Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:22
Man, I love it. No, thanks for sharing that. It’s really inspiring. So I could see. Okay, you weren’t set out to entrepreneurship. It kind of stumbled across with, you know, just helping people, actually. And you start Transizion, you sell it and now you see this big opportunity and, you know, you saw SEO and those things work so well in your previous business. You’re like, well, the next phase is really AI and being discovered on the AI engine. So you start Open Forge and I’m going to, you know, pull this up. I’m curious what does evolution look like of this?
Because what features do you start with right now I can see, you know, you have all these features on here that you’ve built out, probably because of feedback and everything else. What was the original start of it look like? What was included?
Jason Patel: 18:14
Absolutely. So it’s funny. This is, it’s a quote unquote older website. We have a lot more now. And the tool is, you know, five x more powerful than what we, what we created. And we created this website like six weeks ago. You know, like, this is how fast things are changing. So we we started out with a platform that, you know, will read your website, we’ll read your competitors websites, it’ll analyze how you guys show up on ChatGPT and then provide that full 3D 360 market data on what are you doing right, what are your competitors doing right, and then what should you do to close the gap. So then we give you those insights, those quantifiable insights. And we go very deep.
We do that. We go deepest in the industry on the insights that we provide. But then when our customers were saying, hey, you know, I really like the insights, but I’m busy. I got other things to do and I can’t hire a team right now. What can you do to help me automate this whole process?
Well, great. So then we ended up creating a couple of AI agents, one called Orion, which builds content. So essentially Orion will read your stats and our recommendations and then it will build content up to 4800 pieces of content for you every week or every month. And you don’t need 48. You need like five.
But so we overkill it and to give you a lot of options. But Orion will essentially read your, you know, the statistical analysis on how you’re showing up on ChatGPT. And then it’ll help you fill in those gaps. Then we launched a second AI agent called Caesar, named after Julius Caesar, or the ape from planet of the apes. Whichever, whichever option you want to choose
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:56
I didn’t know that one.
Jason Patel: 19:59
We’re a bunch of dorks at this company. I’m a history guy. So we called it Caesar. And Caesar essentially does the strategic intelligence for you. So another problem that customers had was they had a drink out of a firehose of data.
No one wants to do that. This is the AI age. You don’t have to do that. So you’ll have a bunch of data that our platform provides you. And then Caesar is an agent that reads all of that data and then tells you what to do next.
So we’re taking the creativity or the really hard thinking out of it, if you don’t want to think about it. And Caesar will create a battle plan for you and tell you what to do next so that you’re really saving your time. And then you can go about providing value to your customers in a different way.
Then we have an AI agent coming up called Helix, and Helix is going to build third party citations for you. That’s well underway. That will be launching in the next couple of weeks. Third party citations of the gold standard for AI search. If you show up on third party citations, you have a fighting chance to beat big corporations. And so we’re going to help our businesses do that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:58
What are the and we’ll go, I know you have some great videos. I encourage people, you know, there’s resources and he has a YouTube channel. He’s got lots of stuff. And I’ve listened to many, many videos, Jason talking. But just a few of the common mistakes people make that is, you know, preventing them from getting indexed from the AI engines.
Jason Patel: 21:20
So I think the first one is, and the top of funnel content, so content that was very wide ranging and broad was very good for SEO. And God knows I made a, you know, I built a successful company off of really good top of funnel content. The issue with that now is that AI can synthesize all of that content and then provide a summarized answer without giving you credit. Because if you can talk about top of funnel content, other people can talk about it too.
So there’s no differentiation. Wide top of funnel content is going to go away. Stop creating that. What you want to do is create low top funnel content.
So maybe more specific topics but be very specific. They could really drill down on those topics, but then mid-funnel content where people are evaluating a potential product purchase and then bottom-funnel content where you’re comparing yourself versus competitors. That type of content is very good. So that top of funnel, broad ranging content for like, you know, a search term where 10,000 people search for it is not a good idea.
The second thing is technical optimization. Your site should be HTML. It’s got to be machine readable. Have FAQs pricing pages. Because the future is going to be where AI agents, your AI friend will do the work for you. You’re the customer. In order to do research and find out what product is best for them.
So what ends up happening is that your site has to be readable and understandable by AI search engines right now, and then AI agents later on. So things have to be structured correctly, clean. And so those are the two things I would say in a very top line basis. We need to make sure are optimized to get seen by these AI search engines.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:08
Yeah. And if people want to check out more obviously you know go to OpenForge.ai in the resources. They have videos and articles and everything like that. You can watch Jason for hours on YouTube if you really choose to.
