Embrace It. Leverage It. Or Die

Introduction:

This week, Liz Picarazzi, Sarah Segal, and Laura Zander wind up talking about artificial intelligence. They conclude that the time has come for business owners to take AI seriously. Laura says she’s already experimented with using ChatGPT to create lists, to write product descriptions, and to write a marketing plan for a new product. She even used ChatGPT to prepare a presentation for her staff about how to use ChatGPT. She did this in part to reassure them that they don’t have to fear losing their jobs. “What I told the team is, ‘It’s a nail gun,’” says Laura. “‘Sometimes you need to use a hammer, because it needs to be perfect, and it needs to be exact. Sometimes you just need a damn nail gun, and you just want to pop it through. And that becomes the skill. The skill becomes: When do I use the hammer and when do I use the nail gun?’” On their way to the conversation about ChatGPT, Liz, Sarah, and Laura consider the various ways business owners can tap expertise, including through advisory boards, through business groups, and with strategic weekly lunches. Plus: Laura explains why she likes to hire people even when she doesn’t have an opening.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Laura Zander is CEO of Jimmy Beans Wool.

Liz Picarazzi is CEO of Citibin.

Sarah Segal is CEO of Segal Communications.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Liz, Sarah, Laura. It’s great to have you all here. I appreciate your taking the time. Liz, let’s start with you. I gather, you’ve been thinking about whether you should have a board of advisors. What got you thinking about this?

Liz Picarazzi:
So what really got me thinking about it was, as we’ve grown, and it’s become more important for me to work externally with potential partners and collaborators and vendors. I have so many different kinds of people that I’m seeking advice from, or just answering a question for me, and a good number of them now want me to have a retainer with them.

So I suddenly have two or three vendors that I really, really would like to work with, but not necessarily in the capacity—let’s say a lobbyist—of having a retainer. So that got me thinking. I don’t need eight people on retainer. What if I just got them together, like once a quarter, to go over some of the main things that they all could have input in?

And it really was coming from a place of: I really need the wisdom of these people. How do I interact with them? I kind of approached it from: Could they be on some sort of retainer? And then I found out how much it was, and realized I probably could get a lot of information by doing some sort of an advisory board. So that’s where it came from.

What I should say is that I don’t really know much about an advisory board—you know, how to structure it, how to form it. And that’s where I’m trying to decide: Do I get advice from people on how to create an advisory board? Or do I create an advisory board as I would like to have one or be on one, which probably would be a lot less formal?

Loren Feldman:
Laura, you’ve been doing this longer than Liz or Sarah. Have you considered at any point forming some sort of board?

Laura Zander:
That’s a great question. Yes, I did, probably 10 years ago. So maybe we were 10 years in, and that’s kind of when we wanted to really grow. And I think it was for me, I think I was just really floundering and didn’t know which way to grow and didn’t know who to trust. That was a big part of it. I’ve got all these people telling me, “You should do this,” or, “You should do that.” And I just didn’t know who to believe and who not to believe.

So, yeah, I decided not to and decided to just try to find more people like Jay—people who could just be my friend and could be mentors and who had similar experiences. You know, that Jason Fried article that you put out the other day about finding people who have actually lived what I’ve lived, and who have lived what I’ve lived relatively recently.

Loren Feldman:
Be careful who to take advice from. Make sure it’s from people who’ve had the experience that’s relevant.

Laura Zander:
Yes. Yep. Exactly. And the side note to that is: Don’t take criticism from anybody you wouldn’t take advice from.

Loren Feldman:
That’s a good point.

Laura Zander:
So for me, at this point, I’m glad that we didn’t, because I think that I can just get clouded with having too many cooks in the kitchen, too many different people who have too many different opinions. And then what do you do?

Liz Picarazzi:
But so Laura, what I’m thinking about is having them all literally meet together. So some of the too many cooks in the kitchen could kind of get cut down in a shorter period. What I’m doing right now is, I’m talking to, like, 12 different cooks, and they’re giving me a ton of information. And I actually think if they got into the kitchen together that, ironically, we would be able to really work through some things and get some answers in a more collaborative way. If it’s just me one-on-one with the person who could be the lobbyist, then, I don’t know. I’m not getting the perspective of the other maybe nine or 10 people who could be around and could see: Is that a good move or not?

