Latest / Matt Brown Show - Conversations That Power The Business World. / MBS990 - The AI Advantage: Marketing Smarter, Not Bigger with Jessica Zall

Transcript

MBS990 - The AI Advantage: Marketing Smarter, Not Bigger with Jessica Zall · Matt Brown Show - Conversations That Power The Business World.

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody and welcome back to yet another cracking edition of the Map Around Show.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this is the AI Advantage Series.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking to business leaders all about the impacts of AI on the industry.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And with us in the hot seat today is none other than Jessica Zoll.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: She is the chief marketing officer of a pretty awesome firm called Burford Capital.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jess, welcome to the show.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Matt.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to it.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of set I kind of set you up to hit it out the park.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But uh what's the uh what's the elevator pitch for uh Burford Capital?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are you guys up to there?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: We are a litigation finance firm.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So um basically what we are doing is um providing finance to law firms and companies that have litigation, who are plaintiffs in um lawsuits, generally very big lawsuits, company against company, company against government, et cetera, that don't that if they're a law firm, either um, you know, need kind of that recurring cash flow or as a company don't want to um you know disrupt their balance sheet, their income state that they can seek funding um for litigation in which they are a plaintiff um and you know it's paid back if there's a win, it's not if there's a loss.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very interesting niche market that is becoming non-niche.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're a three-time CMO.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this must be quite a different uh challenge for you, right?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of go-to-market marketing strategy, and obviously now, you know, uh with AI being in the picture as well.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a it's a new business.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have never been involved in the legal sector, with the exception of my father did trade me as a paralegal when I was in high school and college in case I ever needed a job.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that is my brush with the law, and that is all about real estate law.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a very new market for me.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it's not.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been marketing um upmarket to uh CFOs, general counsel, CEOs, um, CTOs, et cetera, throughout my career.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's always been in um, you know, very um sophisticated environments, complex products, sophisticated personas, B2B sales led.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a huge difference.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I would just say kind of the legal aspect is new to me, uh, but it's very exciting because it's it's it's a new area um to learn.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really the same type of marketing.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we're really at at our company embracing AI um quite heavily as well.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really trying to do a lot from a marketing perspective by bringing different AI tools in to help um our marketing team really punch above its weight.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I think it also sort of uh created a sort of a category in and of itself, right?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like legal finance.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I know that's probably not that's sort of more like the direction of it.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um but when you've got a$7.2 billion portfolio, I mean, something, something's going on there.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is working for sure.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Legal finance, I again I'm new to this industry from the legal perspective, but I want to say it's probably been around for maybe a good 20 years.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I know we've been in existence for about 15, 16.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was involved in litigation finance or legal finance um in my last company where I was CMO, where we were in the private credit space, and litigation finance or legal finance is a sub-asset class of private credit that people are looking to invest in um in order to seek yield in these topsy turvy markets.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's on the rise.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, again, being new to this, I just see this kind of continuing.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let's change gears and sort of double-click on um AI and stuff like that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So as you touched on, you're relatively new to to Burford, and obviously it's about, you know, now putting together a sort of a roadmap that's, you know, probably I would imagine sort of somewhat AI enabled, um, so that you can kind of create the sort of growth and impact that you're looking for.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um, with that said, um, where is the sort of leadership team around the adoption of AI in the specific um niche of legal finance?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've spoken just to just FYI, I've spoken to a lot of uh law firm owners over the last like month or so.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's a lot of um fear, uncertainty, and doubt around where to start, you know, whether they should adopt AI at all.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if they do, to what extent?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, if you can replace the if you can get 50 associates to do discovery, which used to take them three days, now eight minutes, how do you recoup the billable time?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's all these sorts of things.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's the what is the future of are you gonna need a law firm in in the future?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying like you guys are a law firm, but yeah, I'm saying like you're servicing these sorts of companies.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So walk us through like broad brush strokes, where is the sort of thinking and um mindset around uh AI usage at the firm?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna talk about it from a couple different way angles.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not gonna touch the law firm side because again, I don't I don't I don't deal in that and I know all the the chatter going on, but I also hear and see all of the new technologies and platforms that are arising for the legal space.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: The ads are plastered around all of New York City, which is which is where I I live.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um from an overall Burford Capital perspective, um, we are doubling down on technology and AI to allow us to grow and expand over the next five years, mainly from you know, like a workflow perspective, um, from a content creation perspective, from an analysis perspective.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: But also there's a ton of information that we need to bring into our business, our systems that will allow us with a better targeted go-to-market approach, right?