Michael Trkolta — Rejection is Just Data: Redefining Sales, Strategy, and Trust

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to the Becoming Preferred podcast.

The podcast designed to help you level up your game and become the best version of you.

If you've ever felt like your business is spending time and money getting seen online, pouring budget into ads, SEO or endless social posts, yet you're still fighting for ideal clients on price, today's episode is going to change how you look at marketing forever.

Our guest today is Michael, founder and digital marketing strategist at Web Oracle.

Before building digital growth engines for over two decades, Michael operated at elite levels in completely different arenas.

Touring as a professional guitarist with artists like Shania Twain and playing pro tennis.

He took those exact principles of fundamental discipline, precision and systems thinking and brought them to the digital marketing world.

Michael helps businesses cut through tactical trends to focus on what actually matters, building the foundational digital presence that turns passive viewers into committed clients.

Today, we're diving into the difference between getting seen and getting chosen.

How to eliminate friction from your sales engine and the foundational shifts you need to make to become the undisputed preferred choice in your market.

Please join me for my conversation with Michael Tricolta.

Well, hi Michael, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Thank you, Michael, it's great to be here.

Thank you very much.

Well, and let's speak of here because we're online, you and I, but you're, you're on the other side of the world.

So let's tell our audience where you're at.

Melbourne, Australia, down the east coast, the furthest point, down along the bottom on the mainland, just next to Tasmania on the right hand side.

So it's already, I think you're about 17 hours ahead of us where we are in mountain standard time, something like that.

So let us know how the stock market does today so that we can take advantage of that, would you?

Because you're a day ahead so it should work out well.

Glad you're here.

I'm excited to chat with you and we have, you've got a very diverse background for quarter of a century and, but before we get in there, we're going to talk about marketing, we're going to talk about full service marketing, what the whole gambit looks like, where's it been, where's it going, how do you see things working in today's world, particularly with the advent of AI?

But I always like to give a little historical perspective because you came out of management, you went to school, you were going to be into management.

At one time you were a musician.

So go back, you're in High school.

Right.

And you're going to decide what you want to be when you grow up.

And I think a rock star was probably one of the goals.

But let's start there.

And then how did Michael become Michael?

Well, it all started really at school.

I was dropped off at tennis lessons, played tennis for a little while and then picked up in music.

We did music as well at school.

I'm pretty sure every kid did some music along the way.

I played guitar and ended up in a rock band and playing some session musicians.

And I ended up playing with one of your famous people.

Shania Twain.

Yes.

Yeah, great musician.

And then from there I decided, okay, well I need to change a career.

I need something that's actually gonna set me up for.

For life and be able to sort of do things I want to do in the business world.

So I kicked off with a publication that literally was the biggest selling publication down the east coast of Australia, 1.5 million readers.

Then all of a sudden the advent of the Internet kicked in and I was looking at this and then all of a sudden a lot of advertisers that we were getting through our publication decided, hey, do you build websites?

Like yeah, I think we do.

So we got a web developer and we kicked that into gear pretty quickly.

And.

And then I made one of the biggest decisions of my life and that was to sell mid our publication to a printer because I could see where things were going.

And that was probably the soundest decision I made.

And from there everything just skyrocketed in terms of just building out websites.

These were one pages, Michael, and we were churning out about 30 of these a month with, you know, I think one developer and a part time developer and one designer.

So from there it started building and then marketing kicked in.

How do I rank, how do I get on top of the next guy and how do I change things around so we're seen and all that sort of stuff.

And then we started employing SEO people and this was at the time when Google Ads were not even present.

They kicked in a little while later with that yellow banner I'm sure you probably remember.

Probably would certainly.

And then that kicked in, then they top and tailed it and then all of all.

Everything sort of kicked into gear and you know, the rest is history.

I built my company by adding niche components to.

We have a marketing arm, we have a link building arm, we have a AMPA brand which is a design component to our business.

We which gives us the opportunity to leverage everything that we do, but more importantly be able to Be very strategic in our processes to give our clients the best outcomes required.

Well, you're definitely full service after when you go to your website.

There's just nothing you don't do in that whole world which I think you have to adapt to those things.

And the technology is evolving so quickly.

Like I've seen SEO go at ADWord and it's become the analytics are just there.

