How I AI
How I AI showcases the people shaping the future with artificial intelligence. Host Brooke Gramer spotlights founders, innovators, and creatives who share not just the tools they use, but the transformations they’ve experienced. Human-centered storytelling meets visionary insights on business, culture, and the future of innovation.
How I AI
How a Startup CEO Uses AI to Help Brands Stay Visible in the Age of AI Search
In this episode of How I AI, I sit down with Jon Mest, a data scientist turned startup CEO who’s helping brands understand what visibility means in a world run by AI search.
Jon is the founder of Just Reach Out, a digital PR platform that helps businesses pitch the media and earn organic coverage, and ChatRank, a new tool that tracks how your brand shows up across AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews.
We trace the evolution of search from Ask Jeeves and AltaVista to the era of conversational agents, where the algorithms deciding what people see are no longer just search engines.. they’re language models. Jon shares how AI is reshaping SEO, what it takes to stay relevant when content discovery is automated, and what it really means to “rank” in an AI-first world.
🔥 Topics We Cover:
• The evolution of search from Ask Jeeves and AltaVista to ChatGPT
• What “ranking” means inside AI models and answer engines
• How ChatRank helps brands measure their presence in AI systems
• How PR, SEO, and AI search are converging
• What businesses can do today to remain visible as search becomes conversational
Tools Mentioned in This Episode:
AI Search & Discovery
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
Search & Visibility Tracking
Google, ChatRank.ai, SEMrush, HFS Research
PR & Outreach
JustReachOut.io
Innovation & Legacy Tools
Bolt.new, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista
Connect with Jon:
JustReachOut.io
ChatRank.ai
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More About Brooke:
Instagram: thebrookegram
Website: brookex.com
LinkedIn: Brooke Gramer
More About the Podcast:
Instagram: howiai.podcast
Website: howiaipodcast.com
"How I AI" is a concept and podcast series created and produced by Brooke Gramer of EmpowerFlow Strategies LLC. All rights reserved.
First of all, Google is not dead just because ChatGPT and Perplexity exists like that. That's something that people are kind of. Yes, you're right there's this AI kind of world where people are very excited about it. But last data I saw, which I could trust, was that Google still owns 97% of search. So like Google's still dominating search globally right now. And so yes, these AI tools are becoming more and more prevalent now, what that means for SEO, I'm sure we'll get to in a second, but I think what's interesting though, as well about Google is that they are also very much leaning into the idea that Google search as we know it is gonna be changing.
Brooke:Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. I'm Brooke Gramer, your host and guide on this journey into the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing events and business strategy, wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, AI. This isn't just a podcast. How I AI is a community, a space where curious minds like you come together, share ideas, and I'll also bring you exclusive discounts, and insider resources, because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift, and the sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities will unlock. Have you just started exploring AI and feel a bit overwhelmed? Don't worry, I've got you. Jump on a quick start audit call with me so you can walk away with a clear and personalized plan to move forward with more confidence and ease. Join my community of AI adopters like yourself. Plus, grab my free resources, including the AI Get Started Guide. Or try my How I AI companion GPT. It pulls insights from my guest interviews along with global reports, so you can stay ahead of the curve. Follow the link in the description below to get started. Today's guest, Jon Mest, is a data scientist turned founder who began his career in New York on Wall Street as an analyst before pivoting into tech where he now leads two companies in the front lines of AI visibility. In our conversation, Jon breaks down what it really means for businesses when search shifts from Google links to AI answers. And how founders can adapt their marketing and publicity strategies in real time. We dive into the myths and the truths of SEO, the rise of AI answer engines, and how his clients are getting traction by rethinking PR and visibility in this new landscape. If you've ever wondered how to stay visible in an AI driven world, this episode is going to give you a front row look at what's coming next. Alright, let's dive in. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of How I AI. I'm your host, Brooke Gramer. Today my guest is Jon Mest. a data scientist turn founder now leading Just Reach Out and Chat Rank where he's helping entrepreneurs navigate the shift from traditional PR and Google search into the new world of AI visibility. Welcome, Jon.
Jon Mest:So much, Brooke. Happy to be here.
Brooke:I would love for you to share more a bit about yourself and how you ended up where you are now.
Jon Mest:Yeah. My journey as you mentioned briefly there is, quite interesting, but, so yeah, data scientists by training really loved the engineering and math side of things, but then didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. So I moved to New York and went to Wall Street and that was not exactly the right fit for me, but um, I did learn a ton while doing that. And ultimately was able to kind of like grow into more of a role in, you know, different technology companies. After my stint there started as a data scientist, kind of as a developer, worked into product. Eventually they were like, Hey, you seem pretty good at this. Do you wanna go sell the products you're building? So we went out on the road and started selling and then yeah, kind of led to there. I I've worn product hats to customer success. And then more recently kind of with our team built out uh, Just Reach Out and, and Chat Rank.
Brooke:Well, I see myself in you, a bit of jack of all trades, and I think that's the best place to be, especially as an entrepreneur and founder. So take me back to that beginning where AI entered the chat. When did you start dabbling and begin to lean into this technology?