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's just a ton of data out there.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that is something that that we that we value from a number of different perspectives.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Without getting into kind of the the the legal or proprietary stuff here at Burford Capital, think about it from a go-to-market perspective, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's thousands of cases that are being filed, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's different types of things happening out there in the market to, and there's 20 million data sources for it, right?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a number of different target audiences, different types of companies that we need to pull data from.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So think about all of that data coming in to feed your CRM and your information systems to allow you to have the sharpest, most targeted, most segmented go-to-market approach from a regional and global perspective.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we are looking at it like that.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a number of other things.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm four months in here.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: So just getting to understand the business.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a number of different things that we have created from, you know, data models, um, quantitative models that help us um predict and understand pricing, um, you know, win-loss rates of cases, et cetera.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of work going on that side.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not really involved in that.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm also new here.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I apologize.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think the screen just froze on me.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I don't want to say too much on that.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: From a marketing perspective, that's where I'm really looking at a lot of AI because our research team sits within marketing and that fuels the go-to-market strategy.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where there is just so much information out there, like I said, about the legal community, about litigation, about cases, about trends that are happening in the industry, you know, from um trying to think of certain things without, you know, giving away anything.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, let's just say, for example, right, XYZ hospital system is suing X ABC insurance company, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all of that stuff is being filed out there, is being talked about out there.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's stuff that we want to know about, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because those are that's our target audience.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: So be able to take all of that news, all of that, all of those filings, all of the information about the law firms and the companies, and be able to um filter that into the company to then make sure to then create and adapt um very targeted go-to-market um strategies is really, really instrumental.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you don't necessarily need these huge teams to do it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: When you have AI and you've got the right workflow technology, that doesn't mean you need this team of 10 people.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: You may need a couple people.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it might be more senior people that understand how to use that information, with junior people kind of pulling together that information.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So gone are the days for me of big marketing teams in B2B, sales-led, sophisticated, complex product environments.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now are the days of AI and technology and more senior teams with some junior people to be able to um, you know, uh uh massage and adapt that information, um, that technology to spit out strategy and programs.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys play?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose you play around a lot with sort of deep research models and stuff like that.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I am not involved in that space.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that would be our quant team.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to, I want to tread lightly on that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we have a quant team.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've got our own proprietary models.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: We sit on a lot of data ourselves as well.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you think about you know what we do from a financing and a litigation perspective.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fascinating.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think it's I don't think we've ever had the ability to do discovery, you know, or research um as effectively and and as at speed as we can today.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think, you know, it's fascinating to hear, you know, the sort of you know, breadcrumbs of how you guys are approaching go-to-market and growth because it's so data intensive, um, and it's it's predictability almost, right?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then being able to understand the context within which a law firm is having an issue, and then being able to reach out to them in a way that's like hyper-personalized with uh with something that they go, oh snap, how the hell did you guys know that?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's this it's kind of like um I love I love this analogy, like you can't sell the ambulance unless you've sold the car crash.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think the the role of data and AI in every instance, we've we've never been able to um um, you know, as best sell perspective, you know, um, than than what than what we are today.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think before there was so much data in so many firms, we just didn't have the ability to build our own models to now express these things visually or to be able to change the way that we think about innovation or go to market or segmentation or messaging and so on.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So and think about it too.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is, you know, we've really created this category, right?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we are the leader in what we do.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we're really trying to bring this to the mainstream of legal finance as a tool in the toolkit of the CFO and that organization, right?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: If of course still selling into law firms, but law firms know a lot more now around legal finance, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because that is supporting their cash flow.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um on the corporate side, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's still a very new nascent thing, and it's not at the top of mind of CFOs.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where, again, like you just said, really using the data from all of these multiple sources and also getting access to the information of these individuals within these companies and create using that and then creating, again, using AI to also work to create the messaging and the program and the content around that, so that as a market action happens, you can automatically surface this content in front of them, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, we're marketing to C-level sophisticated bigger companies, right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so we got to meet them where they are.