208: The Empathy Advantage - Bryan Eisenberg on Why Stories, Not Tools, Will Win in the Age of AI

What do you do when you feel like you've swallowed an elephant? For Bryan Eisenberg, a pioneer of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), that feeling was both a personal crisis and the inspiration for his new book.

In this deep and insightful conversation, Bryan takes us on a journey through his 30-year career, from the earliest days of the internet to the current age of AI. He reveals the one-word secret that has guided his success with brands like Google and Disney: Empathy.

Bryan explains why messaging will always be more powerful than any tool, why "facts tell, but stories sell," and how he recently watched a single press release instantly become the "truth" for AI models like ChatGPT. If you're a marketer, founder, or anyone feeling overwhelmed by the noise of the modern world, this episode is a masterclass in focusing on the fundamentals that truly matter.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The powerful personal story behind Bryan's new book, "I Think I Swallowed an Elephant".
• Why empathy is the single most important thread in a successful marketing career.
• How Bryan and his team pioneered the concept and term "Conversion Rate Optimization".
• Why messaging is the most impactful variable you can test, far more than tools or design.
• A fascinating case study on how a press release can immediately influence AI-generated search results.
• The essential skills marketers must cultivate to stay relevant and thrive in the age of AI.
• Why real-world community and connection are becoming more critical than ever.

Episode Links

• Book: I Think I Swallowed an Elephant on Amazon
• Podcast: The Rock Solid Round Rock Podcast
• Connect with Bryan Eisenberg:
  • Website: bryaneisenberg.com
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bryaneisenberg
  • X (formerly Twitter): @TheGrok
• Books Mentioned:
  • Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?
  • Call to Action
• People & Companies Mentioned:
  • Savannah Bananas (Jesse Cole)
  • Newsworthy.ai
  • RocketBEAT

---
If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend!

No Hacks website
YouTube
LinkedIn
Instagram

Transcript

Bryan Eisenberg
===

[00:00:00] What happens when one of the pioneers of conversion rate optimization says, we are focusing on all the wrong things? How do you react to that? Today I'm honored to have the legendary Brian Eisenberg on the show. He helped build the entire field of CRO back when the internet and the website were just getting started.

We talk about his. A powerful personal story behind his new book. I think I swallowed an elephant and discussed why empathy and storytelling are more critical than ever in this age of ai. Brian even shares an experiment he did, where a single press release instantly became the truth for AI models like Chad G.

Pt. So if you care about being discovered by LLMs. Tune in for that story. This is a masterclass in marketing Fundamentals. Fundamentals from someone who's seen it all. So let's get into the episode, but before we start, I have a quick announcement, as you'll hear in my conversation with Brian, digital world [00:01:00] is changing faster than what feels comfortable for most people.

AI is shifting user expectations. There's a lot to keep up with and. I speak to so many businesses whose websites were built for yesterday's web. Poorly built for yesterday's web and they're already at risk of being left behind in this new AI era. This is more than a simple technical issue. It's a business problem that impacts your conversions, your reputation, and your future relevance and discoverability.

This is exactly why I am starting to offer a new service. The foundational website audit that's not about chasing trends. It's not about quick hacks, I mean no hacks. It's about getting the fundamentals right to prepare for tomorrow's opportunities. The audit is a comprehensive deep dive, built on three pillars, ensuring your website is in impeccable technical health, mapping the key user journeys and making sure you are ready for the future of ai.

So if you feel like your [00:02:00] website could be. Doing a bit of a better job for you than it is, but you're not sure where to start. I'd love to chat. The best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn, so just search for my name. Send me a connection request and mention you heard about the audience and the podcast, and let's get the conversation started.

And now let's dig into the episode with the one and only Brian Eisenberg.

​

Sani: Brian, welcome to No Hacks. An extremely huge pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Bryan: I'm honored to be here. I don't, it says no hacks and you're inviting a hack on, so I don't I

Sani: No. I will not allow that. I am the host. I will not allow things like that on this podcast. Let's talk about your new book. I think I swallowed an elephant. I, it's very difficult to find a more intriguing title or a book. If you look at Amazon, if you scroll Amazon for hours, you probably will find a few books with a more intriguing title.

Sani: If that, [00:03:00] what's the story behind that metaphor? How does it connect to the business world up to date, CRO, to anything else?

Bryan: It's funny 'cause I've had several friends who came at me saying they, they hated the title and. We were completely open at this point in our career. We're no ego. We were like, okay let's start exploring to see if we can come up with something different. It was a sort, it was just an inspiration that came to me one day.

Bryan: Everyone obviously knows the expression, how to eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time. It was a play on that. But, I felt like I had swallowed an elephant. Those that known me from the industry for a very long time know that about 20 years ago I had ballooned up to 277 pounds.

Bryan: When, and that's when we left our CRO agency future now. And in 10 months I dropped over a hundred pounds.

Sani: Wow.

Bryan: And over the last few years I started gaining some of it back. And of course after COVID, I didn't go, I [00:04:00] wasn't speaking as much. I wasn't active as much. Wasn't in the community as much and I was also dealing with some family stuff.

Bryan: So my brother had a number of illnesses. He's been my business partner for 30 years. So a number of health scares and I was feeling like a lot of people out there. I was overwhelmed. I literally, there were days I couldn't get off the couch. I, if it wasn't for my dog, I probably wouldn't have even walked outside.

Bryan: Some days I couldn't even get off the couch to shower. It was a struggle. I was definitely dealing with some depression. About a year ago today? Yeah, in July. So a little over a year ago I went ahead and I got a blood test and that blood test revealed that my blood sugar was three times the normal level. Obscene Lehigh blood pressure. And it only took me swallowing that elephant and changing my lifestyle through. Guess what? No [00:05:00] hacks. Sticking with core fundamentals that I regained my life. I got mental clarity again. I no longer needed naps throughout the day. No more aches and pains. My blood sugar normalized into the 70 to 80 mil milliliters per, per day.

Bryan: Everything was normal again. And I had such mental clarity that I knew that I wanted to share some of this. And so I didn't do it when I lost all the weight the first time. And it's funny because when I lost the weight the first time I did it because of a story. That was driving me, which was I had spent so many years focused in on our agency and building up the concept of CRO into the world that I wasn't looking after myself.

Bryan: And so I ballooned up. It was a lot, it was a lot of stress. To the point where when we hit the New York Times bestseller list with call to action and then waiting for your cat to bark within a [00:06:00] year, we barely got a chance to celebrate. 'cause my dad had passed, my grandmother had passed my uncle.

