In this power-packed episode, Jeff Ross is joined by branding visionary and digital marketing veteran Mark de Grasse. Together, they explore how AI is transforming branding, how to future-proof your business in a noisy online world, and why trust, consistency, and leadership matter more than ever. With a heart for family and servant-led leadership, Mark brings practical wisdom and fresh fire for entrepreneurs navigating this next digital frontier.
1️⃣ Branding Starts with Vision, Not a Logo
Leaders must define a clear, measurable, and ambitious vision—AI can’t brand what you haven’t led.
2️⃣ AI is for Robot Work, Not Human Work
Let AI handle the repetitive tasks. Keep the human at the heart of creativity, relationships, and strategy.
3️⃣ Trust Is the New Currency
In a world flooded with AI-generated content, consistency, authenticity, and transparency are the keys to trust.
4️⃣ From Paid Media to Product Excellence
We’re shifting from mass paid traffic to brand-driven ambassadorships and product-led growth.
5️⃣ Micro Influencers + AI = The Future of Marketing
Your brand’s best promoters are everyday legends with 1K–10K followers who actually believe in what you offer.
💡 “We’ve been acting like robots for too long. AI finally lets us get back to being human.” – Mark de Grasse
💡 “AI plus heart is your superpower—it’s not about replacement, it’s about elevation.” – Jeff Ross
💡 “Your brand isn’t what you say it is—it’s what people feel when they see your name. Make it consistent.” – Mark de Grasse
🔥 Ready to brand smarter with AI + heart? Share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur building a legacy of trust.
🔥 Want to future-proof your message? DM Jeff for access to the Laptop Lifestyle Dads Academy—where freedom meets systems and storytelling.
🔥 Subscribe, review, and drop a dad joke—we’ll read the best one next week!
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▶️ YouTube: Laptop Lifestyle Dads Channel
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🧠 Stay caffeinated. Stay legendary. And remember—your brand is a leadership tool, not just a logo.
This is Jeff Ross, signing off with Mark de Grasse for another legendary episode of The Laptop Lifestyle Dad Show. 🎙️🦘
Jeff Ross (00:00) Well, good day legends and welcome back to the Laptop Lifestyle Dad Show. Hey, this is proudly brought to you by the Los Angeles Tribune Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jeff Ross, proud father of three energetic boys coming to you from the beautiful island of Tasmania, Australia. Hey, this is the show where we help network marketers, affiliate marketers, entrepreneurs and online legends, AI, attraction marketing and social selling so you can finally build a business that works for you, not the other way around.
A quick pulse check. Does your brand feel like it's fading into the noise? Are you feeling overwhelmed by AI and not sure how to use it effectively? Are you ready to stand out, scale up and lead with purpose? If so, get ready because today's episode is going to be a rocket-fueled deep dive into the future of branding, leadership and digital growth. Today we've joined with none other than Mark Degrassi.
CEO of a branding, AI Branding Academy and former president of digitalmarketer.com. Yes, digital marketer. Mark has worked with over 120,000 entrepreneurs helping them build brands, grow audiences and now harness the power of AI for authentic influence. He's a leader in this space, a marketing powerhouse, a true innovator when it comes to what's next in this space.
Mark, welcome to the LaptopLights.net show.
Mark De Grasse (01:29)
Hey, thanks for having me, Jeff.
Jeff Ross (01:31)
So Mark, for our audience, I'd to, and personally too, I'd love to get to know you a bit better. what's your two minute story?
Mark De Grasse (01:39)
let's see, I've been, in small business or business management for about 20 years. it's been an adventure. I've always worked with smaller businesses, but it's ranged from, tech to fitness to, marketing, of course. And then, now I work a lot with like marketing education. but it's been a 20 year journey. I'm, you know, tired, now, but then I've also built a family in the meantime.
Jeff Ross (02:03)
Ha ha.