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, you still need to be able to saturate them in all of the places that they go so that they're continuously thinking about legal finance, Burford Capital, et cetera.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: How would how do you think we get we're getting, I mean, as a sort of a, I don't know, um, a business leadership community, do you feel like we are over reliant on AI, or do you think we we might get to a place where we're over-reliant on AI doing the sort of you know, high value thinking uh for us?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things I keep hearing from a number of uh leaders is that, you know, even if you have the world's best data, yeah, and you're building your own models, it's very hard to prevent things like bias or uh hallucinations.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I spoke to the head of uh AI for Salesforce yesterday, and it's you know, these are these guys are building agent force and whatever, and like the most hardcore like workflow agency stuff.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um and and it's a reality, you know.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's not like it's not it's not good enough to say, well, you know, in the future, five years' time, AI is gonna be able to scan, you know, billions of MRI scans and be able to predict in the future like who's gonna have cancer.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like that that might not actually happen.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: It might get you a little bit better there, you know what I mean, which is fine.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it's uh it's again it goes to this thing of like, well, hang on, is this correct?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and you know, how how do you prevent this situation of being over-reliant on the on the relationship between data and then the model itself?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think you nailed it on the head where you said it's it it can make it better, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I worry about people becoming over-reliant on AI for a number of different things, you know, in life in general.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think I always think that we should think of, we shouldn't think of AI as the be-all end-all, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us work smarter, faster, more efficient, especially when companies may be becoming more lean and when the market's market is a little topsy-turvy and people are, you know, getting laid off, unfortunately.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: These types of tools help us work faster.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: It also gives, in my opinion, you know, the generations coming out of school a new skill set to learn and to make them very attractive to the workforce, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: To really be able to understand how to best use AI.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because as, you know, my generation, other generations start to age out, we really look for people that, you know, help me use AI.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: How can I use this to work smarter, faster, more efficient, harder, et cetera?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I don't, I I I I have, I look at AI as I've got to take it for what it is, and I can't trust it all the time.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: It gets me part of the way there.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I like, right?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because for example, like I notice when I'm creating content or my team is creating content with Chat GPT, or I'm typing up emails or internal communications or things like that.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: My AI, my instance of Chat GPT, which is you know, behind the firewall of birth capital, knows so much about the work that I've been doing, but it conflates things, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm looking at different technology that really starts to separate and bucket, kind of like a California clause, it's organization system, all of the things that I've been doing so that I can tell it, okay, pull from here, pull from here, and it'll be more accurate.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it always requires that human oversight and that correction and that continuous prompting and correcting with AI so that the model understands, okay, this is not correct, this is correct.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: But in my opinion, it will always require some type of human management and human oversight.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there's still the level of human empathy that needs to get involved, right?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, especially in writing.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: When you are writing and marketing to C level or just to anybody in general, there has to be that element of, you know, human empathy.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not always there with AI.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll I want to come back to that because that's also come up a few times on this series.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, how do you approach organ like team design then?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a CMO and you, you know, you've joined a new firm or whatever, and you inherit, it's I'm not saying this is you, but you have a team of like 15 marksing people.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: But now you're thinking with an AI uh operational capability hat on.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so to your point, you're like you don't need you know, uh a videographer anymore, you don't really need a a copywriter anymore.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really, you know what I mean?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't really need a social media manager anymore, necessarily.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You could use um uh software to do like 90% of that.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, yeah.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm saying is I'm not saying it's like a case of like, well, you get rid of the social media manager, but they become fractional, then now you can unlock that um that uh operational budget or protect the budget at least.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you know where I'm going with this.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So from your perspective, like how do you approach designing teams now, you know, when when you know that there's so much efficiency out there through AI?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I still need this is why I go back to what I had said in the beginning is I, you know, in the business that I'm in, it is a niche business.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's sophisticated.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of complexities around it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Although, you know, when you think about the other day, it is just financing, right?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it really isn't that complex.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, I mean, you are trying to position this as a financial strategy for um law firms and for companies, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so you are creating more complex messages, complex products.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: There are, because you are talking to the C level, there are more longer sales cycles.