The Marketing Secret Billy Idol Accidentally Taught Mike Montague

00:00:00 AI is fast and trust is slow. There are some problems that just speed, automation and AI can't solve.

This is Mike Montague, the founder of Avenue9, a human first AI marketing agency that has worked with brands including LinkedIn, Uber, Zoom, Bud Light, or the Kansas City Chiefs.

ChatGPT can tell a story. It can't tell your story. It doesn't have that context, background, that lived experience, those gut feelings that you have.

This episode will show you how to use AI to grow marketing results without losing your brand, voice, relationships, or ethics.

Billy Idol fired me live on stage in front of thousands of people. I was an opening act as a DJ, but what that moment taught me was...

Mike. What'd you just share based on that experience that you had on stage? I assume shape everything that you touch right now from the way you approach marketing, the way you build 00:01:00 businesses. Can you roll a bit back? The time to truly paint the picture of that experience, how it felt in that moment without realizing all the benefits that come after that.

I think it really is a, a defining moment in my career because a couple of interest. Things happened leading up to it. One, um, I stepped up. Uh, I was really young. I was at the radio stations and Billy Idol happened to call our station 'cause we were sponsoring the event and say, do you know anybody that can play music?

His opening act had had gotten sick and they were like, we need somebody to just fill an hour so that we don't have to have everybody sitting around, you know, waiting for the, the show to start or we don't have to start early. And I was like, yeah. I can do this and, and I forget how old I was, probably around 25 and, um. I really loved that. I never turned down a chance to be on a microphone. It, it's one of the, the reasons I'm here with you today, but also, uh, defining characteristic of my career. That if 00:02:00 I have a, an opportunity to connect with an audience or express myself or create something new, share my, my thought leadership and what I'm learning, I want to take advantage of, of those.

It's a, a flow state moment for me and, and really. Powerful. I was also really kind of overconfident that, uh, I knew what I was doing at that moment. And so it, it's also probably a defining characteristic of my career. But, um, at that time I had been DJing hundreds, if not already, thousands of, of events.

And I knew this audience was, um, probably like soccer moms going to see Billy Idol in the early two thousands There. You know, they're middle-aged women. They like, you know, Jesse's girl, 8 6 7 5 3 0 9, you know, wham. But any kind of eighties fun pop music, uh, Michael Jackson, all those songs like really went over well 00:03:00 on those audiences.

What I didn't realize was that my ultimate audience was not. The ladies out in the crowd. My audience was Billy Idol and his manager who hate all of those artists I just mentioned, including the song that got me fired, which was Casey in The Sunshine Band. Uh, do a Little Dance, make a Little Love, and Get Down Tonight.

I, I like to play that song because I like to make the joke, not in that order. Save the making love for the end of the night. Feel free to do a little dance or get down though, while, while we're here. And, uh, and then the lesson that I, I shared was. Ultimately after that experience, I thought, oh, well.

That's it. I like, I ripped the bandaid off. Like, what, what could happen on this podcast? Or I, I have an interview with a newspaper this afternoon, or a speech to give later this week. Uh, a zoom call to, you know, a hundred salespeople. What's gonna happen on that? That's worse than getting fi fired by Billy Idol in front of thousands of 00:04:00 people.

Nothing can happen. I'm bulletproof. Now. I'm untouchable because I've gone through that like, um. Curing process. Like they, they talk about in, uh, you know, ceramics or something. I've been through the fires now. I know that like on the other side, everything's fine.

I like that. I love that frame, and yeah, that's the case, right? When you are put in those type of situation in which you, it cannot get worse than that, right? It's so easy to frame it that way. But for those that haven't been through fire, what would be your, your recommendations in order to maybe get a bit tougher or, and not, because I, I, I, I'll share a bit of tangent here.

If I have a friend that had a bad experience. After that back, the experience, he couldn't do that thing anymore, which is public speaking

and being in front of people and those people are like booing him and so on. I was like, I'm not going out again on stage. And that the 00:05:00 immediately opposite effect from your experience.

Yeah, in, in some ways I can't. Relate to that. I think maybe I grew up in, in sports and stuff where you kind of, you win some, you lose some, and, and sometimes the losses teach you more about yourself than the wins. And, and I had a dad that was a coach, a basketball coach and stuff that really, um, inspired me to kind of treat all those as, as learning lessons.

It also, I think, depends on how bad you want it, um, but. Several things came to mind when you mentioned that I love the idea of your podcast and what you're encouraging people to, to do. Uh, first, let's talk to your friend because my first experience on stage was a disaster. Uh, I was in middle school and I was tasked with giving a speech in front of the class.

I didn't prepare. I didn't know what I was talking about. I didn't, I, I was clenching my hands so hard that my fingers turned white. I stumbled. I was like, I couldn't breathe. It was a total 00:06:00 panic attack, and I think the teacher didn't even make me redo it. I think she was just like, that was so bad. We're just gonna give you a C and pretend like that didn't happen and, and never ask you to be on stage again.

