VGTM_ Mark Degrasse_Full Interview
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[00:00:00] Mark: ~Pronounce your last name. Oh, uh, DeGrasse. DeGrasse. Okay. Looks. Yeah. Okay. Oh, not with the E. Everybody says DeGrasse. I'm like, no, it's not DeGrasse. Okay. ~
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Vertical Go To Market Podcast, where you'll discover new opportunities to grow your business from seven figures to eight from the world's most successful agency and B2B SaaS executives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn let's jump into the show.
[00:00:16] Corey: Today I'm joined by the president of digital marketer and a leading voice for all things AI, Mark DeGrasse. Welcome Mark.
[00:00:24] Mark: Thanks for having me on the show.
[00:00:25] Mark: I'm excited. I'm
[00:00:26] Corey: excited to have you as well. I'm excited to, pick your [00:00:30] brain when it comes to AI. You're definitely one of the, ~uh, the ~folks that are out there on the edge. I would say. ~Uh, ~maybe from, ~from~ my perspective, like you're, you're combining sort of the, the marketing world and AI and figuring out ways to, to leverage that to, to help agencies and businesses and individuals thrive.
[00:00:49] Corey: So, super excited about our conversation, but. Before we jump into AI, I wanted to just ask you a couple of questions about sort of where you got started in your career, kind of your career [00:01:00] I think you owned a website development agency at one point. What was, what's been your path?
[00:01:05] Mark: I, you know, I've always been in content is kind of, I look back at the last like 20 years and I find that that's just a recurring theme.
[00:01:12] Mark: Like I've always wanted to produce content and lots of video content, podcasts, articles, books, magazines. and so it kind of,~ uh, you know,~ is how I built my initial company. So, ~uh,~ after I got out of college. Uh, I was actually at a tech startup that dealt with, uh, communication between schools and parents.
[00:01:29] Mark: Uh, after that, I [00:01:30] got into e commerce because I wanted to sell something online and I had a friend who was in fitness. ~Uh,~ and so I was like, Oh, hey, I'll do all the backend stuff. I'll build the website. I'll do the marketing. I'll do all the content, you know, creation and optimization, import the product, like do all that work.
[00:01:43] Mark: You just have to be in front of the camera. And so, ~uh,~ what that led to was, ~uh, you know,~ basically making a magazine. Because ~my,~ my friend had all these contacts in the fitness industry and they weren't doing anything for us. So I was like, Hey, why don't we just ask them for content? We'll optimize it.
[00:01:57] Mark: We'll share it. They'll get traffic and exposure. [00:02:00] We'll get the content in order to connect with the products we're selling. And so that was kind of the birth of me using, ~uh,~ content marketing and kind of organic content generation to make money online. And so, ~uh,~ built that for a while, ended up selling that to a company called Onnit, ~uh,~ in Austin, ~uh,~ one of Joe Rogan's organizations I know a lot.
[00:02:18] Mark: Yeah. Yes. They've been around and they've been, you know, I look back now and I'm like, man, they, the design elements were really. Like, advanced, like it was way ahead of their time. And so everybody's kind of still mimicking them.[00:02:30] but I basically, I worked there for a year as the chief fitness officer. Uh, basically I was like the, a content executive, uh, formulated their certification program, their gym.
[00:02:39] Mark: ~Uh,~ and then used the magazine content that I had sold them in order to form their content platform. ~Uh,~ Ani Academy is what it was called at the time. spent there a year, then I wrote a book about the process of billing and selling my business organically. and then I had an agency for about six years where I worked with 300 different brands, personally worked with.
[00:02:58] Mark: So I literally helped [00:03:00] them put together the brand. Website logos, uh, content platforms, funnels, and then I, I would shoot videos for each client showing them, Hey, here's how to use all this stuff. And my goal was really to, uh, you know, fix the internet is what I called it by connecting real content from the people who should be making the content, which is the business owners, ~uh,~ and then giving them the system to run their own,~ you know, ~marketing.
[00:03:22] Mark: departments. The problem was that the level was a little too low to actually make that happen. So it only works about 5 percent of the time. but what I [00:03:30] found was that I really loved working with, ~uh, you know, ~the people who make the content and, and so they just didn't like marketing. So when I, I had the opportunity to work with digital marketer, ~uh,~ which I was basically, ~uh,~ like a content, consultant for a bit where I actually helped them formulate their content plans for multiple brands, including digital marketer.
[00:03:46] Mark: And they offered me the position as president and I was like, Oh, perfect. Now I get to teach marketing to people who are interested in marketing, which is only marketers. That's the only people interested in marketing. So, uh, that was a huge opportunity for me. That's awesome. [00:04:00] And, uh, You know, I've been there for two and a half years.
