Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 571 | Marketing leadership in the age of AI: Building smarter teams and measurable growth
Transcript
- 0:00I think the biggest opportunity that I see there is of being
- 0:03able to actually track the touch points because the struggle that
- 0:07we have is attribution and you, you we have created like
- 0:11attribution models. And so, but you know, they're
- 0:14all have some kind of flaws. They're never perfect.
- 0:18AI gives us the opportunity to be able to kind of track the
- 0:21complete customer journey. And this is becoming real.
- 0:25Finally. We have talked about customer
- 0:27journeys forever. The biggest learning is don't
- 0:31just hire an AI expert. Yes, you will need technologies.
- 0:34You will need people who know that better than others, who can
- 0:38build agents and stuff like that.
- 0:39But you should always think about who are the people in your
- 0:44team who can actually bring you to the next level in AI.
- 0:47So bring the expertise within your existing team and embed AI
- 0:52within an existing team. This is on base your one stop
- 0:57shop for solving your most pressing B to B go to market
- 1:00challenges. Each week, host Chris Moody and
- 1:02Paul Gibson talk to sales and marketing leaders to get you in
- 1:05depth insights and creative strategies to set your revenue
- 1:08teams up for success. Hey everyone, welcome back to
- 1:13the Home Based Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Moody and
- 1:15today I'm very excited to have just meet Suhani with us to talk
- 1:19about marketing leadership in an AI driven world.
- 1:23Just me. Thanks for joining us today and
- 1:24welcome to the show. Thanks, Chris.
- 1:26Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
- 1:28Awesome. Well, I love seeing a lot of
- 1:30mutual connections. That's always a good sign when
- 1:32we're checking LinkedIn. I like to start every single
- 1:35episode with understanding a little bit about what led you to
- 1:38what you're doing today. So tell us about the journey
- 1:41that brought you to what you're doing now.
- 1:43Absolutely. It's been a little bit
- 1:45unconventional, I would say from marketing standpoint, because I
- 1:49started in tech. I have a computer science
- 1:51degree, so I started in a product group developing as an
- 1:55engineer. And I've been in the startup
- 1:58world forever and more, I would say entrepreneurial environment,
- 2:02right? And that's what I really like
- 2:04about this environment, that it gives you the flexibility to
- 2:08move around, flexibility and opportunity to actually look
- 2:11into other roles that might be of interest to you.
- 2:14And I moved from product to business development to sales
- 2:19enablement and finally marketing, which I really
- 2:22thought that this is my home. And over time, the expertise
- 2:26I've been able to build has been at the intersection of this
- 2:30marketing, data analytics and technology.
- 2:34And I never thought, you know, starting out that technology
- 2:38would be a great asset going into marketing.
- 2:41I think most people never think of marketing that way.
- 2:44And it actually became for the biggest assets that I have being
- 2:48a marketing leader. Awesome.
- 2:49Especially today we're going to talk about that timing is
- 2:53perfect for us to be together. This morning our CEO actually
- 2:57sent out AI principles to the entire company and it was, you
- 3:01know, a lot of our rules and our guidelines and the nudge for
- 3:06every single person to be using AI to make our jobs better and
- 3:10gave some specifications there and the ability to fail, right?
- 3:15Don't expect to be perfect, but we all need to embrace this.
- 3:18So the question I have is a very relevant one for me, but why
- 3:23should marketing leaders care deeply about a is growing role
- 3:27in marketing today? AI has been around for a while
- 3:31when you know, it all started in like 1950s or so and it became
- 3:36in the last five to 10 years, we've talked a lot about AI and
- 3:40how it will, it's going to transform the business.
- 3:43What has happened in the last, you know, couple of years is
- 3:47with the LMS and the Gen. AI making it very real and
- 3:51unavoidable right now. You just talked about how your
- 3:54CEO send that e-mail and you know everyone should be using
- 3:57and that is exactly what is happening at an individual
- 4:01level. Everyone I know is using AI to
- 4:05do their work. Now the problem the business
- 4:07leaders face is how do you now take that and scale it at an
- 4:12operation level for the business, which is the big and
- 4:15complex problem that they're trying to solve.
