Fery Kaszoni: PR Link Building, AI SEO Agencies + Codus!

Ferry, how's it going? Julian, very good, thank you very much. As I said, I'm consuming my double dose of Red Bull and coffee in the morning, very unhealthy, but it's Saturday morning and we need to go for the day, yeah. It's a double-double, isn't it?

It is indeed. And what have you been working on lately? Oh, lots of things. Like many of the builders out there, I kind of dive into AI, and not just chat GPT-AI, but we are actually building a lot with AI and experimenting with AI.

Just like yourself, right? I've seen you doing great stuff as well. We're trying to ride the wave, but in order to ride the wave, you have to learn to surf first, right? So that's what we are doing now.

We are learning to surf, and then the waves are big, they're getting bigger and bigger, therefore it's always a learning, right? You have to learn to be even better at surfing now, so that's the stage we are at. We are building, trying to not even automate, I think automation now with AI, it's not the right word. I think it's reinvention is the word, because you don't want to automate, you want to reinvent the processes.

So that's what we are trying to figure out. How can we build systems to reinvent everything instead of just adding 10% increase with automation? Yeah, that makes sense for sure. Just to put it in perspective for anyone listening, you have a PR agency, so that's what you've primarily focused, but you're setting up a lot of tools and workflows with AI right now, right?

Yeah, I think we have managed to grow the PR agency first and foremost because of the automation that we built. We have built software in 2020, we started building our own software in-house, and it became a monster, and it helped our team be more efficient. And when AI came out, we were like, well, it's kind of sloppy, it's not quite there yet. But last year, I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel, I said, this is not sloppy anymore.

If you have the right harness on AI, then you can go really wide. So it helped a lot with our PR agency, with our efficiencies. And yes, we do have the PR agency, but we are also obsessed with software, and not just for PR, but for every business function that we have, running meta ads, right, or running Google ads, or creating videos. We are trying to add functions, more efficient functions in the business around this process as well, apart from just the PR.

Yeah, I think this is so important now, particularly if you're an agency owner in the SEO industry. We've seen so many people get wiped out, we've seen all sorts of content agencies, remember when they were a thing? You wouldn't use a content agency. It's moving really fast in a scary way, isn't it?

It's scary, and it's exciting, right? We get super excited, but as you said, on the other side, it's very scary, and we've got to be very careful on the decisions we make. And we might not make the right decisions, but I think we do need to bear in mind that we have to adapt. There is no option to stay as we were a year ago, or two years ago.

Every business needs to adapt and reinvent from the ground up. Yeah, 100%. So what are you doing to adapt right now? I think the most important thing is to increase the output of the team.

So per team member, we need to increase the output. Let's say a team member used to deliver two or three campaigns per month. Now we are looking at how can we make the team so efficient that they can deliver five or even eight or nine campaigns per month. And it's hard with PR, especially because there's no guarantees in terms of placements.

You need to hustle, you need to create new stories. Sometimes you push something out, it doesn't land, then you need to do another story, especially when you have a links guarantee with public relations. And by the way, just to distinguish, digital PR link building, like the real digital PR link building is where you do not pay for links. You create a study, a story, you push it out, and you earn the links organically.

And you never pay for the links. That's kind of the distinction between digital PR and the traditional guest posts where you go and pay for the placement, and then it's more predictable. Therefore, it's very up and down in terms of when the links are going to land. So if you can be more efficient, and let's say a team member could run not just five stories at once, but if they can run 10 stories at once, then the odds of doubling the output in terms of links is greater.

So that's what we are trying to do. How can we give our team members tools where they can be more efficient, but also have more fun? I think if you have the right tools, team members can have more fun. I think I've shown you the CodeCodus, the tool that we talked about, and we deployed it to our team members this week.

And people were like, I can now be unlimited creative with this tool, because I've got a framework and the tool can do the hard work of going and getting data from government sources. And the tool can even create accounts on government websites. It's got its own email address, sign up, set up API keys, and download the data with the API, autopilot, without the user having to even know what an API is. So this is the kind of different thinking that we wanted.

