The Impact of ChatGPT on Creative Work with That Tech Pod

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:01) Today, we're talking to Laura and Gabby from That Tech Pod about the impacts of ChatGPT, making meaningful content, and more. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:16) So you're from DC?

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:00:17) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:17) And what is your name?

(Gabby at 00:00:18) Gabby.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:19) Gabby.

(Gabby at 00:00:20) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:21) And you are?

(Laura at 00:00:22) I mean, you invited us. You don't know who we are?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:24) That's right. No, I don't.

(Laura at 00:00:25) My name is Laura. It's great to meet you, Joel. Wait, is that your name? I just want to make sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:30) No, no, no. Just checking. People just call me Modern CTO in public.

(Gabby at 00:00:34) Yeah, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) Reservations, all that.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:00:36) What's up? What up?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) Oh my goodness. Alright, so why did you start making content? What's the deal? Why did you get into this world?

(Gabby at 00:00:45) Yeah, well, Laura, I think I like this story. We have been friends for, like, how long? Well, let's not just say how long.

(Laura at 00:00:52) I don't want to talk about that.

(Gabby at 00:00:53) No one needs to know that, but a long time. That's all you need to know. Yeah. And during the pandemic—I feel like this is a cliche thing by now—but we were kind of just like, alright, what do we do? Like, we're bored. And Laura was kind of like, you know what? You have a sick podcast voice. I'm not saying I do, but she does. She does. So, and then I can also edit, and I'm a producer and all this stuff. And then Laura works in tech, and we just thought to make a tech podcast.

(Laura at 00:01:22) What really happened is I called her, and I was like, Gabby, listen.

(Gabby at 00:01:25) She kind of got me.

(Laura at 00:01:26) You have an incredible voice. We should use it. And she was like, okay, what? And then I was like, let's do a podcast around these tech forms, like e-discovery, data privacy, cybersecurity. And she was like, what's e-discovery? I was like—

(Gabby at 00:01:38) This is a terrible idea. Yeah.

(Laura at 00:01:40) And that's what happened.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:41) E-discovery sounds kind of boring. What is it?

(Laura at 00:01:43) It's boring. Yeah.

(Gabby at 00:01:44) In fact, that's—I guess I shouldn't be sharing this because cybersecurity—but one of our passwords is EdiscoveryIsBoring, and then there's other numbers.

(Laura at 00:01:56) Yeah, that was our very first password. We were like, how should we make this for one of these accounts we had? And she was like, EdiscoveryIsBoring.

(Laura at 00:02:05) And I was like, okay.

(Gabby at 00:02:07) What is e-discovery, Laura?

(Laura at 00:02:08) It's boring. Electronic discovery. But that's why we did it. These things are boring to some, and so we wanted to bring excitement to it. And that's why, when we're going back to content creation, how do you take something so boring and make it not boring?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:26) Well, it's clear that you just start with that topic and change it to a different topic.

(Laura at 00:02:31) That's how we got a new password.

(Gabby at 00:02:32) That's how you bring the people in that are here for e-discovery and then you go in all sorts of directions. Yeah. And I think we also really wanted to make something that was a little fun in the tech space. Like, it's very—at least what I've seen and what when we were doing research, you know, it was kind of very, very technical, and very—

(Laura at 00:02:56) Boring.

(Gabby at 00:02:58) Boring and very, like, company based and very—

(Laura at 00:03:01) Biased. Very biased.

(Gabby at 00:03:03) Biased, you know. Or the podcast will be sponsored by X, Y, and Z company and blah, blah, blah. And we really wanted to bring an unbiased, fun podcast about tech.

(Laura at 00:03:13) We want the content to actually shine because there's a lot of podcasts in data privacy, cybersecurity, e-discovery, and a lot of them are owned by company specific. A lot of them, you're seeing the exact same people that are leaders in the industry over and over, and they're these boring podcasts. I can't say boring enough because that was fundamentally the problem for us. And you can't even get the content if you're so bored listening that you don't even want it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:43) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:45) So you talk about e-discovery, cybersecurity. Are you broadly technology now? It's That Tech Pod is the name of it.

(Laura at 00:03:52) Yeah, that is the name. Thanks for sharing it. Yeah, yeah.

(Gabby at 00:03:56) So I think from my perspective, being someone who does not have the tech background, I do like it to be pretty broad. And I like to focus—I think I, you know, like Laura definitely does the more technical stuff and especially with e-discovery, like that sort of thing. But then I think we also like to ask the philosophical questions around tech, a little bit of the policy implications of some of the things going on, like, for example, with data privacy, all, you know, compliance and all that stuff. So I think we kind of offer a little bit for everyone, for the people that do like the more nitty gritty technical stuff, and then the people who maybe are just curious and interested and want to learn more. And we are focused on making it really digestible and accessible to both categories of people, I think.

(Laura at 00:04:53) Yeah, I would agree.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:54) How long were you doing it before you started to make money?

(Laura at 00:04:58) Honestly, we got really lucky. I mean, we started making money around month four, but unintentionally. So we had a plan where we were looking at how do podcasts make money and what does that look like. Because we didn't start to make money, but realized it's a lot more work than you realize. It's a lot more time than you realize. And you have to—as soon as you miss an episode or airing, which thankfully we haven't, but in reading that, you realize, like, then your fan base or followers are off. They no longer can depend on you, and we didn't want any of that. So we're putting in all this time, and we realized this is expensive. So how can we fund this and keep it going? So we had started looking at different options from having paid subscribers to having our guests pay to sponsorships.

(Laura at 00:05:50) And we had a bunch of guests from Ernst and Young come on, honestly, because we liked them. We looked at different people. A lot of them were very specific of data privacy, for example. And we had said to them, like, you know, how do you get sponsored by a major corporation like Ernst and Young? And they were like, you have to pitch to it. You know, you pitch to us—not them, but to their company. And, uh, yeah, we did. That was where we were like, you know what? Let's pitch directly to them. And we did, and we got lucky, and they were, at that point, it was—it happened to be their budget time. And yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:29) Are you on a path where this could become your full-time job?

(Laura at 00:06:33) I think we'd like that to be the end goal. I think we love what we're doing and we want to expand on it. We recently brought Kevin on, who, he does the ending. He'll judge you after this, obviously. But we're expanding to have more education, and that's why we brought Kevin on. So he's making education videos and things like that, and we want it to not just be a podcast, but a full tech media company. So we have a few other things we're not ready to announce yet, but that we're kind of working on. And I think eventually, yeah, we're hoping to get there, but I don't think we're there just yet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:09) You think it's like six months, a year, two years?

(Laura at 00:07:12) Oh my God, don't put pressure on us. It's slow and steady.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:15) You just kind of go with it.