- 4:17So now the change has been that has become unavoidable.
- 4:20You cannot just say just have a wrapper or a label of something
- 4:24that you were doing under the hood, the traditional way and
- 4:27just say, Hey, we are using AI, right?
- 4:29With that. We saw all of the this, you
- 4:31know, in the last five to 10 years where things were labeled
- 4:35AI, but under the hood you were just doing plain analytics,
- 4:38right? And you know, we are in data
- 4:40analytics business. So we we should know this,
- 4:42right? And you know, you've seen this,
- 4:45but now it's unavoidable. If you don't do this, then, you
- 4:49know, your question, what's at stake?
- 4:51Now you could take 2 views of this, right?
- 4:55I mean, there is this pessimistic view of saying, you
- 4:57know, people are losing jobs and they're going to, you know, be
- 5:00out of skills and you will not be in the workforce, which is
- 5:04true, which is scary. But I think the bigger thing
- 5:08that's at stake is that this is the biggest opportunity for our
- 5:12generation. If you don't leverage this
- 5:15opportunity, that's what at stake.
- 5:17I mean, think about it. A small company can now compete
- 5:21with large, you know, hundreds and thousands of people with
- 5:25just, you know, few people and you know, thousand agents
- 5:28working for them. That's becoming deal as we
- 5:30speak. So that gives you the level of
- 5:33opportunity that we have at this time.
- 5:36And if you don't use that, that's what I think from
- 5:40optimistic side, that's what is at stake if you don't leverage
- 5:42that. Yeah, that's a perfect answer.
- 5:45And it it makes me think about the leaders which you hit on
- 5:48this to the scale aspect and getting every single person to
- 5:53embrace AI. How do you see AI fundamentally
- 5:56shaping the role of marketing leadership, especially if we
- 5:59think about alignment, collaborating with sales?
- 6:03There's always a data story, right?
- 6:05Garbage in, garbage out. All the things that you may hit
- 6:08on here, but what is going to change for marketing leadership?
- 6:11I think this is time when you cannot really avoid being
- 6:17technical or knowing data and getting your hands dirty.
- 6:22So as I said before, you know, this creative side of marketing
- 6:27has been glorified and people have built their careers around
- 6:31that, right? I mean, you know, and this
- 6:33actually with a digital, there was some kind of uneasiness for
- 6:39people who are who came from that, you know, creative side.
- 6:43But it was not was it wasn't enough.
- 6:45And I think the fundamental shift that we'll see is that
- 6:49leaders now have to get comfortable with data and
- 6:55technology and AI to be able to actually succeed in the coming
- 7:00future. I'll take an example of if you
- 7:03are setting goals for your team, and I'm just, you know, talking
- 7:06about marketing goals and there's talk about this
- 7:10multiplier effect, how do I even judge if it's that multiplier is
- 7:151.2 or is it like NX or 20X or 5X?
- 7:22And if I don't have that understanding of how the process
- 7:25is going to change, because there's a lot of lift and shift
- 7:28in today's world, if you think about implementing gauge and
- 7:32most people are talking about, hey, how do we automate stuff
- 7:34that we are already doing? What people are not thinking
- 7:37about is your whole process is going to change as well.
- 7:40So if I don't have that technical understanding and deep
- 7:43understanding of how that's going to change my process, how
- 7:46do I even create my the goals for my teams?
- 7:48What do I sign up for? So it's a fundamental shift in
- 7:51terms of understanding where the technology is taking us and then
- 7:55arriving at the strategy and the the execution part of it to be
- 7:59able to lead A-Team today, That's what I think, you know,
- 8:01it's going to be changing at the fundamental level.
- 8:04Yeah, I, I totally agree. And you had on that fundamental
- 8:07shift and you also said lift and shift, which made me think a lot
- 8:11about my 20 years in marketing. And you've watched all these new
- 8:16tools and technologies come out. I think marketing, we get pretty
- 8:20good at them and then there's a new one and we jump to the next
- 8:23one. So to me, I'm almost seeing like
- 8:25marketing automation, content marketing, social and just boom,
- 8:28jump to the next, jump to the next, jump to the next.
