Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
So how do you balance the importance of kind of human connection in person and really being yourself as much as possible in the AI era with at the same time really leaning into the adoption, embracing technology and AI in our personal and our work lives? I think this is a big question we as founders all have is like, hey, how do I, how do I do these two things at the same time? On the surface, they're kind of diametrically opposed. In this episode, I chat with Allison French about how she's attacking this. Allison comes from a very creative background and she will admit in the episode she's a creative person and was kind of shunning AI for a long time and has found how it works for her and how it lets her be more human, more personable, allow more time for in person connections at the same time getting a lot more done. And her output and her volume and her business is growing as a result of really embracing AI. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. I sure did. And it gave really, really specific, actionable things that I and you can take away and implement in our business to grow faster and more sanely. Hope you enjoy this conversation with Alison French. So I want to start just by at a really high level, talking about how you think about using AI for work, because I think that's a really good place and I want to get super specific. And you've done an amazing job of preparing a whole bunch of stuff that we'll talk through. But high level, when do you pull up that tab in Chrome and what does that look like?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Well, and I will say I was probably the most anti AI person four months ago, maybe. Cool.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Like, I consider myself a creative. Some of my closest friends are designers I met through my career. And so I was like, I cannot get on board with AI. It's going to take people's jobs. I love writing, I love being creative. I have a client who are some of the smartest data scientists, possibly smartest humans I've ever met in my life. And one day they mentioned they were blocking big chunks of time to do hackathons on ChatGPT. Like, the founder was challenging his team, like, literally the smartest humans I have ever worked with. Like solving big, big problems in healthcare. And I was like, whoa, okay, if they're doing this, I need to integrate. I mean, I'm fractional growth lead for them. So, like, my goal is to help them with like, integration of sales and marketing, go to market.
So I felt like it was a very humbling moment of like, I Didn't feel like I could stand on this pedestal of, like, AI is going to ruin creativity. And so I was like, I better start using this.
And so I found my way into Claude, which I feel like is like the creative person's dream tool, because I started with ChatGPT a few times. Epic failure, like, trying to ask ChatGPT to do writing and creative work just probably is why I was so negative and turned off to it. And so getting into Claude over the past, let's call it four months has, like, literally transformed my life. And I mean, from complete anti. Don't use it to, like, I'm about to buy a second seat because I max out the number of prompts I can do quite frequently. And it's like, getting in my way of doing work I need to get done. And so I'm using it for my business.
So I am a fractional, like, SEMA growth lead for clients. So I use it for them. I use it for my business. I happen to create a small, I guess I'll call it a web app to help people at trade shows. So I'm still at, like, go to market product. Market fit. Like, what. How do I talk about my own product? And it's hysterical to be in a world of I get paid to help other people do this, but when it comes to talking about my own baby, I get, like, writer's block. I cannot separate it out in my brain. And so it's just been shocking what Claude has been able to help me. Like, the hurdles I've been able to overcome in my own business and talking about my own business. And then in terms of, like, helping my client, it's just like. I hate the word superpower. It's so overstated, but it's, like, literally superpowering the quality of work I can produce for my clients because I can do it faster. It's more accurate.
Yeah, it's been shocking. Absolutely shocking. Anyone that's not using it is just completely leaving money on the table, both from terms of quality of output and time they're saving.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Interesting. Interesting. Okay. I'm so glad that we're doing this season or series and, like, this might be the rest of the podcast kind of forever. Because, like, I think, like, yeah, it's changing our lives in the world probably. Probably for the better, right? So, like, I ought to be on the Spanwagon. I have a similar journey. It's been a bit of a roller coaster. Like, first came out, I was like, oh, this is so cool. I can create all these funny. You Know, images with, you know, chatgpt and all, whatever. And then I was like, but it kind of sucks, you know, totally. Like, at the end of the day, it kind of sucks. And then my light bulb moment was really about. About six weeks ago.
I'm like a crypto kind of dabbler, and one of the crypto guys that I follow and really super smart investing guy puts out this piece and he's like, look, a bunch of jobs are going to just be gone soon.
And I was like, I kind of have barbell from a financial perspective. I have a ton of value, like personal value and wealth in Castos.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: And then we just have like in the stock market, but like, nothing really in between. And I was like, what if like half of like all of my income, you know, and a lot of my, like, on paper, net worth just goes away in Castos because something happens with AI. I was like, I can't think I'm too good for this anymore. And I. Instead of just like dabbling, I got to really lean into it. So that was like my light bulb moment was like, it's not going to take my job. It might take my entire business.
