Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction: Adapting to AI as a Coach or Consultant
00:21 - Meet Olly Richards: Business Model Shifts
00:42 - How AI is Changing Google Search & Content Marketing
01:04 - The Impact of ChatGPT on Online Courses
01:16 - Is Google Search Dead?
02:34 - The New Google: AI Summaries and Fewer Results
02:54 - What’s Next for SEO-Driven Businesses?
03:16 - Diversifying Beyond SEO: YouTube & Paid Ads
03:33 - The Power of Personal Brand in the AI Era
04:18 - The Growing Importance of Personal Brand
04:23 - Debating the Future of Google Search
04:41 - Pivoting to YouTube: Results & Membership Launch
05:20 - Learning from Ali Abdaal & Email Marketing
05:36 - The State of Email: Spam, Open Rates, and Clicks
05:55 - How Niche Businesses Can Still Thrive
06:14 - The Changing Landscape of Email Marketing
06:33 - Why Factory Email Marketing is Failing
08:00 - Creating a Red Carpet Experience for Email Subscribers
08:31 - Treating Email as Personal Brand Real Estate
08:56 - Earning Your Place in the Inbox
09:16 - Writing Emails Without AI
09:21 - The Process of Writing Effective Emails
10:15 - How Long Does It Take to Write an Email?
10:51 - Writing Like You Talk: Adding Personality
Ash Roy and Olly Richards Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy:
If you are a coach or a consultant, then this video is for you because if you've ever wondered what AI means for your body of knowledge and your expertise and how you are going to adapt to this new world without burning out, and you're about to find out in this video, meet Ollie Richards, a seven figure business owner and entrepreneur who's worked with the likes of Ali Abdaal
Olly Richards:
The, the business model that's really threatened is the kind of 2010s model of publish a ton of blog posts optimized for SEO. Get hundreds of thousands of visits a month, get 1% of those people to opt into your email list, 1% of those people to buy. That business model is gone moving forward, and what I'm helping people to focus on is a combination of things.
Ash Roy:
In this video, we are gonna talk about how artificial intelligence is changing Google search and what that means for you. Ai, which has gone mainstream and it's caused all sorts of disruption. In the content marketing world, knowledge seems to be getting increasingly commoditized, at [00:01:00] least packaged knowledge in the form of courses we are seeing.
People going to chat, GPT and just having a conversation with chat GPT. This reduces the value of a course. I'd love to get your take on what we can do as online educators and online business owners.
Olly Richards:
Yeah, great question. Yeah, I can certainly tell you what I've observed happening in my world. So first of all, I think I, I challenge the idea that no one's using Google anymore.
I mean, Google still accounts for something like 65% of all web traffic. So people are still clicking on links. I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we. We, you know, we live in such a kind of entrepreneurial world. It's easy to have the impression that everyone behaves like us, but for the most part, the wider public are not spending all their time on on chat GPT.
Now, my mom is not sitting there on chat, GPT, having conversations. She's going to Google. The same way that she always did. So I think it's, it's a, a bit of a red herring to say that, that that side of things is dead. But with that said, that the bigger problem actually for content creators is that Google is just changing the way that they are operating.
You know, one, one of the things we've seen since Google's, uh, HCU or help helpful content update a couple of years back is that a lot of businesses have seen their website traffic absolutely demolished. I mean, I have many friends who've. Whose businesses have basically disappeared overnight. They've lost 95% of their Google traffic.
Um mm-hmm. There are other businesses like, like ours at Story Learning, where they've lost like, say 40 to 50% of traffic. And then there are some other businesses that bizarrely seem to have actually got more traffic. Um, and it's difficult to really put your finger on why that's happening. But you know, if you go to Google now, it's different to what it was.
We've had those AI summaries for a while, then you've got like 10 ads and then maybe one or two results at the bottom of page one. So even for people who are going to Google as normal. The experience is changing, and as we speak, Google are rolling out this new, uh, AI results feature where the entire page one is just an AI results a little bit like chat GBT.
