Mark Schaefer: 0:00

They brought 300 futurists together from all around the world to answer an impossible question: how will AI change humanity by 2035?

Joeri Billast: 0:13

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast. I'm your podcast host. And today I'm so happy to be joined again by Mark. Hey Mark, how are you?

Mark Schaefer: 0:26

I couldn't be better. I'm so delighted to see you. I haven't seen you face to face in a long time, so I'm happy today.

Joeri Billast: 0:35

Indeed, guys. Yeah. I'm in Mark's Rice community. We met back in San Diego already some time ago. And it's already the third time, Mark, that you are on the podcast. Actually, you are the only guest that has come back for the third time.

Mark Schaefer: 0:51

Well, maybe we're starting some because remember, I used to be on the Marketing Book podcast all those years. And I think I was on like 12 times. And Douglas Burdett used to say I was the king of the podcast. So see, maybe this is the new trend.

Joeri Billast: 1:08

Maybe. And every time it's for a new book that you're coming back, uh, first time belonging to the brand, then Audacity, and now the book, How AI Changes Your Customers. And um, yeah, I was a bit, I was a bit surprised, Mark, because we spoke in the beginning of July, remember, and you motivated me to Yuri, it's time for you to write a new book. You have kind of some content, but did not know that you were writing two. I even I thought you would take a break in the summer, and I was I tried. And here's what I've done.

Mark Schaefer: 3:22

So literally, I was supposed to take the summer off, and earlier this year I was part of a research project. So when the research report came out, I thought, this is absolutely fascinating because these experts reach consensus on a few big ideas. And look, the I I went to the sponsors of the report and I said, Can I turn this into a book? And they said, Not only do we say yes, we're jealous that we didn't have that idea. And so here's what it came down to. I didn't really want to write another book, but I would have been overwhelmed with regret if I didn't, because it was such a great opportunity. It's such an interesting topic, and I had to do it now. I just had to because AI is such a big topic, it's so important, but everybody's talking about prompts and strategy and integration and transformation, but they're not talking about the psychology. AI is re rewiring us, and it's happening right now. It's in the news. And if AI is rewiring humans, it's changing our customers, yeah. And as business leaders and marketers, we've got to know about that.

Joeri Billast: 4:49

You said it's rewiring who we are. So how does this how do you actually define the new human and what does it mean for marketers that are still operating with the old assumptions?

Mark Schaefer: 5:05

So what's happening is through let me give you a little uh a little example. Before I got married, I used to do my taxes. Then after I got married, Rebecca decided, my wife, that she likes to do the taxes. So I haven't done the taxes in years. And I have de-skilled myself. If I had to do the taxes, I'd be completely lost. I wouldn't know how to begin. And that's common in a marriage or any kind of relationship. You have this shared task, you split up the tasks. Now, what's happening with AI, that cognitive offloading, that de-skilling is happening on a mass scale. So we're abdicating our thinking, our processing, our decision making to AI. And it's literally rewiring us, it's literally de-skilling us in very significant ways. The I think the most profound quote in the book was from this young woman, I think she's 21 years old, 20 maybe, she's a sophomore in college. And I was taught, I met her at a party, and she was telling about telling me about how she uses AI every hour of the day, constantly. I said, I'd like to interview you for my book. And she said, When you told me you were going to interview me for the book, my first reaction was I need ChatGPT to give me the answer for me. I am using Chat GPT to answer texts and emails. I'm becoming dumber. Where am I in these exchanges? I think I've crossed a line. And that is a symbol to me of one of the many ways that we are being rewired. We are being changed forever. There's no going back. And this de-skilling and this rewiring will change. And that's just one of the ideas in the book. Another one that's significant is this idea of empathy. That I'm the there's lots of research coming out now that humans actually prefer the empathy or perceived empathy. It's an illusion. Algorithms don't really care, but it seems like they care because they ask the right questions and they never get tired and they never get irritable and they they never fall asleep in the middle of our discussion. And so think about the implications. How important is empathy in sales, in customer service, in building new business uh connections and relationships. And so the book just goes on and on about these implications. But I think even more important, I look at this through the filter of business ideas, ideas that we can activate to start to, I guess you say, fight back or at least figure out how we need to change our marketing strategy to start to account for some of these things.