(Laura at 00:07:17) Yeah. I mean, when we started, we said we probably won't make money until year three if we're able to succeed. And our hope is by year five to either really be where we want or to say this was fun, but we can't. Again, I think we were fortunate to have that happen sooner than we expected, but, yeah, I don't know the exact time frame just yet.

(Gabby at 00:07:39) Yeah, yeah. And I think to just go back to making money and sponsorship, like I think the strategic thing that we were thinking of is, like, maybe play it more that companies would want to sponsor us, but we need to be very clear in that we—like one of the selling points is that we are unbiased. Correct. And so even though we do have sponsors, we—

(Laura at 00:08:05) We've rejected sponsors.

(Gabby at 00:08:06) We've rejected sponsors who wanted to have more editorial control.

(Gabby at 00:08:11) And we keep that. That's very important to us.

(Laura at 00:08:14) We also, obviously, we want to get paid. Obviously, we love sponsors. At the same point, we don't want a sponsor that we—we don't feel, if we are advertising for them, is something that we would actually use their products, or we respect their company and believe in their mission. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:34) I've turned down advertisers. That was really hard at first—

(Gabby at 00:08:37) It's hard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:38) So hard to turn down dollars.

(Laura at 00:08:39) And exciting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:40) And then I looked at media in an entirely different way. Like, I bet you those news corps, they don't turn down dollars. They just take the money and say whatever they want to say.

(Gabby at 00:08:48) Yeah, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:49) It's like, but for myself—because, and I think that's largely why the medium's doing well, right? Because people start to know you. They listen to your show. You'll share stories. They'll get to know who you are. You'll develop a sense of trust with them. When I get off stage at a conference, people will walk up and start talking to me about my kids or my wife or something that happened in my life. Yeah. And when you have that, if you start recommending or at least highlighting and bringing on people that have horrible products, yeah, and you're overly nice to them in some way that's insinuating like, hey, this is a great company, go work with them—that's, they're going to hate you forever. They're going to take your recommendation, go have a bad experience, and then associate you with that bad experience.

(Laura at 00:09:30) Yeah, yeah. Joel, I have a question for you. Yeah. So you have a lot of cool guests on your podcast. And I was listening to an episode recently where you had on—you did one on Dun and Bradstreet, and I love that episode. Here, for everyone listening, you guys should check out Modern CTO. It's a solid episode.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:48) Now, we did three almost back to back with Dun and Bradstreet. So which one did you like?

(Laura at 00:09:53) Oh. Well, now I'm like, uh—

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:55) Where were you listening to Dun?

(Laura at 00:09:58) I didn't know there were three. So the one I listened to—but it's not actually about the episode. The point was you're bringing on people that are interesting. And so we always focus on having people that are interesting, having content that makes sense. But you had the CTO of Microsoft on at one point. Yeah. How are you getting people that are so high, not just in the industry, but I mean, that's huge. How did you get those people to come on?

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:29) So from start to where we are now, at first—and I followed Gary Vee, and that was the idea and the blueprint for everything. So it started out with me just every single night going home and emailing 200 different technology leaders and asking them to come on. And then I would talk to whoever would talk to me. And I had some friends because that was my industry that I was in through building software teams, and so I had some of my friends on. They weren't the larger names, but they at least got the show started. And then I just went after things I thought were cool. I think episode one is with a video game creator, Adrian Dura. And I just did whoever would talk to me on topics I thought were cool. Yeah. And that went on for six months, just every single day finding 200 people, emailing them, and then networking through the people that I know, hey, who else do you know that's really good at talking that could come on the podcast? So I get a lot of great referrals from the guests. Here's the trick: only ask the good guests for that. Yeah, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:32) So I did that and started to grow it there. And about six months in, I was doing anywhere from three to five episodes a day recording.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:11:47) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:48) And we weren't releasing them all.

(Laura at 00:11:49) So there's—interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:50) There's about a hundred unreleased episodes of this show.

(Gabby at 00:11:52) Oh, wow, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:53) Because we started recording more than we could produce, and we didn't have—

(Laura at 00:11:57) I hope we don't become one of those numbers.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:11:59) Yeah, one of those.

(Laura at 00:12:01) If you heard this, we made it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:03) This was before—yeah, yeah, we made the cut. No, but, uh, so we had really limited funds, and it was just me and my version of Kevin, right? And it was just us trying to figure it out out of this, like, $600 a month space and just trying to make it work and living through my savings. So we weren't making money on it. I was still building software and had a couple projects over there that was helping me fund it and then savings from a financial software company I built and sold my part in. So we're doing all these episodes to the point where I was losing my voice. My wife says, hey, you've got to stop doing so many episodes because I need to be able to talk to my husband after work.

(Laura at 00:12:46) Yeah, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:46) Valid point. Logic is good. So I cut it back to two to three a day. Then, ultimately, it ended up cutting back to, you know, three to five a week, and that's where I'm at now. We've been there for years. And it was about months—somewhere between six and eight months, I believe, and I could be wrong because it's been about six years now. But I got a call from—in the same week, we connected with the CIO of T-Mobile, Cody, and the CTO of Microsoft, Kevin Scott.

(Laura at 00:13:18) It's a really good week.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:19) I know. It was a really good week. I literally was jumping up and down excited like a little kid. Yeah. And I was kind of nervous too because they were the two biggest people I'd ever spoken to. Yeah, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:32) So I did those two episodes, we released them, and that's the moment we saw the first signs of it switching from me having to reach out to people to people reaching out to me. Yeah. And so it slowly built. And by the end of the first year, I was doing no outreach, and we had a six-month backlog of upcoming guests. And that's when I figured out how to make money because—I forget which guest it was, but somebody wanted to come on. I said, great. We're six months out. And they said, well, we have a product launch, and we can't wait six months. And I said—my version of Kevin, I said, what should we do? I was like, I need another Kevin.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:10) I said, if you pay for me, I can go hire another Kevin, and then we can produce your show. And we did a couple episodes with them. And they said, okay, we have a budget for that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:20) I said, really? They said, yeah. I said, well, can you tell me about the budget and how it works and other proposals? And then I found out that there's this entire industry. And they do these incredibly boring media interactions at conferences, probably similar to the podcast you were talking about before. But they would sit there, lights around them, pay $10, $15 grand. They ask them questions back to back to back off of a script. Say thank you, collect their money, they go. Some person who doesn't care, is not really involved, just edits it in a very generic way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:50) They send it off to the company. They put it on the social media. It gets three views, and they call it a day. And I was like, so it—

(Gabby at 00:14:56) Would be crazy to think about that. Because that's partly what exactly what Laura was kind of pitching to me, because she was like, there is money in this. It's just figuring out a way to make it something that we want to do and do it the right way.

(Laura at 00:15:12) And do it the right way.

