On this episode of The Unlearn Podcast, listen in to David Meerman Scott of Stage 2 Capital share his thoughts on AI and its impact on marketing in the coming years. David is an acclaimed author with 12 published books that have sold over a million copies in 30 languages. He currently serves as an independent advisor and investor in emerging companies that are transforming their industries by delivering disruptive products and services.
00:00 - Intro & Background
05:05 - AI is data and math - whose data and math?
05:56 - Using AI with your own data
08:05 - Risk of sharing your data with AI today
12:39 - Proprietary data plus AI for marketing purposes and private servers
17:09 - Job losses due to AI
18:40 - Leaders who don’t understand AI can be overcharged by agencies
21:59 - The immense pressure to deliver growth leaves marketers unable to think clearly
24:50 - The capacity of AI to trigger reductions in marketing budgets
26:25 - What can businesses realistically look to do with AI in 2023
30:58 - Surplus of content created by AI
31:32 - Are we pivoting to more Human to Human marketing channels?
“If you have some specialized knowledge, you will be able to figure out how you can be even more valuable than you are now!”
00:17
Hey, everybody! We're back with another episode of the Unlearn Podcast. Uh, we were just joking 'cause it sounds like if you're a board member at HubSpot, you need to be on the Unlearn Podcast.
So, we have another person who's affiliated with HubSpot and it's somebody that I've known for a very long time, and we will probably cover a little bit of how our journeys have overlapped in this one. But, David, welcome to the show. Do you wanna just take 30 seconds to introduce yourself and we'll dive straight in?
00:53
Yeah, hey Asher, great to see you. I'm David Meerman Scott. I've worked in the financial information business for 15 years; got fired 21 years ago and started my business writing books. I've written 13 books, several of which are international bestsellers. My books are in 30 languages. I've also spent a lot of time on the speaking circuit and have been advising emerging companies.
Such as HubSpot and many others around their go-to-market strategies.
01:28
I'll lead this in. So, several years ago, I was as passionate as I am right now about helping emerging leaders or future leaders become leaders.
And at one of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conferences, the executives at Microsoft were super gracious to give us five sessions. It was me, Justin Perry, and another amazing partner leader (I forget her name, but this is gonna haunt me).
There were three of us and we were like, 'Let's put this session together.' David had just introduced the word 'newsjacking' to the world. And I'm like, 'Wow, this is the thing to learn. People should learn about marketing.’
And my views back then, which are the same right now, were that every person should learn about marketing.
Kelly Sarabyn
02:21
That can be a little dangerous, though. Amateur marketers can be the worst.
02:25
The journey here, right? Don't kill them.
So, we had two sessions to do: we had Steve Clayton, who is running all of Corporate Comms; I would say or is the Chief Storyteller at Microsoft. And David was super gracious to spend some time with us. The thing I'll tell you about David is we goofed up a little bit at the start and we kind of had our timings mixed up.
So, David landed an hour before our session was going to go on.
02:53
And I didn't even know exactly. And I was in my travel cloud.
03:02
And these cargo pants, I'm like, 'What color are these pants?
03:06
Yeah, that's why I want to be comfortable in airplane pants. I was at the hotel about to check in, and you called me, as I remember correctly, and you said, 'Dude, you're on in 10 minutes.'
I'm like, not on in 10 minutes. I'm on tomorrow.'
No, you're on in 10 minutes.
03:24
Asher's mistake, by the way.
03:28
That I've made a lot of mistakes, but that wasn't me. But I will tell you, I learned what the black badge at Microsoft conferences gets you: it gets you access to everything.
So if you're ever at a Microsoft conference and you have a black badge, it's like the magical badge of the conference. So David comes straight to the conference, and we get him up.
And, like, he's such a bro; he doesn't miss a single slide. He gets a standing ovation from the whole crowd. He just walks out like it was just lunchtime.
04:01
And then I'm like, 'What the hell am I gonna do now?' I was planning to be here for days, like, 'I'm done and go home. I did hang around for a couple more days. It was a great event. I always love the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference; it's great.