Joeri Billast: 8:31

Absolutely. I use it also every time it's like you know, the internet or your mobile phone, when it is not available, you have a problem. And I also like to help it because I'm not a sales guy, but if I sometimes you need to be a bit use a bit of sales taxis to convert your customers, and then a chat GPT or AI can help. And I also see that sometimes Claude can be more blunt than ChatGPT when it comes to certain things. I've wondered because I asked it, I asked the both of them to analyze my website and to just be honest with me. And then Claude was like more, you need to put this on there, this. Philip Kotler gave a quote, it's not on your website, put it there. And like ChatGPT was a bit more softer, I would say. Now, talking about that, Mark, and I think this is a topic that is discussed in the Rice community, in your book, in my book, about AI discoverability. So these days, showing up on Google is not like it used to be because Google already gives the answer. So I have this guy came to me, he booked a call with me, asked, We have so many or so fewer clicks to our website because AI answers. So, how do you what is your view on that? And because we need to show up now in ChatGPT in clouds, can you give maybe give an insight what we should know as a marketer?

Mark Schaefer: 9:54

I get into this in quite a bit of detail in the book. And first of all, you mentioned your book. Congratulations on that. I'm so happy that your new book is out. That's wonderful. And so the I think the bottom line is that most of the marketing ideas that have propelled us for the last 20 years around content marketing and discoverability through SEO, most of that basically still works. AI is hungry for data. So if you're showing up and you're creating content on the web consistently, it's always looking for something new, always looking for something fresh. So consistency matters, and that's something I've been preaching on the content marketing side for a long time. But some of the differences are that when I write my blog, I'm writing for you. I'm writing for my friends. I want to create something that's thought-provoking, but also something that's beautifully written and fun to read. AI doesn't care. AI just wants data, it wants explicit data, detailed data. And there's gonna be some tension there. How do we serve our readers, which I will always do, and how do we serve AI? Another consideration is text versus video and podcasting. And so there's two considerations there. AI prefers text. That is one of the things we're seeing. Number one, open AI came out plainly and said we prefer text because on a video, it's hard for AI to look at facial expressions and tone, same with a podcast. But the other thing, it's much, much more expensive for these LLM models to try to tear apart a video or podcast and get to the meaning in the data. So the first default is going to be text. If you're doing podcasts and video, the implication is transcripts, right? Lots and lots of detail, lots and lots of words. Now, the second big idea in the book is overrides, because not every decision is going to be made based on AI. When AI provides a recommendation for me to do something or buy something, I'll consider it. But when a friend tells me to do it, I'm gonna do it, right? So if you if I'm visiting Portugal and you tell me some great things to do, I'm going to do it. Word of mouth marketing, more important than ever. Branding, more important than ever. So if I'm gonna go on a trip to Portugal, I might have an open AI, give me a list of places to stay and things to do. But then I might say, I want to fly Delta because that's my preferred airline. I want to stay in Marriott hotels because that's my preferred hotel. So that connection to brands is more important is more important than ever to serve as an override for AI. So those are two of the big ideas I get into in some detail in the book.

Joeri Billast: 13:23

What about PR? Because being mentioned by other sources or authorities online. That's what the open AI of this world look at, right?

Mark Schaefer: 13:36

Yeah, that's another important idea. So in the SEO world, we concerned ourselves with backlinks, are people linking to us? Google considers that sort of a validation, a vote on our authority. But AI doesn't care about that. What they're looking at is validation through mentions. If someone is talking about marketing strategy or CMO strategy, are they mentioning you next to those words? So, yeah, one of the things we've talked about in the Rise community is that this could be the golden age of PR because these mentions in traditional media, trade publications, academic publications, websites with high authority are very important.

Joeri Billast: 14:23

Uh bring us back to old gatekeepers and trading Google hacks for AI hacks to be able to be mentioned there. I don't know.

Mark Schaefer: 14:34

I think so. It's it's a game, and content marketing is a bit of a game, and SEO is a bit of a game. Um, but I think we need to be informed about what the rules of the digital world are and how businesses are being rewarded. And another thing, I think we need to have a sense of urgency about these things, because I think the windows could close in some of these industries, just like it did in SEO, right? I had a customer one time that said, I want you to teach me how to blog, because I think all my competitors are blogging. And when I looked at their websites, they had some of them had seven or eight blogs, not blog posts, blogs. And the domain authority to these sites was so high. There's no way she was ever gonna win because the game was over, the window had closed. We had to find something else for her to do. And I think the same thing will happen with AI, maybe even more severely, because at least with search, the results could be a list of links, and you could choose, but with AI, it's one answer, it's one recommendation.

