What is an AI Team Mate ?

This week on The Digital Download, we're taking a unique look behind the scenes of content creation with a very special guest: your very own AI Teammate. Join us as we explore the fascinating journey of teaching an artificial intelligence to write with a distinctly human voice – your voice.

Join us as we delve into key questions like:

* What are the crucial elements – from ICP and personas to personal convictions – that form the building blocks of a unique writing style?

* How can an AI be "trained" to understand and replicate the subtle art of human conversation in text?

* What insights can be gleaned from analyzing a significant body of work to identify patterns and preferences?

* What are the challenges and the surprising progress in this collaborative effort to bridge the gap between artificial and human creativity?

* Ultimately, what does this experiment tell us about the future of content creation and the evolving relationship between humans and AI?

As Bertrand Godillot puts it, "It's the methodology that makes the difference, more than the tool itself. By treating my AI as an apprentice, we're working hand-in-hand to create something truly unique."

We encourage you to participate actively in The Digital Download. Bring your questions and insights – we're eager to hear your thoughts on this groundbreaking exploration!

This week's Host was:

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

This week's panelists were:

• Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of DLA Ignite,

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Richard Jones, Director of Qure 8 Ltd, a proud DLA Ignite partner

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-04-25

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:04]:

Good afternoon, good morning, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to a new edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn Live. Now globally syndicated on TuneIn Radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk, news, and strategy radio network. Today, we are taking a unique look behind the scenes of content creation with a very special guest, your very own AI teammate. We will be exploring as a team the fascinating journey of teaching an artificial intelligence to write with a distinctly human voice, your voice. But before we get started, let's go around the set, a very complete set today, by the way, and introduce everyone.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:00]:

While we're doing that, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them, and have them join us? We strive to make the digital download an interactive experience, and audience participation is highly encouraged. Tim, why don't you kick us off?

Tim Hughes [00:01:16]:

Thank you. And welcome to, what an amazing panel we have today. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and cofounder of DLA Knight, and I'm famous for writing the book, Social Selling Techniques to Influence Bars and Changemakers.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:30]:

Thank you, Tim. Adam?

Adam Gray [00:01:31]:

Hi, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm Tim's business partner. I'm kind of a I guess, like, the beta version of Tim Hughes. So he he's the he's the fully fledged one with all the bugs on and out, and I'm the I'm the the the the version that that still isn't isn't right yet. Hi. I'm very excited to be here. AI is something that's that's kind of a hot topic for all of us, and we've all been investing a huge amount of time in trying to understand how we can use this new technology to make our lives and our clients' lives easier.

Adam Gray [00:02:01]:

And, it's it's been and is being a very interesting journey.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:09]:

I cannot agree more with that. So, Richard.

Richard Jones [00:02:13]:

Good afternoon. Well, if Adam is the beta version, I think I'm probably a proof of concept at this stage. I'm a relative newbie to social selling. However, I think I'm, getting involved at, you know, particularly, sort of useful time with AI starting to have quite an impact on the way, we're all sort of living our lives and likely to be selling into the future. So, yeah, I'm I'm hopefully going to be one of the first wave to prove the concept that an AI assistant can, really help your social selling.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:51]:

Okay. Okay. Let's, let's see. Let's see. Tracy?

Tracy Borreson [00:02:56]:

Hey, everybody. I'm excited to be here. Tracy Borsman, founder of TLB Coaching and Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite. And, I mean okay. So marketing is my jam. I'm on the marketing side, social selling. And AI has been a very big disruptor, shall we say, for the marketing industry, mostly from this perspective, people being concerned that they are going to be replaced by AI. So I'm really excited to participate in this conversation about how we can use AI as a teammate instead of just assuming that AI is there to replace the human race.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:34]:

I know pretty well cover that. It's a big emotional time now. Mhmm. That's a big emotional moment. Rob, can you introduce yourself, please?

Rob Durant [00:03:43]:

Hello, everyone. I am Rob Durant. I am the founder of Flywheel Results, a proud DLA Ignite partner, and I'm happy to be back on the download today. School is out for the semester and doesn't start again for another week or two, so nice to be back.

Bertrand Godillot [00:04:03]:

And and welcome and welcome back, Rob. Thank you so much. So as I said, this week on the digital download, we'll look behind the scenes of content creation with an AI teammate. And I'd like to start with a foundational question to the panel and more specifically to you, Adam. Why in the first place would we want to do that?

Adam Gray [00:04:28]:

Yeah. I was

Tracy Borreson [00:04:28]:

gonna say, aren't we gonna ask AI? I feel like that would be a prudent thing to do.

Adam Gray [00:04:34]:

Well, it's it's funny, actually, this, isn't it? Because that's the question that I've been wrestling with for quite some time. So probably two years ago, Tim did a podcast with an acknowledged AI expert because he said I need to throw myself into this AI stuff and really start to understand how we can we can deploy this. And I I was gonna say I I can be a bit of a lullaby sometimes, and, actually, a bit that's probably a little bit extreme. But I want to be really clear about how and why we would be doing stuff and and recommending stuff. And, you know, we've had a load of internal conversations. And and one of the things that we have, kept running up against when we coach individuals and train teams is that, I haven't got time is the big issue that people have to doing social selling in the way that we believe that social selling should be done. So I think we're quite militant and quite evangelistical and quite, extremist with this. You know, we believe that absolutely this is a platform for you to develop your personal brand and for you to be authentic and for you to talk to your audiences and for you to be yourself, and that requires you to do the stuff.