I gotta. I gotta like, be ready.
And I think, I think a lot of people, myself included, have had negative experiences with AI. And like, internally, like, we hear, we talk about this a lot. It's like, hey, I want to try this thing. Oh, but it sucks. Okay. We just won't use it. And I think, like, that's where maybe we can talk about getting over is like, when it sucks, what do you do? And. And like, I want to be really specific. Right. And you, you put together some stuff of like, how you're using it. And problems include.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: I've told Claude before, this sucks. Try again. I'm just laughing, but like, it's getting over the hurdle of like being recognizing. Like, sometimes you just close that prompt, start a new prompt, and the whole thing comes back differently. But it took me hard yard and a lot of frustration.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
Just as we're getting into it, I just want to like, shine a light on one thing, which is like even you as a marketing person and a founder, talking about your own thing, using this to do a better job of talking about yourself and your brand and your business, where on paper, that should be 100% you and your voice. So the fact that like, you as a marketing person and you've been on the show before and so definitely, like respect your chops, like, are leaning into this to help you in a place where it should be the last thing they're using AI for.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Like, should speak volumes to everybody listening, saying, like, okay, if Allison can do this in the most kind of sensitive, high level, creative thing, we all can probably make it work.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Well, thank you. And I think you have to be really discerning when it gives you a response back. And like, no joke, I will tell it it sucks. Or I will say, like, this is too flowery. Like, I am really. Maybe that's why I end up maxing out my cloud prompts quite frequently because I will just go down a rabbit hole to get it right.
But it's worth it because it gets over time, it's getting better and better at. Better at seeing me for who I am. And so that's the part you're. You just have to commit to trying and sticking through.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So let's dive in and get like, really specific. So in the doc that you, you created in, we'll include a link to this in the show notes and we might have to clean it up, but. But like, we'll include a link to this in the show notes below or if you're watching on YouTube, in the description.
A lot of what you talk about here is tone of voice, and I think that's the, like, getting it right for you part.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Talk to me about how you have learned and kind of how you approach tuning up Claude to talk like you.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So I have a bunch of projects and I've learned that has been key. When I was trying to do everything in just a generic no project, I was not getting my best outcomes and it wasn't reliable. And so that's, I think, where a lot of the frustration came from. And so when they introduced projects, I just kind of went all in. So I have a client project.
I have a client project for the CEO's tone of voice. I have a project for myself and my tone of voice. I have a project for my business lto, and then I actually have a separate project just for my demo calls for my little app called Show Scout. Separating out that has been absolutely life changing. And then it's like you have to feed the machine with the information that matters. So for my tone of voice, I have gone through, I have pulled out some of my best emails, in my opinion, best emails, like things that I know. I actually put some thought into old LinkedIn posts, old blog content, articles. I love writing, so it's easy for me. But I even pull in transcripts now from calls that I think went really well. So because how I write isn't necessarily how I talk. And so by able to provide that it has been game changing. I threw in my resume in the beginning. I threw in my bio from back in the day.
I will throw in like I will actually help it use it. So I'll be in my Allison tone of voice project and I'll be like, I need to update my bio. And so I'll give it a few really cryptic paragraphs, like I don't know, things I'm not seeing it talk about related to me. And then I'll be like, summarize this. And then I add that as an asset to the project.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: So over time it just becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. So it's like you have to keep adding the files to the project that matter. So my show scout demo call analysis is a Google Doc now. As I update it, I pop it back into my Alice in tone of voice so it knows what's going on with that side of my business. But it's not the focus of that project for prompts.
That has been game changing. And then the same thing for my brand or my client's brand as I create new assets. Like I just went down this whole rabbit hole on Emma who writes like the Get Punchy Copy book, highly recommend it. It's amazing. She talks about like a value framework. It's like value benefit features. And I really wanted to evolve my clients succinctness in how we're talking about the product. And so I just dumped that in, spent a couple days just playing with it, refining it. And now that is an asset that sits in that overarching. And so anything we do social posts, anything we build from that is building off these core assets that we're creating in the project. And so that to me is where it becomes easier to get a better result. And I know I laughed because I think in one of your things like you're like, oh yeah, it can get it like 90% there. I'm super critical. I'll be like, it gets it 50 to 70% there.
