Dave Burnett: CEO of AOK Marketing

^{Joe Fox (00:02.99)}
Hey everyone, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Retain Grow Thrive. It's early 2026 and I know everyone's super busy. I can feel the business confidence in every conversation I'm having at the moment. So I'm super excited for this season. Today I've got a very, very, very cool guest on board. Dave Burnett. He's had an incredible journey. We're going to hear a lot of really cool things. You're going to hear more some points around loyalty, some points around rewards. You're going to hear about

his really cool things that he's overcame to get to where he's gotten to. You're going to hear about a massive exit that he's achieved and you're going to hear a lot on the digital marketing front and what he's up to now. So without further ado, I want to introduce Dave Burnett. Dave, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

_{Dave Burnett (00:50.264)}
Thanks so much for having me, Joe. Really appreciate the time to be here.

^{Joe Fox (00:54.209)}
Yeah, absolutely. mean, we were just chatting off air about how busy the start of the year has been and everything that's going on. And I'm sure you feel the same with your clients and everyone that you're working with, but there seems to be a pretty good consumer confidence coming into 2026. I think after BFCM and everything like that, and all of the records that were achieved there, people seem more confident heading into business, but

Dave, I would love for you to just give a, you know, I gave a very, very brief, you know, overview of what you've done and what you've achieved. And I can't wait to dive into some of the hockey enforcers stories and some really cool things about what you've overcame. And then obviously the amazing, you know, exit that you had as well. So, yeah, are you able to just give the audience a quick background on, you know, your journey and where you are today?

_{Dave Burnett (01:45.667)}
Yeah, absolutely. love discussions that start with hockey enforcer early on in them. So I'm, yeah, I'm based out of Toronto, Toronto being in Canada, hockey is a thing here is as everybody knows is we're worldwide known for. And so I was one of those kids. I grew up playing hockey, had all kinds of fun. I ended up playing pretty high level, two levels below NHL in terms of where I was playing and

^{Joe Fox (01:49.145)}
Hehehehehe

_{Joe Fox (02:09.227)}
amazing.

_{Dave Burnett (02:12.482)}
You know, what happened was I was playing at that level and I got called up to one level below NHL and a couple of NHL guys got sent down as happens in the pro leagues. And during that game that I was playing, you know, a fight broke out and it wasn't just one of your regular fights. was everybody on the ice was fighting somebody else on the ice. It's called, it's called a line brawl. If you've ever seen it where the, you know, I'm sure you've seen highlights where the goalies are fighting each other and all that kind of stuff.

^{Joe Fox (02:31.456)}
Wow.

^{Joe Fox (02:37.236)}
Absolutely, yeah, and it's just kind of like this all in, all in and everyone's everywhere and it feels like the cameraman can't follow where everyone's at.

_{Dave Burnett (02:43.564)}
Yeah. It was, it was a mess. And I tell this story because, I ended up fighting a guy who got sent down from the NHL and winning the fight, which was, which was, you know, both good and bad. Cause when you're in a fight, you don't want to lose. But what ended up happening was I ended up, being kind of labeled as an enforcer then at that point. And what an enforcer in hockey is, is somebody who was, who basically goes out and just fights other people. So I, that became my job.

^{Joe Fox (02:54.924)}
Mmm.

^{Joe Fox (02:59.539)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (03:10.41)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Dave Burnett (03:13.122)}
Whereas, okay, Dave, we're losing this game. We need to change the momentum, go and beat that guy up. And, you know, as romantic as that sounds, really getting punched in the face wasn't fun. Like it really wasn't. And I hope there's not too much video, but you know, seven broken noses later, that kind of stuff.

^{Joe Fox (03:13.558)}
Yep.

^{Joe Fox (03:18.348)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (03:26.314)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (03:31.301)}
yes. Yep. I've only had one so you're far ahead of me there.