We can find everything back in.

I grew up in the ad man days where we, you know, spray and play or pray and you put the ads out there and it was really about awareness.

It was hard to monitor it.

What publication did you see our ad in was about the only KPI you could get.

But now everybody has that and it.

So you know where your money's being spent, you know how effective it's going to be spent.

You can distribute the content, but we're bombarded.

So how do companies today with all of those tools and everyone has access to those tools now.

So that's kind of been democratized.

And with AI coming in, how do, how do you get noticed today?

What's working to like what isn't working anymore?

What do you see where it's broken and where do you see it going?

Where, where should we be headed?

Well, most businesses think their marketing problem is, is reach.

It's not, it's when people find them, nothing makes them the clear obvious choice.

The website doesn't convert, the messages don't connect and the positioning is pretty much generic.

So being, you know, being seen is table stakes being preferred is strategy.

So you've got to be strategic about what you do because we have now layers involved in our marketing systems that really require a process.

Understanding the channels and where your audience is and then coming up with a strategic process that obviously going to put you right in front of people.

I mean the advent of AI at the moment's added another layer.

We're speaking about that a little bit earlier and you know, lean into it.

It's a great opportunity to be able to, you know, improve your processes, get your work done a lot quicker, check over things.

And talking to your point earlier about that human element component, it's critical to have that there all the time.

You've got to have that there because you, you need to fact check things, right?

Provide someone with an AI component or a platform and they might not.

They, they'll get through it.

But if you provide it out to, let's say a 16 year old, you probably won't get an outcome from them because the tool is specifically designed well, not specifically, but there's no book that comes with any AI platform.

I've seen a bunch of stuff on the Internet and you're probably seeing things coming out at the moment.

But you know, AI is about you do you, I do me and you get, you get through it.

But processes are really critical in this world at the moment, especially online.

And all the foundational components, you know, like what you do, for example, with your work and how you help people.

Those elements, those key positioning cornerstones are still all there.

It's just these new layers that keep appearing to time.

Right.

Well, you said it.

Well, you being seen, the technology's there, the strategies are there, the fundamentals are there, the frameworks are there.

But getting chosen is a different game.

And that's part of your core philosophy, is we get our clients chosen so we can use the tools.

And that's the human aspect of it.

I think you've got to connect at that human level and in an authentic way.

Otherwise I'm going BS or it sounds like an AI voice or you're just saying, you know where it's going.

It's understanding human nature.

And that comes from experience, that comes from insight, that comes from being on the planet long enough to, you know, we have five generations of buyers out there and they all communicate a little differently.

Right.

Like baby boomers.

We want to hear our messages a certain way.

We'll watch an hour video on something, we'll re, we'll watch an infomercial because that's how we were raised today.

You've got, you know, three minutes or 30 seconds if you're on TikTok.

In order to get.

And the attention span of the younger generations just isn't there.

I remember developing courses, we used to do courses, 2030 minute modules.

Now they have to be two to three minutes because everybody's kind of ADD and there's just so much coming.

So how do we stand out?

And I think it's connecting in that human level.

So how do you approach that?

How does your firm at Web Oracle, how do you approach that?

Making sure that that messaging is resonating with that core audience.

Yeah, that preference gap.

Really there are three things that make business preferred rather than just present.

So clarity.

They know exactly who they help and how.

Trust is definitely there.

You need that digital presence, signals authority before anyone speaks to you.

So.

And friction free conversation.

You've got to be able to do that.

Most businesses are missing at least two of those.

Fix them and you stop competing on price.

Yeah, well, there's that's why I think it's been commoditized.

So it's.

And we see it.

There can only be one price leader, right?

And you can be price leader in just a stroke of a pen.

So.

And it seems like a race to the bottom.

Like, I come at it more from the sales end of it, and I watch salespeople, professional salespeople, they get great collateral.

Marketing does a phenomenal job, or they' agency does a great job.

And then the salespeople get.

There's this disconnect and then it's a race to the bottom.

And they're just.

If you give them that leeway, they'll take it.

They just want to get the transaction and they're just using that one currency, right?

Just that dollar.

And like I said, it can only be one.

One price liter in the whole process.

So I think it's attacking it where you said, I want to chat about your translating elite performance to business systems, because that's interesting.

