Business Success Consulting Group

Creating Systems for Increasing Engagement and Repurposing Content With Kate Bradley Chernis, With Adi Klevit of Business Success - Featuring the Lately CEO

Watch the Video ›
Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:02)

Welcome to the system simplified podcast, where we feature top leaders who share stories on how to successfully systemize a business. Now let's get started with the show.

Speaker 2: (00:17)

Hello, AVIT here with the system simplified podcast, where we interviewed top entrepreneurs, founders, and thought leaders about systematizing a business. And this podcast is being brought to you by business success consulting group. At business success consulting group, we create custom processes and tailor made business systems. So businesses can thrive and grow. And today's guest is Kate Bradley Charney. Hi Kate.

Speaker 3: (00:46)

Hey a how are you?

Speaker 2: (00:48)

Good. How are you?

Speaker 3: (00:50)

I'm good. I'm sweating. Sorry, everybody. But I mean, it's like 90 and humid and um, I'm also, I'm trying to recover from vacation. I know that sounds terrible. But you know, like two days of laundry and email mountain and all the, all the things that go with coming back, trying to get, get back into it without losing that sense of sanity, you just spent, you know, so hard trying to regain reading a book or whatever it is we all do on vacation.

Speaker 2: (01:24)

absolutely. Yes. I know how it goes. So I came from vacation as well. So there you go. We're both recovering Kate, introduce you. Audience is probably going like who is Kate, but Kate is amazing. So Kate is the founder and of lately AI and we are AI stands for artificial intelligence, right? Mm-hmm and we're gonna talk all about marketing and artificial intelligence and how you can combine both. And how can you utilize artificial intelligence in order to actually create great processes and systems for your marketing, which I'm really excited to talk about, but let's, I mean, you know, I'm, I have to tell the entire bio here because it's amazing. So, OK. You're former rock and roll DJ. Amazing. And you had like 20 million listeners as you were the music director and on air host, its Sirius. Right? So what, what channel were you the host of?

Speaker 3: (02:23)

Oh, I was the music director for XM 50, the loft, which they retired it a few years ago, but, um, it was one of the most popular channels.

Speaker 2: (02:33)

Oh, wow. OK.

Speaker 3: (02:35)

Yeah,

Speaker 2: (02:35)

That's great. And then, um, you also an award winning radio producer, engineer, and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast communication brand building sales and marketing expertise. And you brought all that information in order to create lately AI.

Speaker 3: (02:53)

Yeah. It's nice when you're left your life connects itself, right? Nadi.

Speaker 2: (02:57)

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: (02:59)

That's the trick is making sure that the, the line sews everything up. Nice and neat for you,

Speaker 2: (03:06)

For sure. So let's talk about you a little bit before we talk about marketing and AI, let's talk about your journey and how did you became a founder and a business owner and the CEO lately from become from your mu being a music director all the way to, um, where you are now.

Speaker 3: (03:25)

Yeah, that is the question. So I was, I had the best radio job in the world. Everybody wanted to be where we were and I was miserable AEE. I, I, um, it was, I, I was being sexually harassed. Um, and I didn't even know it at the time. I mean, this is a long time ago and we didn't have all the language like we all do now and it was rewarded. It was something even I participated in. You were, you were, um, just applauded for, you know, being one of the boys, let's say. Okay. And the weird thing though, was there was this kind tension or hostility that came with it called a hostile workplace now, which I didn't know what that meant either, but people were jealous of me and what I did for my channel and the success that we were having and were using it against me, you know?

Speaker 3: (04:22)

And so that was really frustrating because I couldn't understand, like I was kicking. Why wasn't I getting the accolades that I deserved for, for this? And my body started to react as your body does it, it starts to your body starts to tell you things when you, when your brain won't listen. Right? And so I became, I had multiple injuries and ailments. It was starting to eventually scream at me saying, you have to change this lifestyle. It's not working for you. And, um, I made a change. I went to another music, uh, industry related company, and it was another boys club and the pain got worse and worse. And I was actually incapacitated. And my dad one day lovingly shook me by the shoulders and said, you can't work for other people anymore.

Speaker 3: (05:13)

And there's no shame in that. That was the other thing he said. And there's no shame in that. And the light bulb went off because two things were clear. Number one, there was another way. And number two, the stress was caused by the shame I felt, I, I thought I was disappointing my, my bosses, right. I couldn't figure out to please them. Lot of therapy for that. So, um, read a self help book, which I thought was garbage, but I did it anyways because I was trying to just do anything in my power. I'd seen a million kinds of doctors, east, west, you name it. Um, and the self-help book was the secret. Remember that book?

