Why Getting AI to Recommend Your Brand is the Next Big Growth Opportunity with Alex Dees

Who's RedsRock Today Fire Nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Firebroughts you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down why getting AI to recommend your brand is the next big growth opportunity. To draw these via bombs, I brought Alex, D's and EO Fire Studios. Alex is the co-founder and CEO of Meridian, an AI startup that helps brands measure and improve their visibility in AI search. And today we'll talk about building in public. AI is rewriting discovery, the collapse of the buyer journey, winners versus losers right now and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Alex and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches and agencies, build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white libel your own software. Say hello to our featured partner high level. And visit high level fire dot com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest-weighted business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow in President Trump's son Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow dot com slash EO Fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow dot com slash EO Fire. Alex, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, Fire Nation. It's great to be here. Yeah. I think the thing that I would say is becoming successful is usually after many years of failure. So if you're going to that failure, just keep going. Well, Fire Nation, we're going to talk about why getting AI to recommend your brand is literally and figuratively the next big growth opportunity. And Alex, one thing I want to start talking about is building in public. I mean, you've literally gone viral as a founder by sharing your journey in real time. So how does building in public change brand power, change trust and speed of growth compared to traditional marketing? Yeah, I think it's really about building trust from day one. And that's to everyone that you're selling too, right? When someone has seen your face before just by, you know, scrolling on our feeds, they just have, I think a lot more trust and they know what you're about rather than the first time you email them or the first time you go on a call. So I think this really applies to, you know, first calls with, with investors, first calls with employees and really most of all, first calls with customers. They already kind of know who you are. Hopefully I'll have a little bit of that trust built in. So I think in today's world of distribution is everything. You really got to be thinking about distribution early and building that trust. So what's been one of your more viral moments by doing this? Yeah. So we started building this company about the summer last year, about like 10 weeks in. We launched on like Twitter and LinkedIn. The Twitter ended up getting like 5 million views. The video itself, about 15 million impressions. And I think that kind of, you know, it's made the company go a lot faster than if that hadn't happened. So obviously we put a lot of work into making sure that anyone as viral is possible. But I really do think that speeds up the trajectory. What do you think was the reason it got so many views like it went so viral? I think we did like three main things to optimize for distribution, right? I think when you want to go viral, the main thing is you want to get people to engage with the video and everything should be about engagement. So one, the main thing things we did is gave a way, a great giveaway, getting people to engage with the video, comment, two, we pattern broke, right? I think a lot of people see these videos like these large videos and they see the same thing over and over. Well, you want to do something different than that. And three, we really just gave people a lot to talk about on the video. If you're not giving people a reason to engage with the video, it's very hard for to go viral. Fire Nation, you heard it's Alex just broke it down. And I want to talk about how AI is literally rewriting discovery. I mean, search, social and recommendations. They're just no longer human first. We have to call it spade a spade. So can you break down how AI is changing up? People are discovering brands and products. I mean, even expertise is why haven't most businesses caught up yet? Really AI is making more and more decisions. People are asking AI what to buy, where to go. AI is recommending and people are going more and more with that recommendations. And so I think every part of the buyer journey is now being encapsulated in AI. And so you need to be thinking about that first. Why are I think a lot of business go wrong? Is there still thinking about humans as their only buyer? But really everything that should be done online, especially should be also kept in mind of you want to be marketing, you want to be selling to AI? So that AI is recommending you when you're out there. So just like you did last time, can you maybe give an example of what does that look like in the real world? Like what does that look like in practice? Sure. I think the best way to think about it is kind of what is like a typical buyer journey. Right? So I wanted to figure out what I want by my mom for Christmas. It used to be how it maybe go cool that, find some blog with 50 ideas around what's by my mom for Christmas. I'd look through those 50 ideas. Maybe I would find one of them. Well, then I would go through that same journey, Google that on that product. Right? Find the best one, go read a bunch of review sites, go like it was good, spend maybe 20, 30 minutes on the internet, bunch of different sites until I found what I wanted to buy and then go buy it. The new journey looks like all happens in one shop