Speaker 1: (00:03)

This is eating Crow with Pete Duran.

‍

Speaker 2: (00:10)

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the eating Crow podcast. It's a shame, everybody. We actually re we should have recorded the last 15 minutes of Kate and I shooting the and getting to know each other. Cause we've been waiting for this.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:22)

Yeah, please meet my, my new best friend, Pete .

‍

Speaker 2: (00:25)

Um, it has been like, literally we had all this pent up questions for each other. Like tell me why this is, and then we explained it. Yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:32)

Who are you?

‍

Speaker 2: (00:33)

This might be the most.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:34)

Isn't that the coolest thing though? It is like, sorry to interrupt you. But like, I love how, you know, there was people who, so all I've known about you is like your, your, who you are online obviously, but I've, I've seen your, your photo, your headshot that's half an inch high. Right? So that's the peat. I know.

‍

Speaker 2: (00:49)

, that's how my wife seats me.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:52)

Right.

‍

Speaker 2: (00:53)

Little guy.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:54)

And I've been, look, I've been looking into the eyes of that person for so long and I feel that I know that person. And so it, isn't it remarkable how like suddenly even though on the screen, obviously it's not the case, but we, we go from that two dimensional thing to, this is two dimensional. Yeah. Also, you know, more or less, but I feel like I do. I feel like, can I swear on your show? Yes. I know you like, I'm dying to go have a beer and watch a game with you and your wife.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:27)

Yes. We need to do that. We need to do that. And by the way, next time I get to New York and next time you actually make your way, anywhere south, we're gonna find a way to meet.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:35)

Yeah, for sure. And, and like, I think, you know, this thing we're talking about, by the way, doesn't come natural to, to everyone. Like we have the ability to reach through the, the screen or the headshot and, um, make a friend make a

‍

Speaker 2: (01:50)

Connection. Well, and you've been,

‍

Speaker 3: (01:51)

And it's

‍

Speaker 2: (01:52)

A hard thing. You've been doing this all your life, really? When you started on radio, which didn't have the visual. Right. So it's all about the voice.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:59)

Thank God.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:01)

you got such a great voice for radius. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (02:04)

Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, when I was in radio, Pete, like they didn't have, um, any headshot, like the web hadn't really arrived yet. I remember when it did, we all had to put them on, it was kind of a stress and we had to write bios. And like, I remember, I I'll try to remember mine, but it had something to do with like, I like chocolate raspberries. And I think I said I had a huge crush on Ryan Adams.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:27)

Okay.

‍

Speaker 3: (02:28)

Right. Which I didn't, but I thought it would be interesting enough. Yeah. Yeah. And cuz you know, he's so weird and he would like get drunk and pee his pants on stage and you never knew it was gonna come outta that guy.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:39)

So I mean, I, I like to kick a show off with, with at least three things, chocolate raspberries and public urination.

‍

Speaker 3: (02:47)

There you go. check, check, check.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:51)

You set the stage. It can only go really crazy places from here. So

‍

Speaker 3: (02:58)

See

‍

Speaker 2: (02:58)

What I let know me recognize this is by the way, why my wife would like to meet you cuz she's gonna go. There's actually someone out there that likes you. I definitely need to meet her.

‍

Speaker 3: (03:06)

‍

Speaker 2: (03:07)

She doesn't believe any of this is real. Yes. She goes, you're making up this whole podcast thing. No one would you're paying these people to talk to you. That's what she's convinced. That's so funny. She goes, I don't even wanna talk to you and I have so it's amazing. Um, all right. So it's amazing. I want to talk about, you know, by the way you've got this great company lately, AI, we, we can talk about that towards the end, but I wanna find out how you got there. Right? So you, you were in radio for a long time and it's funny, you just told me, you mention, you launched a radio station in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is right down the road.

‍

Speaker 3: (03:40)

Yeah. That it was called. It is called the penguin, which is very hard to say the penguin. Yeah. Cause you pop the peas and then you're swallowing the N in the G. Right. And try to say it's sexy and I'll try it for you now please. It's like, you're listening to the penguin.

‍

Speaker 2: (03:55)

it's actually pretty good.

‍

Speaker 3: (03:56)

Okay. But it's ridiculous though. Right? I

‍

Speaker 2: (03:59)

Mean, come on in a town who's college mascot is the Seahawk. Somehow there's a radio station with the penguin.

‍

Speaker 3: (04:06)

Yeah. It was a couple of guys who came from Asheville actually. So they had worked at that really cool public radio station there. And they, they started the format that I was in is called triple a, um, which doesn't mean baseball, but it was named by a guy who was a baseball fan. It means adult album alternative. Okay. So like this format in the seventies and eighties broke groups like the police and the talking heads and you'd hear Bowie, but of course Ryan Adams and Alabama SHA, oh

‍

Speaker 2: (04:36)

The Alabama Shakespeare, everything

‍

Speaker 3: (04:37)

From BB king to yeah. You know like, like in, I was in, you know, the nineties. So there's like a lot of Sarah McLaughlin, for example, stuff like that. A lot of angst and lot of angst, not enough. I mean, you know, so it didn't go all the way to Nirvana. Right. But, but we could, we could throw, you know, perhaps, I mean, I'm trying to think of something that's so not nineties, like I like three 11 just came to my mind. I, I was telling somebody, by the way that that record they had, I think it was the second one. And I don't love three 11 by any Chan remote thing. But I owned this album and I used to vacuum to it. It was my vacuuming music.

‍

Speaker 2: (05:15)

Everyone has a vacuuming soundtrack, by the way, they don't wanna do, do they? Yeah. I'm gonna tell you right now mine's hollow notes. I I'm gonna admit it right now. It's

‍

Speaker 3: (05:23)

Hollow.

‍

Speaker 2: (05:26)

It's a guilty pleasure by the way,

‍

Speaker 3: (05:29)

Which, which I'm just trying to, are you man eater on the vacuum is

‍

Speaker 2: (05:32)

That you oh, a hundred percent. Uh, and by the way, just, you know, to break myself of the habit, we bought a house with all hardwood floors. I can't vacuum anymore. Great. I literally had, I had to walk away from it. I had to put it away. If it comes on right now, I got a window corner and cry myself to sleep.

‍

Speaker 3: (05:46)

you remember like our, our, um, I don't know why I ask you if you remember this, but our, our family dog used to bark at the vacuum cleaner, cuz it was convinced it was some kind of animal.

‍

Speaker 2: (05:56)

So our dog who is a Morie only hows, he's only done this one now with little big town on the pontoon. The first time he did it, I was alone by myself with him and the dog starts to sing the chorus. Not, I mean like, oh

‍

Speaker 3: (06:12)

My God,

‍

Speaker 2: (06:12)

God, I've got it. I got it on film. I will send it to you. It is the most hilarious. He doesn't say anything. When that song comes on, only that one artist, only that one title without fail, he will go crazy.

‍

Speaker 3: (06:22)

It's incredible.

‍

Speaker 2: (06:23)

You gotta talk that he's by the way we should, he's heavily medicated. Now we're talking over each other because we just have so much to share

‍

Speaker 3: (06:30)

And I'm so rude. I mean, you're the host I to shut up, but I was just gonna say like, you know, you've made it when you're thing becomes a verb. So I just said, you should talk that right. And so like, I've thought about this, my, you know, when will someone say like, I'm going lately, this. And honestly it doesn't roll off the tongue that way. So I think they never will. And we sh we should have thought of that. Like when you're so many else, note to sell folks when you're naming your company. Yeah. When you're naming your company and your future, you have to imagine how it will sound. If it becomes a verb,

‍

Speaker 2: (06:56)

Right. Well, you should actually get to the point where someone says, I'm gonna turn this. That's what you

‍

Speaker 3: (07:00)

Gotta go for. So that, that I stole, I mean, that's not mine cuz it's my husband

‍

Speaker 2: (07:04)

Or, or I'm gonna put it in the turn,

‍

Speaker 3: (07:06)

Put it in the turn. He um, so, so I had told you churn rhymes with furnace because my, so my husband of course is a musician, their band, the Wells was our favorite record of the year. The first year I was the music director at the loft, XM 50 on XM, satellite radio. And of course job hazard because of, I fell in love with musicians all the time. And they're all except this one. Sure. You know, really nice man, but he's an incredible guitar player. In fact, Eric amble, who was Joan Jet's guitar player used to call my David the best guitar player in New York. Wow. And so his nickname was churn the furnace because he's a smaller person. He's about five, four, but he packs a fiery punch might say .

‍

Speaker 2: (07:56)

That is so awesome. So I interviewed a guy named Dale Dupree did a day on my podcast. Do you know who Dale is? Mm-hmm he started the sales rep rolling mm-hmm and Dale was in a metal band, a speed metal band for like seven years. Wow. When he's 15 to like his early twenties and he met his wife at a show, she was in the audience, he looked at her and he goes, I knew right then and there. So, you know, despite the rumors about the music industry being so difficult, there are chances for romance in music.

‍

Speaker 3: (08:23)

There are. And also entrepreneurship, I think to your point as well. Yes. Because I know a lot of people that have come out of the music industry and here's why I think I was a line cook all through middle school and high school and college Pete, everything Tony boarding has ever said is a hundred percent true. I totally lived it. And then radio and then now startup land and what they all have in common is the lawlessness of, of, of it. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, radio breeds that

‍

Speaker 2: (08:59)

The lawlessness was interesting. He said, I, I, I experienced things that I never thought I experienced at a very young age, by the way, which means he had to kind of figure out which path he wanted to take. He said, I got to meet one of my favorite. We opened for one of my favorite bands of all time. And they're all 10 or 15 years older than who we are. Oh, I can't think

‍

Speaker 3: (09:16)

I got who favorite band. All

‍

Speaker 2: (09:18)

Right. Let me see. I

‍

Speaker 3: (09:19)

Actually, okay, well, we'll have to put a pin on that and you put it in the show notes

‍

Speaker 2: (09:22)

For, I will,

‍

Speaker 3: (09:22)

But I won't know who they are, cuz I'm not a speed metal fan, but same

‍

Speaker 2: (09:25)

Here. I didn't recognize them, but by the way, I'm gonna look them up too. But he said, I looked at these guys and I'm like, that's gonna be me in 15 years. He goes, unless I choose a different path, which for some is the right thing to do. Some's not the right thing to do the Wells. That album was the album of the year on your station at Sirius. And you got to meet the guitar player. Yeah. And that's where it all went from there.

‍

Speaker 3: (09:48)

Yeah. So he, his band that was there, which record was that is called bastards of the beat, I think. Okay. And they're kind of like Tom petty ish, you might say, okay. I think better. Of course they there's a little movie about them that won a bunch of awards because epic records what they used to do. I don't know if they do this anymore. Cause I'm out of the music industry, but they invest in several bands at once and they picked them against each other. So the bands were the Wells Augustana and the fray.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:17)

Oh my goodness. And

‍

Speaker 3: (10:18)

We all know who won.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:19)

Yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (10:20)

The fray Uhhuh. Right. And so the movie is about kind of that and what happens to the band? It implodes and, uh, David was in a really B angry place the year that was being filmed. And there's, I think he has just really one line cuz he refuses to talk and he's, he's playing, they're in the recordings you're playing and the guitar he's holding ha is glittery pink. Okay. And the camera shoots to him and he looks at the camera and he says, this is not my guitar. cause

‍

Speaker 2: (10:52)

That's his whole line.

‍

Speaker 3: (10:55)

Yeah. That's awesome.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:57)

That's

‍

Speaker 3: (10:58)

Awesome.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:58)

Um, so you guys met back what,

‍

Speaker 3: (11:00)

But anyway, so now he has

‍

Speaker 2: (11:02)

2006.

‍

Speaker 3: (11:03)

Was this six that yeah,

‍

Speaker 2: (11:05)

Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (11:05)

Yeah. That was 2006. And, and since then he's cutting his hair and wears chinos and he's in sales.

‍

Speaker 2: (11:11)

Oh my gosh. He's become his father

‍

Speaker 3: (11:13)

To your point. Yeah. yeah. He's very good at it though. Which is, you know, I, I take notes from him cuz he, he works downstairs and I hear him all the time and I've heard the people he works for too, the good ones and the bad ones. And like he worked for this horrible CEO, this for a long time and every time I would sort of SROP and think to myself, God don't be here. Wow. Don't be her.

‍

Speaker 2: (11:36)

You know, by the way, some of those are the best lessons. The, the, the bad examples are the best lessons.

‍

Speaker 3: (11:42)

Yeah. I mean, for sure, I am not always awesome. as Lauren and Chris and Jason and Brian and my whole team will tell you. And the terrible thing is I know it when it's happening people. Yeah. You know, and I, I know when I'm taking the funny out of the room, right. And I know when I'm being soul crushing and I can't help it as it's happening, cuz I'm just human and I'm frustrated. And the, the, the weight is on me and the weight is real and we've been eating glass for a long time cuz we're a startup and it's hard. Mm-hmm and it's, it's, you know, my old boss who I hated had this terrible phrase, which I hated and I'm gonna use it, but it was rolls, downhill. Right. And when I see myself doing that, I'm like, don't you can't be this kind of leader.

‍

Speaker 3: (12:36)

You, this is not a leader. You know? And I was just kind of complaining on LinkedIn yesterday, actually that, you know, you were telling me how, what a, what an incredible, I hate to say superhuman. Cause I feel like it undercuts her mm-hmm but an incredible superhuman, your wife is and all the work she was doing with the logistics of running your life and the life of the family. Right. And why I don't have kids and I can't relate to that. The logistics of running a startup, it's not just the, that's actually the easy part. Believe it or not. The hard part is all the expectations that are upon you, especially if you're an underdog, right. Because right. The comparisons and the levels of SU success, they often move. It's a, which is annoying to me because I, you know, I'm competitive. We talked about that as well. Yep. And before we hit record and I'm not never interested in winning the game, Pete, I'm interested in beating the machine to death. right. You know? Yeah. I got it. Like we have, so I have a couple of arcade games out in our, in our garage and like real bonafide arcade games. And I've rolled the numbers over three or four times on each one. That's beating the machine.

‍

Speaker 2: (14:03)

I have to know which

‍

Speaker 3: (14:03)

One's there. Right. So it's Gallagher, haunted house, Pacman and centipede.

‍

Speaker 2: (14:08)

Okay. I see the Pacman posted behind you.

‍

Speaker 3: (14:11)

Yeah. Here we go. that's that's actual velvet like Velo. Remember those? Oh yes. And it's three dimensional. My, my dad owned the largest print retailer in the Northeast, in the eighties. So he sold posters to everybody in the mall.

