121: Trust as the Only Metric: Jonti Bolles on the Long Game of Search Marketing

Danny Gavin (Host): 00:05

Hello, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optidge, Marketing Professor, and the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor. My special guest today is Jonti Bolles, CEO of Who Digital Strategy, and more importantly, a longtime friend. Jonti and I have been orbiting each other for years through Search U, AMA Houston, and a dozen industry events in between, always in the same rooms, always in each other’s corner, but somehow never formally working together. Until now. Jonti has spent 15-plus years in digital marketing, and if I had to describe what sets her apart, it’s this. She’s generally curious. She was one of the first people I watched lean all the way into AI for content creation, not with anxiety, but with excitement at a time when most of us were hesitant. She’s also the mind behind something called the AI Entity Blueprint, a framework for building brand consistency across channels that goes well beyond what a traditional brand guide can do. And we’re going to get into all of that today. Today we’re going to talk about the long game of relationships in this industry, why the last two years have been the most fun of Jaunty’s career, and what it actually means to build a brand that LLMs trust and surface. All right, so let’s jump right in. How are you?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 01:30

I’m doing amazing. It’s so good to talk to you. I have been so impressed and so proud to watch you build this podcast for years. And I love being able to have a chance to sit on here and talk with you. As you mentioned, I love seeing friends do good things.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 01:46

Thank you. And I didn’t mention this in the intro, but obviously, when I started building my agency and I needed help, you were there for me. You really are a true friend. And I know a friend to many other people as well. Help them, whether it’s announced in social media or not, but you’re that person who’s always there. So it really is an honor to have this conversation today.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 02:04

I try and fly under the radar as much as possible, which is exactly what you should not do in this industry. It’s also been great just to still, when I have friendships, another genuine.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 02:16

Totally. All right.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 02:17

 So, Jontiti, 15 years is a long time in an industry that reinvents itself every two years. What does your business actually look like today? And how is it different from what you imagined when you first started?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 02:29

I think it’s looks like today, as I mentioned, the last two years have been more exciting, two, three years than a long time. They were, they are the energy that I had when I first discovered search engine marketing, seeing things change and the thesis that we’ve had for so many years is proving true. And that’s fun. It’s fun again, right? It’s not just you know follow the rules. It’s make some of your own rules, discover more fun rules, and stay within the lines. I think people may not know that Who Digital Strategy, the name of our company, was it’s originally stood for White Hat Ops. And so White Hat was always the way we were going to do things. But sometimes you have to walk up to the line to know where the line is, right? There were a lot of rules that people classically broke in the early days about search, whether it was PPC or search. I mean, I think one of our favorite things every now and then was we knew we were doing our job well if we got a cease and desist letter.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 03:26

I want to tell you one that I that just because you mentioned cease and desist letters. This happened to be for my parents’ business, but we created a really good blog post when George Clooney proposed to Amal. And yeah, boy, did we get a we got a lawyer’s letter right away. Um, because yeah, like when you searched George Clooney, it was up there and it’s like, hey, you need better dig this down now. And so yeah, I I it was an honor, a little scary, but an honor as well.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 03:48

I just want to say I have a couple of clients that actually we we giggle over it because, you know, you you did something enough to get noticed. So it’s kind of fun. So doing those kinds of there were a lot of lot of rule breaking early in in the industry. You know, we always wanted to take care of things for our clients because most of them couldn’t rebuild a brand or rebuild a site or rebuild authority. So we always tried to make sure that we were doing things sustainably and ethically. Didn’t always leave room for fun. So having the fun again is especially with AI and and the thesis of things we’ve learned over the years and building that and implementing it with ways that we knew but didn’t have the resources or something. And I think that’s really opened it up as long as we’re keeping the human in the loop and and dealing and building on those frameworks and thesis that we know, and not just, you know, we’ll talk probably a little bit about critical and strategic thinking here as well. But yeah, I’m having fun again.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 04:45

I remember 2016 when Penguin rolled out, and I was very much the same type of anchor text, blogs all over the place, did really well, and then it just the floor dropped up, you know, under me. And like there’s so many changes in this industry. And I know it’s exciting, but for a lot of people, it burns them out, right? I’m sure there’s people that we know, like when we, you know, started and been around and they’re not here anymore, right? They’re doing real estate or whatever it is, right? So what kept you from burning out and just like sticking with it when there’s like a Google update here or a social media shift here? What kept you

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 05:16

 on that track?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 05:17

Having clients that I loved. I mean, if if you’re if you take any client for any reason or just for the money, then you get burnt out. There’s there’s no doubt about it. If you have clients and they’re willing to work with you and you set a pace and and you and play long games, you know, it’s not, you know, chase this trend. It’s yes, let’s look at this and it’s evaluated. You know, is this something that is the right time, the right message, the right resources? And then you can pace that. There’s always gonna be deadlines, you know, and and managing those, sure. But clients that you really enjoy working with and that you respect each other’s work, uh, it keeps it easier.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 05:54

