Kate Bradley - Founder & CEO of Lately.ai | The Future of Content Marketing With AI

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the hub spot podcast network which has other great podcasts like social light hosted by Steph Taylor social light discusses all things online marketing Steph Taylor answers all your business marketing questions she deep dies into the nitty gritty of online marketing content marketing social media marketing marketing strategy for business owners if any of these topics resonate with you you're going to love the show you'll learn things like how to scale your brand on various different social media platforms some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch of a new product or service the importance of nurturing and engaging your audience consistently the importance of having your audience fully understand the problem you're trying to solve and why it's important to solve right now as well as why growing audiences across all social platforms feels so hard in 2022. You can go listen to social light wherever you get your podcasts or at the HubSpot podcast network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. Today my guest is Kate Bradley Turner she is the founder and CEO of lately basically a content marketers dream tool. It's an AI that learns which words will get you the most engagement and repurposes video audio and text into dozens of social posts containing those words. Now as a former rock and roll DJ Kate served 20 million listeners as music director and on air host at Sirius XM. She's also an award winning radio producer engineer and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast brand building sales and marketing expertise. What you learned in radio about the neuroscience and music helps fuel lately's artificial intelligence now prior to founding lately Kate also owned a marketing agency which got Walmart. 130% ROI year over year for three years in addition. Kate's appeared as a guest speaker on hundreds of sales marketing and entrepreneurial podcasts and has led presentations for Walmart National Disability Institute IRS United Way Worldwide Saster South by Southwest content marketing institute HubSpot Harvard Columbia University and why you and others. Now we spoke about the evolution of content marketing. We spoke about pivoting career successfully from DJ to marketing mastermind. We spoke about having Gary Vee as one of her major clients. We spoke about how to market for a company like Walmart achieving those incredible numbers and leveraging AI for marketing as well as a whole bunch of incredible content marketing lessons. So I used to be a rock and roll DJ Scott my last gig was broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day for XM satellite radio. My radio voice is you know it's a little bit warmer than my normal voice. My husband's always like why don't I get the nice voice and what I what I learned about the nerves science of music listening through radio actually turns out to be one of the largest informers of how lately's AI works which I can tell you about later. So don't forget to ask me about that because it's kind of cool. But I also in between radio and a few other things before lately I had a marketing agency and my first client was a little company called Walmart. So I ended up getting Walmart 130% ROI year over year for three years with this exhaustive spreadsheet system that I created. You know spreadsheets coming now. But the idea was to look at consistency so for the marketing nerds in the room raise your hands. It was I'll just give you some detail so it was Walmart and all their franchises Bank of America and all of theirs AT&T and all of theirs the IRS the National Disability Institute and also United Way Worldwide. So it was for profit nonprofit and government small medium large there were 20,000 marketers that we were actually wrangling together was a it was a project designed to help lift the poor out of poverty through income tax credits and financial empowerment. So everybody wanted to be a part of this like good thing right and when I came in I came in from radio so cowgirl you know I don't really know a lot about corporate rules and I don't really follow a lot of rules. I was a line cook before all this so you know I'm I'm into the lawlessness of things and I was like you guys are crazy but this is a giant mess you know with didn't have my edit button on either. And I went home and built a spreadsheet system which first just organized everything like okay so if there's 40 people placing ads and newspapers across the country what are the zip codes and what is the content that they're using or if there's 100 people writing the press release will like let's get at all the same message like this idea of consistency and and then I thought a lot about repurposing because I was like it seems like everybody's remaking the wheel constantly here every single day. There's got to be a better way how can we unify our resources. But at the same time and this is so important is to customize each message on the local side because you know this Scott and I'm zigzagging all over the place but humans are multifaceted and so well consistency is important. You you can no longer get to people with one message right that's actually outdated it's it's dying and the big dinosaurs aren't catching on really quite yet. Having a coke have a coconut smile right I was great for a long time but now it's got to be you know there's got to be some little tweak in there. And so we figured that out and when I built lately I used these two ideas like how can I repurpose content so with Walmart I had written a blog and I thought well the title of this blog which they're promoting you know Walmart helps lift the poor out of poverty nobody cares about honestly let's be honest. But each of the sentence is inside were interesting because I wrote it and they were like kind of teasers if they stood alone with a link back to the full length. So if I broke up all the sentences and turned them into social posts I got 40 social posts in an hour and I can disseminate these to everybody in the network and show them how to customize them. And then what if I did that with every piece of long form content we had video audio news news letters white papers right it's all there in front of us. So those two ideas kind of got us here. That's part one of the story do you want to hear part two I do want to know so I was just going to you don't have to give me a second to jump in. I forgot to when we were prepping for this I forgot to say don't feel the need to punt it back over to me because then I'm going to talk too much so it's all about it's all about you but no this is a great story and I just first of all congratulations on the success with Walmart because that's incredible. And sometimes I just wanted to point out something very interesting about when you moved into this marketing you moved into marketing from not marketing sometimes it's the people that don't know the rules that do the best when they move into something when they can really disrupt the way things have been done. So that's