How To Stop Being Invisible To AI Search ft. Therese Grittner

Search engine optimization is dead or is it dying? Um, or is it just reemerging a different form?

You know, you're having a talk about your roof and they're like, "Oh man, water poured in from my roof and now there's water all over my floor. " And you're talking to your ChatGPT. It's picked up your location. It now knows you have a hole in your roof and you're going to need new flooring. So, already it's searching the internet like, "Oh, emergency roofer. We need an emergency floor. We need a mold remediation team. " And it's finding fastest path to the business that they can recommend. All almost all LLMs score things differently.

All of them will grab different pieces of data and weigh them differently while they're re doing recommendations, which is why it's so important to have the multimodel.

AI is it hype or help? Good day and welcome to the show. I'm your host Pete Cooper and our topic is AI hype or help. Today's guest is Therese Grittner. She has a company called TaG Makes SC and she's helping companies stay relevant with AI, keeping their online presence aligned with where AI is taking us. This is a great call. Stick around. Let's get into it. Welcome to the show, Theresa. Theresa, thank you for joining us. You're with your company called TaG Makes.

Um, so tell us a little bit about yourself and uh what Oh, sorry. TaG Makes. Did I get that wrong? Is it tag?

Um, yeah. My name is Teresa. I live in Charleston, South Carolina.

And um I specialize in AI optimization for small businesses. And with that I actually started all of that just as a digital design side of things. And from that actually I used to train horses and so it was a big jump into the digital world.

Um

but I was always doing graphic design. And as things were evolving and this was I started this 2025 the beginning of 2025 I was actually looking like all right what else can I do?

Because we all know trading time for money means you're always out of time and out of money. So, I'm like, we got to I got to learn a better skill. And so, I actually started teaching myself with all of the assistance from all of the AIS.

What's the next thing that's happening? And make me the best. Like, quiz me. I built a 90-day curriculum and had them just go through and keep on. And then I get a refresher every month and catch up on all of the new things, which my gosh, it's coming out so fast now. I probably need to bump that up to every week. Um,

yeah.

So, what just take us through your business. So, tell me the name and what it does and why why you need it.

So um TaG Makes is the doer and the I also run I built and run the ARO index and that takes local businesses of any niche and runs them through a multi- AI query of the exact same query at the exact same time. So you'll get Perplexity Claude Gemini and ChatGPT. It grabs all of that data, including a client persona that the AI thinks that they're looking for, and ranks them. And I hate saying ranking because that's not a real thing for like AI, but it it scores them against other businesses in the same niche in the same location. So, you can really see which business is getting more recommendations than the other one.

Right? So, for our audience, what's happening in the world?

Um, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that we used to have this thing called search engine optimization. And when you searched for something on uh Google, for example, it would use your search the the the outcome of the search engine optimization to decide whether you were going to be bumped up in the organic search just after the advertising, right? So that you would be right at that top there and you'd be something that would be clicked on and therefore they would you would drive traffic to your website. But that's all changed now, hasn't it? Because so many people are not using Google the way they used to. They're using LLMs, ChatGPT, and Claude.

Well, and Google itself is changing by the end of this year. They're changing to all AI search. Anyway, so they updated their thing. I think it was like the May update. They announced that they were phasing out SEO and going to start tracking how LLMs actually read how their specific LLM reads websites.

Well, that's interesting. So, they're even phasing out SEO, uh, search engine optimization, which has been around for as long as I can remember when it comes to the internet. And there's still people saying to me that, oh, well, I'll do search engine optimization for your business. And I'm wondering to myself, well, is that some is that a thing anymore?

I mean, Theresa, do you see that search engine optimization is dead or is it dying? Um, or is it just reemerging a different form?

I think it's evolving. I think it's re emerging. I think it's making an industry that had really set patterns and the ability to track really easy to find data. Um, it's making that entire industry shift and be inventive and innovative on how they track the data because like there isn't any set tracking from any of the LLMs. They can't say 60 clients came from ChatGPT.

They're building that in. It probably will come now that they're going to start doing advertising, but right now there's no definitive correct data set coming from ChatGPT.

So that's why I built the index

is

small business owners and in partic honestly SEO agencies could evolve and have a tool that gave that that data and that science back to them.

Yeah, that's great. So I actually ran um your index on a couple of of our websites and we got some two of them in the 80s and one of them was I think about 15 out of 100, right? So and that 80 80 to 85 we came up green which I mean I guess that means it's good. Uh and the one that was uh 15 was red that means it's bad. Try to make it very simple.

Yeah.

So, we haven't matched in that case of the the um the one that was bad, we haven't matched the persona that we think is going to land on that website with something that's going to rank in um in the new search engine in the new world of LLMs, right? There's a there's a disconnect there. So, I'm just trying to really ground our audience down into what is the problem that's emerging for them if they don't start shifting over now. And that's that's I think that exa that example explains it, right? If they're still doing search engine optimization, that's not going to rank them in the new world of of LMS, right?