It's good enough that like it got me through my writer's block because I put some stuff out there and I can start copying and pasting. I highlight, I'm like, I like this, I don't like this, I like this and this. Combine these two. And so it's almost like a jigsaw puzzle. If you come in expecting it to give you this perfect product, it's not going to work. But over time, if you work within the same project and you use these things and you have to be like, figure out what your prompts are. But like, I'll often say, like, this is too flowery or this is too casual, or this sounds like salesy. I'm not. I don't talk like this. And you just provide that and it'll flip it around and all of a sudden you're like, dang, that sounds exactly like me. It just took me four or five revisions to get there.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, Cool. So. So just for context, for folks who don't know Claude, projects can have assets which are like specialized pieces of knowledge just for working in that project. And you can have one or more chats within a project, as many as you want. Yep. Cool. Okay. So I guess kind of similar to ChatGPT has projects now, but not similar to like a GPT in. In OpenAI.
Cool. Okay.
So tone of voice. And you mentioned, like, having an input of other people's content in there. 1. One thing that I find. I love it. I love it because this is. And like the. The one thing I think I do decently with, with AI right now is like YouTube scripts.
And I. The input of that are other YouTube videos. The. The scripts, the transcripts from other YouTube videos. And what I want is. And even like email copy or you can imagine landing pages is like, I want it to see this as a reference and then make it like me.
Yeah, I find that pretty challenging because what it'll do is I'll copy, you know, I'll copy this script over and have it say, okay, now I want it to kind of feel like this, but on this topic, and I don't find it does well there. Like, how would you approach that specific thing?
[00:14:28] Speaker B: I have learned I have to separate it into a couple different prompts. I can't keep it in the same prompt. Somehow that mucks things up. So if I try to go down a rabbit hole and set like too many questions off of the same thing, it doesn't work. So what I would do is pull the first transcript in and provide ask a prompt on.
Like, help me create a prompt to replicate what makes this video great.
That could be used on other subjects.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: And then you could highlight like, I like this, this, and this specifically. And then it gives you a prompt and then you go to a new chat and then you say, okay, following this prompt, here's what I'd like to talk about. I don't know. That's how I'm handling it. So far, I'm getting way better results than doing It. And so I do that for SEO. So I am a swissography knife marketer. Like, I know a little, not a little bit. I know a lot about a lot of areas. But I have been out of the weeds for so long that coming back and having to be like, oh, I have to optimize my content is like cringy. And then I would say for about a year I just kept spending money on contractors. Oh, I'll just send it to the person I know. I'll just send this person I know. But I'm trying to bootstrap and that gets expensive. And so now I'm like, I kind of gotta get gritty and figure out how to do this. And so I went and googled SEO on site optimization articles. And like I picked, I think three to five that I liked. I dumped them all into a Google Doc, like literally copy paste Google Doc, uploaded that Google Doc to Claude and said, help me write a prompt to come back and optimize a page of content for my website. And it was like, what? This is actually like, is it perfect? No, but is it going to get me like 70% there and one day I can hire an expert to come in and help optimize it? Yes. So I feel like for your audience, like, good enough and fast is probably a lot better than waiting for the day you hire someone.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: I love that because, like, you were asking, like, are we talking to like founders or like heads of marketing? Like a lot of founders, like, for you, you know, listening and watching, like you're a solo founder. I was talking to a founder this morning. He's like, hey, we're a team of three.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: And we're trying to do all this shit. And I'm like, man, like, we're a team of eight, nine, and we still are just like hair on fire all over the place, like, trying to do a bunch of stuff.
I think, you know, the, the quote from Sam Altman is like, there's going to be a one person billion dollar company out of this. And I mean, I feel like I'm just dabbling, I'm just scratching the surface with all this. But I get it, like the stuff that I see and that like you and I are talking about, you can imagine being replicatable and then you have the opportunity kind of at scale, you know, maybe not a billion dollars for folks that listen to this podcast. But like, I was chatting, I was chatting with one of my coaching clients the other day. He's like, yeah, we did. Like, you know, I won't, I won't say the amount, like less than a half million bucks.
And he's like, it's me.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Yeah, life change.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: I was like, whoa, that is, that is, that is life changing. Even if that just lasts a few years, I know that's, that's life changing.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: I'm seeing it like so. And I had mentioned in my notes, but I use Fireflies AI, that's my meeting recorder. I like, I've gone, you know, I've used. Course I've used a bunch of them. I Love Firefly as AI's transcript quality. And it's one click to download. It's effortless being able to take transcripts from a call, import them to Claude. Because sometimes like I'll be talking with a client and their strategic partner and there's some like epic things being spoken that I cannot jot down fast enough to pull that in and then turn that into the press release because I'm like pulling that hook that so and so said. Or let's refine this. Or when I'm getting feedback from a client on a specific asset, I just take that transcript and pull it in and say, okay, this wasn't quite right. Can you revise it based on clients feedback? And it just helps. So what used to be a five hour project for me, maybe an hour now. I mean I'm still in this. By no means is this just like a. I add it, click the button and I'm done. Like I am nurturing it. It's almost reminds me I was thinking about this the other day. It's like a junior copywriter on your staff or like a junior marketing manager where you're like, they get the ball started but you're really working with them. That's how I use Claude right now for my assets.
