Artificial Intelligence Podcast: ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney and all other AI Tools

Is AI Changing the World of Website Building with Pedro Sostre

• Jonathan Green : Artificial Intelligence Expert and Author of ChatGPT Profits • Episode 387

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Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast with Jonathan Green! In this episode, we dive into how AI is reshaping the world of website building and small business marketing with our special guest, Pedro Sostre, a seasoned digital marketer and key leader at Builderall.

He and Jonathan break down why so many “AI website builders” fail, what business owners actually need, and how to future‑proof your skills in an AI‑driven market.

They explore the growing gap between what AI tools promise and what they actually deliver, especially for small business owners who are busy, overwhelmed, and not interested in becoming “prompt engineers.” Pedro explains how Builderall is tackling that challenge with pre-built, strategy‑driven funnels and AI‑assisted tools that do the heavy lifting in the background—so business owners can focus on running their business, not wiring together tech.

You’ll hear them discuss why design alone doesn’t sell, how bad AI content is clogging the internet, and why the people who win won’t be AI itself—but the humans who learn to use it better and faster than everyone else.

Notable Quotes:

  • “Right now people are expecting all sorts of different things, and the reality is they’re generally getting junk, even if it looks good.” – [Pedro Sostre]
  • “Whatever you think you have secure job security in today is probably not gonna exist in two years… You should be doing something different in three years.” – [Pedro Sostre]
  • “People do not care which AI they’re using. They don’t care if the backend is Grok or DeepSeek or ChatGPT. They only care if it works.” – [Jonathan Green]
  • “We’re not gonna be replaced by AI. We’re gonna be replaced by people who are better at AI than us.” – [Jonathan Green]
  • “Train it to do what you do now, because your job needs to be different in two years.” – [Pedro Sostre]

Pedro highlights how Builderall is evolving from “a big toolbox” into a guided, AI‑assisted marketing platform. With their new “builds,” a course creator, agency owner, or realtor can log in, choose their business type, and instantly see which tools to use, in what order, and how they all connect—without needing to touch APIs, Zapier, or complex integrations. It’s like having a marketing consultant baked into the software, helping you deploy proven funnels instead of guessing your way through 25 different tools.

Connect with Pedro Sostre:

Pedro shares how Builderall is integrating AI behind the scenes to write copy, build pages, and connect tools for small business owners who don’t have time (or desire) to learn complex prompting. Their focus is on making AI simple, contextual, and results‑driven—so users see more leads and sales, not just prettier websites.

If you’re a small business owner, agency, or creator wondering how to actually use AI to grow your business—without becoming a full‑time tech expert—this episode is a must‑listen!

Connect with Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green:

AI is changing the world of website building, and we have an amazing special guest today with Pedro Sostre. Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast, where we make AI simple, practical, and accessible for small business owners and leaders. Forget the complicated Tech talk or expensive consultants. This is where you'll learn how to implement AI strategies that are easy to understand and can make a big impact for your business. The Artificial Intelligence Podcast is brought to you by fraction aio. The trusted partner for AI Digital Transformation at fraction A IO, we help small and medium sized businesses boost revenue by eliminating time wasting non-revenue generating tasks that frustrate your team. With our custom AI bots, tools and automations, we make it easy to shift your team's focus to the tasks that matter most. Driving growth and results, we guide you through a smooth. Seamless transition to ai ensuring you avoid costly mistakes and invest in the tools that truly deliver value. Don't get left behind. Let fraction aio o help you stay ahead in today's AI driven world. Learn more. Get started. Fraction aio.com. Now Pedro, I really appreciate you making the time. I think a lot of people really envision AI as taking over the web and we see it happening a lot in social media. And I think that there's this kind of gap between the promise of how easy it is to use AI and the actual experience. And we've seen just a plethora of these tools promising like AI website builders. And I tested so many of them and they're all so far from the promise. They're all either a slot machine where it runs through five or six templates. Or it really just it uses like stock image photos or they just can't quite do what people are envisioning. And I think the challenge is, as every designer has ever, is where the person goes. I know it when I see it. Like I don't know what I want, but I know it when I see it. And. At Build Raw, which is been around for a long time and well before the AI generation. You have this kind of foundation and I'm really curious what people are expecting from AI and what's possible with website design with AI these days.

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah, the issue is that everybody's got a different expectation. You've got people who've been using it for a long time like yourself did they know if they plug it in and it's roll, like you said, slot machine or a dice roll. Sometimes you get something that looks good, sometimes it looks like a little bit of a mess. And then there's other people who don't really know what's going on, and they've heard the news and they think they're gonna get this amazing result. The truth is, and this interview probably won't age well because I imagine two years from now, the, it's gonna be much, much different. But the reality is, anybody who's been in marketing and digital marketing for any amount of time is looking at all this slop that's being created by ai and they're extremely like disappointed and concerned for the future because all these websites, even if they get 'em to look pretty, that doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna sell. And you've got all these new business owners or new startup founders who are putting these things out there and then wondering why they're not getting results and they're not getting leads and they're not getting sales. And it's because there's really no strategy behind this AI produced generation. Now you do get good strategy in other ais, right Chat GPT is actually pretty good if you tune it properly and you prompt it well at giving you strategy. But that connection really hasn't been brought to website generation where you've got a strategic component and a visual component and a coding component all working together. So right now people are expecting all sorts of different things, and the reality is they're generally getting junk, even if it looks good.

