Playstorm: Why Your CEO Needs to Get Dirty with AI - with Sandy Carter

Dan Nestle [00:00:00]: Welcome or welcome back to the trending Communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. I've always had a love hate relationship with the tech industry. Love because as my listeners know, I'm all in on tech. Especially when I can figure out how to bring communications and tech together in the service of our profession and my business. Hate because tech has become like the new cable tv. I have so many subscriptions, I have to get upgrades, few premium channels thrown in, the bills are going through the roof, the add ons and upgrades are inescapable. Services go down at the worst times and 99% of the time you can't get a person on the phone or in a chat. Also, they never hired me for anything and believe me, I. But today's guest, she's been hired by all of them and for good reason. At IBM, she took this thing called social business, which nobody really understood, and turned it into a $200 billion market through strategic storytelling and relentless evangelism. At AWS, she essentially taught governments how to speak cloud, growing their public sector partner network by 45% in a single year. And now she's revolutionizing Web3 and digital identity, taking a startup from 400,000 to nearly 4 million users by making the incomprehensible comprehensible. So she operates from this philosophy. AI first, human always. And that's where it really resonates with me. Because it's not just a book title, by the way. It's a recognition that all this technology only matters if humans can actually use it to create something meaningful. While everyone else is out there either selling AI snake oil or running scared, she. She's figured out how to make transformation technology serve actual human needs. Seven books, hundreds of keynotes, Forbes contributor with five Editor's Choice recognitions, named to every power list that matters. CNN's top 10 most powerful women tech, Forbes of 50 over 50, et cetera, et cetera. But what interests me most is how she's built what I call her own executive influence engine, turning complex technical concepts into boardroom imperatives. So we're going to dig into how AI is actually changing strategic communications, why digital identity might solve the audience fragmentation problem, and you know, what it really takes to get Fortune 100 companies to change their minds about, well, anything. She's the Chief Business Officer at Unstoppable Domains. She's a former VP at Amazon Web Services. She's IBM veteran and quite possibly the only person who successfully taught both the US government and Silicon Valley startups how to innovate at the same time, I can't tell you how excited I am for this conversation with one of the most influential people in technology today and my friend, Sandy Carter. Sandy, wow. It is good to see you.

Sandy Carter [00:02:55]: That was amazing. Thank you for that introduction. I've never had an intern like that, so thank you so much.

Dan Nestle [00:03:03]: Well, barely scratches the surface of how your contributions to not just tech, but to marketing and communications and your legendary, I'd say, South by Southwest keynotes and all of the speaking that you've been doing and your position as a leader in technology for not just women, but for everyone. Although you have done so much to uplift women in the space. And to be frank with you, I thought about where we were going to go with the conversation because it can go anywhere. And obviously you're a technophile and a technologist and a marketer and a communicator. So I have no fear that whatever we talk about be fantastic. But why don't we just start? There's a couple of questions. First of all, people might be asking. This is the trending communicator. Usually I have people who have. Who are in the comms world, mostly in the comms world, with occasional sprinkling of good marketers here and there. I can't define you in that way. And I just kind of want to hear from you a little bit about what communicators. People in strategic communications and marketing includes that. But what is it that you're seeing for communicators that they should be paying attention to right now, you know, based on all the things you're talking about and, you know, that's a big question. So we're gonna. We're gonna kind of veer from there.

Sandy Carter [00:04:36]: Yeah. I mean. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. I am super honored to be here with all the communicators because I think there is a extremely important role for communicators today. I would say that there is a big shift that's coming on today that I'm not sure everybody has caught onto yet. I think audiences today are ready to move on from how do I use gen AI for productivity? And into something that has a deeper meaning or a deeper question, which is, what does it mean for us as humans? My book is AI First Human Always. So what does it mean for us as humans? Like, what does it mean for me? Thank you. What does it mean for me at work? What does it mean for me in dating? What does it mean for me in a relationship? Like, what does it mean we do talk about an AI bubble getting ready to happen? And MIT just published this amazing report that said that 95% of the corporate AI that's out there is failing. And why is it failing? It's failing because of lack of. Of people buying in. Right. Either people are saying, no, I don't want to use it, or yes, I want to use it, but it's just too hard. So people, I think, today are craving big conversations that stretch them, that inspire them, that help them to navigate. What does it mean to be a human in the coming age of personal superintelligence? And I think that communicators who can recognize that it's not just about productivity, ROI does matter, but it's that bigger narrative that I think a lot of people are missing today that I think is. Is what I would focus on as a communicator. You know, the I in AI is the most important part, right? Whether that I is intelligence or I as a first person, it represents a human. And it's clear that I think the focus needs to return to that. It needs to return to what truly matters and who we are.