Mark De Grasse (02:06)
so it's, it's been an adventure, but it's, know, lately, I'm, kind of transitioning into again, where I started where we when I started in business, it was the early two thousands and the internet was new. And, we're basically back there again, where the AI is, is just as new, if not more game changing than the internet, in my opinion, which is why I spent so much time teaching it now.
Jeff Ross (02:06)
Yep.
Hmm
Mm.
Mmm.
Yeah, I love that. And you've also got a podcast yourself. Tell us a little bit about that one.
Mark De Grasse (02:35)
Yeah, my podcast, Dads in Autism Land, was kind of a passion project, but it's rapidly become kind of my most successful brand or fastest growing brand at least that I've ever been part of. And it's fantastic because I just get to connect with other dads. I have two sons. My son Damien is 12 and he's severely autistic, nonverbal. And then I have another son, Declan, who's 10 months younger, 11, and he's neurotypical, but very special in his own way.
It's an adventure.
Jeff Ross (03:06)
Beautiful. I love the, how you've turned the circumstance into a purpose and a mission to be able to serve other dads in that space and just connect. Like that's a beautiful heart. My son, my younger son's got ADHD like right off the Richter scale. And my oldest son actually got diagnosed with MS about 18 months. So it's been a journey. Parenting's fun, right?
Mark De Grasse (03:26)
So well.
It is.
It's kind of funny because you never think you're going to be like, oh, am I going to have a special needs child? Like that wasn't something you even think about. You're like, oh no, it's just going be normal, normal family, whatever you kind of grew up with as your expectation. And then it's really different, but it's not bad. A lot of people think, nothing to be pitied.
Jeff Ross (03:38)
Yeah.
Mmm.
No.
No, definitely not. actually like to think to say it's not necessarily special needs, it's super abilities. know, some of our kids with neurodivergence and that sort of thing have got such amazing abilities when you just get past the expectation of what normal should look like, right?
Mark De Grasse (03:57)
Mm.
Yeah, well, it's that plus it gives other people an opportunity to grow too. I mean, I think I'm the way I am now because both my sons, but specifically, Damien who has special needs has forced me to get out of my shell in so many different ways. And that kind of growth would have been impossible without him around.
Jeff Ross (04:15)
Yes.
Mmm.
Yeah, well said. Cool. All right, let's get back into AI and branding. So Mark, you've spent years at the forefront of digital marketing. You know, like one of the early, early pioneers. I got into it in 2010 and I still feel like sometimes I was a late adopter getting in. But man, this AI space, like it's fun, it's cutting edge. So what inspired you to launch AI Branding Academy and how do you see it impacting the branding space in the next 12 to 24 months?
Mark De Grasse (04:44)
Super early.
You know, there's some industries where AI is going to be extremely pivotal and marketing is one of those where a lot of the tasks that you do as a marketer aren't necessarily because, you know, that's your expertise. You're an awesome strategist. You're an awesome, know, at analytics, all these different things. Most of the job is just, just repetitive work, you know? And what I saw with AI was I was like, my gosh, this tool.
Jeff Ross (05:16)
Mm.
Mark De Grasse (05:26)
can do so much of the stuff that doesn't add to the act of marketing, but has to get done. And so I really saw for my industry specifically, I'm like, this is going to be a game changer. This is going to revolutionize the way we do it. And what I saw was that branding was the essential component that's actually missing from most people's marketing programs, but it's going to be increasingly vital as AI starts taking over everything else.
Jeff Ross (05:53)
I could totally relate to that. I said, I've been in the game since 2010 and I've read all the books, know, Storybrand, Dotcom Secrets, you know, I was actually a certified partner with a digitalmarketer.com for a little while there. So, you know, I've done all the courses, I've done all the training, but one of the areas that I personally struggled and I always had to outreach, you know, delegate was around branding and copywriting. You know, in this last two, three years, I've been able to just go do that myself now and, you know, really,
Mark De Grasse (05:59)
Mm-hmm.
nice.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jeff Ross (06:23)
you know, launched the laptop lifestyle dads like the caffeinated kangaroo that I have on my logo. You know, that was inspired by AI. I basically got it to say, I need to come up with a fresh, exciting, you know, phrase to share how excited I am, not just be cliche, like I'm fired up, I'm pumped up, I'm excited. So I gave AI a bit of a prompt and I mimicked, you know, Steve Irwin, know, Crikey's Terry, look at this marvelous specimen.
