[music]

>> Welcome to the Growth Boss podcast where

we explore the tools, strategies, and AI

workflows helping businesses grow faster

and smarter. I'm your host Alaina Nicole

and today I'm joined by Cody Schneider.

He will be sharing with us how to build

AI agents that do the work of four

marketing hires. So Cody, thanks so much

for being here today. I'm really excited

to dive into this topic.

>> Yeah, thanks for hosting me. Super

excited to be here. I've been forward to

this conversation all week, so.

>> Absolutely. So for anyone who might not

be familiar with you, can you give us

just a 60-second overview of who you are

and what you do?

>> Yeah, absolutely. So for the last 6

years I've spent kind of my life in

early stage startups specifically in the

B2B space. My specialty is like how do I

get my first, you know, 10, 100,000

customers. We've been building AI

marketing products since October of 2022

like kind of right before ChatGPT

launched. But yeah, we're you know,

bunch of different iterations to finally

end up at what we're building now which

is graft.com. Graft is basically

deployed marketing agents for for

businesses. So agent examples would be

like an agent that entirely runs your

Facebook ads, your Google ads, your

search engine optimization, your cold

email outbound. We've done them for

social media scheduling. We've done them

for real farms. Have an endless list of

kind of things that we're like building

out. One that I'm pretty excited about

right now actually is like a Pinterest

agent. It's basically they're for a

landscape design like software company.

But anyway, yeah, that's kind of the

high level. Our specialty is how do I

build distribution and how do I

basically implement these agents to you

know, do the jobs of what a traditional

marketing organization would do.

>> Yeah, that's amazing. How did you

specifically get into the AI agent

world?

>> Yeah, so I was working at a company

called Rupa Health and we had just

scaled I joined as an my co-founder Nur

and I Max actually met there. We joined

as employee like 10 and 11. But we had

just helped scale Rupa from like a $20

valuation to 110 in about 6 months.

Rapidly hired a bunch of team. I think

at the

end of it we were at like 25 team

members that were just on the content

side alone from a production standpoint.

Yeah, we were doing a podcast, email

newsletters, live classes, you know,

posts across all social, influencer

marketing, etc. And we honestly like how

it all originated is we were basically

like, "Okay, what are the operations

process that are super time-consuming

that a human's doing?" We started to see

that these AI tooling could automate a

lot of these processes and this would

have been in like July of 2022. Yeah, we

were just kind of experimenting on the

side and then it really in that fall

like something changed and it became

actually usable like the outputs were

good enough where it was like, "This is

a step function above what it was

previously." So yeah, that was really

the origin. We kind of the products that

we built previously was like a long-form

content repurposing tool. We also built

like an early SEO agents, really

rudimentary in comparison to like what

we're seeing work now. Built a tool that

was like basically used by stores to

like programmatically generate landing

pages based off their product catalog

and then it had like a feedback loop

based off of the live clickstream data

that was coming from the pages. So just

how you'd see like an Amazon or an Etsy

or, you know, Houzz, any of these large

marketplaces how they function is they

basically dynamically generate these

landing pages and we were doing that but

for, you know, brands that were, you

know, 1/10 the size, right? But yeah,

and then, you know, really from that we

kind of saw the writing on the wall

where everybody was trying to build

agents or go to that. We initially built

We actually tried to build

you know, an agent just like everybody

to go with or to to start by initially

like doing a Google Ads agent and then

we ran into all these issues where you

basically like if you're trying to call

the data that you needed from the Google

Ads API, you would run into rate limits

or you'd run into truncation errors or

you'd run into the agent just full stop

hallucinating what it was saying. And to

actually like make, you know, an agent

run for a company, you basically have to

have like a live data stream of what's

actually driving revenue. And so, the

initial version of the product was a BI

tool where we solved the data pipeline

and the data warehouse, and then

recently we've just like in the last 3

months we've added basically the agent

infrastructure as well. So, we deploy

what's called a Hermes agent into the

cloud. So, it's the data pipeline, the

warehouse, and then a Hermes agent, and

then that all works in this like

cohesive loop where you're like, "Okay,

I want to drive,

you know, leads for X business type."

Here's the shape of what that lead looks

like. The agent can go and research

those leads, do qualification on the

ICP, find the email addresses, like

actually cold email them, and then

manage the inbox like responding back

and forth. It's

>> That's amazing.

>> Honestly crazy. Yeah,

like even saying it now it like

>> Yeah, it absolutely is. So, I can't wait

to kind of break it down a little bit

more. So, our topic today is how to

build AI agents that do the work of four

marketing hires. So, just to kind of

level set and start at the foundational

level, can you give us your definition

of an AI agent? And how does that differ

from someone who just uses ChatGPT or

like Claude Co-work?

>> Yeah, totally. I think of an agent as

like some job function or some job to be

done that it's doing it on like

a repeated cycle, right? So, I imagine

like say you have like a standard

operating procedure within your

organization. So, so we'll say like

you're a social media manager, right?

When you look at the job function of a

social media manager, it's basically

like what content is kind of going viral

within my category? Okay, how can I

remix that for our brand? Let's go now

create that content. We're going to

schedule it out, you know, to post

across all social, and then I'm going to

look at the best performing content.

Like what is the winners? What are the

losers? And let that influence it like

my, you know, circle. An agent in my

mind is basically, you know, piece of

software that's running that process,

right? In all reality, like whenever you

hear agent, it's really just software

under the hood with like some type of

thinking loop. I think everybody is

trying to sell a bunch of snake oil in

this category. Especially in our

category like Like have these

conversations all the time where it's in

particular like the last like 3 weeks,

there's been multiple companies that

have come to market where it's like,

"We'll entirely run your ad account."