[00:04:03] Mark: Uh, it's been a great experience and I've worked with, you know, thousands of marketers now. So, uh, that's, that's kind of the path. There's been some stuff in between, but I'm not gonna. That's the, the big milestones. That's,
[00:04:15] Corey: that's the next podcast. I'll, I'll, we'll go into some of that stuff. Exactly. ~to kind of~ stepping back a little bit here.
[00:04:21] Corey: ~So, um, the,~ a big theme here over your 20 year career, you've been, there's been sort of a ~through,~ through line of content. Content's been a big part of [00:04:30] what you've done across all these different domains. It sounds like.
[00:04:34] Mark: Exactly. Well, what I found with content, and this is kind of a realization I just had recently, is that it's the most honest form of marketing, because if you think about what it takes to make content, like you're really delving into the principles of a business, their connection with their audience, their desire to share value through information with their customers and their potential customers.
[00:04:58] Mark: And the only way to do that is really [00:05:00] to honestly present it. Right. Value through content, whether that's videos, articles, podcasts, books, you know, other publications. so I, I'm, you know, more dedicated to it than ever, because I think that people in general, ~the, you know,~ the entire population is getting away from being sold and being tricked into making decisions that they don't.
[00:05:19] Mark: necessarily believe in and I'm like, Hey, well, you know, if, if the company's main goal is really to educate people on what they do best, you know, show their competency of providing the service or products [00:05:30] that they offer, the best way you could do is through content. So yeah, I'm happy. ~Everybody's had that way.~
[00:05:34] Corey: ~So, so, so ~ what's interesting, or I think personally pretty interesting about this is that content is one of the first areas where AI, at least in discussion, has really been. ~Um, uh, AI has been~ maybe a threat, maybe an opportunity, maybe something a little bit of both, uh, as it relates to the, the generation of content.
[00:05:51] Corey: And I guess, ~what are your, what are your,~ what's your perspective on AI's impact on being able to create sort of that honest form of authentic
[00:05:59] Mark: content?[00:06:00] Oh, I think it's a huge, huge bottleneck breaker is what I call it, because really the bottleneck is the creation of content, right? Like, hey, I'm not a writer, so I'm not going to write an article.
[00:06:12] Mark: Oh, I'm not good in front of the camera, so I'm not going to, you know, do video. Oh, I'm not good at talking to people, so I'm not going to do podcasting. And so that's always been a huge barrier for people who probably should be the ones. It's doing articles and making videos and doing podcasts and they just don't because it's too intimidating, too much [00:06:30] work.
[00:06:30] Mark: They don't want to, ~you know,~ make the effort to create these things. So what AI does is it allows anybody of any level of proficiency to make a lot of content as fast as you want using AI as a tool to help that content creation go a lot faster. ~And so, you know,~ if you're threatened by AI, Oh, no, yeah, I can make all the content.
[00:06:48] Mark: It's like, well, you're not very competent at what you do then. Because, you know, AI is just a tool. It doesn't have a brand voice unless you program that in. It doesn't pull the information unless you tell it to. It [00:07:00] doesn't do anything unless you could insert your expertise into the process to make that happen.
[00:07:05] Mark: And so if AI is able to produce the content that you create. You suck at content, like get better and then use AI to do it faster.
[00:07:15] Corey: ~So,~ so in other words, just putting a single prompt in their single line prompt around, you know, write 10 SEO headlines for plumbers. ~Uh, the quality of that is not, is not something, I mean, I, I think ~_~we~_~,~ probably anyone who's listened to this has done their version of that.
[00:07:26] Corey: And, you know, obviously what comes back is very mediocre [00:07:30] at best.
[00:07:30] Mark: Exactly. But, but even in that use case, like it still gives you a launching off point. So if you're saying like, Hey, I'm running, you know, I'm writing this article, don't know what to write. Give me 10 SEO optimized titles. Like that's a great starting point.
[00:07:42] Mark: Now what you have to do is you have to use your core understanding of your company, your brand or the brands that you're working with and say, does this, Is this the brand voice? Like, is, is this title really related to everything else we do? And is it reinforcing the brand message and everything we're trying to communicate?
[00:07:58] Mark: And if it doesn't, [00:08:00] then you need to install that. You need to, ~to~ make it sound like, you know, you make it sound like you're a brand. So, ~uh,~ yeah, it's just a tool.
[00:08:09] Corey: So let's say for the listening audience, ~um,~ a lot of listeners are going to be agency owners. ~Um, is,~ is this something where they could, ~uh,~ create content on the behalf of maybe a client, but ~_that, that, uh,_~ is in the voice of ~their, of~ their client's brand?