(Gabby at 00:15:12) And it's just—it is insane when you think about it. Like, what is that for? Like, what's the benefit?

(Laura at 00:15:20) It's like a new form of marketing. I think it was one of those things where people used to hire marketing companies. And I mean, it started with they would mail things. Like, I'm actually going to send mail to people. And then all of a sudden it became, we're going to do virtual mail and things like that. And now people—I even remember when people were like, oh, commercial or a billboard. To now, I think things are so social media-based that you have to have other forms. And it's tough not being Gen Z. I mean, I wish I was Gen Z. I would be ready to go social media. Older millennials over here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:01) It's definitely an art to figure out how to do it. There's not an exact science. The simplest thing I've come up with is you find an audience and you figure out how to bring them value. And your value could be through you covering topics in a not boring way, and that's your entrance into the market. Or for me, it was figuring out how to talk with tech leaders to share what they learned, going from individual contributor all the way up to running NASA or Microsoft and their path. And then people who were growing in their tech career started listening. And then after three years of just doing that, I got a little bored, to be honest with you, because there's only so many leadership books and types of situations and advice. Josh and I were talking about this yesterday.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:47) But from there, I just started figuring out, what do I want to do? Who do I want to talk to again? Always revisiting it. The best piece of advice I've ever gotten is every quarter in my phone, there's a recurring event that says, are you happy doing what you're doing? Are you engaged with what you're doing? Are you excited about it? Is there anything you can delegate?

(Laura at 00:17:06) I love that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:07) Yeah. I got that from this guy named Andy who's a mentor for me. Cool. And so yeah, I did that, and it grew. And now we're here today talking to these rock stars.

(Laura at 00:17:19) Joel, I have an idea for you. I think for your next podcast, because I know you love to do spin-offs, I think you should do one that's modern failed CTO. And you just bring people on that tried to be millionaires, tried to be billionaires, tried to be CTOs, tried to start a company—like that's the trend—but they failed. And then you ask, what went wrong? I would love that, because people are constantly like, how did you, Mark Zuckerberg, how did you do this? Or, you know, Mark Cuban, or sticking on his Mark...

(Gabby at 00:17:51) Mark.

(Laura at 00:17:52) Let's do another Mark. Yeah, who can we—

(Gabby at 00:17:54) Let's do another Mark. Andreessen.

(Laura at 00:17:55) Yeah, there we go. You know, people are always asking, how did you get to where you are? But I would rather hear people that failed so you can learn what not to do, what are common mistakes that people made.

(Gabby at 00:18:10) Perseverance of trying to do something you love, and then maybe that's just not working out. But maybe it shifts into something different that is also really cool.

(Laura at 00:18:21) What did you do? Right.

(Gabby at 00:18:22) Yeah.

(Laura at 00:18:22) Because that kind of happened to you, Joel. Wow. Like, you went out there and you were crushing it at age 11, succeeding, succeeding, coding around, taking it—I'm an achiever over there. Oh, was there a car accident?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:35) No big deal. I'm going to make my life better.

(Laura at 00:18:36) And then you were like, oh, mistake, but then came back. And for those not listening, I'm not sharing on purpose because it's not my story and I don't know what you want them to know, but you're kind of like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:48) Thanks for listening to the Joel's Life Story episode. I appreciate that.

(Laura at 00:18:52) Yeah. Turns out I sometimes listen to this podcast called Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:56) Oh, let's plug it. Yeah, I know. That's—yeah. That's a lot to think about.

(Laura at 00:19:04) Yeah. Yeah. So suggested. So if you guys all heard it now, we'll do that. Cut of any of the—

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:10) We're a part of that.

(Gabby at 00:19:11) Of that podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:12) So we're a part of it.

(Laura at 00:19:13) So if it happens, it's us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:15) So I'll explain to you the hesitation and then why I wouldn't do it and then a possible solution to how we could do it.

(Laura at 00:19:21) Okay. Love to hear it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:22) I don't want to be around people who are failures in a current state of failure. I want to be around people who failed a bunch and then figured it out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:32) But I think it's a valid idea. So I say we hire ChatGPT to run the interviews, and I don't have to be around them.

(Laura at 00:19:39) Oh, there you go. I love the twist of it.

(Gabby at 00:19:41) Yeah. Love that twist.

(Laura at 00:19:42) I mean, we don't even need to do anything anymore because of ChatGPT.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:46) ChatGPT wrote the questions for this interview.

(Laura at 00:19:49) Oh my god.

(Gabby at 00:19:50) Did they really? Oh, they actually—they really?

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:53) Thank you, OpenAI. We did this five minutes before you guys got here. We asked ChatGPT. I said, today we're hosting a podcast, and we need some interesting questions to help us. Can you write five questions that I could ask the guest about making great content for social media?

(Laura at 00:20:08) Wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:08) Question one, what strategies do you use to create engaging and shareable content on your social media?

(Laura at 00:20:15) It's really scary because you used to read a paragraph and be like, that's obviously, you know, human thought, and now it's not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:22) Correct.

(Laura at 00:20:22) I mean, it's just crazy. It's like predictive text, like on your iPhone or Android, but on steroids. It's absolutely exciting and crazy, and I'm excited for the battle of it. So like, obviously now in school people would be like, oh great, here's my essay. And then the one kid who was like, actually, I'm going to create a software that can tell if you used ChatGPT. And then wait for the battles to continue.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:54) Yeah. That's what I'm excited about. If they somehow do get it, ChatGPT-4 is just going to crush them.

(Laura at 00:21:01) Yeah. I'm excited to see the fight. I can't tell the difference.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:04) You know? I can't tell the difference. And I bet you, I want to see their error rate between actual text and it misfiring and thinking it's GPT, because it's just so good.

(Laura at 00:21:15) It's so good. If you're in marketing right now, just stop. Your career path needs to be shifted right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:21) You have to become an expert.

(Laura at 00:21:23) Gabby and I were talking about, what was it, Buzzsprout? Buzz buzz buzz buzz. BuzzFeed.

(Gabby at 00:21:29) ChatGPT is going to be basically kind of replacing breaking news reporters for BuzzFeed. Like, they're going to start—BuzzFeed is going to start using that ChatGPT. And I was just thinking, yeah, I feel like all—as content creators, really—we have the AI art. We have now a writing software, and it's just an existential sort of crisis for a creator, because it's like, then what am I doing?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:06) Well, you're the director now. Right?

(Gabby at 00:22:07) The director. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:08) Yeah. You have to really shift the format. What it did was—and we were talking about this with Josh—I said, rich people have always had ChatGPT. I mean, wealthy people. Right? I'm a king of a nation. I go grab that expert, go grab that expert, ask them questions. They tell me answers, go get that person, implement it. And so what it's doing is it's making us wealthier. It's giving us access to these tools and this productivity.

