October 21, 2025 • 43 mins
Back when Maribel Lopez left Forrester and became an independent analyst in 2008, she was taking a great risk. Independent analysts were not the force they are today. Social media was just getting going, blogs were still in their infancy, and podcasts were still called online videos.
But today, in part because of Maribel's pioneering work in the field, independent B2B tech analysts thrive. And Maribel is a great example. Yes, she still does great analysis, now largely on the AI market, but she blogs, contributes articles to various outlets, and has her own successful podcast, the AI with Maribel Lopez. She's also a road warrior, spending upwards of 25 weeks a year at tech conferences in the US, Canada, and EMEA.
Nonetheless, she somehow found the time to join us to discuss the evolution of the analyst space over the past three decades, her approach to choosing projects, and how she got rid of that pesky Boston accent for this fourth season premiere episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. I'm Dave Reddy, Head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Maribel.
Here's our chat with Maribel. Enjoy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dave Reddy (00:00):
Back when Maribel Lopez left Forester and became
an independent analyst in 2008,she was taking a great risk.
Independent analysts were notthe force they are today.
Social media was just gettinggoing.
Blogs were still in theirinfancy, and podcasts were still
called online videos.
But today, in part because ofMaribel's pioneering work in the
(00:21):
field, independent B2B techanalysts thrive.
And Maribel is a great example.
Yes, she still does greatanalysis, now largely on the AI
market, but she blogs,contributes articles to various
outlets, and has her ownsuccessful podcast, The AI, with
Maribel Lopez.
She's also a road warrior whospends upwards of 25 weeks a
(00:43):
year at tech conferences in theUS, Canada, and AMIA.
Nonetheless, she somehow foundthe time to join us to discuss
the evolution of the analystspace over the past three
decades, her approach tochoosing projects, and how she
got rid of that pesky Bostonaccent for this fourth season
premiere episode of PressingMatters from Big Valley
Marketing, the podcast thatbrings you conversations with
(01:05):
the top media and influencers inB2B Tech.
I'm Dave Reddy, head of BigValley Marketing's Media and
Influencers Practice, and I'myour host.
Through research and goodold-fashioned relationship
building, we've identified B2BTech's top two hundred media and
influencers.
Including Maribel.
Here's our chat with Maribel.
Enjoy.
It's been a long time coming.
(01:39):
Uh you and I have known eachother a long time.
So this this for me is a greatpleasure.
Thank you.
Maribel Lopez (01:44):
It's great to see you, Dave.
And it has been great uhworking with you over the years.
It's been many years now.
We won't say how many becausewe don't want to say how many.
Dave Reddy (01:53):
People can guess.
That uh that might come out alittle bit in the bio portion of
the uh the podcast.
But uh so we have a somethingin common, and you are the third
or fourth guest who has this incommon with me.
You you grew up inMassachusetts.
Now, was it the city itself orthe suburbs?
Maribel Lopez (02:07):
I grew up in the city of Boston in the South End.
Dave Reddy (02:11):
Wow.
Not to be confused with SouthBoston, which is the the hard
scrabble Irish neighborhood.
So tell me about the South End.
Tell people about the SouthEnd.
Maribel Lopez (02:20):
South End was a really interesting, ethnically
diverse place with lots of greatdiverse food options.
And you know, I really enjoyedit.
But I've had a lot of greatplaces I've lived and enjoyed at
this point.
But Boston will always be home.
As I said to you earlier, youcan take the girl out of Boston,
but you can't take the Bostonout of the girl.
Dave Reddy (02:40):
Yeah, and I I think for those who aren't from
Boston, uh the the South End andnow living near San Francisco,
the South End reminds me, it'slike the most San Francisco part
of Boston, to your point.
Uh very ethnically diverse,very it seems to be the most
liberal part of a very liberalcity, artsy things along those
lines.
Maribel Lopez (02:57):
Yeah, it's got a lot of great architecture in it
as well.
And you know, I think I'vealways lived in places that have
had interesting architecture.
I happen to like old worldarchitecture.
It's because I grew up in anold city.
So I tend to gravitate towardsplaces that have some of that
somewhere, you know, at leastsomething that was from, you
know, no earlier than the 1930skind of thing.
Dave Reddy (03:20):
Well, yeah, I mean, yet if you go downtown, you get
those roads that were built inlike, you know, 1620.
Those are always fun tonavigate.
But um uh speaking of uhspeaking, uh you and I all share
another trait.
Uh at least unless I'm tired orI've landed at Logan Airport
and have been there for morethan five minutes.
What happened to your accent?
Maribel Lopez (03:39):
Oh, that's kind of interesting.
So I I was born and raised inBoston, but my parents weren't
really a fan of the Bostonaccent.
So they didn't want me to havea Boston accent at home.
Well, they didn't want me tohave a Boston accent, but I
decided to have a Boston accentwhen I was outside of the home
because who wants to bedifferent when you're a child,
right?
Dave Reddy (03:54):
Absolutely.
And plus it's it's really kindof hard to not I think of the
Boston accent as almost like adisease.
It just creeps into you whetheryou wanted to or not.
Then all of a sudden you'retalking like this and dropping
your eyes and talking about howthe Sox are gonna win at Fenway
tonight.
And it's amazing how, like Isaid, I if I land at Logan, by
(04:15):
the time I get to by the time Iget to the curb for my taxi, my
alphabet has gone from 26 to 25letters.
So moving on to your career,you you went to Babson College,
which is outside Boston.
It's uh it's in Wellesley, andthen you jumped right into
marketing, actually, at a littlecompany called Motorola.
And that was, of course, longbefore everyone had a cell
(04:37):
phone.
Some people had cell phones.
Gordon Gecko had a cell phonein Wall Street.
Maribel Lopez (04:40):
Somebody had to have a cell phone, yeah.
You remember Gordon Gecko.
Yeah, uh, so yeah, I I wasraised in Boston, and then I
went to school in Wellesley.
I wanted to go to businessschool.
Somewhere along the line, I didtake entrepreneurship, but I
actually went in for finance andended up shifting into
marketing over the course ofthat time.
(05:01):
I went to Motorola, and theidea behind, you know, I started
in finance at Motorola, andMotorola was, you know,
certainly in the smartphonebusiness at that time, and
smartphones look like bricks.
So this really is dating me.
I remember I had one that waslike a brick with the edge cut
off of it.
Dave Reddy (05:21):
So an antenna.
Maribel Lopez (05:23):
Oh, you could drop that thing out of a
10-story window and roll over itwith a car and it would still
work.
I mean, they were reallyindustrial back in the day.
Dave Reddy (05:31):
Yeah, made with the same uh material that they make
uh airplane black boxes out of,I think.
Maribel Lopez (05:36):
God, you could kill somebody with that thing
back in the day.
It was heavy, it wasindustrial.
So Motorola had a lot ofproducts though, and Motorola
was fascinating in the sensethat it had cell phones, it had
networking equipment, so therewas a lot of different products
sold in many different places inthe world, and I knew a lot
about them.
But then Motorola was very goodabout education, and they
(05:58):
wanted you to take a certainamount of educational programs
per year, and they had their ownuniversities.
So I decided one day that Iwanted to understand what some
of these different products didand what they were.
So this takes you back into theearly days of networking.
So I learned a lot aboutnetworking in the early days,
and that was interesting, andthat parlayed into competitive
(06:18):
intelligence for the marketingorganization.
And there were some interestingdynamics around that because uh
information wasn't freelyavailable back then.
You know, you actually had tocall people and get them to mail
you things, and you readmagazines that were hardcover.
You know, there's like computerworld came in and in hard copy.
It was a different time.
(06:39):
So yeah, I am old,unfortunately.
So at any rate, it was reallyinteresting.
And somewhere along the line, Idecided um I wanted to help
with strategy.
And so that's how that started.
And you know, from there on, II went into market research and
did vendor analyst, vendoranalyst kind of things.
And now I'm my own analyst, sowith my own firm.
Dave Reddy (07:03):
Right right.
So you started in '94 at IDCand Forester, still 98 at
Forester, uh, still big firms.
But you know, that's when Ifirst got into the business.
And, you know, those names andGartner still, that that was
like those and a few others.
It would just, it was adifferent world for analyst
firms.
And I'm not sure the folks thathave come up after us are aware
(07:25):
of that.
I mean, can can you talk aboutthat landscape and just the
power that these multiple firmshad and how big they were?
Maribel Lopez (07:34):
Yeah, it's really interesting that you say that.
It was a very, it was a verydifferent world.
First of all, there weren't asmany firms.
I mean, we've seen aconsolidation recently, but you
know, it it was a point wherethere were a small number of
firms driving the entire market.
Dave Reddy (07:51):
Right.
Maribel Lopez (07:51):
So IDC was one of them.
You know, DataQuest at the timewas another one where there was
just a lot of, they had a lotof focus on numbers and
forecasting and also writtenresearch, but you know, a lot, a
lot of it was around, you know,how big or small markets were
going to be.
And I appreciated that in in myown career, it was, it was, um,
(08:14):
it mapped very well to thefinancial aspects I had been
working on before.
I decided that because I wantedto do strategy, I I rolled out
into Shiva.
Shiva was a technology companyback in the early internet days.
And and so so I worked withthem on a lot of marketing and
(08:34):
strategy.
But what you what I realizedfrom my IDC days that I thought
was really interesting was Iwanted to, you know, you either
want to watch the game or playthe game, is how I like to say
this, right?
So analysts watch the game,they watch all the cards, they
watch how they're played, theymake their predictions on who's
(08:54):
gonna win, who's gonna bluffbetter than somebody else, you
know.
The best hand of cards, as weknow, doesn't always win, right?
Dave Reddy (09:01):
You're in the broadcast booth, so to speak.
Maribel Lopez (09:03):
Yeah, so so it's quite interesting.
And when I was at TechnologyVendors, I I enjoyed it and I
enjoyed that aspect of it, butyou're fairly limited in what
you can do.
Your product is your product,right?
So it's a it's a good product,it's a bad product, it's a
product that's well timed,poorly timed.
You don't, there's only so muchimpact you can have in that.
So I I rolled back intoForester.
(09:25):
And at that point in time, youknow, we had big companies like
Forrester, Yankee, IDC.
