Latest / CEOs and ABCs / Desiree Motamedi (Meta, Shopify, Google & Salesforce) How to Implement AI into your Business and Home Life & How to Create AI Safety for your Children at Home #039

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Desiree Motamedi (Meta, Shopify, Google & Salesforce) How to Implement AI into your Business and Home Life & How to Create AI Safety for your Children at Home #039 · CEOs and ABCs

• 0:00
  Desiree Motamedi: I think there's a lot of fear that people think it's going to take my job. I actually don't feel that at all now. If anything, it's more that it's enhancing what I can do. It allows me to move faster and really ideate things I never even thought I could think about. The big thing I really focus on with both kids is about human connection. Really try to make that the most important part, because AI will never be able to do that.
• 0:20
  Kevin Rice: Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Desiree Montebedi, Chief Marketing Officer of Salesforce's next gen platform. Desiree's incredible career in marketing spans some of the most recognizable tech companies like Meta and Google and Adobe and Shopify. And now at Salesforce, Desiree is overseeing one of the most innovative business units. In this conversation, we talk about how she's using AI personally and professionally, how she's implementing AI across her organization at scale, and how she's even brought this home to build creative and educational projects with her kids. This is an episode that inspired me to go deeper and explore how I can be using technology and AI to buy back more time in my own life. Desiree shares how she's using AI in her day to day, how her organization is evolving, and even how she's encouraging safe AI exploration with her own kids.
• 1:07
  Desiree Motamedi: I remember vividly that I found out that I was pregnant during when F8 was going to be live. And I just felt this moment of panic because this was my responsibility. I felt like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this when I'm having a baby?
• 1:21
  Kevin Rice: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, parenting wins and fails, and everything in between. I'm your host, Kevin Rice. Here's today's episode. Desiree, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:35
  Desiree Motamedi: Of course. Thank you for having me.
• 1:38
  Kevin Rice: You've had one of the most comprehensive tech marketing careers of any guests that I've had on the show, going from Adobe to Google to Meta and Shopify. And now you're leading a 12 billion portfolio at Salesforce, leading the next gen platforms. So I'm so excited to talk with you about AI and how you're bringing that into your own career and your team and then also some of the ways that you're translating that to your personal life at home with your kids. But before we jump into technology and marketing and AI, let's just start with what life is like behind the scenes for you at home and specifically how did life change when you were at Google and you had your first son and your family started growing?
• 2:23
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, definitely. So I live in the Bay Area, born and raised. I'm married, I have two boys, 10 and 12. And I'm gonna say my house is chaotic at all times. It's a lot shuttling to sports events and school stuff and the summer stuff as well too with camps and everything. So we are quite busy here. And so yeah, my, I had my first son when I was at Google and I remember at that time I was probably working, I'm embarrassed to say this but close to like 60, 65 hour weeks and it was at a time where, you know, it was a high profile role even there at Google I was in the ads business and so I was kind of covering both APAC and Namia as well too. So I was available to anybody who needed me at the time. So I just remember being like, how am I going to do this with a, with a kid I just don't even know? And even also being married too at the time it was really challenging just to think about the balance at home. But I remember I ended up having a mentor who was amazing at Google who was like, dez, are you a doctor? Are you saving lives? And I remember thinking, oh wow, she's right. I need to stop thinking that everything is like important. I have to answer in the moment and I could probably get back to them the next day. And um, it, it took me a long time though to get that rhythm going and really kind of ground yourself in like hey, you know, wait a second, I don't need to get to this. In this moment, I can get back to somebody. So that was like the first lesson that I had. If someone was like, you know, you're not, this is not like earth shattering like you have to. Someone's life is on the line here. It's more about like you're working in adsdes, you can definitely respond to someone the next day or it's not so impressing. And that you're also setting a precedence also for the people who think that you're gonna respond in the moment every single time. And so that' else. That was also a new habit that I had to learn too. So started there and then you know, very honestly again I mentioned that I had some mentors. They really helped me show how they were balancing people who had families and people who were successful and was trying to grow in their career and that they were able to manage it with kids as well too. So I always looked up to them and I always asked them how they were doing it as well. And a lot of them set boundaries and a lot of them were really good at thinking like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, be done at work at like this time. And I have a bank of time, you know, between two or three hours and then I can come back online to follow up with anything. In fact, I have a personal memorandum that I send to my team that literally says, says that it literally mentions I'm gonna have dinner with my family, I can get back online later in the night. So if you need to catch up with anything or you wanna reach out to me, you can do that. So I've always kept that as my methodology of putting the boundaries in place and remembering that I'm not saving lives. That's it.
• 5:08
  Kevin Rice: It's a great reminder because I needed that reminder fairly often. My consultancy was building technology for restaurant brands and worst case scenario was somebody didn't get their pizza on time. So it's not life or death, but I, I can relate to the feeling of I need to get this done right away, I need to get back to this person. But like you said then you're just training your team to have the foresight to know, okay, I need this information but I might not get it in a day, so I need to plan ahead. If you're training them that you're going to get back to em right away, then they' always going to expect a response right away and they're not going to plan accordingly.
• 5:42
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, exactly. And it's also just, I think there's this fear of like, if you don't get back to someone then you're behind but at the same time they're also busy too. They're probably not waiting for you to respond in that moment, they're probably going to move on to the next thing until you do. So it's like it's just always having that in your back of your mind and sometimes of course things are pressing, but you just manage it the way you can for yourself.