_{Dave Burnett (03:37.251)}
Well, it's just how it got started. But yeah, it was a real challenge. And unfortunately, that caused me to quit hockey when I was in 12th grade and go off and, you know, have to switch career paths because I thought I was going to go to the US on a scholarship. I thought I was going to do all these things, but I had to, I had to quit because I was taking a lot of, a lot of stitches and you know, that, that wasn't great. So I ended up going to a great Canadian university, meeting the love of my life, you know, kind of history.

^{Joe Fox (03:59.412)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (04:07.246)}
You know, who knows how things would have ended up otherwise, but it turned for the better for me. So that was kind of the start.

^{Joe Fox (04:13.035)}
I love to hear that. Definitely a great, if you meet the love of your life because of a change, then it's meant to be. That's 100 % a true fact.

_{Dave Burnett (04:22.158)}
Absolutely. So it was great. then at university, started my first business. I started up a liquor sampling company. So here in Canada and here in Ontario, we actually have liquor stores and beer stores. We don't, you weren't able to actually buy liquor and beer at say the convenience store or the grocery store. So we actually used to give out free samples of booze for people. And I know I was really popular at university.

It was really my personality. It wasn't the fact that I had a truck full of booze, right? was, but for some reason I was got invited to the parties. I don't know why that was. And, uh, but that was my first business. So I had 50 employees working for me when I was in my third year of university and then ended up selling that business to my partner at the time. And so exit, that was my first exit. Wasn't really great or expensive or, know, didn't certainly wasn't retirement money at my, when I was 20.

_{Dave Burnett (05:18.888)}
and went off into another business that was a promotional products company. And this promotional products company within that promotional products company, we started up a company that is now called achievers.com. So achievers.com.

^{Joe Fox (05:30.687)}
Yes, massive. This is the one that I think is going to blow the audience's mind, to be honest, because this is a very cool component and a very interesting part of the journey. I'm really excited for this.

_{Dave Burnett (05:46.051)}
Well, I'm dating myself here, right? So this is back in 2000, back when the internet.com bubble was a thing. And as a result of that, we were the very first people. So I was in at a bank, a local bank that was up here. And they said, you know, we need to give away some t-shirts and hats and pens and stuff. Cause I was in the promotional product side of things. we need to give some of that stuff away to our call center people. And I said, well, what are you actually trying to do? And they said, well, we're trying to incent them to perform better to

^{Joe Fox (05:53.534)}
Yep. Yep.

_{Dave Burnett (06:15.298)}
congratulate them or reward them for doing well. And I said, okay, well, why don't we put up a website where you can give them points and then they can go online and redeem for whatever they want as part of a points program. And they said, hey, that sounds like a great idea. Well, you know, what's that gonna cost? And I was like, it'll be a hundred grand. I just totally made up a number. It's gonna be a hundred grand to do that. And they're like, okay. And I was like, all right, now I guess I gotta build this thing. So we went and built the very first online points redemption B2B.

^{Joe Fox (06:32.819)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (06:37.416)}
Wow, yes, yep.

_{Dave Burnett (06:44.654)}
product and ended up getting massive clients like GE and others. And that was really the start of that business. was originally called I Love Rewards and then changed its name to achievers.com. And that business grew and grew. And I actually left the day-to-day operations of that business in 2002. So I can't take credit for all the amazing work that everybody did. But what happened was in 2015, it actually sold to private equity for $110 million.

So this was a, yeah, this was a fantastic exit for, for all those that were involved with it. And yeah, it was, it was really, really good. And you know, I, after 2002, I went off and started another promotional products company that's now called promotional products.com. So that business grew and grew until 2007, 2008, when nobody started buying promo anymore. Like the great recession happened and all of a sudden I'm losing.

^{Joe Fox (07:13.417)}
Fantastic. Yep. Yep.

^{Joe Fox (07:39.965)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Dave Burnett (07:40.975)}
$70,000 a month is what I was losing at the time. So just crazy. I ended up going out and having to get good at digital marketing. So I went out and bought 3000 URLs and I put up 500 websites. Yeah. So that was...

^{Joe Fox (07:53.608)}
Wow.

