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Winona Rajamohan on Being a One-Person Content, Brand and PR Team · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today, we've got Winona Rajmohan on. She's the senior marketing manager of content and brand at SmartCar, but not that SmartCar.
• 0:17
  That's what I thought too. I was imagining like those little cars that can parallel park but, like, perpendicularly. It's not that SmartCar.
• 0:24
  This SmartCar is a developer platform that has integrations with over 40 automotive manufacturers that lets companies build apps with access to data on the car, so they can tap into, like, mileage and driving habits, and all these other things.
• 0:38
  So they have customers that you might have heard of, like Uber and Lyft, amongst a bunch of other really cool businesses in the EV space. This is a world I know absolutely nothing about.
• 0:48
  Luckily, Winona is an expert, and she walks us through it. It's very interesting.
• 0:52
  It is a SaaS tool, but the use cases are very different than many of the ones that we talk about on this podcast anyways, and I really appreciated that there was, like, a very practical implication of how this software is used.
• 1:03
  Like, the rubber meets the road in a very literal sense. So we talk all about her job as a one-person content marketing leader. We talk about a report that she just published.
• 1:11
  We talk about some of the things she'll be working on over the next six to 12 months.
• 1:13
  And in general, she's a great content thinker, has some really cool projects in the works, and there's a, a ton to learn from this conversation. So I'll get out of the way.
• 1:21
  As always, really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too. Hey, and welcome to another episode of Content Briefly. Very excited to be chatting with Winona Rajmohan today.
• 1:30
  Winona, you're the senior marketing manager of content and brand at SmartCar, but not that SmartCar. [laughs] We'll talk all about that. Before we dive in, would you mind just introducing yourself?
• 1:38
  Tell us a little bit about who you are and some of the work that you've been up to over the past couple of years. Yeah, for sure. Winona here. Very excited to be here.
• 1:46
  So I manage the SmartCar blog, newsletter, PR, very different aspects of social media. The title's content and brand just because it's a little bit more than content.
• 1:55
  It's just a lot of things that kind of ladder up to just our brand positioning as well. SmartCar is an API platform that helps developers build apps for cars, so I'm sure we'll dive a little bit more into that.
• 2:05
  I'm a one-person content team right now, so I manage kind of like the end-to-end process from like strategy to execution, distribution, reporting, all of that. Before that, I was at Hireasy, which is a hiring software.
• 2:16
  I was also their first content hire, initially brought in as, like, a content writer/contractor, and then I ended up staying on and building their content marketing function up from scratch.
• 2:26
  So that was really my introduction to content marketing. And I've been very fortunate to kind of do something very similar for SmartCar as well.
• 2:33
  So kind of always been in these little, like, small startup sort of environments that have, you know, over time, just grown over the years that I've been there. Very cool.
• 2:43
  I should also say that we connected through Superpath Social, which is one of the monthly group events that we run as part of Superpath Pro. So there's my plug for becoming a Superpath Pro member.
• 2:54
  You might become a podcast guest, too. [laughs] And as we were... You introduced yourself in our conversation there and you said, "Oh, I run content for SmartCar." And I was like, "Oh, like those little cars."
• 3:02
  And you're like, "No, no, no, no. That's not what it is." Yeah. Run us through SmartCar. Like, w- what's the product? Who's the customer?
• 3:09
  And then can you cite some e- examples of like, ways that people or companies are using the- Yes... product to build apps? Yes, yes. Okay. So SmartCar, so basically you can think of us as kind of like a Plaid for cars.
• 3:22
  So kind of like the same business case for like an integration platform in any kind of industry. It's just that it's a lot more complex when it comes to vehicles. It's not like SaaS integrations.
• 3:33
  So it's a very interesting space where we basically are an API platform that allows developers, mobility businesses to allow their product to be connected to multiple automakers, 'cause it takes a lot of time to build an integration with just one brand when you're gonna be maintaining that integration, like a very classic kind of integration story.
• 3:52
  But it's just that there are so many brands out there, and they differ, like, by region. So right now we have 40-plus brands globally. Some are compatible in Europe, some are compatible in Canada, some in the US.