Speaker 2: (05:54)

Mm-hmm, ,

Speaker 3: (05:56)

Uh, I call it a barf of a book because it's not very well written, but, but the idea is solid. And the idea is the secret is that there is no secret. It's all in your mind. You know, what you, what you, what you believe is what you become. And what I believed at that time was I was sick. I was unhealable, there was no way out. I couldn't find the light. And it's all I talked about, you know, ID, which is like another way of saying, I wanna die this toxic ball of, and, and so my husband gave me a startup book cause he heard, he heard my dad and the book was guy Kawasaki's out of the start, which is one, a lot of people know. And one or two chapters in the,

Speaker 2: (06:47)

That book as Zen presentations, Z I just mentioned. Yeah,

Speaker 3: (06:50)

Yeah,

Speaker 2: (06:51)

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: (06:52)

You know him. Yeah. So, um, and you know, that book is not meant to be a handbook. It's meant to be inspiration, cuz that's a lot what we need when we're first starting out. It's scary. And so I took it quite literally right in the beginning he says, don't make a plan, just get started. And so I figured, well then obviously I don't need this book. And so I stopped reading it and uh, fortune fortune was favoring me and I, I had a meeting in person with two men who were huge fans of mine at XM and wanted to hand deliver me a product for the company I worked for instead of send it in the mail and to with them. And they turned out to be angel investors and they gave me 50,000 to start my first company. So that was like pretty big moment. It, it wasn't lately, but it was part of on the way here. Um, and I think, you know, the, the takeaway there, and we can talk about the rest of the story if you want, but I don't wanna go on too long. Is that the, the doors that become open to you L luck sometimes brings you the door, but you have to have the wherewithal to go through

Speaker 2: (08:07)

Mm-hmm

Speaker 3: (08:08)

right. And, uh, wherewithal, or maybe, um, stupidity sometimes for me or maybe, um, courage, you could put it as, but, um, I was lucky that these men were trustworthy and smart and they turned out to be great friends and they believed in me, they didn't know what, what we were gonna build together and it didn't matter to them. They believed that I was the person to build whatever it was, you know? And that felt remarkable. That was a huge confidence booster and there, and, and they, there was no sexual harassment. I mean, there was none of that stuff. They just believed in me.

Speaker 2: (08:44)

Right.

Speaker 3: (08:46)

Um, so anyways, from there we did something and it was cool and it was going well. And I, I won't bore you guys with those details, but along the way, someone else came to me and said, boy, you're marketing that really well. Would you like to consult us? We'll pay you more money and you can exit the music industry altogether. And I said, yes, that was, um, the, so I ended up building to systems. I ended up building, um, Walmart, this insane spreadsheet that got us 130% ROI year over year for three years.

Speaker 2: (09:22)

That's amazing. , that's a whole podcast only on that. Like one was spreadsheet

Speaker 3: (09:29)

Yeah. Cause I mean, we've all done that, right? I mean, I feel like so many great plans and systems have all been birthed in some spreadsheet that hurts people's eyeballs, mm-hmm rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows. But the idea though, ad was to the, the Walmart project was not only Walmart, it was Walmart and all of their franchises. We had bank of America and all of theirs, the IRS at and T United way worldwide and the national disability Institute. So I mean, you know, IRS and disability, like how do you market these typically unsexy things. Let's be honest acronym city. Okay. Right. And, um, there was for profit, nonprofit and governments. It was a very strange mix of, of people wanting to work together. There was a good cause at, at the heart of this, this project. And it was all about finances and, and taxes, you know?

Speaker 3: (10:25)

So again, not really sexy, but what I couldn't understand was how could they possibly be measuring themselves when no one had any history or organization to reference and understand. So I started to pull together the pieces and just index them. Let's make a library. What are we doing? What are we writing? When are we on the air? What channel is it? What state is that in? Who's listening, who paid for the ad? What newspaper is it going into? What zip code did that paper get delivered to? Right. So if we pull and who, and again, if someone is writing a press release in this town and they're writing another one in this town, but it's for the same project, well, can we learn from the best practices? Should we pull all these things together? So that was my first idea. Like, let's just do a, like, like this huge organizational behemoth.

Speaker 3: (11:16)

Right. And see if we can find the patterns. I didn't even know that that lesson was gonna be carried over until my life later. But the patterns are the most important thing. Cause there's always patterns and there's always patterns within patterns and they teach you either what to double down on or what to fix. Right? Right. So that's what we were doing. And the, the, I here's the patterns I noticed. Um, number one, people hate writing people at the largest company in the world and the smallest nonprofits in the world it's writing is very challenging. And it's a, a bit of a, that the fear of the blank page is overwhelming for so many people.