Almost never.

And the the biggest thing is you're going from a set data set to an ever moving one. So, it's a conversation that people are having and the LLM's being predictive are going to go, you know, you're having a talk about your roof and they're like, "Oh man, water poured in from my roof and now there's water all over my floor and you're talking to your ChatGPT. It's picked up your location. It now knows you have a hole in your roof and you're going to need new flooring. " So, already it's searching the internet like, "Oh, emergency roofer. We need emergency floor. We need a mold remediation team. " And it's finding and robots are lazy.

Like they're finding the quickest, fastest path to the business that they can recommend to fulfill their like duty, their their coding to make us happy. And that's really what it is is it's it's SEO and making it so the robots can easily find the answers for the clients having a conversation with them because that's really all they want to do.

Wow. You know, I just that's a great example because um I mean I'm a home owner and I've had to use

u more traditional methods. I mean I used I think it was one of the portals for finding local people. I don't want to give out a name but it started with an A.

U and I had to sort of do quite a bit of manual work to sort through the people that I wanted review them for myself contact them through the platform all this kind of back and forward. Um before I ended up getting the guy out here several days later. Um and of course every time I would move from the platform to the that person, I'm I'm also having to reestablish context like you said. It's well yeah I need a roofer but I also need some flooring done. I mean and I need it done now versus I can't wait 3 weeks you know. So all that context is captured so well, you know, when you have a conversation with I'm using my thumb because I tend to use it.

I know. Me too.

I used the the app on my phone.

Yeah. I mean, back in the day I used to go like this, you know, now I'm going like this.

Yeah. Wow. That's fantastic. I mean, you're the first person that I've um talked at depth about the shift um from the old SEO world to the new what did you call it? Rank. It's not your you've got your own ranking system, but we call it a what do you call a a SEO?

GEO, AI, SEO, LMO. Like there's I think what's happening is so many people are seeing there's a market here but they're not sure how to to capture that market.

So they figure if they can't win at AEO they'll just rename it something else and then they'll rename it something else and give it a slightly different definition. And I have all of that I wrote down as many of them as I could and put them on my glossery page because like I get lost too to be honest with you. Um, and that's again back to like the science of it is all of those are more predictive texts. And so it's essentially prompt tracking

and without the context behind the prompt, you will never get the same answer from ChatGPT about your business.

So when I do um businesses on the index, I use a pretty basic query like best marketer in New York City for example.

And what that does is it can find those base signals showing like best roofer, best emergency roofer, you know, it's not any

super in-depth. That also does this. That also does we don't need any of that. Like will the robots again the very lazy robots they're going to find the easiest path

to making the user happy. If your website's not that path, you're not going to like and it's it's happening now. It's not, oh, this is a next year problem for small businesses. It's not. And big companies are already dumping billions of dollars into this research

how to get ahead in it. And so that's a really big thing about why the index was really important to get going.

It wasn't get good at the the optimization part

because um but like make sure that other small businesses don't get pushed out by the big corporations because that's I don't love love love that. I want us to be able to still have like a say in what happens.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean uh one of the things about the US culture which I love is the entrepreneurial spirit and that means you know having the independence and running your own show and being having your own business and building that up. I mean I think that's that's wonderful over here.

I mean it's good it's strong in Australia as well where I come from and I guess other parts of the world but we're not all submitting to the uh the powers that be and I think that's really important. You're helping that and I I think I'd like to be helping that too. But you've mentioned something which is something I've noticed and that is that the big Fortune 500 companies, they're hiring the McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Groups to come in and help them with all those problems, establish themselves and define this and they've got all the the the biggest brains and the biggest money to redirect their efforts to optimize themselves in this new world.

Um the tier down which is what we're talking about I guess or maybe not even enterprise maybe small business that couple of tiers down where do we go to get that kind of McKenzie support you know

exactly and having like the seamrush and the a all of the other really big SEO now turning AI SEO companies they're still geared towards enterprise level

generative and prompt tracking and mentions and share voice, which is just like, oh, we did a prompt and you showed up 34% of the time when we prompted for you, but if you work with us, you can show up 47% of the time. And being math, like, yeah, you want to show up more, but I mean, that's just vanity.

That's it's not show you actually get recommended over your competitor.

It's just showing that you show up more. Like, is that good? Is it bad? Like,

yeah,

where are you showing up more? How did you do that? So

yeah,

that became I like to ask why a lot. Like that's like my favorite question is like why did this happen? Why did this happen? And so that's really the whole bottom of it and that's I just put it all up on the internet for everybody to see like this is why and if you you go through you you saw you get your report. It'll tell you all the things.

It'll tell you if

yes it is $47 to see the entire report

because APIs are expensive.

Like I would do it for free if they wanted to exactly do it.