Not just, oh, we have the cloud to analyze our data source. No, actually, go and get the data source from different places and let it analyze, and then come back to the user, to the PR executive, with the results, and then they can check the facts and so on. So it's way more fun and way more productive. So yeah, just building systems so that the team members can be more efficient is probably what every company should do.

And it's a bit, I mean, it sounds like, because I know you have a big team, particularly based in the UK as well. And I know what it was like working in an office in the UK back in the day. It must be a huge cultural shift for your team. Some people must struggle to adapt to that as well.

Yes. Initially, it was scary with AI, because people thought, oh my God, AI can do what I can do. But it's not quite the truth, because if, let's say, very good team members, like good PR executives, if you give them AI, they will be needed more, because we will be more efficient in delivering campaigns. Clients will want to renew faster, and we'll need more campaigns.

Therefore, we'll need more talent who can embrace the AI and have, again, the 10x output. So the team members will be way more valuable when they have this AI and they will be more in demand. So initially, it was scary for everyone. But I think now they've seen like, hey, I am so valuable now to the company, to the clients, because I can do 10x more.

Therefore, hopefully, people feel, team members feel that they are way more valuable. And we try to instill this to them, like, look, you are really, really valuable now with these new skills. And we can see the output increasing. And we're like, our team members are amazing now.

So I think we went kind of past that stage where it was so scary, because it was so good. So now people got used to it. And we're like, oh, wow, you know, I'm so valuable to the company now, because I can produce way more. Yeah.

And also, like, they learn a skill that, obviously, they're going to need for the rest of their life. Yes. Probably the most important skill. Yeah.

100% the most important skill, indeed. Yeah. How has the SEO world changed? I mean, because last time we caught up was probably Vietnam, like Mastery Summit about two years ago.

Oh, wow, it was 2024, I think, right? 2024, that was wild. Oh, damn. Well, SEO has changed so, so, so much.

And I think there's different kind of groups of companies and people in SEO. I think many have chosen to stay the traditional one. And that's fine. You know, there's still need for, like, the traditional non-AI native SEO agency.

That's fine. But I can see a large group developing of, like, the AI Builders SEO group, where we went to Manchester to Kazra's event. And the discussion that we had even last year at, let's say, I went to Greece to another conference, and people were not yet so excited by, you know, building systems with Cloud or using Cloud Code. At this event, everyone was I asked people, like, hey, tell me what are you building with AI and with Cloud?

And all the SEOs were like, I've just built this amazing tool that pulls data from this place, and then from a search console, from analytics, and it puts everything together from Ahrefs, and then it gives the strategies. And everyone was so excited. Another person rebuilt, they had 3,000 websites in WordPress, and they brought everything into, like, bespoke website, website system with Cloud Code. People were so excited by building software, building systems, building up, you know, revamping their operations with AI.

And I'm like, this is, if you would have told me a half a year ago that this is where the SEO industry is going, they will become software developers. They will become system builders like never before. It's just so exciting to see people actually, you know, really embracing this. Yeah, so SEOs are changing now and becoming system builders, but there's lots of other changes as well, like in terms of, like, I think we brought it up earlier, like link building and what, you know, what SEO is really, what's the value of SEO now.

And I would say SEO is always going to be there in the traditional form as well, because the best algorithm for generating a list of results for a query is still traditional Google search based on the page rank and based on what Google has. Bing tried to emulate them in the past two decades, and they have not been able to do what Google did. It's the best system to give you an answer, a fresh answer for a query. And even now, even the AI, you know, the most...

advanced AI systems are still using some form of traditional search to retrieve the freshest and best results and then compile them into an answer. And it's probably going to be the case for the next maybe half a decade or so. That's what I think. So the links are still going to be relevant.

And also, brand mentions now are coming up as being, of course, for AI to shift the narrative. Not just brand mentions. I think people do confuse brand mentions like, oh, I got mentioned here, but how are you mentioned there? It's not just brand mentions, but what kind of brand mentions are even more important, right?