Speaker 2: (11:58)

For sure.

Speaker 3: (11:59)

Right. The second thing was once we, once you have content. So if, if creating content is hard, but once you do have it, people tend to waste it. They spend a lot of time on it and then they really don't do anything with it. There's this strange understanding that if you build it, they will come. Which is not true at all. If you write it, no one will read it. You have to tell people about that. You've written it, you know, or you've produced it or whatever. And you have to do it multiple times. I knew from radio, we used to play you the same song 300 times a week, hoping you would hear it at once. Right. Right. I knew

Speaker 2: (12:35)

That that's something with commercials too.

Speaker 3: (12:37)

Yes. Right. The ads

Speaker 2: (12:38)

That's right. Songs, but also the ads. I mean, you hear it over and over until you go, oh, it's everywhere, but you have to have that repetition. Absolutely.

Speaker 3: (12:46)

Yes. And it used to be to your point, it used to be seven times that you had to hear an ad for you to, for it to think in. And now it's 12 to 14. Oh

Speaker 2: (12:55)

Wow. Think about that. Definitely competition on your attention.

Speaker 3: (12:58)

Yeah. There's so much noise. Right. And so how do you, how do you cut through the noise? That's the thing that we're all trying to figure out. And so the other component was one I touched on before was this replication of, of efforts that seemed redundant to me. Right. If everybody's working on a project, we don't all need to write the same press release or the same blog. Let's write one, but then you can't just copy and paste it because when you're talking to individuals or individual audiences or locations, there's a vernacular there that you have to, um, allow for. So you have to take the original and understand how to mold it into the voice for that group. Right.

Speaker 2: (13:38)

Right.

Speaker 3: (13:39)

Or teach people how to do that. So, so this system, and I did that and um, and we did it by hand um, this system is what became lately. So I thought, okay, first of all,

Speaker 2: (13:53)

So let me, lemme just understand. So I'm follow. So you basically had this idea of, there is con people don't like to write content. Yeah. But then when they actually write it, they don't use it correctly because it's a wasted content. Basically you can write like a whole article, but if it's that article is not being repurposed or not being reused for different aspects of it, it's kind of like you, you lose, you basically spend a lot of time or you hired somebody and spend money. So a lot of time and money on writing content that then it's not being a hundred percent utilized, right?

Speaker 3: (14:28)

Yes, yes, exactly. Right. Because what do people do typically they take the title of the blog in this case and they publish the blog, the title check out my blog is what they say. Now, oftentimes a title while doing its job of summarizing an article is not doing its job of making anybody click to read more. It's not very interesting. There's not a, a movie trailer kind of aspect to it. It, which is what you want. This is the marketing part. This is the spend. And so I thought, well, you know, the title Walmart helps. The poor with tax credits is it's boring. Let's be honest. But inside what we wrote was really interesting, you know, $2,000 actually is life changing for 54 million Americans. That's a huge amount of people, right. And it's only $2,000. That's not very much money. You know, why, why is that?

Speaker 3: (15:18)

So I thought about what if we just lifted out different quotes and put a link on the end? And because I often wrote, wrote the blog, I mean, the writing was already good. Right. I knew that course, of course. And if I had a typical blog and I could pull out 40 quotes and 40 links back, and then what if I scheduled them cuz we knew quantity has to happen here. We just talked about that. What if I drip them out over time though? So now I'm changing my mindset of marketing. I'm I'm now saying, I know I can see the power of the link back and I can see, I knew the long tail. I knew the value out from radio. OK. And I can see that if you drip feed something out over time, by which, I mean, let's say twice a week, we take these 40 social posts and publish them for 20 weeks. Okay. That's out over time and let them percolate as marketing does like, so let it sink in. You're gonna get the quantity. Um, you're gonna get a teaser here and you're gonna get the, the payback of the long tail, which, and becomes exponentially greater than in the moment because buts in seats is, is very fruitless. Okay. You can spend a lot of money there, but if, instead, if you think of eyeballs later, that when you take the time factor away, everybody has time then. Right. You know? No, it makes

Speaker 2: (16:45)

All sense. Basically what you're saying is that you wrote this blog and then you identify like quotes that we're actually attract probably also different, different public different population. Right. Because that might resonate with, um, you know, women that might resonate with men, you know, that might resonate with a certain type of socioeconomic level. Right. So, but all of those quotes, you know, will lead to the same blog, right. To the same article and that you are achieving the way of actually having those impressions of that. People actually reading this blog, but they come from different interest points, according to what communicates to them. And it doesn't have to be just like right now, like let's say, when I'm, when I publish a blog on LinkedIn, you know, you will see it it'll disappear. Right. And maybe you don't have the time to read it right there, but that way you have it over time. So at some point in time using the word time a lot, but at some point in time that person will be able to actually have the time to read it because they're interested enough. Right.