Wow, yeah, that's awesome. 3000 URLs. I know a lot of people who've bought and sold some pretty cool domains. Funny story I'll tell you off air about a previous founder that I worked for that bought one when it had lapsed from an incredibly large company in Australia and made a fortune from it. But 3000 is a lot of URLs.

_{Dave Burnett (08:20.046)}
It was and still is, I think I still have seven or 800 of them left. Um, but the, we put up 500 websites and, that way we got good at SEO. So with the market changing, we had to adapt and you know, all of a sudden people were buying in different ways. So got good at SEO and that's where AOK marketing was formed, which is our digital agency. And then the promotional products business came back. So now I ended up with two companies. So I got a promo company.

^{Joe Fox (08:23.9)}
Wow. Wow.

^{Joe Fox (08:29.969)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (08:39.42)}
Yup. Yup.

_{Dave Burnett (08:47.086)}
and then a digital marketing company, and then that digital marketing company evolved over years. And then I got into AI in 2017, 18, I became a open AI beta tester. so, yeah, so was in, back, back when Elon Musk still owned part of it and got involved at that point. And then, um, yeah, that evolved. And then now we've evolved, you know, chat GPT came out in 22. And then now what we do is we help people get found in AI.

^{Joe Fox (08:59.066)}
wow, yep.

^{Joe Fox (09:04.124)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (09:16.578)}
So we're, you know, we do all kinds of amazing things on that side. So we are helping people with their GEO, know, generative engine optimization or AEO, their whatever you want to call it. LLMO. Exactly. We help people get found in AI is what we do on that side of things. And we also do, you know, paid search, paid social, help people acquire for e-commerce businesses, which is, know where your history is. So that's kind of the business journey.

^{Joe Fox (09:17.02)}
Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:25.856)}
LLM optimization. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:33.244)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (09:44.168)}
That's awesome. That's it. That's an incredible journey. There's so many things I want to pull apart here. I'm going to start at the latest and work backwards if that's okay, because I think the, you know, the AI thing is so prominent at the moment, right? Like it's just so topical. It comes up in every, I've never seen, I consider this like another form of industrial revolution. I know a lot of people do as well. I,

_{Dave Burnett (09:48.65)}
You

_{Dave Burnett (09:53.517)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (10:13.32)}
personally was involved with a Scandinavian company back, know, 2017, 2018 when I sold my agency. It was in the process of selling my agency in Australia, ended up heading up the Asia Pacific region for them working with really cool brands like Toyota and using huge amounts of machine learning and early, early AI.

to help them make informed business decisions and digital marketing decisions and everything like that. So that's something we can definitely kind of align on is being early to that because obviously now everyone is using it. And I think, you you're seeing micro businesses using it and, you know, typical audiences that you wouldn't see using a tool like this, they've got to integrate it into their phones and everything. And it's just so prominent now in day to day life. And, you know,

I think I find the evolution of traditional SEO into this, know, LLM optimized that all the acronyms under the sun for it. all work. That's one thing we do well in the digital and e-comworld as acronyms, but I find that fascinating because the, you know, I saw a stat the other day or someone mentioned it to me.

_{Dave Burnett (11:24.578)}
We do, we do.

^{Joe Fox (11:35.016)}
It was something like 40 % of Google searches now don't even result in a click. And I found that to be absolutely amazing. And then the other statistic that accompanied that was, I think it was like if the, that someone is five times more likely to purchase or, or use a recommendation through an LLM to make a purchase than they are through search now.

And I just find that absolutely amazing because I think I can't remember, you know, in this e-commerce landscape, a time where something has been had that much of a significant shift in such a short period of time. so I'd love to dive into, you know, that a little bit more, cause I know you work with some pretty amazing clients on those side of things. What do you think is.

the main thing that, you know, kind of all brands should be focusing on and looking at when they're, you know, shifting this traditional search kind of focus in their business to, you know, now moving into the LLM side of things.

