Adapting Agencies for the AI Era

John Jantsch (00:01.405)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Brent Weaver. He is the CEO of E2M Solutions, the leading provider of white label WordPress SEO content and AI solutions for digital marketing agencies. So guess what we’re going to talk about today? We’re going to talk about agencies and we’re going to talk about digital marketing. So Brent, welcome to the show.

Brent At E2M (00:28.728)

Great to be here. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:30.427)

I did get the title right. Didn’t I? You’re the CEO currently. Yeah. Okay. I was.

Brent At E2M (00:34.446)

Yeah, yeah. Joined E2M in June of 2025. So I’m wrapping up my ninth week on duty. So it’s been a new adventure for me.

John Jantsch (00:40.198)

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

John Jantsch (00:47.197)

Well, E2M is not new necessarily, so it worked with hundreds of agencies. Just in your time and what you’ve learned or from the folks there, what do you see as some of the biggest changes in the agency landscape right now? And I know it’s evolving rapidly, but I’m curious what you’re hearing because you pretty much talk to agencies all day long.

Brent At E2M (01:10.722)

Yeah. I mean, the obvious elephant in the room is artificial intelligence and what that’s doing both in terms of how agencies are run and also how they’re deploying services and also how clients are expecting, you know, what the clients are doing with AI as well. So it’s not just like the agency using it, but the clients are using it. So I think some expectations are changing and also speed to results is changing because a client might say, well, Hey, if I can just have AI do this in

three minutes, right? Like, why is it gonna take you three or four days and just kind of working on how to up level your level, know, what you’re doing for your clients in terms of results. mean, that bar has certainly been raising very, very quickly in terms of what expectations are. And so I think a lot of agencies are feeling a little bit of squeeze, but at the same time, they’re feeling a lot of excitement. So there’s that whole topic, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:00.833)

Well, so to tag, I was going to say to tag onto that though, of course, your primary function is to, in most cases, act as a white label support for that agency. So I’m curious, has the white label mode evolved? mean, how are you, because it’s affecting agencies. So how’s it then in turn affecting what a white label provider like yourself is doing?

Brent At E2M (02:25.614)

And we’ve really like planted a flag that we want to be an AI first agency. And so we are doing lots of internal, kind of retooling education. have a thing called AI for Saturday where our whole company comes in every first Saturday of the month. some of that time has been dedicated to education, working on projects kind of, you know, within the teams doing demo days, hackathons. and so we’re definitely taking AI very seriously. Our team’s taking AI very seriously.

we’re also doing fractional AI services for agencies. So actually going in and helping the agency implement AI solutions. And so I think it’s, you know, people want better results. They want them faster, right? It’s kind of like, you know, dealing with Amazon, right? Like people used to think, I ordered something on the internet. It’s okay that it takes seven to 10 days to show up, right? But in the post Amazon world, you’re like, well, like my kids, for example, they’re like, why I ordered this

30 minutes ago, why is it not already at the front door? I think some of that impatience is seeping its way into the business to business service model. And I also think some of that kind of what people expect in terms of a customer centric centered business, like Amazon will give you refunds on just about anything. think customers are expecting some of that for some of their agency customers, but you know, it’s certainly having a huge impact on the overall industry.

John Jantsch (03:40.967)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:49.917)

So, since you opened the AI can of worms, I’ll go there directly. You know, what I’m seeing a lot of people do is, you know, it’s like we’re in this wild west days still where there’s 473 tools. People are hacking this $20 a month thing together with this $20 a month thing. They’re talking about agents and what they can do. What I’m seeing on the business side, the small business side, it’s like, okay, I get it. I get it. We need to do AI.

but this is exhausting. And, you know, is, there ever going to be a day you think where some, a business owner can actually buy the full like marketing operating system that is AI run and installed in their business and not, you know, have to lean on their agency to do this and an SEO person to do that with AI to me. And again, I’m, just asking your opinion because it doesn’t exist today, but, but I feel like that’s where we’re going to go.