• 6:07
  Kevin Rice: Yeah. Did, did that fear show up for you when you first had kids? And I know you had a very fast paced role at Google, right. That was a big change for you going from Adobe to Google. Did it, did it feel like I'm going to miss out in aspects of the company, my career growth? Did it feel like the tension was pulling you away or distracting you from growing in your career?
• 6:32
  Desiree Motamedi: You know, it's funny you say that I Didn't feel it so heavily at Google. I felt it more at Facebook than I did at Google. And I'll tell you the reason why. I think at Google we had a bigger team so that there was coverage while I was gone. Actually, I was like thinking as you were asking me that question, because when I was on mat leave, you're going to laugh at me. I had a whiteboard that had a list of projects I wanted to get done while I was on mat leave. But they were personal projects, they weren't like work projects. So I was trying to make a nice garden outside and doing some gardening. And then I also remodeled a park of our house at the time. Like, I remember I even started a small business where I was selling Apple chips because we had apples in our backyard. Like I was constantly on the go. But I just remember at Google I felt like I had a team that was there. So I didn't feel like I was missing out and people were keeping me up to date, you know, with friends and all that as well too. But when I was at Meta and I had my second child there, they actually had a really wonderful maternity leave. I was in charge of a division for developer marketing and I was covering our developer conference called F8. And. And I remember vividly that I found out that I was pregnant during when F8 was going to be live. And I just felt this moment of panic because this was my responsibility. I felt like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna do this when I'm having a baby? So I ended up having my baby, of course. But I did go to F8 a few weeks later. I actually decided to go cause it was my project and I really wanted to make it happen. But then I took the rest of my mat leave off. There was this moment of like, oh my gosh, if I'm not there, this is the thing that I've been working on. I felt like I had to be there and I now it's really funny. I give the exact opposite advice to everybody on my team who has kids. I always say, take the most amount of time. The team is going to be able to do everything you need to do. The work will still happen. You do not need to feel that you have to be here. It's really funny that I look back and I wish that I had that advice for myself and that I did take the time and that I knew that the show goes on. You know what I mean? The show always goes on. And especially when it comes to companies, they will still survive and do well,
• 8:37
  Kevin Rice: yeah, well, hindsight is 20 and now you're passing your learnings along to other people and hopefully they can learn from your experience. And that's kind of what this show is all about. So at Salesforce, you are overseeing one of the most innovative business units, if not the most innovative business unit at Salesforce. Talk to me a little bit about how you're using AI in your day to day. How do you use AI just on an average Tuesday, you know, free up your time or be more efficient? What does that look like for you? Just on a day to day basis?
• 9:06
  Desiree Motamedi: I am engrossed. I do it all day long, every day, all the time. And now it's starting to bleed into my personal life too, which has been great. It actually helps me go faster in a lot of aspects. So I'd say the number one thing is ideation and concepting. So as a marketer, we're always thinking about new narratives or new ways to position things or how we tell a story. So it's really been great to be, you know, a partner to kind of think through that ideation and creation. My team's portfolio is quite large, as we might, we might have talked about before, but I have different types of audiences as well across that portfolio. So you have to think about the dynamics of the industry that the customers are in, or the challenges that they're trying to solve, or the new hot thing that they're trying to, you know, figure out. So all of that, it's really nice to have a companion that can help you think and ideate and put some materials together that would really, you know, transcend. And then we, we also have to enable our sellers and, and of course our website and then how we write blogs and our press releases, it all comes together. So I'd say all of my day is around that. And then with my team as well too. When we do reviews, I'm, you know, when I look at the materials that they send over to me, I use it as a way to check, you know, say, is it hitting this, is it differentiated? Are we thinking about the competitive lens? Like always looking with that umbrella and then, you know, building a lot of presentations, building landing pages. I'm using that now as like a grid for how we want to lay out content and templates. And I mean, it's so nice to see this, this tool that from a marketing lens people really thought and had this fear that, oh, AI is going to completely wipe the marketing organization. Not at all. If anything, I feel like I have more tools in my tool belt, that I can actually move faster and that I can do things that I've never been able to do before. I think there's a lot of fear that think like, oh, my gosh, it's going to take my job. I don't. I actually don't feel that at all now. If anything, it's more that it's enhancing what I can do. It allows me to move faster and allows me to honestly, really ideate things that I never even thought I could think about, which is kind of cool or a different viewpoint or whatever it may be. So it's been, for me, I'm really loving this new transition from a marketing lens perspective, and I'm kind of excited about the future of where it's all going to go.
• 11:30
  Kevin Rice: Yeah. What you described of kind of using it as a thought partner, that's kind of where I'm at in terms of using AI. And I think that's where a lot of marketers are. Right. What's kind of the next level beyond that? If you think about how a marketer is going to develop in their own AI maturity level, one might be just kind of using a chat interface as a thought partner, kind of what's the next level after that and being able to really advance your skills.
