You Do Not Need AI To Replace You with Drew Dorenfest

If you have ever wondered whether “automate more” really means “disappear from your own business,” you are not alone. I sit down with Drew Dorenfest, a video editor turned small business growth partner, to get honest about what AI and automation can do, what they cannot do, and why the human layer is still the competitive advantage. We talk about the fear behind the hype: when software can write, send, and publish, what is the owner’s job and how do you keep your voice intact? 

We dig into practical small business automation that actually helps, like simple rule based follow ups, and we separate that from the myth of a magic prompt that runs your company. Drew explains why “AI SEO audits” often miss the real point: Google ranks the most helpful answer, not the most mechanically optimized site. That leads us into a smarter SEO mindset built on research, intent, and measurement, where AI supports the process but human judgment drives the strategy and the message. 

Then we zoom out to what is changing in local search right now. AI search and AI features inside platforms are pushing customers toward quick choices, which makes reviews, reputation, and clarity more important than ever. Drew shares two high impact moves you can make this week: build a comprehensive About page that clearly states who you are, what you do, and where you do it, and automate review requests so your best customers actually leave feedback on your Google Business Profile or Yelp. If this helped, subscribe, share the episode with a business owner friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Automation Anxiety And The Human Core

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The Listeners Here's something I keep noticing. Like every small business uh or the business owner I talk to are being told the same thing right now, like kind of automate more, use the tools, let the machine handle it. And a lot of them quietly wonder if I hand all of this to software, is there still anything of me that is left in my business? Or that is the real question underneath all the AI talks that are happening here and there. Not, I mean, not can the machine do it, but what should say, I mean, what should a human even when the machine can? Right? So hey dayler first. Welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avek, and today we are looking at the place where technology meets the actual human being on the other end, the customer, the client, the person who leaves the five-star review, or doesn't. If you run something small, or maybe I'd say if you are building something of your own, then this one's about how to grow without losing the part of you that made people want to work with you in the first place. And for this, we have a very lovely guest with us today. Our guest has lived on both ends of that spectrum. Yeah. So please welcome my guest, Drew Goyanfest. So welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Amazing. Thank you so much, Drew, for joining us today. And Delisons, like I'll quickly love to introduce you with Drew. So Drew has spent years as a video editor for some of the biggest names there are Netflix, Apple, Warner Brothers, and NFL, and now through the client migrant CRM, if I'm not wrong. Yeah, yeah. So so he yeah, so so he he's uh he's taking the same craft and turning it towards helping small business owners win more clients, more reviews, and more sales. So I'll not take much of a time. Let's get started. Welcome to the show again, Drew.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm happy to talk about all that.

What Automation Really Does

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Amazing. Yeah. So so Drew, like I definitely want to start with a misconception, I'd say. Because I think there's a big one floating around right now that a lot of small business owners hear that AI and automation and they assume it means becoming faceless, that growth means turning their business into a machine that runs without them. So you have worked at the highest end of crap and now you are deep into the tools. So, what do you think people get most wrong about what automation actually does to the small business?

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I think you know it's a delicate balance, but the misconception, yeah, is that it's gonna you just hit a button and AI does everything and it automatically works, and it's and if that was true, everyone would be a millionaire, right? Like it just doesn't work like that. It's what they sell you, it's what they want you to believe. But you have to really, like I said, it's a delicate balance. You have to use the tools to make things more efficient, to you know, scale up content, but smartly and have that human editorial oversight and put yourself in there, and that is kind of the way to do it. You could also do it completely by hand and not have AI do anything as well. That's totally valid too. I could I use mostly AI for like chatting with it to get ideas strategy. It steers me away from you know wrong ideas, bad ideas, and then technical, a lot of technical things that kind of happen on the back end when I'm building, doing web dev. I'm not a web designer, but you know, I built my own website. You're doing WordPress for the first time. I had done Squarespace, I had done Word uh Wix, which are more like have more guardrails, really like it's more just really page building. But WordPress really gets the nitty-gritty, you can change things by the pixel. And and using AI, Chat GPT, and Cloud especially, um, really helped me understand um and you can chat with it about this is not working specifically. Try this line of code. So that really is how to do it. But if you're talking about, say, automation, setting up just like a simple uh email automation doesn't even really use AI, doesn't have to use AI, it's just really telling a set of rules, which is like coding essentially, but it's like building these little trees, like flow trees, flow charts, essentially. Yeah of like if you know this person books a meeting on Calendly, I want you to send a follow-up email, you know, 24 hours later or whatever time you want, after the meeting time, with an email that goes out from our email address saying these words, you know, template, and then you could also say like hi, blank name, and then it'll fill in those things. That's not that that's been around for many, many years way before AI existed. So that is really you know a misconception that like AI, you just put in a prompt and it does everything. It's like, no, you can do things by hand, have AI help you out and figure out how to do it, and it can work really great. I think it works better. I think if you just do that other way or you just like let AI run it, it it turns out generic kind of slop, as everyone said.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Exactly. So, okay.

