Speaker 1: (00:42)
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Strategy Talks. I wanna welcome all of you who are here live with us today, and I also want to welcome those who might be watching this on the replay. Um, and if you are, make sure you put hashtag replay in a comments. Last but not least, I wanna do a special shout out to those who listen to strategy talks as a podcast. So thank you so much for joining us today. Um, I want to go ahead and bring on our guest and then I'll introduce her to you. So without much further ado, here is Kate Bradley Churnis from lately.ai. And so let me just go ahead and pull up your, um, bio Kate. So Kate is the founder and c e o of Lately, which uses AI to generate high engaging content in your unique brand voice that is customized to target any audience. Now, there's a lot more to Kate and bef, instead of reading all of that, we're just gonna get right into the conversation, right? Um, Kate, now that this big, you know, let's, let's put the elephant, you know, let's, let's get rid of the elephant in a room, right? Ai, right now we hear everything about chat, G P G P Ts, whatever it's called, right?
Speaker 2: (02:02)
Yada, yada.
Speaker 1: (02:03)
You've been using AI for years for something completely different, or is it the same? Yeah,
Speaker 2: (02:10)
It's, it is completely different. Um, you know, it's so interesting, Dorian, so, so there's so many topics to go in here, right? Like, why is, are we different? That's one. But I think, let's start with AI in general, right? So mm-hmm. , thanks to the movies, the world has a massive misunderstanding of what artificial intelligence is. Um, e essentially they think it's magic . Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1: (02:33)
,
Speaker 2: (02:34)
something that doesn't exist at all. And so that's so interesting because we have to sell against that, you know? Um, and really kind of ground people in, in what it means. So there's the whole fear conversation alongside the magic conversation. You know, it's just the, the things people expect and maybe want don't exist, number one. Sure. Um, and if they, and if something is, is if there are other companies telling that they do beware, they're lying to you. They, they are. Um, and we can talk about, you know, what that means a little more. But then the, the fear part is, I mean, I'm gonna say un fully ungrounded, right? So at least in our world, the AI that I know a lot about, which is content creation land. So with artificial intelligence, it can't exist right now without human intervention. It's not a sat a Satan being, it doesn't exist by any means, right? So it, it all works on math, on algorithms that humans build, right? So that's the most important thing to, if you were, if you were to think of AI as a human per se, and understand that humans being like the only mammals when we're born, we come out helpless. We would literally die if our parents didn't feed us, clothe us, change us, shelter us. Like they're, we're helpless. We're all other mammals can like, get up and start rolling, you know? Yeah. They can eat, they can walk. All
Speaker 1: (04:00)
The, except, except humans.
Speaker 2: (04:01)
Except humans, right? So AI, just like a human in that way, on the, if we were in the life of a human, we're, we're about three months old. Okay? So imagine that it can't do anything, right? Okay. Right? So let's just be clear there,
Speaker 1: (04:19)
Calm down,
Speaker 2: (04:20)
Breathe with me, you know? Yeah. Let's
Speaker 1: (04:22)
Just create, right?
Speaker 2: (04:22)
Yeah. So really now, now if you're thinking of AI in that way, it's, it's, it's technology. Mm-hmm. , it's technology designed to help people do their lives or work better, just like all technology. Mm-hmm. and like all technology, it will cause change and will it replace jobs? Yes. Like all technology, will it create new jobs? Yes. Same thing, right? Right.
Speaker 1: (04:50)
Right.
Speaker 2: (04:51)
Yeah. So, yeah, that's,
Speaker 1: (04:53)
So that, so that makes sense. I just had a conversation with a client. I'm a content creator, right? Yeah. Content manager. And I have small business owner clients. I was ta having a conversation today and I was like, you know, she's like, well, should we use ch you know, should we use ai? You know, what is the ramifications with Google? Like, you know, and I said, look, think of it as a thinking partner right now, um, instead of a content creator that's gonna do all the work for you. Cause you don't want that anyway. You still need a human person, a, a human brain to say, that's good. That's not good. I need to change words here. This doesn't make any sense. Right? You still need that, but you can ask it to do some research for you. You can make it help you write better content, right.
