Optimized Websites are Cheaper and Better than Ever!

Google search is starting to look less like a list of links and more like an AI-built dashboard, and that shift raises a big question for every local business: how do you protect your leads when the way customers browse results changes? We bring back Jacob Broussard, our resident web doctor, to break down what’s actually happening with Google’s AI search experiences, what stays true about local SEO, and why being the most relevant answer in your market still wins, especially for shed dealers, portable building manufacturers, and service providers.

We also dig into performance-based SEO and why tying spend to measurable ranking milestones creates clearer accountability. From there, we get hands-on with agentic AI for coding and custom web development. AI can crank out code fast, but Jacob shares real examples of how it can make confident mistakes, including schema markup problems that can quietly wipe out rankings across dozens of pages. The core lesson: treat AI like supervised self-driving. Let it accelerate the work, but keep an expert behind the wheel to validate, troubleshoot, and protect your visibility.

Finally, we explore what this enables for operators right now: custom tools that move data for you, web scrapers that cut research time, better email and follow-up systems, and even dashboards that help manage shed inventory, dealers, ecommerce listings, and analytics without burning your entire budget. If you’ve ever thought, “There has to be a better way,” this is your blueprint for turning that thought into working software.

Subscribe for more practical shed industry marketing and technology conversations, share this with a friend who owns a local business, and leave a review so more builders and dealers can find the show. What’s one workflow in your business you’d automate first?

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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Shed Geek Marketing

Pittsburgh Paints Co
Cardinal Manufacturing
Velocity 360
NewFound Solutions

Transcript

INTRO 0:00

You're listening to the Friday edition of the Shed Geek Podcast, brought to you by Shed Geek Marketing. At Shed Geek Marketing, we've assembled a handpicked team of specialists from across the Shed and Portable Building industry to help manufacturers, dealers, and service providers grow smarter and scale faster. From websites and SEO to Google ads, meta-campaigns, content creation, video production, lead funnels, systems integrations, and industry-specific lead gen tools, we help businesses build real momentum instead of chasing random marketing trends. Today, Shed Geek Marketing is holding down this title sponsor spot at the top of the show, but this could just as easily be your company, featured right here in front of thousands of industry professionals, business owners, and decision makers every single week. If you'd like information about title sponsorship, podcast advertising, or our 2026 Shed Geek Media Kit, reach out to us at info @shedgeek.com. And now on to the podcast.

Heat Check And Guest Introduction

Cord 1:05

Welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek Podcast. Coming to you from Metropolis, Illinois on a hot one. The first of July. Absolutely sweltering and uh muggy and all of the things out there today. I hope you are comfortable wherever you are listening, uh, hopefully in some AC um, you know, or in the shade or in the evening time because it has been brutal around here. Uh today I am so happy to be joined by Mr. Jacob Broussard. If you are a regular listener, you will know that Jacob was on back in February, and he gave us uh a rundown of SEO. We've been working with Jacob since then, and he is doing great work and has so many insights on websites and custom web development, of course, SEO and where it's going with AI, and we're going to cover all those things, how it affects you, how it affects the shed industry, and really how it affects where all commerce is going. Um, so we're really looking forward to that. But before we get rolling, just a couple quick things so you know how to stay plugged in with us. Of course, the Shed Geek phone line, Shannon Cell phone, 618-309-3648. Give him a call, shoot him a text anytime. Our email, info i-n-f-o @shedgeek.com. Uh, contact us uh on the webpage through the contact form, www.shedgeek.com. Of course, always on Facebook, Shed Sales Professionals Group. We try to be very active on there. Uh reach out to us uh on our Facebook page. Give us a like, give us a comment. Uh we we love to interact on there. Uh the call-in line for our playing community friends, that is 330-997-3055. Again, that is 330-997-3055. If you have any friends out there who you think would enjoy the Shed Geek podcast, um give them give them our number. Uh let them call in. It's a great system. You can even hold your place where you were listening last time and pick it right back up uh and go through the entire Shed Geek catalog uh all the way back to the beginnings. Uh also a quick word from our uh exclusive uh paint and coatings partner, Pittsburgh Paints. Um, we all know that paint is what makes the first impression to your customer, but for those of those of us in the industry, we know there is so much more behind it. That's why Pittsburgh Paints has introduced their true industrial and true shed max shed program, offering solid acrylics and semi-transparent urethanes. True shed max stands out as the true industrial product formulated specifically for shed builders. The true the true shed max program is about more than just paint, coating, sundries, and supporting products, along with color palette assessments from Pittsburgh Paint's color experts. They have local stores, local stock, local service. Uh demos and training are included. I know that that Jamie would love to talk to anyone so uh about doing a demo coming out and showing you not only the quality of the paints, the coatings, all of the actual products, but just the level of service that you receive from Pittsburgh Paints and how it can uh save you time, lead to better outcomes, and lead to happier customers. So, having said all of those things, uh again, I will return to the web doctor himself, Mr. Jacob Broussard, uh SEO wizard, um, you know, uh the magician of uh of website design and web development, app development software. Um, really somebody who is so very skilled and so very knowledgeable uh about what is happening in the uh internet universe. Uh just such a such a talented person and so happy not only to have you back on the podcast, Jacob, but you and I have been working together on some projects. Um, and so I know not only your level of knowledge, but uh your level of ability when it comes to building these things. So happy to have you back. Tell us what's been going on. Uh um how is it down there in Fort Worth? I bet it's hot down there too.

Jacob Broussard 5:18

Hey, hey everybody. No, thanks, thanks for the great intro. Uh hopefully you can uh live up to that. Um, but no, no. Things are going well. Um down here and more so in the Dallas area, but close enough. Um, it's definitely hot. Um, that's right.

Cord 5:34

You're in Plano. I'm sorry. The Dallas crowd doesn't like being called the Fort Worth crowd.