Jonathan Green:

Yeah, I think that I noticed there's this really big gap between the copywriting and the website design and people. For some reason they think that there's copywriting doesn't apply to websites or it's like it comes as part of the design. And my favorite is when people talk about catalogs and oh, catalog. I just wanna be like a catalog. I'm like, have you ever seen the Sky Catalog? That's the most copywritten thing you've ever seen. If your product doesn't sell well and that they kick you out after the first month, it's so high copy. It's not describing anything. It's everything is sales. And I think. It's exactly the people don't realize the different steps in the process that there's the strategy, which is who are you trying to sell to? What is the goal you want? What's the results of your website? Because

Pedro Sostre:

yeah,

Jonathan Green:

the design dramatically changes if you're trying to generate phone calls versus capture email addresses versus sell something on the first visit or sell something later and. These critical questions get skipped. You go in and you say, what type of business do you have? And it's not the same. There's 50 types of house painters, right? You can be someone who paints the outside, the inside, big houses, small houses. Everyone has their specialty in their of X piece. And I think this is really critical to get into, which is like you can use different ais for each step and then at the end start to get a good result. I think the big, my experience is the biggest problem you've had with ai. If they try to use it, something where they don't know if it's good or bad, that's where you get the slop. If someone has no idea of a good or bad website or website that converts the same thing. When someone just makes an AI video, they've never made a video before, an ad before, and they go, this is just like a commercial. I'm like I think Pixar is gonna be fine. And it's exactly that lack of expertise. How do we help people educate that there's a process to it, like people either want it to be super easy, I push one button, get the perfect website, now I'm a millionaire. Or they wanna go to college for four years and there's no middle.

Pedro Sostre:

The reality is even as the tools get better, the market competition is gonna get better, right? So the people who are getting really good at doing this today, even though the AI tools are gonna catch up what did I say, two years from now? It could be six months from now, who knows? But even though the tools are gonna catch up to what, what good marketers are doing today, maybe in six months or two years, those good marketers today are already gonna be doing the next level thing. So it's it doesn't negate anybody's skill or ability today, as long as they continue to innovate with ai. I think AI is just I explain this all the time 'cause some people are like, oh, I'm not gonna use ai. It's, it's bad and it's wrong. It's just like a, it's just like the, when computers came out. Okay. Like I'm old enough that I went to school. When I went to college, we didn't use computers. We had a computer lab that sometimes people would go to for a project, but almost everything else was done by hand. And some people were like, oh, I don't want to use computers because that's not, and I went to art school by the way, so they're like, oh, I'm an artist and I'm doing, and I was in a graphic design, a visual communications program, and they were like I'm an artist and so I need the art to be with my hands. It's no, if you're not using computers in the early nineties, you're not gonna survive. I think AI is the same thing. People think it's it we, society goes through this thing all the time. You go probably back to the Industrial Revolution in cars and there was people, I'm not gonna use cars. I'm gonna keep my horse. That's the same thing today. AI is a tool and it can get you somewhere faster, but you've gotta know how to use it. Then as if you're late to the game and learning how to use it, then the people who got there first are now gonna know how to use it that much better, even though the tools are gonna get better. So with all that said, the tools are gonna get good enough that in two years they're gonna produce something that has strategy behind it and has this, but then the people today are just gonna be that much better and your competition is gonna be that much more fierce.

Jonathan Green:

I think there's this perspective for a lot of people that. Using AI as cheating in some way that it's like it's not authentic. And I've seen this in a lot of areas in life. I had this friend who was a really elite fighter pilot, but he would never, he would go out talk. He would never tell a woman that he's that's cheating. I was like, no, it's cheating if you're not a fighter pilot. That's the diff if it's not true. But we create these rules in our head and using ai, and certainly there are ways in school to use AI for cheating if it's specifically against the rules, but I think that. The other problem is that we judge tools by their worst use cases. And you're on LinkedIn? I'm on LinkedIn. Most of what posted on LinkedIn is AI slop. It really bothers me when someone who follows me posts a really low quality AI image.'cause I think it reflects on me.'cause I have free tutorials on how to make a nice looking image. I'm like, don't use the first image it makes, please.'cause people are gonna think it's my fault. And. That's what we see is the really bad stuff, or we see the worst examples and then we think, oh, it's all like that. And that's what we start to assume is, I think that's where part of the perspective comes from because the most. Broad uses are usually the lowest quality uses and that's the distraction. Like I follow someone who's been like a filmmaker for 20 years and when he makes an AI video, it looks so good. Yeah. It's like I could never accomplish that. Even if I put in 10 times the hours.'cause he has this, it's a skill he spent 20 years developing and I think that when you see someone really good versus someone really amateur, you can start to see AI gives you a leg up, but there's still an effort element. That's, I think, hopefully will help people realize it's not cheating and it's inevitable. That's the other element. I think it's like. Computer. Everyone has a computer, everyone has a mobile phone. Everyone does Google searches now. And we see this in school, like calculators were considered cheating. Yeah. In the seventies. And when I went to school, they were like, you have to have a specific graphing calculator. You can't even take the exam. And then we saw it with laptops and with computers and with Google. And now I think we'll see it with AI where two years ago it was cheating. And in five years they'll be like, oh, if you don't know how to use Chat GPT, you can't even go to college. It's gonna have that transition of expectation. How can people mix their expertise, their existing expertise, with starting to find tools that could actually help them with their job? Because I feel like most people either don't use AI or they're using it for the same thing they used to ask their friend and then they ask Google, which is like, where's the nearest restaurant? Like the number of my friends who use it for restaurant advice, which is wild. I'm like, you can't eat it. Doesn't know

Pedro Sostre:

It's just pulling Reddit or whatever.