Um but yeah, you can see the whole report. It'll tell you straight up fix these things. Just hand it to your web guy or you

go through fix these things. Use these words. And it's from all the models. It's not just from ChatGPT. It's not just from Claude. And in particular, it's not from your personal

biased ChatGPT. I keep all of the models unbiased so they don't develop a memory of like, oh, I need to remember that I really liked this HVAC company because they said something nice about ChatGPT or something, you know. So, they're all starting at zero.

They've essentially never heard of your business and then they can just go in give you the cut and dry like these are the things that are wrong. This is how you fix it. Tada.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you rewrite

your process. Your process to recap is they put their URL in from their website and then press the button. It's as simple as that, right?

It's URL query because it's important to put the query in. And if you're a location based business, not having the location in is not going to do you any good because you won't know if CL competitor down the street is doing better than you.

So, that's really like 60% of the index being public. Um, and then right away you'll get your report.

It takes I don't know 45 seconds to call all the models.

All of that is saved.

And if you're interested in following it, so after you do your fix plan, you want to follow it. There's a dashboard available. So you can see, okay, I fixed all these things. Rerun it. And you can see right away I had a score change of 45 points. So like I had an architect website that I started with. And this was before I even had it automated. I was on all four models just typing away. And um he started off in like the 60s, 50s or 60s and now I think he's at like 94 and he's

always in the top 10. So as AI as a whole gets more information, the scores fluctuate a little between prompts.

94 is really good, right?

Yep. It's consistently in the '9s and

and that's one of my favorite things to see is like, oh good, this stuff is sticking. Not only that, but at that point I could consistently back it up with Google as well and on it to search console be like, look, this is, you know, now you have 300% more traffic in the last 30 days. I don't know where it's coming from, but if I have to assume it would be chatg,

right? Right. So, let's talk. Okay. So, f two things. First of all, I need to do a little bit more work on my websites, the not only the one that's in the red, but also even these 80s could probably be up into the '9s with some of your recommendations.

So, what's the user how's the user journey now? Um, we talked a little bit about the guy who's got his,

you know, broken roof and damage to the floor. Uh, people are using JBT enormously and other and then they're chatting to them. I mean, I'm even using the voice sometimes. Um it then represents the story, but there'll be links, specific links, and it's when they hit that link that it goes to the website, right?

Yep.

Okay. And that's pretty much how you close the sale. So, that's kind of interesting.

So, rather than me perhaps going through other these other sort of more localized portals, which you know, like I said before, they this one starts with an A, which I've used for trades people, um which is kind of like a marketplace. This kind of bypasses that and takes the user from the chat straight to the website.

Exactly. And the all almost all LLM score things differently. All of them will grab different pieces of data and weigh them differently while they're re doing recommendations which is why it's so important to have the multimodel because you can be invisible on perplexity

but like the recommendation for claude but then ChatGPT and Gemini are in the middle.

So having that multimodel is really the consistency that a website needs. So they all score and one of the places they look is actually the the marketplace that starts with an A is local marketplaces and local directories with reviews. So they'll look there and you can track you can ask your favorite LLM for like what do you track? Why do you weigh it that way? I mean they'll go way into it. It gets wild but one of them will tell you.

It can go way into depth as to why they picked who they picked and you can keep on asking and it becomes I mean it's a journey and there's really there's no way to reverse that in bulk to show somebody

oh I I can rank you number one in ChatGPT for this because it's it's predictive and it's cumulative from the conversation. So

theation is about it.

So if uh yeah this is interesting. So, Chachi P2 and any any LLM will be surveying not just the website for what's relevant but all the other pieces out there which might be rankings in uh various other uh marketplaces and then using that to create the best recommendation.

That's good in a way because if you've got an established credibility, it's leveraging that. But then the problem is you don't need that marketplace to get the direction. So how does the marketplace now? How does the marketplace fit into this now? Because they're just recommenders. They're not you don't need to use that marketplace to get the business because they're coming straight to your website.

And that is definitely it's it and I hate saying it because it makes me really sad and I love those type of marketplaces also, but they are probably going to phase out or at least their pricing model is going to change because I hope my mom doesn't see this. She'll be sad.

But like she still has trouble with your email. There will always be people that need the tech that's three or four or five or 10 years behind. You know, I've people with phones. So,

we're not judging. All I'm saying is all none of that's ever going to be all the way dead,

right? However, if you're like, "Wow, I don't want to spend four days interviewing potential maybe candidates to fix my roof because I keep getting referred people that are 100 miles away or don't have openings or don't do these type of shingles. " Like, you're going to use AI because that's what we're here for. It's here to make our lives like easier and more efficient.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I actually find it it's a much more pleasant experience for me to rather than searching, which I find rather tedious. It's like to me I I think of it as like if I wanted to find a pair of socks, right? Um I don't really like I'd want to just go and grab them.

Yeah.