Dan Nestle [00:06:59]: Wow. Really kind of throwing that softball right into the hands of the communications field. I appreciate that. It's interesting because we, you know, as. And I've always straddled the boundaries, or if there are boundaries, I never, I never. I always thought of marketing and communications as one big, you know, gnarly beast. But when you're talking about storytelling and, you know, bringing something to being something that's complex into a. Into an understandable mode, and AI certainly fits that more than anything else that we've seen. I think even, like some people compare it to social, and I think that's not quite apt. I would compare it more like to the wheel. It's a big, big change. But that human side of it is exactly what we've been saying inside our circles. I guess that folks are worried that AI is going to take everything or do things for them, rather than seeing it as, oh, wow, AI can do things for me. So that frees me up to actually take the parts of my being that are broader thinking, that are. That are critical thinking, that are creative, that's kind of strategic, you name it, and really kind of boost those. You know, it's kind of like when a. When a. When somebody loses their sight, their hearing just apparently, from what I've heard, gets. Gets intense, intensely strengthened. I think some of the same things are going to happen with AI. Okay, fine. It's going to do more editing. All right. If you've been in editor, you're going to be strong in other skills now because you'll be able to build that out. But besides that, the fact that communicators are focused on what makes things relatable to people is a, is indeed a huge opportunity for us. And you know, we're storytellers. We should be anyway. We're writers and storytellers. And I've been, you know, I've been digging so deep into AI and as a, as an assistant, as a, as a writer, as an editor, you know, name, name it. I've been, I've been doing it and I just find myself just expanding. I mean, I beat a lot of cookies. I'm expanding that way too. But I find myself expanding like my horizon, like I'm doing different things and I, it's because I've been freed up to think.

Sandy Carter [00:09:24]: But I think there's one point in there that you made, Dan. You know, you have done that because you have been curious and you've, you know, you have a love of learning. I think a lot of people and a lot of the narrative out there today from the press is a fear based narrative. AI is going to take your job. You know, have you watched these movies where the robots take over and you're under control? I think when people are afraid, I think they act in a different, maybe irrational way. And I think right now there is a ton of fear out there. They don't know what's going to happen. And so if they don't understand it, I think that they're going to act in a particular way. So the good thing is you just explained that you're educated, you know what's happening, you know how it can help you, but not everybody does. And so I think for me, a great communicator right now will be able to address the fear, not ignore it, but address it and talk about that big conversation that helps to like. You just talked about things that inspire you. Talk about things that inspire the person. You know, I learned a really amazing lesson from Andy Jassy at aws. We always had to write these narratives and we always have to come in and we had to talk about the customer, never the client. I got in trouble for saying client once. It's a customer. And when you talk about a customer inside of aws, you never talk about the company. So I'm not selling to Wiley, I'm not selling even to fintech. I'm selling to Dan, who works at Oracle, who is an it professional. And I think that's one of the things that makes Amazon so good, is that they design their products, they message their products for people, not, not companies, not the group, not an industry, but for the person. And I think right now people have a fear. And I think there needs to be some education, I think there needs to be some inspiration, I think it needs to be broader. And what does it mean to be human right now, I think is so extremely important. So if I was given advice to a communicator, if I was working at an AI company, that's what I would do. If I was working at a non AI company, but I'm going to be using AI because basically everybody does today. I would address the fear that's coming and try to express why, you know, why you need a human in the loop. Like, why is that so incredibly important?

Dan Nestle [00:12:16]: And we're all, we're all hitting that message again and again like that the human in the loop is you. And the human in the loop guarantees that you actually will continue to work. You just have to understand how that loop, what that loop looks like. Where is it not a loop and instead a sort of Mobius circle, you know, like, where does the shape change? But you're on it, you're in it, and you are, you know, you're leading the way rather than following what some random piece of technology is telling you. And we don't need to lay down like sheep for anything. We should never have done that. We never have done that really. I don't think in the area of any other technology. So this is no different. But I think you're right, it's scary. And I kind of want to circle back to something you said about AI failing in corporations. That's a big statistic. 95%.

Sandy Carter [00:13:13]: Yeah. It's the latest MIT study, by the way. Really well done. If you haven't read it, I'll give you the link and you can share it with your, your listeners too.

Dan Nestle [00:13:22]: Yeah, well, I was wondering about that because, I mean, not the MIT, but because, but the actual figure itself, the CEO. So we're hearing a lot of things about CEOs pushing really hard to get AI, excuse me, get AI into their, into their workforce to implement, to, you know, to enable these, these words, these passive words almost. And, and then on the other, on the flip side, you have people who, like, at least in marketing communications, there's a, there's a stat that I think Andy Christadena shared today is like 95%. And again, 95, 95% of marketers and communicators are using AI regularly. They use it for various things, but they're in it, right? They're. Some of them are a little scared, but not very small percentage. Most are kind of, you know, embracing. So the disconnect there between, okay, CEOs want things to get going. You have a lot of employees who want to use it. So the, so it seems to me that they're falling flat in that bridge. You know, how are you getting from, okay, these. The CEOs want this to happen. People kind of are using it. They don't know where to go with it. It's not all teams, but the CEOs are kind of looking at this from a financial standpoint. They're looking at this from a quick win productivity standpoint. And my suspicion is they're looking at it as any other piece of technology. Like the way that they're leaning into CTOs and CIOs to say, what should we get? What's the systems that we need? Rather than exploring what can be done, how it can change the way they work before they make those big decisions. And it's, you know, it's not easy. I mean, it's a big change management program. So what do you think is that disconnect? Like, why is, why is it that CEOs have been pushing all of a sudden, kind of flip the script a little bit and like, okay, yeah, we need to get on AI, but that failure is happening. What do you think the main thing is, apart from fear, the fear of adoption?

