really, really strong into Shopify, and into e-commerce. And so I really enjoyed that.

[00:05:18] Cassie: I was a StoryBrand guide at the s- at the time. I was getting lots and lots of referrals for that specific business because that's kind of unicorn status. Most people can't combine the power of story and e-commerce. So not only did I do that, but then I started adding search engine optimization to it as well.

[00:05:35] Cassie: So telling that powerful story-- oops. Combined-- I like to talk with my hands. Combined with getting found is even more unicorn status. I started, doing that for all of my clients. They were very successful. We developed strong search engine optimization foundations, which is getting, found on your traditional browser.

[00:05:56] Cassie: And because we were doing such a fantastic job of it, when AI tools started being the be-all, end-all of search, which it's pretty much there whether you're ready for it or not, my clients were naturally showing up in the answer engine search results. Me, not so much. Why? Because I started off as straightforward consulting and marketing, Shopify queen, StoryBrand guide, and then I had this brilliant idea, to go ahead and open up a second business, same digital marketing agency, but Taboo Digital Marketing.

[00:06:31] Cassie: And the reason I opened up a second business was I decided niches were in the riches. I decided I was gonna start niching for regulated wellness brands, but not just regulated wellness brands in general, but, I have a human sexuality background. Once upon a time, I wanted to be the next Dr. Ruth, years and years ago.

[00:06:49] Cassie: and so I was going to help with sexual wellness as well as, I call it, non-traditional medical, like holistic wellness, because Big Pharma had let me down, traditional doctors had let me down, and I had found a lot of success in health by using alternative methods. I didn't know if my audience in Straight Forward would really appreciate me talking about that stuff, so that's why I decided to split out two differences-- two businesses.

[00:07:16] Cassie: So my, referrals were going really, really well until I did that switch, and then slowly they started drying up a little bit. They started being fewer there and further in between. I was having to explain myself a little bit more. They weren't just like a one-and-done closed, "Somebody referred me." And so my, mentor, Erica Bryant, said, "When's the last time you looked yourself up online?"

[00:07:42] Cassie: And I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be awesome. I do this for people all the time. This is gonna be great." I looked it up. It was total nightmare status. It was very, very bad. On the one hand, you had Shopify queen. I had successfully had my own business that I used Shopify and StoryBrand and sold it off, so there was this great story there.

[00:08:02] Cassie: And then, "Come to me if you need Shopify help." And then over here was, "She has a background in human sexuality. She's used holithic-- holistic health. She works with regulated brands. If you need help, come over here." It was so confusing because they were all lined up and topped onto each other. That people just clicked off.

[00:08:23] Cassie: my AEO, SEO dried up, my referrals were drying up. I was having a really big dry spell, and so that was the big light bulb moment I needed. And so what I did was I reverse engineered what I was doing so successfully for everyone else and did it on myself to see what the results would be, and that is how I came up with the visibility stack framework.

[00:08:47] Cassie: So I, sunset Taboo, went back to straightforward only, made sure my marketing foundation was giving all the same visibili- I call it, again, the visibility signal, but your positioning statement. and then within six weeks, I was up and running again. People were starting to refer me. Within eight weeks, I had fully booked status.

[00:09:08] Cassie: So, it was music to my ears to hear the ching again. but more importantly, I've been able to really help others figure out why are you not getting, the recommendation, and showing them step by step exactly how to go about doing that. So it's been great and I I'm all in. I love it.

[00:09:29] Dustin: Well, I love that just version of your story. There's things in there I, I wasn't aware of, and it just shows, the power of taking your own medicine, walking the walk, practicing what you preach. There's a lot of cliches for this 'cause it's so important, and there's actually a lot of parallels, which, maybe you do know this more than the average person because you've been working on some of my, answer engine optimization recently.

[00:09:51] Dustin: But, I had this chapter, and I'm gonna transition into asking you to kind of compare SEO with AEO and some of the things that are the same and different. But the reason I'm aware of this for my own business is I had a chapter, 2009 to 2014, let's say. The first online business that I had was, in the marriage niche, and ironically, a lot of the things I wrote about was, like, healthy sexuality and how that intersects with our faith life, right?

[00:10:17] Dustin: And so I had this kind of fairly prominent S- SEO search engine profile around these topics, and we got a lot of organic traffic back then, which was great back then. But then I transitioned to marketing consultant, and then I transitioned to the meat stick guy, and then I got into this podcast guesting world, four or five years ago in a big way.

[00:10:36] Dustin: And y- to this day, I also have a unique name, so you look up my name, you're gonna get all these weird mixes of expertise and imagery, and my kids, of course, have found all these things and they're like, "What is this post?" I'm like, "Don't read that." so but that w- w- what-- I think all of us have some version of that, right?