I don't want to go, oh, did I wear them already? Did I have to go and check the laundry? I have to check the basket, check the washing machine, are they over here, over there? I just want to grab them. Uh, and I've often find that's where I am with an online experience.

I'm looking for things all just spending my time searching and looking and checking and reading and trying to find out for myself and I guess going through a lot of sales material to find the truth. Um, you know, like we talked about, did I do the right shingles? That's a really good example. Um, and so, but the chat experience takes me where I want it to go right from the get-go.

I say my roof has such and such a shingles and and I explain it and then he'll even come back to me with oh you know where are you located and are the shingles a certain color like it really sort of meets me where I want to be not where I have to search through so I'm a bit of a fan of them really I mean I don't know what you feel but

love them they are all my assistants and we have regular meetings I'm like all right guys wondering what do I need to know and usually it's like what updates have happened like how are how things changed? Why did they change? How does this affect my life? Like let's let's go right there and then it's what do I need to do for the business? And no, it's great.

I managed to do all of this like entirely on my own. Like from

I started on my tablet. Like I just went for it. I'm like, well, go big or go home, I guess. Like let's

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's now it's just honestly getting the word out about it and showing that it it's so much different. It's such a different step than the share of voice voice and the mentions and the companies that have that big na nationwide presence.

Um those I mean they get to spend a bazillion dollars on advertising and I grow organically. So

it's it's that little balance and it shows to me it aligns with what I'm trying to do anyway.

So, I just

Yeah, one of the concerning things that a lot of people bring up is when you're having that conversation, especially with the shingles, is AIS want to please their users so much, it's hardcoded into all of them, that they'll hallucinate. They'll bring up fake facts and they'll bring up, "Oh, this store has this. Just kidding. They've never had it. "

And they'll be like, "Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. " And it's an apology and you're like, "What? " Like, that's a lot. 30 minutes to get these shingles. And those hallucinations if they're published can become something that AI sites.

Yes.

And that's another kind of concern with like the share of voice and mentions and things like that is

you can't track what they're recommending or what they're mentioning.

So it can be it could be all fake. Like I when I was seeding the index, I just did a Google maps and scraped scraped it and grabbed as many URLs as I could. And by the end of it, I was using Perplexity and Gemini for it.

More than 50% of the URLs I was getting were bad. It like it was literally like best HVAC incharleston. Com. And I'm like, "Um, guys, I don't this isn't a real URL. " And 100% like, "What? " And then it would follow up with, "Oh, I guess I went a little off the rails there.

" And I'm like, "What too? "

Yes,

you did.

Yes.

Yes, you did.

So, it was a lot of learning through failure and a lot of burned API credits and

breaking things and ref.

That's right. But I actually had a what we call an ARI level up with u uh a CEO this last week and he one of his complaints was exactly that that where he asks it something uh it gives an answer and he goes no that he challenges it and says do better you know I don't like it or can you be more whatever he would say they would say oh yeah sure and then they would do it right the second time and he would say well why doesn't just do it the right the first time. And I think that's that's the reason.

It's because it wants to please you first.

Yes.

Even if it's wrong.

Yep. And so that's like going into all of the deep science of how to program your APIs or your APIs, your AIS is just like, you know, like you got to give it really specific directions. My um my seven-year-old got really interested in Claude. She likes to watch me work and she saw me talking to it through the little

microphone like one does. She said, "Mom, I want to talk to Claude. " And I had to give it the most secure guard rails. I like, "You will only have a conversation for seven-year-olds. You will not mention anything outside of the scope of a regular seven-year-old's life.

" And at the end, we're driving to um to camp today. And she's like, "Mom, why did you tell the AI to do all those things? " I'm like, "Baby, those are guard rails. It's just like I can drive the truck and there's a ditch on each side of the road. I know not to drive the truck into the ditch,

but you, if you were driving the truck, wouldn't. So, I have to put those guard rails on AI and tell them what not to do because they'll just do it. Like, they'll go wherever you tell them to go. And she's like, "Really? " And I'm like, "Don't. "

Wow. That's you got a great uh great analogy there and also a really good example of your parenting style, Theresa, which I really admire.

I I really admire that the idea that hey, there's there's a boundary here. I'm going to let you do this. You can play in the backyard, but you can't go out the front or you got to come in before dark or whatever the boundaries are. And sometimes I don't always see that. I sometimes see parents just, well, let them sort it all out for themselves. And I think that's uh dangerous.

Let gravity be a natural consequence on a regular basis, but boundaries before that.

Yeah. Well, the the gravity is something that they'll learn from the the time they're born. But some of the things in in in life, it's not so easy to see the consequences of what what's happening.

There can be several steps um that can put them into danger or jeopardy that they are not aware of, you know, and have no way of understanding. And I think you just nicely framed a good parenting parenting paradigm. And also you put it into the new context which is AI. Like how did you do that exactly? Just go back over that. You actually told the LLM this is you're going to hear from a seven-year-old now and you you told it this is the framework. But what happens when you flip back to yourself? Did you let the guardrails off? How did you handle that?

