326: FROM THE TRENCHES / Don't let AI flatten your voice: Human-first content for building your personal brand - with David J. Ebner

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: My name's Trevor Young and welcome to the Earn the Right podcast. Today we're going to talk all about personal branding and telling your story in an AI world. Because let's face it, your personal brand story has always mattered. It's always mattered, but right now it matters more than ever. I believe, and I, I dare say my guest believe, believes that as well. And the reason is because AI is flooding, you know, content right throughout every channel. And the, the problem with that is it sounds polished, it reads well, but it kind of feels all the same. So we want to dig into what it actually takes to tell a human story in that environment. And to help us do that, we do have in the virtual studio an expert guest. His name is David J. Ebner and he's the founder of Content Workshop. And this is a US based story first agency. But I, I prefer the, uh, the way David and his team describe themselves as an eclectic group of artists, professors, entrepreneurs and marketers with creative and curious minds. David, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Trevor.

Speaker B: I want to delve deeper, as I mentioned, into how expert founders and thought leaders and solo practice owners can produce top notch content to, and human, very human content to build their professional brand and their business. And yes, we'll address the vexed AI question head on. First, why don't you give us a bit of a thumbnail sketch of your good self and content, uh, workshop.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Well, I founded, uh, content workshop 13 years ago. Yeah, 13 years ago. We had a look at the calendar real quick. Thirteen years ago when I was a graduate student studying to get my Master in Fine Arts degree in creative writing. And at the time, you know, making money and putting some food on the table was important as a graduate student. You know, I don't know where all of your listeners are, but here in the US Student load debt is a real thing, right? Like spending, uh, a lot of money to get that education, how to find a way to make some money in the meantime. And you know, freelance copywriting seemed natural. I was studying writing, you know, so I kind of dove into applying those storytelling tactics I was learning in the classroom commercially for brands. And, and this was before the term brand storytelling was a, a thing. And it just kind of felt natural and normal. So that was the nexus of content workshop starting. And since then it's always been kind of a collective of artists who have kind of trying to find ways to, you know, use their skills commercially in one way, shape or form. So, you know, all these years later, still, still doing it, uh, Doing it the same way.

Speaker B: Yeah. Look, it's, it's interesting. I, I, I. Did you, was there ever any tension? I mean, obviously when you're studying, you know, at university, I mean, what did you want to be a writer about or for, or whatever the, the term is, you know, the craft of writing. And then you went very quickly into the commercial side of writing. Was that tension there?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, certainly. And there's actually a really big hurdle to overcome for many creative and artistic writers, whether or not they can kind of adapt their style to work commercially. It's a, uh, it's a, it's a hurdle that some writers simply can't make. I've met many writers who I went to graduate school with who were like, hey, can I be a freelance copywriter for your team? Like, yeah, let's give it a shot. And they just, it just doesn't work. Because inevitably when you're writing for a brand, you have a customer. And when you're writing for artistic purposes, you don't have one. Meaning it doesn't matter if somebody else thinks it's good or not. Now, it might not get published if people don't think it's good. However, somebody might not pay you. And it can have commercial downsides if, if that's a customer. So, yeah, it's kind of like we talk about creativity as, as kind of this elusive thing, but when you're working in the commercial space and you're doing content versus just artistic writing, we think of putting that creativity in a box. In that box is the confines that the customer puts on it. Usually it's conversion or, or some sort of like KPI that they're trying to reach with that content. And, and if you're able to kind of curtail your creativity to fit inside that box, it actually is a challenge. But it's extremely exciting if you can do that, because you start to find out things about yourself they didn't know you could do before. But a lot of people have a hard time making that leap, not just from a craft point of view, but also from kind of like a, uh, well, what do I want to do with my life point of view? Yeah, and that's a struggle that, you know, people certainly make.

Speaker B: And, and I guess from that point of view, you, you know, like it, you have got commercial goals, you've got a, you know, in an agency, having, uh, been in agencies all my life, you've got client imperatives, and, and they can shift and change with the wind. In fact, they usually change from the brief as you get into them and you need to adapt and, and I guess from your point of view and content is more than writing, but writing is obviously the spine because if you're going to do, you know, video, you've got scripts and stuff like that. What sort of writing is, is your favorite? I know you've, you've written a book as well, haven't you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I wrote a book called, uh, King Makers. And it's all about taking the artistic side of writing and applying it commercially. So everything we've talked about up to this moment, right, if you're interested in that, go snag a copy. You know, I, I like longer form. I, I'm not a, I'm not. I love the skill it takes and I appreciate like the actual copywriting, short form, advertising, writing, like coming up with a perfect phrase with a few, few as few words as possible. I have a great appreciation, but I'm not good at that. So I've always kind of favored the longer form a blog, you know, ebook, kind of like telling more of a narrative rather than kind of like being super punchy. The funny thing is I actually studied the opposite in, in school. I studied, uh, flash fiction, which is stories like under a thousand words, maybe even 100 words in a story. So conciseness matters. That's still like, you know, longer than advertising copies, even shorter than that. So that's always been my preference because I, I wanted to build kind of more of a, uh, a journey, like build a world, build kind of a connection with the, the audience that's deeper than kind of something that's surprising or might be a little bit jolting, but in a positive way. Not, not really my, my forte.

Speaker B: So 13 years. So that's, that's a, a good chunk of time now to be in a, an industry that's. And again, we're kindred spirits in this. I've been in that same industry for that period of time and a bit more, but, you know, 13 years. A lot's happened in on the landscape for people who, uh, I mean you're deep into it obviously, but for people who are listening, who are running businesses, they're building their professional brand, you know, they're getting out there and you know, day to day working with clients and trying to make stuff happen. And of course they've got to create content over and above.

Speaker A: How.