04:17
Yeah, so to just give you a catch-up on this story: So, David, I ended up creating a partnership with a couple of really amazing people, Partnership Leaders, which is an organization focused on elevating partnerships around the world. And Kelly, do you want to tell us a little bit about what you're doing these days, just so David has an idea?
04:35
Yeah, I lead tech partner enablement and advocacy at HubSpot. So, getting our tech partners connected with our sales and CS solutions partners. And some of the to-partner motion, how you engage and attract more partners.
04:50
Partners? Awesome! That's great. I love it.
Asher Mathew
04:53
If it wasn't clear, this is a very partnering podcast, but what's top of mind?
04:57
You tell us that? I don't know. I don't know how we're gonna get a great conversation in just another 40 minutes or so; we could probably talk for five hours.
05:06
Totally. All right. Well, tell us what's on top of mind for you, David.
05:09
You know, I've been thinking, like probably every marketer on the planet, about AI recently, and, of course, chatbots have been the impetus for a lot of people to be thinking about AI because it's sort of the first way that you can test this stuff.
But my interest in artificial intelligence goes back at least five years, and I've been writing, speaking, and using AI for a long time.
It's like this really interesting moment where, all of a sudden, the rest of the world is getting caught up, and I think that most people are missing an incredible opportunity, and that is to use AI with their data.
So if you think about the usual use case of chat GPT, it's using, and I, and I always think, by the way, of artificial intelligence as two things: data and math.
Always be thinking, 'Whose data is it? Whose math is it?' And so, with GPT, that's what everyone's talking about. It's GPT's math and public internet data. So, I think what's more interesting is the idea of how you can take AI math and apply it to your data.
And figuring out ways that you can manipulate the things that are in your proprietary database, whether that's as a marketer--um, taking, like, and I've done this--I took all of my blog posts for over 19 years, 1598 blog posts, as well as um, six of my books, dropped them into a proprietary database and I run GPT over the top of it.
And so I use that myself; I'm not, I haven't released it to the public, but I use that myself to generate all kinds of interesting things, but it's using my data--it's not, I'm pulling data from the public internet.
So, that's what's been rattling around my brain recently. And I love Chatspot from Hubspot; the idea of figuring out how you can put an AI engine on top of your CRM data is another great example of this idea of how you can take these new tools of artificial intelligence and apply them to your data. And I know Kate from Lately was on your program.
Um, recently, and that's exactly the service that lately does is, is, and I'm also on s support. It is providing this interesting idea of putting artificial intelligence on top of your data.
07:51
Yeah, quickly P.S.A., this podcast is not sponsored, but hard it may look like it is, it's my thing, you know? Like, we wanted to kind of explore, go to the market. But it's super interesting to go to Kelly. I know you have a comment, but then I have a comment.
08:05
I have so many questions, but I wanna talk about the tactical side of AI quickly. Because I think one of the interesting things about how this has evolved is who has access, right?
I think how we move forward and go to market is how many people are using these tools. So, when you're saying that you're dumping a high volume amount of data into Chat GPT, where and how are you doing that? Is that something that is now accessible to everyone? Is that the minorly paid version that they've released?
08:37
I'm using a separate database that then is using the GPT technology to access that database. So, it's a closed database. It's not something that's becoming available to other people because, although my 19 years of blog posts are already public and already visible to GPT and other large language models, my books um...
Probably are, but aren't supposed to be. I say 'probably are' because I know that there are websites that pirate books like mine, and I've very frequently gotten a Google alert saying 'David Meerman Scott' and I click it and it's one of my books that's been illegally put onto the internet. So, I'm not putting anything in.
That, if it weren't closed, would freak me out because I think the idea, and there are some services out there now where you can upload your emails, text messages, and client data into the cloud and then use AI to access that too, um, to learn things about your own life.
That scares me. I mean, imagine a super-private text with somebody that all of a sudden is up in the cloud somewhere, even if the company says...
It's secure; that's not something I would trust. However, my blog posts are already public, and my books--nothing proprietary in them--they're all out there. And if you dig deep enough into the dark web, you can find the books already on the public internet as well.
