How to Start Using AI as a Media Channel for Your Business: Expert Insights by Robbie Caploe

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Sticky Note Marketing Show. I am your host, Mary Czarnacki. Uh, and today I have a very special guest to introduce you to. Robbie Kaplo. So today we are going to be talking about AI and LLMs. And Ravi, if you don't know her, is an editor and publisher, advertising and media. She writes about AI and LLMs as a media surface and advises a small Number of small B2B and media focused businesses. And by the way, she's Sparkling Ice obsessed. So anyone else out there leave us a comment if you're a Sparkling Ice fan. Welcome, Robbie, to the show. Sophie. So happy that you're here with us.

Speaker B: Mary, thanks so much. It's been so much fun getting to know you. And we're going to talk about what is arguably my favorite topic these days.

Speaker A: Yes, I'm so, uh, looking forward to this. I've been looking forward to hearing what you have to say about what is new and happening with all of these AI models and getting found in search. But before we jump into it, I know that there are people who are already familiar with you who are watching or listening to us today, but some people may be meeting you for the first time. So for those people just getting to know you in this episode, can you tell us a little bit about what problems you tackle with your clients and who you work with, what kind of work you are actually doing now?

Speaker B: Sure. Uh, right now, obviously the whole world is thinking about AI, right? And I do not teach people how to use AI. I really talk to them about how to make better decisions about it. We're in a moment in the world where everybody is thinking about the ways in which this is going to revolutionize the world, which I think it actually is. But when it comes down to your business and what's happening, there's a lot of confusion and pain. I think you will agree about what to ignore, what to invest in, where you want to lock down, and the kinds of AI tools and ideas that are worth testing and looking at to see if they're going to help make you and your business more of a success.

Speaker A: And I think that's where I want to jump in is how do we actually think about AI and think about it in, in terms of not just a tool. Right. Okay. We can download tutorials, we can watch videos about, like how to prompt and how to structure this. What tools are, are you using for different jobs? But I think you bring up something really important which is, okay, how am I thinking about this in a structured Way in a strategic way, as a growth driver.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: As something that's going to drive the success of my business. So I know one of the things that you've been talking to people about is being clear on those decisions, right? How to start thinking about those decisions, how to look at the workflows in your business and really understand where it makes sense to build in AI, to use AI. So can you let us into some of those conversations? So when people are coming to you, where should they even be getting started?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of ways to tackle it. And what I am seeing a lot across leadership teams is that they say, I know I have to have an AI strategy, or they're scared that their boss has said to him, said to them, what's our strategy? And they're not sure how to answer. So I think the first thing you really need to do if you're a business leader is to get clear on what exactly is happening. And that means, are you using AI in your company? Do you have a policy in place? Are people just going rogue on their own and spending 20 bucks on their own ChatGPT subscription and uploading tons of stuff to the LLM and you have no idea where it is or how it's going? Or do you have, for instance, an enterprise version of, uh, copilot on your Outlook? And does everybody understand, like, what is okay to put on the LLM, what is not okay to do it, what to do if you put something on that you might not know about? So I would say that the first foot down is really where are we? And one thing that's been surprising, Mary, is that like, people are a little nervous to say I am not sure what we're doing. I just spoke to somebody right before we got on the phone who works at a very well known B, uh, 2B brand. And I said to her, are you on an enterprise version of Gemini or not? And she was not sure. So, uh, you have to be able to understand that maybe you're not going to know exactly what you're doing. And let me tell you, like anybody that comes to you and says, I'm an AI expert, I'm telling you they're full of it. And I hope you don't mind me saying that to your listeners and your viewers just because it's all changing so much so fast that it's really okay, you don't have to worry and, you know, think that you have to act like an imposter. Everybody is learning at the same time and that is the best thing you can do is admit what you don't know. Because there is so much help out there and so much learning that there is to be done that I think we really all have to move forward together.

Speaker A: And I think that's a good permission slip to write. So everyone who listens to this show knows I'm always telling everyone, grab your sticky notes. So I hope everyone has their sticky notes out today because Ravi is going to be sharing some gold nuggets with us today. But definitely, first sticky note is going to be write yourself that permission slip. Right? This is moving so fast. Things that we were talking about six weeks ago with AI are different than we're talking about today. And at the time of this recording, I'm using Claude in my business for a lot of different things that I used to use chat for. Uh, and who knows, six weeks from now that may change again depending on how things evolve. So I think that permission slip is essential, especially for leaders of organizations, that any sign of weakness we can be intimidated by. We can feel like, okay, I can't admit I don't understand this. I can't admit I'm not an expert in this. It's not really a sign of weakness to say, look, we're learning this together. I'm staying up to speed. I'm consulting people who are thinking about this all day, every day, like you, to bring in that knowledge. But, uh, I think you also bring up something. If I'm not the expert, if I have to admit and be real, that, okay, I'm not an AI expert, but I'm an expert in my audience. I'm an expert in my business, I'm an expert in my market. So therefore, what is my role? Like for the leaders you're talking to, what should they be bringing to the table when they are consulting someone who is advising them on AI? What are they really the owners of?

