How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT, Claude and Other AI Search Tools

0:00Anya Cheng:10 million impressions from ChatGPT. Zero dollars in ad spend. That's not a typo. That's what today's guest pulled off, and it won her campaign of the year from the American Marketing Association. Anya Cheng spent her career leading product at Meta and eBay. Then she walked away and built Taylor, an AI styling company that dresses busy men so they can get the job, get the date, and close the deal. But here's why this episode matters to you. Anya cracked the new search game. People aren't Googling anymore. They're asking AI. And she figured out how to make her company the answer. If you're building a brand, selling anything, or wondering why your traffic is drying up, this is the playbook.

0:47Anya Cheng:Let's unlock it.

0:59Anya, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you. I think what you're doing is amazing. So just for the listeners here, today is a little different episode here. Today is not about what you're doing in your business or how you're doing it in your marketing. Today is how you show up. how are you looking when you're going into the meetings how are you dressing Anya has created what I think is a phenomenal opportunity for people to be able to get onto a subscription and wear high designer fashion at half the fraction of the cost so Anya all the way from the Silicon Valley working with AI companies and startups stepped out and created Taylor.ai tell us all about that Anya yeah so at Taylor we help people to look great without doing shopping or laundry and how does it work is that we offer AI stylists for people and then send people real clothes for them to rent so unfortunately you are in Vancouver but anyone in the US we people sign up pay a monthly fee and we send them real clothes for them to rent.

2:10And after renting the clothes, they can decide if they want to buy it or just simply wear it for a couple of weeks. Say you travel to New York, you can change your address to New York's hotel. So the clothes are right in the hotel whole weeks that you can look great. And once you're done, return the dirty clothes into a prepaid envelope, give it to hotel lobby. You can go home without doing any laundry. So no more shopping or laundry. I love the concept. And I just want to make sure people understand this. This is basically you can rent high fashion. When we talked about high fashion, we said like it was medium to high, I believe.

2:46It's high quality. It may not be high fashion because sometimes high fashion, they are fashionable, but may not be high quality. So we offer only high quality brands. They might be the most well-known brands such as Johnson & Murphy, Bonovo, Marine Layer, and BYLT Cuts. Or it might be emerging brands that were really cool, that's trendy. Or they might be most well-known, amazing brands in UK, in Canada, in Japan, but not yet available in the US yet. So high quality brands. High quality brands. However, I think it's important to discuss this first is you get on and you get a consultation of your look.

3:29So if you're someone who's going through, say, I don't know what my vibe is, or I'm going through a brand, a new brand change, or I'm trying to find a style. I see all these people with cool style. How do I get style? You'll sit with one of your brand consultants. Is that correct? That's right. So we have a few human stylists behind. And then behind their workflow, there is obviously powerful AI to help those human stylists. But for customers to interact with a professional stylist who have 10 years of experience, and then those stylists to talk to you and figure out what is best for you, like getting a job, getting a day or close a deal.

4:12Most important is for people about their goals. We help our customer to achieve their goals. For example, go to a conference. One of our customers, he say, I want to close a deal there. And our stylist decide to send him a dolphin print shirt. He's like, what? Why? Our customers are like, give it a try. For conferences, it's all about conversation opener. And he will close. People stop. I say, nice shirt, interesting shirt. And they start a conversation. And of course, he close the deal. And that's what we do to help people achieve their goals. It was very unique in really understanding what it is you're trying to achieve.

4:50Find the style to adopt to that. and then sending the clothes and then wearing it and then shipping it back. Yeah, it's a little bit like your Ubers, right? You get on Uber, you get off Uber, someone else get on Uber. Like your Airbnb rides, you drive to stay, you get out of it, you check out Airbnb, someone else checking. So instead of buying everything, nowadays we don't buy DVD anymore. We open Netflix show. We watch a show whenever we want to. Assets versus ownership. Spotify. We listen to the podcast. We don't record a CD anymore from the Vogue Unlocked shows. But now we can listen anytime we want.