And it's like, "No, you won't. This is

total

Like the only way to actually get these

things to function and work is you

basically take like what is the process

that a human was doing? Okay, how do I

go and basically, you know, repeat that

process like with having an agent run

that? So, in comparison to like a chat

GPT or one of these like generative

tools. So, say for example, like a great

a great way to say way to explain this

is like you're trying to write a blog

post. And so, you're like, "Okay, let's,

you know, find target keywords, research

those target keywords. Like what's

ranking on page one of Google currently

for that keyword." And then I'm going to

put that into the context of, you know,

the like chat GPT. I'd like literally

just copy and paste it all in and then

be like, "Okay, write a, you know,

2,000-word blog post based off of this,

you know, for this target keyword based

off of the source material that I

provided you." So, the human is

basically going through that like prompt

chain to get that output. What an agent

is doing is largely that exact same

process. But instead of, you know, it

basically a human pushing it step by

step through, it's just running that

process for you. And then typically what

we'd like to see is like when it has

some type of like larger thinking loop,

I think that's where it gets probably

more sophisticated. So, it's like,

"Yeah, it made the content, but then it

published it. It's looking at the live

data stream. Okay, which of these, you

know, posts are working most effectively

from like customer acquisition? Can we

go make more content like that? Can we,

you know, do a content gap analysis

based off of like what we've written and

what everybody else has written to see

like how we can improve the content so

that content is like refreshing itself.

And so, I think that's how this fits

like into this is largely it's it's

typically like a linear workflow

that some type of like, you know, agent

is basically like initiating with with

thinking loop like in it. So.

>> Got it. So, it's more of the full cycle

that the agent is able to take on versus

you saying, "Okay, do this, and then do

this, and then do that." It's able to do

the the entire process with it sounds

like more of the human overseeing it

versus managing it and running it.

>> Exactly. Exactly. I think about it more

like I'm I'm a curator. Like my job, you

know, to compete in this new world is to

have like a ton of domain knowledge

about [snorts] whatever my expertise is,

and then basically be able to,

you know, explain that expertise or like

what I'm looking for to whatever this

agent harnesses, and then have some

measurements of success that I'm like,

you know, moving towards. And for every

business is it's the exact same thing,

right? It's like we want to make more

money. So, it's like start there, and

then we work back basically into, okay,

hey, we want to make more money.

What is What are those, you know, what

does that actually look like? Okay, we

need more qualified leads. Okay, how do

we get more qualified leads? Where do

our like our target customers spend time

online? Okay, they'd spend time on

Instagram, Google Maps, and, you know,

like Facebook, right? Okay, cool. Let's

What are our What are our strategies to

show up in those places and basically,

you know, be in front of the people that

are looking for this the service or

product that we're trying to sell. So.

>> Yeah, the goal is always save time, make

more money, and that's Sounds like

something we can do both with what we're

talking about today. So, you mentioned

that in the headline topic for today,

four marketing roles. So, just kind of

high-level, what are those four

marketing roles that we talked about?

>> Yeah, the ones we're deploying the most

for companies is is Facebook Ads

Management, Google Ads Management,

Search Engine Optimization, and really

that kind of falls into the same

category now with like AI search,

whether that's like ChatGPT, you know,

or Claude or Perplexity, all of them.

Honestly, Google Gemini has been like

exploding lately from a referral traffic

standpoint, so we're seeing more and

more of a focus there. And then the

other one that we deploy a lot is like

cold outbound, so like cold email for

organizations. Those are kind of like

the big four, and then there's a bunch

of other, you know, things that that

we're seeing companies want where

they're like, "Hey, I need social media

management." or I need like influencer

outreach and negotiation where they're

like, "Hey, I don't you know, I want

this thing to go and contact a thousand

influencers, find a hundred of them that

are under-pricing themselves. Let's like

them you know, the ten that are most

under-pricing themselves. Let's work

with those, etc." But yeah, that I think

that's the biggest thing. Especially it

depends on the business type. Like we're

having software companies where they're

basically like, "Can we just work with

you instead of hiring you know, an

entire marketing team?" We're having

like local businesses where they're

like, "I hate my agency. I know they're

robbing me. You know, can we basically

pay you to just like run you know, the

Google Ads agent for us, right?" Where

it's like just a flat fee. It's like

optimizing continuously in the

background. And when you look at like a

lot of the agencies that people are

we're we're starting to partner with

agencies, too. Like on these products

where it's like, "Hey, they have a you

know, 150 Google Ads accounts that they

run for appliance repair companies

across the United States, right?" And

then we're basically like the white

label back a house solution for them.

So, they handle all of the client

management and then we are just like

operate the agents for them that are

running the actual ad campaigns. But but

yeah, those are the the four that we're

seeing like people most desire.

Absolutely. And it's largely just cuz

like that's like when you look at the

majority of business growth, it's kind

of across those four categories.

It's cool outbound.

It's paid ads and it's it's organic, you

know, ranking. So, but yeah, happy to

dig deeper into each of those and like

how they actually operate. So.

>> Yeah. So, I'd love to talk through kind

of the process for a business owner or

you know, marketing professional who's

listening and they're like, "This sounds

incredible. I'm not quite sure I'm ready

to work with someone to do it for me

yet, but how could I kind of start to

get in it? What would the process be to

just kind of play around with building

an agent? Where would we start?"

>> Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk through the

Facebook Ads one cuz I think for a lot

of people this is like one of the

channels that they've interacted with

the most and and Google Ads as well. But

I I can go down this list. On the

Facebook Ads side, again, depends on the

business like size and structure, but

I'll just use an example of a company

that we're working with. They're

landscape design AI product. Basically,

it's like you give your address, it uses

Google Maps to like map your backyard,

and then basically is like

here's what it can be, and it gives you

the material list for you to like

physically hand to a like a landscaper

in your geography. And so, it just makes

it so that it's like you know exactly

what it's going to cost. There's not

some like cost-plus pricing that's

occurring, you know, for that

production. So, for them, what we did,

we scraped like Reddit to find what are

all the pain points and the outcomes

that my target customer was using. So,

for the person that's listening, how you

can do this is with something like Codex

or with Claude Code. And uh there's a

tool called Firecrawl that or Exa AI,

they both have the ability to basically

go and extract information from the web.

