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The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.
In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Meg Clarke, owner of Clapping Dog Media, to talk about how getting found online has shifted from gaming search engines to being discovered by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
They get practical fast: why keywords are giving way to 23-word prompts, why your About page suddenly matters, why LinkedIn beats Reddit as a source AI tools trust, and how Meg now runs tech audits and analysis through Claude skills and Cowork to cut payroll and take real vacations.
The conversation also opens up into something bigger — how AI lowers the barrier to starting a business, why it changes the math differently for owners than for employees, and Meg's passion for helping more women step into entrepreneurship.
- Matt Stauffer on X
- Tighten Website
- Meg Clarke on LinkedIn
- Meg’s Website
- Dan Martel Book
- Allie K. Miller on YouTube
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Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
Creators and Guests
What is Pragmatic AI with Matt Stauffer?
Pragmatic AI is a podcast about practical AI for business leaders, developers, and thinkers—the stuff that actually works, not the hate or the hype. We cover using AI tools day-to-day across the spectrum of human experience.
The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.
T-I-G-H-T-E-N.
We will take your AI ideas, prototypes, or even vibe-coded apps,
and we'll take them to production.
Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.
Welcome back to Pragmatic AI, where we talk about using AI in the real world.
What works, how to use it well, and when it causes more harm than good.
Practical tools and real trade-offs for builders and business leaders.
And my guest today is my friend Meg Clarke, the owner of Clapping Dog Media.
Meg, would you mind saying hi to everybody and telling them what you do?
Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
Thank you for having me a guest on your show.
Yeah, I'm Meg Clarke and I have been the owner of Clapping Dog Media for about last 10 to
15 years.
And our goal uh is to help clients get found.
It started off, of course, by Google.
So we were working in SEO to help clients rise to the top of page one.
And as of recently, we are helping people get found by all of their favorite chat tools.
Yes.
And I've heard that some people are starting to use something called GEO.
What's your feeling about that?
Is that sticky?
Is that something you actually use when you're talking to people?
No, I don't.
feel like there's too many acronyms.
so, so no, I, I mean, I know a lot of people do and there's no like, no, no shade on that.
I just, I don't know.
I just talk about it like, Hey, like I want you to get found wherever people are
searching.
And that's on AI or Google AI visibility, maybe.
I don't know.
well, I mean, it's great because you already pitched you said I want people to be found,
which immediately you didn't say I want to optimize your position on a search engine.
I'm not trying to game Google.
I'm trying to help you be found, which allows you to expand into people are looking
different places than they used to.
Great.
We'll help you with that, too.
yeah, absolutely.
Because organic search just, over time, the arc of success is the people who find you
organically, meaning they're typing in a search word on any of their tools and they find
you, they tend to be warmer, better clients.
Like, it's better than ads, it's better than, like, kind of long-term.
I like all sorts of marketing and I like all forms of marketing, but organic traffic is
just consistently strong.
regardless of the tool that they use to get there.
Yeah, so I um want to set a little bit of background, not only for folks listening, but
also for me.
I made websites on CMSs for clients in the late 90s, early 2000s.
And at that time, uh we had to be really considerate and aware of SEO and people were
thinking about all these really complicated things.
And where I landed at the time and where I've led every client I've ever had since is if
you make good content and the HTML is structured semantically,
ah and people link to it and then that's 90 % of the game.
And I have not thought about it much since.
um So before we go into the shifts that have happened over the last year, has that still
generally been kind of where you live?
Because I know there's some people who live in the, yeah, that's true, that's table
stakes, but we got to hyper optimize for the Panda release or the whatever.
And there's some people are like, look, I'm just trying to help people get to that 90%.
Like where do you live in that world?
I live on the client focused, content focused, let's appeal to the people who are looking
for us, much more so than the hyper focused, hyper optimized, like keyword backlinks.
um am much more, let's be simple and true and honest about who we are and what we do and
how we help people.
And then it's gonna find us the right clients.
I mean, typically the people that I work with are not people who are trying to sell
t-shirts or chopsticks and they're not looking for, you know, 12,000 transactions a day.
We need a couple of really good clients in a month.
because of that, don't have, we're not, I'm not slicing, I'm not going to be so hyper
about backlinks or whatever.
Got it.
So obviously one of the things for us to talk about today is the way that your industry
has changed in terms of what you're recommending to people.
Being optimized for being found by chat agents is different than being optimized for being
found by search engines.
But before we go down that road, I'm curious, when did your personal at work, but your
personal feel like, this AI thing is something I either want to or need to start
integrating into my personal workflows as I do my day-to-day job.
Like what was that?
timeline and what was that experience like for you?
Well, that's a great question.
I mean, I'm kind of a curious person.
And so when, you know, all the hype came out about chat at the very beginning, I was like,
my gosh, look, it wrote me a poem and a song and like Elvis's voice.
And this is like amazing and hilarious and fantastic.
And so it was pretty quick to see how smart it was and how like, it's really good at
synthesizing things, taking all kinds of information from all over the internet and like
bringing it together.
And so I was playing with it like everybody else.
was taking pictures of my pantry and having it make me a meal plan and what can I cook
with these ingredients?
And that's all really fun.
that was from day one.
