AI Won’t Replace You If You Do This

Speaker 1: [Music] The big thing that I believe people are missing is this notion of AI is going to drive IIA. And I say I is an imagination accelerator. This should be helping to get human beings to be thinking more expansively, more broadly, more what's next, more where do we go and how to use AI truly as a tool to help us get there but not replace us. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheila tip podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps, a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the She Built It Community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to the Sheila podcast. Thank you for joining us. Gwen, how did your personal path lead you to Chrometrics and what drives you in your role today?

Speaker 2: From a personal standpoint, I'll go a little bit back in time. And in college, I actually studied economics. And the reason I loved economics is because it was about how the world worked, the different intersections across people and society and commerce and government. And while I loved studying that, I knew I didn't want to be an economist as a profession. I was thinking quite a bit about what are the careers where I can still focus on how the world works and get underneath what are different reasons for changes and behavior and things like that. It was marketing was what drew my eye. While I've had a long storyried career in the advertising realm of that, at the beginning of this year, I actually did a career pivot and moved more into the data driven performance side of marketing, which is what we do here at Chromerics.

Speaker 1: That's smart because that's where the

Speaker 2: world is going. Absolutely. In that direction, that was one of the big things in spending a lot of time with clients. They were having more pressure to show tangible results in a short amount of a time. They were leveraging the power of data insights to drive their business and they were looking for ways to collapse a lot of the silos that were existing internally and those are changing quickly and at times it's hard to figure out what to do and there's so much noise. So it is nice when someone comes into your business and helps you streamline those processes.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. They find the value too in that external perspective. So whether it's when you have an idea or you're trying to solve a problem and you're able to bounce it off of somebody, somebody that's not in it with you, but that can give a bit of that perspective. I found there's just a lot of value and that's where we're able to help them chart what's next and where to go and how to get there.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I was going to say sometimes as a founder you're so close to everything that having that detailed and different perspective really is helpful.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Perspective is everything in life, isn't it? You can look at a situation from the left, from the right, from above, from below and assess and figure out, okay, what do you do with it now? And how do you move forward?

Speaker 2: When you start working with a company, where is the first place you look to find hidden potential in their growth

Speaker 1: strategy? The first place that I look and I always try to get very smart on my clients. This may feel very baseline but you look at their annual reports, look at the earnings reports, learn more about them and their teams and then try to piece pieces together. Learning from different news resources, learning from different industry sources and starting to map out what are potential problems to solve. Because at the end of the day, it's about how do you solve problems and create opportunity and that has been a really important piece because it meets the clients where they are. You're gaining credibility to begin with and then you're able to unlock those deeper conversations where you get to understand what is the nuance or what are the real challenges not just the symptoms that are attached to it. That's interesting because you can see a public facing view but when you look inside usually there's a lot that can be fixed as far as process. Yes. And we talk a lot about what's the brief behind the brief because a lot of clients they sometimes believe handover heart that here are the problems to solve or here's the opportunity or here's what we're trying to go after or the consumer behavior we're trying to change or shift. And then when we come in and we are able to pull back the onion per se, you find out it's some of that might be true, but it's not necessarily right. Here is actually a reframe of that problem or here's another way to think about it that if we could unlock this thing, it's going to have that ripple effect.

Speaker 2: What do you think most leaders miss when it comes to using AI and Martekch in a way that actually drives growth? This is obviously the topic duour or the topic d millennium per se. I was looking forward to asking this question. Honestly,

Speaker 1: the biggest thing is that there's obviously a lot of talk about the potential. Everybody's using it. We're flexing our muscles. We're trying to push what's possible through its use, leveraging it for greater effectiveness, greater efficiency, greater ideiation. The big thing that I believe people are missing is this notion of AI is going to drive IIIA. And I say IA is an imagination accelerator. This should be helping to get human beings to be thinking more expansively, more broadly, more what's next, more where do we go and how to use AI truly as a tool to help us get there but not replace us. One of the big things that I always get very frustrated by is especially with earning seasons, they talk about reductions in headcount due to efficiency and AI. And I always think somebody missed the boat because they have all of these great minds and they haven't been able to unlock the potential of where they can go next because of AI versus saying we're just going to replace them with AI.

Speaker 2: That's so true. And I look at what I do as a podcast producer. I'm able to connect with women like you in this conversation all over the world and I absolutely love it and I don't think I'll ever let that go. But I do know that there is an AI component where I could be created as not the real me and get my message out there. So, it's interesting when companies look at how do we blend the two as far as being human beings. We're still going to be human beings hopefully, but also bring in that AI component to help further our business.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I believe that it's going to be one of those things where the human touch is actually going to be making much bigger of an impact in the world in which you can automate and drive things forward with AI. That's one of the things that we try to balance quite a bit. Obviously, we spend a lot of in-person time, facetime with our clients, not only in office, but also outside of the office because at the end of the day, people want to work with people that they like and they know and they trust. And so while we're going to be getting incredible efficiency and effectiveness out of AI, that I think is going to really make the difference when you have a face and a name and an understanding and knowhow and care that goes into it.