(Laura at 00:22:33) It's about time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:35) Right? Yesterday, we found this tool, forget the name of it already. One of my team members did, and they showed it to me. And you put your logo and your website into it, and it digests everything. And then you select a series of images, and it will just make you thousands of incredibly insightful and useful social media posts. Okay. You just click download.

(Gabby at 00:22:57) Okay.

(Laura at 00:22:58) Yeah. Let's do that. If you want to send that to us. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:00) And it's well-branded, and it's bonkers.

(Laura at 00:23:02) We don't need Gen Z anymore. Thank you, Gen Z.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:05) ChatGPT.

(Laura at 00:23:05) We are good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:07) Right?

(Gabby at 00:23:08) Yeah. Yeah. That's wild.

(Laura at 00:23:12) All right. So are you going to use it moving forward? Yeah. Is this—

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:15) Implementing it into the company. Yeah.

(Laura at 00:23:17) Cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:17) It's going to streamline everything. It's going to change so many things for us. And what I really want is people who know how to use these tools really well. You know, come tell us. We were just working on it before Josh got here. What type of prompts do we need to get the correct questions for show notes?

(Gabby at 00:23:34) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:35) Topics you want to cover, I'd say. And, you know, right now, our current thought is we'll enter in your bios, the guest bios, a little bit about their industries and experience, and just tell ChatGPT that we're going to have a conversation with this, you know, main topic or what would the best topic be. And then you ask for questions related to those topics, and you just drill down and talk back and forth to it. And now you have an incredible prep.

(Laura at 00:23:58) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm excited and nervous to see—so right now it's free, but eventually, I think they're going to get you hooked, everyone's addicted, now we depend on this, this is our life. At some point, there's going to be some sort of cost to it, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:14) There already is. Yeah.

(Laura at 00:24:15) Yeah. So what's that—this is just a free beta. Yeah. So I'm like, what's that going to look like? And that's what I want to see. It's going to have to—you need it now.

(Laura at 00:24:27) I need it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:28) So the couple positives, the first one is it's going to be vastly cheaper than a person. So it will allow you two to act like a media company 10 times your size with your current resources. Secondly, it's going to be pennies or fractions of a penny. You can see Microsoft last week released their paid version, and it's incredibly cheap.

(Gabby at 00:24:48) Wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:49) And then a couple people have reported that OpenAI has come up with pricing inside of their technology. So they only rolled it out to a few people, but I believe it was some large amount for $40 a month or something nominal.

(Laura at 00:25:06) Yeah. So for those listening, we're no longer hiring for marketing at this time.

(Gabby at 00:25:11) We got it coming.

(Laura at 00:25:12) But we have free internship programs if you are Gen Z and know how to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:16) We're really good.

(Laura at 00:25:17) On TikTok. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:18) So the departments will just shrink. Right? Instead of you having 20 people in marketing, you're going to have two.

(Laura at 00:25:23) Yeah. Right. I mean, I think for a lot of people, it's a huge benefit. But for some people that—you know, that is your career path. That's what you've been doing. You really have to now figure out what are you going to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:34) You have to try harder.

(Laura at 00:25:36) I think it's like professional soccer players or something. You work really hard, you're a professional soccer player, you make it to the Olympics or gymnastics person, then you turn 17. What do you do now? Then you have to be a coach. Well, how are you going to do that now? You have to really just change your whole life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:52) Instagram.

(Gabby at 00:25:53) Instagram. So I feel like you have a very optimistic view of this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:58) Oh, yeah.

(Gabby at 00:25:59) I have a pretty cynical—I'm a little—well, I—and this is how I approach a lot of things, which is another thing. Yeah. Another conversation for another day. But it's cool. I totally recognize all those benefits, but I'm at the same time a little scared because it just seems so—it's really cool that we're there with that tech. Right? But there is for me a little bit of this absoluteness that as a creative person myself, I feel a little bit like, well, my magic sauce is being taken by artificial intelligence now. And so yeah, how do you transform that? And then it's like the next step of just exponential growth of AI. And what does that look like in five to 10 years? You know, the writing or Kevin was telling me how it can write its own code.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:59) Copilot. Yeah.

(Gabby at 00:27:00) Yeah. And what does that mean? And does that make developers more efficient?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:04) They're going to be able to create—

(Gabby at 00:27:07) I'm so optimistic about it. I'm like, we're going to be like I, Robot eventually.

(Laura at 00:27:12) You better step up, Gabby, or I will replace you as a co-host for ChatGPT. Oh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:18) I'll help you write the code. Yay.

(Laura at 00:27:21) We'll model it on every past thing that she says.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:23) My name is coming through.

(Laura at 00:27:25) With us, and this is our absolute package from That Tech Pod. We just wanted to—you heard it here first. It's Chat. Chat Gabby.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:34) Chat Gabby.

(Laura at 00:27:34) Chat G-A-B-I.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:38) Well, I'm optimistic because I know the end result, and the end result is ultimately we all end up inside of computers. And it's just a delay between now and then. And if you want a logic chain to follow, if you step back and let's say you live on Mars and you start watching Earth, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:56) So you're this alien, you're probably Elon Musk, you're at Mars, you're watching Earth.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:28:00) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:00) And you're watching what's happening from early 1900s when we first get electricity to today. And so what you have seen is this metal and the silicon emerge and sort of infect, like a virus, the planet. It actually does. If you look at the lights at night on Earth, it looks very similar pattern, like a virus or some or a growth.

(Laura at 00:28:21) Necessarily sexy. Describe it more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23) Oh yeah, viruses. That gets the mood going. So what you see is this pattern of silicon emerging.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:28:33) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:34) Right? And I thought you were gonna make a joke. Mhmm. No?

(Laura at 00:28:37) I'm keeping it, I'm keeping it together, man.

(Gabby at 00:28:40) It's really difficult. That's impressive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:42) There was a lot.

(Laura at 00:28:42) That I was like, just don't. Just let him get his thought out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:46) Okay, silicon emerging. And but—

(Laura at 00:28:50) Sure does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:50) You see the electronics come about more.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:28:54) You see—

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:54) The lights come about more. You see them get smaller and closer to your body.

(Laura at 00:28:58) Mhmm. Usually I think we like it the opposite. When it gets closer, we want it to be a little bigger.