But it was a short time after that that I decided to enter storytelling competitions in, in eighth grade that I, um. Practiced. I just got this down and I, for somehow I figured it out that it was like, the more I do this, the better at it I get. And so I went to every classroom in the, the school practiced over 30 times in front of audiences.

Some were better, some were worse. But after that, I won first place. Every competition except for one. And the one I got second place in, I had like laryngitis and was coughing and could barely speak and stuff, but I still went out there and performed and, and did my thing because I was like, this is just part of it.

And I think my experience in radio taught me that too, that in good 00:07:00 days and bad days, something is still going out over the air. Whe whether I choose to or not. Like my show starts at five. Something is gonna, it's either dead air or music, or I say something good or I say something bad, something is going to happen, uh, on the radio this afternoon, and there's no, like, I don't feel like it.

Um, maybe I'll try it tomorrow. There's no delay when you have that kind of audience to, to show up and perform for, and that's how, now how I treat my authority stuff of the podcast that I, that I host, the Human First AI marketing podcast or my email blast, or my social media posts, I say. Today is the day I send something out.

Something's going out. Whether I like it or not, fine. I'll get feedback. We'll do it again next week and I'll make it better. Uh, if I'm not proud of it, but I'm sending something out, I'm creating something because today is the day that I create something. And I have actually one more thought here. Which is that I 00:08:00 also learned in my career early on in radio, I got some feedback for a joke that was, uh, a little bit offensive.

It was actually complimentary to the group I was making it about, but they didn't like the fact that I'd singled out a group. Of people. And I got a called into the, the manager's office at the radio station. And later in my career, similar things happened. I, I was working for a large company called Sandler and I was writing like 10,000 words a week.

And somewhere, uh, along the line in one of the courses I mentioned that like, um, young girls are known for journaling and, and stuff. And it was like, we're not keeping a, a diary of our feelings. We're just, um, you know, we're keeping track of our results and stuff. And someone, uh, said that was a microaggression towards women, which I can understand.

Uh, now, but that wasn't my intent. And again, I got, you know, kind of 00:09:00 called into the boss's office and they said, how do we fix this? And what can we do? And I'm totally open to hear about it. Um, but in my mind, I had to tell myself, and this would be the message to your friend. Somebody booze, that's really just feedback.

Like I'm the one doing the work. I'm the one putting myself out there. So if somebody disagrees with something that I say or something that I wrote on behalf of the company, of course it's because I'm the one willing to have the guts to put it out there. They're not going to be offended by something I didn't publish.

Right. So that, that's the only way to fix that, is to hide and, and be small and to not publish something. So the good and the bad is putting yourself out there. And I found in my career a lot more good comes from it than the bad. So when it's so outweighed, I just take that with a grain of salt to get his

feedback and keep moving.

And I couldn't.

Or because all those experiences shape us, and especially when you 00:10:00 have the courage to show up and do the thing when others are just looking and judging, but often they're just too afraid or who knows, to not do enact themself, um, in a way, and especially nowadays, and speaking of human first, uh, approach when it comes to marketing, AI and, and so on, it's.

It's so important to actually show yourself and be human. What's your approach when it comes to retaining this part of humanity and still leverage AI to to progress?

I think that's a great question because a lot of people use AI to hide. Now they, they say, oh, well if I have. Hey, I write my LinkedIn post or my blog article, or my script for this podcast, then I don't have to take responsibility for it. You know, I can blame my boss or it can let me off the hook if I am the boss.

I'm trying to build 00:11:00 my own side project to go, oh, well, they didn't like it. They didn't like what Chachi BT made. They didn't like me. And when you put your heart and your voice into something. That's when it feels more personal. That's when it feels risky. That if they didn't like this, well, they didn't like my best work, they didn't like my creative thinking or my storytelling.

Uh, but I don't think about it that way. I think much more like you do, which is, um, that's the interesting part. Anybody, you now can ask chat, GBT to. You know the answer to a blog post or whatever question you were talking about. What they can't get is your unique. Experience. So the, the way I say that is, uh, ChatGPT can tell a story. It can't tell your story. It doesn't have that context, background, that lived experience, those gut feelings that you have. So anything you create on your own is inherently gonna be more interesting. And, uh, one of my favorite 00:12:00 quotes of all time is a former Supreme Court Justice. Howard Thurman, he said, don't ask what the world needs.

Ask what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.

Exactly

And I think that's an amazingly powerful quote, but it certainly applies to now and in the near future with AI is like, what we don't need is more people cranking out AI slop. I can guarantee that.

What we do need is hearing what makes you come alive, your unique point of view and, and your unique humanity in the piece, because that's the only thing left. That's interesting.

true. And. The unique stories that you have, like, like share yours. Uh, and I hope that my friend will listen to this conversation and get off that moment and actually try again and to see that actually those like repetitions that we do. And yeah, we might get embarrassed sometimes or we might hear someone not agreeing with us or going 00:13:00 to the, the manager office, uh, to.

Question something or, but all those moments shape us and create these stories which we can share further and inspire others or help others succeed in their own way. And I think that. Well, yeah, it's a fantastic tool. It's amazing. And even, yeah, it can take our context and create based on our previous experience and stories, content and so on.