Jonathan Green:

Yeah. So how can people, and how do you see people starting to use tools in a way that actually grows their business?

Pedro Sostre:

So I love that you used the calculator example that was in my back pocket. I was gonna say it. And then you said it. I think it, it, people still need to learn basic math, right? And the calculator does help, but if you don't know basic math, you're just not like a functional human being. And I think the same goes for, like you mentioned, students in college, if you're using AI to write all your essays for you and you never learn how to write you're in trouble. Like you have to learn the basics. And the problem is for those people, I think they need to start to understand that there's a craft that needs to be learned. Just like in a, in, you've gotta learn basic arithmetic. How do you add, how do you subtract? What does division mean? You've gotta learn those things in writing nowadays when you look at what's happening with content, they're using AI to help their business, but they've also made it a point to understand what are the fundamentals behind storytelling, to what's the fundamentals of like human psychology and what gets them hooked into watching a particular piece of content. So now, instead of having to learn. All the ins and outs of grammar and spelling they're actually like learning things that are a bit higher level, but still influential in that same arena. And I think anything that you do on AI can be influential if you're understanding what's the human part of this, I've gotta bring into it. So I, you hit it, you hit the nail on the head earlier, like, how do I know if this is good? I think that's something that when I went to college, I went to art school. It's actually a big deal because you know the concept of like art being very subjective. It's but once in a while there's a photo and everybody looks at that photo and you're like, wow, that's incredible. But half the time you're looking at things, you're like, I don't know. Is this good? Is this not good? And the teacher says, yeah, this is really good and this is bad. And then you're trying to figure out. Why it's good and what, so I think in order for us to use AI effectively for any use case although I do think it's, it, it has the capability to be good in copywriting, in strategy, in planning for those types of things because it uses that sort of collective data to make those things. But you need to educate yourself on what are the proper fundamentals for success in this space? And I think honestly. What the time that we've freed up from how, spending 30 hours writing an essay, you should spend 20 of those hours reading a book on how to write good essays or what makes a good essay, and then generate the essay and take what you learned from that book and apply. It's okay. Is this good? Does it follow what I learned in this? In this thing? I read about what, it makes a good essay and I think, but I think the applications are. Almost limitless for what you should be doing or could be doing. I think every function, whether you are, whether you're a therapist, whether you're a programmer, whether you're a roofer, the applications for how you should be using AI are only like limited by your imagination. And that's not, I don't think I'm being dramatic. Like I, I know a company, a roofing company that just implemented an AI. Model to analyze all the images of the roof roofs from inspections because the AI can catch things in inspections from those visuals that the human couldn't catch. So I think it's just a matter of really understanding your craft or your business or your or what success means, and then utilizing every tool that you can in your power after that.

Jonathan Green:

I'm glad you brought the roofing example 'cause there's a lot of people who. Work in physical fields, or they don't work in tech fields and they think this isn't relevant to me and. You're, you'd be hard pressed to find a plumber without a website these days. Everyone has some type of web presence and it's just, there was a delay between that where people go, I don't need a website. I'm this type of business now. Every restaurant has one, every type of business. And I think it's really an opportunity for people in unexpected areas. Just like you brought up the roof example, who think, you know what? I can use AI in a way that's really useful and it gives you an edge.'cause people think it's not for them. And I think that's really the critical lesson is that it's. We're not gonna be replaced by ai. We're gonna be replaced by people who are better at AI than us. And that's what you wanna slip by. And I think that there's this big fear that I hear from a lot of people, which is there's this steep learning curve, and it's like, compared to other tech tools, the learning curve for AI is so much shorter. You can really get pretty good in one day if you wanna learn how to edit videos. That's two years, four years. Yeah. It's such a hard skill. Yeah, with a lot of people there's this fear for people that are more employees rather than leaders. They're thinking, I don't wanna train my replacement I build an automation. And this is what I hear from a lot of clients. They go, don't make the automation so good that I become obsolete. I hear this every project I work on, and I never approach with that mindset. I'm not here to get rid of people. And especially I'm like, if you have people coming into the office, do not fire them because it's so hard to get people to come into the office. You have treasures, like treasure them. There's this fear, oh, if I master ai, then AI's gonna learn all my secrets and then it's gonna replace me.

