Latest / Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction. / Brand Voice vs. AI Voice with Justin Blackman

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Brand Voice vs. AI Voice with Justin Blackman · Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Aggressively Human podcast,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: where today we're talking about how brand voice helps you separate human
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: from AI content, especially now that things are being scanned with Pangram.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm your host, Jessica Lackey.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Meg Casebolt.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And today we are talking with brand voice expert, Justin Blackman.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Justin, welcome to the show.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome to be here.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of cool just to get two different perspectives on things and try
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: to figure out how to connect the dots between y'all and make it relevant
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: for everybody.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: So again, fun fact about how Justin and I know each other.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we are connected through a friend of the show, Corey Wilkes.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you know Corey, right?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you know Daryl?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know Daryl.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I know Corey too.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm in a mastermind with Corey Wilkes that's also co-run by Daryl Westervelt.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I know Justin.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I've been following Justin for years because he's done brand voice for a couple
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: of the other friends I follow around on the internet.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then today when we get on the podcast,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: it turns out that Meg also knows one of Justin's clients, Meg.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one of my students is your copy editor and editor, Jillian Hill, who I adore.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I think this world is so much smaller than we give it credit for,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: and everyone's only one or two degrees of separation apart.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Forget the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: The internet is so much smaller than we think it is.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I tend to use the word incestuous, but I like your description better.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It feels way less gross.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and less illegal.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, there we go.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we brought Justin on the podcast today because,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: well, one, I talked to him after a mastermind thing.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's like what you got to do is, you know, make friends on the Internet.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I wanted to talk about brand voice because there's a voice now that
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: when you read it,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: it's like,
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I know this,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: but this is written by A.I.,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are certain words now that they're all quietly.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's the language patterns.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think delve is as much of a thing anymore,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: but there's like a way the word holds, man.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you're like, where are the center holds?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, that's so AI.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Stop saying it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is load-bearing.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is genuinely real.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, well, it doesn't need to say both those things.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of talk about gaps.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Opportunity gaps getting closed.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Here's how we can close the gap.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's not X, it's Y.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have a problem with A or B.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing I never expected.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what nobody tells you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what nobody's talking about.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Except for everybody else on the internet.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right, because they're all using the same prompts.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we're all now reading things that sound,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: we're like, I don't know what AI sounds like, but I think it sounds like this.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And part of the way we don't sound like AI is by having brand voice.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to have Justin talk about,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: come on the show today to kind of talk about what brand voice is,
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: what the AI voice is, and how do we find our own?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: and also I want to,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: we'll cover this later,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: but like the difference between brand voice and copywriting,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: because I think those are like get conflated.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: But Justin, tell us a little bit about what brand voice means.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of fluffy definitions.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's getting your soul on the page.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's your purpose defined.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of definitions like that, which sound great in theory and they make you feel good.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes time to actually write, it's bupkis.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't translate to anything.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, what brand voice is, it's actually three things.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a fluffy definitions.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's three metrics.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's your vocabulary.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the level of language that you use and your readability.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's your cadence, which is the rhythm of your writing.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you write short and choppy or do you write long flowy wordy bird sentences
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: that go on and on forever with nary a comma to be found and you run out of breath
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: before you finally reach the end of the sentence
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: before you finally bless your audience with a period.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Two very different styles.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing is the tone.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's the emotion in your writing.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's your vocabulary, your tone, and your cadence.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's really those three things.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're reading something and you have a very This identifiable style and
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: a specific way of writing that your audience would recognize immediately as you
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: or you recognize if AI or even a copywriter create something that's not you.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those three things.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's your vocabulary, your tone or your cadence.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm talking about brand voice,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about a very specific metric that we can adjust to match your style
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: or anybody else's style and make sure that nobody gets your voice wrong ever again,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: no matter who writes the copy.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: All right,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: so you've hit me and Meg kind of in the feels because we talk about vocabulary a lot
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: on this podcast.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't talked about rhythm and tone, so maybe we hit each of them together.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us more about how brand voice shows up in vocabulary.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or language.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So with vocabulary, it's, that's sort of the, just the reading level of your language.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I write basic.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I, there's a difference between for a simple explanation.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do we say big?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do we say huge?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do we say gargantuan?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do we say, uh, Titanic?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like those words get bigger and bigger and you need a higher level of understanding
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: to, to say it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or do we even say analogies like as, as grand as Mount Everest, like do we write in an analogy?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: The level of words, that's literally what I'm talking about.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are we saying something so simple that a kindergartner can read it?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you need a postgraduate degree to understand the level of jargon
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: that you're injecting into your language?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a wrong or a right way.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: There can be wrong or right for certain audiences,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: but it will attract a specific person and repel another person based off
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: the language that you use.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've written for technical engineers, and I was like, I can't understand this.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, no, no, we need to soften the language.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: They said, no, if I soften the language, then the wrong people are coming to me.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be an expert in order to understand this.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, jargon can be a good thing if it's specific to your audience.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every language, every, like, you guys have been in masterminds.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned that before on the podcast I was listening to.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every group tends to also develop an insider language.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a group called the rabbit hole and we call them the bunnies that are