[00:10:53] Dustin: Where, we have an online profile that's not, aligned with our current focus or certainly not optimized. And you mentioned six weeks, which is remarkable, right? It's like the bad news is, the internet and the AI chats know all these things. The good news is you can influence it pretty quickly, right?

[00:11:12] Dustin: probably quicker than you used to be able to. So that's a very long preface of a question to say if someone kind of understands old school SEO, maybe they kind of came up, in an age where they wrote blogs and knew backlinks and, like, these things that worked, and then they keep hearing about AEO, this answer engine optimization.

[00:11:30] Dustin: what's fundamentally the same or different between those two worlds?

[00:11:34] Cassie: So I think the t- the, the tech is the same on the back end. You still have to, you have to, be human-forward with your copy and your messaging, right? But then on the back end, you still have to have, your meta tags, you know, titles, descriptions, you know, things like that so that the machines can also read and pull your information.

[00:11:56] Cassie: So that has not changed. the I think that you can't manipulate it like you used to be able to manipulate it, because it really is looking for third-party evidence that you are who you say you are, that you can do what you say you can do, where, SEO didn't necessarily look for that. So where before you could kind of buy your way in and work with keywords and rank on those one through 10, you really can't do that with AEO as easily as you could do that with SEO.

[00:12:32] Cassie: Blogs are still very important, so I would definitely continue with the blogs. but AI is scraping everywhere, and right now a few of the key p- places they're scraping, of course, they're gonna scrape your website, but if it's not loading fast enough, it only has two, two and a half seconds max to get what it needs to get off your site.

[00:12:52] Cassie: So it needs to be fairly high up your site, not buried all the way at the bottom, not buried on different pages. it has to, So it has to, be able to read your site really quickly. It has to be able to find corroborations in different areas. so like LinkedIn is a popular place that's getting cited right now.

[00:13:11] Cassie: So especially if you have a B2B service, if you're not on LinkedIn, you're definitely missing out. And that's your header, your about profile, your testimonials on there, which that's a whole 'nother story because Google Business Profile, the, the place where I used to tell people to put their testimonies is not always getting scraped anymore by the different chat tools.

[00:13:33] Cassie: So you really have to have an alternative like LinkedIn or, one of the third-party software sites that is scrapeable. but, so I just... I think SEO is still the layer, but it definitely goes beyond it into the social media realm. You finally get rewarded for social media, which is nice. I used to think it was a necessary evil, now it's like a bonus for you to do it.

[00:13:57] Cassie: so you really have to... And you have to keep, providing it fresh information. Right now, shelf life is only about four and a half weeks. so, and other spots that you could be looking at are YouTube video and Reddit, although Reddit took a recent dive. and I'm always suggesting to people do two totally different channels.

[00:14:16] Cassie: So LinkedIn could be your one social media, then choose either YouTube or Reddit. but no matter what you're doing, you have to be consistent. It's the worst C word in the world. If you're not consistent, it doesn't matter what you do. Gotta be consistent. So choose something, be consistent, be cohesive Those are the two C's today.

[00:14:39] Dustin: Two C's for so far. so what I heard in there is there's sort of this, in the old world, you had your website and that you like SEO optimized that website, and some of the things you could do is buy backlinks or earn backlinks from other sites to basically link to your site. So like that's still a thing, right?

[00:14:56] Dustin: Like you still need to own your real estate, do all the like technical stuff that now AI can probably help you do, right? with the meta tags and descriptions and c- and, I don't know, transcripts for videos, all this kind of stuff, right? So that machines can read it. But what now with AEO, a, a few things I'm like learning this as the audience is learning it from you and, and distilling it.

[00:15:18] Dustin: I heard third-party validation's a much bigger deal now. So it's not just what I say about myself on my website and even those backlinks, it's like if I have podcast guesting-

[00:15:30] Cassie: That I was just gonna say, podcast guesting that corroborates it, so which is what you teach, and that's one of the reasons I joined was because I was like, okay, I could create my own podcast, but podcast guesting would be even greater.

[00:15:44] Cassie: and then, much more visibility. If I can get several different podcasts that are corroborating the same thing, then I'm going to... And I was just about to say I'm going to move up into the ranks, but really I call the AI,position zero, because there's no longer one through 10 links, right?

[00:16:02] Cassie: The blue links. You now have that little synopsis at the top on Google, or if you go into chat, you just get a little synopsis. So there's no more digging. There's nowhere more looking through links. There is you're either there or you're invisible. That's literally it, and sometimes people aren't even going to your site, before they make a call.