Sandy Carter [00:15:23]: You know, here's what, here's what I would say. I did read the full report for my book. I also did. I did a survey with 1500 customers or companies, and I found in my report that there was still only 20% successful. The MIT report found 5% successful. So this is what I think. I don't think this is a technology shortfall. I think AI is powerful. I think it's improving all the time. But I think that this issue is a people and process issue. And organizations have stumbled on this forever, like digital transformation. I mean, you and I have been through all this, right? And I think they stumble because they haven't thought through workflow integration. Right? It's one thing for you and I individually to use an agent. It's another to have those agents coordinated within an organization. Two data is not ready. I mean, I was just working with someone this morning and they're like, these results are stupid. They're not right? So, you know, in the end, we Got down to where did the data come from? Well, they didn't really have data, so they synthesized it. Okay, well if you don't have data, you're not going to get the right answer. So data readiness and then culture. Right, Culture really makes a difference. I'll tell you a story. I think I told it at the Rise conference too, but I was working with a company there in Asia and the lady designed these mood jackets. These mood jackets are super cool. It senses almost like a mood ring from the old times. It senses your, you know, your temperature, your mood, different things about you, your tiredness. And so this company spent nine months getting this mood jacket ready for all the factory workers. They were wanting, you know, they wanted to be able to give people breaks. Not just every two hours, but when they needed it. They wanted to give them music, you know, woohoo, let's get moving energy. When they needed it, they wanted to adjust the temperature when they needed it. I mean, the motives were all very pure, but they spent nine months on the tech and then they were like, okay, we've got to get this out. And instead of training the managers on what this was doing, they just said, let's just roll this out. And so the pods where the manager asked questions, got data explained to his or her people. This is why we're doing it. This is what data we're collecting. The data is anonymous. It won't be used to fire anybod. It's going to be used for temperature and for playing music and for better breaks. Those groups were extremely successful with the mood jacket that utilized AI to interpret all these results. The groups where they did not tell the people what they were for failed. I mean, that's obvious, right, that that would happen, but that happened. And so I think people don't remember that there is a human in the loop that you need to talk to. You need to make sure they're buying into it. And then the second thing you mentioned this, instead of redesigning their work, too many leaders are saying, I've got to have an AI project. I got to have an AI project. I got to have an AI project. Their processes are all broken, their data is not there and they're just layering AI on top. Well, of course it's not going to work because if your process already didn't work, there's no magic in AI that's going to make it wake up and work. Right. I do think the failure is caused by the way companies are adopting. I think that there is an operational reality and there isn't a focus on governance and training and real workflow redesign. So for me, I think that's really the lesson. Successful adoption is not about running a bunch of pilots and layering, carrying it on. It's about rewiring the organization to truly work with AI as a teammate. And I think companies who figure that out and close that gap, those will be the ones that pull ahead. And I think the others are just gonna risk sinking money into endless experiments that just don't work. So that's where I am on this one.

Dan Nestle [00:19:54]: There's so much, there's so much like these human nature things that pop into my mind as you're talking, you know, the things that we are, our foibles, let's say, as people are amplified at the corporate level. And one of those things is this kind of habit of predicting what is going to happen based on where we are right now and it's. Or based on kind of where we are right now in a linear way, what's happened before. And then you say, okay, well, you know, three steps out. This is where we need, this is where we're going to be. It doesn't account for variables or change or, or optimism or abundance or not. It's like, it's like based on what we have now, AI is such a different animal, I suppose that it doesn't surprise me. Your CEOs and consultants and people are out there saying, all right, let's look, you know, let's layer AI on as pilots to our existing processes and see how much faster we can make them, see how much more efficient we can make them. And yeah, so you're seeing these things like 10% efficiency gain, 5% efficiency gain. I think that's ridiculous. You could get a 10% efficiency gain without, with training. You don't need AI for that. So, you know, the system is the, or the workflows, et cetera, need to be rewired from the ground up. Agreed. I also think that the mentality needs to be rewired and bringing in the kind of internal innovators or the people inside a company that have these broad and big ideas to start, like, don't, don't, don't push them aside, bring them into the conversation and start to kind of build a lab or something inside where you're, where you're figuring things out. Oh my gosh, I didn't know I could do that. There's innovation theories and innovation kind of, I guess, structures, frameworks. I was going to say that that apply. You know, you could look at you could look at the, the three box thing where, you know, that's out of Dartmouth. Forget his name. I'm sorry. And then we have Christensen's whole jobs be done thing. There's so much out there that we can work with. And why are we not doing that? We're doing it because I think a good friend of mine has said recently that, well, it's because the CEOs of these big companies are very short termism, are following short termism, making decisions based on where they think the investment's going to come and seeing AI in one way, in one way more than anything else as a staff reduction opportunity.