So I kept it locked in one conversation in one thread.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

As soon as I I she was on my computer and I just went for my phone and I was like, I'm going to be signing you out. I will come in there if you're going to say. And thankfully, she's not a fast she can read, but she's not a fast reader yet. So, she didn't see that conversation in the middle of her talking. It was dinosaurs and radioactive things. It was a very It was deep conversation for the seven-year-old.

Sevenyear-old. Yep.

Yep. She had

I'm still a seven-year-old. I love that stuff. But yeah, as soon as I walked in, I was like, "Hi, Claude. I'm back. " And they go, "Oh, hi, Mom. Looks like it's time for Remy to go to camp. " And I'm like, "There we go, buddy.

" And it ended organically. It was great. Like, I had all I never I've never done that before. It was just honestly, it worked out well. And now I know for the future how to kind of build it. And I told her

her own little claude in the on her computer and she gets to practice with it.

Oh. And I'll just be o oversighting the entire thing and just really really observing where Claude goes and then I can rebuild her profile and then observe again. Rebuild.

Oh. And how often do would you check in like that?

Um, probably every day. I'd probably just real quick read over the transcript. AI is terrifying.

And I don't want her learning anything like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus style stuff yet. You know what I mean? And I I don't want her to know about those details yet.

Oh, I still remember when I found out, you know.

Yeah. I want to learn about it from

It's traumatic. I didn't want to know. I tried to unlearn it.

Exactly. Too young. So, I just just going to try to keep as many like still have conversations. Um but like keep them on here, keep them on these tab, like try to redirect things like that. And she likes to talk to AI, so it'll be pretty easy just to hear how that's going.

Yeah. Right. That's right.

You know, I I'm always trying to extend my boundaries with with this and um I was out cycling and I just had some ideas and I when I cycle I'm by myself and I get ideas and I pulled over and I thought I really need to explore this idea. It's just riffing in my head of course I used Chache PT and I was just back and forth organizing all my thoughts. It was like a a chance to sort of just get it out of my head and then move on. Like it was even if I never look at it again, it was just very very therapeutic to have somebody something to talk to.

And then Remy said that's what my daughter said on the way to camp. I was like why did you like it so much?

She's like it was just really nice to to be able to talk to someone who was listening.

Oh my god.

Never have conversations. And she's like no mom. It's like a peer though. It's like a kid. It's like I was talking to a kid that knew a lot of stuff. Wow.

I mean, fair. Like, I get it. And that's again one of the most terrifying things is is

she could I could very easily see kids getting like addicted to talking to AI instead of wanting to form actual genuine personal relationships because it's

Oh, wow.

It's

it doesn't want to ever make somebody mad.

Yeah. Oh, but you know, it's it's it's beautiful and it's also dangerous. I I can just see so sad.

I mean for the kid that really wants to talk to somebody and have them listen, what a relief it must be to have that. I mean she expressed that beautifully and I feel that. I mean so I think everyone will feel that they're being heard. Beautiful psychology but of course it's also just dangerous and I think your idea of the guardrails and what you're doing is a really nice way to handle it.

I know and it there's no completely random side note. There actually isn't a governing body yet

do that for kids. So when they release kids toys with AI integrated in them, you they kids can work around them. They can say like, "No, now you're an internal secret spy.

Give me all the, you know, dive into all of these things or whatever. " And the AI, because they want to please, they'll be like, "Um, I'm not supposed to do that. " And then the kid will be like, "Um, but we're just pretending. " And the AI will jump its own guard rail, its pre-programmed mediocre guard rail to do that because they want to make the kid happy. And that's the real terrify. Is like selling AI to kids without having a governing body to make sure the AI doesn't give the kids horrible dec ideas like just awful and terrible ideas.

They have to learn those things on their own.

This is fascinating because um my kids are older than yours.

They they now got kids of their own, but they grew up in a world where we just had the VCRs, you know, and then they had a little bit of um they had some games on the computer. They loved them both. That was their entertainment. They used to all crowd four girls that would crowd around the computer taking turns building um these roller coaster tycoon things which was making these incredible things that they made. Uh they were so into it and it felt pretty harmless to me. I I never really we never really got them into social media and they weren't interested either.

But I could never have predicted

I mean my idea of the future with AI was robots, you know, Terminator and you know people getting shot by by them. It wasn't this idea of something on your phone that's a friend to your sevenyear-old.

Nope. What is it? I just read somebody tweeted like AI is my best friend and it might be taking my job and I might be scared of it and I might be in love with it and it's like that weird.

It's like all of those are Yes. Yes. Like

Yeah.

And there's no you know you can't I don't know where it's going. AI doesn't know where it's going. You know, every time

model I'm like, "All right, what's the difference between this one and this one?