- 8:31I think that transition for what's next and what's new and
- 8:35even the shift to digital has been a challenge for marketing
- 8:39leaders in the past to make sure that everyone is still doing
- 8:43their jobs well but staying ahead of the curve.
- 8:46I'm curious if there are some lessons that come from those
- 8:50shifts to digital and a lot of the evolution of marketing
- 8:53technology and sales technology that you've seen that we should
- 8:56apply to the transition to be more AI driven.
- 9:00So are there any learnings that you're thinking about that we
- 9:02all should pay attention to? It's a very interesting thing,
- 9:05you know, because this is an active conversation.
- 9:07Everyone is thinking about, hey, how do we now transform our
- 9:11function, whether it's marketing, HR, whichever part of
- 9:14business you are in now with AI, right?
- 9:17And the first thing that people come up with, hey, let's hire an
- 9:21AI export. And this is exactly what people
- 9:24did in the digital age. You know, when digital marketing
- 9:27came around, people, you know, the leaders at that time, they
- 9:32hired an digital specialist, digital export and made that as
- 9:37a function within marketing, only to see that over time
- 9:41everything became digital and that role became irrelevant.
- 9:44So I always say this, you know, they did this because they want
- 9:48you to save their jobs and just check the box and say, Hey, we,
- 9:51we are digital now, right? And we saw the evolution that
- 9:55over time, as you just described, you know, it's
- 9:57constantly changing. So if you do not have a digital
- 10:01process and people who are trained in digital, it's
- 10:04actually going to fail. So I think the biggest learning
- 10:06is don't just hire an AI expert. Yes, you will need technologies.
- 10:09You will need people who know that better than others who can
- 10:13build agents and stuff like that.
- 10:15But you should always think about who are the people in your
- 10:19team who can actually bring you to the next level in AI.
- 10:22So bring the expertise within your existing team and embed AI
- 10:27within an existing team. And that's the better way to
- 10:30evolve than actually having that silo.
- 10:33And that's, you know, the one learning, I would say, you know,
- 10:35from the digital world, digital time, because, you know, that's
- 10:38what everyone did. And eventually they realized
- 10:40that was not sustainable. I smirked when you were
- 10:43responding because when you were talking about digital marketing,
- 10:47that made me think about all the keywords stuffing you and I
- 10:50probably did in our resumes right back.
- 10:52Exactly. And I remember comma digital
- 10:56marketing, comma right as a specialty.
- 10:59And I, I didn't think about that when I was asking the question,
- 11:02but once I heard it played back, it really has happened quickly
- 11:08where in, in my head we've always been digital, but that
- 11:12was something we put in resumes to match job titles and the
- 11:16director of digital marketing. So I hear you on that.
- 11:19You mentioned in your, your journey both product, product
- 11:23marketing and sales enablement. And my brain immediately goes to
- 11:29sales enablement, which by the way, product marketing and sales
- 11:32enablement, I still think are two of the most challenging
- 11:35marketing functions, just in my personal opinions.
- 11:38So good on you for crushing both of those.
- 11:42How do we make sure that as leaders, we are training our
- 11:46teams to be ready for AI tools and processes?
- 11:50And the disclaimer I'll put on that you hit on a a very
- 11:54important point as well. You said that a lot of folks are
- 11:58trying to automate things and we're trying to get
- 12:01efficiencies. And I, I do totally agree with
- 12:04you. I don't think as many are
- 12:05thinking, hey, if we can automate those things, how can
- 12:09AI help us to be more strategic, more creative, more successful,
- 12:13beat our competitors at a higher rate?
- 12:15I, I think we've tackled efficiency a little bit.
- 12:18So if we think sales enablement across the board, how do we make
- 12:22sure our teams are embracing AI and using it the right way?
- 12:27Yeah, So, you know, the harsh part of this is not everyone is
- 12:31going to come along, which is, you know, a sad and difficult.