Speaker 3: (17:40)

That's right. So you're, and, and, and this, I should have said this, but the short way is like evergreen content. Right. So if you thought, if you think of everything is evergreen content, it is because it's always searchable. Now everything on the web is forever. Right. Nice. So let's bang on let's bank on that, that longer tail like that. It's gonna take us a while to amass this, but we're gonna bet on it and be patient that's the hard part, you know? Um, so that's what we did. And I was able to then take those social posts and then teach the, the groups, the 20,000 markers, how to localize them for their specific voices, you know, their audience, wherever they were. And the idea was then to get lately to do, to do the same thing now, to be clear, a D we didn't know this is what we were doing, that, like, I explained it to you, but I didn't have quite all those words at the time. And we certainly didn't know it was artificial intelligence. Right. We thought we had built an organization system.

Speaker 2: (18:44)

Interesting. Yeah. Process basically, you know, we're all about processes. You actually created the process on how to, what would you call that process? Like how to increase engagement or how to get people to read the blogs? You know, it's just basically a process of how to get people engaged, like the different audiences engaged, right?

Speaker 3: (19:04)

Yeah. I mean, now we say repurpose, but you, you had said, and that's super accurate, but there was more to it because it's not just repurpose, it's repurposed with quite a purpose right, right. Yeah. Um, and

Speaker 2: (19:16)

Maybe we need to define it Kate, you know, because yeah. I did throw that word out cause you use it a lot. I mean, not you, but it's being used a lot. Right. So what does repurpose mean to you?

Speaker 3: (19:26)

Um, thanks for asking. Nobody ever asks that like, it's funny because repurpose there, it's not re reuse is the throwaway. I, I feel like right. Repurpose. I imagine like this spark of confetti opening that like, you know, blows stars into the sky or something because it's, it's like this exponential atomizer and it's, it's not only the multiple pieces, but it's their, the effect that they have. Right. So my, my Uber power is turning listeners into fans,

Speaker 2: (20:10)

Like

Speaker 3: (20:11)

Customers into evangelists. And I believe that that's what I mean when I say repurpose is how do I, yes. Make better use of this thing. But with the end game of not only making this sale, but making a marketer for me in my business.

Speaker 2: (20:28)

Right. So that's, I guess the purpose cuz you taking it, then you make like re meaning again. Right? So you have, you take the purpose and then you make the purpose again. But you know, now through that particular audience and that particular audience, so that timing for that, I mean maybe it's the same audience. It wasn't the right timing. Right. But you are taking what you already created that content instead of creating new content, now you're taking it and for a different purpose. And then you make, I love that. Like you make your customers into evangelists or you know, or, um, listeners, fans. Right. I mean, I, I like that connection. I like the connection you're mentioning, like how you basically creating that emotional connection and you have to make sure that you're using the right purpose.

Speaker 3: (21:10)

Yeah. I mean, I wish I could rename it by the way, if you're in, in the middle of the night, you think of a good name, let me know because you know, part of my challenge, which is embarrassing as a marketer is, is describing like the three things we talked about really here, which is the actual act of reusing something, reusing it with this enhanced purpose, let's call it of, of listeners to fans or customers to evangelists. And then the, the third piece is that mindset shift. We said, right. So U utilizing the long tail, getting out of this, you know, marketing has this now, now, now history, which is integrated because nothing we do really is now, now, now anymore, you know, everything gets recorded and you watch it at will.

Speaker 2: (21:54)

Correct. Right. Like this particular podcast for instance is an example. Right. So, absolutely. Yeah. So let's go back to the story. I mean, to, to how it all evolved. So you figured out that, you know, you didn't know what you were doing, but you were just describe what you were doing now. Hindsight is. Yeah. So then how did you, like, what spark you, how did you convert from convert that to artificial intelligence? I mean, did you just sit down and say, oh wow. You know, I can actually have AI do that for me or utilize AI. Like what's the now taking it to the next level.