Laura Zander:
And are you—I’m sorry, I’m gonna sound like a total jerk—soliciting advice from all these different people because you don’t trust your own gut?

Liz Picarazzi:
No, it’s in areas where I haven’t worked. So some of them are relating to expanding sales with the government. There’s a lot of things, some technical things with product, definitely with sales. That’s an area where I think we could really grow. So it’s like a little bit here and there.

Can I trust my gut on certain things having to do with hardware and those sorts of decisions? No, I can’t, actually. I don’t have anyone on my team who has some of that knowledge. It’s not like I’m just fearful, and I don’t know how to do it. It’s like stuff I literally don’t understand or know.

Laura Zander:
Got it. Got it, and so you’re reaching out to consultants at this point and paying people to get their input?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes.

Laura Zander:
And remind me, are you self-funded?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes.

Laura Zander:
Okay.

Sarah Segal:
Would you be paying this board? Would you be paying them for their time to come together?

Liz Picarazzi:
I would totally be willing to, and I think it would be worth it. I just don’t even know how that’s handled. Like, how do you approach someone with an advisory opportunity? Do you put the number right out there? You know, actually, tactically, how do you do stuff like that?

Laura Zander:
Liz, how much are you doing in sales? Can you share that? Or are you not comfortable sharing?

Liz Picarazzi:
I would rather not.

Loren Feldman:
You’ve shared it before, Liz.

Liz Picarazzi:
I know, but…

Laura Zander:
Is it $10 million?

Liz Picarazzi:
No, no, no. Between three and four.

Laura Zander:
Okay, and how much do you expect to grow in the next five years? Are you looking to triple it, quadruple it?

Loren Feldman:
She’s been trying to double every year. Right, Liz?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah.

Laura Zander:
Okay, you’re trying to double every year. So it’s fast, fast growth. And are you going to need to take money, investment, at some point? Or do you foresee self-funding forever?

Liz Picarazzi:
For as long as I can.

Laura Zander:
Okay, so you’re making a profit?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes.

Laura Zander:
Got it. I don’t know. To me, it just seems like a distraction.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, you were, for a while, part of a larger operation that you parted with earlier this year. Did that larger company have a board?

Sarah Segal:
No, it didn’t. You know, I see Liz’s perspective. And like, I thought about it as well. But I worry about putting too many people in the same room and not being productive, in terms of conversations.

Laura Zander:
Me too.

Sarah Segal:
So I actually started doing this thing this year, where I’m taking somebody out to lunch once a week. That’s my personal goal: to take somebody new out to lunch. And it’s somebody I’ve met, or usually it’s somebody unfamiliar, or somebody who I just really want to pick their brain.

And half the time, it has turned into new business, which is kind of cool. But it’s nice, because it’s just unstructured, and it’s an easy conversation. And if I call somebody up or email them and say, “Hey, can I take you out to lunch?” The answers are usually yes.

Loren Feldman:
How are you picking those people?

Sarah Segal:
Um, there’s not necessarily a strategy to it. It’s more like: Hey, I’m really interested in learning more about fractional CFOs. And so I reached out to a woman this week who is a fractional CFO for nonprofits, just to find out what that is, what services they provide, when I would want to consider working with somebody who does that. And so it’s kind of whatever’s top of mind to me.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I like that idea. I like the informality of it.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, I’m surprised that the first area that you mentioned, the expertise that you’re looking for, is a lobbyist. That never would have occurred to me that a company your size would need a lobbyist—to some extent at all, but certainly on a board.

Liz Picarazzi:
Loren, can I share with you why that’s not the case?

Loren Feldman:
Please.

Liz Picarazzi:
We’re talking about trash and parking spots in New York City and kind of the debate between: it’s either rats or parking spots. You gotta choose.

Loren Feldman:
Wait a second. Explain that.

Liz Picarazzi:
If you boil it all down, the debate about taking care of trash in New York City and containerizing it, it’s largely about parking spots.

Loren Feldman:
Because you need the space to put your enclosures. Is that what you’re saying?

