[Music] we here welcome to the deconstructing data podcast I'm Jesse leac fractional CMO at beex along with David finlin founder and CEO of bedex what's new David hey Jesse good to see you um what's new I don't know just another busy week right yeah definitely not a lot going on um besides a lot that's going on um but today we have another great guest so please welcome Melinda byle she's the CEO of fiddlehead marketing LLC I'm gonna bring her in welcome Melinda thanks for having me Jesse and David absolutely welcome welcome to the show Melinda um we're gonna ask you to kick this off for our listeners and give our listeners a chance to learn a little bit about you so why don't you go ahead and uh tell us a little bit about your background uh what led you to start fiddlehead and uh tell us a little bit about what Fiddle Head marketing is doing for its customers a lot of questions if I miss any let me know uh uh I started up working in Silicon Valley about 20 years ago I went to work for eBay in 2002 I was one of the first eBay people to go over to PayPal and as I worked my way around the valley and various marketing positions I realized that I felt constrained as a marketer I wanted to be able to help more than one company at the same time and so uh about seven or eight years ago I started a fractional consultancy with a very bad name of time share CMO everybody thought we were going to be selling time shares but we rebranded to fiddlehead and we are a digital marketing consultancy we typically work strategically with marketing analytics and now most recently we are starting to work with AI as well that's awesome I appreciate that background and uh it's a good transition uh having worked for companies like eBay and PayPal I'm sure you've got a lot of great experience there that you able to bring to your your customers and your clients now yes thank you and and of course within our clients we've we serve some of the biggest unicorns in the valley so we've worked with companies like GitHub and and uh and stack Overflow and Netflix and other places so we've worked both B2B B Toc and we think that one informs the other that uh there's real benefit and understanding and Jesse's nodding she's like marketing is you know B2B can learn from B Toc and vice versa and it's good to have that human yes definitely and um well I guess on that let's get off into our first topic which is marketing analytics as well as AI in marketing analytics can you kick us off on this topic Melinda well so I I'm an accidental sort of person that got into marketing analytics I have an MBA I was very much about attribution in Analytics when I was working at PayPal and became sort of interested in how we track things on the web and discovered this little known product at the time called omniture and so I helped install omniture which became Adobe analytics on the PayPal website and it was more controversial than you might think at the time and so I started becoming realizing that very few marketers understood how how much it mattered the way that analytics was uh added to the site and how well it was implemented and that would determine the outcome so garbage in garbage out and so almost by necessity or need I wanted to create the data I always wanted to make decisions and that's how I became focused in marketing analytics as a career and now I'm incredibly excited about the potential for AI to take out the parts of the job that are the most sort of drudgery the things that get in the way of being able to to determine what action should be taken from the data because in the end the data doesn't mean anything if we don't do something with it so what do you that's what do you see as some of the more current advancements in AI with respect to marketing analytics I think well so I think we're a little behind I think it's not happening right away on the analytics space unless you are inside of a large company or you have access to the talent that can do some things and the reason I say that is because of privacy so a couple of reasons one is the big companies in the valley have been doing AI for a long time I can guarantee you some of our clients they have had their hands in this pie for a while and and in fact marketers are saying what the marketers these companies like what do you mean AI we've been doing this like it's happening on the back end already and so some of that is there but I think as we go out to sort of like the series B series C startups right the high growth fast startups they main if they're if their main businesses not in AI they can still struggle to get their hands on the talent that they need to do this and right now it's my assessment that a lot of the tools that are out there for AI and data do not protect the data they do not keep it safe they do not keep a propri are and I think we're close I don't think we're that far away but I'm we're watching it like a hawk and we want to stay on it and jump on the places that we see it happening but I think it's going to be a little while before it's totally mainstream and I expect at some point Google will will help us out a great deal uh once they once they feel like they're you know maybe they've got few of their hands on deck for search they'll be able to turn their attention to applying AI to Google analytics data and all that good stuff yeah that that's an inter interesting take um because you know Google has um struggled actually to to some extent with respect to the latest version of uh Google analytics right and so to say the least right and so it'll be interesting to see if they can take the lead that that you're suggesting and actually apply some AI tools to improve upon um what you know what exists today and and well they're going to have everybody nipping at their heels with Salesforce Tableau with Microsoft and co-pilot it's you know this will I think be the next race after sort of search and generative AI because just the need is so great on the on the data front oops Jesse un mute oh interesting I was just saying that's very interesting is there anything else you'd want to add