Mark De Grasse (06:27)
the
Yeah
Jeff Ross (06:51)
And it came up with, I'm as excited as the caffeinated kangaroo bounced on trampoline. So the caffeinated kangaroo was born off the back of that. And the creativity and the energy and the uniqueness of that brand has just elevated everything over the last couple of years. And that's all thanks to AI. So that's what you're talking about, right?
Mark De Grasse (06:55)
That's great.
Oh yeah. Well, and further than that, like what I saw when I worked is I worked in a lot of different positions with the market. I was a marketing manager, a marketing director, fractional CMO, had my own agency. So I've been through all the things within marketing. And the biggest issue I always had was that we were always working from scratch. You know, you go into a business, you're like, Hey, I'm going to do your marketing. And then it's like, okay, well, what do you want to do? And it had nothing to do with the brand most of the time.
Jeff Ross (07:13)
You
Mmm.
Mmm.
Mark De Grasse (07:38)
Even if say you hire like a social media company and I saw this over and over again, where somebody hires a social media company. Hey, do my social media. I don't care what you do. Just go do stuff. And so the social media company has to say, okay, well, you're not giving me a guideline. So I guess I'll just do my best. And then they get fired. And this is why you see this churn constantly happening in, marketing. so I didn't recognize what they, I was no, this is our chance to be.
Jeff Ross (07:47)
Mmm.
Mark De Grasse (08:02)
more on brand to be more consistent than any time in history, because it's not up to a person making decisions all the time. It's just, Hey, what's my brand like? Let me set up my brand parameters. And now AI can tell me what to do when it comes to building my website, when it comes to doing a marketing campaign, when it comes to setting up your booth for a trade show or a million different marketing tasks. It's not a, let's do a brainstorming session. It's a, Hey, let's look at our brand, what we're trying to achieve and
just have AI tell us based on those parameters, what should we do? So for like you, you know, and I love the, you know, the imagery of what you've done. And it says a ton about what your podcast is. Now you can just take those elements and say, Hey, how do I do a press release that's on brand based on these branding parameters? And how do I do an ad campaign and how do I do a social post? And then all of these touch points that would have been lost because they were outsourced to somebody else and then custom to that individual doing stuff.
are now centralized in one spot. And now we could do consistent marketing or consistent branding. Like you see Nike do, or you see Tesla, or you see Amazon, or these big companies that have either a crazy person in charge that doesn't let anybody go off brand or billions of dollars. And then you just have resources to make it happen. So AI makes everybody, it makes it available to everybody.
Jeff Ross (09:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I've just been engaged as the head of tech for the Los Angeles Tribune. And, and, um, you know, now sitting down with them and, you know, falling back on my experience there with, with Brian and digital market around, you know, the customer value journey and doing the audits and all of that sort of thing, man, what I used to take me like, feel like days to go and do a deep dive audit. I can now do in the matter of mere minutes. And, um, you know, but not just that, like it's now like giving me a second brain to be able to bring in things that I would never even thought of.
Mark De Grasse (09:47)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Ross (09:55)
as that strategist, the, you know, to pull it all together and give us a cohesive, you know, three, six month plan to roadmap it out and then just get into build phase. And, you know, this is where I say AIs plus our heart equals our superpower, right? I don't ever feel like AI is going to be a complete replacement. We definitely need to keep the human in the loop. But let's talk about that. What are your thoughts around, you know, AI and, you know, replacement versus leverage and amplification and all that?