Speaker B: How have you seen the landscape change and where do you see it currently? I mean, in the early days it was a lot less cluttered, obviously, but in terms of formats, the Landscape generally. What's your, your sort of big overarching take on that?

Speaker A: Yeah, in the early days, if you were just a great writer, you could stand out. That's all it took. All it took was publishing something that was positive, helpful to other people. And you would show up in, you know, search engine results pages and you know, find your way to the people who are looking for what you're developing. Then there, there was certainly a flood of content. I feel like content like reached its apex in probably 20, 20, 2021, somewhere around there where it truly was the apex of, of it being a king. And actually our agency probably had more customers than we've ever had. Is that in that time period? And then of course up to that point, you know, we would, you know, early days, we'd have to convince people that content was a thing that they should do as a brand. You get past like 20, 15, 16, 17, you no longer have to convince anybody. They all know it. They all uh, know content is king. Right. And then you get up to about 22 and now it's like, well, content isn't so much king as much as it's just easy. And then you start to get a flood of market of, of just mostly AI generated but like a lot of content flooding the market. Flooding the market. So now it's kind of lost its value because it's, we call it a sea of sameness. But like you just uh, there's so much, but it's all, it's not differentiated at all. So that's been a pretty big arc over 13 years. Not a whole lot of like nobody knew what brand storytelling was 13 years ago. To like the idea that it might be an archaic kind of craft done by hand is kind of a pretty

Speaker B: big swing and it's probably a grudge for a lot of people to do. Let's, let's, let's be fair. I mean, you know, if you're a bigger business, you can outsource a bit of it. And of course we will get into AI, don't worry about that because that's the, you know, the game's changed completely and utterly been upended, but the basics are still the same, but the landscape's completely different now. But I guess, you know, you've also had, you know, over that period of time, you know, it started off probably as blogging where I uh, cut my teeth and you know, that was just writing and free flowing and you know, opinions and just putting yourself out there. And if you had a blog in the early days you did get noticed then obviously writing for Twitter and you know, you had the social, whole social media thing, which social media has changed completely now. Doesn't matter at all how good your content is. Even with LinkedIn and, and video and short form video and, and longer, uh, form is you know, really knocking it out of the park with YouTube. So it's, there's, there's no one size fits all and if anyone thinks there is, you're out of your mind. And if you try and do all of it, you're going to go, go nuts. And of course you, you with being a long form aficionado, uh, you'd be wrapped to see that the likes of email newsletters continue to power along and Substack is, is gaining huge momentum. And then there's a lot of different platforms that support email newsletters and, and sort of online publications like Ghost and Beehive and that. So that's a roundabout ways. We've come right back to the written word and long form content.

Speaker A: How crazy is that? You know, I think the reason for that because everything you've described is 100% accurate and it's all the medium of content. Like what medium is kind of like the, the medium du jour. Right. Let's call it right. Like which, which form do people lean toward today? And I think it is coming back around because I think long form content is the most, it feels the most authentic form of content.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Newsletters feel like they're coming from a person. It's a personal outreach. Right. It's this person or brand like reaching out and saying we think these things could be important to you too and helpful. And Substack and these like individual thought leader type of platforms that can, you can really push out a lot of content as an individual is a one to one connection feeling even though it's a one to many. That authenticity is really what's lacking in more commercial content today. So it's not really surprising to me that people are defaulting back to those simply not because I think that they're the written word, but it's just easier to be authentic or feel authentic in those mediums.

Speaker B: Yeah. And just to pull that thread, just one little extra tug, it's, you know, we've. Because the media, the traditional media itself has, has been totally and utterly upended and unfortunately a lot of good writers and journalists have, have lost their jobs and some are electing to leave as well. Knowing the way the media is going and seeing the writing on the wall, they're going to create Their, the substacks and their own newsletters and, and getting paid for it as well. Because people are pay for good stories, for good writing and we're seeing that in the background. It's humming along. A lot of journalists are now embracing, whereas I don't think early days they were because they saw a lot of blogging and social media is the enemy. But now they've embraced it and there's some amazing. And they're the people who are influencing from a PR point of view. These um, journalists who are becoming brand names and personal brands in their own right have a lot incredible influence in the marketplace.

Speaker A: Absolutely. It's like uh, what used to be TV channels have become people. Like people are TV channels. Right. Like you know that. That's the best way to describe it I think, at least I've come up with so far. But like you, you, you tune in, you subscribe whatever it is to the, the channel that produces the, the things that help you the most that you're interested in, that are entertaining, engaging and educational you and that's, you know, where you spend your, your time and attention. And yeah, that again, not surprising at all. The journalists are moving in that direction. They're, they're, they're fantastic storytellers. We have a number of them that work here and they are, they are really good. Actually. The best writer I've ever met is a member of our team and he's a past journalist as well. So that all pans out quite a bit.

Speaker B: Are you ever a former journalist? I've always. I'm a former journalist, but a former working journalist. But I don't think you're ever lose the journalist in you.

Speaker A: I think you're right actually. One of our core values as a company is curiosity and we talk about this a lot. Curiosity isn't something that is like taught. I can't teach somebody to be curious. You're like curious by nature. Right. And I think most journalists are. That's why they go into journalism and that curiosity pays dividends commercially for brand storytelling as well too.

Speaker B: So yeah, it's uh, that, that you, you spot on there. And, and curiosity is I think one of the unsung attributes of, of, of business really and, and professional life. Let's into in terms of that. And, and I guess there's one more thing on that is that, you know, journalists do tell good stories and there's a reason why a lot of them are building massive followings is because it comes down to being able to tell a good yarn and to be Able to articulate a narrative. What's your approach to this? Given that you know where you come from and storytelling, you know, let me take back a step. Storytelling in the corporate world or in the business world has been kind of rendered pretty meaningless.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because people just jumping on saying you've got to tell a good story. Which is all well and good, but what the hell does that mean? How do you unpack that? How do you explain storytelling to your commercial clients, for example?