- 12:34And this is what we saw during the Internet age because certain
- 12:39generation of people who could not come along and adapt became
- 12:43irrelevant. And that's the biggest fear of,
- 12:46I hope every leader, right, because everyone wants to bring
- 12:50around their along their team. The most important thing is, as
- 12:54I said, you know, you have to kind of understand what are the
- 12:57skill sets of people and where can you leverage them?
- 13:01You know, you talked about strategy, you talked about, you
- 13:04know, elevating, you know, how do we kind of elevate this
- 13:07creativity aspect of marketing? How do we make the data better?
- 13:12All of these are specific areas where you have team members who
- 13:16are experts in certain things and they may not be good at
- 13:19building something, building agents, they may not be good at
- 13:23automating stuff, but they're good at, you know, those
- 13:26specific things. So it's about kind of providing
- 13:31those trainings and tools and having them adapt.
- 13:35It's going to be a slow evolution no matter, you know
- 13:38how quick we want it to be. It's going to take some time for
- 13:42people to come along, but eventually people are using it
- 13:45everyday, right? As long as you enable all of
- 13:48that, they're empowered and they're learning everyday and
- 13:51they're on a track. So what I'm doing is, you know,
- 13:54talking to the team and understanding which parts of
- 13:57business can they impact with AI, what are the use cases
- 13:59bottoms up? Because a lot of it, you know,
- 14:02as we see with our customers as well as kind of driven top down
- 14:05saying, you know, we want to automate these functions, these
- 14:10areas, these, you know, specific processes without understanding.
- 14:14Does that even have the impact that you actually hope to
- 14:18achieve? Because people who are actually
- 14:20using these processes, turning these processes are the ones
- 14:23actually who can automate it the best.
- 14:26So having these bottoms up understanding of what are those
- 14:30areas that can be automated and having the people involved who
- 14:34are actually doing that in that automation is actually going to
- 14:38be very useful. And when you talk about sales
- 14:41enablement, it's kind of, you know, making sure now sales sees
- 14:44the impact of that because delivering a certain piece of as
- 14:48you know, content or an asset to them to take it to the customer
- 14:51is not going to cut the thing anymore, right?
- 14:53I mean, you have to, you come from the ABM space, right?
- 14:55I mean, it has to be really personalized and AI gives us
- 14:58that power to be able to personalize it to the next
- 15:01level, which is, by the way, most companies still struggle
- 15:04with that personalization at a stakeholder level.
- 15:07You may personalize stuff at an account level, but now that is a
- 15:11new process that I talked about which does not exist.
- 15:14Now AI can enable that. So how do you kind of now create
- 15:17these new processes with AII? Think that's kind of the journey
- 15:20we're going to be on. Yeah, personalization is such a
- 15:23good one too, because the the bar is high.
- 15:26I think our you and I for us to open an e-mail and I looked over
- 15:31at my my e-mail tab. For us to open an e-mail, it has
- 15:36to be personal, it has to be relevant, has to communicate
- 15:38value. If it feels like it was sent to
- 15:411000 other people, there's no chance we're going to engage.
- 15:45And, you know, a partner texted me earlier today and sent me a
- 15:49Cameo video from a player from Duke basketball, which I'm a
- 15:53Duke fan and NC State fan too. But there was a lot of personal
- 15:57information in the cameo video from Seth Curry.
- 16:00So Steph Curry's brother, But he played it Duke.
- 16:03He knew my story. And, you know, just the
- 16:05relationship building aspect of that, that was perfect, right?
- 16:10I mean, that is what we have to do.
- 16:12And to that point, you know, just getting you to open that
- 16:15e-mail itself can be really elevated with AI because a lot
- 16:20of the marketers struggle with this, you know, sending an
- 16:22e-mail and not getting any, you know, the open dates like suck,
- 16:25right? So how do you kind of change
- 16:27that? And with all the data that you
- 16:29can have with the new technologies that are coming in
- 16:33that can actually improve, you know, even, you know, because
- 16:37content is second step, how do you even actually get people to
- 16:40open it? So those are kind of the things
- 16:42you know, and there's going to be different channels.
- 16:44People have preference. So you know, you have learning
- 16:46about that. So there's a lot of
- 16:48personalization that can happen with AI.