Mark De Grasse (10:10)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
I usually describe it as robot work versus human work and robot work is stuff that robots are good at. So it's pattern recognition, it's information organization, it's tracking, it's all programmed junk. And the problem is that we, the humans have been being the program. So we've been acting like robots when we're doing data entry, when we're copying and pasting something from here and putting it over here and
Jeff Ross (10:28)
Mmm.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm. The boring stuff.
Yeah.
Mark De Grasse (10:51)
The boring crap, nothing is being
added by a human being involved. Actually, most of the time something's being taken away because the human gets tired. The human's bored. The human doesn't have enough time. And so those things that have to happen, even though they're super boring process crap gets lost. Now what humans are good at is what I call human work. It's being creative. It's relationship management. It's being innovative, trying to come up with new ways to do stuff.
Jeff Ross (10:57)
Mmm.
Mark De Grasse (11:18)
That's what keeps us entertained. That's what makes us happy. And essentially what AI is doing is just taking away the robot work. You can assign an AI people work, but the results going to be crap most of the time. And you know, what do want people to do? know, it's not AI isn't people. And even if it got, say, let's say they got epically great, it still doesn't have your life experience. It still doesn't have your ability to see relationships where
Jeff Ross (11:35)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark De Grasse (11:47)
no relationship between, say, information exists. That's what we're good at. And AI is essentially just freeing us to do the fun stuff.
Jeff Ross (11:57)
I love the distinction, robot versus human work. So there is a place for it to come in and be a replacement, but you've got to discern where that place is, right? Yeah. Nah.
Mark De Grasse (12:06)
Exactly. And it's, not everywhere. You know, it's funny because a lot
of people go straight to customer care. Like, yeah, I get a fire. My customer care reps. It's like, you're insane. That's the person that's talking to the person giving you money. That's the closest touch point you have and you just assigned it to a robot. Like, are you nuts? So that's why I'm like, no, assign that to your admin. Like if you want to get rid of people, not that I advocate for firing anybody, but look at the admins. Like who's doing.
Jeff Ross (12:12)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, empower
your admin and give them the tools to be able to lift up. Yeah, I get it. And so it's high tech.
Mark De Grasse (12:35)
Not much.
Yeah. Well, and then put your,
well, put your money in the customer care reps, like get better. Give them raises, like make them so excited to work in customer care that they keep all of your customers around. Because the other effect of AI is going to be ad rates going higher and higher because it's going to get easier and easier for people to run ads and the competition is going to be up. Yep. So it's all connected.
Jeff Ross (12:44)
Yes.
Yeah, the competition's gonna be increased. Yeah. We're already seeing it.
Yeah. Nah, I love that. But it's high tech, but high humans touch still as well. Like it's not just trying to, you know, get rid of one and replace the other. I think it's elevating both for sure.
Mark De Grasse (13:12)
Yeah. Well, and the problem is that we've, you know, the, big business and you look like insurance companies or healthcare or things like that, where it's just like, try to automate these things that should have been human and it has been catastrophic for the industry. now, now everybody's sick or they're dying or they're going bankrupt. You know, I think it's, I forget the stats, so don't, don't quote me on this, but it's something like 30 or 40 % of bankruptcies are due to medical bills. And it's just like, what?
Jeff Ross (13:26)
Mmm. Mmm.
Mark De Grasse (13:41)
to stay alive? This is nuts.
Jeff Ross (13:43)
Yep.
Yeah, well, look, I was forced onto a disability pension here in Australia at the age of 30. You know, I had a horse jump on my neck. I've got three crushed discs in the back of my neck, my shoulders buggered, the nerve damage. And that's why I got into the whole online marketing world in the first place, because I had to figure out a way to make money from, you know, working from my computer, working from home. And so, yeah, I could tailor relate to that whole journey. So coming back to the, you know, the AI, you know, robot versus human conversation.