I was like, oh, wow, look, I can have a video now.
Like, cool, tell me what I, like, here's my closet.
How can I make it more organized?
So I did that.
But then once you start using it to like ask for things and you realize how much better it
is from a search engine, like,
it takes the onus of the searching on them and they tell you like, here's three answers.
Here's what you should consider and why, versus the Google way where you get all these 10
links and you get ads and questions and you have the onus on research is on the person.
And so that's kind of a lot of work.
That's why people only look at the top three links because it's a lot of work.
That's why you need to be at the tip top of Google.
But I really like enjoyed that.
process and how they just kind of turned search on their head.
And I was like, oh, you know, everybody's going to use this because it's better.
Yeah.
And it makes sense that a lot of us got there eventually, but as someone who thinks about
discovery and search on a day-to-day basis, you probably kind of picked that up earlier.
um I know that a lot of, so I've had, you know, folks on who are writers and everything
like that.
Like, were you immediately thinking about ways that your clients would be generating
content using this, or was it primarily more about discovery?
Like, what angles kind of really came to mind to you first?
Well, at first I started with content because that seemed like the fastest and the
easiest.
And so that was so funny because you're like, wow, look, this can make, this can create
content in eight seconds.
And it's pretty good.
And so now, you know, I certainly had clients over the last prior to chat who were
spending, you know, they were going through all of the Fivers and the uh different ways to
find freelancers and they were paying for content.
And then I would, they would give it to me to optimize it.
And I felt like the content that we were getting from these third parties, like not
hardcore, not consistent, not high-end writers, was very similar to the initial output
from ChatGPT.
So I was like, wow, this is gonna save time and energy and admin, because we're not gonna
have to find these freelancers anywhere in the world to create us this basic blog post.
And so at first, I'm like, this is amazing.
We can eliminate that.
we can create content on the fly.
But then you're like, wait a minute, if I can do this, everybody else in the world can do
this.
So it didn't take long to realize that we were gonna end up with, you know, just a massive
amount of content and none of it being that good.
So, we're unique.
Yeah, it's all the same.
It all sounds the same.
It's in this, you know, fast paced discovery world.
And so that was like step one.
And then a half second later, we're like, okay, this is dumb.
We need to not do this and we need to be different and not use chat to create all of our
content because that's what everybody in the whole world is going to do.
And that's not gonna make us special.
So then I started thinking more deeply about how to use it and not just take it at the
surface level.
I think I asked this question on every episode of this podcast on a purpose but I you
know, it's fungibility something you're thinking about with your clients about the ability
to differentiate themselves from everybody else doing the same thing and Does this well if
we want to be different everybody else then our content needs to be not the same chat
generated You know slop that everybody else's is that like a yeah.
Okay.
That's part of what you're thinking about.
Yeah
Absolutely.
I think, you know, maybe one day, you know, with projects and all the different tools, you
can really create a uh custom project that really talks in your voice and the tools.
But in the beginning, we were not there yet and everything sounded the same.
And
It wasn't helping anybody because Google, well, all of the tools are looking for where to
put you in their catalog of memory.
If you think of search, any kind of search, whether it's AI or Google, as a giant library,
their job is to figure out where you fit in that catalog, like what shelf, where you go.
And if you're too generic and not separate and not...
you know, unique, if you don't have a voice, they don't know where to put you.
So they just put to you in this giant bed of like, blah.
And so that's our job.
Yeah, and if we think about a lot of this as content not for the sake of discoverability,
but content for the sake of actually providing value to the customers Chat GPT generated
slop.
Nobody's gonna read that right?
Like it's there so that a search engine indexes it which means that the smarter the search
engines get the more they deprioritize Chat GPT generated slop for all your content and
even maybe not chat generated slops sometimes it's also fiber generated slop, but like
If your content is slopped for a search engine, the smarter search engines get, the less
you're gonna get rated.
And that's always kind of been the thing, right?
Like every time there's a new version of like, again, I remember Panda specifically, but
then there's a new Google ranking algorithm, the more you are gaining the system, the more
you were harmed.
And the more you're just creating really good, actually meaningful stuff that people would
actually wanna consume, the more you're boosted, the smarter they get,
That's exactly right.
Because we are, I mean, our first step is getting found by these tools, but it doesn't
matter.
It's vanity if you don't actually get clients.
So even if you are getting found and you are getting recommended and you're at the top of
Google, if you stink as a business, you're not going to get new clients.
it's like visibility is like the vanity metric of traffic is the vanity metric.
It's like.
Mm-hmm.
I could bring tons of clients to you, if you're a terrible business, what does it matter?
So you have to play with that.
It's a pendulum.
You have to play with that balance.
Yeah, so if you have a company, can you give me, specifically by name, but a generic kind
of like sort of client you would get so we can kind of walk through what today's process
is for them thinking about discoverability?
Are we talking mom and pops?
Are we talking agencies, boutiques?
Like who's like your middle of the road kind of customer?
Yeah, well mostly service-based.
So most of my clients have been around for two plus years They're at the point where they
have an established business.
They have good clients.