Bryan: Like it was a lot. And I'm seeing that more and more in today's world. People feel overwhelmed, whether it's just so much going on at work. Doom scrolling algorithms changing every week new tools coming out. The pressure to succeed. We're overwhelmed. We all have silent elephants that we swallow.

Bryan: And I just wanted to make people understand that yeah, you can overcome them. You just have to focus in on the right thing. On the right story. And for me, that story became very simple because I had a choice when I got the blood work, which was either I can go immediately on medication the easy way, the hack way to get healthy. But I told my nurse practitioner, I said, gimme three weeks, lemme see what I can do in three weeks. And in three weeks I have my sugar. And some of the symptoms started [00:07:00] changing. And like I said, then I got a CGM and give me a little bit of data. And I hacked everything. I tweaked every little behavior and I made some small changes that completely changed my life.

Bryan: And since then, I'm nonstop energy morning till night.

Sani: I love that. Okay.

Bryan: this book, I've written 11 books. Writing concisely. Every chapter is 250 to 400 words. They're bite-size, but with depth is one of the hardest things to be able to do. And it is the first time in my life I felt the clarity to be able to do that.

Sani: That, that is such a wonderful story. Also the change you made in your life, the blood sugar thing. Whenever there's a challenging situation, most people know what they should be doing to get out of it. That's the beauty ev almost everyone know, for example, to lose weight, you know what to do. Just eat less, eat healthy and just move.

Sani: That's how simple it is.

Bryan: But here's the thing that's, that [00:08:00] a lot of people's minds. I was still, even through all the, I was still averaging a little over 9,000 steps a day, well above normal people. So I was still getting that in. I was eating plant-based and minimally processed food. I should be healthy. So what was blowing up my sugar?

Bryan: Obviously it was a lot of the stress that I was internalizing a lot of the cortisol that would affect that. But I couldn't get enough protein in that I needed to do it. I was getting fiber, but probably not enough. And then the biggest behavior change for me was my walks tended to be one big one in the morning, right?

Bryan: And I go with my dog and then another smaller one in the afternoon. Now I started breaking it up. So after every meal right lunch, I'll go out and I'll take a 15 minute walk. And just that small hack really did make a huge impact,

Sani: That, that's

Bryan: but it's fundamentals.

Sani: Fundamentals, it's always about the fun fundamentals will not get you to a hundred percent, but to 80, 90, 95 easily. And it will work for [00:09:00] anyone that, that's the beauty of the fundamentals. This is what I mean. No hacks. This is exactly what it's fundamentals.

Sani: Your career is about as diverse as anyone who has Grace CRO industry with their presence. So you helped companies like Google, Disney, now you're hosting a local podcast and we'll talk about that. You c senior care business, am I correct? So if you look back, is there a common thread to all of those things that you have done over the last 30 plus years?

Bryan: The common thread is actually just one. And now I think about it, it's one word. Empathy. Empathy. It's, I think it's something I, I was naturally born with. My brother was always the finance guy, but I was the one who got pulled outta social work school and, I was working as a therapist and working with chronically mentally ill.

Bryan: And he brought me into sales and marketing and the internet started ex, just growing when we first got into this [00:10:00] and. My power was in understanding how users would experience what they see on the screen, how they would wanna buy. I could step into their shoes and really relate to them.

Bryan: And, I had to do that with people who were schizophrenic, who believed that, there was hay burning in the closet, next to them. Or they heard voices or that they felt like they had a little tooth in their throat

Bryan: That, that was their reality. And when you can step into another person's reality and you can share that moment with them, whether it's virtual or in person that's how you support a community.

Bryan: And that's been everything we've tried to do. I guess my, my whole career.

Sani: Great answer. So the key to life is empathy, is what you're saying, or should be empathy.

Bryan: I think it's one of those, not everybody has it, it's we talked about this in waiting for your cat to bark the golden rule, right? A lot of people know the golden [00:11:00] rule as, he who has the gold rules. That's one way to look about it, right? So if you think about it your customer has the money, then they make the rules. But we looked at it a different way. It's this is a story my, my brother talks about, he was at our friend Lisa's house. Lisa was the co-author of that book with us. And, she was one of our editors at Future now. And he asked for some toast.

Bryan: And of course, Lisa made the toast the way she likes toast, not the way he likes his toast. And the point was very simple. And we use that story in the book. It's no. If you really want to understand people, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. As they say. And so what do they value?

Bryan: What's most important to them? And when you start looking at the world that way, I think people look at you differently. I think people understand that you actually do care about them. You wanna see them shine, you wanna see them succeed. And we've been fortunate that, yes, you've mentioned some very big brands that we've worked with, but [00:12:00] it's the individual businesses that we've, I impacted that have changed their lives.

Bryan: That, to me way more valuable.

Sani: I completely agree. So for someone who's listening to this who doesn't know you, it's fair to say you are a pioneer of CRO, one of the pioneers, the pioneer, whatever you wanna call it. So you've been doing it with persuasion architecture since nineties. Since late nineties, which is when it wasn't even CRO, the

Bryan: Yeah. So we quite we. So it's funny in persuasive online copywriting, which we published in 2001, 2002, you can see the subtitle, how to Take Your Word to the Bank with an Afterward on How to Increase Your Website's conversion rates. But the term conversion rate optimization came a little after that. We published it in click ZI know there's others who claim they invented the term.

Bryan: We went with tone one day and I actually showed him all the documentation. He is no, no doubt about it. Yeah, we were always talking about how the emperor had no clothes, [00:13:00] C-L-O-S-E back in the.com days. So very early internet. We were involved in an incubator and all these people were, getting funded for these, eyeball businesses.

Bryan: Someone who was trying to sell one off what do you call it? Fancy China and stuff like that. And it was just like. Complex business.

Sani: outrageous. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan: Yeah. And yeah, shipping those was a lot of fun. But anyway, we helped them understand that information architecture, how people would choose, how to design.

Bryan: We first started with this, there was no continued shopping buttons on the internet. Okay. It was one of the very first articles that kind of went viral for us early on in, in the very early days. Yeah. I always tell people it was a much easier time to be in business because there was no content, there was nobody in the industry, and so we were able just to produce, I think the number that we ended up with was well over 2 million words online

Sani: Before Gen ai that, that, that's

Bryan: before Gen I,

Sani: thing to

Bryan: Yeah. And it's here's a funny [00:14:00] story. A lot of people don't know. Jeffrey and I were just talk, talking about this the other day. We had a third partner. His name was David. And David would help us with our articles. He'd also help edit and all of that. We were all working together and we finally got the the chance to write our weekly column for Clicky, which was the big internet marketing website back in the day.