Jon Mest:Yeah, I think like a lot of people that have been frustrated when they're trying to find some information and not being able to get it cleanly or easily through a traditional search, that's just always been a, a struggle or a problem of mine. I always hated when I searched for something. And I was given, you know, a lot of listicles or basically very clearly sponsored posts or things that were kind of getting like thrown in my face as answers to a question. But frankly, I didn't need, I didn't wanna read a 2000 word blog post to the very end to just find out that that's what the answer I needed was the entire time. Like I always just wanted the answer. I wanted to just kind of quickly be able to grab things. And so there's been shortcuts along the way. I mean, Wikipedia has always been very helpful. There's always been like kind of ways to get information to people quickly online, but ultimately what really kind of. Opened my eyes to this was, I mean, when ChatGPT first became a thing and I was out there and I was like, oh, you can just for free, go online and just get the answer to questions you have. There was, there was some hiccups along the way. They were, they were not perfect at the beginning, but I really think that that was like a fantastic kind of eye-opening moment for me. And then from there it was just, okay, well how can I use this to help myself? From like, everything from retrieving information about you know, how old some actor is I still saw in a movie to all the way to, you know, obviously now how I use it every day in our lives as, as, as business owners. But yeah, really for me it was just that retrieval of information and that shift in myself to go from like, okay. I'm asking a question or a keyword in a search engine to, I'm asking a natural language question to an answer engine. Like I want the answer. How do I best get the answer outta these tools? And then how do I use that kind of knowledge and thinking to kind of build upon that and to use it to our advantage that, again, throughout the, process of building our technology companies.
Brooke:This is a bit of a off the cuff question because I was having this thought this morning. Do you remember Ask Jeeves and that website was basically what I feel like a lot of people turn to chat GPT to use for now, and it was just maybe a little too far ahead of its time.
Jon Mest:Actually very fun. You bring that up. I was speaking with some, some college students yesterday actually about, you know, they were taking an AI class and PR and it was just like it was just a fun conversation that we, we were having and. Clearly they're undergraduates in, in college. I'm a little older i'm in my thirties now. And so I remember when Google was not the number one search engine, there was Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, all of those, like all Alta Vista, I mean like all of them. And so I do remember loving Ask Jeeves'cause you could ask a question. You didn't have to write those stupid keywords. You could actually ask a question. And I thought that was cool. Obviously we all know how this played out Google won, but yes, absolutely, I do remember that. And I actually mentioned that yesterday and the day looked like me. Looked at me like I had five heads. Like I remember the days before Google was dominant. That was that was a tough one to, to swallow.
Brooke:That's so funny, and so here we are. Now, today, and the hot topic on everybody's mind is search engine optimization. it dead? I've seen both sides of the story. I feel like I live in an AI bubble where it feels like nobody's Googling anymore. But the reality is people on ChatGPT aren't even paying to use it. They're just using it on a day to day until their credit's run out. obviously that shifts and more users are getting on the platform every day. But maybe you can break it down for me, how many people are really using. LLMs in place of traditional search engines. How quick is that shift moving and is it something that is really under the gun right now when it comes to shifting our marketing efforts? I.
Jon Mest:So very loaded question. I'll try to address all three of those points. First of all, Google is not dead just because ChatGPT and Perplexity exists like that. That's something that people are kind of. Yes, you're right. There's this AI kind of world where people are very excited about it. And of course, AI is the future, and I'll get to in a second, like how Google's thinking about this as well. But last data I saw, which I could trust, I know thinking from SEM Rush or a HFS or whatever was that Google still owns 97% of search. So Google's still dominating search globally right now. And so yes, these AI tools are becoming more and more prevalent and the fact that they're lost, like some share is kind of mind boggling, but ultimately they, no, Google still owns the majority of search. Now, what that means for SEO, I'm sure we'll get to in a second, but before that, I think what's interesting though, as well about Google is that they are also very much leaning into the idea that Google search as we know it is gonna be changing. And so they are really kind of, obviously they have AI mode now and they have the Google AI overviews and you can just go directly to Gemini and use that as well. But they, what they're realizing is that at least this is what Sundar, Bacha, the CEO of Google has been mentioning at least I heard it on a podcast this summer with, with Lex Friedman. He was talking about how they're going to kind of keep pushing AI mode separate from traditional Google search, learn what users are really using well, what they really like, what they enjoy, and what features seem to be really kind of resonating with users in AI mode. And then importing them over to Google search one by one over the course of the next, you know, call it, I don't know if it's gonna be six months or six years, it's gonna be kinda take some time, I think. But ultimately they're gonna be moving these more AI forward features into traditional Google search. So Google understands they have the, the users right now, they have the traffic. They don't wanna lose that. So they want to kinda slowly transition people into this, what is ultimately going to be the future of search, which is more towards what like, you know, perplexity might be doing right now. And so Google understands this, they know it, and so they're really leaning to this pretty hard. What that means for, you know, SEO and what that means for like the future of search definitely kind of has a lot to that. We can talk about a lot of pieces there. I think the one thing I'll mention quickly, just as a starting point to kick that off is just overall when you're asking google a question that's really simple or you want to kind of go get to like a very simple answer. I personally, I still go to Google for that. So if I need to buy a new pair of running shoes, I'm gonna go on and search like Brooks Adrenaline GTS size 12 and a half like I do, I know exactly what I want. I'm gonna search that into Google find the people who are selling the cheapest and then just buy'em like that. That's like how I will still use a Google search to do that. I don't need ChatGPT and AI totally to give me that because I know what I need. But if my two and a half year old has a rash on his arm and I don't know what that is, I need to take a picture of it and describe it, like, and try to figure out what that is before I can call the pediatrician when they open in the morning. That, to me is really important to be able to kind of have that insight. Traditional Google can't do that. Like this is something that an AI tool will really, is really, really, really helpful for. So there's complicated, complex questions that require a lot more data information and more like talking to an expert versus just kind of getting like some search results. That's where ai, it's like anybody, like from somebody like me that uses it every day to my mom who like barely knows what it is, but kind of understands that piece of it. Knows how the future of AI search is gonna be really, really powerful for things that are just not so simple to just ask Google. And so that is where we're seeing things heading. And I think over time it's kind of really transition most users over time into that more AI version of search, whether that's with Google, perplexity, Claude like ChatGPT what? We'll.