I, in a world like, you and love what you touch you on here, you know, it's, essentially it's the ethical conversation is keeping the human in the loop where it needs to be kept in the loop, but looking for those, those admin, those mundane bottleneck task to look at, you know, leveraging AI on those places, but in a world that, you know, talking about branding, especially, you know, I feel like we're at a point in the world where trust as a resource is at extremely low points.
because we've been scammed, we've been pitched, we've been sold, just about everything and anything online these days. So what are your thoughts around, especially around AI, where trust is sort of like on that precipice, how do we maintain trust? How do we maintain transparency? How do we maintain that human connection when AI...
is writing copy, it's generating content, it's running workflows. Like how do we continue to build on that trust and maintain it?
Mark De Grasse (15:16)
You know, it comes back to why I got into branding. It's consistency and it's constant execution of whatever your brand mission is. And what you'll find with most brands is that they're extremely inconsistent. People don't know what you do. They don't know what you're all about. And so you can't trust that. just, you don't know enough. so AI essentially makes it easier to maintain that consistency. But then you get the other issue where it's like, is it real?
Jeff Ross (15:29)
Mm-hmm.
Mark De Grasse (15:44)
You know, if you look at, you know, all the alien stuff online, you're just like crap. There's not that the terminator, but I just mean like there, you know, UFOs everywhere and all these crazy things. And you're like, I don't know if that's real anymore because I could generate any of those things using, you know, runway or a million different tools really instantly. so what's happening is you're having the trust in the information is constantly eroding and it's going to get worse because AI keeps on getting better. So I tell people.
Jeff Ross (15:45)
Mmm.
Terminator or Terminator, Sky Net.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mark De Grasse (16:13)
That's why your networking matters. And that's why your content matters. because if you maintain the consistency with your content and instead of focusing on how do I trick people into buying my product and instead, how do I educate my people so they understand that they're my ideal customer and I have the ideal solution, then now they can trust you because you've educated them on the process. haven't tricked them into doing anything and now you are, you know, well, it's all consistent.
Jeff Ross (16:18)
I love that.
And this is the crux behind it all. This is where I wanted to get to, right? It's really, it's the intent. It's the purpose behind the use of the tool. And I find if your business and your company, your brand is mission focused, like it's servanthood leadership. It's getting out there and creating a greater good, know, an impact, a legacy, you know, type company, then you're gonna look for ways to be able to support that conversation. And AI is a
brilliant tool to be able to support you in that space. But if you're all about just about the sale, if you're all about just the transaction, then you got to look for ways to use AI to essentially manipulate the conversation, right? And so, look, take AI out of the equation. This has been happening for centuries anyway, with regards to sales, and it all comes back down to the heart and the purpose, the intent behind it.
And that was really why I wanted to, you know, I'm having these conversations with people like yourself is just to really explore this deeply, to be able to help people to crumb to that understanding so they can be empowered and equipped to leverage AI as a beautiful tool.
Mark De Grasse (17:49)
Yeah.
Well, and the thing is it has gone on for a while, like the bad marketing, but it got really bad when the internet came around. Cause what happened was, uh, everybody got really dependent on paid media, where it was basically like, Hey, I don't have to have a good product. I don't have to do good customer care. I'm just going to plow it in paid media. I'm going to get new customers all the time. And because paid media was cheaper, I could be profitable and I don't need to give a crap about my customer. But because again,
Jeff Ross (17:57)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Mark De Grasse (18:17)
ad rates are increasing and honestly, everybody's tired of crummy stuff. You know, I always use washers and dryers as the example, because I seem to go through them every three years. I have kids and autism is very messy. So we use it quite a bit, but I remember my parents washer and dryer was the same washer and dryer from like 1983 until the year 2000.
Jeff Ross (18:27)
Yep. Yep.
You grew up with it.
Mark De Grasse (18:42)
Yeah. And then you
give it away or you sell it because it's still a good machine. But what's happened is because there's been this, you know, the, the profit engine has just gone through the roof because of paid media and you could track everything back to it. just let everything else go away. We said F customer care, F product quality, F all these things, because I'll just go get new customers. So what I think this is going to do since now one, everybody's tired of buying cheap crap that breaks all the time.