Yeah, it’s because every every day is just is like it’s relationships. It’s, you know, obviously they’re clients, but they’re your friends, they’re your people, and just being with them and helping them. I know that that’s a big part of what I do, what I do is yeah, when we can help someone actually change their life and what’s going on around them, it’s so much more than, you know, than the work we do. But that end result is really, really meaningful.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 06:15

It’s kind of cool. I get to uh tell people that I’ve had my agency for 15 years and I’ve had clients for closer to 18 or 19 years because uh the way I built my agency is is I had the bird in the bush land in my hand and was I worked at a large agency and they wanted to become a software company. And so I was able to take those clients and that book of business and purchase from them and start because they wanted to hand it to someone they trusted as well. So I started my agency with clients built in that I’d already been working with, and some of them are still with me today.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 06:46

I forgot that that’s how you started. Do you do you mind reminding me the name of the company? I know it’s like in the forefront. Sure, it’s Shippel, the web marketing company. Right. And Shipple used to put like really good events on in Houston. And I remember just going back, like when they decided, hey, we’re gonna drop marketing and just be a software company. I was really surprised. Were were you surprised?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 07:05

It was a bold move. And you know, probably looking back, you know, that software is still around. And the people that have gone on from there, the legacy of that place created is pretty amazing. Yeah, so I think everybody was surprised, and also it probably turned out okay, you know, let people kind of fly. And I think the somebody once told me the people that that were there during that time left and have influenced so much of Houston and beyond.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 07:28

It’s really true. So talking about Houston, you grew up in Houston, but you made a meaningful life decision to move to Fredericksburg, Texas. So tell me about it. What drove it? What happened to your business when you stepped outside a major market?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 07:42

So when I started that agency, and that that’s kind of a great lead-in. When I started that agency on my own, I was like, well, I’ve got I, you know, some startup costs here. So I didn’t want to lease a big commercial space because of the overhead. And then I and I knew I needed to recruit some more people, and I was, you know, brand new kid on the block. So how am I gonna attract talent? Well, let’s not have them drive in Houston traffic. So I actually started in 2014-ish, yeah, a remote agency. That was great. We met at coffee shops, we met at, you know, there was heart there were a few co-working spaces around, but we figured out ways to work online before remote was cool. Then when three or four years into that, after another hurricane and mosquito-e summer, I realized, oh, I have a remote agency. I don’t actually have to be here in Houston anymore. And we sold everything because we wanted to to do something different. And we drove around in an RV and worked remotely from an RV for four, for about four, almost five years before and during COVID. And so with that, we were actually driving around the country to explore, and we would stay for one to three months in in places at a time, decide where we wanted to land, and we tried California to Vermont, every place in between that we thought would be interesting. We just came on back to Texas. And Fredericksburg is a right-sized town for us. It’s it has a growing industry of hospitality, which I’m really appreciating. Um, the people that that live and work in that environment. And then it really helped us during COVID to be able to be there for our clients because then we’re like, you’re already remote. We’ve been doing this. We’re we’re good. And it helped them have a little bit of stability as well. So Fredericksburg’s been really good to us. It’s a town of about 15,000 during the week, and then probably double that on some weekends because of wine and and tourism industry.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 09:33

It was really a blessing in disguise. I mean, for you, but also for the people around you, right? Like you were meant to be there to help out the people in that community. I don’t know if you look at it that way, but yeah.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 09:44

Yeah. And like most small communities, it takes a while to, you know, and this will kind of go into community building and referrals and reputation, right? It’s taken a good three or four years for us to be more than just a name in the town, but to actually build relationships and referrals and and support here, um, that we’re helping people and they’re helping us. And, you know, it’s a it’s a longtime generational community. You know, there’s still families here with all their names on all the streets. So when I say that I’ve only been here four or five years, I’m literally mean that’s still the new kid on the block because most of them have been here four or five generations. So to be able to step into that and and grow something has been really quite nice.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 10:26

Yeah. So I think it’s good to pivot now into the next topic of community and long-term relationships. So obviously you and I have been in each other’s worlds for years. So from your side, what does a long game relationship actually look like in practice? How do you tend to those connections without it feeling transactional?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 10:42