[00:16:20] Cassie: I just was looking for a lawyer for someone, and I put in, "This is what I-- This is the problem I'm having. This is the area I'm, I'm in. This is the help that I need. Who would you recommend?" They gave me some recommendations. I asked a few additional questions. I literally took that information and made the call.

[00:16:40] Cassie: I didn't even bother going to their website, and that is the way of the world now. Again, whether you want it to be or not, people, that is the way of the world now. You can tell me that it's not happening. It's not true. It is happening.

[00:16:55] Dustin: We all want to deny it, I think, in some way, 'cause it's like, I kind of liked, 2007.

[00:17:00] Dustin: I don't know, like maybe 2017. But, this is the reality, and there's a lot of, pros as well as c- as the downsides. It's maybe tougher, but I guess going back to this like, so third-party validation like podcast guesting, but also multi-channel like YouTube and LinkedIn and any sort of recommendation engine, Reddit, where people are talking about you and it's not you talking about

[00:17:23] Cassie: you.

[00:17:24] Cassie: Press releases. Press releases are big. guest collabs where you're collaborating all together, on a live cast kind of thing that you can then repurpose later. All of those things are great.

[00:17:37] Dustin: And so that is a big part of this, and the other thing I heard that stood out to me is the recency bias is a lot stronger, meaning, it's like happened in the last four weeks or it didn't happen, versus I still, was getting traffic from stuff I wrote in 2010, for these sort of evergreen topics, but not in an AI search.

[00:17:54] Dustin: Like it's not gonna say, "Here's something someone said in 2010." It's gonna be like, "Two weeks ago Dustin talked about this on this show," and that therefore gives me the signal as the chat engine that this is timely and relevant, right? okay.

[00:18:08] Cassie: And, I'm even thinking about recommending, I'm gonna test it out on my own site first.

[00:18:12] Cassie: That's the nice thing about me being my own guinea pig. and I have an ongoing collab lab where other people are also guinea pigs in the same room, and we're staying with the cutting edge and actually workshopping things and publishing them in the room so that we can gain traction. Super excited to say only in the third month, the one person that is in the room that has not pivoted went from not showing at all to being the recommendation.

[00:18:36] Cassie: So I was like, "Yes," and I just found that out today. so that was fantastic. But,oh, I lost my train of thought, Dustin.

[00:18:43] Dustin: No, that's fine. And, I was just kind of closing out- Yeah ... SEO versus AEO, and then what I wanna... A- and I think where you're going with that, Cassie, is sort of the timeliness. Like, whatever we say right now as we record this, in a month it's probably gonna be different anyhow, but there's principles here that we wanna pull out.

[00:19:00] Cassie: Yeah. I'm thinking about even putting a date on my website of last updated on for each of my pages so that AI can see how relevant and w- how timely it is. So one of the things I used to do on my blog pages, if people weren't very consistent about it, I'm like, "Well, we'll just take the dates off." Not anymore.

[00:19:19] Cassie: You want those dates on. And so you wanna make sure because they, like you said, they are gonna be looking and pulling relevant information. Another thing to know is it is the wild, wild west out there right now. Chat doesn't pull from the same things that Claude pulls from, that pulls, Perplexity pulls from, et cetera.

[00:19:37] Cassie: so you may show up in one and not in others, so that's- another, another ballgame.

[00:19:44] Dustin: Yeah. Which is frustrating. At the same time, I, what I think is good about this versus maybe some of the old kind of black hat SEO things that people did is these are generally good things to be doing anyway for your business, right?

[00:20:00] Dustin: Like, if, oh, like putting out content on... getting recommendations on LinkedIn or having people talk about my program on Reddit in a positive way, or podcast guesting, or creating YouTube content, or putting, proper meta tags on my website, or have my website load really fast, or putting the most relevant information up top.

[00:20:20] Dustin: These are all things we should do anyway. and that's what I do like about sort of the trends here with AEO is they tend to be, rewarding, good business practices, right? Is that, is that... Do you think that's a fair statement?

[00:20:32] Cassie: Yeah. I would think that's a totally fair statement. And I think that, where SEO, like you had mentioned, my-- I had a good strong base with Straightforward Consulting and Marketing, which is why I decided to stick with Straightforward versus trying to build off of Taboo.

[00:20:46] Cassie: So that was one of the reasons why I started showing up more quickly. but you can kind of, as long as you have the tech piece in place, you can in my opinion, leapfrog SEO, do the basics of it, and go right to AEO, which to me, when you're on a budget, isn't a bad isn't a bad deal. I think the best practice is to build your SEO and AEO over time because there are still people that are searching on Google, and you need to be able to be found there as well.