Jacob Broussard 5:40

No, no, it's not bad at all. But no, Fort Worth definitely more boots uh in Fort Worth than Cowboy has. That's your typical um Texas that people tend to visualize when thinking when not having had been here at least. Right. A stockyard town. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um close enough though, less than an hour away. Things are hot though. Um sounds like y'all having something of the same.

Cord 6:11

Yeah, yeah. It's been it's been brutal, but you know, that's the way it always is. Um the first week of July, probably through basically the third week of August, you know, here in southern Illinois, western Kentucky, you know, you're gonna have those days that are 98 -degree air temps and then 104, 105, 106 on the you know, with the heat index and everything else. So um, yeah, it's bad out there. I mean, it really, it really makes you think like, should we just put carports over every road, you know, or every like should we just build more structures? Should we put up more carports so that everybody can park in the shade? Because uh, if you are street parking on a 96 degree day with a hundred and two uh with the 102 degree uh heat index, I mean it is brutal getting into a vehicle right now. But um anyway, so uh despite our struggles with the weather, um I know we uh we and you um and kind of our entire um collaborative group that we've been working with. Of course, you've got projects with Shed Geek, but also uh separately from Shed Geek. I know that um you know you've really been kind of catching fire here the last several months and doing some really great work. Maybe the best place to start, Jacob, is let's just kind of catch everyone up. Um last time we had talked about SEO and your approach to SEO, which is very much a uh results-based system. You don't, you know, in your pricing system, you only pay whenever you get the ranking result when your website starts climbing up the results in your area. Um, and so you know, I know that's kind of where we had had talked about mostly last time, but since then, I know you've taken on several uh SEO clients in the shed industry and otherwise. So, maybe catch us up on what's going on in the SEO world, um, you know, what the big picture is, and then what you've been up to, man.

Performance-Based SEO That Pays On Results

Jacob Broussard 8:20

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, well, yeah, and you said it, but just to kind of touch back on it, we do performance-based SEO, meaning well, more so what it looks like is we present to you a group of keywords that are going to be um strong keywords to target for your business. So, um Dallas. Yeah, so keywords that have sufficient volume, and we uh ideally contract, we will we allow you to choose which keywords we'll give you our suggested route, but then you can always choose. And um upon doing so, we use those as a benchmark uh type of way to gauge your SEO performance because never it's never the case where you contract on one keyword and you just see results for that one keyword. There's uh an inherent effect that takes place once you start actually ranking. We we keep the keywords broad that typically encompass your entire service instead of getting too too specific with them. Uh, we would never want to uh, for example, we would probably avoid, at least at first, doing a contract on pipe repair in Dallas. Instead, we would just do plumbing since that's going to be uh accompanied by plumbing itself, and that allows you to eventually start ranking for a whole host of keywords and HSYs to start broad that way. That benchmark takes place. Uh that way it's a measurable benchmark, and you only pay at specific predetermined ranks. So, rank 15, a one-time payment, rank 12, rank 8, and so on and so forth, down to the rank one, or I should say up to rank one. Yeah, right.

Cord 10:16

So, uh and so you know, I know we've had um, you know, together we've already had some success with this. You bring up um plumbing, you and I have actually uh worked with a plumbing company together um and have had some really fantastic success. Uh, in fact, have grown um grown their leads and actually their revenue almost hand in hand um at about a 30% clip just since uh February and March, whenever right after you were on the podcast, we started, you know, uh started working together on that project that I have separately, and that has gone fantastic. Um that was kind of an expansion project, uh, actually, is what we focused on. So, um this plumbing company wanted to make sure that they were visible and being seen uh in the next town over to where their uh to where their headquarters are. And so, um Jacob did a great job of putting together uh a plan that that got us up to that rank one in a matter of, I mean, I don't even remember, maybe six weeks. You know, six, six, seven weeks we got to uh rank one in that adjacent town, which has about four or five times the search volume, you know, of the town their office is actually in. And so, in any case, uh, you know, I've obviously had some really good experiences with you um you know from that side, and I know that our customers have been very happy on the shed side as well. Um, you know, I think it's I think it's probably worth mentioning just in that approach. Um, you and I had had a conversation a couple weeks back, and probably

Google Search Moves Toward AI Dashboards

Cord 12:03

good just for the listeners' information that Google has actually kind of put out some guidance. Uh, and maybe you've read about this already or watched a podcast or heard about it, but uh for you for those of you out there listening, but Jacob, if you don't mind just a kind of rundown, you had kind of described it to me and giving me the rundown as Google is moving to much more of a dashboard style, AI-driven um search results is what they're aiming for now. You know, is that going to come directly for more the local side, which of course by and large is you know where the shed industry lives. You know, they're they haven't really said how quickly they're going to roll these things out, but you can already see it happening in your more what I would call national product or national service um searches. So, give us your give us your perspective on that, and maybe I'm I may not even be doing a good job of explaining it. You tell me, Jacob.

Jacob Broussard 13:03

No, no, you're fine. No, yeah, no, you you hit the nail on the head. Uh in their recent keynote type, they don't call it a keynote, but it's essentially a keynote speech where they give all their updates. Now, it was a very brief moment that they actually spent time talking about this, but uh apparently in the coming months, um probably three months or so, the traditional search box will be changed permanently. So, as you search for a local service, um now I should preface this by saying in their keynote, they did not they did not do any examples that are service-based searches, they were more question form. Um, you know, how can I improve my diet, blah blah blah, type of question. And so that's that's how they demonstrated the the uh coming upgrade.