Speaker 1: (05:39)
And edit some of the stuff that you've written. Um, but I, I, I think of it more as right now as an enhancement of the things that I do and being able to cut down on some of the work. And I heard somebody else say yesterday, um, which was, I thought, pretty smart. Um, AI is not going to replace the, the social media managers or the social media people. It's the people that don't use it will be replaced right's. It's not going to take the place of us. But those who don't use it eventually will get replaced, because then That's right. You be, yeah. You become that. So, um, but let's talk about sales conversion without cold calls, right? Because this is really where we're going with this conversation. Um, AI is a tool that you use, but how do you do sales on social media? And it's funny because I actually have all these questions for you, and AI was the last question. So we started with that. So that's kind of, so I'm gonna go peel it back, you know, reel you back in. Let's talk about social and selling. Yeah. And let's start that conversation. Or let's, let's go with that conversation next.
Speaker 2: (06:46)
So the, the factors are, and I like to strip everything down, you know, just like you do.
Speaker 1: (06:50)
Absolutely.
Speaker 2: (06:51)
Yeah. Are always the same. So selling has been the same since the first person sold the wheel. Like, you connect with people, you find common ground, they trust you, and then you're willing to buy from them. There's a need there, obviously, you know, that's gotta be part of it. Mm-hmm. , but there's this other kind of emotional component. Now, if you are able to really double down on that emotional component, you make not only a sale, but you make a fan, make it evangelist. And that's the business I'm in, right? So, so because I come from radio broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day for xm, my uber power is exactly that. Take a listener and turn them into a fan. And I started thinking a lot about, well, how can I translate this into sales and into writing specifically? Cuz that's where I shine. And as you know, digital runs on writing.
Speaker 2: (07:37)
Yes, there's videos like this, but you still have to promote the video with writing. So it's down at the, the DNA essentially of all of our marketing and sales kind of endeavors. And I am really interested in the theater of the mind, Dorian, and, and I can explain that for people if they, if they don't know. So the theater of the mind is this act of the imagination that's able to fill in the blanks, um, in the case of, um, essentially se sensory deprivation, right? So you don't need theater of the mind to fill in the blanks in a video because it's all being given to us. But you do need it in the case of when you read a book or when you listen to someone on, on Spotify, on the radio, you know, cuz there's, there's not that visual component. When you are a host or an author and you're good at what you're doing, you're great at what you're doing, you allow room for that human, that other third party, that imagination to fill in the blanks in a way that presses the story along in the direction you want.
Speaker 1: (08:35)
Hmm.
Speaker 2: (08:36)
Okay. So you're guiding them, but you're giving them essentially a voice and you're making what is genuinely a one-way street. Like I'm the writer, I'm the person wielding the mic, feel as though it's a two-way street and that you're having a conversation. Okay? Right? So the way this translates into writing is like this when you, and this is how we get the 98% sales conversion, . Is that ?
Speaker 1: (09:03)
No, I love it. This is fascinating. This is absolutely fascinating,
Speaker 2: (09:07)
. It's, I I think it is. And I think, and it's really powerful because it's plays on, um, nostalgia, emotion, memory, trust, right? These are the things. So when you listen to a new song during, like every other song you've ever heard before must, uh, instantly be accessed by your brain. It's running down the library of songs. It knows you already have heard at one point throughout your whole life, and it's trying to find familiar touchpoint so it knows where to index the new song in the library of the memory of your brain. Okay? Mm-hmm. . So that's happening right away. It's so powerful. Nostalgia, memory, emotion, these all build trust. Now, same idea, when you write me an email or a text message or a social media post, I hear your voice in my head and your voice has a frequency. There's sound to it like a song. So similar idea, can you trigger nostalgia, memory, emotion, trust, even in a 240 character, soon to be 4,000 character, social post to make me fall in love? And the answer is yes, right? I do it all the time. So I, like on LinkedIn, for example, I get posts that have, right, posts that have 84,000 views or 27,000 views. And it's because I'm thinking, I'm thinking of these things, you know, and you've seen me do it, right? I'm mm-hmm. . I mean, I think the mistake I've
Speaker 1: (10:27)
Seen you in,
Speaker 2: (10:28)
Yeah. In action, right?
Speaker 1: (10:32)
Oh, you muted yourself by accident or something happened to your microphone, MyPhone.
