EPISODE 12: Brian Dreyer Wants Everyone to Stop Saying “AI Powered” (And Other AI-Era Hot Takes)

Speaker A: So I was like, assume I know nothing. I was like, tell the tell Claude. Like, talk to me like I know nothing. Here's what I want to do. Give me every single step, start to finish, and just assume I know nothing and explain it to me along the way. And it's what we used to do with Google though, right? We got stuck, we would Google something. It's the same mentality, even with code. Right.

Speaker B: I'm talking to Brian Dreyer, who has made his LinkedIn title product marketing leader for the AI era. So he knows a thing or two about using, uh, AI to do his job. He's currently Director of product marketing at SCANA, a B2B process intelligence platform that uses AI to capture work activities in real time and measure how operations run. Brian's path to product marketing was a little different than most because he started his career in product management at comScore, where he worked on bridging the gap between customers in North America and the overseas engineering team. He has a lot of experience in product lifecycle marketing for startups taking new products from inception to launch and beyond. And we're going to delve into how AI has changed, how he has approached all that. So welcome to Brian.

Speaker A: Thanks for the introduction.

Speaker B: Sure. So everyone in product marketing talks about how it's more important than ever to cut through the AI noise. We've all heard that, that narrative going on. Uh, what do you think has gotten noisier? Are there kind of opportunities for product marketers right now to take advantage of that?

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny. I was on, uh, stage with a, one of the local Product Marketing association events last winter too. And I got up there and I was like, who else is tired of seeing the phrase AI powered? And almost, uh, I don't know, two thirds of the hands easily went up pretty fast, uh, because I think it's quickly becoming an overused phrase. But, you know, at a more higher level, I actually think product marketers are in a really unique spot right now. Um, and I think we're probably becoming more valuable than we've ever been because it is easy to build right now. But the idea of positioning and standing out is probably the hardest it's ever been because there's so much. I mean, it's pretty easy to spin up your own application to do very kind of niched and singularly focused applications. I've really kind of leaned into not trying to use that phrase AI powered. I still get some pushback. People still lean into it because it's easy yeah.

Speaker B: And I think I've talked to you about this, prior to this conversation that I think it's just going to become like the Internet. Nobody talks about how this is an Internet company because every company is essentially an Internet company. You must use the Internet to do business in 2025. Um, and I think that's going to be the same for AI that we're, that's going to kind of become a passe, self evident term AI powered.

Speaker A: It totally will. And we went through that with the SaaS movement where you know, people really leaned into, oh, we're a SaaS company, we're not an on premise company anymore. And you know, at some point there weren't hardly any on, um, prem companies left. And you're right, nobody talked about it because that was just the way to build. And I think you're right. I think it's going to go that way because we're all, there aren't too many applications out there not using some kind of AI, even if it's a more of a traditional machine learning, you know, algorithmic way of using it. Uh, we all have to be using it in some way, shape or form.

Speaker B: Definitely, definitely. Um, I would love to hear a couple of examples of how you're using, um, AI and product marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I am a, I'm a self proclaimed Claude fanboy. I really should have a T shirt that says Claude is my homie.

Speaker B: Okay, uh, that's your favorite one. All right.