Speaker 3: (22:27)

Yeah. So being the marketer, I'm always looking for like the right spin, you know? And, and as, so we built lately, which was essentially in, inside my spreadsheet for Walmart, there were multiple worksheets. And so each feature of our lately platform was one of those worksheets. Right? So it was a similar idea. And what we saw was the customers were very, very attracted to this one particular feature. And it was the one where you paste in the link to a blog, you push a button and lately pulled out all the sentences with the short link, just like I had done by hand. And so we started to be like, oh, okay, this is kind of an interesting thing. Maybe, maybe we should rearrange how we sell the product. So we started doing a demo with that piece. First, we're still thinking we're selling organization. We don't know this has changed yet, but we're trying to put this forward and we're, we still don't know how to talk about it.

Speaker 3: (23:24)

Like we, we, there is no AI, there is no repurposing. Like these words aren't there. Um, but more and more, and we're getting distracted as companies do. Right? Because now we've created content. That's interesting. People wanna publish it. And they they're expecting publishing to be like the other publishing. They know, they know, for example, like, I don't know if buffer was around then, but they have an understanding of what it should be. So now we're competing against the behemoth that we don't wanna be competing against, but we're getting, once you have cool content, you're going bit of, and then AI starts to become prevalent in the market and I'm reading about it. And I was like, oh my God, this is actually what we're doing. So we learned to relabel it, we learn more and more that writing is such a problem. And we eventually actually pull out all the publishing pieces from the product altogether. We just did this as an experiment this year to see if we could sell nothing. But the AI ,

Speaker 2: (24:29)

You don't like, you mean like pull the publishing so you don't write for people anymore. They,

Speaker 3: (24:34)

We, no, we still do the meaning publishing on social media. Oh, I see. So, yeah. Yeah. So we, so you, you still give us your long form content. We still atomize it and then you can take it and go publish it somewhere else where you already have an account with buffer or sprout social or, or HubSpot social media hub or, or Hootsuite, for example, because this is a pain in our to be Frank like, like, okay,

Speaker 2: (24:58)

So somebody else published, but you do that. So yeah. Let's so now let's okay. So we, we got the, the path, which is extremely interesting. now I wanna focus just so also from my understanding, the understanding of the listeners is like, tell me about the, the offering. First of all, tell me who you, who do you, who are your clients, who is your ideal client?

Speaker 3: (25:18)

Yeah. And, and by the way we do publish now again, we, we stop for while

Speaker 2: (25:24)

That makes sense. That's story thinking, oh my gosh. Now we have do it. That's OK, good. So now that's good to know.

Speaker 3: (25:31)

That's good to know. Yeah. And it's, and, and, and so, well, it's the, the point of that story, just to wrap it up is, is the willingness to go with the flow, right. You know, right. This is what, where the demand is going. And we're able to pivot enough, not, not pivot, but I would say evolve, cuz we're still the same product. Just be able to re re spin it or remarket it or refocus the conversation. Um, so our customers are, are everyone , which no investor wants to hear, but it's been the case all the time. We've learned not to compartmentalize them by industry really or size. Um, but by need, so need to fear. The blank page is terrible thing. So people who suffer from that that's number one, because guess what? It's, it's Walmart, it's Gary Vayner Chuck's team. Like, I mean, we've talked to some of the most famous companies in the world at the same problems as little tiny startup.

Speaker 3: (26:26)

Right. Um, the other problem is, is how do we unlock the content we've created if we have a podcast or a webinar? Cause we do this with, well, we talk, we talked about text, but we do that with audio and video as well, where we even clip up the video quotes of what you say and turn them into basically social posts with memes, right? Um, how can, how can we serve those people? Who've worked so hard in this content and help them atomize it or, or get the most out of it. We also created a syndication component because this need for what the question of what to say online has become an epidemic of sorts because it's not just the brand. Now it's the people because there's, um, a weight on your shoulders individually to market yourself and not rely on the company to do it, sales people, they have to go drum up their business themselves. So social selling employee advocacy, you know, we built these features into lately. So we can, we can help with these, these problems. So our customers range from small, medium and large, uh, companies who are interested in, in those components and saving time. I mean, just for the people listening and not to be a commercial, but lately saves an average of 84% of your time. That's like,

Speaker 2: (27:42)

That's amazing. That's amazing. Amazing, amazing. So gimme an example, you know, let's take a small to medium size business, you know, it's just like whatever industry you want to choose. Let's, let's talk about, give an example of a, of one of your clients that is about, I don't know, like has about 20 to 50 employees and industry.