But when you show up, like you show today, live in a podcast conversation, it's, this can be faked. Like it's, it's you, Mike hearing, uh, sharing your stories, sharing your experience, sharing your frameworks, and so on. And I think this is something that people should do more often. No matter how hard it's at the beginning, you get over it and you start creating something that it's worthwhile.

And when it comes to this, like based on, um, your company direction and so on, how do you encourage 00:14:00 others to make this step in order to promote their own stories, share their own stories, and how that basically shaped the path of your company as well?

What comes to mind is another favorite lesson of of mine that some of the best. Things about failing or putting out pieces of content or starting a podcast that, that people don't listen to or, or creating a YouTube video that nobody but your mom watches. The, the best thing about that is it gives you the chance to try things to fail and, and to get better while no one is watching.

And so what I think a lot of people miss because we only see. You know that bad bunny got to do the Super Bowl. What we don't see is the last 20 years he spent struggling when nobody knew who he was, especially in the United States. And so we miss that context of what it's really like to start, uh, 00:15:00 as someone who is a creator or an authority in the space, is you practice all of those.

Things when nobody is watching that. If you, if your first gig with the, was the Super Bowl, it would be embarrassing, right? You'd be in front of billions of people, you wouldn't know what you're doing. You'd be off key. Your songs would be terrible and, uh, nothing would work, right? You wouldn't know how to do the production or anything else.

But by starting in a crappy club with four people and it's just your friends and, and practicing there, you allow that to build up. So I, I've really learned that throughout my career in every yard form. Is writing a blog that nobody reads, uh, until somebody does, and then it gets better and then it gets in front of other people.

And I started radio, you know, doing like the overnight shifts from midnight to 5:00 AM on Sunday morning. And when no one's listening, and then slowly get a better shift and then a better shift. And then I get to fill in on drive time, 00:16:00 uh, in the mornings or, or afternoons when somebody's sick. And then I get to do that full show or then I get to fill in for a week and all of a sudden you start building those reputations.

And, and same thing with my podcast is. Almost nobody listens, um, to the first episode or even the first five or or six. But when I'm 75 in, or, or the show I did previously, I did over 700 episodes and it had 4 million downloads. The only way to get to 4 million is to start with one.

You know, you gotta publish, uh, start with one, then get that first listener, and then if it's good

enough, you know, find a second one or they'll, they'll share it with people. I think a lot of people wanna shortcut the process or they, they're afraid of the failures in between that are really the valuable learning lessons.

And for me, I've always framed it as the fun part, like you said, the interesting part of the story. So I could talk for hours and I'm gonna try not to about the times that I was. 00:17:00 Um, you know, I was maced on stage by police. Uh, the, I've missed events. I've been sick, I've had car accidents on, on the, the way to shows.

I have, um, had, you know, fights break out. I've had, uh, people stand up and walk out of a performance or something, and all of those different things are fine. That's part of what happens. But for me, those are the ones where I go, oh, something interesting happened. This just. Made it fun. Like if I just get up there and do my thing, it might as well be a prerecorded performance if everything goes smooth in the way that I planned it.

I wanna see those interesting moments as, as growth opportunities, as, uh, opportunities for me to improvise and learn something new or, or find a new joke or, or learn a new skill along the way

because something didn't work.

Yeah, exactly. And often those are the best lessons because yeah, from success, definitely you can learn and you can apply some of those to like succeed more and so on. But when you 00:18:00 encounter a huge roadblock or a challenge that didn't truly go as planned, it's so much. Powerful when you truly acknowledge what was the lesson there and

We're talking about the bad ones, but I would also say the good ones. Sometimes you're surprised, like I've also published stuff that went wildly viral and uh, early on in my career I published a YouTube video for a, a rapper that got like 30 million views in the first like. Week. And it was insane. Every time you look at and refresh the page, it was like another million views.

And you're like, wow, this is incredible. I can't believe this happened. And so those things too, like you don't plan for that. You, you can't expect that to happen. But those magical kind, serendipity moments and, and viral moments are when things hit. Those are also huge learning lessons and things that make it, uh, amazing.

So I try not to avoid the chaos. I try to lean into that and I want the peaks and valleys 00:19:00 because when something flat lines, that means it's dead. Right? That means there's, there's no life left in it at all. I want the, the

ups and downs.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, uh, but let's talk a bit about predictability. Like, and especially when it comes to marketing. Like I know that, um, you said that speed can make weak campaigns fail faster. when they're actually marketing teams miss this.

I think, uh, like I said, you know, kind of with building your authority is everybody wants the shortcuts. Everybody wants to, to speed things up. What they don't, what they're assuming is. That what they're doing is gonna work. Right. And that's the same thing I, I mentioned, um, with uh. Building your authority and your experience over time.

Marketing is the, the same way, right? We have to run these little ab tests and these experiments to see what works and what resonates, and we gotta work on our message and hone it over time. I 00:20:00 heard a comedian the other day say a great line. They, they said, you know, AI can write jokes. And even pretty good ones.