Speaker A: Yeah, I, uh, usually start with how I define brand storytelling. And I think maybe it's the same as other groups, maybe not. But I define it as the story of how you as a brand have a positive impact on your audience or your customer. Like that, I think, is your brand story. It's not really about you at all. It's about your customer, your audience, and how you improve their lives. And when you can get to the nexus of that, then you can start to build your story out from there. I think once people start to realize that, that it's really about emotional connection with an audience, it starts to kind of open up what it can be and actually gives it more meaning, uh, how you make other people feel. It's, it's kind of like brand 101. But people have a hard time like conceptualizing all of that. So that's, that's usually how we explain it to people. A lot of people, and especially maybe younger brands and startups, believe that the brand story or have up to that point, it's been really the origin story of the company. And I get that because typically it's one person, uh, or a group of people who saw some sort of like, gap in ability that they had and they went out and took a lot of risks and forged a path to help people. And so the story really becomes about that, you know, that adventure that they took, opposed to the people that they helped. At some point in time, that brand story has to evolve and mature into it's agnostic of the owner, it's agnostic of the founder. It's, it doesn't matter who the people are because those will change over time. What really matters is, you know, your impact on, on uh, another group of people. And the more you can pull at that thread, the more your content aligns with just helping your target audience, like being a helpful resource, providing education and information that makes their life better, their job, whatever, whatever it is, it really starts to open up all the doors to what you can do from a content point of view. So as long as it speaks back to Kind of like that core tenant of your brand story. You can imagine all the mediums and campaigns that can branch off of the idea of like, well, how do we help our target audience? What are we subject matter experts in? How do we demonstrate our expertise online or in person, I guess, wherever that actually helps people. And anyway, that's usually what we ground ourselves in when we talk about brand storytelling.

Speaker B: And I guess there's what's your thinking around. I mean I think you said it earlier about, you know, in the early days you just had to put out useful, helpful content or utility based content. I, I've always called it and now, you know, that's ubiquitous. I got that word out. I never usually can get that out.

Speaker A: Good job.

Speaker B: I'm very pleased with myself. I usually trip over that word and I'm not going to use it again. It's everywhere. I mean information is everywhere now and information is a commodity, which means that your, your content has to be deeper. And as you say, storytelling and the humanity of your story matters a lot. And that's why it matters a lot more. But, but what about thought, More thought leadership? I call it vanguard content where you, you're actually, you know, audiences don't know what they, they don't know what they don't know. So you know, a, uh, good thought leader, uh, and not everyone is necessarily in that space, but a good sort of thought leader who's pushing boundaries and, and changing the way people think about a topic or an issue. Uh, what's your thinking around that type of content? That's pushing boundaries a little bit more and, and it's, it might even great with an audience, but it will probably get noticed more than ever.

Speaker A: I, I have a kind of a love affair with that type of content and I'll, I'll talk about it a little bit deeper, but there, there's really two different types of content. I think the, the age of AI. I like to like throw in terms that AI uses all the time because I find it fun. But like the age of AI, we're finding that this is becoming more and more of an issue, these two types, but the one type is informational content. Content that seeks to answer, you know, provide an answer to a question. Then you have educational content, which is content that seeks to educate and inform the audience so they can solve problems for themselves. Not just always look for an answer online, but actually solve their own problems for themselves. Right. So informational content has been gobbled up by AI overviews. Searching via these, the AI search systems that are out there, whatever chat of your choice. Right? So that is easy to get a lot of informational content. Educational content hasn't really been absorbed as much by these things. Now they can give you steps, processes, but it's a little harder to kind of like get that out of the, the tool. You have to know how to use it to a higher degree. And most people are using it more as like chat and search functionality. So a lot of brands are shifting gears. Uh, you should always produce informational content. Let me be clear. Like for example, our, our brand Content Workshop, we have a content marketing glossary on our website. And you might say like, why would you ever. Right now anybody can get an answer to any term in the overviews. Well, that's true, but like somebody might care what our take is on if we're a thought leader as content workshop, they might care. What, what does content workshop define X as? Because uh, I think their definition might be better than what the agnostic one that I get on the Internet. Also. We, we invest a lot more time and energy on educational content. We seek to, to, to educate people on how to solve their own problems. I think thought leadership, when done really well, is more educational than it is informational. Thought leadership, like you said, is about pushing boundaries, maybe telling people something they thought was untrue. I'm not a big fan of like, let's get the first line out that you know is something controversial, but then like not actually ever have a controversial thought and all the lines there thereafter. That's just a lie. Essentially, you're going to lose more readers by doing that than not. But I think content that grates against what I've known to be true and it is honest and it is, it is bound in an area of like educating is when I learn the most as an individual, I learn the most. When I am wrong, that's when I learn the most. I don't learn anything when I'm right. You know, like if I, somebody asked me a question and I've got the answer and I say it's X and it is X, then I don't learn anything. But if somebody asks me a question and I say it's Y and they're like, no, actually it's X and let me explain why. That's when I actually learn in advance as a human. So good thought leadership can grate against the norms. It can grate against what has always thought to be true. And it can get you readers as long as it's also doing the second part, which is actually educating Them and being helpful and being authentic in that education.