Liz Picarazzi:
Exactly. To containerize the trash, you would need to go in parking spots. And that’s highly political, for a lot of reasons. So there’s just a lot of people who are involved in that. And I’ve definitely come up the learning curve a lot from being in it. And that might actually make the argument for not having advisor/lobbyists on that. But it’s not another city where they’re dealing with a little minor situation, and they have enough parking. Parking is such a political issue. And that’s why I say: It’s either rats or parking. You either containerize the trash, or you put it on the sidewalk.

Sarah Segal:
You know who I’d take out to lunch? Whoever spearheaded the parklets. That’s who I would go for.

Liz Picarazzi:
I know her, and I happened to meet with her this morning. [Laughter]

Laura Zander:
Nice job, Sarah.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes, I have to say it’s the person who was the advocate for it and for things like it as well as the actual designer, because I am talking to them about some future collaborations, which I’m super excited about.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, when I think of a lobbyist, I think of somebody that you hire to help change laws, to try to convince legislators to do something differently, as opposed to a consultant you might hire to help you understand the way the current laws work and how you can get business under the current regime. How are you thinking about using a lobbyist?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, so I can say I’m not hiring a lobbyist. Because I had one meeting with one where I could tell that I knew far more about trash and sanitation and laws about it, and which city council members were on which committee. And I realized: I’m on top of this already.

But there are areas where, for instance, next week, there’s going to be a hearing about whether restaurants can continue to put trash in bags on the sidewalk or whether they’re going to be required to containerize them. So that’s before the city council. Obviously, you know which one I want, which is, require the restaurants to put them in containers. So that’s the sort of thing where, could I influence that or not? I’m not quite sure. But there are multiple things being legislated right now about trash that impact my business.

Loren Feldman:
That makes sense. What are the other types of vendors that you’re thinking about that you would want to have part of the conversation you’re imagining?

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s more about getting advice also from veterans. So, for instance, in the locker space, I’ll say kind of broadly, there are a bunch of companies that do lockers, and a couple of them are somewhat similar to mine. And I’m talking to them, and they’re really just kind of being nice. And we’re passing along some advice. But that would be the sort of person where I would really like to—if I had an advisory board—have a regular check-in with that person, because they’re really interested in my company. And I know that they also could open a lot of doors, which is also probably the prime reason to have an advisory board, if they can open doors for you.

Laura Zander:
But do they have to be on a board for you to do that? As opposed to you just checking in with them once a month?

Liz Picarazzi:
I think that that is correct, that I would rather just have a check in like once a month, or even nicer, take them to lunch. I think that would be a lot less time for everybody: for me, for them. So that’s actually kind of an interesting idea, because then I can also look forward to having lunch once a week that I would expense to the business. And I would make sure to choose some lovely places—not necessarily expensive, but that I would like to have lunch at. [Laughter]

Sarah Segal:
That’s really smart.

Laura Zander:
Well, and then you also can break up with people more easily. So if you’re not getting the kind of information [you want], or if you find that you’re not on the same page, you just don’t go to lunch again—as opposed to the formalities of, “Okay, now I don’t want you on the advisory board anymore,” and blah, blah, blah. It just seems easier.

Sarah Segal:
It seems like it’s a way to dip your toe in the water without committing, like Laura suggested. If there’s a rush, you’ve gotta tell us, there’s a rush. But if there’s not a rush, take your time and have these lunches and figure out who you really want to keep having lunch with. And then next year, go, “All right, those are the five people that have really provided sage advice. I want to put them all in a room.”

Laura Zander:
Yep. Love that.

Liz Picarazzi:
Wow. You guys have really helped me work through this.

Loren Feldman:
You know, this topic did come up on the podcast fairly early on. I think it was Stephanie Stuckey who raised it. She had experience in the nonprofit world, and was used to running organizations that had boards. And when she bought back the family business, she immediately thought about creating a board there. And Jay was a little bit skeptical, as you might expect. He was skeptical about whether you could find people who could really help you for the price that you could afford to pay. And I think that’s probably a legitimate issue.

Sarah Segal:
So let’s just start a dating app for businesses. [Laughter]

Laura Zander:
Oh, that’s brilliant.

Loren Feldman:
You know, there are services that help companies do this. I’m familiar with one. There’s an organization in Ohio called Aileron that’s a really unusual organization. They provide a service where they have a database of potential board people and they connect owner-operators with potential board members and help with the whole process of creating a board.