And they said, sure, hey, I can write a joke, but what I can't do is wait tables for 10 years and, you know, sleep on a girlfriend's couch for, for three years and, and figure out how to, to get a laugh in a, a struggling club with nobody there that's paying attention. Right. Those are. Are lived experiences that bring a ton of value.

And I think for marketing teams, the same thing. Is, is true that, uh, it would be nice and I, I think if you're well, you don't get those jobs. I was just gonna say, if you work for like Pepsi or Coke or something, you probably need your campaign to hit. People are investing millions of dollars on it, but they test those and the people that get those jobs are ones that paid their dues.

Building smaller campaigns for smaller companies. Anyway, your first job outta college is not gonna be writing a Super Bowl campaign for Pepsi. Um, so I, for me, all of that is part of 00:21:00 the experience. But I think ai, we have to be really careful because there's some. Parts of life that don't get better with speed.

Uh, right. We, we can think of some relationship, uh, opportunities that you don't necessarily want to be quick at, but also in, in building trust or, or relationships with your audience is the human side of, of their trust building process and their awareness of your products and services, and your credibility is still moving at human speed.

So even if you could say, I just made 450 pieces of content that prove every answer, every question you need to know, prove that I'm the best and why I'm better than every single competitor you're considering right now. They wouldn't have time to read it. They would still take weeks and months to, to click through it and, and to see it and to build the, the trust and relationship.

And you still need to show up credibly and reliably over time, uh, and generously in order to earn their trust as a lifelong 00:22:00 client. So I think what a lot of people miss is, um, whether you're going viral on social media, if it goes up fast, it can go down fast. They're, they're not subscribers. Uh, but also if a customer switches to you right away, that also means they're willing to switch away from you right away.

So all of those come with downsides as well. So I try to use the productivity to, um, move what I'm making or make it better or move my process faster, but not to try to move the buyer's

process faster, if that makes sense.

It makes, because often, like we assume that it's a straight line when, um, it comes to some be going from prospects to to buyer, but often it's like they might come across your content or your, your marketing campaign and then they do. Get distracted by something else and they, ah, look, uh huh mic pop up in my feed as well.

Again, let me check this piece of content. 00:23:00 And they go do something else. And maybe two weeks later they actually act and, and so on. And especially now when trust is so low, like it's so freaking hard to build authority and trust nowadays and especially when it comes to deep fakes and other approaches. I mean, you see.

People that you actually follow for years, like big podcast celebrities, and they come up with this weird ad and I was like, no way. This person said that. And it turned out they're not them. It's just the fake of them. Huh? How we get protected and the same time to make an informed decision when it comes to buying, when all these things go around.

Especially now with ai.

I have several thoughts here as well too. In my book, uh, playful Humans, I, I talked about three different types of work, and I think we need to separate out some, some tasks here between what are AI tasks and what are human tasks and in. Physical labor, like if you're building a brick wall, 00:24:00 the more bricks that you put on the wall, the bigger or or wider it gets, right?

Hard work equals success. The more you put on the pile, the bigger the wall gets. Um. Most of us now do intellectual work, which is not the same. The more intellectual work you do, you don't get better results necessarily. There's what's called a law of diminishing returns. You might get a, a big spike and it looks like a straight line at first, but then it kind of like peters off a little bit and, and it, it flattens out where, just like what we were talking about with giving content to your buyers, you go, okay, if you.

Publish something on social media that's better, way better than nothing, but all of a sudden, two posts is not twice as good as one post and 200 posts that are AI generated. Don't equal 200 times. That first post you wrote by your yourself. The math just doesn't work. It it, it flattens out. There's a third type of work, which is emotional work, and I think that's where most humans are gonna be, and that's where we are in 00:25:00 marketing or or trust.

Building with authority is sometimes the opposite is true. The harder you try to make somebody love you, the less likely they are to love you back. The harder you try to sell somebody, the less likely they are to buy. And so I think we're seeing that with authenticity. Two. Right. The more you try to make something authentic, the less authentic it becomes.

So we have to let go in those situations. We have to do something that that's human. The hard work, the more the speed, the the bigger, faster, more polished doesn't solve the problem. We have to think about it differently. So then. We can map our work into a couple of different categories. What's human work?

That needs to be human. It'll always be human. What's AI work that humans are bad at? Like if I need somebody to transcribe this podcast, I probably don't want a human sitting there there typing out every single word we did. AI does it faster, better now, and it's not critical work as long as they get the words right.

Great. 00:26:00 We did it. Or. Translating into foreign languages and stuff that could be really expensive and time consuming with humans, but now a couple clicks of a button and we can publish this podcast in any language we want. That's super cool. Right? Those are AI only jobs. There are jobs neither. Should do, right?

There's just work. We shouldn't be doing things, we're not ready for things that are outside of our capability. But I, I think what people are missing and, and this is the, the role of my company in marketing, is the box that's getting bigger and bigger are the things that humans should do with ai. We can do it a lot faster or better if we have an AI assistant working with us, but we're directing the strategy.