They get a lot of referrals most of their clients are from person to person and they're
ready to grow and expand so my clients have been lawyers and Landscapers and interior
designers and I have a handful of wealth and financial managers and
Mm-hmm.
pediatricians, and mental health specialists, like, they've gotten to the point where
they're busy, but if they want to grow, they need to reach people that haven't heard about
them.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let's take a doctor because I think of all those, that's most likely that someone would
have interacted with them.
So in the past, were you doing content audits and everything like that?
And if so, has that changed?
Is the first step of work with that client any different today than it was five years ago?
Okay.
I'm still doing audits just from a content perspective and a technical perspective, just
to make sure that the tools can actually get in and crawl.
I mean, you would be surprised the number of websites that have no index and blocked, they
don't allow crawlers in.
So sometimes it's just like the basics.
So we need to make sure that from a technical perspective, and that typically is a pretty
quick audit, that all the tools can go in and crawl the site.
And then we do look at
Like just for face value, what are you saying about yourself?
Who are you, who are you attracting just by your content?
Because a lot of times it was written by the owner or the founder with their very unique
perspective.
And it's sometime it's either too nichey and too detailed or not and not broad enough.
So we need to look at the words that you're using to see if it will appeal to those people
that we hope to bring to the door.
Okay, so that was what you did before.
That is what you're doing now.
uh Where do you start hitting the point in the process with these clients where things are
different?
ah And is that purely backend?
Is it purely your work that's different or are the clients doing anything different today
as a result of AI?
Great, great question.
Well, I do think it's worth noting that there is this, I'm going to make up a percentage,
but it's similar that a solid Google SEO foundation is the same foundation for AI.
Like the structure of the content, the type of content, just from a technical perspective,
like, I don't know, maybe 80 % of what you used to do for Google, you need to do for AI.
You can't have an AI, you cannot be found on AI and not Google, but you can be found on
Google, but not AI.
Okay.
Yeah.
we're gonna be very similar for a while.
One, there's a couple of things that we do differently though.
At first with Google, it was all keyword research and keyword volume and keyword
competitive competition.
And that's what we use to drive our content plan.
And we would see what keywords you're found for, the ones you wanna be found for, and we
would fill in the gap with those keyword research.
Now,
It's really keywords are being replaced by prompts and keywords were two or three words
and prompts are on average 23 words.
So that's different.
The prompt research is different.
We're using different tools.
It's not as accurate because it's just a little bit tricky.
So we are looking at competitors and competition and even the sources that the AI tools
are using to formulate their answers.
So our content research really does diverge from a, it used to be like keyword gap to now
sources and prompting.
Okay.
Yeah, I can imagine part of it is just you go to chat.gpt and you just say, what's the
best X and Y and then do we show up and who shows up and what are the little thing at the
bottom that says, this is where we got this information from.
We've talked to some people and they're like, well, you know, right now YouTube comments
and Reddit threads are some of the best places they're looking.
So, you know, look there.
And I imagine there's something to be done there.
And I also imagine a lot of people are trying to game those things.
So in the end,
Is there any kind of quick win obvious answers or is it all just create really good useful
content for people and then do your best in the moment to make sure it lands?
I mean, I think that's a great question.
mean, there's always gonna be people who are gaming.
Like I think Reddit is a really interesting case because years ago when the tools were
like learning, kind of before people, before they really rose to the top, they crawled,
like chat for example, crawled all of Reddit and Reddit came online and all this like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that.
This is our content and you need to pay us for this.
There's like,
privacy and logins and Reddit and chat was like, sorry about that.
We've already done it.
And so now they chat pays Reddit like 60 million a year to have access to their crawling.
So that is a hundred percent gonna get compromised.
People are gonna game that system with bots.
And I think the efficacy of that is gonna go down over time.
Whereas LinkedIn.
as an example, was like, you can have all of our stuff.
You can crawl every page, every comment, every everything.
We won't charge you a thing because in LinkedIn's mind, the more people that use LinkedIn,
the more that it bubbles to the top, the more they're going to get paid.
More recruiters are going to use it.
It's going to be more relevant.
So one of the strategies that I liked is to kind of stay away from Reddit because it's a
tricky, bot-filled world.
But if you
If your clients are on LinkedIn, then be there authentically on LinkedIn.
And you can put your content there, it gets crawled.
It's like the third, there's lots of research out there, but there's like the top five
cited sources for AI tools.
Like show up on LinkedIn, meet people, and then you can, like you get connections with
people and you get crawled, and it makes sense.
people are familiar with LinkedIn and not that people aren't familiar with Reddit, but
Reddit can get pretty swampy pretty quick.
Yeah, fascinating.
um Okay, so I talked a little bit about what your kind of early personal interactions
where you said I did chat GPT for these fun things.
We've talked a little bit about what your work interactions have been, but let's talk
about your day-to-day job.
Cause obviously some of it is all of that, right?
You're dealing with how to help your clients place.
But as you've thought about the work that you do day-to-day, are you building agent
systems and rag databases or whatever?
Like what's your actual day to day interaction with AI for yourself, not for your clients.
Yeah, 100%.
Like I am a Claude girl through and through.
So I have built uh skills for like, like I built the processes that I would bring my
clients through before, you know, was this the same process, regardless of the client, it
would be kind of bespoke output.