[00:21:15] Cassie: But a lot of people, especially when they're thought leaders or, or something, they've relied so much on referrals, they've never really played the online game. They're like, "Well, I never cared about SEO. Why do I care about this?" But the big thing that you need to care about, again, happening whether you want it to or not, is if I am looking for, like I said, the lawyers, right?

[00:21:40] Cassie: Maybe my friend Lisa gave me a lawyer name and my friend Linda gave me a lawyer name, because I'm networking and, I like those people. But the new BFF in town is your AI tool. People are putting their personal information in there, they're putting their business information in there, and they often feel like said tool knows them better than anybody else knows them.

[00:22:03] Cassie: So they're going to say, "Hey, I got these two referrals. This is my problem," just like I was saying about the lawyer. "Who would you recommend?" And sometimes what's happening is they're like, "Well, this person could be good for this, this could be good for that, but have you heard of this third person?

[00:22:18] Cassie: Because I just found them online and they look like they check every single box. You should call that person instead." So sometimes, the third person is getting the call and getting the job without you ever even knowing that it even happened. So even if you didn't care about online referrals because you thought they were two separate things, there is now this, crossover and this overlap that cannot be denied that is impacting people's businesses.

[00:22:44] Cassie: So when they're saying that their referrals are a little bit down and things are a little bit quieter, I think the way that people are searching and vetting and deciding on people has changed, and this, these tools are now involved, and you just haven't moved with the times. And a lot of people haven't, so you could get in now and get in on the ground floor, and momentum compounds, and so you can become king of the hill, right?

[00:23:11] Cassie: And it's harder to knock the king off the hill than it is to climb and, knock them off.

[00:23:16] Dustin: Yeah. Well, I think what's really-- that's a really important distinction in that, like with SEO, I think we always thought of, like discoverability. Like, if someone's looking for a general topic, I wanna be in the top 10 list so I get a, get a chance.

[00:23:29] Dustin: and obviously there, there's a, a form of that for AEO, but I th- I'm like thinking about my own behav- my own user behavior in recent times, like going out of town for a trip. I'm not actually typically saying like, "What are the best restaurants in Bentonville?" I'm like typing in, "My wife and I are gonna show up at this time on Friday night.

[00:23:46] Dustin: We're staying at this hotel. on Fridays we typically like this kind of food, and on Saturday morning we're, we're thinking about doing this for a hike." And like, you tell me the itinerary, right? or like the example you just gave, which is where this gets away from discoverability as much as like verification almost.

[00:24:03] Dustin: It's like I'm thinking, "My friends told me there's these three restaurants. Which of these three is gonna be best for us? Which one has availability?" And if it can't tell who has availability, but for two of them but one of them it can, it's gonna be like, "I checked and this one has a reservation at 7:00 PM.

[00:24:18] Dustin: Do you want me to book it for you?" because it's, it's more like the verification and confirmation part of the buyer's journey more so than the discovery part, where I think we traditionally thought about SEO playing the biggest role. So yeah, that's really, really good. and that's applicable not just of lawyers and restaurants, but whatever the thing is that you, the listener do.

[00:24:37] Dustin: wouldn't it be nice... Of course it'd be nice if they said, "Who's the best for this?" And it recommended you, but at a minimum, wouldn't it be nice if they said, "What do you think about Cassie if I'm thinking about hiring someone for, AEO because so and so-- They-- I listened to this interview and she popped up."

[00:24:52] Dustin: You want good feedback and strong confirmation that's a, a verification that that's a good, that's a good, resource. All right. Very good. Like great background. I think we understand like where you're coming from, that you've been through your own pivot, that you're leading sort of interactive experiences with other people in doing AEO in real time, and we talked about how SEO and AEO relate.

[00:25:16] Dustin: I'd like to dig more now into your framework. I think you called it the visibility stack framework. So yeah, tell us more about that. I love frameworks, and a lot of times this is sort of the practical takeaway for the listener. So I'd love for you... Just gonna give you, the floor and, and let you share what this framework is and why we should care and kinda like what the structure is.

[00:25:34] Cassie: Yep. So the visibility framework rests on four Ps, and they all stack to-- they s- all stack on one top of... on top of each other in order to be the recommendation. So the first one is positioning. your positioning statement, I call it the visibility signal that we create. You wanna make sure that your positioning statement is very, very clear about who you are, the problem you solve, who is right for your business, who is not right for your business.