We're making sure it sounds like us. We're putting in the context, our expertise or our authority, and we're using the AI to accelerate or amplify what we're doing, not replace it.

Does that, that sound

yeah. Can you gimme a specific example on this? Especially when, when you mentioned that the, the box 00:27:00 gets bigger and Yeah, you definitely need to use AI in order to, to get, uh, help there.

So podcast is a great example. I do this with my show. I, I'm up to over 35,000 subscribers on YouTube because I use a lot of AI tools. After I record this authentic conversation, I take that and I put it into ai. I get the transcript, I take the transcript to chat GBT, and I say. Help me, you know, pull out the most interesting parts of what I said, what's most relevant to my target audience.

Let's create a blog from that. Let's create social media posts. From that, uh, we can say which 30 or 30 to 90 seconds. Clips were the most entertaining for vertical shorts. What three to five minute portions of the the podcast interview were the best for YouTube highlights or might make great educational pieces.

Where did I say something unique or different that I want to document it for a book that I'm writing or for a, a future blog post or would make a great 00:28:00 email. List to my audience and all of a sudden that human work that I did of having the conversation and being in the flow state and being present with here with you becomes a whole bunch of additional marketing assets.

And I can train, translate that conversation into a bunch of different pieces that people cons consume. Not too many people are gonna wanna listen to me for 45 minutes, but they can watch a 62nd clip, or they can scan through a blog post and check out the highlights of what I said. Or they, maybe they'll listen while they're working out, but they can't watch the video or other people wanna watch what I, I said and, and see a tutorial or something else, uh, in a different video.

So I think that's kind of what I'm talking about. I, I think. Too many people either try to replace themselves with AI or make AI do the heavy lifting of like, take this one prompt that I give you and turn it into a blog post or a script. But if it's 00:29:00 stretching, I call it my concentrated orange juice analogy that if it waters it down, you don't get good orange juice.

If you only gave it a little bit and ask it to stretch, but if I do the hard work first, if I do the human part and I have an hour long conversation with you, and then I ask AI to boil it down to the concentrate and say, give me the best, you know, five minutes, the best three thoughts that was in that hour.

Now I've done the hard work and it's condensing rather than expanding stuff, and I've just found that makes a a world of difference, especially in authority, because I can't ask ai. To be the expert for me, but I can say, highlight what parts of my expertise are interesting

to my audience.

Yeah. That's so good. And, uh, you inspire me, Mike, to, to start doing that. I, I was doing this I think at the beginning of last year, and then because I got too busy and I was like, uh, back then. AI tools weren't that good. 00:30:00 I was like, just, uh, I'll try in the future. And I never did. And you inspire me, especially because, uh, at the time of recording, I'm about to launch the 150 episode the next week and, uh, yeah.

People that listen to this will be like a bit further away in the future, but hopefully guys, what you prepare, you'll like it. And because indeed some, they don't want to listen to a full hour episode, they just want the insights right away. Or they want to test the waters first before they actually dive into the full episode.

And that's, that's very powerful. For those that are listening, like maybe they don't have a podcast, they don't create content that much, but they still want to leverage AI to benefit from, uh, from it. When it comes to the way they run the business or the marketing campaigns, what would be your suggestion for them?

This is what I do at Avenue nine two is. You can make your own podcast. You're having human conversations 00:31:00 every single day. They're in your sales meetings, in your sales calls, you can meet with the founder of the company. You can interview yourself. You can ask somebody or even chat, CBT to ask you questions about what, what it is, and, and you can speak it into existence or, um, I like to interview clients, um, and top salespeople.

I like to figure out, you know, like case studies, what happened. Here, why did this work? Why did you buy from us? And collect all of that information and then do the same thing, say out of this, you know, client interview or out of the sales call that I had, what were the most interesting parts? Why would they buy from me instead of somebody else?

And then I create custom presentations and PowerPoint decks. If you haven't used the tool Gamma yet, gamma app, uh, if you search for it, you can. Um. Take the transcript from your sales call, put it into chat, GBT and say, write an outline for my, my to pitch my company to this person based on what they said in the sales call.

00:32:00 Then take that outline and put it into Gamma and it'll create a polished presentation with your brand, your logos, your, your colors, all the slides beautifully designed, and in like 15 minutes after the call, I email them. A link to this custom presentation that's written exactly to what they said in the, the call, what they were looking for, why they would buy from me, why I'm better and different than other people.

And it increases my, my closing percentage, uh, dramatically. Uh, I think that I. People, uh, part of it is what I do. So it's a little like self-fulfilling prophecy. There they go. I wanna know that, you know, my, my salespeople are not creating custom presentations and emailing 'em to our clients within 15 minutes.

