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The Unstoppable Leader: Lessons in Compassionate Marketing with Kristin Zhivago · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hello everybody.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am Jaclyn Strauminger, your host of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm super excited to welcome to our podcast Christian, Kristen Drago.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot, I'm going to say, I don't mean to butcher the last name, but we were just talking about this before.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: My Boston accent does not like certain words or syllables together or vowels and letters.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, any case, but you guys, let me tell you, if you're talking about business and we're talking about some amazing things that are that are happening today with marketing and leadership, Kristen is the person that you want to know.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so excited to have her on the show.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have had an amazing career.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: You have had and started, you had a high-tech agency in 1979, and you founded another digital marketing agency in 2017.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: You are an author.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so you are a, as we would say, as I like to say, a badass woman in the business world.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's awesome and unstoppable.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So again, welcome to the show.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to be here.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so glad to have you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I always love to share leadership is it's not something that's super easy.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always like to ask if you could share.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've you've had a great career, people who are listening, one thing that they should do and know that they could say, okay, today I'm gonna listen to this and I'm gonna walk away with one huge thing that I need to know about being a leader and also about marketing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's hard to cover both, but not really.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say forget power, think love.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's talking about power right now, and I honestly it's um if you're trying to be the baddest ass in the in the market, you're gonna alienate your customers, not just your competitors and other you're gonna alienate your customers.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna be empathetic, you're not gonna care what they think.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you'll just be in it for yourself.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Your employees will know that you're in it for yourself.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, and I'll just say I define love.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm writing a new book about that.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I define love as just taking care of people.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's that simple.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You you you take care of them, you try to give them what they need and want, and you know, you do your best.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's it.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I would say that sounds easier said than done in some ways.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're talking about it from the business world, I mean I love what you're talking about because I think it's it do, I think it's so true.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you take care of your customers, you take care of your people.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So right?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and that you know, but that doesn't always happen.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could give somebody almost like the playbook, like start with start with A to get you to the game of really selling compassionately to your customers.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's the A?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I know you mentioned the two agencies, but I've spent decades as a revenue coach, which was an industry I made up myself.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm there were no other industry uh revenue coaches.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a few since then, but for decades that's what I called myself because I knew CEOs didn't care if it was sales or marketing that got them the revenue.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: They just wanted the revenue.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Show me the money, yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about keeping the company viable, making enough money to take home and take care of your people and keep the business alive.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So A is realizing it's not about me, the business owner, it's about them, the customer, and secondarily your employees and partners.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: You have to take care of them.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to get over yourself, you have to stop trying to be the smartest guy in the room, and uh everything's about me versus them.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really about understanding what those important audiences, those people, your customers, your employees, and your partners, what they care about.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you guess, everybody guesses, it's a mistake.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can suck the revenue right out of your company if you guess.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that then applies to marketing.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I do when I start working with any client and have for years is after they tell me their side of the story, the clients say, here's what's important to our customers, it's a list, blah, blah, blah.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go out and I interview.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It only takes about five to seven people.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I interview their customers, people who have been happy and who bought, and then I basically say, I come back and say, okay, here's what they think is important, and their list is different.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: At the very least, if there are things in common, they won't be at the top.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: If anything the company thinks the most important is usually the thing that was the hardest for them to do, the customer doesn't care about that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: They want, they they have very specific desires, concerns, and questions.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the things you have to absolutely know and not be guessing.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they come to your site or they interact with your new AI agent, uh, which you're starting to create for clients, they know immediately that you get them and you care about them, and you've worked on things that will work for them.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that they know people know immediately.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: You learn that when you're two months old, and your aunt Hattie or whoever her name is comes to you and goes, Oh, you're so cute, and it hurts your cheek.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, hmm, that doesn't feel like a caring gesture, okay?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But we learn right away who really does care about us and who's faking it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And most companies fake it.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it's actually really interesting that you say that because I think that's something, you know, I think back to like even when I was in college, you know, and and doing some marketing classes.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the biggest one of the first things that we even did was in the marketplace, go interview people, see what people want, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: See, yeah, before you start with product X, go ask, like get some feedback, right?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I almost feel like look that's missing these days.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like people don't seem to absolutely some don't seem to be asking.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so listeners, if you're you know, as a leader in your organization and you want to be unstoppable, start asking people the questions of what do you really want, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and like take the surveys, you know.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I remember Yeah, it's not surveys though.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have a conversation and you have to talk to people who've already bought from you.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right, because they know your company better than you think they do.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be shocked at how well they know your company, and they're gonna come back with a branding statement, which is they're real good at this, but they're not so good at that.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So then you learn what you should be promoting and how they talk about it and how they search for it and all that stuff, and what they say about you when you're not in the room, which you never hear otherwise.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: The people who've already bought from you will spend time with you telling you this stuff.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: When they're buying from you, they're playing poker.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're not going to tell you anything about what they're thinking.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But after they've bought, they've got a vested interest in your company because they they've invested in you now.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to stick around.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so they'll tell you how they bought, why they bought, how they searched for you, what else they looked at, why they turned it down, why, why, why, why, why?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, why that then becomes the language and the concepts that you take out to the market and you stop throwing spaghetti on the wall.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: People think they can get this from AI personas, but AI is just scraping the web and looking at what everyone else is doing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your company is unique.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:59