Speaker B: Uh, I think they should. Certainly the people who I talk with to your point, they're going to know their business a heck of a lot better than I'm going to know their business. And what they're also going to know is where the pain points are. Like, sometimes I will say to them, what's keeping you up at night? Tell me what's really bothering you. And they will say, I want my sales team to have some kind of an AI solution. But I'm not sure how to evaluate. Evaluate who the vendor is. Or I'm thinking that I want to introduce some sort of AI training as part of everybody's work training and then fold that into performance reviews. But I'm not sure what those metrics should look like, and I'm not sure how my staff is going to react once I do that. They will be able to tell me or anybody else, like, where is the pain point and the stickiness that they're trying to get through? Or you will. They'll have them say, my staff says that they lose so much time in putting together billing and statements every month. Or I am in PR and I spend half my time drafting press releases and then putting them out there. That's the kind of stuff that can and should be automated by AI. And it will make people feel better because they'll be like, thank God I don't have to do that piece of drudgery that kind of pops up on my calendar every week, and instead I can do something different.

Speaker A: I think that's a great reminder, too, is that it's not about knowing necessarily the tool. Right. A lot of times I'm getting questions from people, oh, which tool are you using? I will tell you.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But that's not the answer. Right. You're getting at this point, which is one of the things you are having to help people with is slowing the thinking about jumping to the solution and actually thinking about, where's the gap?

Speaker B: What do you need it for? Like, you can say, there are a million vendors out there and they're changing all the time, but if they're not going to help you with your problem, the idea is that you don't want to make a very expensive mistake. And then six months from now, you found out that you spent a ton of money on something that wasn't really addressing the friction in your business.

Speaker A: It's so funny. I'm hearing echoes in my brain based on what we're talking about here. Back when Martech and ad tech and everyone's rolling out these new capabilities and these new CDPs and dams and all these other Martech tools. I feel like it was a similar pressure, except now it's moving even faster. Before it was okay. I don't want to invest in all these new martech platforms that may have the same capabilities or overlap. Or do I need to know what the name of the platform is to be able to recommend it? Or do I just need to be able to describe the use case to my IT department. I feel like there's echoes of that, but it's now even more risky because it is moving so fast. Are you hearing that from some of the leaders you're Working with?

Speaker B: Absolutely. I think there's a lot of that. And what I usually say to people in those situations is you don't have to be the AI expert because there's so much out there and it is changing so quickly, much faster than when during kind of the Martech wave that you were talking about. But you do have to know what it is that you don't know and what is the problem that you're trying to solve for.

Speaker A: That's amazing. So for some of the clients that you're speaking to, especially in B2B spaces where we're not going after end consumers buying tomato sauce, we're talking about a fairly sophisticated buyer in a lot of cases, potentially even complex, complicated solutions or products that these companies are selling. What are some of the major concerns that they're bringing to you when they're thinking about exploring or how they're exploring AI?

Speaker B: They talk about, certainly talk about what is safe to put up on these LLMs and what isn't, which goes back to what kind of system are you using and are you putting in place. That is a big one. Because you don't want any kind of confidential secrets or financial information to be floating out there to be trained by the LLMs for sure. They want to know what should the governance be? Meaning if you're in a very highly regulated industry like finance or insurance or healthcare, we see that all the time. Right. What are, uh, those guidelines are even more stringent. So what does it mean that I have to do everything I can to protect my customers information? So what can I use and what can't I use? Another big thing is, I'm sure you're aware that a couple weeks ago the White House unrolled what it's calling its AI policy. So it was like the trigger for all of the attorneys who were working in AI governance and safety, cybersecurity to say, okay, what does this mean in terms of what we think, think is going to come down the pike from like the FCC and frankly the FTC too, because, uh, unlike Europe, there is no kind of federal national legislation. And honestly the company or the state rather, that people really should be looking at is California. Because California has been at the forefront of rolling, um, out rules and guardrails for businesses to abide by. But there's, there is like a lot of that kind of Wild west feel. And that is a big pressure point for these companies to navigate and to navigate this.