But, you can like scrape Reddit, scrape

YouTube, really any social media uh

people complaining or like talking about

like, you know, what they wish they

could have that your product solves. And

then, so we aggregated that information

for them. And then, we use a tool called

Nano Banana to do a static image

generation. So, based off of that like

all of that that corpus of information

that we extracted from the web, again,

their pain points and the outcomes that

that the person wants, we generate 10

new pieces of ad creative daily. Those

ad like pieces of ad creative, like we

basically gave it a brand style guide,

like here's the fonts, here's the

colors, you know, here's kind of the

composition, etc. And then, those ads

automatically get uploaded to a Facebook

Ads account via the Facebook Ads API.

All this is like pretty technical, but

like the for the person listening, you

would create what's called a developer

API key. And you can do this, anybody

can do this for any Facebook Ads

account. And then, again, within Claude

Code, Codex, you basically are giving

that they call it an uh coding agent

harness, but you're giving it that API

key, and you can interact directly

with your ad accounts via this. Like,

you can literally control them entirely.

Like, you have to know no- nothing about

how to actually use them to to get them

to you know operate. But how we do this

then is go ahead please yeah.

>> The actual agent creation, what is that

done in?

>> Yeah, so we do our agent creation with

three things. So it's we have a data

pipeline, a data warehouse and then the

agent harness. So data pipeline is just

a stream of data from all of your data

sources. So imagine like you're running

Facebook ads it probably looks something

like Facebook ads, you know Google

Analytics for your CRM say like Go High

Level as an example. And then maybe you

have like your payment processor that's

connected as well like Stripe or

something like that. So the reason that

we have to connect those is so that the

agent has an understanding of like what

is actually working, right? So to give

you an example of this of when it's kind

of failed in the past, there's all these

like AI SDRs or BDRs, right? It's like

sales development reps that came out in

the first cohort of kind of all of this

AI tooling. And when you look at their

like you know they're kind of written

off as they they weren't successful or

they like they couldn't actually make

impact. When you look at the postmortems

of like how they failed, they didn't

actually fail. They created a lot of

leads just the leads were really

terrible quality. And it's largely

because they didn't have like the

observability of is this lead qualified?

Like is it actually turning into

revenue? And so you have to basically

give the agent like the the data that it

needs. It's just like a human, right?

Like if the human is making decisions

off of you know poor data, it's very

likely that it's they're going to just

not do well. And we see this within like

all sizes of orgs that you know I've

ever worked with, right? Where it's like

>> Yeah.

>> You know sales wants something they're

like give me whales. Marketing's like

measurement is like give me leads which

are contrasting like different things,

right? And so you kind of have to have

this like meeting of the minds of like

okay, what is a good customer look like?

How do we actually go and like find that

good customer? How do we track that? And

this would be like you know what the

human would do traditionally. And then

you know based off that alignment that's

that measurement of success that we're

going towards. We're just taking that

same concept and basically giving, you

know, the agent that. But so when I say

an agent, what we're actually using is a

harness that's called Hermes. Similar to

something like an open claw or there's

Claude agent SDK is another one of

these.

>> Okay.

>> All it is is basically like an agent

that's So an agent like what at its core

is basically a piece of software that's

living on a a machine that's in the

cloud that's just like always on. And so

you always like have access

>> [laughter]

>> This agent has full access to that

computer basically. And so you can be

like, "Hey, like go research this

thing." Like I like literally I can text

it, right? I can be like, "Go research

this thing." And you know, it will

respond back like, "Here's everything

that I found based off of, you know, the

last 15 minutes of research that I just

did." And the reason that it can do that

is because it has that computer that it

can use and it knows how to like

navigate that computer, right? It's a

lot of it's just like from what's called

the terminal. So like it's writing code

to go and navigate the internet which is

this whole other can of worms of like

what does the internet turn into if it's

just billions of agents that are

navigating it. But yeah, at at its core

though it's it's just this fundamental.

So it's basically like does the agent

have data that it can, you know, that it

needs to make decisions on? Like I put

an agent on a cloud so it's on a

computer that's just like running

constantly. And then it's like giving it

some type of standard, you know,

operating procedure where it's like your

job is this, your measurement of success

is this, you know, go and and run these

activities basically for us. So.

>> So you said Hermes. That's the the

platform. I don't know if that's even

the right word that you used.

>> Yeah, we like Hermes a lot. We've tried

Open Claw on some of these other like

options and I think they'll get better

as time goes on. But like Open Claw was

really the first version of this where

it felt like, you know, I have like I

don't even know what to call it, a

digital human in a box

>> [laughter]

>> that I can like interact with and like

delegate tasks to. But it it just is

very brittle. Like it wasn't enterprise

ready which again for our customers like

they're, you know, I need my Google Ads

to always run properly. And like, you

know, if we set a budget of, whatever,

five grand a month, it's not going to go

and spend 50 on accident because it's

just just like, you know, failing. And

so, we kind of tested everything. We

found Hermes to be like at a quality

level that is just way above, you know,

anything else that we could find. And

so, that's why we've like focused on it.

We also like know the the founders a

little bit. And like we've talked with

them on social. And so, just it just

feels like it's like it's a very serious

like solution.

>> Yeah. And like okay, what's possible?

So, yeah. And now, for someone who's

getting started with this, is that what

you would recommend for them too? Or do

you think something more like an open

Claude would be all they need to get

started?