[00:08:20] Mark: Exactly. And that's kind of what, actually, I'm speaking at TNC next month or January ~if, uh, you know, you're listening to this after that, uh,~ and the whole concept is, ~is~ a concept of brand avatar, where, you know, we have our [00:08:30] customer avatar, we know our target market, we should be intimately familiar with the person we're trying to sell to, what we don't usually have is a cohesive image of a company, and I think what I'm going to present is what I call brand avatar, which is essentially the same thing as a, Customer avatar, except it represents the brand.
[00:08:47] Mark: And so it personifies what your brand is. And then you could say, Hey, my brands,~ uh, you know. Uh,~ brand avatar is Bill, and Bill is like this, and he thinks like this, and he looks like this, and his, you know, his before and after, [00:09:00] because you still do that with the brand avatar, where you say, here's my brand before, ~you know,~ I was successful, and here's the brand in three years when we execute the mission, and here's what it looks like, and so what it helps people do is really visualize your brand, and then communicate that to everyone else.
[00:09:15] Mark: And so, you know, now that's what I'm really pushing is like, Hey, now you can make your brand voice and you can apply it to articles and ads and copy on your website and marking brochures and you know, customer training and customer service and [00:09:30] all these different things could be the same voice, which was really impossible to do before because it just took too many, you know, pieces, but now you can just apply a prompt.
[00:09:39] Mark: You know, here's my brand voice, apply it to this. ~What ~
[00:09:42] Corey: ~is, what is, um,~ are there specific inputs that you would need to, use in order to create a sort of a workable or a cohesive brand voice for AI to use consistently? Like, what is that made of?
[00:09:54] Mark: It's actually, well, it's made of a lot of things because you do need your customer [00:10:00] avatar.
[00:10:00] Mark: If you don't know who you're talking to, you really can't communicate that. Uh, needs really your brand vision, ~uh,~ needs, you know, a statement encompassing all your brand's values and mission and all that kind of stuff. And then what you're able to do when you do this kind of internal and external research, external being your, your competitive research, your market research, and your customer research.
[00:10:20] Mark: Now you can formulate a statement. single sentence. And it's just one sentence that says, here's what my brand voice is. It's a, you know, uh, a kind [00:10:30] individual who really cares about X and they communicate with them in this way. And then, then you just take that one sentence and you say, Hey, take any piece, you know, any asset you want from your company and say, apply this brand voice to this.
[00:10:46] Mark: And it can be written by anybody in the company and what you'll have is a cohesive. thing that everybody now sounds the same.
[00:10:53] Corey: Wow, that's amazing. I'm thinking about my time at my last agency. I had a team of copywriters ~on the team~ and [00:11:00] certainly they had their own strengths. Some were long form, some were short form, but you'd have that variability.
[00:11:04] Corey: We'd have a brand voice, which lived in a document online or a printed document, which they read maybe once a year, uh, and they did their best to be able to adhere to it, but there's no science behind that. And I think what's interesting and promising about this perspective and this idea of a brand voice that's within the AIs that you truly have that consistency that you're trying to achieve as a brand.
[00:11:25] Corey: I think that's super interesting.
[00:11:27] Mark: Well, it just standardizes it and it takes [00:11:30] away, you know, the different writing levels of people and the different, you know, ways we do things. It just says, no, this is the way we do things. Now that's kind of the first step because another, you know, aspect of content that I'd like to tell people about is content structure where you're saying, you know, it's not just about you writing an article, it's about you writing an article and the method that represents your brand.
[00:11:50] Mark: Best. And so maybe it's a list. Maybe there's a lot of bullet points. Maybe there's a lot of infographics. Maybe there's, uh, you know, a problem. Well, what we do at Digital Marketer is we say case [00:12:00] study. So here's the situation and here's the success. Then we say, here's what the problem was. Then here's what the solution is.
[00:12:06] Mark: Step by step. And then there you go. And what you're essentially doing is training people, training your audience how to consume information from you. That way, it's not just about the words that are presented, it's how they're presented. And then now that same structure could fit into your videos, into your podcasts, into your VR, experiential marketing, or whatever you want, but it'll [00:12:30] still have that same presentation structure, and now it's a branded piece of content for a whole bunch of different
[00:12:35] Corey: reasons.
[00:12:35] Corey: will be an example of that? ~If you have an example~ so I can kind of grok that could look like?
[00:12:41] Mark: Well, well digital marketer is the best example because if you look at a lot of our stuff, we're always following that format It's always a case study. We always say here's the problem We always say here's the solution and then we have like next steps is what we put at the end of every presentation Where it's just like okay, here's all the information Next steps do [00:13:00] this, this, this.
[00:13:00] Mark: And so it's, uh, it's actionable. It's simple. And, and it, it gives people an expectation that it's not going to be like, Oh, let me click on the article. Let me scan the page and see the bullet points and see the headlines and decide if I'm actually going to read this piece because they'll be trained on how you present information.