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: in there.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got another one, different on purpose.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's DOP.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, do we call them the dopes?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that feels weird.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't do that, but like small things.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I live in Atlanta.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you come to Atlanta and say, hotlanta, they boo you.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, get out of town.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a town.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like small things like that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: The language can identify where you belong.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're actually one of us.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think also because,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: a lot of what we're talking
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: about here is your human decisions versus what is coming out when you give a prompt
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: that doesn't have a voice guide or any sort of language restrictions or guidelines.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't have that awareness of what you should sound like
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: and what you typically sound like and what you historically sound like,
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Then those devices,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: those tools are going to default to the mean,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: which just sounds bland and round and generic and has some of those phrases
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: and cadences we can talk about.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: But also like it's going to get it at a very basic level versus if you're aware,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: no, this is the language that I use.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is how I describe this.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: I am a couple of months ago.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: I came up with a method called the murder board method.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Of how I want you to think about how your website is organized and you are
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: the central entity of that and then we have the strings going out to all of
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: the other entities and knowledge things that are in the knowledge map
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: and like we had a whole in my signal program we had
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: a whole like people were making their own murder boards based on the murder board
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: in breaking bad because I'm like
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: that's great I want you to be like I want you
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: to be Walter White, but actually I want you to be Gus Fring.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And we had this whole language around Breaking Bad,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: and I feel bad for the people who are in the group who have never seen Breaking Bad,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: but not because they didn't understand me,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: but because it's just a great fucking TV show,
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: and what are you doing if you haven't seen Breaking Bad?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: But having that language and that narrative going on, it's a shorthand.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it is, you know, then people are saying, well, this is my pollos hermanos.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: We're all sort of using this shared terminology in this space to make it feel like,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: oh, I understand what you're saying now.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone has their pollos hermanos, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's your organization.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's separate from you.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: See, and I think that's great.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I haven't watched Breaking Bad, which I know is a sin, but I got the term.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Justin!
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Justin!
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm losing points already.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's been like a decade.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've got other things happening.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have children and dogs.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I do get all that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: But when you said murder board, I was thinking only murders in the building.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: It also applies.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you lost me on some of the other stuff,
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: but I was able to follow along and just sort of know, like, okay,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the places that she's talking about,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: but I can figure out what they mean.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Any police procedural.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: CSI, you see the murder boards, or, you know, murders in the building.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: You have, like, a goofy version of it, but, you know, you know what it is.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: You have that shorthand of, yes,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: it's going to be a corkboard with people's faces on it and strings around it,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: and you sort of have that idea of how this feels.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what I love about this,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: and this is why it's a great example,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: is I've used the analogy following the red thread and people picture a murder board.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Following the red thread is a specific line.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can imagine what that is.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: The word murder board sounds aggressive.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you put that on Facebook, it would probably put an asterisk over the U.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't want to say it.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because it would ding your reach.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a hard word.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's an aggressive word.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you use it.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a deliberate choice.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Deliberate choice.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, screw the algorithm.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm calling it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And one of my students actually made like a series of dead bodies
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: where she was like,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: here are my entities and like outlined them and had like, like it was just fun.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: It makes it fun when you're doing it this way.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you're not afraid to lean into that.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas like a corporate brand would be like, well, we can't call that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: What if we call it a detective board?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like that's, that's fine.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a, that softens it and makes it.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Great, but your level attracts the right people and repels the wrong people.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're offended by the word murder board, get the hell out of here.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is us.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I like about it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Language will attract the right people.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, as an example, I lean a little more scientific.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: So where some people might say trend, I say trajectory.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: I use the word liminal.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I have a no-no word.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you help people come up with no-no words.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't use the word funnel ever in any of my language.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, this marketing is a cycle at minimum.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is not a funnel.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a no-no word for me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I would imagine.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: One of my no-no words is clarity.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: You're not allowed to say clarity in anything that I do.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm like, the word clarity is itself unclear.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: Unclear.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm assuming you're talking about not just like, like,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: like sort of like also origin,
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: like the origin and like the background of like where the language you use come
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: from,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: like trajectory comes from like geography versus more direct response marketing.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's the bigger,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I hate to say it,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: like the bigger word,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: the longer the words, the more it's at a different, it's even the word choices.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming tailor your audience.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I was trying to go mass market on,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And try to appeal to a broad base of new beginners in business,
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I probably wouldn't be like, assess the trajectory of your business.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably not language I would want to use if I was trying to work
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: with very new people in business.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Justin?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's absolutely true.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there is the level of awareness and using the right language for the audience.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: But what I like about what you're describing is that you actually have a brand theme
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: for your language.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And using the scientific words,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: and our friend Jill Hill would love this because there's Latinate type of words and
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: then there's Germanic words.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Latinate are the longer words, more of the heady words, the above the neck.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what is something...
