Revenue Rehab: It's like therapy, but for marketers
June 14, 2023

AI Powered Content Creation: Key Considerations When Getting Started with AI

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Ryan Johnston.   Ryan is a marketing executive with deep expertise in demand generation. From highly verticalized and ABM motions in the enterprise to PLG motions at start-ups, he has seen it all and...

This week our host Brandi Starr is joined by Ryan Johnston.

Ryan is a marketing executive with deep expertise in demand generation. From highly verticalized and ABM motions in the enterprise to PLG motions at start-ups, he has seen it all and built go-to-market strategies at multiple B2B tech companies along the way. In his most recent role, he caught the AI wave early as VP, Marketing at Writer.

On the couch, Brandi and Ryan will take on AI Powered Content Creation: Key Considerations When Getting Started with AI.

Bullet Points of Key Topics + Chapter Markers:

  • Topic #1 Common Biases Against Using AI [04:32] Ryan shares how there seems to be a perception that the content itself that is generated by AI is ‘not good’.  There is “general skepticism that has always persisted that If this content is not good, therefore, I could not use it, it's not worth my time to leverage it…and therefore I should just ignore it”, he tells us. He then reminds listeners that, just like with other automated marketing tools, that the quality of the outcome is directly proportional to the effort and content invested into it.
  • Topic #2 Value and Drawbacks [10:00] AI can help you with variations to expand upon, Ryan explains.  It’s a tool that can be used to spark your own creativity.  However, this can also be a drawback if people don’t lean into the process; “So they can say, give me five examples of something, take one of those five and just run with it, and then not think about, okay, what's this actually quality marketing copy? Would this meet my own expectations? Does this meet my editorial guidelines, etc.” he explains.
  • Topic #3 Leveraging AI in the Writing Process [20:11] From writer’s block to tying your concepts together, AI can support the process of writing.  However, Ryan reminds listeners that it’s not a full replacement if you want good content; “your quality will be better the more involved you are” he states.  He goes on to explain that when it comes to the stage in the writing journey of editing, it’s likely “the brand voice piece, that is probably [going to be] the game changer for a lot of people”.  And most valuable to marketers, he says, is using AI for repurposing existing content.

So, What's the One Thing You Can Do Today?

Ryan’s one thing is to track every time that you had to create a piece of content throughout a day.  “Anytime that you had to create a piece of content, write that down, and then at the end of the day, go back and look at all that and think about how long did it take me to do those?” he says. Once you’ve got that recorded, then try to automate some of those things.

Buzzword Banishment:

Ryan’s Buzzword to Banish is ‘AI content detection’. “I think this notion of trying to figure out what percentage of content may or may not have come from AI [is] just something we all need to move on from”, he says. “So, I'd love to just sit at sunset that notion altogether”.

Links:

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Transcript

Intro VO  00:05

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello, hello hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Ryan Johnston. Ryan is a marketing executive with deep expertise in demand generation from highly verticalized and ABM motions in the enterprise to plg motions at startups. He has seen it all and built go to market strategies at multiple b2b tech companies along the way. In his most recent role, he caught the AI wave early as the VP of Marketing at writer Ryan, welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now.

Ryan Johnston  01:20

Hey, Brandi, great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Brandi Starr  01:23

Thanks for joining me, I am super excited to talk to you. I think it's been a long time coming, we've been able to make our schedules work. But before we jump into our topic today, I like to break the ice with a little Woosah moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what overused buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Ryan Johnston  01:50

Little Brandi, I know you've had a ton of great ones on your show so far at this point. But having been deep in the AI world, I'm ready to get rid of the idea of AI content detection. I think this notion of trying to figure out what percentage of content may or may not have come from Ai. It's just something we all need to move on from. So I'd love to just sit at sunset that notion altogether. I

Brandi Starr  02:10

love it. And it's something I've always been confused by is like, why are people obsessed with this? Like, what is it really matter? Like you think about we've used Ghost Riders, you know, to write marketing content for forever. And in general, even with most marketing content doesn't have an author listed anyway. So it's like, why does it matter if it was a human or a bot or a combination of both? That wrote it? So it's like this weird obsession with AI content detection is a bit odd to me.