Speaker A: Yes. One more thing I'll be making for myself pretty soon. Um, so I don't know, I've really leaned into, you know, really Claude specifically. I like it more than the others because it is just a fundamentally more human writer. Um, and I've anecdotally kind of bounced this off other people who tend to agree. Um, so I, I tend to use that more than anything. So how I make it work for me is in a couple ways. One really leaned into projects. Projects is a great tool for, for maintaining some kind of messaging and branding. Um, that for our job specifically is really important that we kind of carry throughout, you know, whether we're creating blog posts, LinkedIn messages, white papers. We know our differentiators. I'll be honest, I actually still write a lot of the differentiators, the core material myself. Um, cause I really want to, you know, kind of fine tune the words I use. So I still like creating that word doc. And that's, you know, what we've always done. We've always created that foundational word document. Um, but cloud is really good at maintaining and using those foundational docs. So I do it in a couple ways. I've seen people do this for asset types, like maybe they want to do it for YouTube. I tend to do it around use cases. So I have projects for like we sell into healthcare insurance, property and casualty insurance, banks in terms of like loan underwriting. I do a lot of foundational work around ICPs, pain points, jobs. So I kind of use a jobs to be done framework. Put a lot of that in there. Claude helps me with the research. Right, no doubt about it. But then it lives as these artifacts within the projects. So. But every single project carries our, you know, our foundational messaging, uh, and positioning documents. So that always goes in no matter what. And then cloud is just really good at working that into content. When I needed to still read it. I still like to be, you know, that human in the loop. Uh, but the first drafts are getting really solid. The UI work is getting there too. You know, um, ebooks are a, Ebooks are a funny thing. I've created more this year than I think I've ever done in my career. But Claude's getting much better at, you know, layouts. Um, so you can use it to help layout on a page by page basis. You know, I will literally tell it you're creating this for an 8 and a half by 11 PDF and kind of be that specific to it. And it does a pretty good job of laying it out. I wouldn't use it straight out because I don't think the styles are as sophisticated as they need to be. But if you want to get a quick layout and give it to a designer, get a much better starting point. So I've definitely used there some other ways I've used it. I literally built myself a tool specifically for refreshing old content. I find a lot of the SEO companies out there that are writing content, it's all about new, like they all just want to really, they really focus on the new content. So I built myself a solution that um, you know, use Claude code to build this. I got it hosted, um, on Vercel, but it literally goes into Google Search Console. You know, you pick a post, pulls down all the search data for it, then I send the actual post itself. So it fetches the posts, fetches the search console data, send it to ChatGPT, because that's the biggest search engine. I ask it, what are people searching for? What are the gaps? You know, rank them, gives me a prioritization. Then I take all that give you to give the user A chance to add context. So if you want to add style guides, do's and don'ts internal linking and then I send it all back to Claude and say, write me a new draft. So yeah, I was doing it manually, right. Um, and I was like, there's gotta be a better way. So me and Claude code got to work.

Speaker B: Oh, cool. Do you have coding experience to do that?

Speaker A: Not really. Not that kind. Uh, I know enough HTML and CSS and kind of understand JavaScript to sort of know what's happening. I would never be able to create that on my own. That's nothing I would ever be able to do. Here's where being a product manager though really helps is understanding requirements, is understanding some of the nuances of functionality into the weeds a little bit further. Because I think one of the best things you can do when you want Claude, uh, chatgpt, whatever you're coding with, the first step always needs to be requirements and features. How do you want it to work? Let it tease out the nuances, let it find the holes, but tell it what you want it to do. Take that 10, 15 minutes, create a document. And what they will do is actually create you a markdown document that lives inside the project so it actually can kind of always reference it. Then you go build. That's a very product manager focused kind of way of writing because that's always where you start. And that has helped me basically create, you know, your first version just come out much better when you take that 15, 20 minutes of getting the feature set m in the requirement set first. Cool.

Speaker B: So you feel like anybody could do that?

Speaker A: I really do.

Speaker B: Claude code sounds a little intimidating to me, but you're giving me a little confidence of like, maybe I could figure it out.

Speaker A: So here, here, here's my advice too. And over the summer I, I have two kids. One of them is in middle school, my daughter's in middle school and I, I actually made her make an app over the summer when they were, they were a little bored. I was like, you're gonna go build. And it's the same situation. She's never coded. She doesn't know what it looks like, she doesn't know where to start. So my biggest advice to her was like, just ask it for help. First time I got started, I was like, I don't know how to set up my computer to run something locally. So I was like, assume I know nothing. I was like, tell the tell, Claude. Like, talk to me like I know nothing.

Speaker B: Right, Right.

Speaker A: Here's what I want to do. Give me every single step, start to finish, and just assume I know nothing and explain it to me along the way. And it just, I mean, I'm at the point where it's like. It's what we used to do with Google though, right. We got stuck. We would Google something. It's the same mentality, even with code. Right. But my best advice is just, just ask it. Just ask, uh, it. If you don't know what to do, say I don't know what to do.