Sandy Carter [00:22:44]: And that's why actually when you started out, you said, what do I feel like we need to do from a communications perspective? That's why I said we need to move the audience beyond how to use AI for productivity. And how does the technology work for me, how does it work for me at home, how does it work for me in a dating relationship? How does it work for me at my business? How does it work for me with my kids? We need to move beyond that productivity play and kind of relook at things that can really be impacted in new ways. Right. I was listening to a couple of VCs and they said, you know, don't come in here with startups that say, here's a word processor. Now I can use AI with the word processor. It's better. What I want to know is why the heck do I need a word processor? Or don't come in here to me and talk to me about a new way to do customer relationship management by just accelerating the speed and everything. Why do I need to track leads through a funnel? Why can't AI help me determine the exact moment when Dan needs this? And then I don't have to send emails and a follow up email. I will know that Dan needs this now. And so I'm going to reach out to him now. Those are the type of things that we're looking for. And that is the potential of AI is to do those things. Right.

Dan Nestle [00:24:10]: Yeah.

Sandy Carter [00:24:11]: And in my survey now, it's not as broad as MIT, and I'm not MIT, but I found with my 1500 companies that the 20% who were successful did things really simple. One, they didn't say, I need an AI project. They said, I have a business problem, let's see if we can solve it. Oh wow. AI could help us with that problem. That was one. Two, they had somebody in charge of change management. You mentioned change management, change management. A lot of people are like, oh, Sandy, that's from the old days. No change management has to happen on every single transformation that you're doing. And that's what they did. And the third thing was data, right? Make sure you have the right data, because AI feeds on data, and so you're, you're going downhill if you don't have the right data. And this is a funny story, Dan. So this morning I was talking to a company. It's too funny. And he's like, I want to do an AI agent. I was like, okay, what do you want to do the AI agent for? Perfect answer. He said, well, I want to use it to figure out why we're losing deals.

Dan Nestle [00:25:17]: Great.

Sandy Carter [00:25:17]: I mean, that's a good business outcome, right? I'm like, okay, how do, how do you track losses today? Do you track it in Salesforce? No. Do you track it like in a spreadsheet, like deals that you've lost? No, we don't. Do individual sellers have that data logged somewhere and so they can figure out it was these five objections or whatever? And he goes, I don't think so. So how in the world are you going to use AI to figure out why you're losing deals when you have none of that data? And this was a big aha for him. He thought I was a brilliant genius for saying you don't have. Seriously. I was like, you don't have the data. You don't have the data. Yeah, it seems simple, but a lot of people aren't thinking through it because they're trying to move so fast, right? Everybody's doing it, right? Everybody's doing it. Everybody's getting results. I'm not doing it. I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go.

Dan Nestle [00:26:17]: Yeah, there's a lot of that FOMO kind of driven action happening and expectations, trying to meet the expectations of your customers, stakeholders, shareholders, you know, everybody who has it, who has some sort of interest in you. You know, I get that, you know, CEOs want to be out there, but they're not using the tools. You know, the CEOs, generally speaking, you know, they're, they're not really digging into the guts of everything. They're. They're kind of saying, hey, cto, cio, coo, Chro, go figure this stuff out and then tell them, give me a report. Which is kind of ridiculous, kind of, I think self defeating right now because I think CEOs really need to be digging in a little bit more. And, you know, of course, I'm broad brushing them. There's plenty of people.

Sandy Carter [00:26:57]: And I agree.

Dan Nestle [00:26:58]: Right.

Sandy Carter [00:26:58]: But yeah, in my book I talk about this concept called play storm. It's a word I invented because I really believe that, you know, in the past with technology you could brainstorm it. Right, Okay, I understand the concept of cloud. I got it. I understand you're moving workloads from here to here. I got it. But it's different for AI. Like, you have to experience it, you have to get your hands into it. You have to play with an agent, you have to use it to do a video. You have to see what happens when you have customers interfacing. I mean, you need to experience it. And so recently I've been very pleased. There have been several CEOs that have had workshops or retreats for them and their senior team. So they can actually take the time and go and do it. If they don't play storm with it, I don't think they're going to be successful. I think the CEO needs to do that. Dan.