Ryan Johnston 02:48

I would agree. I mean, we've been using spellcheck for how long at this point in time, we've all had a little bit of technology assisting us along the way here. So let's just embrace and continue to move forward.

Brandi Starr  02:57

Yeah, because when it comes to spellcheck, 100% of my writing is AI evaluated. I think the one place though, where I do fall into some of the craze is when it comes to images in you know, looking at like, is that AI? Is that a real photo? And that's, you know, that's a whole different discussion for a different day. But now that we've gotten that off our chest, we won't talk about any AI content detection. So tell me what brings you to revenue rehab today?

Ryan Johnston  03:33

Yeah, I mean, on a similar note, we are here to chat about how AI and content can come together, how I can be a part of your content creation process, every step along the way, especially how marketers, and just organizations in general can be using AI as part of that content process. So happy to dig in with you.

Brandi Starr  03:49

Awesome. Well, I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose. And most important, it lets our audience know what they should expect from our conversation today. So what is your best hope for our talk? Or what are your intentions for this session?

Ryan Johnston  04:07

Yeah, I think I think intentions are to help people remove any bias that they might have around how AI might impact the work that they do, and be able to set that aside and open and do this with an open mind and have an open perspective to figure out how this might best support them and work with them, despite past experiences or any other way that they've tried to use it in the past. So just intentionally come into the space with me remove that bias, and let's see what we can get to.

Brandi Starr  04:32

Awesome. Well, this is a good continuation of a conversation. For those that may not have listened in Episode 53. I talked to Nicole Leffler, who is also been you know, early adopter really been involved in the AI space. And we talked about some of the basics around why people should start to consider AI in marketing in general. And so where I'd really like to focus With you, Ryan, and I know you have lots of expertise in this area is that content generation and I love the angle of trying to remove some of the bias around working with AI. Because I do think that that is a barrier that a lot of people, especially people who are not naturally early adopters for technology, really struggle with. So my first question is, let's get the bias out. Like, let's, let's put it all out there. And so what are some of the common biases that you are seeing? As you've talked to people?

Ryan Johnston  05:35

Yeah, Nicole's great, we all actually all live in the Atlanta metro area. So we've got to get together with Nicole sometime do brand is

Brandi Starr  05:42

definitely I'm always game for a happy hour.

Ryan Johnston 05:46

Yeah, I mean, some of the biases, I think, first and foremost, and we've been noticed this last year, we were first starting to, you know, see the wave of AI come back to life, again, here is around the idea that, you know, the content itself is not good. There were, you know, periods of time, you know, over the past decade, people try to use AI generated content in some form or fashion. And were not impressed with the output. And so I think there was this general skepticism that has always persisted that If this content is not good, therefore, I could not use it, it's not worth my time to leverage it, use the department process, and therefore I should just ignore it. And my own writing is the best right I can use or my own content, just across the board is the best one. So I think first and foremost, is just the skepticism around whether or not the content is actually a quality of any sort.

Brandi Starr  06:30

Yeah, and I hear that, and, you know, I'm really active on LinkedIn. And this is one of the things that I see debated a lot in that some people are like, oh, you know, I can totally going back to the detection, tell when AI wrote it, because it all sounds like AI. And then kind of the other argument is, you know, if you have to go through the effort of putting in all of these prompts, then you suck as a marketer is kind of like some of the, you know, the, it's almost like the bro code on LinkedIn, some of those thought out, yeah, that tried to make polarizing statements to get a rise out of people. And, you know, I find myself getting caught up in some of the debates, like sometimes I'm like, why am I even trying, like, they're not going to listen, but, you know, in that I have learned just in my own experience, and I mean, it's probably been less than six months that I've really been giving AI some some strong attention, that it really does come down to, like, what you put in is what you get out, because I can say that when I first started, I was like, using it as a way to give me a draft, like, give me a draft, and now I'll rewrite it like, and it just was a way to, for me to not have a blank piece of paper that I was starting from, and then talking to people and they're like, Oh, you're working way too hard at this, like, you know, and so how do we, you know, how, what do you say to people who are like, the content is not that great? Like, you know, it's more effort for me to try to get AI to do it? What are some of your thoughts there?