But the things that we did was, were exactly the same because I've been doing it for so
long.
I've been looking at data for so long.
I know it works.
And so I've just applied that to Claude and now it can do it automatically.
So I have agents running tech audits, doing comparison analysis and looking at promptings,
building me spreadsheets and now analyzing the spreadsheets.
And so I have uh been able to reduce my overall payroll because I have Claude doing
consistent good work.
Yeah.
So I, you've said a lot of words in there that I want us to dive into.
It's really good stuff, but it's interesting because very few people I talk to say all
those things when they're not talking about using them in Claude code.
And for those unfamiliar, Claude is both a, like a desk or a web application like chat
GPT.
And then also has a code specific version and the code specific version has skills and it
has agents and sub agents.
But I imagine you're talking more either, are you using Claude.ai or using Claude
coworker?
Like where's your, where are you actually interacting with Claude in a day to day?
I am in Claude Cowork.
It's like a desktop app that I have.
It's a desktop app is what it is.
And uh I have used it to build out projects for all of my clients.
I do very personal kind of bespoke all my onboarding questions, all my calls that of
course we record and transcribe.
All of that information is loaded into each client project.
And then, so that's kind of like on the surface level, but then
Kind of above that, I have these kind of processes or workflows that kind of apply to
every project.
And so I built that and Claude calls them skills.
And so it's just kind of a piece of code that it knows what to do so that you're kind of,
you get the same quality of output regardless of what the input is.
And so I'm able, mm-hmm.
did, did, uh, cause I actually don't use cowork.
I know I should.
Uh, is skills like a first party, like if you use cowork, is it really clear how to use
skills or did you have to kind of like dive deep?
Okay, cool.
Now, in fact, it set, like I was working on a project and I was like, hey, know, here's my
audit, here's like, here's, I've connected you to the search console or Google analytics
so that you get some data about it.
And then it's like, we're having this like conversation, if you will, me and Claude about,
hey, what do you see?
What are the patterns?
are the gaps?
And so then we worked through a project and it was like,
Hey, this is good work, Meg.
Like high five, Meg.
Would you like for me to create this a skill so that we can do this for other projects?
And I was like, hmm, okay.
And so then I said, okay.
And they're like, here's the skill is saved.
If you ever want to use it again in another project, here are the keywords that I need.
And it's basically is like run this, know, tech audit for this client.
And I was like, hmm.
And so then you just jump over to another project and you're like, does this really work?
And it does.
And so that's how I use it from, you know, a small agency.
It's me, I have an admin and then I have a team of people that I kind of outsource to if I
need designer writing or development help.
But they're not on payroll.
They're just contractors.
So I'm running the show.
So whatever I can do to be more efficient, I'm going to do.
That's awesome.
ah I'm very excited to hear about how you're using Claude Cowork because I have a VA and
what I don't want to do is have people who are actually like my employees, like losing out
on work because of my usage of these tools.
And also I want to make myself and my VA, our work to go further because of access to
these tools.
And so I've encouraged her really strongly.
like, you are responsible for a whole bunch of like repetitive processes that
probably are perfect candidates for this.
And she's also the editor of this podcast.
So she's listening right now and I'm like, Kayla, take notes.
uh Yes, exactly.
um But this is so cool.
And I think that this, because I've like I've told you before, I've had a variety of
different people in the podcast who are from various industries.
But I do think that this Claude Cowork
to structure your projects, regardless of what industry you're in, and to have these
repeatable skills if there's like every single time, or I did a really good job of doing
this one task with this one project, now make it so it's easier to do that really good job
more consistently.
I think that applies to almost every industry, right?
Like, yeah, so that's a really cool, is there anything about co work where you're really
frustrated or disappointed, or if you had your druthers, you'd get them to change
something, or is it just working out pretty well for you?
You know, I'm not smart enough to say, wow, I wish this would be better.
But I think it's kind of working out pretty well for me.
And the other like giant benefit is like the way I have mine set up and you can set yours
up in bazillion different ways.
But my VA, she's a queen, we're connected.
So she has her own account, I have an account and then they can kind of be shared.
So if I go on vacation,
Or if I want to be offline for a few days for whatever reason, she can run the skills.
She can do it as well.
So it really maximizes your time and it takes like myself out of the business.
Whereas before, like if I go on vacation, everybody gets a little, everything stops.
And so it's that book.
I read that book.
I think we've all read that book by Dan Martell about, I don't know how to replace
yourself or something, but it, he,
Here's the idea when they wrote the book was with people, like tell people how you do all
your things.
And this just translates to AI tools.
Well, that's I mean, so one of the things I'm always examining here is like one of the
good and bad things I say is in the intro.
What are the good and bad things it brings to us?
Because the bad things are pretty easy.
We've talked about slop out, but you know, today we haven't.
But I know you and I have before talked about like, what are the impacts on the world and
the environment, stuff like that?
Like we are all hopefully cognizant of the potential negative outcomes of A.I.'s
proliferation, and hopefully we can be a part of it, making it better.
But also it's very helpful when.
Every single person I've talked to at some point has said, whether or not you want to use
AI, feels inevitable.
It feels like it's already here and I have to keep up with it.
And that's not a great feeling, right?