Adam Gray [00:05:57]:

And for me, one of the challenges has been that up until very recently, getting AI to produce content on your behalf in a case of prompt writing. And prompt writing is like programming. You have to have a logical breakdown of what you're trying to achieve and what you put in at one end and what comes out at the other end. And more recently, and certainly, an light bulb moment for me, was the work that that Trond had done with this where he had rather than writing a prompt for AI to do something, had an ongoing dialogue with AI, asking it questions, not being assumptive at all. So I would like you to be a ghostwriter for me. What do you need from me? Rather than saying, these are the rules. This is what I need you to do. And that's been, a huge shift in my thinking and certainly the the quality of results that I was getting from interacting with AI.

Adam Gray [00:07:00]:

So, I think we've crossed the the the kind of crossed the point of no return in our thinking. Certainly, I have. So to answer your question, people haven't got time, and also people haven't got the the the the confidence sometimes to write the things they need to be able to write, and this could be the key to unlock that door for them.

Tracy Borreson [00:07:22]:

So can I I would like to first of all, Adam very humbly said this is the way that him and Tim have designed this program because that's the way they believe it should be done? I would also like to say because that's the way it works. If you do it that way, it works. If you don't do it that way, it doesn't work. So you choose. I am saying that from personal experience. But also I think there is something really interesting about the concept a bigger concept of how humans use AI. Right? Because there's, like, so many different ways that you can use AI. And when you look at social selling and really what it's about at its core is about generating conversation.

Tracy Borreson [00:08:09]:

And so if what you're doing is all about generating conversation, then it makes sense to have a conversation or dialogue as you called it, Adam, with AI. Right? That, like, all of the components of this are about dialogue. So if you're going to use AI, then your AI usage should also be about dialogue. And I think this is the thing that's really interesting when you look at I mean, I'm a marketer, so I look at everything from, like, a brand baseline. Right? And if you have that clarity on what your brand is about, then you can engage the AI in the same way you would engage somebody in a conversation on LinkedIn, with curiosity and things like that. So I think to this, we got AI and then we got prompt engineers. Right? And then everyone was like, oh, but now we all need to be prompt engineers. But prompt engineers is one way to use AI.

Tracy Borreson [00:09:10]:

It is not like the way. So I think there's like a more, a foundational level of connection here that just is making sense for me, which is that if you are a dialogue person, then you should use AI dialogically? That's not a word. To support you when you're dialogue.

Adam Gray [00:09:32]:

Yeah. But but I think that it's only very recently that that's been an option. You know? Because if if you'd have tried this six months ago, what you would have got would have been a load of gibberish coming back. You know? The AI wouldn't be able to understand what you were asking and wouldn't be able to to formulate a a reasonable answer and learn from the the interaction that you were having. But, certainly, as a result of what Bertrand had done, you know, asking that question, I need you to be a ghostwriter. What do you need from me? Well, you can answer all these questions, or you can give me some content that you've already written. Okay. Well, I'll give you some content.

Adam Gray [00:10:11]:

How do you want it? Well, you can do it this way. Okay. Well, you've analyzed my writing style quite well. This is who I am. Can you write me a blog based on this knowledge about this topic? Okay. But I've read the blog, and I wouldn't say this, and I don't like it. So I've edited it, and this is how I've edited it. And then AI says or Gemini says, that's really interesting.

Adam Gray [00:10:35]:

I can see why you've changed those things. I'll I'll file that away, and I'll I'll do that to the stuff that I'm gonna write in the future. And that iterative process so so the guy that I was chatting to, last night about this said that he when he asks AI to write him something, his foot he doesn't even read what comes back. He says, that's not sophisticated enough. That's not elegant enough. You need to try better. And then it re edits it, and it comes back with something which is better. And often he says, that's not good enough.

Adam Gray [00:11:08]:

You need to try harder. And it's something else. And he'll do that two or three times until he gets something which is worth him investing time in reading. And it's interesting that, AI, understands the concept or or is able to action the concept even if it doesn't understand per se, is able to action the concept of you need to go away and do a better piece of work. It does beg the question why I didn't do the better piece of work first. But but but an interesting

Tracy Borreson [00:11:37]:

thing Maybe because a human doesn't do that either.

Adam Gray [00:11:40]:

Well, a really interesting thing about this was he said, that he was doing some, research, and he he basically said to Grok, you know, the Twitter AI tool. He said so I'll use Tim as an example here. He said, I want you to find me a quote from Tim Hughes about this. So it comes back with a quote and he said, well, Tim Hughes didn't say that, did he? And Brock said to him, no. He didn't. But it's indicative of the sort of thing he would say. And then no. But it got it got better.