Jeff Ross (19:04)
Mm.
Mark De Grasse (19:10)
and two ads are getting so expensive that you can't, you might not even be able to be profitable on the initial sale. Now it's going to get back to, okay, well, how do I make a good product so that people, you know, find it good and recommend it to people? How do I give enough care so they could use the product to the best of its ability? And then they're, you know, infatuated. So they come back again. How do I innovate a new product? So they're not just, Hey, you got to replace this piece of crap I sold you, but Hey, this one's.
10 times better and will last 10 times longer. And that's how you get new sales through innovation. So I think the whole situation is going to lead to good products and services again, and a return to how business used to be done.
Jeff Ross (19:52)
come back to the 1950s, I actually quite like that. It sort of strikes a chord with what I've been, I feel like I've been touching on anyway, so for a while, you just confirmed it for me. I really believe that the future of marketing is going to be like, ambassadorship type marketing. You know, where we get affiliates and influencers to really represent us, but they're not gonna want to get behind us. Excuse me, they're not gonna want to get behind us if we're marketing crap. You know, because it's their reputation, it's their, you know,
influence behind it and all that sort of thing to build that trust factor, right? And I'm seeing it in Asia already, like there's companies in China with one influencer, did a 12 hour live and he done $1.7 billion in sales, selling makeup of all products, like this guy. So that's the major end of it. But what I believe is the future of marketing here in this space is the...
Mark De Grasse (20:38)
yeah.
Jeff Ross (20:46)
the micro, the nano influencer, the one who's only got about maybe a thousand followers or 10,000 followers. And that's what I'm all about at the moment is equipping and empowering moms and dads in this space to be able to help them to monetize their social media. But once again, coming back to brands, the company's now is gonna be forced to get back to good products that are quality lasting products because that's what people wanna promote. They wanna be a product of the product, right?
So I don't know, what are your thoughts about this and coming around to it? How do we future proof our brands and our businesses? What would you say are some of the one to two things that business owners need to focus on right now?
Mark De Grasse (21:29)
I think you gotta get your brand down and, your brand, you know, figuring out your brand is not, Hey, let me bring all my people in and let's have a chat and let's vote on it. It's like, no, we're not running democracies here or most businesses are not tomorrow and they shouldn't be. Yeah. You got it. You got to be a leader. And honestly, that's why we, when we were making a new brand, we always say you go with the vision first, like that before you do anything, even the brand name, like you figure out the vision and the vision isn't just like.
Jeff Ross (21:40)
Yeah, it's got to have leadership. Yep.
Mmm.
I love that.
Mark De Grasse (21:56)
I want to save the world. We qualify with two specific elements. It needs to be quantifiable and it needs to be ambitious because if you don't have those two factors in a vision, it's not going to be big enough to encompass the objectives of your employees because, because what happens is if you just say like, well, I want to make a million bucks. Like, I don't care about the, but the boss making a million bucks. Like that, that doesn't do anything for me. And I also don't care about, we're going to save the world.
Jeff Ross (22:10)
Mmm.
too is she was she yeah.
Yeah.
Mark De Grasse (22:24)
That's great. You want to do that, but it doesn't mean anything. What does mean something is, Hey, uh, we're going to change the face of marketing by elevating the brand by certifying 20,000 new marketers in the use of AI by 2027. Like, okay. Now, now you start to get the idea like, wow, that's ambitious 20,000. That's a big number. I know when it's going to be. And I know the point behind it, elevate the marketing profession. now.
You know everything. And now if I hire somebody and they're like, well, want to be, you know, I marketing to be more, you know, more honest. Okay. That fits within my objective that elevates the brand. And so when you start with vision, now you can start to program. Now your slogan comes easy. Now that your mission statement comes easy. Now your core values come easy. And it's not this like, let's, let's brainstorm and put a circle in the middle of the whiteboard and put some post-it notes and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, that's not the job.