• 11:56
  Desiree Motamedi: You know, it's so funny because at Salesforce, we actually pretty much gave cloud code to everyone in the company. And some people would be like, what? And some people are like, that's horrible. Like, some people are excited. And some people are like, that's crazy. And I think it's really interesting because one is there's not a lot of enablement. What's happening is, like, people are just kind of learning on their own. In fact, even for myself, I was completely on my own. But I was so curious and I wanted to figure it out because I could see that it had the power behind it. But what I'm starting to see is that people are moving into that next phase of the vibe coding part where they're trying to build these experiences that are helping them do multiple steps in, like, workflows or tasks, or being able to create things that are not just one asset, but multiple assets. And so, because our teams had access to cloud code, there's all these local host URLs that are popping up left and right. So that means that they're building these experiences, but only on their machines. And so the thing that I'm really focused on for my team now, I'm building a lot of the infrastructure for how we want to scale AI within the marketing Org. So I'll give you an example of this is that maybe you have an idea of creating an agent that can help you write content for different Personas or different voices within your company and organization. So they built out this really awesome experience where you can pick and choose and then it gives you an output. Well, if it's running locally on their machine, no one else can really play with it. So now in examples, we're building out a hosting model that anybody builds an agent. We have a centralized git repository now, so we have a git repo that everyone can put their projects in there and then we can host that on. We have a platform called Heroku, but it's VPN enabled so that it's only for our organization. What I'm starting to see out there too is that a lot of vibe coders, they have these things within their organization, but it's a local URL that anyone has access to. And it's like, oh my gosh, what if there's sensitive information in there from your company? So we're building that infrastructure first. So one is of course the hosting of the agent. The second also is login. So we can see who's doing what across these agents. We're also putting analytics in place, we can see how much usage is happening. And then we also have a feedback loop because you don't just build an agent and then move on, you're going to get feedback and you want to constantly evolve it and make it better and better. So we are really putting some of the foundational pieces in place to then scale. Because everything I'm seeing is that people are playing around and they're getting an idea of what this is possible. But it's really that next layer to then be able to do this where everyone can really start to use it every single day.
• 14:32
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, that's where I'm at. So you're starting to operationalize it more organizationally and add a governance layer. How do you see this evolving for your team over the next couple years?
• 14:43
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, I think the big thing is that now they're going to have these tools at their disposal that can allow them to go faster. As I mentioned, but then it really makes me think that these teams can then start to really concept and do things that were outside of the box of what they were always focused on before. I think that's how I feel, even for me and myself in my own career too, is that I've been a marketer leader across different parts of the business. And now I basically have these tools at my disposal that I can really think from, like, okay, I'm going to think about a field marketing lens. I'm going to think about the brand marketing lens. I'm going to think about the content marketing lens. And so I do think that that's kind of the new mantra for marketers is that all these tools are at this dispos that given the best of breed of what they're trying to do, but then they can concept and think differently and think outside the box or focus on a new problem. And that actually gets me excited. So I'll give you an example of something that I never have time to do, but I want to do. I just think that fundamentally the way that marketing is going to work, the way that we've always known from a digital standpoint, like going to a website and learning about someone's product and then putting your details in, I think that whole funnel is going to change. I don't think it's going to work that way anymore. And so as a marketer, you got to then start thinking differently about that too. So if agents are trying to make decisions on your behalf, what do you have to think about from that lens? What kind of content do you have to put out there? Is it focused the way that we build websites for humans today, or do you build websites that are made for agents now? So, like, it just changes the landscape of us as marketers and the way that can be successful for the business to run or the business to continue to grow. So I'm excited for that. Like these pivots that you start to think outside the box.
• 16:20
  Kevin Rice: Yeah. And the way marketers are experiencing the Salesforce products is changing as well, because now you're offering headless solutions and MCP integrations. And I've personally gotten to experience that through my small newsletter that I run where I connect Beehive into Claude, and I can manage the entire newsletter directly from Claude. So I'm pulling analytics with cohort reports where I can look at new subscribers from last week and their open rates versus subscribers that subscribed two months ago. And I could be looking at is it the ads that are bringing new subscribers into it from this week versus two weeks ago? And I could do this all within Claude, and I'm rarely actually looking at the dashboards that I used to live inside because I used to manage Salesforce Marketing Cloud instances. And if I were doing that today, I probably wouldn't even be inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud. I'd just be Running it from Claude or whichever platform I was using.
• 17:17
  Desiree Motamedi: We are really excited with Headless. It is honestly been such a success out of the gates when we announced it, and a lot of it, if you think about it, and I'm not trying to slight it in any way, but the Salesforce UI hasn't historically changed fundamentally since the beginning.
• 17:32
  Kevin Rice: I started using Sales cloud in like 2006.
• 17:36
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So if you look and log in today, it doesn't look that much different than what it was even then. And so I think the power of Headless just opens up a. A big, big door for us. And as you just said, you're working in Claude, you're able to now connect these things and that you can get the data that you want right at your fingertips. It's so powerful now, it just changes the game of you're no longer having to log into a UI and do all the clicks that you have to do. You literally can ask what you want to do in natural language and it basically does the exact thing that you're asking for. And so. And it gives you the information and it might even give you the information in a more beautiful way. So in my head, we see this big opportunity because all the things that you can connect now, it's not just the core Salesforce platform, but we have, you know, MCPS for Tableau, you have an MCP for Slack, you have an McP for our Data360 product, and the list goes on. So all these things that historically have been, not that they're complex when you log into it, but it's just the fact that it has such power underneath the hood. You're now going to be able to do that all through these different IDE surfaces. And it just is so exciting. And so why I'm also excited too is our own existing customer base is like, sign me up. But it's now starting to attract people who have never even thought about Salesforce. And I think that's what's exciting too, is that all of a sudden now we have these developers who are like, wait a second, I can get all that power of what Salesforce does. Because if you think about it, the power of what we do for the last 27 years, it's all the workflows. We know exactly what customers are doing across every surface. And like, again, knowing how a business runs across the integrations and the data that you have, it just changes the landscape for everyone. So, yeah, we're really excited. We think that this is going to be a new opportunity In a big way.
