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ON TODAY'S SHOW:
AI isn’t just about speed and data. What if it could help us build deeper emotional connections with our audience? In this powerful conversation, I sit down with Stephen Sakach, founder of aiCMO and the BLISS Business Podcast, to explore the role of empathetic AI in the future of marketing.
If you're a creative entrepreneur craving soul-aligned strategy and smarter content creation, you need to hear this.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm really worried about some parts of it.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Like so we worked with AI on the number side for
like a decade, right Within allthe ad platforms and things like
that, and it was very smart atbringing together, you know, all
kinds of optimizationsaccording to whatever goal you
assigned it.
If your goal is a bad one, itwill optimize toward a bad goal,
and so this is exactly theproblem that we have right now.
(00:26):
If we're going to have peopleand AI is going to get much
smarter than it is right nowmuch, much smarter and if we're
going to have it optimizingtoward the sole pursuit of
profit, it's not going to careabout people, it's not going to
care about planet, it's going torun right over that because of
it's pursuing profit.
It's optimizing toward profit.
That was another part of it waslike oh, this could be trouble
(00:48):
for us.
How could we build somethingthat maybe comes in through a
side door of marketing?
You know, telling a story aboutyour business that helps you
align with higher consciousprinciples.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Welcome to Tried and True with a Dash of Woo, where
we blend rock solid tips with alittle bit of magic.
I'm Renee Bowen, your host,life and business coach and
professional photographer atyour service.
We are all about gettingcreative, diving into your
business and playing withmanifestation over here.
So are you ready to getinspired and have some fun?
Let's dive in.
Hey, hey, welcome back to Triedand True with the Dash of Woo.
(01:29):
I am your host, renee Bowen.
Today I have a very interestingtopic for you guys.
We are talking a little bitabout AI, but not in the way
that you've probably heard itspoken about Today.
My guest is Steven Sikash.
He's the co-founder of AICMOioand the founder and CEO of Xero
(01:51):
Company, which is basically apioneer in empathetic AI and
marketing, and he's got threedecades of experience in digital
media and journalism and alsohuman consciousness studies,
which, again, I love the meldingof those things.
So we have a really interestingconversation today on the show
about AI, where it's going, thedangers of what some of the
(02:15):
stuff is going on right now andwhat to be aware of, how to
notice what is going on and toredirect it and, at the heart of
it, why empathy and love playsuch, or should play, such, a
huge part in AI and in yourbusiness.
Stephen is committed toembedding empathy into business.
(02:37):
He created something calledBLIS, which stands for Build
Love into Scalable Systems, andhe helps organizations scale
with compassion.
I love this conversation andyou guys are going to love it
too.
Let's jump in.
Hey, steven, thanks for beinghere today.
I want to just dive right intothis topic because I think that
(02:58):
you have a very interesting viewof what we're going to be
talking about today, becauseyou've had a very interesting
career path, from journalism toAI consciousness, and I think we
have a lot to talk about.
But I want to ask you realquick how do you define
empathetic AI and what does thatreally look like in a real
(03:19):
business setting for you?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, for us, particularly in the business
setting, we really use it a fewdifferent ways, but one of them
is kind of on the empatheticmarketing side of things, and so
what does that mean?
It's really marketing thatlooks at how you feel, you know,
versus the whole transactionalkind of idea of you know,
talking about features andbenefits and things like that.
Right, that's kind of boring,that everybody does, and we want
(03:44):
to get a little deeper intelling your story and so to do
that, we really try and buildthis sort of empathetic process
around your business and we usefor the past couple of years
we've kind of built this AIplatform that really dives in
empathetically into how yourcustomers are feeling as they're
going through a journey withyou, really focusing on areas of
(04:10):
your business and how theyexperience your business
empathetically and trying to.
You can do that, and if you cando it through empathy, that's
often, you know, the mostprofitable thing, and not just
(04:31):
the good thing, but the mostprofitable thing to do Um,
because you really can buildthat emotional connection, and
when you build an emotionalconnection with empathy, you're
going to have 306% higherlifetime value than a satisfied
customer, right, so you gotsomeone who's just satisfied
with you, hey, great job,whatever.
But if you're able to get tothat point of that empathetic
emotional connection withsomeone, that's where you're
(04:54):
going to build that longerlifetime value.
And one of the great thingsabout ai is it actually does a
pretty good job of getting intoour minds a little bit
empathetically and it's gettingactually creepier at being
better and better at this.
It's getting a little scarysometimes on the empathetic side
, but it really does kind of getinto our minds a little bit and
(05:17):
help us see, from you know,whatever your business is, the
perspective of your customer,why they're coming to you, what
their problems are, what theirfears are, and there's a lot of
emotions and things connectedwith that.
It really does help you pullout, which is kind of a
complicated thing, but whatwe're doing is trying to make
that simple for any business tobe able to connect that way
(05:39):
versus, you know, having to havea whole marketing staff and
things like that and reallygoing through that process.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, okay, so we're going to get to the AI aspect in
just a little bit, because I amfascinated to get your take on
all of that, because it ischanging so quickly and, like
you said, it's gotten scarilygood at some things and also
kind of weird lately.
I mean, you know what I mean.
Like it's just, it's a bigtopic, so I definitely just it's
.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
It's a big topic, so I definitely what do you say?
What are you saying on theweird side?
What are you?
Speaker 2 (06:04):
seeing on the weird side, it's been super glitchy.
Well, first of all, like it'sbeen really glitchy the last
couple of weeks, but what I'veseen a lot of happening recently
, like and I been talking aboutthis a lot on just to my
communities and just noticing itfor myself is that if we're not
careful, like it's such a hypeperson right, like and I think
(06:25):
there's a lot of like- exactlylike this danger there thing,
right, yeah, like I think atsome point it'll be really good
at like coaching, but right nowit can be such a sycophant, yeah
, that it actually enablesproblems.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And I've seen people kind of spin out with this
because there's this study, theUniversity of Zurich they got
into trouble for this.
They went on to Reddit and theyused AI to see how they could
change people's minds versushumans and you compare the two.
Who was better at changingpeople's minds?
Turns out, ai was six timesbetter being more persuasive.
And so what's scary is, yeah,we're at just the beginning of
(07:03):
that, but what's scary is, likeyou bring up, is that it can be
very persuasive in kind of anunhealthy way.
And you know, it's likecoaching and stuff that
sometimes you need hard truthsabout things and it's trying to
be your best friend sometimesright now and it just sits in
your ear.
And I do think this is a bigpoint for AI because, as a
(07:27):
person, I think it's going toamplify.
Ai is going to amplify whateverI believe in some way.
So if I've got better angels,good right, it's going to
amplify.
If I've got inner demons, uh-oh.
This is a little bit of troubleon an individual basis, and so,
yeah, I was curious whereyou're going with that Cause I
do totally agree with that, thatthat's actually a big problem.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, it is.
And you know it's interestingbecause one of the women in my
group coaching her brother worksfor open AI and we were having
this discussion in there.
I was kind of talking to themabout that and she said, yeah,
my brother said they actuallyhad to kind of shut down one of
the models because it was so outof control, like um, like
exactly what we're talking about.
(08:07):
And it's been interestingbecause I've been telling people
for a while now, like you needto train it to challenge you.
It can't just be a yes person,like if you're, if you're
followed around by yes peopleall day long, you're not.
You know, it's a really it's arecipe for for all kinds of not
good things.
I think, um for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I totally agree.
And where people'sconsciousness is sometimes you
know really how we evolveconsciously is our ability to
take on more perspectives, bemaybe a little more humble, be
more loving.
You know we go through thatprocess.
But if we're still very egoicand have narcissistic tendencies
, this is the worst thing toamplify that right.
(08:44):
It's just going to be thatlittle voice in your ear telling
you all the wrong stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You're amazing, you got this.
Sometimes it's unhinged.
I'm like, okay, calm down, girl, I am not that awesome, but
that's the thing is a lot ofpeople aren't really training it
.
They're like, oh my God, thisis great For for people who have
issues with that too, who, like, really do need the pump up,
who really do need all of that.
(09:10):
I'm a little concerned aboutthose people because they're not
going to recognize it.
Like you said, and like you alsosaid, it is essentially a
mirror.
It is a mirror of you, and sowe really need to be careful on
how we're training our AI andalso what we're sort of bringing
(09:30):
to the table and how we canteach it to also sort of
challenge us.
Which kind of leads me to whereI want to go with what you were
mentioning before about empathy, showing up with empathy and
how important that is for yourcustomer and your clients
empathy and how important thatis for your customer and your
clients.
But it's so important for usalso as the business owners, as
a lot of my listeners are soloentrepreneurs it's just them
(09:53):
sort of running their businessand the marketing can just feel
really, really heavy and a lotand I'm always talking about you
need to root into your purposeand really lead from that.
So you talk about that a lot aswell.
What difference does that make?
That you've seen.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think I mean it makes, I'm gonna say, all the
difference, because this there'slevels to this.
I think right now, if you lookat, there's data out there that
only 21% of people at work areengaged, meaning four out of
five people are disengaged,meaning they're not finding
meaning or fulfillment with whatthey're doing and they're
(10:36):
spending day after day, hourafter hour, week after week, you
know, month after month, doingthis unfulfilling kind of soul
crushing, soul sucking work.
That it doesn't have to be thatway, because sometimes it's
even just a small paradigm shiftin how you view your work and
so if you can find a higherpurpose in what you do, suddenly
(10:57):
everything kind of changes.
From that perspective, yourenergy changes, right, and
that's a huge thing.
It's like now I'm not feelingthat grind as much.
You know that I used to befeeling and where I couldn't
wait till Friday or couldn'twait till the end of the day,
because now you kind of havethis sort of higher purpose in
what you're doing and thatreally fuels your ability to do
(11:19):
more of it.
And I think from a marketingstandpoint, one of the biggest
problems we have is that we aretelling very uninspiring stories
about our business and you'reprobably feeling it.
You're trying to tell a story,but you know it's about hey,
here's the features, here's thebenefits of my product, or
whatever, and it's just notinspiring you, and so it's a
(11:41):
grind right.
But when you're talking aboutsomething that's meaningful to
you, something that's importantto you, it's just not inspiring
you and so it's a grind right.
But when you're talking aboutsomething that's meaningful to
you, something that's importantto you, it's important to your
soul, you're going to be able totalk about that all day, every
day, and just bring as muchenergy to that every time you're
talking about it.
And so one of the things we dowith our software, which is the
AI Chief Marketing Officer,aicmoio, if you want to go there
(12:06):
, but it really starts at thatpurpose point is trying to bring
you through this exercise of AI, prompting us to figure out
your higher purpose in yourbusiness.
So it goes through a bunch ofquestions and then it does some
follow-up questions on its ownthat it thinks will help bring
that, and then it comes backwith all these purpose
statements for you and we justwant you to figure out does one
(12:26):
of these align with you in someway?
And usually this is one ofthose wow points where, when
we're down right, people like,oh wow, I love this.
And once you, you align that,now we're able to tell stories
around that purpose a little bitmore.
And now, like I said, this iswhat kind of changes everything.
This is what will change your.
(12:47):
You know, if you've gotemployees, this is what will get
them a little bit more fired upabout what they're doing,
because you're telling a storyabout your company that has some
meaning versus before, whereit's just, hey, there's the
product, here's the features,there's the benefits, and it's
just it's killing people's soul.
But when you get to thatpurpose and you're able to pull
that out in your business, whathappens is you go from that soul
(13:11):
sucking machine to somethingnow that has, it's like a living
organism that you're feeling apart of, engaged.
You see your employee retentiongo up, you see all your
marketing go up.
Everything starts to becomealigned because you're getting
aligned around this higherpurpose.
(13:32):
And if we look at organizationsand businesses that have kind of
evolved into some of thesehigher purpose businesses, this
is really one of the keytouchstones for them, for making
that leap is finding thatpurpose.
So it's such a huge thing, Ican't state it enough.