Dan Nestle [00:27:49]: I totally agree. You know, back in the old days of January, February 2023, after, right after ChatGPT came out in November, and you know, I, I was chasing the bright shiny object and the people in my company were just like, what's this guy up to? Why is he on to? Why is he, you know, okay, fine, we'll let him do some trainings, you know, make him happy. So they gave me, you know, they said, okay, Dan, why don't you train some people in this, see what we're doing. So I started to develop a training program. Really? 25% tell them what this stuff is instead of that 5% hands on play. Like go play. But let's use real business, use cases. Let's use real things that you're facing. Hey, HR team, what are the things that you hate doing? What are the problems that you're having these days, et cetera. And let's start to use that as the fissile material to build all this. That was GPT 3.5, whatever it was at the time and still great. Still the kind of as people are playing and just being able to kind of work with each other and say, oh my gosh, if I prompt it that way, this is what happens. The lights come on the, you know, and there's. If you have 10 people in the room, you know, I guess it depends on the corporate culture, but you have 10 people in the room, you can almost be guaranteed that one or two of them are going to start to go way off the reservation and start to come up with These interesting uses and crazy things to do and that scares the hell out of the managers.

Sandy Carter [00:29:19]: Right.

Dan Nestle [00:29:20]: But it's great to see it happen. CEOs need to experience that. And I'm with you on play. Like, I love Play Storm. I wish I would have thought of that. I've just been talking about play like let's play. And I created some framework for it. But the idea is you need to give yourself room to kind of just experiment without guardrails and see what you can do. Because I think there's this, I don't know what the phenomenon is, maybe you do, where you think of the big end result and yet you haven't taken that first step. So you say, yeah, I'm never going to get there and just kind of walk away frustrated by the whole situation. And that's what a lot of folks are looking at. Like, oh, well, you know, people are, you know, they're, they're creating agents and I can barely do a prompt. Oh, this is nuts. I'm never going to catch up. You don't have to catch up. There's no catch up. There's no race right now. Everybody's in these different places. So, you know, if you can't, but you can't even understand, I think what will happen when you just sit down and just play because then you start to get closer and closer to those other things, but you might go in different directions you haven't heard before. And that basically describes entire my existence right now is playing and oh my gosh, there's a product or here's something I could do for people and I love it. It's the greatest thing for me ever. Suits me, but it doesn't suit everybody. So what I wanted to ask you though, in this, you know, in this environment, right, where, where we need to be working from, because you, you said something that totally resonates and that the successful companies are solving for a business problem and kind of backing into, not backing into AI but saying, okay, look, here's the things that our problems are. How can, can we, as Ethan Mollux, invite AI to the table? And what can we, what, what can we do? Yeah, and you know, that invites, you know, your, your problem solvers or just your kind of methodical people. But it also kind of opens the door to innovators. And do you think that, that everyone needs to be an innovator or do you think that, you know, it's acceptable just to kind of do the thing and be a follower with AI?

Sandy Carter [00:31:43]: Well, I guess the first thing I would say is I think everybody needs to be trained on AI. I know that's not the precise question you asked me, but I was at the World Economic Forum in January and one of the biggest things I heard from CEOs, we would do these roundtables and they're like, yeah, yeah, he's just not working. Not working. I train my tech team. I'm like, oh, wait a second, you just trained the check, you just trained the tech team? Yes, that's all. They're the only ones who need to know about it. And so after that I started thinking about this and I started listening to companies who were doing really well and they had trained everybody on AI. So I think that the first thing is everybody needs to understand AI. I think, you know, now I'm living in Scottsdale, Arizona. We lost my father in law, so we moved there to help my mother in law. So there aren't that many. Like there's like once a quarter AI thing. So I started getting involved in some of the small business areas and I realized like florists and dry cleanings and vets and dentists, they don't, they need to know about it. They want to know about it. They don't even know what it is. And so I started doing these little sessions for them. And you know, one dentist brought in all of his dental hygienist and his front office staff. And I'm like, this guy is going to do really well. And he is, he's like blowing it out right now. So I do think whether you're a small business or a big business, I think everybody needs to know about it. And then what I would say, Dan, is that opens the door for everybody to be an innovator. Maybe innovation with having this PhD in your pocket now comes from a different place than it has in the past. So I don't think you could sit in a room and say, Dan's the innovator, he's going to come up with something really cool. Sarah never has. John's never has. I think now you're going to see innovation come and pop up from different people. I would also say another big trend I'm seeing is generational use varies. And what do I mean by that? So the other day my daughter walked outside and she was walking back and forth and I could hear her through the window and she was saying, you know, what should I wear to this party coming up? You know, what are you gonna, you know, what do you think I should wear? And then the subject changed and she was Talking about, how should I handle this teacher? So when she came in, I was like, who are you talking with? Like, you know, was that Sarah? Was it your best friend Patty? Who are you talking to? She goes, I was talking to Grok. I'm like, what? You're talking to Grok? So she was actually Grok. If you don't know, Grok is the AI model inside of X or Twitter and they have a companion you can use like a bear or a anime character or something like that. And she was just chit chatting with Grok. She was chit chatting with Grok, asking it questions that I would have thought she would have asked her bff, her best friend. Now let's fast forward. I went to a meeting with the CEO of PayPal and he and I were sharing stories and I told that story and he goes, oh my gosh. My sons do the same thing. Like they'll walk around on speaker mode and they'll be chatting with. And so I think the reason I say this, especially for communicators, is that I think that the way in which we communicate will also vary by generation. Like, I just can't imagine myself calling, you know, getting on with Grok and saying, hey, I've got a big speaking engagement tomorrow. What should I wear? Just not someone I would do, but my daughter very comfortable doing that. And so I do think that the questions and what will be asked and what will be expected from a different generation will change. I also see the next generation, the younger generation from my daughter really going to typeless. You know, my daughter uses thumb. She's texting away. I type because I took typing. But that next generation, they don't type, they don't thumb, they speak, they do a lot of typeless stuff. And so, you know, I've been trying out this application called Typeless. I've been trying to do it for an hour a day. It's hard for me because I think, I think with my head to the paper. Like, I think my ideas flow to the paper. And I was talking to an AI ethicist and psychologist today and she was saying, you know why that is, right? And I said, no. She goes, here's a couple of things you need to do. Like instead of going from your head to the paper, you need to go head to paper and then read it out loud. And if you do that for a while, you get used to that and then you'll have a new way of doing it. Anyway, I think that those are going to be interesting things. So I think everybody needs to be trained. I think everybody can be an innovator. We're going to see innovators coming up from different places and I think the interface is going to vary as well. And I think every company, every communicator needs to understand that too, that it's not just going to be typing, it's not just going to be texting. It's going to be a lot of voice as well.