Sarah Segal:
But even something non-formal, where it’s like, “Hey, I work in this region, and I’m always interested in meeting with like-minded business owners. And let’s go on a date—a business date.”

Loren Feldman:
The other way to do that is with a business group. Liz, you’re a member of EO. Do you think of your EO group as something of a board of advisors?

Liz Picarazzi:
I definitely do. I mean, I meet with the same eight people every month for five to six hours. So they all know me very well, meaning we talk about both business and personal [life]. But for some of the stuff I’m working on, they would not be able to provide the subject-matter expertise or experience on enough of them.

But I mean, I bounce stuff off of them all the time. In fact, next month, I’m giving a presentation about impostor syndrome, actually, and how I’m feeling it a lot. And I know I’m going to be very vulnerable. I’m going to be talking to seven of my business peers about this and where it’s showing up. And then, you know, they’re going to be giving experience shares about how they’ve experienced it. So yeah, I view them as a board of, maybe not necessarily advisors, but a board of supporters.

Sarah Segal:
So EO is similar to Vistage, but it’s for entrepreneurs, correct?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes. The biggest difference is that Vistage actually has a paid facilitator and a structure. Whereas EO is totally self-run. So we all get trained in the way to have conversations, trained on coaching, trained on the Gestalt method, where you’re not offering advice; you’re only offering experiences. So yeah, there are a lot of similarities, I think, in the role that that group can play in your business-emotional life.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, you’ve given some thought to joining a Vistage group, haven’t you?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, and I had a conversation with a moderator—I don’t know if they’re called moderator or group leader—she’s starting a group—

Loren Feldman:
Facilitator.

Sarah Segal:
A facilitator. Thank you. And it was an okay conversation, but there were a couple of things that turned me off immediately. And I was honest with her. Like, she told me that she was working on putting together a group of only women business owners. And as a woman business owner, I don’t want to be part of a women-only business owner group. I want to play in the same sandbox as everybody. So I was clear about that. And so I’m still kind of having conversations with her. She’s super nice. I don’t know that this is going to be the right thing for me in particular. But I’m happy to continue to explore it.

Loren Feldman:
Laura, have you been in a Vistage group?

Laura Zander:
No. I was just thinking… I did EO for about a year. I have been a guest at a couple of Vistage meetings. And then I was talking with a woman maybe a year ago, and she was creating a new group here in town, and I decided against it.

Sarah Segal:
And why did you decide against it?

Laura Zander:
Reno’s a really small town. The town that I live in is very small. And I don’t know, I just felt like I would enjoy being on boards instead, and kind of focusing some of my energy on meeting new people through other ways. Yeah, I just don’t know. I didn’t enjoy the EO experience a ton.

Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, the thing about joining groups that I’ve learned a couple times the hard way is that if you’re not very discriminating, and you start going to meetings, maybe one or two, and then you realize, “This isn’t a good fit for me,” there can be incredible awkwardness then when you try to leave it.

Laura Zander:
Yeah, I mean, I’m thinking back, and the woman who was going to be the moderator, I don’t know… I just didn’t feel a connection. I didn’t feel like it was super authentic and transparent. I don’t know, it just didn’t seem right.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, the person—the regional somebody or other—she asked me a lot of questions about what kind of group I was looking for. And I was very specific about saying I wanted somebody who was going to provide financial accountability and make sure that that was a huge focus of the group. Because that’s important to me, just to have really smart people who understand a P&L, who understand projections and all that kind of stuff.

And the group leader that they connected me with doesn’t have that background at all. So that made me kind of like, all right, what I requested was not listened to initially. So that’s why I kind of stepped back a little bit. I’m still going to go to a lunch that they’re having, just to check it out, because it may not all be about the facilitator. It may be about the people who show up. But again, I think you’re right. You have to make sure that it’s going to be the right fit, because otherwise you’re wasting their time and your own time.

Liz Picarazzi:
And potentially your money.

Laura Zander:
Yeah, for sure. And that was a big part of it. I mean, okay, so what is it? $20,000 for the year for Vistage, or something like that?