Adam Gray [00:12:13]:

So he said, so I want you to go and find me actual examples of him saying something like this. So it came back with something and it said, on the fifteenth of of of June twenty twenty four at 08:41PM, this is what Tim Hughes said in his tweet and an example of the tweet. So he thought, well, I'll go back. And so he he scrolled back and he said, he didn't say that, did he? And and and Grog was like, didn't he? I thought he did. So it was staggering that that there's this dialogue going on. And we talk about AI hallucination, but I think that's a really great example of, first of all, AI lying to him, and then I the next iteration of that AI being wrong and not even understanding that it was wrong because it thought it was telling the truth. So I think, you know, we're we're on this precipice, aren't we, when we're likely, if we're not careful, to see an explosion of false news and false information because the you know, I myself have had an example when I've and I've it it was about I I was I was having a conversation, I think, with my wife about this. And, you know, sometimes if if it's if there's a big number, you can be out by orders of magnitude.

Adam Gray [00:13:28]:

So it was like, how many sets of a hundred thousand people are there in The UK population? And it said The UK population is, 67,000,000. 60 seven million. So how many sets of a hundred thousand? So there are, 67,000 sets of a hundred thousand. No. There aren't. You know, it's it's like you're a thousand times out. And it was

Tracy Borreson [00:13:52]:

AI is not good at math, folks.

Adam Gray [00:13:54]:

He's just It isn't

Rob Durant [00:13:55]:

good at math.

Tracy Borreson [00:13:55]:

Everybody's knowledge. Let's all agree.

Adam Gray [00:13:58]:

No. But but it's interesting that it can be wrong, and it can be so confident that its answer is correct even when it's wrong.

Rob Durant [00:14:06]:

So I wanna pick up on what you were saying earlier, Adam. I heard you say, part of social selling is, producing content. But people have said, people haven't got time and people haven't got confidence. So we turn to AI. Why do we feel inferior to AI when it comes to writing content when we've just proven that AI is not an expert either.

Tracy Borreson [00:14:40]:

Because we're not confident. As you think AI didn't change our level of confidence, I this is something that, like, I've thought about this for, like, years. Like Grammarly is is the number one example that I use for this. Right? So Grammarly, it helps your grammar. Right? Like and it's kinda like a more experienced version of spell check. And it got to the point where it would be like, if you want to sound more confident, you should say this. And people would be like, yes, I will put that in my resume. That doesn't mean you're more confident about the skill that you had that now you're talking more confidently about, which actually creates a bigger gap between the human version of you and the AI enhanced version of you, if you wanna say that.

Tracy Borreson [00:15:29]:

And so I think it's also important to remember that, like, there are ways to use the tool that build our confidence, but there's also ways to use the tool that do not build our confidence. And if our confidence is is still not good, then we're just gonna be like, oh, AI knows. It it knows better than me.

Adam Gray [00:15:50]:

I think it's it's also it's also a starting point, isn't it? You know? So, you would never stand up and say, I am the best marketer in Calgary. Nobody can hold a torch to me. Even though you may be, that's not something you would ever you would never say those words. Right. But when AI says those words for you, all of a sudden, it seems like it's more acceptable for you to say those words or a version of those words. And I think that for many people, getting that kind of, here's an outline of your resume. Because one of the things that we've that that Tim and I have seen over many, many cases of training people and coaching people through this process has been that when we say to people, you need to write a new LinkedIn headline, and they say, head of marketing at whatever company, and we go, no. No.

Adam Gray [00:16:40]:

No. That's about what you do, not about who you are. You need to talk about who you are. And then they come up with often things which don't reflect just how special an individual they are. You know? They they have a passion for snowboarding or or whatever it may be, and they don't seem to want to talk about that. They talk about, you know, twenty years in marketing. And then eventually, we get them to a point where they go, okay. Well, I'll give that a try.

Adam Gray [00:17:07]:

And then they put it out there and people go, oh, that's amazing. Fantastic. I would've I really love that. And AI maybe gives them that first step on on that journey that they wouldn't be able to do without a bit of support, the support that we have historically given them in that space.

Tracy Borreson [00:17:22]:

I think that's the point I would say. Right? It's like there's a directionality with that. You have given them a direction, and they are using the AI to start helping them build their confidence. And that is helpful with direction, but AI doesn't come with direction. Right? Like, you don't log in to chat GPT, and it's like, here's what you should do today. Right? Nope. The direction still has to come from somewhere.

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:50]:

So we we have a comment from Robert, and I and I'd like to, to read it and then and then react to this. I'm actually working with ChatGPT, says Robert, on brainstorming for a fiction book, actually. I found it a great experience. The more I interact with it, the more it feels like working with a person. And that is a little bit of, I'm glad Robert brings that to the table because there there are a number of things that we've said, so far. And, I think it's you, Tracy, you were talking about, you know, we we should have a conversation because we believe that social selling is about having conversations, and and I can't agree more. And and I think there is a little bit of an onboarding process, that you need to follow with, at least that was my my approach to this.

Adam Gray [00:18:45]:

If we want onboarding onboarding the AI

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:49]:

Onboarding your AI teammate. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:18:51]:

Or onboarding you to the AI.

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:55]:

Actually, I think it's a it's a it's a meeting point because you need to you need to probably

Tracy Borreson [00:19:04]:

Same as onboarding.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:04]:

Than prompting.

Tracy Borreson [00:19:06]:

Right? Like, if I'm ongoing a new employee, I'm learning with them. They're learning about me.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:12]:

Exactly. Exactly. And there is yeah. Because we talked a lot about prompts. Because at the end of the day, these are anything we do with a prompt. Right? You know? But it's it's, it's the context. Which

Rob Durant [00:19:26]:

I I I like that it is the the bigger picture. Anything we do is a prompt. Mhmm.