But yeah, like instead of spending an entire day trying to draft a perfect press release or something like that. Because it's not something I do often. Often it's like an hour.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: And you're using Fireflies on sales calls too?
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah, all of my calls. It's.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah, tell me, tell me about that. Like, what's that whole kind of workflow look like?
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Oh, let me pull up my notes. This is actually the whole reason I did the notes. Cause I started to have a moment of like, what?
Cause I'm in there constantly. Um, so I now have my sales calls for myself or my client be the starting point of all content we're creating. And so initially I think we all struggle with like, what do I need to talk about today in social? Like I can sing from the rooftops of how powerful organic LinkedIn is. Like, I could probably a gazillion examples of why every founder should be doing at least two posts a week. Um, like truly. But how do you get those two posts? Like, it's really hard if you're not a content person. I like writing content and it's still hard for me. And so I have learned to turn every sales call into my content for the week. So I will download the transcript, pop it into Claude, into the client specific one, and I'll say like, summarize the key challenges. Like I'll name the prospect, summarize the key challenges they experienced and what they liked about the tool.
It kicks that back. Then I'll open a new prompt. Okay, great, help me write a LinkedIn post about this topic and I might pick out one of the challenges specifically, or I might provide the whole thing. And yeah, I'll take some refining to get there, but it's pretty dang close. So it's like one sales call becomes LinkedIn content. If the problem or challenge that they have described is seeming to be universal from all the sales calls, I will then turn it into a LinkedIn post. I'm sorry, a LinkedIn article.
Because this is just a me thing. I sure there's people that are experts on this, but I am finding more and more LinkedIn articles in Google search when I am looking for information. So I just have this philosophy of like, well, I'm going to create a LinkedIn article and then I'm going to repurpose that LinkedIn article and change it up to make a blog post so I can kill two birds with one stone.
And so I will take whatever that main challenge is and then how the tool solves the challenge and I will make that a LinkedIn article. And once again, this goes back to the discussion about prompts. Like, same thing I did for SEO, I copy and pasted a bunch of articles on how to write good LinkedIn articles and asked Claude to create a prompt for me. And then I just saved that in a Google Doc and then I just dump it in. And so now from that one sales call, I have LinkedIn posts, I have a LinkedIn article, I jump into a new prompt, take my LinkedIn article and say, okay, great, now turn this into a blog post. And then after the blog post is to my liking, I will open a new prompt, I'll say, okay, great. SEO optimizes blog post based on these keywords. And then I'll add it and it's like, it's just a systematic thing. And I think in my notes, what I mean, oh, and then sales follow up, same thing. I will come in and ask it to do my sales follow ups as well. And I've created a prompt on what I like in a sales follow up. And then I'll even ask it to be like, okay, and if they don't respond, help me write another one. And so that way it's teed up in the CRM because my hardest part is the task shifting from this to that. And so if I have my next two touches for a prospect done, it's so much easier than to come back a week later when I have the task that you need to follow up. What do I need to say? My brain is not in that right place of mind. And so I do it all. So all in now it's about an hour to do all this.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: So I get like, I think I wrote seven pieces of content in about an hour. Like using the idea of a good sales call.
I work with startups. I'm running a startup, so there's a lot of new information I don't know about. Like an established brand. If they would have as many meaty learnings coming out of their demo calls as I'm finding, but I no longer worry about what am I going to talk about.
That part's probably the nicest of all.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I'll add two bits because this is a learning episode. I'll add two things to this. And this is where I'm like halfway there. I haven't actually built this out and using it, but this is what's in progress for me along the social side is I paid a guy on Upwork to go scrape the last 50 posts from about a dozen really good LinkedIn writers.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: And I, and I don't think this is wrong. I bought Justin Welsh's LinkedIn course a while ago and he sends out monthly emails with a handful of templates like this, this format and style. And these are the emotions. And this is kind of why this works and stuff. Every month I dump that into Google Doc. Yeah. And I, so, so this is what I'm working on is like I have the specific examples of a bunch of really good LinkedIn content and the templates. And then I want to just be able to say, I want to write a post about this.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: And then take these two bits like you were saying, like your copy these five blog posts as the like learning and model lowercase m maybe and then do a thing.