Keep focusing on trying tofigure out that purpose
statement for you.
No matter what your business is, there's always something there
(13:54):
and there are a lot of storiesabout how I think, like Simon
Sinek tells a story of thisperson at an airport who handles
your luggage and has to go infor Christmas time, you know,
and the family's kind of bummedand he's all.
No, actually my job here is tohelp the grandmas and grandpas
and families get to see theirgrandkids, and so it's very
important that I be there and dothis for them on those days and
(14:14):
so if the weather's cold or hotor wherever you know, he's out
there.
He understands kind of hishigher purpose of what he's
doing to a job which that wasreally just a small paradigm
shift in how he viewed his joband it changed everything for
him.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I love that you brought Simon Sinek up too,
because, like, I talk about himall the time but a lot of the
way that I do deep dive purposework with my one-on-one clients
is is based on a lot of you knowthe way that he kind of speaks
about it as well.
It's something that I alwaysfelt really drawn to, just in
general, because it can't justbe about the money, right, like
(14:49):
you think it might be, but itreally isn't.
It's not really what you'reafter.
You're after freedom, you'reafter time, whatever it is.
But you know, if you're onlydoing it like you said, it just
becomes this grind.
And I feel like, even withcreative entrepreneurs whether
you know, like whatever sort ofcreative business they have, we
usually are drawn to thembecause we're like just good at
(15:11):
it, we're just like naturallygood at something, and somebody
along the way tells us, oh, youshould do that, you should make
money, or maybe we think likethis would be a good side gig to
start, and then it becomesmaybe the main gig and so it
starts out as something that wereally love and that we feel
really joyful about.
But as soon as you bring in thiswhole business aspect and
you're like, oh my God, now Ihave to run a damn business and
(15:34):
I don't know what I'm doing andI hate numbers and it gets into
this, like you said, it getsthis grind and then it sort of
takes this other, different path.
And what I really feelpassionate about is helping.
Well, first of all, helpingcreative entrepreneurs try and
glean that purpose.
You know, I'm always sayinglike you're living it already,
(15:55):
but like we're taking out ourhighlight, or just like
highlighting it, but also likehelping people get back on track
, because once you get thatdialed in, then all your
marketing is so much easier, andso I love that you guys are
doing this and you're melding itwith this AI piece and bringing
in this like empathy.
And then also you talk aboutthis idea of building love into
(16:21):
scalable systems, which I thinkis a really, really cool topic.
How does that work?
Speaker 1 (16:28):
It almost goes to your point, too, about us
focusing on the numbers so much,right, because we're so focused
on, you know, the financialcurrency and really there's this
other currency of love outthere and things like that that
we don't quite know how tomeasure our impact with that,
and so we kind of forget thatit's something that's important
to us when we're in business andit's because we're always
(16:50):
focused on the numbers, theprofit and all that stuff.
And what we're seeing right nowin business is this sort of
move to conscious capitalism, towhere it's going from the sole
focus of profit to now.
It's like, okay, you've got tothink about profit, of course,
but I think it's also importantthat we think about people and
planet and purpose and theseother things.
(17:10):
So this is this consciousnessexpanding in business, and
that's how it's kind of goingthere.
And for us that you mentionedthe, the bliss philosophy that
we use, which is you mentionedbuilding love into scalable
systems.
This is an important part inbusiness growth where, like you
mentioned, sometimes you losesight of why you started, or
(17:30):
something like that.
You know, when you get allstuck into the business and
you're, you're building systems,you're adding people, and this
came along for us when we weregoing through that same sort of
growth period where it's aboutwe're trying to scale.
But I was also thinking, youknow, I don't want to lose what
we're good at in this processwhen we're scaling, cause I, you
know, I gotta be more hands offnow.
Um, how are we going to, youknow, keep that culture alive as
(17:53):
we scale?
And so you start to systemizethings.
This is just the natural partof business.
You go from scale to systembuilding, and so this is where
culture gets lost and getskilled and gets soulless.
All the time.
Nine out of 10 times.
This is where you're making ahuge mistake in your business is
you're just building the systemand you're not thinking about
that love side of it, thatempathy side, that compassion
(18:14):
side of your system.
And so what this really does isit kind of forces you to audit
your business.
In a way, it's like okay, howcan I build love into this part
of my system?
You know, how can I be moreempathetic or compassionate to
my customers in this part of mysystem or my employees in this
other part of my system?
And you start adding this andlayering it and layering it and
(18:36):
over time you look back andyou're like, wow, we really
built this loving, compassionateculture little by little.
And if you do that, little bylittle makes a lot.
And so it's just keep askingyourself how can I build love
into some kind of system?
The other thing about this is,you know, we've all heard like
random acts of kindness, whichare beautiful, right, this takes
(18:56):
random out of the equation andmakes it a system of kindness.
How can we build a system ofkindness?
We've all seen that some, thatperson who's just lights up the
room when they come in they'resuper kind and, you know, can
deal with customers really welland they've got this magic to
them.
But then when they leave, it'slike those random acts of
kindness kind of go with them.
But if we can get that personor you know, you and I, whoever
(19:20):
it is involved thinking aboutbuilding these systems of love,
then when we step away from it,we've kind of left our mark in a
positive way.
We've left kind of a legacythere in some way and it can run
without us and it can promptother people to be kind, and so
it builds on itself.
If you're able to just kind ofaudit what you're doing in your
(19:41):
business.
We call it blissing, somethingyou know at our work all the
time.
But if you know your purpose,audit toward your higher purpose
, look at every part of yourhigher purpose.
How can I embed this into mybusiness?
And so this is just a processof really trying to take this
compassion and kindness andcreate it into a system, versus
(20:02):
it being random create it into asystem, versus it being random.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I love that, and I love the mention of being
intentional about that, because,by proxy, that really means,
though, that we I think that, inorder to have that right, in
order to like be able to embedthat and to like understand how
we want that, like you saidexpressed, we have to be willing
to do that for ourselves right,like, so I really kind of feel
(20:27):
like that starts with thebusiness owner.
You got to be willing to want tokind of go there.
You've got to want you knowsomething more.
You've got to understand theimportance that your energy,
your frequency, your emotion,your intention all has when it
comes to like how people areengaging with your content, with
your emotion, your intentionall has when it comes to like
how people are engaging withyour content, with your
(20:47):
marketing, with your business ingeneral.
But, like you as a person, on apersonal level, you, you need
to be willing to sort of likelook at that Right, like, and so
there needs to be that level ofunderstanding or the desire for
something bigger, better, more,and I know that a lot of people
(21:07):
kind of have this idea that,well, you know, my business is
my business and it's supposed tobe like I'm supposed to have,
like this professional talkinghead which we've seen over the
last few years.
Obviously, that's not reallywhat's working anymore in
marketing in general.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And it's hard to keep like.
If you're like this is mybusiness personality and this is
my personality in life, this iswhere you're getting some of
your energy sapped right,because it's not aligned at all
Right.
So I think, yeah, like you said, if we're prompting ourselves
with that question, you know howdo I add love into this and you
keep asking that over and overagain.
(21:45):
Maybe you don't know what yourpurpose is right now, but when
you start asking that question,suddenly you're finding out, oh,
I'm in service to people inthis other way that I didn't
realize that's really importantto them and I love that you know
.
So you may not know whereyou're at right now, but it's
kind of a process and a musclethat you just keep kind of
asking yourself and you buildupon until I think we've seen it
(22:08):
time and time again where itjust builds into something
bigger than you realized whenyou started yeah, for sure, and
does your so, this platform thatyou like?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
what led you to even want to get into creating ai cmo
?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
it was really that, that bliss mindset that we're
talking about, because we're,you know, agency and we can
handle, you know, 50, 100, 200clients at any given moment.
That can make an impact forsure.
But it's like, okay, we've gotthis loving, empathetic approach
.
How can we scale that?
You know, how can we bliss this?
(22:45):
And as AI kind of evolved tothat point, we're like you know
what we could build our ownchief marketing officer the way
we want.
That's asking us questionsabout, you know, empathy and
helping us tell stories aboutour higher purpose and things
like that.
So that's.
It was just really this naturalstep as the technology came
(23:05):
along and the other thing aboutthat too.
So that's kind of the naturalstep about it.
But then, as we saw and we weretalking about with AI, I'm
really worried about some partsof it.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Like so we've worked with AI on the number side for
like a decade, right Within allthe ad platforms and things like
that, and it was very smart atbringing together, you know, all
kinds of optimizationsaccording to whatever goal you
assigned it.
If your goal is a bad one, itwill optimize toward a bad goal,
and so this is exactly theproblem that we have right now.
(23:40):
If we're going to have peopleand AI is going to get much
smarter than it is right nowmuch, much smarter and if we're
going to have it optimizingtoward the sole pursuit of
profit, it's not going to careabout people, it's not going to
care about planet, it's, it'sgoing to run right over that
because of it's pursuing profit.
It's optimizing toward profit.
It's optimizing toward thenumbers, not toward any sort of
(24:01):
loving or empathetic approach.
So that was another part of itwas like oh, this could be
trouble for us.
How could we build somethingthat maybe comes in through a
side door of marketing?
You know, telling a story aboutyour business that helps you
align with higher consciousprinciples, and so that was the
(24:23):
other side of it was.
Oh, ai is coming along.
Hey, I think we could actuallyhelp companies so that they
don't uh end up killing us atsome point down the line.
They're already killing us nowon a slow kill, daily basis,
most business, like I mentioned.
But um, yeah, it's like how canwe build love into this and and
(24:45):
uh bring more love into theworld?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I love that and I think that that's definitely one
of the reasons why I wanted toopen up this topic a little bit
because, like you're right, likelove to its own devices, right,
what is going to happen?
There's so many people nowusing it.
I really like that idea of youknow, not just like one person
(25:08):
like I do really feel like oneperson can make a big difference
, but the fact that you guys,you know as a company, have
decided like this is like partof our.
Our mission really is to likereally kind of like help the
rest of you with this too, youknow, like whether they're your
clients or not, because it doesmatter like teaching people
about this, us even talkingabout it right now, like
(25:29):
reminding people, like keepingthis top of mind, like we have
to like be having theseconversations, I think, so that
we can continue to embed this,this good, this light, if you
will.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
You're exactly right, we have to have these
conversations.
We have to have them nowbecause this is this
foundational sort of period withAI where it's kind of figuring
out hey, what are you humansabout?
And some of us aren't quiteevolved or ready for this.
Technology is what the problemis and, consciously, you know,
we're seeing this division.
We're seeing a lot of thisgoing on right now because of
(26:06):
where we are in stages ofconsciousness of different
people, and it's causing a lotof conflict.
And this is the process ofevolution.
It's not pretty.
You step back sometimes, thoughit's beautiful because it's
love trying to find its waythrough, and it's coming up
against resistance, it's comingup against rigidity, and this is
where you get all this turmoila lot of times.
But really, we're in thisfoundational stage that we
(26:29):
really need to set the tone andhave these conversations and
make sure that you know we'reall sort of aligning towards
something beyond just, you know,this soulless profit pursuit,
which is what we do, most of us,on a daily basis like I said,
80 of people out there is likethis is their job on a daily
basis is just this sole pursuitof profit, and we have to move
(26:51):
beyond that and I know I meanit's.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
it's hard, like I know there's a lot of people out
there who are like well, youknow, I'm always kind of talking
about this too is like you'regonna find proof of whatever
you're looking for.
So, if you are, I swear brainsare wired.
It's not even just woo stuff,it's like literally our brain
and we are.
We're going to continue to findproof of like, oh, the economy
is bad, or like I have to befocused on this because
everybody else is, and the ratrace of social media and
(27:17):
consumption, blah, blah, blah.
All that stuff, right, like Ifeel like we can easily get
trapped into that, get suckedinto that, get like stuck in
that place.
And so what are some of thethings that you do or that you
guys do over there, like evenwith any of your clients, or any
(27:39):
of the education that you guyshelp your clients with to make
sure that they are staying onthis track, like that listeners
could use in their ownbusinesses?