_{Dave Burnett (12:45.55)}
So the biggest difference is they need to focus on their entity authority. So what do I mean? You know, it's not an acronym, but what do I mean by that? So basically an entity is anything. It's kind of a person, place or thing, but you can think of it as your brand or your company. So traditional SEO is all about page authority. so page authority is, you, want to get, say you search for Starbucks, you would have the Starbucks page. If you start search for a Starbucks near me, you would end up with the

^{Joe Fox (12:50.438)}
Mm.

^{Joe Fox (13:05.488)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (13:14.55)}
Starbucks, you know, maps with a couple nearby locations. But if you search for Starbucks Frappuccino, you would hopefully get the Frappuccino page. So in the past, it was all about getting whatever your Frappuccino page is to rank, whether that's a product, whether that's a service, whatever it might be. Now with the LLMs, what it is, it's all about your overall entity. So you want to get your entity shown and being referenced as opposed to just your product page or your

^{Joe Fox (13:22.394)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (13:27.962)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (13:44.395)}
services page. So then the question is, you know, how is that really different from traditional SEO? So traditional SEO is all about technical SEO, making sure that your website is structured correctly and ranks well. Second part is content, because you need your Frappuccino page if you're going to rank for Frappuccino. Third thing is you need backlinks. So you need other websites to link into your page to rank for that particular search. So that's traditional SEO.

^{Joe Fox (13:44.634)}
Hmm, yes.

^{Joe Fox (14:09.893)}
Yep.

_{Dave Burnett (14:11.746)}
When you get into the LLMs, you need to also think about what your footprint is on the internet. So you need to, number one, understand that PR, public relations, is a big thing. You need to understand that directories and how your company is represented across the internet, is it consistent everywhere? That's a major, major thing.

^{Joe Fox (14:21.923)}
Yes. Yep.

^{Joe Fox (14:32.518)}
Mmm, mmm. Yep, yep.

_{Dave Burnett (14:34.572)}
You also need to think about, you know, we talked about backlinks, but there's also the style of the content on your website. So back onto your website, there's the style. And then there's a major thing that not a lot of people will know about or have heard of called knowledge graphs. And what a knowledge graph is, is a representation about the facts about your company. So if you think about

^{Joe Fox (14:48.676)}
Okay.

_{Dave Burnett (14:55.916)}
the, you know, if you're on your computer, if you look up Starbucks again, there will be something on the right hand side that shows up. It's like a picture of a Starbucks underneath it. There's like the founder and the CEO and underneath that there's the information about who else you could search for. That's called a knowledge panel. That's a visual representation of Google's knowledge graph about what it knows about you.

^{Joe Fox (15:06.895)}
Yes. Yep.

^{Joe Fox (15:18.853)}
yes, okay, okay.

_{Dave Burnett (15:20.686)}
So the way you do that basically, you think of it in three layers. Okay, so the bottom layer or top layer, whichever way you'd like, one layer is your pretty marketing website for people, right? A layer above that, what you need to do is you need to create your own knowledge graph. So interrelated structured facts about your company. So say for example, like Dave Burnett is founder of AOK Marketing, right? That's a linked fact, right? But Dave Burnett,

^{Joe Fox (15:32.09)}
Yep. Yep.

_{Dave Burnett (15:50.753)}
lives in Toronto, right? So those are linked facts. So all those different types of things, that knowledge graph of information, you would then layer on top of your website, your pretty marketing website. So the machines know who you are and what you reference, right? So, okay, marketing, you know, is an expert at LLM optimization, right? That kind of stuff. So,

^{Joe Fox (16:07.493)}
Yes, yes.

_{Dave Burnett (16:15.512)}
But then once you have, you you build your foundation of the pretty marketing website, you build the foundation of your knowledge graph on your site. And then what you hope happens is Google builds its own knowledge graph to fit you in relative to others. So this is, so once it, once it knows how to position you and trust you and it, then, you know, your LinkedIn page represents you well, your Twitter page or your X page, your Facebook page, like all those different things.

^{Joe Fox (16:30.031)}
Nice. Yep.