something that's interesting so not only did you do that in your in your actual job in your role and in what you were delivering from Walmart but this is something that I'm I think that what is probably allowed you to create. And this is something that I now I see actually spoken about quite often like how you have this content strategy that takes one piece and then starts to break it up and disseminate it and repurpose it with even that repurposing it with the caveat that you still have to. Localize it regionalize it make it a little bit contextual to the audience that's going to see it but still like it's like you don't have to do the heavy lifting every single time so just it's just a smart way to and you were like way ahead of your time because now. Thank you. This is how like I think now but you are doing it like before there was tools and tech and people like we'll talk about Gary Vaynerchuk too that always speak about this is the strategy that you have to have to be a marketer that can keep up with social and the constant need for information. And new content like it's difficult so anyways that's my two cents so back to you what. It is yeah and I mean one of the phrases that I say to my team and into myself all the time is it's always right in front of you. Meaning like at this point in my life and this is the confidence and the work you've done wherever it is. Is that I've probably already got pieces of this thing that I need to do right here somewhere you know whether it's if I'm going to write a blog on consistency or marketing I'm sure I've written 50 emails about that somewhere let me just go find them and pull them together you know I don't really have to start from scratch right that's kind of one idea. And then also touching on what you're saying I love metaphorically stealing good ideas that seem to have nothing to do with what you are interested in and then twisting them and reapplying them. That comes back to music like so I'm a sucker for covers Scott and there's some standards though like a cover can't just be the straight ahead song. Why do it again if it's already great right you need to turn it inside out so make it minor key instead of major slow it down instead of speed it up right all those things that's when you go wow you know I can't believe I just did that right. And I think what's that what's that what's that what is that phrase like about like markers stealing or something like that like yeah yeah yeah yeah. I can't remember like green artist steel or something I don't know artist yeah artist steel yeah I'm always one second anyways I believe. I'm pro stealing Pablo Picasso he said good artist borrow great artist steel I don't know it's disputed as to whether or not he said it but this is a great the quote of flights. We should give it to Pablo he deserves it yeah so you know and and then you know even if you don't I mean I was also by the way like so this didn't just like cabinet and over I was a fiction writing major so rule breaking is something that I learned in a lyrical sense right again back to the music and all and the sounds like that's somewhere where my my heart lives and in fiction writing you break rules as a. As a matter of course right that's part of it certainly in poetry for example and then we touched on the kitchen as well I mean everything that Tony Bourdain ever wrote is 100% effing true you know I lived that and I loved it. And what what I loved was the chaos and like the serenity and the beauty that comes out of that chaos getting everything up hot at once you know like being on the air I was on the air live for most of my career which nobody is anymore in radio anyways but like it's stressful man like I'm sure it's very straight you were on serious I'm 20 million people like that's like a 10x multiplier on the amount of people that's going to listen to this so like I would never do that again by the way like that I someone points that out to me regularly they're like how can you be scared you did this thing and I was like I don't know what I was thinking. I think you just probably don't even understand like the magnitude like the scope of people that you're that you're actually I spoke to people radio before and like they'll they'll be like fresh out of college and they'll be speaking to like hundreds of well not maybe hundreds of millions but like millions of people and like that's a lot of damn people and I don't think you realize that when you're sitting there just talking like you really don't get the magnitude of like what you say carries so it's true. And they teach you like I had a good mentor actually who taught me to always I used to draw a picture talk to one person imagine who the person is and like that's who you're talking to. And I mean this is important to what we're going to be continuing to talk about here but like the the the theater of the mind is so powerful because you have to you have to allow for that unknown character to fill the blanks right this works in radio and it works in or podcasts and it works in writing to an author right so let me jump back to what I had said before and then I got to tell you part two. So when you listen to a new song Scott the your brain must instantly access every other song you've ever heard in that moment and it's looking for familiar touch points so it knows where to index the new song in the library of the memory of your brain. Now your voice has a musical note to it has a frequency like a song and when you write text and I read the text that you write I hear your voice in my head. So it's your job as the author to give me the reader familiar touch points and trigger nostalgia memory emotion these are all the base liars for trust right and trust is why we buy. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now running your own business means uncertainty is everywhere so wouldn't it be nice to have a serum platform that just works a serum platform that helps you provide a seamless connected best in class customer experience. For too long businesses have had to deal with managing point solutions that slow down their teams frustrate customers and hit them with hidden fees. HubSpots all in one serum platform has everything you need to do business no hidden fees included with the connected platform that's easy to implement and use your teams have all the tools and data they need to spend more time on what matters most creating remarkable customer experiences. Learn out HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot dot com so knowing that because I don't think many people are very cognizant of that when they create content. They are either. And Hanley is do you know her she's amazing I do yeah I do I didn't know I'm sure like if I'm sure like the people that are like at that level probably are like another one who I I fought like Seth Godin like whenever he writes I'm sure like he knows his style and and you get that feeling to when you read his content. So I guess I want to hear part is that we're still going into part two but I have questions. So we can we can index these questions for later doesn't matter to me but I think the first