Yeah, 100%. I think you're totally right there. I mean, there's three things I got from that. So number one is, a couple of years ago, it was almost taboo and a bad thing to use AI for SEO.

And now it's almost like, it would be weird not to use it. And I think as well, I've seen so many people become builders, like yourself, Charles has built his own tools, Chris Pantelli, myself, we've all built our own sort of tools. And that's crazy, because I don't know about you, but for me, I have no background in HTML or coding or anything like that. And then yeah, for sure, the brand mentions, big.

But that's great for you. I mean, for your agency, as a PR agency, even if the links do follow, at this point, it doesn't matter. It's about the mentions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I agree. I think links are still more powerful than mentions. So we don't count brand mentions as part of the KPI. So that's like a bonus.

And we want to keep that. And especially because, as I said, links are still going to be important. But brand mentions are becoming more and more important. And I think SEO will have to be, there is this kind of SEO equals search engine optimization, or SEO, I think, means now, and I've not invented the term, but I think Neil Patel and some others have kind of talked about it a lot, it's search everywhere optimization.

You will need to have your video channels, you will have to have your social media channels, and you will have to be everywhere in order to have a strong SEO. And that's a strong SEO, but also strong AI presence, AI search presence. And that's where we are going, video with content, and with everything else will work together. Like 10 years ago, it was content and links, build links, write some content, go and buy some content from the content agencies, as you said, that existed back then.

Buy content, build links, you got traction. I think now you need to create way, way, way more content, way more channels. I mean, that's what we found is like, for example, if you went back seven years ago, we would post on maybe one or two channels, like YouTube and our website at most. And now it's kind of like, we post on multiple places on YouTube.

And then we're also posting across like, maybe like 30 other platforms across everywhere. And it's like, that's the only way I think to do it now, to stand out and get attention. It's almost, I know you mentioned it as well before we started the call, which is like, you almost have to post more now as well to stand out, to get the same amount of attention, because you're competing with other people who are doing the same things. Absolutely.

It's the volumes have to be like five times what they were three years ago. And it's almost like a vicious circle because you post more, others post more, and then you have to post even more. And then it's going to be like, I'm not sure where the snowball is going to end, but it's going to be a massive snowball down the line where it's like a circle that never ends. We're always chasing our tail, like, hey, our competitors are posting more, there are more places, let's go more places.

And then, yeah, it's going to be a bit of a crazy journey. Yeah. And I think also the style of content, like, for example, something that's worked really well for us that I wouldn't really do a few years ago is live streams and like really long live streams. I just feel like at this point, people crave human connection, especially when it's so easy to create AR content.

It's like, there's not much that's more real than that and then seeing someone working in real time. 100%. I think the AI content will have its place. Yeah.

You know, AI avatars and everything, it's amazing and it's so powerful. But if you can complement that with real human content, I've seen you also do both, right? You do both human content and you do the AI, and the AI content has got traction as well. I think people really appreciate when you, oh, wow, this is a real one.

I think the human connection will be more and more important and more craved by people. 100%. Yeah, for sure. And I think as well, like, at this point, if you look at the way I kind of think of it, it's like, if I'm an agency owner, I'm trying to compete with everyone else, but I can create content with AI and as much of it as I want to, then I know everyone will go in that direction.

Give it 6, 12, 16 months, something like that. And so if I can keep creating human content, that might be one of the only ways to stand out in the future. You will have a massive advantage of having both channels there for you. Absolutely.

Yeah. 100%. 100%. What are you...

So I'm interested to know more about your tool. Like, what's your plan for launching, for example? We want to launch it next week. Today is like the 11th of July for anyone listening at any time, any other time.

So we want to launch it next week. So this tool has been built by the lack of tools that are suitable for my workflow. And when I was building it, I said, oh, we'll just build it for myself because I need a solid tool to create coding projects, to create software projects where I can work. Let's say we have an application and we have an AI search visibility tracker, right?

I want to build five features at once. It's so hard now to work on five different features in parallel because it's going to have database conflicts, it's going to have file conflicts. But I said, I need to have four different quadrants where four different projects are working independently from each other. So then I built a brain, a brain agent that delegates and creates work trees.