Brent At E2M (04:42.083)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:46.237)

There’s going to be the $5.99 a month solution that’s sort of an all in one as opposed to custom this and custom that and custom, you know, whatever.

Brent At E2M (04:56.494)

And perhaps, you know, I think John that the more I’ve gotten into AI personally and the more Like projects and use cases that I’ve seen it. It’s it’s like the more, you know The more you realize you don’t know and I certainly think that that’s true with AI and and we’re seeing a lot of people do some what I would almost consider to be magical things with AI but then there’s also this like

maybe they do something where they don’t really have the foundational skillset. They’re using a tool like lovable and they’re doing vibe coding and they build an application that gets to a certain point. And then the client says, well, hey, we actually need this for a business requirement thing to do this other thing. And then all of a sudden that other thing maybe isn’t possible within the vibe coding interface. And all of a sudden you have this thing that an agency has spent weeks on in terms of a vibe coding application build.

John Jantsch (05:27.292)

Yeah, yeah.

Brent At E2M (05:49.6)

And then the thing that they needed to do from a business case is not possible within the AI. And so then we’re hitting this wall and we have to go, my gosh, we’re going to have to completely, we have to build this new ground up without vibe coding in order to make the business case work. I there was a study that said that something like 40 to 60 % of enterprise AI projects, and I should probably have a source on this of them quoted, but 40 to 60 % of AI projects at the enterprise level are being abandoned or never seen the light of day.

John Jantsch (06:18.609)

Yes.

Brent At E2M (06:18.85)

and if we all know, from reading wall street, like how much money is being invested in AI, that means like over half of the investment that major corporations are making are, basically being thrown in the trash. And I I’m seeing that same level of kind of experimentation, happened at the agency level and also at the small business owner level. And so I think there’s still, gosh, there’s just so much learning that has to be done. And the upside though, is you find an AI, automation or

agentic workflow that, that works, it gets to a hundred percent. it can have game changing impact on the business, right? Like the ROI on it can be, you know, infinity. And so it’s certainly worth making these investments, but it doesn’t mean that every investment is going to pay off.

John Jantsch (06:51.869)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (06:57.223)

Peace.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yeah, I think one of the challenges in the the window that we’re in right now is, is in some cases, the hype of AI is actually outrunning the reality of it. And I think that a lot of people are like, we can fire everybody and do it all with AI. I mean, you see these people, you know, on Facebook ads, like, I have a $16 billion company and I only have two employees, you know, you’re like, you know,

Brent At E2M (07:13.848)

Sure.

Brent At E2M (07:26.982)

They like show this big like screenshot of all their automation crazy I’ve replaced 64 employees right like maybe I don’t know I mean usually I find when you kind of double click on those things and you go in there’s there’s usually some smoke and mirrors around those things but I don’t want to like bash anybody that’s

John Jantsch (07:31.482)

You

John Jantsch (07:35.909)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:41.341)

Well, they’re 100 % there is. And I think that, you know, it’s like all things. It’s kind of like taking advantage of the craze is actually making the reality a lot worse and a lot harder for that business owner that just needs a couple things, you know, figured out to, you know, to make, to not even to replace people, you know, but to actually empower their people in ways to do better and more work. All right. So I’ll get off my soapbox on that one and move to, let’s talk about SEO.

Brent At E2M (08:06.993)

Hahaha.

John Jantsch (08:10.727)

you know, which is a tactic, of course, a channel, if you will, that, that you guys play in quite a bit. There’s that’s another one of those where there’s, you know, like, it would take me about two minutes to find somebody who, who today put on LinkedIn SEO is dead. And so, you know, how are you, how are you, by the way, it’s not, but how are you advising clients? How are you changing even your routine and working around the reality that a lot of top of funnel

Brent At E2M (08:10.819)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:40.679)

types of content that used to generate traffic has certainly gone away. We can debate whether or not it was that valuable anyway. But how are you evolving your model when you think about SEO practices?