Never start them feeling transactional. Years ago, when I when we speak about mentors or or things, I started working in the in the nonprofit world even before I went to Shippel with a nonprofit startup. And it was very much there about connections, relationships, because everybody was scrappy and trying to figure things out and as rules changed on a daily basis. And it was, I was taught if you can take the time out of your day to connect two people together that you know and expand their network and expect nothing in return, it will come back. And it may come back in in three days and it may come back in three years. But just be that connector piece. And it was probably the one of the most embracing, powerful lessons I’ve learned about business. And so keeping those connections is and now we have tools that can help me manage that better. We can set reminders, we can set, you know, a six-month reminder. And it’s pops up so it doesn’t slip your mind. I wish I was even better at it than I am, even with the tools we have, but still. I do worry about community and how we’re going to create that as we move more and more digitally. Um, because like our relationship started in person. I find here in Fredericksburg, especially with hospitality, I’m leaning in more to in-person relationships uh the more that we’re online. So it’s it’s a great question to think about how our future kind of really looks of building networks.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 12:13

I will be honest, it’s a little bit of a struggle for me. So, like right now in Houston, I’m part of AMA Houston’s like agency network, and we meet about once a month. And then there’s the option to go meet in person, but there’s also the option to sign in through Zoom. And obviously, my life is busy with kids and business and everything like that. And it’s hard. It’s hard sometimes to like get out the house, get into the car, drive to. And I know it’s so much more meaningful, but honestly, it’s a struggle. So I mean, for me, I guess in some ways, I kind of want like, don’t give the Zoom option so that I have to come. You know, I don’t know if a lot of people are, you know, I obviously for others it’s easier. But, you know, I speak to my wife about this often, and is that I feel like after COVID, it kind of like, you know, it set us back a couple of years and to just get out of the house, even now, I know it sounds kind of weird, but it’s it’s harder. It’s harder than it was before. I don’t know if you I know you’re very outgoing and I don’t know if you’ve felt that in any way, but I I definitely struggle with that a bit.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 13:09

No, I’m not very outgoing. I am outgoing when I’m out. And then I come home and and crawl into my craw closet for three days and don’t come out and speak to anybody. I literally have the t-shirt that says I like coffee and maybe three people. And I’m like, three sounds like a lot. So I am that that extrovert, introvert when I’m out. I’m active, I’m you know, engaged. I might even have anxiety driving to an event, but when I’m there, I’m okay. Uh and then I come home and need to recharge and and stop a minute. So, and I think that digital has, and we’ve, you know, as more people are talking about that, we understand it more, find tools to help with that. And I hope that people continue to find tools to help with that because there are times I struggle with it. But, you know, that’s I’m also reminding myself of the value of of people in person because sitting at home doesn’t do me any good for any length of time.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 14:00

Nope. Especially if we don’t move around. Fair, fair. Obviously, we have a lot of people earlier in the in career who listen to the podcast. So for someone earlier in their career who wants to build kind of professional relationships that compound over time, what’s the most important thing they should actually do differently today?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 14:16

Find the rooms to be in and and go there and make the time. I don’t care if that’s marketing. I don’t care if that’s a trade association. Like I spoke yesterday at a uh luncheon for winery tasting room managers. And it’s because I’ve been a part of and gone to a symposium of that organization for several years just to meet winemakers and to meet people in that industry. And it took two or three years to for that to continue to build that relationship. There’s a whole conversation of should you niche down or not. But I think there’s there’s definitely find both of those rooms, the one where is the mentors in your same field, and then find the rooms of where you want to be, of maybe people you want to work with or support at some point. And those definitely usually aren’t the same room.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 14:57

The fact that you bring up niching down, I’m just curious what’s what’s your take? Because we know in the agency world, it’s like you got to niche down, you gotta niche down. And that’s how you, you know, do you have any personal opinion on that?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 15:08

Yeah, I still don’t follow all the rules. Um I’m starting to find a common thread. You know, I work with, like I said, nonprofits, and they’re very much about people and and events in some cases. Um, now I’m working with hospitality, uh, very much about people and events. I’ve worked with healthcare, obviously, with a basis out of Houston. There’s been healthcare and energy and all of that. Energy maybe less so, but definitely healthcare. It seems like almost every one of the larger clients and things that we’re working with that continue to s build is people-based at the end, which makes me really happy because in AI and SaaS and things like that right now, you’re, you know, those industries are feeling a lot more disruption. A niche for me was I didn’t do just SEO, it didn’t do just PPC, we didn’t do just you know, this type of marketing, neither did we pick just a type of industry. But it’s been kind of staying with search, whatever search with a capital S is, and you know, understanding the analytics and data information around that, and then clients that serve people in a very specific way.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 16:08

So even though it might not be a technical niche, it’s still a niche.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 16:11

I think it’s I agree with you.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 16:13

I agree. A niche doesn’t have to be that I only serve dentists, right? It’s more like it could be anything, and it’s doubling down, right? So I I I totally agree with you on that route.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 16:24

And you know, we’d probably, you know, be working from some remote island and you know, wealthier if we you know, supposedly niche down like everybody says we’re supposed to. And uh, but you know what? I’m happy. I like what