You don't want something to inevitably drag you along.
So finding the ways where it allows us to be more the people we want to be and live the
lives we want to live and treat other people who want to treat them.
I'm like, that's what I'm hoping to focus in.
If it's really here to stay, if it is, we don't have the ability to say no to AI, right?
So it's either,
You're putting your fingers in your ears and it doesn't change anything or you're
accepting it.
I'm like, how do we accept it in ways that allow us to build a world that's kind of what
we're looking for, right?
So I love this idea of small business owners being able to take a vacation.
When people ask me about starting a business, the first thing I say is be prepared to A,
stop doing the thing you were doing and instead take that time running the business and B,
not be able to take any vacations until you have a team of 10, right?
So I'm like, this is nice.
Okay.
really excites me.
And this is where I hope to take me and my business in the future.
Like, I don't know when, but one of the things that really pumps me up is I work with a
lot of small business owners who are starting a new business or have been around for a
year or two, and they're really good at whatever their skill is, whether it is landscaping
or uh like painting or I don't even care, but they're good at their thing.
like whatever it is, and they want to step out of corporate or they have babies and they
want to stay home, the thing that's going to help them launch their business better and
faster is AI because they're not going to have to learn kind of like there's so much to
running a business.
There's so much admin.
There's so much stuff that when you're first starting out that takes you away from the
thing that you're really good at.
And I hope to train people to teach people like
Hey, like that gap can be a lot smaller so you can get up and running in your business
because AI can take this kind of repetitive admin tools that you don't even know that you
don't know when you're trying to start a business.
But there is magic there that will enable people to start their own businesses, to get
their expertise out there, to get their special sauce in the world faster.
And I think that's going to be the greatest benefit to AI in this like
worker generation.
I don't even know what that worker generation is, but you're going to be able to do more
faster.
ah Is there a part of you that is like man if I could just do that for people that might
be my thing or are you like I don't know like as they're working with me for SEO sure I'll
help in that as well
well, I mean, I'm really passionate about women and women in business and helping people
kind of crawl above that poverty line.
And so like I, yes, like that.
And I spend a lot of time doing that now with my clients of like, oh, like I use AI and
then I, know, we do like, let me show you how you can do this in your business.
Like this is going to make your calendar a little bit better if I show you how.
a lot.
So I do that with my current clients, but.
I just feel like there's this huge need of like just there's so many people who would do
really well with the business if they had the education and the capital or somebody to
help them.
And I feel like there's a sweet spot here that, you know, when I get rich and famous, I'll
spend more time doing, but I think we'll incorporate it in because it's inevitable and
it's coming and it's going to help.
especially women who are not adopting to AI at nearly the rate that men are, I want to
help them get there.
Okay, so let's say somebody's listening and they're like, that's me, Meg, you just talked
about me.
Obviously, one of the things I'm gonna tell them to do is reach out to you and kind of
connect with you, but what are some resources that you have found useful for you and your
clients to just kind of like learn?
Because there's just so many resources out there that are like, now you need to do Ralph
Wiggum and oh, we're in GPT 5.4, it's like the latest and the greatest and the newest and
every week it's something new.
What if any are reasonable, well, does that make sense?
practical ways of thinking about these things.
And it's also really overwhelming because every Monday you wake up and there's like 1800
new businesses out there or new AI tools out there.
And you have to kind of be disciplined, in my opinion, to like turn that off or you'll
spin your wheels, like reading and learning about new things and never actually getting
the work done.
Every week.
So there is one person that I follow very closely and she just we kind of like she's we're
like on the same level, we're the same vibe.
And her name is Allie K.
Miller.
And so I have watched every one of her YouTube videos and she has taught me about Claude
and she's taught me about chat and like when to use one over the other.
And she talks in like, I hope this is not offensive to her, but if I were like a five year
old who golden retriever, like that is me.
And she's done a really great job of explaining things and she's super high level.
She's, I mean, she's, she's worked in all of the major companies that you've ever heard
of.
Mm-hmm.
now is kind of on her own educating people on AI.
And I found her on a podcast and have soaked up everything she's ever said.
And she's the one that I stick to and try not to get too distracted by everybody else.
Okay.
Well, we'll make sure we link her in the show notes as well as everything that Meg has
been talking about so far.
um So if someone were, if they're saying, I am a woman, I either have a small business and
I'm struggling to stay above water or I'm, you know, I'm interested in starting one.
First of all, they should go check out Allie Miller.
But should they reach out to you or are there any resources where you're like, you know
what, in my dream world when I'm rich, I can be consulting women.
But until then, I turn them here.
Is there anywhere you would send somebody in that scenario?
That is a wonderful question and my answer is no.
I don't have any resources, but please reach out to me and we will come up with something
because that is definitely like the fire inside of like, you know, I'm doing this and lots
of other people can do this too.
you know, just don't be intimidated or be covered in imposter syndrome.
It's just, need to learn this.
We need a couple of things and that's really going to set you up.
So.
Reach out to me and we'll figure it out.
uh
You know some of the questions I ask at the end are related to things we've talked about
right now.
And I do want to ask this for you, even though I think you've gotten the answer, but do
you feel hopeful about the impact of AI in the world overall?