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like one of the words that I used before the examples,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: as I wrote something,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got a piece of feedback that was deflating and that feels just sort of like it let
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: the air out.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, well, no, that's not it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like deflating is how I felt,
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: but the, the, what did the con, what did the feedback actually have to it?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said, it, it felt like I like touched a cactus.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the feedback was prickly.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I changed the line from the feedback felt deflating or I felt deflated to
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: the feedback was prickly.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like deflating is Latinate,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: prickly is dramatic, you know, things like that, changing the level of the words.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: But when you touch the feedback,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: you do deflate if you're,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: if you're a balloon, I'm looking for some of my, my word right now.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, oh yeah, if you hit that with like, it's going to deflate.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's both ways.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's what is the subject and the object of the sentence?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: there is the subject and an object in that as well,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: but the language that I like is more the dramatic.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I like the guttural sounding words,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: whereas you like more of the scientific words,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: but we can even create a theme around that.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had a client a couple of years back where he basically talked about the level
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: of experience that he had.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said something along the lines of like,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: it's not about the years that I've had,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: it's about the The amount of work that I've done in those years.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought of the Indiana Jones line from Raiders of the Lost Ark
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: where it goes, it's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, oh my God, I love that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we created a theme sort of around the type of Indiana Jones,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: dusty, dirty, everything's brown, like Jeep language, like the rough terrain.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: We painted scenes that like an archeologist would be in, like an adventurer would be in.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that was sort of a guide for the type of vocabulary that we used.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it just created this theme,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: whether you picked up on it or not,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: it just kind of had a sense of what words would fit into the page.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Jessica, also,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: in addition to being scientific,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: you have like the roots to fruits and the way that things are sprouting
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: and we're planting seeds and like having the business grow slowly
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: and having deeper foundations there.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a like a signal and broadcast metaphor that moves through everything that I do.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: My dad was an electrical engineer who worked in sound engineering.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so growing up,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was always getting questions about how do antennas work
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: and how do radio frequencies work and like getting those explanations.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's how I explain broadcast amplification and signals in like mass media.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes I think it comes out of.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: there's an interesting thing there when we talk about language choice,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of it comes down to nature versus nurture.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said that your father worked in this field, so you grew up hearing those words.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you're, you're sort of trained to use them because you grew up with them.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's part of the nurture thing.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are also just nature elements from where you grew up,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: how you might internalize certain feelings.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I get in trouble for talking about this sometimes, but it's based on data.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to talk about it.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: There was a survey done.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was the University of Ghent over in England, I think.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in Ghent.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's in England.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's no longer available.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But for thousands of people would come and they would be given words and say,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: do you know this word?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes or no.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they found certain words were more well known by females than males.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to just address it on a binary way for right now, just for simplicity.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: But there were certain words that men tended to use versus words that women tended
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: to use or know, as a matter of fact.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm trying to think, like the words bodice, peony, bottle brush, things like that.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I remember those three specifically were ones that most men didn't know.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then the ones that most females didn't know, a lot of military words.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I knew because of playing with G.I.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Joe as a kid.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the words that I didn't know sound like they would be parts of a set for Downton Abbey.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the type of words that we kind of grow up with and aren't really familiar
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: with that we tend to use later in life.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when you think about like the stuff coming out of AI,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: no matter how good you train some of it, I mean,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: maybe you help train people,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: but like kind of like base AI without having those brand voice dialed in,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: what does it sound like from the language it uses?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like, does it have a soul or is the soul mechanistic or like, what is it?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of language patterns does it have?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get to the rhythm and the tone later.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It tends to change the more you use it because I think it will just sort
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: of identify your patterns based off of how you ask questions and the amount
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: of stuff it sees from you.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're logged in, it's going to learn your style, the vocabulary and cadence.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: It'll get that more and more.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why certain answers sound different depending on the prompt,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: even though it's the same question,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: it's literally the vocabulary and cadence will change.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what does it sound like?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it is based off,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: the best I can tell, a lot of like old school direct response copywriting.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like the things em dashes, I've used em dashes for years.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: When people are saying like, I don't like, I've never used an em dash in my life.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that they exist.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have to use them less now because people says it looked like AI.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I use MDashes more than AI uses MDashes.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Most copywriters do.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The short choppy cadence, that's done to improve readability.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes it easier to read.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Copywriters tend to write like that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking like that right now.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: We use more periods than commas.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's literally a mathematical analysis.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: The average amount of commas per sentence,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: per 100 sentences, the amount of semicolons per 100 sentences.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: These are metrics.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I literally have a tool It's called verbatimtool.com.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to it and it will give you your average statistics and your cadence.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It will tell you your readability.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It will show you your patterns.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: AI is using more of a condensed pattern to improve readability.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it looks ridiculous because most of us write with an average sentence.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: The average sentence length in English is 15 words.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: The average sentence length in AI is probably about 11 to 12.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most copywriters tend to write between 8 and 11.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we write on the shorter end of the spectrum.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: We don't write the way that most people write.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: We write in a very controlled and trained way.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So AI not sounding like you,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: it's typically because it's picking up shorter text patterns from advertisements,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: from copywriting, even text messages that tend to be a shorter style.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our cadence is changing.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think AI is actually making our cadence change faster because of this style.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think people are starting to adapt a little bit to AI because for like 50% of