Many of you might know what a work tree is, but a work tree is like a different branch, a different branch with its own database, with its own separate code base. So you can now delegate to a brain, to a general agent who will create four work trees for four different features. It's going to have four browser views for every single quadrant and it can build, verify in its own browser, fix, build again, verify, and it's going to go in a healing loop until the feature is built. And you can do it in parallel on at least four quadrants.

And I said, there's nothing like this. And I don't see, you know, you can build, you know, you can build software with cloud code or with cloud co-work. You can download it, it's got its own browser, but you cannot build eight projects at once or eight different features at once because there's going to be so much conflict with even the ports, like how it assigns a localhost port 3001 or whatever. There's always going to be a conflict.

Therefore, we built this specifically for this feature so that I can build four times faster or 10 times faster. But then I realized, hey, what if we took the framework that we invested so much time in, many, many months, not many, but a few months, a few months of time and 14-hour days like, you know, in office, like at one o'clock at night to build these features. What if we took these and now we use it for video editing? What if we use it for SEO auditing?

What if we use this for data research? And then we built up these features and it's just absolutely mind-blowing. Like I used to edit videos, probably you as well. We had a media team, with a studio, with even an actress and a singer, and four or five video editors.

So I know video editing and I know how to delegate and I know how video editing works. And I said, there's no way that with Opus 4.8 level of fable intelligence, there's no way there is not a solution for this. And there wasn't any solution. Like this script, it's a great tool.

I'm not dismissing them. I think it's an amazing tool, but it's not quite there yet for uploading a video and then just getting you a really good final result. You have to go back and forth and it works great, but it just wasn't for me. So we have now built an AI video editor where you upload a file, it will go and read.

If you don't already have the brand information, it will go research brand information about you and even your colors on the web, even your previous YouTube channel. It's going to identify your thumbnails, the thumbnail style, everything. And then it's going to cut the video in the right format and it's going to give you final versions in different formats. It's just so, I'm so excited.

I was so excited by the coding feature, but the video feature is just, it just blows even my mind. Yeah. It's interesting as well. I think as well, like, I mean, let's say for example, that takes off for you, which I'm sure it will.

It's such a different business model to have in an agency, right? Like with an agency, you have so many people, you've got so many teams to manage, to train, all the stress that comes with that. With software or for example, for us, we have a community. It's like one or two people maximum, very, very easy to market and it's just a case of getting more attention to it, you know, totally different.

Yeah. Attention will be the most important thing I think in most industries. And it's, as you said, it's a different, it's a different model. I love the agency model.

I think I'm proud to deliver these links and to have the amazing team and we'll keep on growing that. We'll keep on developing that. But I think it's good to have some magic money coming in on the side. You know, we built, we built the Olivia Brown.

I saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Olivia Brown, it was like kind of like scary thing a year ago where you said like, what do you mean? Like AI can like go and find journalists and so on.

And it took off, it made some money, but it wasn't a big money. I think it made Olivia Brown and our AI search visibility tool together, they made like over a quarter million dollars. in like a year. It's not a big thing.

It wasn't a major revenue because our wages were like, I think at one point they were like 400k per month. So a quarter million in a year is like really nothing. But those two, it was money that we welcomed. Sometimes you need some extra cash flow and it was a great cash flow to help us.

And the same with your community as well. I think you have the community generates extra cash flow that can support the whole business. And hopefully, you know, CODUS, hopefully our tool will also be like an extra extra revenue stream. But also I think CODUS is more than that.

We have never built such a powerful and useful product, I think, so far. So I have big hopes, as you said, hopefully it will take off. Yeah. The other thing as well, like for us, for example, with the AR community, it kind of feeds the agency too.

Because a lot of people come into the community at SEOs and then later on they buy SEO from us. Yes. Because there's a warm connection already, you know, they know you, they know from the community. And that is exactly the ecosystem that I was talking to my team.