Joeri Billast: 15:47

Yeah, and I think you know what I started to do when I followed your personal branding class that this is doubling down my podcast, but also repurposing my blog. The podcast is found through Google through the blog, and also the ChatGPT Claude Perplexity, they know about the podcast because I've been doing it so consistency. All I would say the text is out there, as you say. Now, another question I had because, like you mentioned, I've published the book myself. I did the self-publishing route, like a lot of people do on Amazon. It's easy these days. You have a publisher, we have published already more than 10 books. Maybe it's already number 12 or 13. I lost count. But you did this time, you chose for self-publishing, Mark. So I'm curious what was the reason for that? Was it speed or something else?

Mark Schaefer: 16:37

All of almost all of my books have been self-published. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that's really cool that you didn't know that. My earliest books, my first three books were published by McGraw-Hill. And I'm glad I did that because 12 or I guess it's been longer than that now, maybe 13 or 14 years ago. That was the tail end of the powerful days of the traditional publishers. And then other business models started to emerge, like self-publishing, like hybrid publishing, and those traditional publishers have just really collapsed in a lot of ways. And look, I can make eight or nine hundred percent more revenue from publishing myself. I have total creative control. My time to market can be a week instead of months. I own the intellectual property, I can do anything I want with it. Traditional publishers, once they lock in a price on Amazon, they can't change it. But I can change a price every day. I actually have more power with Amazon than the traditional publisher. So this is something I've been doing for a long time. Even if you have a publisher, you're expected to do the marketing. And so there really aren't that many advantages today to go the traditional route versus self-publishing.

Joeri Billast: 18:11

Yeah, indeed. And it gives you the freedom and it Amazon makes it so easy. Now, like I mentioned, you've written a lot of books, you are already in marketing for or shaping the marketing conversation for over a decade. Is there maybe one belief about marketing that you held for years, but now after writing this book, that you no longer believe?

Mark Schaefer: 18:34

No, I wouldn't I wouldn't say so. I I think the if you look at the very fundamentals of marketing, the purpose of marketing is to create customers. Many years ago, I had the great honor of studying under Peter Drucker. Some consider him the first marketing professional. He wrote some of the earliest books on marketing, and he famously said a company is marketing and innovation. Everything else is overhead because if you don't have customers and you don't retain customers through innovation, you have nothing. And so I think that's the fundamental idea. Now, the tactics change. We the internet came around, changed everything, and social media came around and it shifted the power of marketing from agencies really to individuals. That's continuing to change because those individuals who are these powerful influencers with big audiences, they'll they're now creating their own brands. Huge trend, right? The fundamentals are the same, the tactics change, and I don't really think there's much about the fundamentals. I I guess the one big thing, and this is what I highlight in my book, is consumer behavior and human nature might be changing because of AI. And we look at AI in terms of the intelligence it gives us, the way it serves us, but the bigger change might be how it's literally changing us as human beings. And that that's why it was so important for me to write this book. I just had to do it, I would have had regrets if I didn't spend my summer vacation writing the book.

Joeri Billast: 20:28

Yeah, but you also you love writing, right? I'm sometimes I'm wondering do you what do you love the most? Writing, speaking, or building these communities.

Mark Schaefer: 20:37

Yeah, I love all those fun things. And I had a friend tell me one time about the importance of building your personal brand. And she said, when you build your personal brand, you have the luxury of choice. Because the more you're known and the more you succeed, then you can have the choice, you have the luxury to choose what you want to do. And so these things that you mentioned, I have a live event called a retreat called The Uprising. It's the most fun thing I've ever done. It's like bringing all my friends together for a marketing summer camp. I I love to write. It was a journalism major. I love the intellectual challenge of writing. I love our community, and it's a community to me. It's become my university. I live in a relatively small town, and there aren't a lot of people who understand what I do. So the community is like my support group, and they're my therapists, and they're my inspiration. And I think the thing that has really exceeded expectations is they've become my friends. You, you and I, I mean, we would we love each other as friends, right? Friends that would stay over at each other's houses. You and I had dinner together with your families. The community has been awesome.

Joeri Billast: 21:58

Yeah, yeah, we met in Belgium, and you mentioned your retreat, Mark, in the US where you live. There will also be a retreat in Portugal, and Mark will be there, guys, if you're now listening. There will be more information soon, but if you want to have information, just send me a DM. Now, Mark, years ago you warned about the content shock. I'm now wondering today can we speak about a trust shock with AI? Because can we still believe what we're seeing? Can we still believe marketing?