>> Honestly, like for the majority of

people, I think it's even a layer down

from that. Like using something like a

Claude code or a Codex. And then, have

the agent go do work for you. Like have

it go and I try to like more and more

how I I work is I am using some type of

transcription software. I use something

I use one called Super Whisper. Right? I

just know the founder and like it's a

great product. I'm literally working in

Codex or Claude code and I'm like

telling the agent, okay, we're going to

go do this together. And I'm like, you

know, physically like with words saying

that, so I'm not typing. And then, I am

like trying to delegate like any of the

work that is me either touching the

mouse or the computer. I'm trying to

delegate that, you know, to that. And I

think for a lot of people, like as soon

as they realize that that's even

possible, it's like this like light bulb

comes on of, oh my god, like I

everything that I do is on a computer.

And like you're telling me that I can

basically have, you know, this And it is

an agent. That I think the difference is

like when you look at Claude code or

Codex, it's an agent that's on your

machine. And like it can't really like

effectively run tasks. Like say for

example, it's like every day at 9:00

a.m. I want you to do something. It's

not really like built for that. It's

more like you're the human, you're kind

of driving its actions, but it's doing

all of like the I call it the middle

work. So, it's like it's doing all the

middle work for you. So, like, you know,

again, touching the keyboard, clicking

the mouse, you know, etc. And then your

job is like, I need to come up with

like, what does it need to do? I need to

be able to explain it really well, and

then I need to be able to like audit its

actions, right? Like the outputs that

it's generating. But for most people,

like and I've taught these like classes,

like live classes in a webinar setting

before, like this this is like this like

total like change of mindset. Because

and once you get to there, then you

start to think about, okay, cool. What

are all the processes like I just

co-worked with it? What are all the

processes now that I do on a daily basis

that I despise?

And how can I go and basically turn that

into a system that this runs? And then

what naturally evolves from that is

like, it's typically like, you know, a

human does it entirely using something

like a Codex or a Claude code to have

like, you know, the human is driving and

it's like, you know, kind of some like a

co-work situation. And then the next

evolution is like, okay, now like I'm

going to try to make this entirely

autonomous. And I think that's the best

adoption for most kind like people is to

kind of go through that. And again, I I

don't know if where, you know, whoever's

listening right now, whatever industry

you're in, you can have this, you know,

positively affect your work that you're

doing. Like if you own a med spa or you

own a HVAC company or you own a software

company or you own a whatever, like an

insurance business, right? Like there is

I guarantee things that you do, whether

it's writing, whether it's like, you

know, data analysis, whether it's like

lead list cleaning, what whatever that

is, that you do on a daily basis that

you can basically delegate to these

models. And and it costs money, but it's

like at it, you know, a tenth of the

cost or a hundredth of the cost of

having an employee do that. And it's

also going to be like, you know, at a a

caliber or level that's way like better,

especially if you provide it more and

more context. Like for example, and how

I work with I use Claude code as like my

daily driver. And I've just built up

this like, you know, whole collection of

information about my business, like the

things that we're trying to accomplish.

Like here's our brand style guides. Like

all of these things are basically saved

like within its context. And so as I

you're working with it, it gets like

smarter and smarter about your business.

It almost turns into like a co-founder,

right? And again, I think this is like

the best way to have the adoption of

this. Don't try to jump initially to

like I'm going to build an agent that

entirely, you know, automates my whole

business. It's I think that that's a

mistake and it's it's kind of a tar pit

that people fall into accidentally a lot

of the times. What ends up being way

more effective is it's like, "Okay, what

am I doing today? Can I automate a

portion of this with like, again,

something like Codex or Claude Code or

whatever that is, even ChatGPT?"

Honestly, they're building all these

into them now where it's like the local

desktop apps like have Codex in it, they

have Claude Code in it, etc. So it it's

basically, "What am I working on? Can I

automate what I'm working on right now

currently?" And then, you know,

basically from there, now I can start to

think about, "Okay, what is this

workflow that I can do? Can I use

something like a Zapier or like an N8N

or any of these other workflow building

tools to actually go and automate this?

Or can I, you know, set up Hermes? Like

there's tons of these services now that

just like are It's like a Hermes agent

in the cloud where you pay like

whatever, $9 a month to have, you know,

Hermes in the cloud and you can

literally like message it on,

you know, Telegram or iMessage, right?

Like you can you can send voice memos to

it [laughter] and like have it do work

for you. It's pretty wild, but that that

progression is the best way I've seen

from an adoption standpoint. So

>> And I assume you need a separate

computer for this that you run off of.

>> Yeah, when I say computer, like like I

do this like on my my MacBook, right?

Like what I was describing when I'm

co-working with it. When I say like a

separate computer like a Hermes agent,

you could technically run a Hermes agent

on your local machine. Like you could

100% do that. The problem is that like

if you like turn your your computer off

or like you like another piece of this

is the

like how much

access do you want it to give, right?

Like if it's running on your local

machine, it literally has access to like

>> Oh, true. Yeah.

>> everything, right? And so you you kind

of have to think about, okay, like how

am I sandboxing this? How am I, you

know, in the best way that we've seen is

using, you know, some type Like you can

do this on Hostinger as an example. It's

really cheap. I think it's I want to say

it's like $15 a month. And they

basically have like a one-click

Hermes instance that you can spin up.

And then like that Hermes instance is

like on a computer in the cloud. Like

whenever you hear the cloud, just think

like it's just literally racks of

computers in some data center, you know,

somewhere that's using a ridiculous

amount of water to cool it. And that

agent is basically like running on top

of that that computer that's running in

the cloud. And then how you interact

with it, it just again, it can be

through text message, it can be through

like you connect it to your Slack. And

if you're like, okay, how do I do any of

this? How do I actually You can

literally ask it, like I'm trying to do

this.