Brent At E2M (08:54.414)

I mean, if there’s a piece of content that you could easily just ask, you know, chat, and you would get a great answer for that content, if that’s what you’re gonna be putting on your client’s website to help them grow their rank or grow their traffic from the LLMs and things like that, I mean, that’s certainly probably not gonna be a great strategy. And I think most people got that memo when they saw how much traffic decreased for…

John Jantsch (08:58.781)

Right.

Brent At E2M (09:19.566)

Those kind of common things right like how do I make great guacamole? Right is just going to be the user experience to ask that question on On chat is going to be far better than on a Google browser unless somebody has some type of proprietary ingredient or approach or they can actually build some intellectual property around it and kind of protect that unique recipe right in that case or they have a really great personality around

John Jantsch (09:36.199)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (09:42.727)

Mm-hmm.

Brent At E2M (09:47.054)

teaching people how to make guacamole or whatever, and they’re a great YouTuber, and there’s some type of thing that’s unique that AI cannot replicate that they can bring to the marketplace. So I do think marketers have to be a little bit more creative. There’s kind of a reinvention that’s going on. That being said, there’s also a ton of people that are now using LLMs to search for business recommendations, to search for services. And certainly there’s…

John Jantsch (10:09.307)

Yeah, 100%.

Brent At E2M (10:13.248)

a whole cottage industry. our, amount of SEO business that we’ve had has, has categorically gone up year over year, right? And that’s kind of in the post AI world. And a big thing on the, on the E2M team is how are we optimizing our clients’ websites and search strategy for the LLMs, right? Kind of the AEO strategies while we’re also using, you know, continuing to invest in Google. And I think Google, for instance, I I don’t know if search traffic, you know, the

John Jantsch (10:15.035)

the

John Jantsch (10:21.661)

Mm-hmm.

Brent At E2M (10:40.738)

The Google usage has necessarily gone down. mean, I think they’re still driving a lot of traffic to businesses. Google Local, massively important for businesses to be active, right? Especially if they’re a service business or they’re working locally or regionally, right? That’s something that I think the LLMs aren’t doing nearly as well as Google. And so there’s certainly still lots of blue oceans, I think, on the SEO side.

John Jantsch (10:47.132)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:02.119)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:05.853)

Yeah, and I think you’re 100 % right. mean, I’m speaking in a conference next month of all remodeling contractors. And they’re all talking about like, what do need to be doing to change? And it’s like, hey, you know, show up in that map pack, do a better job of your reviews, you know, that, you know, answer, you know, have a lot of FAQs, you know, that answer questions that people would have about remodeling, because that the trust, I think, with the map pack, whether it’s deserved or not, you know, that the consumer has is going to, I think, give that

a life for a long time. And I don’t think you’re going to see the AI overviews for somebody that’s, I mean, you can go there and say, you know, in AI mode, you can say, what’s the best for modeling contractor in this town. And it will give you an opinion. But I think people still value the map pack and the proximity and all the things that come with it.

Brent At E2M (11:55.086)

You know, one thing I think there was this like undertone of like, is AI going to make agencies like obsolete or something? And, and it’s weird because like I’ve asked this to a lot of agency groups have been like, okay, in the post AI world, like who here is working less, right? And I asked people like raise their hands and like, nobody raised their hand. I’m like, okay, the, the right, they’re working more. They’re working way more. Right. It is weird. It’s a weird paradigm, right? Because you would think, Hey, artificial intelligence, the computer is going to do all the work for me.

John Jantsch (12:00.955)

Yeah, yeah, you bet.

John Jantsch (12:11.133)

It’s more. They’re all working more, in fact.

Brent At E2M (12:24.718)

You know, it’s like the logical outcome of that would be that we wouldn’t have to work as hard. And, you know, even though these tools do magical things, I don’t think they make finding leads and customers any easier. If anything, they’re just making it even more competitive. They’re giving advanced marketing tools to a lot larger group of people. And so it’s getting more competitive out there. And that means that businesses…

John Jantsch (12:42.993)

Yeah.