[00:26:02] Cassie: It goes further than it used to be. And I will say that people are, that are trying to be all things to everybody, you can only have one, maybe two max things to be known for anymore. That is it. You cannot be known for the world. So not, not that you can't do those other things, right? But you need to be pushing out the same signal across all platforms.

[00:26:26] Cassie: Okay? So P, position. Then once you've got your positioning statement down, it is the proof, and the proof is where it lives online. So you want to make sure that it is living, like I said, if your LinkedIn's different than your website, than your Google Business profile, than the Better Business Bureau, or if you did SEO once upon a time and you've got all kinds of address directory listings, everything needs to be up to date, everything needs to be clear and broadcasting the same signal.

[00:26:59] Cassie: Okay? So that's proof. Once you get all of that going and you've got your marketing foundation into place, then it comes into path. Now, path has a little bit of that tech, backend stuff that we were talking about before, but it also includes third-party citations and a customer journey. So you wanna make sure that your customer journey is matching and marrying up with what you're saying that you deliver online, and that your testimonials are current and that they are also,saying the exact same thing.

[00:27:33] Cassie: So that is path. And then the fourth is pulse, and the pulse is rinse and repeat. You've constantly gotta be, giving it a pulse, keeping it alive in order for that signal to keep shining. and like I said before, it compounds. So, the-- you start off with that, proof layer, or the positioning layer, and you get the proof on top of it, then you get the path, then you get the, pulse, and then it all just keeps compounding and getting bigger and bigger.

[00:28:02] Cassie: And anything that I do and I teach, my, my theory is that, like I said earlier, that all of these LLM tools are very human in their approach. They want to know, and trust you in order to be able to recommend you. They want to be right. They want to-- you to come back time and time again, to them.

[00:28:21] Cassie: So anything that I teach is good for humans as well as machines. My goal is to be the recommendation whether a human or a machine, like an AI tool, is actually doing the searching and recommending.

[00:28:34] Dustin: It's really good. I love that. So four Ps, position, proof, path, pulse. kind of think of them as,an inverted, inverted cake where the position's kind of the foundation and you layer on top of that proof and then path and then pulse sort of energizes the whole thing because it really becomes a dynamic effort because you basically have to continue to put, energy into this for it to continue to remain recent and relevant, to those search engines.

[00:29:02] Dustin: is there any particular one of those four that you wanna... I know we don't have time to go into all four, and I, I think you have a resource to let people kind of, explore these. But is there any one of those you kinda wanna double-click on and maybe give a story or an example from, so we can kind of k- just bring it home a little closer, closer to home for a coach or consultant that's listening to this?

[00:29:22] Cassie: Yeah. so I think with the positioning statement, like I said, you can't be all things to all people anymore. You have to be more clear. I had a gal that was talking, she is a counseling service, and she, her whole entire online presence was all about men and counseling for men. She was trying to decide, "You know what?

[00:29:44] Cassie: I wanna widen my net, so I think I'm gonna go ahead and also, change my copy up and include women in it." And I was like, "No." I was like, "Please don't do that." And then she's like, "Why?" And I'm like, "Because you're giving this very clear visibility signal out there. it's full beams going, in one direction.

[00:30:02] Cassie: You start putting this in there, you're diluting your brand, and you're also going to start confusing, and they're gonna be like, 'Wait a minute. It used to be only men. Now it's women. Now she's kinda like everybody else. She's not really different.'" And, you, you can't be that anymore. And I'm even telling people even price points are really, really good to put into your positioning statement.

[00:30:25] Cassie: from I have a builder that, he just,called it out. He's re- these rebuilds, a, a bedroom is gonna wind up starting at 10,000 and up. A,we're not for everyone. here's where our prices start kind of thing. AI appreciates that, and humans do appreciate that as well, right?

[00:30:45] Cassie: if I was gonna delve into anything, I would say just being really, really clear on that posit- positioning statement. I do have, classes that I teach on, like how to create your own positioning statements and all that kind of stuff with feedback. I'm happy to give a discount, to any of your audience listening, and I can put a link, in your show notes in a chat, to learn out about it and come up with their own positioning statement so they can start being the recommendation.

[00:31:11] Dustin: I love it. Yeah, I know we'll, we're gonna, as we move to close out here pretty soon, we'll talk about sort of the AI visibility checklist that you've got as a free resource, and then yeah, you run these live workshops with you. and you're gonna, graciously give a, a discount for the listeners if they wanna, kinda get their hands in the, get their hands dirty and, and, work alongside you as they work through some of these things.