>> [laughter]

>> How do I accomplish that? And it's going

to walk you through that process. And

that's it. But again, it's super early.

They aren't perfect like it's not

perfect yet, but

>> Mhm.

>> every month it feels like a year right

now in my industry where it's like even

just looking at our company and like

what we do, like it is an entirely

different shape than what it was like in

January. And we're, you know, only

halfway through the year. Um so, anyway,

yeah.

>> Yeah, I'm sure. It moves so fast. And I

was going to ask you this, you kind of

touched on it. If someone's listening,

they're like, I'd love to learn how to

do this a little bit more hands-on. You

mentioned like a webinar or a class. Is

that is something you do as well in

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can go to

gtmengineeringcourse.com.

Um it's just literally I just use it to

collect emails. And then

we do It's every 2 weeks now. I'm trying

to get to a weekly where we're like some

type of class where I'm talking through

like an agent build. But yeah, that and

like honestly, YouTube is the best

resource for this. Like if you just

search like, you know, how to build X

agents or whatever. Like for example, a

voice agent say that you wanted to like

answer your phone. There is so much

information out there that like people

are sharing about. Don't pay for a

course. Like I

the URL I just told you is like it has

literally course in the name of it. It's

free. It's sponsored by my company. Like

we never will charge for it. Everybody

that's selling a course is selling old

information. Everybody that's like on

the front lines of this and actually

doing it. They're all just giving it

away for free because they just find it

super interesting and it's like it's

also just like so exciting, right? Like

you're telling me I've been running

businesses like online companies for the

last whatever 15 years and I mean we're

at the point now where it's like not

unreasonable to think like hey I can

have this small, you know, website like

something I'm experimenting with right

now that I'm like having a lot of fun

with that's totally a side quest outside

of my, you know, our business but it's

basically building like directory

websites for like random, you know,

things like

>> for example like, you know, best dog

parks with shade.

>> [laughter]

>> You know, just very obscure like long

tail things but like for the first time

now you can go and build these sites at

scale that are really like they can be

autonomously run by itself like by these

agents, right? Which again it's just

software under the hood with some type

of inference like it it using tokens to

think but yeah it's it's a pretty

exciting time and again everybody that's

legitimate they're going to be sharing

exactly this.

>> Right.

>> on whatever it is their YouTube or like

I mean I hate to say it like Twitter's

probably the like most like as people

are discovering things that's where it

initially like it's like shared and then

from that it goes to YouTube and then

like two weeks later LinkedIn picks it

up [laughter]

and then like a week after that it's

it's Instagram basically. It's I but it

all originates typically from like

Twitter and YouTube are kind of the two

origins of all this new information.

>> Okay, that's really helpful to know. And

at what point do business owners or

whoever your client typically is come to

you? Is it after they've been trying it

and if they just can't get it to work or

they realize how much time they need to

invest. What makes someone come and work

with your company versus doing this on

their own?

>> I think like we have two different

customer types. So, like one is like

they're a repeat founder that's like

done multiple companies, and they're

basically like, "Can we partner with you

instead of having to hire a marketing

team or like hire a, you know, a sales

org, whatever that looks like?" Where

they're like, "I don't want to have to

go and hire 10 people to be able to run

these five channels. Can we work with

you guys?" That's kind of like one

customer type. The other is totally

where they've like they've tried to do

this implementation. They've gotten 90%

of the way there, and then the last 10%

is just like some hard technical problem

that they can't get over the hurdle. And

they're basically like, "Hey, just I

just want to pay you for the outcomes,

right? Like just I just want to pay you

to have this actually doing the work."

And so, that's like where we like come

in and how we function is we we So, we

forward deploy engineers to the

businesses to basically like solve these

problems, right? So, we have this like

menu item of agents that you can deploy,

and then like we have software engineers

that like literally

embed with your company and like build

these systems and these solutions out,

right? And then we again, we're the data

pipeline, the warehouse, and the agent

infrastructure. And so, it's just like

the whole like it's whole service in the

sense of it's everything that you need

to actually implement these within your

companies. We're seeing this a lot with

like a business, you know, businesses

where they're like, "Okay, we tried to

implement this. Like we've tried three

different,

you know, organizations. We failed three

times, and we're just like, 'Please just

get us to this like final the yard

line.'" Cuz again, it just what we've

seen in this space is like there's just

a lot of snake oil right now because

it's like, you know, for a lot of

companies like this is the dream, right?

You're telling me I can just like plug

into this thing and my business starts

growing, and like I just like all I have

to think about is like providing a good

product. And like at its core, it's

like, you know, when you look at a

company, you know, from the

fundamentals, like what is a business?

It's like, you know, you have something

that people want to buy, and the you

have the ability to sell it, right? Like

that's all of

a business is. And like for the a lot of

these, you know, business owners, like

there's great product people that have

terrible distribution skills. And so

they're like, okay, if I can just focus

on my service and providing that and

this is handling, you know, all of my

basically growth and and new customer

acquisition, you know, that's like

again, the dream of everybody that's

starting this. And but honestly, where I

started as like a founder as well, too,

like in the end, whatever, 10 years ago.

So, anyways, yeah, but that that's kind

of what we see it. A lot of the times

we're working with companies where

they're like, "Hey, we want to do these

five different channels simultaneously."

We have some companies where they're

like, "We just want to do Google Ads or

we just want to do Facebook." Like

individual agents and we we service

that, but a lot of the times like the

marginal cost of doing everything now is

so small that it's like, why wouldn't we

do everything? Like why wouldn't we try

to be literally everywhere that we can

because we know that's going to like

make our business grow, you know, faster

and and be more sustainable. So.

>> What can would someone expect as far as

like the timeline to get an agent up and

running? So, there's say they're doing

one, say they're doing four.

