Your next customer could be asking AI whom to hire. Does your business make the shortlist?
That's the question I'm building my advisory and marketing agency around.
Some days I love what I'm building. Other days I think, "This sucks, and I should quit/get a job/hide from my friends."
This is me saying this. A person who's been said to have "no quit."
I've spent my career in strategy, product marketing, and business development. I've had four exits, including my own as a founder. I've spent millions on Meta and Google ads, and I know what it feels like to watch money leave an account faster than customers arrive.
Paid ads have their place. I use them for clients. But I'm tired of watching business owners "pay the man" without getting a return.
The promised land? Someone describes exactly what they need, and your business is recommended. A multi-day guided trip through Utah. An aesthetics practice on Maui. A strategic advisor who can actually implement the plan.
I want my clients in those answers.
Getting them there starts with something surprisingly basic. Can the systems making the recommendation read your website?
What you see on your screen isn't necessarily what a crawler can access. Service descriptions, credentials, and customer reviews that make your business worth considering may be hard for some search and AI systems to find.
Here are a few things worth checking:
Important copy that loads only through JavaScript in the browser, without a server-rendered or prerendered version.
Menus, pricing, or service descriptions available only as images.
Essential information inside third-party widgets, with no readable version on your own pages.
Content fetched only after someone clicks a tab or "load more."
Information you want discovered sitting behind a login.
Videos without accompanying text.
Hosting or security settings that block the search crawlers you want to reach.
These are things to inspect, not automatic disqualifiers. Having a booking widget or using JavaScript doesn't make your whole site invisible. But "it looks great on my phone" is not a discoverability test.
Sometimes the fix is straightforward. Sometimes rebuilding the site is the better option.
That's part of what I do: rebuild websites so people can understand why they should choose you, and search and AI systems can access the information that supports that choice.
With AI agents helping me build, I can move unbelievably fast. My years in strategy and marketing guide what we say, what we build, and what we ask a prospective customer to do next.
I love this part. I can take a business problem, work out the strategy, and actually build the thing. For someone who has spent her career getting things done, that's deeply satisfying.
Then the website launches. And the work continues.
Being readable doesn't automatically make you worth recommending. Your site needs to answer the questions your buyers ask. It needs to explain who you serve, what you offer, and why you're a good fit. Your claims need evidence.
The information elsewhere matters, too. Reviews. Relevant directories. Coverage in publications your industry respects. What sources come up when you research your category, and does your business have a presence there?
This is where strategy, content, and PR connect with the technical work.
The measurement is imperfect. We can track referral traffic from ChatGPT and resulting inquiries when tracking is in place. We can't reliably see every recommendation that influenced someone before they searched your name or picked up the phone.
I can identify barriers, improve the information available about a business, and track what changes. I can't guarantee that an AI will recommend it.
And this is where running the agency gets hard.
I'm explaining to business owners why a website they already paid for may need to be rebuilt. Why launching it doesn't mean they're finished. Why the reputation they've spent years earning may not come through when someone asks AI whom to hire.
I understand why they wish the answer were simpler. Some days, so do I.
I'm selling a service some people don't know they need, helping solve a problem they may not have noticed yet. And then I wonder why some days are hard.
The industry calls this GEO: generative engine optimization. You don't need to love the acronym. You do need to consider what happens when a prospective buyer asks for a recommendation, and your business isn't part of the answer.
That's the selection economy. A customer may be forming a shortlist before they ever visit your website.
I know how much work goes into building a business worth choosing. I want that work to count when someone asks, "Whom do you recommend?"
That's why I'm building this. Even on the days I want to hide from my friends.
Try this today. Ask ChatGPT or Claude, with web search enabled, to recommend a business like yours. Describe what your buyer needs—the service, location, and priorities—but leave your business name out.
Are you in the answer?
One answer isn't a verdict. But it's a useful place to start.
If you're missing, send me what you asked and what came back. Let's talk about how to make your business easier to find, and choose.
Until next time,
Susan Pieper
Founder, Claimed
Strategic Advisor & AI-Native Builder
susan@susanpieper.com