Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now, Casey Meehan. Casey, you are the CEO and founder of Epic Presence. You're found on the Web at Epic Presence. Casey, thank you so much for joining us.

Casey (00:01:11) - Josh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Josh (00:01:13) - Well, who doesn't want an epic presence? I like the kind of the the imagery there.

Josh (00:01:19) - But tell tell us more about and by the way, congrats on ten years at the helm here. But explain what epic presence is.

Casey (00:01:28) - So we're a content marketing agency and we do serve SMBs. A lot of folks in the software space over the years, some of our most notable clients, Salesforce.com is probably the one that most people would know. There's another big one eight fold AI. They're an AI company that's in the staffing and workforce management world. We started with them when they were just a 30 person operation and worked with them for many years, helped them to scale up to about a six or almost 700 person. You know, they're like a double triple unicorn, something like that these days. And with Salesforce, we've had some great success. In 2021, we had one of, if not their most highly trafficked blog post was a whole study that we did around entrepreneurs in Covid. We went out and field a field, a study and created some research around that. So those are the types of things that we've been up to.

Casey (00:02:30) - But now there's been a big transition into AI, and that's that's shaking this world up a little bit. So yeah, yeah.

Josh (00:02:37) - So I'll say. So in the content world, how have you adapted or how have you what, what have you been focused on over the past six months?

Casey (00:02:48) - Yeah. So I've, I've really been focused on, you know, how can we get as much out of these new AI tools as possible? And I think right now folks are still in this phase of like, Oh, let me make it create like, you know, 30 quick tweets or 30 Instagram updates or some fairly thin blog posts that then need heavy editing. And so what I've been working a lot on is building these knowledge bases. So taking a similar process. When we get started with a client, we always start with an interview deep dive, who they are, how do they get to be where they are? But instead of just taking that and putting that into our writers minds before that, we're now working on creating these big databases of these knowledge bases.

Casey (00:03:35) - They're called many things now it's still a new field, but turning that interview information into data that we can then use the AI to, you know, as source material for the AI. So when we ask it to create a blog post, we're referencing, you know, maybe 2 to 3 or four hours of interviews that we've done with a subject matter expert. And this is pretty useful stuff. It has a lot of use cases outside of marketing as well.

Josh (00:04:04) - Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, I want to talk more about that. Sure. You know, but I'm also really curious about other trends that you're observing in content, particularly if we think about, you know, B2B companies, folks that are going to have, you know, decent sales cycles. I mean, there's definitely that's very relationship oriented. They're going to have conversations, you know, generally before well, in some cases, not all of them I recognize with your clients. But, you know, thinking about someone who might be running an agency, they might look at content and say, well, Casey, that sounds great.

Josh (00:04:42) - Obviously, that seems feels like a long term strategy. What can we do? Or is there anything that we should be doing to kind of fuel the fire, say, over the next six months or so?

Casey (00:04:55) - I would say just kind of being a little bit cautious with this thin content and thinking that, Oh, great, I can just tell this, you know, buy this ChatGPT to create spin up all of these articles and that's going to be great. I see. You know, my background is in SEO. I see a lot of SEO folks just thinking, Wow, this is wonderful. We create all of this, but they're not necessarily seeing that second level of the fact that everybody's creating all of this content. So there's, you know, if it was a competitive space, you know, content marketing was very competitive before this and now it's, you know, 100 x what it was, if not more. And at the same time, people are going to ChatGPT for their searches more So the search volume may be may be diminishing while the content is increasing.

Casey (00:05:45) - So quality matters more than ever. And so just thinking you can just spin up some thin content that doesn't quite have it doesn't cite or source, you know, relevant folks, that is, you know, you know, there's a danger there to to just creating thin content. And I know a lot of agencies are using it for that which I would I would warn against. But with a little bit of just cajoling you can get it to create some pretty interesting stuff. And especially if you're using, you know, if you have a talented writer and are working to get them onboarded with how to use this and specifically asking it to site resources, site specific folks and things like that, so you can actually try to turn it into real quality thought leadership marketing materials. That's I guess, my quick and dirty takeaway. And I'm on LinkedIn if anybody wants to chat with me. I love talking about this stuff, so I'd be happy to chat with them if they just want to hit me up on LinkedIn.

Josh (00:06:50) - Yeah, what are the risks? I mean, you mentioned you kind of put out a this is a cautionary tale put out a warning, but what are the what are the real risks?

Casey (00:06:59) - Uh, the real risk is just, you know, kind of similar risks that folks have faced when SEO seemed too easy in the past where, you know, they've spun up, you know, there used to be article spinners or just ways where you could create just these articles with tons of keywords in it that meant nothing. I think we're seeing kind of the second phase of that. Yeah.

Josh (00:07:21) - Google's got to be concerned about that.