• 4:03
  They're all very nuanced and very different. So if you were a developer with a small like...
• 4:09
  If you're a small, like, startup with an EV charging app, for example, to do that all yourself, it takes like a whole team to really just manage the integrations on top of the product itself.
• 4:19
  So we have customers across all kinds of automotive use cases, so EV charging to home energy management, auto insurance, repair, rideshare.
• 4:29
  If I wanna come up with, like, two customers that I'm sure everyone listening to this will probably know, like Uber and Lyft are customers of ours. Oh, wow. Yeah. Driver side. Yes, on the driver side.
• 4:38
  So let's say you wanna get a ride with an EV.
• 4:41
  Like, you want your driver to be an EV driver, but let's say, like, you wanna go all the way from, I don't know, like San Francisco to Sacramento, but you don't know what their, like, battery range is, and the last thing you wanna do is just end up stuck at a charger waiting for them to charge for 30 minutes.
• 4:58
  What they do with SmartCar is they basically are able to connect to their drivers' cars and get the battery level so that, you know, they can make sure that all the EV drivers are being matched up to trips that kind of fit within their battery range.
• 5:13
  So it's very interesting use cases like that. There really isn't, like, a single use case for every single vertical either.
• 5:20
  Like, we're trying to figure it out as we go just 'cause the auto space is so big and it's kind of developing.
• 5:26
  It's like it's there, but at the same time, these are very big companies that have been around for a long time. Innovation is kind of slow because of how the industry is. So very, very unique.
• 5:37
  It's unique itself as a product. When it comes to marketing for this space, it's also just like a whole beast of its own. Yeah, the targets are always moving. The playbook is not very existent. Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:49
  Well, I mean, the world of connected automobiles is relatively new. I mean- Yeah... I'm thinking of like, you know, I'm a QuickBooks customer, and QuickBooks is always trying to get me to track driving mileage- Mm-hmm...
• 6:02
  through the app, which I assume if it's not done through SmartCar, it's done through a similar type of integration.Yeah, you kind of have to put the dongle into your car, or you have, like, your smartphone that kind of tracks it, but obviously it's not super accurate.
• 6:13
  Right. Yeah. So that's similar like in... Like my car is. My car has a CD player. That's like how sophisticated it is.
• 6:19
  But like now that cars are actually smart, you can plug in to access data through the car, and then, like, that's what SmartCar is enabling. Yes. Yes.
• 6:27
  And what makes us unique is that, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there, like when it comes to cars, people are very scared about just cars' data. Like, what is my car tracking? Things like that.
• 6:36
  SmartCar's value prop here is that we actually give these apps, like, a consent management function. So let's say you use an EV charging app. You connect to the app via SmartCar.
• 6:45
  You're giving SmartCar access to the data, but you can see exactly what data points are being requested, and you're specifically giving access to those specific data points.
• 6:55
  If you don't have that consent management function in place, it's like a fire hose of data, basically. You don't really know, like, what's being collected.
• 7:02
  And so that's kind of, like, the push that regulation is kind of going for as well, and, you know, we're kind of helping the automotive space kind of position themselves for that.
• 7:13
  Yeah, it's a lot of education on that front, but yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.
• 7:17
  So then from your perspective, you have 40 integration partners, I imagine, like, very, very important to the business, and then you have to market the product itself to a pretty wide range of businesses who may wanna build on a platform like this.
• 7:33
  Are you selling to the developers who are actually building, or are they just the end user but you're making a business case to somebody else? Yeah. So that's a great question.
• 7:41
  So the developers are the end users, but the people that we're building the business case for are typically, like, partnerships, business development, and product. Very, very wide range, but it's basically anyone...
• 7:53
  Like, we basically see that synergy with, let's say, a division in a company, if it's not a startup. If it's a startup, it's like CEO, CTO.
• 8:01
  But if it's a bigger organization, it's like a division within a company that's pushing for some sort of innovative, like, data-led product.