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: the population, AI does write better than them.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an interesting change.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you exactly what it's based on.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just based off of everything.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's taking like we're trying to make it sound like everyone says make it sound more human.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one, it's literally a robot.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: It can't.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: But what we mean by that is make it sound more like me.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are 8.5 billion humans on the planet.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: We want it to sound like one.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have that information.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's trying to take the average of every human and it just winds up in this blob
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: of nothingness.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's really funny.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I was reading,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: did either of you,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: I know Meg,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: you're not a big TV watcher, Justin, did you watch the show Reacher on Amazon Prime?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just watched it for the first time last week, actually.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I really liked the first season.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: I went to get the book by Lee Child.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: I could not read it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like the sentences were so short and so choppy that like that's like what I see from Substacks.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I see on LinkedIn.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually hard for me to read that because it was like.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like short, choppy sentences.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, this is not what I want in a book.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't do well with like,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: oh my God,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: who's the writer that the entire book was like,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: or the entire chapter is like a sentence?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know who you're talking about, but I don't.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like Hemingway or there was another one.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God, who wrote?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hemingway is the opposite, but I know what you're
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: talking about.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Who wrote Absalom, Absalom?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, Vonnegut?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'll figure it out.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll come up with it later.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: A whole chapter that's a sentence, hard for me to read.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Super short sentences in a book, also hard for me to read.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like we have to understand not just the cadence of how we write,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: but the cadence that you read on LinkedIn, short form on your phone.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: The cadence that you read in an email, short form on your phone.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: The cadence that you read on a book,
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: long form,
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: probably in a book, like I think we are approaching the medium differently.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And as the book,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: as the books are more written in the AI cadence,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of them,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: even if they are not written by AI,
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: but we're writing more like AI in all these formats because we're reading more of AI
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: in all these formats and it's getting shorter.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: this is like less interesting for me to read because it's harder for me to read
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: in this context.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if Meg,
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: you see it cause you read a ton and you know,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So yes,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: I want to get back to Faulkner and Ghent is in Belgium.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: This, these are the things that I looked up while you guys are talking.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Oh wait, fact check Meg over here.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, No, I think also I read I read a lot of romance.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so it tends to be a more of like a purplish language,
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: flowery language definitions describing the amount of ways
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: that romance authors can describe like the way a person smells.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, he's he smells like pure masculinity.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, what does that even smell like?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Musk?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: Gross.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like B.O.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: But it does have a certain amount of description to it and there's more length to it.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm seeing that decrease as I read more
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: because I think people are running more things through AI.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: like I have a tool that I've used before called Autocrit,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: which will go through and be like,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: you write 30,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: your book is 34% dialogue, which is higher than most romance novelists.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, clearly...
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know whose romance novels you're reading, but we talk a lot in them.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like just knowing what the genre specifications are.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: To your point,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Jessica,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: about like Substack,
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: LinkedIn,
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: you're going to get a lot of those shorter cadence sentences
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: because people are more direct response.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: They're trying to make a point.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: They're trying to persuade you of something.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: They're trying to share their intellectual property, their thought leadership in some way.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: So they're going to be more direct versus when you're reading literature,
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: when you're reading fiction, you want it to be enjoyable.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Not just plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, but it's leisure.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's joy.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's pleasure.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And why do we have to make that sound like we're reading an ad copy?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much there.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: The context is one thing.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: In a book,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: we want more traditional paragraphs because we want it to be an escape as opposed to
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: an email where our goal is to finish the email and delete it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like we just want to be done with it.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's this point here?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, when you get a long email and you're like, oh, you know what?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I need to focus on this.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read it later.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not you ever do or not is one thing.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: But a book, it's you're choosing.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to sit down on the couch.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to turn off the world and I'm going to dive into this book.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So when you see a book that's written like an email, you can't quite get into it.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, this is too fast.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is choppy.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not getting sucked in.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: The longer sentences will draw you in and it will slow you down.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: You'll naturally start reading at a slower cadence.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: That short, choppy one, you read it quick.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'll fly through that.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it feels like you're accomplishing something and you're being done.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it off.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we don't want that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: The traditional five-line paragraphs,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: the The longer-winded prose, it takes us to a different place.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's designed to be digested, whereas an email is designed to be consumed.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know how AI,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: when you put something in AI,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if your experience is with this,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: but it tends to do a lot of throat clearing,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe that's the wrong term, where it's going to say something.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're like,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: this words,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: and the words individually sound fine,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: but this sentence literally does nothing for me.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know how Netflix now has the shows, where...