[00:13:19] Mark: So they'll just be like, Oh, I know exactly what I'm going to get. Here's how to do your next, uh, you know, a hundred thousand person email campaign. And it's like, okay, You know, if you just said that title, like [00:13:30] from just the internet, it could be anything. It could be a video or podcast or an article or a case study or a white paper or a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:13:38] Mark: But if it's from you, they're going to know exactly how it's going to be. And so now they're more likely to click on it and invest the time to consume it. Why
[00:13:45] Corey: is that important for a brand to sort of standardize the formatting of their
[00:13:50] Mark: content? It's really just that expectation, you know, people go to McDonald's because they know that anywhere on the planet you go to a McDonald's and a Big Mac's a Big Mac, you know, [00:14:00] it's almost like a safety and a comfort that people have with brands and products and everything else where it's just like, Oh, I don't have to think about this.
[00:14:08] Mark: I know what I'm going to get. I'm not going to feel like I'm wasting time or taking a risk by clicking on that link because I know it's going to be this. And so now, now it takes somebody from just consuming random pieces of information everywhere to making you a resource where they know this is what they're going to get.
[00:14:26] Mark: And so now I'm not going to go onto Google or TikTok or [00:14:30] LinkedIn or any of these other sources and try to find an answer. I know that Corey has the answer. Corey always presents these topics to agency owners and so I'm just going to go with him. I'm going to save time.
[00:14:40] Mark: I think
[00:14:41] Corey: this is so, ~uh,~ powerful, you know, coming from, again, my last role as a, ~as a~ chief marketing officer, consistency for all the reasons you said ~is, uh, where~ is so important, but in a large organization, a small organization gain, the consistency is next to impossible.
[00:14:56] Corey: ~So this is a, this is a, a big, uh, promise for that.~ It also reminds me of that test where you say, like, [00:15:00] if we were to go to your website and take off your logo, would someone know who this, what brand this was by as a result of the content. And you get there through that consistency of messaging and how you format the content.
[00:15:12] Corey: So this is a, this is really exciting ~for,~ for someone like me ~who,~ who has been striving to do this using, let's say, uh, you know, non AI based, ~uh,~ methodologies. So that's really
[00:15:22] Mark: cool. It is. Well, what you have to do if you don't have this one solution is you have to have a ton of structure and a ton of [00:15:30] SOPs and then a manager who's going to push all of those things forever.
[00:15:34] Mark: And it's like, Oh, it's all so much work. And so essentially what you're doing is you're replacing that massive function with something that's just idiot proof. Like, Hey, before you post that article. Put it in the chat GPT, put it in this one line saying, use the brand voice. Now you're done with the article.
[00:15:51] Mark: And that's simple enough for everybody to do it.
[00:15:54] Corey: ~How would,~ what are some best practices for agencies today? In addition to the brand voice, which is [00:16:00] again, really interesting, but what are some more sort of day to day kind of tactical things that an agency maybe has been avoiding getting involved with?
[00:16:08] Corey: ChatGPT, Generative AI, you know, what are some things that you've seen agencies adopt that's been really helpful for them?
[00:16:14] Mark: Just in general in terms of like operation Operationally
[00:16:19] Corey: internally facing like where have you seen anything like work really? Well, you see agencies, you know migrating to
[00:16:26] Mark: You know, it's kind of hard because you have solutions like, you know, I always [00:16:30] go back to ChatGPT because it's so universal and it's generally stable.
[00:16:35] Mark: And so, ~uh,~ just actually adding on instead of just doing an SOP, ~um,~ you could just add a prompt. to the SOP where you say like, OK, here's the system. Here's what you're supposed to do. Step one. Do the step two Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Now instead of, you know, kind of requiring the employee to understand what they're doing You could just, and hope that they take that extra step of hey do your research and do all these different things [00:17:00] You don't have to.
[00:17:00] Mark: You can say, hey. Here's the prompt. Here's the steps. So still train people on the SOP. But now what you can do is just say, then go to chat GPT, enter this prompt copy and paste the answer, enter this prompt, copy and paste the answer. And so instead of, you know, having the employee to know how to write and to know how to structure information properly and to know how to do all these things if you just make a good prompt, now your SOPs turn from like, you know, a handbook that literally no one references to, [00:17:30] no, it's like the, it's the output.
[00:17:32] Mark: Copy and paste. Done. And so I'd say for agencies, it just standardizes all of the things that, that everybody should be doing anyway. And now you have something, some consistency. So it's really, you know, it's kind of the same thing I was talking about with the brand voice, but now you can apply it to every process and get a much more consistent outcome with less training.
[00:17:54] Mark: That's,
[00:17:54] Corey: that's awesome.