_{Dave Burnett (16:42.574)}
that you say, these are all related to me or if you author or if you were on a podcast or whatever, all those things linked together, all of sudden Google and the large language models, it's Gemini or OpenAI, chat GPT, they all know who you are and they'll trust you because people are trying to manipulate the models, right? So if you're trustworthy and then you build on top of that PR where it's like, okay, I got a placement in New York Times that talks about how awesome AOK marketing is, for example.

^{Joe Fox (17:00.376)}
Yes, yep.

_{Dave Burnett (17:12.288)}
And then that gives you a third party independently verified sources and reinforces your entity. So this is the whole thing. It's like you've got entity authority and then you've got page authority. So hopefully that helps clarify.

^{Joe Fox (17:25.432)}
That was, no, that was like, I have just learned a lot in a very short period of time. And I feel like I'm pretty savvy with this stuff. So I know a lot of the audience, you know, that are sitting there scratching their heads like, hey, my Google search traffic's fallen off. You know, I need to be looking at this. I'm sure they just got an absolute lot of value. And I just want to give a quick call out here. And I don't do this all the time, but it's clear audience that if this is something you need.

help with you need to be chatting to Dave and A-OK marketing because yeah, that was incredibly well broken down and explained. I've definitely, I can already tell that we're gonna do a part two of this, but I wanna, I could talk on this topic for a lot, because it's personally something that interests me a lot. But I wanna kind of move back here, as I said, I would on that timeline, because it's been such an interesting journey for a multitude of.

of reasons in a multitude of ways. So I want to kind of just go back a little bit. I want to peel out a little bit around the the the rewarding customers that that because that that that's obviously something you know that some people understand and some people don't but you being so early with achievers.com and understanding that

Tell me a little bit more around your ethos of like the way that you think of loyalty and rewarding people and those sorts of things. Cause I think, you know, obviously a lot about audience for our customers and you know, a lot of what our customer success team do is kind of coach people into, know, this is the way that you should be thinking about loyalty. This is the way you should be thinking about rewards. I think sometimes, unfortunately people just think it's

transactions, points, free shipping, redemption, you know, but there's got to be an ethos and a thought process behind that. So I'd love to dive into your thoughts on that.

_{Dave Burnett (19:28.534)}
Yeah, well, I'm to be honest, at this point, I'm sure you know a lot more about it than I do because it's been 25 years since the founding of that. But the main process thought process around that originally was how to like basically how to make your people feel good and want to stay with you. know, money is important, right? And but if you just give money as an incentive or as a reward for somebody,

^{Joe Fox (19:49.943)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (19:57.315)}
then it becomes expected. It becomes part of income. doesn't necessarily, it goes to pay the next bill or whatever bill or they don't basically have anything to show for it. And that's actually part of the promotional product side of things as well, is we want to have something tangible in terms of rewards and incentives for people to look at and to see and to feel proud of. everybody who walks around with a...

^{Joe Fox (19:59.67)}
Yep. Yep.

_{Dave Burnett (20:24.91)}
with a shirt on and I can give you another example. We were actually part of the fulfillment for the Canada is not for sale and strong and free. So we actually did the full production and fulfillment on the promotional product side of things for that brand owner. So we managed their Shopify store. We did the backend fulfillment of it. We then had the products produced and distributed across the country, internationally as well. And so, you know, it's very important to

^{Joe Fox (20:33.526)}
Yes? Yep.

^{Joe Fox (20:51.222)}
Yes, yep.

_{Dave Burnett (20:54.936)}
have something that aligns with what your beliefs are. And so we found that any kind of incentive and reward that you can keep on their desk, they can have in front of them that reminds you it serves multiple purposes. Number one, it serves the purpose that people will be think of you favorably. Number two, it's repeated brand exposures. So whether it's an internal incentive or it's an incentive to, somebody else who's a customer or a client.

^{Joe Fox (20:59.842)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (21:10.295)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (21:23.502)}
then that's a great thing, but it will also then create a overall positive feeling for these people. So the overall thing for us when we were originally doing it was to make sure that people would have a tangible reward. mean, don't get me wrong, people would sometimes choose a lawnmower or something like that. I mean, it's not the best thing, but...