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: They assume you're reading your phone or scrolling your phone while watching the show.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they repeat plot points like through dialogue and they basically signpost it all
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: the way through.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of like assuming you're going to watch it, they're assuming you haven't watched it.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like AI, it kind of feels like kind of like direct response copywriting.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're assuming you're not going to have like picked up the point.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to just like hammer it with like lots of repetitive things.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Closures and transitions and signaling.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you've observed this,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm like,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: this is much longer than it probably needs to be to get the point across.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like a bunch of things.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, this is not useful writing in here.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, this literally says nothing.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: Before we talk about the writing aspect of it,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: I do want to say before Netflix did it,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: the Hallmark Channel is really well known for this.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because they,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: for decades,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: have known that nobody's really sitting down to like,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Tune in and watch the Hallmark Channel.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's always on in the background when you're doing something else,
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: especially at Christmas time,
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: you're folding laundry,
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: you turn on the Hallmark Channel, you turn on a Hallmark movie.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it's meant for.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they know that about their audience.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore they do like rebroadcast the plot after every commercial break
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: and like do it in dialogue so people can hear it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: They're not subtle at all in their writing.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, what's the plot?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Bang it with a hammer.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that The way that people are writing sort of has taken on some of
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: that same repetition because all of our attention spans have gotten shorter,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: which is so sad.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're going down a different tangent here,
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: but like I remember watching The Walking Dead and back when it was live
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: on AMC every Thursday at nine o'clock and it would say,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: your two screen experience starts now.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Tweet to hashtag Walking Dead.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, no, I want to focus on the show.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me to pick up my phone.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to watch the damn show.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: But like they've trained, they want the engagement, they want interaction, they want the buzz.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes we're kind of talking out of both sides of our mouths.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do we want people talking about us or do we want them focused?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: Watch The Walking Dead, but you don't watch Breaking Bad?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Justin, I'm just waiting for you.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So many shows I can watch.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I get it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen either of them.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: But okay, getting back to, I'd like to talk about tone too a little bit.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And let's just kind of give people some examples of like, you know, how...
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Different brand voices can show up because I think it's really hard to say,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: well, if AI is going to do this, it's going to make me shorter.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to more centralize my word choices around the mean.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know quite what it does to tone, but like, cool.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like how do I find out my brand voice and what a different brand voices sound like?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we can hit tone and then we can talk about sort of like,
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: how do you, how do you know what brand voice looks like?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So again,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: it is something that you can measure,
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: and that's kind of why I like this more analytical approach to it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that we know it, it's actually a lot harder than you think.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you ask most people and just about damn near every brand on
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: the planet what you sound like, they're going to default to the same thing.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to say friendly, human, and casual.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's the trifecta of nothingness.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's in damn near every brand voice guide I've ever seen.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you talked about no-no words.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those are my no-no words.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to ever put friendly, casual, and human in a voice guide because it means nothing.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask AI to define your voice, it's going to say friendly, human, and casual.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean shit.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just garbage.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Friendly is more of a personality.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the way that you show up.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's what you do for people.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't define how you talk.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: One of the analogies I give, it's like, all right, let's pretend that you have six friends.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: You got Joey, Chandler, Ross, Phoebe, Monica, and Rachel.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to tell me they all sound the same?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know what every one of those friends sounds like, and they are not the same.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You will not mistake Ross for Phoebe, for Chandler, for Rachel.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: They all have very distinct patterns.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sounding friendly is Means nothing.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Friendly is the actions that you take to actually be friendly.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you think about like,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have brands that say they want to sound like your best friend.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: My best friend drinks like a fish and curses like a sailor.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: That does not fit most brands.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or they say they want to talk to your, they want you to sound like your next door neighbor.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, my neighbor over there doesn't speak English.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: My one over there is a hermit who hardly ever leaves his house.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which one of those do you want to be?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not a thing.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And even if we say that, it means something different to everybody.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I need to get granular with this.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I get a little fired up here, but this is what I do.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: When we wanna figure out what it is, we need to get granular.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that I do that is by presenting different words,
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: telling you to choose which words you think are in your brand.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I actually challenge you on them.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you say, I'll give you the words, optimistic.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Most people choose the word optimistic.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, so there's optimistic and then we might also have the word hopeful.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, on both of those.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are you?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because they actually mean two different things.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like optimism is a passive expectations that thing will work out well and hope is
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: an active commitment to working on them toward a better future.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Those are different.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are we believing that the future is going to be okay?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we actually hoping and are we doing things to make it okay?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know what?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Optimism is passive.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, as much as I thought that that was the beacon of my brand, it's not.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing things.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now let's talk about hopeful.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because hopeful is more active, but it's also not sure that it's going to work out.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Jessica, you've got a scientific approach.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you can look at data and you could look at theoretical
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: and you can make some assumptions of things are going to happen.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Are we confident in that?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we're confident that things are going to work out,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: then hopeful goes out the window too.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you realize that you're not optimistic and hopeful,
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: that you're analytical and you're theoretical.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not like assuming that things are,
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: you're not hoping that things are going to work out.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're not crossing your fingers and praying.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing something about it so you can make guarantees.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's not optimism or hope.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's confidence.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's just an example that I dealt with last week.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pressure of mine that I get a little like,
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: but that's how by pressing you on something and making you defend it,
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to make you lose it.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to make you make whatever you choose, earn its keep.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Cause that way we can define your brand on a really specific level.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: That you will be able to follow,