Pedro Sostre:

So I like your plumber example, right? There was a time when the plumbers weren't doing websites, and now all the plumbers have websites, right? This is a good example of like how the space is just gonna keep adopting. So before the plumbers who first got their websites, they started to win in that field, and now the other plumbers started to get websites as well. And now everybody has a website. However, in the next three to five years, the plumbers that win are the ones who not only have websites, but they have the ability to book your visit online and pay for that first visit and see the pricing, because now that's easy to do. Right now you can easily have a booking calendar that has a built in payment system and all, and then it's gonna automatically deploy to the plumber. Because the people who just have a website anymore, they're gonna become obsolete. And that's what I mean by like in two years from now, even though the AI's better, it hasn't caught up to whatever the best in practice is at that time. Now, people who are looking to train, it's the same exact thing. Whatever you're training it on today, you want it to replace your job today because your job needs to be different in two years. I think that's really the message that everybody needs to understand. Whatever you think you have secure job security in today is probably not gonna exist in, in, in two years, maybe three years, maybe five years if you're lucky. But you're gonna be doing something that's more advanced and has more impact potentially than what you're doing now. So it's a good thing you should be excited about this idea that all the junk work I used to do no longer exists and now I'm working. And again. Same thing with, we're talking about grammar and spelling. Before they were so focused on, did I get my comment in the right place? Did I get my spelling right? Now you can focus on the bigger picture of the story. Wait a minute, is this story actually flowing in the right way and am I making the argument I'm trying to make? You don't have to worry about the little details anymore, and you can think of the bigger picture. It's the same thing in ai. Train it to do what you do now because you should be doing something different in three years.

Jonathan Green:

So much of the content of the internet now is written by AI that was trained on the internet, and then the next generation of AI is getting trained on that. And we're starting to see this cycle of like lower quality social media posts. And a lot of people struggle with how do I stand out and how do I catch attention when my competition is posting 50 times a day? I can't keep up with that unless I use ai. Then my content. Drops in quality and becomes super broad. And we're starting to see this like cycle, whether you call it dead internet theory or AI slop, like these are terms flying around and it used to be like, did you VA write that? And now it's did AI write that? Just switch? We just the accusation. Yeah. Did you write this about GPT? Like it's a bad thing.

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah.

Jonathan Green:

How do you see an opportunity for businesses to stand out or to get noticed when everyone else is doing that?

Pedro Sostre:

Like you said, there was a va, there was VAs before there was content farms. Before you could hire a team overseas of 500 people to just create 500 articles a day. And they were junk, but they were giving you SEO that's always existed. Now it maybe didn't exist at the exponential level that it does now, but I think even more so like you're gonna have that moment. It's like when, for those old enough to remember blogger. Before, WordPress became a thing, like Blogger came out and before that I was blogging before Blogger existed, and yeah, I had a nice golden era where there weren't that many people creating content and I enjoyed the fruits of my labor. And then these platforms came out that allowed anyone to blog and all of a sudden the web was full and I had to now change my strategy. I think we are living in a time where you can't just rest on what you know today or what's working today. You constantly have to be adapting to what's coming. And this is just another one of those waves. It's a wave that's gonna come. Some, there's gonna be some filter that's that quickly starts to say, okay, you know what? This is how we filter the junk right in the be in the, and back in the day, it was like Google's, page rank, right? Page rank said, okay, we know there's a jillion pages out there, but we're only gonna do the ones that have quality links pointing in. Because that's how we determine that humans think this content is good. So there will be a version of page rank that sort of nullifies this influx of junk content. And we probably don't see it yet, but it'll come, right? So you've gotta ride this wave out. But in the meantime you should be thinking, how do I make my content as good as possible and how do I stand out from the crowd? And that's something that everyone that is of working age or younger today is gonna be dealing with for the next 10 years, 20 years.

Jonathan Green:

Yeah, I think it's so funny about Blogger'cause that's how I started. I started off on Blogger in 2007. I was there for three years and. When I started, I didn't know other people could find your blog.

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah.

Jonathan Green:

Until I was ranking for a bunch of keywords. Yeah. And I was like, people can find this because I turned on, they go, oh, turn on the traffic thing. I was like, traffic thing. And it was like, you're getting tons of visitors a day. It was such a surprise for me.'cause I thought it was like a private diary just on a website, but boy, and it. And then I transformed into a business. And you're exactly right, because it's almost impossible now to launch like a personal blog where people just read your story. Those basically exist in where that's what it was. And then we had that generation, and even some people that got movies made out of their blogs, right? Oh, I wrote a blog about trying to make every French dish and now I have a movie. That would never happen because we've shifted and you're exactly right that the, there's this perspective that cheating works. And it does in the short term, right? Like we've all seen the website that cheats the Google album ranks for a little while. I see it on Amazon sometimes, right? But eventually you get caught, like the idea that you can create content with AI that Google doesn't know is insane. Their AI detection budget is like a trillion dollars. Your trick Google, no one strict Google budget is the same, right? It's their detection budget, right? So the, I think you're exactly right that in the long term, what will rise to the top is. Interesting and quality, and that's what always happens is that. There's this chasing of virality, which is very interesting. I had a friend who had a post go viral on Reddit, and he's didn't do anything for me. And I had a post go viral on LinkedIn. I got 400,000 views and it got me 13 new followers. I was like, that's the worst ratio you could ever have. And,

Pedro Sostre:

yeah.