SEO Needs Helpful Human Content

SPEAKER_02 5:12

And and when an owner finally sees it differently, what usually clicks for them?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Uh you know, I think because these tools are widely available, everyone can access them. People who are more tech savvy, for instance, will run an SEO audit. I do a lot of SEO with with client magnet. That's really like our bread and butter. Is people who've heard about SEO know how valuable it is for their business to get found online, to get on page one, to get mentioned by Chat GPT. And so there's a lot of hype out there of oh, SEO, it could be done by AI. Just plug in a prompt that says like run my SEO audit, and then it'll give you like 25 actionable steps, and then you start doing it, or AI says I can do it if you do, say like ClaudeBot. And it's really like it's all just like technical SEO, which has its place, but that's not going to get you ranking on page one. It's just like things that could be improved on your website. It's not how Google ranks pages of like this is the most technically optimized site. No, it chooses the most helpful content, the most, the best, most relevant answer to whatever the search query is asking. And that is really takes creativity, it takes intention, it takes a lot of human thought that can be aided by AI, but it's not something that AI can just create out of whole kilof with a prompt. And so that is really where the the business owner has to be savvy about how they employ it and what they want to do with that technology, because I've seen, you know, like people be like, I plugged my thing in the cloud and it's gonna work better now. And it's like you just start tracking the data and you're like, made no difference. You know what I mean? So it's really about, you know, I'm very data driven. I look at data and say, like, did this work or is this starting to trend in the right direction? The things that work the best, I certainly use AI in my process. It's not like AI didn't do, you know, all the work. I did a lot of manual work, a lot of thought, a lot of research. I'm very research-driven too, of okay, if this is the search query, if this is the competition landscape, what are we trying to achieve here? And then it's very savvy, it's very smart AI systems. I really appreciate their strategic insights, but then I have to bring a lot of my real-world insights, human being insights to it, and it's and it's a conversation. So if you just think it's a prompt, it's it's not gonna work exactly as you hope.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

That's interesting. And I'd say, like, there is something that uh what you said, like about the tools buying back attention rather than removing the person that I want to hold definitely. Because uh I think a lot of people listening have been afraid that crowing means disappearing into their own operations, and uh I mean you you are describing almost the opposite that done right, it gives you more room to actually show up. So that is the belief part of it. So if you just go underneath that, you came from a world like it's all so bigger, bigger brands like Netflix, NFL, Warren Brothers. So where attention is everything and the craft is enormous. So and and then you stepped into the small world business, right? So where someone's running everything alone at 11 at night or 1 a.m. at night. What is the deeper pattern you started to see like about why so many good small businesses struggle to grow even when the work is genuinely great?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

I think it's really mission-driven. I think all good businesses deserve to be found, and not everyone is as online as the most online person. They're not. Maybe they use Facebook, maybe they are on Instagram all the time, maybe they use TikTok, maybe they're just a real old school person who's just like, I don't ever check online. It's something I check in frequently, and I just run my business, I have my client list, I have my people can find me on my Google, on Google Maps or Yelp or whatever, and that's good enough for me. And you know, the world is changing. It is people are still searching stuff on the internet all day long, billions of times a day. They might be just using ChatGPT more. So getting found on AI search