‍

Speaker 2: (14:29)

well, in the eighties go

‍

Speaker 3: (14:30)

Down to

‍

Speaker 2: (14:31)

Arcade. That was a big business in the eighties.

‍

Speaker 3: (14:35)

He was, it was. And uh, I learned a lot from my dad. I mean, he was a really good entrepreneur and um, figured out how to, you know, my dad is really good at math and I'm not very good at math, but the key to his success is to figure out how to, to use every part of every scrap of every thing. Mm-hmm, that's number one. And the second thing is to, you know, PE I hate to say it self included, but people are dumb and we make mistakes and we, we break things or we, you know, we do it all the time. So my dad like came up with all these ways to correct other people's errors. You know, if somebody accidentally, um, ruined someone else's artwork, he could fix anything , you know, really anything. And it's amazing to me like, so, so he had, he, he has the ability to foresee the chances of the mistakes happening. Yeah. And have a fallback for, for that. Right.

‍

Speaker 2: (15:32)

Wow. So when you, when you look at your, your transition from the radio, and I think one of the stories behind lately AI is, is the intuition and the knowledge you learned about people. Right? And you shifted very quickly into this marketing consultant and it did that for years. So how did you take everything you learned in radio, which by the way, is an advertising driven business. Right? You have to reach audiences, but what was the, yeah. What was the thesis? If you were walking into me, a new marketing consultant client I'm Kate, I've been on the radio for 10 years. I know my. What , what was, what was the pitch? Tell me the pitch.

‍

Speaker 3: (16:10)

Uh, yeah. Well, so, so the one thing I figured out in radio, there's no money in radio. Like I was at XM broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day. I made it to the show. There was only two positions up above mine. And this is in 2006 and I made $55,000 a year in Washington, DC, you know, big market. Yeah. Which is not a lot of money. Like I remember my dad actually saying to me, like, there's, there's not really any room to grow here. FYI, are you considering this? You know, cause I hadn't all I just thought was like, this is such a cool job. I'm having the time in my life. But what I did figure out was that if you're the production director, you can, which means the engineering and the putting together of the commercial. So the writing, the creating the voiceovers, you can make a lot of side money doing that and charge quite a lot. So like I could charge, you know, 150 to 200 bucks an hour for just my voice. Right. And I wasn't very good at that. Like I could can't do characters or any of that kind of stuff. Like I have one voice, I did it for you. It's kind of dreamy sexy.

‍

Speaker 2: (17:14)

Dreamy sexy. Right. But you can shift into that anytime you need

‍

Speaker 3: (17:17)

Sexy. I, I , I can also do like, um, you know, I, I worked for, so no one ever asked me about this, but I used to work for a ski reporting company, a national ski reporting company. We would get up at three 30 in the morning and the associated press would spit out a snow report for the everywhere in the, in the country. Obviously we'd pretend that we were on the slopes and we record these live 62nd snow reports pulling from the weather and then we would have the website open so we could see what the trails were and kind of like anything we could find out about where it's known in the trails. So it'd be, you know, and you would have to curate your voice for the kind of radio station. It was sure. So whether it was alternative or country or news or whatever. Right. And so I was good at the young alternative stations cuz I could be like, if you're not out in the pow today, you're missing out time to shush down pink shushy, cat, woo. You know, whatever. Like just the stupid thing.

‍

Speaker 2: (18:19)

that's awesome. So if you were doing this for the radio station in West Virginia, you'd be like, yeah. Snowing out here. Pretty good. You gotta get out and get some whack powder. Maybe even ski some or snort some too, whatever you prefer.

‍

Speaker 3: (18:34)

‍

Speaker 2: (18:35)

I love that. Know your audience.

‍

Speaker 3: (18:37)

Yeah. Know your audience. Yeah. So, so that's the aspect though that you learned that I learned you could make money with. And so, because I learned that I wrote hundreds and hundreds of commercials and I was also a fiction writing major at Pete. So another lawless endeavor, right? Cuz in fiction you can make up your own rules, which I did. And I love the sound of words. I love the way words read. And so that our role wonder was reinforced by radio because in radio it's the theater of the mind and the parallel between reading and just listening is very similar because both of them require the human to play a role with your imagination. They require effort. Right. So in video, you're just sitting back having it at all done for you. But when you read a book or you are listening to a podcast or anything

‍

Speaker 2: (19:40)

Really, or an audio book

‍

Speaker 3: (19:41)

For that matter, your brain has to fold the blank. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Which is by the way, I, I always hate it when authors read their own work because they're generally terrible at it. And they, they, they don't allow for the theater of the mine because they're so focused on kind of feeding you. They're too close to it, you know? So they're trying to spoon feed you the story.

‍

Speaker 2: (20:02)

Yeah. It's interesting. And

‍

Speaker 3: (20:04)

Not let you fill in the blank and take it.

‍

Speaker 2: (20:06)

I have two examples that resonate with what you just said. So obviously I have three kids, right? My daughter and my, my oldest daughter, my daughter loves Harry Potter. She, she was a kid. It was, it was kind of her thing. Right. My youngest son liked it. My, my middle son wanted nothing to do with it. But

‍

Speaker 3: (20:22)

So

‍

Speaker 2: (20:23)

I, I read all the books with my daughter and with my son. And then when the movies came out, we literally walked outta the theater and, and what's amazing is we said the same thing like that is the, that is exactly how I imagined it. Like they took the book and what you were imagining on every character, what they were wearing, how they talked, how they walked, what the, what the hallways looked like, what the paintings did. And they made it come to life. You're like, literally that's the best adaption of a book to a screenplay I've ever seen. It just, it shocked me how, how well it was done. And we just drove back from a wedding in Charleston and we listened to Matthew Macy's, um, book green light. And you were talking about how you don't like it when authors read their own books. It was interesting listening to him, read this book because the opening, because he's an actor, he's an actor. And the opening scene, he takes a clip from some section of the book and that's the opening scene he starts with. And I looked at my wife, we're five and I looked, I'm like, holy,

‍

Speaker 3: (21:26)

‍

Speaker 2: (21:28)

We gotta finish this. And you're right. As an athlete,

‍

Speaker 3: (21:31)

Keep driving.

‍

Speaker 2: (21:32)

we, we drove around, we drove around, we got home and drove around in the summers. Now we finished the notebook, but he that's great. He made it, he made it real like you could picture because he

‍

Speaker 3: (21:43)

Knows.

‍

Speaker 2: (21:43)

Yeah. You could picture. Yeah. You, you, the sound of words, the way they read you were drawn in on the way he and he had a really good pause at the end. He's like green light. Like that was kind of the SA that's why I said, that's why I told you this story, green light. And he would just go onto the next one.

‍

Speaker 3: (22:00)

It's everything, the delivery, you know, people have said for a long time, it's not what you say. It's how you say it. Mm-hmm and that's true. And you know, I grew up, there was a, a book award called the Caldecott award for children's books. Okay. I don't know if that still happens, but those children's books would have like this big gold sticker on it. Yeah. And my mom was a first grade teacher, so she always bought these for us and they were hard cover children's stories and they were all great. And they came with records, they came with readings. Oh. And so it was like Bernadette Peters. , you know, these great classic voices. And I grew up just listening, playing with my dollhouse, believe it or not. And listening to these records where the wild things are and you free to be you and me, like, you know, all that stuff.

‍

Speaker 3: (22:46)

And there's something about, I love being told a story, Pete, I love it. I, I reread the Harry Potter series every summer because I love the story. I love all the recalls, the callbacks that are throughout. Yeah. I love the puzzle. And how so often I see the different setups and they surprised me. I, I see a new setup that she engineered like back in book one. Yeah. Like Jesus, this is a lot of thinking that had to go on here. And the great thing about an author like that, or a reader like Matthew or a, a radio host, I believe is when you're able to create that environment where the listener feels as though they're just going along for the ride. But they're actually taking ownership in the conversation with you. Mm-hmm and the memory that I'm sharing with you around this, like it's so deep and ingrained because the power of sound requires me, me a human, right.

‍

Speaker 3: (23:57)

And this is something let's just tie it to lately that we talk about all the time. So at lately we use artificial intelligence to learn your brand voice, and then transform a podcast like this into dozens of social posts. The AI learns what to clip up, cuz it's listening to the words and phrases you and I say, and it's matching those ideas against what it knows your audience is most likely to like and comment and share online. Okay. That that's what happens now. The then that's amazing. The hard part is we refuse to let the AI do all the work for you because we know that if the human intervenes, the difference is one plus one equals 3000, right? If it's, if it's just the robot doing it on its own, it's just automation. But when you have the human in there, this is that the rush of nostalgia. When there's a, a powerful story like Harry Potter or green light, that's the thing that makes fans, we're fans. We're talking about this now we can't help it. Yeah. And the power of a fan is the long tail it's in. It's you can't put a price on it. It goes on forever and ever and ever,

‍

Speaker 2: (25:13)

Oh, mine. The power of the fan is the long tail. That might be the title of this episode.

‍

Speaker 3: (25:17)

Like radio. Yeah. Yeah. That's you know, I remember when that came out, this was, this is my, my format, adult album alternative lives on the long tail because we're not pop, we're not country. It's always a format. That's like number 20 or 21 in the market. And I'm gonna tie this back. So when I was in North Carolina at that radio station, I had gone to XM in my program director called me. And he was like, Hey, the Arbitron book came out. You're number one. And I was like, what? This is impossible. Number one in a format that's always 20, 21. And I was evenings. Evenings are never number one. Drive times are number one, right in North Carolina. I beat out country and rock and roll classic rock and roll. And he was like, how did you do that? Well, I was the pro production director. So all the drops were mine. All the commercials were written by me or engineered by me more or less. And when I was on the air, it's my show. So it was my voice in between. And also it's my music choice. And I had tossed his playlist out the window because it didn't do what we're talking about. Now. It didn't weave the new songs in with the old songs so that the listener had a point of nostalgic, uh, familiarity with which to go along the ride,

‍

Speaker 2: (26:45)

You know? Right. It's interesting. There is a radio station here in Raleigh that, that launched a few years ago. And it's w B B B 96 1. And that's exactly the format they've chosen. So they play a little bit of everything. They don't play country, but they play, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say alternative, but they say they play pop rock from the sixties, seventies, eighties, two thousands. And they weave the new artists in with the old stuff. So you're listening to it. And we talked about this before. Right? I might have some pink, but then all, all of a sudden I'm listening to S and I will pull my call over, get outside of the street and jam on some ho notes.

‍

Speaker 3: (27:23)

you're like, all

‍

Speaker 2: (27:24)

Right. But you're like, you can't get that anywhere else. You just can't, you, you, you know, if you wanna just be brainless and turn the radio and listen to it for a while and have somebody else take you for the ride like you did as a DJ, that's refreshing versus you having create. When I watch my kids with Spotify, I'm exhausted how they curate their own music and create their own stations. And they love it. I was a Pandora guy, cuz I just picked an artist and hit play and then it just did it for me. So

‍

Speaker 3: (27:49)

It is exhausting. Yeah. I never do that anymore. Like, you know, we'll go somewhere on someone will be like Kate, click the music. And I'm like, I don't work there anymore. That's not my job anymore. it's too exhausting. it? It,

‍

Speaker 2: (28:02)

It is sometimes you just want to be, you just wanna be in the moment so, you know

‍

Speaker 3: (28:07)

Yeah.

‍

Speaker 2: (28:08)

I'm go ahead. I'm curious, you know, you, you mentioned earlier that, uh, this startup thing is hard, right? And you've got this mixture of artificial intelligence, but you've got people still engaged with it. I'm gonna try to parrot back what you said. The AI is interesting. I think that allows you eventually scale, right? Cuz that automation piece is helpful, but you have to bring the humans into it to bridge that gap. And I think you, you know, you said that the theater of the mind, right. I think is that where you're connecting that automation back into the theater of the mind.

‍

Speaker 3: (28:39)

Yeah. So, and I'll, I'll do two things. Let me give everybody a proof point and then explain it so sure. At lately we have a 98% sales conversion, 98%. And we only use lately to market lately, nothing else. So I do three or four interviews a week just like this. I'm gonna ask you for the file or Emma is my coworker. Okay. And we're gonna take the file. We're gonna run it through our own AI. It's gonna transcribe this podcast and read through it and find the ideas and phrases and quotes that it already knows are gonna resonate with my target customer. Okay. And it'll clip the video up and then my human Alex will go through and just make sure the AI is on par because sometimes it will pull weird things out like a non sequiter and you have to guide it cuz it's only a robot, right?

‍

Speaker 3: (29:33)

It does learn. And then she'll say take 20 or 30 posts, publish them on our brand channels. And also our employee channels because we're stronger together. Mm-hmm . And then we watch to see who likes and comments and shares. And we consider them, you know, warm leads basically and, and push 'em into the funnel that way. So the, so that's the proof, the why it works to touch on your point is like this. So when your brain listens to a new song, Pete, it must instantly access every other song you've ever heard in an instant. This is how the neuroscience of music listening works. So imagine that right, that your, your brain is running through everything, this massive library of songs. Sure. And it's looking for familiar touchpoint. So it knows where to index the new song in the library of the memory of your brain now by accident, by default, by nature, nostalgia, memory emotion, all these things get touched as this is happening, which is why music is so powerful. Those are also the characteristics that must be in play for trust to happen. And trust is why we buy. So now when you write, copy, whether it's social media posts or an email or a text to your wife or a billboard sign, the person who reads that copy here's your voice in their head, in your voice, Pete, just like mine and everyone else's is a song. There's a musical note. All sound has a frequency, right? Mm-hmm so it's your job as the host of this podcast or the author of that text to give me familiar touchpoints and trigger nostalgia, memory, emotion trust.

‍

Speaker 2: (31:20)

Wow. So I, I could be wrong. I've never heard anyone. First of all, I think this is due to your background, right? I've never heard anyone come with, you know, 20 years of music in their background and think about everything that music does. And uh, another easy example is my wife, um, made it a policy that we would have music playing in our house every night. So like from five o'clock through dinner, it was Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Michael Bule, Harry kind of junior, all the classics. So regardless what my kids listen to during the day, it was a calming music. My kids could do homework to it. So now they associate that music to smells, right? Certain foods that she'd make to nothing but pleasant memories of the family being together. That is her thing. And she's religious about it. If I'm, if I'm cranking, you know, slightly stupid.