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are it requires a level of more senior strategic thinking to really lay things out around a concept, around a theme, um, around messaging, around programs for different regions, um, especially if in our business, right, it's it's a multi-segmented audience, right?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I do look at more senior people to be able to come in and sit with our stakeholders that are commercially driven and can create programs that back into the revenue goals that my sales teams, my BD teams, need to meet.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that is kind of the overarching theme of how I design, how I am transforming Burford Capital as a marketing organization.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in terms of like technology and AI, um I look for people that know how to properly use it, where I don't necessarily have to train them or they know how to use it to get their job done faster.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they may not need to hire five different people.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I hire a, you know, uh a head of digital marketing, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: That person is going to know all of the different tools and workflow systems, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And AI tools, et cetera, that they can bring in to Burford Capital so that we don't have to have a team of 10 digital marketers.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: We still will need to have support for that digital marketing leader, but those functions can multitask, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Where you just said, you know, social media can be fractional.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that can be, you know, a quarter or a third of one person's job because in this type of company, we don't have these huge social programs.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're not doing Instagram, we're not doing Facebook, we're doing LinkedIn, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of other types of digital channels.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it means that you can have a, you know, one or two digital people under the senior person that can flex between a couple of different roles.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what you're going to start to see.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, there's not just one person that does social media.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's not just one person that does email marketing, there's not just one person that does, you know, Salesforce data management, not one person that does programmatic.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: In smaller or mid-sized companies, those people may be just one to two people.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now that may be different in a larger company, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: For example, um, like a Target or a Walmart.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're all over different types of social media.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they may have a dedicated social media manager, but that person is not going to have five people reporting to them, if that makes sense.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna make things much leaner, you know, yeah.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I don't look from a content perspective too.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's where, again, I want somebody to be able to effectively use AI but not necessarily be over-reliant on it, if that makes sense, because that goes back to the human empathy accuracy element when you're creating very sophisticated content.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is what this is the problem with humans.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'll always do what's easiest.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'll always gravitate there.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to do, I don't know, let's just say training right across your whole organization.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: The old way would be you have uh a train the trainer type thing, you know, and then it's a workshop and people have to attend and this and that, and it and you know, and maybe there was some video libraries or whatever.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but not a great training experience.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're the head of you know training and development and now you've got AI, you know, you would take all your training content, load that up into a model, have that model be able to uh or you could interact with that model through text, voice, and even an an avatar.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes more interactive training.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: So now you don't need the train to train a model.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you're never gonna go back there.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right, because you've you've you're now here.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think too, what it's what what this is allowing people to do is act as bigger companies, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like for example, you know, Burford Capital is uh, you know, under 200 people.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yet when you look at us and the the the the divisions and the groups and the work that we're putting out, we actually I feel like we punch above our.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Weight, right?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: We actually internally being new here, we appear bigger than we are, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because we are using technology to be able to get some of the very basic stuff done, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think about things from a Marcom perspective, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a whole internal communications plan around a specific um, you know, uh growth program that we're doing.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I've used AI to do a lot of the automation of that internally, right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: To train people, like you just said, to communicate people so that I don't need to hire a specific internal communications manager.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't need to myself take five hours out of the day to dedicate to this program.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can use AI to do some of these more basic tasks.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: That way, my team and I can review them and then get them out.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um obviously this leads to like job trans transformation as opposed to, well, I mean, there's going to be some replacement.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what do you say to people or or to leaders who are sort of sitting on the sidelines around this and they're using the excuse of um, you know, job replacement with AI, and we're not that type of, you know, culture or brand value.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: What do you say to that person?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: I say embrace AI.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I say, you know, you never know.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I think about things from a marketing perspective, and I say this to my fellow marketers out there, um, you know, as I was a fractional CMO after having been um, you know, made redundant during um some transitions in a company.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there's a lot of us out there from a very senior perspective that may be looking for new opportunities.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And CEOs are looking for leaders, especially marketing leaders that know how to embrace AI because we're in these topsy turvy markets, right?