Cord 13:59

More more what you would think of as a topical search, more so than than, and then you and I had even dug a little bit and and kind of looked at some of the examples people were talking about, and you know, probably topical is the easiest um way to do that because you're you're kind of guessing uh you know at what people are are looking for, and and you're using AI to kind of do something similar to what Google has had in place for a couple years. It wasn't true AI, you know, they would have called it machine learning, I suppose, or whatever, but they had the um the suggested questions. If you if you looked up something topical, there would be like suggested questions that were then kind of under it. Um, and the what from what I was reading and what we had talked about, it sounded like it was just taking that concept and putting it on steroids and basically kind of arranging a dashboard that is almost based around that topical subject matter so that you're kind of getting that tailored response. Is that is that so yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

Jacob Broussard 15:03

No, no, no. I'm sorry. Um no, no, that's exactly right. So, they're saying that in the coming months the traditional search results where you see your map pack and then you know the 10 websites the basically the 10 ranked websites on page one, for example, um, is going to be changing. So, a good example or good way to get an idea of what your Google search is going to look like in the future, from what I understand, what we understand, is if you go to Google.com and put in your search, and instead of clicking enter or hitting enter, go ahead and click well, I'm sorry, you'll still hit enter, but then after you do, click the AI tab at the top left, and that's how the search results apparently are going to look. Now, is this going to be how it is for local businesses as well? Uh, we don't really know yet, but uh in that case, uh it does a little it changes the whole uh the whole game, I should say. Um, and not in real not in terms of SEO. SEO, you know, if you're a business and you are ranked for certain searches, nothing's gonna change um in terms of SEO. The the journey to get there is still the exact same. The only thing that is going to change is how you're presented.

Cord 16:27

The actual experience to the to the the person who's putting the query in.

AD-CARDINAL MANUFACTURING 16:33

I got a big day tomorrow. I have a fully finished 18 by 40 cabin that's going to require two to three meals to get it delivered. Way back in the sticks and down a dirt lane. With all the rain we've had lately, it's gonna be a mess. But it needs a bigger mule. Well, when you talk, Cardinal listens and you ask for it. With its diesel-powered 69-horse engine and capacity to move 40,000 pound sheds, the Mule 9069 is ready to turn your big days into just another day in the good life. Ah, that's right. You're talking about the one they had up in Michigan at the shed show. That monster meal, that man, that thing was awesome. That's right. It's the one you've seen at all the Shed Hauler barbecues. Man, yeah, there's nothing like a little diesel donkey to make my day go so much better.

Cord 17:34

Yeah, anyway, I mean, you know, I I think that there's been um, you know, uh, because you can even tell inside of, because I do that often, uh, just to kind of see where they're at whenever I search something random, right? Uh to go ahead and just switch to AI. And you can tell that they're starting to turn it into sections, which is the way that it was kind of described, would be sections or uh like a dashboard or something like that. And you can tell where they're starting to put in, you know, different kind of boxes almost that are addressing different angles that you can come at, whatever the topic is. So, um anyway, I mean I think the biggest takeaway there, at least the takeaway that I have had, is that being the content leader, the leader who is talking about things that are uh most useful, most relevant, um, you know, especially when we're thinking about local services, um uh local products and services, which, you know, sheds is almost that that in-between, that in-between world, because you know, you really are you know providing the service of the arranging the delivery or arranging if you're building on site um so much of the industry, uh, of course, the financing or RTO uh you know that's involved in the sales process. So, really kind of a combo uh you know, combo industry. But the biggest takeaway that I've had uh from our talks together is basically continue to remain um you know on top for local relevance, for the information that is needed by people in your area, call out your locality and make sure that everyone clearly understands uh you know where you work, where you service, um, you know, and kind of where that what that area is. Um and as long as you're you know staying in that, whether or not Google um decides to change the actual visual display that goes to the customer or the person who is querying uh or not, you still are gonna have that that SEO authority uh and be able to be

Staying Locally Relevant As Search Changes

Cord 19:46

in there. So maybe actually, Jacob, that's uh that might be a good point um to kind of roll over onto the bigger topic of what I was thinking about today, since we're talking about how to keep that SEO authority and you know really build the content out. And the thing that I've been so impressed with, you know, lately is um not just your ability, but more broadly, the ability of AI um and agentic AI, especially AI that is using quote unquote agents um to go and complete tasks and primarily the thing that they're really good at. Um if you if you listen to the podcast, you'll if you've heard me, you may have heard the ode to the Luddites, where I kind of cautioned everyone for getting too far ahead of their skis, you know, on some of these uh AI, you know, use cases. But it seems to me that on the coding side, these AI bots know how to speak computer language. Am I right, Jacob?

Jacob Broussard 20:49

No, you're absolutely right. They do. They um they definitely do. They it'd be nice though if they knew how to speak the language and not make mistakes, just like just like we humans make mistakes, they are just uh just as well prone to them. Um fortunately, but unfortunately. Right, I would say, yeah.

Cord 21:09

They're but they're almost they're almost volume engines, the way I mean, tell me like they crank out the work, but then you pointed out to me in several different instances where your natural expertise for actual you know coding language and HTML, CSS, Python, whatever that might be, like you're you still need that almost manager who is able to troubleshoot. So, kind of describe to me what that process is like because you know what I want to get to by the end of our conversation is just how this can affect those operators out there, our listeners, who are thinking about you know, uh an upgraded website or an upgraded um, you know, web app or web tool or even custom software, because all of those. things that you can dream right now are closer at hand. So, maybe just describe like what describe to people how what it is like to kind of you know put these agents to work and what is that workflow whenever you're tr coming up with a project.

Jacob Broussard 22:17

Yeah no, I appreciate it.