Speaker 2: I think so too. And even when you look at customer service, we are still humans who want a person. And it might swing one way, but it will swing back possibly a little more towards hopefully we're still humans. We have to prevail in this. That is my mission. I tell people if we end up the movie in Wall-E where everybody's floating in outer space with their superersized drinks, that's where we don't want to be. We want to avoid that at all costs.

Speaker 1: I think about customer service because it's the obvious one that touches all of us no matter what we do. Sometimes it helps because you get the answer quickly. Other times you really need a human being and that becomes frustrating. So it's interesting and how do you find that perfect balance for a business?

Speaker 2: It's fascinating because those are a lot of the tests that companies that have big customer service arm are focused on is what are those things that easily can

Speaker 1: be managed through an AI agent versus where do you need the human touch and there's a very big gray area between it depends and the more we experiment to it we're going to understand truly where that's going to make the outsized difference and is going to drive retention and a positive experience and upsell and cross-ell and all those important things.

Speaker 2: When you review analytics, you look into the customer journey. What's one surprising insight you have found that most leaders wouldn't expect?

Speaker 1: One of my favorite things that we look at is when we can get into deep analytics engagements with our clients and we can understand where a consumer came from before they got on their site and where a consumer goes to once they leave their site. That is usually a gold mine because as you can imagine there's some of the usual suspects. They're doing comparative shopping. They're going to different sites. But sometimes it'll start to reveal interesting behavioral things and behavioral pieces, especially if you don't have that first party data. You're trying to understand what are the behaviors or where are their different nuances or leading factors. So that's always one of the things we make sure we get the access so that we can dive in there and see what surprising insights we get from it.

Speaker 2: It's interesting to think of how you ended up gaining the customer to come to your site which obviously is through leads and different ways but where they go after I haven't heard that said very much as far as what competitor do they jump to or what do they look for after. So that is interesting. It's been fascinating

Speaker 1: because if you think about that customer journey, you have the people that have purchased and then it's okay, they've achieved that goal. So now what are they on to next? Is it an adjacent category? Is it something totally different? Is it an interest? They've gotten that hit of dopamine, they've purchased something, now they can go enjoy when they've abandoned cart. Obviously, we're always looking at what was a friction point where they were pretty far down the funnel and abandoned. So then where do they go and how do we do that? And then also understanding people that might just be coming on and doing some exploration. This is like the light leads that that a site will have and those light consumers and understanding what are other kind of behaviors that then they go to. And if you're a service-based business, what does that journey look like? It's interesting because we don't always stop and think through that probably as often as we should. One of the big things we're actually seeing right now, we're focused really on AEO and GEO and with the rise of LLMs actually going to sites to bring forth recommendations. One of the things that we're currently seeing is obviously the uh amount of LLMs going to sites continues to be relatively low, but the audience when they do get to the site has a high intent. We were actually looking at a pet insurance client of ours the other day and the conversion rate of people that came from LLMs was extremely high. That's one of the big things we're also looking at is how does that journey start to change as people are using LLMs for search for recommendations and how are we getting those websites and digital properties primed for our brands to at the end of the day be successful and drive a seamless and frictionless experience for consumers if they want to do all of that journey actually just directly on the LLM.

Speaker 2: So interesting. If a business could only focus on one stage of the customer journey, where would you recommend they start?

Speaker 1: I actually believe it's a different question to be asked. It's actually about what is the right audience to focus on and then understanding from them what is that right stage in the journey. This is one of the big things that we always are talking about. Again, there's different audience segments and not only between psychoraphics, demographics, whether it's their category purchasing or things like that, but also that intent level. The high value audiences are who are those high intent that can actually drive conversion. There is so much pressure to show short-term tangible results. And if you can understand who your high intent audience is and people that are already actively searching, they're actively primed. You're going to be able to show what that is and what that impact is. And then furthermore, you can use those audience profiles to lookike audiences to then expand out from there.

Speaker 2: So interesting. When we think about social media and websites are often a company's first impression, what's the most common mistake that you see businesses make with their websites?