Speaker B: Yep. And part of it is also it's never fully formed. I mean, a good thought leader is actually building something in public, an intellectual territory, carving out an intellectual territory in public and not being afraid to put

Speaker A: that out there 100%. You know, if you're a good thought leader, you're going to be wrong just as much as you're right in my mind. And maybe some of that is public. Some of that is just in your head. Right. Whatever it is a good thought leader. Somebody who's also like, uh, learning from their audience as well. Right? Yeah, we're always constant learners. That's what they. A good leader is. In general, a good leader doesn't say, this is the path forward and that's it. The good leader takes advice from people. It. They, you know, understand a situation better by doing some research and then they make a decision. Right. A leader is not somebody who gives people what they ask for. That's the opposite of a leader. That's somebody who's being led. So you'll see some, you know, thought leadership claimed content where it's just like, well, what does the algorithm want today? What does, you know, what's the kitschy thing that I can do today? What are, uh, the, you know, Here are the 10 things I learned about marketing on my vacation or whatever like that. That is not leading, that is following the algorithm. So anyway, that's my, my take on it.

Speaker B: And so what. Continue with some takes here in terms of thought leadership and the art of telling stories, uh, infused in, in so thought leadership, challenging the status quo, coming up with these concepts, ideas, frameworks, pushing boundaries of thought, changing the way people think about topics and issues. Storytelling can play a big role in that. And, you know, if I look at who's the master, who, who is actually is a thought leader, you know, you'd have to say Seth Godin. He's doing that on a daily basis and he tells a lot of stories. Yeah, a lot of stories. I reckon he's, you know, and he can tell it in such a short. Sorry. With, with such brevity. And he's honed his craft over a time. But what, what's your take on, on. On storytelling within a thought leadership context?

Speaker A: Well, I think that storytelling, I have this little slow. I don't know if it's still my tagline on LinkedIn or not, but it's. Storytelling can change the world because it's the only way it ever has. So the, the idea of a, uh, thought Leader. Let's break that down into just. They're a leader. Right. Leaders have always led with story for just communication purposes or for. To like convincing people to follow them. Right. So a great thought leader needs to be a good storyteller. If you're not a good storyteller, uh, no one's going to understand how to follow you or understand what your, what your unique proposition is or, or what you're trying to tell them. Right. I, I forget the podcast. My wife was telling me about a podcast where she heard this. The CEO essentially say that there are two, two skills that everybody needs to learn in school today. Uh, uh, regardless of AI, regardless of technology, two skills. The first is, is storytelling. Because that will take you in whatever career you're in, wherever you need to go. You can become a leader with that skill. The second is know interpersonal relationships. And the reason is those two things are tied because good storytelling builds a relationship between an emotional connection between the person reading, consuming the content and the person who produced the content. That's actually the true art form of storytelling, in my opinion. When it becomes art is when there's a shared emotional connection that the reader or the viewer can take with them away from it and recall, recall that piece of art, recall that message, recall that item, and have that same emotional feeling again. Think of like an amazing piece of art, fine art you've seen in a museum, and kind of how it made you feel like something that surprised you. And now think about it again, and you kind of feel some of those same feelings. I think that's really the deepest possible connection and that might be some of the deepest possible connections that people can have. So, you know, tying good storytelling into thought, leadership or any content, just even narrative flow, even like, you know, having artful word choice to, to, to engage somebody and to entice an emotion, uh, it's what builds. It builds that connection to begin with.

Speaker B: So I'm going to, we're going to launch into the AI and unpack the whole question of AI in a minute. But just before we do, just let's go 1. Cut deeper in there. And how can you know someone who's running a, you know, a practice, a professional practice, and they've got a couple of staff and they're the, they're the face of the brand and they're, you know, building their professional, personal brand out there and they're creating content, they're doing all the right things. How can they approach imbuing more storytelling in their work? What are, what are some. A Couple of things that they can look out for and be aware of that they can go away or people to, to check out and to understand again. Seth Godin would be one of mine, but my favourites, but just so people can grasp a little bit deeper how to put stories in, into their work, into their content.

Speaker A: Yeah, Seth Godin, uh, Simon Sinek of course is a great person to, to follow with that aspect. And if you notice, both of them will embark in emotion quite a bit in what they're doing. So that's a big takeaway. On a more tactical level, my advice would be to kind of like take a step back and kind of look at the structure of the content you're producing, whether it's a LinkedIn, a thought, thought leadership post on LinkedIn or you know, a long form blog, something like that, and look at how you can kind of break the mold of what's typical. So a lot of connection happens not when we are disruptive, but we're slightly interruptive. So think about like word choice. Be more concise with your language. Use fewer words, uh, whenever you can. Give some variety, even of like sentence lengths are helpful. Don't give like a bunch of the same. You'll notice the AI writing, right? Like every sentence is about the same length and it goes and there's a structure and it's a paragraph is this long and break things up. That white space gives people time to think and connect.

Speaker B: Always.

Speaker A: When you're producing any type of content, start with a beginning and a middle and an end. And I know that sounds fundamental, but it's missing from most content on the Internet. But you want to make an argument, you want to prove that argument and then you want to tie back what you just proved to how it makes people's lives better. That's what you need to do in every piece. And you need to have a flow that's a narrative flow that will help induce some more storytelling. And again, don't be afraid to be vulnerable, don't be afraid to embark on emotion or tell an emotional story. For a lot of entrepreneurs or people with small business owners, when they ask for advice on brand storytelling, I tell them just to start recording, whether it's in notes or actually video recording how they help their customer, however they do it, just record it. You'll be really surprised in the stories that you can pull out of like, oh, I was helping, you know, this person this way this day and they said this thing. Okay, well that is a great starting point for a piece of content. So yeah, if you Kind of like look at some of the practitioners in the space that are really good that we mentioned, but also kind of do some research on how to like, break up content. The last thing I'll say is if you want to be a good storyteller, you have to read more. And I know this is the hardest thing for a lot of people is like, time to read. But if you want to write well, you got to read a lot. So read some contemporary fiction, some George Saunders, some Jennifer Egan, something like that that like, entices a lot of brain activity. And, uh, that'll help you quite a bit too.