Brent At E2M (12:52.51)

still need agencies and specialists now more than ever. In fact, they need specialists that are specialized in specializations instead of specializations. And that was the other thing I was going to kind of bring as a theme is, is looked like knowing who your customer is, having niche expertise, you know, really knowing your market backwards and forwards, knowing your market better than your clients know their industry, I think is now more important than ever. You know, the idea of just being a general

John Jantsch (13:15.783)

Mm-hmm.

Brent At E2M (13:21.432)

Hey, I’m Brent, I’m the web guy, right? Like I don’t think that’s gonna fly in 2026 and beyond if it is even flying right now.

John Jantsch (13:24.401)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (13:31.293)

So let’s talk about the human element. think a lot of people are wringing their hands around. mean, every time you see these headlines that, you know, Microsoft says are 40 % of all jobs will go away by, you know, the next three years. I think you have a lot of people kind of wringing their hands around about like, is this going to destroy the world? know, if people, 40 % of people are out of jobs. How are…

I tell you what we see is I see a lot of people that are working more, as you said, and a lot of it’s because the consumer or the business owner behavior has changed a little bit in that they expect more. So that’s part of it. our mantra has always been strategy before tactics. We actually feel that if you develop a great marketing strategy, marketing becomes less complicated, but far more effective.

and, and so, you know, what I see is a whole lot of agencies that were, have always been delivering tactics are now just using AI to deliver a new set of tactics. and not still not thinking strategically. I think what Mark, what businesses are going to need in the future is marketing leadership and not marketing doers.

Brent At E2M (14:48.78)

Yeah. Yeah. mean, I think we’re running this event. It’s all about AI for agency owners. And I promise this is not just a direct plug for our event, but obviously it’s my duty to promote our event right now. But one of our attendees, and he’s kind of an AI first person, he registered for our event, right? Went in and purchased a ticket.

John Jantsch (14:50.845)

I should have posed that as a question, but it was really more of a statement.

Brent At E2M (15:17.166)

All using his chat GPT agent. So he literally just you know driving in the car Said hey Go buy a ticket to Vistara and his agent, know went and it takes screenshots and says hey This is what I’m doing along the way, but you know, he just kind of had to say yep Yep in the agent already has all of his information and it has all of the information that it needs in order to make that fill out the web forums and actually purchase a product and

It’s, it’s almost like every business from that perspective, every business’s website just became kind of the Amazon one click shopping experience. You know, if, we fast forward two, three years, if we all have these agents that have, you know, secure access to our banking details and to our PII and they know kind of our preferences. mean, what could you do if you can line up an experience that you know is going to meet the needs of a specific target audience? you know, you have.

very few barriers standing between you and them making a transaction, becoming a customer. And I think in that way, AI is going to be disrupting some of these workflows, some of these user interfaces, just as web professionals and digital agencies, how we view creating those experiences. And so I think that while AI is certainly going to destroy some number of jobs, whether it’s 40%, 20%, I don’t know what the number is.

John Jantsch (16:40.976)

This is…

Brent At E2M (16:42.646)

I trust Microsoft, they’re now worth $4 trillion. They must be doing something right. But I think for every job that it destroys, there’s going to be new jobs created. You know, if I was, if I lived in a Waymo city, I was just out in California. I rode in my first driverless taxi. Would I still have a car? I don’t know because I’m like, well, what if I just used Waymo to get everywhere I needed to go? And when I’m in the car, I’m going to work on

John Jantsch (16:45.309)

You

John Jantsch (16:52.625)

Yeah, I’m seeing that already, right.

Brent At E2M (17:10.094)

I’m going to be productive. I’m going to do work. I’m going to be calling, I’ll call 10 more agencies to see if they can come to my event. Right. So I do think that there’s like some things that are not super exciting in terms of jobs in the marketplace right now that likely are going to go away, right? Like data entry, data harvesting from the internet, you know, content editors, right? Like I can get a lot of my content. can dictate it to chat and

John Jantsch (17:28.943)

Mm-hmm. Just basic research. Yeah.