Agentic AI For Coding With Human Supervision

Jacob Broussard 22:20

No, it definitely using AI is just part of the daily now. Um and anybody that is leveraging it within this industry is more than likely excel you would you would hope is excelling um on some level um nowadays compared to prior what was a 10 man team in two year long project is now one person in probably two months maybe um that they can get done what a 10 year 10 person team could in two years if you know if uh using your tools if you're using your tools effectively that is now I here I go again saying unfortunately but fortunately the in the reason I say that is unfortunately there's plenty of errors that take place but I if it weren't for those errors I probably wouldn't have a job so fortunately there's some error um uh but yeah no so there's a lot of a lot of they can come in all sizes sometimes there's little errors that really you know you can get by with um but at the same time for I had um a client site that was redone entirely intentionally uh it was it was redesigned and what was originally we had just started working on SEO together about a month prior we knew that web the website redesign was going was going to take place so we prepared for it accordingly and in the one month prior we were able to we were so just to give a little more context we had contracted on their service well they're a shed company so we contact trust contracted on shed keyword terms for 12 different cities in their area on all of which I think except for maybe one or two cities we were able to get on the front page not you know not rank one or top three yet but just in a short time span and upon doing upon the website being redesigned um and even going through you know the majority of it um ai had made an error and it took all of um all of the rankings down I mean front page was gone for every single city um thankfully was able to identify and correct this uh because it was on all fifty all 50 something pages um and it wasn't something you could see on the front end at all uh I say front end meaning uh you cannot see it just scrolling down the website pages as a uh cons consumer or customer um and so it's something that is it's schema um if in case anyone is familiar with it um it is well schema can be a whole host of things there's so many different types of schema but basically the preference that that Google or any other um search based um um function it's the preference that they have for how you structure information correctly they prefer that you put it

Schema Errors That Wipe Out Rankings

Jacob Broussard 25:40

um I mean address is probably an easy example um you know where you are structuring your address the same way every time you are uh you are abbreviating street ST period you know I'm not saying that this is literally what the preferred what the preferred Google schema is but it is it is a um it's kind of like a naming function it's basically saying you know this is how we want you to structure this thing and if you don't structure it that way then we're gonna take points off. Yeah, yeah I think that's a great starting point.

Cord 26:14

Yeah I mean it comes it boils down to even very simple matters like name address sorry I muted myself abbreviation being done correctly um and then it goes into more elaborate and detailed things and so having this shed company with multiple different uh locations um the AI decided to go through the schema and make up new addresses for these different locations uh despite having full access to the internet and the previous site as well and so it's just I guess I would say it's a good example of um a instance where AI is you know making errors and where they're not always gonna be as you still need a professional right like you still need a professional you still need a expert you need a Jacob or uh a whoever right like but you need you need an expert who can catch those things you know um that has the technical knowledge to be able to troubleshoot and go behind you know the bulk volume of work that ai can do really efficiently um but the difference here is you need a expert or an expert you know uh I'm I guess I'm a little uh maybe I'm not I think it's and you need an expert it is but I know what you're saying it is it is weird to say and the way you were like being emphasizing it like that you need an expert versus needing 10 experts right so even though yeah um even though you know there is not full independence uh it's uh I'm sort of like in my head I can I keep comparing it I had a pretty I don't know if there's a way to describe it other than like you know something that changes your worldview or your outlook but I had an experience recently Shannon and I were up in um Iowa City uh meeting with a gentleman and uh really interesting guy but he had a uh a Tesla that was full self-driving and you know I've never ridden in a full self-driving Tesla and have always kind of like you know poo-pooted I guess so to speak and been like well you know yeah I'm sure in certain situations or you know if you're if you're on very well controlled you know streets or whatever else but you know out here in the country you know what I mean like kind of kind of been like you know I'll believe it when I see it but I mean I'll just tell you we rode around Iowa City for and I said he wanted me to sit in the driver's seat. I

Tesla Self-Driving As The AI Metaphor

Cord 28:59

mean I set the driver's seat and didn't so much as touch the wheel I mean it backed us out of the parking spot we typed in uh just a random I think we typed in Menards because it was like you know 20 miles on the other side of town and so um it backed out of the parking spot it found its way you know to the to the edge of the parking lot and put us out onto the little the city street we got onto the interstate we exited the interstate we went through roundabouts um and you can sit there and watch it but the point that I'm making is the way that I am thinking about AI is much the way I think about um uh that self-driving which is currently it is supervised self-driving right it is it is um you know you have to have like I was the one behind the wheel like my eyes had to stay up and looking on the road you still have to have a person who is ultimately responsible for how that project is going and that's sort of the way that I'm that's the way that I then concept um where AI is at right now when it comes to building you know websites or web apps or software or whatever is you still need a person behind the wheel with their eyes on the road. You know you may only have to adjust here and adjust there and you know pop in it sounds like that schema right I mean you're probably talking about as far as just physical work uh it sounds like that was only a couple minutes worth of work to fix it right well so yes and well no yes and no so if I would say there's a lot more goes into it uh you can create a generic page and maybe only have a handful if any errors but as soon as you start branching into you know anything larger than that you're not only having to continuously tweak and talk to the AI uh whether it's agentic or not um as well as um shoot I totally lost my train of thought um you're not only having to talk to the AI continuously but you'll also end up with more than likely well if you just give it a prompt and you tell you want a so-and-so website for you know you give it your brand information you tell it you want to make sure your brand colors are correct you're gonna end up with a not only a cookie cutter uh and also you can tell I want it to be SEO optimal I want to be rank one for these keywords you're gonna end up with a cookie cutter site that looks the most generic because I just shouldn't say the most generic but it's gonna look generic because so many people are trying to do that right now that not only are so many websites starting to look the same which you if you look you'll you may notice it but rounded corners very flat rudimentary looking um they use a handful of different fonts unless you unless pumped it otherwise but even then sort of like flyer graphics on exactly right they all the flyer graphics it looks like the same company is like you know uh doing everything from uh weddings to tractor sales to I mean like it doesn't matter they're just all starting to adopt the same style fonts the same style layouts you know that same like very information heavy um where you kind of cram all those you know all the info into several different boxes and you know bullets here and anyway uh with that same art style in the background.