(Kevin at 00:29:03) Is that—

(Laura at 00:29:04) No, I'm talking about like smaller when it gets closer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:07) Stents. Now my children can't—

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:29:09) See them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:09) Heart stents? Heart stents or, you know, things, device, medical devices that they're putting inside of your body, right? Mhmm. And it's just a matter of time before that becomes elective.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:29:19) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:19) With the Neuralink. And so now we're merging. So we're essentially watching this pattern of the emergence of technology connecting and getting closer and closer. Look at this: we got more power in the computing of the entire Earth in the sixties right in our hand.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:32) It just, right, it gets smarter and closer, smarter and closer, and smarter. And all you have to do, it's not really that hard of a leap. You just say, okay, just let that go for another hundred years.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:29:40) Where are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:41) Yeah, yeah. They're in the compute. You and the computer are indistinguishable. Yeah. And so that's the endpoint. So ultimately, yeah, we're gonna go in the computers.

(Laura at 00:29:49) I mean, I hope I get in a Mac.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:52) Me too.

(Laura at 00:29:52) That's kind of where I'm like a different, like, you know, I don't want to be on just a standard PC.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:57) PC. That's why God sent Steve Jobs.

(Gabby at 00:29:59) Yeah, there you go.

(Laura at 00:30:00) Yeah, we made your home in luxury.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:30:03) There you go.

(Gabby at 00:30:05) Do you think that, so that's really interesting. Do you think that our endpoint of being in the computer or being computers is more of a combination of continuing the, like, stents in the heart or Neuralink? Or is it like we're gonna be more so in a virtual reality sort of deal?

(Laura at 00:30:25) You mean the metaverse?

(Gabby at 00:30:26) Yeah. Well, yeah, but like a hundred years from now version of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:30) Yeah, I think in a hundred years you probably have 80/20. You'd have 80% of the people inside of the computer, and then you would have some name like "the landers," like people that walk around on land or something like that.

(Gabby at 00:30:42) Gabby.

(Laura at 00:30:42) Yeah, Gabby's like, "Not going." Yeah, I'm not interested. I'm not—

(Gabby at 00:30:46) Going to—

(Laura at 00:30:46) The mirror. I said I was pessimistic and I meant it. Yeah.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:30:51) The rest—

(Laura at 00:30:51) Of us are like volunteering. We're like, "Okay, see ya. I'm gonna build a code so you can't—"

(Gabby at 00:30:56) So then what does the outside world, this is so interesting to me, I love these conversations.

(Laura at 00:31:00) What is the, yeah.

(Gabby at 00:31:00) Like, it's like, and how do you power that? I guess it's like The Matrix.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:04) Oh, the robots will be able to create themselves and then mine themselves and recreate themselves and, you know, self-replicating robots. Mhmm.

(Laura at 00:31:12) I do think Keanu Reeves will be there, though.

(Gabby at 00:31:15) I think he will.

(Laura at 00:31:17) I think Keanu Reeves may be actually an—

(Gabby at 00:31:21) AI. That dude doesn't age.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:31:24) Yeah, that—

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:25) Is kind of true.

(Laura at 00:31:25) Yeah, Keanu Reeves is going to be around for a long time. If you're listening to this, it's been like a hundred years from now, right, and you're like, "What do you mean Keanu Reeves is 30?" He's been that age for a while.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:36) Yes.

(Laura at 00:31:38) He's a really nice guy. So if you're listening, Keanu, come on our podcast.

(Gabby at 00:31:43) But if, and if robots are self-replicating, then like, then like what, like, and if they can—

(Laura at 00:31:49) Tons of Keanus.

(Gabby at 00:31:51) Like their own thought or like, yeah, like discern thought and stuff like that. Like, what makes a human human then at that point? You know what I mean?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:58) Yeah. That's what I think we're on the path to discover.

(Laura at 00:32:01) That's what, that's where the battle is gonna be. So when the kids at school are using ChatGPT to write their essays that seem like they could have written these essays, how do you distinguish it? And that's why the one kid who was like, "Actually, I'm gonna build something to tell the difference," ChatGPT is just gonna keep fighting that battle, and you're constantly going back and forth.

(Gabby at 00:32:23) I think the scene from the episode of The Office where Dwight is battling the computer—

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:33) Oh, yes.

(Gabby at 00:32:34) I think that perfectly encapsulates everything that we're talking about right now because he's trying to battle and sell more paper than this computer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:44) So you think ChatGPT is a scam and there's 100,000 Pam Beeslys behind the scenes?

(Laura at 00:32:49) Yeah, yeah.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:32:50) Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

(Laura at 00:32:51) Steve Carell has been working on this for a very long time, and Gabby's from Scranton.

(Gabby at 00:32:57) So I actually am from Scranton.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:32:57) She—

(Gabby at 00:32:58) Are you really? I am.

(Laura at 00:32:59) Yeah, she's known about this for a while, which is why she's pessimistic.

(Gabby at 00:33:02) Yeah, because I'm actually, guys, it's a scam.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:07) ChatGPT, you have to learn the skills. I'd say the biggest opportunity I see is when I see artisans discussing the fact that, "Oh, this is a sacred thing." You see all the people moaning and complaining and crying on LinkedIn. "They built this on the backs of our creative—" I was like, "Yeah." I just, I don't do LinkedIn arguments much because I don't like to do a lot of arguments.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:30) Mhmm.

(Gabby at 00:33:30) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:31) But I did share a perspective.

(Laura at 00:33:34) But some people—

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:34) Couldn't help myself.

(Gabby at 00:33:35) On this one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:36) This individual was saying that it's not right that a non-creative person can just go interact with this and it spit out creativity because it's an art and that was trained on their art. And I said, "Well, at the same time, you pay your water bill. You don't go collect and sanitize your water. You buy your food at the store, so the butcher would say, 'You know, you didn't slaughter your own animals,' right? And the water person would say, 'Oh, you didn't filter your own water.' And you go and you buy housing." And that's what we have done since the beginning of time, and we're always building on previous—

(Laura at 00:34:04) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:04) Innovations. So, Mhmm, every single time this happens, you get the, you know, all the way to the example of the horses and the automobile, right? You always get the people in the industry, and there's two types of people. Because one of my first projects helped me realize this. We had gone into a real estate company and reduced the size of a department through a software we created.

(Laura at 00:34:36) I think I heard this on this podcast, Modern CTO. Yeah, there was this episode. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:41) 100%. Yeah, yeah, with That Tech Pod, the collaboration episode?

(Gabby at 00:34:45) Yeah, that—

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:45) Was a good one.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:34:46) That was good. They got—

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:47) Really good ratings. I love that one.

(Gabby at 00:34:48) I've had a podcast.

(Laura at 00:34:49) A podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:50) Kevin roasted me at the end, but—

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:34:53) It was good.

(Laura at 00:34:54) Oh, that's true.

(Gabby at 00:34:55) Yeah, he's a killer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:56) Yeah. And now I forgot what I was saying.