So before founding Web Oracle, you toured as a guitarist with, like, Shania Twain, and you played tennis, professional tennis.

What did elite performance in music and athletics teach you about marketing systems and business growth?

Being very strategic and being prepared for everything that you do.

So you don't get a second chance when you're on a tennis court.

You don't get a second go at a note when you're on stage.

So being exact and very precise.

But being prepared is critical in terms of understanding what you need to do.

So don't go practicing something, you know, ad hoc.

Get everything ready to go.

Play your chords, understand what you're doing, and then go out and play.

Learn your parts.

Learning your parts really relates back to all your business, all the business acumen that I've gathered over the years, and it certainly helped me in terms of just getting ahead.

Preparation is key to everything that you do.

So, you know, strategy, clarity before channels is one big thing for me.

You know, tennis is if you can.

If you can get the other person to run around as much as you can on the other side of the court was one of those things that you always strive to do.

You don't always get there doing it, but that was your mission, is to make sure someone's running instead of you.

If you ever watch tennis players and you watch a great match and you.

I know that you like tennis, Michael, and you can relate to this.

Great tennis players don't move much.

Well, I'm thinking of McEnroe.

I'm thinking of all the people I watched growing up in the playing tennis.

You're right.

They've got you moving all over the court, slip sliding away and sign in and get.

And you're exhausting you.

So that kind of makes sense.

But I like the idea of strategy and clarity before executioner channels.

I think that's an important thing and that's one of the things you talk about is how we should audit our digital foundations.

So you emphasize building the right foundations first.

So what are the three non negotiable pillars that every business on their website should have before spending even a dollar on ad campaigns?

Great question.

So you've got obviously clarity before channels.

Your website should be a 5 second conversion test.

You've got to make sure that anyone that gets there, they understand exactly what that looks like.

Making sure you've got some AI authority before algorithms at the moment.

So you need to have that presence.

Always look at things from visibility versus preference.

Trust builds before conversation and foundation that compounds is critical.

You've got to have a story.

A story is a critical component to any platform.

I don't care what it is.

You watch a movie, if that movie has not got great content and a great storyline, you're going to switch off pretty quickly.

And it's, you know, it's foundational to everything that you look at visually.

It's the bit that draws you in.

So if you can work out what anyone's doing the moment you land on a platform within that five seconds you're in business.

So those components are critical to every channel that you approach.

Look at them individually, understand them and then apply those strategies.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

It's like I remember one of the first things I lesson was the old newspaper above the fold.

And I know you talk about it.

Is they, you got a few seconds to get my attention.

Do you solve that problem and then make it about that client, not what the issues are.

People are coming to you usually because they're trying to solve something to solve an issue or a problem.

And too often we look at them and they're just bragging pieces.

They're just look at, look at all our clients.

Look at what we've done.

It means nothing to them.

It's got to mean something to them.

What are we looking for?

And get your attention and then look at the conversion metrics and kind of work from there.

Are you seeing the.

When it comes to story a lot of people, there's a lot of methodologies out there.

Don Miller of course popularized it even though it was already being done by others with his book called Story Brand.

But it's really, it really just follows that hero's journey.

And I think that's what we have to do in the stories that we tell.

Because even from a sales point of view, whatever the problems, if we walk in and you start talking features and benefits right away, you're missing the point.

You're going to lose that.

That's, that's a mall transaction in a shopping center.

Here they're handing out samples of something.

So I think those things are pretty much staying the same.

They're, they're fundamentals.

We love story.

My, my children love them growing up.

My grandchildren now love them growing up.

So.

Hey papa, can you read me a story?

So we're conditioned this way and we want a story to have a beginning, a middle and an end.

And we want a result.

We need to, we need to close the loop, right?

We need to close the loop on that.

So it's that arc and what's the arc that we have in that story?

So I get it.

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And now back to my conversation with Michael Tricolta.

I wanted to ask you about with all the noise that's out there in digital noise, how do we cut through that in the AI era?

So with all the tools generating endless content, digital channels are being saturated.

It's harder ever to even stand out.

How can a business cut through the noise and build genuine digital trust?

Because as you say, it's the foundation.

Yeah, look, it is foundational and you've Got to start with that story component.

Understand your service, your product, whatever the case might be, break it down, make sure that what people.