Tracy Borreson [00:19:32]:

Not not anything is a prompt.

Rob Durant [00:19:35]:

Anything we do is a prompt.

Tracy Borreson [00:19:37]:

A question

Rob Durant [00:19:38]:

is a

Tracy Borreson [00:19:38]:

prompt. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:42]:

And, so so the context is important. And I think that's what you do when you onboard. When you onboard someone in your team, you actually give context so that they understand, you know, who you are selling to, what are your key differentiators, so that anyone, you you know, anyone needs that piece of information, that that contextual information to just perform their job on a on a daily basis. So if you want your AI to become your teammate, you need to onboard it. You need to go through that onboarding phase.

Adam Gray [00:20:16]:

At

Bertrand Godillot [00:20:16]:

least that was the, the reasoning behind this. And what would you talk to AI that was your question, Rob? I think it's just to have a chat. If you're on your at the end of the day, and that's why I I I broadcast. You know, what Rob was saying is is what some somehow what I've experienced myself is that, you know, I was surprised after a while to, you know, to be like to feel like I was talking I was working with someone. And that is, that is something that is quite new when you when you're when you're, you know, looking at these things on your own. So, talking with someone, even if it's is it gives you more, perspective, backgrounds, different perspectives, etcetera. So you you're, at the end of the day, you you you this adds value as well.

Adam Gray [00:21:18]:

It it does, but Yayan's comment here. So the challenge is that AI is wrong. Lazy content authors don't apply critical thinking and publish the lies AI told them. AI learns from these lies and on. It suggested that by 2028, AI will have exhausted its learning and require us humans to think again to progress. And but I whilst that's that's a bit of a doomsday scenario where AI has got everything wrong because it learns from its own mistakes and the mistakes that we tolerate, it is interesting that that still it comes down to your ability to have the confidence to say this piece of information that's come back is incorrect, and therefore I'm not gonna share this piece of information. Because I think that so many people these days are disempowered or are so used to the fact that Google gives them the right answer that this is just another iteration of that. I've Googled it.

Adam Gray [00:22:14]:

It says it here. Therefore, it must be true. Therefore, it's okay for me to share it. And it does beg the question about how do you go through and fact check stuff. Because the conversation I was having yesterday with Richard where we did the the, like, the tweet published on this date, okay, if if it's if it's somebody who doesn't tweet very much, you can scroll back six months. If it's Tim, you can't scroll back six months because it's literally thousands of tweets you have to scroll through, which would take you forever to do. So how how do we validate this stuff? Because if you if you say to AI, you've told me this. Is this true? Sometimes AI says, actually, it's not true.

Adam Gray [00:22:52]:

But sometimes it says, yes. It is true. I promise it's true. Okay. So if AI says, I promise this is true, and it turns out not to be true, it's an interesting dilemma, isn't it?

Tim Hughes [00:23:04]:

So so, Bertrand, in terms of your, team your AI teammate

Bertrand Godillot [00:23:10]:

Mhmm.

Tim Hughes [00:23:10]:

You've gone through a process of onboarding with it, and just like you would done you would have done a an employee. We've talked internally about AI being interesting, but what it does, it creates average results. Now if you're going from zero to average, that's good. If you're already excellent and you're going to average, that's not good. Mhmm. So where do you think you are? Because I know we then had conversations about so how do we get the AI to go from average to good? Not necessarily to excellent, but at least getting it to good. And where are you? Because because you've actually now been putting out AI, content, haven't you, to actually prove it out to see if you get a similar, engagement to Bertrand written content to, your AI teammate written content.

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:00]:

So I think these are two different things. Right? So, but I've reached a point where articles that I have asked to be rewritten, by my teammate are actually excellent. So so well, let's put it this way. I could have written this. So, but it's rewriting something that's that's been that's been originate originates by myself. Right?

Tim Hughes [00:24:33]:

Okay. So it's not actually coming from zero. You you you No. Because I've taken stuff where I've said something like on a video, and I've given it to the AI, and then it's written a blog for me. And I then I put that out, and I think that that's pretty much close to what I would write.

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:47]:

Mhmm. So I'm not there yet, but, I think there are two things you you can do. So once you've given the the, the mandatory context of things, so plus examples, etcetera. But there are there are basically two things you could do. You could add you could ask for, you know, what would be a great topic for my ICP number three and my personal number one that I could be that I could be developing. There's nothing really mind blowing, but sometimes there are. They are very they are very good ideas. They are very good topics.

Tim Hughes [00:25:28]:

For context for everybody, what Bertrand's done is that he's got he's got his his AI. He's got all of his, all the blogs that he's written today uploaded into that. He's written a, an ICP. Well, he's actually written several ICPs, and the ICP is equivalent of 17 pages of a four long. So he's actually saying it's somebody in fintech. The person is a female. She's she's very active around sustainability. So he's been able to really, generate a very, very close and accurate ICP of a, in fact, of a particular person he's targeting.

Tim Hughes [00:26:08]:

He's got the value prop as well. And so from from all of that information, he's using that to create the the the the, the content that he's that he's asking for. So one thing it may say, what content do you want? And then right going away and actually writing the content.