5:35So it's the same concept. But then we apply for fashion. So people don't have to store lots of clothes at home. But there's always something that they can wear and always looks great and saving time. So I'm always playing skeptic because I'm always thinking about someone who's driving their car right now, listening to this podcast. I'm thinking about you and you're thinking, what in the world? Like I would never wear used clothes. Or maybe they're thinking what I was thinking is like that I'm going to New York next week. And actually, I'm already thinking about what am I going to wear? I'm like, I don't want to wear.

6:08I don't want to pack that. I want to just pack. I don't want to do a check in. But if I have to bring the suit and all this stuff, I got to check in the bags, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you just said, oh, yeah, we can just send it there. What happens when you send the clothes there? I get there, but the clothes don't fit or they don't fit as well. What happens in that scenario? Yeah. So if you're really afraid, say you are first time customer, like just use the first time, you can always we can always ship it to your home and you decide you want to bring to a conference. We are the subscription.

6:41So usually, if for the first time you are not knowing you enough, sometimes customers say, I'm definitely size million and I think I weigh 200 pounds. Turn out that he's not. He can weigh or he lose weight. He doesn't know. Right. So if you're really afraid, but if for subscriptions, they tend to, we know it right away. After you ran for six clothes and you return, you tell them, oh, you know what? I think I can weigh recently. is a little bit tight in the belly area. Then we know, and the next shipment is better. And for people in terms of on secondhand, here's how we think about it. For when you go to a restaurant, the spoon that you use, probably eaten by 100 people before.

7:25When you go to a hotel, you step on the bed, probably 100 people slept there before. But we all still use those things. And secondhand, we own circular, it's just all over the place. everywhere now is second hand so just more about focus assets versus ownership so you don't have to buy everything i like the idea that it's not just about having to buy everything it's also about from when we talked is is about changing up the style it's about being able to wear the clothes for a couple months and then changing the style up and not having to host it and hold it in your closet you know for it to collect dust yeah or when you may never like i personally never like to wear like buy like really white stuff because i get dirty pretty quickly and so i know that looks really good but i don't buy a white shirts but for in this case you can rent something or hey i never thinks i can wear pink oh but the stylist recommends that hey you would be perfect for pink Give it a try.

8:27You only need to wear it for a week. You don't have to keep it forever. So why not try something out of comfort zone? Hey, floral shorts is trendy. Hey, pretty shorts is trendy now. And those loose, really loose pants, like the jeans are getting really big now. Those back, like really loose jeans are very big. The bell bottoms. Yeah, the big bell bottoms. Yeah, so give it a try, which you probably never tried before and you may never like it. but just for a week now you can try something different and you might discover you are actually perfect for purple or greens or a certain style that you didn't know that you would fit very well let's take a step back here and let's talk on on the business side of this where did you come to the idea of this like what was going on where you thought because this is this is very interesting and and i and i like it and i could see it i could see how people would have an affinity towards it I can also see why people would be scared of it.

9:25But how did you come up with this? What came? What was going on in your life that you decided, you know what? This is what the world needs today. Yeah. When I was working for Meta and eBay, I came from marketing backgrounds. But I do, over time, became head of product and leading the technology teams, product manager, US design designers, and technology team globally. So I feel an impassement syndrome from time to time. And I'm a woman leader. I'm from Taiwan originally. I'm an immigrant. I'm a minority. So I feel like, hey, I need to dress up like who I want to be. No one should find out that I'm freaking out every day.

10:07I look like dressed apart, dressed for success. So I start looking for some options out there. I look at stitch fix. It's people pick clothes for you, but you have to buy as soon as you receive the clothes. And buying is not just about money. It's a lot of my spaces. How many times am I going to wear this? How do I outfit in this outfit? Can I find somewhere that's cheaper? After you buy the clothes, you do have to do laundry. You do have to do ironings. It's a lot of work. So I started looking for rental subscriptions, such as Newly by Urban Outfitter, such as Render Runway, Amore. Those are amazing women's rental companies here in the U.S., but they don't require me to spend hours to pick.

10:54There was an aha moment that I realized fashion company has designed for people who are into fashion, not for people like me. I just want to get ready for my day and be successful. I don't care what I wear as long as I get a job, get a date and close the deal. And I started doing research as a good marketer. We all know like researching customer, interviewing your persona, understanding the reach out for the focus group. And I found that a lot of people think like me. They hate shopping. They hate laundry. They are very practical. They have been wearing the same thing last 10 years. They opened their closet.