They were sort of poweredpacks, they all tried to have
like their Gartner, Giga, theyall tried to have their own
mark.
And the thing I really lovedabout Forrester was how
strategy-oriented it was at thatpoint and how think tank it
(09:45):
was.
And and it was it was one ofthe few real commercial entities
that was a think tank.
You know, there were lots ofthink tanks, but they weren't
really commercial entities.
So it was a very interestingmix of, you know, trying to run
a business on big ideas.
So that's actually quiteinteresting.
You know, the world evolved,and people offer, you know, if
(10:07):
you look at Forrester or IDC orGartner, they offer a wide range
of products now, but thedifferentiations between the
companies was far more starkback then.
Dave Reddy (10:17):
It was.
Maribel Lopez (10:18):
And, you know, there there was a lot of
competition.
There were fewer of them insome ways.
You know, there's then therewas a big bang and then there
was a consolidation, and thenthere was another bang and
another consolidation.
But having said all that,that's that's the reason I
originally joined Forrester.
It was a big think tank.
I really loved working in a bigthink tank about technology.
(10:40):
It was a small company.
All of the research analystscould fit in one big conference
room to get really good.
Dave Reddy (10:46):
Got it.
It it just it exuded huge, ifyou will.
Maribel Lopez (10:50):
It exuded huge.
This was like what?
Um we're talking the late 90s,and I went to the $75 million
party.
When they reached $75 million,there were not even 100 people
in research when that happened.
You know, it was just a verydifferent thing.
But you know, we had um we'revery collaborative.
(11:10):
Lots of people came in and, youknow, threw in their viewpoint
on your ideas.
So yeah, it was just a verydifferent market than it is
today.
Today it's um we've gone to amarket that is much more
individual product andspecialized.
And that has its place, right?
(11:30):
So but they're just different.
So when I think about like thecareer trajectory, I watched a
lot of change happen over 10years at Forrester.
Dave Reddy (11:39):
And you know, you yourself are part of that
specialization.
I mean, and you I again it'stough to think back this far,
but when you spun out in 2008, Idon't know if you were the
first independent analyst, butit I don't think it was as
common as it is now.
It seems like most of theanalysts I work with these days
are independent or what we callon our side of the world,
hybrid.
So what was that like?
(12:01):
And you know, how sure of youof what you were doing were you?
Because that's that's a heck ofa thing to go out on your own,
you know, after a you know,several years of of being with
two of the big motherships.
Maribel Lopez (12:12):
It's interesting you say that.
When I think back on it, theonly other independent I can
remember at the time was JackGold.
He sort of forged this wholeconcept in a lot of ways.
And I originally came out and Iwasn't trying to be an
independent industry analyst.
I thought I would actually gowork in marketing at a startup
in Silicon Valley.
I was in Silicon Valley at thetime and wasn't a good fit for
(12:37):
my skill sets.
And over the course of, youknow, me spending some time
trying to figure out what Iwanted to do, which is, you
know, one of those I did have abreak where I could do that,
which I'm grateful for, alwaysgrateful for.
I had a couple of clients reachout to me.
And my my favorite story aroundthis is actually my first
(12:59):
client called me up and saidsomething very descriptive to
me.
Do you still do that thing youdo?
Dave Reddy (13:06):
Was this before or after that movie came out?
It was well after.
Maribel Lopez (13:09):
And I'm just I'm just sitting there like on the
phone, because you know, wedidn't have video back then, it
with this perplexed look on myface, like, I have no idea what
he's talking about.
But the answer is clearly yes.
Dave Reddy (13:21):
Whatever it is, did you ever figure out what that I
think I think I think I know,but I'm curious if you've ever
figured out what did he mean bydoing that thing you do.
Maribel Lopez (13:30):
It was marketing and message testing.
Dave Reddy (13:32):
Got it.
Maribel Lopez (13:33):
So, but I didn't know that at the time.
We figured that out at somepoint, and and we managed to
struggle through a commercialrelationship.
But to get back to what youwere saying, it was very
different back then.
Independence were not a thing.
Procurement did not likeindependence, large firms did
not like independence becausethey didn't see the value.
(13:53):
Right.
It was an extreme uphill battlein terms of growth of a
business.
And it took a couple of yearsfor people to kind of get used
to that concept.
I think what really pushed thatforward was this was really
about the time when social mediawas truly taking hold.
And you had analysts thatfocused on social media, and you
(14:17):
had people that were in thatspace that went out and became
independent voices.
And that notion of, you know,moving out of what had been like
a blogging era and into more ofa social era and into building
audiences became a big, hugemega trend.
And so that really, I think,facilitated the ability for at
(14:41):
least a certain number of theoriginal independents to create
a market and create acommercially viable market.
Still not easy.
I mean, honestly, today it'sstill not easy.
Today you have a differentproblem.
Today's problem is you have aplethora of independents.
And as an organization, hey, Idon't want to contract with a
hundred different people.
(15:02):
It used to be you contractedwith five, right?
Now you're looking at I've gota hundred and five because you
still have the same five youhad, and then all the other
independents that have come outof the woodwork over the course
of the several years.
So, you know, we've seen a lotof different change in the
industry.
I don't know if that's helpfulto kind of give you some context
on it, but it's how I saw it.
Dave Reddy (15:19):
Aaron Powell No, we see it from our side too.
And and and our clients have tochoose among you, you know, who
they like the best, who whoworks, who works with them the
best.
And that must be must make it alittle harder for some of the
folks on your side.
I know you're well soughtafter, but uh I wouldn't want to
be getting into that gametoday.
Maribel Lopez (15:39):
I think the hardest thing, you know, this is
the thing that I've seentechnology vendors struggle
with, but it's also a thing thatindustry analysts struggle with
as well, equally.
And this is the concept of wewon't even call it your unique
value proposition.
We'll just call it, for lack ofa better term, your value
proposition.
And I think that whenorganizations are building
(16:03):
programs working withindependence, they really have
to figure out like what's themix of value propositions they
want.
And an analyst has to be reallyclear about what their value
proposition is because yeah, asan independent, you can't be
everything to everyone, and youcan't be the same as a forester
(16:24):
or a gardener or an IDC.
You either don't have thepeople, you don't have the
ability to separate yourselfenough from the brand to do
rankings.
There's all sorts of thingsthat don't work as an
independent.
So you have to be really clearon what your thing is and
articulate that to people andalso be very specific, if that's
not what they want, then you'renot the right fit for them.
(16:46):
And that's hard.
It's hard to walk away frombusiness, particularly in the
beginning.
And I think the biggestchallenge independents have is
they come out and they thinkthey're going to do their
independent thing the way theydid their corporate thing.
And they're totally separate.
You might have aspects of that,but you will not be able to do
whatever you've done the sameway.
Dave Reddy (17:08):
So how does that play out?
I you we talked a little bitearlier about your one of your
magic powers of being able tomessage test and and and and
mark testing marketing andthings like that.
And you and I have hadconversations like that.
I would presume you have honestconversations with clients
before they become clients orprospects about that.
And how does that play out?
(17:28):
Are some just and I know theanswer in a sense because I we
face it on our side, but aresome just like yeah, I really
would just rather you just putme on a podcast and I'll pay you
$5,000 for it?
Or I mean is is that whatyou're talking about?
Maribel Lopez (17:39):
Like the difference between the Well So
if you if you if we flip itaround and think about what
people need for value, right?
Everybody wants a differentoutcome.
And you have to be really clearon trying to understand what
their outcome is.
Sometimes our outcome is I needcontent done in such a way that
(18:02):
my buyers will understand whatI do.
That's one potential outcomeyou could need.
That content could be written,it could be video, it could be
podcasts.
And then the question is inthat content, you know, how
specific does it need to be toyou?
Right.
So if someone like me says,hey, I can write you a great
(18:22):
trend piece on what enterprisebuyers are thinking about
building customer experience,you might love that.
You might love AI and customerexperience as a trend piece.
You may, on the other hand,however, want something that
wants to talk specifically aboutmy implementation of a chatbot.
In which case that's probably adifferent analyst, right?
(18:42):
So that's not me, right?
And and so, you know, I decidedthat my value proposition was
understanding buyers and be ableto connect technology to
business value, right?
So I write stories about that,I do videos about that, I try to
help vendors, you know, surfacewhat they really do that's
(19:03):
unique and interesting so thatthey can market that to people.
So that's my value proposition.
Other people have valuepropositions that say, hey, I am
the biggest, baddest person forinterviewing your executive on
camera, no matter how deeplytechnical this is, right?
Right.
Superpower, right?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah.
Maribel Lopez (19:22):
Making making like super detailed technical
stuff interesting on video,superpower, right?
But that's a different valueproposition.
And you know, the person that'sgonna do A doesn't necessarily
do B, right?
Then you might have a I justneed message testing.
I don't care about any externalfacing stuff that you might do.
I just want your brain on like,does this work or not work?
(19:43):
Right.
That's a value proposition.
So, and the thing is, dependingon where you are in your cycle
as a company, you might needdifferent things at different
times back on this discussion ofhey, you know, when you're
dealing with companies and theyknow you and you're sought
after, you might be highlysought after for a while.
It might be that yourtechnology area is the hottest
(20:03):
thing on the planet.
Remember when we did mobile?
Oh my god, right?
Mobile was amazing.
It was a great mobile.
Dave Reddy (20:09):
You're on mobile?
Maribel Lopez (20:10):
You've I loved you got an app on the phone.
Dave Reddy (20:13):
Right.
Maribel Lopez (20:14):
Exactly.
So there there was, you know,there there was a time where
that was like the only thinganybody wanted to talk about,
and then they didn't.
And then you weren't the hotanalyst for people anymore.
It went somewhere else, right?
So, you know, understanding doyou have the right topic?
Understanding does the clientactually want to buy what
because the client will say theywant to buy whatever you're
gonna sell them, but then arethey gonna be disappointed when
(20:37):
they don't get, you know, whenthere was a miscommunication
about what that value lookedlike.
So I spent a lot of time in myown business trying to make sure
I understand, am I the rightvalue prop for you before we
even get to a contract?
Because then it's a lot ofwasted time and energy and
disappointment.
And nobody wants that.