• 19:23
  Kevin Rice: It's a tremendous shift because I think about how we used to have teams managing Salesforce marketing cloud for large chain restaurants and we'd have a five or six person team, different roles, different specialties and they would each have a specific function and that's how we would build out large campaigns. And it kind of flips that and it gives a lot more power to the campaign manager or marketer when they can interface with the platform in a more natural language way a hundred percent
• 19:52
  Desiree Motamedi: I think now as we all know, a lot of large companies or even you know, mid sized too, all their data is scattered across their organization literally from they might have a Salesforce instance, but they probably also have maybe a data lake or a data warehouse. They have an ERP system. They might even have an on prem database that they might still have as well too, let's be honest. But now in this world of, you know, agents and MCPs, a lot of these folks are basically going in that direction. So you can connect the data across your Org and then you have access to all this richness as you said as a marketer that you can now segment and personalize and do everything. But more importantly it's at your fingertips. You would have to swivel chair. You would have to use multiple different people within an organization to do the most basic things that you would always like. I just want to do this myself and versus having to be relying on a bunch of different teams. And so I just think it opens a new window and it's really exciting.
• 20:47
  Kevin Rice: Agreed. You talked a little bit about governance because if you've got a whole team building, probably hundreds of agents you need some sort of oversight into how are you actually managing that across all of your teams? And then I'm really interesting how this shows up for you at home when you have a son that's also using AI. How do you think about governance as it translates to your kids and at home?
• 21:13
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, yeah. So again the power of where you work for a big company we have these amazing tools at our disposal. So Slack is awesome only because from an employee standpoint you can connect everything to the agents that we're building today. So that also just helps us see who's using what. Then we also have like layers of governance across the Salesforce platform. So we have things like where it's access controls based off of the groups that you're in or it's also data governance too. You only have access to certain documents. Not everyone has access to documents as well too. We're also Google shop. So same thing as you add permissions when you add someone's email address, it's the same thing. So we have that layer as well too. But even within the Org, with agents even getting access to these documents, we put those parameters in place as well too. We don't want where every agent then has access to personal information or whatever it may be as well. So we have lots of sophisticated tools. Like even with Informatica, they have governance that goes beyond the Salesforce walls, which is really cool from a data lens perspective. So we have lots of things at our disposal, which is pretty amazing. And then from the home life right now we have a shared computer, so we have a Google folder for all the projects that we're working on. And so we basically have those permissions in place as well too. My husband also has on their devices they have iPads as well that we can actually monitor, you know, a little bit of like the apps that they're on and you know, what they're actually doing every day. Because I think that's important too. You do want to make sure that you're seeing when they are online, where are they going online as well. And then it allows us just to have conversations with them too, like, oh, we saw that you were downloading a new game. What's this game about? You know, just allows that conversation, which I think is super important.
• 22:58
  Kevin Rice: Yeah. Do your kids have access to Claude or ChatGPT or any tools like that?
• 23:05
  Desiree Motamedi: They do, but my. My personal accounts. So that's why I say we have the shared computer so they log in online. And that's the beauty of these platforms too. You can actually see what they're actually typing in the prompts because there's that left hand nav that you can see all the things that they're asking. So it is interesting because I do think eventually we're going to have to have our own profiles because I can see where when I'm doing it personally, it merges with theirs as like a memory. So I think we're going to have to create some different profiles very soon.
• 23:34
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, I just think there's an interesting thing about how these applications are built to kind of create a connection between the software and the individual and they tend to kind of placate you or like kind of always side with you. I don't know if you've experienced that, but if I'm having like a challenge in a friendship or relationship and I'm asking for guidance, it kind of always takes my side. And you know As I think about my kids, there is a little bit of a fear if they're going into these platforms and asking for, you know, life advice. I kind of fear what kind of advice they're going to get back.
• 24:20
  Desiree Motamedi: That is so. You know, it's funny you say that. I have noticed that because I've also asked questions too. Just personal things or with friends or whatever, or a scenario. Right. And I, I wasn't sure if it was, as you said, siding with me per se, but, like, just giving it to me straight. But now I'm going to go test that out.
• 24:38
  Kevin Rice: Well, so one of my good friends, he was telling me about how he had an argument with his significant other and he shared his side of the story. And basically it came back and said, you're right in these ways. And then he had his partner put in her side of the story and she said, well, you're right in these ways and this is why he's wrong. And so the platform's really designed to keep you. You attach to it instead of challenging your thinking, I guess, unless you ask it to challenge your thinking. But some of those things I kind of. And like, we hear these stories about kids who have been guided in misguided ways. And so there's just like a little bit of fear. And my son's 10, so he's getting to the point where, yeah, these tools are going to be a part of his life soon. And so I'm just trying to get educated on how to introduce them in the safest way.
• 25:30
  Desiree Motamedi: I do wonder in time, because all the models also don't give you the same answer. Could there be a model that ends up being a bit more, as you said, in the middle, versus being more sighted to one. I'm really curious to see if that happens or if someone actually builds something that makes it that way because of that. So, yeah, yeah, really curious.