Jacob Broussard 32:48

Well plus the SEO aspect of it too I mean it doesn't matter you know how much you tell it that you want it to be a good ranking website it's I mean it will try but it it's not gonna unfortunately well once unfortunately but fortunately yeah um it just doesn't end up taking place. It'll it gives you a good if you're like wow I want to see what my website would look like if I changed the colors sure uh you know run it into AI let it show you an example um but then when you know you're ready to ready to roll I would definitely still consult um you know somebody that is doing this every day um maybe two years from now who knows uh maybe there won't be a need for me or people like me but uh I thank God that right for the moment there is uh but no I think I think overall though this is the time now more than ever to plan not plan out but to fulfill those um those questions in your head of oh it's you know I wonder if this tool is possible for my business like I've I spend so much time doing so and so or we I spend so much time just writing down customer information so I remember it. I

Replace Busywork With Custom Tools

Jacob Broussard 34:11

mean whether it's software or web development uh I mean anything's possible now and you're not burning your entire savings account or you're not burning your entire annual budget for it um and if anyone quotes you otherwise I mean I would say call them out on it ask them what you know this pricing is 2012 pricing.

Cord 34:30

Yeah right are you in 2020 I mean you have do you not use AI and if you do use AI how are you using it I want to make sure there's not um just some rope you know some I don't want to say robot but some large language model just doing all this um and so I would say now more than ever is a time to be particular expect that much better of a product um don't settle and I mean ask for the best price yeah absolutely.

AD-VELOCITY 360 35:01

Hey shed geek listeners I'm Joe Ignace owner of velocity 360 at velocity we know the frustration of spending thousands on ads with no visibility on what's actually converting most leads simply get lost are never called ask yourself does your team respond to every lead within 60 seconds if they're unresponsive do they follow up at least 14 times the reality is your team should be closing not chasing and they don't have enough time to follow up like they should. All that manual follow up is exhausting and it distracts from your hottest leads problem solved. Velocity360 is a white glove turnkey shed specific CRM solution for your sales team. We increase your lead response rate to over 60% without any extra effort from your staff. They just need to pick up the phone and start the conversation once the lead responds. We give you total visibility you'll see your conversion rates average sales price and exactly which ads generate the most revenue and more no more flying blind we speak shed it's all we do with 100% American based support we build the system for you. We don't just show you how it works we build it how you want it to work. Stop leaving revenue on the table call us at 865-672-8175 or visit velocity360crm.com/ sheds to book your call today.

Cord 36:14

You know that kind of gets me really to where I was wanting to wind up here today which is um you know just trying to give people a sense of like what those things can be um you know so just as an example you have uh for that same uh plumbing company that we were talking about earlier you have actually um begun work on a tool that is going to uh that's almost uh you know whether you whether you would call it like a uh list building tool I mean technically we're coming at it from already having uh the first and last name of the registered plumbers in the state of Kentucky basically you know your work in SEO um you know paired with uh me getting out there on the ground and getting some getting a Google business profile uh up and working good and everything has gotten this company to the point that they really they need to hire plumbers and so we're basically creating a custom tool that uh is able to take the first and last name and the fact that they are you know they live in Kentucky or at least we can presume that they live in Kentucky because they're registered in Kentucky um and is able to then go out and sort of mass query um bulk query you know on Google and return that information back and do the matching that would take you know me or you I mean gosh it could take uh the time you by the time you run these things down I mean you could spend 45 minutes or an hour on each individual person trying to make sure that this is the person you're looking for and they do have an association with plumbing and uh you know here there's three different people with the same name and blah blah blah. But you know so I think that's a good example of a custom tool that we are working on currently but maybe just give people I know that we did the um the text to email and email to text we had a um a call come in from someone who uh in the playing community who wanted like a very specific way to um you know use a single interface and be able to uh um email and text or basically send and receive texts uh you know from yeah through his email you know and so uh we built that specific tool um are there any you know just give us some examples Jacob of like what's possible what's out there and because I think the key here is as you were saying now is the time to be creative now is the time to instead of thinking gosh that's a problem you know I need to hire somebody which I think some of these problems you know ultimately at least you know in the past that's kind of been the solution need to hire somebody who can sort through this stuff and figure out what's what and you know just kind of be an accounts person or whatever it is right yeah and to your point now a lot of these problems can really come down to you know can I just move data around in a custom piece of software or you know um whatever that might look like app um and make it work. So, give us give us some insights on this and some of the interesting stuff that you've seen done or that you've done for yourself.