So you've talked specifically about how you think it's gonna enable some people to create
businesses, but we've also talked about there's some downside.
So overall, do you see a world in which there's AI as a better world than where we were
before?
Are you?
unsure?
Are you like, it's definitely gonna be worse?
Like, how do you look at it overall as its impact in society?
Overall, I think it's really positive.
I think that there are in right hands with good intentions, there's lots of things that
can be done for good, for the better, that will help people advance their businesses, help
people advance themselves.
And it just makes things, it's gonna make things more efficient and more productive.
And even if the better at the end of the day is it buys you more time and you get to stop
work.
at four instead of five, or you get to feel less guilty when you take your kid to
practice, and maybe you get to watch practice instead of doing work in your car.
Like, I think those little wins are gonna be, uh are big wins.
And I've experienced that, because I have teenage boys who do all the things.
And I used to always be the one sitting in my car doing all the work.
And yeah, like, and it's hard not to, and I get, it's hard, but there's always emails to
write, there's always,
you know, bills to do and there's always like the admin stuff.
it's like the stuff that I would do in my car was always like the stuff that I didn't have
to, it was like the stuff that I didn't have to think too hard about.
It was stuff that I could do in my car.
That is the stuff that AI is doing for me now.
um So when AI first came out, I had someone I knew who said, well, this is great because
AI is just going to make us more effective at our jobs.
And then we are going to be able to work 20 hour work weeks instead of 40.
it's great.
And I'm like, no, it's not.
We live in capitalism.
It just means that your boss is going to expect more of you.
But one of the things I hadn't thought about, and I've been having that conversation with
people for years at this point, but one things I had not thought about until literally
right now is that is the different story for business owners.
Like for employees, AI is just gonna mean you're expected to do more than before.
But for business owners, you are hopefully set up in a way where it's less about how many
hours you work and more are you delivering the things that need to get done for your
business to continue to be profitable.
And that's where that dream can be realized more.
Because like my job is not based on somebody saying, Matt, did you put your 40 hours in?
Nobody knows how many hours I work, but I know the things I have to get done.
And I hadn't thought until you said that, like, and if I'm getting those things done in
less time because I have this tool, then my life actually just gets measurably better and
I spend more time with my family.
thousand percent and that and it is it is a nuance but it is true and I think it will
enable more people to start the businesses that they've always dreamed about because of
that.
That's what I'm experiencing and that's what you know that's what I'm doing.
Yeah, I love that a lot.
I know we did have a great conversation on SEO, but I'm like, this is the fascinating part
of the conversation for me is like the AIs impact on business owners, on entrepreneurs, on
first time entrepreneurs, on prospective entrepreneurs.
There's a lot there.
And like I said, I don't use Claude Cowork I use Claude every day and I don't even have
Claude Cowork running.
And I'm like, well, apparently I need to.
So thank you for that inspiration.
I think so.
ah
So, okay, one of my other questions that I like to make sure we are able to ask is, has
your view on AI changed significantly over the last six months?
And it sounds like you're a pretty early adopter, so maybe the answer is no, but do things
look any different to you than they did November last year?
Yeah, I feel like it's getting better.
Like for sure, November of last year, you typed in stuff and you were like, everything
sounds the same.
There's like the whole em-dash world and everything sounds the same and how to make it
work for you long-term.
Like how can you customize it?
How can it be smart for my business and not just give me the answer that it thinks it
wants?
And I feel like in November, it was that.
It was telling me,
you're right, Meg.
This is I'm sorry.
I didn't I didn't see that.
And I feel like it's getting better at that.
Like you can change the settings in chat so that you can say, hey, don't agree with
everything I say.
Push back on me.
That's very helpful.
That's in the settings.
But then you can also just like like with I hate to be like the Claude girl.
But if in Claude, you can kind of shut down the rest of the Internet and say, here, I'm
just going to give you like this is this is a great example that I have.
I have a son who has
He extreme special needs and he has all kinds of services and help and he's in a group
home.
And the group home contract is like literally 55 pages on a PDF.
And just this morning, we needed to know where we send our check.
And I was like, it's in this 55 page PDF.
But I had loaded it into ChatGPT as an example, not Claude, and said, hey, I need an
address.
Like, who do I send this to?
And it was like, oh, it's cited on page.
like 19 at the bottom half of the page, this is where you your check to.
And I was like, that makes like, thank you.
Like it's stressful enough to be in the situation that we're in, but to like, just tell me
where to send the check, so helpful.
So for those reasons, like when I close it off from the rest of the internet, just get
smart on this document and tell me what I'm responsible for.
I really like that.
Yeah, I also did not know that was a thing.
Is that a setting or is that just instructions you give it?
Clearly you are a pro here at a level that I'm m not familiar with,
I've just given an instructions.
have my son's name is Joshua.
I have my Joshua project and chat GPT and was like, I just need you to get smart on the
sources that I give to you.
And I'm going to ask you questions about these sources.
So don't go pull things off of the internet.
Just read these sources and tell me what I need to know because I can't physically
understand 55 pages of this document.
Yeah, I don't know.
