\n<\/p>\n
After years of building a traditional business centered on helping people get out of the house and find fun stuff to do,\u00a0John Peterson<\/span><\/span>, the CEO of The Nudge<\/a>,<\/span> just launched an agentic AI version of its \u201cplanner friend.\u201d This new AI agent, which is now live across dozens of U.S. markets, proactively plans, recommends, and books things to do in your city, informed by your likes and dislikes, plans others are making locally and chats from other users. \u201cOnce you sign up, you start receiving texts directly on your phone a couple of times per week \u2013 each \u2018nudge\u2019 includes a brief itinerary, cost, and deadline to take action,\u201d according to the company.<\/p>\n Peterson recently connected with Entrepreneur <\/em>to share his thoughts on pivoting to AI without sacrificing quality, the key to connecting with Gen Z and the main question any leader needs to constantly be asking themselves as they explore new ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Give us the elevator pitch of The Nudge.<\/strong> Please tell us one \u201choly @#$!\u201d moment about running your business \u2014 an unexpected problem you faced and how you overcame it.<\/strong> I remember bringing the team into our tiny basement office and telling them what I always say when @#$! hits the fan: \u201cDon\u2019t let a crisis go to waste.\u201d Every catastrophe has opportunities if we can see them.<\/p>\n So we got to work on finding those opportunities. We realized that our value prop was not \u201cwe text you things to do in your city\u201d but rather \u201cwe help you live your best life.\u201d We started texting people how to do Zoom trivia nights with friends, which Mexican foreign film to watch on Taco Tuesday at home, and how to support local restaurants. We were able to think bigger and redefine how we help people.<\/p>\n What\u2019s something small, like a daily routine or mindset shift, that changed the way you lead or perform?<\/strong><\/p>\n Every day when I arrive in the office, before I begin my work, I write the answer to two questions in a Google Sheet: 1. When I really zoom out, I realize ____________. 2. Therefore, today I will ____________.<\/p>\n This helps me constantly put things in perspective. The biggest risk as a founder \u2014 both to our company\u2019s and our personal well-being \u2014 is that we get stuck in the weeds. We spend too much time working on the wrong thing. We view ourselves as failures because something didn\u2019t go well that week. I\u2019ve found the solution is daily zooming out and reframing. It\u2019s made me a better and, far more importantly, happier leader.<\/p>\n How do you pivot a traditional business to agentic AI?<\/strong> Efficiency is a given, but I think the biggest\u00a0risk\u00a0for businesses pivoting to AI is that they are thinking about cutting costs, which can lead them to a cheaper, inferior product.<\/span> I\u2019m not optimistic about where this takes you in a competitive landscape.<\/p>\n If you focus on how agentic AI can elevate what you do, I think you\u2019re more likely to apply the technology right. How can agentic AI make your customer 10x more satisfied? The answer to that question will take you a long time to build, but it will more likely guide you to something great.<\/p>\n What is your best advice for standing out to Gen Z?<\/strong> And to connecting to customers in local markets?<\/strong> What has been your strategy for using text messaging for customer communications and marketing?<\/strong> You were a management consultant. What are the key things you think anyone running a company should be thinking about in terms of focus and structure? After years of building a traditional business centered on helping people get out of the house and find fun stuff to do,\u00a0John Peterson<\/span><\/span>, the CEO of The Nudge<\/a>,<\/span> just launched an agentic AI version of its \u201cplanner friend.\u201d This new AI agent, which is now live across dozens of U.S. markets, proactively plans, recommends, and books things to do in your city, informed by your likes and dislikes, plans others are making locally and chats from other users. \u201cOnce you sign up, you start receiving texts directly on your phone a couple of times per week \u2013 each \u2018nudge\u2019 includes a brief itinerary, cost, and deadline to take action,\u201d according to the company.<\/p>\n Peterson recently connected with Entrepreneur <\/em>to share his thoughts on pivoting to AI without sacrificing quality, the key to connecting with Gen Z and the main question any leader needs to constantly be asking themselves as they explore new ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Give us the elevator pitch of The Nudge.<\/strong>
The Nudge is the AI agent that runs your free time and lives in your text messages. It\u2019s a subscription that tells you what to do on the weekend, helps you plan it, and can book things for you. Our vision is for The Nudge to handle all your free time one day. <\/p>\n
One day in 2020, we arrived in the office and found out that due to COVID, our entire value prop of \u201cwe text you things to do in your city\u201d was not going to work for a while. \u201cHoly @#$!\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n
My main suggestion is not<\/em> to focus on this question: \u201cHow can AI make our product more efficient?\u201d\u00a0But focus on this one: \u201cHow can AI make our product better?\u201d<\/p>\n
Your mantra with Gen Z should be \u201cdon\u2019t be boring.\u201d Gen Z appreciates authenticity, values uniqueness, and doesn\u2019t respect monoculture (everyone marketing\/branding in the same way). I think a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, \u201cWhat\u2019s a way to do or explain this that has never been done before?\u201d If you\u2019re just adding to the monoculture, you\u2019re missing an opportunity to stand out to Gen Z.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s much more straightforward \u2013 you just need to prove that you understand the local POV. If you\u2019re trying to expand your business to Chicago, people in Chicago don\u2019t care that you\u2019re big in LA. You need to speak to them like a business that only exists in Chicago would. This is not easy for scalability reasons, but we\u2019ve found repeatedly that it has a big impact on acquisition costs and customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n
Texts have higher open rates, higher read rates, and can now support things like in-text payments and advanced ways to interact (buttons, calendars, etc). That being said, the bar for texting customers is very high. My advice is to completely turn off your marketing brain and turn on your friend brain. Text is not a marketing channel, it\u2019s a friend channel. So design all your text communications around that principle. Ask yourself, \u201cIf I were texting a friend about this, how would I do it?\u201d If you can nail that, text can transform your relationship with your customers.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>The best advice I have is to have a little parrot in the back of your head that is constantly saying, \u201cWhat\u2019s the objective?\u201d I find that chaos thrives in situations or conversations where the objective is (or more likely has over time become) unclear. Once you and the team are clear on the objective and agree on the objective, then the structure tends to grow naturally.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
The Nudge is the AI agent that runs your free time and lives in your text messages. It\u2019s a subscription that tells you what to do on the weekend, helps you plan it, and can book things for you. Our vision is for The Nudge to handle all your free time one day. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n