Dan Nestle [00:37:05]: There's a lot of call for voice these days and the voice or this conversational AI folks out there and you know, just like your daughter's doing. Just like sometimes we do if, you know we're trying to think through some problems, sometimes it's helpful to activate voice mode and just start to have a chat. You know, our friend Brian Piper does this all the time and he's been doing it for a long time on long drives and he drives a lot. He just, you know, I'll listen to podcasts or audiobooks. He's got chatgpt going and he just has these conversations to build his business or to kind of work out speeches to do things like this, like really practically using it. And like you though, Sandy, I am a tactile. Like I like I think I speak much differently than I write as anyone knows. My speaking can be all over the place and I sort of, sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my head and some. There's a little, there's a little neurodivergence happening there with different people. It's hard, you know, sometimes hard to do that. I tried to dictate, I think I told you this. I tried to dictate a book long, long, long time ago for a client. It was like a manual of some kind for project management. And it was using one of the earlier types of dictation, kind of like just voice to text tools. And I really like, I was like, I thought it was really fun and I thought I was getting there, but then when it was done, it just wasn't as good as something I would write. And, and plus there's all kinds of, I mean it was a pain in the ass to use, you know, really was. It's different now, but that's the thing. Like when I, when I'm like play storming, you know, when I'm just kind of out there, like just throwing ideas out, then it's great, I'll use a voice memos all the time. But when it comes to like really putting something down that I want people to kind of get understand, I want to write it, you know, And I can't imagine a mode that is going to take me straight from take me straight to voice without the writing part of it. But that's just me, you know, it is generational thing. I totally get that. But there was something I wanted to ask you. Yeah, well, so I mean, you've been talking about how like what communicators can do and I think this is, this can go broader than communicators for sure. But let's just call it for people who write and for storytellers and for folks who aren't necessarily in the kind of coding side of things yet or who aren't ready to be too adventurous and who might be still getting that 10% charge from AI. Like, oh, it writes my emails better by the way. Those are all copilot users probably. But anyway, we'll get this all to get this kind of like charge. Right? But they stop now. This new thing that's not so new has come and it's making the waves certainly across the PR world. And that new thing is geo, right? Generative Engine optimization. For those of you who are out there don't know that that is. And we're seeing this like you're here. I'm hearing from different circles like, oh my gosh, this is like media relations is back, baby. And you know, PR people, I don't think so. I have a very different opinion about this. I mean, I mean I think it is, I think media relations is very, very important. But I don't think it's like this kind of magic pill. What I wanted to ask you though is there are, I think practical advantages like quantifiable value add, like value creation advantages that comms and PR people with their skillset and with the stuff they've been doing so far now have this opportunity to grasp. So like very practical stuff. You talked earlier about telling that story. It's like dispelling the fear, making sure that we bring people on board. But let's like getting down to the brass tacks. PR people I think have this like never before had opportunity to get what they've always wished for, which is to prove that they make things valuable. So what do you think about the opportunities for storytellers, you know, for, for writers, for, you know, people who have understanding of the way humans relate with one another. What is this? What does GEO bring to the table now? What opportunity is that?