What's happening? I need you to, to teach me this. Uh, so that helps for me. But in whatever you do, I think it's powerful that people go, oh, they're professional. They took the time to do this. This wasn't a, a. Blanket, you know, or AI slop created from 00:33:00 nothing. It wasn't a, a generic presentation. This is custom and personalized to me, and I think that's another big, powerful tool of,

of ai for

Yeah, because often when you use. The transcript of the conversation, you'll have the words your prospect actually share in the, in the call and using their own words in the presentation. We'll be much more likely for them to, uh, connect with those words and they're like, oh, that sounds like me. Yes, because it is you, it's tailored for you.

It's,

and so on. And yeah, and I think there. So many use cases in which you can just leverage these tools and take advantage of the amazing time that you're in. And of course, there are people that are afraid that they're gonna quote, unquote, lose their jobs. But if you are playing with this, if you're using it on a daily basis, even for, for some small things.

Slowly, slowly, you become good at it. You'll try other tools, you'll play more and you'll realize like, oh my God, my 00:34:00 life is so much easier right now. And there are so many opportunities that come with that. And still when we should say, stop. Like, I will never, never outsource this to AI or use AI for doing this for me.

that's a great question because I, I think AI can be helpful in some of these things, but maybe it's not doing the, the hard part. Um, right. So a few things come to mind when I give this example of the buckets that should stay human Right. You know, taking your. Your spouse or partner out on the the Valentine's Day date probably shouldn't send your AI avatar like you need to to show up for that, but I think the same thing applies for your best clients or a difficult conversation if you need to.

I. You know, if you need to raise the price, if, if something went wrong, and you gotta have a difficult conversation. If, if you need to let somebody go on your, your team, you shouldn't have AI write those emails. Um, you should show up and do it. 00:35:00 Now, you can still use AI to prep yourself for this and say, Hey, I gotta have a really difficult conversation for a client.

They want to, they want something that I, I can't deliver. Help me prepare for this conversation. But then I think you have to go and, and show up and do it. I would say especially for people trying to build authority. There's a time where you gotta show up and do it, you gotta prove it right. AI can fake a lot of stuff.

It'll make you sound smart in a blog or, I was thinking about that presentation and some like clients that, that I work with, they work in weird industries that I don't know anything about. And so AI will, you know, use their language or, or their terms that I don't really know what they mean. And so I have to do some work to study that, but it can make me sound smarter than I am.

But at some point. I need to show up. I, I'm gonna have to be the person on the stage. I'm gonna have to be the person in the call. I'm gonna have to, um. Be in a live meeting or go on a podcast and share what I'm all about. So, uh, podcast prep 00:36:00 is another one that I've given a, a presentation on before where it's great.

Use AI to research the, the show, give you ideas, talking points, give you interesting things to say, prep you, uh, about the host or, um, your topic. Once the show starts, you gotta close all those windows and you just have to be present. And so what I, I tell people for that is. You wanna know what you want to talk about, you don't want to know how you're going to say it.

You, if you try and read a script, if you try on a sales call or in a podcast or anything, the problem is the other person on the other side doesn't have their half of the script, and so you're gonna sound like a robot. They're gonna throw you something you didn't prepare for, and you're not gonna be in the flow state and ready for it.

So those are the things that come to mind where. It requires humanity, it requires empathy, um, creativity. I think we also need some time to step back. Uh, like I mentioned is sometimes doing the opposite 00:37:00 is the right thing to do and, and humans know when to break the rules. AI does not. So when you get that gut feeling that like nine times outta 10, we would do it this way, but today is that 10th time. That's I think the human work that's

most powerful.

Perhaps because you, AI won't say no, right? It's a people pleaser, and if you feel it like, oh, maybe this prospect is someone that I should avoid. It's just an opportunity, uh, distraction. This guy's an opportunity. Yeah. You should be there as you and saying that no, rather than accepting a deal or making a deal, because AI should be used to, to build the trust, to accelerate trust and not automate it because you, you cannot automate trust if you're there, like in the trenches.

Uh, and do some of the work that you only you can do, AI won't be able to do it.

And even with AI avatars and stuff, like, uh, I, the 00:38:00 other day I was researching something and I was watching these YouTube videos, like, this sounds weird, and, but it's still, it took me like probably 30 to seconds, to one minute to realize that's in AI avatar.

And after those, that first minute. The quote unquote person actually share. This is the AI avatar of the, the guy that has that YouTube channel. And we're, today we're gonna break down this, uh, this topic. And I was like, 300 something thousand people tune in to watch that AI avatar clip. It was like six minutes to seven minutes longer.

YouTube video. I was like, wow. In the same

time. Did any of those convert into potential clients? Probably not. They were just there like me learning something new about that topic, but probably none of those truly connect because yes, it was like a robot. And yes, they're getting better and they'll be better.

00:39:00 You probably won't make the difference, but if that person, let's say, attracts a prospect. Jump on a call with that person, it'll still send AI avatar. At some points, yes, probably, but in the same time, you still have to face that client face to face at some point or in a Zoom call and

and so on. What you'll do.

Well, I, I have a great analogy for this too, is that I feel like it's a, AI is a nice magic trick. The first time you see the magic trick, you go, wow, that's, I impressive. You know? The second time you see it, you go, well, it's a magic trick, right? And I kind of feel like that with the AI avatars that you go, oh, that's kind of cool.