Jonathan Green:

The problem with virality is that for something to go viral, a lot of people who would never become your customer have to like the content, right? Which means your actual customers have to barely notice it, so it actually attracts the wrong people and dilutes your business. And we chase this form of popularity that's like from high school thinking I need. 10,000 people and it's would you rather have 10,000 people or a hundred customers? And when you start to dial into who you want to be talking to, it's very different. Like my content changed dramatically when I realized who my customer is and what they were interested in was not hype. They were interested in like, how can I do large scale projects that move the needle one percentage 0.2 percentage points.'cause at scale, that's what matters. And. For a smaller business to stand out. Like you just have to have a level of authenticity, which I think is almost ephemeral for many people. It's what does it mean to be authentic? It's like that dating advice, be yourself. It's be myself was working. I wouldn't be asking be myself. I wouldn't be asking for advice.

Pedro Sostre:

Right?

Jonathan Green:

And it's so tricky to find authenticity, but I think my definition is say what you actually think. I. I went to college, I got a master's. Don't use any of it. I'm not, I have a pretty firm, for most people, college is not the right decision for 90% of if you wanna be a doctor. Yes. But that's like a strong stance they take and not everyone agrees with me, but, okay. Jonathan stands for something like, we're so afraid to have a strong opinion that we become forgettable. And I think that to me is the most important thing. Like I work with people that I disagree with dramatically. But I know where they stand and it makes it easier. Whereas if someone like always agrees with you, you're like we should do A, and they go, yeah, you actually think we should B. And then they agree with you again. You go you don't actually believe anything, so what's the point? And it's scary to have a strong opinion because there will be people who disagree with you. Like I guarantee I'm gonna to get comments because I said the college thing I always do whenever I bring it up, it's a guarantee that I get negative comments, but it's just. Based on my experience and based the cost. Like college now costs some people a quarter million dollars, half a million. That's a major investment. Yeah. That's a huge amount of money. So that's where my perspective comes from. But there's this desire to sound like everyone else that I think is really damaging to businesses. I think this is the mistake of ai, which is if everyone else has the same tool, then everyone else has the same playing field. Stand out. Like I was one of the first person to have an AI image of myself on LinkedIn and one knows everyone else is doing. I go, I can need, I gotta switch back. Yeah. Because then it's not interesting anymore. And that's the lesson I try to express, which is do what everyone else isn't doing, see what's working, and then be a little bit different so you get noticed and have some identity because if you're exact like everyone else, you're forgettable.

Pedro Sostre:

I think I agree. I'll add on that. I think there's a slight complexity now. There's a book, a pretty famous book called, I think it's called Salt, sugar, fat, and it's about how at some point, the big, I think it's like the big three food companies got together and started doing studies on what amounts of salt and sugar and fat and foods created addictions, right? And. They were able to continue dominating sort of the food space not to the benefit of the consumer, but to the benefit of themselves by creating addictions around around their product, through, by understanding the science behind it. And I think that's happening as well. Not, I think I know what's happening as well. Now in the social media and content space, you look at a lot of these shows that are being made for kids, and I've seen they're actually, when they create these shows, what they do is they do these they study it right? Where they put the show in front of a child, it could be like a toddler. And then they put the child's parent next to the television, right? And every time the kid looks away from the TV to the parent. They flag it so that they can do something at that moment in the show to make a sound effect happen or something pop up. And what they're learning is how to create addiction, right? How to create addiction. And this is not to the benefit of the consumer. People are becoming addicted. We know that's a thing, right? People are becoming addicted to social media and not necessarily to their benefit in any way, shape, or form, but if you are a creator, yes, I think you need to be authentic. And yes, I think you need to say what you need to say. And yes, I think virality isn't the goal, but it does feel like you're, like, you're punching against the wind when. You are putting stuff out there that's really good and people are still watching this junk that's designed, it's if you're making really great health food, but people are still eating the Doritos, it's like you've gotta now think about there is now some science and some studies behind this. And so maybe you've gotta think about how do I incorporate that without. Without kind of sacrifice. I think it's like the music in it. We've heard about this in the music industry for a long time. Like musicians, there's a way to make pop music that is formulaic and it's going to be successful. And then there's musicians like, I don't wanna do that. I just wanna do my music. But then they're watching all these pop stars become rich and famous and they're still just playing in a lounge. And that might be okay, but I think there's people who just keep looking at those pop stars. They're like, man I'm ready to sell out. What do I need to do? What do I need? How do I get there? And I think it's understanding what that balance is for each individual person. How much are you willing to sell out and play with the algorithm and game the system before it's no longer authentically you, but you are fighting against a stacked deck. You've got Mr. Beast out there who knows exactly how to pull the levers on people you've got, coco Melon, that's programming our kids to every two seconds be distracted by something. And and I think those realities exist. And if you're trying to make a mark in marketing or in content you've gotta be aware of those and start to understand that there is a craft behind content creation and virality. And what does that mean for you?

Jonathan Green:

Yeah, it's such a good point because you can start to feel like it's inauthentic to create backlinks, or it's inauthentic to reach out to people, and there is that balance. You have to decide how f. What do I want and what am I willing to do? And I think that we have this problem in our culture where we think everyone's an overnight success. And it's yeah, if you don't count the first 10 years, like we see examples where it's like a band's fifth album and like Overnight Success. I'm like five albums, that's 10 years. Like even Nickelback, they were like a cover band for. 10 years and people are like, overnight success. I was like, cover band is tough. They were doing weddings for 10 years and we don't count that. And even Taylor Swift or all these really big stars, she didn't. Break out the gate. Like she was putting in a lot, she was playing guitar for a long time. Every single person puts in a lot of hours. And I see this there's someone I follow who has these amazing, he gets these amazing interviews with music producers who you've never heard of, but then oh, I made all these songs. They're really hits.