• 25:49
  Kevin Rice: Sometimes they do give you the same thing. I have a friend who still owns an agency and he was telling me about how his team used ChatGPT to come up with a pitch and they did their pitch for a consumer, consumer brand. And the brand side team, their jaws just dropped because they were like, we just got this same exact pitch two hours ago from another agency. And so both agencies uploaded the brief, probably relied too much on the outputs, didn't include a lot of their own original thinking, and they went into the room and they presented the same exact pitch.
• 26:25
  Desiree Motamedi: It's so funny you say that because when we first came out of the gates with Agent Force on the Salesforce side, I think the big thing that people were questioning is like, LLMs, you know, it's going to be all beige. Like, everything's going to be beige. And what I mean by that is it's all going to be the same, same, same. Right. I think the power of what makes it unique and different is the context that you give it. Right. So not just the brief, but then it's like all the background behind it as well, too. And so if that agency was smart, it would be like, let's talk about our relationship with this, folks. And like, like the history of our relationship with the company that they're working with or like, what's the history of all their, you know, you know, digital ads that they did before in the past, or like, putting more of that information in there, you might get a different answer. But if they just put a brief in and then expect an answer, that's like, so amazing, that's on them.
• 27:18
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, yeah. You're. You're missing a lot of the power of it because, you know, it's not plug and play. It's a thought partner as you described earlier. Right. So you still have to come to the table with a point of view and then use it as a partner to develop your point of view. And that's kind of in any way that you're using these tools.
• 27:36
  Desiree Motamedi: A hundred percent. I just think that context is the most important way to think about using these LLMs. The more you give it and the prompts that we put in, I remember when I first started out, you start with like one or two sentences. My prompts now are usually like two paragraphs long. Just getting started because I'm trying to give it as much context as possible. And I think that if anybody wants to be successful, that you have to always think in that way. Think that this is someone who doesn't know anything, but you're trying to give it as much information that you know that's going to be valuable as you get the output out.
• 28:06
  Kevin Rice: Hi, Kevin here. If you're enjoying this conversation and you know someone else who's working to grow in their career while staying present at home, I'd really love it if you could share this episode with them. It's one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they're proud of without missing the moments that matter most. So you're managing a very large organization, a team. You've got two boys at home. Have you found any ways that you're using Some of these tools in your own personal life to maybe streamline your day to day at home life to give you more time for your own hobbies or for time with your kids.
• 28:41
  Desiree Motamedi: Yes,
• 28:44
  Kevin Rice: tell me about it.
• 28:45
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, so I started building my Desiree OS probably about a month ago now. I got really inspired by someone I had seen online that had talked about over break, like Christmas break, by the way, so six months ago, where they had set up open club, but really specifically around, like, their health first. So they uploaded all their blood work and uploaded all of their tests over the years. And the agent kept saying, you need to drink more water. But then he set it up where the OpenCloud could see all his video cameras within their house. And so all of a sudden the agent was nudging him of like, he was at his desk working and had been there for like four hours and was like, you need to go get up and get water. And so all of a sudden he got up and went into the refrigerator, got the water. And then this is the best part, he went, and the agent wrote, good job. Keep. Keep it up.
• 29:36
  Kevin Rice: That's great.
• 29:37
  Desiree Motamedi: I know. So I got inspired by that and I decided to create my Desiree os. So I did upload, like, my blood work and all my history of my health. I also added all my financial stuff recently, so all my 401ks over the different years. And then the best part is it actually found that I didn't have beneficiaries for some of my accounts, which I thought was great that it caught that. Cause I didn't know. I thought it already had been set up. So that was a. A big, like, win for me that I missed that. And then I'd say the other one is around my calendar. And I think that one has been, like, magical. So my husband now has access to my personal calendar, but he also has my work calendar. They can't see, like, what the meetings are, but he can see where I'm blocked. And then we have it in this, like, centralized agent, which is really great. So we can see who's available when and all that. And that we can actually manage our life with all the summer camps and everything else that's coming up. So that's been also a big win. So, yeah, now I have like, a beautiful dashboard. I log in, it tells me, like, how I'm doing, what's going on with my financials. Hey, this is coming up. I also actually set it up where it's also helping me with my social media posts. So, like, if I want to put something on LinkedIn from a personal side or from a work perspective or on X. It's now starting to give me that as well too. So it's been, it's been fun, it's been really fun to like make it and create it.
• 30:57
  Kevin Rice: That's great. Yeah, I got pretty into Health maybe four years ago. I, I've probably lost 40 pounds since then. And when I started, I went out to one of those big clinic, like a longevity clinic and spent a lot of money doing comprehensive testing, everything you could possibly test. And at the end I got back maybe 300 pages of PDF documents on reports. So I uploaded it at the time into ChatGPT and had it analyze it for me and it went through and it gave me feedback on my diet, my exercise routine, sleep, like basically everything. And then the next step of this process with this clinic was to meet with their doctor. So when I went in, I said, okay, here's all the things that I'm looking to adjust. And she's like, yeah, that's pretty much everything I would have told you to do. And then I met with their licensed dietitian and I was like, okay, here's the things I think I'm gonna add. What do you think? And she's like, yeah, that's pretty much everything. She's like, maybe you could add some sauerkraut to your diet. It. And I was like, okay. So basically that's all the additional layer I can get beyond what these platforms can diagnose and the information they can give me. I was blown away.