Loren Feldman:
It’s in that area, yes.

Laura Zander:
So I’m like, “For 20 grand, could I spend that 20 grand in other ways and get as much out of it?” So yes, there are some really smart people I know. I could go fly out to see them. Okay, that’s $1,000 or $2,000, and spend a day with them. And would I get more out of doing that?

Also, maybe because I’m old, I’ve got no interest in sitting around with a bunch of suits and posturing, and people who are just telling us to do things by the book. I like a more eclectic group of down-to-earth kind of West Coast people. So it just wasn’t a good fit. It didn’t feel right.

Loren Feldman:
It sounds like you were right not to join that group. I would say—and I’ve heard lots of people talk about being disappointed with their experiences, but I’ve also talked to a handful—Paul Downs is one of them—who’ve found a Vistage group that just works for them. Paul refers to it as kind of an advisory board. So the group that you’re describing, Laura, I think probably exists. Whether it’s worth it to you to find it or not, of course, is another matter.

Laura Zander:
Totally.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, when we emailed about this session earlier in the week, you responded in a way that suggested you were not having a great week. I think one of the things you mentioned was that you lost an employee you’re disappointed to lose. Can you tell us about that?

Sarah Segal:
Well, I mean, okay, so she was our second most recent hire. And she’s lovely. She’s a recent grad.

Loren Feldman:
So this year?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, this year. She graduated from school in December. We hired her in January. Delightful, great member of the team, but she looked at me last week, and she said, “I feel really bad, but when I was applying for your job, I was also applying for an internship with the communications department for the San Francisco 49ers. And they took forever, and randomly just got back to me and offered me a position. It’s too good to pass up.”

And I get it. I’m like, “All right, you know that you’ve got to take it. I mean, it’s the 49ers, it’s an exciting opportunity. And you got to get us some free tickets.” But the hiring process is a long and painful process that my operations manager works really hard at streamlining. But having to go back through that again after you found somebody that you like. And you’ve trained them. You got them their computer. You got them your passwords. You’ve gotten them up and running. Just to start again, three months later, is just kind of painful. That’s all.

Loren Feldman:
I’m sure everyone else can relate.

Sarah Segal:
It’s interesting, though, because yesterday, we had a phone call with Vanguard, because we’re setting up our 401k. And they were asking us questions like, “When do you want people to be eligible for the 401k? Immediately on start? Or a month later? Or two months?” Or whatever. We landed on three months, just because you never know. Someone may come in, work for you for a month, get a better opportunity, and leave. Although I have to say that I don’t know that we’re gonna get that a lot.

Laura Zander:
I hate it. I actually just hired somebody yesterday. And she’s amazing. We had talked to her about six months ago, and she, at the time, was looking for more than we could offer her. But now she hasn’t gotten anything in six months, so her requirements have changed. So it’s worked out perfectly, but it reminds me: I hate looking for people. And almost everybody at the high level that we’ve hired—I’m trying to think—except for two, we’ve hired when we weren’t looking for somebody.

In the last four months, we’ve hired three or four key employees, and we weren’t hiring for people. But they came out on the market—word-of-mouth referral, knew who they were. And we’re like, “Yep, we’ll make a position for you. We don’t need you right this second. But you’re so good, we don’t want to pass you up.” I mean, that’s our kind of hippie, Tahoe personality, is just to go with the flow, which is probably why we’re not a $30 million company and we should be. But it’s just so much more fun, I think, to just find people and let them kind of come to you and let our paths cross.

And you know, it’s so scary to me to go out and look for somebody, and you have no idea who they are. They’re just giving you their best answers. It’s a 50-50 chance that they’re going to work out. I mean, I know Jay would disagree, because I mean, that’s a skill in and of itself: hiring and figuring out who is going to be a good fit. But I hear you. That stuff just drives me crazy.

Sarah Segal:
Well, it was funny, though, because you’re right. You’re asking these people blindly. And you know—I think that we talked a little bit about this at the meeting in Chicago—references are crap. Pointless.

Laura Zander:
They can be. Yeah, I mean, they totally can be. They’re either pointless or they’re awesome, because they tell you, “Don’t hire this person.”