We have the Olivia users who are PR executives or SEO agencies using for PR. And then we have the AI search visibility tool, which is again used mostly by SEO agencies who manage their clients. And we have a warm connection now with so many people. But also we have the PR agency, which has hundreds of clients as well.

So we can say, hey, would you, you know, would you like to use our tool? We can give you like a 50% discount for AI visibility tracking. And we can instantly have hundreds of users. We've not reached out yet to those.

We are kind of like warm and like thinking about it. But we could just, you know, as you said, create an ecosystem of great people who you're friends with. And when you have hundreds or like thousands of people, then it kind of feeds each other, right? Yeah.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. I think as well, one thing that we find is like, we create more content to attract more people into the community, but then by getting that attention that way, it also brings in more leads to our SEO agency too.

So it's like kind of markets both. I think if it fits naturally into the business model, then you build your own ecosystem. Yep. Indeed.

The ecosystem is, I think it's the best thing you can have now at this point. Even if you launch a new product, like I think Matt Diggity said a year or two years ago, like when you have an ecosystem and an audience that already know you, every product you launch, it's not day one, it's year two, or it's year one, or it's year three already for you. Like you launch and you have instant users. And that's what, you know, that's what happens when you have like a community like you and an audience as well.

Yeah, that's for sure. That's massive. I think as well, like just if you're an agency owner, particularly in the SEO niche where it's changing so much, if you have the audience, however you evolve or adapt, they're going to be with you on the next step, the next step. There's been people in our community who have followed us for like five or six years.

Yeah. And it's so nice. It's just so heartwarming when you have those people around you all the time. And therefore you, it's, and you know, buying your service when it fits their needs, right?

It's so, so nice. Yeah, a hundred percent. The other thing I wonder as well is like, I mean, cause I was speaking to, for example, Jitenjo Botswani the other day, and he was saying, for example, like some people are using AI all the time and that kind of makes you more productive, but also more isolated because you're kind of grinding behind a desk and smashing out more terminals with Clawed Open. But I think as well, the demand for like in-person events is going to increase a lot too.

I think so. Julian, I went to, I took a break from events in 2025 and this year, and I went to Manchester, to the Masterminders. This is the only event I went to this year. And like in 2024, I was like, I spoke at like seven events and I went to like so many more.

But it was so great to be back with people with, you know, seeing old faces and reconnecting with them. I was like, I want to do that more often now. And because I'm at my desk, like probably, you know, many, many of us are like with Clawed Code, like from when I wake up, you know, my laptop is next to my bed. When I wake up, I open up my laptop, get, you know, Clawed running in the terminal and then I go and make my coffee while it runs.

So it's just so, you know, we are, as you said, we are kind of isolated from that perspective, but it's human connections and human events are going to be like, I'm so, I think they are going to, it's going to be like, you know, like when you had the 2020, when everyone, everything was locked down and when it opened, everyone was just traveling and going and craving that human connection and AI is kind of having the same effect. Yeah, I think so too. Actually, my plan is the same, like did loads of speaking in 2024, took last year off, this year doing more travel, but next year I'll be doing a lot more events and going to events and that sort of thing, just because I literally, like you, I kind of crave it. Yeah, so good to connect with people.

Are you thinking of your own event? Do you want to do your own event as well? I don't plan to, unless it's like a small mastermind or something like that, but more like probably go to events, yeah, get a feel for how people organize it and see if it's something I want to do. But I think if, I mean, a lot of people say I should run an event, like in person, but then it's, you got to be good at it, right?

Like it's a skill set itself. And it's like, I think many, many months of like intense stress. I think that's how it is. Yeah, I've spoken to Katra recently.

Oh my God, yeah, then you know. But all of them, we went to, I think all the events, even with the SEO Mastery Summit and Chiang Mai and all of them are like, and even in Poland with the white press, it's always stressful because there's so many moving pieces that you have to have working perfectly together. Yeah, but I was thinking of doing an event back when I was, at so many events in 2024, doing a Dracula SEO conference in Transylvania and having people dressed up like vampires there and having like a very themed castle in Dracula's castle. You can actually rent Dracula's castle there and it's not too expensive.