10:33
And are you worried about your books being taken, bought by AI, and essentially regurgitated? We've seen this in music recently, right? They're having music from AI that was put out and the artists are upset 'cause it sounds too much like them. Do you have any concerns about feeding this into AI models? Are they gonna ultimately be able to turn around and be a better you outside of your permissions?
10:57
I'm a little bit worried about it, but I feel like it's the future, so I'm kind of putting that stuff out there. You know, I've done a couple of experiments where I'll go to one of the public models like GPT and I'll type in 'What is newsjacking?'
Bang! It's essentially my words, but not my name.
So, it's already happening. It's already happening because I have AI, and people like me, probably both of you as well, have so much stuff already on the public internet.
You know, as soon as this podcast is released, it's out there; you know, it shares its words, but you can pop an AI transcription engine on top of it, and, bang, that text is out there. So, um, I think it's already there and I'm not worried about my public content.
I am worried and have not uploaded it. My private content, my private emails, sharing private emails with other people, sharing private texts with other people--that, that I have no plans to upload, even though there are some use cases where it would be really interesting to have that all on top of an interesting AI engine--I'm not planning to do that.
12:16
Yeah, it brings up the question, 'If I was 17, what would my younger self tell my future self?' If that was a question, that would be a use case for that.
12:26
You could, yeah, you know, depending on how big your database is.
12:33
Exactly.
12:34
What was I saying back then? The question, SC, is that on?
12:39
On the podcast that we did, you know, we talked a little bit about private AI and, and I, and that's, you're right. That's exactly where we're going because there is private data that I have that I don't want to put on a public cloud, right? Let's put it on a private cloud, right? So it's good that the AI S movement may create a lot more on-premises.
Applications, then cloud applications - we'll see where this ends up. But the value of, you know, there's a bunch of conversation around, like, 'Hey, people lose jobs, this happens, etc.' And what I'm thinking is there's a lot of AI P that's already in the large amounts of data that's stored inside of companies. And that's a new product offering for them because they can tell what happened in the past, what we're facing in the present, and they can predict, like, for example, Alara, the company that I was with, has like 20 years of commerce data, right?
And this is like transactional data, right? This is when the transactions are happening in the ERP product in real time; you can see it, right?
13:51
Yeah, and I mean, exactly. And so, two things come to mind there. Number one is that a lot of companies who have cloud-based, you know, SaaS-based services have a secure way to store customer data. It is stored in the cloud, whether it's with AWS or somebody else; that data is stored somewhere.
Um, so there's already a precedent for data to be securely stored somewhere, even very, very, very highly proprietary data, like client information, to be stored somewhere and then used with AI. But, I think as a marketer, because this is, you know, we're talking about some marketing ideas here, how cool would it be if you have the type of company that generates data that might be interesting? I'll give you an example. Um, last week I was talking to the CEO and CMO of Haggerty Insurance; they're the largest classic car insurance company in the world, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And we were talking about how cool it would be...
To stick AI on top of all of their proprietary data? Now, I don't mean proprietary in the sense of client data, but proprietary in the feeling that they know the value of classic cars. And they also have a history of the values of classic cars, and they all already provide that data to members of the Hagerty Driver's Club. There are over a million members of the Hagerty Driver's Club. So, I have a 1973 Land Rover Series Three. And if I want to see...
Um, in a historical chart, what the value of a car like mine has been worth? Um, over the past number of years, I can see that, and that's based on actual insurance values of Haggerty insuring that car; that data already exists for Haggerty. They already have that; it's already made public. It's already a form of marketing for them to provide that data to people. But imagine sticking an AI engine over the top of it. How cool would that be to be able to do?
Interesting one-off queries of, you know, how has a Land Rover changed in value versus a Jeep versus a Bronco? I just made that up. But something that doesn't already exist that you could create just by typing it into an AI engine.
I think that's the future of companies that have interesting proprietary data: how do they unlock that for marketing purposes now?