on. Right? I ask, hey, I hate my mom. Is this she likes this? Push it out buyer. Maybe it recommends options. And then I like one of those, tell me the best one of those to buy. And then I'm just offloading a lot more in my decision making process to AI who was taking that solution. Right? And so when that happens, this entire buyer journey is happening in this one instance in the chat box. And if you are somebody who wants to be selling something, if you want to be a gift that people buy for their mom for Christmas, it's pretty helpful to say if AI is recommending your product, your brand in those conversations. Okay. I want to dive deeper in this. This is specifically the collapse of the buyer journey. I mean, funnels, awareness stages, and linear customer paths. I mean, they used to make sense. You were just kind of going through what they used to look like. Now the traditional buyer journey is breaking down. And of course, what's replacing it, you said it is like these chatbots like this happening within one chatbot. So give an example of like, what does this actually look like in the chatbots? And then how exactly can we as business owners who are maybe looking to get in front of these leads, the right leads, at least, what can we do? Yeah. You know, when I think about the buyer journey, it really is kind of four stages that are being collapsed, right? It's finding, evaluating, choosing, and then buying the product. We kind of just went over the finding, right? What do you want to buy? But there's all this whole entire buyer journey part of like, what do you choose? How do you get to that, what you choose? It used to be review sites. It used to be comments. All of these kind of things are really just getting fed into that one moment in the chatbot. Now AI is sourcing that from all the different places to recommend. And so when we are selling our products, now when we are trying to market our services, we need to make sure that AI has great answers to talk about us across each one of those parts of the buyer journey, the finding, evaluating, choosing, and then making sure that it can buy the product. Anyway, I think when you're thinking about like as a business owner, right? The best way to kind of like test this out is really just go into your chatbot, see what it recommends for that buyer journey for one of those, because it really is an entirely new way to think about distribution when you are selling to AI versus a human first marketing. That's very cool. But like let's just say you find like what the chatbot's recommending, how do you maybe get in front of your competition at that point if it's recommending your competition? That's a great question. I think kind of think about like, how do you win in AI chat, right? And really for that bottom of funnel queries, right? Best X for Y, it is kind of zero sum game. AI is recommending you or is recommending your competitions. And of course, you want it to get recommending you. Now what we help a lot of our customers with admirited is that winning. How do we win against that competition? We generally think about it as really six main services across the internet that we help with back in code on their website, front end content, net new content to make sure that we are marketing and telling AI about our product and our solution as well as the rest of the places on the internet that matter for getting paid by AI, right? Editorials, socials, directories. What do we prioritize? And that's what we help our customer with as you bet, to make sure that they are the one getting picked and not their competitors. There's a lot of stuff going on here, Fire Nation. I mean, this is the world that we're living in. And guess what? This is a game that you can still win. Just like you could win the funnel game back when it was funnel awareness stages linear customer past, you can win this game, defining the evaluating, the choosing, the buying. That's what your customer is doing and the doing that within chat within an AI platform. So what is AI doing? Well, you have to figure out what content are you creating? What places actually matter for AI as Alex you said? I mean, editorials, that's interesting stuff. I mean, you think about what matters for AI if they're going to give results. And we're going to be talking about all this stuff and more when we get back from taking our sponsors. Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrive time show dot com slash E O fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month and costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13 point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com/eofire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference. You will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the thrive time show two day in personal workshop featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tibo and President Trump son Eric Trump today at thrive time show dot com slash E O fire. Become the next success story schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star and entrepreneur Tim Tibo and President Trump son Eric Trump at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrive time show dot com slash E O fire. