Everyone's Racing to Write for AI Search. The Person Winning at It Is Barely Using AI to Write.

On the latest episode of Growth Path, Andy Culligan spoke with Melody Sinclair Brooks, head of growth at Allesium Studios, co-founder of the content tool SPGO, and host of the Unfair Advantage podcast. Sinclair Brooks also works inside Bifrost Studios, a venture builder, where she's currently helping validate new companies alongside running SPGO.

The conversation covered a lot of ground: the shift from SEO to answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO), why product-led growth is harder than it looks, and what happens to customer acquisition cost once a sales-led startup tries to scale outbound. The thread running through all of it was the same one purple path keeps running into with its own clients: AI can multiply output, but it can't originate the thing worth publishing.

TL;DR: Content teams are now expected to optimize for Google, for LLMs, and for human readers simultaneously, and Sinclair Brooks calls that combination "impossible" to do without AI. Her fix isn't writing less with AI, it's changing where AI enters the process: after a founder's actual words, not instead of them. The same episode carries a warning for product-led growth founders chasing volume: sales-led economics don't disappear just because a landing page can now run itself, and Sinclair Brooks still recommends direct outreach and events over paid acquisition at the earliest stage.

Writing for Google, Humans, and the LLMs Is Now One Job, Not Three

Sinclair Brooks described a shift that content marketers are living through in real time: search used to mean Google, and now it means Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and social platforms like Reddit at the same time. Her phrase for it: "it's search everywhere now."

That shift has created a specific kind of overwhelm. Marketers spent years building SEO habits, and now they're told to also optimize for how an LLM might summarize or cite them, without dropping the SEO work that still drives traffic. Part of that overwhelm is simply choosing between the AI writing tools on the market, before a team even gets to the input problem Sinclair Brooks flags below. Sinclair Brooks was direct about the math: "It's absolutely impossible to do everything without leaning on AI."

That's not a case for AI-generated content. It's a case for AI as the only way to keep pace with a search landscape that split into multiple channels at once, provided something real still goes in before the AI touches it. purple path has made a similar case for entity-centric, long-form content built to get cited rather than summarized: depth beats keyword-matching once AI Overviews are doing the summarizing.

Start From the Founder's Words, Not the Internet's

Sinclair Brooks's actual method, the one behind SPGO's product, skips the step most AI content tools default to: pulling from what's already published online. Instead, she starts with the person who has the expertise.

"As opposed to writing using AI and the source of information from the internet, I think it's always best to capture the insights and natural language from the business owner, the founder, the person running the day-to-day, the actual experts," she said. In practice, that means recording a short conversation with the founder or subject-matter expert, asking targeted questions, and using their actual answers as the raw material. AI's job comes after that: turning transcripts into structured sections and tightening the language for search, not inventing the point of view.

She was equally direct about what happens when companies skip that step and publish AI output without a real source behind it: "from a reader perspective it's just like, oh, it's just lazy." Readers notice fast, regardless of what a search engine or LLM ranks.

Where This Lines Up With How purple path Treats AI

This is the same operating principle behind purple path's own AI-enabled marketing, and it applies to a wider set of intent signals than just content drafts. An AI model or a content system is only as good as what gets fed into it. A founder's actual insight, a real customer transcript, or genuine buying intent data wired into a CRM all carry information a generic AI prompt can't manufacture on its own. Treating AI as the drafting layer on top of a real input, rather than the source of the input itself, is the difference between content that reads as credible and content that reads as filler dressed up for a search algorithm.

It's also the logic behind purple path's European Agency Partnership with Otterly.ai for generative engine optimization: LLM visibility isn't a separate content category from the rest of demand generation, it's the same discipline applied to a newer set of channels. It's the same gap covered in an earlier Growth Path episode with Atlassian's Janessa Drainville, on what a plausible-looking AI-generated GTM plan misses before a team has to actually run it.

The Sales-Led Warning Inside a Product-Led Pitch

Sinclair Brooks is building SPGO toward volume, product-led growth, eventually, but her answer on scaling sales was more cautious than the "PLG or die" framing common in SaaS circles. She and Culligan agreed that finding the product's "aha moment," the point where a free-trial user becomes convinced they can't do without it, is one of the hardest parts of the model, and that most companies never nail it.