Speaker B: And, uh, I second all of that. And the other thing is about the. I guess the easier gets. When I say the easier gets, you know, the ways that people can start bringing more storytelling into their, into their work, into the content, their posts, their articles, opinion pieces, et cetera. Is. Yes. The obvious one is to go back and tell stories about their past, their professional past, and tie it into a, uh, a lesson learned that's relevant to people now. I mean, that's always a good one because people like those lessons learned. They're parentally good because you've got the scars on the knuckles, you've been in the trenches. There's usually a lesson and, and that's valuable to people and people will lean forward into a story. But also your clients, uh, you don't have to name them. That's. That could be a full case study of, you know, you can always. I was working with one client, blah, blah, blah, and what the issue was with them and how, how they got out of their bind or how we, we help them get out of their bind, but making it about the client, making them the hero or the customer the hero. What do you think about, you know, if you wanted to make a point, you wanted to tell a story, you haven't got a client or a customer, uh, to be able to make that point. What about a fictional story as well? Are you a fan of that?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's fine. I mean, really, what we're, all we're doing is demonstrating expertise, right? Like, I think it's perfectly fine to, to like, have a fictional Persona. A Persona is just a fictional representation of a potential customer. Like, think of that scenario and that plug in that Persona into that story. I think that's perfectly acceptable. In fact, it's a, it's a practice done by, by many, uh, marketers.

Speaker B: And what you're doing too is basically, it's humanizing what you're, What You. The point you're trying to get across would be the way I, I look at it, because, I mean, you know, as humans, we, we love stories. We like hearing about other humans and, and by humanizing our work, that's important. Which gets us to the AI question, because AI is not human. And it. As much as it pretends to be, and it's actually, it's quite. You know, when you do have conversations with Claude or chat, they can sound very human. So that's getting quite scary in itself. But AI now, what's. As you could almost predict this, and I'm sure a lot of us did, many a number of years back when it started, and the uptake of AI has just been incredible. And, you know, it's so mainstream and it didn't take very long at all to become super mainstream. But, you know, of course you're always going to get people who I need to put out more content, and they're just completely outsourcing, not just their thinking, which is dangerous in itself, but their whole getting AI to write everything for them. Okay, what's your philosophy on AI, broadly speaking?

Speaker A: Broadly speaking, I would say that AI not only isn't human, AI isn't actually intelligence. And I think, I think it's important that we all understand, we all should understand how AI actually works and what it does. And I think if we did, we'd probably, like, understand how to use it a little better. And there's a great. Oh, man, I'm going to get it wrong. I'm just, like, going to refer people to a bunch of stuff that I don't give the right names to. But there's a fantastic podcast here in the States called Radiolab, and they had a whole episode on AI and what it actually is. I think it's like Alien something is the title. So anyway, AI is not actually intelligence, it's not actually thinking, it's just processing. Right? So AI is math and the reason why it feels so human and it's getting better and better and better because it's honing in on what our expectations are from the answers. All it is is a series of ones and zeros that is trying to, like, hone down into an answer that we want. So actually, when it's giving you an answer, you know how it says, like, all the time, like, oh, you're right or I was wrong or whatever it is, it kind of like flatters you a little bit because it expects you to want that. So it is not trying to give you a factual answer. It's trying to give you the answer they think you want. So anyway, all that being said because of that, it doesn't mean that it actually can think, nor can it attach an emotional connection to what is being said or written. Uh, that empathy is a human emotion. It cannot be. It can be. They can try to mimic it with tools, but that's by definition the opposite of empathy. Then if it's fake, it's not empathy anymore. Uh, these tools are amazing though, and they can do so much. They can process so much data, they can, they can mimic people, they can do things at speeds that we never could. The problem we see though, is when you outsource that thinking component to these tools, you no longer start to have kind of these avant garde ideas that are different than an idea that's ever been had before. Because what we bring to the table as humans is the creativity. And what we do is like, we all have lived experiences, that thing that happened 10 years ago to us. We have no idea the actual effect it has on our decision making today. Because something might come up and it might have influenced a million other things that have gone on, but we can tap into all of those experiences that are not even closely tangentially tied to the thing that we're thinking about. And it informs kind of like new ideas and creativity. So the best creative ideas are still coming from humans. How we use it today is just that, like, understand what the tool is good at and what it actually does, train it to be the best it can be at those things. And then the things that humans are better at, obviously, like, rely on humans to do it. Content has always been measured on one metric and that's, is it good or not? You know, just because it could be done fast and cheap doesn't make it good. Right. Just the same reason why you wouldn't hire an intern to represent your brand if they aren't skilled enough or have the time in market or whatever may be the maturity to do it. You. Why would you outsource all of the thinking and marketing and the content development to something that has had none of those experiences that you wouldn't give to the most junior staff member? Right? So what we try to do is we call it the. We have a lot of sayings around here for AI, but we call it the human AI Human sandwich. But like all, you know, creative thought ideation comes in, maybe it isn't. It's, you know, tools like AI are tapped in to help come up with some of those things, but humans are leading that concept. The Middle is kind of like the production cycle. Like, what are the things that AI can actually do faster at a good quality. Let's call it good. And then we have a QA human. Human in the loop at the end for, for the QA component of producing content. And almost always they find something that needs to be fixed, right?