Speaker B: Right. I don't know what to do.

Speaker A: Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer.

Speaker B: Yeah. So we've been talking about how, how great AI AI is. What about some of your, uh, kind of pet peeves? Whether it's limitations of AI or pet peeves, I know you don't, you don't like talking about.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, so some of the things you still. I would argue we still need to be careful for what hallucinations is getting better M. Where I find where I see the most hallucinations and I see this on different app ones because I'll admit I cloud I use more than anything. But sometimes I will go to Google or Gemini or Perplexity. Right. Because they do some, I think Perplexity and Google do a really good job with some, uh, of that web searching. Um, they will still sometimes make up data. One thing I've still, I still notice is in there having a fact checked. Step statistics is still a thing that hasn't gone away. You know, again, writing style is really, is a really big one.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: Ch. I don't know. I don't know what the differences are under the hood of chat, GBT and some of the others, but somehow the, the folks at Anthropic are doing a really good job of keeping it human. Um, so that's a little bit of pet peeve. I mean the N dash is a thing.

Speaker B: Of course. Yeah.

Speaker A: They all, they all come out with it. It's kind of funny. I never knew really even. I never use an M dash, uh, ever in my life until the last like two years.

Speaker B: I'm on the opposite side. I'm one of those people that's in mourning for the EM dash. I use it a lot. And now you're. You can't use it because people think you cheated.

Speaker A: It's like it's the calling card of AI generated content.

Speaker B: Right. I know. Maybe they'll. Maybe we'll see a future where we could reintroduce the EM dash.

Speaker A: I think I have it in one of my rules. Uh, no EM dashes.

Speaker B: It doesn't listen though. I've tried that. It doesn't listen. And then if you, if you go and chastise it, it like apologizes and

Speaker A: I'm like, do you sometimes change your behavior?

Speaker B: I don't want your apology. I want you to change your behavior.

Speaker A: Do you yell at your AI?

Speaker B: I don't, I'm very uh, weird about uh, that I try to keep it professional and polite. I don't, I don't know why people yell at it all the time though. I think that it, because it makes me feel bad if it gets its feelings hurt.

Speaker A: Well, it depends if you believe that the machines are going to come alive one day and you want to be on their good side.

Speaker B: I guess maybe deep down I do believe that. I guess, Um, I don't know. It feels like a child to me, I guess. And I don't want to be mean to it.

Speaker A: That's so funny. Or pet.

Speaker B: It's more like a pet. And I don't want to be, I would never be mean to a pet.

Speaker A: Um, no, it's fine. Every once in a while you have to like threaten it that you're not going to use it again. Say if you don't get this right, I'm not going to use it. You know, it actually kind of works. I saw, I saw this written somewhere of like, you know, make the AIs compete with each other.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's kind of an interesting tactic to try to get it to think a little harder.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. I do that. But I don't tell it. I'm doing. I do behind its back. Like I'll use ChatGPT and then put it into perplexity. Um, but I don't tell it that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've told it before. It'll give you some funny responses.

Speaker B: So you talked a little bit about differentiation, uh, um, and how you use your brain versus machines. Um, uh, but differentiation is getting, it's getting harder, um, you know, with so much competition. But do you use AI to help, um, you know, understand how to stand out? Um, a little. At least as a, as a starting, starting point.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's a no brainer. Right. Because they're really good at research and you can just cover a lot more ground, um, a lot faster. Right. Because if you think about the research that we used to do manually and probably still do somewhat degree manually. Right. I mean you would go to a competitor's website or a potential competitor and you know you're, you're trying to Examine how do they position their own products? What are some of the, the highlights that they call out? What do they look at differentiation for themselves? Because you're trying to figure out where to fit in. And the deep research tools are actually getting pretty good about that. They can sort of understand that same nuance to how a, uh, competitor is doing it. So I think the research phase, it, it speeds that up, you know, so that's a really good one because you can tell it don't just, you know, say, who are my competitors? It's like, go to their homepage, look at the hero text and the subsections, and then analyze it for what's their value, what's their differentiation when it comes to our, you know, my personal one. Yeah, I do think this is where we've got to be a little, you know, a little bit more thoughtful. I know. And using your brain is like a hot take all of a sudden.