• 8:09
  So if you're in, like, a huge, like, repair company, for example, there'd be, like, that one division that focuses on, like, I don't know, like, our next thing on the roadmap will be data-led services, and we wanna push for that.
• 8:20
  We get these individuals that usually kind of end up in the middle of business development and partnerships and, like, revenue and you know. It's very interesting titles, actually.
• 8:30
  I've learned a lot of new titles in the three years that I've been at SmartCar. There's a title for everything.
• 8:35
  [both laughing] Is this a competitive space, or as companies realize that they, like, wanna create an integration with a vehicle, like, do they kind of naturally find their way to SmartCar? Yeah.
• 8:49
  It's not super competitive. There are definitely not so, like, competitors that are exactly the same as ours. Like, there are some competitors that focus more on, let's say, the energy space. Some focus more on fleets.
• 9:02
  So we're offering the same thing. It's just that different levels of, like, depth in related to the verticals. SmartCar does provide just enough for a lot of verticals.
• 9:13
  So in that sense, like, we're not exactly competing for the exact same customers.
• 9:18
  Like, we don't have to necessarily compete for the same exact customers, and our marketing isn't necessarily competing with each other also. Like, I'm not fighting for SEO keywords from competitors necessarily. Right.
• 9:31
  Then there are, like, you know, Toyota just has a ton of website content that will never fall from their first three spots because they're Toyota, for example.
• 9:41
  Just a lot of, like, random content [chuckles] on cars as opposed to competitors themselves. Got it. Got it. So then, okay, you're a one-person content team. Like, what's top of mind for you?
• 9:51
  Like, kind of the, the balls that you're juggling on a day-to-day basis? Yeah. So I feel like right now, my day-to-day is never really the same, but technically it kind of falls into these few buckets. So there's SEO.
• 10:03
  It's not very high volume keywords, but we're trying to be very strategic with it and just ensure that our traffic's just growing sustainably. So I'm always on the lookout for that.
• 10:12
  So it's a mix of, like, very technical keywords that I'm looking out for, like auto insurance API or, like, car database API, and then those broad, like, connect to car, sustainable mobility stuff. So there's SEO.
• 10:24
  There's a lot of thought leadership that I'm working on with our company leaders, so it's very essential for just both our founders and also our partnerships team just to create content educating about consent management, connected cars, like, why the industry is ready for it, why it's not as scary as it seems.
• 10:44
  I do a little bit of product marketing as well, like, helping the rest of the marketing team with positioning, because as I'm doing keyword research, I actually end up creating content before we even start officially going after those verticals as a formal marketing function.
• 10:59
  And then I do end up doing PR also.
• 11:02
  So honestly, anything that's, like, written or, like, anything that has to do with, like, content ends up falling under my bucket, and then I just basically collaborate with everybody, it feels like, on the company- Yeah.
• 11:15
  Yeah... to get it through the finish line. But I am, like, the only content person right now. Wow. Yeah, it's so interesting. One, one-person content teams run into such unique challenges.
• 11:26
  Like, there's just so much on your plate, and I have to think at some point it's probably difficult to prioritize, right?
• 11:34
  Like- Yeah, it's difficult to prioritize, but I guess, like, the good thing is that, like, at SmartCar, there's a very good understanding from the top down, like, from leadership itself on, like, the value of content being in its quality as opposed to as just kind of...
• 11:48
  Like, when I first joined, like, my initial thought was, "All right. Should we go big on SEO for all these different terms," right?
• 11:55
  Just a very traditional playbook, and then I quickly learned that it really won't get us anywhere in that sense.
• 12:02
  And so even fr- in terms of, like, our head of marketing, our CEO, like, they really understood that kind of focusing on really quality pieces that focus, that kind of highlight the product, what the product can do, and what our, like, pr-...
• 12:17
  positioning is in the market on, like, why we're not like a data aggregator or any other data platform.
• 12:23
  Finding the sweet spot between that actually helps me a lot because I'm not going for, like, full speed ahead velocity.