11:31There were only five pen prints, Nike, Lululemon, Banana Republic, and they are all busy men. And that's how Taylor was started. And you just said something very interesting. They're all busy men. That's right. Is Taylor more geared for men versus women, or is there a mix? We only provide men's wear. Oh, I did not know that. Okay, great. Okay. So this is now I'm getting it. Yeah. So you even have a, an ideal market. So this is for the working man that has no time to go shopping, doesn't hate the mall. You don't even start talking about ironing the clothes. Oh my God. So that's, that makes a lot more sense.

12:14So this is menswear. and for busy, I'm going to say, entrepreneurial, C-suite, busy men traveling, looking for being able to send their clothes, get there, wear them, drop them off, move on with their lives. Yeah, or a single guy who really not into fashion but want to look great. A lot of our customers are sales guys. They are realtors. They know looking good. First impression matters. They only have a few seconds to get attention from their clients, customers but they don't want to wear the same thing again and again they don't want to think about fashion they definitely hate to go more go to the mall and they love there's a personal stylist on their side almost like the catch guy behind a superhero just like an executive assistant to helping them out while they don't have to pay premium just like celebrities in those hollywood and how are you attracting the men right now like what type of marketing are you using and or business tactics are you using for the awareness?

13:16Yeah. So a lot of our traffic actually coming from Gemini and Chagibity. We do very well in AI SEO, AEO, AIO, AGO. So we work with, we manage those things. And for people who may not familiar with that, as you know, people don't always search on internet anymore to ask those AIs to answer the question. And the difference between the AI SEO search engine optimization from before search engine optimization for Google is that it cared a lot more about sentiment. Before, it was more about as many keywords as you can put on your website, as many relevant links linking to your site and you rent high.

13:59Those were still somehow to be true. But now the AI even care even more about sentiment. So how people say about you on Reddit, how people were reviewing trust pilots in Google Maps, in Yelp, it becomes even more valuable. How people say about you and how people use you in what context is valuable. Also, Gemini and those HGPT, they do read more than text. So in the past for Google, you have to put the text of every images and video because Google, the scroller bot doesn't read those things. But nowadays, those AI actually can read video so they know the content from your podcast, for example. And those multimedia unstructured data become even more valuable.

14:48This has turned into Taylor.ai now into marketing, SEO, GEO services. So let's dive into that because I think that's super important right now. And the game has changed. And it seems like you figured out the game or you're working the game. So when you started, you just named, you said SEO, you said AIEO, you said GEO. I think you named a couple. What were they all? Yeah, I think the terminology doesn't matter. what's really matter is that people search our ask questions on chrgpd and gemini today yeah they don't go in google so which you want the chrgpd answer whatever question they ask such as hey i'm going to your for conference what do you think should i wear you want the answer coming from like taylor's side for example my side versus i don't want them coming from gq i want taylor to be the answer when chatgpt answers those questions right because chatgpt doesn't know the answer chatgpt have to go find on the internet for whoever provide the answer and feed it to the customers and the users so in our model for example we write blog content that's specifically tailored to what people kind of question people will ask through chatgpt so people ask chatgpt very differently from when they search on Google.

16:13In the past, they might say menswear trend 2026. But today, when they go to ChepGPT, they will say, hey, I'm going to this conference. This is a conference. This is I want to close a deal with a client. This is what I'm selling. Tell me what should I wear. They tell a lot more context, right? So you have to think about what people will be asking them, those AI tools, AI search engine, AI chatbots, and come up with an answer that you think will be relevant to the questions, then you put those questions in on your website, for example, become blog or you're with bloggers on those. So blogs are still more important than ever, it seems like right now, is what I'm hearing.

16:59I think the content continues to be important, the podcast, the PR, the blog. However, I think how it becomes structured becomes different. For example, instead of saying that as a third party view of fashion, this year most trendy color, by the way, is a mocha, which is a light brown. And last year was the red wine color, maroon. So instead of think about this, you think about, for example, with our stylist to write something which we say is actually from the stylist with stylist point of view, it becomes much more relevant nowadays. And that's how we were able to win American Marketing Association.