Web Scraping To Find Hiring Leads

Jacob Broussard 39:47

Yeah no yeah definitely I think what used to be uh oh I need to hire someone now um could be much more likely to be oh this is just a tool I can have built now I mean don't get me wrong weigh out your options of course um something makes sense to hire someone and oppose a software if it just makes sense right but um it doesn't hurt to reach out and see if some custom tool is available um but yeah so like to just jump in on what you were saying um for the plumbing tool um it's something I shouldn't say as simple as but it is a more simplistic program um as simple as a web scraper that's built and tailored to identify anyone with this that has an affiliation with plumbing by searching their name and you know hopefully finding that maybe their certificate number their state certificate number is posted somewhere online I think it's less ideal that that will actually be the case and more so just trying to find an affiliation with plumbing or plumber um with their name um within this within that state and so for that tool uh specifically you can kind of visualize it as if you were searching a name on Google and typing in plumber and then scroll to the bottom and you you'll see on the footer that there's an option to click next page or you can you can click anywhere from one to ten and then if you click that right arrow it will take it'll take you from 11 to 20 so that scraper is going to basically in a matter of I don't know a couple seconds will be able to read all so that will actually take you up to page 100 um on that footer that scraper will be then be able to see all 100 of those pages in a couple seconds I mean maybe less maybe 30 seconds for 100 pages. I mean so um but no yeah in terms of custom software I have a software background that was um what I was initially what initially got me into the IT world prior to SEO and um I just ended up finding a deeper love for SEO but I do really enjoy so software development. I've the AI has made um what used to be monotonous heavy lifting tasks into you know not I shouldn't say instantaneous but close to instant um tasks or instant results. Now I will say token costs are on the rise so it's not as simple as or it's not as easy as um just inputting a prompt anymore because there is if you want one of the better or uh if you want one of the models that are more opt for engineering or anything mathematical or development it comes at a cost. But nonetheless uh it does end up with um a lot of uh it ends up with good results aside from the errors or it can and so I've been able to personally build quite a quite a few tools um just a few examples of some of the I'll give you guys some personal tools and then some tools I've I've you know had that I've built for clients so I personally despise I don't despise emails themselves like I'll email you happily but I despise how email uh systems are um I'm a big believer of the whole uh user interface of text messages and what I mean by that is specifically how if you were to send me a new email today not like replying but just send me a new email I'll get your email and I will not be able to see any of your historical emails uh at least not without searching for them or scrolling down up or down and um and even then even then the layout of that is all like it's always so weird.

A Better Email Interface Built Fast

Cord 43:49

You know you don't get you don't get like a straight line of the story. You get like you know what I mean like you're getting like a reply to this and then you know that apply was to this specific thing and then you're reading down and you're seeing that again you know you're double seeing a lot of it yeah it really is I mean I agree with you I mean this is like a longstanding problem with the user interface that has been agreed upon in email I mean it just is you know unless you're unless you're keeping up with it right like unless you're really reading each time you know especially in a thread unless you're really reading each time somebody writes into it or unless you are writing back and forth so quickly like you know during the same day that you just naturally remember but if you have to go refresh yourself on what the heck somebody was saying it is just like you just can't hardly like figure out what exactly you know get yourself it takes it takes just as long to orient yourself as it does to actually reply to the email.

Jacob Broussard 44:51

Yeah exactly no no and and even if you do keep up with your email I mean go on vacation or get sick whatever it is you get a little bit busy sometime and then you're gonna be going through that same struggle even if you are someone that naturally normally keeps up with emails because I try to I try to be that person but you know um things happen you just get busy. So, I created an app for myself that I run locally that it shows it does exactly that it shows all of your history as soon as you get an email from someone it comes across you click it and you see not only that email but also all of your previous emails with that person. Now it the one caveat being if there's anyone CC'd on that or that's BCC well no I'm sorry just if there's anyone CC'd on that um it does start a new thread but it's less threads so to speak than um your standard email and that's something I just actually got functional. It didn't take me too long to build it actually about a less than a week um and I just got it fully functional a couple weeks ago then um had a couple errors that popped up with an update I pushed out for it and so just finished fixing um one of those errors and well the remaining error and um got it functioning again just now fully functional and so it's not as great as I would uh want it to look for sharing it but nonetheless I will share it give me just a moment and I'll see yeah of course so it's more iMessage inspired um in terms of color and framework but I did actually add the option to change the color because I'm someone that likes you know little changes in terms of that kind of stuff and colors and whatnot.

Cord 46:42

Let's see all right let me see if I can figure out how to screen share know how to make the apps but don't know well we go back and forth so much between the uh you know I'm sure this is this is true for the listeners as well uh we go back and forth between you know using the Google Meets and then we use Zoom for the podcast and then a lot of our clients and people that we are talking to during the week are Microsoft Teams people. So, you almost have to be like a full um you know a full expert on all these different all these different uh video call technologies uh you know so all right so what are we seeing here Jacob you're gonna have to describe for those listening and I will say for any of you listening um I mean this is a great looking interface you've got right here I would just encourage you to uh if you're if you're listening to this go over to uh YouTube and find that we're probably right about the 40 or 45 minute mark um so go and find us there and kind of pick up and watch Jacob walk us through a couple of these apps because uh this is really looking nice here Jacob tell me about it well thank you I appreciate that um and I'm trying not to scroll up or down because of you know sensitive information but this is probably a safe point um so this is gonna be just an email thread or a chain of emails I guess or um yeah several emails that you see um right here and then you can one thing that I also added that has helped tremendously uh because I am a person that will type out a text message I will type out an email and really overthink it and then end up getting pulled away from it and I will have a full text message or a full email sitting there ready to send that I thought I sent and then find out I never sent it and then that's eight hours later or however you know however long later and so I kid you not that happened to me once a day with someone whether it's a text or email it's that bad.

Jacob Broussard 48:54

So, I added a function in here that I can favorite a specific person and then in fact I'll show you guys so if I hit the star button I can set a time frame that I want to be reminded uh that I haven't responded so not only does it remind me with a notification on my computer but it will email me and will continue to email me in this time interval that I have not replied um shoot now I have no more now if anyone's watching this now I have no more um if any of my current clients are watching this now I have no excuse not to be quick with my but no yeah I mean so um this does help um I just got this working so it is really nice and then it has all your standard email features um you can also get in here and change the colors whatnot and I'm happy to share this with anyone that that wants it I can send it over um I don't I don't mind at all um but yeah this is this is one of the uh the apps that I built for myself now um I will just go ahead and is my screen still sharing uh it is not Jacob should I didn't want to bring your by chance uh no you were just a couple just a couple seconds there oh okay so I don't know if that yeah okay cool that's Apple for you know it's because I haven't updated my um software version I think on Apple uh and they don't I guess it doesn't play well with screen sharing um now so one of the well so I've also built an another app for myself I won't spend much time on that but um it is a reminders app and it does something of something similar uh where it will also notify me continuously um if I've not um not checked it off that it's complete it's pretty similar to uh you know most reminder apps that are native to a computer um but there is it will actually like really disturb my desktop screen um and if I don't uh respond to it and so it is something that's very helpful for helpful for me um so I it actually will not only bounce up and down on the dock but it will actually turn the color of my screen depending on the importance I set initially on the reminder. So it sometimes when your screen goes all red it's uh definitely um definitely gets your attention so that's something helpful that took me less than two hours to build um well the screen changing colors was a little bit longer than that but everything else took less than two hours um and then in terms of professional um or for clients and whatnot uh there is and I guess I'll go ahead and share my screen again um I can just show