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[00:18:55] Corey: I have a question that one of my, ~um, my~ agency clients [00:19:00] asked, and I'll, I'll ask it to you and see if this ~is, uh, could, uh,~ could be interesting. So one of the questions that she had was, ~Um,~ there's a lot of talk about, you know, how AI is impacting sort of, you know, agencies, ~uh,~ when it comes to content marketing, but is there anything that will become based on your, ~your~ perspective that will become more important as a result of AI?
[00:19:21] Corey: For example, will in person experiential events become more valuable so consumers can have a real experience?
[00:19:27] Mark: Oh, that is a great question. [00:19:30] Um, well, two things. I think that eventually we'll, we'll be way more virtual, right? I think one of the, ~uh,~ presentations I gave recently, I talked about HeyGen and its ability to translate your voice into any language.
[00:19:42] Mark: And so now you could communicate. Not in, when I say any language, you just think, Oh, well, I could read. You know, uh, translated subtitles. It's like, no, because what happens when you use subtitles for translation is you're losing the context and you're, you're losing the voice that you're giving. And so what [00:20:00] HeyGen does is it uses your voice.
[00:20:01] Mark: Number one, it translates it in a more conversational manner. So it's not like a formal translation. ~Uh,~ and then it moves your mouth. with the words. And so now it looks like I speak, you know, I've done Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, and I've actually taken these videos and given them to native speakers.
[00:20:20] Mark: And I said, Hey, does it sound like I speak this language? And 99 percent of the time they're like, yes, it does. And so that means that now I could communicate to [00:20:30] anybody on the planet using the system. Now, when you combine that with the new, uh, kind of VR meeting tech that Meta is coming up with, I don't know if you saw that podcast where.
[00:20:40] Mark: Oh, I'll send you a link to that. But there's this podcast, ~uh,~ that, ~uh,~ Mark Zuckerberg did with a podcaster and they were both wearing the meta headsets and what they showed was what, how they appear to each other. And so the new tech, what's happening is they're creating an avatar of you with your facial expressions and your nuances.
[00:20:57] Mark: And then that's what they're showing the person [00:21:00] you're talking to. And so essentially it looks like you're sitting in the same room and you're not wearing a headset. It's a 3D representation with, you know, spatial audio, and so it just feels like we would be sitting in the same room. Now, that kind of tech, combined with the translation technology, means that you'll be able to communicate with anyone sitting in the same room, no matter what language you speak.
[00:21:20] Mark: Now, that's going to take a lot of processing power, and hardware, and all these different things that are going to take a while to develop. So, in the meantime, In person is going to become really, really [00:21:30] important because what I could do now is I could take a video of, say, you and I could feed it into HeyJen's Instant Avatar and I could have you say whatever I want.
[00:21:39] Mark: And so, what does that mean? It means that you can't really trust any video you see anymore, eventually. Because once people get wise to this technology, they'll start getting very suspicious. so what's going to happen, I think, is in the short term, say, 12 to 24 months, In person is going to become increasingly important where you have to be at the events [00:22:00] and you have to be connecting in person and you have to be doing all these things because it's going to be really easy to fake everything online.
[00:22:06] Mark: And so ~short,~ short term, very important in person, long term, less necessary than it has been.
[00:22:13] Corey: Yeah, I, uh, but it sounds like there's going to be a tipping point, potentially a tipping point at some point where, ~um,~ doing these virtual kind of meetings will kind of, ~um,~ become more of a, More of a natural kind of way that people engage, which is, you know, it's going to be interesting
[00:22:28] Mark: for sure.
[00:22:29] Mark: Yeah, [00:22:30]
[00:22:30] Corey: exactly. one more, one more question I have here. ~I'm just pulling up my Slack. Uh, it is, um, ~I'd love to know his take on how we can leverage AI to create value for clients that we can replicate, repeat, or customize for clients in a given vertical. ~Uh,~ in the essence that becomes our own unique offering, not necessarily, you know, proprietary, but in other words, how do you take this standardization, this brand voice, and then verticalize it like taking a vertical approach?
[00:22:55] Corey: Is that possible? And have you seen companies do that?
[00:22:58] Mark: Yes. And so [00:23:00] what I talk about with generative AI specifically is formulation. And so what we're going to do is instead of being like the content creator, and this is eventually, this isn't right now. ~Um,~ but we're going to be the formula makers. And so instead of saying, Hey, we're going to go in, we're going to do this campaign for you, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:23:15] Mark: It's like, no, we're going to come up with a custom formula that you could then implement using AI. And it's going to do all the things that you want forever. And we could continue to, you know, evolve this system for you in order to continue to implement, or we could [00:23:30] execute it forever for you with, you know, constant consistency.