And maybe if it does allow you to do something you wouldn't be able to do as a human. You can use real creativity that way. Like I mentioned, you know, foreign languages and stuff. I don't speak Spanish. If I can deliver my same content in Spanish and use my AI avatar, that's bringing value 00:40:00 to my Spanish speaking listeners that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do, but.

At the same time, if I'm using it as a shortcut or a customer service thing, or people don't develop relationships with AI avatars, they, they develop them with people. I think all the stuff you said. Occurs and when they peek behind the curtain to see who's did the magic trick or why they shouldn't be surprised, they shouldn't be disappointed.

They, you know, it should be like, oh, that makes sense. Like, that's really cool. That person did something with AI that is smart and creative and interesting, but they didn't like deceive me. They, they shouldn't

feel disappointed, right.

Yeah, true.

Since, uh, you cannot just use AI and expect that people will trust you or or so on.

But if you do it in an ethical way, and here I have a question, like what's the boundary? Like what, what are the things that 00:41:00 will break trust immediately if you do them? With AI in your view and which are like, alright, for this I'll probably forever use ai.

That's a great question. I don't know if I've thought about this too much, but I, I can probably come up with an answer here because I think, um, I think we've hit on a few of them. Number one, I think is, um, I. Authenticity that like if, if you're pretending to be something you're not, or you're deceiving people and they, they feel disappointed that it was fake or, um, that they, they bought something they, that they didn't realize they were doing or, or somehow misled.

I, I think that's a big red flag. The other one is, um. Generosity that I think when people make a mistake with ai, they're saying, oh, this'll save me a ton of time if I automate all my customer service messages. They didn't 00:42:00 ask themselves would the person on the other end feel taken advantage of or generous.

We've all been. On, you know, uh, an 800 number. When you try to call customer service and you're lost in a phone tree and you're extremely frustrated as a customer, it doesn't matter how much time they saved them at the organization, they're wasting your time as the buyer. So I think look for ways you can use AI that's generous to your audience and your ideal clients, and not just selfish for, for you.

I think, um. Reliability and credibility also kind of go together there. If I feel like, um, I'm getting inconsistent results from you and I, I don't know who you are. That's another kind of, you know, tangent to the authenticity part that I, I don't know if I can trust you because you're not reliable. Your AI bot is, or I 00:43:00 can't get ahold of you when I need to because your AI chat box.

Pops up when I, when I don't need it. I think those are kind of big things, so I, I look for places where AI or automation increases my reliability and, and chance to, to show up when it matters versus decreasing it or, or they feel like I'm not gonna be there when that matters. Those are probably the big three for me.

What about you?

And especially I want to add something to the customer relationship thing. Like I would love to see companies implementing an actually easy process of you choosing how you get the support with like, all right. I like, I have a quick question that probably AI can look through the knowledge base and gimme an answer.

But sometimes I really need to speak to a human, not go through a five minutes process to ask tons of questions, just to, for the AI to decide, oh, it's time to get help from a, a real human being

and.

I've ended up in loops too. Uh, I mean, I think banks are the worst and they have some 00:44:00 pretty clear examples that like, if I need to check my balance or change my pen, I should be able to do that online. Without getting a human involved, but there's still banks and stuff that, that don't do it that way. And you have to call in and wait on hold or talk to somebody to to verify who you are and give your whole life story before they let you change your pin number.

It's probably good for security and there's reasons for that, but I. I think that's very frustrating. But at the same time, like you said, then I wanna get a loan, or my check didn't go through, or something happened and I can't get ahold of a person and they're sending me through an AI automated system.

And you're like, no, I just, now is the time I want to talk to a human. I had one with Google where my YouTube ads weren't playing and it flagged something as a, a European political advertisement that I don't know if my name matched, uh, a politician or something somewhere, but. I tried the AI bot and then it sent, sent me to the help center.

Uh, the help center sent me back to the AI robot. 00:45:00 And so I asked for a person and the person said, no, you have to do that through our automated system. Here's the link, and hung up on me. And I was like, this is ridiculous. They, they're sending me from like the, the self-serve help to the AI help, to the human help, and nobody did anything.

And I went through that twice before I, I just gave up, deleted my account and. And didn't buy those ads anymore. Um, and so I, I think a lot of people are gonna be experiencing that in the years to come. And we, it's our job to take responsibility for adding to the, the trusts

Yeah,

taking it away.

absolutely. Especially when you have, um. A way of dealing with your customers that needs hands-on approach rather than just automating the answer to AI or other tools. And when it comes to myself, like I love to, to identify patterns and if, or obviously there are repeating patterns, repeating questions and so on.

And that can have a quick answer or quick. How to guide that. AI can generate, or AI can help with that. Yes. But 00:46:00 if someone needs actual help and needs to talk to human, I'll never outsource that. This often, like people choose us because of us, they don't choose to work with us because we can automate everything and we can do, I dunno, amazing quote unquote smarting, CTI.