Bryan: They're the ones who eventually also launched search engine strategies, one of the first big search conferences. So a lot have came from there. We had started in some of the new newsletter forums, the I Sales and, the ISEO and all that way before that. But we finally got to write for K Clicky, and David one day comes to us and says, I don't know if we're gonna be able to keep doing this.

Bryan: I don't know how we're gonna, write a weekly column. We've been putting out content for 26, 27 years. So he was concerned about six months. He wasn't partner for very much longer, but yeah.

Sani: So about [00:15:00] those old days, what is the one thing that we don't have in CRO today in marketing today that you wish was still a part of the industry?

Bryan: Ooh, that's a really good question. I don't know if there's something that we don't have today. 

Sani: Other than

Bryan: tools today than there ever were. And I think too many people depend on the tools and the tools they think matter more than the words. And at the end of the day, what we found with, and we documented it in our trainings when we used to teach our analysts well over 1500 variables that could impact on a website.

Bryan: We broke them down into 40 main character categories that we put in. Always be testing. The number one thing that has always had the biggest impact is your messaging,

Sani: Yep.

Bryan: whether it's micro messages or the macro message, [00:16:00] or your global messaging, your marketing and your branding and all that. The messaging is the number one most powerful variable you have.

Bryan: It is, hold on. It is the elephant

Sani: I

Bryan: of variables.

Sani: For audio only listeners of this podcast, Brian just pulled up a tiny little elephant.

Bryan: You could swallow this one technically.

Sani: Yeah, you shouldn't, but you could.

Bryan: But you could. Yes.

Sani: That is such a great answer. And like you said. A lot of consultants and agencies have an overreliance on tools these days, especially with, chat.

Sani: GPT is a tool that kind of is everywhere, so it, it's gotten significantly worse with AI wrapper companies and all that stuff. We don't need that. We need to understand the person we're selling to and we do the messaging. Like I said it's more important than design, in my opinion. I completely agree with that than anything else.

Sani: It's the right message to the right person at the right moment and that is most of it done well,

Bryan: Look, we've [00:17:00] seen horribly designed websites

Bryan: Perform exceptionally well and look we'll point to, to horribly designed website Number one was Amazon.

Sani: Yes, still is. Let's be fair.

Bryan: Yeah, it's not the greatest designed website, right? But it still converts at t over 22 times better for prime customers than any other average website out there. Period.

Sani: That's a huge difference. Before we get to the lightning round you had a lively debate on LinkedIn recently. You sent me that in an email, sent me screenshot. I saw the comments. So could you explain that and why you thought that was a really good thing to add to this episode? I completely agree, by the way, so yeah.

Sani: Can you hear the story?

Bryan: So it, it comes back to what you just asked, right? I posted about the, something that we've said since our earliest mentors in sales and marketing. Facts tell and stories sell. Okay? How you explain what you do, the story you sell behind it works. And this guy went on to talk about how I [00:18:00] was conning people with stories, capitalizing the word con.

Bryan: It was humorous. They said you, I should go back to my old always be testing days, right? Where everything was just, more scientific and all of that. I've tested, we've tested tens of thousands of tests,

Sani: Exactly.

Bryan: the stories, the messages they sell better than anything, period. And he goes on to talk about an example for himself where he went to this doctor and the doctor was this runner and he was going to inject his own cells in him.

Bryan: But I was like, the doctor didn't explain the science behind how they extract the cells, how they process them, where exactly they're gonna put it, none of that. He just said, oh, he's a runner. It's your own blood work. That's a story simplified for him. And so I, I found it so humorous because here is somebody who thinks he's logical, but people always make decisions [00:19:00] emotionally.

Bryan: And he got emotional about a blog post talking about the value of storytelling. Because I see this all the time. I'll give you a great example. I met a lo, a friend of mine here locally. He has been helping founders for years in previous businesses and stuff like that. But what he does is he takes their stories and because of AI today he'll go out and he'll help share their stories.

Bryan: And he called it the AI organic content cascade. It's a mouthful. Now, you and I probably understand that, but the typical founder who's an, an engineer or someone who's near shoring or he does all that kind, didn't understand a word he said. And so I'm sitting there at the cafe with him and he sees my eyes go off into the distance and I come back to him.

Bryan: I say, Fernando, what you're doing, you should call viral genius. And he looks at me and then I go to chat, GPT, great use of ai. [00:20:00] And on movies you see the rated PG

Sani: Yep.

Bryan: symbol on them, right? I said, let's turn that into rated vg. Why rated viral genius. It's content. So people will relate to that.

Bryan: And VG has a third layer, which if you've in grade school, VG is very good.

Bryan: Just visualizing it, it puts it together. And he goes to me, he said, I don't get it. And I said, look, what you're doing is you're tapping into the zone of genius of these founders. Every entrepreneur, every founder has their own zone of genius, right?

Bryan: You have your own zone of genius. And I tap into that, and then I consume all that content. He interviews them in a great style, ask great questions, and then he breaks it down into little chunks so that he has the opportunity to share that content throughout social media. I said, you're creating viral chunks out of it. [00:21:00] He's okay. And he lived with it, and he went through it. He was broke. I didn't know how broke he was, but he was broke. All of a sudden he got invited to speak on multiple stages about this. He had more clients than he could handle. He's looking to hire somebody all because we just changed two words to his whole story.

Bryan: Didn't even change what anything else behind it. Just starting to call it the Viral Genius Framework, because those words, that image told so many stories in such rapid succession to people's brains that they bought instantly. Instead of trying to explain, oh I interview and I run it through my AI and my customer Viral Genius framework.

Sani: Yeah, because you, especially something as dry as anything that's Gen ai and Gen AI is just by nature. It's dry. Anyone can do it. There's no soul behind it. If you can attach a story to that and then you can scale it using ai, [00:22:00] you might have a winner without a story, without a personal touch. It's difficult.

Bryan: Or let's talk about in Google Search language, right? In eat, they're looking for experiences. Experiences are stories.

Sani: Yep.

Bryan: There are stories. That's all it is. So start sharing your experiences, connecting with people, you and I together at this time. We're sharing a moment we can talk about this specific moment.

Sani: I couldn't even count how many times I sounded smart because I quoted what someone told me after or before we recorded a podcast episode after four and a half years. It is just, if you have that seed of creative, original, whatever else, making it viral becomes significantly easier. You cannot just take a, air and make that viral.