  unknown: Right.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very true.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's something that you do.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have the conversations with people.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I would even, you know, I do say that even if you're starting a company, you have to ask people.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you're starting a company for X, Y, or Z, go and talk to people.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: You probably have a competitor, find out who some of those people are, but ask the questions.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: What do they what do they love?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: What are they not, what do they not love?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: What would they wish for if they could maybe wave their magic wad?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think that's the same thing that you need to do, obviously, with your current customers.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: What would you want?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how could we be better?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh I have uh the questions that I typically ask after interviewing thousands upon thousands of people uh are in my book and chapter three.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I spell out the method, I'm not holding back anything.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do this yourself, or you can hire someone like me to go and interview them.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And within a few weeks, you'll have your whole strategy worked out.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when you think about and you do this and the things that you've done, I mean, because that most people, you know, part of leadership is obviously the revenue part.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: What have you seen once they've implemented and gone out and asked the right questions and done this?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: What has been their growth?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my dream with every client, my hope, it's more than a hope, my expectation, and we don't stop until this happens, is they go from this to that.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have other problems like how do we finance our growth?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't hire people fast enough and things like that.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we we do eliminate the revenue problem because we're coming right back to where now this is companies that have a decent product, and you know, usually I pick up clients that have a product that is competitive, and there are things that are desirable about it, that are sellable, that people want.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have that.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the way you get that in the first place in the product development or service development phase is you ask these questions the same way you're talking about.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: What are you looking for?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: What's important to you about something like this?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: What's driven you crazy about things like this?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: What trends do you see in these types of things?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you get this.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I call this the mindset when they set out to buy.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the nugget we're looking for.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: What was their mindset when they set out to buy?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's their desires, their concerns, and their questions.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's it's it's quite interesting to find out what that information is when people, you know, because it's gonna help in so many different aspects.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you're finding out what their mindset is and what they were looking for, because it's gonna help on the marketing side and also on the keywords and the whole S all the SEO and the things that you put into play to make those things happen.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So so tell me, you know, what do you see right now?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've you started as you know, revenue coach, you've had agencies, you know.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Has there been one truly like game-changing insight that has helped you be the leader that you are in your own business?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the get over yourself part, because I didn't get to where I was by sitting back and eating bonbons and watching soap operas.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've been working hard all my life, and and part of that was ambition.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually much happier with myself and my ability as manager because when I was a revenue coach, I would go in and turnaround marketing and sales departments.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd go from that to that.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um I was pretty competitive back then, and I don't think I was as good of a manager as I am now, where I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've hired I have 20 people on my team at the moment.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they really do come back and and come up with ideas that I wouldn't have thought of.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I give them full credit.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have this little gold star that I zip into Slack whenever they they come up with a great idea.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they know I'm not competing with them.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: They know I'm not going to be judgmental if they come up with something that can't work.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just say, well, you know, we couldn't do that because of this, but maybe there's a germ of a good idea in there.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you really do have to get over yourself.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's especially true with your customers, too, because it's way too convenient and comfortable to guess and to assume intelligently, yes, of course, you know, you know your business, you know the marketplace, and so on.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you really don't know the mindset of the customer when they set out to buy.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing, it's way more important than personas.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Personas are like stalking somebody.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you'd stalked somebody for two weeks and said, here are all their desires and their questions.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, not so much about these are their characteristics, these are their behaviors.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And just because you shop at this store doesn't mean you wouldn't shop at that store.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: It also doesn't uncover the mindset when you set out to buy.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just somebody watching you all day would not answer those questions about a specific product.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like mind reading.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: You get into the mind of the customer, and then you can repeat that information back out to the marketplace to people who have similar needs and desires and concerns and questions.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's yeah, no, that's it's it's a great lesson to learn to know about that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: You are definitely not the smartest person in the room, and that you need to rely on your team.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that does a whole lot for the team environment as a leader because it helps elevate people and make people feel heard and wanted and appreciated more than anything, which is, I think, really, really important for today.