Yes, some are good, some are really good, but most of the time. Your unique way of seeing things, your unique experience will play when you look through the data, clients send to you and, wow, this can be done this way because I did it before. And even if you feed all the context in the world to ai, they might miss that because they don't have that gut feeling that you mentioned or that unique experience that you went through that you feel that emotion or that that real thing that only us humans can feel.

And you make your decision based on that and yeah. And, but still, for those that are like a bit in the 00:47:00 background, they probably heard about Chad GPT.

They tried for a few things or other tools out there like Cloudera, Jamie and I. What would be your suggestion for them in the next like seven days to start using quote unquote the right way these tools?

Um, I would say there's a big difference between the free and the, the pro version. And so I think these tools are cheap enough that I would say just try it. So sign up for Chad, GBT Pro or the, the Claude. Uh, plus account where it's like 20 bucks a month. Don't, don't spend a whole lot, but pay the 20 bucks and see how it can remember things about you and test it with some things.

Say These are the three most important things about my company. Remind me whenever I'm not doing them or, or remind me whenever I'm creating some sort of piece. Um, I think that sort of memory and learning your style and brand voice and stuff and creating custom 00:48:00 GPTs is a great place. And you can just ask Chey Bt how to do that, um, once you sign up, uh, and stuff too.

The other ones I would say, um, I mentioned Gamma app is a really easy one. It's 20 bucks a month as well. You can make really cool documents, presentations, proposals, um, social media cards and infographics. Anything visual that you wanna create, a gamma is well worth it and it's. Like a magic wand. They, they have several different ways.

They get, let, lets you choose, like, do you want us to write it for you? Do you have an outline? Um, do you have like some ideas? Do you have a previous presentation? You can upload it and just have it redo your whole old presentation and rewrite it in a, a new format or customize your, your standard sales deck to this, this customer and stuff.

Really cool. It's an amazing magic trick. Takes just a couple of minutes. The, there's a couple of other AI tools that I always shout out that I think are really easy ways to get started. 00:49:00 Whisper Flow is a

really awesome dictation app, and so. I used to get, yeah, I used to get carpal tunnel and, and my wrists and fingers had hurt 'cause I was typing so much.

Now I hit two buttons, say what I want into any app on my computer, and it, it'll do formatting. It does like all the grammar and spelling and everything that I don't have to worry about. Saves me a ton of time and a ton of, uh, effort for sure. And then I use that with Grammarly and their AI for, for grammar checkers and suggestions.

Up any piece, but I would say whisper flow is in

my, my top three as well.

Yeah, I love it. Uh, I, I just, uh, use, I was a beta tester for the Android app because I, I'm an Android big fan at an iOS, uh, person.

I just got it yesterday.

Yeah. And, uh, I was a be tester for like two weeks before they launched it yesterday, and I'm like, holy shit. Like, it's useful on the computer, but I, I, I'm not a big fan of voice 00:50:00 messages.

I cannot quickly scan them on the go or like not always able to listen to them. And I'm like, since I'm not a fan of receiving them, I'm not a fan of sending them. And I'm like, this saves so much effort, both for me and the person that I talk to because I'm just talking now and they get the actual transcript formatted and everything, emails, messages and and so on.

And I'm like this app. And I'm curious because they want to build in. Voice operating system. Not sure how that will turn into fruition, but I, I'm excited to

Yeah, I'm not either. And I will say that there, the one downside to this is there's also times where you can't speak, like in public, you don't want to say your whole, you know, message or my girlfriend gets tired of me telling the Billy Idol story or, or, or, you know, talking to my computer all day. But, uh, you know, other than that, there is a great advantage to it and it saves me a, a ton of time.

So I, I

think those are are great places to start.

I 00:51:00 recommend some, uh, noise canceling headphones, like, because now both, both me and my wife work with from the same office. And, uh, we are both using whisper flow and I'm like always the headphones on. Otherwise we like speak over over each other. But yeah.

Mike,

uh, please. Tell those listening where they can reach out to you and how they can engage working with you.

You bet. The good news is I'm an internet marketer, so I'm not very hard to find. If you type Mike Montague or Avenue Nine as my company into any AI search engine or um, or Google search, you can find me pretty easily. But since you're a podcast listener, check out the Human First AI marketing podcast. Uh, there's over 75 interviews with AI and marketing experts talking about what we did today, really how to.

Best use it and cool tools from data scientists to, um, like even behavioral researchers and people doing sentiment analysis and using AI to look at people's micro expressions and, and 00:52:00 stuff to, to see how they respond to your ads. Really cool conversations over there, and it's a

ton of fun to do.

Awesome. And one final thing. If we replay this episode in three years from now, what will be one thing? You are almost certain that be still true no matter how hard AI advanced.

I would say AI is fast and trust is slow. The, there are some problems that just. Speed, automation and AI can't solve. And so I think it's your job as a human to figure out what those are and keep doing those.

Love it. Thank you so much everyone for listening. Thank you so much, Mike, for joining me today, and if this conversation may you think differently about AI trust and marketing, make sure to subscribe to not miss the next one. And until next week.