• 32:12
  Desiree Motamedi: It is remarkable. I truly think I'm seeing that same thing. You put something in there like, wow, it really understands the most interesting basic things about you and your body, but then gives you some really good advice around it. Actually it made me think that the world of medicine is going to change so drastically as well too do just because we've been so reliant on just getting that doctor meeting and trying to figure out what it is. The self dosing though and self diagnosis is also kind of worrying me a little bit. But at the same time it gives you a good direction and I think that's the way to think about it. And so I've been really impressed with just some minor things I put in there that I'm like, oh man, they're calling out something that I absolutely need to take care of. So yeah, it's really great to have it at your disposal.
• 32:56
  Kevin Rice: I also try to use it a lot for just kind of my weekend planning. One of the Things that happens is I put so much attention to detail into planning my work schedule. So everything's color coded. 30 minutes blocks so much foresight goes into planning my work. Then it's the weekend, oh, we have two and a half days. What are we going to do together? And so I use it as a thought partner to figure out, okay, I want to work on my, with my kids on like resilience this weekend or I want to have some really good connection time. And obviously it knows my kids pretty well because I've told it a lot about my personal life. And then it'll help me brainstorm like a structure for the weekend that gives enough downtime for the kids to kind of decompress and then some time for us to like, you know, good ideas for activities and then it'll pull what's happening in our area. So there's like local events. And I found it really helpful it in making better use of my family time together.
• 33:53
  Desiree Motamedi: I love that. I know I'm feeling like it's more just organization right now for me, which has been nice on just the calendars because our calendars are bananas. But I love that you put so much time into it. I hate to say this, I don't, I wish I did. But something else that you reminded me of as well is that I remember when I was at Google, I, there was a mentor of mine that I was like, how does she prep for these meetings? Because my schedule literally is from, you know, morning till evening. I'm in back to back meetings and I always question, I was like, how does she come to these meetings prepared and knows exactly what to do? So I asked her, I said, how do you do this? She goes, I don't prepare, I just go in. And I remember thinking, wait, what? And so that, that was it for me. I, I'm doing the same exact thing now. And I think the thing is that for me in these meetings there's so much context that already happens and I, I catch up based off of the conversations that we're having and then it just continues from there. So I've now realized that I'm really good at jumping into something and then figuring out and problem solve if we need to or whatever the next step is. If it's like a customer meeting, of course I'll prep for that because you want to make sure that you know what the details are of that customer. But most internal meetings, I don't do a lot of prep anymore. I literally just jump in and we problem solve in the moment and Figure it out.
• 35:11
  Kevin Rice: Yeah. You have such this strong passion for building and obviously there's a lot of curiosity and creativity. How do you turn it off at night? Like how do you not come home, spend time with your kids and then want to get right back on and, you know, keep building something?
• 35:27
  Desiree Motamedi: You know, it's funny, I have a lot of people ask me that actually. I probably get that question at least once or twice a week. A lot of it's honestly my own interest. So of course when you want to wind down, people watch TV or read a book or. And I, of course I do those things. But if I'm really interested in something, I'm going to make it happen. I'm one of those people that just wants to figure it out until I get it done. So a lot of this stuff of building these agents for myself really came from that idea of I could make my life simpler. Like how cool is it that I could actually have this at my disposal. A lot of us get so busy that we forget about our own selves. You just said our careers, our money, our health. We just put it to this wayside because of our careers. Right. And so now having a place where, where I feel like I can actually get more visibility in it and that it also helps me ideate around it and also just be thoughtful about it, I think is amazing. So it just changes the way that I think about me and myself. And especially at a certain age, you're like, okay, I wanna feel like I have more control over that versus having to do the work and effort around it. So now it just feels like it's there and I love that I have that now and being just more deliberate. So for me, in the evenings, if I'm working on something, it's because I'm excited to get it done. And then I'll of, you know, close down. I will say this, I do read at night. It is my way to wind down. Sometimes I read online though, and then I have course books too. But typically it's online.
• 37:02
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, I mean it's, it's not work. If you wouldn't otherwise, if you wouldn't like if that's what you actually want to be doing. Because it fills you up, right. If you wouldn't otherwise be. Want to be doing something else. You mentioned that becoming a parent was kind of like a forcing function for you. It sounds like it forced you to really prioritize. You knew you had a certain amount of time every day and you would get done what you could get done. Were there other Aspects of becoming a parent. That changed in how you led your teams at work?
• 37:33
  Desiree Motamedi: You know, I. I think I became a little bit more structured and organized and. And the only reason I say this is that a lot of the places I was working at, we were always flying at the seat of our pants all the time. Um, so I tried to be a little bit more, you know, prepared for, like, things I knew that were going to be, you know, upcoming. I always had like a bank of 20% of, like, we might have something come at us at the last minute, so we should always prepare and plan for that. So I did start to put some time allocation for the team. It also kind of transcends into your personal life. That always happens too. Someone gets sick or, you know, last minute travel with my husband's schedule or whatever it may be. So I feel like that did come through with how I was organizing the team structure as well and just thinking, like, hey, we always have to prepare. Something comes at us at the last minute. So that was the biggest thing, is not thinking in the week, but thinking three weeks or four weeks ahead of making sure that we had the right people in place or support in place to get the work done.
