Over The Bull
Tired of marketing fluff, shady sales tactics, and overpriced agencies that sell fear instead of results? Over the Bull is a no-nonsense podcast where we share real stories from inside the agency world—the wins, the failures, and the clients we had to cut loose. Join me each week as we break down the reality of running a business, expose the marketing BS that’s holding companies back, and talk about what actually works. No generic reports. No empty promises. Just real strategy from the trenches.
Episodes
A ChatGPT commercial shows an older potter asking AI to build her a website. It asks her about the design, and then it tells her it built her a checkout. Ken’s seen this ad before... with every DIY website builder for the last twenty years.
In this episode, Ken breaks down why the ad casts the least likely tech user it can find, how it turns a business decision into a taste decision, and why OpenAI’s own ...
Fifteen years ago I got handed a diagnosis, a stack of prescriptions and a shrug about getting older. Six months later I’d reversed all of it, and not because I had better information than my doctors. I just wouldn’t accept that the question was closed.
In this episode I dig into the real danger behind a lot of bad decisions, which is manufactured certainty. That’s the confident answer that ...
Say your lease says no pets and you get a dog anyway. For eight months nobody notices, and somewhere in there you stop thinking of it as a rule you're breaking. Then one neighbor makes one phone call and you've got thirty days.
That's the internet right now. Your Google listing, your Facebook page, your reviews, whatever books your appointments, whatever sends your email. You don't own any of it. You have an ...
Six words: how do I show up in AI search.
The answer looked great. Bullet points, bold headers, links. It also couldn't tell what the question meant, built its advice out of marketing blogs and LinkedIn posts, and ran sponsored ads for two companies selling the exact service it just said you needed.
Thirty years in this business and Ken sat there genuinely unable to tell which parts were real.
N...
Ken got back with a stack of messages... and a good chunk of them were people asking him to Google things for them. Not strategy. Just look-it-up-for-me. That absurd little moment opens a bigger question: what happens to a business when its people stop thinking for themselves?
This week on Over the Bull, Ken digs into cognitive offloading ... the habit of handing every mental task to a tool until the muscle b...
One business watched its Google reviews drop from 4,651 to 63 overnight. Terrifying... until you understand what's actually happening. On this episode of Over the Bull, Ken Carroll connects two stories the local SEO world is treating as separate: Google's June 24 spam update and the wave of disappearing reviews and review responses. They're not two stories. They're the same one. Google turned up the sensitivity on i...
For years, the internet let you follow people. Tag a visitor on your site, chase them across Facebook and Google, and close the sale later. That playbook is dying, and most business owners haven't noticed yet.
Third-party cookies, the tracking tags that made retargeting possible, are getting phased out. Not all at once. Not evenly. Depending on where your customers live and what phones they use, some of you are a...
Cheap vendors have always cut corners. What's changed is the disguise. Now they're using AI to churn out website content and HTML in a weekend, and it looks polished enough to fool business owners who don't know what to look for. In this episode, Ken breaks down why the real problem isn't the price tag, it's what's happening underneath the hull. He walks through the questions every business owner should ask before h...
There's a quiet line a lot of business owners are crossing right now without noticing it: letting AI build things they couldn't rebuild, repair, or even explain on their own. It feels like leverage. Ken thinks it's a liability waiting to go off—what he calls "the big burst."
In this episode, he gets into how he spent two weeks fine-tuning the way he actually works with Claude, and the breakthrough that came whe...
Every business owner has had the moment: wait, why are we paying for two phone systems? That's a Frankenstack ... the pile of overlapping tools you end up with when tech moves so fast nobody stops to turn the old one off. In this one we get into why it happens (every platform now wants to do every job ... your CRM does payments, your payment tool does texting), and why the real damage isn't the wasted spend. It's th...
Everybody's got an AI take right now — it's coming for your job, or it's the second coming. Ken thinks both camps are wrong, and the truth is more boring and a lot more useful than either one.
This one's off the cuff: from the blacksmiths who didn't disappear (they evolved) to the calculator that was "cheating" in the '80s and required by the '90s, to the famous story about an AI that "blackmailed" its way ...
Most business owners think hiring a marketing agency is a one-way transaction — you pay, they deliver. But the truth is, the client side of the relationship matters just as much, and there are two behaviors that quietly sabotage results every time. In this episode, Ken walks through two real stories: the client who couldn't stop chasing the next shiny idea, and the one who only valued tangible deliverables and...
Artificial Intelligence is an incredible tool… but a lot of people are using it in ways that are actually making them worse at business.
In this episode of Shooting the Bull, we talk about the growing problem with AI-generated overload: massive punch lists, bloated emails, surface-level analysis, and the endless stream of “smart sounding” content that often creates more confusion than clari...
Most business owners don’t have a data problem—they have a clarity problem.
In this episode of Shooting the Bull, we’re talking about why more tracking, more reports, and more “insight” isn’t actually helping you make better decisions… and in a lot of cases, it’s doing the opposite.
If you’ve ever looked at your marketing reports and still had no i...
This week, we’re switching things up and just shooting the bull. No script, no fluff—just real, off-the-cuff conversations about the stuff small business owners actually deal with every day. From burnout and hiring to marketing mistakes and pricing struggles, we’re tackling real questions with honest answers. If you’ve ever felt like you’re figuring it out as you go… you’re...
Most businesses have no idea where their phone calls are actually coming from—and it’s costing them more than they realize.
In this episode, we break down the difference between static numbers and dynamic call tracking (DNI), why guessing your marketing results is a dangerous game, and how improper tracking quietly drains your budget.
We also cover:
•How to actually track calls from Goog...
If your website isn’t bringing you leads, it’s not because you need better design.
It’s because your website isn’t doing its job.
In this episode, we break down the real reasons most small business websites fail—from vague messaging and weak structure to missing trust and no clear path for customers to take action.
We also call out a major issue: too many businesses...
AI-generated images are everywhere right now—and depending on who you ask, they’re either a game-changing tool or a risky shortcut.
In this episode of Over The Bull, we break down what’s actually true.
We cover the real-world pros and limitations of AI images, including where they work, where they fall apart, and why many design and sign companies are pushing back. We also get into th...
RESOURCES:
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-e-e-a-t-how-to-demonstrate-first-hand-experience/474446/
- https://searchengineland.com/demonstrate-e-e-a-t-ai-generated-content-394227
- http...
Here’s the reality most business owners eventually face:
The system favors scale.
Large companies are not built on fairness. They’re built on optimization — for margin, protection, and legal defensibility. And when you enter into agreements with entities that have more capital, more legal infrastructure, and more time than you, you are not operating on equal ground.
In this epi...
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