But, you know, I’m curious when you launch this thing, you’ve launched other companies before. How did the pricing evolve? Where do you start? How do you decide how to price this thing? Because there aren’t tools out there like this. So where do you start?
Jason Patel: 23:36
Yeah. So there’s two different ways we look at pricing. And there are some hard truths here. And I won’t shy away from them on the interview here we are 400 bucks a month as of this recording late October. In 2025, we’re going to have a plan that’s 400 bucks a month.
It is expensive, I understand, but it’s a tool that does the work for you. And so the way we think about pricing is, is that if you, we want to attract companies that will respect the product that you know, that want the product, but also companies that are investing in this. So if you’re investing in GEO generative engine optimization or SEO search engine optimization, we want this to be front and center for you. And we want you to use the product. We don’t want to essentially, you know, charge only 50 bucks a month.
Because if you’re if it’s only 50 bucks a month, then we’re not going to be able to reinvest into the platform. We want to be able to take the margin that we have and invest in the platform to create more value for our customers. And so that’s why it’s 400 bucks a month, which I understand, not cheap, but if you use the tool right, it works. I mean, our customers and we can always go into that later on, but our customers have seen.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:54
Did you start like that, Jason?
Jason Patel: 24:56
No, it started originally at 250 a month and 250 a month. You know, people actually like people tell us that 250 a month was too cheap. And people still tell our customers still tell us 400 a month is too cheap. But we understand, though, that the little guy, the average guy can’t afford anything more than like 400 or 500 a month. So I get that there’s a little bit of a discrepancy there.
The whole point is we started at 250, then went to 300, then went to 350, then we’re now at 400 because we’re providing more. And so the AI has more compute power. So our costs go up. And as a whole, unsexy thing in the background where.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:34
It’s real dollars. I mean, if you’re creating whatever, 48 articles or something a month. Yeah, that is dollars and cents that’s coming out of your account regardless if someone uses it or not.
Jason Patel: 25:47
That’s my point, right? It’s like the tool works like we have the customers, we have a high retention rate. I can’t go on some of that stuff. It’s confidential, but our retention rate with customers is over 90%, you know, which is above average for technology companies. Our customers love it.
You know, we have testimonials, case studies. We have a lot more that’s coming. We’re developing all that stuff right now and more of all the numbers speak for themselves. People, we don’t lock anyone into annual contracts. It’s all month to month.
So we tell our customers, if you’re not using this and you’re not seeing results, don’t pay for the next month. That’s not you know, it’s not good business for us or for anybody to lock you into a one year deal. We tell you, evaluate every month, and if you like what you’re seeing and you’re getting your ROI, pay for it again. And if not, no big deal, no harm, no foul. And that’s how we ensure that we’re providing real value. And our customers are seeing that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:44
I want to talk about some use cases. Right. Obviously there’s individual companies using it. There’s also, I can see a lot of use cases. I did an agency series, who knows of hundreds of interviews on Inspired Insider on top agencies.
And I could see a huge agency use case for this. And I know you have a bunch of agencies using it. Maybe let’s start with an individual one. You had a real estate property management company. How are they using it?
Jason Patel: 27:11
Yeah. So essentially they’re there. So this company is very interesting. They’re not just a real estate management company. They’re a platform that helps other real estate management companies manage their property.
So they’re there for a very big real estate organizations. And so they use it for content creation. A lot of these companies are companies in a space, or this company is in a space where it’s somewhat hard to create content because it’s not the sexiest product, but it’s very necessary. And so what they do is they use our AI to identify where the gaps are in their market versus their competitors. And then our AI will propose content topics, and the AI will literally build the content out itself.
And so they’ve been doing two articles a week, three articles a week using our formulas, our proprietary tech. And in one month, they saw a 464% increase in their AI brand visibility. It’s a high number because our tool, our tech works and you know AI search man, it’s AI search is like America in the 1800s going out west, claiming a lot of land for cheap, getting those big victories without really putting in a whole bunch of effort into it. I mean.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:25
It’s like the early days of SEO where you basically just, I mean, people would just put their keywords up and they start ranking.
Jason Patel: 28:33
It’s not that easy because.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:35
I’m not saying it’s that easy. But it’s like the early days of SEO, right?