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 16:35

 I do.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 16:36

Yeah, and that’s actually what’s most important. So now we’re gonna shift into AI and the mindset shift. So you were one of the earliest people I watched genuinely lean into AI for content creation. I remember when you were doing it, I was like, oh my gosh, she’s crazy. Like, why is she doing this? It’s not good. You were not cautious, you were really excited. I was kind of like, I kind of in a way, I was a little jealous, like, oh, like how does she have the guts to do this, right? So at a time when most of the industry was somewhere between nervous and dismissive, what did you see that others didn’t?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 17:05

I’ve always been scrappy. And, you know, there uh I read somewhere, you know, one of the earlier quotes, it’s it’s common knowledge now, is like as bad as AI is today, that’s the worst it’s gonna be. It’s gonna continue to improve. And so early adopters, yes, you rebuild things, you scrap it, you know, uh, but by the time it gets to a place that it’s actually usable, you’ve already got the, you know, the the hours. You know, maybe it’s not 10,000 hours, but you’ve got the hours in. So now you’re not trying to play catch up. So to me, it felt natural to get in there and just try it and dive in because I didn’t think it was going away. It looked definitely like a genie was out of the bottle. And it’s the same philosophy we’ve used for for our clients with marketing overall. If there’s a downturn in a market or an economic challenge, those that continue marketing and didn’t cut it in the first place, when a market rebounds, it was it’s shown statistically that they will be 30% or more ahead of those trying to come back into the game again and restart their engines. And so I just knew that if we went into this, that we would have that advantage coming out the other side. And I feel like it wasn’t the wrong decision.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 18:15

I teach this a lot, you know, at university about the concept concept of the shiny object syndrome. So my question to you is I understand you like to jump into new things, but you sometimes step back and be like, ooh, that like looks fancy, but and everyone’s on it, but I don’t really, you know, I don’t really think I need to be there. Or are you the type where I’m gonna just try everything?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 18:34

No, I think there’s it there’s definitely discernment. That’s a new word that’s kind of popped up in our you know, lexicon. Um, and I think it’s it has value. You know, for example, it worked, but I’ve never written a listicle for a client.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 18:47

Thank, thank, thank God. Yeah.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 18:51

You know, so if I did every bright shiny object or every tactic that was supposed to work, no, then then you’re truly spinning your resources in the wrong places. But when you can find things that give you an advantage and and evaluate them and and I do take that on as the leadership of our company, is that I try them first. I don’t always trust someone else to filter that. So I, you know, I will try things first because it’s going to break. And I, you know, I try and break it and I figure out if if it’s useful or not, does it save time? And then I’ll get something to a place that feels that they didn’t try it and said, oh, this will never work. I’m fussier than that. I will keep trying until I can make a really decision of it can be used this way. Maybe it’s not as we intended, but it can be used this way, or we scrap it or something. But I kind of feel that’s my leadership role is to decide what the direction is for strategies and then let you know the team figure out how to, you know, tactically implement it once we give them some guidance. But yeah, and then and to be honest, yeah, you’re right. I love tinkering and shiny new things as well. So it serves both.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 19:52

You’ve said that the last two years have been the most fun of your career. That’s a bold statement, right? After 15 years. So unpack that for me. Why now? And what is it about this particular moment that is so energizing?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 20:05

I have the experience to know what I want. It’s not a bright, shiny object. I have the thesis that’s built on years of experience. And then seeing the years of experience tell me that search has always been about trust. Trust is, I will hang my hat all day long on trust. If you know, when Google was built, it was built that if they if they could give an answer that was trustworthy, you would keep using their services. They changed their ad platforms the same way, if we could trust that they were bringing value. And I think AI is is the same thing, is AI is, yes, predicting the next word. And of course, it’s gonna be on that now. But it’s if they’re giving AI overviews or AI answers that we trust, they’re trying as hard as they can to build those algorithms and classifiers so that we trust those answers. So it’s continuously been about trust, which funny enough ties back into the community and referrals because we want to do business with people we trust. We want technology that we trust. For me, it’s the most fun because I have that thesis of knowing what builds trust digitally. And now we have the tools to start kind of implementing that for clients and then build them ourselves. And I and I can trust that the software is going to work because now I can build it.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 21:13

Very cool. I love the single line that like goes through everything.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 21:16

 So let’s talk about the IKEA Billy chatbot story. Can you tell me about that? How do you use that to reframe the conversation when a client or team member is afraid that AI is going to replace their job?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 21:28

Microwaves. I can’t remember if I’ve shared this analogy with you before or not.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 21:35

The funny thing is Jaunty, though, is that like we don’t have a microwave in my house. My wife’s like against microwaves. So but I but definitely go.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 21:42