Speaker 3: (28:04)

Yeah. So with those customers, um, for example, they're using often often using lately in two ways, one to market the brand. So the brand produces, um, regular blogs or podcasts or videos. Um, but also they receive earned media very often. So interviews with the CEO or press releases. So combination of owned and earned media, and then they're also utilizing found media. So that's, um, thought leadership articles about their industry. This is all stuff we wanna talk about online and social and like, how do we talk about it? Oh, there's this great article of, you know, about apple, apple computers. And we wanna write about them, but how do we do it? So you are able to take any of that kind of content and run it through lately. So usually it's the digital marketing manager who does this sometimes supervised by perhaps a CMO or someone in the middle there. And that person will autogenerate from any of these kinds of content. She or he will maybe if lately is giving you 40 posts, maybe she'll take 20 of the best ones, schedule them out over time and create really a patchwork quilt with her calendar. You know, now she can do this for the brand itself, but she's usually also doing it for some employee mix. It could be the executives, the C-suite, it could be like a team of social sellers, for example. So there's this a combination of how they're using, um, lately. And we're,

Speaker 2: (29:34)

So what they're posting, just to understand Katie though, is the quotes that are generated. Right. And we'll be like, part of, let's say we recording this podcast, we're running through lately. And then there will be like several posts that, you know, things that I said, or you said, you know, that we talked about and that will be the post for that social media, with a link to this podcast.

Speaker 3: (29:55)

Yeah. In, in this case, if it's video, it'll also include the video clip of the one liner of you saying what's in the social media post itself. Right. So, so

Speaker 2: (30:06)

This podcast can be used several times. We can, you can use it 50 times in order to get it into this podcast. Right.

Speaker 3: (30:13)

Right. And we'll give you the transcript also. So a lot of our customers will then take the transcript and make a blog out of it because it's, I mean, why not and then guess what you can do with the blog, run it through lately and get different social posts on the same topic. And you use those as well. So it's, it becomes, um, a cascade, you know,

Speaker 2: (30:33)

That's amazing. So it's basically, if I understand this correctly, you can use one blog PO and that's what we talked at the beginning, but it's basically, instead of needing to write over and over again, you can take one blog post and basically advertise it, or basically post it on social media. Let's say 20 times it will still lead to the same blog post. Right.

Speaker 3: (30:52)

That's right. And what's great is it's not perceived as spammy because every different quote that we pull out is different obviously. Right? Yeah. And also like, so the new, uh, upgrade to lately a couple weeks ago is it'll give you all those quotes, but then if it comes across any that seem a little weird, it will also rewrite them for you and it'll do it in your voice. That's very specific. So, um, it's, it's constantly learning you specifically. It's not just doing what it thinks is like the best overall it's like, well, how would a D say this herself? Right. So for example, lately, um, surfaces word clouds for you and its analytics that shows you literally the words that are trending with your target audience and the ideas. Right. And it'll ask you if you want the AI to find more content, you know, from what you get it, give it throughout, you know, with these words in mind or less, you can, um, train it, but it also does this with hashtags.

Speaker 3: (32:01)

So one of the things we learned a D was that the old way of using hashtags as trending devices, where you paste a slew of them, hoping to gain on someone else's fame really is considered not only spammy, but can push you down, um, with the algorithms because it's lazy. It's not really conversational. It's like nobody reads that stuff. Right. But instead two things, if you think of hashtags as more of an enhancer of the message, so number one, by putting them in line, so you can, by we inside the message as opposed to the end, um, it'll give you that visual cue, like in a resume, you know, you're thinking how numbers and things look in a resume. And then the second thing is if you use hashtags as an enhancer, um, some way to maximize the text or optimize the text, that's there. For example, my highest performing hashtag is hashtag peeing my pants, because that's what I said when Gary ner tweeted about this. So the reason that trends high is cuz it sounds like, sounds like a human right. That's

Speaker 2: (33:11)

Right.

Speaker 3: (33:11)

And that's what people respond to. They respond to the, the interest like the real, the real, real,

Speaker 2: (33:19)

Absolutely, absolutely they do because you want, and that's, that's one of probably the arts of getting, you know, doing it, using artificial intelligence in order intelligence in order to actually save you the 84% of your time. Right. And, and I guess the time that's being saved is like, figure out what hashtag figure out what to say, posting, you know, publishing, you know, creating the content, but you still wanna make sure that it's real and authentic and real, the real, real, right. So

Speaker 3: (33:46)

The real real, and that's by the way, which is so amazing to me ad is that like, people still don't wanna do this one part, like we've designed our AI to not do the whole thing for you and it's on purpose. And the reason is if you pull the human out of the equation, you, you don't get the magic. Right. Just doesn't happen. I mean, this is why we're humans, right? And so we know that an AI on its own is cold. It's just a punk of metal. Right. Whereas a human is slow, you know, but together the AI can automate the hard things and the human ads, the magic. Right. And when you put them together, you see 12000% increased engagement. That's what we got Gary and his team. OK. That's no joke.