Culligan's caution went further, aimed at any founder assuming outbound and paid acquisition scale cleanly once a sales-led motion works at a small base: "you'll be at the mercy of the lords of Google Ads." His point: direct outreach, cold calls, and events stay cheap and educational at low customer counts, but once a company tries to scale past that through paid channels or an outbound team, customer acquisition cost can climb past what those customers are worth, especially on a product-led pricing model where each account pays a small amount per month.

Sinclair Brooks confirmed that at SPGO's current stage, with 20 customers split between agencies and individual founders, direct outreach, cold calls, and events have been the working channels, not paid acquisition.

Automating Outbound Up to the Point a Human Has to Show Up

The two also discussed AI SDRs and automated outbound calling, a category growing fast in the same market purple path serves. Sinclair Brooks drew a clear line on where automation should stop: "I think where it can be helpful for outbound is automating it to this point until you reach a human, and then immediately you have to bring your actual self into the loop." Prospecting time is the part worth automating. The actual conversation with a qualified buyer isn't.

Culligan flagged the same trust gap purple path sees in its own AEO and GEO client conversations: chat widgets on websites took years for buyers to get comfortable with, and voice-based AI agents calling on behalf of a company are earlier in that adoption curve, not further along.

Key Takeaways

• Writing for Google, LLMs, and human readers at once is now standard for any content team, and doing it without AI assistance isn't realistic at typical publishing volume.
• The input that separates credible AI-assisted content from generic AI output is a real transcript or conversation with the actual expert, not internet research.
• Skipping that input step is visible to readers regardless of search or LLM ranking performance.
• Direct outreach, cold calls, and events remain the primary working channels at SPGO's 20-customer stage, ahead of paid acquisition.
• Scaling outbound or paid acquisition past an early sales-led base risks pushing customer acquisition cost above what a product-led pricing model can support.
• AI SDR tools work best automating prospecting up to the first human handoff, not replacing the buyer conversation itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO?

SEO (search engine optimization) targets ranking in traditional search results like Google. AEO (answer engine optimization) targets being the direct answer surfaced by AI Overviews and voice assistants. GEO (generative engine optimization) targets being cited or referenced by generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude when they answer a user's question. Sinclair Brooks's view, echoed across the episode, is that all three now need to be handled together rather than as separate workstreams.

2. Can AI write good content without human input?

Not according to Sinclair Brooks's own product design. Her approach starts with a transcript or conversation with the actual founder or expert, then uses AI to structure and optimize that material for search. Content generated purely from AI research on a topic, without that human source, reads as generic to actual readers.

3. Is product-led growth cheaper than sales-led growth?

Not automatically. Product-led growth keeps customer acquisition cost low only as long as channels like direct outreach, cold calling, and events stay in play. Scaling into paid acquisition or an outbound team introduces new costs that can outweigh the revenue from each account, particularly under a low-price, high-volume pricing model.

4. What's the risk with AI SDRs and automated outbound calling?

The risk isn't the automation itself, it's not knowing where to stop. Automating prospecting and initial contact can save time. Handing the actual buyer conversation to an AI voice agent, before buyers are used to that experience, risks the same trust gap that AI chatbots took years to work through on websites.

5. How does this connect to a Fractional GTM or Fractional Marketing model?

The same discipline Sinclair Brooks applies to content, real input before AI touches it, applies to go-to-market strategy generally. This is the same reasoning behind purple path's embedded marketing model: an operator who knows the account, the sales cycle, and the market can catch where a generic AI-assisted plan or content system needs a real signal behind it, before it goes out the door.

Ready to make AI multiply your output instead of replacing your judgment?

If your team is stuck between "the CEO wants everything written by AI" and "nobody's actual expertise is making it into the content," that's exactly the gap purple path operates in. We embed the operators, the playbooks, and the founder-voice-first process that AI still needs to be pointed at something real.

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Growth Path is purple path's podcast on go-to-market, marketing, and AI in B2B tech. Watch more episodes or learn more about purple path.