Speaker B: I do a LinkedIn post hot take. I use my own intelligence and experience to do a project.

Speaker A: You know, I actually wrote that internally on an email recently. They're like, oh, the sentence came out really well. I was like, written by me, not AI.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: Well, so look, I mean, you know, for my company specifically, right, we're, we're coming out with a new Agentix solution, right? We're going hard into this space. It is really noisy, you know, and it's a. I know it's going to be hard to stand out, which is why I'm being really, really picky on the individual words we use. Because cloud by itself will give you something a little bit more generic and they are going to give you a little bit more generic because if you think about what they are learning from, they are learning on the fly from what's out there on the web right now, right? So, I mean, almost every new model you kind of need to be using because they're updating a lot of their knowledge, because knowledge from that's, you know, 12 months old all of a sudden is going to feel a little bit stagnant. Um, because I do think things are changing that fast. So that messaging and positioning exercise, you know, and I mean, I have my frameworks that I kind of run back to, um, because I still think they apply, they're still useful. Doing that first one manually, it makes a ton of sense and I really encourage everybody, you know, take that time to do the first ones manually. Get the foundational, right, and use the words that you really want to make sure that everybody else uses. Because People are going to copy what we write and they're going to say it. Whether it's in the sales pitch or it's on our homepage. Those, uh, are the two areas that has to be different. So I think it's easy to sort of talk a little abstractly. And that's where I think some of the AI content lands. Someone gave me this advice a long time ago and I've kind of never forgotten it. It's like, be direct before you be creative. Right. Make it really obvious first before you decide to get creative on how you want to describe it. And I think that advice now really, really holds true. Like, why are you different? It just has to come out. If you start to use abstract terms or like AI powered. Right. Is a bit of an abstract term because it doesn't really tell you anything about how you use it to stand out.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think also because, uh, like you said, there's kind of a list of action verbs, particularly in B2B that we all use over and over and over again. You know, accelerate or, you know, generate revenue. You know, we could probably like, know, make a whole list. Um, and while those things, you know, are probably true, um, um, I feel like we have to challenge ourselves to do, to do better and get, get away from those words. I, that's something I challenge myself to do. And I think that for me, I, I usually, um, end up, um, just trying to say things in the plainest words possible, like, what are we really trying to do here? There's the whole, you know, exercise of explain it to your grandmother. How would you explain it? Um, and I, I use that a lot like, how can I make this simplified? And then there's plenty of time for, you know, other pages on the website or other one pagers or, you know, on the, you know, further down on the deck to get into all the weeds of how this thing actually works. And let's get into all the feature buzzwords or what have you.

Speaker A: You're absolutely right. I think you said it right. I mean, putting it into platform pages, how it works pages, that starts to make more sense because the person who takes the time to get that far hopefully also understands it.

Speaker B: A different phase in the sales cycle. If you're really researching the specific, you know, features, then you've bought in, at least to the general value proposition and you're, you know, an interested buyer and you're weighing options. So of course the messaging should be a little different than on the homepage. And I think that's a challenge that I often face with trying to make founders understand that. Um, I try to describe it as the homepage is like the front door of your house. You know, um, you want to make it very appealing for people to walk through it, but it doesn't need, you know, to have a list of all the things, all the cool stuff inside your house.

Speaker A: You know, you're absolutely right, 100%. I mean, people want to just understand it quickly. Um, I don't know if you ever read the Jolt Effect, uh, at Dixon's book, you know, and the high level takeaway that I, I do think is starting to apply really here too is like, you know, it's a little bit less about feature selling and more about approach selling. It's like, can you get a prospect to buy into your approach, you know, to solving this problem?