I'm specifying the brand. This is the brand. now using AI, I could feed my brand information to it. And now all my decisions get made. How should we onboard employees? Well, let's ask AI based on your core value of elevating the marketing profession. You need people who are honest. You need people who are hardworking. You need people. look, it now it's easier to hire. It's easier to run my, my social media campaigns. It's easier to make graphics.
Everything could be derived from this information. So that's, that's where it starts. It's you know, laying down your, your brand right now and you don't change it. That's the other trick because another thing I see entrepreneurs do. Yeah. They, they be, well, you know what? Things aren't working. Let me change the brand name. Let me change the logo. And it's like, just shot everything you did in the past. Starting over again.
Jeff Ross (24:00)
consistency. Yeah.
Mmm you stop you just start you study again
Mark De Grasse (24:14)
But the fact of the matter is when you assign these tasks of value creation and mission and all these things, when you assign them to other people who aren't the founder, now you just assigned your branding to your HR manager who's going to make that manual based on what they think it should be. And your social media manager is going to do social media the way they think it should be. And so now you just diluted the brand and essentially you're creating 50 brands at the same time. And it's all inconsistent. Yeah. Well, it's all because, know,
Jeff Ross (24:38)
little micros. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark De Grasse (24:42)
fact of the if you don't specify the guidelines for your social media manager and you just say like, you know what, I don't know TikTok, just do TikTok. don't care. Now it's going to be based on whether, you know, Cindy got, you know, coffee spilled on her shirt in the morning. Now she's angry. Now she's mad at the barista and now she does a post that's based on that. It's not based on the campaign. It's not based on the mission of the business. It's based on I'm sour today. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let that influence everything.
And the truth of matter is that happens with owners too. You're making emotional decisions based on your personal finances, on your situation with your car. You're making bad decisions all the time because we're human and that's how we are. But if you can maintain that brand and build everything off of it, now it doesn't matter if you have a bad day. It doesn't matter if you lose your social media manager or your HR manager or whatever happens because the brand is the brand.
It's there. And so this is, this is how you future proof for business. And then you combine that with content creation. And if you want to, could, I could go into my web three theory on how all this stuff is going to come together into, to crypto and NFTs. but you're building an actual brand that has value and can be transferred in the future.
Jeff Ross (25:42)
Yeah.
I think we've to get you back for round two. And what's actually come into mind here is putting myself in the bit of a hot seat here and say, bring in a couple of my brands that I've got that I'm working on and just get your expert opinion if you're open to that. I think that'd be great for the audience to hear some of that sort of micro level coaching. Because my wife and I, we just started an online church 12 months ago. And we hosted one of our first online baptisms.
about November last year. So the guy was up in Queensland, I was down in Tasmania and we did it all virtually by a Zoom. It a pretty amazing experience. So our mission essentially is to transform the one through Jesus' love. And our vision is to simply, you know, to help people to learn how to love themselves, love God and love others, and to help others to do the same thing. So we've called the whole church to today's discipleship community. So I'm just thinking that would be a great
Mark De Grasse (26:31)
Wow, that's cool.
Jeff Ross (26:59)
entity like a great brain to help you to maybe come in and do a round two series here and do some micro hot seat coaching if you're up for that.
Mark De Grasse (27:09)
that sounds like a blast. Yes. I love that. This is terrible. Hey, well, you know, the funny part is like, well, because that would still be personal, like my personal opinion. So what we do at the Academy is we have assessment tools where we're basically like, okay, here's what we said is, is good branding. And we built an AI tool where you just plug in.
Jeff Ross (27:10)
I think it would be a lot of fun. No hold back. No hold back. Let's get into it. Gordon Ramsay style. Gordon Ramsay style.
Yes.
I love that.