Ryan Johnston  08:17

Yeah, and I think your idea of garbage in garbage out is totally accurate as well, too. And I think that's why we're seeing you and people like Nicole continue to reinforce this idea that, you know, the better you are at providing AI the information that it needs to give you the content that you want back the better results that you're gonna get at that point in time. So it's kind of a give and take here, we can't just put really basic information in there all the time and expect to get something written and our brand boys to the level of quality that we want at the reading level that we want, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there is a lot of, you know, you have to build a skill a little bit yourself as well here, too. Yeah, I mean, I think what we're seeing too, is, you know, this idea that like, there's different phases of the writing process, let's just talk about writing specifically here as part of the content creation process, you know, you've got ideation, you've got editing, or you've got drafting, you've got editing, you've got publishing, you've got distribution. All of those different phases are areas where some people are really strong, and some people are not as strong and when you can recognize where your own are their weaknesses are or the areas that you get hung up the most, or the areas that you think you can automate a little bit better. That's when you can start to introduce AI. And I would bet that anybody listening to this today doesn't feel 100% The best at all of those areas. And so when you think about your own process, like if you have the fear of the blank page, if the hardest thing for you to do is just write those first few words now, get some support from Ai if you love writing on the blank page, but you hate the editing process, get some support from Ai at that point. I think there's people are stuck in this spot that it's all just like, I write a prompt and then I get an output and I'm good to go at that point. An AI can help you through every part of that process. So like depending on where your strengths and weaknesses are lean in appropriately is what I would say

Brandi Starr  10:00

Yeah, so let's let's talk about each of those phases, because I liked the way that you broke that down. And I know for me, ideation of pulling the thoughts out of my head, is where I struggle most. If I'm trying to write something, whether it's, you know, an article, website, copy, whatever, I can literally spend hours staring at a blank Word document, just trying to get something on the page. And so one of the things, you know, I think, probably where I started with AI, was leveraging, and I started with chat GPT, which I think is pretty much where everybody kind of starts, I'm leveraging it to, like, be the the other person that I have a conversation with, like, I'm thinking this what other, you know, relevant ideas. It's like, here's what I'm thinking, what do you think, Okay, I'm thinking this now, what do you think? And then it's like, Okay, give me, you know, five bullet points that summarize this conversation. And so now my page is not blank. And whether those ideas are good, bad or indifferent, it's like having that thought process of, you know, getting that Mojo going. Like, just has been, it's been earth shattering for me, like, my team has been shocked at how much content I've been able to create so much faster, because, you know, they asked me for three things. Normally, I'm like, Yeah, I got one for you. And, you know, once I start using AI, it was like, here's all three, like, go forth and be married. And it's, there's a little bit of shock, and all they're like, Wow, she got them all done. And so what are some of your thoughts? If ideation is the place that people struggle? What do you you know, where do you see AI being valuable? And then I always also like to talk about what are some of the drawbacks or gotchas as well.

Ryan Johnston  12:01

I mean, Brian, I think you hit the nail on the head, I think the biggest thing for me is, if you struggle to come up with one idea, imagine the notion that you have come up with three to five ideas that you want to parse through at any point in time. And so I think, and I've done this, myself, too, when you're trying to come up with that perfect email subject line that you want to use, you're coming up with that next blog post idea, anything that you typically would view is just kind of general marketing content, having three to five ideas that you think and personally edit is so much better than having to come up with three to five from scratch, when you typically might get blocked even doing just one or two. And so I think that's the thing that's so valuable here is if you can immediately get five different flavors of variations of what you're trying to do, let's just say email subject lines, you might not like any of them. But you might like this part of this one, and this part of this one, and this part of this one, and cobble it together. And I've had that happen multiple times where I've never just copy and paste as an output. But I've been able to piece together the right fragments of the subject line that I wanted to use in this example, to have the output that I'm looking for. So it's almost like if my creativity is blocked, initially, I'm using this to then spark my own creativity, as opposed to using it to give me what I intend to go, you know, copy and paste into whatever email tool that I'm using at the end of the day. And so I think some of the gotchas can be the fact that people can not lean into the process. So they can say, you know, give me five examples of something, take one of those five and just run with it, and then not think about, okay, what's this actually quality marketing copy? Would this meet my own expectations? Does this meet my editorial guidelines, etc. Like, there's the phrase human in the loop and all of these different flavors of that, at the end of the day, that's still representing you and your brand, what you publish. And so you should not put your full faith and AI in the same way, you probably would still have somebody double check the work of some of your copywriters on your team, there's still a review process here. And I think you need to make sure that that's still a part of the way you operate.