Brooke:Interesting, and I've seen so many people online share really quick. Instagram reels of how to hack the algorithm, how to create a blog or reverse Google what your keywords and what questions people are asking to find your product. And put this in your webpage and hide the code and. All these workarounds to try to get placed on ChatGPT, so I'm not really sure if Chat Rank solves that problem, or maybe you can bring me through case studies of the best. Use case for Chat Rank and how you're able to quote, unquote, hack the algorithm and get people visible in this day and age where now we have so many different ways to obtain information in this AI space.
Jon Mest:Yeah. So I think the one thing to just point out here is just, just like Google has never publicly told everybody what their algorithm is for how to determine search results. Like nobody really truly knows the exact answer, but. Just in the same way that people have been figuring out how to like reverse engineer Google's algorithm, with SEO and traditional optimization techniques that we've been using for 25 years now. People are kind of taking the same approach to the AI models. So Chat Rank is not some magic bullet. You press a button and it's all fixed. That doesn't exist. Because frankly we need to be adapting and adjusting to how these models are changing over time, just like you do with traditional Google and SEO. And so I just bring, I, I start. With that just by saying like, there is no exact like magic hack, so I'm not gonna, not gonna poo poo some of these Instagram reels. You might've seen that, like say I have this magic bullet, but frankly, any trick like hiding code, any of these like black hat ways of doing things where you put in white writing in the bottom of the page, here's like all that stuff that doesn't work. It might work for a couple days. You might sneak it by the, the algorithm for a week, but it's not gonna work long term. That is not ultimately a real actual way to do things. And so frankly, we don't preach any of that and we don't really focus any of our efforts on, on those kinds of things. The fundamentals of how to kind of improve your visibility over time is very true and I'm happy to share. I mean, there's nothing like, you know, proprietary to the Chat Ranks overall idea of how these things work. What we do differently is kind of execution and how we kind of can track and monitor that and make sure we feel really good about the results. So ultimately, we talked about this a little bit before, but Google is more of like a search engine. So you kind of are, are giving it keywords so it can go use those keywords and find which pages should rank highest given that set of keywords. That's it. That's like the idea of it. I mean, there's a lot more complexity than that, but that's a very high level. That's kind of how a search engine will work, and they have an algorithm that says, okay, these are the pages that we recommend based on, you know, other people saying these pages are good through a backlink profile and through an authority score and all those kinds of things. Well, when you're talking to an answer engine, you're not just looking for a 10 blue links on page one and then 10 more on page two and 10 more on page three. You're not just looking for like true ranking over the next like thousand links. What you're looking for is actually an answer, and so you need to be listed as the answer. So the way that these AI models think and how they, they kind of provide the answer is different than if they had to provide, you know, 10, 20, 30, 50 links. And so approaching the problem like that is the first place that we always tell businesses to start with is, okay, I need to make sure my content, my website, anything external to my website, anything about my brand is helping to answer the questions that my customers are going to ask in natural language, in these AI tools. That is like step one of any of this. And so yes, there's a lot of techniques you can use. You mentioned a few of those like FAQs, question and answers like, but there's a lot more you can do with that. I'm happy to share more details, but ultimately at the highest level it really is about kind of reframing how users are asking for data now and information and how the tools that they're asking that information are providing its answers and that is ultimately what needs to be focused on and that's why. The idea of SEO being dead, it's not dead. A lot of principles of traditional SEO still matter. Writing good content, making sure your stuff really matters, making sure you really have like it doesn't matter that the back links, but really just the brand mentions externally. All that stuff really matters still. It's just a matter of like reframing it to making sure that you are the answer that that tool provide rather than just, you know, one of the links.
Brooke:How I AI is brought to you in partnership with the Collective AI, a space designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the Collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and showed me what's possible with AI. Whether you're just starting out, or want done for you solutions, the Collective gives you the resources to grow your business with AI. So stay tuned to learn more at the end of this episode, or check my show notes for my exclusive invite link.. Thank you for going more into that. And I can imagine this has completely restructured a lot of your clients' business models. And even just the way that you work on your team and the way that you promote your businesses as well. Maybe you can just share more on the shift that you've made in the last handful of years with all of these changes. Or maybe you can share a case study of a client that found success using this new model.