on marketing analytics AI in marketing analytics um just in general maybe I'm crotchety as I get older but I I see a lot of talk about this brand new tool for AI or this brand new tool for analytics and ultimately if we're tracking cookies it's this it's it's very hard to differentiate cookies are notoriously difficult they they're the only tool we have in a lot of cases and we have to use them but it's it's I am I I remain skeptical um until proven otherwise sometimes I've been right to be skeptical sometimes I've been wrong so you always have to be humble when you're making predictions uh when it comes to technology but as we often say here we tend to overestimate it the change in the short term and underestimate it in the long term H it's an interesting perspective yeah well I I think you know to your point I think uh there's been a heavy Reliance on cookies for a long time and I think with uh third party cookies finally you know officially getting deprecated U very soon um we are you know going to run into more issues with especially when it comes to analytics um and now Google's even talking about IP protection blocking access to IPS IP addresses and I think that is going to have um a big effect as well because I think that a lot of companies right now are sort of relying on IP as a backup to uh as a proxy for identity you mean yeah yeah yeah well I think the third party cookie thing I'm again a little sort of contrarian on this most reliable and reputable brands have been using first-party cookies for a long time third party has been going away for a long time we are not in a cookie list future this is my rant um I'll try to get out of the way quickly uh that we are not cookist and that term disturbs me because we will not be cookist unless we are willing to accept an Internet that is not stateless so or that is not stateful so if we like logging into to Amazon because we've saved our username and password that's thanks to cookies if we like websites to interact act with us based on who we are that's stateful and the two go hand in hand and I so I don't think cookies are going away but I do think I agree with you I call it the the light in the cave is getting dimmer it's getting dimmer again I happen to believe it's my belief that most marketers don't need that cohorts are enough for most people um some some some companies may need that onetoone relationship particularly for retention over the long time but then you have that information you know who they are but for acquisition I think in most cases is cohort will'll do we'll we'll do it and a part of me is sort of glad to see some of this go away sorry so what what happens to attribution then well that's I mean it's always been hard right David it's always been hard so anybody's like oh well it's hard well it's oh it's never been easy if you did it right that's how I got into this if you told me 20 years ago I'd still be doing it I have told you you were crazy I thought we'd be have all this resolved by now right so it's it's not easy it's never been easy to do it right particularly on the B2B side particularly on the high value sales where you have where you're closing deals offline where you're building relationships offline it's incredibly hard so I don't know in that case like some of that maybe over some of that dependence I guess I'm trying to say may not have been well-placed some there's been so much you know fraud click fraud add fraud so much messiness and noisiness in that data that there's a part of me that's like let's burn away some of that and try to get closer to what the reality might be that's a really good point that you bring up especially since we have the uh fraud-free guarantee right divid and yeah well for sure but you know one of the concerns that I have is that actually when you start um you when you get into proxying IPS it actually makes uh ad fraud even more difficult to detect and so that's gonna be a problem yeah that's true um this is all leading into our next topic data privacy and ethics so um there's a lot to unpack here and we could take this anyway so Melinda do you want to kick us off on it sure just this is a quick background I became interested in the issues of data privacy and ethics in the aftermath of the 2016 election in the leadup to that election I was on social media buying you know media for my clients and watching what was happening it felt a bit like Cassandra it was so obvious to me that if I was someone who meant harm to the United States for any reason why wouldn't I buy a lookalike audience and try to influence them propaganda the United States has done it over our history we dropped leaflets after the war so I mean this is this is a tactic that's used in nation state and and I think it continues to be used and at the same time I saw um a documentary on Netflix about a young woman who had been working um for Cambridge analytica but didn't she was she didn't realize what was going on and she didn't feel empowered to talk about it I became passionate about trying to find a way to help the people that are on the front lines of managing data know when something isn't ethical and try to help them you know realize when that's a conflict with their own values and have the skills to sort of improve that the digital analytics Association invited me three years ago to found their first data privacy and ethics uh committee uh we are cross functional we have Brands we have agency Engineers uh you know marketers like myself and the idea is to come up with a set of standards that we as data anal ists uh can support and knowing that the topic is complex deeply complex how do you separate ethics from your personal morals and values is a challenge but that shouldn't stop us from trying to come up with a Baseline and see if we can and see if we can sort of move that that ball forward who as I like to say who else besides us if we don't do it who will uh nobody owns it in inside of organizations it can be in finance it and legal doesn't know enough about how the data is used that we Who would know it best should really