Brandi Starr  13:56

Yeah, and that is so true. And even, you know, kind of sticking with focusing on the ideation piece, I think the other thing that you kind of hit on subtly, is, you know, we have a lot of the ideas in our own heads, we have our experiences, our you know, industry expertise, etc. But because AI has been trained on so much information, there's also new ideas that get introduced that sometimes, you know, I know the hardest thing for me, is so much of what I know just comes natural, like I've just, it's what I do, it's what I live, it's what I breathe, and so sometimes being able to like distill down, what don't other people know, like, what's going to attract those people. And in some places, I've had a I pull in thoughts in that ideation process that I hadn't really thought about, you know, different aspects. And so I think that that's another place where you know, it is and obviously you have to fact check because we know can, you know make up some things and things like that. But just even because I've had times where I've gotten a colleague like, you know, I'll slack my team like, is anybody online like that they can ideate with me for 10 minutes. And it really is just needing that other body to, you know, bounce back and forth. And so it's like, you can do that with a bot. And you know, cool, as long as you need to not disturb somebody else.

Ryan Johnston  15:25

Yeah, Brandi, I feel like you and I are cut from the same cloth. Like I'm a highly collaborative person. And so pulling people out of their flow out of the projects that they're working on just to spend 15 minutes on a call with me to Ida, I can do that with someone else at this point in time. And that can say, don't like that idea. Let's try this variation. What about this? What about in terms of dating as well? Like, what persona? Are you trying to target here? Do you want it speak differently, let's say to an executive versus maybe an individual contributor. And so I think that's where and I know, I gotta have myself earlier beyond just the ideation phase. But as we're talking about ideation here, it's like, how can you slice and dice this? How can you reframe it? How can you talk to a different industry, a different persona, all of that, and like, you can do that with somebody real time, you're just not pulling a colleague out of their flow, you're instead doing it with something that has a big wealth of knowledge and may hallucinate a little bit. So your filter has to be there to your point. And you've got to use your own judgment on it, but like to go from one idea to 50 ideas to 100 ideas and the span of five to 10 minutes, all the different variations that you can parse, I think, I think that is just such an accelerator for people.

Brandi Starr  16:28

Yeah, and I think you hit on something else talking about personas that, you know, so in some cases, especially as you're getting started with AI, the prompting process, there is a learning curve, like there's, you know, I have like what I thought was a good prompt three months ago, I recognized was like, totally crappy. And you know, I had to do way more work after. And so some people will argue that that level of effort to really put in a good prompt, you know, air quotes isn't worth it. But the thing that I have taken away is that it really, especially for a marketer, forces you to think about the business, the audience, what you're trying to accomplish, at a deeper level that I don't think we always do when we're doing something ourselves. Like, really, you know, you talked about the persona, you know, what are we trying to get them to do? Are we trying to get them to buy? Or are we trying to get them to feel are we you know, trying to get them to take some action, like the thought process that you have to go through in order to properly prompt. I feel like it's a thought process that we should be having any way that we often just because we're all go, go go and you know, just had last month, some sessions about executive burnout, and you know, how we're all stretched too thin. So it's like, we don't always have that time to stop and really strategize. And that's one thing that I have found that prompting forces me to do, because I have to so that I'm not putting garbage in. I have to really think about those things.