[00:31:35] Dustin: Yeah, there's a, a phrase that came to mind that you were, as you were describing. I always like to say, and I'm sure I took it from somewhere, but,marketing is what happens in the front window of the store, and sales happens at the cash register, right? This idea that you gotta be known for something.

[00:31:50] Dustin: You have to draw people into something. That doesn't mean that's all you can sell, right? but I think that's- Always been true to some extent, and I think it's becoming more and more true, right? Where like you have to really own, 'cause it's position zero, right? It's not, not, it's not hitting the top 10, it's like position zero.

[00:32:07] Dustin: if I wanna learn profitable podcast guesting to grow my coaching business, well I hope Dustin Riechmann shows up as that result, right? Because I've, for four years that's like, like all I talk about, right? and there's so many signals around that topic. Very different dynamic than I wanna be all marketing for coaches or even podcast guesting for everyone.

[00:32:29] Dustin: It's like if I, I really wanna own the position, my, my positioning statement would be that, and even maybe the delivery model, like we do group coaching and it's, the price point of that. And then I think what you're saying too, it's not even just putting that in one spot on your website, but making that part of your messaging overall so that the signals are all consistent and whatever references the, the, the bots are using, they develop a clear picture that this person, this company is for this, these people.

[00:33:00] Dustin: It's not for these people. It's this kind of price point. And, yeah, that makes a lot... e- the price point thing really jumped out to me actually, Cassie, 'cause I think there's sort of an old school thought of you kinda hide your prices. you don't want people making a value judgment before they understand the full value.

[00:33:15] Dustin: But the reality is, I was thinking like three days ago, I'm on an AI search, I think it was like Google, it was like Google Maps, and they have like an AI search within it. And we're looking at my mom's having some health issues, and we're starting to look at independent living options, right? So I started with independent living on a map, and then there's like 15 results and I'm like, "I have no idea what this costs."

[00:33:35] Dustin: Like, I have no idea, like where to even start. So I'm like, "Which of these places has a price that I can find?" And the prices aren't generally on their website, but they have like a brochure, and it's got access to the brochure. And well guess which ones I booked appointments with? The three that had pricing, 'cause I at least have some context for like what they provide and what it costs.

[00:33:54] Dustin: And as a human, that's what I actually, it's a big part of the decision-making process. So, anyway, that, that is very real-time sort of example, thinking about my own behavior and how I'm using these same tools, and I thought that was really insightful. So I do wanna talk about the tools.

[00:34:09] Dustin: Is there anything, before we, kinda close out and tell people how to go deeper with this, with your tools and with your workshop, that you think we should talk about? Specifically like coaches and consultants who, maybe they're, they're pretty niche in their, in their industry, and they, wanna have the, like, the one practical takeaway.

[00:34:26] Dustin: There's something they could change, b- even as they're, closing out listening to us today. Is there, is there something that jumps out to you that is sort of like a best practice that maybe people don't see and it's right under their nose?

[00:34:37] Cassie: Yeah. I, I think a, a simple one is just being very clear, like, in the top three sections of who you're for.

[00:34:44] Cassie: in, y- your positioning statement, I would put it in the top three sections because you- AI is gonna scrape it, humans are gonna scrape it, and if they get that far and they don't see, "Dang, this person gets me. I don't need to search anymore. I found it," they're gonna move someplace else.

[00:35:01] Cassie: Another simple thing that you could do, is add FAQs to each and every page on your website. So it used to be that, you would just have one FAQ page, and it would be just off by itself, but now so even though I-- So I do answer engine optimization. I'm an AI visibility strategist, but within that marketing foundation, right?

[00:35:24] Cassie: Sometimes people need a, a website redo. Sometimes people need their customer journey done. Sometimes people need, press releases, et cetera. I don't really do press releases. I refer those off. But I was saying, like, if you have a press release page, FAQs specifically on press releases right there.

[00:35:40] Cassie: If you have a copywriting page, everything on there. It used to be really popular, too, just to kinda have a one-page catch-all, especially for, like, B2B thought leaders and things like that, and in my opinion, it's getting to be back to the larger websites because people are wanting to learn about you, be able to read about you, consume content and information about you, especially with a bigger purchase, before they talk to you.

[00:36:10] Cassie: They don't wanna have to talk to you to get all that information, and if they can get it from somebody else just like you did, they're gonna go to somebody else because it's the path of least resistance, and it's a lot easier to get from them.

[00:36:21] Dustin: That's really good. What do you think about, pulling in maybe links to media.

[00:36:26] Dustin: Like, do you think, for example, it'd be a good idea if you're a thought leader, and a speaker, and an author, and a coach to have a page where you're showing everyone your podcast guesting appearances or your YouTube videos all in a central location so they can binge those easily? Is that... And that, I guess it would...