What would you suggest?
Even like, especially with theAI piece of this too?
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So, like with our AI platform, one of the things it
does is it kind of takes youthrough this emotional,
empathetic customer journey,whatever your business is.
It tries to get into the headof your clients a little bit so
that you can empathize withwhere they at at different
stages, and that even goesbeyond a whole bunch of
advertising and emotionalconnection you can do prior to
(28:16):
them becoming a client, but then, even once they become a client
, this is the kind of a keyperiod is this consumption
emotion of this consumptionexperience they're having.
And there are 17 consumptionemotions, if you want to get
technical about that, thathappen when someone's using your
product or service and if youwant to get to that emotional
connection, you really have tokind of think about those in a
(28:39):
way.
So one of the tools we have onthere.
It helps you with like surpriseand delight, like doing
something unexpected and extrafor someone in your business.
So your customer they weren'texpecting this at all and you
did.
You went above and beyond withsomething and now suddenly this
is creating that emotionalconnection with them.
You know, and it's also kind ofusually when you're doing that
(29:00):
something extra, it's kind of anact of kindness in a way too
right Cause you didn't have todo that and they know it and you
kind of know it, but it's oh,wow, you went above and beyond.
For me it's kind of this act ofkindness.
So you build this connection inthat way, so we have tools for
that too.
So we're we're trying to takeyour customer all along this
path from a really empatheticpoint and then, once you're able
(29:22):
to do that, once you find yourhigher purpose, it's like, okay,
you know what's your marketinglook like you want to do blogs,
you want to do email, you wantto do a social posts.
We can do all that behind asingle high purpose campaign
idea.
You know, just button clicksand it'll help help you produce
content.
That's maybe would have takenyou a week or even a month to
come up with the ideas, butit'll do it in like five minutes
(29:43):
.
Or you come up with this fullplan and the other thing we do
as as marketers.
We know there's so manytechniques out there, even
someone you know.
I've been in this for threedecades plus always learning
something new.
It's never the same.
So what we brought in was wehave a hundred different expert
techniques on all thesedifferent things in there so
that you don't have to worryabout using the latest or
(30:05):
greatest or, you know, you canjust kind of select from ideas
and concepts that make sense toyou.
But it's really rooted in thissort of expert technique in
there.
So we just wanted to make it assimple as possible for people.
And we're still.
That's always going to be awork in progress, for sure, and
it's getting better.
But the idea is to really helpyou build kind of this
(30:29):
connection with people.
We're so divided right now,we're so disconnected and stuff,
but really these kind of actsof kindness, acts of empathy can
bring us together in thisbusiness setting.
And the thing about business iswe've got a lot of money that we
can spend on our advertising.
If it's working, it turns out.
This is usually the best way togo.
(30:50):
It works really really well.
So you know you may have seensome really good like viral
campaigns out there, like Doveis a classic example of the Dove
Real Beauty right Recognizing.
You know how women felt aboutthemselves and they kind of
changed their marketing about 20years ago to being more of this
(31:11):
authentic, not this ideal viewof beauty dream all the time.
They could spend a lot of moneydoing that same thing like
everyone else is doing, or theycould spend billions of dollars
putting something good into theworld with that advertising and
turns out, yeah, it does reallywell for them as well, but
(31:33):
you're able to get this ad spendand use it for good.
I think that's ultimately forus, that's a big win.
So we're constantly kind oftaking our clients through that
process, trying to find out howwe can build love into something
so that when we're using thatad spend and we're we're putting
good into the world instead ofmore noise out there, we are the
most marketed to we've everbeen in our lives.
(31:55):
Right now it's constant, yeah,so, um, there's just so much
noise out there and most of itis kind of garbage, so we really
want to try and stand out byputting some good into the world
.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
That's really cool.
That's what I really love aboutit.
So what would you say?
Is the and you kind of spoke toit a little bit there, but
there's a lot of talk about, youknow, everybody's creating
their own sort of like GPTs andcustom bots and all this stuff.
What's the difference betweensomeone doing that for
themselves in their businessright now and like working with
AI CMO, for instance?
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean the first one that comesto mind to me, like, if I'm so,
you do photography.
So if you go to chat GPT andyou just say, hey, I want to
blog about something and someoneacross the country is doing the
same thing, you guys are goingto get very similar sort of
output from there.
So what we're doing is reallytrying to set up a whole bunch
(32:51):
of guide rails for you from youknow, building emotional
connection, your higher purpose,how to differentiate you from
everyone else, what experttechniques can we use in this
process?
So you're bringing all this inand trying to produce through
that kind of lens versus chatGPT.
(33:11):
The problem with marketing likeI said, there's so many
techniques, you don't know whatyou don't know.
There's so many strategies, somany techniques out there.
So if you're not, like you know, this expert marketer, slash,
prompt, engineer, slash, youknow, empathetic, individual,
you're going to have a toughtime bringing it all together
and you're going to get somevery uh, I don't know the
(33:32):
kindest way I could say it, butsome very generic uh stuff and
you're going to be putting thesame kind of noise out there
that you know everybody else isum and contributing to the part
of the problem that we're havingright now yeah, I see it a lot
I'm sure you do too, like whenyou just you're scrolling and
(33:54):
it's it's pretty obvious what'sbeen copied and pasted from you
know, chat, like I, I reallyreally does depend on on a lot
of those things like you justmentioned.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
But what would you say to somebody who?
Cause I hear this a lot in mycommunities not as much probably
as maybe a year ago, but Istill I still do get these
messages.
Like whenever I'm talking aboutAI in general or whatever I'll,
I'll get a lot of like people afew people at least who'll
chime in and be like AI is bad,et cetera.
(34:25):
And listen, I mean like Itotally my husband's a
screenwriter and an actor andlike that industry, he has a
bang through it.
Yeah, exactly, I mean like hedoes.
He's the voice of Johnny Cage onthe Mortal Kombat video games,
for instance, and like you cango on YouTube and like you can
find like a lot like people justrip it.
They've been ripping his voiceand creating AI.
(34:46):
It's like completely againstcopyright, but like people have
been doing that for a whilealready.
So I get all of this.
I get all of these you know,slippery slope things that we're
sort of like dealing with rightnow.
But what would you say tosomebody who is a business owner
who is like struggling withtheir marketing and maybe
struggling even to just likehave their business?
(35:06):
You know, I see that a lot ofmy community like a lot of
businesses are failing, a lot ofbusinesses are going out of
business.
Someone in that position inparticular, or just anybody
really who is just vehementlyagainst using AI, what would you
?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
say to them.
First, I definitely want toacknowledge like there is this,
especially for artists too.
There is this sort of darknight of the soul kind of thing
where you're just seeing itproduce something and you're
like, oh well, where did it getall that from?
It stole it from this and that,and it took it, you know, two
seconds to produce it, and whereyou've been working on your
(35:47):
craft for a lifetime, Right?
So there is definitely thisdark night of soul.
But I've also talked to artistsand actors, you know, in
Hollywood too, which they won'twant to mention because it's
very heated in Hollywood, but Iwon't name names but who
understand this.
But talking with artists, theykind of see it as a jazz session
(36:11):
in a way where it's co-creation.
You know it's not, it's not AIsolely creating or taking from
something else, it's you and AI.
In this jazz session you'reco-creating something and it's
it's definitely not fully you,but it's definitely not fully AI
when you're doing it Right, andso you can get to these very
creative places.
(36:31):
And some very good artists areusing this just as another tool.
It's just a new medium for themto explore different ways, and
these are people who have like,oh yeah, now I've been, you know
, painting, drawing, doing allthis by hand and everything, and
now I'm kind of exploring thiswhole new approach to it.
But it's very much this jazzsession co-creation process.
(36:52):
So think about that first.
I mean, that's one of thethoughts I would say.
The other is that what wereally want to use AI for is to
prompt us to be better humans,you know instead of us prompting
us to be better humans, if wecan get there and I think it can
be very, very good at that ifdone right.
(37:13):
So if we're looking forconsciousness to evolve from
where it's at right now, I thinkAI is going to be the thing
that pushes us past the tippingpoint, because we're right at
this cusp of just needing acouple more percentage of the
population to be a little moreconsciously evolved, to see kind
of this next consciousnessrevolution we saw it in the 60s
(37:36):
was.
Consciousness went from thismodern thought to postmodern in
a short period of time, theshortest time consciousness ever
adjusted.
We're going to be seeing itagain at some point.
It's just a matter of peopleevolving to that point.
And I do think AI because we'regoing to be able to get it to
come from a higher ground for usand that gravity is going to
(37:58):
probably be the thing thatpushes us beyond where we need
to be right now.
If you look at the youngergenerations, right now they
evolve consciously much fasterthan previous generations
because of all the work thatwe've done with our
consciousness, all the you knowbattles we've gone over through
the decades and centuries.
The gravity is just up here nowand so they come online, they
(38:20):
get to that gravity much faster,and so they're going to push
the envelope a little bitfurther too.
And we're talking generationsnow, too, that are going to be
born with AI and never not knowAI, and I don't know what kind
of problems that is going tocause, but it will cause
problems for sure.
New problems.
Anytime we've had a technologyor things like that, like the
(38:41):
cell phone, this causes allkinds of problems.
We love it, but it's alsocausing problems at the same
time.
To that point, I think, if wecan use it to prompt us to be
better humans, I think we canmake it through this AI period
without getting too damaged andmaybe come through the other
side, you know, a lot moreempathetic, a lot more loving, a
(39:03):
lot kinder, and hopefullythat's the kind of AI that we're
building in the process.
But, yeah, no, I totally getwhere everyone's coming from
with this um.
It's, it is soul-crushing attimes, you know, when you see,
yeah, what it'll be able to do,um, especially artists,
especially in, you know,hollywood ecosystem, you're just
like, oh, wow, what took athousand people to do, at some
(39:26):
point it's going to be able todo oh yeah, yeah, they just came
out.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Why was it this whole this week?
You know about the, thecommercial that was shot, start
to finish.
All actors voice everything, um, but I.
But it's interesting when youlook at, when you look at the
comments on some of those posts.
It is pretty much almost 100.
We're talking like a lot ofcomments.
I went through a lot of thesecomments.
I always like to see, like,what people are thinking and
(39:54):
saying about this kind of stuff.
They were well, I won't bebuying from this company, I
don't want to, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't
want this, and it's very, veryinteresting.
So I think that, although wecan do it and companies are, you
know, doing it, it's going tobe interesting to see what kind
of backlash there is, if thereis one, and as it evolves, and
(40:17):
we can't tell that it's createdby AI, because you know we're
basically almost there, we'regetting there, you know, daily
the genie's out of the bottle,basically, you know, yeah,
that's the problem really thegenie's out of the bottle, it's
not going back.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
We need to make sure the genie's not going to give us
some sort of you know,nightmarish scenario in the
process, like genies typicallydo.
But yeah, no, I think this isone of the things we do is we
talk about a lot of thingsaround your business that aren't
marketing related, that relateto you being an authentic kind
(40:53):
of business, and we don't wantto be telling a story that is
just a story where you're justtalking the talk and you're not
walking that talk.
So, you know, we've got apodcast where we've I don't know
we're 200 episodes in now, butwe bring CEOs in and we're
talking about love and businessand building authentic
businesses and all those littlethings around your business, so
(41:15):
that when you're telling a storyor using AI, we want you to
make sure you're doing, you're agood citizen in the world, and
then people will give you maybea little more leeway on some of
that stuff.
If you're just about profit andyou're using AI and you're
hurting, you know, thousands ofpeople in the process, um, I'd
(41:35):
say probably look out, you'regoing to be in trouble.
Um, because, like I mentioned,the consciousness of people.
Right now it's kind of evolvedto a point where you're going to
get some pushback and we'reseeing that in a lot of ways
ways politically in businesses,where, you know, with businesses
taking out DEI and things likethat, because of the consumer
(41:55):
battle going on right now.