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah.

Jonathan Green:

And he was talking the other day and he goes, I made 3000 videos before one hit.

Pedro Sostre:

Wow.

Jonathan Green:

And you're like, you don't, we have this problem where we discount the grind element. Challenge. We wanted to work on the first try, like your first, like I launched a new YouTube channel with my wife last week. Our first video got 30 views and I was like, this is awesome, because we didn't tell anyone. You know what I mean? And then we already have four hours of watch time in the first week and we're building something and it's people think, oh, you don't have a thousand. Yeah, of course it's hard. Yeah. We're still figuring out, which is like, what are the visuals gonna be like? What is, we're tweaking different elements and putting in opinions and it's like there's this process to it that is so important. And while AI can help you iterate, you still have to, there's still an element effort, an element to it, of figuring out what exactly is gonna work for me. And as someone, I've written so many books, I've written almost 300 books, maybe it's more than 300 now. Wow. And. The book. That's my favorite book My audience hates. I put the most and the book that like I think is my worst is my most popular. Yeah. And it's very important to remember that it's a democracy. Your customers get a vote and you never know what people are gonna or not like. I'm wrong so often. Yeah. About. What people are gonna like about my content or what type of questions people are gonna have. I used to do this thing when I was single. This is in my long time ago, where I would, before I call a girl, I would write down all my questions and what her answers could be. So I'd be right.

Pedro Sostre:

I have

Jonathan Green:

how chart Huge. Just how much of a nerd I am.

Pedro Sostre:

This tells a lot about your personality type. Yeah.

Jonathan Green:

This tells you exactly everything. I still do it. I was literally drawing one out for a project I'm doing right now. I write everything out by hand. This. Before I do automation, never. They never answer the first question with one of the choices on the sheet. I'd ask a question, they'd say something different. I'll never forget, I called a girl and I go, Hey, it's Jonathan. We met the other day. So good to talk. She goes, I'm in the car right now. I can't talk. And I go, I. It's not on the sheet. I don't like disaster. I never saw her again. And it's like this. Unpredictability is really scary. And there's this other area that I see where people are afraid to talk to each other now. Like they're afraid to get on the phone. They won't call to order a pizza because the person might judge them or all of these things. And we're losing this ability to communicate. This is the other area, worry about ai, where people are like, I've seen this thing where they say, oh, you can practice with an AI girlfriend before you have a real girlfriend. I'm like, yeah, tell her that. Tell a real girl if it was an AI and see how much it helps you like it. It doesn't help. The only way to learn like. I've been married for a long time. My wife surprised me every single day. I never know what she's gonna say. And the unpredictability is what makes it exciting. AI is not unpredictable in that way. It's always gonna agree with you.

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah, it's

Jonathan Green:

not my marriage, that's not my experience. We. Know what I mean? They start too rough

Pedro Sostre:

and it's always super encouraging too, right? Everything you say, it's wow, that's such a great idea. That's you. You did such a good job. It's I don't know why they programmed it this way, I bet it's, I bet they program it this way because they did addiction studies, right? What gets people to be is what if you agree with everything the person says and you tell 'em how great they are, they're gonna engage more. I guarantee it because AI is the most agreeable, complimentary conversation you have.

Jonathan Green:

And. Yeah. It's so funny. That's what I hate about it the most. Yeah. Like I never want my AI to have a voice. I don't like that they have a version where it's like pretends it's breathing. I don't like any of that. Like I want it to be a be impersonal. I don't want empathy. Don't. Yeah, create like rapport with me. I don't wanna have a parasocial relationship. Yeah. Because I'm just famous enough that I've been on both sides that like I'm very famous to about 10 to 20,000 people and to everyone else in the world, no one knows who I am. So I've had both ends of it where it's like every once in a while someone will recognize me and my wife is like, what is happening here? Because it's it doesn't happen enough that it's like frequent and. I don't wanna create that with an ai. And I think that's the worst part of it. Exactly. The addiction element, the empathy element. Like people are marrying their ais now and all of that stuff. No thank you. That's not a world I want to live in.

Pedro Sostre:

That's crazy.

Jonathan Green:

Drones, I'm like robot vacuums. Like as much as I'm into technology, I also hate a lot of technology. But just to pull it back, 'cause this has been so valuable, just to think how can people. From your experience, 'cause you have such a large customer base and some people, you have all of this data. When you're seeing, where are people getting stuck with AI? Or what's the thing where they get caught up in their head and how can they break through?'cause my first stick, I'll use mine first. I was afraid that AI would judge me. I was like, I don't want it to think I'm stupid. I had this was my big blog, and so it took me a while to break through that and start using AI and going, you know what? I'll just accept it. If it just puts me on the dumb list, I'll accept it, but I need to learn this tool. That was my first barrier about five years ago.