question would be how do you how do you do that well because that's a great tool for a market at half. How do you do that at all and secondly how does AI capture that because if you're going to use a tool like lately for content marketing ultimately at some point has to be as impactful as if a human was creating it. So so many good ideas there so the first part is how do you do it as how do humans do it. So there's an easy trick you just read out loud what you write I'll give you an example. This is a letter that I got in the mail so I'm holding a piece of paper and it's from West Elm where I shop. This certificate is issued for reward purposes and is a duplicate of the certificate you received by email. You guys hear that so hear me trip over that this certificate is issued for reward purposes duplicate of the certificate. You can hear me say all the things very hard to say what they're trying to tell me is hey ding dong we emailed you a copy of this coupon you can't use both. That's what they're saying so when you write copy and read it out loud if you trip over it you know you got to read to it. It's not authentic you're communicating poorly because if you're tripping I'm tripping right interesting and even if I'm not reading it out loud say I get that in my hand and I'm reading it and it feels awkward. You're saying that even if I'm just reading it on paper there's a good chance that if I can't read it out loud as the author then the person the recipient when they read that on paper it's going to feel awkward it's going to feel clunky in their head even though they don't know why. That's right and when it feels awkward the first thing you don't do is trust somebody like I said trust is the main thing right and so then you get that spam feeling or. There's a there's a packed that we make a sales people and marketing people and there's no shame in this we're all selling something right we are we all everybody wants someone to do something I want my husband to take out the trash you know you want your children to do their homework on time you want the person in line in front of you to hurry the f up and pay with a credit card instead of writing a check you kidding me let's move it right. So so all these things and so we're I'm thinking about okay well if I want you to do X what is the X I would want you to do so let's talk about social media for example like in social copy there's only two outcomes click or share that's it right now clicks for smaller companies or for people who don't have a lot of trust right we don't have a lot of name recognition clicks are hard. There's one exception which is when you create how to content it's a lot easier to get people to click because they're curious it's already built in how to how do I do that thing you know but the share is is actually easy and this is built on we're talking about that third person in the room so sharing is all about your ego and me making you look at me the author making you look good by sharing my content when you share my content you get credit for it like an album in college yeah you know somebody gave it to you this new record oh my god you're with it you seem like you're in the know you seem like you have all the cool you have asked for the cool stuff or you know like you're the person that you know knows what's what's good and what's coming up so that's why the content has to be educational entertaining like something that makes you look good as the shareer. There you go right so if you know that those are your only two objectives just keep it real smell then you back into it so if I'm writing copy I go for the share because I I can do that well you know I can make people laugh I wrote something racing that said like is your LinkedIn page and I'm a turd. Because mine is mine is you know and I did it because I want you to react right so reacting is the first step into having a conversation and then making them do the thing click share whatever it is you got to you got to make people lean forward and then to tie into your second question was like well how do you do this with AI like and I'll spell it out technically for everybody if you like but the first thing to say is we don't separate humans from robots at lately. We know that the human is an essential component component of marketing and sales so marketing and sales has been you know social selling is not new when the first person had the wheel that that was a social sale he made back in the day it was a man I have to say but right so nothing is different it's just all the tools we use. Did I lose my own dream I thought no I didn't okay so with with with marketing and sales the human has that genus a qua again this is that third piece in the room we're talking about right you can't put a finger on it you have to allow the space there and you you can't always describe it's the thing you and I just met today we already discovered that we could talk for hours and I totally want to have a beer with you or a non-alcoholic beer or whatever we're doing it doesn't really matter. I can do either I'd rather have not done a non-alcoholic I don't like there's not that good but they are getting better I've been trying really I haven't done a non-alcoholic beer in a while actually actually to be honest I haven't done a beer in a while I usually just go to like a I've done too many white claws like it's like I'm super patient because I don't like hangover so like now I'm getting old so like if I do like anything like like actual liquor like if I do like a Scotch or whiskey it's like I'm done the next day so it's like the kilo or like white cloth like beer is like I'm. I'm all bloated like it's not like it's not fun we have the same problems yeah shout out to Lauren on the white claw the claw is the law right yeah and only you and I were able to do that this is what I'm saying like you I feel like we've already reached through the screen we've we've hugged we've high five like all those things right and so you can't remove this element and you don't you don't want to right this is why I will never replace marketers altogether in my opinion so what we do is lately's robots job is to get you three quarters of the way there so that the human has the space to fill in that that quarter percent now the difference isn't one plus one equals two it's one plus one equals three and that's even more the the reason you do it so to back up and give people the commercial briefly but lately AI learns your brand voice it'll learn any brand voice and then it'll atomize any long form content into dozens of previews or movie trailers clips little clips of that if it's a video or just like short little text that's right and the so the magical part is the AI knows which which clips to learn or to use to cut up and to present to you in a social post and it's doing that because it's actually studying your analytics from your social channels and it can see what words and phrases and sentence structures get you the highest engagement and then it starts to look for that same content and whatever you feed it right so the human part though has to carry it's only a robot it's