be the champions for using data responsibly yeah no there's a really good points and I think that that you know when you look back at all the sort of um changes in in policy and legislation and um you know you look at the changes that you know Google has made and and and Apple's made a lot of these things are have been done to sort of prevent the you know the the bad doers you know that have done these things with our data in the past um and it's unfortunate that we have you know we live in a society where we have to sort of put limitations on what we can do as marketers right uh in exchange for ethics simply because there are so many people that you know dis are disregarding you know ethical use of data you know my I was talking to a friend of mind recently about law the law in business and I I was remembering something that my macroeconomics Professor talked about which was the idea that the law is there to make sure that the Bad actors don't crowd out the good ones it's very hard to run a uh a profitable uh compliant if you will ethically uh high integrity data analysis if everybody else is breaking the law and doing all sorts of sketchy things and so I I like the way I like the way he thought about it was yes and of course it's academic in a certain way and abuse is rampant and there always challenges but that again does not mean we should not try yeah I like that and I liked what you said especially for LinkedIn you know I think it's a good topic that if you sort of like if you see something say something and kind of empowering people at the front lines of data um you know never really thought about it like that but um if there is anyone in the comments we'd love to hear from you on anything that we're talking about we can display it on the screen if anyone has any questions um but anything else you yeah I'll add something to this we recently released the results of the first ever data privacy and ethics survey of the digital analytics Association and one of the things that blew us away was how a large majority of our members are are in a situation where their personal morals are in conflict or their ethics with how data is being used in their own company I honestly that shocking isn't it no doesn't surprise me to be honest with you because I know that there's so many companies that are collecting data that don't have the mechanisms in place even to know how to you know keep it safe um Safeguard it you know that the data can exist on multiple devices even on individuals the you know computers that are that are working with that data that may not have that data in a secure environment en um you know the big companies the bigger the companies probably the more um you know controls they have in place for that but you know there are how many millions of small businesses out there that are collecting data that don't have those controls in place and so no governance yeah yeah there there's no governance there's no controls um you know we've we've seen it we've we've you know worked with clients and talk to them about where their data resides and sometimes they don't even know and they're like you know I think it's here here and here and you know and Susan might have a copy of of the DAT the entire database on her computer as well so it's like you know with that being said it makes it all that data very vulnerable right it's printed out in files stacked up against the wall yeah and now with people working remotely it's even more of an issue um cyber crime is on the rise and the biggest one of the fastest growing parts of cyber crime are insiders yeah and so it's it's hard to say like nobody wants to be in the position of of of you know super of surveilling their own employees it's terrible it's a terrible way to go about the world and yet this is happening and so and then you have turnover you know the average 10 year-over CMO is 27 months it's probably you know more in smaller companies and so with more turnover there's more fragmentation of this this effort started and failed this effort started and failed this is everything is all over the place we don't have a we don't have a plan to Sun set and then combine it with and I know this because I was one of those people the mindset of let's collect all the things we don't know what we want to track so let's track all the things when in reality we don't need to track all the things we we but it's very hard to for companies to slow down for a moment and say what are we tracking why are we tracking it what changes what will we do with this if we're not going to do anything with it we shouldn't be tracking it and and for example I mean I love David that you're that you know we talked a little bit on the pre-show about pi fiddlehead avoids It We call we call it a virus in the sense of if we don't want to touch it and if we do we want to be highly protected we want to have lots of safeguards in place and and we found we could do the vast majority of our work without ever having to take possession of if you will or to have to put controls in place around [Music] pii yep it's all very relevant stuff um but anything else any other lasting thoughts on data privacy and ethics before we move into creating cultures that are data driven um anything else so I'll just save it anything you want to add look I mean I I think you made a lot of good points I agree with them um you know the data privacy has always been something that's been Forefront for us as a company um you know we being a very high-tech company you know we have a lot of safekeeping in place you know a lot of security in place that you know as we talked about a lot of other companies don't have unfortunately um so we are very keen to keeping data secure and private um and protecting that um and we are huge proponent of ethical use of data and that's something we talk to our clients about all the time is trying to understand you know what their endgame is what their goal is what data that they need to do that what data they're keeping internally um that they may need to do that and and what their intentions are and and how