So that's the direction of travel. And I think, you know, one thing we can say for sure is that businesses that have typically relied on SEO. And large amounts of Google traffic for their business to run are in trouble, like moving forward. What I'm seeing people focusing on, certainly what I'm helping people to focus on, is a combination of things.
First of all, it is, uh, diversifying from SEO if you haven't already done that, and. For many people, that means a move towards either, either YouTube or towards paid ads, for example. Um, and then on a business model front, to your point about information being commoditized, it's no longer about the message, it's about the messenger.
As you say. You can talk to chat GPT about learning a language, but. If you like Ollie Richards, then you are more likely to listen to what Ollie Richards has to say than chat GPT. And so, so one of the things that I, that I'm focusing on in the language business is making sure that my personal brand is strengthened.
That everything we do in the business revolves around me and my personal brand, because that's gonna survive the apocalypse. The personal brand is still gonna be around, albeit in a lower traffic environment. And so that's the final piece I think businesses need to adapt to be stronger in a low traffic environment.
Which typically is gonna mean fewer cheap courses and more high touch services. So that you can help people focus on handholding them to getting the results through implementation and accountability rather than just providing the information.
Ash Roy:
Couldn't agree more. I think, uh, the personal brand is becoming more and more important.
Just a couple of things I want to respectfully push back on. Um, please. I remember speaking to Neil Patel about this one. He's been on the podcast three times. He's a friend now, and at one point I said to him, I think Google search is gonna not die, but it's gonna struggle with chat g PT going online unless Google comes back with a response.
And at that time, we all thought Google was gonna come back with a meaningful response to chat GPT. But around that time I made a decision to pivot to YouTube because I thought that written content at this rate is gonna get commoditized. From what I can see, it seems to have been almost all the websites seem to have gone like down 66%.
Wow. Between six to 12 months. But I formed the opinion that YouTube, which at the time was the second largest search engine. I figured that I might as well start feathering that nest because I don't see Google as being a source of traffic for much longer, and that has worked very well. In fact, I'm very excited to say we literally launched our YouTube membership.
Few hours ago, and we already have a couple of members. I'm very excited.
Olly Richards:
Oh, congratulations. Um,
Ash Roy:
and I learned a lot of stuff from you about YouTube from Ali Abda, who I believe you have worked with. Is that right?
Olly Richards:
That's right, yeah.
Ash Roy:
Very, very cool. Very cool. I got a lot of respect for him. I wanna switch to email.
You write fantastic emails. I'm seeing. More spam coming into my email 'cause people are using cold outreach. I'm pretty sure I've seen Seth mentioned that the platform, the email platform is corrupted. What is your view on this and are you seeing a change in open rates and click through rates on email?
And if so, how are you dealing with that?
Olly Richards:
So again, it's a very sort of multifaceted situation and I think like, I think this relates somewhat to the discussion about Google because we can speak about trends as a whole, but I don't think that necessarily. Matters for those of us running niche businesses because just to, to sort of step back to the Google point for a second.
You know, let's say Google has lost half of its traffic, fine. That for me doesn't have an impact on the, on our ICP, uh, ideal customer who wakes up one morning and decides. I wanna learn Spanish and I wanna do it in a more serious way. So let's go and start looking around and I'm going to, I'm not gonna just accept the first results I'm given.
I'm gonna dig around, I'm gonna click on links. I'm gonna look at the brands that I see and then make a decision that person is still going to get to the place that they want to get to. So it's quite different from like someone just. Going to Google and, and, and, and searching like, what shall I have for dinner?
With no buyer intent whatsoever, you know, with no, just, just using Google to manage their lives for us. If we are speaking to our ideal customer properly. If we are, if we are right, if we have a strong brand, if we, if. We're giving a compelling message, then the right person is still gonna find us. And so this applies equally to email.
I've also seen shifts in email, but, but not in exactly the way that you described. So in story learning, for example, which it's a, it's a 12-year-old business, so we, you know, we've been doing this for a while. We did see open rates decline, but it was mostly a result of. You know, what are we gonna loosely D term as factory email marketing.