OK.
um There's so many nuggets coming out of here because I have had people talk about how
they'll use it for legal documents and it's making things up and it's referencing stuff
that's not relevant.
so just the idea once again, it is so much comes down to understanding what the tools are
good and not good at understanding those little toggles and these little tricks and tips
and how to prompt.
Well, there's a lot of people who are scamming trying to sell people just learn how to
prompt or whatever.
like
Outside of the scams, knowing how to direct the tools really is so important.
It 100 % is.
It 100 % is.
And a lot of it is just playing and not taking what it gives you as like, like don't just
take what it gives you and copy paste it into an email.
You actually have to read it and do it.
And then once you, and it does learn, like that's part of this generative AI world is you
can say, no, that's dumb.
I'm not, that's not what it says.
Like my son lives in Virginia, not Tennessee.
Like I don't, whatever, but you can, and it will learn and it will get better.
And like,
some of the updates that it is overwhelming because they're always updated.
You're like, what's 4.4 versus 4.0 in a lot of cases, it's they remember more.
They remember more history.
And so that's helpful.
Like nine months ago, it didn't have a memory and it just like it started working when you
started prompting.
But now they have a memory and they can think back and they can say, no, no, Meg, that's
not what we should be doing.
You told me that you wanted to change your service or whatever.
So ah to that, think that's really helpful that they're getting smarter and they have a
better, they have a bigger memory.
And so as long as you read it and you work with it and you tell it what to do, it does not
get offended.
It gets smarter.
Yeah.
OK.
This is great.
So obviously this conversation in a lovely way didn't go where I was expecting.
Are there any aspects of either what we originally planned to talk about in terms of your
day to day work at SEO or these directions we've gone about women entrepreneurs about how
we can use Claude Cowork Is there anything that you're like, I really feel like people
should hear this or something we should get to that we haven't?
Yeah, and that and it is regarding search because I do think more and more people are
going to be using whether it's Gemini or AI mode or chat or Claude, people are going to be
using these tools to find you in your business.
And one of the things they are computers and they need content that is specific and very
much about you.
So one of the things that I recommend is that you you're about page specifically or
I like about page is that you talk about your expertise, you put your certificates, your
diplomas, the degrees that you have, and you're very specific about who you are, what you
do, and the impact you have on clients.
Before, it lives, it should work on your about page or a main page of your site.
But like before, like Google never ranked about pages.
You would never find an about page on a Google results page because that was where we made
connections, we told people our favorite food and our first concert and my favorite movie
and Google did not care.
But this AI is looking for your expertise and are you who you say you are?
And so I recommend that you look through your about page.
Is it a true reflection of your expertise and not just your likes?
And that will elevate because it's easy to create content using AI.
but we need to do a standout with your expertise.
So look at your about page and make sure that it is more professional and less, I like
tacos.
Yeah, that's really helpful.
mean, I'm literally inspired.
I'm going to go give some notes to my team literally after this about that.
So that's very helpful.
If someone does not know if they even need these services, who where do you think we've
you talked a little bit about a lot of your clients, but where do you think someone?
goes from, look, I'm just trying to get myself on the internet to, actually need somebody
actively thinking about SEO for me.
Like, is it a size thing?
it a, we're established in our, you know, word of mouth business and so now we need to
expand outside of that.
Like, what's the trigger?
Great question.
think that's a trigger if you're not growing.
If you are a good business who has good results and you're not getting people outside of
your circle that don't know you, that's a sign.
And if you start hearing about competitors, like nine times out of 10 clients come to me
and they're like, I've been doing this for 15 years where a family owned business were
well established.
And this person has moved in to my space.
They're nine months old and they're getting all my business.
Who are these people and where do they come from?
Yeah.
and because they're showing up.
So I think younger, newer businesses are going to capitalize on this to build their
authority when a lot of times older businesses have experience and that's where they build
their authority.
So you're gonna have to do something to compete with a newer generation.
Yeah, that's super helpful.
ah Okay, we are close to time.
Is there anything else that you wanted to cover before I start doing our wrap up points?
Anything else that was on your mind?
Okay.
I appreciate it.
But no, I've given so many words.
I've said so many words.
so good.
There's I mean literally it's weird because usually if something is really dense and
there's a million things I need to take away it was one of those like really difficult
conversations and I'm like slogging through I'm like this was so great and it was so full
of Just useful nuggets.
Okay, so, you know at the end I like to read something from a community member where they
kind of share ways that they've used AI in their day-to-day life so Daniel Abernathy gave
us a few he said I
I've used it to help me come up with ideas for a Taskmaster style game I run for my wife's
family during the holidays.
I don't know what Taskmaster is.
uh Come up with activity ideas for a Cub Scout Den meeting and suggest cocktails based on
ingredients I have on hand and suggest diagnoses for a lump on my leg.
So there's quite a few here.
Yeah.
um So let's talk about the first two.
We've got Cub Scout Den meeting and Taskmaster style game.
um
I am not in a lot of scenarios where I need to come up with fun stuff.
My kids are nine and 13.
They're just not an age where I'm, you know, they'll say, daddy, tell me a story.
But I keep hearing people talking about making drawings and stuff like that.
Have you done just like fun friend gatherings or stuff for the kids or anything like that?
Or is that again, are your kids not an age where that's really kind of relevant for you?