they'll use it and I think that's super important um I think that going forward the there will continue to be more legislation that will continue to restrict um how data can be used um how it can be collected um I think that there's always going to be the the problem of keeping it secure because like I said only the biggest companies really have the the technology and controls in place to do that so that will forever be a problem um you know for for smbs you know being able to keep that data secure and and I think that if someone can resolve that I think that that would be you know that would be a big win for for everyone every individual because we all know that we have a lot of data out there that's been kept on you know collected about us and and it's hard to say exactly where it is right and we're both I often joke I have my marketing horns you know like my evil marketing horn like there's me as a consumer and then there's me with my evil marketing horns and the evil marketing horns want to track everything all the things and they want to know that David finlin lives here and he buys this but but the consumer in me is very freaked out about that and doesn't want shoes from Nordstroms following me around all over the web once I've decided I don't want them anymore and I don't know and the the solution that has got to be somewhere in the middle I come back to cohorts I I would be very curious on your perspective of cohorts are the solution to that I've often said I don't need to know that David bought a thing I need to know that a group of people with roughly these characteristics are buying the things um and that's usually enough for most media buying but maybe things are evolving you're you're actually that might even be closer to this specific problem that I've been in a little bit yeah I I think cohorts are a short-term solution to the problem um I think the the long-term uh solution is AI to be honest with you I good I'm excited to hear this I think that you know being able to anonymously track uh activity right a user's activity and use that you know within an ad platform to understand those behaviors that are occurring and Target ads based on those behaviors that are occurring across someone's activity completely anonymous ly um I think that AI will have the capability of doing that more effectively um enabling you to sort of reach audiences um you know you can call it an audience of one right A lot of people use that that term where where the AI is narrowing down okay this consumer is doing this okay I think that person needs this this ad um rather than looking at it as a group and saying okay well maybe this group might respond correctly to to this ad see how it performs and say okay well we need to adjust the cor cohort to something else um I think that that the cohorts uh are a good sort of interim solution but I think AI will ultimately be the long-term solution it's an intriguing idea of the cohort of one I don't think I've heard of it yet and it's I was thinking well oh that's interesting because then you could make a decision a marketing decision without knowing that it was David it's just that it's not big enough what if forever reason this cohort is not big enough to drive business results so we need to change of parameters and build a larger cohort without knowing that David bought the thing yeah doesn't matter who it is right I mean It ultimately comes down to it you know everybody's been concentrating on on who should we target but the reality is when once you're you've sort of automated the process it doesn't matter who it is it just matters is it working right and if it's and if these ads are working for this individual then we'll continue to run ads for that individual but if not then the AI learns and finds out what is working for that individual and I think what ultimately you'll see is that over the long term it's going to work so much better because it will learn what your Trends are right today you might have been searching for shoes tomorrow it's drudgery to do that now it's absolute drudgery and it's not actionable because by the time you do it things have changed takes weeks or months to do it now being able to do it in even close to like a week would be useful and with AI it can it can go even faster than that when it's once it's done that's very exciting yeah oh very exciting well how do we create cultures that can manage all of this and lead us down the right path ethically with it I bet the two of you would agree that the data problems are people problems as I say almost always it's ter technology is not the barrier the data is not the barrier it's some combination of culture and accountability and some people just really fight that or they fear it fight fight is the wrong word because that imp place people don't want to be held accountable but they're fearful um especially and I often say if you show me a Culture of Fear I will show you a culture that is not data driven because you don't want to be accountable if you're in an environment where you're punished for your mistakes yeah it should be safe it should be oh I tried something and it didn't work great now what's the next thing not oh you terrible person this this failed and and we should be using the data to to size the quality of our bet and the size of our bet and and and manage that risk accordingly so in my experience when a CMO comes to me and says we don't know how to track I often say what what is your relationship with your CEO because this is where it's going to end up almost always if we can't track it's almost always not marketing's fault that's I'm going to take a stand on that and say it's very rarely marketing's fault I actually just had a really interesting conversation with uh a Strate a strategic consultant who's about to publish a book like interviews with like 1500 CEOs and it was interesting how few of them could see past the fact that they might be abdicating on this that that this is should be CEO Le if we can't track if Finance has a different opinion and I've seen this you've seen it too right