• 12:30
  I'm able to really just go deep and spend a lot of time really understanding the different verticals that I'm writing for and brainstorming with different people to make sure that the priorities are aligned in a very focused way, and that we're not going after, like, three different content goals a week.
• 12:46
  So, it needs, like, that kind of understanding that fortunately I've been able to sort of build with leadership about where content fits. That's awesome.
• 12:56
  That's the most wonderful gift that company's leadership could give a content team, is just buy-in and confidence. Buy-in. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. How about attribution? Is it difficult to measure...
• 13:10
  Actually, and maybe related to that, I find that sometimes when companies have a strong top-down buy-in from leadership, they actually aren't maniacal about measurement because it's like content, if you get it, you're just like, "Okay, it takes a while."
• 13:24
  Like, you know, we don't feel the need to, like, look at every single data point to decide is this working? Is our investment the right one? So like, where does SmartCar fall in that? Uh, it's kind of in that bucket.
• 13:34
  So we definitely track, so there, the top-of-funnel metrics of like, we need to make sure, I need to make sure that the new users that I'm bringing in are consistently going up, because organic is pretty much a lion's share of our traffic.
• 13:46
  And then also measuring, like, just pipeline influence in terms that I'm always kind of seeing all the deals that come in, do they interact with content before and, like, throughout their stages of, like, closing an opportunity.
• 14:00
  Mm-hmm. So we're able to see what pages they visit and kind of measure content influence in that sense.
• 14:06
  It's not, like, very hard, like, oh, you have to hit this target, but we do make sure that they're interacting with some form of content every time they land on the website and, like, book a demo, which fortunately is how the behavior is right now.
• 14:21
  There's usually, like, a blog in there with, like, every single interaction, which we've been very fortunate to have. Got it.
• 14:29
  You know, something interesting that's happened just, like, over the course of doing this podcast is I feel like a lot of folks we talk to are, it's like a product-led growth company that later adds sales, or it's a sales-led growth company that later adds a self-serve component.
• 14:42
  It seems like most companies start at one end and kind of work the other way. Where's SmartCar on that? Is there a sales component? How often are you working with the sales team, if so? Yeah. So it's primarily sales led.
• 14:53
  We do have, like, you can try out SmartCar with, like, a free plan, but all of our marketing efforts as a marketing team, we're focused on supporting sales as much as possible.
• 15:04
  So there, when I came in, it was very inbound predominant. That was when the market was very small, and we were very focused on a specific vertical.
• 15:12
  Over time, like, we've kind of tried to hit broader spaces, like insurance and repair, for example. We don't know if they're searching for anything, so it's been very, like, outbound in that sense.
• 15:24
  So content kind of sits in the middle of like, I'm working with demand gen, the both of us kind of own inbound fully.
• 15:29
  But then I'm also just making sure that all content that I have is kind of optimized for our outbound function as well. Our ABM marketer leads with the sales team.
• 15:38
  So yeah, it, like, kind of fits all purposes there, and I have to make sure that content basically hits everyone's buckets, which is why I'm very strategic with what I create also.
• 15:48
  Like, each asset has to kind of satisfy, like, the product marketing function of it actually talking about our features.
• 15:55
  It has to be useful enough for inbound, but then it also has to kind of give that high-level summary for the outbound function to use in their outreach also.
• 16:05
  So in that sense, I don't need to create too many, I just need to create a lot of very big, good quality pieces of content in that sense. And are you creating it, most of it yourself? Yes. How much AI are you using?
• 16:19
  And if you're using a lot, like, are there some specific use cases you've honed in on that are particularly useful? Yeah.
• 16:25
  So I feel like when, as I'm going down the, the rabbit hole of like Superpath, for example, I've been coming across a lot of, like, very cool applications of AI, which has made me realize that I need to use it a whole lot more, and I'm sure I'll get into that with, like, more members of the team.
• 16:38
  But right now, I use mainly, like, very basic ChatGPT, Gemini for, like, creating really big outlines.
• 16:47
  Like, I spend a lot of time creating very, very comprehensive outlines because these are very complex topics to talk about, and I also have to be very nuanced with the tone as well.