Mark Schaefer: 22:30

You're tapping into a real hot button there. I think it's not a trust shock. I think we're probably on the brink of a trust catastrophe. A few weeks ago on a plane, I watched this movie called Mountainhead. And it's not the best movie, but I highly recommend it just because of the lessons about AI and trust and how these AI tech company founders just kept unleashing technology on the world without really thinking through the unintended consequences when we don't trust institutions anymore. We don't trust content, we can't trust the news. And it's the ability to just create uh any sort of video, any sort of audio that is indistinguishable from real and depict people in terrible circumstances and compromising circumstances to make news events that may uh create a riot. And that's this there was actually a story that happened a few years ago. There was a police shooting in Atlanta, and misinformation came out about that shooting and it created a riot. And it was just, I think it was like a tweet or something that took off on Twitter. It wasn't even a video, it just gives you a little glimpse of what could be happening in our world. And I'm not afraid of the technology. The technology is empowering. The way I end the book is we it's time to put aside the grieving that uh how AI is changing the world and changing us, and think about how AI can empower us and we can reimagine ourselves as having a bigger impact. We can be bigger and bolder and smarter and more creative. I can be a new me in the world in a more profound way, but there is this sort of existential fear that's never going to go away, and it makes me feel a little helpless about the situation.

Joeri Billast: 24:54

Yeah, it's AI is there, won't go away. Now, to end this podcast also on a more positive note, I would say if we imagine a 22-year-old ready to start a business or maybe to conquer the world, what would you give as advice what this person needs to do when it comes to AI and is just starting from zero?

Mark Schaefer: 25:20

I think the biggest hurdle for some people right now is they don't know what's possible. They don't know what they don't know. And so I don't consider myself a techie person. I don't I am I my whole career, I have never been an early adopter of technology. I'll let other people's people fumble around a little bit, and then I'll be a rapid second adopter, right? But today, uh even leaders and especially young people and entrepreneurs, they need to be experimenting, they need to be trying these things out to really see what they can do. Too many people today are using AI as a glorified search engine when this can be something that can change your life, change your business. It can create new business models, it can create new products. I I actually teach a college class where I walk students through, we create a business in class from ideation all the way to manufacturing to just to show a breadth and the scope of what can be done. And so you don't know your true potential until you know what's possible. So don't delegate this, don't abdicate this, whether you're an experienced business leader or whether you're someone you know just coming out of college. Experiment every day, push the limits every day. And one of the things that I have learned myself is I'm a very self-reliant person. I don't like asking for help for everybody, from anybody. And what I've learned is I can't stay relevant on my own. I need a community to help me. There's just too much, it's going too fast. And so I have a community of friends from all over the world that are educating me, supporting me, nurturing. We're teaching each of us, we're teaching all of us. And so the second thing I would advise is find a community of people that can help you figure these things out and figure out what's coming next. Amazing.

Joeri Billast: 27:50

And what I would advise to people listening is get Mark's book. It's available on Amazon. It's available, I think, also as audio right now, Mark. Is that correct?

Mark Schaefer: 28:01

It is. It's an audio book. I narrate it myself. It's available in an ebook version and also in a hardback version. And it's a relatively short book. I think you can read it in maybe a couple hours, but it packs a punch.

Joeri Billast: 28:17

Absolutely. So, Mark, and if people they want to follow you, what is the best way to find you?

Mark Schaefer: 28:24

It's pretty easy. You don't have to remember my name. You just have to remember businesses grow. That's my website. So if you can remember businesses grow, you can find this book. We've talked about belonging to the brand and audacious. Also, we mentioned. You can find all my books, you can find my blog, my podcast, and all my social media connections at businessesgrow.com.

Joeri Billast: 28:48

Absolutely. So, Mark, it was an enormous pleasure to have you again on the podcast for the third time. Thank you so much, Yuri. Guys, what an amazing episode. Really powerful. I think I could talk for hours with Mark, but our time is limited. And as Mark said, you can visit his blog, you can visit Amazon to buy his book, you can find information about the Rice community, about the retreat that I'm doing. Just ask me. And yeah, a couple of things at the end of the podcast episode, as I'm always saying, so be sure to share this episode with people around you because I think it's a lovely for everyone to be a member of AI. Also, if you haven't given me a review yet for this podcast, it will be happy if you give me these five stars. I will give my special meaning. And of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.