[00:23:33] Mark: And, and once it's set up, then you get to do the real side of marketing, which is testing. You know, when you're saying, Hey, here was the formula. Here's what it led to. Let's tweak the formula and we're going to try it again. And so instead of just being like, Hey, let's. Let's A, B test the ad campaign and let's A, B test the email campaign and let's A, B test blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:23:52] Mark: You say, no, here's the formula. Let's implement the formula. All that crap's going to be automated. And so now we get to work on [00:24:00] strategy constantly and, you know, innovation for the future and results. And that's really what we like to do versus making the crap all the time. Exactly. You don't like to make the blog
[00:24:13] Corey: post.
[00:24:13] Corey: Right. Exactly. ~Yes. And, um, Um,~ so I imagine that is like, I know in AI today, in fact, on your website, you have a couple of really handy, chat GPT prompts that are like copy and paste or click and, ~and~ you're there type of thing. But ~what, what,~ when I was playing with it, what I saw was that you're able [00:24:30] to create a content strategy with a click of a button type of thing.
[00:24:33] Corey: ~Obviously the, the, um, ~the prompt is really important ~and I,~ and I saw that it was a really sort of intense prompt, but the idea is, is, is the idea then that Because it's easy to create this output. What you need to focus in on is on the actual prompt, the input.
[00:24:47] Mark: And that's the formula, the formula is the prompt or it manifests as the prompt.
[00:24:53] Mark: Um, but yeah, it's, and it could be anything you want it. And honestly, it has to be custom to the brand. Otherwise it's going to turn into [00:25:00] something that's not the brand. And that's, and that's kind of why I give away everything. I'm just like, yeah, here. Here's all the prompts because the value of the prompts or implementing the prompt is the fact that I understand how that was made.
[00:25:13] Mark: And I have the experience to justify it. I have, you know, all the tests that I've run to make it work. ~Uh,~ I understand intuitively the step by step. So I'm like, yeah, have the prompt you could make, you know, the, ~uh,~ digital marker, we do the customer value journey, a [00:25:30] stage process for taking somebody who doesn't know anything about your brand to eventually becoming a marketing channel or advocate, the brand itself and buying everything in between.
[00:25:37] Mark: ~Uh,~ I don't have to give you a, we, you know, we have a 20 hour certification on this. I could just say, Hey. Here's the prompt, plug it in, you'll have a step by step customer value journey. However, you don't know how it works, you don't know why it works, you just have the product. And so it's, it's akin to like having a cell phone.
[00:25:57] Mark: Yeah, I could use a cell phone and cell phone works and [00:26:00] that's fine. I don't know how it's made, I couldn't make one myself, right? And so, Apple still has all the value. And that's why it's, you know, it's not a threat to marketers or real marketers because we know how to do all this stuff. And that's what makes the prompts valuable.
[00:26:15] Mark: And yeah, it's, it's
[00:26:17] Corey: in some respects, it makes me think about like, you know, AI engineering, prompt engineering, if you will, is a specialized. Skill just like SEO is a specialized skill that most companies don't [00:26:30] have the capability of the, the, uh, the ability to build that in house. So they're going to rely on specialists, IE agencies to be able to do that specialized work on behalf of the company.
[00:26:40] Mark: Exactly. Now, and that, those things will get increasingly automated, but really, there's so many new things that we can do that we're just starting to open our minds to because what's happened over the last 10 to 15 years is everything's kind of stagnated. And so instead of us developing new ways to deliver information and value, we were [00:27:00] just doing the same crap we did 10 years ago.
[00:27:02] Mark: We're writing articles and we're shooting long form and short form video, and we're making podcasts. Like nothing has changed. Right. But now Open up your mind. Like, imagine a website in a few years is not www. whatever. It's like, no, put on your headset, walk into my store, have my AI generated avatar answer any question you have about any product that we have.
[00:27:26] Mark: Pick up the products. Like, see how big they are in your hand. Like, [00:27:30] there's, there's so many more interesting experiential ways that we could be marketing that we just haven't been able to do until now. So now Now that's going to start happening and now we get to have fun again, which is great for everybody.
[00:27:42] Corey: Which is great. Love that. ~Um, you,~ you talk a lot about personal branding and AI for your personal brand. I think you actually wrote a guide on personal branding using AI. What are some of the key takeaways from that?
[00:27:54] Mark: You know what's funny? AI wrote that. AI wrote that. That was, [00:28:00] uh, my friend Jeff Hunter.
[00:28:01] Mark: He, uh, you know, and he has a bunch of AI courses, so definitely check him out. Uh, but he was in my office one day and he's like, Hey, I've been writing books. And I'm like, how did you write a book? He's like, let's just write a book. And so we sat down together for 45 minutes and wrote this book. And I was like.
[00:28:15] Mark: That was easy. Now that said, it doesn't mean that it's a good book or, you know, you shouldn't still review all the content and make sure it's good to go. But, it does give you value. And, and really the core [00:28:30] message in there is just.