^{Joe Fox (21:41.634)}
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. Super practical though. yeah.

_{Dave Burnett (21:51.307)}
Yeah, exactly. So I'd be like, I got this lawnmower because I did that thing. so I'm a very firm believer in the physical, tangible rewards and having some kind of incentive system is really, really important because humans and interestingly, AI models are all driven by incentives. So this is an important thing. So I don't know if that's helpful, but like I said, I'm sure you can speak to it.

^{Joe Fox (21:55.595)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (22:10.946)}
Yes. Yeah. No, that absolutely, I mean, that absolutely is. And I mean, to add to that, you know, for looking at it from a, you know, loyalty technology platform perspective, the thing that I always love and you know, I get to talk to such a wide range of, know, whether it's talking to other founders or, you know, agency owners or, you know,

customers themselves at all stages of their kind of growth and business journey and some of the coolest, know, kind of out of the box ideas. I'll give you an example of two because I think I think this would be relevant for the audience as well, Dave. And I usually talk about this not in front of the camera. So there's two different companies. So one is a very large scale, well known US

global jewelry brands that will be launching with us early this year. But when we started working with them, you know, to get everything underway for their loyalty program, they're very hesitant about kind of diving into a loyalty program because they have the preconceived notion of, you know, points equals.

free shipping or $5 off and to your point, it becomes expected. It's not really a reward. It's not really something that makes someone feel affiliated with the brand. It's just like, I expect free shipping now because I've had it first when I reached a certain level of points or because I signed up. Now granted that does work for some businesses. I'm not saying to completely discount that and it's a really good way to start your loyalty program. But this business in particular,

When we're working with them, we kind of did, you know, a dive a little bit more into their business as opposed to what we just know from that brand when you hear that brand and a lot of people are synonymous with knowing that brand. But we sort of dove under the hood a little bit more about like, okay, so what separates you and makes you unique from your customers? Well, obviously heritage, you release, you have a lot of products that are standard and they're all of the time, which is usually

^{Joe Fox (24:26.814)}
the entry sort of purchase for a customer. But then you also have these, you know, what I would call the ultimate customers because every single season when you're releasing a very particular set of very, you know, high price point jewelry, those are the customers that are continually buying that and it sells out in a relatively quick period of time, right? And so whilst that might not be the absolute

largest audience of customer, it's certainly the most loyal and they certainly have the highest AOV and they certainly have the lowest cost per acquisition because they just know that it's coming out and they'll be searching actively for it and wanting to purchase it. So the thing I really thought that was cool and it was a bit of a combination of thought is like, well, what if you gave that audience, you know,

the opportunity, reward them for their loyalty over the many, years that they've purchased from you by actually going behind the scenes with the master jewelers, going behind the scenes with them, watching the jewelry be crafted, watching, being a part of that experience, having, you know, maybe like a high tea experience. I can say that because you're Canadian and I'm Australian and people understand what a high tea is if you're a part of the Commonwealth.

you know, and really deliver something that's once in a lifetime, but it's based on the accrual on the loyalty that they've already, you know, shown to the company. And then not only that, let's, you know, film the content and let's then distribute the content and feed that into the loyalty program as an incentive or an aspirational kind of opportunity for people who might be buying

let's call it their entry level products, but haven't yet bought one of those seasonal products, because it gives them an opportunity to then kind of step into this upper echelon of, you know, VIP tiering. And so that to me is like, obviously, that's not achievable for every brand. But it can certainly be achieved by a lot of lot of other brands. And I, know, another example of that that's done on a, you know, small to medium business. And I want to give this example, because I think it's

^{Joe Fox (26:46.249)}
particularly relevant to the viewership. Thinking outside of the box again, it was a brand that was referred to us, very long standing, handcrafted, wooden accessories and things that are involved and tied into a particular sport. But once again, they have a very solid, loyal audience who've been purchasing them from day one.