Finance is using powerbi and marketing is using snowflake products using something completely different nobody agrees are we looking at an elephant are we looking at a rhinoceros and so it's starts with how do we trust each other how do we trust the data almost all of our data Consulting engagements we call trust people you'll often see it glossed over in these marketing analytics maturity models they'll call it setup or whatever in my mind in my experience it's trust they don't trust each other they don't trust and they don't trust the data so if you don't trust your colleague in the other Silo then whatever they tell you it doesn't matter data doesn't change people's minds if it did we would live in a very different world we would we would have we would have things that we would all like to have if we if data was enough to convince people but the the if you look at Psychology if you look at the way what we're learning about how the mind works with functional MRI we won't believe data unless it comes from somebody we trust and alternatively we will believe untruths if we if we trust the source that's so interesting true I believe it you've probably experienced it too and we gloss over it because we go to results we want results okay CMO go grow the company go get results but you don't trust them enough to give them the resources you don't trust them enough to take the risks yet so it's it's a very difficult problem and I I'd actually be curious to hear how you guys have tackled it in your careers because it's I've gotten more and more interested as time has gone on because it's not a technology problem yeah I mean culture is is the ultimate importance right I mean you have to have a culture of trust I I agree with that 100% you team members need to trust each other across the across uh departments and divisions um if not then they won't share with each other they right um and when they do share they won't trust each other so they're going to do double the work right because you know you'll see times where someone does something and someone says well I don't believe it so I'm gonna go go do it also so now you have two people doing the same thing instead of you know that's not very effective right and pointing fingers too well my data says this and my data says this and and magically my data says you're wrong and magically your data says I'm wrong it's come on yeah yeah so um you know I've the way I've always looked at it is is to hire people that know more than me so same I pref as say I prefer to not be the smartest person in the room I feel safer when that's the case yeah yeah yeah so you know I I hire someone um like Jesse in marketing that knows it better than I do I hire my my uh CTO um because he knows better on the tech Tech side than I do um and then really what happens is you you sort of have this this culture where everybody respects the fact that they're each you know an expert in their in their area and uh and therefore you know opens up that sort of line of trust it's it's interesting this person I was talking to we both agree that the trust between CEO and CMO as a whole is very bad right now and it's complicated right marketing has a brand problem you know not all of us who do this job are are ethical and qualified and some are using hacks and create and creating a problem we don't have a set of standards as a profession about what makes this and then you have sometimes you have situation on the CEO side like the he had interviewed somebody been a CEO for 10 years and had five CMOS and it was like hm at some point do you ask yourself if it's you right if you've been through five CMOS in 10 years maybe the problem is not the marketing department and that was and and I so I I do see it as truly both ways and as a CEO myself and I'm sure you too David as a CEO you kind of have empathy you know how hard the job is but I would love to also hear how you tackle it because it and the that's what I often say to the CMO we're going to end up in your CEO's office because ultimately we're going to talk about trust because you can't track everything in marketing you cannot and often the things you should be doing can't be tracked they may be a little bit maybe you can get some high Lev metrics but for example content Marketing in B2B how do you prove that all this content you put out resulted in this contract you can't right so ultimately you have to you have to agree on where where how you'll measure it how you'll Define a marketing qualified lead but after that it really does come down to how well you trust the person so if you've got answers I'd love to hear them because this seems to be where good data projects go to die communication is key yeah yeah I think I think you're right I think communication is key I think that um you know it comes down to I think often it comes down to um people's hiring methods as well and so you know we've we uh historically have used a tool we call culture index um you know it's it's it's similar to any personality um you know sort of test but uh but it's very unique and uh I think what it does best is it helps understand whether the person is the right person for the for the job so you know right people on the right seats uh you always you know need to look at it from that point of view um and and we've historically have done that where I I never would look at resume without looking at the test first because it it's too easy for someone to fall in love with a candidate based on the resume oh they've worked for this company oh they've done that um but that doesn't necessarily mean that they you know culturally the right person not only for the job but for for your company um and you know I think people often make the mistake of of hiring somebody based on the resume instead of you know based on uh the behavioral traits of that human being that that you're going to be working with side by side based on more data uh no I appreciated that test because then it made me feel good too I'm like oh so it says that you know it'd be a good fit so no I think that's a great idea yeah J Jesse