Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is the Drake insights podcast,your weekly dose of cutting edge
senior living marketing insights.
Join me, your host, Natasha Drake for boldideas, proven strategies and inspiring
stories straight from the experts.
Tune in and let's conquer the seniorliving marketing landscape together.
Natasha (00:17):
Hi guys.
Welcome back to theDrake Insights podcast.
I am your host, NatashaDrake from Drake Strategic.
Let's get started.
So on today's episode, I am joinedby Angela Green Urbaczewski from
RevOppAI, and Angela and I actuallyworked together in a prior life.
And we have, I think, verysimilar mindsets when it comes
(00:39):
to marketing planning andstrategies and sales strategies.
And so not only was I intrigued thatshe's another entrepreneur, but also
the use of AI in her name, excited me.
And I thought it'd be great tohave her come on today and talk
about just a different way we canuse AI in our marketing approach.
So welcome Angela.
(01:00):
If you want to introduce yourself.
Angela (01:01):
Thank you.
Pleasure to be here with you, Natasha.
I come from 26 years insales and marketing, 23 years
of that in senior living.
So providing a lot of leadership inthe sales and marketing space for
growing senior living companies,both nonprofit and for profit.
A chunk of that was doing consulting work.
Some of it that I did with you andreally helping organizations that
(01:21):
were rebranding, redeveloping theircommunities, going into brand new markets.
And that's really been a passion of mine.
I also spent years as the VP of salesand marketing at Bethesda Senior Living
and at Christian Living Communitiesand really taking those companies,
you know, 45 million a year to 65, 65to 120 with not only operations, but
(01:44):
also management and consulting andreally just saw in the last two years.
AI is going to change the way we doall these digital transformations and
change all those internal marketingteams that I've worked so hard to build.
All those roles are changing as well.
So it really presented animperative for me to go back and
get some additional training.
(02:04):
Went back in 2023 and did my Scrumproduct owner training and I'm just
finishing an AI for business leaderspost grad program at UT Austin.
That's been a fabulous engagementwith a lot of developers and folks
who don't come from the marketing andsales space, but really come from the
IT and software development space and,really excited to bring that skill
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set to help organizations scale theirsales marketing and revenue, really
bringing that same critical approach tolooking at everything within the sales
marketing and customer experience space.
But through the lens of how dowe automate, how do we use AI?
How do we implement the exactly theright things in the tech stack in
order for organizations to scale to newmarkets, scale to new product lines.
(02:50):
And so I work now inside andoutside senior living with all
kinds of mid to small businessesin helping them drive that growth.
Natasha (02:59):
So that kind of
brings me to my first question.
So tell me a little bit more aboutAI in your name and how you really
leverage and use the power of AIto really transform businesses.
Angela (03:09):
Yeah, there were there were
two things that really drove me to
look at how we're going to apply AIand small and mid-sized businesses.
One was when these products first cameout, you know, and now this feels like
years ago, but it was just this fall.
Things like Copilot, Salesforce'sAI assistance were only available
to really large companies.
So I really saw this critical opportunityin that small and mid-sized business space
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for those organizations that can pivotquickly, you know, don't have compliance,
maybe running their companies in the waysome larger companies do and don't have
many, many layers of decision making.
There was this real opportunityfor smaller organizations to pivot
quickly, with some new tools.
But also, you know, 10 or 50 or even athousand person company is not going to
(03:57):
go out and hire gen AI developers to buildtheir own large language learning model.
So it's really about those companiesfiguring out what off the shelf
products can they customize, whetherit's data analysis tools or it's
marketing automation, customer journeybuilding, or it's chat that they also
use to train and coach team members.
(04:20):
So really saw those needs for companiesand that, that for me as a leader in
these digital transformations in thepast, I saw this change management is
so hard for frontline staff and so hardeven for corporate leaders and CEOs,
sometimes to look at what's the changewe drive first that's going to have the
biggest revenue impact for us that isgoing to be well adopted by the team.
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And how do you inspire that adoptionand engage your best stakeholders?