[00:36:41] Dustin: You're nodding along. would that also help with the AEO aspects?

[00:36:45] Cassie: Yes. It would definitely help with the AEO as- aspects. And I'm actually, I'm nodding along because I'm planning on doing that myself, and it's like the cobbler's kid. I'm like, "Yes, put that back on the list, Cassie. It's gotta get done." and I was on another podcast, and they had mentioned, having on your own YouTube channel, having all of your own podcast guestings so that people can binge that easy.

[00:37:07] Cassie: So at the very least, do it on YouTube and then link to your YouTube channel, but I think it would be great to also have that on your website as well.

[00:37:16] Dustin: Yeah, that's, that's really good. I'm also the college kids with no shoes. in our community, of course, we help people with podcast guesting, so we, frequently have people posting individual episodes, but then, usually about once a month someone will post their podcast guesting playlist, and YouTube's a great way to do that.

[00:37:33] Dustin: Spotify has that functionality where basically I could go in and add all of the appearances where I've been a guest into a single playlist, and you can actually embed that in a, in a website or share that in social posts.

[00:37:44] Cassie: LinkedIn, put it everywhere.

[00:37:46] Dustin: Yeah. And even if no one actually sits there and actually binges it, some will, just the know, like, and trust factor of be like, "Oh, she's been interviewed on these 20 different podcasts in the past, three months about this topic.

[00:37:59] Dustin: She probably knows a lot if she's able to answer on her feet these questions." And that's how a human thinks, but that's also, again, how the AI,is evaluating you in terms of third-party validation and credibility. And so make it as easy as possible by pulling that stuff into central locations for humans and, bots, to find.

[00:38:17] Dustin: So well, Cass, this has been amazing. I do wanna give you some time. I know you got a couple different resources, so feel free to walk through those. If there are URLs you want to, like, verbalize, that's great, and then we'll o- obviously take those links and put them in the show notes for anyone. So if you're listening on YouTube or Apple or Spotify, you'll see the show notes and we'll have the links.

[00:38:37] Dustin: but yeah, I want you to describe, because I know, I think you got two different resources that we wanted to point people out.

[00:38:41] Cassie: Yeah. I have a, an AI visibility, prompt list, a prompt checklist, and so that's five simple prompts to test whether AI knows your business, whether recommend you for real buyer questions, which is super important, whether it compares you accurately against your, competitors, or if you're completely visible.

[00:39:01] Cassie: So a very easy quick check search that you can do. You can get that download by going to my website, and my website, again, I'm Straight Forward Consulting and Marketing. One of the interesting things that I did, which I wouldn't recommend anymore, is I shortened my URL. So, 'cause that was way too long of a URL, so it is the letter S- The number 4.marketing, and there is no .com.

[00:39:27] Cassie: It's s4.marketing, is the website. So if you go there, s4.marketing/aeo, you'll learn about the different AEO services we have done for you, done with you. you'll be able to check out that Position Zero Challenge as well, and I will provide you with a discount in that note, in the, for the show notes, and a link.

[00:39:46] Cassie: and you'll also be able to, get that downloadable, checklist as well.

[00:39:51] Dustin: Perfect. So S4, the number 4, s4.marketing/aeo, and that'll sort of be the- Yeah ... the central spot on Cassi's website to get the AI visibility prompt checklist and find out about their services obviously. And then Position Zero Challenge is your, sort of live workshop experience, and we'll have a discount code for people for that, that we'll put in the show notes.

[00:40:15] Dustin: Can you describe that a little bit? 'Cause I know this is something we've been, you've been working on since you joined our program, and it's evolved. So I'd love to hear kinda what you've learned about that, and we'll kind of make that the closing point for, our conversation.

[00:40:26] Cassie: Sure. In its current form and iteration, the Position Zero Challenge, is a, four, four 75-minute, spots basically where you come in.

[00:40:37] Cassie: It's an actual interactive hands-on workshop where you will learn, each, pillar. So the first day y- you're gonna learn what the heck is AEO, why should I care, and am I showing up? The next week you're gonna learn how to create your own positioning statement and where to put it online so that you've got your visibility signals out there and you're ready to start ranking.

[00:41:01] Cassie: the next week you're going to go, over, creating like other third-party citations or, other credibility items so that you have more credibility and confidence when people search for you online. And then the fourth week goes over pulse and getting you into a rhythm and giving you a roadmap of am I showing up?