Ryan Johnston  18:12

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, if you think about, you know, people have wondered is AI good for junior writers is a good for, you know, more senior experienced writers. But at the end of the day, ideally, everyone's using the same framework, they're talking about all the different dimensions of the persona, or the person or their audience that they're trying to speak to more experienced writer might be doing that more second nature, more junior writer might need that more explicitly written out. And I think that's been one of the most interesting things I've experienced as teams try to use this as like creating a collaborative space where everybody can see what the input was to also see the output. Like that's sometimes can be the difficulty of like, one offer bespoke tools, like let's just say, one team members using chat, GBT, they share their output, but they don't share what their input is. And that input is what can be so valuable for everybody else on the team to understand, okay, what was the audience you were trying to target with this? How did you get the results that you got as the output coming out of it. And so I liked the idea. And I think this is what you're getting as well of like, a common framework across everyone, which is, these are the points that you should be trying to input to get the right outputs. But then also democratize that. Share that with the team, have everybody be aware of what drove that persona level targeting that you were able to do that was successful? So you can repeat that and replicate the next few times?

Brandi Starr  19:27

Yeah, we've started we use guru for knowledge, you know, our knowledge base knowledge sharing internally. And so we've started a guru card with some of the key things like we started with just our prompt voice in being able to say like, here's how you nail our voice. And the intent is to then expand to some of the things that you're talking about. So that as everybody is using whatever they're using, that we're kind of, you know, we're putting that same consistency there.

Ryan Johnston  19:59

That's great. That's great. I love that Doc, that documentation probably drives not only so much consistency across your team, but it also helps everybody improve their output. So you're also just getting better results across the team as well, too, I'm sure.

Brandi Starr  20:11

Which is a great segue into talking about the writing process, which, you know, I think is probably the part of the process that gets the most bias. And, you know, the most number of people talking about AI content detection and all the negatives. So just, you know, what, what's the key, in your opinion to leveraging AI for actually writing something that is a solid output? So obviously, there's got to be editing always. But, you know, where do you see AI being beneficial in the process? For the writing?

Ryan Johnston  20:53

Yeah, you know, it's been interesting, we've seen this evolution, where I think early on early on, meaning like last year, with AI, it was very much like, prompting output out new prompt output. At that point, I think people are starting to build this muscle of writing with AI and not just asking AI to write for them. And I think that fundamentally is going to be where this continues to go, which is, you're starting to write your paragraph, you get a few sentences in, you have aI support you on the next sentence, because you're blocked for a minute. And then you get the next sentence going. Again, I think that's where we're going to see people really start to become advanced with using AI as part of the writing processes, like, bring it in every step of the way. Now, there's just a fundamental difference of like, I want to write this and I just want to edit it later, I get that or I just want to write a prompt, and I want to get, you know, a first draft written by AI get that as well, too. But, uh, where I think people are really going to excel is thinking about, you know, throughout the actual writing process, throughout the idea of getting words on paper, where can you bring AI in as a part of that as somebody who's like, a collaborative writer with you, as opposed to somebody who is just giving you back the content that you've requested?

Brandi Starr  22:04

Yeah, and, you know, I think this is a place where writer excels. Because I'm not one to do an outline, like, I don't think I've done an outline for writing since college, which was way too long ago. And when I first started using writer, you know, it was like the assistant tool, and I put in some stuff, you know, I put in like, my, what I'm trying to accomplish, and I click the button, and it was like, Here's an outline. And that then may, you know, like, again, forced that thought process of some places. It was like, oh, yeah, that's what I want to talk about. Let me tweak this. In other places, it was like, No, that's totally not what I thought, you know, wanted to talk about, but it gave me that thought process of what are the points and then you know, you put that in, and then it gives you the sub points. And that collaborative nature, I definitely think is the place that we elevate the quality. Because I know my weakness in writing, you know, long form content. So short form, like subject lines, and ad copy, I am not your person. So AI has really been great for me, they're long form content, I'm really great at the meat, but my transitions, and to fall flat. So like intros and transitions between the key points. That's usually where my writing is just. And so going through that process, I'm like, able to put all this meat in, in outline form. And then when I hit the button, and I magically get a draft, it's used all of my own ideas and expertise, and totally took away my weakness, because it's got great transitions. And, and so I definitely feel you in terms of the collaborative nature of it, and not just having the expectation that you're going to put some prompt and get, you know, I mean, short form, I think it does great, long form, you know, not so much. Um, so yeah, it really is like that taking out. I think what I'm hearing from what you're saying is almost reframing the expectation in the writing process of what your role and what AI's role is.