17:51Last year, we were the best campaign of the year because we get 10 million impressions from ChateGPT without spending any money. wow this is amazing i didn't even know that we're going to go down this road i so you guys got uh a big award because you guys figured out how to get the most impressions from chat gpt i'm just trying to reverse engineer right so the the whole point of the podcast right is to figure out what's that one thing if see people are listening here i want to give them this one thing and we're going to get to this one thing and right now what i'm hearing is there's a way to win the gpt game so that you show up.

18:30And if you do that enough, you start getting awards, you start getting recognized. And what I'm hearing from you is being, you said the sentiment, you said in relevance. So and then I'm also thinking, is there backlinks still a thing? Are people, are backlinks very important? I think it's less important than before, but it's still a component of search engine optimizing because chat gpt today is still calling google so whatever you rank high on google still fit into chat gpt you just on top of what's in the past there are more stuff and also whatever information is proprietary become even more important i will give you an example how how do we get one award was that we start with what people will ask and then we put together some of the answers and the questions from marketers, we ask our human stylist, they provide a point of view on those answers, which you couldn't find it on the internet, which will bring our proprietary data.

19:33But then from those answers, we use augmented with AI, so AI feed more information, become those amazing content, which you could be putting on our product detail page. When you see this shirt, you should pair this shirt with the other shirt, and then you link to the blog page with internal linking from these white shirts. It linked to this blog talking about how to wear a white shirt but not boring. And then we send this information when customers are renting clothes. We send the styling notes. So then when they open their package with rental clothes, you also say, Hey, Mr. Key, wear these with these another brown shoes.

20:14You will be perfect for date night. But if you don't want to go to date night, want a more casual, Why sneaker is your perfect bet? So you also have this information and customer provide feedback. Feedback of the clothes, customer buy the clothes, or customer browsing on the site who haven't signed up. They also click around and read the information. And all of those information feedback to the AI again. So the AI generating better content and our human styles are revising again. So it's a flywheel that is human, AI, human, AI, human, AI. And that's how we were able to make this amazing content that include proprietary data and also attract a lot of impressions from Gemini and Chagipiti.

20:56so you're doing the heat maps what i'm hearing is you you got the heat maps going on the website the ai is looking at the heat maps looking at where people are going and then getting smarter as it creates more of that content and answering more of those questions because it's pulling the questions off of the placement of where people are going on your website but also the actual live human feedback that's coming even off website like actually when they get the packages they're giving back your feedback. So basically taking the feedback of all your customers and just keep asking the questions and having AI get smarter and smarter.

21:29That's right. And these become incredibly important. And so one concept that you should know in the era of AI, data is a goal because AI only grows with proprietary data. If you don't have a proprietary data, which means whatever you're using through Gemini or ChetGPT, you can still do a great job for productivity, but it's going to be unlikely that you become a true AI native company. But nowadays, it becomes more valuable with proprietary data. For example, Mr. Key interviewing hundreds of people. So you have a lot of insight on how to be a successful marketer. And that's something that other people don't know, only mostly you know, and you also have additional points of view from those conversations with a guest.

22:16And that's something that cannot easily find on the internet. And they become gold today. So for example, after people renting clothes, they tend to give us feedback. After we rent the clothes, we tend to know the real quality after washes. Okay, renting three times, second bottom fall off. So we know those feedback. Then we make AI model and agents again and become a tool for fashion brand to predict what's going to sell. And they become our proprietary data and allow us to be an AI native company. Yeah, so your data, the data, it's all in the data is what you're saying. And you're collecting the data points, the AI is making the recommendations and really looking at the data quicker and faster than any human can and creating more outputs and opportunities from that data.

23:08So you end up, you're going to end up being a data company versus just tailored by AI. That's right. Today, 40 % of clothes goes to unsold. So it's$40 billion in the U.S. today of the clothes for men's wear actually unsold every year. So we have found that our data insights can really help fashion brands. Imagine you are a fashion designer. You are designing something that's supposed to be 22 years from today. Imagine you are a wholesale buyer. You have to buy at least$400 million of clothes. And all you have was last year's sales number. And as you know, what's trending in fashion last year? It's not trending.