Sandy Carter [00:41:32]: Yeah, so for anybody who doesn't know, so it used to be search engine optimization, better known as SEO, and now it's geo, which is Generative engine optimization. So you're actually optimizing for ChatGPT or Grok or Claude or Perplexity, those type of tools. And I do think that stories matter in a GEO engine optimization, but they matter on a multimodal state. And what I mean by multimodal is not just text, it's the whole experience. So let me give you an example. I was chatting with Disney and if you go to Disney now and you hold up, I, I just try this because I'm such a, such a geek. You hold up your phone with Grok, taking a picture. So not texting or not typing, not voicing, but let it take a picture of Disney. Let's say it takes a picture of the fire department. And up in the upper corner on the second floor there is a lamp up there that stays lit. And if you hold that up, it will tell you the whole story of that lamp. It'll tell you that the lamp used to only be lit if Walt Disney was in the park. Now it's lit in his honor. The, the AI engine will also capture a picture of you for social media and then it will recommend other experiences. Now if you think about that, that's a little different type of story. Now you're kind of telling a multimedia story, right? You're using pictures, you're setting the stage, you're giving them an experience that happens that's a little different. Let's do another one for communicators. You know, I mean, I'm sure, Dan, I got, I just got three today you get this little AI nudge if you put something in your shopping cart. And that little AI nudge, what it does is it says, hey Dan, that shirt that you put in there, everybody wants that shirt. Can we, you know, do you want to get it before it's sold out? Wow, that shirt would look great on you. Making all these recommendations, telling you a story about how you would feel in that shirt. Like what you could expect. Your image, right? Soft as butter. You're creating images for it. I was talking with Farfetch, which is, you know, kind of a higher end fashion e commerce store and they told me that they do a. AI nudges 30% of the time with that story, convinces someone to buy that shirt, that jacket. And 75% right now of their purchases are influenced by some sort of AI generated recommendation. Oh my gosh, Dan, that shirt would look great with that, you know, with that necklace that you have or those glasses. That would really. Yeah. And so I think that, and all those things are really, you know, powered by AI. Now if you're thinking about GEI explicitly, Reddit comes out top of the list. So you. We just, my company just started a Reddit channel. We have our own subreddit, we contribute to other Reddit's Wikipedia. So we're a startup. We didn't have a Wikipedia page so we got a Wikipedia page. I updated my personal Wikipedia page because chat grot perplexity. We're pulling stuff from my old page. So those two are really big wins videos, articles that do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1 2. So remember the way that GEO works is it's a computer so it likes numbers, right. Top 10, top 5, top 3. It likes things that are frequently asked questions. So then it can do a direct match. Right. So if I have, if I do a press release and then at the end I have like five questions, frequently asked questions, it'll be picked up much more readily in that GEI engine as well.

Dan Nestle [00:45:43]: Yeah, it's funny you said press release because for the longest time we were poo pooing press release. I mean I still do but for different reasons. But you're poo poo in the press release because you know we were creating them for a long time because in the age of content marketing it became just a good piece of content to get some SEO love but you weren't really like you were hopeful maybe that, that some reporter would pick it up but it was really kind of self serving and, and it fell on the the least skilled people to write it. You know and you're, and you spend end up spending chasing around executives for all this time to get a quote. It's never going to get anywhere. But now I think we're breathing new life into the press release specifically because of the faq. When we think about the structure of it where it's now, okay, you're telling you're making an announcement but now build in your why is this important Bullet points. Throw in your FAQs at the bottom. Drop some accountability sorry authority and credibility markers like about your company and about the CEO and the people who are featured in this. You know, so that AI has this complete picture of why why this may why this matters. Because AI is now your audience. AI is not, it's not a piece of technology to be like to try to hack your, your content for. It's an audience that you still that you need to provide rich context. So like going back to where we were mentioned, like where I said that I wasn't so sure that that GEO is going to be a boon for media relations. It's because the occasional hit in top tier media, while we all like it, is still is not. It's not going to yield these results, magical results from AI that you think it is. Whereas solid, like context rich pieces in the, in the trades or in, you know, on podcasts, the, the videos, like multimodal stories that you're part of and that your contribution is kind of understood. So the AI knows that A, it's not bullshit and B, okay, this is going to serve the, the user better because now I'm going to be able to provide something that I know is, you know, answering the query. So it's like there's so much about it and I think everybody has a fighting chance now. So all of that, you know, for me, like my big thing is, is owned content and, you know, earned attention and I think one begets the other and sort of a cycle that happens. But this owned content is typically the domain of your, your comms or your brand communications team. And you're talking about like your websites and your blogs. Like just we're back to 2020, you know, 2003, when you know, hey, new rules of marketing PR, you know, get that content out there. And I think it's a big opportunity.