‍

Speaker 2: (32:13)

And she comes in at five o'clock she's on Sonos. She switches the station, she looks me and I just go, okay. And all of my kids we're uh, she's, she's the best. We're all music. We love music. None of us can play or sing, but we are music aholic. We, we, we have all of the family plans. We share playlists. We fight with each other on who can run Sonos channels and stations and who can take over his DJ. My youngest, son's kind of the champion there, but we just love every aspect of it. So I hadn't thought about the fact that music can trigger trust. So let's drill more into that when you're taking a snippet from a podcast or a video or something else and you bring it to copy. What are the things that you've taught the AI and your people to look for that established trust?

‍

Speaker 3: (32:59)

So for us, what I did was I created a couple dozen rules. Okay. Yeah. And I call, we call them, my team calls me, Kate, Pete, Kate from lately

‍

Speaker 2: (33:10)

Like that. I can use that.

‍

Speaker 3: (33:12)

Okay. So they're called Kate's writing rules. Um, the subtitle that Chris, my employee, my teammate created was the writing, the copywriting rules you wish you had in college. Okay. And I'll give you an example. So one of my favorite rules is don't use words that undercut your authority that are weak. Like probably, maybe I think I just wanted to

‍

Speaker 2: (33:37)

Mm-hmm oh yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (33:39)

When you do that, you, you kill a statement is powerful. And when you take a statement and you make it a guess, it's not that you have to be a no at all, but in, in writing, it just translates as, um, you don't know what you're talking about. Right. And our entire goal as sales and marketing people is to get people to do what we want them to do. Yep. Or shame in that that's that's communications. Right. And so if I want you to do something for me and I'm gonna be a wimp on how I ask you to do it, it's not very compelling. Of course. So my, once the AI runs through and does its thing, my team takes those rules and that's the rules to augment. Now we teach these rules to all of our customers live about once a month. I and I do these copywriting courses for companies like HubSpot, um, content, marketing world, whomever. Sure. They're really fun. Um, cuz you know, I'm rule breaker. So

‍

Speaker 2: (34:44)

You like to create the rules and then break them

‍

Speaker 3: (34:47)

And then break them of course then the AI. So, so it uses you as the first example of things to learn from, but then it uses me and my team and all the data sets we have from all our customers from the last seven years who are doing these same kind of rules or augmentations, for example, one of the great learnings to just double down on your point. A little bit that we found was so, so lately these AI services word clouds that literally show you the words people are responding to. Okay. And it does this with hashtags as well. So we don't really care. What's trending in the world. Cuz what really matters is what's trending with my target audience, right? And I can see it in black and white. Now the traditional way in marketing to use hashtags is as an indexer. So you string a bunch of hashtags that you want your stuff to be searchable by mm-hmm now that has gone by the wayside because it's perceived as a lazy and spammy cuz it is, you know, people will be like hashtag Beyonce when they're talking about socks yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (35:56)

You know, come on. Um, the SEO cottons onto this now the algorithms do. But instead if you use hashtags to augment what your message says and contextualize it further or ground it or add a sense of humor, then your engagement skyrockets. So for example, my highest performing hashtag my personal one is hashtag pee my pants back to urination.

‍

Speaker 2: (36:25)

I knew we come full circle. We did.

‍

Speaker 3: (36:28)

That's what, um, Gary Vanek when Gary Vanek tweeted about us, that's what I said.

‍

Speaker 2: (36:34)

Well that's, by the way, if Gary tweets at you and you come back with that, that's, that's just epic.

‍

Speaker 3: (36:39)

‍

Speaker 2: (36:42)

By the way, I,

‍

Speaker 3: (36:42)

It's hard to, hard to beat that.

‍

Speaker 2: (36:44)

I've seen you do this, right. So I see your post. I see your hashtags and there there's something clever there there's something that's pulling a point out of what you just of the copy to say, Hey, look, if you're gonna remember anything, remember this. Right. And it might just be, it might just be a humorous way to remember it. But honestly, that's why I reached out to you because your copy was Al always humorous, but I'd look at your hashtags and go. This girl's got a fricking wicked sense of humor. I don't know if anybody else picked up on this, but that funny. Right. So I'm like, and, and by the way, she just doesn't care. She's just throwing it out. Like this is who she is, get on the, get on the train or not. So I love that stuff. It's authentic. Um, but I hadn't considered it. Thank you. I hadn't considered the fact that hashtags in general are kind of stale unless you rethink them.

‍

Speaker 3: (37:30)

Yeah. So the AI learns from this, by the way. So we've done an experiment where we worked with Anheuser Bush and Bev and we wanted to see if the AI could start inputting that kind of voice into the text it pulled. Okay. So take it and then augment it itself. And the answer is yes . Um, so we did it with them first and like 10,000 pieces of content from one of their brands, like got like 40 beer brands. Okay. And so it was able to study social media, post and radio scripts and anything that had like texts with a brand voice in it. So then the second experiment was let's do it with me cuz I have thousands of pieces of content, tens of thousands. And so it was, I think it was with some Christmas copy and it was so funny because I had made, I had been making some, some weird Santa analogies. I don't remember what it was like, but the AI started putting those kinds of hashtags into the copy.

‍

Speaker 2: (38:25)

Interesting.

‍

Speaker 3: (38:27)

Yeah. So that's the next version by the way is, is, um, my team is implementing it as we

‍

Speaker 2: (38:34)

Speak. Will they do it? It does. It is the goal to do that hashtags in line or is it due at the end of the post in line? Yeah. Okay.

‍

Speaker 3: (38:40)

To in line you can do 'em both, but both ways, but what's nice about in line is there's a break because it's visual. A hashtag is a weird thing to see in the middle of the sentence. Also it turns it blue and writing is just like eating. I had told you that I was a line cook all through middle school and high school and college cuz I couldn't afford to feed myself. And I was beast. I was climbing all the time and playing soccer and I got two free meals a day behind the line. Um, and I didn't have to look very nice cause I'm not great on the, on the weight, weight staff side. Um, and I could hang with the guys and I could smoke cuz you know, you did back then on the line. That was like a badge of honor. Can you smoke? And like whip it up at the same time.

‍

Speaker 2: (39:22)

Yes. I had so many visuals from the cafeteria I was in back in the eighties of right now just seeing that one extra fries with that. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (39:32)

Exactly. Just like that, man. It's so disgusting. But um, yeah. So why was I telling you this story? Oh, so about how it looks in the plate, you know, we all, you guys have all seen chopped, like that's one of the three categories is how it, how it looks, how it appears and writing is the same way. So, you know, we think about, or earlier when we were talking, we, we started this conversation out. We're at high, we're at a high you and I we're like jamming off each other. We're laughing. I'm pretty sure we're not even talking in a linear sense. So maybe people are having a hard time cutting on. And then we started talking about something else and I purposely slowed it down and I left some space in what we were talking about because I wanna make sure that I'm making people lean in at some point. Right,

‍

Speaker 2: (40:24)

Right.

‍

Speaker 3: (40:24)

And give a break like a song

‍

Speaker 2: (40:27)

That right. That pause is really important. Not only in public speaking, but also how you write mm-hmm let people chew on that in the copy. Like you said, visually, it's a space. It's the way you list things. It's bringing them to a certain crescendo that you want them to do by building up anticipation. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (40:44)

That's right. And I'm thinking I'm, I'm always reading it out loud before I hit publish. Hmm. This is the big cheat. Um, so I amazingly, as we were setting up this call my microphone, wasn't working the irony of me being a, a tech entrepreneur and B a former rock and roll DJ and not having a mic that's working is annoying, but there it is. But the other thing is Pete. So I, I use voice activated software. I don't type at all. I talk to my computer all day long cuz I have a partial permanent disability and I can't type without extreme pain. Oh wow. So I always hear myself. I always hear it before it goes out. So I know right away when I sound like a, sometimes I hit send anyways

‍

Speaker 2: (41:34)

So how is it affect? Is it capture you pretty well? I mean, is it, does it, does it learn how to pick up CMS? I mean, or are you finding like, gosh, I gotta fix that. I gotta fix that or it's got it right.

‍

Speaker 3: (41:46)

It takes a long time. I've been using this since about 2007 or eight and in 2006 was when I left XM. That's why I left XM. Um, and you train it like a language. So I use dragon naturally speaking professionally, which is like the version for total hands free usage. Okay. And it learns, so what's so interesting about this is so, so the people who create dragon are constantly feeding it, language, whatever language you want and they're feeding it, current events, newspapers and all this stuff. Sure. So couple things once in a while, this cracks me up so hard, I'll say, you know, instead of yada, yada, yada, I might say, blah, blah, blah. And dragon will type Bob, blah, blah. Like from arrested development.

‍

Speaker 2: (42:34)

Oh my gosh. Cause that's where I got it. That's

‍

Speaker 3: (42:36)

Hilarious. I know. That's where I got it. Yeah. And then my favorite one dragon is my team knows too, because like I'm with them, I'm lazy and I don't correct it. And so I don't make, um, grammatical errors. I make soundalike errors. So if you read the text, you could tell what I'm really trying to say. Um, so for example, it has multiple times confused the word VCs with feces.

‍

Speaker 2: (42:59)

Oh perfect. But by the way, I've met a lot of VCs. Most of 'em are really good people, but I have a couple that I would, that I would call. Yeah. And they know who they are.

‍

Speaker 3: (43:08)

Yeah. Me too. Who they're. It makes it interesting

‍

Speaker 2: (43:15)

To the point where guarantee you, they're not listening to this podcast.

‍

Speaker 3: (43:20)

You know, some of them don't I, I have to tell you it's really well, this is for another show, but, but the I've got some great stories Pete and the book is gonna be I'll I'm gonna title that chapter of feces.

‍

Speaker 2: (43:31)

Please do. Please do, uh, this reminds me of the joy my kids get when my mother talks to text.

‍

Speaker 3: (43:40)

Oh yeah. I bet

‍

Speaker 2: (43:42)

It's epic. Literally epic

‍

Speaker 3: (43:45)

Because who knows what it's really

‍

Speaker 2: (43:46)

Saying? You get your phone. It's like, it's like 65 inch paragraphs of just,

‍

Speaker 3: (43:53)

She lets it rip.

‍

Speaker 2: (43:54)

Oh yeah. And now she's discovered emojis. Oh. So she talks, she talks and requests emojis, which is great smiley, smiley face, you know, poop, angry, face, whatever. You're like, God, she needs, she needs it is amazing. She needs some Kate in your life. That's alright. I gotta, I gotta switch over to dragon naturally speaking professional.

‍

Speaker 3: (44:18)

All

‍

Speaker 2: (44:18)

Right. So, um, you and I could do

‍

Speaker 3: (44:20)

Isn't that funny though, by the way like that, I still talk for a living Pete. What's the, what's the irony there? Huh?

‍

Speaker 2: (44:25)

So I I'm curious, has this software continued to, obviously they're populating with new information all the time. I'm guessing that they update the algorithms and you get new versions of it. Cuz it's, I mean, if you've been using this for 14 years, that's come a long way.

‍

Speaker 3: (44:40)

They do. But I know some secrets at this point, cuz I'm really good at it. So I know a lot of people who are, who were the original builders who have moved on and done different things. So when there's a problem with dragon there, it's hard to fix honestly. And unless you know where to go and I know the who's who's and I know the message boards and, and who to call and they're weird people. Totally weird, frankly.

‍

Speaker 2: (45:05)

Um, brain's working at a different level

‍

Speaker 3: (45:07)

That's and so when, yeah, when, when, um, and when COVID happened, the people who, who do build dragon, their, their whole engineering team was in somewhere in south Asia. Anyways, they split because you know, they all were working the same room and for some reason couldn't figure out how to work remotely. And so the, the fix crippled me for like six or seven months and suddenly all I couldn't access my email, all this stuff. And so I had to call one of these guys and they built a workaround for me

‍

Speaker 2: (45:40)

oh my goodness.

‍

Speaker 3: (45:41)

Which is a pain in my for months until the, until it was about a year, about 15 months until the new, you know, version went up and I don't know what regular people, what other people did, you know mm-hmm but this is what you do. I mean, you know, I don't think about this ever, cuz this is my life and this is how I operate my day. But to other people, I mean, imagine like you imagine you cannot type, you can't touch your phone or type,

‍

Speaker 2: (46:07)

Most people would freak out. They would freak out. They wouldn't, they wouldn't know what to do. Yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (46:10)

And then I fixed it.

‍

Speaker 2: (46:11)

Wow. So you're kind of living in this AI world every day, right? From you inputting things into your systems and recognizing it and then spitting stuff out. I'm like, this is, Hey, this is a clip we should share with people based on this research and their audience and the person speaking, et cetera. So for people who are, who've heard this and are now curious, who's the ideal customer for lately AI, if they're listening, it's going, I should, I should contact Kate and the team. What would that, what would they look like? Who would be the ideal client profile for

‍

Speaker 3: (46:42)

You on the smaller side, people who have podcasts or it works with blogs and newsletters as well. So if you have long form content that you want to unlock the true power of essentially and save yourself eons of time, then you're my people. But then we work with enterprise customers as well. So lately has a syndication capability, Pete, where one person can syndicate what the AI creates out to any employee, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram channel. No kidding. So like employee advocacy on steroids.

‍

Speaker 2: (47:12)

So if you think about having a really clever group of customer facing folks who have a LinkedIn profile, if they now have the ability to scale this across their content, it's pretty powerful. Yeah. Wow.

‍

Speaker 3: (47:25)

Okay. Yeah. That's what I, so I built a spreadsheet system. You had asked about this a little bit and I didn't answer you between radio and lately I owned a marketing agency. Yeah. and I build Walmart, a spreadsheet system that did this, that got them 130% ROI year over year for three years. Wow.

‍

Speaker 2: (47:44)

That's quite a spreadsheet

‍

Speaker 3: (47:45)

Because together we're stronger together. Yeah. I was

‍

Speaker 2: (47:49)

be better. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (47:51)

It was. Yeah. Um, and, and you know, then, you know, I walked in there again, we, we have to wrap, but like I walked in there with all the rough edges that you're seeing now. And they looked at me like I was crazy. They did. And I was, I mean, you know, I was suggesting things that you would never suggest in a way that was totally offensive because I don't know. Or at the time I didn't know the rules, I didn't know there's rules in corporate America. , you know, you don't reply all number one.

‍

Speaker 2: (48:21)

There are rules

‍

Speaker 3: (48:24)

And I just didn't fit that mold. Um, but the, the person who brought me in knew this and didn't care, you know, they trusted me. And that's the best lesson I've learned through all of this is that if you let, if you give people the permission to be themselves, they usually fly.