(Intro Narrator at 00:34:59) Yo, what's up? Joel was talking about his real estate software.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:02) Oh yeah, so there were two types of people in the department. There were the people that were curious and were like, "Oh, this looks so efficient and it's gonna be great and it's gonna do so many awesome things." I said, "Great, you're pleasant to be around. Come here, I'll show you how to use it." Mhmm. At the end of the day, the people who did that were the only ones left.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:17) Mhmm. They were excited about it and they embraced it and they saw that it was gonna automate things, and they wanted to understand it because they saw their job at risk. Yeah. But they weren't pessimistic about it. They didn't go home and complain to their spouses about it. They said, "I gotta get curious. I gotta figure this out because this is coming." And it did. And they were the ones that were left. And the same thing's happening with GPT.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:38) You think I'm not nervous? When I was going back and forth—

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:35:41) With this—

(Laura at 00:35:41) He doesn't look scared. If you're watching on YouTube, you can tell.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:43) The beard makes me never look scared, but it's okay.

(Laura at 00:35:46) Also, Gabby, I'm pretty sure he's actually just roasting you right now. This is your roast.

(Gabby at 00:35:49) You're a little targeted.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:50) And he was like, "The people that are pessimistic—"

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:35:54) Oh. It's like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:54) "It's not gonna catch on."

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:35:55) Amy. That's what I was doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:57) No, that's—

(Gabby at 00:35:57) Okay, I got it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:58) But the reason why I say it is so that you have the opportunity to retrain your brain, right? You can say, "Whenever I feel like that." You think I didn't feel like that when I saw this? I thought, "What's gonna happen?" I'm not scared on the week-to-week, but I am scared on the three-to-five years because ChatGPT can have better collective knowledge than me. It can come to a point where it will have a visual representation—

(Laura at 00:36:21) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:22) That is indistinguishable, and the way it will be able to articulate itself audibly will be indistinguishable from a human. Yeah. And now you can have this robot that you can't tell is a robot, Mhmm, doing sales calls. You can have it—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) We have—

(Laura at 00:36:37) That already. Yeah, there's a lot of deepfakes of us that we're constantly like, "That's—"

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:36:41) We have to constantly—

(Gabby at 00:36:43) Say that.

(Laura at 00:36:43) All the time.

(Gabby at 00:36:44) If someone is impersonating you.

(Laura at 00:36:45) Yeah, it's weird.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:47) So when that happens, what's going to happen with us? And so I just then went and talked to an astronaut and learned how to deal with trauma. And then—

(Laura at 00:36:55) I'm not surprised by that. I was like, "So anyway, our next guest is from NASA."

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:00) Tom Marshburn. Yeah.

(Gabby at 00:37:02) So how did, how did you learn to, like, what did he say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:05) Yes, this guy would helicopter into, like, yeah, blood baths and essentially, wow, and save lives and deal with, wow, like in a street where there's car accidents and mangled everything, saving lives, getting people on helicopters and out of there and doing surgeries on them. And he just said—

(Laura at 00:37:20) Stomach you have to have, yeah, to be an astronaut.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:37:22) Well, he—

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:23) Did that, and then they suggested that you become an astronaut. Somebody suggested that to him. So he's like, "Okay, cool."

(Laura at 00:37:28) Yeah, yeah. Naturally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:29) Yeah, he explains the whole process on the show. So if you wanna become an astronaut, Tom Marshburn, listen to him. But the takeaway advice is, when the more trauma that's happening, the smaller you make your world.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:37:41) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:41) So if there's an immense amount of trauma, all you do is focus on the one next move that you have to make. You're not thinking about anything other than the next move you have to make.

(Laura at 00:37:48) That is honestly beautiful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:51) We'll put that quote in our book.

(Laura at 00:37:54) Can you quote me saying it and not Tom? Okay, well, we're—

(Gabby at 00:37:57) Going to put like—

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:37:58) Quote, GPT. We'll do Tom—

(Gabby at 00:38:00) We'll do Tom via Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:02) Tom via Joel. There you go. Yeah. What else do people wanna know about creating content?

(Laura at 00:38:09) Honestly, I think that's an incredible question, and to me it's asked wrong. It's not "What else do they wanna know about creating content?" I think it's more "What are people doing wrong when creating content?"

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:38:21) What are—

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:21) They doing wrong?

(Laura at 00:38:22) That's what I wanna know. I'm asking you that. Oh.

(Gabby at 00:38:25) Yeah, yeah. What do you think?

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:26) Oh, well, I haven't thought a lot about this, so it'll be not a great response.

(Laura at 00:38:31) It's a twist.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:31) The thing that they're doing wrong with, let's talk about the thing I see that's wrong with most podcasts, yeah, especially business podcasts. Mhmm.

(Intro Narrator at 00:38:43) That a—

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:43) Bit. A business will come into an industry, let's say security, and they'll say, "Hey, I'm, you know, a billion-dollar security company and I'm gonna go do a podcast." And then they'll wanna talk about their product and interview different people inside their company—

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:38:58) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:58) And all of that. And they wanna name the podcast the name of their company. Mhmm. That is the quickest recipe for failure.

(Laura at 00:39:07) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:08) And the people who get it right are the people that understand the concept that you figure out, you decide who your audience is. If you can't decide, you pick the top 20% of your best customers and you say, "That's my persona."

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:39:19) Mhmm. And then—

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:19) You figure out, what in the marketplace is going after their attention? Who else is going after their attention, and how are they doing it? Mhmm. What's the length of their content? What's the style? How are they promoting it? Let's do a competitor analysis across the market of who's going after their attention. After you do all that, you look back and you say, "Where is the white space? Or where is there someone doing something that's taking off, but they're doing it really poorly and we could do it 10 times better?" And then you start to build your show in that space.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:47) And as long as you keep the audience and value going to the audience at the root of everything, it'll work long term because people are listening for a reason.

(Laura at 00:39:55) Jill, you didn't even need us on this podcast. You just handled it yourself. But I want to not only agree, but I think the key takeaway, in my opinion, is adding value. I think when you're looking at content, everybody who comes on the podcast, before we actually talk to them live and before we hit record, we say to them, "I know this is your big moment," because they want to talk about themselves. They want to talk about their company or their product, and everyone thinks, "When I hear myself talk, I'm just like, wow, I'm incredible." Everyone feels that way, and thankfully, everyone else...

(Gabby at 00:40:30) Feels that way as well.

(Laura at 00:40:32) So we try to say, "Listen, we think you're great. That's obviously why you're on the podcast. But we want to really talk about this specific topic and make sure it doesn't turn into an entire sales pitch, because that's not what this is. This is not your time to have an ad. This is your time to get on and actually educate us and dive deeper on something and help us get something of value out of it, because we feel if we want to talk to them, then other people will want to hear what they have to say." And I think that when it comes down to content creation, it's actually thinking about, would you want to hear this? Does this add value to you? Do you think this adds value to others? Because sometimes Gabby's like, "No, I hate eDiscovery." But she has to step back and say, "But I can see the value that it would give to other people. So let me try to take a step back and look at that."