Speaker 1: It's actually multiple things and we live and breathe this every day. Number one is that from a website perspective, a lot of times people have like their homepage and they're like, "Everybody's going to land here and then we're going to bring them down the journey." And we actually believed in the same sentiment about knowing your audience that there should be personalized landing pages depending on where are they coming in from. If you know what they've searched up, where they land on your landing page should be that very symmetrical experience. You shouldn't have them search up for one thing and then say, "Oh, we can offer all of these things." You want to make it easy. So, I think that's number one. Number two, which we've seen a lot of times and one of our specialties is that people really focus on the aesthetic aspect of the website. And of course, you want it beautiful, you want it gorgeous, you want it appealing, but a lot of times they have this like big launch moment. And all of a sudden, they find out that the new website doesn't perform as well as the previous one. And everybody's thinking, I've spent a couple hundred,000, we've spent all this time, I'm scratching my head. And we really focus in on and believe in experiment-led redesign. So you should experiment and you should test your way into it and you should constantly test because going back to what consumers say they're going to do isn't what they actually do. So you want to make sure that even though it keep it beautiful, keep it all of those things, but you want to make sure any change that you're making is truly an improvement and a tangible improvement that's driving results. So I'd say those are the two bigger things and we can go into a whole other slew of opportunities that exist as well.

Speaker 2: So we talked about this earlier going back to conversion rate optimization it can feel highly technical. How do you make it practical and more human-

Speaker 1: centered? We use a lot of behavioral science principles even within our strategy development is we think about what makes humans tick whether it is social proofing and them feeling okay other people are doing this or four and five people have signed up it makes it a lot easier and frictionless. We think a lot about how do we shorten that journey. A lot of times we'll have clients that have lead forms and there'll be like 12 questions on those. And so the question we have for them is, I don't think you really need all 12. What is the minimum amount of information you actually need? Because you're going to get a higher rate of people actually filling that out and getting further along in their journey. Those are just a couple of the different ways that that we think about it. But while there is a technical aspect, there is a lot of that intuitive and kind of behavioral science-based principles that sometimes as we're bringing them up, we'll have clients that they have those light bulb moments where it's, oh, of course that makes sense. It seems like a good idea sitting in a silo to have a forum with 12 things figured out, but I wouldn't want to spend my time doing that. And and so it's those kind of moments where it's grounded in proven principles, but it's also some common sense types of recommendations. I always think about how can I say the information in the shortest and quickest amount of time. I'm a twin mom building multiple businesses. is if I see a form that's too long, you might have lost me.

Speaker 2: Then you're right, you don't always see it.

Speaker 1: And we talk a lot about that even internally and say if you are sitting in the middle of Chicago, let's say you're at Millennium Park, you have to think about a cross-section of these people that are here at the park are going to need to get through a user flow to sign up for car insurance. Like you got to make that as easy, as seamless, as fast as possible. Otherwise, people are going to drop out. Some people think email is

Speaker 2: outdated. What role does it still play in growth even in the age of social media and AI?

Speaker 1: Email is fascinating to me personally. There's two reasons for that. Number one is again putting your consumer hat on of saying how many of us look at our personal email inboxes or our work email inboxes and you're just overwhelmed and you're like h another email. It's just junk. It's somebody kind of reaching out. I'm just going to go ahead and delete it. So I think that there's still that exist but it actually email has the opportunity to become a lot more creative, a lot more personalized and a lot more breakthrough. That's number one. I think number two which is fascinating is our organization for instance is a heavy Slack culture. So for the first time in my over 22-year career I have quite a bit less emails than I think I've ever had before. So, the ones that do come in and I have all my filters and things like that, those actually do get my attention, which equate to direct mail. I do think we're going to see a resurgence of direct mail because people still go out to their mailboxes and you pay attention to what you get because it's a lot less than what we probably got 10 or 15 years ago. So, I still think email marketing has a big place. It's just how do you make it creative? How do you make it stand out? How do you make it personalized and relevant? And also as more of these other kind of tools are coming in play and people know that the full email inbox is an issue that is actively being solved, it'll actually have those types of things stand out.

Speaker 2: I agree with you. And I have my email that I give to stores where I know I'm going to receive a lot of emails and my emails that are only for work and really try to keep those separate. And Slack, too. I'm on Slack also, but I find myself sometimes sending an email instead of Slack depending on what it is. And then things that really catch your attention within email are valuable because I will stay on those lists if I'm getting the information that I need.

Speaker 1: Exactly. There's something to be said. That's why there's lead forms, right? If I've seen something online that I'm interested in and I fill that out, there's usually some value that I've seen in it for me even to give them my email in the first place. And I think that's how we feel a lot of times about the email marketing of we never want to just work with a client and just spam people. It's like how do we make it intentional? How do we make it so that people are actively wanting to be a part of it and then providing value when we do email them?

Speaker 2: Trust is everything in business. What have you learned about credibility and relationships from building your referral network?