So there can be anotherconsumer battle with AI.
But what really needs to happenat these companies is you need
to be more.
Take more of this consciouscapitalist approach.
You need to be more authentic.
You need to think more aboutpeople, more about your planet.
You know more about your higherpurpose in the world and the
role that you play.
If you do that and then youstart using AI to amplify that
(42:20):
good, I think people will be onyour side for that in the long
run.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
I agree, I love that Before we sort of start wrapping
up, I always like to ask peoplewe're going to segue just a
little bit because we've beentalking a little techie stuff.
Uh, really love, love all ofthis marketing chatter.
That's.
I think it's interesting to me,but I know it's interesting to
people who listen to the podcastas well.
But I want to also kind of divein because I'd like to ask my
(42:46):
guests okay, well, how are you?
Speaker 1 (43:12):
What kind of what's favorite, like, what keeps you
grounded, what?
What is your like sort of youknow practice that keeps you
connected, grounded, orsomething?
If I had a superpower, though,it's probably like lucid
dreaming in that I kind of viewthis as sort of like a sandbox
in a way, where you can work onyourself.
It's like whoa, why did I gettriggered about something in
there?
And you get deeper in into thatprocess of understanding.
You know why you went down thispath in this dream, you know,
and why you reacted a certainway, and it's been kind of this
fascinating journey because youknow why you went down this path
in this dream, you know, andwhy you reacted a certain way.
And it's been kind of thisfascinating journey because, you
(43:35):
know, I can typically alwaysremember my dreams, or I can be
in a dream where, like you know,I've got a client tomorrow, I
need to work on this thing thatI haven't worked on yet.
Let's work on it right now andbe in that kind of flow state in
the dream, which is pretty,pretty cool.
Um, yeah, but I do like theaspect you mentioned, kind of
working on yourself.
It is this process of beingable to uh, bring out these,
(43:58):
these kind of even do shadowwork or things like that.
Right where you're suddenly,you know something scared you,
or or why did you get mad aboutsomething this way, or why would
you react that way?
In this subconscious sort ofstate, you know where things
flow a lot freer.
It's that's really one of mysuperpowers, that.
So that keeps me grounded allthe time.
Um, I rarely have nightmares,or I rarely have that's so cool
(44:21):
things where I get angry.
but it's constantly doing thisaudit of like, what did I think
about last night?
What did I dream about?
Going into the well?
Why would I react that way?
Going into the well, why wouldI react that way?
Going into the stuff beneaththe surface of it?
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Have you always been able to do it?
Or, like, did you have to teachyourself how to lucid dream?
Speaker 1 (44:37):
I've always been able to do that, I think.
Um, I had, yeah, there's reallykind of oddly profound dreams
as a young child that I didn'teven understand at the time till
later, when I was studyingconsciousness and stuff.
I'm all Whoa, okay, that's what.
That's the only thing thisdream can mean.
Yeah, it's always been so.
The blessing is I can do that.
(44:57):
The curses I am like a horriblesleeper, like I have not slept
through the night in 40 plusyears.
I don't know what that is likeat all.
Um, I will be waking up afterevery sort of cycle or staying
in that not quite a sleep stateand kind of plowing.
So there's a, there's a curseand a benefit to that, but it's,
it is fun.
It's weird.
(45:18):
This is where you get to thewoo too, cause we'll do like a,
like we have our own podcast andI'll think about it during the.
You know some of those luciddream things for the next day.
And then I've asked questionsto guests where they're like why
did you ask that question?
I'm all well, this came to mewhile sleeping in.
There there are I'm goingthrough that right now and
bubble.
(45:38):
So that would be the woo side.
I think that's really kind offascinating to me I love that
yeah, which I yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
It's hard to explain, I guess yeah, but some things
you can't like, you just tappedin like things you can't.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
You're just like, yeah, no, that just came to me
and so I was gonna ask it yeah,I think it's super interesting
because, like I, I very rarelylike.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, first of all, I sleep like the dead.
Let me just preface it by that.
Like I, that that's mysuperpower.
One that's one of mysuperpowers is the fact that I
get like I'll, I'll sleep.
I get seven to eight hours ofactual sleep, right, and is that
like, I don't know.
My husband asks me that everymorning.
He's like did you sleep?
Oh, let me just answer that yes, of course you did, because
(46:22):
he's like you, he's very similar.
Actually.
He has incredibly vivid dreams.
Like he will have full start tofinish movie ideas and I'm like
what, what is that?
Like I got I wouldn't even knowwhat that my dreams don't make
any sense.
Like, when I do dream and whenI do remember like it's very
rare that I remember I'm likewhat was that?
(46:43):
Like it is so weird, it's likea LSD trip.
But his makes sense.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, so, and it is like a psychedelic journey in a
way.
And so he.
But he he's like what's coolabout his dreams, because I know
where he's been is like it'llhave that start and finish thing
, but stuff that happened in thestart, you know the finish, it
comes full circle in some way,like well, how would that even
have happened, how would I evenhave thought about that in that
dream.
But since he can't sleep, whathe really needs to do is like
(47:11):
what I do is kind of hey,self-audit yourself in there,
use this as your superpower.
Um, but I've, I totally knowwhat he's talking about and it's
amazing where you I know right,it's so interesting these crazy
things where, like, I like towrite on the side and I can
write like a full page of stuffand edit and go through this
process in there and have thisbeautiful flow state and get up
(47:33):
and be like, okay, I need towrite that down right now, what
I just did, and actually itturns out pretty good.
So not the nonsense you'rethinking about sometimes, uh,
but yeah, no, he's got a, it's acurse and a gift, so he needs
to uh, dive into the gift partof it and yeah, he has, don't be
like you for for sleepingthrough the night.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
No he's, he's past that point, you're right.
I mean it's.
It's been like this his wholelife.
So, like, even as a child, hehas like, he recounts like it
was one of the he used to havehorrible, like horrible night
terrors as a child and he saidthat the way that he got through
it I think he was like 11 or 12when he did this but like, like
he went to sleep and he said Iprogrammed my I don't know how
(48:13):
he knew how to do this at 11 or12.
I programmed my mind to wake up.
I told myself, I want to wakeup when I am being attacked,
cause there was always like thisdemon or something.
And you know, and he's like,and I want to wake up with a
lightsaber, and I want to wakeup and, like, you know, cause
he's such a, he's a total nerd,and he's like I want to wake up
and, you know, battle this, thisthing with my lightsaber.
(48:35):
And he did it.
And he said, ever since then hedidn't have that nightmare
anymore.
And so ever since then he'sbeen able to like, do these
things and I'm like that is socool.
Like I, I love programmingmyself.
Like what I do is I tell myunconscious mind like, hey,
while we're sleeping, whilewe're getting a lot of good rest
, I want you to run in thebackground and I want you to
(48:57):
work on this stuff.
But don't wake me up Like Iliterally am very gentle about
that stuff, right, like workthat out, you know, kind of work
through that so that when Iwake up I feel refreshed and I
feel like I can tackle this orwhatever.
But that's a different.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
That's different than what you guys can do.
I would say like, like.
My lightsaber in thosesituations has always been how
can I approach this?
You know you've had thesecreatures and scary things.
Well, how can I approach itwith love?
Speaker 2 (49:23):
With love yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
With love, and then it suddenly kind of dissolves in
front of you or suddenly turnsthe whole conversation right in
front of you, and so it's reallykind of this exercise that you
keep doing in your head in thesecrazy ass scenarios that it's
really.
You know that you couldn't getin real life either.
You know exactly, I have thesecreatures that come up from
(49:45):
vines and form and all thisstuff and you're like, oh, this
could be really scary, but no,I'm going'm gonna yeah, you know
, and then yeah, suddenly it'slike oh, there's this whole
oneness and thing going on thereand it softens it, and so
that's why I think I don't havenightmares and stuff, it's just
exactly, yeah, exercise, yeah,no, he doesn't either.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
And and I mean that's just that, that growth right,
because, like I even teachpeople that in in coaching, like
to to work with yourunconscious, a lot of people
need to sort of, like you know,think of it as that, that inner
saboteur, and sort of battle it.
But really the fastest way toget through it is to love it,
cause it's really just like alittle you, it's like your, it's
(50:23):
just your programming, and soyears of everything.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
You were seven, eight years old maybe or something,
that something happened that youkind of built up these defenses
toward right as a seven and youtried to handle it as a seven
or eight year old, but nowyou're, you know, 30, 40 or 50
or something.
Yep, that programming is stillthere and it's like, okay, wait
a minute.
I need to deal with as a moreevolved adult now and how I
handle that.
And the answer is always love,right, always it, it's, always
it's.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
I love that yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Love always wins.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
I a hundred percent agree.
Okay, I love this conversation.
Tell people where they can findyou guys, where they can like
try you out, where they canconnect with you, where you like
to kind of connect with peopleany anything like that.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah, If you want to, uh, check out the platform, go
to AICMOio.
If you want to hear me ask CEOsand things about what role love
plays in business, go to ourpodcast, the Bliss Business
Podcast, where we're bringing onlike very successful CEOs and
companies and stuff and we'restraight up talking about love
(51:27):
and empathy and connection andtelling good stories that you
can be profitable and have comefrom this higher conscious place
.
But, um, yeah, at the end ofthe show I'm always asking you
know, what role does love playin business?
And it's been a veryprovocative question that people
just don't get asked.
But we're getting, we'regetting amazing answers off of
this and it's just, I think,something that gets me fired up
(51:50):
every week and being able to goplaces that businesses don't
normally like to go and, likeyou said, yeah, love always wins
.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
It's an important question.
Glad you're asking.
That's really cool.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
This was awesome.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah, it was great.
Thanks for having me, Renee.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
So that was fun, right.
Not only did we have a techiesort of nerdy conversation, but
we went to some reallyinteresting higher level stuff
there, and that's exactly why Istarted this podcast is so we
could have conversations likethis and meld these worlds.
I don't know about you, but,like I think about all this
(52:27):
stuff you know, and I thinkabout how all of this is
impacting us and how it's goingto impact our kids and future
generations, and one of mymissions, as you guys know, is
to, you know, help other people,help business owners,
solopreneurs, photographers,creatives, especially really
hone in on what makes them themost them.
(52:51):
They could be right, likeMolly's telling you be the most
you that you can be, by rootinginto your purpose, by
highlighting it in not just yourmarketing but for you as a
person, as a human, so that youcan then also spread your
purpose, your meaning, and thenalso spread your purpose, your
meaning, your love, to the world.
(53:13):
It's a big deal.
This is really important stuff.
Okay, we are in a world, aperiod of time, that is chaotic
AF.
Okay, we can all agree.
I don't care what you believe,I don't care where you land
politically at this.
I think that we can all agreeon one thing that things are a
(53:37):
little wild right now and AI isjust going to get a little more
wild as it progresses.
I mean, it's not going anywhere.
I understand that there are somefears, but I really love
Stephen's analogy there of, youknow, thinking about it as a
piece of jazz music, right, ifyou know anything about that,
(53:59):
you know that it's acollaboration and you just kind
of have to sort of ride the wavesometimes, right, and I do
think that we need to be payingattention for sure about, like,
what's going on and how we'reusing it, and also making sure
that we are training it to notbe a yes person, right, like
don't be a hype girl, um, butalso that we are open, that we
(54:23):
are curious, that we are in flowwhen it comes to all of this
and willing to sort of seewhat's going on across the board
, even if, and especially if youdon't agree what's going on,
because I mean, whether you likeit or not, it's happening.
So you could bury your head inthe sand or you could at least
(54:45):
just be paying attention.
And so that's another reasonwhy I wanted to do this show and
kind of bring up this topic ina slightly different way than I
think it's been spoken aboutbefore, and I hope you guys got
a lot out of this episode, asalways, and of course I would
love to hear what thosetakeaways are.