Firstly, let me go back a little bit.

People are searching.

So AI is becoming the first place people go to when deciding who to trust online.

You know, they're asking ChatGPT, they're going to Google overviews who's the best in what category, what city, whatever the case might be, what the way that is pretty much being either cited from a blog, let's say like on Reddit, which is a forum that covers a lot of topics or from their website.

So if you are doing something, this is an easy fix type of thing that anyone can do with AI to influence AI and the decision making process is, is right.

Be really, get your story right, get everything in tune and have a really clear, defined piece of content that relates to your services that can be pulled from the Internet straight up to a snippet.

Yeah.

Makes it well.

And on web oracle.com au you've got a whole section on guides and you're very generous with your organization with there's guides for everything.

You want to get on Yahoo, you want to get on Bing, you want to understand social media, you want to optimize your chat, GPT and AI search, you want SEO for SaaS, you cover it.

And I think they and I, that's the part I love that separates us from a commodity in my mind.

Like we have three bags of rice.

How do I change, you know, $10, $10, $10.

How do I sell you my, you know, I want $11.

How do I get that extra buck?

Well, if I put a Recipe book of 20 of the top chefs in the world, half of them from Australia, and stuck that in with my bag of rice, my rice, is it worth that extra buck for you?

Right.

And the right.

Not everyone.

Not everyone.

But for a lot of people, that extra dollar is all we're looking for.

That 5, 10% makes all the difference in the world.

Yeah.

And that takes you away from that, you know, race to the bottom component.

Right.

As you story right there, you've already pulled out a recipe on the right track obviously.

So that recipe is going to appeal to someone.

So they might not necessarily know that they want your rice, but they might be looking for that recipe and there's that recipe.

So you've already differentiated yourself from everyone else in the market space by creating that recipe.

Where else can you add value is the question.

Yeah, well, and I think that's the key and overcoming the commodity trap and I know a lot of service providers, B2B businesses struggle with prospects.

Comparing them strictly on price, that becomes the only variable.

How can a strategic digital presence shift the conversation from price to value?

So content we've just discussed is one of them.

Are there other things that they can do as well.

In terms of adding the value component?

Yeah, add value to show more value.

So that.

Here's why we're different than that.

Yeah.

So definitely the strategy, the clarity, the visibility is critical.

So bringing yourself up to the top of the page by creating those individual pages on your platform that really speak to people, more importantly, and adding value in terms of updating your content on a regular basis is critical to the process.

So differentiating yourself is critical and then obviously adding that content and keeping fresh and relevant.

You've got to keep relevant all the time to bring things.

To the top.

Yeah, I love that word.

As we discussed earlier, just that shameful plug of the latest book, staying Relevant.

She's going to cut that out, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

Way to go.

Let's talk about measuring, because there are so many dashboards these days that measure literally everything.

Who looks at it, how long, how many, all of these vanity metrics and everything else.

How do we measure what actually matters?

Well, what matters is conversions at the end of the day and someone picking up the end of the phone or sending you an email, whatever the case might be, however they want to connect, is how we like to measure conversions.

So Google Analytics is a great one.

You can plug your website into that.

We track everything.

If we're doing a campaign again, strategy, checking the website, foundational components of it, and then having it ready to go for AI.

Then we put all types of trackers on that platform, that particular page, come up with a campaign and then put it out.

We don't want to get anyone fatigued on any one campaign, so we try and update them on a regular basis because the last thing you want to see is being advertised the same thing for the next 12 months.

And that's not being relevant, right?

Yeah.

So we use all types of tools.

There's a bunch of tools that you can use out.

There's a great one called Semrush.

That is great.

Yeah, you know that.

That's a basic one, but there's a bunch of them out there that you can use.

I think that's probably my favorite for, you know, just the top line kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Pretty comprehensive.

Let's talk about lessons and.

Well, actually, before we get There I want to talk about aligning brand strategy and digital presence because you often talk about aligning strategy, messaging and digital presence into a cohesive system.

Where do most mid market businesses experience a disconnect in that alignment?

Well, they experience in the messaging and, and not doing the research, the foundational components.

If you want to be chosen over your competitors, you've really got to do the research.

And this is where I find a lot of it breaks down understanding what your product is.