Speaker 2: (10:38)
Yikes. The flailing hands. Yeah. Um, so, so forgive me for just like vomiting at you, but, but the mistake people make and it's marketing's fault. Marketing taught us all that one message all the time. I was taught that too, right? Mm-hmm. one the same message. Consistency. Consistency. Sure. Hammer at home, hammer at home, the world has changed that is now perceived as spam, okay? Mm-hmm. . So you can't do that. Now, luckily, um, humans are multifaceted and so we are interested in being accessed in different ways. There's different things we care about, right? Yeah. We could be, um, loyalty, it could be saving the environment, it could be the way a perfume smells or whatever it is. But like, there's often many things that cause, cause the purchase mm-hmm. that cause the inspiration to purchase. And so instead of hammering us with one message, let's look at the content we have, let's break it down into multiple pieces, and let's try and hit all those touchpoints with a combination of like, quality and quantity, right? And the, what happens is because you're taking a message and altering it multiple times, it doesn't seem spammy and you're able to actually hammer it many, many more times over because it, it's new every time. And I'll, I will get into this and I wanna touch on one thing. The old marketing adage was seven times, right? You had to mm-hmm. , hear, read, watch something seven times before it sunk in. Now it's, it's two dozen. Okay? Mm. Multiple times
Speaker 1: (12:14)
That many. Yes.
Speaker 2: (12:15)
Right? So how do you do that without being annoying? I got an idea.
Speaker 1: (12:21)
Okay,
Speaker 2: (12:22)
,
Speaker 1: (12:23)
What is
Speaker 2: (12:23)
It? So what we do at lately is use lately to market lately, right? We don't do any cold calls, no cold emails and, and no, um, paid ads. Now I did this by hand for Walmart 15 years ago. Um, so you can do it on your own. And I'll tell you how, if you take a long piece of a long form piece of content, it could be a blog, video, audio doesn't really matter and you're gonna repurpose it. That's number one. So instead of thinking of the headline of the title of the blog, you know, um, interview with Kate Bradley Turn, which is probably what someone would write, who cares about that? But inside is the content. Inside is what's interesting. So even if you can pull multiple sentences out that kind of feel like non-sequitur with a couple of tweaks, put the link back to the blog or the video, whatever it is at the end of it.
Speaker 2: (13:13)
And then now you have maybe 40 social posts from one article, then scatter them out over time. I love it when people say, well, why would I wanna promote this more than once? And I'm like, are you kidding me? Hello. . Right? So, so because it's still new content to me, I'm, I can still discover it in 40 weeks, right? Once a week mm-hmm. once a week mm-hmm. 80 weeks once every other week, let's say. Right? Right. Depending on what the, the cadence you can tolerate with your network. And what's interesting is you'll find many different access points to new people because there's so many things to lift out, not just the title. And you'll find the same people will actually re-share the different pieces of the content because it feels different to them also, right? Mm-hmm. , those are your evangelists by the way. Mm-hmm. . Um, and so we figured out a way to automate this process.
Speaker 2: (14:04)
The, the magic, sorry for a commercial isn't just the clipping up of the things, but it's how do I know what to clip up? Mm-hmm. , which specific words, ideas, et cetera, will, um, resonate with my audience. And this is the difference between lately and all those other companies. So, and two, two things with them, you're typing in a couple words and you're getting out a long form thing. Oh, this is the other way. You need long form content and we'll clip it up into something short with them. You can't customize any of it cuz they don't control it. G P T controls it mm-hmm. , right? And it, they don't have access to your analytics. There's no way it could possibly learn your voice, anything like that. So if you and I typed in the same thing, we would get the exact same thing out. Mm-hmm. , right? We don't want that. Okay. , ask me some questions. How's that ?
Speaker 1: (14:48)
No, that's great. I've actually used lately, and I've seen it in action and I know that you can teach it to, right? Teach, teach it, you can teach it what you want. Like it'll, it'll condense something in 40 snippets and then you go in and go, yep, this was a good one. Yep. This I like you, this I like, and these three I don't. So then the next time you go, it knows more of what you like. Maybe it was the length, maybe it was the way the sentence started. And then what you're not even saying yet was you can do that with long form content, but you could do that with a video video. It was a, it's amazing. So if you have a five minute video, think about what you, if you're a business owner, if you're a marketer watching this or listening to this, what can be done? How many snips and how many clips and how much listening and rewinding and re-listening has to be done to make 40 clips. What if with the touch of one button, AI did that for you based on what you had previously done. So it gets better each time. And then all you need to do is just share them. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: (15:56)
that.
Speaker 1: (15:58)
Yes. No, here I'm selling it for you. I love
Speaker 2: (16:00)
You
Speaker 1: (16:01)
.