a little dumb and it doesn't even know you yet it has to get to know you so the more time you nudge it the more you the more time you spend telling it this way this way it'll it'll get smarter and smarter which is you know great in the job is to as all robots right robots are cold humans are warm robots are fast humans are slow but together this is that this is that magical thing you've got so you know the the story I guess like that I wanted to touch on because you know we're talking about a lot of new ideas here we're talking about as you pointed out like looking at things differently so I want to I want to zag back for one sec when I was at XM I had I had really bad tendonitis and epicon delitis got throughout both arms and hands I couldn't I couldn't type anymore no scary this is you're tennis elbow worse worse than tennis elbow yeah yeah yeah and there wasn't like you said before this is like a long time ago there was we but I had a flip phone you know and dragon naturally speaking had been invented that's the the voice activated software that Paris Siri and but not a lot of people knew about it and it was very clunky and hard to use so I learned about it I found there were four coaches in the whole country one was in DC I had no money I was in radio I ramen you know and other people's I Charles Shaw three dollar three buck check right and I found this woman who was a fan of my channel and I paid her in CDs because I had hundreds of them so it's really lucky and then I took the software to XM they wouldn't put it in the system you know because of IT and whatever so I I got a credit card I bought a laptop which I couldn't afford so I could at least bring it to work and then now I'm a real pain in the ass because I need a private room because I have a microphone and the microphone here's everything so now I want special treatment right I'm not I'm actually a person with a partial disability but I want special treatment and so and it was sexual harassment like a lore like all these things were happening and hostile work environment and I didn't basically it was it was shit show but we didn't have the language I'm using to describe to you and it was to me it was just frustrating I was like wait a second I kind of kick ass here like my channel is like number 21 out of 300 you know I'm doing a great job why am I not getting rewarded for this and why is it so hard and my I was crying a lot and smoking a lot I'm I was very good at smoking I'm a smoking and my my dad kind of had it with me and he loving very lovingly shook me by the shoulders one day and said you can't work for other people and there's no shame in that light bulb right and so that's when I and I'll this is I just want to show this other part because for those of you who are you know maybe inspired but haven't yet made the leap or you know when there's lots of hurdles in your way like the universe is trying to tell you dude you know move you have to make the leap here you have to move it so in that moment all in the same week my husband heard he was my boyfriend then he heard my dad and in his great kindness and wisdom went right out to the bookstore and got me guy Kawasaki's art of the start seminal startup book right and so I started to read that and I got into maybe chapter two where the guy says don't make a plan just get started right meaning like don't waste time thinking about all the things you had to do just you just got to roll with it and I thought okay well I don't need this book anymore and I literally tossed it aside I tried to go back to it but I never really did because that those books are not a map there is no map for what you're doing there's only inspiration you know that's what it's designed to be and then the other thing that happened two other things this is all one week I was reading a self-help book Scott and I I don't like self-help books I I don't I find them just kill me now but I was trying everything I could in my power because I was unhappy and I knew I had to do something and change the channel so I read the secret which is a total bar of a book and the secret by the way is not a secret at all it's a mindset that's what it is and I can see that my mindset sucked I smoked so I'm like totally wishing death on myself literally by the moment I'm all I'm talking about is how much pain I'm in and how much I hate my job and I thought okay well I'm just not gonna do that stuff anymore I'm not gonna talk about I'm not gonna have negative stuff come out I'm gonna stop smoking I'm gonna stop just being like this mess and then I met I went to lunch with some customers who were big fans of mine from from XM and they wanted to hand deliver a product because they wanted to meet me which is very unusual usually just put it in the mail and we went to lunch and it turns out they were angel investors and they gave me $50,000 to start my first company and this all happened in one week and and this was not so this was not expected at all this was this this lunch and did like it was in that lunch that they were like you want to start something you have an idea will help you out yeah I was actually I was remember I told you I don't have an edit button and I was talking about there's this guy Bob Bob left sits who was a big deal in the music industry back of the day he had a newsletter which you know guys my space was just coming around right so and he would he had had authority because he had that voice and Bob was always talking about my show at XM but not giving me credit for it and he told my boss specifically that she couldn't possibly be making those song choices because she's too young and you know couldn't have that where with all and that really pissed me off and so I was complaining about him and they knew who he was and that's when they were just like here here awesome you're crazy let's take on Bob left sits in the world sure why not you know because I didn't I didn't have any what could I lose you know I was already I mean yeah you weren't in a good spot you couldn't really lose anything if anything you know you just end up leaving a toxic work environment and it forces you to find something else it's hopefully a little less shitty that's the worst that can happen if the entrepreneur stuff doesn't work out yeah exactly and like I was so I was lucky luck always has a role I totally believe that you have to have both you have to know the door has to open you have to know to go through so it's both but like I was able to then and I had help I had catalyst to help me do this to start pulling on my my my out my tool drawer of things you know a fiction writing line cook radio okay so I have these skills somebody actually this is a great skill for all you guys listening someone asked me to run through my contacts and try to group them in an in and think of them in unusual ways because I was raising money eventually right I started lately so I like I had to do we will get to that story too but I was trying to think of who they were so my first idea was well they're all music people there's the artists and there's the record industry people right and then I started in their