• 17:00
  Like, when I'm writing for an EV charging startup, they're very techy. Like, they're very forward-thinking, you know. They're ready to adopt any kind of technology.
• 17:09
  But if I'm writing for, like, an auto insurance company or, like, a repair and maintenance company, the tone changes drastically.
• 17:17
  If I talk to them the way I talk to, like, an EV charging CEO, they're gonna be like, "This is not for us." [laughs] Like, what- Yeah, yeah... implement. Like, you want a developer to implement this API?
• 17:29
  Like, what does that mean? So I have to create, like, kind of...
• 17:32
  I use AI to kind of help me create different kind of voices for each piece that I have without having to kind of break it down from scratch every single time. So that's been very helpful.
• 17:43
  My outlines are, like, my briefs for AI are so long. They're like blogs in and of itself, dumps of stuff, and then it gives me an outline that's, like, humongous, and then I kind of go from there and work things through.
• 17:59
  Yeah, yeah. Okay, a few interesting takeaways from that. One is just what an interesting nuance to your work that you have to sell the same thing to, like, very different personas. That's a somewhat unique challenge.
• 18:08
  And the other, I'm sort of fascinated that you create very long briefs for yourself, and I kinda get why you do it. I'm just, like, personally the complete opposite. [laughs] You know?
• 18:17
  Like, I've become, like, pretty handy with AI, but when I write- Yeah... I just, blank page. I just start... [laughs] I don't know, I just...
• 18:22
  Maybe that's a habit I'll break as I-Like get a better understanding of like- Yeah... the goals of AI could kinda like help accelerate the time from like blank page to we're publishing an article. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:32
  I, I totally get that. I feel like I'm like that. If I was writing about anything else probably, I would probably be like that also.
• 18:38
  But like I think with what I'm writing for with SmartCar, like if I'm writing about like commercial auto insurance, underwriting, things like that, like I don't know anything about it.
• 18:48
  The first thing I usually would do is Google. I would Google it. I'll take like the first 10 articles and realize that I'm more confused than how I was ever.
• 18:57
  So what I do now is I basically just like I dump everything that I know from all the different sales calls that I've been listening to, and I just kind of add it in there and I'll...
• 19:05
  In my prompt, I'll just be like, "Is this real?" Like, "Does this make sense? Can you go search for other information to talk about like this?"
• 19:12
  I-- like all my assumptions are in the brief with like a little kind of like challenge for AI to be like, "Is my assumption correct? Is it-- Can you find something else to back this up in that sense?" Right.
• 19:24
  And, and then working that into the points that I have about the product.
• 19:29
  So yeah, it's a lot of discovery done all at the same time, just because before like these tools, like I forgot when all these AI tools started coming up, but when I first joined SmartCar, like I was just doing everything myself for sure.
• 19:40
  I would spend days like researching every single vertical to make sure it's like accurate, because our audience knows, like product managers, you can't sound like you don't know their vertical.
• 19:51
  Like they lose interest- Right... immediately. It would take so long to get a g- blog going for like energy and then insurance and this and that, and now I can do that just in a day probably.
• 20:06
  Like I can get a whole blog done, which is so crazy to think about how much has changed in like three years. Yeah. That's so cool. And the changes are difficult to keep up with because they're happening so quickly.
• 20:16
  You know? Like I was listening actually to a podcast just yesterday with the CEO of Anthropic, which makes Claude, and they now have this, I think they call extended thinking mode. Yes.
• 20:28
  Where it's like instead of an instant answer, you allow it more time and it will give you like a much more comprehensive response. And then I was like, "Well, that's crazy."
• 20:35
  And then I realized that Perplexity has that, but they have web access, so they can- Yeah...
• 20:39
  you can send them out to do a research task, and then that s- sent me down the road of AI agents, which you can now build yourself, who will-- It's like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy."
• 20:48
  Like our skill set as content marketers is just evolving so rapidly. You know, it's difficult to keep up with. And like there is also the component of like y- you gotta learn it.