So that's where. Because I think that the way this ties into what you're doing with your sales call is like, if you just open ChatGPT and say write a LinkedIn post, it's gonna suck.
But if you give it these parameters in context, I think it does a lot better. So that's how I'm trying to approach this. Because we don't record our sales calls. Yeah. Like, they're all the same. So. So, like, I don't. I don't think we're not getting the.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Same learnings of, like, mic drops that I'm feeling.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But, but, but what I can imagine is like, if I was struggling, I might. And like, Justin talks about this a lot is like, break your content up into different, like, functions.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: And like, maybe once a week I just go through a bunch of LinkedIn and a bunch of Twitter and just pull topics out and then just have it write that. And maybe write it from, like, write on this topic from a fear perspective and write on this topic from, like an ambition perspective or a contrarian perspective or something like that.
But yeah, that's super cool. That's cool. So I use Fathom for re recording. I. I don't know. I don't. I don't really use it as deeply as I should, but it's. Yeah, I think there's a lot of great tools.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: I feel like if you're working on go to market, product, market fit, language, messaging, recording every call. And I was kind of creeped out by it. But at first, like, I. I had clients that have used it in the past, and it always was a bit strange. Like, I have gotten over that. And now because there's those moments I can capture where it's like lightning in a bottle. Someone just says something and you're like, dang. That just summarized everything we've been trying to say that I just embraced it. The other thing I'll say from a content perspective is depending on how. When it comes to social and you want your voice to be presented. I once volunteered political campaign, and I will never forget the campaign director being like, we say three things over and over and over again.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Every random person can walk up and say what these three things are. We are never. Because I was like, the marketer, I wanted to be like, we should rebind this. We should say this. He was like, no. And I remember it being very humbling. And I was almost offended because I was like, I'm like a good marketer. Like, why are you telling me? But what I'VE realized is when you look at how little people can actually absorb how busy they are, how many times you need to be able to introduce a concept to them. Like, everyone should probably just pick a couple things that they're trying to talk about. So, like, I love trade shows. Trade shows are my happy place. Trade shows is what drives the best results for my clients. So I now talk about trade shows a lot. I talk about motherhood, and I talk about startup life. And it's like, those are my lanes. And when you come to producing content, it's just a lot easier if you know what lane you're focused on, rather than, I'm having trouble. Like, I can't necessarily provide commentary on things that are happening in the news. And I know some people have really good success with that. I just personally am like, you know, where I've been able to be successful is talking about the things I love.
And if I keep in those lanes, I find it a lot easier to create content based on those.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, I would. I would maybe challenge you. Like, I think three is probably too much, right? Like, I think we. We want to be known for a single thing from a. From a personal perspective and from a company perspective. Like, Kastos is the podcast Humphrey hosting company for monetization. If you want to make money podcasting, come to cast us. That's what. That's what we're trying to do. And that was a whole process in and of itself. Like that. That's tough. Like, if you're an established brand in a kind of horizontal market, to say, like, we only do this one thing or we focus on this one thing, and this is what an ICP looks like for us.
That's a bit tough. But, yeah, I think. I think at least pick a couple, right? Give yourself that out to talk about motherhood or.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's so interesting, too, because then it's like, I as a business owner versus my business.
And so it's like, castness for you, is that. But who is Craig to me? You're a really sharp, savvy entrepreneur who loves to learn and teach. Like, so that's what I get from your information. And so I think that's hard, and it's a journey I'm going through right now is like, well, maybe LTO is the one that should be talking about the trade shows. Even though it's my happy place and it makes me light up. It's like that. That's, like, the journey I'm. But I overanalyze and Overthink this stuff. I think ultimately, just post twice a week about your business and you'll reap the rewards.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's. So I had Sam Brown from LinkedIn. Like, a lot of folks know Sam. I had him on the show and then he and I are kind of buddies. So we chatted a few times. And we've chatted a few times about exactly this, which is like the best thing for my business is for me to talk about marketing and content and podcasting. But. But I am a lot more than that. And I want to talk about startups and entrepreneurship. But. But in reality, startups and entrepreneurship interest a very small percentage of our potential customers.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: So what I've tried to do is one, just give myself the grace that, like, if I'm going to post a few times on LinkedIn, some of them are just flyers. Right. Like, they just, they don't line up. And then when, when I do really want to kind of like do my job right, it's like, how do I talk about, like, my interest through the lens of Cat? What is right for Castos?