Yeah, no, and we’ve gone with and without one as well. But when microwaves first came out, and it it’s the same industrial story over and over again, but I find it especially useful in the town that I’m in in hospitality, which is wineries and restaurants and luxury hotels and everything else. Um, when microwaves first came out. They were this big massive box that you know you you bought and sit on your counter and everybody didn’t quite know what to do with them, but everybody you know knew they needed one. But everybody in the industry that besides microwaves was afraid that it was going to kill restaurants because everybody was going to make food at home and they were going to get fast food. And it did not do that. In fact, it did the opposite. It created fast food restaurants, it created entire industries of microwaveable foods, of like-minded now air fryers and other you know home appliances. And guess what? People still went out to restaurants and they went to high-end dinners and luxury dinners because they appreciated it even more. And there were new jobs created and new and people always want more. They’re always gonna want more and they’re gonna always want the best of something aspirational, right? So I think AI is just going to level set some things, but it’s also going to, it’s there’s going to be a gap. There’s a lag this time for sure, because things are moving so fast. But I think AI is not, you know, so if I say it’s a fancy microwave, I’m definitely gonna get, you know, you know, sideswiped for that. But I think that it creating new industries and new things that we want that we don’t know we need yet is definitely where it will go.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 23:14

I think it’s the perfect example. I don’t think you told me that one before, but yeah, like it’s it hits right on the money.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 23:20

People aren’t gonna want microwaves and some people aren’t gonna want AI and they’re gonna resist it as much as they can. And that’s fine. They’re they’re happy.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 23:27

Where do you think most marketing teams are still getting AI wrong? Either they’re underusing it or they’re using the ways that can create problems.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 23:33

There’s no balance of of guardrails and exploration. You have to explore. It’s kind of like it’s kind of like back in the old days of white hat, black hat SEO. You have to walk up to the edge of the cliff to know what is is bad and then you know, step back a few paces and all right, what is good. There are companies that either resist, no, don’t use AI, don’t put anything of our information in AI. You, you know, they lock it down and they give you very specific parameters. So therefore, no one gets to learn how to use it and explore. But if you give them too much exploration, then yeah, they’re just gonna, you know, and they copy paste and you know, grab someone else’s, then all of a sudden you’ve got security issues. We’ve got to find that medium level is is between guardrails and exploration. It was interesting. I was looking at some stats from SEO Week, and one of the most interesting ones is that the rate of adoption with AI is highest, nearly 70%, in the high net worth individuals. And they also did some things by demographics, but also, but definitely by income levels, which makes sense because high net net worth individuals have a reason to try something new. They also have the ability to pay for the best version. So they’re usually having a paid version, so they’re getting better answers and they’re going to continue to use it. Whereas someone else is, you know, too busy with their own day, just kind of trying to feed the, feed the child, walk the dog, do the do the things to explore, and they don’t have the best version, so they’re getting okay results, and they haven’t really had the time to strategically think about how this can improve my life. So is it ranged from like 34% adoption at the 50% income level to you know 70% adoption at the you know, upper 2% of income levels.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 25:14

Especially we’re in the industry, we’re using the tools. A lot of people are like, yeah, like Google’s dying and everyone’s using ChatGPT to search for things. But in reality, it’s like you said, like, yeah, there is a lot of change, but not everywhere, right? It’s happening in a certain segment, but other segments, they’re happy where they’re at. Or like you said, like the versions that are available to them just aren’t there yet and they’d feel more comfortable just using. So kind of have to keep that in mind, just because what you see uh around you doesn’t necessarily mean that’s actually the truth. That’s out there.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 25:43

The trajectory is there. It will, you know, it is faster than things that we’ve seen before. I don’t and it will slow down, but um, maybe it won’t. You know, I don’t know. I think you know there’s also a chance that you know we’ll all die you know, at the hands of of Terminator, but I doubt it. People are pretty smart.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 26:01

Aaron Powell The Matrix is one of my favorite movies. So I definitely keep that in the back of my mind.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 26:06

Right.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 26:08

All right. So let’s get into the AI entity blueprint. I want you to start from scratch. What is it and what gap does it fill that a traditional brand guide simply doesn’t?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 26:18

