Episode 20 · · 00:30:26
AI for Agencies Who’s Adopting It and Who’s Holding Out
Chris is back from his first ever conference talk at BrightonSEO, where the crowd was full of brand-new agency owners and the talks were less AI-forward than he expected. So we get into who's adopting AI and who's holding out, plus Chris's plan to write a book for a Google knowledge panel, whether AI can stay this cheap, and a guy at Brighton asking Chris if he'd heard of Service Provider Pro.
Hosted by Chris Willow and Alex Zakka from Wayfront.
Show notes
Full show notes
Chris is back from BrightonSEO, where he gave his first ever conference talk. Next to Ross Simmonds' closing keynote, roughly 50 minutes with no ums or ahs, he says everyone else, himself included, sounded like "okay, so look at the screen," then silence and a click (a speaker monitor about three inches wide didn't help). His talk still filled a room of about 200 seats, and the crowd was full of people just starting agencies, including one who made more in his first month than in three months as a bartender.
So who's adopting AI and who's holding out? Chris's slide on the AI baseline says knowing WordPress used to make you the guy, and now that everyone has the same AI-built website, you have to do something extra to stand out. He also came away thinking the Brits might be less AI-pilled than he expected, with some talks that could have been given a year ago (his own included, he admits). Alex thinks there will always be people-only agencies for clients who want that, and that owners who've run things the same way for 20 or 30 years have little reason to change while it's working. Chris thinks newcomers with no preconceived notions are in a prime spot to disrupt.
We also get into Chris writing a book with ChatGPT from five years of his newsletters to land a Google knowledge panel, whether AI pricing can stay this cheap after Alex used about $1,000 worth of credits in 20 days, ChatGPT rejecting the Wayfront integration over tax ID data, Microslop, new Wayfront features getting buried in submenus, and the app Chris built to review every line of code he ships. Plus the guy at Brighton who asked Chris if he'd heard of Service Provider Pro (which is why our LinkedIn banner says Service Provider Pro is now Wayfront), the retirement debate, the AI-generated ads and menus Alex saw everywhere in Malaysia, and Chris's bet that AI slop stops working on its own.
No Custom Work is Chris and Alex from Wayfront, the client portal software for agencies selling repeatable productized services. New episodes every Wednesday.
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