Austin Leonard (2:28)

I'm a chauffeur.

Guest (2:30)

Yeah, right. Well, there's that too. But like, there is just so much to talk about. There is, there is a. I've got a list of. There's A hundred things that I want to get to and things that are kind of percolating and never run out of things to talk about. It's my job, it's what I do. And because I've done it for a while, I've become a bit more quick at doing it. And AI certainly helps. I use it all the time. It's an incredible tool. I wouldn't be able to have the same level of output as I do.

Austin Leonard (2:56)

But yeah, you're the first one to bring up AI in our conversations and I know that's a little bit off topic, but would you share with our listeners a few of the platforms that they should look into?

Guest (3:08)

Yeah, for me it might not be the same for everyone in the audience, but I use Claude for writing. It's a bit of better writing partner. I've started to use Claude cowork as well to actually automate some tasks solid. And I just, I feel hopelessly behind on all of this stuff on automation because it takes a while to actually learn it and set it up. So don't worry if you're feeling behind on it. That's certainly how I feel. I use ChatGPT a lot and then I also, I use Notion to store and catalog all of my content that I've written. All of my interview notes. Save a lot of research there. And one thing that I'm not sure if you guys have noticed it, I don't do it all the time. I really making more of an effort to do it. But I love to use personal anecdotes and stories whenever I can to make a point. And people seem to really love it. I've had people come up to me at events and say, oh my gosh, I love the baby Chino story. Which was like an opening of a story. It was like a story about my son and I love doing that. There was a book that I read a few years ago called Story Worthy and it was written by this guy who is, you know the Moth, the storytelling competition. The Moth, yes.

Austin Leonard (4:21)

It's.

Guest (4:22)

Yeah. So it's like a stand up storytelling. It's not meant to be humorous, but it's like people's personal stories and it's a storytelling competition. It's amazing. So this guy who's a champion Moth contestant, he wrote a book about storytelling and how to effectively tell stories. And he's got a concept in this book called Homework for Life. And it's basically every day you write, just write a quick snapshot of something that happened. It could be from that day. It could be a memory from years ago and just start documenting things that happen. It doesn't need to be anything significant. Some of the most powerful stories that we have is not about going on this amazing vacation or hiking the Camino Trail. It's about the conversation that you had with your kid or about the dog running away or something like that. So I started doing that. I write, write things down, extract it, and get it into my notion database. And then I use AI tools to see. I'll write an article on, like, how. Which story can I use as an opener for this? And sometimes a link will be a little bit tenuous, but that's something that I've really started to enjoy, is. Is bringing more of that storytelling in. And it's fun. I think we could all have a lot more fun in this industry. We do not need to be so serious.

Elizabeth Donovan (5:44)

I don't know.

Austin Leonard (5:45)

I'm having a lot of fun.

Elizabeth Donovan (5:46)

Yeah, that's. That's part of why I think that this. All this content works too, is because there is a very engaged group, and we do like to have fun. We all work really hard, but we also, you know, we. We genuinely like talking about this stuff too. We can learn about it all day if they'll let us.

Guest (6:02)

Yeah.

Elizabeth Donovan (6:03)

I do have this image of you sitting there in front of your computer talking to the AI and writing back and forth to the AI because you're like, I couldn't get in on the phone today, so this is who I get to talk to. Here are all my stories. But it feels like it's almost like a second brain and a little bit of an assistant slash editor that's helping you stay organized even when you didn't realize that you were organized. Making those connections is really key. The storytelling aspect, though, is right on. And I think that's definitely throughout people's sales careers that if they haven't gotten the message around, you have to be able to tell a great story that helps differentiate your brand, your product, your team, whatever it is that you have to do. It's. It's definitely something that I hope people don't underinvest in the development of those skills just because there's easier AI tools that can help you spit out content, but you have to be able to tell that story that's. Creates that human connection that you're talking about. So.

Austin Leonard (6:55)

Yeah, and they remember.

Elizabeth Donovan (6:56)

And they remember. Of course they do. Yeah. Creates the strong relationships. It creates the. The ability for you to land a highly technical point because you can relate it back to something that they probably have experienced in their life too.

Host (7:12)

Miracle Ads is the only retail media solution designed for both 1P and 3Pmarketplace brands. Why does that matter? Marketplace sellers demand a seamless advertiser experience that still offers full funnel ad formats. And retailers need a flexible solution that allows you to scale your media business. Learn more@miracle.com that's M I R A K L.com and then in the interview, Austin and Elizabeth asked me about how I first got got into the retail media game. And this actually presented a perfect opportunity to tell a story that I've never actually told publicly before, that I think you're going to get a real kick out of.

Guest (7:59)

Instacart launched their self serve ad platform and they just came out of the gate with something that was accessible, it was smart, it was really well thought out and it really made me think about this whole ecosystem outside of just the big behemoth in the room. So that was really the moment. So actually I partnered up with one of my colleagues at Bobsled Marketing, that was the name of my agency, one of our ad advertising leaders, Stefan. And we, we started writing a book about Instacart. It was called Instacart for CMOs. And because I wanted to get into this, Instacart's very interesting because it's a four sided marketplace. You've got the brands, you've got the advertisers, you've got the retailers and then you've got all the, also the shoppers in the stores as well. And that they're kind of like, they have a little bit of a choice in what product gets picked off the shelf as well. So it's just something new that I wanted to unpack and really understand. And so we interviewed a bunch of people. I spoke with some really great investment like equity analysts about Instacart and registered the domain Instacart for CMOs. And one day I get a text from, from my assistant saying there's something that you need to look at quite urgently. And it was a takedown notice from Instacart's legal team about this domain that I had registered Instacart for CMOs. And because I hadn't actually launched the book yet, it was just kind of like a holding page while I was getting everything ready. They thought that I was some personator, someone sort of like using their trademark as a bad actor. That was, that was in their claim. So they, they actually made me give up my domain instacart for cmos.com and I was Actually, just. I was preparing for this. I was just looking at this like it went to arbitration and everything. I was like, look, I just wrote a book to tell everyone how great Instacart is. And, you know, no good deed goes unpunished. So that's the kind of hijinks you get into when you're trying to get into the content marketing game.

Elizabeth Donovan (10:08)

That's so funny. And obviously that for CMOs, it was really around, like, hey, this is a real media opportunity, real marketing opportunities. You need to understand it. And someone in the legal team was like, nope, we're just going to shut that down. By the way, I'll save everyone the trouble. I just tried to navigate to it. It is still shut down. So apparently. Apparently.

Guest (10:26)

No, they own it. Instacart owns it now. Because

Elizabeth Donovan (10:31)

Page, though.

Guest (10:33)

No, of course not.

Elizabeth Donovan (10:34)

All right, we'll have to call some of our friends. We'll have to call some of our friends over there.

Guest (10:40)

That book, it's really funny. Like, the only people that. That buy that book are people who are interviewing for jobs at Instacart,

Elizabeth Donovan (10:48)

which is not a small number, so.

Guest (10:50)

Well, I guess so. It's a few years old now.

Host (10:53)

Yeah.

Guest (10:53)

Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys a story that I hadn't told publicly. So there you go. Well, that is it for today.

Host (10:59)

I hope you enjoyed this little snippet.

Guest (11:01)

Snippet.

Host (11:02)

From that episode that I did with Austin Leonard and Elizabeth Donovan from the Unlocked podcast. We'll link up to it in the show notes. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you tomorrow.