Jason Patel: 28:39
Yeah, I’ll say this, your big competitors right now are not doing this because it just takes time to adjust strategy. It’s easier to move a speedboat than it is to move an aircraft carrier. And you would rather have an aircraft carrier in a battle situation, of course, but in a flexibility speed situation, you might want a speedboat. And this is what the moment is in AI and in just business in general. You got to be fast. You got to be agile, and you can get a lot of easy wins off of AI search right now.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:11
And Quilter, how are they using it?
Jason Patel: 29:14
Quilter is such a cool company. I love the guys Darren and Cody who work there. Quilter is using this essentially to create content, technical optimizations and overall learn the differences between what their competitors are doing right and what they’re doing right or wrong. The reason why that’s important is because Quilter is a power control board, a PCB design technology. So they’re designing physical technology.
It’s a very cool, you know, it’s a very cool use case here. And so they’re using the full stack, right. They’re using the test version of helix to build out citations. And so we’re proving it out with them. But they’re also creating content.
And then also finding out all right what are the bigger competitors or more legacy competitors in the industry doing. And then they’re able to mimic what they do just to keep up. But then they use our third party citation analysis platform to find out where the competitors are getting citations from, so quilter can go to those third party citations and pitch their own products and pitch their own guest posts and things like that. So it’s a great way for Quilter to keep up with the legacy players in the industry.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:21
What about agencies? I mean that that’s I mean, I think from a technological standpoint, building out that piece of the software has got to be more complicated. And obviously you it sounds like you did that from the get go. Talk about how agencies are using it and is it like a different interface for them?
Jason Patel: 30:41
No, the interface is the same. We just added agency layer on top. So it’s essentially the same. You get unlimited use. There’s no limitations with anything.
As far as the agencies. We have different use cases. So if you serve if you’re an agency that serves technology, great, we got you. But the interesting part is that we serve a lot of agencies that work with home services, car dealerships, OEMs.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:08
Lawyers.
Jason Patel: 31:09
Local businesses, lawyers, doctors, doctor’s offices. We serve all of those types of businesses, sports, recreation organizations, teams and things like that. And so what our AI also does is geo targeting. So we could tell you how you’re ranking on a geographic basis. So we have for example one customer that is a car dealership in Alberta.
We have another customer that’s a hotel. They’re a holding company of hotels and car dealerships in the Midwest United States, actually not too far from you. We have another customer or a set of customers that are liquor stores and hospitality businesses in New Jersey. What we’re able to do is show how these businesses are showing up in their own geographies, because they’re not competing nationally. They’re competing in Jersey, in the Midwest, in Alberta, on the West Coast.
They’re competing in specific geographies. So we show how they’re showing up in their specific locale, There are specific geography. And then we say, this is how you’re showing up against the competition in your geography, and then this is what you should do to get seen by those search engines in that specific geography. So yeah, we could do it on a national basis, international basis, or literally in your small town, if that’s applicable to you.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:21
I want to talk about AI tools, right? I mean, this is kind of meta a little bit. Right? Before we hit record, we’re like AI tooling. I mean, you’re all using AI.
You’re using AI to run the business. There’s back end APIs connecting to various things. I’m curious, some of your favorite AI tools out there?
Jason Patel: 32:40
Yeah, I’ll name a bunch. I’d love to provide some value here for like all the listeners. So for email we use Instantly AI for cold emails. They’re good value right? I mean it’s a good value.
It’s why we use them. We use Beehiiv which is an email platform just to send emails out there. Not necessarily AI, but they have some cool AI tools. We use Canva for pure graphic design, and I use this really cool tool called Dripify for cold messaging on LinkedIn.
Then we use a tool called Gamma for presentations and my webinars masterclasses. I do them every Thursday from 12 to 1:00 eastern. Gamma is nuts. You could put in a copy and it’ll create a beautiful presentation for you. I mean, it’s everything that’s right with AI. I highly recommend Gamma. Use Gamma.
Then I use a platform called Ideogram. Ideogram where you could tell the AI what you want out of an image, and it’ll build that image out for you 3 or 4 images or 5 or 10, whatever you like. And then you can adjust and make quick adjustments. Very easy to learn.
I use ChatGPT for operations and writing copy and just thinking through different things. ChatGPT I hate to say it is in some ways a therapist business coach as much as it is an advisor or a VC partner. That’s very a heavy hitting person who can help you with your business. Then we use things like, and then we use like basic tooling like DocSend, you know, for investors and whatnot. There’s some cool tools that are more, let’s say maybe not niche, but more meta.