Casey (00:07:23) - Yeah, you can tell Google I just have a conversation about this because the number of ads that they're showing now compared to their organic results has really increased in the last few days. So that's sort of an indicator that they are concerned and, you know, putting more emphasis on their page results there. So.

Josh (00:07:44) - Now, Casey, where do you fit in? Like. Like, is there a particular size company that you typically work with or like, how does.

Josh (00:07:55) - Um, you know, just, you know, how does Epic presence actually work?

Casey (00:08:01) - So, yeah, we're, you know, we work well with SMS. We like to have, you know, a direct line to, you know, the C-suite if we can. And that allows us to really speak on behalf of the, you know, of the organization, but also, you know, that that it's the company is big enough to have some sort of a marketing department, you know, because we're just kind of bringing the one piece of the content and it needs other things there. And the roles are really switching up where we're we're sort of transitioning into being more of an AI consultant to some degree. So training up your teams on how to do some of this stuff. I've been spending five hours plus every day learning and experiment with it and I have a background in it. Before even Jet came out, we had a a really talented data scientists on staff, and I've been doing a lot of stuff with Python and machine learning since 2018.

Casey (00:08:59) - So I'm really now moving in a direction of helping teams of all sizes, but especially in that B2B SMB zone of maybe 5 to 50 employees helping them make this transition and getting the most that they can out of AI specifically when it comes to marketing, but also process enhancements and things like that.

Josh (00:09:22) - Now and then for industries or particular industries that you're stronger than others or maybe kind of function of what they might do.

Casey (00:09:33) - We've dabbled a lot, you know, very B2B, so everything we've done pretty much has been in the B2B space. We've had some significant traction with pharmaceutical. We've had a lot of work in education, work, tech, HR, tech. Those those are some of the big ones that come to mind.

Josh (00:09:52) - Yeah. What do you see happening right now in tech? Like if you were to just kind of give us a lay of the land for those who aren't necessarily in that world, what's been happening in tech?

Casey (00:10:03) - I think there's you know, it's just the pendulum has been swinging so dramatically where it was, you know, nobody could could find folks.

Casey (00:10:12) - So it was really just talent acquisition, talent acquisition. And we can't, you know, staff up enough. And now that is swinging, you know, in a in a in a little bit of a different direction. And how do we reskill and upskill our current workforce is a is a big trending topic there. A lot of the cool tools that are coming out are helping folks to find, you know, really talented people that they might have on staff that aren't being utilized in the best way possible. So those are some of the big picture things I'm seeing there.

Josh (00:10:46) - Yeah. Getting back to AI and AI tools, particularly if you're using ChatGPT, are there any are there any prompts or kind of chat GPT hacks that you're like, Oh, if you haven't tried this, try this, you know, anything like that that you found that you maybe or something. Even just like a recent discovery, you're like, Oh, that's pretty cool. I'll share one with you after you share.

Casey (00:11:09) - Yeah. So, well, I'll start with just a really fun one that I was having that I was this weekend.

Casey (00:11:17) - My wife was away visiting her relatives, so I was just kind of hanging out and I typed in. Let's imagine something that's never been imagined before and had this whole conversation and the AI returned. Well, do you want to imagine a product or a society or a creature? So that was just like hours of entertainment and just just kind of blowing my mind. Another one that comes to mind is one that I use a lot that's called the God prompt. And I, I didn't come up with this, but it's a prompt that basically allows you to improve your prompts. So you basically tell it. I can pull it up here and I can read it for you word for word. So yeah, so that you have it. But this one has been very powerful because you kind of like you kind of know what you want to, you know, the question you want to ask, but actually getting the AI to fine tune it. So this is the prompt. It's a little bit long. I'll read it out.

Casey (00:12:18) - It's I want you to become my prompt creator. Your goal is to help me craft the best possible prompt for my needs. The prompt will be used by you ChatGPT You will follow the process. One you will first response will be to ask me what the prompt should be about. I will provide my answer, but it will need to improve it through continual iterations by going through these next steps. And the steps are based on my input. You will generate three sections, a revised prompt that will be rewritten. It should be clear, concise and understood and then suggestions to improve that prompt and any questions related to the prompt that might also improve it.

Josh (00:13:01) - So that that is beautiful.

Casey (00:13:03) - That's one prompt that'll make all of your other prompts better and your one prompt to.

Josh (00:13:07) - Rule them all.

Casey (00:13:08) - Exactly. Exactly. There's another tool I've just been messing around with. I just found yesterday perplexity. I would say if you haven't messed with perplexity II, it is in many ways more powerful than ChatGPT, which I can't believe that I'm saying that because it's so powerful.

Casey (00:13:27) - But it perplexity right now has a much better access to the Internet. So, you know, they just rolled out the browsing feature in in ChatGPT, which I have struggled with a little bit. But this perplexity is another tool that I highly recommend folks check out because it's very, very powerful.