16:31
To like, plus double-click on your example, right? The person who is feeding that data is a domain expert. The person who gets the insight out is also our domain expert, right?
And where I'm going with this is, there's again the fear that people start losing jobs. Right? And, like, I don't think that's true. Like, there may be some low-level jobs that, like, the workload gets shifted around, but the domain experts are still needed to take the insight and then validate it and then do something with it.
17:09
Oh, there's no question that people will lose jobs. no question about it. But it tends to be the jobs that AR is already very good at. Um So if your job is writing headlines at a newspaper, you should, you should be scared. If your job, if your job is writing obituaries, you should be scared. If your job is um low-level accounting, you should be worried. Um, There's a lot of jobs that I think will, will eventually disappear, however, there's going to be new jobs created.
So just like you said, if you have some specialized knowledge, you will be able to figure out how you can be even more valuable than you are. Now, if you begin to learn about how you can apply these artificial intelligence tools on top of your specialized knowledge. And um you know what I, what I say to marketers who ask?
Um, and I have to credit my buddy Paul Retzer at the marketing AI Institute for initially um sort of triggering this, this general concept in my mind is that um if you're a marketer, you may not lose your job directly to AI, but if you're a marketer who doesn't understand AI, it's almost certain eventually you will lose your job to a marketer who does understand AI,
18:40
Yeah, but, but today it is like, let's call it reasonably sized companies and not, or, or, or any size of the company, a lot of the marketing is outsourced to an agency and then that agency outsources it to us, another agency which is somewhere around the world who then is already using AI to do the work. And so by the time that AI application makes it into the enterprise.
David Meerman
19:14
Disagree. I think that CMOs, SVPs of marketing directors of marketing are scrambling to understand AI themselves because they need to figure out what they're going to say to the CEO and the um, and to the board and investors and, and, and so on about what AI means for their business. It is too big right now to ignore.
And I would also argue it's way too big to just outsource to an agency, and, even if you do outsource, AI I should let me take that back. Sure you can outsource to an agency but not outsource to an agency without an understanding of what the agency is doing.
For example, let me give you an example of that. So, um uh you know, imagine you're in a public relations agency and um your job traditionally has been to take a public relations brief which is created by the company. Hey, we're launching a new product. Here are the uh product attributes. It's going to be launched on June 1st. Here's a quote from a customer and the job of the PR agency is to number one, create the press release draft to the press release. And number two, create a list of the media that they want to target that press release to. Maybe that took a staffer a week to do.
And then maybe including the markup that costs the company $10,000. You can do that task in one minute with an AI you can create a value of a very, very good press release just by pushing a button on an AI, and you can create a list of media contacts just by pushing a button on AI.
So it's the head of public relations or the head of marketing who doesn't understand AI that are paying $10,000 a minute to their agent agency and those people will be out of a job.
21:24
I’m going to say something that's gonna be controversial.
21:31
You're gonna turn off more of our audience. Every episode keep saying something to turn more off.
21:40
Keeps going down, we're gonna go the other
21:42
Asher said on another episode, if you had more than two kids, you're a problem.
21:49
That's politically correct. I try my best not to put my foot in my mouth. I, I'll let you do it if you plan on doing it.
21:59
This podcast is just for Kelly and I to unlearn all the things that people learn basically.
So we just come on ourselves. no. but, but you are right though., but the person, right, thinks about this. Right. Right. The person that was put into this spot to figure out and go pay 10,000 bucks a minute to the agency is because the sheer amount of pressure on them to produce growth was so high that they can't even think.
Yes. And so then they're like, ok, well, my, my natural thing is I can run two experiments. AI can put 10,000 per dollar here and $10,000 here. One of them is gonna work. I'm not gonna get fired. So I'm, I'm fine. Right. That situation is different now where yes, we like growth, but we like profitable growth. That doesn't mean you have four different types of customers and seven different types of partners, right? And they just like to dial it in. So it's reputable revenue that slowly grows and let's just make sure we're building a real business. Right.