Jon Mest:Here's a great example. So it actually combines Just Reach Out in Chat Rank in a way that, that we know our clients love to do as well. But, so Just Reach Out. It's all about, you know, getting pr and press for your business. Which is always like, anybody wants that and rather it's for like a vanity metric like, oh, I got quoted in this Goop article, like listicle for the best towels of the summer. That's one way to do quote unquote pr. Also, it's like, hey, I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal to be a thought leader and expert in this space that they were writing an article about. All that matters and knows really kind of do add value to the business overall. And so that's what Just Reach Out helps brands do is kind of reach out to the media, tell their story and try to get themselves, you know, placed into these, the content and then Chat Rank obviously then kind of like uses anything we can learn about your brand throughout the internet to then kind of see what is driving you to rank better or be kind of a more likely to be given as the answer to a question. So those two are very, very much linked because you mentioned before like writing a good blog and having good quality content on your own pages. That's ideal for like, we tell, tell people with Chat Rank for kind of your own brand. Ranking over time, because you know that's content you can own, you can tell it that's your, information. You can really kind of own the message and be exactly very clear about what you want to say. Whereas if you go to the Wall Street Journal, Hey, it's amazing they're gonna use you as an expert in their article, but they ultimately hold the pen. They're gonna write that article however they want. You need to make sure you fit into that nicely. So we have customers that are kind of finding different ways of getting that, you know. That social proof of external sources giving you a credit for what you already know to be true about what you do. So here's a great example. We have a customer, he's runs this business. It's a, it's a great like, kind of like a business where he helps Amazon sellers. Kind of help reduce fraud in negative reviews. So I know this is a weird thing, but there are like somebody gives you like a one star review on your Amazon product and it's true. You can't do anything about that. That's just customers giving you feedback. But there's a lot of fraud and actually like competitors and people will just hire external actors to basically buy your product and then give you negative reviews on purpose. It's actually quite easy to spot with ai. And so he figured this out and was able to kind of detect these bad actors. And if you can find that, you can submit it to Amazon and say, Hey, listen, this is not a real review, I know for a fact this is a competitor doing this. Here's how I know. And they like, yep, you're right. And they get rid of their reviews. So his whole business is built around using AI to help basically Amazon sellers not get rid of all negative reviews, but get rid of, you know, the fraudulent and the bad ones that are kind of breaking terms of service of Amazon. Really smart business. But, so he knows he's really good at this. He knows he's built the only product in this space that can scale and it's great. They're doing really well. What he's trying to do is get on podcasts to tell people about this and tell more Amazon sellers about this. So in traditional Google, if you wanted to kind of help your brand rank better and grow what's called like your authority scores or like this domain authority domain ranking, depending on who you use, you would actually have to go get backlinks and get people to backlink to your site. The AI models don't really care about backlinks. They care about authoritative content. That tells us a good story. So he goes out on podcasts, the podcast asks him questions about, you know, what he's doing. He answers them really well. Those podcasts get posted onto YouTube or wherever else that they gets transcribed. All of a sudden, the AI tools have another third party source kind of validating that they, what they're doing. And it's working. And so they can use that like in their advantage. So we'll see in Chat Rank that his podcast episodes he's booking through Just Reach Out are being used as citations as to reasons why the AI models are suggesting his brand is really good at what he does. Like that is something you can be doing as a business owner to really reinforce. In this new world of ai, they don't really necessarily need to have that back link from the Wall Street Journal. It's great. I mean, it's not gonna be like, of course, that that's an ideal scenario, but going out, recording a podcast, putting it on YouTube and getting that external, like third party validation on your brand and what you're doing is super valuable. And so that's the kind of things that our businesses and our customers are doing. Kind of using our digital PR and also tracking and monitoring that over time, making sure that we're answering the right questions and doing the right things with that content as well.
Brooke:Wow. I'm so happy to hear that you shared a little bit more of a case study. I think it's important to lean into stories when we're trying to learn more about this technology and my next question is a little bit more future-oriented I've been reading up a lot about. The future of agents and how even e-commerce is shifting. Just this week Stripe and another major e-commerce platform are taking steps to the point where. You can skip the sales page and your phone or your approved system can make purchases on your behalf. And. say the future is agents shopping and purchasing from other agents on behalf of people. I'm curious if you've read into this at all this week and if you've started planning for the future of where you see this industry shifting yet again when it comes to e-commerce and to the point where we're not even the ones making our own purchases anymore and agents are taking and buying on our behalf. Have you thought about that at all?
Jon Mest:We have, and I'll give you actually. I'll give you a story in a second about a customer working with, in this actually direct space. But so first of all it was just news this, the last few days was, was around open ai, basically having this direct shopping in ChatGPT now, I mean, they're starting with Etsy. They'll be moving to Shopify pretty soon. Like that is going to even make this even easier for these agents to kind of do exactly what you just described. And so. Obviously they're incentivized to do this. OpenAI is, but this is like what they are trying to kind of push more towards is this world where agents are going out there and work doing these tasks, like purchasing on behalf of you. Now, why this is interesting, why I was smiling as you're asking the question, is that we have thought a lot about this is because frankly, we actually work with a lot of cybersecurity companies with our platform.'cause they're trying to kind of promote what they do and the security angle of that is incredibly credibly challenging because if you are a business owner, you want to allow these AI agents to buy from you because frankly, like obviously you wanna make it easier. You don't wanna put barriers up to helping people buy your products, but you also don't want it to be fraudulent. You don't want somebody just stealing credit card numbers and all of a sudden having agents buying all over the place and just giving this money. So you have to like how do I like stop? Agents, like bad agents, but allow good agents into my shop at checkout experience. That is not a trivial thing to think about. And honestly, for right now, that is a really, really tough problem to solve. So you can either ignore the problem entirely and then all of a sudden you might have a bunch of fraudulent purchases on your, on your books and all of a sudden you're not getting these chargebacks and it's terrible for your business. But also you don't wanna hurt that that future of, you know, shopping if it's gonna make it easier for people to kind of do what they need to do. And so I'm a little torn on it. I would love the ability to kind of have my, like online grocery delivery, just replenish and like, just have it do that, but not just automate it, but have my agent, actually assess what I need and then go do it. Like, that sounds amazing to me. I would love to not have to go to the grocery store on Sunday night, but at the same time what that means for the future of search visibility. Truly that's what we're focusing on right now with Chat Rank. It's making sure brands can be front and center and visible in this new world of online AI shopping. That's obviously like a very, very major thing of what we're doing. So this news recently about Etsy and Shopify, obviously we've known this was coming, but this is obviously a big thing for our clients now. But actually the nuance of this in this from a cyber world is also something we're thinking about a lot about because our clients, frankly, are the ones trying to get the word out about that and using our tools to help to do that as well. So it's good and bad and like we need to make sure we're kinda doing this smartly. Otherwise it's gonna get outta hand pretty quickly.