Loren Feldman:
Well, that’s Jay’s point. Most of the time, it’s not going to help. But if one out of 10 times, it stops you from hiring somebody who you might otherwise have hired, then it’s worth doing it.

Laura Zander:
It’s totally worth it. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, in that email you sent earlier this week, the other thing you mentioned was painful business processes, waiting for decisions to be made. Was that with potential clients that you were referring to?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, I’m sure everybody has experienced this. It’s the hurry-up-and-wait syndrome, where it’s like, “Oh, I need to get the proposal for work on Tuesday.” This is said to me on Friday. You deliver it, and then they take two weeks to even respond to the initial proposal. And then when they finally respond, they say something along the lines of, “We’re still figuring out how we want to spend our money, and we may not be ready for PR yet.”

You kind of want to just be like, “Listen, it’s a lot of work that goes into those proposals.” Because we don’t just cut and paste materials. We actually go in and look at their past press hits, their social media, or what their competitors are doing so we can put together a thoughtful recommendation for how we think we can help them be successful. And so if we’re doing that in an abbreviated period of time, I’ll be sitting there on my Sunday on my couch working on a proposal that then you don’t get back to me about. It’s just annoying.

And then we’ve been starting to apply to a couple requests for proposals from government agencies. And we went and we met the deadline. And they usually give this whole thing where it’s like, “You have to submit your proposal by this date. We’re going to review and narrow it down to the finalists by this date, set up interviews on this date, and let everybody know by this date.”

And we met the date that we are submitting it and have not heard anything for three weeks. Like, they’ve totally bypassed everything. I emailed the person. I was like, “Hey, I know I’m not supposed to email, but we haven’t heard anything. Just making sure that our proposal was received,” and this and that. And they’re like, “Oh, well, our timeline has been extended.” And like, great. Thanks for letting us know.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I get that a lot with this government work that we’re doing now. There’s one contractor to the city that works a lot with public housing, and they enlisted us. It’s been about two years to work on some trash containers. And we’ve sent a lot of pricing, a lot of documentation. We’ve attended a lot of meetings, but we’re still not actually a subcontractor with them. Zero money. All of this is speculative. If we were to get in with the New York City Housing Authority, all of this work would be worth it. Maybe even all of this unpaid work.

But then finally, I put my foot down a couple of weeks ago. They asked us for some shop drawings for a meeting that they had the next day. So that’s like the hurry-up-and-wait. I just basically wrote back, “We’re not attending any more meetings. And we’re most certainly not sending you shop drawings unless we get a subcontract, and we start getting paid.”

I took a big risk in doing that, because this could be a huge, huge thing for us. But I finally had to draw the line. And that doesn’t seem to be uncommon, where they will bring you into potential work and really take up a lot of your time and expertise. And then something can shift, or something is needed at the very last minute. So we’ll see how that goes. I mean, we’ve had some good interactions since I put my foot down, but it’s still a little bit in limbo.

Sarah Segal:
But I have some good news.

Liz Picarazzi:
Oh!

Sarah Segal:
Well, it’s been a long time. I have weird little goals that I put down for myself. And one I wrote down two years ago was: I really want to have a chocolate company as a client.

Loren Feldman:
You told us about that at one point.

Sarah Segal:
And so I got an inbound this week and had a fantastic phone call with the founder of a chocolate company. And even if we don’t win it, which I hope we do, it was just exciting to have that come in. Because my entire team knows I really want to work for a chocolate company. Everybody was like, “Yay!” So that was really cool.

Laura Zander:
That’s the fun stuff, right? These little dopamine hits.

Sarah Segal:
Right? And I know these folks won’t have much of a budget, so it’s not a huge source of revenue, but it’s just fun. I mean, who doesn’t want to work with chocolate? We have a donut client that we’ve had forever, and it’s really easy to pitch. It’s giving candy to a baby when you’re talking to the media. [Laughter]

Laura Zander:
You gotta have a yarn company too.

Sarah Segal:
I know. That would be fun. Actually, we’ve done yarn. My dear friend owns two local shops in the Bay Area and—

Laura Zander:
Amanda? Are you friends with Amanda? Are you serious?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, Amanda Madlener and I are dear, dear friends.

Laura Zander:
Her aunt taught me how to knit. That’s where I learned it. That’s how this all started for us.