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: that your brand will be able to follow,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: your copywriters will be able to follow and AI will be able to follow.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really interesting is when we find out that something belongs in
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: the brand,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: but it's not yours or something is yours that doesn't belong in the brand.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Cause especially if you have a personal brand,
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: there's two different, different definitions of the word personal.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's personal meaning like yours, something that you own.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's personal meaning like private and secret.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people talk about building a personal brand.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they've conflated the definitions of the word personal
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: and they've interlinked it and they've started to put everything about their life
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: into their brand.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they built a brand that's instead of being 100% them, it's 100% of them.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes it really hard to figure out what's supposed to show up on paper.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I get very clear with the person and we separate what's you versus what's
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: the brand so the brand can stay consistent no matter who's writing the copy.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite part about all of this is that my ads person,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Laura Eastburn, she calls herself a word nerd.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like, Justin, that's the same for you.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I didn't realize there was a really difference between hope and optimism and confidence.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: But as you say it, I'm like.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: But like,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: it's kind of like, you know, that emotion wheel and I'm like, I'm happy, I'm sad.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, no, no, no, that's just like one layer.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have to go to the next layer out on the emotion wheel and
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: the next layer out in the emotion wheel.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: How, like,
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: that's an, like,
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: what would something,
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm putting you totally on the spot,
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: how might you think about something that's like optimistic versus confident?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: How might even that nuance change, like, how you write?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's even that comes down to the vocabulary that we use.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you brought up the tone wheel.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have my own that I use all the time.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've made one for my clients.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: I live and die by these things.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And tone wheels are great because like when you work with a designer,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: you say that like, well,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: our brand color is like we use blue,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: but it's CMY code, you know, three, six, two, whatever.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's THX 1138 for all you Star Wars nerds.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're giving a writer,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: when you're saying we're optimistic,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: you're basically saying write in the color blue.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are 360 shades of blue.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Which one do you want?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you're saying with optimistic versus hopeful versus joy.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: We need to basically give the Pantone color of the exact emotion.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we're talking about confidence, that is saying we will always do this, never do that.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's removing of all hedge words.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you're optimistic, but you're not sure some of that more tentative language comes in.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: We think this will happen.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: We believe this will happen.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're hopeful, It's literally like we hope this will happen.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's that level of word.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Will it happen?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: We think it will happen.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: It might happen.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea if it's going to happen.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, those are the difference between confident and hopeful and optimistic on the page.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Lately I've been getting some questions about core values and
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: whether it still makes sense to list your core values on your about page and say,
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: oh, at this company, We're rooted in integrity and trust building and transparency.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm coming down in this space of,
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: sure, you can choose five words, but you have to back them up.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: You have to back them up with other language where you describe what you mean
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: by those terms and the practical application of what those terms look like.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then also, you know what I want is case studies.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: And here's where I get back into that,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: like analytical versus theoretical is,
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know, you can say, yes, we're transparent.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me a story of when you were transparent with your clients and how
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: that impacted their outcomes or Justin,
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: I love how you're saying everything comes back to metrics.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Even your tone can be quantified and it can be tracked and it can be organized
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: through these metrics.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it can be very analytical, even when we're speaking about things like emotions.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: We know how often we're including these power words.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: We know where they're being inserted into sentences.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just tone as a word,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: but it's the definition of what that is and how does that change the way
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: that people engage with your copy, with your brand, with how much they trust you.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: You can say, oh, we develop trust with our clients.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: How?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: And how does that change your engagement and your interaction with them?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say that whether or not values should appear on your page,
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say that if you absolutely know your brand inside and out,
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: you can write in a way that people will be able to pick up your brand values
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: without you having to tell them.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the goal of any writing.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's really hard to do.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying, oh, just do this and it's done.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a long time.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, the core process is understanding who you actually are.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not who you want to be, but who you actually are.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the process with a VoiceFinder session.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Most people come in,
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be like, so tell me, like, what's a win for you at the end of the session?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, well,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to, I want to define how I sound so I can be more fun or playful or this.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the end of the session,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: we realize that they're not fun and playful, but they own it.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, you know what?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay that I'm not that because the things that I am are actually better.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's genuine.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's authentic.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's sincere.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: All the words that we want in our brand.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now we understand what that's rooted on and we can lean into it.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the writing becomes easier and we know what to say.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: We know how to show up and we don't have to put a flagpole that says this is
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: who we are because people can already feel it and they come to us.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm big on these because now I have like 200 members and I'm like looking
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: at all their websites and I'm like all those things you talked about.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: No one would disagree with those.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're just table stakes.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're beyond table stakes.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was reading a nonprofit's website and they're like collaborative equity center.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you know, human first.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I don't know any nonprofit who wouldn't do these things.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's not enough anymore.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: But if you say you're inclusive and then the first thing that you do is say,
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a coach for female business owners, then you're not inclusive.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: So use...
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: You can use that language as much as you want,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: but I need to see it backed up in everything else that you're doing.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think, you know, like, yes, it needs to be backed up, but also it needs to be distinct.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, like,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: I asked ChatGPT,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: while we were on the call,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: to be like,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: if I were to have three words to describe my brand voice, what would you say?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And, Justin, you can tell me if I, you know, ChatGPT made, you know, this is the...