Brooke:It's great to hear that you already have partners in cybersecurity and are thinking a lot about that and shifting and adapting. So it sounds like you're on the right track. I'm excited to see what's next for, Chat Rank. And I wanna switch gears a little bit more to the PR angle of Just Reach Out and you mentioned a little bit about it already, some case studies and. I find this so fascinating because a couple of my clients are in the PR industry and obviously they do a really great job at getting these articles published and working with editors hand in hand. And I personally see that industry shifting very quickly soon. and they're scrambling to try to figure out this auto summary that you get when you search for something versus maybe a New York Times article as the number one SEO search. So maybe you can share more about the future of PR and a little bit more of the success of Just Reach Out and how you see that shifting even more so in the next six months to a year.
Jon Mest:Yeah. And I promise we are, we at Just Reach Out are not anti PR agency. That is not like what we're preaching here. So I just wanna make that clear. We think agencies are really valuable for what they provide and what they do. Just Reach Out does not have an editor at the Wall Street Journal in our back pocket to call and say, Hey, we should get somebody into this, this publication. That's not what we do. But what we've learned over time is that there are a lot of businesses that either don't, can't afford an agency, or. They can afford it, but they actually choose to not go that route because they actually want to be able to tell their own story and pitch themselves. So Just Reach Out. It's an efficiency platform. It's basically helping brands using ai, identify and build your media list smartly based on who's actually writing content. Or talking about content on YouTube or podcasts or whatever it might be. Who actually is out there providing content on your topics? We have an AI search platform to help you figure that out and then build your media list based on not, you know, the, the 30 names in our list that say they write about tech in New York and I mean that's not all that helpful. What you want is to actually know, this journalist wrote about my direct competitor two weeks ago and did a feature. I need to know that. And then I need to reach out to'em immediately and say, well, I don't want you to talk about me too. And so like that's what Just Reach Out helps our clients do is figure out. What, who those people are and how to smartly build that media list based on what people are actually writing. So instead of reaching out to, you know, 3000 people, you're reaching out to 30, I dunno, whatever the number is, of highly targeted journalists. And then you can use our platform. You could say, okay, we now know that article you wrote two weeks ago about my competitor is why I wanna reach out to you. Well, how can our AI help you craft a message and a story and build your kind of message to that journalist in a way that sounds really good and makes you feel good. It's not doing it automatically, it's not press a button and AI just pitches for you. That's like, those tools exist by the way. They, they're terrible. Like they're just spammy. That's not helpful for the industry of pr, that's just, just spam. What we do is we have AI help you as a business owner craft that story and that pitch.'cause we know kind of what works the pitch, you know, your story and like that combination is what really helps there. And we help make sure that gets into the inbox or the kind of into the person that, that might be telling that story. And so Just Reach Out is really helping brands. Figure out like who to reach out to efficiently and then really, really nicely write them personalized emails and notes because you're not reaching out to 3000 names on the list and praying and praying. You're actually reaching out to a targeted group of people that have written about your topic recently. And so that's kind of how Just Reach Out operates for the future of pr. I think that's what we're trying to really like lean into. Authentic storytelling is never going away. AI cannot replace that. And so if you are a brand and you don't have a good story to tell, you're not gonna get press. Whether you use a really expensive PR agency or Just Reach Out, it doesn't really matter. If you don't have a good story to tell, it's not gonna do well for you. What does do well is kind of identifying who I am as a brand, what we're trying to get out there, what our story can be and why that's interesting. So matching that story to the audience of the outlet you're pitching, like that's obviously what we're preaching so the core fundamentals of publicity and PR have not changed, but frankly more and more businesses are kind of saying, well, with the E of AI and kinda making this more efficient, can I go out there and tell my story as best as I can?'cause frankly, nobody can tell your story as better than you can. It's your story. So go out and do that, and if I can help you do that with our software and kind of the tricks and things we've learned, that's great and that's what we're focusing on. And we're not anti agency in any way. Actually, frankly, a lot of PR agencies use our software. It's because it's about authentic storytelling and can use AI to make things more efficient for you as you kind of tell that story effectively.
Brooke:Interesting. My next follow up question for that is say you are using this platform as an individual. And do you send your pitch through the platform to the editors? What's the success rate for opens? Because the PR teams I've worked with have even already started to receive feedback that people can tell when content is AI generated. M dashes are getting better, but they really had a moment. I'm curious, like what the feedback has been with these quote unquote AI generated or AI polished and assisted media pitches. Is there good feedback and success?