And I find that works pretty well. I think Adam Robinson does a pretty good job of this.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Fabulous job at this.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: But I mean, you know, like, so folks just look up Adam Robinson runs RB2B. Like, it's a, it's a tool to find the email address of people who visit your website.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I highly, I will say to everyone, like, I highly encourage you to do it. It has been so eye opening for me as I evolve my business. But more importantly, if you invest in the content game, so you're using the AI, you're creating posts to know who is engaging with your content is like, so valuable because it'll tell you who these people are. So you'll be like, oh, financial services, maybe that's an audience. I hadn't actually started prospecting to, but I've had three of them hit my site this week. So I'm going to and invest in it. And the free plan is like, you get a hundred visits a month. It's enough to give you that data about who's engaging. Yeah, it's fabulous.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, he talks about being an entrepreneur. Like, he doesn't talk about email marketing or, you know, whatever this inbound, light, outbound thing is at all. And so I think that that's like fair grace to all of us to say, I don't have to talk about podcasting every day. You don't have to talk about trade shows every day. You talk about these things that are kind of like, right next to it or that kind of Venn diagram where it overlaps to where, like, yeah, this thing is relevant. People who may be interested in my thing find this content that is more like, personally meaningful, maybe, or interesting to me, and I gotta be able to.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Want to write it. Right. Like, even if Claude. Even if Claude is helping me do this, like, I have to be inspired by the topic. And I think for me, knowing my inspiration is like, I just really dig this intersection of sales and marketing. And it wasn't until my last company that I founded where I realized for the first time why salespeople say marketing leads suck. And they're like, they say, I have pipeline. I have no pipeline. It wasn't until I was like, in those shoes, I got it. And so it's just fun. Like, I love talking about the intersection of stuff. And so I think if you can talk about something that helps people make their lives a little better, like, sweet. And then if the algorithm likes it or doesn't like it, like, I don't know if I care. I'm excited to write about it.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
I want to talk about accountability and kind of persistence with this because I think this is a big thing. Right. I went on a big bender and wrote. Was super active on LinkedIn. About the Middle of last year, I kind of fell off a cliff and just am coming back. How are you using AI to stick with it? Because I think that's the most important thing is, like, us as founders. The. The highest leverage thing in my business is me showing up tomorrow.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: If I'm just like, fuck it, this is over, that's really bad. So how are you using AI to stay in the game?
[00:33:12] Speaker B: I try to batch as much as I can. So when I am in the flow, I will aim to crank out a few at a time.
And it's usually one theme, like LinkedIn.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Posts or articles or whatever.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: One theme that I'm trying to lean into. It's like, oh, I just got off a call and the person's talking about, like, oh, yeah, we don't really have a strategy, but, you know, we just invested 50 grand in the booth. Like, that will be my hook.
And then I'll try to take that as far as I can. And I always try to lead with like one meaty piece of content, like an article. And then I'll ask Claude to basically repurpose that article three times as three different posts I could share about the article all in that same work. Sprint and Then I'll just calendar it out and schedule it. So I'll be like, I'll post one this week, I'll schedule one for two weeks from now, and I'll schedule one for four weeks from now. And then over time, my calendar just gets filled by doing these little sprints of coming in. I am insane and decided I was going to commit to doing it five days a week for six months to see what happens. Like, human challenge, I guess.
I absolutely have notes in my calendar reminding me, you don't have a post for tomorrow, you need to do something. But I would say the greatest realization is focus. Like, put the time and energy into refining one meaty piece of content that you can then use over and over and over again. So if it's an article or I have a designer I love working with and sometimes she'll come up with just like a little gif I can put with it. Or it will be just a little banner. Use that same banner and then just say like, here's your original post.
Give the original post to Claude, give the banner to Claude and say, help me come up with a new version of this where I can use the same graphic and then same thing. And then you come up with a few, and then you schedule them a few weeks in advance and so you're filling the days and the holes without having to think about it on a daily basis.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Are you scheduling right in LinkedIn or are you using Buffer or something similar?
[00:35:16] Speaker B: I'm using LinkedIn right now. It's just the way my brain works.
I have a VA who keeps a calendar going for me after I post, so she'll come back in so I can always see what I have done. So if I and I'll do the approach of like, what got the best impressions, or I'll look at it and be like, what drove the best engagement. And then I'll copy that over into Claude and say, help me create something like this.
