Slideshow with Dave Hayward, Ep 15, Season 2 (#28)
Episode links
Ask Google for the best plumber in Avondale and its AI overview hands you a shortlist. Most of the plumbers on it aren’t the ones ranking first.
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Kim Voon runs Insight Online, a performance marketing agency for service businesses with lots of locations: carpet cleaners, locksmiths and plumbers with five to 50 sites. Back for a second conversation, he explains what’s changed. Most Google searches now end without a click. AI tools now sit beside Google, and they still need answers from somewhere. That somewhere, as Kim puts it, will still be your website. So future-proofing it is two jobs: structure it so bots can read it, and say something only you can say, because AI-generated content is the average of everything it already knows.
Then the local playbook. As soon as you step online you’re competing with the world, so Kim’s advice is to own a tiny piece of it, like the drain layer who owns West Auckland. Show the jobs you’ve done in each suburb, collect local reviews, run local ads, and get your offline reputation (sponsorships, the trust board, awards) online. That’s how Kim’s team helped a dental group grow from three clinics to 13. And the 50-location client from his first episode cut back to two sites, got the numbers right, and is now scaling state by state.
The second half is for anyone working out where AI fits in their work: taking an agency into Claude Code, why managing your cognitive load has become the real skill, and why most AI rollouts stall for human reasons. They finish on taste, failure, and why Dave reckons Kim is more Cézanne than Picasso.
Links and things
Slideshow with Dave Hayward podcast links:
Produced by Europa Creative Partners
Chapters
00:00 Number one on Google, missing from the AI answer
01:00 Welcome to the zero-click era
04:15 AI overviews, ChatGPT and the bait and switch
07:30 Authority, and owning a tiny niche
11:00 AI search is small for now. Your website still matters.
13:00 Future-proofing: structure for bots, uniqueness for authority
15:30 The unrenovated house: owning your local patch
18:30 From 3 dental clinics to 13
20:30 AI is making work simpler, and more tiring
25:30 Inside Kim’s AI transformation, level by level
31:15 Dave’s AI wake-up call
32:45 Most AI rollouts stall. It’s a people problem.
37:45 Insight’s bet on the businesses that keep the country running
40:30 Don’t let AI do your thinking
42:30 Cut the admin, limit the choices
46:00 Taste, failure, and Picasso versus Cézanne
50:15 50 locations, cut back to two
Mentioned in this episode
Kim’s first Slideshow episode: https://youtu.be/Yuuhy2BE4Rk
Kim’s zero-click numbers (SparkToro, 2026, US data): https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/
AI search is growing alongside Google (Similarweb): https://aisearch.similarweb.com/blog/is-ai-replacing-search/
Section, where Dave’s AI journey started: https://www.sectionai.com/
Ed Ortega on Slideshow: https://youtu.be/o9eb43tEsGA
The “95% of AI projects see no return” figure is MIT’s: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/18/generative_ai_zero_return_95_percent
The study of 51 AI deployments that did work is Stanford’s. Kim folded two good reports into one, which is very efficient of him: https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publication/enterprise-ai-playbook/
Cory Doctorow on centaurs and reverse centaurs (now a book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI): https://locusmag.com/2025/09/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/
Amazon warehouse injuries: Dave said four times the rate, the data says about twice. Still not a great look: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers-suffer-serious-injuries-at-twice-rate-of-rivals.html
Obama’s grey and blue suits. Dave warned he’d get the details wrong, but the suits are right: https://www.npr.org/2012/09/11/160898373/inside-obamas-decisions-from-libya-to-lunch
Ira Glass on the gap between your taste and your work: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/ira-glass-on-storytelling
Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, “Hallelujah”: Picasso, Cézanne and Leonard Cohen: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/hallelujah
The theory behind it, David Galenson’s Old Masters and Young Geniuses: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691133805/old-masters-and-young-geniuses
And the credits app Kim couldn’t name is probably ClassPass.
Keywords
Kim Voon, Insight Online, AI search, AEO, answer engine optimisation, SEO, local SEO, Google AI overviews, zero-click search, paid search, multi-location businesses, franchise marketing, Claude Code, AI adoption, Slideshow with Dave Hayward
FAQ (for humans and search engines)
Why isn't my business in Google's AI overview when I rank first?
Kim tested this live, searching for the best plumber in Avondale. The AI overview recommended a shortlist of plumbers, and most weren’t the ones ranking first. AI answers lean on how much authority a business has across many sources, so ranking alone no longer guarantees you’re the one it recommends.
Is AI search replacing Google?
Not yet. Kim sees search splitting across Google, Instagram, ChatGPT and Gemini, the way it once moved from the Yellow Pages to Google. Visits to AI tools are still small next to traditional search, but they’re growing, and most people who use ChatGPT still use Google too.
How do I future-proof my website for AI search?
Kim splits it into two jobs. The technical one: schema, a clear information architecture and content structured in logical ways, because, as he puts it, robots are still robots. The content one: offer knowledge and experience that can’t be found anywhere else, because AI-generated content is the average of everything it already knows.
How should a franchise or multi-location business get found locally?
Own your area before you chase the country. Feature the jobs you’ve done in each suburb, local testimonials and the community work you already do, like sponsoring the local sports team, and back it with local ads. Kim’s team used this approach as a dental group grew from three clinics to 13.
Should a multi-location business launch its marketing everywhere at once?
Kim’s advice is to start slower. A client with about 50 locations cut back to two, built more robust systems, and worked out how many clicks lead to enquiries and how many enquiries lead to sales. With that equation in hand, it’s now scaling state by state.