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: The poor man's version of working with you, but it says thoughtful, practical, provocative.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: But importantly, I wouldn't choose words like bold, edgy, disruptive, or even authoritative.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Your voice has authority, but doesn't perform authority.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I'm like, I think thoughtful, practical, provocative.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I would use the word provocative,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: but other people can tell me that, like, I'm wrong.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe Claude said it was deadpan.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And like Claude's words, hold please, are corrective, exacting, and dry.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: that doesn't feel right either because I like to think my voice has more richness
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: to it.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I think this is,
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know, they're never going to, never they're going to put the word aspirational.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: They, that's not, that's not
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: my brand.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Our podcast is Aggressively Human.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's provocative.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's provocative.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's intentionally choosing a word that's a little bit controversial,
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: that's a little bit prickly, to use Justin's word from earlier.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: But also tying it to something that we want to be, that's aspirational.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So whether or not those are the right words, I can't say.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't done an analysis with you.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say provocative is interesting.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Corrective is interesting.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: As a copywriter, that's meat.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, ooh.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can do something with that.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not it's the right for you, way more analysis is needed, but it's interesting.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not bold, friendly, or human.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Provocative is the opposite of friendly, and I love it.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that's right.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be right for you, but it's interesting, and there's something practical to it.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think is like a tone thing.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I'm never going to write motivational
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Pump you up stuff.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: One, I don't even know how to do that.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: People are like, tell me what I need to download my business.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, it's going to be a hard slog over four to five years.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the party.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone can make it happen.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, Jessica doesn't
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: say that.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: All you need is an LLC and a dream.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Mine, for what it's worth, from Claude, are strategic, direct, no nonsense, and warmth.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then for my, uh, my creative side of things, it adds witty and empowering.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not witty in my, my love at first search business.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently you guys don't get the wit.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's some foundational elements there, but I don't think that there's anything.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, witty and empowering are fun.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a, there's a little bit of a goal to it.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Strategic.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And direct.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm going to do that, to me, that actually comes across more in the cadence.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're strategic and direct,
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to think that there might actually be more lists and bullet points.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's going to be less emotion in it,
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: and it's going to be more just practical information done right.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have less meg in there and more instructions.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot more process.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: I love it for search right now than there is anything else,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: especially because I'm building up frameworks on frameworks on frameworks.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it has to be like,
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: here's step one through six of this method,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: and here's step 1A, 1B, all the way through.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it is very much a direct, like,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: here's the process,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: but also,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: here's what to do if this part doesn't work and this part doesn't work
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: because search is impossible.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then figuring out how the witty...
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Comes in to direct, those are at odds.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that's wrong.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: That could actually be a really interesting thing once you figure out what it is.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's the examples.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: I can say,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: here's what the process is,
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: but I can also say, here's how it applies to Breaking Bad.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Here's how it applies to Hamilton, the American musical.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: Here's the examples that play into it that give some personality to it.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you can't have a robot go, oh, you should talk about The Walking Dead here.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I've never seen The Walking Dead.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: How would I know what that is?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do zombies.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: If there was a zombie apocalypse, I'd be like, I'm out.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm out.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting about this,
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: so based off of what you're saying,
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: if you're witty but direct,
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: are you not making,
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: it depends if you're making the jokes or maybe you're using a gif.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Of The Walking Dead.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're using,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: that's another thing, like understanding someone's gift choice is phenomenal.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love doing this.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are people that'd be like, yeah, just go to Giphy and I grab the first one.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's the people that'd be like, no,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: I go on like page eight and then I figure out the thing that no one's going to use.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's got to be the right gender or gender or like race inclusive or this or that.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's me like, And then even how you use GIFs.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do you use the GIF to make the joke or do you use the GIF to react to what you just said?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you put a caption under it?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone thinks that the way that you use a GIF is the way that everybody use a GIF.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every client I've worked for says the hardest thing
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: that they have is their copywriters can never get the GIFs right.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't written a blog post about this,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: I want you to write this because I feel like this would travel so far on LinkedIn.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's so fun.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I always ask people, I'm like, do me a favor.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: The next time you're going to choose a GIF, record yourself.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just do a screen record and I want to see it.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's phenomenal.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to close this out and then we'll get to the rest of the human.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the question for all three of you or three of us, the last GIF you sent.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mine is from the office.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Aaron leaping over the desk.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: The whooping because I get a lot of my clients telling me great things
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: that they've done and I'm like cheering them on.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: I also have like the Jonah Hill one where he's like, like, you know, in celebration.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my last guess.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you know what?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: Mine was a Futurama one, which was in your membership.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because I just rejoined your membership.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I was looking for one that was like a Hamilton, like, you will be back soon, you'll see.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't there.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was just like, okay, what's the, I was thinking of like a dogman.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: I had like several, your, I'm back.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm back.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm back was what I was looking for.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then I found a feature Amaral that just had the right words on it.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I didn't really know what the context of it was.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: I just needed the words to be correct more so than I needed the feeling to be correct.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: Justin.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Justin.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just sent an email the other day about Leslie Jones, the former Saturday Night Live host.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: She was in Ghostbusters 2016.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: She's got a show on HGTV.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I read her autobiography and it's 16 hours long.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: The book is only 288 pages,
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: so the average length of an audiobook for that would be 8 to 10 hours.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hers was 16 and a half because she just goes on riffs,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: and I talked about differences in tones per channel,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: and I needed to find a gif of Leslie Jones from people who didn't know who she was.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I tried explaining her.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, no, I can show them.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to find...