Josh (00:13:46) - You know, we were trying to come up with a couple of things last night. We were talking. And so one thing that that will often do is kind of advise on our clients authority, perceived authority. And part of that is like, look, if you're running the podcast media circuit and so forth, you really need to have a press kit, including some bios. And you know, for someone that doesn't have a bio to begin with, I mean, usually they do, but even if they don't, it was recommended. We just ask ChatGPT, Hey, I need you to write a bio, blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah, blah. What information do you need to write a good bio on me? So you ask ChatGPT what it wants and then then you can kind of come up with that and then feed it.

Josh (00:14:36) - And then it'll take that and rewrite that into, you know, some bios give variations on exactly.

Casey (00:14:42) - Ask me five, five questions that you need me to answer in order to create a great bio. That's, Oh, I like that. So you're just prompting it to ask you the questions. I've been playing with that all morning and yeah, that's that's really cool.

Josh (00:14:58) - Everyone who's listening to us go do that right now. Everybody needs a good bio and, you know, revisit that and, you know, just launched.

Casey (00:15:08) - A YouTube channel called Blazing Zebra where there's many, many different videos there, which are all sorts of prompt sequences. One is for copywriting excellence, one is for modern market research, one is for keyword research, a really cool one for SEO, keyword research, all related to AI. So that's a blazing zebra YouTube channel with just thousands of prompts are up there already. So yeah.

Josh (00:15:36) - No, it's I think it's really fun to just kind of see, you know, prompt ideas.

Josh (00:15:40) - It's really cool. You know, another thing that we were kind of goofing around with is I just needed like some sort of an outreach communication and everything that was coming back is like, we'd never talk like that. Yeah, no, it's like we tried so many, you know, kind of tweak it to get the right tone, right? So finally, I mean, it's, you know, again, it's my personality, too. So I'm not, you know, completely, you know, I'm unique in that I would say I'm fairly personable in my communication style. So we had to come finally. It's like the right terminology. I said, Right. A ridiculously friendly and informal or something like that. Like I had to use the word ridiculously, you know, informal and friendly and approachable, you know, you know, message, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that was so funny that we had to throw in that amplifier that, that and the results were like, There we go.

Josh (00:16:35) - We finally got. So I guess it's funny, I guess I now know myself.

Casey (00:16:41) - Exactly. There you go. Tells you a lot about yourself. And it does help to repeat, you know, in three different places in the prompt repeat like what you're having a problem with like, oh yeah, be not sensational. Very factual. Those things can help. And I almost feel I don't know if you feel this way, but it's almost like a pinata where you're kind of hitting at this pinata and it's like it's not giving you anything. And then all of a sudden you do the right thing and it just explodes and just starts sending you all the stuff. You're like, Yes, this is what I'm getting at. That's the experience that I have with with working with it, where it takes multiple prompts and you're almost ready to give up and you try one more variation of a prompt and all of a sudden then the lights turn on there. Yeah.

Josh (00:17:27) - Yeah. Casey, again, your website. Thank you so much.

Josh (00:17:30) - Fun conversation. Your website, Epic presents. When somebody goes there, what would you recommend their next steps after they've been listening to our conversation?

Casey (00:17:39) - Well, there is a video there that just says Start here that just does a little bit about about what we do there. But it is it is changing pretty dramatically. So if folks are interested in talking about anything with me, I would say just come to my LinkedIn and shoot me a quick message there if there's anything I can help with. Marketing or related that would be a good next step to.

Josh (00:18:05) - Yeah. All right. Again, Casey Meehan, founder, CEO of Epic Presents. Your website is Epic Presents. Anything else that you'd recommend for people to do or you you mentioned your LinkedIn. Yeah, you are very engaged on on LinkedIn for sure. Anything else in the world of Epic Presents or Casey that that folks ought to connect with?

Casey (00:18:28) - Check out the new YouTube channel. Oh yeah. Zebra. Yeah, that's where I'm focusing a lot of stuff.

Casey (00:18:33) - I got a lot of helpful tutorials up there. It's all about AI and marketing. So check that stuff out and let me know what you think.

Josh (00:18:42) - One more time on the channel name on YouTube.

Casey (00:18:44) - Blazing zebra. So it's zebra blazing zebra.

Josh (00:18:50) - I like it.

Casey (00:18:51) - Hey, there we go.

Josh (00:18:53) - All right. Just hit subscribe. So awesome.

Casey (00:18:55) - Thanks, Josh.

Josh (00:18:57) - Yeah, very cool. All right. Casey Meehan, again, founder, CEO of Epic Presents. And the the YouTube channel. That's all the rave right now. If you love ChatGPT and want to see kind of stuff you could do, go search for blazing zebra and go follow you there. Awesome conversation. Casey, thank you so much for joining us.

Casey (00:19:16) - Thank you. Josh, Great to be on.

Josh (00:19:24) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up My Influence slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free.

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