[00:28:34] Mark: I'm all about proving your competency, so it's not tricking people into thinking something, and it's not presenting information in a way that, you know, oh, there's the hook, and they bought it because of the hook. It's like, no, I'm going to prove to you how competent I am by showing you Exactly how competent I am.
[00:28:50] Mark: And so I think ~that's, uh,~ that's another level that that's just going to be a common expectation because before, you know, in order to gain relevancy, sometimes you just had to look really [00:29:00] cool, right? Oh, I have a cool website, cool photography, cool copy, whatever it is. It all looks cool. And so now you trust me because I've obviously spent the money and time to create something that looks cool.
[00:29:10] Mark: I don't think that's going to cut it anymore. I think you're going to have to prove it. And you're going to have to prove it by showing everybody. And if you can't show everybody, then nobody's going to believe you anymore. So,
[00:29:21] Corey: you know, consistently over a long period of time too, right? That's, that's a big piece of it.
[00:29:25] Corey: Yeah. I think that's awesome. Well, just a couple of last questions here for you, [00:29:30] Mark. ~Um, how. What,~ what would you say to an agency who is maybe dabbling in chat GPT and hasn't really committed to, ~um, uh, you know,~ deploying these resources? What would you say is, ~is, you know, uh,~ a word of advice, ~um, for,~ especially for those agencies who are looking to grow rapidly in the next couple of years?
[00:29:47] Corey: Ah,
[00:29:47] Mark: get on the ball. Like, start using it all the time. Like, literally, you should be never doing something more than 10 times, let's say. Like, if you did the same thing 10 times, then there's no reason [00:30:00] why that thing can't be automated. either outsourced or not have you do it. So I'd say number one, start using AI as much as possible.
[00:30:10] Mark: Step two is start thinking in terms of formulation. So instead of like, Hey, I got to do this task. You should be thinking about how is this test done? How should I structure it? So it could be repeatable, you know, start thinking deeper into not just. It's not just creation of whatever you're making, but, ~uh,~ formulation of how the thing was done in the first place, [00:30:30] because what's happening is people are able to do this now and then create apps around it.
[00:30:35] Mark: And so instead, and this goes back to like the proving what you're capable of, because, uh, like right now I'm making a magazine and what I realized now as I was writing the articles, I was like, you know what? There's no reason I can't turn this article into a prompt. that then people can apply today. You could just copy and paste it and you could get the exact result that I wrote an article about getting.
[00:30:58] Mark: And so I think the, [00:31:00] if you're not thinking in terms of being able to provide instant value, ~instant,~ instant idiot proof value. You know, it's not, Hey, I have to train you how to do all these things. It's like, no, just copy and paste this in and you could go right now. Then you're going to miss the boat because that's the expectation of the audience is that is going to shift from, Hey, I'm willing to put in the time and effort to understanding your product, service or brand in order to get the value out of it, that's going to go away.
[00:31:26] Mark: It's going to be, Hey, you either give me value right now [00:31:30] or I'm leaving. And, and honestly, why shouldn't it be like that? We love instant. So do that.
[00:31:38] Corey: And, and I think that we live in a world where. ~Um,~ the, the startup costs are zero for,~ uh,~ young, ~um,~ entrepreneurial, ~uh,~ people to come in and, and get pretty savvy on these tools quickly, uh, that could outmaneuver maybe a, an established slower moving agency who's, who doesn't, uh, doesn't think in these terms just yet.
[00:31:59] Corey: So [00:32:00] I think that's a provocative, ~um, uh,~ perspective. you mentioned that you are creating, ~um,~ A magazine, can you talk more about that?
[00:32:07] Mark: Yeah, yeah, so it's called Magazine Mark, uh, which doesn't sound very clever, but I'm actually, it's part of my brand. And so I'm making podcast mark and I can make anything else mark and then it's all consistent.
[00:32:20] Mark: And so I call it a personal magazine, which is basically my top content and kind of accomplishments from the last year in article format in a magazine. [00:32:30] So it's not. boring. It's presented like a magazine. It's interesting. There's cool visuals. There's links to different, you know, things, different types of media you can connect with.
[00:32:39] Mark: And it's all me. So it's all my links and it's all my affiliate programs and it's all my partners. It's everything. All wrapped into something that is presented as just a, you know, educational piece of content, but now you could carry it around and you're not going to throw it out because it's a magazine.
[00:32:55] Mark: If you haven't read the whole thing, then there's still value in there. So you're going to [00:33:00] hold on to it, you're going to read it when you're in the airport, and you're not going to throw it out. So it's like the perfect marketing tool, plus personal brochure, plus way to get yourself out there in an organic format, which is what we all want to do.