A lot of it was word of mouth amongst this particular niche community. And then it's just grown and grown and grown and grown. But then they took that same principle, like, why don't we give them a behind the scenes to why don't we then film that content, redistribute that content, build that into the loyalty program. And whilst they still may offer some of the things like free shipping based on points or, you know, those sorts of things, they've shifted.

and almost built into this two tier loyalty system. And I think that's really cool. And I think, you know, from, your points earlier, I think like having that brand association with a great experience and, then that being seen by multiple other people builds this affinity for a brand that I think is very difficult to do if it's not done in a way like that. So.

Sorry for my tangent there, but I just thought it was a really good call out on what's important in loyalty and rewarding people.

_{Dave Burnett (28:18.078)}
for sure. And I think you've made some great points. And for me, it's also, know, you've, you've touched on it as status, right? Is, know, making sure that people see the status. That's an important thing. And you know, what is brand? One of the ways to think about it is being a, you know, you can associate one thing with another. So if you have a high T experience, as you, as you said, then that is something that, you know, is exclusive and creates that, that kind of aspiration.

^{Joe Fox (28:36.52)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (28:39.996)}
Yes, yeah.

_{Dave Burnett (28:47.32)}
for somebody to do it. So I agree and if you associate your brand with a great experience, if that's the niche that you're in, then that's something that you can really benefit from. I agree 100%.

^{Joe Fox (28:57.872)}
Absolutely, absolutely. No, as I said, we could talk forever about these things because I love going back and forth on these on these ideas. I want to, in saying that, I know that we're definitely going to, you know, do a part two of this. So what I, what I want to kind of dive into now is obviously you've delivered so much value to the audience here today, Dave. And I think that there will be a lot of our audience that are like,

_{Dave Burnett (29:02.008)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (29:26.842)}
in that position where they're like, look, you know, I'm not getting the search traffic that I was getting through Google. Now I was doing traditional style SEO. That's not working from an organic traffic perspective. I need help with LLM, you know, optimization and the like, or, you know, I just generally need this assistance with Ecom. How can people get in touch with you? What's, what's the best way that people can, you know, get some more insights and

you know, if they would like to work with you, how do they go about that process?

_{Dave Burnett (30:00.61)}
Yeah, check us out at aokmarketing.com. You can always follow me on LinkedIn or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm just Dave Burnett and you can find me there. But the one thing for a lot of the e-comm, if you're into the Shopify side of things, if I could add one more thing about this right now, what's happening is open AI in particular is getting into agentic commerce. So right now, you know, there are beta programs like we're, for example, we're one of the approved.

^{Joe Fox (30:24.285)}
Yes.

_{Dave Burnett (30:29.634)}
people to actually be able to implement a gentic commerce on this side of things. So what that basically means is think about it, like if you're familiar with a merchant center, very similar setup, very similar implementation in terms of what you need to do, but then instead your products will actually show up as product listings right in the chat interface.

So there's a bunch of different interesting things that we're doing on that side. So yeah, happy to help and chat with people about that if they think that might be useful. So not only overall organic results, but also on that side of things, because you know they're building towards a paid solution. It's coming, right? It's coming. So we can see all the hallmarks of that, being early on this.

^{Joe Fox (30:52.829)}
Nice.

^{Joe Fox (31:08.657)}
Yes, yeah, it's coming. It's absolutely coming. Yeah.

_{Dave Burnett (31:17.174)}
and understanding how your data needs to be set up. And Shopify is a great partner for everybody involved. And so there's a lot of benefits there too. But yeah, you can find me and reach out. I would love to be able to connect with whoever's interested and see what we can do to help.

^{Joe Fox (31:32.559)}
Absolutely. I'll make sure all of those links are in the show notes because I can't stress enough how much value you've delivered today, Dave. And one last thing, I think you kind of touched on it just there, but I love to close out with predictions, particularly knowing that we'll do a part two of this. What do you see, I'm assuming it's going to be more leading down the agentic commerce side of things, but...

What are your predictions, you know, in e-comm, particularly for the next kind of, let's just call it 12 months. what do you think the biggest changes that are coming in and what do you think we'll see that people may not be expecting?