>> Yeah, we get an agent out the door in

like five business days typically. So,

if like the Facebook Ads agent, like

again, just give you an example, like a

concrete one, like we're using that

landscape design firm, it's like the

first ads were going live in like three

days, right? And then like So, we took

their average cost per lead, we took it

from $17 on average before we started,

we brought it down to $1.70 in three

weeks. Just like by the agent running

the process. And it's it's not anything

like tricky or like special. It's it's

it's just like what are the top 1% of

like Facebook Ads marketers do right

now. And when you look at it, it's like

they test a lot of creative, they have a

conversion action that they're trying to

optimize for, which is like typically a

form submission or like a qualified

lead, you know, whatever that is.

That gets sent back to Facebook. And

then it's like, I'm just trying to look

for like what is the cheapest creative

to create, you know, that action. And

then I'm just testing So, 10 new pieces

of creative go into testing every day.

Losers get turned off, winners get

promoted to a winner's campaign, the

winners are competing for budget for

like, you know, who's the best

performer. They're all optimizing for

that same conversion action and then we

just have an agent that's in the loop

that's basically looking at the data and

then also looking at the winners. We

have it like attached to a vision model

where it's basically like, okay, what do

they have in common? What are the

themes? And then lets that influence the

creative agent and then you just go, you

know, in this loop, right? Where it's

like

>> Yeah.

>> It's just what a human would do. It's

like, I research my market, I make

creative that speaks to the pain and

like to the outcomes that my market

wants. I test all these different

formats. I look for the winners. I

double down on the winners. I turn off

the losers. I repeat that process and

that's that's all that's happening under

the hood with with any of these. So, for

custom builds it takes longer. Like

we're doing this right now for a company

where we're like building this is going

to be really esoteric but like we're

we're called TikTok real farms. So, it's

basically imagine like 100 TikTok

accounts that are in the cloud

>> [laughter]

>> that like, you know, they basically like

we they give us an API endpoint and we

can go and bulk upload like

>> Wow.

>> TikToks, too. So, for them they're like

a mobile application that's like a AI

photo editing app. And so, they have

this format that they found that works

organically on mobile or sorry, on on

TikTok where it's like basically like

three different options of what they

they're basically like a photo studio

studio app. Like you take a selfie of

yourself and then you can like put

yourself in different settings, right?

It's that that's kind of the idea. Um

but for them it's like, okay, we're

going to go and like create this whole

organic content engine. It's just what a

human was doing previously. We're just

taking that same process and remixing

it. But for custom builds it just takes

more time to actually like build out the

solution. But for these like pre-built

solutions that we've already made for

other companies, it's just like on our

menu where it's like, cool, I want that

one. Like

>> [laughter]

>> let me, you know, give me that one. Let

me go implement it and then we

basically, as we build out these other

agents for other companies, they just

get added to our menu as well. So, it's

you know, we'll build this like TikTok

cloud agent and or sorry, TikTok real

farm agent and then we'll basically like

have this playbook that we can go and

apply to these other organizations. And

I think this is like what is most

exciting for me with as all this goes is

it's like

as you start to see like, "Hey,

companies that have this type of shape,

these are the things that are working.

Let's like, you know, you should focus

on these five things to begin with

because we've seen, you know, similar

companies have success with that." And

then it just

>> Yeah.

>> kind of cascades with all the cross

learnings and everything that happens.

And again, it's just moving so fast.

Like the impact we can get is like

typically in like the first month. Like

well, so in the first 2 weeks we

typically get two to three agents out

the door. By the end of like 90 days

we're in the range of like 10 agents

that are live. And like

you know, three of those end up being

custom, right? Like specific to the

company. And again, it's just like

you're telling me that I come from, you

know, business owner like I've done this

before, right? You're telling me that

like I don't have to go and hire First

off, hire the staff, train the staff,

implement the staff, or hire an agency,

have them like, you know, maybe do well

for 6 weeks and then they absolutely

just crumble because they delegate it to

some junior staff member that is

managing 10 different accounts

simultaneously or it's like, you know,

somebody in like the Philippines or

or India that's like now managing my

Google Ads and doesn't care, right? It's

just the You can just create like added

scale and an impact that previously was

just And I think this is where all this

is going. Like you're a business owner.

Like what ends up happening, right? Over

the next couple of years. Like I think

anybody can go and make, you know, a

thousand Facebook Ads right now.

Actually knowing what's working is going

to be the hardest part with all this.

And this is like what we're obsessed

about. It's like what is the closest

thing to revenue that we can track for

and like give to the agent so that all

of its focus is like the closest thing

to revenue, right? Again, if that's like

a qualified lead or like the actual

payment that occurs. Like how can we

like send that back to it? Because

without that it's just going to turn

into like And we're seeing this. There's

tons of these companies that are just

like AI slop

generators, right? And like to be blunt,

like I built AI slop generators like

before I built this company.

That was like kind of the first

iteration of this was like, okay, can I

go have it write a thousand blog posts?

And it's like, yes. And can I can that

make you leads? Yes. But then it's like

it gets to that point where it's like,

okay, well like of all make anything

now, it's how we and how we're thinking

about it more and more is like marketing

used to be like the cost, you know, your

ad spend cost, right? And more and more

it's like, what is the cost per token?

Or what what is the token cost to get a

lead? Is basically like our measurement

of success. It's like, how do we reduce

the token cost to get basically, you

know, grow the band or grow the brand,

whatever that outcome is. Like for some

of the companies that we're working with

are huge and they're like, it's just

brand authority. That's what they're

trying to build. It's like notoriety

within their category. Totally different

outcomes than like But for a lot of

people listening is probably like, I

just need more customers. Like get me

more customers, right? Anyway.

>> I have two follow-up questions. So, one,

is there any type of business or stage

of business where AI agents just

wouldn't be a fit for them?