Sani: It just doesn't, it's not supposed to work like that. I guess you could, I guess people do that, but if you have that genius seed of virality or whatever you wanna call it. [00:23:00] Viji it, it is significantly easier to do something great. Sound smart. To connect with people over that. It just, it is the best possible device.

Sani: Are you ready for a lightning round? We have four questions, I think

Bryan: Okay, let me get a

Sani: 20 seconds each. Yes. Yes. They're not difficult.

Bryan: Okay. Yes, we're ready.

Sani: an easy one to begin with. What is the worst CRO or marketing advice you keep hearing today in 2025?

Bryan: The worst CRO and marketing advice it's probably the same thing, right? It's just, it's focusing in on the tool above the messaging. 90% of your CRO you can do by a, spending more time listening to your customers than anything else. And if you just did that, you'd probably be okay.

Sani: Your Exactly. Speaking of tools. If there's one that you cannot live without, whatever it is, it could be something as basic as Gmail, what, whatever. What is that tool?

Bryan: [00:24:00] Wow. Probably. My favorite tool today would be a video editor. I think today you just need to be able to get out there and do things. And I use several depending on where I am or everything from cap cut to Camtasia to, so it, it really depends. But I think, we are in a world where video is a lot more authentic and so we definitely need to be doing a lot more of it.

Bryan: And so I think a video editor today is probably gonna be my number one toolbox for most marketers.

Sani: And just putting yourself in front of a camera and doing video content. That, that, that is extremely important. Yes. Yes, of course. Exactly. Okay. Now, if your, if a younger version of Brian from late nineties, mid nineties, could see your LinkedIn profile today, leaving a site today would not know what LinkedIn was because it didn't exist back then, what would be the most [00:25:00] surprising thing for young Brian to see?

Bryan: That's so easy to answer, unfortunately. All the books I've written,

Sani: Okay.

Bryan: I had a boss when I was a social worker named Fred. Fred was a former priest who got thrown out of the of the church. He was an alcoholic. He ended up living out in the on the street in the Bowery of New York City.

Bryan: Back in the days when it was dangerous, and Fred was my manager at a independent living for people with mental illness. So they were scattered throughout all these buildings. Every week Fred would come to me and literally he would ask me, he said, when are you gonna write your book?

Bryan: Now, mind you, in college and high school, I hated reading. I hated writing. I am sure any of my English teacher would look at this today and say, there's no way he's written 11 books, including, multiple New York Times bestselling authors and Wall Street Journal book. Like they, they couldn't fathom it.

Sani: but why did Fred think you, you would be doing that? Would you be writing books?

Bryan: It's only in [00:26:00] this last year that I've gotten the clarity and I think what, and unfortunately Fred passed, so I never got a chance to actually ask him. But I think it comes back to that empathy. I think he knew that a person's life is lived and there's stories within them. And those stories need to be shared because everybody thinks their story doesn't matter, but every story matters.

Bryan: And I wasn't going to write another book. Okay. I wrote this book, here's the honest truth, because of one person I don't know how big they are in, in Europe, but have you seen the Savannah Bananas and Jesse Cole and what he's been doing?

Sani: I'll have to say no, sorry.

Bryan: Yeah, no, it's absolutely worth looking. He has redefined the game of baseball,

Sani: Okay.

Bryan: he claimed was boring.

Bryan: And back in 2019, Jesse sent me a note and he was part of a college summer team. Nobody was really paying that much [00:27:00] attention to him or anything like that. But I noticed him on Twitter and I commented on something and he sent me a little gift box. In the gift box. He wrote me a nice, beautiful note and put some other of his gear in there.

Bryan: And I'm finally gonna get him to meet him in person in November. The first time they're coming, he's coming here to, to Round Rock. And he wrote in that note that my book be like, Amazon helped inspire. His fans first mentality. He's worked also very closely with Gary V

Bryan: Terms of documenting everything he does. now he's selling out football stadiums of 81,000 people, okay? With a waiting list of over 3 million people to see his show live games end in two hours automatically. They've changed a bunch of the rules with millions and millions and millions of views online, right? YouTube, social media it's crazy.

Bryan: Absolutely worth taking a look at. There's a lot to study in what he's doing.

Bryan: And he said something in there, which is a key component of my book. He said there [00:28:00] was an exercise that we asked people to do in Be like Amazon, which we talked about Simon Sinek and his famous TED clip where start with why, and everybody thinks it's about your why, but in that clip, he uses the word belief. More times than any other word, your actions are a reflection of your beliefs. Okay? We all hold individual beliefs, and by being able to take those beliefs, and I had to change some of my beliefs in order to lose all that weight, in order to have that clarity and when I realized that one book can have impact on one person who's brought so much joy and fulfillment to millions, I needed to find a way to share that, even if it only reaches one person.

Sani: That, that's a wonderful story. Back to the belief part, there's a quote that says whether you think you can or you can't, you're [00:29:00] probably right. I'm not 

Bryan: yep. Zig Ziglar, I

Sani: Yes. Maybe. I'm not sure. That is absolutely true for almost everyone on earth and belief in. The fact that you can or cannot do something is what's going to get you there.

Sani: I did not know Simon Yu's belief more times than why I, I did not pay attention. I saw the clip and I mean he made a career based on that, a wonderful, amazing career based on

Bryan: Great story.

Sani: Great story. Exactly. Exactly. And he's a good storyteller. He's not just, it's the delivery as well.

Sani: The last one, what is a small decision you made at any point in your life that ending up opening a huge opportunity you did not even know would be there? A sliding doors moment.

Bryan: We certainly made a lot of bad decisions as well. There, there's those I think when we first started internet marketing, we were doing all optimization, right? We were doing search optimization. We were back in the very early days with when there was web position gold [00:30:00] and, there, there were maybe a thousand search marketers in the world, maybe that many.

Bryan: I don't even think there were that many. I just spent more time trying to understand the sales part and understanding what different sites were doing that worked, that didn't work, that un, that took in, persuasion principles as I understood them at the time. And we were given this nickname at the incubator.

Bryan: That's where my Twitter handle comes from the grok before Elon butchered it. But that's a whole different story. I get tagged for the strangest things every day now

Sani: I can

Bryan: that I can barely log in because, yeah. Anyway, the grok was this term from stranger in a strange land that Hyland wrote that meant to understand something like at a deep cellular level, like really like completely understood it.

Bryan: And the person this person at the incubator said that I gred.com.