family friends whatever and I started looking at like differently trying to cut the cut cut across these groups in different ways and so I had people I could see were entrepreneurs I had people who I could tell were risk takers like I made these categories it turns out I did have people who had a lot of money in my life but I didn't really know that about them but I had I called them risk takers and those are the people I went to first to bet on me and I raised on nothing on an idea on an idea that I it was so poor back then to be honest it wasn't this at all we raised $250,000 in a few months not mostly from friends and family actually mostly from strangers was one of them actually was but go ahead sorry uh I was gonna say one of them Bob McHouston was one of my biggest fans at exam and he's my largest investor so like radio who knew radio would pay off that ridiculous career I had you know I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode Manscaped now Manscaped is the leader in below the belt grooming and because you're listening today success story you're gonna get 20% off plus free shipping with the code 20 success at Manscaped.com but let me give you a little rundown of why Manscaped is so awesome and what you're gonna be getting so you're getting 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shipping the performance package all the stuff I just mentioned go to Manscaped.com and use the code 20 success that's a whole other conversation to vote if you have a reach in an audience you can do quite a bit with it which that's that's a lesson in the end of itself but okay so you raised you raised 50k then you raised up to 250k still in an idea there's obviously pre revenue so how did you start how did you you know you're now the current iteration of lately is you're not developing this yourself you're not an engineer so what did you do what did you do with that money yeah so so the first money the first 50k we actually built not lately at all we built miniature radio it was two songs today an old song and a new song that chemically had to work together on sonically and chemically and it was free it was like a widget and as I was but it tops on to the ideas that were having here familiar new familiar touch points right it's all there and that's when somebody came to me and said hey you're really good at marketing let's put you on the Walmart account and I was like great goodbye radio I'm done with you for life you know finally but then as that was happening and I was making all these spreadsheets this my spreadsheet system my friend Steve who was in this world he was a former CTO he'd had a successful exit he knew all these words that I didn't know and he said to me kept saying to me let's automate your spreadsheets we just need $25,000 to build wireframes you know and I'm like okay first of all don't touch my spreadsheets second of all $25,000 like have you met me like I'm I was for about to be 40 at the time and I was buying my first house and we've saved scraped and saved to do this you know and then I didn't know what a wireframe was of course and so Steve ended up pulling the money out of his own pocket bringing in one of my co-founders so Steve was the glue he was the person that had the tech background and you know the first go through Scott so me and Jason the the first co-founder that came in Jason single-handedly built small business products for both Target and Bank of America so he you know had that obviously cachet and then our first CTO that we brought in so Jason is my tea product designer my first CTO we lost to alcoholic depression the second one we lost to suicidal depression nobody died I'm just saying they they were evaporating from my life so the funds we raised were evaporating as well and it was hard you know and it took it this was like a two or three years at this point at this point of being into it with nothing to show and still this cockamami idea about spreadsheets and organization and not that AI at all and finally we raised some money and I got a good CTO Brian who's my CTO now is amazing and we watched our customers and what they did and the thing that we thought was valuable wasn't really valuable to them at all what they liked was this crazy idea I had which was let's just take a blog post a button and turn it into 50 social posts that was a so we built the spreadsheet had worksheets and each worksheet was a feature of lately right the platform had all these features that was my process and so our original idea was that my process could be replicated turns out that's not true my process is too complicated to replicate it's too hard to understand because I'm crazy and I don't you can already tell I don't think linearly I don't talk linearly I'm all over the place right I know but it's good I can see I can see so well I can see you know just when you're first speaking I can see why this would be a successful a successful process for marketing but you're right like if you're going to try and turn this into like a any sort of product or software product or SaaS product it seems like there's a lot of points where it can break yeah you're right and you know we're because I as Joanne Wilson my favorite investor says to me I can walk through walls I mean I have no just hit me over the head a few more times like yes please give me another right so we kept we kept piling on because we knew we had something there was there was something there and we were nimble enough to folk keep refocusing on the thing that was surfacing and double down on it and triple down on it and so that's where what we've been doing or and there's there's so many highs and lows I mean I I like getting punched in the face and obviously I love it right and how do your investors like it that's one of my finest qualities I mean like I mean there's a lot of things that I suck at but like I'm competitive and they know that I'm not going to quit and this this game is especially if your woman's got right so so and or underdogs in general but in my world female entrepreneurs only get 2% of all the venture funding 2% 2% now I've raised $3.4 million all from angels not ventures I've had a couple I've had one term sheet in my hand I've failed to raise a price around twice it feels like a huge short coming on my part why can't I achieve this one hurdle and the answer is it's because it's working hard and they they raise the goalposts on you all the time you know and I'm constantly looking for other kinds of validation and checking myself like am I crazy why am I still doing this you know but I've got 348 customers that you know wouldn't let me pry lately from their cold dead hands so it's like constantly thinking to yourself am I stubborn or am I just driven but you still see progress you still see even if it's incremental like the small you're still moving in the right direction always even even though things are always working out and right now speaking of the right direction so so the right direction traditionally for all startups is monthly recurring revenue that's the direction that that's theometer for all the things and we were going we took us a long