Jon Mest:Yeah. So this is kind of something I was talking about before, our AI helps our customers craft messaging, but it doesn't write the emails. It doesn't actually like do the pitching. What it does is says Hey, when you write an email, you need to relate to the journalists, make sure that you understand, they've written an article about your competitor. Great. Relate to that. Make sure that you are kind of following that guideline. Okay. I saw you wrote this article i'm their competitor. Here's why you should talk to me. We're gonna set the standard then make your pitch obviously. And then like a call to action. It's pretty straightforward. Like we're just our AI. Helps people that would've written this 17 paragraph email. Understand that, no, no. You need to make it crisp, concise, to the point. You're just trying to get that response of, basically you want your best chance of Just Reach Out is to get the response of, tell me more. Like, I want to learn more about your story. Let's go figure this out and see if it's something we could tell to our audience here as a journalist. And so that's what we're focused on overall. Now, so. Ai, writing is getting better, but frankly, we don't allow, it's a fundamental principle, we don't allow you as a user and Just Reach Out to send anything that AI writes. At all. You have to review it, look at it and like deal with it. It doesn't just let you do that. But it does actually send out through our platform, but through your email. So it does come out from you. It's you sending it, but we just make it easier for you. Kind of handhold it, like for you to do that. So I, I tell you, Just Reach Out is more about like preventing our customers from making the mistakes that we've made in our past, like I personally made when trying to pitch media web before, Just Reach Out. Knowing, learning what we've learned over time. The business has been around for a while now, learning what we've learned over time to see what works. We're just helping our customers. Make sure you use those core principles of pr, what agencies know to be true and then use that in the platforms. Like we even have a PR masterclass, built into our platform. You can, it's totally optional, but it's there you can just go through and learn how to write a pitch, how to think about, like journal, all the kind of stuff is there. It's just about teaching them the PR fundamentals that they can do themselves now. Frankly, you still have to do the work yourself. You still have to have a good story. So when it comes to like open rates, response rates, all that stuff, our, our metrics are great. Like our open rates are well over 50% and our response rates are around 10% for our customers. So, I mean, if, you know pr that's like way, way above industry averages for cold emails, for basically cold out outreach. And it's because you're not just sending out 3000 emails with a very generic message. If you're emailing directly to journalists that you know, cover your topic that have written about it recently, and you have a good story to tell them, and you tell that in a way that they can really, easily and concisely see, this is a story that might be interesting to me, and that's it. And so some of our customers do way better than that. Some of'em do like worse than that, but frankly, the ones that do worse are the ones that didn't have a good story to tell from the beginning. And the ones that do better, the ones that have a fantastic story and are really kind of leaning into that pretty hard. And so that's what we are seeing and from our data and from our customers. And I think that is, again, that's what PR is about. It's about telling a good story.
Brooke:I can see why so many PR agencies wanna use this tool because it's giving all the information. It's really skipping the step of them having to reach out to the editors that they have relationships with and ask, what are you working on? Or just assume the same stories are gonna run every season and you're able to in real time. Bring all this data together and the pitch is hyper specific, so that's incredible. And so when they pull a media list, they're, your contacts are updated regularly. Do you use AI to search and update the contacts in your database?
Jon Mest:So I'm gonna tell you a dirty secret, which it's not really a secret. We tell our customers this too, but this is the one thing that AI like. Yes, it, it can help to make sure their contacts are updated. But this is where we actually have a team of people, of real humans that go in and manually check every time you send an email and Just Reach Out, we check, okay, did this person still work at that publication? Is this still the email listed on their website? Like on their, on their profile, every, that kind of stuff. But we have that information done. So we use AI to kinda do the first pass. Once that's done, we double check with a real human because we really care about, again, you like focusing in on getting that, that message out to that journalist. So like, again, we're not, we wouldn't do that if we allowed you to send like, you know, 10,000 emails to like a ma massive list. The whole idea is send 20, 30 highly targeted emails and we'll spend the time to go manually verify the emails on those people are still correct. They're still at that publication, there covering these stories.
Brooke:Wow, that is so important. I'm so happy to hear that. I know that's a really big pain point for a lot of publicists and people that are pitching. Themselves. So that's incredible that they have a team of people at their fingertips doing that due diligence. Um, What's next for you? You know, an incredible entrepreneur. You've really leaned into this world of AI visibility from search engine, Google search pr, you already started to work on another project and ideate what's next for you? Or maybe there's something that you wish was out there in your industry that if you waved a magic wand and used AI to create are you already thinking what's next?
Jon Mest:We are. So we actually, our team has like a few businesses that we own and operate. We also have an incubation arm where we kind of like play around with some ideas and think about things. And the way we usually do that is, it's actually pretty simple. I dunno why I would've mentioned this, but we didn't raise venture for these, these, these businesses. Like these are just bootstrapped, we are just here building customer by customer. Try to figure out what our customers need building for them, and if they pay us, that's how we live to see tomorrow. And if they don't, then we don't exist tomorrow. That's the philosophy we live by. And so frankly, when we do this, we are like very, very tuned into the customer and what they need. Because frankly, like I said, if they, if we don't answer what they need, we're not gonna get paid and we're not gonna have a business tomorrow. And so we lean into that pretty hard with like, what do we do next? Well, we're actually out there searching, working with different companies in our network or people we know, or people referring to us like, Hey, I have this problem. Could you guys help us solve this with ai? It's almost like a, Hey, I have this old problem, this problem that's been like bogging us for five years and I just can't figure it out. Is there an AI solution to this problem? And we do kind of this like one-off consulting work, which it's not part of our core business. It's just like a side hustle for us, and we get paid to do it. But like that is really what sparks, okay, well if they have this problem, should we think of other people have this problem and then figure out if, can we like, kind of reproduce that problem for others? And then kind of see are there other things that could be similar? And is that a business, is that just a quick like project? I don't know. So that's kind of how we identify what those things could be is like what are people looking to solve With ai now our team of engineers is excellent, we're really good at kind of solving these problems. So it's almost like a consulting service turned. Okay. Is that now, once it's done, is that now a product or is that now a, you know, a just a one-off thing and from there obviously we kind of look to what is next for us? And so it shouldn't be that much of a shock, but right now the whole marketing stack is pretty, and I hate the word, use the word disruptive, like it's very disruptable. It seems to be this is the kind of the future of where things are going with ai. Like, and again, this is the opposite of like spamming people with like ai, like automated emails. That's the opposite of what we're trying to do. It's more like, okay, I'm a brand and I wanna really make sure that my brand is well represented out there. So the way you do that is you hire a marketing agency, they get you commercials on tv and they write your content and they run your website. They do all these things that a marketing agency does. We think that those agencies can really, really be optimized using some AI tools and some AI features. And so again, we're not trying to replace agencies. We're not trying to compete against them. We're actually partnering with them and trying to figure out what are the ways that we can be helping these agencies be smarter about the marketing they're already doing and not replace the humans, but use the humans to be more efficient with what they're already doing. And that's our goal here. So we have some things in the hopper that'll hopefully be out, like, you know, call it early next year around like kind of continuing to build that quote unquote marketing stack for our like AI driven initiatives. But really like with the idea that. Marketing agencies, they know this stuff inside and out, they just don't really know how to use AI very well. Let's see if we can help them kind of bridge that gap. But we're already starting to do that. Obviously Chat Rank is like the, call it the GEO or like the new SSEO of the future type of, of version of this. But there's a lot more of that we can be doing and we're really excited about some of the partnerships we're building around that.