You know, you could be four bags of rice that you're competing against or 100 bags of rice.

But the messaging component, coming up with something that's going to be creative enough, but also think a little bit ahead about what you're going to do next.

That might create again a segue, what you did before that ties into what you're doing next.

And create that messaging where you have a hook and bringing that in.

The component where it breaks down is the marketing component where there's not really the messaging that follows up from what's not working.

So they kind of stick to it and not really reiterate it because they haven't done their research in the background.

That's where the breakdown is.

Yeah.

No, I could say, well, when it comes to researching and maybe looking at our ideal client profiles or ICPs, I see a lot of broad brush.

People just throw stuff out there.

Hopefully it sticks to their marketplace.

How important is it to focus on a niche or position within a niche or a vertical.

All right.

And then shape the messaging to that vertical.

So let me give you an example of that.

I use a little lozenge and they're called Vocal zones and they're coming from England.

So you get these little pastel things from Vocal Zone.

Nice box.

And if you go to vocal zones, go to the website, it's completely focused on professional singers.

So you're a musician because I, I'm sure you got chops as well that goes with the licks that you know.

And it's for professional speakers and singers.

And the website's just full of professional speakers and trains.

So I have my own lozenge, which I have one in my mouth right now because you can park it in there instead of drinking water and going back and keep drinking water or you rock stars maybe drinking something else while you're up on stage there.

It lubricates the voice and the vocals.

So I have my own lozenge and I pay like $5 for a package now.

You know, a menthol thing or a fisherman's friend Might do the same job for two bucks.

But I have my own lozenge.

You know, as speakers, I use Apple Keynote because we do keynote.

I don't use PowerPoint because, although a lot of speakers use PowerPoint, but we have our kind of our own app.

You know, it's named after us, even what we do.

So how important is it to niche down and can you have more than one niche?

And how can we accomplish that in a digital forum with digital channels?

A good question.

You can have more than one niche.

There's no issue with that.

You go to our website and you'll see exactly how many niches we work within.

And we drill that down completely and comprehensively and understand what it is people want.

So understanding what that niche is, where it sits in the marketplace, is critical to its success.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

You have a.

And like I say, I personally believe smaller the niche, bigger the market.

Like who makes more money, the dentist or the orthodontist?

And we know the orthodontist is.

Well, who does the marketing for the orthodontist?

The dentist.

So how do we get our market to become the marketers?

Right?

So for instance, in speaking world, we use agents.

We'll have a school of speaking booking.

We have book literary agents, sports agents, your professional test player.

You probably had an agent, all right, and your agent did your positioning.

I'm sure you probably did commercials, maybe some ads, did some things, or Shania Twain, people you toured with, they probably had agents, right?

That's your market marketing for you.

Right?

And doing that positioning for you.

How can we achieve that with today's technologies?

Super easy.

It's a lot easier now than it's ever been.

But at the same time, again, go back to the messaging and the strategy.

Making sure that you understand your tools, where they sit in the space and how you can use them is critical to the success of any one product or service that you're providing.

And then making sure obviously, that the product's the right fit for that person by being very comprehensive.

And drilling down to being as niche specific as possible is critical to any foundation and success to what you're doing.

But technology, I mean, it's.

It's so easy.

You can research so much these days on AI and find out literally where you know where a product was made and not even know about what you're actually holding at any one time.

Like, I don't even know what my.

You know, where my iPhone's completely made.

But you jump online, you will find out exactly where every component's made by just putting that into Claude and they'll drill right down.

So understanding where this fits.

And you know, some people might not like products in certain spaces or whatever the case might be.

Giving them right information and more of it creates a trust.

And that trust is the most important component in terms of when they're making a decision in terms of a purchase.

One of the things you talk about, and I know your organization, your company preaches and is handling objections and buyer objections early in the process and you've got information on that.

Why is that so important?

How does that go to the trust component?

Well, objections are critical in that, you know, you know exactly where you sit so you can start sort of filtering through things very quickly in that decision making process.

Not any one campaign's ever going to work, Michael.

A hundred percent.

There's always, you know, a rendition of what it's going to look like at the end.

And you're changing things as you go along and fixing things.

So being rejected is not a bad thing.

It's just telling you that we're not ready for you yet because we haven't perhaps got enough information about what it is you're providing.