So you can rent the Dracula's castle and run like a Dracula SEO event in October, but then I gave up when I've seen how much effort, how much stress there is and the agency was busy and the AI came. So I said, okay, I'm going to abandon that idea, but hopefully somebody will do it one day. Yeah, I hope to see that. I would go.

If there's an SEO Dracula event, count me in. Yeah, that would be in October when Halloween is approaching and the leaves are falling and that could be really cool. Yeah, for sure. How about this time of year?

So for example, it's July right now. Do you see any changes in seasonality as an agency owner for SEO? It's always up and down. Sometimes there is a silence for like a week or like two weeks or three weeks and then you have a message saying, hey, I want to buy 10 campaigns and then they send you 42K with VAT included.

So we have this all the time like, oh my God, sometimes it's scary because it gets a bit more silent and then you suddenly have your inbox blowing up saying, hey, we are planning for the next quarter, we are planning for, oh, we have some budget left over, we want to buy some campaigns. And it's always up and down. I think, of course, the autumn period is like the craziest. There's just so much money because the end of the year, end of quarter, end of a new quarter.

So everything is probably the most intense. But it's not very, very different. You can feel the replies are a bit more delayed because people are on holiday or people have not slept well because of the heat wave. But it's not too bad.

I think it is a seasonal thing, but it's not too aggressively low. It can be cycles. Sometimes in February, there's a massive silence and nobody messages you about campaigns. But then sometimes another February can be really busy.

So I'm not sure whether it's a seasonality or just the normal cycle of the decision makers. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a mix of both probably. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

How is it your world? How do you feel this? I think like, I mean, so I see this on like three different angles. So YouTube views and also the number of sales in the community and then also the number of sales in the link building business.

They all kind of drop like I would say around July and then they bounce back up. So for example, like last month was awesome for the community. Loads of sales. And then it will drop and it'll go quiet because you got a combination as well of like holidays, heat wave, loads of businesses off and then also woke up.

It's like, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. True, true, true.

Yeah. So they bounce back in September when everything comes back to life or end of August. Yeah. Usually August, like we see the sales bounce back up, but also I think you're right.

It's kind of like, well, if you had an amazing month, quite often there's like regression to the mean. So it will like bounce back to normal and then you kind of go up and down a little bit like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be sporadic sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Last year's August was lower than anticipated. Maybe I was away on holiday as well and maybe I wasn't posting as much as I was.

But last August was like quite low. And then September kind of bounced back surprisingly. I'm like, okay, it's all good. Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, September, Q4 is the best time of year. It should be Q4 every quarter. That'd be great.

Yeah, that would be awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you being on. Thanks so much for sharing everything.

Looking forward to seeing Codus as well. Yes. I'm pretty sure people will enjoy that more than most AI software. that anyone has ever used.

Oh, nice. I'm a hardcore AI user, spending, as I said, 14 hours a day, and I build this for myself. So, I'm not building this for others. I build this to run on three machines and help me be more productive.

So, if it works for me, I'm pretty sure there are some other people who will also appreciate it, and maybe some other people are also working like myself. And if they do, then it will be the ultimate AI platform for everyone. Yeah. Who's got the same workflow.

I'm excited to see you put it out there, man. It's going to be exciting times, for sure. Is there anything we can link to in the description for people? For you?

We will share. We'll probably give a discount code and a link. Maybe next time, when we open up the platform, then we can give a discount code for you and people can join for a low, like a half price or something for first month to get them on board. By the way, it's only going to be available for Mac for now.

So, we've only built it for Mac for now, but it will be Windows as well in a few months. But for now, we're launching it as a Mac-only solution. I can attest to that, mate. When we built the AgentOS for the AirProfit boardroom, Mac was so easy, and Windows was so hard to help people with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a different ecosystem, and I think that's why the iOS, the MacOS and all the Apple infrastructure is thriving. They made it very easy for developers to build. Yeah, 100%.

All right, thanks so much. Julian, good to be here.