Mark De Grasse (27:35)
You know, and I, I
based most things off your website because I'm like, you know, you can say your brand is all these things, but at end of the day, people are going to your website first if they want to learn more about your brand. So that isn't on, on brand, then you've already failed everywhere else, as far as I'm concerned. So we have a tool where you could, and you could just go to the website and do this. It's just put in your website and then you get a score and it just says based on our branding parameters, your score is this. And then now, now we just took the opinion out of it because I could be.
Jeff Ross (27:38)
Mmm.
That's right.
Mark De Grasse (28:05)
You know, I get, could have a bad day and be like, this is crap, Jeff. Yeah. Well, and that's, and that's where, that's where you can get consistent and where now, because we're always so, we always doubt ourselves, right? We're like, wow, you know, I don't know if this is on brand. I don't know if this is going to register with my customer and blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, just ask AI, you know, and, we, teach that too, where we say, okay, here's your customer avatar. This is the ideal person for the service that you're offering.
Jeff Ross (28:05)
Take the emotion out of it, I love that.
Yeah.
Mark De Grasse (28:35)
What do they think about this? And then we build an AI that's powered by all of your customer avatar, you know, parameters. And now you just ask, Hey, customer avatar, or Hey, ideal customer, what do you think of this post? And it's like, Hey, that's crap. It doesn't register with me. And here's why. And now all these questions you have are now gone. They're not gone, but they're, you get an honest opinion. That's not, you know, you asking your, your buddy like, Hey, what do you think of this, John?
John loves you. He's like, that's great. Jeff. It's, love this. You, nailed it.
Jeff Ross (29:08)
Yeah, AI
is biased and it's there to keep you happy,
Mark De Grasse (29:14)
Yeah, well, and their opinion of you is not a stranger's opinion of you. And even if you went to a stranger and you said, Hey, what do you think of this? You're still you. They'll still base their judgment on you personally. so AI basically makes, you know, this kind of mass market testing automatic and really easy to trust.
Jeff Ross (29:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, I love it. Well, I think we could talk all day about this topic, but we're gonna wrap it up. So thank you very much, Mark. It's been an absolute pleasure. You've dropped some amazing gold here on the mic today. So before we go, where can our people find you? How can they connect with Mark and check out everything you're doing and building with AI Branding Academy.
Mark De Grasse (29:58)
Sure, the website's the best place, aibrandy.academy. If you want to learn more about me, have my own, I have another podcast and I have a magazine and I all these things for just the stuff that I do. I do lot of consulting and content creation for other companies. That's just markdegrass.com.
Jeff Ross (30:14)
Thank you very much, Mark. So legends, if you've got value from this one, I know I did and I'm geeking out already and I can't wait to get Mark to come back for that round two. Hey, make sure that you subscribe on your favorite platform. You can find us on Apple, Spotify. We're also hosted in partnership with the Los Angeles Tribune Podcast Network. Make sure that you drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from today's discussion and go and tag a mate who needs to hear this one too. And now we're gonna wrap up, Mark. I did warn you.
We've got to wrap up with a dad joke. So I've been asking Chad, you load it awesome. Well, I've actually been asking Chad to help me to come up with some ammunition and tell you what, some of the parameters I put into it was make sure that dad joke is absolutely cringe worthy, right? It's not a dad joke unless it's cringe worthy. So here's Chad's one. On the topic of AI and branding. So why don't branding experts use AI in the kitchen?
Mark De Grasse (30:45)
Yeah.
I got loaded.
yeah.
Jeff Ross (31:12)
because it keeps automating the seasoning.
Mark De Grasse (31:15)
That's pretty good. Wait, wait. I thought I was going to tell it. you mind if I tell one? All right. All right. If people in the US smile, does that mean that people in Australia, Scalometer?
Jeff Ross (31:18)
Good one Chatty. Yeah let's go. I love it when other people share theirs too.
that's gold, but I'm gonna have to tell my boys that one. Mark, thank you very much mate. For our legends listening in, stay caffeinated, stay legendary, and remember, you were born to lead. This is Geoffrey Ross, signing off.
Mark De Grasse (31:33)
it's terrible. Yeah, no, love that one.