So drilling that down is critical and doing that research to understand it.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

One of the posts that you had with your guides, which attracted my attention as a sales professional and sales strategist, was stop overthinking your go to market strategy and start selling.

Yeah, it's like, don't make me think whenever I land on a website, if I'm thinking about anything, it means that I'm really confused about what it is you're pitching.

And if you're confused, you lose.

So it's got to be the message there, I believe, kind of in the single call to action approach to it.

You know, just one single.

What do you want them to do?

What behaviors are you looking for?

We're looking for behaviors that engage people.

You've got five seconds, literally five seconds to get people interested.

You don't need a bunch of content on a website.

You just need clear vision, clear messaging, something that connects with people.

So that research component, that strategy is critical to it.

And then bring it down.

It's a bit like a newspaper.

Great, great segue, actually.

When you, whenever you pick up a newspaper, tangible product that is purchased at a news agency and you look at the headline and then it drills down to a paragraph that's slight, the font slightly smaller than the actual headline, and then it drills into the actual content that's in columns.

Right.

You remember that?

Yeah.

Sites are the same.

Keep it simple, as simple as possible.

With the messaging, you've got to get people involved straight away by either creating that one liner, creating that content below it, providing your product or services, and then drilling down to what you do and then a call to action very quickly.

But you've got to provide something that's interesting, that keeps them.

Keeps you relevant, keeps people interested.

Yeah, keep them focused.

Let's talk about the lessons from managing digital transformations.

Because you've worked with companies where you got them at this point in their career, their life cycle, and taking them through all of your process.

Can you think of a client?

You can name them if you want to, or you don't have to, or just name a kind of business.

It was where, here's where we got them, here's what we did, and here were their outcomes within certain timeframes or because a lot of people are looking to how do we scale our business?

What's working in today's world?

And there's still a lot of businesses that could use some digital transformation.

And they're so old school out there.

There's a lot of it, matter of fact.

Any examples that pop into your head?

Yeah, we're working with a fantastic brand at the moment called Amber Corporation.

They have a bunch of subcategories.

They're in the clothing business, and they.

It's womenswear shapewear, and it's very seasonal.

And traditionally they would sell into department stores across Australia and New Zealand, and they did very well.

But department stores over time have kind of almost not become irrelevant, but they're seeing less traffic through the front doors.

I know there's a bunch of them here in Australia that definitely are losing out on business, but a lot of it shifted to online.

And what they've had, and they've done it really well, is keep their audience.

They've kept the same audience, but they haven't bought the new audience along.

So there are still people looking for shapewear online that want their product, but they aren't necessarily relating to it.

So we just strategically looked at their messaging and created a whole new department, just focused on bringing up the new audience that they currently don't have.

So they flatlined completely.

So they're still getting people coming through, but now they're seeing an upward trend in terms of sales because that generational gap's now been closed.

Where historically they would get a particular type of demographic that was suited to, you know, 35 to, you know, 65 plus person now they're bringing everyone along because Shapewear, the messaging for the Shapewear line that we've provided, it's, it's free, it's young and it's, you know, you should feel relaxed buying it and it's not something that's visible.

So it should span an entire generation in terms of.

Purchase.

We've brought them along, so that's the part that they're missing.

And so we're working through with them at the moment adding some additional messaging for some of their other products and categories as well.

So with all these changes, with all these changes and all these layers that are added on and like you said, AI is just another layer.

So we'll kind of start wrapping up with this.

Where do you see it moving to in the next two to three years?

I, I, I see there was agencies in the day, we had media buys, remember those?

And you're tacking on 15, 20.

Well, that's, that's pretty much gone away.

Copywriters, we can, there's some good AI, basic copywriting, there's some good, you can get some structure, but you still need the insight.

You still need the, the captain of the ship.

You still need some insights that come from experience.

So where do you see it going and where do you see the role of an agency like yourself at Web Oracle?

When's it time to find someone like yourselves?

Because a lot of companies have, even mid sized have.

I worked with some good enterprise companies.

They got whole teams and departments but they've been institutionalized forever and they're so slow to move.

They're thinking they, they just, just their jobs to stay up to date.

But it's like a big battleship that hits the brakes and they just keep on going.

They keep doing what they think they're supposed to be doing.