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Cord 52:48

Just while you're while you're navigating there Jacob I'm just curious I don't know that we've like specifically talked about this you know otherwise but how do you feel about I know I know there are a lot of um programs out there now that are allowing basically the AI agents to directly kind of control you know what we would think of as your entire screen and open programs and uh make modifications like how do you feel about that I mean I've continued to like be fairly skeptical about those things because I've seen the outputs that we get you know um even in the even in what it's best at right which is coding we know that there are still there are still mistakes that happen there so you know I have not been willing to turn over the keys to my desktop you know I mean what's your perspective on some of on some of that like you know whole PC agentic type of stuff that's going on out there.

Jacob Broussard 53:57

Yeah

Why You Should Not Give AI The Keys

Jacob Broussard 53:58

I know don't do it absolutely that'd be the quickest way to relay that don't do it um if you want something done for you that um whether you know how helpful or not it is you can you can allow it to take over a folder or directory but what I would rec so what I would recommend doing is never well first of all never give it full access to your computer you you'll think probably oh it'll never happen to me you know that's just probably because that guy did this and that person did that but I've heard too many nightmare stories um AIs not only need a lot of context for their task but when there's a couple things that can go wrong it can you can hit memory capacity it's memory capacity um and at that point it just starts spilling memory meaning all the context that you gave it and instructions you gave it are then literally spilling out of it and it's losing context and so not only will they try to regain that context loss but they will start making assumptions and all it has to do is make the wrong assumption and then your files are the next thing that it's cleaning out because your computer's at store you know storage capacity or whatever it is.

Cord 55:14

And so it the simple workaround to that is create a new folder on your computer share access to that you know toggle it to where it can control it sure but just don't ever let it run loose don't ever fully enable it in terms of full automation on your computer I would never remove the uh bypass permissions mode um or never make it fully automatic at least on your entire desktop um I just I was curious because you and I have covered a lot of topics uh we're both a little bit of night owls um so we do a lot of talking chatting in the in the evenings uh well as you can tell the evening is now upon us even here uh if you're watching you can tell that the sun has gone down in metropolis and it's on its way to going down behind Jacob uh down in down in uh Plano at the moment so uh dark in your uh in your room I don't even know sitting in the pitch black all of a sudden yeah I try to keep I try to keep it like natural lighting you know so like whenever we started it was it was still kind of uh you know dusk and now it has gone to just my little ring light up here uh is the only thing that's on in the room now so uh you know hopefully it's uh you know not blinding anybody out there on the YouTube but um anyway uh if you want to go ahead and show us uh what you were what you were looking at here uh in sharing your screen and again I would encourage anyone to go and check out the YouTube video here um and then I'll let you kind of get through this and then we'll probably um you know wrap it up with some final thoughts Jacob so what do you got here?

Jacob Broussard 57:02

Sounds

Shed Inventory Dashboard For Dealers And Ecommerce

Jacob Broussard 57:03

good so uh this is a shed uh management dashboard um I guess is what I would what I would term it so it is but and I should preface this can be tailored so many different ways uh for the time being um it is for a shed manufacturing company uh so you have the capability here to um well and for e-commerce as well um it's multifaceted right now let's just say um you can add dealers that then can go and log in and upload their inventory and sell their inventory on here um they can input once granted permission or a login they can go in and add their sheds through and sorry for the for the audio listeners uh walking through the process I don't mean to sound redundant uh but this is how you would then add your shed you designate whether it's on the lot or whether it's virtual and you can specify the category in fact you have to specify the like well it's not called category here but your type of shed and you would just walk down this process and input all the specifications so your shingles your floor type your siding type foundation uh pricing color um and then allows you to actually um upload all of your um your inventory colors that you use that way you don't have to continuously input your colors you can just select from a um a drop down and then you can put in your doors windows whether it's on sale or not if it's on sale it on the front end which is going to be the e-commerce site it will have there's the standard pricing crossed out with a red font showing the clearance price or the sale price and then not only that but you can access your payments and this this is all sample data anyways um but that's why there's no analytics in here um but you can also access your analytics as well as your leads so um this can be repurposed too that's one of the nice things about um ai is it allows for quicker development overall I think is just to tie it back to the message here is anything is possible now in a much smaller budget and a shorter timeline yeah exactly and so don't let your curiosities remain curiosities forever. I think right now so tokens um just to kind of touch on this tokens token cost I'm sure you um if you watch the news or listen to the news ever you probably heard about all these data centers that they're trying to open and whatnot and that's a whole nother conversation but the usage or the consumption of um resources is a big thing with AI and so as these models get smarter they require more resources in order to perform or to compute rather and in doing so it has made the cost of AI usage on a go on a steady climb.