So I just saw it's, you know,it's typical change management.
It's great leadershipand change management.
And an understanding of what arethe technology options out there.
And so I really thought it was a wonderfulopportunity to bring both of those things.
I'm not a developer.
You know, I don't go buildthe products from scratch.
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I have great partners that do that.
I really bring that businessleaders approach of understanding
sales and marketing.
Understanding salespeople.
That's where I started out in the businessand understanding how we engage them in
leveraging new tools and understandingenough about them without feeling like
they have to become developers to reallytranslate those business needs to how
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we can quickly implement in all kindsof spaces that impact the company.
Natasha (05:34):
That's really interesting.
And I know you also do a lotof assessments as well, and
that's something I also do.
And so that was just something thatreally interests me when we met last
week was how you're able to use then AIto dig deeper into data to really help,
you know, operators and corporationsmake those strategic decisions.
That really interests me.
So if you can explain a little
Angela (05:54):
more as well
Natasha (05:54):
about that.
Angela (05:54):
Yeah
You and I and I come from, I feel likedecades of saying to organizations, let's
look at the data and build your successaround both what's already working and
then let's find out what's not working.
Right.
Are you not converting leads?
Are you converting leadsthat are super need driven?
So your length of stay is super short.
There's more and more industrydata about the impact of that.
(06:14):
And so.
I've always spent a lot of time digginginto customer databases, social media
behavior, website behavior, and analytics,and using that information both to build
really customized customer journeys andto be able at the C suite and VP level
to be able to predict revenue, right?
We need to know what our income is goingto be this month and next month and next
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quarter in order to plan for success.
And get financing and all thosekinds of things that that senior
living organizations need.
So this is really where it'sbeen a game changer for me.
When I stepped back to retool, Iactually thought about going to
get a Master's in data analytics.
And as I started looking at theAI tools that we're developing,
because I don't know R or SQL.
(06:59):
And I think this is the toughthing as a marketing and sales
leader who's pretty analytics based.
You know, I was always reliant onnegotiating with that software company
to get our API and development that wasgoing to help plug our systems together
or negotiating for time with the internaldata analysts to really get the deep
dive into the data done, so that's reallybeen a game changer for me and being
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able to bring expertise to organizations.
You know, it used to take me 40 hourswith a client's customer database,
website, analytics, social media,just to do like, really deep data
exploration now in 10 hours, we've gotall the exploratory data analytics done.
We've got an initial predictive model,we've run it through linear regression
and decision trees and random analysis inorder to find what's the tool that's going
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to help us best, to be able to predictboth individual customer outcomes, that
lead scoring stuff that helps us build,you know, a unique customer journey for
adult daughters versus the 75 year oldcouple, who's still very independent and
has no cognitive decline versus the memorysupport or assisted living resident.
And to be able to really line those outin valuable ways for the customer to
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get what they need, but also for thecompany to be able to predict and then
we're able to spend our time refiningthe data and looking for great look
alike audiences and building out thatcustomer profile in a way that can really
help us find more people like that.
Move that same approach to new markets.
It's really valuable for companies thatwant to be replicable with their approach.
Natasha (08:33):
Something that most excited me.
I mean, I know how long thattakes to go through the data.
I mean, you spend a majorityof your time doing that.
So if this can shorten the time, timeis money, for operators to be able to
look at what are we doing with the datarather than just analyzing the data.
That's huge.
So thank you for explaining that.
Angela (08:50):
I think there's such an appetite
for at the leadership level for there
to be meaningful dashboards that areboth current data and predictive.
Right?
So the tool DeepNote that I usethe most and I use ChatGPT's paid
version for this sometimes stillwhere I know the data will be secure.
I'll test in
between the two, but to be
able to have some new tools
that if you've got, you know, a really
(09:12):
expensive customer database thatnot everybody has access to in your
company, but you want to be able toget that key dashboarding out that
integrates systems and integrates data.
There are some great new tools forthat, that really put real time data
at your fingertips in an easier waythan it was available when you had to
build out with Power BI or with Tableau.