>> Yeah, I think early stage companies that

don't like have an understanding of who

their target customer is or like what

they're selling. Like if it's amorphous

and it's like, okay, I'm still figuring

out like what is the market positioning

that I'm going after. We just have to

like you can't build a system for

a company that doesn't have a system,

right? And so I think that's one piece.

Also like a lot we see this with a lot

of organizations. Like I you look at

like, you know, anybody in real estate

to be totally transparent. It's like

they have some crazy paper trail that

they're running that's just like super

super messy and it's just like hard to

like there's some human that's worked

there for 12 years and

you know, Stacy understands the whole

system, but that's the only person in

the whole company that actually

understands it and there's all this

nuance. So, I think for like a lot of

these organizations and this is where

you're seeing a lot of like consulting

starting to happen now, especially for

like SMBs, like small medium-sized

businesses is basically like somebody

comes in, they look at your whole

process at like structure and then And

like, okay, cool. Like how do we like,

you know, automate this or make it more

streamlined?" Those are the types of

companies where we're seeing this be a

problem. Where just where it's hard on

the agent deployments cuz it's like,

again, how I would just think about it

is like, if I could take a task and I

could delegate it to somebody on my

team, and they could operate, you know,

they could run that task, right? On a

cadence with some type of measurement of

success, if I could do that, that's like

a great like sign at this point that

that that's probably an agent that can

be deployed that actually does this or

accomplishes this. So.

>> Yeah. That makes sense. And the second

question I had, in any of the agent

workflows, any that you work with or

with your clients, I'm sure the answer

answer is yes, is there a point where

humans have to like input some sort of

content? So, for example, say it's a

client who, you know, is doing YouTube

videos or social media, and they do

actually have a human in the videos. Is

that ever something that is part of the

workflows, or is the goal to have AI

create all the content instead of the

human? Does that make sense?

>> I think this human is the most important

part. So, we for sure have built We call

it like human in the loop, right? Where

it's like, say they're in a regulated

industry, and they need a human to check

off of, you know, on something, right?

Say they're in like finance. And so,

it's like, cool, like the agent does the

work, it sends a Slack message, and it's

like, "Todd,

is this all right?" It's like, "No, you

know, you need to change this section."

And it changes makes the change, it

sends it back, right? And it can like be

like a coworker almost in that way. So,

I think that that is like a way that

we're seeing it used. The other side of

it, too, is like, if I just go and ask

an agent to like write me a good piece

of content about my industry, it's like

going to be the most terrible

most like unoriginal most like the least

novel thing that you could imagine,

right? Cuz it's just writing to be

average of the industry. But in

contrast, if you're like, "Hey, here is,

you know, 30 minutes of me talking about

some specific thing that's happening

within my category." You give it that

context. So, it's like, "Here's the

transcript of that conversation." And

now you're like, "Agent, okay, now go

write,

you know, a thought leadership piece of

content based off of the source material

that I provided." The output quality

that you're going to get out of that is

going to be like top 1%, right? And I

think that's the thing, you know, for

anybody that's listening, like how do

you take that domain knowledge that you

have or the expertise that you have and

basically like capture it in some

capacity and then provide it to, again,

whether you're using Claude Code or

Codex or it's an agent that's in the

cloud,

like give it to that employee

to like basically have access to. And

the impact you're going to get like

And I a lot of the conversations we

have, it's like that's what we hear.

It's like, "Oh yeah, we tried to do this

and the ad quality that we got was

terrible, right?" Like from Nano Banana.

Like it looks it's not on brand. It

looks like,

you know,

slop, like somebody that did it in, you

know, Microsoft Paint, right? And we're

like, "Okay, like did you give it brand

style guides?" And they're like, "No."

Like did you give it the color palette

that you has to be in? It's like, "No."

Did you give it like the language that

it's okay and like language that's not

okay? It's like, "No." And so, I think

more and more about this is like I'm

trying to like basically give AI like a

boundary of like knows.

And then this is where you can live in.

Cuz like when it's unbounded, it will

just go and do, you know, basically

unhinged things. But if I like if I

instead I'm like, "Hey, here's the line

in the sand. Like here's the box that I

need you to live in." And like this is

like And it's easier to say that. Like

what I found too is when you're like,

"This is what good is." It kind of gets

distracted. And when you're like instead

like, "Hey, this is what bad is."

You should like do whatever isn't bad.

[laughter]

It's going to create just a better

outcome for you. So, anyway, yeah, just

learnings again that we found that to be

impactful for us internally.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. So, I have two

final questions then I'll I'll ask you

where people can connect with you. So,

next question would be if a business

owner, marketing professional, someone

who's interested in this is listening,

what is one thing they can do that can

make a significant impact in their

business if they want to get started

with this?

>> Yeah, I think that the biggest thing, so

it depends on the organize organization

side. So, if you're just a founder and

you're like, "Okay, how do I

just adopt this myself?" Again, I would

get something like a Claude Coder or

Codex, and whatever your work is, like,

just co-work with it. Like, literally

have it in another tab, and just go back

and forth. As you're doing your job, try

to figure out, "Can I delegate some of

this work to it?" That's the first step.

The second step is basically going and

then incentivizing, like, if you have an

organization, like, how do you get your

entire staff to like adopt this? And

this is the hardest part, cuz like,

everybody's also a fearful, like, "How

do I I don't want this to replace my

job. Like, what is my

What is my role going to be as all this

gets adopted?" I don't have a really

strong opinion or answer about this. I

think there's going to like probably be

like some

you know, I think about it as like a

snow globe. Like, the snow globe's going

to get shaken, and then it's going to

like

tilt and like go into a new position,

but like, it's still the same amount of

snow in the snow globe. It's not like

that's changing, right? It's just the

jobs are going to be in like a different

place. But, if you're a business owner,

like, incentivize The best way I've seen

to incentivize people is to have like a

weekly lunch and learn where somebody on

your team shows what they did with like

this AI tooling, and it's like, "Hey, I

automated this job function, like, a

part of my day-to-day, and this is like

how I did it, like, everything I

learned." And you're just going to

immediately be like You'll You'll see

people just become like they're like,

"Oh, like, you did this? Well, this

relates to what I'm doing. Like, let me

go try and do that." And also creates

this feedback loop where you're you're

trying to make like a hero out of this

person that is using the tooling.