Ryan Johnston  24:29

Yeah, I think that's totally, totally fair. And I love the, like self awareness you have around your own writing abilities, because I think understanding where you maybe struggle like in the transitions is a perfect use case then to go how co AI can support you. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the intentionality of how that blog post builder was built was around the fact that you should be a writer every step of the way. Therefore, what are what's the topic you want to speak about? What are these sub? Sorry, what are the sub topics you want to speak about? building out that outline. But there's even the point where you're thinking about, Okay, what stats and quotes, etc do I want to be a part of this. And if you are just basic prompt and basic blog post output, you're not informing what should be in that output beyond just you know how extensive major prompt at the end of the day. But if you can make sure that every step of the way you're going to get quality, then you can overcome that skepticism we talked about earlier in this conversation, which is, your quality will be better the more involved you are, the more guidance you can provide. So creating different steps to do that along the way, I think in a collaborative environment is what is just going to produce better quality for you.

Brandi Starr  25:36

Yes, and I'm definitely with you there. And editing is we kind of touched a lot on the editing process while talking about writing. What are some of the kind of key benefits of leveraging AI in the editing process?

Ryan Johnston  25:55

Yeah, I mean, you've obviously got your basic spellcheck and grammar check. And I know a lot of people have been using extensions in their Chrome browser for a while to help them do that. I think it's actually the brand voice piece, that's probably the game changer for a lot of people. So if you are able, whether through your initial prompt or through, you know, back end settings that you can change, like you can have, in some solutions, get your brand voice in there, when you go to editing, then it's not just correcting you because you misspelled a word, it's also correcting you because you sunset that product name or you don't capitalize that word, do you sense case instead of title case, and everything that you're supposed to be writing, etc, I think I think when you can bring that element of editing into your process, it's really a game changer, because that not only makes you as an individual writer, more on brand with the writing that you're doing, but that reduces the editing time that's required of the one person that knows your style guide through and through. And so that when you're looking for like time savings across the organization, that type of editing support is probably the biggest game changer for people.

Brandi Starr  26:54

Yeah, I definitely agree there, it has helped us like we have third party editors that we use that are just like freelancers. And it has definitely reduced our cost. Because there are a lot more things that we're able to skip sending externally. Because we've you know, felt like the AI has been solid in all of those things in, you know, bringing forth the voice correcting, you know, grammar, even making recommendations on how to enhance sentences that, you know, may not totally jive with the the overall piece. So yeah. And then the last two pieces I'll talk about together, which is the publishing and distribution. Which, you know, I think like most people think about just automation in, you know, there's been tons of tools that, you know, will automate the distribution of content. You know, social media is probably the the most obvious or the one, you know, one that's been around for the longest. What are some of the other things that you are seeing people be successful with leveraging AI for publishing and distribution? Yeah, I

Ryan Johnston  28:11

think a lot of it is the repurposing piece. So if you think about how repurposing content is something that marketers have been tasked with, since forever, and you think about how that applies to the publishing distribution, when you can take a single piece of content, especially a long form piece of content, and turn that into, you know, the 10 different such nuggets and different ways that you want to produce that content. And not just a social media post, but also the meta description that you need to use when you go to publish it. Also, the, you know, essentially email copy that you want to give your sales team that they can go promote that piece of content as well, too. That's what greatly accelerates but also widens your distribution as well, too. You can be across more channels, and a much more accelerated fashion, when you have aI supporting you in recreating those pieces. And now, when we bring this all back together, when AI is generating social media copy and emails at the same time for you, in that brand voice written in the way that you want. Now, all of a sudden, that's dramatically faster for you. And you can click a couple buttons and get those things out the door. And for a lot of people I have found, you know, they put their heart and soul into the main piece of content they created into the blog post into the long form piece, creating the little snippets that they need to use to go distribute and publish out into the world isn't what you know, feeds their soul at the end of the day. And so for a lot of people, that's where they actually lean in quite a bit is lead AI helped me distribute the great work that I've already done. And it's based on the work that you've already read it like if you wrote the blog post, and then you turn that blog post into social media posts through AI, that that's all based on your good work already. So you'd expect a high quality output coming from that.