In that world,the marketing executive has a lot of time if they are well, or they are, you know, taking, taking care of their time. Well, they do have time to think about these things and, and uh, and orchestrate them. Well, at least that's my opinion.
23:18
I think there's some truth there. but uh I, if I were a CEO and I were um looking over my shoulder at my CMO or if I were a CMO looking over my shoulder to the people who are working for me who are, are responsible for the different sectors of marketing, whether that's event, marketing or demand generation or partner marketing, whatever it might be.
I would want to know how they're using artificial intelligence tools in their job, every single one of those people because AI knows I would, I would be worried, and um AI would be assuming that all my competitors are already doing that, you know. So, let's say you're in a market with five competitors.
You can be assured that the other guys are trying to figure out what AI I means for them. And I would want to be understood how I'm going to be the first one out of the gate on this stuff so that I don't get left in the lurch when um when the inevitable happens and it will happen that these things will be over the top of so many different marketing activities and public relations activities and sales activities.
24:38
Ok ai gonna make one comment and then I'm gonna stop, for Kelly to, like, take the
24:42
Conversation and you, you asked me what was on my mind and, and we've already just, um, I don't, I don't know. This is, this is, I did half an hour, which is cool because it is what's on my
24:50
Mind. You know, this podcast is designed purely for that. That's why we don't have any agendas on this. but I hope the ai bonus doesn't come up. right? Because here's what I'm thinking as you're saying that a lot of finance teams are bonuses on or maybe some of them are bonuses on how much they can save a company. Right.
So now if I'm the CFO and I'm listening to what you just said, I'm like, oh, fantastic. You know, I was gonna cut marketing spend by 30%. Now, I just can, can cut it by 47% and the other 17% is the AI bonus you figure it out.
25:24
I would quit. Um, because I don't, I mean, yes, yes, there are places that AI can save, save money.
And um, if you're working for a company that's owned by private equity, they will want to use AI to cut costs. No question about it.
But if, um, in a regular kind of company either. Maybe it's venture-funded, or maybe it's already public. Yes, cutting costs are important.
But I think AI has more of an opportunity to help on the demand gen side to help, on creating the kinds of products that customers want to buy, um to do lots of other things that are more interesting for a marketer than just figuring out how you're gonna cut some cost out of your marketing budget. Kelly, you were gonna ask something.
26:25
Yeah. Well, as we all know, these tools are rapidly evolving as well as their access, but let's just look at 2023 I'd, I'd love to dig in.
It's kind of related to what Asher said, what can businesses realistically look to do with ai in 20 23?
And I think one of the things you laid out that is related to the cost is a lot of these menial tasks can be replaced by AI, whether that's coming up with the headlines that work on a LinkedIn post or whether that's um give me all the publications, I should pitch this particular article to blogs. A lot of blog content right now could be better B to B content that could easily be replaced, by AI for the quality.
So I think you have that kind of removal of a whole bucket of tasks that marketers are doing today they should no longer be doing and they don't have to be doing and, and you couldn't put that into your company pretty quickly.
The other thing I think you mentioned, which is super interesting, is proprietary databases that you have because companies, smart companies already do this, right? You can use that to put it out as a marketing run. AI has all this interesting data. It's gonna attract a lot of new prospects to you. It's in your space and that sounds like something that you could probably take in 2023.
Are there other buckets that you think a company can take for their marketing department like you mentioned demand gen, right? So maybe here's a question for you.
Like do you think that kind of outbound motion can currently be better written? By AI do know the human psychology of what is gonna pull people in and when better than the marketing practice that has been established over say 15 years as to what we think is best practice for getting people to move forward in the funnel.
28:20
I think the way that I like to think of it is that um taking an AI engine, putting it over the top of your data to create marketing content still needs a smart person to review it, to make sure it's accurate, still needs um a creative person to make sure that it's put together in a way that makes sense that it's telling an interesting storythat um it's not just tossing out hallucinate hallucinations, which AI Engines do you know, bad data, wrong data. Um
You know, I've seen titles of my books attributed to other people, you know, wait, wait a minute, I wrote that you know, so uh you need to, you need to have fact-checking. There are, there are things that have to happen, but imagine an AI engine is an enormous team of people creating first drafts, really, really good first drafts.