Yeah, I hired Lopez Researchand it was an awful experience.
(20:57):
No one wants to hear that,right?
So you got to be really carefulabout brand protect, which you
know more than anybody, givenwhat you've done.
You know, your what is yourbrand value promise?
And are you delivering on it?
Are you the ultimate drivingmachine or not?
You know, are you the Batman ofcars or not?
Like there's things that youneed to know whether you are.
(21:19):
And so I think people come outand they just assume that
they're gonna do research andthey're gonna throw it over the
wall and people are gonna buy itand love it, and it's all gonna
be good.
And by the way, sellingsyndicated research has to be
one of the hardest things Icould imagine on the planet
right now.
Right.
Yeah.
For a lot of reasons.
You decided the topic wasgreat.
Does anybody that's readingthat really want to read that
(21:40):
specific thing?
No, they want to know what youcare about, what you're
researching.
But oftentimes our syndicatedresearch just has to be so high
level, it's not valuable enough.
So that's another whole thing.
If you want to have a standardrepeatable product, it's really
hard in 2025 to figure out whata standard repeatable product
for multiple people looks like.
Dave Reddy (22:00):
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I will,
I will what I'm hearing and uhwhere there's a relationship to
what what we do on our side ofthe ball is the notion that, at
least from our perspective, itit you know, obviously we get a
lot of calls and and call me ifyou have this question.
There's a little ad for you.
Can you get me in newspaper X?
Can you get me on TV show X?
(22:22):
And and I'm willing to havethat conversation, but I think
it's the wrong question.
I think the question is, canyou help me tell my story
better?
And uh that may or may not beyour responsibility as an
analyst or or if you're puttingon your consulting hat, perhaps
it is, but that's a difficultconversation to happen.
Everybody, understandably, metoo, wants instant
(22:43):
gratification.
In fact, I like to say thatinstant gratification takes too
long.
But there's work that needs tobe done, typically, with 99% of
brands to figure out okay, whatis your story?
How does that work for the x anexternal audience, the outside
in, which isn't our thing, butisn't our what we came up with,
but it's the philosophy we workby, the outside in story that's
(23:06):
going to matter to a bunch ofpeople as opposed to just you
and your company.
Is that kind of what you'retalking about in terms of what
you're thinking and when you'relooking at when you're thinking
about new prospect?
Maribel Lopez (23:17):
So that's one of the so trying to because of the
way my specific model works, andI'm not saying this is good or
bad, this is my specific model,this is what works for me.
And what I decided a long timeago was that my brand wouldn't
be big enough individually toseparate it from just looking
(23:38):
like you paid me a lot of moneyto say whatever you wanted to be
said.
That was the the nut of it.
I couldn't get around it.
I tried, and then I said, well,we just don't do that.
And it just makes it reallyeasy and simple and clean,
right?
That's not to say that anybodydoes that, can't do it better.
I've seen independents thathave launched really good, solid
ranking reports and have becomebigger companies and have done
(24:00):
really well at that, but thatjust wasn't what I wanted to do.
So that's one thing.
The everybody wants a quote innewspaper XYZ or an article in
newspaper, online newspaper XYZthat you write for is pervasive.
And it's not that those pitchescan't work.
(24:22):
It's that when people approachyou, they approach you the wrong
way.
Transactional.
The it's it's not even well.
So, first of all, you know,ethically you're not supposed to
take money to have posts inthese.
We could debate whether or notpeople do, but ethically, that's
not how it's supposed to bedone.
It's supposed to be an earnedmedia piece.
So, as you know, probably aswell as anybody on the planet,
(24:46):
thank you.
They don't approach with anearned media topic.
They approach with a I'mlaunching XYZ and I want you to
write about it.
It's like, well, that's great.
I know that that's news foryou, but the stories I want to
tell are how your customerimplemented blah blah and had
some really great outcome.
(25:07):
I will tell that story all daylong if somebody wants to show
up with it because it's a storythat adds value.
It's like somebody had aproblem, they leveraged
technology to get over theproblem, and they had a really
great outcome.
It's hard to get people to comeon for that, but there it
doesn't actually even have tohave the client name.
It could be, you know,financial institution XYZ.
(25:30):
Right.
But it can't start with like,I've got the most industry
leading, groundbreaking blah deblah, and I want you to write
about it.
I'm like, well, I don't havethe time for that, first of all.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Right.
Maribel Lopez (25:41):
So second, I don't have the interest for that
as an individual.
So I think there's a lot ofopportunity if we reframe it,
that people would get better atit.
But this is just a lack ofunderstanding of how things are
done, because there are parts ofthe market where you can buy
exactly the content you want.
(26:01):
So, how do you know?
Like, why wouldn't you askeverybody?
Right.
If if it happens in in, youknow, company A, it could happen
in company B.
So I'm gonna ask you.
So this is what I mean that youhave to spend, I I'm no longer
offended by it because Iunderstand that from a business
perspective, this is what'svaluable to you.
(26:21):
This is what you want.
And, you know, I either do ordon't deliver the thing that you
said you wanted.
And if I don't deliver it, Ioften refer to the people they
do.
Like we all know each other.
I mean, my God, Dave, how longhas it been?
Like we all know each other.
So I know who can deliver yourwhatever.
If and if you ask me, I willtell you.
And I will tell you honestly,like, you know, if I think it's
(26:44):
good, if I think it's worth it.
And I would like to hope that,you know, other and I mean, I
know there's some people that dothe same for me.
Dave Reddy (26:52):
So there's a a Venn diagram I like to use that I I
think you you just describedwhen I'm media coaching people,
which is what you think is newsand what they influencers think
is news.
And now the the diagram,obviously, like any Venn
diagram, can shift arounddepending on one, what the news
is, and two, what the influencercares about, to your point.
(27:12):
Some influencers are perfectlyhappy just interviewing you on
what you want to say.
Not a lot.
And so the Venn diagram is, youknow, on one side, it's the
hey, we need a big push forthis.
Our competitors got an articlefor this, and all of that is
perfectly good stuff, and it's areason to start the
conversation, but they'rethey're missing that on the
other side.
First of all, what the verydefinition of the word news is
(27:35):
is a reason it's called news.
What is new?
And while your product is new,and it might be interesting,
could very well be interesting,and I I hope to God it is,
because that's the easiest thingto do.
It's typically how your productfits into a larger trend and
that you can talk about somewhatuniquely.
So finding that middle ground,that's the magic, and that's
(27:57):
what keeps me coming back tothis gig.
And you know, and I'm I'm init, I'm always actually
heartened to hear about that.
That there are people like youwho are on the other side of the
ball who have the same mindset.
So bravo.
Maribel Lopez (28:10):
It's really a great opportunity that I don't
think enough people leverage.
I've seen sort of as a bestpractice.
When you go to these industryevents, right?
So someone's having theircustomer conference.
Try to take one of those peopleand match them up with a
customer that's doing somethinginteresting.
Let them talk to them, let themlet them be let it become an
organic story.
(28:31):
And those are always greatbecause usually the customers
that are there that you had putout, they're friendly.
They want to talk about theirstory, they want to talk about
why it was amazing and changedthe world for their company.
So it's a it's a good fit foreverybody, but it's not as
utilized as it should be.
And you really have to planthose things up front, right?
(28:51):
You got to make sure thatthere's enough time in the
analyst calendar that they canlike go out and do that
half-hour meeting and that theclient's set up for the half
hour meeting.
So it's not a it's not a thingthat's easy to execute on the
back end when you're there.
You kind of got to pull thatinto the front end of the
discussion.
Dave Reddy (29:08):
Speaking of industry events, shifting the
conversation a little bitforward.
I feel like every time I callyou, you're not in Charleston.
What you live by now inCharleston, South Carolina.
You are today.
How many, how many weeks a yearare you on the road?
How many and how manycontinents do you hit in a given
year?
Maribel Lopez (29:28):
Yeah.
Fortunately, the continents arefewer.
I I think one of the good newsthere is that the analysts have
become a bit more regional.
So that's good.
I'm mostly a North AmericanEuropean analyst.
I don't do as much in APAC andLATOM.
So those are the, you know,those are the continents that I
I sit in for the most part.
(29:49):
You know, I think that, and andsadly, the the answer to that
question is it's somewherebetween 20 and 25.
Weeks a year.
Wow.
It's but it's not actuallyspread out nicely.
They come in clumps where it'severy week for 12 weeks in a
(30:12):
row, kind of thing.
Because you have seasons thatare like April, May, June, and
then you have September,October, November, right?
So that's and to layer on tothat question, there are usually
multiple events per week.
I try to only go to one event aweek, but some of my analyst
(30:33):
friends I've seen at threeevents in a week, which is just
devastating to go from uh someof them are co-located because
Vegas, obviously, you'reprobably in Vegas, what, four or
five times a year at least.
You would be surprised how manyred eyes people take from the
West Coast to New York foranother.
Dave Reddy (30:51):
Oh, to get to another event.
I gotcha.
Yeah, okay.
Maribel Lopez (30:53):
It's it's really quite startling to see people
show up at like six o'clock inthe morning fresh off a plane.
I feel fair.
Dave Reddy (31:04):
But okay.
So shifting to another thing,talk to me about the Data for
Betterment Foundation.
I want to get into what youthink of current tech, but
before we do that, let's talk alittle bit about this project.
It sounds really exciting.
Maribel Lopez (31:16):
Yeah, I'll make that quick.
So about the time that futureof work became a big thing and
we were looking at, you know,COVID and collaboration and all
the changes that were happeningin work, I decided that I wanted
to find a nonprofit that wouldhelp educate individuals, but
also companies, on the changesthat technology was going to
(31:39):
bring to work and how they mightembrace that.
I'm personally reallypassionate about the need for us
to reskill our existing staff.
I think everybody assumesthey're just going to go out and
find this new talent that knowseverything that they need.
It may or may not exist.
Also, you lose all the benefitof people that know you and know
how to work within your systemand culture.
(32:00):
So I spent a lot of timetalking from the Data for
Betterment Foundation withorganizations about well, how do
we think about how you mightupskill people?
Particularly now with AI, Ithink everybody's more hip to
that.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Absolutely.