was questioning the test because she's like really it says I have a high ego do I it's it's okay like that's not necessarily a bad thing you know I mean there's you know different levels of of ego but you know there's different roles in in a company that require it you know and and if you don't have it you you can't succeed in your job if you if you don't have a high you go in a certain job you know in certain roles and sales I mean you need that like that would be bad if ego salesperson might struggle yeah I can't tell you how many people over the time over the years I've seen a culture index for that applied for a sales job and their ego was like super super low like to the on on what the chart literally calls it on the meek side and how could this person be in sales you know there as soon as someone says no they're gonna you know that doesn't mean you have to be a shark but you might Meek might be a TR might be a problem yeah yeah yeah it's it's so true I mean it's and how how you solve that is there's not enough attention paid to hiring for sure and I do think many CEOs in the valley have come to sort of especially if they're engineering background based uh again because some of my profession are not good examples that there's a lot of mistrust and I think they throw the baby out with the bath water if you'll excuse the expression all marketers must be charlatans or all we do is buy ads instead of seeing like what I call the capital M the Strategic value of marketing and how we can partner to to be successful I think we've gone too far the other way in Silicon Valley we we were very far on the business side when I got here 20 years ago that was not great because Engineers were not involved in facing the market there were so few of them they had to be sort of carefully protected but now that we have this you know we've gone all the way to the other side and I don't think that's good either I'm a moderate in all ways so I want uh I want everybody to have a voice at the table I think that's how we get better results absolutely all great points well we only have 10 minutes left we did get a comment um from dawn I'm going to pull it up here really quick so we will get better as we continue to stress the importance of the experience data really is useful for the company and the thief most Ransom seems silly at this point the why of data is always will be the most important reason to have data um and then he's talking about the phone book um which funny memory um and he does agree Ai and blockchain tech tech will improve everything um but wanted to share those any comments before I ask you about your Tech stack was one thing on the last topic and then I'll address his comment which was I was talking to a leader at Google a number of years ago and he said to me he said I have one of he's talking about how he had one of the more diverse groups at Google and he would tease Larry and Sergey that you know he was bringing up the numbers and I asked him well how how does that come to be and he said well I I can hire a PhD I'm Google at this this was a you know a few years back I can basically hire anybody I want I have the budget I can get a PhD but what I don't have are the people who can ask the CMO of Unilever can have a discussion with the CMO of Unilever about what do I do about it so I often say that Executives don't need to know the barometric pressure they need to know whether or not to take an umbrella and so I think we spend a lot of time focusing on data skills and do you know SQL and do you know Python and do you know what what do you have you have a PhD and statistics that's great but I've met phds and statistics who are awesome data scientists but they don't know what to do with it they don't that's I think that's where I love the partnership is to pair that type of person with a clever and creative marketer is just magic gold I do remember the phone book and not just sitting on it as a child I would be curious to know the context for the comment but my question would be back then it was very hard to do anything with it yes everybody's name was in the phone book but what would you do with it yes could you type you know manually type out a bunch of letters and send them to people you were limited by your time and energy and so very few people did it there was a physical cost and now the cost of this is so low that and the potential return is high so why not take the risk it's back to fishing and spam why not it costs you fractions of a penny send out spam and or you know to do whatever and so and the likelihood of you're getting caught or whatever is so low that there's there's no barrier anymore oh thanks Don I'm glad I can be right for people who will hear this on audio Don replied you are so freaking right but yeah uh I want to make sure that we ask you at least about your teex stack Melinda so if you don't mind this is something we ask all the guests on deconstructing data what are some of your favorite tools that you use in your Tech text stack so I don't know if I will come in like as the top of all of your data text stack because a lot of what I'm doing now is working with Executives and sort of sort of doing the culture stuff but like you know with all the talk for chat gbt 4 I'm in love with Claude like I'm saying I'm having an affair with Chad gbt with Claude because the quality of its output is amazing and being able to to write to take something that I want to write and make it more what I really believe I tend to have a very direct sometimes even edgy writing style I don't I don't know if it's yours on Twitter or what it is but my sentences are short and sometimes come off as tur and being able to shape that with Claude has it sits open it's sitting here in my Monitor right now and I use it all the time using for emails for posts on LinkedIn for replies just to get the tone right and it's so much easier than sitting there and talking with it for an hour just dump it into claw it's its voice it just suits me so much better and I love being able to use it to say ask it to reply in the style of McKenzie