Speaker A: There's, like you said, there's a lot of moving pieces, things are moving quickly. So if there are leaders listening to this episode who are thinking about, okay, who do I need at my table? Who do I need in my own cabinet? Who are you seeing be an important set of advisors or who do they need to be talking to? Who do they need to be gathering to the table to make sure that they're, they don't have to be the leader expert, they can be the leader of experts.

Speaker B: I would say, yeah, it's a really good question because I recently saw a survey where it talked about the fact that Most of the AI initiatives in companies are being led by the CIOs. And it certainly makes sense that it originates there. But the CIO is not necessarily going to have the same sort of concerns and insights into the business that for instance, a chief communications officer is going to have, or the chief people officer or the head of HR and certainly the legal council. So what I am seeing is a lot of kind of cross functional AI task forces that are saying, okay, so it's not just about what kind of system we're going to use, but who's going to have access to it. If we're going to produce a bot that is going to answer questions for our employees about health care or about our health coverage, who is going to be overseeing that? And that that might be a matrix of HR and legal and the IT professional. So it, the structures of organizations are changing in the way they have to work with this. And let's face it, the stakes are high because if you make a mistake and start like for instance, if there's something that comes out about a very senior person being let go or leaving the company and they're only seeing it in the trades and there is a bot that's operating internally that doesn't know how to answer very concerned employee questions about it, that's a problem. And it's not just an AI problem problem, but it's how does AI serve the business. So in a way it goes back to what you were saying originally at the top of the conversation, which is the, the AI is not calling the shots. It really has to be the people who are in leadership teams who are making sure that AI does their bidding. And when I talk to people, I get a lot of, they all sound like they're trying to change their pants while they're driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour. And I understand what that feel, feels like, but the idea is that AI can at least slow it down to 40 or make sure that you're fully dressed by the time you get in the car.

Speaker A: It does, it does. It feels like we're trying to manage all these things at the same time, but I think that's really important. So hopefully you guys listening and watching to this, got a couple of those notes down on your sticky note. I know I've been taking some notes as we've been going through. So something you mentioned about bringing together that cross functional group sparked something in my brain, which is as they're bringing these people together, as they're, like you said, trying to get clarity on what are we actually trying to solve here. Right. What do we actually want this thing to do for us? What are our use cases? What are our gaps? It can feel overwhelming. And so what is your recommendation? If we were going to give people some kind of core takeaway, if you did nothing else this week, what would be one thing that you think people could do to feel a little bit more grounded, feel a little bit more clear so that it doesn't feel like that? Uh, I'm trying to pull my pants on.

Speaker B: If you're.

Speaker A: I.

Speaker B: If you're a leader, I think the first thing you should do is put out a survey. It doesn't have to be a big survey. It can be five questions, seven questions saying who's using AI? If you're using it, what, how? What are you using, what is the tool you're using and then what are you using it for? And that it's very basic and it will tell you if people who's using it and how they're using it, as well as who's not using it, it. So I would say if that's the one thing you're going to do this week, you should do it if you're. But if you're an employee thinking, I know I'm supposed to say that I know something about AI, but I don't know anything about AI. I would start playing around and play around with three versions. Just don't. Just be mindful of what you're putting into it. Some people are using AI to plan their vacation itineraries. So it doesn't necessarily have to be work related, but something that will get you inside the gate. And listen, all of the biggies. Claude Perplexity, OpenAI There are free versions of all of them and granted that they're limited, but they will still start to give you a sense of what these kind of chat conversations look like in sound and feel like. I would do that right away because you don't want to be the person at the table who says no, I'M not doing anything on AI. There's that whole notion of it's going to make me redundant and if I start using AI, I'm going to lose my job. And what, what I've been telling people is that I can't guarantee you that you're not going to lose your job, but I can tell you that if you don't use, don't lose AI, don't use AI, it's not going to be good for you. It's just the way the world is now. And it really can be a lot of fun too. You know, if you can try to strip away some of the anxiety and just turn the volume down, it can really be a fun thing to use and find incredibly helpful in your everyday life.

Speaker A: I appreciate that encouragement. The way you said it, just play with it, just be open to testing it. Even outside a business use case, if this is something you're just scratching the surface on. I was fascinated by the ability to just take a picture of my fridge and ask the AI, uh, what I should make for dinner tonight that my 11 year old would actually eat. So it doesn't always have to be a workplace automation development. It can be something where you're just trying to wrap our heads around what could this actually do. And I think that that for me has been one of the most exciting things is because even just understanding the capabilities through play has allowed me to say okay, now when I stumble upon something or I can see something in a process that I'm working on with myself or with a client, I even now have a sense of what it could help me with. So you almost a sense of what the possibility could be in order to start bringing it into your thinking.