• 38:32
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, I think for me, parenting didn't quite come naturally. It was something I had to spend a lot of time working at. Whereas in my professional career, a lot of that structure and processes and frameworks really ties into my kind of logical brain. And it came very naturally. And so I had to figure out, okay, how do I translate what I do understand into this kind of new role at home that is a little bit more foreign to me? And so I did take a lot of my leadership skills. Like, I created frameworks for myself at home. I started looking at things in the stages of a maturity model. Did you translate any of your kind of, like, career skills that you had been developing into motherhood, or was motherhood just something that came very naturally to you?
• 39:24
  Desiree Motamedi: Well, it's so funny you say that. I feel like my husband always tries to remind me, like, when I'm at home, you know, don't forget you're a mom. You're not, you know, managing a team at home. So I do have to remind myself sometimes it's really just the, you know, really being mindful when you get home to be, like, not in work mode, if that makes sense. And so my son just got back his grades for the end of year, and he did great. He had all A's and one B. And in that one B, I went and looked at A little bit more to see what was going on. And he had a couple grades on there that were not great. And so instead of saying, you know, this was awesome, you did such a great job, I was like, why? Why? What's going on here? I started there first, which was like, I felt so bad. And my husband looked at me, he's like, dez, stop with work mode. And it's not like I don't do that to my team that I always celebrate the team, but I also look at it with a lens of like, how could we be better next time? And always like lead with that a little bit. So now I'm trying to just make sure that I'm being thoughtful and stop and celebrate and then give the feedback. So that's just something that is, is coming in, you know, trying to keep working on it, I should say.
• 40:41
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, I think I always found that in my work it was all about productivity. And then sometimes coming home, that productivity tendency would actually distract from. What we really needed was just me being present and having connection time with the kids. And if my kids were acting up, which I have two, I have three boys and there's a lot of energy in the house too. So when they act up, my, my first reaction is to like correct it and fix this. And I've had to like slow down a lot and remember that that's kind of what little boys are supposed to do. And so if I connect with them first, the correction happens a lot more naturally.
• 41:22
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, I definitely notice. Also, I, I try to keep my devices away when I am spending time with them. I don't want them to feel that my attention is not there and present with them. So I've noticed now that like especially at night as they're getting ready for bed, I purposely put like my device away and my computer away and anything like that and really go and you know, be present. Let's talk about the next day. What are you excited about? What are you doing? Just kind of doing that one on one time with them. And it means so much to me. It just feels like a connection that as kids are going to grow so fast and you feel like it's fleeting now. And I know that's crazy to say this, but I always think to myself, because I have a 10 and 12 year old, I'm like, okay, I have six years left with my oldest, I have eight years left with my youngest. And it's a horrible thing to think, but at the same time it's only because I love them so much and I Want to spend as much time with them as possible.
• 42:12
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, I'm already starting to notice it where I want to do a family evening and my oldest son is like, well, I want to go over to a friend's house tonight. I'm like, oh, but I really want some family time.
• 42:24
  Desiree Motamedi: No, I know. It's already happening, by the way. I think it's just. I think there's this moment of setting in your head of like, they're just not gonna be in the house with you or they're gonna be somewhere or traveling or whatever. You know what I mean? It's just all these things go through your head. But at the same time now I'm trying to really make it important to spend that quality time. Like, we're gonna go on vacation for the summer and I'm so excited because we're gonna have so much one on one time. And those moments matter so much more to me, and I try to plan for them as much as possible because it's so special, you know, so. Yeah.
• 42:56
  Kevin Rice: Yeah. Well, you also told me a little bit about some of the projects that you have going on with your kids, which is a great way to, one, you know, build connection, two, prepare them for the future. And then also three, you're also kind of like scratching your own itch of learning, more specifically in this case around AI too. So I'd love for you to tell our audience about what you're working on with your kids.
• 43:19
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah, so I. I probably threw myself into AI from the beginning, but really got excited with like, Claude code probably, I'd say six months ago. Ish. Now more than that, actually. And it really kind of came into a head where I had all these projects coming at me and I felt like, how am I going to get this all done? And a friend was like, why are you not using Claude? And at Salesforce, where I work, we actually are a Google deployment, so we have Gemini and we. We have some tools at our disposal. But Claude was something that I had heard, but I had never really, like, put more into it. So I did. And I just got mesmerized by what you're able to build with vibe coding and all these things that I've always imagined in my head. Now I have it at my disposal. So my oldest, Sebastian, started to see that I was like, really spending a lot of time in building things. And he got really excited. He was like, I want to do this, but where it started at. And it's actually kind of a funny story. So he's part of A program called Curious Cardinals. And it's a great, great program. It's a mentoring program where college students and from universities across the U.S. connect with your kids. And it's mostly based on like their interests and what they like to build and all that. So Sebastian had been part of this program for a few years and so he's like, mom, I really want to do build an agent, but I want someone to help me. So we went through the program through Curious Cardinals and they matched us with this awesome NYU graduate for computer science and he built an after hours agent, that trading agent basically, so for stock. And so because he's 12, he can't have a brokerage account. So it was paper trades. So he used an alpaca API and built this really cool interface. And he worked with this NYU graduate to build it. And so that was his first taste of like seeing what's possible. He learned cursor and replit and I was so proud seeing him have the interest in wanting to build it. So this is the best part. So he started, started out I think with fake money, you know, 100k. But when you log in today, I think he's made like 68,000. So it's 168,000 now. And by the way, these are real trades. And I was like, I wish I gave him more money. I gave him more real money, you know. So that was his first like taste of it. And then this summer we really, really wanted, he wanted to kind of build a YouTube channel and I was like, great, let's do some AI characters. So last weekend we spent some time together using actually chatgpt and we built these characters that were made out of cereal boxes and they all had different names like Sugar Loops and Frost Veil. So really, really fun characters. And so he built that with me and it was just so cool to see he just has such an interest. Now he's learning how to use AI video tools. We've been using Google Veo. He also used nanobanana. But the problem with nanobanana is it's only 10 seconds. So he's trying to see what other tools are out there that he can stitch it together. But he's so excited creating this YouTube channel called the Serial Wives of Breakfast Hills. So it's just hilarious and I'm so proud that he just is into it and I think the curiosity is what's so exciting to watch. So yeah, it's really fun.