‍

Speaker 2: (48:42)

Yeah. Being in the people, business's the hardest thing for some older school leaders and managers to do, cuz they don't have a high level of trust. They're afraid if they let people loose, uh, a on their schedules B on their time and C on their creativity, they can't control them anymore. And they don't realize that every one of their employees is a, their best marketer and B their best salesperson and C their best client service person. Right. They're building their own brands. And if the brands are housed underneath the brand that people go, oh man, I'd like to work there because they're a bunch of really cool creative people, right. That is hard for some people to make that shift. That's where the magic happens. How many people on your team today, how big is lately?

‍

Speaker 3: (49:26)

Seven full time in five part time,

‍

Speaker 2: (49:29)

Where do you see the business going in five years interview question

‍

Speaker 3: (49:33)

Right now, lately does 75% of the work for you. And our goal is to have it do 90% of the work for you in the next year and a half, really. Um, and we just built a self-service product. So what we're really working on is how do we give the, the power of an army to the armies of one and do it in a way that uses that model? I told you, um, it's working by the way. We just, we just released this a couple months ago and the conversion rates are really high. And we're discovering that people are really interested in pushing the button to see what the AI happens, what, what it does, what it comes up with. So we're learning how to make, how to gamify that. And that is an interesting kind of understanding. And I don't have the answer, Pete, but I'm, but I'll get it, cuz we're really good at this.

‍

Speaker 3: (50:30)

Sure. But figuring out like, you know, what's the KPI for people in marketers at a company it's pretty easy. Usually it's like be more effective right now for their boss. It could be save time or save money, but save, save time and money are not really hot buttons for people anymore. They could give the. They assume it's part of the jam already. You know, but even, even be more effective seems to not be ringing enough of a bell anymore, which is crazy. Like, what do you want? I've got Gary V I'm getting him a 12000% increase engagement, 12000%. I've got a 98% sales conversion. I mean, Jesus Christ, what, what more could you want? But they do. So my challenge is discovering either a how to communicate this better, give them more or make it so make the value so much more. The value is not obvious enough yet. That's what I've learned.

‍

Speaker 2: (51:29)

It's so painful when, when that's the case, because I'll, I'll tell you, I am now very curious about lately because I am a podcaster. I am a content creator. I'm not good at other one of 'em, but I'll tell you that the game changer for me was, and I will say for me, it was time and it, and, and time led to scale, which led to performance mm-hmm . So when I started my podcast, I was doing two episodes a week just to build content. I just wanted to get, I wanted to get it out there. I wanted to get into a rhythm and I was running a, you know, I was working full-time and it was exhausting. I'd spent, you know, four to six hours a weekend editing one podcast, cuz I was stupidly very anal about it. And I realized I was editing myself out of almost every episode. Right. The conversation was good, but it wasn't necessary to pull out what you were saying. So I literally just everywhere. I could just take Pete out, take Pete out and get it down to the core essence. But I ended up giving it over to a company that does all my editing for me. And it is amazing how much productivity that saved me and time. Now I enjoy the podcast because I don't feel like, oh God, I just created 10 hours of work over the weekend.

‍

Speaker 2: (52:40)

but here's the thing that I could, I hadn't contemplated. And by the way, they do create a snippet for me, they create two snippets for every episode. I have no idea how or why they choose them.

‍

Speaker 3: (52:49)

And why not more? That seems

‍

Speaker 2: (52:51)

To, it's a complete waste to me. But again, it's for me, uh, there is value cuz I know how much it costs for me to create a snippet. I know how much time it would mean. Cause I did those myself as well. That's part of it I'd drop it into subtitle. I'd do it. You know, I'd correct. Fix all the errors. I'd edit that that's segment, you know, do it and wonder share all that. Right. I figured out how to do all that scale was such a challenge for me. And now I can focus on other parts of my business. So you're right. If I could get 15 snippets out of that, both in video and in copy that I could blog or post I'd even like to take a snippet that just had me in the shot. Right. So what did I say in that episode versus the two of us together that I could do as a one-on-one thing, this, that this is you're, you're at the forefront of this content generation. And I think people are afraid of cuz it, by the way, it's a fricking lot of work, creating content.

‍

Speaker 3: (53:44)

It's a huge amount of

‍

Speaker 2: (53:45)

Work. It's a huge amount of work. Good content. good, good content. And consistently, right? So you're, you're solving those problems. And if you have results like a 12000% increase in conversions or sales, conversion, whatever it is, somebody's gotta pay attention. I, you know, I hope you're, I don't think I would say five years ago, you went way ahead of the market. Now I think you you've hit that wave at exactly the right time. We'll see how, how you catch the wave now.

‍

Speaker 3: (54:11)

Yeah. It's, it's so interesting either if there people get it or they don't and part of the, getting it is the mindset. So this is where that long tail comes in because everybody gets, promote my podcast once or twice. Mm-hmm where I'm gonna give you 40, 50 snippets literally. And like my, not everybody does this, but my team uses all of 'em and plugs them out for weeks on end, because we've created this engine here where, you know, so we have a thou right now with the self-service product, we have a thousand visits to the homepage every month and through the homepage and then clicking to the sign up. This is the self-service version. We've got a 48% sales conversion.

‍

Speaker 2: (54:54)

Wow.

‍

Speaker 3: (54:54)

Okay. Which is like really high now it's 90, 98 on the enterprise side. So that's where the human involved mm-hmm at the end of the process. Right. And then with the self-service no human involve and this was the test. Can it work this way? And the reason it works is cuz we bet on this residual how long it takes for all 40 50 posts to go out over time and then build up and into a patchwork of a quilt in our calendar. Right? Yeah. Over years of, of tri traffic. The conversation I had with my team yesterday is okay, we've been going along like this with our, no, no budget for marketing and our small team. How do we double, how do we make it 2000 visits a month with no money, what we're doing now.

‍

Speaker 2: (55:39)

And, and when you think about, um, your team repurposing, these snippets, these 40 snippets, have you automated that part of it? Like some other words, here's a, I I've taken this podcast. I've generated these snippets. I push it out to the team. They just have to literally go copy paste, push. Or how does, how does it work?

‍

Speaker 3: (55:55)

Oh no, we push it out for, oh,

‍

Speaker 2: (55:56)

You're me.

‍

Speaker 3: (55:57)

Yeah, we, yeah. we automated that too. Yeah. so I created an army of evangelists. Right.

‍

Speaker 2: (56:07)

That's awesome.

‍

Speaker 3: (56:08)

Cause what you said is exactly what I learned, which is when you make your employees, your biggest fans, just like your customers, they market you for free. So when we talked about in the beginning, when I'm a leader, the reason I feel so bad is because I'm hurting my most valuable assets. Mm-hmm

‍

Speaker 2: (56:30)

Wow. Wow. And you described that right at the beginning, by the way, I've got 16 pages of notes.

‍

Speaker 3: (56:36)

I'm

‍

Speaker 2: (56:36)

Sorry. Uh, no, by the way, I'm gonna get all the transcripts of this, but there's some things I write down cuz usually it's funny. I write down and I go back and go, that's the name of the pot? That's the name of this episode? So you said two things. I want you, I want you to share an example for me. So you know, when you're taking the funny out of the room and you could be soul crushing, how would you be soul crushing to your team? What would be an example of something you would do? You'd be like, God, I suck.

‍

Speaker 3: (56:59)

You know, I have, I have, I don't understand why people can't read my mind. I really don't. Mm. I get really upset about that. And I surround myself with people who mostly can, I'm really lucky. I have superior superior teammates. They are incredible humans. And I would die if, if I lost them, mm-hmm because this is how good they are. So in those rare occasions, they can't read my mind. Um, I throw a fit like an ASPH and the reason is because I'm so used to us operating at this high level and I don't understand what happened. What, you know, why did they drop drop off? Right. You know, so that's my fault. That's my expectations are too high. Nobody can be in human. Only. I can be in human, you know? And I have those same expectations of myself. You know what that's like, Pete, when I'm, you're always going a hundred miles an hour, when the engine is only meant to go 25, there's gonna be

‍

Speaker 2: (57:51)

A burning parts. Start to fall off. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (57:55)

They do. Yeah. And it's not just for me, it's for them and, and, and as well. And if it's my job to cheerlead them, it's, it's difficult. Like I surround myself with people who are much better at cheerleading than me, cuz it sounds like when it comes for me, honestly, cuz it is because I don't , it's not my forte. I, I it's so bizarre. Like I like to, I like to pay people and let the money talk. But at the same time I don't pay them often because I can't. So it's like, sure. You know,

‍

Speaker 2: (58:25)

Um, those are always great conversations.

‍

Speaker 3: (58:27)

The uh, the worst and it, and it gets harder and harder as we get older. Because as you know, just as human beings, we have a, a lo our capacity to withstand duress is, you know, harder it's and it's ridiculous. Like this is what I was writing about on LinkedIn yesterday. Like this, the constant eating of the glass and the constant getting punched in the face. Like I have a really high tolerance for pain personally, really high. And it's not a badge of honor just is my way, you know? And not everybody has that tolerance. And obviously I have an addiction also, Pete, because I keep going back for more and more, what the? I don't, I can't even imagine life after lately. Right. You know, you had asked about, you know, stealing the funny outta the room. My other great gift is to see the glass hat on empty. I have a note right here. It says positive, cuz this is my Achilles heel. I'm always negative. You know, my husband is a Saint cuz I'm always pointing out what's wrong with everything,

‍

Speaker 2: (59:35)

Which is an unusual dominating trait for an entrepreneur.

‍

Speaker 3: (59:39)

I mean the good news is I'm always looking for the problems and I'm trying to fix them. That's my like, cuz that's what you want. You're always trying to like the moment that there's no problems. And this happened to us like, oh boy, I remember this blissful time where we thought we were like coasting on whipped cream and Juju bees. And then I realized what the was really going on. It was terrible. But my team is very bubbly. They're all hilarious. They have great senses of humor. Most of them take all of them, take criticism very well. I'm terrible at that also. And they, they know the power they have cuz I talk about it all the time and the, I don't tell them enough personally, but I say it on these things and I think publicly is be a better way to sure do it anyway. So I hope so. And I know that the occasion listen to these things or at least the ones who have to go through the AI do

‍

Speaker 2: (01:00:37)

Um, yeah. You know, but

‍

Speaker 3: (01:00:39)

I

‍

Speaker 2: (01:00:39)

Very astute of

‍

Speaker 3: (01:00:40)

You. I pray to God every, oh I just wanna say I pray to God every day to be just to be better. Pete, don't you?

‍

Speaker 2: (01:00:49)

Um, a lot. it's the first, it's the first thing I say every morning is please help me just be a little better than yesterday. And uh, and you, you know, it's funny whether it's with my wife or my team, I know when I've been and usually it's pretty instant and I go this morning, you said you wouldn't do that. And then you just fricking did it.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:01:10)

‍

Speaker 2: (01:01:11)

You know, I, I, uh, so it it's great that you're oddly enough, my, the chief operating officer at Sabo who I've grown to really admire and, and like as a person is, uh, is, you know, there's a disaster around every corner and , that's the way he sees the world. Um, he lives entirely. His entire life is in spreadsheets, his calendar, his to-do list. I think his Christmas list. Um, I think he writes his wife love letters in Excel spreadsheets. Right. honey just hit the macro. It'll tell you everything I feel about you, but

‍

Speaker 3: (01:01:49)

Colme row six.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:01:50)

Exactly, exactly. But the good thing is, is we've we've recognized. That's how we work well together, cuz I'm gonna, I'm gonna lean forward and pull 'em along and say, Chris, it's gonna be okay, we've gotta go do this. Let's break some glass. It's gonna be, we're gonna, we're gonna jump off a cliff here. And he's like, Pete. Yeah. Great. Did you look at this? And if I haven't looked at it, I need to sometimes it'll pull me back to the cliff other times, like yeah, it. We're still going. Right. And uh, I, I haven't had a situation where I've been working with that kind of really good balance. So, um, and he's really good at, at taking feedback. He's good at giving me feedback. So it's worked it's pleasant and we have a, a co-founder who is our mad scientist who, you know, has all the passion and fire and Verve. And I think sometimes he's like, would you too just fricking figure it out. So we've got a tiebreaker if we need one, which is awesome. That's

‍

Speaker 3: (01:02:44)

Excellent. Yeah. That, okay, so teamwork is magical.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:02:48)

It is. And you know, so what's next for you and uh, your musician, husband, David. I mean, you guys are what, what's the biggest thing you're looking for to doing this summer? I know you got back from two west coast trips, so maybe not that, but what do you, what do you, what do you looking to bring home and maybe a music festival or something what's your highlight?

‍

Speaker 3: (01:03:08)

Um, I don't know, Pete, um, cuz of COVID is so weird, but I, I, my parents live on a lake in Vermont and my favorite thing is to swim in that lake and or to float in it at least. So I really hope to do that. And I miss my, my niece and nephew who will be there. Um, there's a photo from a couple summers ago of me doing some chalk artwork with them and we're all lying down on the chalk artwork and there's, there're smiling and I'm smiling. And for my birthday, David likes to take photos and put them in a card and print them, them out for me. Sure. Photos. He thinks I like. And so that photo is hanging, hanging in my room there and he chose that because he knew that I missed them and because they give me joy, I don't have my own kids.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:03:57)

How old are they?

‍

Speaker 3: (01:03:58)

So they're six

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:00)

And nine. Oh great ages. And they, and they think a kid's like the bomb don't they,

‍

Speaker 3: (01:04:06)

They like me. It takes 'em a little by while to warm up every time, you know? But then we become friends again and they call me, um, Monte cake.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:13)

Nice. Which is, that's pretty cool. That's a good thing to be associated with.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:04:18)

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I have to pee

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:21)

by the way, we came back to urinating

‍

Speaker 3: (01:04:24)

and Lauren is texting me wondering if

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:27)

I'm coming to this meeting, so let's let you go. Um, I'll I'll end this we'll close real quick, but Kate, I, I could do this for two more hours. You got a job to do and you gotta go pee. I love you. Love it. It's been great. Thank you so much. Well done. We'll talk to you soon.

‍

Speaker 1: (01:04:43)

Thanks for checking out. Eating Crow like and subscribe. So you never miss a video.Speaker 1: (00:03)

This is eating Crow with Pete Duran.