(Laura at 00:41:31) And I think that's the biggest thing: adding value.

(Gabby at 00:41:33) And just to add quickly, I think add some value to that. No. And yes. Yes, and I think if you're not super enjoying what you're doing as a content creator, then no one else will really enjoy it. So take some of the science brain maybe out and just be like, "Am I having fun? Do I like what I'm doing? Do I like chatting with Laura for however long? Do you have trust? Kevin judging us..."

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:42:02) That chatting with...

(Laura at 00:42:03) ChatGPT will replace you.

(Gabby at 00:42:04) Yeah. And if the answer is yes, then I think you're doing something right.

(Laura at 00:42:09) And I think that's another reason why, at the beginning when Kevin didn't come on at the end, we would just talk about it afterwards. Like, "How did we feel about it?" And I think it was a really interesting change for our podcast when we started incorporating Kevin, because we're talking to the guest, and Kevin, like we are right now, is listening and judging. And so it is great when he comes on and he's like, "Actually, you should have asked A, B, and C, because that would have been more value." And we're like, "Thanks, Kevin. You're not supposed to roast us." But he will say things that, when we're in the conversation, we're in the moment, and he is listening from a different perspective. So it's great afterwards to get a different perspective. And sometimes he will say, "Actually, I looked up this entire thing that you guys were talking about, and now we need another episode because it's all wrong." Or, you know, that doesn't happen often, but it's good to have and good to know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:04) Where did you find Kevin?

(Gabby at 00:43:06) Oh, man. On the street. We were walking, just walking aimlessly, and we picked him up.

(Laura at 00:43:10) Look smart. No. Actually, Kevin was the CTO of a company I worked at forever ago. And when I went to work at this company, and this is a real story, and it's why Kevin and I have some problems, I applied and I went on this interview, and there were several other people outside of Kevin who were all like, "We want to hire her." Everyone wanted to hire me. I'm really flattered by it, except Kevin. He was like, "Absolutely not. We are not hiring her. This is a tech company, and I don't think this girl can cut it." I don't know his words, but he was like, "Absolutely not." Thankfully, everyone else said yes, but I knew Kevin rejected me. So I was like, "Okay, Kevin. We work together now, and you may be my CTO, but I'm going to prove to you this was a mistake." And then he...

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:57) Hiring me was the mistake?

(Laura at 00:43:59) No, rejecting me.

(Gabby at 00:44:00) Oh, okay.

(Laura at 00:44:00) But I hope not. But then he went to a different company, and from there, when he left, it was, did you ever see Jerry Maguire? Yeah. You know when he's like, "Okay, who's coming with me?" Kevin didn't do that at all. He was like, "Okay, bye." And I was like, "I'll come. I will come with you, Kevin." He was like, "No, no, no, it's okay. It's okay." I was like, "Kevin, I will be there." Kevin was like, "I'm moving to Ireland." And I was like, "Me too." So I followed him there, went to that company. And then from there, we both ended up leaving that company, and I didn't follow him anymore because I was like, "We're good now. I've proved myself." And then Kevin followed us...

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:44:42) Yeah.

(Laura at 00:44:42) And was like, "I really like the podcast." And I was like, "How the tables have turned. Look at us now."

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:49) So is this your full-time job, Kevin?

(Kevin at 00:44:51) No. I do this as a side thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:56) It's interesting, though, right? To become a full-time job. So...

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:44:57) Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. Millions...

(Kevin at 00:45:00) And millions...

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:00) Of dollars.

(Gabby at 00:45:00) Yeah. When that happens...

(Laura at 00:45:01) It will happen. I mean, we have ChatGPT on our side now. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:05) How many episodes are you into your show?

(Laura at 00:45:08) So we have Tuesday episodes that we release every Tuesday, obviously the Tuesday. And then we have bonus episodes. So people are confused by this because we will say, which is true, we have over a hundred episodes. But if you look under our recent episodes, it'll be like episode 95, and they're like, "That's a lie." And I'm like, "It's not a lie. We don't label our bonus episodes." So incorporating both, we have over a hundred episodes.

(Gabby at 00:45:33) And I guess we're almost at officially a hundredth with our Tuesday episodes. Yeah.

(Laura at 00:45:40) Yeah. But this might be our hundredth episode. You know, who's to say? And if we talk to ChatGPT, because I can't stop talking about it, I'm just going to be like, "Yo, tell everyone it's our hundredth," and people will know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:55) Right?

(Laura at 00:45:55) Yeah. Yeah. What are you at? Like your four thousandth episode or 40,000? Gosh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:02) Yeah. You give an accurate count?

(Laura at 00:46:04) He was just like, "Sure."

(Intro Narrator at 00:46:05) Wait. Let me let me tell you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:07) Josh is giving an accurate...

(Laura at 00:46:08) Yeah. Tell us the truth, Josh.

(Intro Narrator at 00:46:10) The truth is that we're in episode 598. This might be episode 600, actually.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:16) Oh, there we go.

(Laura at 00:46:17) Oh, my God. We are at landmark moments together. Wow. Numbers. Okay. This is beautiful.

(Gabby at 00:46:25) What an honor.

(Laura at 00:46:26) Yeah. It really is our first time together at this exact landmark.

(Gabby at 00:46:30) Yeah.

(Laura at 00:46:30) I knew we'd have our first time together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:32) Content creators.

(Laura at 00:46:34) Content creators.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:35) What would you tell people who are professionals that watch other content creators and they think about doing it, but they never actually do it? They don't step foot out into the world. They don't start speaking at conferences. They don't start writing in their industry. They don't...

(Laura at 00:46:52) It's depressing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:54) What would you tell to them?

(Laura at 00:46:55) Be better. Get out there. Stop getting in your own way. You're a failure if you allow yourself to be a failure, and you're going to succeed if you decide that you're going to succeed. Just go for it.

(Gabby at 00:47:07) Yeah. I will quote Michael Scott.

(Laura at 00:47:12) Of course. Welcome back to the audience.

(Gabby at 00:47:13) Quoting Wayne Gretzky, "You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take." Right? Yeah. But I mean, as cheesy and dumb as that is, I mean, it's true. Life is just so short. If you are dreaming of doing something, the best way to do it is just putting yourself out there. And as scary as that is, I mean, we did it, and now we're in this cool studio space out in the woods an hour or so outside of Nashville. So that is going to be you.

(Laura at 00:47:43) And you haven't heard from us since, please...

(Gabby at 00:47:46) You know that we were shot trying to enter into an unlocked house.