AI Search Makes Local Ranking Tougher

SPEAKER_00 9:17

really is critical, and it's it is tied to SEO, but it's not exactly the same thing. So you have to be optimized for that, and you have to create your website has to be readable and parsable by by these tools so that they can give those answers within that chat. For instance, if you're saying, find me the best plumber nearby, near me, or find me the best barber near near me, all that kind of stuff. It's going to be it's it makes it more competitive, to be honest. Like ranking on page one doesn't mean what it used to anymore because you want to be number one on page one. And that is really, really hard because sometimes ChatGPT will give three suggestions and people might ask for three more, but they might just be like, pick one out of three. They make it simple for you, right? It's all like just use less of your brain. So it is means you have to rank in that top three to get picked. So, like, for instance, like when I had like a plumbing issue, I just went on Yelp and I and you know, they have AI baked in on Yelp. And if you go like plumber near me, then the AI chatbot goes like, yes, what's your zip code? You put in your zip code, and then it just sends you, sends that out to you know the local plumbers near you that they know are available on a Saturday, and then they just start texting you, like, hey, I'm available. And then you just pick one out the first one, or you take three quotes and you just pick one. Like you're not doing deep research when you have a plumbing issue right away. And so those are chosen by who gets the most reviews, who has the best reviews, who has the competitive pricing, and who's available. And like USCAft kind of, it's not about who's, you know, who's putting out the most TikToks, who's on social media the most. So I find that it's really, really competitive. And these businesses, these small businesses are having to adapt to that. And so I feel really grateful and blessed that I can help these small businesses and be that growth partner who is tech savvy and says, like, it doesn't matter how it you can be as involved or uninvolved in this process as you want to be. If you say, I want to help guide the content, absolutely, I so want you to help guide the content so we can make it even stronger and even better. Or if you're the opposite and you're like, I'm just focused on the day to day, I just gotta stay in business another day. I you handle the tech side, I don't really want to even know the process. I just want things to be better. I want more sales, I want more leads, I want more five-star reviews so that everything just runs a little smoother. Then absolutely I can do that too. And I'm so happy to help them make it feel like magical. They could feel like I didn't even really do anything, and just things are better. I'm getting more sales, I'm getting more leads. That is that is the kind of the Steve Jobs ethos that I love of just like you get the box with the iPhone in it, and it's smooth, and you take it out, and there's one button to press, and then it just boots up. I remember you know, we had my dad had a Mac 2, and there was all kinds of floppy discs you had to put in to like get it to work, to start it up, to put programs in. Now it's like one button, we take care of the rest, and it just works beautifully from the from the get-go. I want kind of the same ethos to client magnet. We if you work with me, we make things just work really seamlessly, and it just seems like things get better. And if you want to know what's under the hood, happy to share it. If you don't want to know, you don't have to know.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, and you know, like I definitely want to also ask about, I was just thinking, like, was there a moment that made you realize that the problem was not about the quality of their