[00:33:13] Mark: And it's curated by you and it's, yeah, that's
[00:33:15] Corey: super creative and innovative. Now, where, ~where~ would these magazines of this kind of thing where you would distribute them to newsstands or are they more sort of print on demand? Or is this all digital or how's this, how's this actually work?
[00:33:28] Mark: Well, technically it's whatever you want [00:33:30] it to be, but everybody thinks in terms of distribution.
[00:33:32] Mark: I'm like, man, distribution is hard. Like you're talking about because what people don't realize is when you say like a magazine says like, Oh, we have 2 million distribution. That doesn't mean they sold 2 million. magazines or that 2 million people picked up the magazine and read it. It means they sent out 2 million magazines.
[00:33:49] Mark: And so what happens with some, something like Barnes and Noble is they might say, Hey, send us 50 issues of the magazine and only pay you on the issues that they sell. The rest literally go into the trash [00:34:00] can. And so that distribution doesn't even mean anything. And top of the fact that it's just really, really expensive.
[00:34:05] Mark: So for this, it's just, it's a digital. So it's a, you know, a lead gen tool. And then if I go to a conference or something, I could print out 50. I use a company called short run printing ltd. com. If you want to check that out, it's the cheapest way to produce, ~you know,~ this type of content, ~uh,~ and they'll get you your, your copy of your magazine in like two days.
[00:34:26] Mark: And so you could literally, oh crap, I didn't make anything for this event. [00:34:30] Print out 50 copies, send it to the hotel in two days, and now you have something to hand out. And there you go. So cool. Local distribution. I can't.
[00:34:40] Corey: Yeah. And I love that. I can't wait to go to bump into you at another conference and get, uh, get a copy of, ~um,~ Mark's magazine.
[00:34:47] Mark: Hey, I'll be at TNC. I'll have some there.
[00:34:50] Corey: Last question for you. What's your motivation?
[00:34:52] Mark: you know, my motivation now is to work as little as possible to get, ~uh,~ the money I need to do the stuff I want to [00:35:00] do. You know, I think for the longest time it was just like, get successful and get rich. And, you know, the, the older I've gotten and, and, you know, a lot of the transformation work I've done, I'm like, that doesn't mean anything to me.
[00:35:11] Mark: Like, I don't care about stuff, you know, money for me is security and freedom versus. That's the thing that I need, like the, the validation I need to, Oh, I'm an important person because I fly in a private jet or, or do something like that. I'm like, no, no, your value is growth. And so, so really for [00:35:30] me, I think that's the one word I would say, growth is it.
[00:35:32] Mark: I want to learn as much as possible. I want to become, you know, the most amazing version of myself so I could help as many people as possible. And that's the motivation. I love,
[00:35:44] Corey: I love that. ~Um,~ I think it's authentic in how you showed up today. You've been very generous with what you've shared with me and the audience and, ~uh,~ you bring so much, uh, wisdom and perspective and just really cool things you've got going on.
[00:35:57] Corey: So I want to thank you so much for joining [00:36:00] me, for, for coming on the pod. And, ~um,~ where's a good place for folks to get in touch with you if they want to talk shop about AI and, ~and, uh,~ learn more about you.
[00:36:09] Mark: I say markdegress. com, ~that's uh,~ that's the main place and I have all my links and all my articles and, and everything's free.
[00:36:15] Mark: So you know, take it, use it. If you could tag me, if you post it, a friend of mine, Norm Farrar, he's one of the digital marketer faculty members, he posted a prompt that was mine and I'm like, DORP! That was mine. You can have it, but just gimme a little tag , [00:36:30] please. That's fine. Yes. Yes. ~Uh,~ so that, or, ~uh,~ I'm, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and so I'll post, like this morning I posted some random thing.
[00:36:38] Mark: I'm like, Hey, chat GB t's working again. Like, check out this thing I made. And so I'll do, ~uh,~ kind of sporadic updates on whatever I'm working on at the moment.
[00:36:47] Corey: Beautiful. And, ~um,~ I recommend definitely checking out your website because on there, there are under, I think, AI, there's a bunch of prompts, free prompts that are very, I would consider them to be sophisticated.
[00:36:58] Corey: I'm not the most sophisticated [00:37:00] guy when it comes to AI yet, but these are very well thought out. AI prompts that agencies specifically, but any business owner, uh, can apply immediately to their business. So definitely go check out his website. ~Uh,~ and then we'll also include links to all of the websites and resources you mentioned in the show notes.
[00:37:15] Corey: So thank you, Mark. Appreciate you coming on.
[00:37:18] Mark: Thank you, Corey. This is a lot of fun.
[00:37:20] All right, folks, that's it for today. I'm Corey Quinn, and I hope you join me again next time for the Vertical Go To Market Podcast. If you receive value from the [00:37:30] show, I would love a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks, and we'll see you soon.