• 20:57
  Some of the rabbit holes we go down probably won't be fruitful. Some will completely change the way we work though. So it's like- Yeah... you can't ignore any of it. Exactly. Exactly. And it's just so interesting.
• 21:06
  Like my leaders at SmartCar, like they also push for a lot of like just see how you can use AI as much as possible.
• 21:11
  It's been so interesting because I feel like I've written about SmartCar's like positioning for so long that I do have a specific kind of tone of voice that the whole blog has managed to follow, and the newsletter follows it as well.
• 21:23
  It's just so cool, like over the past year and a half just using these different tools, like how they just sound like me now.
• 21:31
  Like exactly like you have to make sure that your skill set, like your strengths lie in more than just your writing and it-- I've just been thinking a lot more about how to really make sure that I-- even though these tools sound like me, I'm using them in a way that only I can bring out the best of it in that sense, where every content marketer is really focusing on.
• 21:52
  But yeah, like they just keep getting better and better and better, and I'm sure that adds a lot of pressure on, on all of us. But yeah, we just have to keep [laughs] figuring out ways to just make it work.
• 22:04
  Like I was playing around with Perplexity's the deep research thing also, 'cause I was-- I'm writing a piece about the EU Data Act, which obviously I did not know much about. Yeah.
• 22:14
  Probably a pretty meaty topic, I'm guessing. Oh, yeah. And like I think it, it gave me such a big like research document, my computer froze. Like that's how big.
• 22:23
  [laughs] And I was just reading through it and I was just like, "Okay, like let's turn this into like an outline in my voice" with another one of those really big like content briefs that I usually put into the AI prompt and it was, it was really good.
• 22:38
  Like it was really, really good. Yeah. That I was like both amazed, kinda scared, but also like, okay. But it does need my 700-word complex brief to get it to this point, so that's good at least. [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
• 22:52
  Totally. Totally. This-- Yeah, I've been thinking, gosh, quite a bit about this. Actually, I'll tease this now. We're gonna do an AI workshop.
• 22:58
  I don't know exactly when this comes out, so hopefully I'm plugging this before the event actually happens. But we're gonna do an AI workshop.
• 23:04
  We're gonna bring in a few content marketers who are gonna do a kinda show and tell of like cool and innovative ways that they're using AI in their day-to-day jobs.
• 23:12
  Because, you know, you referenced our Slack channel on AI, and that's kinda what it is. It's like show and tell, and it's wild. Like pe- the ways people are using us are so varied and so interesting, and I just feel like
• 23:24
  it's-- there's just so much for all of us to learn. And I, I hope that other people are having as much fun with it as I am. Like- Yeah... I'm getting a, a real kick out of like I can make a simple app. That's amazing.
• 23:34
  I'm just, I'm sort of blown away by that. You know? That's the next thing I really wanna do, like creating apps for stuff. Like being in the AI talk channel in Superpath is my like-- People are amazing.
• 23:45
  Like everyone's- Yeah... building such cool stuff that I am constantly just like, "I need to do more." [laughs] Like I get- Yeah, yeah... these ideas. This is our second promo. [laughs] Do join Superpath Pro.
• 23:57
  The AI channel's really good. Okay. So Winona, as you look forward, you know, call it 6 to 12 months, is your job to continue executing as you have been because the momentum you're building is what the business needs?
• 24:09
  Or are you sort of like, you know, is it like a phase that you will finish up of content and then, you know, start on the next thing? Like, you know, you kinda like, you do SEO until you feel like you've got that.
• 24:19
  Now, okay, now we turn to the next thing. Yeah. That's a great question.
• 24:23
  I think right now SEO is actually kind of-- I weaned off it a little bit just because I recently, I think two weeks ago, pushed outOur state of connected car apps report, uh, which is kind of- Oh, cool...
• 24:36
  yeah, kind of like the only report of its kind, like, in our space really, and that was something that I really pushed for the company to do.
• 24:42
  I did the first one in 2024, and then this is the second one, and we're gonna make it an annual thing. It's been doing really, really well just because, like, it's such a core piece of thought leadership.