Speaker B: So I like even if you think about what's that one thing you do when you sit down to work that you dread or just ugh, I'm just going to go back and check my email again before I have to write this, write this or do this. That might be the very thing that AI can help you with.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, I love that.

Speaker B: I think that's your point about just using it for a non work purpose. I, my husband and I did a big party around New Year's Eve and I fed the menu into AI and I said I have three days until this party starts. I need you to give me my cooking schedule. And it did and it was really great, like right down to start the music and make sure that uh, the appetizers are in the oven or whatever it is. But it was, I couldn't believe how helpful it was.

Speaker A: That's fantastic. I like that. All right, so everyone here, I want to hear in the comments what has been the most useful thing that you have used AI to do this week? If you have any creative solutions, drop it into the comments wherever you're watching or joining us from. I would love to crowdsource a little bit of feedback here. That's a great idea, Robbie, that I love stories and storytelling. So I'm curious if you have a story of someone that either you've worked with or even that you've seen in the news or in the trades of someone who's been doing what we're talking about, maybe a, ah, smaller business owner, maybe in the B2B space. But who have you seen be a model of, like you said, starting simple with the problem, being focused on the gaps first, not the tool first. Do you have a story of anyone that you've worked with or that you've heard of?

Speaker B: I had a great conversation with the chief comms officer at Yahoo when I was doing some work with Reagan Communications, and as I talked about doing a survey. But what she did was that she decided to just have, uh, an AI comms day. She had all her people take off from work and she said to them, like, I want you to play around with AI. There were different kind of tasks that had to be done by the end of the day of the day. And it was just a way to gently help people start really using these tools. Because I think that as we talked about it can sound so huge and so scary that you, you know, you don't see it as something that is actually there to assist you and it's okay to figure out what that is going to be. I thought that was, it was a kind of wonderful and gentle and holistic way to do it. And then you hear, I was talking to Brian Buchwald, who does a lot of really cool stuff at Edelman, and they're like instituting AI training across the board and then we'll dip in to see how everybody is faring with it. So it's, I think that if the attitude is like, we're gonna do this together and climb this mountain, it becomes a little bit less intimidating.

Speaker A: I think that's great inspiration for both of those stories. Just, I like the idea of having that day of play. Right. Here are some different things. These use cases we're going to use this for, we're going to test it. Because I'm sure a lot of leaders listening to this episode know that there are people on your team that are already ahead of the curve. Right. In their personal life, Maybe they're already using different platforms or they're already excited about this. They're already keeping themselves up to speed on things. And then there are people who are not so excited about this. And as leaders, you have to bridge the gap Right. Between the different levels of expert expertise on your team. Team.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I think it's. It's like, how do you maintain the balance between those people who were like, AI love it, and the people who are just grumpy and don't want to hear about it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I want to tell you something. It's not necessarily people who are older who are like, I don't care what it is and I don't want to deal with it. It's. It really is people of all ranges, depending on what functions and what industries you're in.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: But it's true that it's omnipresent if you can think of what was your life if you don't go online every day when there was a time in 2008, before then that it just wasn't a thing. But that is exactly what we're facing now.

Speaker A: Exactly. Thank you so much, Robbie, for coming to the Sticky Note Marketing show and sharing your expertise with us. I know that you mentioned to me before we started recording that you just updated a resource that's been incredibly helpful for a lot of teams. Would you tell us a little bit about that resource that you've developed?

Speaker B: Yes. I put together an AI glossary on my substack, which is just being written under my own name, and it's something that I update periodically. And it's really an index of all kind of basic terms that if you want to be fluent in AI when it comes to business, this is a very good resource to have in a file on your desktop or print it out if you're going old school and be able to refer back to it in conversation. And I'm very happy to make that available to the Sticky Notes audience. I think that would be great.

Speaker A: Amazing. So if you're watching or listening to this episode, we'll make sure to include the link over to Robbie's substack so you can grab that guide. I appreciate that resource. I use that resource already and I love the fact you're keeping it up to date. So thank you, Robbie, for offering that to the community.

Speaker B: Mary, thank you so much for inviting me on this. I really had a great time.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So if you're watching and listening to us and you have questions for Robbie, we'll include her link to her substack as well as her LinkedIn profile. So please definitely go follow Robbie for more. I am always curious to hear what you thought, what your big aha. Uh, moments, takeaways, Sticky Note writer downers were. So feel free to leave those in the comments. Share if you found something of value here, send this to a friend, a work colleague, or maybe your boss who might need a little bit of guidance. So thank you again, Ravi, for joining us and appreciate you. Thanks, Mary all right, thank you all for joining us for this episode, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Sticky Note Marketing Show. Cheers.

Speaker B: Bye.