Bertrand Godillot [00:26:27]:

Yeah. Exactly. So, it can be IDs or and then and then we go for a draft. And then, obviously, the draft is is is a draft. So as you can as you said, team is can you improve? I will never use you know, that I don't use imperatives. For instance, you know that I don't use these these specific words. Never ever. So it it will then come back, and then we have an interactive session, and then we end up sometimes, you know, I could completely go off and then finish finish up the, the content and then send it send it back.

Bertrand Godillot [00:27:06]:

So so I think the important thing is it's got to be a comparison between what was offered by your teammate and what you actually built out of it. And and and and, of course, it's always very, you know, it's always very, very friendly and says, you know, wow. Well, I I got that. You know, much more nuances. I've seen you've changed you've changed some formulations, they're more direct, they're more explicit, excellent. So that's a way of of working with it. And and and the other way is you just write something from scratch, and then you say, so what's your sentiment on this? Because what what Tim said is I share my, I think, a 50 posts, but I also share the analytics of these posts. So when I ask for a sentiment, it's it it will say, okay.

Bertrand Godillot [00:28:03]:

It's personal enough. So, you know, it's, it's easy to read. It's it makes a point. That should work. And now we and and now we are, you know, it's it's now we're I've reached the point where I can start really, monitor the performance and the predictions.

Rob Durant [00:28:25]:

So Tim, what you described, 17 pages of description for an ICP. And, Bertrand, what you described, a 50 posts with the analytics just as part of the process of, for lack of a better term, onboarding your AI teammate. Mhmm. That sounds like work. I went to AI because I wanted to push a button and get the answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:28:52]:

Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:28:52]:

Have no time.

Bertrand Godillot [00:28:54]:

But the the well, so

Tim Hughes [00:28:55]:

that that's one end of the scale because we wanted to actually prove it out. The other end of the scale is that, somebody's written nothing. But in sales, you've probably written, your, management summaries for RFPs, so you could use that. Marketing should have already defined your ICP, so you should be able to better go to marketing and and and get that. Marketing should have already, basically created your value proposition. So all of those materials, that you that we talked about should actually be there, and it's just about about collating them and putting them in into the AI. So it's it's it act it actually is pretty much a a press of one.

Rob Durant [00:29:40]:

But I would also say on that. No. No. No. It is not. You cannot simply, oh, take the the marketing stuff and and throw that in. And, here's the RFP and throw that in. And now would you please write a book based on my voice? The AI just doesn't have that.

Rob Durant [00:29:58]:

It is a continuous It's it's not gonna

Tim Hughes [00:30:01]:

it's not gonna write a book.

Rob Durant [00:30:03]:

Reporting But it's not even gonna write a good blog. You have to work with it.

Tim Hughes [00:30:07]:

Yeah. Okay. So we're we're then back to the zero to average. Right. Yeah. So what we're doing is that, we're not saying that it's gonna write something that's really excellent. And it's about making sure in terms of that grading, where are we going and people to understand that and for many people, average is better than zero. Exactly.

Rob Durant [00:30:29]:

It's getting you from zero to one, which for many people is the hardest step. Yes. But that's kind of the point that I wanted to make is that this is getting you from zero to one if you're at zero. That one isn't even going to be average necessarily. But as you continue to work with it so it's not just onboarding. It's ongoing, and you're continually working with it. And the two of you, I speak of AI as though it's it's a a body, but the two of you evolve together in that way. That's what I wanted to make sure the audience understood.

Rob Durant [00:31:10]:

This is still not, I just have to, buy the rate right AI and push the button

Richard Jones [00:31:16]:

and it's not. But but if you

Adam Gray [00:31:19]:

could, would that be a good thing? Because, you know, the

Tracy Borreson [00:31:22]:

the challenge too much content.

Adam Gray [00:31:24]:

Yeah. But but Too

Tracy Borreson [00:31:25]:

much content.

Adam Gray [00:31:26]:

That's the challenge, isn't it? You know, the thing is that that, when everybody has access to the same tools, then the outputs you get are the same. Yeah. You might write a slightly different prompt and get a slightly different blog because it's a slightly different topic and a slightly different voice. But at the end of the day, what you're doing is you're you're commoditizing content and intellect and thinking. And it's always been the case that that to succeed, you have to be better than everybody else, you know, whether you're applying for a job or you're preparing a tender or whatever it is. You have you only have to be slightly better because it's it's it's it's a a a zero sum game, isn't it? You know? Or what there's only one winner. Like, you're you're, you know, you got the hundred meters race. Doesn't matter whether you win by 10 yards or 10 millimeters.

Adam Gray [00:32:13]:

You know? You at the end of the day, you just need to win. And it's the same here. Your content needs to be better than everyone better than everyone else's. More engaging, more personalized, more likable, whatever.

Richard Jones [00:32:26]:

You've gotta be using the right ingredients or the best ingredients to get the best out. That's the kind of way I see it. You know, we're just gonna look for the sort of generic output. Well, then that's there for you. But if you, you know, the real value is the old corny sort of one plus one equals three. It needs to be the value that you've got or the knowledge you've got in your head. You then, you know, share it with your AI assistant who, you know, sort of spices it up or or spins it in a way that perhaps is a little bit more imaginative. So, you know, I I still think it's dependent on putting good stuff in to get really good stuff out.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:04]:

Well, and I

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:05]:

The rule still applies.