Natasha (09:33):
Right.
You kind of mentioned this,but also in addition to data,
how else can AI help improve?
You talked a little bit about thecustomer experience and journey.
If you could talk a littlemore about that as well.
Angela (09:43):
Yeah, you know, I've been getting
ready to speak about AI at Argentum.
And so I've been reconnecting with a lotof the software providers in the industry,
that have tools that are layering AIon to understand what they're doing and
what they're seeing as industry adoption.
And I think.
Two things that I'm really seeing arevaluable in my own work and, and across
(10:04):
the industry that are making a difference.
One is lead scoring, you know, and that'scollecting really good data from the front
end and then being able to use thosepredictive analytics that I talked about
to really surface for salespeople andfor marketing staff, who are those folks
who have the most potential, not onlyto make a fast decision but to be great
long term residents in your community.
(10:26):
So I think that's, that's one way.
And then we've used a lot of AI tools toactually build out that customer journey.
So depending on your customer database,there are so many great tools that can
help you accelerate outbound prospectingto professional referral sources,
whether you're using LinkedIn SalesNavigator or Clay IO, or you're doing
research with Apollo or Hunter, allof those have become great AI tools
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for capturing lookalike and potentialcustomer and partner information.
And then also I'm seeing, you know, chat,chat is so valuable , and you know, we
need to be available to our customer 24/7that adult daughter who is online at 10
o'clock at night after the kids are backfrom sports and in bed trying to figure
out what to do next to support her family.
(11:13):
The more effective our chat toolscan be in serving up information
in a way that's useful for her.
The faster we convert that lead.
Natasha (11:22):
Yeah.
And so I want to end today.
This is a lot of information for everyone.
And for those of you that heardher speak at Argentum as well,
I'm sure you learned more.
What do you want to end today'sepisode with for people to remember,
you know, or top tip for listenersof what you've learned through this,
this process of starting your company
Angela (11:39):
Yeah,
Natasha (11:40):
you know, and using AI.
Angela (11:42):
I would say 2 things.
If you'll permit me 2.
1.
Almost none of us are collecting all thedata at the front end that's going to
help these tools to help us the most.
So really having a thoughtfulapproach and having someone who can
coach you through what are all thepoints in that customer journey?
Because we know, you know, 70, 80percent of the shopping process
(12:03):
now is happening without us.
It's through our website, it'sthrough our social media, it's
through referrals from friends andconversations in the community.
And so the more, and we've got theability to collect a lot of that
that helps us then find more peoplelike that, who can benefit from the
mission and the products that we offer.
So really having a thoughtful approachto that data collection and making
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an investment in that so that downthe road, you can build a great
predictive model and you don't haveto be a huge company to do that.
And don't underestimate the power ofAI, not only to improve your customer
experience, but for smaller organizations,we are using those very same tools.
That knowledge base that we'rebuilding for customer facing
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chat is becoming a great internaltool for onboarding new staff.
If you don't have a large, you know,learning management system, or if
you're learning management system isjust bloodborne pathogens and fall
prevention and, and that, that compliancestuff, those knowledge bases to coach
customer service and salespeople inreal time to help them with strategy
(13:07):
to advance a customer to ramp up inan industry that is hiring all the
time, ramp up team members on the brandexperience and customer experience
expectations that you want to deliver.
And, you know, we're developing areally diverse workforce, so it allows
AI allows us to put some tools attheir fingertips that aren't searching
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through the SharePoint or, diggingthrough, you know, your learning
management system to find things, butreally serve up to team members in
a way that makes their jobs easier.
Natasha (13:40):
Great.
Well, thank you so much, Angela.
I'm really excited to partnermore with you in the future.
If anyone has any questions,please reach out to me, of
course, at DrakeStrategic.comor Angela as well at RevOpp.AI.
That's all we have today on theDrake Insights Podcast, and I look
forward to seeing you next time.
Real quick, if you enjoyedwatching the podcast today, please
(14:03):
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And if you have any questions or wantto talk after about anything that Drake
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visit our website at drakestrategic.
com.