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I need to bring up one other thing, if I could, just to answer that question.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I'm doing in the book is defining what makes a great leader and also what makes people quit.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: There are three things in my experience working with thousands of working people that, and I was a headhunter before I opened my own agency.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I heard all the stories about why they left companies and so on.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the the number one reason why people leave companies is because the boss was unfair.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it wouldn't even have to be unfair to them personally, it would be just they did something that hurt somebody else.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was unethical, it was okay on one side, but you know, it hurt other people or it hurt some their co-worker or something.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they decide at that moment they're not going to stay at that company because it's unfair.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll just start looking, and you know, two months later they'll leave because they found the right job.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing is honesty.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you try to hide, you know, the CYA stuff where you're trying to make yourself look good and not admit to a mistake, or uh you're trying to hide something from them because you don't think they could handle it, or there's a lot of um sort of white lies, I guess, little lies that happen in especially large companies, and it's not nice.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And people know it and they leave because of it.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing is responsiveness.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when a boss gives somebody a job and then they ghost the person and they disappear and they don't answer, they don't provide the answers the person needs.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The person has to stop working, go to something else, and wait for the boss to come back and get back to them.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I know how difficult it is to be responsive because I'm on Slack all day, and all day I have questions.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to carve out the quiet time.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I do it in the early mornings, where you can work on things that you have to get done.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, during the business day, as a general rule, you are getting back to them either that same day or the very next day.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then they can just keep working and things work out.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: But they can get so frustrated, your most productive people can get really frustrated if you're not responsive.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think that's very true.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I actually, I I think, you know, I think one of the, you know, in wrapped up in all that is when people people never leave companies just for money.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: They leave because they don't feel appreciated or heard or valued.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all sort of wrapped up into those key parts, which is really important.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And exactly.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you're right about the money.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I think about you know, I did, I was actually a recruiter for a little bit too.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the biggest things that, you know, that we shared, and you know, we share in that common values is that on ground is you know, I would sit there and people would sit there telling me all the great things that they could do, but they just their leader or the people that were in their company didn't know anything about them.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or any of their abilities.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I always, you know, part of it too, it's like, you know, you know, I I loved what you said, you know, which is like stop guessing, right?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Stop guessing, but stop guessing about your company, but stop guessing about the people too.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you can do anything right now, stop the guessing and start asking the questions and learning.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when I did the marketing turnarounds, the one disadvantage of those assignments was I had to work with the staff that was already there.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: The company I have now, I've built every single person into the team and I know who they are.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first thing I would do, first I'd interview customers before I even started because I knew I'd be bombarded with 300 emails every day and you know, be hard to do.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then I would sit down with every single person individually in the department and I would ask them, What's your happiest place?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: What do you enjoy doing the most?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you hate to do?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd restructure the department so that everybody was spending time doing what they loved to do most, and maybe 10% of the time, 15 at the most, the stuff they could they just didn't like because they just had to do it as part of the job.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I couldn't be delegated.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that made for a very happy department.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I did was figure out who the jerk was.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's usually a one in 10 jerk quotient in large companies.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and these were really big companies I was working for, and I would fire the jerk.
• 20:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then everybody would say, Oh, good, she figured out who the jerk was, and now we can get to work and help each other and we won't be discouraged anymore.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they knew then that I wouldn't tolerate jerks.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: But so, but it's so important, you know.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's it, yeah, I I do a lot of analogies to basketball teams because my son plays basketball, or it doesn't really matter the team.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my my daughter was a skier.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she still skis, but she was a ski team.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's amazing how one person can be the, for lack of a better word, the cancer of a company, a team, and whatnot.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so, or or the jerk that can bring the whole team down.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and we and I think I think one of the biggest things I would say is like if you can figure out who those people are first and foremost before you bring them in and know who they are based on key values that you align with you as a as the leader of the company and the people that you want to bring in, it it helps to hopefully cut that stuff out, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's poison in the well.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Poison.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we want to get rid of that poison.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you're right, it drags everybody down.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's horrid.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: My my son's basketball team has been dealing with it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's top of mind for me right now.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Understood.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I'm, you know, I'm trying to really curious.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is your biggest goal right now?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: My biggest goal right now is to so thoroughly and professionally incorporate AI into our company, not only for the services that we currently provide, but also for new services that we can provide.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we're thinking of doing some things for small businesses that because they don't have time to deal with AI, they don't know what to do with it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we've partnered with a company that has developed a really sophisticated marketing platform based on the founder of the company has like 30 years of research, market A-B testing research and philosophies that he's developed.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really good stuff.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we're starting to build all those tools.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in tech uh since the digital voltmeter, which was one of the first digital things that even ever came out.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that was before PCs and all of that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I've seen the whole, I've been on the point of the spear in the tech business the whole time that it's sort of been in the consciousness of the general populace.