If you want to hit me up overon Instagram at Renee Bowen, Of
course I also love it when youleave reviews and you can do
(55:06):
that super easy atratethispodcastcom slash Renee
Bowen.
I hope you guys have a greatrest of your day, rest of your
week.
Love you Bye.
I'm really worried about some parts of it.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Like so we worked with AI on the number side for
like a decade, right Within allthe ad platforms and things like
that, and it was very smart atbringing together, you know, all
kinds of optimizationsaccording to whatever goal you
assigned it.
If your goal is a bad one, itwill optimize toward a bad goal,
and so this is exactly theproblem that we have right now.
(00:26):
If we're going to have peopleand AI is going to get much
smarter than it is right nowmuch, much smarter and if we're
going to have it optimizingtoward the sole pursuit of
profit, it's not going to careabout people, it's not going to
care about planet, it's going torun right over that because of
it's pursuing profit.
It's optimizing toward profit.
That was another part of it waslike oh, this could be trouble
(00:48):
for us.
How could we build somethingthat maybe comes in through a
side door of marketing?
You know, telling a story aboutyour business that helps you
align with higher consciousprinciples.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Welcome to Tried and True with a Dash of Woo, where
we blend rock solid tips with alittle bit of magic.
I'm Renee Bowen, your host,life and business coach and
professional photographer atyour service.
We are all about gettingcreative, diving into your
business and playing withmanifestation over here.
So are you ready to getinspired and have some fun?
Let's dive in.
Hey, hey, welcome back to Triedand True with the Dash of Woo.
(01:29):
I am your host, renee Bowen.
Today I have a very interestingtopic for you guys.
We are talking a little bitabout AI, but not in the way
that you've probably heard itspoken about Today.
My guest is Steven Sikash.
He's the co-founder of AICMOioand the founder and CEO of Xero
(01:51):
Company, which is basically apioneer in empathetic AI and
marketing, and he's got threedecades of experience in digital
media and journalism and alsohuman consciousness studies,
which, again, I love the meldingof those things.
So we have a really interestingconversation today on the show
about AI, where it's going, thedangers of what some of the
(02:15):
stuff is going on right now andwhat to be aware of, how to
notice what is going on and toredirect it and, at the heart of
it, why empathy and love playsuch, or should play, such, a
huge part in AI and in yourbusiness.
Stephen is committed toembedding empathy into business.
(02:37):
He created something calledBLIS, which stands for Build
Love into Scalable Systems, andhe helps organizations scale
with compassion.
I love this conversation andyou guys are going to love it
too.
Let's jump in.
Hey, steven, thanks for beinghere today.
I want to just dive right intothis topic because I think that
(02:58):
you have a very interesting viewof what we're going to be
talking about today, becauseyou've had a very interesting
career path, from journalism toAI consciousness, and I think we
have a lot to talk about.
But I want to ask you realquick how do you define
empathetic AI and what does thatreally look like in a real
(03:19):
business setting for you?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, for us, particularly in the business
setting, we really use it a fewdifferent ways, but one of them
is kind of on the empatheticmarketing side of things, and so
what does that mean?
It's really marketing thatlooks at how you feel, you know,
versus the whole transactionalkind of idea of you know,
talking about features andbenefits and things like that.
Right, that's kind of boring,that everybody does, and we want
(03:44):
to get a little deeper intelling your story and so to do
that, we really try and buildthis sort of empathetic process
around your business and we usefor the past couple of years
we've kind of built this AIplatform that really dives in
empathetically into how yourcustomers are feeling as they're
going through a journey withyou, really focusing on areas of
(04:10):
your business and how theyexperience your business
empathetically and trying to.
You can do that, and if you cando it through empathy, that's
often, you know, the mostprofitable thing, and not just
(04:31):
the good thing, but the mostprofitable thing to do Um,
because you really can buildthat emotional connection, and
when you build an emotionalconnection with empathy, you're
going to have 306% higherlifetime value than a satisfied
customer, right, so you gotsomeone who's just satisfied
with you, hey, great job,whatever.
But if you're able to get tothat point of that empathetic
emotional connection withsomeone, that's where you're
(04:54):
going to build that longerlifetime value.
And one of the great thingsabout ai is it actually does a
pretty good job of getting intoour minds a little bit
empathetically and it's gettingactually creepier at being
better and better at this.
It's getting a little scarysometimes on the empathetic side
, but it really does kind of getinto our minds a little bit and
(05:17):
help us see, from you know,whatever your business is, the
perspective of your customer,why they're coming to you, what
their problems are, what theirfears are, and there's a lot of
emotions and things connectedwith that.
It really does help you pullout, which is kind of a
complicated thing, but whatwe're doing is trying to make
that simple for any business tobe able to connect that way
(05:39):
versus, you know, having to havea whole marketing staff and
things like that and reallygoing through that process.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, okay, so we're going to get to the AI aspect in
just a little bit, because I amfascinated to get your take on
all of that, because it ischanging so quickly and, like
you said, it's gotten scarilygood at some things and also
kind of weird lately.
I mean, you know what I mean.
Like it's just, it's a bigtopic, so I definitely just it's
.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
It's a big topic, so I definitely what do you say?
What are you saying on theweird side?
What are you?
Speaker 2 (06:04):
seeing on the weird side, it's been super glitchy.
Well, first of all, like it'sbeen really glitchy the last
couple of weeks, but what I'veseen a lot of happening recently
, like and I been talking aboutthis a lot on just to my
communities and just noticing itfor myself is that if we're not
careful, like it's such a hypeperson right, like and I think
(06:25):
there's a lot of like- exactlylike this danger there thing,
right, yeah, like I think atsome point it'll be really good
at like coaching, but right nowit can be such a sycophant, yeah
, that it actually enablesproblems.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And I've seen people kind of spin out with this
because there's this study, theUniversity of Zurich they got
into trouble for this.
They went on to Reddit and theyused AI to see how they could
change people's minds versushumans and you compare the two.
Who was better at changingpeople's minds?
Turns out, ai was six timesbetter being more persuasive.
And so what's scary is, yeah,we're at just the beginning of
(07:03):
that, but what's scary is, likeyou bring up, is that it can be
very persuasive in kind of anunhealthy way.
And you know, it's likecoaching and stuff that
sometimes you need hard truthsabout things and it's trying to
be your best friend sometimesright now and it just sits in
your ear.
And I do think this is a bigpoint for AI because, as a
(07:27):
person, I think it's going toamplify.
Ai is going to amplify whateverI believe in some way.
So if I've got better angels,good right, it's going to
amplify.
If I've got inner demons, uh-oh.
This is a little bit of troubleon an individual basis, and so,
yeah, I was curious whereyou're going with that Cause I
do totally agree with that, thatthat's actually a big problem.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, it is.
And you know it's interestingbecause one of the women in my
group coaching her brother worksfor open AI and we were having
this discussion in there.
I was kind of talking to themabout that and she said, yeah,
my brother said they actuallyhad to kind of shut down one of
the models because it was so outof control, like um, like
exactly what we're talking about.
(08:07):
And it's been interestingbecause I've been telling people
for a while now, like you needto train it to challenge you.
It can't just be a yes person,like if you're, if you're
followed around by yes peopleall day long, you're not.
You know, it's a really it's arecipe for for all kinds of not
good things.
I think, um for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I totally agree.
And where people'sconsciousness is sometimes you
know really how we evolveconsciously is our ability to
take on more perspectives, bemaybe a little more humble, be
more loving.
You know we go through thatprocess.
But if we're still very egoicand have narcissistic tendencies
, this is the worst thing toamplify that right.
(08:44):
It's just going to be thatlittle voice in your ear telling
you all the wrong stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You're amazing, you got this.
Sometimes it's unhinged.
I'm like, okay, calm down, girl, I am not that awesome, but
that's the thing is a lot ofpeople aren't really training it
.
They're like, oh my God, thisis great For for people who have
issues with that too, who, like, really do need the pump up,
who really do need all of that.
(09:10):
I'm a little concerned aboutthose people because they're not
going to recognize it.
Like you said, and like you alsosaid, it is essentially a
mirror.
It is a mirror of you, and sowe really need to be careful on
how we're training our AI andalso what we're sort of bringing
(09:30):
to the table and how we canteach it to also sort of
challenge us.
Which kind of leads me to whereI want to go with what you were
mentioning before about empathy, showing up with empathy and
how important that is for yourcustomer and your clients
empathy and how important thatis for your customer and your
clients.
But it's so important for usalso as the business owners, as
a lot of my listeners are soloentrepreneurs it's just them
(09:53):
sort of running their businessand the marketing can just feel
really, really heavy and a lotand I'm always talking about you
need to root into your purposeand really lead from that.
So you talk about that a lot aswell.
What difference does that make?
That you've seen.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think I mean it makes, I'm gonna say, all the
difference, because this there'slevels to this.
I think right now, if you lookat, there's data out there that
only 21% of people at work areengaged, meaning four out of
five people are disengaged,meaning they're not finding
meaning or fulfillment with whatthey're doing and they're
(10:36):
spending day after day, hourafter hour, week after week, you
know, month after month, doingthis unfulfilling kind of soul
crushing, soul sucking work.
That it doesn't have to be thatway, because sometimes it's
even just a small paradigm shiftin how you view your work and
so if you can find a higherpurpose in what you do, suddenly
(10:57):
everything kind of changes.
From that perspective, yourenergy changes, right, and
that's a huge thing.
It's like now I'm not feelingthat grind as much.
You know that I used to befeeling and where I couldn't
wait till Friday or couldn'twait till the end of the day,
because now you kind of havethis sort of higher purpose in
what you're doing and thatreally fuels your ability to do
(11:19):
more of it.
And I think from a marketingstandpoint, one of the biggest
problems we have is that we aretelling very uninspiring stories
about our business and you'reprobably feeling it.
You're trying to tell a story,but you know it's about hey,
here's the features, here's thebenefits of my product, or
whatever, and it's just notinspiring you, and so it's a
(11:41):
grind right.
But when you're talking aboutsomething that's meaningful to
you, something that's importantto you, it's just not inspiring
you and so it's a grind right.
But when you're talking aboutsomething that's meaningful to
you, something that's importantto you, it's important to your
soul, you're going to be able totalk about that all day, every
day, and just bring as muchenergy to that every time you're
talking about it.
And so one of the things we dowith our software, which is the
AI Chief Marketing Officer,aicmoio, if you want to go there
(12:06):
, but it really starts at thatpurpose point is trying to bring
you through this exercise of AI, prompting us to figure out
your higher purpose in yourbusiness.
So it goes through a bunch ofquestions and then it does some
follow-up questions on its ownthat it thinks will help bring
that, and then it comes backwith all these purpose
statements for you and we justwant you to figure out does one
(12:26):
of these align with you in someway?
And usually this is one ofthose wow points where, when
we're down right, people like,oh wow, I love this.
And once you, you align that,now we're able to tell stories
around that purpose a little bitmore.
And now, like I said, this iswhat kind of changes everything.
This is what will change your.
(12:47):
You know, if you've gotemployees, this is what will get
them a little bit more fired upabout what they're doing,
because you're telling a storyabout your company that has some
meaning versus before, whereit's just, hey, there's the
product, here's the features,there's the benefits, and it's
just it's killing people's soul.
But when you get to thatpurpose and you're able to pull
that out in your business, whathappens is you go from that soul
(13:11):
sucking machine to somethingnow that has, it's like a living
organism that you're feeling apart of, engaged.
You see your employee retentiongo up, you see all your
marketing go up.
Everything starts to becomealigned because you're getting
aligned around this higherpurpose.
(13:32):
And if we look at organizationsand businesses that have kind of
evolved into some of thesehigher purpose businesses, this
is really one of the keytouchstones for them, for making
that leap is finding thatpurpose.
So it's such a huge thing, Ican't state it enough.
Keep focusing on trying tofigure out that purpose
statement for you.
No matter what your business is, there's always something there
(13:54):
and there are a lot of storiesabout how I think, like Simon
Sinek tells a story of thisperson at an airport who handles
your luggage and has to go infor Christmas time, you know,
and the family's kind of bummedand he's all.