- 16:50Yeah. Well, you hit on the marketing
- 16:53multiplier earlier, which makes me go to ROI, marketing
- 16:57attribution, 2 things that have driven plenty of marketers
- 17:02insane over the years trying to get to those.
- 17:05What are the key opportunities that you see AI presenting to
- 17:09help solve some of those tricky challenges like proper
- 17:12attribution or measuring ROI? Yeah.
- 17:15I think the biggest opportunity that I see there is of being
- 17:18able to actually track the touch points because the struggle that
- 17:22we have is attribution and you, you we've created like
- 17:26attribution models. And so, but you know, they're
- 17:29all have some kind of flaws. They're never perfect.
- 17:33AI gives us the opportunity to be able to kind of track the
- 17:37complete customer journey and this is becoming real.
- 17:40Finally. We have talked about customer
- 17:42journeys forever, but now with AI, you're able to track every
- 17:47single e-mail, not from, you know, the mailboxes that
- 17:50marketing controls, but all the mailboxes that are interacting
- 17:53with customers. That's powerful and I think
- 17:56that's the kind of the opportunity of tracking touch
- 17:59points and creating customer journey is kind of the biggest
- 18:02win that we can see in attribution and measuring the
- 18:05ARY because you know, from the first touch point and now close,
- 18:09if you're able to see all the interactions, you can
- 18:12confidently say this is the marketing influence on this
- 18:16specific deal. And that's what did not exist
- 18:19before. And that's again, going back to,
- 18:21you know, creating new processes with AI and not just doing lift
- 18:24and shift. So that's kind of the, you know,
- 18:26I'm really excited about that opportunity actually, you know,
- 18:29on a personal in a business front because that you know,
- 18:31marketing has now the empowerment to actually do that.
- 18:35Yeah, absolutely. You talked about some will
- 18:38inevitably be left behind and I think that has been a recurring
- 18:43theme and marketing honestly, where sometimes folks are too
- 18:47specialized and not paying attention to how things are
- 18:50changing or this is a fad and they don't catch up and then
- 18:54boom, it's gone. How should leaders reassess
- 18:58their teams and objectives and frameworks to stay competitive
- 19:02in this AI driven landscape? There are two ways to think
- 19:05about this, right? The first would be if you talk
- 19:08about doers and directors, right?
- 19:11If you split the workforce in the AIH, we'll have these doers
- 19:16and directors. Now, you know, think about the
- 19:18role of the doers, where only the doers who are really good
- 19:24and skilled at the best in their craft are probably going to
- 19:27survive. Who are, you know, still doing
- 19:29stuff and not directing stuff? And the other ones I think I can
- 19:33think of as, you know, the people who are able to leverage
- 19:37AI so much that they've almost become superhumans.
- 19:40They would still have a lot of value in the ecosystem.
- 19:44Now, if you think about it, now the doors are going to, the
- 19:47number of doors are going to go down because AI is going to pick
- 19:50up a lot of their doing stuff and directors.
- 19:52Now, how do you know, manage the directors?
- 19:54Because they swell if you cannot have that many directors doing
- 19:57stuff. So, you know, of course there's
- 19:59going to be new hierarchy of, you know, that's this is again,
- 20:02you know, some assumptions that I'm making here.
- 20:05There's going to be new hierarchy of directors on, you
- 20:07know, people who are actually managing work, whether that's AI
- 20:10driven work, whether it's the interpretation of that work or,
- 20:14you know, the people who are actually orchestrating and doing
- 20:17the strategy work. So those are kind of what will
- 20:20be the two buckets. That's one way of thinking about
- 20:22it, right? The other way to think about it
- 20:25is the. You know, you'll have these
- 20:27creative LED people who are like from the creative side and they
- 20:32are leveraging AI to now elevate what they're able to come up
- 20:36with. And then there's engineering LED
- 20:40people who have leveraging AI in the best way.
- 20:43So that's the other way to think about, you know, thinking about
- 20:46the frameworks of teams. And my hypothesis is that, you
- 20:50know, since it's all going to be driven by AI, everyone is going
- 20:53to be leveraging AI. They're going to be more AI
- 20:55engineers then creative LED people.