Speaker B: Absolutely. It's. I've heard it described. I'm just trying. If it was. A friend of mine said it, but he. He was quoting someone else. But it's. The best way to use AI in a content side of things is to help with ideation and to brainstorm and to get your thinking clearly. Then you kind of write it and then you bring AI in the end. So it's kind of like bookends. I kind of like that as a general rule, because, you know, it's a smart way of doing it. Still getting the best out of both worlds. And. Well, let's look at first at the dangers of just outsourcing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because I think they're pretty obvious, but I think it's a drum we have to keep banging. What's your take on the dangers of just simply chucking out more stuff and getting, uh, ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or whoever to actually write it for you?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, the first danger certainly is like the falling into the sea of sameness gap, which is that these models are designed around predictiveness. Right. Like if you actually take out your phone, if you have an iPhone, and you start texting somebody, the text is going to start, like, predicting the next word. Like the actual technology around AI isn't. It's much more advanced, but it's similar to that. And that's machine learning, essentially. It's learning your habits. So by doing that, you're going to sound like everybody else. Because by design, it was trained on a model, which is the most generic model, which is the Internet. And it's like, well, what word comes after this word? Most likely that doesn't help you from a marketing point of view. Like, who wants to sound like everybody else? How do you differentiate? How do you stand out? The whole point of brand storytelling and marketing is to sound different. So that's not good. Uh, so you're just going to fall into that trap of sea of sameness. The certainly there's quality differences. Like, we have our. We still every, all the time have writers go up against these tools, and the writers are just better. I read it and it doesn't matter if I know it's AI or not. I'm Trying to look at it objectively and the quality is just better. It's certainly not cheaper, but it's better. The other thing to look out for is the cost scalability of these things. And I think this is like a black box that most people aren't thinking about today. Like right now, the cost of a, um, Claude subscription. The API tokens are what they are, but these companies are losing money on all of that stuff. So I don't know if the economy works everywhere in the world, but when you start producing a product that loses money, eventually you need to make that money. So prices go up over time and computing prices are scaling up at a faster rate than they are raising the prices for these tokens. So inevitably, right now I think Claude Opus, right, is one of the most expensive tools and they're charging what, $15 per million output token, something like that. Whereas like you can get Gemini Flash for like a buck or something, something like that. So there's a big gap difference. But they're not even making money at $15 for a million. So start to think about that for a second. You start outsourcing all of your content production and your marketing to these tools and these rates go up as they will over time. It will eventually become more expensive to pay for these tools than it will for the people who did it. Now that's a problem you could solve at a later point, but you're going to be in a lot of hurt if everybody makes that decision. Lastly, there's a societal issue which is the, you know, the ouroboros, right. Like the snake eating its own tail. Right. Like if we're all producing content from AI, it's predictive based off of what's past been produced, then we will never get any new ideas. Like we are going to be in a loop of not advancing society in a knowledge point of view. And I know that you're thinking like, oh, uh, we're talking about B2B content on the Internet. People read more B2B content on the Internet than they will ever read in a textbook in their life. So yes, it needs to be good and it needs to be educational, I think. So anyway, that was a lot of

Speaker B: information, but that's generally, uh, I certainly agree and I think this, I'm not sure in the U.S. i see in Australia particularly there's starting to become a little bit of a backlash as well. Only just last week there was um, an academic at one of the universities had written a, ah, an opinion piece for one of the newspapers and it, you Know, because it had some phrases that AI tends to lean towards. She was accused of writing. I think, I actually think the irony was, I think it was about AI in academia, if I recall correctly. But anyway, I mean, and, and you know, she got held down and we see it a little bit now with leaders putting stuff out there that it's, it's obviously AI and they get, they, whether it actually is or not, it might actually be the way they write. People are being accused of, oh, you're using AIs and as if that's a bad thing. Yeah. And I think if you're a leader or an expert or you're putting yourself out there as a professional brand and, and, and a thought leader, then I think that those people are going to notice that a lot more than if you're just some um, schmuck putting, you know, churning out a post and no one's really taking any notice of. I think that that's, that's going to, we're going to see more of that. If we're seeing it now, I think we'll see more and more of that and whether or not that turns people away from it and that, you know, that will force them to cover it up a little bit. I'm not too sure. How do you, how do you, how do you guys approach the use of AI then? If you, if we're saying that, you know, we don't want AI producing all our stuff, how do you use it in your day to day content creation and production?

Speaker A: It really depends on one, the client and that's mostly the subject matter that we're creating content around. We certainly use it in content production today we don't use it as an end to end magic button like solution. It's not a Alexa. Alexa do the dishes. Right. Like the people are still the chef, but the AI is like the dishwasher. Right. Like it's doing something that nobody wants to do that really anybody probably can do and they're going to do it faster and better anyway. So that's the use case, right. Human creativity and people who are experts at what they do. You team them up with an understanding of how AI actually works and how it can be used and ethical use cases. And they can do that too. They become a superhero. Like we used to talk about marketing unicorns back in the day, how ridiculous that was. But like there are people who can do a lot now if they are both an expert at how to do it manually and teamed up with the uh, knowledge and use case of AI, we're finding that left and right. Certainly we're finding one person teams. Now that doesn't take away the need to be an expert. Like you have to know how to do it well. You have to have discernment. You have to know what good looks like. And if you can't create it manually, well then how are you going to ever fix something that's broken when it doesn't produce something that's well, Right. So that's our use case and however we can plug it in and still get that output and we feel like we're within those ethical bounds, within those knowledge bounds, things are factually true and the content is good and it meets the goal and initiative. We'll deploy the tool just like we would deploy, you know, a typewriter over a pen and paper or a computer over a word. The old school word processors is as a tool. Right.

Speaker B: So are you talking more about doing the, the planning of the uh, article for example, or the piece?