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: A gif that showed her at her prime.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then this is,
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be a little bit on PC here,
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: but I had to think about race in this because there was a lot of them
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: where she just looked aggressive and like,
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: cause that's kind of what her character is.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's assertive.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there were certain words that I had to delete
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: from my email could appear almost racist in the wrong context.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I like how to find a gif that Presented her as like a strong,
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: beautiful woman,
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: but still reflect the elements that I wanted to show of who she is,
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: which tends to be a little aggressive and offensive because that's her role as
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: a comedian.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: I spent an hour looking for the gif.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I actually rewrote the intro up to it to match the gif that I chose.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's a worthy pursuit.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's that important.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: To other people, it's you just grab the first result and you pop it in.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: So Justin,
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: if people want to get on your email list so they can see these emails that take
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: an hour to choose a GIF,
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: or if they want to learn about working with you
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: to get their own brand voice work done with that with you,
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: where can they find you online?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Go to justinblackman.com is by far the easiest way.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've got some really cool opt-ins that I can help you find your,
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: a better message in three minutes.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can help you tighten up your story in five minutes.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some fun emails along the way.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we'll finish up with our final question.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll start with Jessica, give Justin a bit of a breather.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Jessica, what's Aggressively Human or aggressively canine in your world right now?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to read more as you all have been on this journey with me to reclaim my attention.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I got some business books,
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: but also I wanted to read some nonfiction that's not business books.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I followed some on Substack who talked about all these systems thinking books
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: and how to think differently.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I bought a book called Prisoners of Geography,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: 10 Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I read the Russia chapter last night.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I read most of the China.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm halfway through the China chapter.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating because it's like, oh, it totally makes sense.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like geopolitical things occur because of the geography around it.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh,
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: this makes sense why this country can't be in NATO because then it directly butts up
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: against Russia and they need to have buffer zones.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, it makes sense that like,
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: oh, we need to protect this area because it has a warm water port to it.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is like fascinating.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: It gives a whole new meaning to like figure out your business moat if we're going
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: to like make the amoeba all about business.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I just I was like, oh, I can't wait to read a book about maps this weekend.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my Aggressively Human.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just say it makes me so happy to be a guest on a podcast where I'm not
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: the biggest nerd on the show.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're always welcome back to be three out of three.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: We just all nerd out about different things.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's the lovely part.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that would be on, it's on brand for us.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna, it is on brand.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: All three word nerds too.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: All three word nerds.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely word nerds.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Meg, what about you?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's Aggressively Human for you.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'll go with five minutes before we started recording.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: I got a phone call from the mechanic,
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: which is that we needed to get our brakes redone in our Honda.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I definitely gave them the keys to the Toyota when I dropped off the Honda.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: So they were both on the key chain.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't even like a Dropbox situation.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: I went in.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: I had a conversation with the receptionist.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: I handed her the key.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: She was like, oh, popped him in the little thing.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then I got a call from the mechanic who was like, so you dropped off a Honda, right?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because I have a toilet key.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh, my God.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: And thankfully, my husband was out with my son.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I called him and was like,
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: are you ready to hear the dumbest thing that I've done this week?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like, your kid's in the car.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: You're on speakerphone.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is this the car you're going to drive to the cruise?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're leaving tomorrow.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, I want to get new brakes because it won't pass inspection.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to drive a car that doesn't pass inspection.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we leave tomorrow for the cruise.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, time to get new brakes.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is the first time our mechanic could get us in.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then I dropped off the wrong key.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: So embarrassing, but like so human.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: So human.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't just me.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was also the receptionist who took the wrong key and just popped it in the slot.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not exclusively to blame.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just 98% to blame.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked at my key chain when I was traveling to Chicago and I looked at it
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm like, on my keys are the fob to my car.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a turnkey.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: The fob to the gym and my allergy shot car.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are no actual physical keys on my key chain
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: because we have like electronic locks and we have the mail key.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: We just keep on a separate key chain.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: So like I'm like, I have my key chain with no physical actual keys anymore.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the 21st century.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there it is.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: Justin, what about you?
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: What's Aggressively Human in your world right now?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've done something really stupid this week and I'm blanking on what it is.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm trying to think of it and I'm like, no, it wasn't that.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was something dumber.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was something dumber than that.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like three things to choose from and I can't decide.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll just say that today is my son's 15th birthday.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to, he's going to get his permit tomorrow morning.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's awesome and scary.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter is already 16.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: She's got her license.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm about to have two drivers-ish in the house.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little terrified.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: And hire me now before I have to raise my rates because my insurance is going to go up.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: Goes up so much.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at least they want to learn how to drive their car.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading in some article that like kids don't like want to learn how to drive anymore.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember when my dad and I were trying to learn how to drive, he like made me learn.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: I learned on the car or the van.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then I learned on a stick shift.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the most hearing drive ever where I ended up like stalling out
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: the car like four times on the way to the science museum when I was a kid.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Cause my dad's like, you're going to learn how to drive the stick shift.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to make you go where there's a red light every single one.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone got mad at me because I kept stalling out the car with the clutch.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: I do know how to drive a stick shift,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: though, should that ever need to come up in my life ever again.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Important life skills.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: Important life skills.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you're teaching that to your kids early, though.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not to drive a stick, but to drive automatic.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Justin, thank you so much for being here.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: This was an incredibly nerdy and amazing episode, and I learned so much.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Join us back next time for yet another episode of Aggressively Human.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Bye, y'all.