Sarah Segal:
Amanda and I did our 20s in New York together. And then we all moved out here and like, we’re really close. But when we were first getting started, we were doing fine on the PR side, and we decided that we really wanted to start adding social media to our offerings because it was something that was being asked of us. But we didn’t have a lot of clients. So I literally called her up. I was like, “Can we do your social media, and I’ll charge you next to nothing, just so we can start building our portfolio?” She was like, “Okay.”

Laura Zander:
Oh my God. That’s awesome.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, so she actually still has like half of my camera equipment over at her studio. Because we showed her how to take pictures and all that kind of good stuff. So she does a lot of her own content now, which is beautiful. But yeah, small world.

Loren Feldman:
That’s pretty great. Laura, what’s going on with your business?

Laura Zander:
I’m good. I spent this week really talking and digging into ChatGPT. We did a presentation with our marketing teams and everybody about how, I mean for me, I feel the media is really doing a disservice and scaring so many people and so many creative people. I mean, our teams are terrified that they’re gonna lose their jobs.

And so we had an hour-long conversation. I put a presentation together about how this is just an amazing tool that, if we can all lean into it, oh my gosh. What we can accomplish is ridiculous. We just have to think a little differently and change our skill-sets. You know, learn to ask the right questions, as opposed to learning to write the right sentences.

Loren Feldman:
Give us a hint. What is the potential that you see for your business?

Laura Zander:
Oh, well, content for sure. We can be just content juggernauts and just pump out content five times faster than we’ve ever done it before.

Loren Feldman:
And are you sure it’s going to be as good as you need it to be?

Laura Zander:
Absolutely. I mean, you don’t take away the human side of it. And that was the conversation that we were having. You don’t kind of just produce this content and then blindly put it up. I mean, you still need humans with big brains to analyze it, to edit it, to curate it, to make sure you’re asking the right questions—and then the editing ability to be able to go in and say, “Hey, can you edit this paragraph?” And you just throw it up there, and it fixes all the errors and restructures some of the sentences.

I don’t know about you guys, but I get stuck on—especially when my brain’s moving too fast—even just structuring a single sentence or a single thought sometimes. So now I’ve got this best friend that I can just pop it in there, and I write, “Rephrase. Rephrase the sentence.” And maybe I have to do it three times. But then I’m like, “Ah, perfect. That’s exactly what I was looking for.”

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard such a big endorsement for this from a business owner.

Laura Zander:
Oh my God. I’ll send you the presentation that I put together. I mean, it’s life-changing. I’m so excited. The content that we can put together for blog posts or social media or whatever… I mean: Give me the best place to knit in every state in the country. How much time would it take you to pull that together? Now, all of a sudden, I can come up with all these lists. I can come up with all these ideas. “Hey, I just made this sweater, and I loved it. What should I make next?” And then it’ll tell me. I mean, how cool is that?

Liz Picarazzi:
That’s really cool.

Sarah Segal:
I second her endorsement, one hundred percent. With the human touch.

Laura Zander:
Yes, absolutely.

Sarah Segal:
I’ve used it a lot for planning. For example, I was talking to a client about an awards program. And I was like, “God, I don’t want to sit there and write down the bullet list of all the things that need to happen to develop an awards program.” So I literally went to ChatGPT. I was like, “Give me a list of all the things that I would have to do to start an awards program.”

Laura Zander:
Exactly.

Sarah Segal:
And it did it. And I was like, “All right, take that one out, that one out, that one out, and that one out. Because it’s irrelevant.”

Laura Zander:
We did the same thing with, like I said, “Give me a marketing campaign for XYZ.” And then, our marketing team is relatively junior, so it would have taken them… I mean, first of all, they’d be completely intimidated. They don’t know how to put together a marketing campaign. So it’s not that it’s the end all be all, but it’s a mentor. It gave them a structure. And so then I said, “Okay, now give me the marketing plan.” So now they have a plan, so it’s a teaching tool.

Loren Feldman:
The first question was, “Structure a campaign?”

Laura Zander:
Yep, “Give me a campaign.” So it came up with slogans, and it’s just, it’s a kickstart.

Loren Feldman:
And then the next question was, “Give me the actual plan,” and that laid out how you roll it out?