You know, imagine that in, you know, let's say 10 years ago, you would hire 100 interns to look through your database of content and create net new blog posts while they're working for you for the summer and maybe throughout the summer, they could generate 30 each. Now you can do all of that with an AI and you, but you still just like that intern, you need to look over your shoulder and make sure that this thing is worth putting out.
Um, I think the idea of using artificial intelligence to create longer-form content or shorter-form content or it's freaking brilliant at creating metadata for blog posts. I mean, you take a draft of a blog post and say write me the headline Bang. It's the, it can be really good way better than I can do. I'm a terrible head headline writer, or it can create the metadata paragraph, CAC creates the search terms that you should put along with it.
So many things that were manual tasks that it can do, but it does need humans at least at this point um to make sure that it's not pushing out something that is grossly inaccurate or um um, or in some way, not on brand with the company that's going to push the button to eventually publish it.
30:50
So hearing that is interesting because what I'm seeing now too potentially is like a glut of content, right?
30:58
And we already kind of live in this World creating that. I mean, there is so much generated crap out there right now. I mean, you know, it's everywhere, you know, and, and imagine, oh my gosh, I'm AI my, my brain hurts thinking about it. Imagine how bad the spam problem is gonna get. Um, It's terrible now, but imagine how awful the spam problem is gonna get because the AI engines are gonna figure out how to beat the spam blockers.
And all of a sudden you're gonna be getting 400 spam emails and it's, it's gonna be terrible. It's going to happen, I believe Yes.
31:32
So event marketing and community marketing are getting a boon here because that's already happening,Asher and I just ran a survey with Pavilion on kind of how these different channels are changing and the marketing leaders were saying networking and communities and partners are having a much bigger influence.
I think part of that is because of the noise, of the content in the email and the text and the spam. and if we do get this content, like if every content marketer who's a strategist can now put out 30 articles a month instead of five. Are we gonna be pivoting to these other, more human to human marketing channels?
32:16
I'm glad you asked that or said that because I think you're right and uh I uh my latest book is called Fanocracy. I wrote it with my daughter and it is exploring this exact idea, the idea of human connection, and how so many companies have done a great job at building fans.
And that's because they've, they've created a human interaction with them, with their customers, and turned those customers into fans. So I think you're, you're, you're right there. And that as the online channels become number one more crowded, which you did mention much, much more crowded.
And you know, the, the, the marketer who could do five blog posts a month is now doing 30 blog posts a month that's happening already beginning to happen already. But then the other aspect of that, which I've been writing about now for a long time, for three or four years, is that social media channels are becoming increasingly more polarized.
And um you know, it's the red team against the blue team. It's the people who believe vaccines are safe and effective and those who believe that they're um they're not and the um those kinds of things are increasing and that polarization in the next US presidential cycle um leading up to 2024 you think it was bad in 2020 2024 is gonna be appalling. And Facebook and Instagram and Youtube are already absolute cesspools of polarizing content. They're going to be much, much worse when you take polarized content and add I-generated polarized content on top of it.
So what's the, what's the solution? Well, you can choose not to go to social networks. That's one choice. Um, You can choose not to open the emails that are gonna, that are gonna start to flood your inbox. That's another choice.
But I think you've hit on something, Kelly and, and, and I have been spending a lot of time on this idea of, of the genuine human connection of how you can bring people together. And um, those of you who are listening can't see this.
But over my shoulder, I've got a whole bunch of Grateful Dead concert photos because I'm a massive fan. I've seen the Grateful Dead or the bands with the members of the Grateful Dead that followed the death of Jerry Garcia. Almost 100 times, I wrote a book called Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead with my buddy Brian Halligan, the co-founder, um former CEO, and current executive chairman of HubSpot. And, part of the idea of why we love the Grateful Dead Brian. And AI is because it's a community, it's a group of physical people, you know, and I can go to a grow
35:10
A community like you don't have to preach to me.