Maribel Lopez (32:12):
But you know, when you go back to COVID, they
it was a very different thing.
There definitely was anassumption, I'll just go out and
get whatever I need.
You know, we're moving tocloud, I'll go get cloud people,
right?
Or move into mobile, I'll getmobile people or software
developers.
And I think we now are at ahealthier realization,
particularly as we moved into AIand there was so much emphasis
(32:33):
on, you know, no data scientistsand all this other things.
People started saying, oh, hmm.
So anyway, that's what I do inmy free time.
My own podcast is sort ofpartially dedicated to that.
And, you know, like I said, Ido run across the globe
different opportunities around,you know, how do we think about
the future work?
(32:53):
And this is everything fromdigital inclusion in places like
Africa to get them up andrunning to how do we think about
using AI in the contact centerwhen you know you're not used to
this type of technology as anindividual.
So it's a lot of it takes a lotof different formats, but it's
um it's it's good, meaningfulwork that I hope to do more of
(33:16):
over the course of time.
So if anybody wants to talk tome about, you know, running some
program, I'd be happy todiscuss that.
Dave Reddy (33:23):
Fantastic.
And and that is to your point,I mean, that that whole notion
of reskilling workers is aconversation we have on our side
with a lot of differentclients.
And and obviously, I mean it'sit's it's a big part of what's
going on with AI.
You mentioned before that, youknow, the mobile days were fun,
but you recently told me thatyou've you've you've shifted
largely to AI now, which makestotal sense, especially given
(33:44):
what you just told me about yourfoundation.
So what is your sense of AI asyou've focused more and more on
it?
And you've you obviously hinteda little bit about it in your
last answer, but and by the timethis runs in October,
everything you and I will talkabout AI will have changed.
But is it a force for good?
Is it pure evil?
Is it both?
Maribel Lopez (34:04):
Well, it's both.
If you are a hacker, it's aforce for evil, and they use it
very well, right?
So that's that's the downside.
If you're not responsible, it'scan be a force for evil as
well, because there's all sortsof terrible things that could
happen with people's data andother things, right?
(34:25):
But in general, I'm personallyan optimist, and I believe that
there's a lot of optimism inthis technology, and it's around
learning how to use it.
The rate of change that we'reexperiencing with AI right now
is unlike anything anybody'sever seen in technology.
Literally every three months,there's something wonderfully
(34:45):
new and difficult to understand.
So, as analysts in AI, youcan't say you are an AI analyst
because honestly, that's likesaying you cover error because
every product on the planet isgoing to have some kind of AI in
it.
So, you know, I've tried to bea little more specific over the
course of the past year and ahalf of what an AI cover.
You know, so I look at AI as itrelates to customer experience.
(35:09):
I look at edge AI in terms ofhow people are deploying AI in
things like quick servicerestaurants or for robotics.
And then I also look at thegovernance and security of AI
itself, of things like largelanguage models and agenda AI,
which is really still very huge,but it's still applied in that
(35:30):
regard.
So I think AI will be verypowerful.
I think everybody agrees withthat.
I also think it's verydifficult to extract the value
out of it unless you spend a lotof time trying to figure out
what to do.
So this tying back to a key, soso we've seen, you know, in the
market research world, there'sa real tussle going on with the
(35:51):
clickbait story right now.
And the clickbait story we haverelated to AI is, you know,
somewhere between 85 and 95% ofall AI projects fail or never
make it out of, you know, proofof concept.
That seems to be like the bigthing that's going on right now,
making big headlines, frankly,causing a lot of anxiety within
(36:13):
technology buyers at the moment.
So I spent a lot of time tryingto say, okay, what is or what
isn't working?
Like, you know, what do peopledo that's wrong that you can
avoid?
What are people doing rightthat you can use?
Finding examples of actualreturn with real companies that
you can share with people sothat they know that somebody
(36:33):
made it happen.
Finding those in a right-sizedfashion, you know, it's really
easy to say that some extremelylarge financial services firm
with billions of dollars couldmake AI work for them.
They have enough people, theyhave enough money.
So then you also have to try tobalance that with, well, if
you're a mid-tier business, whatwould that look like?
(36:54):
So I think there's, you know,from the AI perspective, I'd
like to see us get into a placewhere we spend less time talking
about what went what's goingwrong, and more time talking
about like, how do we make itwork well for organizations?
And if we don't get there, it'sit's hard at this point.
Dave Reddy (37:15):
Well, talk about your organization, which I
realize is largely you.
How are you using AI?
It's obviously changedmarketing, it's changed
journalism, it's changedanalysis.
How do you use it?
And more perhaps equallyimportant, how have you chosen
not to use it?
Maribel Lopez (37:32):
Yeah.
So so I'll I'll give youexamples of the good and bad.
So for me personally, I'm aprocrastinator.
And I kind of know whyHemingway shot himself.
Because if you stare at thatblank page long enough, it like
really makes you unhappy.
Wow.
No, dude.
Okay, let's just be let's justthe real, real.
(37:53):
If you write at all, ever, younever ever feel like whatever
you've written is good enough.
There's always be something youcould add to it.
It's always crap the first timeyou do it, right?
So some people, I had a bossthat would sit down and he would
just literally bang somethingout, and it would be frankly
(38:16):
amazing.
And I was always amazed bythat.
And I was like, How do you dothat?
And he's like, Well, I just sitdown and start writing, and
then when I'm done, I read it,and if I don't agree with it, I
go back and fix it.
And I'm like, Oh, okay, I nevermastered that until, until,
until I decided here's what Iwant to write about, and I throw
a prompt into some LLM, and itspits back something absolutely
(38:42):
awful.
And and I'm like, oh my god,no, that's not it.
And then all of a sudden, thefact that you're not staring at
a blank page.
Dave Reddy (38:53):
I hear you.
Maribel Lopez (38:54):
It's like you can just reach into the future and
decide what you want to write.
And you rewrite the whole darnthing.
There's like maybe eight wordsleft from the LLM when you're
done with it, but then you askthe LLM to put a better title
with it because I write craptitles.
So it's really good at givingme a good title after I figured
out like what I want to put intothe document.
So I love that.
And and so, but here's thedanger of that, right?
(39:16):
It looks amazing when you putit into the LLM and it comes
back.
You know, it can begrammatically correct, it could
have excellent pros, it can haveall this stuff, right?
But if you haven't really gonethat extra mile to make sure
it's what you wanted, it's yourvoice, it's the right accurate
content, it's sideways on youand you don't even know it,
(39:38):
right?
So these people that like takeAI, they have it write something
and then they just publish it.
If you go on to open AI intheir safety and security
section, they literally have achart that's all their models
listed and how much theyhallucinate.
It's a live living document.
You can go check it outanytime.
When and they've got largemodels and small models, right?
(40:01):
Because there's a perceptionthat, like, well, small models
don't hallucinate.
Well, yeah, small modelshallucinate as well, just not as
much, but sometimes as much.
So on average, we're looking at20 to 35% hallucination out of
the box.
Literally just makes stuff up.
Right?
Okay.
Dave Reddy (40:18):
It's more than people hallucinate, which is
hard.
Maribel Lopez (40:20):
Yeah.
So, so, so that's how so I useAI to get over the blank page.
I use AI for first trolling ofinformation.
The internet's a big place.
There's a lot of content outthere.
You can ask it to, you know,find a bunch of stuff for you.
I look at all the sourcing, andanything that's ever said sent
to me from AI.
I've tried to get more specificabout what kinds of sourcing I
(40:44):
want.
You know, so these are thingsyou learn over the course of
time of using the technology.
It's like, yeah, okay, a sourceis a source is a source is not
true.
There are credible sources, andthen they're just people
pontificating with like nomeaningful whatever, but they've
got great SEO.
So you have to make sure thatyou understand the quality of
your research.
The BBC actually did a reallyinteresting study on this, and
(41:07):
they figured out that modelsthat were summarizing their
documents were 17 to roughly 33or 35 percent inaccurate.
Dave Reddy (41:18):
And that's just what's the point?
Maribel Lopez (41:20):
Which boy oh boy, right?
That tells you a lot rightthere.
So just don't go copying thoseAI summaries thinking they're
like the thing, right?
So these are things that youlearn.
Dave Reddy (41:28):
Wow.
Well, there there's never agood segue to my final question.
But uh and I think you kind ofanswered it in the open, but I'm
gonna ask it anyway.
So Boston, San Francisco, orCharleston?
Maribel Lopez (41:43):
I'm a firm believer that there are
different times for differentplaces.
Dave Reddy (41:47):
Okay.
Maribel Lopez (41:48):
And I have thoroughly and there was New
York as well.
I lived in New York for a year.
So I'm on my tour of greatAmerican cities.
I don't know if my tour isover, but I'm, you know,
certainly in love withCharleston at the moment.
But they've all been verydifferent.
They all bring different thingsto your soul.
And I think that as anindividual, you need to be open
(42:09):
to experiencing what that is andnot comparing it to what
something else was.
Dave Reddy (42:14):
Well, that was the most philosophical and
non-committal answer I've evergotten to that question.
Maribel Lopez (42:19):
I'm in Charleston now.
I love Charleston.
You know, I've done all theother places.
They were, you know, when youwere young in New York, it's
great.
Would I want to go back to NewYork now?
Not really.
I like visiting, but it's itwouldn't be, I'd have a
different life there.
It's not a bad life or worselife.
It's just different than thelife I want now.
And Charleston's great for thelife I want now.
Dave Reddy (42:42):
Well, Maribel, it was a pleasure.
And I wish we could talk forhours, but we cannot to finally
have you on the show.
You were wonderful, and thankyou for your incredible insight.
You are to say that you're partof our quote unquote top 200
influencers is you're you'reyou're in the top ten easy.
Thank you so much for yourtime.
Maribel Lopez (43:02):
Thank you so much.
You're making me blush.
Thanks, Dave.
Dave Reddy (43:05):
Take care.
I'd like to thank you all forlistening today, and once again,
a big thank you to MaribelLopez of Lopez Research for
helping us kick off our fourthseason in style.
Please remember to visitMaribel's website for the Data
For Betterment Foundation atdataforbetterment.org.
You'll find Maribel's pod atthat link as well.