A Practical SEO Story For Solo Owners

SPEAKER_02 12:26

book?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, absolutely. Like some of my initial clients have been doing a small business, running it by themselves essentially for 10 plus years. And they would be like, I, you know, this is kind of feels like a down period when I started working with them. They're just friends of mine who I, you know, basically, the long story short, is like I have been running my own video editing business. I also freelance, or I'll join up with agencies that, for instance, like work with these bigger brands, and they bring me on to do the editorial, you know, cut the sizzle or the TV spot for the NFL or the trailer for the movie. And um, that's great. You have a lot of resources, you have a lot of people who can help you out and doing those big brand projects. You have a music person, you have a producer who can be the soundboard or you know, all that kind of the assistant editor who's giving you lots of the technical side of things. And then, you know, you go I take on clients directly where I got to wear all the hats. I have to, you know, I have to do all the technical things, I have to be the creative person, I have to deal with the budgets, and and then I have to hustle to get new clients, right? It's a it's a big grind. So a lot of small business solo operators, I am one, right? I I struggle to get clients and I looked into SEO instead of social media because I tried social media and it didn't really yield any new clients by posting all the time. But SEO applying it to my LinkedIn and to my website especially, it really worked to help keep me top of mind to get me found when someone's looking for an editor. And I reached out to small business owner friends of mine who are essentially solo operators, they run their small business essentially by themselves. Said if you trust me enough as a friend to do SEO for free, to take over your website, and you won't, I won't redesign it. I'll be on the back end and I'll make it SEO optimized so you'll get found more. You deserve to be found because you're working really hard and you're wearing all the hats, and your best years shouldn't be behind you, they should be in front of you. So let's do this, let's apply this SEO to your site that's probably not optimized. Most small business owners' websites are kind of they built it 10 years ago with a designer, and it's like they don't have technical, so they don't want to touch it. They're like, it's this beautiful brochure, and I don't want to touch this thing and break it. And they are very breakable websites, so you have to be very careful when you go in there and you know make sure you know what you're doing. And so I'm happy to go in there with all I know and make those adjustments, a lot of it on the back end, or maybe it's on maybe it's on page and it's just like a word change, like a keyword that really is something they're not thinking about, uh an audience segment, right? So we do those things, and then it takes time, also it works better.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And also, uh, you know, like I different want to come here, come down here. Like I wouldn't I I think uh this is the heart of it, not a hack, an actual way of thinking. Like if you're sitting across from an owner who's overwhelmed and skeptical of all of this, AI noise, and you wanted to give them one principle for how

Simple Review Automation That Works

SPEAKER_02 15:18

to bring technology into their business without losing their self. So, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

You know, I love automation. I think it's great. I think it's been really effective, for instance, at the base level of just getting more reviews. If you have customers that you serve in high volume, if you serve, if you sell a product, if you have an e-commerce site and you sell you know 50 to 100 a month of your product, or you have a shop and you are service and you service multiple clients per week, if they're not leaving you, if you're not getting one to two new reviews a month, like you can automate that request with just a post-appointment, post-service, post-sale email that's just like, thank you so much for your business. We so appreciate you. If you don't mind, here's a link to leave a Google business profile review or a Yelp review. That would help us so much, help people find us. And you have to send a very high volume of those requests just to get one or two. The percentages of people who actually do it, even if they love you, if they're the best customer ever, it's like two to three percent are gonna do it. So people are not gonna ask a hundred times. They'll get exhausted and business owners are busy, they're not gonna do it. So just having that automated, which is so simple. It's complicated to set up. Like it's every business is different, how they, you know, have their whatever technology that they already have in place to not have them pay money, not have them, you know, create a new system. It's just like hopefully we can work with the tools that you already have, or if you don't have any tools, integrate with we use Go High Level, which is really powerful and a fantastic platform. Um, it comes included in our services. We just have a really low monthly price for, for instance, getting more reviews. It's just an email that goes out, and then you can pay a little more. You can do uh text messages as well, which are great. And that's a really simple automation and it really works. And so the clients that have we've like essentially doubled their reviews because they've been in business for 10 years and they only have 25 reviews, now they have 50 within four months. When Google sees, oh wow, real people are loving this business, like and they're leaving a review, that really improves your SEO. It really, it really brings you to page one. And when you put out new content, if you're, for instance, in on our SEO tier and you're putting out a blog or you're posting a new service page, that gets ranked higher because Google is like, this is a reputable source because people like it and they've been in business for a while and they are legit and they have authority. So all that is brought to the brought to the fore by reviews. And I think that's a really simple automation that can be run. It's not super complicated. It doesn't overhaul what you have. So we're happy to work within the tool set that you have, or if you need additional tools, we're not trying to charge you an arm and a leg for that tool access.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Exactly. Exactly true. So yeah, and also like uh if I just ask that, I mean here here's the part nobody talks about on the marketing uh podcasts the setbacks, the owner who tries the tools and gets discouraged or grows for a while and then stalls, or finally gets busy and burns out anyway. So you have watched a lot of businesses go through the long middle. So how do you help someone stay with it when growth gets hard? And

Staying Steady Through Peaks And Valleys

SPEAKER_02 18:28

I mean the shine wears off. So what do you say?