And there's a lot of businesses that have kind of fallen into this trap over, over the years. You know, you get established some point in the 2010s, you grow your team and then the founder steps back, and now someone else is writing the emails. And now you go from one promotion a month to two promotions a month.
And we do that because it always worked. But in this new environment where, and I, I think it happened kind of post COVID where every man and his dog had a, an email newsletter and inboxes just started getting flooded because there was more noise. Email marketing stopped being the kind of golden ticket that it was because it's just becoming a bit more commoditized.
So what we've decided to do at Story Learning is to row back from the, the, you know, twice monthly staff written promotions that we had before, and to pivot back towards Ollie's voice. Running fewer promotions, but higher quality and everything basically becomes higher quality. Mm-hmm. And friends of mine with similar businesses, when I, when I talk about this with them, the, the, the thing that we come back to is the question, how do I create a red carpet experience or a golden glove experience for people on my email, on my email list?
Because if you treat email as a primary content source, if you treat it as your own real estate and an extension of your own personal brand, and you make it so that every email that goes out is the best it can possibly be of ab, of the utmost interest to your. To your avatar and you don't just farm it out and, and you know, either have staff write it or even worse, have AI write it.
As long as you are sending this stuff out and you create a great experience over email, you are still gonna earn your place in the inbox. And I've started using this phrase a lot more. Earn your place in the inbox and this and, and I, and I run my whole business brand. At OllyRichards.co. Uh, exactly like this where every email that I write is like, don't use ai.
It's all me.
Ash Roy:
So you don't use at all, it's from scratch all you.
Olly Richards:
No, it's, it's, it's, it's all me.
Ash Roy:
Your emails were fantastic, Olly.
Olly Richards:
Thank you. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you saying that. I don't think you'd be saying that if I was using AI to write my emails.
Ash Roy:
Well, I was actually, one of the questions I was gonna ask you, sorry to interrupt you, but was, do you at least do the first draft with ai?
And I was curious to understand that because your emails just feel so. Effortless, but so warm.
Olly Richards:
Thank you for saying that. But no, I, I don't, I don't use AI for, for that because, you know, AI is really, really good, but it can only work in, it can't have personality and hot takes and of course you can train it to do those things.
But we all know when we're reading an AI written email.
Ash Roy:
How long does it take you to write an email from scratch?
Olly Richards:
Depends on the email. Um, but I have a very, I have a very specific process of writing and it involves. Um, it involves large amounts of, it involves like a multi-step process of creating large amounts of writing.
So what I typically do is, um, I have writing sessions and I sit down and I, and I write without editing, just stream of consciousness, and I get ideas out at the table. And then I return to that idea the next day and I look at it and say, do we have something here? Mm-hmm. And I select the stuff that I feel is re is, is worthy of my worthy of reading.
That idea then gets selected and then I flesh it out, and then I'll return again that, to that the next day. So it'll go through, along a multi-step process. Um, but it's all happening very, very quickly. So I'll, I'll write the first draft of an idea in like seven minutes and sometimes 10, seven to 10 minutes.
And then the second draft will take, again, another five to 10 minutes. By the time it gets sent out, it's maybe 20 minutes for an email max. Not much. Not much more than that. You know, I, again, I've been doing this for 12 years, so I, I, I'm, I'm quite practiced at it and I mean, I've always put a lot of personality into my emails and I try to write now that, that old advice, you know, write how you talk.
Like, yes, that's what I try and do. You know, and I use punctuation and, and like the slang words for effect in a way that AI can't do. And I take like random tangents in a way that AI won't do. I, I really try to write for myself, you know, I try to write the thing that I myself would want to read. Do
Ash Roy:
you hand write them?
Olly Richards:
No, no, no, no, no.
Ash Roy:
This is an excerpt from my conversation with Ollie Richards a seven figure Coach. If you wanna watch the full video, it's available right now inside our YouTube membership, which you can access via the link in the description below. You might also be interested in the Productive Insights membership program, where we help you to grow your consulting business using digital marketing strategies that actually work in this post AI world.
Depending on your level of subscription, you can even get direct access to me. I'll see you in the next one.