And please don't forget to joinus next month when we chat with
(43:28):
yet another member of the B2BTech Top 200.
In the meantime, if you've gotfeedback on today's podcast, or
if you'd like to learn moreabout Big Valley marketing and
how we identify the B2B Tech Top200, be sure to drop me an
email at dReady at bigvalley.co.
That's D R E D Y at Big Valleyat all one word.co no M.
(43:49):
You can also email the wholeteam at pressing matters at
bigvalley.co.
Once again, thanks forlistening, and as always, think
pick.
Back when Maribel Lopez left Forester and became
an independent analyst in 2008,she was taking a great risk.
Independent analysts were notthe force they are today.
Social media was just gettinggoing.
Blogs were still in theirinfancy, and podcasts were still
called online videos.
But today, in part because ofMaribel's pioneering work in the
(00:21):
field, independent B2B techanalysts thrive.
And Maribel is a great example.
Yes, she still does greatanalysis, now largely on the AI
market, but she blogs,contributes articles to various
outlets, and has her ownsuccessful podcast, The AI, with
Maribel Lopez.
She's also a road warrior whospends upwards of 25 weeks a
(00:43):
year at tech conferences in theUS, Canada, and AMIA.
Nonetheless, she somehow foundthe time to join us to discuss
the evolution of the analystspace over the past three
decades, her approach tochoosing projects, and how she
got rid of that pesky Bostonaccent for this fourth season
premiere episode of PressingMatters from Big Valley
Marketing, the podcast thatbrings you conversations with
(01:05):
the top media and influencers inB2B Tech.
I'm Dave Reddy, head of BigValley Marketing's Media and
Influencers Practice, and I'myour host.
Through research and goodold-fashioned relationship
building, we've identified B2BTech's top two hundred media and
influencers.
Including Maribel.
Here's our chat with Maribel.
Enjoy.
It's been a long time coming.
(01:39):
Uh you and I have known eachother a long time.
So this this for me is a greatpleasure.
Thank you.
Maribel Lopez (01:44):
It's great to see you, Dave.
And it has been great uhworking with you over the years.
It's been many years now.
We won't say how many becausewe don't want to say how many.
Dave Reddy (01:53):
People can guess.
That uh that might come out alittle bit in the bio portion of
the uh the podcast.
But uh so we have a somethingin common, and you are the third
or fourth guest who has this incommon with me.
You you grew up inMassachusetts.
Now, was it the city itself orthe suburbs?
Maribel Lopez (02:07):
I grew up in the city of Boston in the South End.
Dave Reddy (02:11):
Wow.
Not to be confused with SouthBoston, which is the the hard
scrabble Irish neighborhood.
So tell me about the South End.
Tell people about the SouthEnd.
Maribel Lopez (02:20):
South End was a really interesting, ethnically
diverse place with lots of greatdiverse food options.
And you know, I really enjoyedit.
But I've had a lot of greatplaces I've lived and enjoyed at
this point.
But Boston will always be home.
As I said to you earlier, youcan take the girl out of Boston,
but you can't take the Bostonout of the girl.
Dave Reddy (02:40):
Yeah, and I I think for those who aren't from
Boston, uh the the South End andnow living near San Francisco,
the South End reminds me, it'slike the most San Francisco part
of Boston, to your point.
Uh very ethnically diverse,very it seems to be the most
liberal part of a very liberalcity, artsy things along those
lines.
Maribel Lopez (02:57):
Yeah, it's got a lot of great architecture in it
as well.
And you know, I think I'vealways lived in places that have
had interesting architecture.
I happen to like old worldarchitecture.
It's because I grew up in anold city.
So I tend to gravitate towardsplaces that have some of that
somewhere, you know, at leastsomething that was from, you
know, no earlier than the 1930skind of thing.
Dave Reddy (03:20):
Well, yeah, I mean, yet if you go downtown, you get
those roads that were built inlike, you know, 1620.
Those are always fun tonavigate.
But um uh speaking of uhspeaking, uh you and I all share
another trait.
Uh at least unless I'm tired orI've landed at Logan Airport
and have been there for morethan five minutes.
What happened to your accent?
Maribel Lopez (03:39):
Oh, that's kind of interesting.
So I I was born and raised inBoston, but my parents weren't
really a fan of the Bostonaccent.
So they didn't want me to havea Boston accent at home.
Well, they didn't want me tohave a Boston accent, but I
decided to have a Boston accentwhen I was outside of the home
because who wants to bedifferent when you're a child,
right?
Dave Reddy (03:54):
Absolutely.
And plus it's it's really kindof hard to not I think of the
Boston accent as almost like adisease.
It just creeps into you whetheryou wanted to or not.
Then all of a sudden you'retalking like this and dropping
your eyes and talking about howthe Sox are gonna win at Fenway
tonight.
And it's amazing how, like Isaid, I if I land at Logan, by
(04:15):
the time I get to by the time Iget to the curb for my taxi, my
alphabet has gone from 26 to 25letters.
So moving on to your career,you you went to Babson College,
which is outside Boston.
It's uh it's in Wellesley, andthen you jumped right into
marketing, actually, at a littlecompany called Motorola.
And that was, of course, longbefore everyone had a cell
(04:37):
phone.
Some people had cell phones.
Gordon Gecko had a cell phonein Wall Street.
Maribel Lopez (04:40):
Somebody had to have a cell phone, yeah.
You remember Gordon Gecko.
Yeah, uh, so yeah, I I wasraised in Boston, and then I
went to school in Wellesley.
I wanted to go to businessschool.
Somewhere along the line, I didtake entrepreneurship, but I
actually went in for finance andended up shifting into
marketing over the course ofthat time.
(05:01):
I went to Motorola, and theidea behind, you know, I started
in finance at Motorola, andMotorola was, you know,
certainly in the smartphonebusiness at that time, and
smartphones look like bricks.
So this really is dating me.
I remember I had one that waslike a brick with the edge cut
off of it.
Dave Reddy (05:21):
So an antenna.
Maribel Lopez (05:23):
Oh, you could drop that thing out of a
10-story window and roll over itwith a car and it would still
work.
I mean, they were reallyindustrial back in the day.
Dave Reddy (05:31):
Yeah, made with the same uh material that they make
uh airplane black boxes out of,I think.
Maribel Lopez (05:36):
God, you could kill somebody with that thing
back in the day.
It was heavy, it wasindustrial.
So Motorola had a lot ofproducts though, and Motorola
was fascinating in the sensethat it had cell phones, it had
networking equipment, so therewas a lot of different products
sold in many different places inthe world, and I knew a lot
about them.
But then Motorola was very goodabout education, and they
(05:58):
wanted you to take a certainamount of educational programs
per year, and they had their ownuniversities.
So I decided one day that Iwanted to understand what some
of these different products didand what they were.
So this takes you back into theearly days of networking.
So I learned a lot aboutnetworking in the early days,
and that was interesting, andthat parlayed into competitive
(06:18):
intelligence for the marketingorganization.
And there were some interestingdynamics around that because uh
information wasn't freelyavailable back then.
You know, you actually had tocall people and get them to mail
you things, and you readmagazines that were hardcover.
You know, there's like computerworld came in and in hard copy.
It was a different time.
(06:39):
So yeah, I am old,unfortunately.
So at any rate, it was reallyinteresting.
And somewhere along the line, Idecided um I wanted to help
with strategy.
And so that's how that started.
And you know, from there on, II went into market research and
did vendor analyst, vendoranalyst kind of things.
And now I'm my own analyst, sowith my own firm.
Dave Reddy (07:03):
Right right.
So you started in '94 at IDCand Forester, still 98 at
Forester, uh, still big firms.
But you know, that's when Ifirst got into the business.
And, you know, those names andGartner still, that that was
like those and a few others.
It would just, it was adifferent world for analyst
firms.
And I'm not sure the folks thathave come up after us are aware
(07:25):
of that.
I mean, can can you talk aboutthat landscape and just the
power that these multiple firmshad and how big they were?
Maribel Lopez (07:34):
Yeah, it's really interesting that you say that.
It was a very, it was a verydifferent world.
First of all, there weren't asmany firms.
I mean, we've seen aconsolidation recently, but you
know, it it was a point wherethere were a small number of
firms driving the entire market.
Dave Reddy (07:51):
Right.
Maribel Lopez (07:51):
So IDC was one of them.
You know, DataQuest at the timewas another one where there was
just a lot of, they had a lotof focus on numbers and
forecasting and also writtenresearch, but you know, a lot, a
lot of it was around, you know,how big or small markets were
going to be.
And I appreciated that in in myown career, it was, it was, um,
(08:14):
it mapped very well to thefinancial aspects I had been
working on before.
I decided that because I wantedto do strategy, I I rolled out
into Shiva.
Shiva was a technology companyback in the early internet days.
And and so so I worked withthem on a lot of marketing and
(08:34):
strategy.
But what you what I realizedfrom my IDC days that I thought
was really interesting was Iwanted to, you know, you either
want to watch the game or playthe game, is how I like to say
this, right?
So analysts watch the game,they watch all the cards, they
watch how they're played, theymake their predictions on who's
(08:54):
gonna win, who's gonna bluffbetter than somebody else, you
know.
The best hand of cards, as weknow, doesn't always win, right?
Dave Reddy (09:01):
You're in the broadcast booth, so to speak.
Maribel Lopez (09:03):
Yeah, so so it's quite interesting.
And when I was at TechnologyVendors, I I enjoyed it and I
enjoyed that aspect of it, butyou're fairly limited in what
you can do.
Your product is your product,right?
So it's a it's a good product,it's a bad product, it's a
product that's well timed,poorly timed.
You don't, there's only so muchimpact you can have in that.
So I I rolled back intoForester.
(09:25):
And at that point in time, youknow, we had big companies like
Forrester, Yankee, IDC.
They were sort of poweredpacks, they all tried to have
like their Gartner, Giga, theyall tried to have their own
mark.
And the thing I really lovedabout Forrester was how
strategy-oriented it was at thatpoint and how think tank it
(09:45):
was.
And and it was it was one ofthe few real commercial entities
that was a think tank.
You know, there were lots ofthink tanks, but they weren't
really commercial entities.
So it was a very interestingmix of, you know, trying to run
a business on big ideas.