Bryan: I understood what was going on at such a [00:31:00] fundamental level that I, I was explaining things that nobody had ever heard before, and that's where our original newsletter came from, grok.com. We had a little Martian character that we used for that.

Bryan: And we decided that was going to be, the focus is gonna be the conversion work. And he was right. Just way too early for the business. It took a lot of years 

Sani: but do you think it helped to have that broader understanding of the web at that time before focusing on conversion? That, that, that had to be a good thing.

Bryan: Yeah. Oh no, absolutely. But we were all in on conversion. We burned the boats all in on conversion. We, I mean for, I think for a little while we had one gentleman who was helping us with some of the SEOs still, but for the most part we focused everything on conversion optimization and that was.

Bryan: 19 97, 98, and CRO when we became bestsellers with Call to Action, which was our [00:32:00] main book on, on, on everything, CRO, that was 2005.

Sani: Yep.

Bryan: That was a lot of years waiting for the market to catch up. And then all of a sudden, folks like Tim Ash and a bunch of others

Sani: a thing.

Bryan: But that was the, that was a long time in waiting.

Bryan: It was consequential, but it was a difficult decision at the time and we thought we were right. But it took too long.

Sani: Everything does, everything good, takes too long. Other than generating a blog post, which had GPT or an email with had GPT, everything that makes sense is going to take too

Bryan: Or coming back to what we talked about the fundamentals. My son's an athlete, I've written a book about his development in baseball. You don't get great overnight. It's repeating the fundamentals over and over and over again. And that's what life is all about, is just getting so good at the fundamentals that you can't miss.

Bryan: You can't make a mistake with them. Then you have opportunities to break the rules.

Sani: and I would just add repeating the fundamentals when nobody's looking, when nobody's watching you, [00:33:00] because overnight success, it's just a fundamental story told over and over again, but nobody was watching.

Bryan: Correct. It's what they do in dark rooms when nobody's watching. And it's the hard work. It's the ugly work. It's the meal prep I do every week to make sure I've got the right proteins and the right vegetables and I don't have to make a time to make a decision about what I'm gonna cook today.

Bryan: 'cause I'm gonna go home today and I know I've got broccoli and I've got Lees and I've got eggplant and I've got it all. I don't have to think

Sani: you need to have. Now, we not talk about AI automation and how that's impacting CRO, but marketing in general as well. So you ran an experiment recently with the press release that you got into the LLMs in no time, almost right minutes. Tell me about that. Let's explain that to the audience and why this is an important example for how SEO is completely being changed with AI coming in and trying to break it almost.

Bryan: Yeah. I, as I tell people, I've been in SEOA [00:34:00] very long time, but local SEO is its own little beast. And of course, I think any great marketer today can't be an expert in everything, but they have to know who to talk to.

Sani: Yep.

Bryan: so before my wife and I moved to our offices, and I'm in my office now in, in the new location for her home care business, a place at home North Austin.

Bryan: We had a shared office space that we were in. When I asked Darren what I need to do to make sure I don't get my account suspended right, or have to re or reverify, he gave me an article that he wrote about it and I said, okay, great. I'm gonna follow it. And I started making all the changes. So I changed the state license which literally just got approved a couple of days ago, but we submitted it early.

Bryan: We went to, the bi, the business registry so our agent here in Texas. And so I modified our business address there modified it in all our social media, had our website done. Our corporate franchise team change, changed the website address, all of those [00:35:00] things. The chamber, I'm a big part of the Round Rock chamber.

Bryan: They changed it right away. I'm waiting. I'm looking at the index. I'm searching I'm trying to see when Google has finally indexed and cashed these new citations with the new address. Two and a half weeks. Nothing. Nothing. And I'm like when am I gonna make this change? And, Darren suggested you get a local guide which I think is by the way, very important.

Bryan: I'm a local guide as well. And I think it's important for anybody, especially in marketing and not in marketing, support your community. Write reviews your community, become a local guide. Like it's, you can't do anything better than for your community than do that. And so he said, get a local guide to suggest the edit, and then you make the change and it goes smoothly.

Bryan: So I was able to do all that, but nothing was happening. So what was the final trick? I asked my friend, Dave McInnis and I'm an advisor at Newsworthy. I wanna be straight up front with that. And I said, [00:36:00] Hey, what do you think if we run a press release talking about our expansion into our new office space? And he is and David was a, again, very early SEO, he's the one who built PR web, which was a powerhouse for SEO, in the last generation. And he's got a new technology, newsworthy AI, that, that's tied to the blockchain and doing very unique stuff with ai. Again, we can go dig into that, but I ran this and literally I got the notification that the press release was approved, and I said, oh, let me go to chat GPT and ask, get what my business's address is.

Bryan: Boom, correct address. Immediately

Sani: Yep.

Bryan: I went, I, then I had my son. We were driving somewhere. I said can you check Gemini? He checked Gemini. He checked Google Overview and it started repeating the stuff that's in the press release, not just the address, but about some of the best of Round Rock that we had wanted.

Bryan: Other things that we said in there that became instantly the AI's truth [00:37:00] because I paid for a press release.

Sani: What does that tell you about the future of visibility in general and SEO as well? It, do you think it's a good future or

Bryan: I do. I do

Sani: scary because of bad players?

Bryan: no. So I think there's a couple of things. So number one, it tells me that Google understands the old index

Bryan: Dead and dying. And so they're not putting the same resources behind it. Okay? 'cause we're talking about Facebook and MapQuest and all, like all these sites, they were not updating them like, okay, so there's something there. So I think obviously they're investing their resources on where AI is going. Typing queries. Look, I remember the days when search used to be one keyword, then it went to two, then it went to three, then it went to four to five, then up to seven, and it just slowly progressed. Human language, normal language is a much better interface, right?

Bryan: We've known that from, the days of [00:38:00] Star Trek, right? Let's talk to our computers. It works much better. And I definitely see search going in that direction. So I think obviously their investment in LLMs and in AI is vital for their success. But what it also tells me is everybody can put out content. Everybody was able to gain links, everybody was able to gain everything else. You can't gain ongoing reputation and ongoing press that comes from this. So I think the AI was able to see that this news release and then was able to see, oh yes, this exists in other places. 'cause it pulled it up from other places as well.

Bryan: It pulled it up from the chamber. It did all of that. Now it was like, oh, that's the source of truth. And 

Sani: to EAT that you mentioned earlier. This is why Google has been so critical about [00:39:00] EAT is something you should take seriously. For years, they've been saying that this is something to take seriously, and now we see why.