So when I was thinking about how to introduce clients and companies to AI and what they needed to be successful, I was thinking about what do they know. And everybody starts when they either have a startup or a company or they want to refresh their brand. They start with logos, colors, taglines, fonts, and those are so important to them. And it’s not always the thing that actually brings them business. I’m so ingrained in search, I wanted something that would be similar, right? Well, this takes that, and under you have to understand your entity because your entity, you know, your brand, your product, your services, now in person, place, thing, events, what those entities are. We’ve understood from since BERT with Google Search and forward, that entities and that structured data is really what’s going to be driving things. They’re how they’re understood for trust. Entities and their attributes and their values. Values are not their moral values, but their data values. I’ll use a winery, for example. A winery is an entity, right? It typically has a vineyard. That vineyard has maybe outdoor patios overlooking it, which is an attributes. Um, it’s in a Texas AVA district. It has number of acres that are planted and number barrels that are harvested. So entities, attributes, and values. That framework and building that in is what most people are missing about their brand and their products and services. So we built an AI entity guide that is your brand and entity guide, starts where the visual guide stops. Being knowing how to talk about your brand, the way machines and then people are going to want, so that you’re providing that trust of useful information is something we’re building so that they can use it in social, in PR, in their website, in newsletters, in directory listings, so that there is a consistency that builds trust because now AI has the compute power to corroborate all of these places that your brand is mentioned and credentialed and licensed. And it can corroborate that in the way that it couldn’t in the past, where in the past your website might have been your one source of truth that Google trusted, but now it’s all of these things and they layer in together. And if there’s any inconsistency in that, it dilutes your trust. And AI LLMs will actually wanting to deliver trust, if they see an inconsistency, will delegate you lower and promote someone else because they want to give a trusted answer. So this builds that consistency and trust factor across all of your channels when you across all of your departments as well. It’s not just SEO anymore.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 28:45

Why do you think consistency equals trust?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 28:48

Consistency is an interesting one because it’s not repetition, but it’s consistency. I would think repetition is a copy and paste. If you have the same bio, you know, we’ve been told for years, social channels, you need to speak to your audience and it needs to be different for every channel. But if you’re consistent about who you are, just you wouldn’t you wouldn’t describe yourself maybe in a conversation to your grandchild the same way you were your grandmother, but you would still talk about the same topic, probably. So I think that consistency builds that trust because that is how the LLMs are corroborating that evidence right now. And we’ve gained the system so much as search marketers that people don’t want just one thing. And in fact, that’s how useful we are, right? We, as people using technology, go to Reddit, go to reviews, go to read an article and it’s been published in PR. We look for comparisons. We, as human nature, look for that trust comparison as well. So it’s natural, I think, for LLMs to do that as well. And when there’s an inconsistency, it starts to throw up a flag. And when that competition is so tough, uh you can’t afford a flag.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 29:52

Yeah, and I love, I love how you described that it’s not just a copy and paste, right? It’s still the same concept, and that’s what’s consistent, but doesn’t have to be exactly the same. You’ve mentioned Will Reynolds’ style of thinking here. The idea that one bad review or one piece of inconsistent information can derail everything, right? So walk me through that logic. How does the one bad actor problem show up in this entity strategy?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 30:16

It goes, I’ve been interested in looking at Google classifier information. So nerd out for a second where we think about what’s in actual, you know, the black box, the Google algorithms. You know, we know a lot about what those classifiers are through leaks, through query, and through many, you know, people you know standing on the shoulders of others that have done these experiments. But we can understand those classifiers. And they really are pass, fail, or hard veto. Um, sometimes there’s a partial in there or something like that. But when you’re, for example, looking at reviews, you can say, well, we’ve got you know 4.8, you know, average reviews. But if that 4.8 is over, and I’ll use reviews because I think it’s a common example everybody can relate to. If there’s a 4.8-review average and you’ve got a large percentage, just say you’ve got 5,000 reviews, right? There’s some, yeah, definitely some onesies and twosies buried in there, um, and maybe quite a few. They will persist in some way. And you might be compared to your competitor, you might have a better overall number, but people will say, I’ve got more reviews and a better number than my competitors. How come they’re beating us? Maybe it’s the content and the the veto in there that the words they’re using or more frequency recently of bad reviews of yours. So, or if it was a licensing or a filing in a in a lawsuit somewhere that was never answered on your website through reputation management or talked about and it just persisted, it’s always going to make remain there as a flag. So there yes, reviews, but it goes deeper than that. We’ve seen through the classifiers, if there is something that was truly a bad BBB rating, or you change company names so that to try and escape something for for that, it follows you and persists. Because now they do have the compute power to corroborate that evidence.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 32:08

But Jonti, it’s so hard to be perfect. So what do you do? Like, what is an actual business, especially a small business, right? You’re gonna have the ups, you’re gonna have the downs. Like what can they do? Because it’s literally like I can’t hide things anymore. Everything’s out there. So what’s what’s the answer?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 32:23

So many people want to bury it and make it go away and just get more reviews that are positive, or you know, just try and move past that with better PR and you know and other publications. But I think at some point, what I’ve seen is if you, as the owner of that brand or the voice of that brand, actually answer it and say, hey, here’s the thing. Either we messed up and this is why, and it you know, we won’t make that mistake again, or you know, the lawsuit got it wrong, or the reviews got it wrong, and and this is why we do it this way, and we’re gonna continue to do it this way, then you have to speak to your niche audience of who would understand that. So I think the the biggest way is is to answer it and whatever means that might be for your company, but don’t sweep it under the rug because it’s still there.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 33:09