Because if you set requirements, like,

companies right now, they're setting

token requirements where it's like, "You

need to use

X amount of tokens per week." Like, I

have a friend that's at a huge

organization that this is a requirement

at his job right now. It's like,

"I have to It's a payroll software, you

would know the name of, and the

Like, he's like, "Cody, my job I I have

this requirement that I'm supposed to

hit. All I'm doing is separating

columns.

Like, I'm separating them and putting

them back together and that's how I'm

hitting my token limit on a weekly

basis. It's like it's not actually

providing any value. He's just like

doing what's required of him, right? I

think that if you're actually trying to

get this adoption, it's like you have to

create that like lunch and learn setting

and then create that hero where it's

like you know, here is again like

like Stephanie and she basically like is

going to share and almost like a a

setting where like praise occurs as well

where it's like look at what she built.

Isn't this amazing, right? And like it's

like that spotlight is focused on that

person which like it creates this like

feedback loop where it's of adoption and

you can you can start to incentivize

stuff where it's like

I don't know. Like tie it to revenue and

those pieces, but I find it's always

very hard to actually quantify like what

is the real value that's coming out of

this. What I've seen is like when you're

like listen, there's parts of your job

you hate. This is going to make you hate

those parts of like it's going to make

that part of your job way easier, right?

And if you can facilitate that that

understanding and actually get them to

start playing with it, you're just going

to get like so the the speed that you'll

be able like of adoption that you'll be

able to get to happen at your

organization will be incredibly fast.

So.

>> Yeah, that's great. And last question

for you is what do you think is coming

with the future of AI agents? Do you

think that all businesses will either

need to adopt this kind of process or

they're not going to make it or what do

you see coming in the future like 10,

15, 20 years down the road with AI

agents?

>> Yeah, I have no idea on that. Like I I

didn't think agents like in the capacity

that we're even using them on a

day-to-day now were going to be possible

like this year and like they happened

which is crazy. I I think the thing, you

know, if you're a business owner, I

think there's a lot of hype in this

category and people think like oh, I'm

way behind. You're really not way

behind. I think the biggest thing right

now to think about and again, there's

going to be people that are trying to

sell like we can totally automate your

entire business. That is not reality,

right? But we can probably like

realistically like maybe 40% of it and

it's like all the stuff that creates

employee burnout and you also hate to do

individually, right? That sounds like a

pretty good, you know, outcome. So, I I

think it's it's also just like have

bite-size pieces is what always works.

Like pick one workflow, try to automate

that. Don't try to like restructure the

entire organization in a weekend or, you

know, something. It just It just I've

never seen it be successful. It's always

like small, like eat the elephant, like,

you know, piece by piece, right?

>> Yeah.

>> that's what always ends up being like

the best, you know, outcomes. And then

again, just like I think if you just

know like just even if you just learn

about the industry, right? You don't

even learn or implement any of the

things, but just kind of have a pulse on

like what is happening and like listen

to the conversations like this where

it's like, "Okay, here's what's

possible, right?" At least you're going

to have like an understanding and not

get fleeced

>> [laughter]

>> by some, you know, kid who's 20, who's

in college and he's like, "I can do this

whole thing that I've like, you know,

and it's reality, it's like, "Yeah, you

can probably do like 1/10 of that and it

will make incredible like impact for the

business, right?"

>> Yeah.

>> But the the whole overhaul of the entire

organization, like it's just going to

take time. I mean, we're seeing this

where it's just like adoption is slow.

It's hard. There's like There's human

parts of this, too, right? Where it's

like political, internal conversations.

Like we just talked to this large

company and like they have 50 employees

and it's like they are entirely against

the adoption of this cuz they see the

writing on the wall. It's like, "Oh, my

job is is is, you know, potentially like

can be, you know, taken away, right?"

And so, you're like having to fight that

internally as well. And so, I think the

bigger thing is like again, just the

small, like like it's boring, really, to

be blunt. It's doing the boring thing.

That's always what actually makes

companies work, right? It's like, "What

is the most boring thing I can do

consistently?" And that's what actually

makes growth happen. So, anyway, I don't

know if that provides a lot of value,

but

>> Can you share with us where people can

find you, learn more about your work,

and connect with you?

>> Yeah, absolutely. So, it's graph.com.

Like I have data and I graphed it, past

tense. My Twitter handle is Cody

Schneider, personal website is Cody

Schneider and then a LinkedIn is

if you just Google Cody Schneider it

should come up. I

If I don't come up I'm doing my job

terribly well or not doing my job well.

But yeah, and then personal email if you

have questions I'm more than happy to

have a conversation with you. It's

cody@graft.com. Uh you can feel free to

reach out there and

>> Amazing. Incredible. Well, thank you so

much. This was such a good conversation.

I know I learned a lot so I'm sure that

our audience did too. We really

appreciate you being here.

>> Absolutely. Thank you for hosting me

again. I really appreciate it.

>> Yes, of course. And to our audience, I

hope you found this as valuable and

eye-opening as I did. If you want to get

started you have everything that you

need to kind of take this and run with

it. So make sure whatever platform you

are listening on that you subscribe, you

follow, and you continue to keep stay

posted for um upcoming episodes. Thanks

again for listening to the Growth Boss

Podcast.

>> [music]