• 24:53
  The traction that we've gotten from the report has been massive, and it's always brought up by, like, partners in, like, different conversations, and customers as well. I do wanna
• 25:02
  m- kind of explore this thread a little bit and see how we can make thought leadership, kind of I guess dig into what thought leadership means for us and turn it into something that's a little bit more repeatable.
• 25:13
  Trying to find the sweet spot between, like, I don't know, SEO, thought leadership, posting on LinkedIn a little bit more, or a lot more actually, and seeing how I can turn that into something more scalable and trackable for content.
• 25:27
  The blog is something that we used to do a lot. Now, I'm not posting on the blog as often. I feel like I'm creating a lot of these big assets and repurposing it in different ways.
• 25:37
  And LinkedIn has been very successful, so that's, like, definitely an idea I want to try.
• 25:42
  Kind of disseminating thought leadership through LinkedIn and maybe using the blog as a little bit more of a technical kind of community building aspect for developers, which would mean pretty much reconstructing everything in terms of how content is working out at SmartCar right now.
• 25:58
  But I feel like it's necessary given the way people are consuming content at this point in time, and also just given the way our industry is developing as well, and just kind of like the big goals that we're trying to push for in terms of, like, reaching people that probably have never heard of a car API in their life, you know?
• 26:17
  Right. So I think we've tackled a lot of the people that might know what we do, and now we're facing that big mountain of how do we break this down and get people who have no clue about just the world of connected cars.
• 26:32
  Like, how do you even start educating them from ground zero? And I think I, I have this big challenge of just, I think I just have to break everything and [laughs] redo it from scratch.
• 26:43
  Which is scary, but it's also kind of fun, you know? Okay, that's what I was gonna say. That sounds cool. Yeah. And I feel like particularly because the space that you're in is positioned for a lot of growth also. Like,
• 26:57
  how many people are there... Like, everybody's already adopted so many technologies. Like, I, I have a dumb car.
• 27:02
  Like, a lot of, a lot more people are gonna be adopting electric vehicles, ride sharing will continue to grow, you know, more people have connected cars, and, like, as that changes, I imagine the demand for what SmartCar offers will increase significantly.
• 27:16
  Yes, yes. It's definitely there. It's like we're on the cusp of something just taking off. It's just that, you know, like, the car space is influenced by a lot of things beyond just tech- Sure... and like regulation.
• 27:27
  It's politics, it's EV stuff, mandates and all of that.
• 27:31
  So it's just a matter of, like, the timing, and I wanna make sure that we have, like, everything in place for when that kind of takes off and everybody's just coming to us to use these different things.
• 27:43
  Which is why, like, the report's a good way for, it's like a litmus test, not just for our customers, but, like, for the company as well to kind of know where we're at, and also as marketers it kind of helps the whole marketing team, like, influence our campaigns and our focus as well, because we learn a lot from just asking 1,000 random drivers, "What do you know about connected cars?"
• 28:01
  And like- Yeah, yeah. That's cool... "Do you have apps connected?" And most of them are like, "No." Like, "I don't know what a connected car is, but I actually have 10 apps connected to my car."
• 28:09
  Very interesting kind of nuances there. That's so cool. I pulled up the report, so I have the URL. I will make sure that ends up in the show notes. Obviously, there'll be a link to SmartCar.
• 28:20
  And then for you, is LinkedIn the best place to send people or sh- a personal site or anywhere else? Uh, LinkedIn's the best place. Yeah, I love to chat about anything content and what people are working on.
• 28:29
  So happy to connect. Okay, cool. Links to all that will be in, in the show notes. Winona, thank you so much. I mean, I got, like, a little teaser of this when we chatted a couple weeks ago in the Superpath Social.
• 28:39
  I'm really glad that we could expand on it and then record for the benefit of others. So thank you very much for making the time, and kudos to you.
• 28:45
  Sounds like you've done some really amazing work and are really well positioned to do a bunch more. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was really fun. Absolutely. Take care. [outro music]