‍

Speaker 2: (00:10)

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the eating Crow podcast. It's a shame, everybody. We actually re we should have recorded the last 15 minutes of Kate and I shooting the and getting to know each other. Cause we've been waiting for this.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:22)

Yeah, please meet my, my new best friend, Pete .

‍

Speaker 2: (00:25)

Um, it has been like, literally we had all this pent up questions for each other. Like tell me why this is, and then we explained it. Yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:32)

Who are you?

‍

Speaker 2: (00:33)

This might be the most.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:34)

Isn't that the coolest thing though? It is like, sorry to interrupt you. But like, I love how, you know, there was people who, so all I've known about you is like your, your, who you are online obviously, but I've, I've seen your, your photo, your headshot that's half an inch high. Right? So that's the peat. I know.

‍

Speaker 2: (00:49)

, that's how my wife seats me.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:52)

Right.

‍

Speaker 2: (00:53)

Little guy.

‍

Speaker 3: (00:54)

And I've been, look, I've been looking into the eyes of that person for so long and I feel that I know that person. And so it, isn't it remarkable how like suddenly even though on the screen, obviously it's not the case, but we, we go from that two dimensional thing to, this is two dimensional. Yeah. Also, you know, more or less, but I feel like I do. I feel like, can I swear on your show? Yes. I know you like, I'm dying to go have a beer and watch a game with you and your wife.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:27)

Yes. We need to do that. We need to do that. And by the way, next time I get to New York and next time you actually make your way, anywhere south, we're gonna find a way to meet.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:35)

Yeah, for sure. And, and like, I think, you know, this thing we're talking about, by the way, doesn't come natural to, to everyone. Like we have the ability to reach through the, the screen or the headshot and, um, make a friend make a

‍

Speaker 2: (01:50)

Connection. Well, and you've been,

‍

Speaker 3: (01:51)

And it's

‍

Speaker 2: (01:52)

A hard thing. You've been doing this all your life, really? When you started on radio, which didn't have the visual. Right. So it's all about the voice.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:59)

Thank God.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:01)

you got such a great voice for radius. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (02:04)

Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, when I was in radio, Pete, like they didn't have, um, any headshot, like the web hadn't really arrived yet. I remember when it did, we all had to put them on, it was kind of a stress and we had to write bios. And like, I remember, I I'll try to remember mine, but it had something to do with like, I like chocolate raspberries. And I think I said I had a huge crush on Ryan Adams.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:27)

Okay.

‍

Speaker 3: (02:28)

Right. Which I didn't, but I thought it would be interesting enough. Yeah. Yeah. And cuz you know, he's so weird and he would like get drunk and pee his pants on stage and you never knew it was gonna come outta that guy.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:39)

So I mean, I, I like to kick a show off with, with at least three things, chocolate raspberries and public urination.

‍

Speaker 3: (02:47)

There you go. check, check, check.

‍

Speaker 2: (02:51)

You set the stage. It can only go really crazy places from here. So

‍

Speaker 3: (02:58)

See

‍

Speaker 2: (02:58)

What I let know me recognize this is by the way, why my wife would like to meet you cuz she's gonna go. There's actually someone out there that likes you. I definitely need to meet her.

‍

Speaker 3: (03:06)

‍

Speaker 2: (03:07)

She doesn't believe any of this is real. Yes. She goes, you're making up this whole podcast thing. No one would you're paying these people to talk to you. That's what she's convinced. That's so funny. She goes, I don't even wanna talk to you and I have so it's amazing. Um, all right. So it's amazing. I want to talk about, you know, by the way you've got this great company lately, AI, we, we can talk about that towards the end, but I wanna find out how you got there. Right? So you, you were in radio for a long time and it's funny, you just told me, you mention, you launched a radio station in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is right down the road.

‍

Speaker 3: (03:40)

Yeah. That it was called. It is called the penguin, which is very hard to say the penguin. Yeah. Cause you pop the peas and then you're swallowing the N in the G. Right. And try to say it's sexy and I'll try it for you now please. It's like, you're listening to the penguin.

‍

Speaker 2: (03:55)

it's actually pretty good.

‍

Speaker 3: (03:56)

Okay. But it's ridiculous though. Right? I

‍

Speaker 2: (03:59)

Mean, come on in a town who's college mascot is the Seahawk. Somehow there's a radio station with the penguin.

‍

Speaker 3: (04:06)

Yeah. It was a couple of guys who came from Asheville actually. So they had worked at that really cool public radio station there. And they, they started the format that I was in is called triple a, um, which doesn't mean baseball, but it was named by a guy who was a baseball fan. It means adult album alternative. Okay. So like this format in the seventies and eighties broke groups like the police and the talking heads and you'd hear Bowie, but of course Ryan Adams and Alabama SHA, oh

‍

Speaker 2: (04:36)

The Alabama Shakespeare, everything

‍

Speaker 3: (04:37)

From BB king to yeah. You know like, like in, I was in, you know, the nineties. So there's like a lot of Sarah McLaughlin, for example, stuff like that. A lot of angst and lot of angst, not enough. I mean, you know, so it didn't go all the way to Nirvana. Right. But, but we could, we could throw, you know, perhaps, I mean, I'm trying to think of something that's so not nineties, like I like three 11 just came to my mind. I, I was telling somebody, by the way that that record they had, I think it was the second one. And I don't love three 11 by any Chan remote thing. But I owned this album and I used to vacuum to it. It was my vacuuming music.

‍

Speaker 2: (05:15)

Everyone has a vacuuming soundtrack, by the way, they don't wanna do, do they? Yeah. I'm gonna tell you right now mine's hollow notes. I I'm gonna admit it right now. It's

‍

Speaker 3: (05:23)

Hollow.

‍

Speaker 2: (05:26)

It's a guilty pleasure by the way,

‍

Speaker 3: (05:29)

Which, which I'm just trying to, are you man eater on the vacuum is

‍

Speaker 2: (05:32)

That you oh, a hundred percent. Uh, and by the way, just, you know, to break myself of the habit, we bought a house with all hardwood floors. I can't vacuum anymore. Great. I literally had, I had to walk away from it. I had to put it away. If it comes on right now, I got a window corner and cry myself to sleep.

‍

Speaker 3: (05:46)

you remember like our, our, um, I don't know why I ask you if you remember this, but our, our family dog used to bark at the vacuum cleaner, cuz it was convinced it was some kind of animal.

‍

Speaker 2: (05:56)

So our dog who is a Morie only hows, he's only done this one now with little big town on the pontoon. The first time he did it, I was alone by myself with him and the dog starts to sing the chorus. Not, I mean like, oh

‍

Speaker 3: (06:12)

My God,

‍

Speaker 2: (06:12)

God, I've got it. I got it on film. I will send it to you. It is the most hilarious. He doesn't say anything. When that song comes on, only that one artist, only that one title without fail, he will go crazy.

‍

Speaker 3: (06:22)

It's incredible.

‍

Speaker 2: (06:23)

You gotta talk that he's by the way we should, he's heavily medicated. Now we're talking over each other because we just have so much to share

‍

Speaker 3: (06:30)

And I'm so rude. I mean, you're the host I to shut up, but I was just gonna say like, you know, you've made it when you're thing becomes a verb. So I just said, you should talk that right. And so like, I've thought about this, my, you know, when will someone say like, I'm going lately, this. And honestly it doesn't roll off the tongue that way. So I think they never will. And we sh we should have thought of that. Like when you're so many else, note to sell folks when you're naming your company. Yeah. When you're naming your company and your future, you have to imagine how it will sound. If it becomes a verb,

‍

Speaker 2: (06:56)

Right. Well, you should actually get to the point where someone says, I'm gonna turn this. That's what you

‍

Speaker 3: (07:00)

Gotta go for. So that, that I stole, I mean, that's not mine cuz it's my husband

‍

Speaker 2: (07:04)

Or, or I'm gonna put it in the turn,

‍

Speaker 3: (07:06)

Put it in the turn. He um, so, so I had told you churn rhymes with furnace because my, so my husband of course is a musician, their band, the Wells was our favorite record of the year. The first year I was the music director at the loft, XM 50 on XM, satellite radio. And of course job hazard because of, I fell in love with musicians all the time. And they're all except this one. Sure. You know, really nice man, but he's an incredible guitar player. In fact, Eric amble, who was Joan Jet's guitar player used to call my David the best guitar player in New York. Wow. And so his nickname was churn the furnace because he's a smaller person. He's about five, four, but he packs a fiery punch might say .

‍

Speaker 2: (07:56)

That is so awesome. So I interviewed a guy named Dale Dupree did a day on my podcast. Do you know who Dale is? Mm-hmm he started the sales rep rolling mm-hmm and Dale was in a metal band, a speed metal band for like seven years. Wow. When he's 15 to like his early twenties and he met his wife at a show, she was in the audience, he looked at her and he goes, I knew right then and there. So, you know, despite the rumors about the music industry being so difficult, there are chances for romance in music.

‍

Speaker 3: (08:23)

There are. And also entrepreneurship, I think to your point as well. Yes. Because I know a lot of people that have come out of the music industry and here's why I think I was a line cook all through middle school and high school and college Pete, everything Tony boarding has ever said is a hundred percent true. I totally lived it. And then radio and then now startup land and what they all have in common is the lawlessness of, of, of it. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, radio breeds that

‍

Speaker 2: (08:59)

The lawlessness was interesting. He said, I, I, I experienced things that I never thought I experienced at a very young age, by the way, which means he had to kind of figure out which path he wanted to take. He said, I got to meet one of my favorite. We opened for one of my favorite bands of all time. And they're all 10 or 15 years older than who we are. Oh, I can't think

‍

Speaker 3: (09:16)

I got who favorite band. All

‍

Speaker 2: (09:18)

Right. Let me see. I

‍

Speaker 3: (09:19)

Actually, okay, well, we'll have to put a pin on that and you put it in the show notes

‍

Speaker 2: (09:22)

For, I will,

‍

Speaker 3: (09:22)

But I won't know who they are, cuz I'm not a speed metal fan, but same

‍

Speaker 2: (09:25)

Here. I didn't recognize them, but by the way, I'm gonna look them up too. But he said, I looked at these guys and I'm like, that's gonna be me in 15 years. He goes, unless I choose a different path, which for some is the right thing to do. Some's not the right thing to do the Wells. That album was the album of the year on your station at Sirius. And you got to meet the guitar player. Yeah. And that's where it all went from there.

‍

Speaker 3: (09:48)

Yeah. So he, his band that was there, which record was that is called bastards of the beat, I think. Okay. And they're kind of like Tom petty ish, you might say, okay. I think better. Of course they there's a little movie about them that won a bunch of awards because epic records what they used to do. I don't know if they do this anymore. Cause I'm out of the music industry, but they invest in several bands at once and they picked them against each other. So the bands were the Wells Augustana and the fray.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:17)

Oh my goodness. And

‍

Speaker 3: (10:18)

We all know who won.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:19)

Yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (10:20)

The fray Uhhuh. Right. And so the movie is about kind of that and what happens to the band? It implodes and, uh, David was in a really B angry place the year that was being filmed. And there's, I think he has just really one line cuz he refuses to talk and he's, he's playing, they're in the recordings you're playing and the guitar he's holding ha is glittery pink. Okay. And the camera shoots to him and he looks at the camera and he says, this is not my guitar. cause

‍

Speaker 2: (10:52)

That's his whole line.

‍

Speaker 3: (10:55)

Yeah. That's awesome.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:57)

That's

‍

Speaker 3: (10:58)

Awesome.

‍

Speaker 2: (10:58)

Um, so you guys met back what,

‍

Speaker 3: (11:00)

But anyway, so now he has

‍

Speaker 2: (11:02)

2006.

‍

Speaker 3: (11:03)

Was this six that yeah,

‍

Speaker 2: (11:05)

Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (11:05)

Yeah. That was 2006. And, and since then he's cutting his hair and wears chinos and he's in sales.

‍

Speaker 2: (11:11)

Oh my gosh. He's become his father

‍

Speaker 3: (11:13)

To your point. Yeah. yeah. He's very good at it though. Which is, you know, I, I take notes from him cuz he, he works downstairs and I hear him all the time and I've heard the people he works for too, the good ones and the bad ones. And like he worked for this horrible CEO, this for a long time and every time I would sort of SROP and think to myself, God don't be here. Wow. Don't be her.

‍

Speaker 2: (11:36)

You know, by the way, some of those are the best lessons. The, the, the bad examples are the best lessons.

‍

Speaker 3: (11:42)

Yeah. I mean, for sure, I am not always awesome. as Lauren and Chris and Jason and Brian and my whole team will tell you. And the terrible thing is I know it when it's happening people. Yeah. You know, and I, I know when I'm taking the funny out of the room, right. And I know when I'm being soul crushing and I can't help it as it's happening, cuz I'm just human and I'm frustrated. And the, the, the weight is on me and the weight is real and we've been eating glass for a long time cuz we're a startup and it's hard. Mm-hmm and it's, it's, you know, my old boss who I hated had this terrible phrase, which I hated and I'm gonna use it, but it was rolls, downhill. Right. And when I see myself doing that, I'm like, don't you can't be this kind of leader.

‍

Speaker 3: (12:36)

You, this is not a leader. You know? And I was just kind of complaining on LinkedIn yesterday, actually that, you know, you were telling me how, what a, what an incredible, I hate to say superhuman. Cause I feel like it undercuts her mm-hmm but an incredible superhuman, your wife is and all the work she was doing with the logistics of running your life and the life of the family. Right. And why I don't have kids and I can't relate to that. The logistics of running a startup, it's not just the, that's actually the easy part. Believe it or not. The hard part is all the expectations that are upon you, especially if you're an underdog, right. Because right. The comparisons and the levels of SU success, they often move. It's a, which is annoying to me because I, you know, I'm competitive. We talked about that as well. Yep. And before we hit record and I'm not never interested in winning the game, Pete, I'm interested in beating the machine to death. right. You know? Yeah. I got it. Like we have, so I have a couple of arcade games out in our, in our garage and like real bonafide arcade games. And I've rolled the numbers over three or four times on each one. That's beating the machine.

‍

Speaker 2: (14:03)

I have to know which

‍

Speaker 3: (14:03)

One's there. Right. So it's Gallagher, haunted house, Pacman and centipede.

‍

Speaker 2: (14:08)

Okay. I see the Pacman posted behind you.

‍

Speaker 3: (14:11)

Yeah. Here we go. that's that's actual velvet like Velo. Remember those? Oh yes. And it's three dimensional. My, my dad owned the largest print retailer in the Northeast, in the eighties. So he sold posters to everybody in the mall.