And do you feel like the LLMs are looking at those answers and then weighting it accordingly? I do.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 33:14

They’re not going to get it perfect. We’ve talked about you know, there’s hallucinations, there’s problems, there’s everything else. Um whereas we’re understanding that you know Google classifiers, there was about 200, you know, Google classifiers in the algorithm. Uh, we’re already seeing with ChatGPT there’s over 800 classifiers, most of which are already starting out with local, which was a surprise to me. Yeah. But how do you deal with that? But you know, we’ll we’ll figure out which ones have the most evidence and the most weight. But I do think that as they get better at it, yeah, and structuring that data. Is it worth bringing up something, you know, from several years ago and answering it? I think that’s probably where you call your SEO or reputation management professional and find

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 33:52

 out.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 33:52

I mean, this wasn’t on my list, but now that we’re here, Google just came out and basically said that AI optimization is basically SEO. And you’ve got this whole world that’s fighting by wow, how can you say that? It’s different. Do you have any official statement on that right now?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 34:09

Coming back from SEO Week, those the people that presented there are brilliant. And if nobody here knows what SEO Week is, look it up. And if you’re interested in search, as they’re releasing videos, watch them, set the time to do it. It’s not just SEO. SEO was never really just SEO either. True. SEO was local, was you know, digital PR, was technical SEO, was content strategy. You know, SEO is never just SEO. So how can we say that LLM and search and that relationship is just SEO? It’s not. It’s it’s even more so because now, as we just talked about, and and I think Mike King and Will Reynolds both were telling you that you know, we we both respect their voices. Um, everything from relevance engineering to Mike talked about being a marketing engineer. You’re no longer an SEO operator or anything. We need to be marketing engineers. And the search teams are the ones that are positioned well to be that engineer because you have to engineer, as I talked about, this consistency of trust across your brand and your entities and everything, across social, across PR, across product management and just so many different factors. Those teams and large corporations don’t really like working together. They’ve got that, you know, you’re taking my resources, I don’t have time for you, all that. So there needs to be at some point a marketing engineer that is going to engineer what that strategy looks like for search, for LLMs, for PR, for all that. And it’s it’s part of your go-to-market strategy. But I think search teams are the ones that have the insight and the ability when it’s done right to manage that. So it’s it’s it’s not SEO. There will be SEO teams still. There will also be AI teams, but there’s also got to be an overarching strategist that’s driving that and keeping it together.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 35:58

I I appreciate it. Thank you. I I just think it’s annoying that it like happens over and over again where Google comes out and says it’s this way and everyone knows it’s not that. And it’s just like, why can’t we just be on the same page? It’s literally been this tango for 25 years. It’s ridiculous. But hey, I guess that’s part of the fun. At least, you know, who who knows what we’ll actually end up

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 36:20

 calling it. As you know, on this show, we define mentorship pretty broadly. It can be a person, a philosophy, a book, a room you walked into at the right time. Who or what has shaped how you think about this work most deeply?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 36:31

I think I am who I am today because of several mentors. I call them past lives, they were past careers. I have a degree in in finance, I have a degree in architecture, I taught architecture school. I’ve worked in in so many different industries until I found search and something that kept my interest. But I think back in architecture school, that those professors engaged me and trained me more than anything that I’ve prepared for the rest of my life. And one of the professors there, when he passed away, it was at his memorial service. And I had worked as him as a graduate teaching assistant, and we had gone on to teach at the university together, where he came down as a nice switch where I was his student, his graduate teaching assistant, and then he came to actually teach at the school and in my my studios as well. So a full circle moment. So at his memorial service, people came up to me because they knew we’d had a relationship and they were having a display of his work. He was also an artist. Person after person came up to me that had gone on in their field in architecture and what he had meant to them. And they all shared these poignant stories. And what I did realize was walking around looking at his artwork, which we think of an artist that is their body of work, is that it’s, you know, a legacy leave behind and it becomes more valuable after they’re gone. But I realized his body of work was the people he had touched and the way he had helped them and the way he had silently encouraged them. And that became the most powerful image for me of if at some point in some place in this world, I could leave a body of work that had contributed to an industry. And I think that’s where I came from this idea of sustainable ethical work to do good for our clients. And when I worked at Schiphol, one of their taglines was, you know, do good. And it was that simple. So I think that starting out was uh, and I’ll I’ll name him as Richard Farrier, was uh an amazing professor, and his body of work uh persisted beyond him. And I think each of us that can contribute to a body of work in an industry is blessed.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 38:32

That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing. You’ve mentioned potentially thinking about an exit at some point. What does an exit actually mean for someone like you? And how are you potentially thinking about building towards it?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 38:43

An exit for me would mean that I get to spend the time picking. I I don’t know that there’s an actual exit exit. It means there’s a time that I’m not day-to-day operational and that I can pick and choose even more so than I do my clients or the things that interest me now and still contribute in a way.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 39:01

I love that. I I I I was hoping that was the answer. Right. Because it it doesn’t mean, oh yeah, I’ll sell it off and go to no, it’s like, okay, I still I what I do is who I am and I love it, and I just get to do more of it and maybe push away some of the things that aren’t truly aligned. Good answer.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 39:17

Yeah, that’s the the best, right?