And yet we've pivoted, we've changed.

And where do you see that movement?

When's it time for you?

I think it's a great question.

It sort of takes me back to when I sold my publishing business and moved into digital.

And I feel like we're in a transitional phase of marketing and development online.

And I feel with AI, it's at the moment it's still in its infant stages, a bit like when Google was around in the early days.

I feel it's going to turn into a Spotify model where they'll be linking up with some great agencies around the world and universities to pull out papers and great information that's actually factual because at the moment it's pulling a lot of information from the Internet and you need to fact check it.

And I feel that that's where it's going to go and someone's going to come out.

I know that there's talk about there's a couple of companies looking at integrating with or partnering up with universities and in good information sources like, you know, reliable information, trustworthy services.

Absolutely.

That's the next stage.

So that's going to be a pay per view kind of model.

Bit like what you see on Spotify, which is a great model.

Right.

Because there's less fact checking, you know, that it's a reliable source, it'll cite them and you'll be able to actually confirm whether that's right or wrong based on where it came from.

So if it's come from, let's say, a very prominent and influential university from a great, you know, someone that's actually researched the topic, you know, it's going to be okay, right?

Y.

So they can just post itself.

So that's where I feel it's going.

It's going to become a lot easier to be able to do business for that very reason.

But the foundational components never change, Michael.

They never go away.

You still need that fact checking.

You still need to be the capability, captain of the ship.

Tell the story.

Yeah,.

You've got to tell the story.

You've still got to come up with the foundational components.

And just talking back to what we're speaking about earlier, you know, it starts somewhere and you can't teach that component.

You can teach that component, but you, you've got to, you've got to have it before you can move on to the next stages.

So foundation is critical to everything?

No, I think the tools have just made it a lot easier.

It's like our episode here.

We can.

We do 35, 40 minutes of, of talking.

We used to take that.

Then it gets cut down and editing, final cut.

Back in the day, da Vinci, all the video.

Now we use AI tools.

We use script goes in, we change in a document, in a transcript, actually does the audio and editing.

We get rid of gaps, we make sure it looks good.

We can fix the sound, even how we're recording this episode.

You're on the other side of the world, you're recording.

We get high 4k quality.

Then we can hit a button and it's going to automatically go in and look for the hooks.

It's going to look for things that make a difference and we can schedule it.

And so we used to have people to do every one of those things.

And take care of it.

And now it now allows us to elevate our game AI, I think amplifies our abilities and now allows us to do the stuff that's really creative, really thinking and thought provoking versus spending all of our time on execution and just those fundamentals which can create better campaigns.

So I think it's a win win right across the board, don't you?

Could you imagine doing that 20 years ago?

Yeah.

Yes.

No way.

So that's why I have no desire to retire because this is just.

It's more fun than it's ever been.

Yeah,.

Exactly.

You've got to think and if you've got some experience, you're going to have an advantage over somebody who doesn't because they're not going to know good when they see it because they don't have the experience.

Right.

I don't want a robot doing my surgery unless it's being manned by somebody who's been doing it for 20, 30 years and knows what to watch for.

Good.

Point.

I think that's going to make it Last question for you then.

If an entrepreneur listening today wants to instantly elevate their digital strategy and move closer to becoming the preferred choice in their market, what's one actionable step that they should take this week.

Is just jump online and check your website and get looking at it, get someone in front of it and if they can't work out what you do in five seconds, you need to restructure pretty quickly.

That's an easy one.

Makes sense.

Do your audit yourself and then what do we do, who do we help and what should we do next?

If it doesn't do that in five seconds, I love that.

I used to think it was 30 but it's been accelerated.

So that makes a good point.

Michael, this was truly insightful.

Thank you so much for being our guest today.

We'll have everything on the show, notes for your website.

So weboracle.com au if they want to get hold of you, I know you work with organizations all over the world and have clients and so your reach is far, not just in Australia.

If they want to send set up a consult or an initial chat with you, they'll have all of that information as well.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Michael,.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you and who is one person who you can share that with, either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening.

Perhaps it is that being seen as merely table stakes, whereas being preferred requires intentional strategy.

Or maybe it's that before spending a single dollar on ad campaigns, you must ensure your Website passes a 5 second conversion test so visitors instantly understand what you do.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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Goodbye.