‍

Speaker 2: (14:29)

well, in the eighties go

‍

Speaker 3: (14:30)

Down to

‍

Speaker 2: (14:31)

Arcade. That was a big business in the eighties.

‍

Speaker 3: (14:35)

He was, it was. And uh, I learned a lot from my dad. I mean, he was a really good entrepreneur and um, figured out how to, you know, my dad is really good at math and I'm not very good at math, but the key to his success is to figure out how to, to use every part of every scrap of every thing. Mm-hmm, that's number one. And the second thing is to, you know, PE I hate to say it self included, but people are dumb and we make mistakes and we, we break things or we, you know, we do it all the time. So my dad like came up with all these ways to correct other people's errors. You know, if somebody accidentally, um, ruined someone else's artwork, he could fix anything , you know, really anything. And it's amazing to me like, so, so he had, he, he has the ability to foresee the chances of the mistakes happening. Yeah. And have a fallback for, for that. Right.

‍

Speaker 2: (15:32)

Wow. So when you, when you look at your, your transition from the radio, and I think one of the stories behind lately AI is, is the intuition and the knowledge you learned about people. Right? And you shifted very quickly into this marketing consultant and it did that for years. So how did you take everything you learned in radio, which by the way, is an advertising driven business. Right? You have to reach audiences, but what was the, yeah. What was the thesis? If you were walking into me, a new marketing consultant client I'm Kate, I've been on the radio for 10 years. I know my. What , what was, what was the pitch? Tell me the pitch.

‍

Speaker 3: (16:10)

Uh, yeah. Well, so, so the one thing I figured out in radio, there's no money in radio. Like I was at XM broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day. I made it to the show. There was only two positions up above mine. And this is in 2006 and I made $55,000 a year in Washington, DC, you know, big market. Yeah. Which is not a lot of money. Like I remember my dad actually saying to me, like, there's, there's not really any room to grow here. FYI, are you considering this? You know, cause I hadn't all I just thought was like, this is such a cool job. I'm having the time in my life. But what I did figure out was that if you're the production director, you can, which means the engineering and the putting together of the commercial. So the writing, the creating the voiceovers, you can make a lot of side money doing that and charge quite a lot. So like I could charge, you know, 150 to 200 bucks an hour for just my voice. Right. And I wasn't very good at that. Like I could can't do characters or any of that kind of stuff. Like I have one voice, I did it for you. It's kind of dreamy sexy.

‍

Speaker 2: (17:14)

Dreamy sexy. Right. But you can shift into that anytime you need

‍

Speaker 3: (17:17)

Sexy. I, I , I can also do like, um, you know, I, I worked for, so no one ever asked me about this, but I used to work for a ski reporting company, a national ski reporting company. We would get up at three 30 in the morning and the associated press would spit out a snow report for the everywhere in the, in the country. Obviously we'd pretend that we were on the slopes and we record these live 62nd snow reports pulling from the weather and then we would have the website open so we could see what the trails were and kind of like anything we could find out about where it's known in the trails. So it'd be, you know, and you would have to curate your voice for the kind of radio station. It was sure. So whether it was alternative or country or news or whatever. Right. And so I was good at the young alternative stations cuz I could be like, if you're not out in the pow today, you're missing out time to shush down pink shushy, cat, woo. You know, whatever. Like just the stupid thing.

‍

Speaker 2: (18:19)

that's awesome. So if you were doing this for the radio station in West Virginia, you'd be like, yeah. Snowing out here. Pretty good. You gotta get out and get some whack powder. Maybe even ski some or snort some too, whatever you prefer.

‍

Speaker 3: (18:34)

‍

Speaker 2: (18:35)

I love that. Know your audience.

‍

Speaker 3: (18:37)

Yeah. Know your audience. Yeah. So, so that's the aspect though that you learned that I learned you could make money with. And so, because I learned that I wrote hundreds and hundreds of commercials and I was also a fiction writing major at Pete. So another lawless endeavor, right? Cuz in fiction you can make up your own rules, which I did. And I love the sound of words. I love the way words read. And so that our role wonder was reinforced by radio because in radio it's the theater of the mind and the parallel between reading and just listening is very similar because both of them require the human to play a role with your imagination. They require effort. Right. So in video, you're just sitting back having it at all done for you. But when you read a book or you are listening to a podcast or anything

‍

Speaker 2: (19:40)

Really, or an audio book

‍

Speaker 3: (19:41)

For that matter, your brain has to fold the blank. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Which is by the way, I, I always hate it when authors read their own work because they're generally terrible at it. And they, they, they don't allow for the theater of the mine because they're so focused on kind of feeding you. They're too close to it, you know? So they're trying to spoon feed you the story.

‍

Speaker 2: (20:02)

Yeah. It's interesting. And

‍

Speaker 3: (20:04)

Not let you fill in the blank and take it.

‍

Speaker 2: (20:06)

I have two examples that resonate with what you just said. So obviously I have three kids, right? My daughter and my, my oldest daughter, my daughter loves Harry Potter. She, she was a kid. It was, it was kind of her thing. Right. My youngest son liked it. My, my middle son wanted nothing to do with it. But

‍

Speaker 3: (20:22)

So

‍

Speaker 2: (20:23)

I, I read all the books with my daughter and with my son. And then when the movies came out, we literally walked outta the theater and, and what's amazing is we said the same thing like that is the, that is exactly how I imagined it. Like they took the book and what you were imagining on every character, what they were wearing, how they talked, how they walked, what the, what the hallways looked like, what the paintings did. And they made it come to life. You're like, literally that's the best adaption of a book to a screenplay I've ever seen. It just, it shocked me how, how well it was done. And we just drove back from a wedding in Charleston and we listened to Matthew Macy's, um, book green light. And you were talking about how you don't like it when authors read their own books. It was interesting listening to him, read this book because the opening, because he's an actor, he's an actor. And the opening scene, he takes a clip from some section of the book and that's the opening scene he starts with. And I looked at my wife, we're five and I looked, I'm like, holy,

‍

Speaker 3: (21:26)

‍

Speaker 2: (21:28)

We gotta finish this. And you're right. As an athlete,

‍

Speaker 3: (21:31)

Keep driving.

‍

Speaker 2: (21:32)

we, we drove around, we drove around, we got home and drove around in the summers. Now we finished the notebook, but he that's great. He made it, he made it real like you could picture because he

‍

Speaker 3: (21:43)

Knows.

‍

Speaker 2: (21:43)

Yeah. You could picture. Yeah. You, you, the sound of words, the way they read you were drawn in on the way he and he had a really good pause at the end. He's like green light. Like that was kind of the SA that's why I said, that's why I told you this story, green light. And he would just go onto the next one.

‍

Speaker 3: (22:00)

It's everything, the delivery, you know, people have said for a long time, it's not what you say. It's how you say it. Mm-hmm and that's true. And you know, I grew up, there was a, a book award called the Caldecott award for children's books. Okay. I don't know if that still happens, but those children's books would have like this big gold sticker on it. Yeah. And my mom was a first grade teacher, so she always bought these for us and they were hard cover children's stories and they were all great. And they came with records, they came with readings. Oh. And so it was like Bernadette Peters. , you know, these great classic voices. And I grew up just listening, playing with my dollhouse, believe it or not. And listening to these records where the wild things are and you free to be you and me, like, you know, all that stuff.

‍

Speaker 3: (22:46)

And there's something about, I love being told a story, Pete, I love it. I, I reread the Harry Potter series every summer because I love the story. I love all the recalls, the callbacks that are throughout. Yeah. I love the puzzle. And how so often I see the different setups and they surprised me. I, I see a new setup that she engineered like back in book one. Yeah. Like Jesus, this is a lot of thinking that had to go on here. And the great thing about an author like that, or a reader like Matthew or a, a radio host, I believe is when you're able to create that environment where the listener feels as though they're just going along for the ride. But they're actually taking ownership in the conversation with you. Mm-hmm and the memory that I'm sharing with you around this, like it's so deep and ingrained because the power of sound requires me, me a human, right.

‍

Speaker 3: (23:57)

And this is something let's just tie it to lately that we talk about all the time. So at lately we use artificial intelligence to learn your brand voice, and then transform a podcast like this into dozens of social posts. The AI learns what to clip up, cuz it's listening to the words and phrases you and I say, and it's matching those ideas against what it knows your audience is most likely to like and comment and share online. Okay. That that's what happens now. The then that's amazing. The hard part is we refuse to let the AI do all the work for you because we know that if the human intervenes, the difference is one plus one equals 3000, right? If it's, if it's just the robot doing it on its own, it's just automation. But when you have the human in there, this is that the rush of nostalgia. When there's a, a powerful story like Harry Potter or green light, that's the thing that makes fans, we're fans. We're talking about this now we can't help it. Yeah. And the power of a fan is the long tail it's in. It's you can't put a price on it. It goes on forever and ever and ever,

‍

Speaker 2: (25:13)

Oh, mine. The power of the fan is the long tail. That might be the title of this episode.

‍

Speaker 3: (25:17)

Like radio. Yeah. Yeah. That's you know, I remember when that came out, this was, this is my, my format, adult album alternative lives on the long tail because we're not pop, we're not country. It's always a format. That's like number 20 or 21 in the market. And I'm gonna tie this back. So when I was in North Carolina at that radio station, I had gone to XM in my program director called me. And he was like, Hey, the Arbitron book came out. You're number one. And I was like, what? This is impossible. Number one in a format that's always 20, 21. And I was evenings. Evenings are never number one. Drive times are number one, right in North Carolina. I beat out country and rock and roll classic rock and roll. And he was like, how did you do that? Well, I was the pro production director. So all the drops were mine. All the commercials were written by me or engineered by me more or less. And when I was on the air, it's my show. So it was my voice in between. And also it's my music choice. And I had tossed his playlist out the window because it didn't do what we're talking about. Now. It didn't weave the new songs in with the old songs so that the listener had a point of nostalgic, uh, familiarity with which to go along the ride,

‍

Speaker 2: (26:45)

You know? Right. It's interesting. There is a radio station here in Raleigh that, that launched a few years ago. And it's w B B B 96 1. And that's exactly the format they've chosen. So they play a little bit of everything. They don't play country, but they play, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say alternative, but they say they play pop rock from the sixties, seventies, eighties, two thousands. And they weave the new artists in with the old stuff. So you're listening to it. And we talked about this before. Right? I might have some pink, but then all, all of a sudden I'm listening to S and I will pull my call over, get outside of the street and jam on some ho notes.

‍

Speaker 3: (27:23)

you're like, all

‍

Speaker 2: (27:24)

Right. But you're like, you can't get that anywhere else. You just can't, you, you, you know, if you wanna just be brainless and turn the radio and listen to it for a while and have somebody else take you for the ride like you did as a DJ, that's refreshing versus you having create. When I watch my kids with Spotify, I'm exhausted how they curate their own music and create their own stations. And they love it. I was a Pandora guy, cuz I just picked an artist and hit play and then it just did it for me. So

‍

Speaker 3: (27:49)

It is exhausting. Yeah. I never do that anymore. Like, you know, we'll go somewhere on someone will be like Kate, click the music. And I'm like, I don't work there anymore. That's not my job anymore. it's too exhausting. it? It,

‍

Speaker 2: (28:02)

It is sometimes you just want to be, you just wanna be in the moment so, you know

‍

Speaker 3: (28:07)

Yeah.

‍

Speaker 2: (28:08)

I'm go ahead. I'm curious, you know, you, you mentioned earlier that, uh, this startup thing is hard, right? And you've got this mixture of artificial intelligence, but you've got people still engaged with it. I'm gonna try to parrot back what you said. The AI is interesting. I think that allows you eventually scale, right? Cuz that automation piece is helpful, but you have to bring the humans into it to bridge that gap. And I think you, you know, you said that the theater of the mind, right. I think is that where you're connecting that automation back into the theater of the mind.

‍

Speaker 3: (28:39)

Yeah. So, and I'll, I'll do two things. Let me give everybody a proof point and then explain it so sure. At lately we have a 98% sales conversion, 98%. And we only use lately to market lately, nothing else. So I do three or four interviews a week just like this. I'm gonna ask you for the file or Emma is my coworker. Okay. And we're gonna take the file. We're gonna run it through our own AI. It's gonna transcribe this podcast and read through it and find the ideas and phrases and quotes that it already knows are gonna resonate with my target customer. Okay. And it'll clip the video up and then my human Alex will go through and just make sure the AI is on par because sometimes it will pull weird things out like a non sequiter and you have to guide it cuz it's only a robot, right?

‍

Speaker 3: (29:33)

It does learn. And then she'll say take 20 or 30 posts, publish them on our brand channels. And also our employee channels because we're stronger together. Mm-hmm . And then we watch to see who likes and comments and shares. And we consider them, you know, warm leads basically and, and push 'em into the funnel that way. So the, so that's the proof, the why it works to touch on your point is like this. So when your brain listens to a new song, Pete, it must instantly access every other song you've ever heard in an instant. This is how the neuroscience of music listening works. So imagine that right, that your, your brain is running through everything, this massive library of songs. Sure. And it's looking for familiar touchpoint. So it knows where to index the new song in the library of the memory of your brain now by accident, by default, by nature, nostalgia, memory emotion, all these things get touched as this is happening, which is why music is so powerful. Those are also the characteristics that must be in play for trust to happen. And trust is why we buy. So now when you write, copy, whether it's social media posts or an email or a text to your wife or a billboard sign, the person who reads that copy here's your voice in their head, in your voice, Pete, just like mine and everyone else's is a song. There's a musical note. All sound has a frequency, right? Mm-hmm so it's your job as the host of this podcast or the author of that text to give me familiar touchpoints and trigger nostalgia, memory, emotion trust.

‍

Speaker 2: (31:20)

Wow. So I, I could be wrong. I've never heard anyone. First of all, I think this is due to your background, right? I've never heard anyone come with, you know, 20 years of music in their background and think about everything that music does. And uh, another easy example is my wife, um, made it a policy that we would have music playing in our house every night. So like from five o'clock through dinner, it was Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Michael Bule, Harry kind of junior, all the classics. So regardless what my kids listen to during the day, it was a calming music. My kids could do homework to it. So now they associate that music to smells, right? Certain foods that she'd make to nothing but pleasant memories of the family being together. That is her thing. And she's religious about it. If I'm, if I'm cranking, you know, slightly stupid.