- 20:58And that's also kind of ties to the fundamental chip that I
- 21:01talked about that, you know, even leaders cannot be left
- 21:03behind. You have to be involved every
- 21:05day and actually thinking about where this technology is taking
- 21:08us and getting their hands dirty.
- 21:10So that's kind of the, you know, the different ways of thinking
- 21:12about where this is going and you know, if you want to
- 21:14structure it in that way. That's great.
- 21:17It's funny, a lot of times I feel like I'm unlocking better
- 21:22ways to use AI internally for work when I use AI personally,
- 21:27you know, as a parent and coaching kids.
- 21:30And hey, what should we work on with baseball?
- 21:33Just all the ways answer key for homework, just thinking of very
- 21:38specific things. But then, oh, what if we take
- 21:41some ideas of things they like and then turn that into meal
- 21:44suggestions and then the grocery list, Just literally anything.
- 21:48And I do think there are times where we're a little rigid in
- 21:53our work personalities, and sometimes we don't take risk and
- 21:57it's hard to take risk. So I'm curious how, you know
- 22:01right now, I feel this urge to tell everyone creativity is the
- 22:07path forward. We have to be more creative.
- 22:09That's the way to differentiate how do we fight that internal
- 22:13resistance to push for unconventional marketing bets
- 22:17and get permission to do that? The biggest thing that everyone
- 22:21runs against is the risk of failure because most leaders are
- 22:25concerned, especially in large corporations where you know,
- 22:27things are not that nimble. Everyone is very protective of
- 22:30their role and their teams. So nobody wants to fail.
- 22:34And what I typically, you know, I'm kind of running against this
- 22:38kind of risk, a worse kind of mindset.
- 22:41I think one way to think about this is you kind of paint a
- 22:44picture of what if you did not do this, what's at stake and
- 22:48kind of build that scenario as well.
- 22:50So now they have both sides like you do this because we think
- 22:54this is going to drive these outcomes.
- 22:56And by the way, there's, you know, risk and everything.
- 22:59And now let's look at what if we don't do this scenario and think
- 23:04about what risks do we have if we don't do this and come to a
- 23:09point where we see, OK, you know, maybe they start higher on
- 23:12this side and you know, you need to take this unconventional bed
- 23:15because you'll have to move forward a little bit, some of
- 23:18these transformation that are happening.
- 23:20I think the good thing is, and this is again going back to what
- 23:23you just said, we are experiencing efficiencies and
- 23:27productivity gains in our own lives, in everything.
- 23:31So now everyone has experienced that.
- 23:33So it has become very difficult to argue that this will not
- 23:37work. The big question is how would it
- 23:39work in the complex work environments?
- 23:42Because you know, we have all the control on our individual
- 23:45lives and you know, work fact we do at an individual level.
- 23:48But when you scale it to the team level, to the business
- 23:51level and function level, that becomes more complicated.
- 23:55So that's what the argument, you know, where we need to build on
- 23:59how can it actually transform at a function level?
- 24:02And the key lies in understanding specific use cases
- 24:07where you would have immediate ROI, you know, kind of low
- 24:10hanging stuff, and then build your case from there.
- 24:14And when I talked about, you know, having this AI expertise
- 24:18within the team is because you need to have deep process
- 24:22experience to be able to actually now find these high
- 24:26impact use cases that will actually, you know, bring the
- 24:30ROI that the leadership is looking for.
- 24:32And that's kind of, you know, where it's basically a
- 24:35combination of understanding the expertise, the deep processes
- 24:40and bringing the AI to actually help with that to kind of, you
- 24:44know, win over the argument. That's perfect.
- 24:47You answering that just made me think of a way I'm going to use
- 24:50AI to help me before our next marketing leadership off site.
- 24:54I'm not going to tell the team though, but I will document what
- 24:58I do and then after I present, I'll show them how I did it.
- 25:02So your exact description, just unlock something for me there.
- 25:07Thank you for that. We have one more question before
- 25:10we jump into kind of the lightning round, really fast
- 25:13ones and this one we're compiling all the answers for a
- 25:16survey. The challenge here is you can
- 25:19only respond with one thing. What is the single biggest
- 25:24challenge in B2B marketing today?