Richard Jones [00:33:07]:

Yeah. I feel

Tracy Borreson [00:33:07]:

like there's also because one of the things that I think we don't pay attention to enough as humans is the behavior change that our technology has led us towards. Right? So when you think about Amazon and how with two clicks, I can have something at my door, it starts a behavior change that has me believing that everything is supposed to be that easy. Right? And so then I come and I think about things like building relationships, onboarding employees, and all these types of things is they should be one clickable. If Amazon can make that one clickable, this should be one clickable. And I wanna save time. And I'll and and saving time is good because then what? I have more time to scroll on social media? People are not doing meaningful things with their time, but that's a different problem. But, like, we we end up in this behavior change assuming that what will deliver better results is for this to be faster and easier. So then we're looking at AI to be faster and easier.

Tracy Borreson [00:34:14]:

But when does that start to break down? Right? So if I'm if I'm a person and I will use myself as an example, I'm a person who believes in investing in the potential of other humans. I do that as a mom. I do that in my community. I do that with myself. I believe in this as a human. And so if I'm onboarding a person into a role in an organization, there is a ninety day plan. That ninety day plan is iterative. I expect that employee to grow throughout their tenure at the company.

Tracy Borreson [00:34:47]:

I expect myself to learn from that employee. It is an iterative process that is interactive. Right? So I believe in an iterative process that is interactive, which gets us to the destination. I have seen the success of that play out again and again. But what people are getting in the practice of doing is skipping the iterative investment process, and they want the results. But the results don't exist without the iterative process. Right? So even in this, if we wanna say we wanna get from zero to one because we want people to get introduced to content creation, cool. Right? Good.

Tracy Borreson [00:35:33]:

Right? But that is step one. If we stop at step one, we we can't go farther. And now we've got a whole society of people being like, step one is good enough. That's all we need. We need step ones. We need all this content in the world. More content is created on a day to day basis than a human brain can process in its lifetime. You creating content today didn't matter, folks, in the wide world of people consuming information.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:01]:

Right? So then why why are we consuming? Why why are we doing that? In in the social selling scenario, we're creating content because we wanna show people what we're about. Right? We wanna give them a reference section to who we are and what it might be like if you came in and had a conversation with us. And if you go into AI and you don't even give it that kind of framing, it's gonna be like, here's a blog post.

Bertrand Godillot [00:36:27]:

But then

Tracy Borreson [00:36:28]:

And I've done it. I've done it too. Right? Like, I've had clients who are just like, oh, we did this we did this session. Right? Just use AI to turn it into a blog post. And I'm like, I don't don't care that much to not do that. So I do that. But, like, how does that also turn into, like, what we're caring about as humans? I think

Adam Gray [00:36:49]:

there's a bigger existential question here, isn't there? Absolutely. So, you know, we have we have an issue where it's now possible for me to say, I want to sell more of my stuff, and AI will identify my ideal customer profile, will construct an email to them, will send the email to them, will check who's opened the email, will send them a follow-up email, will dial the number for and, actually, I'm I'm I'm, systematically removing myself from that particular role. And then all of a sudden, I'm gonna be the one crying that I've been laid off because I've what I've done is I've percolated down to AI's level in terms of how it delivers stuff. And now what I've done is I've done myself out of a job. I've proved that I'm dispensable.

Richard Jones [00:37:35]:

And and on the other side of the equation, the buyer is overwhelmed by content and places the selection in the hands of AI. It is I've got so you've got the sort of you've done yourself out a job, and you're redundant anyway because, you know, because I That's that's that's that's that's that's happening. So, yeah, you know, it's just it's AI selling to AI, you know, and we're all losing then. So

Rob Durant [00:38:06]:

with that, I come back to something I've said on this show before, and I will be saying again. Content is an outbound play. We are producing content not simply so the AI bots can read our content. We're producing content so that we can say to the world, look. This is who I am. This is what I think. And when I reach out to you to connect with you for the first time, before you connect with me, you're gonna ask, well, who the hell is Rob? And you're going to go look me up. And the history of content that I've produced shows you who I am, what I think, and so on.

Rob Durant [00:38:52]:

And with that, having that zero to one content that I put out and and and I'm content with that, that will never work. I need to continually iterate. I need to put that out there to share more of me, my insights, both professionally and personally.

Adam Gray [00:39:16]:

So you got an interesting comment from Lawrence here.

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:19]:

Yep.

Adam Gray [00:39:23]:

Adam is stating that my brain is circling here. What my brain is circling here. I just don't see how AI is a great thing for employees whatsoever. Yeah. It it's I I think it it is a great thing for employees, but only if they understand how they're using it and perhaps more importantly, why they're using it. You know? So in an environment where many of us have a, a distributed workforce in our companies, we're not all in the office, so brainstorming stuff is significantly more difficult than it used to be. And having, an entity that knows as much as you do or more than you do or is an AI programmed up with somebody else's knowledge means that you potentially have somebody or something to bounce ideas off. You also have a starting point.

Adam Gray [00:40:17]:

And I think that certainly for us in the the DLA ignite ecosystem, we're used to writing blogs. We write blogs really quickly. So, AI is not a huge time saving thing for me. If I'm gonna write a blog, it takes me fifteen minutes. If I get AI to write the blog, it takes ten minutes. By the time I've read it and edited it and iterated it and sent it back. But actually, I, and I speak for all of us here, I am not representative of most people that write blogs. Most people take two, three, four hours to write a blog because they're not they don't have the experience or, you know, Bertrand said, I've I've poured a 50 of my blogs into AI.