Brandi Starr  29:46

Yeah, and I think two sort of themes that have carried through everything that you've said, is really the look at what you're good at. You do those parts and fill in the gaps with AI. And then I love your last statement is the what feeds your soul? Like what are the parts that you really get jazzed about. So, you know, which is kind of a different flavor of what are you're good at. But in some cases, there may be things that you're not great at, but you really love doing. And so, you know, and I think when I talked to Nicole, that collaborative nature was also the, you know, read that, that she wove through her message was, it really is a collaborative process.

Ryan Johnston  30:34

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Yeah. And I think on the feeding your soul piece, yeah, you might not be good at writing ad copy. But if you love writing ad copy, like don't take that away from yourself, like, find other areas that you can have aI support at the end of the day, because you should enjoy parts of your job every single day, why not still hold on to those pieces as much as you can?

Brandi Starr  30:54

Yeah, I definitely believe in the 8020 rule, like 80% of your day should be spent on the stuff that you actually love. And the 20% is just the stuff that comes with the territory. And if that's not your life, you may be in the wrong job.

Ryan Johnston  31:09

Fair, you can't find it, then you definitely are gonna have issues.

Brandi Starr  31:13

Yeah, little random career at bias. Well, Ryan, talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So if you could give us your one thing, what is our first step, our one action item that we can do coming out of this session?

Ryan Johnston  31:44

Yeah, I think if you've got time today, depending on when you're listening to this, or let's say starting tomorrow, write down throughout the day, every time that you had to create a piece of content. I know we've talked about writing here today. But that could also be image related content, audio related content, etc. But anytime that you had to create a piece of content, write that down, and then at the end of the day, go back and look at all that and think about how long did it take me to do those? Where did I get stuck in my process, and then the next day, I would encourage you to go try to automate that in some way go, whether it's a solution you already have, or a new tool that you need to go find. Go try to find one of those things and see if you can reduce your time from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, or 15 minutes to five minutes. But just find a way to improve your day a little bit using AI, but you need to know where you can even focus. And you can do that just by writing down almost like keeping a journal of the writing work that you did that day or like I said, graphics, audio, anything else that you need to as well.

Brandi Starr  32:41

I love that and you know, taking stock of our time and our effort, I think is always valuable. Whether you know, AI is the solution or you know, sometimes it's just I shouldn't be doing these things, but to delegate. So yeah, I think that's a great starting point. Because I do think people who are more late adopters sometimes struggle with where do I start, especially with AI because there's so many tools and things are moving so fast that sometimes you know if you if you some people feel like they've missed the boat, like you know, are that the boats, you know, it's a speedboat, and they can't jump on. I'm good for beating an analogy to death. Yeah, I really liked that as our one thing. So for those listening, if you're listening in the morning, let's try it today. If you're listening in the afternoon or evening, make it an action for tomorrow to journal all the things we'll start with things that you write and see where you can leverage AI. That is a great takeaway, and I have enjoyed our discussion, Ryan. But that's our time for today.

Ryan Johnston  33:53

Thanks so much for having me, Brandi, and thanks, everyone for listening in.

Brandi Starr  33:56

Yes, I was gonna say I was gonna just say that. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Ryan. I can't believe we're already at the end. We'll see you next time.

Outro VO  34:09

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Stars. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue rehab dot live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.

Ryan JohnstonProfile Photo

Ryan Johnston

Marketing Executive

Ryan is marketing executive with deep expertise in demand generation. From highly verticalized and ABM motions in the enterprise to PLG motions at startups, he has seen it all and built go-to-market strategies at multiple B2B tech companies along the way. In his most recent role, he caught the AI wave early as VP, Marketing at Writer.