There’s a tool called MiniMax that I use to create just cool AI imagery. It’s got no limits on it. You just have to pay for tokens. We use LoRA and Flux, which is a great way to adjust what the outputs of MiniMax are. And there are classes that you can use on this. So it’s all very easy to know and understand.
We use ElevenLabs to clone my voice and we use HeyGen to clone my voice and then create AI avatars for short form YouTube videos. We’ve been using that less because I’ve been doing more live YouTube videos, but it’s something worth something worth checking out. And we use Napkin.ai for AI graphic design if you want to create a literal chart. There are some other cool tools out there like called Typeset, which is great for creating ebooks.
We haven’t used that in a while only because we haven’t created an ebook, but you know it’s still worth it. There’s a tool called Happenstance which uses AI to analyze your own LinkedIn network and your friends’ LinkedIn networks to see who’s a good fit for introductions and whatnot. So it takes care of a lot of their research for you. And then ChatGPT or OpenAI just launched their Atlas, their Atlas browser. I use Atlas very AI forward.
If it’s a cool tool and it provides value, I’ll use it and I’ll pay for it. And then of course, we use a tool called Descript for video editing. We use that a little less now because our business has grown. So we’ve had to hire a human editor to take care of all that stuff, just because we’re just so busy but Descript, I have love for them. They did a great job for us. And so, you know, more power to them.
Those are generally the AI specific tools that we use. There are other tools that I use for my business that are just software related. So yeah, I mean we use a lot.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:07
No, that’s that’s great, Jason, on a tech stack, what are you using for the business like from a project management, from a communication standpoint.
Jason Patel: 36:17
Slack to communicate, Trello to manage my projects, Google sheets to manage just different projects and just, you know, the spreadsheet. We use Loyee, otherwise known, it’s actually rebranded to Alpha. Alpha, just like yesterday or two days ago. It’s run by two incredible women. That’s for CRM enrichment. So it’s a little bit of a niche product, but it’s an incredible product.
We use Knock2 for, we use Knock2 for essentially identifying customer website or customer website visitors. I mentioned ChatGPT for script writing and just general operations. You can ask ChatGPT thinking model anything. It’ll get some really good stuff for you.
Calendly for your calendar like online links. Stripe for payment processing, sales navigator for doing research. If you could use Sales Navigator right? Spend like a weekend learning it. It’ll be really helpful for you.
We use Google Sheets. The other thing too I believe man, is like if it doesn’t need to be reinvented and there’s no ten-x value provided by an AI tool, just use the regular tool. So we use Google Docs. You know, there’s no need to do all that specific stuff if you don’t need it. I like Perplexity for research purposes, so Perplexity as the LLM, but ChatGPT is my go to ChatGPT thinking model will handle everything for you.
Pay the 20 bucks a month and it’ll handle a lot of it for you. I would say Gemini is also a good LLM, but you know, I have love for Google in terms of what they’ve done for the internet, but they make their products very hard to use. The Gemini is a great LLM. It’s just you got to jump through some hoops to use the damn product. So, you know, take it for what it is.
And then we use YouTube for all of our, you know, uploading and, you know, just just video stuff. I hope YouTube has a competitor one day because they have a monopoly on the whole video ecosystem. But, you know, here we are. Yeah. So that’s the tech stack we use. A lot of it is simple.
A lot of entrepreneurs and founders all over the country use what I use. There’s nothing really different here. It’s more of a you can build a successful business, you know, not reinventing the wheel and just doing the blocking and tackling correctly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:37
Jason. Amazing. Appreciate your time, energy, you know, sharing your journey, your lessons, insights everyone. Check out OpenForge.ai to learn more and we’ll see everyone next time. Jason, thanks so much.
Jason Patel: 38:52
I had a great time, man. Thanks for inviting me and thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s a very tumultuous, anxiety inducing time for a lot of people. And I would tell everyone, keep the faith, stay strong, be gritty. You’re all rugged individuals.
AI, don’t view it as an obstacle. View it as an opportunity. I promise you, there’s tons of opportunity to be had, money to be made, and dreams to be built with AI. Don’t be scared. Just embrace it. And Jeremy, looking forward to part two of our interview and thank you very much for having me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:26
I love it. Thanks, Jason. Thanks everyone.