[00:41:22] Cassie: Am I not? Here's a roadmap exactly how to get there. So, it's a really eye-opening course. It is a requirement, to apply to my AI Visibility Collab Lab that is an ongoing monthly workshop. or I also have the done for you services as well. There are some people that are just too busy. and the thing I would say with Position Zero Challenge, if you are the founder, thought leader, you know, extraordinaire and you find you're wearing too many hats, but you have somebody that's a copywriter or something on your staff, you can send them in your place.

[00:41:54] Cassie: You do not have to come to the Positions Challenge yourself. So-

[00:41:59] Dustin: That's awesome. Yeah, I'm, I'm glad I asked about that because, one of the things I like to do on this podcast is not only learn from you, and we learned a lot about AEO and what it takes and the framework, but I also like to like dig into what's working now in your business and your offers.

[00:42:13] Dustin: I know you said you kind of joked the current iteration 'cause you've been do- you've been doing this, several times through. we have-- we've done something very similar, we call ours Booked and Paid. But I think this is a really good demonstration of it's... I... Maybe it's not ironic. it's, it's like the know, like, and trust.

[00:42:30] Dustin: It's all the things that, that we're talking about for AEO. It's like how do you actually give people the proof and the, confirmation that like you're the real deal, that you're the right one to work with, and one of the ways to do that is to have a lower risk, higher sort of intimacy front end experience.

[00:42:47] Dustin: And so if people are like, "I think I wanna do more with this. Seems like Cassie knows what she's talking about. I don't really know if I'm ready for like a full done for you thing yet or not. I don't really know what I don't know." it sounds like going through the Position Zero Challenge is just a really good way to get four live sessions and like really get through your framework in,in a concise way that's, I'm sure, a reasonable price point and a way to, At least get exposure to a extremely important and growingly, and more, growing more important topic of AEO.

[00:43:19] Dustin: so anyway, I, just kudos on the offer. I think it's a really cool front-end offer, and if, I, I highly endorse it, and I've worked with Cassie personally, and, and definitely would recommend people check that out. So check that out, and we'll have a discount code, so check the show notes and we'll get you that so you can, get in for even less risk.

[00:43:35] Dustin: And if you're just not even that curious, but you're curious, definitely go grab the prompt checklist and do some self, playing around in your AI tool of choice and just see what the reality is.

[00:43:46] Cassie: Your mind will be blown.

[00:43:48] Dustin: Yeah.

[00:43:48] Cassie: Yes.

[00:43:49] Dustin: Yeah.

[00:43:50] Cassie: Oh. The one thing, you know what? Actually I'm gonna edit my, I'm gonna edit my prompt list.

[00:43:54] Cassie: I'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out before it gets in your hands and make sure to edit it, because the one tip I would give is I hear a lot of people that, like I was talking to account the other day, and she's like, "What do you mean? I'm showing up online," and she's using- Mm ... her logged-in ChatGPT, her logged-in Google True, yeah

[00:44:13] Cassie: all this stuff. And I'm like, "No, you're not." I'm like, "Here, let's jump on Zoom. I'll show you my screen," because it tracks all of that information that you're putting in, right? And it wants to- Yeah ... it wants to kiss your hiney, and it wants to- I was gonna say-

[00:44:28] Dustin: "Who's the smartest of them all?

[00:44:29] Cassie: You are" Yes, exactly.

[00:44:30] Cassie: That's great. so you need to be logged out of all of your stuff. You need to be in an incognito window, and you need to say, "Act like you know absolutely nothing about my business. Only comment on what you can find online," 'cause otherwise you're gonna get false positives all over the place. And also, like I said, you might show up on Chat, you might not on Perplexity.

[00:44:51] Cassie: So try the different tools out, don't just try one. And you really need to look monthly. I was just working with someone today, and he still hasn't popped up yet, but he got a new competitor that popped up. So that's, then you look at the competitor. How is that competitor popping up? What do I need to do to beat them?

[00:45:07] Cassie: I mean, it's... You can tell I get, I get geeked up. Maybe other people don't get geeked, but I, I get geeked out about it. So to me it's a game.

[00:45:14] Dustin: That's where you get to do this every day, and you, and you love your life. Everyone else is like, "I'll just let Cassie do it. I just want the clients." well Cassie, you're awesome.

[00:45:22] Dustin: Thank you so much again for being here. So s4.marketing/aeo for all the goodies. look forward to, spending more time with you in our community and, and continuing our work with you on this, effort. And, look forward to seeing you do more podcast guesting. This is a kind of a meta moment where we're talking about AEO, and you're doing podcast guesting, and it's kind of the, the best of both worlds.

[00:45:41] Dustin: So thanks again for being here.

[00:45:43] Cassie: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Dustin.