So that's actually quiteinteresting.
You know, the world evolved,and people offer, you know, if
(10:07):
you look at Forrester or IDC orGartner, they offer a wide range
of products now, but thedifferentiations between the
companies was far more starkback then.
Dave Reddy (10:17):
It was.
Maribel Lopez (10:18):
And, you know, there there was a lot of
competition.
There were fewer of them insome ways.
You know, there's then therewas a big bang and then there
was a consolidation, and thenthere was another bang and
another consolidation.
But having said all that,that's that's the reason I
originally joined Forrester.
It was a big think tank.
I really loved working in a bigthink tank about technology.
(10:40):
It was a small company.
All of the research analystscould fit in one big conference
room to get really good.
Dave Reddy (10:46):
Got it.
It it just it exuded huge, ifyou will.
Maribel Lopez (10:50):
It exuded huge.
This was like what?
Um we're talking the late 90s,and I went to the $75 million
party.
When they reached $75 million,there were not even 100 people
in research when that happened.
You know, it was just a verydifferent thing.
But you know, we had um we'revery collaborative.
(11:10):
Lots of people came in and, youknow, threw in their viewpoint
on your ideas.
So yeah, it was just a verydifferent market than it is
today.
Today it's um we've gone to amarket that is much more
individual product andspecialized.
And that has its place, right?
(11:30):
So but they're just different.
So when I think about like thecareer trajectory, I watched a
lot of change happen over 10years at Forrester.
Dave Reddy (11:39):
And you know, you yourself are part of that
specialization.
I mean, and you I again it'stough to think back this far,
but when you spun out in 2008, Idon't know if you were the
first independent analyst, butit I don't think it was as
common as it is now.
It seems like most of theanalysts I work with these days
are independent or what we callon our side of the world,
hybrid.
So what was that like?
(12:01):
And you know, how sure of youof what you were doing were you?
Because that's that's a heck ofa thing to go out on your own,
you know, after a you know,several years of of being with
two of the big motherships.
Maribel Lopez (12:12):
It's interesting you say that.
When I think back on it, theonly other independent I can
remember at the time was JackGold.
He sort of forged this wholeconcept in a lot of ways.
And I originally came out and Iwasn't trying to be an
independent industry analyst.
I thought I would actually gowork in marketing at a startup
in Silicon Valley.
I was in Silicon Valley at thetime and wasn't a good fit for
(12:37):
my skill sets.
And over the course of, youknow, me spending some time
trying to figure out what Iwanted to do, which is, you
know, one of those I did have abreak where I could do that,
which I'm grateful for, alwaysgrateful for.
I had a couple of clients reachout to me.
And my my favorite story aroundthis is actually my first
(12:59):
client called me up and saidsomething very descriptive to
me.
Do you still do that thing youdo?
Dave Reddy (13:06):
Was this before or after that movie came out?
It was well after.
Maribel Lopez (13:09):
And I'm just I'm just sitting there like on the
phone, because you know, wedidn't have video back then, it
with this perplexed look on myface, like, I have no idea what
he's talking about.
But the answer is clearly yes.
Dave Reddy (13:21):
Whatever it is, did you ever figure out what that I
think I think I think I know,but I'm curious if you've ever
figured out what did he mean bydoing that thing you do.
Maribel Lopez (13:30):
It was marketing and message testing.
Dave Reddy (13:32):
Got it.
Maribel Lopez (13:33):
So, but I didn't know that at the time.
We figured that out at somepoint, and and we managed to
struggle through a commercialrelationship.
But to get back to what youwere saying, it was very
different back then.
Independence were not a thing.
Procurement did not likeindependence, large firms did
not like independence becausethey didn't see the value.
(13:53):
Right.
It was an extreme uphill battlein terms of growth of a
business.
And it took a couple of yearsfor people to kind of get used
to that concept.
I think what really pushed thatforward was this was really
about the time when social mediawas truly taking hold.
And you had analysts thatfocused on social media, and you
(14:17):
had people that were in thatspace that went out and became
independent voices.
And that notion of, you know,moving out of what had been like
a blogging era and into more ofa social era and into building
audiences became a big, hugemega trend.
And so that really, I think,facilitated the ability for at
(14:41):
least a certain number of theoriginal independents to create
a market and create acommercially viable market.
Still not easy.
I mean, honestly, today it'sstill not easy.
Today you have a differentproblem.
Today's problem is you have aplethora of independents.
And as an organization, hey, Idon't want to contract with a
hundred different people.
(15:02):
It used to be you contractedwith five, right?
Now you're looking at I've gota hundred and five because you
still have the same five youhad, and then all the other
independents that have come outof the woodwork over the course
of the several years.
So, you know, we've seen a lotof different change in the
industry.
I don't know if that's helpfulto kind of give you some context
on it, but it's how I saw it.
Dave Reddy (15:19):
Aaron Powell No, we see it from our side too.
And and and our clients have tochoose among you, you know, who
they like the best, who whoworks, who works with them the
best.
And that must be must make it alittle harder for some of the
folks on your side.
I know you're well soughtafter, but uh I wouldn't want to
be getting into that gametoday.
Maribel Lopez (15:39):
I think the hardest thing, you know, this is
the thing that I've seentechnology vendors struggle
with, but it's also a thing thatindustry analysts struggle with
as well, equally.
And this is the concept of wewon't even call it your unique
value proposition.
We'll just call it, for lack ofa better term, your value
proposition.
And I think that whenorganizations are building
(16:03):
programs working withindependence, they really have
to figure out like what's themix of value propositions they
want.
And an analyst has to be reallyclear about what their value
proposition is because yeah, asan independent, you can't be
everything to everyone, and youcan't be the same as a forester
(16:24):
or a gardener or an IDC.
You either don't have thepeople, you don't have the
ability to separate yourselfenough from the brand to do
rankings.
There's all sorts of thingsthat don't work as an
independent.
So you have to be really clearon what your thing is and
articulate that to people andalso be very specific, if that's
not what they want, then you'renot the right fit for them.
(16:46):
And that's hard.
It's hard to walk away frombusiness, particularly in the
beginning.
And I think the biggestchallenge independents have is
they come out and they thinkthey're going to do their
independent thing the way theydid their corporate thing.
And they're totally separate.
You might have aspects of that,but you will not be able to do
whatever you've done the sameway.
Dave Reddy (17:08):
So how does that play out?
I you we talked a little bitearlier about your one of your
magic powers of being able tomessage test and and and and
mark testing marketing andthings like that.
And you and I have hadconversations like that.
I would presume you have honestconversations with clients
before they become clients orprospects about that.
And how does that play out?
(17:28):
Are some just and I know theanswer in a sense because I we
face it on our side, but aresome just like yeah, I really
would just rather you just putme on a podcast and I'll pay you
$5,000 for it?
Or I mean is is that whatyou're talking about?
Maribel Lopez (17:39):
Like the difference between the Well So
if you if you if we flip itaround and think about what
people need for value, right?
Everybody wants a differentoutcome.
And you have to be really clearon trying to understand what
their outcome is.
Sometimes our outcome is I needcontent done in such a way that
(18:02):
my buyers will understand whatI do.
That's one potential outcomeyou could need.
That content could be written,it could be video, it could be
podcasts.
And then the question is inthat content, you know, how
specific does it need to be toyou?
Right.
So if someone like me says,hey, I can write you a great
(18:22):
trend piece on what enterprisebuyers are thinking about
building customer experience,you might love that.
You might love AI and customerexperience as a trend piece.
You may, on the other hand,however, want something that
wants to talk specifically aboutmy implementation of a chatbot.
In which case that's probably adifferent analyst, right?
(18:42):
So that's not me, right?
And and so, you know, I decidedthat my value proposition was
understanding buyers and be ableto connect technology to
business value, right?
So I write stories about that,I do videos about that, I try to
help vendors, you know, surfacewhat they really do that's
(19:03):
unique and interesting so thatthey can market that to people.
So that's my value proposition.
Other people have valuepropositions that say, hey, I am
the biggest, baddest person forinterviewing your executive on
camera, no matter how deeplytechnical this is, right?
Right.
Superpower, right?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah.
Maribel Lopez (19:22):
Making making like super detailed technical
stuff interesting on video,superpower, right?
But that's a different valueproposition.
And you know, the person that'sgonna do A doesn't necessarily
do B, right?
Then you might have a I justneed message testing.
I don't care about any externalfacing stuff that you might do.
I just want your brain on like,does this work or not work?
(19:43):
Right.
That's a value proposition.
So, and the thing is, dependingon where you are in your cycle
as a company, you might needdifferent things at different
times back on this discussion ofhey, you know, when you're
dealing with companies and theyknow you and you're sought
after, you might be highlysought after for a while.
It might be that yourtechnology area is the hottest
(20:03):
thing on the planet.
Remember when we did mobile?
Oh my god, right?
Mobile was amazing.
It was a great mobile.
Dave Reddy (20:09):
You're on mobile?
Maribel Lopez (20:10):
You've I loved you got an app on the phone.
Dave Reddy (20:13):
Right.
Maribel Lopez (20:14):
Exactly.
So there there was, you know,there there was a time where
that was like the only thinganybody wanted to talk about,
and then they didn't.
And then you weren't the hotanalyst for people anymore.
It went somewhere else, right?
So, you know, understanding doyou have the right topic?
Understanding does the clientactually want to buy what
because the client will say theywant to buy whatever you're
gonna sell them, but then arethey gonna be disappointed when
(20:37):
they don't get, you know, whenthere was a miscommunication
about what that value lookedlike.
So I spent a lot of time in myown business trying to make sure
I understand, am I the rightvalue prop for you before we
even get to a contract?
Because then it's a lot ofwasted time and energy and
disappointment.
And nobody wants that.
Yeah, I hired Lopez Researchand it was an awful experience.
(20:57):
No one wants to hear that,right?
So you got to be really carefulabout brand protect, which you
know more than anybody, givenwhat you've done.
You know, your what is yourbrand value promise?
And are you delivering on it?
Are you the ultimate drivingmachine or not?
You know, are you the Batman ofcars or not?
Like there's things that youneed to know whether you are.