Sandy Carter [00:48:43]: Yeah, I'm also sorry, I didn't interrupt you. I was going to say that one of the really interesting things, Dan, that a lot of people don't do, I was just actually so crazy. I just spoke to 100 CMOs and I said, how many of you guys have gone out to Perplexity, to Gemini, to Grok and just put your company in there? And literally of a hundred, only two had done it. And so we did it, like during my session, I said, okay, everybody, let's type in, you know, type in your company, pick your favorite tool. And people are like, wait a second, this isn't right. Get this off of here. Like, how do I get this off of here? It was fascinating. And just like me with my Wikipedia page, they're like, this is old. And I'm like, well, you see the source there? It says that that came from Wikipedia. So you need to go fix Wikipedia. Or this came from a question and read it. And they're like, years ago, we don't even look at Reddit. Yes, we don't even look at Reddit. Well, yeah, I can see that you don't look at Reddit. And so, and then I had them, I said, okay, I'm a small business, I'm looking for a CRM system. Let's just type in. Small business looking for a CRM system. And what came out, I think this was out of Chat GPT. It actually gave me a table. It gave me five CRM tools and it told me the price and it gave me all their pros and their cons. And they're like, this kit, this isn't right. They should not do that. I'm like, well, this is what's happening. So again, play Storm, right? So this is so chatgpt Perplexity clot. They're ranking you and they're ranking you on your content, on the story, on where, you know, look at where they're pulling sources from. Make sure you get in there. One of the cool things is HubSpot is everywhere. HubSpot is doing a great job on getting this content out.

Dan Nestle [00:50:36]: Always has.

Sandy Carter [00:50:38]: Yeah, they're really good at it. But anyway, make sure. I mean, I know it's a really simple thing. If you take one thing from this whole podcast, just go out there, put your company in, put yourself in too, and see what comes out. And if you don't like it, look at the sources and figure out a way to impact it.

Dan Nestle [00:50:57]: Yeah, you'll get a great roadmap for where, like for patchwork or repair work that needs to get done. And you'll also get a great idea of what the perception of you is. I mean, because if AI has that perception, guess what? People who are using AI are going to get that perception of you too. You know, they used to tell you there was a book written many, many years ago about reputation and said, you know, this in the early ages, in the early age of digital transformation, one way to check your reputation is just keep Googling yourself, Google yourself every couple days, whatever. Set yourself, set a Google alert for yourself. It is no different. Go to Perplexity. Build three or five or ten different prompts about you. Because, you know, you got to think of the different ways people be looking for you and, you know, get the answers. Like, see what, see what's happening. Because you're gonna find out, especially if you're a brand, that there's a Reddit conversation that happened three years ago because you've neglected Reddit. Everybody has. Everybody has. You know, I saw this great demonstration yesterday from a company called Profound, and I'm not, you know, they're not paying me, but, but I really enjoyed it. They are measuring presence on, on LLMs and they have. It's very robust. But one thing they were showing me was like, okay, there was a company that manufactures sports bras, but they also manufacture sneakers and other things. And when they checked out, you know, they do these. It's. The data is incredible. But when they run the, they run the prompts every single day to figure out like, what their placement is. And they real. They realized that this company placed like 58th in sports bras and 11th in athletic shoes or 10th and 11th shoes. It's like, why our sports bra business is really good. What's going on? Like, it's supposed to be really good. It's one of our major products. Well, if you dig into the data, it's because the only information available for women out there about sports bras, about this particular company is on Reddit from two years ago. There's nothing else that AI is pulling in. So, you know, lesson there. Get on Reddit, you know, get your content to answer the right questions. So look, Sandy, I know like, and listeners, I apologize. You know, Sandy's on a tight schedule. It's tough to get one of the greatest tech influencers in the world in front of you sometimes. But I really do appreciate your time, Sandy. And before we go, I just want to tell everybody to. You can find sandy@sandycarter.net on LinkedIn. Of course, he's very active on LinkedIn. Instagram is Sandy Underbar Carter founder, Underscore Carter founder and on, on Twitter Twixter or X whichever you want to call it. It's Sandy Underscore Carter. And you know, just, just Google her. She's everywhere. And check out her on like go on YouTube. Look up Sandy Carter. Watch some of the videos you're going to see from south by and from. Oh yeah, and hey, AI first buy the book First Human always. Though I didn't read it, shamefully, I will be. And you know, I was hoping Sandy would school me a little bit on that and shame me, but Sandy, any last words before we split?

Sandy Carter [00:53:54]: I would say that for me, communications has always been super important. And I do think, Dan, in the age of AI, it's even more important. I think content matters even more. Coming up with a content strategy, how you get your message out there, not just for SEO, because for a while we'll be doing SEO and geo, but how we make it have an impact in both of these worlds at the same time. So if you are a communicator, make sure that you are, you know, understanding your value and your worth and making sure that you're learning that you're play storming with all of these tools. And if I can ever do anything to help you out, reach out to me at any of these places that Dan just talked about.

Dan Nestle [00:54:41]: And she means it. Sandy is approachable, generous of heart, generous of mind, and you will not regret reaching out to Sandy. Thank you so much, Sandy Carter. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you back again sometime in the near future.

Sandy Carter [00:54:55]: Thank you so much.

Dan Nestle [00:54:57]: Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know@dantrendingcommunicator.com thanks again for listening to the trending Communicator.