Speaker B: Uh, I like that because I usually use, you know, value based or benefits, but I like the idea of approach selling. I'm gonna use that.

Speaker A: I use it in my last company quite a bit. And I even, I uh, even like got the sales folks like explicitly ask the question at the end of your sales call, do you buy into our approach? It's like either the prospect liked it or they didn't. So we just, you know, kind of encourage the sales reps to just ask the question point blank. And what you find is when they say yes, your win rates just go up because people are bought into how you're doing it. If they think you're overkill, doesn't matter about the rest of your sales cycle. They're just not going to buy because they're not going to spend more because they don't see the value in it. You know, and I think the AI side of things is going to be very similar, especially for us. I mean, we're doing a very different take on how we train our models and how we're getting some of that knowledge into these agent models. You either buy into our approach or you don't. And if you do, it's going to be very hard for a competitor to beat us. Um, you know, and obviously we back that up with how we do it. But come in the front door with, you know, here's our approach to solving this problem. Do you want to come in the front door or not?

Speaker B: Sure, sure. So you mentioned a little bit earlier how you never worked on more ebooks than this year. And I found that really surprising because every time I go on LinkedIn, all I see is the old way of white, uh, papers and ebooks is dead. And nobody's reading your ebook, it's a big waste of time. I also believe that like for a certain, um, part of the sales cycle, I think that they can be valuable. Probably not for awareness necessarily anymore. I mean, um, in terms of being a lead magnet. But if you're really researching options, I think that there is an opportunity to use ebooks. How are you using them?

Speaker A: As many LinkedIn post as I see as the whole, you know, your traditional demand gen funnels are dead and everything is changing. I uh, take that a little bit with a grain of salt. Yes, there's changes. People don't research in a linear path. But to your point, people still do research, especially in the enterprise buying space. Like people are still trying to buy software in roughly the same way they've been buying for the last decade or more. So a lot of the ebooks, they are definitely lead magnets. That hasn't gone away. I mean that is still a thing now what people are researching. Yeah, our AI use case content does a lot better than almost anything else right now. Like I think we definitely see trends in people are still trying to figure out how to make it work, how to make it successful. Where am I going to add business value? That's a huge one. Everyone can spend money, but can they actually either save money, save efficiency, get productivity out of it. That's a, that's a harder one. So I think what people are researching is changing. Um, but people I think are still doing that research. So. And yes, it's gotten easier, you know, to kind of push out content for sure because that first draft is just, it's a lot faster if you know what you want to say. You've got the supporting material, the points you need to make where you insert yourself versus inserting, um, kind of generic, um, generic's not the right word but more industry specific or use case specific content. That first draft is a lot easier. So we can still get to that first draft pretty quickly and that's made us move faster. I mean, well, we thought maybe we would have done one or two a quarter. I'm doing one or two a month.

Speaker B: Oh, wow. That is a lot.

Speaker A: It, it can be a lot and it's a lot. For a horizontal solution, we're, we're a bit of a horizontal solution. There's a few, you know, places that we focus on, but we still have a horizontal nature to us. So our demand gen team actually has, you know, quite a few targets. So a lot of times it's supporting that. Um, and then there's some Executive thought leadership. You know, there's some pieces there too. Again, this is a new space. Um, doesn't really matter what level you are in an enterprise, it's new to you. Yeah, right. I mean all the way up to the CIO. We sell into the CIO's organization primarily. A lot of times that CIO is, gets on these calls because at the end of the day they're buying AI solutions for the first time.

Speaker B: So there's an education piece and it sounds like, yes, of course there's some thought leadership, but it sounds like practical advice is winning.

Speaker A: It is. 100%. It is. Because very quickly, I mean for the last, what, 12 to 18 months, enterprises have been spending, uh, and the CFOs are going to come knocking of like, hey, what am I getting for this spend?

Speaker B: Right, right.

Speaker A: And that's where the rubber hits the roads. We've heard this anecdotally too is like CFOs are, they want to know what they're getting for their spend. They know they have to spend it, but we got to have something to show for it.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So what about in the future? What do you think AI's capabilities are going to be for marketing and product marketing in the Next, let's say six to 12 months?