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business and they are also our featured partner high level. If you're an entrepreneur coach agency or a course creator looking to grow faster and smarter high level is the all in one platform that replaces your entire tech stack seriously think click funnels, county Mailchimp, Kajabi and even your CRM all wrote up into one powerful white label solution. You can build funnels send SMS and email campaigns schedule appointments manage pipelines, run memberships and even launch your own branded mobile app. It's drag and drop simple incredibly customizable and built for serious growth. My favorite part you can resell high level under your own brand. That means recurring revenue loyal clients in total control. So whether you're tired of duct taping tools together or ready to start offering high value services with ease high level is your unfair advantage on top of it all their support team is second to none and has your back every step of the way. Seriously every question the pops up they will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link you'll get a free trial so visit high level fire dot com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching that's high level fire dot com we're marketing sales and automation finally come together high level join the revolution. Alex were back and we talked about this before the break but I want to dive even deeper and that's the winners versus the losers. I mean in this new AI driven landscape how are small businesses already winning or losing customers without even realizing it. I do think it's a whole new paradigm shift when you think about you know like SEO of the last 15 years John. A lot of it was kind of smudged stone right. Yeah local SEO guy they might tell you hey it's going to take us 12 months to improve our rankings. Luckily it's a little bit faster than that you know in most cases and I think you know the great news for a lot of your audiences probably a lot of competitors are thinking about this new channel yet how do we optimize and really investing in it. But when you look at how do you win I think it is just starting to understand what AI looks for perversing engineering from that and making sure that you have the questions to those answers right a lot of winning in AI right now is just being the answer we want you to be the answer. In the question and answer for those users so how do we make you the answer. As long as you kind of do that repeatedly in the places that matter on the internet you will hopefully you know get a lot of leads get a lot of customers and make a good amount of money. Okay I'm going to go for some free consulting here from you right now because a I have you you heard my show you can't go anywhere and be it's going to also be you know promoting and pumping meridian so it's going to all make sense. Here I am you know I've recently partnered with high level and you know they sponsor every single podcast that I do 365 per year. There are feature there are feature partner you know we do a lot of cool co promotions with them and we're always looking to you know get more leads to want to try high level which is a CRM like a hubbass bought like a sales force etc. And I create a lot of contents specifically on YouTube I'm going to be actually be really ramping this up creating even more content on YouTube to really get people fired about CRM's in which one should they choose. You know like what do you need to CRM you know this kind of does actually go back to like finding evaluating choosing buying funnels all these different things. Email marketing you know sales pages is like the all in one process and this isn't meant to be a commercial for for high level what is meant to say is I'm looking to create content around high level that AI is choosing to recommend when people are going saying what CRM should I do is high level better than house water vice versa. What would you recommend and what would Meridian be having me do and how Meridian help me in this discovering how to position myself as the AI choice. I would take that and you know talk a little bit about like what do I have what do I eyes look for one day or recommending a solution. I think there's really six man things and I'll kind of go over them like real quick one is clarity right can it quickly understand what you do for whom and why you're different. Two is consistency do you have the same content the same positioning across your website and all the other places on that matter I think today these are large language models they language on that that. As user answers user questions and says that you are good right and that's what we're helping optimize around three is authority right there is a lot of language on the internet so what is the authority that you have for being the one that right is recommended for AI. The fourth is proof simply example is case studies or quantified outcomes right we want to add those to your content so that AI knows that these are real claims that you are making and then fifth and sixth is one we want to measure that your content is fresh. It's not from 2012 2014 right want to measure that it's relevant today to the user is asking the question today and then lastly is specific city right. So you can say that you help everyone that this is this RM for everyone but then it's probably not going to get recommended nearly as much as for like a niche position right when you look at how people ask AI. They like to give a lot more context on themselves on their use case the problem that they're trying to solve and how we'll match that for that specific positioning and so we want to make sure that you are positioned in a way to win the customers that are great fits for your business and you want to be followed your way. So let me ask you if you think this is a good idea because it literally just came to me as you are talking is I would maybe go to an AI chat and asked the question of like hey what CRM do you recommend for an entrepreneur or a small business owner and then they would give me an answer that I would say. And then my light bulb idea is saying hey like like you know AI how did you come up with that answer like what like where did you pull that information from like what articles or content. And then if you use to form this opinion and