time we flatlined for a while and we dropped and whatever and then we were flying super high and then something broke and I cried a lot and a lot of stuff actually broke all at once and that was really difficult because you know we can take a lot of punches as myself and my team might have a very high tolerance for pain and stress but this was all the stuff at once and we had to just pick up our heads and and we are we're doing something crazy which is we're saying now that MRR is not our true north no this is crazy right I'm gonna say I'm gonna say making money is not what I care about right now what I care about right now is what what is it what is the one single thing that makes customers not churn what is that thing what do they have to do in my product to get enough aha whatever to to love me till the day they die you know and your goal right now is to figure that out or you have figured that out I know what it is yeah I already knew before but I what I didn't know and this lots of things this year helped me understand what exactly what you said is can you make it a straight line I figured out how to do that but it means becoming what we are and stop trying to be the things we're not and that's a big I'm being a little bit cryptic because it's too long and boring to tell a little a slightly cryptic I'm like wondering like how deep I want to like press on it's like figure out what the hell you're doing right now well I mean I figured out that you can yeah you can sequence you can sequence lately the AI you can't sequence marketing marketing everybody comes at it from different ways and that's what we've been trying to do this is why well no we weren't trying to do it we we knew that and we so we didn't automate a million things and we really relied on customer interaction demos and like an enterprise mindset and we knew all the reasons to not do that or to do that for the moment but we had enough validation happening around you know what we're my gift my uber power is making listeners into fans or customers into evangelists that's what I do and how can I take that and using product leg growth scale that right because what I do now we don't do and lean forward everybody so we don't do any paid ads and no cold calls and no cold emails at lately we only use our own organic AI for all lead generation and we have a 98% sales conversion is incredible that is incredible yeah it's incredible now are you are you are we scale that but the question is yes so might yes I was going to ask how do you scale that but also is that just because you wanted to figure out those key carrots that you have to dangle in front of customers to actually you know those things that you have to have the customer do before you reduce return to whatever zero percent or whatever your metric are trying to achieve do you want to figure that out first before you ramp up the more traditional air quotes type of marketing or is that just not what you want to do as a company you're happy with the 98% conversion rate with no ads back well I mean I've fucked up a million other things like that's the one shining good thing you know but oh I know I'm just wondering where your head that you do the company in the future when you figure those things we have figured them out already because remember what I was saying it's always right in front of you and it was right in front of us and we knew it before we have amassed a lot of data well I had got some great advice from an entrepreneur several years ago which was to always look for the patterns right because you're either going to double down on the patterns or like the patterns are going to show you what's wrong and so I knew that and I had collected all this data and I could tell that I just wasn't looking at it right but I didn't have the wisdom or the perspective I needed I needed someone else to come in and with their eyeballs or light something up and so I spent time with Mark Robairch this summer Mark is yeah Mark is the former CRO that took Hubspot to IPO for those from like he was like employee number like whatever it's six seven and a garage to and he was like the the man gen he's like the person like I like to follow and subscribe to for a content marketing strategy because he's all about inbound he's all about yeah yeah he lives in breather and he's so nice and it wasn't at you know he he emailed me he's also we have time for a quick story yeah he's also a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Business School alumni angels of New York actually led my first round so I like I didn't go to Harvard but like I got Harvard in my life right and he called emailed me and said hey will lately be a part of this thing for my my class and I get these kinds of things all the time and I have to really be judicious about where we spend that time or not because it's not often worth it and I was like sounds like a waste of time no I wasn't paying attention scut because I'm busy and I often I often gloss over things you know I do because like there's so much coming out you right and this person was very precise for persistent and he was like let's get on the phone and I was like okay you got mark on the phone again and again and again yeah I don't know who it is I'm not paying attention I know who he is but I'm not conducting connecting the dots right so we're on a call just like this on a zoom call and he's talking and I just keep thinking damn this guy really took some time to know about me he's cool he's smart he's got good insights because most people don't they're just shining me or whatever advice is free right and I'm googling him and I'm like oh my god it's Mark Rovarish so we did the project it was actually a waste of time but what wasn't a waste of time was that later that summer stage two capital did their first which is Mark's venture arm did their first ever accelerator and they reached out and asked way leader participate and I was like oh I'm going to spend 10 weeks being coached personally by Mark Rovarish yes I'm doing this that's not a waste that is not a waste of time no and he was so he was part in part the catalyst like the he equipped us with people to come in and look at my numbers and help me sift through them in new ways but also I wanted validation Scott because you know I'm like crazy right here we are like oh my god everything is upside down again and I got it I got it in so many ways that like I've done a lot of accelerators as well and I've worked with a lot of people but I'd never had so many people from his cherry pick from his team who actually actually helped me they didn't just give me some advice that I could maybe execute on or noodle on or whatever and in my world that's so valuable because I'm only one human and there's never enough people to do it actually physically do all the things so in time I can get somebody in you know to do it I don't need it I don't need advice I've got advice coming out of my ass you know I need executors right um and you know now it's time to take what I learned and put it to the test and hey see well you know as always like well let's stick to the wall we'll find out