Adam Gray [00:40:58]:

Yep. Most people haven't got a 50 blogs, so they haven't got the experience of being able to write stuff quickly and get their thoughts down and marshal their ideas in the same way. So AI is incredibly powerful that for that because you're not staring at a blank piece of paper. Here's what I know. Here's who I'm talking to. Write me something which uses music as a metaphor. Okay? Well, then you've got a starting point, and you can tweak it and amend it, but you have to tweak it and amend it to make it as good as it can possibly be.

Rob Durant [00:41:31]:

That last comment about AI not being good for employees, wasn't the same thing said time and again every time there's some, major innovation? And I think of the example of tractors. When tractors came about, that was going to be the end of farming. No. It just made it more productive so that we could focus on other elements and advance the economy accordingly. Now are there those that get left behind because they don't understand how to work with the, output, how to advance the technology beyond that? Absolutely. But no. It it in and of itself, it's not going to put people out of work. It's going to demand more from the people in terms of things

Adam Gray [00:42:27]:

that

Rob Durant [00:42:28]:

the AI cannot do.

Adam Gray [00:42:29]:

Maybe. And I say maybe because when tractors came about, you you traded using your physical muscles for your intellectual muscle. You moved from the fields to the office knowing that machines could do the manual work, machines cannot do the thinking work. Now we've got machines that can do the thinking work. The manual work's already gone. We got the thinking work left. And if you think about what what separates us as human beings from every other life form on the planet is art. You know, we do things for the joy of doing things.

Adam Gray [00:43:09]:

We write, we paint, we compose, we play instruments, we wonder at the magnificence of it all and all all of that stuff. But actually, one of the things that people are doing now is they're using AI to write music. They're using AI to create images that they're gonna share with their their post. Somebody wrote a a beautiful piece about this, and they said, I don't want AI to do, to to do the the painting and the writing for me so I've got more time to do the dishes. I want AI to do the dishes so I've got more time to do the writing and the painting. And if we're not careful, we're gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater here, aren't we?

Tracy Borreson [00:43:54]:

I think that's I I have a personal story about that because I remember you might have shared this on the show before. I share it up on places. But, like, I I hand cut nuts for my cereal in the morning. And, like, when I met my husband, I had no knife skills. He used to work in the kitchen. He taught me knife skills. And so I I chop these nuts manually, and I feel like Bobby Flay. Right? I'm like a chef.

Tracy Borreson [00:44:20]:

I've got skills. Right? Like, I feel like I have a skill. And I remember my dad being here one time and being like, you need a slap chop. And I was like, I don't actually need a slap chop because a slap chop would make chopping the nuts faster. Absolutely, it would. But then I would lose all the joy that I get in using my skill to chop the nuts. And also now I have to clean the slap chop, which is trading a, like, pleasure activity for a not pleasure activity, just as what you said, Adam. And I think it's really interesting when we look at one of the things that came up from what you had said previously for me, Adam, was, are we using AI to replace our experience? Right? If Bertrand has written a 50 blogs, he has experience writing blogs because he wrote a 50 blogs.

Tracy Borreson [00:45:14]:

He doesn't have experience writing blogs because AI wrote a 50 blogs. Right? He has the experience. And so are we using AI to replace our experience, or are we using AI to grow our experience? And I think it's possible to do both of those things, but we have to be very aware of what we're using.

Richard Jones [00:45:39]:

One of the things that I I sort of, mum over is the the way it potentially dumbs dumbs people or dumbs us as humans down. I mean, we're living in an environment where we've had to, you know, learn a lot of stuff. We've had to sort of, become skilled at certain things. And I think a a good metaphor for this for this is the, is is the satnav, you know. So if, you know, pre sat nav, we all had to have a sort of rudimentary understanding of, you know, sort of signposts and reading maps and stuff. Now, you know, we've got a generation that doesn't know south or east, you know. You're literally just using technology to supplant a sort of a life skill. And I guess AI is gonna replace your need to know a huge amount of things.

Richard Jones [00:46:25]:

And where where does that where do you draw the line? You know, what do you simply never need to know? Because AI will always be there to make the decision or make the tool on your part. And and I think that's an interesting sort of, you know, taper on where the future we're we're at that point where we've got knowledge and we want AI to sort of, you know, perhaps add to it, to supplement it, to make us look flatter. But, you know, we'll get to a point where you just don't simply need to know. You don't need the experience. You don't need the knowledge.

Tim Hughes [00:46:58]:

Well, I think that's really outsourcing.

Adam Gray [00:47:00]:

Tracy has absolutely nailed it with with the comment that she made because, you know, Bertrand has spent a year writing 150 blogs. The show's gonna finish in thirteen minutes. You can write another 150 blogs in the next thirteen minutes if he chooses to. And part of the challenge is that we, in the corporate world, we have seen, that drive for efficiency, that drive for more volume of stuff, more volume of emails, more volume of pay per click adverts, more volume of automatic dials, more volume of personalized messages, more volume of stuff, which from a sales perspective, you know, we've now got, self learning CRM systems. We've got, outbound tools that enable you to schedule all of your emails at the right time based on what people have opened. We've got things that analyze the work you're using in your telephone calls, yet more salespeople than ever are not making their number despite all of this help. And we run a very real risk of of of going down this route of thinking that more is better. You know, we've got a 50 magnificent blogs from Bertrand.