My kids are 19, 17, and 14, and ah no.
ah I haven't done that, but I do like that idea.
Like it does make me wanna be like, like with the cocktail joints, like we can plan like a
fun themed cocktail party.
So no, but I do like that.
I do appreciate that of like, I need something to do.
I need like an icebreaker that's not, what was your first concert?
Yeah, yeah.
And so you for the the cocktail ingredients a brilliant idea I've often found myself where
I'm like, so my wife is She can look at the barest of cupboards and instantly like I'm
gonna make a shrimp risotto blah blah blah and I'm like, but I We're if I look at it.
I'm like I've got my ten recipes on my head And if I don't have the ingredients for one of
those ten recipes, it's not happening So I love this and you had mentioned that right you
said you you would pointed at your pantry and just say give me something to do How
successful has that been for you?
Like so successful.
Like I can't even tell you how successful it is of like, I will just take a video or a
photo and say, what, like, what can I make with all of this?
And it is magical.
And it will even say, I've connected it.
Like I live in Northern Virginia.
So there's like my go-to food stores at Wegmans.
And so I've connected it with my Wegmans and say, I go to Wegmans, this location.
And then it will say, okay, you have eight.
You have eight things that you need for this recipe, but you need to go to Wegmans and on
aisle 18, there's pick up this, whatever.
And I'm like, oh, there's that.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Quad can do that or is that a different tool you're using for that?
So, Claude, Claude can do it.
Before, I started with chat and I just took the video and I was like, tell me what I can
make.
And it will say, no, you have eight out of 10 ingredients for this.
So it will tell you what you can make today.
And then if you just go to the store and order these two things and get these two things,
you can make the rest.
It's magic.
thought I was pretty good at using AI.
You're teaching me.
have no idea what I'm doing.
This is amazing.
uh Okay, so the last one was diagnoses for a lump in my leg.
We both grimaced a little.
uh I have had several friends talking about how they're like, look, I know that chat GPT
is not a therapist, it's not a doctor, it's not anything else, but it helps me inform
myself so that I can go to the doctor and say, hey, I was concerned and.
I just wanted you to help me kind of think through these and I'm like, yeah, but can't the
doctor just do that?
And they're like, look, I had the doctor say I didn't think about that or it was able to
identify some kind of pattern that I wasn't.
I'm still skeptical.
I feel like we're going to get to a point where there's like a we trusted or we know we
know what it's good for and not good for from a diagnosis perspective.
But it feels to me like it's more likely that it's going to be at the doctor's office
where they're able to use it versus.
Da!
Web MD 2.0, right?
I'm just like, I don't know how I feel about this one.
I don't love that.
But what I have done with my doctors is you know how on your MyChart or your profile
they'll give you the digital file for all of your tests and whatever?
I have loaded those in and said, the doctor has said this.
This doctor said this about my thyroid levels.
What do you say?
so maybe as a second opinion, but if I had a lump on my leg, I think I would just go to
urgent care.
yeah, that's.
That's and this is the continued thing where every time I talk to somebody who's using AI
in a different way, I develop a little bit more of an understanding of looking at
something from like a like a just a slightly different angle about like maybe it can't do
this.
But what if you do this and it's, you know, taking advantage of the ways LLMs work?
versus the ways they don't work.
Because we just tend to think of them as like they're universally smart at the same level
across all applications.
And it's like, no, they can analyze data differently than they can come up with unique
ideas.
They can search things differently than they, you know, like they can review things.
So yeah, the idea of feeding it a bunch of data and saying, based on all of the medical
standards that you've read before, my age, my whatever else you know, is this thyroid
level of concern or not?
My doctor said this, are there any other things I should be thinking about?
Because I've
I've looked at lab results before and wanted a second opinion, so.
Absolutely.
And so yeah, and I don't know what this all I don't know what these proteins mean like I
don't know so like in didn't my and doctors are busy like did they really look at this
like I'd like did they spend enough time on this like I'm sure that they are but they're
busy so I I like to give it real data and then ask questions about it versus Solve this
problem for me.
So I like to I'd like to give it
on your own.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
to like be, you have to help them be educated first.
that's really good.
Okay, if people are fascinated by Meg Clarke and want to learn more about her, follow
everything she's doing or potentially contact her for work, how do they get a hold of you?
Oh, great question.
um I do a lot on LinkedIn.
I don't do, I spend more time on LinkedIn and I don't write a lot on my blog.
So I'm at Clapping Dog Media on LinkedIn.
You can find me or Meg Clarke with an E.
Either way, you'll get there.
And then my um website is ClappingDogMedia.com.
And you can always find my address or fill out my contact form and reach me that way as
well.
And all these links will be in the show notes as always.
uh Meg, this was, I knew it was gonna be good because we've talked beforehand and I think
you're great, but I did not know it was gonna be this good.
So thank you so much for what you're sharing.
And obviously um you and I share a dream of seeing more women being able to be
entrepreneurs and follow their dreams.
So thank you so much for the work you're doing there and for what you've shared here.
And I really hope that some people get in touch with you after this, but either way, I
really appreciate you hanging out today.
That was so fun.
Thank you very much.
Awesome.
And for the rest of you, we will see you all next time.
See ya.