stay tuned so okay so then we have to do we'll have to do a follow-up when because I really want to know what what you're changing I like you know even before we jump in this call like you said like you're gonna shake things up you're gonna you know rip stuff out and then so obviously you're like in a in a high transition period right now because I'm I'm curious what I'm curious what it's gonna look like so anyways you have you have some great advice coming in from some great people obviously so I think it's gonna be a net positive I can't imagine it going the wrong way Mark prepares it is really impressive so like if if he's the one who helped be the catalyst for all this I think it's probably gonna end up working out quite well anyways I'm curious yeah because I've also even like when we first before we actually started talking um I was trying to figure out like this seems like it's a great product for like like a consumer or like you know for a smaller content creator and I'm like well this is priced out of my range at that the beginning when I first started looking into it so I'm like how do we how do we you know how how can I use something like this because I'm not Gary Vaynerchuk and I don't have a you know a huge marketing budget but this is like AI is like the dream for a smaller content creator because that's again you know you just mentioned how every time you can bring somebody in to help you like that's well then my in my in my world like tools and tech and AI is what allows me to replicate myself without hiring somebody full time so how do I figure out how to get this into my world and maybe that's I don't hopefully you're going down that road in the future we'll see yeah I feel like I'm democratizing my own company like you know but that's not a bad thing no that's not really a bad no it's the thing we were built we were built to do like this is the best part we should wrap it up I know and I'm being so cryptic and it's mean of me so let's no I just it's it's it's it's it's just means you're you're you're planting for something like the best part is I'm happy you know somebody said to me and and listeners like this is so important and it sounds so fluffy and and cliche but one of my investors and friends Peter said are you happy and the answer was no I don't operate in a world that I'm not happy because you know I've learned the hard way that it manifests physically for me and incapacitates me and I was like oh my god and he asked what what what makes you happy with work you know when I told them the things that I'm best at doing I wasn't actually doing anymore or at all and so we restructured even internally the company who got paid who was going to work here anymore you know sales versus engineering was the decision we made we made we made it engineering we made it product the product needs to shine the product is everything you know I just want to take a second and thank the 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you're trying NordVPN there is literally no risk to you they have a 30-day money back guarantee give it a try if you like it great if you don't the list of you are refund you can pretend it never happened they gave a special discount for success story podcasts listeners they gave a special offer so go to my link at nordvpn.com slash success story to get your subscription started today do you want to talk about I need to talk about Gary Vaynerchuk I just need to talk about Gary Vaynerchuk because we have to talk up okay so first okay so let's sort of like segue into this so the goal of the goal in my mind of lately is to is to help anybody turn themselves into a media company to anybody have a replicable scalable content strategy at its core that's what that's what I think it's most useful utility is and then of course it's you know you said like it takes you three quarters of the way and then of course if you if you're a marketer you can finesse it and you can massage it and then you can tailor it to the audience so that that's the goal right like you have this one piece of content that you can turn into a whole bunch of clips and then it does it smartly and intelligently and and with your brand in mind and then you can disseminate it to any social platform whatever um so this is obviously something that I I learned this strategy before I knew about the tool from Gary Vaynerchuk this is how I grew my show my podcast through this strategy right like you record the long form and then you break it up into clips and you break it up to a blog and you you know you have like the five minute clips for Facebook and you have the two minute clip for Instagram you have a 30 second clip for Reels or TikTok or YouTube shorts or Snapchat spotlight so you have all these different clips and they go anywhere so anyways this is what I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk and then I realized he's actually using your tool so it was he so walk me through that was he already he was already part of the content game for a long time and I'm sure that he was trying to create content scale I don't think there was a tool he was using maybe it was just a team of marketers but then I know that he actually uses lately now so I'm assuming that obviously it was like a holy grail for him and how he markets right I don't know the whole story connecting dots yeah I mean we did a test with them because so so you know lately isn't really made for Gary because Gary doesn't need me he's got an army right and he's not my ideal customer amazingly not he's my ideal poster boy and like the goal wasn't ever to make him a customer because we just knew like it's hard to replace mindset you know we found this when we talked to enterprise customers especially or like large agencies is they get really nervous because they're like well we're already doing this by hand and you're like yeah but we could save you time and and anyways so it was interesting learning from Gary's team you know around that but to your point you know we asked Gary to talk about us on social twice linkedin and twitter we got a ton of inbound and each time we weren't able to convert the inbound at a large scale and like we're like we knew we didn't know why but we were starting to figure it out on top of all the other things we were learning right so like the new product that we are releasing is actually designed for you and everybody else he wants to exactly what you're saying and so that the AI will get them 90 percent of the way there is that only three quarters of the way and to be at that you know consumer kind of kind of price range and all the things with with Gary what what happened was okay so I'll tell this last story and then I got to go because I'm having so much fun video and I realized that I have a thing I want I'm trying to let you so I know we booked you you're supposed to be done like one I was like whatever like these are great stories and and we'll wrap up like okay sorry I don't I didn't want to I didn't want to drag it out too long but it just it's all really great it's all really good stuff and and I appreciate that like you just you're very self-aware