Cord 1:00:40

And uh for example anthropic which is the um company that makes Claude or that has made Claude and continues to push out updates their newest model just uh came out one of their newest models and it they input a 35% tokenizer which means it is now 35% it's going to use 35% more tokens um and tokens are something you pay for um in essence instead basically uh a unit basically a unit of compute right I mean they're trying to they're trying to estimate and I think there's actually a formula you know that's based on the actual computational value for what a token is but point being it's it is a it is an approximation of how much actual quote unquote I mean these this is where you start to cross the Rubicon right when you start to describe things like this but it's basically uh a way to approximate how much thinking is taking is taking place um you know how much compute is taking place uh in that and yeah to your point you know um and the potential um volatilities that that come in the future as far as um with some of this ai stuff I mean you know of course it is about an increased compute and everything else but it's also about the fact that in a macroeconomic sense they have basically gained more or less all of the daily users that are probably likely to adopt and so they're still they are still wildly unprofitable and so I mean like comically unprofitable one to ten right I think they're no I think they're like what a billion in debt and then they they're yeah it's like it's like closer to one to a hundred yeah sorry yeah it's closer to one to a hundred on like revenue versus liabilities and so you know they're yes part of it is the new models require more compute require more electricity require more you know ones and zeros right um but then the other side is you know they're trying to figure out how to make this a profitable model and so much of that truthfully comes down to the crux of what we're saying here today which is how do you solve real problems you know it's great to be novel it's great to be fun it's great to kind of be like a uh something that is fun to play with and is impressive I mean I was very very very impressed um with that self-driving um from Tesla right now for it to be economy changing it has to be unsupervised right because if you if you can manage to get the politicians and you know the actual safety standards and you can get it to where um you know I mean me and Shannon are a great example we travel so much and we basically spend you know two days on the yeah but it's not even about just the drive right because honestly both of us like to drive we like to you know look at you know we just we like the experience of driving and talking but more than that you know basically every trip that we take it effectively takes a day to get where we're going out to Pennsylvania up to Michigan over to Iowa you know down to the Gulf Coast over into uh you know the Georgia Florida line I mean like everywhere we want to go and talk to shed people is more or less you know a kind of a day's drive so we're spending two days on the road you know but uh again just kind of relating this to how do you really have economic impact well if you're able to um if you're able to get this unsupervised self-driving technology to the point that it actually you can leave at you know 10 p.m drive overnight right and this drives you can sleep the whole time and then you just you know and of course it wouldn't be mu it wouldn't be very you know shouldn't be shaped like a Tesla at that point it should be shaped like a van you know um and just you know have you know a bunk or whatever right and you're able to sleep and drive um that changes the way people travel that changes uh yeah it changes the way you live changes the way you even view um what it means to live eight or ten hours away from somewhere whenever all it is a good night's sleep away about that part about where you live yeah you know and but that's the same thing we're talking about with this stuff which is you know how do you use the tools that are here in front of you to actually make a positive economic impact in your life and for your business like what are the genuine things that could be solved and how can Jacob here uh help to supervise a team of AI agents to make sure that that that problem is reliably solved for you in your business or in your life daily So uh Jacob, we've gone uh about an hour here. I know

Final Advice And How To Reach Us

Cord 1:06:04

me and you, we always say we're gonna have uh quick phone calls and quick chats and you know quick podcasts, and of course we get to talking and uh and really enjoy these topics. So of course we go a little long, but um please, I mean you know that the um the door is always open here on the Shed Geek Podcast. And if you have any um any thoughts or topics or something happens that you think, gosh, the shed industry needs to know, uh, never ever hesitate to uh to reach out and come back on and continue to grace us with your presence. So, um thank you for being here. Um again, Jacob Broussard, the shed doctor. Uh he is one of our uh one of or the uh the web doctor. I'm sorry. I said both. Yeah, the shed doctor, the web doctor. Um uh he is one of our service providers for Shed Geek Marketing. Uh, we pride ourselves on having gone out and found what we consider to be you know top two percent providers in every category, and Jacob is certainly one of them. Uh he does great work, and that's what we pride ourselves in. So, uh if you'd like to get a hold of Jacob, uh reach out to the podcast. Jacob is Jacob J-A-C-O-B at the Web. Oh that's right. S E O at the website. SEO at the WebDoctor.com. That's right. I'm sorry. I should have had it sitting right here in front of me. I thought I could do it from memory.

Jacob Broussard 1:07:36

No, you're fine. Maybe I should change it to Jacob.

Cord 1:07:38

No, I like it. I like it. SEO at the WebDoctor.com. If you want to reach out to Jacob directly, or you can always reach out to us here at Shed Geek and we can put you in touch. So, uh Jacob, any final words, final thoughts? Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Jacob Broussard 1:07:53

Yeah, thank you so much for having me again. No, I would say, excuse me. Um, no, yeah, thank you for anyone listening or watching. Appreciate your time. And if there's ever anything you want to explore, even if you think, oh, that's a dumb idea, oh, that can never work, um, I think you'd be surprised. So, and it may cost fractions of what you would imagine. So, I would say definitely reach out, shoot an email. I won't mind emailing back. I got my custom email application. No, no, no, but all jokes, as all jokes aside, no, yeah. Definitely reach out and um text, email, call, whether it's through um to Shed Geek or shoot me an email, either or I'd be happy to chat with you and hear if I can uh help your business help or help you uh automate part of it or whatever it is. Very good.

Cord 1:08:45

Very good. Well, thank you very much, Jacob. Again, thank you all for listening, and I will see you next time on another episode of the Shed Geek Podcast.

OUTRO 1:08:55

Today's Friday edition of the Shed Geek Podcast was brought to you by Shed Geek Marketing. If your company is looking to increase leads, strengthen your brand presence, improve digital visibility, or simply stop wasting money on marketing that doesn't work, you're in luck. Shed Geek Marketing was built specifically for this industry and has assembled the absolute best providers from across the country that, bottom line, bring you the results. From dealer startups to nationwide manufacturers. We help businesses connect better, market smarter, and grow with intention. Interested in becoming a title sponsor of the Shed Geek Podcast or advertising across the Shed Geek Media Network? Reach out today at info@shed geek.com and ask for the 2026 Shed Geek Media Kit. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time, right here on the Shed Geek Podcast.