Speaker 2: (34:32)

Yeah. Amazing. So what is the part of the human still? Does what's that part that you live for? The humans?

Speaker 3: (34:38)

Yeah. So there's two, two roles, very important. Everything. The AI spits out a human needs to look it over and edit it. Right? The AI will do weird things. You know, it doesn't know. It ha it just met you. You have to help it out. Right. It might start with a nonsequitor or something. Now it's gonna make an attempt to rewrite that. But maybe it'll say she, instead of her, for example, you know, human speech patterns, um, are not always the same, right. That this is why it's not like you're just studying grammar or something like that. And it does begin to use using yours, uh, learn yours specifically. But it, it takes a little time. So that's one way, every everything you edit, it's taking note, if you trash post, if you publish it, it's gonna be like, oh, do more of that. This is good. This is bad. And then inside those word clouds, I told you about that's the other place. Right? So if you're, if it lately says, well, it looks like the word good is in a, a lot of your posts that do really well. Now you, the human can, will probably say, okay, lately don't double down on that word. Right. Unless you're good ice cream products, then yes.

Speaker 2: (35:56)

To Kate, tell me in terms of building, you know, you have the experience now of building the companies. I mean, you know, you had the first company and then you had the consultancy and then you figure out, okay, you know, this is what people need, and this is how I'm going to basically package it. It's very similar. I can totally relate very similar to my story. You know, I, when I started my consulting company in 2011, it was basically every like the things that I'm good at and it's helping people and it's helping in different areas. And I found myself, Hey, you know what entrepreneurs are really having problem with is documenting their, their processes and procedures, creating those training manuals, creating those playbooks. It's under to-do list, but it's never a priority. And I realized that that's what they need. That's why I can really relate to your story. Cause you saw what you saw the need and then you saw you figured out a solution on how to solve it. Right. So if we go to talk about systems, right, and processes, why from your perspective, as an entrepreneur and working with so many companies, small, medium, and big, what are, what is your take of why processes and procedures are so important for a company?

Speaker 3: (37:06)

Yeah. You hit on it. I mean, we are constantly building the plane as we fly it. Like you said, the systems and procedures can often be a last minute thought and it's too late. You know, we're already deep into it. Um, marketing was never that because of course I came from this world. So we started, you know, way in the beginning, cuz I know in order for the long tail to work, cause I'm betting on the later you have to start, start it now. And, and that's really unique. Almost every startup has this problem of, um, marketing is like a huge problem, right? They don't know how to get lead gen going, right. We have a 98% sales conversion by the way lately. And we only use lately for, I just wanna answer your question, but then spell this out to everybody. So I do this podcast.

Speaker 3: (37:58)

I'm gonna ask you for the file. I don't care if you have two listeners or 20 million listeners, because this is lead gen for me, the content is itself, right? We're gonna run it through our own AI. Layton's gonna clip up the one liners that you or I said, it's gonna drive traffic back to your website. So this is a win for you with all 40 posts or 50 posts, whatever we use. And then we know that the quotes that pulls out are the exact quotes for my audience that they're most likely to respond to. Right? And then we have a conversation with them on, on social. They're warm already. This is the key to the high conversion. So by the time we get to them, you know, it's, they're essentially hot. Um, but the, you know, with, with the, with getting the systems and planning in place, believe it or not like I'm the most anal attentive in the world.

Speaker 3: (38:51)

Everything in my house is white. All my closets are beautiful. Every cabinet, when you open the doors, it's awesome. Like my car is the one show, frankly. Um, whereas the company, you know, we have, it has to be messy because there's so many changes that happen so often. So if you there, and this is not always the case, but a lot of the times, for example, help a help center. Like we can make videos all day for our help center, but we've changed the product. Oh God. 90 times in the last three months, Lauren would making 10 videos a day. Right. So they're outdated. I mean just is what it is. However, what I found like, even though I'm a spreadsheet queen, the systems that I love the most in the world ad are the ones that are born out of language. Okay. Um, so I'll give you an example.

Speaker 3: (39:44)

I love our slack channel. I, I, I built a place and it's a place, even though it's virtual where we communicate like a, like a pack of woves like, there's a lot of things that go unsaid, but there are rules that we have to, when a new person comes into our lives, except our communications pretty hard, always every single time. Right. Cause they're trying to figure out all these unspoken things and we've had to learn to figure out ways to document them and educate people around them. Um, and some of that includes like etiquette. Some of it includes vernacular. We have words that we've made up, right. Just like you have with your family or friends. That mean something to all of us, the inside jokes, um, all the, all the shorthand you have there. Um, I'm in love with that. I think it's so it's what makes any community, a beautiful, unique place because you feel this inclusivity, you know, around it, what we've tried to do is take that feeling and translate it, um, to our customers. So the inside systems that we have around language, we purposefully use it outside and we do in a way so that you might not know what you were talking about, but you wanna, right. That makes sense. And the sense yeah, and the AI is like that by the way as well, because this idea of clipping out a quote that you don't totally know what the interview is about yet, it's designed to give you just enough sex appeal. So you want to hear more, see it's, it's everywhere. This I, this idea, this system for us.