Laura Zander:
Step by step, yeah. The human brain is not meant to remember; it’s meant to process. So I’m like,“This is, once again, another way for us to think at a higher level. So let this do the legwork.” And let it do the repetitive tasks, like writing product descriptions. Once we can teach it our tone and what words we do want to use and what words we don’t want to use—our team’s so sick of writing product descriptions and that copy, and then they all end up sounding exactly the same anyway: “We’re so excited to bring on this new yarn.” So this helps give them a bit of a break, so that they can focus their energy on more creative stuff and stuff that only humans can do.

Loren Feldman:
Laura, I just highlighted a story in the Morning Report—

Laura Zander:
I read it.

Loren Feldman:
—about how shoppers are starting to use ChatGPT to search and actually make purchases. Does your presentation, does your thinking, include anything along those lines?

Laura Zander:
I had not. But I sent the article that you put out this morning to our entire team before this podcast [episode], and I was like, “This is a must read. I want everybody to read this and then let’s talk.” So no, I mean, we’re so excited about it. I mean, just the potential. It’s just a tool. And what I told the team is, “It’s a nail gun. Sometimes you need to use a hammer, because it needs to be perfect, and it needs to be exact. Sometimes you just need a damn nail gun, and you just want to pop it through. And that becomes the skill. The skill becomes: When do I use the hammer and when do I use the nail gun?”

Liz Picarazzi:
I haven’t even downloaded it—if that’s what I call it. Do I download it in the app store?

Sarah Segal:
No. You just type ChatGPT into your browser, and it will pop up, and you log in, and it lets you start doing it.

Liz Picarazzi:
Wow.

Sarah Segal:
Literally, you can type in prompts that are like, “Draft me a quote about the importance of trash enclosures in major cities, in terms of prevention of rats and mice and other things that could impact people’s health.” And it will give you a quote. I guarantee that you’ll be like, “Oh, damn, that’s good.”

Laura Zander:
Liz, if you’re interested, I’ll send you the presentation.

Sarah Segal:
I’d love to see it, too.

Laura Zander:
I mean, it’s rough. It wasn’t meant for public consumption. So please don’t critique it.

Liz Picarazzi:
Seeing how it’s tailored to your team, like giving a presentation to your team about this, I think it was probably really useful for them.

Laura Zander:
I hope so. I mean, It’s been on my list to dig into and figure out how we could leverage, and then I got feedback that—we have mostly women—the girls were very scared. And they hate the idea of this, and it’s just that kind of fear mongering.

Sarah Segal:
It’s not going to take people’s jobs. And having been a member of the media, it’s like, three weeks ago, everybody was talking about how the recession is going to make the sky fall. And this week, it’s about ChatGPT taking everybody’s jobs, or whatever.

Laura Zander:
And we’re gonna get ruled by computers.

Sarah Segal:
My feeling is, you either embrace it, and you leverage it, or you die.

Laura Zander:
Or you die. Exactly. And that’s what we talked about. And I’m like, “If you guys can learn, using it as a skill in and of itself—so if we can learn this skill and develop the skill, you’re going to be heads and tails above everybody else. You put that on your resume.”

Loren Feldman:
Laura, did you ask ChatGPT to prepare your presentation about ChatGPT?

Laura Zander:
You’re so funny. Doug asked the same thing. Yes, I did. For some of it. Absolutely. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
And it was good?

Laura Zander:
Oh, yeah, it’s great. I mean, again, you have to use your critical thinking skills to figure out what to keep and what to throw away. So the human part is never gonna go out. Like, “Give me 10 names for this new product that’s going to appeal to 45-to-65-year-old women on the West Coast with higher than average disposable income and is related to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And then it’s a springboard.

Liz Picarazzi:
How does it do that? I don’t get it. [Laughter]

Laura Zander:
Who cares? I don’t know how my car works, either.

Loren Feldman:
Well, we will be talking lots more about this, I suspect, but we gotta stop now, unfortunately. My thanks to Sarah Segal, Liz Picarazzi, and Laura Zander—and to our sponsor, the Great Game of Business, which helps businesses use an open-book management system to build healthier companies. You can learn more at Greatgame.com. Thanks, everybody.