Consulting because sometimes that's what you need and I'm not a Mackenzie consultant but sometimes you need that voice to or in order to do the thing that you need to do to get the credibility and so honestly I'm just this is my plug for Claude I'm just having a ball with it chbt can do a lot of things but there's just something about the voice of Claude that feels warm and human I don't know if you guys have had the same experience but I haven't tried that one yet yeah I'm gonna try it yeah the free one is you I just signed up for the Pro I've been using but I got into it and I've been using it as a thought partner this is another way I tell people to talk to the AI like it's human but never forget that it's human so personally this is I don't know if you want the story but personally I I struggle with vision and mission statements I'm I'm Gen X I'm kind of skeptical and cynical about manipulating people um and uh I I I just feel like so many vision and mission statements are BS and I had a I had a conversation with Claude I said Claude I know my own company needs a mission statement I have an MBA I I'm supposed to do this but I hate it and I don't want to do it and I can't find anything I like and over the course of several days because I wasn't paying at the time so you know I'd cap out it actually answered my questions it actually helped me think through the problem and come up with the vision statement and a mission statement that I really could live with and really could get behind and could operationalize and not feel and so because it's not human I can whine at it I can complain to it I can say I hate that it's terrible I don't have to uh I have I'm ADHD I don't have to hold anything back I'm not going to hurt its feelings and that is helpful for me as a thought partner so I don't I don't know if it qualifies as a text stack but it certainly is my own form of co-pilot sitting next to me every day absolutely sounds like a very important part of your Tex stack I would say the other one I'm learning about is there's a lot of gen xers on Tik Tok and I've been having fun with it I was in I had was in cancer treatment last year I'm going to be fine but during some of the darkest days t talk just kept me entertained and so I got curious about it like all marketers and there is a tool called cap cut which is just fantastic it's like canva but for video and I just love it and so it's I've started editing little otter videos and I'm just playing around with it because I remember having like what is it ecam pro and like all these other video softwares were so hard to learn and this one has just been delightful and fun to play with I love cat Cut I do the same great I make cooking videos and yoga videos yes it's my thing yes it's fantastic cool well I'll have to find you on Tik Tok Melinda how can folks find you on Tik Tok I just used my name at Melinda byle nothing that's a good news I don't have there not many people in the world with my name so if you search for it you'll find me so yeah and I'm I have a very small account and I'm really just dabbling and playing around so but yes if people want to come and play with me that would be great I have a group of and I recommend this to people a group of other marketers in private DM and what we're doing is pushing each other to learn what did you learn today what are you doing I tried this you know I've learned this this tool or how do I do this and yes there are lots of tools and resources out there but there's nothing like having a little support group cool where do you what like what tool do you guys coordinate in for your we just do it in Tik Tok and DM so we send each other of videos and yes we upload or you know and try to support each other but mostly it's like here's what I learned or here's a video I found or I like the style does anybody know how I can do it that kind of thing so get a get a group of friends together it's like a book club except it's the ti marketing Club marketing Club yes excellent love that well thank you so much for sharing and so now that we know where to find you on Tik Tok where can listeners find you um if they're not on Tik Tok please visit uh our website which is fiddlehead HQ and you can go to slm marketing aai if you want to focus on that specifically but if you just go to fiddlehead hq.com you can obviously get to the website and I I'm doing most of my own social media on LinkedIn these days probably just like you I think think that's where the right conversations are to be had so you can find me there as well yes and just for the record it sounds like dot Don is completely in agreement with you about Claude over chat GPT so thanks Don for your engagement we'd love to have you back um but in closing we would like to just uh ask listeners to be sure to check out bx.com and when you're there go click the try forf free button to check out Omni IQ if you're here watching on video you can just use this QR code that I have over my face here and that'll take you right to Omni IQ where you can import a list of your first-party customer data and see some analytics on your first-party customer data so you'll get gender household income and birth year all complimentary no credit card required um but you know you're of course not going to want to stop there you're going to want to see more and so you can upgrade to see more and also you know create a a you know an expanded audience we'll say I won't say lookalike audience because you're pulling data from multiple places right David it's different than just like a lookalike audience than Facebook it's really a lot better so check it out and we'd love to hear from you so if you have any feedback about deconstructing data or you would like to suggest a guest to come on the show please reach us at info@ vex.com and share your qualitative data with us so we can make it better for you and thanks again so much for joining us Melinda I was glad to be here thanks for having me absolutely yeah thank you Melinda it was great to have you on the show today all right have a good one [Music] [Music] everyone