But ironically, like yesterday I had a post that one would deem a failure, if any. If I had an agency looking at it, a marketing manager even, they'd be like, yeah, that post sucked. It had like a hundred impressions. However, it was very specific about the app I'm creating, very specific to the problem I solve. And of the 7 likes, so to speak, whatever engagement, the little like thing, two of them were the people that are closest to revenue in my pipeline.
So is that a failure at two people who are my closest revenue? I'm changing, chasing engage with a content that was just 100% reinforcing why I do what I do. So I was like, to me that is a win, but to everyone else that would post would look like a failure. And so that's the hard part is. But that's what motivates me to keep coming because it's like, oh yeah, that's. That was just. That saved me an email touch point to try to remind them why I'm so awesome.
Like I say that jokingly. It's the hardest part for me in founder led sales is like, I don't want to bother people. I don't. I truly want to help. And so if they can see a post and engage with the post and let the post help nurture them along and save me the time and energy from having to come up with an email that doesn't feel intrusive, like, heck yeah, I'll do that all day long.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I think it's probably better, right, than an email because like they're choosing to go engage with your content. Like the email is like intrusive. Like no matter what you do, it's intrusive.
And I think that like you touched on a really important thing which is like, we all want to see, oh, this is 124likes on this one or 7 comments or this one went viral or whatever. The reality is, in my experience it's like much more holistic. Right. It's like there's this kind of silent audience that never engages with your stuff, but then, you know, just signs up for your service or, or like it's another platform that you're not really monitoring and it just randomly gets there like freaking Reddit or whatever. Like I think that like, and it's tough cause like, you know, coaching founders, they're always like, where do I focus my energy and what should I be working on? Because I only have three hours in the day to do marketing. And I totally get it. And the answer is not always clear because like, you just can't tell like with a lot of certainty what the heck is working there. There's only a couple companies I know that say SEO works for us or Facebook ads work for us. Everyone else is kind of like, we do a bunch of shit and we're growing. Yeah. And maybe if I turn this thing off, it changes. But. But maybe not even like, because there's such a long tail impact of so much of this.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: I think a lot of it is credibility. Early stage founders, businesses who are really trying to scale is you have to focus on what makes you credible to your audience. And so I think that is where the investment in LinkedIn, if you're a B2B company, or maybe it's YouTube, but it's trying to show people that you can send an email to someone. It is black and white text. There is no context to who you are or what you do. But if over time you can use thought leadership, articles or podcasts, other things like that, to show I'm actually a human who cares. I am here to support. I'm not just some overseas company that's trying to pitch you on something. I don't know. I personally think that's where I found her. Even once a week, like, sometimes it's just cutting back how much you can do, but committing to the consistency.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: And then from there it's like, how do you do your time? Like, yeah, SEO is awesome, but are you ready to do link? Are you ready to do everything? It's a lot of uphill lift, but if you can just say, like, okay, cool, I'm going to leverage whatever the channel is that your audience is in or whatever you're most comfortable in. I have people who don't mind recording video. I find video really painful. So it's like, if you can just record video and make YouTube your channel, like, go for it.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. How do you, how do you kind of balance the human connection element, which I agree is probably like where if I fast forward five years, like, it's going to be by far the most important thing with really embracing AI. Like, how do you, how do you balance the two? Because they're on the surface, like kind of diametrically opposed.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Hmm.
I haven't thought of this before. So, like just top of mind, first thing that comes to mind is AI gives me the time to do the work, to open me up, to have those personal experiences, like if I can batch my content, stay frequent on LinkedIn, build my audience so that I have 30 minutes in my day to help someone who has a quick question, like, that's awesome.
I have been able to connect with so many cool people through LinkedIn. Just blind networking. Hey, would you like to connect?
And I don't think any of that would have happened had it not started with AI.
So I mean, we only have so much time in the day, so it's like, how can you use AI to get some of the low hanging fruit off your plate? Or you only have so much budget to spend, so how can you. I mean, I have some brilliant, brilliant, brilliant copywriters in my network that I adore working with, but for a lot of people it is not an option to drop. I think I'm paying $1500 for case study with someone. Like a lot of people just can't do that. And so it's like, how do you use AI to free up your dollars so you can go to the trade show and have those face to face interactions?
[00:41:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, to me, like it's re saying what you're saying. It's mental energy.