Speaker A: Typically it's some, a lot of times we'll actually do that planning. We actually find a lot of value in the humans doing that part. Now when it comes up to coming up with topic ideas, you know, we think that AI can help influence a lot of that. But like the unique proposition, the key takeaways, the differentiator that's going to be in the article, we're finding way more value in humans doing that part of the work. We actually, you know, we have had a lot of success with using these tools to actually draft content and that is pretty darn good. Now we've had to do a lot of work creating our own models, customizing them to such a high degree and then training them because they keep doing things wrong. But the tool, the models have gotten good enough that they can learn some of those things over time. They're not good out of the box. And I think that's the big issue that a lot of people are having. Like, it's like, it's like taking a computer out of the box and never loading it with an operating system. It doesn't know how to do those things. So that's primarily it. And then we'll use it for maybe some fine tuned checking at the end for like SEO and things like that. But then again a human always reads it at the end. If you're not willing to read it before you hit publish, you probably don't deserve to push publish.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's a fair call. And I think when you're saying trading Are you saying. I mean, I know with me, I've, you know, written a couple of books. I've got access to the, the, the draft of one in particular that I've, you know, the more latest one AI's got, you know, Claude, Claude's my favorite, has been for some time, by far the best that I've found. But, you know, I've fed it so many of my articles, so, you know, 80,000 words of my book, you know, I've been writing for a very long, I've been giving it a lot of work. Is that something you recommend people do? Is that if you're going to embark on it, you train it on your own work so it knows your nuances and your background and the way you think and the way you write? Is that something you guys do?

Speaker A: Yeah. So we've actually built, we haven't like given it out to the world yet, but we've built our own agent. We call it the Content Workshop Writer agent. But essentially we've trained it on our own content that we've written, that our team members have written. We've trained it on all the advice we would give a new writer anyway to write about our brand and how to write. Well, all that stuff's packed in to the training of it and it uses our own content as like a learning mechanism. But then we actually test it. We give it a bunch of tests, right? We would have a brief written and put together and give one to the best writer that we have on our team, who's still to this day way outpacing the quality of these tools. And then we'd have AI write it as well with all the training we possibly could give it. Then we would have it like, compare the two. Like what's different in this one versus this one? It's like, oh, well, obviously the one written by the human is doing X, Y and Z and I'm not doing that. Okay, great, start doing that. Right. So that testing helps quite a bit. Now you have to be careful with how much content you give it to train. So like, let's say you're using Claude, you're using projects, right? Like you have files you can upload in there. All that's great. Feel free to upload as much stuff as you want. The problem you're going to face though is that is context windows, right? And I think a lot of people need to understand this. Like every time there's a call to the mothership for Claude, it's taking some of that file information with it and it can only take so much with it before it actually starts to degrade in the chat. So once you start to hit certain number of tokens in the chat, your, your results started to grade massively. So if you have too much in the context window, it actually, all of that's going at the same time and it's causing the, the chat did great a lot. The good news is if it's in the files and not just in the chat, don't upload the documents in the chat, like put them in the files. If they're going to be there forever, it's going to cache some of that and kind of like truncate it so that it's not sending so much of it with it. All that being said, don't try to do too much with one session. Like I try to tell it to tell me every time I get close to, you know, 50 to 70% of the total window for the session and then I have it truncate the chat and start a new one. And what I think a mistake a lot of people can make is they will give it a whole 80,000 word text and, and it, it's, it's going to degrade that window super fast.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's, it's, it's something that I've sort of noticed particularly uh, if you, you know, researching and working on a, on an idea that might become a story or even something bigger than you know, report or something like that, that it's um, you know, you get too far down the track and it's, yeah, it just, and you also run out of tokens, then you have to, then you have to stop it and open a new one. So there's, you know, and, and I'm sure all of them are a little bit different. So depending on what your, your AI tool of, of your, your AI poison is, you know, you need to be aware of how it works. And I mean that, I think that that's um, it's just more of an awareness of people and that's, that's good information David, because it's, it's just an awareness of how these things work and how you can improve upon it to get the best value from it. I, I, it takes me a lot longer now to write an, a long form article because I'm going deeper, I'm going deeper than I ever have. And when I'm going deep I'll come up with new ideas that I'll put to aside and, and you know, I might have one session and I'll have three uh, article ideas. But then I've got to get back to the, the one. But I'll go a lot deeper because I'm, um, I want to be challenged. I want to push, I want to. And then I'm, um. That's how I'm using AI and it's literally a battle of wits with it sometimes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, you know, you do go backwards and forwards and you do argue and, you know, I do anyway, I'm not, I'm not sure I'm the only one that's important.

Speaker A: I think that's a valuable insight too, Trevor, because think about AI, if you think about it as not intelligence, but it's just trying to kind of like learn from us and mimic us to a degree. You're chatting with yourself kind of. And I think if that's not thinking, I don't know what is. Right. Like our mind is just our, our greatest friend, our greatest partner for life. So I don't know, I think that's valuable to a degree.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I, I found it really good, but it's, you know, and, and I might get down the track and then I find that there's not much, there's no thread I can pull in this article, but I'm double checking everything 100 times. I use, uh, a lot of examples. So I use it for researching for examples, but then I go and check them out myself and, and then I will double check and sometimes triple check, you know, with Gemini or Perplexity, which is very good in checking sources to make sure it's accurate. So if I've written the thing, I'm comfortable with Claude having an eye over it, and then I'll just triple check it elsewhere for accuracy. I don't want it changing writing. I don't want to do anything like that. Uh, just accuracy before I'm confident. And then I'll reread it a few times and probably re edited, but that's why it takes me so long. But I'm returning to the craft a lot within a lot deeper way because, you know, my, my articles are, you know, getting into the 1500, sometimes 2000 words because I'm going deeper and then I need to cut back, you know, so that's, that's when I get ruthless and I have to chop back. So there's not one way, that's just the way I'm doing it. And that's been an organic process and I'm going to improve that along the way. And I think the key, this is where I like it because if You've got your information and you're writing long. This is where you know, we're probably kindred spirits here. But you know, if you're writing long form content, putting some really decent stuff out that you're putting a bit of effort in and you don't have to do it every week or every day by any means, but if you're regularly doing that you can. This is where AI is really good is taking that and it can then create the social media stuff from it because it's your work and all it's doing is you know, shortening, pulling threads out of it. Uh, are they. Does it get it right every time? Absolutely not. But you know, if you've got a lot of assets, getting AI to reduce those assets into bite sized chunks and then you have a. Obviously go over it again and, and probably redo it. That's, that's the gold. I mean otherwise you, you know, if you're doing that manually that, that takes the time. So that's just the way I do it. I don't know about you guys whether you find it useful in the repurposing of your long form content of your own and your clients.