23:51It's almost like tomorrow's weather based on yesterday's weather, right? So how we were able to do it is we found this amazing insight from the customer can help solve the industry problem and also reduce the future waste from those brands. you just said a static 40 percent of the clothes at the end of year go to waste yeah in the world today and then 30 percent of the clothes in the world actually goes to landfill it's nowhere in the story in the world yeah most of our brand only have sales through rate between 20 to 80 percent which means on average 40 percent will end up on sale and those clothes that end up in the landfill, usually you get burned and then you generate 8 % of carbon emissions.

24:39Wow. I did not know that. 40 % of the clothes that you go searching through in a mall, let's just say, on a rack will end up, 40 % of it on average ends up in the landfill being burned. That's right. That's right. So it's a lot of waste. It's a real problem in the industry, not to mention even for people after buy the clothes and they go home, most of people only wear less than 20 % of what they have in their closet. You just love the few shorts. You always think that one day I wear the less skin jean that I bought five years ago, which you never do. And by the end of the day, you feel like, okay, I'm going to give it to pool and donate somewhere.

25:20Most of them just end up in the landfill again. The donations end up in the landfill as well. So that's what you're trying to, so Taylor.ai is not just becoming the fastest growing data company around fashion and clothing you're also actually doing one step better and helping the world become a better place and an emissions-free place is what i believe the real wear data is valuable think about this almost all of the e-commerce they only know what people buy but they don't know what people real feedback after they wear the clothes right after I buy the clothes I don't even know if am I wearing or someone else wearing it how many times I wear it when I wear it how do I feel oh the shoulder is a little bit too tight feels a little bit itchy after I wash five times it's shrink after I wash ten times you don't know those things the other thing is that today if I ask you which brand is mostly sustainable then you answer based on whoever do most marketing saying that around sustainable right nobody knows how do you know did you actually do a test wash like oh you can wash 10 times this one only wash five times you don't know that but we do as a rental company we know the true quality of a garment we know which brand the product is really most sustainable and we believe those data can help them as well because a lot of them they don't even know they out sorted to big manufacturer they out sorted to small factory after batches and batches of inventory.

26:55They don't even know the true quality or the issues of garments. And that's where we come in. We create a missing feedback loop between the customer's feedback to the brand partners or brand designers or the wholesalers. And all of this stemmed from a day. I love the quote you said earlier. You basically said, I don't care what I'm wearing. I just want to wear something that makes me look good. Act as if, because I just want to get the deal done today. That's right. That's right. One day we have a customer. He say, hey, how's it going? What do you want to wear next few weeks from our human stylist?

27:34And he say, I am going to court. I'm getting divorced. I want to fight for my children. I want to get the rights. And so I don't care what I wear as long as I win the case. So that's it. That's his goal. Anything that I wear can close to win a case. We have a customer say, I don't know, but I'm going on day nights tomorrow. So our stylist sent me a blazer. He's like, you know, I'm pretty more like hot type of person. I'm not always needing blazer. And our stylist said, you know, it's day night. Just bring it. After he walked out of the restaurant at 9 p.m., the woman feel a little bit chilly. He put the blazers on the top of his shoulder.

28:14I love it. I love it. The next day. Yeah, he got a second date just because of the blazer. this is fascinating for all the men listening right now if you have a fashion problem or if you want to make fashion easier for yourself and be able to have uh i would say more options in the closet uh this is the place to be it's taylor.ai for for any of those listening like what are some last words for them of where they can maybe find you what they need to know about your services and where they go yeah go on our website which is taylor.style that's t-a-e-l-o-r dot s-t-y-l-e taylor.style use a code podcast 25 podcast 25 p-o-d-c-a-s-t 25 to get 25 percent off first months and father's day and summers is coming forever birthdays if you think the guy need a will be help, want to look confident, saving time, and give them a gift card, go on taylor.style with the code podcastgift, podcastgift, then you get 10 % of gift card.

29:23And we'll make sure we have that all in the show notes. Again, thank you. I know you must be really busy on the back end there. So thank you so much for stopping by and letting us know a little bit more about obviously what taylor.ai is but i think there was even more gold here with how we can start thinking about how we show up in the llms and gpts and that for our businesses yeah thank you so much this is anya chin from taylor thank you