It's not time. I have time. I don't have like today, like I have nine calls today.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: I have nine calls today, five today. And my executive assistant was like, ooh, good luck.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so I'm working the same number of hours, right. Like as I would normally, but I'm going to be completely done at 4:00. Like when that call ends at 4:00, I'm going to go open a seltzer and sit on the couch and watch YouTube for a while. Yes. But there are days when it's 4 o'clock and I've had two calls and I've kind of putzed around and done marketing stuff and I'm jazzed. I'm like, cool, my afternoon coffee, I'm ready to rock. Let's do this. And to me, yeah, it's like, can I take some of the volume of work off my plate so that I have more mental energy to do the high impact stuff? And it's exactly like the four hour work week stuff. You freaking rewind 10 years. Right. Or 15 years now it's like, hey, can I hire this person in the Philippines for $4 an hour to take some of the stuff off my plate? Can I pay Claude 19 bucks a month to. To do and it achieves the same thing.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: And for us to elevate. And this is what, this is what I tell our team. And like, I think this is a whole discussion. It is like, how does your team embrace and respond to AI because at surface, like, it's a risk for all of us. You know, I was talking about my kind of epiphany moment with AI like it threatened my business and it is threatening my business in some way and it's threatening all of our jobs. Yeah.
How do you.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Our local elementary school does like a planning session every three to five years or something and they bring in these speakers and the basic gist of the whole community is how do we prepare our children for a life with AI? How do we educate our youth now so that they are have a career path headed forward. And that was really shocking to think about and like sit here with my kids and realize like, cool, let's focus on teaching you guys how to run some businesses because that AI is not going to take away the ability to run a business. But yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's pretty crazy. I, I, yeah, but, but I agree, like, I think how going I, it was a huge tangent going back to the like, how do you balance the human element and how that's more important than ever with the need. Not even the, like, it's beneficial. You have to lean heavily into AI. I agree. It's like just free up those, that mental energy and that time to do more of the human stuff.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Go to the trade shows.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Have the calls like be willing to do the face to face when you can.
I think that's a huge part of it. I'm trying to think of the other components of the human element.
I think the human element of AI that I'm seeing come out with my client is the relief because you know, one, we all are not good talking about ourselves.
And so having to write an investor newsletter or having to write that difficult email about a sales call that didn't go well or anything like that, I think that's the other side of human like humanness that AI is presenting is the weight on a shoulder that was carried from probably six months, I'm guessing about an investor newsletter when it was like, why don't you and I just have a call for an hour. Firefighters will record it. I'll draft it up. And like I said, 70% there. But it got the ball rolling. And so I think that's the human side of AI that we have to say is like if you're willing to embrace it, it's going to bring some relief in like your point mental space that we don't give it enough credit for.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
One really specific thing maybe to end on. I talk to chat GBT a lot.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: I can't talk to Claude as far as I know on my laptop. I think maybe I just downloaded the mobile app. Can you talk to Claude?
[00:45:45] Speaker B: I haven't tried.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: It might not like me if I was talking at it slightly more reserved in what I'm coming back within my favorite feedback.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: I think it's juniper or Julep or something like that in, in chat gbt. Yeah, it's great. Like, especially on my phone. Like if I have five minutes I'll, I'll Fire up. Like, I have a couple projects where I just do this kind of recurring thing, and it's. It's so cool because it's learning, like, it learns the context of, like, this thing that we're building.
Yeah, I'll just talk to it. I'll be like, hey, I was thinking about this thing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, you can see, like, memory's updating and it's doing all this stuff, like, because, like, I don't like. That's why I do a podcast. It's like, I don't like writing, so. So it's cool for me to be able to talk to it. And I like it. Very different words when. When I'm talking versus when I'm typing. Same.
So. Yeah.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really cool. That's a good one. I hadn't thought of.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But. But I don't know how to do that in Claude. So that's maybe, like, maybe I'll like, record a thing on my phone and upload it or something like that. Um, cool. So, Allison, like, folks who want to reach out. LinkedIn sounds like it's the place to.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Always on LinkedIn. Yeah.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: Um, LinkedIn websites. Join lto.com I'm putting together a bunch of free resources, so I will try to put some of my specific AI prompts that I'm using that you guys can download on that.
But yeah, just open book here to help.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Awesome. I appreciate it. So we'll include a link to the Google Doc that. That we put together in the description below. Podcasting or YouTube. Check it out. It's really great. It's really specific too. So you can take and just implement this. So I really appreciate it. Thank you.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: Absolutely. Happy to help.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: All right.