(21:19):
And so I think people come outand they just assume that
they're gonna do research andthey're gonna throw it over the
wall and people are gonna buy itand love it, and it's all gonna
be good.
And by the way, sellingsyndicated research has to be
one of the hardest things Icould imagine on the planet
right now.
Right.
Yeah.
For a lot of reasons.
You decided the topic wasgreat.
Does anybody that's readingthat really want to read that
(21:40):
specific thing?
No, they want to know what youcare about, what you're
researching.
But oftentimes our syndicatedresearch just has to be so high
level, it's not valuable enough.
So that's another whole thing.
If you want to have a standardrepeatable product, it's really
hard in 2025 to figure out whata standard repeatable product
for multiple people looks like.
Dave Reddy (22:00):
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I will,
I will what I'm hearing and uhwhere there's a relationship to
what what we do on our side ofthe ball is the notion that, at
least from our perspective, itit you know, obviously we get a
lot of calls and and call me ifyou have this question.
There's a little ad for you.
Can you get me in newspaper X?
Can you get me on TV show X?
(22:22):
And and I'm willing to havethat conversation, but I think
it's the wrong question.
I think the question is, canyou help me tell my story
better?
And uh that may or may not beyour responsibility as an
analyst or or if you're puttingon your consulting hat, perhaps
it is, but that's a difficultconversation to happen.
Everybody, understandably, metoo, wants instant
(22:43):
gratification.
In fact, I like to say thatinstant gratification takes too
long.
But there's work that needs tobe done, typically, with 99% of
brands to figure out okay, whatis your story?
How does that work for the x anexternal audience, the outside
in, which isn't our thing, butisn't our what we came up with,
but it's the philosophy we workby, the outside in story that's
(23:06):
going to matter to a bunch ofpeople as opposed to just you
and your company.
Is that kind of what you'retalking about in terms of what
you're thinking and when you'relooking at when you're thinking
about new prospect?
Maribel Lopez (23:17):
So that's one of the so trying to because of the
way my specific model works, andI'm not saying this is good or
bad, this is my specific model,this is what works for me.
And what I decided a long timeago was that my brand wouldn't
be big enough individually toseparate it from just looking
(23:38):
like you paid me a lot of moneyto say whatever you wanted to be
said.
That was the the nut of it.
I couldn't get around it.
I tried, and then I said, well,we just don't do that.
And it just makes it reallyeasy and simple and clean,
right?
That's not to say that anybodydoes that, can't do it better.
I've seen independents thathave launched really good, solid
ranking reports and have becomebigger companies and have done
(24:00):
really well at that, but thatjust wasn't what I wanted to do.
So that's one thing.
The everybody wants a quote innewspaper XYZ or an article in
newspaper, online newspaper XYZthat you write for is pervasive.
And it's not that those pitchescan't work.
(24:22):
It's that when people approachyou, they approach you the wrong
way.
Transactional.
The it's it's not even well.
So, first of all, you know,ethically you're not supposed to
take money to have posts inthese.
We could debate whether or notpeople do, but ethically, that's
not how it's supposed to bedone.
It's supposed to be an earnedmedia piece.
So, as you know, probably aswell as anybody on the planet,
(24:46):
thank you.
They don't approach with anearned media topic.
They approach with a I'mlaunching XYZ and I want you to
write about it.
It's like, well, that's great.
I know that that's news foryou, but the stories I want to
tell are how your customerimplemented blah blah and had
some really great outcome.
(25:07):
I will tell that story all daylong if somebody wants to show
up with it because it's a storythat adds value.
It's like somebody had aproblem, they leveraged
technology to get over theproblem, and they had a really
great outcome.
It's hard to get people to comeon for that, but there it
doesn't actually even have tohave the client name.
It could be, you know,financial institution XYZ.
(25:30):
Right.
But it can't start with like,I've got the most industry
leading, groundbreaking blah deblah, and I want you to write
about it.
I'm like, well, I don't havethe time for that, first of all.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Right.
Maribel Lopez (25:41):
So second, I don't have the interest for that
as an individual.
So I think there's a lot ofopportunity if we reframe it,
that people would get better atit.
But this is just a lack ofunderstanding of how things are
done, because there are parts ofthe market where you can buy
exactly the content you want.
(26:01):
So, how do you know?
Like, why wouldn't you askeverybody?
Right.
If if it happens in in, youknow, company A, it could happen
in company B.
So I'm gonna ask you.
So this is what I mean that youhave to spend, I I'm no longer
offended by it because Iunderstand that from a business
perspective, this is what'svaluable to you.
(26:21):
This is what you want.
And, you know, I either do ordon't deliver the thing that you
said you wanted.
And if I don't deliver it, Ioften refer to the people they
do.
Like we all know each other.
I mean, my God, Dave, how longhas it been?
Like we all know each other.
So I know who can deliver yourwhatever.
If and if you ask me, I willtell you.
And I will tell you honestly,like, you know, if I think it's
(26:44):
good, if I think it's worth it.
And I would like to hope that,you know, other and I mean, I
know there's some people that dothe same for me.
Dave Reddy (26:52):
So there's a a Venn diagram I like to use that I I
think you you just describedwhen I'm media coaching people,
which is what you think is newsand what they influencers think
is news.
And now the the diagram,obviously, like any Venn
diagram, can shift arounddepending on one, what the news
is, and two, what the influencercares about, to your point.
(27:12):
Some influencers are perfectlyhappy just interviewing you on
what you want to say.
Not a lot.
And so the Venn diagram is, youknow, on one side, it's the
hey, we need a big push forthis.
Our competitors got an articlefor this, and all of that is
perfectly good stuff, and it's areason to start the
conversation, but they'rethey're missing that on the
other side.
First of all, what the verydefinition of the word news is
(27:35):
is a reason it's called news.
What is new?
And while your product is new,and it might be interesting,
could very well be interesting,and I I hope to God it is,
because that's the easiest thingto do.
It's typically how your productfits into a larger trend and
that you can talk about somewhatuniquely.
So finding that middle ground,that's the magic, and that's
(27:57):
what keeps me coming back tothis gig.
And you know, and I'm I'm init, I'm always actually
heartened to hear about that.
That there are people like youwho are on the other side of the
ball who have the same mindset.
So bravo.
Maribel Lopez (28:10):
It's really a great opportunity that I don't
think enough people leverage.
I've seen sort of as a bestpractice.
When you go to these industryevents, right?
So someone's having theircustomer conference.
Try to take one of those peopleand match them up with a
customer that's doing somethinginteresting.
Let them talk to them, let themlet them be let it become an
organic story.
(28:31):
And those are always greatbecause usually the customers
that are there that you had putout, they're friendly.
They want to talk about theirstory, they want to talk about
why it was amazing and changedthe world for their company.
So it's a it's a good fit foreverybody, but it's not as
utilized as it should be.
And you really have to planthose things up front, right?
(28:51):
You got to make sure thatthere's enough time in the
analyst calendar that they canlike go out and do that
half-hour meeting and that theclient's set up for the half
hour meeting.
So it's not a it's not a thingthat's easy to execute on the
back end when you're there.
You kind of got to pull thatinto the front end of the
discussion.
Dave Reddy (29:08):
Speaking of industry events, shifting the
conversation a little bitforward.
I feel like every time I callyou, you're not in Charleston.
What you live by now inCharleston, South Carolina.
You are today.
How many, how many weeks a yearare you on the road?
How many and how manycontinents do you hit in a given
year?
Maribel Lopez (29:28):
Yeah.
Fortunately, the continents arefewer.
I I think one of the good newsthere is that the analysts have
become a bit more regional.
So that's good.
I'm mostly a North AmericanEuropean analyst.
I don't do as much in APAC andLATOM.
So those are the, you know,those are the continents that I
I sit in for the most part.
(29:49):
You know, I think that, and andsadly, the the answer to that
question is it's somewherebetween 20 and 25.
Weeks a year.
Wow.
It's but it's not actuallyspread out nicely.
They come in clumps where it'severy week for 12 weeks in a
(30:12):
row, kind of thing.
Because you have seasons thatare like April, May, June, and
then you have September,October, November, right?
So that's and to layer on tothat question, there are usually
multiple events per week.
I try to only go to one event aweek, but some of my analyst
(30:33):
friends I've seen at threeevents in a week, which is just
devastating to go from uh someof them are co-located because
Vegas, obviously, you'reprobably in Vegas, what, four or
five times a year at least.
You would be surprised how manyred eyes people take from the
West Coast to New York foranother.
Dave Reddy (30:51):
Oh, to get to another event.
I gotcha.
Yeah, okay.
Maribel Lopez (30:53):
It's it's really quite startling to see people
show up at like six o'clock inthe morning fresh off a plane.
I feel fair.
Dave Reddy (31:04):
But okay.
So shifting to another thing,talk to me about the Data for
Betterment Foundation.
I want to get into what youthink of current tech, but
before we do that, let's talk alittle bit about this project.
It sounds really exciting.
Maribel Lopez (31:16):
Yeah, I'll make that quick.
So about the time that futureof work became a big thing and
we were looking at, you know,COVID and collaboration and all
the changes that were happeningin work, I decided that I wanted
to find a nonprofit that wouldhelp educate individuals, but
also companies, on the changesthat technology was going to
(31:39):
bring to work and how they mightembrace that.
I'm personally reallypassionate about the need for us
to reskill our existing staff.
I think everybody assumesthey're just going to go out and
find this new talent that knowseverything that they need.
It may or may not exist.
Also, you lose all the benefitof people that know you and know
how to work within your systemand culture.
(32:00):
So I spent a lot of timetalking from the Data for
Betterment Foundation withorganizations about well, how do
we think about how you mightupskill people?
Particularly now with AI, Ithink everybody's more hip to
that.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Absolutely.
Maribel Lopez (32:12):
But you know, when you go back to COVID, they
it was a very different thing.
There definitely was anassumption, I'll just go out and
get whatever I need.
You know, we're moving tocloud, I'll go get cloud people,
right?
Or move into mobile, I'll getmobile people or software
developers.
And I think we now are at ahealthier realization,
particularly as we moved into AIand there was so much emphasis
(32:33):
on, you know, no data scientistsand all this other things.
People started saying, oh, hmm.
So anyway, that's what I do inmy free time.