Brent At E2M (17:38.52)

gives me pretty good content. It even gives me some suggestions on how to evolve it and gives me different, know, hey, here’s a version for LinkedIn. Here’s a version for Facebook. Here’s a version for Instagram, right? Here’s a script that you can go and put, take a video and record, right? So things that I would have relied on three, four or five people before I can get done myself. And a lot of times I don’t think I was necessarily hiring those people. I just wasn’t doing it, right? I’d post maybe on one platform instead of four and I wouldn’t hire a social media person to do that.

John Jantsch (17:45.917)

All right. Yep.

Brent At E2M (18:07.022)

And so I think that some of these things are certainly going to destroy jobs, but you know, like what will my kids’ jobs be in 15, 20 years? I have no idea, but they’ll have something to do, I’m sure.

John Jantsch (18:07.867)

Yes.

John Jantsch (18:17.841)

Yeah. Yeah. I’m even seeing that in our organization. you know, people that, that really were good doers, good implementers, you know, we’re really pushing them to, know, they have to be more, they, whether they have employees under them or not, they have to really think more like leaders and think more like managers, who are going to optimize, you know, some of these tools, as opposed to, you know, writing the, every bit of social media content, they’re going to be, you know,

looked more as managers. And I think that that from a skill set standpoint, that’s, that’s probably not everybody’s sweet spot. I mean, there definitely are people that are just very good at give me an SOP and I’ll follow it. But I do think that from a career standpoint, you know, if you’re one of those people, you probably need to really start looking at how do I, know, how do I, my strategic thinking, my EQ skills, you know, over and above, you know, being able to, to manage a spreadsheet.

Brent At E2M (19:15.79)

And sometimes, you know, not to like be like capitalist or whatever, but like, think at some point, right, if people aren’t willing to move towards that opportunity voluntarily, they will, you know, maybe have to earn some, learn some hard lessons. And in those, some of those might be expensive lessons. think certainly as an entrepreneur, I’ve had to learn some expensive lessons when I didn’t pivot hard enough or, you know, change my business or change my mindset fast enough. And then you…

John Jantsch (19:32.327)

Yeah, Yeah.

Brent At E2M (19:43.51)

And then you’re like, was a hard lesson. I’m never going to do that again. So I think, you know, people don’t evolve right now and they don’t invest time. Like again, we’re doing these AI first Saturdays as a team. And at first people were like, I to come in on Saturday. we’re like, Hey, look, this is the reality. Like we’re all working an extra, an extra day right now to make sure that we can properly retool and learn enough about this tech because during the week, we’re all very focused on client work. We’re focusing on.

John Jantsch (19:46.097)

Right, Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:55.121)

Yeah, right.

Brent At E2M (20:11.758)

know, doing the day-to-day business. so, you know, we’ve, we’ve made that as a priority all the way up to our leadership team. Right. I mean, I’m waking up at four o’clock every Saturday, joining, joining the team and you know, working on AI stuff.

John Jantsch (20:25.713)

Well, Brent, we’ve frittered away a perfectly good 20 minutes here trying to help people talk people off the cliff a little bit. Is there some place you’d invite people to learn more about e2m’s solutions?

Brent At E2M (20:39.34)

Yeah, you can definitely check us out at e2msolutions.com. You can always email me brent at e2msolutions.com. We’re running an event called Vistara at the end of September, depending on when this episode airs, join vistara.com. So we’re doing two full days on artificial intelligence and agency growth. So, I mean, we’re, think this is such an important topic. We’re running a full two day event on this in Denver, Colorado. So if you’re interested, certainly reach out.

John Jantsch (21:01.319)

Yes.

John Jantsch (21:06.791)

Well, I’m just down the road. should probably come down and speak at the event. Well, let’s make, let’s, let’s make it happen then. All right. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll see you soon out there on the road.

Brent At E2M (21:10.606)

I think so. I think so. should. Let’s make it happen.

Brent At E2M (21:20.942)

Thanks, John.

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