No, actually my job here is tohelp the grandmas and grandpas
and families get to see theirgrandkids, and so it's very
important that I be there and dothis for them on those days and
(14:14):
so if the weather's cold or hotor wherever you know, he's out
there.
He understands kind of hishigher purpose of what he's
doing to a job which that wasreally just a small paradigm
shift in how he viewed his joband it changed everything for
him.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I love that you brought Simon Sinek up too,
because, like, I talk about himall the time but a lot of the
way that I do deep dive purposework with my one-on-one clients
is is based on a lot of you knowthe way that he kind of speaks
about it as well.
It's something that I alwaysfelt really drawn to, just in
general, because it can't justbe about the money, right, like
(14:49):
you think it might be, but itreally isn't.
It's not really what you'reafter.
You're after freedom, you'reafter time, whatever it is.
But you know, if you're onlydoing it like you said, it just
becomes this grind.
And I feel like, even withcreative entrepreneurs whether
you know, like whatever sort ofcreative business they have, we
usually are drawn to thembecause we're like just good at
(15:11):
it, we're just like naturallygood at something, and somebody
along the way tells us, oh, youshould do that, you should make
money, or maybe we think likethis would be a good side gig to
start, and then it becomesmaybe the main gig and so it
starts out as something that wereally love and that we feel
really joyful about.
But as soon as you bring in thiswhole business aspect and
you're like, oh my God, now Ihave to run a damn business and
(15:34):
I don't know what I'm doing andI hate numbers and it gets into
this, like you said, it getsthis grind and then it sort of
takes this other, different path.
And what I really feelpassionate about is helping.
Well, first of all, helpingcreative entrepreneurs try and
glean that purpose.
You know, I'm always sayinglike you're living it already,
(15:55):
but like we're taking out ourhighlight, or just like
highlighting it, but also likehelping people get back on track
, because once you get thatdialed in, then all your
marketing is so much easier, andso I love that you guys are
doing this and you're melding itwith this AI piece and bringing
in this like empathy.
And then also you talk aboutthis idea of building love into
(16:21):
scalable systems, which I thinkis a really, really cool topic.
How does that work?
Speaker 1 (16:28):
It almost goes to your point, too, about us
focusing on the numbers so much,right, because we're so focused
on, you know, the financialcurrency and really there's this
other currency of love outthere and things like that that
we don't quite know how tomeasure our impact with that,
and so we kind of forget thatit's something that's important
to us when we're in business andit's because we're always
(16:50):
focused on the numbers, theprofit and all that stuff.
And what we're seeing right nowin business is this sort of
move to conscious capitalism, towhere it's going from the sole
focus of profit to now.
It's like, okay, you've got tothink about profit, of course,
but I think it's also importantthat we think about people and
planet and purpose and theseother things.
(17:10):
So this is this consciousnessexpanding in business, and
that's how it's kind of goingthere.
And for us that you mentionedthe, the bliss philosophy that
we use, which is you mentionedbuilding love into scalable
systems.
This is an important part inbusiness growth where, like you
mentioned, sometimes you losesight of why you started, or
(17:30):
something like that.
You know, when you get allstuck into the business and
you're, you're building systems,you're adding people, and this
came along for us when we weregoing through that same sort of
growth period where it's aboutwe're trying to scale.
But I was also thinking, youknow, I don't want to lose what
we're good at in this processwhen we're scaling, cause I, you
know, I gotta be more hands offnow.
Um, how are we going to, youknow, keep that culture alive as
(17:53):
we scale?
And so you start to systemizethings.
This is just the natural partof business.
You go from scale to systembuilding, and so this is where
culture gets lost and getskilled and gets soulless.
All the time.
Nine out of 10 times.
This is where you're making ahuge mistake in your business is
you're just building the systemand you're not thinking about
that love side of it, thatempathy side, that compassion
(18:14):
side of your system.
And so what this really does isit kind of forces you to audit
your business.
In a way, it's like okay, howcan I build love into this part
of my system?
You know, how can I be moreempathetic or compassionate to
my customers in this part of mysystem or my employees in this
other part of my system?
And you start adding this andlayering it and layering it and
(18:36):
over time you look back andyou're like, wow, we really
built this loving, compassionateculture little by little.
And if you do that, little bylittle makes a lot.
And so it's just keep askingyourself how can I build love
into some kind of system?
The other thing about this is,you know, we've all heard like
random acts of kindness, whichare beautiful, right, this takes
(18:56):
random out of the equation andmakes it a system of kindness.
How can we build a system ofkindness?
We've all seen that some, thatperson who's just lights up the
room when they come in they'resuper kind and, you know, can
deal with customers really welland they've got this magic to
them.
But then when they leave, it'slike those random acts of
kindness kind of go with them.
But if we can get that personor you know, you and I, whoever
(19:20):
it is involved thinking aboutbuilding these systems of love,
then when we step away from it,we've kind of left our mark in a
positive way.
We've left kind of a legacythere in some way and it can run
without us and it can promptother people to be kind, and so
it builds on itself.
If you're able to just kind ofaudit what you're doing in your
(19:41):
business.
We call it blissing, somethingyou know at our work all the
time.
But if you know your purpose,audit toward your higher purpose
, look at every part of yourhigher purpose.
How can I embed this into mybusiness?
And so this is just a processof really trying to take this
compassion and kindness andcreate it into a system, versus
(20:02):
it being random create it into asystem, versus it being random.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I love that, and I love the mention of being
intentional about that, because,by proxy, that really means,
though, that we I think that, inorder to have that right, in
order to like be able to embedthat and to like understand how
we want that, like you saidexpressed, we have to be willing
to do that for ourselves right,like, so I really kind of feel
(20:27):
like that starts with thebusiness owner.
You got to be willing to want tokind of go there.
You've got to want you knowsomething more.
You've got to understand theimportance that your energy,
your frequency, your emotion,your intention all has when it
comes to like how people areengaging with your content, with
your emotion, your intentionall has when it comes to like
how people are engaging withyour content, with your
(20:47):
marketing, with your business ingeneral.
But, like you as a person, on apersonal level, you, you need
to be willing to sort of likelook at that Right, like, and so
there needs to be that level ofunderstanding or the desire for
something bigger, better, more,and I know that a lot of people
(21:07):
kind of have this idea that,well, you know, my business is
my business and it's supposed tobe like I'm supposed to have,
like this professional talkinghead which we've seen over the
last few years.
Obviously, that's not reallywhat's working anymore in
marketing in general.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
And it's hard to keep like.
If you're like this is mybusiness personality and this is
my personality in life, this iswhere you're getting some of
your energy sapped right,because it's not aligned at all
Right.
So I think, yeah, like you said, if we're prompting ourselves
with that question, you know howdo I add love into this and you
keep asking that over and overagain.
(21:45):
Maybe you don't know what yourpurpose is right now, but when
you start asking that question,suddenly you're finding out, oh,
I'm in service to people inthis other way that I didn't
realize that's really importantto them and I love that you know
.
So you may not know whereyou're at right now, but it's
kind of a process and a musclethat you just keep kind of
asking yourself and you buildupon until I think we've seen it
(22:08):
time and time again where itjust builds into something
bigger than you realized whenyou started yeah, for sure, and
does your so, this platform thatyou like?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
what led you to even want to get into creating ai cmo
?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
it was really that, that bliss mindset that we're
talking about, because we're,you know, agency and we can
handle, you know, 50, 100, 200clients at any given moment.
That can make an impact forsure.
But it's like, okay, we've gotthis loving, empathetic approach
.
How can we scale that?
You know, how can we bliss this?
(22:45):
And as AI kind of evolved tothat point, we're like you know
what we could build our ownchief marketing officer the way
we want.
That's asking us questionsabout, you know, empathy and
helping us tell stories aboutour higher purpose and things
like that.
So that's.
It was just really this naturalstep as the technology came
(23:05):
along and the other thing aboutthat too.
So that's kind of the naturalstep about it.
But then, as we saw and we weretalking about with AI, I'm
really worried about some partsof it.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Like so we've worked with AI on the number side for
like a decade, right Within allthe ad platforms and things like
that, and it was very smart atbringing together, you know, all
kinds of optimizationsaccording to whatever goal you
assigned it.
If your goal is a bad one, itwill optimize toward a bad goal,
and so this is exactly theproblem that we have right now.
(23:40):
If we're going to have peopleand AI is going to get much
smarter than it is right nowmuch, much smarter and if we're
going to have it optimizingtoward the sole pursuit of
profit, it's not going to careabout people, it's not going to
care about planet, it's, it'sgoing to run right over that
because of it's pursuing profit.
It's optimizing toward profit.
It's optimizing toward thenumbers, not toward any sort of
(24:01):
loving or empathetic approach.
So that was another part of itwas like oh, this could be
trouble for us.
How could we build somethingthat maybe comes in through a
side door of marketing?
You know, telling a story aboutyour business that helps you
align with higher consciousprinciples, and so that was the
(24:23):
other side of it was.
Oh, ai is coming along.
Hey, I think we could actuallyhelp companies so that they
don't uh end up killing us atsome point down the line.
They're already killing us nowon a slow kill, daily basis,
most business, like I mentioned.
But um, yeah, it's like how canwe build love into this and and
(24:45):
uh bring more love into theworld?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I love that and I think that that's definitely one
of the reasons why I wanted toopen up this topic a little bit
because, like you're right, likelove to its own devices, right,
what is going to happen?
There's so many people nowusing it.
I really like that idea of youknow, not just like one person
(25:08):
like I do really feel like oneperson can make a big difference
, but the fact that you guys,you know as a company, have
decided like this is like partof our.
Our mission really is to likereally kind of like help the
rest of you with this too, youknow, like whether they're your
clients or not, because it doesmatter like teaching people
about this, us even talkingabout it right now, like
(25:29):
reminding people, like keepingthis top of mind, like we have
to like be having theseconversations, I think, so that
we can continue to embed this,this good, this light, if you
will.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
You're exactly right, we have to have these
conversations.
We have to have them nowbecause this is this
foundational sort of period withAI where it's kind of figuring
out hey, what are you humansabout?
And some of us aren't quiteevolved or ready for this.
Technology is what the problemis and, consciously, you know,
we're seeing this division.
We're seeing a lot of thisgoing on right now because of
(26:06):
where we are in stages ofconsciousness of different
people, and it's causing a lotof conflict.
And this is the process ofevolution.
It's not pretty.
You step back sometimes, thoughit's beautiful because it's
love trying to find its waythrough, and it's coming up
against resistance, it's comingup against rigidity, and this is
where you get all this turmoila lot of times.
But really, we're in thisfoundational stage that we
(26:29):
really need to set the tone andhave these conversations and
make sure that you know we'reall sort of aligning towards
something beyond just, you know,this soulless profit pursuit,
which is what we do, most of us,on a daily basis like I said,
80 of people out there is likethis is their job on a daily
basis is just this sole pursuitof profit, and we have to move
(26:51):
beyond that and I know I meanit's.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
it's hard, like I know there's a lot of people out
there who are like well, youknow, I'm always kind of talking
about this too is like you'regonna find proof of whatever
you're looking for.
So, if you are, I swear brainsare wired.
It's not even just woo stuff,it's like literally our brain
and we are.
We're going to continue to findproof of like, oh, the economy
is bad, or like I have to befocused on this because
everybody else is, and the ratrace of social media and
(27:17):
consumption, blah, blah, blah.
All that stuff, right, like Ifeel like we can easily get
trapped into that, get suckedinto that, get like stuck in
that place.
And so what are some of thethings that you do or that you
guys do over there, like evenwith any of your clients, or any
(27:39):
of the education that you guyshelp your clients with to make
sure that they are staying onthis track, like that listeners
could use in their ownbusinesses?
What would you suggest?
Even like, especially with theAI piece of this too?