• 46:28
  Kevin Rice: Yeah, that, I mean it's so creative. It's fostering his curiosity and just passion for Learning. I think when we give kids an opportunity to learn about something they're interested in, then they can take it so much further versus just kind of shoving traditional. I mean obviously you need to learn core curriculum, but I love the like child led learning approach and sometimes those after school home projects are the best way to do it.
• 46:54
  Desiree Motamedi: Yeah. And it also gives us time to spend together as well too, which has been so great. So he, he'll come to me and ask me questions even before school ended. It's like, hey mom, I'm trying to figure this out. Do you know if can chatgpt do this for me or whatever it may be? And it's just, it's really great that his mind is expanding in that way of like, wait, I can ask it this and it can give me these answers. And it's so funny when I do find him on YouTube, I always think he's gonna be watching like crap stuff, but he's actually watching science and learning. And it's so fascinating to see that he has this interest which is so great. So he's gonna be on Jeopardy. One day and he's gonna know every answer. Cuz he just knows all the most random knowledge which is pretty amazing.
• 47:34
  Kevin Rice: That's so fun. So where do you go with this next? As you are preparing your son for a future that's really hard, hard to see what it's going to look like when he graduates in six years and kind of goes off to his own, how are you preparing him for that future? And is this AI education a big part of what you think he needs to be successful in the future?
• 47:55
  Desiree Motamedi: Actually, it's really funny. I think about this all the time. The big thing I really focus on with both kids is about human connection. And what I mean by that is that when they meet a new person or someone that I know and we're out and about, I always tell them to look at people in their eyes and always shake their hand and ask them questions and ask how they're doing and really try to make that the most important part. Because AI will never be able to do that. Human connection is so powerful in a way that will always transcend no matter what. And so for me that's like the most important piece. I think then on top of that they're going to have the skills that they're going to focus on. That I think will be interesting. So is AI a part of that? If that's what they would love to do, absolutely. But I think it's that human connection first on top of whatever they're really interested in. So I love that he loves AI cause I do too. And that he's gonna learn the fundamentals of it. My youngest though, he loves video games. Right now that's what he's really enjoying. But I always say that whatever they wanna focus on, they need to first think about the relationships that they build and also that connection that you make with people. Cause it's such an important vector. I think there's a lot of kids who literally sit in front of their devices all day long and don't even look up to the world. And so for me it's like really making sure, sure that stays intact. My parents also taught that with me. Maybe it's just part of our culture that, you know, you always say hello to someone, make them feel like they're welcome and warmed with the relationship that you build with them. But I just think that's such an important part of growing up and moving on into the world and being successful as well too.
• 49:28
  Kevin Rice: I completely agree. So for any other marketers that are kind of maybe just using, using chat based AI tools and they want to take the next step, like what are some simple things that they can do to start developing those skills?
• 49:44
  Desiree Motamedi: Go to YouTube, say I'm learning ChatGPT or I'm learning Codex, or I'm learning cloud code, or I'm learning any platform. Anything that you're interested in. If you want to build AI videos, if you want to build AI characters, if you want to build any, anything. The web is full of resources. And I think that's the thing that becomes so apparent to me and even in my journey. When I started out, I did not think I was a developer. I wasn't technical. I mean, I was technical to some extent, but not in the way that most people who've coded all their years. I am mesmerized by what's out there and that if you have the interest and the curiosity and the drive, you can make anything happen, truly. So as a marketer, I would say if you're interested in this stuff, go look at the stuff that's out there today. There's some amazing influencers that are doing some really awesome stuff from like getting started and you know, with showing how the skills work or you know, showing like what they build. And I think that's so powerful to have at your fingertips. So I would really push people to think in that way.
• 50:49
  Kevin Rice: Amazing. Well, Desiree, thank you so much for joining today. I really enjoyed hearing your story of how you've brought AI into different aspects of your life and how it's enriched those different aspects of your life. You really inspired me to go a little bit deeper and to try to learn some new things in how I can apply AI to my own life. And congratulations to your son with all the after hours trading success that he's having. And I can't wait to see the serial housewives of Breakfast Hills come to life. So thank you again. I appreciate you for joining.
• 51:20
  Desiree Motamedi: Thank you. I appreciate it. This has been a fun conversation. I really appreciate your time too.
• 51:24
  Kevin Rice: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We've got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow and stay tuned.