then if it gave it to me I could say oh well that's where they're pulling the content so I can go to those places and create better content and like you know more clear clarity consistency fresh relevant specificity I can do all those things. What do you think about that yeah I think that's a great way to start right if you're just kind of getting into this a gender of engine optimization place I think to recommend to all of the listeners of this podcast would be go do exactly that in your you know maybe chat you be to you and since ask the question that you want to be the answer for and if it's not recommending you understand well who is it recommending what is the sources that it's recommending and that's a great lead list on where to start and you can start today on increasing your visibility and I search. Let's talk about the next 12 to 24 months I mean looking ahead where's all this going like what should business owners be preparing for now I mean if they want to stay visible relevant entrusted as AI becomes a primary gatekeeper what do they do I think when we look at the next year to I think these things are going to happen a lot faster than you expect technology moving real quick and I think you're going to see AI just really become the default discovery level ever more more decisions are going to get made before somebody even clicks to your site right currently a chat you be to referrals worth 5 to 20 acts more than a Google referral and it's only going up because customers are making the decision in these a chat shop once for the ever here website and I think that's going to become the default in the industry and I think even adding to that right you're going to see Google switch I think a lot of people when they think about like a search maybe you only think about like chat you be tea perplexity grok but Google is moving there to right they're showing an hour use on 50% of queries soon defaulting to AI mode when this happens the majority of search will be question answer her question and when that happens showing up in these answers showing up when your customer has a question versus as a blue link is really just going to get a little bit more more important every month and how does your company meridian how does Meridian help customers business owners entrepreneurs individuals how does it help yeah it's a great question really know what we do is we gather a bunch of data to start about the when we are a customer we start by defining okay one of the types of queries that they want to shop for we gather a bunch of data around how AI is recommending product solution services for the queries that they want to be and then we filter that into how they are going to be very data driven in the way that we help them everything from you know really across was like 6 main services that I went through how do we prioritize that so that they can get to the place that they want in discovery hopefully you know as fast and as easy as possible so if fire nation wants to connect with you wants to learn more about meridian what is your specific call to action for our listeners today I'm an active on socials like did on Twitter Alex tease also you know if you want to learn a little bit more about how we help our customers at meridian you can see us we have a bunch of cases a bunch of testimonies as well as like free resources at try and radian dot com yeah I'm on the website right now fire nation it is slick there's a lot of things going on here and definitely worth checking out for all the reasons we discussed here today I mean we've talked about building in public rewriting discovery the collapse of the buyer's journey winners and losers what AI engines are actually looking for the next 12 to 24 months Alex what is the one thing of everything we talked about that you would love for fire nation to walk away with today yeah I think it would really be think about you know how are you marketing your company to AI I really don't think it has to be you know investing in like a super expensive tool you can start today the way I would kind of start is really writing down like what is your AI roof trust footprint you know I brutally clear who is your product or service for who is in not for why you that statement we want to put on the plot trust places on your website on the other you know socials editorials reviews and I think that's a great place to start today fire nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with you been hanging out with a D in J L D today so keep up the heat and fillings everything we talked about visit you fire dot com type Alex in the search bar in the show knows page will pop right up of course try meridian is definitely a place for you to start as far as the URL and Alex thank you for sharing your truth your knowledge your value with fire nation today for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side absolutely thanks for having me John this was fun hey fire nation thanks for listening and a big thank you to Alex and our sponsors for a spot today's episode and EO fire is looking for the right guests if you think that is you we have an application process over it's EO fire dot com slash guests where you can learn more I'll catch you there or on the flip side are you ready for the ultimate all in one platform for entrepreneurs marketers coaches and agencies build funnels automate follow ups manage clients and even white label your own software say hello to our featured partner high level in visit high level fire dot com to start your free trial today fire nation are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tibo and president Trump son Eric Trump at thrive time show dot com slash EO fire again request life changing tickets today at thrive time show dot com slash EO fire.