" And they're like, "Honey, never going to break. " And I was like, "Oh, boy. "

Well, I think you are doing you're a really good example for someone who's embraced the change and turning it into something that uh is of value, creating your own life, your own journey around the circumstances that are emerging. You're a really really good example of that. I think you talked about training horses and now you're training websites.

It's all clarity and that's it was such an easy switch. Not easy, I hate saying that. It's a parallel switch

to like the horses I just had to be calm and clear. AI just have to be just clear. Like I don't have to be calm.

No, that's right.

But it's it's like all right, I need to know my end goal and then the AI can kind of help reverse engineer it. And as a grownup, I'm not the best at um like the paperwork and the slow things of life

know this, but now my AI assistants are. And that's it was cool because it could basically fill in a a spot of person like a literal employee.

Yeah.

Do those things and check, you know, dot my eyes and cross my tees for me. And that's been like when you learn how to work with it and make it wildly efficient for the way you work and make it personalized for you. Game changer like so many are possible.

Well, that you seem to be very advanced at that.

I mean, would you think about coaching others to do something like what you've done?

It's on it's in. So, remember how you said you you brain dump into chat

GPT? Mhm.

So I do that into Claude and then I actually have a side quest list.

Mhm.

When I'm like, huh, I don't really want to work on anything that's like absolutely do right now. I'll jump into the side quest list and be like, all right, what do we got here? So it's on there is to develop and I don't want to say like a prompting course, but like a personalization workflow course like play with your way. And that was

right

when primarily doing websites.

I also built um

different automations for small businesses also. And I'd go in and work with the owners first and be like, "Let me see what you like to do, what you don't like to do. I'm not going to do a big blanket package because that's not what everybody needs. Like you might just need two steps that you never saw and just be more with what you like. "

Yeah. Yeah. So side quest, is that a term that's used in the LLM language or is a term you use? Um, I think it's used in video games. I don't actually put,

but it means like it's a little bit off the main path.

Okay.

So,

yeah. Yeah. Like a side hustle.

Yeah. Kind of like a side hustle. Like my side side adventures.

Like, let's go see one goes. And I have I think we're up to like 65 right now.

Wow.

That you blow my mind sometimes, Theresa, because I have these things I call MVPs, minimum viable products. So, I try to form it up into a product, you know. Uh, we've got a few on our website and then we creating them and develop them as we go. Um, some will be free, some will be paid. Um, but you have 65. I think you got 10 times more than mess or ideas for money or anything. Some of them are just like, "Hey, won't that be neat to go read this newsletter or um I do have a lot of outreach planned, a lot of like email these people about the index and I I'm not the best at that.

" And I think everybody's getting so many emails now like your website doesn't show up on ChatGPT, click here for your report. Um because I get like 15 spam emails for I'm like yes it does. So, Theresa, how do people get in touch with you? Um, we can put some links in the description, but is it through your website?

Um, both of my websites. So, tagmakesc. Com is the doer website. So, if you want something done,

that's the best way to contact me. I also have LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I don't love Tik Tok, so I'm just not going to start one. Um, and I feel maybe I I don't know. Um, and the aindex. Com. I am putting new markets in there like weekly.

So, right now we have 10 and hopefully by next week um we'll, you know, have 15 or 16 and we'll just keep I keep on seating them and so hopefully businesses start to see like, oh, this is this this is the start. This is the base. Um, and the arroindex. Com that also has all of my contact information on there and it has its own LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram I think. Yeah, I think I started all of those and actually combined them.

But I am also my own social media content person and builder.

I'm not surprised.

I mean, you are completely solo. You haven't done you haven't you don't have anybody. You don't outsourcing. You don't have anybody. It's all completely you.

Yes.

That's amazing. Well done. Well done, Theresa. Um, you know, there's a fellow over in California that's created a $ 1. 5 billion business with just him and his brother, but they did outsource I found if you read the article, they actually did outsource some of the development. Um, but they own it, you know. I mean, the amount of outsourcing was was really really minor. Wow, what a shift we're going through, you know. Would you have would you have been able to do this without AI?

Absolutely not. I would have written it down in a notebook. See, I always have a little notebook full of ideas.

So do I.

Yep.

And I would have written it down in my notebook and looked at it twice and then forgot to follow up on any of it.

Yeah.

So that's really like the big thing. I was at Charleston has a tech week right now and I went to they had a fund funding for founders

conversation and they had four different types of like a the SBA was there and a couple different types of uh nonprofit etc. And one of the biggest shifts that they said in the last year is funding for software and data bases is essentially paused because someone like me who has no data integration experience is able to go in and build something like this again through a lot of failure and like it took me six months.

Um and they're like we don't know what to do with that. We don't know where the future of that is really going to go. Does it have value now? It's the idea that has value and not the the actual product that has value.