(Laura at 00:47:51) Yeah. The other thing is, you might as well do it now because your job's going to be replaced by AI soon, anyway. So get out there and do it while you can.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:47:55) Yeah. Hustle quickly. This is your time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:05) Now, had you found value in talking to a hundred people? I don't know. Were you in sales before? Did you talk to a lot of people before?

(Laura at 00:48:14) Yeah. I'm constantly talking to people. What about you, though?

(Gabby at 00:48:18) I love it. No. I was not in sales.

(Laura at 00:48:22) Absolutely found no value.

(Gabby at 00:48:23) Did not talk to millions of people at a time. But I've been surprised doing this podcast. So I came in and I'm like, "I don't like this stuff." You know what I mean? I'm not a tech person. Although, I need to call you out, Laura. I love you. Do it. Before we started recording...

(Laura at 00:48:46) It's true.

(Gabby at 00:48:46) Laura, this is a very true story. She said to us, "Do you guys know how to put your phone on silent?"

(Laura at 00:48:52) This literally happened today.

(Gabby at 00:48:53) And we showed her how to put the phone on silent.

(Laura at 00:48:55) And, um, tech is hard.

(Gabby at 00:48:58) Tech is really hard. But I've really enjoyed, so don't get me wrong, some conversations are just not for me, maybe more for you in the eDiscovery world. But I've had really, really interesting conversations with people, and I've learned so much. And I didn't think I would get that much out of it.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:49:19) Would you...

(Laura at 00:49:19) Do it again, though?

(Gabby at 00:49:21) Yeah, for sure.

(Laura at 00:49:22) What about you, Joel?

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:24) I hadn't talked to many people at all before I started the show. Mhmm. So it changed my entire perspective of people as a whole.

(Laura at 00:49:31) Yeah.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:49:33) Just have to figure out...

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:34) How to talk to people. And then I was saying that at a conference, and somebody came up to me afterwards and said, "There's this book called Speak to a Hundred People." That's probably not the title, but it's something like that.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:49:45) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:46) And it talks about how if you want to get to know how to interact with people, have a meaningful conversation. So at the checkout doesn't count, right, at the grocery store. Sitting down and having a conversation about something. Do that a hundred times, and you'll have an entirely different view of how the world works.

(Gabby at 00:50:04) Well, we've done that.

(Laura at 00:50:05) Yeah. I wonder if the view has made you pessimistic, though. Is that why? Is it all the people we talk to? You're very...

(Gabby at 00:50:13) Some people have definitely scared me in terms of AI, futuristic, and data privacy stuff. Yeah. But it's also really, really cool. It's like there are scary things and also cool hopeful things, which I think makes it interesting to keep discussing and talking and learning about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:35) You ultimately die. So it's like, let's party in the in between.

(Laura at 00:50:39) Debatable. Look at canneries.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:41) I know. That is true.

(Gabby at 00:50:42) Or if we could figure out that Black Mirror episode to put our consciousness in...

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:47) Yeah. That's the ultimate...

(Gabby at 00:50:48) The cloud.

(Laura at 00:50:49) That's where we're going. Consciousness cloud. Can't wait.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:52) Are either of you actively managing a team? Do you have direct reports in your life?

(Gabby at 00:50:57) Yeah. Yeah. We're boss bitches.

(Laura at 00:51:00) Yeah. And, you know, just a shout out to somebody that we boss around: Kevin. Kevin. Sorry, Kev.

(Gabby at 00:51:07) How do we do, Kev?

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:51:08) It's good. Do you guys...

(Intro Narrator at 00:51:10) Want Kevin to judge you at any point?

(Laura at 00:51:13) Yeah. Can we bring Kevin on? Yeah.

(Intro Narrator at 00:51:14) Yeah. Yeah.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:51:16) Let Kevin take your seat.

(Gabby at 00:51:17) There you go.

(Laura at 00:51:19) Kevin, welcome to the show.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:21) Welcome. Welcome, Kevin.

(Laura at 00:51:22) So, Kevin, you've been listening this entire time to everything that we've been saying. Can you give us your feedback? Give us your thoughts.

(Unknown/Multiple Speakers at 00:51:32) What do you think?

(Kevin at 00:51:33) It's been really interesting. Obviously, first, please thank you for not murdering us. We were definitely a little concerned. But no, actually, I think this has been really interesting because, you know, obviously the content, we are very conscious of it, but I think some of the folks out there aren't really thinking about it. And I think one of the things we've done well is the side of it where we've actually come in and done something different and done something that is pretty unique in our industry, and not done the sales pitch and not done the very sort of industry-standard podcast. And so for me, that piece of it is big. You know, the thing that I do think is interesting when we're talking about some of the AI and all, I'm not as worried about the AI replacing a human per se, but I think it's going to be a human with AI that's going to ultimately be the thing that is the next iteration. You know, for me, that's the big piece of it that I think is kind of missing. And so there are going to be certainly industry pieces that are going to be replaced. You know, again, a low-level marketing person, an entry-level accounting person type of thing, you know, that could be easily replaced. Um, you know, but I think the side of this that I do think is interesting is the separation. You know, the folks who rise to the top are going to still succeed. The folks who are not making it a lot harder to automate themselves, and so for me, that's the piece that I think is really interesting and definitely, you know, kind of the exciting side of this and all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:55) For the people who are not achieving. Right?

(Kevin at 00:52:59) Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:01) We just do a Hunger Games thing with them.

(Kevin at 00:53:02) I mean, obviously, you hope that we don't have the Hunger Games for them, but, you know, I think it'll happen naturally. I do think those folks...

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:08) The Hunger Games situation will happen naturally?

(Gabby at 00:53:10) No. No.

(Kevin at 00:53:11) I feel like the folks who would normally come out of, you know, accounting classes or a marketing program that are kind of coasting will have to find something else to do. I do think that is sort of the natural evolution of this. You know, it used to be the big joke that anybody who graduates from medical school becomes a doctor. You know, I think there are going to be folks who aren't going to necessarily make it automatically. Right? There isn't going to be that kind of default option. I think we're seeing a lot more in certain industries. You know, again, I come from an eDiscovery background, and so you see it in the legal industry. You know, you no longer can just automatically get a job. You have to rise up.

(Kevin at 00:53:46) You have to be the best of the best, and I think that's going to start being more pervasive in more and more industries. And I think that's the big shocker for folks. And so for me, that's kind of my opinion of it. But hopefully we're not going to have to necessarily Hunger Games folks out, but I think it will be sort of a dog-eat-dog.

(Kevin at 00:54:04) The folks that rise up will succeed, and the folks that don't won't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:08) I fully agree, and I nominate Kevin as game master. Probably perfect.

(Kevin at 00:54:14) As long as I get the cool haircut and the cool suit, I'm in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:17) Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.