entrepreneur and I think that like your your story is is inspirational to say the least and I just appreciate like how real you are with how you've done things and how you're building things and it's just it's nice it's a nice story so I didn't want to go well no no I mean uh to be really clear I can't do this by myself I rely on you I rely on my customers right and like you know what's life after lately I don't know but like as much as I know that part of my journey is to like try to help other people along the way right and so by sharing the stories that's the way I can do it with the time I have all right I can't give people personal consultations or advisor marketing whatever but I can I can share these stories so we've Gary like again we talked about opening the door and then having also the where where where with all to go through um he does four D's right that that course he does where you can go with like seven or ten other people you hang out at Vayner Media all day um we we lived underneath Vaynerd and in an accelerator for a year so I knew where you know I know the building really well and um anyways I got and I got an invite um to four D's so I was like great I will do this I don't really care about having marketing advice from Gary or anybody else all day I just want to close this sale you know I knew that I needed to get the sale to get noticed by Gary and he doesn't know who we are and um so I we we closed a trial with Jim Thompson who was running team very Gary V marketing and it happened to be that Jim was on vacation this week when I when 40s was happening which is a bummer but I figured oh I'll meet everybody else so I went around like so I was like constantly leaving the room I didn't go fuck like you know they're giving me advice on Facebook and Gary only comes in for one hour it's his whole staff is in for the day giving you great advice but like I didn't I don't need that advice you know I'm not like the best things since sliced bread but 98% sales conversion I'm pretty good so um at some point Gary does come in he's so awesome he treats every single person like a superstar and he talks you individually and he focuses on you even there's a room full of people which is an incredible thing for for anyone to do you know I would be impatient person I'd be like oh my god why you're asking this ridiculous stuff but he doesn't he's like you know 100% and he gets to me and I tell him what I do I've actually met him before but he did remember when I pointed out which is funny but anyways so um he was like wow marketing automation we would never use that here I'll get back to you he's kind of short with me and I was like okay and so then he comes around the room and you're oh we're supposed to have all these questions for him and I don't have any questions I'm scrambling to come up some questions my little notebook and uh so he gets back to me and he's like wait a second are we uh he said he said yeah something again but not using AI and I said well actually you guys are using lately right now and he was like what and to his great credit he he said to the cameraman or Nick or whoever it was he's like who who's using lately get them in here and so he brings in Rogan who's like using lately yeah we love it like here's what it does you know and it was this great moment where and they videotape this whole thing and they put it out as content right because that's what Gary's about and so this an hour-long show he spends 18 minutes with me which is a long time and then he chooses to put this out like so you know he kind of was caught by surprise which I think is you know that's that's integrity coming out your eyeballs right so awesome yeah that's you're not going to get a much better recommendation than not for somebody who's yeah that's yeah yeah and then like you know they they were we thought they were about to churn and then we released the video clipping feature and we saved the sale for a couple years and then actually they recently churned which is no surprise we knew I mean like they're not using it right yeah and my relationship with Gary isn't for him to become a customer it's from for him to help me market it to all of his followers um and he's the actual ideal customer profiles like the people that don't have a team of a hundred marketers that's that's who you who want to use it or you need to use it that's who needs to use yeah yeah yeah and he's just the he's just the nicest human like he always like I try not to bother him very often but like I do have his phone number and I do once in a while text him and he always responds it's nice and yeah I mean I feel like you know what I hate I hate always asking and I want to give and I don't know what to give him because he doesn't need anything for me do you know what I mean so listen if you have any ideas let me know it's it's so much better to come bearing a gift and then to ask later right yeah I hate feeling the needy team is needy I don't want to be the needy team um okay let's uh let's uh let's wrap this up not because I want to wrap it up but because we have to wrap it up we have to have life okay so uh I needed to do a quick a couple quick rapid fire but you can go really really quick I just need them for the end of the show but before I pivot into these uh where can people reach out do you find you where do you want to communicate social media uh website all that stuff um friendly you can get me on twitter uh uh lately ai katley so katley my team calls me katley from lately um lately is dub dub dub dub that lately dot ai and um tell me where you are and how the weather is because there's are the great questions that everybody can relate to good very good all right quick rapid fire uh biggest challenge you've had in your personal life uh what was it had you overcome it personal or professional excuse me uh my hands not being able to use my hands to type as terrifying and scary and I use that voice activated software every day like this is why the reason I have this headset is because I talk all damn day long right so like I cheat I can hear myself I have resting bitch face in writing I do like I can hear it so like when I was talking about reading it out loud it's because I live that you know I know I know I got to put a lot of smiley faces in there yeah to choose one person there's obviously been many who have been incredibly impactful in your life who was it and how did they help you what did they teach you my husband David teaches me all the time that uh I'm worth putting up with you're not that bad I'm very nice I mean you know all right your favorite source to learn to grow book podcasts audible anything you'd recommend people go check out um I reread the Harry Potter series every year um it's my go-to because I know how the story ends and I like an underdog to win and I believe in magic amazing you can tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be spend money on eye cream sooner that's a good one and then last question what does success mean to you oh god and honestly it does mean money yeah and I'm not a shame to say that and I'm I want to roll in that stuff man