Speaker 1: Trust is everything. People want to do business that they know, that they trust, that they respect. And while personal brand is such a buzz phrase today, it's always existed and it's based on the notion of doing what you're saying you're going to do, kind of putting other people's needs ahead of yours and their business objectives ahead of what you're trying to get. It's being genuine and authentic and not coming across as salesy. And sometimes that does drive, I call it long lead nurturers, but those are really important because at the end of the day, you never want to be pushy. never want anybody to feel uncomfortable and you actually lose quite a bit of trust quickly if you ever appear to be that. A lot of those core principles that have always been around continue to be important. They're actually more important today because there are so many salespeople out there that are just looking for a quick conversion. And that's where we can easily sniff them out and say that feels authentic. That feels not what we need. And that's why volume plays such a big deal into sales. And we try to focus on quality over quantity.

Speaker 2: That's so true. And I look for that in my team members and try to provide that for our clients too because our clients want to trust us just like I want to trust my team members.

Speaker 1: Exactly. And that's a great indication. We talk a lot about the importance of hiring the right people and especially for a business like ours which is very client focused is how are we making sure it's the right people obviously from a skills standpoint but also from an attitude standpoint and from are they credible? Are they trustworthy? Do they immediately make that first impression that puts people at ease? For a leader looking to grow their influence, what's one piece of advice that you would share with them?

Speaker 2: Put yourself out there that is one of the hardest things for people and myself included. Putting yourself out there I would break down into I've given this advice before of a lot of people are very much on LinkedIn for instance, but they don't post. They feel very exposed. They feel like they're putting themselves out there. So I encourage people get a first post out there. Get a second one. Get a third one. You'll find out not only is it not that scary, but then all of a sudden somebody you haven't heard from or been in contact with for a long time reaches out and oh, I'm so happy to hear you're doing like really interested about hearing about this. Thanks for sharing. And you get some of that positive reinforcement and it goes a long way. It's taking those I call them like those micro steps like what are those small little steps that you can take in order to put yourself out there and then make an impact. I think the second thing is in the world of influencers, I actually think that's like a misnomer. It your goal shouldn't be to influence. Your goal should be to connect because you have something to say because you have some advice or some wisdom or some experience or some perspective. If your goal is to influence, it feels like very empty without the substance to it. I also always tell people love think about what it is that you bring to the table or what is the perspective that is unique to you that you think other people would benefit from and that's the thing that you should be putting yourself out there and talking about and sharing and all of a sudden you'll learn actually your experience isn't only unique to you but it's something that actually helps other people out as well.

Speaker 1: So true and you never know where that lead or that next client might come from.

Speaker 2: completely. Someone might see your post and be talking to a friend and say, "Oh, I know someone who does that." And in this world, it's all about staying top of mind and also timing. You never know when somebody's going to need help or support.

Speaker 1: Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. What is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy? I

Speaker 2: know we've talked a lot about business today. This took me a very long time to rediscover, but in the last number of years, I've really been focused on integrating hobbies much more so into my life. And people talk about work life balance. People talk about life integration. And I am really a big believer hobbies make me a more curious person, a person that's constantly learning. I'm fine spending time working on the weekends or at night because I created space for my hobbies and I think it really just goes to being like this lifelong learner. Even joining in Chrometrics again as I mentioned it was a big career pivot. So one of my own goals is to learn more of a technical expertise. I'm not a technical person by nature or by education. Even last week I went Google had this agent first to build agents. So I signed up. I went to Google. I coded for the first time. I created multiple AI agents and connected them with an MCP server.

Speaker 1: I love that.

Speaker 2: And I broke the code a few times, but I put myself out there and I tried it. And so I think there is this notion of taking that first step, finding those joys, learning new things in your personal life, but then also your professional life. And that has just brought me so much joy and I feel more fulfilled. But I also look back and I'm proud of some of those accomplishments and some of those steps that at the time felt really big, but you're just slowly but surely moving in the right direction.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I love that it is that thirst for learning that's going to keep a career evolving or a business evolving completely. That's one of the biggest risk we have as we were talking earlier about AI and human beings is if we as human beings are stagnant that is a place of accepting the status quo and doing what you're told and left behind.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So you have to put yourself out there and say all right where is the world going? What is my role to play here? And how can I be part of this change as opposed to your point being left behind?

Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing all of your marketing wisdom with us. Can you please share with us how and where we can find you?

Speaker 2: You can find me on LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn. Also, our website is www.crometrics. So, crot

Speaker 1: i cs.com. And thank you so much for having me. It's been great catching up today.

Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hell@shiltiltit.com on our sheiluiltit website or at sheiltit on social. Thank you to my editor rich drefalino who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave. [Music]