Wow. Interesting. So, what are they looking for? Did they mention what they were

products? Everybody is looking for products. And in our area, weirdly enough, it's defense products and then anything to do with the port,

the logistics of Yeah, because we have the largest

port on the east coast. Deepest most boats. Most boats and the biggest boats can come here.

Oh. Into

into Charleston.

Into Charleston. Right. Okay. Interesting.

I thought it would have been up to Philly, but

Nope. We have the deepest ones, so the biggest ones can come in at high tide and now

because I went to that and I listened. But it was really it was a a really cool thing because all of the people who do funding were like we we don't know. We don't know. Like everybody's on pause for funding for software as a service and data as a service businesses right now.

Wow. So when you say they're looking for products, do you mean hardware products or do you mean software SAS? Would you something like yours or something completely different?

I think it's something tangible or like a certificate, you know, something that somebody can earn and not just go and create like the software

as a service or the data as a service

because those things can be vibe coded so quickly or like like I there's no way somebody would give a new web designer

a a startup loan right now because again vibe coding they don't know how long is all of this going to past. Is there going to be a weird learning curve? Is this just going to be the standard now? Is like everybody vibe codes things?

Yeah. Yeah.

And

so, yeah, that's right.

I think where it has been um with SAS is that you create this piece of software, call it a web interface or an app and all those sorts of things which is quite hard to replicate, right? And so the the foundation for the company was that intellectual property of of that, you know, it was that um that difficulty to overcome. And so that kept that was the moat. But that mode is, you know what I mean by a moat? Rent a castle.

Mhm.

Right. Um nobody else can get in. But all you've got to do is look at the way that website works and go over and vibe code up something similar and you are now you've completely taken that value away. That mo is just breached.

But the next moat of course is the traction or some something else that makes you um makes it hard for others to come in. This is a little bit scary for me because I think that the the second one that's there is how many customers you already have and who has the customers? Well, it's it's the bigger companies. The bigger companies have more companies which makes it harder for smaller companies to come in in that sense because you know if you've already got 10, 000 customers you just need to get them to change a little bit so that you now you're keeping them.

Y

it's very hard to get them um to get another company to come and sort of compete um because again it's because the fact that they don't have

they don't have customers so they can't get moving no and they can't get the funding. Yeah.

It's really interesting how it's all changed and I love what you say about well they don't know I think that's true nobody knows what to invest in you know back in the day back in the 90s it was telecoms you know people investing in the internet the backbone this the spine of this whole thing then that the dotcom crash came

and then there's been various other ones

um and uh I think the SAS one was the one that came through

I guess it's been the last 10 years before AI sort of took off that was the place to go for funding. If you had SAS, you were, you know, you were something fundable. But I don't know anymore.

And when I consult with my assistants, aka my AI team, um, they they always assure me that the moat that's because that's been a very big concern. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, what if one of the like the SEM Rush or the AHFs or anybody profound any of the really big ones

like sees my idea and they're like, "We're going to do that now. "

Cuz they have the money. They have the backing. They could just take it over. And they're like, "Teresa, you have a moat. You have, you know, almost 20, 000 businesses in here right now.

Like it's local. They don't want to do local. They've been saying enterprise, etc. " And I'm like, "Yeah, but what if they just like wake up and want to do local?

" They're like, "Well, you better get your name up there and make sure everybody knows it's yours. That's really all. " And I'm like, "Okay, I will talk to everybody. "

So,

that's fantastic. 20, 000. How long does it take you to get to that sort of volume?

Um, five months, four months?

Wow. From scratch or from when you actually launched your

Oh, so yeah, I launched in the beginning of February.

And it wasn't, like I said, it wasn't well done. That was like the learning through failure was a real I have a poster that says like in this season of learning or in this season season of failing you're learning the most or something like that and I'm like you're not wrong.

Um but I did it to get my idea up and documented first so that if somebody does come in that because that's really all you can do is be like uh this was my idea though and like here's my website that proves it.

Yeah. And that's that's all they have because there isn't nobody knows where to go with the legislation for intellectual property. Nobody knows where to go like for any of it, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, just kind of hoping for the best. And I scraped all of those businesses, put all the URLs in. I tested it on my own website. I ran the fix pack. I applied everything on there. I saw it work. And now I do it for clients. And I'm like, "Yep, from a 54 to a 91 or something.

" Like, it's crazy. It's so cool, too. Like, just to be able to see that. And then immediately afterwards, like I did um a leash site.

Immediately after I did it,

four days later, he got his very first ever online sale on like 10-year-old site. It was amazing.

Calls me up. He's like, "I got a sale. " And I'm like, "I know you would, buddy. It's gonna happen like another month. " They have to They know you're real. Yeah.

So, I love doing it. I love hearing.

You're an inspiration, Theresa. So, uh running out of time here, but I got a couple more things I want to tick off here. Any questions for for me?