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Where there's not a lot of companies that are doing these mass hirings, right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing very targeted hirings.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are not in the know about AI, you are going to lose out to other candidates that are much more well-versed in AI.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: So do not sit by the sidelines.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Get as involved in AI as you can.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: But always remember like AI is not the answer.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: AI is never going to do the job for you.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you are a senior leader, you are a leader because you've had the experience from a psychological psychological perspective of building organizations, leading people, finding tools to help move help move you smarter, faster, more efficient, et cetera.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to be uh in the know about AI.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: So do not sit on the sidelines at all.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then to you know, the younger generation coming out of college, looking into, you know, looking for jobs, again, the exact same thing.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: What is going to help you get a job is how you can talk about the use of AI to make your job more accurate, faster, more efficient.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what companies, that's that's what I look for.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's what CEOs look for, and that's what companies are gonna look for.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of uh skill sets, I want to double come back to empathy.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So um, what sort of you know, leadership skills or you know, or management skills do you are you gonna be looking for now?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, obviously there's the can you use the AI, the AI piece, but then when you think about, you know, the human qualities that AI will never really be very good at replacing, you know, like empathy and and that kind of thing.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it won't be as good as humans, I don't think.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Might get somewhere there, but um uh I digress.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: What leadership skills do you think are gonna become more important, you know, as we move into this AI economy?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, AI is never gonna manage per person, right?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: People are gonna manage AI.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't, like I look at my team right now, AI can't manage my people, right?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I need to manage my people.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it is communication, understanding, um, mentorship, um strategy, right?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: AI can't, AI can't do that, right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you look at ChatGPT, and I mean, yes, I can tell ChatGPT write a sympathetic email for me to XYZ or write an email that, you know, corrects somebody on XYZ or write this performance review.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Here's all the information, but I have to populate it with that information.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna know that, right?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: It may just help me tweak things.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I still, you know, you still need work on the psychology of being a leader, work on your communication style.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, as a leader, you also need to be a mentor to your people, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you still need to be able to make tough decisions, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think I don't, I think the same leadership qualities are still there.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: AI is, again, AI is just a tool to me right now to help move faster and move, I want to say, more accurately, although we know that there are plenty of challenges with AI, that it's not always accurate.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So again, you have to have the human oversight, but it allows me to just continue to move faster in lower resourced environments.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so Jess, let's wrap this up.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you were to predict a fun or surprising way that AI will affect everyday life in the future, like not just, you know, in business and marketing and stuff like that, what do you what would you say that's gonna be?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it's it's just in everyday life overall.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just gonna be the continued hyperpersonalization of everything, the knowing as much about each other as humanly possible, which scares scares me, I'm not going to lie.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen it, right?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like my Alexa listens to me, my phone listens to me, um, my different computers, my personal computer versus my work computer, where my work computer is not tied to my phone.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And yesterday I was looking at a venue for a conference, and I noticed on my Instagram that venue for my conference, which is not tied to my phone, surfaced on my Instagram.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think AI is just going to continue to become hyper, like hyper personalized to you, um, connected through everything.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And companies are gonna, you know, I don't want to say take advantage in a bad way, but it's half take advantage in a bad way, half take advantage in a good way for the company, obviously, to surface, surface things to you.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is I don't think we're at the terminator um side yet, or the minority report, or you know, any of that, but um, you know, who knows?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you never know.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: They haven't taken over yet.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean I was gonna say Zuckerberg, um, last week I think he put out a video saying Meta's whole thing now is is building personal superintelligence.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: What to your point?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because if any I mean it is freaky.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'll be talking to my wife about, I don't know, bad example, not a real one, but I don't know.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, things that where to go on family holiday.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or like something more obscure than that, you know.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I will see like dog training, and then I'll get a message for dog training.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or something like that.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, I mean, like, hang on.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: I said something about bed sheets recently.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: I need to do bedsheets, and lo and behold, on my Alexa and on my phone, my Instagram, I started getting ads for bed sheets.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's freaky, man.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, Jess, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you for letting me know.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me, man.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're very welcome and wishing you and the team all the very best in the future.