Does Your Agency Sell Work That AI Does for Free? with Tom Lee | Ep #909

AI is not replacing SEO. It is exposing which agencies were only selling execution in the first place.

In this episode, Tom Lee breaks down why generative engine optimization (GEO) is becoming the next layer of search visibility and what marketing agency founders must understand before AI reshapes client expectations. He explains why most agencies are approaching AI visibility incorrectly, why recycled AI-generated content will fail, and how founder-led agencies can reposition themselves around strategic thinking rather than commoditized execution.

The deeper conversation is not about tools. It is about value creation. Agencies that continue charging for production work alone will face compression. Agencies that own strategic clarity, semantic positioning, and original expertise will become significantly more valuable.

What You'll Learn

• Why GEO builds on top of SEO instead of replacing it
• What the Anthropic AI automation research actually means for agencies
• Why execution-based digital agency models are becoming vulnerable
• How AI evaluates content differently than traditional search engines
• The concept of "semantic space" and why it matters for visibility
• Why AI-generated summaries alone will never create authority
• How to turn client expertise into citation-worthy content
• The structural difference between agencies selling labor vs. judgment
• How founder-led agencies can reposition before AI commoditizes delivery
• Why strategic thinking becomes more valuable as execution gets automated

Key Takeaways

• AI is compressing execution work, not strategic judgment.
• GEO is an extension of SEO, not a replacement for it.
• Agencies that rely on production retainers alone are increasingly exposed.
• Original expertise and proprietary insight are becoming the most valuable forms of content.
• AI visibility depends on semantic authority, not keyword density alone.
• Repackaging existing content with AI creates noise, not differentiation.
• Founder-led expertise must be extracted, documented, and distributed systematically.
• Agencies that understand AI training ecosystems will create stronger long-term authority.
• The future advantage belongs to agencies that help clients shape perception, not just rankings.
• Strategy becomes premium as execution becomes commoditized.

Are you still optimizing your agency's content for Google while your clients are getting their answers from AI? Are you charging for the execution that AI is about to make obsolete, while giving away the strategy that commands real fees?

Today’s featured guest works with agencies navigating the shift from traditional search to generative engine optimization. He’ll talk about what the Anthropic research actually says about how much of the work agencies do today can be automated, how AI reads content differently than Google does, and the practical steps any agency can take right now to show up in AI-generated answers before competitors figure it out.

Tom Lee is an AI search and SEO specialist and co-founder of Visto, a platform that helps agencies build the visibility and optimization layer for the AI search era. Tom and his team advise agencies on generative engine optimization, or GEO, and how to position their clients to show up in AI-generated answers across platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews.

His background includes working inside large enterprise companies including Apple and Walmart, where he managed SEO at scale. He now works directly with SEO and GEO agencies helping them build the strategic frameworks and content systems that translate traditional search authority into AI visibility.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Is your value proposition still execution?

• Why GEO does not replace SEO

• Repackaging existing content will get you nowhere

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

What the Anthropic Research Actually Says

Tom referenced an Anthropic study published earlier this year that mapped out the theoretical automation potential across industries. For software development, AI can already handle around 35% of code generation, with a theoretical ceiling of 97%. For business and marketing functions including SEO, that ceiling is 94%. In his view, those numbers are not a reason to panic, but they are a reason to get clear on which part of the work you are actually selling.

The agencies at risk are the ones whose value proposition is execution. Writing the content, building the links, pulling the reports: if that is what you are charging for, you are in the category that AI is actively compressing. The agencies that will hold their ground and grow their fees are the ones charging for judgment. Which topics to chase. Which content gaps matter. How to translate client expertise into something AI will actually cite. That is the 6% that automation cannot touch, and it is also the highest-margin work in the engagement.

GEO Is Built on Top of SEO, Not Instead of It

Something that gets lost in the noise around AI search is that GEO does not replace SEO. It extends it. Showing up in Google search results is still the foundation. What has changed is that showing up is no longer enough. AI reads content the way a human being reads it, evaluating whether the argument is convincing and whether the source is credible, not just whether the right keywords appear in the right density. That changes what good content has to do.

The practical starting point Tom recommends is mapping what he calls the semantic space for a client:

Identifying what topic areas people are actually raising in AI conversations that the client should be part of.

From there, you translate that semantic space into specific prompts, run those prompts across the major AI platforms, and audit what comes back. Who is being cited? Where is the client showing up and where are they absent? What content is AI pulling from competitors that the client has not produced yet? That gap analysis is the strategic deliverable that commands real fees. It is also the work that no AI tool will do for you, because it requires knowing what the client actually wants to be known for.

Why Repackaging Existing Content Gets You Nowhere

Once you’re clear about the topics your audience is looking for, there’s something that will for sure not work the way many think it does. When you identify a content gap and ask AI to fill it, you get repackaged information drawn from the same sources the AI already used to generate the gap. That content does not move anything forward. AI knows where it got the data from. Recycled information does not earn citations.

What earns citations is new data, original perspective, and subject matter expertise that advances the conversation rather than summarizing what already exists.

The 5 step system Tom uses with his clients:

1. Identify the content gaps

2. Build a specific set of questions tied to those gaps

3. Send those questions to a subject matter expert at the client

4. Have them record a Loom or voice memo answering freely

5. Use AI to transcribe and chunk that recording into content

The raw material is original. The expertise is real. The content that comes out earns its place in the semantic space rather than competing with what is already there.

Your Clients Are Training AI. Are You Helping Them Do It Right?

The broader point running through this conversation is one that matters whether you run an SEO agency or not. AI systems are being trained on open-source content: social media posts, forum conversations, podcast transcripts, FAQ pages, markdown-formatted content. Every piece of content a client publishes is either building their presence in that training data or failing to. Agencies that understand this and can show clients where they are absent, who is filling that space instead, and what it would take to reclaim it, are in a fundamentally different conversation than agencies still talking about keyword rankings.

The founders who will build authority in this environment are the ones creating real content from real expertise, showing up broadly enough to be present in the long tail of AI conversations, and charging for the strategic thinking that makes all of it coherent. The execution is becoming a commodity. The strategy never was.

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