Speaker A: Well, I think we're still figuring out how to make systems out of it, you know, and, and I say that because I know what I'm doing, but I'm still in this like always be learning phase. Um, as many times as I think as I've got, you know, some systems or connections in place, I see someone who's, you know, got a more complicated system at some point it still has to work. I'm not convinced that everybody's 40 step process where it's one comment away on LinkedIn, you know, actually works. I still think there's a little bit of junk in there. Um, so I think over the next 12 months I still think there's going to be a lot of learning. Um, where I think as marketers we're going to get a lot of lift is actually on the creative side, um, the videos that are being created are good. Um, I don't know if you've really played with like Google's VO or Flow or any of the Google products. They're getting really, really good and not just at ah, like a five to eight second clip, but of actually maintaining a scene and a character across multiple videos. So I've been kind of toying around with that a little bit on how can we use that to you know, speed up marketing generation of videos. People that want to do, you know, a talking head like a real person, it's a lot easier to do that now. Whereas you might have had to hire somebody, get someone on camera kind of taking care of that. You know, you can develop a character with AI and image generation. And Google's doing a really good job of taking that and moving that into video. Um, that's one of those areas that I've definitely been playing around with. So you know, in product marketing the creative side of things is still a bit of a human element. You know, see there's a couple sites trying to do things like PowerPoints and data sheets. I still don't think it's polished enough to really use that. I would put my name on it. I think it's good for idea generation and I totally use. This is actually a site genspark that I actually really like to use. I just think they do a good job with layouts. But it's the creative side I think is the, is the next leg up. I think they got really good at text generation. Uh, the creative side needs to, needs to catch up.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So that's what I'm looking forward to.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. That will be a uh, accelerator for our workflows. Absolutely. So we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to have the getting to know you portion of the of the podcast. We're back talking to Brian Dreyer who is director of product marketing at scana. Um, so Brian, looking back at your career, can you recall an experience um, that kind of shaped your leadership style or your decision making approach. I think that you have a unique perspective because you've come from product management and transitioned into product marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen a lot of different types of leaders throughout my career here, you know. And um, I think the one that's kind of shaped more than anything is the leader that's willing to back you up even if they think you might be wrong. And I do remember I uh, an experience earlier on, especially in my product management career where maybe that have made a big right or wrong decision per se. It didn't have some big ramifications but I remember being backed up and I do think that was a good one, a strong one for me. So as a leader I do try to back my, my people up uh, and my teams up and I do always look at it as a team. I don't think anybody works for me. I think they work with me. So if you take that mentality, it starts to shift the dynamics because you know, there's a time and place for busy work. We all do it. I want people that can think for themselves and I want to give people some autonomy because those are the folks that tend to grow the most. I want people to grow under me. If you go into like the mega, mega companies, it's a little, can be a little bit of a different story. Sometimes you just need people that are there to get the busy work done and that's their job. But I want people to grow. So sometimes backing them up, making sure they know I've got their back I think is actually a really important part of, of team because the people that don't feel supported, uh, they struggle, they struggle the most and they also don't stick around. It's a great way to lose good people.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. I, I definitely think my most successful engagements are whether it was a full time position or you know, as a consultant. Being the boss or stakeholder, be, collaborate, have a collaborative attitude is just a much more pleasant and ultimately productive experience.

Speaker A: It is, yeah, totally is. So I try to carry that.

Speaker B: So on the flip side, what's the worst piece of advice or conventional wisdom you've been told or even that you've heard out in the, in the world?