35:12
I can go to a Grateful Dead concert. I know I, I, I don't even, even if I don't know those people have an instant connection and we were talking about um Microsoft partner conference when we started the show.
Another great example, you know, it's the last I heard 25,000 people go to that event and you instantly have a bond with anyone in that, in that building. And I sit down for lunch. I don't know the person next to me, but I have a bond because we're both Microsoft soft partners or part of that partner ecosystem.
Um, And that is super valuable stuff. So 100% with you on that, Kelly, I agree wholeheartedly with it.
Asher Mathew
35:53
Now we have four minutes left but I have one super interesting question to ask, how was writing a book with your daughter? like what was the high point, and what was the challenging point?
36:04
So interestingly, we both came to the same idea that as we were just talking about this idea that the online channel was becoming crowded and the online channel was becoming um polarizing. Um, And this was six years ago when we first started seeing that. At the same time, I said, oh my God, I love the Grateful Dead. I love to surf. Um, And she said, I love Harry Potter. I love um Korean pop music, K-pop.
Um, and like, she's in many ways, digs in deeper than I do into her fandom. She wrote an 85,000-word alternative ending to the Harry Potter series where Draco Malfoy is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. Put that out on a fan fiction site and it's been downloaded thousands and thousands of times. She just wrote the very first um officially sanctioned by a K-pop band graphic novel which is coming out this summer.
Um uh super interesting is written up in a lot of publications and all these other publications. Um So she's, and she's an emergency room doctor.
37:14
Wow, this person sounds exceptionally impressive. good job.
37:20
Awesome.
37:20
Thanks to this person, this person, my daughter Rachel, a very, very impressive young woman. she's, yes. um, she is not only a writer and a fan of K-pop and Harry Potter, but also an emergency doctor.
Anyway, um um it was a fabulous experience to write Fanocracy with her because number one, she's a better writer than me. But number two, it was a great way for us to come together as father-daughter after she had become an adult. When she's, when we first started writing, she was just starting medical school. She was in her first year of medical school.
And, um, and so we realized that for this writing team to work, she had to be able to tell me my writing sucked. She, I had to be able to be willing to admit that. Um Hey, um her ideas are probably some of her ideas are probably better than mine. And so that was a great thing because, before that, it was like, you know, I'm the dad, I paid the bills. I'm the boss. I mean, I was never quite like that, but you know what I mean? Um, And we became full equals and full equal partners in the project of writing this book. So that was interesting. The other thing that became super interesting about writing the book is we originally did one voice. So we wrote um in kind of the, you know, we, you know, we did this, we did that and,
and it was a neutral voice trying to take a middle-aged white Harry Pot, uh middle-aged white, grateful dead man together with a mixed race. Um uh, She's half Japanese mixed-race, millennial woman who loves Harry Potter and K-pop and turned that into one voice. It did not work. There is one that does not intersect.
39:10
Think, AI could do that for us. we gotta put that in the AI prompt.
39:14
If you do write a, write a book halfway between, um, a middle-aged white grateful dead fan and a, and a, and a, and a mixed race millennial, um, harry potter fan. it probably could. but what we ended up with, which was great, was she wrote half the chapters and I wrote half the chapters and we put our byline on each chapter. and so that ended up being fabulous because you can see her voice, you can see my voice. and then when we read, when we read the audiobook, she read her chapters, I read my chapters. So that worked out great. But um it was a fabulous project for us to come together and it did well, it hit the Wall Street Journal best-seller list. So I'm, we're, we're both proud of what we were able to accomplish.
39:59
Super well, David, as you said, we could probably spend hours but wanna be respectful of your time. So thank you so much for coming on the show and engaging in an amazing conversation with us. Uh, We hope we hope to bring you back at some point in time after we get through the rest of the board members' spots.
40:22
This is great. This is great, fun. I love it. I'm glad you didn't just have a bunch of questions to fire. It is a conversation.
40:29
Is great. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your day.
40:35
Thank you for listening to Unlearned. subscribe wherever you listen and visit unlearned podcasts dot com for the transcripts.
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