Bryan: Yeah. 

Sani: Elements, it's part of it at least. Yeah.

Bryan: yeah, I was asked to speak by the head of the quality score team at Microsoft several years ago after an event that I spoke at s at SES, where I spoke about what I call the conversion trinity. Relevance, value, and confidence in the call to action. And he really wanted me to spend the time on the relevance, because the way I was exp explaining relevance from the human point of view, he wanted me to explain that to his engineers. And that's all Google's been trying to figure out as well. It's oh. Real experiences are part of it. And I realized that in SEO many years ago, this is, we had, we still had our agency at that point. So you're talking about 2007 and I had put together a presentation called the Med Men of Search, talking about where big data was going and how it was gonna change search.

Bryan: [00:40:00] Because I had a client that was in the educational toy space. And no matter what they did, and as well optimized as everything they did and all the rules that we know about SEO and all the link building, they could not get the number one spot. The number one spot went to Fisher Price.

Sani: Oh,

Bryan: Okay. Which is the big brand in the space. Their website sucked. It was flash, it was terrible. So what was Google using to say that was the number one spot? And they were right. It wasn't that they weren't right, but by everything they were telling Web masters.

Sani: it was wrong. Yep.

Bryan: It was wrong. So what was right, was oh, would Google by chance have access to all this credit card information that's out in the world that you can buy by subscription?

Bryan: Could be, oh, might they have a chance to scan people's email confirmations when they buy things and see it in their email? Oh, that's a [00:41:00] possibility. And when you start piecing together, oh, they've got browser data and Android data, and like they can piece together anything they want, how do they mimic?

Bryan: And this is something that the old CEO was saying, I'm blocking out his name for a moment. And he used to say, our job is to mimic what, what's happening in the real world.

Sani: Yeah.

Bryan: And that's all they were doing.

Sani: I'll just add Google Analytics to that mix of things that they knew the. Best free spy device that completely reshaped the internet and put Google in a position that they would not be in without Google Analytics. There's no question.

Bryan: So back in the days when we were consulting to Google, we know for a fact there was a sign in someone's door that said that Google Analytics was installed on over 65% of all websites at that point.

Sani: Find me anything else that's on 65% of websites. [00:42:00] It's very difficult.

Bryan: Yeah.

Sani: CSS maybe,

Bryan: Maybe. Yeah.

Sani: maybe that is, yeah. I wanna ask you about Rocket Beat as well. This is a company you are devising for, right? That's your relationship with 'em. So they have a, an AI that ranks or scores startups based on how likely they're to succeed.

Sani: Something like a FICO score,

Bryan: Correct.

Sani: what do they do and what does that to entrepreneurship in general. Does that put small startups at risk because maybe they're not ready just yet and this just says it's not worth investing in and then they don't get the money? Or is this a, how is this going to help a small founder

Bryan: I you weren't around in the days of the dotcom days when literally I'd walk into the founders of the incubator's

Sani: with money?

Bryan: he was very over his head with pitches like it was nonstop. In today's AI world, we're developing [00:43:00] more startups faster and coming to delivered product faster than ever beforehand, period.

Bryan: Flat out simple. are gonna need a better tool to understand what startups make sense in investing in, right? Because obviously there's huge growth opportunities there. And I think from the startup founder's perspective, they need to understand what their risk profile actually looks like.

Bryan: Like a credit score, right? You wouldn't go to buy a car or buy a house without knowing what your score is. And so it's the same thing before you go pitch, let this analyze your score. And my friend Juan Damia, who started the company I've known him from the very early days of the Web Analytics Association.

Bryan: He was an analyst in Argentina, brought his company, sold it a couple times. So he's done phenomenal. And he realized he was able to take all this data. And there are other companies giving people this algorithm. They say that scores them. And he's no. They talk about some of their variables and he knows for a [00:44:00] fact they had zero correlation.

Bryan: To any funding or any growth or any success. So he's really done a tremendous amount of analysis using AI in this. And we just wanted to make this concept simple for people. So yeah, you just need that rocket BEAT score or the FICO score for startups and for investors. And same thing, if you're gonna go pitch an investor, you should know how valuable of an investor they can be to you as well.

Bryan: And so we score them at the same time. And we do that globally, so you know who the right people you should be speaking to. If you've really got something good, it's gonna make it easier.

Sani: Feels like an absolutely necessary tool at this time. Like you said, launching a something and calling it a startup has never been easier and recognizing the noise. From the signal is extremely important these days and probably getting more and more important as we go.

Bryan: That's why that's the elephant in the room.

Sani: There you go. There you go.

Bryan: We're overwhelmed with the noise

Bryan: Need clarity, 

Sani: probably the most important thing [00:45:00] right now, probably the most important, probably the most important thing right now is being able to know what to focus on whoever solves that problem for humanity versus just, the disease of more, which is where we have been going forever. I think that's capitalism, but just basically, let's create more.

Sani: Let's do more.

Bryan: but that's gonna, but that's also what's gonna change in marketing real quickly. And I want to touch on

Sani: How's that? Yeah. I would love to hear, because my next question was, is AI a threat to marketers careers or is it going to help them? So I wanna hear your perspective

Bryan: I was having this conversation with a person who had on my guest recently, Felicia Reed. She's a phenomenal portrait photographer here in Round Rock. And a mindset coach, brilliant woman. And she was commenting about a brand and how they didn't have anybody that looked like her, right?

Bryan: She's a African American woman, little stocky, but she's in the gym. She's a strong woman. The curls and all. She said why don't, why doesn't she see people like me? And I said, we're gonna see is something that my mentor, Roy Williams talked about this [00:46:00] pendulum that happens in marketing.

Bryan: And we're seeing a revolt starting just now. Just we're seeing the pieces of it. All these AI models, the AI bands that are coming out. How do you know who's real? How will you know who's real? It's the real connection with people. It's seeing people who are authentic, who look and feel and talk like us, that's gonna have the biggest impact in marketing over the course of the next five to seven years.

Bryan: 'cause you are, you can't, you it'll be too easy to have deep fakes with AI and we're gonna need more real.

Sani: already it is too easy. And someone told me, I can't remember who it was, but recently someone told me, the closer you are to the averages, the more likely you are going to be confused for AI slop and something that was just generated in five seconds. So you want to be not necessarily extreme in any way, but you want to be closer to the extremes than to the averages.

Sani: And that is the position to [00:47:00] be in

Bryan: That's been our philosophy on CRO forever.