Speaker A: You know, advice is definitely shifting. I, I kind of go back a little bit. I mean I got outta college in the early 2000s. Um, there was no social media, there was no gig economy. Um, you know, Salesforce had not pioneered the, no software phrase yet. Google um, was just some little company with a search box. You know, I remember that, you know. Yeah, the advice of uh, do what you love and you'll figure out how to make money on it I think is shifting quite a bit. Job markets have really changed. Job openings and job types have changed. The gig economy is an interesting one. You know, there's an avenue to where you've got to, you have to make a living somehow. Um, and I think it may not always be what you love, but I tried. What you do to support yourself doesn't have to define who you are. I do think we might have grown up with a little bit of that mentality of like, you know, your career is who you are and I don't think that's the case anymore. I think if people piece together income off multiple sources, they have side hustles even, even if they do it full time, you know, they, and they have side hustles because they actually might be more passionate about that, but maybe it doesn't, you know, either doesn't pay as much, they don't lean into it whatever reason. Um, so I think it's a little, I think that sort of advice is a little different, which is why, probably why you're going to see some changes for like the next generations coming out of college. I mean my undergraduate's in sports management.

Speaker B: Oh, really?

Speaker A: I don't do anything with that any.

Speaker B: I mean that's still pretty lucrative career area. It totally could have been more scarce, right? Yeah.

Speaker A: Could have gone very differently. But no, I don't know. I think some of that advice that we grew up with isn't necessarily holding true. And uh, I think we all just have to embrace that level of change.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's hard to make a living in a more creative field specifically that you have to have, I think some kind of financial backing in order to really kind of go for it. I think, um, it's very. To be an artist these days. I think it's one of the, I would agree with that, uh, endeavors. So that's. But sometimes the best business insights come from outside of work. Do you do anything outside of work, like for fun or something you're passionate about that you've also learned things that help you do your job better in maybe more unexpected ways.

Speaker A: So the thing that helps me learn the most is probably being a youth sports coach. I mentioned I have two kids. My, my daughter's in middle school, did a little bit with her when she was younger. It's my son who's in fourth grade who I, I've done a lot with at this point. So I've been his coach ever since uh, 2020, which was an interesting time of coaching outdoor soccer with a face mask on. Um, but through them, you know, I've become a travel soccer coach. Now I'm a travel basketball coach. Uh, and you know, having to help move people along, whether they are 8, 9 or 10, um, or full fledged adults. You know, there are some similarities there because at the end of the day you are still trying to get people to be better versions of themselves. You're trying to move them along, teach them how to grow. So I really like coaching for that aspect. Sometimes it's a great mental break, you know, from the day to day just gets me out of that zone into a very different one. But there's a lot of similarities between, you know, being a business leader and also teaching kids.

Speaker B: Yeah, we bring a lot of our, you know, youthful personality into our adulthood. Uh, in terms of the way we react to things or, you know, our personality quirks, I find that if I'm having an interpersonal work, um, challenge, I have friends who are teachers in the public school system, and they often have the best advice on how to deal with things. Um, I believe that. I think that, that, you know, kids are, you know, early versions of the adults that we all become.

Speaker A: They totally are. And, you know, it's the same. And I think it's like the similar concepts. Right. I mean, you want people to learn and grow, so you can't criticize them for making a mistake because they tried something new. Right. They try a new move on the basketball court, ball gets stolen. You can't yell at them for trying. But there are coaches that do, just like there are managers that do.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And you can tell it's the same exact principle. The kids that can fail are the kids that learn, the adults that can fail.

Speaker B: Errorless learning, meaning there's no such thing as mistakes. Exactly. It's just this happened, and let's see what we could learn from it. I agree with you. There's really not much to be gained by chastising, you know, things that have happened that maybe didn't go the best way. It's just all about how can we move on and take something from this. Right. Like, no one's living this flawless life as much as we all.

Speaker A: I know. Exactly. Exactly. We're all going to make some mistakes.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Want to make sure we learn from them and don't keep repeating them.

Speaker B: Definitely. Okay, so as we wrap up, um, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Speaker A: Probably LinkedIn. It's probably where I spend most of the time. That's probably the best way to reach

Speaker B: out and get in touch in the show notes. I'll be showing sure to put that in the show notes so people can get in touch with you. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Last Word on product marketing. This has been really interesting. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast on all the major platforms and check out the videos on my YouTube channel. And thank you to Brian and thank you for listening.