_{Dave Burnett (32:18.094)}
So I'll just make one then then well that way we can say yes, Dave, you're right or no Dave you weren't be really easy. So my prediction for this upcoming year now we're at beginning of 26. So through 26 is that every pixel on your screen will be generated for you. Not just type something into chat GPT or Gemini and you'll get a response.

^{Joe Fox (32:19.761)}
Yep.

And we'll do it at the very start of the episode.

^{Joe Fox (32:38.972)}
Mmm.

_{Dave Burnett (32:45.912)}
but the way you interact with the world, the virtual world will be generated for you. So you will open up something like ChatGPT or Gemini and your entire experience will be curated for you. It'll be delivered to you in a way that you wanna see it, but it'll still give you the information from the internet, from the websites that you wanna see. So if you were searching from your example earlier for jewelry,

and you wanted to find a gift for a loved one or whatever reason it is, or wanted to do it as part of an incentive program to give a gift to a client, whatever it may be, they being, know, chat GPT and Google will basically generate your whole interface for you. So you won't open up Chrome, go to Chrome, find a website, click on that website, go do that whole thing. It'll just be, I want to give a gift to somebody, give me examples. And what'll happen is it'll, the machine will go out.

find the information and bring it back in whatever interface you wanted to see. So if you want your interface to look like the matrix with all the green stuff, and if you want it to look like you're interacting through a cartoon, everything's in cartoon or anime, it'll bring you the information back in whatever form you wanna see, and it'll be fully agentic in terms of being able to complete the purchase. Do everything you need to do without leaving the chat GPT interface, for example. So it will be your new gateway to the internet, and everything you see will be generated for you.

^{Joe Fox (33:43.676)}
Yeah, yep, yep.

_{Dave Burnett (34:07.36)}
every pixel on your screen.

^{Joe Fox (34:09.276)}
I totally agree with that. And I'm going to go one step further in the fact that I think, let's say, for example, that exact example with the, with the jewelry component of it. I think that by the end of the year, so let's call that end of 2026, this can be my prediction for, for when we do it, I will add to that by saying, I think.

_{Dave Burnett (34:28.462)}
Yep.

^{Joe Fox (34:33.135)}
that there will be a 90 % chance that the recommendation that comes back in that interface is exactly what you wanted or not better than what you were expecting it to be. That will be my prediction.

_{Dave Burnett (34:47.552)}
I agree. And I'm happy. I'm happy. You agree with my prediction. We'll see if we're both right or we're both wrong, but either way, I think people need to prepare for that. I think people need to prepare that even though they've got the pretty website for people and people are important. Don't get me wrong. There's still going to be a huge portion of people who, who are still going to be seeing your Shopify website and you need to have all that done correctly. But there's also going to be a percentage of people who's you know, AI interface or agent agentic.

^{Joe Fox (34:50.915)}
Yeah, yes.

Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (35:03.243)}
Absolutely. Yep.

_{Dave Burnett (35:15.084)}
their agents are going to come and shop on your site or, you know, they're going to be just shopping via agent. It'll be kind of a hybrid. You just got to be prepared for all those things. So you got to prepare those, those layers of your, of your site, of your experience in anticipation of that. that's.

^{Joe Fox (35:24.388)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (35:29.986)}
Absolutely, absolutely. No, no, that's, that's perfect, Dave. And I think to add to that point, have the right people such as yourself, you know, and a lot of the agencies that are in our network as well, having those right partners who are, you know, looking at this day in day out, to help you guide and navigate through that process, I think is crucial. So Dave, look, thank you so much. I, I personally,

gained so much and learned so much out of this. I really am excited to do a part two, you know, not just to see if we're right about our predictions, but I think there's a lot more that we can dive into. And no doubt there'll be a lot of changes between now and then, not just the predictions we mentioned, but thank you so much for the value that you've given to our audience today, Audience, please, please, I encourage you to check out the show notes.

Click on the links, connect with Dave, check out AOK Marketing. And thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Retain Grow Thrive. I'm your host, President at Growave, Joe Fox. And I look forward to seeing you at the next episode.