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So, like with our AI platform, one of the things it
does is it kind of takes youthrough this emotional,
empathetic customer journey,whatever your business is.
It tries to get into the headof your clients a little bit so
that you can empathize withwhere they at at different
stages, and that even goesbeyond a whole bunch of
advertising and emotionalconnection you can do prior to
(28:16):
them becoming a client, but then, even once they become a client
, this is the kind of a keyperiod is this consumption
emotion of this consumptionexperience they're having.
And there are 17 consumptionemotions, if you want to get
technical about that, thathappen when someone's using your
product or service and if youwant to get to that emotional
connection, you really have tokind of think about those in a
(28:39):
way.
So one of the tools we have onthere.
It helps you with like surpriseand delight, like doing
something unexpected and extrafor someone in your business.
So your customer they weren'texpecting this at all and you
did.
You went above and beyond withsomething and now suddenly this
is creating that emotionalconnection with them.
You know, and it's also kind ofusually when you're doing that
(29:00):
something extra, it's kind of anact of kindness in a way too
right Cause you didn't have todo that and they know it and you
kind of know it, but it's oh,wow, you went above and beyond.
For me it's kind of this act ofkindness.
So you build this connection inthat way, so we have tools for
that too.
So we're we're trying to takeyour customer all along this
path from a really empatheticpoint and then, once you're able
(29:22):
to do that, once you find yourhigher purpose, it's like, okay,
you know what's your marketinglook like you want to do blogs,
you want to do email, you wantto do a social posts.
We can do all that behind asingle high purpose campaign
idea.
You know, just button clicksand it'll help help you produce
content.
That's maybe would have takenyou a week or even a month to
come up with the ideas, butit'll do it in like five minutes
(29:43):
.
Or you come up with this fullplan and the other thing we do
as as marketers.
We know there's so manytechniques out there, even
someone you know.
I've been in this for threedecades plus always learning
something new.
It's never the same.
So what we brought in was wehave a hundred different expert
techniques on all thesedifferent things in there so
that you don't have to worryabout using the latest or
(30:05):
greatest or, you know, you canjust kind of select from ideas
and concepts that make sense toyou.
But it's really rooted in thissort of expert technique in
there.
So we just wanted to make it assimple as possible for people.
And we're still.
That's always going to be awork in progress, for sure, and
it's getting better.
But the idea is to really helpyou build kind of this
(30:29):
connection with people.
We're so divided right now,we're so disconnected and stuff,
but really these kind of actsof kindness, acts of empathy can
bring us together in thisbusiness setting.
And the thing about business iswe've got a lot of money that we
can spend on our advertising.
If it's working, it turns out.
This is usually the best way togo.
(30:50):
It works really really well.
So you know you may have seensome really good like viral
campaigns out there, like Doveis a classic example of the Dove
Real Beauty right Recognizing.
You know how women felt aboutthemselves and they kind of
changed their marketing about 20years ago to being more of this
(31:11):
authentic, not this ideal viewof beauty dream all the time.
They could spend a lot of moneydoing that same thing like
everyone else is doing, or theycould spend billions of dollars
putting something good into theworld with that advertising and
turns out, yeah, it does reallywell for them as well, but
(31:33):
you're able to get this ad spendand use it for good.
I think that's ultimately forus, that's a big win.
So we're constantly kind oftaking our clients through that
process, trying to find out howwe can build love into something
so that when we're using thatad spend and we're we're putting
good into the world instead ofmore noise out there, we are the
most marketed to we've everbeen in our lives.
(31:55):
Right now it's constant, yeah,so, um, there's just so much
noise out there and most of itis kind of garbage, so we really
want to try and stand out byputting some good into the world
.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
That's really cool.
That's what I really love aboutit.
So what would you say?
Is the and you kind of spoke toit a little bit there, but
there's a lot of talk about, youknow, everybody's creating
their own sort of like GPTs andcustom bots and all this stuff.
What's the difference betweensomeone doing that for
themselves in their businessright now and like working with
AI CMO, for instance?
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean the first one that comesto mind to me, like, if I'm so,
you do photography.
So if you go to chat GPT andyou just say, hey, I want to
blog about something and someoneacross the country is doing the
same thing, you guys are goingto get very similar sort of
output from there.
So what we're doing is reallytrying to set up a whole bunch
(32:51):
of guide rails for you from youknow, building emotional
connection, your higher purpose,how to differentiate you from
everyone else, what experttechniques can we use in this
process?
So you're bringing all this inand trying to produce through
that kind of lens versus chatGPT.
(33:11):
The problem with marketing likeI said, there's so many
techniques, you don't know whatyou don't know.
There's so many strategies, somany techniques out there.
So if you're not, like you know, this expert marketer, slash,
prompt, engineer, slash, youknow, empathetic, individual,
you're going to have a toughtime bringing it all together
and you're going to get somevery uh, I don't know the
(33:32):
kindest way I could say it, butsome very generic uh stuff and
you're going to be putting thesame kind of noise out there
that you know everybody else isum and contributing to the part
of the problem that we're havingright now yeah, I see it a lot
I'm sure you do too, like whenyou just you're scrolling and
(33:54):
it's it's pretty obvious what'sbeen copied and pasted from you
know, chat, like I, I reallyreally does depend on on a lot
of those things like you justmentioned.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
But what would you say to somebody who?
Cause I hear this a lot in mycommunities not as much probably
as maybe a year ago, but Istill I still do get these
messages.
Like whenever I'm talking aboutAI in general or whatever I'll,
I'll get a lot of like people afew people at least who'll
chime in and be like AI is bad,et cetera.
(34:25):
And listen, I mean like Itotally my husband's a
screenwriter and an actor andlike that industry, he has a
bang through it.
Yeah, exactly, I mean like hedoes.
He's the voice of Johnny Cage onthe Mortal Kombat video games,
for instance, and like you cango on YouTube and like you can
find like a lot like people justrip it.
They've been ripping his voiceand creating AI.
(34:46):
It's like completely againstcopyright, but like people have
been doing that for a whilealready.
So I get all of this.
I get all of these you know,slippery slope things that we're
sort of like dealing with rightnow.
But what would you say tosomebody who is a business owner
who is like struggling withtheir marketing and maybe
struggling even to just likehave their business?
(35:06):
You know, I see that a lot ofmy community like a lot of
businesses are failing, a lot ofbusinesses are going out of
business.
Someone in that position inparticular, or just anybody
really who is just vehementlyagainst using AI, what would you
?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
say to them.
First, I definitely want toacknowledge like there is this,
especially for artists too.
There is this sort of darknight of the soul kind of thing
where you're just seeing itproduce something and you're
like, oh well, where did it getall that from?
It stole it from this and that,and it took it, you know, two
seconds to produce it, and whereyou've been working on your
(35:47):
craft for a lifetime, Right?
So there is definitely thisdark night of soul.
But I've also talked to artistsand actors, you know, in
Hollywood too, which they won'twant to mention because it's
very heated in Hollywood, but Iwon't name names but who
understand this.
But talking with artists, theykind of see it as a jazz session
(36:11):
in a way where it's co-creation.
You know it's not, it's not AIsolely creating or taking from
something else, it's you and AI.
In this jazz session you'reco-creating something and it's
it's definitely not fully you,but it's definitely not fully AI
when you're doing it Right, andso you can get to these very
creative places.
(36:31):
And some very good artists areusing this just as another tool.
It's just a new medium for themto explore different ways, and
these are people who have like,oh yeah, now I've been, you know
, painting, drawing, doing allthis by hand and everything, and
now I'm kind of exploring thiswhole new approach to it.
But it's very much this jazzsession co-creation process.
(36:52):
So think about that first.
I mean, that's one of thethoughts I would say.
The other is that what wereally want to use AI for is to
prompt us to be better humans,you know instead of us prompting
us to be better humans, if wecan get there and I think it can
be very, very good at that ifdone right.
(37:13):
So if we're looking forconsciousness to evolve from
where it's at right now, I thinkAI is going to be the thing
that pushes us past the tippingpoint, because we're right at
this cusp of just needing acouple more percentage of the
population to be a little moreconsciously evolved, to see kind
of this next consciousnessrevolution we saw it in the 60s
(37:36):
was.
Consciousness went from thismodern thought to postmodern in
a short period of time, theshortest time consciousness ever
adjusted.
We're going to be seeing itagain at some point.
It's just a matter of peopleevolving to that point.
And I do think AI because we'regoing to be able to get it to
come from a higher ground for usand that gravity is going to
(37:58):
probably be the thing thatpushes us beyond where we need
to be right now.
If you look at the youngergenerations, right now they
evolve consciously much fasterthan previous generations
because of all the work thatwe've done with our
consciousness, all the you knowbattles we've gone over through
the decades and centuries.
The gravity is just up here nowand so they come online, they
(38:20):
get to that gravity much faster,and so they're going to push
the envelope a little bitfurther too.
And we're talking generationsnow, too, that are going to be
born with AI and never not knowAI, and I don't know what kind
of problems that is going tocause, but it will cause
problems for sure.
New problems.
Anytime we've had a technologyor things like that, like the
(38:41):
cell phone, this causes allkinds of problems.
We love it, but it's alsocausing problems at the same
time.
To that point, I think, if wecan use it to prompt us to be
better humans, I think we canmake it through this AI period
without getting too damaged andmaybe come through the other
side, you know, a lot moreempathetic, a lot more loving, a
(39:03):
lot kinder, and hopefullythat's the kind of AI that we're
building in the process.
But, yeah, no, I totally getwhere everyone's coming from
with this um.
It's, it is soul-crushing attimes, you know, when you see,
yeah, what it'll be able to do,um, especially artists,
especially in, you know,hollywood ecosystem, you're just
like, oh, wow, what took athousand people to do, at some
(39:26):
point it's going to be able todo oh yeah, yeah, they just came
out.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Why was it this whole this week?
You know about the, thecommercial that was shot, start
to finish.
All actors voice everything, um, but I.
But it's interesting when youlook at, when you look at the
comments on some of those posts.
It is pretty much almost 100.
We're talking like a lot ofcomments.
I went through a lot of thesecomments.
I always like to see, like,what people are thinking and
(39:54):
saying about this kind of stuff.
They were well, I won't bebuying from this company, I
don't want to, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't
want this, and it's very, veryinteresting.
So I think that, although wecan do it and companies are, you
know, doing it, it's going tobe interesting to see what kind
of backlash there is, if thereis one, and as it evolves, and
(40:17):
we can't tell that it's createdby AI, because you know we're
basically almost there, we'regetting there, you know, daily
the genie's out of the bottle,basically, you know, yeah,
that's the problem really thegenie's out of the bottle, it's
not going back.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
We need to make sure the genie's not going to give us
some sort of you know,nightmarish scenario in the
process, like genies typicallydo.
But yeah, no, I think this isone of the things we do is we
talk about a lot of thingsaround your business that aren't
marketing related, that relateto you being an authentic kind
(40:53):
of business, and we don't wantto be telling a story that is
just a story where you're justtalking the talk and you're not
walking that talk.
So, you know, we've got apodcast where we've I don't know
we're 200 episodes in now, butwe bring CEOs in and we're
talking about love and businessand building authentic
businesses and all those littlethings around your business, so
(41:15):
that when you're telling a storyor using AI, we want you to
make sure you're doing, you're agood citizen in the world, and
then people will give you maybea little more leeway on some of
that stuff.
If you're just about profit andyou're using AI and you're
hurting, you know, thousands ofpeople in the process, um, I'd
(41:35):
say probably look out, you'regoing to be in trouble.
Um, because, like I mentioned,the consciousness of people.
Right now it's kind of evolvedto a point where you're going to
get some pushback and we'reseeing that in a lot of ways
ways politically in businesses,where, you know, with businesses
taking out DEI and things likethat, because of the consumer
(41:55):
battle going on right now.
So there can be anotherconsumer battle with AI.
But what really needs to happenat these companies is you need
to be more.
Take more of this consciouscapitalist approach.