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And AI is the biggest tsunami I've ever seen.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely taking over.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's smart as a whip.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, it's also mistakes all over the place right now, still.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there are ways to use it to refine what you're doing.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not not in the way I was talking about with, you know, thinking they know what the customer wants, because that's sort of too broad brush and doesn't give you that specific information.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of other things that are very, very good.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we are working with those and on those and just working like crazy, just bringing it all in and and um making it available to clients.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I like that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very true.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think AI is very interesting right now.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I feel like it's you know, one of the biggest things that I always share with people is that if you want it to work for you, you have to make sure it gets to know you.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to be able, but you need to know who you are or what you need to know those business parameters first before you can feed it in to then get out what you want.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is exactly right.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um yeah, go ahead.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, I was just gonna say, what do you what do you think having or bringing the AI or bringing AI in and doing this is going to do both for you and your clients besides revenue?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's uh certainly AI is pretty good at research.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I I tend to use perplexity um just because it does its cites, uh, its sources uh more rigorously than ChatGPT does, even though it's been trying to get better at it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and honestly, search engine optimization is completely on its head because now when you go to Google, you always get that AI thing at the beginning, and you don't even scroll any further if it was a something that could be answered in that kind of format.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're not shopping for something specific, you're looking for an answer to a bigger question.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you can use it to say who are the best in this environment, and so on.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the research part of AI um, I think is usable by anybody now.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think the graphic tools are going to put a lot of graphic designers out of business if it hasn't already, because you can get, if you use the right prompts, you can get some absolutely beautiful art.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't cost you anything, it takes three seconds.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't like it, you do another one.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I've been using that for a long time now.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, as somebody who's been using graphic illustrators, designers, and so on for decades, it's it's it's a total revolution.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: The writing, the writing's still catching up.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I use it more as a uh we use it more where I've written something or one of us writers have, and then we sort of feed it in and say, make it shorter or make it this way or whatever, and then we see what we can learn from it.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't necessarily take it verbatim because sometimes it comes out really homogenized and sort of corporate talk, uh, which people don't read.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're using it carefully.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's um I I do think it's it's uh going to be very it is very useful for people.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: So all right.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my so what's your favorite graphic tool, chat or you know, for AI?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's something called Image X, I think, now uh, but I've been using Copilot, which is based on Dolly, D-A-L-L-E, um uh Microsoft's Copilot, which one of the biggest problems it had at the beginning is it had a lot of trouble with appendages, fingers and legs.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you can have a bunch, you can say make a bunch of people sitting, you know, in a room, and then that's everything above the conference table is fine.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath there's two legs or three legs or one leg on people, or there's six fingers or or no, you know, three fingers or whatever.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's been uh the hard part about that is when it comes up with a perfect illustration and somebody has one leg.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's very discouraging.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because it won't give you the if you say, well, please, everything was perfect, but I just want two legs on that person, and then it might come back with three.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting a little better, but that's no.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've I've used some of that too, and it's like it's really funny where you know images are kind of with the hands or hands and feet, sometimes even noses are off or something like that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or people like I've had a picture where people are shaking hands, and then I looked at their hands and I'm like, she kind of looks kind of webby.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or like you know, yeah, the fingers are tough.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, fingers are tough.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, and sometimes I think when they you ask it to put words on it too, sometimes it gives you Oh, they don't do that.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just gibberish, it's like yeah, illustrations of letters.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm like, that's what I need.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I know um, but that's changing by I mean, this every next week it could be something else.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right, it could be something else.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Kristen, I I could talk to you forever.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I think this is like so fascinating.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like it's you know, there's so many things that are happening, you know, obviously with in the world of of marketing and agencies and also what you are sharing, you know, key people, you know, being revenue generators, because it all it's actually all tied together.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I know you've got a you've got one book and you do you're working on another one.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um please share with everybody where can people connect with you and tap into your expertise even more.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: All the first of all, all you have to do is just type Kristen Chavago into Google and it goes on and on and on because I've done a lot of content over the years.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um my book is Roadmap to Revenue, How to Sell the Way Your Customers Wanna Buy, and that's on Amazon.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's Kindle, um yeah, Kindle Audible and Hardcover.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually best in hardcover because I I dissect the buying, the types of buying processes in the world based on how much scrutiny people apply to the purchase, and it just works better in a print environment.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the rest of it's useful as well.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It the thing it does is it gets you out of your buyer, your seller hat, gets you into the customer's life and mine.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I write a blog in at Chivagopartners.com, which is our main site.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so listeners, you definitely want to connect with Kristen, get her book, get her expertise, um, and really just, you know, again, connect with her on LinkedIn and on all the socials, um, and really just start subscribing to her blog.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And again, get the book.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I really appreciate you being a guest.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: I am Jacqueline Jaminger, the host of Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you have enjoyed this, please hit subscribe and please share it with your friends and colleagues as well.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because our goal is to make amazing leaders out there who actually help elevate their people and their companies, because then we will hopefully have a better leadership-based world.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So again, I'm Jacqueline Stominger with Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight Podcast.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you guys for listening.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.