Adam Gray [00:48:18]:

The next 50 written before the end of the show are not gonna be magnificent. They'll be okay. Mhmm. Which is a retrograde step, isn't it?

Bertrand Godillot [00:48:26]:

But I'd like I'd like for us to to share that comment. Oh, sorry. That was not the one. Oops.

Tracy Borreson [00:48:33]:

But, yes, Robert. We do wanna be Tony Stark with Jarvis, not Ultron.

Bertrand Godillot [00:48:41]:

Yeah. Just to share the level of intimacy that I've I've I've kind of reached with with my teammates, because I think that's also that's also a little bit of the outcome that you could expect is everybody knows I have a passion for making bread. Right? And because I share the number of posts, my teammate now knows that social selling is important to me. So because every now and again, you know, we work on our LinkedIn profile and and we're and and I'm I'm still working on the title of that profile. Just for fun, I asked I asked my teammate. I said, so with everything you know about me so far, Can you make me a suggestion for my LinkedIn profile title? And and I was dismissed because it came back with social selling is my daily bread, which I think, you know, was was kinda kind of okay.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:48]:

Great. It's very Bertrand.

Rob Durant [00:49:51]:

He knows me quite well.

Bertrand Godillot [00:49:54]:

And that's that's

Rob Durant [00:49:55]:

Richard, I I had to smile a bit when you were talking about, lamenting the loss of map reading skills and GPS replacing that because my mother and my wife often lament the loss of handwriting skills. We don't teach that in the schools anymore. And I always turn to them and say, yes. Well, I don't know how to read hieroglyphics either.

Richard Jones [00:50:25]:

Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:50:25]:

There are things that we lose when we no longer need that. And I don't lament the loss of of map reading or or consider us ignorant because we first turn to Google when we have a question and and the answer is given to us right away. It's still us processing these things. It's still us evaluating how trustworthy the response is and then, judging accordingly.

Richard Jones [00:50:57]:

Yeah. Yeah. No. I think I think you're right there.

Tracy Borreson [00:51:01]:

Also, like, my mom is, like, the most I'm like, how can you not use Google Maps? I don't understand how you can not get this. I could get her a map and she would be totally able to navigate it. Can't use Google Maps.

Richard Jones [00:51:16]:

Yeah. I I love I love a map. I just like the visualization of it. I like to see the bigger picture rather than the little kind of sort of what's in front

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:22]:

of it.

Rob Durant [00:51:22]:

But it's really hard when you're driving.

Richard Jones [00:51:25]:

Yeah. Yeah. Or or or it's or it's windy.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:29]:

Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:51:29]:

But it's also like, I think these are also the fun things to pay attention to. Like, if you're lamenting something like that, why is that? Okay. So Richard likes to see the bigger picture. So how else are you seeing the bigger picture? How can you use AI to see the bigger picture? Right? Like there's opportunities for us to to experience those things and then tap into what's important for us and then participate with AI in the way that it allows us to have those things. So, like, I use AI all the time. A few weeks ago, I posted a post because I saw a chat chat GPT, and I call it chat. It's not that creative for the marketer in the room, but I it it said to me because it had updated its memory. So it's like, oh, it's got a new level of memory.

Tracy Borreson [00:52:23]:

It can go back into historic chats. So if you're curious, you can prompt it, like, based on all of our chats, what do you know about me? And I was like, for me in particular, that's super interesting because I do a lot of client work using chat GPT too. Right? And I have a very diverse industries of clients. So, like, oh, yeah. Fun? Sounds good. Let me try this. And what it came back with, I was like, that's a good synopsis. Right? It like it was really intelligent.

Tracy Borreson [00:52:54]:

It it referenced how I ask questions and how I'm always going deeper. And I was like, oh, well, yep. Because that's how I am, and I allow myself to use AI the way I am. So then AI can be trained in that. And whether you are I just see this very similar. I love that we call this show about a teammate. Right? Because it's just this thing, this onboarding a teammate. It's the number one reason why outsourced social media content creation fails actually is because people didn't have 150 blog posts and didn't have an ICP and didn't have a value prop and then hired someone to say, make these social media posts

Bertrand Godillot [00:53:34]:

every day. Yeah. That's that's need

Tracy Borreson [00:53:37]:

to exist because AI can do that for free. Right? But what what happens when we do our due diligence And when that due diligence is all in alignment with who we are as people, then, bam, we can create magic.

Bertrand Godillot [00:53:52]:

That's an excellent conclusion, Tracy. Really. Thank you so much. Team, this has been really great, and I'm sure we'll have more discussions about this because it's, it's it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing topic. So, now is the ad moment. So we now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get the show highlights, build the show insights, and reminders of upcoming episodes.

Bertrand Godillot [00:54:20]:

You may scan the QR code on screen or visit us at digitaldownload.live/newsletter. On behalf of the panelists and to our audience, very interactive audience today, very participative audience today. Thank you. Thank you. And, thank you all, and see you next time. Bye bye.

Tim Hughes [00:54:41]:

Bye. Bye.

Tracy Borreson [00:54:41]:

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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