‍

Speaker 2: (32:13)

And she comes in at five o'clock she's on Sonos. She switches the station, she looks me and I just go, okay. And all of my kids we're uh, she's, she's the best. We're all music. We love music. None of us can play or sing, but we are music aholic. We, we, we have all of the family plans. We share playlists. We fight with each other on who can run Sonos channels and stations and who can take over his DJ. My youngest, son's kind of the champion there, but we just love every aspect of it. So I hadn't thought about the fact that music can trigger trust. So let's drill more into that when you're taking a snippet from a podcast or a video or something else and you bring it to copy. What are the things that you've taught the AI and your people to look for that established trust?

‍

Speaker 3: (32:59)

So for us, what I did was I created a couple dozen rules. Okay. Yeah. And I call, we call them, my team calls me, Kate, Pete, Kate from lately

‍

Speaker 2: (33:10)

Like that. I can use that.

‍

Speaker 3: (33:12)

Okay. So they're called Kate's writing rules. Um, the subtitle that Chris, my employee, my teammate created was the writing, the copywriting rules you wish you had in college. Okay. And I'll give you an example. So one of my favorite rules is don't use words that undercut your authority that are weak. Like probably, maybe I think I just wanted to

‍

Speaker 2: (33:37)

Mm-hmm oh yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (33:39)

When you do that, you, you kill a statement is powerful. And when you take a statement and you make it a guess, it's not that you have to be a no at all, but in, in writing, it just translates as, um, you don't know what you're talking about. Right. And our entire goal as sales and marketing people is to get people to do what we want them to do. Yep. Or shame in that that's that's communications. Right. And so if I want you to do something for me and I'm gonna be a wimp on how I ask you to do it, it's not very compelling. Of course. So my, once the AI runs through and does its thing, my team takes those rules and that's the rules to augment. Now we teach these rules to all of our customers live about once a month. I and I do these copywriting courses for companies like HubSpot, um, content, marketing world, whomever. Sure. They're really fun. Um, cuz you know, I'm rule breaker. So

‍

Speaker 2: (34:44)

You like to create the rules and then break them

‍

Speaker 3: (34:47)

And then break them of course then the AI. So, so it uses you as the first example of things to learn from, but then it uses me and my team and all the data sets we have from all our customers from the last seven years who are doing these same kind of rules or augmentations, for example, one of the great learnings to just double down on your point. A little bit that we found was so, so lately these AI services word clouds that literally show you the words people are responding to. Okay. And it does this with hashtags as well. So we don't really care. What's trending in the world. Cuz what really matters is what's trending with my target audience, right? And I can see it in black and white. Now the traditional way in marketing to use hashtags is as an indexer. So you string a bunch of hashtags that you want your stuff to be searchable by mm-hmm now that has gone by the wayside because it's perceived as a lazy and spammy cuz it is, you know, people will be like hashtag Beyonce when they're talking about socks yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (35:56)

You know, come on. Um, the SEO cottons onto this now the algorithms do. But instead if you use hashtags to augment what your message says and contextualize it further or ground it or add a sense of humor, then your engagement skyrockets. So for example, my highest performing hashtag my personal one is hashtag pee my pants back to urination.

‍

Speaker 2: (36:25)

I knew we come full circle. We did.

‍

Speaker 3: (36:28)

That's what, um, Gary Vanek when Gary Vanek tweeted about us, that's what I said.

‍

Speaker 2: (36:34)

Well that's, by the way, if Gary tweets at you and you come back with that, that's, that's just epic.

‍

Speaker 3: (36:39)

‍

Speaker 2: (36:42)

By the way, I,

‍

Speaker 3: (36:42)

It's hard to, hard to beat that.

‍

Speaker 2: (36:44)

I've seen you do this, right. So I see your post. I see your hashtags and there there's something clever there there's something that's pulling a point out of what you just of the copy to say, Hey, look, if you're gonna remember anything, remember this. Right. And it might just be, it might just be a humorous way to remember it. But honestly, that's why I reached out to you because your copy was Al always humorous, but I'd look at your hashtags and go. This girl's got a fricking wicked sense of humor. I don't know if anybody else picked up on this, but that funny. Right. So I'm like, and, and by the way, she just doesn't care. She's just throwing it out. Like this is who she is, get on the, get on the train or not. So I love that stuff. It's authentic. Um, but I hadn't considered it. Thank you. I hadn't considered the fact that hashtags in general are kind of stale unless you rethink them.

‍

Speaker 3: (37:30)

Yeah. So the AI learns from this, by the way. So we've done an experiment where we worked with Anheuser Bush and Bev and we wanted to see if the AI could start inputting that kind of voice into the text it pulled. Okay. So take it and then augment it itself. And the answer is yes . Um, so we did it with them first and like 10,000 pieces of content from one of their brands, like got like 40 beer brands. Okay. And so it was able to study social media, post and radio scripts and anything that had like texts with a brand voice in it. So then the second experiment was let's do it with me cuz I have thousands of pieces of content, tens of thousands. And so it was, I think it was with some Christmas copy and it was so funny because I had made, I had been making some, some weird Santa analogies. I don't remember what it was like, but the AI started putting those kinds of hashtags into the copy.

‍

Speaker 2: (38:25)

Interesting.

‍

Speaker 3: (38:27)

Yeah. So that's the next version by the way is, is, um, my team is implementing it as we

‍

Speaker 2: (38:34)

Speak. Will they do it? It does. It is the goal to do that hashtags in line or is it due at the end of the post in line? Yeah. Okay.

‍

Speaker 3: (38:40)

To in line you can do 'em both, but both ways, but what's nice about in line is there's a break because it's visual. A hashtag is a weird thing to see in the middle of the sentence. Also it turns it blue and writing is just like eating. I had told you that I was a line cook all through middle school and high school and college cuz I couldn't afford to feed myself. And I was beast. I was climbing all the time and playing soccer and I got two free meals a day behind the line. Um, and I didn't have to look very nice cause I'm not great on the, on the weight, weight staff side. Um, and I could hang with the guys and I could smoke cuz you know, you did back then on the line. That was like a badge of honor. Can you smoke? And like whip it up at the same time.

‍

Speaker 2: (39:22)

Yes. I had so many visuals from the cafeteria I was in back in the eighties of right now just seeing that one extra fries with that. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (39:32)

Exactly. Just like that, man. It's so disgusting. But um, yeah. So why was I telling you this story? Oh, so about how it looks in the plate, you know, we all, you guys have all seen chopped, like that's one of the three categories is how it, how it looks, how it appears and writing is the same way. So, you know, we think about, or earlier when we were talking, we, we started this conversation out. We're at high, we're at a high you and I we're like jamming off each other. We're laughing. I'm pretty sure we're not even talking in a linear sense. So maybe people are having a hard time cutting on. And then we started talking about something else and I purposely slowed it down and I left some space in what we were talking about because I wanna make sure that I'm making people lean in at some point. Right,

‍

Speaker 2: (40:24)

Right.

‍

Speaker 3: (40:24)

And give a break like a song

‍

Speaker 2: (40:27)

That right. That pause is really important. Not only in public speaking, but also how you write mm-hmm let people chew on that in the copy. Like you said, visually, it's a space. It's the way you list things. It's bringing them to a certain crescendo that you want them to do by building up anticipation. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (40:44)

That's right. And I'm thinking I'm, I'm always reading it out loud before I hit publish. Hmm. This is the big cheat. Um, so I amazingly, as we were setting up this call my microphone, wasn't working the irony of me being a, a tech entrepreneur and B a former rock and roll DJ and not having a mic that's working is annoying, but there it is. But the other thing is Pete. So I, I use voice activated software. I don't type at all. I talk to my computer all day long cuz I have a partial permanent disability and I can't type without extreme pain. Oh wow. So I always hear myself. I always hear it before it goes out. So I know right away when I sound like a, sometimes I hit send anyways

‍

Speaker 2: (41:34)

So how is it affect? Is it capture you pretty well? I mean, is it, does it, does it learn how to pick up CMS? I mean, or are you finding like, gosh, I gotta fix that. I gotta fix that or it's got it right.

‍

Speaker 3: (41:46)

It takes a long time. I've been using this since about 2007 or eight and in 2006 was when I left XM. That's why I left XM. Um, and you train it like a language. So I use dragon naturally speaking professionally, which is like the version for total hands free usage. Okay. And it learns, so what's so interesting about this is so, so the people who create dragon are constantly feeding it, language, whatever language you want and they're feeding it, current events, newspapers and all this stuff. Sure. So couple things once in a while, this cracks me up so hard, I'll say, you know, instead of yada, yada, yada, I might say, blah, blah, blah. And dragon will type Bob, blah, blah. Like from arrested development.

‍

Speaker 2: (42:34)

Oh my gosh. Cause that's where I got it. That's

‍

Speaker 3: (42:36)

Hilarious. I know. That's where I got it. Yeah. And then my favorite one dragon is my team knows too, because like I'm with them, I'm lazy and I don't correct it. And so I don't make, um, grammatical errors. I make soundalike errors. So if you read the text, you could tell what I'm really trying to say. Um, so for example, it has multiple times confused the word VCs with feces.

‍

Speaker 2: (42:59)

Oh perfect. But by the way, I've met a lot of VCs. Most of 'em are really good people, but I have a couple that I would, that I would call. Yeah. And they know who they are.

‍

Speaker 3: (43:08)

Yeah. Me too. Who they're. It makes it interesting

‍

Speaker 2: (43:15)

To the point where guarantee you, they're not listening to this podcast.

‍

Speaker 3: (43:20)

You know, some of them don't I, I have to tell you it's really well, this is for another show, but, but the I've got some great stories Pete and the book is gonna be I'll I'm gonna title that chapter of feces.

‍

Speaker 2: (43:31)

Please do. Please do, uh, this reminds me of the joy my kids get when my mother talks to text.

‍

Speaker 3: (43:40)

Oh yeah. I bet

‍

Speaker 2: (43:42)

It's epic. Literally epic

‍

Speaker 3: (43:45)

Because who knows what it's really

‍

Speaker 2: (43:46)

Saying? You get your phone. It's like, it's like 65 inch paragraphs of just,

‍

Speaker 3: (43:53)

She lets it rip.

‍

Speaker 2: (43:54)

Oh yeah. And now she's discovered emojis. Oh. So she talks, she talks and requests emojis, which is great smiley, smiley face, you know, poop, angry, face, whatever. You're like, God, she needs, she needs it is amazing. She needs some Kate in your life. That's alright. I gotta, I gotta switch over to dragon naturally speaking professional.

‍

Speaker 3: (44:18)

All

‍

Speaker 2: (44:18)

Right. So, um, you and I could do

‍

Speaker 3: (44:20)

Isn't that funny though, by the way like that, I still talk for a living Pete. What's the, what's the irony there? Huh?

‍

Speaker 2: (44:25)

So I I'm curious, has this software continued to, obviously they're populating with new information all the time. I'm guessing that they update the algorithms and you get new versions of it. Cuz it's, I mean, if you've been using this for 14 years, that's come a long way.

‍

Speaker 3: (44:40)

They do. But I know some secrets at this point, cuz I'm really good at it. So I know a lot of people who are, who were the original builders who have moved on and done different things. So when there's a problem with dragon there, it's hard to fix honestly. And unless you know where to go and I know the who's who's and I know the message boards and, and who to call and they're weird people. Totally weird, frankly.

‍

Speaker 2: (45:05)

Um, brain's working at a different level

‍

Speaker 3: (45:07)

That's and so when, yeah, when, when, um, and when COVID happened, the people who, who do build dragon, their, their whole engineering team was in somewhere in south Asia. Anyways, they split because you know, they all were working the same room and for some reason couldn't figure out how to work remotely. And so the, the fix crippled me for like six or seven months and suddenly all I couldn't access my email, all this stuff. And so I had to call one of these guys and they built a workaround for me

‍

Speaker 2: (45:40)

oh my goodness.

‍

Speaker 3: (45:41)

Which is a pain in my for months until the, until it was about a year, about 15 months until the new, you know, version went up and I don't know what regular people, what other people did, you know mm-hmm but this is what you do. I mean, you know, I don't think about this ever, cuz this is my life and this is how I operate my day. But to other people, I mean, imagine like you imagine you cannot type, you can't touch your phone or type,

‍

Speaker 2: (46:07)

Most people would freak out. They would freak out. They wouldn't, they wouldn't know what to do. Yeah.

‍

Speaker 3: (46:10)

And then I fixed it.

‍

Speaker 2: (46:11)

Wow. So you're kind of living in this AI world every day, right? From you inputting things into your systems and recognizing it and then spitting stuff out. I'm like, this is, Hey, this is a clip we should share with people based on this research and their audience and the person speaking, et cetera. So for people who are, who've heard this and are now curious, who's the ideal customer for lately AI, if they're listening, it's going, I should, I should contact Kate and the team. What would that, what would they look like? Who would be the ideal client profile for

‍

Speaker 3: (46:42)

You on the smaller side, people who have podcasts or it works with blogs and newsletters as well. So if you have long form content that you want to unlock the true power of essentially and save yourself eons of time, then you're my people. But then we work with enterprise customers as well. So lately has a syndication capability, Pete, where one person can syndicate what the AI creates out to any employee, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram channel. No kidding. So like employee advocacy on steroids.

‍

Speaker 2: (47:12)

So if you think about having a really clever group of customer facing folks who have a LinkedIn profile, if they now have the ability to scale this across their content, it's pretty powerful. Yeah. Wow.

‍

Speaker 3: (47:25)

Okay. Yeah. That's what I, so I built a spreadsheet system. You had asked about this a little bit and I didn't answer you between radio and lately I owned a marketing agency. Yeah. and I build Walmart, a spreadsheet system that did this, that got them 130% ROI year over year for three years. Wow.

‍

Speaker 2: (47:44)

That's quite a spreadsheet

‍

Speaker 3: (47:45)

Because together we're stronger together. Yeah. I was

‍

Speaker 2: (47:49)

be better. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (47:51)

It was. Yeah. Um, and, and you know, then, you know, I walked in there again, we, we have to wrap, but like I walked in there with all the rough edges that you're seeing now. And they looked at me like I was crazy. They did. And I was, I mean, you know, I was suggesting things that you would never suggest in a way that was totally offensive because I don't know. Or at the time I didn't know the rules, I didn't know there's rules in corporate America. , you know, you don't reply all number one.

‍

Speaker 2: (48:21)

There are rules

‍

Speaker 3: (48:24)

And I just didn't fit that mold. Um, but the, the person who brought me in knew this and didn't care, you know, they trusted me. And that's the best lesson I've learned through all of this is that if you let, if you give people the permission to be themselves, they usually fly.