Sani: There you

Bryan: It's the reason we talk about personas and writing to the different personality types because when you try to appeal to everybody, you end up appealing to no one you.

Sani: Exactly. That, that, that's a great point. So if someone's just getting started with marketing right now, CRO marketing, whatever it is, what's. You can't say empathy 'cause we talked about empathy. What's the one skill or one thing that they should focus on and master to stay relevant Long term now that everything around us is changing and everyone's telling us, AI will do CRO for you.

Sani: AI agents will analyze the page and fix everything for you and automatically do. God knows what I mean. This is my favorite book of 2025, by the way. I'm not buying the hype. I'm absolutely not buying the AI hype. So what is the one thing that a young person entering the field should focus on in 2025?

Bryan: listen. Spend some time listening and learning from others. Listen to customers. Listen to clients. [00:48:00] That's a skill that can't go away. Okay? People need to feel like somebody's connecting to them. It's why they're getting attached to their ais, but it's not the same kind of listening that a human. Can process.

Bryan: And so I think that's an important one. And then learn what's old is always new again, right? We can take principles that have worked a hundred years ago, 300 years ago, 3000 years ago, right? We talked about in our first book, persuasive Online Copywriting. Aristotle was one of the first people to talk about four different personality types, humors of people.

Bryan: It's just how people gather information and make decisions. We have different styles, so why not understand that? Take what's worked in the past, keep studying it, and that will never be wrong. That will always work.

Sani: Why don't people do that then? Because it's easy to get distracted, or is there something else? 

Bryan: The brain craves novelty. [00:49:00] It's trained to ignore the things that are routine, and so we get attracted to the bright, shiny lights. It's, that's just normal. But if you look at people in any industry, whether it's in athletics, in politics and whatever it is, the ones who excel, it's those simple, fundamental conversations.

Bryan: I was at an event with a politician yesterday here at the local chamber. Not gonna talk about the politics. It's not about the politics, whether I agree with him, don't agree with him. But I spend time listening to how he communicated, how concrete his words were, how simple he kept things so that people can absorb them,

Sani: Yeah.

Bryan: whether you agree with him or not. He's a great communicator for that reason. [00:50:00] It works

Sani: a great point. That's a great point. So not just listening, but learning how to communicate your ideas in an effective way that most people will be able to understand. I think that's the thing that's, AI will not help you with that. AI can push you, but unless you already have an idea of what you want to do

Bryan: correct.

Sani: it can push you the wrong path 

Bryan: and I talk about it in waiting for in, and I think I swallow an

Bryan: It took me 10 days to craft the first draft because I had all the ideas in my head and it helped me get it down. But it took us five months to polish every single one of the words that we used in there, because yes, it got it down.

Bryan: And staring at a blank screen is the hardest thing, great, but when it's a 250 word chapter, every word better matter. And so we had to invest a lot of time into doing that.

Sani: So I have one final question. Actually. You talk about stories all the time. You talk I completely agree. Stories are [00:51:00] without a story, it's not a human experience. There has to be a story in everything. Even in, Talia, our mutual friend, she has a book about

Bryan: The emotional targeting. Yeah.

Sani: Yes. Which is where there's no story.

Sani: Most people will say, there's no stories, there's no emotions. No. You don't want to look like a fool for buying something from a vendor that's an emotion. It's fear. So how you say that the most important stories are already in the customer's mind. You just need to find them and

Bryan: Intersect them.

Sani: Yes. Basically and ride that story to, to, to the sale, to whatever you're trying to do.

Sani: How can mar listening? Of course, yes. But what are other tips that marketers can do? How do you, if you don't have access to the customer's mind? Do you do social listening? Do you follow the trends online? What are

Bryan: we do my, we do mind reading.

Sani: Yes, but not all people can do that.

Bryan: So one, there's certain behaviors that are consistent across populations, right? We know there's some people gonna be much more methodical in the way they approach things. We know some people are gonna be more [00:52:00] spontaneous. We know some people are gonna approach things more humanistically. We're, we know we're gonna approach, some people are gonna approach things in a more competitive style.

Bryan: Okay? So that's an easy one. It's if at a minimum you looked at your customers with those four lenses, you're probably gonna get a little bit closer. Just it's a, it's, if you think about almost like landing a plane, I can land it in different directions. So you have to know the angle of approach that gives you an angle of approach.

Bryan: So that's the first thing. The second thing, and I'm finding this a lot now I was talking to a friend of mine YFA from nom.ai, and she's got a little chat bot real simple that goes on people's websites and you basically edit a couple of documents and it starts working it.

Bryan: She says, it's not even about the chat bot, it's the conversations that customers are having with that chat bot in real language that gives you such insight into the customer. So if I could take that feedback, and we've been trying to do that since I, perceptions with four Q with the Avinash and myself years ago, anything we can gather information from the word of [00:53:00] mouth of customers is incredible.

Bryan: And I talk about this story in in, and I think I swallow an elephant as well. We work with a company that's 75 feet full of research that they thought they had on their customers. But it was all the demographic information about them. It's why they spent, and where they spent and where they come from and what they did at their competitor.

Bryan: And until we set up a little research at the front of their place that we were able to see, oh, when you say these things, it turns people off when you say these things. Oh, it excites them. It's like listening again. It really is not that complicated. And it's why I've decided to spend so much time and energy on my, this local podcast.

Bryan: I want to give more businesses opportunities to share their stories because they need to be heard. They need to have somebody who is willing to guide them to extract that story so they can tell it more powerfully.

Sani: Also connecting as directly as possible with people in general with customers. This is what Mark [00:54:00] Cuban recently said. He would bet on this is going to be the next big thing in-person events, small, large, whatever it is. This is the next huge thing because we are losing that to AI and we're try going to try to win

Bryan: And we lost a lot of it through COVID. And again, big theme of my book, right? I joined the Round Rock Chamber because my wife and I opened the local business and I decided to start going to the events. But slowly those events turned into friendships and it built a big community for me.

Bryan: And, having that support of that community after being isolated from COVID and not traveling and not seeing my, my, ci speaking circuit friends. Yeah. A lot of us withdrew a lot. A lot of people I know moved to distant towns and. Don't have those connections, and it's so powerful to be back connected with humans on a regular basis and have those deep conversations that ultimately that's what the joy of life is really about.

Sani: I could not agree more. I could not [00:55:00] agree more. Leaving gr the gray hairs aside, I could not agree more. Connections with people you care about. Yes. And also connections in your local community is something that in a digital life, living on social media and everything, we are forgetting that it exists.