- 25:26I think it's still measuring ROI that for all the other things
- 25:30that we face, measuring ROI still is the biggest challenge.
- 25:33That's why I'm really hopeful, yeah, he's going to solve that.
- 25:36Awesome. Yeah, I think you can write a
- 25:39book on that too, if you get there first.
- 25:41Just go ahead. I want to use AI to be your
- 25:44ghost, right, And go for it. All right, we have a couple
- 25:48quick questions. We love asking these every
- 25:50single time. It gives us great compilations
- 25:53and lists that we can pull together.
- 25:54The first, What are your favorite tools and technologies
- 25:57that you're using today? So.
- 25:59You know, we were talking about AI, right?
- 26:00So there's a lot of tools out there and I think there's kind
- 26:04of, it is time consuming actually to pilot and you know,
- 26:08experiment with everything. But I love using cloud for my
- 26:12own content. We are experimenting with VO,
- 26:16the Google's LLM for media Lovable is amazing for, you
- 26:21know, designs and stuff. Believe it or not, I'm coding
- 26:24after like 25 years, 20 years or 25 years.
- 26:28Building agents is really fun. NA10 and Figma and you know
- 26:32others who are basically you, they help you kind of build
- 26:34these agents and apps. That's really fun thing to do.
- 26:38So those are some of the things, you know that we are working on.
- 26:40It's very exciting. Great suggestions there.
- 26:43What about Goodreads? And I am very generous with this
- 26:46one. It could be book, blog,
- 26:48newsletter, podcast, video. What are some of the best
- 26:50sources of content for you? I like you all know, on Harare,
- 26:54you know his book on Nexus, the history of information networks
- 26:58is amazing. I think that's a great book.
- 27:01Podcasts. I listened to a few podcasts,
- 27:04you know, some in marketing, some in non marketing, but
- 27:06marketing once you know, marketing against the grain by
- 27:09HubSpot is great. I think lately what I've found
- 27:12really helpful is as I've gone into kind of trying to build
- 27:17these agents, the YouTube videos that are out there by people who
- 27:21are actually doing that stuff. They're amazing tutorials.
- 27:24So I've been watching those a lot lately.
- 27:27So that's that does some of the things.
- 27:29Awesome. Love that.
- 27:30Yeah, we, we do a lot of that internally too.
- 27:33TikTok and Instagram have led to great product developments.
- 27:37I've talked to the product team on that too, because they're
- 27:39creators who are showing you exactly how to do all the things
- 27:42they're doing. So that's a great suggestion
- 27:44there. What about for people who
- 27:46inspires you in the B to B space?
- 27:49Mohan Sani is a professor at Kellogg.
- 27:51He happens to be my cousin as well.
- 27:53He's always a mentor, an inspiring figure.
- 27:56You know, Dharmesh from HubSpot is amazing how he has cut across
- 28:01from like strategy to culture and to, you know, touching on
- 28:06marketing stuff. And he's a CTO.
- 28:08So it's like amazing to, you know, see his insights and
- 28:11perspectives. And I've always been a fan of
- 28:14Gary Vaynerchuk. So those are kind of the names
- 28:17that come to mind. Yeah, those are really good.
- 28:19I like the commonality of ability to take risk of the the
- 28:24folks you you listed there. And you go from Kellogg
- 28:27professor to HubSpot and such a great growth story.
- 28:30And then Gary Vee, let's just just go just do so.
- 28:34Yeah, Great, great thread to follow there.
- 28:36And then the most important question of all, how can
- 28:39everyone get in touch with you after this episode?
- 28:42LinkedIn. Outstanding.
- 28:44Well, thank you so much for your time today.
- 28:45It's been a pleasure. I learned a time I'm actually
- 28:47going to go use AI to help me get ready for this off site
- 28:51based on this conversation. So thanks a lot.
- 28:54Thank you, Chris. This has been fun and of course
- 28:56I learned a lot as well. Thank you so much.
- 28:59Thanks for joining us for On Base.
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