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 39:19

All right, it’s time for our lightning round. So I’m gonna ask you a question. Doesn’t have to be a long answer, but if you feel like you want to get into it, you can and let’s see how it goes. All right. What’s one thing the marketing community is still sleeping on? Something you wish more people were talking about seriously. I mentioned it, trust. Oh, good good answer. One AI tool you’re using right now that more marketers should be experimenting with.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 39:43

It’s secret sauce. I’m gonna get in trouble for this. I’m giving away Shyler Deland, I don’t know how to say his name, has a tool called Rela it’s relationalseo.com. And it’s where you can actually go in and query against Google classifiers and either grounded or or training data, both in Google or Chat GPT now that he’s had an add-on. But I’ve learned more from that in the last few months of just actually seeing, I was like, no, Google has this wrong. His tool is wrong. And I’m like, no, that’s what Google actually sees, and we have it wrong. So relationalseo.com, I believe is the URL. We’ll get it in the show notes.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 40:23

Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for sharing that. What’s the most recent thing you said yes to before you felt ready?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 40:29

Probably going back to going to SEO week. It was, it’s a it’s a big room. And I wasn’t even speaking or anything, right? But it was just a big room and it was a big expense. And going to New York, which is, you know, for someone who actually doesn’t like people, there’s a lot of people there. So I wasn’t quite ready, but I just said, I’ve got to go. I’ve just got to go. That’s because that’s that’s where I need to be in that room.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 40:51

I’m glad you went.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 40:52

Me too.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 40:53

A book, thinker, or resource that changed how you see marketing or business that most people in our world probably haven’t read yet.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 40:59

Everything kind of goes back to Shippel, darn it.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 41:02

Okay. Ed Ed was a good guy. He is a good guy.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 41:04

I know, right? There was a book there that was, you know, required reading for us, and it was winning. And winning was more about people and less about marketing. But also, if you read it right, you understood marketing as well. So if you start to understand human nature and people going back to trust, then you’ll you’ll get that.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 41:22

And then the final question you’ve lived in big cities and now in Fredericksburg. What’s something that small town life has taught you about business that no marketing conference ever could?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 41:32

Go out and support your your local business. Get away from Amazon as much as you can, get away from fast food as much as you can, find the people in your community that are doing it and support them, even when it’s harder, because it it sustains itself.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 41:48

Just on that topic, because just this happened a couple of weeks ago. I for what I talk about my parents a lot, but they they run a jewelry business and someone recently called them up and’s like, hey, like I know I could buy this from Tiffany or Cartier or whatever it is, but I saw that you’re a local Houston business and I wanted to support you. And I just thought that that was amazing. Because like you don’t hear that often. So there are people out there who think that way, and I think more of us can, right? Like if we can help support the little people, or not little, but you know what I mean. It it it helps uh everyone around much better.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 42:19

I mean, even in Houston, you know, or you know, other big cities that we’ve been in, yes, those businesses, local businesses exist. They don’t get as much of the same feel because it is so large, and you don’t realize that they’re local, but they support families and they support, you know, an economy there. So it might be harder to realize that they’re local and that they need your support as much as they do because it’s overshadowed by tall buildings. But

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 42:45

 yeah.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 42:46

Yeah, that’s a very good point. Well, Jonti, where can listeners follow your thinking and get in touch?

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 42:51

Who digitalstrategy.com is our website. Um, but in reality, you should come to Fredericksburg and share a glass of wine.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 42:59

It’s true, and I need to do that.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 43:01

So I’m you can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on Instagram, but you know, let’s get back to to people again too.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 43:09

100%. Cheers and the Chayim to that. Sajanti, this is the conversation I’ve been wanting to have with you for years. And it delivered everything I hoped it would, and really did. Like this really was special and amazing. Thank you for being so generous with your thinking, your frameworks, and your honesty about where this industry is heading. I’m really glad we finally made this happen. Thank you.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 43:29

You’ve been a joy to be able to call a friend all these years. So thank you so much.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 43:36

Pleasure.

 

Jonti Bolles (Guest): 43:36

I appreciate it and I’m proud of what you do.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 43:40

Thank you. Thank you for your support. And thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll speak with you next time. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedmentor.com and at the DM Mentor on Instagram. And don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts for more Marketing Mentor magic. See you next time.