Sani: Even being able to have a friend that lives across the street or five minutes away and see them and have a deep conversation with them at any time is, it will make you happier.

Sani: It that way.

Bryan: Here's a funny story to wrap all this up.

Bryan: So last week my friend Difa from Nome asked me to meet her in the coffee shop, right? She lives not far from me. Her son goes to the same high school as my youngest and where my other kids have gone to. And she wanted to connect and talk about what she's doing, maybe join the chamber.

Bryan: 'cause she's been seeing what I've been doing as well. And my friend Fernando is running a live event further down south. And he asked me to come speak and, spend a few minutes. But I said, no I'm doing this podcast this morning, so I can't 

[00:56:00] That was an incredible conversation with Brian Isenberg. So many insights to unpack, and I keep coming back to the central metaphor from his book. The idea that we all have these silent elephants that we swallow, and these moments of being completely overwhelmed by work, health, life, whatever it is. His personal story, Brian's personal story of regaining his health by focusing on.

Fundamentals, not hacks is a powerful lesson, not just for business but for life in general. So with that theme of fundamentals that carried through our entire conversation and the to his entire 30 year career. And the one thing that just. Keeps repeating and staying there all the time is one word. It's empathy.

I mean, he even said it's one word, empathy. So it all ties back to the biggest point for marketers today. According to Brian, your messaging and your story are everything. So focus on getting those done and forget about the shiny toys and, and the [00:57:00] promise of AI doing everything for you in seconds. And as Brian said, facts tell, but stories sell.

So it's about finding the stories that are already. In your customer's minds. Not inventing a new story, but find something that's there and connecting with those stories on an emotional level and like that, that experiment with, with the press release, it was just mind blowing. I cannot believe that it happened instantly that AI models just accepted that as a truth, as a source of truth instantly, which also tells you maybe not trust Chad, GPT and all those other LLMs so blindly because it.

Getting information into their brains is not as difficult as well, even as it was with Google, maybe. And then finally, the, the, the life advice from Brian is learn to listen. Uh, everyone can automate, everyone can produce noise, uh, but the ability to truly hear your customer and connect with your customer or your community is.[00:58:00] 

I believe the ultimate competitive advantage these days. So a huge thank you to Brian for his time and his wisdom, and be sure to check out his new book. I think I Swallowed an Elephant, and also his podcast, the Rock Rallied Round Rock, and all the links will be in the show notes. So one last thing I would like to ask you to do is if you found this conversation valuable, the best way to support the show is to leave a quick rating or review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, whatever you're using.

It takes less than a minute. It makes a huge difference in helping others discover no hacks. So sharing the episode with a friend or a colleague who might enjoy it also goes a long way. And as always, thank you for listening to No Hacks. Okay.

Bryan: do it. And he said, do you know anyone else?

Bryan: And I said, yes, let me connect you to Yfa. And they actually knew each other,

Sani: Oh,

Bryan: it was because of that close connection of seeing her in a coffee shop that she was top of mind, that it was important and [00:59:00] again, perfect timing that they were able to connect. And she's down there presenting and I'm here with you today, and I think that's awesome for everybody.

Sani: I couldn't be any more honored. I agree. I agree with that. So finally, where can listeners find your new book and your podcast?

Bryan: So they can find my new book on Amazon or on Audible. I think I swallow an elephant. The stories we sell, the success we built it's also available on Kindle. The podcast is called The Rock Solid Round Rock Podcast. Now, I know you're thinking, okay, this, what, how's it relevant to me?

Bryan: 'cause it's all about Round Rock. No, understand. Round Rock as a community is the number one fastest growing county. Williamson County is the fastest growing county in the whole United States. It has more than doubled in its valuation in the last six years. From about $80 billion to a hundred and 80 mil $180 billion.

Bryan: And that's not just because Samsung is moving in near us, that's part of it. But it's because we had 12,500 small businesses [01:00:00] like ours Open up. Hire individuals and grow our businesses here and the support of a great community. And I wanted to bring all these community leaders and business leaders in so you can hear what makes a great community.

Bryan: It's the partnerships, it's everybody pushing for the same thing because our neighbors matter. Leaders who were former mayors worried about were they gonna leave a community for their grandkids, okay, that would want to stick around. It's like there's magic here. And I think if you just spend some time listening to these magical people first you'll meet some great people.

Bryan: But second of all, you'll understand what it takes to be in a thriving community.

Sani: But it would also learn from them and how they're building their businesses and it's practical

Bryan: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Sani: Brian, I'm so honored you were a guest in No Hacks. I want to thank you. This is a, this is gonna be such a great episode and yeah, thank you so much and I wish you a great day.

Bryan: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. 

​

[01:01:00] That was an incredible, insightful conversation with Brian Eisenberg. So many insights to unpack here, so lemme just try to go back and look at some of them. We kept going back to the central metaphor from Brian's book, the idea that we all have these silent elephants, that we swallow these moments of being completely overwhelmed by work, health, life, and Brian's personal story of regaining his health by focusing on fundamentals, not hacks.

I'll say it again because I like the sound of it. Fundamentals, not hacks is a powerful lesson, not just for business but for life. And that theme of fundamentals, it carried through our entire conversation that. The true line of his entire 30 year career is empathy. He even said it one word, empathy. It all ties back to his biggest point for marketers today.

Your messaging and your story. Are where it all begins. [01:02:00] As he said, facts tell, but stories sell. It's about finding the stories already in your customer's mind and connecting with them on an emotional level. And that experiment that we quickly discussed, uh, the press release that went into the LMS almost instantly, that was mind blowing.

So the fact that a models accept it as root almost instantly shows you how much of the world. How much did you trust LMS in general, but how much the world of SEO and online authority is changing? It used to take days in best cases to rank in traditional SEO. Now this is a different game. So ultimately, Brian's advice is, is really, it's timeless.

You have to learn to listen in an age where anyone can automate, anyone can produce noise. The ability to truly hear your customer and connect with your community on a deep level. Is the ultimate competitive advantage. So again, a huge thank you to Brian for his time and his wisdom. [01:03:00] Be sure to check out his new book.

I think I swallowed an elephant and his podcast, the Rock Solid Round Rock, and all the links are in the show notes. And one last thing, if you found this conversation. The best way to support the show, uh, is to leave a quick rating or review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It takes less than a minute, but it makes a huge difference in helping others discover no hacks and hopefully enjoy it.

Sharing the podcast with a friend or colleague who might enjoy it also goes a long way. And as always, thank you for listening to no Hacks.