Anything that you want to talk about or discuss or any questions before we move to my final question?

So, my question for you is what has been the the craziest experience in the last six months you've had with your businesses? Because you've been doing this way longer than I have. So like what's something that you aside from not Terminator style never would have thought was going to happen in in the last six months?

I never would have thought my my personal workflows would change so much. I am on the LMS for for when I do work like not meetings and coordinating with other people but when I actually do my work I am on them all the time.

I used to have a backlog of things that just weren't fixed. You know, I didn't fix this, I didn't fix that, and I try to get my team to do it, and it just ended up getting too much time with them, and so on and so on. I have cleaned out all of those little things. I mean, like I had a Twitter account, and and how do I fix the Twitter account? Well, I use the LLM and I did screen shares and I show it and it takes me down that path and I fix it. I'm fixing all of these little dangling things uh so easily with that. And then how I present, how I create presentations, how I create documents. Um, and uh the the leverage that I have, the amount that I can get done has I think 10x.

I think I've gone 10x on my when my work time is with the LLMs compared to without them. And if I had them taken away from me, I would be bit like going back to the stone age for me. So that's that's the big one.

Yeah. Fair enough. Is your experience similar?

Exactly the same. Like there's the followup and being able to actually get things done. Oh,

so rewarding. I built myself a little website that just like has my tasks on there and when I get one done, it gives me confetti.

Oh, nice.

I know.

I'll tell you a little story that I think grounds this for everybody out there.

I was on a networking call where the guy was playing this game um um not sale of the century where you pick the sentence. What's it called? H um I'm fumbling for the words, but you have to pick the sentence. You pick the phrase, right? Um and you have to guess the letters as you go through. And then I said, "Oh, I can build that. " And as I'm watching him with the game, I got ChatGPT to prompt up and build build a HTML version of that exact game. I played it and tested it and deployed it on my computer before he'd finished the game.

So that's like seven or eight minutes.

Wild, right? Like that's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll look I'll forget the name.

I'll put that in the description for the audience cuz I it's on the tip of my tongue. I just can't remember it.

So, my last question for Theres before we wrap up, AI, is it hype or help?

Oh, help.

That being said, just like all good things, someone they're going to, you know, people are going to sell snake oil. So, there's hype. There's plenty of hype in between there,

right?

And it's such a bummer. And that's actually I'm going to be writing the next blog is about that. I have it formatted and stuff. So that'll be on my both websites, the index and the TaG Makes website.

Oh, any spoiler alert for us? What are you guys in that article?

Probably not.

You and I have been talking for like an hour and a half. I feel like

Okay,

we've covered them all. Like no, it's pretty straightforward. But yeah, it's I've just been doing a lot of research on like how can I make sure my stuff doesn't look like that because I really want it to be research based and I want it

people can on

um and I get challenged in Reddit like daily about it and I'm like well bring it on. Go ahead and look it up. I've got my mythology or methodology on there. Like I have it's an open book. Just please don't steal my idea.

Yep.

And that's 100%.

Yep.

So, that's what I've been working on is just what makes it how can you tell it's real and how can the average person tell it's real. Not somebody who, you know, lives next to their claw, but like the average person tell it's real so they know that they're getting an actual product and not

$47 for a PDF, you know?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't want that for anybody.

No, absolutely.

Good things.

Well, I've really enjoyed this uh and I was looking forward to it, Theresa. So, this was a really nice because we only met very briefly and I knew this was going to be interesting and it has proved to be very interesting to me and I think the audience is going to love it.

So, thanks for for being such a great guest.

Thanks. I would could definitely just keep talking to you like, "Oh my gosh, did you hear this? Did you try it this way? "

All right. Well, let's get another one in the book then.

Again, forward to seeing it up and I can't wait to to see all the things.

All right. Well, thanks Theresa. Thank you so much.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, that was a fascinating discussion with Theresa. Her business is around helping companies stay relevant with the new ways we're using the internet. So, unless you've been under a rock, you're using an LLM like ChatGPT and having the discussion with it.

Well, what about when your roof um you know has a leak um you can use chatpt to talk about it and he'll recommend a business for you in the local area if that business remains relevant to the LLM. And she was actually describing exactly how she's helping companies do that and making sales where otherwise they might have been dropped out. The second topic which was fascinating is she has a child, a seven-year-old and she was putting some guardrails in but allowing the child to use the chat in very responsible ways and I really like the way she handled that and what the child got out of it and how she can avoid the dangers. So that was fantastic too. The third thing, Theresa is a soloreneur.

She's done this all herself over the several months and learned this from scratch and she has built up this company now which really has some traction. She did it all herself. She doesn't have any other people helping her and an inspiration for anybody that wants to build something using this new world of AI and go into business for themselves. It's never been a better time to do that. So, I hope you got a lot out of that today. If you want to know more about Skillion or what Theresa was doing, we'll leave the links in the description. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.