Pedro Sostre:

So we've got, now we've got a very specific customer base, right? We have tens of thousands of customers, but they're basically like mostly small business owners. In Spanish and Portuguese speaking, latam. And in the US we have about 20% of our customers in the US and they're English speaking, but if you look at 'em, they're also generally like a Spanish heritage. So what I see in that, so I can speak to that market specifically, is that they don't wanna have to learn ai. They don't wanna, they don't wanna try to figure out what prompting works and they don't wanna do any extra work. To do that, they're already swamped. Like they're all running businesses and they're already swamped as it is running their business. So all the tools that we've built that have been successful are really like, very point based. And the all the prompting is pre-programmed in the back end so that they can come in and just use the most basic language, write copy for my about page right now. They rely on us, on our platform to take the context of that, right? We already know their business, we know their website, we know what their logo looks like. We know all these things. So we've gotta now engineer on the backend what the prompt is in order to create the about page for them, right? So that's what we're seeing is nope. From our customer base, they don't wanna learn ai. They're not, they don't wanna, we have agencies and the agency clients are looking to become more proficient 'cause they understand that's what people ask for. But the small business clients, they're like, look, I just want this thing to make my web pay page for me, and I want you to make it easy because I don't want to be an expert in ai. And for the 80, 85% of our customers that are running their businesses, they wanna use it that way. And that's what we see the most common use case. They don't wanna prompt, they don't wanna learn. They don't wanna take a course, they just wanna in context with whatever they're doing, use it to speed up so they don't have to think about what to write or think about what design they want or think about whatever. And that's what I think seems to be working. Now the effectiveness is up to us, right? When we build a platform, we have to build it in a way that. The output at the end is effective because we're a marketing platform. So if they don't get any leads, then they think it, it didn't work, right? So it's really on the company. I think that's what's gonna happen for most of society, right? The tools, the Geminis the rocks, they're gonna just integrate themselves in a way that people don't have to learn prompting anymore. They're just gonna interact naturally and they're gonna get something out of it because it's conte, it's so contextualized that it's gonna know what they want already. And I think that's the real race is everybody's trying to you know who Google knows a lot about us. Meta knows a lot about us. Twitter knows a lot about people who use Twitter or x Grok, whatever. And I think they're all racing to see who can own as much. User data so that AI can just be contextually right all the time without having to require anything from the user.

Jonathan Green:

Yeah, I see so many AI startups that are too technical. And they fall into that. And this was I, early on, this is what I thought because I saw a lot of content that were like, I remember the first time I, someone had a prompting template and they'd use a smaller font to get it fit on a single PDF. And I was like, that's when you know it's really hard. It was like, they're like, learning to prompt is just like learning Portuguese. And I was like, that's hard. It's really hard. Learning a new language is hard. What are you talking about? And there's this push for complexity. And as I started working with more and more clients, I realized. Just like you said, it's like the microwave. Nobody knows how microwave works. You put in something cold, you push a button and you eat it.

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah.

Jonathan Green:

What happens in the middle? No one's really sure. And that's exactly there's nobody now who says I'm a master of word. I'm an expert at Word. We just use it. It does what you want. It puts the letters in the right place and it tells you something's misspelled. That's all you really care about, and I think that you are exactly dialed in. People just want it to. Do the result to get 'em somewhere faster, where instead of trying to write the about page, they could just read it and go, oh, tweak this, tweak that. And the more accurate it is. And that's really, I think, what's gonna separate the companies that last and those that don't.'cause people do not care which AI they're using. They don't care if the backend is grok or deep seek or chat GPT or whoever. They only care if it works.

Pedro Sostre:

There was a time when, like a Google search. Queries were prompted where you would you were taught like, okay, when you search on Google, you can use like negative flags and you use your location and you type up, and there was like a whole format for how to do a proper Google search query. Nobody knows that today. Nobody bothers with that because now Google already knows your location. They know who you are and they're gonna just figure out what's the best thing for you. And we trust them. But in the beginning. There was, the equivalent of prompting for Google search queries that anybody who's, under 40 years old probably doesn't even remember 'cause it disappeared. I think it's gonna be the same thing. The idea of prompting, unless you're a, an AI engineer, the idea of prompting, I don't think is gonna matter to the generation alphas by the time they grow up. Because it's not gonna matter. The AI's gonna already know all the context behind it.

Jonathan Green:

That's such a good point. Like I learned boolean and search in high school. And it's that doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist. It's and or this and that and the commas and like putting quotes around two words, Uhhuh, so it cheats the two words as the same term. None of that matters. Yeah. Anymore. But you spent so much time learning that and it's, that's really dialed in. So I think a lot of people are waiting for the right moment because they're distracted by the bad stuff. They see. So much of what I mean I only basically do LinkedIn. Like I certainly don't, I have a Twitter account, never use it like most people, but I see some, most of the content I see on LinkedIn, unless I'm curating, it's like it is depressing. It's like everyone's posting generic stuff. It's not interesting and it can lead people to think this is what everyone else is doing. This is. It's what I should do. And I think that's why we see always a short term race to the bottom until you see the sweep where they start blocking AI content and the different tools are trying to add that option. Like on Pinterest you can click a thing like saying how much AI slot do you wanna see? And it's like there's a slider. None for sure. That's an easy question to answer. And we're gonna see more each platform's kind of handling it in a different way. Yeah. Of how much, how they're handling it and. I think the thing for small businesses, and especially for entrepreneurs who are like feeling this desire to chase that ring, is that you wanna use tools strategically that you wanna think, how can this help me do what I'm already good at faster? That's the place where you should start. It's what are the things I have to do that I don't have time to do Great. Have AI help me with that. I don't have time to do my website. I don't have time to write my terms and conditions. That's a great thing to have AI help you with.'cause it, you have to have them. It comes up for me, my terms, conditions come up. Every time there's a chargeback or anything, I always have to send 'em in. It's a whole thing. So you do need to have them, but it's once you have that, like you don't like the ability to do those things. Or when I get a contract, I can have a look at the contract and tell me these are the sections to be worried about. Yeah. And help you get that perspective. Like when you start to use it strategically and this it's such a critical lesson. Like whenever someone buys a tool and then they decide I bought this tool, now what am I gonna do with it? You always end up making a mistake. But instead, if you approach it, I have a problem, let me find the tool, they can solve it. I want to cook food fast, I'll buy a microwave. Like that type of thing. For people who are small business owners, they're interested in your type of tools, whether they're Latin American descent or not. I've certainly used Builder in the past. I'm very interested in kind of a lot of the changes you've making over the last two years. So can you tell people a little bit about where you are now and where the future is and how they can check things out to see the amazing stuff you guys are doing over there?

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that opportunity. What we announced most recently, I think that had the biggest impact in our user experience is what we call builds. And so it's the idea that like if you're a course creator or you're an agency or you're a realtor because our platform has 25 different marketing tools, and it's great if you're an expert marketer because you get in there and you're like, okay, great. I know I wanna use this, I wanna use this, I wanna use this, I wanna use this. And then you build out this funnel and then it works. That's really what like successful marketers are doing today, is there's generally a funnel involved. Me and a funnel just means, you've got a landing page that goes to an email list, that goes to a check, whatever. The whole process. Every different niche has like a different. Marketing funnel that works. So our builds enable people to get in and they don't have to know anything about marketing and they just choose, okay, I have this type of business, and it's gonna say, Hey, these are the six tools you wanna use. Here's the order in which you do'em, and here's how they all connect. And since it's all the same platform, you no longer have to go to a lot of people here might be familiar with Zapier, right? And, okay, I gotta go create an account at Zapier and I've gotta get it, put an API key so that it connects my my ad leads to go into MailChimp, and then that's gonna, and it just becomes a nightmare. You spend weeks just doing tech setup because our platform's all in one, all the tools are already talking to each other. So I like that because it's enabled our, it cut our churn in half. Our new user churn in half because they get in, they see exactly what they need to build, and they're seeing results because it's just like having a marketing consultant come in and say, Hey, this is what you should do.

Jonathan Green:

I love that because I think the challenge of having so many tools is that it's really good, but it's also overwhelming. Yes.'cause someone comes in and goes, there's 50 tools. Which one do I learn? And I always think about the menu at Cheesecake Factory. It's so long it has ads in it that I love this idea. We got a bunch of tools and lemme tell you which ones are the right ones for you because, and I tell you this, when I was choosing the camera that I issued this podcast on, I said to my friend, which camera do you recommend? He goes, so here's three good ones. I go that's not what I asked you. I said, I don't want more work. Just tell me which one to get

Pedro Sostre:

right.

Jonathan Green:

And it's one budget question. I go, this's how much I wanna spend in get this one? And I love that because it's very overwhelming for someone to go even to know which, how often should I email? Or which social media platform should I target or. What type of pricing? So like people sometimes people don't understand that I don't do e-commerce, I do direct sales, which means. I don't do add to cart, it just says buy, like I have one offer on one page. As opposed to multiple that you buy at once. Like that to me is the difference between e-commerce and direct. And that's a really critical question.'cause for different, just that one little thing. Yeah. And it's if I had all my courses on one page and said, add to cart, my. Sales would drop through the floor. It would kill my business because of my industry. Everyone buys differently in different markets. So just knowing that one small thing. So I love the F builds. I love a lot of the change you're making. That's why I'm so excited to be on the show today and I really appreciate your time.'cause I think this is gonna be really valuable for a lot of our listeners who we're thinking about what type of tools should I do and how should I start choosing which tools use and how I should position my business. Because I see so many AI startups that think the complexity is what matters. But how many movies that were really hard to make does no one care?

Pedro Sostre:

Yeah,

Jonathan Green:

it doesn't matter. People only care about ease of use and the result, and it's it doesn't matter how hard you work on a product, if it doesn't work on the first try, people never forgive you. So I love the things you're doing and have been revolutionizing a product. Has been around for a while and you found that next generation and saw many amazing things. So I really appreciate you being here. Again, guys, it's builder. All I'll put below in the show notes and below the video because this is a really cool product and I really love how they're revolutionizing it and so many amazing things. So thank you again for being here, Pedro. It's been amazing episode of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Monday with more tips and strategies on how to leverage AI to grow your business and achieve better results. In the meantime, if you're curious about how AI can boost your business' revenue, head over to artificial intelligence pod.com. Slash calculator, use our AI revenue calculator to discover the potential impact AI can have on your bottom line. It's quick, easy, and might just change the way. Think about your business while you're there. Catch up on past episodes. Leave a review and check out our socials.