Speaker A: 100 we call it content atomization but essentially taking a longer form piece or a collection of longer form pieces and then dicing them up for better or easier consumption or maybe just like for a different audience. AI is actually really good at that. Now you have to still quality like word choice and quality. You still have to check and then make sure they're pulling the right threads. But yes, of course.

Speaker B: And the, the other thing is I know we're talking sort of claw to perplexity and, and chat GPT etc for the, the research and the writing and the strategizing and all of that sort of the ideation. Is that still a word? Um, for things. But there are other tools where you know, when I'm finished this and I'm editing this I use a tool called Resound Resound FM and it gets rid of all the ums and ahs and it does beautifully and silences and you know to, to edit that yourself years ago was, was just not where you, you hardly ever did it because it was a nightmare. But now it, you know the machine can do that. And that's, that's what we're talking about earlier is it can improve the product that you've already got. You know, you can get film, you use a uh, tool called Opus Clips or we're recording on Riverside and it will take chunks out of it and turn them into, you know, short verticals to use on, you know, social media, TikTok, Instagram Reels, etc. Do they get it right? No. Do they pick the right things? No. A person is always going to pick the best chunks to edit. But are they getting, is AI getting better? Absolutely, it's getting better. So I think that that's, I think the, the drawing, extracting good stories and quotes and stuff out of a video conversation is a really good test in that regard because I think humans will win absolutely every time. But AI is getting a little better and does a little bit of the hard work. So If I get 10 out of Riverside, I might use two.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And then I'll change them anyway. So, you know, it's not perfect by any means, but it might, you might get a little bit out of it. But still doing a lot yourself is the goal 100%.

Speaker A: And that's the atomization. Right. It's good at taking source material and dicing it into tokens and then re. Serving it back up via those tokens to answer questions. So essentially it's taking all that source material and then embedding it and itemizing it and cataloging it and then repackaging it together. It's so good at that.

Speaker B: Yep. David, this has been, uh, terrific. I've, it's, it's, you know, it's a never a movable feast, all of this. And it's, it's changing all the time. And it's, it's about, you know, I think developing a philosophy around it from a content point of view and how to use AI tools to get the best out of yourself and your thinking and to be, obviously to be able to take away those jobs that, you know, would take you a long time and you probably wouldn't do like the, the atomization or the repurposing. Is someone listening to this and they, they've been sort of, you know, leaning too hard on AI for their content and they've probably fallen into the trap of getting AI to do a lot more than it should and not having their human element over it and probably not telling enough stories and putting enough emotion in. What's one thing, uh, they should do following listening to this interview to start reclaiming their own voice.

Speaker A: I, uh, you know, from a selfish point of view, I'll add that they should come to our website. And the reason I say that is we're actually launching these courses to teach people how to use AI, like to do these things effectively and not lose that voice. You'd be very surprised how easy it is to go down that maybe you wouldn't be surprised how easy it is to go down that pathway and get to that point of inauthenticity and ah, kind of lose your thread on your brand voice. But anyway, we put together some courses on that simple stuff. It's going to be launched probably in the next week or two. So probably by the time this episode goes live. It's really important not to get this wrong. Building trust, which is your brand, which is your voice, takes a lot of effort. Doing what you say you're going to do over and over and over again, it takes only one instance to totally destroy it.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: So if you care about what people think about you, or you care about your, you know, what your name means, what your brand means, how it affects other people, my suggestion is to do some more research and dive in a little bit deeper, understand what those things are. Maybe do a quick like message map or Persona workshop to kind of like dive in a little bit deeper. Hey, go do a read. Start with why by Simon Sinek. I think I got it around here somewhere. But dive in deeper to your mission, your vision and your values. And then, then ask yourself like, are we there? Is that what we're doing right now? Are we portraying these things to the world? And if the answer is no on any of those, just like take a step back, rebuild your foundation and then start over from there. Um, yeah, that would be my, my advice.

Speaker B: No, that, that's good advice. And again, it's about, over time, developing a philosophy and being aware. I think awareness is the main thing. Uh, are we sort of floating too much towards AI? Do we bring it back? How much of our voice do we want out there? How can we use it more effectively? And you can only learn by doing and reading and being aware and that, that whole notion. But at the end of the day is we want to differentiate our voice to everyone else. We don't want to be the same. So we need to put ourselves, our stories, our, our human emotion, our empathy into what we write. And, and that's, and whether that's writing for video or writing long form content for substack, it doesn't matter. It's, it's, it's the same thing. So have that awareness experiment, have a bit of fun and go deep. That's right, go deep and, and, and never just accept what comes up first, but really put yourself into it. And I think the winners will be the people who could do that because they can be a lot more effective with their time. They can go deeper with their research, they can expand on their ideas, but they don't lose that, that emotional pull that they're, they're. They only their voice can do. What's that? What would be the best URL to send people to for those courses?

Speaker A: Uh, just content workshop dot com. I don't know where on the website we'll publish them. I should probably find that out. But they'll be easy to find them when you get there. Once they're live, they're, they're going to be great. We're also going to have some instructor led ones. So if you're like, everybody wants to like, learn at their own pace, but like, if you really need somebody to hold you accountable and needing somebody to talk to through the process, you can actually work through it with an instructor as well.

Speaker B: Terrific. Very, very timely. Uh, Dave, it's been terrific. I can't believe we've, we've just conversed for an hour on this. It's been fantastic. So thanks very much. Much appreciate your time.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me.