Speaker 2: (41:31)

Yeah, totally. You know, and so I, I totally agree. And I've done it many times for many clients in terms of documenting their communication system. Okay. So they use slack or teams or like when do you use slack and how do you use the different channels? What is the etiquette? What are the rules? You know? And so I totally relate to that. And I think it's an awesome way of explaining why systems are important. So you can actually have the, that consistency, but also that feeling of belonging to people from the outside that are coming in and also reminding the group members on how, what are the rules and how do we do that? And then the creativity can actually happen in between those rules. So I love that. Kate,

Speaker 3: (42:15)

Thank you. Yeah. I, and I know we have to go and I just wanted to say, like, it's interesting that, you know, I've, of course I've worked places where there's a lot of handbooks and there's a lot of, um, the handbooks, you know? Right. Um, like where there there's all those things which do need to be in place when you're in a, when you're in a bigger company. But I, as you were talking about this, it's interesting to me that our, the rules that matter most to us are the unspoken rules. Like we talk about the golden rule all the time, you know, do to others. And we don't, we mean it in the nice heavenly kind of way, but we also mean it in the, um, like if you're going to don't, don't, don't dump the pile of work on someone else, like get them three quarters of the way there and then give them the rest of it. Right. So's a different way. Yeah,

Speaker 2: (43:12)

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, that's where I find that defining those things, you know, that's the culture, that's really what makes the company what it is, right? Yeah. It's not some kind of a dry handbook that sit on the shelf, like whenever we document or create right. Handbook, it's always within the culture of that particular organization for that exact reason. So I'm really happy that you mentioned that because it has to fit who you are. Right. It has to fit the way you talk. It has to fit the yeah. The culture and it has, what purpose are you trying to accomplish? Like, why are you documenting? Right. So

Speaker 3: (43:51)

Which

Speaker 2: (43:52)

Person has to answer the own, the own answer to that of like, why documenting? And then if the answer is just because we have to, then it's not, you're not ready to do that. Right. Right.

Speaker 3: (44:04)

Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Like the culture is such a huge part of it. And I find that the people who are, do a poor job of what you do, don't take that into consideration cuz it's everything. Right. Otherwise it's just a dry cookie cutter thing and nobody wants that. Right? Correct. Um,

Speaker 2: (44:21)

That's correct.

Speaker 3: (44:23)

And the, and it's inhuman then because it's not malleable. I mean, which everything has to be everything ha everything changes, everything always morphs. So it has to all systems, I believe have to have that built in ability to roll, go with the flow, you know?

Speaker 2: (44:39)

Absolutely. Okay. So in closing, first of all, we have to direct our listeners to.ai. Right? That's the website.

Speaker 3: (44:47)

Thank you.

Speaker 2: (44:48)

Absolutely. Because its nice now I'm I mean this, this has been so such an amazing interview because you walk us through your own story, which was totally inspirational. And I hope our listeners got inspired by, you know, they can do it right. And they don't have to be ashamed that they can open the or be entrepreneurs and be who they are, but also really understanding how you can use AI and the systems that you can build in order to actually increase the ability to be out there and communicate in a large sphere. I mean that, that is for me, like it's been such an incredible interview getting that data. So Kate, thank you a lot. And um, also wanna thank Russell Benaroya that he interviewed you first and that's how I found out about you. I listened to the interview and I go, okay, I have to interview Kate. I have so many more questions that I wanna ask.

Speaker 3: (45:38)

So awesome. so

Speaker 2: (45:39)

Definitely I'm gonna also include the, the link to that podcast that Russell did with you because I think it's great to listen to both of you talk and then our listener, if they wanna hear more from Kate and definitely from Russell. So again, thank you so much, Kate, for being a guest on this podcast,

Speaker 3: (45:57)

You are awesome. Ali, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: (45:59)

You're welcome.

Speaker 4: (46:05)

Thanks

Speaker 1: (46:06)

For listening to the system simplified podcast. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click, subscribe, to get future episodes.

99% of Posts on Social Get ZERO Engagement. Don’t let that be you.