Speaker 2: (16:03)
Yeah, I mean that's, that's the thing is like, you know, how do we, and but the training is the hard part. So what we found is so interesting is like, this is selling against magic. So people don't wanna train it, they just wanna walk away. And you're like, okay, well you know, why is it that people sit down with QuickBooks and they totally know that they have to do some work, they don't just push a button and like their accounting is done for the year. And I mean, it doesn't happen this way. Like, so we started communicating that training as AI training
Speaker 1: (16:30)
Hmm.
Speaker 2: (16:31)
Specifically, and, and we did an experiment too. So we found that customers who didn't do the AI training would see really great results, but when they did the AI training, that's when you see 98% sales conversion, 12000% increased engagement, 84% increase in clicks. Right? Right. Those are the big, big numbers. So that's the really, I think that's so important goes back to where we were talking in the beginning, um, you know, AI on its own great AI with a human, wow, it's not just ethical, it's about the results too. You know?
Speaker 1: (17:07)
Right. So if you're watching this, this is, if you take anything away from this is that you as a human still need to be there and nurture, almost nurture ai, uh, and, and, and help it think the what you want it to think and help and help it. Um, do what you want it to do because it needs that human brain and a human, um, process. And also, you know yourself as a business owner or you know, your clients if you're a marketer, better obviously than the bot would. So, yeah. Um, making those changes and making it authentic is really important. So, so to wrap this up, for those who are watching and listening, Kate, you're using the process, what you are selling to make your own sales conversion for lately, correct?
Speaker 2: (18:01)
Yeah. There's a couple of other components that are a little secret. You want me to share them?
Speaker 1: (18:05)
Absolutely. . Okay. So secrets are great .
Speaker 2: (18:10)
So there's a mindset shift here, which is required and that is on the post MO versus the promo. So if you start thinking of the post mo, the post promotion as more valuable, you will get infinitely more eyeballs on your content. It's not that promo isn't important, but don't go, don't go crazy on that. Go crazy on the after the fact marketing. Mm-hmm. , that's number one. The number two thing to think about is, um, earned media versus own media. Mm-hmm. . So everyone is often very concerned and good at, at promoting their own content, but then when it comes to earned content, like if someone was interviewing you or writing an article about you or writing a press release, it just dies. A sad death. You know, maybe you mentioned it once on LinkedIn, but again, why not put the same effort in promoting earned media as you would own?
Speaker 2: (18:57)
So our secret is I get on a show like yours a couple times a week or I guess write a blog or I'll do a workshop on AI training, writing skills or whatever. And then I asked them for the file and then I run the file through lately. And then secret number four or five, wherever we are, is we broadcast it not only on my channels and the brand channels, but all the employees participate as well. So employee advocacy, that's a buzzword now, but we've been doing it since the beginning. Do you know how hard it was to get Walmart to do that in 2006? Mm-hmm. , I finally did third year they did 12 posts and we saw the engagement in the ROI just skyrocket that year. So then the, the last secret is Slack. We have a Slack channel called Sharing is caring any customer we target that we want to be our customer and we see content that they're sharing online, we pop it in there and the whole team piles on and comments and shares and likes.
Speaker 2: (19:53)
We make them aware of us. And then with our current customers, once you become a customer, now you're in my family. So if I see that you've got a new book you're writing or something, we pop it in sharing, caring, the whole team piles on Congratulations, Doreen, you know, that kind of thing. And then with our own content, you know, the moment I get featured somewhere again we pop it in there. So like we're actively doing the hard work that AI can't do, right? So we're letting it do the annoying thing we don't wanna do so that the humans can get in there and like engage, have the conversations, reach through the screen and shake your hand. Alright.
Speaker 1: (20:28)
And I know we're almost out of time, but the nugget right there was guys liking, sharing, loving on somebody is free on social media if you've taken anything away from this , um, do that. Get your team involved, get your staff involved. I love that sharing is caring Slack. There were, were so many great truths here and great secrets that you share it with us. Kate, I so appreciate you being here with me today. I know that, um, you've, you've gotta run. Um, if people wanna connect with you, what is the best way or would lately or check it out? What is the way they can do this? Hi
Speaker 2: (21:02)
Everybody, tell me you who heard me here because we're friends and so, you know, they'll be really important. Uh, so dub dub dubt lately do AI is us. And then, um, you can get me on Twitter lately. Ai Kailey is my Kailey Kateley from lately.
Speaker 1: (21:15)
. I love it. I love you. Yes. All thank you so much. Bye everybody. Thanks so much. Bye.