You need to be more authentic.
You need to think more aboutpeople, more about your planet.
You know more about your higherpurpose in the world and the
role that you play.
If you do that and then youstart using AI to amplify that
(42:20):
good, I think people will be onyour side for that in the long
run.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
I agree, I love that Before we sort of start wrapping
up, I always like to ask peoplewe're going to segue just a
little bit because we've beentalking a little techie stuff.
Uh, really love, love all ofthis marketing chatter.
That's.
I think it's interesting to me,but I know it's interesting to
people who listen to the podcastas well.
But I want to also kind of divein because I'd like to ask my
(42:46):
guests okay, well, how are you?
Speaker 1 (43:12):
What kind of what's favorite, like, what keeps you
grounded, what?
What is your like sort of youknow practice that keeps you
connected, grounded, orsomething?
If I had a superpower, though,it's probably like lucid
dreaming in that I kind of viewthis as sort of like a sandbox
in a way, where you can work onyourself.
It's like whoa, why did I gettriggered about something in
there?
And you get deeper in into thatprocess of understanding.
You know why you went down thispath in this dream, you know,
and why you reacted a certainway, and it's been kind of this
fascinating journey because youknow why you went down this path
in this dream, you know, andwhy you reacted a certain way.
And it's been kind of thisfascinating journey because, you
(43:35):
know, I can typically alwaysremember my dreams, or I can be
in a dream where, like you know,I've got a client tomorrow, I
need to work on this thing thatI haven't worked on yet.
Let's work on it right now andbe in that kind of flow state in
the dream, which is pretty,pretty cool.
Um, yeah, but I do like theaspect you mentioned, kind of
working on yourself.
It is this process of beingable to uh, bring out these,
(43:58):
these kind of even do shadowwork or things like that.
Right where you're suddenly,you know something scared you,
or or why did you get mad aboutsomething this way, or why would
you react that way?
In this subconscious sort ofstate, you know where things
flow a lot freer.
It's that's really one of mysuperpowers, that.
So that keeps me grounded allthe time.
Um, I rarely have nightmares,or I rarely have that's so cool
(44:21):
things where I get angry.
but it's constantly doing thisaudit of like, what did I think
about last night?
What did I dream about?
Going into the well?
Why would I react that way?
Going into the well, why wouldI react that way?
Going into the stuff beneaththe surface of it?
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Have you always been able to do it?
Or, like, did you have to teachyourself how to lucid dream?
Speaker 1 (44:37):
I've always been able to do that, I think.
Um, I had, yeah, there's reallykind of oddly profound dreams
as a young child that I didn'teven understand at the time till
later, when I was studyingconsciousness and stuff.
I'm all Whoa, okay, that's what.
That's the only thing thisdream can mean.
Yeah, it's always been so.
The blessing is I can do that.
(44:57):
The curses I am like a horriblesleeper, like I have not slept
through the night in 40 plusyears.
I don't know what that is likeat all.
Um, I will be waking up afterevery sort of cycle or staying
in that not quite a sleep stateand kind of plowing.
So there's a, there's a curseand a benefit to that, but it's,
it is fun.
It's weird.
(45:18):
This is where you get to thewoo too, cause we'll do like a,
like we have our own podcast andI'll think about it during the.
You know some of those luciddream things for the next day.
And then I've asked questionsto guests where they're like why
did you ask that question?
I'm all well, this came to mewhile sleeping in.
There there are I'm goingthrough that right now and
bubble.
(45:38):
So that would be the woo side.
I think that's really kind offascinating to me I love that
yeah, which I yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
It's hard to explain, I guess yeah, but some things
you can't like, you just tappedin like things you can't.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
You're just like, yeah, no, that just came to me
and so I was gonna ask it yeah,I think it's super interesting
because, like I, I very rarelylike.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Well, first of all, I sleep like the dead.
Let me just preface it by that.
Like I, that that's mysuperpower.
One that's one of mysuperpowers is the fact that I
get like I'll, I'll sleep.
I get seven to eight hours ofactual sleep, right, and is that
like, I don't know.
My husband asks me that everymorning.
He's like did you sleep?
Oh, let me just answer that yes, of course you did, because
(46:22):
he's like you, he's very similar.
Actually.
He has incredibly vivid dreams.
Like he will have full start tofinish movie ideas and I'm like
what, what is that?
Like I got I wouldn't even knowwhat that my dreams don't make
any sense.
Like, when I do dream and whenI do remember like it's very
rare that I remember I'm likewhat was that?
(46:43):
Like it is so weird, it's likea LSD trip.
But his makes sense.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, so, and it is like a psychedelic journey in a
way.
And so he.
But he he's like what's coolabout his dreams, because I know
where he's been is like it'llhave that start and finish thing
, but stuff that happened in thestart, you know the finish, it
comes full circle in some way,like well, how would that even
have happened, how would I evenhave thought about that in that
dream.
But since he can't sleep, whathe really needs to do is like
(47:11):
what I do is kind of hey,self-audit yourself in there,
use this as your superpower.
Um, but I've, I totally knowwhat he's talking about and it's
amazing where you I know right,it's so interesting these crazy
things where, like, I like towrite on the side and I can
write like a full page of stuffand edit and go through this
process in there and have thisbeautiful flow state and get up
(47:33):
and be like, okay, I need towrite that down right now, what
I just did, and actually itturns out pretty good.
So not the nonsense you'rethinking about sometimes, uh,
but yeah, no, he's got a, it's acurse and a gift, so he needs
to uh, dive into the gift partof it and yeah, he has, don't be
like you for for sleepingthrough the night.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
No he's, he's past that point, you're right.
I mean it's.
It's been like this his wholelife.
So, like, even as a child, hehas like, he recounts like it
was one of the he used to havehorrible, like horrible night
terrors as a child and he saidthat the way that he got through
it I think he was like 11 or 12when he did this but like, like
he went to sleep and he said Iprogrammed my I don't know how
(48:13):
he knew how to do this at 11 or12.
I programmed my mind to wake up.
I told myself, I want to wakeup when I am being attacked,
cause there was always like thisdemon or something.
And you know, and he's like,and I want to wake up with a
lightsaber, and I want to wakeup and, like, you know, cause
he's such a, he's a total nerd,and he's like I want to wake up
and, you know, battle this, thisthing with my lightsaber.
(48:35):
And he did it.
And he said, ever since then hedidn't have that nightmare
anymore.
And so ever since then he'sbeen able to like, do these
things and I'm like that is socool.
Like I, I love programmingmyself.
Like what I do is I tell myunconscious mind like, hey,
while we're sleeping, whilewe're getting a lot of good rest
, I want you to run in thebackground and I want you to
(48:57):
work on this stuff.
But don't wake me up Like Iliterally am very gentle about
that stuff, right, like workthat out, you know, kind of work
through that so that when Iwake up I feel refreshed and I
feel like I can tackle this orwhatever.
But that's a different.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
That's different than what you guys can do.
I would say like, like.
My lightsaber in thosesituations has always been how
can I approach this?
You know you've had thesecreatures and scary things.
Well, how can I approach itwith love?
Speaker 2 (49:23):
With love yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
With love, and then it suddenly kind of dissolves in
front of you or suddenly turnsthe whole conversation right in
front of you, and so it's reallykind of this exercise that you
keep doing in your head in thesecrazy ass scenarios that it's
really.
You know that you couldn't getin real life either.
You know exactly, I have thesecreatures that come up from
(49:45):
vines and form and all thisstuff and you're like, oh, this
could be really scary, but no,I'm going'm gonna yeah, you know
, and then yeah, suddenly it'slike oh, there's this whole
oneness and thing going on thereand it softens it, and so
that's why I think I don't havenightmares and stuff, it's just
exactly, yeah, exercise, yeah,no, he doesn't either.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
And and I mean that's just that, that growth right,
because, like I even teachpeople that in in coaching, like
to to work with yourunconscious, a lot of people
need to sort of, like you know,think of it as that, that inner
saboteur, and sort of battle it.
But really the fastest way toget through it is to love it,
cause it's really just like alittle you, it's like your, it's
(50:23):
just your programming, and soyears of everything.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
You were seven, eight years old maybe or something,
that something happened that youkind of built up these defenses
toward right as a seven and youtried to handle it as a seven
or eight year old, but nowyou're, you know, 30, 40 or 50
or something.
Yep, that programming is stillthere and it's like, okay, wait
a minute.
I need to deal with as a moreevolved adult now and how I
handle that.
And the answer is always love,right, always it, it's, always
it's.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
I love that yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Love always wins.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
I a hundred percent agree.
Okay, I love this conversation.
Tell people where they can findyou guys, where they can like
try you out, where they canconnect with you, where you like
to kind of connect with peopleany anything like that.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah, If you want to, uh, check out the platform, go
to AICMOio.
If you want to hear me ask CEOsand things about what role love
plays in business, go to ourpodcast, the Bliss Business
Podcast, where we're bringing onlike very successful CEOs and
companies and stuff and we'restraight up talking about love
(51:27):
and empathy and connection andtelling good stories that you
can be profitable and have comefrom this higher conscious place
.
But, um, yeah, at the end ofthe show I'm always asking you
know, what role does love playin business?
And it's been a veryprovocative question that people
just don't get asked.
But we're getting, we'regetting amazing answers off of
this and it's just, I think,something that gets me fired up
(51:50):
every week and being able to goplaces that businesses don't
normally like to go and, likeyou said, yeah, love always wins
.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
It's an important question.
Glad you're asking.
That's really cool.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
This was awesome.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah, it was great.
Thanks for having me, Renee.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
So that was fun, right.
Not only did we have a techiesort of nerdy conversation, but
we went to some reallyinteresting higher level stuff
there, and that's exactly why Istarted this podcast is so we
could have conversations likethis and meld these worlds.
I don't know about you, but,like I think about all this
(52:27):
stuff you know, and I thinkabout how all of this is
impacting us and how it's goingto impact our kids and future
generations, and one of mymissions, as you guys know, is
to, you know, help other people,help business owners,
solopreneurs, photographers,creatives, especially really
hone in on what makes them themost them.
(52:51):
They could be right, likeMolly's telling you be the most
you that you can be, by rootinginto your purpose, by
highlighting it in not just yourmarketing but for you as a
person, as a human, so that youcan then also spread your
purpose, your meaning, and thenalso spread your purpose, your
meaning, your love, to the world.
(53:13):
It's a big deal.
This is really important stuff.
Okay, we are in a world, aperiod of time, that is chaotic
AF.
Okay, we can all agree.
I don't care what you believe,I don't care where you land
politically at this.
I think that we can all agreeon one thing that things are a
(53:37):
little wild right now and AI isjust going to get a little more
wild as it progresses.
I mean, it's not going anywhere.
I understand that there are somefears, but I really love
Stephen's analogy there of, youknow, thinking about it as a
piece of jazz music, right, ifyou know anything about that,
(53:59):
you know that it's acollaboration and you just kind
of have to sort of ride the wavesometimes, right, and I do
think that we need to be payingattention for sure about, like,
what's going on and how we'reusing it, and also making sure
that we are training it to notbe a yes person, right, like
don't be a hype girl, um, butalso that we are open, that we
(54:23):
are curious, that we are in flowwhen it comes to all of this
and willing to sort of seewhat's going on across the board
, even if, and especially if youdon't agree what's going on,
because I mean, whether you likeit or not, it's happening.
So you could bury your head inthe sand or you could at least
(54:45):
just be paying attention.
And so that's another reasonwhy I wanted to do this show and
kind of bring up this topic ina slightly different way than I
think it's been spoken aboutbefore, and I hope you guys got
a lot out of this episode, asalways, and of course I would
love to hear what thosetakeaways are.
If you want to hit me up overon Instagram at Renee Bowen, Of
course I also love it when youleave reviews and you can do
(55:06):
that super easy atratethispodcastcom slash Renee
Bowen.
I hope you guys have a greatrest of your day, rest of your
week.
Love you Bye.
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