SPEAKER_00 18:33

No, absolutely. Like no one just takes off like a rocket ship. I think everyone looks at those success stories of people who have gone on Shark Tank and pitched a product and it takes off and it's in every big box store, or they pitch it, they create a TikTok account, and then the first five posts, something explodes, and then they're a millionaire. That is an edge case, that's a unicorn, that is not the average business owner. The average business owner is just grinding it out, trying to stay in business another month, and you got to build it day by day. You got to build it brick by brick. And I think being with that business owner as a growth partner, as someone who is alongside for the good and the bad, is really invaluable. I think they so appreciate that you're transparent with them and you say, hey, yes, traffic took a hit this month or sales are down, but we're working hard to do what we can do to improve it, to turn it around. And I know you got this. I know we're gonna everyone goes through peaks and valleys. I think when I started, I saw in the data, like they would have big peaks, like big months, and then big valleys. Like they just do drop and be like, what happened here? Now I'm what we're trying to do is just make a really gentle hill. So they have their big months, but then it's not a big crash. It's just like back to a kind of an average, which is good. And everyone goes through that. I go through that too, where I have insane months that I'm like, I'm so happy and everything's working well, and then other months where I'm like, where's the business? Where's the clients? Why isn't it working? It's just that's just natural. That's just you know how life goes. And so, yeah, when it gets tough, you just gotta. I kind of like to preach that like you have to do something positive. You have to action create reaction, right? Yeah. Just don't don't completely veer off the course. Don't do something that's gonna disrupt everything because it's like, I gotta mix it up. Just incrementally improve the business so that when you look back, that you all the work, all the little changes that you've done, all the little improvements, even just little micro tests you can do. Like, what if I added this page to my website? Or what if I added, what if I changed the call to action instead of you know it being this, now it's this and it's a little softer, it's a little more inviting. Does that invite more clicks, all that kind of stuff? Then you can look in the data and say, like, did it work or did it not? But it doesn't disrupt everything. It's worth trying. And hopefully it does lead to you know incremental positive change so that you do see like a nice sloping success story. There are certainly moments where you've like hit a light bulb moment where you're like, I did this one thing and it really, really worked, and like now we're gonna triple down on it. That absolutely happens too. So it is a journey. It is something that is, you know, you're grinding it out alongside with them, and you just got to be positive. So if you have to give one advice to the listeners today, what that can

About Page Fixes And Final Takeaway

SPEAKER_00 21:07

be? If you have your own website, you have to have an about page. That's my go-to, easiest piece of advice. If you don't have an about page that's like comprehensive, like that says who you are, what you do very clearly, and where you do it, what location you are in, that is the key information that Google needs to figure out where to place you. So if someone searches, you know, IT specialist near me and you are near them, then you show up, right? And the about page is generally where they're gonna go. If you don't have an about page, add it. If you do have one, take a look at it. See, like, is it really slight? Does it have like five sentences or does it have five paragraphs? Because the more information you can put on that about page that tells you and your story and what you do, what you just that's a little different or special, that really helps the algorithms figure out how to how to figure where you lay in the landscape of your niche. So that is a really easy, actionable piece of advice. And then the second one is get more reviews. It's not easy if you're doing it manually just to ask a million people to leave your review. It's much better just to automate it. So those are the two like simple things that can have a really big impact on your visibility.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

So where can listeners find you?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

My website is clientmagnetcrm.com. On social, we're at clientmagnet CRM on most platforms. And you can connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Drew Dornfest. Happy to chat anytime.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

So, to listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for your easy reference. And um, I have to say uh thank you so much to today. It's really rare to hear someone talk about the tools and the human side with equal care. And I think that's uh exactly what people needed today. So thank you so much for that. And for everyone who is listening right now, maybe we will listen later as well. So if you have been feeling the pull to grow, but also fear of losing yourself in it, right? Just take a breath. You don't have to choose between building something bigger and staying human inside it. One thing this week that's been quietly draining you and let it go to the machine. Keep your energy for the people that's where your business actually lives. So, with this hope, this is your host of week, and this is Mind Meets Machine. I'll see you next time on the next episode. Thank you so much.