Brooke:That is exciting. That's really my reasoning for asking that question is to spark ideas, and even if someone listening here wants to create a solution, I just think it's such a fun time to start leaning into these problems and solutions and have the tech and engineering at our fingertips. I just had a interview before you with a woman who used Bolt New to just vibe, code her unique problem set into a solution. Such exciting times. You spoke just a second ago about bootstrapping. I think that's also a really interesting conversation. If you wanna share maybe a few minutes about your experience of bootstrapping because we are in the age of. Yeah, can be a tech founder and people are leaning into being a first time founder and making those decisions in the beginning. Do I wanna bootstrap or do I wanna do a seed round and look for investors? So maybe you can share about your personal decision and any words of advice for someone wanting to lean into that route.
Jon Mest:Yeah, it's a bit, a bit of a loaded question, but I, I promise I'll, I'll get to a good answer by the end.'cause I really do feel pretty passionately about this. I've actually have an interview coming up here pretty soon, just to talk about this in general, with the local paper here in St. Pete because it's such a moment for. Anybody can start a business, but like, frankly, it's hard to raise funding. Like, how do I just think about this and not necessarily have to raise funding? Should I raise money? All these kinds of questions. So I in my career have worked for bootstrapped companies and for venture backed companies, and I personally just love the, the hustle nature of working at a bootstrap company. Just the idea that if I don't sell this company today, and if we don't make our customers a hundred percent satisfied that they're gonna sign up and continue paying us, like then we don't exist tomorrow I thrive in that. I know that's, that might not be for everybody, but for me at least, that's really where I've seen to be successful. I worked at a company in New York called 10 10 Data. They started with literally just two guys in a, in a room in 2000 just building things and it took'em 15 years till 2015 till they really kind of blew it up and did really well. But that business sold for$500 million in in 2015. And that was, again, they didn't raise venture that was just slowly over 15 years building customer by customer. Really smart. They had amazing technology and amazing team. That was one of the most fun things I've ever done in my career was helping them scale that. When they got sold and that day happened, like that was a party it's quite a party to kind of be able to see that come to fruition. I think it's a long time and a lot of work to get there. I've also worked at venture backed companies, and it's just like when you have the money, you spend it,, maybe you're not being so efficient, maybe you're not really thinking about the right things. And so for me personally, I love the idea of bootstrapping. I, I have a friend here in this, this incubator rehab here in St. Pete that he gave a great quote the other day that I'm gonna steal that I'm gonna take credit for it. But basically he said that companies are much more likely to die from indigestion than starvation. And so when you get all this money, you're gonna spend it and frankly, you're gonna like lose sight of what you're trying to do and lose sight of the customer and lose sight of what you're trying to focus on. So. All to say, I'll pause there for a second. That is not to say that venture is not good and you shouldn't raise money or you shouldn't think about funding.'cause a lot of businesses need it and it can be really, really effective and really, really valuable to do it that way. For us personally, I think in certain industries or certain spaces, when you raise that kind of money, like we don't need a lot of money to do what we were doing. We built a solution. With customers paying us to do it, which is obviously that's not easy to do, but that requires, like, if they're willing to put their credit card down and actually pay you to do it, that shows they're serious. That shows that they really wanna do it. And so for us, we only wanna build things that people are willing to pay for. And so to do that, that's like the bootstrap mindset that we take. And for anybody else that can like vibe code a product and see Hey, I think this could be like really interesting. I want to get out there and do it. My advice would be don't just go try to raise money on that idea. Go try to sell it a couple times, and if it works and you're like, wow, there's like so much demand. Everybody wants this, and yeah, go raise money and go take it to the moon and go and go do that. I'm not saying that venture is bad or that raising money is bad, but I see too many people kind of have these ideas, especially in the world of AI where money's just flying around left and right and people are trying to invest in Chat Rank and what we're doing. Frankly, that's not what we're interested in. People were willing to give the money to go build stuff. Then you lose sight of what you're actually trying to do and what customers need. And for us, we're gonna continue staying focused on the customer and what they need and what they're willing to pay for. And by doing that, and if you're a customer, like thinking about starting a company or being a first time founder, that's my advice to you is go try to sell it to one person. Can you get convinced, one person to pay you for what you're providing, and if yes, you are onto something, if you, if it takes you six months, you haven't sold a single deal, I, I have a feeling it's not gonna, it might not work out. It's like you'd rather learn that first before you go out, raise a bunch of money, spend all that time raising money, disappoint some friends and family or whatever other venture investors that you might working with. For me, I know it's a long-winded answer, but that really is what we strive on, is making sure that every day we are focused on what we're doing at our customers. Because if we don't, we don't exist tomorrow. And that, that's really, really important.