My own podcast is sort ofpartially dedicated to that.
And, you know, like I said, Ido run across the globe
different opportunities around,you know, how do we think about
the future work?
(32:53):
And this is everything fromdigital inclusion in places like
Africa to get them up andrunning to how do we think about
using AI in the contact centerwhen you know you're not used to
this type of technology as anindividual.
So it's a lot of it takes a lotof different formats, but it's
um it's it's good, meaningfulwork that I hope to do more of
(33:16):
over the course of time.
So if anybody wants to talk tome about, you know, running some
program, I'd be happy todiscuss that.
Dave Reddy (33:23):
Fantastic.
And and that is to your point,I mean, that that whole notion
of reskilling workers is aconversation we have on our side
with a lot of differentclients.
And and obviously, I mean it'sit's it's a big part of what's
going on with AI.
You mentioned before that, youknow, the mobile days were fun,
but you recently told me thatyou've you've you've shifted
largely to AI now, which makestotal sense, especially given
(33:44):
what you just told me about yourfoundation.
So what is your sense of AI asyou've focused more and more on
it?
And you've you obviously hinteda little bit about it in your
last answer, but and by the timethis runs in October,
everything you and I will talkabout AI will have changed.
But is it a force for good?
Is it pure evil?
Is it both?
Maribel Lopez (34:04):
Well, it's both.
If you are a hacker, it's aforce for evil, and they use it
very well, right?
So that's that's the downside.
If you're not responsible, it'scan be a force for evil as
well, because there's all sortsof terrible things that could
happen with people's data andother things, right?
(34:25):
But in general, I'm personallyan optimist, and I believe that
there's a lot of optimism inthis technology, and it's around
learning how to use it.
The rate of change that we'reexperiencing with AI right now
is unlike anything anybody'sever seen in technology.
Literally every three months,there's something wonderfully
(34:45):
new and difficult to understand.
So, as analysts in AI, youcan't say you are an AI analyst
because honestly, that's likesaying you cover error because
every product on the planet isgoing to have some kind of AI in
it.
So, you know, I've tried to bea little more specific over the
course of the past year and ahalf of what an AI cover.
You know, so I look at AI as itrelates to customer experience.
(35:09):
I look at edge AI in terms ofhow people are deploying AI in
things like quick servicerestaurants or for robotics.
And then I also look at thegovernance and security of AI
itself, of things like largelanguage models and agenda AI,
which is really still very huge,but it's still applied in that
(35:30):
regard.
So I think AI will be verypowerful.
I think everybody agrees withthat.
I also think it's verydifficult to extract the value
out of it unless you spend a lotof time trying to figure out
what to do.
So this tying back to a key, soso we've seen, you know, in the
market research world, there'sa real tussle going on with the
(35:51):
clickbait story right now.
And the clickbait story we haverelated to AI is, you know,
somewhere between 85 and 95% ofall AI projects fail or never
make it out of, you know, proofof concept.
That seems to be like the bigthing that's going on right now,
making big headlines, frankly,causing a lot of anxiety within
(36:13):
technology buyers at the moment.
So I spent a lot of time tryingto say, okay, what is or what
isn't working?
Like, you know, what do peopledo that's wrong that you can
avoid?
What are people doing rightthat you can use?
Finding examples of actualreturn with real companies that
you can share with people sothat they know that somebody
(36:33):
made it happen.
Finding those in a right-sizedfashion, you know, it's really
easy to say that some extremelylarge financial services firm
with billions of dollars couldmake AI work for them.
They have enough people, theyhave enough money.
So then you also have to try tobalance that with, well, if
you're a mid-tier business, whatwould that look like?
(36:54):
So I think there's, you know,from the AI perspective, I'd
like to see us get into a placewhere we spend less time talking
about what went what's goingwrong, and more time talking
about like, how do we make itwork well for organizations?
And if we don't get there, it'sit's hard at this point.
Dave Reddy (37:15):
Well, talk about your organization, which I
realize is largely you.
How are you using AI?
It's obviously changedmarketing, it's changed
journalism, it's changedanalysis.
How do you use it?
And more perhaps equallyimportant, how have you chosen
not to use it?
Maribel Lopez (37:32):
Yeah.
So so I'll I'll give youexamples of the good and bad.
So for me personally, I'm aprocrastinator.
And I kind of know whyHemingway shot himself.
Because if you stare at thatblank page long enough, it like
really makes you unhappy.
Wow.
No, dude.
Okay, let's just be let's justthe real, real.
(37:53):
If you write at all, ever, younever ever feel like whatever
you've written is good enough.
There's always be something youcould add to it.
It's always crap the first timeyou do it, right?
So some people, I had a bossthat would sit down and he would
just literally bang somethingout, and it would be frankly
(38:16):
amazing.
And I was always amazed bythat.
And I was like, How do you dothat?
And he's like, Well, I just sitdown and start writing, and
then when I'm done, I read it,and if I don't agree with it, I
go back and fix it.
And I'm like, Oh, okay, I nevermastered that until, until,
until I decided here's what Iwant to write about, and I throw
a prompt into some LLM, and itspits back something absolutely
(38:42):
awful.
And and I'm like, oh my god,no, that's not it.
And then all of a sudden, thefact that you're not staring at
a blank page.
Dave Reddy (38:53):
I hear you.
Maribel Lopez (38:54):
It's like you can just reach into the future and
decide what you want to write.
And you rewrite the whole darnthing.
There's like maybe eight wordsleft from the LLM when you're
done with it, but then you askthe LLM to put a better title
with it because I write craptitles.
So it's really good at givingme a good title after I figured
out like what I want to put intothe document.
So I love that.
And and so, but here's thedanger of that, right?
(39:16):
It looks amazing when you putit into the LLM and it comes
back.
You know, it can begrammatically correct, it could
have excellent pros, it can haveall this stuff, right?
But if you haven't really gonethat extra mile to make sure
it's what you wanted, it's yourvoice, it's the right accurate
content, it's sideways on youand you don't even know it,
(39:38):
right?
So these people that like takeAI, they have it write something
and then they just publish it.
If you go on to open AI intheir safety and security
section, they literally have achart that's all their models
listed and how much theyhallucinate.
It's a live living document.
You can go check it outanytime.
When and they've got largemodels and small models, right?
(40:01):
Because there's a perceptionthat, like, well, small models
don't hallucinate.
Well, yeah, small modelshallucinate as well, just not as
much, but sometimes as much.
So on average, we're looking at20 to 35% hallucination out of
the box.
Literally just makes stuff up.
Right?
Okay.
Dave Reddy (40:18):
It's more than people hallucinate, which is
hard.
Maribel Lopez (40:20):
Yeah.
So, so, so that's how so I useAI to get over the blank page.
I use AI for first trolling ofinformation.
The internet's a big place.
There's a lot of content outthere.
You can ask it to, you know,find a bunch of stuff for you.
I look at all the sourcing, andanything that's ever said sent
to me from AI.
I've tried to get more specificabout what kinds of sourcing I
(40:44):
want.
You know, so these are thingsyou learn over the course of
time of using the technology.
It's like, yeah, okay, a sourceis a source is a source is not
true.
There are credible sources, andthen they're just people
pontificating with like nomeaningful whatever, but they've
got great SEO.
So you have to make sure thatyou understand the quality of
your research.
The BBC actually did a reallyinteresting study on this, and
(41:07):
they figured out that modelsthat were summarizing their
documents were 17 to roughly 33or 35 percent inaccurate.
Dave Reddy (41:18):
And that's just what's the point?
Maribel Lopez (41:20):
Which boy oh boy, right?
That tells you a lot rightthere.
So just don't go copying thoseAI summaries thinking they're
like the thing, right?
So these are things that youlearn.
Dave Reddy (41:28):
Wow.
Well, there there's never agood segue to my final question.
But uh and I think you kind ofanswered it in the open, but I'm
gonna ask it anyway.
So Boston, San Francisco, orCharleston?
Maribel Lopez (41:43):
I'm a firm believer that there are
different times for differentplaces.
Dave Reddy (41:47):
Okay.
Maribel Lopez (41:48):
And I have thoroughly and there was New
York as well.
I lived in New York for a year.
So I'm on my tour of greatAmerican cities.
I don't know if my tour isover, but I'm, you know,
certainly in love withCharleston at the moment.
But they've all been verydifferent.
They all bring different thingsto your soul.
And I think that as anindividual, you need to be open
(42:09):
to experiencing what that is andnot comparing it to what
something else was.
Dave Reddy (42:14):
Well, that was the most philosophical and
non-committal answer I've evergotten to that question.
Maribel Lopez (42:19):
I'm in Charleston now.
I love Charleston.
You know, I've done all theother places.
They were, you know, when youwere young in New York, it's
great.
Would I want to go back to NewYork now?
Not really.
I like visiting, but it's itwouldn't be, I'd have a
different life there.
It's not a bad life or worselife.
It's just different than thelife I want now.
And Charleston's great for thelife I want now.
Dave Reddy (42:42):
Well, Maribel, it was a pleasure.
And I wish we could talk forhours, but we cannot to finally
have you on the show.
You were wonderful, and thankyou for your incredible insight.
You are to say that you're partof our quote unquote top 200
influencers is you're you'reyou're in the top ten easy.
Thank you so much for yourtime.
Maribel Lopez (43:02):
Thank you so much.
You're making me blush.
Thanks, Dave.
Dave Reddy (43:05):
Take care.
I'd like to thank you all forlistening today, and once again,
a big thank you to MaribelLopez of Lopez Research for
helping us kick off our fourthseason in style.
Please remember to visitMaribel's website for the Data
For Betterment Foundation atdataforbetterment.org.
You'll find Maribel's pod atthat link as well.
And please don't forget to joinus next month when we chat with
(43:28):
yet another member of the B2BTech Top 200.
In the meantime, if you've gotfeedback on today's podcast, or
if you'd like to learn moreabout Big Valley marketing and
how we identify the B2B Tech Top200, be sure to drop me an
email at dReady at bigvalley.co.
That's D R E D Y at Big Valleyat all one word.co no M.
(43:49):
You can also email the wholeteam at pressing matters at
bigvalley.co.
Once again, thanks forlistening, and as always, think
pick.
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