‍

Speaker 2: (48:42)

Yeah. Being in the people, business's the hardest thing for some older school leaders and managers to do, cuz they don't have a high level of trust. They're afraid if they let people loose, uh, a on their schedules B on their time and C on their creativity, they can't control them anymore. And they don't realize that every one of their employees is a, their best marketer and B their best salesperson and C their best client service person. Right. They're building their own brands. And if the brands are housed underneath the brand that people go, oh man, I'd like to work there because they're a bunch of really cool creative people, right. That is hard for some people to make that shift. That's where the magic happens. How many people on your team today, how big is lately?

‍

Speaker 3: (49:26)

Seven full time in five part time,

‍

Speaker 2: (49:29)

Where do you see the business going in five years interview question

‍

Speaker 3: (49:33)

Right now, lately does 75% of the work for you. And our goal is to have it do 90% of the work for you in the next year and a half, really. Um, and we just built a self-service product. So what we're really working on is how do we give the, the power of an army to the armies of one and do it in a way that uses that model? I told you, um, it's working by the way. We just, we just released this a couple months ago and the conversion rates are really high. And we're discovering that people are really interested in pushing the button to see what the AI happens, what, what it does, what it comes up with. So we're learning how to make, how to gamify that. And that is an interesting kind of understanding. And I don't have the answer, Pete, but I'm, but I'll get it, cuz we're really good at this.

‍

Speaker 3: (50:30)

Sure. But figuring out like, you know, what's the KPI for people in marketers at a company it's pretty easy. Usually it's like be more effective right now for their boss. It could be save time or save money, but save, save time and money are not really hot buttons for people anymore. They could give the. They assume it's part of the jam already. You know, but even, even be more effective seems to not be ringing enough of a bell anymore, which is crazy. Like, what do you want? I've got Gary V I'm getting him a 12000% increase engagement, 12000%. I've got a 98% sales conversion. I mean, Jesus Christ, what, what more could you want? But they do. So my challenge is discovering either a how to communicate this better, give them more or make it so make the value so much more. The value is not obvious enough yet. That's what I've learned.

‍

Speaker 2: (51:29)

It's so painful when, when that's the case, because I'll, I'll tell you, I am now very curious about lately because I am a podcaster. I am a content creator. I'm not good at other one of 'em, but I'll tell you that the game changer for me was, and I will say for me, it was time and it, and, and time led to scale, which led to performance mm-hmm . So when I started my podcast, I was doing two episodes a week just to build content. I just wanted to get, I wanted to get it out there. I wanted to get into a rhythm and I was running a, you know, I was working full-time and it was exhausting. I'd spent, you know, four to six hours a weekend editing one podcast, cuz I was stupidly very anal about it. And I realized I was editing myself out of almost every episode. Right. The conversation was good, but it wasn't necessary to pull out what you were saying. So I literally just everywhere. I could just take Pete out, take Pete out and get it down to the core essence. But I ended up giving it over to a company that does all my editing for me. And it is amazing how much productivity that saved me and time. Now I enjoy the podcast because I don't feel like, oh God, I just created 10 hours of work over the weekend.

‍

Speaker 2: (52:40)

but here's the thing that I could, I hadn't contemplated. And by the way, they do create a snippet for me, they create two snippets for every episode. I have no idea how or why they choose them.

‍

Speaker 3: (52:49)

And why not more? That seems

‍

Speaker 2: (52:51)

To, it's a complete waste to me. But again, it's for me, uh, there is value cuz I know how much it costs for me to create a snippet. I know how much time it would mean. Cause I did those myself as well. That's part of it I'd drop it into subtitle. I'd do it. You know, I'd correct. Fix all the errors. I'd edit that that's segment, you know, do it and wonder share all that. Right. I figured out how to do all that scale was such a challenge for me. And now I can focus on other parts of my business. So you're right. If I could get 15 snippets out of that, both in video and in copy that I could blog or post I'd even like to take a snippet that just had me in the shot. Right. So what did I say in that episode versus the two of us together that I could do as a one-on-one thing, this, that this is you're, you're at the forefront of this content generation. And I think people are afraid of cuz it, by the way, it's a fricking lot of work, creating content.

‍

Speaker 3: (53:44)

It's a huge amount of

‍

Speaker 2: (53:45)

Work. It's a huge amount of work. Good content. good, good content. And consistently, right? So you're, you're solving those problems. And if you have results like a 12000% increase in conversions or sales, conversion, whatever it is, somebody's gotta pay attention. I, you know, I hope you're, I don't think I would say five years ago, you went way ahead of the market. Now I think you you've hit that wave at exactly the right time. We'll see how, how you catch the wave now.

‍

Speaker 3: (54:11)

Yeah. It's, it's so interesting either if there people get it or they don't and part of the, getting it is the mindset. So this is where that long tail comes in because everybody gets, promote my podcast once or twice. Mm-hmm where I'm gonna give you 40, 50 snippets literally. And like my, not everybody does this, but my team uses all of 'em and plugs them out for weeks on end, because we've created this engine here where, you know, so we have a thou right now with the self-service product, we have a thousand visits to the homepage every month and through the homepage and then clicking to the sign up. This is the self-service version. We've got a 48% sales conversion.

‍

Speaker 2: (54:54)

Wow.

‍

Speaker 3: (54:54)

Okay. Which is like really high now it's 90, 98 on the enterprise side. So that's where the human involved mm-hmm at the end of the process. Right. And then with the self-service no human involve and this was the test. Can it work this way? And the reason it works is cuz we bet on this residual how long it takes for all 40 50 posts to go out over time and then build up and into a patchwork of a quilt in our calendar. Right? Yeah. Over years of, of tri traffic. The conversation I had with my team yesterday is okay, we've been going along like this with our, no, no budget for marketing and our small team. How do we double, how do we make it 2000 visits a month with no money, what we're doing now.

‍

Speaker 2: (55:39)

And, and when you think about, um, your team repurposing, these snippets, these 40 snippets, have you automated that part of it? Like some other words, here's a, I I've taken this podcast. I've generated these snippets. I push it out to the team. They just have to literally go copy paste, push. Or how does, how does it work?

‍

Speaker 3: (55:55)

Oh no, we push it out for, oh,

‍

Speaker 2: (55:56)

You're me.

‍

Speaker 3: (55:57)

Yeah, we, yeah. we automated that too. Yeah. so I created an army of evangelists. Right.

‍

Speaker 2: (56:07)

That's awesome.

‍

Speaker 3: (56:08)

Cause what you said is exactly what I learned, which is when you make your employees, your biggest fans, just like your customers, they market you for free. So when we talked about in the beginning, when I'm a leader, the reason I feel so bad is because I'm hurting my most valuable assets. Mm-hmm

‍

Speaker 2: (56:30)

Wow. Wow. And you described that right at the beginning, by the way, I've got 16 pages of notes.

‍

Speaker 3: (56:36)

I'm

‍

Speaker 2: (56:36)

Sorry. Uh, no, by the way, I'm gonna get all the transcripts of this, but there's some things I write down cuz usually it's funny. I write down and I go back and go, that's the name of the pot? That's the name of this episode? So you said two things. I want you, I want you to share an example for me. So you know, when you're taking the funny out of the room and you could be soul crushing, how would you be soul crushing to your team? What would be an example of something you would do? You'd be like, God, I suck.

‍

Speaker 3: (56:59)

You know, I have, I have, I don't understand why people can't read my mind. I really don't. Mm. I get really upset about that. And I surround myself with people who mostly can, I'm really lucky. I have superior superior teammates. They are incredible humans. And I would die if, if I lost them, mm-hmm because this is how good they are. So in those rare occasions, they can't read my mind. Um, I throw a fit like an ASPH and the reason is because I'm so used to us operating at this high level and I don't understand what happened. What, you know, why did they drop drop off? Right. You know, so that's my fault. That's my expectations are too high. Nobody can be in human. Only. I can be in human, you know? And I have those same expectations of myself. You know what that's like, Pete, when I'm, you're always going a hundred miles an hour, when the engine is only meant to go 25, there's gonna be

‍

Speaker 2: (57:51)

A burning parts. Start to fall off. Yeah,

‍

Speaker 3: (57:55)

They do. Yeah. And it's not just for me, it's for them and, and, and as well. And if it's my job to cheerlead them, it's, it's difficult. Like I surround myself with people who are much better at cheerleading than me, cuz it sounds like when it comes for me, honestly, cuz it is because I don't , it's not my forte. I, I it's so bizarre. Like I like to, I like to pay people and let the money talk. But at the same time I don't pay them often because I can't. So it's like, sure. You know,

‍

Speaker 2: (58:25)

Um, those are always great conversations.

‍

Speaker 3: (58:27)

The uh, the worst and it, and it gets harder and harder as we get older. Because as you know, just as human beings, we have a, a lo our capacity to withstand duress is, you know, harder it's and it's ridiculous. Like this is what I was writing about on LinkedIn yesterday. Like this, the constant eating of the glass and the constant getting punched in the face. Like I have a really high tolerance for pain personally, really high. And it's not a badge of honor just is my way, you know? And not everybody has that tolerance. And obviously I have an addiction also, Pete, because I keep going back for more and more, what the? I don't, I can't even imagine life after lately. Right. You know, you had asked about, you know, stealing the funny outta the room. My other great gift is to see the glass hat on empty. I have a note right here. It says positive, cuz this is my Achilles heel. I'm always negative. You know, my husband is a Saint cuz I'm always pointing out what's wrong with everything,

‍

Speaker 2: (59:35)

Which is an unusual dominating trait for an entrepreneur.

‍

Speaker 3: (59:39)

I mean the good news is I'm always looking for the problems and I'm trying to fix them. That's my like, cuz that's what you want. You're always trying to like the moment that there's no problems. And this happened to us like, oh boy, I remember this blissful time where we thought we were like coasting on whipped cream and Juju bees. And then I realized what the was really going on. It was terrible. But my team is very bubbly. They're all hilarious. They have great senses of humor. Most of them take all of them, take criticism very well. I'm terrible at that also. And they, they know the power they have cuz I talk about it all the time and the, I don't tell them enough personally, but I say it on these things and I think publicly is be a better way to sure do it anyway. So I hope so. And I know that the occasion listen to these things or at least the ones who have to go through the AI do

‍

Speaker 2: (01:00:37)

Um, yeah. You know, but

‍

Speaker 3: (01:00:39)

I

‍

Speaker 2: (01:00:39)

Very astute of

‍

Speaker 3: (01:00:40)

You. I pray to God every, oh I just wanna say I pray to God every day to be just to be better. Pete, don't you?

‍

Speaker 2: (01:00:49)

Um, a lot. it's the first, it's the first thing I say every morning is please help me just be a little better than yesterday. And uh, and you, you know, it's funny whether it's with my wife or my team, I know when I've been and usually it's pretty instant and I go this morning, you said you wouldn't do that. And then you just fricking did it.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:01:10)

‍

Speaker 2: (01:01:11)

You know, I, I, uh, so it it's great that you're oddly enough, my, the chief operating officer at Sabo who I've grown to really admire and, and like as a person is, uh, is, you know, there's a disaster around every corner and , that's the way he sees the world. Um, he lives entirely. His entire life is in spreadsheets, his calendar, his to-do list. I think his Christmas list. Um, I think he writes his wife love letters in Excel spreadsheets. Right. honey just hit the macro. It'll tell you everything I feel about you, but

‍

Speaker 3: (01:01:49)

Colme row six.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:01:50)

Exactly, exactly. But the good thing is, is we've we've recognized. That's how we work well together, cuz I'm gonna, I'm gonna lean forward and pull 'em along and say, Chris, it's gonna be okay, we've gotta go do this. Let's break some glass. It's gonna be, we're gonna, we're gonna jump off a cliff here. And he's like, Pete. Yeah. Great. Did you look at this? And if I haven't looked at it, I need to sometimes it'll pull me back to the cliff other times, like yeah, it. We're still going. Right. And uh, I, I haven't had a situation where I've been working with that kind of really good balance. So, um, and he's really good at, at taking feedback. He's good at giving me feedback. So it's worked it's pleasant and we have a, a co-founder who is our mad scientist who, you know, has all the passion and fire and Verve. And I think sometimes he's like, would you too just fricking figure it out. So we've got a tiebreaker if we need one, which is awesome. That's

‍

Speaker 3: (01:02:44)

Excellent. Yeah. That, okay, so teamwork is magical.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:02:48)

It is. And you know, so what's next for you and uh, your musician, husband, David. I mean, you guys are what, what's the biggest thing you're looking for to doing this summer? I know you got back from two west coast trips, so maybe not that, but what do you, what do you, what do you looking to bring home and maybe a music festival or something what's your highlight?

‍

Speaker 3: (01:03:08)

Um, I don't know, Pete, um, cuz of COVID is so weird, but I, I, my parents live on a lake in Vermont and my favorite thing is to swim in that lake and or to float in it at least. So I really hope to do that. And I miss my, my niece and nephew who will be there. Um, there's a photo from a couple summers ago of me doing some chalk artwork with them and we're all lying down on the chalk artwork and there's, there're smiling and I'm smiling. And for my birthday, David likes to take photos and put them in a card and print them, them out for me. Sure. Photos. He thinks I like. And so that photo is hanging, hanging in my room there and he chose that because he knew that I missed them and because they give me joy, I don't have my own kids.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:03:57)

How old are they?

‍

Speaker 3: (01:03:58)

So they're six

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:00)

And nine. Oh great ages. And they, and they think a kid's like the bomb don't they,

‍

Speaker 3: (01:04:06)

They like me. It takes 'em a little by while to warm up every time, you know? But then we become friends again and they call me, um, Monte cake.

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:13)

Nice. Which is, that's pretty cool. That's a good thing to be associated with.

‍

Speaker 3: (01:04:18)

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I have to pee

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:21)

by the way, we came back to urinating

‍

Speaker 3: (01:04:24)

and Lauren is texting me wondering if

‍

Speaker 2: (01:04:27)

I'm coming to this meeting, so let's let you go. Um, I'll I'll end this we'll close real quick, but Kate, I, I could do this for two more hours. You got a job to do and you gotta go pee. I love you. Love it. It's been great. Thank you so much. Well done. We'll talk to you soon.

‍

Speaker 1: (01:04:43)

Thanks for checking out. Eating Crow like and subscribe. So you never miss a video.

‍