Brooke:Beautiful words to share. That might have stolen the thunder a bit from my wrap up question where I always like to what's what? It's one main takeaway you'd love listeners to get from this episode. That was already an amazing one, but maybe there's another one in your back pocket that has maybe more focus on you as a founder or leaning into technology so maybe you can share a bit more on that for your final key takeaway.
Jon Mest:I think overall we, we've touched on a couple of these pieces, but I'll kind of summarize it here. As a business owner, as a founder, as a team, we're just going out and trying things and we know this is not like a, we're not just building like metal bolts for a machine. We're not building a very simple thing that requires like manufacturing efficiency. We're working in a space where these LLMs are changing rapidly. If open AI changes their, like the tuning on one of their models, everything we've done for the past six weeks might be thrown out the window. That is challenging. It's crazy. It's different we have to stay on top of things. And so for us, what we really try to lead into is listening to our customers, staying on top of what's happening and the technology that we're building on, and really, really focus on what it is that we're building is what the people need. And then leaning into that really, really hard. And so for us, the takeaway is just like. Don't lose sight of what you're building and why you're building it, and also making sure that what you're doing still matters as technology changes, especially in the world of ai. There's a chance, I'm not saying there, it's likely, but there's a chance that LLMs, these idea of these like chat models just goes away in two years. Like we're just in a different phase of what AI can be. For us, it's fully agent and there's no more like asking ChatGPT, anything I don't think that's happening in two years, but it could, and again, that's this thing like then all of a sudden, like what Chat Rank is today? If we just try to fast forward to two years would just not exist. It just would be pointless. And so like the idea here is that you really need to kind of lean into and focus on what you're doing, what needs to be building and why based on the, given the technology constraints and what your customers are willing to pay for. It's not easy. That is what we really try to like look at every single day and do. And we actually have a weekly Friday morning call with our entire team to kind of reset every week to be like, okay. What are we building? What are customers asking for? Or is that aligned and what's the technology changes happening right now? Is anything new come out this week? We just kind of reset every Friday morning for an hour to kind of think about that. And that just requires us to kind of think about these things a lot. And I could say if any, any upcoming founder or somebody thinking about this space, please just remember that it's, it's not easy, and it's not just like a straightforward path. It's gonna be changing all the time.
Brooke:Nice. I thank you for that. Final key takeaway, quick question that just came to me because listeners might be interested. What's it like working in an incubator? And maybe you can touch on the tech scene in St. Pete, Florida.
Jon Mest:Yeah, it's, it's actually a lot of fun. So we have the, the Arc Innovation Center here in St. Pete. Arc investments. Kathy Wood, she moved her hedge fund down from New York City down to St. Pete a few years ago and kind of helped with the city and the county fund tech incubator here. She's been famous for, you know, her tech innovation funds Tesla and everything else that she's been investing in over the years. So yeah, she runs this. She's chairman of the board. Our office is right next to the Tampa Bay here in the water. And so a lot of maritime and defense technology here, because again, you can be doing water testing, you can be doing like, types of robotics work. And so being here has been a lot of fun to kind of just see the different types of companies. So there's a lot of, you know. B2B SaaS businesses like ours, there are a lot of software businesses. There are a lot of, you know, more hardware and robotics businesses. They have a makerspace here. Like we have like a very large military presence here. So a lot of defense tech, a lot of water and technology, a lot of AI around here as well. It's been really fun to just kind of see like-minded individuals coming together. Every Thursday we just, like the whole incubator sits down for, again, an hour and a half and just has a brainstorm. There's really, there's never an agenda. It's just sit down and talk about whatever people are thinking about at the moment. St. Pete is not traditionally a tech city. But I mean, neither was Nashville or Austin or some of these places were before, you know, a few years ago too. And so they're kind of building it here o over time, and it, it's not like huge by any means. I lived in New York for a long time and just like seeing what New York Tech scene is like compared to here, it's obviously different. But what they're building here is really, really strong and I'm excited to kind of be a part of it.
Brooke:I ask because a lot of people from Miami seem to be wanting to move to more affordable cities within Florida,
Jon Mest:Yeah.
Brooke:one of them. Absolutely. That. On the rise and has been for the past few years. So much construction, incredible things going out there. So thank you so much for your time today. This was a very well-rounded discussion and for allowing me to ask just off the cuff questions that I had in my personal work experience and I know that people are really like wanting to know the answers to. So, in conclusion now, how can listeners reach out to you? How can they find out more about Chat Rank and Just Reach Out? What's the best way to get in contact with you for next steps?
Jon Mest:Yeah. By all means, please check us out. It's Just Reach Out.io, so J-U-S-T-R-E-A-C-H-O-U t.io as well as Chat Rank.ai. Those are our two websites. Check us out, learn more about them. You can obviously contact us through both of those pages to schedule demos or talk more about it. Or if you're just interested in, in reaching out to me, please do. I am Jon JO n@chatrank.ai. It's the best way to get in touch with me. It's been a lot of fun. Kind of learning from this and, and, and kind of seeing where this could go and overall, we are building, we are doing new things. If you have projects or you're kind of like, Hey, I have this really annoying problem, I bet AI could solve it. Reach out, please. This is what we're focusing on. This is what we're doing. And you never know. You might be the lead lighthouse customer in our newest next business, so we, you'll never know. It could be really exciting.
Brooke:You never know.
Jon Mest:Mm-hmm.
Brooke:Thank you so much, Jon. I appreciate your time.
Jon Mest:Thanks Brooke. Appreciate it.
Brooke:Wow I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with AI. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and wanna share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I AI. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective AI, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with ai. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.
